User:JapanYoshi/sandbox

Haley Wakamatsu
Born	Haruki Wakamatsu (1999-02-05) February 5, 1999
Nationality	Japanese
Other names	JapanYoshi, JapanYoshiTheGamer, TheFIZZYnator, JustFizzyDance, Akira Sora, Szistirra, HaleyHalcyon, HaruruChanDesu
Occupation	Programmer
Known for	indie games, electronic music, free fonts
Notable work	Salty Trivia with Candy Barre, Monster Friend, Project Paintball, Digital Desolation

Haruki Wakamatsu (若松 春希, Wakamatsu Haruki, born February 5, 1999) /hərˈuːki ˌwɑːkəˈmɑːtsuː/, also currently known as Haley Wakamatsu /ˈheɪli/ or Haley Walker, and previously as Harry Wakamatsu, is a Japanese programmer, indie game designer, typographer, EDM musician, and YouTube video maker.

Early life

Wakamatsu was born to two Japanese parents in Tomakomai, Hokkaido, and moved to Atsubetsu-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido when in kindergarten. She was exposed to English from a young age through programs like Hippo and Labo, and was practically a native speaker since childhood.

She then attended Kaminopporo Elementary School, before being home-schooled during Grade 2 due to not fitting in. While home-schooled, she was bought subscription workbooks by Benesse. She gradually eased back into going to school, making a full reintroduction by Grade 4. Her favorite subject was arithmetic.

From Grade 2 to 11, Wakamatsu learned to play the Electone. However, she did not like music class at kindergarten, because the children were told to sing as loud as they can.

In Grade 5, she and her mother went to Whitianga, New Zealand for a two-week homestay, where her mother would learn English immersively and she would attend Mercury Bay Area School. This experience left a positive impact on Wakamatsu, and led to her decision to enrol to Hokkaido International School from Grade 6.

During her studies in Hokkaido International School, she acted in drama class in Grade 6, played the jazz trombone in Grades 7 through 11, and sang musical songs in choir class in Grade 12. She would attend all of HIS’s school productions, including her last one themed after the English alphabet, for which she composed her own musical number from the perspective of the letters X, Y, and Z, wishing to be used more often.

During middle and high school, she would explore a multitude of hobbies like electronic music production on FL Studio, graphic design, Web design, font design, game programming, drawing, and poetry. She also engaged in fandom culture, contributing to the Puyo Puyo and Danganronpa fandoms.

University

Wakamatsu attended Griffith University in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia for a Bachelor’s degree in computer science. She lived in a student dorm during those years, allowing her to more freely explore her self-expression through crossdressing and cosplay. She came out as a transgender woman in 2019, formally starting hormone replacement therapy on April 10 that year.

When the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, her mental health declined considerably, ultimately turning herself in to Currumbin Clinic for inpatient mental health care. After taking a gap year in 2021, she completed her course remotely in 2022.

Shavian alphabet

Wakamatsu is a notable contributor to the Shavian alphabet community. Her Shavian fonts have been widely used in the Shavian subreddit and mentioned in Shavian.info, the main informational hub for the alphabet. She popularized the convention of adding a loop to the consonant letters 𐑐 /p/ and 𐑚 /b/ to distinguish them from the vowel letters 𐑪 /ɒ/ and 𐑧 /ɛ/, and adding a crossbar to the consonant letters 𐑓 /f/ and 𐑝 /v/ to distinguish them from the vowel letters 𐑨 /æ/ and 𐑩 /ə/ in mono-height fonts, based on one of Ronald Kingsley Read’s early drafts for the alphabet, and to evoke the letters p, b, and f.

She is also known for creating word games using the Shavian alphabet, including an adaptation of Wordle called Shingo!.

Views on LGBT activism

Wakamatsu self-identifies as a bisexual transgender woman. She explicitly denounces the word queer, considering it both a highly offensive slur, a vehicle of exclusionary extremism in the LGBT community, and a vestige of queer theory which considers homosexuality and pedophilia to be on equal footing.

Wakamatsu self-identifies as a transmedicalist, and considers the idea of xenogender labels, neopronouns, multiple sets of preferred pronouns, and non-dysphoric trans people to be laughable at best, detrimental to trans rights at worst. She argues that English third-person singular pronouns are a direct result of the referrent’s gender, identified or perceived, and deviating from that standard makes communication clunky and difficult to understand.

Wakamatsu considers "mspec microlabels" to be contributing to bisexual erasure. She maintains that the word pansexual is defined by biphobic stereotypes, such as the idea that bisexual people are only attracted to those with binary gender, not nonbinary or transgender people.

Wakamatsu has designed a set of alternative pride flags to increase meaningful symbolism and visual appeal.