Flowers And Funerals
Originally posted by mrwupy
I'll share one story with you and if you like it, i'll pass on a few more. It's a very quick read, promise.
Wildflowers
Hmm, you offer an uplifting spiritual allegory based on plants and I offer tragic stories of children dying.
The contrast is something, I'll give it that.
The wildflowers story is great, and I love your warm, casual narrative style. As I read it, I could hear you dictating it aloud in your voice -- a
voice I know from your podcasts (“This is
mrwupy coming at you...”) with its delightful drawl and animated cadence.
It was easy for me to visualize the scene, you effortlessly drew me into that day and the way you describe your thought processes is familiar and
endearing.
And of course, the message is spot-on.
I think we all will eventually come together someday.
I call it Convergence, and though my ideas about it may be dead wrong, it's good to know I'm not the only one who feels that way.
About Those Gruesome Short Stories Of Mine...
Just to make sure it's clear, they're back stories for some characters in the anime series
Haibane Renmei, which is a spiritual allegory set
in a mythical walled city.
While the series gives strong hints that all the haibane had lived before (and thus had died in various ways), it is generally pretty vague about how,
and the details are left to the viewer's imagination.
In writing my novel designed as a sequel to the series, I did a
lot of background work, and sketching out the back stories for each character
was part of that.
Just a small part, too. So far I have over 30,000 words of background material written for the story that I have no intention of ever publishing,
because it would spoil the story (it's stuff like story arcs, timelines, character profiles, plot synopses, schedules and so forth).
Anyway, the back stories for Reki and Kana are two of those, and I may write up the rest over time -- maybe after I finish the darn novel itself. I
started it in December 2004, so I would like to finish it this year.
And yes, by their nature, the stories of the previous lives of haibane must necessarily end in death, which can be rather grim. After all, since when
is the death of a child ever a happy occasion?
But on the bright side, they go on to become haibane, and that's not all bad.
Bah, sorry for the long-winded digression.
Just sayin'.
Oh and please pass on some more stories of yours. I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. 
[edit on 12/1/2005 by Majic]