Meet Captain Jack Sparrow, professional escapist.

My interests are wide-ranging, as longtime readers of this blog know – anime, sci-fi TV shows, fantasy movies, video games, RPGs, cosplay, comics, fiction literature, and so on. One thing binds all of these interests: they are all escapist forms of entertainment.

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LISTEN UP YOU WHINERS!

I have something to say to the following people, no matter who you are or what you’re into, like anime, or cosplay, or writing a novel, or starting a band, or traveling, or drawing a comic, or making your community a better place, or overthrowing the government, or ‘changing the world for the better’:

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I’m watching the sixth episode of K-ON! and it’s at the part where the band is onstage for their live performance at the school festival. Mio is frozen with fear under the spotlight.

My breath catches in my throat. Because I remember what that’s like.

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Shibuya at night. I took this photo while crossing the street, trying not to get elbowed and shoved around.

The Nintendo DS Game The World Ends With You is set in an alternate-reality version of Shibuya, the ultra-trendy fashion capital of the ultra-trendy city of Tokyo. More than anywhere else you will find people dressing according to the subcultures that they belong to — loligoth, urban hip, princess-kei, retro hip, and so on. And unlike more homogenized fashion scenes like, say, Manila, the fashion of one subculture wildly diverges from the fashion of another.

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Before I uploaded my lightsaber-wielding picture to my About Page a few days ago, I thought about it for a very long time.

What was the worst that could happen?

When I was a kid, I quickly learned that being different in any way meant that the people you were different from were going to pick on you, sooner or later. Sometimes the picking was for harmless fun, like a joke between friends. (I’ve always made fun of my martial artist friend’s bald head, knowing full well that if he really felt that I was dissing him just to diss him, he could kick my butt so hard I can taste his shoe. He’s cool with it. Plus it makes him look like a badass.)

Every now and then in any kid’s life, the picking becomes mean-spirited and vicious, a way for kids to show other kids who’s top dog of the playground. This is fine if you realize that the name-calling is all just a kid’s game, even if it’s one that’s played for keeps. It’s not so good when you start letting the insults wound you.

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