(Hi, I wandered in from your comment in a clamp_rants post today.)
Speaking as someone who isn't really a fan of slash(I'm not UNinterested and don't dislike it, I just don't get the fanon shipping thing at all[canon shipping I completely get], regardless of gender combinations, and in most of what I read, the canon is het, though I am finding more manga with slash lately that I'm liking) I erally don't get the "no, it's not slash" thing with Clamp, either. I'm very much a newbie to Clamp(I watched both versions of the X/1999 anime last year, then was lured in by the pretty of xxxHolic, then was lured in by Tsubasa, and now have been poperly brainwashed and shall be hunting down other Clamp works) but I don't think you could miss it with anti-slash blinders. Seishiro/Subaru is blatant, and Himawari/Watanuki/Doumeki, Tomoyo/Kurogane/Fai, and Kotori/Fuuma/Kamui all seem deliberately set up for you to endorse every which way (between Clamp and Cantarella, I have now learned the value of the OT3.) I haven't read it yet, but I'm told that even CCS!Syaoran is biisexual, and he and CCS!Sakura fight over a guy.
Long story short: I don't see how anyone could miss the slash, and i'm not even a slash fan.
(Man...I'm even going to start reading Angel Sanctuary soon. The incest-even adopted/grew up together- is one of my major fictional "NO WAY!"s, but the supernatural possession/forces/reincarnation aspects of a few manga seem to address a lot of my concerns. I wasn't even phased by the real!Syaoran/real!Sakura pseudo-incest reveal...just as long as she didn't actually give birth to him...the clones get most of my shipping obsessiveness there, anyway.)
I always love it when someone who isn't normally a fan of something ends up liking the story anyway. Back when I was still writing fanfics, my favourite review that I ever got was one that went along the lines of 'I normally don't like slash, but I really liked what you did here'. That review really warmed my heart.
As for Angel Sanctuary, despite the main pairing being one of my major squicks, it really is a great story. It's one of my favourites.
Well, I don't dislike slash, or even have strong feelings one way or the other about canon slash. I really don't care if something I read has het, slash, or is completely gen, I just want to be entertained. It's just that most canon slash in manga tends to code one guy as female, and when I encounter a pairing where one is coded as female, I want it to actually BE a female. I've had better results with m/m pairings when they've popped up in my sff and mystery books.
Clamp and You Higuri have the ability to make me squeeful over just about anything, though, even if they don't make me ship a lot. So far, all I really ship in Clamp are the Clones and Sorata/Arashi, and I didn't ship the clones until vol 16. Until then, I was "yes, you are cute and I support you and I like you both and your story, but you don't interest me a lot" but then he went all soulless and suddenly it was the girl who had been protected and who had nothing but him to ground her having him yanked away, and put in the position of having to find and save him while having someone just like him(but not quite) right there and pining after her and I was all "HELLO!!!"
Meanwhile, the dynamics(as presented in the X/1999 anime) of Seishirou/Subaru and Fuuma/Kamui both fascinate me(more than any other dynamics in the series), but I don't think I could ever ship either one. Not because they're m/m, but because both involve one torturing the other, trying to kill him, and murdering the person he loves most in front of him(err...I think Seishirou killed Hokuto in front of Subaru?) Makes for awesome drama, but I kinda define shipping as "Oh! Hai! Plz to be ending up happy and playing tonsil hockey at the end!" which doesn't really apply in those cases.
Angel Sanctuary I've read some of, though it was back when it was first coming out. One of my coworker was reading it and I read to...well, I don't know how many volumes. Mostly I remember that I loved Kira and the 2 angels(the girl angel looked like a boy, and the boy angel was a crossdresser, iirc) and was neutral about Setsuna and Sara(h?). The last volume I read(the coworker got fired) was when she was killed, so I know the sex didn't make me run away screaming. Similarly, I'm not disturbed by Cesare's VERY incestuous feelings for his half sister in Cantarella(hers seem to be more projecting because he was the only one who cared about her for so long, and her feelings seem to have turned more towards normal sisterly feelings now that she's met Chiaro.) I'm also not weirded out (in that way) by Aki's complex over Aya in Ceres. I think it's the whole extreme supernatural/reincarnation/mythology part. It seems to move it from my mind from strictly incest to primarily reincarnation/mythology. At least, as near as I can tell, because things with "normal" incest, including stepsiblings, grew up apart, and grew up like siblings always set off my "NO WAY!!!!" alarms and make my stomach churn.
Speaking as someone who isn't really a fan of slash(I'm not UNinterested and don't dislike it, I just don't get the fanon shipping thing at all[canon shipping I completely get], regardless of gender combinations, and in most of what I read, the canon is het, though I am finding more manga with slash lately that I'm liking) I erally don't get the "no, it's not slash" thing with Clamp, either. I'm very much a newbie to Clamp(I watched both versions of the X/1999 anime last year, then was lured in by the pretty of xxxHolic, then was lured in by Tsubasa, and now have been poperly brainwashed and shall be hunting down other Clamp works) but I don't think you could miss it with anti-slash blinders. Seishiro/Subaru is blatant, and Himawari/Watanuki/Doumeki, Tomoyo/Kurogane/Fai, and Kotori/Fuuma/Kamui all seem deliberately set up for you to endorse every which way (between Clamp and Cantarella, I have now learned the value of the OT3.) I haven't read it yet, but I'm told that even CCS!Syaoran is biisexual, and he and CCS!Sakura fight over a guy.
Long story short: I don't see how anyone could miss the slash, and i'm not even a slash fan.
(Man...I'm even going to start reading Angel Sanctuary soon. The incest-even adopted/grew up together- is one of my major fictional "NO WAY!"s, but the supernatural possession/forces/reincarnation aspects of a few manga seem to address a lot of my concerns. I wasn't even phased by the real!Syaoran/real!Sakura pseudo-incest reveal...just as long as she didn't actually give birth to him...the clones get most of my shipping obsessiveness there, anyway.)
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I always love it when someone who isn't normally a fan of something ends up liking the story anyway. Back when I was still writing fanfics, my favourite review that I ever got was one that went along the lines of 'I normally don't like slash, but I really liked what you did here'. That review really warmed my heart.
As for Angel Sanctuary, despite the main pairing being one of my major squicks, it really is a great story. It's one of my favourites.
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Clamp and You Higuri have the ability to make me squeeful over just about anything, though, even if they don't make me ship a lot. So far, all I really ship in Clamp are the Clones and Sorata/Arashi, and I didn't ship the clones until vol 16. Until then, I was "yes, you are cute and I support you and I like you both and your story, but you don't interest me a lot" but then he went all soulless and suddenly it was the girl who had been protected and who had nothing but him to ground her having him yanked away, and put in the position of having to find and save him while having someone just like him(but not quite) right there and pining after her and I was all "HELLO!!!"
Meanwhile, the dynamics(as presented in the X/1999 anime) of Seishirou/Subaru and Fuuma/Kamui both fascinate me(more than any other dynamics in the series), but I don't think I could ever ship either one. Not because they're m/m, but because both involve one torturing the other, trying to kill him, and murdering the person he loves most in front of him(err...I think Seishirou killed Hokuto in front of Subaru?) Makes for awesome drama, but I kinda define shipping as "Oh! Hai! Plz to be ending up happy and playing tonsil hockey at the end!" which doesn't really apply in those cases.
Angel Sanctuary I've read some of, though it was back when it was first coming out. One of my coworker was reading it and I read to...well, I don't know how many volumes. Mostly I remember that I loved Kira and the 2 angels(the girl angel looked like a boy, and the boy angel was a crossdresser, iirc) and was neutral about Setsuna and Sara(h?). The last volume I read(the coworker got fired) was when she was killed, so I know the sex didn't make me run away screaming. Similarly, I'm not disturbed by Cesare's VERY incestuous feelings for his half sister in Cantarella(hers seem to be more projecting because he was the only one who cared about her for so long, and her feelings seem to have turned more towards normal sisterly feelings now that she's met Chiaro.) I'm also not weirded out (in that way) by Aki's complex over Aya in Ceres. I think it's the whole extreme supernatural/reincarnation/mythology part. It seems to move it from my mind from strictly incest to primarily reincarnation/mythology. At least, as near as I can tell, because things with "normal" incest, including stepsiblings, grew up apart, and grew up like siblings always set off my "NO WAY!!!!" alarms and make my stomach churn.
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