12-30-2023: A Recap of 2023 and A New Year Ahead
(Warning: This blog mentions politics, TERFs, swearing, the Israel-Hamas war, Donald Trump and some heavy stuff. Please take care before reading on.)
Finally, the year is about to come to the end. It’s been 3 1/2 months since I made a Neocities account and website, now I have about 58,000 views and 88 followers! This made me feel great as I never thought my website grew as big as it did. As I mention on my birthday blog in September, most of this year wasn’t that good due to quitting my toxic job and getting scammed in January (on the same day too), having problems looking for a job to the point I just give up because the job market sucks right now and that I had a meltdown in March over getting rejected from receiving SSI due to having a job (that I quit two months prior). But after suffering from another meltdown in May due to hating the fact that I’m lonely and have no friends (beside my family), things have been mostly calm.
In June, I joined Tumblr when Reddit killed the 3rd party apps, which caused mods to shut down their subreddits to protest and people to flee out of disgust. On Tumblr, I feel more welcome and comfortable, compared to being on Reddit as I don’t have to worry about being attacked in the comments for liking things. Stuff like that is the reason why I don’t post and comment on Reddit as much due to fear of backlash. Meanwhile at Tumblr, I post mostly daily, have over 120 followers from reblogging posts and I don’t get any hate on my comments as people there tend to be more open-minded. Of course, there were times things got political (as Tumblr is a left leaning site) to the point I have to mute some words in the following tab to keep my mental health in check. Next year is the 2024 Election, which I hear it’s going to be as ugly as both the 2016 and 2020 Election. I know that I’m planning to get off of most social media accounts, 2-3 weeks before Election Day for the sake of my mental health.
Three months later, I joined Neocities to make a website, just in case Tumblr collapsed. At first, I had to relearn how to make website after forgetting it 11 years ago, from a web design class that I took in high school. Eventually, I got a hang on to it and now website is looking nice! I was quite thankful to have a website when I heard rumors back in November that Tumblr is going to shut down due to upper management deciding to reduce the @staff team to a skeleton closet, which managed to scare some people (including me). Those rumors were later squashed by the CEO, saying that it's not true as he did it due to too many people working there, which brings down the quality of the site. But he then promised that he’ll and the reduced @staff team will work to make the hellsite better in the future. Of course, some people were skeptic over his response and decided to make accounts on different sites, just in case the worst happen.
On Neocities, I met some cool people from looking at their websites and joined a few webrings. Later on, I found out that one of the webrings that I joined is secretly a TERF webring (which they don’t mention in it, but have some members who are TERFs)! A user here called them out and even wrote a blog about it. I was rightfully disgusted over the screenshots that I read on the blog as the people in them were calling trans people slurs, which I won’t say for reasons. It was thanks to the user and their blog, I deleted the webring in question from my website, wrote an email to the owner to remove my website from their ring and to not contract me again! Okay, the last one was a bit of an over reach, but after getting scammed 3 times in the past 1 1/2 year, I’m doing this to protect myself from getting fooled again.
Now, I have to be careful when looking at webrings and people’s website because some of them can have nasty views, which will make me (and others) feel uncomfortable. I even have to unfollow and block a user here because not only they defended J.K. Rowling for her TERF views on their blog, but also call a trans woman “a man who claims to be a woman”! This angers me as a cis woman as I feel terrible for trans people who have to deal with transphobic people who scolded them for challenging gender norms, which makes them feel uncomfortable. It also doesn't help that there's even transphobic politicians who passed laws in the last few years that make their lives miserable!
Even if I try to scan out anything bad on people’s website, some of them are good in covering it well to the point it won’t hit us until it’s too late. There are some sites here that I won’t follow because there is something about them that rub me the wrong way, but I don’t know why. Even if their website looks so good and cute, I can’t trust them without proof that they’re not terrible!
As for my webcomic, it’s on a hiatus due to both burnout and suffering from art block. It sucks that this has to happen. But this is what happened you have a short attention span, you rather focus on something new than stuff that you like to do (like this website….). Well not really, but that’s a bad habit of mine as I tend to abandon things as soon I see anything shiny. I’ll get back to my webcomic one day, it just I need to get motivated again.
On a somewhat brighter note, I beat 20 games this year which includes the remake version of Super Mario RPG, which was as good as the original game. I even beat that secret boss with no trouble! Other games that I beat in the last 3 months include Suika Game, Papers, Please, Unpacking and Katawa Shoujo. The last game caused me to think of ideas of making a visual novel. An “American Version” of Katawa Shoujo, but takes place in 2011 and mention state politics (not the bad kind) and pop culture. I don’t know, it’s in writing mode right now and I’m trying to write out the prologue right now. But my executive dysfunction doesn’t allow me to write in one sitting. So, I have to do it bit by bit, just like my webcomic (grrr….).
Meanwhile, I managed to watch 10 anime this year too as most of them aired this year. One of them included the final season of Attack on Titans, which was known to have a shitty ending when the manga concluded in 2021. It managed to piss off the manga readers to the point the anime viewers have to keep their expectations low when the finale aired in November. Turns out the anime alter some of the more controversial scenes from the manga that made the readers mad. Because of that, the anime viewers had a better reaction to the ending, but agreed that it wasn’t as good, like the manga readers said. Then there are some anime viewers who never read the manga, even wondered what the manga did to anger half the fanbase in the first place!
Other anime that I watched include “Oshi no Ko”, which got big due to a huge plot twist in the first episode. Season 6 of My Hero Academia was a huge improvement, compared to the last 2 seasons due to the animation. But I heard that people complained about the blue skies in the anime ruined the gloomy atmosphere of some scenes, compared to the manga. Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt became my first ecchi series, which was a love letter to western cartoons that aired in the late 90s’-2000s’. Pluto is a retelling of an Astro Boy arc, but it’s a crime thriller and has some allegory to the Middle Eastern war in the 2000s’ (which make sense that the manga was released in 2003 during the Iraq war). Lastly, I watched Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, where it’s different from both the live action movie and the graphic novel (which I never watch or read, but heard about it) due to a huge plot twist in the first episode.
For real life, nothing of interest happened, beside my youngest niece “moved out”. As in leaving her clothes and stuff here and instead crashing at one of her friends’ place, but she doesn’t have any problems at home to cause her to leave. It just ‘cus. I don’t know, I tried to stay out of people’s business. And for the cold I mention on both my status.cafe and on my last blog, turns out I got from my nephew instead of my older sister, which caused both me and her to get sick from him! But I did heard that she later gave to her boss, which complained it sucked and now know why my sister called out sick (my sister rarely takes days off unless it’s for a good reason).
I don’t know what’s going to happen next year, but I’m already dreading it. Next year is Election year and it’s already going to shit. Especially, thanks to President Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war by handing weapons to the Israel government, which they managed to bomb the shit out of Gaza and killed over 21,000 Palestinians, whom most were women and children. Because of that, most of everyone in my age group (18-29) are refusing to vote for him in the upcoming primary and general election and are thinking about voting either 3rd party or not voting at all! Because of that, Donald Trump might end up as president again if things go the way things are right now (and if he doesn’t plead guilty to the 91 charges he has over his involvement to the January 6th Insurrection). I’m one of those people who won’t vote for Biden for the upcoming election for that reason and will be voting for a 3rd party for the first time in my life. I hope the war will end soon….
As for real life, I’ll try again to apply for SSI since next week will mark one year since I quit my job and will be enough to have me approved (the main reason I’m applying is to get health insurance since I’m on my mom’s and she’s planning to retire in a few years). I’ll try to keep the vegetables in our greenhouse in the backyard from dying like I did the past 2 summers due to living in Texas. I’ll continue to improve my coding, writing and drawing skill so I can make better things for myself and for others to see. I’ll also get the chance to see the Total Eclipse since where I live, is the perfect spot for it (it’s where the Solar Eclipse also took place in October).
My gaming and anime goals for the upcoming year are going to stay the same by watching and playing 10 of each. I’ll try to play longer games that I have on my backlogging list, such as Final Fantasy VIII Remastered, which I started in 2020, played on and off for 2 years and got walled by the opening boss of Act 4 before giving up. Quitting the game caused me to play Fire Emblem: Three Houses instead. Oops. This time, I’ll learn to not grind too much as it’s one of those games where when you level up, the enemies level up too (one of the reasons why I quit is because I made the main character, too powerful and not have strong weapons to beat the boss). And to play that card game side quest, so I don’t have to grind for parts anymore as the right cards can do that for you.
For anime, I’ll try to watch the new breakout series of the season when I can because I’m usually slow about like. Like when “Oshi no Ko” was the breakout series in Spring 2023 season (and people on Reddit won’t shut up about it), it took me almost 3 weeks after the first episode air to finally watch it. Same thing with Pluto as it took me a month after it aired in the Fall 2023 season and people raved about the series on Reddit and various pop cultures that cover anime. Problem is executive dysfunction keeps me from doing it and due to having a short attention span. It’s the reason why my anime backlogging list is very long as some of the anime are too long for me to watch. And that my mind tends to have a short attention span and rather do other things instead.
As for this website, I’ll continue to add more pages for my Shrine and the Misc. page. I’ll add more themes to the landing and the homepage as Valentine’s Day and Easter is coming up. I’ll try to update and improve my website as much as I can and might even add more stuff to it. I’ll try to continue my webcomic (which I refuse to abandon) and do something about writing out plot line for my visual novel. I should read more books since 2023 was the first time I read a classic book since the 12th grade. Same thing with manga since I started a small collection of manga in early 2023 and also with webcomic too since I tend to abandon them real quick for some reason.
Overall, I have mixed reaction over the next year as my main concern is the Election and what’s going to happen in November in case things goes south. With me planning to play more long games, watching more anime, probably watch more movies and TV shows, read more books, manga and webcomic, it’ll help me keep myself from reading the news all the time. Same thing at home with the gardening as I’m hoping I can grow something for once. I did in 2022 with the tomato plants, but it too die in the Texas heat. At least next year, I’ll be a bit productive on somethings…or not. And one more thing: #FreePalestine.
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