188 | Be The First collection + finishing Reader and Protagonist Definitely Have to Be in True Love

[straightforwardly]

► The Be The First collection has opened up! For those who aren’t familiar with it, Be The First is a fest where people write fic for nonexistent fandoms. Check it out!

Here's a couple of recs:

Winter (Hanakisou -Visual Novel, Hanashiro/Kuroto, >1K)
Hanashiro can end this winter. He's the only one who can.

He doesn't.

I’m only familiar with the manga version of this canon, but that was plenty for me to follow it. All you really need to know is that Kuroto is destined to bring about the end of the world simply by existing, Hanashiro is destined to save the world by killing Kuroto, and their feelings about this aren’t necessarily what you’d expect. It’s a lovely fic: evocative and melancholy in the best way.

The Lost Heart (My Kingdom (2011), Yi-long/Er-kui, 1.2K)
"What do you dream, night after night, brother?"

Whereas I don’t know this fandom at all, outside of reading a hastily googled summary of the movie, but the fic still worked really well for me. I’m always weak for complicated sibling dynamics.

► I finished reading The Reader and Protagonist Definitely Have to Be in True Love! I’d actually stopped for a while, but then picked it up again and found that the entire translation had been finished in the meantime.

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the ending + the chapters leading up to it. Especially in regards to Xiu—it really continued to deliver on the iddiness of his feelings about Du Ze. ♥ And Du Ze even started to get in on the iddiness with his feelings for Xiu! Which was excellent. ♥

A couple of scenes I particularly liked:

—— “Sorry.” The young blond in his memory smiled and whispered: “It won’t happen again.”

So Xiu really meant it. Even in his madness he carefully restrained himself, trembling with desire, making Du Ze his touchstone.

You can’t frighten him. You can’t hurt him.

That has already been carved into his brain, whether he is sane or not.

It would be difficult to describe Du Ze’s mood at this time. He was a little surprised and moved, but mostly his heart was full of bitterness. This man who was hugging him was acting like a large dog who wanted to be petted but didn’t dare to move because he was afraid his master would be angry with him.

— Chapter 80: “Tower of God: Gnome Ruins”

Of course, Du Ze rejected the god of light’s terms just as they had expected: “I will not kill Xiu.”

“Don’t you want to know more about the God of Creation?”

Du Ze shook his head. His tone of voice was very natural when he spoke, as though was saying something that was common sense that needed no explanation nor justification. “Even if I cannot get the information about the Creator God, I will not kill him.”

–I’ll never kill him, even if I have to stay here forever.

— Chapter 90: “Protagonist: I have special customs clearance skills”

Some other thoughts, not directly related to Xiu/Du Ze:

I wish that Nina had stuck with their group, if only for extra opportunities for my Nina/Ariel shipping, but I did really like her final words: “You are very gentle, Du Ze. Next time don’t be too good to a fox, it will be tamed.”

The final scene between Corellen and the spider goddess did kind of make me want to ship them, despite not really remembering who either of them were. Corellen’s hatred of her was just really intense, in a good way.

The angel’s trial was unexpectedly excellent. I didn’t care about the angels much, but Xiu was amazing in that arc—it really showed how he’d grown as a character. And the whole “you just try to bring comfort to people while still upholding the system that causes the suffering, while I’m going to go destroy that system entirely” thing between Xiu and Eric was super iddy in an entirely different way than usual. I really loved seeing Eric having his worldview challenged, and I only wish that we’d got to see what became of him from there, rather than having him never be mentioned again.

Parts of the actual ending were meta in a way that wasn’t to my taste, but everyone I really cared about survived or weren’t explicitly mentioned to have died (and so I can pretend otherwise, despite Xiu destroying everything) and Xiu and Du Ze were reunited in the end, so I was happy to ignore the bits that I didn’t like—it’s not like it affected the actual story in any real way.

And...I think those are the main points that I wanted to touch on. Overall, while the aspects I hated about it in the beginning still stand, I did end up enjoying this LN quite a bit. Du Ze got a lot better as the plot progressed, and especially after he and Xiu finally got together. And Xiu himself was always fantastic. ♥

Comments

[samuraiter]

I should have done the "Be The First" challenge, but I think I did not find it in time. Perhaps another year?

[straightforwardly]

Yeah, I've never actually managed to do Be The First either, though I love the idea in theory. (I almost did last year, but wasn't satisfied with the fic I was working on, so I ended up not posting until a few months later, outside of the challenge.) Maybe next year!