milkypink [dot] net

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Closeup on the pattern of The Most Awesome Miniskirt Ever which I purchased from WetSeal~ (it doesn’t exist on WS’s site, so I can’t link you to it )

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A spiral wire bead bracelet I bought from a seller on lj years ago.

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this necklace from WetSeal

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Hello Kitty-head plush backpack which I will likely end up using as a travel pillow so soft and squishy! also I got it for only $3

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Strawberry print from the inside of my Putumayo bunny bag

uwah I definitely fell far behind on these…

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Babbit from Kodocha – image in an OST booklet

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went to see Date Night – was sappier than I was hoping, but still funny.

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fortune I’d kept for a long time – I’m waiting for the brilliance to show up…

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bracelet that was my grandmother’s. I’m oddly attached to it.

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something I made with the embroidery floss and “craft lace” … not exactly sure what I’ll do with this long strand of it.

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tiny preview of the customizations I’ve made to my waist bag.

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from the cover of the Bones Season 4 DVD set – I finally marathoned my way through that and the current season.

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Clasp on a flat wallet I bought – has heart quilting~

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adorable Hello Kitty notebook with a sakura theme

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My Hina-Ichigo charm~

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pink DS lite + pink DS lite game case keychain (sadly not functional )

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trying to finish up making mnemosyne flashcards of KiC lessons… (yes, still )

new smilies courtesy of Mitsu @ Universal Doll (the text-based ones) and Jays @ Babydoll.nu (Marie & other animated)

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a lightened version of a photo taken on my Tilt2 of my Victorian Maiden dress.

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my strawberry emery board <3

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a strawberry zipper pouch I use for storing my AA/AAA battery charger

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ribbon ring from Paris Kids – some of the black paint was chipping off so I covered those areas with black nail polish… XD worked pretty well XD;

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my Tokyo Tower keychain~ I need to replace the TT charm on my camera, the tower charm fell off D: now it’s just a moon… XD;;

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my collapsible chopsticks case

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light fixture in a building (the ceiling was very shiny XD)

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My collection of PS2 Kingdom Hearts games, notes are on the flickr page

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my dinner~ chilled chicken & cucumber salad on brown rice :9

In reading this post about representation and Lucky Star, I ended up thinking about how I feel about creative works versus the people behind the creative works.

With music, I largely separate the two because I find that combining them often dampens my enjoyment of the piece – it’s not a certain rule, but it happens enough that I actively avoid finding out too much about the people behind the bands I like. The problem lies mainly the fact that song x makes me feel y and if creator z turns out to be a total jerk then I will forever associate song x with z being a jerk.

However sometimes when the person is going out of their way to be a top level jackass (I’m looking at you, Amanda Palmer) you can’t continue to support them just because you like their music because that music pays their bills and if you support it, then you are perpetuating them being a jackass and they will not learn any lessons.

But sometimes this just happens because I discover the people are someone I can’t personally respect. They aren’t really doing anything horrible, I just wouldn’t be able to handle being friends with them. Or, y’know, hang out in the same room with them, most likely. Music is music, and while there’s something to be said about music conveying a particular message written in by the creator, I’m more on the side of music making you feel what it makes you feel and the way you interpret it is correct for you and there is no “wrong” way to enjoy it. Mostly.
But music is a more personal subject for me than, say, anime series.

I don’t typically look up who writes what. I tend to not know if x was written by a boy or a girl unless I’ve been told for some reason, although I’m aware that a lot of the stuff I’ve come to love falls into the 青年 (seinen) category – series targeted at males 18-30 or so, and as you might imagine, a lot of those authors are males.

Do I particularly care? Not really. If I like the series and can relate to the characters, why should it matter who wrote it?
But I can see the unease in having an all-female cast scripted by someone who isn’t female – I’d actually feel a similar unease being pointedly introduced to a series full of males written by a non-male. Equal opportunity weirdness.

It’s not as though people who are one sex/gender cannot understand people who are the opposite sex/gender well enough to write them – certainly the guys who wrote Lucky★Star and K-ON! were good enough to hook me – but, as a writer, I do think it’s more difficult. Both of those series are pretty fluffy, which means that stereotypes are A-OK and they’re what the story plays off of… the little story that there is, anyway. When a plot begins to delve really deeply into the interpersonal relationships and conflicts of one sex/gender, a lot more experience and knowledge is required – and that’s something I think many people don’t have. I’d even be hard pressed to say I have comprehensive experience in all-female relationships, even though I’m possibly adequately qualified to write about such things, being a girl, identifying as a girl and having friends who are girls.

But subject matter takes over here. Thinking about other all-female casts brings me to series like Azumanga Daioh and Kanamemo. Both cute, both seinen, but while Azumanga is written by a non-female, Kanamemo is actually written by Iwami Shouko, who is female. (Japanese wiki page confirms)
I did like both series… to a point.

Azumanga is a series about nothing, same as Lucky Star, but with one important, creepy addition: this guy. Kimura-sensei. A rather sketchy teacher who admits to wanting to be specifically employed at a high school because he likes high school girls. He develops a creepy attachment to Kaorin who is understandably horrified, and although he doesn’t commit any serious atrocities in the context of the story, his creepy factor is way up there. He actually requests a a glass of pool water that the swimming club has been in at their cultural festival booth. Yeah. That kind of creepy.

The problem with Kimura is, well, he’s supposed to be funny. Like, “ha ha oh you pervert. Welp, nothin’ we can do about him.” No one outright condones his behavior, or praises him for it, in fact, everyone that encounters it sports at least moderately horrified expressions, but it’s allowed to continue. No one reports him to a superior, and he’s not likely to get fired for questionable morals and motives. (He also inexplicably has a pretty, air-headed wife.) He never crosses into the category of even vaguely attractive, and you know he’s creepy from his first appearance, but I’m really uncomfortable with his existence in an otherwise pretty relaxed and fluffy world.

Kanamemo has a similar problem – Haruka, a university student who lives and works at the newspaper delivery office, has a suspicious fondness for pre-pubescent girls. She follows the general drunken salaryman stereotype in this manner, harassing Saki, the elementary school aged assistant chief of the company. In the swimsuit/musical episode, it becomes painfully clear that her interest in them goes beyond “oh little girls are cute” as she sings about how, not having much to hold them in place, young girls’ swimsuits are apt to slip and expose something.

Haruka is “reprimanded” in the typical fashion of disapproving looks and maybe a smack or two, but she’s allowed to continue to live there and her behavior to continue. Again, Haruka’s actions are meant to be comical – Kanamemo is a light-hearted series – but such a lenient environment for pedophilia made my stomach turn so much that I couldn’t continue watching it (even though Kana and Mika were so cute, too). The fact that Haruka is female doesn’t make it any less disturbing, nor does the fact that Kanamemo was written by a female. Creepy is creepy regardless of sex or gender.

Now, neither Azumanga nor Kanamemo are at all blatantly sexual (okay, minus the obvious yuri relationship in Kanamemo, but that’s at least consensual and of age) – but they’re clearly aimed at adults who will recognize the thought processes that Kimura and Haruka are likely having off screen.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is this: I’m far less bothered by who wrote a series than what the series contains. Anime series in general seem to contain a lot of fan service of one kind or another, and manga/4koma tend not to get picked up without a healthy dose of it (hell, even Umineko’s full of scantily clad characters and someone in charge of the anime STILL felt it was necessary to amp up the service). I’m okay with fan service to a point – the obligatory comparison of breast sizes and the working in of a swimsuit episode, even if it doesn’t make sense canonically, for example – but the inclusion of creepy characters in a setting where they will never encounter consequences is a dangerous path to walk, in my mind.

As a side note, I’m divided on the no-underage-chara bill that’s being delayed in Japan. I’m not positive that it would prevent those creepy characters from existing, just from the girls themselves from being blatantly sexualized. So does that really solve anything? Additionally, in the proper setting, such themes can make a powerful statement, but defining exactly which settings are truly appropriate gets a bit fuzzy. I don’t want to get too much further into that topic right here, though.

I enjoy last-generation (or last^2-generation) games, as anyone who started on them might, but I don’t feel a burning nostalgia for the Days of Yore in which single games came on multiple discs, or even cartridges that would get dust in them or would generally be fickle so you’d jam it in and wiggle it around a bit before getting it to work.

I like the games, yeah, but the media can go recycle itself.

I understand that vinyl records have a very specific sound quality to them, but I’m not convinced they’re higher quality than digital recordings, or even better quality (I’m differentiating a quantitative “higher” in which bit rates, etc are better and “better” which is less numbers and more of a “the overall feel is nicer” fuzzy kinda logic). I did listen to some records as a kid, most notably some Alfred Hitchcock stories I to this day still do not understand (XD) and some Copland pieces. My father’s digitized most or all of his collection by now, I think.

VHS, SNES, N64, even cassette tapes which I grew up on – I don’t feel any kind of awe for them, or strong emotional attachment. They’re just stuff. Moving the data from one form to another doesn’t make a difference to me – if the bits are intact then the source is the same as far as I’m concerned. Easier to back up, too.

I’m not saying I dislike all physical media, because I can’t quite seem to move away from tangible books, but media that’s already halfway there to digital may as well be all the way there. (If I had grown up on books that were sold on little cartridges you stuck in a handheld reader I’d probably be perfectly fine with moving away from that, to be honest.) I’m a little wary of digital media that won’t let you back it up due to DRM or other madness, but in general if I can make two or three copies in the event that something happens to the originals, I’m 100% fine with digital-only media.

Physical media just seems to have so many limitations – I’m sure even after I get my Lucky Star box set I’ll probably still watch my sub files because I can chuck them all in a playlist and run them straight through without having to change discs. I might also rip the DVDs and do the same. … Come to think of it, I really ought to do that for other series, too. Anyway, the point is I like to have free reign over my stuff and just let it run… as you might’ve observed by my occasional tendency to stick my entire 10k iTunes library on shuffle and let it fly. XD

So why don’t I own a PSP GO (I’ve no idea how to format that idiotic name) or the DSi?
Well for one, the DSi currently only comes in this awful hot pink (okay it’s not a bad hot pink but I really want light pink, sakura-pink, milky pink) and the LL (sorry, “XL”) exists in black and brown of all colors. (As a side note, why is it always brown? Why not white or blue or ANY other damn color? Are there really that many people who want brown electronics? It looks like it’s perpetually dirty!) Yes, maybe it’s petty but I want cute electronics and I will not bend! Years of nothing but black, grey and that hideous cream that every single computer tower seemed to be made out of in the 90s…. I want COLOR! Okay, truthfully I want pink but you get my point.

Will I chuck out my DS carts when Nintendo handhelds go digital-only? Eh, probably not, mostly because they’re tiny and there’s little point in paying twice for a game I already own. I’ve only got a few PSP games as it is, so assuming Sony doesn’t go nuts with DRM/copy protection I have no issues downloading games rather than buying UMDs.

Do I still buy CDs? Yes, but actually I tend to mainly buy CDs I’m forced to import, which now that I think about it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since I could just buy iTunes cards or something and get music that way… but I think I shyed away from using iTunes too much back when it was full of DRM. I get most of my downloaded English music from amazon.com – I’ll only use iTunes if it’s the only place I can find it. I understand that currently CDs are actually much better quality, but I feel like in the future that might not be the case, if we move away from physical media more completely.

The only media I haven’t moved to digital with is books, something I’ve discussed in part before. The Kindle is not my ideal reader, nor is the nook, although it was an exciting step in the right direction. The format is keeping things too separate – there’s no one universal “book” format that you can easily convert to, unlike mp3s. You can’t download a book from amazon and use it on your nook, or from b&n and use it with your Kindle. It’ll probably take some time before that media war settles down and the consumer gets to win again. So I’m not ready to switch over just yet. It’s tempting, really tempting, but I can’t justify it at the moment.

Plus, you know, I like the feel of books. (But that’s not a very concrete-type argument XD;)

(written mostly at the end of January)
Reading Danny Choo’s blog, in particular an entry about Otaku in 5 years’ time, I started thinking about the idea of “otaku”, and whether or not I would be considered part of that group. Specifically, when did I become one, if ever, and is that still true?

I answered the poll in that entry that I had been an otaku for 5+ years.
Certainly, my fascination with Japanese pop culture has existed for around 10 years now, ever since I discovered Sailor Moon was originally not in English. I spent ages hunting down original episode clips, music, animations – reading up on the changes that had been made when the series was localized. I wanted to watch an uncut version of the episodes, but unfortunately those didn’t exist in DVD form yet. The closest thing I could get were the movies, and so I bought Sailor Moon S the movie. That was probably the first time I’d really listened to the Japanese VAs – everyone’s voices seemed so high! XD

Around the same time, I discovered Card Captor Sakura, which had been localized and bastardized to the point that it was basically unrecognizable. They took what was initially an adorable fluffy series about a magical girl and tried to warp it into some kids’ action show. They kept some names (Sakura), but changed others (Tomoyo became Madison) and completely ignored some episodes (the dub started about 7 episodes in, I believe). But I still followed it, and searched for uncut versions, and merchandise. Ebay became my best friend – I bought both localized merch (the Clow Card book) and original Japanese merch (Sakura Card book). I wanted the original dolls, but never managed to obtain them so all I have are the localized dolls. I’m still miffed that Tomoyo was left out of that group. I occasionally check yahoo!Japan auctions for the dolls, but I eventually decide it’s not worth it.

I do, however, own all of the inner and outer Sailor Senshi – the 10th anniversary versions that came with both school uniforms and senshi outfits. I did also acquire some of the dolls made in Canada, a 12″ Tuxedo Mask and a 12″ Wicked Lady. Sadly I have no 12″ Sailor Moon so the destined pair are horribly mismatched. (That’s all right, those two screwed up a lot of lives by getting involved anyway….) I also bought a Lain doll, and even made an outfit for her!

On top of this, I scoured the internet for additional merch – CDs, wallscrolls, posters. My room was plastered with them. My speakers played out more and more bubbly anime songs, and I even learned the lyrics to some of the openings and endings – within a reasonable margin, anyway. I knew the sounds, but not what I was actually singing. (Sure, I’d read the translations, but as I’ve come to discover, not all translations are worth trusting implicitly.)

So, did buying a few anime DVDs, dolls, CDs, wallscrolls and posters make me an otaku?
I’d never been to a con, and I still haven’t, actually.
I’ve never waited in line for a limited good, although I’ve since held point cards for stores like Animate and Gamers. (I even redeemed some points for a small xxxHOLiC clear file!)

I don’t own a Dollfie Dream, or any Volks doll, but I do own a 60cm BJD from an asian company.
Are doll collectors a separate kind of otaku? I collect Pullips, Blythes and Momokos, many of which have crossed with anime and j-fashion subcultures. I own four of the Rozen Maiden Pullip/Dal collabs, one of the h.Naoto Pullips, and a Kana Momoko.
What about vinyl figures? Pinky:st come to mind immediately, the first I ever encountered being a Rei and Asuka Evangelion set. Most of the ones I own now are not collabs, but I do have four Suzumiya Haruhi Pinky:st girls.

I no longer spend hours online searching for related merchandise of my favorite series, but if I’m in Japan, I’m always certain to be found at least one day in Akihabara, browsing Gamers, Animate or other stores for goods. When I lived there, I went nearly weekly. Another weekly occurrence was karaoke – filled with mainly anime songs, with some j-pop, j-rock and a handful english songs thrown in.

I still watch anime, although I’ve never been one to sample all of a season’s offerings – I skim the descriptions of what’s out and pick and choose. Or, more likely, I find out about them through friends or… you know I’m not sure, really. But I end up watching them, one way or another, as my growing list will attest (it still needs to be updated, actually). I enjoy keeping up with series as they are released, for the most part (watching xxxHOLiC on TV in Japan was an unbelievably surreal experience for me, even though it really oughtn’t be anything important.) although it’s frustrating occasionally if each episode doesn’t cover much material.
I read manga, true, but frequently even less than I watch anime. Generally speaking manga is a more detailed medium, but I often support the anime of a series just because of the music.

My laptop wallpapers are nearly always anime/game characters, and even the theme on my smartphone has a K-ON! background!

But despite wondering if I actually fall into the broadening category of “otaku”, I cringe at the thought of being lumped in with the grouping of “weeaboos” – a term I have no idea where it came from yet ran into again and again.

I have no desire to become Japanese, I don’t wish I was born one, and I don’t obsessively search for and hoard anything I can find that comes from Japan. Neither do I believe that Japan is some magical sparkley world where everything is happy and perfect. Japan is a country that has its problems, like any country, and depending on who you are they are more or less relevant than issues going on in your own country. I hate entering into debates about Japan’s military and social history – I don’t automatically agree with everything they’ve done (in many cases I disagree greatly), studying the language does not make me logically fond of everything about that country or its culture. I live in the US, but I certainly don’t agree with everything that’s been done here over the years, nor do I expect anyone to believe that I do.
Yes, I’m more interested in pop culture than traditional culture, but I’m not sure that’s any less valid as a viewpoint. I’ve spent approximately ten years by now studying the language to various degrees – yes, it does creep into my written vocabulary, but I consciously stream it out for coherent english-only posts (like this one). I enjoy mixed-language writing and songs, but that’s separate from Japanese itself. To me, Japanese was the first language that made sense to me while I was studying it. After spending four years flailing about trying to grasp French, this was amazing!

Does having a serious interest in the language exempt me from ‘weeaboo’ status?
I wonder, if in some people’s eyes, anyone who has a serious, over-arching interest in Japan falls into that category. In that case, there’s nothing I can do to change their opinion. And in reality, it shouldn’t matter what box they choose to stuff me in, as I don’t actually fit into any quite right anyway. But stereotypes exist to help people function, whether or not they are used in a discriminatory manner.

In the end, I like what I like because I like it. I don’t actually need to explain myself, or place myself into a box labelled anything in particular.

But sometimes, I think about it.

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I wouldn’t just buy a tape measure because it came in pink, what do you take me for?
Oh, right. well to be fair, it is pink.

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Shiny sparkly star charms bought with a deco items order. I plan to turn at least one pair of them into earrings.

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I <3 pumpkin seeds. They're also really high in magnesium, the deficiency of which is supposedly linked to things like headaches. I am attempting to eat some every day as an experiment. It isn't as though I get headaches every week, but fairly close to it.

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Small MAC order, two items shown here are Nymphette Lipglass and Myth Lipstick (although it’s not as though you can see the color… XD)

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On Friday it actually got up to a decent temperature for most of the day! Don’t believe the recorded high of 77F, the thermometer actually sits inside my window and not outside so when it’s closed and the sun hits it, it’s much warmer than the ambient temp outside.

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Went to JoAnn’s today and bought some stuff to make shiny things. These are just some of it – pink floss and sparkly ‘craft lace’