A Better Word for Weird

Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

roguebelle requested explanations for the following:
bishounen: In Japanese, translates to "beautiful youth," though it is understood to mean (to use a more vernacular phrase) "prettyboy." It's most widely used to describe any male character from anime who looks slightly (or very) feminine. Another one of my interests, Dilandau Albatou, is an example of a bishounen, though even he might fall on the more male-looking side of the spectrum.
So why's this in my interests? Because sexual ambiguity is yay, that's why. ^__^

buachailleen: Pronounced "book-a-leen" with emphasis on the first syllable, buachailleen are Scottish faeries who appear as young boys and run around on summer nights messing with sheep. They fall on, I think, a happy medium with regard to humans- not particularly nice or particularly malevolent, but rather just mischievous. My faery-dude who I've posted art of a coupla times is a buachailleen, and if I ever try my hand at a webcomic, it'll be about the little group of sheep-worriers I've had running around in my head for some time now.

earthbound: My favorite video game of all time!!! Also one of my most treasured fandoms, inasmuch as I "do fandom" anymore. The game is an aerial-view RPG for the Super Nintendo, and in it you play a young man who's awakened one night by the sound of a meteor crashing not far from his house. From there begins an adventure involving aliens, psychic powers, a traveling blues band, an evil dimension-bending statue, monkeys, cavemen, hippies, vision quests, magic cake, the loch ness monster, a walking dungeon, zombies, ghosts, dinosaurs and time travel, just to name a few things.
Some years ago I managed to become a big fish in a small fandom with my 20-chapter Earthbound fanfic, Cycle, which picks up on our heroes 10 years after the game ends and has since been called "the 'Casablanca' of Earthbound fanfic." Its sequel, Mutation, has become a very long work-in-progress which I'd still like to finish...

my scottish ancestry: The only part of my geneology I've done any looking into (though I would like to do more someday...). My mother's maiden name is Crawford, a very Scottish name, though so far we've actually traced them back to Ireland. BUT. It was right around the time when a whole bunch of well-to-do Scots were coming over and seizing the Irish farmers' land and living on it. Soooo there's a good chance my ancestors were Scottish assholes XD Dunno how proud I am of that, but it feels cool to know where one comes from. Even if it's from assholes.

nhsi: Stands for "National High School Institute," or the "Cherub" program. It happens every summer here at Northwestern for Junior high school students. I did it for theatre when I was between 11th and 12th grades. It's fun being a former Cherub at Northwestern, because you can strike up conversations with other former Cherubs that start out with, "Remember that time during Cherubs..." and watch non-Cherubs roll their eyes. :P

pgsm: Stands for "Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon," which is a great example of Japan's wonderful ability to take a good thing way too far. Hey look, we have a successful cartoon with hundreds of episodes! Now let's make it a live-action show! And have stage shows! With songs! I have a DVD of one of the stage shows. It is deliciously ludicrous.

takarazuka: More Japan stuff! More sexual ambiguity! Takarazuka is Japan's all-female acting troupe known for staging lavish musicals. The actors live together in dorms, train and rehearse all the time, and are not allowed to date while they're in the company. Hard.Core. I'd do it if it weren't for the not-allowed-to-date thing. And the being American thing.
My favorite otokoyaku (or "actress who plays male roles") is Oozora Yuuhi *points to icon*. She's a wonderful comic actor; she played Nicely-Nicely Johnson in their production of Guys and Dolls. She was also Rudolph in one of their many Elisabeths. And she's pweeetty *_*

And with that, I'm off to campus. I has callback!

People around me keep using the word "godly" to describe things. People who don't even have ANYTHING to do with each other. I think this is a sign I'm supposed to start using it, too.

Anyway! On Sunday, lanthiriel and I went to Ren Faire. It got rained out, and we were only able to be there for 2 hours. :\ Which was doubly unfortunate because I was really rather proud of my costume. But I did have a short nifty photo shoot before I left :D Behold ze pictures!: Faery Bard.
What you can't see in these is that I'm actually wearing a dress. Shock and horror, right? ;) It's a snazzy brown velvetty dress with a short, jaggedly-cut skirt. And then I wore brown tights and boots. And a belt with a pouch on it to hold my moneys and camera and phone. And I tied my flute to the belt. HOORAY.
I really like that costume.

Speaking of playing dress-up, I think I ought to share a new fandom of mine, since it's one that not a whole lot of people on my f-list know about, and I'm likely to bring it up in some fashion every now and again.

Back when I'd first arrived in Japan, I was looking through my guidebook for interesting theatre-y places to go. One of the ones that caught my eye was a place called Takarazuka. The book mentioned that it was an all-female troupe that performed western musicals in a very dramatic fashion. Just from that description I knew it was something I had to see.

There should be no question why I found this intriguing. Now, the exact question of why I enjoy a bit of crossdressing every now and then is something for the therapists to work out after I finally lose it :P But I do. And I am insanely jealous that these girls get to do it FOR A LIVING. Check out their cast of 'Guys and Dolls' doing Luck Be A Lady to see what it's like.

Why don't I get to play Sky Masterson (or, as adampb just made me admit I'd rather play, Nicely Johnson)? Why haven't I heard about anything like this in America? GAH.

And does it seem ironic to anyone else that just when I've started getting back into wearing skirts, I discover that this exists? Good gravy.

Anyway, Takarazuka is Japanese musicalish (godly?) crossdressy fun on a stick, and you can expect to be hearing more about it in the future. :P