A Window, A Light...

I really want to write fan fiction for Serial Experiments: Lain. A long time ago, now, I played in a play-by-post set in that world, and I promise you that wasn't real easy. SE: Lain doesn't make for easy work, and I know I sweated trying to address the themes of the show with the character I played then. The show initially ran in 1998, and it addressed themes like self-identity and the nature of reality, while portraying an isolated girl and her relationship with her friends. The show was oddly paced, information-heavy, dense, but became a cult favorite for its good-faith effort, moody, surreal atmosphere, and the emotions it evoked.

My initial exposure to the series was a picture of Lain on the internet which spent some time as a desktop background. Later, I found a VHS cassette in my local game shop with a picture on the front that had the same character. Intrigued, I Google'd the name of the show. It had already been in existance for several years at that point, so it wasn't too tough to find information on. At the time, the internet was still heavily laden with anime 'shrines' and fan sites, so I skipped between several in an attempt to dig up information before I was able to get the DVDs for my birthday and Christmas. I was unsure of what to make of the results.

After so long, I wanted to revisit the game I played. It was a very meta feeling, because I was younger then, and the show hit its decade-in-existance point sometime last year. I didn't want to just investigate the show's themes, but I wanted to go back to what we had done several years ago, and tie those together and frame them in a new light for now. The show dealt with one series of themes and used a fairly standard information dump from various scientific sources. I, myself, wanted to go a different route. While the show brought in research about altered conciousness, alien crashes, and MMOs and shooters, I wanted to investigate the feeling of being watched, Foucalt's Disipline and Punish, Bentham's Panopticon, Fear and Loathing, and a desire to escape and understand the world around us. These days, I don't have the unregulated free time I used to. I haven't went out and pulled the books and movies I need to. So, there's laziness. On the other hand, I keep wondering if it's worthwhile to spend so much time on fan fiction.

I guess it's just using fiction as a vehicle for my own research though. Which is why I'm spending time on it these days.

It's about time I developed those two tags. I'm surprised it took this long.