supereilonwypevensie

So I had this thought that it might be a really cool idea to create a Naruto OC-centric Discord server where we can all talk about our OCs and fanfiction and share resources and art with one another and everything. I feel like the Naruto OC community is so vast and fluid so I thought it might be really nice to create a space where we can all come together and engage with one another's work. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, feel free to fill out this Google Forms application and I'll let you know if you've been accepted once I filter through the responses. 

(The purpose of the application, in case you're wondering, is just so I can make sure anyone who wants to join isn't going to cause problems because I truly want this to be a safe and happy place for all of us to have fun and make friends. Not that I expect to get anyone totally off the wall but just to be safe, I'd rather be way too cautious than toss invite links out into the void.) 

I'm not fucking sorry. 

I LIVE!!! And I have crawled out from under my rock to tell you guys about something super special. I'm voicing a character named Livia Stargaze in a web series called Space Hotel and I couldn't be more excited!!! I've been involved in this project since 2015 and after many years of hard work and an amazing cast and crew, we've finally reached this point! But we need your help. Please CHECK OUT OUR GOFUNDME and consider donating to help us fund this amazing project. And if you can't donate, then please HELP SPREAD THIS LIKE WILDFIRE. GET THE SPACE HOTEL NAME OUT THERE! I WANT EVERYONE ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE GALAXY TO KNOW!!! #spacehotel

    So, it's been a while. I was trying to deviate away from posting too many personal journals for a while just because I realized broadcasting my life probably isn't always the best thing to do but after going so long without writing anything, I can't help but feel a massive build-up of emotion waiting to spill out. Maybe I need to write personal journals more than I hoped I did.
    A lot has happened in the past month and a half or so, some good and some not so good. School has been basically eating up all my energy and motivation. I went through a brief period of anger with myself because I had to drop one of my classes-- a minimester course I wasn't sure I would be able to handle because it basically condenses 16 weeks of material into 8 weeks. I'm already in three classes and didn't think I'd be able to handle the fourth, much faster paced one. I was angry with myself for dropping, though. I knew the consequences of what would happen if I did. It would set me even further back from my goal, from earning my degree and finally transferring to my dream university and living with my boyfriend. What happened within the following weeks, however, made me grateful I did drop the class.
    A few weeks back, my parents and I scheduled for an official campus tour of the university I want to transfer to. The plan was to tour the school, spend the weekend with my boyfriend, and then be back home in time to not miss any school days. What was supposed to be a nice little weekend visit, however, turned into a weeklong nightmare. My parents and I drove up on a Wednesday night with our tour on Thursday afternoon. I was so excited, I ended up giving myself a panic attack the night we arrived, feeling like I did the first night I ever spent at my boyfriend's house, which was weird. I should've known that would start the weekend off on the wrong foot. When I woke up Thursday morning, I noticed there was a blurriness in my left eye that I initially just attributed to a smudge on my glasses. After cleaning them, though, I was very much aware it was my eye itself. I assumed I just had something stuck in there and decided not to worry about it. My parents, my boyfriend, and I went on the college tour and went out to dinner and on the way back home, I picked up some eye drops in hopes that that would get out whatever was stuck in my eye. My mom was growing skeptical, though, and she scheduled an optometry appointment for me that Friday. The doctor was pretty unfriendly until he figured out what was wrong with me: I had a swollen optic nerve, which he said doesn't happen often but when it does, it usually happens in women my age and is a warning sign of multiple sclerosis. I was going to scream. I ended up breaking down in tears in my boyfriend's car in the parking lot afterwards terrified that this was the beginning of a very arduous journey. Throughout the rest of the week, I ended up being tossed back and forth to five different doctors like a volleyball desperate to find out what the fuck was wrong with me. I had to see an optometrist, an ophthamologist, a neurologist, and get bloodwork done. Fortunately it wasn't until I came back home that I got the results of my bloodwork and it turns out my eye is just a symptom of cat scratch disease and has been slowly, gradually clearing up on it's own but for a while I was really scared. My eye got so bad I had a massive blind spot in my central vision and couldn't see for shit. I was literally blind in one eye. I felt like nobody was giving me answers and that I was beginning to feel lost and hopeless. The one thing that made the week from hell at least humanly bearable, however, was my boyfriend. If I thought he was the best before, I certainly think evne more of him now. He stuck by me the entire time, taking me to my doctor's appointments whenever he could and caring for me and supporting me like nobodys business. My mom joked that we were really getting our fill of "in sickness and in health." I felt bad for putting him through this, especially since I feared my health scare and all the doctor's offices would bring back bad memories of his late ex girlfriend (who comes into play a little later on, by the way). While there may have been some moments where this was a bit of an obstacle, he proved to me just how devoted and loving and true he is and I cannot thank him enough for that.
    Coming back home at the end of my long week was disorienting, to say the least. I missed an entire week of school but luckily most of my teachers were very understanding and accomodating. Still, it was difficult to get back into the groove of my usual, everyday life. Not that this is anything new-- I have this problem every time I come back home from my boyfriend's. I think it was just emphasized this time because of everything we had been through during my last visit. The one other positive that did come out of my last trip, however, was a closer relationship with my boyfriend's mother. I had been extremely nervous about meeting her for the same reasons any girl would be with a few others added in. I knew she loved my boyfriend's late ex a whole hell of a lot and a part of me was terrified that she wouldn't like me nearly as much, that I would never live up to the legacy the ex left behind. This is a confidence issue I've been dealing with for months now. While I was sick, however, his mother started texting me every other day asking how I was doing and how I was feeling and overall being incredibly friendly and kind. I felt reassured that she cared so much, not that she had any reason to feel otherwise. When I came home from my trip, she had texted me one day while I was on my way home to ask if I wanted to grab something to eat that night. I had known for a while that she wanted to take me out to dinner to finally meet me in person but both of our scheduling had been so hectic, we didn't get around to it until the week before we were to travel up to my boyfriend's together for his birthday (this weekend). So we finally went to dinner and met in person and the night went beautifully. The both of us got along phenomenally, talking the entire time and really connecting which was comforting. Despite how well the night went, though, I still found myself in the throes of a massive panic attack hours after I got home. I wasn't sure if it was just what I ate not agreeing with me or just general anxiety from taking such a big step in the relationship--meeting the mother-- but my overactive emotions that night paved the way for a rough week afterwards.
    The majority of my week was spent in a state of panic and hunger-nausea. The dinner may have happened and gone well but there were bigger events coming up: traveling with his mother to see him for his birthday. I was incredibly grateful we were able to manage coming up together and everything since I did want to see him for his birthday but the idea of being in the car with her for five hours had me reeling. I almost felt trapped, like I was terrified of what I would do if something were to happen on the trip up. We came up today, actually, and it's definitely been a big day filled with even more firsts.
    I was so overrun with a mix of panic and excitement last night that I didn't end up falling asleep until roughly 2:30am and, subsequently, woke up bright and early before my alarm at 7:30am. I got the rest of my things together, made myself relatively decent, and she swung by to pick me up around 9am. From there, we ventured down to my boyfriend's brother's house seeing as we were renting a car for the trip and leaving hers at her elder son's place. So here came the other barrage of firsts. I met the brother, his wife, and their infant son, saw their house, went in their house, sat in their living room. They were nice people and their home was absolutely beautiful but inside I was absolutely screaming. Everything was new and unfamiliar-- I've never had a boyfriend before, let alone a serious one, so I've never been through anything like this. Fortunately things went well, however, my boyfriend's brother drove us down to the car rental place, we hopped in our rental car, picked up hot chocolates at the McDonald's down the street, and then we were off.
    The drive was long and rough but then again, it always is. I was fine for the most part but I still found myself caught in moments of combatting little tinges of anxiety. On a positive note, however, whatever friendliness his mother and I had began at dinner earlier in the week overflowed into our car ride and we spent the entire time talking about anything and everything. There were some subjects, however, that were a bit sensitive and got me really thinking. Those subjects revolved around my boyfriend's late ex. I finally debunked some mysteries about their relationship and why they broke up, questions I was too timid to ask my boyfriend himself (nor did I want to get him started on her since he doesn't like to think about her much, truthfully). Learning about their past and even who she was as a person made me feel much better and somehow also much worse, in a way. There were things she went through that made me feel horrible for feeling envious and competitive towards her (not that I didn't already feel horrible because, I mean, she's dead). Talking about her and learning about her wasn't as draining and self-degrading as I expected it to be, though. I knew sooner or later she'd come up in conversation and I'd have to confront how I felt about everything but I didn't expect it to make me feel the way it did. I felt comforted, almost, filling in the empty spaces and hearing the way his mother spoke of her. Rather than contrast what she had versus what I didn't, she compared our similarities and the way she worded it made me feel enlightened and worthy rather than my usual feelings of "I'm not good enough." She said that she was worried for her son that he wouldn't find another respectable girl with how so many of today's young women decide to present themselves and was scared his roommate would try to set him up with someone who wasn't exactly the kind of girl you'd want to take home to your mother. That's why she said she was so refreshed when she saw our relationship status on facebook, to see that he was with someone who wasn't slutty and sexualized. She admitted to having seen my name pop up on his facebook every once in a while throughout the past few years but she didn't know about our past until I told her, which she empathized with and I think felt even more appreciative of my relationship with her son after finding out I had strong feelings for him for two years straight. When I told her I almost flagged him down at graduation and confessed my crush to him but chickened out, she simply said "Aww, you could've come to dinner with us afterward." In reference to his late ex, however, I felt comforted by her words when she spoke of how she considered myself and the ex in the same category-- sweet, innocent, good girls full of purity and family values. Which, I will admit, even though I may be a bit rough around the edges, a little stubborn and sometims a bit too brutal in my honesty, it was reassuring to get the confirmation that I didn't need to try and fix myself up to be at the level I considered the ex. Apparently we were already on par with one another.
    There was another thing his mother said, as well, that really hit home with my confidence issues about this, as well. We were speaking of my boyfriend's sister in law and the tension between her and my boyfriend's mom. Apparently there's some beef there about an ex girlfriend of his brother's who his wife I guess assumes his mother might think he belongs with rather than her solely because she's still close friends with the family. I saw a lot of my own insecurity in that, the way it basically reflected every feeling I had been facing the past few months in regards to my own insecurity. Granted, his brother's girlfriend is still alive but still. The way his mother voiced his opinion about it, however, reassured me even further. She said that she didn't care who her older son was with so long as he was happy and if that girl didn't make him happy, then that's that and that she shouldn't hold a grudge about it, especially since she's married to the man for heaven's sakes and that's basically the highest form of commitment here, like validation that he chooses her and isn't going anywhere. It really made me rethink my own opinions about my own specific though very similar insecurities and put a lot of things into perspective, truthfully. I'm not saying my self esteem issues have been completely cured after one long, talkative drive but they are definitely taking a massive step to recovering and finally setting those concerns to rest.
    PS: In other, more negative news, this election has been absolute hell. I'm not typicalyl one for politics but as it was my first year engaging in my privilege to vote, I felt obliged to form my own opinions and get involved. Of course, I love how they give the girl who hates politics the most terrible election in history for her first time voting. I knew exactly what I wanted to vote for on most everything on the ballot and did so with confidence. I stayed up later than anyone else watching the election coverage and alerted my parents of our new president the moment it was announced. I was shocked, however, at the vicious reactions of so many not even an hour afterwards. I have even had family members instigate fights with me on facebook solely over differing beliefs, all of which I had to block and unfriend. The worst part, though, is that it really put things into perspective about another thing I had been holding a massive grudge against. When my uncle basically estranged all of us over political differences three years, I told myself I would never forgive him or accept him as part of our family ever again, even if he came crawling back. However, now that I'm older and have formed my own political views and opinions (most of which mirror the rest of my family's), I've realized that it's not my uncle I should be blaming. It's his sister, my aunt, the one who can't accept when things don't go her way and when people don't share her beliefs. The one who has nothing better to do with her time than comment passive aggressive bullshit and links to Snopes articles on every single post she finds that is even remotely political just to shut differing opinions down. She took her niece, her goddaughter, who engaged in this wonderful thing called democracy for the very first time, and began instigating fights with me solely because my views and opinions differed from hers. She targeted me and began degrading my opinions and beliefs and jumping to conclusions, even going so far as to stupidly and passively insult her own baby brother's profession. Now that I know of the vile, vicious things she does and says, I feel sickened by all those years I spent cursing my uncle because here I am three years later doing the exact same thing he did. And I don't even regret it one bit. She may be my aunt, she may be my godmother, but she is not my family and I could give less of a fuck what she does or thinks or says anymore. She is no longer my problem and I no longer care.

    So, within the past couple weeks, despite being incredibly busy with college, I've made some exciting cosplay advancements I can't wait to show you guys. My last con was an absolute blast and I'm so grateful my best friend was able to get some amazing pictures of me (and that she put up with my shenanigans in the first place...). Managing the 13ft wig was defintely an adventure but fortunately, things went a lot better than I feared they would. It wasn't nearly as difficult to manage as I expected and it didn't get too messy until we went outside in this grassy area by the hotel. Great for pictures, not so great for keeping a ton of hair clean. I honestly still haven't cleaned out the second extension. I think the thing I was happiest about, though, was the extensions themselves. I was so paranoid the entire day that they were going to fall apart like the last ones but luckily, they held up wonderfully! I'm so much happier with these new ones compared to the ones I was using before, which then brings me to my next point: what I'm doing with the old extensions. The original extensions were simply a set of short wefts in fairy blonde from Arda Wigs (they didn't have the long ones in stock and I was impatient...). Considering all that was left of the old extensions were the wefts themselves, I toyed around with the idea of using them to thicken my Rapunzel wig among other things but ultimately decided to make use of two leftover things to start creating a brand new thing. The new extensions were originally ponytail clips that came attached to a short base wig. Since I only needed the extensions, the base wig ended up being tossed into my closet seeing as I didn't have any use for it in mind at the time. Well, one night I put two and two together (quite literally) and came up with the perfect idea. 13ft of hair is hard to manage and unrealistic to wear to every convention I want to attend as Rapunzel, especially bigger ones that could potentially damage my wig. I've completed the super long hair, and I've completed the super short hair, so I decided I really wanted to complete the trio of hairstyles and shoot for Rapunzel's braid. I've tried it out various times before between my original Rapunzel wig (which I will forever nicknamed Crapunzel) and my second incarnation but this time, I think I'm a much more skilled cosplayer than I once was and therefore have decided once again to shoot for the braid. I'm taking a lot of inspiration from the wig the face characters wear in the park, which I've always been fascinated by the construction of and have tried to study as best as possible in a plethora of pictures. With that in mind, I've decided I want to try and make my wig two separate pieces: a base and a braid. I've already started on the base by sewing the short wefts from the original extensions into the base wig that came with the new ones, though I only have one side done currently. Originally I was hoping I could use just the base wig itself but I quickly realized it was far too short and there was no way it could hold those dutch braids and look right. I'm incredibly pleased with the way the construction is coming so far, though. With the wefts I did sew in so far, the wig has become much longer and thicker, not to mention that side's braid looks great. I haven't had the motivation or inspiration to work on the second side yet (it's been a few weeks) but once I do, I'll style the bangs and then work on trying to construct the braid. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do it yet but I know a part of me wants to try and engineer some kind of harness so that the weight is distributed on my back and shoulders rather than just my neck. I'm shooting for the same over-the-shoulder braid she wears in the parks (the original one, thick with the long, loose tail), achieving the thickness probably with the help of lots of hair and cotton batting. I don't know, it's still a work in progress and I don't really have a set deadline I want to finish this by so progress may be slow but I'm excited to work my way through the process and see how the end result looks.
    In addition, there are a couple other cosplays I'm planning to tend to, as well, specifically Ariel and Alice. Alice was my very first cosplay ever and the costume I bought was great but I was pretty young at the time and much like Alice with the cookies, I quickly outgrew the thing. I'm planning on selling it and then hopefully buying a new one, the same one as before but in a bigger size, since I was very pleased with the quality of the original and would love to be able to get the same one again. I would love to invest in a new wig for her, as well, since the one I have is a shitty Halloween store wig that, I will admit, is very thick and decent but it's just not exactly up to the standards I set for myself these days. It was a white wig that I tried dying ginger for Anna but the experiment failed and left it a pale blonde. Here's to hoping I can invest in a new, higher quality one soon, though. I'm thinking an Eowyn in Fairy Blonde from Arda, since that was always my first choice for an Alice wig. Either way, revamping Alice isn't really an immediate concern of mine at the moment. Instead, after Rapunzel, is Ariel, who I've made some incredibly exciting advacements for.
    I think it's safe to say I have always adored mermaids and wanted to be one ever since I was little. What girl didn't, though? When I was teeny tiny, my mom used to give me a pillowcase in the bathtub and I'd slip my legs into it and pretend I had fins. I pretty much perfected the dolphin kick by fourth grade. I had always wanted a mermaid tail but they were always so expensive and I knew when I was a kid that I'd outgrow it anyways and then all that money would have gone to waste. After a while, the desire got shoved to the backburner a bit but my childhood dreams finally bust back into the spotlight a few weeks ago. My parents and I visited SeaWorld for the first time in ages a few weeks ago and as we were passing the strip of stores in the front of the park, I saw a sign that said something about them selling Fin Fun products. I'd like to say I'm familiar with the brand at least due to researching mermaid tails if nothing else so when I saw that, I nearly flipped. Whatever freaking out I didn't do at the sign, though, I did when I saw the products inside. In one corner they had an entire display of Fin Fun mermaid tails both in packaging and hanging on racks freely. I basically died. Throughout the entire rest of my day at the parks, it was practically the only thing I could think about. I remembered visiting often when I was a little kid and wishing that they had sold mermaid tails there, thinking SeaWorld would be the perfect place to buy them, and now my wish had finally come true. I had considered buying Fin Fun before but the main thing that stopped me was my uncertainty of how the tails fit, if the sizes ran larger or smaller, and the quality. Being able to see them up close and in person made it so much easier to decide whether I wanted to buy from them and so before we left the park, my mom and I snuck back to the store and I fulfilled one of my childhood dreams. I am now the proud owner of my very first mermaid tail. Not only do I hope to use it for my Ariel cosplay but I'm excited to start learning how to swim in it and getting myself familiar with the art of mermaiding in the first place. I wanted to go to the pool this weekend to test it out finally but ended up being sick until Saturday and still feeling pretty shitty on Sunday so there went that idea. Hopefully I can get there soon, though, and finally fully fulfill my childhood mermaid dreams swimming in a beautiful tail ^_^