Category:Diary

Thank you, Pokeau (A retrospective)

Posted on Updated on by ZinCategories:Essays, Housekeeping

Today is June 8th – which means tomorrow is my birthday.
It’s not really an important date inside Pokeau itself (aside from being Pearl’s birthday), but with events like Artfight coming up, as well as the recent passing of Ultra Arc’s 2nd anniversary (which I missed due to… a whole cacophony of things), I figured I’d maybe write a retrospective. Since it’s been on my mind.

I’ve had… a lot of feelings, regarding Classic pokeau and Ultra Arc. And a lot of feelings being felt from other people.

For those unaware: 2 years ago, I was feeling heavily dissatisfied with what has now been differentiated as ‘classic’ pokeau – though at the time, this was just ‘pokeau’. While I had been sort of… losing my ‘spark’ of love for the series ever since the games made the jump to the switch, it was around the beginning of the PL:A era that the largest factor into my burnout with pokeau came to be… fandom bullshit!

Part of me says it’s pathetic to admit, but the exhausting attitudes and constant infighting over complete nothingburger issues, combined with the feeling of it being some kind of rat race and a constant craving of validation… it made me feel miserable to continue working on the love of my life. My best friend.
Pokeau was never meant to be palatable, and it never was even since it’s inception. It’s a world for me, and only me – a world that doesn’t need to appeal to others.

But…
When I was sort of… ‘peer pressured’ onto Twitter, it was like some kind of parasite. A parasite that constantly needed shallow, number-based affirmation; a parasite that would become spiteful and comparative. A parasite that sucked the joy out of something that’d been the apple of my eye for so, so long.
Because suddenly, pokeau wasn’t a world for me anymore. It was a world to be judged and perceived and pitted against others – the characters some kind of flat idols to battle against other OCs in a battle of who could be the most conventionally attractive.

And it sucked! It sucked so bad! I was miserable and I hated my art and my writing and no matter what anyone said, nothing would change.

Mariska and Hazel were meant to be one offs. Just a little pocket of a small alternative silly thing.
But…
It was with them I felt like I was given a breath of fresh air.

Even though it was suffocating me, pokeau as it was 2 years ago was all I had known. It felt outlandish for me to leave it, even if the toxicity of social media and fandom has poisoned the water supply.
So, when Hazel and Mariska and Ramiel’s adventures seemed to offer something completely different, something away from it all… I guess my subconscious took the chance to jump ship.

Since then, Ultra Arc has grown to be so much more than the single one-off arc that its original name would imply. It’s become my primary focus, and it brings me so much joy and fulfillment.
But…
Part of me is still guilty. Both on my behalf… and on behalf of others.

I talked about it a little bit in the 9th anniversary letter, but because classic pokeau had been the forefront of my mind for so many years… even just the thought of letting it be dormant is distressing. I’m afraid I’m going to lose it, and all the friends I’d made there. It’s distressing when I realize the staple characters who were practically my neighbors barely cross my mind.
I know that… a dormancy doesn’t have to be forever, and a hiatus doesn’t have to be indefinite. But there’s a nagging paranoia in my brain that keeps telling me, ‘what if it is over’. It’s not pleasant and I don’t like to think about it.

The other half is… a guilt on behalf of others, funnily enough. It seemed that, during its ‘prime’, I’d rarely get vocal positive feedback from anyone who wasn’t a friend… but now that classic pokeau is on hiatus, it seems to be all people can be excited about.
That, and I’ve had a few people voice their disdain about ultra arc taking the spotlight to my face. That they don’t like it, that it doesn’t make sense, that it’s not pokemon. That you’re the pokemon guy, shouldn’t you be doing pokemon stuff? I can only imagine how much worse things are being said behind my back by drama-bound cliques, but as long as that never reaches my ears, I couldn’t care less.

It’s frustrating.
I needed to take a break from classic pokeau because it’d become something that drained me, something I no longer felt the same joy with.
Ultra arc gave me that freedom again, a freedom I felt I’d lost.

I’m not sure when I’m going to feel ready to return to classic pokeau again, as I imagine the smoke will still need some time to clear.
But in the meantime, Mariska and Hazel and everyone else will keep me company;
And I’m sure Lune and Emmy will be waiting there for me when I come back home.

Essay; Decay of the house, and OC ‘ownership’ in a new era

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Uh oh! Uh oh!! New annoying rant of an essay time!! This one’s been on my mind for a hot moment, but I’ve never really been able to get my thoughts about it together cohesively. But maybe… I’ll try?
As a disclaimer – I do not hate Toyhouse! It’s a wonderful resource and I’ve met so many of my closest friends there. People there are creative and have a passion for art and storytelling. Consider this to potentially be an SOS flare.

I’ve been on Toyhouse for 9 years! That’s almost a whole decade!! And in that time, I’ve seen things come and go, as well as trends and attitudes change. So, with that in mind… I don’t like where things are going! But it’s beyond the obvious lack of moderation issue, and goes deeper into the community and changing of times as a whole.

Toyhouse has one member of staff. A mod, admin, whatever you’ll call it – there’s only one person managing the entire site… and it shows! Unless it’s blatantly inflammatory, the forums and comments are effectively an unrestricted free for all — which, as the userbase has began to grow exponentially, doesn’t bode well. The ‘free for all’ type of atmosphere has led to the development of a uniquely discouraging space that was once full of promise. However, this issue is not exclusive to TH – it just happens to manifest there quite a bit due to lack of moderation.

You cannot write bad things. Sure, murder and death is ok, but you must put a big huge warning saying ‘I DON’T CONDONE THE ACTIONS OF MY CHARACTERS’ on your bio – otherwise you condone it, as would be the obvious conclusion to nobody.
But any other type of ‘dark theme’? Simply portraying is is romanticization. If it makes you uncomfortable, it’s problematic.

This extends beyond themes, too. People will become so hungry for drama and their desire for a sense of justice is too strong, that they aren’t allowed to just ‘dislike’ something for no reason. The thing they dislike NEEDS to be morally reprehensible so they can feel justified.

This attitude is exhausting to see, time and time again – even as a bystander.
Everything has to be in bad faith, and arguments spark as easily as flicking cigarette embers out of the car while driving by a field in drought. Again, this is not exclusive to TH – rather, TH suffers from a symptom of the greater modern internet itself.
Rage and hostility is engagement. Engagement is good. Art and writing is content to be consumed.

It’s awful and I don’t like it, even if it makes me sound like an old hag. I just want to create things and tell the stories and emotions of the people in my head.

Ownership… what about it?

Maybe I’m only just noticing this because I only ‘got into’ adoptable recently, at least in the TH sense. As a teen, I’d buy and sell adopts on pre-AI hellscape dA using points. There were of course popular artists in my sphere, but the focus was almost always on their art instead of adoptables they’d make.

But… it seems different now. Especially in the last year and a half.

In the environment TH has fostered specifically, designs are trading cards. Sure, they may get a one-sentence blurb of story and potentially a name, but more often than not, it’s an endless rat race of foddering someone’s art in order to achieve ownership of a design by someone popular… only to fodder that design for different ‘pop’ designs.
These people’s art is being treated as disposable, made more evident by the rise of ‘dreamie’ lists. People will insist they aren’t shopping lists, but when you link that folder saying ‘any design in here is an auto-accept’…

And god forbid someone actually creates a story with a character design they’ve obtained, instead of dangling them on an ‘entertaining offers’ stick for eternity. If someone has many character designs by ‘pop’ designers and doesn’t show an indication of foddering them off, they’re a whale, a hoarder, and don’t deserve them.

What a mess.

On the reverse side, it’s also getting harder and harder to support smaller adopt makers too, as they begin herd-adopting more restrictive terms of use for their designs. Generally, the worst of these is the ‘don’t delete or hide my designs or else you don’t own it anymore‘, in my eyes.
What are you going to to when TH eventually succumbs to its hubris of exponential growth with no moderation? OCs have existed long before TH, and will exist long after it. To act as though you can simply ‘revoke’ a character that may have heaps of development and love simply because you can’t have your eyes on it at all times… it’s weird.

But what does it matter. They’re just designs to people. Trading cards.

Art is content and must be consumed quickly before moving on to the next new shiny thing, after all.

Diary; February 22nd, 2024

Posted on Updated on by ZinCategories:Diary

Hello! Life’s been busy, and the diary has been blank… so, I guess this marks the first entry of the new year? Albeit a bit late…

January and the first half of February were very, very rough months. I was off an essential medication due to a mixup and the withdrawal kind of felt like hell on earth – and I ended up making 3 trips to the ER. Fun! Thankfully, I’m back on the meds again and have been feeling a lot more like a person, now.

I’ve been really taking a particular heavy interest in 3D animation now that I’m feeling better, seemingly right where I left off. I feel like I’m improving every time I animate, and it’s super wild to look back at the animations I created at around this time last year! I really, really want to finish something longform eventually, but I still feel that’ll be a ways out…

I had a really good day today, though. A few days ago I was able to reunite with my absolute best friend after a year of being apart, and today I was able to meet up with another really good friend, too! I also had a random encounter with a super friendly man while waiting for my family after the meetup – his voice and smile were super warm and he said very nice things to me.

Hoping I can get some more website progress done again. It feels like everything is in a big transitional period of completeness, and I want to actually… make things complete.

Oh, also! New year, new diary theming, I guess?

Diary; December 9th, 2023

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Wow, uh… been a while, huh?

I don’t think I properly checked in based on dates of updates. But TLDR, in October I got covid for the first time, and everything has just been… tough since then. Fatigue and brainfog have been really, really bad. And it’s frustrating and distressing and the fact that it’s SAD season is NOT making anything any better. I’m kind of miserable right now and my ability to do anything is taking a hit… which is. A bit of a problem!

Because my personal self-worth sort of relies on my ability to continually create. I feel like I need to do something, to output something to justify my existence. And when I can’t do that for whatever reason, it tends to spiral quickly, and it’s unpleasant. It’s like an oroboros feeding off of itself – I feel awful so my brainfog is bad and I can’t think or brainstorm, I can’t do anything because my brainfog is so bad, which in turn causes more brainfog. I feel like I need to accept I can’t be 100% all the time and that I need a break, but it’s hard.

I’m like a court jester for an audience, even if there is no audience. If I’m not doing something, I have no right to exist.

But that’s… uh… unpleasant. Nobody wants to hear about that.

It’s hard but I’ll still try my best. But expect updates to be slow, if any updates at all. I just wanted to say something because I don’t like leaving things without a word.

Diary; September 25, 2023

Posted on Updated on by ZinCategories:Diary

Oops! Oops! Local guy gets too busy doing other things!!

Thankfully, my mental state is a lot better than the past diary entry I wrote, though! I was able to get a med increase for the medication that helps me with depressive symptoms and ADHD, and they’ve both really been helping a lot! So much so, I finally got off my ass and was able to finish initial work on a project I’m the webdev for with some friends! And bugfixing and doing support and assets for that has eaten up a lot of my time, haha.

But since the initial rush of all that has gone down, I really want to start working on this site more? Idk, I haven’t been as happy with it as I was, which may be a burnout thing – who knoooooows. But I feel like I could make it look better. More ‘me’.

I’ll try and update some of the core pages tonight (aka. the sitemap. its so old : ( ), then probably tear apart the CSS and see if it sticks. I want to get to actually completing more world pages too, even if I’m just one guy with tiny, tiny hands.

Essay; ‘Doubles’

Posted on Updated on by ZinCategories:Essays

Haha, oh no. We’re writing essays now! To be honest, I ‘write’ a bunch of essays like this in my head as I’m like, going to sleep or whatever, but barely ever manifest them. But maybe something will have something insightful for someone? Or maybe I’ll just piss people off. One of the two.

This one is particularly a hot-button issue in the Pokemon twitter fanspace I’m (regrettably) in, on that of ‘doubles’. Despite what the horrors of the 2015 kinnie Tumblr trenches would make me think, this time, it refers to someone who selfships/yumes the same character… but the discourse around it is literally exactly the same.

I guess I should start with a disclaimer that I do not consider myself ‘yume’ or a selfshipper, though I associate closely via both friends and because I’m kind of squashed in there. I do OCxCanon entirely from a storybuilding perspective, and while yes, certain romantic setups are unbelievably self indulgent and full of projection on my end, the representatives of ‘me’ are more often than not the canon character.

I feel like anyone who may come across this would already be familiar with what yume/selfshipping is, or at the very least is able to infer what it means from the english world. It’s when you ship yourself with a fictional character! Which is epic and cool and I know it makes a lot of people happy!

The issue arises when people get defensive over others who ship themselves with the same character, called ‘doubles’. And it’s kind of made Twitter (even more) insufferable, and I’m just seeing it from the sidelines because I already had a good chunk of these people muted for being annoying for other reasons.

The whole attitude of ‘doubles’ breeds animosity in the community, end of point. It doesn’t matter how you do about it – the moment you say ‘doubles dni’, you are contributing to the issue!

At the start, when someone simply says ‘doubles dni’ – it seems small. But you’re now laying a trap for everyone who comes across your carrd or whatever; if they happen to share the same fictional love interest, boom! You’ve potentially invalidated them and created an exclusivity.

However, it gets worse when done in groups.

I’ve complained about the clique attitude of the fandom sphere before, about how only people who do this in this manner and make it appealing are given any attention, as is socmed in general. But when you have these huge members of the same clique, and each one has a different yumeship that says ‘no doubles’, and each member of the clique ‘enforces’ that by not giving others any attention… it’s a mess. So no wonder extreme levels of jealousy are coming to points among people who aren’t the ‘popular’ yumeship – when everyone blocks you out in favor of someone else, it stings!
A lot of the worst cases of this are with teens, obviously – because their emotions are going wild, they have less filter… they lash out, and then are promptly chased off the internet by the bigger ship’s followerbase.

Because someone couldn’t share toys that didn’t even belong to them.

I’m not saying harassment is right. It’s awful these things happen, but making a callout post about a jealous 15 year old is almost never the answer. There’s a very cool and handy button that says ‘block’, did you know? And also one that says ‘mute’, which will, shocker, let you not see the tweets upsetting you but also not tell the person you silenced them. It’s almost like instead of parading a ‘doubles dni’ sign and pissing everyone off, these buttons could be used! Shocking!

A lot of these big names are adults. Even if they have their own emotions of jealousy to work out, they should at least have the common sense to know that these characters are not theirs, so people are going to like them too.

There’s also the subject of ‘biggest fans’ and ‘validity’ here, and it’s one I also have gripes of. It’s actually pretty similar to people’s entitlement to character on Toyhouse, in a way? Kind of.

People on Toyhouse complain that ‘Oh you’re not even drawing this character, I’d draw them way more than you!’. But with the fandom take, you take the would out – ‘I’m this character’s biggest fan because I draw them more!’.

Even if you don’t say the quiet part (‘You’re not-‘) out loud, actions have implicated meaning. And again it causes jealousy and hatred within the community. Because like all socmed, it has to be a competition. People aren’t allowed to just have fun.

People also call themselves a character’s ‘biggest fan’ or ‘most valid yume’ over… spending money on them in the gacha game, Pokemon Masters. Which I’ve kind of seen from the sidelines happening with other gacha games, but good god, claiming you love a fictional character the most because you gambled for a model of them that you can just rip and watch dance in MMD for free? I’m not going to get started on that, it reeks of consumerism.

Also goes for people acting like their headcanons are canon / the only ‘correct’ headcanons, getting into fights with others based on slightly different flavors of fanon… the list goes on and on. I can’t wait for Twitter to burn to the ground and for artists to move elsewhere so I can finally stop using it.

I’m a self/shipper yume and I don’t like doubles, what should I do? Am I a bad person?

No. That’s silly. However you need to recognize that by publicly displaying this attitude where anyone can see, you are enabling people to fight with you. Even if you don’t want to be in the ‘community’ – as long as it’s public, unlocked, not limited to followers… people are going to see it!

You can’t leave other people responsible to curate your online experience. If you see someone who makes you uncomfortable, block them (or mute them if you get blocking anxiety or whatever). It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s free! Take your internet experience into your own hands and you’ll have a much better time about it.

Selfshipping, like shipping in general, is supposed to be about having fun and it’s supposed to be something that brings happiness and comfort. But when you give an air of hostility, don’t be surprised that people are going to take that and fight.

Also gacha is bad. If you’re going to spend your money on PNGs or models, please just… commission an artist for a custom or buy an adopt.

Diary; August 5th, 2023

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Heads up, this isn’t a fun one – CWs within for talk of dissociation and derealization. And more typos than normal, probably.

Fucked up that it’s the 5th already, huh? I blinked and July seemed to fly by… which has become an increasing problem.

I’m not sure why it started, but I’ve been having dissociative episodes lasting entire days, almost always prompted by an overly-vivid dream/nightmare beforehand. It feels like I’m not really ‘waking up’ from these at all. It’s to the point where I’m forgetting that I did things I just did, like my voice and body are foreign – it’s really not fun and upsetting, to say the least. Because of that my general productivity has really taken a hit and I’m not able to do work or the things I enjoy, which includes working on this website.

A friend suggested it may be possible menopausal stuff coming to bite my ass after a medication conflict nightmare, so I’m just hoping I can see SOMEONE about this soon. This diary is partially me trying to remember to do that on Monday, lol.

Though on a positive note – I’ve really gotten back into The Sims 4 again, and it’s nice. I feel like people in the small microcommunity of pokemon and sims fans missed me, I’ve gotten nice messages and they’re helping me keep my grip while all this else is going on (as cheesy as that sounds).

I’m building an UA save there, I can’t wait to see where it goes.

Diary; July 6th, 2023

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This one is kind of hard to write – not because of deep emotions or anything, but because my wrist decided it’s time for a devastating flareup! Only time the brace comes off is if I have to eat finger food or when I need to wash up. It sucks!

I was really looking forwards to Artfight this year so I’m super bummed out, I’m hoping that with some better medication and a gel I picked up per friend’s recommendations that I can hop back into the fray, so to speak. But I won’t push it, even if I really, really want to draw. I fucked around and found out in 2021 and I don’t wanna do that again.

Otherwise, I’ve been busy – in a good way! Got a project I’m working as a website guy for with some pals, and I’m proud of the work I’ve done for it so far c:
Again, the wrist makes things kind of annoying because my typo ratio is a lot higher due to less mobility, which means more coding errors that are actually just typos I missed, but I’ll survive!

What else… I wanna try making some simple 2.5D/Gen 5 styled buildings in blender for the location pages… I think it’d be cute and more simple than drawing them, maybe? I’ve been studying those models, anyhow, so it’d be a fun experiment.

Man, I also wanna keep adding to my Koi model collection… so much to do @__@

Diary; June 10th, 2023

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My birthday was yesterday! I wanted to write a diary entry then, but unfortunately fatigue kinda got my ass… as it’s been doing for the past week.

I’m not sure if it’s in part because of the extreme heat and humidity and how its been rapidly shifting, but I’ve had zero energy for anything and have been sleeping most of the day since the month started. It’s kind of unbearable and the feeling that I’m running out of time won’t go away, it sucks. But my postop period isn’t over yet, so maybe it’s just one last hurrah of annoyances before I’m out of that period.

I feel a bit bad that I didn’t do much for my birthday because of that, but I was able to spend some time on Second Life with friends and forced them to watch Touhou stuff, so that’s alright enough for me. I also got a full essentials and skintone set of paints! So hopefully I can actually do more serious painting now that I’m not missing so many colors.

I’m almost done with bio migrations… it’s tough especially with fatigue, but I’m really really hoping I can power through and get it done, considering it’s been… half a year.

Diary; May 25th, 2023

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Soooooo many thoughts all the time…

The point of this one was actually to ramble about Lune, since it’s her birthday today, but also I feel like I need to clear my head a bit before I start doing work for the day. It helped last night, but instead of writing about myself, I did some diary prompts for Hollyhock.

8 years! It’s really wild to think about, honestly. Like, I know Emmy and co. are older than her, but even just the individual milestone is a lot. Within those 8 years Lune has managed to attract all kinds of bullshit towards me, next to, ironically enough, Angie. I talked about this pretty comprehensively in the Harmonia family shrine I made a while ago, but people really get upset over shipping, especially if you’re having fun shipping an oc with a canon character instead of shipping that canon character with a person’s preferred partner.
Shipping nonsense is exhausting, and it’s one of the reasons I really, really wish I could ditch Twitter, if it wasn’t for wonderful artists who I find and work with from there. It’s about who kissing who is most attractive and marketable, or whatever. Like at this point, after 8 years, the Harmonias are barely a ‘ship’ to me – they’re just a family, a trio in love that goes beyond surface level. But of course, that doesn’t matter to everyone else.

Maybe I’m just out of touch. The rapid rise of the yume community in pokemon oc circles wouldn’t be concerning if I didn’t have to see people being paggro to each other about ‘no doubles’ like its 2015 kinnie Tumblr. Just block people, there’s no need to invalidate others to keep yourself afloat, yaknow? Better yet, why can’t people start fangirl/boy armies like we did in 2011, where wanting to smooch the same character was a point of bonding instead of division?

Ok, phew. That’s a lot off my chest! Otherwise, things have been a bit harder – the first week post-op was really, really good, but it was just a fakeout. I’ve been feeling cruddy for this whole week with pain and dissociation. I worry I’ll have to start taking the really heavy pain meds, which I’ve been avoiding because they generally make me nonfunctional. I know recovery isn’t linear, but god, I wish it was. It’s hard to do much of anything and it’s really frustrating!

I have some work work to do now, but maybe afterwards I’ll make a new 3DS theme and boot up AC:NL again… it’s been a week, I bet my villagers miss me.

Diary; May 8th, 2023

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I kinda forgot I had a diary, oops.

I’ve been having a feeling that I can’t shake where it feels like I’m running out of time? Like, it doesn’t feel like there’s enough hours in a day to do everything I want to do. This in tandem with a pretty bad spell of executive dysfunction wasn’t great for me emotionally, orz.

But I’m hoping I’m bouncing back a bit. I’ve been able to sleep through the night as of late, and even though I’ve been having unpleasant overly-vivid dreams more, the fatigue is a bit less bad? I actually felt rested for the first time in a long time after I woke up today. Though that does tie in to the ‘lack of time’ feeling, because I know that when I fall asleep at like, 9pm, I’m gonna be out for a solid 12 hours.

Not all bad though! I was surprised to hear that Coco won the prompt contest for the species group she’s in – I really wasn’t expecting it! I guess nothing beats the universal appeal of extremely low res spinning roaches?

Also, I’m very excited slash very nervous about surgery which is… in 4 days! For some reason I’m particularly nervous this time around, even though I’ve had similar surgeries before… though thankfully, this one if hopefully going to be the last in that series.

Anyways, I feel kinda of itchy to clean up character and website stuff, it got really messy while I wasn’t looking, or something. I’ll see what I can get done!

Diary; April 10th, 2023

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I’ve been busy! A bit… too busy for my liking, actually x__x Between a mix of severe fatigue and a growing to-do list, it’s been a bit hard to balance what I want to do and when I want to do it…

I woke up today feeling completely out of it, in part to oversleeping way too long and having a really vivid and strange dream (that I can’t even remember anymore). It’s on those types of days that it feels like my brain is full of soup, and focusing on anything becomes a nightmare. Nothing feels real and it feels like I’m swimming through reality. It’s weird! I’m still not entirely grounded but I’m hoping the sleepy feeling will wear off later.

That said, it may be my body trying to do a reset because I’ve been sleeping too much to begin with lately. Fatigue was really really bad for 3 days, and while I can’t say for certain if it’s better now because of how fuzzy things feel today, I think that flare is over with.
Which is good! Because I have like 3 art trades I have to do, and I also need to update the mods for my ACNL save because the season changes tomorrow and I only modified the files up to that point. I can’t say I’m excited to deal with the work that being totally out of commission for 3 days left me with, but I’ll make it work.

I did realize that it’s almost only 1 month away from the surgery – especially given the recent bout of Symptoms:tm:, I’m excited and I know I’m going to get more annoying the closer it gets : p

Oh! Also! My grandparents visited! They said they’d visit in February to deliver xmas presents in person because the weather was so bad, but then they couldn’t visit because… the weather was so bad. But the snow is melting really fast, so it was nice to see them again!
I got a very very special gift from them too! I kind of want to make a character based off it, but I’m not sure how I’d place them… plus, Czarina and Czar kind of already exist as mirrors to my grandparents.

My grandma asked me to draw her something, so maybe I’ll try and think something up in the meantime.

Diary; April 3rd, 2023

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Remember how I said I’d do these? Yea, it, uh, only took me a month to actually start doing them.

For most of March I was going through… something. Flareup? Medication side effects? Who knows anymore. So I didn’t get much of anything done and all of the things on my to-do list got all scrambled. It sucked! But the snow is melting, figuratively and quite literally. It’s nice!

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but I was finally able to get a date for a surgery that will vastly improve my QOL after fighting to get it for YEARS – next month!! I’m so excited it’s kind of devolved into mania almost, but the fact that I may be able to live without constant pain and fatigue being on the horizon is… a lot to take in.

Speaking of, uh, mania… it’s decided to manifest super hard in tandem with a hardcore new fixation on Animal Crossing: New Leaf, specifically modding it. It’s really fun! But I’m worried about the possibility of it spiraling too much out of control – I already made my wrist upset by copying materials for 2 hours straight without a break x__x

But, as someone who’s always thought ‘animal crossing but with ocs’ was the coolest idea ever, it’s very rewarding! I’m hoping to put together a little shrine/section for my gameplay, based around what the old ACNL site used to look like. It’d be a cool bonus I think! And it’s OC related, since I’m remaking the town of Waterfall.

…Enough procrastinating though. I said I’d migrate some bios tonight, so I should… get on that.

Happy Pokemon day! Here’s to 27…

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Some fanworks are a love letter to canon…

…This, however, is hatemail.

That’s the quote that the Pokeau skit compilations, or the ‘Hellzones’ open with, at least as of Hellzone 6. I, uh, stole it from an AO3 tag that was reposted on Tumblr, but it really resonated with me for some reason.

I’m not old enough to have lived in a world without Pokemon, but approaching 30 years is pretty impressive. And it feels like for almost half of those nearly 30 years, Pokemon has been something I just can’t get out of my mind.

From a kid imagining stories sitting tucked out of the way somewhere in the school playground, to an adult to only seems to get motivated to do things when they involve their weird pokemon people – the one thing that hasn’t seemed to have changed is how Pokemon has brought out a love of storytelling in me. Even if at this point I’ve molded a lot of it to fit my own agendas and desires, Pokeau will ultimately be tied to what’s in its namesake.

I’m pretty adamant about how I’m not very happy with the directions TPC has been taking (as well as the video games industry at large – it’s a symptom of a larger problem with AAA games), and often feel disconnect in social media fandom spaces, but ultimately, it’s… not really about Pokemon anymore? At least, kind of.
It’s about the stories I’ve created and skills I’ve gained and friends I’ve made. Which, ironically, are some of the core themes of Pokemon as a series itself. So, uh, scratch that – it’s still about Pokemon.

So… thanks, Satoshi Tajiri! Because one autistic person’s idea, 27 years ago, and lead to a whole lot for a whole lot of other autistic people’s ideas. Which happens to include mine.

(This is a new ‘diary’ style of entry! This one is marked as ‘housekeeping’ because it’s the first, but in the future, these will be marked as ‘diary’ and accessible through my personal section of the website.)