Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Baguio 2018!



I went to Baguio again. This is like my 2nd time to go to Baguio this year alone. LOL. Two of my officemates are celebrating their birthday on this trip so I have been craving for Vizco's cake ever since we planned this trip. 


The accommodation was from Airbnb and we hired a van to go there and tour us around. Everything was prepared by someone else and I don't really plan to put the details here. Anyway, our itinerary is mostly DIY, but this is Baguio so everything is just there already. 



So like I said I've been to Baguio earlier this year so to make my trip a little more exciting, I’ve decided to do a vlog or something. 


Thus, here’s my 3-part video of the 2 day trip.


Part 1


 Arrival and first half of day 1




Part 2
 After sleeping and the darker half of the day





Part 3
 Day 2 and going home

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

2018: Osomuchink and Nanowrimo recall

I did two creative challenges this year: inktober for October and Nanowrimo for November. I’ve been doing Nanowrimo on and off for three years already, while this is my second inktober for my fandom, Osomatsu-san.

It’s not really new to me but this year was more difficult compared to last but despite the odds, I still managed to finish both. BOO YEAH! BOTH!



But first, let us discuss Inktober. Here it was in a nutshell:


Inktober was not really my strong suit. First of all, I’m not an artist and I haven’t learned the foundation of drawing. Although I will never call myself an artist, I do enjoy drawing and doodling. This was one those things that I do because it’s Osomatsu-san. It’s like buying merch, I do it because it’s Osomatsu-san; if it’s any other fandom -- I will never do this kind of thing. It’s just frustrating and not to mention very difficult. Why? (1) I have no idea what I’m doing, (2) I don’t think my art is any good and (3) I’m only doing this for fun. There was never any intention to prove that I improved or to show that I’m good. I just do it for fun and I get surprised that this year’s inktober was a bit better(?) than before. Maybe? I don’t know. Maybe I am deluding myself but with every piece I try to make, I do it a challenge for myself. I mean, it’s already a challenge to draw on time, but there’s also that part of me telling myself to try something I never did before – also to draw hands. Because fuck hands.



Click for the complete set of my Osomuchink 2018 entries at Twitter

But in the end, I managed to do everything! All the days and all the prompts as much as I can with limited time and limited skill. I do believe I did a good job, it’s not the best but I reached the requirement, which for me is already a success.

I like to be realistic and set the bar low for me.

And that’s exactly what I did for Nanowrimo.

The previous Nanowrimos were terrible because I liked to shoot for the stars. I tried making 5k a day so that if I missed the next days there were still some word count I could fall back on. Big mistake. Because there were days that I didn’t write, it got harder to pick up where I left off. Ultimately causing me more stress and failing at it altogether. There was also a year where I tried to plan ahead and I still kept that.

So for short, I had two attempts in Nanowrimo I could think back on to prepare me for this year’s.
It’s a furikaeri and there were some things I want to keep, some issues I have to take note of and some steps that I could try so I could solve those issues.

So yeah, like I said I tried to go slow and steady this year. I tried not to miss a day and just aim for 1k-2k words a day. I also hyped myself up by tweeting about it and talking about it just to get those endorphins to continue running.

The people from MatsuPH among other friends in the fandom also helped a lot. Although I did tell them specifically what they should do to help me. Thus my post in the MatsuPH server.

How to help mic during nanowrimo:

1. tag mic for all magical au and magical girl au art.
2. Tag mic when you see OsoToto. bonus point kung magical
3. Give mic references for magical girls
4. remind mic to drink water
This helped a lot because I got inspirations, references and just the general everyday boost I needed to continue. Even though they had no idea what was happening in the story and I was just giving snippets, it did not feel lonely. This I think was very important because the previous Nanowrimos felt exactly like that – writing for the void.  Even until now I still have some backlog on the things gave me and I really appreciate everything.

Of course, there were still days where I fall back and think that this wasn’t good or this did not make sense, or that no one really cared about this. And there were also days where I got sick and those days were hard because even if I was at home, there was no writing happening. There were words but it's not 5k and there's this little imp inside your mind that would tell you that "you should be hitting more words because you're just stuck at home!"

The worst thing you could do to stop being productive was to worry that you were not productive. For me, it always causes a downward spiral into sadness and hopelessness, but I know myself enough to spot where that spiral begins.

However, just knowing about it doesn’t mean I can stop it. So what I planned to do was to just think about the 1k words as the requirement. It was a battle against my inner demons again but as long as I think of numbers as numbers, insecurities shouldn’t matter.

As long as I can reach that 1k words today I should be able to fix things later on during proofreading. I know it’s that bad habit of relying on future me, but somehow during the struggle, it helped. Because I have that “I can still fix it some other time if I just manage to make it to the requirement” in mind, I still puked out the words.




There are still some things I need to do for that story, like proofreading and uploading, but for now. I managed to do 50,550 words in one month and I believe that is a great achievement. I FUCKING FINALLY FINISHED A NANOWRIMO!












PS. Do take note that I was doing both these challenges while studying for JLPT. Now, that shit is suicide and I swear never to do that again.

Saturday, June 16, 2018

1/2 : An OsoKara Zine

So today we released the OsoKara Zine.Yay

Putting this zine together had been quite challenging and I'm just glad that it came out beautifully. But surely if not for all the effort of the contributors it wouldn't have been this close to being amazing. And I really appreciate all the help I got from here... from Nogi who served as my "eye" for details because god knows I have none, from Nori who gave good advices for the zine, from Tundrea who checked the zine so thoroughly and for Komo and Para who supported me.

I probably increased my skills in MS Word because of this. I mean, I only used the program for typing and I have a slight idea that I can use it for functions that I need for the zine but building it all from there... that was unexpected.

Anyway, although I admit that there were times I got really annoyed and stressed because of this, it was all still good in the end. I "met" more people in the fandom and I think I left a good impression even amidst the problems. So in the end it's good... and in the end the zine still felt like it was worth something to do.

So anyway, click here to view the zine and here to download.
But if you wanna see the zine. Here it is ready for your perusal:


Saturday, January 20, 2018

2017: review of shit I wrote

Another self-indulgent review of stuff I wrote last year in terms of word count. This is purely Osomatsu-san because I don't really write anything else now

2016 carryovers: 36365

Oneshots: 11 titles with 31825 words

Multichapter: 6 titles with 106636 words

Also wrote some extra stuff: 6 titles with 18077 words

With a total of 192903 words!

Well I did wanted to outdo last year and write 100k words for Ososan but this was crazy. Anyway, let's look forward to what 2018 has in store for us!