JD Farber wrote:
I guess I'm going to be the bad guy.
Don't say that. It's never "bad" to offer your opinion, as long as you
do it politely and without malice, as you do here.
I have no desire to see this as a sequel to 'Transitions'. I feel
very strongly that 'NLTTL' would tarnish Atsuko's memory from
'Transitions', and have told Mr. Lawson as much.
Interestingly, your sentiments very closely echoed mine after I finished
writing the first draft of the story. I shook my head, then sent it off
to my prereaders, saying something like, "I shouldn't have written this,
but now that I have is there anything that can be salvaged?" I was not
plying for sympathy; I believed as you did, JD.
Imagine my surprise when my prereaders liked it, and said I should
polish it up and publish it. They thought that it accented, rather than
detracted from, the ending of "Transitions".
When I read this, I was getting ready to kill someone. To see
Ryunosuke call the AI Nuku Nuku was disgusting.
Heh, well, you were supposed to think that what Ryunosuke did was a bad
way of dealing with grief. And yet, if he hadn't, Narau would never
have been "born", as it were. This is very similar to the original
anime: if Akiko hadn't sent that attack hoverjet after Kyusaku (and
darned near killing her son in the process), Atsuko would never have
existed, either. Maybe Ryunosuke would have had a new pet cat, and it
might actually have lived longer than Atsuko did, but which existence do
you think she would have preferred? (That's actually an interesting
question with many levels to be argued. Someone ask me at Akon so I can
wax philosophic. ^_^)
The only reason I finished reading the story was it was a Lawson
story. That is all.
Heh, that's quite a compliment. Thanks.
When Aki and the Android (for she was not yet Narau) walked in,
and confronted everyone, I stopped, literally stunned. And I
realized that the Android was just trying to experiance love and
life, and the only way she knew how was as Atsuko.
Yes, exactly right. As Kyusaku pointed out, her problem was not that
she wanted to live, but that she wanted to be Atsuko. That was a
mistake. Even if Narau's baseline is Atsuko's personality, she should
allow herself to go off on a completely different tangent, forging a new
identity that is uniquely hers.
That was when it hit me.
Richard had created a character that I despised. And in the end, I
ended up loving her, too.
Wow. That means a lot to me. That's what I was aiming for - the
prologue was supposed to hint that something very *wrong* had happened,
and then lead you to a point where you decided it was okay after all.
Glad it worked. :)
But, no matter how much I liked this story, and I did like this
story, don't get me wrong, I would hate to see it put up as a
sequel for 'Transitions'. I felt a sense of closure from
Transitions', and I was happy with the way it turned out. It
doesn't seem right that anything should follow 'Transitions'.
Again, your thoughts paralleled mine when I first wrote this. In my
mind, what redeems the story is another piece of C&C I got from this guy
who said that after reading "Transistions" he felt hollow inside. "No
Longer Than Thy Love" removed that hollowness, and allowed him to accept
the events of "Transitions" without leaving him hollow. And I think
that's important, and part of what motivated me to write this in the
first place: a story as bright and happy as All Purpose Cultural Cat
Girl Nuku Nuku should have an ending that's slightly up tempo at the
very least. :)
JD
Thanks a lot for the intelligent feedback, JD. ^_^