Long Time

Oof, it’s been a while again. I’ve been focused on trying to grow my Instagram page for the last year (a fruitless effort, I realize now), and so I’ve been neglecting this poor little space. Plus, the last year has just been… awful, quite frankly. I don’t even think a recap is in order, since it’s mostly just been bad. But, things will get better. I’ve been working on costumes again, which has been great, and am hoping to have a few new things done by Katsucon. That, at least, has definitely been a silver lining. So, here’s to things getting better as the year goes on. I’ll be around here a bit more often.

An Ode to a Fictional Character

Today is a weirdly special day.  It’s the in-game 98th birthday of my old Vampire: the Masquerade character.  It seems strange even to me to still be invested in a character I haven’t played since 2016 when the campaign ended, but she – well, they, as you’ll see in a second – still hold a special place in my heart.  

Shrine to my gaming character
Because who doesn’t have a mini shrine to their gaming characters in their office?

Briony and Aughra Bonaforte were my split personality Malkavian vampires.  Even though one was technically a figment of the other’s imagination, they believed that they were twin sisters.  They had a very Jekyll and Hyde style to them, as Briony was innocent and kind of idealistic and Aughra was very angry, bitter, and prone to violence.  Courtesy of a very traumatic human childhood (because I can’t write a character without a tragic backstory, apparently), Briony had no real memory of her human life, although Aughra did.  They met their sire Ramses when they were 15, and by 16, they agreed to a willing embrace.  They were so much fun to play.  Unlike Jekyll and Hyde, the twins were very much aware of each other and interacted all the time, so I got to play talking to myself a lot in-game.  It took some getting used to, but it was a blast.  During the campaign, I started writing out the girls’ rather involved backstory, so maybe I’ll post it here as a series at some point in the future.

My character sheet
My character sheet at the end of the campaign

Even after all these years after the campaign ended, I still love these characters.  By the end of the game, they were living in Linda Vista Community Hospital, an old abandoned hospital in Los Angeles, and I imagine that they’re still there, protecting their city and trying to change the world.  Happy Birthday, you two.

Cosplaying my vampire character
The obligatory cosplay

One Week Down

I’ve been doing this now for a solid week. I’m nearly positive I’m the only one seeing this, and while that both takes some pressure off making anything I’m saying interesting and makes me feel like I’m just talking into the void for no reason, I’m still pretty happy that I’m keeping this up. I realize that this pace is unsustainable in the long run, but if I can hold it for forty days, it might help me make this a more regular thing in the future.

Leap Day

It doesn’t particularly feel like an extra day of the year. Still, it’s pretty interesting to me to have a day that only occurs every four years, give or take. I still don’t understand all the rules involved. It feels like one of those “i before e except after c” things, where there’s a rule, but then there are rules for the rule, and it just gets confusing.

I ended up spending the day running errands with my husband and son, finishing folding a truly absurd amount of laundry, and watching my kid play. I also tried to squeeze in a little bit of website design while he was napping, and managed to crash Photoshop mid-save. So, I ended up making negative progress somehow.

But now I’ve recreated everything that I accidentally deleted and have finished my design. Now to see if I remember how to write CSS sheets…

Like A Dragon

I’ve been doing some web design for the first time in years. It’s been a lot of fun, although I’ve just been messing around in Photoshop so far without actually coding. I’m kind of dreading that part.

In the meantime, my cat spent the day sleeping in her pile of toys like a dragon guarding her horde.

Cute Kitty

My son is sick with a bad cold, which I’m getting, and I’m exhausted. But I also don’t want to give up on my “post every day” plan on day two, so here’s a cute picture of my old lady kitty, Usagi, with the hope that I’ll have more energy tomorrow.

Ambitious Projects and Bad Ideas

I used to go to anime conventions and cosplay at least twice a year. Between adopting a child and everything else that’s been going on, I haven’t actually made a costume for about two years, outside of throwing something together for Halloween. I’d like to get back to sewing and costuming, and since I’m not the type to ease back into a hobby (a.k.a. a dumb person), I’ve decided to go straight for the most bat-shit crazy option I can think of.

For those of you unfamiliar with animated vampire films of the early 2000’s, that is Carmilla from Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. I am a huge fan of the Vampire Hunter D light novels, and even though Carmilla does not actually appear in them, I have wanted to do a costume from the series for a while, and hers is amazing.

Seriously though, I’m not sure what I’m thinking taking this on as a restart project. The wig alone is the stuff of nightmares. And that dress defies physics in the way only an anime outfit can. But, you know, I guess I’ve had worse ideas than this.

Time to dig up my swatch book and see what I need.

Mardi Gras

I honestly didn’t realize today was Mardi Gras. Normally I don’t realize it, but I had a plan this year, and missing Mardi Gras actually would have messed my plan up.

I was raised Catholic, and even though I no longer go to church or practice, the only real holdover from my past religion is Lent. The theory is you’re supposed to give something up as a sacrifice. It was never a practice that made a lot of sense to me, even though it’s supposed to be symbolic. But when I would give things up, it would always be something kind of silly, like chocolate or ice cream or something, and half the time I wouldn’t even manage to get through 40 days without slipping.

So a few years ago I changed my plan. For the 40 days of Lent, I gave up procrastination. I forced myself to create something every day and posted it on the internet for accountability. It was hard, but I did it with no slips. It might not be as much in the spirit of things to give up something so intangible, but it genuinely helped me and made me feel like I was actually doing something that mattered, instead of just pretending to give up something trivial that I would totally go back to the second Lent was over.

So this year, I’m giving up something more intangible again. I’m giving up ignoring my blog. However dumb I feel about it, I’m going to post here everyday until Lent is over. Heck I might even try to push for Easter. We’ll see how things go. I suppose I accidentally picked the right time to come back here and start writing again. Here’s to happy accidents!

Here We Go

So, a lot has happened since August. The biggest thing was that my husband and I went to Tokyo once, and Seoul twice, and brought home a son the second time. Suddenly going from having no children to having a small toddler running around the house has been, to say the least, an adjustment. I naively thought I’d have time to write over my parental leave, but not so much. Hopefully I can start to remedy that now.

I probably won’t end up writing about my son that much, even though he’s now a huge part of my life. This is mostly so that some future spouse or employer can’t Google four hundred embarrassing stories about things he did when he was two.

I do want to write about our trips to Japan and South Korea, hopefully before I forget everything that happened. And I’ve got some other fun stuff in the works, if I can just find some free time.

So, in the immortal words of Stan Pines…

Here we go.