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crack_van2011-12-30 05:28 pm
p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2011-12-30 05:28 pm
Entry tags:
A Distinct Lack of a Spoken Apology by Amanuesis (Gen)
Fandom: KUROSHITSUJI
Pairing: none
Length: ~ 1000 words
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amanuesis1
Author Website: Despoiling Harry
Warnings: Spoilers, for the end of the second anime series; also, major character death
Why this must be read:
To say that the second anime series, and its ending, are controversial within Kuroshitsuji fandom is perhaps something of an understatement. In contrast to the ending to the first series, the ending to the second series (if you take the series as a whole as anything more than a dream) tells us Ciel and Sebastian will have further adventures; it also leaves us with no more than hints about what has actually happened to our characters, what any of it means, or what sort of future lies before them.
This is not, obviously, a situation any self-respecting fandom can leave alone. To finish the final episode of the second series, if you've become invested at all, is to make strangled noises at the screen – noises that translate, roughly, as What was that I can't even – and go to work at once on some way to fix it (whether by "fix it" you mean "Ack, no, you can't stop there, this is going someplace we need to see!" or "Ack, no, you are totally not going to that place! Here's where you're really going!"). As that range of possible meanings for "fix it" suggests, he end of the series is so strange, and the information we're left with so ambiguous, that it doesn't impose any single dominant narrative of what's likely to come next for our protagonists -- indeed, it tells us almost nothing, even by implication. Which is wonderful for the fandom: instead of resulting in people writing the same story over and over, the irresistible urge to Do Something with the second series ending has given us a rich and varied subgenre.
My next few recs are all post-series-two fics; but that's all they have in common -- that, and my admiration for every one.
* * * * *
Sebastian, as we know, is extremely good at fixing broken situations. In “A Distinct Lack of a Spoken Apology,” he does just that, with a little help from an old friend. Visceral and bloody and at the same time strangely sweet, this isn't a story that gives us a happily-ever-after by any ordinary definition. But from Ciel's own point of view, as well as from Sebastian's, it's hard not to see it as a kind of victory.
A Distinct Lack of a Spoken Apology
Pairing: none
Length: ~ 1000 words
Author on LJ:
amanuesis1Author Website: Despoiling Harry
Warnings: Spoilers, for the end of the second anime series; also, major character death
Why this must be read:
To say that the second anime series, and its ending, are controversial within Kuroshitsuji fandom is perhaps something of an understatement. In contrast to the ending to the first series, the ending to the second series (if you take the series as a whole as anything more than a dream) tells us Ciel and Sebastian will have further adventures; it also leaves us with no more than hints about what has actually happened to our characters, what any of it means, or what sort of future lies before them.
This is not, obviously, a situation any self-respecting fandom can leave alone. To finish the final episode of the second series, if you've become invested at all, is to make strangled noises at the screen – noises that translate, roughly, as What was that I can't even – and go to work at once on some way to fix it (whether by "fix it" you mean "Ack, no, you can't stop there, this is going someplace we need to see!" or "Ack, no, you are totally not going to that place! Here's where you're really going!"). As that range of possible meanings for "fix it" suggests, he end of the series is so strange, and the information we're left with so ambiguous, that it doesn't impose any single dominant narrative of what's likely to come next for our protagonists -- indeed, it tells us almost nothing, even by implication. Which is wonderful for the fandom: instead of resulting in people writing the same story over and over, the irresistible urge to Do Something with the second series ending has given us a rich and varied subgenre.
My next few recs are all post-series-two fics; but that's all they have in common -- that, and my admiration for every one.
Sebastian, as we know, is extremely good at fixing broken situations. In “A Distinct Lack of a Spoken Apology,” he does just that, with a little help from an old friend. Visceral and bloody and at the same time strangely sweet, this isn't a story that gives us a happily-ever-after by any ordinary definition. But from Ciel's own point of view, as well as from Sebastian's, it's hard not to see it as a kind of victory.
A Distinct Lack of a Spoken Apology