Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

It's been a while, so you would think I've read all sorts of fun stuff, which is true. However, I don't want to get into all the crap when I can gush over great literature.

Pride and Prejudice is one of those books that everyone has read at one point in their academic careers, I think. Austen is a great writer, and Pride is probably her best known work. I know I had to read it once in high school, and while I liked it, it didn't leave that much of an impression on me.

That's not true for other people, judging from the mountain of profession fanfiction in the market today. You could read the entire thing from Darcy's perspective. (the cleverly titled Darcy's Story) You could read what happens if the book's timeline was changed. (Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World is just one example.) You could even see Elizabeth fight against the zombie hordes. (the nerd-ification masterpiece Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) There are literally dozens of books that try to continue, alter, and play with Austen's original story, at least according to Wikipedia, and we should always trust Wikipedia.

Collision Course by K.A. Mitchell

There's a few things I want to get off my chest before I really get into it, and it is this:

FUCK THIS FUCKING FUCK OF A FUCKING BOOK.

... I feel a little better.

When it comes to gay erotica, I tend to read those set in olden times (i.e. historical romances) and those set in never-really-happened times (i.e. fantasy). I don't usually read anything set in modern times, and this book proved to me why.

Collision Course is about two guys in Jacksonville, Florida. Aaron is a paramedic with a hatred of social workers. Joey is a social worker who falls in love at the drop of a hat. They meet at the scene of an accident where Joey was doing the Good Samaritan shtick, and it's not long after that the two leads are having sex in the back of the ambulance.

Of course, my first reaction was, whoa, not fucking around, are we Mitchell? The gay erotica I usually read tends to save the sex scenes for after the guys get to know each other, angst over each other, or at least had a couple of drinks first. No, Mitchell knows why we're here and the writer does not want to disappoint.

Bukatsu no Kouhai ni Semarareteimasu by Koshino

Let's talk about Bukatsu no Kouhai ni Semarareteimasu.

You might know this or not, but a lot of professional manga-ka have cut their creative teeth in fandom. CLAMP, of course, is the most common example. They started up making Captain Tsubasa parody books (of the slash variety, of course), and look where they are now, entertaining millions of fans with their strange, confusing plots and constant ship-teasing. They made it.

Other artists continue making fancomics even after they debut. Murakami Maki, the creator of Gravitation, for example, has done doujinshi for her own comic. And she isn't the only one.

It's not something you come across back home, is it? You usually don't find a professional using his skills to make fan parodies...

It was a bit of a stretch, and I'm (not) sorry.

Which brings me to Koshino. She, too, has done (and continues to do) fanbooks, mostly Fullmetal Alchemist slash. She also has found success with Bukatsu no Kouhai ni Semarareteimasu (I'm going to start calling it BKS from now on), a comic series that you can find on Libre Mobile's web service. It's done so well that they've produced an audio version (which is can be bought via Libre Mobile.)

I don't deal with Libre Mobile (and I'm pretty sure you can't either), so when I came across BKS for the first time in Magazine Be-Boy, the May 2011 issue, I thought it was a one-shot. Little did I know...