diary

January 1 2025: I finally figured out the sidebar situation after finding out the easiest way to do it was through tabs. Took a while and now I got to this point. I'm really trying not to make this section all about coding but I can't help it lol. Depending on how I feel, I might end up separating everything out instead of having them in large pages like I currently do but I like the look of it right now. I hope you like large hitboxes >:) Happy new year :)

January 2 2025: I bought Forever Kingdom on December 31, 30 minutes before the new year started. It was out of impulse, not due to the fear of never getting this game physically, but because I wasn't doing ok mentally. It is an odd thing honestly but it was better than crying more than I did hours before that moment. All I have to do now is wait for 2 weeks and hopefully it isn't scratched to hell and back.

January 3,2025: Hopefully this picture loads correctly on this page. A late Christmas/Birthday gift arrived yesterday and I'm very grateful for everything I recieved from my friend. They're too kind to me!!! They made the Mohammed Avdol, Serial Experiments Lain, and the injured Curly mouthwashing pins!!! The pins came in with these very beautiful pockets that have stars on them. The journal is vintage from the manga author Yumiko Tabuchi. I was very surprised to see this in the package since it was the very last one and it's just as gorgeous as the photos in the listing. The washi tape included has designs of decorative rolls of tapes with the occasional "washi" sprinkled in and the Miu Miu page came packaged with the journal when I opened it. That's definitely going on my wall somewhere. The mango hand butter was based on a response I gave my friend about what fruit Mohammed Avdol would enjoy and the mass amount of stickers I got is due to me having a sticker collection. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with over 800 legend of zelda stickers teehee.

January 4, 2025: My copy of Forever Kingdom came in way earlier than expected. The funny thing is how it arrived. I already knew it wasn't going to be in the original case sine the listing said so but I was not expecting it to come in a busted xbox 360 case for grand theft auto 5 taped up, with cover paper inside for the game itself. I saw this wrapped up case and thought to myself, "Now what if this was broken with no way to fix it?" Anyways shout out to the person who wrapped it though because that game was ultra protected AND there wasn't a single scratch on it. It's funny, the picture for the listing had the person holding it with a microfiber towel, not a single screenshot in sight. Just 2 pictures to prove that it was still functional.

A bit after struggling to cut the tape off the case, I was presented with a game that didn't look used at all. In comparison, my copy of Evergrace had a lot of scratches on it, since it was technically used by 3 different people and it was bought for $2.99 by the person before me. Forever Kingdom looked like someone bought the game, popped it in once and forgot about it. I played it for an hour, noting every difference I saw fit. Personally, I enjoyed it a bit more since there are 3 characters to switch between instead of one character. The fact that they interacted a lot too made it more enjoyable, especially since their observations about the environment they were in made certain tasks easier to understand. For example: in Evergrace, after defeating the mini boss in the human research lab there is a button that gets pressed to unlock a gate. You have a set amount of time to get over there before the gate goes back down. The issue with this is that it only shows the cutscene once and it's up to you to find the gate and hope that its open. In Forever Kingdom, certain interactions with people or things shows a cutscene that can be triggered again just in case. It's more convienent thar way. Though I still miss Sharline's valley girl accent with the vocal fry :(

I've also been painting quite a bit, mostly for the enigmatic art section that has yet to be constructed. Most of my characters have preliminary sketches and only 2 of them have been painted so far. I really should just make the section and throw in some drawings instead of stalling on it. I just hope however I decide on making it look, that it's fully functional and does't cause any issues.

January 8, 2025: I'm sick :(

January 15, 2025: I'm feeling a lot better. Still sick but I can still do things. Not much has happened, I don't live a very interesting life sadly. A lteer from my pen pal came in on Saturday :). I've been waiting since October. If I remember correctly, that was when i sent him a letter originally and the universe had it against us when it came to his turn. It took 3 tries and I have it now. I finished writing the whole letter but I'm not done with the drawing and decorating the envelope. Baller if you're reading this: haiiiii love the bracelet I wear it alll the time :3

January 17, 2025: As weird as it may seem, I've been working on a comic. It's been something I've been wanting to do for awhile now. The only issue is whether or not I'll actually release anything from it. Some people in my life have seen a bit of it; I believe around 5 concept pages of it. This is a problem because it has become a very personal project and not just something that involves my characters. A lot has changed from the original drafts that I created roughly a month ago and it became way larger than I originally anticipated. So far, theres 7 pages with the majority of it being inked. I made the decision to do everything traditionally for my own sake. Whatever I do to it will be permanent, any editing I do will be minimal and if there are words on any of it, it will be in my own handwriting. This is my personal torture lol.

I'm writing this out as if I'm being forced to do this when I decided this was the best way for me to formulate everything. I guess it does get funnier: I'm doing this entire comic in a cheap sketchbook and only using supplies that are equally as cheap. Legit anything that could be laying around is what I'm using for this. There is no special paper, there is no special pens that would make this easier. I decided to use what I already have. The paper I use works well enough since the ball point pens and gel pens I'm using don't actually smear as much like they did with my more pricer sketchbooks. I'm starting to see why this viable torture method is helping me out way more than I thought.

Again, I'll think about whether or not to release this when the time comes. It's way worse to dwell on something like this instead of letting time take its course.

January 18,2025: I'm currently building the long awaited art section. For real this time, I'm not joking. It's going a bit smoother than I thought. I just have to take a lof of photos and hope this actually looks good. I really wish I had a scanner lol instead of taking every photo by hand. Damn you broken printer.

January 27,2025: It's so weird knowing that the month will soon come to an end. It felt like I haven't done much this month, even though its only the beginning of the year and that I have nothing to worry about. I do have a few achievements for this month dsepite the feeling: I began working on a comic, something I never thought I'd get around to, I began making dolls again and I've been consistanly updating this website. I guess having something to look forward to makes life a little easier. It's obvious but whatever lol.

I had to remake the dolls I originally was going to give my friends. The first ones were made too big so I scaled them down quite a bit. They're around half the size of the ones I usually make and I plan on trying to make simple clothes for them too. One of the dolls has a gimmick with masks and one of the masks is a makeup look one of my friends showed me :). I hope the both of them like them when we get to see each other again. Hopefully I'll remember to post the dolls too after they're given out

January 30, 2025: Sometimes when the waves crash at just the right time, I can hear the fish singing. They sing of a pained existance, one full of horror and treachery. Someties I wonder when their words will cease, but I know deep down that they won't. They have nothing left except their voices.

February 2, 2025: It's the beginning of a new month. I'm a bit more excited about this month than the last by quite a lot. I decided that at the end of the month, I'll be publishing my comic on here. Massive thanks to my friends who encouraged me not to keep this to myself, even though I joked about setting it back to December 21st of this year lol. It's weird releasing something so personal on here but it's better for people to see it instead of keeping it to myself.

This is the first, and only sneak peak I will be doing for this comic. This is my character Raymond reflecting on a large aspect on his life: the odd organ that he was born with. The drawing also depicts a stylized remdition of the solar plexus.

Even more, I'm planning on getting fully into lolita fashion. My friend (the same one who sent that lovely, lovely care package) sent me a site that sells lolita fashion that has a plus size section. I'm still looking through 42Lolita to see what exactly I'd like to wear but I'm dead set of gothic lolita lol. I'm having a lot more fun with this, especially since we plan on going to an anime convention in this fashion. I hope this month is a lot nicer to me :)

February 6, 2025: I decided that some things on here needed to be revamped a bit so it's more cohesive. The links page needed some explanations for some of it so I just went ahead and got on top of that before I decided to throw more things into it. I do plan on having the art section completed by the end of this week so this site would look more complete. It's been a slow morning, it's 5:24 am as I'm writing this out. I spent a chunk of my time sculpting a doll head with some new clay I bought. It's Fimo polymer clay, very sturdy but very difficult to mix. I should've taken the warning seriously and bought clay softner too but I still have a lot of sculpey clay left over so I mixed the too. Did not expect the clay to become so sticky and a bit difficult to use. That's what I get for mixing a soft blue clay with the new clay.

So far, this is what she looks like. I decided to base it off of the painting The Birth of Venus since the fin flowing reminded me of the hair in the painting. I even have a shell that resembles the one in the painting. Obviously this doll will be too big to be fixed to it but I think it would be nice to have her holding the shell instead. Still, I'm not entirely sure about what I'm going to use as cloth for the doll since this is an impulse doll and isn't planned out at all. I'll find something good, I just dont want it to be floral this time around so it would be a bit more natural looking if you know what I mean. I probably won't paint the doll either since the colors I mixed look really lovely and I don't want to cover that up. It's pretty.

February 8, 2025: I've been thinking about this Rothko painting on and off since last night when I was painting one of my characters. The colors used ere were so pretty that I subconsciously replicated it. I was thinking about it then too. It reminds me of the sunrise though my friend said that it reminded him of the sunset. Still pretty regardless if the interpretation.

February 14, 2025: I'm definitely not taking fifty years making the art section. Definitely not. Aside from this absolute blunder, I decided to do a few quality of life changes. I didn't like how empty the hope page and about page was so I changed it to some water to fit the vibe better. I was originally struggling with the best wallpaper for it but I think this is perfect for now. I also changed the background color to the diary section since it was too bright and hurting my eyes a bit. I hope I can find a better place for that background but it didn't feel right to have it in that section. The picture for the diary section is what I took this morning when I went out to place the trash cans by the driveway at around 7 am. It's been raining on and off these past few days. It's kinda funny that we're having monsune season so late here when it usually starts in mid December to early January. But hey, rain is rain when you live in the desert lol.

These few days have been uneventful; going to work, working on my comic, remembering that I should finish the drawings for my site. It's been a bit monotonous, and the fact that I've been in pain has added to the monotony. I did break it a bit when I decided to attempt to progress some more in forever kingdom but I'm stuck in this underground section. The game truly is unforgiving but I enjoy it way more than I originally believed when I first got into this series back in......October of last year? I've been thinking about this series and Lost Kingdoms or Rune in the US. I'm convinced I watched someone in my family play that game since I heard the song Plains of Rowahl. This isn't some feeling of nostalgia but remembering something. I might ask my cousins if they know about it since they did remember playing Evergrace in the early 2000s.

Rest in peace filegarden. You will be missed

February 19, 2025: One of these days I'm going to completely revamp this site. Actually, I wouldn't go as far as to say revamp everything but I do want to remake the home page and about page. Something simple yet cohesive to the vibe of the site. Uhhhhhh yeah I don't know what else to say honestly except this comic is taking 50 million years. I have, what, 7 pages left to draw and ink? It's going fine, just a lot of black ink being used :0. I'm not sure I'll be able to finish it by next week but I hope I'll have everything done and scanned by the second week of March.

FILEGARDEN IS BACK BABEYYYYYYY

February 22, 2025: Yesterday I took down my braids after having them in for a bit too long. Everytime I put them up in a bun, the new growth would get snagged and it was very uncomfortable. It took me 2 hours to take them out and 15 minutes to completely wash my hair out. My hair did grow a bit, so that's nice but for some reason, 2 large napps are in the bottom part of my hair. I tried to detangle it but they're firm in place. I should cut those out honestly and I don't know why I havent yet. Other than that, I put in 4 large twists and called it a day...until I took them out. I'm saying this with sincerity but I look like Katt Williams right now. I looked like the girl from Polar Express yesterday and now I got that going on. I don't have cute curls at all, my shit is fucked up dawg! I fluffed it out the best I could, I tried to make it look a lil bit like a 3c blowout but it was not having it. Now everybody knows I tried to fluff out 4c hair. Embarrassing.

February 28, 2025: Another month has come to an end....saying this as if I'm not typing this at 9am. A few interesting things have happened this month but I'm more than happy to finally leave this month behind me. It felt far too long, despite the 28 days but that doesn't matter much. A few things I'd like to mention:

I completed 2 smaller dolls this month. These were the 2 I made for my friends that are half the size of the dolly I typically make. Though I haven't gotten around to making the accessories, I'm proud of how they came out. SInce I never made a doll this small before, they do look a bit weird but that's what happens when you decide to do something different from how you usually do it. I haven't taken the pictures of them yet nor given them to my friends yet. I hope they like them :)
I began working on revamping the home and about pages. I'm using the template petrapixel made since it was the easiest for me to understand. If I decide to revamp this again, I will do it by hand, though i have no issue with using templates obviously. Itinerae's template served me well, and I did love using it but with how the site looks currently, I think it's best to switch it out with something else lol
I'm going to Vegas in 2 weeks I believe just to be around some family and potentially meet a friend. I hope I'm able to see him since my family and I only go there every once in a while.

I hope next month treats me better.

March 2, 2025: Its March...and im definitely not updating this on my phone lol. Today has been pretty slow, mostly staying in bed and sleeping. I did make some awfully bland brownies that couldn't be fixed anyways. I'll probably use it to make sundaes if that's what it's called.

I also decided to put my comic on hold for a little bit. I've been working on it on and off all last month and I decided that right now would be the best time to take a break. This mostly is due to me leaving the state for a bit in 2 weeks and I don't want to spend most of my time working on it lol. Also that new home and about page.....I am lazy....but it's getting done....lol

March 7, 2025: I'm working on the comic again. I'm fighting the belief that I am making this in vain, that no one would actually like this and want to see this. It's been a struggle working on this; I'm not confident in my art anymore and it's more of a vent piece with far less words than people would expect. The pressure of this having to be the most perfect thing I've ever made has been weighing down on me. It may be made using a cheap sketchbook and gel pens anyone could get their hands on but I have this feeling that people aren't going to like just how unpolished it is. This is ruining me. Even worse, I now have 6 pages to finish and the second week of March will be starting soon. I tell myself that this is for me but I know some people who are excited about this, even though I stopped showing art for it. I just have to wait, I guess.

March 8, 2025: It's currently 12:24 am as I'm writing this. I finally added the new home and about pages. Though they are bare at the moment, I'm glad I changed them from what they originally looked like. I'm very happy with how things are looking on here. When I first created this site, I thought I was going to have a more windows inspired setup but the more I thought about it, the more I really didn't want that. I do like it when sites show this off but when I did it, it looked a bit clunky. I might expirement with it more in the future but this is what I want out of my site right now. Might say more later lol

March 11,2025: Today has been slow, in a good way. I'm doing better today than I have for most of this month. I really wanted it to be nicer but I had a feeling it wasn't going to turn out that way. I think its obvious in these entries that I was not doing well at all. For most of this month, I was having mental breakdowns, sometimes having 3 in a single day. I could not enjoy myself at all and it was slowly eating at me. I'm trying not to self isolate since I worried my friends. I'm grateful that they checked up on me and made sure nothing terrible was going on. Very grateful for them.

Aside from this, I started drawing for fun again. A few days ago, I drew Solca from Forever Kingdom. I plan on using it for an analysis of the game since there isn't much illustrations/screenshots of this game available despite the game coming out over 20 years ago. I'm doing this purely for fun since not a lot of people actually take the series seriously and I want to have something with as much information as possible, adjacent to taptroup's site. I hope people enjoy it when I actually finish it.

ALSO also I'm nearing the end of the game :3 I believe I have 4 or 5 more locations to go through and I'm excited about finishing it. It's been a great experience and I'm glad that I picked it up instead of letting it fester in my mind for eternity.

March 17,2025: Hi, I'm in Vegas right now! Well I've been here for around 4 hours now (5:06 pm) and it's been pretty nice. It's colder here with strong winds. I haven't been needing my jacket at all, even though the rest of my family were cold. It's weird still being up since I went to work last night and I've been up since 3pm yesterday but I'll be alright.

On my way here, I took some pictures. Admittedly, I'm upset that I didn't take as many pictures of the canyons as I wanted. I was a bit too preoccupied with my Link spread to care much. I'll upload the spread some other time.

Before heading to the hotel to get situated, we paid a visit to my uncle and lil cousin. I hadn't seen my lil cousin, we'll call him Juju, in around 3 years but i saw my uncle last year I believe. Juju is a lot bigger than before and likes to play fight a lot. At first, he acted shy despite us finding out that he was impatiently waiting for us to come down. He specifically wanted to see my mom since she was the one he remembered best. After my brother, dad, and I showed interest in playing, thats when he started opening up. Most of the time it was my brother and Juju playing with nerf guns and this odd air ball gun. It was stopped when he started aming for the face, not intentionally but it had to be halted. He even had me play roblox after awhile since I wanted to play on there. The most lucrative game we played was hot potato with a toy grenade. If we caught it when it "exploded", we had to play dead and had a mock funeral before getting back up to play again. This only lasted around 7 times before we started pushing the grenade onto eah other. In fact, there was a period where Juju and my brother "held me down" so I couldn't resist the grenade. They liked doing this because I would ragdoll everytime it exploded. 3 hours after we got there, we had to leave and go to the hotel. We said our goodbyes and Juju really wanted my brother to have a sleepover with him. He declined. We'll see about that tomorrow since we're seeing him again.

I plan on meeting a friend for the first time tomorrow as well. I'm very excited :D. We planned this roughly 3 weeks ago; I decided to ask him if he wanted to hang out since it was a coincidence that I was coming down here for a bit. We agreed that if I was here, we could meet up and do something together, I'm happy that he agreed to this :)

I made him something: A sculpture of the head of his persona. He doesn't know that I made it, but he knew I made him something. Sadly the gloss I used was sticky and the stuffing I used to protect it stuck to some parts of the figure. Even sadder, a piece of the hair came off when I was figuring out how to get it here. I feel smart for putting the box between a tight wedge where my bag was in the trunk. It got here safely without any other scratches. It also has a starry night motif at the bottom of the figure. I was going to decorate the box with this design but I thought it would've been more impactful if I painted it directly on the figure. I'm not going to post it right now since I want him to see it first. I hope he likes it!!!!!!

March 18, 2025: Hi, we met up! It was a lot of fun :) We met up in the Chinatown district and hit a few stores. There was a wonderful bakery that showed their breads and cakes in displays and you got them yourself on a tray. I ate a red bean bun, really good but it took me forever to eat since it was so sweet. I still have my matcha cake and his requested jalapeno cheese bread to eat :D. We also hit a Shanghainese resturant where he got 2 scallion pancakes and i got chili oil dumplings; both were really good and aparently that was a place he never went to. We got boba, visited a card shop, and went to an arcade that had a far better vibe than the one I usually went to at home. So much fun, I'm really glad we were able to do this. This was the most fun and I hope we're able to hang out again the next time I'm down here.

I gave him the sculpture of his sona first thing when we met and he loved it. Sadly when we were going down the stairs, it fell on the stairs and the remaining hairs broke off. Theres also a large crack on the surface but beyond that, it held its shape. I offered to replace it but he likes the original too much for that. Anyways, heres the pictures that I took when it was finished :)

March 27, 2025: Not much has been happening but I wouldn't say its entirely good either. That's just how March is. 2 days ago, we got new carpets installed. They're soft and a vibrant deep blue, I'm not used to how they feel since the softness is somewhat uncomfortable. It took around 9 hours for the 3 bedrooms to get new carpet. I didn't sleep much that day either; I pulled an all nighter when I went to work and by the time I was home, I had been up for over 24 hours. I took an hour long nap on the couch since there was nothing I could do about it, and all of my art supplies was in the garage. I was a bit smart having my main sketchbook out and I used the PS2 so time would pass. Even as I'm writing this, half of my things are in the garage. Not gonna lie, I don't feel like bringing them back in so.....it might be a while.

I know I keep saying this but the comic is actually almost done. I think I'll be able to release by Sunday. Its mostly finishing touches and completing the 2 pages. I haven't been as motivated as I thought I would be but I think I'll be ok.

March 31,2025: Now that I finished the comic, I plan on showing both the original sketches and references used in the comic. I'll try to get a chunk of that done this weekend. That and taking pictures of the sketchbook that held the sketches.

This month was all over the place, to be honest. There was some good and some bad. I do believe that this month was a lot better compared to the last 2 months of this year. I was able to meet and online friend, released a comic on here and I haven't been as stressed as I thought I would be. I hope next month is far better :)

diary entries