But at least I haven't dropped another day, been doing work every day.
The two main things I've been working on; trying to get details done on Phyrra, and also trying multiple times to get the aesthetic of Kaze down--I thought that Kaze would be literally the easiest character in the cast to draw. He's a shade. Living shadow that lashes out strikes of air, slicing, dicing, piercing, thrashing, ripping, pulling, twisting, throwing, just, air itself in the form of a shadow.

The aesthetic I drew from could be summed up as from two sources; Kazeshini from the filler arc of Bleach, combined with a Darkness Elemental from Dragonfable.
A male, but incredibly effeminate form--very thin, pretty short, but still recognizably masculine, and yet a being who is mostly formless. White eyes and an occasional slasher smile, but no nose, no ears, no form beyond shadows that flicker like black flames. Recognizable arms and legs, with a recognizable chest, but for this to be bathed in shadows that make it not look like human skin. Anthropomorphic enough to still appear to be arms, legs, a torso, a head, but with enough obscurity to not give clearly defined edges. Where you can't tell where 'skin' begins because there is none to speak of. Where the shadows bleeding off of Kaze don't give a center of mass, because there is no center of mass.

I've tried multiple times to nail the aesthetic, but every time came up with frustrating failures. So I ended up biting the bullet and actually googled for the reference images from the two main sources of inspiration for Kaze.

And there you have it. (Yes, I did have to refer to an image of kazeshini not from the show itself, because none of the images from the show gave me the references I was looking for.)

The Darkness Elemental on the left, from Dragonfable, was one of the main aesthetics I was going for with the look. See the face, the shoulders, the chest? and the look on the arms (albeit, the arms on the darkness elemental are much much too big when it gets to the firsts)? That somewhat-transparent, wreathed in black darkness that oozes the aura of a blaze?

Now just give it the more anthropomorphic shape of kazeshini on the right, and you've got Kaze. This image shows perfectly the proportions of what I want Kaze to be--the thin, but still masculine, chest, with the approximately right proportioned arms and head, with the slasher smile and the killer eyes. (Bonus; this image has hair which looks a bit like the black flame-like aesthetic I am aiming for, at the forehead.)

It should be so easy to draw. Pencils provide the perfect medium to do it--you can nail the aesthetic of a living shadow, of flame-like wind sheathed in darkness, just by using pencil mark after pencil mark after pencil mark.

But it's still so darn hard to nail.

Still, tho.

​I'm trying!

Pretty notably so.
I've been doing things every single day for Phyrra and Cyrus, but...just...
...Not today. Not while I'm this sick.

​This isn't what I meant when I said extenuating extreme circumstances though--so this will cost me a day, moving my hardest of hard coming out day to January 22nd. First failure, and less notable of a date. OH WELL. I am making the choice and honestly given being sick, I don't think it a bad one.

Slow and steady, but it's something. Every day doing work, no matter how little, means every day work is being done. Small steps, little things, maybe not the best of things, maybe not as much as I could do, but better than nothing and that's something I'll take.

In this case, decided to follow through on what I said yesterday. I tried to draw Phyrra's secondary weapons yesterday without references.

Phyrra's primary weapon is a longsword--well, a longsword that is proportional to her size. That is to say, if she were to grow to an adult size, and the longsword were to scale identically to her, it would be a longsword. As in, it is proportional to her as a longsword. It is a longsword for her. For an adult, not quite sure what that'd be. I used a google reference image of a broadsword, but heck if I know what a good sword type would be for something that by is wielder would have the aesthetic of a longsword.

Her secondary weapons are a series of multiple (about 2-4) shortswords, each with no guard (which I always think of as being the hilt, in spite of the hit being what you grab the sword by), which past the first episode, she can control with a combination of telekinetic magic and wind magic. Which for an adult, would probably be long daggers. (Think like Sting and similar being Hobbit-sized swords; for the people those weapons were designed to be used by, those were daggers, not swords.)

Turns out that you can actually find some very good references in like 30 seconds of searching, 'hiltless sword' (in spite of, as I mentioning, it not being no hilt I was looking for; I was looking for blades with no guard). Apparently, the aesthetic I was looking for is common in older Viking swords? (When you think of Viking swords, you probably don't think of them as having no guard. You think of them as having the Riders of Rohan sword, like this look, more or less. Or maybe you think of them as having a longsword. But the images I found had almost zero guard, which is what I was searching for.)

So I got some good tracework images to have as a reference. Mine are probably too long proportionately, and need to thus be shortened a bit, but I got the aesthetic right, and with the aesthetic right, easier to make!

...And thus, technically speaking, not on today, but like. It was 12:45 when I did it, if it weren't for daylight savings time, it would've been on today anyway.

So I did get some more done, albeit basically nothing. (Just sketching out Phyrra's daggers. The plan here is more or less, sketch out her sword, sketch out her daggers, sketch out her gloves, sketch out her other clothes, etc., sketch out her face, then retry putting them all together.)

I was feeling really, really uninspired today so I didn't do much, but hey, I got some work done so...not doing nothing, therefore, deadline remains!

I did a second trace, and then tried to do a drawing.
I wasn't happy with it and couldn't find a way to make myself happy with it so I abandoned it half-way through, similar to one of my drawings yesterday.

So the more I have done is mostly failures.

I'm disappointed, but I shouldn't really be surprised. I've never drawn any of the characters from Phyrra and Cyrus before. I know what they look like in my mind's eye, at least mostly, but with me never having made them before, it's not going to go well immediately.

I should be doing more, but uhgg, this is workkk.

I know I need to do work on it every day, but once I've put in some work for the day and feel an overwhelming uhg feeling, kinda hard to put even more in.

So for now, just farming in minecraft. (Need to replenish on my supplies. Mostly, I'm looking to get a boatload of torches.)

I suck.

I want to do more but can't push myself to do it in spite of what I've said.

Some work done is better than no work done, butstill.

Phyrra and Cyrus will never be made at this rate.

Barring extenuating circumstances (power outages, something drastic which leaves me with no supplies and no ability to get them, vacation), every day I don't work on Phyrra and Cyrus in some way, I move the date of coming out back one day.

I did work yesterday--failed sketches of Kaze, but still work.
Today, I already have done work--a trace of the main protagonist from The Promised Neverland. (This is work because Phyrra and Cyrus are both 11-year-olds, just like the protagonists of the series, so this gives me a sense of how to draw them right.)

I'd have done more, but my work station collapsed, causing a cavalcade of errors, including my drawing pencil catapulting out to Narnia (by which, I mean, can't find it right now).

This won't stop me, but it'll mean I need to spend time searching for it--something I can and will do, but not while watching a stream. (Am multitasking. Well, was. Losing the pencil means that the only multitasking I can do is search for the pencil, which I tried and couldn't find yet.)

Trying to make excuses not to, trying to put it off.
This is, pretty obviously, not the blog about League. I can still try to make that later, though I have some slightly different thoughts there overall.

I admit, I don't know exactly where to begin with this.

Basically, this is something I've toyed around with blogging about before but never managed to form enough of a coherent thought on it and the more depressing aspects of it overwhelmed me anyway leading to my blogs being short ones where I noted I was feeling awful and couldn't blog, or something to that effect.

It does come from a bit of a morbid place; one of the things spurning on the urge for this blog was me thinking of "what if?" scenarios where I am about to die from diseases, and then more or less going, "why wait to be dieing to do that?".

I suppose I can start with this. I won't go into details to respect their privacy, but basically. My friend, who was my girlfriend for two and a half years, is dating the love of their life, and hearing about all the things their girlfriend does, it makes me realize how much of a failure I was as a girlfriend.

I definitely had the same love. My friend is never going to stop being the love of my life, painful as that is to me since I know I'll never be their girlfriend again. But what I did with the love, is where I more or less think the failure comes in--or rather. More or less. The lack of what I did, in that I didn't do anything. I never sent gifts. I never put real time and effort into figuring out a way to meet them in-person.

You might attribute that to differences in personality, of their current girlfriend just being that significantly different, but in many ways, from what I have heard, they have quite a number of similarities to me. They've done more to progress their relationship in less than two months, than I did in over two years.

On the one hand--that's amazing for them! That is awesome for them! That is really, really good, for the both of them. It is proof that the two of them were made for each other, more or less. They are really, really good for each other, they are better as a couple than I was as a couple with my friend. And because they are so good for each other, assuming that nothing catastrophic gets in the way of their relationship, I know that they will be tremendously happy together and that knowledge gives me a lot of happiness.

I do genuinely get happiness from seeing friends, especially this friend, happy. I want them, especially this friend, to be as happy as is humanly possible, and their current relationship gives them that more than I ever could, and I do genuinely think that is a good thing.

But, it does highlight my shortcomings. It does highlight all of the "what ifs", of things I could have done better, of things I could have done differently. Our relationship wouldn't have continued if I had done things better, if I had done things differently, mind you. The feelings they have are the feelings they have and the feelings they have are that their current girlfriend is the love of their life. Nothing I could've done differently would've done anything to change those feelings so they would still have ended up together regardless. (Which, again, I feel the need to reiterate--is overall a good thing! It sucks for me, but it is genuinely better for them and since it is genuinely better for them, is a good thing.)

So what I'm more or less getting at here, is. This is not regret of "if I did things differently, maybe we'd still be together".
No, this is more regret of, "seeing what their current girlfriend has done for them, it makes me realize what I missed out on", more or less.
I could have done so much better for them.
And I didn't--and as a result, I just feel like in comparison, I am a failure compared to what I could've done.

Basically, every time I hear what my friend's current girlfriend has done for them, I realize, it's something I didn't do for them when I was their girlfriend, which I could've very very very easily have done, but I didn't. I didn't even think of most of those sorts of things. I had the love, but I did almost nothing with it.

There were times where I considered doing more. But 'considered' isn't actually doing, and even those things I considered pale in comparison to what their current girlfriend actually has done.

And overall.

I just feel like.

Seeing the current relationship makes me realize why I suck.
I feel like a coward. Too scared to do anything. I feel like a failure. Not as a girlfriend, mind you, but more as a person, with the lens of my time as my friend's girlfriend just as a way of exposing the underlying fault I have as a person, if that makes sense.

To put it another way--I don't think I was actually a failure of a girlfriend and I doubt my friend would think I was, either. But I do think I was, and still am, a bit of a failure as a person, and it is realizing that I didn't really succeed as a girlfriend which helped expose this. (Again, to reiterate, nothing would've stopped the breakup; even if I had succeeded as a girlfriend, feelings be feelings be what they are. But that doesn't stop me from lamenting the lost opportunities that have passed me by, things that we could've done while girlfriends which we can't do as friends. I could've done so, so much more than what I did, but I didn't. And that's a failure on my part.)

Like I said.
This blog is really, really hard to compose properly.
I'm still not sure my thoughts, feelings, are being properly conveyed. I'm worried that they aren't. That the wrong message is being sent.
I feel like the part about thinking their current relationship is nothing but positive, is clear enough; I feel like the part about me knowing nothing would've stopped them from entering into their current relationship, is maybe clear enough, and as per above, that this is a good thing.

But I'm not sure I'm really getting my point across.
That I feel like looking back.
If I were less incompetent as a person, then on both ends, there would be more good memories from the relationship. More for them, more for me. (There's plenty of good memories, mind you. But I mean, so so much more than what I gave. To reiterate, their current girlfriend has given them higher-quality memories in two months, than I did in two years. And what I mean is, if I had been a better person, if I had thought to do more, then we'd have had much more, I guess is what I mean. I still feel like this is poor wording to get at the concept.)

I identified the main problem, at least I hope so. It's that I was way, way, way too passive. Just as a person. And I am still way, way, way too passive. I've more or less, just been...waiting and waiting, rather than controlling, planning. I feel like I am pathetic, that I am a coward, held back by my fears (no matter how justified or not they may be), always held back by an endless number of excuses, usually procrastinating endlessly.

Those things weren't specific to my relationship, but realizing what a better girlfriend I'd have been if not for those things is what I am getting at, basically. That's what I mean. By seeing the current relationship my friend has, it revealed to me that as a person, I am passive, a coward, too timid, too afraid, making excuses (I made so many trying to avoid this blog!), always endlessly procrastinating.

Lamenting the "what if I had those qualities" of the past for what that'd have meant, doesn't do me much good though. (It is what made me think of this blog in the first place, in tandem with the bucket list, but it is not productive to dwell on.)

But what it does give, more or less.
Is motivation.
It is reflecting on that which lets me see. "Bree, you didn't have those good qualities back then, and you have all these regrets now as a consequence...so why not make the changes now, so you don't have them in the future?", more or less.

Realizing a fault I had in the past which made life less rewarding than it could've been if not for the fault, basically. Serves as motivation to move forward in life trying to fix the fault, so that in the future I won't have regrets due to the fault. That with the fault fixed, I have no further regrets from the fault. (The regrets from, in hindsight, realizing I had the fault and what would've been better if not for it, will never go away, but having fixed it helps a lot.)

This fault will be very, very, very hard for me to fix.
It won't be an overnight improvement.
I will have to fight every. single. step. of the way to put it down--and worsening it is that the fault will fight back at every single stage.

Do you think having fears combined with excuses combined with procrastination, is a combination which lends itself to trying to correct itself? No, it's a combo which tries to reinforce itself, and every time I will be trying to push those traits away from myself, they will push hard in resistance.

I am always afraid. I am always a procrastinator. I always make excuses. I am so good, such a natural, at them. And every time in the past that I have tried to fight back, they have managed to reinforce one another as to keep me passive, keep me stable, keep me unchanging, keep me immobile, keep me rooted down, grounded, stuck, in place, not moving forward for stupid fear of being catapulted back.

In fear of losing it all, in fear of losing my life, I have lost (out on) things I easily could have not lost (out on) if I was less afraid, if I didn't put them off, if I didn't talk my way into taking the path of least resistance. Which is precisely why this is so. damn. hard. It is the path of least resistance to be passive. It is the path of least resistance to do nothing. It is the path of least resistance to do as little as is humanly possible and rely on others.

I am not happy with that.
Mind you, nothing really makes me happy right now, depression does that to you, but I am dissatisfied with the idea that I am not going to have any progress in my life.

I'm not going to proclaim something along the lines of. "That changes now!". Or "that won't happen anymore". Of overnight success, of overnight suddenly becoming somehow, mystically, magically, on track.

Like--I don't even know what I'm going to do yet, specifically, to get out of this funk. I have some very loose ideas (see below) which are progress, if I work on them, if I progress on them, but like. I don't have a plan here. I kinda wish I had one because I think it'd help me a lot, but one of the excuses I made for not trying this before was precisely that, not having a plan.

So screw a plan, I'm still going to try.

It's not much of an immediate change--but an eventual one? I am setting an absolute, hardest of hard, absolute LATEST deadline of January 23rd, 2023, for coming out as a girl publicly in real life. Everyone online has known for over six years. I don't want it to be over ten. More than that, I don't want to reach thirty years old and still be trapped in the living hell of my current life.

And to reiterate this--that's the latest point. Latest. As in. "No matter what. No excuses. Nothing. No amount of fear. No amount of backing out. No amount of cowardice, second thoughts, hesitation. No matter how awkward it will be, and it will be awkward, come out, period, end of discussion." That'll be very very tough to do, but I refuse to let myself not do it.

Preferably, I move that deadline up. Within a year, for instance. But this is a date which I felt was a good starter, because it gives plenty of time for my fatass of a dad's poor health habits to inevitably kill himself (after which I could immediately come out), while ensuring I don't wait 20 years for something to happen.

I am willing to wait two years to be myself. I feel like my dad's health is poor enough that it is very realistic that he could die in that time.
I am not willing to wait twenty years to be myself--while I feel like my dad's health is poor enough that he won't live that long, it is still a considerable chance that he could, especially if he (shock! gasp!) actually cleaned his habits up. (He won't, but if he did...)

So I am setting myself a decent deadline, so that I can actually hold myself accountable. I do have this more or less planned out. Day before, shopping for girl clothing, next day, wake up early to make the announcements publicly online on places where people in real life can see it, go to the Y and talk to them there, while there text my mom, come home with her, and face my family.

It is a plan which I can adjust closer to the time I do it.
I can do it at any time, too.

The main reason I'm not doing it sooner, I suppose.
Is.
I guess.
I want to exploit the safety for a bit longer.

I don't want to be passive with that safety.
But in a sense--I want to practice, so to speak, with that eventual outcome, by pushing myself now in other ways.

Granted, said practice could just be me failing, me not doing anything, in which case. Maybe I move the deadline up.

In fact, that actually sounds like a neat idea. I don't have any clue how to implement this. But a rule of more or less, "The more I fail to be less-passive now, the sooner I force the lack of passiveness". As in, the more I fail at my current endeavor, the more I push up the date of the coming out.

The less use I get out of my current life, the more I push towards changing my life.
Right now, I am not getting anything out of my current life--so if not for this being a change I'm making literally just today, I'd be pushing the deadline to be much much sooner.

Right now, my plan is to commit to trying to make something, screw the excuses.
I want to commit to making something.
Truly commit to it.
At work, I threw around two ideas. One being a webcomic as a safer/easier option.

The other was Phyrra and Cyrus.
I have made oh so MANY excuses to put off working on my pet project there. And some of them are probably valid. I don't have a wide enough voice range to voice every character so I would need voice actors, and I probably cannot animate things on my own (though I will be looking into that).

But a lot of the excuses, I just.
I'm sick of not doing what I want to do, because I have the thought of those things causing failure. I know it won't come out perfectly, but I want it to come out. I know that I could do this better with planning--but past a certain point, excessive planning which I can't complete, just...doesn't do me any good.

I have put it off, saying I need to plan more.
I have put it off, fearing that it'd fail.

I don't know how, exactly, I will manage to make it so that I don't.
But I am not going to succeed if I don't try and right now I'm not trying. Talk, no action.

I do have a very, very loose idea of maybe a way.
I have tools readily available at my disposal to help me.
I have had many many many times where I am watching streams and gone, "I want to watch this, but I want to do something else at the same time" where I was pseudo-bored--still invested in the stream and wanting to watch it, but wanting to do something in addition to the stream, and I did nothing or might as well have.

There's stupidly obvious things I could do.
I have boatloads of art supplies.
I have an endless supply of most things I would need to try, and if I am watching a stream I can open a tab to look at any artistic reference I want. I can draw.

Granted, yes. I have made a very strongly-standing excuse which I don't have a workaround on, not really anyway, of.
I can't scan my drawings into my desktop.
And even if I could--I don't have an art program beyond paint on the desktop.

But the thing is.
I don't need to put the art on the computer.

I just need to make the art, actually make it, stop talking about it, and do it, and then see where it takes me.

Do art while doing the stream. Concept art. Or storyboarding. Just. Working on it.

I have the tools. I have the skills, and if not, the ability to learn the skills. Like, one thing that I don't have is a video editing program or whatever would be needed to make the final version of Phyrra and Cyrus and even if I did I don't know how to use one--but these are things that a quick google search would fix.

I can literally solve one of those in less than thirty seconds, and the other can be found in the same amount of time (albeit, presumably, as a youtube video or something, taking time to watch, and practice, and such).

I made the excuse of not knowing it and it being something I won't be able to do.
Ignoring that it is something I could learn to do very easily.
And there's no excuse not to.
I've been lazy.
Not doing it when I could have.

I don't know what order I will be doing things.
I don't have a schedule, not a plan, not yet.
But I am getting started.

Because I feel like if I don't start trying to make something of my life.
There won't be anything in my life.
I was okay with not doing anything in my life when I felt like I could live a life of a nobody and be content--but I'm not happy with that anymore.
So why am I still doing what I was doing, when I was in that mindspace? Why am I still doing nothing, when doing nothing was a byproduct of a mindset that I am no longer in? Doing nothing was something I was fine with when doing nothing still allowed me to be happy, but right now I am not happy and doing nothing does nothing to make me happy.

I am sure I will invent a myriad of excuses in the future, so future self, screw you for being a self-sabotaging prick.
But right now.
I don't have those excuses.
So I am going to put in the work that I can.

...In fact I was planning on it already but I realized I didn't make the blog entry yet.
Yesterday in my mega-blog post one thing which I neglected to mention--Phyrra and Cyrus continues to be something I work on. A while back, don't think I mentioned it, but I added something to Bard's character that made perfect sense and made a particular storyline feel more nuanced and natural (albeit having one necessary adjustment earlier in the story to accommodate for it).

Very, very recently, I did similar for Clara, adding a significant section to her previously-rather-underdeveloped (considering her status as a childhood friend of Phyrra and Cyrus) backstory which helps increase her role in the story ever so slightly, fleshing out an already-planned moment.

So Phyrra and Cyrus is not a project I have forgotten about.

I also did today lay the groundwork of the simplified expanded Rise of Rome scenario, too, but that blog can wait.

So remember how I said yesterday that I had bought a female bathing suit? Well today, I got to wear it. And my GOD it is amazing. It fit me perfectly. I honestly don't know why more guys don't wear something similar--there is an existing male one-piece full-body bathing suit, a really really old style no less. Or really new. Or both. You can find things similar to what I was wearing for men and plenty of men do buy them, but most men who swim...choose things which don't go above their waist.

I honestly don't know why they wouldn't tho, because I wouldn't need to be a girl to have known the experience of the swimsuit was amazing. But my god was it exactly that. It was incredibly comfortable, and it made me feel more like me. It also made me feel a little bit sexy. The whole day, I was just...exuding an aura of something I rarely display, of just an energy that I only display in my most euphoric moments. The moments where not a touch of gender dysphoria hits me, where I feel like I look like a girl.

Mind you.

While I loved it.
It was not without its downsides.
1: It was a bit warm. This is pretty unavoidable. The only things I was wearing on my torso (the area which was warm) were the bathing suit and my lifeguard shirt. I obviously can't get rid of my guarding shirt, so...not much I can do to be cooler when wearing the bathing suit underneath. Not much of an issue, given that I am skin and bones so rarely overheat anyway.

2: Some parts were initially a little itchy. I imagine that this is a byproduct of it being a new swimsuit though, because I'm pretty sure that every swimsuit I've ever worn has had that problem when they were brand new.

3: Some parts felt a little tight at times and some areas didn't quite stay in place properly. I believe the two are related, in that the tightness likely came from areas of the suit slipping out of their proper position. This is not something which is very fixable because it's an issue you deal with, with any given article of clothing. No piece of clothing is perfectly tailored to your exact measurements (unless of course...they are, but those are like...$200 business suits), and swimsuits are no exception to this. This is something which happens for all of my clothes, so isn't an issue specific to the bathing suit.

4: The straps at times seemed to be pushing in, in a way akin to having worn a heavy loaded backpack for too long. Especially the left shoulder which was bothering me about 50% of the time. Half of this can be attributed to the above--the suit slightly shifted out of the proper position, I didn't really notice this in the area it slipped, but felt the slippage in the form of the shoulder straps.

But mostly? This wasn't creating a problem; this was alerting me to an existing problem. Even without the bathing suit's straps, my left shoulder was suffering from a condition which I'd call some combination of "tight, sore, tender, stiff, fatigued". This is not a new issue. It's a known problem I frequently suffer from. From the base of my neck to my deltoid muscle, my left shoulder flares up on occasion to have that issue.

The only fix I have to it is trying to stretch the muscles, massage them a little, roll the shoulder, hyperextend it, basically try every trick in the book to loosen them up, to remove tension from them, to basically make them...not bother me. So, again. Not a problem related to the suit.

Noticing a trend? Yeah, basically, none of the problems were due to the suit and all of them are things which can be managed and were minor nuisances, not real problems. Things which are annoying, but which aren't detrimental and won't consistently plague me especially not now that I know of them (and even if they do, given time to break the suit in, they'll go away).

There is one problem which is due to the suit tho.
One which will, presumably, go away after a while, but which is still a little inconvenient.

5: So sometimes, I can randomly be aroused by thoughts which aren't sexual at all. These arousing things strike randomly, where I basically go, "what the hell, body? There wasn't so much as a single sexy thought in there, not even a kinky thought, not anything which is a fetish, so why are you being aroused by that?"

When I was initially putting the suit on, this hit me hard. (Haha. Sadly.) If I had to guess, my guess is basically that I suffered from Distracted By My Own Sexy, in that I literally said to myself, "Okay, yeah, I get it. I'm sexy like this. Now shut up. We've got work to do." And at the end of my shift when changing out, while I was wearing nothing but the swim suit, I ended up going for a while, "Okay, fine. I'll take some time to appreciate that, yes. I am sexy in this. I have the time to spare. But you need to get used to it, body, because this is going to be the new me."

Because, yeah. I feel incredibly sexy in it. It fits me, it looks good on me (well, as far as I can tell, anyway; I have no mirror so hard to say for sure), and I feel a lot more like my femininity is more on display while wearing it (even though it's not actually visible). I feel like I am more openly displaying "hey I'm a girl" while wearing it and that feels so good. Everything about it is amazing and it is incredibly comfortable.

I do think that eventually, my body will adjust to that and it'll stop happening. (It's honestly annoying and I feel a little annoyed/guilty that the arousal happens when putting it on/taking it off. So hopefully it's a temporary thing related to it being a new change that the arousal is just extreme excitement about.)

So overall.

It's perfect.

​So glad I took the plunge and made that buy.

Splyce came so close to being first in their group.
You may recall that after they went 1-2 I was among the doubters.
I said "The Splyce we've seen doesn't deserve to move on; if they want to move on, they need to prove it by showing us the Splyce that went even with the likes of Fnatic and G2", more or less. That they needed to step up their game or go home. That the Splyce we had seen wasn't worthy of worlds, even though the Splyce we'd previously seen prior to the tournament was.

That in order for them to earn their spot they needed to be in top form.

And while I missed half of the matches today, I caught Splyce's first match against FPX and their match against GAM--and I can say that Splyce did precisely what they needed to. They did precisely what I said they needed to do in order to deserve moving on, in order to prove themselves worthy of worlds. They stepped up their game and showed up in if not top form close to it. They were a force to be reckoned with, and this was the Splyce who made me place them as the favorites to win first in their group.

And while they lost the tiebreaker to FPX and thus didn't--that it came down to a tiebreaker proves to me that my original faith in them was not wasted. Yeah, their losses showed their weaknesses. Yeah, even in their wins they had elements which weren't clean. But the Splyce I saw today was the Splyce I was rooting for since the beginning of the tournament, a Splyce who was good whereas when I said "Splyce in this form doesn't deserve to move on", they were...not good.

They did it. I am so glad they did.

Yeah it sucks that my predictions for positions ended up both wrong for the group, with Splyce 2nd GAM 4th when I had them as 1st/3rd, but OH WELL. I am still happy.

Am terribly behind in the vogs tho.

In non-gaming news: today I went shopping for some swimwear. It was ludicrously expensive, at $130ish in price to get what I got. Some of it was necessary costs. Others were there more or less to mask my true purpose for the visit. Yeah, I got gear that I desperately needed, but while I could use a new jammer swimsuit and I've needed new goggles for months the rest of what I got aside from one item was luxuries meant to help give a mask for what I really was there to buy.

Fun fact: I thought that the trope I Have This Friend was, in real life, so transparently obvious as to not be worth trying. That it would be ridiculously transparent, cliched, obvious, and give away my true meaning easily. But apparently it works well enough! I said that I needed help shopping for a gift for a girl, about my height, and wanted to get them a swimsuit, more or less. I got the help I needed; while I have no clue if it'll fit, I will at least try it on tomorrow and hoh boy is it exciting for me. I imagine that it will not be very comfortable, but it'll be worth it I feel in the end.