Musical Otaku - Writing

WRITING

On This Page:
-	LARP Stories and Con Reports
-	Predator - The Slash Novel
-	Film Composers Parody Stories
-	Assorted Parody Writing
-	Fanfiction
-	Poetry
-	Online Roleplay
-	Archival Anime Reviews

I've always enjoyed writing. From a very young age, I drew and wrote my own graphic novels, and for a few fleeting years I had the ambition of doing it for a living. The discovery of computers sadly drew my attention away from that fantasy.
In 1994 and 1995 I attended the "Marathon de l'écriture" at my college, CEGEP André-Laurendeau. It was essentially an overnight 24-hour writing marathon, with a 1-page per hour quota. Both times, I believe I was the only one there to take it upon himself to write one continuing story from page to page throughout the entire night.
My most successful writing project in academic background was at that same college, in literature class. We had to author a story that mirrored Gulliver's Travels in its use of fantasy to depict jansenism. The minimum was around 4 pages; I wrote a sprawling 22-pages epic set in the Warhammer world that blew my teacher away.

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LARP Stories and Con Reports
Each time I attend a convention, I sooner or later always write a detailed account of the event. All these can be read on the convention & events page.
Although these can be viewed as nothing more than comprehensive journal entries, it's when I write dramatic accounts of LARPs (Live-Action Roleplay) that I really get to flex my writing muscles. Those roleplay events are nearly always multi-fandom, which means that Darth Vader is liable to run into Sailor Moon, and imbroglio generally ensues.
I always write my stories in-character and as accurately as I remember the events. Some of these events may seem too incredible and picture-perfect to have happened thus, but believe me, they really did. Sure, I'm the one who strings these words together into fanciful lines, but a lot of credit goes to my fellow LARPers, such as Holly and Linda and a host of others, who help make these adventures memorable in the first place. Below is a list of all my LARP reports.

Emperor Kuzco at Katsucon 2008

Kintaro Oe at Nekocon 2007

Hohenheim 'of Light' Elric at Otakon 2007

Duo Maxwell at AnimeNEXT 2007

Ranma Saotome at Katsucon 2007

Envy at Nekocon 2006

Alphonse Elric at Otakon 2006

Predator - The Slash Novel

'Schaefer's Team': The cast from Predator in chibi form.

Spurred on by my newfound interest in "Slash" (being the practice of taking existing material and pairing up its -often same-sex- characters), I decided to start my first novelization in 2005, and completed it in 2007. Predator had long been one of my favourite movies, but it was only then, through the practiced eye of a slasher, that I saw the movie for what it really was: a treasure-trove of slashy goodness.
Those who've always loved the film for its machismo and virility will no doubt be greatly destabilized to see its butch commandoes turned gay (all except one), but the purpose of this exercise (in addition to providing entertainment) is to make the reader re-watch the movie and exclaim: "My heavens, he's right, all these gay hints really are there!"
Because they are. Every gesture seen in the movie, every line heard, every action, every prolonged stare... I respected it all as I wrote this 300+ pages labour of love. I didn't change anything seen or heard in the movie, I just gave it a different underlying meaning. Below is a series of brief excerpts from the book.

Excerpts of Predator - The Slash Novel (First two pages of every chapter)

Film Composers Parody Stories
In the late 1990s, when I was an active member of the James Horner Shrine community, several silly threads gave way to some wacky improvised writing, some of which I saved and present below.

One of History's Greatest Moments Vol.1

One of History's Greatest Moments Vol.2

Assorted Parody Writing
Below are short humorous blurbs based off theatrical works and anime fandoms.

Haleth (A Lord of the Rings parody)

Hobson's Joke (A parody of Harold Brighouse's play 'Hobson's Choice')

There Once Was a Merchant from Venice, Whose Body Was Shaped like a... (A parody of Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice')

Humonculous Delight (Menu of a restaurant from the universe of 'Fullmetal Alchemist')

Fanfiction
I always felt fanfiction was never quite for me. I like that others do it, but I've always much preferred writing original works, myself. However, a great potential left unexplored in someone else's original work sometimes motivates me to explore said potential to the fullest. And so the following came about.

Shylock's Lament (A follow-up scene to Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice')

Poetry
When inspiration strikes, I sometimes pour my thoughts into poetry. I am unabashedly untrained in its ways, and hence make no pretense of writing anything that follows the rules of sonnets, alexandrine, hiakus or other such established poetic structure. I merely concentrate on symbolic contents, and rhyme (sometimes not even bothering with the latter).

Online Roleplay
In the mid-2000s, as a natural side-effect of attending cons and discovering slash, I started roleplaying online. This principle is essentially similar to traditional pen & paper roleplaying except without sheets, stats, experience points, dice or randomization. Instead, it's all about character interaction. There is no "combat" persay here, or "leveling up". Truly an art for the thespian roleplayer. It is also astoudingly good practice for all aspects one's writing style.
            They are usually played on a blogging site of some sort (LiveJournal is particularly popular), where each player creates an account for their character, and posts on public threads, typically describing the character's actions and thought process through a third-person perspective.
            In the past, I've played characters from Harry Potter (Luna Lovegood, Peter Pettigrew, May-Eye Moody, Walden MacNair, Mundungus Fletcher) and Star Wars (Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, Fi). Sadly, these Roleplay communities don't last forever, and it soon becomes impossible to track down past games. Below is a list of games I'm currently a part of.
- Kryten on 'Fractured Reality'
- Emperor Kuzco on 'Fractured Reality'

Archival Anime Reviews
Between the years 2001 and 2003, when I first started this site, I had a vision that it would serve as a kind of encyclopedia of anime, with extensive banks of pictures and reviews, all classified by series and character. A sort of Wiki of anime.
            Taking into account the volume of anime out there, I consider I actually did a laudable job tirelessly writing all these reviews and analyses. Although the structure for this anime database has long been taken offline, I felt it was a waste to just eraticate all these (sometimes lengthy and detailed) commentaries.
            And so I present them here. Enjoy.

- Blue Seed

Azusa Matsudaira

Daitetsu Kunikida

Kintaro Oe

Kome Sawaguchi

Mamoru Kusanagi

Momiji Fujimya

Murakumo

Sakura Yamazaki

Yoshiki Yaegashi

- Cardcaptor Sakura

Chiharu Mihara