Jocelyn Samara
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RAIN - Chapter 40 Fake Manga Covers, Part 2
🕑 Added 2021-02-10 15:49:47 +0000 UTCFollowing up from my post from the other day, I'm going to continue to share the fake manga covers from Chapter 40 at full size, and maybe talk a little bit about them. ^_^
Today, I'll be focusing on Starstruck, one of the ones which Emily directly spoke about reading, which was described as "fun", but "fanservicey".
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Starstruck probably dates to around whenever Gurren Lagann came out. My idea was kind of shounen "fighting anime" style story with a space age sci-fi setting. But more than that, it was like, I'd had kinda unwritten rules for myself at the time where I didn't like to write over the top stuff. I wasn't ever the type to want to focus on fanservice or blood or low brow humor or anything, and Starstruck was like me saying, "Okay, but what if I did? What if I just wrote in a very 'unlike me' style." Truth be told, that's probably a big part of what prevented the story from ever getting off the ground. Everything about it just felt "off" coming out of me. XD
That said, while I feel weird writing about certain kinds of stuff, I can still enjoy reading/watching/playing it. Like, I don't really write fart jokes, but I can still laugh at them. I don't write sex scenes or gratuitous violence (and actually don't necessarily prefer seeing it either), but if a story is otherwise really good, I'll sit through it to get back to the good story.
To emulate that, we have Emily saying "the author really likes to home in on the main girl's chest". Rain goes on to add, "it's not usually her thing", but that she admired the character. And that's basically the kind of story Starstruck was. Kinda fanservicey and over the top... but still an enjoyable time. There's nothing wrong with writing that way, and clearly Rain and Emily could still enjoy it; I probably could too if someone else wrote it. But it's just not for me, as the writer. XD
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Getting to the story itself, the basic idea was that it starts with two professional mercenaries (a twin brother and sister I've never bothered to formally name), are in the middle of this elaborate heist. Despite a few hiccups in the plan, they get most of the way through before screwing it up at the very end due to their complete inability to work together like adults. Both of them come out with nothing but bounties on their heads. As a result, they end up parting ways, to show the other that they really don't need help from the other.
The brother (a physically strong and agile man with a magnetic suit he uses to manipulate the metal that makes up about 99% of everything around him) stows away onto a guild's ship. They let him stay because he offers to work with only the compensation of feeding him once in a while. Of course, because he's "so good in a fight", he rises from a stowaway to ultimately gaining the status of captain (by shounen law, that'd take about 90 episodes, at least).
The sister meanwhile (a gun nut, who typically has no less than a dozen firearms on her person at all times) commandeers her own ship, taking it over no matter what the crew has to say about it. Ruthless as she is, the crew comes to respect her in time (perhaps 70 or so episodes?) as she proves herself a committed and reliable leader time and time again no matter what the situation may be.
The two siblings often have their own separate arcs, but their paths do cross time and time again, sometimes as enemies and sometimes as allies. The true problem with this story is that it's the kind of thing that really could go on forever. Not to mention, while the siblings are the main characters, the two entire crews that each one commands would need to be fleshed out and developed to have an overabundance of characters who really only serve to make the two main protagonists cooler (in typical shounen fashion).
Which leads into the other reason this probably never got far. It's exhausting just to think about how much would need to go into it, and I simply didn't feel up to it; especially not for a story that was tonally off-putting for me to write. I just wasn't attached enough to the story and universe to spend the amount of time that'd be necessary to tell it. I'm glad I tried, though.
And I did enjoy drawing this cover, and giving it a shout out in Rain. ^_^
