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I've talked to friends and read many posts about what is most important in their life. What matters to them the most; what truly resonates with their soul. A major one I see a lot from friends, internet, and society in  general since it's been a large issue for years and years is sexuality. The debate and fight to get gay marriage passed and the neverending plight to stop discrimination and hate that comes back the other way. There are other major social issues that I see over and over again as well since no matter how good it may seem on the surface compared to so many years ago, something like racial tension will always be around, lurking underneath an innocent exterior or blown right up and smashed into your face if someone massively influential happens to promote it. (We all know who I'm referring to here) Regardless, there are lot of these kinds of thing that people are very passionate about, and very passionate about making them right, making them better.

I have the fortune of not having much attachment to those kind of issues due to not running into much conflict. I guess the word a lot of people use is privilege. For instance, though I am Asian, specifically Chinese, not only do I not run into much racism at least as much as some of my other Asian peers is because I take up the majority of the Asian populace (that or Indian, I'm not entirely sure who has more population at the moment) and I happened to grow up in an incredibly multicultural neighbourhood. My area was so diverse, that there were more Asian people in my high school than white people. White people were the minority. I never really got flak for my race as I grew up. so I never was as passionate as many other less fortunate folk in terms of fighting it, and thus cannot understand to quite their degree their plights. 

I also have the fortune of living in a very liberal city, but not only that, growing up in a family where my brother came out as gay. Although the fallout of that with my family itself was not pleasant, I learned early on that there was no reason whatsoever to be bigoted to people who prefer one sex to another. I learned very early on thanks to my environment that people can like whoever they please and that's seriously not even the in the top ten of issues we should even be concerned about, but we have to because bigots will always exist and always discriminate. In a perfect world you would think most if not all people would be focused on issues affecting the entirety of the human race, such as global warming and its impact on humanity and their quality of life, or helping out those escaping from war-torn authoritarian countries. No, there's still this major debate that people need to care about who people love, and there's still this major debate about racism and sexism and all these other hot-topics that if we were all decent people would in a utopian society would not even be in a blip in our radar, yet here we are.

And it is an important fight that will likely be endless, but that isn't a reason to never fight, for if we never do, we will never improve. Many wonderful. outstanding individuals over many years have progressed us to where we are today, where slavery in its most traditional sense anyway, is no more in many countries, and everyone above a certain age can vote. Still, as important as these issues are, what really resonates with my soul and frankly in the large scheme of things isn't nearly as important as these issues is friendship.

Yet due to how I grew up, it has affected me very deeply. It's impacted who I am, what I like, who I befriend. It shapes my personality, my attitude, and my perspective. I don't think I've yet to run into anyone who is as moulded by this desire for friendship as much as I have, but again I don't know other people inside and out, so I can't be entirely one-hundred-percent sure. When I was very young. I was this small Asian girl about to start school. I remember how small I was because not only were there photos, but because for the entirety of elementary school and even middle school, I was the smallest person in class, bar none. It's possible I forgot a year where I wasn't and happened to be slightly taller than some other student who didn't stick around the school for long, but for most of it all I was the smallest. It's not hard to forget either. I remember one of my gym teachers referring to me and my other smol brethren as munchkins, and my best friend I made in primary school to this day had always nicknamed me shrimp. I am small, and people will not let me forget.

Before I continue let me repeat that I do have the memory of a goldfish, and for whatever sadistic reason it is in human nature for us to be more likely to remember the unpleasant memories over the good ones. Or it's possible I had a miserable childhood, but whatever the case, when I was in kindergarten I only remember making this one friend. We weren't that close since I don't even remember his name, and I don't consider him the first friend I made, since a kid and their family moved into the basement suite we rented out and she became my very very first friend. Still, due to that girl being two years my junior the first friend I made in school was this boy. My single memory of our friendship me as a young child crying uncontrollably hidden under the biggest, very much unsafe slide we had at the playground, and this boy who I assume was probably responsible felt bad and was trying to apologize or cheer me up in some way. I don't recall how. I only recall that it didn't work. He had to stay behind a year for whatever reason my smol child mind could not comprehend, and I moved onto the first grade.

The only thing I remember in all of first grade is that our school was so small some classes did not even have their own classroom. In first grade my classroom was in the gymnasium. That's it. That's all I remember. (In fourth grade my class was in a library until the portable classrooms were finished construction and then we moved there. There was another grade, probably second that was also in the portable classrooms, but I think we also had a legitimate classroom at one point too, so my memory is faint. Only reason I remember this is because I distinctly remember being super excited to have a Gameboy Colour of my very own with a copy of Pokemon Blue. I guess I made out my new fun toy to be too fun because someone stole it from my backpack not very long after. I never saw it again. D<)

Second grade though was when my friend who lived downstairs started school, and unlike me who made that one kid friend and her as a friend she found a clique right away. Unfortunately being different grades causes problems because she'd bond with these other kindergarteners, and I was two years older and then though I was her friend, she'd rather be with these other similarly aged peers. I remember this one time one of her friends had a birthday party, and I was upset because I wasn't invited. Of course I wasn't invited because I wasn't really close to her friend, but I thought since I was her friend and this clique was like, three people outside of me that we could get to all be friends or whatever and it wouldn't be bad if I joined them too. Or in other words I begged my friend's friend to invite me too, and it it worked, but I really wish I didn't do that, or at least it didn't work because that whole party ended up being very awkward. Still, that friend of mine who had this clique was still my friend probably due to our proximity of living spaces, so the year went by.

Third grade luckily I made a friend but the evils that were DIFFERENT GRADES continued because this friend was in the fourth grade. For whatever inane reason the school had this one BIG KID area reversed for ONLY the fourth grade kids. Keep in mind I was in a very small school, and it was called an Annex so it only went up to the fourth grade until you were shuffled over to a full-fledged big Elementary school that went from kindergarten to seventh grade. Some areas in the country, and well the world have a thing called middle school, which we didn't really have in my area, but that second elementary school was pretty much my middle school so when we get to that part I'm just gonna call it middle school anyway. Now obviously my fourth grade friend would of course want to be in this big kid area. All the other big kids were there. It was the cool thing to do, and hanging out with a friend a year younger than you may lead to kids making fun of you or looking down on you for not being in the cool reserved big kids area. I may never know my friend's reasoning, but she was my best friend this year. I never called the kid that had a clique my best friend, but I always referred to her as my first friend and someone I was close to. Third grade was the worst year of this school for me. My lack of any friends in my own grade was quite a disadvantage and this was the first year I experienced everyone's favourite past time in school, BULLYING! I also had the meanest teacher of all time in this year, and remember several times crying during the year of suffering.

Pull a seat and grab a cup of tea because I may be stuck in third grade for a while. During this tremulous year, I was one of two kids that caught head lice. Unlike the other kid who only had a little and thus, was probably caught from me, I had head lice all over my head. I had to have treatment and my hair cut quite short. This one girl bulled me relentlessly for this short hair. And I 100% know I am cis because despite being a super tomboy I seem to be very passionate about letting people know I was not a boy. I do not look like a boy. Fuck you for calling me a boy. Go the fuck to hell. This was not the first time this happened. For you see, I actually had a few friends outside of school that lived on my street. I had this older female friend likely already in middle school, and this boy a year younger than me who introduced me to THE NINTENDO 64 HOLY FUCK. We spent a lot of time bike-riding and playing video games. I am blessed to have spent time outdoors for my early childhood because let me tell ya the moment I got a computer and access to the internet the outside was a long gone memory. Anyway when that older female friend found out I had this friend who was a boy, all hell broke loose. She had this insane concept that boys and girls could not be friends. PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND. THIS IS AN ONGOING THEME. And told me if I did not de-friend this boy this instant, she would de-friend me. To make matters worse, she said the fact that I HAD a friend that was male meant I was TURNING INTO A BOY. I ran off crying. My dumb smol child brain believed that I was turning into a boy because of this, but also being one that is a dumb smol child, instead of defending my male friend or staying with that female friend I stopped hanging out with the both of them entirely. I lost two friends because of this stupid concept. That male friend of mine was probably super upset too, that poor child. However the best part of this terrible little incident is my very first friend came and comforted me while I was crying. 

And this whole choose one or the other kind of thing did not stop there. My best friend in school in the fourth grade and I also made this other friend as well. Now this may be relevant, but my best friend was white, and this new friend was native. So even though it seemed like we hung out with one another (we ate lunch together, I think?) my best friend would constantly bully my native friend. This was odd because I was not that close to the native friend. I'm quite sure it was my best friend that befriended her anyway. Or "befriended" I should say, but being the dumb smol child that I was, I did not defend my native friend. That's just as bad as doing the bullying yourself, but I guess at this point I wasn't willing to be assertive or helpful whatsoever because it's quite clear I have this desperation for friendship, and I'd do anything not to rock the boat and lose anymore friends. If given the choice to defend the poor kid being picked on or staying friends with the alpha female, my choice was to do nothing. Because I didn't want to invite more conflict. I feel pretty bad about those kids I did not defend though. I was not a strong person.

Finally, this friend I wanted to stay my best friend moved pretty much after the third grade. I was only friends with her for one year, and I did not help this other friend of ours, and it was all just sort of pointless now that I thought about it, how much I wanted to stay friends with her due to my inaction and thus enabling of her behaviour but perhaps if I did defend that third friend we would be friends instead. Even so that was not the worst part of this year. The teacher making me cry in front of my dad who berated me as I cried was not the worst part of this year. The losing of two friends due to an ultimatum was not the worst part of this year. Being horribly bullied by this girl with head lice was not the worst part of this year. I had a fallout with my very first friend. I felt like she was bossing me around and I was just letting her, and being submissive so I don't lose her as a friend and so did whatever she wanted, whatever she said. I don't recall what exactly caused us to fight, but I stood up for myself for the very first time and it blew up, and this first friend of mine stopped being my friend. We had this feud, this grudge. Every time I walked by she would turn her head and huff, and to have lost all my friends in the span of one year, including my first was a crippling blow. It only further fueled my desperation for friendship, but not only friendship. True friendship. It's not as if this first friend was terrible or toxic because I do remember the fond memory of her supporting me when I was crying, but well, the moment I tried to be independent, or how I felt like I was being bossed around was the moment I lost her.

Anyway I fucking hated third grade, but yay for fourth grade! I may have entered it friendless, but there was this new kid in class. And we became friends pretty much the moment I met her, and she was the one who always called me shrimp and stuff. Unlike all these other friends who were all different grades, weren't even in my school and of different ages, and not someone I clung to or put on a pedestal or whatever, this friend was my peer of my same grade, and she would pick on me a lot. But friendly picking. Like, the first friend where we can make jabs at each other and not step around egg shells. She has been my friend since fourth grade and is still my friend. Of course at this point I was sort of broken, like friendship is SUCH A HUGE ISSUE FOR ME NOW that it eclipsed everything else. Most people would say the point of school is not only for academics but also to become socially intelligent as the years go by. How to treat other people, how to make friends, all that stuff that is healthy for the human psyche. Yet I put all my buns in that second basket, and so my grades were always average except that one weird year I was top of the class for math somehow. I felt like the KING OF THE WORLD and was DESTINED TO BECOME A DOCTOR, but I digress. For anyone reading who knows of my planned trip to California next year, this friend, also known as Tofumold or some other food-related name will be coming with me. However she has never been an affectionate person and doesn't have this friendship complex like I do, so I started having these expectations like "I wish I had friends that would hug me! Because on TV friends hug!" and other such things. She doesn't do that. So while she is my very best friend since childhood, my years of struggle with friendship before this year gave me these humongous expectations to find these ideal friends cartoons like to feed me. Who are these perfect friends that are always on television!?

Also at the same time all this regular grade school stuff was happening, I was enrolled in a Chinese school that took place every Saturday since I was four before I even started regular school. I never made a single friend in this school. I was extremely bitter about this, and though I mentioned being bullied in third grade, the first time I was actually bullied was when I was four by other fellow four-to-five year olds. Like what the fuck? Kids still have souls at this age do they not!? Anyway my lack of friends gave me an incredible lack of motivation to do anything at this school let alone learn, and I was a pretty terrible student. Around tenth grade I outright refused to go back to the school, I was so fed up. In hindsight the idea of being in this school to retain my knowledge of my own native language was very important because of how many people that spoke the language and lived in the area, but I also understand why I never retained it and never managed to learn much of anything. My mindset was so stuck on this whole friendship thing, this thing I wanted so much but struggled so hard to obtain and when I did, to keep, and if I did keep was it even sincere in the first place? This insecurity struck with me my entire school life, and its remnants still remain with me to this day.

So anyway fifth grade came around, we were off to a new school to the wonderful experience that is middle school. Or the years of my school where douchebaggery was highly contagious and infected most if not everyone including myself. Bullies everywhere! IT'S TRUE! MIDDLE SCHOOLERS ARE SOULLESS HUSKS OF A HUMAN BEING! In an effort to not be at the bottom of the social ladder with my friend, there was this probably mentally handicapped kid with a speech impediment that everyone made fun of. We were not exceptions and it was not a proud moment of my life, but just like all the other times of inaction and trying to be with the majority to not stand out and all that kind of jazz it was a thing I did. School feels like this whole dominance kind of thing where followers will always look towards the strongest alpha student, follow their ways to not be seen as weak and thus be picked on by the populace. It's like survival of the fittest; savage animals trying to stay alive. That's why bullying is such a difficult issue to solve, and sometimes the only way to fix it isn't any sort of the safe, peaceful methods the faculty or parents always attempt, like ignoring the bully or telling a teacher or whatever. Those never work. The only time I've seen someone successfully fend off a bully was to stand up for themselves and punch them back, even if they are also suspended or even the only one suspended because of how backwards school rules are. My god, school is like prison. I've always heard to earn respect or to keep yourself from being a target is even if someone fights you, you must fight back. You can't run to a prison guard or try to hide or anything of the like. Even if you lose the fight horribly, as long as you stand up for yourself people will respect you. THAT'S SCHOOL. Can't tell a teacher, can't be a snitch! You're gonna get punished for being in the fight regardless of who initiated! AND YOU WILL BE BEAT UP ANYWAY. Survival of the fittest everyone.

Around this same time I made some friends! Yay! A few female friends and people I even invited to a birthday party. I even had this silly game I had with one of them where we'd grapple our hands and try to push each other like we were sumo wrestling or whatever. I remember fond memories of eating dried noodles from its package and people playing Pokemon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh, and soon even Beyblade. The trends were here! Of course during said birthday party all hell broke loose. I'm being melodramatic probably, but I'm pretty sure I cried at most of my birthday parties. Or at least was not particularly happy about them. Maybe I'm just a sensitive little bitch, who knows. But the one year I remember this being very warranted. One friend I made was like another one of these alpha females. I don't know why I keep calling them this, but it's like this one girl I befriend who is bossy and I always listen to and such. They command the room. They are the leader. Anyway I have this male cousin of mine, two years junior who I was very close to over the years. The markup of my family tree is sort of complicated but essentially we were the only people in our family of similar age, and everyone else was either just being born, or was not born, or was way older than us (including my brother who is over seven years my senior) so I became fast friends with him and he is a huge influence of my life. He introduced me to LF2 and Negima a few years down the line (attempted to introduce me to Re:Zero but after the debacle that was Negima I learned better >_>) He also had like every game console in existence. I remember playing games on his PS Classic like Worms and Gundam, on his PS2, his PS3, his PS4, his Nintendo 64, his Gamecube. He introduced me to Smash and is just as passionate about it as Souless is. (He once brought a CRT TV to a BOAT so he could play Melee properly with his friends. On a boat. Like don't even get on a boat to be on a boat, go on it to play Melee! To be  fair his father was a fisherman so he probably had been on boats most of his life, but still!) I also got him to play Soldat for a few years. It was nice.

So yeah, when this happened a fucking third time, there was no longer inaction or fear of losing a friend. Because my alpha female friend I had made this year was appalled that I had this male cousin who was my friend. She was like NO BOYS ALLOWED! She and the other (female) friends I had invited to the party locked themselves in MY OWN ROOM declaring it a BOY-FREE ZONE, and instead of joining them all I was outside the door with my cousin who was crying. FUCK. THESE. PEOPLE. This was MY birthday party. That was MY room. And this was MY cousin who I had been close to for YEARS! I didn't care that ALL OF MY FRIENDS were in there with her. I STAYED WITH MY COUSIN. I was so angry! I was so appalled. WHY IS THIS CONCEPT OF MALES AND FEMALES BEING FRIENDS SO TERRIBLE? We were EVEN related! I don't even! Holy fucking shit! 

And you know what? I defended my cousin and didn't lose any of my friends. Not even my alpha female friend.

Of course she moved away a year later. If it had gone down similarly to previous incidents, I may have lost friends and then the one I would have kept would have moved away anyway. I avoided this happening a second time by defending my cousin. We also made some male friends at school we'd play a form of tag with all the time, but we were always the ones chasing them so I assume no one wanted to pick that role and we were willing to be the sharks to try to eat them because we were not particularly high on the social ladder at school. I remember very little of sixth grade aside from not being fond of the teacher, but outside of school it was around this time my first friend moved away and another kid, a boy a few years my junior moved in. We became fast friends, played LF2 and NHL 97, and for a brief period of time this other kid in the neighbourhood played those games with us too. This was also around the time I got my first hamster, and I think I influenced HIS life quite a bit because we really enjoyed manhandling these hamsters (I know better now, lol. Imagine if my parents had any presence in my life during these times of turmoil how different this would all be) and when he finally moved like 90% of my friends do he got himself his own hamster. I got a boy to like hamsters. Cute. He also played Beyblades with me and it seems like though I struggle to keep female friends, I always find similar hobbies and interests with this guy friends and always actually DO stuff together. This never seemed to be the case with most of my female friends. Luckily my very best friend also enjoyed video games, so there was that to bond over. Alas I do not remember much else of this year, so moving on to the seventh grade which i do remember quite a bit.

During this year, we made friends with these two boys that sat at our same table. I actually knew one of the boys for a long time to the point that my family would be like "OH IT'S SPOTTO'S BOYFRIEND!1!" playfully or whatever, but only became friends this year. What's amusing to me is that the OTHER boy actually confessed to my best friend at the end of the year. She didn't recuperate, but that's sort of interesting. I only stayed friends with the boys, but one thing that truly touched me is on my birthday I was given this sketch of myself with a little doggy (because I loved dogs a lot!) and balloons everywhere out of the whim. I still have that drawing on my wall to this day and it is my favourite birthday present ever. I did not have to invite him to my birthday party to get a present. He just did it just because. I wonder if he too liked me beyond friends, but idk. I was still struggling with friendship and my brain was wired that boys and girls could be friends that I never really thought about romance whatsoever. I was a smol child with a smol child brain. Pretty sure I still have a smol child brain now too. 

Anyway it was a generally happy year except that one time I threw up in front of the class during quiet time and got relentlessly picked up by this asshole jock. I also remember this year (or was it the last?) where the popular girl made me do her homework. YAY MIDDLE SCHOOL! But still, I had close reliable friends who I didn't feel like were just friends just because, but people who really cared about me. This was the year I was king of math. Is there a particular reason for that? I don't know. But I think I do better in academics when I'm not flailing about drowning trying to make friends. For once in my life, I felt stable. I had a good friendship with the boy that lived downstairs, and spent lots of time with him and this other kid. I was friends with the kids at my table. My best friend was still here. This was not a year where I yearned for friendship. I had it.

Then everything changed when high school attacked. 

Luckily me and my best friend went to the same high school but due to where our school was located and where people lived, basically everyone at our grade split off to four different high schools. I never saw those boys again. In high school we did end up making some friends... all female. it was a very large clique with say 8-10 people, but due to my everlasting status of being near the bottom of the social ladder and my friendship complex, me and my best friend were not anywhere close to alpha female position, let's just say. I had this desire to make more friends, but CLOSE friends just like with my best friend. But in a clique there's usually even more inner cliques. Two girls will be best friends and do all the stuff together. Same with these other two girls. I came into this clique with my own best friend already, but we weren't all in the same classes ALL the time. And these friends of mine were closer to these other girls probably because they didn't put each other on pedestals or have clingy friendship complexes, so it was difficult to really grow close. I liked the girls that were nicer to me and such, but even then. It was also at this time my time on the internet went on a rise and I found friends online. Online friends who shared VERY close interests to mine since we could communicate over long distances and I didn't know anyone in my school with very similar interests. Due to such, I grew much more closer to these internet friends. I think the most significant of these were the BIFF. Today, only two of the BIFF remain but they have become ultra close friends with me especially Akira, and now I've learned that best friends are few and far between, but will always be there with you. It's not all about having sixty thousand friends and expecting them to all be as devoted as the few.

Akira is the other friend coming down to SFO with me! Let me talk about the internet friends too! We all bonded over Beyblade. Obviously no female friend of mine in high school gave two shits about Beyblade, so the internet was all I could turn to. Unfortunately my best friend who I do share interests with we always sort of miss that interest by a few steps. Like how she prefers RPGs and I prefer shooters, or how she likes Yu-Gi-Oh and I liked Beyblade. We were close! SIMILAR GENRES EVEN, but no cigar! Only the internet could solve this everlasting problem, and solve it did! I began writing stupid stories on crack about Beyblade characters and made friends in the fanfiction community. I had been writing as a hobby since I was like nine on my brother's ancient laptop, so it was not unfamiliar territory for me. Since making friends was SO rad to me I became very attached to these people like I knew them in real life, even if all we had was Beyblade. But once that interest faded, a majority of them faded as well because we didn't really do anything else nor have similar interests otherwise. It was more like a club that liked this one thing, and once people left the club because they weren't interested, it was no more.

No hard feelings or anything... well except this one incident where one of our club blocked us all of sudden, and I foolishly, like the foolish desperate clingy person I was, tried all I could to at least COMPREHEND why someone would do this. Since she really only blocked me, I reached out through another friend, and talked to her. She dodged all our questions and then proceeded to block everybody. I could never understand, but one of my friends told me to let it go. So I did. It was a difficult decision, but to be fair I did step on her toes by not respecting her decision to exit from our lives by trying to reach her beyond her powers that be. I still don't understand, to this day.

Back to high school though, and I don't really feel like splitting it by year so we're just gonna have one giant blurb about high school in its entirety. Since I was closer to my internet friends and couldn't truly reach over to these high school friends, I began having the same problem I did with my very first friend. Where they would do things and not invite us, or only invite us if no one else was able to go. One of my friends gave me ample advice when she realized my little friendship complex. Don't do things for other people before doing things for yourself. I don't remember the exact quote, but basically I was so eager to please i never really thought about my own self considering my very average grades and all, and just tried to do whatever I could to stay friends with people. It's a theme of my life, man. I also had one friend I made some year later (Grade nine? Egads I remember nothing) who I found rather obnoxious, but she was probably the type of person I should have stayed friends with over several others because no matter how much I expressed to her that she was annoying, she was still very accepting and friendly to me. I wish I stayed friends with her. She was one of those people I felt would be one of those once-in-a-lifetime friends if you gave them a chance, but I sadly did not.

There was also one year, later on maybe in junior or senior, where there was this friend who was basically Pinkie Pie in real life. She had ALL OF THE FRIENDS and was nice to ALL of the people, including me, so low on the social ladder! I really wish I could have been a closer friend to hers, but because she had so many other friends it was a nigh impossible achievement. There was also one year where I suffered some of the worst bullying. In sophomore these girls were transferred to our school and she would not stop at anything to call me names or throw pennies at me because I looked like a poor kid. (I wasn't actually that poor in terms of the school. I was just not one who found importance in appearance so I kind of looked like someone who didn't care and was more, let's say, homely than other kids. Or if you wanna bully me too, you could call me a hobo! Because I looked like a hobo. Gee I wonder if my parents had more of a presence in my life I wouldn't always dress up like a hobo to school) 

Back to the internet that I was increasingly spending more time on because I felt so much more accepted on there. Also they can't see me, so they can't tell me I look like a hobo! After discovering LF2 and playing so much of that game, I found another game that this website covered too called Soldat. Alas my friend I spent oodles of time playing games with who lived downstairs moved away, but I immersed myself in Soldat. I found many friends, a clique that in video games called a "clan" and got to see these same people in these same servers over and over again. We had fun, fun times shooting each other in a competitive environment. Though again like the Beyblade days many of these people faded away, there were some I stuck by for a very long time and still talk to today. We call ourselves Spectral Infantry, but I think I'm the only one that does that now because Discord exists and nobody cares about the clan name and my Teamspeak is dying. Regardless, it's not the name that is important, just like the name BIFF was never really important. (It stands for Best Internet Friends Forever. I hope that is the case with the two I am still friends with lolololol) but the people that still stick around. Also obviously a majority of these friends are guys. Because all the guy friends I've ever made friends with NEVER antagonized me for being friends with them despite being a girl, or never purposefully excluded me because if they want to spend time playing say, Path of Exile when I do not even play that game who am I to feel excluded? I don't play that game. It was a lot more transparent I guess. I felt more stable amongst them. My ability to friendship was finally levelling up, but those back at school were as stagnant as ever. The same feelings, the same kind of inevitable conclusions.

It's very important to not only share interests but share hobbies when it comes to friends. Video games were the thing that kept me going with these people. On the other hand, though I share less interests and hobbies with the few female but true friends I have left to this day, I still feel very close to them because we bonded on an emotional level. We understand each other, and we will be there for one another. Both of these have taught me that I do not need to be doing a thing with a person 24/7 to stay friends with them, or trying to be complacent to keep as many friends as possible because only the important friends are the ones that you really need to keep. The ones that will keep you going and motivated like they do me. At the end of high school, the one friend I became closest to outside of my best friend, who gave me a handmade birthday card out of nowhere, encouraged my graphic design and caused me to win the grade-wide competition, and actually gave me HUGS what the fuck, brutally chastised my appearance throughout high school with the harshest words possible over the internet. I blocked her immediately and we are no longer friends. It was one of the worst friendship breakups I have had, on par with my very first friend,. People who were there for me but obviously had some sort of pent up issue with me that the first sign where either I mentioned something or I was out of frame physically they unloaded their frustrations with me. Why couldn't they be honest from the get-go? I guess because I was a sensitive, eager, clingy person with a friendship complex, and the moment any conflict arises could be the end of it all, like it was. But it always blew up in the end because of it. It always ended friendships.

It always hurt.

And now the consequences.

I have had a pretty terrible year in terms of loss and family and pain, but in terms of PHYSICAL pain I went through several dental treatments to get my teeth fixed. Root canals, crowns, and surgery. Oddly enough despite all of those things I mentioned, the worst pain was the first cleaning I had after several several years. Because my teeth were so bad I was very sensitive to temperature so any cleaning felt like the absolute worst. Somehow cold air was worse than giant pointed steel needles being stabbed into my gums. I also buy separate shampoo and conditioner now, and pay for my own toothpaste, floss, mouthwash and toothbrush because my parents cheaped out and always bought the crappiest toothpaste possible, the cheapest 2-in-1 shampoo, and really all the other tools that though I do not blame for why I've had self-esteem issues certainly contributed a small part to it. Oh and I started buying some of my own clothes because throughout all of high school it was hand-me-downs all the way down, and since I was a tomboy I rejected 50% of it. So i kept wearing very old clothes that started getting tattered. My money at the time was going into things that were more important, like computers and video games. THUS THE HOBONESS! 

But the other consequence was where my interests ending up lying. I was so in need of friendship that every single thing I've ever watched, friendship was the most important issue to me. My very first OTP, ship as it were that I blame the whole Beyblade fanfiction community for getting me into, was KazumiSayo. See my icon? STILL KazuSayo. They are relatively minor characters in the grand scheme of Negima, but for what they had I enjoyed them immensely. Kazumi I saw as a role model because she wasn't a character that really developed per-say. She was kind of ideal from the get-go. She did not care about being in cliques or being friends with a cast herd. When the manga started she was in no cast herd, she was alone. And she was fine with it. She was still confident, still spunky, still had the best voice, still was extremely attractive despite such. (How do attractive people not attract friends?) and was very kind.

Then Sayo came along. Sayo was a ghost who had been alone for like some ridiculous amount of time, like sixty years. No one could see her until her teacher just happened be a wizard. Then when her existence was exposed, it was Kazumi who befriended her. Now at first I wondered why Kazumi of all people befriended her. I could see it in terms of practical reasons, like Sayo being a ghost would be ideal for Kazumi's need for intel, what with being an aspiring journalist and all. Meanwhile Sayo's need for a friend is extreme because she has been alone for sixty years and she hasn't become a batshit insane murderous ghost yet. Kazumi gives her this need. in terms of who is giving more and who is receiving more, it looks one-sided.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the most healthy and best relationships are when two people improve one another, and while Sayo who I essentially related to since she desperately needed a friend will become a better, more whole person thanks to Kazumi, what does she serve for Kazumi beyond the practicality? Does she make Kazumi a better person? At first I believed maybe Kazumi might be susceptible to becoming the stereotypical yellow journalist who would do anything to get a story. She did toy with the idea with exposing magic to the world, but it wasn't difficult to convince her to keep it under wraps despite such a story being an ample opportunity to launch her career straight into the moon. She also mentioned when she first became friends with Sayo that letting the world know of the existence of a real live ghost would also land her in prime territory to be one of the most renowned journalists out there, yet she is the one that convinces herself not to do so because that would be unfair and plain mean to Sayo, who does not need the attention of the world right now. She does not need to be a zoo exhibit or to be experimented on by scientists or studied, she needs a friend. That's exactly what Kazumi provided. I suppose Sayo fills out the role of keeping Kazumi in check. She was a wildcard for a moment when some members of the class opposed Negi's side of the battle, and Kazumi for a while was working for the supposedly "evil" side (it was more like a huge moral dilemma and no one was painted as an irredeemable bad guy, but still) but once context was given to Kazumi she switched sides pretty easily.

But still, their relationship served to fuel my need for a friend. One who for no reason would be your friend. Like a dog! I love dogs. I always wanted one but it was never right to ever get a dog due to their upkeep and price. Dogs are those kinds of unwavering companions that no matter what will always be loyal. No matter who you are or what you look like. That's why I loved Kazumi and Sayo so much. I saw this character who I looked up to, wanted to be like who gave unconditional support to this ghost character, who needed it above all else and overlooked her own ambitions to do so. It was a heartwarming friendship I wanted out of anyone at all. Still, it didn't serve the ideal kind of friendship I was looking for where the two characters could help one another to be better people.

Touhou came along to bring with it oodles of odd female friendships. I am very attached to female friendships as you can see. With guys, it's just play video games with them to bond because competition or whatever. I even watched Beyblade to figure that out too. But I could not figure out female friendship. I had such a hard time retaining female friends. I've run into so many problems and incidents involving all of that, so my interest was very high for how media portrayed female friendship. That's one of the many reasons I jumped between so many favourite characters and thus so many different OTPs in Touhou. So many different depictions of friendship and devotion! I loved it! One of my first favourites was Murasa and Nue. Unfortunately at the time they were in one of the less popular cast herds, so finding anything notable and meaningful that portrayed the two was a bit of a challenge. The depiction they usually got was that Nue was alone and sort of excluded from the main cast herd that being the Myouren Temple because she was a bit of a prankster/troublemaker. And she felt she needed to be alone (also she was sealed for like several hundred years) but secretly she wanted some form of companionship. Murasa was the usual person she'd  be paired with for that companionship. I remember reading this touching doujinshi where Nue is all self-conscious and stuff, gets attacked by some scumbag humans (not that humans ARE scumbags but these guys tried to kill Nue when she never provoked them, so... ) and they involved one of the legends associated with Nue in the conflict. The nue was shot down by some famous guy (I forget his name) by either his amazing enchanted bow, or he was so amazing he could shoot down mystical youkai like nues. So this guy that was trying to kill Nue had this bow and that guy's name too, so even though youkai usually very easily overpower humans this was not the case here.

Anyway Murasa pops out of nowhere and takes the arrow for her. It's treated as very melodramatic because Nue acts like Murasa is dying even though youkai can brush off such physical injuries plus Murasa is ALSO a ghost and ALREADY kinda of dead anyway, but yeah, this relationship was kind of like KazuSayo to me. My favourite character at the time was Murasa, who was portrayed as this badass ghost pirate captain who was very confident. She had a pretty depressing backstory too, but it wasn't given much detail thus that one story I wrote up about her history. This story serves to teach Nue that no she is not alone, and she doesn't have to feel like an outcast among the cast herd she is associated with. Murasa though I don't see what she learns or how she becomes better by being friends or more with Nue. It again, feels one-sided. Nue doesn't really touch upon any of Murasa's backstory or anything like that. They just happened to know one another. Also the game that came out right after introduced this buddy of Nue's from the outside with a similar ability where they have trickster pranks together and all, and sort of killed the illusion that Nue would ever be insecure to need friends that badly, or whatever. I dunno. I don't know what to think about it, lol.

Of course, moving beyond that I began to like MokoKene. Or KeneMoko. Again a similar OTP to KazuSayo. One person is SUPER LONELY. This person, Mokou, has done something to give herself immortality that causes her to be ostracized by society since she never seems to grow old, so she becomes increasingly withdrawn and a hermit to society. She does this for a thousand years or so. (This is getting absurd, isn't it? Lol. SPOTTO IS SO LONELY, SHE ONLY IDENTIFIES WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE ALONE FOR ABSURD AMOUNTS OF TIME) Of course unlike Sayo Mokou actually does go about killing a whole bunch of people, but moving on we come to Keine, a half-youkai whose character is the basis for the initial conflict between humans and youkai. The perspective of a half-youkai is most unique. (Though Keine is only really a youkai once a month since she is a WERE-hakutaku, so... ) anyway Keine has more of a human-leaning view than a youkai view despite her affliction. Mokou is someone though technically a human, her behaviour over the years and her own immortality makes her out to be more like a youkai if you think about it, but Mokou's first friend after many centuries ends up being Keine. I think there's something truly heartwarming when the protagonists need to go attack Mokou and despite Mokou being INVINCIBLE, Keine still goes out of her way to try to protect her and lead the protagonists away anyway. Keine gets beat up and they go for Mokou despite her efforts. She did this at first to protect the village earlier in the game, but near the end of the game the only reason she fights the protagonists again is solely for Mokou. It's sweet, isn't it?

This spawned a ridiculous amount of the most adorable fanworks I have ever seen. KeneMoko is a fairly popular pairing in Touhou, especially when you consider harem lead Marisa isn't part of it, nor does it involve any other protagonist that usually manages a harem of their own. The characters themselves haven't really been that relevant for several years either, until recently when Mokou showed up in a fighting game and some outsider they introduced Mokou ends up befriending and let's move on from that. Keine is especially irrelevant at this time though, haven't not appeared in anything with any significance since pretty much after her first appearance. Sigh. Well that's how it goes I suppose. It's the same with Murasa too. Not all too relevant now.

So I moved on to the last one I'm gonna mention from Touhou. It's relatively recent, so give me a moment. For the last few I kept sticking with this one lonely character who needed a friend. Or a dog, I guess if you really think about it, but for AyaSanae, this time the character, Aya, was not someone who was well, lonely. Her traditional characterization is usually this confident journalist who will do anything to get a good story, no matter how immoral it might be. At first this portrayal was more prevalent in fanworks, seeing as it was a funny exaggeration for the cast's only media representative, but the creator very quickly adopted a similar portrayal himself, so Aya sort of became a caricature of her initial characterization. I don't know either. Anyway, in-universe she was not the most popular person in the world. All of her mainline ships didn't really serve to improve Aya as a character, as Aya was usually the dominant member and would boss around the character paired to her. I hated that. It took me a long time to really look at Aya as a character I would bother liking. Like, who cares? She's not the role model Kazumi was and she has no qualms about how to achieve what she needs in her career, and she isn't lonely at all!

...or is she?

AyaSanae, a rarepair came along and it came with a very refreshing take on Aya. While yes, Aya isn't exactly human (but we keep applying human-like qualities on values on all the other youkai and non-human species of Touhou anyway, fanworks!) she's not really a well-rounded character with any depth to her motivations. Like why is she a journalist? Why because her crow tengu species are all avid reporters too! Well that doesn't make Aya particularly unique even if she is the most notable of the group. Still, as someone with a friendship complex I can't really swallow that Aya doesn't resent in some way that she may not be popular or have any friends. The character most associated to her in canon, Momiji, canonically hates her or at least has a very strong personal feud with Aya. Aya's other character most strongly associated to her is Hatate, who is just another crow tengu journalist meant to be a rival that makes Aya look like the best tengu around. It's not really all too reassuring. But in comes Sanae, an OUTSIDER with a unique perspective who believe or not, when this ship is portrayed, makes Aya a BETTER PERSON.

THAT'S ALL I EVER ASKED FOR!

So how this all works is that Aya seems to fancy Sanae for whatever reason. I dunno. Figure it out yourself. The point is, Aya feels she can't really approach Sanae properly in that kind of manner because most of her relationships to people are strictly business. Not only that but Sanae is a human and that may look badly on human-youkai relations due to Sanae being involved with the goddesses who sort of want to take over the mountain for their faith which is also where the tengu all live and take claim to. It's a bit of a mess, is it not? There's some agreement in place for both of them to co-exist on the mountain, but it's just not good for tensions if most notable tengu and priestess responsible for spreading faith get together, is all I'm saying.

Yet thanks to fanworks bending canon rules, Aya's acquaintances who are more like close friends in this universe encourage Aya to go after Sanae. Sanae's goddesses want her to be close to Aya too, so they can improve goddess-tengu relations, and if they're friends that'd be good or whatever. So Aya gives Sanae a tour but Sanae doesn't really like Aya because who actually likes Aya, I mean c'mon. Then over time we run into Sanae's own issues of adapting into Gensokyan society, since she came from the outside where she had a normal (sorta) life at school with friends and modern technology, and now has no real peers here and has a completely different life with completely different technology, like magic! Aya comforts her in her very own youkai-like way, in that she hasn't much to say because she can't possibly understand, so she just pops out her wings and envelops Sanae in it. Give her some physical comfort. It's all Sanae needed... and for once, this relationship doesn't start off one-sided or stay that way, anyway. The two help one another. Sanae to adapt, and Aya to be better.

Because unlike Aya's more popular pairs, she's not bossing Sanae around and Sanae is devoted to her anyway for no real reason. Sanae makes Aya second-guess herself, makes her flustered. Sanae's go-for-it attitude and eccentricity is unpredictable to Aya. Every time Aya thinks she has control of the situation, Sanae surprises her. I can't really go into much depth about these two because they are a rarepair and everything I mentioned came from one very talented doujinshi artist, but this person (man? idk) singlehandedly not only made me like this ship, but like Aya! But anyway, Sanae's existence humbles Aya and gives her this sort of humanity and empathy she was sort of lacking, that made her more relatable. But this still wasn't to the level of give and receive I was hoping for, but the farthest I've found so far. Though Aya provided Sanae opportunity to adapt and supported her, I don't see Sanae as a character improving, but she does get a friend and acclaimed to Gensokyo and maybe her own character doesn't really need improving because she isn't as obviously flawed as Aya. Who knows! Still, it's the closest yet.

Potential for such a thing came from this next series, one very not-subtle about what they're trying to achieve with the show since it's titled as Friendship is Magic. MLP.

It took me a while to find a character to like actually. I most related to Fluttershy at the time, but my values were a lot closer to Pinkie Pie's. So I was like "wait, why not just put them together!" which was something somewhat possible due to their interactions in the most innocent of times that was season one. In one of the earliest episodes, Pinkie Pie defended Fluttershy's sensitivity, and kept her and Rainbow Dash (who has known her for years mind you) from pranking her. When Pinkie saw Fluttershy being bullied, she came up with a plan to get the bully back. When Fluttershy needed courage to jump over the chasm in Dragonfly, Pinkie's song encouraged her enough to go over. Not her other friends who were clearly exasperated (especially RD) about her keeping them from progressing very far. Pinkie kept her positivity up and supported Fluttershy wholeheartedly, no hard feelings whatsoever. Then several episodes down the line, for some reason Fluttershy despite being the shiest, most timid of them all, was so happy Pinkie was okay when she went missing (and was most worried for her as well) she jump-tackled Pinkie to the ground the moment she saw her. This would seem out-of-character if we didn't note all these things Pinkie did for her earlier. I thought a lovely cute little friendship was happening. It was one-sided though, but it was blossoming.

Then the most innocent of times concluded. One flaw of Pinkie Pie the writers began to make more and more apparent was her...insensitivity? Which I thought was quite odd because it seemed like she grasped this concept pretty well in season one. I suppose that same episode Fluttershy glomped her in she did start a war with her insensitivity with her not-very-good (rather unusual for Pinkie) song to make sure the ponies and the buffalo could get along. Maybe it was a botched attempt at humour, I'm not sure. Anyway Pinkie seemed to lose this concept and probably unintentionally made the whole Luna situation in Luna Eclipsed worse, then her sense of reality or how other ponies felt dwindled quite rapidly, like in the Friend In Deed episode where she could not grasp Cranky's need for her to leave him alone, if only because Pinkie is SO desperate to make him a friend and doesn't care, or just doesn't understand. Then there's that one episode about the cake she was protecting that was all kinds of wtf in terms of friendship, so let's not go there.

Then of course Pinkie realized with such clairvoyance how her own clones were terrorizing the town in the season three episode. I'm inclined to believe Pinkie didn't realize how overbearing she was until she saw several dozen copies of her acting in the most one-dimensional way possible. Finally in season four despite being one of the strongest Pinkie Pie seasons to date (there is a lot of "I realize I am in the wrong and can see you are unhappy and understand your sensitivity" in Pinkie Apple Pie and Pinkie Pride respectively, maybe even Maud Pie!") we had... Filli Vanilli.

I have spoken so much about this episode, but it really slammed on the pedal and floored it when I was already in the wild wide and hoping to any higher power of existence who could hear me to let us slow down. She was NOTHING like this in season one, and here she is making Fluttershy cry with the most obvious, over-the-top cries, sobs, and wails I have seen and somehow Pinkie cannot see what she is doing that is wrong? I just do not understand how people defend Pinkie in this episode, I can't. It was finally here that I realized the old vision of PinkieShy where Pinkie is the one who can help Fluttershy become bolder and closer was wrong. Or at least, only part of it. If the canon is going to run off with this type of characterization, Fluttershy is the one who needs to make PINKIE the better person! If both parts of what I see does happen, then yes this would be the first time the relationship will be pretty evenly-sided, where they help one another.

I mean Pinkie has her insecurities! Her most infamous episode had her breakdown believing her friends no longer wanted to be with her, and she clearly is very clingy to the friends she has despite having more than anyone. I can relate to that! But despite my idea of the two helping one another, over the years and seasons Fluttershy never needed Pinkie to become more assertive or bold. She did that on her own, through many situations with many friends including her animals friends, and Pinkie wasn't there to support her with as much presence as I hoped. It's like Fluttershy became better and didn't need Pinkie at all. It became a one-sided affair once again. I was so frustrated with this pair that had so much potential in season one. I really thought if the two were close friends it'd be a really heartwarming kind of thing. Two people so very different, with different ideals, but both sharing this same kind of sensitivity, both understanding one another. It would be the closest thing to the ideal pair I have seen, but the engine barely started before the car broke down entirely. An introvert and an extrovert who can both understand what it is like to be an introvert and an extrovert. I really wish this concept was explored.

In what i call a bit too little too late, an episode finally popped up that actually featured the two together though they still shared their conflict with Rainbow Dash and Applejack. There was great pressure to do well in a sporting competition, and surprisingly both Fluttershy and Pinkie buckled under this pressure. At first Pinkie buckling is more surprising, but after Fluttershy's character development you sort of don't see it coming either. Regardless Fluttershy is the first to burst about this towards RD and AJ, and is the one to bring up the problem that paves the way to the well-rounded perfect solution MLP likes to do. Meanwhile Pinkie becomes withdrawn under this pressure, and is the one who is unable to let RD and AJ know what she feels. She actually seems like the more sensitive one of the two! For whatever reason this made the two of them feel like they have a lot more depth than before, but this aspect of the two characters hasn't been explored since, and I'm not really expecting a Pinkie and Fluttershy episode actually focused on only those two anytime soon. :\ 

So if a show literally titled Friendship is Magic wasn't the way, what was?

I found a show called RWBY. The title of the show is the first letter of each protagonist who are paired into a group. Their goal is to go to school to learn to fight monsters, and then fight monsters with that group for the rest of the foreseeable future. Or at least in school, but from the existence of teams that existed well beyond school I'm thinking that is not the case. Anyway we are given tidbits of some background information on these four characters, and they get thrown into the school to learn to work together to defeat the monsters and subsequently become better huntresses and people as a result! I watched a trailer called the White Trailer. It had this character who exemplified all these feelings I've had in my entire life, though the lyrics weren't particularly subtle about it. This beautiful girl, who could get hit in the face and get a RAD SCAR despite her beauty, was all sad and lonely. She is entirely by herself in the trailer and only fights this construct which isn't even technically alive. I felt sympathy for her and loved the music and animation of the trailer. I knew she'd be my favourite character immediately, but in the large scheme of things she was sort of fitting my stereotypical pattern of favourites.

Until she opened her mouth in the series itself.

THIS IS AN ALPHA FEMALE! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

But yet, I still loved her.

Why?

Weiss Schnee was this type of person I had conflict with so many times in my life, but I never really saw these people's own perspectives. I had such negative interactions with them, or at least my friendship with them always ended poorly that I never really saw it from their side or understood who these people were. Weiss was like, someone who guarded herself deeply and had a lot of issues inside, and she did it by being bossy and mean. It took her a while to accept those around her, but it also didn't take her long to change herself or see that she had to be supportive if she wanted to keep these people around, these friends. She learned pretty quick actually, so her first impression wasn't really all that significant in the large scheme of things. Seeing her White Trailer and then how she acted I knew right away Weiss wasn't actually like this at all, and unlike a lot of people became intrigued with who she was and what she'd become because of it. Because we already knew there was something about her that didn't match how she behaved.

At first I followed the crowd and shipped her with whoever was most commonly shipped with her, but this was a young show, so anything could change. And change it did because the core of the plot for much of the first three seasons was the conflict between the White Fang and well, everyone else, but mostly the Schnee Dust Corp since they're the ones that led the White Fang to their reputations and extreme beliefs to this day. The person on the side of the White Fang, or at least formerly and with a lot of faunus baggage left in? Blake. And it seemed like Weiss and Blake were very integral to the plot for a lot of these reasons. Well mostly Blake for plot and Weiss for character development, but you get the idea. Weiss needed to shake off her racist upbringing if she was to keep these comrades of hers by her side and for them to become an expert, efficient team of huntresses. This included even accepting the former terrorist group member with an endless amount of issues, Blake. Weiss really came to her own as a character over these episodes, and it even seemed Blake was turning a leaf as well, willing to let people into her life despite having been closed off for years in fear of discrimination and conviction! 

Then of course all the shit happened and it turned into Naruto. Where nobody graduates, the group breaks up, and the broodiest, angstiest person runs away. I guess since this show isn't blatantly titled FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC I can't expect it to focus on friendship as the core theme of the show, but I had assumed so anyway because of the title of the show and the premise, that these four girls of vastly different background and history must come together and fight monsters. The fact that Weiss and Blake had all this conflict to get over, and all these scenes where they were helping one another, Weiss forgiving Blake for running off with her problems, Weiss trying to force Blake to talk about her problems to the group, Blake choosing Weiss over the White Fang when they were about to kill her, finally letting go of her criminal past and what really needed to be done, to the point that by season three they were amiably having a tea and coffee date with one another. They were willing to spend time with each other outside of training, outside of arguing about their vastly different upbringings and opinions and were friends THAT HELPED ONE ANOTHER BECOME BETTER PEOPLE.

But instead shit hit the fan.

Weiss let go of her racist ways and accepted how poorly faunus were treated. She became nicer, and more supportive as a result. Blake let people into her life more often, began to trust more, and these people who should be enemies at any other time are not. That's heartwarming. That's beautiful. That's friendship! Heck, even beyond! This is the greatest potential for the greatest ship I have ever seen, but of course, of course, this show has decided writing as a priority is like fifth fiddle to things like adding more characters than necessary in every season and not bothering to develop any existing ones, killing random characters off for shock value, and putting more stock into developing side characters and minor characters over the main characters while ignoring and writing out the interpersonal relationships and interactions I watched the show for AMONG THE FOUR GIRLS. They had it! They had in right in their palms and tossed it right over a cliff! THEY HAD IT!

A non-one sided relationship in which two people can help one ANOTHER improve, and not only that their BACKGROUNDS improve. Fix the White Fang, fix the Schnee Corporation to get rid of all the corrupt terrorist bullshit that infects both their backgrounds and them as people. The two being together could solve them as people and SOLVE THE PLOT but it was flung off the cliff, not knowing what they had. I do not expect them to make this ship canon, but their mere friendship is all that is needed for some of the most heartwarming, wonderful, uplifting, and hopeful kinds of solution possible. This is why I like some horribly dark, twisted series a lot despite their theme because the ending of these things (such as Dangan Ronpa) is always one of hope despite all the shitty hardship and death everyone faces. And yes, RWBY is not over yet, I suppose the show too can achieve that same kind of thing, but when we had so many misprioritized plot points and focus on random one-off characters in such a large ratio of the show, the characters of team RWBY no matter their potential is shuffled to the side and in the end I don't even believe they have a friendship at all. There is no training montage where they learned those team-up moves they had in that one season two episode. It was not as if they did not have time because they had a whole plot about Jaune that did not move the plot whatsoever about his own problems I don't give one flying shit about. The solution didn't even matter because Pyrrha dies anyway. Like what the fuck? Yang goes out of her way to reveal some of her backstory to try to help out Blake from imploding inside due to her worries on White Fang activity, but I can't even believe she'd do that because when Blake and Weiss were arguing in season one and Blake ran off, Yang did absolutely nothing. What changed there? Was there some moment of bonding they had that made them closer so Yang would do such a thing? No because they wasted time doing pointless shit that did not improve on the relationships of these characters at all.

Blake had to resort to random faunus monkey dude to support her in that episode, and now he's the only one doing it which is troubling. If they were to be friends then it would be Weiss, Ruby, and Yang that would help her get past what her issues now especially since what Blake is going through affects her team the most, especially Weiss, but most especially Yang because she lost an entire arm trying to help Blake and Blake instead of accepting this traumatic support or helping her friend instead just runs away and leaves them to be,. But this random faunus monkey dude can totally follow her around. That's okay! Is it because he is a faunus? IS THAT THE ONLY REASON!? Ruby is so preoccupied by defeating the enemy themselves she never considers say, staying home to support her most traumatized sister a little longer, or trying to find Weiss or Blake. It's investigate what happened to Beacon, fuck my friends. Yang understandably is too shaken up to do anything for some time, so she is forgiven, but Weiss cannot even leave her father's side. She is stuck there, so she is also forgiven for not reuniting with her friends. But why bother when no one comes after her, and her final conclusion after escaping her father is to find her sister? She clearly doesn't believe they are worthy to seek out and only her sister can support her, and who can blame her!? Fuck her friends! There is no female friendship in RWBY and that's a fucking disgrace. They have no idea how to develop it whatsoever and instead develop male-female friendships that aren't even friendships because EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAS ROMANTIC SUBTEXT. DOES FRIENDSHIP MEAN ANYTHING TO THIS SERIES AT ALL!? WHAT THE FUCK. Penny and Pyrrha were amazing supportive friends! EXCEPT THEY DIED. OKAY. AWESOME.

It was the most promising and it crashed hard, into a trainwreck that was so bad I finally looked away from it. Yeah the action, choreography was great, but that's not what keeps me watching a series. That's not draws me to a series. It's the female friendship I so long to watch. It's why of everything that has been recommended to me in the past few years Little Witch Academia is on the top of the list because I don't see any of these themes in all the other mystery, comedy, actiony things people recommend me. Maybe I'll give it a chance, but I just feel so cynical after RWBY, that I had to write a giant story to fix this severe problem. That I'd rather just play video games and give up watching stuff forever than to put in hope for what I like to see in stories. It's why I'm so apprehensive with starting anything and would stick to the same series and franchises I have trust in over and over again. And it's because of my friendship issues throughout my entire life that I'm stuck with such a specific kind of theme I really want to watch, and see done well. Maybe I just want validation? I don't know. 

Things like Touhou and Overwatch where everything does not hang on one cohesive story is a lot more approachable than some anime or cartoon people recommend. Since the story is not released all at once and speculation is rampant, plus we can always enjoy them both in other words like actually playing the game or listening  to music, it doesn't depend entirely on what canon says. I really like Mercymaker in Overwatch for the potential of Mercy being one of the few people that can help Widowmaker recover. Also it's hot, but that's irrelevant. It's extremely one-sided though because I do not see Mercy benefiting as a person helping Widowmaker, merely doing what she usually does that she has devoted her life to, but it follows the pattern of the kind of pairing I like. Anyway despite that there's not a lot of canon to back this up, it's just an idea and the fans power these ideas. Most likely due to the story being all over the place and with so many other characters this ship is free to be as large as the imagination desires. There's a chance something will come around to throw it off, but due to the nature of these series I can usually ignore it.

One final last thing I forgot to mention in quite possibly one of the largest rants i have written of everything ever, is that I also had a friend in between Beyblade and Negima, a fandom friend when I was into B-Daman briefly. We made up a lot of story and artwork through our roleplays and I spent a ridiculous amount of time with this girl. Sadly she drifted away eventually, so I couldn't think of anyway to put her in this rant since I mentioned so many of my other friends. Still, i do wonder how she is doing and if she is okay because when I met her she was going through some difficult times. I have no real way to contact her but I hope she's doing well.

Ultimately, friendship is hard. True friends are the few that stick by your side unconditionally, and most people have no idea how to depict the kind of friendship I'm looking for in media. At least of those I've seen, but RWBY has dampened my spirits to the point that I can't be bothered anyway. Just gotta stick with what I already have and cherish who are still around. Thank you my friends. Even if we drift away someday, I am glad you were around when you were. And it's definitely true that a lot of us will not know what we are missing when people are gone. I probably still have a bit of a friendship complex, but throughout all of this I went from this positive outgoing person who really wanted lots of friends to an introvert who would rather stay inside and sleep all day. I do still want to have friends, but I don't have the effort anymore. And I know a lot of people are like this too, but even if they don't talk to me everyday or even every week, when we finally do speak again we can pick off where we left off, like time does not affect our friendship at all, and that's the best feeling to have. We're all adults now anyway. Responsibilities take up our time, but still that doesn't mean drifting away is something that is guaranteed. 

This has been Spotto, and I have revealed quite a bit. Adios!
spotto: (Sooooolo)
Regrets

1) Waiting five years for a Sayo backstory chapter that never came. She had her introduction chapter and that was the first and only time she had a chapter dedicated to her.

2) Waiting four years for a good Fluttershy episode. She had Hurricane Fluttershy. That's it. I give up. Do not have Fluttershy as a favourite character. Pinkie and Rarity will take her place.

3) Waiting three years for RWBY to be good. Still waiting...

4) Waiting my whole life for the Canucks to win a cup. (They were cupless for the twenty years before I was born too...) A regret that will go on forever.

5) Waiting too long to go to another home game with my dad. We went to one once in 2009, and we lost pretty terribly (led and then gave up the lead) We kept talking about going again, hopefully to a win. Now it's too late. We had seven fucking years to go but never did.
spotto: (arisu margtrod)
Once upon a time on a cold, chilly day there was a boy named Max. He had lovely yellow, messy hair and freckles upon his face, above which were some wondrous blue eyes. He was hopping about on the sidewalk that day, taking such a path seeing as he was bordered on both sides by knee-height snow. His boots left jolly imprints on the mostly-shovelled sidewalk, appearing rather sporadically in time with his merry gait. He looked up and there appeared to be a large bridge going right over the four-lane road he was next to. He had been planning to visit the store across the street a few blocks from whence he stood, but this was the first he had seen of this bridge. Knowing he had never trekked onto such a marvel of architecture, and knowing it was far more convenient than to wait at yet another boring stop-light several metres down the street, Max took several steps up the stairway, advancing across the bridge.

He stopped at the middle to gawk at the cars zooming past underneath him, as if they had no qualms about the no-doubt icy surfaces they were rolling across. His thoughts were cut-short when one car had overestimated its own all-weather tires, skidding about until it had come to a roaring halt into the stairway Max had moments ago climbed. The hood of the poor sedan was crumpled up, and the woman in the driver's seat was shocked right out, having barely recovered from the air bag expanding in such speeds as to protect her pretty face from the unmerciful steering wheel. Max reacted as one would, quickly dashing across the bridge and rushing down the stairs. Unfortunately in his haste, he too had overestimated his boots' ability to grip on the icy surfaces and found himself not just descending, but tumbling down to the ground. With reflexes like that of a competitive sports participant, Max threw out his left arm to shield the rest of his body from the solid ground below. He fell with a heavy thud, though it was somewhat muffled by his heavy winter coat.

Alas, Max's clever ploy to protect the rest of his body was not a smart one for his arm, which had held out well in the nanoseconds it could to keep the rest of his body from contacting the unmoving sidewalk, but in doing so the elbow snapped right back, and a pain Max had not felt since he was a young child during a nasty bike crash rushed back into his memories as well as his nerves. His other arm grasped the elbow in an instant, and it took him great willpower, the same willpower he used to summon his God Turtle during spinning top battles, to keep from crying out.

And so the story ends with two accidents, damages on vehicles and limbs be damned. The synposis of a story that Spotto read has now come true, from the keyboard of Spotto as opposed to the fraudulent and untrue summary that was one she had read earlier. It had promised the reader, should they venture into such a tale, that Max would've broken his arm after falling down some stairs. Neither of which ever happened in such a story, and a girl, so unsatisfied was she, immediately loaded up Dreamwidth to write down an impromptu story.

None of which would have happened if a bloody antivirus had updated promptly, allowing her a night's rest during the late hours of 3:20AM. But since it took its sweet time thanks to her ISP's incompetence, she had to wait, and wait, and wait with droopy eyes and baited breath, until great rage urged her to express her emotions in that of a pointless drabble.

This has been Spotto and FUCK NOSTALGIA. WHY ARE ALL THESE OLD FANFICTIONS SO BAD!?!?!?
spotto: (hong kong *STAAAAAARE*)
Whilst sleep deprived and wracked with indigestion, thoughts began swirling in my head. 
 
I just realized the innate problems of including a minority character in media, in particular someone who may be LGBT. See more often than not, said character who is about to discover oneself runs into a plethora of problems, of bullying, of conflict, of "religious injustice" but depicting the drama of such issues in media while is a good way to spread awareness to those who do not experience such things, is not what most I believe, people who are actually gay or what have you even want to watch.
 
For a lot of people or at least me, media and storytelling is a place of fantasy. A place where things that are not true, are true. We see it as an escape from reality. Unless it's some sort of terrible satire about the realistic bastardization that is life, usually fiction is more idealistic than our side of the universe. So I would think and I DO think as I am one, watching a show where say two characters of the same sex who end up as a couple and run into ZERO PROBLEMS regarding their partner of choice would be most desired. That is what we want after all. A fantasy where who we are is not questioned and is the norm! But almost every single time this comes up in media it must involve some sort of internalized issue with society because even in fictionland there are the intolerable bastards that we try to avoid every single day in real life!
 
In other words in mainstream media, a story about a gay guy coming out is really intended for straight audiences. Because a homosexual is exotic and different and a movie or book can be used to illustrate their rough walks of life to those who never have to walk in their shoes. ("But Spotto! Minor character 1 and minor character 2 are a gay couple in that one show! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT!?" Well, that is still for a straight audience because they're minor/side characters! Everybody has that gay friend or whatever, but god forbid YOU YOURSELF differentiate from the norm!) Why am I thinking about this? Well today is a new RWBY episode, presumably about a prom or ball or dance taking place in fantasy high school that is so generic that it has proms and balls like high schools of reality. I hate high school! I don't want to watch this shit! And now our female protagonists are presumably straight or possibly bi (but people are never bi in media, so unless they outright say this it's safe to say they're straight) asking guys out for dates. No, not Team JNPR who each have a partner of the opposite gender and such explorations of their potential relationships would actually be interesting, the main four girls.
 
Since they are all girls, we need some other dudes outside of the school to work with, otherwise we have teachers and taken guys. So let's introduce a whole team of dudes who don't get developed much except for that leader who showed up in season one and then suddenly pair them with the girls because THERE IS A PROM!!!! OH MY GOD! Since RWBY is such a hotspot for gay ships (what media form isn't? seriously what isn't!?) there is a sizable LGBT minority that wish to see some actually become canon. The issue is it isn't our story, so if we see absolutely zero gay ships welp, we'll just have to deal. We'll just have to deal like with every single thing we've ever watched or read. Or anything. However, the creator of RWBY has actually ended one of this animations with a yuri ship and has addressed the community's desire in an interview.
 
But he mentions how it'll take a long time to come to fruition because a character needs to discover themselves and realize they might be gay or they don't like being the gender they were assigned or something. Either this implies Ruby, the youngest character in the series, is going to be gay, or they're going to take their time and go through the whole annoying issue of intolerance and hatred that comes from the outside before said character will accept themselves. In other words it's another LGBT character written for a straight audience! (Obviously no writer is doing this consciously or intentionally, but we all like to write for ourselves and think of what we ourselves would enjoy, so not having a same-sex relationship in the forefront of a story is not an issue to a lot of people) RWBY is already a fantasy, but I suppose with the despicable treatment of faunus we can't expect people to be chill about liking someone of the same gender either. 
 
So today's episode likely has Weiss in the middle of this stupid horrible love chain where Pyrrha (the coolest girl in the whole school, why does she BEGIN this triangle!? ALL THE BOYS AND EVEN SOME GIRLS SHOULD BE ASKING HER!) likes Jaune for some reason (WHY? I don't know! If the guy wasn't so oblivious and was more like a lovable goof, sure why not, but this dude is obscenely annoying and thickheaded!) who likes Weiss of all people (in what world does Jaune and Weiss seem compatible? Weiss is coldhearted and generally hates people it seems, and you want HER!? How about someone more fitting to your personality, Jaune? HOW ABOUT SOMEONE WHO HASN'T TURNED YOU DOWN MULTIPLE TIMES!?) and Weiss likes Neptune, a guy we just met this season and know nothing about aside from being a K-Pop star and being generally dorky like literally every other boy in this show. You barely know him. You took like ten episodes to be friends with Ruby. WHAT. IS. THIS. MADNESS!? Finally Neptune supposedly likes Yang...despite hitting on every girl he saw, including Weiss, but apparently will pick Yang. Now unless Yang adds more to this horrible dramafest of a goddamn cliche high school trope, it ends here. 
 
Of course this is the same Yang who has mentioned the hot boys in her dorm in season one episode three, encouraged Jaune in season one episode four, season two episode three, and season two episode five to keep trying for Weiss, and doesn't seem to express her no-nonsense independent attitude nearly as often as she appeared to in the trailer, so I'm not entirely sure at all what to expect from Yang Xiao Long. How do you predict her? She has little development so far and also little consistency. I do want to like her. She's technically my second favourite, but like 90% of that is due to fandom. GODDAMNIT YANG. DO SOMETHING. And please not a romance thing. Gah. SHE DID SOMETHING! AND IT WAS EPIC! REJOICE!!! YANG XIAO LONG FOR PRESIDENT!
 
You can see my distress here.
 
Usually my compromise is no romance at all. My favourite characters in Negima were all uninvolved with the harem. (Aside from one, but she was sane/naive enough to fall for an older version of the protagonist, so while tragic at least she isn't crushing on a goddamn ten-year-old boy) Romance is entirely absent from Touhou and while rampant in fandom, due to the female population dangerously reaching 100% levels, it's all delicious, delicious yuri. And finally my last example is complete and utter spoilers, but I give up on keeping it tight-lipped. Most of you will never play Dangan Ronpa, and even if you do this one tidbit isn't going to ruin the story or anything, just a few characters if you're that testy with spoilers (which I MYSELF AM, but I give up) SO LOOK AWAY NOW IF YOU WISH TO BE UNSPOILED.
 
-IN WHAT WORLD DID I THINK SPOILING PEOPLE OF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER IN SDR2 WAS A GREAT IDEA GODDAMN THIS HAS BEEN SNIPPED FOR YOUR OWN GOOD-
 
Sure I can fantasize about AUs all I want for any of that to work, but that's fandom stuff. That's why there's a ridiculous amount of shipping and gay fanfiction and all that crap because where else can we find a nice domestic story about two guys or two girls together struggling to make ends meet or something like that, without having stupid prejudice issues the real world already has constantly butting in? In fanfiction my favourite character will not be called a slur or punched in the face or looked down upon for their sexual orientation. In fanfiction my favourite character will not spend eight hundred chapters figuring out why they don't care for the opposite gender. IN FANFICTION ALL OF IT IS THE NORM AND NONE OF THAT EXISTS.
 
THAT IS WHY SHIPPING IS SO RAMPANT. THAT IS WHY SHIPPING IS PREDOMINANTLY SLASH OR YURI.
 
This has been Spotto. Fuck proms, fuck canon, fuck high school.
spotto: (@_@)
Actually considering how adverse I am towards typing giant walls-of-text on Tumblr, I've remembered that this place still exists! So let's have a few updates here. Typing is a tad awkward as I burnt my finger fairly deeply the other day so now it feels like the nerves on my finger are dead, but that's just the dead skin yet to peel off (says Ed anyway and who can argue with Dr. Psychopath?) so there's that. NOW, A FEW THINGS!

First, my main fandom is still and proudly is RWBY. I've nothing to say about it as it is still on hiatus, and I'm enjoying Tumblr quite a bit with its extremely positive fandom over there. There's some bumps here and there as all fandoms have, but it's been less than I'm used to oddly enough. (well, considering that OTHER fandom I used to be in...) I've actually come up with an intricate AU about the show though. The characters makes it super easy to come up with AUs which I rarely if ever did so with Touhou. I may or may not one day post it here. The other AUs that exist are flipping brilliant, so it that helps too!

One very nice thing is how this show is somehow watched by almost every one of my friends. Initially I was the only one who was in the fandom that I knew of and while I cannot ask nor should I expect anyone else of my friends to actually get to the fandom parts of it (they just watch it, helps that it's fairly short) it's really nice that they do know of it and what it entails. That's already more than I ever bloody expected, but Cunchy even has an avatar of Yang twerking...and like, that is ridiculous. I usually never involve my guy friends into all this stuff because fandom feels like a very...female-oriented kind of hobby? Bringing any of this stuff up with them just seems awkward and forced. Even though clearly they do not do things like ship or come up with AUs/theorize about it, the fact that they are amused enough by something like that to show it off to others is pretty unexpected I must say. I was almost to the point where I thought my hobby was sort of embarrassing and silly, and just keep it to myself or indulge with it over my girl friends. It always feels like bothering them with things they aren't interested in might be sorta obnoxious (I say this, yet enjoy Aoi-dono talking about her love all the damn time so who am I kidding haha) but it's pretty damn cool. To that note, I'm probably going to read One Piece at one point just to see why it's so popular and maybe get into it a bit. My friend is really into it, so it'd be nice to share more interests with him.

All that aside, MLP season four began a few months back. I had done some sort of review thing here before, particularly of season two...and wasn't as invested into such a task for season three (though I do recall still doing some) so that pretty much means you won't see any for season four; however, I have been watching it. It's got its ups and downs, but one of the more recent episodes (Pinkie Apple Pie) was really, really enjoyable. One thing that can easily bring me back into the fandom is a properly and amazingly portrayed Pinkie, seeing as she's my favourite and all, and that had to be one of the episodes where Pinkie really shines. In certain episodes like A Friend In Deed or occasionally when she is a side-character she seems a bit too overblown even if I still do enjoy her character. In Pinkie Apple Pie, she never stole the show or hogged the spotlight like she sometimes does, but shared her limelight with the Apple Family properly while interacting with them in a rather well-written enjoyable way. This episode is exactly why I love Pinkie Pie. She's off-the-wall and thinks on her own world, but she isn't overbearing and when conflicts arise that really do affect her, she can have standard, reasonable reactions like a real person (pony?). That episode was almost perfect and had a great song for Applejack to sing that isn't something lame like Raise The Barn or way off her usual genre like the Bats song. (That song was great but not a catchy song you'd have stuck in your head)

On a much more dreary note, I watched SVU last week, a drama I've pretty much watched my entire adolescence...and for the first time in forever (I'll talk about Frozen below) actually got pretty shaken up by the episode. The perp from the première was creepy as fuck and to watch an episode where he basically tears down the main character like so with such a chilling and accurate performance was extremely hard to watch. I almost dropped this show because of it. Have an excerpt of my discussion with Aoi-dono:

[09/01/2014 10:21:27 PM] werepotato: no I'm used to those things
[09/01/2014 10:21:52 PM] werepotato: I don't even know how to describe it
[09/01/2014 10:22:00 PM] werepotato: or if the emotion I'm feeling is even anger
[09/01/2014 10:22:02 PM] werepotato: maybe disturbed?
[09/01/2014 10:22:59 PM] Joanne: the show depicted something controversial or revolting in nature?
[09/01/2014 10:23:13 PM] werepotato: well there was this premiere two-parter
[09/01/2014 10:35:50 PM] werepotato: where the main character (a cop) gets kidnapped by a psychopath who gets off on torture/rape and has escaped conviction multiple times
so that premiere was very powerful and such, the main character manages to escape herself and the dude is caught
So many episodes later (this is usually a show with lots of mature content, it's pretty heavy handed and can get very dramatic/melodramatic, I've watched it since I was 10 so I grew up watching like, dead bodies on autopsy tables and such, and hearing of gruesome details or the emotional impact of rape etc.)
they give us an episode of them in court, and this dude (the actor is ridiculous, he is very very good at playing a psychopath) wraps the jury around his hands and the main character has to lie (because she actually assaulted him while he was handcuffed after escaping due to all the emotionaly/physical trauma, it's super emotional and sad and such, plus a witness (a cleaner that'd come clean the shack or whatever that dirty place is) and their child came in to do her work, but the main character who managed to escape at that point found out they were illegal immigrants, and she's sympathetic to them because if they are found out, the cleaner's kid will be taken away from her, so she tells them to leave because she needs to call the cops to pick the dude up) ANYWAY back in court she needs to lie about those two things, while the dude who stereotypically enough manages to be his own lawyer, makes it so that the entire kidnapping was because of the main character's repressed sexual desires after years and years of throwing herself into her work solving horrible sex crimes, and because there is the discrepancy of some facts (since she has to lie about it) it affects her credibility in court, and while in the end the evidence of his many other crimes gets him convicted, he still manages to re-traumatize main character and
THE ENTIRE THING JUST FEELS LIKE
DIABOLUS EX MACHINA
BAD THINGS KEEP HAPPENING TO MAIN CHARACTER
AND IT'S LIKE ACTED OUT SUPER WELL AND WRITTEN WELL, BUT IT'S LIKE A TRAUMA CONGA LINE AND THE BAD GUY WAS SUPER SUAVE AND CHARMING LIKE A REAL PSYCHOPATH AND IT'S EXTREMELY CREEPY
and I've NEVER gotten bothered by this show before, after like fifteen seasons, NEVER have I've gotten to this point, despite watching it since very young
I could not even STARE AT THE SCREEN, the end of the episode she was CRYING ON THE STAIRS ALONE and the very last scene has the dude ACTUALLY FINDING A WAY TO ESCAPE PRISON
LIKE THE PREMIERE IS BAD ENOUGH WHY ARE YOU DRAGGING THIS OUT TO A FOURTH EPISODE ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME
IT's gotten to the point that I want to stop watching the show entirely, AFTER WATCHING FOR THIS LONG
Like the show is very long-running so lots of bad things have happened to main character but this is getting just ridiculous
AND THEY LEFT OUT SOME DETAILS FROM THE ORIGINAL PREMIERE THAT'D MAKE THE PROSECUTOR'S CASE STRONGER, which makes the prosecutor character, one whom I actually like (they have hit and miss prosecutor characters and the most recent one is very well-written imo) LOOK REALLY INCOMPETENT LIKE WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED
And the main character is supposed to have a boyfriend but it's like SHE SUFFERS ALONE ALLT HE TIME!???! WHY EVEN HAVE THAT ROMANTIC PLOT I DON'T EVEN CARE FOR IT WHY I DON'T UNDERSTAND
THIS SHOW IS NAFJNWTHBJDFkfgndfskgdbskglhfgh
[09/01/2014 10:45:29 PM] werepotato: I hope i did not overwhelm you with all that
[09/01/2014 10:45:39 PM] werepotato: but you said hello pretty much right after I watched it
[09/01/2014 10:45:40 PM] werepotato: omfg
[09/01/2014 10:46:31 PM] Joanne: ohh
[09/01/2014 10:46:48 PM] Joanne: ah, I think I would understand just a little bit of what you have experienced from watching the show
[09/01/2014 10:47:08 PM] Joanne: I guess it's a little bit of feeling indignant over the injustice?
[09/01/2014 10:47:49 PM] Joanne: As much as your description made the show sound intriguing, I would probably avoid watching it as much as I can because it feels something awfully bad for my heart.
[09/01/2014 10:51:03 PM] werepotato: yes perhaps a little bit of feeling indignant
[09/01/2014 10:51:04 PM] werepotato: but
[09/01/2014 10:51:31 PM] werepotato: I just, I was like "I haven't watched this show in a few weeks due to christmas break" and just expected to be entertained for an hour and continue my day and such you know??
[09/01/2014 10:53:28 PM] Joanne: but then it got ruined because of the storyline
[09/01/2014 10:54:35 PM] werepotato: I didnt' expect a continuation of the premiere though
Just a standalone episode like normal
[09/01/2014 10:55:11 PM] Joanne: ah
[09/01/2014 10:56:22 PM] Joanne: the portrayal of a constantly victimised protagonist with a tragic life is quite hard to stomach
[09/01/2014 10:58:28 PM] werepotato: she;'s not eeven my favourite cahracter tho
[09/01/2014 10:58:44 PM] werepotato: my favourite character is usually the hot blonde chick
BUT TO MAKE ME FEEL THAT MUCH FOR A CHARACTER WH OIS NOT MY FAVOURITE
[09/01/2014 10:59:18 PM] werepotato: TO MAKE ME GO " THIS IS NOT RIGHT
THIS IS NOT A STORY IW OULD ENJOY
THIS IS NOT A SHOW THAT IS MEANT TI ENTERTAIN THE MASSES WHAT"
[09/01/2014 10:59:43 PM] werepotato: THIS IS WHY I DROPPED SHINGEKI NO KYOJIN
[09/01/2014 11:00:01 PM] werepotato: I DON'T WATCH FOR CONSTANT DESPAIR
[09/01/2014 11:00:01 PM] Joanne: despair porn?
[09/01/2014 11:00:34 PM] Joanne: oh crap. you just reminded me of tsumi to batsu
[09/01/2014 11:00:34 PM] werepotato: this is like
[09/01/2014 11:00:37 PM] werepotato: fanfiction
[09/01/2014 11:00:45 PM] werepotato: I can handle people killing characters off and calling it tragedy
[09/01/2014 11:01:40 PM] werepotato: I CANNOT HANDLE PEOPLE WRITING HORRIBLE ANGST SUPER WELL WITH TWO CHARACTERS WHO CHOOSE THE PATH OF UNHAPPINESS WILLINGLY FOR SOME DUMB CHARACTER FLAW REASON, AND THEN ENDING IT AT A BAD ENDING AND NEVER EVER FOLLOWING IT UP FOR HAPPINESS EVER
YOU CANNOT THE BAD ENDS I don'ta behjenv

The latest episode though was pretty sad because a regular left and that was like :C. I actually liked the content of it though because I got to the point where I was like "JESUS HE IS SO SCREWED HOW ARE THEY GOING TO SOLVE THIS WITHOUT BULLSHITTING ANYTHING!?" and the episode was written in a way where it wasn't cliché or contrived or anything! So hooray. 

Oh yes, I watched the movie Frozen which I NEVER would have, if not for it being spammed on my Tumblr dashboard or the recommendation from Souless who led me to such gems like How to Train Your Dragon and the long overdue Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, both of which I enjoyed immensely. Frozen was much better than expected, but not some perfect amazing movie that deserves all the awards in the world. It does have the elements Disney's older movies had that made them such instant classics, so Frozen may become such in the future, but there were some flaws that bothered me in my opinion. The pacing for example felt a bit fast. Now I can be a bit biased as I am a person who goes through shitloads of fandom and thus shitloads of stories good and bad (though obviously I avoid/stop reading any I do not enjoy) so it gets to the point where I need a little more to care about the conflict of characters I know nothing about. So the pacing was a bit too fast; the movie assumed I was invested into the characters a little too soon and thus it could not have been as powerful as it could've. The twists were all pretty well-done, but the Hans reveal felt like it came a bit too much out of nowhere? I know in the song he shared with Anna there were some clues and a second viewing would make it more obvious, but damn, that twist really WAS a twist for me and I didn't know how to feel until the next twist came along.

The next twist was brilliant, how saving Elsa is an act of true love even though it was familial love and everyone and their dog was expecting the usual Disney Princess story again. But how Anna thawed and then Elsa realized how to control her powers all happened in the span of like what, thirty seconds? I felt like there could have been some more beats or whatever to not make it feel rushed. Maybe if it HAD to be that fast, Elsa could've smacked herself for being so stupid at how simple the method to controlling her ice powers were, to express how fast she managed to get everything down, but whatever I'm just nitpicking. One other thing is while I realize Elsa was meant to be the villain at first before they wrote the astonishing "Let It Go" song, the way Anna is the main character makes it feel like Disney isn't ready for some royal or princess like character who cares not for love to be the main character (then again, there was that Brave movie I've yet to see) but while Anna/Kristoph was meant to be there to fake-out the familial-love-saves-everything ending, Elsa having more focus may have been more powerful because she kind of went from regal perfect royal person to "I AM FREE!! JOY!!" person really quickly...and we didn't know all too much of whatever was going through her head besides from song and maybe hints from her actions. The pacing was not as sublime as the rest of the movie I guess, but still, it was quite a good movie and one I'm glad I spent no money for because it was actually a late-birthday present from my bro. Thanks for taking me bro!

Now where the hell am I going with this? Oh right, I caught up with Sam and Cat after the break. I normally don't speak of this show either, just like SVU but they recently had a special where characters from iCarly and Victorious guest-starred. I initially expected the creators to write some special that pandered to the shippers or something like that, but surprisingly the special was a great mix of well-written comedy and eyecandy for the shippers. Being a shipper myself I'm not all that bothered by those who ship in shows where I don't give a rat's ass for the romance, but for Dan Schneider shows in particular the shipping is so prevalent I literally cannot find actual discussion on the show itself so it sort of gets overbearing after a while. (Then again, I suppose there's really not too much to discuss of a show that isn't especially deep or enthralling? I don't know) The special basically exceeded my expectations and actually for once, made me laugh. That isn't a jab at S&C itself either; I just usually never laugh out loud at things meant to be comedy (until I discovered Achievement Hunter at least) and simply chuckle or internally acknowledge that yes, that thing was funny. But one piece of comedy I shamefully always find amusement in are breast jokes. Now I don't mean the annoying jiggly boobs of Gainax anime or something like that; I just like flat-chest tsurupettan jokes a lot, where people get self-conscious about that sort of thing.

I know that sort of of self-drama actually happens for a lot of teenage girls and they end up making stupid decisions instead of loving one's body, but being someone who too very much lacks in the chest department, it feels like I'm laughing at myself. The fact that a kids show like S&C isn't shy about it either is pretty hilarious as well. Basically Cat locks Sam in a closet so she can take her place in jumping over the rabid tuna (it makes sense in context I swear) but Sam mentions that people would suspect that Cat wasn't Sam due to her lack of assets, and then Cat stuffs oranges in her bra and says something ridiculous like "Yay boosoms!". Then, when she's about to make the jump, Sam gets there in time to see her crash WITH THE ORANGES ROLLING TOWARDS THE DIRT BIKE.

I cannot simply acknowledge the humour and express content with it. My body must make convulsions at how absurd that sequence of events was, and so it did. Ha.

But I think the primary reason the episode was good was yes, the obvious inclusion of the guest stars. I love Sam and Cat but besides its rampant cartooniness, its lack of various and diverse characters makes it stale occasionally. Watching Jade make her quips or Freddie's reactions or Robbie's buttmonkey...actually always watching Robbie get snubbed gets old and well, nerds are a free target just like old people it seems in these shows, but basically having more variety in characters and not always being about Sam and Cat (because let's face it, as much as the supporting characters are pretty nice they really aren't three-dimensional enough to be entertaining on their own) makes the show all that much more better. That's probably why I enjoyed Victorious more than iCarly, but eh.

As for anything else? Well...that's pretty much it I guess. Happy 2014! Happy almost-Chinese New Year too! I could discuss the despair I have for the Canucks atm, but that's a thing I'll hold up on considering they won the last game. (It's getting pretty ridiculous how much we make the headlines for all the wrong reasons though) My hope after the end of this post is that my favourite character will not die in the next Dangan Ronpa update. This has been Spotto!
spotto: (NUUUUUUUUUUEN~)
Hello blog I always neglect! Another post here by Spotto. No worries, despite the lower frequency of my posts, occasionally thoughts pop up in my mind that I do want to write down, and here they will go.
 
Currently I have the RWBY opening stuck in my head. And just yesterday I went through a night of delirium due to sleep deprivation going through the newest Touhou game, Double Dealing Character. So this post will obviously be of those two things, but of one central theme I suppose. The theme is empathy. 
 
For me, my view upon life is always of balance. My interests, despite being limited and perhaps overly niche, do fall in rather vague genres, like my music taste. Maybe my lack of experience of going through every inch of the media allows me to have more tolerance in certain tropes that pop up in storytelling again and again, but like usual, I compare myself with those I know and why we all have sometimes conflicting perspectives of the world.
 
So before I go unnecessarily philosophical or what have you, the two topics above! We'll go for the more recent one, that with DDC. Plenty of new characters have been introduced onto the Touhou plate, as well as the glorious side serving of musical alcohol. We also get our usual silly plot out of the way and of course probably the main reason for a game to exist, the game itself and its gameplay! I played DDC briefly before I collapsed into well-needed sleep, and before that went through several playthroughs of those who decided to stream or record their own goings.
 
The biggest part of Touhou are the characters, as least in terms of my interests. This is also the second main game to come out that I've been here to experience, so comparisons with Ten Desires is inevitable. I didn't talk too much about Hopeless Masquerade here (as opposed to Ten Desires and especially SoPM) because all of my reaction were summed up in dozens of Tumblr posts flooding my poor friends' dashboards with MikoMikoMikoMikoMiko. I knew my hype for this game would not nearly be as huge, and so it hasn't.
 
Anyway the first new character I saw was Yatsuhashi, a tsukumogami of a Japanese instrument, a Koto or whatever. Then it turns out she has a sister who you get to fight depending upon your shottype (Shottype A gets the sister, B gets Yatsuhashi) though the midbosses of the stage are swapped. My initial thoughts of Yatsuhashi wasn't much. She looked kind of plain, but immediately I noted she was the third brunette (actual brown hair, not black) to be introduced to the gigantic Touhou cast, which was interesting. Other fans, in particular the Japanese ones compared her to Alice, with their similar headgear. Alice has become one of my most favourite characters, so immediately I descended upon the idea that she was an inferior Alice. :D Mostly joking though.
 
Her sister is Benben, a biwa tsukumogami. The name was very noticeable. Benben is a pretty strange name, but the names in DDC were already pretty damn strange already. (Benben just seems EVEN STRANGER!) Regardless of her odd name that sounds like the onomatopoeia of a burly man, she had a very nice design. I thought her hair was short at first, but then noticed longer hair at the back. The separation of the short hair and the back made it look like hair extensions. She also looked like a musical Akyuu what with the flower in her hair and similar hair colours. These two tsukumogami aren't exactly blood siblings, what with being objects and all but apparently they were born around the same time and decided "LET'S BE SISTERS" just because. That's pretty awesome.
 
On the other hand...two MORE tsukumogami? Medicine is suspected to be one, Kogasa the first official one and then Kokoro is one (Menreikis are types of tsukumogami it seems) and finally two more here? Soon enough the tsukumogami will outnumber the fairies! These ones seem more generic due to their last names, as opposed to being related to their abilities or whatever seem to just be "Tsukumo". So these two were born, decided to be siblings for kicks and then chose the least creative last names possible. Good job you two.
 
Before I noticed the stage five boss, or even acknowledged her, I paid attention to the music instead. Usually stage five boss themes are on the lower end of my music tastes, but this one was really good! Especially since I had no clear favourite song in Ten Desires (wasn't too impressed with its soundtrack) with maaaaaybe the very first track you hear after the menu screen, Night Sakura of the Dead Spirits as the favourite, this theme I found myself bobbing my head to. It's not an instant classic like the songs from the older games, or my absolute favourite Emotional Skyscraper, which I initially found okay then warmed up to so much it became my absolute favourite but it was definitely a song I loved at first listen, and that's more than what I can say for ANY song AT ALL in Ten Desires or even Undefined Fantastic Object!
 
So yeah, the boss. The boss looked like Nue and Suika had a lovechild with a random red streak in her black hair to look "ULTRA XTRA KOOL". Her name is Seija, which is going to be highly confusing with Seiga's name due to random typos, sort of like Tokiko and Tojiko, but thankfully one character is an obscure written works character and the other is a midboss. This time around though, Seija is the mastermind of DDC and that doesn't help when comparing to Seiga's large role in Ten Desires, so... Seija however is pretty insanely loli, which I do have a bit of a problem with and will bring up later in this post. Her outfit is pretty nicely designed and she's supposed to be an amanojaki, which is like an oni but smaller or less intimidating. She seems a little redundant compared to Suika who is a loli oni, but we'll see. I do find her cute and if the plot I heard of in this game is true, hilarious.
 
Remember when I said Miko was an underwhelming boss? I was all like MIKO IS WORST OF STAGE SIX BOSSES OMG TERRIBLE WHY YOU DO!!!! And then somehow I started liking her after SoPM because of her personality, then HM came out and floored me? Well that's what's gotta happen if I'm going to like Sukuna because while the music is quite good and climaxy enough, the design is not very final boss like. Probably very in tune for what Sukuna is based on, but not really all that appealing to me. ALSO ANOTHER LOLI GAH. I'm still not sure entirely her role in this game, so can't really say anything about that. Her ability to change other things' sizes is similar to Suika's density control, as in how she can change her own size. Truly these are her children.
 
Finally the extra boss! It took a big book of Touhou, a fighting game, and a friend who mains her to beat me up all the bloody time for me to find Mamizou decent, but I doubt we'll need that for HIROKAWA RAIKO. While her actually being the Shinto God of Thunder is up in the air, she's at the very least also a tsukumogami apparently associated with the other musicians (MORE TSUKUMOGAMI?) except she's special since she took advantage of what Seija did and became a god...or something. Will have to get back to you on that. Regardless Raiko is a drummer because she IS the drums, or maybe the banjos considering her preferred type of danmaku. Why are extra bosses lately so crazy silly? Well in terms of Raiko's design, that will be included in this very next rant of all of DDC's character design, including outfits and lolism.
 
I do not like DDC's character designs.
 
Now that we got that out of the way, reasons! A big reason is how Touhou characters are usually dressed. A big part of their identity is their clothes because they look fairly generic without them. And I find the fashion in Gensokyo to be very unique and awesome, rather traditional-looking yet with various aspects of fantasy lining up every girl's pretty pretty dress. But DDC introduces us to not one, but TWO characters wearing...kimonos. Or yutaka. Or whatever they are. Sure, that's pretty traditional but not really creative. It's just dressing up a normal person in their formal clothing. To really see a person's personality we need to stare at the clothing they prefer to wear everyday, not clothes they need to for certain days of the year. Raiko is similar except with a more modern equivalent, which seems to come out of nowhere because no one wears modern clothes in Gensokyo! Except maybe Hatate. But Raiko's isn't even stylized it just looks like a suit. This ruins the point of fanartists drawing their favourite characters in yutaka or suits! Ah well.
 
But then there are the lolis...and well, I have no problem with the appearance of a Touhou character except...that the popular notion that Touhou being a game of lolis is very misinterpreted. Some of th most popular characters in Touhou are in fact, very child-like characters, but a majority of the population have the appearances of teenagers or something. It's probably ZUN's art style that gives that perceived notion, but then you see official artwork of the characters NOT by ZUN and they tend to not look ridiculously loli except for the Grimoire of Marisa for whatever reason. But even compared to ZUN's art style, both Seija and Suzuna are REALLY TINY AND YOUNG. One makes sense I guess, what with Suzuna being related to the folktale of a one-inch boy or something but two in a row for some reason, looking so young is jarring. Yes, Remilia and Flan and a bunch of other characters are loli too, but they never looked this young in ZUN's artwork. These two took like they're four years old. (I think there is a plot reason though, so the loli rant might be nullified)
 
As for music, the stage five and six boss themes are great. Not sure what to think of every other song at the moment though. That's still better than Ten Desires. In terms of hype it feels like Ten Desires had way more, in terms of the fandom and even myself. Oh, and while this game lacks a unique system like cherry points or UFOs, the bosses themselves are gimmicky enough to make up for that. This is PLAYER MANIPULATION, THE GAME. You get stage five with flipping screens that invert your controls, stage six that resizes you into a huge blurry bullseye and an extra boss that shakes the screen presumably from the vibrations of her drums...or maybe the stage is inside a drum, yet to figure that out.
 
So first impressions? Up and down, some music tracks are pretty good, design is a little disappointing. (Even the graphics for the score and everything aren't as good as I hoped, it looks too similar to Ten Desires and there's little variation in colour) The good designs are fairly minimal and do look good, but the ones that don't are also rather simplistic, so we don't have any Shous running around this time. Sekibanki still looks like a yukkuri achi-Cirno with Vincent Valentine's cloak though. (My favourite design is probably Kagerou or Seija) The gameplay though? HILARIOUS to watch, potentially fun to play but I only briefly played and got murdered by Seija's gimmicks. Dying to stage five bosses is not new for Spotto!!! Definitely a funner-looking game than Ten Desires at least.
 
But hey, I warmed up to Ten Desires and its cast A LOT after a few years, will I do so for DDC? We have yet to see, but I tend to like the newer games. 
 
And that is your monthly Touhou for the...month. Next rant or whatever is about the animesque web series, RWBY. It seems no matter how much Anime people suggest to me, I will always end up neglecting them and just going for the animesque stuff that isn't controlled by giant studios (SEE TOUHOU). I dunno why I keep avoiding all the Anime people recommend to me. I know Madoka is good, but don't want to watch it yet. I know Dangan Roppa just started and watching would be nice, but nope not yet. But hey, nonprofessional 3D animation thingy that looks like MMD and is voiced by Americans? SURE!
 
Well it helps that I've followed previous Monty Oum stuff. I also find Rooster Teeth pretty awesome, watching RvB waaaaay back in 2008 (will need to be especially bored to pick it back up though) and finding the Achievement Hunter stuff to be highly amusing. (Though I was exposed to Gavin via Slomo Guys instead) And also watched that stuff initially for the GTA Let's Plays because holy crap those are hilarious let's plays. So RWBY was the next step. I saw the RED trailer forever ago but RWBY never came back up until literally my entire dashboard was Rooster Teeth stuff. Still a little sad Dead Fantasy is probably dropped, but that was non-stop action with a poor attempt at implementing plot with no dialogue anyway because who the hell watches Monty Oum stuff for action?!?!?
 
Oh right, everyone.
 
Actually I don't understand the complaints that there is too little action in the series so far. Because the trailers are filled to the brim with that stuff already and Monty actually wants to form a plot before flinging random girls into action this time around, so good for him for doing that. I like plot and character with my acfion! Anyway, I started with re-watching the red trailer and then the other three that weren't out when I started at this project.
 
First of all the music is pretty damn awesome. The action is as expected, fantastic and the designs are all pretty good. I'm feeling so Alice about colour schemes though and I wish they were more varied despite the theme. Like, Ruby with red is pretty important yeah, but the red-black scheme feels so overdone lately. "RED AND BLACK = INSTANTLY COOL YEAH" but it would've been okay had Blake's trailer not ALSO BEEN RED AND BLACK. She has no red at all in her palette! I guess it's because of Adam who also happens to be red and black. Agh... too much red and black. The lack of a lot of blue on any character is disappointing too because that is such a universally liked colour that looks good with so many other colours. Maybe RWBY is special because it's trying to actually not be blue? I dunno.
 
Oh my god I just realized the two best designs in Touhou 14, Kagerou and Seija, are red and black. (and white too but eh) AAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHH
 
Oh right, RWBY. So yes all the trailers were damn cool and then I watched the first four episodes. Ruby was surprisingly bubbly and perky, but I like it and it's very expected of Monty's works considering what he did to his Dead Fantasy models. (GEE GEE GEE is stuck in my head forever) Dunno how much I would've liked the series for its characters if everyone was some quiet brooding badass in a deep dark world. Not a lot of variation with that really, except we have Yang who was obviously going to not be quiet or brooding but still badass and she is clearly Marisa I mean she is awesome.
 
But yes, the series! Starts with some action, throws in a stereotypical school (BEGIN GENERIC ANIMU PLOT!) with a headmaster that is clearly Kai I mean a headmaster in love with his coffee cup. What is with headmasters and coffee cups lately anyhow? The whole forest initiation thing and the possibility of dying reminded me too much of Naruto's chuunin exams, but despite what Naruto's controversial quality is, that setting IS pretty damn awesome. Also I do like how every character isn't some plucky inexperienced child. Ruby MIGHT be one, but considering the trailers are all prologues to the actual series every single character has some experience outside of just schooling. (I guess they would have to, to attend such a prestigious academy) Maybe Jaune doesn't have experience, but then how did he get into the school anyway? Huh.
 
While I do like the characters and comedic style so far, the actual nature of the animation doesn't flow well with the comedy. For example turning Ruby into super-deformed dork of a fangirl looked very weird with the surroundings and then having Yang disappear with her silhouette friends with as little animation as possible also looked awkward. The same is whenever else the series transitions into 2D animation for whatever reason. I do hope the artist either improves as the series goes along or they find another one, because that newscast looked like it was animated by the average deviantart user. :X Also, since you have 3D models instead of frame-by-frame animation, I don't think a lot of usual Anime tropes work well here. They work in Anime because of how minimalist it looks and how easily they can change their art-style. While it takes HOURS upon HOURS to even make a 3D animation in one-week, 2D animation, if I am not wrong still takes way longer. This is evident in all those pony model stuff and the millions of MMD stuff for Touhou and other series. I see more 3D PVs everyday and less of the animations because of how time-consuming a quality 2D animation thing is. Sixteen minutes of Fantasy Kaleidoscope took a year to make! D: It takes nine months for a single Simpsons episode! 
 
Then again I do not know the details of RWBY and how long they took to make the models and settings and script and voice acting and everything, but again the advantage of 3D is that you don't have to draw your character five million times in a billion frames. You get that model to manipulate instead. Regardless, being a web series that takes ages to make and is done by a small group of people as opposed to a gigantic team, if the Animu-looking comedy is easier to animate, despite its awkwardness, then why not. We all know the action will be flawless and is better than most things we've seen 3D or not anyway. 
 
So yeah, that's my thoughts on RWBY so far.
 
Wait, there's one huge important aspect I always touch upon when talking about things...CHARACTERS! Despite only 45 minutes of footage, how are the characters? Well...
 
Ruby's a good protagonist. Yang's awesome. I like Blake but she seems so mysterious we're going to need time for her. (I do realize the allusions to fairy tales in all the characters so) And then there is Weiss, a name I have problems pronouncing like Keine.
 
LIKE KEINE.
 
Hello world, let me tell you about Weiss, the best RWBY character ever and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong. HOHOHOHO! Lately I've been falling in love with such characters, kind of like Miko and Alice. Except Alice isn't nearly as outspoken while Miko isn't mean at all! She's just genetically superior to everyone else and everyone should worship her amazingness. But again this part of the rant isn't about Touhou and I dunno why I keep falling back on Touhou.
 
You could say it's cliche. I'll retort that I don't watch much Anime and put off all the good ones. But Weiss is obviously that character who starts off hostile and becomes warm in the end. We've had so many of these characters in media, off and on. They are the foil. They are the rival. They're usually the one character with the most amount of change throughout. I fell in love with the song in Weiss' trailer. The lyrics are most telling. They're actually not deep lyrics at all and the writing of it isn't to be marveled at, but it's sung very beautifully and the instrumentals are amazing. "Mirror, mirror, who is the loneliest of all?" So many interpretations can be brought up about that. There's the obvious one, pressure to be the heiress to a gigantic shady company and likely emotional turmoil growing up in such an environment. I'm reminded of a Negima character who quarrels with the main girl all the time, and despite her haughty personality she had a very heartwarming backstory and despite all the innuendo jokes, very innocent. Sadly she got heavily shafted in the actual important PLOT of the manga and...oh, going off on a tangent again.
 
Not to mention she's hilarious and amazingly blunt. See, if Ruby isn't the silent brooding badass, then people might assume it'd be Weiss from the trailer, but nope she isn't either. They gave that role to Blake, which I'm glad. (It was also very obvious with her, but since she's with some guy and has actual dialogue, the whole "silent" part and being able to brood alone kind of gets pushed to the background for a bit.) Obviously my favourite character can always change because there's a secondary team with some people who seem cool and countless others yet to be introduced. But at the moment, had Weiss not existed I'd probably be stuck wondering who my favourite is. Yeah, everyone else is awesome but they're all pretty equal and I don't tend to love things or go into fandoms if I don't ESPECIALLY love a character.
 
Well now I'm hungry and I don't know if I have enough brain power to finish this rant about empathy or what have you. The point I was going to make is that...I am very blessed to be surrounded by people who are very supportive and always nice. Because of these people, I feel I can identify with and understand others more than I would've, which is probably where my love of characters come from. My favourites are either overly flawed or seemingly have no flaws at all for some reason. But because of this, even if I may not identify with the character themselves (I don't identify with Miko? BUT SHE IS THE BEST) I'm still able to appreciate every character and love them for who they are. Sadly reality isn't as easy as fantasy. There are always those unpleasant people around us who have stories of their own and probably reasons for their demeanour, but getting through to them and actually expressing enough selfless motivation to look beyond their cover is one of the toughest things for humanity to do. One of my favourite quotes, "We judge ourselves by our intentions, but others by their actions" is well, my favourite. To me it describes how society is like perfectly.
 
Of course someone is going to disagree with me completely, something I so strongly believe in. I BET YOU THAT WILL HAPPEN IT ALWAYS DOES RAH but it is a little concerning when people you are close to disagree with anything you really, strongly believe in because while disagreeing and difference of opinion is fine, there's always that tinge of disappointment. What if they did have a similar view of life like I do? Maybe the world would be better if that were true? Or is thinking of it like so too human and selfish of a person? But isn't thinking like this how everyone perceives society? Christians believe if everyone was a Christian, the world would be a better place. Atheists think the opposite. So it's just a normal desire that everyone has because everyone feels their view and perspective of society, regardless of the experiences of other common folk, is the only one. Also the whole argument about "If we all had the same views we'd all be the same and that is boring!" because treating situations like so with absolutes isn't the best idea. There is an in-between of levels of similarity and difference. Too much difference and there is conflict. Too much similarity and there is apathy. A good balance and depending upon what that balance is, is in my opinion the requirement of a highly-functioning civilization.
 
Or I have heavily idealistic views, I don't know! NEED FOOD. END RANT! This has been Spotto. Hooray DDC!
spotto: (flutts)
This post is only to update you, readers of this blog which is like two people, which I love pointing out every single time and is probably horribly old by now, of my other blogs that you probably care nothing about but in which they have been updated and so I must inform you. Did you like that run-on sentence?

First off this is a bit old but I've updated my Sims Blog a few weeks back with basically an ACADEMY version of all my Sims for the hell of it. Also, recently I've just been normally playing my Sims back in the Gensokyo neighbourhood as well, so if anything interesting actually happens there I may post of those too, but don't expect to much.

The other blog is the SPOTTOMON blog, which I call it such because while it has been updated once with a Touhoumon update also includes a PONYMON let's play blind run (video!). Ponymon is still in alpha however so despite all the Pokemon being replaced by ponies the game is still essentially FireRed.... replaced by ponies. It has not reached Touhoumon's point with the modded music, story, dialogue, EVERYTHING, so yeah. But there is new typing (as far as I remember) for the ponies and other such little things that aren't in the regular game that I've decided to just record myself playing.

So... got that? Sims Blog here! And Touhoumon/Ponymon blog here! 

I would technically say even my Starcraft blog updated except I abandonated livestream and am now using TWITCH.TV for my SC2 casts. (These seem a little pointless now that SC2 has the "watch replay together" feature, so unless you really enjoy listening to my speech impediment I guess this announcement isn't too important either. Oh yeah the stream is password-protected because I am silly. If you wanna get in it's "spectralinfantry". Yes, that is the password. 

As for anything else...uh... I'm tired and wish to go to bed. In terms of future posts here, I'm actually working on the GENSOKYO CRISIS scenario, extending it and figuring out how Marisa will work with her GET-OUT-OF-HELL free card (with horribly difficult conditions!). So, maybe or maybe not expect that popping up here. Also an image of a new (technically borrowed) car. These new things just blow me away with their ridiculous features. Perhaps I am getting too old when a car that has a USB port blows my mind. CARS DO NOT NEED USB PORTS!! And now they do...as with many other things.

This has been Spotto!
spotto: (Stage One.)
Tolerance.
 
There was a saying somewhere, in sometime, at someplace that in order to become successful in life or to rise up in the ranks of business...we had to practice tolerance.
 
Because that is how life is like, we are not going to run into people who are pleasant to converse with or be in close proximity of at every facet of our lives. In fact, people who we initially are wary of may turn out to be the best people in your lives. Basing everything on previous judgments may not always be in one's best interests. It's how the world rolls on, always throwing us twists and turns to brighten up the corners of our eyes so maybe, just maybe, we won't miss something we really wouldn't want to miss.
 
Yesterday I returned from watching the hockey game to find out that one of my friends was a fan of a very hated rival team. Immediately as my own team was mentioned, flurries of insults and past unpleasant memories were brought up of the histories I experienced watching my home team go through. I had not said a thing to initiate this. It had already begun when my other friend mentioned my team, only to comment on the game itself and funny coincidences when he actually watched. The moment I read those messages, clearly flinging hate towards my way for daring to be a Canucks fan, I had only one urge but to fight back. 
 
Except that was not how I wanted to be. 
 
There is something I truly hate about hockey rivalries or of any sport really. At the same time, this aspect of being a fan is something many, many others may relish in. I can see that, defending your team from rival fans and blasting insults back in forth in some sort of heated passionate dispute could be a way of defending one's honour perhaps. However I never really wanted to be a part of that. To do so I never participated in forum discussions and often didn't even bring up the topic of hockey except to neutral parties who would nod at my nonsensical points and move on. I just wanted to see my team succeed and be happy because of that. 
 
However as time went by I could understand this need for a rivalry. The Flames have not been particularly relevant these last few years. I always thought I'd be happy they were not contesting with us at the highest of levels so that the fan-hate could die down. Alas that was not so, their team looks to be in an irreparable mess because the organization is too stubborn to start over, clinging onto the hope of making it to the playoffs each year with a mediocre, almost qualified team. As if their very jobs hung on the balance of merely making the playoffs when no person in their right mind would consider them to be cup contenders at all. In that case what is the point of making the playoffs only to be knocked out immediately? Is it not better to revamp that team to be highly competitive each and every year, fighting it out almost as if to the death with other teams so they could launch onto the podium and be the best? 
 
So now, watching games between the Canucks and Flames is just another game these days. No longer is it a game you'd be revved up about, excited to see your hated enemies fall under your triumphant...skates. Because besides getting those two points, there is no joy in seeing them lose. They have been down there for far too long and at this point you only want to see them succeed in some way so the passion and stakes during the games could one day be higher. It's funny because I have no hatred for the Oilers who if not this year already, at some point in the future will have highly contested games with us. We will not be dominant forever.
 
But again, not the point of this rant. I understand the need of a hated rivalry but I do not believe that the Canucks and Bruins are a rivalry at all. We ran into one another in the finals and many, many nasty plays occurred from both sides. I want to be able to explain why one of my beloved favourite players may have did what he did and instead of expressing blind hatred at certain players on their teams because of why they may have done what they did, try to understand as well. In the end the only explanation is raw, unadulterated emotion. We all do pretty dumb and stupid things when our logic is overcome with great emotion. The riot afterwards is a pretty good indication of that. I too, after that final game, was overcome with emotion and at first was glad of the riot. Our fans and even I at the time, felt so entitled for a Cup. I could still remember the chant during the post-games where fans would pump their fists up demanding for the Cup. Even if we were two games up on the other team, we were not guaranteed the Cup and it wasn't the fans ultimately that could've brought the Cup to the city, it was the players.
 
I still think to this day our fans could be far more considerate. My own parents dismiss the play of our players after a single bad game. The first game of the season for example they lambasted the play of both our goaltenders just because of the score at the end. It was a single game...the very first, after a long lockout. Even without those excuses goaltenders do have bad days just like any other normal person. To believe that a player no longer has it in them to be utterly perfect every single day a colossal failure is foolish. In fact when our team and many others were stripped of first-class plane privileges and filed a complaint, many fans acted as if they were rich millionaires who could not comprehend the real hardships of life. A sort of "first-world problems" kind of thing but even further!
 
Their opinions just felt so, so, entitled. Yes they are making a lot of money and we are not. It is the dream for many people to become star athletes raking in the cash. But their jobs are by no means easy no matter what kind of salary they are taking in. Our team has a rigorous travelling schedule just because of where our city is located in relation to the rest of the teams and sleep is incredibly important to your performance the next day. Suddenly their usual sleep arrangements are shrunk in half and their legs can barely stretch out. These players, keep in mind, are all in the range of six feet, so large space is necessary to be comfortable at all. So now their seats in the plane are no longer comfortable, their own rest impacted and tomorrow their game underwhelming. The media and fans, excepting the best of the best, begin criticizing them to no end, to demand that they are traded, to claim they are overpaid right after they implied that players have it so easy because of their big fat paychecks.
 
And players are not made of hardened stone who have the ability to completely ignore criticism. Some are better than others at this, but no one is perfect. The constant pestering of the media, the trade rumours, the player becoming a scapegoat all poking at the back of their minds. They attempt to do more than they are capable of and perhaps fuck up even more spectacularly. I would never be able to become a person in life who would be so focused by so many millions of the world and expected to perform day-in and day-out consistently so no one is let down. Truly these athletes and not just in sport, but in rigorous e-sports and other competitions such as chess and the like, have my complete respect for their ability to hold their own. To become as strong as they are to do the things they do because they truly love it...for me, the perfect job would be in my own home or perhaps an office where the only person expecting you to be efficient is your boss, not the eyes of millions.
 
Tolerance. To tolerate a single person who honestly should not rile you up about anything anyway, but you do, to tolerate the eyes of many who loudly judge you, to tolerate every singe annoyance in every aspect of life...and as you continue to build tolerance, the further you can proceed. Sometimes that brings me up to another aspect of life I've been looking into lately, the difference and wonders of extroversion and introversion.
 
The more I think about it...I don't think I'm an introvert. Not at all. Oh sure all those personality tests are pretty firmly confident that I'm a rather introverted person but well, the definition of introversion is a lot deeper than simply being reserved. You can speak the same of extroversion, to think of that word of simply Pinkie obnoxiously poking her head into everything for the purpose of fun would be wrong as well.
 
Sometimes I wonder...and this could be completely awful, but it's a legitimate thought I've had, if introversion even exists. Yes I have several, several introverted friends and they may even be appalled that I bring up such a point. I've seen images and comics and discussions and such of what introversion is. I can understand how it works. There are some people in the world who would rather read a book in their own time alone than to have five friends constantly pulling them towards the next big social event. Well that to me is not introversion but rather what type of entertainment we prefer. Being immersed in your mind as you dip into the imagination of story as opposed to being immersed in smelly, nosy people...oh, forgive my bias, in a drunk frat party filled with stupid people? Some actually prefer the former!
 
Well to actually be serious of this discussion...sometimes I wonder if introversion is simply a lack of built-up tolerance. You just cannot handle people because you simply do not like them sometimes, so you rather be in your room on your computer or reading a book. I've heard from various people, and forgive me for never remembering these sources, that seeing someone's face and being able to communicate via body language is healthy for the growth of a human. We have evolved always having communicated face-to-face and suddenly we are in the era of technology and of the internet and now, we do not have to go through the awkward and painful process of actual speech! We can type on a computer! Something you could've said without thinking could be retracted by the essence of a backspace before you hit send, and your words are suddenly wiser with mere clicks! Now the people on the internet seem far more smarter than those in real life because the words they say are so much more intelligent!!!
 
And now I realize...we're all pretty stupid people, but with a screen on our side, we have a buffer to keep us from throwing out those initial utterly moronic remarks we may have made face-to-face. Of course there are still plenty of people who choose not to use the buffer this way but of the opposite, so that they can make others angry in petty amusement. Had the internet not been invented what would we have been like then? We'd still be encouraged by media and people alike to be more outgoing and more social or else we wouldn't climb the ladder that is life. There was no room to escape into back then to run away from all the fears of society because we had to see to them face-to-face, every single time.
 
Sometimes I wonder.
 
I've always hated labels anyway. Am I extroverted? Introverted? Am I straight? Gay? Bi? Asexual? Am I religious? Atheist? Agnostic? Am I a brony? Pegasister? Feminist? Nerd? Hipster? Geek? Gamer? Artist? Writer? Potential terrorist? All these words always get thrown back and forth everywhere I see and I just...I'm not a person who chooses labels, one who can clearly define that YES, I AM THIS and nothing, nothing else because they have such rigid definitions and people do not have time to think of say, a hipster as anymore than thick rimmed glasses and scarves in the summer. People don't have TIME To think of these labels beyond that, they have lives to tend to but I also do not believe I am these things because you say so or I am these thinks because a dictionary says so. I don't really care if you call me one of these things because it'd be silly to be offended since, well, I do like ponies so it's only reasonable to call me a brony but I certainly won't ever introduce myself as "Spotto, the perhaps straight maybe gay possibly bisexual perhaps asexual temptingly religious probably agnostic understandably atheist likely a brony more likely a pegasister implied to be a feminist stereo-typically a nerd annoyingly a hipster ridiculously geeky somewhat a gamer sometimes an artist a soul of a writer and everyone's a potential terrorist! That'd be overwhelming and far too attention grabbing!
 
You know what? I'd rather just be plain ol' Spotto and you can make your presumptions from that. When you hang out with me or spend time with me, when we converse or chat...I am Spotto. Those labels are your shortcuts but don't expect me to use them as well because honestly I don't know. And frankly I do not care, I am not invested in each of those labels enough to really, really label myself in one anyway. I might like someone out there but to me, what gender they are or what skin colour they have or what build they are do not matter. And I'm not going to like someone else who looks similar to them because I probably like them for their personality and how they're pretty compatible with me, since I know them and we are friends. And that is not to say I do not yearn for intimate relationships because well, honestly I do. It is not a thing to be ashamed of and even if media is riddled by sex far too often I can find my way to whatever I want to watch and read all on my own.
 
But well...introversion? It probably exists and I am being silly, but I must admit my understanding of it isn't as great as people might believe. Frankly I don't get it. My favourite character is Pinkie Pie, guys. My least is probably Twilight, so this introversion thing is lost in my ears. However I will still give introverted people space because that's not a very friendly or nice thing to do to just demand attention from people. They are who they are and I am who I am. 
 
And since I just HAD to mention ponies...PONIES! Throughout this I also wondered why the flying fuck I loved Pinkie Pie so much. Because all the people I know or heard of who DO like Pinkie Pie are these crazy happy types themselves, and there I go using shortcuts myself. Or they like Pinkie because she is funny or something, but I don't really like Pinkie because she's humorous. I don't really like Pinkie because she's cute. Those aspects of her are certainly fine aspects to love about her, but not the big reason for me. And for some reason I feel others might possibly judge me for loving Pinkie Pie so much because it's kind of shallow. Because Pinkie Pie is so simple a character and a child could cling and be a favourite to. She isn't DEEP AND ARTISTIC like Rarity man! I'm after all some kind of (unfortunately) an art major, so why not identify with Rarity and what she goes through? I'm a reserved type of person who does not go outside and interact with people much, so why don't I identify with Twilight and her love of reading? Why not love Fluttershy the most because I actually DO identify with Fluttershy?
 
Then throughout all this tolerance and introversion crap...and wondering why I disliked Too Many Pinkie Pies so much when that episode is a fine episode for Pinkie's character did I realize the sole, precise one reason why I love Pinkie so bloody much. Because she makes me happy? I guess that's part of it.
 
But let us go back to my name. I am Spotto. 
 
Spotto derives from the dog character, Spot, of a picture book and Zotto, a character tic of some redhead from Final Fantasy VII that a friend liked using so often. Spotto-zotto. Dog? 
 
I love dogs so much. I've always been a dog person. For some reason introverts are cat people and extroverts are dog people. But for the longest time I considered myself an introvert, so why am I a dog person!? Or perhaps that saying is not absolute!? Did I like dogs because they were cute? Well cats are just as cute if not more! Dogs are my favourite animals...over tigers and majestic wolves and other cool animals. The dog. 
 
Man's best friend.
 
It goes all the way back to everything I've ever liked. I guess underneath Spotto I'm just...that little girl, long ago, who wishes for a true friend. A happy one who will cheer you up as you come in the door from a really bad day. I never grew out of this I guess. It's a pretty childish thing to cling onto, this wish for friendship and perhaps why I love ponies so much. It's a shame I can pinpoint this so easily for myself because at some point I thought I was some deep complicated person when it was all very, very simple. I'm not a picky person in terms of ACTUAL taste when it comes to media or anything really. For example the longest time I never wanted to watch TTGL not because I believed it was bad but the complete opposite. I have liked MANY things of QUESTIONABLE quality so if I let EVERY piece of media in my life, I'd get so immersed into it, it isn't even funny! It's a really stupid way of choosing favourites I know, but inside these questionable pieces of quality I watched or read of or whatever, the characters I'd pick out would be the same, simple little thing I've always wanted since as long as I could remember.
 
A friend. Kazumi and Sayo are not major characters and do not get character development! But damn if I am not a sucker for strong friendships. Usually the character who WOULD be the most amazing friend ever is my favourite and the character I identify with, the second favourite. That's why Murasa and Nue were no longer my favourite as sad as it was. Because Ten Desires came out and my incredible headcanon that Nue was this prideful but lonely loser disappeared when she actually had old other friends...and her so called "connection" with Murasa was so weak in canon it wasn't funny. ANYTHING that happened could have broken it easily. But this is why I ended up loving Keine and Mokou because they ARE STRONGLY canonly friends for some reason or another! I yearn to know why but it's heartwarming already that they are! Touhou is not a series in which you search for such things because everyone is a bloody jackass! Even in older series, Hetalia lasted so long because of my RP with a friend but deep in my head and thanks to other roleplays I read, Korea was my favourite and Hong Kong whom I identified with. (Kind of hard not to what with my chinese ethnicity) But his fanon characterization was so beautifully done, it was wondrous. 
 
But wait! Pinkie and Fluttershy? What the fuck? They don't interact very often and like, 90% of the fandom would agree that Pinkie would overwhelm the fuck out of Fluttershy anyway. It's happened several times in canon! How to explain!?!?
 
Well, we go back to the dog. Pinkie is, of all of these "amazing friend characters whom are my favouritest of favourites" the most dog-like. Seriously. She's still obviously a character and pony but she is just...her PURPOSE IN LIFE IS TO MAKE OTHERS HAPPY! That's what a dog does! She eats so sloppily and neglect hits her HARD, like a dog! There are so many sad stories of people not paying attention to their pet dog but then when they pass on do they finally realize how much that dog, despite the lack of love they get, continue attempting to get you to approve of them and love them back! FRIEND IN DEED! Her motif is play! Pinkie Pie is the closest I will ever have to owning a dog. So why is Fluttershy there you ask!? Because why...why has Fluttershy never really shown to interact with many dogs? She is the ANIMAL pony is she not? I guess other animals need far more attention than dogs since dogs are understood by society already anyway, but if you think of Pinkie like this, and Fluttershy like that, it could work. Sometimes life isn't always concrete. Sometimes a pony, not necessarily Fluttershy, but like her, could use something like Pinkie, not necessarily Pinkie.
 
Oh how I yearn for Pinkie and Fluttershy friendshipping. It's why I'm so sad the show itself doesn't deal with duo-character episodes anymore. We could've not only had this, but other strange matchups that have lots of potential...like Pinkie and Rarity for hilarity. Or Fluttershy and Applejack with animals, or Rainbow Dash and Twilight because it's only been touched upon on the side with books and such...and maybe MORE of what we already seen! Rainbow Dash and Rarity? Rarity and Applejack? Rarity and ANYONE!? Where my Rarity episode at D:!? Countless countless matchups with infinite potential! My favourite fics are friendshipping and it's just...I miss season one man. Season 3 is great, but these types of episodes just don't happen anymore. It's always ONE character and CONFLICT or whatever. Friendships are ALWAYS evolving, just because two ponies have been friends forever does not mean there isn't some story you can string around it.
 
Of course this rant ended in ponies. Thank you for reading and this has been Spotto!
spotto: (Stage One.)
-there was once something here-

My words are just a bunch of overthought horsehockey.
Emotions are not always coherent
They are rarely logical
It's something that's difficult to pinpoint and therefore put into words


spotto: (koi)
Hello Dreamwidth, it's been a while.
 
And frankly, I am sad that it has been. I know exactly why I haven't been typing up stuff here lately. It is not because no one reads this because even if no one does (I know people do) that isn't the point of writing posts up here. I realize now why I haven't. In order to produce walls of text you need to actually have walls of text you want to write out. I did not. And I know why.
 
Lately, I have not been thinking. These past few months have not been all that productive really. And by "productive" I mean actually doing something and not being a mindless drone in front of the computer screen. I've actually felt closer to the real world over the internet yet I still spend a large amount of time here. 
 
Playing video games and going on Tumblr or Reddit isn't productive to me. These things do not allow me to think, just do. Whenever I am on Tumblr I mention a couple of things people actually don't care about as I have no followers who give a damn about anything I post and whenever I do post things there they largely feel pointless anyway. Tumblr drains my thought away. So often an article of interest pops up and I check the notes to see if any discussion popped up about it, but then all I see are thousands of reblogs with not a single person saying a thing. Tumblr isn't about discussion, I get it. It's about reblogging or liking things that you see on your dashboard that was interesting, but nothing more.
 
And that is not productive.
 
Reddit is a bit better about it I suppose. It feels like a more community-oriented Tumblr. The front page or the subreddits you've subscribed to are again, points of interest that pop up you can look at. This time they are accompanied by discussion, and that's great.
 
Unfortunately, thanks to the very efficient upvoting system...you have little opportunity to actually think. By the time you look at something, there's already 300 comments and the top voted comment is already everything you wanted to say. The response is everything they left out and mentioned. No need to think here, everyone thinks for you. And that is fine but it leaves you not really developing your own opinion, just agreeing with others and never exercising your brain on how it should or should not be. The purpose of this blog is to throw my own opinions on it, so I can figure things out on my own. I enjoy that.
 
The lack of all that has left me feeling like mush. Like I'm just sitting here, a waste of a human brain. Having a job you hate is not using your brain. Going to school for a specific subject too, is not using your brain, at least not way I want to use my brain. With the specific subject you're ultimately limiting yourself to one thought, and not being able to process everything you see in the world. If only there was a job for that. I suppose there used to be, a long time ago...all those "great thinkers" and the like who were heralded and such, although a majority of them were probably spewing blasphemy at the time and the population ousted them as crazy or outrageous. 
 
I've been playing World of Tanks and it strengthens your technical skill. However that game is possibly the most mindnumbing game in existence. You are thrown with not just one other or four other teammates like other games might be, but fourteen others. These strangers will change every game, every six or seven minutes as will your opponent. Playing public games constantly is never going to be consistent considering how random every match will end up being. I do not see myself improving just by playing these pub games over and over again. Not only that, but as you go up the tech tree you will likely switch tanks and ultimately switch playstyles. I played the T-34, a medium that had high RoF and low armour. I basically sped around going pew-pew-pew...its upgrade, the T-34-85, did not improve on the armour at all except the turret and it gets a massive gun instead with low RoF. You can't play it like a T-34, you have to drop everything you've learned on the T-34 and learn how to play a sniper. By the time you've learned how to play a sniper you can get the KV-13...which has a crappy gun, high frontal armour and is meant to brawl and flank. So now you have to forget about your sniper ways and try to adapt to this NEW playstyle, while playing in public games over and over again in unpredictable matches and unpredictable opponents and teammates.
 
The nature of this game however, is that I could improve by playing tank companies or creating a clan. Both options require real money. I can't even play with more than one other person without paying. (I could join a random tank company for free, but that would only be somewhat more consistent than pub matches) or joining a clan. There are clans that train you and such, and clanwars are filled with tactical advantages to improve you greatly. I just don't want to do either of these without Ed, but I don't think he's willing to do either so I'll either keep mind-numbingly playing pub matches hoping I improve while reading some tutorials online or something, or no longer enjoy it and have my brain become mush.
 
And you're probably wondering why I came here to discuss, why I am suddenly thinking now, which is great. Thinking allows me to daydream, something I've been doing so less of. Daydreaming seems useless to most people, but I think the contrary. Making up stories within your mind is highly enjoyable, like a movie you created all yourself just for you! And again, it means you use your brain rather than conforming with everyone else. Posting a random short message on Twitter or updating your status on Facebook does nothing. Upvoting a post and mentally agreeing does nothing. I rather disagree. I rather disagree and start typing up paragraph after paragraph of why I do. It allows you to use your brain in any way you wish to. That is why I'm disappointed in the outlook of the next generation. A few years back everyone had a blog where they can write what the hell they wanted even if no one gave a fuck about what they thought. Now, most people abandon these blogs and just flock to the Twitters and Facebooks and Tumblrs and Reddits. Where they no longer need to type gigantic paragraphs, but become lazy and let their brains melt into that goo. Why is it becoming socially acceptable to be too lazy to express your complete thoughts? Why do people require short little comics to express their views, or something witty and clever that though makes us chuckle, can't possibly envelop the entire thought? These shortened messages encourage misunderstandings. 
 
But I'm not asking for an answer, I already know. People do this because they have no time. The less time they have, the less time they can be engaged, and the less time they can be engaged, the shorter their attention spans become. It feeds itself into a downward spiral where their brains will ultimately adapt to a lifestyle filled with routine after routine, never thinking for themselves. Then the media of the world can take advantage of it, we just jump to one side without ever giving thought as to why we do. We then vote for some moron to lead our country and then the world continues on its own downward spiral into hell; the exact world I am witnessing.
 
Okay perhaps that is a stretch, but you know what I mean. P:
 
And to the actual reason as to why I am thinking, I read a scanlated fan light novel of Touhou the other day. It was two hundred pages. 
 
I know why people love to read. I know why reading is good for you because it allows you to think. Perhaps all those English classes where we analyzed the books we read were actually a useful experience. (Speaking of English, "an useful" sounds odd) Unfortunately I was never interested in those books or books at all. I was never a reading person, but somehow I still ended up enjoying writing and wanting to express my thoughts. I'm not sure how that came to be. The English subject is such an importance in schools. It's not just there to make sure you type in correct grammar and spelling (which, if the many teenagers typing on the internet count, doesn't seem to be happening anyway). (And I still dunno where to place the damn period whenever there's a sentence in parentheses at the end of one) But the purpose is to make a person think. So when they see a supposed "fact" they will question it, to make sure what they are told is really true, just like how Math ultimately teaches logic. 
 
Also I hate this entire rant. The points are there, but I haven't typed such long paragraphs in so long my English is downright abysmal. I'm not using any advanced vocabulary and there are simple sentences and awkward ones all over the place, so I apologize. @_@ It's hard to type atm, but at least my thoughts are written down.
 
Anyway the light novel was actually quite confusing. I understood the gist of the plot, but because it was a translation from a work written in Japanese, not every sentence could be translated completely loyally, and that led to some awkward paragraphs. It also didn't help that Touhou characters, at least when portrayed close to canon, act incredibly cryptically and mysteriously. All those damn Yuyukos and Yukaris and Kanakos never telling you what the hell is going on, just dropping hints or being all ~MYSTERIOUS~ just makes everything even more confusing. Despite that, I quite enjoyed the story. The novel lacked every single one of my favourite characters as well. I feel like Youmu who is never told anything despite owning a sword that can supposedly cut confusion.
 
Okay that was a lie. It had Renko, who was pretty much the protagonist...I think. And she's one of my favourites! Like, number 18 or something! Yes.
 
This post will obviously spoil everything. I found the ending to one that could be subjected to great speculation. The story is basically Renko and Mary finding the crack into Gensokyo, except to Mary there seems to be way too many cracks than normal. Only Renko actually ends up in Gensokyo, and she is almost moiderized by Rumia when Marisa saves her. Marisa was just with Reimu trying to figure out why Gensokyo was going out of whack. (all the seasons were happening at once for example) Whenever an incident happens Reimu, being the shrine maiden, acts, but she is not. This means whatever is happening cannot be prevented and we learn why. Gensokyo is ending. There is a lot of philosophy in this story. What begins must end. Yukari loves Gensokyo and though knows the end of Gensokyo cannot be prevented, she tries to stop it anyway. That's how much she loves it.
 
We soon learn the story goes with the popular theory where Mary IS Yukari, and in fact, the whole of Gensokyo is revealed to actually be someone's dream. All dreams must end at some point. The residents of Gensokyo after some large amount of drama eventually decide they will do whatever they want, whether it be to attempt to stop the dream from ending or just having a huge party to end it all out, they go do whatever they want. The twist is that the world outside of Gensokyo is also a dream, and Renko's entire life was but a dream. She has been asleep for a long time, and her bestest best friend, Mary, entered the dream she had to try to prevent Renko from dying, but by doing so and trying to maintain the dream as Yukari, ended up destroying herself. So Mary ends up killing herself to save Renko, and as the dream ends and Gensokyo crumbles, Renko wakes up. 
 
Which is all terribly depressing until Renko is like "FUCK THAT!" runs up the mountain where they entered Gensokyo in the dream, finds the abandoned Hakurei Shrine, finds a box with the shrine maiden outfit in it and apparently becomes the shrine maiden and starts Gensokyo!?!?
 
Like I said, the ending is very speculative. For one thing, Mary herself might only exist in the dream. In that case, Renko may have forgotten (or not cared) about her real life and just went insane trying to stay attached to the dream. (Of course a lot of people prefer the interpretation that Renko refuses to take what the world gives her and does what she wants, which is the ultimate message of the story) But this ending leads to another question we ask about not just the story, but Touhou itself.
 
There are a lot of discussions in storytelling itself, especially for example, to Disney.
 
WHERE ARE THE PARENTS!?
 
And we are told. They are dead, missing, abandoned or whatever.
 
However in Touhou with very few exceptions there are ZERO parents. The only existence of family is a few siblings here and there. We are also never told where the hell they are.
 
And I am actually okay with that.
 
Okay, I'll explain here. A majority of the characters in Touhou are youkai. Youkai are crazy long-living and have various origins. So obviously it would be an abnormality if they DID have existing family members still alive. The few humans though, are the ones we must question. Youmu for example is half-ghost, which leads to many Touhou fans asking "HOW DOES THAT EVEN!?" And she has a grandfather who disappeared, who served Yuyuko before Youmu. That of course leads to many other questions, like who the hell her parents were if she has a grandfather and why they are they never even mentioned. Of course since we don't even know how half-ghosts can possibly exist, we'll just move onto some other humans.
 
What we do know about Reimu is she is a shrine maiden and is the latest in the line of shrine maidens for the Hakurei Shrine. That means her predecessor, likely a parent did exist and function for Gensokyo at some point, and since Reimu's job is to be the shrine maiden now, her parent isn't necessary anymore. We can safely assume they either died or retired and left, not wanting to hang around the shrine anymore for whatever reason. In certain fanworks a "Hakurei Miko", Reimu's fan-mom sometimes shows up to make sure Reimu isn't being stupid. She tends to show up in the more outrageous works.
 
Marisa's father is mentioned in the story...somewhere. Granted I don't look into the official manga as much as I should. (For some reason I can read a 200 page fan light novel but only stare at some of the manga, I dunno why) Apparently her father left, abandoned her or whatever. He does not have a name, only known by "Mr. Kirisame". But we DO at least know where one of Marisa's parents went.
 
However the most mysterious of them all is probably Sanae. Well Sakuya's probably even more mysterious but because she's possibly not even human kind of rules her out. Sanae used to live in the real world. In the real world, you kind of require some parents to care for you as children. There aren't obvious signs of supernatural beings who could do whatever the hell they want, even as young'uns. But somehow Sanae was able to come into Gensokyo as either a teenager or late teenager (perhaps even adult) with no intention of returning to her more mundane life. She came with her goddesses, acting as their wind priestess. If she lived in the real world, she'd have gone to school and therefore required a parent or someone to guard over her. Some people could say maybe the goddesses were her guardians, but because they were losing so much faith no one could even see them besides Sanae, thus why they moved, so that cannot possibly be. Perhaps, just like Reimu, Sanae's predecessor as the wind priestess was her parent? And they were done or died or whatever? And they agreed for the sake of their god's survival that she and her goddesses should move to Gensokyo? I suppose that might make the most sense, but there is absolutely nothing there to suggest such or not, so we can only speculate.
 
But because Touhou is such where family is not an element in its universe and story, where a majority of characters are youkai so we do not expect family, we don't really even expect the humans to have any either. Besides, the real families are all the characters that do live with one another. Scarlet Devil Mansion, Hakugyokurou, Mayohiga, Eientei, Moriya Shrine, Chireiden, Myouren Temple... I don't think the TD characters live with each other. >: And they, throughout their story and through various fanworks, demonstrate their love of each other and their willingness to work together, that the family does not need to be blood-related to be family. Good enough for me!
 
But...it is not good enough in the context of this light novel. Renko and Maribel live in the "real" world, which in this story was also part of the dream. However, when Renko wakes up, she is in a hospital room. No one else is there, no family, no nurses or doctors. She decides to run off to a mountain and make her dream a reality (making dreams reality is another message, basically "Do what you want" and "Dreams" were the message) And we can only presume since we have no other information provided, that she wakes up in...our world, I guess. The REAL real world. Because the dream real world is a place where children do not smile and all discoveries of physics already happened, according to the mangas and music CD stories by ZUN. So we can assume that Renko probably had a family of some sort, and that doctors and nurses probably existed in a hospital. They probably went "WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR COMA PATIENT!?" and can never find Renko because she went to some obscure deserted location. (My suspension of disbelief still works because this entire story and Touhou itself lacks all common sense anyway)
 
So the doctors will be confused and any family she might have will wonder and worry like hell. Not only that, if Mary DID exist in the real real world, then her OWN family will wonder why THEIR DAUGHTER FELL ASLEEP AND NEVER WOKE UP. And because Renko ran away to make her dream a reality, BOTH FAMILIES LOST THEIR DAUGHTERS.
 
So I think, in that context, the ending (after the whole Renko crying, because this ending happened after the credits and such, like a stinger...perhaps it is not canon in terms of the story?) isn't very good, but we don't know for sure. Even what ending happened is difficult to determine, we can only speculate. And maybe the both of them, or just Renko's if Mary never actually existed, families are all dead. And the only ones confused will be the doctors, as their little coma patient was spirited away...twice. Mayhaps Renko is actually ZUN! And the Touhou games are his efforts to make his dream a REALITY!? OO: !?!? O:!? I:!? ?
 
...speaking of dead or disappeared families or loved ones, I watched the Dark Knight Rises the other day. Most people are raving about it and sending death threats to people who criticize it, which is all old news but I thought to mention. I will also be one of those contraries...I only thought the movie was okay and I'm not entirely sure why. I found Batman Begins and The Dark Knight quite amazing, so how come this last one didn't do it for me? Again, I can only speculate.
 
The movie itself was quite long, there were lines from Bane I couldn't make out. Granted, there are lines from ME I can't make out when I hear myself because I have a thick accent and a stupid voice. The thing is, in Batman Begins...we watched it for Batman. It was the first movie of a brand new Batman remake, we of course watch it for Batman and see what this new director does with his character. We liked Batman in this movie.
 
In the Dark Knight, it is not Batman we care about as much so more (and people already hate his fake gruffy voice, so) but the Joker. The Joker was what made this movie, he was the focal point this time and he was so brilliant the movie is considered by many the best of all time. No wonder there are aggressive fanboys. They want this image they saw of the movie to be untouched that perhaps, some people when they watched the final movie made it seem better than it is? I don't want to make myself sound like my opinion is more valid than theirs or anything like that, especially since I'm not a fan of the comic books or anything. (Comic Book fan or not, the movie has nothing to do with them, it's just the director's story using the characters of Batman so whether or not we've read any of the Batman comic books or watched other movies or animations we'd still understand)
 
It's just that, after all those movies of the week I've been viewing. I've seen a good share of movies now and I actually don't like a lot of them. And a few days before I saw the Dark Knight Rises, I watched "Leafie, a Hen into the Wild" which I thought was a grand masterpiece. So perhaps those factors changed my views, perceptions and expectations of movies, especially one like Dark Knight Rises. 
 
But for actual flaws of TDKR, I'll have to paraphrase what some other critics have said. The movie ultimately feels like it doesn't have a focal point. It isn't all BATMAN like Batman Begins or all JOKER like The Dark Knight. You introduce several important characters like Catwoman and Bane, but because the movie is the finale, it's GOT to focus on Batman himself. We need to resolve his story after all! But maybe there wasn't enough time for the story Nolan wanted to tell. I did not care when Bruce Wayne found a way out of the pit. It didn't feel like it was that much of a feat. The movie did not focus on him enough for me to care. And since TDKR felt more like a sequel to Batman Begins than The Dark Knight, I had to look deep into my memory on what the hell happened in Batman Begins because that was a long fucking time ago. 
 
Yeah, I didn't see the twist coming like so many of the comic book fans did. But the ending was...people all called this movie super dark, but that ending isn't dark. If Batman died, that would be dark. It felt like a Disney ending. Of course he probably DESERVED that ending, but if people are going to call the movie dark the entire movie should be dark. @_@ That's not really a criticism of the movie itself, just to people saying IT WAS REALLY DARK OMG. That pit is totally dark what with everyone encouraging you to rise, Batman! I found The Dark Knight to be far darker. 
 
And if a movie has Morgan Freeman it should have more Morgan Freeman than that! 
 
But I don't hate the movie. It wasn't bad, but for a finale of a trilogy with such insane hype, it's impossible to fulfill those high expectations. Even so apparently a majority enjoyed it, so good enough for them.
 
I'm also curious of what Robin fans think of Robin (like Akira) because rather than being a canon Robin he's like...all the Robins combined, with the real name of Robin. But then he becomes Batman. I think that's acceptable because people switch superhero identities all the time in those silly comics, but I'm just wondering.
 
There is also apparently a huge controversy over the call that led to the penalty kick in the Canada - USA semifinals. The penalty kick led to USA tying the game and ultimately winning in the last few seconds of extra time's extra time. I don't know enough about soccer to form an opinion about this incident itself, but I do hate the fact that you can get suspended for criticizing the referees, which a few Canadian players (including our best, Sinclair) did. So many times in hockey I've seen people complain about the referees and when you watch, sometimes it is blatant enough that complaints should be justified. And frankly, shouldn't criticism be accepted so referees can be improved? Granted oftentimes the complaints aren't exactly CONSTRUCTIVE criticism but silencing all those who complain without giving a single explanation as to why what happened happened feels like corruption. It really does! It's like if a corrupted government starts seeing someone rebel because what they were told was wrong, so in response they shoot them. I hate that people can be suspended by such comments, or fined heavily. The Burrows incident with the Auger referee for example. Isn't it mighty suspicious a referee pulled player to the side pre-game? Why not investigate? Why would a referee ever do that, and why don't they ever take the word of the player? Sure, Burrows does not have the greatest of reputations, but why the hell would he lie? What would he gain from making his up? Nothing!
 
In the wise wise words of Malcolm in the Middle, "Life is unfair."
 
So yeah...I wonder if this wall-of-text made up for the inactivity here lately? I sure did have many thoughts this morning. TO LUNCH! And to recharge. This is Spotto, signing off.
spotto: (@_@)
Man this week has been odd.

During the weekend I ingested quite a lot of tea, simply because I was tired of pretty much all the drinks in my vicinity and even beyond. Beer is not exactly a drink you take in often, and even though I do occasionally have a glass, it really does taste like bitter piss. Juice is always clogged with sugar and you always feel a little jumpy when drinking far too much of it. Water is tasteless and milk isn't a flexible drink at all, considering I contract stomachaches if I consume it at certain parts of the day. Everything I've ever drank that I've loved before no longer has the same charm as my memory seems to indicate...so I just tried some tea...and even that didn't quite hit it up.

Anyway as a result I felt like I was drunk...somehow. I'm not sure, since I've never really been drunk, maybe a tad tipsy that one time but I never really indulge in alcohol. The resulting caffeine (and I have absolutely no idea how much caffeine is even in the tea, or how much of the leaves I'm even supposed to throw in) made me incredibly fidgety. I could not go one second without moving a limb or darting my eyes and for some reason my morale crashed down into the gutters. I felt like an alcoholic at the bar, drowning my sorrows and complaining to a bartender in the number of first-world problems clogging up my life. And at that point I didn't even know why I didn't have the restraint as per usual to flood the waters of the internet of my unhappiness, as I usually do. I always think "well, my problems aren't even problems...so many other people have much bigger ones and mine are just inconveniences in comparison. It's pretty pathetic to get worked up over nothing."

Yet, due to this lovely drug called caffeine, I had no qualms about spilling out what I thought was wrong with my life and how much, in my eyes, it sucked even though in reality I'm a very lucky person with awesome awesome friends and an incredibly supportive and helpful family. And I'm glad that I did. I learned through that experience that a lot of my friends are in similar situations...there's probably a reason we all gravitated towards each other in the first place other than we enjoy the same game or anything like that. That I am not alone in how I feel and the whole misconception about males not really being as emotional or sappy, I suppose, as females is mostly a misconception. It's okay to let out your feelings to a guy friend and not just a girl friend. If they're your friend they aren't going to look down upon you or judge you. My trust was not in the right place before, and I jumped over this most recent hurdle thanks to caffeine.

Even so, thanks to these friends and this lovely fandom I am currently enjoying...I've felt like a better person today than a year ago. Today I went to obtain a few ponies from McDonald's...a year ago I couldn't even imagine myself calling a bunch of restaurants asking about toys. I always thought it was so embarrassing and stupid to be doing that, to ask a fast-food joint about their cheap little plastic toys when said toys are not even for a child. In fact, seeing as I am female it would probably be a bit easier and less taxing to walk up to a cashier and request ponies, or call several stores to know if there are ponies there. I am quite the shy and intense terrified individual. It takes up a lot of courage to even post public messages on an image board, even as an anonymous!

And when I obtained those toys? I immediately left the restaurant as fast as possible, but I could not keep in my excitement and threw my arms up in the air the moment I left the door. I unfortunately forgot to zip up my wallet and coins went flying all over the place, so I had to pick them all up, and as embarrassing as it felt at that moment. I easily forgot about that qualm and remained perfectly happy mere moments later. If this was me of the year ago, I'd still be worrying about all those staring strangers wondering why that girl was so incredibly happy and stupidly clumsy. Now? Now I do not care.

Finally, people are all different and they react and take in the sights they see in all sorts of different ways. Just because one friend found an incredible movie or book absolutely life-changing doesn't mean it would do the same to you, even if you too enjoyed the book. Looking for happiness where someone else found some is incredibly counter-productive, because seeking happiness does not always lead to happiness...the definition and how happiness is obtained is not as simple as seeing something that makes someone else smile, and doing the same. People are different and have different views and opinions about everything, even though they may not agree and perhaps often if not always disagree, the difference is what makes humanity special. Although some days I end up questioning why certain groups of people make certain decisions or how they came up with their illogical or nonsensical opinion, that doesn't mean all of humanity is terrible and life is a pointless shallow pursuit.

I was going to make this post a pony one, just listing a few videos and moments from the latest episode I especially enjoyed...so I'll just tack it on.
ADORABLE



Anyone notice that all the manual labour in this was being done by earth ponies? DISCRIMINATION I SAY!


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Man my favourite ponies have been abusing each other quite a lot lately...

To end this post, perhaps my first attempt at one of these letter things at the risk of sounding like a sappy and cheesy long-gone pony fan, if only because I truly did learn a friendship lesson:

Dear Princess Celestia,

A few days ago I learned that keeping your feelings or problems huddled up inside is not the best way to go about in life, and friends are there to lend a helping hand or a listening ear. Never feel that you may be a bother or your problems too miniscule to be heard, a true friend would never hesitate to help.

Your faithful student, Spotto

spotto: (Q_Q)
So ranting about the current Derpy situation would be rather pointless as everyone and their grandma has already discussed it. Not only that, but AKR already issued a pretty in-depth statement about what exactly happened. When I first heard the news I was a bit upset of course, as any fan probably would be, but I wasn't all that invested into the character of Derpy herself. I mean, the fact that she was named and had a voice and everything was a huge thing for the fanbase itself, but otherwise The Last Roundup being my favourite episode ever and possibly forever had nothing to do with Derpy; if she never appeared it'd still be my favourite episode ever.

Nonetheless, my biggest beef with the change was the removal of her name. The statement Amy Keating Rogers released explained why it happened, and while the term "derp" has been used to describe retardation before, I believe it's a wrongful use of the term. I'm pretty sure "derp" was popularized from South Park (and first used in the creators' film, Baseketball), and certainly not as a made-up word to describe the mentally-disabled.  Timmy, the kid in the wheelchair who could only speak his name was, as far as I remember, never addressed with the word "derp" before. No, derp was something like Homer Simpson yelling D'oh! after doing anything particularly dumb or making a mistake. If I started typing something out, describing something to my friends but accidentally using a different name for some reason, I'd probably correct myself and say 'derp' afterwards, acknowledging my silly mistake and moving on. It did not mean retarded. According to KYM, derp was eventually associated with the crossing of eyes, calling it a "derp" face...and well, due to the animation error on Derpy...her name was natural.

The only reason derp has ever been associated with anything related to being a "retard" is that fact that "retard" has been used erroneously and irresponsibly itself. I too am guilty of using it improperly, using the word in place of other words like dumb or ridiculous. And frankly if people actually thought about what they were saying, using the term "retarded" to describe such things itself is pretty offensive, so this really just carried over and all the misuse of words is strangling and killing the ones we use today. A word we might think is innocent could be a horrible slur or insult in five years, and perhaps in an even shorter duration of time due to the rapidly-evolving nature of the internet. I mean you can always argue on how language is pretty much dying this generation due to chatspeak thanks to texting and such, but it's gone beyond that now. People actually have full-touchscreen keyboards to actually type everything out and large enough tablets that their pudgy fingers could easily tap the letters in without needing to take shortcuts. Even then we still have older style phones without that luxury, and smartphones with screens too small to consistently type in an efficient manner with those tiny, tiny keyboards.

Even without this excuse there are still generations of people, even adults well into their 30's and 40's who despite having the often-overlooked advantage of a full QWERTY keyboard insist on typing their words with shortcuts and basically sounding like eleven-year-old children who cannot spell. This has been going on for a while anyway, and is pretty common knowledge in terms of how language has evolved. As much as I don't want to judge a person in how they type, it's kind of hard not to. It feels like they do not respect the person they are talking to enough to put effort into typing words with all the letters they have. I guess in their shoes it would be pretty anal to have a problem with that, but I really wish people would just start typing properly, even if it is on the internet. I guess in certain situations with close friends and such it isn't too much of a bother, but the more lenient we are to this, or the more exceptions we make the less incentive there is to actually bother to spell in the first place.

So that merely just returns to the usage of the word derp and how it has evolved thanks to negative influence and how we associated some words with others. I find it tragic in a linguist kind of way, but that's just how it has to be. I wish we could use words already seen as inappropriate and actually use them with their original definitions, but it's too late for these words now. Faggot used to mean a bundle of sticks...wouldn't it have been nice to be able to describe "a bundle of sticks" with just one word? (I do recall an episode of the Simpsons where they used the entire word, uncensored on air while actually describing a bundle of sticks. It was pretty awesome!) Sadly the once-innocent word became one of taboo and people can never use it, else offending pretty much most of the world, while others will continue using the word disrespectfully, and not because they're dumb ignorant idiots who should know better. (I mean, that's probable) After all, I am a person who swears with the fire of a thousand suns especially when angry, and while my meaning behind the words isn't as nasty as they are meant to be, it's just something that comes out. People will be offended and apologizes must be handed out in short order, ending with tainted reputations. People just happen to be very judgemental, so as much as I'd like society to not banish the usage of certain words simply because someone corrupted the word to be so distasteful, it's just not possible in this world today.

And due to the change of Derpy's name, or rather the removal of it...well, that certainly is a giant step on the path of turning the word into a horrible one in the future. I liked Derpy's name, it was different. Ditzy just doesn't seem as modern or as unique and Derpy was the perfect shoutout to MLP's periphery demographic. But unfortunately due to everyone's improper and insightful wording...it's probably going to be on the path to its own destruction. Nonetheless I will always think of her as Derpy Hooves, not Ditzy Doo or whatever name that may be used. (I do like "Dreamy" from the Ask Pinkie Pie Solutions askblog) But I guess on a personal level it isn't too big of a deal for me, I just hope in the future such an incident won't happen again, and the writers or other creator's won't be too influenced by the, excuse my language, shitstorm that resulted from this. P:

Well that's just my little rant of the day, carry on with your exciting and highly entertaining wondrous lives.
spotto: (NUUUUUUUUUUEN~)
So huge, huge, HUGE update on my Sims blog today. All the cast pages are done and two posts! One is an enormous picspam and the other just minor details about the game itself. I also added something in the "THE HELL IS THIS!?" page for anyone who cares. :D 

----

As for the actual post? Welp, it's that time again. The time to rant about gender roles. Now I'm not a feminist...or at least, I don't think I am. I'm all for rights for women and such, but I've never been a person who liked using concrete terms to describe a person, including myself. I'll use them if I have to, or if the situation is far too odd without it, but I figure in my own terms like a personal blog and such, I don't have to use it. For example, if you immediately held down CTRL + F and searched for "Brony" you will find one result, the one on this post. P: I don't use the term at all because I simply don't like such terms. Their definitions can change or be different depending on someone's opinions. An ignorant person might imagine a feminist as someone who has double standards and only wants "rights" or in their minds, "privileges" over the male sex which would be very wrong.

So this post isn't the usual "females in this fandom seem one-dimensional!" kind of jargon. Rather I'm going to discuss my friends or why I believe I have far more male friends than female. I don't think it's a coincidence. I'm pretty sure most group of friends tend to be populated by a single sex, possibly one member of the other but otherwise it's cliques of guys and cliques of girls. Obviously I'm not the best person to use an example for this, considering my track record of friends...but I can at least explain how I see it from my experience! 

First off I've noticed a majority of my female friends (all of them) into MLP like the more feminine of the characters. This is obviously not surprising, being female and enjoying more feminine characters. After all, you generally like who you identify with the most and I don't have any jock friends who could like AJ or RD. I bet that's why Twilight is so popular because the majority of the periphery demographic happen to be nerds. I'm probably oversimplifying everything here, but for the sake of the rant let's continue. On the other hand, that doesn't mean every female's favourite character will be Rarity and granted there are tons of reasons to like Rarity. She does get the most quality of episodes, has a splendid voice actress, and her character is a great subversion of the shallow fashion-obsessed female seen far too much in the media. What is not to like?

...maybe I'm whining a bit here, but whenever my favourite character comes into play I have yet to find a fan who enjoys her character at least as half as much as I do, that being Pinkie Pie. Of course I don't have too many friends into MLP and most of them who do aren't major fans like I, but I know Pinkie is a pretty popular character. Is she only popular with the more immature viewers, of children or those who enjoy her humour so much that they prefer her over characters with "depth" like Rarity? Am I immature for liking her? Well, shoehorning myself or anyone else into a single category is unfair, but time and time again I keep finding ways to slot myself into a minority. Trying to find a way to share interests with existing friends is hard when your opinions of said interest are always different. The greatest thing I hate is being so enthusiastic for something only to be responded with disinterest. It's like going up to your best friend on the streets with the most tricked out car you've ever seen and their response? "Eh, I've seen better".

Well thank you for deflating all of my enthusiasm. You can discard this popped balloon into the trash now.

It isn't their fault. Changing opinions simply isn't an option, or at least isn't easy and a lot of people have gone through their lives developing their own viewpoints that it's unreasonable to always expect them to be amazed at the same things you are. Still, that feeling of sharing girly squeals over the same thing is a feeling that is hard to replace. I'm probably as aloof towards other people's interests similar to how they act to me, but it can't hurt to want, can it? The problem with thinking that I'm in the minority so much, even when I share the favourite character so many others have, is that somehow I'm still in the minority. I think I need new friends, ones with similar interests to add to my current ones. But that is a difficult feat indeed, to find new friends..so used to the current ones I have now. "I love this movie!" "That movie was okay." "This song is brilliant!" "I hate that genre." "This episode was fucking amazing!" "Low-tier episode for me." "PONIES!" "You're a freak." "That was an awesome restaurant!" "Seafood is evil." "SHE WEARS SHORTS!" "Who gives a damn about such a forgettable one-time boss?"

My so-called rant about gender-issues was just a poor disguised rant about...well, cynicism I guess. (I don't really have strong feelings about gender issues anyway, unfortunately... I think I should?) Maybe that's why I enjoy such happy characters...because they're so rare in real life? People are always so negative, cynical, pessimistic...and I want to feel joy, but my joy is always sucked away. I need a friend who also revels in joy. I've assigned so many pony names to people in Ventrilo, to actual people in real life, but I've never assigned anyone Pinkie Pie. No one is happy enough. The world sucks and is doomed. There's no point because humanity is stupid and a lost cause...why be happy when there is no reason to? Why be negative when it just makes everything worse?

I don't know. Perhaps my standards of everything is too low, perhaps I am seen as naive and innocent by many people that I don't understand how terrible the world can be and so haven't conformed to that cynical, depressed personality everyone else has. Maybe I'm in denial?

Smile, Smile, Smile, you better be in episode 18.
spotto: (@_@)
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This gigantic pony post has nothing to do with Lyra.

Holy GIGANTIC Mare-Do-Well! )

spotto: (Sims - Awesome :D)
So a while ago I was up at 3am doing homework, and then was too tired to continue so I went to bed. The next day, despite three hours of sleep, I had finished everything for the first class but did nothing for the presentation in the second class. Then late into the first class I prepared slightly then used lunch to finish while eating. Well, this presentation was given two weeks to prepare, I prepared for half-an-hour and apparently I got a good mark.

You know, in an ideal world people shouldn't be able to do that. Where everything is fair and someone who has worked lots on something gets the same mark as someone else, but in reality this situation happens quite often. This ability though is not always good. I think I'd rather be a person with great work ethic than having these things handed to me, granted if I actually prepared in advance I'd probably be less stressed out and have more sleep, so it's not all unfair and such.

But, lots of people procrastinate don't they? Moreso than me, and some people are probably better at this whole "WING THE PRESENTATION" or "WING THE TEST" thing than me, but any Arts exams I can usually wing, while anything in the sciences I'd probably require that work ethic to go anywhere. This is why despite how boring and uninteresting I find mathematics or physics may be, I do admire them. They're good people. They save lives as doctors and entertain us as game designers. These days we need more of these people, with so many people being put off by such "supposedly" difficult subjects...

The funny thing was, I once had the stereotypical asian intelligence symbiote. You know, the one that means people of this ethnicity are good at math? Yeah, I was once good at math. I liked math and I was a very logical person....I wonder what happened.
spotto: (Sims - Dean :D)
I think I should write a post about a few of my friends. Well, certain friends, not all of em, or it'd be a bit long since I like to write up walls of text, but I do have some pretty awesome friends I'd like to talk about. This post will probably be sappy, so...

SAPPY WARNING! Nevermind, false alarm. 8D;

Before you read on...

The reason why I buy hamsters in pairs is because it always seems lonely to just have one, yet the loneliest, saddest part is not having one hamster, it is when you buy two and one passes away. The hamster that is left has just spent its entire life with others, never alone, always with another and suddenly it is alone. You would always hear the occasional squeak from squabbles or watch the two try to steal food away from another, but it is never more heartwenching than to hear constant silence.

Poor Iggy.

This rant did not go as planned O: )

dgggsrt

Sep. 5th, 2010 02:02 am
spotto: (Chocobo Paparazzi)
MY GOD.

I just got home from the amusement park, called "Playland" here. Went to the fair too, but Playland was the main attraction obviously. Since I just recently went there and rode on practically every scary ride (except the ones you need to pay extra, we are cheap and those FREAK ME OUT EVEN MORE...)

I figure to give the day a ranking...and well, summarize the day in this blog post obviously.

First I absolutely goddamn hate the food there, I'm sure others will enjoy it but my stomach doesn't seem to like fried butter or fried mars bars or fried batter or fried sugary doughnuts. I think the fact that I don't eat a lot of pure fat whatsoever made my stomach not used to it so I get nauseated whenever I eat anything remotely fat, which is actually good because that will discourage me from eating fast food, but when you go to a place that ONLY has fast food that really kills the stomach.

We ate Dim Sum first. which was pretty good. After that we got the day pass, a stamp to indicate we can ride ANYTHING we want for the entire day, and our very first ride was a ride I NEVER RODE ON BEFORE...called "Hell's Gate".

Sound scary already? I was actually in a way disappointed. My best friend who is terrified of roller coasters and won't ride on them with me went on Hell's Gate before, and told me about it. I had at that point completely forgotten what she told me though, but I knew water was supposed to spray into you as you're flipped upside down constantly like a whiplash-ly swing. WE NEVER GOT WET. So in that sense I was disappointed, it was Summer--not particularly hot though, but I wanted to get wet and that didn't happen.

Anyway the ride was TERRIFYING. When you watch it happen it looks tame, BUT BEING FLIPPED AROUND LIKE THAT IS ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING! I also smashed my neck when we got super-flipped super-fast and I really dislike the ride not only because it was TERRIFYING but it gave me a booboo. :C It also made the next ride a lot worse.

Afterwards I felt somewhat dizzy, but decided to go on one of my favourite rides: the Musical Express. This ride is not that scary, hell it's not scary at all but I love the adrenaline you get from the UTTER SPEED. It's this crazy insane fast ride that whips you through in a circle with music, the faster the music the faster the ride. Sadly the music is usually mainstream so it never fits my tastes but I can usually forgive that because the ride is AWESOME. (I went on it with Akira before! I think she crushed me, or I crushed her. I forget.)

Unfortunately I felt rather dizzy afterwards, NEVER did before--we theorized that I got dizzy BECAUSE of Hell's Gate before. So after resting for a few minutes we headed to the CORKSCREW, personally one of my favourite rides. I was actually petrified before going on because I hadn't been to the park for....I forget when, either last year or the year before, whenever Akira came, but I had at that point forgotten what the rollercoaster was LIKE, so I was in great fear. Afterwards though I found it was not that scary at all, which was why it WAS one of my favourite rides...because I am a chicken. >_> But it has fun loop-de-loops and such and such.

Then we headed to my other other favourite ride, the Plume...or Flume. I think it was called Flume I forget. It's a log ride and after being disappointed from Hell's Gate I was really hoping to get wet this time! Flume had the LONGEST LINES EVER, and not only were they long, they were SLOW...since each log can only take up to five people and sometimes it could have four or even three people each depending on who came with who to the ride. Sadly when we FINALLY got to the ride itself we were in the back of the log, and everyone in our logs were kids..that means when the log smashes into the water there will be less weight to cause more of the splashy- and thus less of the wetty. I barely got soaked. So disappointed :C

Also you know those pictures they take of you when you go down the STEEPEST fall of some of the rides, I MAKE HORRIBLE PICTURES. In this one my head was behind my bro's, and the rest of the other pictures my head is down or I'm closing my eyes and cringing because GAH IT IS SCARY WHY AM I DOING THIS!?!!?!?

Speaking of which we went on the Wooden Roller Coaster next, also known as simply "Coaster". It is actually one of the top-rated wooden roller coasters in the world according to various sites, that despite how it looks and it's less-than amazing drop-height, the fact that there are lots of "laterals" and "ejector airtime" gives it its great rating. In other words (ESPECIALLY IF YOU SIT IN THE FRONT) as you almost-free-fall during the first drop, the drop is SO FAST AND STEEP that it forces your body TO STAND UP in the seat FROM THE MOMENTUM. Coaster has BARELY ANYTHING keeping you from falling off, basically the single bar in front of you, barely anything AROUND you--a completely wide-open front, and it is just absolutely, absolutely SCARY.

Also you get knocked side-to-side, front-to-back, up-and- down CONSTANTLY, so much that I have three bruises on my right knee ALONE. Granted I should've wore jeans or something, not shorts. Yeah well I know lots of thrill-seekers love this sort of thing I personally didn't enjoy it because it was scary and Spotto doesn't like scary rides. Why did I ride it then? My bro wanted to, and the first time I rode it with a friend of mine (MY FIRST TIME WAS AT THE VERY FRONT TOO DDD:) she forced me to, so yeah...

Oh and Coaster also had pretty long lines, but the line moved quite fast unlike Flume...DESPITE THAT WE WENT ON THE FLUME AGAIN! I really wanted to get wet. Luckily this time we got to seat in the front, this time I sat at the very front so in the pictures my head wouldn't be hidden behind my bro's, lol. I DID get drenched, but only my bottom half, the splash was not large enough to wet my face or hair. This ride did soak us up quite a bit when Akira and her friend were with us, lol.

We decided to take a break after this, and we walked past a LITTLE DONUTS shop, which I always buy whenever I'm at fairs...unfortunately this time I bought a bag too many and started feeling really nauseous so we spent the next few hours waiting in line to see the PRIZE HOUSE WOO! and then sitting in a coliseum (Home of the Vancouver Giants!) for half an hour while staring at them set up for the show "Superdogs".

Unfortunately we did not get to watch that because my brother wanted to see Steven Page, apparently the former lead singer for the Barenaked Ladies play on stage minutes later, so I could not watch the awesome doggies have awesome competitions like I always watched every year when I came to the fair, mostly because it only had one show that day due to some...inexplicable reason, apparently the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Navy or something was there...not to mention it was ALSO the 100th anniversary of the fair itself, who knew.

The concert wasn't that bad, but I only recognized one song and not only did I miss dinner and STILL felt nauseous, I was extremely cold. WHY did I wear shorts again...

So after feeling a bit better we headed back to the rides, decided to try the ferris wheel. EPIC TIMING. We got on as the finale of the fireworks was happening so we could watch the fireworks while being HIGH IN THE SKY (and actually able to watch the fireworks not soaring back downwards on a rollercoaster or something) probably the highlight of the night. What impeccable timing, really! I mean otherwise if we wanted to watch the fireworks we'd have to get a seat and the concert ended quite late, so there would already be a huge crowd. This was the best seat avaliable at the time and--was probably the best seal overall if the ferris wheel wasn't constantly MOVING. My brother actually found this ride the scariest because we are in the air super-high-and we know it. On a roller coaster or whatever we'd be in the air for a few seconds than we come down so the whole height-thing ain't that scary, but I found the ferris wheel the tamest obviously.

Afterwards we went on the Musical Express one last time, this time was much better---didn't get dizzy, and we DID decide to try the corkscrew again but we saw the thing stuck at the top and assumed it was either broken or closed, so I, still hungry from missing dinner, decide to purchase a corndog, the food I eat every year in the fair--as well as win a souvenir, a stuffed animal because that is also a tradition. The corndog made me nauseous too as I mentioned before. :C I still feel kind of sick.

So that was my day! The fact that we saw fireworks while on the ferris wheel was really awesome though, and I did love the rides...but this is only a rare-one time thing for me because I may sound like a geek but I preferred staying at home playing Starcraft or something over this...at least SC2 doesn't make me nauseous, but nonetheless something like this once-in-a while is very fun, albeit very scary and nauseating...

THIS HAS BEEN SPOTTO!
spotto: (Ultimate Cleavage)
After reading through various comms on Livejournal (variously various!) I'm starting to wonder if everything I've ever written has been pretty much the same thing...just replace their names and viola!

Particularly because I actually do that with original fiction, for I am not really much of a person to create my own characters, rather I would twist and turn existing characters or even existing people's relationships because it feels so much fun and full-to-life with something other people actually acknowledge than just yourself. Of course, that means my "original" fiction probably isn't even original. The biggest original thing I ever created was actually with my brother, which makes it something acknowledged by more than just myself. I rarely actually talk about this "original thing".

But it's of a dalmatian named Spot. He is the most retarded bastard ever, who is racist to all humans and wishes his master (played by my brother) would drop dead. He has the biggest potty-mouth ever, and is really just a goddamn unloving ridiculously stupid and retarded buttmonkey that I have been roleplaying in real-life for over thirteen years. THIRTEEN YEARS. Of course with my brother not living around these parts anymore we don't do this as much now. Everything we (or mostly me, actually) put into this lovely universe is clearly inspired by other media. Spot has a sister named Sittie, who calls this boy named Bobby "Sweetbaboo" and is attached to him so goddamn much she could very well be a real life stalker. That name is clearly from Peanuts, also better known as that Charlie Brown guy and his friends. Spot himself, at least namewise, and his mother Sally, at least namewise, come from "The Adventures of Spot" a children's book I dearly loved as a child.

There's more. He also has a younger sister named Evelyn (rarely called Eve) who is morbidly obese. That is the only purpose of her existence, to make fat jokes. Then there is his other younger sister, Nicky, the only-sane-man who suffers from the idiocy around her, especially from another character, the boy next door named Joey, who is so retarded he is basically the Ralph Wiggum of the story. He infuriates her greatly. The universe is so diverse that previously we once had a "Zippo" universe, where all the dogs lived on some sort of "Zippo" dog food, and also a "Pokemon" universe, with a very stupid Pokemon named Pikaspot. There's their GREAT ANCESTOR FROM THE PAST, WHO IS BASICALLY AN EXPY OF SPOT, named WALF the WARRIOR, originating from my love of the REDWALL books and that great mouse in the past named Martin.

DID I MENTION because my brother loves imperialism or something, that SPOT IS A PRINCE? His father and mother are the KING AND QUEEN OF DALMATIA. The other breeds are part of their OWN country and are regarded as their own RACE. (The Poodles are like, super inspired by the French for example) and the Dalmatians are CONSTANTLY AT WAR with the BULLDOGS and there is a HUGE RIVALRY between the two breeds, but as more buttmonkey jokes come up, the Dalmatians are HORRIBLE AT SPORTS and LOSE TO THE BULLDOGS ALL THE TIME? Much to the King, WILLY'S despair!? Etc. etc. etc. There is even a future version with Spot's son, Thomas, etc. etc.

THE THING IS, I never write about this. This is just a thing about my brother and me. What I do write is of stuff NEVER ORIGINAL or so heavily inspired by other things that it should not even be called original at all. It feels more like plagarism, and that is definitely not original. Or like a pseudo-original/somehowcrossover!weird fanfic of shit. Like what. This is why I have five dozen Little Fighter fanfics. IT HAS A BUNCH OF PERSONALITY-LESS CHARACTERS JUST WAITING FOR SOME STORYLINE TO EXPLAIN WHY THE HELL THEY'RE fighting because there is no true story! Then LFO comes out and everything goes to shit. Way to go Hong Kong.

OR we can go to the EXACT OPPOSITE of the spectrum with Hetalia that has its little comic!canon AND IT'S HUGE SUPER COMPLICATED HISTORY CANON! I can't write for Hetalia at all because of all the research needed and how goddamn scared I will be to screw some little detail up and suddenly the fanfic turns into controversy. Nations are too complicated for me to handle.

Sometimes I wonder if I am thinking too much into this. Akira asked me to write a fanfic about her three characters, Ryan, Adam, and Jason. I told her I would because my muse returned when I started writing some fanfic again, but it was really hard to write these three. We had many many discussions about their character but in the end I just kept COMPARING them to some fandom character that I didn't know what to do. What AM I supposed to do? I don't know what to do with original characters. I drew them a bunch of times to try to make it easier (and I've been drawing a bunch lately) but Akira tells me lots of times that often they don't look like how she views them, so again I am afraid of writing them OOC or not being able to grasp their character. The limit I am given is really crippling me. The last actual fanfic I wrote was of that Negima story, you know with Yuuna and stuff? It is completely long and incredibly embarrassing actually, but it makes sense I wrote so much of those characters. At that time they largely had little development or personality in the actual canon so I felt like I could do anything with them as long as I kept their apparent personalities. It's the SAME thing with LF2!

Seeing as those stories don't count either, I need to backtrack some MORE. B-Daman? I believe I only wrote for that because its fanbase is crippling small and nobody and their dog would ever admit to ever being in a fandom like that. It's not really a great story or anything at all, so why did I like it anyway? So that leaves us with Beyblade.

Do you know how the BIFF started? Because of my crappy crack!OOC extremely!exaggerated "humour" stories of the characters attracted some people and we added each other on MSN. That's how it started. I did write some serious stuff, but my writing back then was quite crappy and my computer back then was so bad that I barely remember any of the serious stuff. In short, I have not written anything truly FANDOM or truly ORIGINAL at all because if I have I don't REMEMBER it! I'm not a good enough writer to keep a major character in-character for as long as I could, but also not a good enough writer to actually create characters that aren't crack or for humour! What the hell!

And so here I am, having to settle for this LF2 fanfic I'm writing because it's not completely original yet not completely fandomized either. There is no fandom, it's just a silly freeware game. And now I am discussing with Akira how to not write them in a way I have written EVERYTHING I'VE WRITTEN EVER because for me, there is always THOSE TWO CHARACTERS. I will develop them so much more than everyone else despite wanting to develop everyone else too. Akira's friend came over for the summer and introduced me to SUPERNATURAL. I found it rather entertaining, but did not really look into it anymore, but the dynamic of THOSE TWO CHARACTERS...whether they be best friends forever, lovers, brothers, sisters, cousins, ANYTHING...will always appeal to me, no matter what. It has nothing to do with Yaoi or Yuri or whatever. I cannot turn it into a trio. I cannot do a five-man-band. I cannot do anything with a singular character either.

It.is.always. THOSE TWO.

Even if many many fandoms try to break this dynamic (I tend to have three favourite characters) I will always like TWO OF THEM vastly over the third. Then the rest I don't give a damn. That is all. That is it. Hong Kong and Korea. Kazumi and Sayo. Example and example, etc. etc. I don't really care if they end up being best friends forever, super awkward brothers or lovers, it doesn't matter as long as somehow they interact with each other and are TOGETHER. Not for the sex or the hotness or anything like that, :\ Sometimes when I write I feel like I'm forced to turn them into lovers (while I DO ship them) because everyone else is doing it, but I'm always satisfied if they're BFFs or super-close bros or something too, as long as they're together I don't care. (But at the same time when some third party comes in I get insanely jealous and defensive, telling them to GTFO BITCH even if its not about lovers or anything)

Right, I'm completely rambling now.

Kirami likes to add yaoi-drops onto anything I tell her, like hockey. Sometimes I mind. I love Bernier, he is cute, but I also love Bernier because he is that awesome rugged hockey player that he is, and because he is helping my city's team try to be the best, to get the Stanley Cup, and for the hockey game that it is. It is entertaining to watch, be it the IIHF championships, the olympics, women's, men's, and the NHL itself. The game is entertaining, not everything is about two boy's loving each other, seriously. Sometimes I feel like everything I do revolves too much around that. My brother is gay! I've had it in my life for a long time! I'm not homophobic, but does EVERY SINGLE GUY have to be paired up with SOME GUY? I even like Hong Kong/Taiwan to an extent DUE to RP (they seem boring otherwise) but I love Korea/Hong Kong ALSO due to RP! It has nothing to do with "hey he's hot and he's hot let's make them screw each other" and that the third girl is a bitch and should die in a fire.

Well, also rambling now. If this bothers anybody's friend's list due to its length I'll cut it, but I'm going to leave it like so. I hope it's not obnoxious to do so or anything...

EDIT because I realized how those last two large paragraphs contradicted each other! First I say OMFG GTFO THIRD PARTY BITCH! Then complain about people who go OMFG GTFO THIRD PARTY BITCH! Oh how hypocritical you are Spotto. I think what I was trying to say is that while it IS always those two guys, I largely don't care for a third UNLESS canon or awesome RP convinces me like so. So I guess I am part of the GTFO third party. Though I think I'm against that third party moreso because I CANNOT WRITE THEM INTO THE STORY FOR MY BRAIN IS TOO SIMPLE FOR SUCH COMPLICATED MEASURES and thus my defence is to kick them out. I wish everyone else wasn't like me too, but I tend to not bash the third person, just kick them out because I can't write them in. Like Chisame, or China, or something. I don't hate these characters. I think the second paragraph was describing like, the Mariahs, Taiwans, Negis of fandom rather than the other. (These are horrible examples they will only make sense with my  friends ~_~)

Okay no more editing.
spotto: (hong kong *STAAAAAARE*)

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