greetings thatoddhaystack shareholders. bit of a late meeting this time around due to scheduling conflicts; and as such there are not any complimentary snacks this time around. I’ll also only be talking about june stuff here because… I want to hopefully draft and post a july post on time instead of only posting it [looks at bare wrist] the third week of the month.
events
hanacon
one of the first things I did in june was go to hanacon! yeah, yeah, I know I had sworn off cons for this year. but this one was just a one day affair, fairly inexpensive (compared to how katsucon has decimated me in the past), and also I felt the need to inject some Nerd Culture into my life. sue me. I also wanted to wear kagamine rin astray out to another convention, and I knew one of the exhibitors in the game room so I thought it would be nice to go and say hi to them (lichen lab games, showcasing fleshwalk)
I was a bit late in getting to the convention, so I thought I would miss the first panel I wanted to see that day (on itabags), but thankfully the panel was a bit delayed so I slid in just in time and got to jumpscare everyone with my zenos itabag. very proud of this cursed artifact. afterwards I went to the opening ceremonies, which I usually skip out on, but I enjoyed them at hanacon. they had a lion dance performance that went on for a while that was cool… I walked around the merch hall for a bit and didn’t buy a ton of things, but did end up with an axolotl plushie from one of the vendors b/c I bought axolotl earrings for my sibling and mentioned that they love axolotls, so the vendor offered the axolotl plush on their booth to me for free. wahoo! to be clear, it’s not like a handmade plush but just one they were trying to offload from their personal collection. wild things happening at artist alleys yall.
another thing I did at hanacon that I usually skip out on was the maid cafe! I had not purchased a ticket for it but they did have a small amount of walking each session, so I was able to squeak my way in. the maid cafe was really fun!! I came in with zero expectations lol. I had a slice of chocolate cake and a little glass of pink lemonade, and the maids had two dance performances during the session. we also played jenga at our table, and I lost one round and got bonked :pensive: all in good fun though. I got a photo with the maid serving our table as a commemorative memory… having experience the maid cafe now I definitely think I would like to try to attend another session at a different con!
I ate lunch outside of the con, and one of my small criticisms here is that because the con was fairly small, there wasn’t a saturation of cosplayers in the surrounding areas. meaning, I was the only person in cosplay at the chipotle and people were Absolutely staring at me. it comes with the costume though so I wasn’t too bothered. a few people ended up asking me if there was an event in the area and I got to tip them off to hanacon so. free advertising for the con LOL.
I attended a “vtuber creation” panel hosted by nixieroid. vtubing isn’t something that I am super determined to get into, but I think that drawing and rigging models could be fun, and also if I ever do like, occasional casual game streams I would want a vtuber or pngtuber avatar to represent me over a face cam. the panel did inform me of some free/low cost tools for vtubing so that was nice! I spent some time afterwards bouncing around the con, saying hi to lichen labs in the game room and people watching. I stayed for the cosplay contest, and the very first perfomance was an amazing display of baton twirling and gymnastics… super impressive! it was a high bar for the other performers to be sure LOL. I brought a lightstick so I was able to cheer along to some of the idol performances… all together a fun time!! I expected there to be some kind of closing ceremony, but instead they just kicked us out of the room to make space for the dance, so I took the time to get dinner outside of the con.
by that point I was pretty tired, so I poked my head in to take a look at the dance, saw it was Pretty Empty, and decided to make my way home where I just crashed LOL. the next day I was pretty tired too… getting old….
overall I thought hanacon was really fun!! I am unsure if I will go next year though, as they moved venues and also expanded to two days instead of one, when I really liked that it was just a one day con so I had a weekend day to recharge… much to think about…
new york
at the end of june I went to visit my mom in new york city for a few days. technically this visit went into july but it feels like it would be silly to only talk about half of the trip now and then finish it next month. I was in new york for (basically) three and a half days and I did so many things… so I will just hit the highlights here. including my walk from the bus on friday, I walked 28 miles in total… which isn’t actually the furthest I’ve walked in a trip to new york! I’ve capped out at 30 miles. but I did break my previous record for most miles walked in a day by a little bit by walking 11 miles in a day. needless to say my legs were toast afterwards LMAO. only got one blister though out of it!
I saw wicked on broadway for the first time in a long while… it used to be the broadway show my family would see every time we visited new york, and I got really stupid emotional at it… did not survive defying gravity or for good…. i was pretty much bawling during the last 20 minutes. in a good way though! it was cathartic. also the actresses playing elphaba and glinda like straight up almost kissed at one point. happy pride!
I visited the bandai namco store in brooklyn and was pleasantly surprised with the variety of gachapon they had there! I got suckered into gambling on several of the mini food themed ones, but I think my favorite was a gacha for ib! i still remember more than a decade ago when I played the game for the first time… and it’s wild to see that it’s gotten to the point where I can purchase ib merchandise in america (granted, it’s one gacha machine in one store, but for a tiny indie japanese rpgmaker game that’s incredible to me)
when I stopped by kinokuniya this time, they had a sort of mini pop-up of alien stage merchandise! I was totally surprised by this, and spent maybe too much time debating what to purchase… I settled on just a luka standee and plushie, so that he could join my collection of blonde freaks. I have dio and zenos plushies, and maybe someday I will get a zenya plush also so that I can truly complete my circle of blonde freaks…. I also saw the look back artbook for sale which I didn’t end up buying because it was out of my budget at the time, but I’m still thinking about it… I might end up buying it someday.
projects
june was actually a pretty productive month! what I did /not/ end up doing was finishing otome jam, but our team is pivoting to the interactive fiction competition, which is due at the end of august. please look forward to it!
ghost jam 2025
the main thing I did in this month outside of working on otome jam was ghost jam 2025! I just made one ghost this year, caged fly. the premise of caged fly is that the user is an urban explorer who stumbles upon beelzebub in the basement of an abandoned house. beelzebub is trapped in a summoning circle as the result of an aborted ritual, and tries to convince the user to make a contract with him… I recruited decomakke again to draw the shell art for the ghost while I took care of the writing and coding. this time around, I did rough out a design prior to the jam that I passed to deco, who made adjustments for the shell art. I also wrote a rough outline of my writing ideas for the ghost before the jam. I wrote bubs in aosora, which presented its own set of challenges but was novel to work with.
overall, I am pretty pleased with how bubs turned out. I intend on writing a larger post mortem of my work and a general review of all the ghosts submitted soon (tm), so please look forward to that if you want to hear more of my development thoughts.
other things
I mentioned this in june’s entry, but through june and july I assisted with organizing the no sleep for kaname date fanart countdown! and I’ll break my rule of saying I won’t talk about july’s events here because the final piece for the project was posted today. we organized a collaborative piece with 40 different artists drawing a different version of iris to be collaged into one picture. I and another mod did the background and composition of the piece, and I am extremely satisfied with the results. I drew a granblue fantasy version of iris for the collab! I also finished and posted my piece for the main countdown. with day 17 I drew a parody of a mickey 17 poster with kaname date and saito and I am sooooo happy with how it turned out. there were for sure some challenges in running the countdown, but overall I am really proud of everyone who contributed art and all the other mods who made sure everything ran (mostly) smoothly. and also myself for sticking to a project for more than a week.
in june I also completed a long time project to update my ffxiv oc carrie’s textures to dawntrail! in endwalker I had almost perfected their modded textures, and with dawntrail breaking it entirely I wanted to update their textures for a whileeee but was just too demotivated to do so. I basically had to redraw their facial textures from scratch because the uv maps changed significantly, but their body textures were easier. of course, very recently a ffxiv modder I follow dropped new neck scar textures that I want to cannibalize for carrie (since while I did make a neck scar for them I am very much an amateur in this area so it doesn’t look The Best). really it was mostly just tedious to figure out the new quirks of dawntrail textures. but now I have my little freak back :-)
I worked a little bit more on the ukagaka wiki and knocked out another couple of pages! and also wrote a small guide on using sharex to simplify the process of taking screenshots for the wiki. it’s currently just in the ukagaka dream team discord but I would like to put it on the wiki… soon…
favorites
bring her back
I watched a bunch of horror movies in june, and bring her back just beats out titane as my favorite for the month. it could have been that since I caught it in theaters I had that going for it over titane which I just watched at home. either way! bring her back was incredibly bleak, but had moments of comedy throughout that kept it from being an absolute downer. the actors were great, and while the plot was a little shakey at times it was alright to just let things in the movie happen. had a very distinctive feel to it, which is something that always excites me about a horror movie.
fat gengy
it took almost an entire year, but in june I finally completed my goal of getting to bed on time for 100 days. and I loveeeeee giant fat gengy plush. he is so soft and squishable and i love his stupid little tiny limbs. worth every penny!!
i wanna be here - deathbrain
in june I was in another breakcore phase, and I kept coming back to this one song by the artist deathbrain. there’s something so ethereal about i wanna be here…. it feels like the musical equivalent of a cool drink of water. a very good song to turn up the volume to and just lie down and dissolve to. helped to quiet the racing thoughts I had more than a few times in june.
future plans
here’s the part where I would tell you what I plan to do in july. except well… as of writing this it is currently the end of the third week of july. and I’m going on a (much needed) vacation next week. so spoiler alert, I had plans for this month, but I didn’t end up doing nearly as much as I did in june… I think honestly a combination of dealing with work stresses (which I’d rather not talk about) and also still trying to push myself as hard as I did in june led to me burning myself out… I am looking forward to having a full week off from work though! that’s something I haven’t had in. years. hoping to take some time to engage in analog hobbies (watercolor, crocheting, touching grass) so I can come back well rested for august.