SSBB #61 Something Old, Something New
I’m not dead, I swear. I just got caught up in the complex and time-consuming process of utterly failing to buy a house. And then it felt weird to update the blog after so long, so I just kept putting it off. And now here we are.
Luckily, Shousetsu Bang*Bang did not attempt to buy a house (although what a great house it would be if they did!), and were thus, of course, able to put out the newest issue waaaaaay back on Monday, which, coincidentally, is also the day I finished reading the issue. I have no good reason for why I didn’t write the summaries earlier than this, but if you need one, then I say to thee, “Parent-Teacher Conferences.” One parent brought me booze. She said it wasn’t a bribe.
But that’s neither here nor there.
On to the Issue! The theme was Something Old, Something New, intended as a tribute to the legalizing of gay marriage last June.
There were only five stories, but they were good ones.
Down On My Knees: Two men, strangers, meet in a bar. Pretty predictable, for me, at least. But it was hot and sweet.
Employee engagement: Perhaps the most complex tale of the bunch. On the surface it’s just a couple of coworkers, but a little deeper and there are a few plot lines that twist softly…I don’t know, perhaps “complex” is the wrong word, but it has a large number of characters for a short story, and they are all dimensional and it was just really good.
Layer Cake. Woah. Super hot. A baker of cakes, and an affianced couple looking to order one, except they are both terrible groom-zillas, and have changed their minds just at closing time one night…
The Happy Knot You Tie: This one I found confusing. It was heartwarming, to be sure, and once Things were explained it made more sense, and…maybe there is another story in this world somewhere, in which case we already knew the slew of characters, which would greatly help with the confusion, but as it stood this story was decent and sweet, but not fantastic.
Bachelors and Bouquets: Two parts. One single man, four engaged friends, one summer. A large number of characters were dumped on our heads right in the first scene, and I won’t admit the depths of my confusions over them here. I will say that they didn’t matter all that much, and after shrugging the whole passel of them off with the summary line above, my enjoyment of the story increased immensely, and I really loved it. It was a good balance of all the things you might like to see in a wedding romance story, without actually being any of them.
