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traincat · 3 years

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I’ve been trying to piece together a few things from your Twitter and Tumblr posts alike and still can’t make heads or tales of things, so would you mind helping out a FF & spideytorch noob? 1) what is currently happening with Johnny in the comics? (I’ve fallen head over heels for this guy, largely all your doing) 2) when’s the last time he and Peter have interacted, canon wise? (And do you think upcoming interactions are likely?) 3) your thoughts on if they’ll have him come out in the near future? (has that ‘biggest change to the fantastic four’ teaser come to pass yet?) Love all your content, thank you!

I'd say no problem but then I started thinking about this current run again and got a headache. But yes, I can do that to save you from reading it, because it is very largely not good.

So I don't think it's unfair to just flat out say the current Fantastic Four run is not very good, largely due to writer Dan Slott's efforts. Slott was previously on Amazing Spider-Man for 10 years, to mixed opinions, but a large portion of Spider-Man fandom, myself included, blames him near singlehandedly for the decline in quality of Spider-Man books over those ten years. I will say, in the interest of fairness, that Slott as a writer has an incredible fondness for the Spider-Man/Human Torch relationship, and that a lot of the recent teamups and interactions between them have been written or co-written by him. So it's all not all negative here. But in general, I personally find Slott's more recent comics (the last seven-ish years especially) to be badly plotted out, messily characterized disasters that feature characters written with all the emotion of a cardboard cutout. That's me putting it nicely.

To explain this fully, you have to understand the position Fantastic Four comics were in from the years 2015 through 2018, both in the fictional 616 universe and in the real publishing world. Following the 2015 Secret Wars event (great if you want some Johnny angst in the background of your plot), the Fantastic Four were disbanded -- Reed, Sue, and their many biological and found family children were presumed dead but in reality were remaking the multiverse, unable, for a reason that was never clearly defined, to reach home. Ben and Johnny were left on Earth. They had an unspecified falling out, likely due to Reed and Sue's absence, and went their separate ways -- Ben joined the Guardians of the Galaxy and went to space. Johnny was featured on both Inhumans and Avengers books. What's notable about this period is that it's the first time since 1961 that there was no Fantastic Four book being published by Marvel. Now the real world reason behind this is both complicated and extremely petty: Marvel really wanted the Fantastic Four film rights. Marvel denied this explanation at the time, stating that the reason was sales motivated, but it was a thoroughly flimsy excuse and Jonathan Hickman, writer of 2015's Secret Wars and overseer of the current X-Men plot, gave an interview saying the decision was film rights motivated. This decision kept the Fantastic Four books off the shelves for three years, up until the Disney-Fox merger, which secured the X-Men and Fantastic Four rights for Disney's Marvel Studios. Marvel then announced that the Fantastic Four book would be returning. So that's a little bit of background as to the precarious place the Fantastic Four currently occupy in the Marvel universe -- it's worth noting that this year is their 60th anniversary, and Marvel has done very little for it. Compare this to the X-Men, whose film rights Marvel also obtained during the Disney-Fox merger, and whose books are currently dominating the publishing lineup. The Fantastic Four definitely occupy an unpopular position, one Marvel themselves is at least partially responsible for forcing them into.

But to move back into the actual content of the book -- the readjustment period Slott wrote reintroducing the Fantastic Four into the Marvel universe can be described as clumsy, at best. It's never fully explained why Reed, Sue, and the kids couldn't return to Earth, something that was explored in Chip Zdarsky's 2017 Marvel Two-in-One, which featured Ben, Johnny, and Doom on a multiversal roadtrip to try and find their family and which I on the whole recommend, despite it having an awkward ending due to being cut short by Slott's announced Fantastic Four main title.

(Marvel Two-in-One 2017 #4)

Instead, the Fantastic Four return to a Marvel universe a little different than how they left it, with the Baxter Building -- formerly the offices of Parker Industries, the company Doc Ock started in Peter's body during Superior Spider-Man that Peter inherited after his defeat and then lost spectacularly when he trashed his own company to fight nazis (good for him) -- occupied by a different fantastic foursome in a plot that goes nowhere and does nothing. This is somewhat emblematic of the early days of Slott's run -- he introduces ideas that fail to go anywhere, including Johnny's rekindled relationship with his other best friend and former college roommate, Wyatt Wingfoot, who he was seen being very cuddly with in the early issues.

(FF 2018 #1) A small group of Fantastic Four fans have argued for a while that if Marvel was to have Johnny come out, a relationship with Wyatt would feel very natural -- they're already close, with Wyatt being an important Fantastic Four supporting character since the '60s. I have some further analysis here on the conspiracy theory that Johnny and Wyatt were supposed to be in relationship at the beginning of this run but that that plot was, for whatever reason, nixed. I don't know that I entirely believe this theory, for the record -- but I do think the pieces line up remarkably well.

Anyway, that didn't/hasn't yet happened, obviously. Slott instead for the most part put Johnny on the back burner for the beginning of his run, up until the Spyre arc, which I have reason to believe is the main story he pitched that he credits with securing him the Fantastic Four title. The Spyre arc suggests that the Fantastic Four's failed space exploration during which they got their powers wasn't just to beat the commies to the moon, as Lee and Kirby envisioned (simpler days), but to reach a specific planet outside of our galaxy. When the team sets out to conquer this mission, they arrive at the planet, but are quickly captured. The planet, they find out, operates like a soulmate AU -- everyone has a fated person that they are matched to via a gold armband. Reed and Sue are soulmates (and Ben is confined to an underground subterranean with the other monsters, because this is a Fantastic Four comic) while it's discovered! Shocker! That Johnny is actually the soulmate of the one the planet's inhabitants, a winged woman named Sky, with the suggestion that this is both why Johnny's previous relationships have never worked and why he loves space exploration -- he was just trying to get to his Soulmate TM.

(FF 2018 #15) "What's going on here? Where are my clothes?" As you can see, this didn't start off super great, with Johnny being separated from his family, stripped naked, and put in Sky's bed with a soulmate armband slapped on him. Did I mention they're only removable if your soulmate takes it off for you? And that Sky has consistently refused despite Johnny asking her to? Yeah. It's bad. (I think it's important to note Johnny's long history as a victim of assault plays into this narrative, whether or not Slott is personally holding that in mind while writing, which I don't believe he is. cw in the linked post for discussions of sexual assault.) There's an additional issue here in that Slott has a history of problematic writing regarding women of color, featuring characters he's created to act as love interests being oversexualized, infantilized, villainized, or some mix of all three, with two examples of this phenomena being Cindy Moon and Lian Tang, both of whom he introduced in quick succession in Amazing Spider-Man. Slott certainly didn't have to write Sky as manipulative or controlling towards Johnny, but that's what he chose to do, and that factors into the bigger picture of unfortunate themes in his writing.

Sky returns to Earth with the Fantastic Four despite Johnny appearing unenthused about the idea and initially generally reluctant to interact with her. Apparently they went on a few dates after this and kind of made up. I don't know because I stopped reading for about ten issues in there but I feel confident I missed very little. It's hard to talk about the Sky plot without referencing Johnny's previous interactions with a character named Lyja, a Skrull whose relationship to Johnny I have a long breakdown of here. It's doubly hard, because Lyja actually showed back up in Fantastic Four during this plot. Lyja's modus operandi has remained consistent throughout almost all of her appearances, which I guess makes sense, because she literally has no storylines that do not involve her being obsessed with Johnny, and this recent story isn't any different: Lyja shows up, Lyja disguises herself as another woman in Johnny's life to get close to Johnny, Lyja gets caught and claims it was all fine because she did it for love. This time she disguised herself as Sky.

(FF 2018 #32) Not gonna lie, kind of proud of him for this one. That's one of my problems with Slott -- very occasionally, he busts out good moments, only to undermine them with the rest of his narrative.

In the same issue, Alicia Masters, the first woman Lyja impersonated in order to get close to Johnny, uses her supervillain stepfather's radioactive clay to control Lyja's mind and send her back to space, and I do think she utilized girl power when she did this. Johnny, left reeling after Lyja's latest attempts to trick him into a relationship, ends this issue by sleeping with Victorious, Dr. Doom's right hand woman.

I know she pegged him. I know it. This scene was a little controversial in Johnny fandom, because a lot of people viewed it as Johnny cheating on Sky and thought that that action was out of character for Johnny. I'm personally of a little different opinion, which is that regardless of whether or not you view Johnny and Sky in a committed enough relationship that Johnny's tryst would count as infidelity when all Johnny and Sky are bound by are magic plot soulmate bracelets, I think Lyja's involvement changes things significantly when it comes to Johnny's characterization. All of Johnny's "playboy" periods, if we can call them that, coincide directly with Lyja having been in and then left his life again, which I think makes a certain amount of sense -- it's Johnny trying to wrest control back after a situation where he had none. None of this is explicitly canon, I have to note, but sometimes in comics you have to do the work yourself. So I think this is a case of something being accidentally extremely in character that Slott accidentally stumbled into because he had these love triangles in mind, not because he put a lot of thought into it.

Speaking of love triangles! Johnny sleeping with Victorious gets more complicated when Dr. Doom announces his intent to marry Victorious -- not because he has any romantic interest in her (this engagement caused a lot of uproar in Fantastic Four because Victorious had been previously referred to as being like Doom's adopted daughter) but in order to install her as Latverian regent in his absence. I'm not going to lie, I love a political wedding. Victorious, for some reason, thinks Doom will be deeply upset that she slept with some closeted blond twink and the member of the Fantastic Four he views least as an enemy and more as an annoyance. Johnny, who Sky is currently not talking to because she "felt" him sleeping with Victorious through their magic plot soulmate bracelets, also feels nervous about Doom finding out about this, which I guess is slightly more valid. Anyway, for some completely ridiculous reason, Victorious decides the best time to tell Doom about this little indiscretion is when they're standing at the altar, which coincidentally the Fantastic Four are also standing at, because Doom asked Reed to be his best man in a not at all homoerotic little setup involving midnight swordfighting and Reed slipping Doom's emerald ring onto his own finger. Sorry to sidetrack into DoomReed territory here but it's just like. It's just a lot.

(FF 2018 #33) Also, Ben walked the bride down the aisle. :,) Look at his gigantic hand.

Anyway then Doom decides he's going to kill everyone in a completely reasonable and not at all overblown reaction to Johnny and Zora having what was most likely both disappointing for Zora and weepy for Johnny sex. And that brings us up to where Fantastic Four comics left us yesterday -- in answer to your "big change" question, that's most likely coming up in the next issue, so it hasn't come to pass yet.

Having gotten all that out of the way -- the last time Johnny and Peter interacted canon-wise was in the recent Empyre Fallout Fantastic Four, at the end of the Empyre event:

It was cute! Slott does right good interactions between them. This is possibly the Stockholm Syndrome talking. I don't know if more interactions are likely imminent -- the Empyre event was fairly recent. On the other hand, Slott does like writing interactions between them. So I'd give it about a 50/50 shot. I was skimming the letter page in the latest issue and someone wrote in asking if Peter was likely to appear in the pages of Fantastic Four again any time soon, so there is definitely a demand.

As for Johnny coming out -- I don't know. It's not a call I feel comfortable making at this moment, which I guess means I wouldn't bet money on it. I'd like to say yes, especially because I think Slott set up, whether that was his intention or more likely not, several good places in his run where Johnny could have come out. The beginning, when he's implied to be living with Wyatt again and where he and Wyatt are paralleled against Ben and Alicia. Ben's bachelor party, where Johnny laments not finding the right person -- specifically person and not woman -- and where Ben tells him to "be brave, Johnny Storm." And the soulmate planet plot, where I think could have had a very different and much better ending if Johnny had told Sky that she couldn't be his romantic soulmate, because he knows he wants to be with a man. But those are just places that I think would have made good opportunities for a coming out story. Instead, Johnny's been involved (dubiously) with three different women over the space of the last 10 issues, which is more heterosexuality at one time than he's been confronted with in the last 60 years. So my thoughts are still that it's going to happen eventually, but quite possibly not anytime soon.

Hope that helps! And that my incredibly long answer about what's currently going on with Johnny in comics sheds some light on things!

#johnny storm #traincat talks comics #*replies #long post/#wednesday spoilers

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potteresque-ire · 3 years

Link

Not sure if this has circulated before, but here’s a link to Henry Jenkin’s reactions to 227, largely as responses to an interview he did with Sanlian Lifeweek magazine (三聯生活周刊), a publication modelled after TIME magazine and published under China Press Publishing group (中國出版集團), the largest and state-owned publisher in China. The magazine asked for Jenkin’s opinions on the fandom-related aspects of 227 back in March, 2020. Henry Jenkins, as many may already know, is among the most renowned scholars of (Western) fan culture ... if not the most renowned.

Personally, I find this article to be quite limited in perspective, because 227 had a significant non-fandom-oriented, sociopolitical component ~ and hence its scope, its chaos, its damage. IMO, 227 stopped being a fan war, stopped being about solos, cpfs, and even Gg the moment AO3 was shut down ~ the powerful Chinese state had intervened, and the incident necessarily became a political incident. That One Fic on AO3, the conflict between solos and cpfs about whether and where That Fic should exist was at most a lighter left at the scene of what would become the blaze; it wasn’t even responsible for igniting the first fire. Most i-turtles (i-fruits?) are probably aware too at this point: if fan wars are sufficient to start 227, then there wouldn’t have been a 227 ~ because 227 would have been every date of the year.

Fan culture is fundamentally transgressive, and what that means can only be defined in the context of the subculture’s “mainstream” sociopolitical and cultural environment. I therefore find the article’s attempt to transplant Western fan culture’s observations / theories / analysis / conclusions to the incident without explicitly comparing, addressing in depth the differences of the pre- and post-transplant environment to be ... prone to rejections (as organs are after transplantations!)—exclusion from being useful or valid. And this article was very short on such comparisons or address. Jenkins being a fandom expert aside (and he was careful about not treading outside his area of expertise), early “antis” of 227 presented themselves as crusaders for the freedom of speech and, by late March when this article was published, the heated debates surrounding the incident on Chinese social media had already led to embarrassment for multiple powerful state publications. It was probably a wise choice to not make another dive into the political aspects of the incident.

Being a new(-ish) turtle who joined the fandom a full half-year after 227, I’ve been backtracking, trying to really understand the incident, which remains very much beyond comprehension in many aspects. The discussions I’ve dug up that have most fascinated me have been those in non-fandom spaces, by non-fandomers / politics enthusiasts who barely knew who Gg was, who didn’t know That One Fic involved more than one idol and had zero knowledge about solos vs cpfs. In these discussions, “antis” are not referred to as “antis” because while the action of the so-called “227 coalition” was to kill Gg’s career, that wasn’t considered its ultimate goal ~ its ultimate goal was to warn whoever tried to clamp down the freedom of expression that their opposition was strong enough, populous to fight back and take away whatever, whoever those who attempted the clamp-down care the most about. In this case, “Gg fans”—I put this in quotes because eventually, no one would know who would lurk behind those pro-Gg Weibo IDs (and the anti-Gg ones as well)—were the perceived enemies of creative freedom. Gg, assumed to be the one, the symbol of what “GG fans” cared about the most, naturally became the target of the coalition.

Gg wasn’t special in that sense ~ and that was perhaps, the saddest thing I found about this incident as a Gg fan (without quotation marks); Gg could be any idol who achieved top fame at the moment, who had enough fans to make the point known. The coalition was therefore not “anti-Gg” in its ideological sense. It was anti the fan circle culture that had cemented Gg’s popularity, that had already been known to deal extremely poorly with dissent—complaints had been abound that c-ent was no longer fun for bystanders because the latter could issue no critique, not even doubt, about an idol without the fear of being reported, torn down by fans. The coalition eventually grew to include anti the many happenings, the many censorships and imprisonments in the past few years that had silenced the creative crowd in China, happenings people dared not speak about beyond a loud grumbling ...

The coalition tried to take down Gg, because they couldn’t take down the force that had shut down AO3, that was truly responsible for the silencing. They played the Hunger Games in the Weibo arena instead of challenging Who The Real Enemy Was, because some might not have given much thought about The Enemy; some might have thought the Enemy too invincible to be worth the effort; some might have got too carried away by their blood thirst, the cruel schadenfreude of shredding a beautiful, successful young man into pieces, and forgot why they were there in the first place ...

And that was only the political side of 227. 227 was also widely suspected to have a commercial component, which added another layer to the symbolism behind Gg the Idol ~ pretty much as soon as 227 happened, netizens investigated, tried to uncover the chain of capital behind Gg. With the scent of money was the memory of filth associated with it, in a country not exactly unknown for its corrupt business practices. Much like in The Book of Exodus in the Bible, the Idol is believed to be forged with gold; it is ungodly, tainted. Whether Gg the Person was identical to Gg the Idol, Gg the Symbol mattered to few. That Gg *was* a person seemed lost to many ...

I’ll have to dive into the non-fandom aspects of 227 with more rigour. As much as I'd love to leave 227 behind, every time I see Gg, I see its legacy on his face, in his smile, and perhaps, I’m not the only one ~ ADLAD cast him as Patient #5 because of 227′s effect on him. Put it another way, 227 is already modifying, writing Gg’s career trajectory ~ a trajectory that is undoubtedly under scrutiny by many who wish to duplicate his success but circumvent his pain. And every time I see a young idol—Gg, Dd, and anyone else—I wonder if the hurt of 227 can happen to them (again) because the crux of the incident has never been resolved; the oppression and silencing have remained strong as ever.

Anyway (sorry for the rant) ... what I found noteworthy about this article was the quotes the magazine highlighted in its published form (in Chinese), which weren’t highlighted by Jenkins on his own website. They reflected what the magazine would like to be the take-home messages of the interview. I’ve listed them below; all of which had Jenkins as the speaker:

[Pie Note: About Real Person Fiction (RPF) in Western fandoms]

“American fans often do have some shared norms about what is and is not appropriate to write, mostly having to do with protecting the privacy of other people in the star’s life. Writing about the star is seen as fair game; writing about their family members is not.”

---

[Pie Note: About GG being “cast” as a transgender woman in The One Fic that started the incident; gender in fandom]

“We write fan fiction as a form of speculation and exploration. For some people, it may be one of the few spaces in the culture where they can express who they are, what they are feeling, what they are desiring. And for others, it is a place of “what if” where they explore in fantasy things they would not necessarily desire in reality.”

---

[Pie Note: Whether GG should be held responsible for his fans’ behaviour]

“Under these circumstances, I would not hold a performer responsible for his fans’ behaviors but the performer is responsible for their own behavior and fans may respond negatively to performers who over-react to the existence of alternative fantasies and insult or hector their audiences.”

---

[Pie Note: About AO3 and why fans were so upset about its closure] “Keep in mind that AO3 is a particular kind of platform. Alongside Wikipedia, AO3 is one of the greatest accomplishments of participatory culture in the digital era.”

---

[Pie Note: About the “problematic” content on AO3]

“Among my findings were that fan fiction sites can be a valuable space for young people to acquire skills (and receive feedback) on their writing from more experienced writers who share these same passions ... That said, while teens have participated in fandom, a large part of those on AO3 are adults, engaging in adult conversations on adult topics.”

---

[Pie Note: About media text in the new media era]

“First, I would stress the proliferation of media texts at the current moment ... We have access to a much broader range of media content than ever before and in this context, fans play a constructive role in curating that content, helping some shows get greater visibility ... Second, these texts have become more malleable”

---

[Pie Note: About idols not producing “good” media texts]

“Rather, the question should be what are fans finding meaningful about these performers and the texts they generate. I start from the premise that human beings do not engage in meaningless activities. I may not immediately recognize why something is meaningful but my job as a scholar is to understand why cultural materials are meaningful to the people who cherish them.”

---

My understanding of this selection of quotes is this: this state publication (as others) was quite ready to forgive Gg, to put this incident behind. It could choose to not publish this interview; it could choose to leave out certain quotes, or not do the highlighting that cast both AO3 and Gg in a positive / innocent light. But it did all these things. This article furthers my impression that the state never intended 227 to blow up the way it did, and that it did—enough for stories about it to be found in non-China websites, and in English—was what I’m still trying to comprehend. 227 was, admittedly, how I was first introduced to Gg beyond Wei Wuxian. And as I got to know Gg, like Gg, my want to understand 227 only becomes stronger, perhaps because only through comprehension I feel I can find peace for the GG fan (again, without quotation marks) in me.

Maybe I should email Dr Jenkins and ask if he’s looking for a PhD candidate. 5 years of research and thinking ... maybe that’s what it’ll take.

I feel I’ve already started anyway.

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

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putschki1969 · 6 years

Text

Time for another FAQ

In recent days/weeks I have been asked a lot of questions and many of them boil down to the same thing so I thought it would be a good idea to combine them to make a sort of FAQ. Some of my replies will most likely contain a bit of speculation (which I usually tend to avoid), I will try to keep it to a minimum.

What are your future plans for this blog? Don’t worry, I will pretty much do the same as always. I will continue to spread the Kalafina love. Kalafina is a gift that keeps on giving. We have ten years worth of awesome music, gorgeous pictures and fascinating interviews. There is still a lot to discover for many people who only recently became fans. There’s also so much to re-discover for fans who have been part of the fandom from the get-go. Aside from the usual stuff, I will of course post about Wakana’s and Hikaru’s solo acitivities. I am eager to see what’s in store for them and I will 100% support them along their chosen paths. The same goes for Keiko (obviously!). Finally, if there is certain content you are dying to see on my blog (any particular scans, translations, pictures, etc), I will do my very best to provide it.

Will I change my blog name? No, this is and will always be a blog dedicated to “Everything Kalafina”.

Why do I continue to tag everything as Kalafina? I guess this question mostly refers to Wakana’s and Hikaru’s solo stuff. While their solo activities might be unrelated to Kalafina I will most likely continue to tag those posts as Kalafina. First of all, in my eyes there will always be a connection to Kalafina when it comes to Wakana, Keiko and Hikaru. No matter what they do next, Kalafina took up more than ten years of their life so there is no way I cannot associate Kalafina with them. Also, so far it seems like they are not trying to cut ties with their past. Both Wakana and Hikaru are fully aware of their past and treasure their time as part of Kalafina, they have openly talked about this and neither Wakana nor Hikaru have shied away from performing Kalasongs. So yeah, using the Kalafina tag seems fitting to me. Plus, I think it’s easier for casual fans to find my posts because they are more likely to check out the Kalafina tag.

Thoughts on Wakana’s debut single being released under Victor Entertainment? It’s no surprise actually, Back in 2017 Kalafina were moved from SME Records to SACRA MUSIC - a label specialising in anison music. Of course that wouldn’t be suitable for Wakana’s solo career especially since she is not doing anything anime-related as of right now. I am definitely glad she is not going back to SME Records since they have always been quite restrictive. I think Victor Entertainment was the next best choice. After all, Victor Entertainment (JVC Entertainment/Flying Dog = the anime division of Victor Entertainment) has been releasing Yuki Kajiura’s music for almost 20 years now. There are also lots of other noteworthy artists releasing under them directly (or one of their many record labels) so I think it’s a pretty good label for Wakana. I am kinda hoping she will go on a similar route as KOKIA who has been releasing her music under Victor Entertainment since 2001.

What activities can we expect from Wakana in the future? I doubt she will do much for her solo debut single (but maybe there will be some fan club exclusive events). I think we can expect a tour following the release of her solo album this spring (and I will definitely do my best to attend one of those lives). I also hope she will do something for Christmas this year (a few acoustic lives for example - maybe she will be joined by an orchestra again?). And like I said before, I would really love her to take a similar route as KOKIA. Maybe she can travel to Europe and have a few concerts here? Maybe she can release a cover album? The possibilties are endless.

Thoughts on Wakana’s new blog being restricted to Harmony members? I don't mind actually, I am a member after all and I will continue to be one as long as Wakana remains under Space Craft. Plus, from a business point of view, it’s a smart move so I understand why they are doing it. It’s their way of trying to bribe/draw in/win back members. Most Harmony members probably didn’t intend to renew their membership coming April but taking this and possible other exclusive content into account, they might rethink their decision. Whether this actually works remains to be seen. At any rate, I doubt her blog will permanently be member exclusive but we can probably expect it to stay like that until April at the very least. Some fans fear that this will make it harder to promote Wakana as solo artist but quite frankly I don’t think it will make much of a difference. Wakana’s die-hard supporters among Kalafina fans will buy her releases either way and aside from that Wakana doesn’t really have much of a fanbase yet.

Thoughts on Kalafina’s fan club “Harmony” being turned into Wakana’s fan club? It makes sense. Why waste effort and money to create something new if you already have an existing fan club? It has taken them some time but they have changed quite a bit already (the header doesn’t feature Kalafina anymore, all past videos related to Kalafina or Hikaru are gone, Wakana has her own blog and is no longer posting on Kalafina’s LINE blog etc). There is still a lot to be done though, they should change the name (Harmony just doesn’t fit) and remove the remaining Kalafina parts. Right now the look of the fan club suggests that Wakana is the “only remaining member” of Kalafina and that’s just not how it is. A change of name would maybe help get rid of that misconception.

When is Wakana going to leave Space Craft? Who knows. Judging from what we have seen in the past year it’s obviously not that hard to leave Space Craft. Yes, she might just be waiting for her contract to expire but I really doubt her contract would expire that much later than Keiko’s or Hikaru’s. To sum it up, I believe she chooses to remain under the agency for the time-being, I very much doubt anyone or anything is forcing her to stay...She probably feels safest in a familiar environment and once she has tested out the waters she might move on.

What will happen to Kalafina’s Official LINE blog? Hikaru has chosen the best route possible by starting her own twitter and I think it’s a good idea that Wakana now has her own “blog” as well, that line just had to be drawn and it would have felt weird for her to continue using the Kalafina blog all by herself. Plus, it might have forced them to delete all the Keiko and Hikaru content. As of right now the blog has pretty much lost its purpose and there is no reason to continue it. While I really hope they will not just delete it, I am not ruling out that possibility. At some point they might have no choice but to shut it down...In the past few months I have been preparing for the worst case. Aside from saving all the pictures to my hard-drive I have been working on a printable version of the blog that contains each and every single blog post by Wakana, Keiko and Hikaru (as soon as that’s done I will provide download links of course - still need to work on the formatting but everything is already copy/pasted). A fan on weibo has also compiled static html pages of each blog post so even if anyone decided to delete the LINE blog, we are safe. It would be a real shame to see almost 9 years worth of Kalafina blogging suddenly disappear.

Do you think “Kalafina” should be used to promote Wakana’s single in the media? I can’t believe there are still people out there who think Wakana shouldn’t be allowed to use her “Kalafina fame” to promote her solo career. They are accusing her of riding the wave of success and not being able to stand on her own two feet. I am sorry for my language but that’s utter bullshit. No matter what happens in the future, Kalafina will always be a significant part of her life and that is not something she should hide or be ashamed of, quite the opposite actually, it is something she can be proud of.

Do you think we will hear anything from Keiko soon? We don’t know why she went AWOL but I believe it was her choice and not some sort of work ban or whatever. We also know that she is doing well and for me that’s the only thing that counts. IF Keiko chooses to return to the public eye (which I really hope she does) then I think this spring or early summer would be a good time for her. It will be exactly one year since she disappeared and we all know that April is always the perfect time for a big change or a new start (at least in Japan). Let’s wait and see.

When can we expect any announcements from Hikaru? Hmmm, I don’t know, I have a feeling it might be soon. Aside from posting cute selfies and food pictures Hikaru is often tweeting wordly wisdoms related to making decisions in life so I feel like like there is a lot going on behind the scenes right now. Her new profile pic and header might also be a sign for a big change. The picture looks like it was taken professionally, possibly for some sort of promotion? Maybe it’s just me but Hikaru’s photo reminds me a lot of Sayaka Yamamoto’s pictures promoting her upcoming solo career. I randomly came across her pictures the other day and I can’t help but feel like there is a similar vibe. Hikaru also recently followed Koji Saito on twitter, he is the producer of Animelo Summer Live. While I wouldn’t say it’s out of the ordinary for Hikaru to follow him - after all Kalafina have worked together with him a couple of times in the past - I think it could be a sign of future collaborations. I could definitely see Hikaru taking part in an event like that to push her solo career. Oh well, we will see...

Will Wakana, Keiko and Hikaru ever work with Yuki Kajiura again? It’s certainly possible but I don’t think it will happen any time soon (especially when it comes to Wakana and Hikaru). For the time-being it really seems like they want to focus on fulfilling their individual dreams and Yuki Kajiura obviously wishes for them to do their own thing. Many fans mainly see Kalafina as Yuki Kajiura’s project, a “tool” to bring her music to life and to a certain extent, that’s what they have always been. Yuki Kajiura is aware of that and Wakana, Keiko and Hikaru know it as well. It’s nothing bad per se, YK and the members of Kalafina have profited a lot from this arrangement, they have mutual respect for each other. But it’s about time Wakana, Keiko and Hikaru get a chance to freely express themselves in order to realise their full potential This part of YK’s interview summarises the situation perfectly and it showcases how iimportant it is for everyone to go their separate ways for a while.

――After becoming independent from your agency, you have distanced yourself in your role as Kalafina’s producer. What do you think of your ten years working together? [Kajiura]I feel nothing but gratitude towards them for continuing to sing so well for me up until now. Being stuck as part of the same unit, not being able to express a single wish (regarding songs), not able to do anything except sing the songs they are given with all their strength. Under conditions that are extremely inconvenient for a singer, they have been singing for ten years, not once getting the chance to sing the songs they wanted to sing. “They are so easy to work with…” “They are really amazing...” For ten years straight, they have always taken their work seriously and their singing has become progressively better. I am sure it was difficult for them to sing genres they had never listened to before. On top of that, I have treated the three of them mercilessly with all my demands; I think my demanding nature caused quite the internal struggle for them.

I hope I was able to answer most questions. If you feel like your question didn’t receive a reply, please don’t hesitate to send an ask/a message.

#kalafina #reply #wakana #keiko #hikaru #my blog #long text post #yuki kajiura

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