I've made up my mind.

[xaq_the_aereon]

After what happened in Team Hatoful's last playthrough, I finally decided that my grousings and grumblings about what being Ryouta's VA had brought on had gone on long enough.

If history's going to remember me for voicing a cross-dressing rock dove, then I'M BURNING IT INTO HISTORY'S BRAIN, DAMMIT.




(Side note: That is now my sig image on all the forums I frequent.)


...I feel far more at peace with this decision than I probably should, and that's fine by me.

Comments

[kjorteo]

So you're ... coming out as the person who voices Ryouta?

[xaq.livejournal.com]

I dunno if that's really the right term, but I've noticed lately that, whenever Ryouta does something involving cross-dressing or acting...I dunno, "girly" would be the term I guess?...it just bugged me for some reason. That became especially apparent to me in the last storyline.

That bit in one of the videos where I declared I was quitting? Well, obviously I didn't, but I wasn't entirely joking about that. I don't know why it bothered me as much as it did, and the more I think about it, the more I find that I really have no reason for it to bug me. Honestly, once I could force my way past those grousings, I really got into the role...it just took a bit more work getting past them than it really should.

I've also found myself being genuinely embarrassed to bring up the fact that I enjoy this game in other communities I'm part of. The closest I ever got until now was doing a review of Hatogate for a gaming community I'm part of...and even then, I worded things to the point that you'd have no clue I had any involvement in the game's making.

So this is more a case of me telling the part of myself expressing that unwarranted aggrevation and embarrassment to be gone, and accepting my connection with Ryouta for what it is: something I genuinely enjoy.

[kjorteo]

Ah! Well, I actually wasn't aware that you had a problem, and I apologize if I should have been and I was too dense to catch on or something, but ... I'm glad that it's resolved, at any rate. :)

Sadly, I can't really say more than that because I am so the wrong person to talk to when it comes to feeling conflicted about liking girly things.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Eh, truth be told, I don't know why the idea of playing a cross-dressing magical girl bugged me so much anyway, considering a few years back I brainstormed a story involving Xaq as a gender-bending magical girl. XP

Guess I just forgot about that until recently.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

Well, did it help you feel more comfortable when Ryouta said that he considers crossdressing just another kind of job? Just a line of work he happens to be skilled in?

[davidn]

I did notice that you were quite hesitant during the "taken from behind with the massive thing" section in Bad Boys Love, but I had thought that your reaction to the whole crossdressing pigeon thing was the same as my own jokingly put-upon feelings about being cast as someone who cuts birds up with a chainsaw and posts them to their friends in bits - I had no idea that you were sincere! The dream you posted about last month takes on a whole new meaning now...

I am glad that you've decided to... let yourself enjoy the whole thing - you're one of us in this mad escapade, and nobody should think any less of you for it. As you yourself said, "If we're going to do this, we might as well go balls to the wall on it." :)

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much the right angle of attack, there.

As someone who's never fit into my supposed gender role (or even into any niche EVER) it took me a long time (like, over 20 awkward years) to just throw up my hands and say "fuck it, I'm not changing, if you don't like what I am, then I don't need you in my life".

If anyone's gonna give you shit about being a crossdressing rock dove, then they're probably not a very good friend.

After all, you could be shipping 10 year old Pokemon masters or bad Dr Seuss adaptations in your spare time.

Crossdressing pigeons are preferable to the alternative.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Heh, thanks. As far as the "Dr. Seuss adaptations" thing goes, though...well, I guess How Shuu Murdered Christmas didn't turn out that badly.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

I meant specifically the Lorax fandom. They... went sort of crazy and creepy about it over on tumblr when that movie came out. It's that one phase everyone wants to forget :)

[kjorteo]

There's a Lorax movie fandom??

I mean, yeah, obviously there has to be because there's a fandom for everything, but

There's a Lorax movie fandom??

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

IT WAS REALLY TERRIBLE and mostly Onceler x Evil!Onceler or Lorax x Onceler. There were literally hundreds of Alternate Universe ask-blogs. It's still sort of present but most of tumblr is just like.... yeah.... let's just... forget about that one.

Then when Wreck It Ralph came out, everyone had massive fan crushes on King Candy, which I also do not understand AT ALL.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

[kjorteo]

Meanwhile, I finally gave up and asked the SA trans megathread about my sort-of maybe gender issues last night, and am just awaiting response now (hopefully they're not too vicious D:) so yeah, like I said above, I might not exactly have the right perspective for being able to relate to not wanting to embrace something girly.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

You and I are pretty alike. I'm sure we've talked about this before, at least briefly. I don't want to derail this too far since this is someone else's journal, but if you want we can talk about it on AIM later?

As for what's relevant to this thread, my personal view is that there are no particularly masculine or feminine activities. Sure, there are activities and roles which males or females may be more suited to, or may traditionally occupy, but there are very few things that aren't defined by culture.

As an example:

A lot of my friends crossdress to a small degree, and I have actually sat down and talked to one of them who was feeling dysphoric. It turns out that he doesn't actually want to be a girl, he just likes feminine clothes. I've decided to make him a kilt soon to see how he feels about wearing a completely justifiable "skirt" in public. I figure not only will it help him feel confident about himself, but it will help him figure out what sorts of things he likes wearing.

I knew a guy who wore a black and white plaid jacket with pink stripes. It was a woman's jacket, but he knew what would look nice on him, and if he didn't care, I doubt anyone else would, either.

The same applies to your PSP, or anything else "non-masculine". If someone just walks up to you and gives you shit for having a purple PSP, then you probably don't want to be involved with them anyway. They're just going to find something else down the road later on to judge you with.

In fact the only reason pink is a "girl color" because it's completely devoid in the boy section of toy stores, clothing stores, and so forth, but you'd be hard pressed to find anything that WASN'T pink in the girl's section. This is a good example of how manipulative marketing really is - they can just have a meeting and decide that orange is the new pink and suddenly in about 20 years it's firmly cemented in our subconsciousness and it's "always been that way". Except it hasn't. 100 years ago, pink wasn't "just" for girls. If I heard right, it was actually a masculine color. I'll have to snopes that.

This is pretty much where Bronies failed hard. They are idolizing a show about love and friendship and yet they are now openly ostracizing and kicking out girls who may have been fans of the franchise all along because they're not allowed to share an interest in their totally manly boy's show.

They're trying to make it exclusively masculine instead of making it "not feminine", if you get what I mean.

So personally I wouldn't worry about what is feminine or not, if you like it then that's really the only thing that matters. Be you whenever possible. Don't feel like you have to change for someone else.

(But if you show up for work wearing bow ties and bright pink sneakers, that's just letting everyone know you've got no fashion sense)

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

I've also heard that; that 100 years ago, pink was considered a man's colour because it was vibrant and active and stood out, whereas what we'd call baby-boy blue was considered a girl's colour because it was just kind of pale and wishy-washy and faded into the background, like women were expected to do back then.

(This from the person whose two favourite colours are warm green and bright violet, and who just considers themself as a soul in a body without worrying too much about trying to ascertain the gender of a soul. I like what I like, and that's generally a mixture of stuff that's considered 'masculine' and stuff that's considered 'feminine'; I try not to freak people out too much with what I like if I think they'll react poorly to it, and things generally work themselves out well.)

D.F.