a(n) earring
a(n) earring
g. 2838. Sakurai Sho, Horikita Maki.
Sakurai meets a charming girl.
Edited but unbeta’d.
This particular story is many months later than intended, but hopefully the writing is better for it. Inspired by __sine and her stunning Storm Children AU, especially this later addition to the canon, a girl. While it could probably be read alone, um ( Read more... )
g. 2838. Sakurai Sho, Horikita Maki.
Sakurai meets a charming girl.
Edited but unbeta’d.
This particular story is many months later than intended, but hopefully the writing is better for it. Inspired by __sine and her stunning Storm Children AU, especially this later addition to the canon, a girl. While it could probably be read alone, um ( Read more... )
This is, really, the best remix/companion (?) I could ever imagine - I was thrilled to see your comment and then when I actually started reading I felt my heart exploding with joy and also anticipation and excitement. Because your tone and everything was so perfect that it felt like I was just wandering into another part of the story that I hadn't yet discovered and everything just fit. It is a testament to your meticulousness that you incorporated all these details that I'd forgotten about/hadn't really thought about - from things like Sho's styrofoam cup and Maki's nice shoes, and taken that and expanded it. All of those details and the dialogue have been cast in a fresh light here and I loved discovering that as the story proceeded. Also - Sho. Every now and then I think about Storm Children and add things to it mentally and let the rest of the story brew inside my head... like a storm (lol). And I think one of the only things I've not really considered writing is an extended Sho POV, for whatever reason. So seeing his perspective on the town in further detail and really removing it from the Nino-centric perspective that I've personally always taken was really, really great. I love his quest for information, his search for power besides the magical kind and how he's always lost and used to it by now. And I love his interactions with Maki, how he gets used to the fact that he'll probably never actually get to purchase a newspaper or magazine from her but that it doesn't stop him from trying. And Maki here is lovely too - we meet her for the first time through Sho's eyes and the easy ... acquaintanceship? they strike up was really well done. The earring! That moment between the two sections when Nino undoubtedly met Maki (because she was looking for him?) and gave her the card - here I have to say again how thrilled I am that this fic even exists!
And all the rest of the details, which I will now try to go through with as much coherence as I can. In bullet points! Because bullet points are the gateway to better organisation:
- I love the names of the newspapers and also the fact that they are contrary as hell and so preoccupied with things like moffle monopolies (!!! :) ... and also this line: "atop the dizzying heights and dangerous lows of dilapidated telephone wires, lurking in the shadows of every shifting corner and disappearing alleyway" and the passage it belongs to - lovely and so evocative. Also in the same vein, that moment when the streets and buildings shifted and Sho found the alleyway full of stalls.
- Sho's shoes! Proper shoe care advice from Sakurai Sho, the man with the best shoes in town!
- All the references to the yuzu sweets. I love that Sho detests them, actually, and Maki only eats them because there aren't any milk sweets (!!!) and that there is a new significance to the jar of sweets that Nino demolishes.
- The earring was the loveliest thing ever - nonmagic, because Maki knows Sho well enough not to have made it a charm.
- I loved your descriptions of Ohno every time he appeared. The cigarette smoke, the way he refers to Nino like he's hiding something (bad paraphrase but that was great)
- The Toma cameo was perfect, as was his comment about the writers. And at this point I should really mention that I love the images that you included.
- That image of the crowned crow
- And finally, with the bird group names - I love the poetry in a phrase like 'a murder of crows' so I really enjoyed the whole play on the collective nouns and the significance it took on. Some of these I was completely unaware of! You learn new things every day. And ending on a charm of hummingbirds was, for the lack of a better word, just charming.
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I mean, once again - thank you for writing this. I'm still reeling from the fact that you took the time and effort to, and from how perfectly it fits in with everything else in my head. Your writing this, and how beautifully you've written this, really makes me want to delve back into the universe and write some more, if only so that I can build on some of the details you've added here. This is lovely, lovely stuff (I feel I may have overused this word) and I am so pleased to have read it.
<3333333
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It took about when I first mentioned wanting to write this to about now to get the tone as right as I figured it'd ever be, so your saying it was like wandering into a part of the story you hadn't yet discovered - I, this is such high praise and I'm super, super happy & giddy it came off that way. I'm also so happy you liked the Sho POV & that it wasn't something you really considered (because that means it wasn't something I ruined)! To be honest, he was the character whose motivations I least understood during Storm Children just because he was...so normal compared to the rest of Arashi, and so removed from much of the magical action until the very end so part of me kept wondering - what was he doing? And that's sort of where this idea was born - that and a girl bringing Maki to the forefront as another normal person surrounded by abnormal people in an abnormal town and my wondering how they might then interact with each other (and, ok, perhaps, also from my preference for Sho/Maki at the time). So I'm relieved you liked the way they interacted instead of thinking, "Oh, gosh, this girl and trying to bring Maki up over and over again with this AU.";;;
I will try to make this as least convoluted as possible: I loved that you picked out all the details that I loved picking out of your original canon as something that you, well, liked re-imagined here. Because those images really stood out in the originals (Sho & Maki's shoes, the moffles - which I googled because of you fic and have wanted to try ever since, the yuzu vs. milk sweets, etc.). And the earring! I was SO worried the earring would be the undoing of this entire fic because SHO WOULD NEVER BUY PROTECTION HE SAYS SO but it was pretty much the crux of the story and I'm just really glad it didn't rankle you in any way and that you also easily picked out the moment of the card exchange. Because of course Nino hiding Maki is still one of my favorite bits of this universe. ♥
I'm also - and I'm using the word relieved and happy a lot so no overusing words judgement over here - happy you liked the images! I was just going to write them out but figured, well, when in an urban fantasy AU! :)
And IDK this comment just made me super super happy and relieved and amazed you enjoyed this SO THANK YOU SO MUCH for the compliments and, again, for writing your amazing universe to begin with. I think I said this before, but I will always be extremely to be any kind of inspiration for you to let out your brewing storm story and write more and more of this universe. ♥♥♥
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