Citadel's Blog

Go home

- Umm. Yet another long time no blog. I've still been SUPER busy lately and working around major burnout from how much I've been getting done irl with work and home life. I still don't think it's fully gone but I've been able to do things sparcely here and there. I haven't been drawing much these past few months besides a few doodles here and there and part of me still feels a bit bad about it. But honestly I don't want to push myself too hard bc that tends to make burnout a bit worse. I switched up meds (again) and got off the higher dose and I feel more like a person thankfully :thumbsup: though I've noticed that if I miss them it gets bad. so I rlly shouldn't do that!

I saw a few more bands live again, and I'm going to see a few more in the upcoming month and a half. I've been trying to steadily collect my silly cds along these concerts but for whatever reason some haven't really shown up yet, and I'm kind of bummed. I bought the With Promises of Death album by BRIGHTER DEATH NOW and it hasnt shown up yet and it's been quite a while since I first purchased it. I suppose shipping from Europe hasn't really improved, but here's to hoping!

- Long time no blog. I really haven't had the time to mess around with the site as of late given how just abysmally busy I've been for the past month or so. I finished off art fight a few weeks ago because I got burnt out quite quickly (especially in regards to what's happening currently with the ownership and what's come out) and I did in fact try harder this year in terms of better quality attacks but god x_x it's hard not to get burnt out fast esp since I've been doing this for 7 years now! I've noticed a shift of the vibe on the site for the past few years (as in, the way people see the event, how revenges are seen, etc etc) and I feel like I've done this for long enough to not give a shit about all of that LOL

I won't get too personal here but I have been switching up things in my life that needed to be changed and it's been leaving me feeling like a husk of a man most of the time. My medications are fucking me up again and I upped them recently since I noticed the very large plateau in my mood and they honestly made it worse. I love the healthcare system I love the mental health system surely this will do nothing but good in the long run (lying).

I finally saw a band live that I've been wanting to for years since they were seemingly allergic to my area for a good chunk of years, and I've met some cool people at concerts. I've finally come to the conclusion that I do in fact enjoy talking to people but deep down I still really don't like most I come across. I need my me time and it's hard to explain that I do in fact need human interaction and being able to talk about things while also not being able to stand most people I come across in my day to day life and I really don't see the good in people for the most part. I still consider myself an 'extroverted misanthrope' since it's basically the best way I've seen to explain how I feel.

- Been thinking a lot about moving domains lately. I do want to get off of neocities because well. It definitely has it's fair share of problems, (including going down at random intervals) and generally the "community" (or what you'd I guess call one) I just can't stand. I really don't know how to put it into words, though. With my own domain I'd be able to do whatever (and I've scouted a few free hosting services that would work) and since I truly just, don't want a presence in any sort of social media (since, you know, everyone moved to making their own site which turned neocities into it's own form of social media) I truly can't give a shit about anything relating to it anymore, outside of my little character storage site. (and even then, I've been moving their bios here so I would be able to get into the nitty gritty of their backstories without the average toyhouse user deciding they aren't okay, and I use th for image storage for the most part, though I've been working on getting all the images somewhere else bc well. Th is hosted by cloudflare and they're not known for their stability.) Neocities is super easy to edit and code on (which I see why the userbase is so large) but I want somewhere to just. Put things into the void so when I'm gone there would still be a trace of me, at least. I'd like to do all of this, but I've been so busy at work and doing shit in general other than sitting on my computer (which, in a way, is a good thing. I've been feeling (relatively) better lately in terms of general mood but since an anniversary of a shitty event's coming up I get bouts.)

It's pride month, and that means I think about my identity a lot. I've come to love being 'unlabeled' for the most part. (I don't mean this in the way that a lot of people do, since I was made aware there was an unlabeled pride flag...? Which honestly defeats the purpose bc now you're using it AS a label you know. you feel me) I honestly could not care less about labels other than being trans, and even then that's still very much an umbrella term. I don't care about microlabels (and honestly feel that a lot of them can be damaging) and if I started speaking about my feelings on my sexuality and gender I have a deep feeling someone would go "well, that sounds like [x]!" and I just can't bring myself to care. Since I finally accepted the "apathy towards any label because honestly who gives a shit" I've become more open with my sexuality in terms of figuring myself out. Testosterone has done so much for me (and had um. the effects) and I've become more welcoming to being that one weird furry guy and I feel way happier. I live under the idea that I've just GOT to get weirder in everything I do and understanding myself with my gender and sexuality has helped quite a lot. yippee

- So sorry for being MIA for the past week or so, I haven't really been able to sit down and work on my site as I'd like to because I started working full time again :broken_heart: I've been working on a ton of ref sheets for the upcoming artfight in a month. I've been just generally suuuper busy bc I'm an adult and sadly need bills to be paid. I got a few more items for my collection, and sold off all of my (non-collection) plush and figures at a tag sale we tabled at :) All my money is going to my car and the money pit that its become. I've been rekindling my love for reading these past few weeks too- mostly listening to audiobooks while I work (since they do truly help me stay focused especially if I'm invested in the story).

I finished A Clockwork Orange a few days ago, and I really quite enjoyed the book. I previously saw the Stanley Kubrick film a few years ago, and part of me understands why he decided to not um. Put any of the political commentary of the book into the film (given the fact that it was released in the 70's where it was frowned upon (and it still is today) to critique the government in hollywood) and given that the entire point of the book was "Ultraviolence is ok only if we're (the police, government) are doing it to the right people" sort of deal, but I still can't help but be dissapointed in this. The entire second half of the book is literally just fully commentary on the government and class issues in Britian at the time and the movie just... left it all out. Overall, I really really enjoyed the book. I believe that good art and good commentary is supposed to make you feel emotions while you read (and in this case, disgust at both the government and Alex's actions) and if it isn't doing that, I think it needs to be improved. I think the book did a fantastic job at being subtle (though, some of it was supposed to be subtext that basically just turned into just. Regular text, such as Dim becoming a militant after Alex gets arrested and jailed.) and still holds up to this day. I read the British version specifically, since the american version of the book cuts out the entire final chapter, for whatever reason. If you were to experience this story, I'd suggest reading the british version of the book before anything else. The movie is a fantastic film, both in delivery and cinematography (though, I am really not a fan of Kubrick in general, given what happened on the Shining film set.), and, while it is a hard watch at times, (especially during the ultraviolence sections), I still think that it's a solid film.

- I've been researching a lot of things lately after I get home from work since I finally was able to fix my internet problem back home. I've been looking into a lot of television type technology, and specifically the switch to analog to digital broadcasting throughout the world (though mainly only the US). I'm not one to get emotional for really anything, but I cannot describe how I'm feeling watching the videos of the analog stations being shut off for good in around 2007-2013. It's like putting down an animal at the end of it's life and telling them how much of a good job they did throughout their life and how they'll be missed.

Some stations made specific goodbye messages to everyone watching the channel, while some just simply shut it off without even saying goodbye. The ones that didn't say goodbye to me feel like someone who put down the animal without even saying anything and walking away, while the ones saying goodbye. True care and love came from the stations who gave them proper sendoffs and thanked all the people still watching analog for sticking around so long and seeing them off.

To me, giving a proper sendoff for an analog frequency that's been in use for over 50 years seems right. It's all about giving them (the frequencies) a peaceful and kind ending to their run when most of the world has already given up and forgotten about them.

- I finally got a car! I've been searching and scouring craigslist and I was finally able to snag a car I really wanted. It needs a ton of work, though. It doesn't run currently due to the distributor that was installed backwards. Once I pick it up I'm gonna do a ton to clean and make sure she runs fine, and if not, I'm adding it to my little spreadsheet. I genuinely can't put into words how happy I am at the moment. I've got a lot of work ahead of me but the faster I can get it running the better. It's an automatic (sadly), so I'm gonna see if I can find a manual in a junkyard and rebuild it and do a switch. It's a bit rusty, but the frame itself is in perfect condition.

Other than that, I've officially finished my first year of college. I'm not quite the fan of any of it, really. I'm not going back to the college I went to this past year due to the fact that it costs WAY too much money. I'm going to go to a CC instead for the time being. Getting my car really helped get over this first lump in my plan and I can finally work to getting my lisence :D

- Finally got my wishlist for my collections in once place! I used to have a Carrd for my collection but I really hated the (incredibly low) limit for images and items on pages, and finally managed to move it all here. I've been thinking about collecting again, and casually looking for stuff again, though I can't help but want to save my money because this hobby can become quite expensive x__x Since I'm getting my tax return very shortly I decided to purchase the JP version of the Absol pokedoll I needed, which was a little treat for myself. All of my colletion is in storage at the moment since I'm still in a dorm at the moment (but I'm moving out soon!) so I'd be able to get pictures of my items and upload them. Hopefully I'll be able to afford buying from JP again through a proxy so I can get more absol stuff at a cheaper price than english sites :).

I've been looking at a lot of different collection sites (mostly to get images for my wishlist) and I've got to say that I still believe they look incredibly same-y. Same top bar, same everything. I can't blame a lot of them though, since Weebly and wix are (fine) website builders and easy for people who don't know how to code to make websites but still. I know mine doesn't look the best either but I want to keep it really simple for the most part. Have an image of the figure/plush/whatever, date released, and creator, and a small blurb. I've been rethinking how I collect as well, since getting my absol wishlist took a little over 5 hours of work to finish (straight). I finished one of my finals for this semester and immediately started working on the site, and it made me realize just how many figures and other assorted goods I was missing! I have basically all the plush besides a few tagged vs untagged ones, and the one that doesn't release for another week or so. This hobby is a huge money sink, but I'm sadly a completionist when it comes to these things. (I even found some random absol merch that I wasn't even aware existed!) And I may start looking at my collection differently. I won't ever stop collecting as far as I'm aware because I have the natural urge to collect small items and trinkets, but as a broke college student I don't really have that many options.

Speaking of collection sites and collectors, I ventured onto LiveJournal for the first time in many years. My mother had one and used it until they sold the company and I've gotta say, the website is nearly unusable. I have adblockers and other things running in the bg of my firefox browser and even then I get MASSIVE banner ads among a bunch of other things, and while I understand that the LiveJournal group was one of the original collectors groups for sales/auctions/whatnot I can't help but think that there's a time to give up the ghost. The website got worse after they sold it (and the fact that they sell your data, too.) and there are other avenues to do this sort of thing! God just stop using LiveJournal the website sucks ass

- I've been updating the website a lot recently (once again to ignore my college work) and I finally made the decision to host my ocs on my website instead of Toyhou.se since it's run off of cloudflare and it crashes pretty frequently. I'm still keeping an account, of course, just mainly using it to do image hosting online rather than here since a lot of it takes up a ton of space and I'm not sure if I really want to pay for neocities premium given how badly the site has been performing as of late. I've been slowly but surely moving stuff here too. It's been a ton of fun rewriting the entire lore down for characters, since I don't tend to do so on toyhou.se. I'm gonna be replacing things on my toyhouse with plaintext things since I value the info over the prettiness. I've kind of moved away from Toyhou.se somewhat mostly due to the userbase (and the forums), though I still use it as a valuable tool for both commissioning and the character market, though most of all the bios are probably gonna stay here.

I've gone to a few good concerts recently and I was finally able to really add a bunch of CDs for my collection, and I even got some that weren't released yet :-) I haven't listened to half of them yet since I do want to review them, but still!

- I went to a really amazing concert a few days ago and I keep thinking about it! I wasn't expecting to enjoy the opener as much as I did (I got a bag and a signed CD from them! They were super sweet too). I met some really nice people there but I don't know how I would go about keeping in touch with them... I gave them my number and such so here's to hoping! Alongside going to the concert, I got a bunch more CDs to add to my collection. Most were from the concert (I had to buy double to get them for a good friend of mine.) And overall it was a really good experience, but I came to a roadblock. I bought the CD's in person which meant that I wouldn't be able to get the mp3 files on my computer unless I either 1) repurchased the albums on bandcamp so I could get the digital library files or 2) rip the CD to put the mp3s on my computer. Sadly, my laptop I currently use doesn't have a disc drive (which is really a shame), so I briefly looked into external DVD/CD readers. I got recommended a good one from people who know software and hardware better than me so I've been keeping an eye on that specific model. That specific one can do, lets say, special things, and I'd be able to rip whatever I'd want to put on a harddrive or something else of that nature. I've been meaning to buy an external harddrive anyways but that stuff gets wayyyy too expensive for me at the moment, but I'd definitely get one in the future. I'd really want one so I can store my music and videos/movies on it so I have a solid archive of things I deem important enough.

I finally downloaded (a lot of) the music I bought off of bandcamp and shoved them into my music app on my computer. I'm still not done but I think this is a good start so far. The program I use is (suprisingly) super easy to configure and add files to the player. Though for whatever reason whenever I scan the folder for new files it repeats the Killer's Notebook file and the Revenge of Dr Q. I thought it could have been due to those not being in folders of their own (When I first started downloading all of it I removed them from the folder they were in for whatever reason) but it doesn't do the same for the other albums I have in there that don't have a folder. It's quite interesting and doesn't bother me enough to fix

- Been browsing a bunch of different sites today (instead of working on my paper that's due monday... lol). And I've been coming across the idea of the "webcore" fans and 'mining' for nostalgia. It was interesting reading all of these views on the internet and, in a way, personal websites as a whole. I came across a good deal of drama though my small trek through random websites, though I can't help to say that I feel... torn.

On one hand, I really hate 'webcore' people. All the ones I've met through my years online are younger than me and have never touched the OS or even used the things they like in a day to day light. A lot of them have eyestrain-y, bright, and flashy codes on websites (such as toyhou.se) that really bother me. I'm not super photosensitive, but if someone who doesn't have photosensitivites gets eyestrain/headaches from your website or code... maybe look for a different one? Or make it more accessable. I know my site could be considered "eyestrain" because it's a black background with white text, but it's the easiest for me to read given my issues with reading. I don't want my site to be considered 'webcore' because I made it with my own personality and characteristics in mind, and a small piece of me will be left with this site if I ever do die or move on with my life. I personally really don't like the "-core"-ification of the internet as well, but that tends to be a deep rabbit hole that I won't get into here. I've been surrounded by 'geeks' growing up (ie people who just really like computers or just general geek-y interests, and I've seen the old internet for what it was. I've spoken to people who were on the old web during my free time and all have basically said the same thing- "It was great, but had (very glaring issues)", simular to the internet today. It's a different landscape now, but still ripe with the same issues it had nearly 30 years ago. Sites like Livejournal (in their peak) were great places to share writing and keep in touch with friends and even family, but it was sold off to a different company which sold users data. But Livejournal was probably the biggest place for drama amongst users in many different areas, so it seems like time will always be a flat circle when it comes to drama, people, and the internet. I've seen others say "well if you like the old net, why don't you do this (thing?)" (for example, mp3 files instead of streaming services. I personally use mp3s a lot (some of my favorite albums are only available though the artist's website since they were removed from bandcamp and I refuse to listen to music on youtube because of how crunchy it can get).

On the other hand, I think creativity knows no bounds. While a lot of people will simply imput things into a builder or template (hell, the first iteration of this site was from an internet website template I found that someone created, and some of the bones of the website builder I used for the current iteration can still be found, but I made a point to make it my own work.) most people will be incredibly creative. If someone would want to make a site that looks like it came from 1999 with shitty html and all, why should you care? How would you be able to tell if it's 'mining' for nostalgia or just how the webmaster envisioned it? (Though, I would make sure my site was readable first and foremost.) The internet and life as a whole welcomes people who are incredibly creative, and even if you don't do it for anyone else besides yourself, you're still creating something. Though, I don't find myself interested in a lot of other things people are. I saw an argument that not everyone needs a personal website, and I would agree, but it leads down a road of self doubt in if you're "interesting" or "good" enough to have a personal website.

I've been thinking about myself a lot lately, especially how I see others in my life and how I see myself. I'm not an extrovert, (because I hate people), nor an introvert (I get very lonely). I've been told that I'm somewhat of an extroverted misanthrope, and I'm starting to identify with that 'label'. I crave being friends with people, though I have no tolerance for stupid people, or people who don't respect me. I don't like going through that process of figuring out if someone would be a good friend (let alone romantic partner), only to figure out that they're insufferable behind closed doors. I've been told I come off as not caring about most social cues (since I am a flavor of "neurodivergent") which is in part true, since some of this shit is dumb as all hell, but it seems to have put a crack in my personal life. Lots to think about. Humans are social animals at their core, and many positives come from having a good network of people surrounding you who truly care about you, but it seems that it's hard to come by. I'm in college currently and have yet to make any true, good connections with anyone. It is, in all honesty, kind of my fault, in a way. That's something to unpack later, I think.

- Today marks one whole year on Testosterone for me. I feel a lot happier than last year, at least. It's a bit tricky to really put my emotions down in text because I can't identify them by myself in the first place but I'm really glad I started T. I feel a lot better in my body and I always love seeing the changes I'm going through. (Though, not a fan of having to give away most of my clothes because they don't fit anymore >_>) I feel myself getting stronger too, especially biking around. I finally got off my ass and uploaded a lot of my older and more current art to the site. It was a bit tricky to find my older works though, since I've gone through like 3 computers in the past 5 years, but alas. I was suprised with how much I've improved these past few years, though I do regret 'giving up' (I wouldn't say giving up is the right word here. I just stopped doing it) on animations since like, 2020. I did have a lot of fun making them and it helped me get OC ideas out but I haven't had the drive to make any more. (Also the fact that sony vegas just like, doesn't want to work on my laptop.) All in all, I do have a lot of regrets in my life but what is life if we don't fuck up a bit? I am finally starting to see the beauty of small things within this world.

- Finally decided to remake the old blog- with a new style! My previous blog was coded with duct tape and hopes and didn't really like working correctly. I don't have much planned for this side of things, though. Currently I've just been poking at things on this site- hopefully getting to the game archive side of things... eventually! it's taking a while.