Hello, all. Welcome to my profile.

Internet name: Harlyn

Occupation: College student

Age: Nineteen

Gender: Female

Animes: RuroKen, Samurai Champloo, DNAngel, Death Note, InuYasha

I've been reading fanfiction obsessively since summer 2007. Since, I've come to have a great respect for what fanfiction can do for amateur writers. It's very inspirational to see how writers have developed over a period of years. It's also incredibely humbling to find the occasional middle school students and MANY high school students who are better writers than I am; sessha hopes that after five or six years of writing fanfiction, I will have similarly improved :-)

Fanfiction: I have a number of Rurouni Kenshin fics in progress, but I've proven to be very slow about updating. Of Math and Midgets will be updated as it comes, but in the future I don't plan to upload fics until I've made serious headway and realistically expect to finish them.

Fics in Progress: (As of May 2008)

Rurouni Kenshin Fics

"Retirement" is discontinued for the time being. I'm not sure I'll ever come back to it.

I still have ideas about "A Midsummer's Night Haunting", but it's on hold as well.

"Of Math and Midgets" I have long term ideas for, and will be updated with time :-)

I have a planned Rurouni Kenshin project that's this historical AU of massive proportions, but I need to do a great deal of research. Hopefully this will happen over this summer.

Inuyasha Fics:

I keep being attacked by Inuyasha plot bunnies. I have a number of fics in progress that will hopefully be posted on completion.

"Miranda Rights" is not complete-- I totally failed the above resolution. However, it's moving along at a reasonable enough pace, and the outline isn't exactly ambitious, so I started posting anyway.

My Thoughts on Fandoms:

The only fandoms I've written for(and the prinicple fandoms I read) are Rurouni Kenshin and InuYasha, but it seems like the kinds of fanfiction that they produce are very different. Rurouni Kenshin is populated by a number of highly developed characters, and their historical backgrounds are fairly relevant to their personalities. When Kenshin stops being an idealistic, aging war hero with PTSD, he pretty much stops being Kenshin. If he's not polite and introverted, he definitely stops being Kenshin. I have read great fics with wildly out of character Kenshins, but Battousai darkfics mostly get on my nerves. Sanosuke, Hiko, and Saitou are also pretty defined. Kaoru, Megumi, Misao, and Yahiko I feel are less developed in canon, and there's more room for interpretation.

Because Kenshingumi are so developed to begin with, fanfictions seem to be more plot driven.

InuYasha is the reverse. If you've read this far into my bio, you get to learn my secret: I've never actually watched InuYasha. I have read the manga available at my local library, but more of my IY lore comes from the fanfics(a LOT of fanfics) and Wikipedia. I can't stand the anime, and never made it more than a few minutes into an episode. The voices grate, and the slapstick is embarassing. However, my impression is that the plot basically consists of fighting the monster of the week, everyone arguing, and an ongoing quest against an enemy of total evil(in the anime-- the manga has recently had develpments :-)). The characters are very portable. Kagome is the bubbly, sweet schoolgirl, Shippo is...cute, Sango is the honorable, traditional warrior, Kirara is...cute, Miroku is the intellectual, semi-enlightented pervert, Sesshoumaru is an icy badass, and Kikyou is a flawed Mary Sue. InuYasha himself has a slightly more detailed character, as a feral young man with surprisingly thick skin, endless courage, more emotional defenses than a porcupine, and fundamentally good intentions.

Aside from these mostly two-word characterizations, everything else is left up to the fandom's imagination. The AU potential is endless, the amount of character development possible over the course of a fanfiction is impressive. Don't get me wrong; the manga is mythopoeic like crazy, a "Feudal Fairytale" indeed. It's like any fairy tale, very archetypally powerful, and can be written in different ways over and over again without losing it's sparkle.

In a nutshell, I read Kenshin-fics to see the characters I love having new adventures. I read IY fics to watch the skeletons of characters I'm fond of, and the beginnings of relationships that intrigue me, fleshed out into characters I can love.

Final notes:

Sometimes I enjoy citrus in fanfiction; it can carry a lot of emotional power. However, I think most fangirls out there would benefit from reading "Our Bodies, Our Selves."

Unless very well written, I don't care for alternate pairings. (I DON'T understand why SessXKag is so popular...)

Dramatic irony = Teh Evil.

It's also my opinion that fluff, wordplay, cool fight scenes, and happy endings are all wonderful things :-)