Okay, I'm going to break my "this is fandom ONLY" journal thing this time, because...I HAVE OFFICIALLY GRADUATED FROM UNIVERSITY!
*happy tears* 
There were times when I wondered if this day would ever come, and now, it is here! JOY.

On a completely unrelated note, I have been watching copious amounts of Kyou Kara Maoh, and....is it wrong that Josak sometimes sorta slightly reminds me of Chiaki? 
Somebody shoot me.
Of course, that just gives me images of Chiaki crossdressing...XD
There's a fic in that somewhere, I swear.

In other news, rebelintosanity and I have forged a pact to switch fandoms for a fic. Which means, I will be attempting to write a Phoenix Wright fic involving Edgeworth and Gumshoe in some way in the near future. o.O Seeing as how I've played, like, two sections of a game and know practically nothing at all about PW...it shall be very interesting. 

On the other hand, this means that rebelintosanity will be writing a MoB fic with Haruie and Kagetora.  :D Can't wait to see how that turns out!

So I watched "Gohatto" (Taboo) on youtube today. 
For those who don't know, it's a Japanese film set in the bakumatsu period (end of the samurai in the mid-19th century) in which a beautiful young man joins the local militia and wreaks havoc among his love-crazed fellow samurai. 

Ha, I actually watched it thinking that it might help me understand Kagetora's situation a little better in his first life. I was thinking about Cerise Tennyo's "Tsukiyo" the whole time, to be honest. True, it's set in a much later period, but the main theme is the same. An incredibly desirable youth who inadvertantly (ahem) drives the men around him mad with passion, and brings trouble upon himself as a result. It also has a very interesting little twist in it. 

It made me laugh at some inappropriate moments, as well, because I kept imagining Kagetora's possible reaction to some of the lines the guys were using. "I don't want to die before making love to you," or "I would give my life to hear the nightingale's song after having held you in my arms all night long." 
XD I can just imagine Kagetora's expression.

Ah, warning for anyone who may watch it- there is some smut at one point. 

 And here's another comment that grew into a post. This time I was thinking about Naoe and rape. Sure, he raped Minako, and he was terribly sorry for it. But I would argue that not only did he mount serious sexual assaults on Takaya (six, to be exact), he actually raped him on three of those occasions. Love Naoe as I do, I'm not going to excuse his actions. The fact that most people, and Naoe himself, do not consider these three rapes to have been rapes and thus deserving at least some regret or apology concerns me. So here's my "comment": 

( Read More... )

 

As is often the case, I began writing a comment to someone else's post, but wound up deciding not to put it up after all because it got too long and off-topic. ^^;
I decided that it was an interesting enough topic to stand on its own in my journal, however, so here are some thoughts on Naoe's voice:

Whoo-hoo! I also found a page with most (all?) of the MoB novel covers. Some of these I have been seeking for AGES.
http://cobalt.shueisha.co.jp/meisaku/mirage/series.html

Okay,  I just ran across a german MoB fansite with a TON of screencaptures from the main series and OVA. Thought I'd go ahead and post the link in the hope that someone will make icons others may enjoy them. I am so charitable that I astonish myself sometimes. XD

http://www.mangaplanet.net/mirageofblaze/ff.php

There's a pretty good capture of that moment in the Minako flashback where Naoe is cradling Kagetora's corpse. You can't see them real well, but enough to notice that 1) Kagetora does look to be about the same age as Naoe (which feels very strange- I've gotten too used to having them at different ages) and 2) Kagetora looks kinda HOT. As does Naoe. It's really a pity that the animators don't give us a clearer image of them. I understand why they didn't, but...*sigh*

Oh, and for rebelintosanity only, there are Ranmaru pics under the "TV" category in Pictures. They probably won't be that interesting to you- they just have some close-ups of this fairly pretty guy. Don't know why they didn't capture him looking more sinister...oh well. Now you can't say I never gave you anything Ranmaru-related! 

Title: Wages of War
Rating: PG
Word count: 606
Disclaimer: I do not own Mirage of Blaze, and I am not making any money off this.
Warning: I don't know practically anything about the Minako time period, so I'm probably screwing a lot of stuff up. Sorry!
Acknowledgements: As always, thanks to sabriel75 for going over this with me, even when she was so busy already! *chu*
And thanks to rebelintosanity for daring me to write this. Wouldn't have attempted it without your encouragement, dah-ling!
Summary: He hadn't intended to go to the funeral.

Okay, I was having some trouble with this on lj, so I decided to just link to the story on ffnet. Here it is: Wages of War

( Wages of War )

Tags: fic, mirage of blaze

Ahahaha . Okay. So, I finally yielded to temptation and linked my own fics to my rec list. ^^; 
I put a disclaimer, though, so hopefully it'll be okay...? 
*worries*

Well, if it turns out to have been a bad idea, I can always just take them down.

 

As part of my search for The Real Kagetora, I think I will occasionally post random little things I think I have discovered about Kagetora. 

Today's thought: Kagetora= Not a cocktease.

Okay, so I've been trying to get a handle on the characters of Mirage of Blaze for a while, now. They are all pretty difficult, but Kagetora is probably still the most mysterious to me. We see something of Takaya, but our perception of Takaya is nearly as confused as Takaya's view of himself. Takaya never really had a lot of self-knowledge to begin with, and adding a bunch of muddled memories and an identity crisis into the mix doesn't help any. Kagetora, in his full centuries-spanning warlord-ly glory is hinted at, but we just never get as clear an image of him as of the other characters. 

( blah blah blah )

 Well, if anyone is interested, kat_tyan has put up russian translations of several Mirage of Blaze novels/sections of novels, including what I believe is almost the entire wadatsumi arc, on her website. I have not gotten through all of it yet, but I am currently working my way through the wadatsumi arc. 

I, of course, cannot read russian. But I have found that using babelfish to translate, while referring to some of the summaries of that arc which have been written by sargraf, I can pretty much figure out what's going on most of the time. That is not to say that it is easy or particularly clear (I have to stop and sort of uncross my eyes every once in a while), but it is possible and significantly better than the nothing which is currently available of that arc in english otherwise. 

kat_tyan's website is here: http://mirage.karlson.ru/
If you punch that address into babelfish and set it to translate from russian to english, the first category on the menu to the left should translate as "books." Click on that, and then select "transfer" for the items that are listed under "books." I belive that "transfer" just means translation in this context. The "empress of coastal waters" parts I, II and III are what she has up of the wadatsumi arc. For those of you who don't know, that arc is what immediately follows the events of the MoB ova, ending (I believe) with the death of a *ahem* significant character. I do highly recommend reading Sargraf's summaries along with the babelfish translations, if anyone decides to try this, as Sargraf directly translates several of the most important conversations in her summaries, and they are of course MUCH better translations than babelfish can manage.

Sargraf's summaries of the wadatsumi arc can be found here:
http://sargraf.livejournal.com/41694.html

Actually the above link is for the fourth part of her wadatsumi arc summary, but it has the links to the previous three parts.