The past few days have been a blur of 3D printing and my newest tap tap phone game addiction: Ensemble Stars. I've been playing LoveLive since uhhhhh 2015? 2016???? but it's been a fucking shit show. SIF2 is not even close to the original, and it's shutting down in a couple months. Worldwide is apparently launching next month, but it'll only be open for a few months before it also shuts down.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

lays on the ground sadly

But look I hate change and I really like 1) the songs and 2) the play style of LL, so no other rhythm phone games have stuck for me. UNTIL NOW, APPARENTLY!!!! I even tried enstars a few years back and didn't really care for it, but I guess I just needed to try for a bit longer? I've barely been able to put it down since I started a few days ago XD

ANYWAY. The other important part of this post is 3D printing, namely the inevitability of me printing a bunch of tristamp Knives's blades.......not a million of them but as many as possible XD I bought a 3D model on etsy and it's been.....challenging to get it to work right, to say the least :T


Knives is disappointed in the many failures >:O
Something about the model isn't working right; it's basically too HD???? Pat's brother has been trying to help us sort it out, because where the blades come to their "sharpest" point, it's too narrow for our printer to actually render/print/something???? I dunno. I'm not good at 3D shapes in general and considering we just got this printer a few days ago, it's been a lot of messing around to try to get things to work.

Micro Center did have small packs of fun filament - because of COURSE we went back to get more already - and I also got a big thing of shiny silver to make the blades...once they work right :TTTTT I had to take a break from it for a bit.

Also, classes start tomorrow!!!! It's my last semester at community college :D I'll be graduating with my associates in creative writing after this, and hopefully transferring to complete my bachelors :D I have to work on filling out some transfer applications, but I started them just as I got sick and couldn't really work on them for the past couple weeks.

I'm both nervous and excited, tbh. I kinda thought I'd never finish any sort of college and now here I am, just one semester away from success!!!!!! And my top choice school to transfer to is definitely a reach, but I'm still gonna give it my all~~~~

look, I did all 4 days of Otakon, what do you want from me? XD Anyway, I found this while trying to organize my Google Photos some and just thought it was silly ;D


There's just a lot going on here, okay? We were packing up the car to go to Miryokucon for the day and it's just...Knives body pillow, akeshu ita bag, a case of water bottles, our badges featuring lanyards covered in buttons & charms, and Liz getting into the car to drive because Legato is apparently the ultimate driving gay ;D


Also, I got the Vash & Knives plushes I ordered in the mail today :D they're very soft and cute and I'm gonna take them everywhere~~~~
Anyway, since apparently every fucking week there's some new thing, my dad had to be rushed to the hospital last week and he was diagnosed with leukemia. He's being released today and is doing better, but I don't know any exact details yet ;w; Because like, that's what I needed, right???? I needed my dad to have cancer.

RELATED to that: I completely forgot I had signed up to get a free piercing last Thursday - courtesy of Pat getting lost on the free section of Craigslist - and thankfully, they called me to remind me...approximately an hour after I found out my dad was in the hospital and about an hour and a half before the appointment. So, Liz and I hopped in the car and booked it to Rockville, because yes I agreed to drive an hour+ away, during rush hour traffic, to get a piercing XD

We made it in time, though!! And tbh the adrenaline rush was very much needed. So now I have my first ever dermal piercing, and it was honestly very easy? Barely any pain during the piercing and it stopped hurting in under 24 hours. I only remember it's there if I accidentally catch it on my clothes or something.


IT MAKES ME FEEL VERY COOL!!!! I'd wanted one for awhile, so I'm glad I got a free chance to take the leap~
And now today I have physical therapy, which...I dunno. I signed up while I was working the cake job and like super needed it, but now I'm not sure if I wanna pay $40/session for it :T We'll see.

OH MY GOD RIGHT THE BEST NEWS OF ALL THIS MESS: I finally have both my ADHD meds again, so I am getting shit done!!!!!!!!!!! :D

Now that I got the sad entry out of the way (sort of- there are more details I'll probably go into once it stops being so painfully raw), I can talk about the fun things that happened recently. aka, I got some shit I wanted + the mail contained things I ordered, soooooo....


First up: mail day featuring pins from konerru and SHEEB1T!!!!! They look SO good and also the extra messages/doodles/notes/etc filled my heart with such joy ;w; Glad my ship was obvious XD


THE UPGRADED SETUP!!!! It looks pretty much the same, but I'm now running Windows 10 and I'm (slowly) setting up Rainmeter, so it can look cool. I apparently wrangled Rainmeter back in oh, 2009, but it's been awhile. I'm gonna do the thing! Also, I'm rapidly running out of space for new stuff around my desk.........


I GOT THE HELLO KITTY HEADPHONES I WANTED!!!!!!!!! I'd been lusting after them for awhile, since I do have the standard wired kitty ear headphones from Razer...I just wanted bluetooth ones for on the go. And now I have them ;w; They sound just as good as expected and tbh the convenience of being able to get up from my computer and not be tethered by the cord has been really nice.
The other positive news is that I fixed the image hosting on my site so it actually loads. Yay!!!! It broke a few months ago and I'd just been manually uploading everything I needed to host, but not anymore~~~~~ The PHP version had gotten messed up and I finally sorted it out.

THE FINAL DAAAAAAY sobs I miss it already. That's how I'm prefacing this; I already wish I were back at the con ;w; It was so fucking good!!!!!!

We once again made it to the con at a reasonable time (somehow????), despite being very tired. I couldn't find my Vashwood shirt so I said fuck it and wore cute goth shit and called it a day. I was all decked out in Knives merch, so that's all I really need, right?

Liz dropped me and Pat at the con and went to go park, so we did a quick run of artist alley while we waited...and bought another print even though we were soooooo overspent on money. Oops??? OUR BAD. We then had to zip out and meet back up with Liz.

And then....we finally went to the dealers room for basically the first time XD It was, as always, fucking massive. And we'd already spent all our money a bunch of times over, so we were just browsing. We did get to see the bullet train booth and get free swag, so that was cool!! :D

After that, we ended up hanging out with the Livio cosplayer from yesterday for a bit, which was really nice!!! I always worry I'll miss saying goodbye to people on Sundays, so it was good to find them ;w; Then we ended up back in artist alley to meet up with different friends, get the gossip on some con drama, and accidentally befriend the guy who bought the Knives Thirst Standee XD

okay so straight up I have never really gone to cons for programming. But I really loved tristamp and wanted to support it and do more!!! So we went to the autograph session for Studio Orange and I got them to sign my Knives pillow *w*


HE LOOKS SO GOOD AHHHHH!!! I got to show him to the artist and she was super excited to see him autographed :D

We then had another lunch of champions - aka lunchables - before rushing over to artist alley a-fucking-gain to see more friends before the end of the con. I'm so sad to see everyone go, but since some of them are local and others hit up the same con circuit as us, I'm really looking forward to seeing them all again ;w;

I FEEL LIKE I'M FORGETTING THINGS BUT I AM JUST SO FUCKING TIRED SOBS

The drive home was so long and so sad, but it was improved by me forcing Liz and Pat to listen to my theme music (aka MILLIONS KNIVES -Vocal Ver-) until we got to the worst rest stop on I-95. It was even worse than usual because the vending machines were entirely fucking empty????? We were so thirsty and so denied any liquid.

And then, finally, we returned home to a fresh pot of coffee courtesy of Chi ;w; It was so thoughtful to come back to ;w;

( just a few pics from today )

I MISS OTAKON ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe it went by so quickly and also that so much happened!!!! AND ALSO I can't believe that I wrote up a recap for every fucking day; this is a first for me :D

Day one, success!!!!!!!!! I had such an amazing day and I'm so exhausted now, but it was so worth it :D

Somehow made it to DC by about 10:30 am, which is a new record for us getting out of the house at a reasonable time. I'm gonna try to pull it off again tomorrow....hopefully... We started by getting a lay of the land, as if we haven't been to the past few Otakons or anything XD I was playing "spot the Wolfwood cosplayers by looking for the punisher" as we wandered around, which was fairly successful.

We ended up lining up for artist alley at around 11:30, even tho it didn't open until 1, because I wanted to participate in a bunch of stamp rallies and also get a kuroneko plush that the artist only had 15 of. We talked to a lot of cool people while waiting, including some other Trigun fans who gave us LOVE & PEACE ribbons to put on our badges :D They also were running the Trigun shoot later, so we got to see them again... though more on that eventually XD


THE ARTIST ALLEY IS SO FULL THIS YEAR AND IT WAS LIKE A FUCKING FEVER DREAM AHHHHHHHH I LOVE ART AND BEING IN SUCH A POPULAR FANDOM IS DANGEROUS TO OUR FINANCES BUT IT WAS SO GOOD!!!! We ran all over the place collecting stamps for three (3) different Trigun stamp rallies, and got some pleasant surprises along the way. One of the participants was a friend of ours from MDZS and another lives only about 10 mins from us!! Small world!!!!! I was also on a quest to collect every Knives there, but our $$$ ran out before I got them all. OH WELL. We also got the very minimal amount of Legato merch we could find, and Liz got a Livio charm, surprisingly.

Anyway, we ran around for about an hour and a half before heading to dealers room...mostly so that we could sit at the tables there and eat our lunch. We packed Lunchables, fruit snacks, and pudding cups, and it was actually super helpful! It saved us from having the buy a meal while in DC :D It was also just super nice to sit comfortably and vibe while eating.......until the karaoke started up. Why the fuck is the karaoke being hosted in the middle of the fucking dealers room??? I have no idea, but it was....not great, to say the least.

And then....TRIGUN MEETUP TIME!!! We got to meet back up with the cosplayers we met yesterday beforehand, and then I took a billion pics with my nice camera. The auto-focus on my lens decided to crap out right at the beginning, but whatever, I know how to focus on the fly at least. I have so many pictures to go through after this weekend is over *w*

STUDIO ORANGE CAME TO THE MEETUP AND TOOK PICTURES OF THE WHOLE THING AND AHHHHHHHH IT FEELS SO COOL TO HAVE THE FUCKING ANIME STUDIO COME TO THE PHOTOSHOOT ACTUALLY????? AHHHHHHHHH!!!! I of course missed getting a picture with them because I was too busy taking pictures myself, but oh well!! Still fun!!!!!

After the shoot, we sat at a table in the main area and watched cosplayers go by while I rested up. We also chatted some more with the people who ran the meetup....mostly about how much we love plantcest and how we can't understand antis who stan Knives.

Eventually, we walked over to the Sbarro that's practically attached to the con center and had a quick, cheap dinner. The heat was fucking terrible though, straight up, it's so fucking bad. Just the brief walk nearly ended me ;w;

And then we returned to the artist alley, since we'd kinda speed run it doing the stamp rallies. We went through the WHOLE DAMN THING and I'm so proud of myself for all the stretching I've been doing, because I powered through the whole thing without a break. We talked to so many people and they were all so nice and I just am full of so much love for being at cons again ;w; I want to just keeping doing this forever, which is good because I think we will.

I ALSO GOT FUCKING THIEF KING BAKURA STICKERS!!!! There's never Thief King stuff, ever, so I was very excited. The artist is also taking preorders on a BAKURA BAG, so as soon as I have money again, I'm getting one. It's so important to me. I love him so much ♥

uhhhhhhh god I'm fucking tired

I had to go sit in the accessibility rest area and recover after doing the entirety of artist alley in one go, though, especially since I kept stopping to talk to people. We had more snackies (cheez-its and pepperoni) and chatted about the bullet train XD I also made the maybe stupid decision to redo my lanyard to be entirely Knives tomorrow, in honor of the Studio Orange panel. But I had switched to P5 lanyard, and that just won't do........so Pat's currently making me a new lanyard to use tomorrow XD What's a con without last minute sewing????

Anyway!!! That was most of the day, we were there for over 12 hours and while I'm in pain, it's not nearly as bad as it's been recently. Here's hoping to an even better day tomorrow!!!!!

( god I'm so tired but I wanna share some pix )

I haven't had the $$$ to buy merch (fanmerch or official or anything) for Trigun yet - except for my Knives funkopop lmao - but I cleaned my desk off this week so I could put up some of the stuff that came with an akeshu zine I'd forgotten I'd pre-ordered XD


Writing side of my desk :D I finally moved the akeshu figures so I have more room to work.


Computer side, featuring Lumos trying to help me write (because she's precious) ♥


Oh wait, I lied, I bought a single thing- tristamp Knives earrings. I've worn them basically every day since I got them, so at least I'm getting the most out of them~~~

I was up until 5 am doing homework, partially because Liz and I were rping from like midnight-3 am before I was like OH FUCK SHIT HOMEWORK THATS DUE AT 9 AM.

and then I had to do it and I'm so tired

It was for my digital media class and it's so self-indulgent but we were allowed to use whatever we want in this visual + audio project. And like. I can't help myself; I used Knives and his music from Stampede and his literal knives as assets and I had to spend a chunk of time in Audacity cutting a track apart into smaller clips and just. Yeah. That's why I'm so fucking tired because my class is also at 9 am so I am dying.

And yesterday evening Pat shaved a bunch of my hair off and helped me bleach it - instead of homework!!! - because even though I was like "no I like having funky hair colors I'm not going for pale white-blonde" like a week ago, here I am: further continuing my descent into madness. I cannot believe I'm stanning a guy named MILLIONS KNIVES but I never claimed to have good taste XD

However I didn't get all the blue lifted and I need to trim it some more, which is how my professor ended up pausing class to ask if my yellow-blonde hair was the intermediary stage before it becomes another color and I had to admit that yeah it is but I have to lift the blue-green out of it before I can get to pale lavender/white-blonde. And then he commiserated with me....

And then one of my classmates asked if I watch anime.

So I think I will go take a nap forever XD

This is the entry of "I should be in bed already and maybe I should have written this literally any other time today" but I'm here and I'm soft and sad and emotional about Trigun still but this time it's about MUSIC.

The music for Stampede is so fucking good and the second half of the OST dropped and I was so excited for how good it would be and let me tell you. It is good. It is SO good. It is so good I spent hours listening to a single song through my $150 kitty ear headphones, 100% volume, on repeat, screaming along to the lyrics so loudly I scared off my cats and it's WORTH IT.

It's so worth it I'm so fucking emotional over a guy who named himself MILLIONS KNIVES and I can't stop myself ;w;

I started working on a new layout for my tumblr because I cannot cannot cannot stop being a certain kind of fucking way about Knives and his devotion and fear and every little fucking thing so I'm here, crying into the internet and using song lyrics for all the titles of my posts, I guess.

So I didn't quite sober up but I screamed out my feelings enough to finally sit down and write so I did and I dare the world to cancel me for writing plantcest when tristamp is just so so so much of Knives trying to fuck his brother.

But I wrote something and it's good and it's stream of consciousness with bits of poetry because that's what I do now, I guess, and I like it.

Title: it's (not) a betrayal
Fandom: Trigun
Pairing: Knives/Vash
Rating: Teen
Word count: 577
Warnings/Tags: Incest, Codependency, Stream of Consciousness
Summary:

And they never see eye to eye unless they do and Vash can’t won’t forget what they used to be even as he desperately wants to pull Nai into the here and the now, because how else will he learn to live?

Vash and Knives pull each other in opposite directions and it's a tragedy from open to close; stagnating in remembered perfection is the same as death.

I guess I could have done this when I posted that other Trigun fic the other day but no I hate being consistent on my personal journal XD

Also part of this came from something Pat said while drunk:
“Trying to hold onto a moment when things were perfect is the same as death.”

and I just had to write something that used it because it's so so so perfect for these idiots

(I love them)

(I wish they could fix their problems but uhhhhhhhhh yeah)

been exceedingly mentally unwell about Trigun, especially Knives and Legato because I don't know how to pick a popular fucking ship sometimes and like, whatever, I don't care, because this is where I am. Because I sat down to work on homework yesterday and thought I could write a little bit of fanfic as a warmup. Because I couldn't just write it as a warmup and I couldn't stop myself, either.

And because now it's 11 am and I went to sleep at 4 am because I did finish what I was writing and it is absolutely one of the best things I've written- not just of this ship or even Trigun but in general: it is fantastic.

It's everything I've been playing around with in terms of experimental formatting and blending prose + poetry + snippets of weirdness and it's a beautiful culmination of years of practice and going to school for this sort of thing.

It's "I've been writing fanfiction for 20+ years and I finally feel like it shows in the best way"

It's "I've been writing since before I understood how important it is and it shows"

It's "I've been writing and writing and writing and writing and now I'm here and I want all of you to experience it with me"

It's being obsessed with characters and a ship that is grossly overlooked and deciding that no, that's not good enough: I can't stop thinking about them and I'm gonna make it everyone's problem.

waltz of the damned

Legato sparkles so terribly brightly.

a composition in 9 movements