My Yuletide Orphans
Nov. 16th, 2011 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsBecause I had more than four ideas for Yuletide requests, here, as promised, are the orphans...
5. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Characters: Soma & Genya.
I want a genfic with these two, with tension/contrast between their relationship in Soma’s last incarnation and their relationship now. Bonus points: Soma gets tired of Genya telling him what to do and/or finds out who Genya really is. I like Castlevania fic relatively warm and uprightly heroic rather than dark. No explicit sex, please.
This was one I very much appreciate another participant nominating, but it ended up as one of two options for my fourth request and got edged out by Natsume Yuujinchou. Perhaps it’s just as well; I feel like maybe I’m different from most other Castlevania fans, and that might be troublesome for you, as might the elaborate headcanon that very little of has been written. As mentioned I take more of a warm, heroic approach, more like a shoujo angle on it than a badass gothic take. My CV fics on the archives are so outdated that I’m a bit embarrassed by them now, but they might still give you some guidance as to tone, plus there’s also the 30 pencilled pages of CV Dojinshi I did for the summer NanoMango round this year that are a fragment really but more up to date (I actually have a summary of much of the elaborate headcanon, but it's on a private filter; I don’t want to necessarily burden you with that and didn’t get as far as AoS anyway; you can see the tag where I reviewed the series via playthrough links, tho). I am a fan of the whole series, although the Symphony of the Night style games are the ones I tend play myself and there are games I like more than others or reject from my headcanon (Curse of Darkness? Didn’t happen.). Aria of Sorrow is my second favorite after Symphony; I feel like it boldly snatched awesome out of the jaws of cheesy (a feat Dawn of Sorrow was not entirely able to repeat), but I love it. As for the characters, I imagine Soma as kind of prickly, definitely self-willed (I enjoy my little joke about him expressing teenage rebellion by refusing to dye his hair), but basically a good guy, and I like to keep sight of a “fairly normal teenager” aspect with him despite everything that gets dumped on top of it or revealed underneath it. And Genya, aka Alucard... Oh, where to start with Alucard? I can really only describe my own version of him, but I see him as the classic Melancholic personality, a cerebral type whose introspective perfectionism makes him liable to depression, and whose sense of guilt and self-loathing are more of a self-imposed burden than anything he deserves. He pushes people away because he wants to protect them, and because, although he hides it behind his stone-faced demeanor, the times he went to sleep and woke up with everyone he knew and loved dead for hundreds of years hurt too much to want to get attached again, but he can be quite protective of the younger characters (particularly the Belmonts and Belnadeses --- and Soma), and by the Aria of Sorrow timeframe his shell might be starting to show some cracks.
6. Kemono no Souja Erin, Characters: Erin/Ial
I want an Erin/Ial story, preferrably something quiet and thoughtful, or something fluffy; anything along that line would make me happy, really, but if you need an angle, maybe think about how he’s adjusting to his new life post-canon, and how Erin’s other friends are adjusting to this guy with his stone face and ninja vibes. Bonus points: include a warm, soft, furry animal, not necessarily an Ohjuu. No explicit sex, please.
Kemono no Souja Erin; I loved this series, and I wrote a review of it that you can see here, but it didn’t quite make the cut for my Yuletide nominations, and it was too obscure to hope for anyone else to nominate it. I saw fansubs myself, but the whole thing is now free to view on Crunchyroll; 50 episodes, but it’s worth it. It’s based on novels (which I have not been able to read) by Nahoko Uehashi also of Moribito fame, and she is a master of well-grounded fantasy worldbuilding. As mentioned in the review, I loved the anime’s combination of the domestic and the epic, and Erin is such a great strong heroine --- brilliant and curious, always chasing her dreams and holding to her principles. Ial is the kind of (figuratively) scarred stone-faced pretty boy I have a weakness for, I admit it. I was happy with the kind of slow and subtle building of their relationship in canon --- Uehashi seems to be good at that, too ::coughBalsaTanda:: --- but I would like to see a bit more with these two.
There's no particular reason for anyone to do these of course, and they don't count toward Yuletide, but I thought it might be fun just to put them up anyway.
5. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Characters: Soma & Genya.
I want a genfic with these two, with tension/contrast between their relationship in Soma’s last incarnation and their relationship now. Bonus points: Soma gets tired of Genya telling him what to do and/or finds out who Genya really is. I like Castlevania fic relatively warm and uprightly heroic rather than dark. No explicit sex, please.
This was one I very much appreciate another participant nominating, but it ended up as one of two options for my fourth request and got edged out by Natsume Yuujinchou. Perhaps it’s just as well; I feel like maybe I’m different from most other Castlevania fans, and that might be troublesome for you, as might the elaborate headcanon that very little of has been written. As mentioned I take more of a warm, heroic approach, more like a shoujo angle on it than a badass gothic take. My CV fics on the archives are so outdated that I’m a bit embarrassed by them now, but they might still give you some guidance as to tone, plus there’s also the 30 pencilled pages of CV Dojinshi I did for the summer NanoMango round this year that are a fragment really but more up to date (I actually have a summary of much of the elaborate headcanon, but it's on a private filter; I don’t want to necessarily burden you with that and didn’t get as far as AoS anyway; you can see the tag where I reviewed the series via playthrough links, tho). I am a fan of the whole series, although the Symphony of the Night style games are the ones I tend play myself and there are games I like more than others or reject from my headcanon (Curse of Darkness? Didn’t happen.). Aria of Sorrow is my second favorite after Symphony; I feel like it boldly snatched awesome out of the jaws of cheesy (a feat Dawn of Sorrow was not entirely able to repeat), but I love it. As for the characters, I imagine Soma as kind of prickly, definitely self-willed (I enjoy my little joke about him expressing teenage rebellion by refusing to dye his hair), but basically a good guy, and I like to keep sight of a “fairly normal teenager” aspect with him despite everything that gets dumped on top of it or revealed underneath it. And Genya, aka Alucard... Oh, where to start with Alucard? I can really only describe my own version of him, but I see him as the classic Melancholic personality, a cerebral type whose introspective perfectionism makes him liable to depression, and whose sense of guilt and self-loathing are more of a self-imposed burden than anything he deserves. He pushes people away because he wants to protect them, and because, although he hides it behind his stone-faced demeanor, the times he went to sleep and woke up with everyone he knew and loved dead for hundreds of years hurt too much to want to get attached again, but he can be quite protective of the younger characters (particularly the Belmonts and Belnadeses --- and Soma), and by the Aria of Sorrow timeframe his shell might be starting to show some cracks.
6. Kemono no Souja Erin, Characters: Erin/Ial
I want an Erin/Ial story, preferrably something quiet and thoughtful, or something fluffy; anything along that line would make me happy, really, but if you need an angle, maybe think about how he’s adjusting to his new life post-canon, and how Erin’s other friends are adjusting to this guy with his stone face and ninja vibes. Bonus points: include a warm, soft, furry animal, not necessarily an Ohjuu. No explicit sex, please.
Kemono no Souja Erin; I loved this series, and I wrote a review of it that you can see here, but it didn’t quite make the cut for my Yuletide nominations, and it was too obscure to hope for anyone else to nominate it. I saw fansubs myself, but the whole thing is now free to view on Crunchyroll; 50 episodes, but it’s worth it. It’s based on novels (which I have not been able to read) by Nahoko Uehashi also of Moribito fame, and she is a master of well-grounded fantasy worldbuilding. As mentioned in the review, I loved the anime’s combination of the domestic and the epic, and Erin is such a great strong heroine --- brilliant and curious, always chasing her dreams and holding to her principles. Ial is the kind of (figuratively) scarred stone-faced pretty boy I have a weakness for, I admit it. I was happy with the kind of slow and subtle building of their relationship in canon --- Uehashi seems to be good at that, too ::coughBalsaTanda:: --- but I would like to see a bit more with these two.
There's no particular reason for anyone to do these of course, and they don't count toward Yuletide, but I thought it might be fun just to put them up anyway.
