A good part of this post contains sections lifted, often verbatim, from a post I originally made on my LJ. Some of my readers may have a very odd sense of deja vu because of it.
Late last year, this particular post on Insanejournal attracted an insane amount of attention from the Katekyo Hitman Reborn! fandom, and, in my opinion, for good reason. I participated in the argument, taking what was apparently a very unpopular stance with regard to my take on her series.
My original post, fandom rant and vitriol included, is still up for public viewing on LJ, for the curious. Now that I’ve let that sit for a year, however, let’s go into some of the more valuable points we can lift from all of my extreme (but justified) angy, since I firmly believe that I had a very valid message to deliver, both to casual readers and members of fandom.
The original argument of the blogger that I linked can be summarized in the following points:
1. KHR (that is, Reborn!) is a bad series because it underrates their girl characters. All they do are domestic, boring things that basically affirm chauvinism over feminism and female empowerment.
2. What is with shonen series and their degrading, narrow-minded portrayal of women? It’s so tasteless.
3. Fanon is the only thing that can save the female characters in Reborn.
In my counterargument, I decided to ignore the third point. My basis for doing so is that I feel that there IS no argument to be had, because there is no real basis for making such a claim. I did, however, present two basic arguments: contextualizing Japanese anime and manga within its proper space, and the concept of an original audience and its relations to how one should read a work from another country.
Continue reading ‘Reading: Contextualizing Manga The Right Way (and then some)’
Filed under: academic faggotry, literature | Leave a Comment
Tags: criticism, issues, katekyo hitman reborn!, manga
Because memes make the world go ’round down here in cyberspace, and I promised a friend of mine that I’d do this one like, AGES ago.
1. Why do you write fanfic?
I don’t think there’s a good answer for this one, really. Saying that I “have” to is relative, because in essence, there are other things that I should probably be doing on the creative end of things. I’ve got a crapload of original projects, for one, and they’re almost always shoved into the background of things whenever I get caught up in real life things, or a new shiny something from the fandom end of the universe.
…Saying that I “want” to, though, isn’t quite right either. There are times when an idea hits me while I’m reading or watching something, and it’ll keep hovering around in my head screaming WRITE ME! until I get a line down, for better or for worse. It does become entirely disruptive on some occasions, but, more often than not, it turns out just fine, and the fact that people end up reading the work at the end of the day makes it even better.
Fanfic seems like a pointless exercise for a lot of people because most view it as a derivative work that won’t really get you anywhere, but on my end, I consider it valuable because it’s good practice – ANY writing, for me, is good practice. Another step to developing one’s style and such. That’s probably one reason why I keep doing it.
It’s also nice, quite frankly, to post something up and see that somehow, people are reading it and enjoying it.
2. When did you write your first fanfic and which fandom was it for?
Saber Rider. Keywords: mechanical-tentacle-almost-rape.
…I was young and innocent and I did not know what I was doing.
3. Which fandoms do you, or have you, written for?
Final Fantasy 7, Suikoden, Bleach, Full Metal Alchemist, DOGS, Gundam Seed, Kingdom Hearts, Oofuri, Persona 3, KHR, Metal Gear Solid, DtB, D.Grayman, FF10, FF12, Gintama, Soul Eater, XXXHOLiC, Harry Potter, Xenogears, Devil May Cry, Tales of the Abyss, Count Cain, Devil Summoner, Final Fantasy Tactics, Bounen no Xam’d, Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann, Black Lagoon, Eureka 7, Loveless, Gankutsuou, Tokyo Majin, FF9, Ghost Hunt, Magna Carta, Ouran, Prince of Tennis, Air Gear, Peacemaker, Sailor Moon, Gunslinger Girl, Code Geass, Kekkaishi, Star Ocean 3, House MD, Fruits Basket, MPD Psycho, Monster, Moyashimon, Toward the Terra, Kurenai, Wild Adapter, Odin Sphere, Hikaru no Go, One Piece, Seirei no Moribito.
That’s an incomplete list, I think.
4. Do you read much fanfic or do you mainly write?
Hard to say. I THINK I write more fanfic than I read fanfic, but that might only be in recent history.
5. What comes easiest for you when writing? (dialogue, descriptions, plot, characterizations, humour, angst…)
ANGST IS THE ONLY WAY.
…Okay no, that would probably be putting it crudely. I do enjoy conflict, some form of conflict. I also apparently have a penchant for milking out the full range of a characters’ emotions through subjecting them to a variety of experiences, good and bad.
On the level of craft, I THINK narrative and characterization come easiest to me. Dialogue and plot are second, maybe.
6. Which genres do you mainly write? (action, angst, dark, drama, horror, humour…)
…Do we have to talk about genres? I find those catagories too restricting and general. o_o
7. Which genres will you not write?
People have told me that I hardly ever write fluff or cracktastic stories, but I don’t know if there will ever be a “genre” that I will absolutely not go into.
8. Are reader comments/responses important?
For possible improvement? Yes, if the person responding can actually give me something to go on beyond “OMG IT’S GREAT” or “OMG U SUCK”.
For ego boosting? Extremely. I know that it’s not general practice for folks to leave a comment on fanfic, but I really love it whenever I get one. It’s visible proof that there ARE people reading, even if I don’t actually need it.
At the end of the day, though, I realize that regardless of what people say about me or my writing, I’m not going to STOP writing. I never started out on this thing for anyone beyond myself, after all.
9. Do you use a beta reader?
Not unless I’m required to, like in the case of KHR Undercover, or if I really feel like I’m not confident in what I’ve got.
I probably should, though. I make the most EMBARRASSING typos.
10. Which is your favourite character to write fanfic for and why?
…That is such a hard question. I have a favorite for every fandom that I’ve written for so far, and if anyone were to ask me about each one, I could go on and on.
People most familiar with the most recent fandoms that I’ve written for (namely, Gintama and KHR!), will note, though, that I write extensively for Takasugi Shinsuke (because eyepatch-tans are love), Bansai Kawakami (because music is his radar~) and Hibari Kyouya (because you can’t go wrong with biting people dead).
11. Which are your favourite ships (including friendships) that you write the most?
AAAAAAAAAH THAT IS EVEN MORE DIFFICULT JUST ASK ME IN PERSON.
12. Do you have characters that are so strongly established that they’re in your heads?
I used to, but these days, I tend to be very fluid with my personal interpretations.
13. Which characters are you most comfortable doing a POV for? Which is the hardest?
Contrary to popular belief, I have an incredibly hard time writing directly from Hibari’s perspective. I know I’ve ficced him a lot, but getting into his head is quite another thing altogether. u_u
Beyond that, I really can’t answer that question. I tend to write from a more “objective” point of view, and the difficulty or easiness of the work was always grounded in something outside of the character’s point of view, I think.
If the meme’s made you curious about reading my stuff, there’s a very messy archive of them over at Stitched Up on LJ. I’m in the process of making a much more organized archive, which will be pimped here as soon as I finish it.
Filed under: fangirl things, fiction | 2 Comments
Tags: fanfiction, writing
WARNING: There will be spoilers for the latest arc of the manga in question, and gratuitous references to the text itself. I’d highly suggest being familiar with the series before reading this.
About a year ago, I was holed up in the library over on campus, leafing through copies of the International Journal of Comic Art and articles from the Japanese Studies and Pop Culture end of the scholarly scene, shoring up resources to use in my paper about Katekyo Hitman Reborn! (shortened to Reborn! for the remainder of this article). All of my friends thought I was crazy, going out on a limb and attempting to do a formal – critical – study on one of the gayest, lulziest shonen manga around at the time, but what can I say? I was a fangirl, head-over-heels, truly-madly-deeply in love with the latest shiny thing blipping on her radar. I had already written a crapload of fanfics by then (and wrote a whole lot more afterward, if I’m to believe the dates on my archive), and it was time to take the passion a whole new step forward, not just by “going meta”, but by formalizing a critical viewpoint through which to regard the series itself.
At this point, interested parties can read the paper itself over here. To summarize, though, the paper seeks to explain why Reborn! is more susceptible to a homoerotic interpretation than other shonen manga serialized in Shonen Jump. Basically, it was a scholarly attempt at figuring out why the hell people think it’s so fucking gloriously gay.
(It was also a good excuse to bring my dojinshi to school and explain its critical value to literary scholars with a perfectly straight face.)
That’s not actually the point that I want to talk about in this blog entry, though. Instead, I want to explain why I’ve fallen out of love for the series, and for what I believe to be very critical reasons.
Continue reading ‘Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, the one ex-boyfriend who wasn’t an asshole’
Filed under: academic faggotry, fangirl things, literature, non-fiction | 7 Comments
Tags: criticism, katekyo hitman reborn!, manga
Long time, no see again, folks!
I’m proud to “launch” the Academic OTL section of this blog, which is my running (and permanently incomplete) body of academic work that I’ve done so far as a student and as a teacher immersed in the academe (or attempting to be, most days).
Seeing what’s listed here will give you a general idea of the sort of research work that I’m into doing, and might serve as a good look at what sort of thing you ought to expect from me in the future, on this blog.
All of the papers that I’ve done so far are already up in the section, and I’ve copied the whole body of the page in question to this post, for quick referencing. Enjoy?
Continue reading ‘Sometimes I do try to be Smrt | Academic OTL’
Filed under: academic faggotry | 2 Comments
Tags: 'sup guys, criticism, research
If anyone were to get me to describe my experience of music, I’d have to say “schizophrenic”. I was born in 1985, to a family full of boys – the smallest age gap I have with one of my brothers is four years. The biggest age gap is ten.
Let’s take a moment to illustrate my day when I was but a humble little beansprout. I’d wake up to a nursery rhyme, walk to school humming the tune of Sesame Street’s opening theme, get picked up by my mother driving the Family Van, listen to anything from Frank Sinatra to the Bee Gees to the Beatles en-route to the schools where my brothers studied, then go home and follow my brothers into their rooms, where they were either playing Gin Blossoms, The Cure, R. Kelly, 2Pac, Ace of Base, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi, Rage Against the Machine or Metallica, depending on their mood that day. Later in the evening, when I’d wander into my parents’ room and crawl between them under the sheets, I’d fall asleep to Mozart, or Beethoven, or Chopin.
I grew up surrounded by a wide variety of music, and absorbed it all like a sponge without ever being able to pin names or genres to whatever I was listening to. I only started “rediscovering” bands between the ages of twelve and fourteen, and Nine Inch Nails was one of them.
Continue reading ‘Writer Stuff: Nine Inch Nails, and How I Owe Them Just Short of Everything.’
Filed under: music, non-fiction | Leave a Comment
Tags: tribute, writing
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