belated introductions

[waterscroll]

I've made a few friends in the Guardian fandom since the last time I did an introduction post, so hi, nice to meet you, I'm waterscroll. I've been in online fandom for about 20 years but I changed my fannish id last year because I was getting writersblocked. It helped, somewhat. My previous fandoms were all western canons but under this ID before I found Guardian I was all about historical otome novels.

(Otome novels are a kind of dating sim. In historical ones, you date fictionalized versions of historical characters, who are often at war with each other. It sounds extremely cheezy, but I've found them a wonderful genre for exploring how a conflict looks different from different perspectives and how everyone can be written as a hero from the perspective of someone who loves them.)

The main thread that runs through all my fannish interests under both my IDs is people dealing with the consequences and effects of war and of decisions that they made during wartime. I sometimes shorten this to 'redemption arcs for war criminals' but a) they don't actually have to have committed actual crimes as long as they made questionable decisions b) I'm ok if they don't get a redemption arc in canon as long as it is plausible to imagine one. This is a highly specific interest, I know, but it's been remarkably consistent over the years. I also love enemyships and love stories involving terrible people.

Guardian is my first cnovel and cdrama canon. I know this means that I'm missing things, or getting squeeful about things that are relatively common tropes in the genre. I might continue in the genre once I have bandwidth for another canon. Meanwhile I'm reading all the meta I can find and trying to tolerate my own learning curve.

I am not a particularly prolific writer, if I can write a few things a year I'm happy. I almost never write anything longer than 2000 words. I tend to be most interested in writing characters or premises that haven't been written that much. My favorite genres are post-canon fixits and canon divergence AUs, but I also like rule 63 AUs when there's something interesting to say about gender in canon.

For pronouns I'll take she or they. I'm in my late 40s. I live in the US but I didn't grow up here. Personal posts tend to go under access lock, so I tend to grant access once I get to know someone well enough that I think they'd want to read my personal posts, or once they grant me access and I'm commenting on their personal posts. But if you really want to see my vents about life in the pandemic, let me know and I'll add you.

Anything else you want to know?

Comments

[waterscroll]

My absolute favorite otome game is Hakuouki. In it you date fictionalized versions of the Shinsengumi, a Japanese militia on the losing side of a 19th century civil war. There are also non-Shinsengumi characters that you can date to see other sides of the story (and the war). It's slow-moving and has a lot to think about and works on a lot of levels. It's also very iddy, especially if pretty characters covered in blood are of interest to you. Oh and at a certain point most of the love interests turn into vampires. I'm not usually very into the vampire trope but these are done very well and make lots of thematic sense.

I'm also playing two mobile phone otomes set in the Japanese warring states period: Samurai Love Ballad and Ikemen Sengoku. Of the two, Samurai Love Ballad is more serious and thinky and Ikemen Sengoku is more fanservicey. (But they're both kind of fanservicey, honestly. I prefer Samurai Love Ballad.) They are both free to play, which means you get about 10 minutes of story every day for free and can get more if you pay for it. I've been playing both of them since October. It takes a while to play them since routes take about a month each if you don't pay money. What I like about them is that you see the warring states period from the perspective of each of the different warlords, depending on the route you choose, so the protagonist of one route is always the antagonist of another. A character who seems foolish or pointlessly violent as an antagonist can turn out to have a vision for the country that makes a lot of sense when your character is in love with him. This is more or less how I read stories in general, even with something like Guardian I'm always asking what the story looks like from Ye Zun's POV, or Zhao Xinci's, or Ya Qing's. So I like otome novels where different perspectives are part of the canon.

Two of my favorites recently got discontinued: Demon's Bond, which is a prequel to Hakuouki set in the warring states era, and Scarlet Fate, about a Heian era princess/priestess trying to save her city-state from an invasion.

I like Guardian a lot and it's fun to be in a fandom that has an active presence on Dreamwidth, and where I don't feel like I'm two generations older than everyone else in the room. It's kind of an odd fit for me in some ways, but it's a big canon so we'll see what I can do with it.

Nice to see you here!