One Year of r41n834u.com

07.15.26 // 12:15am

It’s July! And this July marks a very important milestone… the one-year anniversary of my blog on this website!

Rejoice!

Technically, the birthday of my website itself is in June. June is such a strange month for me: it’s my website anniversary, it’s my debut anniversary (both Beau’s and Cholla’s), it’s Pride Month, it’s my dog Mochi’s birthday, and it’s also the anniversary of my dad’s death. I’ve mentioned that latter anniversary quite a few times over the course of my blogs. I loved my dad very, very much, and I don’t think I’ll ever get over losing him while I was still so young. I think it’s because of this anniversary that I feel so determined during the month of June. I want to become the best version of myself and live true to who I am—and, in so doing, I want to be a person that my dad would’ve been proud of.

I feel like I am. I’ve grown a lot in this past year. “Years” don’t really mean a lot to me anymore… when you’re an old hag like me, they really do start blurring together. However, if I objectively look at where I was this time last year compared to now, I think what I’ve accomplished is pretty amazing. I made this whole website! This time last year, it was only one homepage, and now there’s so much to explore! I often like to page around my own website and revel in its color and whimsy. It’s such a comfort. It’s not perfect—my code is messy, there’s a lot of formatting issues, and it’s still really rough on mobile… but I made it! If you showed the Me from last year—or two, or three, or ten or twenty years ago—what I’ve made, I think they’d be boggled. Really, everything I do is in an attempt to impress those little versions of me who are still knocking around somewhere in the dark corners of my psyche.

I’ve reflected a lot on my hobbies and interests, as well as what matters to me. I’ve devoted a lot of time and energy into revisiting aspects of myself that I once tried to abandon. For so many years, I haven’t really “gotten into” anything new—nothing really… grabbed me. Lots of TV shows, games, anime and the like have come and gone in popularity, but I haven’t been on the pulse of popular media in forever. And, since nothing inspired me—because I wouldn’t let anything inspire me—I just wound up consuming nothing at all. Nothing aside from YouTube, at least.

In the past year, though, I’ve played more games and watched more anime/TV than in the last, like, five years combined. I rewatched all of Haruhi and Pani Poni Dash. I watched and read Witch Hat Ateleir. I’m watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and MDZS, and I love them both. I’m already using my new VTuber-sona to play games I’ve been wanting to play for years, like visual novels. And I’m having so much fun!

I owe where I am, I think, to Beau. Beau was originally purchased as a fursuit/kigu head from Meow Fursuits. The company has gotten into quite a bit of controversy over the years… but I dunno—I had a perfectly pleasant experience with them. He was an original design created for me: I asked the maker to sort of surprise me, like a Skeb.

This is the graphic I made explaining the vibe I wanted the suit to go for.

And they knocked it out of the park. Beau arrived on Christmas Day, 2024, and I was in love. I’ve worn him a couple of times… but he’s, ah, broken. The head warped in what I think was the heat after leaving it in the car, and I have no idea how to fix him. I guess that’s what happens when you only pay 300 dollars for a head, eh….

Ever since receiving Beau in the mail, though, I’ve felt hypnotized by him. Drawn to him, almost, like he’s pulling me in with electromagnetic waves. Beau, to me, represents everything I want to be. He’s colorful, obnoxious, and bright. Cholla was also kind of who I wanted to be, but her character was always colored by who I thought I was. When I envision Cholla as a character, I envision her as lazy, mean, a little dumb. Cool, punk, goth, emo. I think that archetype is fun, but… if you give your fursona negative character traits, you begin to associate yourself with those negative traits, even if that wasn’t your intention. “Cholla is lazy” became “I am lazy”, in my mind’s eye. If Cholla is dumb and mean, then I must be dumb. If Cholla is punk, then I have to be punk—only punk.

’Tis my hamartia: I project onto my characters too much. Despite loving roleplay, this winds up being a problem every time I revisit the hobby. I’m playing my character Lux Ivory right now in a Waterdeep Dragon Heist D&D game, for example, and I find that during and after the game I feel grumpy. Why? Because Lux is grumpy. Lux is a stoic, awkward man who hates other people and wants to be left alone. So, when I’m embodying this character… I wind up resenting my fellow PCs and wanting nothing more than to just go “home” and not engage with the plot. These repercussions aren’t really something I think about when making a character, because I can write a depressed sack of crap fine—it’s roleplaying them that’s the issue.

I mean, take Celescoix. I first started fleshing out Celescoix through a roleplay with my boyfriend, who wasn’t my boyfriend at the time—but we roleplayed our characters in a romantic relationship. And, as time passed… I found myself projecting more and more onto Celescoix. He took on more of my doubts, my passions, my fears. And when I read my partner’s responses, I began to think that he was saying these things to me, not Celescoix… and I wound up falling in love with him.

And now, they’re married.

That dynamic has changed over time, of course. I love my boyfriend for who he is—all of his lovely characters included. But I think, if things had worked out differently, I probably would’ve wound up having to switch to a different character if I wanted to keep roleplaying with him, because Celescoix embodied too much of myself. I don’t feel this way with all of my characters, but when you’re roleplaying them—literally acting out and embodying them for months to years at a time—the line between fiction and reality gets a little hazy. I don’t know how actors do it. I’m not sure I’m cut out for it. I think I’m far more well-suited for being a dungeon master or writer, where I’m in control of so many characters that I can never get overly attached to any one in particular.

Anyway, rambling again. Where was I? Cholla has negative traits. I can’t separate those traits from her in my mind. She has a personality that, try as I might as her creator, I can’t find myself able to change.

Beau, on the other hand, is perfection.

When I envision Beau’s personality, I think of someone peppy and happy. I think of someone who’s so passionate about his interests that he wants to share them with the world. He’s cringe and he’s proud and loud about it. Cholla as a character would play it cool—she would hide her embarrassing fanfiction with a flippant wave and a knowing smirk. Beau instead grins and speaks at length about their 300,000 words of Ace Attorney fanfiction.

That’s the kind of person I want to be. And, through “embodying” Beau—even before he was my VTuber sona—I’ve accomplished so much. Through channeling his energy, I made this whole site… and, man! I’ve made so many videos! I decided to start making internet history/meme videos to advertise my streams, and they’ve taken off like I never would’ve expected. I have around 16k followers on both Instagram and Tiktok, plus 8k subs on Youtube. That’s insane, dude. I had, like, 100 YouTube subs for Cholla? Hello?

And because I’m being inspired by Beau, my drive to create is off the charts. I stuck with this blog for a year! A whole year! Can you believe it? I never stick with anything for a year! And I’ve been pretty good at streaming regularly and releasing videos. I just feel… so happy!

I don’t know what level of autistic masking I’m on where I require larping as a rainbow mouse to function, but man, I don’t care. Whatever gets you through the day, dude.

So, where do I go from here? I’m very content with all that I’ve achieved. I’ve already passed milestones I never thought I would. Numbers are pretty arbitrary, but if you had asked me when I started this site how many hits I eventually wanted to have, I probably would’ve said 10k—now we’re at 110k. If you asked me when I debuted as Beau how many YouTube subs I was aiming for, I would’ve said 1k. It’s crazy how much I’ve been able to flourish.

But, putting aside my inner therapist telling me “all progress is good progress”, let’s try to map out a plan. I don’t really like the word “plan”—I’m worried if I get too caught up in numbers and goals, I’ll burn myself out and fall into a depression when I inevitably hit a snag. I’m already feeling a little bit of it if a video doesn’t perform well… which, to me, is when a video only gets like 5k hits compared to 50k. That’s already an insane amount! How quickly numbers balloon on social media….

My major goal for one year from now is simple: I want to still be here. I mean that in every sense of the phrase. I want to be alive—I don’t want the evil infesting the world right now to destroy me, like it so desperately wants to. But I also mean here as in r41n834u.com: I want to keep maintaining this site, and I want to keep channeling Beau.

I don’t want to say something like “I need to reach 50k subs on YouTube”, because that feels meaningless. Numbers very quickly stop mattering. I felt amazed when I hit 10k on Instagram, and then I wound up discouraging myself when I wasn’t instantly at 20k the next day. So, let’s not do that. Instead, let’s aim for goals I can actually achieve based on my own merit.

• I want to release a long-form video about something I’m passionate about.
• I want to finally catalog my fanfiction on this site. Other goals include—changing the way I store blogs to an array, more personality quizzes, an interactive lore page, dark mode, adding more stickers, and finally finishing that darn closet.
• I want to keep writing a blog post every month.
• I want to write something fictional. I spent so much time on my blog last year that I didn’t wind up writing anything aside from roleplay… I’d like to write either a fic or a short OC story.
• I want to read more visual novels and watch more anime.
• I want to do more with my digital camera! I took some pictures last year, but I never found out how to port them to my computer. I have to get on that!
• And, last but not least, I want to inspire at least one person to pursue what makes them happy.

I think those are doable. Even if I achieve one of them, I’ll be satisfied.

This website is such an extension of “me” that it’s kind of hard to imagine people paging around it. 100k hits… I don’t believe it, honestly. I think the majority of those are bots—or me. But I don’t think it should matter. As long as I make something that I enjoy and that I’m proud of, I’ve succeeded. If other people love it too, that’s awesome! If other people hate it, it doesn’t bother me—I didn’t make this for them, after all.

That’s how I want to stream, too. I stream for myself. I want to play games that I want to play. I’m no longer going to force myself through games I’m not vibing with if I don’t want to. Even if people don’t like the game I’m playing, it doesn’t matter as long as I’m having fun! If I wanna yap, I’m gonna yap! If I want to be an obnoxious, brightly-colored mouse VTuber who talks in a squeaky voice, then I’m gonna be one! It makes me happy, and I’m gonna keep doing it for as long as it does!

Together, let’s brighten the world~

That’s my advice I’d give to anyone, really. If anybody out there other than me ever reads this… it’s my advice to you, too. Be your biggest fan. Be proud of the things you’ve created—nobody else could’ve created them but you. Love every part of yourself, and relish the things that make you happy. Never, ever try to squash your joy for the sake of others’—I promise, you won’t really live until you allow yourself to love.