💕💕💕 My fifth year attending KCON and I'm still impressed at how I almost always have a good time as long as the ticket wars don't kill me! This year's lineup included two of my favorite girl groups (IZ*ONE and LOONA) and just overall most things were really fun and reasonably well executed in my opinion! It's still insane that simply at the convention itself—before you even make it to the concerts—you can encounter a ton of idols, listen to their special talks, potentially interact with them. ;u; I find some panels pretty interesting and I really enjoy exploring the expo with all the free beauty and food samples and loads of unbelievably delicious sales!! It's just become a no-brainer for me to go every year LOL.
Artists that we saw this year!!!
💘 Owns my soul probably: IZ*ONE, LOONA
💕 Love~: fromis_9, SF9
🌸 Like: NU'EST, Mamamoo, Itzy, Seventeen
👌 I guess I like?: N.Flying, AB6IX
🔍 Interested in learning more: ATEEZ, Stray Kids
😊 Neutral: Momoland, Verivery
Just like me, this post is long and messy—sorry, not sorry.
I think that I tend to focus so much on the lacking moments that perhaps I forget to acknowledge and appreciate the times when there are little sparks of joy. Today was a really good day, full of things that I can say with certainty made me happy! 💖 I loved waking up today without somewhere to be or immediate deadlines to work towards!! I cannot remember the last time I was allowed to be so relaxed. With my freedom I decided to lie in bed and start playing the Revue Starlight mobile game—which I genuinely quite enjoy! ^^ There's lots of fun story content, reasonable combat system, generous gacha and stamina so far, even your own little space to decorate and watch your best girls walk around and interact in. And then I met up with friend to get my new favorite thing: the Sesame Matcha Milk drink, which was super yummy and hit the spot!! Followed by a really fun thing! We joined up with another friend to take a spontaneous adventure to the beach city that's 45 minutes away. 💕 Visited one of my favorite ice cream parlors and we went on a wild goose chase looking for these particular coffee beans (despite not being coffee drinkers LOL) that support a particular youth resource foundation related to events from years ago and is very close to my heart. We explored downtown! And finally, I've been looking forward to lying in bed and playing more Revue Starlight!! Sadly I've been busy preparing for tomorrow which will be a..crazy day so I haven't actually gotten to open the game—and also really wanted to immortalize my joys from today—but I think it's a beautiful thing, the sensation of "looking forward to something." ;v;
✨✨✨ I'M FREEEEEEEE. I've been waiting for this moment for months!! I'm thankfully happy with all the things I've been working on recently and they are fulfilling projects, but it's truly exhausting and stressful to constantly be against deadlines and to always come home from work knowing that I can only take a short break before diving into making cosplay, or recording lines, or mixing, or making video ads. I really need a whole week just to catch up on sleep ;^; However I'm very excited to be spending all of August just doing social fun things and making a trip to LA with friends for KCON!
DREAM✦SCAPE made it to the final round of Ascension Chorus Battle (2019) and the deadline was last week, marking the end of an amazing journey. I really love all three entries our team made!! Our non-vocalist staff (pKotetsu, shippa, minty⁺, neneki) are all so talented and cool; it's been such a great honor to work with them and I still feel privileged that they said yes to us and stuck with us for 3 rounds. ;u; And of course it's been incredible to be a vocal team with longtime friends Mimi, Chiisana, and Aerin 💕💕💕 The other day in our sappy feels we called each other our "singing sisters"—and I feel like that's really the best way to describe the four of us... Our vocal tones all vibe and blend extremely well together and we sing with similar amounts of energy!! And we're always on the same page; having worked together and been friends for nearly a decade (yet somehow we'd never done a quartet before?!) let us be very comfortable with each other and give/accept honest feedback and have the best support system ever. ;o; I love them so much. I got to sing with such fuqqin POWER VOCAL QUEENS.
There's a lot to appreciate—from the vocal prowess and blood-pumping energy by chiisana, Mimi, and Aerin; to minty⁺'s ever stylish designs that nailed each of our personalities every time and eye candy illustrations that I would happily eat up at any given moment because they are just my type; to neneki's persevering dedication and how she elevated us with her knowledge about mixing and audio tech; to pKotetsu and shippa's animation (and the story was crafted by them too!) with A+ aesthetics and unique effects built by them that I can't comprehend the process behind.
Thank you for a great CB run! 💕
【A-S3】紅蓮華 | GURENGE【DREAM✦SCAPE】
For the past two rounds, neneki had done the main audio mix while Mimi and I would work on the timing—but for this round the scheduling only worked if neneki tuned/timed while I did the main mix, so that's how I ended up mixing despite swearing off CB mixing after Gemini's "Innocent x Haven" for Ascension 2017, heh....... For good reason too, I found out. and reconfirmed every. single day. as I struggled to make enough progress on the mix. Struggled just to accomplish anything. Discovered that I know nothing about efficient mixing, am lacking a lot of technical knowledge. Constantly felt the pressure of the looming deadline and the high expectations for a final round entry. Was burning out because my full time job is also post production and eye strain intensive. Had trouble staying awake late every night. Ear fatigue clouding my judgment.
This was such a big wake-up call regarding my mixing process. ;; More about this under the cut.
Wrote my very long AX write-up on all the fun times I had and thought I'd leave a bit more of a personal post too since June has been...a really different experience LOL. I'd never lived such an intensely disciplined life before—since I usually never exercise or diet...... And it was all for one (1) day of cosplaying a character who doesn't even suit my playstyle lol..................
What I was doing was actually pretty...unhealthy. Before being hospitalized I was already seriously underweight for my height (I'm 5'8 or 173 cm orz) then I came out of the hospital severely weak and never quite recovered weight-wise, so after under-eating for a month there were actually times I was scared looking at my own limbs. ;; All I wanted was to lose that layer of fat on my tummy so that I could try to bring out some abs, but I ended up pretty unhealthy............ On the plus side though, my acid reflux improved a ton! I focused on protein and no longer had snacks 24/7 during June, WHICH WAS REALLY REALLY HARD because my fast metabolism means that I get hungry really quickly and I'm used to eating often? Thus the acid reflux. I was hella getting withdrawal on the week before AX LOL. So much respect for people who are able to diet!!! Powerful beings!!!!
I don't know how to do this again in a healthy way. How do you achieve that balance?
And then I spent every freaking day either working on my Kai'Sa cosplay or doing chorus battle work TT~TT til like 3-4 AM..... through 126 episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's.... and then go to my full time job.... I was actually really frustrated that I never had time to do spontaneous things or take a chill day. >< For probably two months, I was too busy to hang out with Fome aside from a few group outings and the one time he helped with my costume. Constantly just worried about having enough time to finish everything.
Being busy also meant that I had difficulty dedicating time to workouts (okay, it's literally just ab excercises—I only care about abs) so I tried a new method this year of treating every waking moment as a casual, lowkey ab workout. While at work, I would use a standing desk and do a bunch of leg stuff and mini core squats. A lot of exercises while looking at my phone in bed or hand-sewing anything.. Dancing or knee highs whenever I was standing around idly.. While talking to friends, I would do sit-ups LOL. I really didn't have the abs that I dream of having—but in this specific photo, the lighting brings out ?? abs ????? a little???
Throughout June, I kept saying, "AS SOON AS THIS IS OVER, I'M GOING TO EAT A TON AND DO SOCIAL THINGS WITH FRIENDS!!!" and oftentimes you come up with these ~finish line fantasies~ in order to motivate yourself through challenges, though they may not actually come true afterwards... But I think I've been really happy the past week (despite the exhaustion and a few bad things) because I actually was rewarded with all the things I looked forward to. QuQ Lot of yummy food, more quality hanging out with friends than ever this AX, and I looked decent in cosplay.... It feels pretty fulfilling and as though my effort and discipline was worth it! I've been blissfully treating myself to every craving and living my best life hehe!
Right now I can safely say that my mental health is in a pretty good place. 💕 There were a few blips of me being overwhelmed with stress but all of my negative emotions have been temporary and situational. Been very stable and able to leave myself open to help others. I may be tired but I'm happy! ^^
A few years ago I realized that my life essentially revolves around Anime Expo—it's a staple that guarantees a good time filled with love, that I can look forward to/work towards every year without fail, and motivates me to keep going. ❤️ Year 8 has now passed and it was a lottttt of fun! So now begins the "waiting for the next AX" phase lolol.
After last year's gargantuan turnout, this year had a much smaller youtaite crowd and in particular I didn't have as many non-local close friends that came. ;o; On the one hand, it meant I didn't get to meet up with as many people that I rarely get the opportunity to hang out with, but that was okay!!! Because my hotel group (+ our friends who became honorary members) spent so much time together that it felt like we became a big comfortable family. 😭 This makes me sooo happy.... I love them allllllll T____T What a good group of good boys and good girls and gremlins and ninja bros! Kind of funny though that we went all the way to the biggest annual weeaboo gathering to mostly spend time with 80% folks that we already can see in NorCal but ayy the bonding was priceless.
"Afraid so. We really ought to install a sign, something like, 'Offerings Only' or the duller humans will continue mistaking it for what they call 'mailboxes.'"
"And who from this time?"
"The human girl again. The one who makes moving pictures. Fortunately it seems her litter may cease soon—her troop is relocating and she gratefully asks that we look after the mischievous feral creatures of whom she still believes we are guardians."
"Tsk, I told you humans have a way of falling helplessly for flerkens' trickery. If only she'd gratefully send more than a sheet of paper."
"Right. The incessant updates go on: singing, dancing, the usual, and she'll be accompanying her companions on their yearly migration towards..." the fairy squinted, perplexed. "What is a convention of animo?"
(i found this at my workplace today but i should be packing for ax)
Two and a half years after Mikumo, I'm gonna be very shoddily hacking together working on another cosplay up until Summer 2019! It's K/DA Kai'Sa from League of Legends' "k-pop group" and I gave all my reasons here for why she's personally my favorite member ahah.
Follow along as I have no heckin' idea what I'm doing.
Been a while since I wrote a new post; though I've been updating my cosplay progress post once in a while! My whole life recently has been my full time job and then sewing til late every night while listening to episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh LOLOLOLOLOLOL. I finally finished season 5 of the original YGO and then with my friend KT's recommendation, started YGO 5D's which was my first time watching a Card Games on Bikes series and it's not bad! Yesterday I cancelled dance practice on account of my recent lung pain(?) so I spent the entire day sewing......... through 27 episodes of 5D's. o<-<
I did go out with friends today though for Gino's birthday! We took a very obnoxious group photo at the produce section in Target :'D
thank you to everyone for voting me as Center for Produce NYA!!!
I’ll work hard until our debut, so please look after me with anticipation 🤗🍍🍈🍎🍅🥬 pic.twitter.com/AFNIQSauxY
Recently I've been thinking about how one of my uni professors tried to teach us that "You are not your art. If your work fails, it doesn't mean you've failed" and I never grasped that at all.
It's been on my mind as I just wrapped up a crazy work week (thankfully the event we were working towards is done so is all good now ;v;) during which I put in overtime and took on way more responsibility than I was tasked to, which in turn really helped the team and improved the videos we were working on. And at this point, in this moment I don't feel like I'm necessarily being a workaholic so much as I've already committed myself long ago to projects and am pushing through to finishing them even though I'm unhappy that I'm not left with any free time. Maybe it's because it's summer now but I wish so much to be able to do more things with friends, have spontaneous outings, sometimes just chill and play games.... instead of just constantly feeling like I'm running out of time for all the things I committed myself to getting done.
Back to that lesson by my uni professor, I think that separation is a great thing to teach—especially to students who are about to go into the world and face probable failure. On the other hand, I do find that it's one of my strengths that I take so much pride in my work, and it's something that my bosses be sure to point out during my reviews. D: Because I care, I try my best.... But I think it also means that I tend to sacrifice myself in favor of achieving better results. It's a double edged sword for sure. ^^;;; Once July 22nd (ACB round 3 deadline) is over, I look forward to dropping all responsibilities and just!!!! doing whatever I want!!!!
Happy to be able to say: I have a new solo cover!!! ✨✨✨
So twelve and a half years ago, I uploaded my very bad "fandub" of For Fruits Basket to youtube—my first cover that I put online. But like. Recorded in Windows Movie Maker with a $20 microphone. Mispronouncing everything and singing the wrong words.
Fast forward to when the 2019 reboot of the Fruits Basket anime was announced, I knew I definitely had to cover the opening theme—no matter what kind of song it was, no matter if I actually sounded good on it or not LOL! Hit up my friends' art and instrumental commissions, immediately started recording when the song came out, and I was set on uploading in April because I have other projects to worry about.... Until I got sick for 2 weeks, was on biz trip for 1 week, never fully recovered, had to focus on other things. :c Singing this was a struggle! In any case, I'm just very glad that I finally finished it; this is a super meaningful project. 💖
Bless my friends sherry and Dibur for making me sound and look this pretty?!?! sherry's art is just wonderful and warm and adorable. TuT And Dibur's instrumental makes me feel like a princess.... Do check out their links below to support/commission them!
There's a special reason behind me holding a basket full of candy in the illustration: I wrote a "future generation" fanfic called Candy Basket as my 8th grade novel lol. A friend and I wanted to make it into an anime (literally drawn in Microsoft Paint) and I was going to voice the cat character, but this is something to share more about another day~
I'm okay, so please please please click away/scroll past if this makes you uncomfortable and don't force yourself to read this post!! I'm doing well now and everything's good; please take care of yourself and don't think much of this ❤️❤️❤️ I appreciate you very much~
A super exciting thing—the bestie Chiisana and I have finally released our duet of Girl's Day's iconic song Expectation!!! Although we recorded it in 2014, many plans fell through throughout these years and at long last, expectations have become reality....haha get it.......thanks I'm here all the time
We're very privileged to have aeror404's hot, leggy art and Nobelz' amazing animation 💗
Since there have been multiple "finished" versions of this mix that span across 5 years—evolving with my growth in mixing skill/judgment—I was interested in comparing them and seeing exactly how my style of mixing and mastering changed!
Sad that YouTube was not very kind to the mix though so please listen at the link below:
Hawwo, it's been a while. TAT I honestly don't even remember how I spent April but I was certainly busy with something or the other... Now the month of May has blown by me with little semblance of healthy personal time. orz I was sick for two entire weeks and then had the most intense, draining, high pressure business trip for a week in Phoenix.. Now I'm mostly recovered but still got busy and some stressful times ahead. Yells a little.
Right before I got sick (and probably the reason), Fome and I made a 1 day trip down to LA because my favorite!!!! group!!!! Lovelyz came to the Korea Times Music Festival for their first American performance. QuQ I was so happy I got to use my lightstick and banner.... My princesses were beautiful and glowing 💗 The downsides to KTMF were that it was outside, a very long show, and it got cold once the sun went down—but o m g it was so much better a concert than I ever imagined it to be.... We both enjoyed it a lot!!! Every single act brought a quality performance and we were constantly awed by how impressive everyone's skills were... Kim Bumsoo is now my favorite ahjusshi; he's literally a godman and can do no wrong ever. Super Junior is always a joy to watch; plus their live vocals were very clear and they nailed them. Eunji from Apink is just such a wonderful and incredible singer and person!! Sungwoon's super stable vocals and dancing! And of course Fome's favorite Taemin dances for this non-broadcasted outdoor concert with as much charisma and feeling as he would for a music video shoot. And everyone else was impressive; I'm just too lazy to write about every act.
Here's me being the one embarrassingly loud Lovelinus in my section.
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The Ascension Chorus Battle round 2 deadline was a few days ago and yaaaay our group actually made it...... Not gonna lie, we were getting worried but hoooooo everyone really worked their asses off and pulled through in the end. T___T So thankful for everyone's hard work; this round was not easy at all.... On the vocal and mixing side, we struggled a lot. We sang XAI's "THE SKY FALLS" (which btw is from a Godzilla anime movie OST, which for some reason we were pretty hyped about) and it's a very cool song but is overwhelmingly repetitive, so we came up with a lot of melody changes and stretched ourselves to add new adlibs and harmonies as last ditch efforts to add a little spark... And then this sort of song is pretty unforgiving to mix since the vocals are very exposed, so every adjustment makes a drastic change in the sound and you end up going back and forth trying desperately to find a sweet spot that may not exist. (Not to take credit for the mixing—I only did timing and then neneki mixed while Mimi and I gave feedback so we were all frustrated together lolol)
Visuals are freaking amazing. This concept? The selective colors? The character styling? The story? The Marvel reference? Amazing amazing amazing.
A few weeks ago was the round 1 end of the newest, hottest chorus battle Ascension. Before I rave on and on about my own group, here are some of my close friends' groups that I highly recommend a watch through!
🔹 CYPHER - Redmoon :: Absolute legends. My favorite boys. ❤️ Truly, I admire every single member of this group and I LOVE that they are a CB repeat group! This time they came back with AN EPIC ORIGINAL SONG written by one of their members Toast who just released his first EP which you can buy here! I highly recommend checking out the lyric translations for Redmoon and the rest of Toast's songs as they're just poetic artistry. Everything about Redmoon is flawless....
🔹 The Prison Girls - Division Battle Anthem :: Badass rapping girls!!! Everything is so cool and I've never known of a CB entry as rap-centric as this before! So impressed!!
There's an abundance of great, impressive, fierce, beautiful, sweet, hardworking groups in this battle and you can find them in this playlist~
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It's kind of like a long-time dream come true to finally form a group with some of my favorite singing homegurls Mimi, Chiisana, and Aerin/Erin ❤️❤️❤️ Of course Mimi, Chiisa, and I are very used to working with each other, and Aerin has always been one of Gemini's closest friends and supporters so she's basically family. (Aerin and Mimi have also recently made a duet channel so please subscribe since they'll be active there. ^^) The four of us have great synergy and an honest, comfortable, trusting dynamic that allows us to really try our best—and so it's unbelievably gratifying and touching to hear from...actually a handful of people.......that we were their favorite entry vocally ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; omgggggggggg............ how is this possible?????? what a dream come true... It's especially flattering because our visuals are so strong that it's crazy that people are still able to give attention to our vocals? ToT
We sang the Japanese version of "What" by Dreamcatcher!! It was fun to get to show our colors as we're all also k-pop coverists and Dreamcatcher's songs in the k-pop scape have the unique quality of sounding like j-rock!
And of course the staff are the real reason our entry turned out amazing....
neneki was an incredibly dedicated mixer whose magic touch was what seamed our vocals together and made us shine! She's been dealing with some terrible circumstances but she still chose to work hard towards this entry in spite of everything—and for that, we're indebted to her big heart. ;; Please consider checking out her audio editing commissions as the income would mean a lot to her!
minty⁺ art speaks for itself.... I had a friend describe her art style as "timeless" and I think that's right on the nose. It's visually appealing as hell and she represented us as pretty, fierce, and vulnerable all at once. So freaking perfect. T^T How lucky were we to get Minty art..... I love it too much....
We were also privileged to have pKotetsu and shippa work on the animation and they really brought to life this story of 4 students trapped in nightmare scapes! I really love that we each have our own spoopy situations and how the color grading sets each world apart. Honestly both of our animators were dealing with reallyyyy busy lives during this round so it's crazy impressive how the animation still came together despite how little time they had to work on it. ;;;
Actually Chiisana and I last minute helped out with the animation to take a little off their shoulders—I animated the rap portion and Chiisa animated the bridge! Luckily we had pKotetsu's comps and settings as a base and I'm happy with how my portion turned out ;o; I felt like I leveled up as an animator from this!
Hello hello! I procrastinated blogging a lot in the past few weeks but I've been doing well! I've dedicated a lot of my time to singing projects but not in a burnout sort of way. ^^ My business trip earlier this month was incredibly exhausting but it's for one of those causes that feel warmly gratifying and fulfilling—I edited a video that celebrates some of the brightest students in the country with the strongest knacks for scientific research and potential to improve the world, and they always fill me to the brim with inspiration and pride every time I work this event. ;A; These students are so brilliant, ambitious, sweet, and hardworking; I love being able to share their stories and share their research, showcasing impressive and fun sides to them, and letting them see themselves as heroes. In comparison, they make me feel stupid and unpassionate but I try to think that my part in doing my heartfelt best to create videos that spread the message about their achievements and help them be proud of themselves is important too. ;o;
On this trip I also met up with Sonny for the first time over delicious ramen!!! We became friends many years ago through our blogs so it's super meaningful to me to get to post about our first meeting here. ❤️
Also got dressed up for the fancy gala at which my video was shown at the end of the trip!
Hmm, what else has happened... Chiisa and I got tickets for NCT 127's US tour in May! The ticketing process was painful but yay we're going! Also just one mere month before the concert, MY FAVORITE GROUP IN THE WORLD Lovelyz was announced as performers for the Korea Times Music Festival in LA 😭 Even though I had to book plane tickets and a motel, I'm gonna be exhausted from being busy, and my bank account has a chunk taken out of it from my lung situation, I thought of course I have to go......... How much would I regret it if I missed Lovelyz' first ever appearance in the US? ;;; Sadly Chiisa can't come but Fome wanted to accompany me so it's going to be his first kpop concert ever wowowow~
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March 16th was my singing fam Gemini's 8th year anniversary!!! We wanted to be more active so on top of a new project that's being worked on, we also thought it'd be nice to pick up a really old project that we recorded back in 2014! I had actually mixed it back in 2015 and shockingly the mix was not bad at all, I was kind of proud of myself..... But it wasn't up to current standards and our old mics sounded like crap, so I went and basically redid the majority of the mix L-LOL.. orz;;
A-and then I was going to make kind of a simple lyric video with chibis and just like.... particles and our dumb representative symbols from 2011, BUT LOOK WHERE WE ARE. LOOK WHAT THE NOOBIE ANIMATOR DRAGGED IN FROM AFTER EFFECTS HELL... I sold my soul for over a month animating this in most of my free time while listening to 37 episodes of Shokugeki no Souma dub in the background LOL. It was my first time making a 3D scene and I learned a ton of new things just for this video ^^;;; Please look upon it kindly!
We were all amazed at how our vocals from 2014 don't actually sound that bad ahaha. Of course we've all become stronger singers since, but man this really feels like the ~essence~ of Gemini that we're most familiar with. I'm incredibly proud of the six of us and how we've stuck together through all of these years—making us one of the few permanent singing groups in the communities we've been in that's this old and somewhat active. Especially in the past couple of years, we've been hearing a lot from people that have been supporting us for a long time or tell us that we inspired them, and that's just soooo amazing and heartwarming..... I really want us to keep going if that's the sort of impact we can have. ;^; ❤️❤️❤️
