v-s.net v0.6

Tuesday, 11:51 am in Otaku

So I admit it, I’ve been lurking around at lolita_fucks lately.  It’s a guilty pleasure, mostly because if there’s one thing that makes me cringe it’s seeing dumpy, horsey-faced Western girls dressed up in over-stretched, too-short imported Lolita gear.  They always choose the worst outfits, too; in really terrible patterns and colours, nevermind the rest.  So I go there for the lulz.

But lolita_fucks is interesting outside of the lulz, mostly because I can also meta-lulz at the so-called ‘lolita-elitists’ that permeate the community.  And some of them have the weirdest objections to stuff.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a huge fan of Sweet Lolita, or maids, or miles and miles of race, but if something is well-made and ‘works’ then it works; even if I personally don’t like it (or, for that matter, would not wear it when forced to at gunpoint).  The thing I find curious about the lolifuck girls is that they seem to have these huge list or arbitrary rules stacked up in their heads about what ‘is’ and ‘isn’t’ good lolita.  Fair enough, you say?

I disagree.  I disagree because I think it goes against the very thing that attracted to me to Gothic Lolita in the first place; creativity.  The Western Lolita scene is pretty stagnant as it is; it’s almost purely reactionary, girls copying off the stuff they’ve seen in their Gothic and Lolita Bibles.  The weird thing I’ve always found about this is that the traditional Japanese Lolita look just does not work on Westerners; we’re generally too tall, we have the wrong shaped faces and our bodies are generally not petite enough in proportion.  But instead of recognising this, and re-inventing the fashion to suit (in the same way the Japanese re-invented the fashion off us in the first place), the scene turned inwards and started forcing itself to conform to a bunch of arbitrary ‘rules’.  The vitriol really came out when Gwen Stefani released Love. Angel. Music. Baby. with its overt, Alice in Wonderland-Lolita stylings.  There are always tears when something ‘underground’ gets mainstream attention, but I always found it curious that the Lolita community seemed not to hate Stefani so much for her creation of a ‘new Geisha’/travelling mistrel show culture with the Harajuku Girls, or even being successful, but rather for daring to try and re-invent the Lolita ‘look’.  Yeah, it was far more overtly sexual than Japanese Lolita… but Stefani is a tall, thin adult woman.  It’s a little bit disturbing to think of her dressing up like a child.

Of course, the other odd thing about all this hoo-hah is that flick through any G+L Bible and you’ll notice that Vivienne Westwood is still a fairly large influence on Japanese GosuRoli street culture (her logo is the little Saturn-ball with the cross on the top).  For those who’ve lived in a fashion vacuum since the 1970s, Westwood was the designer who gave the Sex Pistols their look and, more or less, invented punk.  After her punk years, and through a brief infatuation with making modern-day pirate outfits out of tracksuit fabric (don’t ask), Westwood eventually got into ‘period’ methods of clothing construction; corsetry and traditional drafting.  It’s these ‘re-invented aristocrat’ looks which have influenced Gothic Lolita in the first place.

The thing is, the fashion is a living thing.  The stuff that got included in G+L vol.1 is not the absolute same as the stuff in G+L vol.17 (or whatever they’re up to now; I know I’m missing a bunch of the more recent ones).  Stuff like elements doesn’t cosily fit into the Lolita scene at all, yet the brand has been a staple of the scene since the beginning… yet don’t try and wear that in any of the Western EGL communities.

I dunno, people always get so precious about ‘The Mainstream’ (boo hiss) ripping off their so-called subculture fashions, but to me it always seemed infinitley worse when a subculture turns so incestuous and vicious, so resistant to innovation or experimentation, that it stagnates itself.

I’ve totally lost all faith in EB Games.  Well, not that I had a lot of faith to start off with, but at least I’d always previously thought I was pretty secure knowing that EB would always chase money when they could.

One of the things that used to amuse me about EB was that they would be perfectly happy to put in pre-orders for things which weren’t on their system.  According to ~Mat [h] – who used to be an EB Rules Lawyer – one of the EB training manuals specifically states that if a user tries to put in a pre-order on something that is not in the system, the store staff will take the order, ring up head office and get the entry added.  No worries.  I know they used to do this because I have a pre-order for Burning Crusade dating back to January, which was way before they had it in their computers ‘properley’ (in fact, I believe dad’s pre-order is from December).  I’m pretty sure I did this for my WoW CE, too.

But no matter how hard I try I can’t get the damn staff at the Woden EB to admit this.  I rang them up this morning, “Hi, I was wondering if I could put in a pre-order for something that’s not in your system yet?”

“No, sorry we don’t do that.”

“Really?  Is that new, because you used to do it; you’d ring up head office and get them to put the game on their computer.”  (This is me subtly telling her how to do it, just in case she was worried.)

“No, we’ve never done that.  Head office is pretty good at putting games in weekly so we don’t–”

I stopped just short of telling the lady to read her own bloody store handbook.  EB Games has been bought out by GameStop (?) in the time since ~Mat [h] worked there, so I dunno; maybe they changed their policy (I’ve been told third-hand from “sources high-up in the chain” that the US stores won’tput in pre-orders on anything unless they “know the exact number of stock”).  In that case, EB, your new policy is shit.  IF I want to give you ten dollars to reserve a copy of Duke Nuken Forever for myself then damnit, I should be able to.

I should totally ask Erin; if anyone can go and get something added to the EB computer, Erin can.

Oh, and tajessa, Amy and Mage; I sent you guys emails but in case you see this first, I need your postal addresses!

• Tags » deh lulz, eb games, egl, fashion, internet drama, opinions, stupid store clerks
• Comments By » ~Mat [h]