Ramblings
So I think my male!Haibara's name will be Akubana Hibiki (空花 響) unless something hits me otherwise. That decided, ficcing will proceed!
By the way, I had the weirdest idea last night for a Slayers fic. It involved Lina and the group actually being NPCs in a D&D game (D&D being what Slayers was based on), and the Lord of Nightmares was actually the GM of the game, hence being "God". And Xelloss was actually a player character that had leveled himself insanely but preferred to dick around with the NPCs instead of helping his fellow players. It was amusing.
Anyways, I was thinking about the fic rec post, and the biggest problem I'm running into (besides being lazy and not wanting to track down fic) is that it's really hard for me to find fic that's in character. So much of it has one or both of the boys just....vastly OOC. Or if they're fine, it's the other characters. I'm okay with not being strictly canon-only IC, because, let's face it, there has to be a bit of twisting to have KaiShin and not ShinRan and such, but besides that little detour, I do like characters to be an in-character as possible. If I didn't like them in canon I wouldn't write about them, after all! But there are so many that veer so off-course it feels like I'm not reading about Kaito and Shinichi anymore.
I ran into this with FMA, too. There is one prolific author that, while I did enjoy her fic's plots, I just couldn't really get behind it as FMA fic because Roy and Ed were so goddamn OOC that I felt I was reading about a pair of original characters that just happened to share their names. There just has to be a point where you realize that the characters you're writing just aren't that fandom's characters anymore and you should just change their names and write an original story instead.
Or, they're in-character but so exaggerated that it's another form of OOC. There are so many fic authors that play up little bits of canon or fanon and explode them far beyond reason - like Shinichi being a little awkward and oblivious to love, Kaito being hyper-competent and just hyper all around, and these traits are so exaggerated that it's not really the characters anymore. Yes, Shinichi is not at his deductive best when it comes to feelings, and yes, Kaito is an extremely talented and competent individual, but that does not mean that Shinichi recognizes no feelings, ever, or that Kaito Can Do No Wrong. I think Shinichi is more awkward because he just doesn't know what to do, and he's rather reserved so he'd rather not risk his pride and feelings unless he's absolutely sure...and even then, he's the sort that would only say if he has it completely planned out or in desperation. Case in point - canon itself. He learns, what, in the second chapter that Ran likes him? And obviously in a romantic sense. But he doesn't bother telling her he likes her back until the recent London case, which was like 700 fucking chapters later, and even then it was a spur-of-the-moment "make Ran stop crying" type of thing. Sure, he had to be told that Ran liked him since the thought didn't seem to occur to him otherwise, but that wasn't because he was oblivious to romance, it was more because Shinichi seems to have really weird self-esteem issues. (He's prideful and arrogant about his skills, but he seems to have next-to-no pride in himself as a person). It wasn't because he's blind, since he certainly recognized his own feelings, it was because he seems to believe that there was no reason for Ran to like him back. (Possibly because Ran spends every other minute insulting him, but that is a different rant about why I hate ShinRan as a pairing). So, since he seems to subconsciously think that romance has nothing to do with him whatsoever, he just completely misses any true hints because he's not looking. It's like he has this "Just Friends" filter permanently turned on, it's weird. As for Kaito, yeah, he's the kind of character where if you need something done, Kaito can be the one to do it. But that doesn't mean that he never fucks up or that he knows absolutely everything. Hell, half of Magic Kaito was about him fucking up in new and interesting ways, because despite being a very skilled genius, he's still a teenager and human, and he can only do so much. Nor is Kaito far more competent and smarter than Shinichi. They're pretty much established as equals, and most of Kaito's early successes against Conan were because of surprise. Conan also has to work out Kaito's methods on his own from scratch in short periods of time, so he is at a slight disadvantage. But now that they're used to each other, most of Kid's escapes are because Conan lets him go. I have no doubt Kaito could escape, as he does when Conan does try to catch him, but he never really escapes unscathed unless Conan lets him. It's not a huge gap in skills.
Speaking of equals, that's another thing that gets me and is perhaps my own personal pet peeve. I despise unbalanced couples. I don't know why, but I do. I like my pairings to be on equal footing - not necessarily physical or mental, but at least emotionally or as a couple dynamic. The fastest way to turn me off a pairing is to make one half super special and the other not, or to make one half of the pairing obviously in control or at an emotional advantage. I suppose its what truly drew me to start shipping KaiShin, because that's what they were set up as - equals. Far more balanced and equal than their canon romances, at the least. (Fun fact, I typoed 'canon' as 'conan' just now. Canon Conan romances, heh heh.) ShinRan and KaitoAoko suffer from the same problem of "super-smart one half", but the attempt to balance them brings them under the heel of the not-so-smart half, and that's what I don't like. It's not balancing. I don't mind one half of the pair being smarter than the other, because that's just realistic. Not everyone falls in love with someone of their exact IQ. What bugs me is that, to seemingly "balance" them, the other half is at a huge emotional advantage, so the pairing advances at their pace. Like, ShinRan. All the romantic advances start with cues from her - she confesses first and he's always trying to appease her emotionally, with very little coming from her end. In fact, that "love confession" from Shinichi is a perfect example - she was running away in tears, he was the one forced to do something to make her feel better. The reverse? She calls him a detective geek and complains about his hobbies and ambitions. Where's the Ran trying to make Shinichi feel better? Where's the Ran who is supportive of her possible future husband's fucking life-long dream and career choice? It's all on Shinichi to cater to Ran's emotional whims, and there is little emotional return for it. I mean, the only real sign of it is her promises to "wait" for him, but how does that really compare with what Shinichi invests? In fact, it puts more of the baggage on Shinichi, because he's still the one who has to return, has to do something, and Ran does nothing about it but "wait". That is an emotional unbalance, and I will take a genius paired with a drooling moron over that. Kaito and Aoko, while there are some differences, have the same problem - he's forced to leap through hoops trying to appeal to her and keep her happy when nothing of the sort comes from her, although I do have to admit she tries a little more than Ran, but that's negated because she's ten times harder on Kaito than Ran is on Shinichi. (she's also very childish and needs to grow up quite a lot, but that is another rant about Aoko). It's like they tried to balance Kaito and Shinichi's natural talents by putting huge emotional handicaps on them, all the while missing that emotional equality is far more important than skill or talent or intelligence. I'm reading too much into it, but I just hate it so much. I can be convinced about almost any ship if it's done well enough, as long as there's balance. If it's emotionally unbalanced, however, I will never like it unless the imbalance is removed.
That in itself is sor tof a rant against tsundere types, I suppose, but it really isn't, because I do like mild tsundere. In fact, I tend to make Shinichi one, because he is pretty bitchy and sarcastic, and he does fit that whole "doesn't want to get hurt so lashes out instead" thing, at least in my personal fanon, heh heh. But it's just so easy to forget that the key element of tsundere is that they are not prickly and harsh all the time. The attraction is that harshness slipping and the sweetness shining through for a moment, so that someone tries all the harder to get those moments of sweetness, but at the same time the sweetness has to be equivalent to what the other party puts in. In fact, I don't think Kaito would do well without a tsundere or otherwise difficult partner, haha, because he thrives on challenge and he'd get bored if his partner didn't challenge him. But there is a huge difference between "good challenge" and "fucking unpleasable", which is how Aoko personally comes off. Ran and Aoko fit the prickly half of the tsundere bit, but what sweetness they give Shinichi and Kaito in return just way isn't worth what the boys have to go through to get it. An example of a good "harsh but sweet" is Kazuha. She is always arguing with Heiji, but she's always beside him and supporting him. She doesn't act like being a detective is some horrible thing she must always complain to Heiji about. Sure, she's understandably upset when it puts them in danger, but she otherwise likes him being one. And Heiji pushes her right back. They do things for each other, it isn't just one party continuously trying to please the other without any significant return. Most likely because if Kazuha pulled that shit Heiji would waste no time telling her how much that shit doesn't fly, and neither does Kazuha let him take care of everything himself. They're a couple, they go together, and that is why I am infinitively more supportive of Heiji/Kazuha than any other main pairing. /rant
Wow, that went way off-track. It started as a complaint against OOC characters and turned into My Thoughts On Shipping. Well, I did appropriately title this post "Rambling", because boy did I ramble.
I may open a drabble meme soon. Also I'm thinking of doing a double-Kaito-POV for Loop because this next chapter isn't working in Shinichi's POV. And I do need to do that confrontation from Kaito's POV, it feels liek copping out if I leave it as a side-story. Double Kaito it is.
And one last thing about me having a hard time reccing fanfics - the fastest way to get me to press the back button is using Japanese terms when English ones are just fine. There are so many FMA fics, for example, that I would recommend if it weren't for them using "Taisa" and "Niisan" and "Hagane no" all over the place. "Colonel" and "brother" and "Fullmetal" work just fine, there is no reason to use Japanese in English fic, ever, unless the term simply does not translate. Like, i only use "Tantei-kun" in Conan fic because the nickname just doesn't go into English. "Little detective" or whatever sounds stupid, but if someone could suggest to me an appropriate English alternative I will use it. But "Taisa" fucking means "Colonel". There is no reason to not use Colonel! DO NOT USE TRANSLATABLE JAPANESE TERMS IN ENGLISH FIC, IT IS JUST STUPID.
By the way, I had the weirdest idea last night for a Slayers fic. It involved Lina and the group actually being NPCs in a D&D game (D&D being what Slayers was based on), and the Lord of Nightmares was actually the GM of the game, hence being "God". And Xelloss was actually a player character that had leveled himself insanely but preferred to dick around with the NPCs instead of helping his fellow players. It was amusing.
Anyways, I was thinking about the fic rec post, and the biggest problem I'm running into (besides being lazy and not wanting to track down fic) is that it's really hard for me to find fic that's in character. So much of it has one or both of the boys just....vastly OOC. Or if they're fine, it's the other characters. I'm okay with not being strictly canon-only IC, because, let's face it, there has to be a bit of twisting to have KaiShin and not ShinRan and such, but besides that little detour, I do like characters to be an in-character as possible. If I didn't like them in canon I wouldn't write about them, after all! But there are so many that veer so off-course it feels like I'm not reading about Kaito and Shinichi anymore.
I ran into this with FMA, too. There is one prolific author that, while I did enjoy her fic's plots, I just couldn't really get behind it as FMA fic because Roy and Ed were so goddamn OOC that I felt I was reading about a pair of original characters that just happened to share their names. There just has to be a point where you realize that the characters you're writing just aren't that fandom's characters anymore and you should just change their names and write an original story instead.
Or, they're in-character but so exaggerated that it's another form of OOC. There are so many fic authors that play up little bits of canon or fanon and explode them far beyond reason - like Shinichi being a little awkward and oblivious to love, Kaito being hyper-competent and just hyper all around, and these traits are so exaggerated that it's not really the characters anymore. Yes, Shinichi is not at his deductive best when it comes to feelings, and yes, Kaito is an extremely talented and competent individual, but that does not mean that Shinichi recognizes no feelings, ever, or that Kaito Can Do No Wrong. I think Shinichi is more awkward because he just doesn't know what to do, and he's rather reserved so he'd rather not risk his pride and feelings unless he's absolutely sure...and even then, he's the sort that would only say if he has it completely planned out or in desperation. Case in point - canon itself. He learns, what, in the second chapter that Ran likes him? And obviously in a romantic sense. But he doesn't bother telling her he likes her back until the recent London case, which was like 700 fucking chapters later, and even then it was a spur-of-the-moment "make Ran stop crying" type of thing. Sure, he had to be told that Ran liked him since the thought didn't seem to occur to him otherwise, but that wasn't because he was oblivious to romance, it was more because Shinichi seems to have really weird self-esteem issues. (He's prideful and arrogant about his skills, but he seems to have next-to-no pride in himself as a person). It wasn't because he's blind, since he certainly recognized his own feelings, it was because he seems to believe that there was no reason for Ran to like him back. (Possibly because Ran spends every other minute insulting him, but that is a different rant about why I hate ShinRan as a pairing). So, since he seems to subconsciously think that romance has nothing to do with him whatsoever, he just completely misses any true hints because he's not looking. It's like he has this "Just Friends" filter permanently turned on, it's weird. As for Kaito, yeah, he's the kind of character where if you need something done, Kaito can be the one to do it. But that doesn't mean that he never fucks up or that he knows absolutely everything. Hell, half of Magic Kaito was about him fucking up in new and interesting ways, because despite being a very skilled genius, he's still a teenager and human, and he can only do so much. Nor is Kaito far more competent and smarter than Shinichi. They're pretty much established as equals, and most of Kaito's early successes against Conan were because of surprise. Conan also has to work out Kaito's methods on his own from scratch in short periods of time, so he is at a slight disadvantage. But now that they're used to each other, most of Kid's escapes are because Conan lets him go. I have no doubt Kaito could escape, as he does when Conan does try to catch him, but he never really escapes unscathed unless Conan lets him. It's not a huge gap in skills.
Speaking of equals, that's another thing that gets me and is perhaps my own personal pet peeve. I despise unbalanced couples. I don't know why, but I do. I like my pairings to be on equal footing - not necessarily physical or mental, but at least emotionally or as a couple dynamic. The fastest way to turn me off a pairing is to make one half super special and the other not, or to make one half of the pairing obviously in control or at an emotional advantage. I suppose its what truly drew me to start shipping KaiShin, because that's what they were set up as - equals. Far more balanced and equal than their canon romances, at the least. (Fun fact, I typoed 'canon' as 'conan' just now. Canon Conan romances, heh heh.) ShinRan and KaitoAoko suffer from the same problem of "super-smart one half", but the attempt to balance them brings them under the heel of the not-so-smart half, and that's what I don't like. It's not balancing. I don't mind one half of the pair being smarter than the other, because that's just realistic. Not everyone falls in love with someone of their exact IQ. What bugs me is that, to seemingly "balance" them, the other half is at a huge emotional advantage, so the pairing advances at their pace. Like, ShinRan. All the romantic advances start with cues from her - she confesses first and he's always trying to appease her emotionally, with very little coming from her end. In fact, that "love confession" from Shinichi is a perfect example - she was running away in tears, he was the one forced to do something to make her feel better. The reverse? She calls him a detective geek and complains about his hobbies and ambitions. Where's the Ran trying to make Shinichi feel better? Where's the Ran who is supportive of her possible future husband's fucking life-long dream and career choice? It's all on Shinichi to cater to Ran's emotional whims, and there is little emotional return for it. I mean, the only real sign of it is her promises to "wait" for him, but how does that really compare with what Shinichi invests? In fact, it puts more of the baggage on Shinichi, because he's still the one who has to return, has to do something, and Ran does nothing about it but "wait". That is an emotional unbalance, and I will take a genius paired with a drooling moron over that. Kaito and Aoko, while there are some differences, have the same problem - he's forced to leap through hoops trying to appeal to her and keep her happy when nothing of the sort comes from her, although I do have to admit she tries a little more than Ran, but that's negated because she's ten times harder on Kaito than Ran is on Shinichi. (she's also very childish and needs to grow up quite a lot, but that is another rant about Aoko). It's like they tried to balance Kaito and Shinichi's natural talents by putting huge emotional handicaps on them, all the while missing that emotional equality is far more important than skill or talent or intelligence. I'm reading too much into it, but I just hate it so much. I can be convinced about almost any ship if it's done well enough, as long as there's balance. If it's emotionally unbalanced, however, I will never like it unless the imbalance is removed.
That in itself is sor tof a rant against tsundere types, I suppose, but it really isn't, because I do like mild tsundere. In fact, I tend to make Shinichi one, because he is pretty bitchy and sarcastic, and he does fit that whole "doesn't want to get hurt so lashes out instead" thing, at least in my personal fanon, heh heh. But it's just so easy to forget that the key element of tsundere is that they are not prickly and harsh all the time. The attraction is that harshness slipping and the sweetness shining through for a moment, so that someone tries all the harder to get those moments of sweetness, but at the same time the sweetness has to be equivalent to what the other party puts in. In fact, I don't think Kaito would do well without a tsundere or otherwise difficult partner, haha, because he thrives on challenge and he'd get bored if his partner didn't challenge him. But there is a huge difference between "good challenge" and "fucking unpleasable", which is how Aoko personally comes off. Ran and Aoko fit the prickly half of the tsundere bit, but what sweetness they give Shinichi and Kaito in return just way isn't worth what the boys have to go through to get it. An example of a good "harsh but sweet" is Kazuha. She is always arguing with Heiji, but she's always beside him and supporting him. She doesn't act like being a detective is some horrible thing she must always complain to Heiji about. Sure, she's understandably upset when it puts them in danger, but she otherwise likes him being one. And Heiji pushes her right back. They do things for each other, it isn't just one party continuously trying to please the other without any significant return. Most likely because if Kazuha pulled that shit Heiji would waste no time telling her how much that shit doesn't fly, and neither does Kazuha let him take care of everything himself. They're a couple, they go together, and that is why I am infinitively more supportive of Heiji/Kazuha than any other main pairing. /rant
Wow, that went way off-track. It started as a complaint against OOC characters and turned into My Thoughts On Shipping. Well, I did appropriately title this post "Rambling", because boy did I ramble.
I may open a drabble meme soon. Also I'm thinking of doing a double-Kaito-POV for Loop because this next chapter isn't working in Shinichi's POV. And I do need to do that confrontation from Kaito's POV, it feels liek copping out if I leave it as a side-story. Double Kaito it is.
And one last thing about me having a hard time reccing fanfics - the fastest way to get me to press the back button is using Japanese terms when English ones are just fine. There are so many FMA fics, for example, that I would recommend if it weren't for them using "Taisa" and "Niisan" and "Hagane no" all over the place. "Colonel" and "brother" and "Fullmetal" work just fine, there is no reason to use Japanese in English fic, ever, unless the term simply does not translate. Like, i only use "Tantei-kun" in Conan fic because the nickname just doesn't go into English. "Little detective" or whatever sounds stupid, but if someone could suggest to me an appropriate English alternative I will use it. But "Taisa" fucking means "Colonel". There is no reason to not use Colonel! DO NOT USE TRANSLATABLE JAPANESE TERMS IN ENGLISH FIC, IT IS JUST STUPID.