Fanime report part 2: buying doujinshi.
May. 26th, 2008 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elwen[New tag! For Code Geass. Dunno how much I'll use it going forward, but I figure I have enough in the archives already to warrant it. Maybe for Saiunkoku, too, but I wasn't sure on that one.]
So for a change of pace this year, instead of spending lots of money in the Artists' Alley, I bought some doujinshi instead. Even though I got them all from the Yaoi-Con booth, only two (out of six) of them were actually yaoi, and one was BL. The Yaoi-Con booth just happened to have the largest, best-organized, and most recent collection of any of the dealers.
Buying doujinshi was . . . an interesting experience. I can't say I have buyer's remorse per se, since I like all of the doujinshi I bought, and they were all reasonably priced, but . . . I don't know. Maybe they're just too short? The non-yaoi ones were . . . like reading fanfic, except with art, and not free. And the yaoi ones . . . I guess they were like fanfic, too. They just didn't seem like things I would want to continue spending money on. Maybe I'm just a cheapskate, and I want my fixes for free.
The way I thought about it at first, they were a good deal because they were about the price of a print from the Artists' Alley, but instead I got a whole book's worth of art. But they were also about the price of a volume of manga, with a lot fewer pages, and probably less re-read value. So I guess it's the one-shot nature of them that makes me less willing to pay. Art prints I can hang up -- at least theoretically, since I haven't actually gotten around to doing that for 99% of the art I've bought. But maybe they'll grow on me. All the doujinshi I got were very cute, clever, and/or insightful, so maybe I'll read them again now and then when I want to savor the relationships they portray.
Anyways, on to the fandom babble!
Saiunkoku Monogatari
At least in the back of my head, I was mainly looking for Saiunkoku Monogatari doujinshi. Even maybe specifically Tsukiyo Ban ni Miru Yume wa, which is this Shuuei/Kouyuu doujinshi that I love to pieces. [It was posted in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
saiunkoku at some point, but I couldn't find it. It apparently isn't on saiunkokudoujin.] Unfortunately, there were no Saiunkoku doujinshi. [Sorry if you clicked on the lj-cut hoping for something interesting.] In fact, the only Saiunkoku goods I found in the entire con were two cellphone charms, one each of Shuuei and Kouyuu. =/
Phoenix Wright
I know I said I wasn't going to get sucked into the fandom, but well-written NaruMitsu just makes me happy, I guess. Like I said in the above-linked entry, I can't resist Edgeworth's guarded and tormented personality, and Phoenix's earnestness is the perfect thing for it to play off of. Much like Leon and Stahn, though I don't ship Leon with anyone, much less Stahn, who belongs with Rutee. It's still true that I don't really see NaruMitsu as sexual, though, so the yaoi doujinshi I bought didn't really appeal to me as much as the shounen-ai one. It's also probably because (1) the yaoi one turned out to be a continuation of another doujinshi [serves me right for not reading carefully and just looking at the really nice sketch of angsty!Edgeworth, when it says "part 2" on the back cover] and (2) it had Phoenix as seme, which just isn't my thing, apparently [actually, it was really hard for me to figure out who was seme, but after careful examination, I'm pretty sure it's Phoenix].
Anyway, the shounen-ai doujinshi was kind of cute. It's called "merry merry-go-round" and it's about how both of them always feel like they're chasing after/being led around by the other. Like I said, it's like a sweet little one-shot fanfic with some interest insight into the characters. Also, it has tie-pulling. :]
Darker than Black
I realized pretty quickly after I started thumbing through the DtB section that I wasn't going to buy any yaoi. There are a reasonable number of male characters in the series, but none of them interact in a particularly slashable way, especially not with Hei -- and I wouldn't ship anyone but Hei. I think I mainly saw him paired with November 11, which is not bad, except I thought November 11 was cuter when he was flirting with Kirihara [in a way, he's a lot like Yuuto from X, now that I think about it], and someone else who I can't remember anymore. I suspect it might be Zhijun, since I can't think of anyone else who interacted enough with Hei and would be slashable. [Huang and Mao interacted with Hei plenty, of course, but one's a warty old man and the other's a cat. And July and Maki are little boys, and Hei isn't really the shota type.] But Zhijun/Hei would be creepy. Like Muraki/Tsuzuki, but a hundred times worse. x_x
Setting all that aside, there probably are [or should be] lots of het fics involving Hei. Hei/Amber was strongly hinted at in the show, and Hei/Kirihara is pretty cute. And there was romance between Hei and a lot of one-shot characters that could be built upon. I was fond of Hei/Havoc, myself.
But, well, I guess I couldn't expect to find that much het doujinshi at a Yaoi-Con booth. In the end, I just got a normal doujinshi that had a really pretty, mellow picture of Hei, Bai, and Amber on the cover. [If you haven't figured it out already -- and are actually reading this without having watched DtB -- different organizations in the series use different naming conventions. MI6 uses dates (November 11, April, July), the Syndicate uses colors in Chinese (Hei, Bai, Yin, Huang).] I kind of figured I would have bought the cover as an art print, so I might as well get the doujinshi. It's kind of neat, although frustratingly short. DtB left a lot of unanswered questions, so I think the "facts" in the doujinshi are non-canon, but they fit will. It has three parts. In the first, Hei is talking with Amber while Bai sleeps, with flashbacks about how Bai kept the Syndicate from killing Hei by telling them she needed him for her remuneration. In the second, Amber is reflecting on her feelings for Hei, to put it succinctly. The last takes place after the end of the series, with Yin reflecting on how Hei must regret his decision and how she doesn't want him to. Overall, it was very introspective and mellow. Which was one of the strengths of the show itself, I think. Unfortunately, I didn't watch the show carefully enough to understand the references to canon. I should probably fix that by rewatching.
Code Geass
Thank god I don't ship Suzaku/Lelouch. About 95% of the doujinshi was Suzaku/Lelouch, and they had two full boxes of it, mostly packed so tightly it would have taken me forever to screen them by art style. Instead, I got to skip everything that was SuzaLulu, plus anything that was Scheiser/Lloyd/Suzaku (eww), which I think was the second most common. Which left me with . . . not much. I think there was one Lelouch/Kallen, whose art I didn't like, and a few Lelouch/C.C., of which I bought one. I also got a gag book -- it had cute chibis and a shiny cover, so I couldn't resist. And one more, which I will talk about more in a bit.
So. SuzaLulu. Did I mention that I hate Suzaku? Not that I can't see the appeal of SuzaLulu, what with the childhood friends turned enemies thing and all (hey, it's Fuuma and Kamui all over again). But I hate Suzaku when he's idealistic, I hate him when he's clueless, and I hate him when he's angry. And those are about the only things he is. Oh, and I guess sometimes he is tormented, which I normally would like, except . . . I dunno, he's just a wuss? So so much for that. (Also, I never went for Fuuma/Kamui either.)
But I have to admit to wondering . . . who's seme? Or are they reversible? But I can't stand them enough even to try to find out. Also, I have the sinking feeling it's Suzaku, unless it was some kind of mindfuck by Lelouch, neither of which I could stomach.
So... moving on... I'd rather see Lelouch with one of the girls. Particularly C.C. or Kallen. C.C. because she and Lelouch are both so cynical that their interactions are really amusing. Case in point: the first drama on the first Sound Episode CD is one of my favorites so far. Lelouch shoves C.C. under his bed when Suzaku suddenly bursts into the room. Suzaku voices the suspicion that Lelouch has a girlfriend and asks what kind of girl she is. Lelouch says a lot of bad things about C.C., who has to listen helplessly (kind of) from under the bed. XD The C/Lulu doujinshi is more of the same, in a sense. [One of the neat things about reading the doujinshi was that I picked up all the short names of various pairings by reading the prefaces and afterwords. Though I'm not sure how best to render Cルル in romaji.] The student council is talking about the rumors of a ghost in one of the school buildings -- obviously C.C., since it dresses in strange white clothes and smells like pizza XD -- and Milly decides to hold a ghost hunt. Lelouch races ahead to get C.C. to hide, but runs the both of them into a dead end. C.C. solves the problem by (apparently) having a school uniform on underneath her white outfit -- she storms out and calls Lelouch a pervert, diverting all of the student council members' attention to him. ^o^ Then there's a somewhat unrelated scene where she declares to Nunnally that she will someday steal Lelouch from his sister. So in the end it wasn't really C/Lulu so much as gen fic about the student council plus C.C., but it was cute. Plus, really good art of everyone, and minimal Suzaku. :P
So from the artists' notes, I gather that a lot of Japanese fans (or at least doujinshi artists) are really into the royals. I can't say I really get that. Maybe I just don't remember season 1 enough, but I don't feel like we got to know enough of either Clovis or Schneiser to do much with them. They're just pretty faces with bland personalities. But I found this one doujinshi that was Schneiser/Lloyd, and it was a unique enough pairing that I pulled it out to see the cover. And it had the hottest picture of Schneiser and Lloyd I've ever seen. [Don't worry, it's worksafe.] Plus, the thought of the pairing just kind of blew my mind, so I got it. It seems to be set pre-series, with Schneiser telling Lloyd to go to Japan (after bribing him with purin-flavored alcohol, which I really want to try making now) and naming the Lancelot. Like the cover, it is very hot. It seems to take advantage of the lack of information we have about Schneiser to give him a darker side -- that, or I haven't paid enough attention to the scenes when he's around. It's not a pairing, or a depiction of Schneiser, that I would really go with, but for a one-shot doujinshi, it's yummy. The one disappointment was that Lloyd turned out to be a lot more of a pushover than you would guess from the cover.
Random: I was annoyed to find out that it's "Schneiser" since gg subs it "Schneizel". Mneh. But "Schneiser" makes more sense, at least, unlike "Kallen" and "Milly". But I've seen far worse official spellings, so I guess I'll live.
Given that these doujinshi had to make their way from Japan to Yaoi-Con to me, I'm guessing their vintage is probably fairly old, so they wouldn't incorporate anything from R2, and perhaps not even things from later in season 1. Probably R2 doujinshi has lots of Rounds slash, not to mention Xing Ke. And Lelouch/Rolo, of course. [I hate Rolo almost as much as I hate Suzaku, so you can imagine how I would react to the pairing.] So... there doesn't seem to be much in terms of Geass doujinshi for me to look forward to. Which is not so terrible, considering I don't even read fic.
In the end, even though I did pretty well, I feel like buying doujinshi is so hit-or-miss. If I subscribed to more popular ships (SuzaLulu), or was less picky about art style, I would never have been able to decide what to get. And what you end up getting is so unpredictable. I need back-cover summaries! D:
Last thing: I'm thinking of emailing some of the artists whose work I bought. I'm not really sure what I'd say, but I kind of want to let them know that they're reaching people even in the States, and tell them todraw more C/Lulu keep up the lovely work. I wish I understood more about how doujinshi in Japan works, and how to navigate their websites (日本語能力足りない！), but at least I can babble at them in bad Japanese...
So for a change of pace this year, instead of spending lots of money in the Artists' Alley, I bought some doujinshi instead. Even though I got them all from the Yaoi-Con booth, only two (out of six) of them were actually yaoi, and one was BL. The Yaoi-Con booth just happened to have the largest, best-organized, and most recent collection of any of the dealers.
Buying doujinshi was . . . an interesting experience. I can't say I have buyer's remorse per se, since I like all of the doujinshi I bought, and they were all reasonably priced, but . . . I don't know. Maybe they're just too short? The non-yaoi ones were . . . like reading fanfic, except with art, and not free. And the yaoi ones . . . I guess they were like fanfic, too. They just didn't seem like things I would want to continue spending money on. Maybe I'm just a cheapskate, and I want my fixes for free.
The way I thought about it at first, they were a good deal because they were about the price of a print from the Artists' Alley, but instead I got a whole book's worth of art. But they were also about the price of a volume of manga, with a lot fewer pages, and probably less re-read value. So I guess it's the one-shot nature of them that makes me less willing to pay. Art prints I can hang up -- at least theoretically, since I haven't actually gotten around to doing that for 99% of the art I've bought. But maybe they'll grow on me. All the doujinshi I got were very cute, clever, and/or insightful, so maybe I'll read them again now and then when I want to savor the relationships they portray.
Anyways, on to the fandom babble!
Saiunkoku Monogatari
At least in the back of my head, I was mainly looking for Saiunkoku Monogatari doujinshi. Even maybe specifically Tsukiyo Ban ni Miru Yume wa, which is this Shuuei/Kouyuu doujinshi that I love to pieces. [It was posted in
saiunkoku at some point, but I couldn't find it. It apparently isn't on saiunkokudoujin.] Unfortunately, there were no Saiunkoku doujinshi. [Sorry if you clicked on the lj-cut hoping for something interesting.] In fact, the only Saiunkoku goods I found in the entire con were two cellphone charms, one each of Shuuei and Kouyuu. =/Phoenix Wright
I know I said I wasn't going to get sucked into the fandom, but well-written NaruMitsu just makes me happy, I guess. Like I said in the above-linked entry, I can't resist Edgeworth's guarded and tormented personality, and Phoenix's earnestness is the perfect thing for it to play off of. Much like Leon and Stahn, though I don't ship Leon with anyone, much less Stahn, who belongs with Rutee. It's still true that I don't really see NaruMitsu as sexual, though, so the yaoi doujinshi I bought didn't really appeal to me as much as the shounen-ai one. It's also probably because (1) the yaoi one turned out to be a continuation of another doujinshi [serves me right for not reading carefully and just looking at the really nice sketch of angsty!Edgeworth, when it says "part 2" on the back cover] and (2) it had Phoenix as seme, which just isn't my thing, apparently [actually, it was really hard for me to figure out who was seme, but after careful examination, I'm pretty sure it's Phoenix].
Anyway, the shounen-ai doujinshi was kind of cute. It's called "merry merry-go-round" and it's about how both of them always feel like they're chasing after/being led around by the other. Like I said, it's like a sweet little one-shot fanfic with some interest insight into the characters. Also, it has tie-pulling. :]
Darker than Black
I realized pretty quickly after I started thumbing through the DtB section that I wasn't going to buy any yaoi. There are a reasonable number of male characters in the series, but none of them interact in a particularly slashable way, especially not with Hei -- and I wouldn't ship anyone but Hei. I think I mainly saw him paired with November 11, which is not bad, except I thought November 11 was cuter when he was flirting with Kirihara [in a way, he's a lot like Yuuto from X, now that I think about it], and someone else who I can't remember anymore. I suspect it might be Zhijun, since I can't think of anyone else who interacted enough with Hei and would be slashable. [Huang and Mao interacted with Hei plenty, of course, but one's a warty old man and the other's a cat. And July and Maki are little boys, and Hei isn't really the shota type.] But Zhijun/Hei would be creepy. Like Muraki/Tsuzuki, but a hundred times worse. x_x
Setting all that aside, there probably are [or should be] lots of het fics involving Hei. Hei/Amber was strongly hinted at in the show, and Hei/Kirihara is pretty cute. And there was romance between Hei and a lot of one-shot characters that could be built upon. I was fond of Hei/Havoc, myself.
But, well, I guess I couldn't expect to find that much het doujinshi at a Yaoi-Con booth. In the end, I just got a normal doujinshi that had a really pretty, mellow picture of Hei, Bai, and Amber on the cover. [If you haven't figured it out already -- and are actually reading this without having watched DtB -- different organizations in the series use different naming conventions. MI6 uses dates (November 11, April, July), the Syndicate uses colors in Chinese (Hei, Bai, Yin, Huang).] I kind of figured I would have bought the cover as an art print, so I might as well get the doujinshi. It's kind of neat, although frustratingly short. DtB left a lot of unanswered questions, so I think the "facts" in the doujinshi are non-canon, but they fit will. It has three parts. In the first, Hei is talking with Amber while Bai sleeps, with flashbacks about how Bai kept the Syndicate from killing Hei by telling them she needed him for her remuneration. In the second, Amber is reflecting on her feelings for Hei, to put it succinctly. The last takes place after the end of the series, with Yin reflecting on how Hei must regret his decision and how she doesn't want him to. Overall, it was very introspective and mellow. Which was one of the strengths of the show itself, I think. Unfortunately, I didn't watch the show carefully enough to understand the references to canon. I should probably fix that by rewatching.
Code Geass
Thank god I don't ship Suzaku/Lelouch. About 95% of the doujinshi was Suzaku/Lelouch, and they had two full boxes of it, mostly packed so tightly it would have taken me forever to screen them by art style. Instead, I got to skip everything that was SuzaLulu, plus anything that was Scheiser/Lloyd/Suzaku (eww), which I think was the second most common. Which left me with . . . not much. I think there was one Lelouch/Kallen, whose art I didn't like, and a few Lelouch/C.C., of which I bought one. I also got a gag book -- it had cute chibis and a shiny cover, so I couldn't resist. And one more, which I will talk about more in a bit.
So. SuzaLulu. Did I mention that I hate Suzaku? Not that I can't see the appeal of SuzaLulu, what with the childhood friends turned enemies thing and all (hey, it's Fuuma and Kamui all over again). But I hate Suzaku when he's idealistic, I hate him when he's clueless, and I hate him when he's angry. And those are about the only things he is. Oh, and I guess sometimes he is tormented, which I normally would like, except . . . I dunno, he's just a wuss? So so much for that. (Also, I never went for Fuuma/Kamui either.)
But I have to admit to wondering . . . who's seme? Or are they reversible? But I can't stand them enough even to try to find out. Also, I have the sinking feeling it's Suzaku, unless it was some kind of mindfuck by Lelouch, neither of which I could stomach.
So... moving on... I'd rather see Lelouch with one of the girls. Particularly C.C. or Kallen. C.C. because she and Lelouch are both so cynical that their interactions are really amusing. Case in point: the first drama on the first Sound Episode CD is one of my favorites so far. Lelouch shoves C.C. under his bed when Suzaku suddenly bursts into the room. Suzaku voices the suspicion that Lelouch has a girlfriend and asks what kind of girl she is. Lelouch says a lot of bad things about C.C., who has to listen helplessly (kind of) from under the bed. XD The C/Lulu doujinshi is more of the same, in a sense. [One of the neat things about reading the doujinshi was that I picked up all the short names of various pairings by reading the prefaces and afterwords. Though I'm not sure how best to render Cルル in romaji.] The student council is talking about the rumors of a ghost in one of the school buildings -- obviously C.C., since it dresses in strange white clothes and smells like pizza XD -- and Milly decides to hold a ghost hunt. Lelouch races ahead to get C.C. to hide, but runs the both of them into a dead end. C.C. solves the problem by (apparently) having a school uniform on underneath her white outfit -- she storms out and calls Lelouch a pervert, diverting all of the student council members' attention to him. ^o^ Then there's a somewhat unrelated scene where she declares to Nunnally that she will someday steal Lelouch from his sister. So in the end it wasn't really C/Lulu so much as gen fic about the student council plus C.C., but it was cute. Plus, really good art of everyone, and minimal Suzaku. :P
So from the artists' notes, I gather that a lot of Japanese fans (or at least doujinshi artists) are really into the royals. I can't say I really get that. Maybe I just don't remember season 1 enough, but I don't feel like we got to know enough of either Clovis or Schneiser to do much with them. They're just pretty faces with bland personalities. But I found this one doujinshi that was Schneiser/Lloyd, and it was a unique enough pairing that I pulled it out to see the cover. And it had the hottest picture of Schneiser and Lloyd I've ever seen. [Don't worry, it's worksafe.] Plus, the thought of the pairing just kind of blew my mind, so I got it. It seems to be set pre-series, with Schneiser telling Lloyd to go to Japan (after bribing him with purin-flavored alcohol, which I really want to try making now) and naming the Lancelot. Like the cover, it is very hot. It seems to take advantage of the lack of information we have about Schneiser to give him a darker side -- that, or I haven't paid enough attention to the scenes when he's around. It's not a pairing, or a depiction of Schneiser, that I would really go with, but for a one-shot doujinshi, it's yummy. The one disappointment was that Lloyd turned out to be a lot more of a pushover than you would guess from the cover.
Random: I was annoyed to find out that it's "Schneiser" since gg subs it "Schneizel". Mneh. But "Schneiser" makes more sense, at least, unlike "Kallen" and "Milly". But I've seen far worse official spellings, so I guess I'll live.
Given that these doujinshi had to make their way from Japan to Yaoi-Con to me, I'm guessing their vintage is probably fairly old, so they wouldn't incorporate anything from R2, and perhaps not even things from later in season 1. Probably R2 doujinshi has lots of Rounds slash, not to mention Xing Ke. And Lelouch/Rolo, of course. [I hate Rolo almost as much as I hate Suzaku, so you can imagine how I would react to the pairing.] So... there doesn't seem to be much in terms of Geass doujinshi for me to look forward to. Which is not so terrible, considering I don't even read fic.
In the end, even though I did pretty well, I feel like buying doujinshi is so hit-or-miss. If I subscribed to more popular ships (SuzaLulu), or was less picky about art style, I would never have been able to decide what to get. And what you end up getting is so unpredictable. I need back-cover summaries! D:
Last thing: I'm thinking of emailing some of the artists whose work I bought. I'm not really sure what I'd say, but I kind of want to let them know that they're reaching people even in the States, and tell them to
no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 10:31 am (UTC)I'll try my best to go next year, perhaps even to cosplay if I pull my act together. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 08:43 am (UTC)Suzaku frustrates me because he's *almost right* but his critical thinking is off - he lets key puzzle pieces slip him by, like letting "following rules" take precedence over "valuing human lives". And Suzaku/Lelouch wut?! Though they're awesomesauce when they work together in Ep 16.
LOL at C.C. the pizza-scented ghost. I feel more comfortable with Lulu/C.C. than the other possibilities. Slight tug for Lulu/Shirley, but that 'ship was sunk the moment it launched. Also fail to understand the fascination with the royals - I like the Ashford Academy set better; they've got cooler uniforms. :)