Free At Last!
Aug. 14th, 2005 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2So! I haven't logged in to play City of Heroes in a full week. You know what this means, don't you? Clearly it means I've had time to do other things, such as work on my Tai-Pan stories or get the the tire on my Pt Cruiser fixed?
You wish! For most of the past week, when I haven't been at work or asleep, I've been reading fanfiction off of fanfiction.net. That's right. I can't put down one obsession without picking up another. What can I say?
The sad thing about reading at fanfiction.net is that you have to wade through pages of stories before you find a gem worth reading. And usually even the most interesting gems are incomplete. Mind you, this applies to all fan fiction anywhere, but you know, such is life.
In between I've actually started working on one of my fanfic stories that I have had around for just about forever. I've had an account at fanfiction.net since around 2001, but I hadn't published anything there since 2003. So I threw up chapter one of A Goddess In Oz, and a complete story called Bonk On The Head, and then I managed to finally after years, get chapter three of Seven Fiancees written. I put up the first three chapters of that, and now I'm trying to get chapter four into shape.
I finally took a break today, and picked up a manga that I've had for a month or two now. It's something I picked up at Half Price for $5.48. It's volume one of Genshiken, put out by Del Ray. Del Rey has been very careful of releasing only top-quality manga, and this one looked pretty interesting.
So I finally start reading it and... oh my gawd... it's absolutely hilarious. It's funny in a very painful way, because it's about anime/manga otaku with hardcore obsessions, and for anyone who is a fan of anime, manga, science fiction, fantasy, whatever -- well it strikes very close to home. The main characters are freshman students who join a manga club full of weird freaks... you know, the kind of freaks you find in fandom everywhere, who are actually nice people if you can look past their weird quirks and obsessive hobbies. One of the freshman is a guy who is a hardcore fan but at first can't admit to himself that he's a freak like the rest of the freaks... another is a guileless boy who is clean-cut, charming, perfectly normal -- and yet might be more obsessed than them all. The third is a girl who is trying to be the girlfriend of the second boy -- but he's too clueless to notice. She can't stand all the fan stuff, and yet as she fails to change her boyfriend, she keeps getting drawn further in to the whole fandom thing...
Anway... hilarious stuff, and scarily close to real life. In one scene a pudgy, greasy, dishevelled guy is explaining to the new guy all the intricate details of the plastic model he's assembling -- what the character's like, where this outfit came from, what it represents to him, why he likes the newer style of models -- and I can't help thinking I've met this guy before... probably many times, in different guises.
I think my favorite part is the bios they do of each otaku in between chapters. This is a common thing in a lot of manga, to do some sort of bio of a character in between each chapter. For example, it might list birth date, blood type, astrological sign, likes, dislikes, etc. So of course for these otaku boys, it lists favorite manga, favorite anime, favorite video games, favorite fight characters... priceless.
You wish! For most of the past week, when I haven't been at work or asleep, I've been reading fanfiction off of fanfiction.net. That's right. I can't put down one obsession without picking up another. What can I say?
The sad thing about reading at fanfiction.net is that you have to wade through pages of stories before you find a gem worth reading. And usually even the most interesting gems are incomplete. Mind you, this applies to all fan fiction anywhere, but you know, such is life.
In between I've actually started working on one of my fanfic stories that I have had around for just about forever. I've had an account at fanfiction.net since around 2001, but I hadn't published anything there since 2003. So I threw up chapter one of A Goddess In Oz, and a complete story called Bonk On The Head, and then I managed to finally after years, get chapter three of Seven Fiancees written. I put up the first three chapters of that, and now I'm trying to get chapter four into shape.
I finally took a break today, and picked up a manga that I've had for a month or two now. It's something I picked up at Half Price for $5.48. It's volume one of Genshiken, put out by Del Ray. Del Rey has been very careful of releasing only top-quality manga, and this one looked pretty interesting.
So I finally start reading it and... oh my gawd... it's absolutely hilarious. It's funny in a very painful way, because it's about anime/manga otaku with hardcore obsessions, and for anyone who is a fan of anime, manga, science fiction, fantasy, whatever -- well it strikes very close to home. The main characters are freshman students who join a manga club full of weird freaks... you know, the kind of freaks you find in fandom everywhere, who are actually nice people if you can look past their weird quirks and obsessive hobbies. One of the freshman is a guy who is a hardcore fan but at first can't admit to himself that he's a freak like the rest of the freaks... another is a guileless boy who is clean-cut, charming, perfectly normal -- and yet might be more obsessed than them all. The third is a girl who is trying to be the girlfriend of the second boy -- but he's too clueless to notice. She can't stand all the fan stuff, and yet as she fails to change her boyfriend, she keeps getting drawn further in to the whole fandom thing...
Anway... hilarious stuff, and scarily close to real life. In one scene a pudgy, greasy, dishevelled guy is explaining to the new guy all the intricate details of the plastic model he's assembling -- what the character's like, where this outfit came from, what it represents to him, why he likes the newer style of models -- and I can't help thinking I've met this guy before... probably many times, in different guises.
I think my favorite part is the bios they do of each otaku in between chapters. This is a common thing in a lot of manga, to do some sort of bio of a character in between each chapter. For example, it might list birth date, blood type, astrological sign, likes, dislikes, etc. So of course for these otaku boys, it lists favorite manga, favorite anime, favorite video games, favorite fight characters... priceless.
