• Make navigation buttons on tab pages nice looking
• Add tabs to character lore page
• Add tabs to blog pages
• Clean up Cuckoo-Clock heart & No.44 shrines
• Honestly we could use some new css in general to clean things up
• Make list icons unique (I just realized they deserve to be pixelated too)
• Add more Aster lore
• Add blinkies to graphics page
• Make new graphics collection page
• Add blinkies back to computer scrolls
• Re-do footer buttons to actually be useful
• Add 32 bit cafe button
• Add those links to the sketchy Dave Malloy bootleg uploads
• Fix the graphics and blinkies collection and move into correct folders
• Make a class for all chatboxes
• Add webrings when accepted
• Decide whether I like the new layout

June 2 2024

• Moved Devlog here from home page
• Added Badtz Maru gifs i found
• Cleaned up things on the home page in general
• Made the dev log default open
• Added footer to blog page
• added bottom margin to footer
• cleanup on about me page
• made blog tabs in order from newest to oldest
• added blog posts from may

June 1 2024

• Guess who FINALLY fixed the blog pages to use a tab system (this guy)
• Changed the link on the labyrinth page
• I even wrote a new plog post! look at me go
• Moved the code jam link to my blog page
• Added new board game, still need to do a write-up

April 13 2024

• Added to-do section to shrines
• I also followed a bnuch of people on the neocities theater & musicals tags

April 12 2024

• Updated board game page with some reviews & recommendations

April 11 2024

• New shrine!!! for my board game collection

April 10 2024

• Fixed up the Jack and the Cuckoo Clock heart shrine! I'll finish cleaning up the links and post it soon
• Blog post

March 31 2024

• New blog post

March 30 2024

• Animatronics webring!

March 26 2024

• Blog post

March 22 2024

• Updated button scrolls on home page

March 21 2024

• Aster is playign minecraft now
• Mostly did a lot of work cleaning up a new layout for my partner
• blinkies cafe button

March 20 2024

• And so the great graphics renovations begin!
• Searched out an downloaded all the stuff i had hotlinked (sorry)
• Uploaded all my other stuff I had saved
• Started fixing stamp names
• Moved some of my other graphics and gifs around to consolidate
• Seriously I had way too many folders with vague titles and ideas of what was suppoed to be in them
• New footer
• Fixed graphics on the main page
• Fixed graphics on pets collection
• Fixed graphics on entrance hall
• Didn't need to fix anything on my about me or ask aster pages, but they got the new footer
• Fixed all the graphics on the page I store my artfight attacks
• Fixed a couple more footers
• Fixes on purple radio plush page
• Cleaned up footer on site links
• Refurbished graphics page
• Got all my stamps, buttons, and larger gifs and such uploaded, plus the graphics I made myself

March 19 2024

• Started cleaning up and re-organizing blinkies and stamps
• Meant I had to break most links to them though, like in the computer scrolls

March 17 2024

• Fixed a couple blinkies and such that were broken
• New blog post

March 12 2024

• NEW ASK ASTER
• Fixed some blinkies too
• More site buttons from surfing

March 11 2024

• one thing about me is i love adding site buttons
• click for Palestine

March 10 2024

• spent some time surfing, added new buttons!!!

March 8 2024

• More blog entires
• Palestine stamp

Sept 25 2023

• 2 new Blog posts
• Finally got the Writer's Block Webring functional

Sept 15 2023

• Added Acing the Internet Webring!
• Fixed chatbox css

Sept 14 2023

• Blog post

Sept 13 2023

• Added Comedy Club Webring!
• Fixed up button section on home page

Sept 11 2023

• Re-organized some graphics and blinkies behind the scenes
• Messed around with the Mysterious Stranger shrine, background is better but still not satisfied

Sept 10 2023

• Started cleaning up the css and standardizing those parchment colored boxes
• added to-do box
• made more things individual scrollboxes
• speaking of which, added literal scrolls to them lol
• borders are rounded now
• made a transparent main so I can mess with different borders!
• added a black transparent background to the container to help with eye strain

Sept 9 2023

• Finally added a browser icon! It's a little rat
• Added more fun sites and buttons

Sept 6 2023

• Little edits to About Me
• Clown bear on a motorcycle babeey!!!!

Sept 3 2023

• Realized I needed to start a new page for my blog since it's now September lol

Sept 2 2023

• Blog update
• Ask Aster update!

Aug 29 2023

• Blog update

Aug 24 2023

• More shifting around, "Archives" now takes you to Aster's lore page, and added a "Shrines" button
• Added new labyrinth hall and made a new header to accommodate
• Cleaned up navigation on shrines
• Worked on the Cuckoo-Clock Heart shrine until my brain hurt. I figured some things out but I still don't like it.

Aug 24 2023

• Made a new pets page since the chat page I used to keep them on is defunct. If people have more recomendations of virtual pets let me know, I'd love to add more!
• Haha I am re-doing the formatting on my Dave Malloy shrines again
• Finally updated the purple radio plush shrine! It's so fun now! The photos are a little big though and are slowing it down so I might re-do those.
• On a roll! Also gave The Mysterious Stranger a fresh coat of paint. I still need more sparklies though. And cats. The background is kinda a placeholder.
• Exists the page editor covered in blood (I do not want to know how many hours I spent working on my site today)

Aug 23 2023

• Minor updates, spent my free time surfing my mutuals' sites and added a few more buttons!
  

Aug 22 2023

• Finally started a devlog!
• Changed the "chat" link in the navbar to "ask aster" and the "blinkies" link to my new blog, you can still find the blinkies by going to my links page or clicking on the little Aster on the computer.
• Finally fixed the navbars to all the Dave Malloy archive pages, though they still don't have much on them.

Finally got some work done around here! hopefully this will make me more inclined to actually write. I'm enjoying the haphazard thrown-together style of this site, it's charming, but I need to make it manageable or else I'm never going to get anything done.

Why the FUCK do instagram links in messages take me to facebook and then back to instagram. insta on browser is INCREDIBLY broken btw. Things I can't do on instagram in browser:

• Post to my story
• Send posts to my story (you can do this on browser facebook though)
• Interact with story stickers, even question boxes
• Archive posts
• Not have it crash every ten minutes

I get that it wasn't intended for browser use, but how the fuck is it SO broken?

Very reasonably, i just want to not have social media on my phone. sometimes yes this does mean i have to take a picture, send it to myself, and then post it, but the pros outweigh the cons, you know? I recognize i've got a tendency to get addicted, so i'm distancing myself. i think that having screen time limits is one thing, but incredibly easy to bypass and I don't tihnk it gets to the root of the issue. what good reason is there for me to have social media on my phone? the only slightly valid argument being as mentioned before, that it makes it easier to post there directly from my camera roll. but given how quickly i can send it over to myself anyway, and the fact that it gives me a little more time to think and a bigger screen to type out my thoughts onto, i think that evens out just fine.

Tumblr breaks for me sometimes too, like it loops in a really weird way. It may be a result of my addblocker. it's just, as sites make the user experience worse and worse, it becomes easier and easier to just use something else. how long until discord goes to shit and i just talk to people through long-ass email chains again?

I am freaking out a little. I have a lot on my plate! Trying to organize a concert right now. And that sounds big, it's smaller than it sounds but also it's just as much work. thought i could get stuff printed at home but I realized not very far into it that i should have just done it at the library instead. i hadn't even considered that it would be an easier option. this is what i mean, i try to be on top of things but i still miss very obvious options and conversations.

I really should be blogging more, but honestly I've just been wanting to re-vamp this page ever since i learned how to make a tab system that would let me put each month into different tabs and not have to make a whole new page just for the five times I actually remember to blog each month. BUT I will finally do it someday. Maybe this weekend. I need to blog more and not just when I'm having the Big Anxieties.

I have had a very big month, though. I took a trip to New York which was A LOT. Had thie whole moment hoping I'd meet one of my heros and then didn't. I will tell that wohle story another time because it's an absolute ride and one I think I learned a lot but two I do not feel any less manic. Did not cure the hyperfixation it just made me feel bad about it. And weird. And panic-y. Did not sleep much last night i can tell you that.

I want to make more pages here with cohesive thoughts. Like more than just collections if links and stuff but actual manifestos. The thing is, I usually keep my other website open, my proffesional portfolio one, to remind myself to work on it. Which means I have to close all the tabs and switch my account over to this one if I want to write somethign here. The other thing is, and this ties into the opening of this post, that this place is still very janky. It's a year old now, I know a lot more than I used to, and having the energy to actually fix issues gets in the way of just wanting to write out something simple. i need to make a base format, kinda like how my portfolio site has, that doesn't feel incredibly jarring. why would i tell myself i need to hold to making each shrine a unique coding experince, and not just have a default layout that i can barely tweak to creat different pages? and actually write them first and then decide if i have the energy for new coding? but then of course, i'll have to actually make that new blank template first.

recently I've been thinkin gabout writing about mending and fixing clothes. I sew, and I make a lot of the clothes I wear from scratch, but just as importantly are the ones I just keep fixing. i don't want to make jeans or cargo shorts from scratch, my machine can't handle it and my brain can't take that much top-stitching. but you know, someone made that from scratch. like, we like to imagine here in the west that everything is automated and shit, but it's really not. even the most expensive clothes we wear come from a sweatshop unless direcctly proven not to. someone sat at a sewing machine and sewed the very clothes I'm wearing right now. when we talk about machine automation, that just means we no longer have to manually weave the fabric not sew together the garment.

So I fix my shit. I'm in a vague no-buy period I suppose, I only buy clothes from artists or second-hand. being a designer myself helps me figure out how to patch stuff without it looking weird. I'm fat, my pants only rip in one place: alongside the crotch where my thighs rub together. depending on the clothes they only last two-three years before this starts to happen. so I have to figure out how to put patches there without it being obvious that the patches are just on the crotch. most visible mending tutorials don't really help you when you don't want to call attention to the one area that needs mending, even if you like the look of visibl mending in general.

i'm glad some people get rips on the cuffs or the knees and want to mend them in a visually appealing way, but some of us are fat and have thick thighs that run through clothes 10x faster!

So I have a couple solutions. On one pair of shorts I used some outdoor canvas to make a 4 inch ring that goes around the bottom of each leg. that way it covered the problem area (the inside seams) but since it goes all the way around it doesn't look like that's the issue. on another one, i'm taking another pair of pants that has been mended over and over again and reached the end of its life, and i'm layering the enture side of the pants over one side of the shorts. so it has a half and half color block look. but i overlapped the seams a little to cover the rips that were starting to form along the crotch. i'm not quite done with it yet, i think i want to do some loose machine embroidery to give it more pizzaz.

Sewing for my scratches a lot of the same itch as coding, or perhapse it's the other way around since I got into sewing first. it's taking control of your environment, refusing to take things for granted. clothes, food, furniture, websites, so many things in our lives in the US that we are told not to think about where they come from, because if you think too hard you will start caring that it's made in a sweatshop by underpaid workers. but if you just care about the things you buy and the things you take in, you realize that starting to make it yourself is only one small step after another. i'm not that great at sewing and i'm not that great at coding, who cares? I make my own website because fuck social media corporations and i sew my own clothes because fuck clothing manufacturers. and at the same time, i get to express myself, make something my own, be proud of a thing i did even if it's not incredible and amazing and groundbreaking.

so yeah, i think anyone can and should learn how to sew. I should collect some links on it if i make a full page someday. it's a survival skill, for one, but i also think it's an important excersize in not letting late-stage capitalism completely disconnect us from where our things come from. evrything around us was made by a person, why couldn't that person be us? even if it's just a little upkeep here and there. it's like finding a decent end table at goodwill and giving it a new coat of paint. doesn't take much to make something look decent, and you're saving it from the landfill, so why not do th same with clothes?

I've seen someone online who takes wool sweaters and needle-felts designs over the holes. they look amazing. I wish I had the patience for needle-felting but it's just not my thing.

I've gotten more compliments on my pants with dinosaur patches on them, the patches that were made from the scrap bin at a thrift store and probably were originally sheets but had been cut up for a quilt of some sort, the patches that i had sewn on while waiting to start another project that was in the washing machine, the patches i just did on a whim and then added more from another fabric because why not, i have gotten more compliments on those than every other piece of clothing that i've made, even ones completly from scratch. the close seconds would be my Peanuts shirt or my candyland shirt. so idk, the moral here is that if you have a decent eye for design you should just trust yourself.

What else is new? Got accepted to that theater festival I applied to two months ago! Oh boy, this is going to be a lot of work, isn't it?

I have a concert next week that I'm producing. that's right, orgaanizing, producing, made the programs, comissioned the art, arranged the venue, kept up with the musical arrangements, etc. I don't pretend i'm doing this all on my own, hell no, but it's satisfying getting to be the engine keeping everything moving forward and organized. like a train. i'm train. just keep moving. drumbeat to drumbeat, ya know?

how can the world of men have let me here, i am not that kind of man!

oh imposter syndrome, my greatest enemy. so i think you have to be a little cocky, a little overconfident. hype yourself up. i'm going to succeed because i work hard. if I don't, it won't be because i didn't work hard, it will be some other factor, and that factor may or may not be my fault. but if i work hard then i'll anticipate any major issues, so any issues that come up will be out of the blue, and then it won't be on me nearly as much when things go wrong. what was i supposed to do? i did my best, right? that's the hope. the anxiety killer. things will go right not because i deserve it but because i'm putting in the work to make sure they do.

Birthday. 22 now. old man. woohoo.

I hate leaving the theater after a show. It feels wrong somehow. I hang around, haunt the place. People watch.

Even when the show is over the place is still alive, buzzing.

I feel like I’ll miss out one something. I hate being the last person to leave anywhere, not because of any social contract but because I will miss out on the chance for more conversation, more connection. Maybe I’ll miss that one thing that would make the whole night the highlight of my week, meet that one person.

My mom was like that too, it drove me crazy as a kid. I was always ready to leave somewhere I didn’t want to be, she wanted to stay. She wasn’t wrong, she met a lot of cool people that way. I think when she died it decided to haunt me instead. This looming anxiety that the second I decide to leave is always right before the second I was fated to have something incredible happen.

Like I don’t know how she felt about it of course. But knowing her now. I think it felt the same to her, too. She didn’t want to stay, she had to.

I hate leaving the theater after a show, because then it’s over. It’s no longer an is, it’s a was. Theater is the only form of art that remains completely ephemeral, impossible to capture in that moment. The second you do, it turns into something else. Now its film. Or a CD. MP3 MP4 etcetera. But even right after a show the room is filled with energy, and my experience of it ends as soon as I remove myself from it.

I once saw the same show three times in a row, it was such a strange way to experience theater. For that one moment, I had captured it. It would never end. I would see it again and again, I had done the impossible. Groundhog Day. But when it ended, I crashed even harder, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

My mom was one of those people. You miss every shit you don’t take. She didn’t say it, but that’s how she moved. But I didn’t inherit much of her spunk, or else I think I grew out of it. I’m no good at taking shots. No one taught me how to play. So I stand there. And I wait for something to happen. Not taking the shot but not removing myself, not letting myself leave because the second I leave I know I’ve missed. But I don’t take it either. So I wait.

I did it! I applied to said theater festival. Took some time to make an outline & game plan, and am most of the way through a rough draft at the moment. Lets hope I don't lose steam on this one too, but i have a few months before i actually get started so I have plenty of time to take breaks and come back and re-work things and talk to friends.

Why is working in theater so hard and also expensive.

Also. Why doesn't Instagram let me do anything from desktop? Like this is seriously obnoxious. I can't post or share to my story. Or archive posts. ??? Come on Instagram why is this unuseable. At least on Facebook I could post something to my story even if I can't edit it. What's the fucking point. (The point is they want me to get the app again)

The JATCCH shrine is getting a re-do since I'm thinking about it again. I'll probably be even more excited about it if I watch the movie again, but we don't have plans yet. The issue is, anywhere I can find it streaming it only has the english dub. I don't want to watch the stupid english dub, I want to watch the original french. And I do have a pirate link for the french version, but it doesn't have subtitles. and I know it well enough to not need them, I've seen the movie a dozen times and read the book anyway, but if I want to watch it with anyone besides myself and my partner, we're stuck. kinda the same with the soundtrack, and the play. there either isn't an english version or it sucks.

They should come do a US tour. Or at least Canada. I know how people feel now when US bands don't tour worldwide.

Anyway I love Cuckoo-Clock Heart. Such a dramatic, flowery, and earnest piece of media. You have to take it seriously bc of just how much the creators are in love with it, even if it's so silly. I really want to do a stage version of it sometime, there is a play but it only incorporates a couple of the songs, the ones that are diegetic to the plot. I want a Chicago-style plot within a performance pls, I want to blur the edges of rock concert and musical. it would be so fun. the original album slaps i want to see it onstage. at least translate the french stage play. pretty please.

Why is theater so EXPENSIVE. AND I gotta get permission. or buy the rights or whatever

And as much as I love webmastery, it's not going to be my thing. this is my replacement for social media, but it can't replace my actual projects. i need to do stuff with my HANDS. with PEOPLE who are in FRONT of me. this is just. the thing I do when i can't do that. or when i like to write things down. its a balance but it can't compare to actually doing stuff. and unfortunately that doing stuff costs more than sitting at home on my computer all day.

It's cold here by the windows

Good day yesterday. Bought some treats at the gas station and they offered me the same ones, two days expired, from by the counter. for free. I said yes. they were packaged, i dont care. second thing. got spam musubi at the Hawiian resturant with my friend, they messed up cutting the first one so we got an extra half. also very good. free food is always good. had a drink at lunch, was fine by rehearsal but as soon as it was over and i was tired my legs started getting all wobbly again.

I'm trying so hard to tell myself that my bosses don't hate me, they're just busy right now, frustrated with their new shows they're working on. and then maybe i'll have more to do once they, too, have the time to slow down and work on side projects. i just want to get hired to paint and sew more, that was so calming and i was making good money. shows are fun but i'd much rather do the monotonous work, save my show energy for my own projects.

And get paid.

While waiting for THAT, i've decided to do more good turns with my energy, ya know? volunterring more with people I know who run theaters. i've got a couple volunterr usher slots lined up when i can fit them around my actual show. feels good. and i get a little something in return so i don't feel like i'm waisting my time. not that volunterring should get you something in return but. i'm broke. so i'll gladly do some work for non money rewards like seeing shows and getting free shit. or even just becoming closer with people.

I'm so fucking mad at the world for being so mean and tough. I understand Job Clown Bible now. You toss me about in the roar of the storm. I desire to argue my case with God. Gonna punch her in the fucking face.

I know I'm the tech but it feels unfair to make the person who rides the bus do the laundry after the show.

Dave Malloy was so right. God is hiding under those 88 keys and if you pound, of you don't approach the piano like a priest the communion table, you risk damning your soul and the souls of those around you. But he was also fucking wrong like, kinda a pretentious prick. Bitterly looking down at those who came to the jazz club to chat with friends. And besides, aren't half his best songs pounded out on the keys? Grendel's Death, anyone?

My phone died while I was doing laundry so I had to "rough it" that is, navigating the bus system alone. Ran up just as the trolley was pulling up so i could check the screen. i have two options, a west route and an east route. west route: one bus, 30 minutes, 9 minutes of that is the walk from the stop to my house but it's still my go-to both ways. east route. trolley and a different bus, usually a little longer but it's less walking, drops me off two blocks from my door. issue is i don't like transfers if i can help it. but in this case, my usual bus wouldn't be coming for 21 minutes so i took the risk and hopped on the trolly.

Guy on there was asking the other older guy about all his climbing equipment, and he was telling him about some zipline he installed way off in the woods and had been hanging around watching the sunset. he said it was the next state to the north of us, so why was he riding the trolly northward i thought. anyway. good for him, lotsa guys like that around here.

Got off at my connection and sprinted, i'm glad this one has a shelter. the screen was broken last time, leaving me completely to the whims of the transit gods. but luckily for me it had been fixed. ten minutes. i think i came out on top there, i don't feel like checking but i think overall i did better than if i had waited. less walking, too. those nine minutes home are awful after work.

sang some Malloy while waiting. you know I never like how my voice sounds in the theater, but it always sounds lovely at the bus stop. especially at night.

Just some thoughts on gender inspired by a mutual's post.

I've been thinking about my gender a lot more in the past couple years since I started leaning more and more transmasc. I've been vaguely butch since high school but started using any pronouns in 2022. Yes I know my about page says he/him, I still prefer those when I'm on here, I just use different personas depending on the outlet and in this case, I'm Aster. He uses he/him.

I'm butcch and I'm genderqueer and I'm a bear. A bear bear. I've got the bear pride flag on things, when I can find it. And I recently realized there's something all three of these labels have in common to me and that's why I like them. I associate each one with desctruction of some sort. Despite not being a woman anymore really, I still love the term butch because I like that I used to be one. I WAS a girl, I am purposefully destroying the ides of that girl I was and that was expected of me. I love the idea that my choices are made more impactful because of what I’m leaving behind in my dust. I don’t just want to be masculine, I want to take it and dissect it appropriate it for my own means. Being masc isn't my default state, even if it's the one I default to when given the choice, I made that change myself.

And on a similar note that's why I like genderqueer too, I'm defying the idea of gender and I don't like any other labels. I'll talk about my self as transmasc in a vague sense but I don't really indentify as it, it's only something that is useful in specific discussion. fuck you, i don't owe you any more explanation than genderqueer, i dont need to have one.

To be fair, I think my idea of what the bear label means to me specifically might be kinda skewed from the general agreed definition, but I don't really care. To me it means embracing the kinda gross and ugly sides of being masculine. Being fat, hairy, sweaty, covered in dirt and stupid little scars and just a clear map of really living in your body. Not treating it like a delicate museum object but instead as an animal your brain inhabits. It holds hands with the descrution of femininity that being butch represents to me but it takes it a step further, men and butches can be masculine and still be well put together and fit into a societal ideal of pretty masculinity. And I do love being the butch in a suit sometimes. But I'm still a bear in there.

And I like guys, I do, I call myself butch but I do very much fall for guys. Usually other bears. So I still fill the basic defintion of being a gay guy if you tilt your head the right way.

As a side note, my personas and self insert characters exist on a range here. I have one I'm thinking of now who thinks of herself mainly as butch, possibly later having a more agender/genderqueer identity but never being uncomfortable being seen as a woman. Another is like me, butch genderqueer and transmasc leaning. Another yet is binary transmasc in a very straightforward sense. Then there are a handful who are cis masc, or at least, not canonically trans in any way, they are just guys. I just think of them as guys. Aster is like that, I don't think about if he's cis or trans he is just a guy to me.

While I'm thinking about gender, I have a couple words of wisdom from my cis male friends:

"fat guys have boobs too"

(this one being slighly paraphrased because he used someone specific as a reference.)

(to friends) "she has a bigger dick than any of you"

*bows* thank you. that is all.

Vent incoming. Rehearsal today sucked.

I am only in the lst three minues of the show, but I do still want to watch it, so I've been spending my time drawing in my sketchbook half-watching and listening to them rehearse. I did this for the entirety of the last show I was in with the same director, and I've done it for a couple weeks so far, but suddently today it was a problem. And the director said something like "if you don't want to be a part of it you can go into another room and do that, the actors can't work with you there" and if she had just been nice about it I wouldn't have minded at all! That's fair I guess, might be distracting. But she has said it was ok in the past and now siddently she's making a big fuss over "you're performing your own show over there" when i'm just sitting drawing and occasionally checking my phone for a minute.

And yeah big surprise it was on my mind the rest of the night and i wasn't able to focus when it was my time to be up.

Anyway. I talked to one of the other actors/the composer about doing some indipendent rehersal of our finale song, which he agreed was a good idea. I just can't do so much at once, I never got the chance to fully learn the current version of the song before they started adding dance moves. but while we were out on our own he was really sweet and validating and told me that the director was being too mean and he knew how i felt. we talked about the usual stuff, not taking things too personally and knowing it's her own impatience and bluntness and not any big fault of my own that she's like that. i hope we can do a music rehearsal without her there at all.

it's weird acting, I don't know why she asks me to be in her shows. i'm not an actor, i made that decision halfway through high school. i'm simply not interested enough in doing it, i don't get enough satisfation, to be worth how difficult it is for me personally to feel like i'm getting anywhere. i'm autistic or something, I dunno, my therapist says i have enough symptoms to get diagnosed but she doesn't reccomend it. anyway i have a lto of trouble fully entring and accting like someone i'm not. it just doesn't ever click for me. and there are totally people out there who it doesn't come naturally for but they have the passion and that makes it worth the effort, but i do not have the passion. it's simply not my thing.

and it's a cycle, then, i'm not good at it so i don't plan on doing it so i don't practise or research it so when people do ask me to act i'm bad at it. cause it's not a skill i care to put effort into honing. i don't care that i'm not a good doctor, or pilot, or knitter, do i? there are simply things i have no interest in pursuing. but apprently that's surprising to people when i work in theater. i do enjoy performing, i'm a singer, but that's waaaay more preplanned and has much stricter rules. i like speaking in front of a crowd as myself, i've done speeches and emcee'd. i enjoy puppetry and experimental movement, i can get fully into a character as long as I don't have to come up with words, tone of voice, accent, etc. i don't like thinking about how i talk, just generally i hate how i sound if i think about it too much. ask a kid i would go nonspeaking for large stretches of time when i was upset. it's my first thing to go.

Anyway i think my anxiety is reaching a point where it's worse than it's ever been. or at least, in a general sense. i don't think it's worse than when i was living with my ex but at least then it was focused on my relationship and i got a break at work and school. now i feel like i don't get a break anywhere, like I can't even sit still without feeling like there's something i should be doing instead.

I'm just trying to get some of my own projects off the ground right now, ones that are frankly terrifying and intimidating. areas i know a little about but have never been the head organizer of like i'm considering. but i know no one else is going to do it, no one else has the same drive and knowledge combined. i'd just really like the confidence boost, ya know? i could use it.

I'm so curious about what seeing Three Houses is going to do to me, I'm almost dreading it.

The offical description on Signature Theater's site is: "Susan has fled to Latvia. Sadie hides in New Mexico. Beckett longs for Ireland. All three are alone; all three are haunted by their grandparents; all three hear the Big Bad Wolf scratching at the door. Three Houses is a post-pandemic open mic night parable about magic, madness, and the end of the world."

I'm thinking about all the times that I have had a profounf relationship to his work. No matter if it was the first time listening, maybe the fifth time listening but the first time fully grasping a piece, or maybe it was in the front row at Don't Stop Me, a show I had known for literal years all coming crashing together as it suddently became real in front of me. Don't Stop Me was a show I saw because I was a fan. That's already a specific relationship I had with the piece. I knew all the lines, chatted with friends about headcanons of the characters, could sing pretty much any song in there from memory and have even cosplayed one of the characters. And I like to consider myself someone who also looks at it critically, I spent much of that time discussing the work, the writing, the themes, every little intricacy in the way only someone with access to multiple bootlegs could. I was not experiencing the show in the way anyone who made it had intended.

Sure, the playwright and actors and probably Dave himself are fully aware there are people out there who are fans purely by this manner, they know full well we've seen footage that was never meant to be made public. I don't know how much the others think about it, but surely it crosses the mind of an artist like Dave Malloy, someone who has put so much thought and care into the way his shows are presented to their audiences. Great Comet is in a jazz club, the actors weave and dance between tables, sit next to audience members, share food and drink with them, pull them to their feet. Octet is set in a church basement, the only instruments are the actor's voices and the tambourines and pitch pipes they play, there is no piece of the artwork that isn't diegetic, isn't happening directly in front of you in these real people's lives and minds, even the fantastical aspects feel incredibly grounded. Ghost Quartet asks the audience members to take hold of the instruments that have been played by the performers, continuing their story as they walk out of the room. Beowulf asks you to consider it an acedemic lecture, until suddently it's a rock concert. And Don't Stop Me.

Don't Stop Me is a dance-a-thon being live streamed. That is part of the story. It is being live streamed, in the story the characters are painfully aware that all eyes are on them. Not just their parents, partners, friends, but the whole world. The whole world needs to know whether they will succeed or fail, some may be rooting for their victory, some for their downfall. And we are that audience when we are watching it live. THey are aware of us, sitting in those seats, forming our own opinions on who we think deserves The Prize. To a first time watcher unaware of the ending, they don't have that awareness to distract them, there is no reason they wouldn't speculate on who will win and who will lose. I was watching it with a friend who knew something of the ending, I had only told them that only one team would make it out alive, and they kept saying "please tell me it isn't [x character here]". It has been years since I first saw the show in its intirety, but even then I had already listed to the scattering of demos on Dave's page, I already knew too much to go in completely blind. The experience of going in blind to this show is something I never had, it captivates me to no end. I am experiencing it wrong. I don't mean in a moral sense, bootlegs and proshots are necessary for a greater audience to get to see such an ephemeral work of art such as theater, but in my own journey. I didn't know, it's no one's fault.

Don't Stop Me might be the first malloysical I see live, but Three Houses will be the first one I actually experience as intended.

This all is not to say of course, that Don't Stop Me was any less impactful. Because the simultaneous realization that the show was so much more thatn I had experienced before and also the meta awareness of that fact still hit me like a truck the first time I witnessed Seconds in person.

But on to Three Houses.

I've never experienced a Dave Malloy piece as theater in it's pure form. It's always been a research project, a fan obsession, a secret bootleg collection. I'm someone who sees a decent amount of shows, but and small, at least two a month. I'm very intimate with the way it feels to experience live theater. I.E. I can extrapolate, make an educated guess on how this is going to feel. And I feel like it's going to wreck me.

For the first time i don't know any more going into this show than any other stranger, nothing important, at least. A small collection of common themes, a couple familiar actors, references to the puppet designer's previous work. My mind tells me it's going to be more like Preludes than anything else, or maybe like Octet (same production company after all) but why? Why would I have any expectations? His music spans such wide genres, maybe it will be more like Beowulf! Who knows, who knows.

I have cried at his shows that I only have the albums to, I have had profound moments that will not leave my brain for days on end. Look at how long I've been able to talk about Don't Stop Me. I haven't even begun here on this page to start properly talking about my relationship with his blog posts and his other writing.

An "open mic night parable" is another interesting framing device. The Big Bad Wolf sratching at the door, the idea of magic and puppetry intertwined with someone whose work has typically been so grounded in reality. A fantastical reality, sure, but one that deals with anachronisms and fate and unexplainable figures build out of metaphor, not literal wolves. The Don't Stop Me DJ doesn't feel... magic? He feels like a figure of their collective conciousness. I suppose that's probably how this wolf will be too, though the addition of magic into the very description has grabbed my attention.

I am going to walk into a theater, just like I do here, and I will expereince a show blind for the first time. And it will be intense and spiritual and awe inspiring and everything his work is for me but all at once, not a slow trickle of information, detached through my computer screen. Right?

"Susan has fled to Latvia" "Sadie hides in New Mexico" "Beckett longs for Ireland" the word choice is so intentional, so vivid there. I feel like I'm seeing it for the first time now, did it change from previous press releases? Or is it something in me that has changed. The tickets are bought, I no longer need to worry about making sure I get in, it's solidified, it's happening. "All three alone; all three haunted by their grandparents" Malloy experimenting with the way we are haunted by those who came before us? I love the word "haunted" when it comes to artistic interpretaion. Haunting. So much possibility there. I recently saw a play about a man who repeatedly returns back to his parent's abbandonned apartment to try to find inspiration for his poems, only to come in contact with a being of some sort that posseses his friend. It had been haunting the place, or him. The experience of being affected and haunted by past generations isn't something i've seen his explore before, as far as I can remember.

WAIT I have thought of something. Fixing an old piano. Time to look.

FOUND IT

21 February 2006

"today while placing a screw small in a place smaller i saw my grandfather grin back at me from the within the row of hammer shanks that are the pillars of the piano actions architecture; there his face roaming the single alleys of doweled wood, his head floating through and smiling at my clumsy fingers, fingers supple to ease the art out of this instrument but nevertheless too fat when dealing with the small crevices between damper spoons and flanges. i think he gets it, i think he really does; that all this above the wood is whirl and curl and just so much wind...my heart may pound furiously in the midst, but all that passion and stress in the end is over air, timeshadows though an ever moving sunbeam gone so soon...rn reminded me after our understudy crisis in 'cabaret' that our profession, the theater, is so bizarre in its hyperbole; its a fucking play. its a fucking play, its a fucking song - - and then: its a fucking feeling, its a fucking heart. its not the ground beneath my feet, the wood and felt and brass and strings wound tight held together with screws too small and elmers carpenter glue too rich."

Reading through some other mentions of his parents and family now, there are bits of memories, but that's all they are. Memories, nothing that stands out any more than the way an artist usually conextualizes the small and meaningless spark of familiarity that bring up past visions. Comparisons between his midwestern upbringing and his messy artist life. Nothign so far that has really piqued my interest in relating to this show. And that intruiges me, because his work has always been so personal, I've always been able to pick at it here or there and find those references back to his past writings I have read almost religiously. So I'm so curious how this will tie in to the world of his work I have created in my mind. And after nearly five years with no major shows (sorry Witches), what will he have made?

The pandemic has effected all of us in inumerable ways of course. I know this show itself is very purposefully about that time spent in isolation, spent with nothing but yourself when the constant contact of the people around you becomes to much to bear. Fuck a lot has happened for me too, moeved out, lost my mom, broke up, moved out again, graduated high school and college, started a job. What I haven't mentioned in all of this is beyond it being new live theater, and Dave's work of theater, the very bones are intense and personal. I broke up with my partner of two years and had to move home until the apartment was sorted out. I lived in a half empty house, one I hadn't spent more than a day or two in since my mom had passed, haunted by my not quite so distant dead relative.

So there's many aspects of this show that swim in front of me, building up the potantial that this is going to be some major spiritual moment like I've never had before. Anf on top of that, the conext of the trip, the specialness, the possibility of meeting actors, friends, all these things that had previoulsy been taking over my thoughts, just like Don't Stop Me, to be honest. But I'm not thinking about those things right now, I'm just thinking about what it will be like to experience the art itself.

And of course, see the puppet.

Finally did it! Deleted instagram off of my phone. And tiktok, though I already barely looked at it I would just open it up when I thought about making a video, think about how annoying it would be, and then the app would probably crash anyway and I'd forget about it.

But instagram I was still using, I'd say it was my second go-to on my phone after checking my main discord huants. Nothign to do for three minutes? Time to scroll. Refresh refresh refresh etc. I purposefully never got Tumblr or Facebook on my phone, I knew that I didn't need another thing to distract me with, that it was bad enough and I wasn't going to start a new addiction.

So, no Insta on my phone. I still have a smart phone, sure, but now it's just for communication or looking something up on the go. Nothing to distract me in there. I also tried to get some games last year or so, just to have a distraction that was a little more engaging and less awful for me, but all of them were riddled with adds. That's what my switch is for instead, I suppose. And a good game you can't just pull out for three minutes while you're waiting for the microwave, you have to sit down for a half hour or so and give it a proper chance.

Not that I'm completely distancing myself from these social medias immidiately. I still open them up on my computer as part of my morning check-in, with my breakfast and tea. But the lack of convinience keeps me from being engrossedin them all the time. It's just a little more effort, but it's effort that forces me to think about what I'm doing. Maybe some days I go into it with a purposeful thought to see what a specific mutual is up to, maybe I just want to check my messages, maybe I know there's some event going on I want to advertise. Either way, it's as much as a purposeful act as checking neocities is, which then brings up the thought, why am I browsing here instead of exploring my mutual's personal sites?

Started a new discord server for people to send me stuff in, so maybe that will help me stay a little connected. If you want to show me something, send it to my discord that's the fastest way I'll see it.

At the same time, I'm confident in my coding skills that I feel like I can coach someone, bring someone along with me. I can't teach them, definitely not, but I can at least share with them the resources I used and give them some encouragement! Plus, of course, the promise of already having mutuals when moving into a new space would definitely help. When I got started on neocities I knew ONE person who had one, peanutbuttaz, and they aren't even super active. But just having someone else to talk to, to get excited with you, to swap tips with. I would hope that would go a long way.

So as people respond to my going-away-post with "I wish I could step away from social media" I'm responding to them with you can!! Just do it!! You don't have to immidiately stop using social media either, I've been here for a year now (though Aster's Archives itself is younger) and it took me a while to build up the confidence in this new community to then break away from my other socials. This was already the result of a lot of hesitation on my part. But the sooner I started taking those little steps, the sooner I could get to this point, even if it was a long road.

What else is up? The new bootleg took up a ton of space on my computer so I'm going to have to do some updating of my external drives and shifting some portfolio stuff over. I've been saving all my pictures as I put them up on my portfolio site but they're so big that at this point I should start removing them once they're backed up.

And back up those new bootlegs, in case I need to remove those too.

That's what your 20's are about, right? Making mistakes, fucking up?

This is coming only a week after my last mistake at work, where i left a paint sink running in the back when I left and didn't realize until I had been home for two hours. At 11pm. Gave myself a heart attack getting back down there to turn it off, I was convinced id arrive to a flooded paint room. it was fine though. worst part was it had come right after the last rental had done the same. i had been WARNED. though I turned it off quick enough, i don't even know if it was noticed. no i didn't tell anyone.

And also not long after I was given permission to use the sewing machines, because mine is kinda acting up right now and also i have no space in my room for the huge project i wanted to do. and i DID use the older ones, but i ended up hitting the needle on the plate more than once and didn't realize until the third time that it was because it was loose. i shouldnt have to say that generally this is bad. the plate is a little chewed up now. and that's another thing that i'm just waiting for someone to yell at me for.

How much of this is just life, how much of this is our new overly complicated world, andhow much is just me? Im not self depricating enough to think im some sort of unique species of fuck up. I just wish it was a little easier to not be so.

Maybe I should read more Dave Malloy, or more William Gibson. I still haven't finished his book, I made some progress on a car trip but it was getting to the point where his mom died, and I didn't want to be all upset in front of people in case they think something is wrong.

Is it normal to wish you could just start over? Change your name? Leave almost everything behind. I think about this with a lot of things. I think about it when I look at my online presence, how careless I was as a young teen and how I wish I had been just a little more careful in what I put my real name to. I look at my job, my relationships. I feel like I flip flop constantly between enjoying the very idea of forming even aquaintance bonds and not being able to stand the fact that I could exist within someone's memory. That I even exist outside of a direct sphere of influence.

I wish I could be one of those artists who works on one thing. Just one thing. For a really long time. Or even not a terribly long time, maybe two years or so. I finish one thing and it's pretty good or maybe it's charmingly shit but at least the effort can be appreciated. And this is just as much about motivation as it is about working WITH people. If I just worked on my own would I still have this much stress? If I fucked off to a cabin in the woods and embroidered for days on end without talking to a single soul? But I couldn't live like that. I need people, I need them too much. Need attention and validation and a reminder that I even exist.

Sometimes I wonder why all my most self-insert-y characters are ghosts, or imortals, or some otherwolrldly being defined by their seperation from the rest of the world. They flit in and out of reality, no real ties to any one time or place. They have no real connection or long term emotional responsibility to anyone, which is a blessing and a curse, they always long for what they don't have. As a kid one of my favorite movies was Yobi the Five-Tailed Fox, about a kitsune girl who had watched humans for so long, and wanted to be one. But she already lived a perfect life to me, she could pretend to fit in when she wanted and whenever something went wrong she could just dissapear into the woods. TUrn into an animal. Wait a couple hundred years before showing her face again. Of course, in my dreams something always went wrong. They would catch you, someone would be more knowledgeable than you expected, and you'd be captured or forced to run. But imagine. Imagine being allowed to interact with people only as much as you have to, being a mysterious figure no one expects to understand, and just getting out of there when you feel like it.

Do imortals think about a stupid mistake they made 600 years ago? Probably. It's probably even worse. Either that or you have to form a sort of mental shield, a new layer of dissasociation and distraction in your brain to deal with the crushing memory of ages far longer than it was supposed to hold.

I need to stop feeling like I always have to be up to date on things. "What if you just missed somerthing what if you let something go, just for tonight? Would it be alright? Oh, I swear it'd be the same" Dave Malloy. It's an addiction, right? As soon as I actually have something going on I can avoid it. But if not, even as I'm writing this, it's so hard not to check, isn't it?

As of this week, Tumblr stated publicly that its selling text and images from users to ai websites. That and the recent transmisogyny is making it very very hard to stay there. Where else do I go, here? My own little corner, my own little chair, screaming into the void. After the trip I took I had people to talk to on Instagram, I could feel that direct social connection that made it worth it. I was talking TO people, if no excatly directly, the people who I wanted to get the message were reading my stories. But I can feel even that waneing, and it feels strange to write there instead of on Tumblr, where my longer style posts feel more welcome.

There's a Tumblr clone now, I don't know the name off the top of my head but my partner has it. Idk if I'll join or just take the opportunity to stop. Just stop. Come back here. Tell all my mutuals to meet me here.

Is that too much work? To have to Remember to check in on your friends? To not have their new stuff spoon fed to you by the algorithm? Hell even Neocities has a system for following people to see when they're updating. And I know there's older services for that too.

Maybe I do just need to force myself to stop. To take a deep breath. Type out everything here in my own little corner of the void where a handful of you might even see it. And or keep chipping away at my personal site. See a play in person. Write a little thing about it. Have a silly little hyperfixation and write about it here in a vague enough way.

"He'd rather be safe than sorry, and he'd rather be safe than happy" Krista Knight, I assume. I don't know who wrote the character descriptions in the script. Maybe it was the kids themselves. Back when Rodger was presented as more of a model citizen model student does everything right sort of charcater, I didn't see much in him. He has some of the best one-liners in the show, of course, "1590, you know I missed a question" "sure, I mean, it's part of being an Eagle Scout". But recent Rodger, recent Rodger, he doesn't feel like he's a part of everything because he's some model student, no no that's the Valles' jobs. He has to be in charge, because he's too anxious to allow his fate to be in anyone else's hands. He doesn't think anything will go right unless he's the one to do it himself. "Every choice I make feels made with terror, dread, nausea and doubt".

I hate you changing thumbnails and/or titles after a video has been up for a few hours. Congradulations I had it in my watch later but now I want to watch even less. Now you're just clout chasing and desperate.

Uuuh yeah. Going to try to update more here again. I had to take a break from this site to work on my portfolio, since I got that sudden urge to fix it proprly and then had to follow that wave alongside a growing anxiety over finding work. Plus, once I really got into it, I realized just how much of an endeavor that's going to be! Trying to categorize and make a page for every major project I've done since High School. Oh boy. I think I'm at 40-something out of 70-something projects finished-finished there, with a whole lot more that are just halfway. I kinda go through waves of "I need to make money right now" anxiety and "fuck the system I'm going to make ART". Still in the first phase but at least I need to take some time for myself.

If you're keeping track of updates you might notice some new additions to the Dave Malloy section of my shrine! I went to see Don't Stop Me live in person! And so, of course, hyperfixation re-invigorated, it was time to finally fill in some information on the show. With the help of some mutuals, hopefully. It's still a big work in progress, and I'm a little worried what happens if the creators discover I've put the demos on here (though they ARE avaliable publicly through the licensing page website, and there was no warning at ALL not to share them).

I really should get back to writing daily. Anyway. Three 8-hour days of light hanging management, set construction, and other little theater tasks later. Decided to go to my weekly board game night on saturday and ended up staying late at the theater yesterday to see the actors' reaction to the set, so today is the first time I've spent time at home and not in bed for a while.

Of course, then I had to get con crud. But I'm ok. I'll wear a mask to work.

At the con panel, they showed off the teaser for the puppet series I'm working on. Afterward I was given the download and showed it to a couple of friends and my partner since. And to be fully honest, I do like what they're trying to do, but I don't think it will catch on. First off, their editing and scoring are just a little off, I found the music kinda distracting and over-emphasizing. The writing is nothing I can comment on, I don't think the majority of the humor is my style except for the occasion they really find their mark in the Douglas Adams style, and then it's great! But me preferring dryer humor isn't a real criticism. And it's an adaptation of a very popular and often adapted public domain book series, so I do think they need to make sure what they're doing stands out.

Something of note on a more meta scale is that no one here is really used to working with puppets. And that's not an issue in itself! But listening to them answer questions on the panel about the formation of the project, it seems like the choice to do puppets was more of a budget and production one. They want it to purposefully look charming and low-budget, which is always something I can get on board with, but I think in there is a lack of pure love and appreciation for the possibilities within the medium. Why are they puppets? Because it was during the pandemic. Because full-size sets are more expensive. Because stop-motion is too time consuming. And then they made them and they were having fun making them and playing with them and that's great! But I still feel like there's a lack of exploration of what puppetry as a medium really brings to the project, aside from their very strong cardboard-and-felt aesthetics. Idk maybe I'm just rambling and maybe I just don't really like the end result once it's eddited together.

And it's made me think more about what I would do in a similar medium. I was telling my friend at work the other day that one of the things on my art bucket list is to make some sort of performance using a Pepper's Ghost Illusion. You know, what the Haunted Mansion uses? It's an amazing effect to see live! And theme parks are pretty much the only place you can still see it so close to its original form, since digital and projector "hologram" effects are so much easier nowadays. For live theater you practically have to build the stage for it, when it was first invented in the 1800's it was such a marvel that it was worth the effort. And I want to do it SO BAD. If full-scale live theater is too much work, maybe a smaller puppet theater? Or even a filmed puppet show, but the live viewing is so much of the experience.

But as I think of this, I realized that I never really see anything going farther than a single video or two, maybe a short series I create myself with some help and hired out music & voice. I have so much more focus on the project, the ideas, the themes, I can't imagine working on something so big that you're whole goal is to get it picked up by a network or streaming service. I wonder if that's a lack of value in my own work thing, a pretentious artist thing, or maybe just not interested in putting in the work.

It's 8am so this is more of a summary of the last week!

My spacebar is acting up again grr.

Getting ready for workthis morning. I made the mistake of accepting two 9-5 days in a row right after spending a day at ComicCon and my feet hurt! And I won't even get to use my three-day badge.

Okay gotta go back. The puppet project I'm a part of got a panel at ComicCon on friday, and they invited me to join! Their main puppet maker & puppeteer is out of town, so I became the person most familiar with the mechanics and the intricacies of how they're opperated. It was only a 45 minute panel which went by in a FLASH. Of course, partly due to some technical difficulties (I didn't see if we started on time, but it couldn't have been that late) and the showing of an eight-minute teaser. That's what I've been working on these past two weeks! We had about a hundred people spread out through the seats, though plenty were far in the back and it was clear they weren't super interested, just there to chill (no judgement, I have done that many times). But I got to talk a little and it went smoothly!

I feel a little stupid because someone asked me if I had a website and I said not yet (because I am in fact in the middle of building a website but it is very not done yet) and forgot for that moment that I do have an instagram which is more proffesional than private. Grr.

But after that I had some time to wander around the con. Five hours!

Started with artist's alley, of course. I was mainly on the hunt for fun things for my partners, and just looking for cool people to talk to. I've realized I've become a lot more open to talking to strangers at cons once we have something in common, usually vendors with a vibe I like. So I met a couple! Someone had Centaurworld pins so of course we talked for a while.

And being where I am there was a lot of pride merch, whichis always cool to see! But I didn't see much I wanted. Some of the ace flags maybe, I ended up getting an ace flag fish sticker for my partner who isn't out yet and has hinted at wanting something subtle. And a couple people did actually have pronoun pins that said "any pronouns", but all of them were either pastel or had curvy script, and that's just not my vibes. Plus some were on top of pride flags and although I do love them, they were hard to read on the ace ones. There. was ONE person I found who had a bear and labrys flags. ONE. And they told me they kept getting questions about them because pepole didn't know what they were. That is so sad. I'm not the biggest fan of the labrys one but I love the bear flag! It's so warm and comforting. So I got one! I'llhave to decide what I'm brave enough to put it on.

On the bus now. The thing is, for all the pride merch I saw, and some of it getting fairly kinky with “dom””mommy””be my top””catboy lover” etc and more things I’m not going to put here, there was not a SINGLE piece of merch with the word “butch”. I saw “they/them and femme” which of course is fun and rhymes, idk what would rhyme with butch, but surely you can think of SOMETHING clever? Closest things were maybe “don’t you know I’m a dyke?” and a he/him pin with a lesbian flag, but that’s still different. That’s not butch. Man no wonder I was internally scared of the label for so long. Sure everyone knows what it means but no one’s encouraged to use it. I’ll use “genderqueer” but it’s enough of an umbrella term I don’t think it says all that I want it to. I just want to say I’m butch. And I want to buy in person! I hate buying things online I want to see their face.

Fun fact the only thing I own that says butch on it is a playing piece from a 50’s board game where it’s just the kid’s name. But it’s iconic looking he does LOOK like a lesbian. Anyway. It’s mine now I superglued a pin back to it.

I’ve been working at the theater whole lot this week, going between that and being jittery about the panel (only a little anxious, mostly excited) and taking lots of breaks. We’re two weeks out from opening, solidly into load-in now. I’m not the stage manager but I’ve been a sort of production assistant on a lot of other things, helping the director make sure everything is in order while he tries to manage also being the set designer, lighting designer, and today lighting director. He’s also not the greatest at communicating with a large group, he gets stuck in his own head a lot and his own way of putting things. So I’m there for the next two days as the translator, I won’t be doing much actual hanging of lights but I’m pretty good at making sure the plot is being followed correctly. I’m a good numbers and symbols guy.

Summary is I’ve been busy as hell. Theater stuff. Filming stuff. Seeing family in between. And keeping busy is cool, i definitely barely know what do to on my days off and I love doing everything I’m doing. But, ya know, not a lot of brain left. Been thinking about future projects a lot too. Takes up a lot of energy even when I don’t want it to.

How do people watch normal tv. I hate living with someone who watches normal tv I'll come out to the kitchen to get a snack and they might be watching an informercial or news coverage of a shooting or a shitty weight loss add or a classic movie.

Good mornign it is my break day and I am overstimulated whihc is not very helpful for taking a break actually.

Good morning gamers and girlbosses! it's been a while since ive checked in so here's all thats up.

I've been helping film with a local puppetry project for the last few days! I wont tell you what it is for sake of privacy, but it's been really cool to work on. They're using a mix of live-action puppetry and digital sets built in Unreal, which lets them position a shot on the "set". It's then shot over to a big 4k screen and we set up the puppets in front of it, like a more complicated version of a painted backdrop. The reflection of the screen causes some lighting complications, but it just takes longer to figure out the positioning for each shot. The final product looks really cool, you often can't even tell that it wasn't made with a physical set.

I was brought on as an assistant puppeteer, so I don't know much about the technical side of things. Mostly I hang out for a couple hours at a time while they set up, then we practice a shot a few times while i move around the head and arms of whichever character I'm assigned to for the shot (usually the main character, as the main puppeteer does major movements on the tripod). I've done only a couple puppetry projects previously but i've spent a lot of time with them, mainly a big shoulder puppet that i would take to comic-cons and such. So while i'm not used to rod puppeteering for a camera, i guess that sense of how you make a character move and emote carries over in some way.

I also! bought Cult of the Lamb finally. I've been thinking about it since it came out, but the recent Unity announcement and the idea that i may not be able to get it someday scared me into getting it. I'm really really bad at buying video games for myself (or too good? depends on how you look at it). While I'm happy to spend plenty of money on silly little physical object that are just as if not more frivolous, something about it feels like a waste. even if i'm going to get way more enjoyment out of it than another stupid plush! i grew up on a shitty xbox and a wii and just played the same games my parents got for me over and over, mostly minecraft. now I play on the switch lite, i didn't even buy it my ex and her friend got it for me for christmas along with Stardew and Minecraft to play with them. I did buy the new animal crossing when it came out and played the hell out of it, of course. but for the last two years i played on her switch, which lived in its dock, just whatever she had (Kingdom, various pokemon games, stuff that came free with subscription bundles like Roller Coaster Tycoon or Tetris99). and my current partner is letting me borrow their physical copy of Breath of the Wild as they play Tears of the Kingdom, but it's just not my thing. neither were the pokemon games, I liked Legends Arceus though.

So this is my first time in a while buying myself a video game, and i'm always so anxious about whether i'm going to like it. but I love it! i'm absolutely awful at rouge-likes but i'm a huge fan of city planning and pet management games. but they have to have charm. which Cult of the Lamb has no shortage of!

Playing video games is good for me, i should be doing it more. not so much that it eeks into my work and creative time, but to replace mindless watching of bad content. i'm realizing i need different kinds of rest, and sometimes that means a physical rest, a mental rest, but also it can mean a creative rest.

and when i need a creative rest but not a mental rest, just watching stuff is frustrating. i can't make anything, but my brain needs stimulation, i need to think, to solve problems, to experience content, and just watching things doesn't work. i don't know my vocab well enough for a crossword, sudoku loses its charm, this is why i'm a big board game fan but there isn't always someone to play with! so the next best thing, indie video games. not too much story or i'll get frustrated again. not too much fighting because i'm bad at it. plenty of resource management and building to make my little autistic brain happy.

this week's fun fact about me: i go to weekly board game nights. i'm a board game guy. 4/5 of my closest in-person friends at the moment are people i met there, and 3 of them i only see there each week (except when they come to my shows!!!). i discuss the ups and downs and complex strategies of trick-taking games, engine builders, deck builders and deck managers and area control etc etc. and of course, the graphic design.

Today I went shopping and stopped by a flea market :) I got Raggedy Ann books and a couple of $1.50 men's dress shirts that are all stripey. Feel like a salary man. They're purple and teal. It's great.

Update: Technically it's the 10th but I haven't gone to sleep yet so it's the 9th for me!

I've been working on generally improving accessibility and navigation, including joining some webrings! I was looking through some lists but only ended up with a couple I applied to. An Asexual one, of course, caught me eye. A general queer one and a small writers one. I was lookign through other identity ones though and was having a hard time deciding myself if that was something i identified with enough. Not "enough" in anyone else's terms, hell i do what I want I call myself a bear, but enough to myself. Trans? Transmasc? Bi? Lesbian? People would say genderqueer would fall under trans and yet. And I'll call myself a lesbian half-seriously but somehow i still pause when deciding if i should apply. I need a webring for theather kids. Or like. Clown enjoyers. I cannot be thinking about starting my own now lmao.

It's 2 am. I think I had too much caffeine at game night.

Maybe it's just my want to have Aster be kinda seperate from myself. Of course there's the about me and this blog which are clearly about i me myself and i, but right on the front page? Idk. I saved the link for later so maybe once I'm done having a little gender crisis I'll come back to it.

Today I went to the museum!!! They had a REALLY cool exhibit on the new Pinocchio movie that I've been meaning to see for a while. The kind where I spend an hour just staring, my face pressed to the glass my eyes open as wide as possible to soak everything in. Very cool. I love the puppets so much, on top of that the meaning behind the film and all the heart put into it. Just reading all that it meant to Del Toro makes me kinda emotional, and remembering the first time I saw it (in the theater, the 35mm film cut).

Afterward we went shopping at our usual Asian market, and I found BADTZ-MARU MERCH!!!!

Someone must have finally listened to all the brain waves I've been sending out lol. I check for Badtz-Maru merch everytime I'm there but I usually turn up empty-handed.

Man, ok. I was riding home with my boss and was telling him about the Pinocchio exhibit, and how seeing stuff that like makes me so antsy and anxious to get out there and make something and be part of something big. Not even in a "hitting the bigtime" and finding any sort of fame kind of way, but just getting to work on a project of that scope that means so much to so many people. He told me of course to not hope too badly for any specific thing (which I knew but thanks, I'm also scared of hoping for anything like that) but that being excited about the future is always better than the alternative.

And as I was getting out of the car he said "now go make your own Pinocchio!". Which is honeslty so sweet. I stumbled out a "yes sir" and a half-joking salute but man. Thanks. I will.

And of course my friend is excited and cool about the project and i feel dumb (but I already knew that, I already felt dumb about being anxious even when I was waiting for an answer)(hi if you're reading this... this is my fault not yours you are so sweet I'm literally just made of Anxiety)

Today we are getting our shit together! Buying new shoes! Going to the Post Office to get an inperson estimate on the package because I hate online calculators! Picking up checks so I hcan pay my rent! And maybe possibly even going to work if I still have energy later, though I'm still frustrated at my boss for not telling me that they cancelled rehersals yesterday.

Last night I finally finished fixing the CSS on my portfolio site!!! It took three days of working during all my time off, but everything has been fixed now. Most of the individual gallery pages are still empty, but at least the template is set up correctly and the code is MUCH more efficient. And of course, set up so if I want to change the fonts/colors across the board later on it'll be super simple (almost like that's how all this stuff is supposed to work!). I even made individual classes for each category of pages, which at the moment just changes the backgrounds but I could change the palettes later if I wanted to with just some added CSS. I put in a couple hours this morning just downloading, naming, resizing, and uploading photos for three more pages, didn't even get to doing the descriptions yet. So this portfolio site will definitely be the long haul, but I'm also saving all my (non-compressed) photos into another place to move to an external hard drive once I'm finished. So it'll be worth it to have everything in one place for years to come.

I was in the area so I went to the mall today to look for Badtz-Maru merch! All Hot Topic had was air fresheners. That's right, the only piece of merch that featured Badtz-Maru as the center of attention was a fucking air freshener. The DnD and anime store had a few plushes which are super cute! But out of my price range. I want to spend $10-20 on a littl guy or maybe a shirt, not a $40 plush. Maybe if they have a sale...

I did buy this Andy doll though. Because he ourple.

Hello! Today I am incredibly anxious! So excuse a little vent.

First off, I have a package I said I'd ship for a mutual who lives in Canada since the eBay seller wouldn't. Now I don't mind doing the paperwork, I've done it before when I sold Furbies, but it looks like it's going to be a lot more than the $20-30 I was estimating. So I feel bad telling them that it's going to be super expensive, and I don't know how they will react. If they'll suck it up and pay or blame me for it (I don't know them very well, in fact our main interraction in the past has been me as a mod letting them know they broke a rule) and then what, I buy the package from them and try to re-sell it myself? No idea. But today is labor day so I have to wait until tomorrow to go to the postal annex and see if they can give me a cheaper option.

I'm also anxious about asking a friend to be part of a project I'm starting. And this one I know is dumb an unwarranted anxiety. I asked my transmasc frined if he'd be interested in doing some voice acting and comfortable playing an openly transmasc character and I know it's perfectly normal to specify but I can't help but feel like I did something weird. He's just taking a while to reply since he's not online much.

I was also stupidly anxious about leaving the AC on when I closed up after work yesterday but it litereally does not matter so. My brain just looking for excuses at this point. It's barely getting above what I set it at (72) these days so I doubt it even turned on overnight.

I guess the reason I'm anxious about asking my friend if he'll play a trans male character in my project is an extension of my anxiety over writing one in the first place? But it's not a big part of the story, at least not explored in a depth that is outside my range as a genderqueer butch who struggles to call themselves either trans or cis. There are certainly things outside my understanding, maybe I'm just burned by knowing I made some mistakes in earlier versions of similar charcaters (seven YEARS ago) back when I thought it must be oh so different from my own experience. But I know more now! I should trust myself, or at least my ability to research and learn.

I am also very sore from work, I feel like an old man already. I can't do a day's worth of crawling around theather sets without everything hurting. But work is keeping my mind off things, so I'll probably go in early again today. Until then I'll knock out more of the cleanup work on my portfolio site.

EVERYONE READ THIS MINOTAUR COMIC RIGHT NOW

I think YouTube is protesting me using UBlock. The home page won't load unless I click on it from the sidebar and the adds are back (just the ones before a video, no midrolls as far as I can tell) but without visuals.

Finally started working on my old portfolio website again! Man I did NOT know what I was doing when I started coding last Feburary. Besides the fact that I fucked up my CSS so now I have to re-do every page anyway, I'm realizing that stuff was just majorly inefficient in the first place and then copied over to the dozens of pages I had begun to create. At least now that I've finished with the dozen or so main and category pages, the rest will be a lot easier to fix up. And I didn't get very far in some of the categories. I do find myself a little lost on the design and vibe of it for the moment, so hopefully what I'm putting in place will help me change it when I do. It's currently sorta art nouveau but without enough color, I want the backgrounds to be seamless repeating but I also love having fabric looking ones and it's hard to find ones that match the vibes i want.

I can't help but open any links with Furby stuff on them just to see if I'm on there. Any Furby oddbody collection or Reddit DIWhy reading I just have that morbid curiosity to see if my old work is still being shared around.

In and out of work projects and working on some personal stuff in between. I've bee thinking a lot recently about how I want to someday work on some passion projects involving my own OCs. Like any gay autistic I have about a million of them, but a couple of storylines that have been evolving, no joke, since middle school and even before. And as someone who works in the arts, this feels like something I should be able to do. I should be able to make something of this, that's what artists do. Plus, I want that respect from other artists and employers that having a passion project like that gets. What do I have to show right now? Some cool dolls, sure, plenty of technical capabilities, but I have nothing to show for my mind, my storytelling ability, I want people to take me seriously there too! I want to be the cool artist who spent all their free time on one big passion project, the one that was so filled with the urge to create that they just had to get it out, this one thing.

And so I have two projects rattling around in my brain, I just have to pick a medium, pick which one I want to focus my energy on. Or maybe just pick the one that is the most different from what I'm currently doing for work, to avoid burnout from the overlap. Maybe I should talk to more people, get an idea of which they would like to see more. The first is something that I know would directly help my career, I've been thinking for a while about making a stop-motion short featuring my OC Bruni, who I've already made a doll/puppet for which makes a half decent stop-motion subject. I don't want to be a stop-motion animator, I don't have the patience for it, but I want to be part of the community, I want to make props and costumes and set dressings, maybe write scripts. I love the medium.

The other idea is to make a website for my character Ray, a 90's/early 2000's blog/business site for his ghosthunting career. That one's a lot more writing, a lot less making stuff (I do have to code a website, but that's not the time-consuming part). Plus, grabbing an actor friend (I have one in mind) to play the character for photos and occasional audio recordings.

They're both work, but they're different kinds of work, and I ca't decide which one would be easiest for me to focus on at the moment. I want to get something done, I want to have something to show for it. I'm not used to actually putting my characters down where people can see them, usually I start from the other direction. I don't usually make things with a character and story in mind, I start with the simple question "can I make this". "can I make a cloth-and-clay doll?" and when the answer is yes "okay now what can it tell me about the character it wants to be?" i just wing it, the character comes afterward. Even Aster was a fun little side project thrift store plush before he was a character.

But Bruni has pages and pages, literal centuries of story and backstory. What do I choose? What highlights what I love most about him, what I think people will connect to the most? Same with Ray and his ghost pal Marlo, where do I start? That one's a little easier at least, a lot more cohesive and a lot less magic system to describe. But that's all writing, that's scary to me. A quick animation would mean storyboarding sure, but I can get away with not doing dialogue. On the other hand, I am making things for work right now, physical things, sets, costumes, even tiny puppets, and some variety would be nice, would be good for me.

On the third hand. I already have a passion project over at the Raggedy Ann Revival Effort.

I am officially, as of today, no longer using tumblr unless they fix a bunch of the recent issues. The lack of icons makes it basically worthless to me, I can't tell who is posting anything. I also just don't... want to use it anymore. If I could, I would only be here and discord. I don't even like to use instagram but it's the only place I know some of my friends, and there is no better place to find cutesy memes to send my partner. I need an instagram feed that is ALL cutesey memes. Maybe I'll do that. I also use it as a low-key portfolio while I procrastinate making on official one. And though I probably don't need it on my phone for that, I'm bad enough at remembering to post my recent projects without also having to send myself the photos to use my computer.

I guess i just need to get more comfortable using neocities, and find a way that it can fulfill that hole that social media has left. It's really fun ot make stuff here, sure, but the lack of social interaction is something I either need to get used to or get out of my comfort zone and find for myself.

I originaly started a blog on my other more proffesional website, but soom realized that, surprise! I couldn't talk as openly as I wanted to with the idea that future employers would get an easy link to it.

So this is me finally starting my blog here, because writing daily was actually really helpful. Also, big surprise.

I've been in a weird sort of place the last few days. On Saturday, I got to see the LAIKA exhibit at the MoPOP and on Sunday I saw a local screening of a documentary about six animators from the area. Art stuff, not commercial, although one of them had worked for a studio I knew about so I had seen her in another documentary that screened locally last year (I'm trying to stay up-to-date and connected, it's part of my job, after all). But experiencing other people's work like that always has the same effect in me of making me incredibly restless to do something myself. Finish something. Be that person who can dedicate months, years, to a project. In between work hours and chores and deadlines. Sunday night I was incredibly restless during dinner after the movie, all I wanted was to get back to working on something.

But I have a job, in fact, I have two! Sort of. I am already moving towards that, I already have creative endeavors that, while not a passion project of my own creation, are artsy and weird and are with great people and good companies that will definitely look good on my resume. And I DO have that passion project, two and a half years in the making, but it relies on other people, and currently a lot of legal back and forth, so there's only so much that I can do on it. It's not the quintessential little artists' endeavor, me in my room with a camera and a pen or a stop-motion puppet, slaving away.

I've been feeling this pressure to pick, go all-in on animation and stop-motion and build up my own portfolio to prove I'm just as artsy and intellectual to have a place there, or do that same thing in the theater world. I guess I'm leaning towards theater now, that's what I'm actually getting paid for after all and my director/producer loves having me around, he says things like I better work with him on a few more shows before I'm too successful for him to afford working with me. Which is sweet, but I can't imagine being at that point. I barely know what I'm doing. I've fully accepted the existential crisis of being just out of college, a year away from breaking up with my partner of three years I had been living with, it just seems that no one else has. Or they assume I haven't, that I'm not acutely aware of my age and my stage in life. I go out with friends, have a movie night, leave in the morning with a convenience-store breakfast eaten on the bus home and I say to myself "this is exactly what I would write if I wanted to represent this part of a character's life". Like a long, artsy movie. Foreign, or maybe Wes Anderson.

But I like working in theater, I like the collaboration, I like showing up for load-in and being told what to do for six hours and going home sore as hell. I'm afraid of people assuming I know more than I do, of catapulting me too far ahead before I've paid my dues and learned my lessons early.

I want to talk about the show I'm working on right now, so I'll start at the beginning. I'd worked for this director before as a stagehand, loading in & out, ushering, that sort of thing. And I had worked for the other director from this company (they own it together) as a stagehand/actor. He contacted me about mid july asking for pictures of some of the puppets I'd made, and at that point asked if I'd be able to make something like my fabric dolls for a show he was working on.

Which in itself was already incredibly exciting. So of course I sent some photos over and we talked it over and I was now part of the puppet team for the show! But at some point the other writer of the show added into the script that this puppet (human, about two feet tall, direct manipulation bunraku puppet and the third main character of a three character play) was made out of wood. Just casually, written into dialogue. And instead of change this, he decided he was just going to make her out of wood! So where did my part in all this go? At first, I was just given other stuff to work on (the set, mainly) as he worked on the puppet, and was told when it came to the head I would be doing the paper mache over his sculpted form. The busy-work, the messy stuff, which I was perfectly fine with. But as the set and the other puppets moved forward he depended on me for more and more of my design input, he trusts me with it. Which surprises me, I guess. Not that I don't think I know my stuff, I spent two years of community college on it after all, but surprised that anyone this early on would respect my opinion and my artistic input. I guess I also assume that as the director/producer/designer of weird artsy shows since the 90's (some of which toured nationally and even internationally) he knew what he was doing, but it turns out he had never made a solid puppet like this before.

Sorry for the whole lot of backstory, but what I guess I'm getting to is this. He was struggling figuring out the joints and decided to schedule a meeting between him, myself, and the house woodworker to try to figure something out. Of course, the set guy is wondering why the hell anyone is asking him, he doesn't do puppets he does sets, any why not bring someone in who actually knows what they're doing/ And I'm just sitting there for a while because I don't want to talk over anyone. Before, he had asked me if I knew anything about engineering, and I had given an unsure "no", I don't really think I do compared to the kind of stuff I look at. Well it turns out I'm much more of an engineer than he is and that was enough, because when I finally did open my mouth to explain an elastic-based ball-and-socket joint he went See we don't need to bring someone else in, we have the genius right here! And man, that was exactly why I wasn't opening my mouth.

I wasn't even positive it would work! It felt like a weird game of telephone, me trying my best to remember what I had seen other people do and explain it to him. He didn't seem interested in looking up any of the original places I had come across the technique, it wasn't even anything fancy, it was from watching Dollightfull!

But there's where we get to the crux of things, I don't want anyone to take my ideas and my suggestions as fact. I'm just out of college, I don't know shit! There are 5-6 hyperfixations I'd consider myself an expert in and a handful of other things i have enough experience in to help someone with some basic problems, but I'm figuring this out as I go along as much as, if not more so than, anyone else.

After rehearsal the director often drives me home, at first because it was still 90 degrees out and now because it's late (it's not that late, I've taken the bus home from the theater later). I usually end up talking about something I'm interested in or working on, and he seems pretty engaged. I hope he's actually listening though. My friends (and now even my therapist) have joked that the two producers are going to leave the company to me someday, they've latched on to me so quickly when it's only been a year or so since I've started working there. But I'm in the business right now of not planning more than a year or two ahead.