I've managed to peek over eBay and not bid on anything!

[taotrooper]

However!

Kenshin plushie. AIYEEEEEESQUEEEEEE!

This girl is selling packs of rare CLAMP goodies, and she ships internationally in case you want something. Meanwhile, I'm surprised there's someone else in this country who owned Soel to Larg.

And now a meme I saw on the flistflist. I have to choose 6 fandoms and answer to the questions:

1. Tsubasa/HOLiC (for current)
2. Cardcaptor Sakura (for activity)
3. Fullmetal Alchemist (for the win)
4. Avatar (for something that's not anime)
5. Fruits Basket (for it's ending)
6. Rurouni Kenshin (for nostalgia AIYEEE PLUSHIE)

Who is your favorite character from #2?
Eriol. Yeah.

Who is your least favorite character from #4?
Mmmmmmm. Right now Azula.

What would a crossover between #1 and #5 include?
ROFL. Mmmmm, probably Tohru any juunishi stepping in Yuuko's shop and wanting the curse to be broken. I can't decide on which one would be funnier, though. A tiny voice tells me it should be Hatsuharu if it's just to annoy Watanuki, but it'd make more sense for Rin to get to the shop. Kyou yelling around would be -really- amusing. And even if I can't see how the fuck to work it, Yuuko interacting with the Mabudashi trio would be so damn awesome.
And now that we're at it, Ayame should be BFF with pre-Tokyo!Fye. Cue Kurogane headdesking.

Who is your favorite ship from #6?
Er, I don't have ONE favorite one. My first one was Kenshin/Kaoru, though.

If you were to set one person from #3 and one person from #6 on a blind date, who would they be?
Oh boy, oh boy. Misao and Ed XDDDD She'd be disappointed because her date is shorter and uglier than Aoshi-sama, and Ed would go apeshit on her. And then he'd get pwned by her 1337 ninja skillz.
Havoc could try to date Megumi. She seems like his type.

If you could meet one person from #4 and spend the day with them, who would it be, and what would you do?
Sokka, actually. Because he's smart and funny, so hanging around with him would be cool. We could, um, go grab the Avatar-world equivalent of a burger, perhaps, while we talk.

If you could change one thing about #2's plotline, what would you change?
MORE CLOW BACKSTORY. The second movie wouldn't exist, and the anime TV ending would be more closed. And Eriol wouldn't praise Tomoyo that much, because that confused the fuck out of fanbrats.

Explain a relationship between two people (not necessarily romantic) from show #5, and why you like the relationship between them.
Just one?! That's so evil.
- Tohru, Uo and Hana's friendship is so cute.
- I'm currently hooked on the school council dynamics; they're just so awesome once you grow fond of the kookiness of the members. I think it's because of Kakeru, personally.
- For a ship, Ayame/Mine. That's a good combination of crack, drama, and romance, and I like how the relationship doesn't actually change that much as the story goes on.
- All sibling relationships. Period.

If the lead title characters (first name in the credits) from #1 and #3 were both drowning, and you could only save one, who would it be?
That's...
Sakura and Syaoran (I'm not sure who's the main character anymore) can drown, really. So! The issue would be between saving Watanuki and Edward. See, I love Kimihiro a bit more than Ed, but the thing is the elder Elric has two metal limbs, and the younger is ALL metal. It's harder for Ed to save himself, while Watanuki probably can swim or get saved by some creature, or by Doumeki for the 2136537th time. So I'd try to help Ed instead. Except I'd get drown too, but--

If you were able to add a new character, any kind of character you wanted, to the storyline for #6, what would the character be like and what would their role be?
Errrrrrrrr. Adding more characters is never a good idea. Have you seen the goddamned fillers?!

What happens in your favourite episode of show #2?
Episode? As in the anime? Nng.
In 46 we have Yue kicking butts and Clow showing up. Cons: lame what-if scenes with Sakura twirling and Tomoyo singing at the background. WTF was that?!
In 68 we have contemplative!Eriol and flashback!Clow, which is awesome.
In 69 we have Eriol kicking butts, and it's almost as cool as in the manga. Cons: Fujitaka fell asleep, and Eriol disappeared instead of giving explanations, and Madhouse rushed Syaoran's confession.

If you could kill off one of the characters of #1, who would it be and how would you do it?
Oh man. There are TRC characters I want to smack the shit out of them, and there are characters I keep asking "why the fuck are you even heeeeeeeeere?", but the ones I've actually wished to die are so important to the plot they might never, ever, ever be killed off. However, the ones I love will be dead meat sooner or later because this is CLAMP. Woe.

If you got the chance to visit the set for either show #3 or show #5, which would you choose?
By "set" I'll take "world", right?
Furuba is such a normal place, you know. So FMA, then. But a place that isn't too dangerous because I'm so weak. Problem is, everywhere is dangerous *facepalm*

ETA: If any of you own a Wii by now, I officially envy you.

Comments

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

You know, as much as I like Clow, I think it's better that he doesn't have so much canon backstory. It's one of the things that made him so interesting to me, actually - he's a mystery.

Word about the second movie, though!

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

Probably I expressed it wrong. I want flashback fluff (or even angst, whatever) that won't get in the way of plot, because I just want to see the damn guy alive and interacting with people for a while. Kinda like in Soel to Larg, but also with his guardians and cards. Hell, like episode 68.

Not really backstory because that would cause more plotholes with other mangas, although the generic "for centuries" still makes my head sore sometimes. But you know, showing a bit more of his personality in canon wouldn't really kill off all the mystery, I think.

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

showing a bit more of his personality in canon wouldn't really kill off all the mystery, I think
I don't know, I like that we have to figure out his character from little bits and extrapolation. There are enough hints to get a pretty good idea of what he was like without ever having to show it.

But now that you mention it, I would have liked to see a happier scene with him and the Guardians.

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

Awww, that icon is so cute!

Perhaps, but as I was an Eriol fan before a Clow fan, I'll always have this thorn buried in my -heart? brain? soul?- that makes me wonder what parts of Eriol's personality come from Clow and what parts he developed on his own -as he keeps repeating he's not exactly like Clow anymore and all. Same with Fujitaka; it's fun to think Clow had a lot of Fuji, but we can't never be sure about how much of Fujitaka was from Clow's adorkable side.

Maybe it's also reinvindication. Sometimes I fear we got Clow all wrong, and he truly was an ebol bastard when we didn't see him with his guardians (hell, obviously he wasn't a saint and threw some morality through the window, but I like to think he was sorta balanced in good and bad traits) like some parts of the fandom like to believe.

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

Argh, double negatives!

Back from dinner!

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

I love it, but I'm not coloring in manga icons ever again. *everyone places bets on when she'll change her mind*

Good point about Eriol. We can only make guesses about that... Especially because, unlike Fujitaka, he didn't have a chance to build his own personality without knowing where things come from. I think I don't mind it so much because I enjoy characters who are so open-ended; I like the room to guess. It can make life-in-the-fandom a bit difficult sometimes, though. It's like you always have to justify everything... You know I'm a canon whore, but at the same time I like to have room for interpretation, and sometimes I feel that the fandom doesn't really get that. And I just went on a tangent, yay. ^_^U

I never doubted that Clow wasn't en ebol bastard. There's absolutely nothing evil in Fujitaka (although he does throw professional ethics down the window!) and Eriol is really sweet to the people he's close to. Also, it's like you said when we were comparing Clow and FWR: if he was evil his creations couldn't have turned out like that. (On yet another tangent, I always loved how the Cards have a whole range from Really Adorkable to Really Dangerous. I think it's very telling.)

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

*puts three bucks in "around Christmas"*

Having room for interpretation is fun, yup. But I think in my case I like it more when the room is more about facts and less about character traits. It's good to think about how a character would react, but sometimes you don't really have a lot of base to anticipate it, and you find yourself improvising. And it's a hit-and-miss thing, really, and every person in the fandom will have its own vision of how a character is like.

To use examples that aren't Clow:
- Yuuko is another mysterious character who could be anything you want. However, she's shown so many facets of herself you'd have to be extremely sugar-high at 1:00 am to have her OOC. Now, there's still room for interpretation, as internally she's not exactly transparent.
- Nadeshiko is another dead character for whom we only know by people's mouth as well. But by her own nature and actions, we can pretty much assume that what we see is what we get with her. You can still interpret things and give her flaws to make her less perfect, or spice her up (i.e, making her top Fujitaka in bed wouldn't be OOC because really, who knows), as long as you don't have her wishing her grandpa died or cheating Fuji because THAT is OOC.
- Making a contrast, we know a lot about Kaho's past but her personality isn't as obvious as you'd think. I'll get back to her later.

But the problem with some open-ended characters is how everyone has its own interpretation to the point every fanon version is different (I don't read a lot of HP fic, but I bet there must be terrible over there). I agree with your version of Clow and think we have our hints in canon leaning to him actually having a lot of those traits. However, I've seen a lot of people going for the "Clow was a pimp" team (hell, I have them on my flist) because there's nothing in canon that contradicts their he-fucked-everyone interpretation. And even the "Clow was teh ebol" team could write him, if they're talented enough, so it wouldn't clash with canon, and even could make some canon-compatible explanation on how Clow was secretly evil while Fujitaka isn't. Hell, I'm fearing *CLAMP* will pull that on us on TRC, if they go Taishaku-ten on FWR!

So will the real Clow Reed please stand up?

Not going farther, I think I'm writing Kaho like anyone else before in the fandom. Me rereading the manga like two times to get her better turned out with a completely different interpretation than practically all the other Kaho writers. I'm guessing that for a lot of them my Kaho is OOC or something.

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

You know, I think this is one of those cases where we just have a different approach to things. Because I actually agree with everything you said. ^_^ Except your dislikes are my likes here. For example, I think stuff like this:

everyone has its own interpretation to the point every fanon version is different

is fascinating. I love seeing so many different takes on him, even if I don't agree with some of them. Actually, many times I wish more people would do something a little different instead of going for the more or less average fanon. On the other hand, it IS possible to go OOC: a good author can convince me that Clow was evil, but not that he didn't care about his creations, because that would contradict canon.

I also like seeing the differences based on which part of canon people are familiar with. CCS only? HOLiC only? CCS and HOLiC? With or without Soel to Larg? The possibilities are endless. In the middle of that there'll be many things I dislike, but there are also people who make think of aspects of Clow that I hadn't thought about before.

That's partly what I meant when I said it makes fandom life complicated. Because most people in fandom (myself included) tend to overthink things - or else we wouldn't be here! ;) There's also the "but what will the other fans think of my interpretation?" thing, that sometimes makes people uncomfortable. But there's nothing wrong with not having a lot of base or with improvising. I love it. I wish more people did it.

Which is another reason why I like that you're going in a different direction with your new E/K fic.

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

I think I should've said I don't dislike it. Hey, bring it! It's more like some characterizations on the ambiguous characters I love make me extremely uncomfortable, and I can't even justify it by the usual means (for instance, tons of the fanon!Eriol I get the hell away from because it's OOC and there's no possible discussion, and I rather prefer to read Eriolfic with some degree of ICness) as sometimes there's little canon contradiction or OOC to it. That Clow darkfic of yours, for instance, was disturbing but I found it interesting. But obviously, I'd much rather your usual ones. Then again, IIRC that one was what-if situations and not a "this is how the Clow in my head is!". This is why I enjoyed reading that piece. If that was seriously what you believe, I'd be really uncomfortable reading that.

But the thing is there's so little canon of Clow it's so easy for people to read it once and then forget about it, and then improvise their own Clow because they had "no idea" about how he is. So basically, with open-ended characters, OOC characterizations or basic-fact ignorance or self-inserting are so easy, if you don't know or remember the few canon for them.

Example: Cue person who read the manga once three years ago. Can only remember Clow kissing Yue's forehead. Never noticed Clow kissing Kero as well. Also, kinda remembers he was never showed using cards in manga canon. Personal conclusion: cards were tools (like ofuda, but pretty), Kero was just a dumb exotic watchdog he never even fed so it's not even worth mentioned in fic, and Clow had the hot buttsexxxors with uke Yue every night.
...Fine, I grant that it's plausible Clow had sex with Yue, or that he first created or made the concept of the cards as tools, as it doesn't contradict canon. Hell, I sort of believe the second statement myself to some degree, although I do think he was or grew attached to them. But see how in this example we have a characterization based in selected canon facts and traits, while ignoring others, but with lots of improvisation. Some parts of the characterization might be interesting to read, but I know I don't want to read a fic with that Clow, even if it's not smutty at all. It's more like I can't find any of the things I like about canon Clow. This guy portraited feels to me like a generic seme Gary Stu. But I can't bring myself to label this Clow as OOC, because technically there isn't much of canon rape.

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

Ah, I get your point. I should probably clarify that I like to see different interpretations based on canon (or at least the part of canon that the writer knows - I can't ask every CCS fan to read HOLiC and Soel to Larg). Your example is something I wouldn't like to read, because it does ignore some parts of canon. Ignoring Kero *would* make him feel OOC for me.

But I like that you can have different writers who take into account *all* canon, and even then all of their interpretations will be different. The basics should be the same, but there's a lot of room to play around. I probably won't like them all, but I think it's really interesting that it can happen. Hell, even my own version of Clow isn't static. It changed over time, and sometimes there are details that I change from fic to fic (my crossovers100 Clow went to Hogwarts but my piffle_fanfic Clow had tutors, to mention a random example).

I also stay away from characterizations I don't like. I know the feeling where nothing's exactly wrong but it still doesn't click with you. But overall the little canon is still something I enjoy, and one of the things that make Clow so appealing to me as fanfic writer and not just as a reader.

[telrunya.livejournal.com]

No he aparecido en internet desde el domingo por el Wii *huye*.

Muahahaha, debía vengarme >D *huye*