hi!

i’m out of my sad little hole about finishing development, here to fridge an announcement in this post before promptly talking about some awesome merch i have in the works:

parfum nostalgique may be done with development, but it’s like, not really. what i mean by this is… i love me a kinetic visual novel. i do. i love simply reading a story and enjoying the ride. but i think that it would be cool to write some more routes for this thing. i think it would be cool to beef this thing out. is this happening anytime soon? i don’t know! but i’ll continue to shill this game for my absolute life, because it’s my lovely creation that i spent so much time on. it’ll happen when i feel the call to work on it. which might be around… december, maybe. that’s when my biological autism clock starts going “it’s time to kick into overdrive for working on parfum.” but also, if i don’t release new routes and de-kineticize this thing? whatever man. shit still rocks.

anyway. onto merch talk.

my friends! you may have notice the priro shop has been POPPIN’!

after working on this game for so long, i was desperate to have a more tactile craft to hone. i’ve been a sewist for my entire life. i was a competitive cosplayer, i was a bridal tailor (fuck that btw), and i even have a golden thimble from my grandmother passed down for generations (it’s the only thimble that isn’t too big for me!) i needed something that would get my face out of screens and also uh. make me money tbh! it’s been good for my health to spend as much time as i have sewing and hand-dyeing fabric. i’m looking forward to doing local craft shows as well, i’ve really wanted to get more involved locally. that’s actually the main reason I have physical copies of parfum nostalgique available, so i can sell them at events!

all of my art is connected in some way. all the games, clothes, characters, art I make… it’s all connected. and as much as i’ve been having a lot of fun hand-dyeing my own fabrics and stuff, i have been yearning to put my characters on the stuff i’m making. i love the feeling of holding an item i make in my hands and being like. “that’s my baby right there.”

so let me show you some stuff I have cooking.

by the way, for those interested, i use a website called fabricondemand. if you ever want to order custom fabric, you should use that site and not spoonflower. spoonflower got bought by amazon, and quite frankly, their prices are very out of range for me. fabricondemand was the first site i’ve ever used that had custom printing fabric options that didn’t break my wallet.

one of the most sold and most loved items in my shop are these magnets.

i understand why. at least i think i do. a cheeky theatrical hot scandinavian vampire who sits on your fridge and tells you what to do. lots of people want a handsome manmilf to tell them what to do! flirty, but not too risque that you can’t put them on the fridge at your parents’ house. my dad has them, my mom has them, all my voice actors have them, my friend arisa has them and her japanese mom calls him “bitamin no hito,” and i never get tired of hearing stories of roomates and family members who know val not as val from parfum nostalgique, but the guy who tells them to take their vitamins that they see every day. i love that more than anything, seeing my art touch people beyond my visual novel is one of the highlights of my life.

these magnets made me really want to lean into val being a figure of self-care. not a consumerist idea of self-care, but a hand to hold when you struggle with everyday tasks in a chaotic world. it’s simply more fun to take your meds or do your taxes or whatever when you have a pretty person there to do it with you. the world sucks, dude, and if you’re struggling, no matter how cringe you think it is, it’s fun to have an imaginary friend who makes the world more bearable.

i was in really serious abdominal pain one night, and i didn’t have a heating pad to help. i ended up making one myself, out of a tenugui i sewed and dyed and some rice i wasn’t going to eat. I was really proud of my effective improvisation because it was both functional and aesthetically pleasing. it felt full of love. I thought about how cool it would be to make a heating pack myself to put in my shop, and how cute it would be to put val all over it. i thought a lot of people would enjoy having a kinkier, more goth version of a regular household item like a heating pack, and holding something with a handsome man on it when you’re in pain is comforting. so i drew up a design, and i’m making it.

the fabric is being manufactured right now. it looks like this:

I’ve drafted a pattern that looks like the outline of a hot water bottle with a heart-shaped top. one side of the pack will be made with a dark red fabric and a branding patch, the other side will be this pattern with a red heart applique. I’m making the red heart applique out of fabric origami, my signature origami hearts. the inside will not be filled with rice, but with cherry pits. they’re lightweight, satisfying in texture, retain heat well, and… when you heat them, they smell like lovely cherry pie. when i make this, i want it to be as comforting as possible. i want that lovely smell to soothe people. whenever i break out my heating pad, i know i’m gonna have a hard night, and i know i’m gonna feel like shit. i know i’m gonna think a little too much about whatever chronic bullshit is causing me my pain, whether i try to or not, but i take so many measures to be nicer to myself so i can get through it. it has made my life a lot easier to deliberately make myself more comfortable and be kind to myself. while i was writing parfum nostalgique, val was always fresh in my mind, and he helped me be kinder to myself. i hope he can help you be kinder to yourself as well!

the other thing i’m making are gamaguchi pouches. in america, we call them “kiss lock” pouches. i didn’t know that term, but it’s really cute. i knew “kiss lock” as “gamaguchi” first for some reason.

bags like this! this is from sousou. i’ve had a weird fixation on this type of bag since i’m a child. i think it’s so interesting. at the mall today, i dragged my husband to the purse section of boscov’s so i could look for gamaguchis. i only found one, and it felt TERRIBLE! these bags from sousou feel amazing, though. very smooth and easy to open and close. and when you open it up, it has ANOTHER smaller gamaguchi mechanism inside!! i know, because i have one as a wallet. if anyone ever tells me i’m not autistic…

anyway, i bought FIVE YARDS of fabric in this demonia pattern.

I plan to make some gamaguchi closure pouches with it. if i can’t make one that fits at least phone, keys, wallet, i want it to at least function as a nice wallet. I also plan to make some apparel out of this fabric. you know, my famous jackets!

I’d love to make some covered in demonias. that pattern is really great for a lot of stuff, imo. covered in fucked up little blobby cats. from far away, it just looks like a bunch of haphazard rainbow scribbles, which is cool on its own, but then when you get closer, you can see all the little eyes.

ah! also: i really love demonia. i love that cat. i love the image i made of that cat. whenever i put her on anything, it brings people joy. there are people who have played parfum nostalgique simply because they wanna see what that cat is about. but demonia is named after the shoe brand. it’s a shame, because i didn’t see myself using her so much when i first made her, so i thought naming her demonia would just be a fun nod to the shoe brand. that, and i remembered that in ace attorney there was a cat named shoe, so i wanted a cat named shoe as well, and demonia was born! from this point forward, for branding purposes, i will be referring to her as “demonya” instead of “demonia.” i actually think this is an adorable re-spelling, because you know, “nya” is japanese onomatopoeia for “meow,” and she is a cat. it’s still pronounced “demonia,” but with a little twist that won’t get me sued, or at least will keep people from being like, “oh, like the shoe brand?”

i hope you like my ideas! i’m having a lot of fun putting my art on different clothes and accessories i make. i like to treat my characters like they’re mascots with an additional story that people can read. it’s nice and all for my characters to be a personal experience, and to really have people know them, but that’s just not as important to me as my art being a way i communicate with others. i’m not the type of person who judges my characters by how marketable they are, but i am really compelled by the art of making characters that evoke attachment on an immediate basis. i’m fascinated by how people can develop such love and loyalty for characters like hello kitty and mickey mouse simply because they’re cute. for lots of people, it’s a capitalism thing, it’s an “easily influenced by marketing” thing, but i think even people who aren’t easily influenced can find appeal in mascot characters. i don’t really get out of the house much to places where i can go out and socialize. i can’t really do that in an ongoing global pandemic as an immunocompromised person. i have lots of internet friends, but the faces i see most every day besides my husband belong to characters and figurines and dolls and pieces of art i make. they comfort me and i love them.

i think that we should all have our own personal “mascot characters.” characters we slap on shit with stupid little gimmicks and deliberately endearing traits.

the idea of mascot characters can often be soured by the reality that they are used by companies to play on our feelings and sell products. like, have you ever met a girl who is REALLY into hello kitty and has a WEIRD sense of loyalty toward her? that’s kinda whack, man. as much as i like pompom purin or keroppi, i don’t go out of my way to show any type of loyalty to them, because i know they exist to sell products. for me, it’s more like… if i have to buy a waffle maker for 14 dollars, do i want the one with the regular waffle or with the one with the cute frog face i know from my childhood? if i have to buy a notebook, i’m GONNA choose the one with the fat fucking dog on it. with sanrio or line friends or san-x or… any kind of mascot character from a large corporation, i don’t feel like i can love them with the absolute madness that i desire. corporations will ALWAYS let me down. they don’t care about me. they might even hate me! lots of people hate trans disabled people!

but if my friends made mascot characters, if a local artist made a mascot character, that would mean something so much more. like, my friends love choopy, my blowfish mascot character. when they see her, they see me. i had an internet friend (i miss you!! where did you go!!) who made a mascot character who was a shrimp with huge eyes, like demonya. INSANE aura on that thing!! i loved him so much!! and mascot characters don’t even have to be cute little guys. sometimes they can just be dudes. we need more mascot characters who are just dudes. i happen to really like james line friends for this reason.

or my other favorite, namchini!

or, yknow, you could make a large scandinavian. like me. make enough large scandinavians and they can form a band. like metalocalypse or something.

aight bye!