Springkink Mystery

[chomiji]

Too much has been going on in RL for me to take in much of springkink. But now that I look at it (briefly - 'cause I'm at work), the vast majority of stories seem to be about Kingdom Hearts (!) or Transformers (!!!).

Aren't these a video game and a rather simplistic kids' cartoon, respectively? Can someone explain why these might be so popular for the springkink treatment?

And here I thought that my much-expanded repertoire of manga knowledge would enable me to appreciate this stuff more effectively this time around ... .

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Hellifino what's appealing about Transformers.

But Kingdom Hearts - mostly KHII - has a large variety of older-than-puberty characters in it that are almost all bishounen, and some deliberately ambiguous tension between the main character and his best friend. :) I can see where that one comes from. Alas, I have not finished KHII, so I avoid those, and I dislike underage pr0n or non-pr0n sexual tension, so I avoid those, and that pretty much cuts out everything KH.

But hey: Sephiroth shows up in both KHI and II.

[chomiji]

>> Sephiroth shows up in both KHI and II. <<

.... he does?

The Mr. got Kingdom Hearts when we bought our PS2, and I watched him play several times. I never saw anyone but a bunch of Disney characters and the teenaged POV character. It just wasn't my thing! But he enjoyed it - stuff to blow up, hey! (Most recently, he's been playing "Ratchet and Clank.")

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Either the Mr never played the tournaments all the way through to the Platinum Cup, or you missed him doing it. :) Sephiroth is the final opponent in the tournament, an optional boss.

His entrance. (I lasted slightly longer than that player did. XD)

He shows up loitering around Hollow Bastion, glaring at Sora, in KHII and is presumably involved in the plot somehow, but I'm only halfway through so I'm not sure.

[chomiji]

I'm sure I just missed him doing it! He played KH1 to death. (I only just finally looked at this vid - unsurprisingly, they block YouTube at the office.)

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

I think the recent Transformers movie is what's caused the recent spike in interest.

[chomiji]

That sounds plausible!

[chomiji]

Karl has played Kingdom Hearts, but as I mentioned to telophase, all I saw was Sora and the Disney characters. In general, I find the computerized "role playing games" so incredibly lame compared to a halfway decent human-refereed RPG, so no, I haven't ... . For computer games, I stick to abstracts like Mahjongg (and the Mahjongg thing we have has some other neat games as well) or map games like Civilization.

[chomiji]

There are several videos of it on YouTube. And I remember telophase talking about it. It looks cool ... but the comments on youTube from serious games say it was too easy for them, so I probably don't want to get it for the Mr. (he wants things to fight back - hard).

But it's this whole business of writing fics about games that I don't understand, still ... .

[chomiji]

I think maybe this clip gives a better idea of what Okami looks like in play ...?

I think that to some degree, I'm just reluctant to load on another addiction. I already can spend hours on my LJ, just answering the inbox ... I've been on since 2:30 here, for example!

[sanada.livejournal.com]

Kingdom Hearts is basically a crossover between Disney and the wildly popular Final Fantasy series of RPG games, but the fandom does their best to ignore the Disney part and focuses on the Japanese eye candy instead. Since RPG games can easily take 20, 40, or even 80 hours to play through with lots of side quests and relationship building, the stories are pretty complex... Kingdom Hearts is very much like a shounen manga with themes of friendship and all the usual stuff. Personally, I'm not into it... I think it's overrated... but like most shounen series, Kingdom Hearts is overflowing with pretty boys and angst. That pretty much explains why fangirls like it so much.

As for Transformers... I don't know, and I don't think I want to know. What I remember from Saturday morning cartoons is that there are robots from another planet that turn into cars and stuff to, uh, fight evil robots. Or something. There is a terrifying amount of porn for this... I don't know how exactly the fanfic writers pull that off, because I'm afraid to look. Apparently in one incarnation of the series, the robots turn into giant animals, which makes for even more disturbing porn. But like furries, the robosexuals take their kinks very seriously... *shudder* I guess the recent movie piqued people's interest, but Transformers slash has been around for ages. Now that old 80s cartoons are trendy among my age group, we should mentally prepare ourselves for the inevitable Care Bears porn...

[sanada.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that there are so many fics for Digital Devil Saga and Persona... I thought the MegaTen games were too difficult to be popular! I'm glad that Shadow Hearts II is getting some love, though, because any video game where you can beat Rasputin with a frozen tuna or collect gay porn to give to a tailor so he'll make dresses for your battle loli is BRILLIANT in my mind.

Yeah, someone on my friends list draws and writes lots of Transformers slash... which I try to ignore. Sometimes she makes the robots human, which makes slightly more sense. Slightly.

Kiss Players? o__O I just googled it. Wow, two kinks in one... Japan never ceases to amaze me. Somewhere, an otaku is getting off to this.

I've made a point of staying far, far away from cartoon fandom. The first fanfic I read upon getting my first dial-up internet in middle school was an NC-17 Dinosaucers piece featuring oral and anal sex between a man and a space brontosaurus. *sob* Way to rape my childhood, internet.

I know there are plenty of people who write Disney character smut, but they seem to be a separate fandom from the KH people.

[chomiji]

(Somehow, in light of this discussion, the rather tense talk I was just having on "why slash" seems awfully normal and tame ... at least my fantasies don't need to be turned into fuzzy critters or robots before I can enjoy them!)

[chomiji]

Karl has played Kingdom Hearts I recently, but the parts I saw didn't have anybody interesting in them except Sora. (Apparently, I decided "been there, done that" as far as watching him play before it got interesting.) I figured we had to be playing the wrong version, given all the key-carrying cosplayers last year at Katsucon, whom I never saw onscreen at our house!

Argh, I have a feeling that alienated kids who feel themselves powerless probably get into the Transformer stuff - which is rather the same reason that 4-yr-old boys get into dinosaurs and robots. (Interestingly enough, Kat's extremely indulged and secure not-quite-4-yr-old - who has two parents that work at home and who still can sleep in their bed if he wants to - isn't interested in either of those, much. He likes pirates, and sometimes trains.)

[chomiji]

Oh, and re Care Bears? You mean someone will actually write the (joke) novel Clan of the Care Bears, which was the subject of an entry in one of those word puzzle contests ... you know, change one letter, and explain what the result would be about ... .

[blackcatsboon]

Kingdom Hearts combines to very popular existing fandoms - Disney and Final Fantasy - and adds a whole bunch of colourful new universes and easily shippable new characters. Plus there are multiple games out there now, making it a series, so more characters, and, well, more everything. If you're not a gamer or into any game-based fandoms, it probably wouldn't hold much appeal. But for everyone else, it's pretty versatile and really shiny. I'd say it's a good candidate for kink!fic because of all the different worlds etc (the characters take on different forms when they enter different worlds and stuff).

As for Transformers... Well, it's my childhood, so I get that warm, safe feeling from it, and, to coin a phrase, chicks dig giant robots. And chicks write a lot of fanfic.

In fic terms, the recent movie has opened things up a whole lot, in that you can basically redesign everything any way you want and get away with it. And since 'sex' isn't really defined in any detail, you can basically do what you want there too. Pretty much anything goes, so there's plenty of room for kink.



And I should probably at this point, point out that Transformers is my current fandom focus, so I am gonna argue its good points in slightly biased manner. :p

[chomiji]

De gustibus non est disputandum ... . The big robots just do not turn my crank, although I had a brief flirtation with Astroboy and his kin in my very young days. Then I moved on to the superhero guys (including some very early X-Men), and by 10 or 11 was a confirmed Trekkie and Middle Earth nut.

And when I hear "gamers," I get all excited - until I realize that people nowadays usually mean computer games. Man, that ain't gaming! Gaming is sitting around a table or the living room with your best geek buddies, making bad puns and saving the world (link is to one of my friend TK's sites - he still sometimes publishes gaming stuff, and he ran a really superb game).

XD

[blackcatsboon]

Ah. Well for me it's not really such a surprise. I used to play with Transformers toys and watch the cartoon when I was little, and when I first got into anime in a big way, it was mostly mecha anime, so it wasn't really a huge leap to get into Transformers fandom.

Of course I do love superhero comics too. My first encounter with online fandom was with X-men. It was sort of an anomaly for me actually, in terms of fandom. Hm. Trek I'll watch and such, but I'm not really a serious fan, and Middle Earth pretty much went right over my head, I really just couldn't get into it.

And yes, there are those types of gamers too. A lot of the 'gamers' I know are involved in both types of gaming, but in my previous comment I was basically referring to the computer gamers. I don't generally participate, but I still have a good working knowledge of the subject thanks to the company I keep and almost all of the significant non-familial relationships in my life having been with gamers. Therefore I can comfortably dip my toe in Kingdom Hearts fandom and not emerge completely baffled. ^^

[chomiji]

I was such a young LotR fan that it's hard for me to remember exactly why it appealed at that age. I think that the hobbits - the feeling of being a small person caught up in horrible world events - was most of it. And I remember being weirdly moved by the last sections with Frodo and Sam inching their way to the top of Mount Doom to drop in the Ring. Although the Sam/Frodo shippers squick me out, I know where it's coming from ... .

I had a massive crush on Spock, although it didn't play out that way - I was young enough and naive enough that I didn't think in terms of romance.

I can see why some people play computer games - it's the idea of writing romantic or smutty fanfic about them that has me bemused. As for the other type of gaming: an early m/m pairing of mine was one of my characters (I had a number of male characters) with another player's male character. When that player came out several years later, I 'fessed up to him what his character had been up to in my head, and he wasn't upset at all ... it was rather nice. Otherwise, it would have remained a deep, dark secret. But because no one knows such characters but the people with whom you play, they're not very easy to share elsewhere.

[chomiji]

Oh, I know pretty much exactly when I read LotR: I got it volume by volume for Hanukkah when I was 11, in the edition with the crazy abstract-ish covers by Barbara Remington (links shows the covers all together as a poster - which I owned, of course). I read and re-read it until the books fell apart - I was on my second boxed set by the time I hit college. I think I mentioned that I wrote game supplements based on it ... .