"Writer's Block: Forbidden Reading"

[kohikari]

[Error: unknown template qotd] (Woohoo, somp'in ta waste ma tahm wiv.)

I don't think my parents ever tried to stop me from reading a book (probably because they either "wanted me to grow up an enlightened child" or (more likely) were too lazy(mother)/clueless(father) to bother), but there are a few vaguely relevant bits I can remember:

First; when I got into my mother's considerable stash of trash novels around the tender age of...oh...I was probably eight or ten, I don't think she was too happy about it--but that was mostly because I would squirrel the ones she wanted to read/was in the middle of reading away into my room and it would take a team of professional excavational spelunkers to find them again.

Second; in school I was always reading something under the desk/table when I was supposed to be paying attention, and while this ticked the teachers off, it wasn't until I'd switched from my regular fare (Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Sweet Valley High, Babysitters' Club, Goosebumps, Wishbone, American Girl, Boxcar Children, Anne McCaffrey, Tamora Pierce, Diana Wynne Jones, etc.) to what was clearly soft-core porn that they attempted a full-on intervention.  Also, when I (in my early primordial flailing attempts at pre-otakuness) was reading the novelized versions of the Sailor Moon anime, I would get embarrassed and recover them with paper and pretend to be reading something more intelligent than watered-down cartoonish pap that couldn't even spell the word "whoa" (it seems that, even then, I was something of an elitist).

Third; my friend Kate (who I first met when she was a beleaguered summer camp counselor and I a whirling precocious seven-year-old hellion with a vivid imagination, high IQ and a penchant for biting people; over the past decade or so, she's been something of an amalgam of teacher, mentor, babysitter, godmother, sister, idol, and friend) once forbade me from reading The Lovely Bones until I was old enough; for the first time in the history of my life I actually did what I was told, and when it was on my summer reading list in high school, she gave me her copy.

I think that's it.  EDIT:  Ooh, ooh, also!  My friend Jessica B-L (I know waaay too many Jessicas) gave me her copy of the Necronomicon when she moved down to South North Carolina with her Iraq vet combat-medic husband; before that, I would flip through it when I was over at her parents' place (I thought--and still think--that it's the most adorable thing ever), and I would randomly pick a page and read melodramatically and she would freak out and tackle me and wrestle the book away (it didn't matter whether I was reading from "The Conjuration of the Fire God" or the Acknowledgements).

(Hee, downstairs I can hear my cat fussing and scratching in her labohratohree; three guesses what that is.  Socute. ♥)

Comments

[dayadhvam-triad.livejournal.com]

Haha, my parents just wanted me to stop reading SO MUCH in general--you know, locked books away into a drawer and all that--because they said it was bad for my eyes.

Which it was, to be honest. ^^;

*is mad late in noticing this*

[kohikari.livejournal.com]

I am probably as blind as I am today because of the hours late at night spent sneaking books with a flashlight or the light from the hall. Also, you know how they tell you, when you're nearsighted, not to read with your glasses on because it'll make your eyes worse? Yeeeah. I didn't listen. XD It used to be that I could see clearly w/detail up to a foot and a half from my face; now it's more like seven inches...

(BTW, how goes it?)

Re: *is mad late in noticing this*

[dayadhvam-triad.livejournal.com]

That happened to me too! Yep, I just read with glasses, regardless. Ahahaha.

(Going well, a tad busy--the lateness of the reply makes me rather ashamed. I haven't been on LJ in a while. How are you? :))

watch for headlines "DEAR GOD BOSTON IS AN ANACONDA FACTORY HEAD FOR THE HILLS"

[kohikari.livejournal.com]

Hee, it's like we were competing to see who would take longer to notice. I think you won, if only because you have an actual life with courses and responsibilities; I'm still floating in unemployed limbo between graduation and acceptance letters (I got a ridiculously high score on the SATs: that state school would accept me if I were a blind and deaf lemur with motor control issues...they're just taking forever). Somehow, though, I've been getting less done with all this free time than I would normally waste time doing when I was in full-time high school. (I have, however, been drowning my guilt in liberal amounts of D.Gray-fic, prepping a DGM version of my Long-Winded Fantards Report (/1469.html)! Ah, terrifically bad fanfic, how I missed you so.)

(I AM SO BLIND XD;; it's all my fault, but I can't feel any guilt or regret, because all those books were so much fun~ ♥ They gave me something to do with my life before the internet took over!)

I have been informed rather hurriedly that (a) the other dude!snake is named Dominique (for now, at least) and (b) the Aquarium has not released any of that info publicly yet so everything about the anacondas is TOP SECRET. *gets out fedora and martini glass and meanders off doing her best Bond impression*

Re: watch for headlines "DEAR GOD BOSTON IS AN ANACONDA FACTORY HEAD FOR THE HILLS"

[dayadhvam-triad.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, I should've come back to LJ earlier. Hey, you might become Judy the Anaconda Girl, right? :D (Don't worry, I wasted so much free time over the summer before college). Hey, do you have any good D.Gray-man fic to rec, besides Cross & such (I believe that one pops up as a good one fairly often)? I haven't read much DGM fic since the series went on hiatus (since then come back), and I've lost my feeling of momentum.

(EXACTLY. WE SHALL FEEL NO REGRETS. 8DDD)

er, what snakes? what rats? Marion & Marion? pfft Idon'tknowwhatyou'retalkingabout--

Re: watch for headlines "DEAR GOD BOSTON IS AN ANACONDA FACTORY HEAD FOR THE HILLS"

[kohikari.livejournal.com]

Hoo boy. Um...what are your criteria? I'll set about gathering a rough list of the good gen I've come across, but the vast majority are KandaAllen, or LaviAllen, or Allenalee, or something along those lines (almost always involving the Fab Four and/or Tyki and Road; the less popular characters tend to lurk in the sideships), so which pairings are preferable?

♥

Re: watch for headlines "DEAR GOD BOSTON IS AN ANACONDA FACTORY HEAD FOR THE HILLS"

[dayadhvam-triad.livejournal.com]

I would adore genfic. :DD And as for pairings, hmm, I don't really mind. Nothing terribly explicit?--although if the fic's fabulous enough, I'd read it anyway. Thanks! :)

♥

recs!

[kohikari.livejournal.com]

A'ight, I'm nowhere near a place where I could give you a comprehensive list, but here's what I have so far off the D.Long-winded list:

Lady Indecisive's Real Smile isn't bad, though a bit long: T, romance/angst, 259,505 words, girl!Allen, main pairing KandaAllen but nothing has happened yet (I was deliriously happy over a fic where the main objective was plot over pr0n); characterisation is good, and if you ignore the copious internal monologuing it's an all-around good read.

Riku-dono's Smirking Shadow is special special Finnish!bad-English genfic: T, drama, 109,725 words, Allen-centric; focuses on a situation where Tyki planted, like, a Tease in Allen's soul or something and now he's got multiple personalities, one of which likes to kill people, and he's taken in by the Noahs for the lulz. Allen's characterisation struck me as unnecessarily (and, in some instances, disturbingly) childish, but what the hey.

Firey-Moonlight's In Cold Embraces isn't that bad either, if you don't mind a bunch of OCs, xover characters and minor characters brought to life: T, Adventure/Romance, 291,997 words, Noah!Allen, KandaAllen w/side TykiLavi and RoadLenalee (both of which are actually somewhat bearable, surprisingly enough); AR in which the Earl has this "New Child" project trying to create Noahs like the Order was trying to create Exorcists, except more successful. Allen has been part of that project, and is the program's greatest success, and when a team of Exorcists runs across an Accommodator in the Noahs' hands they immediately set about retrieval, resulting in Noah infiltration of the Order. Allen's character is of course altered, but is fairly decently portrayed; this fic is actually one of the better ones on the list. A lot of this fic is dedicated to politics, subterfuge and other delicious delicious plotty aspects that were like candy to me after so many PWPs. If you can stomach the mad OCs and xover characters, this fic is def. worth it.

And then of course there's the pretty pretty origins!speculation!gen of artbug's Mana and Cross and Komui and Dhampir72's Bookman and perhaps that Kanda Gaiden thing I haven't gotten around to yet.

[[cut b/c my verbosenessess is too hot for LJ to handle read: Judy is incapable of shutting up]]

recs!

[kohikari.livejournal.com]

[[cont'd]]

And then we get to Saya! Ah, Saya. She's...like, a pillar of the D.Gray-fandom in the context of yaoi and angst and etc. Her newer stuff is worlds better than her older stuff. She's kinda like Karen Miller in that respect, in that she starts off with ridiculously clichéd ideas but the power and quality of her growing writerly instincts and the inevitable tide of characters driving the story eventually redeems the work. I read all her longer fics, and have to say that I found myself enjoying much more of them than I thought possible.

A Black World Washed White was her first fic, and remains her longest project (176K words)--still ongoing, in fact. It has the most clichés and the wackiest characterisation and overall the most faults, but if you have the patience to wade through all 78 chapters the characters and causality are actually well-developed and realistic.

I recommend starting with a newer project that starts out more tolerably, like Less than Innocent, More than Like, which is another big project--128K words--but is instead quasi-origins!speculation!fic about Lavi and Kanda in their early days at the Order. It's got a lot of interesting ideas about the Bookman perspective, and is actually pretty good. Main pairing LaviKanda, if you don't mind that.

Opposites and its sequel, A Promise is Made to be Kept, are an older KandaAllen project placing the war between the Earl and the Order in modern times; they're not really worth going through unless you're obsessive-compulsive like me (the characterisation's atrocious).

As for her other, shorter stuff: Twisted Carnival and Phantoms Now (TykiAllen and "mystery"!KandaAllen, respectively) are eh and probably not your cup of tea; The Flower and Willow World and Death is in Love with Us are...I dunno, respectively they're a Lavi/geisha!Kanda fic with a lot of contextual detail and a LaviKanda-Lavi/shinigami!Allen fic set in modern day with Lavi having a month to live and, I dunno if they're up your alley or not. They're pretty pairing-centric, though TFaWW does have an interesting lens of the geisha world and all that.

As for Running From Sunrise, Chasing the Moon, frankly I was shocked when I found myself really enjoying it, especially considering the fact that it's a CrossAllen/TykiAllen fic (w/side CrossKomui, LaviKanda and flashback!CrossMaria) set in nineteenth-century London. It might have to do with the extended backstory she gives Komui and Kanda, and all the delicious delicious historical context. Maybe also the lulz.

That's all I have right now, hopefully there's a few in there you'll enjoy. ^^;