April 28th 2024
Picacon 2024 (the final year)
In the blink of an eye it's already the end of April.
Early this month I went to a convention called Picacon in Kristinehamn here in Sweden. The first time I went was in 2018, missed 2019 and then the pandemic hit, but since they picked back up again I haven't missed it. This year however was the very last year. There won't be any more Picacon next year. There's gonna be one called Väncon in the same place though? Which is organised by other people but is at the same school. Or is planned to be.
I did a bunch of con crunch, but I don't really have any photos to show for it. I'm so bad at remembering to take photos at cons. I did get these photos however!
From what I've learned it's a character from either Hazbin Hotel or Helluva Boss, neither of which I have seen, but I enjoy the music. I also really like clowns. The cospalyer is eepiest_monke on instagram.
As usual I spent a lot of time playing the pinball machines. They really are my favourite type of arcade game, but at a regular arcade it's so expensive to play anything. At cons however it's free to play! I don't usually play at Närcon though as it tends to be a whole lot more crowded on account of it being the biggest cosplay/gaming cons in this part of Europe. At Picacon however, I spend a lot of time playing.
With cons come bootleg anime merch. Some of it is unfortunately stolen art, which is why I tend to shop mostly in artist alley, but sometimes, it's funny stuff like this. Cursed Anya... staring straight into your soul...
I really enjoyed singing karaoke, though I somehow forgot my standard song (Howling from the Darker than Black anime). Did sing 'Loser, Baby' (Hazbin Hotel) with my friend Annu, and 'Time Judged All' (Kamen Rider OOO) with my best friend Ren. Apparently there was a 10 year anniversary version of the song and I had no idea! I also sang a bunch of Prince of Tennis songs, as I've been very much into Prince of Tennis again. When Ren sang the song 'För fallna änglar' by Loke Nyberg, everyone was singing along. His music is fairly niche, somehow he's especially poopular at medieval fairs/festivals and, for some reason, at anime cons. Well, I know why. He used to perform at Närcon Sommar a number of years back, and ever since then his music has stayed quite popular among a lot of swedish con-goers.
I watched the cosplay contest as well, though I only took video of it. I wanna see if I can get any good screenshots out of it of the contestants, though I don't have the SNS links for most of them so I wouldn't be able to link them. Gonna have to think about how to solve that for future cons.
Now let's get to my little haul. I set a pretty low budget for myself cus gas money was gonna eat up a lot of my money anyway, so I bought a few small thins, one bigger thing, and some snacks.
These are my purchases from artist alley!
The first two items are adorable keychains, the delicious-looking cake slice (though if it were a real cake I wouldn't be able to eat it, I can't eat cream haha) made by Astrid F Comics
The second is a charming Gojo from JJK in a little maid dress, matching one I've made for myself a few years ago pretty well. It was made by mumunyu.cos/Nachi on instagram.
The person who made the halo didn't have a card, but I did get their instagram handle! Picacon 2024 was their first time doing artist alley, so I hope that they enjoyed it. The creator of the halo is 0scv0 on instagram.
I will admit, I bought the Hello Kitty candy for the tin can. I love a good cute tin can, they're so useful for storing things. I'm thinking I'll try to see if I can use it as a small travel sewing kit container for cons. Minus the scissors, of course, that wouldn't fit. But I think I can find some very good use for it. The crisps were delicious, especially the seaweed-flavour. The secret surprise flavour of the pink (though they were actually purple) was curry. Kind of annoyed the vendor told me that. I did not ask. I wanted to be surprised.
As for the last little baby. I don't really like blind-boxes. Only gacha game I've ever played has been Show By Rock!!, and in that game you could gather the ingame money fairly easily for free. Only spent actual money once in that app, I think. Only blind-box-like items I've bought in recent years were some Jigokuraku keychains, cus I loved all the characters you could get. Anyway. Blind-boxes. I will only buy one if I know I like every option in there. If there's any option I don't really want, I won't buy it blind, I'll see if I can get it second-hand so I know what I get. There's this vendor that usually has stuff they've opened up and marked though at Swedish cons, so I'll buy from there once in a while. Isn't she cute? If you search "flower zodiac cora" you can find the series in several different places.
Retromania 2024 (the my first year)
Yesterday I was helping my brother sell a bunch of second-hand stuff at a little festival/market thing called Retromania. Well, I call it little only because it's just one day long, and I'm not sure if it's called a festival or market or whatnot, but anyway, I was there. I sold a few things myself too, but most of the stuff was my brother's. It was a pretty long day, and all day I had the song 'Erabareshi Elite Shuudan' from the Prince of Tennis musicals stuck in my head without being able to listen to it to get it out of my system (though that doesn't usually help, the brain does what it wants). Well, until the last 10 minutes that is, when my brain switched to having 'Illusion' from the same media in it instead. None of the tenimyu music is on spotify, so thank fuck I loaded it in as local files. Though the songs that work locally seem to be very random. And I don't have Illusion on there. Gonna have to get the last few musical soundtracks from season one in there too and see if I can figure out why spotify picks and chooses what's gonna work and what won't.
Anyway, what did I buy? Some lil somethings.
The full haul! It's mostly second-hand video games. Three DS games and one PS2.
I bought 'Hello Kitty Birthday Adventures' and 'Hello Kitty and the Apron of Magic Rhythm Cooking' from a person who also sold a 2DS. I don't know why I'm surprised that's a thing that exists, but honestly, this was the first time I've ever heard of it before. It was prertty cute though. I hope I enjoy Apron of Magic, after they closed down SB69fes a live I haven't been playing any rhythm games. I've tried enstars and the tenipuri phone game, both of which are rhythm games, but they didn't quite work for me. I might try out the tenipuri game again though, since I'm so heavily back into the series again.
The third DS game is called 'Where the Wild Things Are'. Considering it has 'the videogame' underneath, it might be based on something? Movie, book? I have no idea, and I think I'm gonna go into the game blind so I won't look it up. I really liked the coverart and it was cheap so I bought it. I look forward to finding out what it's about.
The PS2 game is a Sims 2 game called 'ship wrecked' that I hadn't heard about before, but I think it sounds interesting and could be fun. Pity it's only one player, I think it could be fun playing that kinda game with two players.
I've never bought a build-kit like this before. Actually, have I ever bought any build-kits that weren't just regular flat puzzles? I just thought this pokemon was cute, though I've only encountered it in Pokemon Go. I admit I haven't really played a lot of Pokemon, I only got a Nintendo console in late high school when I bought Ren's old one when they bought a new one. Me and my brothers got a PS2 when I was in middle school, though our parents bought it for our little brother.
This pokemon is so cute though, it's called Alcremie in english? Says the wikia. The box is in Japanese and it has a completely different name in Japan. I just find it so adorable, I might need to actually play the game it's from so I can make a cute team with it in, actually. Pretty sure Ren has the physical version. The only Pokemon game I own myself (aside from PoGo) is Sun, and I haven't played a lot of it. That's the DS game with the legendary lion on the cover, right? I look forward to building this little thing.
If there is ont thing you might find out about me if we ever interact IRL, it's that I'm a sucker for earrings. I love them. Adore them. I mean, I do have... (gimme a minute, I have to count) 13 ear piercings. These were too cute to pass up on. They were made by Chibi's Crafts, whom I've been following for a little while already, and I was pretty excited to see they were gonna sell at Retromania, so I had to pop by and say hi. And ended up buying these earrings. They're adorable.
Lastly, Njord is helping me show off the patches I bought from Amai. They're going to look very cute on my pink jeans jacket or maybe on a sweater. The girlfriends Kuromi and Melody... cuties. Njord was very kind to help me out.
Of course we're finishing up with some cat pictures, can't miss including them properly, can I?
I was practicing playing the piano a little bit the other night when Kalma decided to come join me. Did he like it or did he come to tell me to stop? Unsure.
The photo of Njord is her being a silly little girl, just look at her little fang.
Did I miss anything? I hope not, this got really really long. I should've updated earlier so I could've made Picacon it's own post, but too late for that now. Oops.
March 21st 2024
Early this month was my birthday! Well, our birthday, as I'm a twin. Happy birthday to us!
On our actual birthday, me and my brother Tofi went to a restaurant and had lunch together. It was a delicious buffet, though I only had a little fried food, I can't handle too much of fried food anymore, makes me feel sick if I have too much. I'm not used to it anymore, I eat mainly whole foods these days. I do enjoy a nice fried chicken once in a while though.
We weren't having cake the day of, so I bought us some ice cream, and we went to the lake to chill for a little bit and eat them there. Too cold to go swimming though, on account of the ice. I know ice bathing is a thing, but you're not getting me to do that unless you've got a sauna right next to the water. And even then, I probably won't. Maybe. I'd do it once, tops. But as I have no sauna access next to the lake, not gonna. It was really pretty though. We had no little candles, so I brought a big one. The wind blew it out lol.
In the aternoon I streamed! Tofi and my bff Ren even joined me! I had a lot of audio issues though, I had to get rid of the add-on that was supposed to make audio management (muting etc) easier. It just made a mess out of it instead lol. I drew some, of me and Ren's stream models. Lookit. I. I need to post it to my regular-schmegular pages as well, oops. My model on the left, Ren's on the right. I need to finish their png-tuber at some point.
Njord gave me birthday cuddles. Very snuggly, though did she have to sleep on my face?
We were celebrating with family during the weekend, so I decided to bake a cake. I'd bought a cute heart-shaped cake pan after all, gotta use it. Peep the little (huge) strawberry that was in the container.
Well, it was gonna be 'a' cake, but dad suggested two, thinking it looked like it wasn't gonna be enough. We uh. We had more than enough. They ended up much taller than me, my brother or dad expected.
I didn't really know what I was doing. I wanted to make one of those cute cakes I've seen online, but I've never even made any cake before. I've made a lot of pies though. Particularly starwberry/rhubarb crumble pies. They balance each other so well, highly recommend. The frosting... stuff... was initially a catastrophe, I felt like the recipe must've been published on April 1st or something, it was hard like a rock with the proportions the recipe called for. So off to the store I had to go! Even though I thought I'd bought everything I needed, but anyway. The second try, with a completely different recipe, went super well. Delicious shit.
Considering I didn't know what I was doing, the end result was pretty good! I look forward to seeing if I can do it even better in the future.
Anyway, cake pics!!!
My piece of cake managed to be served standing, so according to superstition I'll get married! Well. My single ass can hope lol. Apparently Ren's grown up with the other alternative (if your cake is served lying down) is that you'll get rich. Never heard that before to be honest.
Birthday roses from grandma. This took so long to write it's almost the 22nd. This weekend I'm gonna factory reset my computer. Onedrive fucked it up so bad, it really hates me for getting rid of it. Onedrive installs itself very invasively, can not recommend less. Never installing a cloud directly on my computer again. I'm double-saving my art and my photos to both my external harddrive and a USB. Supposedly you can do a factory reset without deleting your files, but I've transferred everything just to be safe. Funsies!
January 26th 2024
God damn, time flies. We're already almost a month into the new year. I've already managed to squeeze in getting two new piercings, getting my total of piercings up to... 18? I think. I need to calm down with the piercings or I'll never get to go mermaiding again. Anyway.
This winter I've been having a huge influx of nightmares and night terrors, and I finally got my meds adjusted this week. Hopefully that's gonna help a bit, cus I know I had insomnia for 15+ years, I don't need more issues with it. I already had nightly night terrors for months before I got my meds, I think that's enough of that.
Anyway, let me ramble a bit about fandom now. This was originally posted on tumblr, but I wanted to expand on it here.
2023 was really the year of going back to my roots aka my 2000s favs. I've been rereading Katekyo Hitman Reborn, D. Gray-man, 666 Satan, Psyren, DOGS, rewatched ParaKiss and Meine Liebe, replayed Zero Escape VLR and at the tail end of it I'm back into Prince of Tennis. I didn't draw a lot of stuff of most of these series in 2023 but I sure was reading and watching lol.
You bet I'm gonna try to bring all my old cosplays back in 2024 cus wtf. Most of them were pretty badly made though, since I made them before I used patterns. Fun fact, I used to hate using patterns cus my middle school sewing teacher didn't allow me to make any modifications to patterns, so I started to hate using them at all. I get wanting students to stay on course, but when a student is already done with the mandatory stuff and you KNOW they do the thing (in my case sewing) in their spare time, why stifle creativity? It took me years to be willing to use patterns again, and honestly, not using them is making things harder for yourself. Especially if you want to make the same thing more than once.
Speaking of old cosplays, I'm already working on TYL!Bel cus I made his teen version in the late 2000s - early 2010s, it only feels fitting. I also made a TYL version at the time but we don't talk about that nightmare. It was so bad lmfao. Especially the trousers. I had no idea what I was doing (especialy since I wasn't using patterns) and they were an absolute nightmare. The jacket was... Decent I suppose, but still bad. I'm gonna cosplay him at a con in April, so I need to get at least his boots done til then. My friends don't know if they're gonna have the jackets done by then, but Varia is still pretty recogniseable without their jackets anyway. Damn I hope one of the mentioned friends does cosplay Lussuria, that would be fantastic. My friend Ren already cosplays Squalo, so we would have a Funny Sunny Day group lol.
On to DGM. Lavi was my first-ever cosplay way back in 2008. It's funny as fuck that I met my first girlfriend because we were both cosplaying him at the same con and we collected every version of him, we even had the Deak version. I only knew one of the other Lavi-cosplayers beforehand cus of a mutual on LJ. It was a blast. Ah, how I miss the LiveJournal days, I won't lie. Pre-whatever social media has become. LJ still had drama of course, I remember searching up a ship (AkutsuSengoku from Prince of Tennis) and seeing someone say 'if you ship AkuSen you're a bad person cus Akutsu is a bad person' so, well. That part of fandom is nothing new. Anyway, Lavi is one of my OG boys, and I want to remake the cosplay so bad. My first cosplay was his first uniform, then a few years later I cosplayed him in his third uniform. Never did his second, oops. I really want to redo his first uniform. I hold such fond memories of that cosplay.
In April 2023 I finally FINALLY cosplayed from 666 Satan in 2023 with Ren. Only been planning on doing so since the late 2000s. It felt so exciting to finally do it. Cross and Jio were finally done, even if my boot zipper decided to fucking BREAK right when I needed it lmao. Worked semi-fine the day before, then on the day of, the zipper said nope, time to break. It was the weekend too, and not in a town I was familiar with, so I had no reliable shoemaker to turn to (my local one is so good at what he's doing, he's fantastic. I always forget he only takes cash though). The timing was so awful, god damn. Already at the con and everything. Learning how to make Cross' wings was a trip. I made them out of floor insulation. I like how they look, but they're a bit droopy so I'm gonna replace the skeleton with something sturdier. The hard part is that I can't make too visible shoulder straps since Cross' shoulders are bare. Really adds an extra layer of difficulty in the process there.
I found my old Heine jacket from when me, Ren and my gf at the time (aforementioned fellow Lavi cosplayer) cosplayed Heine, Badou and Naoto from DOGS: Bullets and Carnage. It was crumbling. Faux leather doesn't hold as well, does it? In 2023 me and twin got to tear up grampa's old red leather couches though and you know what that means? I'm gonna try to remake Heine's jacket in 2024 using real leather taken from that old couch. The back was still smooth and completely useable. And with how many seams are in that jacket the pieces don't need to be big. I have never worked in real leather though.
As for Tenipuri the wig I had for Shiraishi was terrible, you remember early 2000's ebay wigs and how THICK they were if you used to cosplay back then. I had a Sengoku wig but I gave it away to a friend who needed a last minute wig for Yata from K Project (I'm pretty sure) cus my head looked gigantic in it (think Tre Vännerna och Jerry if you're familiar) cus of how thick it was, and Yata wears a beanie so it wasn't as noticeable lol. I still have like 5 different Bunta wigs oops. Cus none were 100% what I wanted until the last one. You do not want to know how many wigs I have at this point... last I counted it was about 100 of them... Oops. I mean, ebay wigs were such a hit and miss, at least I can use the wefts from them to put in other ones, so nothing goes to waste.
As I mentioned. Early 2000s ebay wigs. Quality shit, shit quality.
Summer 2024 I'm planning on cosplaying Clover from Zero Escape. I am so fucking psyched. For once I'm not gonna be melting cus of a sweaty cosplay (like the time me and Ren cosplayed Bel and Squalo at a summer convention, sweating Dying Will bullets (though at least Bel's jacket is open lmao, win for me) and dying cus it was so mindnumbingly hot). I mean, the woman doesn't wear a whole lot of clothes in VLR. Been a while since I've worn such a revealing cosplay. I have spent so many hours playing Zero Escape, especially when I made the mistake of saving in a puzzle room in VLR. Don't do that. Do not save inside a puzzle room. I lost like 21 hours of gameplay.
I don't know how many times I've rewatched Meine Liebe over the years... So many times. My brother found the anime on crunchyroll in middle school, back when they were still a pirating website, you know those days. If I remember correctly they no longer have Meine Liebe on their site, which is a bummer. I can imagine the anime wouldn't be very popular with newer anime fans, and otome game based animes were already not super big, but since it's from the early 2000s it's paced very differently compared to modern anime. I do so love it though, it's a bit of a comfort anime to me, and I rewatched it again in 2023. It's a perfect example of what happens when you remove the girl out of the otome game when you turn it into an anime. Gay. The answer is very very gay. And Otome games are already pretty homoerotic as it is. Removing the girl out of the equation just made it even more so. Like, Ludwig is not subtle with his interactions with Naoji. Eduard and Orpheus' relationship can be pretty queer. Love that for them.
I may or may not have rewatched Paradise Kiss because a woman I matched with on Tinder reminded me of Miwako with her fashion. I love Miwako so god damn much, she's so cute... Her style is what I aspire to... My love for piercings definitely come from Arashi in big part though. Gotta love piercings. What if, Arashi and Miwako both with tongue piercings, but different jewelry? Could be damn cute if you ask me. Isabella's vibe reminds me of Jasmine You from Jakura/Versailles. I got to see Versailles live once at the same con where the TeniPuri photo above was taken, in 2011. Sadly he passed in 2009. I still remember his look in Versailles so well, I adored it. VKei is such a fantastic style, especially during the 2000s and 2010s.
I of course did a lot of SB69 stuff and some Mars Red and miscellanious which is more recent but consumptionwise I was placed quite firmly in the stuff I loved so dearly in the 2000s.
Happy new year to me, apparently it's somehow 2010 again!