Fun and Thieving in Las Vegas: A Lupin III fiction-in-progress
Anyone who has known me for any serious length of time knows that I have a tendency to get caught up in what I am here euphemistically calling "enthusiasms." Perhaps a more accurate, and less flattering, term would be "obsessions" -- especially given the all-consuming nature of these activities once I really get rolling. Though the original definition of enthusiasm implies a pretty all-consuming state too ... but I digress.
Anyway, the enthusiasm du jour turns out to be a dual one. I have had a fondness for the long-running anime/manga franchise Lupin III ever since I first discovered it on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming several years ago. However, it wasn't until early this year that some random urge prompted me to start tracking down more of the franchise--Adult Swim had only been broadcasting the first 26 episodes of what turned out to be the second TV series. And once I did, I suddenly found myself falling head-over-heels in love with the whole thing. It's got just the right combination of wacky over-the-top outrageous humor, surprisingly intricate plotting and storytelling, and occasional flashes of more serious themes, to really grab me. Plus the main characters are incredibly rich and fun.
And finally, there's just such a huge amount of material out there to investigate--several manga series, three TV series, five movies, and a few dozen TV specials, OVAs, and other assorted stuff. It's fascinating to me how this series is so little-known here in the US, because in Japan it's apparently a pop-culture fixture comparable to Superman and Mickey Mouse; for instance, the tradition of a new annual 90-minute TV special has been going strong on Japanese TV since 1989. Some of this video material is only accessible to us English-speakers through either volunteer fansubs or dubs in other languages (for reasons I've yet to understand, Lupin III is huge in Italy). And while the first two manga series have been translated into English, there are several more that have not yet gotten the treatment. But this is exactly the kind of challenge that lends fuel to the obsessed fan's fire.
Anyway, at a certain point the writer-geek in me started longing for more Lupin stories, headed in different and sometimes even weirder directions than the Lupin tales I had gotten my hands on so far. So inevitably I found myself starting to write those tales.
Now the thing about fan-fiction, as some of the so-called "professional" writers I have known have taken great pains to reinforce, is that many pros look down on it as a lesser form of writing. After all, you didn't come up with your own goddamn characters, what kind of a failure of imagination is that? And they also then point at the huge wealth of mediocre fan-fiction out there on the web, much of it just sketchy excuses to create sexual fantasies between fictional characters (the so-called "slash" genre, which got its name from the amateur erotica generated by fevered Star Trek fans envisioning forbidden Kirk/Spock liaisons--the added irony for this-here self-identified queer being that most homoerotic slash is actually written by straight female fans).
Well, given that 90% of any field can and will be dreck, to dismiss a genre because there's a lot of dreck to be found is IMO specious. And as to the not-coming-up-with-original-characters bit: well, given the recent huge upsurge in the re-purposing of historical figures as fictional characters, and even the embrace of previously pop genres, in works of serious literary fiction (cf. Michael Chabon), not to mention the blithely unrepentant re-appropriation of whole texts by post-modernist writers (cf. Kathy Acker), it strikes me that this objection is specious as well. So that brings us down to the basic question one has to ask about any piece of fiction, which is not whether you approve of the tropes and rules of the genre, but simply whether you like it.
Now mind you, my little fanfic project does not have such high-flown literary aspirations as Acker, or perhaps even Chabon. I'm more interested in just having a damn good time writing a damn good read. But inevitably I'm finding some of my own philosophical and literary interests creeping into the work (note, for instance, the blatant reference to Hunter S. Thompson in the title). Plus I confess that the way I'm writing it--first person present-tense stream-of-consciousness from the point of view of the protagonist, the irrepressible gentleman thief and womanizer Arsene Lupin III, has turned into a fabulous opportunity for me to encounter the transgender male-identified part of my psyche--which I didn't realize I had until I let that randy little monkey-man take over my brain (my writing practice has a lot in common with Method Acting, so I wind up having some pretty damn close encounters with my characters).
Anyway, this is all a very round-about way of inviting you to check out my Lupin III fanfic and see if it turns you on. And if it does turn you on, do let me know--and do pass the link on to others who you think might also be turned on. I'm not too proud to admit that I adore having an audience--hell, why else would I have a personal website/blog thing anyway? :-)
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