Working on my new site has been a bit… troublesome to me psychologically. It’s nothing I can’t handle, but it’s promoting quite a bit of thought.
I decided to add a monthly post to the front page where I talk about all of the big anime, etc., events in Texas(there are lots of smaller ones but I’d never get it done if I added everything – Texas is a big place). Turns out there are three all over the state next weekend.
In doing the research for that, I discovered that there is going to be one in my town, coming up in a little while. I mean, literally, in my town. I could drive there in ten minutes.
Now, if I were to take my self-given job seriously, I’d go. I’m deliberately catering my site to people who like that kind of thing, and maybe the least I can do is make some token gesture towards being one of them.
But I’m not.
I really, really don’t like comic cons.
I understand that I don’t have to like everything that everyone likes in order to cater to them, and obviously I have at least some affection for the genre or the tone of the site would be very different. But the idea of dressing up as your favorite character, etc., just makes zero sense to me. It seems like, to be charitable, a waste of time and effort. And certainly the opposite of fun.
But then, it can’t be said that I spend all of my money and time on things that are productive, either. I have a particularly.. umm… ecchi anime sculpture sitting on a dresser, and a couple more are in the mail. That’s something that others wouldn’t like either, but whatever. I just like pretty things, even if some of their assets are… unnecessarily (and unrealistically) exaggerated. Seriously, you’d think there’d be back clinics all over Tokyo for all of the back problems those would cause…
So I have a little while, but I have to decide. Am I willing to go all in and take one for the team? Or am I going to keep at an arm’s length and not even bother?
Truth be told, on one level, it’s not a hard decision. Not at all. But on another level, if I want to succeed, I can’t stay too far separated from the culture I’m writing about. Some distance is good, particularly for a quasi-journalistic endeavor, but still.
It’s a hard thing to think about. And I’m not sure what the ultimate decision will be. If I decide to go, you can probably expect a few rather pissed off posts afterwards. All the more entertainment!