- any!
Hi! As soon as I made this profile I realize I made the mistake of making my username the purpose of this account because now people would have trouble referring to me without my name upfront. Oops. For now till 4 weeks, simply refer to me as the character in my profile picture, Shijima! I'm 19 years old, and as for my gender, I don't have a clear view for myself, so refer to me as whatever for now.
I've made this account with the goal of simply writing about my life in here, and to write little bits of literature here and there. Drawing isn't my best suite at the moment but I do love writing! ^w^
I like the works of Tsukumizu (Girls' Last Tour and Shimeji Simulation), Yume Nikki and the equally dreamy fangame Yume 2kki, Pokemon, Roblox, and most importantly, reading literature! Especially classic works such as the Sherlock Holmes canon and H.P Lovecraft, etc.
My online activity is sporadic and few so I'm not active a lot of the time, but I'd don't mind a conversation .w.
As of this entry, the school schedule is very lenient for its amount of classes and hours on the week. With that, I've been staying up to until 12 AM everyday, playing Roblox. Me and my friend group have been at Dead Rails for a while (hence little activity and, with an admission of guilt, slacking off on writing...), wanting to finish a game but having a run ended through bad luck and ill-considered choices of raiding The Castle without any preparation.
Although it isn't a recommended habit, I love staying up late to the night because it in the hours of sleep where I am left to my own devices in the quiet and restful period of the day. No noise, and no chores to have to do. Just me and this laptop...
But this is part of the reasons why I love the night.
In the case of someone who lives in a greener area, there is the nocturnal stridulation of distant crickets, the chill breeze that rustle the trees, the sight of fireflies gathered under the leaves of trees, and occasionally, the Moon stealing from the sun's light, shining to my room as if to say hello. Then, when the clouds clear up, I can see the stars. I'm grateful to live in a seclusive neighborhood with little light pollution so that I am able to behold the sprinkles of space.
Writing this entry made me have a feeling of longing for staying up to the night just to feel it. I think I could do this right after this, as I feel like the habits of doomscrolling are starting to debilitate my senses and ability to feel, it sometimes just make me feel horrible depending on what information I numbingly received to an already overwhelmed brain. There is always a better time to spend than quick consumption.
Happy March, everyone!
My drive to make is a wavelength. It is at its peak for a week, then it comes crashing down. My mind would flare up while it scrambles for ideas and figure out the right way to write words and sequences to a story, only to come crashing down on the couch and binge The Pokemon Anime (Sun and Moon currently! My favorite character is Lana, her personality matches mine :3) all day.
Sometimes it all feels kind of, bleh. No..., and without outside initiatives, I just don't get the urge to do stuff on my own. I've put off my short story in this state, and it isn't even halfway done...
I think of myself as a snail that takes breaks. Although I wish to be a novelist, my habits don't show that... ,_,
I'd still try to work on what I put off, but maybe I'll just stick to poetry for now. Its easier to construct a fun poem than to construct a world built on raw words. Whenever I feel like this, I go back to my roots, where I'm most comfortable.
My creative process is obscured by many obstacles that hurt my focus, and while I feel bad for not being productive enough to write a lot of literature, the only other thing I take pride in, is that I've at least made something. Its a start!
Nowadays, I've been handling my phone use a little better, scrolling through YT Shorts exhausts a lot of my motivation and desire to do anything. But sometimes I just feel guilty when I could not sit down and just read a book straight! Especially when a book that I've currently set in my mind to read is a more difficult read. I read more manga than novels more because the story is both drawn and written (and sometimes the visual goes SO HARD), but I also want to continue The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. Its my first introduction to the Victorian era of literature-though I didn't know this, just thought the title sounds cool when I had my eyes lain on it in the bookstore-and so far for me it is a plot of a family making means, but I know there is more to that if I truly invest my time on the novel.
I want to be able to be more media literate because I want to enjoy to the fullest the media I really enjoy and to reflect that by making the magnum opus I dream of writing! But due to the predatory methods of companies attempting to fetch in engagement to their social media products, I feel like I'm the Ulysses ogre.
And heck, even I don't know if I fully grasp my favorite mangaka's writing of the manga I indebt my life to, but all I've felt from reading it is existentialism and isolation from how Shijima experienced life; detached, apathetic. Light spoilers for those who didn't read Shijima Simulation, I'll just rant here:
The inability to relate to others to a more personal degree, yet, she still feels fear, gratitude, and eventually, the desire to connect. She never seems to express so much as the lively egg-head Majime, when this girl's desire for connection made her cling to Shijima. And that is how I got attached to the personality of Shijima!
In the age of fast content, time for reading is so much a need when now the people around me, even my family, endlessly scroll through their phones. And I don't deny falling victim to this too, but, I sometimes break through the mold to read and write. There is so much cool things to see out here in spite of where the world is heading, and we, you and I, have the privilege to see AND make cool things! What is the use of that privilege if we amuse ourselves to death?
I don't know how, but my body's sleeping pattern is strange. Sometimes I try to sleep early, and I end up with 4 hours in and up on 12:40. I stay up up to 12, but then I wake up on 6 or 7 (NO PUN INTENDED NO NO) o'clock. I've been up to 12, writing and coming up with ideas for my first literature post for school break due to the Chinese new year, but since now there is school today, I slept on 9, but got up with 4 hours of that sleep.
Partly I think its because of this that I don't usually experience dreams as much anymore. I do wish I can dream a lot more, just so I can experience what the heck Madotsuki is experiencing.
Back from digressing, it had felt like this for a long time. It is probably normal, but I don't know. I've heard from friends that they just flop on the bed and wake up with like 8 hours of sleep, and just like that. Only until now did I start questioning my sleeping patterns...
So far, I've been reading this manga called Usuzumi no Hate when browsing through Mangadex, and I ABSOLUTELY love the art style of the manga. Especially with how the mangaka does their perspective composition on some of the pages (I would show such panels but I'm not someone who spoils!)
Everything about the manga checks a lot of what I want to look for when it comes to reading stories that I personally like; existential, food-for-the-mind dialogue, and quietness. Its like Resident Evil gone bad mixed with Girls' Last Tour-esque post-apocalyptic environment. I will be obsessed with this manga for some time :3
Though, a question that boggles my mind comes up every now and then ever since I made the first journal post here; hypothetically, how would this, the manga's art, be translated to words when it gets serialized to a novel? As someone who likes to write stories, how does one turn the visuals of scenery inside the mind to crafted words that lead the imagination of readers to visualize what the author's world which they imagined it to be? Comics use visual and dialogue to depict a story, but I don't have skills of a painter. How would a writer use a pen on a canvas?
Poetry, I can say, is something which is equivalent to this, to quote part of a poem from Alberto Caeiro, a pseudonym of Fernando Pessoa:
And there are poets who are artists
And they fashion their verses
Like a carpenter his boards! . . .
But if the focus is on prose? As much as though I like writing, doing prose is something I've not done much. It kind of terrifies me to do this kind of writing:
The building was of grey, lichen-blotched stone, with a high central portion and two curving wings, like the claws of a crab, thrown out on each side. In one of these wings the windows were broken and blocked with wooden boards, while the roof was partly caved in, a picture of ruin. The central portion was in little better repair, but the right-hand block was comparatively modern, and the blinds in the windows, with the blue smoke curling up from the chimneys, showed that this was where the family resided. Some scaffolding had been erected against the end wall, and the stone-work had been broken into, but there were no signs of any workmen at the moment of our visit. Holmes walked slowly up and down the ill-trimmed lawn and examined with deep attention the outsides of the windows.
- Taken from "The Speckled Band"
I like reading novels, but descriptive writings to conjure scenes takes a bit for me to imagine and comprehend visually the physical scene which is being described.
I have a habit of conjuring up ambitious ideas in my head, but feeling like I don't have the techniques and skills to give exact vision to these big ideas. One of these ideas is making prose stories inspired by Yume Nikki. Considering that the game revolves around surreal dreams, its essentially making surreal literature. But to make out of the abstractness of the daydreamed world I have in my head based from this dream game would be confusing to navigate through. There are more concrete worlds in Yume Nikki that are easy to make description of, but there is also stuff like this:
How does a writer describe Neon World in prose to someone who doesn't know Yume Nikki?
Greeted by the bright neon glow etched on the walls, Madotsuki enters through the door that glowed with colored flashing dots on the front that reminds of the aesthetics of arcade machinery. On the vantablack floor, there are flashing neon tiles with a face on them, the eyes rolling round each tick of flash, of which these tiles are arranged . Around as she looked, there are what seems to be individuals of this light-show habitat that share the neon traits of their living space. Her shoes squeaked on the seemingly non-existent floor and clunked against the metallic texture of the neon tiles as she navigates the bright dream.
I wonder how much description should be needed to give a vivid envision of my dream world without it turning redundant. I feel like I gave enough depictions here to make up Neon World, but to what amount of detail can I fit into a paragraph or two? What feeling does it capture when entering to the dream world (in prose)?
Ahhh, I'll leave the entry like this to rest my brain, abrupt as it is. Once I start a journal entry, I get really engrossed to writing what goes on in my head sometimes. Thank you for reading!