andr0meda

Doing better today. I was able to sleep a little more last night. I really need to learn to stop fucking doomscrolling for my own good, especially when I'm surrounded by creative projects that need to be worked on.

The good news is, I'm at least drawing a little again. Hopefully I'll be able to post something TieJen-related here soon. I was also able to go to an estate sale and get a Pyrex container for cheap. Between this and an $80 instant pot that i got for $20, I have learned that old dead people hoard a lot of good kitchenware. I was even able to get a cute fancy shirt for 3 bucks and get the weird sauce stains out of the sleeve.

Man, I have been radio silent. This past week has been crazy, and now I'm suffering through the aftereffects of two vaccines (COVID + flu) so now I have time to post.

I got to see Gundam II and III in theaters. Highly recommended experience. I always forget how soul crushing Lalah's death scene is to me personally, and seeing it on the big screen was an experience.

I also have a HG Gouf assembled, and I have more Tieria merch coming in... I should try to post more TieJen lore here. I can't draw for shit right now, though. I'm assuming that it's because certain Events that are looming on the horizon are ruining my vibes, which sucks because self shipping has always been a huge comfort for me. Ah well. Perhaps I'll be able to get back into it soon.

... I finally put my foot down and placed my self ship community oriented Tumblr blog into permanent hiatus.

I was initially hesitant to let go because I'd met a lot of cool people there and I didn't know if my self ship art would be accepted outside of that sphere. However, after spending time on Cohost amongst Gundam fans who didn't yell at people for violating their three page DNIs and who weren't unhealthily obsessed with bullshit shipping discourse, I realized that the culture there had negatively affected me. When I made the choice to just stop logging in, it was like a huge weight had lifted off my shoulders. The digital panopticon was no longer a threat.

I know a lot of people glaze the everloving shit out of Cohost, but I do have Eggbug to thank for showing me that I actually didn't need to cling to toxic internet communities for acceptance and validation. I know I'm not alone in that respect, either, I ran into people who said that Cohost is what got them to finally ditch Twitter.

I suppose I've learned that you truly don't need toxic internet communities as much as you think you do. The lightweight social media acquaintence-ships you may have formed with a few users aren't worth it, especially if you can talk to them elsewhere. Neither is the occasional crumb of good content you receive. Putting your foot down and committing to leaving is truly the hardest part. Once you're out and you've established yourself elsewhere, you'll wonder why you even chose to stay in the first place.

Things are looking up at https://nadleeh.neocities.org/! I have a template I vibe with, I found a cute little background, and I'm populating it with all sorts of Gundam 00 stuff... the possibilities are endless... I can finally make shrines for my favorite things once the front page is done! It'd also be really nice to have a central location to publish stuff like my builds, my doodles, and my self ship lore for ease of reference.

Maybe I'll find a way to plug this blog into one of the pages as well so people can read it from there. I think that neocities has some limitations RE: how many posts can be viewed at once, but eh.

By the way, my website is, in fact, at nadleeh.neocities.org. Warning: it is very bare bones right now.

I will say that one thing I am excited about here is the fact that long-form posting feels more... encouraged here, in a sense? I loved reading long posts and comments on Cohost, but I still felt like I had to trim the fat off of all my thoughts and make sure that everything I posted was easy for everybody to digest at a glance. Old habits enforced by larger social media websites die hard, I suppose.

This does excite me because I have a lot of TieJen thoughts that could easily evolve into essays, though. Especially as my rewatch of 00 continues. I'm already thinking about how Jenni's core issues in Season 1 are self-isolation and toxic self-reliance, and how it affects her dynamic with Tieria. I'm gonna be honest: there were points in which they were making each other worse.