Mirage of Blaze notes and fic rec
Oct. 17th, 2004 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaFirst: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladyjaida wrote Crowley/Aziraphale fic purportedly inspired by my FST. XD
Berkeley Square (Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now)
Go read it; it's excellent, albeit not upbeat at all. Ah, me! Ah, life! Ah, Morrissey!
Second: I did a bit of a write-up to novels 3-4 of Mirage of Blaze, in complement to Remiel's plot summary at http://www.petronia.net/mirage, and sent it to the MoB ML. Am copying the text here because, well, if I read I should keep a record. Though I'm never quite sure who's interested in this particular series to what extent (luxetumbra of course, fable...?). It's a weird fandom to be in, because of the spoiler situation and the fact that I'm reading "behind" the anime continuity.
***
Takaya has a lot of angst about his parents. His father's a classic abusive alcoholic, and when he was eleven or so his mother couldn't take it anymore and essentially walked out on the family. After that he started acting out. Yuzuru tells Naoe about meeting Takaya in freshman year junior high, at which point he was the proverbial kid who smoked and skipped school and everyone else in the class was terrified of. Yuzuru seems to have interpreted this - correctly - as a desperate bid for attention, and took steps to make friends; it's due to Yuzuru's emotional support that Takaya's life is remotely on-track at all at this point. (The whole situation's set up to go boom, as by the end of the fourth volume it's become evident
that Yuzuru is essentially the Monou Fuuma of this story. ^^; Kousaka tells Naoe that he's going to end up destroying Takaya and Yuzuru's friendship, based on the historical antecedent of Naoe basically being the root cause of everything shitty that ever happened to Kagetora ever. However it's difficult to tell when Kousaka is being snarkily prophetic or when he's just tweaking Naoe for fun. He tweaks Naoe like it's a hobby.)
Anyway, Takaya's known for years that his mother remarried and lives in Sendai, but he never had the courage to contact her. Took a train in the middle of winter and stood in front of her house for hours, went back to Matsumoto without ringing the doorbell. Picked up the phone and dialed the number, listened to it ring, hung up. That kind of thing. (The first meeting between Takaya and Kousaka occurs in book 3 when he's staked out in front of his mother's house, watching her with his grade-school-age half-brother and angsting. Kousaka wanders up and offers him a handkerchief, because "I thought you were going to cry. Sorry, my mistake." XD;;;) He's conflicted as to what he actually feels about her; he doesn't blame her for walking out on the father he loathes, but at the same time he doesn't know if he really forgives her for abandoning him. And it ties in with his who-am-I-really angst, because if he's really Uesugi Kagetora then technically speaking she's not his mother at all. He stole the life of her "real" son. The ethics of their situation bothers all his team members to some degree; Naoe and Ayako deal with it by being as dutiful and caring to their birth families as they can be, Chiaki deals with it IIRC by cutting off contact as soon as possible.
Throughout the arc the adults around Takaya advise him gently to reconcile with his mother so they can both move on (including Date Masamune, who shares the fact that his mother hated him so badly she actually came back from the dead for another chance at defeating him), but when push comes to shove he can't do it. When she accosts him in the street he snaps at her that she's a stranger to him now, even though that's not what he meant to say and he doesn't mean it. The second time he plain refuses to speak to her. Eventually one realises he's repressing his real wish, which is that he wants her to come back to him, because he knows it's logically impossible and not something he can ask for.
The thing about Takaya that becomes apparent through all of this is that he's very fragile emotionally, which is something that didn't come across very well in the anime because of the missing background. He really is just a little kid in desperate need of affection and stability, and he gradually shifts a lot of those unconscious expectations onto Naoe. Naoe meanwhile spends most of his time dumb with gratitude for the second chance, and vowing to himself every five minutes not to mess up again. Problem is Naoe's second chance depends on Takaya not remembering, and everyone else wants Takaya to remember, including Takaya himself. As he gradually regains his powers and confidence, he takes on more and more of Kagetora's charismatic and commanding character traits - and then he starts having recurring dreams about his uhh Naoe-induced suicides.
Now reading book 5. Chiaki and Takaya are in Nara, looking into what is essentially an X-File (mysterious floating fireballs cause death and destruction but cannot be photographically verified); I find investigations into fortean phenomena inherently interesting, so I'm actually a good ways in at this point. Lots of Nara dialect, lots of touristical info (the reason they do MoB tours is because the books themselves are essentially tour guides), lots of piss-contest bickering between our two dorks. Chiaki is the only person in the series who'd say things like, "Hey, Bakatora, wash your hands after that burger - I don't want you getting greasy fingerprints all over my car," which I find quite salutary. XD
ladyjaida wrote Crowley/Aziraphale fic purportedly inspired by my FST. XDBerkeley Square (Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now)
Go read it; it's excellent, albeit not upbeat at all. Ah, me! Ah, life! Ah, Morrissey!
Second: I did a bit of a write-up to novels 3-4 of Mirage of Blaze, in complement to Remiel's plot summary at http://www.petronia.net/mirage, and sent it to the MoB ML. Am copying the text here because, well, if I read I should keep a record. Though I'm never quite sure who's interested in this particular series to what extent (
luxetumbra of course, fable...?). It's a weird fandom to be in, because of the spoiler situation and the fact that I'm reading "behind" the anime continuity.***
Takaya has a lot of angst about his parents. His father's a classic abusive alcoholic, and when he was eleven or so his mother couldn't take it anymore and essentially walked out on the family. After that he started acting out. Yuzuru tells Naoe about meeting Takaya in freshman year junior high, at which point he was the proverbial kid who smoked and skipped school and everyone else in the class was terrified of. Yuzuru seems to have interpreted this - correctly - as a desperate bid for attention, and took steps to make friends; it's due to Yuzuru's emotional support that Takaya's life is remotely on-track at all at this point. (The whole situation's set up to go boom, as by the end of the fourth volume it's become evident
that Yuzuru is essentially the Monou Fuuma of this story. ^^; Kousaka tells Naoe that he's going to end up destroying Takaya and Yuzuru's friendship, based on the historical antecedent of Naoe basically being the root cause of everything shitty that ever happened to Kagetora ever. However it's difficult to tell when Kousaka is being snarkily prophetic or when he's just tweaking Naoe for fun. He tweaks Naoe like it's a hobby.)
Anyway, Takaya's known for years that his mother remarried and lives in Sendai, but he never had the courage to contact her. Took a train in the middle of winter and stood in front of her house for hours, went back to Matsumoto without ringing the doorbell. Picked up the phone and dialed the number, listened to it ring, hung up. That kind of thing. (The first meeting between Takaya and Kousaka occurs in book 3 when he's staked out in front of his mother's house, watching her with his grade-school-age half-brother and angsting. Kousaka wanders up and offers him a handkerchief, because "I thought you were going to cry. Sorry, my mistake." XD;;;) He's conflicted as to what he actually feels about her; he doesn't blame her for walking out on the father he loathes, but at the same time he doesn't know if he really forgives her for abandoning him. And it ties in with his who-am-I-really angst, because if he's really Uesugi Kagetora then technically speaking she's not his mother at all. He stole the life of her "real" son. The ethics of their situation bothers all his team members to some degree; Naoe and Ayako deal with it by being as dutiful and caring to their birth families as they can be, Chiaki deals with it IIRC by cutting off contact as soon as possible.
Throughout the arc the adults around Takaya advise him gently to reconcile with his mother so they can both move on (including Date Masamune, who shares the fact that his mother hated him so badly she actually came back from the dead for another chance at defeating him), but when push comes to shove he can't do it. When she accosts him in the street he snaps at her that she's a stranger to him now, even though that's not what he meant to say and he doesn't mean it. The second time he plain refuses to speak to her. Eventually one realises he's repressing his real wish, which is that he wants her to come back to him, because he knows it's logically impossible and not something he can ask for.
The thing about Takaya that becomes apparent through all of this is that he's very fragile emotionally, which is something that didn't come across very well in the anime because of the missing background. He really is just a little kid in desperate need of affection and stability, and he gradually shifts a lot of those unconscious expectations onto Naoe. Naoe meanwhile spends most of his time dumb with gratitude for the second chance, and vowing to himself every five minutes not to mess up again. Problem is Naoe's second chance depends on Takaya not remembering, and everyone else wants Takaya to remember, including Takaya himself. As he gradually regains his powers and confidence, he takes on more and more of Kagetora's charismatic and commanding character traits - and then he starts having recurring dreams about his uhh Naoe-induced suicides.
Now reading book 5. Chiaki and Takaya are in Nara, looking into what is essentially an X-File (mysterious floating fireballs cause death and destruction but cannot be photographically verified); I find investigations into fortean phenomena inherently interesting, so I'm actually a good ways in at this point. Lots of Nara dialect, lots of touristical info (the reason they do MoB tours is because the books themselves are essentially tour guides), lots of piss-contest bickering between our two dorks. Chiaki is the only person in the series who'd say things like, "Hey, Bakatora, wash your hands after that burger - I don't want you getting greasy fingerprints all over my car," which I find quite salutary. XD
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Date: 2004-10-17 05:37 pm (UTC)However, given the lack of a guidebook I've found useful, and trust me, I've been all over the English and Japanese sources.... you don't suppose there's a handy extraction of the touring info anywhere? Since that's what's what I really want to get my hands on, I think. >_>
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Date: 2004-10-17 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-19 08:11 am (UTC)