So Peeps

[spiralmaiden]

Apparently there are a lot of feels out there about the anime ending. How does everyone here feel about it? What was your personal experience with it? Were you baffled? Angry? Sad? Satisfied? FICCING VIOLENTLY?

(I will answer in comments)

Comments

[stanza]

I had convinced myself through an aversion to novel spoilers but an accidental viewing of several spoilery pieces of fanart that Nezumi died at the end

I was so fucking terrified of this. :| Like I was making an effort to ~reign in my heart and feels~ so I wouldn't get attached if this happened. (Bury Your Gays, I am familiar with you and your hideousness!!) So when, I think, canis_m posted her short translation/summary of the novel ending/epilogue I let out the longest breath in existence because thank god, I could have feels. I could have feels.

But yeah I mean after a lot of 'ugh this is such a cop-out' feelings about the ending, at this point I am mostly happy it's so open-ended, as open-endedness is more conducive to fannish pursuits and less conducive to horrible jossing. And these qualities match up nicely with my own hopes and fears haha.

[spiralmaiden]

Yes, that. That. That. My terror at one or both of them getting killed off (I almost threw a pillow through my TV because I thought the anime was about to go all Ai-no-Kusabi on me). Give me any ending where they are both still alive and I will accept it wholeheartedly. I still feel like their ~separation~ still plays into the roots of that trope but eh ... sometimes I'll take what I can get. (god, someday, PLEASE let people stop making ~ambiguous~ same-sex relationships as tragic as possible ... this seriously screwed me the fuck up when I was younger, no joke).

[stanza]

Throwing a pillow through your TV would've been seriously impressive. Just sayin'.

ai no kusabi

god don't even shut up rn

plays into the roots of that trope

It's kind of a general refusal of the narrative to fully buy into and deliver the romance element, and I think it's probably ignorant to say that the fact that it's homoromance didn't influence that decision. (I mean you have tragic separation with het couples all the time but het couples also do not have an entire pantheon of tropes designed to negotiate their sexuality out of the text...)