X Never Marks the Spot

First off - just heard from naye that Madhouse anime studio is going to be making a Supernatural anime. ZOMGWTFBBQ THIS IS GOING TO BE LEGEN - waitforit - DARY. On the one hand, SPN is wildly popular among Japanese fangirls (hawt incesty brothers ftw!) so how can they go wrong; otoh SPN is so very very American, how can they go right? I can't wait to see. Also crossing my fingers that the seiyuu casting will break my brain.

In related news, have been feeling adrift of late, not really having a fandom. And in my drifting I floated back to past affections, and after happily paddling in Clex for a bit, I, um, somehow seem to have gotten back into Yu-Gi-Oh. Yeah, don't ask. I have no excuse - I've seen and read dozens of better anime and manga (like, most of them...) before and since, and I originally got into it before YGO: The Abridged Series even existed. Yet somehow Kaiba Seto and his little brother manage to maintain a target lock on my fangirl heart. (I can't help it. Kaiba manages to hit nearly every favorite character button I have - bad-ass arrogant asshole cum reluctant redemption character codependently loyal to his sibling/only family. Also manga!Mokuba is as awesome as he is adorable. Also also Tsuda Kenjirou's voice is still the sex.)

So I've been flipping through my YGO manga and watching my HK bootleg DVDs (and fixing up the subtitles of some of my favorite bits, good translation practice since the "English" on a lot of them is somewhat less than comprehensible.) and fastforwarding through all the %$*@(% card games, naturally. And then ficcing - I've at long last finished my not-really-dead-Mokuba WIP "Safeguard," am posting the final chapters now. And maybe a bit more after that, if gnine has her way.

Have also rediscovered an old trouble writing anime-based fic - while my Japanese isn't anywhere near good enough that I could write fic in Japanese, I can mentally compose dialogue. When I fic I often try to "hear" the character's voices speaking the lines, and it's no different with anime fic, except that since I never watch dubs, the voices are in Japanese. Which means that on occasion I find myself sitting before a story trying to figure out how to best render kudaranai in English, and writing "Of course" when the char is really saying Touzen da.

Storytime! immicolia has started sharing her threatened Winchester Brothers & the Case of the Boy with the Haunted Bling (yay!), so now I, myself an attention whore of the first degree, am getting antsy to post what I've been poking at for the last month, my own unholy crack-induced crossover. I finally have a title for it (always the hardest part of these thing. No, really), so should be getting up the first chapter soon. In the meantime, here's the prologue, to give you an idea of what kind of crack I'm talking about.

Supernatural/YGO. And please forgive the opening melodramatics. The fic is shaping up to be lighter from here on out. Despite the proliferation of really top quality angst in the SPN canon and fanfic alike, whenever I try to write the Winchester boys they go all squishy and cheerfully dorky. It's GetBackers all over again.

( Four Knights Game. Because the one thing Kaiba-kun doesn't have enough of in his life is aaaaangst... )

Contrary to rumors of homicidal ghosts in badly photoshopped paintings, or disappearance down a whirling vortex to a strange new world, I am in fact alive and well and still living in Kyoto, and since I have succeeded in finding a job (at the most infamously evil of the eikaiwa co.'s, but let's not get into that; a job is a job and a visa is a visa and the important thing is I am not getting deported. I would have to be dragged kicking and screaming from my Book Offs and combinis and kaiten sushi places, not to mention my imouto-tachi, and it would be terrifically embarrassing) I'm likely to be here for a good long while yet.

April is apparently International Guilt the Author Month; in the course of a week I received two convincing inducements to continue with various unfinished projects, in the form of lovely fanart, a rare piece for Illicit Miracles (well-timed; my webmanga's annual hiatus ends next Monday) and this one from Ru for Tiger Hunt. Which I will be posting a new chapter to. Uh. Soon. Marvelous bribes, at any rate.

Meanwhile, looking at these last two months in Japan...I have a problem. The first step is acceptance, right? My name is X-parrot, and I'm addicted to doujinshi. ( Cut because I am still pathetically obsessed with YGO/Kaiba. )

Should have been studying for tomorrow's Japanese final last night - I've managed to forget more kanji this semester than I'd ever learned before - but instead I was poking at fic, readying a new chapter for upload. Only to discover upon attempting to post that ff.net's doc manager is currently refusing all documents - gives me a random error message when I try to upload. Is this just me, or is everyone feeling the hate?

Anyway, on the off-chance someone from ff.net pops over to my lj, here's chapter 6 of "Legally Insane". Mokuba torture, Kaiba angst, all that good stuff. Though geeze...it was supposed to be like a 20 page story, it's now 45 pages and counting. Have I mentioned I'm having far too much fun with this fic? What can I say, unrepentant h/c'er here - the classic 'loved one gets abducted, big brother proceeds to completely lose his mind', it never gets old!

edit: Ah-hah! Works now. The old "bitch about it to others" trick, never fails!

edit the second: Next page NOW plzkthx! Presumed dead! *squeal* (Benjamin/Caprice = absolute OTP, yo!)

I almost was going to write crack darkfic, had an idea and everything. Then I realized I didn't want to write YGO darkfic. And I have been wanting to write this, er, pairing. So here's fluffy crack, or possibly cracked fluff, of the pr0nish variety.

Y/S-M/Y, or some variation thereof (what would you call that, sandwichshipping?) In character? What is this in character of which you speak?
Warnings for consensual sexing stuffs, yaoi, voyeurism, advancing the timeline, willfully ignoring canon, crack, etc. Also please to be remembering that X-parrot is a gen writer for a reason, and has no business writing smut.

In which Seto is up for a new challenge...

--But there was a polar bear in Lost this week! "He like bears?" *giggles* Also the Michael-Sawyer stuff, awwww. This show does bring on the hurt/comfort. (and the pretty boys. Add Desmond to the list - look at those big crazy puppy eyes!)

And I got the YGO movie in Japanese! Er, without subs. But all the same. ...Yes, I realize it's probably better in the English in this case, because something this bad could only be funnier dubbed. But I really am that allergic to dubs. And in lust with Tsuda-sama's voice enjoy hearing Kaiba boast. Need to watch the whole thing, but at least the end is not quite as stupid as in the American version of the movie ani-manga. (and Mokuba bandaging Kaiba's arm! awww!) It's interesting how they...umm...translate these things. "You're still the true Duel King, Yugi, I will defeat you," (and he uses omae! I didn't know Kaiba knew any other form of "you" besides kisama!) becomes "Enjoy your last days of being champion while you still can" and "You really are a true Duelist, Kaiba-kun," becomes "It's nice to have the old Kaiba back!" and Yugi talks about his friends and his mou hitori but doesn't have that irritating line about Kaiba not having people he loves to share his victories with, which ticked me off because, uh, what is Mokuba, chopped flarn?

Obligatory Advent Children reaction:

SQUEE OMG PRETTY SQUEEEE OMG THE SHEER KICKASSEDNESS OF IT ALL SQUEE SQUEEEEEEE OH HOW I LOVE RENO (AND COMPANY) SQUEEEEE SQUEEE!

You're unlikely to get more outa me. Except did the toss-the-Cloud sequence remind anyone else of OP, Arabasta arc, with the clocktower?

And, fic. Finally finished the Static Shock Summertime; started posting a new YGO, Safeguard, because no one is writing me the squishy fluffy gen that I desperately want to read in that fandom. So I'm writing it for myself. And then there was a challenge on a comm and hallucinations were too good to pass up, so now I'm writing Legally Insane, too, only I doubt that one will be terribly popular there, as it's not angst except in the most contrived and shallow way, nor is it incest (I'm terrible about following rules) - it's an incest comm, most of the fic are dark and creepy, disturbing angst, often extremely well-done. But I have no urge to write creepy & disturbing for YGO, because that's what most of the good writers are doing for it already. The series has a definite potential for dark, and since that side's only briefly touched on in canon (the chars are all too busy playing cards to dig into how messed up they might be), it's not surprising that fen enjoy exploring it. But I doubt I could do it any better than others already are, and since my darkfic itches are getting scratched, I'm not particularly inspired to try. And dammit, sometimes I just want an unabashed happy ending that leave me with a silly grin.

...Okay, most of the time that's what I want, even if I enjoy and appreciate other sorts of fic. I'm a hurt/comfort addict. There probably should be a 12 step program for that. As it is, I'm writing all - fluffy angst? Or angsty fluff? Pseudo-angst, the sort that puts the chars through much stress and worry and physical/emotional torture but it all gets entirely and cheerfully resolved by the story's end. With hugs. Because there can never be too many hugs.

Yo, gnine, naye? We absolutely have to get that h/c comm off the ground!

Is this the future of One Piece fic? There are 35,000 stories now listed on ff.net's YGO section. Of the first 100 fics (all posted/updated within the last 24 hours or so), there are 20 without spelling or grammar mistakes in either the title or the summary (my favorite is "Kaiba becomes a supper hero" - he starts volunteering at a soup kitchen?). There are surprisingly only 11 obvious Mary Sues, mostly going after Kaiba - Seto-sama gets a lot of action, of the 63 romance/pairing fics, 31 list him in the pairings. Shizuka narrowly beats her brother in bagging everyone's favorite asshole CEO, 8 SetoxShizuka to 7 SetoxJou. Impressive, considering in the series I don't think Shizuka and Kaiba have ever actually exchanged words.

And yeah, I'm still posting there anyway - here's my latest fic, courtesy of gnine, who came up with the whole thing. Featuring time travel, Kaiba angst, and people who take their card games way too seriously...

I'm confessing here so certain people can holler at me, as I well know you will, though I swear it's not my fault, I didn't want to do it, I can't help that Kaiba is such a compelling SOB.

...which is to say, yeah. I wrote Yu-Gi-Oh fic. Moreover, I didn't even write good YGO fic. No, instead I had to retell the same damn flashback story I'm sure has been done a thousand times before on ff.net. Only with overextended metaphors and in second person, just to be contrary. And while I drew a little on the anime filler, most of it is based on what we've thus far seen of Kaiba's backstory in the manga. So it was essentially inspired by all of three pages of manga.

What can I say. They're a really interesting three pages.

Deconstruction

Now, leave me to my shame. And my incredibly cute if stupid filler arc.

I don't like card games. Solitaire, go fish, poker, none of that has ever been terribly entertaining to me. This carries over to the fighting card games, excepting a brief flirtation with Magic: The Gathering in high school, and even then it was more for the pretty pictures than the gameplay. Card games bore me. And do you know what's even more boring than playing a card game? Reading about a card game being played!

So why, for the love of little fishes, do I like Yu-Gi-Oh so darn much?

Obviously, because I am weak. ( Warning: gratuitous overuse of the word cute. Minor spoilers, but mostly in the incomprehensible fangirl squeeing way, nothing that's gonna ruin it for you. )