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13.12.22
Recently I have found a new love for Comic Sans. I heard it improves your writing productivity. Even though that claim is probably false, I decided to set my default font on Word and OneNote to Comic Sans. It's sort of nostalgic, and also it makes everything more fun. I've just got to remember to switch my school papers back to Times New Roman before submitting them. I just found a browser extension that changes every single website to Comic Sans. It's pretty cool, even if it does break some sites a bit. You may think I'm odd, but I honestly like this font a lot. Many people probably just hate it cause it's cool to hate.

I wanted to join this Self-Insert Webring, but I'm having difficulties picking a single character that I really like and want to have listed under by my site name on the webring. There are so many characters I like, and a lot of them have already been chosen. Even Iori Yagami (who I thought was pretty unknown, cause there seems to be no X Reader content for him) was chosen. It's nice to see other people liking the same characters. It's just so hard to pick, cause there are so many characters I like. My favourites currently are Broly, Vegeta and literally most of the Saiyans from Dragon Ball, Iori Yagami and Shingo Yabuki from KOF, Kazuya Mishima from Tekken, Abbacchio and Kars from JoJo, Sanji, Cavendish and Doflamingo from One Piece, and so many from the Yakuza/Ryu Ga Gotoku series that I can't even be bothered to list them. I also have a growing obsession with Shadow the Hedgehog for some reason.

I think I'm gonna choose Broly (from the recent DBS film) cause I like him so much. Or maybe I'll choose Vegeta, I don't know... It's a bit weird talking about self-insert stuff here, even if there is nothing to be ashamed of. The trouble is, you need a square image of your character, and it's so hard to find good Broly pictures of him in his base form. Most of the screenshots are him in Legendary SSJ form, which is great and all, but I really prefer him how he is normally. In DB Xenoverse 2 (Which is the only DB game I have), both versions of Broly are playable characters, but they are permanently stuck in Legendary SSJ form. The other characters have multiple versions of themselves, but not Broly. You have to get his base form by downloading a mod. I know it's just a video game and I shouldn't rant about it, I just wish that they Broly wasn't stuck in that form all the time, cause he looks angry and that makes me feel bad. A lot of Dragon Ball content is like that, it's all about the fights and the power ups and stuff. I like all that too, however I also like the characters as themselves, they don't have to be fighting all the time... Which is pretty much what Dragon Ball Super is all about, mostly just fighting. At least there are some people who write cute romantic fanfiction online. I probably shouldn't be interested in Dragon Ball if I like romance and deep characters, but I really think the world is cool, and I've always appreciated how light hearted it is. Anyways, I'm gonna try and join this Self-Insert webring.



9.12.22
This year's Spotify Wrapped disappointed me a bit. For some reason, on my top songs playlist, they left out some songs that I listened to non stop, and instead put songs that I like, but only listened to once or twice this year. One year, I got a song on the list that I clicked on by accident and never played. I feel like they add the songs they want to sell, or maybe the ones the record labels payed for Spotify to market. The songs they left out were pretty obscure. Some of the songs on the list were accurate, there were a lot of Eiffel 65 songs, as well as the Sonic Forces soundtrack. I discovered that game this year, and the songs were just so good I couldn't stop listening to them.

I also discovered Argonavis from Bang Dream (now called "From Argonavis"), and listened to the songs a lot. Basically, it's an idol project with cute anime boys. I never finished the anime, I just forgot to watch the last two episodes, but I love the bands a lot. There are actually real musicians behind the groups. There's also a mobile game, it shut down so I couldn't play it. The main group in the project, Argonavis, are a bit too basic for me. My favourites out of the groups are Fantôme Iris, the visual kei band, and Gyroaxia, the more edgy rock group. They cover a lot of songs I like, mostly they create original songs, which are so good! The lead singer characters for both bands are super cool as well. My favourite song from the project was Fantôme Iris's "Pierrot", it's somehow my third most listened to song on Spotify this year. Currently I can't stop listening to this song from Gyroaxia, because the way the chorus is sung just sounds so nice. Apparently the some of the lyrics are in English and it the chorus actually goes "hello crappy world", which I didn't realise until now.

From Argonavis isn't that well known, so there's not much art or fanfiction for the characters. That's why I'm bringing it to your attention right now. The anime is worth watching too, even though I still haven't finished it, I think it's good. The animation is really weird looking though. It's mostly worth it for Asahi Nayuta and the rest of Gyroaxia. Asahi's another angry tsundere character, but I still love him a lot. Felix from Fantôme Iris is my second favourite of them all, he's a bit like an anime version of Kamijo really. He's one of those blonde prince-like characters, I always have a soft spot for those types.

In other news, I updated the site a lot yesterday. I wanted to write more pages about my language learning experiences, cause that's really been one of my hobbies for a while. Most of that section of the site is in English, even though it's about other languages. I don't know if I have the confidence to write anything in French or even Japanese, I don't want to show off my bad grammar to any potentially native speakers who might be reading. Maybe I'll do something next year. I was also thinking of moving over the guestbook for my old site over here. Honestly, I don't even remember what was on my old page, Misty's World. There were a few pages about me, a blog, and I don't know what else. It's weird how bad my memory is.


8.12.22
I have been on the computer all day studying, and Neocitiesing. Now it's dark. Maybe I should turn off the computer and read a book.



25.11.22
Caramella Girls released a new song, and it's actually great. Some of their songs are a bit cheesy, however their latest releases have impressed me a lot. They're one of the only groups now releasing bubblegum eurodance stuff. Originally they were just riding on the fame of Caramelldansen, now they've gone on to do some great original songs. And the artstyle they use for the cover art has improved a lot. Their latest song is actually a cover of Blue Monster and Bikki's "Take A Ride", which could even be a cover itself, I'm not sure. The songs sound very similar apart from the vocals. You don't get the Blue Monster sound effects in this cover, of course. You also miss out on the bit at the beginning where Blue Monster goes "BRMMMMMM BRUM BRUM BRUM" really loud. Maybe the same producers worked on the Caramella Girls version? I wouldn't be surprised if they did. I like the new version a lot, I don't think it's as good as the last Caramella Girls release, Boop Boy. That song was very impressive. My favourite songs of theirs are Boop Boy, We Like To Party, Venezia, Lollipop, Samurai, and Candy Girl. Actually, I really hated Candy Girl at first, but somehow it grew on me. The video is unintentionally hilarious too. If you like happy music and cute anime girls, you'll probably like Caramella Girls. The original band that started it all, Caramell, are also worth checking out.



9.11.22
It's less than a month until the JLPT N5 test!!! I've been trying to learn all the verbs that I'm missing, luckily there were only a few. There are probably a few basic words I never learnt, but as long as I have verbs I can probably figure them out from context, right...?

I started this language in late 2018, but I never really focused on it much these past two years. The only thing keeping my skills alive was the fact that I constastly listen to Japanese media. Sometimes I feel good at Japanese, but then I see people who drill like three billion Kanji everyday and the people in my university's Japanese club who are already doing the N3 test. But then I realise that I started the language when I didn't really know how to study. Now I know how to study and learn, and my motivation is higher. If I started Japanese now instead of four years ago, I probably would make faster progress.

I sort of gave up on Genki when I started, because I felt that the book just shoved too many new words in your face, and that it was really designed to be used in a classroom. I had no idea how to learn new words then, because for some reason I forgot that flashcards exist. I used Quizlet to learn hiragana and katakana and it worked so well, but for some reason it didn't occur to me that I could use it for vocabulary too. I tried Anki many times, but it didn't work for me at all. Now I know how to study properly, but I'm not that passionate about Japanese anymore.

If anyone else here is taking the JLPT this December, good luck! (If anyone needs help studying, I'll be happy to assist.)



7.11.22
Yesterday I saw an anime film in the cinema for the first time. It was the new One Piece film, and I thought it was awesome. I got to see it in IMAX with subs. There was barely anyone in the screening aside from one family and a few men who looked like they were in their thirties. I think more people were in the next room watching the English dub instead. The sound in my cinema's IMAX room is so loud that it almost hurts your ears, but the sound made this film really good. I'm sorry if it sounds like I was paid to promote this, but I generally had a great time.

I'm not caught up with the manga, I'm still reading through Whole Cake Island, but there weren't any spoilers for future chapter. I think I maybe got spoiled for one very minor thing. The songs sounded so good! I mainly just liked the main song, it was stuck in my head all night afterwards. Uta was a cool character, the film was mostly about her but the others had their moments too. The plot actually turned out different to what I expected.

I wish that the other characters got to sing. I know it's Uta's movie, but the other voice actors can sing really well. There should've been a musical battle at the end like in MLPEG Rainbow Rocks. Other than that, I had no problems with the film. There is one slight issue I had, but I can't talk about it without going into spoilers.

Luffy's voice sounded a bit different to me in this film. I think he sounded more mature. Maybe he usually sounds like that. I only watch bits and pieces of the OP anime, and most've what I've watched is before the time skip. Maybe his voice matured after two years?

The quality of this movie makes me wish I could've watched the Dragon Ball Super film that came out in the summer. For some reason they were only showing it dubbed in my area though. I'm glad that they're showing more anime films in the cinema here. My local cinema seems to be showing more international movies instead of Hollywood now. I think a lot of American films moved to streaming now, and that's why. The ticket to see One Piece Film Red was expensive, but I think it was worth it for the fun I had.



15.10.22
Today I listened to this song about a billion times, it's now stuck in my head.

I wrote on my otome game blog for the first time in forever, so that's good. I also finished up editing this Subaru Sakamaki X Reader story I had been writing. Subaru's birthday is in less than a month, so I thought I would write something for the occassion. It's been a bit hard because I've been out of the loop on DiaLovers for a while. I suppose I lost interest cause the games are so hard to get because they're Japanese exclusives. Subaru's story was harder to write than Ayato's, but I think I did a decent enough job.

Somehow the Vegeta X Reader story I wrote got TWENTY KUDOS. I turned the comments off on all of my stories, cause I'm a bit afraid to get feedback. I know that constructive criticism is useful and something that all writers should get, but I'm scared. Plus I forget to respond to nice comments, I never notice them until months later. It's surprising that my story got that much attention, because I wasn't sure if people were gonna like it. It's not a mature, sexy X Reader story like a lot of them are. I don't think I could write those types of stories even if I tried.

I really want to write a DBS Broly reader insert story. Broly's one of my favourite characters ever, so I've been dying to write an X Reader for him. The trouble is, I still haven't got a grasp of his personality. I'm struggling to think of how I'd write his dialogue. Usually I write for tsundere characters, so I should try tackling different personalities for once. I could probably write the original DBZ Broly well enough, except he's not as interesting to me. In the DBZ movies and games most of his lines consist of him screaming "KAKAROT!!!" In Xenoverse 2 even if you try to befriend him, he just treats the player like dirt all the time. I have read some X Reader fanfics with him in, and those usually don't give him a softer side. I don't think the old Broly is the best character for a reader insert romance. I also got an idea of a Black Butler reader insert involving the Undertaker, but I decided against it cause it had major spoilers for the recent story arc, so none of the anime only fans would be able to read it. Also, it was a bit too dark, that would be fine if my writing didn't always end up being lighthearted without me trying.

Today I also sorted through my dolls, I tried to decide which ones I would give away. I used to find it hard to get rid of any of my things, but now I'm much more willing to let things go. I'm giving away some of my more boring blonde Barbies, as well as the two with Twist 'N Turn waists. I don't dislike those two by any means, but it's just most of my Barbies have the post 1999 body moulds, so I don't have many clothes that'll fit the older body type. One of them is an old early 90s Barbie I won at a school fair years ago, and the other is a Teresa who I think is from 2000 or the very late 90s. I like the Teresa a lot, but it's just that I want to have space in case I would like to buy any more dolls. I go in and out of the hobby every year and I rarely buy new dolls anymore, but I want to focus on dolls a lot now.

The reason for that is, I don't have many hobbies that don't involve looking at a screen. Writing, gaming, making websites, anime, all of these involve a screen. I'm getting tired of staring at screens, but I can't escape them. In university all of the work is digital now, so if you want to study you have to stare at a laptop for hours on end. I want to look at the real world more, so I'm trying to find more hobbies other than drawing that don't involve blue light exposure. I feel bad when I look at a screen all day, even if I'm doing something productive. I think I just need a break. It's just so hard to find other hobbies...

I'm going to try to add more images to this section of the site, even if they are random and unrelated. It must be boring for all of you to read big chunks of text like this.



11.10.22
I've gotten back into otome games again... I was so burnt out from them, but it's been more than a year, and I miss my 2D men. So many new games have released in English since I was last in the fandom. A lot of them look like super plot heavy games that don't interest me. I used to just buy anything that was otome because there weren't as many releases, now I'm a lot more picky with my games since I have less free time. The only game I really want to get is Amnesia Later X Crowd. It's funny seeing the original game on the Switch for such a high price, I'm used to seeing it on sale for so cheap on the Vita and PC.

I started playing the new Cheritz game The Ssum. They announced this game so many years ago, I was starting to think that it would never come out. I've only played it for five minutes, and it seems like a cute game. It's a lot different from Mystic Messenger, but that's alright. Hopefully it doesn't require me to log in at the same times every single day. A lot of people seem to dislike this game, but I don't see any problems with it so far. People don't like that you have to wait a lot, but you had to do that in MM too. Waiting isn't so bad if you're busy. The main screen of The Ssum is a bit confusing, but maybe that's cause I didn't pay attention to the introduction. As long as this game it doesn't require me to spend money later on, I'll keep playing. Apparently the MC and the love interest have a fight later on in the game. I'm not looking forward to that. It promises 200 days of gameplay. I'm busy so I don't have time to play everyday, so I hope the game is forgiving with that. Mystic Messenger was impossible to play if you had a busy schedule. If you missed too many chats, you'd end up getting a bad ending. I used to open the chat rooms under my desk at school and leave them open until I was able to read them. In the end I just gave up on trying to get a good end for Ray's route, even though he was my favourite. I stopped playing because the game was so hard to play if you weren't on your phone all the time. But the characters and routes are still some of my favourites in the genre. Maybe I'll replay it again once I have some more free time.



28.09.22
I made some changes to the homepage in order to make it look nicer. I moved the navigation bar to the top, and I sort of copied the new design from a few other sites... I also put a border around everything. I was gonna make the background inside the border white or something, but then I realised that I would probably need to change the HTML of every page to include some div tags and such. On my old site I had a lot of those, but I didn't bother here because I didn't plan to use much CSS.

I want to add more shrines soon, maybe a page dedicated to my favourite manga series. Also, I want to find more cute GIFs to spice things up a bit. My site is full of text, and big walls of text are boring. Hopefully I'll be able to get some stuff done in between university.

You know the graphics page where I made some 88x31 buttons? I thought those buttons weren't all that good, but... I've seen them floating around a few Neocities pages. I've probably mentioned this already, but I found some of mine again today. It makes me happy. Sometimes you make something and think it sucks, but then you realise that other people seem to like it. I am never proud of anything I've made, so it's uplifting when other people like it. Even with those X reader fanfictions I wrote, I thought they were rubbish, but I still got some kudos on A03 for them. I just constantly compare my site to others on Neocities, and I feel like my site is awful in comparison. It would be best if I just stop comparing myself to other people, then I would be a lot happier.

I want to make more buttons and write more fanfiction, but I'm waiting for some good ideas to come first.

Guess what? I signed up for the JLPT N5 test! Even though I know all of the right words and grammar because I've been doing this for four years, I'm still trying to study hard. The listening comprehension seems so easy. The voice speaks so slowly, and the questions feel so easy. I've got a few months to learn the vocabulary I'm missing. It turns out that I didn't even know basic words like "bedroom" and "homework", but I can say weird things like "blood", "death" and "vampire". A lot of people say that N5 is pointless, I thought it was too but my family kept encouraging me to sign up. But right now in university I am learning French, Chinese and Italian. Four languages is a lot. Most of my classmates grew up bilingual, but my family have only ever spoke English. None of my relatives know any other languages. I probably would be fluent in another language if I didn't keep focusing on multiple at a time! I really want to learn Romanian, but I'm trying to hold myself back. If I learn anymore, my brain will just explode.

In my Chinese class, everyone seems to be so good. They've probably been watching C-Dramas a lot. I am only now just beginning to grasp the tones, but I feel weird speaking in my class. Even in French (where we try not to English at all anymore), I try to speak but the grammar and conjugations trip me up and I stutter a bit. I've been practicing my French speaking so much during the summer, and my listening. My listening skills were terrible, but I did Duolingo a lot and tried to watch anime in French. I should probably watch actual French television instead of just anime...

I'm starting to feel embarrassed to be an otaku. All this time I have been proud to like anime and manga, but I feel weird now. Maybe it's cause people used to make me feel bad for liking MLP and Barbie when I was in my early teens. I became really protective of my interests, and would keep most of them a secret. I wouldn't even watch TV in front of anyone in my family out of embarrassment. I thought I was over all of that, but then I kept being told that I should stop watching cartoons and find something live action to watch. I don't mind non-cartoons, but it's just that currently I like anime and that's all I want to watch. I watch anime for escapism, live action just reminds me of the real world too much. And sometimes I'm told that video games are useless, by the same people who spend hours binge watching Netflix or using social media. So now I feel guilty whenever I play video games. Most of the clothes I like wearing are anime t-shirts, and now I feel weird wearing them. I didn't really care about fashion much until recently, so most of my wardrobe consists of these shirts. I just don't want to go to my university and look like a cringey weeb. At least I have this website where I can just write about manga as much as I want.



26.09.22
I brought the SCM music player back!! Hopefully it won't glitch out like last time. It's so cool, I left the homepage open just to enjoy the tunes.



10.09.22
I added some more doll pages today!! I'm thinking of getting rid of some of my more unkempt childhood dolls, and just keeping my favourites. Then I get get lots of fashion packs for them, and I'll have space to buy one of the reproduction Bratz dolls! I missed out on Bratz for a long time. It took a while before my parents would let me have them. I used to turn the TV show on when it was airing but then I'd be told to turn it off. There are a few Bratz in my collection, but they have super messy hair. I like to swap their clothes, but because I don't have many outfits, they get to wear tight Monster High dresses or Moxie Girls clothes. I don't like them as much as Barbie, but I think their fashions and the general aesthetic is cool. I also sort of want a Rainbow High doll. It seems that MGA dolls are a lot higher quality than what Mattel is putting out these days. But like I said, I like to swap their outfits, and if I have only one RH doll, she won't be able to fit any of my Barbie clothes. I'm so deep into the Barbie ecosystem that it would be weird getting an RH doll. When I was younger I was gifted some Moxie Teens, they were cool but they were taller and couldn't fit any Barbie or Monster High outfits. I just took their clothes and put them on my Barbies instead. Sure, they were a bit baggy, but they looked cool. The Moxie Teens are now somewhere in my dad's house, naked and wigless.

I've been following the Monster High reboot and all the drama that comes with it. The new music videos are very cringy, but again I am not the target audience for them. The animation is so odd in them, it feels like when the framerate drops in a video game cut scene and everything moves in slow motion. The new doll I like the best is Lagoona, because her colours are so bright and appealing to me. Toralei looks strange, it's like they toned down her attitude and sanitised her. It's just funny that people are paying hundreds to buy these from scalpers.



31.08.22
I thought that I should do something with my four years of minimal Japanese study, and try and take the JLPT test. My studying was very random and didn't really correspond to any proficiency level. I read Genki 1 but I only remembered the grammar, I didn't know how to study the vocabulary back then so I remembered none of it. The JLPT N4 test seemed like the best thing for me, but the vocabulary is all strange to me. The grammar I mostly understand though. Even though I'm nowhere near fluent, the language sort of sounds familiar and normal to me. I can watch anime, and even though I never understand it 100%, it never really occurs to me that I'm watching something in another language. My entire reason for learning was because of video games. That's a lame reason to learn a language. With other languages, I have goals, like I want to visit that country or I need to speak it to get a job. But with Japanese I never really wanted to travel or speak it anywhere. Whenever I thought about visiting Japan, I just thought about the city and going to all the arcades and buying lots of weeb merchandise. Now, if I were to go I would want to go to the countryside instead. My Japanese listening skills are decent, my speaking is OK, and my kanji recognition is poor even though I know a lot of words. I can understand generic shonen anime or romance stories with no problems. The thing I understood the most was Sailor Moon Crystal, probably cause it's a mixture of romance and action. I can also understand the JP versions of K-pop songs really well, but that's not very useful.

I think I'll just take the N5 test even though it's the bottom level. At least the certificate will look good on my wall, and maybe it'll also look good on my CV. It feels pathetic than I can only do the N5 after FOUR YEARS, but then again I didn't really actively study for most of that time, and I studied through media which meant that I didn't learn normal words. If I had studied in a proper classroom, I probably would be able to take the N4 or N3. At one point I was better at speaking Japanese than I was at speaking French, but I dunno if it's still like that. At least if I was stuck in the middle of nowhere in Japan, I would be able to survive.

24.08.22
I spent all day writing that X Reader fanfiction. Even though it was sort of childish and more than a bit cringeworthy, I had fun writing it. I'm proud of myself for having the guts to upload it online. Now it has awakened a newfound confidence in me. Suddenly I have so many ideas for things I want to write. I'm not doing it for online popularity, I'm doing it to develop my writing skills and also my confidence. Also, I owe the world something in return for my hours of free fanfic reading. Writing as a hobby makes it much easier for me to write for school. Although it embarrasses me to share my work, I think it's good if I let other people read it.

This evening after work, I wrote an Ayato Sakamaki X Reader story. It's not bad. A lot of fanfic is very angsty, but unfortunately I can only write lighthearted fluff. I still tried my best to make the romance decent. Although I haven't played or watched DiaLovers in ages, I think I know the characters well enough. I feel less knowledgeable because I never played every single game, but I don't think most members of the fandom in the West have either. It's easier for me to write DiaLovers because I've been a fan for so long. The story I wrote yesterday was a Dragon Ball story. I haven't been into that for as long, so it was a bit harder for me to write the characters. However, I still think I did well. What I wrote sort of ended up feeling like a comedic filler episode of DB Super.

Ayato was never my favourite character, but he's starting to move up the ranks. Obviously Subaru is my number one, but I find it hard to write him accurate. I have that issue with a lot of my favourite characters. I want to portray them accurately, but I suppose I will always write them differently to someone else. Everyone will have a different persceptive on someone. Ayato's an arsehole in the DiaLovers games, so I sort of just want to write about him growing and becoming softer towards Yui/the reader. I relistened to his drama CD whilst writing so that I could refresh myself on his personality. I ended up writing continuously without stopping, unlike yesterday where I kept checking if I got character and plot details accurate every five seconds. Dragon Ball is a lot more detailed than DiaLovers, and I get confused as to how to spell the character names because they're different depending on which translation you read.

The plot of my new story is sort of inspired by Ayato's routes in the games. It sort of feels like one of the short scenario chapters you're forced to read in between the actual plot. I tried to keep Ayato's tsundere personality, but I probably softened him a bit. I think everyone softens the DiaLovers boys in fanfiction, because they are quite extreme in the source material. I know a lot of people don't like the way the boys treat Yui, so I didn't want to make Ayato too mean. But then again, a lot of people actually enjoy that kind of stuff. I hope the romance I wrote is realistic. I've never actually experienced real romance, but I've played plenty of otome games to use as reference!

Tomorrow I will force myself to proof read the story, and then unleash it onto the world. Let's hope I don't get cold feet and give up on it.



The only problem I had is that writing in second person is hard. I end up using the word "you" so much, it must be painful to read. First person reader insert fanfictions are not my cup of tea, so I don't really want to use that. Also, I hate proofreading. Rereading my work makes me cringe. I have this problem at school too, so sometimes I end up submitting papers that have a few errors. That's why I need to gain some more confidence! Reader insert fanfiction writing should hopefully help me. I'm not going to share my Archive of Our Own account here yet, though.



23.08.22
Today I started to write my very first X Reader fanfiction. Please don't judge me. I've wanted to do this for a long time. Hopefully it doesn't turn out to be full of cringe. I wanted to post it on Archive of Our Own, but I'm starting to think it's not good enough for that place. Maybe I should just put it on Wattpad instead?

There's actually not that much romance in my story. It's supposed to be a one shot. I'm almost near the end, but I've only written three pages. Maybe I should've fleshed out some of the descriptions better. I know X Reader stories aren't usually good quality, but I want to try hard to make mine good. It's very light hearted, and not mature rated or anything. I was really confident at the start, but now I'm starting to get embarrassed of it. Hopefully I'll finish it soon.

I also want to write an Ayato Sakamaki X Reader story. Even though Ayato isn't my favourite DiaLovers boy, I think he would be interesting to write about. Maybe I should write some stories for some characters and series that seem to have no fanfics.



10.08.22
Monster High's being rebooted for the second time, as many of you probably already know. There's a lot of hype surrounding all the new dolls and the movie.

I didn't really have very high expectations for the new releases after the awful 2016 reboot. I don't have the space or time to buy the new dolls anyways, but I still like to look at them. Monster High is very close to my heart, I have a lot of cherished memories collecting the dolls with my friend and playing with them for hours. To be quite honest, I actually prefer Ever After High. The dolls are more my style and the webisodes felt less cheesy than MH's. I'm not that into horror and monsters (except for vampires, of course), so the fairytale theme appealed to me more. I still like Monster High a lot. My favourites were always Draculaura (although her voice is annoying), Venus, and Elissabat. Nowadays I prefer Operetta and Jane Boolittle. I found Draculaura annoying so I remember that I made a cringy OC to replace her. She was this vampire who only wore black, and I used my friend's Raven Queen doll to represent her whenever we played together. I'm glad I didn't know much about fanfiction or fan art back then.

The new Nickelodeon movie looks a bit cheesy, but I never like those kinds of films usually. I always thought the original animated films were corny, even when I was in the target demographic for them. I'm not too sure whether they're restarting the story with a blank slate, or are they continuing from where they left off? The new collector dolls come with diaries that continue the story lines that came with the original dolls, but I'm not sure if they're going to make more webisodes and animated films again.

The dolls look OK, but I can only really form an opinion when I see them in person. At least they're using a new body sculpt. The original dolls were always so skinny. I know they're just dolls, but they were literally like skeletons, and their backs always had this unnatural curve. These new body sculpts are great, but it probably means that the new dolls can't share outfits with the older ones. The faces on the new dolls look a bit odd to me, but again I haven't actually seen them in person yet! At least the fashions are cool. They're updated for the current era, but they still match the characters and their personalities. It seems like the clothes are detailed and not cheaply made. There are a lot of accessories included with the dolls, so that's good. I especially love Draculaura's clothes, I want to wear them myself. The collector dolls are also nice, but they don't interest me much.

I don't like the new art style much, but maybe it appeals to the younger audience. The character art looks super cartoony, and doesn't feel as edgy and detailed as the older designs. Excuse me for being mean, but I really think the designs are a bit ugly.

Suddenly, Monster High seems to be popular again. Even my friends who didn't seem to be into dolls are now into MH. Finally I have people who will be willing to listen to me spewing out all the random MH facts I've had stored in my brain for nine years. It's nice to see older people into the dolls. I know adult collectors have always been there, but it's cool that people I know are into it too. When I was in my Monster High phase, I was just finishing primary school. I was still in the target demographic for the dolls. But my classmates thought it odd that I was still into dolls. Even members of my own family told me I was too old for Monster High. And then I got into My Little Pony and things got worse. So it's nice that my friends aren't embarrassed to like Monster High. Hopefully there'll be a lot of new fans as well as ones coming back for the nostalgia. And maybe the prices of the old dolls will go up and I can make a bit of money from selling my collection. And perhaps they'll rerelease some of the older lines I missed out on, like School's Out and Freaky Fusion. The only dolls I really wished I'd got were C.A. Cupid and Elissabat, but there's probably a 0.00% chance of those two being rereleased.



I feel bad about giving you a massive wall of text without pictures, so here is an old photo of my dolls, before I started swapping their clothes and ruining their hairstyles.

Another doll thing I want to talk about is Hollywood's live action Barbie movie that should be coming soon. Despite being a massive Barbie fangirl, I'm really not excited for this. There are going to be some massive actors in it, and it probably has a high budget, but I don't care. Why does Barbie need a live action movie? It just sounds like a dumb idea. And I think the fashions are going to mainly be based on the 80s dolls. I feel like the film's probably just going to portray Barbie as a bit of a joke. I know Life in the Dreamhouse did that too, but it doesn't feel like a good idea for the live action version. I just miss how Barbie was in the 2000s movies, she gave off an older sister vibe. Hopefully the live action film doesn't end up feeling like a big parody. Parodies are OK, but I don't think I could stand it for a full length film. But who knows, maybe it'll actually be good? There's not even a trailer out yet, and I'm just judging it from a few promotional shots.

I've been rereading JJBA again. I was getting a bit fed up with the series because I couldn't escape the memes and the references, I thought I had lost interest in it, but here I am again... This time I finished reading the Battle Tendency manga. Usually I read a whole part without breaks, but because I was periodically collecting the physical volumes for part two, it took me a while to finish. Now I've read every single part except for parts four and eight. I watched the anime for part four but I couldn't be bothered to read the manga, and I gave up on part eight two volumes in cause my Kindle didn't want to open the files. I watched one episode of the part six anime, but I don't feel inclined to continue. It's not that I dislike part six, I just don't have the interest in revisiting it. Maybe once Netflix finally releases the second half, I'll watch that bit. It gets more exciting then. All I want is for All Star Battle R to come out, because it looks so cool. Hopefully it has a story mode. One of my favourite characters isn't playable, but there are plenty of others to use. There are too many fighting games in my collection, but I just can't get enough of them. I just like unlocking all the different characters and messing around. Fighting games look intimidating, but they're not that bad. It's just that all of the guides for them think that you want to become a professional and play in some tournament.

Updates on this site have been slow recently. My summer job has been taking up most of my time. In September I'll be able to add some more things.



01.07.22
I was going through all my old Scratch projects I did back when I took a computer science course at school. Some of the projects were too ambitious and very glitchy. A few of the games made me laugh a bit. One of the games I made was cool, so I decided to add it to this site!

This week I finished two series that I really liked, it feels kind of empty without them. I finished watching Lego Monkie Kid in only a few weeks. It was really good, especially in the third season. The episodes were way too short though. I don't know why they had to be ten minutes long when they aired in a twenty minute timeslot anyway. Why do cartoons do that all the time? They have a twenty minute slot to air a normal sized episode, yet they decide to show two ten minute episodes instead. You can't really develop much in ten minutes. Monkie Kid was still really good. The first season was OK, but in the next two seasons and in the specials the plot got interesting. The animation was really good, even though I watched someone's 480p Google Drive upload. I liked most of the characters by the end. My favourites were probably Wukong and Macaque. The series felt a bit nostalgic to me, because it reminded me of the stuff I used to watch on Cartoon Network and Disney XD "back in the day".
I know the whole show is just an attempt to sell toys to the Chinese market, but the cartoon is still great. The advertisements can't work on me, cause I'm not in the market for any Lego... I can't be affected by it, right...?
Now I sort of want to go to the Lego Store and see if they sell any keychains of the minifigures...

I also finally finished Yakuza 6 after many months of procrastinating. I've finished the whole main series (I played Like A Dragon last year cause the other games weren't on Xbox yet), which is sort of sad. I didn't really play too many of the substories in some of the games because I was engrossed in the story, so maybe I should go back and finish them. I also skipped some of the mini games, like the stuff where you have to talk to the girls. Yakuza 6 wasn't my favourite game. Sometimes I was a bit bored with it. It was a bit annoying how it's supposed to be the final game in Kiryu's story, yet a lot of the characters we've gotten to know over time are barely even there. You would've thought that they'd put in a lot of fan service because it's the last game, but no. The new characters are cool too, but it would be nice to have some time with the old ones too. I only did six substories in this one, they were fully voiced which was cool, but it also meant that they took longer. I know, the substories are a major part of the game, it's just that I don't really like getting sidetracked with them. I tend to only focus on one thing at a time, so if I'm engrossed in the main story, I don't want to focus on the sidequests. Some of the substories are fun, sometimes it's odd playing a comedic one right after you've been doing the main story which is mostly serious. I couldn't really imagine Kiryu stopping to help some random person with their problems when he's in the middle of some important plot related business.

It took me almost two years to finish this series. I started with Yakuza 0, I knew literally nothing about it going in apart from that it had a karaoke game. I only planned to play the one game, I didn't want to play the rest of the series. But I became absolutely engrossed in the world, the plot and the characters. Before that, I didn't even play many games apart from otome and sandbox simulation stuff. Now the Yakuza series is one of my favourite things. None of my friends have played them games, so I didn't have anyone to about it with. Online it seems to be super popular, but mostly for the memes. I think I found out about it on some forum somewhere, the plot and characters seemed interesting but I didn't think it was on Xbox. I bought 0 entirely using Swagbucks and Microsoft Rewards, and I was so excited to play it. My favourite of the games plotwise is probably Kiwami 2. After finishing 6, I started replaying it. I'm annoyed that I never realised that the game had a photo mode! Now I'm trying to take pictures of literally everything and everyone.

Even though nobody asked, here are my opinions on each game in the order I played them:
(Don't worry, I will try to avoid spoilers as much as possible!)

0: I can't remember everything about this one because it's been a while, but it was so much fun to play. Before I hadn't really played anything like it. If I go back and play this one again, I'll probably understand it a bit more. Out of the two characters, I preferred playing with Majima over Kiryu. I thought that Majima was one of the main characters of the series at first, but he doesn't really show up that much in the other games. When I started I thought for some reason that you could change Kiryu and Majima's clothes, but was disappointed to find out that you could only do that after completing the story, and even then the outfits were preset. The cabaret club stuff was actually super fun, I enjoyed giving the hostesses makeovers. The makeover part actually reminded me of the Flash games I used to play as a kid. There aren't any fashion and makeover games on the Xbox at all, but somehow the Yakuza series has them included. The final battle I played streaming it to my PC (someone else was using the TV but I was too invested in the game), it was a bit laggy and glitchy so I didn't get the best experience. The final boss seemed to have so many health bars, probably more than I saw in any of the other games. I thought the graphics were excellent (I didn't play too many modern games before this), so I was shocked to find out that Yakuza 0 was already a few years old. Going back to the fighting style here is a bit strange when you're used to the newer games. The UFO catcher in this game is the best though.

Kiwami 1: This one was OK. The story's ending is set on Christmas Eve, which is the actually the date that I finished it. I can't really remember my thoughts on this one. A lot of the Yakuza 0 stuff was reused, so some of the stuff looked like it was from the 80s even though the plot is supposed to be in 2005. The Majima Everywhere stuff I mostly didn't experience until after the game. I didn't realise that Majima was hiding under a giant cone, so he was just left there through most of my playthrough. Sometimes I go back to this one to play Billiards.

Kiwami 2: As you already know, I love this one the most. My Xbox One S doesn't like the Dragon Engine much though, sometimes it can be a bit slow. The fighting feels a bit different too, but I'm not really sure why. The plot was so good, it seemed to have a lot of tropes that I adore. These games are usually full of drama and plot twists, but I like that. The more dramatic something is, the more I enjoy it. I loved the new characters too, especially Daigo. He somehow turned out to be my favourite in the whole series. The bit where you play as Majima was a lot shorter than I expected. I can't remember much of what happened in it. Takehito Koyasu played a character which was nice, except his character didn't get much screen time at all. I think they added the Majima part just for the people who liked him in Yakuza 0. They also took the cabaret club stuff from that game. Even though I liked that mini game before, I skipped it here. Apparently the original PS2 game has a few differences, I'd love to be able to play it one day. I saw it for sale in a used games shop, but it and Yakuza 1 were sold for more than what I paid for the remakes.

Like A Dragon: The only game that has a physical copy for the Xbox version. They only sell it as an expensive steelbook, but I managed to get it on sale for a great price. It came with a free sticker, I thought it was a temporary tattoo at first!
This game spoiled some things for me, since this is really the seventh game in the series. The story began really slow, I wasn't as invested at first. Once things started picking up, I was super invested. I stayed up so late completing the main story. It took me three tries to do the final dungeon and boss. This was because I had to do other things and my Xbox kept restarting the game every time I came back. I actually finished it a exactly a year ago.
Ichiban was such a cool main character, and the supporting cast were fun too. There was a lot of focus on "the power of friendship", but I like that stuff. Also, there was a lot more comedy in this one. I prefer it when things are more serious and dramatic, but the comedy was still OK. The JRPG combat was fine, sometimes it was a bit annoying though. I much prefer the combat in the previous games. There was so much side content, the arcades had the best selection of games. I spent a lot of time just playing Virtua Fighter 5. And there was the best selection of karaoke songs too. You could change the costumes and give each party member different jobs, which was fun. The business management game I only did to unlock the extra party member, she was very useful. The photo mode was the best out of all the games simply because you could add cute filters and the other characters and NPCs would actually pose for the camera.
There were a lot of otome game voice actors I recognised here. Usually I've never heard of the actors they use in the Yakuza series, cause a lot of them aren't in many anime or otoge. There was an English dub but I've never listened to it. It would be a bit weird for me hearing everyone speak English when it's supposed to be set in Japan. Also, I have only seen one other person notice that Joon-gi Han resembles T.O.P from BIGBANG (who happens to be my favourite K-pop star). Someone on the development team must be a VIP... I think that's the reason why Han doesn't have any karaoke songs, it would look too much like a BIGBANG video if they did that. They should've just hired T.O.P for the game, he can speak Japanese and he has done acting in the past, he'd do fine. But it would probably cost way too much money to do that.

3: Why do so many people dislike this one? It's probably my second favourite. This game has such a cosy feel to it, Okinawa is such a nice location. I just like anything that has the beach, it reminds me of my childhood a bit. The plot is so good, I can't really understand why it's not that popular. I suppose different people have different tastes. The blocking isn't really that bad, I mostly played on Normal mode and got through fine. I don't think I can talk much about this without spoiling it. I can't remember the minigames much though, I think I forgot to play them because once again, I was engrossed in the story.

4: This game's plot wasn't as good, but the decent characters drew me in. The soundtrack was the best in my opinion. One of the songs reminded me so much of Shenmue. (It was this song if you are curious) I liked having multiple protagonists, I got attached to them so much that it was a bit sad when the game forced me to switch to someone else. Akiyama was my favourite, Saejima was also interesting. For some reason Tanimura didn't click with me, he wasn't a bad character, but I just didn't care for him. I finished most of the substories, except I couldn't do them all because there was a final one that required you to talk to the girls in the cabaret clubs so I didn't bother. The plot should've appealed to me a lot more, but I think I got a bit confused at one point. Even now I can't really recall what was going on, I can't even remember what the antagonists looked like. My favourite karaoke song was in this game, for some strange reason it wasn't included on the soundtrack album so I can't listen to it. Akiyama apparently shares a voice actor with Beerus from Dragon Ball Super. The two don't sound anything alike, their seiyuu does an excellent job at doing different voices. Most seiyuu are very talented, but it's usually so easy to recognise their voices.

5: The plot in this one was a bit better. At one point it almost made me cry. There was a lot of side stuff that I didn't do. Playing as Haruka was fun because you didn't get into a random battle in the street every five seconds. I didn't actually think much of her in the earlier games, but I came to like her a lot. Her mini games were cool, but her part of the story was mostly just like a teen drama so I wanted to get it over with quickly. At least it did give us this song, it's sad that it doesn't have an extended version. I'm surprised that Majima didn't get more screentime in this one, I think he probably needed it the most here. Shinada was an interesting new character, but he was broke which meant I couldn't play Taiko no Tatsujin at all during his part. Usually money is really easy to get in this series, except for Shinada's part here and Yakuza 6, where I was mostly too poor to even afford healing items.
I just liked this game a lot because it had Taiko no Tatsujin, Hatsune Miku and the best version of the Print Circle game.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Online: I briefly played this game during an especially boring night shift. The story is just an alternate version of Like A Dragon's. I mainly just wanted the cute gacha cards of my favourite characters. I read some translations for the stories online to save time. What I didn't understand about this one was the multiple art styles. Some of the sprites looked like they were from the main series, others were in their own art style, and then some characters were just big breasted anime girls. I get that the gacha cards are done by different artists, but the sprites should all look like they belong in the same universe. I think it placed each player into a group with a chat room, and I think the group I got placed in seemed to have members who were actually invested in the game and were friends with each other. (At first I thought this chat room was full of AIs, but it seemed like it was real.) This game didn't hold my interest for long. It still gives me notifications all the time though.

I wrote a lot here, I probably should've posted this on my blog. There are probably a lot of grammar mistakes up above, but it's late so I'm not going to proof read. There are still more games in this series to play, but unfortunately they're not easily available to me. Dead Souls looks like it has so much fanservice, but it's not on Xbox. The first game in the Judgement series isn't available on the Xbox One, for some dumb reason only the sequel is. I didn't have much of an interest in those anyway. There's also the Fist of the North Star game, even though I like that manga the game is also not on the Xbox. There's also those PSP spin-offs and the historical ones, those will probably never be localised. I'm probably just going to replay the games I have until I become interested in something else. My friend tried to get me playing this new, extremely popular game that nobody will shut up about, it's fun, but I fear that I'm going to like it a bit too much...