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A small selection of my projects that are reflective of my present interests and approach.
( Original works )( Fanworks )A new home for North Bound (again!)
Wednesday, October 21st, 2026 08:55 pmAs part of the migration/archiving activities as Pillowfort Laundry Day looms, I'm once again spurred to try to give my massive Yu Yu Hakusho prequel fancomic, North Bound, a proper home! Here it is!
https://yyhnorthbound.thecomicseries.com/
I can't figure out how to make the default page the overall cover of the project, so I just set it to the About page and slapped the cover on there for now. I'll look into some other options later.
The actual comic pages and art files were not difficult to find, thankfully, as I (usually) name things with a consistent date format. I also have most of the files in one place in some semblance of order from making image sets on Pixiv. The thing is that I'm particular about wanting to carry over the original commentary as much as possible. All the world-building and behind-the-scenes comic-making thoughts feel as much a part of North Bound as the comic pages to me - that whole experience of creation and fun fandom discourse (even if it's just with myself). So I have like 3+ windows being referenced while uploading pages, trying to find and copy comments from different sites and cross-reference links and stick them in the right place with dates and everything. What can I say... hoarder/archivist at heart, I suppose.
As mentioned, this is not my first attempt. Years ago I brought North Bound over to SmackJeeves, the same time I took Now Recharging there. It did quite well and was even featured by the SmackJeeves Twitter account, which I found extra hilarious since Jeeves is a butler and Hokushin is also a manservant. (Admittedly I was mildly annoyed that the fancomic was featured instead of the original comic, but to be honest I don't know that its fancomic nature had anything to do with it. Maybe more because yokai make everything cool. Supernatural semi-historical drama versus cozy robot slice-of-life, a tough matchup, haha.)
I remember having a great experience with SmackJeeves' mass uploader, and I was pleased to find ComicFury's version pretty user-friendly too. While I don't remember all the details of my SJ mass upload experience (aside from "It was good, I liked it"), it reminded me very much of it. I understand it's because CJ was heavily inspired by SJ? In any case, it helped a lot, and I have the cast page and some background info pages up with images, so I'm pleased. I already updated the reference link on the PIxiv archive, and once everything is further along and I'm not stressing as much from other things I have to do (upcoming events and other work and volunteer commitments etc.) I'll start updating all the AO3 links accordingly.
Soon, all my hundreds of pages of Hokushin lore and love will all be together again! Mostly.
https://yyhnorthbound.thecomicseries.com/
I can't figure out how to make the default page the overall cover of the project, so I just set it to the About page and slapped the cover on there for now. I'll look into some other options later.
The actual comic pages and art files were not difficult to find, thankfully, as I (usually) name things with a consistent date format. I also have most of the files in one place in some semblance of order from making image sets on Pixiv. The thing is that I'm particular about wanting to carry over the original commentary as much as possible. All the world-building and behind-the-scenes comic-making thoughts feel as much a part of North Bound as the comic pages to me - that whole experience of creation and fun fandom discourse (even if it's just with myself). So I have like 3+ windows being referenced while uploading pages, trying to find and copy comments from different sites and cross-reference links and stick them in the right place with dates and everything. What can I say... hoarder/archivist at heart, I suppose.
As mentioned, this is not my first attempt. Years ago I brought North Bound over to SmackJeeves, the same time I took Now Recharging there. It did quite well and was even featured by the SmackJeeves Twitter account, which I found extra hilarious since Jeeves is a butler and Hokushin is also a manservant. (Admittedly I was mildly annoyed that the fancomic was featured instead of the original comic, but to be honest I don't know that its fancomic nature had anything to do with it. Maybe more because yokai make everything cool. Supernatural semi-historical drama versus cozy robot slice-of-life, a tough matchup, haha.)
I remember having a great experience with SmackJeeves' mass uploader, and I was pleased to find ComicFury's version pretty user-friendly too. While I don't remember all the details of my SJ mass upload experience (aside from "It was good, I liked it"), it reminded me very much of it. I understand it's because CJ was heavily inspired by SJ? In any case, it helped a lot, and I have the cast page and some background info pages up with images, so I'm pleased. I already updated the reference link on the PIxiv archive, and once everything is further along and I'm not stressing as much from other things I have to do (upcoming events and other work and volunteer commitments etc.) I'll start updating all the AO3 links accordingly.
Soon, all my hundreds of pages of Hokushin lore and love will all be together again! Mostly.
Nise Murasaki Inaki Genji adventures
Wednesday, October 21st, 2026 08:51 amOriginally posted April 25, 2019 on Pillowfort.
Many years ago, when my knowledge of Tale of Genji was still pretty superficial, I came across mentions of Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji (偐紫田舎源氏, literally "False/Fraudulent Murasaki, Country/Bumpkin/Rustic Genji” - its formal translated titles are generally some variation of this combination of adjectives.)
These references rarely went into much detail beyond describing Inaka Genji as a Tale of Genji parody written by Ryutei Tanehiko in the Edo period. Sometimes there might be a more drawn-out comment describing its framing story - a bit involving a woman named Ofuji (the false Murasaki) deciding that she wants to write a novel, and that she could even write her own Tale of Genji, and proceeding to go about it with only half-baked knowledge of the original and getting everything wrong. As a result, I had this vague impression of Inaka Genji as a simple comedic parody set in the countryside (?), and that was about it.
As my knowledge and experience with the Tale of Genji grew, my knowledge of Inaka Genji grew bit by bit as well. And I soon realized that my original impression was SO WRONG.
How I got into the Tale of Genji
Tuesday, October 20th, 2026 10:53 pmOriginally posted March 30, 2019 on Pillowfort.
By now I've been asked by a few people how I got so deep into the Tale of Genji, so here it is in writing.
The answer is, Yu Yu Hakusho. YU YU HAKUSHO IS THE REASON I'M OBSESSED WITH THE TALE OF GENJI.
Well, sort of. Obviously this requires a longer explanation, so here I am retracing my steps on a creative journey basically forever fueled by fandom.
( Read more... )And that is how Yu Yu Hakusho made me obsessed with Genji Monogatari.
Fruits of the 1000 year old fandom: Tale of Genji fanfiction
Tuesday, October 20th, 2026 10:26 pmOriginally posted June 14, 2018 on tumblr, and reposted March 30, 2019 to Pillowfort. Some minor typos have been corrected.
A while back I mentioned I was hunting down historical Tale of Genji fanfiction to read. I DID. AND IT'S BEEN SO MUCH FUN. And super fascinating! Especially seeing the amazing continuity of the human and fandom experience over the course of a millennium. It seriously makes you feel like part of something ANCIENT AND POWERFUL. Anyways, I decided to write some reviews. This post covers four Tale of Genji historical fanfics ranging in date from approximately the 12th century to the 1930s. (Which is incredible when you realize this means the oldest fanfic on the list is still separated from the original source material by a century or so.) I break them down as follows:
- Background: What it is, some historical context.
- Premise: Short spoiler-free summary.
- Thoughts: My “review”, with some minor spoilers.
I think ALL of them are worth reading, for many different reasons. In chronological order of when they were written, they are...
( Read more... )It was honestly a pleasure getting to read these stories! For anyone interested, Reading the Tale of Genji: Sources from the First Millennium has translations of the first 3, and the last can be found as part of a collection of Yourcenar’s short stories, “Oriental Tales” (which are not, despite what you might assume from the title, all based in East Asia).
I’ve yet to venture into the world of Tale of Genji historical AU fanfiction. Two that are on my radar:
Hamamatsu Chunagon Monogatari/Mitsu no Hamamatsu - 11th century story purportedly written by the first Tale of Genji fan ever documented (Sugawara no Takasue no Musume/Lady Sarashinai - I mentioned her in my Ukifune illustration). I’ve read some summaries/reviews of it, but haven’t read an actual translation yet. It’s kind of a reimagining of the Kaoru and Ukifune story, but the Kaoru character is more successful. Reincarnation and the Chinese imperial court are also involved. (Update: At last! Here it is! [link to come once I migrate the post])
Nise Murasaki Inaki Genji (translated variously as “False Murasaki and a Country Genji”, “A Fraudulent Murasaki’s Bumpkin Genji”, and “The Rustic Genji”) - very famous late Edo period take on Tale of Genji by Ryutei Tanehiko, which transplants the story into the Muromachi era. I only knew of it as a parody, but when I read a bit more about it, the title translations do NOT do justice to what the story involves. Basically Genji is sort-of a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood and almost all his love affairs are carefully calculated machinations as he recovers stolen artifacts and foils political villains. There’s a lot of murdering and assassins and swords flying about and stuff, even with the ladies. It sounds AWESOME STAY TUNED (Update: It was awesome. Here it is!)
Settling in... and settling down
Tuesday, October 20th, 2026 05:21 pmPhew, last night was interesting. I didn't see Pillowfort's announcement till around dinnertime, was both sad at our collective loss of another bastion of the internet and also not overly-surprised at the same time, was grateful for the fact that I got to experience such a cozy community and meet so many lovely people over all these years, and of course there was much commiserating in the indie creator communities I'm a part of. Then my brain went into "OK, what next" mode, as it seems everyone else did too.
I usually research and hem and haw for weeks before doing anything, because I really dislike making new accounts all over the place. But as you can see, I'm here! The jump to Dreamwidth was super fast, probably because it was actually a direction decades in the making and it's a platform already familiar to me from the old LiveJournal days. I never signed up during the exodus of that time - I don't remember exactly why since I knew people who headed for DW. (My guess is I thought a bigger change made sense with the way the web was evolving. I can't remember if there was anything in between, but I know I ended up settling on Posterous before reluctantly moving to Tumblr when Posterous shut down, and then eventually to Pillowfort.) I chuckled when I saw the fields for mood and music as I was clicking around. I don't think I'll use them, but it was nostalgic to see.
I'm trying not to get too reflective/Buddhist-philosophical here, mainly because... I'm actually working on a zine and this touches on so many things I've already been thinking about for that project! My little hamster wheel brain doesn't need more encouragement! Case in point: at about 2:30 this morning the hamster decided to go for a marathon run writing essays from different angles for the zine. It took me like 2-3 hours of mental ping-ponging with breathing meditation to wind down.
Aside from the essay-writing, the hamster brain was also throwing up things like "Did I do X when I set up my Dreamwidth? What are my settings for Y?? Is this going to be a problem-" "Oh here's another bunch of things that will be broken on my website and AO3 because I cross-linked from Pillowfort so much for blabberings and background info about all my creative projects-" "I'm going to need to migrate/archive some things elsewhere, it'd be most convenient while Pillowfort is still up but probably too stressful to try to do it all before December. Is the Tassel export more robust than Pillowfort's upcoming export options? Maybe I should look into that-" "-THE REFERENDUM!! Results should be out today, that feels like a bigger thing to be worried about??" (Context: Canadian here. Everyone is/was to some degree concerned and/or ticked off about the Alberta referendum.)
Eventually I fell asleep again. My dreams were a colourful adventure-romp through the rainbow-flooded layout of my elementary school library and looking for something resembling a Pokemon while clutching a giant but vaguely Tamagotchi-like device. It was like my brain went "What? Disaster has struck and we're going back to LiveJournal land? OK, let me check the memory attic for random stuff from way back, it might be useful!" (It didn't quite get the time period right.)
I've started moving major art commentary over to Ellipsus for linking from my website (I finished the ones for hua, Dharma, and 31 days of poetry and ink so far), and will also migrate some of my favourite essays/posts over here. I'm trying not to be too precious about everything - it is a bit of an opportunity to review and clean house!
With the way DW handles images, it won't be as convenient, but I like that it's forcing me to be more thoughtful and intentional about what I upload and how I organize and use it. The reality is that digital resources (bandwidth, space) have a cost to it just like physical resources, it's just super easy to overlook. I haven't quite decided yet what to do about my next update with the Gifts of Ink Tarot and what gets hosted where, so there might be some experimenting.
The trickiest things, to my mind right now at least, are the longform visual fanworks. Some of the Star Ocean 2 fanfic covers and rambles with screenshots, my Project LHIA dollhouse miniatures and comics, and most of all my North Bound posts. A lot of the images are already in various places (like Pixiv), but the thing I always struggle with is wanting the commentary to be available and not be lost. I'm leaning to making a dedicated place specifically for North Bound as its own project. I had actually tried to do that already back when I moved it to Smackjeeves, but... well, we know what happened to Smackjeeves (RIP). We'll see!
Grateful for everyone who's found me here. Thank you for checking this out and reading this!
I usually research and hem and haw for weeks before doing anything, because I really dislike making new accounts all over the place. But as you can see, I'm here! The jump to Dreamwidth was super fast, probably because it was actually a direction decades in the making and it's a platform already familiar to me from the old LiveJournal days. I never signed up during the exodus of that time - I don't remember exactly why since I knew people who headed for DW. (My guess is I thought a bigger change made sense with the way the web was evolving. I can't remember if there was anything in between, but I know I ended up settling on Posterous before reluctantly moving to Tumblr when Posterous shut down, and then eventually to Pillowfort.) I chuckled when I saw the fields for mood and music as I was clicking around. I don't think I'll use them, but it was nostalgic to see.
I'm trying not to get too reflective/Buddhist-philosophical here, mainly because... I'm actually working on a zine and this touches on so many things I've already been thinking about for that project! My little hamster wheel brain doesn't need more encouragement! Case in point: at about 2:30 this morning the hamster decided to go for a marathon run writing essays from different angles for the zine. It took me like 2-3 hours of mental ping-ponging with breathing meditation to wind down.
Aside from the essay-writing, the hamster brain was also throwing up things like "Did I do X when I set up my Dreamwidth? What are my settings for Y?? Is this going to be a problem-" "Oh here's another bunch of things that will be broken on my website and AO3 because I cross-linked from Pillowfort so much for blabberings and background info about all my creative projects-" "I'm going to need to migrate/archive some things elsewhere, it'd be most convenient while Pillowfort is still up but probably too stressful to try to do it all before December. Is the Tassel export more robust than Pillowfort's upcoming export options? Maybe I should look into that-" "-THE REFERENDUM!! Results should be out today, that feels like a bigger thing to be worried about??" (Context: Canadian here. Everyone is/was to some degree concerned and/or ticked off about the Alberta referendum.)
Eventually I fell asleep again. My dreams were a colourful adventure-romp through the rainbow-flooded layout of my elementary school library and looking for something resembling a Pokemon while clutching a giant but vaguely Tamagotchi-like device. It was like my brain went "What? Disaster has struck and we're going back to LiveJournal land? OK, let me check the memory attic for random stuff from way back, it might be useful!" (It didn't quite get the time period right.)
I've started moving major art commentary over to Ellipsus for linking from my website (I finished the ones for hua, Dharma, and 31 days of poetry and ink so far), and will also migrate some of my favourite essays/posts over here. I'm trying not to be too precious about everything - it is a bit of an opportunity to review and clean house!
With the way DW handles images, it won't be as convenient, but I like that it's forcing me to be more thoughtful and intentional about what I upload and how I organize and use it. The reality is that digital resources (bandwidth, space) have a cost to it just like physical resources, it's just super easy to overlook. I haven't quite decided yet what to do about my next update with the Gifts of Ink Tarot and what gets hosted where, so there might be some experimenting.
The trickiest things, to my mind right now at least, are the longform visual fanworks. Some of the Star Ocean 2 fanfic covers and rambles with screenshots, my Project LHIA dollhouse miniatures and comics, and most of all my North Bound posts. A lot of the images are already in various places (like Pixiv), but the thing I always struggle with is wanting the commentary to be available and not be lost. I'm leaning to making a dedicated place specifically for North Bound as its own project. I had actually tried to do that already back when I moved it to Smackjeeves, but... well, we know what happened to Smackjeeves (RIP). We'll see!
Grateful for everyone who's found me here. Thank you for checking this out and reading this!
