I realize that this anime blog is, as I always mention, intended for moe, and all it entails. It's not so much a genre as a style, an additional feature that can stand on its own (regardless of whether it should), but can also be added to another show as akin to a condiment. It is, in the popular definition, a set of traits and personality types which converge, however eventually, to a common point.

Even so, there is one particular form of moe which has never quite grabbed me in the same way as, say, glasses or silence. Strangely enough, at least in the Anglophone anime fandom, it appears to be the most popular, or rather the one with the most vocal contingent. It is a personality type that relies on being abusive, insulting, and unpleasant towards their target audience, in the hopes of some sort of payoff at the end. This is, of course, the tsundere.

This is one of those words which has no real English equivalent. It is difficult to explain with a definition, but somewhat easier to provide examples of. The vague idea has been around for somewhat longer than anime itself, but only reached its current form, complete with a Platonic ideal and a parodifiable stereotype, quite recently. TVTropes, as usual, has an article.

This post will be rather different from my previous posts on the aspects of moe, in that I don't actually understand this particular variety. (This must be how non-moe fans feel about us.) So I'll be relying on other people to explain why they like tsundere characters; in this case, a friend of mine who would like to go on the record as insisting that he is not speaking for all of the tsundere fandom, but merely his own personal tastes.

Since I am incredibly biased, I get to go first.

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One bit of advice most frequently heard among blog comments, generally in the vicinity of blog posts about blogging itself, is to Write What You Want, and from there Write What You Know. Which may be all well and good, but this runs smack into the adage of Knowing Your Audience: if your Audience doesn't Know what You Know, then whatever has been Written is likely to go unRead.

Then again, I never promised anything other than two pings on your chosen RSS feed per week, whether or not these pings are of any use. So it goes.

If forced to identify myself in the overall hierarchy of fandom, I would place my name firmly in the nebulous mass of the fanfic writers. Considering the reputation fanfic has among the other parts of fandom, and the derision that fanfic writers themselves (I do not say "ourselves" because I've never done it personally; I am in the subsection of lazy fanfic writers, far too lazy to bother commenting on other people's fanfics) heap upon fanfics which do not meet some arbitrary standard of plot, it is perhaps not surprising that I am quite comfortable by now with my reputation for having no taste whatsoever.

Even worse, I happily commit the sin of creating new characters for use in my own fanfics. These are labelled "original characters", which I suspect provides for a nice shorthand label of "OC", like "AU" or "gen". This is odd, since these characters are not exactly original, save in the sense that they are not native to the canon.

Some of the time, this is because I needed a personality type that is not available in the series itself: Card Captor Sakura was lacking in the deadpan Spineless Harem Comedy Character type, which led to ten-year old Ichiro Onosaka and his unrequited crush on Tomoyo Daidouji. Mostly, however, I just thought that it would be so cool to be a character in that world, and so I create Significant or Powered characters to live vicariously through. Self-inserts, essentially, except with different names, personalities, and pretty much everything except wish-fulfilment.

Such characters, and their authors, are often claimed to be the scum of the Internet, implying that we are worse than 4chan, which has to be an incredible achievement in its own right. It is seen to be in bad taste; since I am a primary fan of Moe Fanservice Anime, though, I have no shame.

And then there are the Mary Sues. This term has been bandied about the Internet for so long that it should need no explanation, but since I'd rather not simply assume, we shall work on the definition that a Mary Sue is a character who is so powerful, so perfect, and so well-loved, that she (or he, for that matter; such are called Marty Stus, or Gary Stus, or some such) overshadows the canon characters. The astute reader may immediately spot the problem with this definition (namely, the sheer subjectivity of every important term), which is probably why the term "Mary Sue" has been argued about for as long as it has existed in the fandom consciousness.

As an example, let me show you them introduce to you one of my favourite original characters to write, a Mary Sue from the marginally-post-StrikerS era of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, Lumina Celeste.

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There is, I have found, a difference between being a fan, being part of a fandom, and simply liking something. An excellent illustration can be seen with the Fallout games: there is the fan-ness of being a fan of the games, and there is the fan-ness of liking the games. These are not mutually inclusive, as is the status of being in the Fandom. As an example, I like the games, and I will be happy to discourse upon them with any others holding the same view, but since I like Fallout 3 a great deal more than Fallout 2 (I have not played Fallout 1 or Fallout Tactics yet), I have been firmly told that I am not a "true fan", and therefore I am forevermore barred from being in the Fandom.

This is not a new position for me. Throughout my years of being in Internet fandoms, I have been in the general vicinity of American comics fandoms, but apart from Astro City, I have yet to really delve into the foetid depths of the convoluted histories of the various popular comics characters. I realize that life in comics is not all about Marvel and DC, but considering what the stores here actually stock, I have to wonder sometimes. And so, when I joined the community at the American Superhero Comics Inspired MMORPG City of Heroes, I have been shunned by some for not coming to the game from the viewpoint of a comics fan. I mean, I really like Astro City, but apparently that is not enough.

Yes, I understand that this is a minority view, and I have been given a sort of pass on the basis that I like CoH/V due to my anime-esque ideas. Apart from my well-known constant requests for More Magical Girl Costume Options, I still await the advent of Paper Control, partly because I can make my own Read or Die Paper Master, and partly because the ofuda-slinging Combat Miko is a common staple in supernatural-oriented anime.

In any case, since this is an anime blog, I have to tie this in to anime. The obvious link here is in the reputation fans have, due to the fandom they may or may not be a part of: if you should feel favourably inclined towards, say, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, you may call yourself a Haruhiist, or you may not, depending on how much a part of the fandom you are. There is no shame in being a fan but not being in the fandom: gods know I'm perfectly happy to put a great deal of distance between my being a Fallout fan, even if not a True Fan, and the Fallout fandom, who I would imagine know what constitutes being a True Fan, ie not me.

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Now that I have actual Free Time that does not need to be taken up by worrying about what I should be doing instead of what I actually am doing, I am burrowing through my anime collection to rewatch the shows I keep meaning to rewatch. This is because if I don't take advantage of this now, I may never be able to do so, and my anime collection ceases to be of any use other than as collectors themselves, this time of dust.

It's also a good way to realign my memories of what I remember an anime to be with what it actually is. I rediscover things that I've forgotten, both good and bad, and the results can be surprising. For some reason soundtracks tend to be easier on the ears on older anime, compared to the somewhat forgettable BGMs of many (but not all) anime today. This could be sample bias at work, of course: the fact that I own these anime to be able to rewatch (and have not, say, given them away) means that they have some quality which makes them Worth Having, and good music might as well be one of them. After all, newer anime which I also own on DVD (Lucky Star, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) also have great soundtracks.

Of course, older anime also fails in terms of technology, with bad transfers, horrible picture artifacts, indistinct and warbly audio, and the evils of Scanavo cases.

In terms of character designs and plots, I… don't see much difference, honestly. Advances in animation have let studios tell flashier stories, yes, but that's just fluff. For what really matters, I don't see any hidden and common trait to older anime which makes them inherently superior to newer ones. If it's good, it's good. If not, it's not.

Again, though, this could be sample bias. I may not be seeing much difference in, say, the amount of moe-ness, because I only collect anime which have a given amount of moe anyway: my gateway anime was Ranma 1/2, and my gateway manga was Love Hina, so I know what I like.

Nostalgia tends to exaggerate emotions and opinions in odd ways. This has also convinced me that anyone who says that anime is unconditionally So Much Better Way Back When has no idea what they are talking about.

I'd link to a Mary Sue Litmus Test, but considering the sheer variety of these out there, I doubt that any one of them is truly representative of all the rest. Considering how much they've been copied-and-pasted, I suspect that while there may be an original (for the Gargoyles fandom, I believe) and several generic ones, they all strive for some strange Platonic ideal that can be viewed, however dimly, only by taking these in aggregate. Some questions are fandom-specific, and some are not. Even those that appear out of place may need to be asked anyway, to account for the stories where the main character is a fan of some contemporary pop or rock group while simultaneously being a native of some fantastic time, be it in the far future or distant past.

I should probably mention here that I don't actually have anything visceral against the Mary Sue. I believe that all the accusations thereof can be boiled down to simple Bad Writing, which is too general a thing to be confined to a single cause. Besides, I used to be a member of the Mary Sue Appreciation Society (RIP Kielle), primarily for the reason that writing, or at least amateur writing, should be fun, and if a Sue is involved, so be it.

Anyway. The main reason I brought up the Litmus Test is that their degree of usefulness can be determined by reversing the purpose, and testing the tests themselves. The example character to put through the questions is not some canon or well-accepted character, but yourself. As in, your Real Life self.

If you've existed for a sufficient period of time (late teens or so) and had a somewhat varied life, chances are you'll score at least in the "Danger" section, and very likely in the "Outright Mary Sue" category. The (un)luckier of us might even reach "Uber-Sue", the highest goal that may be achieved. The points come from surprising places: for example, if I discount my scattershot knowledge of Japanese (as well as my efforts at Klingon), I am still relatively fluent in three languages (English, Mandarin Chinese, Bahasa Indonesia), which is apparently a Sue trait, despite also being part of my cultural heritage. In fact, simply being Asian (the tests seldom distinguish between East Asian or South Asian or whatever) is worth Sue points. Considering the overall population of the world, this has always struck me as odd.

On an intriguing tangent, anime fanfiction fandom in general reverses this: in a standard Japanese setting, a "foreign" character (often labelled "gaijin", or "outside person"/"outsider", which is one of the many Japanese terms made popular in Anglophone communities by anime fandom, despite the more appropriate "gaikokujin", or "person from another country") has the same connotations as "Asian" characters in more Western fandoms. Exotic, different, special… basically a "look at me!" attention-grabber, which is, at base, the point of a Mary Sue.

I've always held that the Litmus Tests are originally meant to be jokes. Unfortunately, I've met both creators and takers of the tests who treat them with the utmost seriousness, so apparently I am mistaken.

The point of all of the above ramblings is that as an audience, we tend to have strange definitions of "realism" when it comes to characters. I submit that we do not, as such, want "realistic characters". Instead, we want simplified versions of what we believe to be realistic characters. (Yes, I know about exceptions. I'll get to them in a much later post.)

A passage in The Science of Discworld II alludes to the idea that while we place our own freedom of will pretty importantly, socially we don't expect anyone else to have any. This can be seen in the phrases "not himself" and "out of character", which we often apply when a character is acting in an unexpected manner, and our reactions and expectations of the reasons behind those actions. We're happiest, the book notes, when the explanation turns out to remove the element of free will from the situation (doing it under duress, or doing it for a bet, or whatever). Of course, the question I'm interested in is not that we don't expect others to have free will, but whether we have free will in the first place, especially if we do have it, but our choices are constrained by what other expect us to act like, or just our own mental and moral boundaries.

Therefore, an actual "real" person would be far too complicated to present to the viewer. This is partly a limitation of the sense of narrative which a work of fiction has to establish: yes, I can speak three languages, but that is not always relevant to whatever story I might self-insert myself in. A viewer expects not to see a person, but a bundle of character traits mushed together, the same way we see everyone else around us.

And the average viewer will probably have some character traits they like, and some they don't. Thus, the more "complex" (ie the more character traits they have) a character, the more likely that one of these undesirable traits will sneak inside. Sometimes these are excusable, or easily overlooked in favour of the more welcome traits, and so they get filed away under "bad, but trivial, habits", or some such. After all, we do the same in Real Life every time we meet someone new.

A "realistic" character is thus someone who presents to us the right number and type of character traits, that we may assign them some convenient mental labels in the same way we do in Real Life. The difference is that the Real Life version tends to have more, while the character can be a mere hollow shell in comparison. There is, after all, no need for further expansion of the character, without going into irrelevancies: we know quite a lot about Nanoha's character, for example, but we don't know much about her opinions (if any) on the Hanshin Tigers. Mind you, our beliefs intertwine and affect each other to a large degree, so Nanoha's views on, say, the global economy may be influenced by her general political views, and knowing those would help us write her "in character", even in non-political situations.

So take a bundle of character traits, and make that bundle bigger. Add in more traits, more aspects, more personality parts… and you'll find yourself ticking off plenty of Mary Sue traits in a Litmus Test. Whereas if you have just a few character traits in that bundle, the character is accused of being "bland" and "cookie-cutter". Their bundle-ness becomes more pronounced and obvious, rather than hidden behind the mask of being a character.

This isn't a one-dimensional sliding scale, or any scale of any sort. The Mary Sue is unwelcome not so much because they can do everything (to exaggerate the position), but because they do everything, or at least the major stuff. It's possible to have an Uber-Sue according to the Litmus Tests and have a bland, cookie-cutter character who doesn't register on the narrative at all; if the character doesn't get a chance to exhibit all that competence, there's no spotlight to hog.

It's an interesting balance, different for every character and every viewer. This is why some characters can seem like two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs to some fans, and also well-defined, realistic epitomes of what a character should be designed as to others. If all else fails, there is always the equally human tendency to project our desires and hopes onto a relatively blank slate, writing narratives in our heads for what an ill-described character should be like. Frequently-encountered tropes help with this: recall Konata's insistence that the twintail hairstyle is a common feature of tsundere characters, and vice versa.

Or, of course, I could just be talking out of my arse.

A great deal of virtual ink, which is nothing like actual ink save when used in a metaphor, has been spilled on the popularity of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It is fast becoming a sort of shibboleth, to identify those who have crossed the threshold to become a hardcore anime fan, by which I mean the sort to attend conventions and spend actual money on merchandise, official or otherwise. Like Neon Genesis Evangelion, whatever your feelings on the show itself, at least you have heard of it, especially if you actually do attend a convention. Also like NGE, it is probably not a very good first anime to introduce to the non-fan.

One of the many criticisms I have seen levelled at MoHS is that Haruhi is Not A Nice Person. From the viewpoint of a person watching the show for the first time, she's selfish, she's rude, she's arrogant, and her actions either border on or cross said border into anti-social personality disorder, depending on how charitable one is feeling. Yes, she gets better over time, but that does not change the truth-value of that descriptor at the beginning of the series, and from certain actions throughout.

The question is then posed: "how can you like a character like that?"

The answer I always give is "I don't." Which often requires me to clarify the differences between "don't like", "dislike", and "hate" (a matter of degree, with "don't like" meaning a mere lack of attraction). And then I am asked why I love the show when I don't like the main character, which kind of leads to a rather longer answer.

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While I commented on Lupus's post on the advantages of watching raw over subbed, it was Zaitcev's casual dismissal of said comment (and, apparently, my mental capacity) which made me wonder why I didn't have a problem with subs.

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One of the things I've often been told to capital-C Consider is my capital-A Audience, which means you. You, the reader, and those who, like you, are reading this blog at this moment for whatever reason, all lumped together in one statistical bundle, where you might find yourself sharing your personal space with people who do not yet exist, mere hypotheticals who may or may not read these ramblings in the future, but have the potential to do so. Like Schroedinger's famous feline, we will not know unless we actually take a look.

When I started this anime blog, I had in mind an Audience of One, namely myself. This was supposed to be just a repository of all the random thoughts about anime I happened to have, where I can actually wax enthusiastic about my primary hobby and interest, without appearing too creepy to the non-anime fans on my Livejournal friendslist. (There are a few, surprisingly enough. They know of anime, but they're just not interested, and I can understand entirely.)

Almost twenty months later, I have to finally admit that there are actual flesh-and-blood people out there who are interested in what I have to say. I'm not sure what you see in this blog, and I'm not sure what I'm doing right (or wrong), but it's pretty good for my ego.

Now that I have an Audience, I must Consider this. I could just ask "so what are you here for?" and sift through the comments, but apparently this will be a biased sample, of only those who care enough to leave a comment. Also, I've been told that this method is too anecdotal. I dunno, I never scored very well at Statistics.

So we'll just have a look at what Wordpress.com Stats tells me. This will presumably include the hits by spambots, so there's the grain-of-salt thing and all that.

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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.