♦ ♣ ♥ ♠ Why Kid? ♦ ♣ ♥ ♠
| -Or-
How Detective Conan Changed Our Life. November 2001, was looking for ficcage to read at work. (we multitask. Hard to focus just on one thing) when I stumbled upon a fic on either Krista Perry or W.M. Chichiri’s site, ‘The Case of the Missing Detective’. Mental thought process: Oh. That shrunken detective series we see at the local Japanese book shops. Well, if such a good authour likes it enough to fic, might as well give it a shot. Read it. Sooooo good. Got curious. Looked for more. Magical Princess Pink Orchid by Lady Orla, the Window and The Longest Hour by Ysabet so very very yummy. Enter animeforever.com’s fanfic archive (now closed) and a DC scanlation site. Which led to other scanlation sites, including Jane’s. Jane also has this funny page for an older series of Gosho’s, Magic Kaitou. We were just coming off a CLAMP high, having read CLAMP Campus Detectives and finding our CLAMP love, Duklyon, through that, figured that we might as well try to repeat the pattern. Pattern holds. Main series cool. Side series ROCKS. Kid = Much crack. XD January 2002. FF.net had around 50 - 75 fics in the DC archive. Start looking for Kid specific stories. The first Kid fic we find involves the Kaitou swinging in through a bedroom window, shattering it, laughing manically while firing a machine gun, shooting everyone in sight, killing many for no reason what so ever other than the fact he felt like it. Say it with me now: WTF?! And for some really bizarre reason, this pissed us off. Like, royally cheesed off here. Voices were outraged and I was flabbergasted. Total OOC-ness. Decided right about there that y’know what? -Someone’s- gotta write Kid and let people see what a cool character he is. I’d like to say so that’s what we did, but it wasn’t like there was this immediate veritable tide of Kid fics pouring outta us. -_- And we got things wrong. Boy, did we get things wrong. Jane’s site, which was about the only English Kid page on the net, spelled ‘Nakamori’ about three or four different ways, ‘Kaito’ and ‘Kaitou’ fluctuated back and forth and the grammer’s really not the best. (we’re not dissing her, we’re thankful for the site, but this caused quite a few problems in early fics that we never fixed on the ff.net versions.) But that set the preference. We relate more to the thief than the detectives anyway. Enter MSN messenger, talks to late night talks with Ysabet, Loquacious, Hell’s Hauntress and Magik-chan. Plunnies spread and mutate. Becky Tailweaver’s Relative Truth comes out and maaaan, were we jealous of her story telling ablity. *drool* About six months later, it dawns that we’ve pretty much exhausted the net looking for DC/MK stuff. But hey, there’s this site with stolen Japanese artwork by someone named Persia. And so we gather up our courage and foray into the Japanese net, never mind we don’t speak the language. First picture we find, con you not: The Kaitou Kid. Wearing his Monocle. Gloves. A Devil-May-Care Grin. And his Hat. …Which is on his butt. Nothing else. Thank goodness he was on his hand (the other hand holding the hat on) and knees, making it so can’t see *ahem* anything. #^^# (we were so young and innocent then ¬_¬ *sigh*) Needless to say, this should have been considered what you might call Foreboding, Foreshadowing or just a straight-out Warning Sign. I kick myself on occasion for not having saved that picture. Never did find that site again… *waxes poetic* -Did eventually find Persia’s site. Very nice art, inaccessible to computers coming from America because that was who was taking her art and posting it elsewhere without permission. Which is why we don’t post links to Japanese sites, because too many people use the language barrier as an excuse not to ask permission for taking art for use on their sites or for personal icons. /end rant. Anyway, end up learning the secrets of navigating the Japanese and stumble upon ‘Data Files’. And hey, there’s this funny thing called ‘Babelfish’ on Alta Vista which translates ‘Kuroba’ as ‘Kurobane it is pleasant’ or ‘something-or-another Donkey’, depending on the mood its in, but can at least give us a bit of a clue of stuff that we can’t find on the English net. And then there was that one NC-17 picture of Genta and Mitsuhiko, which ranked as the most disturbing thing we ever saw on the Japanese net until we started looking at Yu-Gi-Oh! Fansites… o_O;; Warning: It is VERY dangerous to click on links when you don’t know where they lead. Okay? Okay. Back to the English Net, something important happens to change our whole impression and way we see Magic Kaito. Golden Eye. Chat Noir vs the Kaitou Kid. Aoko’s birthday. Jii’s assistance. “Merci Kuroba Kaito” (with correct spelling of name in ENGLISH!) Hakuba’s phone call from Paris. Holy shyte, Hakuba’s phone call from Paris. Hakuba went from pervy Kaitou fancier/stalker (“And he's the only one who can interrupt my thoughts...” –Sunset Mansion) to a character we could grasp without giving him a plushie elephant as teasing fodder (“I don't want to see you lose to anyone until I capture you myself.") …The whole ‘This sugary yet obnoxious tone of voice is... Hakuba?!’ line is all the funnier when you realise that Hakuba’s VA is Ishida Akira… With that and the past discovery of a Kaito/Akako/Hakuba site is when it stopped being ‘Kaito/Aoko OTP’ to ‘Pairing? What Pairing? Anything goes!’ and a gradual descend into pervertness. Although some might argue with me on that. >_< Thus explaining our slide and entrapment into the MK fandom. Still freaks us out to realise that at one point, 25-50% of the DC/MK fics on ff.net were ours. 0_0 Think we’re still holding the record as most DC/MK fics authored… huh. Anyway. So how did Detective Conan change our life? Backtrack to MSN messenger and those late night talks. Only now the circle has grown to include not only Ysabet, but our Evil Twin Becky Tailweaver, Kaitou Ann, occasionally Meg from fenya.net, and several other very talented authors/artists. (much time spent going ‘OMG!! We’re not worthy!! Orooo…’ all around) Ysabet invites us out to Fanime 2003. Despite the fact we’ve never met her before in person, we fly out to Tucson, Arizona and ride with her and several other people to Dallas, Texas. And fall in love with the city of Tucson, despite the 100f/40c+ temperatures. So a few months later when we lost our house and our job due to both being sold to different owners, we moved from Los Angeles to Tucson. Where we’ve made some amazing friends (MOrgan!!!), met my boyfriend ((GLOMPS)) and learned a lot of really important lessons about life and myself. Regardless of the fact we still haven’t found a permanent job. ^^;; But none of which would have happened if we hadn’t gotten into Detective Conan in the first place. ^___^ Salute! -Icka! M. Chif |