![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
"Writer's Block: Forbidden Reading"
[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. ♥)
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
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.
(Hee, downstairs I can hear my cat fussing and scratching in her labohratohree; three guesses what that is. Socute. ♥)
recs!
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. ^^;