subdee

MOAR LJ FAIL LINKS
http://seperis.livejournal.com/583653.html
http://community.livejournal.com/sf_drama/612153.html
http://msilverstar.insanejournal.com/37790.html

The third link is from worldserpent, the first is from I Forget. The second came up in a google search. In order: funny comments from users responding to the LJ "news" post, babelfish translation of the more straightforward Russian news post (warning: link is full of xenophobia and bad soviet jokes), roundup of responses by the Advisory Board.

Also via Charmian, a link to a totally new offense: http://stewardess.insanejournal.com/228035.html
Wherein LJ edits the "Top Interests" page to remove "sex," "porn," "fanfiction," and "fandom." I don't know about you guys, but I've never felt more loved! :D :D :D ...:(
EDIT: 'faeries' and 'bisexuality' also removed, along with terms like "hardcore" and "bondage."
EDIT2: Aaaand they're back. I gotta say, LJ staff is unlucky when this stuff breaks over the weekend, when the crisis management staff are away from their desks.


REACTIONS TO (JUMP) MANGA
Warning: links point to recent manga chapters. The chapter number is in the URL after the series title if you want to avoid spoilers.

http://www.onemanga.com/Naruto/392/14/
THAT WILL NEVER STOP BEING DISTURBING NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES IT HAPPENS AHHHHH. (On the other hand, this will never stop being cool.)
http://www.onemanga.com/Bleach/314/
Aizen Explains it All. XD The evil plan makes a surprising amount of sense! And I'm surprisingly excited for the result:
( spoilers )
http://www.onemanga.com/Hunter_X_Hunter/272/
Hunter x Hunter is doing some interesting things with the passage of time which would be incredibly cool if they weren't so incredibly FRUSTRATING. XD; They'll be cool in the volume release, I guess.


OTHER
Waiting for a certain package from amazon. emblem knows what I'm talking about.

You know what it is, I've been so paralyzed by the weight of so many missed deadlines -- for schoolwork, fanwork, even housework -- that I've just been hanging on to the things I do have, waiting for the perfect time to finish them. Or even the perfect time to post what's already finished.

Take this Kankuro thing.

Series: Naruto
Title: The one where Kankuro gets drunk in a bar
Genre: Drunken Ranting
Note: Originally for this request (oh my god, that thread is two years old).

( No time like the present? )

Doesn't it have that just-dusted-off feel? orz

Of the boy --> girl variety, if only because no one ever writes it the other way around. XD I love genderswitch. Ranma ½ was my first fandom. These two things are not unrelated.[1]

1. Naruto, Oh Baby, Oh Baby by The Badifc Fairy.

Parody, but the sort of parody that’s still good if you’re completely serious about it (where by “completely serious” I mean “willing to read mpreg”). This story wins on three levels:
a. There are canonical, sensible, plot-related reasons for turning Naruto into an OOC pregnant girl!
b. The story is fun enough to hold the reader’s interest until those reasons are revealed.
c. The author enjoys making fun of Sasuke’s pain. (Who doesn’t?)

2. Full Metal Alchemist, Eliza AU, nekokoban and harukami.
I like this one because if you make Ed a girl in disguise and then move her in with Roy, you are well on your way to But She’s my Ward! I’d be Taking Advantage! awkwardness. Which line is crossed by the third fic in series XD. It’s also a mostly serious -- but also very funny -- look at exactly which things would change if Ed were a girl. If you like FMA and like genderswitch you’ll probably have already heard of this one, but the series is disconnected and not archived anywhere that I’ve found so here is an (incomplete) index: ( cut for length )


3. Yami no Matsuei, bookverse story by mistressrenet

Not technically genderswitch, or even focusing on gendeswitched characters. But I thought I’d include this one because 1) I like it and 2) Yami no Matsuei does canon genderswitch AU, how cool is that? Also, because the mangaka had the good sense to make Tsuzuki the girl and not Hisoka. (The problem with making Hisoka the girl – what most people writing Yami genderswitch do -- is that it’s a fundamental part of his character that he looks like a girl, is treated like a girl, and has a girl’s name, but IS NOT A GIRL. That and YnM reverses traditional top/bottom roles but anyway moving on.)

4. Sayuki, Ranma ½ fusion by emungere

Aaaaand finally a Ranma-esque fic. Uses the premise and not the characters, so you do not need to know anything about Ranma ½ to read it. Hakkai/Gojyo, smutty. Very, very smutty.

This completes the genderswitch AU cycle, gagfic --> serious exploration of gender boundaries --> he is practically a girl anyway --> pr0n. Because pr0n is the fanfic equilivent of Rome, all roads lead to it.

***

[1]Yes, let's talk about fandom origins! Ranma 1/2 was gignatic, but I don't think that's the biggest reason I was in it. GWing and Sailor Moon and DBZ and CCS and Rurouni Kenshin were equally huge, at the time. Access to sources -- ie CCS and Ruroken not having domestic releases -- wasn't the issue either, because ahaha I never did read Ranma or watch the anime. I think it really was the genderswitch. (That, and the crossovers and AUs and fusions. XD)

Claiming Ranma 1/2 as first fandom dates me older than I actually am. That's because what I mean by "fandom" is really more like "read lots of fanfic on nearly-defunct personal websites". There weren't many people still writing at the time that I was reading. I did join two Yahoo!groups -- one for an author who rarely updated (beckytailweaver) and one for an author who'd stopped posting publically (team7) -- but I never replied to or posted anything and that was the extent of my participation. XD So there was no interaction, either online or off, for maybe three years.

Which really explains a lot.

P.S. I have this bizzare desire to finish an impossibly long RPG over break. It's bizzare because I haven't played videogames for two and a half years (since starting college), and because I was never a big RPG fan in the first place. I mostly played platformers and racing games. I wasn't into anime when I was into video games, right, and I've always seen RPGs as an extention of anime fandom.

( Here're my RPG stats )

I took a short break from livejournal to read the first book of CJ Cherryh's Dawnbreaker trilogy and watch anime. Catching up is really starting to kill me; I might have to read on filter once school starts, although I have no idea what I'd cut out beyond a few increasingly annoying communities.

( book&anime babbling )

HIGHLIGHTS from the last week.

( Twelve Kingdoms )
( Initial D )
( Pally's Collab Corner )
( Princess Tutu )
( Naruto )

Fandom Relief Efforts
Pellaz offers fic in exchange for Katrina donations <-- I'm doing this as soon as my House!finances are settled.
Blood for fic <-- exactly what it sounds like. Measures like this are too inefficient to really be effective, but they don't hurt either.
News and help links <-- yasminm is always on top of these things.

I didn't think I'd ever been to New Orleans -- even though Umich always schedules Spring Break to coincide with Mardi Gras -- but I've just realized I have. We took a detour on the way back from Florida (Boca Raton), I think I was five or six. I remember sitting at an outdoor cafe, on a second-story balcony, French Quarter, July, millions of hanging flowers (mostly pink), and I accidentally dropped a really nice fork over the railing and onto the street. After we'd paid the bill we saw that the fork was still there, only it'd been flattened into sheet metal by the traffic.

I still have that former fork.

1. Killua/Gon pairing manifesto at ship_manifesto. It’s a lot like reading a summary of the series XDXDXD totally Togashi’s fault for basing so much of Hunter x Hunter on their relationship. Good choice of manga scans in that post; HxH is the furthest thing from subtle but those particular scans are so incredibly blatant, they do everything but show the killer with his hand still on the knife, which is protruding from his victim’s back. They certainly include him standing over the bloody body and his confession afterward.

(odrade42 has a much better grasp on Gon’s character than me. Ahaha but I think I finally understand now? I need to write something for 30_kisses soon, it’s been four months and I’m not kicked out yet only because the community mods have better things to do.)

2. Naruto: reccing Way of the Appartment Manager by Elizabeth Culmer. It's alternate timeline (which I consider worse, much worse, than AU); main character is an OC who gets to be Naruto's substitute Mommy. And it's awesome. The cool thing about this fic is how well it fleshes out the Naruto world -- village dynamics, jutsu mechanics, stuff like that. There's not a whole lot of HOW COULD YOU NEGLECT THIS POOR ORPHAN BOY YOU MEANIES, and what there is, is tolerable.

Rec is via this post of V's. I also reccommend Family -- it's another story that sounds bad in summary but which has excellent writing and well-reasoned implications. These two aren't quite canon; that's what makes them great.

3. HanaKimi manga: gorgeous characters with the best expressions. But if I hadn’t had the whole series to read at once I probably would have died of frustration. ( Cut I )

3. Prince of Tennis manga: makes it soooo much harder to fangirl Ryoma. ( Cut II )

4.Half-blood Prince: let’s play flist connection! Assume spoilers, of course, although they are very vague. ( Cut III )