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CH0 - Neko

SepelaThons here, welcome to my house! I hope you can feel comfy!! I plan for this space to be a little spot dedicated to my interests. This page in particular focuses on penspinning, the hobby closest to my heart. As summer ends and university starts again, the leaves of fall may soon distract me in celebrating the 8 years I’ve spent on this journey. Even throughout those years spinning, making mods, joining collaborations or creating edits, it still feels like there’s so many things to do and discover.

I recently felt some inspiration to start writing again from Joule and Magiai’s blog entries! Thank you to Sayashi and Syn too for convincing me! This will be my second time as I left my previous one unpublished thinking it was too embarrassing. I’ve since grown to be a bit more introspective, acknowledging value in personal texts to connect with memories that can tend to fragment.

This entry was originally called ‘Project: Penspinning Love Letters’, the background of which was writing my story and listing all the spinners that left a positive impact on me. If you can forgive me, I’ve decided to keep all these letters within the desk of my heart (ehehe). But if it’s okay too, I want to be a bit selfish and share myself this once, giving my gratitude to the community for all these years. This is my little penspinning memoir!

koro satori niko and nyans

CH1 - Koneko

One of the first things I ask a pen spinner is how they discovered the hobby. What is it that made us attracted to this niche? Ever since I was young, I’ve always somewhat ‘spun’ my pen. I knew other kids too who would sometimes show off chopped passes or twisted sonics with oval rotations.

Before I discovered that it was a real hobby, my main pastime would be reading sci-fi or mystery novels. I never really listened in class and was infamous for sleeping constantly, but I still somehow managed to score highly. I had several friends but I wasn’t really a ‘normal’ communicator, only really interacting when sharing a weird derivative I found really cool. Sometimes it felt like I never really learnt much so I taught myself things like obscure vocabulary, the periodic table, or a hundred digits of pi.

One day in my fifth year of primary school, Mom decided to pick up our 3x3 cube. She eventually learnt it and taught me how to solve it using CFOP. I was really thankful because it was the first skill toy I fell in love with. Whenever it was my birthday, I would be gifted cubes and variations! I would start cubing in school too and I would compete with classmates and have fun. As a child I wasn’t the most healthy, and I often struggled to make friends, but this was the first time I was able to bond over something. Even though I eventually grew to become a bit bored of cubing, that time is one of my most treasured memories.

my few remaining cubes left!!

It wasn’t until middle school, around 2018, that I decided to search Pen Spinning for the first time on YouTube. I thought I may as well embrace the nerd character to see if there was more to learn than just the oblique passes I knew. That was the day I discovered Kuma Films’ ‘Epic Pen Spinning’ video, unaware that this would be a great catalyst for the following years of my life. Seeing Ian Jenson and PPM perform with these weird sticks made me want to learn more immediately.

I initially searched not knowing it was a real thing with outstanding visual depth. If this was something I could do with my pen today, there was absolutely nothing stopping me from learning what seemed like magic! I ended up showing the video to some friends and we would learn the fundamentals together! We would sometimes go out of our way to find sticks, finding out which ones spun better.

As I continued to browse the front page of Pen Spinning, I encountered a spinning clip from an anime. It was one of the comments on the video that would catch my attention: ‘Combo at 0:07 TA T12-12 > Tws Rev 12-23 > TA 23-23’. When I learnt this weird activity had a formal notation system, I exited my room and jumped around in geometric arrays in surprise. If RPD’s Book existed during that time and 12 year old me witnessed it, I would implode on the spot. There really was nothing quite as cool as what I saw that day.

My excitement carried onto learning the fundamentals through Ktrinh93. It would take me 2 weeks to get my Thumbaround consistent. It felt slower than I thought, but that was what motivated me even more, sometimes delaying sleeping because I needed to land it at least once. I would soon also create my first mod! It was a very light, slippery pen from KMart that I double capped. I later learned the Charge and the Fingerpass, but the concept of the Sonic made absolutely no sense to me. The only way I learnt it was through using my other hand to guide the motion, something I learnt to be a very effective learning strategy.

my first ever recorded ta!

With the fundamentals down, I wanted to give myself a test. Twelve-year old me had this great idea of spinning above a toilet bowl. If I was truly confident, then this should be no problem. Unfortunately, this would end up a bit badly! As months passed though, I would build my trick pool through learning sonic variations. I remembered making a UPSB account at the time too, but it felt oddly deserted as this was its tail end. I ended up sticking with Reddit, not knowing about the Discord servers on the sidebar. Having only seen this part of the community, I made the common conclusion that penspinning was ‘dead’.

This idea that the penspinning community was a wasteland of fallen warriors felt like I was assigned a special duty to become a pen spinner even more. I couldn’t let such a rich hobby die out! I was also only starting so it was unfair too! Although it was my new favourite gatekept activity, I showed all my friends more pen spinning videos and got more people interested. Some in class were impressed with my Twisted Sonics and would ask how I did them. It felt like I was on my way to start a revolution!

Even though I learnt nothing in school, I looked back at this time fondly playing with my friends and having fun every day. We all made our own mods and I used it as an opportunity to improve mine. I would make a green one with my marker caps of my favourite colour! Looking back, the triangle barrel was unideal, but this was the mod that reminded me of that precious time. My friends were all silly and squishy and we’d sometimes get in trouble together, or maybe a lot! It was something I really wished could’ve lasted forever and I regret not giving more hugs (ehehe).

CH2 - Wakaneko

It had been about 3 months since I started spinning. After managing to grind through the fundamental reverses, arounds, hybrids and their different slots, it would be around the time I should be finding my first pen spinning idol! There seemed to be a lot of check ups that I had to attend though. My parents wouldn’t tell me anything yet, but recently, whenever I went to play, I would lose energy immediately. I was told there was something wrong inside me, and I would have to be admitted to a hospital. I promised my friends we’ll still spin together, and that I would return.

It was the beginning of spring when I disappeared into my new colourful home. My first surgery was scheduled next week and holes were driven into my squishy head. I had to stop studying from that point, and the pen mods I made grew abandoned. Everyday I just played games on my PSP to fall asleep and pass time. I felt a bit weak, but I thought I could still keep my promise.

a cold, clinical, colorful landscape

As time went on, my social skills began to fade, but it made my heart fluffy when people would come visit me! I would try to smile, but when they saw the instruments attached to me, it only made them uncomfortable. I felt guilty in some way and I would understand, but I eventually grew a bit avoidant, isolating myself and losing memories of the friends I made. Two months later, my bed would be moved to the operating room and I had a really long sleepy…

An unknown time would pass as I woke up in an ICU with Dad holding my hand. It took several more days before I was able to move my fingers. I was still really shaky and my voice was a bit wobbly, but I asked my parents if I could spin my mod. Mom knew how much penspinning meant to me, so she brought it for me. I soon found out I had faced several complications, my lack of vital signs lead to being administered adrenalin to bring me out of a coma. It took some time, but Mom came back with the green mod I previously made with my friends. On my second try, while lying down still bedridden, I was able to land a thumbaround for the first time in months.

awa...

The weeks continued and I couldn’t comprehend time or myself. The stream of opioids was a blissful nothing that I learnt to sleep with so peacefully. But as Christmas approached, I was able to remember a bit about myself and the things I loved. This was around the time Penstock was gaining popularity, and I was convinced in wanting to try a Flying Panda! I didn’t really know any better at the time, but as a gift, my Dad got me one, and I was able to feel really happy for the first time in a while!

It was the first ‘real’ mod that I got, and my first impression was that it was really shiny, cool, and very official-like! It felt distributed and I liked how the wide grips allowed me to perform wipers easily. It was like this magic wand I would bring around with me everywhere! In the end though, not even I liked the Flying Panda for too long, but it did later come to influence one of the mods I’m best known for.

That season, Dad brought some dress-up masks and he was able to bring joy in the ward. We would have my sister’s birthday there too! For celebration, we ate sushi and played new games we had on our Wii U. As her semester ended, our whole family would be together to watch anime in the hospital! I’m really grateful to them for sticking with me during that time and I felt like my heart could feel a little squishy again (nya).

As much as I was showered with love, it felt like I was still stuck sleeping under that bed, wanting to come back and sleep forever. Even years then, I would find ways to take control of my lost body, hoping adding more scars could shift that fragmenting image and help me find myself.

Spinning my mod turned to help in grounding me through connecting my identity to this physical hobby. It was a little thing I had that made me really happy. The plushies I have would also serve as parts of myself I lost, hugging them to learn to love myself (ehehe).

daikazoku

Even after that, the world didn’t really change for me! It was still sweet and colourful, and humans are cute and all really loveable. It would be difficult moving forward, but I think I wanted to learn to live. If it was okay, I wished to keep spinning, hug those close to me and to be of help as much as I could. As the New Year of 2019 arrived, my physical therapy kept ongoing but I could finally come back home! <3