Whatever Floats Your Boat

 AKA, the things that kept me going through this long, bloody pandemic.

There are five weeks of this shittacular* school year left.  There have been ever-present temptations to murder the nearest dumbasses for nearly a year and a half now, but surprisingly enough, I'm still sane.  This week, I thought I might share my coping strategies.  So here goes.

1. Danmei:  Okay, so I flirted with the dark side before, but for the most part I was in denial about my potential to go full-on fujoshi.**  See, I watched Yuri on Ice to see what all the fuss was about, and had to admit it was cute.  A while later I watched Banana Fish for much the same reason, which turned out to be a mistake, because the ending REALLY pissed me off.  Between that and all the female fandom's weird, non-canon shipping, I was convinced that the BL genre had nothing to offer me.  But then last March, out of boredom and the fact that anime was having a dark age, I caved and tried a little Chinese animation called Mo Dao Zu Shi.  I spent the next week caught up in the lives of the two protagonists, progressing from the animation to the manhua and finally beginning the webnovel (because as it turns out, if one beautiful male character is good, two are even better).  And then I read the rest of the author's oeuvre.  And re-read it.  And eventually broke out and started reading other authors.  So while the fact remains that I have a complicated relationship with China, I've got to admit I find their boys' love more compelling than Japan's.  Sadly it will probably be a while before I get to live out my dreams of wandering the jianghu, but for now, I don't know how I would have gotten through the last year - particularly the last month or so - without danmei webnovels.

2. My flute:  This is not a euphemism (no matter how many times my Dark Lord and Master may have made insinuations about band camp).  I started bringing my flute with me after the year we did Kiss Me, Kate, but just started playing it with any regularity since the pandemic started.  And more specifically, since I got into Mo Dao Zu Shi.  This is relevant because one of the two main characters controls zombies animated corpses with a flute, and maybe about that time I found myself wanting to cultivate my own flute skills.  Okay, sure, mostly I just cultivate anisongs, but you know what?  It keeps the time moving.  

3. Crafting Projects: This should come as no surprise.  I AM the person who spends her vacations sewing dolls, after all.  However, my projects have gotten more and more intense.  A year ago I spent weeks on end creating a 3' x 5' Space Invaders-themed latchhook rug.  FYI: latchhook is easy.  Designing it was easy.  Cutting the yarn was easy.  But actually making the damn thing was TEDIOUS.  

I wanted to continue the gaming theme with a Tetris afghan, but I couldn't stand yarn anymore by the time I finished the rug (I've actually only just started messing with crocheting, and I can't get the damn squares the same size).  Instead, I made plushies.  I tried some different designs because I didn't have skin-tone fleece for a while, made a kappa, a mokke, and even a little goldfish (okay, so the WHOLE year of anime wasn't complete garbage).  When my summer course was over I finally let loose and sewed my two MCs from Mo Dao Zu Shi, learning that Chinese traditional clothing is more of a pain to sew than a kimono.  I feel like I really hit my masochistic peak when I decided during the first lockdown that I should make a Tomioka-san plushie, which meant that I had to print his haori by hand, and THAT meant I had to cut stencils (because of COURSE I had to do it the traditional way).  I've gotten to the point where I made silver vambraces using aluminum pie tins, warazori out of one of the nendoroid tatami mats I bought my last time in Osaka, and - oh yeah - I started playing around with epoxy resin.  

Sadly, most of these projects are still unfinished.  I'll figure them out someday.

4. Online Shopping:  When I lived in Mongolia before, I was an amateur when it came to shopping.  Thanks to the pandemic I have leveled up.  It started with Taobao...there were a couple of nendoroids made by GoodSmile Shanghai I really wanted, but their price was crazy.  Someone mentioned getting them on Taobao, and I thought, "Oh.  China's like, right there.  Are there Mongolian Taobao agents???"  Well, it turns out there are, so I got my nendos.

THEN the shopping became a solution to holes in my shoes and jeans, but since getting anything from the States was a gong show  - shipping was expensive or unreliable*** - I had some degree of restraint.  Eventually, I started buying stuff so that I'd have something to look forward to when I got home, and THEN I was introduced to an air freight service named Hotel4Box, and.  Well.  The meme there to the left is all too accurate.  Suddenly everything that I have thought would be convenient to have was absolutely necessary to my well-being.  I needed fabric.  I needed new clothes.  I needed an alto flute and a clothes drying rack and inkjet iron-on transfer paper.  

I regret nothing.

5. Mug Brownie Sundaes: As cringey as it can be to video chat, my friends have kept me going.  Last fall during one of my chats with Baby Chicken Wing, she said, "Wait, you like brownies, right?"  I gave her the long history of my students hitting me up to make brownies and how I seem to always overcook a pan, and then she hit me with her recipe for a brownie in a mug.  It was heavenly...but there wasn't enough of it.  I solved that problem by making it with tablespoons instead of teaspoons (it gives you 3x the brownie) and topping it with ice cream, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it actually doesn't make any difference what brand of ice cream you use - the shittiest Russian vanilla tastes just fine, because it's really all about melting into a gooey mess (although my personal favorite is the walnut maroo GoodPrice has been importing from Korea).  And that gooey mess gives me something to look forward to even on the shittiest day.

6. Content creators: You know what sucks about being an adult?  Finding other adults to geek out with.  Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have survived the last 6 months without dinners with Engrish between lockdowns, but it's not like she has an appreciation for the 2D world.  I honestly don't know what we did before social media, but sometimes - just sometimes - something good floats to the top of social media, like gold in a pan (apparently algorithms sometimes get things right).**** My 3 favorite treasures are the animatics I found by Limeizuan on YouTube, MorallyGrey's Tiktoks (literally the only reason I go on Tiktok) and incorrect_mxtx - the best thing to happen to Instagram, ever.

So there you go, guys.  Insh'Allah we are on a course bound for normal life, and "coping" will become a thing of the past, but these should keep me going til then.

*I believe this should have two t's - feel free to fight me on it.

**Japanese word for female fans of stories about gay male relationships.  Probably TMI, so sorry :-o

***No, really.  I ordered a nendo part on Etsy last February.  It got here back in January.

****Usually, though, they just insult me by suggesting that I need old lady bras.