Discord Ban - 10/1/2026

Yeesh, didn't think I'd update so soon! And on something semi-serious too... As of yesterday evening, discord has been banned in my country, Egypt with little to no warning, likely for political reasons. It's very upsetting to me because discord is one of the only ways I can communicate with my online friends freely, especially since the majority of us had quit using other platforms we had in common for various reasons

Of course, this ban can still be bypassed using VPNS, but it's hard to find free VPNS that work properly on mobile, even less on IOS, so far I've only found pc ones. This will still decrease my interactions with my friends, as I obviously don't carry around or use my laptop as frequently as my phone and, who knows how long it takes before they ban VPNs too?

This is ridiculous, it's ridiculous that governments have so much control over the internet now, it's ridiculous that they can just censor the whole website just because they saw a few things they didn't like, it's ridiculous that we can't do anything about it. I HATE IT HERE!!

New Years! - 1/1/2026

Happy New Years! yippie! here are a few interesting things that happened but were too small for me to consider making a whole entry for them

I finished my mid-terms, and now I'm doing my mid years. It's INSANE that I'm already halfway done with my first year of college -- I've been so busy I couldn't even draw much outside of small birthday gifts for friends. Speaking of which, I finally learned how to make a mini zine locally, it's nothing fancy, just how i should position the pages before printing and how to bind them, but small knowledge is still knowledge! A friend's past birthday was the perfect chance to try it out, and it worked out well!

I officially changed my tumblr name from mello-bee to NoctuAst, I've been wanting to change my username for a while now, because as much as I adored the name "Mellobee", I also felt like it didn't fit me anymore. I'll have to go through and change a bunch of my links now but I'm very happy I finally got the chance to change it to something that worked better for me now

I also got into writing more, I feel like my skills have improved alot the past few months in the sense that I no longer cringe after reading what I wrote, and that means I've been making progress, right? right? (maybe I just got desensitized to the cringe, which could be a problem...) anyways, I'm hoping to add a link or something to my art dump that will take you to my AO3 or something, once I have enough work to be proud of showing off

That's all for the past 2 months, hopefully I'll be able to update this more frequently now

Quitting Genshin - 5/11/2025

You must be wondering: "You're quitting a video game? that's it? that doesn't need a whole journal entry!" and I can't blame you, but Genshin Impact has been one of my longest lasting fixations, and was basically all I'd ever talk about for basically 5 years. When I started, I really didn't expect my interest in it to last this long, but by now I reached a point where playing it just came naturally to me even if I didn't like how the story was going or how the gameplay was evolving, or the powercreep, or the sudden introduction of modern day technology, or the story retcons, or the new characters or-- okay. maybe I should've seen this coming from a mile away. I've actually had this feeling that I'm not enjoying the game since fontaine came out.

So, what finally made me quit? what was the straw that broke the camel's back? Was it nod-krai as a whole? Was it Milistria Wonderland? It was pretty terrible after all. But no, that isn't the answer...

the answer is..

...My playstation ran out of storage.

OKAY that's not exactly it, but I basically couldn't play like at all, and that was a step back from genshin I clearly needed. During that time I stopped playing, I realized. I don't enjoy the game at all, or the fandom. So yeah, I thought what would push me to quit was the PS4 discontinuation, but it actually happened much earlier than anticipated.

Now, will I quit other hoyoverse games? Mainly Honkai: Star Rail? The answer is No. I found none of the problems I've encountered with Genshin or Honkai Impact 3rd with HSR, though I guess I'll try to not get as invested in it as I usually would, considering it's made by the same company as the other two games that "fell off" in my mind. Other than HSR and CRK, I wanna try to play more finished and non-gacha games instead of the life-updated ones, I quite missed those types of games.

Ruined Sketchbook - 6/10/2025

Well, I certainly had an interesting start of the year to college O_O

As you may know, I got accepted into my uni's art school! yippie! the past two weeks were introductory stuff, you know, telling us what tools to bring and which each subject is about, which is pretty exciting, and this week, we've started actually doing assignments which is even more exciting!! Unfortunately, a little accident happened in my (so far) favourite subject :(

We're supposed to be attaching our papers on these wooden boards, and the girl infront of me didn't bring hers. She turned around to face me right when I was bringing out my sketchbook out of my bag and she rested her hand on it and just said "I'm going to use this instead of the board" kind of decisively. I was gonna say yes had she asked so I just gave it to her, but I've never seen anyone so assertive before, you really meet all kinds of people in college ( •̯́ ₃ •̯̀)

At some point, I guess she wanted to re-do the drawing we were supposed to do, because she started drawing in my sketchbook on account of her only having one paper, but again she didn't really ask and she also started handing her friend extra papers from the sketchbook (no shade to the friend! she was really nice and was also the only reason I realized this was happening bc she turned around and asked me before taking the paper)

In the end, I finished pretty early so I went to ask for my sketchbook back, which is when the fated accident took place... She went to take out the drawings she made, but ended up pulling out all the paper from the wiring. So I kinda don't have a sketchbook anymore, just an assortment of seperated sketchbook papers ( 〃．．) she didn't really apologise or try to help put it back together either, which put a really sour taste in my mouth (or maybe thats the candy im eating right now)

Uh, I didn't say anything. I hope that doesnt make me sound like a doormat, I'm really hoping we're past the age of bullying and targetting people now that we're in college lol

New Journal - 2/10/2025

Hello to anyone reading this, I officially made a journal! yippie! this means I only have 3 more pages to do before my site is officially complete! It also means I can remove the status thingy on my main page, but I don't know what to replace it with yet

Okay, lets address the elephant in the room: Field Of Misteria theme?? I really like this game, I got it for my birthday literally four days ago and I haven't stopped playing it, I love all the characters already and as a Stardew lover it literally has everything I hoped for sdv!! But maybe I should save that rant for the media log :p

Anyyywayssss, I'm not sure how often I'll update this, definitely NOT everyday tho. Probably when interesting stuff happens or when I have something on my mind