A Geek History of Time - Episode 218 - Fan Fiction Part II

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

The World Disney Yes! The 11th figure of our pop culture. That's how they get you. And out of Yada, she eventually causes her own husband to be born to death. And that makes me so happy on cold nights. Especially in the badly for the idiot Pecker Woods.

You have a bottle of starch. Okay, that's twice that he's mentioned redheads. It is un-American to get in the way of our freedom to restrict people's freedom. That was the part I know plenty about this thing. I love me some Bobby Drake. Well, if that's all we've got then we're being really lazy. Yeah. Y'all both.

You can literally poke a hole in it as soon as someone gets pneumonia. Well, I'm not as old as you. Well, ha ha mother fuck motherfucker, I got a wizard. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect Nurgere to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I'm a world history and English teacher at the middle school level here in Northern California. And I have to confess that I had a dogberry moment during our

well right after our last recording session. For those who are not liter inclined, Dogberry is famous from Shakespeare as the character who loudly tells everybody else on stage, do not forget, sirs, that I am an ass. Dogberry converges in in much do about nothing. And my particular dogberry moment was that during our last recording session, at one point, I had to type up in the chat, hey, there's some weird noises outside in the hallway. I have to go investigate. So I muted my mic and I went out and there was nothing out the hallway.

And I figured it was the cat. So I came back inside and set out to rejoining the conversation. And then after our recording session, I went into our bedroom where my wife was waiting up for me. And I mentioned to her that at one point, one of the cats went nuts outside the room room is recording and she said oh yeah really Yeah, well, I says Can you can you look at the bedsheets

So our linen closet is literally right outside the door to the room where I'm recording. I had not heard the cat. I had heard her. And I went into the bedroom to tell her this story about how the cat was losing their mind out in the hallway, as I was standing there staring at the bed sheets that she had changed from the closet out in the hallway. So, do not forget, sirs, the time and asked. I literally looked at her and said, you are so much better than I deserve, and I'm sorry, I'm such an idiot. She said, that's okay, I love you anyway. So, that's a humbling moment for me.

How about you? What have you had going on? Man, I had it in my head and then your story. And I knew that was my time. I knew it. And dug it. Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a Latin and a history teacher here

at the high school level in Northern California. And it's where I will tell you this, I, I, this is one of those moments. I think we've talked about this before. I've passed through some sort of membrane where I can absorb the cost of emergencies on occasion. Yeah. Single dad, okay. Right.

But I can absorb the cost on emergencies on occasion, because I'm also a unionist. So on occasion, we get better, better raises. That being said, I have now entered the phase where I was able to purchase an item ahead of the thing it would replace breaking down completely. Oh, shit, man, you leveled up hard. I got ahead of the curve.

And I'll be able to absorb the cost of that because I have been saving up for said item for the last two years. So I bought a new refrigerator, which will be delivered tomorrow morning. Um, in order to prepare for that, of course, I have not bought groceries. Uh, so the kids and I enjoyed burritos for dinner. Um, but I also had to, uh, I don't know what everybody else does regarding their, um, their, their, the top of their refrigerators, but that's the place where medicines go to expire.

And it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a crop list for inspired medications. So I was cleaning off the top, right? And then I started playing the game of what's the earliest expiration date that I found up here. Oh no. Any takers, any bets? I'm trying to remember when you moved into that house. 2077.

Okay. Divorced in 2016 or separated in 2016, effectively divorced just a good catch up. I'm gonna say 14. You got it. So yeah. I had some ibuprofen up there. I'm gonna say 14. You got it. So I had some ibuprofen up there. That's nine years expired, which means I likely bought it

when I bought the house as a married man. There were also some vitamin e capsules. And I remember when I bought those because I cut my foot on a garbage can and it didn't heal for a while. So I started getting vitamin E in the hopes, right? All right, yeah. Those capsules are gelatin.

So I was just, I didn't even bother trying to rattle it. I just tossed it in the trash. Yeah, yeah, it's best that you did. Oh my God, there was so much stuff up there to the point where, and I told the kids, you do not touch everything that's on this counter right now because these are drugs that I don't want you messing with. It's just ibuprofen and shit like that, right?

Yeah, well, and if it expired only three years ago, I'm keeping it. I just bought a fridge. I can't afford it. But it's been kept relatively cool. I think, you know, I'm the only one that takes that ibuprofen, it'll be fine. But they still, like, were stunned to find out that there's stuff there that, like, is pre-them walking. Like, it was bought before they were existing.

That was bought when, when like Marvel Ultimate Alliance, the first one came out like that old. So yeah, I had a little weird trip down memory lane, I guess. I remember when I cleaned out the pantry a while back. And I found shredded coconut from the Obama administration. Um, yeah, that's what I'm going on. Okay. So, uh, I noticed that there are two extra faces in the chat.

Yes, there are. And I remember that happened last time as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These, these appear to be your people. So I would love you to go over the reins here. Well, you know, I tossed out into the ether that I was doing an episode on fanfic

and they just spontaneously showed up in my feed with all the opinions. And so the good news is that they're both wonderful people and experts in this because they have been very deeply involved in the fan-fick community and going from left to right across my screen as I see them right now. The first of them is Sean, who is himself an award-winning fan-fick author from a while ago. We will have to admit. Sean, go ahead and introduce yourself to the people. Hello there, Sean and a fan-erator for the ex files, quantum leap, I'm missing Kerry Potter and one more alien nation. Well, aliens. Oh, so that was an amazing guess though. Thank you. Sledgehammer.

Ooh, I like what you think. Head of the class. Okay. I like what you think. Let's boss. Now I'm starting to get scared. And then football. You treat interesting.

Kinky. Interesting. King Key. And then on the furthest right on my screen is a friend of the show and also very good friend of mine, Tessa, who has been a beta reader and a fan artist in a number of different genres, Tessa or not genres, fandoms, I should say. Tessa, please jump in and let us know about you. The only thing I want to say after you made the Kinky comment

is hi, I'm Tessa, I draw porn on the internet. Which is in the line um yeah so hi I um in the prolific fan artist I have done art for various fandoms and high school um hop in as beta reader and a collaborator with other fick writers. I don't write, but I'm always happy to bounce ideas off. And most recently I am a prolific creator in the carry on fandom. And I also have done work for a new anime that came out called Buddy Deadies. I've also done work in Super Natural, the cursed fandom. And I forgot about the last one, which was the one from high school, which I will actually be talking about in this episode, the fake fandom, which I'm pretty sure died in the United States at least back in 2005. Not stopping me though. Okay. I got to ask as as someone who has

probably the most recently finished watching all of the supernatural episodes. Why is it considered the cursed fandom? Because everything's terrible in fanfic has pretty much come out of the supernatural fandom. We have a gift for everything. And every bullshit shenanigan that has ever occurred on Tumblr ever can be directly traced back to the supernatural. So it's like the Star Wars of fanfics. If Star Wars was only the Christmas special. OK, because I'm just thinking like Star Wars fans are the worst fans.

They've driven at least three people to suicidal ideation who were in the fucking movies. Oh, yeah, no, we're not the worst fans. In fact, there's a huge community and it's very beautiful. Okay. Really great activism, lots of things. It's just the things that come out of people's minds who watch this show. It's like if a generational curse came to you in a really cute kitten. Okay.

Okay. Okay. That's getting ideas. For the knowledge, be honest. I don't think I would upset you. You don't say it. Yeah. No. I am. You just have to be a very specific sort of depraved

to thrive super natural. Okay. And you both mentioned this thing, beta readers. I assume you are people who can tell the future by divining what Japanese fighting fish are doing That would be great the beta reader comes from the idea of a Beta tester so someone who you know goes through something before it is published or released the general public And so the idea in fanfic and also fan art, there are fan art beta.

You go over the content that someone has created, I've heard like an editor or someone to give feedback or look for like continuity, whatever. And you fade a read, which also brings me to one of my favorite tags that you'll hear me reference at some point during the series, which is the no beta we die like fill in the blank, which is a phenomenon that has come out of people who create content without a beta reader, which every fandom has some character that has died.

It is well known for dying. And hilariously in the new anime that I've been doing the work for. They came up with like four so fast with hilarious, but it becomes no beta we die like insert your fandom's dead character here so like in supernatural you could have done I don't know no beta we die like literally anyone in the show no beta we die like serious like right that I like to think about it. What is it? I'm the one in the carry on fandom is no beta we die like the mage I mean it's great we die like so and so is dad yeah so no. Okay. And why why for beta rather than a editor is going back to the end of the standalone weirdos doing this on their own thing. What you were

asking people to do varies wildly. So sometimes a beta reader is acting like an editor and providing feedback on content, providing feedback on tone and voice. Sometimes they're like, I just want you to make sure that I have got there and there. Correct. Okay. That makes sense. Now, somebody also used the word tag, and I assume this is what happens as you get older and you get that ball of skin And you can use just nail clip hanging off the end of your fandom And I have to exactly put it down And it burns for like 10 seconds and then you're fine. You might have a spot of blood. That's all So the tagging system is a newer system that have come out

Odds fan Content has developed so previously there were no fan tags, no tagging system at all. So you maybe got like a synopsis, like a back of a book blurb, where you kind of saw the new that you were getting into, which started to evolve into a rating system, which we'll talk about with based on citrus. We'll get into it. OK. And basically like a general like G, whatever rating until you get to the A03, which is archive of our own, which is the most comprehensive and incredible

kind of archive for this type of work where you can tag all aspects of content, including what hadn't been done before, think very specifically. Exactly what will be in the content, exactly what is either depicted in the art or written in the thick, any kind of triggering content. It can have special tagging called archive warnings where some pretty serious stuff and then people can filter content so that they don't have it appear for them when they're logged in. So it's spoilers? Oh, yes. You can tag for spoilers as well. You can tag for spoilers as well. Yeah. So it's it's a more reasonable and sensible version of what the MPAA tried to do.

Yes, okay, they're saying reasonable. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Cool. All right. And I will interrupt with questions of other terms as they pop up because there are I think two or three more up with questions of other terms as they pop up because there are I think two or three more that I couldn't quite into it. And if I can't, then I know at least one other reader or listen. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And we'll talk about like we'll talk about like some of the specific things like that too, because they come up them. Yeah. So when we last left our heroes, we were ending the gold, cold-press Latinum era of Star Trek fanfic with sound like that was like from the 70s into the 80s, if I'm getting the chronology roughly correct. 79. 79.

All right. So it's 1980. Thatcher's in power and great Britain. Ronnie Ray gun is on his way to the White House. And Rabbit has attacked the president. Yes. A rabbit has attacked the sitting president of the United States. I'm sorry.

There's a contractual part of my job in this podcast is that every eight episodes, I have to mention the swamp rabbit attacking Jimmy Carter. I still can't believe that that's not fanfic. Fundamentally, it kind of should be. Right. But yeah. So I'm trying to think what else we have going on in 1980. We have an Olympics going on

that the United States sat out. Yeah, we boycotted. And which means Russia's in Afghanistan. Yes. And I think there's other lyrics by Billy Joel. By Billy Joel. Sorry, the five. It was like a media issue.

Yeah, oh media. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wheel of Fortune, Stallyride, having metal suicide. That's still that's. It's crack. It's crack.

It's crack. Bernie gets. Yeah. I've had directs on the shore. Try to get a more. But that's later. That's that's forward. That's still a verse or two ahead of us.

I don't know. I don't know. I got lost. But anyway, so it's 1980, technologically speaking, we are at home computer yet. Not quite. We're almost there. We're about two or three business computer. Yes. Yes. Those are starting to get marketed. Let's see Atari consoles. No Not I think you got kinko visions more. Yeah, yeah, and Let's see trying to think what else

Relevant to what we're talking about. We're still we are still dealing with about a three cents per page photocopy rate cost, opportunity cost for photocopy. And at this point in 80, we are starting to see the beginning of video recording, but it has not hit the mainstream yet. Right, I will point out that Pat Patterson is still the intercontinental champion in the WWF. Because contractually, yeah, because contractually that's every episode.

Yeah. Yeah. And Bob Backland is still the champion. And WWF. Right. Yeah. in WWF. Right. Yeah. Okay. So we are now entering into this new decade.

It is not yet morning in America, but it's about to be. And what do we have going on in the world of this kind of alternate, or not alternate, this, I don't know, supplemental. I'm trying to think what a good word would be for this parallel fandom universe what what do we have going on within the movement? Well Good news bad news the good news is

Well, you don't have to hear about Morgan America bad news is We're going to now take a brief detour with intermission, intermeso. And I know, David, you are the wrestler for shadow. How is your sumo? until a Samoan gets tagged as a Japanese fellow named Yokozuna who had previously been Kokina Klutch in the AWA Rodney Ayoki who is the cousin of Dwayne the Rock Johnson. So that doesn't happen until the early 1990s. So unfortunately there's not much more sumo that I could bring to the table. Sorry. That is literally a ton more than I was expecting. Only still pressed. Closer to half a ton. He was a quarter ton when he was champion. The guy. He actually ended up having to go to an intervention specialist like a weight loss camp because his health was getting

out of control. He loved eating turkey butts, dipped in mayonnaise, and turkey butts. Yeah, so apparently the Pope's nose, I think, that part dipped in mayonnaise and he would eat those deep fried um and uh and he he ended up his his weight went from five hundred where he could really move around really well to uh close to seven hundred uh pounds he was not doing well and so they put him in a like it the the the term back that was called the fat farm to weight loss clinic. In I want to say North Carolina. And I think he and Vader, a big van Vader, the first guy to do a moon salt first, a big man to be doing moon salt at least. And the two of them actually found a way to gain weight while there.

And it's because they were sneaking out for KFC. So, yeah. Wow. Yeah, it was sad. It was really sad. Yeah. I feel I feel bad for laughing, but it's just it's a very scary. I can't. Okay. Tessa just looked up Turkey, but I think. Yeah. I can imagine. I just had the cat. Okay. All right. So that's what I know of sumo. I mean, I know the rules of Sumo. I've shown the kids that kind of stuff. I know that the main guy is called the Yokosuna. He is like the, the, the,

number one. Yeah, number one national champion in Japan. Yeah, I can name exactly three people who have done Sumo. The, the most recent of which been Aki Bono and the other two having been guys who went into professional wrestling. So, yeah, very cool. most recent of which being Aki Bono and the other two having been guys who went into professional wrestling. Oh, yeah.

Very cool. So I was going to jump over to Japan and I know that Tessa here has a lot to bring to the party when it comes to manga dojinshi et al. And yes, I did just kind of cross couple languages, sorry. Okay. First things first, we're talking about manga, which is the Japanese word for graphic novel, it's a little bit inaccurate, but it literally translates to whimsical pictures, and it's the same root word as manwa in Chinese, if you

you'll see this perhaps similar kind of creations that I've tried in there called manwa. were kind of creations that I've tried in there called Manoa. Also Korea. Also Korea. Yes. So talking about someone in law, we've mentioned some of the copyright laws. This is a good time to bring up the, both guys we're heading backwards in time.

The May G period was 1868 to 1912. That was a time that Japan introduced Shinkoku Kazai. Shinkoku Kazai. Wow, that one came out poorly. At the time, it was Mizukara Tsugetaro-Womate, which means to inform personally, but it was the the same kanji used for Mizukara Tsugetaro-te as Shinkoku-Zai. And it is a category of offense that cannot be prosecuted without complaint by the victim. And that was their definition of what copyright law was in Japan at the time. In other words, it's your product, but that only really matters if you take offense to what someone else is doing with it. In America, we would call that you have to have standing. It's a little bit more than standing.

Likely so, but I was just thinking, comedy or an analog would be... Yeah, well, analog would be any circumstance in which the victim has to be the one that charges it. So like many criminal offenses, for example, the victim does not need to actually say no I'm pressing charges, but there are many. Right. There's a stream as an overriding interest.

Yeah, but there are many circumstances. There's all kinds of civil regulations, for example, that don't get enforced until somebody who has standing, because standing is a technical get enforced until somebody who has standing, because standing is a technical legal term, somebody who has standing, who has been damaged, says, okay, no, I want you to nail this bastard. And so, yeah. Under English law, that's a, we tend to consider criminal charges to be something that is brought by the state.

Yeah. If you go to, this is Japanese, but it's also the same thing that you'd see in many of the German-derived areas, so both, you know, Germany, Denmark, etc., have a similar set of laws where lesser offenses that are, including things like property crimes, are things that police can't pursue unless there is a Completed. And it's kind of associating all these cultures with some type of social sense that it isn't the government think how things are supposed to operate, but how we say things are going to operate.

And so if I permit Tessa to play with a creation of mine and go do something wacky with it, that doesn't diminish my ownership of it in any fashion. That's just me permitting something. Whereas here, oh, if you don't zealously guard your rights, they disappear evaporated. It's kind of a bad thing. Yeah, it's really important too, because the Shinkoku-Zai is really, really vital for how these fan comics develop in Japan and how they are today, because, for example, like I've been working how they are today because, for example, I've been working in films and little blanks of these novels where fan writers are writing thick to fill in these blanks and fan artists are doing it.

However, Arzene, we can't do anything to legally unless we had permission from the author which she has basically said, I can't actually give it, my publisher has to give it. We can't do anything to get any kind of type of monetary gain, and it's too hard to legally make sure that you're only recouping your costs. Whereas in Japan, under the Shinkoku Zai, you can literally do like whatever, as long as you can show that it is not actually diminishing the profit of the person who created it or damaging the reputation. You can pretty much get away with anything, which is why

dojanski is just this huge phenomenon in Japan and why you see it them created and sold on so many platforms. Like, it's just they're totally different. It is kind of the background legal structure and the background art structure is completely different. And it leads to something to a culture of art creation to this completely different and unfortunately very cool. Yeah. And I think it also is, I'd have to look into it more, but I know that

there are, because like, manga artists, they'll be contracted through like a magazine or whoever, where they do their serial publishing. But then what they'll do is they'll create dojjjj on the side with their own characters that are their self-published stories that have been outside of it. I'm gonna jump in here. Yeah, go for it. She mentioned a couple times Dojinshi and the definite Dojinshi is specifically means yes you've done it yourself and so pretty much all fanzines would be considered Dojinshi. Art books but to give you an idea of how far back this goes, back in 1814, Hokusai, as in 12 youth, Matoji Hokusai, published his first 15 manga volumes,

and they were all dojenshi, he'd be self published because he could. And I think you probably test what I jumped in on the laws of around 1812, 1814 period, because that's interesting. Yeah. And so what we started to see, and then this is from the LGBTQ lens, previously in Japanese art, you would see a lot of same-sex interactions, eroticism and romantic interactions all over the place. It was just very common in the art. I can't remember the name, but it was, they specifically have names that categories, that type of art that you would see. And it was all over the place. In around 1812, Shudow and Kadema? Yeah. And then in 1812, we started to see kind of like a negative lens,

start to be put on same-sex relationships. And they started to produce anti-sotomy laws, and they started to have a more negative attitude towards these types of relationships and interactions, which caused the medium to shift away from these themes because it would be treated differently. And to this day, there are still specific censorship laws that dictate kind of how stuff is shown in animation and things like that. But you started to see it like really go away and it didn't really start to come back into

published work until about 19. I think it was like 76. And this is specifically Japan. This is not. This is specifically Japan. They had same-sex relationships, same-sex interaction. Pretty much, probably, including androgyzany and gender stereotyping, really, commonly, including in theater and things like that. And then in the early 1800s it started to be negatively seen. Oh sorry yeah so 1969 is that first time

that we start seeing gay relationship gay antagonists come back into the published media. Although before we jump 100 years I I was going to point out 1853. Ed, this, I know, I know. Yeah. That's, that's Perry showing up in, in the harbor and saying, so you're going to open up to us or we're going to blow the shit out of your capital. There's something deeply wrong with calling with someone creating something called the black fleet. Well, okay, well, if the best standing at the top of it going, could I be any more evil?

Is Tomador Matthew Perry? Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah. How that that fucking hurts. How you do? Oh, that was a postons mate. Postons mate, Joey Trubiani. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, it's okay. I'm, I'm trying to, because I find it interesting that that legislation happened in 1812. We don't see contact with the West until, uh, 35 or 53, sorry, 53. Um, we see contract for the West preceding the 1600s. Remember? Yes. I said Portuguese can only go here.

Yeah, I should I should clarify. And it wasn't actually Portuguese. The only ones they were allowing into the country were the Dutch. Right. Because the Protestants see Prades didn't send Jesuits to fuck with people. Right. No one likes Jesuits being fuck with people. Right. No one likes Jesuits being there.

Yeah. Well, yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, I can't, I can't argue. But I'm, I'm trying in, in the background here as, as you're talking about that, I'm trying to figure out what the, what the historical context within Japan would have been. It has like started. It started? Yeah, so it started a little bit, but you're right.

So the first anti-sautomalos really came out in the 1860s, but there had started to be a reduction in like it appearing. But yeah, once the West came in, that's when there was like a big shift with anti-Saturday night. Well, and I want to do it. I'm going to challenge that just a little bit too. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's the influence of the West so much as it is because we see this every time. An empire that sees itself in decline will aim at marginalized groups first and they will typically go for either the handicap or the queer communities first because they are visible minority that people can other quickly. And I'm going to quote a couple of of historians I really like. of historians I really like, who did some really great work with their podcast. It's called a Geek History of Time.

I recommend any of your listeners, I want to start listening to that. I encourage. These two geniuses did a bit about the cartoonish hyper masculinity of 80s American fiction. And asking the question, why this weird hyper masculine bullshit and I look at the the basically the the ending of the my G period everything leading up to you know 1800s up to 1912 and see basically American the 80s. I'm tough, I'm bad, I'm powerful, I'm awesome. I'm getting my butt kicked, everybody's walking all over me. I don't feel it wrong.

I'm flailing and all of a sudden, we can't have any arc that said, just wear anything other than bear-chested, he- I put a virile, he- I put you. Yeah. Okay. back care has back hair Tell me the best you've ever had now. Yeah, yes testosterone is the punchline. Yes

best of always a punchline So wait, so this so we're seeing we're seeing manga Existing in Japan as early as when again. All go on all depending on how you define it. Sure. I'm thinking comic books, right? Okay. Yeah. Not as whimsical pictures, but comics. Yeah, they were talking to the 1600s. Jesus. Because like the adventures of Mr. Obedbediah Oldbuck as you can remember from episode one of

Geek history of time Came out in 1842 and that was the first American comic book Here's here's one of the things I'm gonna point out part of the reason that you had Essentially comic books manga, manga as a medium so much earlier in Japan than here in the West, generally speaking, literacy rates in Japan were significantly higher historically. Yeah, earlier and so and also a lot of Japan's society. I don't want to say they were more urbanized, but their urban centers Had a denser population. So there was a greater market for right that medium. Yeah, and congee itself kind of forced it We're we write using the Roman character set, which is squiggles that mean sounds,

and that's cool, but you go to other parts of the planet and the writing is ideographic. And I'd say here as a set of squiggles, they're much more complicated. And this set of squiggles in a little area equals an entire word. And so you can't look at it and determine pronunciation for any kind of rules.

It's just memorize this squiggle and one set squiggles per word. And that means that you had better, if you would like to put something in writing, either you've got good penmanship or brush brushmanship, brush, person'smanship, or you had best be really good with your print techniques.

And so, the lithography was really pretty advanced. You look at what Hocus-I was doing, and it was like painting onto the stone to create like blends of color. I'm the truly beautiful work. But that all that comes from the root of if you don't do really excellent etching and really excellent clean printing, no one could read this. It would be Gideoghanna. Oh gosh. Gideoghanna, which is the phonetic system didn't even It's gonna be the birth of it may have been associated with magi, right? and it was a modernization attempt because, you know, we immediately now have to figure out how we're going to catch up with everybody.

I'm having a podcast as well and the ability to harmonize. That's what you really see post-Majie is the rise of Kata Kana not as not to be used as it would have originally been the poor person's language. So that Hira Gana was the script that was utilized for phonetics, but it was very curved characters that you could do with brushstrokes. Katekana was the exact same stuff, but simplified, angular because you're going to be a poor person using a smudge stick, you know, a stick that's been burnt down a charcoal and you're scratching it. So you can't do a curve. And come to the IG period, now we're dealing with all the gauging and all the Europeans.

They said, OK, this is no longer for use by poor Japanese people. This is how we're going to spell any lone words we're picking up from all of the foreigners. So that everybody can tell that this is a foreign word, not really one of ours. Yeah, and it's really interesting when you're reading it to just know automatically, like, oh, this is not a Japanese word.

Yeah. Actually, it's a little bit easier when you try to figure out what the heck something means. You go, oh, that's coffee. Yeah. Cool. Cool. But they'll do it too.

Like, the other thing too is that it makes sense that they would have this way of telling stories through graphics because when you look at like the old like prints and scrolls that were created, right? Like there's so much storytelling in one image. Like one image of like, like, they'll be like a woman, you know, sitting on her like, Matt, and she'll have like writing new tenses in front of her. And there's a cat who is literally walked through the ink and the cat is leaving pop prints and it tells a story and it's so like really unique to like what they were creating. It really makes sense of that. Yeah, it was just doing storytelling. Right, it's like they say a picture

is worth 372 brush strokes. Not even mad about that one. No, not even mad. Well, yeah, they were, they're really skilled pictorial storyteller. They're artists. And the monks do like when they were doing their poems, when they would write these poem scrolls, they would do illustrations that helped explain what they were

talking about, you know. Yes, okay. So, we get into the 20, 1926, which is the beginning of the show while period, which is Emperor here, what in the west is referred to as Emperor here, you know. Right. which is emperor here, what in the West is referred to as emperor here, you know. Right. Here's another shift right word in the culture. They hadn't really separated public and private social matters and had a loyalty all through the society. Here's a thing that meant that any ideological shift, any proposals for reforms was viewed by not just the government, but by other parts of the society, what we call Mujwazee, as an existential threat to Japan itself.

And so there was a lot of leftist movements at the time, pre-World War II, there are a lot of demands for reform, for social reform, for economic reform. And it triggered what's called the end of the Tysho democracy. And they went to the opposite direction into ultra-nationalist totalitarianism. Right. And things that we start seeing happening are they had the show off financial panic, which then actually preceded the Great Depression. And then Great Depression hits and magnifies it. And this is when Zaibatso's or large organized groups of private companies, that basically what over here we just say, oh, that is illegal monopoly.

But those are trusts. Yes, yes. Vertically integrated industrial conglomerates. When you look at a cyberpunk and they say, the bad guys, they mean Zybotsoos. I mean, right. And Zybotsoos take over Japanese banking completely. They just seize the banks.

There's actually a march on the military on the emperor, well, actually on the government. They had a full unarmed rebellion that the emperor had to step in and stop. And the result of that is basically the kickoff to World War II, as far as the Pacific theater really is kind of concerned. And that's where the Black Dragon society shows up as a quasi-official cabal within government and industry, driving the decisions that led to, as you say, Japan actively entering war. Right. So, now we have got the war, and it ends in ludicrous amounts of destruction.

Obviously, there's two atomic weapons utilized, which are here to foreign scene, but also quite frankly, even more violence committed with fire bombing against cities that are predominantly made out of wooden paper. So it's just... And I don't remember, I don't have the episode number ready, but back through 15. Thank you.

We talked about this when I talked about the giant robot genre. And as the direct inspiration for much of the much of that genre. That's episode 19. I was thinking about Battle Tech and the Yellow Paral. Are you talking about? Well, yeah, that's also there. Right. You refer to like the fact that like you would have like these giant Kaiju like giant monsters that came from nuclear

from the Western creation. Yeah, for the rest of the nation. Yeah, instead of having Superman who was exposed to radiation and has superpowers, you incite find monsters that are superpowered for destruction. Yeah. Yeah. And interesting how about happen. Or multiple generations of stories where the various militaries are building ever more impressive doomsday weapons that are, that whose approach is seen throughout the entire story and when they arrive, shockingly, it does not go well. We also have episode 16 where we talk about the nuclear family through the pandemic for specifically using nuclearization.

Although Superman himself, we haven't really covered, but Superman is much more the Jewish immigrant experience to the United States as it was written by two Jewish immigrants, and they were subverting the Ubermanche mentality Germany at the time. Also, one of them is dad died by being shot in a convenience sororory. So it would make sense that Superman and nobody called him Mary Sue. No, but anyway, so that's because he clearly had external genitalia. Oh, come on now. Yeah, so so we now get to the all this.

And the at post war, we have manga now at post war carries on a lot of the pre-warm pre-migy stuff. Only now we're starting to see some more changes. Disney cartoons are being shown, so that's impacting how they're drawing faces eyes, that kind of thing. And it's bringing genre. They're they're bringing American comic books, and those are genre comic books. They're the time things like Westerns, gangster stories, and superheroes. And to be honest, those have a massive impact. And the superheroes are not the ones that get the biggest impact. It's actually the others that really land hard.

American occupation ends in 2002. And that's when Astro Boy, maybe you as well in manga. And between 52 and 69, the manga market has broken into two categories, shounen and show Joe. Yeah, and they become really distinct and I'm gonna come at this from the others. This is my artist lens coming in,

but the development of these two categories also started to dictate how artists were expected to draw based on the story that they are telling. And that certain stories are told with certain art styles to be consumed by a certain audience. And that there wasn't really a subversion, but that's important to them and to come back to that later. And you did all that. And for the shoes of eye shape, and I mean, and angularity of eyes, it's very shading, crossing,

the heaviness of the line, the type of tonal paper, screen tone that they would use, which is like a plastic film that uses to create grace base, how dense and heavy those dots were that created those tones really very based on if it's Shojo or Shonen. Shojo is for women and girls.

Shonen is for boys and men. And Shonen tended to be talking about action adventure stories, slaps to humor, honor, and butchered sex, whereas Shogyo stories tended towards romance and motion intense plots, self-realization and self-actualization, which is some interesting things to see. So you actually started seeing a lot earlier in Shog Joe stories, interlives that you didn't see for quite a lot longer in the show in the show in the show didn't sign things. She said it sounds very familiar to how fanfiction goes. What?

Whoa. Just tying that back explicitly in case anybody missed that, because I know. Thank you for that. Yeah. I'm here for you. It's the thread for people. Yeah, I do get tangled up in the red thread.

And you're good. Thank you. So 69, we get the year 24 group of female artists. The year 24 group was born in 49, which is a reference to the fact that Japan still maintains two sets of calendar systems. One is the calendar we're using. Gregorian, is it I believe? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And the other one, the Japanese calendar is based upon the emperor. So the show, what emperor 1949, let's see, 24th year of his rule.

So it was show, what 24. The year 24 group was a group of female, all female artists who were developing show, Joe, and they developed a ton of these sub-genres, Joe and one of them is Josie, ladies comics, which are effectively then taking manga that these people had now grown up with and evolving them into adult stories,

with adult not meaning gratuitous sex and gratuitous violence, but it meaning stories that apply to adults. In their case, it was good. Very much in 1969 you're seeing what you'd then be seeing in more like 1999 over here. In that, also this is the point at which fire comes out. Yeah, and fire is a really important novel because it depicts a gay male protagonist specifically focusing on the music scene, the glam rock scene that we were seeing in the UK and the United States.

And there was like heavy references from like David Bowie, but this is created by a female artist using actually more shounen driven aisle to create this novel with a protagonist. So now you have a homosexual character who is the front line for the story and it was actually fairly well received. It's it's pretty interesting. It's also the same point that we see Joe said that the ladies comics being joined by the male equivalence now It's pretty interesting. It's also the same point that we see Josie that the ladies comics being joined by the male equivalents now, the sign-in and the surgeon. Please note, I hesitant to say that they follow in the same category as being actually

stories for adults, so much as adult rated stories. That's still a lot more sex and violence. Somehow that always seems to happen. But last time around, we talked about 1970 being the year of the Xerox improvements. I'm not sure as it were. Yep. Yeah.

We have the same thing happened here with Dojinshi, which are the self-published manga. And, uh, um, memiographs weren't really used. I mean, you couldn't memiograph, um, you know, Paul the RD, you have been, as teachers, you know, you've attempted to memiograph things. If there's any art on it, it is obliterated by the memograph process. If there are details, they're blotted. And so Kanji, the characters are not going to get reproduced in the memograph. The ARps are going to be reproduced.

So there's really nothing you can do about that. So up until 1977, any dojinshi were going to be printed the traditional way. They're going to be printed lithographs. So they were very expensive. To this day, if you are a collector and you've got the pre-70s dojinshi, they're like, you struck gold. After 70, all of a sudden you start seeing people selling dojinshi because they can, they can go ahead and draw it, they can print it, they can bind it, they can sell this. The rules of Shinkoku-Zai indicate that as long as you are not trampling on offending

the original creator, they're somewhat obligated to honor the fact that you're creating something. The time you do see them actually, someone actually come after anybody for creating D'Gisci, they were selling underage pornography in a store and they said, yeah, no, that one, that one gets to go. That guy in the next trailer, that one there. Yeah, that one right there. Yes, straight to hell. So that was that was the line.

But so yeah, and this kind of interesting thing, you start seeing them, they are being sold. This is a, because here, the copyright rules are different. And so these are available for sale. This is a, because here the copyright rules are different. And so these are available for sale. 1975 Takahashi Rumiko begins publishing Dojichi at 18. Takahashi Rumiko born in the Gata Japan in 1957 and is basically a god amongst artists jumping to the end of you know true current

gale does such a note she's been inducted to the Ister Hall of Fame nominated three times before that who won the Grand Prix de laville de Angolain. Angolain. Angolain. Angolain. Angolain. Angolain. I'm glad somebody here speaks French, it's not me. But I'm the second woman and the second I'm going to do so. She award the Hunchu Medal of Honor in Japan with Purple Ribbon. And the Harvey Awards, Hall of Fame, for her body of work over the years. Aside from separate individual awards for various individual works ranging from 1975 to today,

she's still quite active. Her shit is very good. She is very good at what she does. She's very good at telling stories. She's very good at conveying emotion and creating really empathetic characters. She does. Lean lines.

Gender expectations and explorers gender identity. She literally, literally combines modern Japan culture and poems that together with ancient Japanese cultures literally shoves them together and make them navigate each other. And I mean, I mean, she's so fucking good. She's so good. Fucking good. Yeah, so she comes on at 18 creating dojjinsis creating self published comics that she's literally zeroxing and selling and

Some of the other another artist like no seriously you you need to come and do this professionally This this this we want to publish you that was 75 Go's professional 78 and her first creation is ursa yet Surah Which is and her first creation is Ursa Yat Surah, which is, if you see the anime character with the little animal ears and like a tiger stripe bikini. Piger stripe bikini, that's her character. And it's been that character in that series have been popular ever since.

She then the next year after that creates my sony cocoa, which is. Also, wait, wait, I have to go back to LUM because one of my favorite things about LUM or the Udice etude is what she does is that usually you have a male character in a trope who relentlessly pursues a very unwilling female character. And in Udice, Isoda, what she does is long, who's the main character is an alien from another planet. And she relentlessly pursues this very unwilling man. And it is a little, she literally came out

to get like, fuck your gender roles. And it just went for it. Like, I mean, she's, I love the character. She's discussing. It's awesome. She does such a good job of making her like the equivalent of a womanizer, but opposite. It's, but, but only for the one guy.

Yes. Like, will not take no for an answer. Like, show it her tits, like, I mean, just is so funny to see and she's a female artist subverting this. Like, oh, it's okay. that it is written by a woman in a society that is very showvonist that does have extremely Although the Shojo manga are More women and predominantly written by women unlike America where all the writers are men here It's gendered women are writing for women and men are writing for men so she's working with other writers, but businesses owned by men and What her writing is really about is

those gender roles and societal expectations. And predominantly a giant middle finger point in both. Mike's on the cocoon, another, not only is it a yes it is. Not only is it a, is it just straight up a show, Joe, female directed story, romance story. It's like the best, like full on, in all the years since then, nobody's top that you're done.

Yeah. And so that's like, that's 1980. It's really lovingly done. It's very heartbreaking. More than a couple of occasions. Oh, but it's beautiful because she's telling the story of a widowed character. You don't often see a widowed character, let alone a widowed protagonist who is so developed and such a strong character who you end up relating to so much.

Like I remember her, I do, I vaguely remembered the guy vaguely and she does a really good job of storytelling her deceased partner and she never showed us his face but you weren't, you feel the love for this character, despite never knowing what he looks like. You never know what he looks like. Which is better than if she, if she showed her. Yeah. Right. Because it's just, it doesn't matter. It's her memory. And like that's what the male protagonist is coping with. Like he doesn't know what this guy looks like. And he's having to learn this other man through her

and her memory that her stories is just, fuck, I cried so hard reading those books. They're so fucking good. If you pick up any of her, pick up that one. Well, I'm going to bring up my personal favorite, which is not a heartbreaking tale, but the opposite direction, yes. I love Ron the two, but the opposite direction. Yes. I love Ron Matu, but I'm just saying,

it's like how many novels? Yes, but 1987 she wraps up, I guess there are N My Sonakoku. Her publisher says, you know, listen, you've been like hitting the balls out of the park for the show, Joe stuff. Can you do something that is straight up shown in, or at the very least kind of like crossover appeal a little bit?

Because we're making a lot of money, but there is a lot over there too. Can you come up with something that would appeal to the guys? And the Encyclopedia Galactica has fallen through the warp, and we've looked at under the term, Gone Horbly Right. And that's the definition of what happened here with Ronma 1-1-half. She succeeded. She succeeded. So hard. So hard. Oh my god. I can't even begin to tell you how hard. See, nine years of manga, two TV series, three films, 11 OVA's or original video animations, a live action movie.

15 video games. But okay, this is a story tells really good. So I've to make on the worst parent in the in all fiction, barring perhaps the dad in, you know, Genesis Evangelion. He takes his five-ish-year-old boy on a 10-year training trip, wandering the earth like cane and cun-food. Kids get snow-schooling, no peers for more than a year, just ludicrous, dangerous, painful martial arts training. During this time, he sells his child repeatedly,

mostly into range marriages, but a couple times just for food. After all, the kid needs to learn to find the way out of it. So, you know, good training. And two pickles. And two pickles. What a Peach of a man. Yeah. Along the way, he also wrapped the kid and dropped him into pits of starving cats repeatedly for days or to train him.

Yes, yes, this was a comedy. I know you're thinking to yourself, hot, this sounds hysterical. We'll get there. Anyway, he drags his now 15 year old son, two place called Juicent Q, legendary training ground of Kirst Springs. Since he doesn't bother to read Chinese and he's in China, he doesn't read the warning signs that say don't go here, this is cursed. And yeah, everybody who falls into one of these pools of water comes out with a curse, the curse is that you get wet, you turn into your cursed form, you get hit with hot water, you turn back into your normal self. Well, the actual story starts with a big panda bear carrying a little tiny red headed girl across Tokyo as she's struggling to get away. And it turns out that

now that his son turns into a girl, he's trying to marry him off really fast to one of his buddies, three daughters, he's never met. The buddy is also a charmer in a peach, but not as, not nearly as bad as again, my no one is. It takes a while. It's a really, really low bar. It takes a while eventually getting moments of the fact that his wife is wandering around

with her odashi, giant sword, and a sepaku pledge that says, ''Gadma's son, the girl must become a man amongst his men in his mother's eyes, or his mother will demand that father and son kill themselves.'' The son is Sartre Meirana, the eponymous runma of Bruno and half, because he's half boy, half girl. OK, that's a seven. The actual stories, a love dodeck

she dream. I mean, it's the reason why that trope exists in TV trips. It is sheer tale. Oh, it's epic. Raman. It sounds like French first, to be honest. Oh, it's got an awful lot to go with that. Yeah

Rodmas unwilling fiancee tendo carne is a talented humble. Oh, he's martial artist with an entire cast of that warranted my wrist She takes his ass. She kicks his and everybody else's She is oh, yes. Yeah. Yes Rodmas best oldest buddy wants to kill him and is now Connie's new stalker. Another old friend was promised Ronma as her husband and she's back to collect a Jouketsu-zoku amazot from China is now pursuing Rama to marry and or kill him depends. Is that shampoo? shampoo By the way, if you Damien, Damien, if you've seen Ronma, no. No. There are so many puns.

You've got to find this in manga form because it is epic level puns. Okay. Shangpu is a great example of some very pointed puns. Shangpu, one, there's the gag that all of the Chinese characters have hair product names, shampoo, coolon, mutsu, pronounced as the same way that you would, a Japanese person would pronounce the Japanese of English words, shampoo, coolon, mousse. So there's the gag that way, but the sounds are actually appropriate for Chinese, shan, tu, mutsu, you know, and then the kanyu that are used to create those. And so the kanyu that are written for shampu translate depending on which way you write them as uncut gem because she is kind of a gem in the diamond of the rough or mountainous breasts.

She's got very large titties. Yes. Okay. And so they're always out there. They're always there. And Ronma, for example, is written by two characters sets that, depending on how you write, well, or I should say the sound, Ronma can be written two ways. One way would be the characters in which would mean wild horse or wild orchid. And everybody gets, who's trying to write down his name,

gets introduced to him when he is in a girl's body. And they immediately proceed to write wild orchid, because of course, that's what they would name their daughter. OK. And so it's always, there name their daughter. Okay, and so it's all there's always the event There's always the very embarrassed. No, it's the other one So there's a lot of these Word a lot of wordplay Akane the kind of the the very angry tomboyish martial artist fiance Akane means red and

specifically it is the die of red that you it's called matter red. And yes, that pun is in English. Because it's kind of one of the things she does is the puns cross language barriers. But you have to know all of them to get it. Right. It's it is really hard to follow some of the wordplay because it is so deep into, yes, into this. But all throughout this is body, first, like I mentioned, the French, French, French, French, French, first, you know, the swinging doors, the bedroom, kind of comedy. Right. First, you know, the swinging doors, the bedroom, kind of comedy. It is this massive martial arts insanity kind of thing.

Plightful ass with a romance, no decade of everybody. If Jackie Chan did a sex, first kung fu movie. Okay. I would pay. I could see that. I would. would I would I would show up though because on top of all this that she's got going on, which her continuity stunning. And conducing the art of it. Yeah, but she's also actively dismantling gender roles because you've got this character who is biologically male, cursed to turn into a female and he's

greeted by characters differently based on what worries and especially when they're meeting him for the first time. Rio guy think at first if I'm remembering correctly, feel like he's very nice to him because he's a female form. And then all of a sudden, he realizes like, oh, you're that mother fucker. And as soon as he goes back to his male form, it's like murder time, but then it's really funny because you can see these double standards

with the same person treating him completely differently based on how his gender is presenting. On top of it, a pane because she's such a tomboy also gets treated by Rana at times. Who's experiencing this firsthand? He's still does some sexist bullshit and then she turns around and kicks this fucking at. And it's just like, it's amazing how she's creating this very clear message

about, you know, gender expectations. And Rodman's behavior changes because he starts out, he starts out raised by his dad and being just as misogynistic as his father, be perfectly honest. He's just an honorable person, so he doesn't take that misogyny and use it as a tool as a weapon But he just believes in other people being less because well, you're just a girl and although he now turns into one and He starts off with being Angry about this being upset about this curse he has and being like reluctant to change the worst thing in the world when he changes. And when he does demanding

that he be a boy they be male despite being extraordinarily female in his female curse form and as he, he learns to start treating all the other women like their justice, competent, capable, dangerous, driven as he is, justice serious martial artist, justice serious people, and he starts to treat his female form like his form. He actually starts changing how he dresses to where he starts with trying to get his way,

dressing up to play a trick on somebody to try and find the cure for his cursor to sneak extra food or something. Cause again, that is training him by starving him and you've got to find your own food. So it starts with that, but it leads to just kind of like, oh yeah, we're having a dance time dressed in the ball gown. Yeah, sure. That's a gin. Because I look good like this.

And there's a couple other things that are really interesting. There's some very specific secondary characters. He's got an old buddy who's a chef. And the old buddy went to a boy school with him and so he's like, buddy, and the buddy's like, I'm going to kill you. And they figure out the buddy's actually a girl dressed in Min's clothes and had been promised to be his fiance. And so there is that character.

Then we get introduced to this very frilly female character who's chasing the female chef who's dressed as a boy and pursuing intensely. And they get to the the the denier woman where a con and ran the two protagonists were like, oh, this is going to go horrible. And it's revealed, okay, I don't think you understand. That's not a boy. that's actually a girl. And the girl, the frilly dress is like, well, yes, I know. And I'm a boy.

And the two characters who were cross-dressing were just like, yeah, we both knew this. The only people here who were confused were running around back and forth with you two more on us. Right, right. Oh, anybody else, any shitty person would have made this the, you think this is a girl,

but it's actually a boy, surprise joke. I mean, you can picture that on friends. That's what it would have been the joke. This is 87, 88, 89, and she's writing this with, no, the joke is on the heteronormative couple who don't realize that they're on the outside looking in and They think there's this whole thing going on and they're just completely effing plueless

um yeah Now this this author she's this is all self-pub or is this all done through a public that one That one was done through the publishing house. Yeah, this is she initially started doing spam comics and then she has been constantly published through publishing house because of her success. She's really, really engaging story tellers. She's really, really good. I don't know what has happened since the pandemic, but pre-pandemic, she was the richest woman in Japan.

The only reason I think why Rahnma is not already on Netflix in season seven is because she doesn't need the money. And if any of us try to mess with it, probably they do it terrible. So yeah, not gonna let you. But it is. Yeah, and she's really the moment. And subverting the joke for us, and subverting these gender rules, and like doing it in such a,

where it's not the butt of the joke. The gender is never the butt of the joke. Right, it's not the punch line. No, it never punted down on the identity and it really shows characters navigating identity and growing really carrying way. Yes. And it's got a lot of characters who don't. Every time they've got the younger characters who have their life ahead of them and have a chance to grow up to be a real person who doesn't suck. There is a commensurate adult who is an epic fucking failure at this. And so there's the mom who, Ronma's mom has this insanely old fashioned gender role, gender ideal where one of her upsets about her son.

Is that her son doesn't break into girls' locker rooms to peek at them and steal their underwear? Because that's manly. That's boys do that. That's men do that. That's what she should be doing. It should be the sex sex criminal that that would be a It's really amazing because like she's actively like getting in storylines where it she's showing me very traditional Massage and this they've shown in a certain ideals and she's just like no actually kind of fucking stuff Yeah, and here's my face to sunwalk.

And then she just she just makes it a story that's really engaging where younger readers in particular aren't necessarily going to realize that they are processing things that are going to have them unlearn some really toxic shit. Now question, Tessa, do you want to go through the other things that are going on in this time? Or do you want to go through the panfic of this? Since you're talking about the fact that she's creating this series to kind of mesh Shodown and Shodown and starting to boil those lines,

I will bring in banana fish because it blends both bananas and fish. Very. because it blends more than is answered. Very. A community of Shida, she creates this graphic novel starting in 1985 that goes to the event 90s. Specifically focused on psycho-hallucinogenic genetic drugs being used for a military weapon. Basically using psycho-husband and genetic drugs, giving them to soldiers to cause them to basically be mind-controlled and become killing machines. and what she does is she creates a story of this kid in New York whose brother goes to

serve in Vietnam and when his older brother comes back from Vietnam, he's a shell of himself. And it's because he's taken this psycho-husinogenic, this experimental drug called banana fish. And so this kid whose name is Ash, can't think of his last name right now, but the main character, his name is Ash. And she becomes obsessed with finding out who created banana fish that broke his brother like this. And he basically wants to kill him. And so he gets involved in these gangs in New York

in order to get to the bottom of this. And what then winds up happening is that this young Japanese boy named Aigi goes with his mentor. He's learning how to be a journalistic photographer and they come to do an article on the Games of New York and in doing so, Aegee and Ash meet. And there's a lot of subtext of romance between these two characters, but it's not in a traditional show-n-s, or show-josh sense where it's more written towards women. It's very shounen art style. It's very pretty, very harsh lines, lots of hatching, like ink, and it's really violent, like it's incredibly violent. But there is all this intimacy that's played that's alluded to subversively and it has become pretty well

known for it. They actually recently animated it. I want to say in like 2013, and I don't have a good therapist yet, so I'm not going to subject myself to one thing because I know how it ends and it's gut-runged, Shane. But it's a wonderfully done story with all of these shone and art aspects that are telling a story that you would more likely see added into the show, Joe's style. And it's just, it's really, really well done. And it, that same kind of thing too, where it's exploring what is intimacy, what is emotional connection. same kind of thing too where it's exploring what intimacy, what is emotional connection, and all while telling this incredibly gritty, violent, tragic story of the drugs being used to create

super shoulders and create them into shells of human beings. And so she does it in a much more gritty, not funny soul-wrenching, destructive kind of way. But it's just, it's really neat to see this happening in that like 80s era, the late 80s, early 90s, where you see traditionally show-jo artists start to do things in the shown in art style and take things from shown in storylines and mesh them together which is what happens with fake as well and another artist by the name of a Sadami Maxwell and I'll get to that later. I could go forever on that one, but that's going to be the doj and she tie in. So just to kind of loop us back around, we have all of this going on within the genre of manga at this time and all this work going on. and what is what is the influence of that on

the movement as it were of fan fiction, either either in Nihon or here in the United States. This is where I get to go. I don't know, go for it because I can tie in mine, but I can go for it. No, go for it. I'm going to say one of the things that we started to see in the series again from my gay agenda alone. Generally a lot of censorship is happening in these published by publishing house comics. In so storylines have certain censorship that are happening and again the artists are being kind of like they're working with these magazines or these comic issues that seriously run various chapters of their comics of what's going to happen right so they have to get it approved and things like that. But what you'll start seeing is published like mainstream manga artists doing dojenshi

of their own work. So they'll take the characters that they are serializing with these publishing companies. And they will self-publish side stories that a publishing company wouldn't necessarily run. And so they're able to do different aspects of the story or go deeper with the story because they're not costing their publisher anything but they don't have to go through that potential censorship or changing of the story that they want to tell.

And so I'll go to like, for example, so she starts as like a showjo artist, really flowery, kind of say, kind of style. But she's telling a story of two cops, which if you have that in super flowery sailor moon, it's kind of weird looking, right? Yeah, it's definitely out of type. A little strange. And it's like in the early 90s. And so it's two NYPD tops. And people they work with and stuff. And the art style initially starts very show joe, very four girls.

And her art style starts to shift pretty heavily. There's speculation as to why it could potentially be that because of the type of story that she's telling, utilizing a shown-in style or leaning more into a shown-in style would make more sense, but then she does other stories where the style changes that aren't, that are still fall into the show-joke category. And so the style starts to blend shown in in Shodown.

It's still definitely not like super like mecca, whatever like what you would expect to see. It's not very harsh, but it's also not very soft. And so she's creating this story that has a bisexual character, specifically labeled bisexual character, to identify as bisexual and says it repeatedly which I'm just gonna plug this right now. That was my first bisexual character, like seeing the word imprint, like, oh, so that's like kind of different. And so you still have like a whole bunch of retuitous violence and and things like that but then because it's not an American publishing there

are storylines two kind of talking about implicit bias where a black character a black father has to identify the body of his daughter who has been killed by a serial killer. And he lashes out at the two main characters because the way that his daughter's body was autopsy. And they literally have a conversation about the fact that there are cops who are terrible to people because of their race. Like, literally start talking, and that's like in 1996, we start seeing, yeah, I know, I was like, whoa, really? But her story is very methodical in the published one, and it's very like focused

on whatever case it is that they're working on, and the romance is kind of like a subversive thing. And there's not a lot of emotional discussion. There's a little bit. And specifically one of the things that she does in her story that stands out so significantly, which bringing it back to you can kind of start to tell a queer creator versus a tech creator.

like queer creator versus a tech creator. You've got this character who's doing the trope of kind of being obnoxious, hitting on the other guy. Like, it's pretty gross. Right. But there comes an opportunity where the not-as-engaged character is very emotionally vulnerable and goes through an incredibly traumatic experience at which he is willing to just submit. The most character literally laughs him across the face and says, I know I will not take advantage of you and breaks that trope that we would usually see go a very specific way. Right. Now that's that's hint number one. It's like, oh, there's there's some emotion here. What's it that humanity? What? But then she starts to create so

genie of the characters and she starts to focus more on the romance and the emotional growth and the conversations that can't happen in this published thing because it talks about things like identity and coming to terms with your identity or processing your identity. One of the characters boss through the child. And that child gets into a fight in the dojenshi, the self-published comics, gets into a fight with another kid who's doing homophobic slurs or whatever to another. And it winds up with him going

to his foster father who's in a queer relationship and saying, how did you know? How did you know you were queer? and there's a deep conversation that happens About identity and understanding that and this kid is like well, what if I am and like there's a whole that's real deep Yeah, and it's one of the that's one of the things that made me go You you do get this. Right. You've been there. This isn't your address.

You're not doing anything for shock factor. And it's really beautiful. It's beautifully done because you not only have a queer main character. You have a queer main character who has a child who's having this conversation that they're child in a very frank and open manner. And then it ends with like some stupid joke about boobs or whatever because like we got

it, we got a breakup, how fucking serious they got. Sure. But that's a side published comic that you usually wouldn't see because of that. That's the storytelling specifically related to homosexuality. And so it's neat because what you've got is it's their own version. They're doing fan fiction, but it's not. It's within the category of fan fiction. Like it's labeled as fan fiction because it's self-published, but it's it's canon. Is it canon? That's that was a question I was going to ask is is is one of the exclusionary features of of canon like being used

here or is this because the laws are different, it's different or no it's fast and getting because what so for synonymato in particular she will wrap things that she's done in her doge and she there was a running joke about oranges and smelling oranges and I couldn't understand it until I read the doge and she and I was like you. She made a joke about an intimate scene, but that talks about emotion by reference scene, a little thing in it with the scent of oranges. And she'll do that, she'll reference these outside comics so that you would go and look for it.

It was hilarious because I had to look to my husband in the eyes and go, I have just purchased so many porn comics and I'm going to say words that no one actually ever gets to say. It's for the plot. People get to say it, but but people don't get to be taken seriously when they do. Yeah, I have to say, you know, it's all kinds of things. So it was like annotated. I bet. Because every now and then you would just go, and I'd have to like go back and try and figure it out or just go, yeah, because I would realize like the really long one

was actually like directly connected to the chapter in the other book and who's yeah. It's a me and who will translate. So they and the publishing houses are cool with this or the day just not look that closely. Because of the laws for like fair use pretty much, unless they can fool and it's impacting their sales negative. In fact, it's increasing their sales, right? Because she's creating these side-comic. Right.

If somebody wants to know what it's about, they're gonna purchase it. Yeah. And then I'll throw the other direction for fan created fan thick. So the reason I went to run one half that ended the manga series ended 27 years ago and high-end world. Yeah. Well, Damian loves to point that out to me basically every episode at least once. So I do not disagree with you. 27 years ago, and there's still a thriving community of people writing Ron Moanhaf

and today. And they've been, I remember seeing how incredibly engaged they were in the 90s and coming back in the 2010s, they're still going. And, but I noticed that the writing was changing. It was morphing, Very clearly there was a direction. And I thought it was at first I didn't really notice it because you know, it's this white guy. I'm you know oblivious in my little freaking bubble. But I spotted that the pattern was pretty straightforward. The earlier versions of the fanfic for Run 1.5 were generally speaking genre shifting, a lot of genre shifting, a lot of, hey, this is a, what if Runma was,

you know, because wandering martial artists, he wanders into this other story, or revisionist, oh, I hated this bit, how about, you know, he doesn't end up with her, he ends up with her, those kind of things. And that started changing to some substantial recontextualization. And the ones that I noticed were that they were actually very specific writers who clearly had some very personal experience with gender, non-conformity, one type or another.

And Phronma provided both a structure in which to have that conversation, as well as, and I didn't realize just how important this was until I saw this community former grandmother, an audience with whom to interact and engage, because there were a lot of people who are, and still are, huge, run-mo in half fans. And all of them, regardless of whether or not they are gender-conforming, anonymous-forming, are fans and are familiar with these characters and understand that they change the gender to have these gender issues. And there were all of a sudden, starting to see more and more and more works of people talking about not just the gender shifting and the gender politics that had been more than and social roles that had been Takashi Umiko's focus.

And we're now talking about the inner life, the difference between gender presentation and gender identity. And does sexuality have the impact on gender identity? Does me finding myself to be female or have female attributes mean I am now also trying to demand? I mean, all these things going on that were implicit in the original, but were not explicit ever. And they're now very explicit and very touching and moving and meaningful. And because of the modeling, it's just really, really good. And it's not disappearing into a whole. It's really easy for someone to say, I am a creator. Here's my creative product. And they put it out there. And there's like five people who realize that was really good. Like the

fanatic Confederacy of Dances, the award-winning novel that was never published in the writer's lifetime. A few other writers, we go down a long list writers. This is a case. But with fanficking with the rec contextualization of the essay stories, there is this place to see the story grow into something different and have people actually interact and engage and talk back with the writers. That's kind of one of the things that is pretty spiffy. It used to be that you might maybe meet somebody at a con and be able to, oh, you wrote that or you've read this too with the rise of the internet.

We're now all there and people are talking and you actually hear back from people. And I think that's a very important thing. Yeah, it seems like. Yeah, it's good too. Oh, go ahead. Oh, no, go for it. Oh, I was just going to say it seems like the,

there's an old saying of an artist never finishes their work, they abandon it. And it seems like with the advent of the internet, specifically coalescing with fanfic that that abandonment doesn't have to happen for those who don't want to. For those who do, I can see them getting intensely frustrated with what are you doing? I already killed, you know, Annie. Why are you bringing her back? Misery is dead. The whole thing is over. Let this man stop breaking his ankle. We could have the whole of England in black publicly mourning the loss of the public.

I was like, it could be worse. You could have the whole of England dressed in black, publicly mourning the loss of the public, oh, it could be worse. Get out the whole of England dressed in black, publicly mourning the fictional character that you have tried to kill to the point that you get pure pressure to bring them out of the putter bag. Little Arthur Conan Doyle there. Yeah, Arthur Conan Doyle has entered the chat.

Yeah. I'm telling you. God damn it. You ever gonna get out of that, man? Yeah, no. But what about Brigadier Gerard? We don't care about Brigadier Gerard. He's a goddamn frog.

I'm just saying, like it could be worse, like they can get pissed about the fanfiction, but you could literally have public upheaval. Yeah, well, to his credit Conan Doyle was like, hey, you know what, as long as the checks clear, fine, I'll write him, like it pisses me off, but I have a lavish lifestyle to support. So, you know, and spiritualism to keep trying to prop up. You can find more of that in episodes one 38 and one 39 of our podgems. Oh, I was just going to say you I'd broken in right when you were so go ahead

and make your point. I've got my question. I was just going to tie, I'd broken in right when you were. So go ahead and make your point. I've got my question in. I was just going to tie up our two fanfishing one other way too, which is that you have a really unique thing in Gojanshi. Not only do you have a bunch of people who are not professional artists creating these professional artists will actually make the origin sheet of other comics, by other artists. and they will create

their own stories of these people who care. There is a tsunami box. I was going to keep talking about it because she is a huge influence on my style and myself as an artist, general. But upon finding that she was doing these videos. She has done them for like three different series that are not hers. She did one for one called Black Explod, or she's done a couple of them for that. She's also done a couple for one piece, which is a fairly well known. Yeah. She has done Dojinji for it, and she has also done Dojinji of a, I haven't seen it yet, but I've a dojin she for it and she has also been dojin she of a I haven't seen it yet

But I've been talking plenty to watch it. I think it's called tiger bunny and it's like superhero kind of she's done a couple of that one Which I think is on that looks I don't really have She's not to watch it, but she's done dojin she of the characters of other artists. And there's actually one, it was another older comic called Gravitation. And she was invited by that artist who was creating a doj and she of their own characters, Mita Kamemaki. They created, she created art for that other artist

for their doj and she, like they would collaborate. So you've got this really cool thing of professional artists publishing comics that are fan comics of somebody else's work. Right. And it's really neat to see because you don't often get to see that. Sure. The book carry on that I've been in the fandom of. It's very much like you can read it and you'll be like, you know, you're a little Harry Potter-y, you know, Harry's on for fanfiction-y. But she's very aware of fanfiction, so like it really encompasses it, and there's all these, you know, aspects that are like kind of dismantling Harry Potter, which is

They're like kind of dismantling Harry Potter, but like To see it because with the art, right when you create those characters and you draw those characters To have these artists just coming out and be like fuck it. I'm drawing so and so shit like it's So cool to see and it's something that you just don't you don't get to see it the same with like novelization. Like you'll know something based on a fanfic like that. Why was that terrible fucking raylofic that got turned into some garbage title line abomination of a novel, Ali something. I'm not saying that it's a raylofic. Don't hold back, you know, if you have some feelings, you should probably.

I literally, I literally thought I was like, that's like literally a title 9 HR violation, like why is she not fired? I am very much the, I don't do non-con, non-concentral, anything, and make things this off. Anytime you get romanticized, and any kind of thing I'm just like yeah, but it was a Raylofic that got a romance novel with different names. Well, they Raylo. Kylo Ren and Ray. Oh, okay. Ray. Got it.

Yeah. It's terrible. It's not. It's not good. It went viral and it's not good. Oh, god. But like they have to change the name, whereas like these comic artists can just be like,

bug it, I'm drawing so in folk characters, however I want. And then they just do. Sure. And it's incredible. Well, and it sounds like it sounds like it's, there's a, there's a community of artists who have the opportunity to engage in joy. That's right. With like, this is so cool. I want to do this. And because of the difference in legal structure and I'm going to say. If the black well wasn't Japanese.

Yeah. Edmund Burke was not Japanese. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. Yeah. Well, I found a place to fish. So this must be mine now is not. Manifest destiny wasn't a thing. I would be curious to see if there's any like I knew a fanfic, um, you know, the indigenous folks, pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic, they access the fanfic, but I think that'll have to be in a different episode.

Yeah, we have run up against the only real limitation on our conversations, which is time. It's actually data space to be perfectly. Yeah, well, okay, yeah, granted, but they are synonymous large. They are. And you thought this is only going to be two at the center go men to say I'm sorry so I I'm worried that I stepped on either of those points of anybody to finish off what they were saying Ed did I jump in on oh no I'm good I'm good. I'm good. I already fucking forgot what I was talking about. So you're okay, so then let's see the neither of you want to be found online, which is totally fair, but I would like to hear from you recommendations that you want people to go and check out. So we'll start this time test. So we'll start with you. I feel like I talked about it enough.

I would recommend checking out the Nami Mopo words. She's got a couple of fake, which is my personal favorite. Definitely try to get the newer translation because whoever did the translations in the 90s, I was an age well, but I do recommend that series and I also recommend her gender exploratory one called Full Moon or Bixfor the Full Moon and until the food. It looks finding them, but if you can find them, I do recommend. Okay. How about you Sean? What do you recommend. Okay. How about you Sean, would you recommend me? Well, I'm going to do two, because it might as well.

If you go dig up Gossamer, that's the old archive for X-Files fanfics that had been published in use groups, which apparently will discuss shortly. Yes, I know. Old, old, old man. There is a story there called Oklahoma. And a couple of very, very, very good art. And it is also really painful to read. I will definitely one of those in the story of you being tears, but I'm very good ex-files fanfic there. And just because I can't leave everybody with the absolute biggest downer I can find. I would also recommend checking your favorite places on the internet,

specifically for Star Wars Revisited. There is a wonderful fan editor called Eddie One, who has created the definitive version of both Star Wars New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. They are phenomenal fan works, different from fanfic, they are video rather than just text, but if you saw the special editions and thought, hmm, not that special. These are amazing. They actually refilled parts of the Hoth battle in the snow with the 501st and Rebel Legion. Created an entire echo base in miniature form about six feet long to refill the mat plates.

True, I mean, it is not your usual and it is phenomenal. So I would hardly encourage you to locate either one's Star Wars Reviews and Empires for Ex-Backrovisant. Okay. And I didn't do this, but Ed, what have you gleaned so far? I think the biggest thing that jumps out at me right now is we

Suffer as consumers of media because of the structure of copyright law here in the West Because because there is there is so much cool shit going on in parts of the world that aren't ruled by the the Litch Lord known as Walt Disney and the legacy of his manipulation of copyright. Right. Because I mean, we determined in, I don't even remember what the episode is, that Disney was in fact, was it lawful evil or neutral evil? Lawful evil. Lawful evil. And I think this kind of just proves it.

You know, that we, there is so much, like I said before, there's so much joy that we miss out on because of the repacious capitalization of everything we want to consume. It needs to be worth a buck. And like, dude, we could have all of this wonderful creative stuff going on if we allowed artists to do it. Right.

Which is ironic because the thing that they use that the corporations use to defend is that like we you know if you if you if you have people do fan-fixed stuff if you have people using the intellectual property of others then you're stealing from artists and they can't feed themselves and it's's like, well, you know what? The only people making that case seem to be those who think, A, if I win the game of capitalism, I could also have my boot on someone else's neck, or B, they already have their boot on all the artists' neck.

Yeah. Like this. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there is a thing I'll touch on here Trent Resner released an album, I think it was called Year Zero. And then he essentially he left thumb drives in the bathrooms of his shows that had I think all the tracks that he had laid down for all the songs.

And people found it and they're like, oh my God, or that's how he released the album. I can't quite remember the people's stories that blend, but essentially a whole bunch of fans made their own mixes and sent them to him. And he released an album of that stuff too. Oh, that's cool. Very democratizing. And that's bitching.

Yeah, it's just, you know, stuff like that. Like, literally you can have collaborative good art with the artists and have that work. Like, all of that is very true. Yeah. And yeah, you absolutely still mine of just like, true. And yeah, you absolutely still still mine of just like, but for the fact that our laws are wildly in favor of of the people who have already made use of the public well and drew all the water and made their own shit. And then they're like, nobody else gets to have access to this well now because that wouldn't be fair to everybody. And you're like, you

son of a bitch. Yeah. Like what? Yeah. So cool. All right. Now, what would you recommend? I'm going to follow Sean's example. I'm going to give an example of a work of fan fiction. And this one is, I had to do some hunting around to find it, but it was the first place winner of the 1995 Spooky Awards for Best Sci-Fi Story, Best Horror Story, Best Action Adventure Story, and most Carture-esque story. And most carter-esque story. Jimmy Carter has, so there's rabbits attacking people. A lot of peanuts. No Chris Carter. Other, making beer, building houses for Chris.

Chris Carter, not Jimmy. Chris Carter. The creator, head writer, showrunner for the X-Files. And the title of the story is etched. And it is a work by Sean Smith back a mom. And so a review or a recommendation written by somebody who was part of a fanfic group, they indicate it contains a genuine and very frightening X file, which is also a crossover, but since the author didn't list what explicitly in the headers, I'll let the reader figure it out. And I can I can personally attest to this one being scary as fuck. Even though even though the author, you know, is my best friend and told me like, Oh yeah, here's here's what

the conceit is. I went into it knowing that and it still left me having trouble falling asleep at night. So, yeah, that is my recommendation. So yeah, check it out, it's awesome. Nice. Thank you, my brother. Of course. I'm really glad I caused you sleepless night of

the carer. Yeah, well, between that and lifting. Well, okay, yeah, I wasn't going to mention that part, but, you know, surprisingly with slender band videos when I wasn't expecting them to ask whole. Anyway, whole other whole other thing to talk about. So Damien recommendation. Yeah, as as the only person who never reads fiction in this room. And yet we keep coming with stuff that like I have no idea about. I love it. yet we keep coming with stuff that like I have no idea about it. I love it.

I'm going to recommend a memoir by someone who made his own fan thick for many, many years, quite successfully. All about me, my remarkable life and show business by Mel Brooks. Absolutely worth a read. I read Carl Reiner's book, I read this book. They just fantastic. So talk about fanfic adding to art and making the world a slightly better place. There's a real art to it. So I strongly recommend that book if you need any kind of grounding. Okay, but yeah, so Ed, where can you be found? I cannot be found. I remain a shadow in the warp.

But we collectively can be found at woebowobawageekhistorytime.com. found at www.wobbawobbageekhistorytime.com can also be found on Twitter as at Geek History Time. And you are listening to us, as I always say, so you have found our podcast somewhere, either on the Apple Podcast app or on Stitcher. Either way, however it is that you've found us, please take a moment to give us a five-star review if for no other reason than having such a low-coacious and well-educated guests. And then be sure to subscribe. And beyond that, where can people find you? Oh, well, you can people find you?

Oh, well, you can find me, let's see, as of this recording, May 5th at Luna's doing a capital punishment. I got one hell of a lineup for that, as well as June 2nd. Capital punishment will be back at Luna's. Both of them in Sacramento, both of them at APM, bring $20, $10 for the tickets, the other 10 is for food and merch. We'll be heading out masks, just in case you forgot yours. Stay safe. Please keep everyone else safe and let us make you laugh.

So that's where you can find me. So on behalf of a geek history of time, Sean and Tessa, thank you guys so much for joining us for the next two episodes as well at least and these last two. So thank you both for joining us. Laysher, thank you very, very much. And yeah, so for Geek is real time. I'm Damien harmony and I'm Ed Blaylock and until next time keep rolling 20s.