This month’s haul

Loaded up on Kojima Lalako since I couldn’t afford not to completely read all of her works. (:3)rz

As most of you (regular readers) know, I haven’t been buying BL that much lately because of the usual reasons. Thankfully last month, my mom agreed to let me buy new (manga) releases again and as for school matters, I’m now officially a college senior this coming semester and so my aunt actually allowed me to do anything I want this summer. So of course I’m trying to give all my time to my usual hobbies although most of the time, I dwell on improving my illustration (career—sort of).

Otakutofujoshi is on Twitter

I made a twitter solely for BL updates and nothing else. Here everyone can be easily updated with releases and since I won’t use my Formspring anymore, all questions will be answered there in my new twitter as well. ;w;)/

For more personal questions though, please refer to my info on my sidebar for my e-mail address.

Thank you very much!

Perspectives on BL manga Part I: BL manga as an esoteric fandom.

It’s only been a year since I got into BL and I admit that I’m still not that experienced with the fandom. Yes, as I said before, I’ve been into yaoi for the longeeeeeeest time already but when I got into BL, it’s a totally different experience.

Just the other day, my friend Yee Hun and I met up with Ms. Khursten Santos, one of the organizers of the BLush Convention, to get our own copies of the very first BLush Anthology. The meeting was also for us to discuss further plans with the anthology which then lead to a more in-depth fujoshi talk—which I enjoyed very much! We talked about the old and new BL fandom, the difference between yaoi, BL and their stereotypes. I loved how similar our views were about BL fandom; she was able to enlighten me with words I long thought of but never had the chance to express or explain it clearly especially here in my blog.

When I was into yaoi before, I never called it “BL”—I didn’t even know what BL was.

My BL fandom all started because of a random BL blog I stumbled upon while looking for some new manga. The blog was in Japanese so at first, I had no idea what she was talking about when I saw posts about BL magazines and anthologies. I thought to myself, “Wow, so stuff like this actually exists in yaoi fandom” since I only knew about Shonen Jump before, lol. After reading a few posts from her and discovered new blogs and fujoshi friends along the way, I now succumbed to the very obsessive fandom that is BL.

So what’s the difference between yaoi and BL anyways?

For me I think the right word to describe BL is that it’s such an esoteric fandom that most fans don’t give time to actually understand what the fandom really is so they just tend to only have knowledge about the general facts. Although, before I also used to think yaoi is more on the obscene side while BL on the other hand is just pure love. But it seems they both have matching descriptions which explains a lot since technically, they’re the same. As to what I understood from further readings about the term’s origin, it just depends on how people got used to calling it. In the end, it all differs on how much the fans understand the genre itself.

Up to now I’m still trying to get the right words out of my head in order for me to properly explain my thoughts about what BL really means and how it influenced me as an artist. All I can say is that it greatly influenced me not only for my art but also my perspective in life. I know it sounds a bit dramatic but that’s how it really is for me, haha!

BL greatly changed a huge part of my personality since it provided me personal guidance. Most of the BL mangas I got to read had a very realistic storyline and because of that, it really made me realize what life is all about—as cliche as it may sound. Since BL tends to lean more on the shojo and josei demographic, it often has a mature feel to it. 

My views on eroticism also changed because of BL. To most people, eroticism is pornographic which often leads to negative impressions. I remember Araki Nobuyoshi (a very famous Japanese (erotic) photographer) saying this in one of his interviews:

I think people should be positively dirty-minded and if you are positively dirty-minded, you end up in the most lively and energetic place. 

The quote seems simple but it actually depends on how you understand it.

Other than those, most of what I learned are too complex to include it here. Right now, I’m still trying to expose myself with more BL so let’s just see what further realizations I’ll get to have in my next post regarding the topic! ;v;)/

I hope this short(?) post gave you guys some realizations of your own!
Don’t hesitate to share your own opinions. ;v;)/

P.S.
Cluttered thoughts as always. Sorry if my words seem out of place in every sentence!

New Year’s resolution—sort of!

I’ve been sulking about this blog of mine again recently. As much as I don’t want to admit how much this blog has been a burden to me, I’ve been feeling the need to finally end it once and for all—but still, I love it too much to actually do that.

So since I want to do something for my blog after all these tentative hiatus for the whole 2012, I decided to make a New Year’s resolution for both of my BL blogs. It’s not much but I hope these few changes will at least make up for my absences! ;v;)/

For otakutofujoshi:

• I’ll buy at least 2-3 tankoubons every other month—depends on my allowance, of course!
• Will update more on insights/reviews rather than updates. I’m quite a perfectionist when it comes to using scans/photos in my posts (yes, I annoy myself always as well) so with my laptop’s current internet connection, saving photos online can be quite frustrating because of the quality. For the scans, I can only scan using my desktop PC but since it’s currently busted, I can’t obviously use the scanner. But once I get a new PC and scanner, of course I’ll update more on both!
• I want to surprise people this 2013 with exciting giveaways!
• Since I’m lazy to do long reviews most of the time, I’ll start doing short commentaries more often.

For homodesu:

• More scans! /crossed fingers
• I’ll start posting reviews as well. Of course, once I reviewed something for homodesu, I won’t review it anymore on otakutofujoshi. *Although, reviews here in otakutofujoshi are more detailed—you’ll know what I mean once I start on my first review in homodesu! ;w;)/
• BL sharing. You can submit anything BL related to homodesu! Be it reviews, recent purchases, essays… anything!

That’s it for now. I’m still thinking of more things to add to my lists. I feel like 2013 will be a great year so I really do hope I’ll be able to do all of the stuff I listed above, lol.

I actually have a bunch of things I’d like to talk about but I’ll just save it for later. It’s BL related of course but it’s more about my personal work.

Anyways! I’ll surely get to talk about it real soon!

BLush Con + a certain BL anthology

I always say this but I’m terribly sorry for the lack of updates. ;; As always, uni gets in the way of everything but on the brightside, I’m actually pretty relaxed since I’m now an irregular student. Although I really can’t spend that much time on the PC these days since my major subjects just became harder to handle even with my very free schedule (I only go to uni 3 times a week, so).

Also, I’m pretty much busy preparing for the most anticipated BL convention here in the Philippines—BLush. As I said in my previous entry, my circle and I will be part of the marketplace. We’ll be selling pins, bookmarks, cellphone straps and prints! ;v;

We recently made a tumblr—click!
It’s still quite empty but we promise we’ll update as much as we can! We’re quite new with selling stuff especially in this upcoming BL con where we’ll be selling prints and other things on the spot ahhh. ;; Oh and if you’re attending the BLush Con and currently reading this, since most of us do digital works, we won’t accept on-the-spot commissions that day. We’ll ask you to just write your request on a sheet of paper (but we’ll most probably just put it on our cellphones) and discuss payment process after.

2 weeks left until the said event so hopefully all our preparations will be done earlier considering we’re all busy with our own personal works. orz;

As for this blog’s current status, I’m already frustrated about not being able to update this (and homodesu@tumblr) that much but as I always say (like, for the 10000000000000000000000000th time already), I’ll try my best to update both of them. I was actually doing a couple of review drafts I can’t remember when I started though but yeah. I was actually excited to show you guys my last purchases a couple of months ago but meh, uni happened. ;;

I haven’t really mentioned it yet before but have you guys heard of Right BL he Youkoso?
I was reminded by a friend when I saw her post it on Tumblr. I was actually curious about it when I got to read it on the release list before but I only got to see the title and didn’t really know what is was about, lol. The title is written as “ライトBLへようこそ” (Raito BL he Youkoso), I was actually wondering at how Raito is read—Light or Right—but then when I read the description I guess “Right” it is?

So basically it’s a BL guidebook. I’ve seen a lot of similar guidebooks in the past but haven’t encountered a comic one like this? I usually see novels so this one is pretty interesting—not to mention the mangaka lineup!  I checked today on HMV and it’s already available! (I was trying to pre-order before but it wasn’t on their website D:)

If you already have a copy of the book please do tell me how it is! ;v;)/

BL rebound

Waited for quite a long time for me to get back on buying BL so I think it’s okay to spoil myself again with a few titles. As much as I want to spend all out on releases I missed, I limited myself to the ones I really like and just took note of the others that I can just buy next time. I don’t really have much time to read lately anyways since uni has been a pain plus I’m busy for a convention this December. ;;

some thoughts

Since I really wanted to talk about this for a while now, I think its best to actually say it here rather than in my personal blog/s since this is pretty much BL-related in most ways.

How to Read BL 101—I mean, Japanese language learning tips.

Hello everyone! Finally after 48573920478947397939504277 years of actually disappearing from the whole BL fandom—well, not actually disappear it was just a while since I last visited BL sites since I was taking a little R&R because I can’t stand the temptation to buy all the new releases. But yeah, I still can’t that’s why I’m so frustrated so I try to avoid looking at BL sites as much as possible. But I still do check BL sites (I’m such an M I know) and just ogle at all the shiny new releases.

Anyway so on to the post!
As promised a *very* long time ago, I finally came around to make this Japanese language learning tips entry. Note that I won’t be teaching you guys HOW to speak the language. I’m just going to give tips and tell you about  my learning experience with the Japanese language. Yeah didn’t need to explain that eh, title says it all lol. Just don’t mind the “How to Read BL 101”. ;;

What’s in for April

Long time no pooooostt!!

So I know it’s been a month since my last update orz;; something happened lately and I don’t really feel like typing personal stuff in here so let me just link this post from my personal blog. ;; Although everything worked out in the end after yesterday’s talk with the department head—5 years isn’t such a big deal after all! ;u;

Anyway, I haven’t been checking BL sites that much for the past few weeks since it’s a pain to see release updates when you’re in a purchasing hiatus. But I still got to see some release updates since, well, I practically follow a bunch of mangakas and BL publishers on Twitter so it’s really hard to miss out especially if you’re on Twitter most of the time. orz;;

→ Shimaji is on the cover of Cab Vol.19 featuring her new manga, “Fair Bianca“. (2012/4/25)

→ Some of this month’s upcoming tankoubon releases:

(Click on the covers for more details on  Chill-Chill)

customs horror + last January orders.

I just realized otakutofujoshi already turned 1 last January 27. /;n;\ belated happy birthday to my blog. ;u; ❤

I was supposed to do an appreciation post to everyone who have subscribed, read, commented and linked my blog to theirs but I always run out of time so I’ll just be posting my appreciation post when I’m not too busy. ;u;

Anyway! These last orders from January were as frustrating as my first orders from December. Well for one, waiting for a month was a pain. I was worried EMS wasn’t able to get a hold of my package and it got lost somewhere—thankfully it didn’t. But what was so frustrating is that it ended up in customs so I had to go all the way to the main office just so I can get these.

This is the first time I have encountered such inconvenience with EMS. I can’t say I wasn’t able to encounter problems with them before but compared to this one, this one’s just scary. ;A;

So it all started a few weeks ago. I tried calling the customs office and asked about my package. The one who answered my call was a woman. She was so uncooperative that I had to repeat my tracking number 5 times for her to finally track it. Imagine if I didn’t call them then my package will just remain at their office for eternity… err. So yeah after that, she told me it was ready for pick-up. I then asked my dad if he can accompany me to the customs since I don’t know how to get there.

Once we arrived, the people at the customer service were nice. They told me what I should do, where I should go and what should I present to the people at the parcel room. After that, me and my dad waited for 30 minutes for them to locate my parcel. I swear their service was so bad since they were so disorganized. The old man from the parcel section told me to go to the parcel collecting station and just wait for my parcel there. Thinking I can already get my parcel, I was shocked to know that they still had to OPEN IT UP. Imagine the intense feeling I had when a middle-aged man finally called me and asked me to have a look at my parcel. Of course it wasn’t only me who was going to check it—there’s the middle-aged man, an old lady who gets to check the invoice receipts and suddenly, MY DAD came over beside me. I was literally  seconds away from actually throwing up since I was too scared of what might actually happen. ;;

Thankfully, they didn’t sort it out anymore because if they did, and if they saw Manako’s and Katou Setsuko’s cover, I’ll probably be in a serious questioning session.

Anyway, enough of my horror story and onto some sneak peeks!