Five things meme!
If you ask I might give you five things I associate with you or I might not I make no promises.
From penchaft:
Japan:
When I was a kid I thought Japan was fascinating because it was the only country I knew of that was "modern" like the west, but wasn't colonised and whose people still had a completely different culture. Obviously I know the world is a lot more complicated than that these days, but that's where my interest started. I would have learned Japanese in highschool if I could have, but I couldn't so I learned Indonesian (which I'm glad about because I don't think I ever would have learned it otherwise). And then in highschool I got into anime and later visual kei and that brings us to my next topic I guess.
Androgyny:
I don't actually remember how interested I was in androgyny as a concept before I got into viskei but I think I was? Because I've been interested for a very long time in how it's possible for someone to be completely straight or gay when to me it seems like there's just so much overlap (I think I understand it a bit better these days having read a few discussions about it but still). One of the things I came across last year while researching for my dissertation really struck me, it was one of those things that seems really obvious in retrospect and makes everything make much more sense. That was the theory that there isn't just a masculine-feminine scale, there's a scale of how gendered someone is at all. You can be androgynous because you're both very masculine and feminine at the same time, or because you're neither. I should have realised this earlier because Japanese even has two different words for androgyny that map onto those two ends of the scale fairly well (which were mentioned in the piece I translated, I think I translated them as "neutral gender" and "androgyny" although that's not entirely helpful).
Law:
When I was very little I wanted to be a vet, but as I grew old enough to realise that being a vet was less adorable kitties and more sticking your hand up cows I decided I'd rather study law. It was a pretty simple choice and I've never particularly felt the need to question it, it just always seemed like the thing I wanted to do. I don't actually particularly want to be a lawyer but I really enjoy studying law and I don't think I'd mind being a solicitor particularly if that's the way my life ends up going. Mostly I like the direction it stretches my mind in when we analyse cases and apply case law to potential scenarios and I think I'm pretty good at it. If I was a better student and therefore more organised about actually learning the law that I'm meant to be discussing and applying then my marks would be much better than they are.
Firefox tabs:
I'm much better about these than I used to be! I used have 80+ open at any one time but at the moment I only have 35 open between two windows. I'm a terrible procrastinator so I have a tendency to open tabs to things that I'm sure I'll get around to later.
Phoenix Wright:
Someone once commented that the Phoenix Wright games must be really accurate if I, as a law student, loved them so much. Actually I love them partially because they don't even pretend to bear any resemblence to ANY form of coherent legal system, much less a realistic accurate one. I love the sheer ridiculousness of them and their characters and cases, while retaining a certain level of internal logic and intelligence. One day I hope my Japanese is good enough that I can play them in it, because as far as I'm aware the characters and the jokes are different in the Japanese and that would mean I'd get to play and enjoy them all over again in a new way. But it's gonna be a long time before I'm good enough to play a game that's so finely focused on the exact meanings of words.
From auntpol:
Japan:
As much as I like being in Japan, I don't think I could live there permanently. I'm not prepared to give up the privilege of living in a country that's not racist towards me and where the main language is my native one. I do really like Osaka but that's probably at least partially because it's the first time I've ever lived in a big city. I love Perth, but it is pretty quiet here. Osaka is huge and vibrant and I love the atmosphere around Shinsaibashi/Nanba, which is where I spent most of my time hanging out. And there are still places I haven't been that I want to see there. Being in Japan is also fun because of the sheer novelty of being surrounded by my fandom, which is basically unheard-of in Australia. I'm sure that would wear off if I lived there for a while but channel flicking to MTV and catching the broadcast of a concert of visual kei band is awesome. Not to mention actually being able to go to the concerts of my favourite bands. Visual Kei is a fairly fringe subculture (I'd compare it to the Goth subculture here in terms of how much the average person knows about it) but it's still definitely around. There's a section for it in most CD shops, it's on TV, it's on posters in train stations.
Clarinet:
I started learning clarinet in year 8, but stopped fairly quickly because I was overwhelmed enough by starting high school at a new school and everything. And that would have been that except that halfway through year 9 I mentioned it to a family acquaintance, who suggested that there was no reason I couldn't take it up again now that I'd settled in. I thought that was a good idea so I did. I did TEE music (specialised in it for my end-of-highschool-exams for those of you playing at home) which means I reached a pretty decent level of ability, although I was fairly mediocre on the scale of people studying TEE music. Then I didn't play for about three years until a couple of things spurred me into joining a local community concert band, which has been one of the best decisions I've made in the last few years. I love playing in an ensemble and doing my bit to create something that sounds amazing.
Genderfuck*:
This came with a note that Amber picked it because of the Which-One's-A-Girl Game, so I'll talk about that! Screwing with peoples' perceptions of gender is basically the favourite pastime of most visual kei fans (Usually taking the simple form of "Hey, she's hot!" "That's a guy" ".......") and I took inspiration from a post about it on a fan comm to make a game out of it. I've been refining my choices of photo for the last few years and the current version is here. If you haven't seen that version before feel free to guess in the comments (one of them is a girl, no really, no this isn't a trick question, yes only one). The previous versions are here: 1 2 3 3.1 4 so you can see how it's changed. I'm still not entirely satisfied with it and I'm always on the look out for more pictures to use for it. I'm thinking of maybe doing different difficulty levels too. I like springing it on people because I find it fascinating the way people are so hung up on gender and sex when really they're kind of arbitrary (everyone except the girls (who are both physically female and identify as women except for one who IIRC identifies as neutral) in those pictures are male and identify as men). I've done my best to fix it so that there is no logical way of working it out, so in each new version I've learned from the reasonings people have given me and done my best to make them not work again.
Also the icon I'm posting this post with is really outdated in terms of what pictures and terms I should be using, I should fix that.
South Africa:
My father was born and raised in South Africa. My mother was born in Zimbabwe (well, Rhodesia) but studied in Cape Town and met my father there. South Africa is the reason why I was raised being told that Perth is paradise. I've been there once and Cape Town was quite pretty and I've got relatives living there still but you couldn't pay me to live there.
Laughing:
Hmmm... I'm not really sure what to say about this. I laugh pretty easily, and I also smile and giggle when I'm nervous (which can actually be useful when I'm doing something public-speaking related, I've been complimented on seeming friendly when really it was pure nerves). I think I have a tendency to laugh after I say something if I'm unsure about what I'm saying or trying to lighten the conversation, but I've never analysed it that closely.
From penchaft:
Japan:
When I was a kid I thought Japan was fascinating because it was the only country I knew of that was "modern" like the west, but wasn't colonised and whose people still had a completely different culture. Obviously I know the world is a lot more complicated than that these days, but that's where my interest started. I would have learned Japanese in highschool if I could have, but I couldn't so I learned Indonesian (which I'm glad about because I don't think I ever would have learned it otherwise). And then in highschool I got into anime and later visual kei and that brings us to my next topic I guess.
Androgyny:
I don't actually remember how interested I was in androgyny as a concept before I got into viskei but I think I was? Because I've been interested for a very long time in how it's possible for someone to be completely straight or gay when to me it seems like there's just so much overlap (I think I understand it a bit better these days having read a few discussions about it but still). One of the things I came across last year while researching for my dissertation really struck me, it was one of those things that seems really obvious in retrospect and makes everything make much more sense. That was the theory that there isn't just a masculine-feminine scale, there's a scale of how gendered someone is at all. You can be androgynous because you're both very masculine and feminine at the same time, or because you're neither. I should have realised this earlier because Japanese even has two different words for androgyny that map onto those two ends of the scale fairly well (which were mentioned in the piece I translated, I think I translated them as "neutral gender" and "androgyny" although that's not entirely helpful).
Law:
When I was very little I wanted to be a vet, but as I grew old enough to realise that being a vet was less adorable kitties and more sticking your hand up cows I decided I'd rather study law. It was a pretty simple choice and I've never particularly felt the need to question it, it just always seemed like the thing I wanted to do. I don't actually particularly want to be a lawyer but I really enjoy studying law and I don't think I'd mind being a solicitor particularly if that's the way my life ends up going. Mostly I like the direction it stretches my mind in when we analyse cases and apply case law to potential scenarios and I think I'm pretty good at it. If I was a better student and therefore more organised about actually learning the law that I'm meant to be discussing and applying then my marks would be much better than they are.
Firefox tabs:
I'm much better about these than I used to be! I used have 80+ open at any one time but at the moment I only have 35 open between two windows. I'm a terrible procrastinator so I have a tendency to open tabs to things that I'm sure I'll get around to later.
Phoenix Wright:
Someone once commented that the Phoenix Wright games must be really accurate if I, as a law student, loved them so much. Actually I love them partially because they don't even pretend to bear any resemblence to ANY form of coherent legal system, much less a realistic accurate one. I love the sheer ridiculousness of them and their characters and cases, while retaining a certain level of internal logic and intelligence. One day I hope my Japanese is good enough that I can play them in it, because as far as I'm aware the characters and the jokes are different in the Japanese and that would mean I'd get to play and enjoy them all over again in a new way. But it's gonna be a long time before I'm good enough to play a game that's so finely focused on the exact meanings of words.
From auntpol:
Japan:
As much as I like being in Japan, I don't think I could live there permanently. I'm not prepared to give up the privilege of living in a country that's not racist towards me and where the main language is my native one. I do really like Osaka but that's probably at least partially because it's the first time I've ever lived in a big city. I love Perth, but it is pretty quiet here. Osaka is huge and vibrant and I love the atmosphere around Shinsaibashi/Nanba, which is where I spent most of my time hanging out. And there are still places I haven't been that I want to see there. Being in Japan is also fun because of the sheer novelty of being surrounded by my fandom, which is basically unheard-of in Australia. I'm sure that would wear off if I lived there for a while but channel flicking to MTV and catching the broadcast of a concert of visual kei band is awesome. Not to mention actually being able to go to the concerts of my favourite bands. Visual Kei is a fairly fringe subculture (I'd compare it to the Goth subculture here in terms of how much the average person knows about it) but it's still definitely around. There's a section for it in most CD shops, it's on TV, it's on posters in train stations.
Clarinet:
I started learning clarinet in year 8, but stopped fairly quickly because I was overwhelmed enough by starting high school at a new school and everything. And that would have been that except that halfway through year 9 I mentioned it to a family acquaintance, who suggested that there was no reason I couldn't take it up again now that I'd settled in. I thought that was a good idea so I did. I did TEE music (specialised in it for my end-of-highschool-exams for those of you playing at home) which means I reached a pretty decent level of ability, although I was fairly mediocre on the scale of people studying TEE music. Then I didn't play for about three years until a couple of things spurred me into joining a local community concert band, which has been one of the best decisions I've made in the last few years. I love playing in an ensemble and doing my bit to create something that sounds amazing.
Genderfuck*:
This came with a note that Amber picked it because of the Which-One's-A-Girl Game, so I'll talk about that! Screwing with peoples' perceptions of gender is basically the favourite pastime of most visual kei fans (Usually taking the simple form of "Hey, she's hot!" "That's a guy" ".......") and I took inspiration from a post about it on a fan comm to make a game out of it. I've been refining my choices of photo for the last few years and the current version is here. If you haven't seen that version before feel free to guess in the comments (one of them is a girl, no really, no this isn't a trick question, yes only one). The previous versions are here: 1 2 3 3.1 4 so you can see how it's changed. I'm still not entirely satisfied with it and I'm always on the look out for more pictures to use for it. I'm thinking of maybe doing different difficulty levels too. I like springing it on people because I find it fascinating the way people are so hung up on gender and sex when really they're kind of arbitrary (everyone except the girls (who are both physically female and identify as women except for one who IIRC identifies as neutral) in those pictures are male and identify as men). I've done my best to fix it so that there is no logical way of working it out, so in each new version I've learned from the reasonings people have given me and done my best to make them not work again.
Also the icon I'm posting this post with is really outdated in terms of what pictures and terms I should be using, I should fix that.
South Africa:
My father was born and raised in South Africa. My mother was born in Zimbabwe (well, Rhodesia) but studied in Cape Town and met my father there. South Africa is the reason why I was raised being told that Perth is paradise. I've been there once and Cape Town was quite pretty and I've got relatives living there still but you couldn't pay me to live there.
Laughing:
Hmmm... I'm not really sure what to say about this. I laugh pretty easily, and I also smile and giggle when I'm nervous (which can actually be useful when I'm doing something public-speaking related, I've been complimented on seeming friendly when really it was pure nerves). I think I have a tendency to laugh after I say something if I'm unsure about what I'm saying or trying to lighten the conversation, but I've never analysed it that closely.