The meme that's been going around, and which I think probably could be pretty useful for my stories: ask me why I gave any of my fics the title I did, and I'll explain.
Although hey, I'll throw in this one too: Name a character or pairing! Watch me ramble on about it!
Again, I have to complain about my computer crash: I usually always save all the notes I make while outlining a story and choosing a title, but I can no longer refer to my ones from Three Times True.
As it is, I can only say that I appear to have somehow miscopied the quote I was using; it shouldn't be 'three times true' but 'ten times true'. Or at least that's what google's suggesting, and I don't remember well enough to be sure what else might be the explanation.
The quote (I'm pretty sure) is from Measure for Measure: "Nay, it is ten times true, for truth is truth / To th' end of reck'ning."
I adored how Hero told the same story several times, but with different spins each time; it's like a fandom with AUs built right in. While the movie pretty clearly intends for you to interpret the last version as being the true one, I like the idea that they all are equally possible. For the title, I was looking for something that conveyed the same sort of idea as this quote from the Sandman: "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." except, uh, in a form that could be a title.
...that was a long explanation. Okay, Goku and Sanzo! I love anything involving Sanzo, of course, but this aspect really makes my heart hurt. I love how Goku is the one who can totally call Sanzo on his shit: one of my favorite moments is when Sanzo is, essentially, torturing the scorpion youkai when the rest of the ikkou burst in on him and are shocked. It's Goku who recalls Sanzo to himself by saying, "Hit me with the fan and call me stupid monkey. That's what Sanzo's like" (or something, I'm too lazy to go get the manga). But the part I really love- and that took me forever to pick up on- is that that's the last thing Sanzo and Goku say to each for nearly an entire volume, between Sanzo getting poisoned and Kougaiji showing up, and Goku going crazy, and Sanzo spending several days in a coma. But after all that? Goku is depressed and worrying, and the first thing Sanzo does, for seemingly no reason, is HIT HIM WITH A FAN AND CALL HIM STUPID MONKEY. And in this context, I don't think there's a clearer way to say "I'm still Sanzo and you're still Goku, and that's all that matters".
It's true love, I swear. I don't worry much about the different interpretations of the relationship- platonic or romantic- because it almost strikes me as bigger than that; it somehow encompasses all possible choices. Which makes sense, given the fact that it's stretched over lifetimes- Konzen and Goku is familial love (though they've always struck me more as brothers than the more common view of Konzen as a parent; Konzen's too clueless to be anyone's parent, but he can go after any bullies who hurt his little brother), and Sanzo and Goku is something else, and the next life will be yet another new thing.
You know, one thing that bugs me about them as portrayed in fandom is that people always seem to want to reduce the relationship to Goku = younger, bouncy child and Sanzo = older guardian figure, which especially stands out in AUs or reincarnation fics. It drives me crazy because it's such a simplification; the relationship between Sanzo and Goku is this huge, enormous thing, of a "I hear your voice in my head" type of importance, of a "I'll find you even if it takes 500 years" type of importance, and that's all people can think of to do with it? The same thing, over and over? How... small.
Someone needs to write me a reincarnation fic where Goku's the older one.
Anyway. I love how it's portrayed in the manga as something so basic that it's not even talked about (not that Sanzo would ever talk about his feelings...) but just understood to be there. And that Sanzo will ruffle Goku's hair even when he never touches anyone. And that "I'll kill you. I promise" comes to mean devotion, and it's such the perfect promise for them, because to take on that sort of responsibility for someone else is a huge commitment. It's such a realistic take on how to care for someone else: not a promise that everything will be good, but that they'll do whatever it takes, even death, to keep it from getting too bad. And I love that Sanzo sucks at non-attachment, and that Goku gets it better then he does, except for one area, because you can't have the monkey without his sun.
And that's the whole thing, really. I mean, can you imagine how depressing they'd be alone? It makes me wince to think about. They'd be the sort of people who get mired in their own selves, left with just the sort of principles that hurt. Sanzo'd keep refusing to need anyone, and so he wouldn't have anyone, and yet he wouldn't be able to ask for friendship even if he could admit he needed it, because he couldn't do that and still be him. There are some basic elements to your nature that you can't let go of even as they destroy you. In other circumstances, of course, it's that same personality that makes me love him, but if he was alone it would just wear him down.
But when you've got the both of them, it works. I adore the type of characters who don't need to say anything to each other, but who can stand back-to-back in a fight and move like a team, who are aware of each other's movements on a level underneath consciousness. And Sanzo and Goku very much fit that archetype.
Hee. You know, when I very first got into the Saiyuki fandom, I was a bit disappointed to find it so heavily weighted to Gojyo/Hakkai. Not that I mind, but I wanted to read about my OTC, and where's the Sanzo in that? But I've since been converted.
I really like how they do seem like real best friends. They're so comfortable and causal with each other- the way they speak and play cards, their body language. I can see them so perfectly as the two people who have all sorts of inside jokes and a secret language of half-finished sentences and gestures, who can communicate whole sentences in a glance, that one set of friends everyone has who know each other so well that they can play all sorts of tricks and tell jokes and do amazing conversational contortions just by playing off of each other, and it's like they've praticed before, but it's really just that they can read each other that skillfully.
I like Gojyo/Hakkai because it seems like it shouldn't make any sense, and yet it totally does. Gojyo is foul-mouthed, and a playa, and seems to reveal in everything being easy and simple and meaningless, while Hakkai is so polite and formal in his speech, a schoolteacher!, so much more serious. But then, nothing is that simple in Saiyuki, so Gojyo is completely and always the abused child, and he has this total heat-of-gold chivalrous streak, and Hakkai is fucked-up in the head, with serious repentance issues. How could they not go together? Gojyo is convinced he's worthless, and Hakkai only has room for a few people in his heart, but he does scary, scary things to defend those few. Gojyo picks up broken things. Hakkai was dying and he saw Gojyo and he smiled. I love that. I love that they flounder around and have no idea of the right thing to do, and keep healing each other almost accidentally.
(Man, I'm so embarrassed that Three Times True has apparently been the source of much curiosity; I can't believe that I named it after a quote that didn't exist.)
Now Memory Loss I do still have the notes for, as I did the early ones on paper instead of the computer. It was a very hard one to name, and I ended up giving it a title only in the last few minutes before I had to post it. I'd wanted to name it something about the surreality of GenSouKai, because that was my first conception of the story; I'd been trying to work out how I could write something about memory loss (which Boni had specified as one of her fic kinks), and I kept thinking about how Tsuzuki tries to act like he's forgotten most of his previous partners anyway. And that struck me, because what is the difference between actually forgetting and just convincing yourself that you've forgotten? When you're already in a realm as nebulous as thought and memory, what's real and what's not? And then we're back to GenSouKai, which is a sort of fake, hyper-reality, just like Tsuzuki's forgetting.
Except I couldn't come up with anything resembling that which would work as a title (and I doubt most of it made it into the story anyway), but by the time I was finished, I was very worried that it had traveled incredibly far from what Boni would like. I really was trying to keep in mind that it was a *gift* fic, and write it to her tastes, and so the title became an effort to emphasize the part I knew she'd like.
Sanzo and Hakkai. You know, the moment I really fell in love with Saiyuki- not that I wasn't liking it before, but the moment that I fell in head over heels, incoherent, these-characters-own-my-soul love- was when Sanzo says to Hakkai "The gods save no one. You have to save yourself." I adore that. I love that Saiyuki isn't about people getting saved, but about people learning to save themselves; if you're fool enough to let yourself die in some sort of redemption effort, the others won't stop you. You have to reach back out of the cave.
And there's no easy answers, either. Sanzo and Hakkai have pasts that are impossible to fix; the deaths they feel responsible for will never be redeemed. I mean, how could you possibly repent for over a thousand murders? There's no way to make that be okay; there is no justification for that scale of death. But, okay: if nothing could ever, ever be enough, what's the point of Hakkai dying? It won't make up for it; it won't bring anyone back to life. So live, and change what you can.
I love that. That in spite of all that's wrong, of all the ways in which they're weak or guilty or inadequate, they keep going. Right in the face of all that shit, they live.
Also, since I reread Gaiden last night while uploading it for a friend, I have to say that Konzen breaks my heart. He's so, so young (...I don't think I'm old enough to call people young. I will anyway). He's incredibly clueless- not naive, really, or immature- but clueless. I think he's the one least like his Saiyuki incarnation; not that he and Sanzo don't share any traits, but Sanzo would never put up with Konzen's willing ignorance and, therefore, weakness. Konzen has no idea of any of the things going on around him, has the emotional capacity of a thirteen-year-old, and can't even care enough to notice that he's in a self-imposed cage. Except that, of course, he does come to care, but by the time he tries to do something about it, it's too late; they have mere days left and there's nothing he can do in that time to stop the events already in motion. He can only try, even though he finally sees that it's hopeless, they'll die, and he's not strong enough or knowledgeable enough to stop anything.
Tenpou though, scares me. Not that Hakkai is the most stable guy ever, but that moment when Tenpou glares up at Li Touten from the floor- that is not a man I would ever, ever want to cross. I keep half-expecting to find out in a new chapter of Gaiden that he's been arranging all sorts of double-crosses and Machiavellian maneuvers that will be useful but are morally horrifying.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2006-03-07 06:40 am (UTC)And for a pairing, hmm... Goku & Sanzo -- because they can go so many ways.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 05:39 am (UTC)As it is, I can only say that I appear to have somehow miscopied the quote I was using; it shouldn't be 'three times true' but 'ten times true'. Or at least that's what google's suggesting, and I don't remember well enough to be sure what else might be the explanation.
The quote (I'm pretty sure) is from Measure for Measure: "Nay, it is ten times true, for truth is truth / To th' end of reck'ning."
I adored how Hero told the same story several times, but with different spins each time; it's like a fandom with AUs built right in. While the movie pretty clearly intends for you to interpret the last version as being the true one, I like the idea that they all are equally possible. For the title, I was looking for something that conveyed the same sort of idea as this quote from the Sandman: "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." except, uh, in a form that could be a title.
...that was a long explanation. Okay, Goku and Sanzo! I love anything involving Sanzo, of course, but this aspect really makes my heart hurt. I love how Goku is the one who can totally call Sanzo on his shit: one of my favorite moments is when Sanzo is, essentially, torturing the scorpion youkai when the rest of the ikkou burst in on him and are shocked. It's Goku who recalls Sanzo to himself by saying, "Hit me with the fan and call me stupid monkey. That's what Sanzo's like" (or something, I'm too lazy to go get the manga). But the part I really love- and that took me forever to pick up on- is that that's the last thing Sanzo and Goku say to each for nearly an entire volume, between Sanzo getting poisoned and Kougaiji showing up, and Goku going crazy, and Sanzo spending several days in a coma. But after all that? Goku is depressed and worrying, and the first thing Sanzo does, for seemingly no reason, is HIT HIM WITH A FAN AND CALL HIM STUPID MONKEY. And in this context, I don't think there's a clearer way to say "I'm still Sanzo and you're still Goku, and that's all that matters".
(Hang on, I have to spilt this comment in two.)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 05:46 am (UTC)You know, one thing that bugs me about them as portrayed in fandom is that people always seem to want to reduce the relationship to Goku = younger, bouncy child and Sanzo = older guardian figure, which especially stands out in AUs or reincarnation fics. It drives me crazy because it's such a simplification; the relationship between Sanzo and Goku is this huge, enormous thing, of a "I hear your voice in my head" type of importance, of a "I'll find you even if it takes 500 years" type of importance, and that's all people can think of to do with it? The same thing, over and over? How... small.
Someone needs to write me a reincarnation fic where Goku's the older one.
Anyway. I love how it's portrayed in the manga as something so basic that it's not even talked about (not that Sanzo would ever talk about his feelings...) but just understood to be there. And that Sanzo will ruffle Goku's hair even when he never touches anyone. And that "I'll kill you. I promise" comes to mean devotion, and it's such the perfect promise for them, because to take on that sort of responsibility for someone else is a huge commitment. It's such a realistic take on how to care for someone else: not a promise that everything will be good, but that they'll do whatever it takes, even death, to keep it from getting too bad. And I love that Sanzo sucks at non-attachment, and that Goku gets it better then he does, except for one area, because you can't have the monkey without his sun.
And that's the whole thing, really. I mean, can you imagine how depressing they'd be alone? It makes me wince to think about. They'd be the sort of people who get mired in their own selves, left with just the sort of principles that hurt. Sanzo'd keep refusing to need anyone, and so he wouldn't have anyone, and yet he wouldn't be able to ask for friendship even if he could admit he needed it, because he couldn't do that and still be him. There are some basic elements to your nature that you can't let go of even as they destroy you. In other circumstances, of course, it's that same personality that makes me love him, but if he was alone it would just wear him down.
But when you've got the both of them, it works. I adore the type of characters who don't need to say anything to each other, but who can stand back-to-back in a fight and move like a team, who are aware of each other's movements on a level underneath consciousness. And Sanzo and Goku very much fit that archetype.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:05 am (UTC)I really like how they do seem like real best friends. They're so comfortable and causal with each other- the way they speak and play cards, their body language. I can see them so perfectly as the two people who have all sorts of inside jokes and a secret language of half-finished sentences and gestures, who can communicate whole sentences in a glance, that one set of friends everyone has who know each other so well that they can play all sorts of tricks and tell jokes and do amazing conversational contortions just by playing off of each other, and it's like they've praticed before, but it's really just that they can read each other that skillfully.
I like Gojyo/Hakkai because it seems like it shouldn't make any sense, and yet it totally does. Gojyo is foul-mouthed, and a playa, and seems to reveal in everything being easy and simple and meaningless, while Hakkai is so polite and formal in his speech, a schoolteacher!, so much more serious. But then, nothing is that simple in Saiyuki, so Gojyo is completely and always the abused child, and he has this total heat-of-gold chivalrous streak, and Hakkai is fucked-up in the head, with serious repentance issues. How could they not go together? Gojyo is convinced he's worthless, and Hakkai only has room for a few people in his heart, but he does scary, scary things to defend those few. Gojyo picks up broken things. Hakkai was dying and he saw Gojyo and he smiled. I love that. I love that they flounder around and have no idea of the right thing to do, and keep healing each other almost accidentally.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-07 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 02:48 am (UTC)And since
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:55 am (UTC)Now Memory Loss I do still have the notes for, as I did the early ones on paper instead of the computer. It was a very hard one to name, and I ended up giving it a title only in the last few minutes before I had to post it. I'd wanted to name it something about the surreality of GenSouKai, because that was my first conception of the story; I'd been trying to work out how I could write something about memory loss (which Boni had specified as one of her fic kinks), and I kept thinking about how Tsuzuki tries to act like he's forgotten most of his previous partners anyway. And that struck me, because what is the difference between actually forgetting and just convincing yourself that you've forgotten? When you're already in a realm as nebulous as thought and memory, what's real and what's not? And then we're back to GenSouKai, which is a sort of fake, hyper-reality, just like Tsuzuki's forgetting.
Except I couldn't come up with anything resembling that which would work as a title (and I doubt most of it made it into the story anyway), but by the time I was finished, I was very worried that it had traveled incredibly far from what Boni would like. I really was trying to keep in mind that it was a *gift* fic, and write it to her tastes, and so the title became an effort to emphasize the part I knew she'd like.
Sanzo and Hakkai. You know, the moment I really fell in love with Saiyuki- not that I wasn't liking it before, but the moment that I fell in head over heels, incoherent, these-characters-own-my-soul love- was when Sanzo says to Hakkai "The gods save no one. You have to save yourself." I adore that. I love that Saiyuki isn't about people getting saved, but about people learning to save themselves; if you're fool enough to let yourself die in some sort of redemption effort, the others won't stop you. You have to reach back out of the cave.
And there's no easy answers, either. Sanzo and Hakkai have pasts that are impossible to fix; the deaths they feel responsible for will never be redeemed. I mean, how could you possibly repent for over a thousand murders? There's no way to make that be okay; there is no justification for that scale of death. But, okay: if nothing could ever, ever be enough, what's the point of Hakkai dying? It won't make up for it; it won't bring anyone back to life. So live, and change what you can.
I love that. That in spite of all that's wrong, of all the ways in which they're weak or guilty or inadequate, they keep going. Right in the face of all that shit, they live.
Also, since I reread Gaiden last night while uploading it for a friend, I have to say that Konzen breaks my heart. He's so, so young (...I don't think I'm old enough to call people young. I will anyway). He's incredibly clueless- not naive, really, or immature- but clueless. I think he's the one least like his Saiyuki incarnation; not that he and Sanzo don't share any traits, but Sanzo would never put up with Konzen's willing ignorance and, therefore, weakness. Konzen has no idea of any of the things going on around him, has the emotional capacity of a thirteen-year-old, and can't even care enough to notice that he's in a self-imposed cage. Except that, of course, he does come to care, but by the time he tries to do something about it, it's too late; they have mere days left and there's nothing he can do in that time to stop the events already in motion. He can only try, even though he finally sees that it's hopeless, they'll die, and he's not strong enough or knowledgeable enough to stop anything.
Tenpou though, scares me. Not that Hakkai is the most stable guy ever, but that moment when Tenpou glares up at Li Touten from the floor- that is not a man I would ever, ever want to cross. I keep half-expecting to find out in a new chapter of Gaiden that he's been arranging all sorts of double-crosses and Machiavellian maneuvers that will be useful but are morally horrifying.