Thank you, 2023

Hello fellow Starmin! I’m back. In a way, but I’m back, here on Starpura Space. Yay!

This is more of a personal final post for the year 2023, since I haven’t blogged here for months. Seeing my last post about Dez and Ves’s graduations and leaving it there seemed depressing as if it was some “final goodbye” for me as a Tempura. No, not really. The Data Analytics bootcamp that I enrolled in¹ completely took over my free times. I finally finished it with my certification back in early November. But, that wasn’t the end of my hiatus, unfortunately. Late November until before Christmas, my employer required us to work 50 hours a week for the pre-Christmas period, meaning I only had one full day off (Sunday) and had to work the rest of the six days at the oddest hours². When the final stretch came, guess what. I fell ill.

I had my COVID-19 vaccine (updated) around Tuesday afternoon with my mom. I was aware that it had really bad side effects and stayed home when my entire body started having muscle aches. I went back to work on Wednesday, but only stayed there half day. The common cold and the coughing started kicking into gear and my sinuses was completely blocked. I left home early and have been resting for almost a week. I finally recovered on Christmas Day. Praise be to God!

Now that I got that out of the way, let’s proceed.

Welcome ARMIS!

It was difficult to keep up with the boys when I was on hiatus because I was entirely focused on my studies. But I kept my social media notifs on. I know it’s been over a month now, but, I’d like to officially welcome the newest HOLOSTARS EN unit, ARMIS!

I haven’t been really active in watching the new boys yet, but as a group, they seem very chaotic, hilarious, loud, and dang obnoxious. Some who started watching them shared their sentiments that they’re here to “carry on” the Dez & Ves unhinged legacy. I did notice that some of the moots who started oshi-ing ARMIS came from the Magmites and Vesties. And not just that, just being a proud Pinay here, HOLOSTARS finally got our first, not one, but TWO Filipino talents in Jurard T. Rexford and Octavio. Congrats and welcome, boys!

Goldbullet/Gibby and Ruze are fun guys too. Gibby is basically malewife who can cook and adorably calls his fandom Bubbies, while Ruze was trying so hard to be a badass jerk but is actually wholesome altogether. I feel that these boys do have a bright future ahead of them if they keep up.³ Wishing ARMIS well!

Recapping 2023 as a Starmin/Starlight/Tempura

I don’t normally blog about year recapping, but as a Starmin since 2022, I might as well reflect.

Accomplishments

• Building, opening, and maintaining Starpura Space – a fan blog/site dedicated to HOLOSTARS as an entire division. This was meant to be a personal project where I would just write posts about them, but then it evolved a little bit as a starting point for new Starmin and just curious visitors in general. I focused more on the sidebar, where I post their upcoming events and current merch on (pre-)sale.⁴

• I joined the Elysium Delivery Services Discord Server as a Sensitivity Reader, thanks to the mess that happened in the first Gavis Bettel Birthday Project. I’m not going to elaborate further about what happened then here. Just reach out on social media if you’re curious. I signed up, but I didn’t make my debut as a sensitivity reader until the Christmas week, where I began my duties in Altare’s Aquarium Birthday Project. It’s been really good so far, but still got a lot to go. The project is due sometime before the end of January⁵.

• I signed up for more memberships within HOLOSTARS, with some of the OG9 and some of the UPROAR members. I still have yet to get to know ARMIS since I recently just came “back” back before I join theirs. We shall see.

• I don’t know if I should call this an “accomplishment,” but through VSaikyo, I got to know about Tatsuki Selen of NijisanjiEN. As a Shiny-Spicy enthusiast,⁶ she was really delightful and a true homegirl to the boys as TSB. I’m aware of the other NijiEN talents, sometimes I would watch some of their clips, but Selen stood out for me the most, like she’s on top of her game, despite the mishaps she had to go through with their management. I wish Selen nothing but blessings and success for her, no matter what she does. I’m also happy to see Altare and Axel spearheading the collabs outside HoloPro, not just with NijiEN or the well-known indie vTubers on the EN side, but also on the JP side with Axel’s VCR event participation to Altare playing Valo with the Algorhythm Project boys and a few of the NeoPorte boys too. I’d love to see more collabs, not just with Shiny-Spicy, but everyone in Holostars altogther.

That’s about it for accomplishments!

Plans for 2024

• I’m building up my data analytics portfolio and my enthusiast with the vTuber scene in general would be my theme. I’d like to do case studies about HOLOSTARS, HoloPro, the vTuber scene in general, but most of all, the vTuber fandom altogether. I plan on taking self-paced supplementary courses tying with my certificate, so that I can be a stronger candidate for an entry level job in data analytics. Thing is, all my case studies will not be on this site, but it will be in my portfolio somewhere. I can link them here if anyone’s interested in the future.

• Self-paced courses on art again, but with character art. I mean, I can do simple object and scenery (?) art, but with character art and maybe world building scenery art. Ah, so much to do on my spare time.

• Cook more~ I admit, I haven’t been cooking meals for myself and Mom, but Mom isn’t feeling well as of late and I also won an air fryer from my workplace’s holiday raffle.

• Participate in more projects and even with the Discord communities, even though I still feel a little out of place for a list of reasons.

• Actually thinking about self-promoting this blog to the fandom masses and maaaybe… mention it to some of the boys when the right time comes?⁷ Maybe not.

Closing

Let this blog post be the final Starpura Space post for the year of 2023. I filed for vacation tomorrow and Saturday, so there’ll be some time to do some updates with this site. But for the most part, I’ll start working on my portfolio for job hunting purposes.

Happy New Year, minna!