talkingsoup | Chibi Drool

And then you have manga like Monster which has no swords, no shinigami, no monsters (well...), no anime-hair, no ninjas and no giant talking frogs. You've just got a fooking killer plot, awesome drawings, and a most-most excellent handle on tension and suspense. The fourth one finally came out today, and I haven't read it yet, but I WILL.

Mostly because I spent the evening reading Descendants of Darkness, um, 7, 8 and 9 I think. Borders has such a poor selection of the series I thought I might as well clean them out at least halfway. Now that I have 4, the rest of the volumes are on Borders's shelves, so there's no worries--so long as I get my sticky manga fangirl paws on them before some other squealy annoying thing.

Oh man, oh man, I love that manga. Tsuzuki is so freaking adorable. And Hisoka, Tatsumi and Watari are love. It was a bit weird, because volumes 4, 5, and 6 were relatively lighthearted and all kinds of sweet, and these recent ones were all kinds of dark. I feel so bad for Tsuzuki. And I thought Hisoka had problems. Muraki, meanwhile, is evil as ever, despite the brief glimpse into his past, and the bastard just won't die which he really needs to do because he's tortured poor Tsuzuki and Hisoka long enough. Hmph.

Yes. Well. Anyway. I wouldn't have gone to the bookstore if it hadn't been on my way home from Liz's job. She was babysitting and needed something, so I delivered "it" to her (yes, Julie, the ambiguous "it!" That one thing, at that one place, at that one time, and so on, lol). She babysits to chibis. *koff* Children. The girl is four, the boy I think is around one. I ran out and got lunch, we ate in the park and then I hung out with Liz until the mom came home. I got baby drool on me. Which has the same effect on me as all other kinds of drool. Ugh. (Some people have problems with blood, other people have problems with vomit, me, I have problems with saliva. Go figure.).

Ah, yes. I promised a bit of an outline of the Spirits story. Just to warn you, I don't know that much yet. I don't even know whether it's set here or in an alternate universe. But oh well. For now it's the characters I'm interested in. Here's what I know:

Okay, so. Obviously the world is a fantasy world. You've got magic going on. People go to like universities to become curse-breakers or alchemists or summoners, stuff like that. So, naturally, you've got humans, but you've also got other critters running around. Everyone non-human falls under the term "Folk." Original, I know.

There's also Four Planes of reality. Or maybe five. There's the Mortal Plane, where humans live, there's the Whodden, which is where animal spirits--called Tieken--and demons and other stuff comes from. There's the Elysian Plane, which speaks for itself. And there's the mysterious Fourth Plane, which no one knows what's there, since nothing ever goes in or comes out. The Planes are connected by the Great Tree. Think Yggdrasil--kinda. The Human Plane is where the trunk is, the Elysian Plane is on the roots, the Whodden is in the branches, and the Fourth Plane is at the top, or something to that effect. Yeah.

I'm still conflicted as to whether all Folk--Folk being: Selkies, sirens, harpies, tengu, dragons, wurms, leviathans, possibly elves though I'm loathe to use them, etc.--come from the Mortal Plane/Human Plane or the Whodden. Tieken come from the Whodden, as do demons, as do "Insubstantials," which are things like elementals, guardian spirits, and demi-gods.

In any case, Tieken and everything else are all usually lumped under the term "demon," which can piss a Tieken off to no end. There's a tentative cooperation between humans and Tieken etc., because Tieken often come out of the Whodden and come to live in the Human Plane, where they get jobs and stuff.

Oh, and, things in the Whodden aren't too great either. Several decades, or maybe a century, I'm not sure--there was a giant war between the then-ruler of the Tieken, the Wolf Queen (no name yet), and a powerful usurper, the White Lion (no name either). The Wolf Queen lost and supposedly died, but not before stealing something of value. And since then, the supporters of both sides have hated each other, and skirmishes are fought every now and then, though at this point the White Lion's rule is pretty much absolute. Yeah, it's one of those things.

Mind you, just about all of this is subject to change.

That's about all I've got right now in the way of world and plot, so I'll move on to characters.

North--Main character. She's about eighteen, a human. She's an orphan, as near as everyone can figure--was abandoned in a hospital shortly after birth with only a slip of paper giving her her name. She's been raised in foster care ever since, shifting between foster homes and orphanages, never staying with anyone long. She brakes for ducklings. And chipmunks. And everything else. And she's the kind of person who will beat you over the head with a lead pipe if you threaten someone or something weaker than you. She gets into an awful lot of fights that she doesn't need to get involved in, and she's not above going up against gangs with knives and stuff. So she also gets hurt a lot, despite her relative prowess for fighting. And she has a temper. And she prefers the company of animals to people--definitely not a people-person. Currently, since at 18 she's out of the system, she's staying in an rundown building that she's on the way to converting into a no-kill animal shelter. She technically doesn't have a license, nor a degree in veterinary sciences, but she's got a serious talent for healing animals.

She's also got the Wolf Queen living inside her. The Wolf Queen escaped to the human world way back when and entered a human in order to recuperate and to shield herself from the White Lion's agents. She's kind of been passed down from parent to child since then, usually unbeknownst to the carrier--North doesn't know. It's kinda like Naruto's situation, except that the Wolf Queen has no control over North and has no desire to break out and wreak havoc. She's waiting patiently for the day she's strong enough to try and take back her kingdom. Queendom. She's also holding tightly to whatever artifact it is that she stole. Later on North and the Wolf Queen learn to communicate and share each others powers.

There's some other mysterious things about North, her lineage, and her past that I either don't know yet or don't want to reveal.

Tobias--here's one you haven't heard much about yet, if only because I don't know that much about him. He's North's classmate and acquaintance, sort of. His family is filthy rich and his parents tend to ignore him. He doesn't do that well in school, despite his aptitude for summoning (spirits, demons, etc), because he's a daydreamer. The quiet, dreamy type. He's very gentle and polite and kind, and I suppose you could say he's like Fox without the blatant eccentricity. He's neither a people person nor a non-people-person. He likes to watch people, I suppose. The world tends to fascinate him. When he was very young his parents commissioned Circles of Power (xomg original) to be tattooed on his palms, which aid him in summoning. North doesn't like him at first on principle--he has a reputation for being rich and snobby--but later learns that he is everything but arrogant.

Though his money serves as a really nice resource later when things start getting tough.

Kaiyss Shydath Murroe--ah yes, Kaiyss, the Kazriel, Fell, Fox, Gecko and E-Kail of Spirits. In other words, my favorite character. Kaiyss, who usually goes by Kai, is a half-Tieken, half-elemental hybrid. In short, he's a lightning cat. He's both a cat spirit--so he can wander around in cat form, leap tall buildings, digs seafood--and he's also lightning--so he's wicked fast, can fly and can become and control the element of lightning.

Now, you'd automatically think, oh, he can electrocute people, that's awesome. And, well, yeah, it would be awesome, if he was fighting crime or something, but no. He's a professional thief. He's an unstoppable kleptomaniac, a genius when it comes to breaking and entering. He's never been caught and never been outwitted by a security system. I mean, how do you stop a guy who can reduce himself to electrons and simply waltz in and out of the wall socket?

He goes by many names--the Lightning Cat, usually, the Thief Prince, and the Lightning Thief. He also went by Showtime, once, and Cell 0.

He doesn't steal to bring misery or because he's just an asshole. He just likes shiny things, frankly. Plus crime is about the only way a hybrid like him can survive in the human world, because Tieken-elemental hybrids are shunned in the Whodden, and hybrids of any kind are shunned by Folk and humans alike.

He's a lover, not a fighter. Loves his wife/mate--Jae--to a fault. The idea of killing someone is appalling to him--his opinion is that no one has the right to kill someone else. Although in many ways he's just a coward. The ability to outrun anyone and anything is handy, but he's not all that cocky. He hates fighting and he's terrified of golems, which are creatures made out of mud, clay, stone or glass and animated, because his powers don't work on them and it wouldn't be that hard for them to kill him. Although he does have his sense of honor. When the war in the Whodden broke out he stayed firmly on the Wolf Queen's side, though of course he made no effort to fight. He'd also willingly kill or die for Jaereiper or for something he really, truly believes in.

Although, at the end of the day, he's just a clutzy, fun-loving, food-loving, shinies-loving cat who wears a hat with a purple flower on it and who loves flying.

He's also one of the few characters ever who doesn't have a dark past. I mean, he has a past of course--he's 400 years old, of course he's going to have a past--but it's not all that dark. He's had a lot of strange adventures in his time. When he first came to the human world he was captured and used to power the capital of an empire, as kind of a living battery (there's a lot of power in him). Wasn't a fun time for him, but when he was set free at last he ended up with a traveling carnival, which is where he got the name Showtime. He met Jae in the desert--she had stolen something he was intending to steal, so he fought her and she buried him up to his neck in sand. It was love at first sight. Or so he claims.

His personality is more befitting of a dog than a cat, but I just blame it on the lightning. It makes him hyperactive.

So that's my kitty. *pets*

This is running a lot longer than I expected, so I think I'll save the other characters for the next post.

Those descriptions stole all my wind.

I'm working on Mot again, and the recent Boone scene was pretty sweet. Things are starting to move again. I'll have them off to Larotha in no time.

Pretty much all that's left now is J. She comes next. Nya-ha-ha-ha-ha...