Hello! I am currently in England! It's been a delightful time. I visited some cities. I was in one city in lolita and an old woman at the larger church was like "You look lovely!" and she clapped her hands for me. I want to like.. figure out the best way to share pictures from my adventures. Like I want to put pictures on my lolita page but I also have this blog. I guess I'll just share in both and hope it isn't redudant. I imagine a lot of people don't read my diary entries though. It's so much text!
Briefly want to mention.. Yesterweb is.. Dead? At least, I think it's dead. I really didn't like Yesterweb as a concept though I had nothing against people who were part of it. I was just explaining my issues with it to someone only to go to the website and find that a lot of things happened haha. I'm not rejoicing at the death of yesterweb or anything. The loss of a community you enjoy being a part of is always very sad, and I hope people still talk to the friends they've made in that community. My thoughts on this subject are succint and I've spoken at length about them in private with friends, so I don't really feel like going into them here. But someone who has many thoughts and a good writeup is suboptimalism. Here is a link. I'll probably link it on my links page too.
Anyway, back to abroad things. My time has been pleasant. Many pictures taken. I'll post a few. A lot were taken when I was biking!
from the woodsc:beansride over :cnational speed limitlarge
I have a lot of pictures. I plan to make a page for all of my pictures eventually with different sections for each adventure. I just have an empty mind lately. Layout ideas are difficult. I made another website mal.ophanimkei.com a month ago for class. It was fun and i'd like to use sql for more random projects though messing with MySQL and PHP made me realize static sites are just really fun to update and manage haha. I'm typing all of this in visual studio code rather than a spreadsheet. I'll probably use that site for more random projects though. My class next semester uses MySQL so it will be good to have on hand.
Oh god I should really focus on my time abroad rather than internet things. Okay okay! England really is a beautiful country. When I'm biking along the paths, looking at the rapeseed, or struggling to make my way through a fava bean field only to come across a fence, it truly feels like I'm playing Yume 2kki. Which is such a dorky thing to say! But it's true. I love nature but I'm just trapped in suburbs. And even when I lived in the country, I was often stuck in the yard or my granny's long driveway! I don't get to see this much beauty all at once so frequently often.
The larger church is 1000 years old, and the people there are lovely. There's an organ that plays the most haunting music. I also visited a 200 year old church and there's a pastor there who's from the states, but he has such a heavy English accent I couldn't tell. I got a lovely picture there I'll put on my lolita page at some point.
The place we're staying in is gorgeous though I struggle to capture its beauty in photographs. I need to take more pictures as well. It's a mishmash of architectural styles. I love the painted ceilings in some rooms.
can you hear the angels?
I went to a goth shop called Void Clothing and got wonderful shoes. Spiked trainer's. According to the website they're called "Bane Of Exile Black Koi" which is neat. I got some striped gloves I'm gonna wear everywhere and black striped OTKs. The guy who worked there was really lovely. He had like.. I think it's considered a mohawk. The sides of his head were shaved. We talked about Camden Street and I told him I was from America. He's definitely the nicest person I met here. He recommended I go to the doc marten store and a store called.. Cyberdog?
I've got about a week here left, but I've got to finish up our project by the 25th. We did most of it today, and it was lovely. It was alot of gardening. There were gazanias, marigolds, and some other stuff I don't really know. I talked to the gardener a bit, and he said he knew he wanted to do gardening since he was in school. Really amazing being so devoted to something.
I've got to handwash my blouses before I leave.. And I'm really tired, so I'll head to bed soon or maybe upload pictures to my lolita page.. We'll see!
Honestly I was really looking forward to coming home. My family finally seemed like they chilled out about my clothes after Years of complaining, and while my mother has definitely calmed down (likely because of the 2021 incident and me being an adult), she's still quite annoying.
She's been insisting to see the outfit we're wearing on my birthday trip (two months away fyi), and initially I assumed my granny had called her. The actual reason is because she deemed I dress up way too much which.. Ok. Why would I care? She keeps saying she'd want me to tell her if I thought something was wrong with her outfits so she needs to tell me, but I don't know how to tell her the opinion of someone who refused to let me wear the clothes I wanted to for years + someone who threw away my favorite cardigan because it had a pentagram on it + the opinion of someone who is my mother (sorry moms out there) + the opinion of someone who is a normie means nothing to me.
And it's over like.. dumb bullshit. "You can't wear the shawl. It's too much." "The ruffley skirt is too much" "Why can't you wear shorts and a t-shirt?" I am basically 20 years old...
I don't like.. mean to be disrespectful or anything? It just feels like a silly thing to complain about. I hate dressing down. It makes me unhappy. She told me the way I dress draws attention to myself and I said I don't care. She asked when I stop caring (because i have an anxiety disorder and used to hate attention), and i told it was when i realized how happy dressing like that made me. Of course, it wasn't enough. Just being happy doing something is never enough if you look weird while doing it I guess.
And my mom wears like.. the same clothes everyday which is fine, but i don't give her a hard time for it. Maybe I should? I don't really have the motivation though because I don't care about how she dresses. Fun fact! Most people don't care about the clothing of others.
I'm home. It kind of sucks but I'm having a lot of fun with my siblings. The JSK I ordered was sitting on my bed. I put it on and wore it outside while playing with my brother.
it was very hot
My granny is um. Not very happy with my fashion choices recently. My granny has always been pretty unhappy with my fashion choices but now that I've been buying clothes with my own money, she's way more unhappy.
She told me "I want to go to hell," I'm very pretty but downgrade myself, I look like a devil worshipper, what I wore to church the other day was inappropriate (it was literally a black blouse and a long black skirt, i chose it specifically because i thought it had ruffles and was nice for church), and some other things. It all culminated with us talking about my trip to the UK! which not sure i mentioned.. i'm going to the UK to study abroad in a few days lol
She kept telling me to dress normally while on the trip because I need to represent my school, I don't know the culture, etcetera.. I told her I dress similarly to my cousin who lived iwth me during the semestera nd is also alt but she said that cousin looks good and I don't which admitedly hurt a bit. Tbf, I consider myself more goth while my cousin consides herself more alt. I definitely go for more of a casual bat look rather than the look my cousin goes for.
Anyway, lol, it's fine. There's this Instagram reel that's like "honey i love you i think you're a terrific girl but you have clothes like a fucking dickhead" with the text "someone said 'i'd rather my outfit be borderline ugly than boring' and now i live by that" and i feel similarly.
and honestly, i don't even dress that weird. like i call myself a goth or emo or super edgy or whatever but my outfits are pretty tame. plenty of goths wouldn't consider me goth and my fashion tends to lean towards regular clothes but dyed in black.
>br>a selection.. i don't think i dress in a way that would bother modern sensibilities
but. idk who showed my granny my instagram story where i was wearing the black jsk with the striped socks but whoeever it was GET FUCKED!!!!!!!!! lol there's no reason for my granny to know what i was wearing yesterday. i'm not sure who the hell showed her but when i find out, i am going to eliminate them (politely ask them not to do that).
I do realize my granny comes from the generation where their first exposure to alternative people was Christians framing us as devil worshippers, true crime and the news framing us as cultists and murders, etcetera ectetera. So I don't blame her for being kind of weird about it. It's actually why I'm not very happy about the show Wednesday being so popular. I really don't think it's good for the subculture for goths to be associated with murder, but lol I realized I'm influenced because I'm in the bible belt and I have to deal with the consequences of depictions of us being like that as evidenced by this entire blog entry thus far. Also my granny like.. raised me. I'm basically one of her children. It probably hurts that I'm a bit of a freak to her.
Anyways, onto positive things. Going to study abroad. I'll be in the UK! You might. Be able to guess some of my locations if you're from the UK and know my interests HAHA. I'll be going for most of May! I'll be in London for a few of the days just hanging out. I'm hoping to visit Camden Market and.. SOHO? If you know of any like.. alt or dork shops in the area, feel free 2 send them to my email LOL.
I went on a big hiking trip and saw a waterfall which one of those pictures is from that. It was so fun. A friend went with me and we took pictures cx I can't wait to go back to college and go on more hiking trips! I plan to make a page dedicated to it. I've just been really burned out. Don't wanna do much,, it's why I haven't updated anything since my zine released LOL.
I decided to join the vncup and i'm collaborating with Zed. He's doing some of the cgs and backgrounds. I've had a friend offer to make music too though I haven't said yes because I'm so picky and don't want to kill them with my requests LOL. It's just really annoying looking for stock free music. Definitely one of my least favorite parts of game development.
Umm.. And that's all folks. I wanted to talk about a lot more like my storage unit hell, a cool bookstore I went to, etcetera, but I'm really tired!!! I'm going to talk about it another time hopefully cx See you on the flip side!
>br>a selection.. i don't think i dress in a way that would bother modern sensibilities