Millie Squilly Dot Com

zine of Millie EX 5 and ending a miniseries

2026-03-14T23:14:43+11:00

If you weren't aware, I put out issue 5 of my zine of Millie EX series just a few days ago!

And with this issue, I guess I'm declaring the end of the EX miniseries. It had a nice consistency in terms of style and format, and it encouraged me to push myself artistically and consider aesthetic more. But I think I need to maybe take a break and change things up again when I start making zines again. (honestly finding different good 16-colour palettes for each issue was getting tricky)

I have a few ideas for what to do next zine-wise and decker-wise. I don't think I'm going to immediately launch into something new like when I finished season 3 and bounced very quickly into EX. Honestly if you read issue 5 you probably get the sense that things have been... somewhat rough for me brain-wise. So I think I need to clear my head.

One project that comes to mind is some sort of index for my zines. Like, I have no idea what's on which issue, so whipping up some sort of spreadsheet may be a good idea. I might make that my next project. I've also had a thought of putting up like an archive of EX on itch, like I did for the original series, but maybe a bit fancier like with a menu of some sort. Tasks for the future.

One thing I did whip up is versions of the EX series with the standard Decker menu font replacing my custom MillieSans font. A few friends had mentioned that they really struggled to read the custom font, and like yeah I am no font designer tbh. So I put this together as an option for ease of readability. It's a bit wonky since like a lot of stuff was sized for my original font but hopefully it's non-broken.

Anyway, like yeah, that's it for the EX series. I think I'm still going though. If there's something you'd like to see in future zines let me know, I do have some ideas but I'm also open to them.

Some technical observations about the Space Adventure Cobra UK dub

2026-03-03T22:46:00+11:00

I had an enjoyable evening watching Discotek's new blu-ray of the Manga UK dub of Space Adventure Cobra, with the Yello soundtrack. It's a pretty fun movie and I wrote a bit about it on letterboxd, as is my way. But I want to write about some observations I've made about the technical aspects of this dub of the film and such so that's what I'm going to do here.

I will now make a bunch of observations and then attempt to make sense of them.

The UK dub of Space Adventure Cobra, with the Yello soundtrack, was done to a 25fps copy of the film. This is pretty clear from the included songs, the only way they sound at the correct pitch and speed is if the film is played at 25fps. Which is not particularly unusual for a production done in the UK for video release, since that's kinda how PAL video works. Typically film runs at 24fps but when transferred to PAL video it was normally sped up to 25fps, to fit the 50hz video standard. So the conclusion is that the dub must have been mixed after the film was transferred to PAL video.

A lot of Manga UK's other releases worked off standards-converted NTSC masters, so there's no speed issues, but in this case they seem to have obtained a PAL transfer. This could indicate that they'd got the master on film and transferred it themselves, rather than receiving master tapes.

The original UK VHS of Cobra translates the opening credits rather crudely, with big black boxes obscuring the scary Japanese characters and English credits added to replace them. Discotek's new bluray does things a bit more tastefully, with the English credits in a nice serif font alongside the Japanese ones. But it's the original release where things get a bit interesting, because the credits for Yello's soundtrack are in a visibly different font to the others. Here's a comparison from a rip of the VHS I found online (I do own the VHS myself as well as the new discotek bluray, please excuse my current inability to transfer a VHS myself)

There's also some interesting things to observe in the end credits. The main credits crawl (done over a still image) includes all the usual credits as well as details of the dub cast and recording, but no mention of the music. After this crawl, there's a series of silent credit cards on a black background listing the credits and song publishing info for the Yello songs. The main credits crawl has a "produced on film" look to it, but the extra credits for the Yello songs look video-generated to me. On the Discotek bluray I suspect some of these may have been recreated as they look way too clean but I'm referring to the VHS rip too. I'm not sure what source Discotek used - some of their upscaled credits have some low-resolution compression artifacts, which makes me wonder if they used the one French DVD that actually included this dub as the cleanest source (or at least better than a VHS rip) but this doesn't matter too much for my ponderings here.

The wikipedia page for the movie does mention a UK theatrical run in 1995, citing an issue of a magazine called Film Review in 1995. Google Books won't let me see the full text of the page, just snips, but it does mention a release date of May 5 and the Yello soundtrack. The BBFC rating page does also mention a rating for theatrical showings.

As an aside, theatrical showings of films, even in countries that use PAL for their video standard, are generally still at the standard 24 frames per second. And the BBFC page backs this up with the theatrical runtime being significantly longer than the video runtime. (There's also a 2008 video rating running at a runtime closer to the theatrical one, this however would be the DVD release of the Streamline dub, standards-converted from NTSC)

So, you can probably see where I'm going with this. The sequencing of the Yello soundtrack was clearly done on a video master, because of the framerate. But it seems Manga had some of the dub materials prepared on film, and then they transferred this to video and then did the Yello music editing. Which raises some questions. Was there a version of this dub on a film print? Because there's certainly UK dub credits on a film print. Did they use the original soundtrack? If so, why does the Film Review article mention Yello? If not, why are all the Yello credits seemingly done as video edits, and why does the music run at PAL speeds?

I sort of set out to theorise that the film was dubbed and then reedited with the Yello soundtrack after the dub was finished, but the mentions of the theatrical run really mix things up further. Maybe Film Review were basing their review on a video screener? The home video rating on the BBFC site is about only a month after the theatrical rating, after all.

There's a bit of interview with Andy Frain on the blu-ray (that's partly taken from this larger interview that Justin Sevakis did for his Anime Business documentary, although I think some parts are exclusive to the blu-ray), where he talks about working out which track to place where on the film by basically just sitting down with the VHS.

Anyway, yeah there's been some forums consternation about this dub running at 25fps so it's been fresh in my mind and like I am the sort of person who notices what font credits are in so yeah. Was this film dubbed at 24fps as a film production and then resoundtracked at 25fps on video? idk maybe?

Also the credits apparently miscredit the voice of Cobra if you believe Wikipedia, so now I wonder what caused that too.

art consistency or lack thereof

2026-02-17T22:32:43+11:00

I was going through the drawings I did of the duo from the zine of millie EX series (check it out if you haven't) and I've realised I seem to draw them kinda differently each time.

(check out zine of Millie EX, if you email in time your letter might be in EX5)

A post, kinda just arbitrarily sent out into the void or space or whatever

2026-02-09T00:34:13+11:00

I wound up being awake late today. Dressed up all cute but not going anywhere, after a morning of watching some stuff and napping. Poking and annoying a few friends, dabbling in games a bit, and an evening writing a long rambly article and doing a few drawings for the next zine.

And by "next zine" I mean the finale of the EX series. I think 5 is a good number, like I want the format and vibe to get iterated on enough to be interesting, but not become stale. Then I do something new.

I just wrote a paragraph doing some really bad brain thoughts where I rage against imaginary readers of my zines and this blog. Not sure that's good.

IDK, look maybe lately I am just having trouble with social and desired attention vs actual attention and not really knowing what to do or how to function? I have a lot of "want to talk to people" but not as much "knowing what to say" and sometimes an enthusiastic extrovert can carry me but lately it doesn't seem to work so well.

Still pretty recent that last zine came out. Maybe I'm feeling like it didn't get much notice, or commented on much? So it's felt more "into the void" than usual. Or maybe my brain is broken such that I haven't noticed people's reaction to it as much. The only real measurable metric I have is "nobody's emailed me".

Bouncing around in my head is what to do next. Style-wise I have a few ideas, but also, what if like reinvention or new persona? Shy Catgirl Millie is me but also like really it's a version of me. What if I present myself differently in my work, how do people react to that?

Giving too much away on a public blog post maybe haha. It's a ploy to get you to think about me. Hi, thanks for reading, say hello if you're seeing this ;)

new zine is out

2026-01-31T12:25:57+11:00

Few days ago I released zine of Millie EX issue 4.

It's kinda vaguely themed after "space" if that helps sweeten the deal. My zines are my primary method of communication of my thoughts so if you at all give a shit about what I have to say please read it.

Some updates for people who follow this

2026-01-21T18:02:15+11:00

Honestly yeah I have some things to talk about here

First of all, big lego. It's in progress. I have built a stardrive section. Next up is the saucer section!

Life stuff: finally got my fucking roof fixed. Good. No more leak, I hope.

Decker goings on: well, I'm working on zine of Millie EX4. When it feels ready it'll get polished off and I can release it. Not ready quite yet.

I have a few other decker project ideas. Tempted to maybe run a jam based on one of them. Do I have either the energy or the social reach to successfully run a jam? Honestly idk.

Really after a real fuck of a december I kinda want my life to get back to a stable point. I think it's about there?

Main issue is the weather is doing a humid thing lately which does not at all agree with me. It makes it hard to sleep, which then makes it hard to think. Which might be why I'm writing this all in like bits and sentence fragments and not proper paragraphs?

I think I am looking forward to cooler weather, haha.

Sometimes there are a few bigger life things bouncing around in my head. Like, the possibility of social connections and such. IDK. It is, currently, Too Hot to think about stuff I think.

But Evan bought me a new puzzle platformer and that's nice and fun :3

big lego

2026-01-11T07:58:28+11:00

I finally had a late christmas present arrive. It's the big fancy lego set of the enterprise-d. I think I've got space for it in my house?

My Decker Wrapped 2025

2025-12-29T14:10:00+11:00

yeah yeah everyone loves to post things generated by various "platforms" about what they passively consumed over a year but fuck that I am writing my own thing about things I've actively created!

In 2025 I have made in Decker:

Nine zines
6 itch games (and game-adjacent experiences)
1 short musical animation
1 transitions module
1 helpful guide
and finally the interface and associated bits for one standalone raspberry pi-based dedicated Decker machine

So, the nine zines. This was made up of issues 25-30 of Zine of Millie, more than half of the third season including the dramatic finale, and then the first 3 issues of my new zine of millie EX project.

Looking over zine of Millie, the ones released this year are the vast majority of my post-cohost output. I think I'm still sitting with the legacy of a lot of this work in particular being heavily defined by my persona and identity on that platform, since aside from existing friends that's where I seem to have found most of my audience. So it's felt weird putting them out without a corresponding cohost post where people will be sharing and commenting and such, it's a lot more just casting it into the void. I kind of feel like the desire to keep doing something interesting with the format has been both a motivation and a bit of a curse. Like, I felt like I couldn't keep just putting out low-effort stuff, but making the high concept stuff every time was difficult and sometimes also stifling, like in terms of working out where to fit things. And so this sort of led up to the season finale (since my seasons are 10 issues each for whatever reason) where I ended up having some concluding finality vibes (by way of a lot of End of Evangelion references) and wrapping up at least somewhat some of my running bits. Sort of getting to a point where I felt I could end it there.

And then there's zine of Millie EX. Out less than a month after I "ended" my initial zine run. I think it feels a bit like a breath of fresh air, like I've shrugged off the baggage and now I'm free to do whatever I want. The only thing really carrying over is the "elsewhere in the Deckerverse" segment, which I sort of feel like is the one thing I really feel strongly about wanting to continue, since like us decker people need to boost each other up I think, and I love to give props to my friends' projects! But otherwise it's felt really fresh, like as a series it feels like it has a very different vibe from the original run. My main thought is it's more visual oriented, with a lot more pure art pieces included (I especially feel this worked really well in issue 2). Honestly I'm really glad how it's turning out, like it's distinct from the old so I'm free of that, and each feels unique but also consistent. I guess this is the different vibes of pink-haired Millie as compared to blonde Millie? (god I really need to get an IRL pink wig)

The itch projects. Mostly created for various jams, and there's been a few of those this year. In addition to the traditional twice-yearly official jams run by IJ, there's also been treegravy's Decker Visual Novel Jam, and SWANCHIME's pink decker jam. Plus a few projects I've just done on a whim, because if I wanna do something I can just do it.

So yeah, to start off with, early in the year I put out Ember in the wilderness, which sort of sprung from the whole joke about "oh disco elysium should be about a cosy witch in the woods", and I kind of wanted to give a different take on what a woods witch would be like. So it's unfortunately a bit tainted with cosy game discourse but I think it's good, and it feels very "just doing shit I want to" instead of worrying about if/how it makes sense "as a game".

Another standalone "just because" project was little wordless trans story, which was basically a little thing I threw together in about an hour or so, basically as an experiment with some different art styles. Honestly at the time I was sort of thinking "this really could just be a zine page" but for whatever reason I released it standalone and it got a weird amount of attention due to somehow ending up in itch's "fresh games" section. Really it's just a short little wordless story about an egg-cracking, haha.

Next we come to the things I've made for jams. For the Decker VN jam, I made A stopover on SQ-75, a little multi-ending VN about my Mixx the Jump Jockey character, who shows up every so often in the original 30 issues of zine of Millie. And I say "little" but it was complicated enough that it took some time and required some keeping track of the different paths. It turned out pretty good though. It's kind of my most "pure" VN, since otherwise I've tended more towards the point and click adventure style.

For the pink decker jam I made Janky Pink Dance, a short little looping animation synced up to a Jankytunes soundtrack. I've seen a few people experiment with using Jankytunes themselves a bit, but generally not with the sort of high-energy upbeat music that I think is particularly suited to its limited chiptuney powers, so that's why I made this. It wasn't too big a project but it's fun.

For Decker Fantasy Camp 2025 I made project.deck, which I guess is sort of a video essay of sorts, in which I discuss in voiceover some of my feelings at the time about how my zinemaking was going, with accompanying illustrations. Really it was an experiment in doing a voiced Decker project, but it very much tied into what I was going through at the time in terms of how I feel about my creative output. So a lot of it may relate to what I wrote above.

Those three jams were kinda all bunched up really close together, so honestly my burnout feelings may well have related to that. Huh.

Anyway, there's also the two projects I did for Deck Month 3. And they're both pretty small, at least in terms of amount of time taken if not file size. And both are essentially experiments. And still pretty fresh as I write this, so it's hard to be particularly reflective at this time so I will see what I can do

Select a friend is basically an experiment in making an FMV game in Decker, a platform that doesn't really have video playback support as such. But with a little effort and elbow grease, you can make it happen. As long as you don't mind your file sizes going absolutely wild. This is another one that got a weird amount of attention, I think favoured by the algorithm somehow. I am not sure what people who don't know Decker and its limitations are making of it, since like sort of inherently the gag is "you did this in Decker?" but oh well. Mostly I hope it serves as inspiration for other Decker people to pinch my technique and integrate FMV into their own works if they want.

The other project for this jam is a storybook called A nice anime date, where I return to a few characters from my first proper game from back in 2024, Get Out And Run Some Errands, in like kind of a book style formatting. Decker recently added some pageturning style animations as transitions, and they made me go "oh that would work nice as a book" hence I made this. I actually started it before Select a friend (although the concept for that came first) on a whim. Revisiting these characters was fun and honestly it's also good drawing practice, like trying to make my characters feel less stiff and have more body types going on and such.

Anyway, final two projects up on Itch. One is WackyWipes, which are some transitions that basically do a wipe covered up with an image. Mostly these were intended as something for people to steal and integrate their own images into, but I'm not sure anyone has yet. The other is How to install Decker on Linux, an instructional deck born out of a frustration where people keep going "oh no how do I run this on Linux, I guess I'll just run the Windows version through Wine" instead of compiling from source like a normal person. It's basically just repeating the instructions from the github about how to compile. It's weird to me that people are using linux and not already understanding how to do something like this, maybe that's good that more people are switching? But people should not be afraid of compiling from source or poking at their computer in other ways!

Anyway, final Decker project has been, well, the Deck Kiosk that I keep posting about here. It's a standalone raspberry-pi based computer in a cute little classic mac inspired enclosure, with the intent of being a dedicated Decker machine. And as of a few days ago, its menu interface is itself a Decker deck, that uses some Danger Zone features to launch other decks and shutdown the computer. Although there's a few tweaks still needed to the case, I think at least software-wise I'd say it's at version 1.0 now, with the Decker-based menu being essentially complete, although enhancements may come along. I have put the launcher deck up on github for others to poke at, but really this falls in to the category of "physical object" so I'm excited to see people try it out if/when they visit.

So yeah that's my 2025 in Decker. I have a few ideas for things to do in the future and I'm already working on issue 4 of EX, so we'll see what happens.

God it's a lot when I lay it all out like this, huh?

deck kiosk (mostly) done (at least hardware-wise)

2025-12-26T22:19:16+11:00

Alright you probably want to see some photos

Anyway yeah thanks to my dad's help I now have a functioning enclosure which I have stuck all the parts into

(may have accidentally scratched the screen, luckily in a place where you can't see the scratch on a normal decker project but I am obtaining a replacement nonetheless)

(also the power button isn't wired up yet)

also there is a youtube video at https://youtu.be/5xuIWG8Q6kg

Still need to build an actual decker-based launcher, that's a project for when I have the energy for it.

Some projects for Deck Month

2025-12-17T19:08:25+11:00

In the past couple of days I've released two Decker projects for the Deck Month jam, both pretty different! I'd love if you checked both of them out though!

Select a friend by Millie Squilly

Select a friend is essentially an experiment in whether one can do an FMV game in Decker. The short answer is yes, with a lot of caveats. Essentially, the file size goes bananas, especially with full-screen 16-color video. I actually had to downrez the embedded itch version because the full size one loaded very slowly (and didn't load on firefox at all). But hey, it works and it's a cute little thing involving clicking on plushies!

A nice anime date by Millie Squilly

A nice anime date is a less technically experimental project, and is basically just a short story followup to last year's Get Out And Run Some Errands. I like these characters, and I think the realistic setting of that game comes across a lot better than when I do sci-fi and fantasy stuff (as fun as that can be) so I wanted to revisit it. Mostly I was inspired by Decker getting new page-turn animations!

So yeah, I'd love if you checked out these projects and told me what you think!