Extended Maunderings on the Surprisingly Awkward and Tedious Pursuit of Nerding Out

[cephalopod]

Damn it, I need a fandom. It seems really odd to deliberately shop for a fandom, rather than passionately leaping upon one--there's a sort of arranged marriage vs. love match dichotomy going on here. Is one less real than the other? Less devoted? Does a reasoned choice make for a better match? Screw it, I dunno. But I do know that I write and draw more and generally feel more creative when I've got a fan community to interact with. I've been feeling the lack of common fan-ground for a while.

Code Geass is neat and I'm digging how it presents itself first as an earnest Gundam-esque teen-boy drama and slowly but with gathering speed goes off the rails with switched-up gender role tropes and subversion and nipples and heinous motherfuckerdom. Still working on this one, but I don't feel the tingle of fan-love yet. Might be because it's still basically about two school-age boys dealing with Big Issues and War Things while trying to retain that childhood friendship. Seen that.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is rad as hell and I love it because every single thing in it is faaabulous and cranked up to 11, but there's three series and I'm starting on the third because the earlier ones date from 1989 and 1997 and have been out of print forever. Hell, so have the first volumes of the arc I just started on. I think I'm missing some context.

I dig me some Le Chevalier d'Eon, but I suck at keeping historical figures straight (by which I mean keeping them named the right thing with the right titles in my head, rather than het.)...I just don't feel confident messing with it.

...which is probably why I never really got into FF12, too, come to think of it.

And I think I sprained my Metal Gear fan-gland when I entered fandom the first time. Criminy.

Lessee, what else...Black Lagoon, that's jolly fun and the Southeast Asian setting is new and neat. A little hard to filter out the moments of salaryman wish-fulfillment, though.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, I AM MY OWN SNIFFY KOREAN GRANDMOTHER WHO DOESN'T WANT ME TO GET INVOLVED WITH ANYTHING UNSUITABLE AND WHO HAS ARRANGED A NICE LUNCH WITH MY MOTHER'S COLLEGE FRIEND'S SON WHO WORKS AT WOO-RI HE'S HEADED FOR A BRANCH MANAGEMENT POSITION YOU KNOW and I don't even have a Korean grandmother, goddamn

I think that's a metaphor for FF7 or something. I have no idea.

Maybe Fallout 3. Maybe. There's Dogmeat.

Comments

[cypher]

Man, I would have thought FF7 would be somebody's sort of wild-eyed creepy grandmother, who mutters and forgets people's names and asks suspiciously if you've found Jesus.

What's Black Lagoon about, anyway?

[cephalopod]

It's about a four-person band of pirates operating out of Thailand--three expatriate Americans and the main character. He's a salaryman nicknamed "Rock" who gets mixed up in a smuggling op in the first volume, screwed over and left for dead by his company, who turns out to have flashes of crazy tactical brilliance and joins the crew. Sometimes the story focuses on him and his evolving take on outlaw-dom a little too hard, because that's not what the writer's good at.

Most of the time it's a cool blend of ultraviolence and cultural anthropology (esp. Thai, Japanese, and Chinese), with especial love for small-group military dynamics and tactics. Gun fetish, smack-talking, and thorough enjoyment of personal domination feature heavily. :D I have a personal fondness for the attention spent on accurate labels and packaging for the Thai beer and snacks and bits of signage.

One of the things I like best about it is the treatment of female characters. One of the Black Lagoon's crew, Revy, is dressed like a throwaway angry gun bunny but she's absolutely not; she has a thoughtful background and real depth and her motivations are complex. And Balalaika...oh goodness, you'll like Balalaika. Russian veteran of the Afghani wars, head of her defector merc crew. Absolute crazy badassness, rock-solid command and total control except for the moments when you realize that despite all these things, she's gibbering batshit. But she's still human enough to do non-badass things; I mean she's a businesswoman, she grouses and does paperwork occasionally. Pure love.

(...wow, that was long.)

[cypher]

...That all sounds seriously cool, and also not like any of my other current fandoms, which is pretty rad. Maybe I will see about picking some of it up and giving it a shot. :3

[subtext]

You have a PS2, no? Did you actually play Magna Carta, the one with Calintz? Maybe you should! It has a big muscle-guy not entirely unlike Wakka, too.

(Oh wow, I just realized you could seriously cosplay the fuck out of Calintz. Why did I never think of this before? See, now I have to be local just to do costuming stuff with you! Look what you make me do! <3 I might even be willing to be your doofy yellow huge-boobed sidekick, and/or Agreian.)

I don't know if you have an Xbox 360 (I do not), but if you do, you really ought to get The Last Remnant. I'm promised that the characters are actually likeable and that the main boys have an adorable friendship. I know you'd enjoy perving on it just as much as I will if I ever get it to run on my underpowered video card (or give up and upgrade/buy an Xbox. My lack of being able to actually play this tasty game when I OWN IT RIGHT HERE saddens me greatly).

I would watch Le Chevalier d'Eon and take notes with you, too-- it sounds really interesting-- but that's still a bit in the future, so. :)

[subtext]

Y'know, you might like Steven Brust's Dragaera books, too. You would enjoy playing with poncy formal phrasing (and the characters who refuse to use it even when they should), and I know you like subverting things with strange pairings. In the books about Vlad Taltos, Vlad grows a mustache basically just to annoy his smooth-cheeked Dragaerans overlords by being human and having facial hair. I know you like ornery and contrary.

[cephalopod]

Maaaan, you know my tastes so well. :D

I'll see if I can find Magna Carta. I had a look at an artbook at Kinokuniya yesterday and I really like the character designs (even with the WTF breasts), and while I've heard that the story/mechanics suffer in favor of the pretty, god knows that's never happened before.

If you were Doofy McYellowboobs, you could wave around this huge flower thing. C'mon let's do it, it'll be hot.

[subtext]

If you were Doofy McYellowboobs, you could wave around this huge flower thing. C'mon let's do it, it'll be hot.

I will do a LOOK AT MY TITS costume if I get to have an alternate badass costume where the focus is not my ample natural bounty. Agreian's long-spiky-armor-arm would be pretty crowdsafe if it were done in black vinyl...

I'll see if I can find Magna Carta.

Look down at the used category, it's $15-20. Or help me move faster on the apartmentfinding and we can play it together; I have it already. ;)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0009K7ESM/ref=sr_1_olp_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1243629835&sr=8-1

[cephalopod]

help me move faster on the apartmentfinding and we can play it together

Fuck yeah superwin. I have to run off to the post office but I'll be on AIM tonight--there was something you wanted me to look at, right?

[subtext]

Yes yes yes! <3 Couple things I wanted to run by you, in fact-- I'll be around tonight, we can chat. Am serious. Is time. Have changed some criteria in order to GTFO.

Topic2

[(Anonymous)]

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