fanfic reminiscing

As I was driving home late tonight, wondering why there were so many cars on the freeway and hoping they weren't drunk, for some reason I thought of cross-dressing in fanfics. And what came to mind were two fics where the uke willingly dresses as a female. One was a Hikago one set on Christmas Eve. Akira was going to meet up with Hikaru, but had to stop by the Institute. He is accosted by Ogata and Ashikawa, who invite him out drinking or something but he refuses because he has a date. Well, being good older brother types they get very interested in this woman that's captured Akira's heart. He can't have them finding out he's doing out with Hikaru, but he realizes that they just aren't going to leave him alone until they are satisfied. He calls Hikaru and explains the situation, and Hikaru says he'll come up with something. So Akira, Ogata, and Ashikawa are at a cafe, waiting for Akira's girlfriend to show up. Akira tells the two that his date would get upset if they were too nosy, so he gets them to agree to be content with a view from across the intersection. He gets a call from Hikaru, and he goes out to meet him. Hikaru is dressed as in a dress and boots, with wig and makeup and all. Ashikawa is like, oh...she looks like a looker. Ogata notes that she's rather tall. But they can't really see anything. When Akira meets up with Hikaru, to show up his sempai with no dates that night, he gives Hikaru a kiss. Hikaru, refreshingly for an uke, is not all embarrassed. He explains that he hurriedly found the clothing (either he bought them or he got them from someone...I can't remember), then walked into some cosmetic shop and told the girls there that he needed to dress up for some party. I guess they have dinner or something (I don't remember), and of course they end up at a hotel. What made the fic nice was that the uke wasn't excessively embarrassed about anything, including the sex, and was very much the equal of the seme. They had to get out of a sticky situation and they made the best of it.

The second story that came to mind was a PoT TezuRyo story. Tezuka and Ryoma were meeting up...I think after school or something. Tezuka is very surprised to find Ryoma waiting for him in a girl's school uniform. Ryoma tells him he was wearing it because he felt like it or something. They have drinks (and I think dessert) at a cafe, during which Ryoma does not sit as a girl wearing a short skirt should, and Tezuka being distracted by the short skirt...or the legs that emerged from under the short skirt (ah, the muttsuri sukebe rears its head). Of course, being Tezuka, he doesn't outwardly show his discomfort, and Ryoma is rather disappointed by Tezuka's lack of reaction. They get out, and at some point Tezuka snaps. He pulls Ryoma into the shadows of some side street and proceeds to give him a hand-job (the skirt is really convenient for that kind of thing). I love how Tezuka thinks how it'd be so much neater (with less to clean up) if he could just give him a blow-job, but realizes that it wasn't prudent to do something that obvious in daylight on the public streets. Afterwards, Ryoma is very impressed with Tezuka's reaction. He exceeded any expectations he had regarding a response. And he reveals that he had another motive (besides seeing Tezuka's reaction) to the cross-dressing. He wanted to hold hands in public. ^_^

I've read far too many fics where someone is unwillingly persuaded or coerced into cross-dressing, and then acting very unhappy or embarrassed about it. I enjoyed these fics where they were very okay with it, even having fun in the situation. I just wish I remembered the title or the author of the fics...^_^;

why I shouldn't take 2 hour naps

It's 1:30 in the morning and I'm still awake. I need to get up decently early tomorrow morning! ;_;

Since I'm just killing time before I get sleepy enough for bed and I just don't feel like typing in the translations I did by hand (OMG remind me never to do translations by hand again. Typing pages and pages of scribbles SUCKS.), I decided to continue on the reminiscing...this time about the fandoms I read. Before I jumped into Japanese fandom with PoT and Hikago (and later Gundam Seed), I read English fics. I don't really remember my first fandom. I remember reading heavily in X-Files, Highlander, Star Wars and Gundam Wing. I also read a good bit in various anime and other fandoms, including HP.

( and a trip down memory lane )

BL paradise?

Some recent yaoi_daily postings I've enjoyed:

Sono toki ai wa ubawareta by Minami Haruka (Parts 1, 2 and 3). First of all, I like the art. Some of the shots of the seme are just so lovely. But one of my favorite moments has to be on post #2, where you get the flashback of the seme and uke's one-night stand that just fades out on the actual sex but later you have the seme describing the uke that night, saying something like, "You were so sexy and slutty. Your eyes were wet with desire and let out your voice with every thrust and took me in so tightly it was like you wanted to pull me in deeper." Sometimes the description is sexier than actually seeing a sex scene.

Hug Me on the Canvas! (Canvas wo dakishimete) by Nangoku Banana (first post here). First of all, very nice art again. And the whole body painting thing is just so drool-worthy. What topped it off for me was how the uke was trying to convince himself that their relationship was about desire, and had nothing to do with love. I wonder what will make him realize that he's just deluding himself?

And then I started wandering around the vast BL novel-land on amazon japan, amusing myself by reading blurbs:

Iro-kasane by Goh Shiira and Takaguchi Satosumi is about a brilliant counterfeit artist who is asked to draw a gay love scene. In order that the artist understand the pleasures of gay sex, his client ties him up one night and rapes in in front a mirror, telling him to look carefully...I'm almost tempted to buy this, because the set-up is so amusing and the cover art is appealing. :P

Sabaku no ou wa ryu wo daku (The desert king fucks the dragon) by Shudoh Rena and Light Graph II. I was attracted by the stupid title. This doesn't have a blurb, but the reviews are hilarious! From what I can gather a wounded yakuza (with a dragon tattoo) is found and rescued by a prince who happened by. One reviewer took the story to be a comedy, because so many improbable things happen starting with the intense sex the two engage in waaay before the yakuza is even close to being healed. She apparently had a good time laughing while reading the story. XD

Ookami datte koi wo suru (Even wolves fall in love) by Wakatsuki Kyoko and Sugahara Ryu. Again, the title drew me, but this time the blurb was enough to make me laugh. The poor uke, a high school student, gains two hot guys as step-brothers thanks to their respective parent's marriage to each other. The problem? Every night the two brothers turn into "wolves" and sneak into his bed. I guess there must be much threesome-ness in this one...

a day at the bookstore

I spent several nice hours at a local bookstore drinking chai and perusing through books and magazines. One book that caught my eye was Hawaii: True Stories of the Island Spirit, a collection of short essays on Hawaii. There were entries with their share of romanticism but the decent prose made them readable. One called "Honolulu Mamas" by Robert Strauss, halfway through the book, made me howl with laughter. It was about the trip to Hawaii the author and his wife took with their respective mothers. It was so funny I had to write it down and type it up to share:

( the excerpt )

In contrast, I was flipping through the November 2005 Conde Nast Traveler magazine when I came upon an article called "Before There was Paradise." It was about the leper colony at Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai. It was eye-opening for me. I knew about it as it is just common knowledge here as well as taught in school, but I didn't realize just how bad it was at the beginning. Being a leper was criminalized and people suspected were hunted down and exiled to this little natural prison. They were just dumped there to fend for themselves. What I also didn't know was that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Hawaii's image in the US was basically that of a leper colony. Clerks who compiled the yearly index of stories published in the New York Times notated entries under "Hawaiian Islands" with the words "See 'Leprosy.'" Only when businessmen in Hawaii became desperate to change its image did they do something about bringing order to the colony. They even did a PR campaign, with things like hiring Jack London to come over and tour the place to write a piece on it. Apparently it backfired when after writing a very acceptable news article, he wrote a piece of fiction describing lepers as horrible monsters. ^_^; In any case, a very fascinating article.