i've got persona brainrot again ★ weekly photo diaries~

Hello!!! My sweets!!! It's another weekly(ish) photo dump!! It's kind of a chunky one, but a lot of it is Persona, as Persona 3 Reload came out last Friday and it's all I've been able to think about/do these past few days lolol it's so good sobs

I'm going to go ahead and mention Persona 3 Reload first and foremost cause it's been the only thing taking residence in my head this week! So get ready for a lil essay!!!

I know a lot of you will have little to no familiarity with Persona 3, as it came out in 2006, and the original version of the game was very grindy and really required a dedicated player to get through all 120 hours of it. I have played the og P3 (it was actually the first Persona game I ever played), but I only got about 50 hours into it, before I got too exhausted by just how much grinding I had to do to progress in Tartarus. I've been talking to my bestie Audley about the game (P3 is his fave in the series), and there was a lot of rad story shit in the original that my brain has completely glazed over cause all I can remember is running around Tartarus and being terrified of the Reaper coming to catch me cause it took too long to explore the giant floors ToT

This is all to say that this remake is more than I could have possibly hoped for!!! It has so WILDLY exceeded all of our expectations!! The new character portraits and English VAs are all so good (Yukari's summer fit is SOOOO slay I'm obsessed), they've added SO many quality of life (QOL) improvements that not only make the gameplay more smooth and fluid, but also really really flesh out the world and the relationships between the characters. The one major gripe I have is how they directed the new MC Persona awakening scene -- the 3D animations are GORG (they're a great improvement on the 3D animation style in P5), but they went a little more...cartoony with it? I suppose? It's just not as dark and jarring and affecting as the original awakening scene. :((( I'm learning that direction is really a HUGE thing in animation (as it is in film, I'm not sure why that never really clicked before), so whomever directed the original I would like their hand in marriage thx

I have a weird attachment to Minato (or Makoto, depending on which version of his name you wanna use) for never having played all the way through P3 in the past, and I think it's because he was my first ever Persona MC, and also his design is so!!! delicious!!!! The blue hair??? The headphones??? And they made him look so good in this remake sobs there's this little swoosh-y animation his hair does whenever he walks through doors that I'm really really fond of <333 I also think his emo sensibilities just...really make my heart sing :') I love him!!! Excited to draw more fanart of him!! I drew Yukari on stream the other day and she turned out SO CUTE and I was excited about it in a way I don't normally get about fanart, so this feels like a bit of a turning point for me in my "getting over my fear of making fanart" journey~

Also!!! The fact that all the social links and little dorm hangouts are fully voiced makes SUCH a world of difference! They didn't even do that in P5 Royal!! It was only the final social link cutscene that had voice acting, so having it for EVERY RANK in every social link is so incredible ToT

okay and now for other little bullet points heheh

• I've gotten in the habit of sitting on the floor while I play P3, leaning against the ottoman cause one of the cats is usually is sitting there, and Sophie has taken to sprawling out somewhere on the floor near me when I've been playing too long and it's well past our bedtime hehehe it's very cute
• I took miss Soph to the vet on Saturday for her bi-annual checkup, and have discovered that my sweet baby angel has hyperthyroidism :(( She's on a new medication now, felimazole, which is just methimazole (the same meds that human with hyperthyroidism take!! so neat), and it's only been a couple days but it already seems to be helping?? She seems less agressive (tho still her chompy self) and her poops are already looking more solid, and she doesn't cry when she uses the litterbox!! I do need to schedule her for an ultrasound to make sure she actually doesn't have IBD, which is what I thought she's had these last few years cause thats what I was told when I adopted her, but she’s never had an ultrasound or biopsy done since I got her to confirm. The doc also heard a very low level heart murmur (when she called me to tell me this I started sobbing almost uncontrollably in my car), and the blood test they did for her heart came back abnormal, so they’ve sent off some blood samples to make sure she doesn’t have some underlying heart disease. They also took some x-rays they sent off, as she seems to have an enlarged lymph node?? I think?? She also has a bladder stone rn TT but they’re gonna get me some prescription food for her to help with that specifically. I’m really hoping that this felimazole alleviates a lot of her pain, and can help her gain some weight back cause even with her ravenous appetite, she’s lost a pound since her last visit, so she’s only 7.5 lbs rn T^T why must the passage of time be so unrelenting and cruel!!!!
• got a lil haircut! I've decided to start the process of growing out my wolf cut, so I had my hairdresser bring up the back to be a little closer to the front bits -- it's still not where I want it, obviously, but I need my hair to be even again before I can start growing it out to my collarbones again~ my hair has actually been giving me a lot of grief in the Gender department, and I didn't think it was possible to get so emotional over hair but!! Here we are!! It’s just very frustrating to look in the mirror and see a version of myself that doesn’t feel Right
• I got a new plant!! I had to move my peperomia cause it was having a REAL hard time and 3 of the 5 stalks that I bought it with have all died, BUT I moved it to be right in front of the window in the dining room and it seems to REALLY like it!! It's got like 6 new leaves coming in! So hopefully I'll be able to propogate a stem and fill out the lil planter again. But I got this lovely prayer plant for this lil dim corner and it seems to like it here! I mist it with filtered water every other time I walk by it, cause the person at the plant store told me they like to be babied so I'm trying to take that to heart o7
• I finally picked up my tiny lil mug from the pottery studio! It's my first ever finished mug, and it's so wonky but I MADE IT so it is very perfect to me <33 I think I wanna try slab-building my next mug!! I do really love wheel throwing, but it is so much more involved and messier?? In terms of getting in/out of the studio in a few hours, I think hand building may be a lil more conducive on days I don't have a bunch of extra time to spend in there
• I finally drew my sweet pigeon ranger Francis <33 I was so stoked to finally figure out how to drag his dang wing arms/hands, and THEN I got this incredible package from PJ, with this gorgeous commissioned drawing of our whole DnD party ToT as well as a lil in character note from his chara to mine!!! I cried and cried!! I still can't believe I get to be in a campaign with folks I've looked up to for years and years, and now I get to call them friends :') It is very surreal and very cool and we pick up our campaign again this weekend!! I can't wait!!
• there's no photo for this, but on a similar but way more tragic note, my other DnD campaign, the one with my fancy boy cleric Chad, has been fully cancelled TT Our DM is going through some stuff in his personal life that has made it where he can no longer continue the campaign in any capacity (we've had our friend Mal as a guest DM for the last few months, and Dylan has been conferring with him on it creatively, as this is Dylan's campaign that he concocted and has been running for the last few years), so!! Our adventure has prematurely ended TT I found out while streaming on Friday and had to end stream cause I couldn't stop crying lol. I'm very attached to Chad and I want him to have some closure and resolution to his story :((( I'm also so devastated to think I'll never get to play him again. I love him sobs
• This past Thursday, the sweet darling Jordan Clark invited me and our friend Mary over for a Galentine's craft night!! it was SO FUN!! Jordan is the Craft Queen, as y'all know, so we got to rummage through her treasure horde of craft goodies and make some lil valentines for our S.O.s :') I was SO happy with the valentine I made for Ares and he really liked it too >:)
• I've been doing a lot of reorganizing and tidying lately. I've been feeling kind of..itchy?? I'm not sure how to put it. Restless? I think my rapidly approaching 30th birthday has me a bit on edge, and my dining room was feeling so crowded, so I decided to take down one of my shelves and reorganize all my art supplies and finally hang up some of the art from my studio. I've really been missing my studio lately...I've been missing having space to sprawl out and make stuff. Next time Ares comes through, I'm going to ask him to help me move my yellow dining table downstairs, and bring up my biiiiig white standing desk that used to live in the middle of my studio. It's a foot wider than my dining table, so I wanted to get one of the shelves out of the way so the room wouldn't feel so packed
• Megan convinced me to get a Hobonichi Techo!! I've had one once before, that my dear friend Lito got me from Japan back in 2019 I believe, and I regret dropping off that one SO I'm excited to have another. I've started writing in it before bed, and having a lil case with my stickers on my nightstand, and printing out photos and using my lil corner rounder cutter on them. :3 I will likely not feature this in too many videos, as I'm enjoying this just being a for me thing, and having exactly 0 (zero) expectations for making it look super beautiful for the gram. I don't wanna get burned out on it like I did my bujo...
• Making art has been really hard lately, so I've been trying my best to have fun, whatever it takes. It literally feels like I'm staring down as I'm working on a project, brow furrowed, just grumbling "I WILL have fun making art if it's the LAST thing I do!!! Gosh dang it!!" So! I cut down a giant drop canvas I had so it's easier to lay out on my living room floor, and I found an old easel that my college roommate gave me, and I've been trying to paint again, as well as trying my hand at little air dry clay sculptures.
• I got invited to be a part of Gallery Nucleus' upcoming Cluster Show (!!!! how insane, this is gonna be the first time anything of mine has been in an exhibition!!! aaa!!!), and as such, I've been tasked with painting this little wooden mushroom they sent me. I've been waffling on ideas for it for ages, but I think I've finally landed on making just like. a lil mushroom house with some lil guys on it!! I had a surprising amount of fun sculpting these lil gnomes (the one on top in the first pic ended up totally falling apart cause I didn't really know how to work with the clay yet, so I remade him yesterday, and he's much sturdier now :D) I can't wait to paint them! And to figure out how the hell I'm gonna decorate this mushroom...but I think I want to make more tiny dudes out of clay, it is very fun and so different for me
• I got lunch at this place called Made in House which is right near my hairdresser, and I had my first ever bibimbap bowl!!! It was INCREDIBLE!! And the vanilla oat latte I had was soooo creamy and beautiful.
• I’ve finally broken out the Kubo Libra 2 I got for Christmas, and I’ve started reading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir!! It is so weird and already so gay on page 50 (the TENSION between Gideon and Harrowhark is wild) and I can’t wait to read more >:) I’ve been waffling around on what book to read to get me out of the years long reading slump I’ve been in (the last book I remember tearing through was Madeline Miller’s Circe a few years back, and I ate that shit up in one day, it was so good), and so many of my friends have recommend ACOTAR – I already know the plot of the whole series thanks to caricanread’s plot recap vids lol but I wanted to give it a read for myself anyhow just to see what all the fuss was about. The one thing that’s kept me from going much further than 20 pages in is knowing just how ~heterosexual~ the series is (and all of SJM’s books are, it seems), and also I frankly don’t love the whole “19-year old is mated to a 4000 year old fae lord” thing. (Why can’t she be 25?? Or even late 20s??? She would be just as hot and young and cool and capable at 25, if not more so!!! Sarah!!!) So, now I’m reading about lesbian necromancers in space instead. :D

And that’s it!! OOOOOF what a long one!! I was planning on publishing this on Friday, and then my weekend ended up being quite eventful so I had some more to add hehe.

The January rewards are being packed up and shipped off today!! Tysm for ur patience~~ Sending all my love!!