(warning, long post ahead) wow, i can't believe it's already my second time celebrating maki's birthday. i'm aware this is days late, but i had a huge celebration on the actual day. i don't really know where to start expressing my feelings, but i guess i'll start with this: happy birthday maki! you have no idea how much i've been anticipating today. it's also impossible for me to put into words how much i love you. you mean so much to me. your smiles, your laughs, your faces, your piano, your exclamations and singing voice are all incredible. you make me extremely happy. you're a comfort to me at all times and you're an inspiration. i know i'll never be really alone because i will always have you. you're truly the light of my life. thank you for everything. we're very similar in many ways; we both receive pressure from our families to do well. we both have something we're passionate about that we have to balance with our studies (in my case, that thing is you). we both hide our feelings, though in different ways, but when we open up we are truly honest. deep down, we both care endlessly about our friends and family. one place we differ is in our actions; i admire you so much for yours. instead of procrastinating and whining and losing sleep to homework, you take things head on and get things done so you can do what you love but also live up to your family's expectations. you don't let your family tell you what you can and can't do; you listen but you stick up for what you believe in. your friends love you dearly, and so do i. we have similar flaws; we're both stubborn, and sometimes we don't think before we talk or act. but i know you always have good intentions at heart. you're an amazing person through and through and i love everything about you. you help me cope with the stuff life throws at me. when i'm in shreds and lonely i can listen to your voice or look at your face and lift my spirits instantly. thank you for being the light in the dark. thank you for being an inspiration and a comfort. thank you for treating me well--i don't deserve the blessings from my scouts. thank you for everything. thank you for being such an important part of my life for an entire second year. you've meant so much to me from the very beginning. i loved you since i saw your alter figure; it was truly love at first sight. my heart has never faltered. you've been the most important since the beginning. i don't think i'll ever be able to love another character as much as i love you. i'm glad i get to be open about my love for you with the people around me--my family and friends know how dear you are to me, and they support me, which i am extremely grateful for. you'll be important to me as long as i live. i've collected her merch avidly for another year, and my shrine has more than doubled in size. i'm proud of the transformation. i hope my merch can at least begin to convey how much i love maki--it's not much compared to other collections but spending money is the way i show affection. merch is what i've invested in instead of a car, or college savings, or something with practical use; i hope that would mean something to her. and even if it didn't, it's a privilege that i got to learn about maki, have her in my life, and have the ability to collect her merch. i have very few of her figures left to collect, but the journey never ends; i'll keep buying merchandise for a long time. she means the entire world to me. my collection has grown so much since this time last year and i hope to see it evolve even more as we approach 2019. here are some pictures of it: this is the shelf i'm most proud of, since it looks nicest and has the most on it and here's the side! the cutouts above the poster are what used to be in my phone case (right now it's magician) i hope you like your cake! it's red velvet, the same color as your hair. i ate it with my mom and one of my sisters. we sang happy birthday and i blew out candles. i'm sorry my sister got jealous and destroyed the image after we ate a few slices. i may or may not have burst into tears when i saw it at 2 am. i feel really bad. now we arrive at the scouts. on my main ww, i saved 1720 gems-35 pulls. i saved for 9 months. it's the most gems i've ever held at once, and it's probably the most i'll ever hold. on my first pull i got my favorite sr in the whole game, animal v1 maki. she's absolutely stunning. i was confident things would go well after that. isn't she simply gorgeous? i didn't get any ur for 8 or 9 pulls. around my 10th pull, i got one, but it was magician maki, which i already had. although i had never copy idolized a ur before, so i was happy to do that ♡ i continued scouting and eventually pulled another ur-mermaid maki (who i later idolized with ss seals)! she flipped. i saw one sr envelope so i skipped the animation, and i was totally shocked when i saw her pop up. thank you so much, i love you my wife ♡♡ i kept scouting, and unfortunately got magician maki one more time. it was disappointing, but i still had scouts left. i pulled another copy of valentine's maki, who i already seal idolized, which lowered my spirits even further. but on my second to last pull, she surprised me with my dream ur, baseball maki!! i'm so so blessed. i really don't deserve this. she's so amazing, i love her so so much. i also scouted ghost maki during these scouts. i ended up with 3 or more copies of each of her ssrs idolized after i was done, with 10 ss seals and 40+ s seals. i've seal idolized all the srs i hadn't already copy idolized and did 3 25-bt scouts in total, getting 3 new urs from bts! i'm now only missing 8 maki srs on that account. i've never truly loved that account until now; it was the account i made when i started the game as a total newbie in june 2016. i'm so proud of it now. thank you so much maki, i love you so much ♡ i also spent 6 pulls on my side jp, which became my main, because i got both the urs in the limited box with four pulls, one on my first pull. i was seriously blessed. i was in public and it took every ounce of my will power not to break into tears. her limited ur, and the sifac art in general, is so beautiful. i can't believe i have her birthday lim and her bokutachi lim on the same account. thank you so much maki; i'm keeping this account forever. i don't deserve to be this blessed. thank you so so so much. i make minimalists and i have done a lot of makis. here are two of my favorites. i hope i did her justice, although that's probably not possible because she's just that perfect. i'm sorry that got so long. long story short, i love maki so much. i can't put it into words. she is absolutely everything to me. she blessed me so much on her birthday this year and i am eternally grateful. i can't wait to continue to spend my years with her and grow as a person with her help. she's an inspiration, she's my motivation. she gives me something to work toward, strive for, look forward to. she keeps me going more than anything else. i hope that this post properly conveys that. happy birthday, maki. you have no idea how much you mean to me. i love you so so so so much, and i hope your birthday was even half as amazing as you are. you deserve the universe and infinitely more. ♡ MakiBirthdayGiveaway2018