after my wobbly the other night, i spoke to jack. he's just getting over a really nasty stomach illness, and we both realised we're so burnt out. we've had a chaotic 12 months with no rest - buying a house, dealing with our landlord selling the old flat from under us, changing jobs, huge job demands, me getting seriously sick multiple times, jack getting seriously sick, and realising the most rest we've taken is long weekends for conventions. and, well, conventions are fun but they aren't very restful. and you can't rest on only a long weekend. plus jack being ill and working his regular job on top means he doesn't have enough stock for confuzzled ready to go. for him that's also what it is- work. a week of work sandwiched by regular work. we haven't really done anything but work for a year, be it paid or not. we both feel unwell and have struggled a lot despite having a lot of good changes because we just haven't had any opportunity to rest.

then it turned out about half our friends going aren't going any more and have all booked other holidays which also kind of made us reconsider if it was the best option for us this year.

so we decided our heart isn't in confuzzled this year and we're too burnt out to manage it. instead, we found a cheep-n-cheerful holiday to the balearics and are going there to lie in the sun for a week. oh, and throw ourselves in the pool a bunch. i love taking early morning walks along the promenade to look over the beach too, so that's exciting. we might even get to go to a waterpark!

i'll miss seeing a bunch of you. cons are kind of this special thing where you get to have all your friends in the one place for a few days all at once. but sometimes fun is resting, recharging your batteries, and spending time with someone like your partner when you haven't had the chance to properly in a long time. and i'm looking forward to it just as much.

if you follow me anywhere else, you'll know in late 2021 i rediscovered my very first "nerd" hobby: cosplay. coming back to it as an adult, free of that childish drama and pressure to attend every single con on the go, just being an adult playing dress-up as a form of escapism is lovely. it's truly wonderful, and an enjoyment i've never had from it before. what i get out of it now is what i tried to get out of it as a teenager and instead burnt myself out. with it has come rediscovering anime and finding a huge love in new shows that are just fun to watch, and making friends through those, and while i've never been a video game person i've picked up watching playthroughs of a few things. it's nice- like a mug of hot chocolate under a blanket on a snow day.

however, focusing on that, i've also realised my interest in furry has just never returned. it kind of vanished during the pandemic, and two cons and a meet later it just... doesn't really exist any more. truthfully i've never been fond of meets or online spaces in the first place but cons used to feel like returning home. now, outside of seeing friends, i just don't have the patience and feel like i've shown up to somebody else's party as a plus one. it doesn't feel my scene or vibe, and i feel like i stand out in ways i don't like compared to how easy it feels in my cosplay communities now. nothing caused it; it just seems to be where my brain has drifted to. i think the realisation hit when eurofurence announced it was moving to hamburg and i realised i had no drive to go if it wasn't an excuse for a holiday to berlin.

there's more to life than one hobby, one interest or a fandom. there's lots of things i'm into that i don't share because i don't have spaces for them. so it's not a case of equivalent exchange- but they both require money and time, things which i have to be careful how i spend since i don't have loads of. when picking how to spend my fun-time funds, i've realised that for the past little while i've picked cosplay (+ what comes along with it) over furry, and i'm very happy with that. the excitement i used to get for furry cons is now the excitement i feel organising cosplay and getting to go to anime cons. when i'm daydreaming away and thinking up potential things to do it's tattoos, cosplay, trips to parts of the world i haven't seen, things like that. cons of all varieties have been a staple of my life for almost two decades now, but re-evaluating things has left me thinking about how i'd like to do cheaper cons with cosplay and be able to do other things than sink everything into them.

please don't think this is some silly "leaving the fandom" journal- especially since i'll still be here. this just isn't much of a hobby or interest for me right now, and no amount of forcing it changes that. as with everything, maybe months or years down the line it'll shift round again and i'll once more be obsessed with doodling myself as a rabbit. who knows, right?

gosh, i haven’t seen furaffinity this active in… forever. seeing old faces upload art has given me that little community feeling places like FA have always given me. ones places like twitter, tumblr, instagram etc have never really done.

it’s actually really nice, i kind of lost interest in furry stuff as the pandemic’s rolled on but seeing the activity here has reminded me it’s still one of my interests and still a little part of me. just because it isn’t my main interest doesn’t mean it isn’t something i can dip in and out of. plus most of my friends, their main interests are centred around being furries so i’m always going to end up involved that way too.

it’s good to see you all!!

i'm not a monarchist/royalist in the slightest and considering everything that's going on in the uk right now, i don't feel good about the amount of time and money being spent on an elderly stranger's funeral. i worry about the things parliament will put through while the country is distracted. but things are weird. i feel weird.

it feels like the past few years have been constant change everywhere that i don't have any ounce of control over even though they affect my life. this whole situation with the queen dying feels weird, because it's another huge cultural shift happening around me. and there's been so much change lately that this just has left me feeling a sadness i can't fully place. i suppose we're all feeling it right now.

soooo... it's easter weekend. a big bank holiday in the uk. i had plans to go to see friends and go to a market thing. super exciting right? especially after last week, where i had a bunch of medical emergencies that largely turned out to be false alarms. so my first ever bank holiday weekend off as an adult, and fun things ahead.

except i caught covid. again.

for people who don't follow me on twitter, i had covid in september last year when the delta variant was going round. so when i woke up on sunday morning with a sore throat i had a feeling of dread, and by monday it felt like it was full of glass. i took one of the rapid tests, and there it was. the double lines. and as the week's gone on i've gotten more unwell again. it's not been as bad as the last bout, but it's been absolutely brutal all the same. i had long covid, got an infection which resulted in losing three of my teeth, and have organ scarring from having the delta variant last year. having this omicron variant has worsened the breathing problems i had from the last bout of covid, and unfortunately i can't walk very far without being breathless. i've been given new inhaler instructions but it's still not great.

i'm so worn down. i took extremely bad reactions to two vaccines and the third wasn't easy either. i've now had covid twice. i have never been as ill in my life as i have over the past 12 months and it's exhausting.

conventions are back on!! i mean, they kind of started last year and we did go to mcm birmingham but i haven't been active on here in a long time. i've got my holiday time booked and i've planned to go to a couple of conventions this year after i was super-lucky and go tto go to scotiacon last minute.

i've decided to take a year out from confuzzled and go back to may mcm in london for the first time in years. truthfully i'm kind of wondering if i've done the right thing, because i've been to confuzzled yearly since 2015 and so many of my friends who i really miss go... but i'm sure it'll be lots of fun and having the chance to cosplay for the first time in years will be really nice. there's also a convention called acme comic con on this weekend in glasgow, it's a replacement for every comic/anime convention in scotland, and that'll be something to go to. truthfully i think it's a bit of a weird idea to mesh every scottish convention into one, in the one place, once a year but i guess that's how they're going to do it.

i'll also be at animangapop glasgow, mcm london october and mcm birmingham to help my husband with his stalls. he's about to finish uni and just did his first pin kickstarter which was really successful so they'll be working weekends rather than a holiday.

i also might be going to hyperjapan for a day in the summer but we'll see when we get to that one because i actually have to get there first.

anyway yeah! 2022 is turning out to be a bit rubbish already but here's some nice things. if you want to hang out then the answer is yes, i would love to.

i love animals. you probably love animals. we're furries right? we care about animals! well, in april i've decided to do something to raise some money for animals. specifically i'm going to be streaming 1897 minutes of gaming on twitch throughout april, ending with a 12 hour stream on the 31st. the blue cross help lots of pets BUT they've also given several of my friends therapeutic voluntary spaces when they've been recovering from mental illness episodes and getting back on their feet. they've also offered some other friends a lot of support when they've lost a pet.

you can find my page here if you want to donate some pennies towards a good cause!

so let's try to raise £250!

it's been a while since my last journal. it feels a lot like the world is constantly burning now, and i'm still having to go in to work because the big bosses have argued each lockdown that staying fully open is essential. which is quite anxiety-inducing. university have become harsher with their marking & assessments and won't listen to any student feedback. my family are all classed as extremely vulnerable, and i'm constantly scared about the health of my partners, my friends and myself.

i also suffer from several chronic mental illnesses and the support for mental illness is extremely low priority; as such, what i get is sparing and by locums while the regular staff have been reassigned. i'm on the waiting list for private healthcare once they start accepting new patients so hopefully something will come of that. i have cpn, psychology and psychiatry appointments all with locums next week... that's a huge emotional toll.

it's all been a bit much really. so i've started blogging for something to help. you can find it over here.

i've also been retreating more and more into my little side. it's not really any secret that i'm involved in the babyfur community, it's just something i've always had to sideline for brain or other reasons. so i've made a permanent account over at  clumsyspaniel and a twitter account i won't be deleting this time at clumsyspaniel. expect those to be my main hubs of activity for the next long while.

a mixed bag of an update really. i hope everyone's well and safe.

this is a very negative journal entry.

everything sure is a shitshow huh? locked in the house for weeks on end, university up in the air, job under constant threat of furlough or even being laid off, no contact with my mental health support team until mid-july at the very earliest, complete isolation from everyone except one of my partners, everything worth looking forward to cancelled, severe mental illness relapse and the ever-present threat of severe illness + death looming. it's near impossible to stay positive. i don't have any positive words. it feels like every step, every little inch of progress i made over the past three years has come undone over the course of four months but particularly the past three weeks. there is likely another ten to go of this minimum. i don't know how i'll cope.

i'm also feeling increasingly distant from the furry fandom. i've met so many amazing, lovely people but i need to pull back my interaction for a while because over the past few weeks i've seen heavy support for cub porn creators and zoophiles. it's disgusting. there's no excuses. no non-offending bs, no no-contact bs, no but-it's-just-art bs, no wehh-drama-in-my-funspace bs. i didn't spend my teenage years being groomed by creepy anime men fetishishing cosplay girls to ignore or enable creepy animal people doing the same. i appreciate nobody can be glued to whatever the latest big thing happening is, especially when there's so much going on in the world, but actively defending these people is supporting them. it's gross. and i've seen more people than i'm comfortable with doing it lately. so i'm taking a step back so i don't burn out and become distant from the people i love who i met through furry.

feel free to dm me if you want my discord handle or my @ for my ~normie~ twitter where i have other interests and fandom stuff.

if you follow me on twitter or we're in mutual telegram groups, you may have noticed i've been posting sporadically or not at all. i wasn't massively active over the summer because of work, going away, personal things etc but after EF something bad happened and i more or less withdrew entirely. the past month has been a very intensely bad period and i've even withdrawn from my closest friends.

i'd like to say i'm feeling better, but i'm not. i'd love to say things are on the up, but i don't know if they are. i work a physically demanding job, i study full-time, i have multiple disabilities and being online often feels like a chore rather than a fun way to spend time. i get very little time to myself and i want to spend it on making myself feel human. so i'm trying to be active with friends again but overall i'm actually thriving by doing nothing more than that.

it's my birthday on wednesday so i'm flying down to london with my husband to see both cursed child parts. thst'll be fun. so i'll be away more or less entirely from tuesday until friday.

ahhh, hey. the past two or so months have been abysmal and i'm having a moderate relapse in terms of mental illness. withdrew from almost everyone and everything. only really left my house to go to work. all that jazz. some bad stuff happened at cfz and continued through for another two weeks after.

i'm at eurofurence 2019 by the way. as in, i'm actually here right now. i arrived with MarmaladeGordo this afternoon, i'm currently lying in bed at our hotel after an extremely busy day. we've been on the go since 5am.

Where are you staying?
estrel

Means of transportation?
flying to and from berlin, sbhan otherwise

Sharing a room with:
MarmaladeGordo

What is your gender?
no gender- xe/xem and he/him pronouns

Relationship Status:
engaged to justsmith and in a relationship with baileyrabbit

Which languages do you speak?
english

Do you like the theme?
not really interested in it tbh

Where will you be most of the time during the day?
we seem to gravitate towards the beer garden, especially around the fire pit, when we're not at events

Who will you be with?
the 2A crew and a bunch of the other usual suspects

Do you do free art?
not an artist

Do you do trades?
still not an artist!

Do you do commissions?
nope

What suit(s) will you have?
none this year, not got enough suitcase space for meeko

Can I dance with you?
yeah!

Can I touch you?
i'm not fond of being touched, so unfortunately not

Can I talk to you?
of course, i'm a huge chatterbox

Can I hug you?
if you ask first and i say it's okay

Can I take photos of you/with you?
yepyep, especially if we're good buddies

Can I buy you lots of drinks?
only if they're non-alchoholic

Do you drink Alcohol/Smoke?
nooooope

Can I give you lots of money?
i mean if you want to for some reason!

Can I hug or snuggle with you?
only hugs (+,if you ask first)

Can we hang out?
yeah, ef is great for socialising and hanging out is the best bit

Are you nice?
i try to be!

Other cons you may go to?
scotiacon

Attending any events?
i'm running the trans meet, otherwise the furries in archaeology meet, the dance comp and the event about growing up in the gdr as a furry

How can I find you at the con?
i'm bald, have a nice beard, i'm quite small and have trans pride flag converse

Can we go out for a dinner?
eating around strangers makes me anxious but dinner with friends is good

Are you buying art?
maaaaaaybe?

What do I have to watch out for, when I am meeting you?
no transphobia, homophobia, ableism, misogyny or classism flies around me. i try to keep set mealtimes and i need to rest fairly often.

May I kidnap you to my room?
no

Last time/last con/last meet/last chat we talked so much and now you forgot my name? Why???
my memory is awful due to mental illness, it’s nothing personal

Will you tell me your room-number and can I surprise visit you?
absolutely not

I have a personal question for the convention. May I ask you that?
depends on the nature of the question

What is the best way to contact you?
telegram

it’s may!! which means it’s confuzzled at the end of the month. almost a week of friends, events, staying in a hotel and other furry shenanigans. so much has happened this year that it’s sort of sprung up on me out of the blue. the next week and a half will be stressful because of exams and work, but then i can focus on getting hyped for my favourite convention of the year.

so! time to do that yearly meme, eh?

Where are you staying?
main hotel again - hilton metropole

What day are you getting there?
evening of thursday 24th

Who will you be with?
my partners justsmith & baileyrabbit, a bunch of the awoomi crew and quite a few more

Do you do free art or trades?
i don't draw, sorry

Do you do commissions/badges?
don’t do art

Do you have prints/CDs?
nopeee

Do you have art in the art show?
nah

What suit(s) will you have?
meeko, who is now mine(!)

Can I dance with you?
yessssss let’s dance i love dancing

What is your gender?
not applicable

How old are you?
28

How tall are you?
5ft 4 (shortbun)

Are you mated? in a relationship?
engaged to justsmith and in a relationship with baileyrabbit

Can I touch you?
if you ask and i say it’s ok then sure

Can I talk to you?
PLEASE i’m super chatty

Can I hug you?
ask first or read my suiting badge

Can I take photos of you/with you?
you can, i wanna make a collage this year

Can I buy you lots of drinks?
i really only drink water but i won’t say no to a diet coke here or there

Do you drink Alcohol/Smoke?
nope to both

Can I give you lots of money?
sure but idk why you’d wanna haha

Can I hug or snuggle with you?
if i’ve given you the ok then you can hug me

Can we hang out?
ofc yeah that’s the best part of cons

Are you nice?
i try to be!

Where will you be most of the time during the con?
panels, chilling in the lobby, outside if the weather’s nice, or in my/my friends rooms - or resort world if it’s dinner time

Other cons you may go to?
eurofurence and scotiacon

Who are you rooming with?
someone who isn’t actually a furry

Attending any events?
rabbits & rodents meet, dance comp, trans social, cozy fables, little scribbles, power of play, fursuit parade, jym’s yearly disaster...

How can I find you at the con?
short, bald, wearing dungarees or shorts, bouncing around with brambles badges on

haven't done a journal in a few months, so here we go!

in 2019 i've got two conventions confirmed for sure. i'll be going to confuzzled with the usual crew, and my room mate this year is someone who's never been to a furry event before. they're not sure if it'll be their thing, but they're looking forward to trying it. then after that i'll be going to eurofurence, and i'll be rooming with occultobelus!

all exciting, exciting stuff going down.

so this is something long overdue. it’ll be relatable to more people than rock any boat, but i think it’s worth saying.

my life has become incredibly busy over the past year anf a half. i have nowhere near the amount of free time i used to have, and what little free time i do have is time i want to spend relaxing or doing something related to my hobbies. i’m both studying and working. that doesn’t leave me with a lot of time to spare.

if i’m online, that doesn’t mean i’m free to talk. i could be busy, i could be doing something else, i could be tired, i could just not be up to talkjng. me being online doesn’t give you the right to bombard me with messages and get angry when i can’t respond.

so i am going to eurofurence after all, thanks to some last minute arrangements working out after all. i’m SUPER excited, it’s been a really rough summer.

Where are you staying?
estrell

Means of transportation?
plane to germany then car to the hotel

Sharing a room with:
one of my closest friends, thedecisivepanda

What is your gender?
none- i use xe/xem and he/him pronouns

Relationship Status:
engaged

Which languages do you speak?
english

Do you like the theme?
it’s interesting- not my cup of tea, but the art looks cool

Where will you be most of the time during the day?
running around with friends and going to everything i can

Who will you be with?
aki, red, bloo, toto and some other friends who are going

Do you do free art?
i don’t draw

Do you do trades?
don’t do art

Do you do commissions?
still don’t do art

What suit(s) will you have?
meeko and cotton eye joe

Can I dance with you?
sure!

Can I touch you?
no- please ask if you want hugs beforehand

Can I talk to you?
please do, i chat lots

can i hug you
if you ask first

Can I take photos of you/with you?
yep, just ask first

Can I buy you lots of drinks?
if they’re non-alcoholic then yup

Do you drink Alcohol/Smoke?
no, just vape

Can I give you lots of money?
if you want haha

Can I hug or snuggle with you?
hugs if you ask first

Can we hang out?
yeah, i love making new friends

Are you nice?
i like to think so!

Other cons you may go to?
scotiacon

Attending any events?
i haven’t checked out the schedule yet

How can I find you at the con?
a short chunky bald bunny wearimg shorts, or a short grey and black mutt with pink feathers in her hair

Can we go out for a dinner?
only if i know you, eating around strangers makes me anxious

Are you buying art?
i usually buy some stuff in the dealers den

What do I have to watch out for, when I am meeting you?
don’t make any transphobic or homophobic comments, or generally any -ist comments. i have several disabilities so don’t be mad that i keep strict mealtimes or sometimes have to be alone for a while

May I kidnap you to my room?
no

Last time/last con/last meet/last chat we talked so much and now you forgot my name? Why???
i’m terrible with names and faces and it ties to my mental illness, it’s nothing personal

Will you tell me your room-number and can I surprise visit you?
no

I have a personal question for the convention. May I ask you that?
it depends on the nature of the question

What is the best way to contact you?
telegram and twitter

not doing ef now, not... really going to be doing much for a while.

my health- both physical and mental- is way too bad right now for travelling or going far from home. i'm doing what i can, but i need to put myself first. i haven't been well in months, and collapsing a few weeks ago was the start of the tipping point.

i need to pull back my online presence, i need to stop pushing too hard, i need to focus on me and only me for a while. if i seem distant or flaky, here's your explanation why.

i'm ill. i'll only get more ill if i keep on the way i have been.

i'm currently pretty ill. i was in hospital yesterday, had to see a doctor today. i don't want to get into details but i'm very, very unwell and will be for a while. i'll be quiet for the near future.

I'M SO EXCITED FOR CONFUZZLED THIS YEAR it's going to be so good, and i'm so excited to go. in five weeks our train should be pulling close to birmingham. so, because i'll be busy the next few weeks and i need an outlet for all these hype feelings, i'm doing that meme i do every year because why not.

Where are you staying?
main hotel - hilton metropole

What day are you getting there?
offsite on thursday 24th, then registering on friday 25th

Who will you be with?
my partner justsmith, friends onlyvelveteen, fleoa, Xantouke, decisivepanda then meeting up with lots more

Do you do free art or trades?
don't draw

Do you do commissions/badges?
see above

Do you have prints/CDs?
still not an artist

Do you have art in the art show?
nope

What suit(s) will you have?
borrowing meeko again from UselessDemonicMutt

Can I dance with you?
hell yessss

What is your gender?
i don't have one

How old are you?
27

How tall are you?
5ft 4

Are you mated? in a relationship?
engaged to justsmith

Can I touch you?
i'm cool with affection from people i know and trust, otherwise nope sorry

Can I talk to you?
YEAH i like to ramble

Can I hug you?
if i say you can then sure, but ask first

Can I take photos of you/with you?
yepyep, make them memetastic

Can I buy you lots of drinks?
sure, get me looooots of diet pepsi

Do you drink Alcohol/Smoke?
no, but i vape (and decisivepanda is holding a vape meet you should check out)

Can I give you lots of money?
if you want to then go for it, although i'm not sure why you would haha

Can I hug or snuggle with you?
hugs are fine if i've given you the okay

Can we hang out?
yeah that's my favourite part of cons!!

Are you nice?
i hope so?

Where will you be most of the time during the con?
nyooming around here, there and everywhere- if it's a sort of socialy even i'll probably be there

Other cons you may go to?
eurofurence and scotiacon

Who are you rooming with?
idk my bff onlyvelveteen

Attending any events?
uhhh off the top of my head - opening ceremony, dance comp, cookies & cartoons, scribbles, pawpets, jym's yearly travesty, pony meet, rabbit & rodent meet

How can I find you at the con?
not as chubby and now bald, but still wearing brambles badges and still short

there's a lot of stuff going on right now and it doesn't really feel like i've got much time to be online but a q quck update!

i'm away in newcastle for the next couple of days, and while that's going to be busy i get to meet up with a friend tomorrow night for dinner before staying in a nice, comfy hotel so that's always a big bonus. i won't be back until late on thursday night, so i'll probably end up sleeping for a chunk of friday. with that in mind, please don't message me on telegram before 6:30pm on thursday! i won't be able to respond, and i might just sleep the whole train journey home.

then things sorta go from 100 to 0 on monday and i have two weeks of nothing before important things start again so i'm going to focus on a couple of personal projects before life gets busy again. i should be able to post them here, but the ones i can't will be on my alt account canyoncollie. might be worth checking that out just in case.

then it's going to be an extremely packed, busy four weeks until onlyvelveteen gets here from canada and we go to confuzzled. once we hit may the time is going to nyoom by i'm guessing, which is good because i really feel like i need a holiday after everything that's been going on and is going to be going on.

my mental health is very bad right now. i’m not doing well at all. aside from here, i’ve deactivated all my accounts until i have a better hold on things. i hope this passes. right now it doesn’t feel like it will.

been snowed in since wednesday. if you’re dealing with this storm too, please stay safe.

OKAY SO wow, it's been a day. but it's got some positive outcomes. lemme tell you.

i was supposed to be going to an anime convention at warwick uni in july called amecon. over the past few years, my interest in these cons has dwindled to nothing; it's been a long time since i've read any manga or watched any anime, and i don't like video games. i was going because i felt obliged to. this morning, i finally talked to my friends and told them i felt like i was only going because they wanted me to rather than because i'd get any enjoyment. so i decided to cancel my registration.

at the same time, i was looking into other furry cons in mainland europe. whenever i go to a con for the first time, i like to stay off-site and not go for the entire time. some of my friends and i were considering trying eurofurence next year but going whole-hog. so i prodded tris and asked how he would feel about berlin for a long weekend. fortunately, ef registration opened yesterday. he agreed that it'd be cool to see berlin and try a con abroad. we reserved a room at a nearby hotel, sorted our flights, registered for the con and tah dah! we're going to eurofurence.

i'm nervous and excited at the same time. i only got a passport with the right name and gender marker in october last year. it'll have been 13 years since i last went abroad by the time we go. it's been so long since i last travelled that far, i've never actually booked overseas by myself.

what an adventure, right?

the past couple of months have been super busy. a really nasty thing happened to me and tristan, which caused a huge amount of stress. it really took it's toll. at the same time, xan and aki moved across the road and i threw a lot of time into helping them to take my mind off of things (as well as being happy two of my closest friends are my neighbours now). generally, just became sort of awol. everything piled up and up, then i was signed off university by my doctor due to unmanageable levels of stress, anxiety and ptsd symptoms. instead of taking that time to rest though i... didn't. instead i took on more responsibilities and did so much for other people that i was constantly exhausted and snappy.

it was a bad idea. so now i need to make sure i stop myself from overexertion, and focus on myself rather than what i feel like i should be doing for other people.

while talking this out with my friends, i thought about how i represent myself. and i thought about brambles as a character. brambles is chill; he's a way for expressing myself and behaving how i wish i could behave. i've spent a lot of my life thinking i should just exist to do things for other people, and that if i can't do that it's because there's something wrong with me. and i used creating brambles to forge a path where i got to alleviate some of that needless responsibility.

i think i'd like to try to be more like brambles.

registered for confuzzled 2018 last night! ...or, this morning, really. really early this morning. i'll be rooming with onlyvelveteen, which i'm really excited about because we've never met irl before. and it'll be his first con too! we're on-site and have one of the twin rooms. very good for making blanket forts and eating pizza in during down-time between events, i hear.

uselessdemonicmutt is also being a sweetheart and letting me wear meeko again this year, which is exciting! a bunch of us are planning on making team skull outfits and getting some pictures together, and i can't wait for that. i'll be dragging another couple of cosplay with me as well, considering they're encouraging it this year and they're related to the theme. so i'll be swaggering around the con either as mccree from overwatch or robert from dream daddy for a bit probably!

now i just need to prod smith and daph to get a move on with their registrations so the whole squad is sorted.

...and i'll cry if i want to.

but yep, it's my birthday tomorrow. 27 years old. i'd compare my plans to my 17th but i don't actually remember what i did for my 17th birthday. i don't think i actually did anything because i was going through a rough time after being expelled from school. kind of weird thinking that was over ten years ago really.

i saw my family today, got a few bits and bobs, and went to wagamama for lunch. lots of tea-related things and some halloween things. tomorrow justsmith is taking me out somewhere to eat then to an arcade, which will be nice, usually i let him have all the tickets and pick the prizes. i just like playing the games and doing well at them. maybe we'll get enough tickets to get something like those bubbles with the ball maze at the top of them. i like those.

also cfz reg opens tonight but i'll be registering next month because i've got amecon to cover this month- it usually sells out in 15 mins whereas cfz has like three months before the better rooms are gone. hopefully i've not jinxed that though.

i'm not doing great with my mental health right now so please just be patient with me. talking and socialising takes a lot of energy i don't really have when i'm spread thin juggling a joint degree at university and trying to keep stuff running at home because smith's work hours are immense.

life's been... tough. it's been really tough lately. and it doesn't really feel like there's much of a way out of it but i've just got to keep plugging along with it i guess.

i treated myself to dream daddy last week and i love it. i've played every single route, got every single ending, and it was nice to actually have a distraction. even if my favourite dad turned out to be a massive disaster area and the devs have said that's not going to be changed. also one of the routes hit home quite a bit and another one of the dads was incredibly relatable.

basically it's good and good representation of queer men by a team of (mostly) queer men. which is a lot better than the weird fujoshi trash i'm used to seeing get hyped up. if you want any guides for any of the endings then hmu.