Getting to the bloody point of this blog

This post and the comments page for it got me thinking about why this particular blog, and my posts for Yukan Blog, exist. Also about why I bother with blogging at all.

The article is to do with whether the age of a blogger affects their credibility. But I think I can expand a little further than that about why I think my blog(s) are relevant.

First of all, I automatically come into a questionable status because there are some people who think my condition, Asperger’s Syndrome, does not exist. I try my best to ignore these people because when I do get enraged about it people use my annoyance as justification for their views about people with Asperger’s being retarded or being loose cannons who can’t operate properly. This is not the case, and saying that Aspies don’t exist is like saying gay people don’t exist, you might think I’m comparing two completely different things but really both situations, both Aspies and gay people, have minds that work differently to “normal” people. I have even met a man my age who is both an Aspie and a gay person at the same time, so I know what I’m talking about.

But this isn’t so much a rant about people discriminating against me, it’s what I do with this blog. I started this blog as an experimental outlet for my creative writing which can be described as semi-journalism and ramblings, but it was also started to find out an Aspie like me would interpret Anime completely differently to neurotypicals, that is, “normal people” in layman’s terms. I’m halfway to discovering the truth about this, and so far I’ve discovered that I have the same capability to interpret Anime on a deep level, it’s just that the conclusions I make about something are hampered by the difficulty of attaching names to character’s faces, and remembering what happened in previous episodes which impacts the latest one.

One of the most controversial statements I will ever make is this: I actually identify with Noe from True Tears, call her autistic if you must and call her crazy, but it’s not like I wasn’t so different from her when I was younger and even more naive than I am now. Also, it’s about time more autistic characters turn up in Anime because apart from Osaka from Azumanga Daioh you can’t really find many of those characters who are affected by that condition, even if not stated explicitly in the canon, which Aspies can look up to, or be inspired by.

Baka-Raptor has stated that Noe is crazy and autistic, and I still respect him as a good man, because he doesn’t judge me on the basis of being crazy or autistic, he judges me on his consistent championing of GAR characters. A good consistency of ideological standing is good to have, but it is also good to realise when one is wrong in some cases. Baka-Raptor’s hero is Maddox, mine is Osamu Tezuka. Maddox hates everyone, Tezuka said “All life is sacred”. If you were in my shoes which one would you pick as a role model for a generation? Tezuka’s been influencing people since before Maddox was old enough to shave, and he continues to do so despite the disability of being dead now. Whereas Maddox hasn’t updated in months.

Baka-Raptor consistently comments on my blog entries and for that I thank him. We share intellectual discussions. We argue about what makes a man truly a man. I suppose we differ in what we consider our heroes. I consider Yomiko Readman from Read or Die one of the greatest heroes manga and Anime has ever produced because she’s suffered heartbreak just like I have. Baka-Raptor’s hero is Maid Guy because… well… he’s man enough to wear a maid outfit and he punches animals in the face as I have heard. I can’t help it if I think Yomiko Readman is sexy, because she is, and unconventionally so. She’s a meganekko, and an avid reader, qualities I respect in a woman in an age where young women I go to school with don’t read the newspaper or try and get out of voting even though her ancestral mothers of the past worked so hard to get women the vote in the first place.

One thing about my blogging style is that I’ve realised I can adapt it to suit multiple purposes. I can write about something that isn’t Anime for once, such as video gaming, especially when there’s the chance to win a PS3 in it for me. I can appear on the radio to talk about one of the works my hero Osamu Tezuka created about the Buddha’s life, and why it’s bloody brilliant. But all this cross-media attention won’t distance me from my regular Anime blog fans because my Anime blogs are my home on the web, and from there I began building settlements and building alliances with other bloggers who will hopefully stick by me even when I’ve got arthritis at 80 years old and my eyes will be too weak to watch Anime without listening to a dubbed version with my grandchild explaining what the hell’s going on in the show on screen.

I know I’m not the most regularly updating blogger when it comes to episodic Anime blogging, but things are changing in my life and I’m exploring new forms of creative expression, maybe I’ll draw a few comics or political cartoons to illustrate my articles in future. But what does that say about my age affecting how people percieve me?

I’m so young and new to Anime I haven’t even finished watching Love Hina, Speed Racer and Kimba the White Lion. I am usually so busy creating my own works of popular art with my illustrated novels there come occasions where I miss a highlight of the Anime season entirely. I have school to go to, and there I meet real life friends which take up even more of my time. But I never forget my blog, even if I let the tumbleweed roll a little too much on it for a while. Those who recognise patterns in my blogging have noticed that the more I blog, the more breaks I have to take after a prolific period. In that time, when I come back, the quality of my articles increase dramatically.

God forbid, I might actually have learned to research further than Wikipedia, which is what I had to do to appear on radio as an authority on Tezuka’s work. I now research my articles to a greater extent than ever before, even comparing Anime shows to non-Anime things to make it more accessible to a non-Anime fan audience.

One of my favorite blogs, Neil Gaiman’s one in particular, was what got me started on wanting a blog of my own, particularly since I am a creative writer and illustrator. You might not have seen much evidence of my growing talent yet, but I’m getting there. The first step to creating art is to stop worrying about whether people will think your drawing is crap and actually doing something with the pencil and paper, and good Lord, you might even have to use an eraser tool once in a while to edit your mistakes.

Blogs do not have eraser tools, but artmaking does. A failure in a blog entry I make is never removed, because that would be dishonest. And because of my age, the mistakes I have made all make up the image of myself that is the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a book I still haven’t finished reading. But because I read, that informs my writing and illustrating. Artist manifestos equally influence my blogging as it does my artmaking, and reading books and articles like Hunter S. Thompson’s Nixon Obituary have shaped my understanding of what a good article for a blog can be.

And I continue to define my identity through not only how I see the world as a young man, but what I learn from it as I grow older. Maybe in a few years you might see my books for sale on shelves, maybe it will take a bit longer for that to happen than I expected, but hopefully I spread my creative energy evenly. Until then there’s Anime, and lots of it, that I am yet to discover and be inspired, changed, and riveted by. Always.