Monthly recap (August 2026)
My life has the opposite issue to Me & Roboco where there are so many plot thread throwbacks that it kinda makes me nervous how well everything is lining up.
Auckland Zinefest Best of the Fest Awards
For some reason, I won the overall prize at the Auckland Zinefest's Best of the Fest awards.
Mr Fuzzby: Thank you everybear!
I seriously did not expect such an honor so I was fumbling my words at the closing party, but I'm really thankful overall. Local pro wrestling is the reason I started to love living in Auckland and it's cheered me up so much throughout the past few years. I'm truly glad that I can help others learn about it too.
ONE FALL got best overall and runner up in photography (???) I've never won any sort of creative contest before1 so I'm very happy.
But again, it's kinda absurd to me because this feels like a natural conclusion to my years-long unintentional (!) story arcs about zines and pro wrestling and art.2 If you read my blog chronologically it's actually character development in a jarringly narrative way. I can feel the ending credits closing in on me!!!
Speaking of, next year I plan to focus on narrative comics. I've done a lot of dojinshi over the years but they're all terribly cringe so I want something I can feel proud to look back on.
I was going to do a zine about scanning local music QR codes on traffic lights and walls, but most of the musicians turned out to be based in Europe3 and the last guy's music was fine until I got to the track where he raps about how he hates being called a colonizer. Luckily the closing party did have some fantastic live local music by Club Ruby and Maebh McCurdy. WE LOVE ROCK!
Some zines I read at the event:
- Kalesbug - My Computer: Wahh what a nostalgia trip. The part about 2020 forcing online a bunch of people who typically wouldn't be is so true.
- puppyadjacent - Junk Mail & Junk Mail 2: SOO CUTE. It's like reading a personal website that's also a scrapbook and a magazine at the same time. Each spread is a different 'article' and there's even a centerfold pinup! All neatly tucked into an A6 zine with very fun layouts.
- ??? - I Miss You: Absolutely crazy one-of-a-kind zine with all kinds of materials stitched together in a punkish manner that becomes more distorted as you turn the pages. The raw pain feels uncomfortably present.
Also chatted Genue Revuelta, who wrote a real interesting post about their experience at Auckland Zinefest too. Check it out!
Anyway, I've put ONE FALL up on the website if you want to read it or print it out for yourself. I'll add analog refuge later since the formatting is a bit of a pain in the arse. As for my printable dojinshi files, please consider them lost media until further notice.
If we met each other at Zinefest (or anywhere else IRL), please don't hesitate to reach out at wulfpaper@gmail.com! I'm slow to respond but I'll be around.
Site updates
Went ahead and started rebuilding my site with Eleventy. It's been so terribly fun that I can't quit smiling! And it feels real rewarding.
I literally keep going ohhhh my god this looks soooo good oh my god.
At work I'm constantly constrained by how inefficient and slow most CMSes are. It genuinely feels so futile when I have to spend hours on tasks that I know could have taken seconds with a different system. When there's an issue, finding a fix is frustrating because the problem is always the result of the CMS to begin with. I'm spending hours fixing simple issues on my Eleventy site as well, of course, but in the end I can achieve almost anything with utmost flexibility, and in the end I feel proud and happy knowing that the skills I've gained will be transferable across different scripting applications.
I'm so happy with it that I'm showing it off at the next team meeting! So I'll put a staging site up in a couple of days, but I likely won't make the full switch until early October. Feed URLs should remain the same.
Writing-wise, I really want to get the museum pieces done because there are dependencies now... oh my god I'm making plans for my plot thread throwback in real-time.
Art log
Entry for this year's Overload art competition. I've been attending the convention for the past 13 years but never got around to entering until now.
Character design concepts for an eroge visual novel I'll make someday. It's about a guy who wants to work as a gacha game illustrator, but ends up in a fine art school where he's made to try painting, sculpture, and performance in his first year. The love interests are a ladylike yet eccentric conceptual painter, a sweet 'girl next door' installation artist, and an interpretive dancer whose personality (and design) I haven't yet decided on.
Media log
Read
- Shima Shinya, Ryo Hanada, Becky Cloonan, Leslie Hung, Conrad Michael W., Hua Hua Zhu, Aki Shimizu, Sloane Leong - Betwixt: Read this because the idea of Leslie Hung creating a comic for an anthology with a cover by Junji Ito was too crazy. I wish she had used her regular ink-brush style though.
- Shuhei Miyazaki - The Parodied Jokerland: Roboco's character makes a lot more sense when you realize she is literally just the mangaka's version of Mama from The Promised Neverland.
- Itsuki Tsutsui - Smiling at Yoarashi C1-14: Revenge fantasies are almost always about the satisfaction of being weak and overpowering someone stronger so it's interesting to see a revenge fantasy where the main character (pathetic female teacher) is so weak that someone else (manic pixie dream girl student) carries out the revenge against her will. I think the relationship between the manic pixie student and the reformed gyaru bully is so fun though.
- ⭐ UKETSU - Strange Buildings, Strange Pictures: The straightforward writing style and redundant diagrams make you feel like the author thinks you're an absolute dolt. But they're so very easy to read that you can't quit reading so I won't complain. Final verdict: Strange Buildings > Strange Pictures > Strange Houses.
- delovely - I 💔 Social Media: The collage format conveys the overwhelming nature of socmed very well. I like the emphasis on portraying a self not for social approval in general but specifically for likes.
- Kohei Horikoshi - Quit Laughing, Shijima: It's cute, but the character design at the end feels far too reminiscent of Chainsaw Man...
- ⭐⭐ AllyRat - A lifetime dedicated to lolita with Kathryn A. Hardy Berna: There was a lolita exhibit at the museum in the 2000s? And it was curated by a professor at Yoobee College?? The point about lolita being associated with the Virgin Mary in Mexico was very neat! The other interview about veteran lolitas in New Zealand was so cool aughhh. But getting posted to /CGL/ after a first meetup is a nightmare hahaha.
- ⭐⭐⭐ Rainedragon - Teddy Bear Picnic: A Look at Teddy Bears Through JFashion
- Yoshiharu Tsuge: Nejishiki
- Ryo Minemani C18: What stands out about Haunted Peak is how realistic it is compared to other sexual-horror-type manga
—instead of rejecting conventional relationships in favor of more depraved or nonconsensual relations, male characters reject it in favor of abstinence or decrying women entirely. That's a lot more in line with how a lot of men think and act these days. The only other manga that I've seen convey this is The Climber, but that's more about an individual autistic guy who can't handle social situations in general. - tandem - Effective Altruism and Rationality meet at a Secular Solstice afterparty: OK so people on LessWrong scare me but I do see why this philosophy appeals to the very specific demographic of transgender people who live in the California Bay Area.
- ⭐⭐⭐ Kaito - Blue Flag V1: The dramatic irony of an LGBT manga published in Jump is almost as tense as a romcom published in a horror magazine. Ahh, you know a manga is good when you have to put it down every few pages to process your emotions!
What is it like to be a Toma—the one who is looked up to and actually goes through with being able to help those who rely on him!? Crazy!!! A mindset I can't imagine!!! The confusing dislike that Taichi feels towards Futaba is sooo good. What a specific feeling to capture, a gay guy who doesn't realize he likes his best friend so he gets annoyed at helping the girl who likes his bestie but doesn't realize why!! It's really something you can't get from BL manga!!! The last page of the 1st volume I actually went OHHHH MY GODDDDD out loud!!! - Chorva - The Third Wheel Dilemma: Niche Vocaloid yaoi with a nice 2000s style.
Watched
- Michael Moore - Farenheit 11/9: I put off watching this because I figured it'd just be circlejerking stuff I already knew but somehow the circumstances were even worse.
- Jeff Gibbs - Planet of the Humans: I stopped 3/4 of the way through because it felt weirdly inaccurate and hung up on the holiness of trees in the same catch-all way people will get hung up on books.
- Don't Hug Me I'm Scared: Wow, the surrealness and production, I can see why it got so popular back in the day.
- Hot Fuzz: Feel like I should have liked this one a lot more but the comedy was so quick that the gags didn't hit me even though I knew they were funny.
- Jenny Nicholson: Subscribed to the GOAT's Patreon at last. The Evermore videos are really worth it!
Listened
- Ariana Grande - Petal: I haven't liked any Ari albums since Sweetner but this was surprisingly enjoyable.
- Slayyyter - WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA: Lots of fun!
- Iron Miku - Left Ear Call Me Maybe, Right Ear Creep: LITERALLY ME
- ADELA - Ain't In LA: SEXYYY! The tibits of Slovakian culture are cracking me up.
- triple j - Nerve covers Justin Timberlake’s ‘SexyBack’ for Like A Version: Why is this highkey badass...
- Joni Mitchell - Blue: The kind of good that sings for itself.
- Audrey Hobert - Silver Jubilee: Woah mama...
Played
- ⭐ scriptwelder - Waterworks!: Neat deckbuilder-type game that takes place in medieval Poland and goes into a bit of water infrastructure history.
Other
- Floor796: Obviously the whole thing is pretty incredible but I'm impressed by the individual animations too. There's a lot of complex movements there and capturing it all in isometric pixel art is crazy!
- smallcypress - baltimore: This is so neat! I love how every city has its own heritage and quirks. I wanna make something similar for Auckland.
- iox: News site for indie animation!
- Auckland Mushroom Festival: I thought this was gonna be a Willy Wonka experience-type thing but there are actually an absurd number of people who wore mushroom costumes despite the short notice. Hello? Did you guys all have mushroom hats and shirts in your closet beforehand???
Kalechips is reviving Salad Magazine, their web-based zine! Very cool concept, hopefully I have time to send something in.
Except for the time I won a Danganronpa zine DTIYS but the mod never sent out the prize to me and they had my very niche favorite characters prominently on their DNI list because they had beef with the previous person who had my Twitter canon username for shipping reasons (I had that username before them, but I reclaimed it after said person quit Twitter for unrelated reasons).↩
If you want to go super in-depth this is a character storyline that has been brewing since my SideM era. See the insane chart at the bottom of this post.↩
TOMORROWNOW was one of the Europeans in question. I thought the Reverse Engineering album was pretty good, it's like a techier, more modern version of We are the World-type music.↩