daidoji_gisei | Intense Relief; also, Some Reflections on Fanfic (Reply)

The page with

koshindou's fanfic is back, much to my relief. I'm not sure if yesterday's disappearance was just some temporary problem with the host, or if my intense anguish bent space and time and caused the page to reconstitute itself. In any event, I decided not to take any more chances and email

koshindou to make sure that he had copies of all his stuff. He says he does. Somewhere.

The whole event has made me think a little bit about fanfic, and L5R fanfic in particular. yhlee and I once had a discussion on how strange L5R fanfic is compared to other fandoms. Specifically, in L5R fanfic almost always deals with original characters, while in other fandoms canon characters only is the norm.

I think the difference is that L5R from the get-go is an audience-participation-welcome kind of affair--that is, the mechanics of the games themselves encourage this mode of fanfic. The rpg, of course, is built on the idea of people creating original characters and doing Interesting Stuff, but the ccg also fosters the notion that the player is in some way a participant in the events in the setting. With a background like this, using original characters in the L5R setting is quite natural. TV shows, on the other hand, don't grant that kind of involvement to its fans. (Though it is a semi-interesting question whether the release of rpg tie-in games leads to an upswing in original character fanfic in those fandoms. And if so, how was it received by the non-rpg-playing members of the fandom?)

I have more on this, but I've had a long day and about two hours of sleep (night baker training, how I do not love thee!). I'll try to post more later if anyone is interested--in the meantime, does anyone else have any comments?