Disclaimer: Neither of the authors own or make any claim whatsoever upon Yu Yu Hakusho and the events and characters of the aforementioned series. We also do not make any claims upon the video game(s) mentioned in this piece. This is a non-profit endeavor and is in no way, shape, or form associated with or endorsed by the copyright holders.

Additionally, we do not own or maintain the mailing list alluded to in this chapter.  If we were the list mommies of this particular mailing list, we would probably die of overwork in a futile attempt to insert a semblance of intelligence into those messages that lacked any sensibility and legibility whatsoever.

The Hypocrite Hunter

Chapter Six

Co-written by Rose Thorne and Yamino Tora

"Good grief," Yuusuke muttered dazedly.  "Don't these people have anything better to do than talk about how hot anime characters are?"

"Eh?"  Kuwabara diverted his attention from the television screen for just long enough for Hiei to knock the green Link off of the cliff with a Pokémon.  "Dammit, Shrimp, play by the rules!"

Hiei glared at him and knocked his character off of the same cliff, this time making good use of a gigantic hammer.  "Only when you quit cheating!"

"I'm not cheating! You're the one who's always chucking Pokémon at everyone!"

"And I still haven't agreed to not do it, so you have no reason to complain."

Kuwabara sighed and dropped his controller.  "Fine, Shrimp.  I'm not going to argue with a cheater.  Now, Urameshi, what's your problem?"

"Come here and read this," Yuusuke said, pointing to the web page he was on.  Kuwabara moved to stand behind him, seeing nothing more than what looked like any other email message.  He started reading, but abandoned the attempt after the first few horridly misspelled lines.

"Damn.  Who sent you that one?"

"Someone on the mailing list I joined a couple of months ago.  I thought it would help me improve my English, but if this is the way the native-speakers write, then it looks like I'd be better off going to class!"

A snort came from the general vicinity of Kuwabara's elbow.  "You, going to class?  Don't make me laugh."

"What's wrong, Hiei, afraid to admit that you can't even write in your own language?"  Kuwabara laughed, earning himself a matched pair of glares from both Hiei and Kurama.

"It's pretty difficult to learn to write in a language that's never had an alphabet of its own, Kuwabara-kun.  And there's no equivalent in any human language I know for some of the sounds in it," Kurama said, coming over to join the others by the computer.  Kuwabara shifted nervously, although Hiei pretended to not notice.  "Inari-sama, that is horrid!  How can they understand themselves when they write like that?  No offense, Yuusuke, but your English is so much better than this I'm shocked."

Yuusuke looked torn between preening at the praise and acting offended at the implications.  "You think this one's bad, wait until you see a couple of the other 'regulars' around here," he said, hitting the back button and clicking on another bold subject.

Kuwabara choked, and Kurama stared at the offending material with what might have been termed scholarly disinterest by anyone who had seen his expression at that moment.

"Interesting.  I take it the 'ur' is intended to be a shortened form of your, but why is that person asking for hentai manga on a mailing list about Dragonball Z?"  Kurama asked, reading through the message.  "Wait a minute, isn't 'Spiritreigun' one of your screen names?"

Yuusuke flushed and deleted the message.  "It's not my fault, really!  Kuwabara made me post that one!"

Hiei looked at him skeptically.  "Sure he did."

"He did!  He was going to tell my mom exactly where the rest of her imported vodka went if I didn't!"

"Vodka?  You drank vodka?" Kurama stared at him incredulously.  "How can you stand that stuff?"

That earned a sheepish look from Yuusuke.  "It was all that was in the house at the time!"

Hiei snorted.  "You're as much of a fool as the oaf, even if you're only drinking that weak human excuse for liquor."

"HEY!"  Yuusuke and Kuwabara yelled simultaneously.

"It's not weak," Yuusuke muttered indignantly.

"Not for human brews, no, but compared to what we're used to it might as well be ginger ale."

"No wonder you two never get drunk," Kuwabara said.  Hiei snorted.

"Never around you, at least."

"Whoa, Yuusuke, go back to that last message," Kurama said, pointing to a line of text.  Yuusuke complied and Kuwabara stared at the screen in confusion.

"Where's the reply to that?" he wondered.  "This is the same message you just deleted!"

Yuusuke sighed and scrolled down the page.  Reply after reply after reply flashed by, but still the latest response eluded the Reikai Tantei.  When Yuusuke finally stopped scrolling, the four of them leaned forward, even though Hiei couldn't read English, only to see the one-word response to end all one-word responses: k.

Perhaps the previous sentence should be revised now that it has been considered--it would be much more accurate to say that it was the one-letter response to end all one-letter responses.

Kurama and Kuwabara stared at the one letter in stunned bemusement.  "All that for just one little letter?"

Yuusuke nodded.  "Yep.  Sadly enough, it's typical of the people that frequent this list--they keep every single reply in the thread until it can be traced all the way back to the origin of the internet, and they like hiding their replies in weird places in the messages.  They've also been known to send replies completely unrelated to the topic, and in this case the rampant one-letter response has reared its hideous head."

"How . . . moronic," Kuwabara said.  "Why do you bother getting messages from illiterate morons like that?"

"Because," Yuusuke grinned at him and clicked on another subject, "people like this one make it totally worthwhile."

"Really?"  Kurama asked, reading the post aloud.  "'If I didn't know any better I'd say that you were trying to scare us intelligent newbies away from this ML with your rampant idiocy. And yes, your point is very clear: you escaped from some loony bin and didn't take your medication and now you're running on an obsession for a two-dimensional anime character.'

"'Happens all the time.'"

Yuusuke smirked.  "See what I mean?  That particular person is one of the lurkers, but when she decides to pop out of the woodwork she definitely makes her presence known.  It seems like she tends to wait until someone posts something really idiotic to delurk, though."

"Seems like she likes to point out exactly how stupid some of those . . . threads . . . are," Hiei said, smirking.

"No kidding.  Here's another one: 'There's a very distinct difference between the usage of English by one who is just learning the language and by one who never bothered learning the language properly in the first place.'
"'The latter seems to be the case here.'"

"What was that in response to?"  Kurama asked.  Yuusuke scrolled down, and Kurama nodded in understanding.  "No wonder--whoever wrote that message can't even use correct punctuation and capitalization!"

"Not to mention the fact that the spelling is just as bad as that first one," Yuusuke said.  Hiei muttered something about being glad that his own native tongue didn't have a written form as Yuusuke deleted that message as well.

Three jaws dropped open in shock at the content of the next message.  Hiei craned his neck to stare at Kurama.  "Well?  What does it say, fox?  I can't see the screen from here--the oaf's in the way!"

"It's . . . an advertisement for a website that offers people the opportunity to marry or enslave their favorite anime characters."  Hiei's crimson eyes narrowed dangerously.

"That's obscene."

"Rikkui agrees with you on that point," Yuusuke stated, pointing at a heavily capitalized section of one of the responses to that message.  "I think this is the first time I've ever seen her 'yell' about anything on here."

"I can see why," Kurama said.  "I'd probably be yelling about that, too, even if it was just something that someone decided to create for fun."

"Where's the fun in owning another person?"  Hiei demanded.  "Even if it's not a real person being enslaved, the implications are the same.  Whoever decided to start that needs to realize exactly how obscene his or her actions are."

"No kidding," Kuwabara said.  "I can't believe that person actually went as far as advertising it on a public mailing list!"

"Yeah," Yuusuke said, deleting that message after sending his own caustic reply to its sender--with Kurama's assistance in the spelling and grammatical departments, of course.  "You know, it's always like this on here.  There's so many flakes on here that it puts the cereal aisle in an American grocery store to shame!"

Kurama giggled into his hand, but Kuwabara and Hiei stared at him in confusion.  Yuusuke sighed.  "Never mind.  Enough of this for today--I swear this thing is worse than hentai manga in the brain cell rotting department."

"And yet you still read them," Kuwabara said, leering at Yuusuke and receiving an extremely rude gesture gotten from an American movie in return.

"Whatever.  You guys want to hit the arcade?"

Kuwabara snorted.  "We were just there last night, Urameshi!  Let's go see what's playing at the theater instead."

"Sounds good to me," Kurama said.  "What do you think, Hiei?"

"Hn.  I don't care."

Yuusuke grinned as he shut down the computer.  "Genkai's temple is on the way to the theater, so we can pick up Yukina and Keiko on our way.  Although they'll probably want to go to some chick flick and nothing worthwhile . . ."

Kuwabara didn't seem to mind that possibility any, and the other three had to run to catch him as he thundered off in the direction of the temple.

Authors' notes: The views and opinions expressed within this story are a reflection of the authors'. We are in no way saying that our personal opinions are right, but we are saying that everyone has a right to express their own opinions without fear of being censored.  Also, we would like to thank anyone who has taken the time to read this story and listen to our opinions.

Additionally, I would like to extend special thanks to Rikkui lai'Kyasha for allowing the use of her name in this chapter, as well as the use of several of her statements.  This chapter is not intended to insult or offend anyone, merely to point out the fact that problems are as inherent in anime mailing lists as they are elsewhere on the World Wide Web.  The simple truth of the matter is that it is nearly impossible to find a person who is intelligent enough to know how much weight really rests upon proper use of a written language, and the problem does not stop with mailing lists and online forums.  There are those writers out there that refuse to consider the fact that their work does need polishing before being posted for everyone to see.  Many of these people are also intolerant of any criticism they might receive from honest reviewers.

The point of the preceding statements is that writing is something to be taken seriously--especially if you want other people to take you seriously.  If you don't care enough about what you publish to reread it and take the necessary time to edit what mistakes you find, how can a reader (who just might be a writer as well) believe that your story is worth reading?  If you can't edit your work, or ask someone else to review it before you publish it, you're only hurting yourself.  And if you intend to go professional with your writing and attempt to have an original story in such condition published, you're undoubtedly going to find your manuscript at the bottom of the editor's slush pile.

I personally hate seeing the amount of time I spend on making sure that my work is the absolute best I am capable of in comparison to the amount of time some other authors take on theirs.  Most of the fics out there are nothing more than first drafts, and very bad ones at that--it's hard to find something worth reading when your time is limited.

I guess the point that I'm trying to get across with this rambling train of thought is that we need more quality fanfiction these days.  I'd like to see some good pieces from new authors as well as the established ones.

~Yamino Tora