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Message no. 1
From: runnerpaul@*****.com runnerpaul@*****.com
Subject: Otaku [was: Starting equiptment]
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 13:36:33 -0400 (EDT)
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At 10:43 AM 7/17/99 -0400, IronRaven wrote:
:>if he's really an Otaku, a Denver "Otaku", or just a
:super-good-extra-special
:
: OK, what are Otaku, for those of us who've never read VR2?

In RL the word Otaku originated in Japan as a slang term for die-hard
fanboys of Manga, Anime, computers, and videogames, those who pursue
those hobbies to the point of social maladjustment. I've heard two
different translations of what the word is supposed to mean, and
they're both probably right. The first I've heard was that it was an
extremely formal word for addressing someone directly, the word "you"
dressed up in it's best formal wear. The second definition I've heard
was that otaku meant "house". I'm guessing that it's "house" in the
sense of "household" meaning one's family, one's company, and the
allies thereof; and that Otaku means "You and your Household", but
since this is all speculation based on secondhand hearsay, don't take
my word for it.

In Shadowrun, the Otaku were first introduced in the Denver box. They
were an urban tribe of children living on the grounds of the Denver
Data Haven. These children, no older than early teens, were
hyper-adept with comptuers and the matrix and were able to run a
tortise connection almost as fast as a jacked decker.

Most all the Otaku had gotten datajacks at a surprisingly young age.
They run the matrix on cyberdecks handed down from the shadow deckers
who act as sysops for the Denver Data Haven. Since the Denver sysops
almost need to stay two hops _ahead_ of the SOTA curve, even their
hand-me-down hardware is tricked out up the wazoo.

Now if the Otaku were just kids who were introduced to decking at
such an early age that it becomes second nature to them, running on
some of the best hardware on the planet, that would have been
impressive in and of itself. However, at the end of the section in
Denver on the Otaku, one of the Otaku posts a shadow comment:

"Some of the Otaku don't need a deck. ... They jack using a simsense
translator modified with a simple digital impulse converter. That's
it -- no headware memory, no active memory, no storage memory, no
progs, no MPCP, no persona, nothing. They just do it. And the matrix
does what they want."

The shadowtalk then goes on for about half a page mentioning terms
like "Deep Resonance", "Channels", and "forms", terms that
the Otaku
use to describe how some of them deck without cyberdeck hardware. No
full explanation is given, however.

When VR2 came out, it focused much more on the decking without
cyberdecks aspect of the Otaku. The concept of little kids being as
skilled as veteran deckers with near unreal decking abilities,
because they "grew up in the matrix" is only touched upon briefly.
This could be because a player character who grew up in an Otaku
tribe but never learned how to deck without a cyberdeck could be
represented by the existing rules for chargen.

The "Deep Resonance" is an experience that certain members growing up
in an Otaku community, "those who show the deepest, most profoundly
imprinted understanding of the Matrix," undergo. Undergoing the "Deep
Resonance" is a life altering event akin to a Moment of Clarity or on
par with a Shaman's first Totemic experience.

I won't go into specifics about the mechanics of creating or playing
an Otaku (you wanna know? buy the book *g*), but generally, the
mechanics can be described by analogy: An Otaku is to a regular
Decker what a PhysAd is to a Street Sam. The potential for their
abilities is bounded only by how much karma they can pump into
advancement.

There are also two flavors of Otaku: the Cyberadept, and the
Technoshaman. Technoshamans view their Deep Resonance experience as
being touched by the living soul of the Matrix itself, while
Cyberadepts take a colder, more technical, viewpoint.

Subsequent products have dealt with how AIs interact with Otaku. AIs
can apparently speak to Otaku in the Language and Voice of the Deep
Resonance, making Otaku somewhat susceptible to an AI's influence.
Certain AIs even exhibit the ability to at least partially induce a
Deep Resonance experience in certain individuals, giving them the
ability to create new Otaku, though often with several limitations.

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-- Paul Gettle, #186 of 1000 (RunnerPaul@*****.com)
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Message no. 2
From: runnerpaul@*****.com runnerpaul@*****.com
Subject: Otaku [was: Starting equiptment]
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 13:38:49 -0400 (EDT)
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At 10:22 AM 7/17/99 -0700, Arcady wrote:
:> OK, what are Otaku, for those of us who've never read VR2?
:
:An otaku is a pervert in Japanese.

No. Hentai is pervert in Japanese.


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--
-- Paul Gettle, #186 of 1000 (RunnerPaul@*****.com)
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Message no. 3
From: Arcady arcady@***.net
Subject: Otaku [was: Starting equiptment]
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 11:43:46 -0700
> : OK, what are Otaku, for those of us who've never read VR2?
>
> In RL the word Otaku originated in Japan as a slang term for die-hard
> fanboys of Manga, Anime, computers, and videogames, those who pursue
> those hobbies to the point of social maladjustment. I've heard two


http://enterprise.ic.gc.ca/cgi-bin/j-e/tty/dosearch?sDict=on&H=PS&L=J&T=otak
u

Two Matches Found

otaku
(pol) your house; your home; you

otaku*
(col) geek; nerd; enthusiast

Seems to be the only reference I can find for it. It's not in any my
Japanese-English or English-Japanese dictionaries.
Message no. 4
From: runnerpaul@*****.com runnerpaul@*****.com
Subject: Otaku [was: Starting equiptment]
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 18:22:56 -0400 (EDT)
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At 11:43 AM 7/17/99 -0700, Arcady wrote:
:> : OK, what are Otaku, for those of us who've never read VR2?
:>
:> In RL the word Otaku originated in Japan as a slang term for
:die-hard
:> fanboys of Manga, Anime, computers, and videogames, those who
:pursue
:> those hobbies to the point of social maladjustment. I've heard two
:
:
:http://enterprise.ic.gc.ca/cgi-bin/j-e/tty/dosearch?sDict=on&H=PS&L=J
:T=otaku
:
:Two Matches Found
:
:otaku
: (pol) your house; your home; you
:
:otaku*
: (col) geek; nerd; enthusiast
:
:Seems to be the only reference I can find for it. It's not in any my
:Japanese-English or English-Japanese dictionaries.

Oddly enough, there's a scene in one of William Gibson's novels
(Idoru, I think) where the protaginist's Japanese-to-English
real-time translation software chokes on the word otaku, defining it
as "pathological-techno-fetishist-with-social-deficit".

Check out:
http://www.i360.com/anime/lexicon/otaku.html
It's a pretty good piece on the contemporary usage of the word,
including how the connotation of the word differs when Americans use
it to describe themselves compared to the Japanese use of the word as
an insult.

Another handy link is:
http://www.altculture.com/aentries/o/otaku.html


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--
-- Paul Gettle, #186 of 1000 (RunnerPaul@*****.com)
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C260 94B3 6722 6A25 63F8 0690 9EA2 3344

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Message no. 5
From: runnerpaul@*****.com runnerpaul@*****.com
Subject: Otaku [was: Starting equiptment]
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 18:38:35 -0400 (EDT)
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At 03:27 PM 7/17/99 -0400, IronRaven wrote:
:>An otaku is a pervert in Japanese.
(I've mentioned this previously, but in case the list is eating posts
again, I'll repeat here: Hentai is pervert in Japanese, not Otaku).

: That is the reason I was asking. I knew it was a form of magic,
:and involved computers, but I was afraid that FASA was going White
:Wolf on us.

The Otaku aren't specifically magical. Some of the otaku do explain
their own abilities in mystical terms, but no one can say exactly
what is going on. However Otaku in Shadowrun are in no way comparable
to the Virtual Adepts of White Wolf's Mage game.

:>But in Shadowrun it's someone who can get into the matrix without a
:>cyberdeck.
:
: OK....
: Can this be explained in fifty words or less? I just need a
:generalisation.

An Otaku is someone who has been exposed to "something" on the Matrix
that gives their brains the subconcious ability to interact with the
matrix as if their brain were a cyberdeck running programs. This
happens most often to children who have run the matrix from an
unusually young age.

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-- Paul Gettle, #186 of 1000 (RunnerPaul@*****.com)
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Message no. 6
From: Patrick Goodman remo@***.net
Subject: Otaku [was: Starting equiptment]
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 17:48:33 -0500
> :>if he's really an Otaku, a Denver "Otaku", or just a
> :super-good-extra-special
> :
> : OK, what are Otaku, for those of us who've never read VR2?

<snip condensed version>

Paul, that's the best Reader's Digest explanation of the Otaku I've seen.
You mind if I print this up and add it to the primer I'm putting together
for my game?

--
(>) Texas 2-Step
El Paso: Never surrender. Never forget. Never forgive.
Message no. 7
From: runnerpaul@*****.com runnerpaul@*****.com
Subject: Otaku [was: Starting equiptment]
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 20:42:00 -0400 (EDT)
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At 05:48 PM 7/17/99 -0500, Patrick Goodman wrote:
:> : OK, what are Otaku, for those of us who've never read VR2?
:
:<snip condensed version>
:
:Paul, that's the best Reader's Digest explanation of the Otaku I've
:seen.
:You mind if I print this up and add it to the primer I'm putting
:together
:for my game?

Go right ahead.

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--
-- Paul Gettle, #186 of 1000 (RunnerPaul@*****.com)
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Message no. 8
From: IronRaven cyberraven@********.net
Subject: Otaku [was: Starting equiptment]
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1999 08:53:26 -0400
At 18.38 07-17-99 -0400, you wrote:
>An Otaku is someone who has been exposed to "something" on the Matrix
>that gives their brains the subconcious ability to interact with the

Sounds like FASA is planning to go Gibson on us, with loa or something in
the matrix. Prbably something big, blue and officially dead.


CyberRaven
http://members.xoom.com/iron_raven/
"Once again, we have spat int he face of Death and his second cousin,
Dismemberment."
"'Impossible' is a term used by those of little imagination or intelligence
to describe that which they can not understand."

Further Reading

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These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.