Just north of normal, just south of strange, just west of weird, Just East of Eden.
This will be a series of loosely-related vignettes centered around the life of Lucille - a world-weary yet optimistic student on the verge of college graduation - in her sleepy hometown of East Eden. This will also be a bit of a writing challenge - one chapter a week, covering the passage of time and the changing of the seasons. If you're looking for something a bit relaxing, a bit introspective, and a bit of a look into modern-day Americana, this is for you.
On a meta level: after the success of Letter From Yokohoma, Lucille and Regina agreed to a one-year, fifty-two chapter deal.
On a meta level: after the success of Letter From Yokohoma, Lucille and Regina agreed to a one-year, fifty-two chapter deal.
Lucille? A dramatic and unreliable narrator? Never!
The genesis for this chapter came from a recent replay of Far Cry 5 (3's my favorite, but 5's pretty good too). Lucille's worldview is limited, and the unknown is scary, especially in tough times plagued with a feeling of paranoia. Did she really stumble upon some sort of Charles Manson cult or was this just the average rural house in my college days? She's facing something unfamiliar and defaults to being scared, which isn't the best, but is also human. But the fact that's she growing beyond her limited worldview, little by little, growing pains and all, is the direction I'd like to take her character in.
I can't imagine doing California north to south. But at least you're not surrounded by Masshole drivers.
Also - thanks for your support on this. Gonna be focusing on the J Novel contest so I won't be posting for a while (hope you can still sense the autumn feeling in a chapter posted in February!). Though, I do want to write one more chapter before putting these characters on ice for a few months.
So again, thanks for always reading and commenting!
(Oh hey, mention of a transmutation circle. That's one more anime we have in common.)
It is quite a country we live in, isn't it? A while back in the HF discord, some of us were talking about that US urban-rural split. I was posting maps to show how over half of Oregon's population lives in just a tiny area in the northwest of the state, and although it dominates state politics, you don't have to drive that far east to start seeing the stars and bars.
The "all of these existed in the same country as East Eden" line really brought me back to Chapter 3 and the line about Super Fortresses and Spongebob coming from the same country. The way we live, our daily experiences, the way we see the world, we're not at all united as a country. At the same time, we are united as the greatest military power the world has ever known, and if that ever completely breaks down, things are going to get real bad, real fast. Hopefully, it won't come to sides.
Reading this chapter, I like to think Lucille is just being overly dramatic. The woman had a Bernie shirt. The man was playing a pro-union song. They're probably good people. But then again, media literacy being what it is in this country, maybe they didn't know the meaning of the shirt or the song.
(I've done the California north to south. Not fun. I-5 has a lot of lanes and very, very long straight sections. There's nothing to do except continue moving forward. Maybe there's the occasional slight turn, but it can lull you into a sense of boredom. You can't help but retreat into your own mind a bit while driving, and that's scary, because it slow your reaction times, and the reaction times of the drivers all around you. and because it's straight, the speed limit is very high, so everyone's moving very fast with these slow reaction times.)
Gunsmith Cats is great. But we also got Bebop, Shamploo (I think), and probably other AS anime in common. I bet if we compared lists, we'd find there's a decent overlap.
And yeah, love for anime comes and goes. You change, market tastes change, life circumstances leave you with less leisure time. It's inevitable. The good part is, when you come back to it, you have the benefit of a handful of great series you passed on that have survived the test of time and are sill considered great, so you don't have to take as many chances on series that might not end up entertaining to you.
Thanks for reading! Great analysis, though there's one more layer - Jess Blue, the in-universe kind of fictional stand-in for the MC.
This chapter does take place in-universe, because I'm sure that if there are Lucille's wanting to live in Japan, then there are Saki's wanting to live in America. And we finally have an anime in common - I'm a big fan of Gunsmith Cats. But on the whole, I agree with Saki as well - I find myself watching a lot less anime nowadays. Still love the medium, but the whole magic of cracking open a new anime is starting to lose its appeal. Comes and goes, of course.
And the timing of this chapter is deliberate - this one is about Saki's view of America. The next one is about Lucille's.
"I want to escape anime and its consequences" would be a great T-shirt slogan.
You really went and did it. How many layers is this? I'm gonna take a guess that this isn't one of Lucille's stories and actually takes place in-universe. But even so, you've got:
- A story where the MC is kind of fictional stand-in for the author.
- And this MC wants to live a highly fictionalized Japanese high school life, as portrayed by anime.
- But in the same world, there's a Japanese high schooler who believes she is living in this anime-style Japan, but rather than anime being a reflection of Japanese society, feels that Japanese society is molded by the pop-culture tropes common in anime.
- And wants to live in a fictionalized version of America as seen through imported American pop culture, such as American cartoons and violent movies.
- As well as anime such as Gunsmith Cats, Patlabor, and California Crisis.
OK, that last one is just a bit of my own analysis. Did I miss any levels here?
Just like Lucille, I find myself agreeing with a lot of how Saki sees the world here, even if she's seeing a version of Japan that doesn't really exist. I guess I'm saying I find myself agreeing with how she sees anime. It really can be shallow and materialistic, can't it?
These grounded slice-of-life and CGDCT series are really a form of wish fulfillment for living an ordinary kind of life. (And for much of the audience, imagining the kind of wife they want.) And yet, what do they tend to focus on? Mundane activities which typically require spending lots of money. It's living vicariously in ways you can't afford in real life. Sure, it's also making the kind of friends you were too socially inept to make in high school, but the capitalist aspect can't be discounted.
I don't think this is an intentional message from the creators to the audience that they should strive to live this way. Just like the Shinzo Abe procreation thing was a joke, and not something the government was really forcing anime studios to promote. But in both cases, once you see it, it's hard to unsee it.
Glad to see your husband joining the church of Pope Evaristus 😂
You're right about fishing, it hadn't been mentioned before. Long ago, the original idea for this story would be a single narrative, but I decided it would be less pressure and easier to go for loosely-connected vignettes (which it simultaneously is and isn't). I think one of the consequences is not fully fleshing out the side characters - in a tighter story, we would've learned more about Regina in chapter 3 or 4, rather than twenty-five or so chapters in.
But after the regular craziness of Lucille's POV, it's nice to write from the perspective of someone more laidback.
And thus, despite being introverted, but because of her easygoing nature, Regina became the first pope of Lucille's church of anime.
Lots of great one liners in this one. The banana peppers. Lucille admitting she hasn't read the philosophers she's referencing. Regina having boarded last week. The Renge line. I had to share the Renge whole passage with my husband. He's a huge Renge fan, and his response was, "That's really fuckin' good. I can see why you like this novel."
And the rest of the chapter was really nice as well. It was great to see things from Regina's perspective. Why she not just puts up with Lucille and Jackie, but even likes them. We got to learn about her fishing hobby, which I don't recall being mentioned earlier, and I thought it was an odd choice at first, but as you described it, it made a lot more sense. It's an activity that can be done solo, and the slow pace really fits Regina's personality, but also, there was the nice touch about Jackie and Regina celebrating a catch with her.
I really liked seeing things more from Regina's perspective. it really helped me understand her a lot better. Now that I have a better idea of what to look for, I hope to pick up on what she's silently putting down a lot more in the upcoming chapters.
I totally feel you on both life keeping you busy and on ideas being come and go. Things have been especially busy for me this year as well, also mostly in a good way.
I'm sorry I you didn't know about the JNC contest earlier! I also learned late, but I still learned a couple months ago. I should have pinged you on Discord to make sure you knew.
For a while, I was all fired, up, thinking I would reword Cat-Eared Mage and write two new stories, just to maximize my odds for JNC. I don't expect to win, but getting professional feedback would sure be nice. But then things kept getting busier and I kinda had a moment of reflection about why I'm writing. Is it for the contests?
I started writing for my husband. Anyone else who read my books was just a bonus. But my husband has been asking for volume 2 of Cat-Eared mage for over a year now, but I keep putting it off because I'm having a hard time tying it into a solid narrative. I started Hoshinauts as a project I could noodle on while blocked on Cat-Eared Mage. The idea was, as soon as I hit writer's block on one, I'd switch to the other.
Problem is, Hoshinauts went a lot smoother. Then the contest started, and I put Cat-Eared Mage to the side while I worked on it. But halfway through the contest, my summer got really busy, and I knew my writing time was going to vanish, so I hurriedly ended Enchanted by a Witch, and for a couple months there, I felt guilty about it. Like, if I had been able to put my all into the contest, I could justify it. Otherwise, I was just stealing writing time from what my husband actually wanted to read.
All that to say, I'm going to submitted a reworked Cat-Eared Mage, and maybe, maybe one other book, depending on how much free time I get over winter vacation.
Sorry for rambling, but good luck with it all. The contest, coming up with ideas, and life outside of writing.
Thanks for reading and commenting! The climax of this little arc was the chapter before this, so I wrote this chapter as a lighter epilogue to things. I always struggle with how to utilize pop culture in my writing, but for something like this, it's nice to explore the deeper meaning behind things rather than simple name drops (which I have definitely done).
Whisper of the Heart's importance to me can't be understated. Without it, there's no Web Novel Club, there's no Just East of Eden, and I might not have even picked up writing again. There's something about it that just really draws me in. One of my goals in writing is to recapture the magic I feel when watching it.
And I appreciate your concern and care. I'm doing good. I would've liked to have written more chapters for this by now, but I recently found about the J Novel contest. Goal is to catch up on this by New Year's, which I think is doable. Just need 10 days of free time for this, but life finds a way of keeping you busy (a good kind of busy, fortunately). And the toughest part about Just East of Eden is coming up with 52 different ideas for chapters - there are weeks where I go without any, and then sometimes I come up 3 or 4 in a single day. But we'll get there.
Some days, some nights…
Man, but the Boondocks though. It may not be anime, but what a thing. A thing with its own sad production history. At least McGruder didn't work himself to death, and I hope nothing like that ever happens.
And on that note, I hope you're taking care of yourself. It's a rough world out there.
I don't feel like there's quite as much to comment on in this chapter, not that it makes it worse or anything. Having a slower chapter like this. It's still got a weighty theme, and it's got some important character development, but maybe it felt a bit lighter than usual.
I do dig scenes where characters discuss anime. Obviously I do, and Whisper of the Heart is a perfect fit for this story.
I wish we could have more of that kind of thing in published light novels. Literature has such a rich history of intertextuality, but Japan's got different laws about that kind of thing, and even in the West, the rise of making everything into an IP franchise can make it tough. Published stories have to be oblique in their references to anime. Light novel contests have rules against it.
(There's a small typo in this chapter. "Kicking and scream.")
What I can say is that the quote that opened the chapter made me tense up, but the way the chapter ended was nice and uplifting. As always, I really enjoyed reading this, and I look forward to the next one, whenever you post it. Really, take care of yourself first and foremost.
I did some self-reflection for these chapters and the smoking/drug use was a pattern that stuck out to me. On a technical level, it does serve the purpose of breaking up dialogue and stopping it from being a bunch of talking heads in a blank space. On a thematic level, I usually try to make the most emotionally-negative characters the smokers (Masako, Lucille). On the flip side, sometimes it's me just wanting to replicate how cool Cowboy Bebop makes it look. I feel like Shun straddles the line between the two. And fun fact, Masako smoking was originally just a reference to a gag in His and Her Circumstances before I decided to connect it to the larger theme.
And good point about Lucille's problems following her no matter where she ends up. That's one of the themes in Letter From Yokohama. If she had money, I could see the Japanese fantasy version of herself becoming a chain-smoking gacha whale.
Destiny Marine is more of a Royalroad thing, perhaps when the contest is over I'll post the rest of it here. Boundary Scramble was written for a Royalroad contest as well, and certainly fits in with *my* Eva fandom.
Writing is a good hobby for someone like Lucille who needs something constructive to ground her. For the first time since the story started in April, she might have finally gotten past the starting line. Only time will tell. As for the pandemic - I still remember the first days of the lockdown like it was yesterday.
And as always, thanks for reading and commenting!
"Oh come on, that's a stretch. Emitting mustard gas can't possibly be a—No, wait. I see it." - My thought process while reading this chapter
"Sometimes a girl ripping sick clouds is just a girl ripping sick clouds." - Sigmund Freud, probably.
You know, I never made the connection between Masako's troubled smoking and Lucille's troubled vaping and drug use. (And Shun's smoking? I really did take it at face value that it's a good way for an author to break up dialogue with action tags.) I just never identified it as a theme, or a tendency, and thought of it as a coincidence.
I guess, in a way, I always felt Lucille's fantasies of living in slide-of-life anime Japan would clash too hard with the unwholesome reality of her drug use, but real Japan's got unwholesome social problems too, in the form of smoking, drinking, gambling, etc. Maybe she'd have to lean on different vices, but she'd still have the same underlying disease.
So I've never read Boundary Scramble or Destiny Marine. Maybe I should one of these days, but if the description of Boundary Scramble's principal here is accurate, it appears to fit right in with Lucille's Eva fandom.
OK, I've been beating around it too much, but I simply loved the conclusions Lucille came to on her vision quest. I don't think everyone picks up writing because they're lonely, or write as therapy, but certainly many do. Even so, she's got the right attitude. Writing is fucking kickass. There doesn't have to be a single reason for it. It's less destructive than many of the other things she's doing, and if she enjoys it, all the better!
The pandemic stuff got me though. I can't believe we're like 5 months from the 4-year anniversary. Where did that time go? During the lockdown, it seemed to both stretch on forever because of the dread, but the days also blended into each other so much that, looking back on it, it's hard to say it lasted very long at all.
Anyway, so as to not leave it on a downer: I loved this chapter.
That's an absolutely fantastic idea. Won't lie, I had very few plans for Fran, but considering I still have seven more months of writing this...won't steal your idea, because it's a good one and I never would've thought of it, but Fran might find herself making more appearances in the future
Glad to hear it. I was mainly worried that if I ended up extrapolating based on what you wrote, I could end up making comments that seemed more like a commentary on you, or things in your real life. Kinda like an unwelcome psychoanalysis over the internet.
And yes, the feels ride was about Fran, mostly. I don't know if I can describe this well enough. In terms of appearance alone, Melissa looks like a healthier, more successful Lucille, right? On the surface, nbd. Fran has a type, this is just her finding someone else who fits the mold.
But there's also another possibility, that she never quite got over whatever feelings she had for Lucille, even if it was just a small crush. I've suffered through enough lower-upper or upper-middle class dinner parties with new graduates to pick up on two distinct reasons for humbleness in a new career. Either they truly are humble, or they feel trapped on a trajectory, and that trajectory feels hollow.
It's not too surprising. Sure, they had to study hard to get into a top university, but they had all the resources provided to them, especially if they were legacy admissions. They never got to choose their own path. It was cleared ahead of them by their parents. And now they're seeing the next part of the cycle. They'll work in a soulless job where they make more money and receive more accolades than they deserve, or at least more than people lower in the ladder. But the job doesn't bring them joy, it just brings them money and security, which they'll be expected to use to pave the path for the next generation, like their parents did for them. Even a lot of their interpersonal relationships feel fake, born of economic networking more than genuine feeling.
And then Fran comes back to East Eden and sees Lucille. Maybe she's not really seeing the real Lucille, but the memory of that car ride where she truly felt alive for the first time, and she wants that feeling back. Maybe not enough to try to pressure Lucille into anything, but to realize she wants to break away from the life Melissa has envisioned for the two of them. And Melissa isn't dumb. She can put enough together to at least figure out that reconnecting with her high school friends/bullies probably played a part in this, especially since Lucille is also Fran's type.
Completely understandable. I'm feeling the JNC deadline too, and I'm just revising something I already wrote. Best of luck!