email: autumnriver@yahoo.com

A lovely pic of Kusanagi! Good thing to know that CLAMP hasn't forgotten him!  Thanks to Alison for the use of her scan. You can visit her site at Dreams of Sakura.

My Passions
Manga: X, Berserk, CCS, Basara, KKJ, Rurouni Kenshin, Sensei!, Naruto, Juline, Suki Dakara Suki, Wish!

TV: Enterprise, Firefly, Home & Garden Network, Iron Chef, International Channel

Sewing:  wool cloak for Aelfgeirr, purple Calontir tabards, linen tunic for Fenric

Armoring: stainless steel helm, new brigandine

Biseinen: Kusanagi (X), Fuuma (X), Touya (CCS), Gatts (Berserk), Itou (Sensei!), Kakashi (Naruto), The Red King (Basara), Cho (RK), All the CCD cuties (Clamp Campus Detectives, X) and most especially Bob (Husband)

Hobbies: Learning Japanese, Calligraphy, drawing, writing, hiking, touring old houses, making medieval stuff, collecting foxes.

Cat of the moment: Nabiki

Subterfuge: Winter is Coming

Yay.

So another birthday has come and gone. This one rated pretty low on the scale of goodness. I won't go into details, but it was not a good day. One of those "I got out on the wrong side of the bed" things. I got one present, a pair of fox pajamas from my mom, and they didn't fit (too big), so I've got to send them back and exchange them.

Bah. I'm so stressed during Xmas that I never really enjoy that holiday, so my birthday is really my celebration and happy time. So when it falls so spectacularly flat as it did this year, it's a big let-down.

Ah, well, I'm not going to dwell on it. X3TV comes out today on DVD, and I'm going to try to finish my dress for the Clothier's Seminar. It's nothing special, just two layered tunics, one linen, one wool-blend, both shades of brown. I like the texture of the cloth I'm using--it's a real joy to work with.

More later, breakfast now.

Tuesday, January 28, 2003 06:59 a.m.

Quietus

Sometimes I astound myself at my own dullness. That's not to say that I'm uninteresting...I try very hard never to be bored. I have almost too many interests!

But I'm not very exciting to be around. Fun is not a word commonly associated with me. I'm aquainted with fun, but my idea of fun is reading, or research, or creating something. Bob's much the same way, although he is better with people than I am. Parties are difficult for me, although I enjoy the chance to visit with people, it gets overwhelming very quickly.

It's closing in on B-Day, and this time of year usually finds me a bit melancholy. It's the same today. No particular reason, things aren't bad here. My heart just aches a little for past days, past friends, past glories. It'll pass, I suppose. That's the price one pays for being born under a wandering star.

My connection is being all screwy tonight, so I'll hold off on social blogging until tomorrow. I have to say that X is certainly turning interesting. One thing about that series is you really have no clue where CLAMP is headed with it!

Friday, January 24, 2003 11:52 p.m.

Resilience

The last few days have been difficult. I found out that Mom's going to have to have surgury again (she had it last summer, but evidently it didn't take right). She wanted to wait, but the doctor was saying, nope, need to do it soon, so in the next couple of weeks, she'll be going under the knife.

Strange phrase, that. Scary, too.

To add to this, my folks are also planning to run off to Mexico for six months or so. Since they're going out of the country, they're having me handle their financial affairs until they get back. So last Friday, I'm running around getting things all set up for that. It's quite a bit of work. I'm happy to do it, of course, but it's going to be a challenge.

I barely slept for a couple of days after hearing about Mom. I'm a worrier, you see. Good thing I don't have kids, huh? I'd never get any sleep!

They had a bardic thing over at Robina's house on Saturday. Bob had accidently scheduled something else on top of that, but we went for a couple of hours. I was enjoying myself, although I was feeling pretty ragged from lack of sleep. Afterwards, Bob went on to his gaming thing and I wandered around the house in zombie mode, trying not to sleep until it got dark. Went to bed, slept only five hours, then sat up and watched TV. Yesterday was shot as well, as I was so tired as to be barely coherent. I did finally get a full night's sleep last night, so I'm feeling a little more the thing today.

Alison, good news about E's! You've talked about the series quite a bit and I've been interested, but I've never been able to locate the manga, so I'm looking forward to seeing the anime when it comes out!

It's so great to see Lika-chan and Satsuki-chan posting again! I know, life gets busy, but I've missed reading your ideas. Kinda like how I miss the chats. YahooMessenger was getting too troublesome, though, and I'm not a big chatter anyway, but I miss talking to ya'll.

I'll be heading for the Calontir Clothier's Seminar in a couple of weeks. Bob didn't want to go, so I emailed a gal I know in Cedar Rapids and she managed to arrange a ride and crash space for me. I've always been fascinated with costume (one of my favorite things at cons are the cosplays), although my sewing skills are mediocre. Some pictures from previous seminars are here and here. The stuff I make is nowhere near this good!

Thanks, Ammie! I plan to work more on the story this week (although the last few days have been shot!). I'm feeling the evil call of Harry Potter again, so I might pick up that story I started last fall and work on it more as well!

Monday, January 20, 2003 05:20 a.m.

Pressie

Okay, just for you two, here's a present! It's not done and is just a draft so far, but I'll try to finish it in the next week.

*faints* Satsuki-chan updated! She lives!! ;-D *hugs* Missed you, chica.

Thursday, January 16, 2003 07:48 p.m.

Dizzy

I'm so diiizzy, my head is spinning
Like a whirlwind, it never ends

As I'm fighting off a cold (again--this is a drafty house!), I took some cold medicine to help with the battle. It does help fight off the stuffy head, but man, the stuff dopes me up. I hate it when I can't think straight.

Especially when I have so much to do right now. January (it took me five minutes to figure out how to spell that word, which just shows you how out of it I am right now) is always a time for reorganizing and reevaluating, not only because it's a new year, but because of my birthday as well. I look at my stuff, figure out how the things are arranged, what works, what doesn't, throw out or give away what I can't use (or haven't been using) and try to make the best of what's left. I do that with my life, as well. It's been a useful habit, but I have to say that it tends to make January awful cluttered.

*Looks around messy office* Ah, who the hell am I fooling? I'm not going to work on this today. I'm going back to bed and sleep off this headache. rassumfrassumstupidcoldrassumfrassum.

Wednesday, January 15, 2003 12:22 p.m.

So Now You Know, part 4


Which Subaru are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Actually, that makes sense. The Tokyo Babylon Subaru is by far my favorite.

Ammie-chan, I'd love to beta any Kusanagi/Yuzuriha story you might write! Hope you enjoy your new library...it's nice to be able to walk to work, isn't it? I always enjoyed it when I had the opportunity!

Happy Birthday, Kerianne!!! Hope your year is filled with happiness and that CLAMP indulges us with an Aoki/Karen love scene!

Lika-chan, you've a birthday coming up soon, too, right? This weekend, I think? Hmmmm....what can we do about this? Hmmmm....

Kristin, I will never be able to listen to the My Little Pony theme song again without getting an image of the Witch-King of Angmar. That was just evil! So, what's your thoughts on Gary Oldman as Sirius Black?

I got a bit of an early birthday present yesterday. Actually, I'd ordered this a couple of months ago and it just came in: CLAMP North Side artbook. I really liked it, especially the crossover pictures and the Clover stuff. Very neat. I'm trying to place the four guys, though...what series was that from? They look similar to the CLAMP Campus Dectectives. Are they possibly from one of the CLAMP Campus series? I know there were a couple of them, but I've not read them. I have South Side on order, too, but that one hasn't come in yet.

Ah, well, off to work.

Tuesday, January 14, 2003 08:02 a.m.

Just When

Just when I was feeling a little low tonight, something happened that made me feel a little more grounded. I got an email from my old friend, Marlene, who I knew back in Kentucky.

Marlene, known as Mistress Bianca Rosamund in the SCA, was the gal who taught me how to do calligraphy. I used to go over to her house once a week, and we'd pull out the inks and paints and sit around at her drawing table. She'd show me how to do things, and we'd talk about anything and everything. Her husband Bill would come in from work and find us there, and we'd all hang out and talk. Bill passed away about 5 or 6 years ago, from cancer. I miss him still. Bob reminds me of him in many ways.

Anyway, we lost track of each other after I married Bob and moved away a few years back. I have to admit, I'm rotten at correspondance: I always have too much to say and I don't want to miss anything, so I procrastinate at getting the letter started, and then I end up not writing. Terrible, huh? Anyway, while unpacking some stuff that my mother had foisted off on us, I found a couple of artbooks that Marlene had lent me long ago. I thought I had returned them, but evidently not. And now, I wasn't even sure if she was living in the same place!

I contacted the Midrealm email list looking for her, and it turned out a couple of people knew her and passed on the message. And she wrote. And it was great. It was like those years since last we met had never happened at all.

Moving around as often as we do has had its toll on me. I'm not easy to really get to know, not in person, anyway. And there aren't a lot of people that I really trust and get really close to. And the more we move, and the older I get, it becomes harder to connect with like-minded people. I don't know why, but it's the truth. I didn't like Des Moines, although we did make a couple of good friends there. I do like Dubuque, but it has been very lonely here. The other SCA people here are nice folk, but I'm afraid they find Bob and I rather dull, as we are more settled (and older) than most of them.

One thing I really loved about Marlene is that she knows how to play SCA. She doesn't ever gossip, she tries to see things in a positive light, and she tends to focus more on the research/history side of things rather than the social side. That's how I want to do things, too, although I'm nowhere near being as nice as she is. I really admire her as a person. And it really touched me that even after I practically disappear for five years, she still wants to be friends.

Damn, I'm gonna start crying now.

Monday, January 13, 2003 10:44 p.m.

Shakespearian Tolkien

I found this hugely amusing. Tolkien probably wouldn't have--he despised Shakespeare (actually, any literature after 1100 CE didn't count with him).

This person (who I don't know, btw), had some interesting theories about female "pack mentality" in fandom. I can't say I exactly agree with the concept: men have their own packs, although they are less shy about attacking others individually. Bob hangs out online with the GURPS community and I've seen some of the arguments that come across there. Pretty damn brutal and mainly about trivial bullshit the likes of which I've rarely-to-never seen argued about in anime/manga fandom (at least by women). That's not to say there aren't packs: people tend to cluster with those they like or who have similar ideas. But the question of other females working to bring down someone that they think has gotten above themselves? It does happen, in real life as well as the fandom world, but men do this, too. They may approach it in a different way, as in less consensus building among other men and more direct attacks, but it still happens. Take a look sometime at the Berserk fan community and you'll see what I mean. Heck, I'm too imtimidated to say much there, those guys are so brutal!

I guess why this assumption bothers me so much (and why I feel I must comment on it) is that there is this myth that women cannot handle authority or work together without turning on one another. I've actually run into employers who really think this. And this myth is one of the reasons that women hit the glass ceiling. So when I see it come up, I have to speak out and get people to question it. That's the only way to debunk it.

Monday, January 13, 2003 08:49 a.m.

Tired but Happy

Well, just got back from the Queen's Prize Tourney. It was a bit of a drive (around 6 hours), but fortunately the weather was clear and the roads were in good condition, so we made good time.

I hadn't spent much time in Missouri before, except for a couple of short visits to St. Louis when I was dating a guy there years ago. I have to say that Iowa is prettier. Columbia (where the tourney was) is a good-sized city, larger than Dubuque. The University of Missouri is based there, evidently, as well as a couple of private colleges. We didn't get to see a whole lot of the town, since we got there around dark, and the next day spent most of the day indoors at the tournament.

It was great fun. I did a Saxon-style scroll, in Artificial uncial script, using the Rule of St. Benedict as a text. I got some nice comments from the judges on my work (especially my documentation), so that was cool. I was worried they'd tear it apart (my previous experience with A&S contests led to this belief), but they sincerely seemed to like my work. The tourney is structured so that every entrant has a sponser, and then each sponser awards a prize to another entrant who impressed them. I was awarded a handmade nalbinded pouch and glass vase from Maerwyn of Holme, who as an enthusiast for all things Saxon, was thrilled at the theme of my entry topic. :-) It's good to be Saxon!

The "winner" of the tourney is the person who gets chosen by the Queen of Calontir as a favorite entrant. The winner was a lady who did experiments with medieval dyes, then made a dress out of her dyed cloth. It was a really interesting project and I was hugely impressed with the amount of research and experimentation she did. There were over 120 entries into the contest, so suffice to say there were a lot of interesting things to see and learn about. Bob and I had a terrific time.

We took another route home, which brought us through Iowa City, so we stopped off at Daydreams where we spent too much on comics. I picked up X/1999 (the Viz trans), volume 9, which of course has the Kusanagi side story. I was curious how they would translate it as opposed to the net translations I had read and my own reading of the original Japanese. It wasn't bad. They added a little, probably to ease the flow of conversation. No "Missy"s spoken, they left that phrase out altogether, which I kind of missed. He's still at that mysterious/dangerous stage that Satsuki-chan loves so much, and I have to admit he's lost that over time. Kusanagi does work better with a touch of scariness--he is, after all, one of the supposed bad guys.

This is also the volume that has the wonderful scenes with Subaru rescuing Kamui after he falls into a coma after Kotori's murder. I forgot how much I liked that scene. Subaru has been such a wimp lately, you tend to forget the occasional signs of kindness that he showed towards Kamui in the beginning.

We also picked up a couple of issues of Super Manga Blast, which have not been showing up regularly at our local store ('cause they suck). Most of SMB I could take or leave, but they have Club 9 and What's Michael?, two very funny and cute series that I've become addicted to. Club 9 is a story about a country gal who moves to Tokyo to go to college and winds up working part time as a hostess. It's absolutely hilarious, although as someone who speaks with a bit of a Southern accent myself, I have to say the phrasing they use in the translation is atrocious. No one has used phrases like "Lord love a duck!" in more than a century. Southern English has plenty of modern colliquialisms that would suffice for translation of some backwater Japanese accent--using slang from the 19th century is a sign of lazy writing. Of course, these guys are from the West Coast and probably think "Heat of the Night" and "Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood" are accurate depictions of Southern speech, too. But putting that aside, Club 9 is very cute and ya'll should give it a try.

Anyway, now that the Queen's Prize is done with, we can slow down a little. *Looks around house and sighs* That means I get to concentrate on housework, oh goodie. Yay. But it is getting a little cluttered and both Bob and I get edgy when having too much clutter around for too long. Not that we're neat freaks or anything, but you know, just so we can find stuff without getting frazzled would be nice. Ah, well, I'm starting to babble now...seeya...

Sunday, January 12, 2003 05:34 p.m.

Procrastination

I really am supposed to be working on a couple of things right now, but I took a break and decided to blog instead. I'm weak, I tell you, weak!

No, actually, I'm nervous. Queen's Prize Tourney is this weekend and I'm still working on my entry. It's so stupid, I shouldn't worry so much, I've done almost 40 scrolls now and this is just one more. But I'm choking because I know it'll be judged. But I need to persevere and do this. I hate competition.

We headed down to Des Moines last weekend to get our Xmas presents from Bob's family. Of course, I wasn't expecting this, but they made reservations at The Latin King (a favorite restaurant of Bob's) without telling us, so we ended up having to go out for dinner. Problem is, this is expensive food and I hadn't budgeted for the expense. I was not a happy camper, but tried to be gracious about the whole thing. They just don't think about this sort of thing.

The next day, we went over to Omaha for Lonely Tower's Twelfth Night Celebration. We had a really good time. We met a couple of friends of our friend Robina, Master Owen and his apprentice, Eliane, who were very nice. They do bardic things (the "bardic arts" are such things as singing, storytelling, poetry, that sort of thing) and are very good. Owen had a Sutton Hoo Lyre that really impressed Bob. It's now on his list of things to make (after the yurt and the chairs and the chest and my portable drawing table). It's not really like a harp per se. It's more to enhance the melody of a singer. We also ran into several people we used to know from Des Moines. It was really nice to see them again, as it's been a couple of years since we'd seen some of them.

The fighting looked good, but honestly, I didn't stay to watch most of it. It's hard watching the fighting when you really want to be out there doing it, you know? We did pick up some trim and Bob got me this cute little leather needle holder. There was a nice performing arts venue that we attended. 17 performers, which is pretty good. Some dancers, storytellers, several singers, an instrumental ensemble (our Des Moines pals!), a harpist and a very fine lute player. It was really enjoyable and there were a couple of the performers who were extraordinarily good.

I had written a little song,, just as a lark, about a kestrel (oooooh, bad pun). No really, one of the guys at Lonely Tower is a falconer and his wife had just acquired a young kestrel recently. Since I knew she was a bard, I thought I would make a song for the kestrel and maybe sing it for her (since as a bard, she'd appreciate the gift). However, she insisted I sing it at the Performing Arts thing instead, even though I'm not big on doing much of anything in public. So I did, and it went over better than I thought. I remembered some things from my Scarborough Faire days and got the audience to sing along in the chorus, which tends to make songs a little more fun for listeners. I was so scared, it wasn't even funny, and I don't remember the performance, but Bob said I did really well.

So we had a good time. The feast was excellent, and we headed back to Des Moines to stay at the homestead then drove back to Dubuque the next day. The roads were a little icy closer to home, but otherwise the travel wasn't bad at all.

Ah, well, better get back to work. Social blogging coming later.

Tuesday, January 7, 2003 09:45 a.m.

Auld Lang Syne

Happy New Year, ya'll!

Bob and I headed out to a party last night. It went pretty well. We brought some mead (always good to drink) and our friend Gaston brought along some raspberry flavored sparkling wine (see, I didn't call it champaign, did I?) that was really, really, really good. I didn't get to drink much of it (the sparkly stuff goes straight to my head and I pay for it dearly), but the little I had was excellent.

It wasn't a huge party--about 10 people were there, including two kids that the hostess had to babysit at the last minute. That made it a little difficult, since we had to watch our language and couldn't tell any off-color jokes. But we had a good time anyway.

Bob's still out cold. He's funny when it comes to his liquor. He's a big guy, so you'd think he'd have some tolerance, but he really doesn't. He just thinks he does, which gets annoying if you're trying to talk him into not driving. Men!

I thought about doing New Year's Resolutions, but it's kind of depressing when you break them by January 15th or so, so this year, I only resolve to do my best in whatever I choose to pursue. Vague, but easy to keep, yes?

I got a cool book in the mail yesterday: The Fox and The Jewel, which is a study about contemporary Inari worship. Inari is one of the more interesting deities, and of course, with my fox obsession, I'm quite taken with him/her/it.

What's kind of cool, and not really something you see in America, is the shrine festivals that they have over in Japan. Yes, Americans have big religious gatherings (like revivals), but they're pretty boring, and you have to sit through the "Be Redeemed Or You're Going to Hell!!!!" speeches, which get really tiresome unless you have a decent preacher. The few Catholic festivals I've been to have been along the same lines, with less prayer and crying, but at least they get to drink and dance. No wonder I turned pagan. I'd like to see one of those Japanese festivals one day, just to have the experience.

Sheesh, I'm rambling today. Better be off then, I've a ton of things to do. I hope everyone has a great year for 2003!

Wednesday, January 1, 2003 09:14 a.m.

Quickly

A couple of replies:

Beth and Ammie-chan, thanks for your compliments on the layout. It IS a nice picture, isn't it? I keep my layouts simple as I'm self-taught on the web and not very good at coding yet. "Winter is Coming" is a reference to one of my other obsessions: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, one of the best series of fantasy fiction ever written. Really, he's on a level with Tolkien.

Kerianne, glad you liked the rant. Some folk didn't, evidently, but that's life.

I actually got an email (besides a bit of hate mail) asking what "Fresh Meat" refers to. I tend to forget most of ya'll aren't from Texas. Fresh meat is cattle on the hoof, on the way to the slaughterhouse. Beef: it's what's for dinner. It's a term used to describe someone new to the battlefield, cannon-fodder, a greenhorn, someone wet behind the ears. The term is commonly used in the military, down South and in the country. It's not exactly complimentary and wasn't meant to be.

Today I get to rearrange my office. Oh. Yay. What fun. However, it's got to be done. The manga is crying out for another bookshelf, so it looks like the folklore is going to have to go elsewhere. I've also got to find space for all my Japanese language references now. My last year's Asukas and Betsuma Margarets need a home, too, since stacking them on top of the file cabinet won't work anymore. I also have to rearrange last year's bills and financial statements. I'm committed to doing the taxes earlier this year, as in before April.

Finally finished the other cloak. It's 100% wool, in this army blanket green that I didn't like at first, but has grown on me. Bob's a big guy, so I ended up doing a three-quarters circle rather than a half. A little more work, but the effect is very nice.

Next up, a tunic for Keith, and a trial run of the new sewing machine! I've got a quilt I need to finish that I set aside a couple of years ago because my old sewing machine was giving me fits on it--I may get to finish it now. It's pretty cool: old-fashioned Japanese print designs mixed in with plain black and a red calico. I'm still piecing it: I may end up doing the actual quilting by hand, depending on how I feel at the time.

So anyway, enough procrastinating, I'm back to work.

Monday, December 30, 2002 11:32 a.m.

It's Time to Rant

Oh, lookee here, Keri just brought me some fresh meat. Pull up a chair, dearie, it's time for Maria to pull out the big stick and beat some sense into you.

Congratulations, chica, you've just met someone who wants to read more fics about Kusanagi. So much so that she started writing fics about the big boy a couple of years ago so there would at least be something out there. No, I don't post on CLAMPesque. Too many Big Four stories, and besides, I'm not much into writing yaoi. I will admit to reading it on occasion, but have been disappointed due to the unrelenting sameness of the fics presented there.

I can certainly understand the prevalence of Kamui and Fuuma fics. They are indeed the ultimate protagonists/antangonists of X. I have to say that I rarely see them written well, though.

Poor Kamui is often reduced to a panting love slave, when his best traits (no, not his pretty face or tight ass) are ignored. Kamui is an innocent, for all his power and early arrogance. He wants to do good (redeem Fuuma, protect his friends), but he doesn't always know how. He makes the wrong choices sometimes. But he keeps trying. This endearing side of him is rarely seen in X fanfic, and that's just sad.

And even worse, Fuuma is turned into a rollicking sadist, alternately torturing or f*cking any other character he comes across, well dressed and with perfect hair. "But that's what he does in the manga!" cry the fangirls. Open your eyes, people. He's testing them, he acts as a reflection and conduit of their own desires, until such time as those desires free or destroy them. And despite the good Fuuma/bad Fuuma dichotomy, he really hasn't changed that much. Even in the early days, he was reflecting the wishes of those around him, to be the perfect son, the good student, the kind brother. "It's as if he has thrown away his own self, to act as someone else according to the other person's wish. That's not a good thing to do to yourself."

Damn straight. THAT is Fuuma's tragedy, yet how many people write about it? No, it's more amusing to see him screwing with Kamui, or Seishirou, or Subaru, or Keiichi...boooooooooring. Show some depth, dammit.

Now let's take a look at Subaru and Seishirou, shall we? The darling pair of X fanfiction, the sociopath and his doormat..er..victim. Any stranger reading X fanfic for the first time, without much exposure to the original manga, might suffer under the delusion that Subby and Sei-chan were the main characters of X. *cough*hack*cough* No. They were the main characters of Tokyo Babylon, another story altogether. Within the space of Tokyo Babylon, they were brilliant. Subaru's innocent goodness, Seishirou's evil cat and mouse game, they were the spotlight in a classic tragedy.

In X, they are a sidelight, fanservice, an example to Kamui of what not to do in his own life. Within X itself, they are neither brilliant, nor all that interesting. They are side characters, just the same as Karen, or Aoki, or Yuuto or the CLAMP Campus Detective cuties. Now don't get me wrong, I loved Tokyo Babylon as a horror story, but it just chaps my ass to see the S&S stories that fanfiction produces. You know what happens when you get a sociopath/victim love story? Yep, Hannibal. The story sucked because Lector and Starling went off into the moonlight together, and it was implausible and it didn't work. The beauty of Tokyo Babylon was that the S&S romance was doomed, and X proved that it stayed doomed. And it should stay doomed, dammit. But the fanfic writers don't seem to get that, do they?

So when was the last time Kusanagi appeared? Besides the flashbacks, it's been a couple of years. That's not any comment on his character, that's more due to the glacial pace at which this story moves. Subaru also disappeared for a long while as well, and I didn't hear any comment about that being because he was boring. When was the last time Kusanagi did anything useful? His usefulness lies in the way he inspires Yuzuriha, who has taken a more active role and who works closely with Kamui. What has he done in this series? Why is he even there? He's there to provide grounding, he's there to show that the DOE are not all amoral bastards, he's there as a love interest for one of the leading female characters and he's there as an element of mystery and surprise. No one knows what his role will be in the final battle. He could go either way. THAT is why he is interesting, THAT is his quirk, his key in the story. He's the wildcard. That's why he's fun to write.

The comment about Kakyou is also somewhat unfair. Yes, he's a whiner. But he had to have had a backbone at some point, otherwise he wouldn't have gotten shot trying to save Hotuko, would he? He's loved and lost and is lost because of that. Annoying yes, but no more so than Subaru's pining for Seishirou. And Sorata is one of the most charming characters in X, with his energy and endless optimism. His love for Arashi is not only based on her looks (although that's what he most comments on--he knows it will get a rise out of her), but also on her demeanor, her intelligence and the fact they have this end of the world thing in common. Their love story is one of the better sidestories in the series.

Every one of the supporting characters has a role, and each one of those roles can be taken and effectively utilized in fanfiction. The CCD guys are support, technical and financial. Think about it, these guys are rich, talented, the cream of the crop, and relegated to standing aside and watching as the fate of the world hangs on the whim of some pretty teenaged boy. How do they feel? How do they react? Oh, look, a story--a good one.

What is the role of the Windmaster Clan that Aoki is a part of? What purpose did the church have with Karen, and why does she feel the need to work in the sex industry? What's she running from? Look, a story--a good one.

Anything that might clear up the enigmas that are Yuuto and Satsuki would make a good tale, as would Daisuke, Hinoto or Kanoe. (So how does she get away with wearing such low-cut dresses to work? I've worked in city government before--a secretary just doesn't have that kind of power, even an executive one...)

Don't blame CLAMP for too many characters. That's just a cop out. In a few words or images, CLAMP has been able to make even these minor characters matter. Too many characters is not the reason that X fanfic focuses on the Big Four to the detriment of the others. Laziness is a clear factor. Concentrating on a less developed character means that a fanfic writer might have to use her own imagination, might have to take a risk in presenting something that is of herself more than some fevered romantic ideal of pretty boys f*cking. And that's just too much for some people, isn't it?

So, in conclusion, if OtherDragon fans want to bitch about too many Big Four stories, they are perfectly justified. There are too many Big Four stories out there, many of them lacking originality. Take a chance, try something new, expand your borders, focus on someone else for a change. It's very possible to include many characters in a story and make it work. It is just a matter of technique and application.

Disclaimer: people may of course write whatever they want. It's good that people write something and that they are excited enough about X to write fanfiction about it. I'm just tired of seeing the anti-OtherDragons sentiment around in the fandom. Variety is the spice of life, folks, remember that.

Sunday, December 29, 2002 01:07 p.m.

Wait! There's more!!!

Okay, I thought I was done...

Alison, I admit, I've learned to ignore the "Ugly Lumberjack" digs. That was a stupid joke a few years ago and hasn't gotten any more clever over time. But everyone has their preferences. Mine happens to be for the muscular guys. Although Kamui is very pretty to look at, as was Subaru in the days of his youth. In LOTR parlance, I'm more into Boromir (or Faramir) than Legolas. Not that I would kick the pretty boy out of my bed though! (Bob probably would. He doesn't go in for that sort of thing. Very straight, that man of mine.)

Bob made me a sandwich. And he baked cookies the other day. Major husband points for the sweetie.

Ammiiiiiieeee! I got your card and the strawberry pocky!!! Now I'm on a sugar high!!!! Loved the drawing on the card...is that a slumber party or is Daisuke just that vigorous? ;-D

Okay, now I'm really going back to my story.

Thursday, December 26, 2002 07:36 p.m.

Almost Done

I changed the layout a bit, with the new Kusanagi pic from Asuka. Thanks muchly to Alison for permission to use her scan. I cleaned it up a bit...not bad for a gal with no formal training in Photoshop!

And yes, I love this picture!!!

I didn't get as much done today as I'd hoped, but it's my own fault, since I ran off and went to see LOTR: The Two Towers again. But with only two days of work left at my job, I'm not too worried about time. After Saturday, I should have plenty of time to do whatever I want.

I'm going to go write now....!

Thursday, December 26, 2002 07:13 p.m.