Some AU Chapter 122 fan-fiction; because Kio Shimoku can be a real demon of mis-direction when he wants to be. The only thing worse than being a stick-in-the mud, old-school cis het fanboy is being one with a plausible scenario that screws up everybody’s ships.
The Second President.
“Time to choose. This has gone too far”
Madarame turned to face them all.
“I choose Yoshitake Rika-san – but only if she dresses like a boy.
That got your attention, didn’t it?”
“Ok; Not!”
“I apologise to everyone. My deepest apologies to Kuchiki-san, whose celebration this trip is supposed to be for. Hold tight, I’m going to fix things for you.”
“My thanks to Yoshitake-san for trying to clear up the Harem, You were right, This could tear the club apart. Seeing what is happening tonight, I fear that it has already started. I must stop that even if it means ‘decide or leave‘.”
“I am the second President of the Genshiken, a club that I loved and am still very proud of. The new membership is different from my time, but in many ways just as exciting and even more productive. I will not be the reason that it breaks into pieces. I resign as harem-lead and circle-king.”
“Thank you Keiko Sasahara-san for your interest in me. You are right; like Saki-san, you stand in the riajuu world and can point out the obvious things that we miss. You are strong and beautiful… but I must consider the future. If we went out and it did not work, how could I ever face Sasahara-san or even Ogiue-san, your brother and your soon-to-be sister-in-law? Even while it worked it would be very uncomfortable. It is way too close; too much like a small village drama.”
Miss Susanna Hopkins. I am comfortable around you and I am very happy that you are now comfortable enough around me to look my way. What would happen if we ruined that?
You are a vital member of the club. I hope to watch you as your skills catch fire and you become a force at Comiket. And yet, neither of us know the slightest thing about real-world romance. The chance of it working is slim and the chance of bitter misunderstanding is high. And then I would never again be able to trade obscure otaku jokes with you.
That I could not bear.
Hato Kenjiro-san. How did we end up here? I tripped over you when we were both drunk and tired. You cooked for me and cleaned up after me when I broke my wrist. We both have a head full of fantasies swirling around us and most of the club looks at us as a pairing. I always said I didn’t mind… but I do mind! I don’t like being thought of as a sou-uke. And I don’t know if I can be a forceful seme either. These fantasies leave no room for me to just be me, a guy.
You gave me Valentines day chocolate and I felt something. Earlier I told you that I was not afraid of trying it, even as you tried to persuade me to give up. Thank you for your objections; If anything they re-doubled my interest. I don’t think I have turned gay and I don’t see you only as a guy or only as a girl. I wanted all of you. I have become greedy.
But you made your point. And we missed two bigger issues. Neither of us have the slightest idea of how to do 3D romance, let alone that we are two guys. I don’t think that is so much of a big deal; unless we try to behave like something in your dojins or in my trap games. That will not work, I guarantee that. And then we will grow to hate each other.
Right now, you are drawing, you can become a dojinshi artist, you might even follow Ogiue as semi-pro or pro. And you are an important member of the club. You said it yourself: If something was to go wrong, we would never speak again. And I fear that even if nothing went wrong, how you fit in with the rest of the club would be forever changed. You say that if I can understand that you have thought of both MadaHato and HatoMada that you will stop running. You have made me think of both of these and all the junk in my head from my trap games too.
And I am not afraid.
But I have also thought of how much effort you have put into becoming a fujoshi. I said I understood that you were a fudanshi. And you said you were a fudanshi. I was wrong and you are wrong. You are not a fudanshi, you have never wanted to be a fudanshi. You are a fujoshi. You are as real a fujoshi as the rest of the women in the Genshiken.
As a fujoshi you fit into the club. As a crossdressing fudanshi with a boyfriend, you de-stabilize the club, you break the magic circle, you destroy all the work you have done, you risk your friendships, you threaten the club. You can call me a coward but I have seen you with your first love. I have heard your true heart beat doki-doki.
I will not stand between it and you.
Had the stars been different, something different might have happened. Even now I hope that I can be your friend. But I am not your sou-uke. I am not your seme. I cannot even be your love. I must be your sempai, the second president of the Genshiken, who served this club and passed it on to Sasahara-san who passed it on to Ohno-san, as she passed it on to Ogiue-san. One day, it might be passed to you.
I will protect what was entrusted to me.
Susana-san, do you recognise the line: “No one will be happy. Everyone will be equally unhappy together”? That is the Japanese way. I will get my bags, catch the late train, get home, start looking for a job and think of moving close to it when I get one. I will see you all at Comiket, and maybe at the University culture fair. Do not disappoint me, become great.
Kuchiki, I return to you your harem fantasy. Don’t break it.
(Much angry grumbling from the group)
I am so full of shit right now that I am going to explode.
That cannot be helped. And I leave the story without a good ending.
I will try one last small hope. I will “look with unclouded eyes” at the one who has been right in front of me all this time.
Angela-san. (Ohno please translate – I must get a smart phone to help translate) I thank you for your earlier suggestion, but I would not care to be shared with you… or to share you. (pause) I think I would want you all for myself. (pause)
I hope that does not disappoint you. (pause) I know you have a wicked sense of humor. I thought that you were just playing with me when you went on about my fingers and stuff, but then you keep travelling all this way to come here. Thousands of miles, so many times! (pause) I know it is fun to visit with Ohno and Sue and the club, but I have been a fool not see anything else. I could be wrong. (pause) …But you were ‘first girl‘. First Girl always wins – if you still want to. (pause)
You are beautiful and scary and powerful and funny and I apologise for all the times that I have run away. I never meant to hurt your feelings. Please forgive me. I must learn from my friend Hato-san. (pause)
It is my turn not to run away any more. (pause)
And long distance does not look so far away any more. (pause)
Also; forgive me for being calculating, but if I am a complete loser and you dump me, It won’t hurt the club. I am new at this, please treat me well. Tell me soon how you feel.
I love you all. Speaking from my true heart and as your sempai and as the Second President of the Genshiken, this is my final decision.
And now I need another drink.”
-30-
C’mon! You have to admit it WORKS. Uses all extant parameters, dissolves the harem in such a way that everyone saves face, appeals to hierarchy and responsibility getting in the way of true whatever, leaves lots of room for happy fantasies, makes our loser hero so damn noble – he can snap to when put in an executive role – and lets him jump on the grenade heroically.. Only Angela can save his sorry ass if she wants to.
The fear of a runaway-harem-train-crash might be enough to overcome the fear of a sexy blonde gaijin bombshell who thinks he is cute. Pretty easy heroic sacrifice. Twist the other arm. Ooooh you forced me!
Booo Hisss Cheat! Yell the pro-Hato faction. Of course. I admit it.
Just sayin’. That’s why the patriarchy is a rat-bastard. It is always too easy. It owns all the default settings. The game is called Monopoly for a reason.
Doesn’t mean that I don’t think the pro-Hato forces of truth and justice aren’t up for the good fight:
Madarame: Hato, you’re the only one I can be forward with.
Madarame: Whatever’s stopping you from accepting that we could be serious with each other, I’ll help ease your worries.
Madarame: Seriously, don’t think the fact that we’re both guys means that we can’t work out together.
Madarame: Dang yeah, I’ve definitely thought about topping you.
Madarame: Sure man, I get that choosing you means I’ll have to consider role-reversal when it comes to sexy times.
Madarame: (literally in front of every one else, including the girls who are openly vying for his attention) Okay let’s continue our date in private, Hato.
Fuckboys: UHM YEAH, MADAHATO? IT’S JUST NOT REALISTIC. WHEN IS HE GETTING TOGETHER WITH SUE.
– muravie’s Tumblr
And:
“I’ve given up on trying to convince those types. Even if Kio dedicated an entire chapter to Hato and Mada getting it on in graphic detail, they’d still find a way to NO HOMO out of it like “Naw man he tripped and accidentally slipped his penis into Hato and because it was dark he couldn’t tell it was a man he was fucking so totes no homo Sue end when lmao”.”
#their tears are delicious though #they sustain me
-andialex’s tumblr
Even without the deep draughts from the tear bucket, they do make a persuasive set of arguments:
“Without a DOUBT Madarame is way more interested in Hato than any of the others he went on dates with, that’s just utterly blatant. And they’re able to discuss all this so candidly! They’re both trying their best to be totally honest with each other and say how they really feel and what they need and what they want, and it’s all looking just really good and really healthy, you know?
I feel like if they got together, they could have really good communication and that goes such a LONG way in a relationship. They could work out for sure, they really could.
This chapter IS beautiful, oh man. ;_; I love them both.””
-Hatomada’s Tumblr
Point taken. Well pitched. The “Fuckboy” contingent has been letting our end of the argument slip a bit. I fix.
I, or anyone else can write fanfic sequels where Angela told Madarame to go fuck himself, she is nobody’s last choice. Mada leaves, moves away and occasionally pops up again at conventions. (Which begs another question; where are the older Genshiken alumni?)
Or Angela and Madarame walk off into the sunset. Or Hato lends Rika boy clothes and they walk off into the sunset. Or Hato grabs Mada after the speech and sweeps him off his feet in a tango smooch. Or zombies attack just as Madarame is about to reveal who he has chosen.
For a manga about fans who take the stuff they love and make their own stuff to add to the love, there is a serious need for more Genshiken fanficton. Not to be a pest, but Hatozine Vol2 please! I’ll read it. I’ll help. Sorry, I have not enough cred to org it.
Now what do I do with this? I put it up here on this blog of course. Feel free to toss noodles at my ears via the comment section.
What next? I don’t think Kio Shimoku or any of his crew troll obscure English language blogs or English Tumbler space looking for ideas, or to frustrate obvious plot-line speculation by fans. Some time around March 25 we’ll get an idea of how Kio Shimoku wants to play this. If I come close I’ll buy myself a chocolate donut. If he does something else, I’ll look to see if he does it better and try to figure out why he did, what he did.
It’s a hobby.
No, wait. Put on your tin-foil hats and adjust them tight. Get your red and blue pills ready. The big secret that you are not yet ready to understand is that Kio Shimoku sends his minions to read this blog. He’s gonna be sooooooo pissed off that I guessed his solution for chapter 122 that he CHANGES IT. Yuppers! So if you get a nice juicy MadaHatoMada canon ship in chapter 122, it is so because of moi, this post and all my friends at the IATPT. You owe us all big-time. Don’t believe me? You aren’t ready for the TRUTH, Sheeple! Or you suspected it all along, forcing me into revealing it in a purposefully clumsy way as a false flag operation to cover the tracks of the great conspiracy. At least you have no idea yet about the Duck.
Yup, Uhuh!
Or I could just be desperately clinging to old stories. please see:
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2015/12/what-do-when-youre-not-hero-any-more
(You may have to reload a few times or turn off javascript to get around the effing sign-up pop-over.)
Thing is, I’m trying to get around all this. Maybe I just want ALL the alternatives. Mada walks away in disgust with everyone. And Mada walks off into the sunset with Angela or with Keiko or with Sue or with all of the girls or with all the girls plus Hato, as boy, as girl, as boy-girl. And Mada walks off with Hato and then…
No one said the modernist subject has to be a hysterically unified ego-structure. Duh; Joyce, Elliot, blah blah blah. We were fucked the minute they invented the movie camera. Read The Wasteland as screenplay, yadda yadda yadda. How sophomoric of me to mention this.
Does the way the walking off is done have to salve something in the way I want the forms of the symbolic order to play out?
Do the characters have to start acting brutally honest with each other and themselves? Is that just a fallback? Will I put up with some gay-lite if they act honorably and honest? What if Hato is being devious and Madarame is a poor little deluded lamb? What if Madarame is going to turn evil and exploit poor lovestruck Hato? Can they be equally deluded and make funny mistakes over and over and over again? An idiot guys’ guide to fakee gay relationship fun via BL tropes. Try this and fail! Hijinks Ensue. Ok Lets try the idiot guys’ guide to a fakee pervy-queer relationship fun via Josou game tropes. Even funnier fail. Haw haw Haw. Serves you all right.. Should have stuck to cis / het behaviour.
Don’t laugh too hard. In my youth I watched a horribly stupid and somewhat emotionally damaged young couple try to learn how to do “normal” romance by watching 1970’s soap operas. The results were ridiculous but probably better than their earlier attempt to figure out true love using massive amounts of recreational hallucinogens.
Or Mada and Hato walk off into the sunset and slowly figure it all out, with kittens and long walks in the park and finally after many many a chapter, in a special comiket-only 18+ dojin by “some other mangaka“, (special low comiket-only price Y1,000) the happy couple engage in a marathon of yaoi schmex acrobatics to consummate their union then hold each other tightly, talk of their futures together and profess true, unending love, forever, yawn and yawn ever, as Mary Jeanne Johnson once suggested; like happy, married, middle-aged lesbians. Of course she then added: “real gay guys don’t do that”. But what does she know? MJJ blogged before cialis, perhaps even before poppers. Heck, even before Shoujo Sect.
But hey… They could also turn into 70 meter tall kaiju and wreck Tokyo. (Bad fanboy in denial, Bad!)
HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! Chapter 122 will be an extended plug-piece for the new Genshiken Eroge Visual Novel! Yes, you can get all the endings! If you clear all the routes, you get naughty bonus stuff too!
(I just collapsed in a pile of fannish steam out of my ears or something!)
Probably not. Dream on. Some folks will be disappointed.
I could, at this point bring in a few poignant essays from writers, with female and/ or non euro-ethnic and/ or not-straight and/ or not-cis identities about the shit of trying to get through the academic maze and/ or the publishing industry with that old white guy at the gates (gates also staffed by unpaid rich white girl interns) and in their heads, but shit…
The idea that anyone is going to give anyone else a juicy $150K tenured job for life at a university teaching other rich folk’s kids the magic of writing is soon going to vanish down the toilet of the “sharing economy” aka the new serfdom. And fanfiction will displace official fiction as they merge into each other on Amazon. Then Bots will get better at writing and all of us can go home. Gresham’s Law. Freedom of the press means freedom to own one and crank it yourself, and you are reading this hideous mess on yours. Ps: it is also your own personal music and movie studio. Enjoy, please don’t overload the interwebs.
Meanwhile, I get more new content then I can possibly even read at the cost of all my time and a $30/month DSL charge. Let’s so not go into the failing economics of creative production and distribution. It will all soon go belly up and if we want more Genshiken, we will have to make the trip to see Kio Shimoku perform the latest chapter of Genshiken as Rakugo; live with subtitles up on a screen. But we have to all strip and change into yukata first, so we don’t cam the show and bootleg it up onto the web.
Guess I should start running ads on this blog.
Nawwwwwww. Not yet, Feels like work.
Serves Kio Shimoku right for opening the Pandora’s Götterdämmerung of fan-fiction and secondary production in an age when the traditional male gaze diffuses under the pressures of new economic realities, distribution methods and electronically aided production. He will weave tales that take us through the long night ahead. When he falls silent, others will take up the storytelling.
At least none of his characters pirate their manga and anime. No one in Japanese manga or anime ever pirates their fave stuff. They never even go to Book Off for used copies in great shape, for Y100.
Dog most assuredly is not barking.
Let ten thousand flowers bloom.
25 more days.
Ps: the Ogiue Maniax write-up for chapter 121 is up:
http://ogiuemaniax.com/2016/02/26/nayami-heat-genshiken-ii-chapter-121/
(1) Later: I just want to make it perfectly clear that the “red-pill” section above is a pure “down-the-rabbit-hole” bat-shit whooohaah attempt at conspiracy humor. You know like that meta-joke Stargate episode… or sumthin’.. What with current US politix, I thought it timely. I haven’t quite lost it… yet. Occasionally over-enthusiastic, guilty as charged. Also, I have nothing against HataMadaHato ships. I think they are cute. I’m not picking on Hato. Just wanted to point out the obvious biases in the structure. However, I have been reminded that some folks don’t share my sense of the absurd and others find me a bit hard to follow, so I just thought I better… Oh heck, screw it…
A month later, after the mess that is chapter 122:
Well this reads like suck in the light of chapter 122. That was not a resolution. That was not a serious response, to anyone and from anyone. I am ashamed of this post but I will leave it up. There is still a lot of Hato, especially in female presenting, full-metal-fujoshier-than-thou mode that is deeply troublesome but during the trip, Hato was locked in her like a straightjacket. She could not break character, lest she lose everything. Besides, the Genshiken is about fans and geek and Hato’s fanning is as legitimate as anyone elses. But that also means Hato should have the right to dial it back if needed.
And Mada… Mada was pursuing, Mada almost went through with it. Only the thought of having to be the lead in a Genshiken no-privacy-ever dojinshi collapsed his resolve. His responses to the others were perfunctory. The response to Hato-as-chan was an invite to pretend it was all a rotten fantasy and damn everything. And so they did. In too many ways, far more insulting than “and then they woke up and it was all a dream”. An honest confession demand an honest response. None was given.
The club did not help, it hindered. Yoshitake was allowed to run her setup. I wonder if she now smiles her work to see. She always assumed that Hato was gay and Madarame would run. I don’t think Madarame suddenly has eyes for guys in general but he felt something real for Hato. He should have been allowed to. Was he “fooled”? Perhaps some of the melodramatics from Hato pushed buttons, but who the fuck was there for Mada when he was stuck at home with a dead wrist? Was that all delusion? Even Hato’s fannish enthusiasms are shat upon. At least I tried in my stupid thing above to value them. How can they even ever face each other again?
We didn’t hear enough from Hato in male mode.We never found out what the two talked about when they continued their “date”. Ogiue was ineffective. Ohno was out of range – no fairy godmother help this time. Sue folded like a house of cards. The entire club was drunked up and then scared shitless of what they had done. This fails the Genshiken, fails the general readers, fails the readers who cheered for a gender-diffuse, non-binary, trying to figure it our Hato (Kio, that is really is low), Fails the stick in the mud middle-aged guy readers who were trying to get their thinking past the angry ghosts of earlier times and even fails the rabid fuckboys who could have lost a bit of the fear that hides behind their snark. It fails as comedy, it fails as tragedy, it fails as slice of life. Fail fail fail.
Damn you Kio, you shat in our cornflakes. Repent!
HEARTS OF FURIOUS FANCIES 