Spring Green

Spoilers: For the entire movie
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary: In which dragons and boys both must find their own tale.
Notes: Written for Hikario for Yuletide 2009. Many thanks to edonohana, who did an extremely quick beta and helped me brainstorm the ending.
(Me: It's such a typical fic for me!
Her: Pretty prose, Asian mythology, and food?
Me: Oooh, I should add food...)

Read Becoming

Series information

Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi/Spirited Away is one of my favorite Miyazaki movies (as a side note, I love that AO3 puts the original language transliteration first, then the English translation). Ten-year-old Chihiro and her parents find themselves in a magical world, and Chihiro must find work in order to save her parents, who have been turned into pigs. She ends up in a bathhouse that serves spirits and gods. I love the movie for the imagery and for Chihiro and the daikon radish spirit and the river god and everything, and I was delighted when I got it as my assignment. Then I was absolutely terrified, because damn it's hard to live up to Miyazaki.

( Commentary )

Spoilers: For the entire song
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary: Hell's queen is its ruler and its most enslaved soul.
Notes: Written for Avendya for Yuletide 2008.

Read Cruel Hope and Gray Despair

Series information

"The Queen and the Soldier" is a song by Suzanne Vega (lyrics), but my favorite version is the cover by Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts. coffeeandink introduced me to it, and I love it to pieces and keep almost requesting it for Yuletide and then not. The fandom as far as I know has one other story, edonohana's lovely The Queen Knew She'd Seen His Face Some Place Before.

( Some commentary )

Spoilers: Through Claymore chapter 80 or so
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary: Ugly manners, her mother would say, pretty is as pretty does, but she never told her pretty girl that monsters ate pretty and ugly girls alike.
Notes: Written for woodburner for Yuletide 2008. Many thanks to magicnoire for the quick beta!

Read Pretty Monsters

Series information

Claymore is a shounen manga series by Yagi Norihiro about half-human half-yoma women called Claymores who go around killing yoma with giant swords. There is a lot of blood, which I do not like so much, and a whole lot of stoic icy warriors, interesting backstory, worldbuilding, and awesome relationships among the many warriors, which I like A LOT. The story is pretty spoilery for the series, and I have no idea how well it stands alone.

( Some commentary )

Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary: Listen, and I will tell you how Monkey comes to America.
Notes: Written for st_aurafina for Yuletide 2007. Rachel, Yoon, Vom Marlowe, and Mely all guessed me correctly! (I felt so obvious writing this!)

Read The Journey West

Fandom information

American Gods is a book by Neil Gaiman about old myths and gods coming to America. There is also other stuff, but really, all you need to know is that Gaiman posits that gods come to America with their believers.

( Factual notes )

( Some commentary )

Spoilers: For the entire series
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary: These were the memories he didn't have of Sei: growing up, growing different, growing apart.
Notes: Written for Tou-chan for Yuletide 2007. Includes work-safe image done by the wonderful vom_marlowe!

Read Skin Shallow, Bone Deep

Series information

Mars is by Soryo Fuyumi (author of Eternal Sabbath), published by TokyoPop. It's about shy artist good girl Kira and destructive motorcycle-racing bad boy Sei, and it's also about two damaged people trying to heal themselves. Well, that, a lot of of Gothic plot twists involving twins, psychotic mass murderers, parentage, and who knows what else!

It was one of the first shoujo manga series I ever read, and I devoured it in the space of a few days. Later on, it was one of the first shoujo manga series brought over to the States; I found out it had been translated when I spotted a young girl reading a volume of it on the subway in New York, just like a schoolgirl in Tokyo or Taipei.

I don't think the story will make much sense without knowledge of the canon, since a lot of what I was trying to do was to change the characters in canon, to age them plausibly, to turn a Gothic high-school romance to a romance that could work in the real world. Also, I totally spoil almost all the plot twists of the manga.

( Some commentary (series spoilers) )

Spoilers: through ch. 147
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary: What does Yuuko wish for?
Notes: Merry Christmas, rilina_fic! Many thanks to thuviaptarth for the beta! This is pretty much all speculation on my part, and I'm sure it's going to be jossed as soon as the next chapter comes out. So think of it as AU!

( Behind the shoji doors, Watanuki lies in bed, black Mokona anxiously watching over him. )

Spoilers: vague spoilers through ep. 20 and for Episode Zero
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary: A young terrorist walks into a church...
Notes: Merry Christmas, yhlee! Many thanks to both edonohana and rilina_fic for the beta! Only I am incredibly stupid and realized this spoils you for Duo's fate post series (i.e. if he lives or dies).

( Read more... )

Spoilers: Spoils the entire series!
Disclaimer: I do not own them, though I derive great joy from the series!
Summary: Nomiya battles once again with a suit he long thought he had outgrown.
Notes: This is for rilina, whose fic also served as an inspiration. And thanks so much to vonnie_k and jinian for beta-ing!



( Nomiya was good at hurting people; he knew this. He had taken courses in sarcasm and majored in world-weariness: he held a degree in detachment. )

So, for those of you who write for anime and manga fandoms: do you ever have problems translating the characters in your fic?

I've found that it's much easier for me to get character voice for manga, provided that I've read the manga in translation, but with subtitled anime, I've been having a very painful time. There's always a small mental disconnect in which the characters are speaking Japanese in my head, but English in the fic, whether I'm reading or writing something.

I keep hearing the characters saying things like "Sou ka naaaa..." and I can't figure out how to do that in English. And I don't want to pepper my fic with too much random Japanese, as a) reader accessability is a good thing, b) it furthers the disconnect somewhat (i.e. I as a reader have to flip between Japanese and English even more often), and c) I have had too many bad experiences with fangirl Japanese.

How much Japanese throws you out of a fic (or does it ever)? How much do you personally try to keep in (if any)? Do you try to keep suffixes like -san and -chan, and do you try to keep interjections like "ne"?

And how in the world do you translate things like "Sou ka" and the not-quite-yes "Un" that often goes with a nod and all that stuff?

*wanders off, confused*

And now for something completely different!

I've been endlessly amused watching people I know write themselves as Mary Sues in SPN ficlets, but alas, since I don't watch SPN, I will instead apply this to my currently most active fandom!

( Mary Sue Saiyuki! )

You are all grateful that I never got around to trying to knit the ikkou socks. Stripey, candy-colored socks. Or possibly a gun cozy.

Spoilers: Takes place after the end of the movie, but it doesn't spoil anything, unless for some reason you didn't think Ginger and Rocky would get together or that the chickens would escape.
Disclaimer: Aardman rules!
Notes: Written for castiron for Yuletide 2006. Many thanks to minnow1212, jinian and kate_nepveu for the beta! I tried to go off Cast Iron's prompt of how the island ever got to be populated with chickens, except much like Nick and Fetcher, I couldn't think of a plausible way either, and the thought of chicken sex mostly just broke my brain. My current theory is that all the chicks are Ginger and Rocky's, only fostered out to assorted hens.



( Fetcher had decided a long time ago that if he ever had to go to the large rat den in the sky, it wouldn't be in yarn, much less pastel yarn. )