Author notes for Intermission

[brigdh]

This is my original assignment for remix, aka the one everyone heard me complaining about while I was writing it. Not that I didn't have fun writing it, but it's just very long. I mean, it's 8,768 words long! That's a lot of words. I think it's the longest thing I've ever written; at least, it's the longest thing which is both finished and which I still have a copy of. And I did it in essentially a weekend, so go me. I ended up completing it about three hours past the dead; I just barely managed to read over it and edit it once, so it still feels to me like an unfinished second draft. There was some things I'd planned to put in that got cut in the interest of my not having time to write them; I was going to have one more Gaiden scene, for the purpose of showing Konzen and Goku being cute at each other and giving Goku more of a reason to decide to keep the memories, but it didn't make it. Also, it logically should have come after the scene where Izanami offers to take the memories away, and I wasn't sure if the fact that the Gaiden timeline was skipping around chronologically would confuse people. I'm not terribly happy with the last Gaiden scene, by the way. I'd planned to actually write Konzen, Tenpou and Kenren dying, but it was 2am I didn't have the mental abilities to do it and not have it be over-the-top. Instead, you get implications.

I was assigned xsmoonshine, which was pretty neat, since I'd expected the pool of animanga writers to be so small that I'd know my assignee. But since not, it was a great opportunity to read some stories that I hadn't before, though as soon as I started looking at them I realized that I did know them, or at least a few of them. Her phantom pain (YnM, Tsuzuki thinks about Muraki and Hisoka) is amazing, and I've thought so for a long time. Unfortunately, it's a character introspection piece, and I couldn't think of a way to remix it. This is what led to my post asking about what counts as a remix- how could I find the middle ground, for instance, between just repeating exactly what xsmoonshine had already said with different words (and since I like her take on it so much, I'm sure if I had attempted to remix that story, I'd have repeated a lot of the same ideas), or writing an entirely new story with the same basic premise? After all, I'm sure there's a million fics out there that could be described by that summary, but they're not remixes of each other. They're different stories. Of course, mine ended up going so far from her original premise that it's a pretty different story too, so I still haven't really found the balance.

In the comments to that post though, someone mentioned that they were taking what had been a serious story and remixing it as a comedy, which was where I finally got the idea that eventually turned into my story.

The original 'Intermission' is a cute, funny crack!fic about the Sanzo-ikkou spending the night at Baba Yaga's house. But hey, I thought, Baba Yaga is a witch, and the ikkou can be fairly dark themselves; obviously this is the perfect set up for a horror story. At this time, I was picturing it as something very scary, along the lines of The Ring or something, which it didn't turn out to be. Someday I'm going to get around to writing (and finishing) something scary.

I started doing research on Baba Yaga, as I didn't know anything more than the basic details: a house with chicken legs, flies with a mortar and pestle, etc. I turned up a lot of little details that were interesting and made it into the story: her steel teeth, the fence around the house made of children's bones, cannibalism. Her first line, "Are you seeking something, or running away from it?" comes directly from the fairy tale "The Apples of Youth and the Living", but it sounded so perfectly like something a Saiyuki villain would say that I had to use it. One of my favorite things (and which I'm sure no one picked up on, but hey, I amuse myself) is that she has three horsemen- white, red, and black- who embody dawn, the sun, and night respectively. So when everyone keeps mentioning Sanzo and the red horseman look alike? Yeah.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything that lent itself to a plot. The only stories I could find with Baba Yaga as a character were the same two or three plots repeated over and over, and they weren't really conducive to plugging in the ikkou. I did, however, keep turning up references to her as a goddess of death and the Underworld, particularly in regards to rebirth, to discovering new strength in yourself and in your past. Which, again, sounds completely like a Saiyuki villain. How many climactic battles have been sealed with Significant Flashbacks now?

Eventually I gave up on finding anything. I figured that since Journey to the West and Russian mythology were already being thrown together and deformed, why not try throwing in some Japanese death myths too? I stuck a couple of relevant keywords into google and- here's the creepy synchronicity part- wikipedia's page for Journey to the West was one of the first hits.

I didn't have time to read all of the novel, but I skimmed an online edition of it and came up with this passage:

Then the Venerable Immortal Ge, a heavenly teacher, reported, “Your Majesty, the King of Qinguang, one of the ministers of the Underworld, has come with a memorial from the Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha.” A jade girl messenger took the memorial, which the Jade Emperor read through. It ran:

The regions of darkness are the negative part of the Earth. Heaven contains gods while the Earth has devils; Positive and Negative are in a constant cycle. Birds and beasts are born and die; male and female alternate. Life is created and change takes place; male and female are conceived and born; this is the order of nature, and it cannot be changed. Now the evil spirit, the Heaven-born monkey of the Water Curtain Cave on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, is presently giving full rein to his wicked nature, committing murders, and refusing to submit to discipline. He killed the devil messengers of the Ninth Hell with his magic, and he terrified the Ten Benevolent Kings of the Underworld with his power. He made an uproar in the Senluo Palace and crossed some names out by force. He has made the race of monkeys completely uncontrollable, and given eternal life to the macaques. He has annulled the law of transmigration and brought them beyond birth and death. I, impoverished monk that I am, importune the might of Heaven by presenting this memorial. I prostrate myself to beg that Heavenly soldiers be despatched to subdue this fiend, bring the positive and Negative back into order, and give lasting security to the Underworld.

When the Jade Emperor had read this through he ordered, “Let the Lord of Darkness return to the Underworld. We shall send generals to arrest the demon.” The King of Qinguang then bowed till his head touched the floor and took his leave.

And then I had a plot. One which hopefully is not contradicted by any other part of Journey to the West, but someone who's actually read it will have to confirm that. I also had an excuse to make a post about good luck and weird coincidences, in case any of you remember that and wondered what it was about.

Unfortunately, I had a really long plot, and not much time to write it. I like this story, though; I've always wanted to write something that actually had action, and suspense, and action scenes, and multiple plotlines, and now I have! Though, uh, I might have liked more time in which to do it. Or someone to babble incoherently to while I was writing it, but trying to stay anonymous spared you all the worst of my whining. It was a lot of fun to do something different. I had a lot of fun writing the fight scenes, in particular, though I have no idea how well they turned out. I'll have to do that more often.

And it's gen! When do I write gen? However, if you'd like to believe that the ikkou head off to the nearest inn and spend the rest of the day in bed, I fully support any and all combinations you come up with for that. Me, I'm thinking they all get stuck in one room together.

Anyway, I also needed some central Underworld figure for Goku to talk to, which is where Izanami comes in. Her myth is Japanese, and corresponds almost exactly to the Greek Persephone myth, which then gave me the excuse to use other elements from the Greek, like the pomegranate she's eating, Cerberus (the two-headed dog Sanzo, Hakkai and Gojyo kill) and the "don't look back" thing at the end. So, basically this whole story is a big game of "spot what Brigdh stole!" Possibly I've forgotten some of them myself.

Given the length, the lack of pairings, and the many things which typically don't appear in stories of mine, I thought that no one would guess that I'd written it. It turns out that I'm a lot more recognizable than I'd thought, though.


Okay, and now I promise to stop spamming your flist. Maybe I'll post my other remix story tomorrow.

Comments

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Well, that confirms that I was (one of) the YnM/Saiyuki/FMA authors in need of a pinch-hit. Which explains why Vic didn't take me up on my offer to do the pinch-hitting. *G*

I love all the different mythologies you worked into the story, and having the red rider look like Sanzo cracked me up. The balance of humor and horror, dark and light, just worked so well. And I confess, I'd love to see a sequel in which Goku deals with his memories and in which they all engage in stress-relieving sex.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yep. I can't believe people have quit on you twice now! You have so many stories and fandoms to choose from that I have no idea what the problem could be. And this time you didn't even get an extra story out of it.

Wow, did you know about the red horseman? That's great! I was so sure everyone would think I was on crack for that and not get the connection, but I couldn't resist.

And I confess, I'd love to see a sequel in which Goku deals with his memories and in which they all engage in stress-relieving sex.

*grins* I'll write that sequel if you write a sequel to yours where Goku doesn't let them distract him.

[threewalls]

The 'spotting what you stole' was probably one of the most fun aspects of reading this story for me. I didn't remember one of the horsemen was the sun-- but I should have.

[xsmoonshine.livejournal.com]

Yay, thank you! I enjoyed the myth-spotting tremendously. I think it's great that you took the same starting point and ran off in a vastly different direction, and it works perfectly well as a stand-alone story or a remix. (ahaha. I seem to skew the remix to the gen side perforce, sorry!)

Wow, you wrote so fast... /envy :)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I didn't really expect anyone to catch that, but I thought it'd be fun to write in anyway.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*grins* Thank you! I'm so glad everybody liked the myths; I was worried that I was sticking too many of them in. I had a lot of fun writing this remix. Thanks so much for the original story! *grins*

(Nah, it's cool. I like gen, I just usually don't write it. And now I have something to point to when I start to get worried that all I ever write is porn, anyway.)

I normally write incredibly slowly, so I don't know how I managed this.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

But why do you have to be interesting when I have to work? Why, why, why??

I'm going to have to read your references, and then go back and look for the mythologies I didn't know when I read it the first time-and-a-half. I picked up on the Greek references, but I know no Japanese mythology, and while I could see that the Queen of the Underworld was and was not Persephone, I didn't know who else she was and wasn't. And so forth, throughout many thousand words of coolness.

I do want to talk about the remix process, and how people picked things and what we did and didn't think we could do. But I'd better not do it now, or I'll be sorry; I can only hope that the discussion won't have moved on too irretrievably by the time I can do it, which may be tomorrow or even Wednesday.

But while I'm here, and before I forget, I do want to add that I too would totally have tried to remix "Phantom Pain" if I'd had your assignment. And in thinking about it, I have realized that I'd probably have ended up with something conceptually not unlike "Fish Dinner." Which gives the whole idea a striking tail-chasing quality, at least inside the weirdness of my own head.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Yep. I can't believe people have quit on you twice now! You have so many stories and fandoms to choose from that I have no idea what the problem could be. And this time you didn't even get an extra story out of it.

Well, last year's person didn't quit, which is how I got the two stories. Not sure what happened to this year's person. If it happens again next year, then I'll know I'm cursed. *G*

I remembered the red horseman as being day, not sun, but I did pick up on the connection. *G* I thought that was brilliant on your part.

If Goku wants to give me that story, it'll get written. ;-)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Sorry. If I knew you were off to something exciting and time-consuming, I could have waited. Still, even if everyone moves on from the discussion, I'll still be here.

Here's (http://www.uwec.edu/philrel/shimbutsudo/izanami_izanagi.html) a nice description of the basic Izanami myth. I didn't know it either before this; it was really surprising how very similiar it is to the Persephone myth.

I'd love to talk about the Remix process when you get back; I think you did some very cool things with your story. It's such a neat idea that it's really too bad we can't have big discussions while we're writing.