LJ talk and xxxHOLiC fic stuffs
Jul. 31st, 2007 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopI downloaded LJ Talk a while back but I haven’t really done anything with it since, so I was wondering, are any of the rest of you using it? Is it worth bothering with, or should I just stick with the usual gmail/occasional AIM chat programs I’m used to?
On to an unrelated (though much lengthier) topic, it’s generally known that not everyone who enjoys a fic comes up with anything to say about it (and much as Ilive for like getting feedback, I’d be the last person to complain about this since I’m very aware I don’t leave feedback on everything I read by a long margin). So one of the nice bonuses of doing polls like this one is suddenly you’re getting a slightly better idea of about how many people really are reading your work and getting enough out of it to have an opinion on what they’d like to see more of, and – well, I’m not sure what number I was expecting, but still. Cool. That’s quite a lot of people. ^_^ And of course it’s extra gratifying when they all vote for the one you wanted to continue anyway.
The post-apocalyptic AU is coming along nicely, but there are a lot of background details that need to be sorted out, some of which I think I’ve got figured out, some of which I’m still pondering. So, in the hope I can talk people into helping me bounce ideas around, here’s what I’ve got so far:
The nearest Complex was 200 miles away, where a giant glass dome and round-the-clock security protected just enough arable land to support, by safe calculation, exactly five hundred and twenty-four men, women and children. When the year was good and they had food enough to spare, they stored it in giant underground compartments which some said had contents enough to support the whole population through the worse years when nothing would grow. When the storage was full, they’d trade food for what outsiders could bring them; salvaged tech from the junk piles and raw metals were their favourites. Not much went in or out, everything under the dome was recycled – the air, the water, probably even the people. Twice in Doumeki’s memory they’d expanded past their borders, new domes springing up like slow growing mushrooms. They had a way of reclaiming the dead lands now, he’d heard tell, but it was slow and the components were rare, and expansion put the whole colony at risk until everything was finished. Workers and guards had swarmed like bees over those new sections every moment of the long months it took them to finish.
It was a closed world to outsiders. Most of what anyone knew reliably about life indoors came from the few residents who ever left – the old or the crippled or the crazy, or people who were too sick with strange new diseases to be quarantined. They told stories about a life inside like the old days – where there was running water, regulated temperature and working technology, and the greatest luxury of all – to always know where your next meal was coming from. It sounded like paradise to someone raised out in the dead lands, people outside dreamt of getting in someday, and eagerly repeated even the most unlikely stories that made it sound possible.
Doumeki didn’t want any part of it. It was survival of the fittest wherever you went these days, but he’d take natural selection over artificial any day. At least out here the old and sick had the same half-arsed chance at survival everyone else did, they weren’t raised in a sandbox and thrown out into the cold the day they outlived being useful.
Thanks to Fye, Doumeki had heard more about life on the inside than most people, since their tech would sometimes talk about it when he was in the mood. Doumeki half-suspected he embellished a lot of it when he got bored though, so he’d never been sure exactly how much to believe. What Fye was doing on the outside was mystery enough itself – he was still young and healthy and patently not useless. People who broke the rules – the criminals – got thrown out sometimes too, of course, but ultimately, Fye was another of those people in the category of being too useful for anyone in the camp to have the luxury of prying any deeper.
Kurogane had always been the one in charge, not the leader in any official sense, but he was the one who always knew was they needed to do and when he gave an instruction they others obeyed it. Doumeki was second-in-command by similar token – there were no official ranks, but the suggestions he made were good and Kurogane rarely argued with them. Doumeki could hit a moving target at two hundred yards too, which always did no harm to one’s command status.
Doumeki had come to learn that Sakura was stronger than she looked, but she was such a pretty, fragile thing that she would never have lasted long in this world alone. The reason she had survived was that Syaoran would rip anyone who hurt her limb from limb – literally, if he felt it was necessary and she wasn’t there to see it. Syaoran fought like no-one else Doumeki had ever seen – he was more than proficient with all variety of guns, but it was with hand-to-hand combat or blade-weapons that he truly excelled. The kid could twist and strike like a snake, he go into fits of such intense concentration in a fight that it scared even his allies. It was too much relief sometimes to be reminded that even then – so far – he’d always remembered who those allies were. Where he’d come from or where he’d learned to fight like that Doumeki had no idea, even Syaoran himself was seemed hazy on the details of his own past. All he remembered for certain was that Sakura was important, and he took to the task of protecting her with the single-mindedness of a man who had nothing else in the universe that was real to him. If Sakura knew anything more she’d never said and no-one asked. It was the first, unwritten rule at their camp, as long as you pulled your weight, you past was your past and no-one would make you talk about it.
Still, something about the way Syaoran moved, the way he learnt faster than anyone else but never quite seemed to be all there made Doumeki remember one of Fye’s taller tales – the one about the labs in the Complexes where they took their approach to artificial selection one step further and experimented with children who’d be born stronger or smarter or with more endurance. He wondered what they’d do with one – or two – who’d worked a little too well, and not well enough all at once.
Syaoran stayed at the camp mostly, guarding the perimeters on regular patrol. He didn’t like going further from Sakura than necessary, so it said a lot about how far he’d come towards trusting his companions in the past few years that he would occasionally sometimes leave Sakura in their care for now for hours at a time to take his part in occasional missions elsewhere.
Fye didn’t leave the camp very often either. Most of his day was spent in the endless cycle of checking and repairing the nest of solar panels in the centre of their camp. The power went to two places – one was the electrified fence that ran around the perimeter, to catch anything Syaoran might miss. The other one was Chi.
Chi was Fye’s pride and joy – very probably the only working computer outside of the Complexes in this side of the country, more valuable than a whole year’s ammo or food. Communication between the Complexes went by radio waves or satellite – low tech stuff that anyone could pick up, but without equipment of Chi’s calibre it would be indecipherable. Her main job was to get them the weather reports. Acid rain and cataclysmic storms were rarer these days than they’d been ten or even fives years ago, and people were getting bolder and were less and less prepared when one did hit. Knowing when one was due was worth all the work her upkeep took. Information like that sold at a good price to any other camps they wanted to trade with, as long as you kept up your reputation as being reliable and they didn’t ask where you got the information from. The general rumour – ones they did their best to keep alive – was that they had a contact in one of the Complexes, the kind of thing that couldn’t be stolen and would become useless if their camp was ever ruined. If rival gangs ever learned about Chi, not even the electric fence would keep them out for long.
Chi could draw them maps of anywhere they might want to go too, and could update them whenever the Complexes sent each other word the landscape was changing again. Even gang movement would come in with the news sometimes. No messages ever went out from her that might be traced back to a source – all she did was listen.
Why she had to look like she was a she or even a human, Doumeki had never understood, he would have preferred his machines to look like what they were, but at least it made her interface easy to deal with. Fye had keyboards and monitors he could hook up to her ears, but mostly people just asked her their questions and she answered them, or drew them maps in the sand with her fingers.
Other characters and stuff to come:
So, talk to me people. Am I heading in a good direction with all this? Anyone got any good suggestions about what I should/shouldn't be doing with this world?
On to an unrelated (though much lengthier) topic, it’s generally known that not everyone who enjoys a fic comes up with anything to say about it (and much as I
The post-apocalyptic AU is coming along nicely, but there are a lot of background details that need to be sorted out, some of which I think I’ve got figured out, some of which I’m still pondering. So, in the hope I can talk people into helping me bounce ideas around, here’s what I’ve got so far:
The nearest Complex was 200 miles away, where a giant glass dome and round-the-clock security protected just enough arable land to support, by safe calculation, exactly five hundred and twenty-four men, women and children. When the year was good and they had food enough to spare, they stored it in giant underground compartments which some said had contents enough to support the whole population through the worse years when nothing would grow. When the storage was full, they’d trade food for what outsiders could bring them; salvaged tech from the junk piles and raw metals were their favourites. Not much went in or out, everything under the dome was recycled – the air, the water, probably even the people. Twice in Doumeki’s memory they’d expanded past their borders, new domes springing up like slow growing mushrooms. They had a way of reclaiming the dead lands now, he’d heard tell, but it was slow and the components were rare, and expansion put the whole colony at risk until everything was finished. Workers and guards had swarmed like bees over those new sections every moment of the long months it took them to finish.
It was a closed world to outsiders. Most of what anyone knew reliably about life indoors came from the few residents who ever left – the old or the crippled or the crazy, or people who were too sick with strange new diseases to be quarantined. They told stories about a life inside like the old days – where there was running water, regulated temperature and working technology, and the greatest luxury of all – to always know where your next meal was coming from. It sounded like paradise to someone raised out in the dead lands, people outside dreamt of getting in someday, and eagerly repeated even the most unlikely stories that made it sound possible.
Doumeki didn’t want any part of it. It was survival of the fittest wherever you went these days, but he’d take natural selection over artificial any day. At least out here the old and sick had the same half-arsed chance at survival everyone else did, they weren’t raised in a sandbox and thrown out into the cold the day they outlived being useful.
Thanks to Fye, Doumeki had heard more about life on the inside than most people, since their tech would sometimes talk about it when he was in the mood. Doumeki half-suspected he embellished a lot of it when he got bored though, so he’d never been sure exactly how much to believe. What Fye was doing on the outside was mystery enough itself – he was still young and healthy and patently not useless. People who broke the rules – the criminals – got thrown out sometimes too, of course, but ultimately, Fye was another of those people in the category of being too useful for anyone in the camp to have the luxury of prying any deeper.
Kurogane had always been the one in charge, not the leader in any official sense, but he was the one who always knew was they needed to do and when he gave an instruction they others obeyed it. Doumeki was second-in-command by similar token – there were no official ranks, but the suggestions he made were good and Kurogane rarely argued with them. Doumeki could hit a moving target at two hundred yards too, which always did no harm to one’s command status.
Doumeki had come to learn that Sakura was stronger than she looked, but she was such a pretty, fragile thing that she would never have lasted long in this world alone. The reason she had survived was that Syaoran would rip anyone who hurt her limb from limb – literally, if he felt it was necessary and she wasn’t there to see it. Syaoran fought like no-one else Doumeki had ever seen – he was more than proficient with all variety of guns, but it was with hand-to-hand combat or blade-weapons that he truly excelled. The kid could twist and strike like a snake, he go into fits of such intense concentration in a fight that it scared even his allies. It was too much relief sometimes to be reminded that even then – so far – he’d always remembered who those allies were. Where he’d come from or where he’d learned to fight like that Doumeki had no idea, even Syaoran himself was seemed hazy on the details of his own past. All he remembered for certain was that Sakura was important, and he took to the task of protecting her with the single-mindedness of a man who had nothing else in the universe that was real to him. If Sakura knew anything more she’d never said and no-one asked. It was the first, unwritten rule at their camp, as long as you pulled your weight, you past was your past and no-one would make you talk about it.
Still, something about the way Syaoran moved, the way he learnt faster than anyone else but never quite seemed to be all there made Doumeki remember one of Fye’s taller tales – the one about the labs in the Complexes where they took their approach to artificial selection one step further and experimented with children who’d be born stronger or smarter or with more endurance. He wondered what they’d do with one – or two – who’d worked a little too well, and not well enough all at once.
Syaoran stayed at the camp mostly, guarding the perimeters on regular patrol. He didn’t like going further from Sakura than necessary, so it said a lot about how far he’d come towards trusting his companions in the past few years that he would occasionally sometimes leave Sakura in their care for now for hours at a time to take his part in occasional missions elsewhere.
Fye didn’t leave the camp very often either. Most of his day was spent in the endless cycle of checking and repairing the nest of solar panels in the centre of their camp. The power went to two places – one was the electrified fence that ran around the perimeter, to catch anything Syaoran might miss. The other one was Chi.
Chi was Fye’s pride and joy – very probably the only working computer outside of the Complexes in this side of the country, more valuable than a whole year’s ammo or food. Communication between the Complexes went by radio waves or satellite – low tech stuff that anyone could pick up, but without equipment of Chi’s calibre it would be indecipherable. Her main job was to get them the weather reports. Acid rain and cataclysmic storms were rarer these days than they’d been ten or even fives years ago, and people were getting bolder and were less and less prepared when one did hit. Knowing when one was due was worth all the work her upkeep took. Information like that sold at a good price to any other camps they wanted to trade with, as long as you kept up your reputation as being reliable and they didn’t ask where you got the information from. The general rumour – ones they did their best to keep alive – was that they had a contact in one of the Complexes, the kind of thing that couldn’t be stolen and would become useless if their camp was ever ruined. If rival gangs ever learned about Chi, not even the electric fence would keep them out for long.
Chi could draw them maps of anywhere they might want to go too, and could update them whenever the Complexes sent each other word the landscape was changing again. Even gang movement would come in with the news sometimes. No messages ever went out from her that might be traced back to a source – all she did was listen.
Why she had to look like she was a she or even a human, Doumeki had never understood, he would have preferred his machines to look like what they were, but at least it made her interface easy to deal with. Fye had keyboards and monitors he could hook up to her ears, but mostly people just asked her their questions and she answered them, or drew them maps in the sand with her fingers.
Other characters and stuff to come:
- I feel vaguely as though there should be more members to their camp, but I’m not sure any of the Tsubasa/xxxHOLiC regulars will be appropriate. Touya and Yukito are almost definitely out, unless I remove any relationship between Touya and Sakura. If they get even a cameo, it’ll probably be as some kind of freelance duo who show up now and then but mostly keep on the move. Souma’s a possibility, but I probably don’t know her well enough to write. I’m toying with the idea of Tomoyo as someone from the Complexes who actually ventures far enough to talk to the outsiders sometimes and Souma as her bodyguard, but it doesn’t quite feel like they fit in anywhere yet. Alternately, there may just be a couple of recent, unnamed graves at the back of the camp, which I could probably get away without mentioning in more than passing, since that’s just the sort of stuff that happens in a world like this.
- I could also have a couple of characters (presumably other transplanted CLAMP characters) who’d appear as ghosts to Watanuki, but I haven’t got the faintest clue who they’d be yet…
Hey, maybe I could work Mugestu in as some kind of radiation mutant critter!- Since Doumeki recognised Watanuki so quickly as the ‘spirit-seeing-boy’ when they first met, I’m wondering whether he has some kind of distinguishing feature – possibly also whatever it is that makes it easier for the rest of the raiding gangs who’ve stolen him from each other in the past. If he’s blind in one eye (a la volume 7), that might do nicely…
- Since the Tsubasa characters are all on first-name-basis (and not all even seem to *have* last names), I’m pondering whether I should have everyone referring to Doumeki and Watanuki as Shizuka and Kimihiro for consistency. Which means I’ll have to decide whether I’m referring to them that way or by last names in the text too.
- In case there could have been any doubt, I will state that this world is definitely going donuty in a serious way in the near future, and I have a pretty good idea how it’s going to get there too. The only question I’ll have to deal with is how much will be shown on screen.>.>
- Watanuki in this world is not domestic in the least. He can’t begin to understand why anyone would even bother learning to cook or clean.
- There will very likely be a Kohane – probably someone Watanuki and Doumeki will pick up in the ruins of a destroyed Complex. Details are still being figured out, but I think she may have been born on the outside, but her mother managed to use whatever Secret Power her daughter possesses in this universe to convince the Complex poeple to let them in. I suspect it’ll turn out she and Sakura can see ghosts in this world too – they just don’t attract them the way Watanuki does, so it doesn’t make such a difference. Also, it should be pretty much a given that anything that ruins a whole Complex in one hit is going to be something nasty.
- All the X characters from the Acid Tokyo arc are getting a direct transplant, because I loved that world to bits, and they won’t take much rewriting at all. I did actually toy briefly with setting this whole world in the same universe from Tsubasa, but I wanted a little more freedom to invent stuff, and having the same X characters who met the regular Tsubasa crew meet my own warped versions would get a little awkward (there may well still be a similar food source in the form of monsterous, mutated animals though). Anyway, the two Acid Tokyo groups will be the two biggest (and, all considering, least unpleasant) gangs in the vicinity of where the main characters live, and they’ll be on decent but hardly friendly terms with the main characters.
- There is a Himawari in this universe – or there was, because by the time Watanuki joins Kurogane’s camp, she’s been dead for some time. She’s going to be someone who Watanuki used to know, probably a year or more ago. She’s starting to develop an interesting story too which I hope to get to go into at some point, because I don’t think Watanuki ever sees her ghost and he certainly wouldn’t talk about her under most circumstances, and naturally we’re not going to see her alive.
- It turns out that part of the reason Doumeki was so mad at Watanuki for bringing Haruka up is that until that moment, he was still holding on to a faint possibility that his grandfather might be alive. I did not see this coming when I wrote that scene. Now I’ve only gone and given Doumeki another reason why he doesn’t want to believe what Watanuki can do is real.
- And because people are bound to be wondering about that other rather important xxxHOLiC character I haven’t brought up yet, there’s no Yuuko in this universe. If there ever was one, she’s been dead for a long time.
So, talk to me people. Am I heading in a good direction with all this? Anyone got any good suggestions about what I should/shouldn't be doing with this world?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 03:32 pm (UTC)I HAS HTML INADEQUACY
Date: 2007-07-31 04:07 pm (UTC)I have to say, after seeing how many people had answered that poll I sort of considered trying to find a way to incorporate a relevant poll in my fic posts. Just to see. (I
live forenjoy feedback as well. >_>)Re:AU.
"natural selection over artificial" = WIN. This might be the first time I've seen this opinion expressed
by anyone but meso succintly. ♥Syaoran and experimentations. ;_; Poor boy can't escape it.
Mugetsu as mutant pet = WIN TOO. And by the way, I don't think I've ever thanked you for the pipe-fox tutorial. *_* For a few weeks there I was handing them to everyone around me, and my girlfriend still carries hers around for exams and stuff. :3
Anyway. I'd like to expand on pretty much everything, but I'm going home now, so. I like where you're going! It looks like a nicely complex universe too, which
gives me ideas for spins-offpromises lots of goodness. Also, donuts! ^_^no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 04:24 pm (UTC)Also, re: LJ Talk. I used it fairly frequently a couple of months ago, but it kept logging me out, so I switched over to Yahoo messenger. ;__;
no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 11:25 pm (UTC)Haha, oh, I *never* make notes like this outside my brain. Though I do talk about what I'm working on a lot if I can ever find anyone who'll listen/might be able to help me figure out what's going on when I've got this many details to work with. This is pretty much just one giant brain dump. ^^;
Re: I HAS HTML INADEQUACY
Date: 2007-08-01 01:23 am (UTC)Gmail chat's the one I use most lately, since you don't have to install it at all (runs from your web browser) and you can (at least mentally) get away with the excuse that you're just checking your email when using it at work. >.>
I have to say, after seeing how many people had answered that poll I sort of considered trying to find a way to incorporate a relevant poll in my fic posts. Just to see. (I
live forenjoy feedback as well. >_>)Relevance is the problem, isn't it? I have to admit, half the appeal of putting up that poll in the first place was always getting to ask 'so just how many of you are reading these?' ('Fanfic writer' is just a fancy term for 'feedback whore', we may as well be honest about this)
"natural selection over artificial" = WIN. This might be the first time I've seen this opinion expressed
by anyone but meso succintly. ♥So, uh, now I guess you've heard it expressed by AU!Doumeki too? ^^; I always feel a bit weird about the degree to which my character are or aren't expressing things I'd agree with personally. But from where Doumeki stands, it is pretty clear cut.
Syaoran and experimentations. ;_; Poor boy can't escape it.
Syaoran in this world has turned out as this weird bastard mix of all the Syaorans from Tsubasa (freaky clone version included). A little experimentation seemed far too appropriate to explain his background, though I've still got no idea whether any of that will ever get to being explained in the plot yet.
Mugetsu as mutant pet = WIN TOO.
^^; I'm just not sure yet whether working that in is going to be a bit too 'and then they found this cute pet!' for a world like this.
And by the way, I don't think I've ever thanked you for the pipe-fox tutorial. *_* For a few weeks there I was handing them to everyone around me, and my girlfriend still carries hers around for exams and stuff. :3
Pleased to be of service. ^_^ Handing them out - just how many did you wind up making? o_o
Anyway. I'd like to expand on pretty much everything, but I'm going home now, so.
Well, y'know. Feel free to do so later if you still feel like it. ^_^
It looks like a nicely complex universe too, which
gives me ideas for spins-offpromises lots of goodness.=3Also, donuts! ^_^
Whatever else may happen in this universe, donuts and a relatively happy resolution are a promise.
Re: I HAS HTML INADEQUACY
Date: 2007-08-01 03:37 pm (UTC)But don't you need to have a gmail address for that? (Also, something running from my browser would be most inconvenient. I'd have to keep switching tabs! The drama!)
('Fanfic writer' is just a fancy term for 'feedback whore', we may as well be honest about this)
I think most of us are honest about it. As long as it's done gracefully (as in: NOT in the R&R PLZ I WILL NOT POST ANY MORE UNTIL I HAVE FIVE REVIEWS way), it's fine. XD
I'm just not sure yet whether working that in is going to be a bit too 'and then they found this cute pet!' for a world like this.
It could be the Amewarashi's mutant pet. That she sets on the group because they're trespassing in her territory. It could try to eat Watanuki. :3
And then Doumeki can shoot it. OHNOES.Handing them out - just how many did you wind up making? o_o
Uh, five? Five and a half, actually. And then the sewing killed my hand and I stopped for a while and didn't start again. XD
Feel free to do so later if you still feel like it. ^_^
Twenty-four hours later: same place, same time, same problem. Dammit! I will find the time for this. Somehow.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-01 04:29 pm (UTC)...the promise of a somewhat-happy ending for Doumeki and Watanuki makes me really happy. It could so easily go the other way in that universe, so...yay! :)Re: I HAS HTML INADEQUACY
Date: 2007-08-02 12:29 am (UTC)Sure, but it's not a problem - gmail's been open for sign-ups for a while now, and it's so useful I use it for as much of my email as I can get away with. (Wouldn't you have to keep switching tabs for any kind of chat?)
I think most of us are honest about it. As long as it's done gracefully (as in: NOT in the R&R PLZ I WILL NOT POST ANY MORE UNTIL I HAVE FIVE REVIEWS way), it's fine. XD
Very true. Just as long as we can at least pretend we're being subtle about it.
Anyway, it's not like you'd get intelligent or interesting reviews out of people pulling that kind of junk, so I can't even see the point.It could be the Amewarashi's mutant pet. That she sets on the group because they're trespassing in her territory. It could try to eat Watanuki. :3 And then Doumeki can shoot it. OHNOES.
I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to work in any of the general spirits in this world - it may be a case that there are just so many human ghosts that the old spirits just get lost in the mess. I'm also not sure what would have happened to the Amewarashi in a world where I've screwed up the weather quite this badly.
Uh, five? Five and a half, actually. And then the sewing killed my hand and I stopped for a while and didn't start again. XD
That's more than even I've made
so farthen. Out of curiousity, did you manage to find some of the wire you could use for them?Twenty-four hours later: same place, same time, same problem. Dammit! I will find the time for this. Somehow.
Ah well. There's always weekends?
Though mine never seem to stretch as far as I need them to these days. ><no subject
Date: 2007-08-02 12:42 am (UTC)Really, I don't see much point in doing a world like this and just letting it end miserably. There'd be no challenge in it - it'd be all gloom-gloom-gloom-end. But if you're going for some kind of resolution you've got to actually explain stuff and develop the characters and the situation. There's a lot more room to do something interesting with the world that way.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-04 02:55 am (UTC):)
You've got some great ideas for backstory here -- fascinating as stories, and absolutely full of places for the plot to go. I really like Fye as the computer genius who walked out of his privileged life... And Syaoran sounds both heart-wrenching and creepy.
For other camp peoples -- Hokuto? I can totally see her as a gung-ho mechanic/trader/courier, traveling in a beat-up pick-up truck she keeps running with paperclips and duct tape. Possibly with her brother, who is utterly soft-spoken and the fastest draw in the west?
That's totally cool... both that you did not have this planned and that Doumeki doesn't want to believe in Watanuki. Up until now, I get the feeling he's been agnostic really -- accepting that Watanuki does seem to have good luck at finding food and not caring how. Now... now he's gonna care. And that's not going to sit well with Watanuki, I think.
About the highly-recognizable feature idea -- I think it would be cooler if Watanuki had something like an entirely black (pupils, iris, 'whites' -- all black) or entirely white... basically, not an eyepatch. I could see him chosing not to wear one both as a protection (nobody will kill him, given his reputation) and as a way to creep people out and keep them away.
Errr.... Hope some of that was amusing, if not useful.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-04 05:01 am (UTC)Up until now, I get the feeling he's been agnostic really -- accepting that Watanuki does seem to have good luck at finding food and not caring how. Now... now he's gonna care. And that's not going to sit well with Watanuki, I think.
I don't think it's going to change things all that much. But that would have been around the stage when Doumeki had seen enough of what Watanuki could do that he was having trouble denying it - then suddenly, he gets another reason why he doesn't want to believe Watanuki. Back to square one. He's a hell of a skeptic in this world.
About the highly-recognizable feature idea -- I think it would be cooler if Watanuki had something like an entirely black (pupils, iris, 'whites' -- all black) or entirely white... basically, not an eyepatch. I could see him chosing not to wear one both as a protection (nobody will kill him, given his reputation) and as a way to creep people out and keep them away.
That is pretty much exactly what I had in mind - and that is what Watanuki's eye looked like (http://groups.msn.com/eXeXeXHOLICManga/chapter075.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=1267) under the eye patch in volume 7 too. I'm thinking he'll be given an eyepatch to wear at some points though specifically so that he won't be recognised and other gangs won't try to steal him.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 03:18 pm (UTC)The glimpses of the characters' backstories are intriguing and I can't wait to learn more. Fye's tall tales (or not so tall tales as the case may be) and his having left (or been kicked out of) the complexes rings very true to him. And the idea that Sakura and Syaoran are experiments that went wrong (or to right) is great.
I really like the idea of Yuki and Touya being a traveling freelance doe that shows up now and then.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-29 02:06 am (UTC)As far as I'm concerned, finding enough elements from canon which can be blended into the new setting is what writing a good AU is all about (it's also half the fun). I seem to have come up with a pretty nasty version of Syaoran there in the process - but what with recent Tsubasa events, it didn't seem too much of a stretch at all.
All those character backstories were getting pretty convoluted even when I first made this post, and they've been fleshed out a lot more in my head since then. I'm going to have a lot of ground to cover on that front.
I'm afraid the idea of Touya and Yukito as a traveling duo has been scrapped since I made this post. They'll still be appearing elsewhere in the story - just in a rather different role. Anyway, glad you're enjoying this so far, thanks for your feedback! There should be plenty more from this story up soon too.