Summer is here (again)

It’s been too long.

That’d be a given, seeing as I’m well on my way to becoming a professional procrastinator at this point.

Regardless, it is summer again (in England, it’s still only averaging at 20 degrees Celsius, but I’ll take it) and I’m only taking the time to look through my photos from last summer. Shocking.

A lot has happened, life wise, fandom wise, you can change a lot in however many years I haven’t written. But better late than never – seeing as I’m due to enter university later this year, we might as well take this as an opportunity to brush up on my literacy skills.

Seeing as ‘write’ is on my to-do-list for this summer, here I am, writing.

 Teaser for the topics of posts to come – holidays, anime conventions. FUN.

Here is a complementary photo of me with a lavender Hello Kitty. Whilst on holiday in Hokkaido, Japan – famous for… wait for it.. lavender!

Yogscast Dairy Drive!

As a Yognau(gh)t of many years, and living in the same country as them, I figured I should do my bit for charity!

Isn’t it the dream? To be able to work and play at the same time? >_< While it can’t be achieved for everyone, at least we can watch those who do over the internet!

The Yogscast have always been amazing and the commentary… let’s say it varies from Simon’s dwarf driven rambles to the real guy, the best guy, Sips_ himself.

If anybody needs credit for putting their popularity and publicity to good use, it’s them, especially because of the highly entertaining livestreams they run! (And fitting for the night owls who are still up at 1, because they run for most of the night!)

So, if you want to do one good thing for charity this Christmas, and you particularly enjoy watching let’s plays of games such as anything from Zoo Tycoon to Left for Dead, then I would recommend checking out the Yogscast on YouTube! (Who are not sponsoring this in anyway, though a job at Yogtowers, if anyone in Bristol can ever find it, would be faaaantastic.)

If only all months were as fun as Christmas,

~ Persephone

50% OFF

Haha, figured I’d put this on for Lady R. We watched this during the sleepover, and well…
‘Here, you can take this to your boyfriend.’
‘Hehe, he’s not my boyfriend!’
‘Hehe, you’re not fooling anyone.’

 *fangirls*

That’s the fandom, right there.

Sure.. there are less appropriate moments (the trophy, remember?), but come on, the minute you hear Nagisa’s voice? *mindblow*

Just don’t die while watching this Lady R, we still need to finish the series…

~ Persephone

The 104th Training Division… Dances

While I’m clearly on a SnK run, I guess I better put this on as well.

I mean, when do we get a legitimate reason to listen to High School Musical songs? When it’s in another parody video!

This time, everyone’s in it.. dancing together, it’s pretty amusing all in all.

And for the fangirls, there are some ships there, dancing together. Personally, all I saw was Ereri. Especially at the end, come on, biased much? (But it was glorious.)

 Tell me this isn’t canon. Just try. -_-

It was funny, and made me want to dance too, what can I say? They looked very sophisticated and debonair in dresses and suits!

(I have a problem with YouTube, I think it’s taking over my lif- ‘oh look, a new video from the Yogcast!’)

~ Persephone

Attack on Dust

Sometimes, you wonder why you love a certain character so much… then a video like this comes along.

Lance Corporal Levi may have a potty mouth and makes toilet jokes all the time, but you have to admit, his OCD tendencies are amusing at times… Just like the numerous Photoshopped picutures of him opening the windows in his cleaning gear…

Wow… just wow…

And so, someone decided to make a parody of the anime opening. A pretty spectacular parody if I say so myself! The song, the sheer amount of cleaning cloths and dusters…

May I add that when Eren is reading the SnK manga and Heichou’s outside, cleaning the windows? Their relationship in a nutshell!

I don’t even know anymore, except that Season 2 of the anime could not come any sooner – just like Season 2 of Free!, the fangirls are ready, and Tumblr is sooo, ready for new content.

~ Persephone

School supercedes Social-life

Wow, it’s been too long… too, too long. School started, and then everything went to HELL. (Not that I had a social life before.. but…)

Also, I mean, I’ve got Lady R onto the otaku ship, so… Ouran HSHC every Friday night over Skype – we read it and fangirl, what can I say? I’m a good friend, I know.

Then, we had a sleepover for her birthday, and it turned into a ‘LET’S WATCH LOTS OF ANIME ALL DAY-DAY!’ A feel of it would be… Watching: Ouran HSHC, including the English dub bloopers (the only thing good about the English dub compared to the Japanese), Ghost Hunt (it was near Halloween and we turned off the lights…), Free! (because it’s Summer and light-hearted and now Lady R ships MakoHaru!),Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou (it’s hilarious) and Shingeki no Kyojin (most epic anime of all time… and I’ve watched a lot of anime)!

So.. the overall reaction was good, and honestly I was just happy to have an otaku friend… *sniffs*, it’s hard when your friends don’t appreciate the finer things in life like anime… And  just you wait Lady R… Ereri will be a thing for sure! *cue evil laughter* Hint: we just need to watch a little more SnK.

 Just looook at them *coughs* where was I?

So, essentially, between school, Access to… schemes, tests, and Fangirling to keep myself sane. The blog has turned into a neglected Animal Crossing town… overrun by weeds… (copyright amazing metaphor much?!)

How do I rectify this? Well, we’re doing a lot of wider reading for the English scheme at AtB, and waddya know? Lady R has taken up the challenge of NaNoWriMo… soo, WATCH THIS SPACE.

May the odds be ever in your favour (because Catching Fire is coming out soon),

~ Persephone

Weekend Manime Club

So, what do you do, when you’re an otaku but you have no friends who share the same interests as you? Scream at the World about how unfair it is?

Nope, I decided to turn one of my best friends into an otaku – Lady R! >_<

Now, when you’re a sixth former, you find yourself inexplicably more busy than ever before, and as for free time? Let’s just say aside from fangirling, *cough*so, actually, this ‘club’ would be a great way to stay in touch, and perhaps teach the ways of Japanese culture to a friend.

Since I’d be throwing her into the deep end, I though that I should start with something relatively ‘family-friendly’. (You know, no yaoi, or excessive gore just yet) so I decided on.. Ouran High School Host Club. Okay, the title sounds odd and misleading, but if you know about it, you realise it’s not as bad as it sounds!

Starting a club sounds easy and all, but when you have to face the fact that we were not going to meet up, but use technology (Skype) to video chat and read it together. Yay! -_-

So, we decided on Friday nights, at 6pm, to just call each other, and read together. No, we have to read together, after all Lady R is uneducated in all Japanese references! I just couldn’t throw her in the deep end!

Now, Lady R’s opinion after reading a whole volume in one sitting? (About 3 hours… on Skype). It was very, very funny! And she even has established ships! (So proud). Even though I had to explain (uncondescending, I really wanted her to like it, after all) some things like why Haruhi is a girl, but it’s okay for her to be a boy in this, and the usage of ‘ore’. However, there were things that I see now, were actually weird to her, but not someone exposed to every sort of archetype for a manga plot possible. The ‘rich and poor’ thing, the ‘weird caste system’ <– actual quote, didn’t sit well with her though.

In teaching a friend about otaku culture, I have realised, no, not that I use too many images and gifs in my posts, but that manga is really weird. Now, where was I? The club! It was a success, especially how we agreed over the ships, TamaHaru, of course, MOney (Honey and Mori), and Kyoya x self (we didn’t argue over him, but I guess we’ll have choice words later on). But the obsession they had with ‘peasants’ didn’t seem right to her. I guess? It’s a romantic comedy, so I assumed that was part of the humour – the misunderstood view of the poorer people in rich people’s minds. And the thing some girls have with a possibly incestuous set of twins.

It’s going to be a thing, regardless of the little setbacks. And after I showed her the bloopers to the English dubbed version of the anime, I think that I have officially assimilated her into the fandom. Success!

I mean, how could she not laugh at Tamaki and his sulking in the corner? Or Honey-senpai and his Usa-chan ❤

~ Persephone

 

Those Who Sin

Oh, dear Mockingbird

Why slaughter the innocent-

Who do naught but sing?

~ Persephone

Author’s Note: Wow, I had this moment of revelation…The reference is clear, but to say To Kill A Mockingbird is good, would be an understatement. I simply have no words, for a novel which made me cry at the end. A must read, and when you know all the subtext and morals behind this story, you will understand so, so much more about human nature.

Ad Astra

Celestial bodies

Glowing bright, guiding our way

Lighting up our galaxy.

~Persephone

Author’s Note: This was something I thought about when I had stomach ache at 2am in the morning. On a school night. I looked up at my ceiling, and that lone glow-in-the-dark star stuck there and thought it would be great to write a haiku about it. I wish I was like Mr. Magorium. He had so many stars in his room. I don’t even know how to count the syllables…

Edit: I finished it! Not much change, except a title (yes, I’ve done Latin, and I know we don’t have capitals, but hey….) ‘To the stars’, is obviously a reference,  to Virgil’s Aeneid, which I did for GCSE, and was remarkable to say the least (especially it’s length O__O). However, it’s also me, paying homage to the stars, and thanking them for giving me such a good subject to write about… at 2 am in the morning and of course, existing in the first place~

“I used to believe…

“I used to believe in forever, but forever’s too good to be true.”
– A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Now… while not everyone in the whole World may have heard of Winnie the Pooh (sadly), they will have at one point, experience this sheer feeling of contentment, it a second, or throughout their life. That one moment where you feel as if you want to preserve it forever, and you believe that it would never end.

Unfortunately, life is rarely so kind and unforgiving, and before you know it, you’re back in the ‘real World’ – having to suffer through a monotonous lull that is your existence. As a child, you might be willing to think that you can remember all the things you loved, and sometimes, if you wished ‘hard enough’, that TV show, or ice cream cone would never end. Then, as you get older, and wiser, you come to learn that there are such things as endings, and even if you loved the characters enough to call them family, or you would be willing to eat that particular sweet for the rest of your life – you simply cannot.

Since it is in human nature to never let things go (sometimes), we are taught to deal with the loss, and that forever simply cannot be. Even if science were to allow us to live beyond the realm of time, what would that make us? Lonely? It’s hard to think about existence in a timeline that stretches on, for an eternity, and then some.

Whether it’s an event, novel or place in particular, nothing is eternal, so our serviceable substitute,  we are now conditioned to believe that while things may not last forever, they always have a way of coming back to us. Sometimes, it is expected, sometimes,  it may be in  the most surprising way imaginable.

Even if we are not equipped to deal with even the concept of forever, I should think that holding things close to your heart ‘as long as possible’ shall suffice for now.

After all, isn’t it true, that…

    

No matter which fandom you are from, I’m sure you’ll appreciate while forever is beyond our grasp, at least this means we’ll never be alone.

~ Persephone

Omake: