Retiredere

Self-conditions:

No following a blog unless it has a post rate more akin to a traditional blog. I don't want to see reblogfests on my dash.

I don't post on Tumblr with any regularity anymore, but I thought I'd take the time to post this.

One of my friends from England, who goes by @codemasterslow on Twitter, was arrested on charges involving possessing what the police believes to be lewd images of underage children. What were the images, specifically? Touhou fanart, NSFW and otherwise.

And possession of NSFW art of underage children--even if those children are creations of the artist and are based on no actual children-- is indeed against UK law, as two more of my British friends and a brief Google search can attest to.

Touhou is a work of fiction. No actual underage person is being exploited in the case of these works; there is no victim at hand here.

At any rate, my friend is out on bail, but will not be allowed to use a phone or any devices that permit internet access until July. Even then, it's not guaranteed things will be peaceful once again for him once the bail period ends.

I...don't know what to do, to be honest. This whole case hits too close to home for me because:

There are people out there who are unable to establish a strong local support network, and thus have to turn to interactions on the Internet for company.

I--shameful as it is for me to admit it--have a sizable NSFW folder. A portion of it is either lolicon or shotacon--only a small fraction, but it exists in my possession nonetheless. Some days, I'm reminded that in some countries, I could get locked up as well for this, and--if I'm particularly unlucky--end up on a registered sex offender list, which basically means any and all reputation I have will be shot straight to hell for eternity. Who knows, the US could be next to make this sort of material--despite being works of fiction--an illegality.

This rant is mostly directed at video game players, but it can also apply to general activities like sports and arts.

Yesterday, my friend @Jozdrumz had this to say:

don’t deny that there are people better than you at something. if they are, they are. if anything, you should look up to them and learn from them

“i wanna be as good as that guy!” is what you should do, think positive, not negative

i…

Today at Sword Music Game Land…

Notable events:

Turning a failed lamp into a clear lamp (ANDROMEDA II [SPH]).

Playing one round of DDR and then getting dizzy afterwards because I barely ate the day before. Protip to fellow players: Don’t do that.

On the plus side, I started using the bar. On the downside, I think I wore out my arms by doing so.

Attempted SP七段 and got as far as halfway through THE SAFARI. Still died.

That’ll do…

So in an effort to clear out a high volume of usual life stresses and at the recommendation of a friend, I decided that today, I was just going to kick real life responsibilities in the butt for now and spend the day at Sunnyvale Golfland playing otoge.

SVGL finally upgraded its DDR cabinet to DanceDanceRevolution(2013), the current game in the series. Huge swath of content, even without an…

エロない！(or, am I scrub enough for scrub-tier translations)

エロいVNじゃない 変態CG見せない あの事ロマンじゃない

不完全なシステム スペース刑事救った 可愛い恋愛洞窟だね

(WIP; original lyrics here. Constructive feedback appreciated!)

Shirley Phelps Roper (on whether there would be a funeral for the late Fred Phelps Sr.)

Every time I start to lose interest in cosplaying, I try to remember the following:

I prefer to cosplay for recreation rather than competition, but I should do my best and push myself to become better.

I cosplay as a way of showing my appreciation for the series and character by replicating the character.

I cosplay so I can put myself in social situations and make new friends. Remember, I have…

I have decided I'm retiring from Tumblr--at least from active use.

I've noticed that I never post a lot here anymore, outside of crossposts. A lot of my recent posts are short posts; if I want to microblog, that's what  Twitter is designed for.

I have functional reasons for doing so (Tumblr honestly isn't designed for conventional/traditional blogging, as I've learned in my 3 1/2 years of using it) and personal reasons as well.

I'll be crossposting from my WordPress blog, where I'll be conducting my blogging from this point forward, and I have select Tumblr blogs subscribed to on Feedly (mostly blogs that aren't Unlimited Reblog Works), so I'll still be occasionally reading some posts and my notifications, and otherwise visiting Tumblr once in a while (e.g. to answer messages that poke into my inbox). But consider me officially inactive; I've little use for this service these days.

Other ways you can contact me (please identify yourself when adding me if it isn't clear you're someone I know):

Skype: raydere

Jabber: [email protected]

LINE: raydere

Google+/Hangouts: Ray Dere

The gathering was held in Kelley Park in central San Jose, and as usual turnout was massive, at a record-breaking 550 or so. Cosplayers of various fandoms came out to test and demonstrate their costumes, some using the gathering as a testing ground for their cosplay before going on to fine-tune them for Fanime, which is about 2 1/2 months from now.

Not wanting to bog myself down with female cosplays, which have a long prep time due to me putting on makeup (something I tend to not bother when wearing male cosplays), require me to change at someone else’s house due to parental issues, and both of which need a dry-cleaning anyway, or my Apollo Justice cosplay, which was my initial choice until deciding that hair spikes are a pain in the ass (and I don’t feel like I look good in the cosplay anyway), I fell back on my general-purpose, boring-but-practical cosplay of Persona 3‘s male protagonist (known as Minato Arisato to Western fans).

I was quickly joined by Kelp (as Madoka from Madoka Magica), a good friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in 9 months, as well as a few of her friends, and I spent a good fraction of the gathering with them. I also got to see plenty of other friends, such as my blog colleagues Nate (as Ken Amada, also from Persona 3) and Robbie, and classmate and cosplay photographer Samir.

It seems like I made a good decision to cosplay Minato, as there was a surprisingly large influx of Persona 3 and 4 cosplayers, apparently because of the announcement of several Persona spinoff games being confirmed for Western releases. I got photos with some of them. I didn’t see a lot in the way of Touhou cosplay (Touhou is my top fandom that actually has a cosplay presence at cons)–just two of my friends cosplaying Parsee Mizuhashi and Remilia Scarlet.

In general the gathering was pretty fun–saw various costumes as usual, made a few new friends, and gave myself a chance to relax without constantly worrying about the various problems of my cosplay. I was in a surprisingly good mood for only four hours of sleep–didn’t even doze off at all during the gathering.

After the gathering, a few of us went to Hydration Cafe to get dinner and milk tea, and some of us passed the time discussing careers and how to maximize productivity before parting ways.

I was still feeling particularly good, so I went to bed shortly thereafter and avoided looking at distressing material on the Internet. I also went out of my way to make a new Twitter list, my “day brighteners” list, in case I need to remind myself that not everyone or everything in the world is shit.

My next cosplay event will probably be NorCal Cherry Blossom Festival 2014, but the elimination of cosplay events means my friends will be less motivated to go. If I see a lot of people still expressing interest, I’ll probably go, but if that doesn’t happen, I might just skip and wait until Fanime instead. Either way, see ya, folks.

Instructor: The exam will be open-note and open-book.

Rest of class: HOORAY I DON'T HAVE TO STUDY