how i'm spending my four day weekend

[insaneneko]

It all started with an FST for the fanfic Pianissimo Butterfly by Angrybee. The music intrigued me so I downloaded it, but I was going to pass on the fic (I don't read Gravitation fic). After a couple of days, I thought I'd skip around and read a bit of the fic out of curiousity. The Ryuichi POV was interesting, but as Ryuichi isn't a character I'm really into that didn't immediately suck me in. What did end up intriguing me in was the way the author characterized Ryuichi. He's pretty fucked up, but not in the normal way. Love how Kumagoro is front and center, in his world. Her writing in general was also very very compelling. I was pulled into the fic and it didn't let me go to the end. I don't think some of the characters were very IC, but in the end the fic made me not care whether they were or not. They were alive and I needed to know what would happen. And being weak on romantic sap, how could I not love anything with the lines, "Kiss me, and kiss me, and kiss me. Let's make a new forever, together. Kiss me until they throw us out of the park for indecency."? And then I listened to the FST and was blown away by how it really fit the fic.

After that I had the bug to read more Gravitation fanfic. Like I stated before I don't read fanfic in that fandom, so it was daunting in that I didn't know where to start and the fandom is a good size. After reading many unsatisfying ones, I did manage to find some I really enjoyed.


Things Happen by dhrachth

The Yuki/Shuichi dynamic was wonderful in this, and there were so many great moments. I love love love the end of the music vid. It's so perfect, and I could see it happening in canon. ^__^

Undesirable Flirtatious Objects by bakayaro onna

UFO catchers gone wrong. Oh so wrong. XDXD The level of description in the fic was just fabulous and made it even funnier.

The Off Track by Aoi Umi

Shuichi drags Yuki on what basically turns into a road trip to the middle of America. I can't believe how much I laughed reading this. It was so Gravitation, with Shuichi's thoughtless bouncing from one stupid idea to another, Yuki's sarcastic comments and thoughts and his reluctant feelings of happiness and contentment that crop up despite himself every so often. I liked the non-graphic sex, too. It was all so sweet and hilarious.

Fleeting Inspiration by Anna Sartin

It was worth reading if only for Yuki's hysterics over how a book titled "Four Gay Elves" was haunting him. He even had Tatsuha perform an exorcism on it, dressed up in his monk costume and all. XD But the rest of it was pretty funny, even if some of the characters seemed OOC to me.

Goodnight Kiss by Yosuke

SAP! Tasty sap, though. Most of the sap I read failed for me, but this one hit the spot.

The Natural Order by Celeste

Yuki is just hilarious. Gotta love the summary: "Some people are meant to be in charge. Some people are too dumb to realize this."

Cha-cha-cha by lazulisong

It was short and cute. ^_^; I don't know if it'd actually happen, but a girl can dream, right?

Meet the Family by harukami

As the title indicates, Yuki goes to meet the Shindou family. Love how he starts out being charming (and unnatural, according to Shuichi) and ends up being himself.

Composition by Akot

Cute fluffy drabble in which Shuichi is having problems writing some lyrics. The last line is priceless. Poor Yuki, unrewarded for his efforts.

The Disasters Brought by Free Time and Neglect by Hatsbox

I don't know how to feel about this. I liked the fact that Shuichi was more or less thinking and doing something about his life (instead of only reacting, or squeeing over Yuki) even though it's hard for me to imagine Shuichi being able to think that much for a sustained amount of time. I liked that some of the things he did didn't work out, or wasn't handled well. I liked how the Yuki/Shuichi thing was handled well. I liked how Shuichi compiled a photo album of prospective wives for Yuki. I did not like the big thing that happened between Tohma and Shuichi--I can't imagine the conniving Tohma doing something so...not conniving. The end seemed in some ways too much of a "feel good" wrap-up. But overall I probably like it.


It'd been a while since I'd done extensive fanfic reading in an anime/manga fandom in English. I'd forgotten the extent of fangirl Japanese abuse. Some perfectly decent fics were absolutely ruined for me by overuse of fangirl Japanese. ;_; I can tolerate a certain amount in a fic (I'd think you'd have to, to be able to read in the English fandom), but...*shudders* In one case, what got me was when an author bothered to put in a note that the characters are actually talking in Japanese when talking to each other (they were overseas), YET STILL THREW IN FANGIRL JAPANESE IN THEIR DIALOG! The illogic of it just annoyed the shit out of me. I know, I know, it's just rampant in any English fandom like this, but...sometimes I have to let out my annoyanace! GAH! I guess this is why I don't go looking around English fandom that much. :P

Thank god not that many Japanese PoT writers have the urge to make Ryoma talk in "English." If I had to read fic after fic of absolutely awful English in otherwise perfectly fine Japanese fics that would probably drive me nuts, too. I can see them messing up longer passages, but it puzzles me at how even a simple sentence could be garbled so badly. After all, most of these authors must have taken some English in school at some point.

Comments

[mirichan.livejournal.com]

The Natural Order by Celeste

Agree with you on that one... totally cracked me up :P

I'm slowly going through the list, the shorter fics first... UFO did not make much sense to me so I kinda stopped after 1/4th of the fic though...

P.-S. I LOATHE japanese fangirling in English stories... Weiss Kreuz was one fandom that had way too much of that (and GW too, years ago when I was reading it).

[insaneneko.livejournal.com]

Hope you like the longer fics, too!

UFO is a bit hard to read. I slogged through the odd writing style and was rewarded at the end. ^_^

I read a lot of GW in English, too. *shudders* Oh, the awful memories..

[mirichan.livejournal.com]

I could not really read the longer fics as I'm having serious problems with Yuki. In fact, small doses of both is about all I can take (if Shuuichi was a girl? You'd have the fans rating about emotional abuse from Yuki, imo... people seem to accept it because he's a boy. I just can't accept it, his maleness is irrelevant in my eyes. Yuki is usually a jerk and I can't tolerate the guy)...

Euh yeah... I'm not a big Grav fan.

But the short ones were cute...