I Don't Have a Witty Title...

31 Oct, 2025

I won't lie, this is probably going to be a bit of a nothingburger entry today. However, I would like to say that I'm awful at managing time as usual. How awful? Well, I wanted to do something on my site for Kaiba's birthday considering he's kinda plastered everywhere, and ended up doing nothing. How fun! I suppose that doesn't really matter at the current moment. I had fun participating in the birthday tag, even if I didn't really draw anything past a really bad shitpost.

Other than that, I just took a picture of my collection rearranged. Truth be told, it wasn't my favorite picture, but I'll toss it in the gallery at some point. For the most part, my focus right now is on reviews. I'm slowly catching up to where I wanted to be in terms of reviews, so I'm going to aim to knock out the 11 pictures on the "upcoming" section, with the occasional figure I decided to photograph on a whim in between there. Basically, everything else on my plate until the end of the year is just finishing off projects that I've started and kind of left unfinished. I keep saying that, but I'm following up on all my claims.

I suppose since I'm delayed on things though, as I've stated in my upload log, those ideas are all on the table and will get done. I suppose I've added a bit of work as well, because I still need to put up my old layouts, and I did also want to talk about the new Halo... I promise you it's nothing good, because whenever Microsoft touches Halo these days I get irrationally mad. So I guess you can all look forward to a massive rant that has nothing to do with FFXIV for once.

Also later today is my last day of raid. Let's hope I get another totem because I'm just going to buy the RDM rapier and call it a day. No UCOB SAM weap, but I suppose 4/8 of us do get the shakies sometimes.

Unrelated to everything going on, apparently Pink Charm is planning on putting the Body Harness Eve up for a reprint. I am so eager and ready. Between that and the possibility of Eden Eve binning on release, I'm ready to buy more demon girl figures. I cut a lot of things off my wishlist while trying to make space for other things, but if I end up with a few other things I can finally have a demon girl shelf...

I say this like Ikea not restocking the doors I want for my cabinet not being the absolute bane of my existence right now. Anyways, after raid tonight, I can finally maybe spray paint parts of my desk and get some vinyl wrap. Super excited for that. I've been meaning to do it all summer and yet I'm finally doing it now ahahaha...

I don't know what else to say other than the latest Mabinogi event is kind of fun, and I've been doing a lot of Mabi cooking. One day I'll finally make a Mabi blog. Maybe at the very least, I'll go through and take pictures of all the recipes I recently got an entry on, as I work towards my goal of collecting the entire cooking journal & getting every entry to 5 stars...

If you happen to play Global Mabi, let me know. I can give you uh... 4 star food. I'll probably just start putting a bunch for sale in Dunbarton while I try to perfect my attempts. I wish 5 star food wasn't based on sheer luck.

Also, in that drawing, those are supposed to be macarons but they look more like burgers. I suppose that's what happens when you scribble things out in like 5 minutes.

At this point I'm just writing "website work fanfiction" so maybe I'll take that as a sign to go to bed already.

Possibilities are Endless, even if Code is Finite

23 Oct, 2025

Sometimes I have the distinct displeasure of dealing with people in ways I don't want to. This was one of such moments. I'll say that I excused myself from the conversation because this person wasn't listening and persisting with their argument. Should I have listened to them more on it? Maybe. But the topic was going in circles and they were basically giving me the ultimatum of "Either you see this my way or we have an issue." To which my response is, considering it's not their place to make the call and it is wholly my choice, yeah, we have an issue. And considering it's my work technically, I think my say is what matters, regardless of their opinion.

The thing in question? It's apparently my views on coding and "copying," as well as outright theft. Before I get into the bulk of this topic, I'm going to preface this with the following information. I'm in my 30s. When I was a child learning how to code, I was around 13. I was basically making all of my first websites back in the days of places like Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod etc. I've run websites for a while, but I just kind of stopped because my interests shifted, and most of those sites are gone anyways. Anyways, I've had the days where I was incredibly protective of my code which was... based on layouts that were made in Photoshop and generated via the slice tool (and I wont lie, up until my current layout, I did that for almost all of my layouts.) When I got started though, I wasn't making my own layouts, and I was using sites like Aethereality & Celestial Star for their pretty premade anime sites. I loved those things. Honestly, I still do. Im sure you can tell by looking at stuff like My first premade which I explicitly stated was based off an old site layout I had from like 2012 that I generally like these kinds of designs. Hell even my Yugioh Shrine (which continues to be a work in progress) has the same design philosophy as well. I realize it all probably looks very "GRAPHIC DESIGN IS MY PASSION" to some people, but these designs are just reminiscent of that era of the web, especially for fan made webgraphics.

Basically, back then, a lot of younger people learning coding were just learning by taking things that were free to use and either learning to customize them entirely, attempting to emulate them and getting the same results (aka the "copying), or just straight up stealing code that we'd play around with. Is this right? I think that depends on the person being "stolen" from. And I use quotes in this case because I'm the person being "stolen" from. And that's a stretch. Like a huge stretch.

I feel like it shouldn't need to be reiterated, but I suppose I will. I host a measly 4 premade layouts as a resource. They're free to use. In my Site History page (which should be renamed), I have everything pertaining to making my website: The meaning behind its name, the main reason I made it (I suppose this is a "manifesto" for some people, but I really don't think mine is that. I just really dislike MFC's community at times, so I put my reviews elsewhere), what is basically a Terms of Use as well as "Legal" stuff if you can call it that, a decent handful of the credits, and so on. I'm sure that anyone who's read it has noticed that I have stated the following:

....You're free to look at my HTML, CSS, Javascript if you desire. It's poorly written, but you're still free to attempt to learn from it. You are also free to go take from my premade layouts....

....Any assets on my website with the exceptions of things that I have personally made with some sort name for my site are free to use with the exception of my artwork....

....I don't require links back to things I've made....

The reason I bring this all up is because apparently someone used a free layout, and apparently that's supposed to make me mad and strike them down in the name of plagiarism. And I'm just here like... This isn't plagiarism. It isn't theft. They used something free, and hearing that people are using it actually makes me happy. I don't know why people are expecting me to be upset. I'm not upset until people start wanting me to go after people and it's like, "No, I won't be doing that." My entire site is literally stating that you can look at my code. Neocities is an open source website, and quite honestly, in honor of that I feel like it's only right that I leave my website as open source. A lot of people's site's on this host are the same. You can right click and hit "view source" or open the developer tools on your browser and see how they made their site. I encourage people who want to look at my site to do the same if they so desire. There's no hard feelings. I'm not upset. I'd be more upset if you actually plagiarised me or did something like took from things like my art. That's where I start seeing things as plagiarism. Copying my code is fine if you remove everything in the paragraph brackets. Hell, if catbox was working right now, I'd literally post my layouts on my site to make an even bigger point out of how little this actually matters to me. Being open source is not encouraging plagiarism. And I'll remain open source until my site inevitably shuts down again in the spirit of keeping things free for younger people to learn, because that's how I learned when I was 13. So I don't care if you're 13 or 33 or 303. If you want to code, and you're looking at other people's stuff to learn how to do all of this, go for it.

"But other people have their code stolen and you agreed with them being upset!" Yeah, because it's their code, and thus it's their choice. While I definitely have mixed feelings about it, I understand that everyone is going to feel different about it. That's okay! Some people feel really negatively about it. Hell, I've seen people go as far as not only disabling right click on their site (which makes it hard to even save their buttons but that's another topic) or disabling developer tools on their site. And y'know what? As much as I don't like that, they're within their own right to do that. The point here is to respect that everyone is going to feel differently about this, and as an older person on the net I'm very just open to the fact that "Kids will mimic what they like. I used to do that." And I welcome it. Because not every single person's learning is going to start with the W3C or similar websites. And that's okay. If it gets people to actually learn something and try to make something themself, without relying on some sort of AI tool, then it's fine. I know people freak out when they see something that even remotely looks similar at times. I've heard that this is a huge problem with Nekoweb apparently, but I don't know any particulars so I hesitate to start dunking on them in specific. But generally, people are going to be drawn to certain kinds of aesthetics. Understandably, some people will want certain things for themselves. And I think that's fine. Like, hell, my website was inspired by others as well. I think so many people see sites that have very similar layouts to mine will sometimes not realize how similar things are because I did things like put a bit of margins and customly drawn headers, as well as giving everything a coat of blue paint & tweaking it to work with Zonelets. People probably just don't realize that's what makes my site "different."

So please, I beg of you, literally stay in your own lane and do not come to me expecting me to bully someone for "looking too much like me." I put all of my stuff out there to be used for a reason. I'm not stopping you from coming to my site and taking stuff from it. It's on the internet. It's all up for grabs! All I ask is that if you're going to copypaste my website, don't steal my words! I feel like this entire problem stems from the fact that people view "webmastery" as a whole as the site's design and not the content. I could literally make my site look just like the sites I'd browse on my parents old Webtv in 98 and 99, while waiting for Gold & Silver to come out, and it'd still be the same site in my eyes. Someone looking "similar" doesn't phase me, and I don't think it should phase others. The important part of this is getting people to try new things, experiment with code, and use the template to make something new. Everyone out there who puts resources on their site intends for them to be used, so getting upset for someone else when they're used is more upsetting than the supposed theft.

Anyways, this happened a few hours ago and it has not left my mind so I feel it's better to put it out there and let it be known.

Disappointment

22 Oct, 2025

Today was not a great day. It wasn't a super bad day, but it wasn't a great day or anything. We didn't reclear because the memeing went too high, and each time we saw adds there was tank complications (Not that I'm blaming tanks or anything. I do not know how to tank an ultimate. I have also clowned very late in a pull. It happens and it's not the end of the world) so that kinda bummed me out. But it was liveable. After all, as we say in UCOB, "Haha, thank god this is the first pull of the night!"

Crying over lack of totem aside, I had an awkward encounter with someone that felt nothing but tense, and then proceeded to play minecraft while a bit angry. And like, I can live with all that. The other person said they had a rough night. That's fine, shit happens.

What I can't deal with is the news that one of the figures I wanted the most had a regular production review revealed and...

Oh... Oh no...

If you want the full context and credit, here's a link to the Bilibili review video and just know that the prototype is on the right, and the mass produced version, which is what the buyers will recieve, is on the left. I would be mostly okay with it, even the kind of clumpy hair to a degree, and even the kind of lack of shading, but the stockings being sheer when they were white is where I'm like "This is awful." Like, I'm debating cancelling. But I also know it's going to be a century before Amiami starts sending stuff to the United States again so I have time to further contemplate if I truly want to cancel this figure and save the 136 dollars and put it to something else (Like the Yugi & Yami Yugi figures). Personally, I'm going to wait until we start seeing more pictures before I pull the trigger on her, but she might be the first Eve to actually bin. Followed by the other Eve that's probably going to bin with the swimsuit and green plants that everyone hates for whatever reason.

Either way, I was really looking forward to this figure so to see it go so south makes me kind of want to consider canceling. I think the only thing that's making it not an instant cancel is the bonus tapestry. Stupid reason, I know. However, figure companies have delayed things in the past to improve the quality and if this ends up being one of those cases (Because let's be real Hpoi probably going to roast the everliving shit out of her) then I get to have my order kept on a crisis that gets avoided.

I'm just begging them to fix the sheer stockings they look like ass. Praying the rest is just shit lighting because yeah, shit lighting can make figures look way worse.

Yeah this is just copium.

UCOB

17 Oct, 2025

UCOB Cleared

6:58 PST 10/16/2025

Happened on a pull we had no business clearing. Literally 20+ deaths, everyone minus 1 person grey. Lot of single digit parses. I got a 0 and I'm so proud of it. Going in for more totems over the next 2 weeks, so hopefully both the totem acquisition and the parse will get better. I think I need to clean up some positioning as well. Either way, most of this is going to just be images. I'll probably make a more formal blog later today as well as today is technically the 1 year anniversary of this site, but I'm about to go out to a birthday party, so, it'll be a while before I get to that.

Anyways after we cleared and took a picture and got our weapons & stuff. My first weapon of choice was white mage. I'm gonna get samurai, and then after that I'll probably grab a bunch of stuff I don't have any ult weaps for. Debating between RDM & PLD first. The last one will be MNK. After that will all be doubles unless I go and get a GNB TEA totem & the other 90 & 100 Ults I haven't cleared yet. But I'd probably still get WHM first.

Also we went into UwU for memes. I've cleared this fight but doing it on a melee off of memory of what we're supposed to be doing is a bit hard. It's a mess. Honestly the first 3 phases of UwU are super fast learning but doing the rest is so loaded. Especially when you get past Predation and start getting into Annihilation & Suppression. Annihilation is hell for healers.

Well, either way, I wanted to expand a bit on what I had done a bit, but I had a party to go to for my great grandma's birthday, and that was pretty fun. I ate way too much sweets. For now though, I think I'll lay down, figure out something to do about my 1 year post & figure out what I want to do for Kaiba's birthday next week, because why not do something. Maybe I'll bake.

A better topic

16 Oct, 2025

So I find myself at a loss for words on how to like start this entry, but despite the woes that the previous one will probably cause me from people who don't want to talk, I'm just going to like, move on. And that's why I'm making 2 entries in 1 day, especially after sleeping--Not that sleeping helped really considering it didn't feel restful but that's whatever.

I'm at the point that I'm nearly done with UCOB and now that we've seen Golden, are getting consistent with adds, that means a clear is around the corner. I dunno how many totems we'll get but considering that pugging is an option due to everything being pug strats, I wouldn't be surprised if thats what I'll have to do to get said totems. But for the most part, I'll be done with raid, and I'm probably not going back to it for a good while.

That being said, I'll probably be opening commissions soon. Starting to do warm ups. Might start to stream stuff related to art, unsure though. I basically do feel like I have more free time to exist, so I'm going to take advantage of that. I think if I get my head in a better place, I can be a lot more productive because I definitely feel like the reason most of my stuff during the last few months was me feeling I had to juggle 500 things.

Hopefully that means more reviews finally because I have just had an abysmal time trying to sit down and kind of write all that out with other stuff going on. Like I've said, I don't really want to air grievances in explicit detail. I did that once last year and while getting everything off my chest by writing it all down and screaming at the top of my lungs felt good, some things are just better left unsaid and forgotten. The more you dwell, the more it festers.

I did intend to retake a lot of the pictures for figures that I didn't have finished already at some point for the stuff that's mine. My backlog is admittedly huge and I'm here wondering where to go next. I have a lot of stuff that wasn't in the initial queue that I have pictures of already done, vs some stuff that needs to just be rephotographed that I'd like up sooner because it's what I'm more passionate about reviewing, but that just makes the backlog of pictures grow even more. It makes me feel a bit stuck admittedly, as I try to figure out what to do in relation to all this, and then things don't end up done for a long time because I feel overwhelmed by how much is on the backlog. Part of me would make a poll but truth be told, it might be better for me to just go with my gut when I finally decide to sit down and work.

Outside of that, I might really pick up the pace on the blog related to the MSQ so I have that done faster. Feels funny to say "I need to play more XIV to end up playing less XIV" but IDK, I really just wanna do my story and close out that chapter because at this point I'm really only here for expac drops, if I decide to do that.

I guess I'm going to need to figure out a way to balance game playing and figure related posts at some point, if I don't just go all in and have just massive updates.

Oh, and maybe I'll finally show off the little clay things I made some time later. And also, Umineko gamelog soon, hopefully. I admittedly don't have the energy to replay the entire VN for all of OCT, so I might do it in episodes.

Another goal for the month is to get the YGO shrine pages done soon, because 10 days from now is Seto Kaiba's birthday. Which coincidentally isn't too far out from the 1 year anniversary of this site. Maybe I'll make a post on that too.

Anyways, 500 ideas, not enough time.

The Call is Coming from Inside the House

15 Oct, 2025

Earlier I wrote up an entire crash out post about some bullshit that happened over this weekend. Before posting it I reread it, then reread it again, and even after acknowledging that yeah, I can plead my case and realize how it comes off may be heartfelt and whatever, it doesn't really matter. Truth be told, I know that if people want to go through and dissect literally everything I say on any platform now, they're going to do that. I mean like let's be real any time anything happens in the chat it becomes bully central anyways. I'm at the point where I'm like, I talked with (person I fought with), we are on the same page, we agreed to be better about our communication between the two of us. The rest of you guys though? IDK you can like read my shit and be mad at me, you're not going to talk to me anyways, you're going to hide behind whoever you can so I'm just like whatever. If you want to have a talk, my DMs are open. I don't hate you, but I'm just not bothering with this level of petty where you all pretend that you've never been toxic and it's only me. It's not only me. It's never been only me.

For the normal people that read my blog: Don't raid in MMOs its not worth the mental health plague. This is why I fucked off to webdev & collecting plastic again mostly and running with other people.

Awkwardness

9 Oct, 2025

I think the hardest thing about going through and updating some of my pages, is when I have to go through and tinker with links. Lately I've been letting my mutuals pile up without linking back buttons, which is bad on my part because I used to be a bit more on top of all that, but I figured I'd go through, double check everything, and link a bunch at once. Which is just easier for my part. But then I end up seeing how many people follow me and then promptly unfollow after a while and it's like... confusing and a bit irritating. Like I get it, follow-for-follow is going to be a thing literally anywhere you can have followers. But I have really grown to dislike it. Every time I follow people, it's because I'm legitimately interested in reading their site. Even if I don't interact (Probably becaue I never know what to say and I constantly fear making myself come off as a dumbass or belittling someone by mistake or just coming off far too strong because I'm strongly opinionated), I'm still generally interested. I'm like, reading people's stuff. I don't see everything right away, but I do find things fun and interesting.

I'm just really really slow at getting around to checking sites.

All I know though is that a lot of people who have like no pages done or like the bare minimum front page done tend to follow me and yeah sure, I've seen some people come up with cool designs and all, but it's weird when I go to a site and it's just someone redesigning their front page and about page for the 50th time but their other 10+ links don't have anything. Is that mean to say? Like I get it, design can be hard for people who are new to it, and sometimes it's hard to find what to say (looks at my own work in progress YGO shrine) and you get caught on that. Like the words in my head don't end up coming out that way on paper. I wouldn't be surprised if other people have this problem. But also just... IDK, I hate to say it but like, if you wanna follow my site because you like the content or even the web design, that's fine. But don't follow, unfollow, then refollow every few days hoping I've seen you cos like. IDK that's just weird to be on the recieving end of.

Like IDK, I guess if you want me to follow you can just tell me or interact with me, but it also doesn't guarantee anything.

Anyways, I have raid today, maybe, if it doesn't get cancelled due to people having outages. I hope my ADHD allows me to concentrate. Anyways, I was hoping to maybe get a bit of work done today. But the lack of concentration is definitely beating my ass. I still have a bit to clean up on the site, and I'm hoping to make an article related to my favorite VN ever as both the 1 year anniversary to this site, and just due to the fact it's October, but don't be surprised if the ADHD beats my ass.

Speaking of which, yeah the Beato banner will stay up a bit, but not the entire time.

Edit: I realize this sounds kind of bitchy/ungrateful but I'm talking about specifically people who unfollow/refollow constantly like I've seen them follow at least a few times, and they just have like no content. I'm not talking about people who happen to not have their content yet, but aren't spam following or coming off like they're doing a F4F bait. This isn't to be like "Oh your site isn't good enough if you don't have X amount of content" this is a "Hey, I understand the desire to have a mutual following with some people, but please don't try to bait me to follow you if you really don't have much on your site."

Stillness

5 Oct, 2025

There's a level of frustration that comes with a certain level of boredom. A boredom so heavy that I would consider it to be akin to the sensation of burning, but instead of upon the skin, it's deep within the mind. And it permiates every waking moment of one's existence. The desire to be creative can be so heavy at times, but that's also where the problem tends to lie. Sometimes the desire to create can be so strong and overwhelming, and when you lack the muse, you can struggle to end up putting pen to paper. Sometimes I want to draw. Sometimes I even take requests. But when I went to go fill the two requests I recently got, nothing comes out other than frustration. So I sought to aleviate this feeling some way else. I attempted to find something to play, but I found myself at a loss. Playing XIV pushed forward some sort of need to create content for this site, so it became a bit hard to work up that desire. Playing Minecraft caused the feeling to create grow overwhelming and instead of making anything, I just looked through several versions, finally wrote something (albeit brief), and called it a day. Playing Mabi did nothing for me really, so I just ran around, tried on clothing, and just sat there dissatisfied while I gathered materials.

At some point I finally drew something but it's so... whatever. It was just re-lining an old WIP I found that wasn't exactly spectacular and at first I thought it filled the desire to create, but it really didn't. I found myself instantly dissatisfied for whatever reason. I think what I'm craving isn't just the desire to create, but the desire to forge connections. The usual people I tend to go to for dumping whatever brain puke I have filling my mind about fictional characters haven't really been around as of late, so I find myself seeking out new people. However, that's hard to do when you're literally afraid of everyone. Like how do you go up to people and just go "Yeah I'd like to write like 30 page essays about fiction with you at like 3 am my time when I'm lacking sleep and I'm clearly fighting my inner demons."

Weird shit to say to someone, but I suppose if it keeps my mind off of darker matters, then anything really works. Still, the lack of creative outlet in the way that my brain desires to create is frustrating.