Where I stand, fandom-wise

[charmian]

Where I stand now, fandom-wise: (ObDisclaimer: Dreamwidth, while fandom friendly, is not a fandom blogging service.)


Basically, I'm an anime/manga fan, with a bit of fantasy-novel readership thrown in. However, I'm not really involved with the formal, con-going aspect of SFF fandom, although SFF is my favorite form of genre fiction. I think the last English-language TV show I watched was the Sopranos.

Current interests:

Onmyouji (manga by Okano Reiko): Not translated, sadly, but if you can read Japanese (or Chinese?) you should totally read it so that you can suffer with the rest of us. About the legendary onmyouji Abe no Seimei. Great art, though, so maybe even if your mind blows up trying to figure out what's going on, it's still worth getting. I ended up reading uh... like three onmyouji related books to try and get some grasp on the background. Maybe I'll post my continuing reading blogs here, if I don't do it on LJ. Only one person will probably read them and she's on DW, also.

Saiunkoku: Two seasons of anime, and a light novel series. I read the light novels and summarize them for the benefit of the English language fandom. It's a shoujo series, but oddly it's taking weirdly political and dark overtones, which actually interest me more than the beginning premise, in some ways. The fandom is rather moribund because the anime is over and most people can't read the ongoing light novel series.

Samurai Warriors 2: I am oddly fond of this video game. manticore and I claim that it is in fact post-modern but probably we are delusive, and besides, no one believes us. Or maybe our minds became warped upon seeing certain Japanese fan-manga of it, which I translated for her (I believe in using my powers for evil)

The Ravages of Time: Manhua (Chinese comic) featuring an original perspective on Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Sima Yi as protagonist? However, it's got great art and great writing... Okay I'll stop before I become obnoxious again.

And some other things which are even less popular. XD

Comments

[verstehen]

Oh, SW2 is definitely pomo!

[charmian]

LOL, you think? I hope there is someone writing meta on it when SW3 comes out. XD

[verstehen]

See, now I'm tempted to replay SW2 when I get home tonight and write meta about exactly how pomo it if only because it's all about reconceptualizing the historical narrative. And the fun of the advocacy of consumer culture in buying lots of shit to upgrade your army/guys. And that's aside from the buying stuff using REAL money to load that stuff in the game. Micro-transactions FTW?

[charmian]

Haha, yeah. And how it has several storylines that only make sense or tell the real story only when you play other storylines. The game is more fun once you know something about the history/legends.

Huh? Real money?

[verstehen]

Oh, the Xbox 360 version of SW2 had downloadable content. IIRC, it was all horse stuff.

...it's also possible I'm confusing the content availability between SW2 and SW2: Empires.

[charmian]

Oh, did you play Empires? I was watching on Nico the dialogues between the characters there, which I found pretty amusing.

[verstehen]

Yep, but I haven't played Xtreme Legends. I actually liked Empires. It was fun and they had (again IIRC, this was a good 2-3 years ago) a fun Monopoly-like mini-game.

[flourish]

I find it really interesting that even though I share literally no fandoms with you, and I'm in Western fandom where you're in anime/manga, I still consistently find your thoughts applicable to my own fannish experiences. I guess that that goes to show that, to some extent, fandom is a universal constant. (Well, not totally, but you know what I mean.)

[charmian]

Perhaps, although, many of the thoughts of fandom are inspired by instances of fandom wank which occur in Western fandom, or Western fandom meta (anime fandom produces little meta of that sort), so perhaps then it is natural that they are? But then, I discuss my 'real' fandoms very little as fandoms, as nothing bizarre happens there.