(Not caught up but I am just completely skipping any posts that are actually related to the story ftr. I will probably try my best to get caught up... probably tomorrow, I'm at 8 so it's a bit too much to do in one sitting I think~)
I will say I quite liked Sailor Nothing back in the day and enjoyed what I have read of Nowhere Stars
I loved Sailor Nothing. It was fantastic. Nowhere Stars is now on my reading list.
I think Sailor Nothing is a product of its time, and I admit I've cooled on it quite a bit. It's not bad, I think the writing is in a lot of places strong if you can ignore the kind of 2000-isms (the script stuff- though I definitely think it's more well-incorporated than most fics of its time, and the unnecessary honorifics, for instance)- I think Chapter 8 is honestly one of the best examples of its narration style out there, to be honest. But that said, I think in many ways you can kind of tell it's a 2000s work- the heavy emphasis on unnecessary rape and the threat of rape, for instance, or how completely brazenly Aki's relationship with Himei is in many senses an absolute sidethought that is basically rarely brought up and never thoroughly explored, with her getting no real conclusion or real resolution for her character. In some ways her being gay feels utterly superfluous to the story as a whole. I don't think it's bad by any means, but I suspect if Stefan were writing it today, there were quite a few things he'd at the very least tweak.
Yeah, that's valid. There's a lot to be levelled at Zero and Urobuchi's work as whole, which is really odd for me given how much I enjoyed PMMM and Zero. Like the fact a lot of the female characters don't have any agency or motivation outside of one of the male characters or their actions in Zero.
Honestly the more and more I see Urobuchi's work the more I think Shinbo is a really good influence on him and able to refine him and help curb his excesses, which is why I'm glad he's returning to direct the new Madoka movie. Urobuchi is in many senses just a really weird dude who I think can have good ideas but when it comes to actually depicting those ideas, ends up coming across as at best mixed thematically, at worst completely off-point of what the work should be, especially since his perception of how to write female characters can be charitably described as... confused at times. (Hey there Jing Ke from Lostbelt 3!) Urobuchi has talked before about how Madoka is in many ways a very collaborative work between him and Shinbo- I believe he has said that the ending was actually Shinbo's original idea that the two of them then refined- and from what I hear from a lot of people who work with him, Shinbo just does a really good job at keeping people's impulses at check and helping refine their ideas, especially thematically, which is often where Urobuchi's work tends to fall especially flat.
@Simon_Jester Oh, I was thinking back and I realized you were really shocked and confused at my comment that a "running internal monologue" is a sign of depersonalization (other people probably were too), and I was thinking back and it was an offhand reference I could have put a bit more clearly. Like, it's not your typical running monologue where you're just kind of casually thinking about everything in your life, no no no. It's like... essentially your brain castigating you for every thing you do, literally all the time. And if it can't think of anything you're doing at the moment is wrong, it finds something from the past to criticize you for and it just is an endless loop. It kind of makes sense- when your brain can't quite like, process what it is that is making it so anxious and upset all the time, it just kind of assumes that you must be doing
something wrong that it is trying to warn against, and so when the anxiety doesn't stop, the natural conclusion to relevant parts of the brain is just that you are always doing something wrong.
I also do want to emphasize that this inherently isn't a trans thing- depersonalization (and depersonalization-derealization disorder, which is generally what it's called when you have these symptoms long-term outside a panic attack or etc) is a not-uncommon response to trauma or chronic stress generally, but it's a psychological response that is especially common among trans people.
