cosplaying a cosplayer, COSPLAYCEPTION

Hey, I’m MJ. No, that does not stand for Mary Jane — thanks, Spiderman. It’s for Mary Julienne. Like Julianne, but with an e. Yes? Okay. My parents thought it would be nice to name me after my paternal great-grandmother Juliana, but with a modern twist. How they managed to skip over the “a” in the middle and turn it into an “e” is beyond me. But it’s quite fun, seeing your name in the dictionary and knowing you share a namesake with those julienned carrots in your salad.

I was born in the Philippines, living in the province with my grandparents while my parents worked a hundred miles away in the city. My mom shoved me into school at the age of two and a half, and I still have my ID card from then. Eventually my little brother and I moved down to the city, too, where I attended an all-girls Catholic school (it’s worth mentioning that I’m an atheist now, but that’s another story). My family moved to the United States when I was 8, and I’ve lived in New York City since.

I enjoy eating, knitting, taking walks, photography, geeky discussions, role-playing video games, teaching myself Latin, worshipping Nobuo Uematsu and all his kind, and singing Asian pop at the top of my lungs without understanding a thing I’m saying.

I’m personally not much of an art person in the traditional sense; I’m more crafty than artsy, if you will. I am not a huge museum-goer as I’m one of the hundreds of thousands who reads the plaque, looks at the painting/sculpture/what have you in question, snaps a photo with my camera, and moves on. That said, what I enjoy as “art” is music — which, yes, probably seems counterintuitive, but being able to weave together melodies and rhythms across instruments (and perhaps your life story, too) into a four-minute masterpiece is my kind of art. I will likely enjoy a two-hour orchestral performance more than a perfunctory museum tour, but that’s just me. To each their own!