4/3/23: Childhood Favorites

What have I been up to anyways? I know I haven't done very many major updates to the site in a bit, so that isn't very exciting. Mostly I was just trying to get all of my class work done. I do online courses at the moment, so if I procrastinate everything builds up until the end of the week. I just finished it all, thankfully, but one assignment had me confused and I debated whether to bother emailing my instructor on a Sunday evening just for it. It was for a compare and contrast paper, but the title of the assignment only said that the introduction and thesis were due? But he was acting like the full paper was due in the video he posted of himself talking about it. Then I found out there were two different files for the introduction and thesis, due today, and the actual paper that is due...at some other point? If the actual paper is due today then I'm fucked because there is no way it's getting done. Boring class stuff, I suppose.

Another thing that has been on my mind is getting back into some things that I enjoyed when I was a child. Not to brag, but I was super ahead of all those teenagers that started watching anime in 2020, as my mother constantly played Sailor Moon or Pokemon on our box tv for me when I was younger (this is a joke, btw). She was super into Sailor Moon and Robotech as a kid in the 90s, so maybe that makes my mom the og instead of me? I guess it does.

I rediscovered my love of Sailor Moon back when Sailor Moon Crystal came out, and I binge watched all of it on Crunchyroll, back when you could actually watch good things on Crunchyroll without paying for it. Imagine little Violet's surprise when she found out that the version of Sailor Moon she had watched her entire childhood was not at all how the story was in the manga. They don't all have English names even though they're Japanese teenagers? And Michelle and Amarah are lesbians and not cousins?! This actually made more sense to me since the cousin incest gave me weird vibes even as a kid. Gotta love homophobic views in the 1990s.

As for Pokemon, I grew up with an older brother that was obsessed with it. In all of my attempts to get closer to him and annoy him more (those with siblings know how it is) I wanted to also collect Pokemon cards and watch the show. This interest went beyond a simple one off thing that I would be preoccupied with for a few months though. I had hundreds of Pokemon cards that I kept in perfect condition. My parents got me a dvds of any new Pokemon movie or season of the show that had just come out for my birthday (remember when DVDs were a thing?). However, as a poor child with no money and dollar store toys, my parents never sprang for any of the actual merch besides the cards and dvds, so today I am left with no reminders of my childhood obsessions.

To top it all off, my mother gave my cousin all of my cards when I was in my "that's cringe" phase, so I don't even have that. Hopefully none of them were worth much money. I wish I had never had that phase, as now I have to rediscover many of my favorite childhood things. Everything that I liked was for the "weird kids," and so I usually didn't talk about it or invest as much time in it. That got to be especially annoying when everyone and their grandma was obsessed with Pokemon Go in 2016, and then turned back around a few years later and said it was for weirdos. Talk about whiplash.

But, as my time as a "weird kid" waned, and my social anxiety got better throughout high school, I got to play a little game called "act 'normal' and perfect your appearance so people won't think your interests are weird." This truly pays off. I want to write a whole different post about the advantage of being pretty and a woman's interests or hobbies. I think it's incredibly interesting. If you are considered attractive by men, they can just write off the "strange" things you like. You're pretty much like a manic pixie dream girl at a certain point, but if you're not traditionally attractive, then they'll treat your interests differently. Worst of all, you'll be cringe.

Cringe culture is stupid, and I am an adult who's brain is slowly becoming dead to embarassment. I want to make shrines on here and talk about my rediscovered love for Pokemon, Sailor Moon, obscure 80s cartoons, Strawberry Shortcake, Winnie the Pooh, and Beanie Babies. This might just be me clinging onto my childhood, as I recently turned 18, but I think it can be healthy to reconnect with the child I once was. The world is too dark and miserable to worry about only watching "age appropriate media" anyway. Besides, I can have a balance of media for different age groups. Watching so many episodes of a show with heavy subject matter is only good for me if I break it up with things on the lighter side as well. Soooo, yeah. This is my new goal. Post about the things I love that would make eight year old me jump for joy and 14 year old me roll her eyes.