December 13th 2024

Let it be known I have never in my life been good at keeping a diary. I'm gonna try to be short.

Närcon sommar 2024

NCS was a lot of fun this year. I slept in the dorms again cus me and Ren were too slow to get our hostel rooms and they were all out when we finally got around to it. We're already booked for next year now, to be on the safe side. Gotta do it super early.

A lot of this is gonna be pictures. I'm planning on building 2025's diary a bit different so it's not as picture heavy, I know it takes quote a while to load.

Big white letters in the style of the Hollywood sign that reads Närcon.

plush geese of various sizes, from small to very big, hanging by their feet from a stall.

There were so many geese just hanging out.

Ate way too many red bean paste taiyaki, it's delicious. I tasted the nutella one too, but the bean balanced the taste of the batter better. So much nutella got way too... much for me lol.

Cardboard randing different characters in different teirs.

A group of Helluva Boss cosplayers, from left to right: Fizzarolli, Stolas, Blitz, Moxxie, Loona, and Millie in the front.

Left photo: There was someone walking around with a cardboard sign full of anime characters, and each person was allowed to make one swap. It got very heated and I have no idea how the sign ended up in the end.

Right photo: I went to a Helluva Boss panel, it was really funny. Enjoyed it so much.

A Boosette cosplay from the Mario franchise.

A super cute Gumi cosplay who didn't have social media to share (Gumi is my favourite Vocaloid), and Nisencosplay as Boosette. The illusion with the legs was so good though, especially in person.

Onto the purchases I guess? I spent a little more than I planned, I admit.

Two prints, one of a light-skinned girl with white hair holding a red rotary phone reciever in one hand, twirling the cord with the other. On the right is a black woman with wavy hair in blues and purples, wearing a green dress and holding a flower in one hand, a hat in the other.

A print in greens and yellows of a person from the shoulder up.

A print of a pink dog-like creature with hearts for ears and two tails lying on its back.

Some cute/cool prints. Most of them are framed an on my walls now, haid a bit of trouble finding frames, cus I thrift for those. Creators of the prints from left to right: Emma Lupine, Lara Carson and Astrid F.

A gloomy bear Super Sonico keychain and a sticker with a pile of gloomy bears.

A keychain with a cutesly purple ghostface with a bloody knife and cat ears under the hood, text next to them saying slay.

A keychain of Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi from Link Click.

A ribbon keychain with strawberries and a keychain with the Pokemon Leafeon.

Keychains galore! From left to right: Super Sonico x Gloomy Bear by mikashiyaa. Ghostface by Bloodypink. Shiguang from Link Click by Saida Min, and Leafeon and the strawberries by Akara.

A zoom-in on the print on a fabric bag that says 'aa, sou' in japanese on top, 'jaså' in swedish underneath.

Misc section. A thrifted Final Fantasy game that I still need to get the first part of, and a textile bag with a pun I found really funny.

And since it's a language-based pun Imma uuuh, explain it. The Japanese reads 'aa, sou', which kinda means 'I see'. Broadly. 'Jaså' in Swedish means the same thing. And depending on the mood you don't pronounce the J, which makes it pronounced almost the exact same as the Japanese. The game is from Nostalgibutiken and the bag is from Ordbilder.

Pride 2024

This year I went to both the official Pride Party and the parade at Nerike Pride.

In the foreground is a black woman performing in a pink and blue carnival outfit. In the background you can see more dancers.

Getting pictures of the Brasilian carnival was hard cus it was dark and a lot of movement, so this is my only good picture. It was so much fun and the costumes were so sparkly. I loved the glitter.

A clip from the drag show a little bit later at the party. I didn't get a single picture from the parade, oops?

Northern lights

I go on a lot of walks, especially in the evening. This is how I got to see northern lights irl for the first time ever, on August 30th. It was very unexpected! You usually don't see them that often in my part of Sweden.

Third one of is my favourite.

Misc stuff

Mostly summer photos.

Melonpan and strawberries on a plate, a glass of soda and a nintendo switch on the edge of a moss-covered well.

I don't bake melon pan that often cus it's pretty time consuming, but I made some this summer. Had some on the old well on the farm while playing some... animal crossing? I think. And blackcurrant berries that I picked off the one single bush we have of it.

Excuse the unevenly sized images, but. Nearby village animals. Aren't they cute?

A nintendo switch (animal crossing edition) on a cloud-shaped shelf. A super Sonico figure next to the owl from Fire Emblem Heroes on a similar shelf next to it. You can see the spools of an overlocker in front of them.

I got into shelf making a while back, maybe last year? And now I've made five different cloud-shaped ones. The latest one being for my switch.

A longhaired dark cat glaring into the camera, lying on pattern paper.

A shorthaired grey and white cat rolling on pattern paper.

Annu's cats when me and a couple of friends were over. They were helping. Very good kitty-helpers.

I think that's everything I have to share for now. Damn. Sorry about the load time, I'll be thinking of that for next year's diary.

June 23rd 2024

Glad midsommar!

The day after my last entry was Sweden's national day. I never really celebrate that at all, so I spent it mostly as usual, though I did have the day off. That and getting a little bit tipsy on stream was about the only out of the ordinary things I did. That evening I actually finished playing the game 'Night in the Woods'. I gotta say, I really liked it. Loved jumping around on stuff, loved the vandalism and Gregg's wiggly arms, loved Angus, he was so sweet. Wanted to date the shit outta Bea, I must say. Give Mae a goth GF please. After they get better at communicating of course.

Finishing the game made me want to go out and take a walk in the woods myself, so I did. I had a nice time, just listening to the soundtrack to it and wandering. Did find what both me and dad are pretty sure are plastic tent poles though? Some hanging on tree branches, one stuck in a tree stump. I took them home and left them in the boiler room, cus you know, you don't leave plastic in the forest like that. After calling my dad and asking if he'd put them there for marking them or something though; we are both grain and forest farmers, so, guess whose forest I was in (as much as you own nature in the literal sense).

Well, with allemansrätten I could walk in any forest I want though. In Sweden, as long as you don't disturb the trees etc you can be in any forest or nature (this doesn't apply to private property though, though I've had some claim it does, which, um, no?). Anyone is free to pick berries and mushrooms out there, it's nice. Doesn't give you the right to leave plastic shit around though, whoever left those sticks in the woods. I'm out for your blood (jk).

Photo taken upwards showing the tops of trees circling a spot of blue sky.

The tips of a branch of a fir tree dripping raindrops.

Lingonberry plants not yet with any flowers or berries in front of a moss-covered rock.

In Sweden it never gets fully dark during summer, which you can really tell in these photos. The first one was taken at almost 10 at night, the last closer to 11. It only gets a little bit darker than that this time of year. It makes my sleep schedule so crazy cus my brain doesn't register the late hour with how light it is outside.

All our flower fields are in full bloom right now, though the cowslips are done for the year. I still leave their dried up little selves alone, so the seeds have plenty of time to get to the ground and take root for next year. We still have lots of other flowers giving the fields colour though, it's lovely.

I've been keeping track of how the berries and fruit are growing, and this weekend I actually got to harvest about twenty wild strawberries. They're so tiny and sweet.

Last summer, the one time dad was the one mowing the grass instead of me, he drove right over them, not even noticing that they were there, so this time I made sure to tell him where they were. They're hardy little berries, so they still came back despite dad accidentally destroying them. And honestly, it's probably not the first time he's done so, they're not really in a spot you'd expect them to be. Yes, grandpa used to grow regular strawberries close to the area, but that was more than 20 years ago now.

Black and white cat sitting on the bottom shelf of a bookshelf.

Cloudy sky with a rainbow. Tops of trees can be seen in the bottom.

Last weekend me and Tofi were invited to our parents' place to have a pre-midsummer celebration, as our little brother and his sambo were going abroad during midsummer. In writing moment they're still outside the country, hopefully not getting sunburnt. Little brother also has that ginger gene, even though none of us got the ginger hair. We still burn real easy.

I was the only one who ended up going, out of me and Tofi though. We both have social anxiety, but his is a lot worse than mine. Since we also have to factor in travel when visiting our parents it drains a lot more spoons.

Anyway, I had a nice time.

A black cat lying on his back with his arms spread on a hammoc, looking very comfortable

Midsummer always come sooner than I expect, in my mind it should be in July, but it's always been in June. End of June is close enough to July though, I suppose. But here we are, and Midsummer is all celebrated and done.

Photo of bowls and plates of potatoes, potato sallad, sliced meat, boiled eggs and vegetable mix.

A plate with rhubarb and strawberry pie and mocha squares, vanilla sauce on one side of the plate.

Me, Tofi, our parents and (paternal) grandma celebrated Midsummer this Friday at grandma's apartment. The eggs were accidentally a little undercooked for the usual midsummer eggs, but perfect otherwise. The yolk stuck to the knife when I tried to cut them, so it got a little messy. I was first knifecutter midsummer night's eve.

After dinner me and grandma played with spinning tops cus the kitchen got too crowded. We can't all do the dishes at the same time when there's only so much sink to go around! Somehow I managed to spin it with my right hand too, though it was a lot worse than with my left. Kinda wanna rewatch Beyblade now...

A hare sitting on grass beyond a peony bush

I often find hares hanging around the farm all times of day. This little midsummer bunny was munching on some grass in the glow of the sunset.

A glass of a pink drink and a bowl of waterlemon slices

The last two photos are from earlier this afternoon, where I was chilling outside with my first ever attempt at an ice cream float and some watermelon. Kalma decided he wanted to hang out too, though he moved to the railing of the patio quite soon after, where he was spying on everything going on around us. What he saw, I have no idea. He's got way better eyes than I do.

A black cat to the left, brushing up against a person in a light green hoodie to the right.

That's all I've got for you for now. I hope you had a good midsummer if you celebrated it, if not, I hope you had a nice weekend. Hej då!

June 5th 2024

Long overdue Valborg entry

In my life I've never been one to keep a diary. The closest I ever got to consistently doing that shit was when livejournal was big, and that was. Quite the while ago. I've now seen both Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss, and I'm very glad I took those photos of the cosplayer I took a photo of, cus Fizzarolli is my fav in Helluva Boss, hands down. Love him. My favs in Hazbin Hotel are Lucifer, Niffty, Angel and Husk.

On April 30th I went out to celebrate Valborg, which is... Walpurgis or something like that??? in English??? I think. I only know the English side of it from Good Omens with the witch burning and the gunpowder.

I'm gonna be honest, I don't know if I've ever celebrated it before, my memory is very bad and I don't remember much from my childhood, and I've never been religious (though I did do the confirmation stuff as a means to be away from home more. Family relations can be complicated lol. they're better now). I just went this year cus I wanted to look at some bonfires. I'm glad I went to two, cus together they made a full experience.

I didn't realise that the first one I went to was organised by a church, so I was slightly annoyed when the singing was interrupted by a priest that droned on for way too long. Honestly, I feel like he talked longer than the singing went on, but that might've just been me being bored out of my mind. One thing the priest said though, stuck with me, and not for good reasons, more because it had me go 'um what?' He said "Thank you God for always being Good." Sir, did we read the same bible? Cus your god most certainly was not always good. I seem to remember a whole lot of vengeance and murder in that book. Eh, whatever, at least the fire was nice and toasty. You'll see that fire being the first of the two pictures I have of fire. Still had a good time, and I should've paid more attention when picking which fire to go to, that's on me.

A neatly stacked bonfire shaped into a square.

A dude trying to light a bonfire. This bonfire is a massive pile of branches.

The second bonfire I went to had no preaching, but the fire just refused to take. They doused the thing in lighter fluid, but in one spot only, and if the wood was wet, that wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Getting damp wood to burn isn't that easy. There's a reason we store out firewood under a roof. At least they had fireworks though! They were very pretty, and VERY loud. I've inserted a little video clip here (if it works correctly) and I lowered the volume to 1% in the video editor I use.

I haven't been this close to fireworks since I was a kid and we celebrated a new year with out cousins on their pig farm. Second closest was in... 2011? When me, my firned Ren and brother Tofi saw some people light fireworks at a grocery store parking lot, but we were still a little ways away. This time I was so close I had to cover my ears after a little while.

The bonfire made me crave stick bread, which is literally just pizza or scones dough wrapped around a stick. And since it's a little hard making that over a large bonfire, me and Tofi made some over the boiler the day after. It was very nice, even though we were a little impatient and didn't wait for the fire to die down quite enough, but it turned out great anyway. Next time we should be a bit more patient though. But we were kinda hungry. Oops.

Covering all of May and the first few days of June in one fell swoop

During May, I tried red bean paste buns for the first time, as well as strawberry flavoured fanta. The fanta was a bit meh, it tasted kind of like vimto but not as mindnumbingly sweet. The buns though, damn, they were good. And they were the frozen kind too, I really gotta find a place that makes them fresh, I feel like that would taste amazing. I really liked those. They were so cute, too, looking like little pandas.

Tofi had never had churros before, so a nice day during the early summer, we got some (and I got my first soft serve ice cream of the year). I find that I can't really eat an entire cone of churros on my own anymore, so sharing one was perfect. It was really good, fresh churros are so nice. And the ice cream was delicious. I love ice cream. There was a reason why the song 'galen i glass' ('crazy for ice cream') was my fav ourite song to sing at graduation in school every year. Glass glass glass is stora lass lass lass... Hell yeah. Yum.

A red bean paste bun that looks like a panda. A bite has been taken out of it.

A cone of churros and a cup of soft serve ice cream.

The weather really has been lovely so far this summer. At least for the most part. We did have a bit of a thunderstorm not too long ago, where I spent some time doodling the sketch for that drawing of Lucifer I uploaded to SFW-other not too long ago.

Living on a farm, there's a lot of beautiful plants, and here's hoping that the absolute mountains of cherry blossoms were pollinated and that we get loads of cherries later this summer. Last year we only has about 2 liters or so, compared to well over 10 the summer before that.

Last summer was pretty terrible to be a crop farmer in general though. Both a drought and flooding, instead of getting the rain interspersed throughout the summer? Say it ain't so! That's kinda how we got the bird-eaten Gävle goat this yule though, so at least something good came out of it. Well, funny rather than good.

Njord absolutely hated the thunderstorm though, she stared at me with huge eyes, as if I could control the weather. Kalma didn't really care, he's a fairly chill boy. Which I'm happy about since Njord has anxiety. He's chill for the most part, at least, unless it's the evening and he comes inside for a quick snack onyl to find the cat door locked for the night. He thinks he should be able to go outside any time he wants, but I keep telling him no, you're not allowed outside when it's night time. Does he listen? No. He just yells at me with loud meows. Feeling like he's the most unfortunate little cat in the world.

Njord used to sleep a lot in this box full of ziplock bags, but completely forgot about it until the other day. Look at her, able to make it look both super cramped and spacious depending on the angle. She's the queen of comfort that one. While Kalma loves going outside, Njord only does it a little bit every day, mostly to pee. She prefers staying in bed, be it mine or hers (she has this drawer full of bubble wrap she loves to sleep on).

A black and white cat staring toward the camera, crammed into a cardboard box underneath a chair.

Same cat, in the same spot, but at a different angle, the space looking far less cramped from this angle.

Kalma has also recently (today) rediscovered his favourite spot where he spent a huge chunk of his time last summer; the field of flowers right outside the window next to me where I have my desk. The same field that holds frankly an absurd amount of cowslips during spring.

Last year there was a permanent dent in the tall grass of the flower field from how much time he spent hanging out in that one specific spot. Will it happen again this summer? Only time will tell.

A black hidden among a field of flowers.

Same cat, same spot, but closer up. The cat looks very satisfied.

It's like a very easy game of Where's Waldo. Which I don't think I've ever played, so I don't actually know what Waldo looks like. I do know what my little boy looks like though.

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!

The same character but some parts are lit up by the flash, amde of reflective material.

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 cosplayer 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...

A kinda creepy-lloking bootleg Anya from Spy Family keychain

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.

A keychain of a slice of cake and a keychain of Gojo Satoru in a short maid dress

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.

a tin can with hello kitty blanding and two crisp cans, one super mario branded

a little figure with a scale on its head, wearing a flower petal dress, sleeping

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.

three DS games, a PS2 game, a box with an Alcreamy pokemon on it, two patches with Kuromi and My Melody and earrings that read 'fuck you' inside a heart

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.

a box with an Alcreamy pokemon on it, opened to reveal a sort of 3D puzzle

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.

pink heartshaped earrings that read 'fuck you'

A black and white cat with its nose nudging a patch with Kuromi on it, a patch of My Melody next to it

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.

A black cat standing on a lap in front of a piano

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.

a black and white cat on its back looking toward the camera, one of its fangs poking out

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!

Communist bugs bunny meme, text that reads 'twin life: OUR birthday'.

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.

Two ice creams in front of a frozen lake.

A partially eaten ice cream in the foreground, thighs dressed in white stockings and a colourful skirt below it.

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.

Chibi heads of two characters sticking out their tongues. On the left is my vtube model Rhubaby. She has pink hair, pink skin, clear horns with orange tips and green eyes. She's wearing white facepaint and a clown nose. On the right is my friend Ren's PNGtuber model-to-be. They have purple skin, black hair with white and grey streaks and four sets of green eyes, the top pair are closed an not very visible. Both characters have shark teeth with extra long canines.

Njord gave me birthday cuddles. Very snuggly, though did she have to sleep on my face?

Blurry photo of a mostly black cat with a little bit of white covering the lower half of a human 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.

Big and very wide strawberry. Seems to be several strawberries merged into one.

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!!!

A heart shaped cake with pink and white frosting and raspberries. Text on the cake reads 'congratulations' in Swedish.

A heart shaped cake with pastel blue and white frosting and raspberries. Text on the cake reads 'congratulations' in Swedish.

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.

Four Lavi cosplayers, each dressed as different versions of him.

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.

Yukimura, Bunta and Akaya cosplays. Yukimura is standing, Bunta and Akaya are sitting on the ground.

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!