Gemmu

Project Manager; PR Team Lead

ARMADA, thank you so much for sharing our excitement! We hope you had fun and enjoyed this special anniversary project. We also hope that this cover makes it to your playlist, or inspires you to draw those awesome designs, or explore the lore of this world that we created.

BRIGADE, thank you so effin' much for everything. We did it! The project is LIVE, and it's all thanks to YOU who believed in this singular person's idea and vision. Who would've thought that we'd make something so beautiful? ME! I did! I've always believed in you! Thank you for believing in me, too!

As we step into the future, one thing is for certain: Badlands Brigade WILL KEEP ON COOKING. Please, never stop on supporting us as we pursue better, bigger, and bolder endeavors.

I am running out of words. I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much.

Lots of love,
Gemmu
"Girlfail Supreme of Badlands Brigade"

Dandelion

Project Manager; Copy & Continuity Editor

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY ARMIS, I am so so so glad to see you all continue to grow as Holostars since your debut last year! I've been a part of the tempura fandom since HQ's debut and it's been just absolutely amazing to see our community grow with the armada as well.

I have nothing but gratitude for the tempura/armada community and how much confidence y’all’ve given me to pursue creativity and take on new experiences. Never could have dreamed of the amazing things I’ve learned and the RESPONSIBILITIES I’ve been capable of taking on these last few years with the boys’ inspiration and the support of this community.

I really can’t understate this. Being a part of this community truly gave me my life back. For most of my life, I was convinced I was hopelessly disorganized, utterly unreliable, and incompatible with making commitments due to my disability/health stuff. I honestly didn’t realize what a toll those demoralizing experiences had on my self-esteem until the last few months with the Brigade.

Within this community, my health restrictions don’t matter as much. I don’t need to consistently have the energy to speak or to leave the house to maintain friendships and grow new ones. When my chronic pain flared worse than usual over the summer, issues with brain fog and extreme difficulties typing didn’t lose me my seat at the table. It’s easy to step away for a break in an online community where asynchronous communication is the norm, rather than a failing. When it was totally fine to show up when I could, I was finally able to learn all the ways I COULD show up.

I joined the Badlands Brigade leadership back in January 2024, intending to take on "some light administration duties" (lmao) to help out around the server. I quickly grew into a project manager role and was the primary manager for the visuals phase of Legends of the Bloodhounds: ARMIS Anniversary 2024. Working with the Brigade has been one of the best experiences of my life! Our team is so full of amazing, dedicated, creative individuals, and the rest of the management team is just so supportive. Our management team is so communicative, helpful, and willing to step in for each other. Seeing this attitude in practice let me feel comfortable expanding the boundaries of what I thought I was capable of.

This project gave me the confidence to grow in ways I never dreamed I could. It still blows my mind a little to hear my team tell me they admire my organizational skills. Writing that literally makes me tear up a little because of how at-odds it is with who I believed myself to be for so long. I’ve learned that in the right environment, I have a unique ability to see connections and create functional systems that help others do their best work. I voice-acted for the first time. I learned new ways to manage my time and energy and gained the confidence to begin learning web development on my own in the summer. I didn’t know a lick of html before August-ish and I built this site WHILE balancing managing the Brigade, running our promotional collab with South Elysium Times, and maintaining my grades in uni. I LED MULTI-HOUR MEETINGS EVERY MONTH?!? Insane.

I extend my deepest thanks to every single team member who trusted me as a project manager. It's been SO HEARTWARMING to hear so many people tell me this is the first fan project they've been involved in, this is what got them involved in the community, that this is the smoothest project they've ever been involved in, or that they chose to learn new skills. I can't wait to work with y'all more in the future and see how much more we can grow together!

OTSUBRIGADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All my love and the beegest mwahs ever!
Xoxo,
Dandelion

Astra Amartia

Assistant Project Manager

HAPPY FIRST ARMIS ANNIVERSARY!!!

Before any of this even happened, I joined the Holostars fandom in Jan 2023 on the Vanguard debut. I am simply someone who stepped out of the void as I watched the debut as I got inspired to do something, anything, as long as it did not make others feel uncomfortable. Never had I thought I’d be able to make friends nor integrate into fandoms.

To ARMIS, Thank you for the wonderful shenanigans that you've shown us over the past 1 year. Even though it wasn't always sunshine and rainbows across the globe, I'm honestly grateful for the days filled with all the hype, fun and laughter. You guys are and have come a long way, I love the synergy you guys have with each other, it all felt very well fit together.

To Jurard, the loudest cheer leader, the funny screaming man, I'm really glad to hear that you enjoyed the MV. Am also grateful that your reactions to it brought so much joy and laugher to everyone, it's like those little things add up together into one big joyous moments.

To Octavio, it's always cool to know there's another person who is very much appreciative of music and touched on the music production side of things. Also I got exposed to so many wonderful Tagalog songs, it's a beautiful language, really. There's so much I got to learn from you and very much appreciate you.

To Goldbullet, Thank you for the warm safe space which you've created for the community. It was nice to hop in at random hours to hear something that out of context was actually quite funny.

To my kamioshi, Ruze, who hates sappiness and loves ants. I have a Japanese Pun for you.

Ants = 蟻 in Kanji, read as あり (Ari) in Japanese.
十 kanji means 10, it can be read as じゅう(Jyuu) or とお(Too).
Now 蟻が十 = There are 10 ants.
If you put 蟻が十 into hiragana, it is written as ありがとお.
This sounds like ありがとう, which means thank you.

Thank you for being my Muze, for being here. No more void, alright? You belong here with the HoloStars and Armis now. You have my gratitude, not just for the shiny star bringing the community together, but also for reigniting my old passion and inspiring me to get out of my comfy zone to push further ahead, without fearing about making weird strange noises.

To Armadas, you guys are a delight to be around and a very supportive community to be in. It’s pleasant to be around you guys, gassing each other up to push forth. I’ve enjoyed the company while I’ve been around when I was much more active. Some of us have met and enjoyed each other's company, and I’m grateful for it. There’s plenty of you guys who I do hope to be able to get along with, I may have responded or commented on twitter, I’m actually really shy to even start sending private messages, perhaps now I should say, was. Regardless, I know I’ll eventually get that courage to speak up more. I sincerely hope you guys have enjoyed the fanmade MV which I’ve taken part in with the Brigade.

To the Brigades, I can’t emphasize how much delight it has been for me, it is my highest honor to be working with all of you who’ve come together to make this MV like one of my dreams come true. It’s one of the most communicative teams I’ve ever worked with. My initial thought was to simply be able to give back to the community something, in the form of vocals/singing/voice acting, as that has been my childhood dream. Similar to how our oshis have given us something, like in the form of creation alongside the entertainment and fun times, never had I thought that I’d become part of the staff team, nor did I dream about making this huge project and throughout most of the process, from storyboarding, conceptual art, to the collaborations. I will say this again, you guys have reignited my old passion, as we continued to work together. I’ll always treasure these memories that I have, the effort that every single one of us put in despite the ups and downs that had occurred over the past 1 year.

To anyone who has read it this far, thank you for putting up with my lengthiness. This is my proudest moment that will have a special place in my heart. It brought out so many emotions which I had to untangle it all, like a long healing process falling into place.

Never had I once thought of myself as a talent, I had simply looked at myself as a boring person who had an old dream about creating something and wished that it would go big and be noticed. However, that will change as I move towards using my own tangents to create something. I wish to light those people up, as all of you have had for me. Please look forward to more slow cooking.

With Love,
Astra Amartia.
(Known by a handful as the Tangent Constellation, some knew me as a cosmic whale shark.)

VII/Nana

Assistant Project Manager: Social Media

HAPPY FIRST ANNIVERSARY, ARMIS! 🥳 🎉 🥂

I am here to express my heartfelt gratitude for being here with us, inspiring us with your hard work and fun streams. Your light-hearted banter, chaotic shenanigans, and wholesome moments bring us light and joy, especially in times when we're at our lowest. Keep up the good work and take care always 🥰

To the Armada, thank you very much for your heartwarming support to the boys and to our project. This is such a warm and lovely community, and having you with us motivates us to do great things to give back to the boys and the fans 🤩

To the Brigade, thank you so much for joining us in this project. Your amazing skills, talents, participation and cooperation brought our project to even greater heights I couldn't have ever imagined. We couldn't have done this without you! 🤩 I was one of the first members and was tasked to be the social media manager and part of the PR team. I really thought we'd be just a small team with a simple MV. Now look at us! A team with over 90 people on board, with an awesome MV and collaboration with Tactical Elysium and South Elysium Times. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to be here with you all and to be a part of this wonderful team 🥺 I hope I can do more fun things with you all! 🤩

Once again, congratulations Armis! I'm so proud of you all 🥺 I am looking forward to your journey and I'll be here to support you 🥰 Cheers to more years! 🤩🥂

Sincerely yours,
VII (7/Nana)
Social Media Manager
PR team member

Ac

Music Team Lead

Hey ARMIS, happy first anniversary!

Well, I have been a starmin from 2021, but I must say that it really is impressive how far all of Holostars have come. How you, ARMIS, alongside the rest of Holostars EN, have inspired the community to come together for such a massive project.

You know, music had always been something I was able to do. With the cover projects I’ve been doing for… the second year now actually, I think music has now become something I want to do, maybe for the rest of my life if I can help it.

Congratulations, you may have changed a person’s life forever.

To the Brigade, while I may have been one of the founding members, I really am glad you’ve decided to come onboard for this project.

I look forward to working on more fan projects, for Holostars, for Holostars EN, for ARMIS, with the Brigade.

Best regards,
Ac
Music Team Lead

Flying Space Whale

Writing and Concept Team Lead

To the Brigade and all the Armada:

Thank you all so much for your cooperation with this project. As your writing/concept lead (and PR person), it was an honour to work on this with all of you from the very start.

Truth be told, when I first joined this fandom, I never expected to make any friends, much less join such awesome projects. When I first joined back in 2022, I was not in a good place mentally. This fandom and our boys inspired me to pursue my true passion, writing. (I had already been writing for various IRL things off and on throughout the years, but that was just to make extra money).

I won't lie and say that it was easy. There were many days where the boulder rolled back down the hill, many days where I felt my hopes dampened by the rain. I continued trying because I had nothing left to lose.

Everyone has grown as well. The music team improved quite a bit as musicians while the staff grew to be capable leaders. The art team managed to get all the art together with only a few hiccups. Our amazing admins weathered us through the toughest storms and went above and beyond for us. Working with such a capable team like this is awe-inspiring. It makes me wonder how far I too have come on such a journey.

To the Brigade, Armada, and Tempura too, thank you for giving me a chance to show off my skills. Because of you, I have many dreams now. I honestly don't know how far I can take those dreams, but I'm gonna try with all my might. I know that I don't want to be chained to the ground. I want to soar amongst the stars.

Your friendly neighbourhood writer,
Flyingspacewhale

P.S. I love you all.

Lani

Art Team Lead

Hello everyone!

First and foremost, I want to say…. YYIPPPEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! WE DID IT GUYS!!! There’s so many feelings I want to put into words but I can only say so much, so I'll try to squeeze as much as I can into this one letter.

A fun fact, I actually ALMOST didn’t take up the art team lead! I was approached by Dandelion while the music team was almost done with their section of amazing work, and she gave me the offer to become the art team lead based on my acts in the other Discord server we’re in and my artistic abilities. But to be honest, I almost rejected her. I had so many thoughts running through my mind, ‘This is a huge job’ ‘Why me?’ ‘How did I deserve this position?’, like.. I truly didn’t understand how or why Dandelion picked me LOL, especially when I didn't do any ‘art team lead’ work or even leading positions in ANY projects. But at the time I wasn’t working a job so I had all the time in the world, more importantly, It was a project for ARMIS so I said, fuck it let’s do it! So that was when I joined the team as an art team lead!

I remember that when I first started, I was SO lost. Again, this is my first role as an art team lead so I was just so confused, to say the least I was overwhelmed. Truth be told I kept telling myself over and over again I wouldn’t be able to successfully lead this team and I would just fail and I’d feel just.. Guilt. Luckily, our team who have already been on the project for many months helped me, and backed me up and I cannot thank them enough.

Let’s take a moment to talk about you guys as well! YES YOU THE BADLANDS BRIGADE TEAM! You guys are fucking awesome, for the first time, and the first art team I have led, everyone was kind, communicative, and most of all just overall amazing. I don’t think I could have asked for any other team, we all worked so hard! And I wouldn’t call us perfect because we had our bumps in the road, but even with those difficulties and hard times, those hardships are what makes us perfect.

To wrap things up, being involved in this project made me love ARMIS and just Holostars as a whole even MORE than I would ever imagine. I hold this project super close and dear to my heart. I want to give a final thank you to the staff, the collaborators, everyone who has helped me with my art leading process and most of all, to each and every one of you who is reading this message right now! I cannot wait to work with all of you again in the future, let’s soar to the sky with Holostars!

OTSUSTARS!
Xoxo, Lani

Gravity Forces

Editing Team Lead

To ARMIS, Armada and the Brigade - Happy 1st Anniversary! I hope you all enjoyed watching and/or taking part in this project! I hope this project shows how much love everyone has for the boys, because it totally did reach me!

I first noticed this project when it was in need of video editors, around July-ish? I’ll be honest I thought MV Lead meant just handling a few editors… boy was I wrong. This whole journey taught me a lot, coordinating the timing of storyboards, communicating back and forth with others, and ensuring the pace of the MV was perfect and within the deadlines. Handling such a huge responsibility like this was the first time for me, and I was so scared I would fumble it, especially in the last few weeks when I had to change many things at the last minute.

To the Admin Team, thank you for trusting me as MV Editing Lead. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to lead my team. This project RULES because of you guys!! I got into the team late, but I was able to witness everything being made to perfection. Everyone put in their hard work and it really paid off!

To my MV editors!!!! I LOVE YOU GUYS! Thank you for working with me through everything!! You guys made the MV shine with your editor magic. Honestly, of all the MEPs (Multi Editor Projects) I’ve taken part in and hosted, this was the most seamless one I’ve seen yet. Everything flows so well, everyone of you did your part great! I appreciate you guys so much.

When I first stitched the MV together, with every part filled, I nearly cried. The effort of almost 90 people was put into these 5 minutes, and I could feel the love for the boys through this. I felt so much love, I rewatched it so many times, prior to the screenings and premiere, it also made me make a trailer. I feel so happy to be part of this project, and I hope to take part in more projects from Badlands Brigade!!

Love you guys! - Ameerah (Gravity Forces)