Commentary for "Surprise,"
If you haven't read it yet, you should! And don't bother reading my rant about it until after. For a lot of reasons, the most obvious of which is that most of this wont make sense until you do, and also what little might make sense would be a big fat pile of spoilers.
Don't spoil it, go here!
So, this was one of those times when I sat down desperate to get some kind of juices flowing... I didn't care about pairing or genre or rating or length or even who the main character was, I just hadn't written in what was becoming an uncomfortable amount of time and I didn't want to get even more out of touch. I just had to write. I found that giving myself freedom to write for more than just a specific pairing helped me loosen up and just make a story.
It begins in a sickeningly familiar place.
is out drinking with and they are away from home due to . Meh, what is life.
As I started writing, I had to chose a point of view to settle into. I decided to do non-objective third person, broken up by Tora's voice in his own head. I think it was an interesting decision, because the way the piece ended up, that format helped me convey the idea that stories are universal. Having the little peeks into the triviality of what occupies his brain in any given situation personalizes the piece, in a really mundane and global way. Lol. You know, everyone stares at their feet when they're commuting in public, everyone automatically focuses their attention on a television as soon as it turns on. That kind of thing.
The other thing that was significant that I wanted to point out was that in his thought process, way before Tora makes any kind of connection that helps him realize how he feels, there is one factor that makes everything completely obvious.
This is the fact that in Tora's head, when he's thinking about his friends, and the people that he knows, he thinks of everyone by whatever name he calls them, but all along, Shou, in his mind, is just "you." I tried to make it come across so that Shou was just distinct in Tora's thoughts from everyone and everything else. In the narrative, Shou is "Shou," but according to Tora, Shou is "you," like in his head, Shou is there all the time, looking over his shoulder, listening, being a friend. Tora on one occasion thinks, "I need new shoes for the beginning of the New Year... You would know where to go to get a pair." Even simply in passing, when the idea itself has nothing to do with Shou, Tora is alreay considering when he decides to go shopping that he should take Shou along, simply because Shou is Shou and who else would he ask?
I really like the idea that Tora does not say a single word in the entire fic. It's so much about him, and yet he does not speak once. It was a step for me as a writer to move away from the dialogue that my writing sometimes depends too much on. There are only four distinct words ever spoken aloud, "Tora, are you there?"
Anyway, I was proud to have managed that.
I should mention that at the moment when Tora is twisting the door handle and entering Shou's flat, I was totally imagining Ju-On. The scene where Nishina Rika enters the house in the very beginning. That scene was playing in my head. Hahaha.
Also, the fact that the whole plot centers around Tora going so far out of his way to do something so insignificant is, I think, telling. Tora even realizes this on some level, in his own words, "If this was anyone other than you..."
This, coupled with the way he thinks around his world compared with the way he thinks about Shou specifically, and then consider the fact that Tora is so familiar with Shou that he knows exactly which hat is his favorite, exactly how he would choose to go about making his way home, exactly where he lives and even exactly which shoes in his genkan belong to him and why their unusual arrangement signifies the presence of an outsider.
I think it might also be interesting to explore the fact that not at any point in Tora's musings does he ever once consider or worry about what Shou (or anyone else) thinks of him. It just doesn't come up. "I hope he doesn't think about me, that would be so embarassing." I can't decide whether I see that in fics and it bothers me a little, or something. For this pairing, specifically, for Tora and Shou, I think that their level of familiarity and comfort with each other is a really fundamental part of the dynamic that they have. Now, I just typed like a page ranting about this one fic I read once that embodied that so well, but I think I'll save it for another post.
Even though this isn't a personal journal, I think a post like that, just about specific authors and pieces that have strongly influenced my writing style and the kinds of things I pursue as a writer, would be relevant to the function of this journal. I think I will make a master post of, like, recommendations? Yeah. I think that's a good idea. Okay.
~
Is there anything else that I wanted to say? Oh, I should think about a critique for the piece. Things that didn't seem to be a hundred percent.
... Maybe that time when Tora flips out and beats his hasty retreat from Shou's place? It's a little bit unlikely that he could somehow navigate his way into his shoes in a hurry and make it all the way out of the building and onto the street all with his eyes closed? Which is kind of what my wording implies... I'm too lazy to go and fix that part, though.
I do also feel that it's worth mentioning that if Shou and Tora have such a close relationship, why does Tora get so surprised when he walks in on the gayness? He's so shocked. Maybe that's non-typical. I don't know... If I wanted to make a foolproof conjecture on the literal and most likely nature of Shou and Tora's relationship where one or the other or both tends to be a wee bit lavender I'd have thought that out. If the point of this piece were different, I'd have thought that out.
The thing is, as I mentioned when I was talking to one of my fabulous readers,kaiser1103, who commented and helped make my day, "The idea I was chasing was Tora realizing Shou had left something of his behind, and Tora going out of his way to return it to him, only to receive some sort of shock that would metaphorically slap him in the face." Some sort of shock turned out to be heartbreak. It was just the easy solution, basically. I didn't go into it working out a backstory and emotional dimensionality. Maybe it would be a fuller piece if I had done.
What else? Also, it bothers me a little bit that I bring up on at least three occasions that Tora's hands are "white." I didn't mean to make any sort of metaphor referencing his innocence or anything along those lines, so it doesn't belong in there under that pretense. I think I was thinking about what his fingers would look like holding onto that red hat. His hands would be cold, so maybe it would be more appropriate to say that his hands were red or chafed or pink or whatever.
OH, also, I don't smoke, I've never so much as held a cigarette. But Tora smokes. So, when he's travelling home, chewing the unlit cigarette, I portray him as worrying the filter? Yeah, I have no way of knowing whether the filter is the right end or not. I don't know what end you light. I could probably Google it and find out. Still too lazy. So, if you've ever smoked, maybe help me out?
That's it then, that's all I can think of. This is the end of my commentary on "Surprise," if you haven't read it and didn't listen when I told you to at the top, whatever, I suppose. If I made you want to read it by talking about, it, awesome! I hope it makes you want to read other things I've written. Better yet, I hope it makes you want to write, like reading fanfiction by others has done for me. I'll be the first to read and comment if you do. I hope, if you have any thoughts at all, you comment ~_^
Have a gif after all that obnoxious text
