Yo new Clann song just dropped and I’m loving it! Go listen to it here!  

I discovered this band a few years ago and last year finally acquired their album Seelie. Their work is haunting, soft, ethereal and deeply steeped in classic high fantasy themes, it’s some of my go-to music when I need some solid Gestalt inspiration! Clann’s music is largely connected to an independent multi-media story telling project by a duo of brother’s and their small company Five Knights, the aim seems to be to tell a fantasy story through several mediums including film, music and eventually a graphic novel companion piece which looks really gorgeous and intriguing from the samples on their website for the project! (Side note I really dig their website design, it’s interactive, feels a little minimalist and very sleek, often I’m not a huge fan of more modern web design trends but this one feels very solid for what it presents, I just wish there was a bit more to it!) I’ve been captivated since I was recommended their work by Alys ages ago.

I do wish more of their work was out on CD, I do love collecting CD albums, one of these days I may invest in a solid record player, many of my favorite bands put out vinyl exclusively, much to my chagrin. ^^;

Hoping to come back to more regular blogging soon, I’ve been pretty absent from internet life as a whole for a while due to a lot of IRL business going on in both my professional and personal lives. More frustratingly I’ve also been very creatively dead for a while. But I’m hoping to jump start that with a solid book refurbishing project Dad has pitched for me! More on that later today perhaps! 

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In the meantime I’ve continued plugging away at writing up some posts to make a DW-centric index of my doujinshi catalog, which will in turn link to various posts where I share or review my books here! I’m about…80-90% done with the Twelve Kingdoms catalog including adding new books which I’ve long put off. It’s just a matter of getting a few more minor details added here and there like page counts, dates and double checking accuracy of title translations, creators credits and the like. There’s also the matter of finishing up a few outstanding book descriptions too which are definitely the more fun part of this project. So keep an eye out for that!

in fannish news, I’ve recently been made an admin of the 12kingdoms  comm here on DW! Still feeling really flattered and astounded by this turn of events, initially I’d messaged one of the older mods to clarify a few things before committing to writing up a few more detailed posts (like sharing a few, ahem, more risqué doujinshi over there ahaha!). I’ve also been debating making a call for help in updating a few fandom-centric wiki updates for the series in light of the new books becoming more accessible to the English speaking fandom as Eugene wraps up his translation of the last of them. Particularly the TV Tropes page and fandom Wiki both of which I often reference for double checking details here and there! I’m sure other folk must make use of these as well and I’d really like to see them updated a little… I just have no idea myself how to really edit wikis! 

Since there’s a nice little community for it, I’ll be posting Twelve Kingdoms Doujinshi reviews and shares over on the 12kingdoms comm as exclusives over there, so they’ll be locked to members and any adult content filters depending on the content of any given book I post on! 

I’m still waffling on the idea of supplying scans of full books, even if they’re small and generally not like, the most Quality of images, I’m limited by a heavy old scanner bed that doesn’t play nice with books and look, my priority is preserving the quality of my books!

Secondly, there’s the ethical concerns. A part of me says information wants to be free and valuable niche fandom history like this should be preserved, but as we’ve seen time and time again, scans are a big problem for doujinka and fan artists over seas, I’d hate to contribute to something that takes control the distribution of someone’s work from them… but on the other hand… most of the books I’d be most keen on backing up in this manner are almost a good 20 years old by now. What could it hurt? 

Maybe it’s best to leave it at photographs for review purposes or limited scans at least for higher image quality for review purposes… additionally perhaps I could add a generic watermark to dissuade the use of even my couple pages of scans for spreading works around too much? One of the bigger losses in my mind after having left Twitter is losing convenient access to several active doijinka whose work I still follow and support which made it easy to reach out and strike up small conversations, ask for assistance with understanding a story through the language barrier (many djka have been kind enough to write story summaries for me after I expressed interest in their fanworks!)

When it doubt it certainly wouldn’t hurt to ask! But again, in the cases of ,any of these older (10, 15 and 20+ years since publication) works being as old as they are, sometimes pen or circle names changed, sites and emai addresses have gone lapsed and abandoned and the original artists can be all but impossible to find, especially on the western side of the web! 

Maybe I’ll cave and make an account on the blasted bird site again for the strictest purposes of communicating with doujinka whose only known contact is twitter but honestly I’d probably be better off following up on email addresses or instead investing in a pixiv account… we’ll see!

At any rate! More doujinshi sharing will definitely be in the future! For those interested, I do have a small subsite dedicated to cataloging my doujinshi collection and offering small comments and such! I do not host scans or images of the interiors currently, it’s really more of an at a glance catalog along the lines of the Doujinshi Lexicon, but be aware a fair amount of my books are R18 and my ships are nasty~! <3 

Man, May is almost over, can y’all believe that? My domain’s birthday is coming up, I’ll have had Satsnet online for three years now! And after that of course is the Glorious 25th! I’ll have to do something special, maybe a little doodle?

Just a little low-key update to ease back into the habit of posting here!

Knocked out my taxes today and did some much needed spring-cleaning of my filing cabinet (more of a box...really), that took most of the day so I guess it doesn't feel like I've done much this weekend so far! I did do some cooking however and think I've cobbled together a really cool southwest take on onigiri? I'm gonna take another whack at it tomorrow to make some lunches to take with me to work! I wanted to document this lil southwest-nigiri recipe here:

The base is more or less the same as any onigiri you'd make, wash and cook your rice, but in addition to throwing in some dried Kombu seaweed for flavor, toss in some dried ancho chilies while you're at it! Ancho chilli pepper goes into a lot of texmex and makes a nice, mild spicy base for your rice to cook in along with the traditional flavor of kombu! I'd throw in about five peppers to cup of rice/water. For my first try  I did only three and to be honest it didn't show up too much, it was there, but not as strong as I would have liked?

While your rice is cooking, mix your filling! Recently I've been addicted to stuffing my rice balls with smoked salmon, its easy to prep and mix up with just about any flavor I'm craving and can be really good on its own too, plus its sold here in little packs that often make a good amount of filling for anywhere from six to eight rice balls! (I've found I can reliably make maybe three good size onigiri per cup of rice! So depending on how you divy things out you may wind up with more rice or less filling or the reverse! Save leftovers for fried rice later?)

Mince your smoked salmon, add a splash of umami black garlic sauce, a squirt of ranch (I know, trust me) and add: chilli powder, smoked paprika, and cracked black pepper to taste! No salt, the salmon will likely be salty enough on its own and your rice will be plenty salty after handling it! Mix this all up to coat your fish and set it aside to marinate while your rice finishes up!

Once that rice is cooked and cool enough to handle in your hands, make Onigiri as you do! Cold water and salt for your hands and such so it don't stick to you and is easy to shape and firm up, or use those lil molds you can find online! (lightly oiling or sprinkling some salt water in there helps the rice come out once its shaped I've found!)

Toss with sesame seeds and more smoked paprika for color, wrap with nori, top with leftover filling so ya know what you filled it with (if needed/you have leftover tasty filing bits) and serve right away while still warm or store for a nice meal later!

The result is still pretty close to a really traditional onigiri flavor profile but with that unique pop of spices found in southern cooking, the ranch mellows things out a bit and adds its own unique tang too if you're not too big one really spicy things, but really, these only turn out as spicy as you make em so they're adjustable!

I'm kind of writing from the assumption folk passing by may know how to make onigiri, but if not and anyone is curious, just comment and I'll update this with some proper links to videos, recipes and tips that helped me when I started learning how to make these tasty little jelly filled donuts Japanese snacks!
 

I’ve been referencing several YouTube tutorials and channels breaking down gesture, structure and basic shapes, things I never really… properly learned when I first started drawing, self taught as I am. 

The end goal has always been “I wanna draw anime style!” Or “some day I’m gonna be a mangaka!” As were probably most of our middle school aspirations. But, public school art credentials never really made basics very fun, and failed to connect them to what I really wanted to draw (animes). So I feel like I’m coming to a lot of these art “fundamentals” much later in life and am only just now connecting them to what I want out of my art.

Even the anime artists I admired as a kid and continue to emulate in my art as an adult have a basic, foundational understanding of anatomy, structure, and various other things that go into drawing figures, paneling comics and creating sequential story telling! 

So, in my attempts to create more intentional, structured practice and study time into my routine, I’m gonna just ramble here a bit and try to come up with a schedule or method that works best!

Welp, the RSS appears to be working, huzzah, blog for my website! You guys will be able to see it in my next site update, just working on a few more things before my next FTP updoot!

So I’ve been playing a lot of Ender Lillies: Quietus of the Knights lately; it’s a fun little sidescroller or Metroidvania type of game that I happened across because the soundtrack for the game appeared in my music recommendations on YouTube. The cover art looked pretty and the name was intriguing so I hit play. I really enjoyed it! The game’s music was haunting, melodic, simple, somber, very… atmospheric! Eventually I happened to glance back at my go-to OST compilation video and caught a glimpse of the game play.

Side-scroller? Single player? Good enough for me!

So I went out on a whim knowing nothing else about the game, bought it for my Switch and have been playing it for about two weeks now!

Just like Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, this game hits that special place in my brain that is stupid excited for side-scrollers. I love the send of loneliness to this game which has inadvertently made me rather attached to the guardian spirits you can collect and add to your arsenal.

The plot is simple, in a post-apocalyptic kingdom you play as “Lilly” last of the white priestesses, guided by a single spirit, you roam your destroyed world curing “Blight” as you go, a zombie-like condition that has turned the land and its inhabitants into little more than mindless murder machines.

Along the way you can collect allied spirits once you’ve purified and rested their mindless, rampaging bodies, usually these are your mini-bosses and main bosses! Each gives you a different type of attack which makes for a fun means of puzzle solving with different combinations or builds. (Your starting spirit, Umbral Knight, for instance is a pretty basic with a decent long-reaching sword and your typical three button smash combo, your second spirit is also your first boss fight, Seigrid a warrior-sister type complete with habit and frock and large fuck-off morning star, she gives you both a spinning leap attack if used while mid air and makes a nice defense you can send out front on the ground to wail on encroaching blighted!)

The story is told through various little scraps you can find here and there which adds to an exploration element which I rather like in games like this, letters from blighted who never made it to their final destinations or keepsakes and talismans used by members of the clergy or local villagers in the cliff-side hamlet. Very…media res story telling haha!

It’s a fun game so far and I’m enjoying it immensely!

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I've also added: A secret page, the bookshelf has been updated, I should really put more photos up, lord knows I've got nicer ones of my shelf, I added something I wanted for the longest time, its a little bare bones but hey there's an adoptables page with little web doodads I'll be making that you can stick on your site or tools to download!

No link round up this time because I'm pretty tired and want to move on to writing other journals. ^^;