Random Insanity

Today's snowflake_challenge is about fandom resources. At first I didn't have a clue what to put here since I'm not really involved in fandom anymore other than reading a few fanfics (that I never comment on) or writing my own fic, but then I started thinking about when I was working on my Epic Ouran AU (mentioned here) and all the resources I used to flesh out the AU. Those were things that went beyond just fandom resources. I had to look up maps of Boston and Tokyo, learn about different places in Japan, check out baseball schedules, etc). It was a lot of work, but there were a few fandom places I went back to time and time again for information.

1. the Ouran High School Host Club Fandom Wiki - of course this is number one because it's where I got all of my canon facts. Fandom Wikis are a necessity when writing fanfic so you don't have to reread/rewatch what could be hours and days of content to remember one tiny scene or turn of phrase a character said.

2. kissmegoodbye.net for screencaps of the show for making icons, character headers for my personal wiki of the AU, reminders of scenes without rewatching the anime, and general inspiration

3. Japanese name site. I used two of these because I was making up a ton of new characters and wanted to have real sounding names. Let me tell you, I had way too much fun with these sites. Japanese Name Generator has a set number of names that I think I exhausted because I kept getting the same random ones no matter how many times I click the button, lol. Japanese Name Dictionary is more like a baby-naming site that gives you information about the name besides a basic meaning and lets you see other names with similar sounds/meanings. They both also list random last names to round out the characters. I came back to this site time and time again for inspiration on names and character traits. If you're going to write in an anime/manga fandom with Japanese names, these sites or one like them are a must. These two are my favorites.

Those are just three of the resources I used while working on my Epic AU. These are more fandom or general oriented. I also used tiddlywiki.com to create my own personal wiki to organize my thoughts and information, and found some good add-ons for that. But that's information for another post.