"Terrella" notes!
So, anytime before four years ago I could produce these awful, lugubrious stories without a second thought. I wonder now if this is because I didn’t care about the source canons enough, or if I was aesthetically drawn to ineluctable sadness (as the young are so often inclined); these days, the main reason-and almost only one-I ever jump into fanfiction is to revisit the characters in and at my own way and pace, to see how they are doing in the aftermath of whatever devastation the plot dealt them. It’s a highly emotional, and I would say necessary, activity for me. While my mood is not consistently bad as it used to be, my lows are lower than ever before, and during my bouts it’s really easy for me to descend into nihilism and extreme apathy over my own life. Who I could be at my worst is not the kind of work I want to be doing at its best.
About two years ago, I started to write Mononoke Hime fanfiction that operated on the assumption of a most probable best case scenario, to give the characters and myself an opportunity to heal after the rather brutal end. I had plans to write pieces with more visible conflict in them after I set the groundwork that could contextualise a future I essentially insist on being promising, but then I read Turning Point 1997-2998. Oh, god. So, there’s a three-way interview inside it titled ‘Animation and animism: Thoughts on the Living “Forest”: A discussion with Takeshi Umehara, Yoshihiko Amino, Seiryuu Kousaka; Moderator: Keiichi Makino'. On pages 113-4, I ran into this exchange:
AMINO: The “curse” on him isn’t resolved in the end, is it?
MIYAZAKI: His mark did grow fainter. Young people nowadays aren’t convinced by a happy ending. They would feel it is more realistic not to have the mark disappear completely, and to have Ashitaka continue to live, bearing the burden of something that might flare up at any time.
UMEHARA: It is a mark of discrimination.
MIYAZAKI: Yes, it is.
Oh, come on! I’ve been a young person all my life and I’m still convinced by happy endings, really. I panicked! The interview unravelled all my stitching, so to speak. I screamed and clutched my chest and cried “NOOOO”! Ashitaka’s probably my favourite male character when I think about it… for… various… reasons… and I care about him deeply. I want him to be happy!!! More and most importantly, I want him to live and die peacefully of old age, after which he will surely be apotheosised into the kami of his own legend and spend an eternity in the hereafter with San (who will inevitably become a kami of herself too) watching over their unbearably adorable scions in spirit form. That is in my absolute adamantine faith to claim, and I would probably fight people for any interpretations otherwise, hahahaha…
ALTHOUGH FIRST I NEEDED TO SOLVE HIS PROBLEM OF POSSIBLE IMPENDING DOOM IN LIFE??? I was back to square one of the healing process. Thus, this fic was born. Well, it was compounded and partitioned a coupla times to become a solution to the aforesaid problem of Ashitaka’s curse being kind of a dormant volcano. Here’s a brief history of the root of my perversion:
Circa July 2015, I entertained the idea of both these kids being heavily scarred (figuratively and literally) because OF COURSE THEY WOULD BE. I also wanted to write more sex, because for some reason the fandom lacks pr0n sorely-even tho these two are so hot together???-and specifically the fanfiction for the fandom lacks sex in which San tops. For some reason I can’t ever seem to get them into missionary even in my head. BUT I have wanted them to practice the Congress of Canines for a long fucking time, much longer than when I began to think about what kind of scars they have. So when I started blitzing through my last WIPs I thought I would do the clever thing of blending the lyrical scar WIP with the doggy style WIP; alas, the latter did not make it into the final result because Terrella got way too solemn and intimate for the playful mood I had envisioned for the one where they do it from behind. I, u-uh, constantly needed them to look at each other with astral sparkles in their eyes. Ushiro de is thus still in incubation.
The projected length went from 3K to 5K to 8K to 10K. It was never supposed to exceed 10K but it did anyway, *shrug*. I eventually titled the WIP “Healall” at around the 7K mark, and that’s when it struck me! LOVE IS THE PANACEA. I’m proclaiming this without an iota of irony, btw. Beyond all ostensible naiveté, I think that motto encompasses a true and essential lens from which one can, and sometimes must, approach the world. It’s true as reason, and should be argued as such. Sometimes I, and most other humans, need that sense of unconditional closure and sure healing. From then on that was my main goal with the fic: give Ashitaka and San and myself another chance to mend anew. Even Miyazaki acknowledges that magic and curses happen randomly and arbitrarily. E.g. On Ashitaka’s control over his curse: “But I didn’t explain any of this. The more I explain, the more false it becomes.” So there! What could be a better cure for hatred than love???? I really do think the love of my OTP keeps the curse in check and will continue to do so up until Ashitaka’s death. Still, I think titling a sex fic “Healall” had unfortunate implications, so I changed it later on to Terrella.
Why? Well, I thought of the phrase “Little Earth”, wondered from where I had heard it, and googled. Up came the Latin feminine diminutive for the earth that is also a magnetised representation of the globe! It was a great fit for the fic, I think, especially since earth is a very yin property, and another goal of the fic is to build up San as a very yin kind of creature. It’s part exercise in experimental prose? Like entendres everywhere??? Patterned images and rhythms? Dependent clauses that increase syllable by syllable for textual dendrification, etc. Seemingly innocent sentences that aren’t at all. For instance, “glosses mingled” sounds pretty innocent right? Or not really, ‘cause I meant it in all the definitions I know for it: a shiny, slippery substance; Greek for tongues; and lexical explanations. Or “lumens and shades”: a kinda yinyang image, with lumina being measurements of light and also cavities (apparently actually used??? In anatomy for vaginal passageways) AHAHAHA and shades being the yinny dark but also the various shades of red/pink one goes while flushing, and a synonym in my silly bilingual brain for 色. There are others, and a drinking game for all the wordplay would be a riot to watch. I’m mostly expounding because I am almost certain that I’ll forget I tried to do these things at all in at least a few months!
Anyway, I think stylewise, Terrella is unabashed. It is me at my romantic hedonist all-loving incandescent acme. It’s been a while since I let myself be totally pavonine. I wrote it and read it with a fair amount of hubris! Halfway I realised I was responding to Donne and Marvel and probably other metaphysicists, from which the whole idea of the body as a place was probably popularised for a while. Thus, I think there’s a certain daring to the work. In a lot of contemporary/postmodern poetry metaphor is denounced; it's a kind of revolutionary trend especially among slam and Tumblr poets. i.e. the body is said then to be something that shouldn’t be seen as more or less than anything bodily. I understand where that line of argument comes from, but I’m so greedy! I want both an honest and kind depiction of a body’s physical form and also how it is in feeling, where it extends, what is beyond in relation to it-which is really just another form, isn’t it? So I set out to reconfigure both extremes of the argument. While I’m like ICK ARGH of course a person’s body isn’t something you should be able to claim or colonise, I also explored the idea that bodies can indeed be great places or sites for communion or whatever, and that people can be homes, absolutely. I know a lot of people refuse the idea, but I wonder if they would contest it so much out of a romantic or sexual context: it’s not really the house that makes the home, right, but the people who you would like to live in it with you? People cannot survive without other people. Ashitaka’s exile utterly breaks my heart, and I like to think that in his search for a home/found family San accepts him under her shelter. Moreover, as Ashitaka’s dealing with a natural god it’s actually not really a stretch to see her as holy. I tried to reconcile the way Ashitaka regards her, as both perfect and fallible (as these kinds of gods are, inevitably), with the reality of their scars. Yet I think he thinks, as I do, that scars, birthmarks, freckles, whatever and whathaveyou are free variations in beauty. Differences that don’t make a difference. My other M.O. was to remind people that bodies are changeable, constantly, whether it’s in texture or size or functionality or presence, and that that can be a thing to be celebrated too. In any case, I think I have achieved the body positivity for which I aimed.
Now, amidst all this talk of embraces and acceptance, I know for a fact Ashitaka and San fight a lot, although fighting would probably consist of San yelling and Ashitaka remaining silent and at worst skipping a visit. I don’t always write out all of them (there’d probably be too many to count, much less detail), but I try to inform the reader of them via implication, since I think San is the forgetting type, and Ashitaka is so deeply the forgiving type to a fault. Therefore, I almost always try to catch San in her best mood. To wit, Miyazaki says of her in Turning Point:
“San’s hatred of humanity could not be erased. But she was able to accept Ashitaka. He tells San that even if she can’t forgive humanity the two of them should continue to live. I expect San will repeatedly break Ashitaka’s heart after this. [laughs] Ashitaka has chosen a path full of ordeals. He is a youth who has decided to live in the most difficult place possible. That is, he wants both the people in the ironworks and San to live. He wants the mountain to live. Knowing that ironmaking must continue, he faces the modern dilemma of how to live as a modern person. He’s in for a hard time. [laughs]…”
Even so, he also mentions in that famous proposal of his that “beautiful things can exist in the midst of killings" etc. I wanted so much for this fic to be a glimmer of goodness in that harsh, vicious world. The form of Terrella was meant to suit that purpose: I wanted to concentrate a day of happy and beautiful sex into pure textual form. Or rather, Ashitaka’s refractory period, after a few rounds, in real time, ahahaha. In that sense I wanted to blend different text types into one: prosepoemplay. Prosepoetry I think is esp evident in the first and last few paragraphs that sandwich the more playlike parts, i.e. the considerable dialogue. I wanted the stories told within it to be of both ugliness and hope, and I made sure to include on San’s part positive experiences with humans and herself to balance out the hatred she shows at other times. There is, I've been told, esoteric references to Xi Shi and a Buson hokku (hint: the statues are shapeshifted forms). The span is a unique achievement on my part, as I have never written such a long scene ever! I hope it shows that the lack of any line break will be interpreted as all this taking place in the 25-45 minutes it might take to read it. Which speaks for perhaps the briefness of the moment. Nevertheless, transitory though the purity of that bliss might be, I think it's more important that they experience it at all.
All in all, the project is another take on the themes of The Body, the Breath and a follow up to the ones in Canicule at the Threshold (which I only managed to finish after Terrella, but I started it two years before!). San’s in one of her best moods here, and so is Ashitaka, and when they are both so open to love and accept each other and the world, anything can happen!!! Also, the result, I think, is rhapsodic and probably masturbatory, literarily and literally. I have always attributed these qualities to youth and excess passion. It is a paean in both senses of the word: song of praise and galdr of healing. Especially to San, for whom I wish the warmest best. I would write a paean for Ashitaka too, but San would not at all be the singing type for a human. It’s also an ecstasy in the three senses of the word: religious, sensual, and philosophical? Especially an ecstasy in the sense of there being vastly reduced awareness of anything but San for Ashitaka. I’ve been juggling ideas for original fiction to publish and it occurred to me that I wouldn’t write something like this if I were attempting to submit it, unless I were established already. I like the freedom being fannish in a small fandom affords me! I can experiment; I can outpour all I please. Even if I think maybe I should bridle these urges sometimes, the heart wants what it wants: what mine wants is to write things like this, I guess, and I can scarcely deny it that for so long.
About two years ago, I started to write Mononoke Hime fanfiction that operated on the assumption of a most probable best case scenario, to give the characters and myself an opportunity to heal after the rather brutal end. I had plans to write pieces with more visible conflict in them after I set the groundwork that could contextualise a future I essentially insist on being promising, but then I read Turning Point 1997-2998. Oh, god. So, there’s a three-way interview inside it titled ‘Animation and animism: Thoughts on the Living “Forest”: A discussion with Takeshi Umehara, Yoshihiko Amino, Seiryuu Kousaka; Moderator: Keiichi Makino'. On pages 113-4, I ran into this exchange:
AMINO: The “curse” on him isn’t resolved in the end, is it?
MIYAZAKI: His mark did grow fainter. Young people nowadays aren’t convinced by a happy ending. They would feel it is more realistic not to have the mark disappear completely, and to have Ashitaka continue to live, bearing the burden of something that might flare up at any time.
UMEHARA: It is a mark of discrimination.
MIYAZAKI: Yes, it is.
Oh, come on! I’ve been a young person all my life and I’m still convinced by happy endings, really. I panicked! The interview unravelled all my stitching, so to speak. I screamed and clutched my chest and cried “NOOOO”! Ashitaka’s probably my favourite male character when I think about it… for… various… reasons… and I care about him deeply. I want him to be happy!!! More and most importantly, I want him to live and die peacefully of old age, after which he will surely be apotheosised into the kami of his own legend and spend an eternity in the hereafter with San (who will inevitably become a kami of herself too) watching over their unbearably adorable scions in spirit form. That is in my absolute adamantine faith to claim, and I would probably fight people for any interpretations otherwise, hahahaha…
ALTHOUGH FIRST I NEEDED TO SOLVE HIS PROBLEM OF POSSIBLE IMPENDING DOOM IN LIFE??? I was back to square one of the healing process. Thus, this fic was born. Well, it was compounded and partitioned a coupla times to become a solution to the aforesaid problem of Ashitaka’s curse being kind of a dormant volcano. Here’s a brief history of the root of my perversion:
Circa July 2015, I entertained the idea of both these kids being heavily scarred (figuratively and literally) because OF COURSE THEY WOULD BE. I also wanted to write more sex, because for some reason the fandom lacks pr0n sorely-even tho these two are so hot together???-and specifically the fanfiction for the fandom lacks sex in which San tops. For some reason I can’t ever seem to get them into missionary even in my head. BUT I have wanted them to practice the Congress of Canines for a long fucking time, much longer than when I began to think about what kind of scars they have. So when I started blitzing through my last WIPs I thought I would do the clever thing of blending the lyrical scar WIP with the doggy style WIP; alas, the latter did not make it into the final result because Terrella got way too solemn and intimate for the playful mood I had envisioned for the one where they do it from behind. I, u-uh, constantly needed them to look at each other with astral sparkles in their eyes. Ushiro de is thus still in incubation.
The projected length went from 3K to 5K to 8K to 10K. It was never supposed to exceed 10K but it did anyway, *shrug*. I eventually titled the WIP “Healall” at around the 7K mark, and that’s when it struck me! LOVE IS THE PANACEA. I’m proclaiming this without an iota of irony, btw. Beyond all ostensible naiveté, I think that motto encompasses a true and essential lens from which one can, and sometimes must, approach the world. It’s true as reason, and should be argued as such. Sometimes I, and most other humans, need that sense of unconditional closure and sure healing. From then on that was my main goal with the fic: give Ashitaka and San and myself another chance to mend anew. Even Miyazaki acknowledges that magic and curses happen randomly and arbitrarily. E.g. On Ashitaka’s control over his curse: “But I didn’t explain any of this. The more I explain, the more false it becomes.” So there! What could be a better cure for hatred than love???? I really do think the love of my OTP keeps the curse in check and will continue to do so up until Ashitaka’s death. Still, I think titling a sex fic “Healall” had unfortunate implications, so I changed it later on to Terrella.
Why? Well, I thought of the phrase “Little Earth”, wondered from where I had heard it, and googled. Up came the Latin feminine diminutive for the earth that is also a magnetised representation of the globe! It was a great fit for the fic, I think, especially since earth is a very yin property, and another goal of the fic is to build up San as a very yin kind of creature. It’s part exercise in experimental prose? Like entendres everywhere??? Patterned images and rhythms? Dependent clauses that increase syllable by syllable for textual dendrification, etc. Seemingly innocent sentences that aren’t at all. For instance, “glosses mingled” sounds pretty innocent right? Or not really, ‘cause I meant it in all the definitions I know for it: a shiny, slippery substance; Greek for tongues; and lexical explanations. Or “lumens and shades”: a kinda yinyang image, with lumina being measurements of light and also cavities (apparently actually used??? In anatomy for vaginal passageways) AHAHAHA and shades being the yinny dark but also the various shades of red/pink one goes while flushing, and a synonym in my silly bilingual brain for 色. There are others, and a drinking game for all the wordplay would be a riot to watch. I’m mostly expounding because I am almost certain that I’ll forget I tried to do these things at all in at least a few months!
Anyway, I think stylewise, Terrella is unabashed. It is me at my romantic hedonist all-loving incandescent acme. It’s been a while since I let myself be totally pavonine. I wrote it and read it with a fair amount of hubris! Halfway I realised I was responding to Donne and Marvel and probably other metaphysicists, from which the whole idea of the body as a place was probably popularised for a while. Thus, I think there’s a certain daring to the work. In a lot of contemporary/postmodern poetry metaphor is denounced; it's a kind of revolutionary trend especially among slam and Tumblr poets. i.e. the body is said then to be something that shouldn’t be seen as more or less than anything bodily. I understand where that line of argument comes from, but I’m so greedy! I want both an honest and kind depiction of a body’s physical form and also how it is in feeling, where it extends, what is beyond in relation to it-which is really just another form, isn’t it? So I set out to reconfigure both extremes of the argument. While I’m like ICK ARGH of course a person’s body isn’t something you should be able to claim or colonise, I also explored the idea that bodies can indeed be great places or sites for communion or whatever, and that people can be homes, absolutely. I know a lot of people refuse the idea, but I wonder if they would contest it so much out of a romantic or sexual context: it’s not really the house that makes the home, right, but the people who you would like to live in it with you? People cannot survive without other people. Ashitaka’s exile utterly breaks my heart, and I like to think that in his search for a home/found family San accepts him under her shelter. Moreover, as Ashitaka’s dealing with a natural god it’s actually not really a stretch to see her as holy. I tried to reconcile the way Ashitaka regards her, as both perfect and fallible (as these kinds of gods are, inevitably), with the reality of their scars. Yet I think he thinks, as I do, that scars, birthmarks, freckles, whatever and whathaveyou are free variations in beauty. Differences that don’t make a difference. My other M.O. was to remind people that bodies are changeable, constantly, whether it’s in texture or size or functionality or presence, and that that can be a thing to be celebrated too. In any case, I think I have achieved the body positivity for which I aimed.
Now, amidst all this talk of embraces and acceptance, I know for a fact Ashitaka and San fight a lot, although fighting would probably consist of San yelling and Ashitaka remaining silent and at worst skipping a visit. I don’t always write out all of them (there’d probably be too many to count, much less detail), but I try to inform the reader of them via implication, since I think San is the forgetting type, and Ashitaka is so deeply the forgiving type to a fault. Therefore, I almost always try to catch San in her best mood. To wit, Miyazaki says of her in Turning Point:
“San’s hatred of humanity could not be erased. But she was able to accept Ashitaka. He tells San that even if she can’t forgive humanity the two of them should continue to live. I expect San will repeatedly break Ashitaka’s heart after this. [laughs] Ashitaka has chosen a path full of ordeals. He is a youth who has decided to live in the most difficult place possible. That is, he wants both the people in the ironworks and San to live. He wants the mountain to live. Knowing that ironmaking must continue, he faces the modern dilemma of how to live as a modern person. He’s in for a hard time. [laughs]…”
Even so, he also mentions in that famous proposal of his that “beautiful things can exist in the midst of killings" etc. I wanted so much for this fic to be a glimmer of goodness in that harsh, vicious world. The form of Terrella was meant to suit that purpose: I wanted to concentrate a day of happy and beautiful sex into pure textual form. Or rather, Ashitaka’s refractory period, after a few rounds, in real time, ahahaha. In that sense I wanted to blend different text types into one: prosepoemplay. Prosepoetry I think is esp evident in the first and last few paragraphs that sandwich the more playlike parts, i.e. the considerable dialogue. I wanted the stories told within it to be of both ugliness and hope, and I made sure to include on San’s part positive experiences with humans and herself to balance out the hatred she shows at other times. There is, I've been told, esoteric references to Xi Shi and a Buson hokku (hint: the statues are shapeshifted forms). The span is a unique achievement on my part, as I have never written such a long scene ever! I hope it shows that the lack of any line break will be interpreted as all this taking place in the 25-45 minutes it might take to read it. Which speaks for perhaps the briefness of the moment. Nevertheless, transitory though the purity of that bliss might be, I think it's more important that they experience it at all.
All in all, the project is another take on the themes of The Body, the Breath and a follow up to the ones in Canicule at the Threshold (which I only managed to finish after Terrella, but I started it two years before!). San’s in one of her best moods here, and so is Ashitaka, and when they are both so open to love and accept each other and the world, anything can happen!!! Also, the result, I think, is rhapsodic and probably masturbatory, literarily and literally. I have always attributed these qualities to youth and excess passion. It is a paean in both senses of the word: song of praise and galdr of healing. Especially to San, for whom I wish the warmest best. I would write a paean for Ashitaka too, but San would not at all be the singing type for a human. It’s also an ecstasy in the three senses of the word: religious, sensual, and philosophical? Especially an ecstasy in the sense of there being vastly reduced awareness of anything but San for Ashitaka. I’ve been juggling ideas for original fiction to publish and it occurred to me that I wouldn’t write something like this if I were attempting to submit it, unless I were established already. I like the freedom being fannish in a small fandom affords me! I can experiment; I can outpour all I please. Even if I think maybe I should bridle these urges sometimes, the heart wants what it wants: what mine wants is to write things like this, I guess, and I can scarcely deny it that for so long.