Fannish Anomalies

By Jeanne

1. 'This ML is like my family.'

As people often say, understandably. A ML is your group, where people are prepared to tolerate your quirks and kinks in a way that most families won't. They act the way you wish your family would act, and you often feel closer to the members than you do to your parents.

But the word from those who can read these things is that the Chinese go us one better in their bulletin boards. There they actually act like families, down to the assigned roles. And the foundation of the family being marriage, well, they get married. Traditionally. A matchmaker decides that author A and author B would make a lovely couple and proposes a union. If it's not at once apparent, there may be a little discussion about who's the wife and who's the husband. After that the husband gets to work providing a home- another BB- and the wife gets to work providing a dowry- so many stories on such and such a theme. Being husband is more work, I hear.

Anyway the happy couple and their friends- who are called younger sisters and older sisters and older brothers etc- all move off to the new BB and the new 'family' sets up housekeeping/ discussion/ ongoing role-playing, simultaneously. As my anonymous informant says, "When a writer posts on a BBS she becomes a husband or wife to someone, and she knows to be gallant with the wife, charming and flirtatious with the other girls, and funny and lighthearted with the children." And all is merry as a wedding bell.

Until a disagreement arises and the wife goes back home to her original BB. The disagreement may centre about the kind of stuff we westerners argue about in original fic, because of course almost all Chinese fan writing is original m/m. The permissibility of real people slash, say, or the excesses of PWPs. Though they don't argue about Mary Sues. Asians in general seem not to do Mary Sues, and it might be interesting some time to speculate why not. When husband and wife divorce, naturally the family takes sides. Quote again: "There are several on-going family feuds -- that's the only way I can describe them, because they're not like mailing list wars or blog wars. Since the BBS are modelled after families, with aunts and uncles and sister-in-laws and brother-in-laws, the wars are divided along familial lines as well. Sometimes you have to pick your loyalty, when you're related to both families." And the poor matchmaker is left mourning 'But they made such a lovely couple.'

If things really get nasty one may write a story and name the uke character after their despised ex, and then have the usual nasty uke things happen to him. In Chinese fan stories, the uke can't get out of bed for a week following sex. It's just a traditional topos, like Iya! Dame! in Japanese stories. 'That'll teach her not to offend *me*!' Writers act like divas over there. None of this western modesty: they're stars and they know it. They have violent rages and monumental temper tantrums, sometimes expressed in (get this) classic Chinese verse.

I have to say I find all this charming. We have adoring fans who -sama their favourite fanwriters, but democratic principles dictate that writers themselves must never overtly take precedence one over another, however many fangirls they have in their wake. Certainly we never have to decide which fanwriter is (basically) the seme with respect to any other one. Though if you start thinking along those lines... Uhh, no. On second thought, better not to start thinking along those lines. And as for the family feuds, I think they add a note of grace and interest to what are, after all, simply the Chinese version of flame wars. Somehow the role-playing framework adds a little distance, a touch of fiction, to an ordinary disagreement.

And class, my god, is it classy. When was the last time you saw anyone over here expressing their rant in Latin hexameters, or even a Petrarchan sonnet?

2. Wonders never ceasing...

Well well well well well. The Japanese yaoistas have discovered muscle men. The Japanese yaoistas have discovered gay male art styles. The Japanese yaoistas are drawing dudes hung like horses and bursting out of their jockstraps. Go here and check it out. It's part of a webring for people who like this sort of thing. If your browser doesn't read Japanese, the bottom farthest right button takes you next, the one to the left of that takes you back, and the one before that gives you random. Oh, it's female drawn yaoi. There's the josei muke warning: for women. Read the dialogue. 'Eeeeeei, isn't Ba-chan so cuuuuuuute?'(heart heart squeal) (And you gotta love Japanese warnings. 'Chotto matte!! You really want to come in here? It's all guy/guy stuff. You're sure you want to come in here? It's got these guys all over each other. You're *sure* you want to come in? You're sure you won't regret it? You can go elsewhere by any of these doors below--- (several 'emergency exit' graphic links, one of which goes to a useful page listing the members of the current cabinet) Use whichever one you like. You're *really* /sure/ it's OK?? Enter.')

3. Hon'yakusha no Namida 2- A Translator's Tears

• Katte. I hate katte. 'Arbitrary, high-handed, doing exactly as I please and screw everyone else.' Slops over into selfish sometimes and arrogant sometimes, but isn't exactly either of them. Emphasis I think is on the self-centredness of putting your own desires above the convenience of others and imposing your opinions on other people, which is why we don't seem to have a single word to translate it. That's called self-directed and assertive here, and is valued as an expression of individualism. Individualism is not prized Over There.

  Depending on usage there are ways to translate around the word. 'Katte ni shiro!'- Do whatever the hell you like. 'Katte na koto wo shita no wa, ore dattan desu yo'- well, I'm the one who just went and did whatever so... (it's not your fault or don't feel responsible etc.) But 'Katte sugiru!? 'That's too katte.' Don't know what to do with that one.

• Ketchi. Means stingy in its original sense, and there's room for a discussion on the whole stinginess thing in Japanese culture cause there's a lot of it, just as there is in British culture. That value got left out of American colloquial, is all I can say. Ketchi takes in both senses of the word 'mean'- stingy and unkind. Kids say Keeetchi!! when you won't do what they want you to, so it kind of segues into No fair! and Meeanie. But ketchi also takes in the whole 'dog in the manger' idea, which Americans have lost entirely. 'I can't have it so you can't have it either.' What's the word for that? Minekura dumps her publishing company and goes elsewhere. Her publishing company sits on the six eps of the manga she did for them and says We won't release these as a tankoubon for three years. And you can restart the series in your new place but you can't release those eps for three years either. Now, that's ketchi, but what my English reflexes say under the circs is Enix are being pigs. Nothing to do with stinginess at all.

• Taisetsu. Dear, precious, very important to me. This one is a pain because however natural it may be in Japanese, it's almost always unnecessary in English. 'I can't let him do that! He's my taisetsu little brother.' You don't have to tell us he's taisetsu. We already know. 'I can't let him do that! He's my *brother*!' We express the idea by vocal emphasis. The Japanese express it with a word. But translating the word can make rough tough yakuza sound twee.

• Kawaii. For exactly the same reasons. The Japanese are always telling you that some teenager or actual adult is 'my cute younger brother,' 'my cute little sister,' or even worse 'my cute young master.' You just don't say this in English. 'She's cute.' Fine. 'What a cute little dog.' Fine. But after people get over the age of maybe five, you stop referring to them as cute; and we never do call them 'my cute So-and-so.' We don't express this 'cute/ sweet/ hence lovable/ and I love him/ her' set of feelings with the actual word. 'Even though he was my kawaii son, I sent him to bed without supper' a Japanese would say. We say 'I love him a lot, but I sent him to bed without supper.'

• Shikaru. Scold, something no-one does any more. (Translates *fine* into Victorian English, she mutters.) We chew people out or give them a hard time. But an office worker wouldn't gasp over a mistake 'Ohh the section chief will scold me for this!' like a Japanese would. (Actually it's 'I will be scolded by the section chief' because Japanese likes the passive voice a lot more than English does.) 'Ohh the section chief'll be mad!' we say. And chew me out, but we don't mention that part