The false saffron bloom season wasn't quite as bountiful this year for some reason, maybe I checked too late, but I'm still glad I went. I will probably take another walk there soon to hopefully get a few more pics in better lighting since these were taken when it was really overcast

16.02.2024

I'm so unbelievably fucking bad at keeping journals that i just entirely forgot to update this one for over a month... At least I'm glad to report that my package finally came so i can finally reveal the contents...

DOLLS!

I posted more in depth about them on Dollect here, I'm really excited about them and the nun one specifically was an absolute grail I thought I'd never get.

My classes also restarted this week and I will try not to skip too much this semester please pray for me.

10.01.2024

I really enjoy digging through the Wayback Machine and through GifCities and looking at people's old sites, so while doing this I have also amassed quite an amount of graphics, pixels and other decorations. I've been thinking of making them publicly available and split into categories for ease of browsing, I'm just trying to figure out the least messy way of going about doing that: should I make a dedicated section of my own site a graphics archive? Should I just make a whole separate site exclusively for that purpose? I already have two sites on neocities (this one and an oc project), idk if neocities has specific policies about the same person having multiple accounts on here for different purposes, but I'd rather not risk it I guess. I guess I could also make some kind of drive folder for this but that sucks I hate dealing wih google drive. Much to think about, I will try to figure it out soon-ish hopefully hehe

That aside I AM still waiting for my packages. Praying for at least the main one to get here within the week sobbbb.

I'm really excited because I finally got my hands on one of my absolute grails, I'm waiting for her to come in the mail as well and praying that she has a safe trip pleaseeee please please lord keep an eye on my pockages. Amen

27.12.2023

Christmas came and went, and now that all the family dinners are (mostly) over, I find myself in that typical post-christmas sleepy and lazy mood, and on top of that I feel like I have a cold that's building at the back of my throat. The most engaging thing that's happened in the last few days has been that my boyfriend and I have started watching The Rose of Versailles (with his older sister). I remember watching it (not fully, but quite a few episodes nonetheless) as a child because it was amongst the anime that were licensed for italian television (dubbed in italian, of course. Very scary) and for some reason the consensus in the early 2000s used to be that cartoons were for children regardless of the themes they handled, so BeruBara was played in the afternoon on a channel that ran shows for children. Rewatching it in full & in the right order has been really nostalgic for me because I already had a fondness for that show, especially for its portrayal of Oscar and its handling of gender.

Longtime BeruBara fans would probably hate my guts for saying this but I feel like knowing Riyoko Ikeda's other works it's extremely disingenuous to read Oscar's character as just a masculine woman, I feel like regardless of the intentions behind her character Oscar reads as a transgender man even if those words are never used for her. Her relationship with gender honestly really resonates with me to the point where it's almost embarrassing to admit. I will elaborate more on this when i finish the show BUT my thoughts for now are that Oscar really is France's first she/her cis male amab transgender man.

21.12.2023

Yesterday was supposed to be my last day of classes for the semester, but I didn't get to go because my train was suppressed I woke up with some kind of evil lower back pain too so i had to stand around for like 30 minutes in the cold outside and miserable and in pain because the train station announcements assured us that there would be a replacement bus, except the bus never came so I just went back home . I ended up just passing the fuck asleep on the couch for two hours after. Today my back hurts less at least but it was still excruciating and I ended up spending pretty much all day yesterday in bed and miserable.

Other than that I don't have much that's like worthy of note to report, I'm waiting for a package that will probably get here around my birthday (january 14th) and I'm pretty excited about it even if it's still far away please keep her (the package) in your thoughts and prayers.

08.12.2023

Yesterday I attempted to fill out that one "favorite character bingo" template that was getting passed around a while back, and I had a surprisingly hard time with it honestly because a lot of things I've been into I liked the whole source material without having a specific favorite character from it, but also because I tend to obsess on a handful of characters and have them living rent free at the back of my mind. This was what I was able to scrounge up:

(also they're arranged in a sort of rainbow order, hehe)

I guess my "main" favorites are Kaeya, Childe, Diluc, Rosaria, Neuvillette and Furina from Genshin Impact, Legato and Vash from Trigun, Anthy and Nanami from Revolutionary Girl Utena, Lan Wangji from The Untamed and Yoo Jonghyuk from Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. The rest I still like them a lot and find them thematically interesting in their respective pieces of media, while I guess Alpha from Yokodama Kaidashi Kikou and Ichigo Momomiya from Tokyo Mew Mew are more like... for nostalgia's sake, since they're from manga/anime I used to be into when I was younger. I don't have a real justification for Olivine from NU Carnival other than I'd do unspeakable things to that man.

Runner ups that didn't make it into the chart are Garry from IB, Shizuo from Durarara, Misa from Death Note (again, all three for nostalgia's sake) and Knives from Trigun (who I like as much as Vash, I just figured I had to pick one and I'm specifically kind of obsessed with Legato being a foil to Vash specifically so I had to include both. Guy who was designed in a lab to sicken and torment you specifically and so on and so forth).

By the way, I'm kind of obsessed with writing this dumb ass journal that probably nobody reads but me in some sort of lame flow of consciousness style it's very fun

05.12.2023

Yesterday i went digging on gifcities as i occasionally like to do, and clicking around through the gif sources that led to old web pages archived on the wayback machine i ended up finding quite a few interesting sites.

The first interesting page i came across was this Revolutionary Girl Utena site created in 1999, The Observatory. I find it pretty charming because it was created by an italian girl (i'm italian too) and the site itself is two years older than me. I cannot really attest for the quality of the content on it because the webmistress apparently didn't get the point of RGU at all consdering how she was seemingly in love with Akio Ohtori, but then again i don't wanna be too critical considering how the owner apparently didn't have access to the episodes of the show and was likely a teenager upon making the site. It's interesting in itself as a sort of time capsule.

Through The Observatory, I was able to find The Utena Encyclopedia (1998), which is another RGU themed site that archived a lot of information about the show. There are translated scripts of each episode as well as lyrics for the anime OST and a lot of other info.

Still through The Observatory, i came across a Trigun themed page by complete accident: Happy Donut Land. What's most fascinating about this specific trigun fansite is the "adoptees" section, which contains a lot of sprites of Trigun characters (1998 anime designs) made by the owner of the site themself.

Speaking of Trigun, the most odd find of the day was definitely The Yaoi Shrine (2001?). Do not dig it up if you're under 18 obviously because. The name is pretty self explanatory. It's some old as hell yaoi site. Being a yaoi site, especially one from the early 2000s, the content on it is quite questionable and I'm gonna be honest i didn't dig too deep cause i didn't wanna run into anything upsetting or reprehensible (which is also why i'd rather not direct link to the home page of it) BUT. What i did find was an ANCIENT stash of Trigun doujinshi scans. Again i would rather not link the full thing because these are yaoi from the 2000s and a couple of them contain shit i genuinely don't wanna look at ever in my life, but these specific two i'm kind of obsessed with, and that i don't mind linking directly because they don't seem to have any fucked up content and are tasteful enough i guess. Still though please leave if you're under 18.

The first is Heaven's Drive, which i love just because Vash and Wolfwood have really funny faces. Unfortunately individual pages haven't been archived so all that's left are the previews but those already look funny enough even with missing pages. But the real gem in this is Dsear. If you're not familiar with Trigun these are just going to look like random ass anime men BUT. The reason why i'm obsessed with it is that it features Legato Bluesummers and Midvalley the Hornfreak FOR SOME FUCKING REASON. Who are respectively the main's villain's main henchman and another minor henchman of the same guy. This was added to the site before 2002 so it was presumably based on the 1998 adaptation of Trigun. Where i'm not sure if Legato and Hornfreak even say much to each other. It was such a humbling find i'm glad to see that rarepair yaoi warriors have been hard at work for over 20 years.

04.12.2023

Over the past several months i've been developing a more active interest in dolls, specifically for ones from the late 90s to early 2000s based on anime or cartoons that were licensed or made in Italy during that period (so like... magical girls anime as well as italian media such as Winx or w.i.t.c.h., both of which received doll lines produced by Giochi Preziosi during that time period). In my search i came across this Hay Lin (from w.i.t.c.h.) doll on ebay, being sold for pretty cheap considering what these tend to go for. She was in pretty miserable condition and wearing what is definitely not her outfit, and her hair was really badly matted even if (thankfully) it didn't seem to have been cut.

I am planning to redress her eventually (idk when yet cause i don't have the time or energy to attempt to sew anytime soon), but in the meantime i decided to use her as my guinea pig for boil washing doll hair.

This is the state she came in, and the only pictures i have of her pre-intervention (I unfortunately didn't think of taking any "before" pictures or close ups of how matted her hair was, so all i have are the ebay listing pictures)

Considering i paid only like 10 euro for her i figured it'd be ok to make her my guinea pig in trying to figure out boil washing. I first washed her really well with dish soap because old dolls that have been played with tend to be grimy, and then conditioned her hair and brushed through it a lot with a metal pet slicker brush and boil washed it about 4 or 5 times, conditioning and brushing it in between. This is only just my first attempt at a boil wash so i know i have a lot of practice to do but i'm still pretty satisfied with how soft the hair became after the treatment... The ends are still dry and idk what to do about those rn really but the overall condition improved SO MUCH

Her hair is a really interesting blend of black and dark purple and it's now super soft and smooth aside from the very ends which are still a bit dry and damaged. I will keep looking into what i can do for those and hopefully eventually redress her as well.