Oh, I get it now (more writing babble)
But first:
Nightmare Fuel. D: (There's ANOTHER one in comments if you scroll down. T_T)
MY CHILDHOOOOOOOOOD T_T
- - -
Manga came out early this week? (Doesn't the Shounen Jump stuff usually come out late Thursday, or is my sense of time totally fucked up? PRobably the latter, huh? XD)
Naruto: awwwwwww. I think, after that recent Hinata scene, this has been one of the more effective chapters in quite a long time. (Or maybe I'm just a sucker for father/son fluff.) The art still sucks though. :P
Bleach: chiiiilllls. shit is going down.
Detective Conan (released a few days back): I'm really enjoying this arc. Oddly enough, I think Yamato and Uehara have gotten the most backstory/development of all the minor recurring characters so far. (And we didn't even know they were going to be recurring until a few chapters ago -- and it's possible that they won't show up again after this but I doubt it... They're too awesome not to. XD) Doesn't necessarily mean that they're plot-related though -- and in fact this probably marks them as non-plot-related; I think we've actually gotten more Sato backstory and heck, even Megure backstory than we have with any of the plot-related characters. XD OTOH. One of the suspects this time is a game developer? Hmmmmmm. The only BO-related threads (in terms of their MO) we have so far really are the pill and the computer virus/game arc from way back when.
(And does anyone think he's REALLY going to kill off "Koumei"? lol. I'll be surprised if a good guy actually ever bites it in this series. Akai is SO not dead. That'd be more along the lines of Kindaichi, which my sister started showing me recently, and which is really old school Japanese mystery in style. I think we only have the first 13 out of 100+ episodes though!)
Nana (from... I don't remember. also the past week?): Actually, I forgot what I was going to say about this. I think this would probably read better if it were not being released on a monthly basis (or slower); the pacing is horrendous. Which is something I noted even in earlier arcs (so actually, no, it's not better even when read in a single sitting instead of a chapter-by-chapter basis). It feels like she's just drawing out the tragedy... And yes, I can buy that it's realistic in a sense*, but mostly, ughhh draaamaaaaa. (Oh, I guess I did enjoy the Yuri/Miu talk. XD Yuri was her name right?)
* Or could, before RL events earlier this year.
- - -
A realization about the current fic: Camus/Nina is essentially Aoshi/Megumi, redux. I'm surprised I didn't make the connection earlier, but seriously -- (almost) the exact same unwilling captor/not-so-innocent captive dynamic, which I absolutely adore (obviously).
That said they're not *quite* the same. Nina and Megumi are different -- I think (my) Nina is perhaps more deeply scarred (which should say something about just how much she's scarred, given how deeply Megumi is already scarred), but on the other hand she's nominally in a position of a lot more power (even if in actuality she's just as powerless as Megumi in their respective situations). Also they react slightly differently to their situations: (my) Nina deliberately withdraws, (my) Megumi lashes out.
And Camus and Aoshi -- seriously similar. Same underlying themes of loyalty and betrayal. Same innocent girl figure from their youth. (Lena and Misao respectively. Though in Camus's case I suppose Lena was the one who was more influenced by him than the other way around. And also since Lena was quite a bit older when they knew each other, and like, isn't half-raised by Camus, she doesn't fall into crazy idol-worship the way Misao does. They also part on much more neutral terms. So there's none of that baggage there. In fact Lena's type seems to be veeery different from Camus given her canon love interest. XD) That said, Aoshi is a whole lot more fucked up than Camus, who is actually fairly well-adjusted. More or less. XD (It helps that he was much older/experienced than Aoshi by the time shit went down for them respectively.) And their motivations are quite different -- Camus being the more noble one in general (whereas for Aoshi everything is very, very personal). Heh.
Camus/Nina is in fact more high stakes overall. The sweeping scale of the context, the weight of history and circumstance bearing down on them. Aoshi/Megumi is much more low stakes and self-contained, but I think that's part of the "tragedy" of their particular story. Differently flavored, but no less compelling.
So is this current fic basically Kakusei, take 2 (or 3 or 4, if you remember the earliest versions XD), down to the deliberate seasonal echoing? Will this story ever get out of my head? I think it is, in some ways -- I am touching on a lot of the things I. uhhh. left unfinished. That said, if I were to go back to Kakusei now (I still do intend to.................... SOMEDAY), I think I would definitely rewrite it to narrow the focus even more (fix up that strange plot) and up the suffocating factor by a lot. It always was my intention for that particular fic to take on kind of a Victorian/Gothic, very convoluted, dark-and-churning atmosphere. There is suffocation in this fic too but it's rather different, I think.
SO um yeah, two very different fics in my head. But this one is definitely the spiritual successor to Kakusei. Jeez, self. That explains it.
Nightmare Fuel. D: (There's ANOTHER one in comments if you scroll down. T_T)
MY CHILDHOOOOOOOOOD T_T
- - -
Manga came out early this week? (Doesn't the Shounen Jump stuff usually come out late Thursday, or is my sense of time totally fucked up? PRobably the latter, huh? XD)
Naruto: awwwwwww. I think, after that recent Hinata scene, this has been one of the more effective chapters in quite a long time. (Or maybe I'm just a sucker for father/son fluff.) The art still sucks though. :P
Bleach: chiiiilllls. shit is going down.
Detective Conan (released a few days back): I'm really enjoying this arc. Oddly enough, I think Yamato and Uehara have gotten the most backstory/development of all the minor recurring characters so far. (And we didn't even know they were going to be recurring until a few chapters ago -- and it's possible that they won't show up again after this but I doubt it... They're too awesome not to. XD) Doesn't necessarily mean that they're plot-related though -- and in fact this probably marks them as non-plot-related; I think we've actually gotten more Sato backstory and heck, even Megure backstory than we have with any of the plot-related characters. XD OTOH. One of the suspects this time is a game developer? Hmmmmmm. The only BO-related threads (in terms of their MO) we have so far really are the pill and the computer virus/game arc from way back when.
(And does anyone think he's REALLY going to kill off "Koumei"? lol. I'll be surprised if a good guy actually ever bites it in this series. Akai is SO not dead. That'd be more along the lines of Kindaichi, which my sister started showing me recently, and which is really old school Japanese mystery in style. I think we only have the first 13 out of 100+ episodes though!)
Nana (from... I don't remember. also the past week?): Actually, I forgot what I was going to say about this. I think this would probably read better if it were not being released on a monthly basis (or slower); the pacing is horrendous. Which is something I noted even in earlier arcs (so actually, no, it's not better even when read in a single sitting instead of a chapter-by-chapter basis). It feels like she's just drawing out the tragedy... And yes, I can buy that it's realistic in a sense*, but mostly, ughhh draaamaaaaa. (Oh, I guess I did enjoy the Yuri/Miu talk. XD Yuri was her name right?)
* Or could, before RL events earlier this year.
- - -
A realization about the current fic: Camus/Nina is essentially Aoshi/Megumi, redux. I'm surprised I didn't make the connection earlier, but seriously -- (almost) the exact same unwilling captor/not-so-innocent captive dynamic, which I absolutely adore (obviously).
That said they're not *quite* the same. Nina and Megumi are different -- I think (my) Nina is perhaps more deeply scarred (which should say something about just how much she's scarred, given how deeply Megumi is already scarred), but on the other hand she's nominally in a position of a lot more power (even if in actuality she's just as powerless as Megumi in their respective situations). Also they react slightly differently to their situations: (my) Nina deliberately withdraws, (my) Megumi lashes out.
And Camus and Aoshi -- seriously similar. Same underlying themes of loyalty and betrayal. Same innocent girl figure from their youth. (Lena and Misao respectively. Though in Camus's case I suppose Lena was the one who was more influenced by him than the other way around. And also since Lena was quite a bit older when they knew each other, and like, isn't half-raised by Camus, she doesn't fall into crazy idol-worship the way Misao does. They also part on much more neutral terms. So there's none of that baggage there. In fact Lena's type seems to be veeery different from Camus given her canon love interest. XD) That said, Aoshi is a whole lot more fucked up than Camus, who is actually fairly well-adjusted. More or less. XD (It helps that he was much older/experienced than Aoshi by the time shit went down for them respectively.) And their motivations are quite different -- Camus being the more noble one in general (whereas for Aoshi everything is very, very personal). Heh.
Camus/Nina is in fact more high stakes overall. The sweeping scale of the context, the weight of history and circumstance bearing down on them. Aoshi/Megumi is much more low stakes and self-contained, but I think that's part of the "tragedy" of their particular story. Differently flavored, but no less compelling.
So is this current fic basically Kakusei, take 2 (or 3 or 4, if you remember the earliest versions XD), down to the deliberate seasonal echoing? Will this story ever get out of my head? I think it is, in some ways -- I am touching on a lot of the things I. uhhh. left unfinished. That said, if I were to go back to Kakusei now (I still do intend to.................... SOMEDAY), I think I would definitely rewrite it to narrow the focus even more (fix up that strange plot) and up the suffocating factor by a lot. It always was my intention for that particular fic to take on kind of a Victorian/Gothic, very convoluted, dark-and-churning atmosphere. There is suffocation in this fic too but it's rather different, I think.
SO um yeah, two very different fics in my head. But this one is definitely the spiritual successor to Kakusei. Jeez, self. That explains it.