I'm honestly not too surprised since I think this is the 3rd time staff got into an issue with me as they've previously seen criticism I have made of some threads I found that were made to make men angry as "trolling" and the mod that banned me for 5 days was the same person who did that. In the meantime, I backed up all my data and imported it onto AniList to have a backup in the worst-case scenario even if that site is way less active in terms of the community. It just sucks that the mods let toxic behavior go unchallenged 90% of the time, only ever taking action if its egregiously bad. They really don't apply their rules equally at all and it's getting to a point where I feel like they are actively targeting me for trying to push for them to be fairer in the application of the rules.
I came out to my mom a year ago and it didn't go well so there's just a huge tension there with trying to go back to school with the name change being done already. She's previously threatened to cut me off like what happened to you for being different than what she wants so I really gotta figure out something fast since she keeps consuming misinformation about trans people from the news. There is a possibility she lets me go back to college solely for the fact that she seems to want it too, but there's still that risk. Getting cut off seems so scary and I really hope you're doing ok
That's awesome that you got to cosplay at the event! I haven't gotten to do cosplay stuff in years and it seems really fun (if a bit expensive). Once I start my medical transition, I really want to get back into cosplay stuff but that is quite a way's off.
I'm not sure what social media I really have. I'm genuinely pretty disconnected as I wasn't really allowed to have many social media accounts as a teenager and never made them for some sites. Idk I just dumb
It's ok. It's good to focus on the things that you find most important. I haven't been doing as much as I really should to follow up on the things that I find important, so I am happy that you were able to be more active and engage with more things in this world.
Things have actually been getting way worse on me for speaking up on this site. I've just returned from a 5-day ban because I shared a meme making fun of AI generated "art" as they saw it as "Threatening" and have been dealing with "warnings" from staff for speaking up against outrage bait content and am heavily at risk now of getting permanently banned for speaking up. There's so much hate towards marginalized groups and so many pushes against artists on here that I'm feeling less safe to fight back especially since the staff seem to be taking the side of preserving the status quo regardless of how it harbors a negative environment. I've been trying to push staff to implement rule changes to prevent the hateful stuff from spreading but they seem to be actively ignoring me and I genuinely think it's because of my beliefs challenging them, and I feel like if something isn't done soon it will get a lot worse considering this sort of vitriol tends to especially be present in online spaces during years where US Presidential Elections take place.
I haven't really made many steps with my art stuff as I am stuck in my slump still, but I am heavily considering going back to college as a result of it to try and force myself back into things. It'd probably be a much more conducive environment for me mentally anyways. I do worry about things being a problem though since I changed my name in the school system when I was originally supposed to graduate without my mom's knowledge, and she would have to see that I changed my name during tuition payment. Hopefully I can figure it out.
I'm glad that you were able to go to a con! They tend to be some of the most fun things I get to do and I hope you enjoyed the one you attended!
Hopefully this isn't the last time we speak as I am genuinely scared of being banned now so uhhhhh hopefully that doesn't happen
Wow!! If u want read something about Asia, what about Heike Monogatari or Genji Monogatari? Strongly recommend both. Want something modern? Murakami.
There's a huge clash between what people see when think about Japan and watching anime - and when they're faced with some uncomfortable facts.
Totally true, specially school animes. Ive wtched several interviews of pple living there and i would just go to get the experience, because the cultural shock is so big/huge. I will not live there or try stablish deep bond with pple from there because i think is very difficult and u will have a lot of frustration on yourself. Yee i think is kinda expensive, though the local currency (yen) is at historical minimun rates. If u teach English u can go there to teach English and stay a while, though is better to go just as a tourist, instead of working.
It's all good, taking care of yourself def should be top priority.
Good thing is in the meantime since we spoke last, I finally got action taken against the harassment I faced. It took far too long but I'm glad such obvious transphobic comments are just gone off my page and the person who left them punished. I still face some backlash here but I'm glad the more.... personal attacks... are taken care of. I do need to get better at controlling my responses though when I do get some shit thrown at me as I can get pretty angry if they get insistent which is exactly what they want as it makes ME look like the one in the wrong. I need to get better at controlling my emotions.
Oh yeah Crunchyroll is pretty shit when it comes to European and Australian distribution, I've heard it is like much worse than it is here in the US (and it's not even great here either as there's major missing titles after the Funimation merger). Licensing of Japanese anime seems like a complete mess and the companies who handle it don't do a good job at all which really makes it no wonder that piracy is just so normalized in the fandom. There's a quote from Gabe Newell, owner of Valve Software which states that "Piracy is usually not a pricing problem, it's a service problem," which can easily be reflected in how poor the official options can be for Japanese anime which leads to piracy being so common. I actually just saw a video this morning from Mother's Basement about how bad Disney+ is with handling anime licenses and it is just yet another example of these companies not knowing what they are doing with distribution.
I really should put more focus on my art. Thing have just been crazy for me irl so that alongside my motivation issues have made it difficult to pick up my pencil sometimes. I get in my own head way too much which can make it difficult when things don't turn out the way I imagined them on the page. It's really hard to break out of that perfectionist mindset when it was essentially beaten into my head by my parents when it came to academics, so my brain kind of applies it to everything to my own detriment.
I had a lot of fun at the con. My clothing was basically just me replacing my masc clothing articles such as my sweatpants for more gender affirming clothing articles such as a bra and a skirt so it'd be easy to change back before my family could find out. One of my bf's friends was even there so I got to meet them which was pretty nice. I'm just happy I got to go out for a day and just...be me since that is such a rare thing these days.
Haha dont worry! Life is frenetic lot of things to do etc!
I´ve been watching a lot of videos of Japan now, and i was very surprised on how it is the real culture there (in a kinda bad sense). Would u like to travel to Japan? Or to live there?
What do u usually to in ur day to life? Do u hang up a lot? Or maybe just weeknds ;) ?
I know I'm late, but thanks for your comments in "Show us your latest sketch or drawing v.2".
Since the drawing was for a gift, I drew only mystery drawings in the genre, but the truth is that I spent more time drawing shoujo manga, so I was quite new to drawing shonen manga.
I feel the same way. It's so relaxing to be able to have constructive conversations with others without it getting all nasty or toxic like it tends to get in these spaces so often. Idk if you've seen in my comments, but I have been dealing with a bit of targeted harassment recently, so its just been especially meaningful to have civil conversations with nice people such as yourself. In spite of all the bad stuff, talking to you and the others who have been nice to me has been really great for my mood and it makes me really happy which has been a rare feeling for me recently.
At least one good benefit that I have learned about porn is that it does lead to less sexual crimes which is good at least. Makes it strange though when some states in my country are trying to effectively ban it. Like porn isn't great but its so strange to see it get banned like that and I do wonder how this will affect crime rate and stuff like that. I love looking into statistics and stuff so that is something I might be interested in doing more research on. Why am I so strange like this and overanalyze everything lol.
The FMA DVD sets are nice but they're long out of print since there's some weird licensing stuff with it going from FUNimation to Aniplex a few years ago and Aniplex has kind of just pretended the original FMA anime doesn't exist. None of the DVDs or Blu Rays have been reprinted in years which has led to issues of the Blu Ray set specifically being extremely bootlegged, and it doesn't seem that Aniplex plans on putting out their own new version of the DVDs or Blu Rays. Even if they did, they'd probably be really expensive since Aniplex likes to make everything overpriced.
In regard to my artwork, I don't publish anything I make since I'm still learning. I am not at a level where I feel people would be actively interested in as I still have a long way to go until I have anything that looks to what could be considered at a "good" level. I mostly am focusing on how to fix up drawing characters and perspective rn since I have to work on stuff like proportions and getting down certain shapes. Hands especially are just painful to draw, but I am not the best with hair either. My end goal overall is to get to a good enough level where I can produce artwork for the video game project I want to make.
On a completely unrelated note to all this, a positive development has happened recently as my boyfriend is taking me to my first local anime convention which is very exciting for me (although my dumb ass is still nervous somehow lol). He's even gonna dress me up in my favorite feminine clothing which is just super exciting since it's not something I get to do all too often. He hasn't seen too much Japanese anime yet, so I wonder how confused he's gonna be by some of the stuff there lol. I guess that's something else to help keep my mood up for the time being. I am hoping that it will be an enjoyable time and if you want I can tell you how it went once it happens ^w^
I don't think you're annoying either, and our discussions are never really bothering me. I always appreciate talking to others who are kind people, and from our interactions you definitely fall into that category ^w^. It feels very rare to stumble upon people such as you in fandom spaces online, but especially with stuff related to anime, video games, and comic books. Far too often do I end up interacting with strange people who get mad over the most absurd of things and it can be discouraging at times, but when I find those people who don't act like that, it can be very easy for me to connect with them. When I was younger, I used to be a bit of a garbage person who overly objectified women in order to repress who I was inside, but all these years later I seemingly have grown while these fandom spaces have grown stagnant. It has had some negative effects on me long term (I still have a bit of a porn addiction that I am trying to work through as embarrassing as that sounds) but being on the other side of the objectification I guess has really widened my perspective. I feel a big part of the problem is that a lot of these guys can't really separate porn from reality which can cause issues since most of that stuff isn't really mutual in terms of which parties are pleasured since so much if it is masculine-focused and based in outdated gender roles and stereotypes. Can get really bad when they apply it to real women. Hopefully I won't be on the receiving end of that mess anytime soon since I haven't had to deal with that yet, and my boyfriend seems very knowledgeable on all this stuff too. Especially in fandom spaces though, I wish that this sort of weird coomer behavior would cool down a bit since its just a bit too over the top with most people who show those behaviors.
Yeah, Fullmetal Alchemist is one of my favorites. I am rewatching the older show for the nostalgia, and since it recently turned 20. My insane ass has been trying to watch each episode the same week it would have aired in Japan back in 2003-2004 to kind of recapture that original experience. The cool thing is that the DVD sets we had for the show here in the US come with the original Japanese TV ads for stuff like the show's premiere, the tie in games, and the DVD sets, which isn't really a thing that I see preserved very often in physical releases of TV shows in general. I took marketing for 3 years in High School, so seeing all the old advertising material is something that really interests me. I need to read more of the manga, but I have to wait until I can find stable employment since they have these really cool collector's edition reprints here in the US that reprint the manga on glossy paper similar to Western comics, so the contrast is much higher leading to better image quality. They even have the color pages which are usually printed with really poor black and white conversions in most prints. They added like concept art and stuff which is just really cool as well. I wish more manga got this level of treatment, since as someone who is trying to be an artist in a sense, it allows me to appreciate the art more with the better clarity and the behind-the-scenes stuff. I'm fangirling out a bit too much aaaaaaaa >.<
On the good note it does at least seem where I live people are slowly becoming more aware, and perhaps the same is happening around the world. As much as people seem to hate it, I think that fiction tackling serious topics like this helps a lot, especially for younger audiences. Perhaps that is why there is so much pushback rn as young people are becoming more aware which threatens those who want to uphold hate, so they try and erase the knowledge needed to overcome these struggles. The one true way to beat hate is through knowledge.
I'm pretty much always available too if you ever want to reach out. My dumb autistic ass always feels weird messaging people first lol, I always get scared that I am bothering people, especially since I go on long passionate rants about all sorts of topics, whether it be sharing something I love or talking about serious stuff. My parents find me annoying when I go on and on like that so i get self-conscious. I'm just glad to have found more likeminded individuals such as yourself on this site since it seems the dominant culture online is very much against people who think like us. Prolly doesn't help that some people such as myself can kinda get emotional and it seeps through when debating stuff lol
I have to say i read some of your posts on @LSSJ_Gaming's profile.
I feel exactly the same when it comes to my parents, too. This feeling I have to prove something? (...) The anime fandom is also filled with white men just wanting to see big boobs :/ so it's amazing for me to talk to you, to my bf, people who watch anime and are open minded.
Oh dear, that sounds pretty bad. Scary part is I have seen some parts of my coutnry try to do the same thing. Some places have even flat out banned transitioning entirely. We truly live in an absurd world
At least here in the US where I live, while currently things are down, overall in terms of historical trends though, it is getting better. Not sure much about Poland's specifics but I know in that general area of Europe there's a lot more that needs to be worked on. I am somewhat aware of some social politics in Europe rn, but I may be a bit focusing too much on what's close to home with how much crazy stuff is going on rn with borderline conspiracies going on to try and undo the progress we have made. Over the past 4 and a half years of being trans, my eyes have just widened to how the world treats others and in some ways it has helped me in good ways as I have become much better at being able to relate things in the media I consume to the real world which is a skill that is sadly lacking from a lot of people these days. I've genuinely gotten to love analyzing media much more than when I was in high school. I may be a bit ridiculous with it though since I feel like sometimes, I come out of even technically mediocre experiences with a lot of insight even if that may not have been the intent. With my unique perspective and experiences, I've just learned to look past the surface level and try and understand the core of things, from simple things like media, to the people around me which is probably good. I feel if that was a thing more people had the world may be more kind and accepting of others
I can relate a lot to your struggles since I tend to deal with that self-doubt a lot, especially since my parents make me feel like I have a need to prove myself to them and others and like its never enough. It doesn't really help that it feels like most media spaces and fandoms online are pretty openly hostile against the LGBTQ+ community. I've been trying my best to make the anime community a bit more accepting but there is quite a bit of hostility and pushback I recieve for it. I've pretty much given up on certain other communities I used to partake in like Star Wars as oh god it is just getting so much worse over there, there's just so much mask off racism and transphobia rn over there with the new show that's coming out. it's just genuinely terrifying how it feels like everyone in the world around hates people like me for just existing, and with elections going on in my country and my existence basically being the main political issue its just draining which has 1000% furthered my demotivation to work on myself and my skills. I just don't understand why people hate other so much for being different. I hope the world becomes more accepting sooner than later
All Comments (60) Comments
I'm honestly not too surprised since I think this is the 3rd time staff got into an issue with me as they've previously seen criticism I have made of some threads I found that were made to make men angry as "trolling" and the mod that banned me for 5 days was the same person who did that. In the meantime, I backed up all my data and imported it onto AniList to have a backup in the worst-case scenario even if that site is way less active in terms of the community. It just sucks that the mods let toxic behavior go unchallenged 90% of the time, only ever taking action if its egregiously bad. They really don't apply their rules equally at all and it's getting to a point where I feel like they are actively targeting me for trying to push for them to be fairer in the application of the rules.
I came out to my mom a year ago and it didn't go well so there's just a huge tension there with trying to go back to school with the name change being done already. She's previously threatened to cut me off like what happened to you for being different than what she wants so I really gotta figure out something fast since she keeps consuming misinformation about trans people from the news. There is a possibility she lets me go back to college solely for the fact that she seems to want it too, but there's still that risk. Getting cut off seems so scary and I really hope you're doing ok
That's awesome that you got to cosplay at the event! I haven't gotten to do cosplay stuff in years and it seems really fun (if a bit expensive). Once I start my medical transition, I really want to get back into cosplay stuff but that is quite a way's off.
I'm not sure what social media I really have. I'm genuinely pretty disconnected as I wasn't really allowed to have many social media accounts as a teenager and never made them for some sites. Idk I just dumb
Things have actually been getting way worse on me for speaking up on this site. I've just returned from a 5-day ban because I shared a meme making fun of AI generated "art" as they saw it as "Threatening" and have been dealing with "warnings" from staff for speaking up against outrage bait content and am heavily at risk now of getting permanently banned for speaking up. There's so much hate towards marginalized groups and so many pushes against artists on here that I'm feeling less safe to fight back especially since the staff seem to be taking the side of preserving the status quo regardless of how it harbors a negative environment. I've been trying to push staff to implement rule changes to prevent the hateful stuff from spreading but they seem to be actively ignoring me and I genuinely think it's because of my beliefs challenging them, and I feel like if something isn't done soon it will get a lot worse considering this sort of vitriol tends to especially be present in online spaces during years where US Presidential Elections take place.
I haven't really made many steps with my art stuff as I am stuck in my slump still, but I am heavily considering going back to college as a result of it to try and force myself back into things. It'd probably be a much more conducive environment for me mentally anyways. I do worry about things being a problem though since I changed my name in the school system when I was originally supposed to graduate without my mom's knowledge, and she would have to see that I changed my name during tuition payment. Hopefully I can figure it out.
I'm glad that you were able to go to a con! They tend to be some of the most fun things I get to do and I hope you enjoyed the one you attended!
Hopefully this isn't the last time we speak as I am genuinely scared of being banned now so uhhhhh hopefully that doesn't happen
Thanks for your reply!
Good thing is in the meantime since we spoke last, I finally got action taken against the harassment I faced. It took far too long but I'm glad such obvious transphobic comments are just gone off my page and the person who left them punished. I still face some backlash here but I'm glad the more.... personal attacks... are taken care of. I do need to get better at controlling my responses though when I do get some shit thrown at me as I can get pretty angry if they get insistent which is exactly what they want as it makes ME look like the one in the wrong. I need to get better at controlling my emotions.
Oh yeah Crunchyroll is pretty shit when it comes to European and Australian distribution, I've heard it is like much worse than it is here in the US (and it's not even great here either as there's major missing titles after the Funimation merger). Licensing of Japanese anime seems like a complete mess and the companies who handle it don't do a good job at all which really makes it no wonder that piracy is just so normalized in the fandom. There's a quote from Gabe Newell, owner of Valve Software which states that "Piracy is usually not a pricing problem, it's a service problem," which can easily be reflected in how poor the official options can be for Japanese anime which leads to piracy being so common. I actually just saw a video this morning from Mother's Basement about how bad Disney+ is with handling anime licenses and it is just yet another example of these companies not knowing what they are doing with distribution.
I really should put more focus on my art. Thing have just been crazy for me irl so that alongside my motivation issues have made it difficult to pick up my pencil sometimes. I get in my own head way too much which can make it difficult when things don't turn out the way I imagined them on the page. It's really hard to break out of that perfectionist mindset when it was essentially beaten into my head by my parents when it came to academics, so my brain kind of applies it to everything to my own detriment.
I had a lot of fun at the con. My clothing was basically just me replacing my masc clothing articles such as my sweatpants for more gender affirming clothing articles such as a bra and a skirt so it'd be easy to change back before my family could find out. One of my bf's friends was even there so I got to meet them which was pretty nice. I'm just happy I got to go out for a day and just...be me since that is such a rare thing these days.
I´ve been watching a lot of videos of Japan now, and i was very surprised on how it is the real culture there (in a kinda bad sense). Would u like to travel to Japan? Or to live there?
What do u usually to in ur day to life? Do u hang up a lot? Or maybe just weeknds ;) ?
Since the drawing was for a gift, I drew only mystery drawings in the genre, but the truth is that I spent more time drawing shoujo manga, so I was quite new to drawing shonen manga.
At least one good benefit that I have learned about porn is that it does lead to less sexual crimes which is good at least. Makes it strange though when some states in my country are trying to effectively ban it. Like porn isn't great but its so strange to see it get banned like that and I do wonder how this will affect crime rate and stuff like that. I love looking into statistics and stuff so that is something I might be interested in doing more research on. Why am I so strange like this and overanalyze everything lol.
The FMA DVD sets are nice but they're long out of print since there's some weird licensing stuff with it going from FUNimation to Aniplex a few years ago and Aniplex has kind of just pretended the original FMA anime doesn't exist. None of the DVDs or Blu Rays have been reprinted in years which has led to issues of the Blu Ray set specifically being extremely bootlegged, and it doesn't seem that Aniplex plans on putting out their own new version of the DVDs or Blu Rays. Even if they did, they'd probably be really expensive since Aniplex likes to make everything overpriced.
In regard to my artwork, I don't publish anything I make since I'm still learning. I am not at a level where I feel people would be actively interested in as I still have a long way to go until I have anything that looks to what could be considered at a "good" level. I mostly am focusing on how to fix up drawing characters and perspective rn since I have to work on stuff like proportions and getting down certain shapes. Hands especially are just painful to draw, but I am not the best with hair either. My end goal overall is to get to a good enough level where I can produce artwork for the video game project I want to make.
On a completely unrelated note to all this, a positive development has happened recently as my boyfriend is taking me to my first local anime convention which is very exciting for me (although my dumb ass is still nervous somehow lol). He's even gonna dress me up in my favorite feminine clothing which is just super exciting since it's not something I get to do all too often. He hasn't seen too much Japanese anime yet, so I wonder how confused he's gonna be by some of the stuff there lol. I guess that's something else to help keep my mood up for the time being. I am hoping that it will be an enjoyable time and if you want I can tell you how it went once it happens ^w^
Yeah, Fullmetal Alchemist is one of my favorites. I am rewatching the older show for the nostalgia, and since it recently turned 20. My insane ass has been trying to watch each episode the same week it would have aired in Japan back in 2003-2004 to kind of recapture that original experience. The cool thing is that the DVD sets we had for the show here in the US come with the original Japanese TV ads for stuff like the show's premiere, the tie in games, and the DVD sets, which isn't really a thing that I see preserved very often in physical releases of TV shows in general. I took marketing for 3 years in High School, so seeing all the old advertising material is something that really interests me. I need to read more of the manga, but I have to wait until I can find stable employment since they have these really cool collector's edition reprints here in the US that reprint the manga on glossy paper similar to Western comics, so the contrast is much higher leading to better image quality. They even have the color pages which are usually printed with really poor black and white conversions in most prints. They added like concept art and stuff which is just really cool as well. I wish more manga got this level of treatment, since as someone who is trying to be an artist in a sense, it allows me to appreciate the art more with the better clarity and the behind-the-scenes stuff. I'm fangirling out a bit too much aaaaaaaa >.<
I'm pretty much always available too if you ever want to reach out. My dumb autistic ass always feels weird messaging people first lol, I always get scared that I am bothering people, especially since I go on long passionate rants about all sorts of topics, whether it be sharing something I love or talking about serious stuff. My parents find me annoying when I go on and on like that so i get self-conscious. I'm just glad to have found more likeminded individuals such as yourself on this site since it seems the dominant culture online is very much against people who think like us. Prolly doesn't help that some people such as myself can kinda get emotional and it seeps through when debating stuff lol
I have to say i read some of your posts on @LSSJ_Gaming's profile.
I feel exactly the same when it comes to my parents, too. This feeling I have to prove something? (...) The anime fandom is also filled with white men just wanting to see big boobs :/ so it's amazing for me to talk to you, to my bf, people who watch anime and are open minded.
Cant agree more. I hope u are doing good also