[45 & 48] [Yu-Gi-Oh] Breakdown V & VI

[praiseofshadows]

Title: Breakdown V
Series: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Theme no.: 45 (Misery with tenderness)
Character(s)/Pairing: Kaiba Seto/Mazaki Anzu (implied)
Rating: PG-13 (for implied drug abuse)
Notes (if any): A possible (not so happy) future to Foster Care. Previous parts may be found here.

Comments

Re: I am surprised.

[praiseofshadows]

First of all, thank you for commenting ^_^ I'm flattered (and rather embarrassed) by your description of my presence over at setoanzulove, though I think the real honour of revitalizing the community goes to ”atlantian_magic" & geniusgirl (as well as the_sweet, although she goes without saying).

This empty space reveals no trace of the interaction that belies a healthy community. Actually, I think we're very healthy; it's just that this (like other fanfiction LJ communities) leads to personal friending of its members. And the personal friending of its members leads to a certain...laziness...if you will. It’s so much easier to post fiction on one's personal journal (I'm very guilty of that) than to crosspost it elsewhere.

We often comment on fics via im or in the comments of an entirely unrelated thread, and while I’m sure this is much more than you want to know, I simply want to assure you that we do still talk about our fiction with one another. We still talk out our plots, still use each other for inspiration, and (more importantly) we still care about each other’s writing.

Also, most of us are on school holiday at the moment, and that means we spend less time hunched in front of the computer. XD.

(And then there’s the fact lots of people are getting sick of my penchant to drug Kaiba up and make him angst and ready for a more happy tale XD)

All fandoms fade without the continuing production of new canon, so I suppose Azureshipping is nearing its end. I think there's still quite a lot to be written about, actually; Yu-Gi-Oh GX! is quite a fun fandom to write in, and it's so easy to tie in an older Seto and Anzu (as well as older versions of the original cast). I’m not sure if you’re watching GX, but if you are, then you’ve probably seen how they tie in Pegasus with disturbing regularity. XD. So I think it’s safe to say, you haven’t seen the last of Seto/Anzu fics. XD.

However, this (and a few of the other features at the Anzu_Seto community) do not seem to be large undertakings and carry in the nature of their forms the hope for resolution. So I would encourage you to persevere and bring this to a close.

Oh, we’re all still working on our projects, never fear (or perhaps you should? XD). I started this little series of drabbles to get my mind off a particular plotting problem of “Foster Care” proper, and while “Foster Care” is stalled at the moment, I have every intention of finishing it. ^_^

The overt...sexuality featured in the comments (the prose I might simply consider prose) is interesting, to say the least. Especially amusing is the existence and response to scenes of male sexuality, exemplified in a previous section. The range of male sexual experience is narrower and less powerful than the female, so it never occured to me that women might fantasize about a guy jacking off in a dark room. You don’t read much BL, do you? ;D It’s a pretty standard (dare I say? XD) literary convention for the genre, both in its manga and in its written form.

It wasn’t written as a sexual fantasy - I’m not entirely sure any BL author or mangaka is ever writing out a sexual fantasy, per se (I’m sure there are exceptions, of course; I hardly know every BL author or mangaka nor would I assume to speak for them). But really, BL is never meant to be about the sex (and honestly, the way sex is presented in BL is often physically impossible…but I digress). It’s about the romance, the emotion behind the actual physicality of the action.

I’m a fan of the psychological novel (as I’m sure you’ve guessed by reading my work), and I take my cues from Tanizaki Juni’chiro. At some level, sexuality will always be amusing - even grotesque - but there ought to be some meaning behind it, and it’s always fun to push the boundaries of that meaning (which is why Tanizaki had so much fun with paraphilias; while so-called “pregnancy!kink” may not technically be a paraphilia, it lends itself nicely, don’t you think?)

Re: I am surprised.

[praiseofshadows]

So, I guess the short of it, is no, it’s not meant to be an adequate portrayal of male sexuality (nor if the character in question had been female would it have been meant to be an adequate portrayal of female sexuality), and I ought not to digress so….

I shall sum up: thank you for your frank words about your response to the piece. I admit, writing heterosexual fiction is not really a specialty of mine. I also don’t read much of it, and so I’m always interested in how BL conventions are perceived when transferred to heterosexual fiction. ^_^