when I used to be on finsta 24/7, the context of the community was vent posts and funnies within the span of a sentence or a few paragraphs. i wrote vents but never found it particularly useful— instead it felt like i was chaining fleeting thoughts to a post and giving more weight then they really needed.

it was around that time that i was told, by a well meaning college student at summer camp, that not all your thoughts are worth consideration or further examination.

what scared me, and what eventually prompted my first insta deactivation, was that I found myself thinking in the context of spam post captions — an attentiveness developed to what could be interesting to share or complain about mixed in with much too many “tfw” thought stems.

posting is a habit, much like writing or drawing is; write enough in a diary and you’ll start thinking of your next entry, draw enough and you’ll start imagining what the world might look like on a canvas. it's just that now, you're playing to the audience rather than yourself.

the larger the audience, the more likely self-censorship/branding comes into play, which is fine when you're trying to build a professional presence, or keep in touch with a wide net of people, but not necessarily if you're trying to just share your own thoughts. many a webmaster in the top followed spots here have seen this work against them.

this was the main source of my uncomfortableness for my previously deleted accounts, where i felt a separation of personality was needed for each social sphere, whereas on tumblr/neocities, i can comfortably be a mixture, without worrying about saying things that are irrelevant/offensive to a select subset of readers.

obviously, the only reason this is possible is that the number of irl/art/close friends that actually follow me now is extremely low; most would be incredibly disinterested with any posts on here. nevertheless, it suits my own interests.

since i've moved to neocities, shifting from social media format to a self-tailored one, i've found my knee-jerk thoughts lengthening, and much more willingness to share, to talk (although i haven't reached the community stage yet, as my site is still in beta, and there's only one person who knows about it thus far - hi sabi :3).

having the control to put dropdowns and pictures of all sizes where i want to, sans any numerical indication of who's seen it, seemingly does wonders.

saturday night i came home late after making kimchi with paris2024, and in a leftover-halloween candy induced sugar high, binged almost all of the first season of white collar.

its always been on the radar as a suits fan (the crossovers are endless), and the strong polyshipping catches my interest, i don't see ot3 as the top ship very often. phantomstatistician just made a graph of the top ot3 pairings, and the top fandom is leverage, which is super interesting since that's always recommended as a "similar to wc" show, where there's 4(?) neals and 1 peter.

after finishing s1, yeah, there's no way it could be anything other than peter/neal/el. i'm a sucker for the blue sky era of usa shows and related content (see: psych, suits, chuck etc.) cuz lighthearted comedy is pretty much all go for in terms of entertainment, and peter/el has been the only canon m/f relationship that didn't make me feel apprehensive.

i realized it's primarily because peter/el's foundation was never based in a lie like shawn/jules and mike/rachel were -- and neal might leave out the details, but like he says, he's never lied to peter directly.

...which is why pairings like shawngus (or lassie), mike/harvey, and neal/peter end up so much more compelling to me. it's the willingness of 'the rule follower' to put everything on the line to protect the other's secrets, because they believe so deeply in the difference the other can make, despite their past decisions, and of the flighty rule-breaker to realize there are some things worth sticking around for. these things only work best in the first seasons though, the further along you get, the complications start piling up against them and starts spawning fix-it fic instead.

tim dekay's got one of those easy to draw faces, so i've been having a fun time with peter sketches (matt bomer is way more difficult).

every now and then, i get the urge to test whether my skills have gotten to the point where i can do doujinshi-style level of ship art.... as of now, it's...sort of...if directly copying reference, with a heap of cringing the whole way through. it's on ao3, but i can't 'cringe but free' my way through posting that here.

templemarker describes these shows (sans psych) as 'pre-packaged Special White Guy sandwich of slash' which i find endlessly amusing. after poking around king-owl-house's fairly exhaustive list of quirky crime procedurals, the shows that follow the 'special guy' formula that have the diversity temple is looking for...usually end up falling under 'special guy (white) and the guy that follows him around' instead (psych, elementary, izombie)...i didn't check all of them though, someone tell me if they've got an exception.

the other part of the quirky guy formula is the endless pop culture references -- mozzie's quotes, shawn's jokes, marvey's quips -- which i almost never, ever get TT -- but i don't find it bothersome, it's interesting for the most part and it gave us trekkie harvey :P

picking up on temple's bafflement at the lack of shawngus - the first time i clued into fandom's allergic-ness to poc pairings was in the tfa era, because how on earth are there more kylohux fics then finnpoe? by a margin of almost ~800? shawngus vs. shassie is even more disparate, by 1000+ on ao3.......but i can't really say anything about that because as someone with the experience of having a childhood best friend, that type of ship has never worked for me, lol. (part of the reason i could never get into she-ra either, tbh) but yeah, all the content that people would normally take off with is right there, and yet....

getting back into usa shows that are a decade old also means coming into contact with old-ish fandom and livejournal lingo, which might be the first time i've come close to experiencing anemoia... closer's 5U175 is one of my favorite suits fics, because the memes are so 2010s time capsule (update: i poked around on dw and found that the secrets page is still going strong, so i guess it's not as much as a capsule as Something People Do). the blogging aspect too; the only person in my friend circle who actually keeps up a blog on any level is a journalist, and even then, her posts are very much geared toward what she does for a career. substack is too business-y, dreamwidth and neocities are what i'm looking for, but it's a bit difficult to find people.

one of the best wc authors was publishing hp fic when i was born, which...combined with the fact that she was the 91st user to join ao3, has two kids, and is still posting on dreamwidth, is both mind-boggling and reassuring, i suppose. there are a lot of people who vanish off the face of the internet, so it's always a nice surprise when you see people still creating in fandom after all that time.

a mention of shorthand in a wc fic set me on a stint of learning orthic, which, after trying a few systems (teeline, forkner, gregg) is the only one that felt natural -- it's really difficult to drop vowels on the go, and phonetics have always confused me -- so fully-written orthic is what i've been practicing. the average writing speed is 5-20 wpm, and it takes ~6 months of practice to reach 80wpm with orthic shorthand....which is pretty cool? here's some autoheart lyrics written with it:

translation, from hungover in the city of dust

Feeling moody, dark and heavy
There's no feeling in my left arm
Resonance is far away
Try to complicate my thinking
Am I falling, am I sinking?
Powder in my fingernails
And the belt wrapped around
My shrinking waist is having trouble
Tryin' to keep the damn things up
Want to write a single letter
Maybe then I'll feel much better
Until then we'll float
We're hungover in the city of dust

one of the drawbacks of paper journaling has always been thinking way faster than i can write, so i wonder if shorthand would help that process.

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switching gears back to kimchi night, my friends are i are all in that weird post-grad limbo where you have to make Big Life Decisions that will Affect Your Foreseeable Future and it's all very Unfun. but i relish in the fact that they're still around for another year at home, cause i know once everyonetakes off, it'll be much harder to meet up beyond the holiday seasons. j's coming back for thanksgiving too, i always feel like a particularly excitable dog waiting for her to come back...

the 2023 publishing creatively fair was held at songshan cultural and creative park from oct 28-29. there were a few artists i knew that attended, but since i couldn't go, i did the digital equivalent => browsing all the vendor stands and picking out stuff i like in hopes that i can find them at a future date when i'm in taiwan...

oo's loveletter - (angry) cats

CFABC - not merch, but has funny yt videos

hoi in cabin - camp themes, the best dogs

yuying - bunnies :3, warm colors

tomo - cool graphic designs, fashion

im3layer - silly animals

cankingsketch - youtuber again, has good art telephone vids

---

some other taiwanese artists/brands i want to keep track of too:

fishcat - cats that are fishes...what more could u want

my mom got me this one:


without knowing i had bought triple gnome cat a year before:

little yellow studio - cute animals!

they had a pop-up at a mall, got one of his bucket hats which i have been wearing every day to keep my hair out of my face

inblooom - flowery patterns on clothing/lifestyle stuff

i went to their founding store in dadaocheng on dihua st.! they have workshops where you can do your own riso prints too.

doga - this is a chili snack. BUT. their merch is a+ & it's yummy

they also have a store in dadaocheng that is very neon and cool. i like the yellow punchy bunny (both design & flavor)

XCTRL - tokyocore(??) fashion

they have a few storefronts in ximending & good buy 2 get 1 free deals and it comes w/ stickers :3... they also have color-changing and holographic stuff which is pretty fun. double-layered jacket carried me thru pittsburgh winters

it was really nice weather today and mimi was behaving, so we sat around outside for quite a while; i managed to knock out some figure drawing practice, a few chapters of holes, and a latte before i was roped into yard work (leaf transport).

i've heard you aren't supposed to rake leaves, but i'm not sure if our hoa has guidelines for it T_T. last month, they wanted the neighborhood to plant prettier grass, so i imagine they'd probably take issue with it...

my sister went to a park clean up next to shire fest and won a copper mushroom named "the fungus among us"... i didn't go, but it's a new lord of the rings themed event with local vendors, hosted by the shire post mint. their store has a hobbit door which is superrr cute:

big fan of the guy who bought a 2" silver orb from them for $1,500:

i'm not big into coins, but it seems like a good place to get gifts for lotr/got fans! i've been seeing posts abt how sitting down and watching the full extended edition of lotr can be overwhelming for some folks, so i guess i was lucky to have multiple people to marathon it back in the day?

i imagine part of it might be watching it out of the zeitgeist, but i've watched both standard and extended a few times w/ my dad, did a lotr marathon with some older neighborhood friends, and went to all 3 hobbit premieres...

apparently there's 1,300 hours of unused footage from lotr, and jackson has hinted at making a super duper megacut edition for the 25th anniversary. i had no interest in watching rings of power, but i wouldn't mind more lotr content, esp since i haven't rewatched it in a long time.

this is going to be a perpetual wip...too many thoughts, not sure how to organize them

"social systems have values – arguments baked into their design. for example, twitter's core argument seems to be: everything should be public, and messages should find the largest audience possible. snapchat's might be: communication should be private and ephemeral."

- robin sloan, from return to nib's knoll

neocities' argument: the monotony of the internet has isolated us, and it's up to you to harness your creativity and make the internet fun again.

my first encounter with the monotony was while taking hci classes at college, which had a very mixed range of students -- we had everyone from freshmen to grad students, from all sorts of different disciplines.

feeling of being boxed in by default social media templates is something i've experienced pretty strongly i'd use paper, but i want hyperlinks and gifs and the ability to rearrange things at a whim...

what kinds of things do people write in their web manifestos?

beyond the general format of first time with the internet, nostalgia for the old web, concession that some things are better now, and the gripes with the corporate web that led them to neocities, people want to...

• educate themselves on data harvesting, internet privacy, and simple computer commands to take back a bit of internet freedom (rainmirage)
• bring back the fun of old internet, the freedom, anonymity, and ad-free experiences (l-chan)
• share what they love presented in a way they like, and connect with others (smallweb)
• increase public service web applications (building a more honest internet)
• love sight unseen and and be lonely with you on the other side of a strange and beautiful square of glowing plastic that contains nothing less than the future (cat valente)
• create their own spaces, treat others with respect, and start dialogues to form common understanding (sadgrl)
• browse the web without bloat from excessive js, ads, and trackers (charinus)
• love the internet again (studiokori)
• find their way toward a user-centered web that gives us questions to ponder and explore, rather than the expected answers of a corporate web (yaya's manifesto)
• revive and preserve means of connecting and sharing beyond the grasp of large platforms, in order to escape becoming a content-generating machine (jade everstone)
• adore the genuine passion of weird, ultra specific pages about their niche interests and feel appreciated for your own (solaria)
• if people want a piece of me, they'll have to come to my house to play (auzziejay)

personally, i came to neocities after finally deleting my twitter/instagram/reddit (for good?). i don't think social media isn't wholly a bad thing -- lexin had some good tips on making it work for you, especially if you're an artist -- i still have tumblr and youtube, and now neocities.

i think the main source of uncomfortableness for my previously deleted accounts is that i felt obligated to create a separation of personality -- a personal account for irl friends, art account for art friends, spam for close friends, whereas tumblr/neocities is where i can comfortably be a mixture of all three. obviously, the only reason this is possible is that the number of irl/art/close friends that actually follow me on tumblr is extremely low.

neocities is as much of a time eater as other social media is, but the time is mostly spent creating and tinkering, rather than endless consumption.

what i worry about in creating a personal site like this is the potential danger of self-obsession.

"when you know that you're going to write, it changes the way you live...you will live more curiously [and] become a scientist...of whatever world you care about"

mimi came to us three years ago, after following my parents home on a walk. his origin story remains a mystery -- he seemed to have gotten a fresh haircut and was litter box trained, but no tags or people missing him. the working theory is that someone dropped him off here since our neighborhood is known to be pet friendly.

he wasn't shy, climbing onto my dad's lap after we had decided to transition him from our porch to the inside. to this day, my dad is the only person he'll sit in the lap of, even though he spends the most time sleeping in my bedroom (not out of choice...i'm the only person who allows it, despite being the only person who's allergic).

turkish vans are incredible jumpers, meaning that he gets into all sorts of trouble scaling the cliffs of our home, both inside and outside; the mantle, the fridge, my door, the piano, the fence, in addition to sticking his nose where he shouldn't. our fireplace remains sealed off with christmas wrapping paper after one too many sooty paws.

we named him mimi (米米), using the chinese character for rice. sounds like a girl cat name, but it inadvertantly kept up the tradition of my family naming kids with chinese names that are traditionally reserved for the opposite gender. i learned to be careful with the pronounciation this summer though, after telling a taiwanese guy his name, he looked at me with shock -- turns out mimi with no tones (i.e. how it's pronounced in english) is slang for boobs. so i have a little boob kitty.

i baked pumpkin bread (recipe, halved sugar), giving the leftover puree to mimi, who very happily licked it clean. i like baking, especially autumn recipes, but it takes a whole lot of willpower to not overconsume what i just made...the butter+sugar combination is too addictive! i feel like everything i make lasts 3 days max before it's all gone.

in cat-related literary news, i've been reading ursula k. le guin's no time to spare, which is a collection of blog posts from her later years. my interests in the topics vary, but i do love the way she writes. my favorite category is the annals of pard where she writes about her new cat, which is both endearing and interesting, in seeing the similarities and differences between my own cat at home.

i've also beeing thinking about the according to punkin by sondra gray, who came to visit my grade school with signed copies. gray writes from the perspective of her her cat punkin, who she found abandoned on a loading dock. punkin tells the story of her new life as a trucker cat.

gray originally wrote it for an elementary school GT program that linked truckers and students, where sandra and her husband would send the kids a rock from locations on their route each month, highly motivating them to figure out what location the rock came from (clearly they understood kids' enthusiasm for funky rocks). very much a regional short story for kids, but it's fun to follow punkin around the country.

---

today's audio is from sufjan steven live in london (9/3/2015),
uploaded by rairun: sister

got sidetracked today with psych halloween eps and making tea. favs are probably nightmare on state street (8x9), lassie jerky (7x3), and scary sherry (1x15). liked the idea of shawn & co. being in a zombie apocalpyse a la shaun of the dead, so i drew a little crossover :D

aside: if you're interested in a psych zombie apocalypse fic, i liked miss_whimsy's the revised zombie survival guide

love psych, but it's def a product of the times, and i've been a lot more selective about what episodes to watch -- most of the episodes with romance subplots are a bit hard to get through :P so doing themed runs like this has been more enjoyable.

i've been trying to follow along with miacat's live gesture/costume drawings on saturdays. seeing the thought process behind placing lines has been really helpful, but i haven't been able to sit through a full session yet >_< i did a few from today's stream of wednesday costume drawing and warmup sketches from scary sherry:

--- fnaf movie spoilers ahead! ---

yesterday night i went to the fnaf premiere at amc! i'm not a hardcore fan by any means, i've watched a few markiplier playthroughs & game theory videos, and have read a lot of lore/wiki posts for entertainment value.

what got me really interested in the movie though were the animatronics/puppets, especially knowing that they were being made by jim hensons' creature shop!! seeing movie set footage was so cool, they really look like they were taken straight out of the game. when you see them without all the movie lighting effects, they're super uncanny valley.

the row in front of us went crazy at the matpat cameo, which i did not get AT ALL until after the movie, cuz i've never actually seen matpat's face T__T in my head, he just looks like:

watching dvd extras has always been my favorite, so i'm excited to see the bts content that rolls out later. speaking of which, do they still do interactive dvd games??? because that would be so perfect to include in the fnaf dvd. (nostalgic aside: favorite dvd game of all time: the lion king 1/2 virtual safari; there are scenes from movie that i watch that i feel like could be such a good amusement park ride, and this basically fulfilled my wishes before planet coaster was released)

before the movie, i picked up a postcard for pedro pascal & ethan hawke's strange way of life off a table. it's a queer western short film (31 min) with a bit of murder, sooo it's def going on the watchlist. i've quite run out of space on my walls, so the postcard is on my bookshelf. if i look over to the right while i'm working, i am met with pedro pointing a gun at me:

final lore speculation: i think puppet=garrett theory checks out, especially because of puppet music box in end credits, which could potentially mean that mike's dad is henry emily (the movie said that he was still alive, couldn't handle his kid's death, and nobody knows where he is). there's also the cassette tape with mike's name on it when he first arrives; was it left by afton, who obviously has access, or the casette man (henry)?

i added the rest of my cards to pkmn.gg this afternoon; it's a fairly new card collection website that i think is very well designed. they're adding lists soon, which will be nice for organizing which cards i'm looking for.

altogether, i have a total of 1,218 unique cards and 581/1010 of pokemon collected. i started learning new pokemon names at the ~800 mark -- even being online in the pokemon space did not expose me to the likes of espathra and lokix.

i don't buy packs anymore, but i'd like to collect the original 151 and all the cards from my "jelly" pokemon set (for my gym trainer oc, zuri). the ikegami yoriyuki illustrated is ultimate wishlist but they're going for $30 a piece, which i cannot justify paying for @_@ but look at how pretty they are:

learned that baby pokemon have way less cards -- mantyke only has 1! there were a lot of baby pkmn release in gold/silver and diamond/pearl, but since then, the only other new one we've gotten is toxel in swsh. apparently, they were introduced to sell the new breeding feature in g/s, but it died out as breeding got increasingly used for competitive stats.

i want to take a stab at painting some of my common dupes, and maybe trading the rest for other common cards that i'm looking for below :-)

Original 151 (Any)

• Butterfree
• Pidgeot
• Venomoth
• Poliwrath
• Machamp
• Victreebel
• Dewgong
• Muk
• Gengar
• Hypno
• Kangaskhan
• Moltres

Jelly Pokemon

• Gulpin
• Solosis
• Ditto
• Goomy

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10/29/2023 - First Attempt at Painting!

went with the simplest card i have; it still took like 3 hours though...notes: (1) good to prime with a thin layer of paint, but don't make it too wet, (2) golden color mixer is helpful for getting colors right.