meme

In the last fanfic you wrote, what was your favorite sentence? Why?



All time travellers are wolves.

-from Beyond, my tPOTW Rose/TARDIS fic.

This wasn't the last fic I started, but it was the latest complete fic. I liked this sentence because... it was nice an short, for one thing. I usually am too wordy. I liked that I felt I could make this really strong comparison that not only played into the fairy tale themes of the ficlet, but also into the various portrayal of "wolf" or "wolves" as a symbol in both the new Doctor Who and the Dark Tower books. Also, I liked the sinister sound of the sentence, and that it's going back to the idea of Dark!Doctor that the Ninth Doctor's series was so focused on.

Plus it ties to Jack as well, since we don't really know how dark he is, and he was living as a con-man for a time, a wolf-like proffession for sure. And it applies to Rose for obvious reasons. So "all time travelers" is the good and the bad and the in between. Plus I like the idea of identifying Rose and Jack and the Doctor as part of a lumped together group of ALL the people that have ever travelled through time, human or Gallifreyan or otherwise, instead of the Doctor & companions being so unique and individual. There's the suggestion that all time travellers, good or bad, all desire the same thing in messing with time, all affect the timeline in basically the same way: like wolves. Is that good or bad? Are wolves noble beautiful creatures that have a complex social bonds and mate monogomously? Or are they vile and evil hunters of myth and nursery rhyme that kidnap children and leech off society? Well, maybe both.

I know that's a lot of explanation for one sentence, but the meme did ask for my favorite sentence.

(no subject)

Long I have searched for good Princess Tutu icons! And I found them! In ushitora_icons.

EDIT: Ahhh, and there's Scar/Lust icons too.

EDIT2: I die of teh prettay.

Blade of the Immortal - Chapter 99

I'm reading chapter 99 (first chapter of volume 15) of Blade of the Immortal thanks to a link that donna_c_punk gave me a few days ago.

( chapter 99 reactions... )

Damn, I need fanfic for this series. WHY IS THERE SO LITTLE FIC DAMMIT?!


* for background info, that was my roommate from the first quarter. She moved out (hah!) and was replaced for the next two quarters by a sweet, funny person who understood the meaning of squee and who was not in the least bit psycho.

The one where Rashaka compares Harry Potter and Naruto

I was reading a random standard series review of Naruto, and it got me thinking. It got me thinking about Naruto as a series and Harry Potter as a series. What both series manages to do, one of the strongest aspects of both series, is the fascinating and in-depth world created for the characters to play in.

The worlds of both Naruto and HP draw liberally from previous conventions in their respective genres:

HP is about a supernatural underworld the normal humans are unware of. I think I've read that about 40 times in different books.

Naruto is about ninjas. Half the anime out there is about ninjas. Even the new Batman movie was about ninjas.

But both series manage to take those conventions and create something entirely fresh-feeling. In the case of HP, it's the simple depth of detail and munitiae (sp?) that makes the wizarding world seem fresh and new. JKR's capacity for coming up with new and fascinating little quirks for everything creates a vibrant world that you feel you could walk into. This has always been one of the strongest things drawing me into the HP series.

The world of Naruto, on the other hand, is much less detailed on the day to day stuff. We know some things about the average ninja lifestyle, but not as much as we know about the average lifestyle of the HP wizards. Nevertheless, what Narutoverse lacks in the small things it makes up for in the big things. We have a very clear idea of the politics and social environment of the societies of Narutoverse. We don't know much at all about international politics in HP, but half of Narutoverse is about war, i.e. about international politics. Or intervillage politics, to be more specific. It also feels a lot more realistic and more sensibly structured to me than the political world of HP.

The world HP feels realistic and vibrant on and individual level, but I've always felt it was better when JKR just glossed over details of international stuff because when she tries to go into detail about it, my mind starts picking it apart, and fast. Speculating about population ratios of wizards to muggles and economics is the LEAST of it. The plot of Naruto, however, is very strongly grounded in the politics of the hidden villages, and the whole concept of ninjas as a society was wonderfully created. If you're going to have ninjas but they're going to be common and well-known, make them like a real military. Not to say that the hidden village system is anything remotely resembling a real military, but the point is that actual ninjas weren't military-like at all; there weren't armies of them and they didn't all wear flak jackets and they didn't function like a working military body supported by a company town. But the ninjas of Narutoverse do all that. Naruto demystified the ninjas and militarized them at the same time. Brilliant. The idea of individual and self-sustaining mercenary armies being used interchangeably by various countries DOES make a kind of weird sense. And the way the mangaka developed the world around the hidden villages supported this societal structer very well. It falls firmly and pleasantly into my suspension of disbelief.

The Naruto world also manages to feel really, REALLY different from the original worlds or societies created in other anime series. It's familiar and filled with familiar things, yet feels very unlike any kind of ninja or action anime we've seen before.

I've said the vibrancy of HPverse is one of the reasons I like the series. That and the plot are why I keep reading. I like the same things about Naruto. However, I've never bonded with the characters of HP the way I've bonded with the characters of Naruto. I like the HP characters and I quite adore Luna Lovegood, but I don't love them. I LOVE the characters of Naruto, almost all of them. And while I'll make a few HP posts every once in a while, I tend to post Narutoish things a lot.


While writing this I remembered FMA. I thought about adding that to the comparison since it *does* create a vibrant and original world... but then I stopped because I remembered that the world of FMA may be vibrant, but it's not original and it's not meant to be. It's meant to be Europe. It's a history class through a mirror darkly (it's got psuedo-Nazis, terrorism, trench warfare, civil wars, train travel, and fighting with insurgents in the Middle East. Like I said, it's Europe thoroughout the 20th century.) And besides, FMA for me is about the plot and characters, not about the setting anyway. Although the setting fucks with your head just as much as everything else in this series. You can't trust anything in FMA because it all fucks with your head sooner or later.