Jpop fic. No, seriously. XD
Mar. 9th, 2005 01:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaHilariously, after having spent about an hour today explaining to Sai why I have trouble taking popslash seriously as fanfiction as opposed to original fiction, I decide to edit and release the Lead fic I wrote for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
niche. Furthermore it is classic non-slashy popslash in the sense of being all about mediated existence versus "reality", fame, authenticity of talent etc. Ha ha! XD;; ...I don't read wFL fic, really, so I have no idea what the fanon is, but I did watch (and was somewhat intrigued) by the Kamachi movie in which Lead starred, so I wrote around that.
Changes have been made, of course.
Two-Way
This is the strange thing: so much is happening it doesn't feel like anything's really happening. He's too busy to think about it. They have no time this month for anything resembling regular classes or even study sessions, but there's plenty to get by rote. Dance steps, stage cues, lines, cues, more lines. The time not spent in memorization or practice is spent in getting from one place to another. Or sleeping. Shinya sees his mother four times a week. For the first few days of shooting she rode the bus with him to the set, and then she stopped.
They're very rarely left to their own devices.
When push comes to shove, Shinya realises, he had no idea what to expect.
***
Akira's telling a story to Keita, in between sets of stretches. Shinya is subvocalising to his MD player; he doesn't notice until Keita laughs, a bubble of sound like a skip in the instrumental's incessant rhythm. He pulls his headphones off halfway, sits up.
"What are you," Hiroki's saying, "a sixth grader?"
"I'm telling you," Akira protests. "I read it. In a magazine."
"So who puts these mirrors there, then? Wouldn't you have to drill a hole in the wall?"
"They put them there when the building's being constructed. Or renovated, whatever. You'd just have to pay off the contractor."
"Yeah, whatever," Keita says. He's still laughing, though.
The next time Shinya is in the third-floor lavatory he stays there a little longer than usual, looking into the mirror. Eventually he places a hand on the surface, but the glass is cold and the skin of his palm is damp, and the hint of condensation makes it impossible to see anything.
***
Akira doesn't read magazines unless he's in them. None of them do; they don't have the time for it. But it's all new enough that when they are they read the feature with their heads together, cracking up at the bolded quotes and the pink heartmarks in the margins. Keita gathers his copies in a pile, and takes them home on the weekends. His mother scrapbooks, he admits once, and Akira makes fun of him for weeks.
Shinya doesn't look like himself in the photographs. It's heightened versions of Lead that appear in them - the shoots involve hours of hairspray and makeup and lighting, and for all they know the images are manipulated afterward by computer - but Shinya doesn't have the same trouble recognizing the others as he does recognizing himself. Whatever the camera's raisons d'être, reproducing what the human brain thinks it should see is not one.
***
As always the doing sets something in motion inside him as well as outside. It might be called joy, or pride, or determination in that it keeps him going, like a small sun inside his belly. For as long as he remembers Shinya's been trying to reach a certain place; when he's there, he's certain, the sun will go supernova, the light will spill tangibly from his voice and his fingertips for thousands to hear and see. He's told the others about it, albeit not in so many words. What he's never doubted is that he'll know the moment when it happens, but now he does, a little.
Likely it's a function of the fact that he's not fighting to be heard anymore. Or at least, not as much as he used to. No one in his immediate vicinity needs convincing. It's like standing in the first car of a train now, hurtling along in the tunnel's dark, staring out past his own reflection in the window: along for the ride. Waiting for the light.
***
He keeps checking the mirrors, although he doesn't believe Akira's story. For that matter he has no idea what he'd do or think if he found one that really was two-way. And what if someone's watching? His mind stalls on the thought. It's like being asked where he plans to be when he's thirty, although they've stopped asking him that question.
Mostly it gives him a bit of time before he has to leave. A few seconds to half a minute, hands cool against the glass. Eyes closed. No music, no lines to speak. Even public lavatories are quiet, often enough.
***
There are two camera crews: first and second. When this was mentioned to Shinya he figured First Crew would follow him and Akira, and Second Crew would follow Hiroki and Keita. Or vice-versa. Instead it turns out that First Crew is the studio crew, and Second Crew is the exterior location crew. The outside of Kamachi's house is in Gunma Prefecture but the inside of it is on a warehouse soundstage in Tokyo with the windows papered over white, and all the scenes are shot out of order.
The soundstage lights are very hot, and difficult to see beyond. It helps remind Shinya he's onstage, working under familiar constraints, but it doesn't help him act.
In the morning they shoot Hiroki's scenes, while Shinya sits in a waiting room and goes over his lines. In the afternoon they switch. One morning they make him go into a studio booth and record the voiceover from the script. Just reading, no memorization, an endless stream of questions and half-answering statements. Poetry. It's a bit like rap, but there's no backing beat, and he supposes flow is not really what's being asked of him. The director says into the mike, put more emotion into it, Taniuchi-kun. Feel what you're saying.
Try to understand.
***
It's not that he doesn't, apart from the issue of memorizing scenes at random and forgetting them directly after in order to make way for the next batch, which is where most of the problem lies. Shinya knows what it's like to want to reach out for something, someone. At 9PM on Saturday nights with his forehead pressed against the floor-to-ceiling door of a recording-studio lavatory stall the someone becomes anyone, or (perhaps, some days, not all days) specifically someone. The thought of Kamachi's year in prep school triggers a familiar sense-impression: that of a slow wearing grind, like insomnia caused by nervous excitement, or dehydration without thirst.
Shinya knows how to deal with insomnia and dehydration. Mortal enemies to any performing artist, as Lead's voice coach and choreographer and manager have drummed into him. Kamachi, too, knew his enemy. Other than that, he thinks, neither of them is very unlike other boys after all.
***
"What are you doing?"
Shinya starts away from the mirror. It's not what it looks like, he wants to say; what stops him is the realisation that he has no idea what it looks like.
Hiroki gazes at him for a moment. There's a quizzical lean to his head with which Shinya is familiar, that says Hiroki's seeing something he doesn't like much. Not in the sense of repulsion or annoyance, more like he's caught sight of a problem on the horizon and wondering if he's morally obliged to solve what no one else has noticed, or if a desultory stroll in the opposite direction is permissible.
"Aren't they setting up for your scenes?"
"I-"
Hiroki sighs, reaches behind him and locks the lavatory door. He approaches the sink next to Shinya and lays a series of items down on the ceramic edge. Plastic glass, toothbrush, floss, travel-size container of mouthwash, tube of toothpaste from Muji.
"Keep talking," he says. "I'm still listening. ...What?"
Shinya swallows his comment and glances away. After a minute he says, still staring at the window, "Hiroki. Do you ever think about girls?"
"Mmbfgh."
"Just... how it would be. Go to a really normal school, sit in really normal boring classes, see a girl you like. White Day. That kind of thing. Sneaking around to be with your girlfriend so you can fool around - I mean, we can't do that, there's just no way - and we're going to have fans, they're not just girls anymore, they've seen us. In magazines."
"Arbngwfn. Nrrgh." Hiroki spits into the sink and runs the water. "Yes," he says.
"What?"
"Yes. Yes, on a number of occasions, I have thought about girls." Hiroki looks sideways at him. "I kind of also think the shoot is getting to you."
Quiet.
"The shoot. As in the movie?"
"I don't know," says Shinya. He turns and leans his forehead against the mirror again. It's pleasantly cool. "Hiroki... You know that thing Akira said, about the mirrors?"
"No. What thing?"
Shinya gives up. "If the mirror were two-way. Like if you found out this was a two-way mirror, what would you do?"
"Oh," Hiroki says. "Well, this, obviously." He drags the back of his hand across his lips, leans forward deliberately and plants a light kiss on his own reflection. It leaves a spot of steam on the glass that clears as Shinya watches.
"Gives whoever it is something to chew on," he says.
"I'd better get back," Shinya says, and starts for the door. Hiroki catches him by the shoulder as he passes.
"Hey, look," he says. "You wanted it. We made it happen."
"Yeah, I know."
"You made me believe it. So don't forget why you wanted it." Hiroki's eyes are suddenly serious. "Promise me."
"They're waiting for me," Shinya says.
***
He doesn't really know how to play guitar. A little; enough to fake it.
The lights are hotter than broad daylight. It's not July-humid on the soundstage, though, so the water they splash on him keeps evaporating. He strums wildly, kicks his legs, tosses his hair to the music. Twist; twist and shout. His eyes are closed. Pretend that's all there is: just the music. When he lifts his head the light burns through his eyelids like the sun.
One take, two takes. The recording stops and starts.
They sound so vibrant, the director (who would have been near Kamachi's age, had Kamachi lived) said before the scene. Unpolished, unaware of what was to come, so alive.
So young.
END
niche. Furthermore it is classic non-slashy popslash in the sense of being all about mediated existence versus "reality", fame, authenticity of talent etc. Ha ha! XD;; ...I don't read wFL fic, really, so I have no idea what the fanon is, but I did watch (and was somewhat intrigued) by the Kamachi movie in which Lead starred, so I wrote around that.Changes have been made, of course.
Two-Way
This is the strange thing: so much is happening it doesn't feel like anything's really happening. He's too busy to think about it. They have no time this month for anything resembling regular classes or even study sessions, but there's plenty to get by rote. Dance steps, stage cues, lines, cues, more lines. The time not spent in memorization or practice is spent in getting from one place to another. Or sleeping. Shinya sees his mother four times a week. For the first few days of shooting she rode the bus with him to the set, and then she stopped.
They're very rarely left to their own devices.
When push comes to shove, Shinya realises, he had no idea what to expect.
***
Akira's telling a story to Keita, in between sets of stretches. Shinya is subvocalising to his MD player; he doesn't notice until Keita laughs, a bubble of sound like a skip in the instrumental's incessant rhythm. He pulls his headphones off halfway, sits up.
"What are you," Hiroki's saying, "a sixth grader?"
"I'm telling you," Akira protests. "I read it. In a magazine."
"So who puts these mirrors there, then? Wouldn't you have to drill a hole in the wall?"
"They put them there when the building's being constructed. Or renovated, whatever. You'd just have to pay off the contractor."
"Yeah, whatever," Keita says. He's still laughing, though.
The next time Shinya is in the third-floor lavatory he stays there a little longer than usual, looking into the mirror. Eventually he places a hand on the surface, but the glass is cold and the skin of his palm is damp, and the hint of condensation makes it impossible to see anything.
***
Akira doesn't read magazines unless he's in them. None of them do; they don't have the time for it. But it's all new enough that when they are they read the feature with their heads together, cracking up at the bolded quotes and the pink heartmarks in the margins. Keita gathers his copies in a pile, and takes them home on the weekends. His mother scrapbooks, he admits once, and Akira makes fun of him for weeks.
Shinya doesn't look like himself in the photographs. It's heightened versions of Lead that appear in them - the shoots involve hours of hairspray and makeup and lighting, and for all they know the images are manipulated afterward by computer - but Shinya doesn't have the same trouble recognizing the others as he does recognizing himself. Whatever the camera's raisons d'être, reproducing what the human brain thinks it should see is not one.
***
As always the doing sets something in motion inside him as well as outside. It might be called joy, or pride, or determination in that it keeps him going, like a small sun inside his belly. For as long as he remembers Shinya's been trying to reach a certain place; when he's there, he's certain, the sun will go supernova, the light will spill tangibly from his voice and his fingertips for thousands to hear and see. He's told the others about it, albeit not in so many words. What he's never doubted is that he'll know the moment when it happens, but now he does, a little.
Likely it's a function of the fact that he's not fighting to be heard anymore. Or at least, not as much as he used to. No one in his immediate vicinity needs convincing. It's like standing in the first car of a train now, hurtling along in the tunnel's dark, staring out past his own reflection in the window: along for the ride. Waiting for the light.
***
He keeps checking the mirrors, although he doesn't believe Akira's story. For that matter he has no idea what he'd do or think if he found one that really was two-way. And what if someone's watching? His mind stalls on the thought. It's like being asked where he plans to be when he's thirty, although they've stopped asking him that question.
Mostly it gives him a bit of time before he has to leave. A few seconds to half a minute, hands cool against the glass. Eyes closed. No music, no lines to speak. Even public lavatories are quiet, often enough.
***
There are two camera crews: first and second. When this was mentioned to Shinya he figured First Crew would follow him and Akira, and Second Crew would follow Hiroki and Keita. Or vice-versa. Instead it turns out that First Crew is the studio crew, and Second Crew is the exterior location crew. The outside of Kamachi's house is in Gunma Prefecture but the inside of it is on a warehouse soundstage in Tokyo with the windows papered over white, and all the scenes are shot out of order.
The soundstage lights are very hot, and difficult to see beyond. It helps remind Shinya he's onstage, working under familiar constraints, but it doesn't help him act.
In the morning they shoot Hiroki's scenes, while Shinya sits in a waiting room and goes over his lines. In the afternoon they switch. One morning they make him go into a studio booth and record the voiceover from the script. Just reading, no memorization, an endless stream of questions and half-answering statements. Poetry. It's a bit like rap, but there's no backing beat, and he supposes flow is not really what's being asked of him. The director says into the mike, put more emotion into it, Taniuchi-kun. Feel what you're saying.
Try to understand.
***
It's not that he doesn't, apart from the issue of memorizing scenes at random and forgetting them directly after in order to make way for the next batch, which is where most of the problem lies. Shinya knows what it's like to want to reach out for something, someone. At 9PM on Saturday nights with his forehead pressed against the floor-to-ceiling door of a recording-studio lavatory stall the someone becomes anyone, or (perhaps, some days, not all days) specifically someone. The thought of Kamachi's year in prep school triggers a familiar sense-impression: that of a slow wearing grind, like insomnia caused by nervous excitement, or dehydration without thirst.
Shinya knows how to deal with insomnia and dehydration. Mortal enemies to any performing artist, as Lead's voice coach and choreographer and manager have drummed into him. Kamachi, too, knew his enemy. Other than that, he thinks, neither of them is very unlike other boys after all.
***
"What are you doing?"
Shinya starts away from the mirror. It's not what it looks like, he wants to say; what stops him is the realisation that he has no idea what it looks like.
Hiroki gazes at him for a moment. There's a quizzical lean to his head with which Shinya is familiar, that says Hiroki's seeing something he doesn't like much. Not in the sense of repulsion or annoyance, more like he's caught sight of a problem on the horizon and wondering if he's morally obliged to solve what no one else has noticed, or if a desultory stroll in the opposite direction is permissible.
"Aren't they setting up for your scenes?"
"I-"
Hiroki sighs, reaches behind him and locks the lavatory door. He approaches the sink next to Shinya and lays a series of items down on the ceramic edge. Plastic glass, toothbrush, floss, travel-size container of mouthwash, tube of toothpaste from Muji.
"Keep talking," he says. "I'm still listening. ...What?"
Shinya swallows his comment and glances away. After a minute he says, still staring at the window, "Hiroki. Do you ever think about girls?"
"Mmbfgh."
"Just... how it would be. Go to a really normal school, sit in really normal boring classes, see a girl you like. White Day. That kind of thing. Sneaking around to be with your girlfriend so you can fool around - I mean, we can't do that, there's just no way - and we're going to have fans, they're not just girls anymore, they've seen us. In magazines."
"Arbngwfn. Nrrgh." Hiroki spits into the sink and runs the water. "Yes," he says.
"What?"
"Yes. Yes, on a number of occasions, I have thought about girls." Hiroki looks sideways at him. "I kind of also think the shoot is getting to you."
Quiet.
"The shoot. As in the movie?"
"I don't know," says Shinya. He turns and leans his forehead against the mirror again. It's pleasantly cool. "Hiroki... You know that thing Akira said, about the mirrors?"
"No. What thing?"
Shinya gives up. "If the mirror were two-way. Like if you found out this was a two-way mirror, what would you do?"
"Oh," Hiroki says. "Well, this, obviously." He drags the back of his hand across his lips, leans forward deliberately and plants a light kiss on his own reflection. It leaves a spot of steam on the glass that clears as Shinya watches.
"Gives whoever it is something to chew on," he says.
"I'd better get back," Shinya says, and starts for the door. Hiroki catches him by the shoulder as he passes.
"Hey, look," he says. "You wanted it. We made it happen."
"Yeah, I know."
"You made me believe it. So don't forget why you wanted it." Hiroki's eyes are suddenly serious. "Promise me."
"They're waiting for me," Shinya says.
***
He doesn't really know how to play guitar. A little; enough to fake it.
The lights are hotter than broad daylight. It's not July-humid on the soundstage, though, so the water they splash on him keeps evaporating. He strums wildly, kicks his legs, tosses his hair to the music. Twist; twist and shout. His eyes are closed. Pretend that's all there is: just the music. When he lifts his head the light burns through his eyelids like the sun.
One take, two takes. The recording stops and starts.
They sound so vibrant, the director (who would have been near Kamachi's age, had Kamachi lived) said before the scene. Unpolished, unaware of what was to come, so alive.
So young.
END
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-09 06:28 pm (UTC)The Beatles' "Twist and Shout" always makes me want to flop around and lose it like the fangirls did back then. ;-) Could have something to do with John and screaming and ... *cough, ahem* ... meep.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-10 11:21 pm (UTC)(I like it quite a lot too, the roughness of it compared to the other version.)
no subject
Date: 2005-03-10 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-10 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-10 11:19 pm (UTC)Glad it wasn't, like, completely on crack. XD