rec

[cimorene]

i've spent all of today when i wasn't doing errands being enchanted, entertained, doubled over in laughter, and knocked breathless and starry-eyed by this completely, insanely brilliant noir au in which hikaru is a private eye and touya meijin is the biggest mob boss imaginable (you have to scroll down approximately halfway to the "sam shindou, private five!" section).

i'm not sure what it is about aus that makes me love them so much, but when an au is truly wonderful, it's one of the best kinds of wonderful there is. of course, if you can manage a successful noir voice (and this writer's is fabulous) you've already won half the battle, because just the narration will already be hilarious, and that's possibly enough to salvage any problems in characterisation. but while the connection between the noir caricatures of all the principal characters and their canon characterisations may not be immediately obvious, there's a strong backbone of powerfully insightful and thoroughly right characterisation in all of the big ones: gumshoe hikaru, femme fatale-mafia heir akira, crooked cop kaga, crazy bodyguard waya, mob boss touya meijin. it's not without rough patches, but just keeping up that much crack through so much length (and scope, and detail) as well as she did is impressive.

Comments

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*bounces*

OMG I KNOW I LOVE THAT SERIES!

(Seriously, I love it so much that I went for the all-caps without hesitation, and I very nearly threw in an extra exclamation point.)

And I agree; AUs have a special chemistry all their own. Sometimes they just work. (And when they don't, they can be the most painful thing on earth to read.)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i totally didn't see it in your bookmarks - how could i have missed it? otoh i'm very glad, because i've been wading through nothing but the most terribly abject badfic for almost a week now, and it was very nice to find a piece of good that i hadn't read yet. ._.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

It's - I'm pretty sure it's there. (I am familiar with the author from her FF and Xenosaga writing, so I read her HnG early on.)

*checks*

Ah. I lied, apparently, when I said all my HnG bookmarks were shared. That one's not, because it contains notes that are not suitable for public consumption. But that sucks, because when I try to get people into HnG, I sometimes give them my links, and I don't want them to miss a few of the best stories because I'm keeping notes in the comments. Will del.icio.us let you bookmark something twice?

Hmmm. No.

*ponders*

This would all be so much easier if we could not-share just our comments as well as the whole link. (And while I'm at it, I'd like a USB-compatible pony.)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

ahahhahaha. well, i admit to curtailing my notes in the comments slightly, but mostly i don't worry about other people seeing them too much. in fact, i've been told several times that people like that i remark on the weak points as well. in this story's case i thought about it, but i didn't want to mention anything in the rec since it could be spoilery, and they're fairly minor quibbles in the face of how much i enjoyed it overall. there was nothing that made me want throw things with rage or anything, like a certain fic i reread today where akira calls hikaru "mr angry-pants" or something like that. i think somewhere in my mind, a tiny part of me is still covering my ears and whimpering.

you could make a second del.icio.us account, but of course that would require logging in and out... or you could download a second browser and stay logged into one account on each browser (i use both mozilla and opera regularly because opera doesn't fully support gmail - although i admit this is a pain in the ass). or i suppose you could store your personal comments elsewhere entirely? there's got to be a way.