Neko

october 8th:

it's been a bit since i wrote one of these, so i wanted to check in.

shortly after i wrote my last entry, i went to go see one of my friends in a play our university's theatre department was putting on!! she was playing keyboard as part of the on-stage band for the show, we sat near her end of the stage and were able to wave and say hi before the show started which was nice. my main thoughts on the show itself were 'man. emminent domain is fucked' and 'damn. the aftershocks of the red scare are apparent even now and LA should really fucking compensate those that were displaced by the falling through of the housing project and subsequent construction of dodger stadium'. theatre tends to invoke reactions of 'wow i fucking love art!!!!' or 'wow our current world is FUCKED UP!!!' in me lol. in some other universe where i didn't have like, shut-in levels of anxiety as a teenager and was more extroverted i 100% would have gotten into theatre (even though uh. my district for sure didn't have the funding for that considering my program didn't even have an art teacher for 3 of my four years there).

we ended up staying out unexpectedly late though -- the show ended at around 9:30, we went out to breakfast for dinner sometime around 11 and we were originally heading home at like? 1, 2ish? which was to be expected, but we ended up picking up and driving home a friend who couldn't drive back from a party and said party was half an hour-ish from where we were at the time, plus a friend of theirs had to get dropped off... we were finally back on the road home by like. 4am though. with the advent children version of one-winged angel blasting that came up on shuffle lol. i got home at like 5 and was SO tired and my sleep schedule is still mildly fucked up bc of it but i'd literally rather have my sleep schedule out of whack for a few weeks than leave a friend hanging. i also heard my voice on recording for the first time in a while that night and honestly????? even though my vocal dysphoria is still A Factor it didn't trigger at all hearing that which was a pleasant surprise.

i'm also currently still dealing with Funemployment which is kind of frustrating but like. it is what it is, most people fresh out of school who aren't straight-A kids or who have good connections to their industry from interning or whatever tend to go through this. i'm definitely gonna broaden my scope of like. Places I Would Tolerate Working At, at least until i get something pinned down and then i can work on getting referred to something that's actually within my field of expertise and doesn't pay minimum wage lol. one place i applied at indicated an interview for the middle of this last week but that didn't happen, so i'm gonna call and try to follow up sometime middle of this week just to see if i'm still under consideration, bc there i would at least get tips on top of minimum wage.

at least i've made a ton of site progress in the meantime. made a landing page, made multiple CSS layouts, completed a shrine i was working on and made two others start to finish, expanded the former stamps page to the point i couldn't just call it the stamps page anymore, made a site list, etc etc., lots going on. i do feel bad that i've kind of fell off of checking spacehey and some of the forums i was active on during the summer though ;;; might check in on those.

despite dealing with funemployment, though, i WAS able to get (or at least reserve) one thing: THE BOCCHER.

hitori 'bocchi' gotoh nendoroid. the figure is small, only about 4 inches tall, and is about 2 and 1/4 heads high, giving it a cute look. bocchi has long pink hair that is worn mostly down with a small section of it tied with a hair tie with two small plastic or acrylic cubes affixed to it, one light blue and one yellow. she also has somewhat long fringe, but it doesn't hang over her eyes too much. she wears a pink tracksuit jacket with her school uniform, which has a gray skirt, black knee socks and brown loafers. the graphic shows the figure in various poses and with various expressions, one of which has her holding guitar with a blank expression, another with her bundled up in a blanket with the same blank expression, and multiple with her wearing various nervous expression, as a core part of her character is that she is prone to anxiety.

i was originally going to get her when she was in-stock on GSC, but bc of how popular BTR is, her regular stock went quicker than i was able to get in. so i had to preorder her december release that every non-GSC distributor has out here. still think it's kind of bullshit that GSC just releases shit Months ahead of any distributor out here, AND that they offer it cheaper than any distributor (bc they have to pay the cost of the item + any import costs, which then get forwarded to the customer at least partially) bc that's already had like. pretty bad effects on the western distribution market, considering how much of the figure market is taken up by GSC stuff. like it's already not easy to keep a business like that afloat, let alone when the guys you're buying from are your competition. but yeah bocchi! getting her later than i'd have liked but at least i have her on reserve. was also thinking of preordering the faceplate collection but i'll hold off for now

i still don't know what my plans are for halloween though... i'm going to a drag event later this week which i still don't have a costume for, and my original plan of being bebop from TMNT is looking less and less likely since i have less time to thrift and potentially dye stuff if i need to. I might just try to find some fancy clothes and put that vampire cape i got last year to good use.

on the topic of last year, though, yesterday marked 6 months on T for me, and tomorrow marks one whole year since i cut my hair off short! and also one year since i got high for the first time. funny story with that, so last year i couldn't get loans to pay for school so i was having to cut shit WAY tighter on my budget than i did for junior year, so like. couldn't afford to get my hair cut. had my 'oh hey im more masc than i thought' gender epiphany not long before and was dealing with long hair agony. so i was able to talk my bestie into mulleting my hair and we were legit SO relieved that everything went fine that we were like. ok. we r ordering fatburger and doing edibles and watching UHF. which! honestly as someone who had not seen that movie prior i feel like that is a movie best enjoyed high.

tuesday also marks 1 year since i went to the undertale cafe which was honestly super fun. i need to go back to requiem, i was already kind of miffed i missed the invader zim rave but now im like. man that venue was cool. i should keep an eye on what events they're hosting when i have like. money to drive like 100 miles to go spend more money on food and drink and knickknacks lol. anyways here's some pictures since i'm reminiscing!

requiem cafe sign. it is stylized to mimic the logo style of the final fantasy series, with large fancy-looking text reading 'requiem', with smaller text in the same font below reading 'coffee, tea, and fantasy'. behind the text is a sihlouette-like drawing of a coffee cup with steam billowing out of it, colored with a gradient changing from blue, to pink, to orange, to yellow. the sign is affixed to the red brick exterior of the cafe, and is flanked by a tree on its left side.

the outer sign on the venue. despite it being the last day of the cafe, the line was PACKED. very glad we ended up getting there as early as we did. there were also a fair number of chalk and even permanent marker drawings on the sidewalk outside, lots of sans and spamtons.

drinks served at the cafe. one is the sea tea, a marshmallow butterfly pea tea with vanilla seasalt cold foam. it is light blue, opaque, filled with ice and served in a transparent plastic cup with a dome top and a wide blue straw to match the blue color of the drink. the other drink is the reigen supreme, based off of reigen arataka from mob psycho 100 (notably not an undertale character. this is due in part due to at the time recent events, wherein on a twitter poll determining the ultimate tumblr sexyman, sans was pitted against reigen. said poll gained much notoriety during it's run and concluded mere hours prior to the queens death in september and in close proximity to when the cafe started, hence why it was notable at the time. it was also served due to the cafe being out of most everything else at the time we attended, and october tenth being reigen's stated birthday). it is a sparkling lemonade, semi-translucent and a very light yellow in color, again served with ice in a plastic cup with a dome lid and a wide straw, it being yellow to match the drink. the drinks sit atop a glass table, and the drinks and surrounding area are lit under the purple lights of the cafe.

we ended up going on the very last day of the cafe's run, so they were out of almost everything. we just ended up getting sea teas and reigen supremes and got taiyaki and boba when we went thrifting afterward, though i really wanted to try the butterscotch pie.

cardboard cutouts of sans and papyrus from undertale. sans is a short skeleton with a wide face, wearing a smile, a blue jacket, black shorts, and slippers. papyrus is a tall skeleton with a long face, and is wearing a red cap, boots, and gloves, as well as blue bottoms. both cutouts are using their less-detailed overworld sprites. they are flanked by a cutout of sans' stand from outside of snowden as well as a christmas tree and a bunch of cotton stuffing, mimicking snow.

and the cutouts! rai and chloe ended up taking pictures with them, though i won't show them here. we also moseyed over to the gift shop shortly after this, where i got the collab lanyard and the temmie flakes keychain. i also got a bi-thon (bi python) sticker from the shop, but i seem to have misplaced it in my move which sucks ;;; hopefully i find it at some point, i wanna put it on my bass.

but yeah that's it! might write again soon, hopefully sooner rather than later.