It occurred to me that I was, actually, supposed to publish a meta post to do with my Hamatora Rarepair Valentines 2015 Suite from, well, 2015, but clearly I never did. Which is okay. So I'll do it now.
What was Rarepair Valentines 2015? Me writing five fics for (crack) Moral/Nice, Nice/Ratio, Art/Koneko, Hajime/Skill (Nice/Hajime counts as rare, I guess, since fandom jumped ship) and Art/Gasuke.
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Recurring imagery: (i.e., the reason why it's a suite, other than "recommended reading order")
1. Water Water symbolises a ton of things - life, moving water = change, dead water = death and dying...
This is fairly straight-forward and the way the water symbolism changes from one fic to the next is like a current of its own. It's pretty fun at first, water slides and a bizarre toilet joke, gets totally sappy-cavity romantic, evolves to a sort of self-conduit before becoming responsible for some pretty interesting choices (interesting in the car crash tragedy sense) and then become more meta on the actual choices themselves.
2. Ships Yes. Ships. Shipping? Sailboats? This is a joke. But it's a completely serious one. (I think I'm hilarious, go figure.) Moral's piloting a speedboat (stolen from Murasaki who stole the money off Nice), Nice's landing on an inflatable ship led to Nice/Ratio (instant pairing, 0 basis in canon), Art's steering and trying to work out what's going on with his life after Koneko shows up, Hajime dreams of a ship to lead her to the stars, while Art and Gasuke... are interesting as far as boats are concerned. That fic's intent prevents me from summarising it in one line.
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Progression: The fics get considerably more complex the further in it gets and the closer it gets to Valentine's. Why? Why not? Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm partially post-modern as a writer and partially because I like to subvert and play around with things. So... yes, this exists only because I noticed Friday the 13th was before Valentine's. Good show. I love Hamatora.
(Incidentally, the story titles are 5 words long on the first day, 4 words the second, etc, all down to 1 word on the fifth. Hey, "Through Star-Glass" is two words. Drabble battle. Do the hyphen dance!)
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Notes I made specifically per-fic: (I've tried to keep my personal interpretation to a minimum, pun half-intended)
Day 1, Moral/Nice: Crackfic, Moral-the-self-insert, also a parody of everything else in the suite, also a bad joke regarding Draco in Leather Pants and meta about fanfic meta. Which is the reason I sometimes suggest the reading order of 2-3-4-5-1, actually.
Day 2, Nice/Ratio: Honestly, everything is explained in this fic and I have nothing left to say that the characters haven't said themselves, other than the fact that I still can't believe I let it get so long. Oh, well. It's really straight-forward.
There's a bit about stars and people being made from star-stuff that could be compared to the stars and Skill and star-stuff in the Hajime/Skill fic if that's your thing, however.
“Well, we aren't here to search for stars. I mean, how can you even catch one anyway? They're so far.”
“They aren't far because everything in the world is made from stars,” Ratio remarked. “Any element greater than hydrogen and helium could only be created in one.”
“And we're carbon-based lifeforms so star-stuff is basically everywhere,” agreed Nice. “That's a cute definition, if you say what comes out of a star is still the star itself. I didn't think you were interested in astronomy.”
There's a point brought up somewhere about timing in relationships - Ratio used to like Birthday but Birthday rejected him on the basis that he didn't want Ratio to suffer more, but then Ratio got over it when Birthday was finally cured. So Ratio ended up with Nice (who is basically Birthday) and Birthday ended up with Misty (who is basically Ratio). Life is full of these weird timing coincidences all the time.
Day 3, Art/Koneko: Art supports Koneko, given that he's older and her troubles are mostly in growing up, and Koneko supports him by having him believe in himself. They grow more and more open with one another as the story progresses.
Koneko's confession "killed" Art's former self - seeing as he needs to be killed in order to revive again. Peach tells me they headcanon Art had a mini heart attack, so...
It doesn't go crazy with anything. I think it's interesting how the ship imagery in this one compares and contrasts with the imagery in the Art/Gasuke.
Day 4, Hajime/Skill: It's reference time!
All the images in the dual story lines are trying to unravel Hajime's thought processes. I'm not going to go into the obvious symbolism (e.g. the water) because this will get even longer. There are also a couple of other readings people could have had but I won't go into them either. This is mostly to explain the 897234927 references.
Hajime and the red queen (Momoka): Callback to Re:10, where Momoka gets into Hajime's head and insists that everything bad that's happened is all Hajime's own fault.
Hajime and Hikaru: Hikaru is somebody who was once in the same situation that Hajime found herself in, and Hajime opinionated enough in Re:01 that he most likely had an impact on her. The scene in the town of Memory is her remembering Murasaki telling Hikaru to choose. Hajime, needing outside voices for an opinion, listens to the imaginary Murasaki in her memory.
Important line from canon, from Hajime about Hikaru [Re:01, Anime-Koi subs]:
Hajime: I kind of get him. He's scared that if he changes, everyone will change.
The little girl sees her eyes become red; scared, she pushes the red queen away, destroys her, turns her back to everything and becomes afraid of change. Momoka reminds her it's her fault. Hajime breaks all the mirrors. Hajime's afraid of reflections because she sees unfaithfulness looking back at her - the little girl and the star boy's hearts have resonated with each other, and Hajime is trying to find her answers. She wants more but she also wants to keep what she already has.
Hajime and the glass: The title (and some of the fic) references Lewis Caroll's Through the Looking Glass. In that story, if you subscribe to the reading that Alice's journey to capturing the Red Queen symbolises her journey to womanhood, Hajime's pushing away of the red queen is a rejection of growing up and persisting with childish thoughts and childish dreams. Hajime's pursuit of the stars can be seen as childish dreaming.
Kudos to Art for stealing the show near the end. He totally wrote himself in like that and I love it. Give me my Art & Momoka, please. Please. I'm going to have to write this myself aren't i
Sidenote: Skill ruining everything here can be a deconstruction of god!Skill in previous fics. God!Skill is so good. (I call it... godskilling: God!Skill-ing / Gods killing)
Day 5, Art/Gasuke (aka. Kiteline): You know, I actually spent a while wondering what I was going to talk about regarding Kiteline because I refuse to explain it, but I suppose I could talk about why.
Kiteline's concept is inspired by the Rorschach. It's designed to elicit emotion and written as a pattern of inkblots. There are lots of moments where you, as the reader, have to make logical leaps based on scarce amounts of information. As the story progresses, this becomes a series of assumptions, and the magic of assumptions is that they're coloured by an individual state of mind at the exact moment you're forced to make one. The fic is ambiguous in intent, playing on how a person self-inserts as they read, yet it shouldn't feel ambiguous while it's being read. What should happen is that the reading you walk off with is based on yourself. Your context, your culture. Art isn't the only one working out whether or not he likes Gasuke - so are you.
(That's the goal, anyway. I don't know if I succeeded in it because I still don't have enough feedback. There are a couple of people I'd specifically like readings from that I don't have, but I'll take what I can get. It's just fanfiction~)
((I'm too aware of my Word of God powers, so I'm avoiding the topic hard But message me if you want to hear my thoughts. Chat is a completely different medium.))
The fic itself is very fickle. Things happen that aren't always romantic. Bumps emerge. Inner conflict with more at stake than just fuzzy miscommunication. The imagery tends to contradict itself. Or, they can be read as developments. It's an unusual fic and an unusual pairing on a day where many fandoms find themselves swamped in fluffy ships and feel-good writing.
Incidentally, this was published Feb 14th, which also happened to be the first day of NiceArt Week (of which I had no idea of, because I'd locked myself in my room and written furiously for the past one and a half months so I could get all the fics out in time). The coincidence amuses me a lot. I wish I could tell you why.
Then again, I wish I could tell you why I go to all this effort anyway. But I love you guys <3
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Bonus!
For taking the time to read this, here's a secret: http://syviki.tumblr.com/hamartia-teaser-trailer-2k16
Thanks for supporting my writing and being really awesome~! c: