greetings shareholders. uhhhh I got some chips from the vending machine for your snacks this week. that’s about all the energy I got rn. unfortunately the curse of March in the vitaverse continues. somehow, for as long as I can remember, march has been the worst month for me. I dunno why or how. but the tldr is that a little midway through the month I had a major crashout at work and I am still feeling the repercussions of it now. whoops! this isn’t supposed to be a vent post now so uh. let’s quickly move past that….
march events
uhm <3 i didn’t actually do Events in march really. I had my FL trip at the very beginning of the month that I talked about last entry. and I had some Appointments. and I hung out with a friend near the end of this month. but for the most part I was staying home and working!! in part because the weather was so weird for most of the month I didn’t feel like I could confidentially plan excursions… and in part because I had spent a lot on pc parts and FL trip and I wanted to Pull Back on my spending a bit. here’s some pics of friend hangout lol. we got a little treat and then walked around the mall and found a store that sold labubu accessories.
it was!! tatum and dewey’s 3 year anniversary of their gotcha day this month!!! three years ago my sibling and I went to the shelter and came out with two terrified little goobers… and now we have two scrunklies living in our house. I love them more and more each day.
march projects
somehow even tho I had my Crashout I still got a lot done this month. tbh I think my crashout was so bad I just dissociated at some point and kept moving. no it’s not okay but we move LMAOOO.
probably the biggest thing I did was participate in etc. jam once again! this year a fellow dev (zichqec) had the idea of an open collaboration where all participants make something in accordance with a loose theme of “celestial mages”. I made a simple little freeshell of a mage and their familiar. I intend to add more to it, but for jam time constraints I was limited to just a range of expressions for the mage, blinking/talking animations for the mage, and a blinking animation for the bird. oh, there’s also an optional glasses dressup for the mage. entirely to my tastes haha. it was fun to participate in another mini jam like this where I get to feel deadline pressure to make!!! something!!! which I don’t always feel… and so projects languish in development hell for years… not so much with jams. you either do it or you don’t.
I published another oc profile! another one in my necromancerverse, bloom into death. this guy’s a plant necromancer who has plants growing in his body. they’re chill about it though. I also published my monthly blog post, kept up with my book clubs, and applied to more jobs. baby needs a new job NOW tbh.
I took care of a todo that was on my list for a longggg time, that being to put the contents of my Ebay Drawer… on ebay. my ebay drawer is what I colloquially call the drawer where I’ve been tossing extras from box splits and failed blind box pulls and other misc pieces of merch that I think I can sell. and I just never sat down and listed everything until this month. and like, I don’t particularly care how Long things take to sell, but obviously they can’t sell if they aren’t up on ebay!! so it feels good to finally. check that off.
I did my taxes. lol. boring adult task that takes way too long and stresses me out but if I don’t do it I’m fucked.
I’ve continued to pick at my horror visual novel. I’d estimate I’m about 80% done with the editing phase…? I’m hoping to finish my last editing pass Soon and then toss it back to my main editor for one more read through before I call the script Done. and then I can start making visuals in earnest.
I also added some pages to the english ukagaka wiki. I threw together a quick page for my etc. jam 2026 entry of course, and then also finally published a page for the ayaya VS code syntax plugin. I’m continuing to whittle away at the current wiki project even though its not my main focus right now.
lastly, I’ve been participating in a wol sticker trade through the mail! I made stickers of my two wols and have been sending them out to other participants! it’s really fun to have an excuse to use all the stationary I’ve hoarded over the years.
bingo checkin
time for another brief update on the goal bingo, going over squares I completed in march.
complete a physical craft: I got really into origami at the end of february and beginning of march, and I ended up working through an advent calendar of origami videos put together by someone on the wanikani forums. the videos are all in japanese, so I’m counting it as language practice also. I ended up putting almost everything I made up in my cubicle at work.
make a new recipe: somehow instagram figured out I love crab rangoons and has been showing me instagram reels of various crab rangoon inspired recipes, so I decided that maybe a sidequest this year is figuring out which of these recipes is The Best way to crab rangoon (or the best way to goon, although people don’t like me describing it as that for whatever reason). the recipe I made was for cream cheese rangoon rolls, except I added imitation crab to them because like, Duh. I accidentally bought spring roll wrappers instead of egg roll wrappers and I air fried them instead of baked them but they still turned out good I think. a decent level of crunch and a decent baseline for the (Ran)Goon Tier List.
put items up on ebay: I mentioned this earlier in this entry so I won’t repeat everything I’ve said. I did manage to sell something already though which is nice.
read a manga in japanese: I started reading the kuro manga in february, and am currently on volume three. it’s a little bit difficult to read, since this manga doesn’t have furigana, but I have enough kanji knowledge now that it hasn’t been too difficult to look up words. I do generally enjoy the manga. I’m not usually one for the “cute girls doing cute things” genre that a lot of easy japanese manga falls into, but kuro at least has a horror edge to it so it’s more interesting.
march faves
slay the spire 2
slay this spire and its sequel are games that I have no interest in playing myself, but I loveeeee watching other people play it. a ytuber I follow (john twolfe) posted several longform videos on him playing through the game and it just scratches something in my brain. I really love the art improvement from the first game as well. the silent and necrobinder are soooooo cool.
leon kennedy
I was going to put resident evil requiem on here but lets be real it’s mostly leon kennedy that I’ve been into lately LOLLLL. he looks sooooo fine in re9 it’s unreal. I need to chew on him like a small dog. I want to give every person who worked on his design a bouquet of flowers. I am also really touched by how he cares about grace in game… maybe he sees a little bit of his rookie self in her…
tomodachi life living the dream demo
shadow dropping the demo for tomodream on a random wednesday was kind of crazy I'm ngl. but I am thankful because it gave me 40 minutes of Sheer Joy. I spent a lot of time working on my miis and i didn’t even scratch the surface of the face paint feature. which I will be doing, since it means I can finally make my cyclops oc without having to bastardize the mii facial features…. I’m really excited for this game since I poured hundreds of hours into the 3DS one… I just really wanna see my little guys hang out…
april plans
april! what a concept! what am I planning for april… a lot of the same honestly. continuing to work on my vn, continuing to work on a monthly oc profile, continuing to apply for jobs. I want to keep working on the english ukagaka wiki, although how much progress I plan to make this month is yet to be seen. at least another page for the a-listers project, and maybe more…
I also want to more seriously practice coding again. coding game hasnt exactly been sticking as a hobby so I'm thinking maybe I'll try to find a structured course I can work through? research to be done.
I added some bingo focused goals to my list for april. reading a spanish graded reader and making a ffxiv mod. both of those I don't anticipate on taking tooo long. I was debating adding a third bingo goal to the list but I don't want to overburden myself after a stressful march so I'm leaving myself somewhat open.
with regards to ghost masquerade… it’s been a month into the submission period and I have not been working on anything at all. so I'm not sure I will submit this year. I know there's always the opportunity to make something small and submit it, but I’d rather not have another extraneous half finished project floating around at this point in my ukagaka career. I have had a few projects on the backburner for years now and I want to finish them before devoting myself to another ukagaka idea. but also, who knows! maybe I will find a hidden cache of strength and power through my masquerade idea I've been holding onto for a while.
I think in april I finally want to sit down and build my PC, since I've been holding onto the parts for a few months now and have avoided building it for… scared reasons? I guess? I'm worried I'll fuck something up. but I also can't just have my parts sitting around for forever while I try to extend the storage capacity of my laptop soooooo….
that's about it from me this month. I hope april is kind to you (and to me), and I'll see y'all in another month!