The feck--?

[flemmings]

Who nominated Motoni's Detective Bluecat over at Yuletide? Who could have? And seconded and thirded it? Has that thing been translated while my back was turned?

No. Obviously. Because there's Hyakki Yakou as well. Manga or tv series uh yeah-- Qwerty, this was your doing amirite?

But I may have to enter if only to write Molesworth. Only I won't, because pastiche-master bravecows afrai will, and she'll do a better job than me or anybody. But still. molesworth x peason OTP. Um. No. peason x molesworth OTP. wandsworth x fotherington-tomas OTP. (Had to look that one up. There is only one h in fotherington-tomas.)

And the appearance on the list of works by authors who foam at the mouth any time fanfic is mentioned will be, mh, interesting if nothing else. Yuletide does not have a low profile.

Comments

[xsmoonshine.livejournal.com]

Wah, do it! Afrai will most likely get something else as she always does, with her enormous list of fandoms, and poor Molesworth will languish in the enormous list of abandoned requests. ;_;

I'm not familiar with Bluecat... No, you have to blame mikeneko for Hyakki, I was all wrapped up in whatever fandoms it was I picked that I can't recall now. ^_^

The foamy author requests are a long-standing issue. Some of them already have fic on the archive, foam or not. There's a Robin Hobb story from 2005.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Except that the cardinal rule of writing molesworth is not to write like molesworth because no one can do that well except Willan, who is dead; but if you don't write like molesworth it isn't molesworth. A catch-22. Unless one followed the example of Slave of Carebears and did an utter disjunct between cintent and style.

Bluecat is a Taishou-set BL manga, heavy on the dorkiness and unlikely melodrama (master jewel thieves, upstanding and handsome policemen, male geisha house owners, sinister aristocrats etc etc) that needs to be drawn by someone other than Motoni Modoru. There are odd and nagging parallels to Ima Ichiko's Phantom Moon Whorehouse that would make for an interesting crossover if I were someone else as well.

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

Bluecat didn't get officially licensed or anything, but Fifay (http://swa-swa.com/) did do (rather iffy) scanlations of it, so it's possible that it picked up more Western fans through that.

Patarillo's on there too, which made me boggle for a second.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Now there's a distinct blast from the past. Patarillo fans do exist, but the ones I know have all been in fandom for ohh twenty, twenty-five years by now?

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it, caithion probably nominated it. She runs the big English Patarillo fansite (http://www.caithion.net/patarillo/) and I believe she's done Yuletide before.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

There may well be others, but I'm one of the people to blame for Hyakki Yakou, which I have been reading in French.

French really suits it, actually.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

French reads better than English would IMHO, and quite convincingly unless you compare the French text and the Japanese; but then the shortcomings become apparent.

[incandescens]

I have a suspicion that if I could read the Japanese, I would find that my French manga is not as good a translation as I think it is. I should probably just enjoy it for what I have -- and some day get round to that ambition of learning Japanese.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

They're pretty good, still, as translations go. Just odd bits left out or nuances that don't seem to come across exactly, when you compare the texts, which suggests an editorial hand at work making things fit- rather badly, too- into the bubbles. I suspect if I compared Hikaru no Go with the Japanese I'd find similar things there, but as it is the French manga reads perfectly convincingly and gives me a pretty good diea of what the original Japanese was likely to be saying.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Lit is fair enough game, and in its way easier to write than manga or live action. Purely a question of pastiche. And the kids books are usually exercises in More- I'm tempted to try a Green Knowe pastiche myself- unless the thing has been dramatized and then everyone wants slash. Or femme slash. Or- well, you know. Doujinshi based on Prince Caspian, Caspian x Edmund. The mindset isn't that different from Sailor Moon hentai djs.

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as Q said, used my number six slot for 100 Demons; the character list is also courtesy me, hence Uncle Kai. I noticed that Galerian ash and Melymbrosia were considering adding it; it's highly likely there are a lot of others unknown who've been reading it in French.

I specced (manga or tv) options 'cause Mely got concerned about no access to later volumes; the TV series isn't hard to find and has more limited scope and characters. So TV is like the comfort zone. :D

Still, nothing like a guarantee that it'll make my own Final Four. I like all six of my nominations, so it'll depend on how the numbers pan out -- y'know, how many people offer to write which fandoms.

Only I won't, because pastiche-master bravecows afrai will

Mm, low likelihood. No matter what I've hoped for, I've been ambushed by the least expected every time. Never fails.

The standing policy on Authors Who Froth is that they must make a direct request to the archive maintainers to have a fanfic removed. The onus of alienating fans is on the authors, not the organizers. They must do their own dirty work.

Eh. After looking over the nominations and considering what I'm half-assed familiar with, I expect I'll be saddled with a book or movie again. You seem to have a lot broader range of possibilities than I do. Mou. But they're making no-fault fleeing pretty easy this year, which is another reason I'm willing to give this a go. ^^;

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I hadn't looked at the character list, which is good because the presence of Kai would have been proof positive to me that it was qwerty doing the nominating. Only Chinese and Japanese readers have met Kai.

Mely got concerned about no access to later volumes

Err- concerned in what way? For the potential readers or the potential writers? (You can see I'm still not sure how this entire thing works.)

The French readers know up to vol 6. The TV series only goes as far as vol 7. One volume can't make that much difference, even if it has a bastardization of one of the best stories. It still means the Chinese and Japanese readers have twice as much series to work from as the other fen. A Japanese reader- me, say- writing the series can easily lose someone who hasn't read past 6.

And equally, the TV series is in Japanese, and Chinese fansubbed. melymbrosia is coffeandink, yes? who doesn't read Chinese AFAIK. galerian is in Sweden, whatever her background. Can they make out what's happening in the series?

If you don't offer a book or movie you won't be saddled with it, yes? Confine yourself to animanga and you're home free.

What intrigued me about people nominating Jo Walton is that anyone would care about her unlikable characters enough to want to write them. Though I can see how one might warp Tir Tanagiri (as far as I read it) into Daisan no Teikoku mode to good effect. A vast improvement- everyone would be much more beautiful and much better dressed, and still go about assassinating other people and conniving at world power.

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

the presence of Kai would have been proof positive to me that it was qwerty doing the nominating.

But she's not reading it, y'know. She's being supportive of the lunacy fannishness of others. :D

Err- concerned in what way? For the potential readers or the potential writers? (You can see I'm still not sure how this entire thing works.)

Mm. The way it works is that you can nominate up to six fandoms; in the end, you can only request four fandoms. At that time, you spec which characters you want to see in the fanfic.

Next, you have to volunteer for the fandoms you can write (and which characters you'll do). Starting last year, they post a page where you can track how many people are volunteering to write for each fandom.

So. You asked for Fandoms A, B, C, D. But no one is volunteering to write Fandom B, dang it! So you suck it up and redo your form to abandon Fandom B and shift over to Fandom E -- which has a horde of people volunteering for it.

After all this volunteering and jockeying for writers is finished, then the computer matches your request list with a single writer. As the writer, you can do any one of your recipient's four requests.

(E.g., I was matched for Q's Loki request, but for various reasons I didn't want to write that. So instead, I gave myself a crash-course in the Wild Half manga. As I recall, my other two choices would have been reading Herbert's Dune series or Cherryh's Fortress series. Q's a tough yuletide customer. ^^;)

Animanga fandoms are a special problem: You get a mix of familiarity. Some people are only watching the anime. Some of those are watching fansubs, others only the licensed releases, others only the originals in Japanese. Others are only reading the manga version. Of those, some are only reading fan scanslations, some only licensed translations, and some only the originals in Japanese.

So. Some examples of classic mismatches. Last year I asked for fanfic for a 3-volume manga series. Mely (untrue_accounts) was assigned to me; she'd only read the fan scanslations, which only comprise 1.5 volumes. Likewise, one year I pulled a recipient who'd only watched the anime OAVs; I was mostly familiar with the manga. I had to compensate madly for this gap in the fanfic.

For this reason, most people spell out in the request's comment section (or their later LJ post) precisely how much of the series they're familiar with, and in what format. (Some people, like the Tactics anime-only fen, can get pretty heated over this issue.)

So. 100 Demons is a 15-volume manga series, with only 6 volumes in French, and only . . . 3? volumes in English fanscan. Plus there's also a TV version that differs from the manga in coverage. So specifics about what and how much you've seen is going to be important, both for requesters and writers. Like anime series, TV can be a comfort zone with a defined beginning and ending.

(Ack. I don't know anything about Jo Walton or her books, other than that she's got an LJ account, sorry, sorry.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

She's not reading it? Then how did she know the TV series was a barebones summary of the manga story?

My head spins slightly from all the info, but I'm beginning to see how it goes. And why it's a surefire grade A bitch to write animanga for. No wonder people don't. Or deek out if their person has requested precisely that.

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

She is clever that way? She's read the English fanscans, and she's watched the TV series (which I haven't finished myself 'cause I found the birds so off-putting). She's also fond of consuming massive amounts of fanfic for fandoms she knows zilch about. <-- fact.

Anyhoo. Yeah, fortunately, it's always simple in actual practice.

Animanga isn't so bad. Being farther along in a series is a bonus: knowing more equals less Jossing. Even so, it's kinder not to spoil recipients who aren't as far along in a series, or to baffle those who won't know non-anime Character X. That sort of thing.

As for why more people don't offer to write for animanga . . . umm, I dunno. (I mean, there are some animanga luminaries in the lineup -- who usually don't end up writing animanga. ^_^;) I think it's because most of the fans really do like animanga ONLY, so they're less likely to find yuletide attractive compared with something like springkink.

By the same token, your chances of getting someone unexpected (i.e., not one of the usual fandom suspects) writing your fanfic go up with yuletide. Bit of a gamble, really.