fun travels, happenings, and other shenanigans!

love live the school idol movie with my bestie!

having watched the original school idol project over 5 years ago you would have thought that the school idol movie would have followed close after, but somehow watching it has evaded me until my good friend helena (go check her site out at fallen-denpa-angel.neocites.org) began watching love live after i wouldn't shut up about it (i still won't shut up about it), and once she reached the end of the school idol project anime, we decided to watch the movie together! i think this was the first time we watched something together where neither of us had watched it before, and it was so so so much fun! before i go into my thoughts on the movie i just want to try to express even a fraction of how happy i am that helena's not only watched love live, but that she also connected with it to a similar level as me, but in her own unique way! it made watching the movie that much richer of an experience. not to mention she's such an important person to me and hanging out with her in any capacity fills me with love, joy, and peace.

anyway yeah the movie! i honestly didn't think the series needed a movie because the conclusion we got was already very good; but if there's anything i learned from the sunshine movie, these movies give them a "truer" ending if that makes any sense at all? like they're not continuations for the sake of being continuations; kinda if those "one last ride" movies were peak. we get a little more insight into the characters and the relationships they have with each other as they approach completely new conflicts. the one thing i really liked about the school idol movie was how it felt like a passing of the torch from µ's to the school idols of the future, namely Aqours, who were announced just a few weeks after the film's release. i also think this movie was really important in hammering home the importance of school idols, and how they're different from regular idols. by that i mean that the charm of school idols comes from the effort put forth resulting from having to organize everything yourself, and being able to do that is a show of love, which is what any form of performance is all about. "in the end it's just love" to quote Coldplay (speaking of which i need to get working on a love live superstar amv with jupiter), but it really is how it's best summed up. it reminds me a bit of the events i helped put on as part of my college's music club, bringing people together through a shared love of music, with an event put on out of love. before watching the school idol movie, i don't think i would have really been able to articulate what makes love live so unique, but this movie does a perfect job of it. anyway i think that's enough rambling for tonight, goodnight everyone! may you be able to convey your love to the world!

oh yeah the keyboard!

i forgot i never uploaded a photo of the new keyboard here!

the base board is a Redragon K686 EISA Pro and i swapped in the Gateron Jupiter Brown switches. the keycaps are from the set i put on my old keyboard, and the knob is just a generic potentiometer knob i found on amazon lol. also the photo's at a weird angle bc i wanted to show off my custom lighting scheme! it's inspired by Liella! the numbers, alphabet, and adjacent punctuation keys have the colors of the 11 members. the other keys are split between purple and white because those are the colors generally associated with Liella! as a whole! anyway i do wish these keys had some sort of shine-through but i don't think there are keycaps out there that quite capture the vibe i want the way these do. i really like the novelties, expecially the constellation enter key and the solar system key that i'm using as the key to open the music app!

idk just rambling

hey everyone felt like blogging rn! currently listening to the deluxe additions from From Zero, and let me just say i love Linkin Park, and I am very excited to see them in September! Let You Fade is one of my favorite songs from the deluxe edition! it's also really nice to hear the live versions of some of these songs!

anyway i had a pretty good day at work today as well! i work part-time teaching math, and i had a really great moment working with a student as i taught her how to add mixed numbers, and it took a while but i could see when she finally understood the process and it was really nice! i love being able to teach and have an impact!

also my ankle's strong enough to be able to play drums again!! i'm so happy about that and i've had so much fun that i've missed for nearly two months! once i get my timing back to where it was i'm gonna start uploading drum covers again!

summer!

hello everyone long time no see! i am moved out of the dorms for the last time and done with the semester officially!! i'd pretty much given up after spring break tbh, and i also injured my ankle really bad so that kept me at home for most of the latter half of the semester. i'm surprised i managed to do as well on the finals as i did tbh. thankfully i'm walking again and ready to enjoy these next three months as much as i can! my Starlight Prologue arrangement for band is coming along really well! hopefully my band director will let us play it! speaking of which, we did get a chance to read through my Mitaiken HORIZON arrangement before i injured myself and it was so amazing to hear that music played by actual musicians. definitely wanna do more. i'm also thinking of arranging something for my high school band so i'll reach out to my old band director about that soon. in other news, i got another keyboard that's a but quieter and has a numpad! the other keyboard was great, but i found myself really wanting a numpad and i found something for decently cheap, so i got it! i had to do some modifications tho; the stock switches were linear which i'm not the biggest fan of, so i went ahead and got some tactile switches to swap them out with! the process of removing the old switches took way longer than it probably should have to get used to, and i did break the casing on a few of them, but eventually i was able to swap them out! also, earlier today i began to mess with customizing keybinds for this keyboard, and i've made a few very nice changes! first, i have a button that opens the music app, a single button to screenshot instead of the multiple keys, and a quick way to switch the input language so i can go ”こんばんはみんな！”　without missing a beat! anyway, i'm really glad to be home without any schoolwork. gonna recharge and make my final year in undergrad one to remember! goodnight y'all!

apartment!

after 3 years of living in the dorms i'm honestly kind of fed up with a lot of it. don't get me wrong, the building itself is very nice, but lack of regular access to a kitchen is really starting to annoy me. so i've been thinking about moving into an apartment for my final year of college. through some miracle, i found that some of my closest friends also needed an apartment, and all of us together made 4 people, which was perfect for this one place we were looking at. within a week, we started looking at apartments, toured some, applied, and signed a lease! not to mention, for the location and all the amenities the place has, rent is pretty good! super excited to move in!

keyboard update!

the keycaps are here!!!

i am so pleased with how it turned out! they do feel a little different than the stock keycaps but i think that's a good thing! the colors are really pretty and it feels like my setup is a little more personal now!

keyboard!

hi hi! i got my first ever mechanical keyboard today! the point of this post is treally just for me to give it a whirl and start getting used to it. the switches are really nice, and i'm getting a set of cute keycaps for it at some point! definitely a good investment. will share a picture once i do get the keycaps!

Love Live! School Idol Honor Band

hello everyone! it's been a minute since i've posted anything on here. hope everyone's having a great start to the new year! anyway hopefully i'll be posting here more often now that the music blog is moving over to this site as well! without further ado, the image you see above is the product of divine inspiration, intersecting niche interests, and several hours of wishing i hadn't used google slides as an editing software. it was a really fun process figuring out who goes on which instrument and also getting a good balance of instruments, and i'm both proud and surprised with how well it turned out! i've got the full rationale of everyone's instrument assignments over on my tumblr but i'll add a few of the highlights here!

• yuu is the conductor obviously, with her being like the manager/director rather than an idol.
• all of the niji girls are on the instruments featured in their SIFAS Marching In Harmony cards.
• i put a bunch of pairings together but my favorite is probably tsuzuri and sayaka bc they remind me so much of a bass clarinet and clarinet in my high school band who had a similar dynamic lol.
• mari and kanon are on euph because they are so similar to asuka and kumiko from hibike euphonium.
• i put a lot of thought in the seating as well, especially with the trumpets and chika being first chair over honoka, kinda to represent Aqours matching and arguably surpassing the shine that µ's had.

i'll hopefully be doing more with this, or at least making more instrument ensembles with the love live girls, because it's really fun being able to bring my band nerdiness to the places that need it :3

GRUNKLE STUNKLE WINS THE FUNKLE BUNKLE

this is a cry for help.

little life update yay!

i need to update this blog more but things have been pretty crazy. let's work our way backwards; i had my band concert last night and it was something i very much needed. it was the first time in what felt like years since i've felt that hyped to perform and i'm just glad i got my mojo back. i even had a timpani solo that i absolutely slayed. afterwards we engaged in our after concert tradition of going to this pizza place, and it's always fun to see everyone hanging out together! i got to reconnect with one of my friends who i hadn't seen in ages! after dinner, we ended up heading over to this arabic coffee shop for a while and they had some really good drinks! by the time we left it was already midnight, so i thought i'd drop my friend back at his apartment since it was so close, but i ended up staying for a while (read: until nearly 2 in the morning). which is fine and all but not when you have a class at 9am the following day. ended up getting back to my dorm at like 2:30. i was already exhausted from this week so i made the executive decision to skip class this morning and i've been chilling since.

today's been pretty chill too; listened to Coldplay's new album "MOON MUSiC" and i enjoyed it. it wasn't as good as "Music of the Spheres", which i think is their best album, but they had some bangers on there. i'll give it another listen once the CD i preordered comes in ^-^. speaking of CDs, i ordered a used Sony Walkman off of ebay that came in the mail yesterday. got some batteries earlier today so i'm listening to "Clancy" while i write this. but of course you know i had to inaugurate it with "Starlight Prologue" :3

to recap the rest of the month, my band director ended up not being able to print enough parts to read through my arrangement during rehearsal, but he did give me a lot of good advice on how to approach arranging for an ensemble. unfortunately this entails deviating further from the original song but i'll do my best to keep the spirit of it alive :D
i also met up with some friends from my study abroad for sushi a few weeks back! after lunch we headed over to one of their apartments where we rewatched the two short films we made together and also a little bit of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure! was a super fun day!
ooh i also forgot to mention! earlier i found this group of musicians based in Numazu that do a lot of instrumental covers of Love Live! songs, and they had some CDs available so i ordered myself one of those as well! it'll hopefully be here soon! in addition to them i also found a wind ensemble that performs Love Live! arrangements as well! i saw a flier for their summer performance while i was in Numazu, but sadly i was out of Japan by the date of the performance. still, they upload their performances to youtube and they're really cool! if only i could stand on stage with them...

what a weekend...

hey y'all, i've just had one of the weekends of all time. started friday off by healing my middle school self by finally going to see twenty one pilots in concert. to be honest, i'm still kinda processing the fact that i was really there. i absolutely loved it, and hearing all my favorites performed live truly fixed a part of me.

i also went to a local con for the other three days, and it was cool seeing all the cosplays and merch and whatnot but the true highlight was the karaoke i did sunday night. karaoke's fun as it is but anime cons take it to another level because not only do you have a bunch of people who match your weirdness (at least to some degree), the level of support you get from a crowd like that is unmatched. i got to perform Starlight Prologue and the 8-bit Big Band version of Five Nights at Freddy's, and both times i was having so much fun on the stage, and i truly was feeding off the energy from the crowd. i don't think i've ever had that much fun doing karaoke. of course, when i wasn't performing i carried out my duty and supported each performer by cheering with my lightblades. my shoulders were absolutely dead by the end but it was so worth it.

new year new me?

back in the dorms for round 3 of this college thing. last year wasn't too too hot so i'm hoping to turn it around this time. i've got a really good feeling about it tho. my roommates are super chill and we're already working on our living room entertainment setup together which is something i haven't been able to really do yet because i haven't had roommates like this before. my room's also in a much more convenient area of the building this time too so i won't be spending nearly as much time needlessly walking around.

my classes also seem a lot more interesting than before. i'm done with most of my gen eds now so i can actually focus on the fun stuff, like thermodynamics, which is supposed to be super difficult, and from my brief encounters with it in high school, i wouldn't disagree with that assessment. but because i am the way i am, i feel like i'm gonna do really well. i also seriously lucked out with my schedule this year. my monday/wednesay classes are at the same times as my tuesday/thursday classes, so i can really get into a proper routine. it'll be great for my sleep schedule too cuz i'll be waking up at the same time everyday so i won't be as tired. the only issue i see is that i've got classes that end at 2:45 and work a little over 10 minutes away that starts at 3 for mondays and wednesdays, but i talked to my boss about it and she's chill if i'm a minute or two late because of it so i should be in the clear. anyway i'll keep this page updated as the year goes on. there will be many a story to tell.

baesbal

i went to a baseball game with some of my friends a few days ago! it was the first time i've gone to a professional sportsball game with an appreciation for the sport, so needless to say i had fun! and of course, who could resist the ballpark hotdogs?

happy birthday setsuna!

august 8th is the birthday of the one and only setsuna yuki of love live's nijigasaki high school idol club! it's easy to say that you changed because of a character or a piece of media, but there are few things that can change your entire approach to life. setsuna was a huge inspiration to me in that aspect, and because of her i try to live each and every day unapologetically shouting my love for everyone and everything important to me! setsuna, i can't thank you enough for making me the person i am today. i wish you the happiest of birthdays, and here's to a future of cringe, love, and general nerdiness!

cool cloud!

saw this rainbow cloud during my trip to Numazu in Japan. this was the day i was heading to Uchiura to complete the main part of my Aqours pilgrimage!

new shelf!

finally got myself a bookshelf to keep all of my fun little trinkets (and books too i guess)

and some closeup photos!

it's funky neso friday!

exclusive behind the scenes photo op with kanon shibuya during the recording of CatChu!'s first single, "Distortion"!

"Distortion" music video!