come one, come all, my little noalings. i'm here to tell a tale of loss. with a twist!come one, come all, my little noalings. i'm here to tell a tale of loss. with a twist!
now, context. i, like many modern 20-somethings, have a smartphone. although, i don't much like using it. i'll use it to call, text and occasionally browse tumblr. maybe the occasional game when i'm waiting for something and somehow forgot to bring my 3DS.
i especially don't like using my phone for taking photos. never have. so, i decided recently to upgrade from taking photos with my 3DS to a small point-and-shoot digital camera.
after some research, i had settled on a nikon coolpix L18 as my camera of choice. compact, yet could still do what i needed done. so i found a reasonably priced one on ebay and bought it!
i was at universal studios the day it was to be at my door
(more on that later) so i was positively itching that whole day to get home and play around with my new toy!
oh boy.
it arrived to me, no kidding, wrapped in christmas paper. it was literally just the camera box covered in wrapping paper and taped within an inch of its life. i suspect this is the cause of my later issues.
the camera seems fine, as does everything it came with. so i chuck a couple AA's in and take it for a spin.
i took a few photos of a lucky find from universal and then go to turn it off. i come back to it a little while later, turn it on, and-
(!) Lens Error
and then the thing shuts off.
okay. that's new. the lens is still open even though the camera is off, and i can't use it at all due to this "lens error." i do some googling to find this is actually a pretty common problem caused by dirt getting caught into the lens and making it not able to close.
"easy fix," i thought, ignorant to the horrors "i'll just dust it"
dusting does nothing. the paper trick does nothing. gently nudging the lens back into place doesn't even apply in this case because the lens is fine otherwise. nothing works.
an hour passes. as i'm trying a fix i'm sure will work (the symptoms match my camera and it seems promising)
pop
the metal bit that allows the shutters to close on the tip of the lens falls off. i want to make it clear i was not even putting pressure on it at that point. it just chose to do that, i guess. *my best silver the hedgehog impression* great!
i tried for another hour to fit the piece back onto the camera before having a full autistic shutdown. after calming myself down, i requested a refund which, thankfully, was accepted. it's now in transit back to its original owner.
that was yesterday. this morning i was on ebay again, hunting down another coolpix when my mom goes "hey, i think we solved your problem" and comes in with the box of a canon powershot A2300. my childhood camera that i thought hadn't survived our move was sitting on my bed, its battery charging.
all stories have to have a good ending, right? now to wrap up this post, some photos taken from said canon, as well as that cool find from universal!
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see, this icon made a lot more sense when this blog was going to be posted yesterday... oh, well.
long time no blog! sorry i've been M.I.A outside of site updates recently. i just don't think i've had much to say as of late. since it's 2023, i've been using my hobonichi almost every day to write in!
for those who don't know, hobonichi is a japanese company specializing in stationery and journal-style planners. i have been using hobonichi off and on since the start of the pandemic, i'm pretty sure? either way, they're amazing little things!
journaling is a very useful coping mechanism for me; both my memory and general mood i feel have improved since i started doing it again at the beginning of this year. =)
here is my setup, BTW! one thing hobonichi is known best for is their MOTHER/earthbound themed planner covers. i re-used this cover from about a year or two ago, since i love it so, so much! the clay style of the MOTHER series is so heartwarming to me.
fun fact: hobonichi the company, is owned by shigesato itoi, A.K.A the creator of the MOTHER series!
that isn't the only thing i want to talk about, though !!! ...................................
did you all see that nintendo direct!?!?
i know, i know ... i am incredibly late talking about it, but this and last week has been so busy i haven't really had time to blog along with everything i was doing on moonview at the time! ok, ok, ok.
i'm known to be a bit of a nintendo apologist, but wow, was this direct amazing! i don't think a single person came out disappointed. freaking etryian odyssey 1, 2 and 3 got remade, fantasy life is getting a sequel, we finally have a trailer for pikmin 4, a metroid prime remaster out of nowhere, tears of the kingdom comes out this year, and PROFESSOR LAYTON IS BACK !!!
i wish i was joking, but i actually got light-headed from the excitement of a new professor layton game... that series means quite a bit to me!
the splatoon DLC also blew me away! call me a sucker if you want, but being able to return to inkopolis plaza almost got me teary-eyed. it's functionally a reskin of splatsville, but i'm honestly fine with that. splatsville is really big and impressive but it's also needlessly confusing to traverse I.M.O :/
and the "side order" story looks like it's going to be amazing, too! octo expansion in splatoon 2 is possibly one of the best stories in the series. agent 8 is an incredibly compelling character so i can't wait to see more of her!
i guess the last interesting, blog worthy thing that happened to me recently was the other day when i got 2 5-star's back to back in genshin impact. i got hu tao in 20 pulls, had enough to get 10 more, pulled on her weapon banner and got lost prayer in a single 10-pull!
i'm having so much fun playing hu tao, and lost prayer is best-in-slot for klee (my main) so it all worked out perfectly for me!
happy new year !!!
well, new years eve, but you know what i mean. last journal entry of the year and all. i never made a christmas blog post, so why don't i talk about that now?
i got a meta quest 2 this year! how cool is that? my parents haven't really done big gifts like that in a long while, i especially didn't expect it this year. family financial issues and the sort. though i'm not great showing it in person, i'm incredibly grateful for such a gift...
i was also given a carrying case for it which i'm even more thankful for in hindsight. a good chunk of my friends had VR already and i'm learning a lot, mainly to keep that thing out of any sort of direct light, since it'll harm the lenses. and, yeah. moonview has been silent this week because i've been toying with the quest a bunch, and subsequently dealing with VR sickness.
VR sickness is no joke! i've had maybe 3-4 real play sessions since christmas and i've had to take days long breaks between them due to how bad it can be, depending on what i am doing.
the game i've played the most probably is gorilla tag. which, funny story, i actually have two copies of technically. the version native to the quest has no accessibility features to speak of, which i need in order to play most games, VR especially. my other copy is on steam, which has a "world scale" setting that actually allows me to play the game due to my lacking range of motion.
i got two games for free with my quest, resi 4 and beatsaber! i haven't tried resi yet, but beatsaber is really fun despite how bad i am at it! :D i think i'm going to try resi once i get my "VR legs" as my friends like to call it. i still get sick easily, so if i can barely handle funny monkey game i don't think i'll be able to handle a shooty thriller game anytime soon.
i also beat starfy 1 recently! i understood, like, 80% of the game so i feel like i had a good grasp on the major plot elements. it was really fun and i'm so sad we never got it state-side. i'd really reccomend it, you don't entirely need to understand the dialogue to have a good time with this incredibly looked-over platformer.
i've started the 2nd game since, and it's just as good as the first one so far. i'll report back on that once i've finished it!
i'll leave you with this, dear reader. something i always come back to on new years. it's super nostalgic for me, so i want to share it with all of you reading.
so, SADs, huh?
seasonal affective disorder, or seasonal depression, is a killer. it never fails that every year as the weather begins to change, so does my mood, in often disasterous ways.
i have been feeling it especially hard recently. i have been on my winter break for a few weeks now, and as such i have time to process everything that happened during my fall term. i returned to this community, i immediately got swept up in the biggest drama i've ever seen both on and off site, i have been dealing with my own personal revelations in regards to many things.
so it's just all been snowballing. i don't really "take" anything for my mental health, because other than this, my conditions aren't treatable via medication.
i have taken up my daily exercise routine, and i am also writing this blog post as a form of "coping" for lack of a better term. once i find the energy i'll no doubt start drawing again, too. meditation also greatly helps me.
it's a bit funny, isn't it? how the official term for seasonal depression is acronymized as "SAD." probably less funny and more fitting, actually.
but, to make myself happier, the rest of this blog will be about a project i took up once my semester ended: finally getting around to modding my gameboy advance.
here it is! the guts of my very old, original GBA put into a happy new shell, with new parts across the board. i am incredibly happy with how this turned out!
i used the brand funnyplaying for both the shell, buttons and contacts, and i gotta say, this brand is amazing! the colors are super vibrant, the buttons are great feeling and overall i've had 0 problems.
for the screen, i got an IPSv2 kit. it's a backlit screen that allows for optional brightness controls that require a bit of soldering to get working. my dad and i spent a few hours one night putting it all together, it was incredibly fun!
here it is playing 伝説のスタフィー (the legendary starfy), which i decided to get after i completed this mod! i have all 3 starfy on the GBA, and i'm loving them!
and just today i aquired a lith-io battery pack mod. this one was by far the easiest to install, i quite literally just fit it into the battery compartment and it works like a dream!
here is a photo of that. it charges via USB-C and feeds the insanely power-hungry IPS screen! if any of you, dear readers, plan to mod your GBA like i have done, this battery mod is a must buy.
kind of a moonview patented tonal-shift, but i hope you will all understand. i needed to talk about these two very disperate subjects to keep my brain in perfect balance, lest i start doomscrolling twitter as a form of self harm.
finally hopefully a shorter entry today. i really do like to hear myself talk, i guess, but it gets too much even for me sometimes! anyway, i went to the book store today and wanted to do something of a "haul" post, because i'm really excited to talk about what i got!
first, i got the second book in the "a starless clan" arc of warriors! you may or may not have seen one of my older blog posts about this arc, on who i think could have been involved with, or have knowledge about, mistystar, reedwhisker and curlfeather's deaths. this is the second book in the arc that came out earlier this month, and i'm incredibly excited to read it!
i might even make a follow-up to that post once i'm done with the book to see if it confirmed or denied any of my theories.
before i get to my favorite find, i'll talk a bit about some of the other stuff i got. i found an among us blind box (got the white crewmate w/ the chef's hat!) and a small simple dimple i can fit into my backpack! i always carry around a few stim toys and this one is honestly perfect.
now ...
WHO WAS GOING TO TELL ME THEY FINALLY LOCALIZED SHONEN NOTE?!?!?!?! WHO ?!?!!?!
for those unaware, shonen note is a series written by yuhki kamatani, an agender mangaka! they also happened to write one of my favorite series of all time, nabari no ou. they have a few other series, notably our dreams at dusk, hiraeth: the end of the journey, and of course, shonen note, also known as boy soprano.
they must have only started publishing it in america recently, the date on my copy says 2022! that's this year, baby!
it also was the only copy on the shelf at my particular store. i was lucky to arrive when i did, or else it might have not been there!
if you've never read any of kamatani's work, i highly reccomend you do. they have a beautiful artstyle and their stories are very touching. and, if you're one of those types who seek out media with diverse casts for the sake of it, nabari no ou has a canonical gay character, asexual character and intersex character. have fun!
10/31/2022
happy halloween !!!
yesterday, i was in orlando celebrating both halloween (and my mothers birthday), by going to halloween horror nights at universal studios! i would like to talk a bit about that today. :)
i wish i had taken more pictures, but i was so engrossed by the atmosphere (hint: i don't like taking pictures on my smartphone, and i left my 3DS at the hotel.) that i forgot to! i will provide links and things when i can, though, to give a better picture.
the good bits:
the atmosphere! it truly feels amazing to be there. especially the scare zones. for those who don't know, scare zones are areas set up during HHN where there are scare actors roaming around with the regular crowd, and if you go in without a staff escort, you consent to getting the piss scared out of you. the most memorable moment has to be in the "sweet revenge" zone (in the new york area), where an actor walked up and was following us for a bit, before getting close to me and screaming "HAPPY HALLOWEEN!" it did scare me, and that's the point!
the houses! one of the other draws of HHN are the haunted houses that are set up. we were only able to go through about 4 of them (legends collide, descendants of destruction, bugs! eaten alive, & dead man's pier: winter's wake) before midnight, which was when we left.
below will be a short description and rating of each house, plus a video of a walkthrough of said house, in the order that we went through them.
you're guided through scenes featuring the classic horror monsters dracula, the mummy and the wolfman. this one was really fun! a few of the scares did catch me off guard, which added to that. it was short but sweet.
you find yourself in an abandoned subway, being chased by post-apocalyptic, deformed, once-human monsters before escaping through a cave, filled with mutated mushroom creatures. this was one of the better ones, the set design was intense. the smell of cooking meat in the human-meat market section was such a grossly cool touch!
a new pest control technique turns a once comforting 50s home into a living nightmare. i was all but coerced into going into this one, haha. i hate bugs !! but, mom won and we went in together. it was downright horrifying! not in a good way, either. i enjoyed the plot for what it was, and it was really well done, but it just wasn't for me. i am glad i did it, though.
dead man's pier: winter's wake
a sleepy new england town is ravaged by the ghosts of sailors long past, wanting to exact their revenge. this was, by far, the best house at HHN. most of the big scares take place towards the end, which really lets you sink into the atmosphere, which is BEAUTIFULLY done. there are a lot more open areas as opposed to the other houses we went through. i would have gone through it twice, had it not have been one of the most popular houses there. it never went under an hour wait!
the only thing i didn't much like was how loud it could get. i brought my noise cancelling headphones because i expected that would be the case, but even with them on it felt like my ears were going to burst in some places! normally, i only use my headphones during rides, and i'm fine out in the park itself, but not so during HHN! towards the end of the night i got quite overwhelmed and had them on until we were on the bus back to our hotel.
otherwise, i had a great time! i would encourage anybody with the means and desire to go to check it out next year! the jury's still out on whether or not we'll be going next year or not, but i think it would be fun to. our hotel was quite nice too, but that has little to nothing to do with the point of this blog, so i will just leave it at that.
i hate art block so much.
i hate having so many ideas while having none at the same time. that last piece i put out, ostensibly a vent piece based on recent events, took me the better part of a week to complete because it's just so tiring. not that art is tiring, but moreso the creative process is killing me. i don't plan to quit art anytime soon, but i'm going through a bit of a rut. i need to try a new style, or a new method or something. i need to "break out of my comfort zone" as it were, to challenge myself maybe?
i love art. it means so much to me and it's so important to me i'd never think of quitting it, but maybe an extended break is worth it. i have been getting into writing as of late, so maybe i should try to explore that more? i know where all of this stems from, so i guess i might just need more time to process it fully?
social media killed my artistic drive. i've only recently come to realize that. i want to get it back, but the twitter artist in my brain keeps yelling at me that if i don't draw this character from a show i'm watching or that character from a game i like i'll never get attention, and when i finally get attention i can start drawing my own designs. but that isn't the case anymore. just opening SAI makes me feel sick sometimes from feeling like i need to draw something and post it that week or i'll lose followers.
not that i even liked any of the people who followed me, or had any relationship with the majority of them. they were just a number that went up and down depending on what i said or did. if you've never posted your art on platforms like twitter this may sound silly to you, but whenever i'd get 0 interaction on a post i'd feel genuinely empty.
not to mention twitters generally toxic and horrible atmosphere. i had a mutual follower who would PM me without fail at least once a week to let me know that "oh crazy frog is bad, you need to unfollow them," or "oh, this furry artist drew something this 14 year old found uncomforting, you need to block them." it was so tiring and honestly anxiety-inducing to see a "1" over my PM's and think "oh god, what did i do this time?" upon blocking them when i grew too tired and too anxious to even open twitter for a while, i lost about 3 or 4 other followers who all mutually followed me and them.
i honestly don't expect to make anymore art this year, probably. maybe over my winter break, or thanksgiving break, but not right now. i need to do some more soul searching, i need to meditate more, i need guidance, i think.
i just needed to get my thoughts out tonight. thanks for reading, if you did.
so, i live in florida. and if you know anything about anything going on right now, you'll know that we just got hit by a hurricane. we didn't get hit too super bad, but i still wanna talk about it a bit.
surprisingly although ian was much weaker than irma, the last hurricane we had, we actually lost power for almost 24 hours. our entire area ended up losing power, but many places around us got theirs back way sooner than we did.
our phones have unlimited data so it wasn't that bad honestly. the worst thing was one of my professors forcing us to work through the hurricane!!
i received an email earlier this week about how there are "no snow days" and that "your work is due by sunday" ... and he has yet to reply to an email asking a question about that! my guess is that he lost power too, or that he doesn't check his emails when he's not at work. how do you expect your students to get their work done when we don't have power ?!?!?!
i ended up having to use the wi-fi hotspot on my phone in order to finish the work i had for that class. i did good on the exam, despite everything!
other than that, i ended up playing a lot on my 3DS last night because i wanted to save phone battery. i played a lot of futari wa pretty cure: arienaai! yume no sono wa daimeikyuu! and i gotta say, it's really fun!
it's a puzzle platformer on the GBA that honestly kinda reminds me of the klonoa games on the GBA! you control cure black and cure white through stages while collecting hearts and pretty cure cards and defeating enemies.
man, i really gotta start working on my pretty cure shrine...
i also found a card commune online for a pretty decent price, so i snatched it up really quick! it came with the card commune itself, the mepple/mipple faceplates and the carrying case, but no pretty cure cards.
well, it technically did come with a card, just not a pretty cure card. for some reason, the lot includes a heart card, which can only be used with the heartful commune from futari wa precure: max heart. so, it'll come in handy i guess if i ever decide to seek out a heartful commune!
kind of a weird change of topic from "talking about a hurricane" to "talking about one of my special interests" but whatever!! i just wanted to update everyone!!
hello hi! it's my birthday today!
i've never been good at talking about myself, but today i am 22. i'm not a fan of birthdays honestly, getting older is kinda scary. and i always feel like i'm never as "mature" as i should be at any given age. i honestly still feel like i'm 16. but that's okay, i've always been a late bloomer. i don't need to be something i'm not!
regardless! i want to talk about something i really like about birthdays! videogame birthday messages!
i honestly think they're not as talked about as they should be. i don't mean ones like the party you get on your birthday in animal crossing or something, those games are meant to be life simulations, so it makes sense you'd get something special on your birthday. i have a bunch of examples i got today from some of my favorite games to show you all!
1. smile precure! let's go marchen world!
this one is just so cute!!! pretty cure has been one of my biggest comfort shows since the beginning of 2020 and it's so sweet to see my favorite characters wishing me a happy birthday. i also got a screenshot of the birthday screen!
2. the legendary starfy
i remember discovering this one when i was way younger, and almost every year since i've played starfy on my birthday to see this screen! i remember being really shocked that this game even had a birthday message!
3. pokemon ultra moon/ultra sun
almost every pokemon has a birthday message, and i think the USUM one has to be one of my favorites! the music box theme that plays in the pokemon center is so sweet.
4. teddy together / kuma tomo
the tomo series have some of my favorite birthday messages. the games are just so healing and sweet! i play this game whenever i need to cheer up, and seeing this message was just what i needed today!
5. neko tomo
just like teddy together / kuma tomo, neko tomo's birthday message is just the sweetest! my favorite part was when my grey cat, madoka, thanked me for being alive (literally said "i'm glad you were born") and for taking care of her and my other cat, kohaku!
thank you all for the birthday wishes everyone, i hope this was an interesting read!!! 
ahh hello! everything has been redone ...
as you can tell, i basically remade the whole site. i'm much much happier with it now. i always feel the need to justify things which is something i'm trying to stop doing. i don't need to justify everything, and i don't need to justify changing my websites layout !!!
i say this because the original "first entry" on this new page was going to be me trying to explain why i needed to change the layout. but as i was brain storming what to say i realized that was a bad idea. moonview is my home, i don't need to explain why i want to do something to my own house. i wanted to do it because i wanted to, simple as that.
i will explain a bit about this page though, because i added some things:
the creative writing link will take you to, well, my writing! each story will have a little blurb and "tags" based on what the story is about. you'll have to click to read them. each story will have trigger warnings as applicable. i do want to keep this site somewhat SFW, so i will never post smut or the like.
the older entries link will take you to my previous blog, because i was too lazy to port everything over to the new layout. and i have 50GB of storage so who cares!
other than this, i have been watching a new anime! you can probably guess by the picture in my status box, but i have been watching alien9. i really like it! i really relate to yuri otani, the girl in my status box and the main character. i finished the manga last week and got around to watching the anime once school calmed down a bit.
oh yeah, school started too. my first in-person class went okay too! thank you to the person who sent me an email with suggestions on what to bring. :)