trying to become the cutest version of myself, getting way too into gintama, and other october ramblings

24/10/2025

i enter my lolita training arc (and other cute-centric behaviours)

for a while now i've been trying to put a renewed focus on living a cuter life. i feel happiest and at my best when i'm exhibiting cuteness in some way, be that through my clothes or through my hobbies. so it seems like a pretty natural self-care practice to just. do that more. and it's been working! i am 80% more likely to leave my house if i have a super cute outfit planned and generally go through the day feeling happier and more energized when i do! i am, admittedly, a pretty crude and vulgar person when it comes to my humour and speech. and while i don't think of this as a moral failing of mine, it does make "feeling cute" a little more difficult... so i think taking extra care to be cute in other ways is important. basically, i've been trying to make sure i'm equally representing my pervert fujo toilet humour self and my pretty princess cutesy self so that i feel maximum amounts of happiness ☆

part of this quest for cuteness has led me into trying to dive deeper into lolita fashion and community! i've loved lolita fashion for a very long time, but as someone who enjoys a ton of different aesthetics, i've never really given it the commitment it deserves. and that sucks because i like it so much!!! it helps that i recently found out my local comm has a discord server now. i'm terrible at using facebook and quite shy when meeting new people in person, so being able to chat with comm members and actually know when meet ups are happening has been so nice! i also noticed that a few other noobies were signing up for the annual comm secret santa, so i signed up for that too! i'm super excited to shop for my person and go to the meet up in december. i've only ever been to one meet up before and it was quite awkward for me, but knowing there'll be other new people and getting to chat online a bit more first makes me feel a lot better!

i think my next big step in this lolita training arc is to....... actually train. i have a lot of dresses i bought pre-quarantine that don't fit me anymore after the great hibernation of quarantine. and while i have no great self-esteem issues with being a fat girl, i stack very little paper, so being able to wear dresses i already own instead of buying new ones is kind of ideal LMAO. and exercising is another self-care practice that i need to get the hang of too... i am firmly against fatphobia and the notion that someone who is fat must also be unhealthy, but it just so happens that i am both fat and unhealthy and i would really like to tackle that! taking proper care of yourself is important for inner cuteness too!!!

hobby wise, i'm trying to get back into the swing of sewing and crocheting regularly again. it's been a bit of a battle because i am still playing runescape so incredibly hard, but i do think i'm becoming better at juggling multiple hobbies at a time and not just tunnel-vision focusing on one. it's also nice that runescape is a game where there's a lot of activities i can do while doing other hobbies at the same time. i'm a big fan of setting up afk skills on my ipad while i sew! and i have a lot of graphic shirts that i don't really wear anymore so right now i've been upcycling them into cute pieces that i'll actually wear. it's been a lot of fun!! i'm looking forward to sharing them with you all when i finally get my crafts page finished in a million years.

i started watching gintama and it was a mistake

last year, i wrote a diary entry where i reviewed a bunch of anime and said that i had started watching a couple of episodes of stuff before bed. it was a nice way to wind down at night while finally eating through my ever-growing to-watch list, and i really enjoyed doing it! but somewhere along the way i stopped. while watching some weekly animes last season i realized i wanted to restart this habit and decided to start gintama on a whim. my thought process being that because it's a long watch, if i watch a couple of episodes here and there every night it'll keep me entertained for half a year or so. and gintama is such an unserious show that if i quit somewhere along the way it wouldn't really be a big deal.

but boy was i wrong!!! i like it SO MUCH. i want to be watching it at all times. i go to bed earlier so i can watch more episodes. sometimes i just laze around all day watching it. it's so fun and it's such a great show for people like me who really love characters. and i got into it at the worst/best time because a new spin-off series where all the characters are students and the main character (gin) is their teacher just started airing so now i'm in even more of a rush to finish so i can watch that weekly!!! and if you've seen my fan behaviours page/last entry here you know that this is an EXTREMELY pressing matter to me. student x teacher served up on a silver plater sorachi i would do anything for you.

and i fear it is happening again. i am back in the almost-yume stage of my fixation on a character, in this case gin. i always say this but i fear it's terminal this time. i need him so bad. you can't show me a gross annoying asshole guy that is also extremely honourable and caring and smart and not expect me to go insane. that's wife bro. i need to put him in a box and rattle him around. i need to use him as a chew toy. it's BAD.

and i fear that won't change because watching gintama has kind of made me realize something! i may be coming out of my monoshipping ways... or maybe i'm just becoming more tolerant of multishipping??? i think i'll always be someone who primarily focuses her attention on one singular ship and prefers to have everyone paired off nicely, but gintama has so many interesting dynamics spanning across all its characters that enjoying several ships per character is kind of a must... gin himself has like, eight different ships (both BL and HL) that i'm pretty invested in seeing on screen. it's kind of funny!! hearing that it has good yaoi was a big motivator for my watching gintama but almost 200 episodes in, i still haven't found myself gunning for any ship in particular. the ever-popular gin x hijikata IS excellent though. i'd be a fool to pass on a good rivalry. and i'm really itching to see more of gin's interactions with takasugi... friends/lovers to enemies is so juicy too... in any case, i'm looking forward to updating my fan behaviours page with it once i finish the series as a whole!

i randomly attended a convention

on the first weekend of october i went to a con! i had no plans whatsoever to go to this con. in fact i didn't even know about it until i was already going. a friend of mine is a routine giveaway joiner and won tickets for it, and i was lucky enough to be the friend she invited along! and it was really fun!! it was a small con and only a two-day event, but we got to dress up and do some artist alley shopping and really, what more can you ask for from a convention. so it was a good time!!

as you can probably gather from the previous section of this post, i was primarily on the hunt for gintama goods. going in, i was a bit worried about being like. fifteen years too late for gintama to be at all present, especially since it never quite reached the same popularity overseas as its contemporaries. but i remained hopeful that maybe i just never saw gintama stuff before because i wasn't looking for it, you know? and that turned out to be the case!! it still didn't have a particularly large presence but enough goodies to keep me spoiled for choice and i even saw someone cosplaying hijikata!!!

that being said! man. it is so hard going to artist alleys these days as someone who doesn't play any hoyoverse games or love and deepspace. this is more of a personal compliant since there's no question how insanely popular they are right now, but i sure do love going to the so-called anime convention and finding half the booths are full of gacha games!! i know they're anime-adjacent and i've definitely been known to not complain when people are selling merch of the video games i like, but it just felt a bit overwhelmingly disproportionate this time i guess!! at least games like love live and bandori have anime accompaniment!! it was nice for my friend though, as she plays most hoyoverse games and LADS, but i found myself walking by a lot of booths entirely because there just wasn't anything for me to look at. i don't think i would care as much if it wasn't so overpowering, and it's hard to blame artists when that does seem like where the money is at these days. but this is my diary and i just wanted to complain a little!

anyways!!! let's get to the important stuff!! the haul:

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gintoki's in a separate pic because they have already found their home on my purse ♡

a solid array for two days of shopping, i'd say!!! looking back i ended up with a lot more gintama stuff than i originally thought.... to be fair, a lot of these items came from one big combo set! if they prints and the folders were sold separate i probably wouldn't have bought them, but i'm still happy they made their way to me hehe. the hanging okita keychain was actually a freebie from one of the booths, which i was really shocked and excited to find!!

don't ask me about the mousepad keychain. i am a crude and vulgar pervert, after all.

other october ramblings

october's a pretty stacked month for my family! my mom, sister-in-law, and nephew all have birthdays in october! my mom and sister-in-law land early in the month, so we have already celebrated and spoiled them accordingly. it was a lot of fun!! my nephews first birthday is next week though, and i'm so excited... he's such a funny kid and he gets funnier every day!! still as busy as ever but soooo pleasant and sweet. i'm really looking forward to his first birthday celebration!! i need to start crocheting something and fast...

last weekend, me and my friends had a friendsgiving hang out as canadian thanksgiving was the week before. i organized a little at-home bingo event because we all got hooked on roblox bloxy bingo for a while and it was sooo much fun!! everyone seemed to really enjoy it too :D moving forward, i'm pretty excited about halloween this year! my friend is having a party and i am planning on finally achieving my clown costume dreams. if i have enough time to, i'd really like to get some clown gags to do at the party. might even learn how to tie balloon animals if the stars align. it's the first time i've really looked forward to halloween in a long time and it feels so!!! aaaa!

i hope the colder season is treating you all well!!

just another day - oingo boingo