Journals57
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...Still Alive...?
1 min read
I am pretty inactive here, unlike the old days. I suppose work has taken up lots of my time! I only drop by here nowadays if I must upload something specific.
Any of my old friends still around...?
I more actively post now on my tumblr, my personal website, or my facebook if you're interested in keeping up.
xoxo kageshoujo.
Any of my old friends still around...?
I more actively post now on my tumblr, my personal website, or my facebook if you're interested in keeping up.
xoxo kageshoujo.
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I will do my best to be active again~
1 min read
I will do my best and try to be active on dA again! I miss the old times I had here with my old friends, and how we'd have fun together and fangirl over the same things. I don't even know if my watchers are still active anymore! But after my community hurts in Facebook, I'll just do my best to get in touch with the family I once had here and go back to being productive and making fanart and paintings + progressing on my fanfiction. I will paint more in my spare time, while of course making a living by making cosplay props for you all, and posting the tutorials for you guys when I can.
I hope we can all be happy together!
- kageshoujo
I hope we can all be happy together!
- kageshoujo
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Fire Emblem Community Sadness + problem
12 min read
This is long, but you may find yourself in it. If you belong to a community, if you have roleplay accounts, if you admin fandom pages, I hope you read it, and if you find it has a few points, I hope you share it. I really want this to reach the people it was meant for. I'm a nobody, I don't have the power to spread this. So if you find yourself in it, I hope you do.
--------------
Since most of my friends are Fire Emblem fans anyway, I've been looking for a place to express my upsetness and hurt over the community. NOT the deviantart community, or my folks over at Fanfiction, but the Facebook community. If you haven't checked, community pages are turning up in Facebook left and right. Maybe you follow one or two of them. Maybe you admin one or two of them. Most of them are pages named after characters in the series.
Fanpages are fun and all but I've been hurt recently by the incidents that occurred. I hardly can talk about what happened, I just want to forget it, but I decided to rant out all my hurts about these incidents. I have no one to talk about it much and it's caused a bit of pain in my heart.
Some pages are fun; they talk about Fire Emblem, roleplay with other pages, make up community events that are very very fun. Fans and pages get to interact with each other, and it's great.
It's great to see such a tightly knit community together, most page admins befriending each other (and even finding love). It attracted me to try to be active in these pages. At least I liked most of them and followed them, even if I just kept silent watching most of their posts and all the fun they have. Finally I've taken the leap and decided to try to interact with them.
Some pages are fun. They'll welcome you with open arms and it feels like home.
But that's a minority bit of them. Most, as you will notice, tend to ignore and just interact with fellow pages. At some point, someone was rude and I got hurt. Apparently regular people don't belong in the club. I decided to leave, unlike, and unfollow. Does it only happen on Facebook, because I've been a member of communities like here in dA (though inactive now), and I've been on fanfiction for what? Six, seven years? I also follow tumblr ask pages and haven't been turned away by an ask page all my life. I'm happy they entertained the silly fangirl in me.
My statements will be heavily filtered if I try to air them to these people, and I'm really a positive gal and I love Fire Emblem like all you guys but there's a point where we get hurt, too. It's easy to be careless when we can hide behind false accounts and names, and sometimes we hurt people. So I decided to air my hurts.
----------------
Perhaps it's because I like to think of these pages as we cosplayers look at cosplay.
We cosplay out of our love for the character, put labor and hours into making the costumes, and then saving money to buy wigs, make-up, tickets to conventions, etc. We give everything to the portrayal and characterization of these characters. It's self-fulfilling but we also want to give justice to it, for the sake of the fans who also love the character. Fans get disappointed if they see half-assed cosplays where improvement could have been clearly done but skipped out on, so we do our best.
If you cosplay a character for selfish reasons (fame, that character is popular, in sexy costume, even if you don't know shiz about the character and game) prepare to be flamed royally. This is a standard that happens everywhere.
If we apply that to Facebook pages, and roleplay...
--------------
Why did you start that page?
- If you named it after a character, you probably love that character.
- If it's a Fire Emblem character, you probably love Fire Emblem.
Spreading Fire Emblem love is good and well and I highly approve of that. That's why I tried to like everyone in the beginning.
If you started the page to:
- Constantly whine about life
- Constantly post things not related to Fire Emblem (a couple is okay, but if you're steadily streaming off-topic things that's... why?)
- Bastardize the character (Different portrayals are great, and they're refreshing to see. I don't mind if you turn Karel into some pyscho or Matthew into a womanizing freak; it's portrayal liberty and I may be used to it from reading all the fanfics that have had too many OOC moments and if executed well it's funny and refreshing.) What I mean about 'bastardizing' is when you forget that it's about the character, and think it's all about YOU.
It's your own page, you can do what you like, and you can argue that. But I disagree. It's not YOUR page; it's after the person it is named after. We're hitting likes because we love the game, and we love that character. If you want to use that page as a personal means of ego-stroking and trying to have ideas that someone is listening to you, MAKE A PAGE AFTER YOUR OWN NAME. A few people had successfully done it and now have a big audience from nothing but posting selfies, so why not give that a shot instead of masquerading as a character from our fandom?
-----------
What's so great about managing a page?
My brother, co-admin of a bigger fanpage, always puts up notices for everyone to show their support by shooting them any suggestions for the betterment of the community. There are many legit suggestions which he always takes into consideration, but there will ALWAYS be someone who will be saying "Make me an admin! I know I can make this page better!" or "Okay will you make me an admin or can I just move on and unlike this page?" (r00d huh?)
Well, in our cores, we all just want a little more attention. A little more love, a little more time. Technology worked wonders for that--we meet people across the oceans, find friends, find love. I've found a wonderful man who's 7 hours away from me based on the timezone. I'm forever thankful to the internet for that and for that fateful day he stumbled upon my personal blog.
But if you equate that little longing for love into page likes and the fulfillment that you have 50, 100, 200, 500, 5000 followers? You want people to "like" your posts and desire it so much that you vie for adminship or make a page? That's kinda wrong.
--------------
My Advice:
This is a sensible blogging advice, cosplay advice, and advice in life in general. If you want likers to come, and you want that attention...
Work on your content.
Good content is informative, is funny, and makes whoever reading it a better person. Good content doesn't alienate your "followers". If you just look at the name of your page--be it "Linus the Mad Dog", "Balthier the uber smexy Sky Pirate" (that's not FE okay I know XDD) or "Heath the Wyvern Rider"--you'll know who your audience is, and you'll know what content they want to see (for short: it's not about YOU, admin.) It'll encourage more interaction too.
---------------
Statistically, a big majority of your likers are us "lost souls who found our way here", (which is how I feel at times about being in a page and trying to interact and seeing that they, mostly, only interact with other pages and not normal people, I think that's also how they treat us). You have 100 followers? You think that 100 is all made up of your page friends and roleplayers? 600 followers? Then we're a bigger majority.
Now there comes and important question:
Do you have to please that bigger majority? (AKA us random page likers)
Of course, the answer is NO.
You can do what you want. You can be off topic all three years of your existence. You can keep putting up selfish posts in the guise of being a Fire Emblem page (or any other page). You don't have to please the majority; no one is supposed to do that. But again if your reasons are solely for yourself, I highly suggest you make a page with your own name in it.
I find that those that gain the attention and likes and have followers interacting with them are the ones that do all of this not to please the followers, or gain fame or attention, but just out of love for the fandom. I think if you really love the fandom, you'll want to represent it as well as you can.
Oh yeah, and it results in a happier community overall.
----------------
Bridging the Gaps:
The page admin friends I made all agree that there's definitely a gap between page admins/roleplayers and regular people (you and me who refuse to make pages and fake accounts, etc.). At some point it's made me feel small, like someone regards me as not a true fan. Maybe my pride is injured, that's part of why I'm upset? Let me make this clear: it's not simply ignoring me or saying just "k tnx" that makes me feel little.
It's when:
- I ask questions that express my interest in interacting/an event you have, and it's unanswered but I see the page is interacting with other admins/pages that commented after I did. Sometimes I can ask a simple: "I don't understand this? What is this for?" There you have my willingness to join your event/interact with you but you throw it away but others that are "in the cool kids group" will be responded to even if they just say an "omg lol".
- It's when this above happened to me not rarely.
- It's when it's actually easier to talk to Fire Emblem fanart greats like keiiii who've contributed loads to the community rather than these pages, and they get flooded with comments and have real lives but are way more welcoming.
- It's when you are rude to me when I try to talk and admit that I feel a bit lost.
- It's when above happened to me repeatedly.
- It's when I find others who attest that this happens to them too, so I'm not the only one. Grievances of "I've been around this community for years but people only started befriending me when I made a page" don't come from just one person.
(^the story of why I want to take a break from the "community" summed up briefly.)
I think the only solution to the gap, first, is to stop doing those silly things I outlined above, and prevent them. The pages I started interacting with, I dared to make a comment because I saw that they act the same towards everyone. If it's not just you and your usual peers always talking to each other you'll bring out the others and encourage them to talk, too. (And good content doesn't hurt and will bring people out of their shells.)
And being rude is just r00d, and always will be. Pages have gained power, and can make someone's day or destroy it, and make people feel the way I have. Perhaps people are more careless because they're hiding behind their screens, or not even outing their own faces, hiding behind the photos of our favorite characters.
---------------
Go back to basics of why you started the page, too--not to gain fans (besides we're not fans of YOU if we liked the page, but fans of the game/series/character) but to have friends and find people with similar interest and bind them together. I encourage everyone who reads this, if you have such a page like the ones I describe, to stand back and evaluate yourself, and why you started your pages.
------------
This is from a fellow Fire Emblem cosplayer, talking about cosplay and pages, but there's lessons to be gleaned here as well:
"I'm getting to the point in my cosplay hobby where people have approached me at cons and told me they were a fan of my cosplay. I'm taken a little aback by it cause I'd rather have friends than fans. I like having people admire my cosplays, it makes me want to get better and produce more. I want to socialize with people of a cosplay interest and make friends, not for them to idolize me. That's part of the reason I don't have a Facebook Cosplay Fanpage".
If your page is causing you to treat people rudely, perhaps all the "powers" that come with having a page and likes is influencing you. Communities don't exist so people can have fans and power trip on each other; it's so people like us who love the same things can be bound together.
--------------
I'll end here, with my hopes for the community. These are my words--yes, my hurts, but my hopes as well. I've found pages and roleplay accounts that made me feel at home, and so I know there are wonderful people in facebook communities. Perhaps the reason I've even said these and spent an hour or two of my time trying to put my feelings into words were out of my love for the community, and the strong hopes I have for it. I hope it also helps other communities, and not just our little community in the tiny part of the internet.
All my love,
kageshoujo -- an anon page liker.
--------------
Since most of my friends are Fire Emblem fans anyway, I've been looking for a place to express my upsetness and hurt over the community. NOT the deviantart community, or my folks over at Fanfiction, but the Facebook community. If you haven't checked, community pages are turning up in Facebook left and right. Maybe you follow one or two of them. Maybe you admin one or two of them. Most of them are pages named after characters in the series.
Fanpages are fun and all but I've been hurt recently by the incidents that occurred. I hardly can talk about what happened, I just want to forget it, but I decided to rant out all my hurts about these incidents. I have no one to talk about it much and it's caused a bit of pain in my heart.
Some pages are fun; they talk about Fire Emblem, roleplay with other pages, make up community events that are very very fun. Fans and pages get to interact with each other, and it's great.
It's great to see such a tightly knit community together, most page admins befriending each other (and even finding love). It attracted me to try to be active in these pages. At least I liked most of them and followed them, even if I just kept silent watching most of their posts and all the fun they have. Finally I've taken the leap and decided to try to interact with them.
Some pages are fun. They'll welcome you with open arms and it feels like home.
But that's a minority bit of them. Most, as you will notice, tend to ignore and just interact with fellow pages. At some point, someone was rude and I got hurt. Apparently regular people don't belong in the club. I decided to leave, unlike, and unfollow. Does it only happen on Facebook, because I've been a member of communities like here in dA (though inactive now), and I've been on fanfiction for what? Six, seven years? I also follow tumblr ask pages and haven't been turned away by an ask page all my life. I'm happy they entertained the silly fangirl in me.
My statements will be heavily filtered if I try to air them to these people, and I'm really a positive gal and I love Fire Emblem like all you guys but there's a point where we get hurt, too. It's easy to be careless when we can hide behind false accounts and names, and sometimes we hurt people. So I decided to air my hurts.
----------------
Perhaps it's because I like to think of these pages as we cosplayers look at cosplay.
We cosplay out of our love for the character, put labor and hours into making the costumes, and then saving money to buy wigs, make-up, tickets to conventions, etc. We give everything to the portrayal and characterization of these characters. It's self-fulfilling but we also want to give justice to it, for the sake of the fans who also love the character. Fans get disappointed if they see half-assed cosplays where improvement could have been clearly done but skipped out on, so we do our best.
If you cosplay a character for selfish reasons (fame, that character is popular, in sexy costume, even if you don't know shiz about the character and game) prepare to be flamed royally. This is a standard that happens everywhere.
If we apply that to Facebook pages, and roleplay...
--------------
Why did you start that page?
- If you named it after a character, you probably love that character.
- If it's a Fire Emblem character, you probably love Fire Emblem.
Spreading Fire Emblem love is good and well and I highly approve of that. That's why I tried to like everyone in the beginning.
If you started the page to:
- Constantly whine about life
- Constantly post things not related to Fire Emblem (a couple is okay, but if you're steadily streaming off-topic things that's... why?)
- Bastardize the character (Different portrayals are great, and they're refreshing to see. I don't mind if you turn Karel into some pyscho or Matthew into a womanizing freak; it's portrayal liberty and I may be used to it from reading all the fanfics that have had too many OOC moments and if executed well it's funny and refreshing.) What I mean about 'bastardizing' is when you forget that it's about the character, and think it's all about YOU.
It's your own page, you can do what you like, and you can argue that. But I disagree. It's not YOUR page; it's after the person it is named after. We're hitting likes because we love the game, and we love that character. If you want to use that page as a personal means of ego-stroking and trying to have ideas that someone is listening to you, MAKE A PAGE AFTER YOUR OWN NAME. A few people had successfully done it and now have a big audience from nothing but posting selfies, so why not give that a shot instead of masquerading as a character from our fandom?
-----------
What's so great about managing a page?
My brother, co-admin of a bigger fanpage, always puts up notices for everyone to show their support by shooting them any suggestions for the betterment of the community. There are many legit suggestions which he always takes into consideration, but there will ALWAYS be someone who will be saying "Make me an admin! I know I can make this page better!" or "Okay will you make me an admin or can I just move on and unlike this page?" (r00d huh?)
Well, in our cores, we all just want a little more attention. A little more love, a little more time. Technology worked wonders for that--we meet people across the oceans, find friends, find love. I've found a wonderful man who's 7 hours away from me based on the timezone. I'm forever thankful to the internet for that and for that fateful day he stumbled upon my personal blog.
But if you equate that little longing for love into page likes and the fulfillment that you have 50, 100, 200, 500, 5000 followers? You want people to "like" your posts and desire it so much that you vie for adminship or make a page? That's kinda wrong.
--------------
My Advice:
This is a sensible blogging advice, cosplay advice, and advice in life in general. If you want likers to come, and you want that attention...
Work on your content.
Good content is informative, is funny, and makes whoever reading it a better person. Good content doesn't alienate your "followers". If you just look at the name of your page--be it "Linus the Mad Dog", "Balthier the uber smexy Sky Pirate" (that's not FE okay I know XDD) or "Heath the Wyvern Rider"--you'll know who your audience is, and you'll know what content they want to see (for short: it's not about YOU, admin.) It'll encourage more interaction too.
---------------
Statistically, a big majority of your likers are us "lost souls who found our way here", (which is how I feel at times about being in a page and trying to interact and seeing that they, mostly, only interact with other pages and not normal people, I think that's also how they treat us). You have 100 followers? You think that 100 is all made up of your page friends and roleplayers? 600 followers? Then we're a bigger majority.
Now there comes and important question:
Do you have to please that bigger majority? (AKA us random page likers)
Of course, the answer is NO.
You can do what you want. You can be off topic all three years of your existence. You can keep putting up selfish posts in the guise of being a Fire Emblem page (or any other page). You don't have to please the majority; no one is supposed to do that. But again if your reasons are solely for yourself, I highly suggest you make a page with your own name in it.
I find that those that gain the attention and likes and have followers interacting with them are the ones that do all of this not to please the followers, or gain fame or attention, but just out of love for the fandom. I think if you really love the fandom, you'll want to represent it as well as you can.
Oh yeah, and it results in a happier community overall.
----------------
Bridging the Gaps:
The page admin friends I made all agree that there's definitely a gap between page admins/roleplayers and regular people (you and me who refuse to make pages and fake accounts, etc.). At some point it's made me feel small, like someone regards me as not a true fan. Maybe my pride is injured, that's part of why I'm upset? Let me make this clear: it's not simply ignoring me or saying just "k tnx" that makes me feel little.
It's when:
- I ask questions that express my interest in interacting/an event you have, and it's unanswered but I see the page is interacting with other admins/pages that commented after I did. Sometimes I can ask a simple: "I don't understand this? What is this for?" There you have my willingness to join your event/interact with you but you throw it away but others that are "in the cool kids group" will be responded to even if they just say an "omg lol".
- It's when this above happened to me not rarely.
- It's when it's actually easier to talk to Fire Emblem fanart greats like keiiii who've contributed loads to the community rather than these pages, and they get flooded with comments and have real lives but are way more welcoming.
- It's when you are rude to me when I try to talk and admit that I feel a bit lost.
- It's when above happened to me repeatedly.
- It's when I find others who attest that this happens to them too, so I'm not the only one. Grievances of "I've been around this community for years but people only started befriending me when I made a page" don't come from just one person.
(^the story of why I want to take a break from the "community" summed up briefly.)
I think the only solution to the gap, first, is to stop doing those silly things I outlined above, and prevent them. The pages I started interacting with, I dared to make a comment because I saw that they act the same towards everyone. If it's not just you and your usual peers always talking to each other you'll bring out the others and encourage them to talk, too. (And good content doesn't hurt and will bring people out of their shells.)
And being rude is just r00d, and always will be. Pages have gained power, and can make someone's day or destroy it, and make people feel the way I have. Perhaps people are more careless because they're hiding behind their screens, or not even outing their own faces, hiding behind the photos of our favorite characters.
---------------
Go back to basics of why you started the page, too--not to gain fans (besides we're not fans of YOU if we liked the page, but fans of the game/series/character) but to have friends and find people with similar interest and bind them together. I encourage everyone who reads this, if you have such a page like the ones I describe, to stand back and evaluate yourself, and why you started your pages.
------------
This is from a fellow Fire Emblem cosplayer, talking about cosplay and pages, but there's lessons to be gleaned here as well:
"I'm getting to the point in my cosplay hobby where people have approached me at cons and told me they were a fan of my cosplay. I'm taken a little aback by it cause I'd rather have friends than fans. I like having people admire my cosplays, it makes me want to get better and produce more. I want to socialize with people of a cosplay interest and make friends, not for them to idolize me. That's part of the reason I don't have a Facebook Cosplay Fanpage".
If your page is causing you to treat people rudely, perhaps all the "powers" that come with having a page and likes is influencing you. Communities don't exist so people can have fans and power trip on each other; it's so people like us who love the same things can be bound together.
--------------
I'll end here, with my hopes for the community. These are my words--yes, my hurts, but my hopes as well. I've found pages and roleplay accounts that made me feel at home, and so I know there are wonderful people in facebook communities. Perhaps the reason I've even said these and spent an hour or two of my time trying to put my feelings into words were out of my love for the community, and the strong hopes I have for it. I hope it also helps other communities, and not just our little community in the tiny part of the internet.
All my love,
kageshoujo -- an anon page liker.
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I am now on Etsy!
1 min read
If you're interested in commissioning me and my beloved shop for cosplay accessories, drop by our Etsy here! I opened it to make things more convenient for international buyers. I've already shipped to Canada, USA, Ireland, and Singapore to this day~ <3 All those had been transacted with my Facebook page though, but I opened the Etsy to reach out to more buyers. 
Visit the Etsy here : www.etsy.com/shop/ThreeSmitten…
You can also drop by our Facebook page, where we also conduct business! That has more samples of our works compared to Etsy or my deviantArt. You can also view people's feedbacks there!
Visit our Facebook here: www.facebook.com/ThreeSmittenK…
Thank you~!
Visit the Etsy here : www.etsy.com/shop/ThreeSmitten…
You can also drop by our Facebook page, where we also conduct business! That has more samples of our works compared to Etsy or my deviantArt. You can also view people's feedbacks there!
Visit our Facebook here: www.facebook.com/ThreeSmittenK…
Thank you~!
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If you're Looking for Me...
2 min read
It's been a long while since I've been active here in dA. Unlike the old days, this isn't the way I roll anymore. I've been very preoccupied with issues--work, my online shop, part-time work, random stuffs--that I barely have the time to say hi to y'all and all the friends I've made here that I miss.
For readers of my Fire Emblem fanfictions on Fanfic . net, so sorry to say everything has been really delayed. It's been a year since I haven't updated 'The Journey' and updates on Bern are slow, but definite. I still work on it on my spare time. I read all your reviews and respond to them when I can.
I also am busy with my online shop, Three Smitten Kittens. I made custom polymer-clay made cosplay accessories for local cosplayers in the Philippines. Business has been pretty busy, especially since it's just a one-man show and I handle everything. If ever anyone's interested in having anything made, consider visiting our Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/ThreeSmittenK… I ship to anywhere in the world so long as the buyer handles the shipping fees. Also, as long as it isn't in a rush, as shipping takes a while.
You can also reach me through my wordpress blog. My blog is currently converted to a blog for my shop, where I post handy tutorials on how to make the items that have been commissioned from me, and other clay craft topics. If you can't order an item from me, you can find it pretty handy to know how I've made certain commissions. View here: kageshoujo.wordpress.com
I wish everyone happy days. <3
For readers of my Fire Emblem fanfictions on Fanfic . net, so sorry to say everything has been really delayed. It's been a year since I haven't updated 'The Journey' and updates on Bern are slow, but definite. I still work on it on my spare time. I read all your reviews and respond to them when I can.
I also am busy with my online shop, Three Smitten Kittens. I made custom polymer-clay made cosplay accessories for local cosplayers in the Philippines. Business has been pretty busy, especially since it's just a one-man show and I handle everything. If ever anyone's interested in having anything made, consider visiting our Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/ThreeSmittenK… I ship to anywhere in the world so long as the buyer handles the shipping fees. Also, as long as it isn't in a rush, as shipping takes a while.
You can also reach me through my wordpress blog. My blog is currently converted to a blog for my shop, where I post handy tutorials on how to make the items that have been commissioned from me, and other clay craft topics. If you can't order an item from me, you can find it pretty handy to know how I've made certain commissions. View here: kageshoujo.wordpress.com
I wish everyone happy days. <3
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