deepsea

working hard or hardly working? the world may never know...

{ 8 / 14 / 25 }

> mood: broke...

> learning: japanese!

> still unemployed?: yup...

finding some new hobbies + the job hunt continues...

hey journal, been a while again. it's been a hard time trying to find a job lately and i've been doing tons of interviews on top of interviews leading to...nothing. i'm getting myself back on the art horse just to make some money in the meantime, as i'm considering applying for an online class to study concept art and have to save up for it. for anyone interested my commissions are open indefinitely.

but i've been picking my own pace back up with art again (albeit still a bit slower), as i participated in my very first artfight this year! my goal for each piece was to stick with learning color picking/color palettes, and the results for each came out really nice! i was hoping to do more, but life's gotten hectic so i could only manage about 5 pieces before the month of july was over.

i also picked up some new hobbies, and somehow i landed on learning a new language! i'm hoping to increase my ability to read and understand japanese, and i've gotten a couple books pertaining to grammar, sentence structure and kanji. a lot of my time at the start is memorizing the three writing systems, all of which take a good while to get lodged into my brain (especially getting the stroke orders memorized...), but it's been fascinating to learn, and i've been having a lot of fun!

what's been interesting starting out is how the various writing systems function in tandem with one another. it's like relearning the alphabet when you're memorizing specific phonetics with symbols, and all are written with a specific stroke order in mind. kanji is the hard part, as the meaning is affected by the context it's used in. but it takes time to generally get kanji down, so it's a matter of patience and memorization.

i've also been using a note-taking app with my textbook learning, so it's been nice to keep everything organized as i study!

one of the strange parts of language learning is, well, the community surrounding the study. the rise of generative information taking over much of the current web has taken its toll on nearly every platform imaginable. as someone learning a lot of things from the ground up, figuring out the starting point whilst avoiding anything artificially spat out at me has been a hard battle. but i'm seeing where things take me utilizing some recommended workbooks i've found online, and i might try to give a deeper review of them someday.

i've also been trying out traditional art again! part of why i'm updating my art section was to have areas to post sketchbook or paint practice (and not have everything lumped together into one area). fancybox is not an easy thing to figure out though, i'm still fighting with the differences between local previews on my own end vs when i officially post it up on nekoweb. strangely, it isn't affected on neocities but i suppose there are some errors and hurdles to get through when crossposting.

the world's been pretty crazy as of late. i've had to use an app to limit my usage of various socmed apps on my phone during the week because of how bad doomscrolling got for the past month or so. it's certainly got me to be on my phone a little less and gets me out of bed more than anything. i'm keeping myself more occupied with some kind of hobby so i might get back into coding my site some more, maybe to at least stave off the current state of everything.

i certainly fell off when playing catchup with updates, so future changes are to edit my links page with new sites i've followed/followed back, or just add a few sites i think are cool (which is also a good way to plug my guestbook if i happened to miss anybody)! a lot i have planned are still in the works, but the ones i have in mind to work on are a recipe section, a section dedicated to writing, maybe one for japanese language learning and resource reviews, and finishing lance's shrine because that's been on the backburner for a while (getting episodes of journeys and the tournament arc are a hassle right now...).

if anything i want to update my review section some more, maybe for micro reviews for media i've read/watched over larger infodumps because of how much research i gotta do just to write stuff out. there's other things i need to put more effort in infodumping about, but more about what i love and the fair criticisms i can give to it. perhaps it's the perfectionist in me when it comes to site building, but there's something fun to unfinished sections or work in progresses i need to keep in mind more than polish.

and...i think that's about where life's been for me at the moment! nothing crazy besides the world's usual happenings and trying out new hobbies to stave off unemployment. here's to hoping i have some better news to bring to the table with the next entry, otherwise to future me and future people reading this, i wish for better times to come ahead. keep fighting for what you believe in!

we on that job hunt once more, portfolio crunch time

{ 3 / 11 / 25 }

> mood: hopeful

> book: earthsea (tombs of atuan)

> unemployed?: yup

a slow yet honest start...

hey journal, it's been a while! i'm definitely going into this year trying to be more hopeful now that i'm out of college. So far it's just been reworking portfolios and resumes and updating a lot of job website info while finishing up commissions, it's been busy but uneventful!

been reading earthsea with an audiobook i checked out from the library and learned a really fun fact: the narrator for most of these is Harlan Ellison, aka the creator of "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream" which surprised me because of how much of a shift it is between what he writes and how he reads, it's truly masterful. many reviews i've read say he's a little too much or emphasizes in odd places, but i find that he has a charm that has made my reading journey all the more interesting! a most delightful dose of cheesey narration to tide me over on the reading.

lately i've slowed down a lot on art besides finishing up commissions, the postable stuff i mean. a lot i'm making is currently a work in progress towards a bigger thing, which is visual novels! i enjoy the method of telling a story through the means of the programs itself, and it helps to know how to do art when i struggle a lot with being verbose. you'll see me catching myself repeating the same word in a sentence sometimes, and every time i find myself doing it i get annoyed, but it's a human error. it's mostly been coding and drawing and script writing, the Works.

i'm learning a lot from other visual novels on how they're made and produced, and bit by bit its all gonna work towards building my own. which is Really hard. thankfully there are old forums still lingering around to help with certain code aspects i'm struggling with. its not easy, as i have to learn specific words to what i'm trying to find, but i'm getting there. other aspects i'll account for later on are music, and i'm planning on making this free to download! as its fanmade and i don't wanna get into the legalities of bigger companies, i could Maybe make a behind the scenes art book pdf for it... food for thought.

i've also done a lot of self reflecting (because...what else can i do but wait until i hear back from any job opportunities?) and thought about art, not just my own but the state of it, especially in a time where it's not valued as much as something generated is these days. incorporating a level of sincerity is what makes a lot of art what it is, no matter the level or the skill or the materials. something i need to remind myself when much of social media has everyone focusing on the numbers.

as much as the world itself loves a good meme or joke, i ran myself empty very quickly when i leaned into it and relied on it back when i used my twitter often (now locked down at least). it just never felt sincere or as deep as i would have wanted it to be. i don't chase the highs of numbers or popularity as much these days but sometimes i wish i was as big as some of the biggest artists on all platforms, at least something to help pay the bills. but we keep on going, rolling with the punches til something lands.

for site updates, i have slowed down a good bit on it because i've been stumped a good bit on what else to add? media reviews are coming up because i have a Lot to say on the first earthsea book and twin peaks once me and my friend finish the series and go into the movies. i miss coding stuff and having a space to have opinions on things, though between this and renpy and toyhouse i've been in the code zone. i finished one shrine though and i'm really happy with it! despite a lot of hiccups! catbox And filegarden going down last month took a toll on me. that was annoying but at least i got it fixed.

other life updates too: i got a pc! not something crazy expensive but much of the money i made in my last job went towards parts to upgrade it. a good graphics card really ups the amount of games i can play on it (though i may need to get more ram if i wanna play monster hunter wilds. it looks SO good). i went into a small bout of playing ff14 for a good bit but i got busy with life again! before that though i was just hanging out at the gold saucer just trying to get enough coins for mounts (squeenix please GIVE me that marimo moss ball mount. it looks so funny). i have lance as my guy for having fun in the gold saucer and riley as my guy for experiencing the story (though MSQ's are really tedious to get through solo, i wish i had a buddy for those)

guy who is so normal about lance pokemon (throws him into ff14)

and...i guess that about covers how life's been lately! i think college being over at least gives me more time to try out various things, new programs, new options, maybe i might try streaming? whatever the case, i hope i'll have some good news to log down in the coming months. stay safe and take care out there!

this semester was so shit!!! glad its my last!!!

{ 12 / 18 / 24 }

> mood: i'm FREE!!!

> game: webfishing

> unemployed?: yeah...

college graduation! and a lot of opinions...

hey journal, it's been a good bit since the last entry. this time of year always seems to amp up the stress somehow. holiday seasons and finals weeks and a million things to prepare for before the year comes to a close. at least i'm no longer tied down by academic obligations though! this fish is a graduate!!!!

here's an opinion on college: it's not for everybody and That's Okay. i think my time felt a little wasted due to a lot of internal issues with my own institution and budget cuts, so i'd say definitely look into what college you're considering going into. professors can vary for everybody, just like teachers in high school. some are pretty lax and genuinely cool, my professor who taught me 3D genuinely got me interested in using blender or unreal engine while i took the class! but others...can be a miss. unfortunately some will be just as strict or be barely any help to students, even if you ask questions or be active in the class you're not gonna be exempt to the professor saying you "didn't pay attention" just for asking a question pertaining to a project they never provided a rubric for.

i will say, i've met some genuinely cool people here! i've had some really inspiring professors the past few years i was here despite the few bad eggs. hell, i took a geology class that was really fun even if it was just for general ed credits. i got to talk about the cambrian era and even got to talk about pokemon for my final presentation (that i got a A on, god i loved that class). however i will Not miss the tuition, the parking, feeling drained 24/7, stressing over projects and grades, the works.

the current downside is that i'm also unemployed now. and unfortunately i gotta pay off said loans, so commissions are gonna be open on my kofi for a good while til i get a stable job. it's been a good bit since i've done these and i still have yet to get a vgen code to set up commissions on there as well. the method of getting one is really specific though, and especially since my twitter is inactive/locked, i might just ask around for codes. (if anyone actually does have a vgen code to spare, send me a message on guestbook)

in recent developments, i got scrivener while it was on sale to see if a different writing program can switch things up for me, and i've been liking it a lot! the custimization settings really do allow you to have full control of your space, as well as organize notes and references, even allowing for htmls and customizing the fonts on the menus! i don't consider myself a writing genius of the sort, but i've been trying to up my game up with writing and structure. part of me diving into writing is because i played a really good visual novel, and the other is that i used to write a lot for myself and my longtime friend, and i missed being able to get my creative juices going for an actual story.

i also picked up tales of earthsea by ursula k. le guin! i've been meaning to find time to read a book, and some previous ones i got didn't really hit a specific niche i was looking for, but one artist i followed recommended this series, and i got the fully illustrated version with all of the earthsea books in one while black friday sales were going on! might consider making a general review page on here for the upcoming year, i definitely want to log my thoughts on this one as i read it. here's to educating oneself to gain better reading comprehension for new years resolutions!

really though, i do want to get to everything i had on my backburner for Years now. i got a Totally Legal Copy of disco elysium that i wanted to get through, finally use some tutorials I bought for blender but never used because I was so busy, model kits I have yet to open, get better at mahjong, and work on my visual novel/writing in general...and get my room in order. the list goes on...

oh man i also want to play final fantasy 14 because i'm seeing so many swag blogs have a page for their wol and i'm like. inspired. but my gaming laptop has not been agreeing with being turned back on after not being used in forever. either i get that thing deep cleaned or i should probably get an actual pc, both options scare me. i think a pc will be better for the future, but its the one thing i know zero about because all the gamer setups care more about the cool LEDs and such, but i just want a pc that can actually run the thing. and with all the bloatware being added to current computers being made, god. i just want something that's functional.

i did it for fun at first and modeled a au'ra after shadow the hedgehog. his name is nine'egg plantstall and i liked his vibe (and yes, i even did the math for his height, eggplants are at an average of 9 inches tall so multiply 9x9 and you get 81 inches or 6'7 feet tall). it was originally a running gag for me and an ex friend to have our guys be named something funny, but i might start fresh if i start playing again. it's been way too long since i played it...

it's him. mister nine'egg plantstall,,, my rotten soldier

and as for here, honestly i've just been having fun building my own space somewhere. i've grown this place a lot since i first started, and every site i've got to visit on here has just been really cool. and inspiring too! i was only feeling a little down since the end of last year was not the best for me, but this year really has been a whole lot better despite the hurdles of college. meeting cool users on the site building side of the internet has really boosted my mood, there's always a site or two you've never seen before every time i check here and on nekoweb when i mirror stuff. it's scarier going into the new year not knowing how things will end up, but i can only hope for the best at the end of it, y'know.

future goals are that i want to save up to move out of the house away from my family. unfortunately i don't wanna be homeless but i have to be in the closet around em and maybe someday i won't have to be stuck here forever. at least with my many various online aliases means my family wouldn't know that i like girls anytime soon.

i dunno, there's a lot i want to do with the time i've got. definitely gonna look for some audiobook readings for the earthsea books, get some more pictures up on my pokemon page with my collections, get a general page going for my pokemon timeskip designs/character stories, get some work done for my visual novel, finish my shrines for riley, lance and their ship that i made, fluffyriceshipping! there's something about writing a rarepair in the way you want it, its like. i might as well make it myself. and i am! learning how to make visual novels is really fun, i just need to make sure the story itself is comprehensive and, well, good. i'd need some writers advice on some parts, its hard to make something good that doesn't have a dip in interest like a level that people dislike between two good levels. writing feels like that.

the hard part is that romance is hard to write without it feeling like its moving too slow or there's too much filler. and there's very few references that i can go from with my ship because of how niche and specific i want my fluffyrice's dynamic to be without ending up being generic or reduced down to tropes. finding a good balance is hard for what i'm trying to go for, and i hope in the end its good. not groundbreaking but at the very least, good.

at least this year's coming to a close, the year of the snake is the one i was born in, so hopefully it means good things going forward. so... here's to better years! good luck and godspeed wherever you are in life, to future me and others out there.

drinking tea (LOTS) to not get super sick

{ 10 / 20 / 24 }

> mood: disgruntled

> game: ghost trick

> coding?: ren'py!

a series of crazy events...

hi journal. it hasn't been great these past few weeks. for one, my current job on my college campus is already ushering me out to find a different job, and i haven't had much luck finding another one as a good hopping off point. combined with having to work on various projects and prepping both digital and physical portfolios alongside finding a suitable job AND planning things out for graduation, life has not pulled any punches with me.

my schedule in general has not been consistent nor will it stay that way! and i hate it a LOT! from all the work i'm doing everywhere its hard to even find time to even relax or lay down. because of car related issues i have to drive back and forth from workplaces to my college and back on probably the worst road in my area, and my back has not been taking it all too well. i might as well become a shrimp by the end of the month.

if anything, my supervisor's tactic of trying to push me out the door and quit my job is working, i guess! wish me luck on finding a new job...

in better news, i'm certainly finding a lot of joy in coding stuff for my neocities and learning how to use ren'py! new stuff is on the way so i'm excited to get my other pages set up soon. i learned about how to create and set up tabs so it might make my life easier when making my shrine pages (although now i have to. make sure everything in it is formatted well enough...). as for ren'py, it's similar but different than what i'm used to. i'm slowly figuring out the workings of it, though. helps to learn other programs when pursuing a lot of my future game dev related goals in life.

life does have a way of hitting you hard when you least expect it, and sometimes you just have to handle it however you can. i can at least be grateful that i've got people to talk to to help me through a lot of it though. this time of year brings out stress for everybody everywhere, and it sucks a lot! but it's good to know that you're not alone in the feeling, either. i've been overall happier in my social life that was once super closed off. the other downs are a lot of the recent stuff coming about ever since last week.

two things occurred around the same time: pokemon leaks happened and it's been. insane? and then the current news of neocities creator being a fan of genai. which was very disappointing. to the neocities stuff, i am disappointed but at this point with every single creator of social media being a jackass in some capacity, what's happening now isn't really phasing me as much as it has others. current plans are to just get everything mirrored onto nekoweb just as a backup in the offhand chance things go to shit on here, but i will try to keep both sides up to date. but honestly, the community on neocities is so much nicer than nekoweb (or at least to my knowledge, there isn't really one that's as specific as neocities'?) so it's part of why i don't want to jump ship just yet. i think for the time being i'll try to get everything set up on nekoweb for future mirrors, but that was the one depressing note.

the other is the pokemon leaks. and boy am i feeling mixed feelings about it all. for starters, there is a whole lot of info coming out that will be archived for the future, high quality pictures of cards and such that we've never seen this well in years is finally surfaced and it gives me a few more sources to add to my future shrine pages. which would be all fine as is, however, all the information and images came at the cost of thousands of employees at gamefreak getting d0xxed. what the fuck??? they draw the line at leaking any information of gen 10 but are willing to let thousands of employees have their information out in the open?? genuinely criminal. i hope the employees are doing okay after all that mess...

the information coming out about scrapped ideas has also been giving me and many others headaches on how people are processing all the new information. mythology is weird as hell and has been for literal years, but when pokemon emulates it pretty tastefully and as homage to the original myths they're based on, That's when it's weird? okay. i forget sometimes people don't read when they play games or in general. "it's so dark" or "it's so gross i can't believe pokemon is like this" please. read up on some mythology and stop reducing stories down to unfunny jokes about stuff being horny or strange. asian myths have been fetishized enough as is and i'm so TIRED. typhlosion and others i'm so sorry people are reading about ya'll like that, they do not deserve to be subject to several years of slander that vaporeon dealt with, and the joke has outstayed it's welcome. lets all go frolick in the fields together and visit the public library and learn about mythology for real now.

needless to say there's a lot of work to be done on just about. all areas of my life at the moment. hopefully i'll get a good mirror going as soon as possible and work on my shrine page writings some more. the hard part for those is getting images together, which also means i have to go on a general manhunt for manga pages and anime screencaps to fill up their gallery pages. fun stuff! i hate to leave these on a bad note, but hopefully when the month passes, i'll finally have some more time to cool down.

...is what i WOULD say but as i was writing this, twitter decided to have a terrible update! because there's no opt out for having all of your posts submitted for a! and blocks got ten times WORSE. basically useless for anyone who's been a victim of stalking or has anxieties about that sort of thing, so that's fucked! i'm making a new start on bluesky though, transferring is easier because i don't post much on twitter these days. part of me wishes i could have as big of a following on there as a lot of other people i know. the other part also hates the idea of having all those eyes on me, stage fright but for social media in a way. but ah well, new starts and bluer skies await...

but yeah, journal pray for me. october is the WORST with midterm projects coming up soon on due dates, but it will hopefully be less so after this semester ends. good luck and godspeed wherever you are.

got a cosmos tile back in mahjong soul...yeah baby now we're talking!

{ saturday 9 / 28 / 24 }

> mood: tired

> game: heartgold (shiny hunting!)

> mahjong?: mahjong...

a rocky start to my last semester...

hey there journal! god. i cannot wait for my college journey to finally end soon. i've met a lot of people good and bad, but i'm coming out of it so much better than before. at least after this semester concludes, i'll hopefully be able to find a job and put more focus on that instead of worrying my ass off over academics.

i've been reflecting on my own personal journey for a while and realized a lot of things about myself. after being isolated for so long from interaction with people on public internet spaces (in a safe manner of course), around august-early september i joined some discord servers and gained a better outlook on things! i've never been this happy being a little more myself around others in a long time.

currently i'm brushing away the dust on my main twitter after a good few years of inactivity. there's so much old art that i can look back on and say: "wow! these kinda suck." i was still pretty green to digital art and color theory as a whole, so while it is a sign of growth, it sucks when the most popular posts on your account are old smash bros comics made during what's now a long dead hype. i haven't even touched smash bros in years ever since the final announcement.

there's not really a deep reason other than that though. that old art isn't really Me anymore! i've moved on to greener, pokemon filled pastures (and those pastures are better spent with friends). i think regardless of my media tab cleansing, twitter is definitely more my post-and-run account while my tumblr and this blog function as my funzones to divulge on so many things :] MY city now babeyyyy!

if anything, i have been finding stress relief in learning how to play mahjong. there's a lot of repositories on learning how to play it, and lately i've found it pretty fun! been playing a lot of mahjong soul to learn the ins and outs of the rules and hands. i'm not the best at it, i'm definitely a beginner at best with it, but at least i'm not losing actual money on it. i use it solely for the purpose of learning and getting better at playing it. it's almost like poker where there's hard skill but to win also requires luck, so if you don't have either, it probably won't end up good for you. at least my knowledge is starting to come together with mahjong, as much of a newbie I am with it.

i think about this gif every time i get a ron. thanks kiryu

i've been hard at work with college, though. from project work to portfolio setup and branding identities for jobs, and getting all of it wrapped up and done around december...yeesh, my plate got super full all of a sudden. my college even got hit by bad budget cuts, so my on campus job got slashed for time, too. 20 hours per week to 8 per WEEK??? unbelievable. i'm not even going to have that job by the end of the semester. had to put myself on the hunt for better opportunities because of those recent developments. at least my classes are putting me on track with all this portfolio building.

besides the tough life stuff, everybody's gotta have some kind of reprieve for it. aside from mahjong, i've been shiny hunting in my copy of heartgold lately. in my soulsilver i obtained my pride and joy of a shiny chikorita, Tater Tot! my plan is to hunt for the other two starters in heartgold to get the full johto trio, so my attention is split between totodile or cyndaquil. they're all wonderful though, so i'm not opposed to any of them. here's to hoping my effort brings good fruit!

things have slowed a bit lately when it comes to site building, but these revised journal/blog(?) entries will help me keep things running. working on shrine pages and a general pokemon page is gonna be my next big update on here soon. i'll also be getting my links page updated with resources and blog buttons soon, lots of little maintenance here and there.

and i think that's a good spot to end off my first entry! be sure to eat a snack or something if you haven't already, stay safe and keep on going!