August 2023 - birthday, badges, and building to a big shop drop!

This month I continue my unlucky streak: I started it with a twisted ankle, which is only just healing, and I ended it with Covid-19. The bright spots have been celebrated my birthday and working towards a big release on my online shop coming at the end of the month!

Site Updates:

Nothing new this month, but coming soon, this website will be migrating to a custom URL! I’ll probably make a newsletter when it does happen, but just prior warning: soon, this site will be hosted on (probably) shootingstarpress.xyz! (There are other options, I’m very indecisive.)

Art Updates:

I spent the first half of the month working on a piece for a zine that’s yet to come out, and I’m very happy with what I submitted. I think I mentioned a while ago that one of the things I’ve been trying to improve is cohesive colour schemes, so for this I figured out the colours as soon as I’d figured out the sketch and composition. It was fiddly and frustrating, but it ended up making the finished thing come out great—which you’ll see in a couple of months when I can post it.

I made a print for my parents’ anniversary, and wrote the Scott Pilgrim essay for this blog, which really ran away from me, but the main thing that happened in August was of course my birthday! When I was part of the end of year shop at Foundation, the button badges I made sold faster than anything else so it made sense to ask for my own press, for shop reasons and also because I’ve always loved badges as fun little trinkets and accessories. I haven’t named my badge press yet, but I’m sure I will at some point.

I’ve started decorating my backpack & clothes with badges representing things I like (favourite video games, books, music), and making badges to sell in the shop, here’s some sneak peeks:

I also got some sticker paper, which I’m planning some designs for (some fandom-related, some more general ones), so the aim is to drop all of this stuff on the ko-fi shop (which you can follow to make sure you’re on top of things) around the end of the month, before I start university. I’d like to make a redux of my shooting star pride designs, maybe with specific pride flag variants.

Zines are chugging along, shop stuff is happening, and I’ve got a few potential commissions queued up: keeping the same fun balance of busy and exciting, just gotta make sure I get most of it done before university.

I ended up having a low-key birthday day itself with friends and an awesome chocolate fudge cake made by my sister, and then a birthday party with friends at an arcade bar. I also got a new lunchbox and thermos for college (so I can stop carrying around my lunch in old tupperware,) new keycaps for my mechanical keyboard (which are gorgeous,) and some great books. And some awesome t-shirts (first one is a Hangman Adam Page t-shirt (one of my favourite pro wrestlers) and the second one is by sofftpunk.)




 

What I Love

Reading!

• I finished Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which I mentioned I was struggling with last blog. I ended up putting it down for a while to finish rereading Scott Pilgrim, but I successfully finished it. I did enjoy the way the plot picks up at the end of the book, enough to make me consider loaning the sequels from the library, but I still finished the book disappointed. It’s a good read for people who want a plot-focused sci-fi series, but I’ve realised something I value a lot in books is feeling immersed, and the prose and character voice didn’t make me feel immersed at all. There were interesting concepts that I feel weren’t done justice by the writing, especially Breq’s whole existence - a novel from the perspective of a spaceship sounds fascinating, but Breq’s narration felt flat and didn’t describe her emotional state at all beyond vague lines about feeling disconnected. Seivarden annoyed me, and generally, the emotional angles of the book fell flat for me.
• I started Babel by R. F. Kuang, and so far I’d say I’m intrigued by it. The worldbuilding and linguistics involved is interesting and it pulls off the style of the books it’s emulating very well, but so far it’s slow going. I’m not particularly interested in ‘dark academia’ as an aesthetic or academia as a setting, but I think it’s clear Kuang is much more interested in picking it apart than just following it. It’s a huge book, but I’ve been reading it while I’m sick in bed, so I'm making some good headway.

Watching!

• I got to see my first live pro wrestling this month and it was absolutely incredible. I saw the RevPro 11 Year Anniversary show at Copper Box Arena, which we had a great view for despite being pretty high up. Honestly, it’s just crazy. Like I don’t really have any words other than ‘I saw the wrestling! In front of me!’ because it was just such a wonderful experience. The matches were amazing—Shingo Takagi vs Will Ospreay was the obvious highlight, but Michael Oku vs Trent Seven was a classic hilarious match with an amazing crowd reaction and Tomohiro Ishii vs Luke Jacobs was a match I didn’t expect to like, but ended up getting so swept up in the storytelling. Mickie James and Zack Sabre Jr. were both amazing to see live.
• The next day, I saw AEW All In at Wembley Stadium. Visibility was much worse, so it was more of a ‘being in a wrestling crowd’ experience than watching wrestling, but I still managed to see some wrestlers I love and enjoyed the experience, as well as meeting up with friends who attended. Seeing Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi in the same ring live was crazy, and I get why they don’t wrestle together as much anymore but it makes me sad, so even just getting to see them doing their tag team moves meant a lot, because the Golden Lovers are so important to me. Cheered tons for Hangman Adam Page, the Young Bucks, Hikaru Shida, and ate overpriced donuts. Good time overall.
• On a very different note, I’m watching the new season and new English dubbing of Takeshi’s Castle. I was obsessed with weird CBBC show Splatalot as a kid and later Total Wipeout, so I think the show itself is great, I just hate how they’ve chosen to dub it. They’ve got two British comedians commentating and laughing along at it like reaction youtubers, when I actually just want to watch adult men fall off various large soft objects. Also, the fact they don’t translate or explain any of the Japanese and mock the format leads to a kind of uncomfortable ‘weird Japan’ vibe.

Listening!

• I miss Blaseball, so I was listening to some of the Garages’s music recently, just for nostalgia reasons. The Garages are hard to describe, I think they’re best described as Blaseball was: a cultural experience. Just a ridiculously large amount of fans submitting and creating songs about a silly splortsgame, and they ended up producing some cool stuff. I never did a particularly deep dive into their music, and I’d like to at some point, but I enjoy some of their classics: The Ballad of Unremarkable Derrick Krueger, Firewalker With Me, Mike Townsend (Knows What He’s Gotta Do) and Eyes in the Dark. Of course I’ve gotta shout out songs associated with teams and players I like: Shutout is a classic and Heart Full of Love (Mouth Full of Blood) is also great. I think my niche pick favourite is probably Pathetic/Spineless, which is a really early song that doesn’t seem to have much relevance to anything in particular, but for some reason has just rooted itself in my head? I’m very fond of it.
• Thought I’d follow up the Scott Pilgrim blog post with a shout-out to the original version of Black Sheep by Metric, which really is great, and through a weird fandom venn diagram in my mind, has come to be known to me as a Kenny Omega song. It is, though!

Playing!

• Caves of Qud has been my latest obsession. I am not very good at it and I don't think I've ever got outside the starter town, but I'm really interested in the solo roleplay experience and I love the character customisation. The art and styling of it is just really fun & I'm excited to hopefully, uh, get better at the game.

That’s me for August, I’m going to get back to pressing a lot of badges and dreading doing the colour planning for this zine piece. And sneezing. Keep your eyes peeled for the shop update and URL change, I will announce both shortly :D I have no idea what the September mid-month blog is going to be. We’ll find out.

Ellis xoxo