Writing introductions is a bit tedious so....just take a look at my first post if you want to know more....

....and if you get curious about the name of this World or my posts, check out the second one.

Pride on the Blade

Eh...I've waited way too long to make this post...I knew I should have done it right after I went to 夏コミ and could really talk excitedly about it. I'm only doing it now b/c I'm afraid with Beth visiting next weekend I'll end up having too much other stuff to talk about & never get to it if I don't. Oh well...gotta try and make it good anyway...So, I did my ANBU cosplay both the 1st and 2nd day, but the pictures are all from the 2nd. The 1st day I was by myself, while the 2nd Hachi was with me to be my personal cameraman.

This girl had the most amazing contacts, but you can't see them at all in the pic...

Hachi was pretty funny when we went out to the cosplay plaza (you can't just take pictures in the middle of the convention hall after all, it's way too crowded). She's been going to these things longer than me, and the first time she invited me she mentioned going to look at cosplayers as something to do there but it turns out...she's never actually done it! Seems she was too scared to go out there by herself.

This girl was the best Lee ever! I mean, seriously....she looks EXACTLY like him!

I can kinda understand Hachi's hesitation I guess. I've gone out and walked through it befeaore, but never taken pictures of people b/c I was by myself and it felt weird. Having her with me, and seeing her get excited over every cool looking person we saw made it a lot easier for me to walk up to random people and chat about Naruto or ask to take pics together. A few of them even asked me if I had business cards. Yep. Cosplay business cards. I have to make some now since I ended up receiving them.

These might be the only Naruto cosplayers I met who were actually male...

Notice something missing from my costume? Yeah...no weapons. I was so upset when the staff made me leave my sword and armor at the cloak check! What's an ANBU without a sword strapped to their back?!? It makes the costume! OK, actually, the mask is what makes the costume, but still...the sword is pretty damn important.

I had to take one w/Gilbert even though we don't match at all...

And when it was all over I had to get a haircut since I bleached the purple out & my hair started melting off just like when it was pink 4 years ago. I keep thinking of more characters I want to cosplay now. I hope my mom is up for some more sewing next time I go home....

The Fearless Child

I should really just put all my posts in the Hetalia category, huh?

...but before I get obsessive again...

...my girls (who also love Hetalia of course!)

...and my Hachi (who made me super happy by requesting this Kakashi fanart.

So, anyway....I got to draw Al again This was a request from a 6th grade girl, who watches (and reads?) Hetalia with her mom. And so I must wish a whole lot of awesome on this, the third pair of mother-daughter fujoshi I've met in Shiz. Well, I say "met" but I haven't met the moms, just heard about them. But let's face it, they're awesome. I ran out of pages in my sketchbook and had a few hours of work left today so I started doodling on the back of some unimportant ones...

...and these are the results (now you see why they're not worthy of fanart posting, people? there's marker all over the back that's showing through!) Neither of these is that great (nor is the posted one, it looks like he has a lazy eye...) but I'm still pretty proud of them. I know I don't talk about it much (b/c it's kinda embarrassing) but most of the stuff I draw usually has one or two references that I'm looking at or combining. I always say it's b/c I'm doing requests and I don't want them to come out crappy, but maybe it's just a crutch. (I'm sure Al wouldn't do it if he was an artist...). I've only ever tried drawing from my head with Kakashi before & was only marginally happy with the results, but this....this is something I can build on.

Sure, there's a lot wrong (particularly the shape of his head I'm now noticing...) but it seems I'm destined to be in love with the idiotic personification of the USA for a while, of course, he's not my number one, Arthur will always be number one b/c he's me, but Al, well, he's the hero after all, you can't help but love him. So I guess I'll be getting a lot more practice at drawing him.

If you're an enemy I have to defeat, I will. That's all.

6/17 op. 4 A Face From the Past

So.....my summer vacation was awesome, but first just a quick clarification of one more thing from yesterday's post, when I said I "messed around" with photo editing...I mean just that, by no means do I think that I'm good at digital graphics. (In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm terrible...) I like technology as much as the next otaku, & I think I understand the ins and outs of my computer well enough, but that's as far as it goes. When it comes to artwork give me my pen and paper please.

Anyway, summer....well, it's still summer even if I have work tomorrow & all the stores have their fall clothes out, but...vacation....I guess you could say I took two really, with a brief interlude of work to help out the new kids (it sucked, btw). During the second one (last Thurs-today) I went to 夏コミ (more on that in a different post where I have space for more pics!), hung out w/Hachi, saw the latest Naruto movie (it wasn't that great, Kakashi had waaaaaay too small a part) and did some cleaning & shopping. Most of the week I just sat around wishing I could keep my purple hair & counting down the days till I had to dye it back to some semblance of a normal color. But anyway......what I really wanted to post about now was the first "vacation" I took (July 24-Aug 3).

...can't breathe when I'm around her...

My wifey came to visit! She promised that she would when she left a year ago, and she really did. Not that I had any reason to doubt her. We've talked about this every week since she left. So it was nearly two whole weeks of eating together, sleeping together, shopping together, um.....actually, that's pretty much all we did, eat, sleep, and shop. That sounds pretty bad, huh.....we did go down to Osaka for one crazy night with Tricia (the "me" of Hawaii) that turned out to be something like 72hrs long....

....oh, we also took a ridiculous amount of purikura. A long time ago there was one of a bunch of us that everyone said looked like a poster for a TV drama. I think this one might be even more so....

Anyway......gah, I can't seem to stop saying 'anyway'....losing my train of thought too easily in the early morning (of 11:45 am...) Having Stacey back was amazingly good for me, but at the same time, maybe it wasn't? I mean.....she was back and it was like she never left - a lot of people said it, including her, but I think I felt it differently than they did - it was so easy to slip back into being what we were, what I "was" when she lived here. And while I love her, and love being with her, at the same time....there's this sense of codependency that might not be the best thing in the world. Especially when after she left I felt lonelier than I have all year. It was like all the misery of her leaving was held back by the way we didn't get to say goodbye properly the first time (check here for detalis, not writing it again) and came out in my fury at having to once again teach a bunch of idiots how to do their job the very next day. (Ok, so to be fair, I wouldn't have been nice about that no matter the circumstances...) I thought for sure I'd cry when she left this time. It was all too short, too fast, too busy to even remember clearly, but when we stood on the platform at the train station all I could think was, 1. I'm such an ass for spending too much money and not being able to take her to the airport, and 2. I have to comfort her if she starts to say sad stuff about this. Which she did, and I did, and then the train came and I carried her suitcase onto it, hugged her, and then went back outside to "get out of people's way". And I stood there and waited, and waited....for 8 whole minutes watching her talk to the old man next to her with her cute smile shining just like always. And I waited, and I thought I would cry, but.......I couldn't. It's always that way. The times when I feel like I'm really miserable and I should be crying, nothing happens. It's like I'm in shock or something.

The train left, and I went home, and went on about my life. She texted me when she got home, just like always. I got random texts about random things from Pin, just like always. Put my headphones on and drew for hours and hours at work just like always. Thought about how much better it was with her here. How much happier everyone was. Wished for a way to split myself in half so there'd be two girls again. Wished briefly that I was the type to make friends with other girls since that'd solve things way faster. And even more briefly that I wasn't so much of an "俺様 type" so I wouldn't be angered by these things in the first place. Pushed them out of my mind so I wouldn't take them out on people who I know (I know) aren't trying to hurt me.

...you're falling, who's crashing now?

Oh, when I said I wasn't going to use other people's art as a theme on my World, by no means was I also saying I was going to quit posting it to express my mood. Go ahead, call it a double standard, I dare you.

Changed Again and Again

I finally did it. My site is completely my own art. The background, the banner, the avatar (that doesn't show here....) all of it. It took the better part of the day. Well, to be fair, I only woke up at 12:30 so I suppose the better part of the day may have been when I was still sleeping (hey, better is a relative term anyway!) I've kinda been using this World as a base for a lot more than just communication on theO and I realized after a while that, considering who I am (not going into that right now) and what I do (or that, sorry) I really should be using my own stuff here. To be a bit less vague, it seems unfair for an artist to be showing off while using someone else's work as decorations. I couldn't spare the time to draw something new just for this, though I would have liked to, so I messed around with some photo editors and....this is the result. I'm not too happy with the way the yellow text is hard to read on the banner, and I think the yellow in the background stands out too much (I don't actually like yellow all that much, not even sure why I used it) but.....I got sick of working on it Just to clarify, I am by no means condemning, insulting, or looking down on the practice of making/editing avatars, wallpapers, layouts, etc. using other people's art or the people who do it. You guys make some awesome graphics. I just decided it wasn't right for me to do it anymore. On a side note, if you look closely at the Arthur drawing that I used for the background, there's a certain detail that's missing, or rather, had to be moved, for the final version with all the other Hetalia guys.....

I love theOtaku. I don't say that often enough. Actually, I probably don't say it ever, but it's true. Of course, I'm not the same kind of member I was 6 years ago (when I was someone else), or even 3 years ago for that matter, but I still have to visit every day. Recently I've started to feel like I kind of know who people are again and even got a couple of really nice surprises, this pic:

from mia-chan about a month ago, and this one:

from Farah2 last week. Crazy surprised both times! (click the links above each one to go to the fanart & give hugs!) Thank you!!

Anyway.....I've only got 2 more days before it's back to work , but at least no school yet, just sitting in the office. It's still considered summer vacation somehow....I did a lot during the break, and have a lot to say about it, but......that's for a different post. I finally got around to listing the post titles I've used & then deleting them from the main list (which I finally saved so I don't have to keep looking it up on wiki every time) so I won't have to read through all my old ones every time to check for duplicates. Which means, I should be able to do this more efficiently, and thus, more often. I'm thinking of turning this particular World in a more public direction and making two more (one Japanese and one private) since you can have up to 5 (right? 5? I think it's 5....)

....eh, a little preview never hurt anybody...

Heroes Can Save You

My apologies to anyone who reads this blog simply because they're my friend but have no connection to theOtaku whatsoever.....I've gone into obsessive mode and this may bore you quite a bit.

First: here's the final version of this fanart I posted yesterday. It's for the pre-summer issue of my old school's art club magazine, and ranks my 6 favorite characters. Somehow Arthur came out being the hot one while Al is just cute. I guess that solves my, "I can't draw the one who's like me," complex. Not really satisfying when I wanted to make Alfred look sexy, but....oh well, his personality is cute so I guess it just came through in his looks.

Second: I can't stop watching this amv...

Third: Here is what I've learned from Hetalia, I should have paid attention in History class more when I was a kid. But, just like everything else I've ever hated (or loved for that matter) once I'd decided that was it. I was going to hate it forever. I have a vague memory of being interested in the Phonecians in World History when I was in 9th grade. I wanted to research something about them being the first people to have ships. I can't remember what I thought was cool about it at the time, I'm not all that interested in ships or sailing. I skipped out of European History in 10th grade much to my mother's displeasure, but I was much too interested in music and math at that point to care. Turns out it's kinda interesting. Of course I know that Hetalia isn't an exact historical account, but then, depending on who you ask, neither are most history books.

Friends have sometimes questioned why I don't like History since I love stories so much. After all, it's just a big bunch of stories about people who used to be alive, right? And Hetalia has finally managed to get that point across to me. I think it's because the storytelling is romantic. Not cheesy Disney movie romantic or angsty high school vampire novel romantic, but real romanticism. Like the stuff I studied all those years ago in England, Byron and Shelley and Blake, they had a way of making things seem amazing, no matter how they made you feel....kinda like this...

the fall of Prussia

what's in a National bird...

EDIT: After skimming over recent entries I realize I may have been boring people for quite some time now....oops....