There is a thin, fragile line that separates reality from fantasy, fact
from fiction, Asmov from Sagan.  This line is an ever-constant anchor of
sanity in a constantly shifting and turbulent universe.  Sometimes, this
line is all that keeps the great forces of kookiness from rubbing their
cosmic crayons in mad circles on the great sheet of paper we call life.

        However, what happens when the colorer goes outside the lines?

***

BGlanders presents…

Disillusionment

Or

The worst self-insertion plot device ever… short of the Switch.

***

Greetings Bat-fans!  When we last left our heroes, the infinitely evil
Destructo-Ohki had our caped crusaders in a bind, tied in chains and
suspended over a pool of lava…lava that could have spelled INSTANT DEATH for
our protagonists!  Fortunately the ever-vigilant Yosho happened to have his
laser-enhanced Juraigotchi on hand, thereby cutting through said chains and
thwarting the vile, talking cabbit.  Upon Destructo-Ohki’s defeat, the real
Ryo-Ohki was returned to the Masaki household and all was well again.

Really.  No lie.

That had all happened thirty minutes prior, and at the moment Tenchi and the
gang were sitting around the living room, relaxing and chatting about their
latest ordeal.

That was about as far as the author got before he gave up working on his fan
fic.

        It had been quite awhile, and once again the author was trying to
come up
with a suitable plot line that would please and appease his (many?) readers.
  He had a general idea of where the story was going, but as of yet he
couldn’t see how to properly accomplish it.

        Currently the author was sitting in his basement, surrounded by
boxes
containing various anime, books, CDs and other various items that were
common to college students.  He was in the process of moving from point A,
his parent’s house to point B, his very own tacky brown hellhole of a
college house.  As moving day was quickly approaching, he decided to get a
jump on the situation and begin storing stuff several months early.

        The author himself was your average “I don’t care” type of
gentleman,
sporting an uneven brown goatee and wearing an Anticrombie tee shirt as he
sat at his makeshift work area, listening to bad rock music and wishing he
had a cherry slurpie.  Hell, that sounds pretty good…

        An hour later, the author sat at his makeshift work area listening
to bad
rock music with a half finished cherry slurpie by his side.  Once again he
stared blankly at his screen, reading and rereading the same tripe prose
over and over again.  Here Tenchi was being overshadowed by some movie side
character for the thousandth time, over here Sasami was assimilating with
Tsunami…again… to have sex with Tenchi and save the universe…again, and over
here Kagato was some giant orange blob that patiently waited while Ryoko
recounted some copyrighted child abuse.  With a scowl on his face the author
reminded himself yet again to find out where that particular fics author
lived and beat the living crap out of him for plagiarism.

Idly he reminisced about the days when Tenchi fics numbered under twenty,
when Ryan Anderson was the first, last and only name worth knowing, when
fics like Run Fast Tenchi and Images of Tenchi were still considered new and
when the lemon section was nothing more than an afterthought.

        Little things like those had made the prospect of writing Tenchi
fics so…
wonderful.  Ranma and that sailor bimbo had been done to death, exhausting
all the good plotlines before anyone even knew what was going on.  Tenchi
however was different.  Here, a beautifully constructed, well thought out
story was just waiting, nay screaming to be completed.  It demanded to be
complemented, and people took notice of this fact.  One by one, Tenchi fics
started to appear, each bringing an air of dignity and respect to the
original story with them.

        Then somewhere along the way, the stories started to lose their
magic.  Oh
sure, fics like Confess to You and Aikan Muyo were still there, but Confess
to You was one among many, and when was the last time Happi had written
anything?  It seemed as if the majority of TM fics were degrading to the
level of bad Chibi-usa porn, and that was something that severely
disheartened the author.  Sighing, the author once again tried to focus on
the task at hand; writing a relatively good Tenchi fic.

        For months he had been trying to visualize different ways his
stories could
end.  The author, after several years of constant writing and publishing,
had felt his love for the craft running dry.  He no longer seemed to care
about the latest fic update, nor did he watch his OAV or TM Universe
collection with the same vigor and wonder that he once held.  To even write
the words, “It was a bright, sunny day…” made his stomach churn with mundane
disgust.  He was tired.  Tired of writing about a story that had gotten
worse and worse as it was told, tired of writing night after sleepless night
about characters he didn’t own for people he would never meet, only to
receive one or two responses about his work, and that was if he was lucky.
The author was tired, and he wanted to stop.

        Unfortunately he couldn’t.  Well, not at the moment at least.  He
had made
the mistake of starting several series, the dreaded pitfall of all writers.
Once started, they had begun to loose their color in the eyes of their
creator.  Silently, the author wished he had never conceived several of his
stories, no matter how good or bad they might have been at the time.  Now
they were just anchors to keep him chained to his work, and he hated them
for it.

        “Then why don’t you just stop?”  A voice asked from behind him.
Sighing,
the author aimlessly typed at his semi-broken keyboard (the result of his
writing golem falling into a poorly placed cup of chicken soup one morning)
and said, “Because I’m not done.”

        “Then finish what you’ve started.  You know how the stories will
end, so
why don’t you just put it on paper?”

The author sighed again, this time resting his head on his left hand as his
right one hunted and pecked.  “Can’t.  The buckets going down but the well
is dry.  I just don’t have the desire to do it anymore, and the ideas are
gone.  Hell, the love of doing this is gone.  Besides, who would even care
if… who the hell are you?”

        The author spun around, searching the cluttered, box-filled basement
for
the intruder.  As his eyes scanned the pillow-cluttered couch behind his
ottoman, he realized that the last time he had checked, he didn’t own a
plush Ryo-Ohki.  At least, it looked like a plush Ryo-Ohki, despite the fact
that it was incredibly lifelike and curiously black.  “Heh, did Chris leave
you here?  Damn you’re cute…”

        “No he didn’t, and thank you!  Now, what do you mea…”

        “WHAT THE BLOODY CHRIST!?!?!?”

        The author was now behind his make shift work area, his cherry
slurpie
spilled on the ground.  The cabbit, the rather life like and somewhat
goth-looking plush doll on his couch, had spoken.  While shaking in abject
terror, the author tried to find a rational explanation for what was
happening.  After several seconds of staring in wide-eyed horror, the author
started to realize what was going on.

        “You… you’re real, aren’t you?  This isn’t some slurpie induced
hallucination, is it?”  The cabbit shook its adorable head.  “Nope, I’m
real.  At least, I’m real to you, and that’s what matters at the moment.
Now, as I was saying…”

“But you’re a cabbit!  An animated character from Japan!  How the hell are
you speaking?  How do you even know English!?  You’re an anime character!”

The cabbit shrugged with its cute shoulders and said, “Beats me.  Maybe I’m
from the Pretty Sammy continuity.  Maybe this is the dub or something, I
don’t know.  Whatever the case, I’ve come here for a reason.  You think
you’re out of ideas, don’t you?”

“Of course I am!  Look at this crap!  This isn’t fiction… this is… is…
silage!  It’s slop!  Here, read some of this, it’s a sequel to an older fic
I didn’t continue.”  The cabbit hopped from the couch to the author’s chair,
making that cute little sound effect that all cabbits seem to make when they
hop as it did so, and read aloud.

“The Royal Gardens were beautiful at night.  When the soft, white light
reflected off of Jurai’s moons shimmered through the thin, crystalline
windows, the trees seemed to wrap themselves with a blanket of calm, hidden
by their own shadows as they stood erratically on their pedestals.  For as
far as the eye could see, the trees seemed to continue in a precession,
starting far out of sight from below and sleepily marching on towards the
heavens, giving the gardens the feel of an endless playground, with the
playing children now sleeping on their swings.”

        “What’s so bad about that?” the cabbit asked.  Angrily, the author
scrolled
downwards, revealing the rest of the fic.  All two paragraphs of it.  “It’s
taken me three years just to write that!  I’m through, get it?  Done!  The
well has run dry!  Happy?”

        The cabbit shook its adorable head and sighed, a small sweat drop
appearing
beside its head.  “You’re wrong, you know.  A story isn’t something that you
can just magically pull out of thin air.  A story is something special,
something that has always been there, sleeping inside of your imagination.
Every story has a beginning, middle and an ending, but sometimes they’re
just hidden.  They get tucked away where no one but you can see them.
That’s what makes them so special.”

        The cabbit reached out with its incredibly cute little paw and moved
the
computer’s mouse to the ‘file open’ command.  “Every story is written before
the author has even put the pen to the paper, the trick is getting them to
come out.  A story is like a soul; it can’t be changed outright, but rather
guided as it grows.  Once one has been completed, it cannot be altered.”
With a click, the cabbit opened the author’s story files; revealing dozens
of unfinished projects that the fan fiction community had no idea even
existed.  “You’ve found so many stories… why can’t you bring them out for
others to see?”

        The author, now standing beside the cabbit, reached over and moved
the
mouse to the ‘file close’ command.  “Because apparently they don’t want to
be found, or maybe I just don’t want to find them anymore.  I’m sick of
this, cabbit.  I want to write about my own characters in my own worlds, not
the product of someone else’s imagination that’s been butchered a billion
times over.  Screw it, I’m done.”  With that the author started to walk
towards the stairs, carefully avoiding several shelves of dusty journals as
he did so.

        “Hey, wait a second!”  The cabbit hopped down from the make shift
work area
and quickly hopped to where the author was now standing, half-poised to
begin climbing the stairs.  “You haven’t even heard why I’m here yet.”

        “You mean that cute little pep talk wasn’t it?  Look, when an anime
mascot
starts telling me that if I believe in myself I can achieve anything, I know
I’ve been devoting too much of my life to something that I shouldn’t be.
Goodnight, cabbit.”

        “And is that so bad?  Just because things got a little crowded, you
think
that you can just walk away?”

        “But there’s just so much of it out there now… Cabbit, I remember
when
there were only a handful of stories based on Tenchi.  I remember when each
and every author on the tmffa knew one another and wrote back and forth,
hell I remember the tmffa BEFORE it was called the tmffa!  And now…”

        “And now it’s grown, just as all things do.  Things grow and change,
or
they die out.  Which would you have preferred?  Would you have rather seen
your works included among so many others, read by and compared to hundreds
of works composed by your peers, or would you rather have seen this be a fad
and die out, much like El-Hazard fanfiction did?”

        “Hey now, El-Hazard fanfiction is pretty good, for the most part…”

        “Oh yeah?”

        “Yeah!  Why I’ve read…well…several good El-Hazard fics!”

        “Name one El-Hazard fanfiction archive.”

        And at this, the author paused.

        “And no, fanfiction.net doesn’t count!

        And at this, the author paused again.

        The cabbit continued, “Don’t you get it?  Eventually things grow and
become
something more, or they just die out.  Your inner monologue was ripping on
Sailor Moon and Ranma fanfiction earlier, but damnit that’s a prime example
of what I’m talking about!  Yes, there are loads of bad fics out there, but
there are some good ones too.  The point is that people, thousands of people
now, want to take part in a story that’s moved them.  You were like them
once, remember?  You were so touched by what you had seen, and felt so
cheated by the fact that it had ended that you wanted to carry that story
on, to continue that wonderful feeling you got from it.  Don’t you
remember?”

        The author nodded, his face softening slightly.  “I remember.  I
remember
being so moved by what I saw that I told myself it just couldn’t end like
that.  I wanted those characters to keep going, to give me something
wonderful to see.  I wanted a good story, and when I had read everyone
else’s and still found myself wanting more, I wrote several to fill that
void… but now…”

        “Oh what?  The void has been magically filled?  Just because things
are
different now and more people are involved you think that it’s no longer
special?”

        “But it’s not special anymore!”  The author turned and yelled,
startling
the cabbit.  “It’s nothing now!  It’s just a bunch of porn and bad
self-insertion, and crappy formula fics by AHRLIs and RHALIs!  It’s being
done by people who don’t even know what the hell they’re really watching!
Face it cabbit, this just isn’t special anymore!  Now if you’ll excuse me,
there’s a bottle of scotch with my name on it and I think I’d like to go
hide in it, seeing as how my slurpee has joined with the carpet.  Excuse
me…”

        As the author started marching up the stairs, the cabbit sat
wide-eyed,
watching him go.  He knew that if the author reached the door, then he had
failed in his mission.  So with a tremor in his speech and a wish in its
heart, the cabbit issued one final plea; its voice softly carrying across
the basement to the author’s ears.  And for one final time, the author gave
pause and listened.

        “But don’t you see?  You’ve given people something special, whether
you
know it or not!  Sooner or later you’ll realize that no matter what, people
DO care about what you do.  So what if you’ve become disenchanted?  Who
cares?  The point is that once, a long time ago there was something special
here, and even if you do feel disenchanted, the point is that even though it
may be years from now… even if it’s only one damn person in this entire
world… someone WILL remember what you’ve written.  That’s important, you
know.  Even if you can’t see it now, even if it’s not important to you at
this moment… it’s something important to them.  THAT’S why you, and
countless others do this without money or praise… you do this because you
feel something for it, no matter how much you try to deny it.  No matter
where you go, this will forever be the start of your works, as frightening
as that sounds.  Remember that… if nothing else…remember that…”

        The author paused, letting the cabbit’s monologue slowly sink in.
Ever so
slowly he turned, ready to answer the cabbit’s claims, but when he looked…

        …The cabbit was nowhere to be seen.

        Was it nothing more than a slurpie-induced hallucination?  Was it
something
brought about by the fact that the author hadn’t slept since God knew when?
Had it been something completely in the author’s head?  Honestly, he didn’t
know.  However, as he stared at his makeshift office and his rather
cluttered computer, he found that he could only stand there, pondering the
cabbit’s words.

        “Important…”

        Slowly, the author walked back to his computer, opened his Document
files
and stared at the near hundreds of files that filled his electronic folder.
Some finished, most not, and nearly all of them unread by all but himself.
After browsing through story after story, many of which the author himself
had forgotten about the author picked an unfinished tale at random.

        “Something important.”

        And lo, even if it was just for one more night, and even if he never
looked
at his unfinished works again, the author smiled…

        …Because for one more moment, what he was doing felt important to
him.

***

At a certain point, everyone questions what he or she doing, and why they’re
doing it.  I’ve been questioning it for too long, and now I think it’s time
I faced up to those questions.  Funny thing is, I haven’t liked my answers,
so now I’m going to change them.  I’ve felt disillusioned for too long, and
there are still a lot of stories out there to write.  I guess I had
forgotten that this has become popular, but I’m ready to face up to change,
and damn it, I can’t just let the few stories I’ve started just trail off.
As of this moment, I vow to finish every single story I’ve started, and to
finish them well.  I just hope that someday down the line, one of you
remembers them.

Tenchi and Co belong to AIC, Pioneer and TV Tokyo

All C&C to BGlanders@aol.com

www.geocities.com/tokyo/gulf/6417