Being that I completely forgot to mention it in my last post, I actually meant to lead up to a rambling of sorts on the feasibility of importing various cultural norms from the 97th Non-Administered World into the Midchilda setting of post-StrikerS Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha.

The gist of the matter is that going by Hard Science, there is no reason whatsoever for our holidays and traditions to turn up in any recognizable form for the native denizens of Midchilda. And yet, from the squishy softness of the sci-fi of MSLN, it somehow seems plausible for the characters to be celebrating Christmas or some such, albeit possibly by another name.

And seeing as this is, at base, an anime made in Japan for predominantly Japanese consumers, the holidays featured would be Japanese ones, as well as Japanese interpretations of international occasions. The canon has not, to my knowledge, dealt with this in any depth as such; there's the post-A's O-Hanami in the Sound Stage (third one, I think), which involves mainly the Uminari City set of people, the Wolkenritter (who've probably gone native), and the crew of the Arthra (who might conceivably have picked up on Lindy's slightly warped Japanophilia). Tanabata will probably be given a pass, since it'll be fairly obvious to all that the stars on Midchilda will probably not look the same as on Earth.

Yet, the possibilities for fanfiction are tempting. We could use Nanoha's knowledge of her own culture to introduce Vivio to the joys of Hinamatsuri; Subaru and Ginga could have picked it up from Genya, and Caro from Fate (who, in turn, probably learned of it from Lindy or the Takamachis). Christmas-analogues are so common among the softer edge of speculative fiction, especially those marketed at a mass enough audience, that it is within the realm of Keeping To The Spirit of the Nanoha-verse to include something like it, particularly as Christmas is seen as a primarily romantic holiday in Japan. The religious aspects might be interpreted through the Church of the Sankt Kaiser, which could lead to some awkwardness on the part of Vivio.

All of this (and the previous post) was actually inspired from something which I took for granted when writing anime fanfics: Valentine's Day. The complex interplay of Will She Or Won't She, shading into Is She Or Isn't She, revolving around the one emotion which makes it all indispensible: hope. On a less dramatic note, there's always the puppy love image (although with the Three Years Later of the SSX sound stage, the dynamics have gotten more… interesting) of Caro and her handmade chocolates presented shyly to a furiously-blushing Erio. Of course, if we're willing to break the mood with some comedy, Lutecia could be standing by with her own handmade chocolates, Ensuing in Hilarity.

Which is still quite tame, compared to the potential of my favourite StrikerS duo.

Teana: Just so we're clear, this is obligation chocolate, and nothing more! Obligation chocolate! There's no deep or hidden meaning in this, okay?!
Subaru: ^_____^

The Time-Space Administration Bureau of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha oversees at least 97 "non-administrated" worlds, since Earth is number 97. The title of "non-administered" is distinct from "uninhabited", so we can assume that all of these worlds have some sort of population. The number of "administered" worlds is unknown, but is probably more than one. Depending on how accurately certain sources have been translated, the highest number I know of offhand is either 12 or 61.

Judging by events in the series, the Prime Directive is loosely enforced in the case of the non-administered worlds, and there is no injunction against revealing the existence of the TSAB when necessary.

Due to MSLN's position on the scale of sci-fi hardness at a general consistency of ketchup, we have yet to have any problems with language barriers, much less culture shock.

It's a bit hard to decide the traits for a brand new character who's supposed to seem a bit "foreign". Foreign to where? Japanese elementary school children can converse perfectly well with magical artefacts speaking in English, and do battle complete with banter with magically-constructed beings from several thousand years ago, who wield weapons speaking in German. Later, all of them head to an alien world where everyone speaks Japanese. We may postulate the existence of translator microbes, or some sort of magical equivalent, but That Way Lies Madness, where the soft sci-fi of MSLN runs head-on into the hard sci-fi tendencies of fandom.

For the sake of our collective sanity, we'll leave out of our considerations the creator in-joke of naming almost every significant character after a motor vehicle or associated aspect. This does provide for some odd mental images when I see an ad for the Nissan Teana.

The core media of MSLN is the anime, and it clearly eschews physical, sociological, and anthropological barriers in order to tell a Cool Story. Later, the extra materials of the Sound Stages, the manga, the DVD informational booklets, and random creator interviews attempt to explain away the inconsistencies after the fact, but these usually raise more questions than they answer.

Thus far, I've had to completely discard two entire fanfic uberplots due to canonical incompatibilities that have, in the anime, all the emphasis of a passing mention, or a single medium-sized manga panel. (Indeed, the first attempt was shot down because of a single manga panel, which I had hitherto not seen before.) Altering the plot is inconceivable, quite literally; an odd quirk in the way I formulate stories means that these uberplots are extruded whole, a complete work requiring only filler text to be presented as a finished item. On the upside, everything is tightly-plotted, and the guns of Anton Chekhov sound off in perfect time. On the downside, it's all a house of cards, and I don't think that I should continue the bizarre metaphors any longer than necessary.

All of this has given me a sort of blase attitude towards writing MSLN fanfic. While I try to scrutinize every aspect of my Card Captor Sakura fanfics for inconsistencies, the ever-changing canon explanations for How Things Work in the Nanoha-verse has led me to fall back upon the default answer of "Because". I shall have Vivio and several friends attempt a school project, botch it horribly, and then try to hide the results from Grown-Ups, at least until Nanoha-mama comes home and wonders why Zafira has grown thirty times his usual size. Is Vivio even able to do this? Isn't she supervised closely by the authorities? Would her accidental mischief be allowed to go that far? What of the laws of conservation of mass? I'm certainly open to suggestions, but as long as I can present a given quantity of fun, regardless of what readers think afterwards, then I consider my mission well and truly accomplished.

And yes, I have been criticized for this already. Not my stories, but my belief in just letting things be. The slippery slope is brought up quite often, as well as accusations that I have completely done away with Common Sense. I have yet to truly grok why the debating techniques used are so… antagonistic.

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It requires a bit of discipline, or at least a healthy amount of guilt, in order to stick to even the vaguest schedule for blogging. Best-laid plans and all that, however, expecially when one is laid low by Real Life and illness, thus reducing the available time for Deep Thoughts about anime. I could regurgitate yet another Nanoha GamerS comic, or a quick one-liner with regards to some new facet of the Summer Season in the 2008th Year of our Lord and Saviour Sephiroth the Pretty, but that feels a bit like cheating. So I'll shift one square to something in the general proximity of anime in general, even if it is not exactly blogging about anime as much as blogging about stuff related to anime.

In this case, anime fanfiction. Yes, again.

I'm still working on several pieces of fanfiction at the same time, in an astonishing display of multitasking that probably would be more impressive if it weren't about sock-puppeting fictional characters owned by other people into some semblance of plot and drama. One of these stories is, as has been mentioned before (and which I am too lazy to link to), something set in the universe, nay, multiverse of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, post-season three. I have a large and unfeasibly detailed timeline of events which spans one thousand and five hundred years, albeit clustered with specific dates in the periods where the stories actually take place. The cast stretches to, if not thousands, then at least Far Too Many to be comfortably introduced without the reader feeling like they've stumbled onto a Baby Picture conversation. (You know the type.)

This is considered par for the ficwriting course for me. What struck me hard enough to trigger a seed of blog post inspiration, and this is not very hard at all, was the assertion that since I have so many original characters, this was no longer a work of fanfiction, but original fiction instead.

I can, with some effort, understand the claim: after all, for the most part, fanfic readers wish to read about the canon characters, rather than the diseased creations of an amateur author's fevered imagination. What they want the canon characters to do is best left for another discussion, especially since I'm trying to keep this blog at least somewhat family-friendly. The gist is that since the canon characters take something of a backseat to the action in the fanfic, it is no longer worthy of that "fanfic" label. What it is to be called now is anyone's guess.

And yet, I cannot quite tell the story I wish to tell without both using the world of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, as well as relegating the canon characters to the sidelines, at the same time. This is not for lack of trying, but just that the story requires several character types who do not appear in a major capacity in the canon. In fact, the only one who qualifies is Yuuno, who was carefully set aside to the relegation bench from a large part of StrikerS, possibly due to possession of a Y chromosome.

The Nanoha-verse is large, varied, intriguing, and almost criminally unexplored. There is a great deal of background information in the setting that we simply Do Not Know, a limitation which apparently Seven Arcs share as well, considering how bizarre some of their explanations have been. (How many moons are there over Midchilda?) And the large majority of the canon character show absolutely no sign of interest in exploring these mysteries, preferring instead to blow things up. I have created my original characters almost by necessity, for lack of anyone else to act as the Watson to Yuuno's Sherlock.

If anyone else has any better idea on how to proceed, I'm certainly open to suggestions. Or, to be honest, I will be once I get over this accursed virus.

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