Pondered It Over the Last Few Days.....
......after doing this important thing they call voting yesterday. I knew I'd see some big changes, none too surprising of which including the House being an "R" majority again, but not THIS big in my home-state alone. We won't see what comes until the wheels start to turn once our newly-elected governor and his legislature settle in, roll up the sleeves and get down to business. It'll be a very hard job....but things HAVE to be done, so I wish them all the best.
I didn't come to post about politics though. It is more or less in that I reflected more upon what I had put forth on the 30th of last month about sweeping changes of the non-political nature that seem to be coming to RP forums, especially those geared towards the adult population. I've come to a few conclusions....about RPing, anime and jRPGs, while trying to place no blame on the fandoms of those things.....I am also a long-time fan, and I wouldn't want someone ripping me for the titles I choose to enjoy.
Sexual fetish-isms aside, both the mediums of anime and jRPGs are literally in a lull state..with nothing very creative coming forth that appeals to a Western palate. This has been the case for the last (at least) 3, if not more, years. Anime-speaking, the things that DO wind up out of the production stage and onto TV (most of which airs on the lowest-rated TV network in Japan, NHK namely) in Japan, titles like my two favorites
Saiunkoku Monogatari and
The Twelve Kingdoms.....many of which do make it Stateside to home DVD release, also wind up being some of the absolute least popular titles for two reasons. No mega-popular-huge manga / toy / game to market (which of course, appeals to the kiddies), or no lewd fetishizations (is that even a word?) of characters who look younger than their stated age, which has a stranglehold on die-hard middle-aged anime fans (otaku) in Japan, and also bears a cult, if miniscule, following online in Western markets. At the end of the day with anime...kids still like their Pokemon and Naruto, and men love their jiggly boobies I guess. All manner within the fantasy (Slayers, Lodoss, et al), shoujo (all manner of drama / romance and magical girls in this category. Fushigi Yuugi, CCS, Sailor Moon and the ilk), josei (Saiunkoku, Twelve Kingdoms....though the latter is more a drama of the social and political style) and (lesser extent with, due to Eden of the East proving somewhat popular) seinen have been literally KO'ed to the mat faster than the world's best MMA fighter to the point where they could nearly be considered 'dead' genres. And of course, Western stories done in anime form by the Japanese have either come out sketchy (Howl's Moving Castle) or downright snuffed altogether on both sides of the pond (Romeo x Juliet and Count of Monte Cristo are two titles that threw GONZO into bankruptcy, among other misfires)
jRPGs are in their rut because the devs are unable, due to market forces at work (and a crap economy at that), to try anything new. Anything 'new' scares the gamer-base that have kept titles like FF and Dragon Quest so hot for nearly 25 years, and as such they bomb at retail. Only the die-hardest of die-hard gamers on BOTH sides of the Pacific dare to dive into the works of small-house devs like Gust (Atelier, Mana Khemia, Ar tonelico, et al) and Atlus (SMT), and to a slightly larger extent, Namco's "Tales" franchise and Nintendo's 'Fire Emblem" series of Strat-RPGs. I'm going to even wager a bet now that the SMT series, at least in its Persona 3 and 4 iterations, made more of a killing Stateside for Atlus (both U.S. publishing and Japanese publishing / dev divisions) than they did in native Japan, since jRP gamers here were salivating for a setting and characters that were different than the usual tired crop people bitch about with Square Enix (henceforth affectionately referred to as "Squeenix" in this post) and their various franchises.....or lack thereof in recent years.
In a nutshell, no more 'middle-market' at all, period, at least for the time being.
Now, economics aside, what's it all got to do with me. Simply put.....I put myself into a terrible rut, and if I'm going to want a more fun experience with ALL my hobbies, especially RPing, I'm going to have to make some changes to myself and what I present. It'll be hard for me, because I don't have a grand imagination like some of you whom I'm sure are aspiring to be novelists, whose best realized works I may see someday at the likes of Amazon.com or when I step into a Borders, B&N or local bookseller.
I had a good talk with someone whom I could now consider a kind friend over IRC earlier today, sharing what I had pondered over after watching election results last night. I've figured several things out at least.
One being, admittedly in terms of fetishes that I personally have, anime and its peculiar aesthetics in the form of common or exotic costuming that's rarely, if ever, seen in Western art.
That's one huge thing for me that pushes buttons.
Hair styles in all gravity-defying manners and every shade from red to black in the rainbow, but especially styles that utilize straight hair, or more Oriental-ish styles. Yes, gimme!
On the flipside, my tenure as a fan of jRPGs and Western-themed fantasy goes back much further than that of anime. Anime may have given me my fetish for all things exotic, Oriental and otherworldly in nature, but if I didn't get into the jRPG and Western stories of a fantasy nature, I wouldn't have my fascination with Japan's takes of Western-style attire only seen in medieval-fantasy, and I definitely wouldn't have that kink for those with pointed ears....the elven folk.
In the case of both of these mediums where I get my kinky likings from, most of the characters featured, regardless of their age, have that impossibly smooth skin to them; the only hair shown is often just atop their head. In the past, it was often cited that this was done as a cost-cutting measure, especially back in the days when anime was done painstakingly by way of hand-drawn cels and painted by way of colored inks. Nowadays in the age where all 2-d animation is drawn by hand, then scanned and colorized by computer software, I dunno about that, but either way, it's a feature I crave as well with my partners' characters.
You can peek at
my Photobucket to get an overall look at attire, hairstyles and other bits, in case you're wondering.
-sigh- The trouble in getting what I crave is still punishing me though. I have no idea where to begin.
I've gotten the hint as of late, that people just plain don't want to play a canon character outside of the character's canon world. I suppose as adults, we see this as childish role-play, and since most of us are in it for some form of self-gratification....be it wanting to weave a story (with or w/out sexual bits) or just jump right into the gutter for some smutty one-shot fun, it makes it limiting....if not hard or impossible, for others who see my RP requests, to see a character they maybe know, getting into adult situations (unless of course, the original source material calls for it. In most anime other than the hentai genre, and a lesser extent, the tired-old male-aimed harem, this is almost always never the case))
Most people want to throw themselves, in the guise of a character or personality we are not in our reality, into a world that is not our own. Likewise with me. Though thanks to a few past RP partners (one in particular that stuck with me from 2001-2005) who probably should have said 'No' to me, but didn't towards my strange ideas (more than likely to be nice), I am where I am today, and have to get over this stupid craving that's frustrated me for nearly 5 1/2 years. That being, to pair myself with these canons.
As I put forth above, with me, the kinks are in how they dress, certain hairstyles / colors, smaller / slight physical features (mostly in being shorter heights and smaller breast size and the like), and that impossibly smooth skin. With me, it's not about the ages of characters. I care not for anything nekkid, and I LOATH and ABHOR loli and shota. May those two subsets be damned, but that's a whole 'nother topic for another day.
The problem has mainly come in the form of characters who have the traits I like, but are questionable in terms of true age just because of the whole aesthetic of appearance vs actual age. Japan, for as long as anime and JRPGs* have been around, have always 'child-ized' their characters. Been that way since Osamu Tezuka's
Astro Boy and will probably stay that way till my hair falls out and I finally die of old age.
(* aside: to a lesser extent with jRPGs...at least with mainstream popular titles put out by Squeenix, Nintendo and Namco-Bandai, they do a decent job at keeping the characters looking their age, or even a bit older than their age; the more niche (Atlier, tonelico, et al), and ESPECIALLY so with visual novels (ie: the KEY titles, Utawarerumono, anything by aGé, Aquaplus, Léaf), none of which I've had experience with, and don't want to, the more lewd, and the more younger the appearances of characters, esp females, take on.)
I've come to finally grasp that it is not the characters themselves I really want. It's the styles of attire, hair, and physical features I crave.
Therein lies another problem though. I know what you're thinking. "Well, Haruki, why not do a cosplay, or drama/play scenario?"
I've tried. It's in Request 1 in my sig. The trouble is finding imagery to work with. Cosplay is not popular amongst adults, unless one deals with the whole EGL (Gothic Lolita) subculture of Japanese culture (I have seen this a lot at my annual jaunt to Chi-town for A'Cen), or video game characters. Anime characters are..(and I have personal experience as a cosplayer of anime), to be blunt, HELL sometimes to pull off without looking like 'EPIC FAIL' material (There, my unavoidable 4Chan meme for the evening). Westerners just don't have the physique or facial structure 90% of the time to pull off the more rounded-off details that an infinite number of anime characters have. That's not the trouble though.
The trouble is just finding images of ADULTS doing the cosplaying. With anime, it's 99% always teens, and at that, almost always female. Japan is, for the most part (from what I've seen)...it HAS to be Photoshopped fluff. That or those folks just have WAY too much time on their hands and have somehow made cosplaying a 'career' (I've read about this somewhere recently and I find it a little disturbing).
Obviously,
nothing out there in the cosplay circles will work for an RP setup. (This is why I have no images in that particular scene to show). I'm an adult, I wish to RP with adults, as adult characters, and my partners as adult characters, in a consenting manner. The ONLY time I waver is when I'm playing a canon for a canon RP, but even then, I play nothing below 16 anymore, and age up characters to 18+ wherever the story allows for it.
Damn it all. I have uber-rare fetishes I guess, and if I can't find any way or anyone who'll indulge with me, I'll have to suppress it all.
I have no idea where to begin when it comes to tweaking my requests in a manner where I'll have better luck with getting what I crave, WITHOUT making people feel odd, instead being more open to my ideas....both for one-shots and for the long-term.
Maybe all this comes parallel with the changes I am sensing both in our social and political makeup, and at the end of the day, it'll be all for the better for myself. The end result being that I wind up having more fun than I've ever had with RPing, gaming and anime in my life.
Take care, and get some rest after last night folks. I know I need it.
- Haruki
((PS: I welcome any PMs in response to my, what I hope will be the ONLY, long-ass entry here. I wonder if there's other anime and / or jRPG fans out there whom struggle with the same things I do. Support and RPing with others who understand is always a good thing, and something I'm lacking.))
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Long Term rps are love. Just saying. Hope you find something. And that Japan doesn't eat you aliiiiiiiive.