#kinda like those custom plushies that were posted recently

[yoshdoodles]

love & peace <3

[renchanworkshop]

I guess I should write here sometimes so I won’t look too dead .__. I will upload plushie pics as well in couple of minutes so if you are here just for those, you can scroll this post X) First of all, warning regarding my work: I have severe technical issues currently because of sewing machine I use to make embroidery, broke (one of its parts literally shattered into pieces and it is not repairable. this part is not sold in any local stores, but they said it is possible to order spare parts from the manufacturer. I did, but it will take weeks to reach me.), so I’m currently postponing or canceling (if customer is not willing to wait) all plushies which require a lot of embroidery. I still can do small embroidery amounts (like just eyes or something like that) on my other sewing machine, but as it takes much more time on this one and it is very hard to keep decent quality on this sewing machine, I currently can’t do a lot of embroidery, it will be just too stressful with very average result.

About how things were for me recently: shortly saying not very good. I ruined my health very badly overworking at winter holidays and still can’t recover. to fellow artists, as i know it is very common within artists to overwork harshly: don’t do that to yourself. it doesn’t worth it. It seems it’s fine to work too much, to not care about yourself, to live on energy drinks and to sleep 3 hours per day for a long while, I know that, I am workaholic myself, but one day both your soul and body just breaks. and it is very, very hard to recover from that quickly. you are taking a break, but it just doesn’t get better.  besides this massive burnout I had a lot of other troubles including one of my cats getting sick. unfortunately, she passed away and both me and my family are absolutely devastated by this loss. she was 11 years old.

Regardless, of course, I still work, a lot, and I don’t slack. I just may be slower than usual for a while and I don’t take too stressful orders currently. I apologize, hope, it is understandable.

Regarding gaming stuff: you may know I am a competitive player in some games (even though I kinda suck because of I don’t have enough time to practice. I just play in bed before falling asleep) X)  first, Pokemon. yes, SURE, I watched pokemon direct. but I currently don’t have strong opinion about upcoming games, they didn’t show enough information to judge. Starters are cute, but I struggle to say which one will be my choice, will wait for final evolutions reveal I guess. Currently I am team Sobble but maybe will pick Scorbunny if its evolution will be better X) Not a fan of very vertical map and some things in the trailer were straight upsetting for me, but I think they may be cut some stuff out because spoilers. Also I am very very thrilled to see something looking very similar to Battle Frontier at the top of the map. I only hope they will return to classic battle mechanics and this game will be classic competitive-wise. I absolutely hate pokemon go mechanics and it is my worst nightmare if they will keep those in main series just to make the game easier for newbies -_- we’ll see and another game I am very into: Tetris.  God bless you, Nintendo, for Tetris 99 for Switch. it is SO MUCH FUN. And it feels is so rewarding to win! My win rate in this game is between 20% and 25%, but games I lose I finish in top 10 almost always, and I consider it being quite good :D I also encountered Wumbo twice and Doremy once (of course, I was annihilated, but I somewhat proud I took the second place being in the same lobby with Wumbo. Proof:  https://imgur.com/a/0qVkjNP (I am Himiko on switch. by the way I have a twitter accoubt just for screenshots and videos from Switch, if you are interested in, please send me a private message, I’ll send a link :) ) Besides Tetris 99, I play Puyo Puyo Tetris sometimes (will do more when I will be tired of Tetris 99), my current rating is ~12.7k but to be honest I am not good, if to not say I suck. We’ll get better eventually but so far I play very sloppy and I struggle badly against puyo players :(  I’ll answer private messages tomorrow, thank everyone who contacted me and sorry for responding rarely. I just don’t have enough time for everything 

[tigren]

im going to do the 30 day neopet challenge but im going to do it in one post under a readmore bc i will almost certainly forget it within the first week if i do it the proper way, i don’t think anyone is going to care about my responses in particular and i don’t want to spam people daily, and most importantly: im super bored right now

Day 01: When did you start playing Neopets and how old is your current account?

my first account got purged but i saved the date that i created it. i had my 14 year neopets anniversary last month WOW!!! my current account will turn 11 in may.

Day 02: How did you find out about Neopets?

i think my brother made a neopets account when he was like 10ish, he didn’t get super into it but my dad also made an account and got really involved with the site!! i was like 6 or 7 and i just really liked poogle solitaire (rip). i don’t think i actually knew how to play but it amused me and my dad let me continue playing because he got stuff for it. but eventually i guess he got sick of me being on my account and made one for me. my first username was bleubaby_72, which is named after a doll i had as a much younger child (Blue Baby, misspelled) and i don’t think the 72 means anything. my first pet was a yellow aisha whose name i don’t remember... my dream pet was a desert aisha (would still die for a UC desert aisha, i wouldn’t say theyre my fave but THE SENTIMENTAL VALUE.......)

Day 03: Favourite Neopets species?

i love boris! and yurbles recently shot up my list of fave pets, but i don’t like a lot of their colors. i generally prefer neopets that are mammalian (but not as a rule necessarily) and have features of real animals but can’t necessarily be pinpointed as a certain real species. like, aishas and wockies are cats, gelerts and lupes are dogs, grarrls are tyrannosaurus rex, elephantes are duh. and thats fine and good i still like a lot of those species! but yurbles for example have that hedgehog/bear thing going on but they also have their weird spiral ears and neck ruff. and thats my favorite thing. 

i also really like unis because i’ve been a horse girl since childhood n never grew out of it, and they have great colors. and aishas were my first fave and will always be one of my favorites. so i can appreciate pets that can more easily be represented by 1 animal. 

Day 04: How many pets do you own and which is your favourite?

ummmmmm 14 i think? there might be a few other pets rotting on sides that i kinda forgot about, i’m too lazy to check. Abbur is my favorite, he’s my pink bori baby boy and i just care about him with all my heart. i really like his customization and none of my pets have any real “stories” or anything but most of them have vague personalities and histories and his is more developed than any of my other pets. Alabryss is another fave, i’ve had him for FOREVER and he’s always been a uni but he’s gone thru a billion color changes. he’s royal now and will almost definitely be royal for the rest of his life. his name is a misspelling of the petpet Alabriss (i think i made him 1 day after they were released) which i didn’t totally do on purpose.. like obviously i got the name from the petpet but i didn’t realize until a while later that i had subconsciously used it. anyway i’m not complaining, i still love him and he has an alabriss petpet named yuni

Day 05: Favourite Paint Brush colour?

OHH HBOY that’s hard!!! off the top of my head w/o looking through colors or anything i like royal and desert bc they’re generally more Elaborate w/ the clothes options and stuff. but i also have a big appreciation for cheap colors like cloud and ghost.. they look good on almost every pet imo. i like starry a lot too, big obnoxious iconic neopets stars. i especially like when starry pets have orange accents.

Day 06: Favourite Labray only colour?

is robot labray only? robot is cool. i guess there’s the robot zapper thing from the dr sloth plot forever ago but does that count?? i think chocolate would be my next choice. i can’t even remember all the labray only colors

Day 07: Favourite Petpet species?

this is so hard!!! i’ve always loved petpets SOO much. i’ve recently started to have a big appreciation for the super like.. generic, classic petpets.. like the kinds youd find in the neopia central petpet shop. they have a certain charm to them and i love them. i’ve always liked crokabeks a lot, theyre sooooo square shaped!! square crows! gruslen & doglefox were my faves as a kid. 

Day 08: Favourite Petpet colour?

birthday is rly cute

Day 09: Favourite Petpetpet species?

uhhhhh i don’t know all the petpetpets and never had THAT much of an interest in them. what’s the one that looks like a praying mantis??? i’ve always liked those

ok wait i just looked up a list and petpetpets can be p cute actually. i still like the praying mantis dude, moach, but i also love: cooty, fleaf, lightmite, and zytch. i don’t tend to like art of petpetpets in games and stuff but they’re cute in their regular images.. theyre so small......

Day 10: Favorite Neopian world?

UHHHHHHH since i was a kid i’ve always liked: faerieland, lost desert, and mystery island.

Day 11: Which team do you pick for the Altador Cup and why?

always darigan citadel. i don’t really know why i picked it my first year... i was never like an Edgy Goth Kid or anything. they got 2nd place the first year and i thought that was awesome, and i had also gotten involved with a really fun DC chat group so i joined them again the next year. then they won and that was awesome!! other people in the chat group started joining other teams and there was no reason it needed to be a DC only group (it was called the 30 trillionaires... our “goal” every year was to collectively make it to 30 trillion goals during the season. which is impossible but idk that was what made it kind of fun i guess.. it was just casual yooyuball grinding and chatting with friends lol) so i wasn’t “stuck” with the team but even after they stopped doing so well i stuck with them out of loyalty. i used to be SUPER into the altador cup but i lost touch w/ the chat group and never got into it again

Day 12: Favourite Avatar?

ANOTHER HARD QUESTION!! i’ve always LOVED the bon appetite kelp one.. which i still don’t have. generally i prefer the “older” style of avatars where they were simpler, mostly animated but in a simple way and a lot of the time w/ pixel art elements. i feel like a lot of newer avatars have a way heavier focus on animation, like theyre just lil gifs, they lost a lot of that simplicity. i also tend to be biased toward avatars that have odd shapes rather than just being squares. like gloomy and jazzmosis and taelia. even the circle ones that still have regular borders are pleasing to me

Day 13: Which chat boards do you usually chat in?

i don’t use the boards much... i lurk newbie chat a lot and sometimes try to get involved and talk w/ people but i never keep it up. i was an avatar chat girl as a kid and that’s still the place i feel the most comfortable i guess.

Day 14: Are you in a guild?

nope! i LOOOOOVED guilds and 10 year old me would be so upset to find out that i’m not involved in the Guild Life anyway. imo it’d be really cool if guilds got a rehaul.

Day 15: Favourite Faerie?

mira is my girl.. i like the battle faerie a lot too but i can’t remember her name. 

Day 16: Do you have a gallery and does it have a theme?

i have one created but i don’t even know what’s in there, i don’t pay much attention to it. i think i just have a few plushies and petpets and random items i thought were cute or charming. i like the idea of one day having a guild with a cool theme.

Day 17: Do you use the Battledome?

not really. i have my dad’s old account now with a super super powerful battle pet (he was Famous in the BD and i think for a while his pet was one of the most powerful pets on the whole site) so i guess i should take advantage of that but i don’t

Day 18: Do you use the NC Mall?

nah... i use the free NC when i get it, usually. i think i have some accrued on a few different accounts that i just don’t use. it’s kind of a pain in the ass to worry about NC items in customizations on diff side accounts. 

Day 19: Favourite shop to shop at?

i rarely even look at neopets shops lol. when i was younger i really liked the faerieland petpet shop. that’s all i got for u

Day 20: Favourite game?

i feel obligated to say spinacles bc it’s my blog title but i don’t even like spinacles, i’m just good at it and there were a good few months when i got a good number of people who aren’t normally super into neopets obsessed w/ beating my score and it Amused me. i’m not even like a spinacles Master but i do know how to get gold Very easily. anyway uhhh i think let it slide is fun and i’m fairly good at it but i hate playing it for np because it feels like it takes forever and it gets boring. i feel the same way about assignment 51 which i also like the Aesthetic of a lot. i have a love/hate relationship with ultimate bullseye II

Day 21: How many items are currently in your Safety Deposit Box?

Items: 1,900 | Qty: 2,828

Day 22: Whats the most amount of Neopoints you’ve ever had at one time?

i hit 8mil recently and then spent some of it on a royal pb. i had planned on going for 10mil before spending any (so i can get that sweet bank account upgrade) but i got impatient. 

Day 23: Do you use the Stock Market?

occasionally. i don’t check it every day but i have a decent portfolio

Day 24: Favourite Daily (ex. Coltzan’s Shrine, Tombola, etc.)?

i kinda like the discarded blue grundo plushie or w/e in faerieland. i don’t know his whole stupid name but i remember when he was just a tiny pixel in faerieland that didn’t do anything, so it’s cute that he’s a daily now and gets visited by people more often. 

Day 25: Do you decorate your Neohome(s)?

not at all

Day 26: What is a Paint Brush colour TNT should release next?

honestly why dont they just make pet pb colors out of colors that are currently petpet exclusive? birthday and valentine? fuckin.. picnic might be harder to execute but it’s out there and it’s a fun one. 

Day 27: Favourite hero? Favourite Villian?

i’m not as educated about neopets lore as i’d like to be i think..... i like nabile, shes a hero right?? and i’ve always like balthazar. he’s a piece of shit. 

Day 28: Favourite plot or site event?

my biggest regret is not being more involved in plots as a kid :( i read the comics but didnt participate. i really liked the LDP comic and wish i’d been part of the actual puzzles and stuff. 

Day 29: Are there certain items you collect?

i kind of collect cute petpets, i love them and don’t usually get rid of them once i acquire them. same with cute plushies. also i like the poorly drawn items from the “artists day off” days, smelly jelly is one of my faves i think

Day 30: Why do you like Neopets?

there’s... so much to do!!!! like yeah the site is dying and jumpstart is digging its own grave and sooo many parts of the site are dead or broken or whatever but there’s still just, always a new goal to strive toward and a new thing to get into and i think that’s cool.

[murasaki-murasame]

So earlier today I decided to bring in some boxes of my old childhood books I had stored away, to see once and for all what stuff I want to keep and what stuff I want to donate.

It’s such a weird feeling to get a concentrated dose of nostalgia like this. Wow. I’d kinda forgotten about a lot of these books, and honestly I don’t think these are even the entirety of what I read as a kid. It makes me kinda sad that I fell out of reading for so long, and then kinda fall back out of it yet again at the start of this year. I’ve at least gotten into reading manga though.

Anyway this is gonna get long and rambly so I’m gonna put it under a cut. I kinda wonder if I should even bother posting this, but I guess it’d be good to write down my feelings on at least some of them, for posterity.

I’m not gonna go over EVERYTHING I found, at least not in much detail, since there’s like two or three boxes full of books.

There’s only two series I decided to keep, for now, since I genuinely want to reread them eventually even if I know they won’t hold up. Those being the Deltora Quest series, and the Keys to the Kingdom series. I remember really enjoying both of them, though I’m not sure if I ever even finished the latter. Maybe I’ll finally get around to that. I’m kinda surprised I have the complete collections of both of them. I thought some of them were missing. I can’t really explain why exactly I want to reread them, but I do. I want to at least reread SOME of my childhood books.

I’m almost surprised at how many action-y, adventure-y books I read as a kid. Statistically speaking most of the books in general were probably fantasy, but I also had stuff like the Cherub series, which was all about young teenagers doing surprisingly dark, adult stuff as part of some sort of undercover spy/military organization, and some stuff by Anthony Horowitz. I think I always gravitated more towards fantasy, but I guess I also enjoyed those sorts of books too. Huh.

There were also some old kid’s mystery books, and some weird D&D-esque RPG book things that I think were things my dad had from his own childhood that he gave to me. I never really enjoyed them.

I also had a surprising amount of comedy book things that probably had lots of gross humour in them. I’d need to look over them again, but I can’t remember if they were a series of actual novels, or if they were short story collections. I remember having at least one short story collection as a kid that had some surprisingly good and memorable stuff in them, but I don’t know if that’s the same thing or something entirely different I don’t have anymore.

Apparently I had some weird phase as a kid where I tried to get into Twilight and apparently gave up after book two, so that’s . . . interesting. Huh.

Looks like I also tried to get into Eragon at one point. I don’t think I even got through the first book of that, lol.

I found like three random Narnia books not not any of the others so who even knows if I ever had the full set of that. I don’t really intend on rereading it, though, even if I do.

I forgot I had a few random kid’s books set in or involving New Zealand. Huh. I think there’s some I read as a kid but never owned. I wish I’d read more books like that. It’s sorta depressing how few books I’ve read that are actually set in the country I live in. I feel like I’m so used to consuming media set in either America, Europe, or Japan, that something set in my own home country would somehow feel MORE foreign than those ones.

I completely forgot that I actually have one of those first-edition versions of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief with the stupid, ugly cover. That goddamn winged shoe and the gaudy gold patterns and the stormy background image will haunt my nightmares forever. I can’t even remember if I liked the book itself when I read it, but I think the cover probably put me off reading any more. Which is a bit funny to consider, given that a few years ago I got REALLY into the series and binge-read the first two main series in a row, and now I’m a bit of a diehard Rick Riordan fan. I wonder what would have happened if I had have stuck with the series from the very start. Would I have been part of it’s fandom since the beginning??? That’s a weird thought. I’m not even involved in the fandom NOW. Well, mostly because I haven’t gotten around to reading the last few books that have come out, but still.

On the note of Rick Riordan, it doesn’t have to do with the boxes of stuff I bought in since these are already on my shelves in my room, but he also made the 39 Clues, which was basically one of the first few things where I actually got involved in the fandom for it, and even did my own weird self-insert fan-fic things on internet forums back when I was like 10. So in a lot of ways, Rick Riordan was one of the things that got me into fandom culture in the first place. It’s weird to consider. If only I had positive memories of that series that weren’t irreparably tainted by the godawful cash grab second series they put out. That sure would be great. I think that was my first ever experience with feeling viscerally disappointed and enraged at a franchise.

This is getting into slightly more embarrassing territory, but I was also into some REALLY ‘girly’ things when I was a kid. Probably closer to seven or eight or so, though. Like, I must have had some period of time of being REALLY into Care Bears as a franchise, since I have, like, several DVDs related to the cartoon franchise of it they had. I’ve also had basically a billion plushies of them over the years. Mostly as a kid, but I still keep one of my giant ones at the corner of my bed. I never really bothered to get rid of it, I guess, since it doesn’t really get in my way, and nobody goes in my room anyway. I think I’ve owned my giant one, and one little one I guess, for over a decade now. And to further put into perspective how obsessed I was with them as a kid, one of the photos of me as a kid that’s on display in our living room is of me sitting in a pile of all the Care Bears I had at the time. I’d completely forgotten that photo existed and now I’m kinda horrified about how many people who’ve visited my house might have seen it.

And then right next to the giant one I have on my bed, I have a Scalemate plushie, which I guess goes a long way to represent one of my more recent fandoms, lol.

God I have an absurd amount of Homestuck merchandise, come to think of it. It mostly comes from one single session of buying tons of stuff, though. Off the top of my head, I think I have two posters [which I think are still in storage and may have been thrown away], a Scalamte plushie, a John figurine, a deck of themed tarot cards, a Cancer sign necklace, a Breath t-shirt, a Hope hoodie, and a custom-made Breath windsock hoodie that I had a family friend made for me. I might not have ever gone out in public with it, but I have my own shitty home-made John Egbert cosplay get-up so that sure is something I can say about myself. I’m also probably going to buy Hiveswap as it comes out, and I’ll probably buy the Homestuck books as Viz puts them out, because in the end I will never truly be free of Homestuck.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I also have my original UK editions of Harry Potter, which are all super beat up and ugly now. For some reason I remember disliking the series as a child, and yet I read all of it, saw most of the movies, and I remember dressing up as Harry once or twice for Halloween. I also played a surprising amount of the video games for it. But even my mum can confirm that I was never super into it. It’s weird. I have no idea how I felt about it as a kid. It’s just a mystery now, I guess.