Monthly blogs or whatever, am I right? It would be nice if I could actually pull off posting a thing at the end of every month, but considering my ADHD and constantly changing motivation I won't make any promises. Either way, the point of this blog is to give you a summary of what I've been up to this month.

Website update

This site received a major overhaul. I tried to keep the development of the new look as secret as possible, only sharing it with a couple of friends. If you've seen the previous version, you probably went "Woah!" when you saw this one, didn't you?

The color palette changed from black-and-blue to black-and-red (and white). I think this color palette reflects my "vibe" more than the previous one. After all, it's the palette of my sona. I always liked red more than blue anyway.

And I started to make actual illustrations to be used as decorations on the site. I get extremely lazy when it comes to things like this, though actually seeing them on the site is SO worth it. I even made some buttons for myself - "I HATE TWITTER" which I put on the Home page, and some pride flags that I put in About.

I have to stress that I'm not a creative person, so designing anything remotely good-looking is always a struggle for me. But you know, I'm very proud of this new design. I don't like saying things like this, but I guess I did work hard on it.

There are still areas I could improve, though. For one, I'm still unsure if I want to have just one sidebar, or if I want to have two. I'm not even sure what I would use the second sidebar for, except for links to my socials and a blinkie collection. Why am I even thinking of adding another sidebar, you ask? Because sometimes my OCD acts up from the main section of this website not being centered.

There is also the question of whether or not to keep the sidebar in blog pages. The Javascript that comes with Zonelets already includes a 'Home' button at the end of each blog, so having a navigation menu seems redundant. I could use a separate style for blog posts altogether, but I like design integrity... Once again, these are minor issues that I'm going to solve in one way or another in the future.

Also the header is kind of ugly.

General life stuff

It feels like all of my mental illnesses are relapsing at the same time. I freeze every time I have to talk to someone or make myself 'seen' on socials. But I don't want to be too negative, so let's switch the topic to something else.

As usual, I've been busy with university affairs. I have only a few classes each week now, since some of our exams and assessments happend earlier than usual. Still, I get easily bored of doing homework and "working" on my thesis. I want uni to be over already... But there is still a month and a half left.

For this year's uni practicum I'm supposed to surveil a state school exam. It is called "Unified State Examination" and every student in our country who is finishing high school is obligated to take it. I cannot stress how important this exam is - students can spend a year or even two preparing for it.

This role is strangely fitting for someone with a camera objecthead as their sona. But good lord, I don't actually want to rat on teens who secretly brought phones or cheat sheets. When I was taking this exam I didn't bring either because I was incredibly afraid of being caught, but I don't blame anyone who does. I am very much against this bullshit exam - it's incredibly hard and doesn't really test your knowledge of the subject; rather, it tests your knowledge of the exam and its questions. It has many trick questions that are made so that you never get a 100% score. I myself lost a couple of points on my English exam because of dumb true/false questions (92/100 by the way).

I have no idea if there will be any penalties for not reporting on a cheat. I hope not. How would they even check that? I could just say I missed it because of astigmatism or because I went to the bathroom. Moreover the cameras tend to have low resolution, which makes it hard to understand what the students are even doing. Not to mention the fact that each class will have, like, 10 of them.

Gaming!

Unfortunately I had to put my Calamity Infernum playthrough on hold, not only because of other interests but also because playing Terraria consumed my life and I could spend an entire day just playing it instead of doing something more productive. Both of my multiplayer Calamity playthroughs haven't been progressing either. This is bad news as I was very much looking forward to finishing this mod. It became a huge interest and source of inspiration for me over the past few months. On the bright side, there is a chance I will get to play vanilla Terraria with another friend this summer. Hooray!

Some time ago, as I was brooding over life and video games, I rediscovered Leathericecream's works. He is an artist and youtuber I've liked since my early teen years. He also happens to make games. I always liked the humor of his videos, so I was very curious to see what his games were like.

The game I decided to try was "At Least There is Čeda Čedovic". It's a platformer and a relatively long one, so I knew I would be able to nicely savour it. Its description sounded extremely promising, but it wasn't until I've heard the main menu theme that I realized just how batshit insane and special this game was going to be.

It's important to mention that the game's story is set in the universe of Leather's characters - the Poor 4. Background information on them is provided through the game's lore book. The lore entires usually list insane facts, such as some characters being immortal or having started multiple wars, and then refuse to elaborate. They compelled me to learn more about the Poor 4 and I ended up watching some of the animations with them.

I'm nowhere close to understanding the full narrative of the Poor 4, as these OCs are a decade old. But I got charmed by Čeda. I have a soft spot for characters like him, who are charismatic, violent for no reason other than it being funny, and have some godly superpowers. He is also aroace? This may or may not have been one of the reasons I decided to play this game...

So yes, I'd say that the game's selling point is its humor and tone. The game radiates charm and it's clear that a lot of effort was put into it. The gameplay is good too, though it's not revolutionary. I forgot to mention that this game is HARD, like Celeste levels hard. If you, like me, enjoy hard platformers, be sure to check it out.

After I finish At Least There is Čeda Čedovic I would like to play Bone2.exe as it seems like another banger that I would enjoy. I was never that interested in creepypastas, so I will probably miss, like, 80% of the references. But I don't really care as long as the game is funny.

Leather is currently working on a new game called "(Myths are) 100% True". It already looks polished.

Artfight...

Remember guys. Artfight is in a month! Prepare your fucking character references and profiles! I'm already working on my refs, though work has been slow so far. I hope to pick up pace in June.

This year I'm going to add Scare and Rage to my Artfight roster in hopes of someone drawing Scage yuri for me. I still have some stuff left to draw with them because I'm quite dissatisfied with their references. Maybe I'm too perfectionistic when it comes to these two. Either way, they are going to be this Artfight's spotlight, and if I won't get any art of them I'll combust.

I really hope this year's theme will either be Destruction vs Creation or Time vs Space. These are literally the coolest dichotomies mankind has ever made. A lot of my OCs would fit the first theme, as they tend to either be destructive menaces or some kind of artists. I wouldn't mind Spring vs Autumn or Tragedy vs Comedy too, these seem fun.

I swear, if the theme is going to be Heroes vs Villains or Heart vs Soul I'm going to explode this fucking planet. These are so boring. I don't really care about either villains or heroes, though yeah, I generally prefer the latter. As for Heart vs Soul, I don't freaking know! I consider myself loveless and soulless, so I can't pick either. Though if going by Pokémon dichotomies I am choosing Heart. Ho-Oh over Lugia every time baby.

I guess the theme reveal will happen in early June, so we'll find out this year's theme REALLY soon!... Oh, and yeah, here is my Artfight profile in case you don't follow it yet.

What's next?

I already have some plans for what I want to do this summer. I don't want to spoil them though! Just know that I'll be busy as always.

None of my plans involve extensive work on this website, by the way. So no big updates in the near future. As they say, my job here is done. I do want to make a button that would link back to my site though! And some HTML tutorials to help my friends, maybe...?

I plan to learn some Javascript, but I don't have a need for making Peerless Fabrications interactive outside of an art gallery and possibly a theme changer. I abandoned some of Zonelets's script for this reason - what if someone using a noscript extension visits my site? I don't want the header and the footer to be locked behind enabling JS, personally.

If anything, I just want to fuck around and see what possibilities knowing JS could bring to my life. I sometimes use coding as a way to get a break from drawing. So why not learn it some more? I might even enjoy it.

Thank you for reading until the end.