Back in the mid-Nineties when I was writing the Star Trek fanfic Door Repair Guy I was reading Henry Jenkins on the competition between producer and consumer in the field of popular culture. Fans sometimes assert a right of eminent domain over a favorite narrative and will create stories of their own if they think their tastes or expectations have been ignored by the executive producers. Oftentimes these stories are of a sexual nature and include scenarios you know you'll just never see on TV (e.g., "Kirk/Spock"). Part of the fun of reading the manga Genshiken is the realization that the author Kio Shimoku knows all about fan culture and is drawing toward it. Much of the story revolves around the creation and collecting of doujinshi, fan-produced manga. These comics are invariably described as porn by the anti-otaku Saki Kasukabe, and when the characters' own doujinshi is finally shown almost all of it is blacked out for the sake of propriety. A number of the characters pair off into couples over the course of the story, and there's considerable innuendo about what goes on in the clubroom and the washrooms, but very little is shown. I suspect this is a strategy to encourage fan-art by the readers, and sure enough, you can buy Genshiken doujinshi on eBay, where I stole this image. Douglas
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