Well, for those who don't know (or don't care but came here anyways), I'm moving off this sad excuse of a blogging platform Blogger to join Randall's harem/host club in all their Wordpress glory. Yay, me? Anyways remember to come find me and my incoherent ramblings at tondemonothing.dasaku.net from now on :D
Byebee and whatnot.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Bye Bye Blogger
Monday, 19 May 2008
All that Gender Confusion... And the aftermath
Talk about things being blown out of proportion... (
Oh, like I'm one to talk (I've yet to go above self-linking and probably never will)
Anyways, since that post got an obscene amount of comments (OMG, more than 10! The tears cannot stop flowing T.T), I'm branching out here to write up some 'meaningful' replies and settle this whole issue here once and for all (so that I can go back to my 'usual' blogging 'schedule'. Yes, look forward for more man-love posts :P *oh there goes the readership*)
Queer Eyed Straight Guy said...issa-sa says: Oh, Shin, you are just too easy... XD (I'll trade you Nagato's secret for better buldge-concealing panties, you sick-ass. The eye surgery bill is going to YOU)
Taiyaki said...issa-sa says: Like we need another one around these parts?usagijen said...
Oh, so you're a trap! =P
lulz. so are you a trap, issa?!
Lupus said...issa-sa says: Yes, the current Blogger is probably a poor choice in terms of functionality aesthetics and whatever else being a hald decent blogger requires. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wished that the commenting interface was more user friendly (I certainly wish I could edit my own respond comments because I'm a lousy typist) amongst other issues. Of course it's still possible to implement all the 'cool blog stuff' into a Blogger blog, just that it'll take a certain amount of know-how which I currently do not possess nor have the time to learnup right now. The most I can do is copy and paste random bits of code into my template like I did to get the 'continue reading' function on my posts, and even then it's still not very pleasing to the eye and gives me a hell lot of trouble when I publish posts sometimes T.T
Yeah, gender shouldn't matter. We all know there are no girls on the internet anyway, right?
Off-topic, but since you mentioned pageviews, I suggest you move off blogger if you want to get any. It's ESPECIALLY HIGHLY recommended if you want to get comments, because everyone and their pet godzilla hates Blogger's captcha.
However there's a chance I won't have to bother with all those troubles for long. As Randall hints in his comment,
Randall Fitzgerald said...[issa-sa:] ...yes I've
.... Also, don't worry. You won't be my only non-gender identifying blogger at dasaku. :D
Anonymous said...issa-sa says: I probably came off as too general (Sorry, Erica if you found that I misrepresented your blog in any way). Actually the yuri for guys and yaoi for girls thing is rather rubbish imho, especially in the case of yuri which I've found to have a broader appeal since it has more roots to the emotional, while BL has a tendency to teh smex for the sake ofErica Friedman said...
Actually, yuri is for both girls and guys. Yuri Hime, the prominent yuri manga magazine, has only a 30% male readership. This statistics was mentioned in some interview. They made a special sister magazine, "Yuri Hime S," that's specially targeted to males (indicating that the main one isn't).
Okazu, while definitely by a woman, isn't manga focused, its just that there's more Yuri manga than anime. I also review Live-Action and novels, where they intersect Yuri.
And now to the real meat of this post:
- Randall Fitzgerald said...
It is meant to be a big sack of elitist horseshit, just like all things that attempt to seperate one group out into another.
As a prime example, show me a single instance of a female blogger not being respected on the same terms as a male blogger in the community? Of all the women I host, I can't think of a single one who is thought of as less important that any given male blogger. "Sticking together" is stupid because no one is trying to divide the female bloggers. They're not a fucking minority.
I seriously doubt anyone with any sense these days would want to start a group with elitism in mind, though I do think that we should be wary of that worst case scenario-like possibility of it turning out to be like that. Also I don't think this all-female collaboration was borne out of necessity for shelter, we've since advanced past the dark ages of women oppression thanks to efforts like Saiunkoku's Kou Shuurei (there I go mixing fiction and reality again...), certainly so in anime blogging where as Randall points out, there never was a dark age for women to begin with (minus that ABC April Fool's fiasco)
But really, girls got to do what girls got to do XD I don't believe 'sticking together to protect ourselves from the nasty boys' or "Guys Suck, let's band together to slice off those e-p3n0rS!!" were any of the original intentions of this endeavour. Girls may prefer to stick with 'their own kind' to discuss things relevant to themselves, as do guys, so guys start one of your own
Also there sure has been a hell lot of gal bloggers who've responded to the call, doubtless a good portion of them not exactly familiar names to most of us readers. Why there was probably a time back no too long ago that if you were asked to name 3 female bloggers your answer would probably be something along the lines of "Hinano, Hinano, and err... Hinano?" (no offence to everyone else, that was how my own narrow view of the blogosphere used to be) So in a way it's great that this round-robin calls some attention to the small time (gal) bloggers of our community.
usagijen said...issa-sa says: In real life especially, there are subjects that girls will only speak of to girls and guys to fellow guys (well, if they can help it). Only a major dickhead of a guy would walk into a room full of females and announced "I JUST HAD THE BEST WET DREAM!" and not even the worst bimbos would want to describe their 'once a month experiences' intimately with a pack of hungry wolves (XD) as crude examples. The round-robin may very well serve as a 'slumber party' type gathering of gal anime bloggers who may be tired of 'playing along' with 'guy stuff'blissmo said...
well this 'movement' is not meant to set this elitist distinction between guys and girls, it just so happens that there's no virtual community which unites female bloggers together at the moment (unlike the guys who have their #ab channel), so they can talk about a wide range of topics, especially certain topics which they'd rather discuss among fellow girls. I mean, won't it be better to discuss things like "women's bias against so and so", with fellow women? something like that...
Between you and me, I'm not so into the all girls thing since i dont mind about the gender issue thing. hey, most of my time guys talk to me about "guy stuff" and i just normally play along cos thats wat i do... ...and ive always thought that guys are better than girls most of the time, which is probably a bad thing cos everyone lives in equality?
-
- Nagato said...
Hmm well, I was inclined to label you as female. I guess that's unfair since I've taken pains to avoid being labelled myself. xP
@ Shin: Ha, you wish! >_>
blissmo said...
...but i also originally thought u were a girl!
- issa-sa says: What's stopping you from continuing?
issa-sa says:
Os said...
Wait. Crap! Issa is a male?! I thought it was one of those cute girls who has a raspy voice that sounds like a male... I jest. I knew.
- lanie-emon said...
All of this is making me dizzy, lol. Oh well, got nothing against the female blogger circle, really.
- Caitlin said...
It keeps eating my comment :(
But I'm sure someone will come up with the female version of circlejerk soon.
Os said...issa-sa says: Nothing is going to stop the rest of the blogosphere who aren't officially part of the round-robin from posting on the same topics when it eventually comes to it, in fact this will most certainly happen
You know, with all these posts, I dont know whether to take this seriously or not. I've been thinking the entire time: "No one's really stopping you for chiming in with the rest of the ladies anyways. I could post on the same subject if I wanted..."
Fight the power... brother?
And last but not least...
Marmot said...issa-sa says: If there's anyone who did sign up for the round-robin who isn't 'what you claim you are', then I suggest you pull out quickly lest Marmot finds out you've been tainting her orgy XD Shin will gladly accept you though ;)
HEY RANDALL GIMME SUMMA WHAT YOU'RE SMOKING BABE ♥
SERIOUSLY NO RANDALL LISTEN TO ME: I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVEN'T FIGURED IT OUT YET. GOD YOU FUCKING LOSER. WE FEMALES ARE BANDING TOGETHER BECAUSE WE ARE PLANNING ON HAVE A GIANT LESBIAN ORGY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE SO FAR REMOVED FROM REALITY THAT YOU DIDN'T EVEN SEE SOMETHING SO OBVIOUS!!!!
Finally, I do believe that it shouldn't really matter what the blogger's gender is (unless he/she writes in a way hat calls attention to it in a relevant fashion. And as Sasa says, we're all either internet guys or internet girls online, so that 'gender' should be the one that you pay attention to if you really must), so long as the material and writing style appeals to the reader, that's as fine a job as a blogger can do really ;)
Sunday, 18 May 2008
As if things weren't confusing enough... (A tribute to my fail)
So I was reading Marmot(the 'real' one)'s 'ragerant' (she's since made friends with Marmoset or whatever it is the guy had to change his nick to) on how someone had -unintentionally- used her nickname while she was MIA a while back, and it reminded me of once upon a time...
(warning: this post contains epic fail. Turn back while you still can)
...when I started using My Anime List to keep track of everything I've watched/think I've watched - I probably have a ton of misleading entries in there right now, like how I've 'completed' watching stuff like Ranma 1/2, but that can't actually be possible since I watched it on TV back when it was showing on AXN as religiously as I could, but out of that whopping 161 episodes MAL states I'm sure there's a large number I managed to miss due to conflicting schedules with real life (which is why one should either record shows they mean to watch on TV or just stick to the internet).
*ahem* Back to my point, this must have been some time before I started blogging proper again, and back then my MAL username was something totally different (and now that I think about it, totally insipid *gags*). Eventually of course, I had to make the change to 'issa-sa' to match my
Apparently, I was too late because someone else has already used it.
Damn. I would've go into tsuntsun-like rage rant about it (WTF, you mean there's someone else whose watched Animal Yokocho and is as enraptured as I am about it to want to impersonate a panda???), but it seems since I was the slow one in this case, so it would just make myself out to be a sore loser...
(Btw, I think I'll stop doing rage posts because
So instead I settled for plain old 'issa' *yawns*. Fickle-minded as I was, a month later (since MAL only allows you to change your nick once a month) I tried "issasa" instead, but that just sounded like a rubbish marriage between issa and sasa (Sorry Sasa! XP). I need my hyphen, damnit!
Finally today, I
...that I seem to have a ridiculously high 'compatibility' in terms of shows we watch with a person who until then I assumed to be a complete stranger... *smells a rat* My first suspicion was that this was probably a secret account my sibling back home set up without my knowing, since we pretty much watch the same shows together with little exceptions (and we're both in the few people I can count on one hand who've seen Animal Yokocho), and a quick glance through issa-sa(clone)'s list reveals that INDEED I've watched pretty much everything on the list - but the possibility of it being my sibling's seems decidedly low since there was stuff like Saiunkoku Monogatari and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha there which I know for sure
That the account is probably mine and I've totally forgotten about it, ORZ
Indeed signing out and signing in again as issa-sa (with a different password that I had to take a few guesses at) revealed that the owner of the account is none other than myself from who knows how long back then. *smacks head on wall repeatedly before making myself grow taller* Either this proves once and for all my own air-headedness *needs to lay off America's Next Top Model* or I've yet to be medically certified to be schizophrenic... (The latter would of course explain why I'm often at two minds about things and how I can contradict myself halfway through my own posts -_-")
Err, anyways, I've switched names again on my current MAL account to issa-sa while my old doppelganger is just clone_issa-sa (har-har). If anyone wants an extra MAL account (what the hell for, I can't imagine), feel free to contact me and I'll gladly purge my old list and hand this one over to ya. You know, if you ever wanted to impersonate someone over MAL for real -_-"
Saturday, 17 May 2008
Wait, so CAN I or can I NOT join the Rebellion?
A while back usagijen posted on Kure-nai about a scene that launched me into a mini rage-filled comment (similar to my recent one on Toshokan Sensou 6). Now, what was interesting to me was her eventual response to it:
The funny thing is, I don't ever recall discussing my gender over the blogosphere since one of the things I naively tend to think is that it really shouldn't matter what ones chromosomes are when it comes to discussing the animu and whatnot. You know, besides determining what type of stereotypes you're expected to conform to/break of course. So being a male blogger probably means you have "fap fap fap" plastered on a good number of your posts, while being female probably means fangirl rage is a typical recurrence on yours. (Hence why usagijen automatically assumed - correctly?- that I'm a girl) But seriously, do any of these 'distinctions' matter really?
Oh wait, silly me, apparently they do.
So there’s this all female blogger round-robin thing going on, with the purpose of strengthening sisterly bonds with all the female bloggers out there in this crassly male dominated otakusphere. Spearheaded by itsubun, sasa, and usagijen, it is in hopes that all bloggers of the fairer gender consider being a part of this endeavour
In fact, I'm quite eager to join myself, why usagijen has even stated in a comment that she hopes I’ll hop on the bandwagon:
And honestly, I'd be honoured to... but there’s one problem, jen:
Just for fun (warning: everything I've said thus far has been truthful, but I give no such guarantee for anything from this point onwards), here are some points to consider:
1) This is how my bookshelf (well, the part of it that’s actually holding books now) looks like currently. Since I’m a frugal
(And ohbtw, saving up for the entire Fruits Basket manga series next)
2) A teaser for posts to come:
-The Magic of
-So I finally finished watching… Kyou Kara Maou (Seasons 1 & 2)
-So I finally got round to watching: Aka-chan to Boku
-An Overdue Overview on OoFuri
-There's something about Watarase Jun...
-Mizuki Nana and Why Allison & Lillia is Awesome
-Allison & Lillia and Why Mizuki Nana is Awesome
-Why Everyone Should Watch Animal Yokocho
Well, at least I think he is. It’s hard to tell with animals that don’t wear pants.
4) I watched true tears and Clannad because they had cute girls
(I watched Air because it had dinosaurs.)
5) Read the first (and then the second) point of this post on Furu Anime Panikku. Now consider the (sad) truth that this blog has never gained more than 200 views in a day before T_T
6) If you subscribe to the yuri is for guys and yaoi for girls stereotype, then note that both Nagato and I blog Junjou Romantica (Taiyaki too, while I'm at it. I've stopped doing it on a regular basis though, and Are-Are gets more hits than I'll ever hope to achieve). Is that an 'ahah' enough for you? But let's add this blog and this blog into the equation (though they're manga focused). See, the bigger picture?
(Also, let's not forget a TRUE MAN who dares to do hardcore MAN ON MAN posts XD)
7) Finally (and probably the
Confused? So am I.
(Perhaps like Nagato, I’m really just reluctant to participate in something that might ruin the 'mystery' of my true gender in real life… Why, half my regular readers (all two of you) will probably never come here ever again once they find out that I’m actually...)
In conclusion, let’s just say that there’s a part of me that’s very ready to join the round-robin thingy, but part of me that’s very afraid of Hinano’s (and now their fearsome gatekeeper blissmo XD) threat against those attempting to infiltrate the sisterhood XD Now as far as I can gather, the gender-confused do not seem welcome in the group currently (bummer), but whatever you girls decide to write on in the future, don’t be surprised if this little panda starts
Den Den Town Revisited
So last weekend was my second visit to Osaka's otaku heaven, Den Den Town. *ignores the scoffing from those who've been to Akihabara* Purpose? Bored out of my wits on campus To seek out that Giant Gundam shop I can't believe I missed during my first visit (several weeks before). Not that I'm an actual Giant Robot fan or anything, I just had this nagging question in my mind which needed answering: HOW did I miss something so huge the first time around when the place is hardly a few streets long?
By walking on the wrong side of the street that's how ORZ. After asking someone and eventually finding the place, I realized that I had indeed passed by the shop previously... Only you can only see the ginormous billboard from the opposite side of the road *smacks forehead* My (non-otaku) friend who was accompanying me through the rain (the day I chose to go happened to be one of the lousiest in terms of weather) was slightly 'disappointed' because I 'somehow' gave him the impression that we were going to see a real-sized-god-knows-how-tall actual Gundam model towering over the surrounding buildings... (Okay, I admit I sort of had that some illusion in my mind ORZ)
Anyways, some fuzzy handphone pics to make this post seem like it actually has content!
Obligatory maid pic (Yes, it's a terrible picture that seems to have a random stranger as the focus instead and you can hardly see the hardworking meidos, boo-hoo)
This place neither has melonpan nor that many books (Okay it has a whole 2 floors, since the upper floors were under renovation or something). Yet another one of the many places in this country you can browse for 'wholesome' 'literary and artistic works' while being surrounded by people staring intently at 2D boobies and the latest episodes of whatever's showing this season blaring down at you.
Too blur to actually make out the Minori (not to be confused with Minorin) autographs there. Remind me to actually bring out a camera next time... -_-"
And finally... My sad excuse of the day's 'stash' (and probably the actual reason I made this post :P) - 図書館危機 (Toshokan Kiki: Library CRISIS, like how awesome is that??), the third book in the Toshokan Sensou novel series snagged at a second-hand bookstore for half price (Yes, I'm a pitiful scrooge). It's in pretty good condition really - minus some discolouration on the jacket which I'm willing to overlook. But you know what would make this purchase even more awesome? If I could actually read it without having to look up half the words in each line -_-"
That, and if I actually had the first 2 books in my possession... (total and utter ORZ). Watch out usagijen, I'll catch up to you... Some day!
Toshokan Sensou 6: No Laughing Matter
Doujou Atsushi is officially my favourite guy character this season. Sorry, Kogarashi :P
If I really had to summarize this episode, it would be along the lines of:
Iku and Komaki have to bring a [very important sci-fi?] book back to the library. They get attacked by the Media Communists along the way, and have to play hide and seek with them villains for a while. Iku and Komaki talk a lot and say a lot of things I can hardly understand. Komaki is shot in the leg. Iku starts shouting angrily at the guy who fired the shot only I haven’t a clue as to what she actually said (well, she was really really angry). They run and hide again. While Iku bandages Komaki’s wound, he laughs his signature laugh. Iku asks “How can you laugh in such a situation?” to which he responds with a flashback of how 'old Doujou’ once acted as Iku did. Back then a kid snuck into the library grounds, and some heartless and idiotic
Guns are for chumps!
So yes, I will have to watch the subs when they come out. Not that I mind at all :P (I do apologize to anyone who expected an actual usable summary, my raw watching skills are painfully inadequate for Toshokan Sensou, which is why I’ve been avoiding doing any sort of summary for all the previous episodes.) As usual, Impz is picking up the slack on the summary end so I'll point you over to THAT direction.
However, I do want to ask: What the hell is wrong with society in this season’s shows? How could you bully an obaa-san on a train? How can you even CONSIDER pointing a gun at a child?
Besides the indignancy I felt towards the Media !@&^#ers, I fully enjoyed watching old Doujou’s acting on impulse and doing what he knows is right on instinct even if it’s not the most ‘mature’ way of settling things. Of course Genda stole a lot of the show when he joined in the fray (XD), but I’m definitely partial towards
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Happosai, is that you?
Posted beside the elevator of my dorm. If it's not legible from my fuzzy handphone pic, the notice reads:
Robbery of underwear occurred on 14th May on the 5th floor at Dorm 1.
Please watch out with your laundry and take out them after finishing wash soon.
Thank you for you cooperation.
The 5th floor's fully female, of course. I don't know whether to laugh or facepalm when I read that (and that has nothing to do with the Engrish, it's the first thing I made myself get used to here), since rumours were circulating about the day before about a 下着泥簿 (shitagi dorobou : underwear thief) - which has incidentally become the dorm's most favourite phrase now, lol. Apparently our dorm supervisor even had to make an announcement abut it via intercom to the entire dorm (but I was out at the time so I didn't get to hear it).
Also apparently, the same thing has already happened before recently - on the fully male 4th floor (XD) I guess the guys just didn't want to make as much of a fuss about it, lol ;P
.
I can't believe I read through the whole thing hoping you'd reveal your gender.
THIS WHOLE POST IS A FUCKING COCKTEASE /rage
ps I know Nagato's real gender (: