My mood has been pretty heavily downcast the past few days/weeks (maybe it's the seasonal lack of sunlight?)
...In either case, one thing I was thinking about today was magical girls (and idols).
It was mostly the fault of stumbling about HoloLive for the first time (...well, I found it before, but I forgot about it...), and I was clicking around a lot on Gura's stuff (like I'm always behind on all kinds of memes and I didn't realize where that entire "a" meme came from), and then I started reflecting a lot about idols and stuff in general.
I mean, I've always outwardly insisted that I hate idols, but it's also ironic because I've definitely read tons of idol manga.
An example of an idol manga that came to mind was
Oshi no Ko by Mengo Yokoyari (the same author as Scum's Wish). The opening panels in the first chapter always stuck with me because one of the first things stated is that everything about being an idol is centered around being a
good liar. Of course, that sounds extremely negative on the surface, but the manga presents it in an incredibly positive light.
Hoshino Ai (the idol) goes on to explain that one of the reasons why she likes being an idol is because she likes giving people dreams (which is super cliche), even if it's buried underneath a mountain of lies, which somehow kind of resonated a little bit.
Let's see... how else to put it...?
I guess I can relate?
Like I once wrote this in a blog on NUF, but
I've always been extremely envious of magical girls.
Like the transformation aspect always enthralled me, in the sense that people can spin around and turn into an entirely different person. Of course, one aspect of the Magical Girl persona that differs from the Western superhero is that magical girls are (of course) grounded on
spreading positivity and wholesome-ness, which were certain values that I clung to dearly in a certain phase of my youth.
That said, a magical girl is still a persona.
They are no different than how an idol character is a persona, or batman is a persona.
A persona represents an idea far more than they represent a person.
By no means are the people underneath certain personas an accurate representation of the mask they show on the surface.
+ + +
Exhibit A.
Let's rewind to... approximately 2013, I think.
The summer of that year was sort of like a quarter-life crisis for various reasons I won't go into.
But incidentally that was also the same year that I started getting
super active on the Internet (it's a compensatory thing, I think). I was totally emotionally in shambles (depressed? #problems?), but I was pretty much on the Internet every waking moment of the day (and at night) and not going to my university classes.
It's really strange because those years were the time that my most "vivid" Internet personas appeared.
Like... hyper-positive and squeeee happy!!! ☆*:.。.o(≧▽≦)o.。.:*☆
That was the year that I was sending glomp gifs at virtually everyone that I encountered.
Like... totally unlike my actual self (IRL), but somehow I ended up down a rabbit hole of "wuv" and artificial positivity.
...Despite the fact that my emotional state was probably incredibly unstable underneath the surface.
But I think I did it at the time because I realized that if you give other people a ton of love, it
tends to get reflected at you, and suddenly you have dozens of people who adore you for your cheerfulness and lovable-ness.
But then the cognitive discordance sort of widens over time...
...And then I spend much of next few years trying to figure out exactly what is me (and isn't).
+ + +
Why bring this up?
I guess, I think it's very similar to this idol complex or magical complex.
Like I had this sunshine persona of positivity, and I would
intentionally go hunting for guys that seemed lonely/gloomy and shower them with affection. Back then, I was very active on the blog-o-sphere, and I would stalk anime bloggers who didn't get very many visitors and spam gigantic text wall comments on every single one of their blog posts.
If they were a popular blogger, I instantly ignored them.
I wanted to be a "
special" fan, and I did so by focusing all of my mahou-shoujo attention on tiny bloggers who could feel my presence.
I mean... I was super hardcore lol.
I kind of saw myself as a cheerleader.
Like I would keep track of all of their birthdays and draw artwork for them and send it to their email.
At this point, I was pretty much spending 24/7 on these online anime blogging communities.
Time is the most precious gift that you can give to someone, and you can't fake a 4000-word comment written in response to someone's blog post. There were multiple bloggers that I was chatting on twitter DM late into the night, and we would have super long conversations on all sorts of stuff ranging from politics to literature classes and other things...
By the way, they were all nerdy single guys.
Most of them were friends with each other, and it might sound shameless, but I was totally happy to be the center of attention........
One of the bloggers (his internet handle was "frog-kun") I liked a lot, and I constantly used to publicly joke that I was "in love with him". I had other monikers like being a "shrine maiden" to a certain someone.
x.x ...I'm remembering a lot of things now.......
+ + +
Ahhhh that cringe level is too high.
I mean, my persona from back then was literally
all diabetes.
Things fell apart after a year or two (...I mean... I was horribly unstable emotionally speaking), but the subsequent years I would repeat similar things from place to place.
Thinking about it more, the core pattern to my online behavior was that I would search for a guy that seemed likable enough (and critically not too happy with themselves), and then I would
spam affection at them. Afterwards, I would kind of bask in the positive fluffy feelings for a while until our "friendship" fell apart again (because generally speaking I'm a horribly flaky person who keeps too many secrets).
I didn't really have to feel actual "affection" towards them...
Sometimes, just
pretending to love someone felt just as good.
It's a little bit like singing karaoke, maybe?
If you shout "
I love you!" loud enough, I think it's somehow satisfying in its own way.
It feels fluffy and warm, and I guess that's all I was looking for.
+ + +
So... before this trainwreck of a post gets too far out of control...
Ugh, magical girls and idols!
I've had many "friends" over the years, and I think they generally think of me positively.
Sometimes I avoid my older Internet friends because I'm terrified of ruining the magic that an older persona of mine (I've had many personas...) might have provided to them. It always hangs on my mind that people are only interested in the quirky fun character that sometimes I display online, but in reality I'm just boring cloud of lukewarm gloom. I think to myself that it's better for people to be left with fond memories rather a sour residual ghost of persona that they used to know.
I think I was able to give a lot of people good memories... with plenty of fun times...
Is it okay if it's grounded in something that's much uglier?