fanfic forensics

"Our old enemy 'poverty' somehow disappeared, and we can no longer find an enemy to fight against" (Miyazaki, 1988). In other words, after Japan's industrial success since the Meiji restoration in 1890s and recovery from WWII cast out poverty from the nation, people still remain possessed by an illusion of gaining a wealthy everyday life and continue living with a gap between their ideal and real life. As a result, an endless and unsatisfying cycle of production and consumption has begun destroying harmony among family and community (Harootunian, 2000).

Zizek (1989) points out that people of late capitalism are well aware that money is not magical. To obtain it, it has to be replaced through labor, and after you use it, it will just disappear, as will as any other material. Allison (1996) adds to this point: "They know money is no more than an image and yet engage in its economy where use-value has been increasingly replaced and displaced by images (one of the primary definitions of post-modernism) all the same” (p. xvi).

Related to its presentation of the loss of spiritual values, the film elaborates an extensive critique of another contemporary global issue: identity confusion. A symptom of identity loss is seen in the way that cultures today encourage people to constantly refashion their self-image, so that individuals construct their identity based on ideals presented in popular media.

Comics were once tarred-and-feathered as sub-literate pablum, lacking any artistic or cultural merit, considered childish and lacking any merit. Communities once sponsored bonfires to rid them of the evil of comicbooks, less than a decade after the end of World War II.

a story about queer dudes or ladies can never be defined by its plot or by a single-character story. Slash stories can never be gen.

This is why I am told that the gay children's book I gave my nephew "contains sexuality," but the dozens of children's books that he already has where mommy and daddy love each other do not contain sexuality.

I am so serious about this: het/gen, the slashing of het and gen, het and gen making out with each other, is a system that reinscribes heterosexuality as the norm and as normal, a system that excludes queer sexualities from representation, from general interest.

In other words, being a good academic may be important to other academics but not necessarily to other fans.

We thus face a dilemma: how can we respect and encourage the academic aspects of fan writing while still maintain fan meta as a distinct and separate discourse.