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petroniaI also keep saying that I won't let Kuwabara Mizuno abuse me anymore, and yet it doesn't stop. =_= Whyyyy?
***
The impression I get is that Yami-Sengoku is - rather than non-stop fighting - four hundred years' worth of occasional skirmishes and maneuvrings punctuated with breakouts of outright occult war, which are then followed by de facto truces while all sides recover. Thirty years ago was outright war, with the Uesugi group primarily battling the Oda (as in fact they still are), and losing. Kagetora operated under extreme mental duress, pitting his group of possessors against Nobunaga's army while skirting the edge of an emotional breakdown. As second-in-command and starched retainer it fell to Naoe to keep milord in line with Uesugi Kenshin's directive, essentially with stern reminders of duty. He must have been merciless in applying stiff upper lip; reflexive abhorrence of "amae" is apparent in his conversations with Takaya, and I imagine he's nicer with Takaya than he used to be... In any case, duty became a friction point in their relationship, with the result that Kagetora still trusted Naoe in the professional/military sense but stopped liking him very much (and may have been obvious about it, if his later modus operandi is any indication). Naoe didn't know how to deal with that, nor with Kagetora's emotional distress/battlefield PTSD, so he did his best to pretend none of it was happening.
Into this non-communicative stalemate arrives Minako, whose family becomes a casualty of Yami-Sengoku in a way that's currently unexplained and for all I know never will be (one assumes something like Nagi-the-tsukumogami-girl in Book 5). Kagetora takes it upon himself to protect her, and they fall in love. Any discussion of Minako at this point comes with the caveat that we only see her through Naoe's eyes, and he idealises her completely - I don't know which fact is more perverse. ^^; However it's clear that his relationship with Minako offered Kagetora the only emotional refuge he'd had for a very long time. A separate peace, the calm in the eye of the storm. Naoe understood he had to take care of her as well, for the sake of Kagetora's peace of mind, but couldn't come to terms with the fact that she could give Kagetora something he couldn't. He'd always told himself that it didn't matter what human lovers Kagetora took, as they all die in the end; with Minako he ran a real risk of being shunted aside in Kagetora's - trust? intimacy? Affection was already a lost battle. Jealousy and insecurity turned into hostility against Minako.
The situation came to a head when the war against the Oda intensified to the extent that the Uesugi were having trouble guarding themselves from harm, let alone humans. Kagetora called Naoe in and told him to leave, taking Minako with him, in order to protect her. In retrospect from Kagetora's POV this order was a proof of good faith: a conscious demonstration of his trust in Naoe, despite the fact that he must have noticed the latter's simmering internal conflict. It was however badly miscalculated, as what Naoe understood was that 1) Kagetora was sending him away (Naoe's greatest personal fear), 2) at a time when Naoe's powers were badly needed on the frontlines, and thus 3) Minako was more important to Kagetora than either Naoe or Yami-Sengoku itself. He snaps completely, leaves with Minako and - away from Kagetora - rapes her. Feels sorry for it the next morning. =_= She forgives him for Kagetora's sake (and of course she understands the Tragedy of his Feelings etc., in that way women only do in BL narratives), so when Naoe refers to her as a Bodhisattva in his mind he is entirely correct insofar as he himself is concerned... Mind you this personal mythology of Naoe's ends with rejection of divine grace and a slow mosey-on downward, because both he and Minako are captured by the Oda and used as bait to trap Kagetora. Kagetora comes to rescue them, and his physical body is killed in the ensuing skirmish. This is Bad because a possessor's soul is basically defenseless out in the open, and Nobunaga's special attack deals direct spiritual damage (it is terebigeemu at heart, okay). At wit's end, Naoe uses the power Uesugi Kenshin gave him - and only him, as Kagetora's rear-guard and protector - to force Kagetora into the only other body available, id est Minako's. They escape, but this of course kills Minako-the-actual-person. To heap insult upon injury upon OMGWTFwrongness, once Kagetora is in Minako's body he realises she's pregnant, and not by him. ^^;;; So it all comes out in the worst possible manner, and Kagetora swears he will never forgive Naoe's betrayal. Never is a long time when you're functionally immortal.
Then they fight what was supposed to be the last battle against the Oda, during which Kagetora tries to exorcise Nobunaga, Nobunaga tries to blow Kagetora apart with his soul-destroying attack, and the entire area goes up in a massive explosion leaving a smoking crater in the ground. Pretty much everyone present died physically and incurred varying amounts of spiritual damage, so they all scattered and went looking for new bodies. Naoe ends up as the child of a rich Buddhist family that lives in a templejust like the Echizens or the Gravitation!Uesugi, who come to think of it had BETTER NOT BE DESCENDANTS (completely off-topic but what is it with these temple families in anime/manga anyway? I'm assuming they actually exist. Are they supposed to train a son to monk-hood every generation or what?). When he reaches the mature age of seven he gets back into contact with Irobe, who was the only possessor on the Uesugi side to have survived the battle (and his physical age thus being thrown off the rest by thirty years, is a child during the present-time of the series). Irobe informs him that Nobunaga had not in fact been successfully exorcised, and his spirit's still hanging around like Voldemort; that Nagahide and Haruie have taken bodies, but that Kagetora is nowhere to be found. He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, and as his soul must have suffered serious damage from Nobunaga's last attack, no one knows whether he's even still "alive".
With Kagetora gone, Naoe has no pressing reason to continue living. He fails to cope and slips into catatonic depression, with at least one incident of attempted suicide. (Not that in the end he must've meant it very seriously, as dying implies being reincarnated for good, without any memory of Kagetora - and Naoe has a major philosophical problem with the idea that he might be able to exist unknowing in a universe where Kagetora was not.) His birth parents were horrified, pulled him out of school and sent him to train at the temple where his father could keep an eye on him. ^^; After he grew up he mechanically rejoined his exorcist duties as an Uesugi possessor, all the time looking for Kagetora, because it's either that or sit around wallowing in miserabilism. Then, of course, for his sins he finds him.
...This may be the single most depressive entry I've ever written; I look forward to seeing what the ljArchive regressive analysis makes of it. =_= Most of the missing details come from Book 5 Chapter 3, in which the plot stops dead on a dime so that Naoe can wander around Nara Koen and angst/reminisce. The locale is portrayed in evocative detail, actually, to the extent that I'd probably be reminded of this scene if I ever visited there. ^^; In general I find myself mapping impressions of my own treks around Beijing and Hangzhou to the "feel" of this particular book in the series.
***
The impression I get is that Yami-Sengoku is - rather than non-stop fighting - four hundred years' worth of occasional skirmishes and maneuvrings punctuated with breakouts of outright occult war, which are then followed by de facto truces while all sides recover. Thirty years ago was outright war, with the Uesugi group primarily battling the Oda (as in fact they still are), and losing. Kagetora operated under extreme mental duress, pitting his group of possessors against Nobunaga's army while skirting the edge of an emotional breakdown. As second-in-command and starched retainer it fell to Naoe to keep milord in line with Uesugi Kenshin's directive, essentially with stern reminders of duty. He must have been merciless in applying stiff upper lip; reflexive abhorrence of "amae" is apparent in his conversations with Takaya, and I imagine he's nicer with Takaya than he used to be... In any case, duty became a friction point in their relationship, with the result that Kagetora still trusted Naoe in the professional/military sense but stopped liking him very much (and may have been obvious about it, if his later modus operandi is any indication). Naoe didn't know how to deal with that, nor with Kagetora's emotional distress/battlefield PTSD, so he did his best to pretend none of it was happening.
Into this non-communicative stalemate arrives Minako, whose family becomes a casualty of Yami-Sengoku in a way that's currently unexplained and for all I know never will be (one assumes something like Nagi-the-tsukumogami-girl in Book 5). Kagetora takes it upon himself to protect her, and they fall in love. Any discussion of Minako at this point comes with the caveat that we only see her through Naoe's eyes, and he idealises her completely - I don't know which fact is more perverse. ^^; However it's clear that his relationship with Minako offered Kagetora the only emotional refuge he'd had for a very long time. A separate peace, the calm in the eye of the storm. Naoe understood he had to take care of her as well, for the sake of Kagetora's peace of mind, but couldn't come to terms with the fact that she could give Kagetora something he couldn't. He'd always told himself that it didn't matter what human lovers Kagetora took, as they all die in the end; with Minako he ran a real risk of being shunted aside in Kagetora's - trust? intimacy? Affection was already a lost battle. Jealousy and insecurity turned into hostility against Minako.
The situation came to a head when the war against the Oda intensified to the extent that the Uesugi were having trouble guarding themselves from harm, let alone humans. Kagetora called Naoe in and told him to leave, taking Minako with him, in order to protect her. In retrospect from Kagetora's POV this order was a proof of good faith: a conscious demonstration of his trust in Naoe, despite the fact that he must have noticed the latter's simmering internal conflict. It was however badly miscalculated, as what Naoe understood was that 1) Kagetora was sending him away (Naoe's greatest personal fear), 2) at a time when Naoe's powers were badly needed on the frontlines, and thus 3) Minako was more important to Kagetora than either Naoe or Yami-Sengoku itself. He snaps completely, leaves with Minako and - away from Kagetora - rapes her. Feels sorry for it the next morning. =_= She forgives him for Kagetora's sake (and of course she understands the Tragedy of his Feelings etc., in that way women only do in BL narratives), so when Naoe refers to her as a Bodhisattva in his mind he is entirely correct insofar as he himself is concerned... Mind you this personal mythology of Naoe's ends with rejection of divine grace and a slow mosey-on downward, because both he and Minako are captured by the Oda and used as bait to trap Kagetora. Kagetora comes to rescue them, and his physical body is killed in the ensuing skirmish. This is Bad because a possessor's soul is basically defenseless out in the open, and Nobunaga's special attack deals direct spiritual damage (it is terebigeemu at heart, okay). At wit's end, Naoe uses the power Uesugi Kenshin gave him - and only him, as Kagetora's rear-guard and protector - to force Kagetora into the only other body available, id est Minako's. They escape, but this of course kills Minako-the-actual-person. To heap insult upon injury upon OMGWTFwrongness, once Kagetora is in Minako's body he realises she's pregnant, and not by him. ^^;;; So it all comes out in the worst possible manner, and Kagetora swears he will never forgive Naoe's betrayal. Never is a long time when you're functionally immortal.
Then they fight what was supposed to be the last battle against the Oda, during which Kagetora tries to exorcise Nobunaga, Nobunaga tries to blow Kagetora apart with his soul-destroying attack, and the entire area goes up in a massive explosion leaving a smoking crater in the ground. Pretty much everyone present died physically and incurred varying amounts of spiritual damage, so they all scattered and went looking for new bodies. Naoe ends up as the child of a rich Buddhist family that lives in a temple
With Kagetora gone, Naoe has no pressing reason to continue living. He fails to cope and slips into catatonic depression, with at least one incident of attempted suicide. (Not that in the end he must've meant it very seriously, as dying implies being reincarnated for good, without any memory of Kagetora - and Naoe has a major philosophical problem with the idea that he might be able to exist unknowing in a universe where Kagetora was not.) His birth parents were horrified, pulled him out of school and sent him to train at the temple where his father could keep an eye on him. ^^; After he grew up he mechanically rejoined his exorcist duties as an Uesugi possessor, all the time looking for Kagetora, because it's either that or sit around wallowing in miserabilism. Then, of course, for his sins he finds him.
...This may be the single most depressive entry I've ever written; I look forward to seeing what the ljArchive regressive analysis makes of it. =_= Most of the missing details come from Book 5 Chapter 3, in which the plot stops dead on a dime so that Naoe can wander around Nara Koen and angst/reminisce. The locale is portrayed in evocative detail, actually, to the extent that I'd probably be reminded of this scene if I ever visited there. ^^; In general I find myself mapping impressions of my own treks around Beijing and Hangzhou to the "feel" of this particular book in the series.
