softlypaintedseafoam

The way I completely forgot about this account, whoops.

But it all works out if I'm being honest, no one ever checks it out so it's like having extra privacy online but not really since anyone could check it out if I'm being honest. Anyways, onto what this post is actually about.

On June 20th, I decided to learn how to draw. Because at this point, why the hell not. It's 2025, my country is a hot mess and I'm two semesters away from finally graduating and moving on with my life. SO, learning how to draw it is. Funny enough this happened because of OP Rarepair Week. Which, I'm still writing late entries for and should get to working on after this. But one of the days, I decided to write a Zotash fic for a friend who ships it. Having never written a single day for that ship or even for Tashigi, I dove deep into reading character and ship analysis and even reading fic.

In my research because I'm a nerd who has to understand a character to write for them, I saw a couple of folks who could draw and write. And I said "Well damn, I wanna draw fanart for my own fics too!" So thanks for that Zotashers. We may not ship the same thing, but y'all inspired me.

As of right now, I'm slowly making a way through an anatomy book. Specifically "How to Draw People" by Jeff Mellem. I'm still on Level 1 "Armatures/Gestures", as labeled in the chapter. I'm having fun so far despite essentially drawing what basically boils down to "advanced stick figures" lol. But because I know with the studying of fundamentals, I'll probably get bored if it's nothing but "studying" I do have doodles here and there of characters I like to mix things up. But this first sketchbook I'm using I'm basically dedicating to studying anatomy. From checking out videos of learning how to draw, that's the number 1 thing I see come up for 'mistakes beginner artists' make which is ignoring the fundamentals or not focusing enough on it. So I figured, "why not get that out of the way now so I can have fun with doing style studies later?"

And clothes studies, of course. I wanna be able to dress these people properly lol. I'm slowly working up the chain to get to trickier things like "perspective". BUT for now, I'm just focusing on enjoying the journey so I don't get discouraged by any lack of progress or progressing too slowly etc.

It'll be fun once I can eventually draw things the way I imagine them in my head and maybe even get comfortable enough posting things online for others to see. For now... off to go eat my breakfast and enjoy some morning anime!

Because my gods, this kid cannot catch a break. Someone save my boy.

To be honest, this isn't a chapter reflection so much as a reflection of the entire series up until this point. So of course, spoilers beware for the people not caught up to the manga or are simply anime onlys.

I swear the curse of the fandom creator is to constantly be plagued by ideas that you always be compelled to write because you have no self-restraint. Every time I say I'm going to focus on the WIPs I have before starting up in other, something always comes up. This time, I have two excuses reasons:

0) I want to write at least five fics in Japanese this year: so I might as well get as much as possible out the way. No this doesn't count as one. Let me be.

1) An upcoming birthday present for a friend: she's recently gotten into One Piece (close to finishing Alabasta) and one of her favorite ships is UsoNami. Her birthday isn't even a few days or a week away; it's at the end of May. But I want to get a head start on it to have it done by then. But since I'm making it a point to write more in Japanese this year, I'll be translating it into said language and posting it on Pixiv. That friend doesn't have a journal so I can talk about it a bit more freely here but in case anyone stumbling upon this wants to be surprised, the only detail I'll spare is that it takes place after Little Garden but before the arrival to Drum Island. That was such a tense time with Nami being sick and I had a clear vision for it!

2) I've been meaning to make more friends in the JP side of fandom and opportunity came in the form of a shipping event: thanks to a few JP artists I follow, I saw the Lusan Yuru Katsu Week (ルサンゆる活WEEK) account making an announcement for a few days in May that will be and then a reminder that June 3rd is LuSan day. I mentioned before I'm already working on a fic for these two and I'm planning to have that up by June 3rd. I think I'll post it on Pixiv on June 3rd JST and then the next day on AO3 in my time zone. But for the stuff going on in early May, I think I'll write something else probably on the shorter side. We'll see if I can manage it, but the fic going up on June 3rd is a no question from me.

The other fic I'll do for earlier in the event is up in the air so there's no title for it, but I have titles in mind for the other two that have titles in both English and Japanese. I tried to come up with titles that could work in both languages. I'm pretty excited for everything I'll be working on at least and hopefully keep things limited to just these 3 wips. Especially since the 3rd is so bare bones nothing, not even a vague concept. But I wanna challenge myself and have fun and hopefully make new friends in this part of the fandom. 

Anyways, that's enough fandom talks for the day. I'm tired, I still need to do the night time routine for one of my parents I take care of and then I'm going to sleep. Working on fic can come later this time lol. Maybe I'll listen to the MsScribe story to sleep again like I've been doing the past couple nights once I'm ready to settle down for it

so i'm gonna join the club of the chads who write fic in their second, third and hell even fourth language. so i'm working on writing a fic in both english and japanese that i'll be posting on ao3 and pixiv respectively. imagine my surprise when i realized after all these year people could write fic there too lmao, the perfect discovery right when i was wondering what sites host jp fic. so boom, that's one part of the journey down.

lusan week just ended and i've been rewatching wci with a friend, so the fic is going to be a lusan fic. i have no restraint lmao, the drafting stage is what i'll be focusing on today and tomorrow before actually writing the story. i'm thinking about drafting in both english and japanese to make it a habit for myself for fics that will be written bilingually. i'll be taking another japanese class next semester as a credit booster, so i'll consider this studying in advance in the most unorthodox way lol. その物語を書くことを楽しみにしているぅぅぅ～　すでにタイトルを決めた💙

in the meantime, i am slowly backing up my tumblr blogs on wordpress but i swear something goes wrong each time with it freezing every other import i do😒 (hopefully that will be over with soon. if tumblr does get sent to the gulag, it will basically be the modern day burning of alexandria TAT i've been on that garbage site since 2014). but i won't feel comfortable posting more of my writing to tumblr until i've got everything backed up. hopefully my writing blog will get backed up this weekend and i can post the rest of my timestamp entries i was requested to do. fingers crossed the backing up goes smoothly this time around, ugh, i want it to be over with already