The Letterblade Library

Cowboy Bebop - 26-episode anime directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, with IMDb keywords including Mexican Standoff, Jazz, Haunted By Past, Spaghetti Western, and Near Death Experience, despite the fact that it's science fiction. A slick, groovy, gritty, and at times astonishingly touching show that hit popularity in the US with a well-publicized (and well-dubbed!) run on Adult Swim. It's got a mindblowing jazz soundtrack by the Japanese musical chameleon Yoko Kanno, and is extremely accessible to the not-anime-literate. Good stuff.

The fandom was small and scattered, but not nearly as insane as several other anime fandoms. I miss a few folks I met there. And, yes, with the exception of a ficlet that rolled around later, my Bebop work had thematically unified titles. Two that I never finished were White Bird Solitaire, concerning Julia, and Green Bird I-forget-what, concerning Ed in her later years, as a crazy granny. (Ed makes a great crazy granny.)

	Black Bird Jeopardy
Cowboy Bebop	"Every sight here will be imprinted upon his mind forever, along with the slowly rising conviction that he is not human. More like a vision than a dream, a single flash of divine and painful clarity that will be an unspoken birthing and apotheosis for the rest of his life." [ Vicious: a creation myth for a character too inscrutable to have a story ]
Subjects gen violence
2003	1,408 w.	Canonlit. N

	Blue Bird Rhapsody
Cowboy Bebop	"For the first few months he lives far away from the cities, for fear of discovery. In the countryside of Callisto the snow lies fluffy and a handspan or more deep, and it has its own profound silence and its own soft roar of sound, and he understands." [ Gren's story, in sound ] Spoilers - through ep. 13
Subjects gen soc
2003	1,562 w.	Canonlit. Y

	An Interlude for Angels
Cowboy Bebop	"Angels that are forced from heaven have to become demons. Isn't that right, Spike?" [ an experiment in explaining that line ] Spoilers - through ep. 5
Subjects m/m soc softcore
2004	759 w.	Canonlit. Y

author's choice	Red Bird Roulette
Cowboy Bebop	"Spike, breathing curls of gray-white, brushed Vicious' hair away to bare his face and ran a thumb down the narrow scars that creased their ways out from his eyes." [ the Russian kind, of course: a six-bullet slice of Spike and Vicious, before the Bebop, before Julia, with weaponsex ] Spoilers - slight for ep. 26 Beta - Switchknife
Subjects artsy bdsm hardcore m/m violence
2003	2,318 w.	Canonlit. N