hkmiller wrote:

Odd story.  I find that I react strongly to it, which I suppose is good 
news for an author,
except that it's a strongly negative reaction to the tone of your 
narrator.

Ah well. Better than ambivlance, I suppose.

 I have a

whole set of confusing reactions to this one.

Granted, there aren't too many ways you could write a fic describing the 
series' setup
from the POV of one of the parents, given the series' setup:

I didn't think it was much elaborated on beyond the first ep, but I was 
uncertain since I saw all of 4 eps of it.

  both her

parents describe
the situation to Miki in roughly the same terms:  I feel something for 
this other
person that I don't feel with your other parent, but we're still great 
friends.

Yeah, it was a summation for the contrivance for her and Yuu, to be certain.

 I guess

the way I pictured it was more that the two couples had less overt 
dissatisfaction
with each other prior to meeting the other couple, and that it was meeting 
the other
couple that opened their eyes.  (Not that I'd ever bothered to picture 
this in any
great detail, you understand; I'd always taken the MB parents' situation 
as just a
comedic given.)

It could have been that way too, although it probably makes them even more 
shallow than the reasoning appears on the surface. Except that it's not 
meant to be taken seriously. Naturally I create a serious story in it's 
place. Ironic, isn't it?

But reading this, I find I have a very negative reaction to a supposed 
37-year-old
narrator's attempt to differentiate between a relationship which she uses 
both the
word "caring" and the phrase "f- buddy" to describe, and the romantic, 
swept-off-her-
feet relationship she seeks.  This is partly personal, I know; it is a 
reaction I've had before
in reading other things.  (I just don't think there IS all that much 
difference, and tend to
get suspicious about what people are selling when they assert that there 
is.  After all,
many people would say that, after sixteen years, a marriage consisting of 
peaceful
coexistence and caring is being ahead of the game.  Well ahead of the 
game.)

Heh. If only love was so formulmatic. It's different for each person, which 
helps make it so unpredictible and tricky. Quite the hassle, it is.

In this connection, I think your narrative strategy to use one of the 
women as
narrator

was correct; this language would be much less believable (IMO)

coming
from a male character.

In shoujo? It's standard that the men think like women. Of course, the 
reverse is true in for anime directed toward us guys. :)


 OTOH, you have both male characters echo this

language,
more strongly than they do in the original material.  You might have had 
both male
characters just shrug and reply "yeah, kind of like that, I guess.  But 
also, I'm kind of
bored with <my wife> in bed, and you're a major babe."

Heh. I don't think they're attitude is ever really that course in most 
shojo. And if it seems that way on the surface, usually their some angsty 
reason for it which the female lead will eventually dig out. At least from 
what limited exposure to shoujo i have. I could be wrong. I've never been a 
big fan of it in general, although it does have a nice change of pace.

Should you be

tempted to
revise more than trivially (which I suspect you won't), I suggest giving 
the men's POVs
a different tone than the women's.

I don't use theirs all that much.

Given that this is a series set in Japan, too, I"m not sure that my own 
reaction
doesn't also reflect some degree of disbelief that this degree of 
idolization of romantic
love could hold sway to this degree in Japanese people of this generation

Yeah, I'm no expert on Japanese values, so the story will have the writer's 
more Western biases slip in.

(people

in their late thirties in the late 1980s).  These could have been arranged 
marriages,
for instance; why does your narrator believe that "passion" is what 
"marriage was
supposed to be about"?  For most of Japanese history, "passion" is what 
corrupts
marriages, which are supposed to be about family continuity, bringing up 
children,
and conservation of property.

But, again, MB is a shoujo series, so female characters are supposed to 
angst about
love, romance, and passion, while male characters aren't supposed to come 
off (to
male readers, at least) as real people.

(While I own the first three

manga, I've never
really been able to get into them, and much of what I know of the later 
series is
from reading Biles' fanfics.)

Never regard fanfics as a correct interpetation of the source material. And 
when it comes to some writers, their biases make you wonder if they even 
read the series at all. You'd be better of with a series synopses.

Not sure that all this is any great help to you, but, as they say, take 
what you find
useful and discard the rest!

I will. One thing I've never had problems with are people explaining why 
they don't like something I did or why they think it's horrible flawed, or 
some other problem it might have. I might not take the advice given for a 
variety of reasons, but I'll look over things and think about it, at least. 
I've been wrong on something and gone back and changed them.

Overall, this fic didn't turn out as good as I thought it might when I 
envisioned it in my mind. I trimmed it a bit from the original outline (A 
good thing, as it would have watered down the purpose behind the fic by 
dragging things out uselessly). That happens sometimes. What is in the head 
doesn't translate so good on paper. Sometimes the reverse is true. Yardwork 
turned out much better than I thought it would. Ditto with Azumanga Royale, 
so it works out both ways. This one I'm not so happy about. Part of it is 
probably the 'voice' since this is a first person narrative. Those are some 
of my most hit or miss stuff when it comes to writing the idea out. 
Painegloss, Equality, and Separation went very well, while this and Symmetry 
of Pain didn't.

Thanks for the help. I'll try looking it over to see if I can use some of 
your suggestions.

DB Sommer

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