Fanfiction is one of those things which are forevermore shrouded in controversy, at least among fandoms. The arguments for and against are endless, and I don’t really want to have to deal with them right now, so we’ll just all agree to disagree, or perhaps agree to agree, as the case may be. I’m very agreeable at the moment, largely because agreeing with stuff might make them go away and stop bothering my and my headache.

However, I’ve noticed that there’s at least a significant contingent of people for whom fanfiction is not the Spawn of Slaanesh, and yet it holds no particular attraction of any sort. One of the most common refrains heard is: “I haven’t read any fanfics I liked.”

Cue the inevitable deluge of fanfic recommendations, of which this post is one. So it goes.

Trying to recommend fanfics to another person is extremely difficult, if only because due to its nature as entertainment, it is subject to personal opinions and tastes, which are, well, personal. Just because I like the idea of, say, crossing over Card Captor Sakura and Star Wars doesn’t mean that anyone else would, and it is in these tiny details which readers are converted or cast away.

So one of the myriad problems I have been facing for the past week or so is what seems to be a persistent illness which bears the symptoms of influenza, except not at the same time. In fact, I seem to be getting about a third to half of them at any one time: runny nose, aching muscles, fever, general feelings of discomfort, so on and so forth. I have yet to have all these strike me at once, which may or may not be considered small blessings.

The net result of this is that I have not been able to get much restful sleep. Yes, I know, world’s smallest stringed instrument and all that. However, it has interfered with my usual plans for posting anything other than Random Pictures, of which I keep forgetting if I have posted them before. And so, I’m going to try seeing if I can post as a more stream-of-consciousness deal for a while.

This means that I will probably not be posting anything of actual interest for a while, at least until I get several nights’ worth of sleep. (Or days. It’s the usual geek lament of not keeping sane hours.) You may interpret that as you wish.

Anyway. My continuing obsession with the gender-swap project as applied to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has not abated. It has, however, as with organisms under tremendous stress, mutated.

I should probably explain the situation as it stands in the AnimeSuki thread at the moment, although I must warn all interested parties that said situation is very fluid, and what may be the Truth now may not be the Truth when I wake up tomorrow, and it may well be a small rubber duck instead. (Or something.) To recap no, there is too much; to summarize, we have Suzumiya Haruki no Seitenkan, which translates more or less to “The Genderbending of Haruki Suzumiya” (”Haruki” is not a typo, and is indeed the name of the male version of Haruhi, achieved by thread consensus), and it is the Main Project towards which our efforts are bent, aha.

And then, rising from the murks of What If, we now also have something tentatively labelled Suzumiya Haruhi no Tsuji, which allegedly translates into “The Crossroads of Haruhi Suzumiya”.

The premise of SHnT (which I am choosing for the convenient acronym, since it looks better than CoHS, which reminds me too much of my MMORPG of choice) is that due to some uncertain cause, possibly quantum, the setting involves the canon characters, and their genderswapped twins. In other words, imagine a SOS Brigade headed by both Haruhi and Haruki Suzumiya, countered by the Dual Snark Action of Kyon and Kyonko.

Since doubling the world’s population would be out of the question, the thread’s consensus appears to be to leave most of the characters as their canon gender, and twin the characters who have received an image song CD of their own, plus Taniguchi and Kunikida, presumably for being themselves. This works out to be eleven extra characters to work in, which is no mean task.

Opinions are split on whether the SOS Brigade are aware that This Should Not Be, and how both Kyons will handle the realization that they are now kinda-sorta siblings, except much more complicated. An especially vocal contingent wishes to turn this into the script for a H-manga, whereby the solution to the problem of colliding worlds is for the Kyons to do the dirty.

It’s porn. It doesn’t have to make sense.

Since the SHnT project is somewhat splintered at the moment, I’m considering taking up the banner of what has been called the GuruGuruMawaru faction, after the lyrics for the opening theme of the first season of School Rumble, which takes love polygons to relatively absurd levels that nevertheless make some variety of sense if you start from the very beginning. This will be decidedly non-H, and the premise is that everyone has been twins from the beginning (whether this is Haruhi-influenced is undecided, but the important thing is that Kyon and Kyonko are unaware of this), although it will probably be rather confusing, if only for the huge cast of characters.

I’m in the middle of a draft of such a story even now. Kyonko takes the role of the viewpoint character, if only because, freed from the constraints of sticking so closely to the text of the original novels, I can let loose my impression of what a snarky female narrator might be. It will not be a pleasant experience for the targets of her barbs.

We have descended deep into the pits of fanfictional fantasy, and only time will tell whether any of us will be able to claw our way back out, changed by our experiences, in whatever direction.

And so, on the last day of the year Two Thousand And Seven of our lord and saviour Sephiroth the Pretty Kefka the Disturbing, I have once again engaged in Deep Dental Diving and ingested my daily dose of painkillers, hopefully for the last time, if only because I have a limited supply of brain cells teeth.

Being that I am mentally unsound to provide a post of actual value, I shall instead provide you with one picture from what I believe to be Comp H’s 2007 calendar, one year late.

If it helps, imagine the female three-fifths of the SOS Brigade giving the year a send-off, instead of welcoming it in.