ParaNorman = Natsume Yuujinchou

Just finished watching the movie, and seriously. To anyone who has seen both, the parallels should be obvious.

And the climax of ParaNorman really explains why I love Natsume (the character) so much. Because even though he was bullied his whole life (and honestly, there's a strong likelihood that he was abused by some of his relatives), he made a conscious decision to not hate everybody and to try to see the good in others.

And I'll leave it at that, lest I go into fangirl mode. *-*

JJBA Voice Actors

On Twitter:

Sugita (Joseph): Fight by my side from now on too, Caesar!

Sato (Caesar): I’ll always be watching over you, JOJO.

In contrast, Phantom Blood actors in first meeting (as told on JOJOraDIO):

Okitsu (Jonathan): Oh, you must be the voice actor for Dio! Nice to meet you, Koyasu-sa

Koyasu (Dio): I’m not going to be friends with you.

Okitsu (Jonathan): Huh?

Koyasu (Dio): You’re Jonathan, right? I’m not going to be friends with you.

Okitsu (Jonathan):　(´・ω・`)

koyasu pls

So I just got an offer of employment

As a fundraiser for a charity organization called Children International. (To clarify, I'm not employed under the organization itself, but a separate organization that fundraises for them. It's actually pretty interesting how different nonprofits get their funding, but tl;dr that's a post for another time.)

It's such a coincidence, since my best friend just got accepted to his first-choice graduate program, then a few days later, I get this job! And the salary + benefits are pretty good considering that I'll only be working 5 days/week. But most of all, it's such a relief to no longer have to worry about applying for jobs, relatives giving me not-so-great suggestions about what I should do/what types of jobs I should look for, scraping together the money to pay for my monthly loan repayments, etc.

AND I get 5 weeks paid vacation, which means I can take a trip abroad! Maybe I can visit all the Western European countries I didn't get to see this past summer. Or maybe I can finally GO TO JAPAN asdadjasjkdsj

In any case, I'm excited. Nervous too, because this job will require me to step outside my comfort zone (which is honestly part of the reason I went for it). But I'm more excited for now. :)

misogyny in "the west" vs "the east"

Just gonna copypasta an email I sent to a friend. (It would be too tedious to fix the capitalization, sorry.) And this one actually relates to anime!

(EDIT: the study referenced in the text can be found here)

this is dumb. if i turned into a boy, the only thing that would change is that i would have a dick and no more boobs the end.

and this reminds me of how the entire last season of sailor moon was never aired on tv in the US because it had guys who transformed into girls. I guess that was too confusing and weird for all the little hyper masculine american boys who would rather kill themselves than be a girl.

oh and I also find it funny because americans are always so quick to judge asian societies as being sexist and backwards in comparison to the west, which really shows that westerners completely lack self-awareness. anime has crossdressing characters and effeminate guys all the time and it's totally acceptable for straight male celebrities to flaunt themselves at the camera and wear guyliner and shit, which is stuff that freaks americans out! and in the us, stuff like that is automatically associated with homosexuality because of course straight guys can't be even a little effeminate!

and westerners are the ones who have a history of exoticizing asian women and emasculating asian men because of course asian countries are "weaker" and thus more feminine than the strong, masculine western countries. and yet americans still honestly think that they respect women so much more than asians do. it's such bs.

i swear, one day i'm going to get so angry over this shit that i'll grow 100x my normal size and destroy new york!!

on prejudice against assertive women

I'm not the biggest fan of Nicki Minaj, but I definitely agree with what she's saying here. I've always felt that the lack of women CEOs and the lack of women in leadership positions more generally has less to do with blatant/obviously hostile discrimination against women and is instead tied to more subtle, deeply-rooted sexist beliefs within our society. Essentially, qualities such as assertiveness and charisma are still seen as "masculine characteristics," whereas submissiveness and seductiveness are "feminine characteristics."

Notice how even the meaning of the word "bitch" changes depending on whether it's applied to a women or a man. If a women is called a bitch, it's because she's unfriendly, hostile, unpleasant (or possibly assertive/commanding). If a man is called a bitch, it means he's a coward or a wimp (or possibly submissive). I've always felt that a large part of the reason why there are fewer female leaders is simply because many women are not raised to be assertive, charismatic, demanding, aggressive, loud--all characteristics that are valued in a leader, and unsurprisingly, all characteristics that are considered "masculine."