Memoirs of a Young Fan

[Wolf Ranger]

You'd be very surprised at how being creative can get you. I've never been able to go to the Boston Anime Con ..ever..sadddd..

[FanChan]

I certainly understand what I can gain from being creative. Just a matter of getting my foot in the door and get people to look past the fact that I have no college degree.

That's too bad about not being able to go to the Boston con! I'm hoping to make it to the Big Apple Anime Fest some day. They get an awful lot of great movie premiers there, though Otakon certainly has a few. That was the first place they showed the Jet Li movie Hero, as well as Steamboy, and the Fullmetal Alchemist movie. I really only go to watch anime, 'cause it's one thing to watch anime at home by yourself or with a couple of friends. It's an entirely different thing to be in a room with five hundred to five thousand people who are all gasping, laughing, clapping, and cheering at the same things you are. It's just really really exciting.

[Wolf Ranger]

That's odd becuase I have Hero on DVD and I still haven't finished it. I have a collection of DVD's that ranges from the really cool..To the what in the holy hell was that all about?

xD I would love to get my friends to watch anime with me sometime, but the last time I tried a friend of mine wound up keeping my SailorMoon S boxset. That, and my other friends really only watch horror movies. o_o Kinda sucks, but what can ya do?

Plus I saw Spirted Away in a theater with no one else there. Just me.

hehe..I have an associates degree in animation but that doesn't seem to do much.

[FanChan]

I saw Spirited Away in theater, too ^_^ That was so freakin' awesome. I also saw Howl's Moving Castle three times in theaters. Still have the ticket stubs. Muahaha. I love Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki. I'm looking forward to the Stateside release of his son's movie Tales of Earthsea. It's been released outside of the US, but I can never get my hands on a dvd that can be played on a US dvd player. It wasn't released here thanks to the SciFi channel still holding the rights to the franchise in America due to their crappy miniseries (which even the original author of the books despised).

*deep breath* Yeah, I'm an otaku to the core. And I have a similar dvd collection xD I actually fell asleep watching Hero in the theaters; I couldn't see over everyone's heads to read the subtitles, so I got some much-needed napping done in the meantime. Then my mom got it for me that Christmas. It's a lot easier to follow once you can see what they're saying 0.0

That's too bad about your friend taking your anime >.< I was the anime/manga library at my high school, and people would borrow my stuff a lot. I didn't find out until I moved that I never actually got back one of my favorite books. Thankfully, I bought another last year ^_^ As for the one who only watches horror movies... You should check out Blood: The Last Vampire (the precursor movie to the show Blood +), Boogiepop Phantom (which also has a pretty neat live-action movie that goes with it), or Paranoia Agent. There are a lot of horror animes, but those three are a few of the more popular ones.

[Sarah]

I've been through a lot in this world! : ) I wrote a pretty big post somewheres in the members section. I'll pull it up so that you can read it.
I'm 27 now, and starting from a very early age, I've had to deal with a lot - in a nutshell: ongoing (and new) medical issues, disability (my knees dislocate), emotionally abusive father (who also secretly does drugs), somewhat emotionally abusive younger brother, and add society's play into this, and I've had one helluva rollercoaster life.

I'm also interested in new age, and there's some stuff that goes along with that, but it can scare a lot of people, so I'll see how you react to this part before I start terrifying (ha! ha! I hope not!) all of the members. ; )

So, I plan to write, publish, public speaking, 'campaigning', and anything else I dream up. : )

[FanChan]

My knees dislocate, too! It's crazy @_@ I've also got chronic nightmares, which leads to poor sleep and being tired all day T-T
I'm a conservative Catholic, which leads to any number of its own challenges in a liberal protestant country -.-;; But, at least I'm living in a town that's dominated by the conservative Catholic college and community, so I've found a comfortable niche in the world.

[Sarah]

oh my god, seriously!!! : ) That is so cool in it's own weird way. I've never met anyone whose knees dislocate too. Well, I've had about 2 people who 'pretend', but I can tell ; ) My knee's have dislocated a ton. I don't even know how many. It started when I was 10 - so more than 20, less than 100. But then there are the times when it just teases me. I've worn braces on my legs forever. My last dislocation last April is why I'm having surgery. I knew that when it happened, something was different. I kept trying to tell them at the time, and to numerous doctors, who were easy to blame it on me, or tell me nothing was wrong - that it was just my medical history. But I kept at it, and finally almost a year later, I'm getting surgery (with about 7 things wrong with my poor knee).

[FanChan]

Awww. I was born with slightly misshapen knees - the groove the patella sits in is very shallow, hardly there at all, and is positioned a few milimeters too far to the outside. It was fine until the first time it dislocated when I was 13. No one believed me that it had dislocated, since it relocated as I fell (was horsing around with someone, teaching them a karate move that they did not do right >.<). So I never got physical therapy. My parents didn't believe me for the longest time. It dislocated three or four major times after that, and it partially dislocates at least once a week - quite a frightening feeling, really. It was during high school when it fully dislocated and stayed dislocated out on the soccer field during gym class that my parents - and the doctors - finally believed me. I was able to work it back to a point where I could run without it dislocating mid-step, but shortly after that, I was in a car accident that dislocated it and ruined it all over again -.- It's even worse now, and aches constantly. All of my joints are running downhill, constant aching and the need to crack them to release the building pressure. And I'm only 21 T-T

Turns out surgery, minus total knee replacement, wouldn't help me. And I won't replace them, not so young. I don't want to go through surgery after surgery ever five to ten years to get them replaced. I'd rather be in a wheelchair.

[Sarah]

my knees aren't mishapen, but then bottom and top areas where the knees are supposed to rest are pretty much flat, when the 'normal' person has kind of like not triangles, but grooves where they sit in.

The first time I had a dislocation was when I was 10, and we were 'shooting' baskets one by one in gym class. I fell, and got up again. I had no idea what went wrong. It was such a strange feeling, and at so young - and you know - it happens so fast that your mind has to be really quick to figure it out. No one believed me either. But no matter when it happened, it always went back in. But in 8th grade, it happened when it didn't go back in, and that's the way it goes now. I have to go by ambulence to emergency, and they have to put it in. But they have to put me to sleep, and I'm extremely tolerant of drugs, so for example, this past one in April, they had to give me enough drugs, that would typically kill a person.

So I've been with zillions of physiotherapists since I was 10, and nothing worked. Then when I was in high school, I found out about something called pilates (my mom was getting a neck massage for an injury), and I've been doing it ever since. Actually before this last one, I hadn't had a dislocation for a couple of years.

I also have something called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (I'm hypermobile type, though they suspect it may be a combination), and I've had arthritis since I was in my early 20's!

They always told me that because of the EDS that they would never consider surgery. But with now they think I should, for my left one.

[FanChan]

Really interesting. I have a high tolerance for pain meds, too. No matter how much they gave me in the ambulance, the pain wouldn't go away. They gave me the maximum amount, then put me to sleep after relocating my knee at the emergency room. I never want to go through a relocation like that again. It was traumatic. Luckily during the car accident, I was in so much shock that I couldn't feel pain, and I put the knee back myself. That's probably one reason it's never been the same -.- I went through all kinds of physical therapy and other things for my knee, as well as psychological junk for the dreams. I was mistakenly diagnosed with clinical depression, and let me tell you, anti-depressants SUCK. Big time. And they do major damage when you're not actually clinically depressed. Which I wasn't. But yeah.

Despite it all, I'm happy with my life. My faith has an interesting and refreshing take on suffering, so I'm happy to be the way I am these days. Makes life interesting ^_^