Cynthia Ahmar

I see that now. Meh, it was my fault for getting excited and skipping down the list when I saw Hetalia. I only read the first few questions posed before I saw that and began scanning what other fandoms you'd selected, which gave me a different impression for what the meme was (since the first questions were the ones about those you enjoy, aka "steady" "old flame" questions).

I have heard of East of Eden, but I don't believe I have heard much of the rest.

Well, Hetalia probably either appeals to you or it doesn't. I would imagine there are few inbetweeners with that series. The crack and personification of countries is something I enjoy.

I can understand that. It does revolve heavily around that genre, so yes, if you don't like ninjas at all, then even a new way of looking at them isn't appealing.

Yes, X was delayed because of various social issues. Gouhou Drug stopped because the magazine it was published in ceased publication. Although it might seem to us like a guarantee for a group with proven success to convince someone else to publish it, it is still challenging to shift a series to a new magazine. In the case of Gohou Drug, it may be they are ready to continue the story, but have not yet found the correct new outlet for publishing the story. CLAMP has spoken about resuming it in the near future after TRC and XXXHolic are finished, so it's likely a matter of finding and finalizing a new publisher who is willing to serialize the rest of the series, since barely any of what they intended it to run for has yet been published.

Maybe it's because I work as both as writer and an editor, but I sympathize with the tenuous process of publishing. It can be tricky to find the right editorial department since they work so closely with the artists and trickier still if it's a pick up from another mag (e.g. editors have to ask themselves, how do they work out the copyright issues with the now defunct magazine for the earlier work? If they can publish the previously published material, do they sacrifice the page space to begin it all over again at the risk of aggravating already impatient current fans as a trade off to gain new fans, or do they pick up where the other left off hoping readers gravitate to their mag and aren't alienated by the abrupt start? ). I would imagine CLAMP is very picky about their release schedule given their perchance for going weeks without releasing anything in order to gather new data, and it takes a certain kind of editor and magazine to allow that flex--they still have to fill those pages every week or every two weeks, so finding another series to trade in and out like that with a more erratic publishing schedule is yet another challenge.

I personally would much rather they write where their heart is at the moment rather than forcing out an ending or continuation of something that they are not prepared to move forward with. Sure, it's frustrating as hell that X sits unfinished, but if it's the difference between having TRC now and getting the real ending to X they wanted to show with the right publisher versus getting an edited ending that would pass censors on the not-so-right publisher, I'm heavily on board with the former. Plus, X/1999 has a movie and a TV series, both with separate, unique endings, so really frustrated fans that just want an ending now can get a bit of a temporary reprieve by watching one of those. And it' s not just their postponed series that have frustrating lapses. They frequently take breaks from TRC and XXXholic, sometimes at very climatic times when you really want to know what comes next. That is really frustrating, but when you come to the series later when it's already published in volumes you have straight, continuous quality. Their story doesn't suffer precisely because they take those breaks when they need to. And as a writer, I'll take the wait, painful and infuriating though it may be, over a sacrifice in quality any day. :)