MoJoBaKa wrote:
Krista Perry wrote:
Very well, I might add. ^o^x -oro?
^_^
C&C is welcome and appreciated. ^_^
And lose my well earned status as a 'Lurker'?! HA! (by the way, you
never received this...)
Okay. Shall we tell the rest of the list that they never received this
either?
<snip>
I probably could comb though the story and find some sort of
spelling/grammar error, but that's really not my forte, and I tend to
ignore things like that to enjoy the story (that's what its all about,
right?).
Well, hey, that means you missed my spectacular hexagon/octagon mix-up.
(Then again, so did most of my pre-readers, so I don't feel too bad.)
;) I really do know that 8 points make an octagon, and not a hexagon.
Really. ^_^;
It also helps that all your stories have very little such mistakes,
and are always well written, and imaginative. I would like to point
out something that bothered me a little. I got the feeling, though out
the fic, that a few concepts were repeated a bit too often. I think
maybe it was around the Kuno/Nabiki inner monologue(?), which was very
well done, by the way. It seemed to summarize what changes happened to
them in the last two fics. Nothing really wrong with that, especially
for new readers, but if you've been reading the story, it may seem a
little drawn out...
Very true. This is what comes from writing a fic over the space of
years. I have the tendency to want to remind everyone of what's
happened before, and that can translate into this very problem. I
myself haven't read HoI all the way through for almost a year now. I
should probably do that again, to see if I can smooth it out a bit.
That wasn't a very good example, but it was various things like that.
Also, I have a question in general. I know that they're key points in
the story, and that they were built up nicely years (and years^^x) ago
when you first started Hearts, but I've been seeing them a lot in fics
lately, and wanted to know if there's something I missed.
Where does the concepts that Nabiki is an Ice Queen, and Amazons
dislike men and the Musk (hmm. Where'd the Musk come from? I don't
think I've seen more that a flashback concerning them... Oh, well.
Work with, please) come from? I'll admit, I haven't completely
finished reading all of the manga, but I have read the first Musk
story line, and from the way Herb was having a calm conversation with
Cologne, I perceived no hostility.
I don't deal with the Musk in HoI, so I can't help you there. You'll
have to ask other fanfic authors, who do deal with the Musk, for the
reasons behind their depictions. I have my own feelings on the matter,
but it has nothing to do with fanfiction, and I don't want to start up a
character debate. :)
Also, aside from Mousse, and the fact that male amazons in the manga
are virtually nonexistent (Shampoo's father and MAYBE Mousse), I
haven't really noticed any hostility or disdain to any males at all.
Not even the notion of them being subservient.
This is where a lot of fanfic authors get to excercise their creative
liscence. Since a lot of Takahashi's Amazon culture is left
unexplained, with only a few visual and verbal clues scattered here and
there throughout the manga, a lot of it is left up to interpretation.
Since most of us are familiar with how other Amazon cultures have been
portrayed in various media (the most recent example I can think of being
the Amazons in "Hercules" and "Xena"), a logical step for fanfic authors
is to fill in Takahashi's blanks with what they have gleaned from other
sources. And most often, Amazons are depicted in the media as being
elitist, and having a condescending attitude toward men. (I'm not
saying that's historically accurate in all instances of Amazon culture
-- just that it's a common depiction in media.)
I really don't see where Nabiki gets the Ice Queen persona, either. I
pictured her from the manga as being mainly carefree and mischievous.
True, it seems she likes money, but it also seems that she just likes
the pursuit of it, the chase. To manipulate people to do what she
wants them to do. I haven't seen any examples of her being overly cold
about it though...
Again, this is fanfic author creative liscence. The canon Nabiki is a
pretty flat character. I think I can count on one hand how many times
Takahashi had Nabiki do something that wasn't related to personal gain
and/or amusement. Because she's such a flat character, any fanfic
author who wants to do a serious treatment of her in a story has to
flesh her out a bit. This means trying to find a reason for her
behavior, other than her one-note greed. One of the most logical ways
to flesh out Nabiki's character is to imagine that she is really a deep
person hiding under a shallow facade.
It's not canon, no. But it makes for a more interesting story, neh?
^_^
Anyway, I was just going to write them off as fan-fic myths, but as I
said before, this is something I've seen alot. Is there something that
I missed from the series?
Nope. But then, fanfic myths, or "cliches," aren't necessarily a bad
thing. It only becomes a bad thing when the fanfic author uses the
cliche as a crutch in their writing as a substitute for real character
and/or plot development. For instance, when I read a fic that starts
out with a whole scene focused on a pointless Ranma/Akane argument
(especially if it's about Akane's cooking), without any other plot in
sight, the fic is sure to earn a one-way trip into the trash bin. I
want the author to give me a *reason* to read their story within the
first couple of paragraphs. I want a hook, not a cliche. If I see the
same-old same-old, I'm not going to waste my time.
Hm. Didn't mean to go off on that, time to get back to the
masterpiece at hand. Krista, your fan-fics are extremely well written,
very well thought out, and for me, personally, evokes scenes that can
easily be imagined. I look forward to the next chapter of Hearts of
Ice, as well as the next chapters of your other fics.
Thank you very much. ^_^
--Krista