Otaku Anime💖

I'm fairly new to anime. As a teenager I'm sorry to admit that I wouldn't have liked it so it's ok that I had no knowledge of it, through my twenties I got more and more interested in japanese culture in general, folklore/traditional and pop culture. I got to a point where I was seeing a lot of stuff connected to various anime/manga and knowing I liked it without actually having a way to consume any of it.
Long story short, over the past couple of years I have had good access to anime, finally, and am ready to start making lists on my blog because what other joy is there in this world!?
I recently used my amazon prime free trial because (although I try to avoid amazon) I needed something quickly for the rats and figured while I had it I'd take advantage of the tv and film on there. I have a few things saved but other than Your Name there wasn't anything available that I already had on my watchlist so I just added a few bits, some totally new to me, some I recognised the title, that seemed like they might suit me and am trying to get through it before the trial ends. I started with Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku which finally brings us to the point of this blog post😂

I love anime about otaku. So far I've found otaku and cute-girls-being-a-bit-fantasy/magical-slice-of-life are my favourite cosy topics. It's not about whether they're the "best" series but these topics always bring me joy. As mentioned in my last post I don't let myself spend enough time with hobbies so I still have a lot of catching up to do in my anime watching but here are a few of the anime that I've watched that have an otaku theme somehow.

Himouto! Umaru-chan
This is one of the first anime I watched and I love her. It's about a girl who out of the house seems like the perfect student, smart, pretty, kind but as soon as she gets home she's a lazy otaku, lounging around playing games, eating snacks and getting her brother to do everything for her. This really fills the otaku theme that I enjoy, I love all the references, I love the slightly mis-named brands and I love her.

Gamers
This is more about the love triangles/misunderstandings of the characters than it is about games but the otaku game references are always there and it's their love of games that links them all together and causes them to meet. I'd like a second season of this, I don't know what happens in the light novels but it didn't feel like it ended. But maybe that's just because I wanted to see different people end up together!

Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku
This one is set in an office rather than a school which is nice just because it's adults rather than kids and it's just so sweet. I watched it on a whim because of the prime trial and ended up really enjoying it. Narumi starts a new job and hopes to keep her otaku side a secret (she's a fujoshi) but it turns out someone she knew when she was younger works there and it comes out because he's an otaku too and doesn't hide it at all. I love that this has four otaku characters, each with a different interest and it's just a perfect mix of otaku stuff and romance and I really want to read the manga now.

Sanrio Boys
I'm not sure if Sanrio Boys entirely counts but they're pretty passionate about their beloved characters and I think that's otaku. Also, it's the sweetest anime about boys being allowed to like cute stuff and I love it to death. I was totally expecting it to just be a fairly shallow advert for Sanrio but it's so. good. There are five characters and they each have a different Sanrio character that they have an attachment to and that's what ends up bringing them all together and it's adorable and good and let boys like cute stuff please it would solve a lot of the worlds problems😭

Comic Girls
Comic Girls is one of my favourites. Again I'm not sure about the technicalities of whether it's an otaku anime but they're all trying to be mangaka and we definitely go to Akihabara during the series so I'm counting it. You can be an otaku for art supplies, right?
This follows four girls that go to live at a special dorm to improve at being mangaka, they each have their own genre and they're just trying their best to be good at drawing comics and supporting each other and tbh I cried a lot. The art connection is too much for me and some of the struggles are just too relatable plus it's cute girls and that's my main weakness. I love Kaos-chan so much😭💖
I really want to read the manga but I'm pretty sure it hasn't been translated which is just sad.

If you can recommend any otaku based anime (or anything else) then I'd be happy to hear about it😊
I've started Dororo (not otaku based but very good) and am having an emotional break down trying to finish it before my trial ends. I'd normally watch something this dramatic/emotional slower but I really want to get to finish it so am just powering through😫

Brain Plant

I had a few quite bad days last week and was thinking about how you have to look after yourself all the time not just when you feel like you need to.

I feel like I'd heard it somewhere else but I'll credit Frannerd mentioning it in a video for making this metaphor stick with me. Your brain /mental well-being / creativity / motivation etc is like a plant, it needs the right amount of water and sunlight all the time to thrive, you can't wait till it's dead and then chuck a load of water on it and expect it to be at it's best.

Last week I think I reached a point where I hadn't been going out of the house, I hadn't been giving full attention to any hobby type things, I was stressed and panicked and consumed by the idea that the only way out of it was to work, sit at my desk and work, stop being lazy.

In the greater picture, yes, I need to work hard to improve my work situation but I can't work if my brain shuts down like it did last week and has done over and over and over. This isn't news, this has happened before, a lot, quite often.

Sometimes it takes time before you can make actual changes. This time might not even be that time. I don't know yet. I feel like such a broken record, on here, in my diary, talking at Will, in my head, "I see what I'm doing wrong, I'm going to change it". But I will. It just takes time and realising the things that need changing and being aware of them is an important step to making the change.

Anyway, I want to spend my life being as creative as possible and for that to be sustainable I need to feed my brain plant. It's ok to read, watch, go for a walk. In fact it's not possible to be creative if you're just stuck in your house alone not taking in anything from the outside world. And it's going to take time to fully recover from this dead plant brain because I can't just chuck a load of water on and expect it to be at it's best. I'm going to give my brain what it needs day to day rather than in random, desperate bursts and I'm going to improve my situation.

The photos are from a walk I took when I realised I was getting stuck, I knew it was going to rain and normally would use that as a reason to stay in the house but does it really matter if I get rained on? It was a good walk.

From the past week or so...

I loved packing this order and was very grateful for how many things they bought ^-^

I'm still always so amazed when someone wants to own something I made, I think I always will be. I know it's a cliche but I make art because I can't not, the fact that other people see anything of interest in it is a really sweet extra💜

I've had a tough brain week this week. So has Sharky. After our last vet visit we tried stopping giving him as much "not rat" food because he's been losing weight and the vet thought giving him extras might be stopping him from eating the rat food that has everything he needs in it. For a week or so we stopped giving him his extras and we're pretty sure he's a brat and that actually made him stop eating the rat food as some sort of protest. Yesterday I tried crushing the rat pellets into some baby food so he can have his treats like the brat he his and we know he's also getting the nutrition from the pellets. I'm pretty sure when we give him the stuff he wants, he also eats more of the pellets and this way he gets even more of the pellets because they're mixed into the treats. Such a spoiled baby lol. He's almost two and not very well though so at this point I'm happy to do anything to keep him happy.

I finally bleached my roots. This is how I section it so I don't miss any bits.

It's still just bleached now though because I can't decide how I want to colour it. I'm not too keen on it just bleached but I prefer it to the roots. I'm sure I'll just chuck some colour on there soon.

I'm still trying to paint more. This day was a bit of a bust brain-wise so I just drew flowers from a book and then painted them whatever random colours. I'm trying to not beat myself up for spending time on things that aren't sellable items. I think in reality I have enough shop stock and make things often enough, it's a bigger audience I need so I need to focus on things to share and building that just as much as I need to be coming up with new stock. It all counts.

I'm working on a weekly vlog at the minute and used these photos of a painting I did as a title card for the day and thought it'd be a cute gif. I'm conflicted with gifs, like, does there need to be something glitching about on every page shouting for your attention while you're trying to read things but also I love gifs.

And then yesterday I actually left the house for the first time all week and since some time into the last week too. This photo is actually from the garden but I went into the city with Will for the library book sale and then we went out a second time in the afternoon but that was just to the supermarket.

I always have Teleprompters by The Uncluded in my head because I really do need to get out more. I am snail under pressure. I'm working on it though ^-^

Just Let Nature Goblins Live

I decided to have another go at watercolours, click here for the not pixelated version of the blog post and lots of process photos ^-^

Tank Troubles

So, Tanks's cyst/abscess (don't worry I won't go into detail)(unless you want me to, I'll happily reply to comments about it, bodies are so weird and interesting) had some sort of hissy fit and the vet decided the best thing to do was to open it up and keep it clean while it heals in the hopes it won't just fill back up again.

WOW IT'S HORRIBLE!

Not in a gross way, like, it is gross but a gross that Will and I don't mind at all. It's horrible because Tank hates it so much. Obviously. He has a hole in his neck and we're holding him down and wiping it out. The poor little thing screams his heart out (and poos up a storm). He has always been a crybaby, you don't have to even touch him sometimes and he'll squeak at the anticipation of you doing something he doesn't want but these screams are so awful. It breaks my heart and wears me out and we've only had to do it twice so far out of a twice a day for probably at least a week.

The other side of the stress is that he's such a sweet boy. All he does is scream. I can't believe he hasn't tried to bite us. He's so good. And it feels awful to be abusing his trust like this. I know I've said he cries a lot and that probably makes him sound anti-social but he really isn't. He's so cuddly and will groom all along your arm while you're holding him and we're doing this awful thing to him that he doesn't understand. It's for his own good and we have to just do it but it's tough and wearing.

The rats are the best things, so when something is going wrong with them it is the worst thing.

Cleaning as Self Care

Sometimes things happen that are very stressful and upsetting and are so far out of your control and it can be very frustrating to have to have all these feelings about something and to not have any resolution to it. I can't do anything but that doesn't stop me from feeling like shit, shit that can't put my mind to any other tasks.

When a big societal disappointment makes you unable to focus then anything you might have done in that time that makes you a good force in the world doesn't happen. Fuck that!

This morning I spent some time rambling nonsense frustrations with Will and then I got the kitchen roll, duster and window cleaner, put on The Uncluded Hokey Fright and cleaned our bedroom window and table/books. I don't enjoy cleaning in general and I can't do much in one go because I get so worn out from it but as a distraction technique cleaning one small space works perfectly. I can clean and let my mind wander, I can wipe a window and cry at the same time (never underestimate the power of having a cry), I can use my nail to get right in the mouldy grooves of the frame and feel sad and angry while the dirt disappears and I can dust precious little items and sing along to songs that make me feel good.

The cleaning doesn't take any particular brain power, it's not something I can ruin but at the end I feel at least some satisfaction that I got something good done in the time I could have just been going over and over what was bothering me. It also gives my brain a break from going over and over the thing.
I felt better.

Then I did some reading, had some lunch, stood in our over-grown garden for a bit and now I'm at my desk, writing this before starting something that can count as work.

Gotta look after yourself so you can fight back, whatever that means for you.

Blog thoughts and Sundays

Wah! Technology or whatever. After all my hopes for blogging again I'm now hitting problems here that I can't fix. The image quality is bothering me a lot. I think maybe blogger has just been neglected and isn't suited to how good screens are now?
However. I think I've come to a conclusion. As mentioned in my last post, I set up my Patreon account as a just-in-case but it's there now so I may as well use it. What I'm thinking is, if it's art/work related the image quality is important but if it's just personal, it's not as important. I can carry on blogging here for myself and when it's something to do with art I can do a public post on my Patreon page and link to it from here. I don't know how well that will work, will people bother to click through to other pages? Does it seem like I'm trying to trick people onto my Patreon page? (I'm really really not btw, if anything, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I even have one, I don't have an audience asking for it, who am I to think I might need a Patreon account at some point etc etc) I don't know but in the grand tradition of making the best out of what you've got I think this is my plan for now.
I would love to have a website and have a blog and everything else on there and make it all nice and fancy and good but I can't afford the fees for now and I don't want to set up another free blog somewhere else only to move it again in a year or two.
So yes, these are my bloggy thoughts that I don't really need to share but feel the urge to. I hope you will click on my links to see my work better on other pages and I hope you'll enjoy my personal posts here with slightly pixelated photos.

Anyway, it is a sunday and I have been feeling pretty good lately and am planning to just "have a sunday". I'm learning to find balance in working and resting so that I don't get so drained. It's hard, I feel like I need to just work until I've succeeded at life but I can't work well if my brain is a stressed mush and there the evil circle starts up. Also, if I'm always working towards this "success" I'm losing all these days in the mean time. I'm also trying to learn better focus when I am working so I get more out of my time. Just trying to be better while also just existing and enjoying where I am.