36° / Family Matters - characters poll

[akk]

A nice person gifted me with a paid account for six months. :)
So here's the long requested:


[Poll #924519]
Please use comments if you want to add why you like a specific character best. :)


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Comments

[jjblue1.livejournal.com]

My vote goes to Omi Tono. Why? Because I think he is/was up on something (more precisely Subaru's 'passionate' behaviour in bedroom). I'm likely wrong, he's likely just a nice man... but after meeting Seishiro Subaru should beware of nice men...
... or maybe I'm just paranoic...

[akk]

Not maybe. ;)

Poor little Subaru can't be surrounded solely with psychopaths, can he?
Though you are right that Omi was there for a cause, but it didn't involve what you think. :)

[jjblue1.livejournal.com]

Oh, but I think he wouldn't mind much to be surrounded by a certain psychopath... ^_-

^________^

Anxious to see how it all will develop!

[akk]

I fear that Subaru has got to wait some more. Next is an Interregnum. ;)

[jjblue1.livejournal.com]

I bet Subaru doesn't know if to feel relief or worry at having to wait! ^_-

[vehemence.livejournal.com]

I love the way you've been portraying Seishiro (contemporary) and I find him the most intriguing because well... like when I read Tokyo Babylon, there was the question in the end, is Seishiro really just despicable or does he too have a really heavy inner pain which drives him to forsake love and bla bla bla. And I have a feeling your fic may reveal the source of the normally inpenetrable Seishiro's pain. *Hopes* xD

[akk]

Seishiro is a very complicated character. I found it astonishing that he was treated so... flat in X after all the complexity hinted at in TB. It was way too tempting not to combine that. :)

[calasstriastar.livejournal.com]

Your contemporary Subaru gets my vote, but honestly both him and Seishirou fascinate me in this story. They both have layers to their characters that slowly surface as the story continues. It keeps me wanting to read more. Plus the more they find out about each other, the intense the interaction between the two of them becomes. I like a good conflict.

Your lemon tree disturbs the heck out of me, but it adds more of a twist to the story. Maybe that's why I like it.

[akk]

Perv-Tree has safely the lead in the secondary characters - and it's no less twisted than Seishiro. But then, any talkative tree having watched humanity for over 2000 years just has to have quirks, right? :)

[azul-fyre.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about your take on Subaru right after the bet.

Damn You, you made me pick between both ancestor's and the tree. I had to choose the tree because it seems to know a lot about both families and I'm curious about what else it knows.

[akk]

Yue, the Emperor's Murderer, and Tree-san...

yes, they are quite a setting. I'm really tempted to spill their story in a fic on their own, though I fear the research necessary for writing anything believable in a 6th Century Japan setting will be nightmarish (though Yue's background is already sound, hm...) ^-^

[daddiesadruggie.livejournal.com]

In the first place, this story is amazing. It may very well be my favorite TB/X fanwork of all time. Icing on the cake is that it's still alive! Every other intriguing, drawn out saga I've gotten attached to seems to have, at some point, tapered off and died. Your characterization of Subaru and Seishirou is so rich and beautifully convincing that I'm awed by you.

Now, arguably, I'm a Subaru!fangirl a tiny bit more than a Seishirou!fangirl, but I had to choose Seishirou in the poll because of the depth of character you've given him. Granted, in X he was less dimensional and mostly straight up tormenting evil, but even in Tokyo Babylon, while we saw something of his private moments, we were given absolutely nothing of his motives. Most authors say A) he never experienced emotions and didn't realize he was in love, B)he was jealous that Subaru never loved him above other people despite his best efforts and killing his sister ensured a permanence to his value, even if it was bad, or C) (my least favorite)he knew Subaru would have to be toughened up if he was going to serve as a warrior of the apocalypse / wouldn't be able to fight him unless he gave him cause to hate him. Your Seishirou touches on these themes, and then blows them away with layers of personality and trauma and hardened humanity that make me (like Subaru) want to cry and hug him and make him better. I can't think of any other writer who's fleshed him out so empathetically.

And I would die to read the fic that chronicles the genesis of the Sakurazuka/Sumeragi dynamic...I'm a whore for backstory, and I waffled back and forth between Yue and the Emperor's murderer for the secondary character. I settled on Yue, because he's actually made a personal appearance and I'd love to see him back in some form and his thoughts or reactions to the present Subaru (whose body we know he thinks is pretty appealing ;) ). Bits and pieces of contextual material like the not-so-pure origins of the Sumeragi clan tantalize me and I latch onto any crumbs I can find in your work.

On the same principle, I'm dying to get to the pont where Sumeragi head the 12th finally catches up to what kind of deal-with-the-devil her grandson's entered into...and moreover that he isn't entirely lamenting the situation. Afterall, she's a Sumeragi too, she'll understand the significance of the dao and what's she going to do? Send the rest of the world back on it's course to oblivion for the sake of Subaru's supposed purity and honor? She's going to be between a rock and a hard place if she wants to disrupt them. Anyway, really, really hope the next installment is coming soon, and I want to be you when I grow up.

[akk]

First of all, thank you for your very favorable - and detailed - review. I hope the story won't disappoint you in the future.
Seishiro is a complicated person and any "simple as that" explanation of his motives wouldn't do him justice, hence A) - C) don't work in my eyes. However, I'm glad that my characterization of Subaru doesn't fall flat compared to him, because I found him much more difficult to write than Seishiro.

Yue's story is really evolving in the back of my mind, though I'm not sure I can grasp enough of the place and time to get it to work properly - I'm a physicist not a historian for 6th Century Japan - but the plot is tempting; not only because of the historical background of the Fall of the Chen Empire in Southern China and the connections between earliest Japan and the Baekje kingdom in Korea. But that would be a 100% original fic and no longer a TBX fanfic, so... On the other hand, I ♥ Yue as a character. ;)
In any case, he is going to make another appearance later on (chap 15 or 17?), likely involving interaction / advise with Subaru. :)

Lady Sumeragi surely knows about the Dao, but the question is how far does she understand the nature of the marks and what they mean esp. for Subaru. And there is the rest of the clan elders, whose positions are to be taken into account, too. But that's chapter 11 and later.

Chapter 9 proved to be a complicated chapter, so it might still take a week or two to complete it.