Busy Weekend

[chomiji]

The sis-in-law (the one who's married to a minister) had a rotten week: her employer is transferring her, with almost no notice, to a different facility, and as she runs a senior center (basically, daycare for senior citizens), it means leaving behind not only staff, but also clients. So she decided at virtually the last minute to come down (with our nephew in tow) and see the Young Lady's play (our daughter is crewing her school's not-quite-spring musical, Beauty and the Beast) Friday night, because she thought it would cheer her up. This meant I had to clean up the guest room, which was wall-to-wall wrapping paper bits and rolls still, from the last installment of Xmas. But when I got home, there was an Amazon box waiting: I have Samurai Deeper Kyo 27, xxxHolic 11 [thanks, megan!!], and Takumi-Kun 2!

Saturday I was not feeling well - malaise about sums it up - and nothing much happened except meals out (lunch at Oriental East, which has great dim sum and forgettable service; dinner at Austin Grill, which is quite good for a chain) and the week's grocery shopping. The Young Lady was crewing again and had to eat leftovers for dinner. Oh well - it builds character!

Sis-in-law left early Sunday morning, and then sanada came to visit! We had brunch at Jackie's (retro American cuisine in a groovy-funky 1960s industrial setting) and talked manga nonstop. A good dose of fangirling makes one feel ever so much better. Then we went and saw the matinee of the play ourselves. Energy level good, one or two really good performances, scenery very uneven (the Beast's castle was very, very good, the village scenery was pretty lame), costumes pretty nice (althought the dinner plates were awful), and the special effects were much fun ... during the Beast's transformation at the end, petals fell from the catwalks onto our heads. They were meant to be rose petals, but all I could think of was (a) Sakura of Doom and (b) Nanao dumping baskets of petals over Shunsui. And the casting was the usual marvellous Blair High School racial mix: Oriental Belle, African American Gaston, Hispanic (I think) Beast, and so on. Dinner was what the Mr. calls "the meat place" - Brazilian BBQ.

Comments

[chomiji]

I've been thinking about this on and off ... I am going to post at some point on "what cho needs from a story," because it's been coming to me that the whole "older characters" thing is a complete red herring - I re-read kids' books all the time, and love them. What I'm beginning to zero in on is somewhat what you;'re saying - the relationship thing.

And the diffrence between Wallflower and Ouran, I think, is that in Wallflower, the guys are objectifying her to a large extent (she's The Problem) and she is also objectifying them (the whole "creatures of light" nonsense). In Ouran, Haruhi quickly becomes part of the gang, even though they also crush on her (increasingly seriously, in the current book) and do a little minor objectification of her sometimes (she's their token Common Person). But they plot with her, and involve her in their crazy schemes, and as characters, they care about her and about each other, in varying ways and degrees. The most recent Ouran crystallized it - SPOILER - one of the twins is starting to feel seriously about her, and this is "something he can't share with his brother" for the first time. And another person in the group - Hunny - notices the situation. So there's more mutuality among the group members.

Having said that, you will probably like the other Wells books - they both feature group interactions and friendships, and both romantic and non-romantic relationships. (And Lymond has a bunch of that as well ... difficult to say without spoilers, but there are definitely the following: mother-son; brother-brother; friendships among older women; platonic older woman-younger man; proxy elder brother-younger sister; male-male comrades-in-arms; and probably a lot more that I'm not remembering. There is also at least one searing instance of how destructive hero-worship can be to both parties.)