Authorial Intent in the Shounen Manga Form or Why Recent Chapters Don't Mean Luuuurve for IchiOri

[http://users.livejournal.com/_debbiechan_/]

This only part one.
This is part essay/part editorial/part fangurl carrying on.
Read at your own risk.

Preamble: Yes, I am paranoooooooooid.

For all the geeky kinship and intellectual masturbation over power levels that make fandom fun, it can be a creepy place. Most fan-folk aren’t creepy, but there’s always that one anonymous message than can chill your blood. For every twenty squeeing, squabbling, hormonal fangurls who see themselves as sisters in perversion, there’s that one lunatic who just may cook your pet rabbit in a pot if you write her favorite uke as seme. For every dozen jovial and wisecracking fanbois, there’s that one who will spam your inbox with WHOREWHOREWHORE for twenty pages because your drew a fanart of his favorite shounen hero in a dress.

Then there’s always the semi-literate person who answers your post: “Stop doing that. That’s annoying.”

As debbiechan, I don’t editorialize about politics and religion and don’t (intentionally) insult people (well, unless you spit on my honor during that time of the month). I’m, therefore, always surprised when someone takes huge offense to anything I’ve written. Once, after posting about the concept of deities and the spiritual realm in my favorite manga, I was taken to task for using the dash in G-d when referring to the highest Supreme Being. (Typing the dash is a habit--a Jew is supposed to reverently consider the concept of G-d whenever the word comes up, but I do it as unconsciously as capitalizing the first word of every sentence). “That’s annoying,” this person, who found most posts annoying, said. I responded that he was responsible for his own annoyance and that it wasn’t the fandom’s job to cater to his feelings as if he were, let’s say, a G-D.

Fans will hit you harder, though, for disagreeing with their manga worldview than for how you spell G-d. One time I was asked to repent on Yom Kippur for remarks in my personal journal that may have hurt yaoi fans (Along with making some jokes about Chad’s height, I may have written something about my belief that Kubo Tite appears to fanservice everything but BL and yaoi). And the dummy I was, I went to synagogue on that important day and swore to be more sensitive to peoples’ perceptions of cartoon sexuality and to try to curb my bad jokes.

Got hated on anyway.

In any event, this preamble is to give fair warning to those who may bust an artery over what are my opinions and may not be those of the general Bleach fandom at large or of any particular enthusiastic faction. The following post contains opinions that may anger IchiOri fans or irritate manga fans who tend to be embarrassed by undue attention given to spikey haired, big-eyed people made of ink-marks on a page--especially if it’s ship oriented attention.

This essay may also contain spoilers for current Bleach manga chapters. Part One references, without revealing conclusions, the movies Chinese Box, The Great BlackOut Coming, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the manga Honey & Clover, Fruits Basket, and Video Girl Ai, and the anime Princess Tutu.

Think you may start spiraling into a fanfreak episode? Don’t read. Think you might have fun and can agree with or challenge what I write without threatening my moral integrity or the lives of my pets? Keep reading.

( Authorial Intent and No Luuurve )