I don’t really feel comfortable talking about BL and doujinshi much at Vox because my parents read that blog, which is why I didn’t really go into detail. Buuut of course I couldn’t resist the urge to ramble about my purchases and such, so! Hence, LJ-only post. 8D

So basically, Saturday morning Shaunte and I were talking and the topics of anime and manga came up. I had been hesitant about asking them if they liked manga because when we were at the bookstore in Shibuya last week and we walked through the manga section, Cathy seemed entirely uninterested and Shaunte only mildly, and, well, I didn’t want to come off as some huge geek. But, it turns out that Shaunte does like manga, especially BL! This was a pleasant surprised because I had been starting to think I would have to do all my BL-shopping on my own, so that I wouldn’t freak out my friends with my, ah, interest.

When I asked her if she was into doujinshi, she said she’d never heard of it before, but she was definitely interested in checking out the Mandarake in Ikebukuro with me. It’s smaller than the Shibuya one, but it specializes more in BL. I didn’t want to drag her there but she was the one who decided we should go today. Cathy ended up going with us, which is why we didn’t spend as much time in the store as we would’ve liked, but we felt bad leaving her to sit out there while we went crazy inside.

My loot consisted of 11 djs, 9 (initially) for myself and 2 specifically for a couple of LJ friends. (I won’t say who or what the djs are, so you’ll just have to wait until I get back to the US and mail them out. I’ll ask for addresses at that point.) However, I’m probably only keeping a few of the other 9 for myself and either giving the rest away to friends or selling them. I spent most of my time in the Suikoden section looking for Albert djs, but it seems like Albert appears pretty much only as part of Silverberg brothers djs, and it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s just brotherly love/interaction or incest (which I am totally not into). I picked out the ones that I thought had the prettiest cover art and that looked the most gen from the covers, and ended up getting 5 total (which constituted maybe 1/2~1/3 of all the Albert djs I found). The other 4 are d.gray-man Rabi/Kanda djs, not all of which I plan to keep because not all of them interest me as much and I don’t feel like it’s necessary for me to own 5 Rabi/Kanda djs (since I already have one at home). I like the pairing, but it’s not like I’m super-obsessed.

The interesting thing about shopping at Mandarake is that everything is wrapped in clear plastic so you can’t look inside, and so (unless you’re familiar with the djs circles, which I’m not) except for what you infer from the cover, you don’t know what you’re getting until after you buy it and open the wrapper. It’s kind of a surprise. ( Summaries, comments and thoughts about the individual djs I ended up getting.Collapse )

Shaunte didn’t buy any djs. Instead, she managed to find a section in the back that sold actual manga (and cheap, too). However, once again, everything was wrapped in plastic, so she didn’t get to preview what she was buying, which is why she didn’t realize that one of the two books she got was completely shota. XD; Surprisingly, she didn’t really mind, though. She was like, “I read fanfiction like this all the time anyway,” and was amused by how *nothing* is censored in these books. Her books are mostly PWP smut stories, but that’s actually mostly a good thing, since we can’t read/understand much of the text without furi anyway.

Sunday, we went to the Mandarake in Shibuya because we were there to look for a phone for Cat. Once again, we had to hurry because Cat was waiting outside. The Mandarake in Shibuya is bigger and more organized, but in a way it was also harder to find stuff, at least in the doujinshi section. They had a sizeable section of regular manga, and the nice thing was that in the BL section they actually pointed out the location of the books by some of the most famous BL mangakas. However, two of my favorite mangakas, Fujiyama Hyouta and Tsuta Suzuki, aren’t super famous (yet), and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where their books were located. It also doesn’t help that I don’t remember off the top of my head how to write their full names in kanji.

The doujinshi section was much harder to find stuff in. They had separated the doujinshi for males and the doujinshi for females. I spent the entire time in the female section, but I would’ve liked to have a chance to head to the male section just to see what’s there. (Is it just hentai or is there also non-sexual het stuff? Because the female djs section was almost all BL.) For the most part, they had a much greater variety of fandoms than at Ikebukuro, but the individual sections were smaller. For example, the Suikoden section was only about 1/3 of the size of the one at Ikebukuro. Some of the sections for really major fandoms (eg. Naruto, Bleach, etc.) were so big, though, that they were separated by pairing. For example, the Naruto section had separate subsections for SasuNaru and KakaIru, and the Death Note section even distinguished between L/Raito and Raito/L.

But with so many more fandoms crammed into a really small amount of space, it was hard to find individual fandoms. Still no luck finding an Air Gear section. Do AG BL djs not exist? They had a lot of Gintama djs on display, but I couldn’t find the actual Gintama section. I found a CLAMP section, but it was all KuroFay and a little bit of DouWata. None of CLAMP’s older works were represented, sadfaces! This one also had a Xenosaga section, which excited me until I realized that it was all Gaignun/Jr. and a little bit of Albedo/Jr. Sigh. WRYYY the incest pairings. x___x It also had a .hack section, but no Haseo/Endrance. ;_; I did pick up a funny gag book with lots of chibis and Endrance looking sparkly and fantastic. Definitely a keeper. I also picked up a pretty sexcellent Yuber/Albert book in the GS3 section.

kaluin, I did look for Hervey/Lazlo djs for you at both stores, but no luck. ;_; The Suikoden section was subdivided into the different games but the relative sizes were like: I+II > V > III > IV. The IV section was tiny and consisted pretty much only of Snowe/Lazlo and Troy/Lazlo and Sigurd/Hervey.

I'll definitely be returning to both stores though, at least one more time each (Ikebukuro maybe more than once), probably on my own so that my friends don’t get impatient waiting for me while I go nuts. Also, I think we might head out to Akihabara on Thursday or Friday afternoon, because we only have class in the morning on those days. I’ve been told that’s the place to buy animanga merch in general, so if anyone else has a wishlist, now’s the time to let me know!

Quite possibly the best Christmas present evar. ALBERT! AND SHULA! By mithrigil of all writers! I am a lucky girl. ♥

serenity_santa gift fic is almost done. I kept hitting a Big Wall of Writer's Block the past few days, until, interestingly enough, I watched the world championship of darts on TV last night, and then I could suddenly write again. Weird.

Unfortunately, even if I finish in the next day or so, I don't know when I can post, as I am relocating to my other aunt's house today, and I don't know what the Internet situation will be like there. Also, I have to share a room with my mom, which means I won't be able to keep up my usual habit of writing/editing at night when everyone else has gone to bed.

Then, when I get back to TX, I get to work on my own suikosantaredux contribution. I'm looking forward to it, although I still don't really know what exactly I'm going to do, or how I'm going to do it.

I got recced at yuletide. ♥ Although, the person recced all the other fics in the same fandom and didn't go into too much detail about any of them. But, it's still something.

My dad sucks. I am no longer going to waste time and space on enumerating the many reasons why though.

The shitty part is that today, mom actually felt compelled to say, "We may have to look into other options, like you staying here a year to work or go to school here before going to CMU."

If something happens to make that come to pass, I am going to renounce all ties to my dad and change my last name. If I can keep myself from jumping off a bridge first.

Whatever. Anyway.

Last day of work was today. It left me strangely cold, but then I was already pretty emotionally fucked up by the time I got there. Anyway, the most important thing is that I shouldn't have to lose the friends I made there just because I'm gone now. I'm hopefully going for dim sum tomorrow with El and Joann, and we're definitely going clubbing next Saturday.

My Albert & Caesar doujin came in yesterday! It is oodles and oodles of love. I really like the artist's way of drawing Albert and it has this wonderfully OOC!Yuber who goes all googly and hearts and tildes over Albert, which makes me giggle. There are also some random appearances by the other Destroyers, Apple, Kidd, and two characters whom I completely fail to identify. I need to hurry up and learn Japanese so I can figure out what exactly all is going on.

I found some direct downloads of Kyou Kara Maou so I no longer have to wait on the piece of shit that is BT. I watched up to Episode 11 today, because I figured it'd make me feel better. Thoughts so far:

( Only very vaguely spoilerific but cut just in case.Collapse )

Everything relates back to Suikoden yes yes yes. *SHOT*