Back when I was active on deviantART, I just had the single account where I yapped about things I liked, and posted my art and fics too. There was no barrier between myself and the artist, and even when I first moved onto tumblr, I posted all of my art for the most part on my personal account, or my roleplaying account (which you can argue is also 'personal' and 'art' combined).

At some point I ended up making an art tumblr to upload and store all my art to, but it wasn't used much since I still preferred posting on my roleplaying blogs that I was consistently on.

It wasn't until joining twitter in the ... 2017-2018 era ... that something changed. To be fair, Twitter nuking your media to a shitty gallery didn't help, but I still posted my art on my personal twitter. I also began doing commissions at the end of 2017, and eventually began to move from pet site currency commissions to actual money commissions in a few years.

So it was hard to really facilitate art commissions from a Twitter account that I kept private just to keep it to my own hidey hole, and it didn't really work to have my roleplaying blog be an official "art" account either, nor did my personal blog really feel appropriate as a landing page for people when I'm here reblogging the 'do you like the colours of the sky' and pictures of plinko horse gifs.

So by necessity my art accounts came into being, that were just art, and some chatting here and there from me.

It's so weird because I ... don't mind when other artists are vocal on their accounts, and reblog things that have zero relationship to their art because they are just people with interests. But I can't do that to my own. It's so hard to be open on my art accounts, outside of tiny spurts, because I have a mental barrier of a 'persona' when it comes to how I portray myself as an artist. It's not that I haven't yapped about things I like (god knows you can find me being unhinged on my Bluesky over zhongvie, tags does help for that), but I always feel like I have some need to curate everything.

Twitter definitely hasn't helped with having basically no way to filter out just the artwork ... Bluesky has helped with having feeds and functional tags but ... (vaguely gestures to the ongoing censorship shitshow). Sheezyart is great but it feels more like a gallery than anywhere to really be unhinged. Tumblr I have already my personal blog of 13 years, I don't have a need to talk on my art blog there. Pillowfort is probably the closest where I also feel more able to talk, like Bluesky.

It also doesn't help that I tend to have immensely low social energy now, and tend to find it the easiest to be vocal on my personal tumblr, that's 99% just random crap (fondly). And it sucks because artists being personal is what's appealing to people!! I'd love to yap there!!! But I have such a mental barrier around it, that it makes it hard!!!

And it sucks because it's you that draws people in. Pretty art is nice, but it helps to know the artist beyond that. People do get me on those, but not in full.

And I want to keep personal and 'professional' separated, its why all my personal accounts have slowly migrated to not be under Asuraid, but under things like zhongvie, or sylviegirly. It's easier to reblog my own art to a personal account, for the people who are cool with me being unhinged and uninhibited there, and leaving it as just art and a more neutral self on my art accounts.

A personal part of me is always on display even on my art because my art is centered around Sylvie, who is my comfort character.

I dunno if I have a concrete point to this blog, in particular, outside of this: man, it sure sucks to juggle persona masks sometimes, but I very explicitly want a divide between my 'work' and my 'self'. Anyway to those who are on my personal site/blog, congrats! You get the full unfiltered self.

Hideki was my first exploration into him being less conforming to his gender; he's a cis guy through and through, but has always loved feminine fashion, makeup, looking cute, but has always felt a strong divide with that because of his history (a mother who's always wanted a daughter and has basically berated him and put him down, and the daughter she did have after him died in an accident).

Is it because he wants it? Or is it because of what his mother has wanted to push upon him? Is it weird to want to do that? Him living in Japan + having a same-sex relationship has always brought up conflict and shame in how he wants to be himself, and usually always kept it buried, or locked in the not-so-metaphorical closet. By the end he's embraced it, although he still dresses more for comfort and hiding old scars, pinks and whites bleed into his outfits, and as a streamer he openly embraces more of that part and allows it to be more public online (vs in person).

Through Hideki I've learned to embrace what you like, and to be a little gentler to yourself. Hideki was also my first foray into deep research into BPD, since he ended up exhibiting personality signs of it. Talking to people who have it and were open to offering their experiences, researching blogs that posted about their experiences, videos, articles on therapy and the steps of therapy for it, medicines and what could help.

It's always a little scary to depict something that isn't you, and it's why I sometimes have anxiety talking about even exploring gender through my OCs, because its personal to who a person is.

It's so odd that with sexuality/romance I feel more comfortable exploring, but perhaps it's because I've been dabbling in it longer, with my first real prominent OC I made when I was like ... 14 being bi, and being exposed to the concept of different sexualities early on.

Characters that explored gender I didn't encounter until much later while in the roleplaying scene, and even to this day many characters I encountered tend to only err on the nonbinary spectrum, with very few being trans, or fluid (and just as few who fall on any aro and/or ace spectrum). Many people didn't talk about their personal experiences on their roleplay blogs, so I got a lot less exposure to it until I really decided to make Sylvie and returned to being more social on my personal/art socmeds.

Sylvie is my first real dive into exploring it more in-depth, in having a character that's changed their ... not entirely their whole identity over the time ... but most of my OCs up until that point haven't changed much in how they felt about their gender or how they identified (not counting Cotton who I changed semi-recently from he/him to they/them to it/they).

One of my close friends I met through RPing is NB themselves (and since then I've been exposed to a lot more friends and mutuals who are NB/fluid/etc), and their OC (who Hideki basically thinks of as a sibling/family) is agender. And because of knowing them, and knowing this OC for years, I felt comfortable enough feeling out agender for Sylvie when I made them. Sadly because it's 4 years ago, I can't say I remember my exact train of thought outside of 'I don't think they'd really care about gender, they see themselves as just Sylvie'.

I know we've also talked that agender and aro/ace characters tend to be misgendered and have people try to push ships/sexual relations on them (I've seen it with Sylvie, people have used he/him for them despite it being in my bio that it isn't, and my friend's OC who's she/her but agender keeps getting fem terms used which they've stated isn't accurate for her), which I guess was also another fuel for me to continue exploring it.

It's almost funny how fast I dropped he/him for Sylvie when it felt gross to see it used for them. Felt wrong. And they/them is what they remained. From Hideki's love of dressing up in dresses and make-up, it bled to Sylvie as well. They like it because it just feels nice, it makes them feel pretty to be in a short-cut cute dress, just as much as a sexy suit combo.

And it's only in the last year I've really ... like stupid giggly found out I really like she/her for Sylvie too. Like a puzzle piece that fits perfectly that has me kicking my feet and blushing whenever it's used for them.

I still tend to use just they/them in writing because it's been 4 years of doing that, but know they are the most girl-thing they/she to me who could crush me and I'd thank them. It also introduced me to librafeminine as a gender (though sometimes they even feel closer to demigirl to me, but truthfully both work in their own ways; librafeminine just fits them a little more because of being agender primarily).

Their own confidence in their appearance and self, and embracing their own femineity has helped me be a little more connected to my own, even if I don't necessarily ... err, feel connected to it. Contradictory, but I dunno if it makes sense. On top of being a little more comfortable with body hair (giving them a bush for my own coping, but it's also because I'm tired of baby smooth everything down there).

I wish I could put the exact words into it but it just puts me through some stupidly giggly euphoria looking at them looking as they are, but comfortably preferring to be called a gorgeous lady because it's just so them.

I would love to in the future explore more fluid characters, or trans characters ... I cook OCs immensely slowly though, and especially with how personal some stories can be and how they can reflect the experiences of real people, I'd want to do it justice and not just have it be an OC that becomes sidelined because my fixation is elsewhere (considering it took 7-8 years for Hideki to wind down as my comfort/fixation OC, and Sylvie's been going as that for 4 years now).

But until then, I do lovingly admire all the OCs people make, and the experiences people have, because it lights up my world a little more with the colours of others.

So what drove me to use Obsidian? Learning. I do not remember things I’ve learned, or rather I do not retain them well. I can understand something perfectly and then blank out on how to do it a week later, or even a few days later. So Obsidian felt perfect to make learning notes and to link them together.

Hell, I've even made a whole wiki for myself for my Genshin game so I have access to every character without needing to boot up the game, or check out what builds I had planned for characters, and it's fun to see everything tie together between nations, elements, materials used for weapons and characters, game roles, and so on.

I've begun storing recipes here too, though this one I'm torn if I wanna do it on my iPhone notes (which has a great built-in conversion for tablespoons/cups), or keep it here, or do both. It's easier for me to format here, versus copy and pasting recipe stuff on mobile (so in the end I might still do both).

I don’t know what I’d call this … the concept of PKM, commonplacing, zettelkasten and all that fly over my head to some degree; I want to give a name to what system I’m using (just for the sake of knowing What it is), but I also just accept this is my place to store snippets of information that tie together into their own bubbles (since I really don’t think my random note on why leaves turn green during autumn will have connections to my studies in Blender).

I would maybe like to analyze articles more, but circling back to quotes … my brain just doesn’t work well at unpacking things, or citing quotes, and it’s a barrier I don’t know how to work with outside of bookmarking articles I genuinely found interesting and maybe one day forcing myself to take notes on it and what I liked about them.

Regardless, aside from my unsureness in what my note taking system is and places I wish to change how I handle, it’s been nice having a ‘hub’ of information that’s local, not locked to something online like Notion. I do have the sync so I can type on the go (I take notes of my day to transfer to my physical journal, and sometimes it happens on my walks), but otherwise this is just for me (and my hard drive backups).

Maybe I need to take sticky note thoughts as I read stuff but haha, I’m cursed with a brain that Does in the Moment, it doesn’t Stop to Write. It’s why I forget because I get focused on doing with my metaphorical—or literal—hands, not documenting it until I’m done and out of that focused state (which sometimes is a minus because I will forget what I’ve done).

Anyway, to summarize, it's been nice to be able to write down things to revisit later, and it helps for my own memory to write down things like mechanical steps to do things ... I also like my shiny chart (all the yellow stuff is my Genshin Wiki, oops).

The only mild exception to this was my early devART days where I used doodles of 'me' as I am to decorate my journals, or boxes, or even avatars ... though as time passed, that slowly phased out to use Resu instead, and even more so when I moved off devART to Tumblr. It was Resu, then Hideki, and now Sylvie. Even in games, I prefer to make Sylvie than even consider making something to represent myself. That, or just something separate from me, but perhaps with the colours I like.

Case in point, my Warframe drifter ... a guy, but lots of pinks and blanks and pastels muddled in.

My Spirit City avatar is just pinks and browns, with my style of clothing.

Palia is the closest I've gotten to someone looking like 'me', but even then, it's not my hair colour (I did have red highlights at a point, but that was way back in high school). ... which speaking of, I need to return to at some point now that they have animal handling as a mechanic.

I guess some part of me has been wanting some physical representation of myself ... or some 'mascot' that's not just my OCs, because my OCs stand on their own feet with their own development, but I also use them to represent me. It's not gonna change anytime soon from me using Sylvie everywhere (they are my comfort character and emotional support after all, and Hideki lasted 7 years as my comfort character), but I wanted some 'sona', some design that is just ... a design, of stuff I like.

I had Cotton, but they're just ouppy shaped, not something that can interact with things, and I'm not changing its design because I've had it for years.

Anyway, this is not a coherent blog post, it's just me rambling and musing on things, and in a weird way I'm at least happy I did make some design of something that I like and could see as a ... 'hey, it's not me, but it represents things I like'. I do hope she sticks, she's cute. Her design is simple enough to draw, and get art made of (and that was on purpose).

Funny that I'm hella not a furry, but I just wouldn't find comfort in making something that's human and a 'sona'.

Either way!!! Random thoughts, disconnect of the self yadda yadda, she's cute and fluffy

Cause I:

• Write here on this blog to thought dump in a more cohesive manner
• Use status.cafe to offload 'at the moment' thoughts so they don't sit in my skull
• Have my listography page for scattered ideas in one area
• Write on tumblr to also offload momentary thoughts in a more public/interactive place
• Talk to friends to offload thoughts

... but I still want to do physical journaling to have something in my hands that I can look back on; it was fun flipping through my journal and seeing what I wrote about 6 months ago, plus I like decorating it with stickers. Though I think the urge to be uh ... what's the word ... to have a pretty looking journal brought me as well to a weird barrier, as well as feeling the need to do it daily and needing to write more than just a single line or two. As fun as it is looking through how others do their own for inspiration, it's hard not to feel a trickle of the need to join in, and write that much, and have nice journals.

Well, I'm going to force myself to at least write just a line, and no more. A simple highlight of the day. If I need to write more, I will, if I don't ... I don't and just leave it to the next day for another highlight. If I want to do stickers, I will, but I need to not make myself think it needs them.

Journaling is definitely hard with ADHD, but it can definitely be done in a lot of different forms; I've seen people who have digital diaries logged on their sites, or /now pages documenting what's been happening, or status updates, and so on. There's definitely catharsis and something about having a document of your life somewhere tangible, either in HTML, or handwritten. Especially as someone with subpar memory, it helps to be able to look back on a part of the past and know it happened, and what was going on then.

Anyway, this is me just rambling about my recognition of journaling in different forms and the desire to try to pick up handwritten journaling again.

It's not that I haven't questioned how I personally feel about my own gender, cause unironically I've found a Tumblr post from way back in 2014 when I was ~16 years old talking about it.

i sometimes– idk what gender i am? like idk how to classify myself

i know im a girl and i feel like a girl but… i dont too?

like i dont care that im a girl

i accept it but just… shrugs towards the gender????

maybe demigirl?????

I've sat and thought about it and ruminated and revisited it over the years, and still circle back that I'm ok with just IDing as a girl, even if in concept it's not really integral to me/not something I'm deeply connected to; it's like a container full of one type of goop (feminine) but it's an immensely muted colour.

Funnily enough, I lived more gender euphoria through exploring Sylvie's gender identity (considering in the years I've had them it's shifted from masc he/they, to fully agender they/them—since he/him for them made me feel uncomfortable—to finding a wild joy in they/she and how much I feel that it fits them perfectly), Hideki's exploration of presenting himself as more fem and that it makes him happy, and finding cassgender cause it hit the nail on the head how I feel about myself; although I am comfortable IDing as a girl, and it is my identity I am also comfy with, I feel disconnected to being it/it's not a huge part of how I see myself.

(Might also kinda speak to why a lot of my OCs are agender, or don't see it as important to their own identities.)

As for romantic interest ... I think I like guys by the process of elimination more than anything (no attraction to girls, single IRL crush was a guy, I like fictional men—though I do have some fictional women I like, ex. Acheron who I like more in awe of cause I love her as a character). Truthfully I also have very little interest in the concept of dating, though I think the concept of more romantic interactions is cute (albeit I think romance, if pursued, needs a basis of friendship and someone you'd trust to talk about with stuff like you would with friends ... I don't see much of a difference between a romantic relationship and a friendship, minus some additional aspects ... and I mean this in the sense for myself, everyone views the two in their own personal ways).

Although I feel muddied and bland with my own self, I love seeing other people, and the characters people make, and what they are and what is comfortable to them. I love learning about different identities and how one expresses themselves and how they best feel comfortable in whom (or what) they are, I love seeing people's posts about their progress, transitions, their thoughts and ideas and posts talking about themselves, of stories from people who are in their old ages who have found new pieces of themselves or the openness to be themselves after so long. And I hope everyone finds somewhere safe they can exist, considering the state of the world today (and even before today too).

Not really a coherent blog post, it's more akin to a verbal and personal diary dump in trying to sort out my thoughts (maybe I need to rename this section to blog/diary) ... and who knows, maybe like that Tumblr post from earlier, I'll revisit this later down in my life and see how I feel. Something in my chest feels a little lighter talking about it, putting it into words that I know won't quite as easily disappear under the copious amounts of posts on my own blog.

If you got to the end, thank you. 🖤🩶🤍💜

It's kinda funny cause I've had someone point out some posts I've made (on tumblr) align a lot with ADHD in the past, and I was there like 'haha it's a mood, but I don't have it' while also finding myself nodding and agreeing with other posts people made about their ADHD/neurodivergent moods and experiences ... and while thinking 'yeah, I feel that a lot, but I probably don't have it as bad as other people'.

At least until I saw this post and something made it click in a way where I was like 'oh'.

Because ... I've had a lot of systems I put in place over the years. Reminders for my 'subpar memory' even for minor tasks like showering, setting tiny work amounts (pomodoro), always relying on background noise, running timers for even small things like my tea steeping, doing things on call with my friend, schedules, doing things half-way and at least taking stride in that over nothing at all, subconscious fidgeting, putting things in easy access and view, and probably other things I can't quite think of.

And it's funny because my long-term bestie of 8+ years now told me 'I always thought you had it' or something akin to basically having it like a red stamp on my forehead LOOOL. On top of other people also pointing it out, and that the love and fixation I have for Sylvie is definitely beyond the norm (for a normal, neurotypical person anyway). Obviously growing on the internet, being fixated on your own OCs and fictional faves wasn't unusual to me so it's why that didn't seem weird to me, and that normal not-online people either way aren't weird about their own characters (if they even make any) but yeah. Never really clicked.

But it feels like an answer to a lot of things of how I am.

My memory is terrible, yesterday blends into the past, and it's blurry. I remember going to a cool food festival event with some coworkers and having the time of my life ... but as soon as I get home/the next day, the event feels like it happened so long ago, like years. Things don't feel real in particular, even though I know I was there, there's some weird disconnect that I never really have been able to change. And I'm sad because many fun events I know I've enjoyed myself at, I have no memories of if I never noted them down in some form (pictures, writings), or if they were significant enough. And even those blend: ex. we've been to Cuba multiple times on vacation and I remember general strokes and chunks like me finding a living starfish, but if you asked me which of those trips it was, I could not tell you.

I remembered a friend's birthday once because she shared it with my favourite fictional character at the time, otherwise I need to write them down in my reminders to remember, even if I love them.

Time blindness is a bitch, and so is task paralysis (spinning random wheels/coin flips are a nice solution for that).

I am cursed to enjoy staring new projects and the hype and fixation rush (to be fair, this site is one right now!!), but to not have the capability to carry most projects to their completion without either working in a team, or having deadlines imposed on me with consequences due to stress overwriting the ADHD part of the brain (I do not look at the amount of projects I began around Sylvie, like a visual novel and RPG Maker game that are half done).

My thoughts are jumbled and messy and jump in places, I can go from topic to topic without finding it weird, I like using my own experiences to connect to situations. To be fair, recognizing that it most likely is ADHD that is causing this has helped me view things in a different light. Why I struggle to want to start something, why I like having an item here but not there, what works for my focus and when my focus is absolutely shot (I usually try to do 10–20 minutes of work even then, sometimes even just starting is enough to get me to do a little more work than planned).

I tried to journal, but both physical and digital journals flopped for me (I know I do not have to write in them every day, but if I don't try to keep consistency in some form, I then forget to do the thing ... as soon as I slip, I usually stop doing it). Audio journaling has been good to thought dump without feeling some looming pressure to write, or want to decorate, and I don't feel the need to do it daily.

Aside from that, I usually rely on my phone reminders and timers to keep some semblance of organization in my life, and I like organizing things in other facets of my life to scratch an itch (like this site, my tumblr blog, my Notion, etc).

But here are some of the tools I've liked to use:

• Structured — a scheduling app, I use it on and off, but I really like how it visualizes your free time + how your day is filled; it's indie made as well
• Spirit City: Lo-fi Sessions — my most recent addition, it's like having a second buddy with you, plus it has a lot of lo-fi + background sounds included like brown noise and rainfall (which are my go-to)
• ScreenZen — to avoid the time blindness pitfall and to just help scrolling habits in general (or not getting lost in Cookie Run games for 2—3 hours), also an indie app
• Untold — my audio journaling app, sadly only for iOS; I've fallen off from using it, but it was a nice tool for a while
• Habitica — I've fallen off using Habitica and already migrated my whole system to iOS's native Reminders, but it's honestly a pretty good interactive habit tracker/to-do for those who'd like a little RPG aspect to it

Some of my favourite YouTubers for information:

• How to ADHD
• Rick Has ADHD
• Life Actuator
• The Mini ADHD Coach

And some of my favourite (standalone) videos:

• ADHD Simulator (her channel in general has good ADHD stuff)
• ADHD Love shorts in general
• ADHD Test (had some thoughtful prompts in it)
• What is ADHD (I like how it was covered)

Not too sure what else to say outside of ... adult ADHD being hard to diagnose sucks!! I think I know where mine came from if it is genetic (staring holes into my own dad), but it's definitely not something like I feel like I can bring up with my own family. Thankfully the online sphere is full of wonderful people, and information to see and get from people who genuinely have it as well, so ... I am glad I've learned a little more about myself and understand myself a little better through it. Perhaps one day I can get a full confirmation (hard not to have the lingering doubts about faking it eugh), but until then I learn what works for me, and helps my brain a little more.

(It's actually the 13th as I finish writing this, but it's ok, shh.)

And it works!! Neat knowing block images can be centered with auto left/right margins. Anyway, onto the actual blog post ... it's kinda hard cause when I do sit to think about what I wanna write, I blank out; audio journalling has helped a lot on days I need to thought dump (thanks Untold for that, very sad it's iOS only) but it's rare that I do need to do it.

So blog posts here will probably be very sporadic, but I will try to document things to the best of my ability, might it be something I'm working on or learning.

Right now, I'm definitely in the trenches with the last 2 weeks of school, considering assignments are heavily piled on right now. I'm not terribly worried since I've got good grades in all of my classes, and my projects that are heavier work (Unity ones) I managed to get an extension on. I hate to admit that Copilot is perfect for coding prototype stuff really fast, especially since my brain isn't a coder one (funny how I decided to code a whole website then), and it's been easing up a lot of the stress I've had with this game project. Making curling into a VR game is ... weird, but I've got an idea, and it's slowly shaping into something more solid. Thankfully, it's only a prototype, so I'm not going super in-depth.

The other is just interactables, and it might take me more to make some shitty and quick ProBuilder models to do a base colour on, vs just having physics based items you interact with to simulate the tea-making industrial process (which surprisingly is still very hands-on, this wonderful video by Wu Mountain Tea is what I'm going to base it off, and probably do the oolong tea process in a more simplified version.

Aside from that, working on this site has helped me to understand HTML/CSS better, though Javascript is still a mystifying beast to me. Most likely because I know nothing about the syntax they use for functions and things. Like I understand at a vague level (duh, I had C# drilled into my brain for years in Game Design), but otherwise ... icky, spooky. Still a lot to do, and I'm very stumped on how I wanna handle OC profiles. It might be the one instance where I do make a different CSS layout just for OCs and place them in a folder to figure that out.

Otherwise, I do hope to get some work done on that because I wanna join the yume ring that's here, but it requires a completed shrine. I guess if I think about it, shrines are also ways to make new css/HTML layouts for something you like to dedicate to it. I do really like ... yeah yeah, it is homogenizing, but I do like consistency across the look of a website for anything that isn't a special page. I have mad respect for the people who can make new layouts for pages, cause I definitely could never (both in energy and my brain fighting against it). Part of me wonders if I can just reuse my <intro> and <aside> sections and modify them with my existing CSS, but also blehhhh. If there's a code that allows you to 'merge' columns (aka have one div that spans two of your defined columns) I might be able to just use my old CSS, but some part of me also just wants to say fuck it and just make an altered version only for OCs.

I do have Toyhouse for all of them, and I prefer that as my OC hub for hosting everything + uploading all of my art and commissions, but I think it'd be so cool to make something a little more custom (I say as if my layout isn't inspo'd by the CSS layout I have on there, which speaking of I should credit in my footer as inspo). I most likely will end up doing the same for my character layouts, or see what other people have done on here, or see if any existing templates I can adjust/gut to work with my current CSS ... anyway, plans and plans.

I should be playing the new HSR update, but I've been so sucked into either website work, or school work. Hell, even poor Minecraft got left behind which was my fixation ... but that's it for now!! Till next time I get brainworms I need to offload.