meta - Johnny's & Associates - Hitman!AU: We’ll End it on Our Terms: Post-writing notes
Normally, I try to not write any notes at all. Normally, I don’t say anything about my writing process or anything like that. Mostly because I think my writing should stand on its own, and I always found fandom to be a bit of a test for myself-is my writing good enough to attract people, to get people happy and excited? The answer, of course, almost always ended up being no, but that’s why I’m not planning on going into fiction. (Science writing makes about as little money as fiction, has about as few jobs, but is a bit less tricky than fiction).
But since I’m no longer in fandom, I feel absolutely no shame in producing this.
Hitman!AU: We’ll End it on Our Terms: Post-writing notes.
Warnings include: the fact I wrote this while sleep-deprived, so I'm far less polite than I usually am. Discussion of death, tragedy, etc, etc, etc,
To begin with, this story is for Rei. I wrote it with Rei in mind, I wrote it knowing that I would not write a happy Christmas story for Rei, because that is not how we work. We work with me calling her a bratling and her calling me “o superior one” and the both of us knowing that our meeting was chance, but our friendship was the result of many hours and emotional investment on either side. A happy Christmas story would cheapen that relationship.
This story is also for Rei because I wouldn’t have re-opened Hitman!AU for anybody except for Rei. But she didn’t want cybernetic dystopia or vampires (what type of person says no to cybernetic dystopia?!), and I haven’t paid any attention to KAT-TUN at all since about 1 month before Jin left (in case you don’t know, I have this curse where if I get into a band and then stop liking them, they break up (DBSK) or some member drama happens (KAT-TUN)) so there was no way I was going to write canon, seriously, I know my limits. Rei was like, “Write Todai!AU” (or: that AU where Rei and I write entirely self-indulgent fanfiction and where JJ Lin has appeared, Yamada features as a main character [Yamada is the best character that we’ve ever made, seriously], Yoochun is an Artist and sleeps in Jaejoong’s bed) and I was like “No,” because I’m a good friend.
And then I was like, “I will write Hitman!AU, you can deal with it.” And she said something along the lines of: “Oh dear,” but I was busy writing so I didn’t really pay attention.
See, actually, Rei always wanted me to write an Akame story for her, but I refuse because I hate Akame with the passion of dying suns (quite passionate), and also because I’ve never liked Jin (no idea why some people never seemed to realize that). I think Jin is an idiot. End of story.
But since I don’t write Akame, I wrote Taguchi/Kame. I used to do it, so I knew it wouldn’t be too hard to figure it out again, except I couldn’t quite write it. In fact, if you read We’ll End it on Our Terms, you might realize that Taguchi’s characterization was a bit iffy in a few early scenes-hopefully I’ve managed to fix all of that, but you might get lingering traces of it.
That being said, Hitman!AU was written for a prompt of Taguchi/Nakamaru (I think, the details are actually pretty fuzzy), and while Rei’s remixed Hitman!AU into a Taguchi/Kame love story (I actually like quite a bit), I’ve never actually figured out how Taguchi and Kame would work in Hitman!AU. Mostly because I never actually paid much attention to Hitman!AU. It was really fun for the 2 hours I wrote the fic (and then fun for the like, other 1 hour I wrote Like Flowers Blooming), but it was never anything good, and I never particularly cared much for it-circular structure was pretty decently executed, I liked my use of Taguchi’s pun, imagery in Flowers was pretty good but really roughly done), overall it was pretty sloppy writing and more of a quick type-up than anything good. I mean, yes, I like it, but I don’t actually care too much for Hitman!AU because the world building was flimsily done, I CONTRADICTED MYSELF in the two stories I wrote and went: “whatever, somebody else can deal with this” etc,, but that’s not the main issue with reopening Hitman!AU.
The issue with Hitman!AU is that it’s impossible to write a sequel to it. It has an open-ending, it’s meant to have an open-ending, and while I don’t care about fandom anymore, I do care about my writing enough to not retcon the open-ending. I know exactly how I wanted hitman!AU to end-I wrote the last scenes first-and hell if I was going to compromise that for a Christmas gift. Maybe that comes across as quite selfish, but even Rei knows this (I can dig out the chat logs), but the open-ending is completely necessary. (And yes, I do know the actual ending. That’s why I’m not writing it.)
That’s why I didn’t write a sequel. That’s why We’ll End it on Our Terms is set before Hitman!AU officially starts, and focuses on Kame.
That being said, it was ridiculously hard to figure out how to write these characters. I went back and winced my way through all my old writing (goodness, I can’t believe how bad I was during my J&A years, the only one I could half bear was Like Crystal.), and then I went and watched a bunch of videos on youtube, and then I was like, “oh my gosh, why are there no videos on youtube” and then I found some con clips and was like, “excellent, this is a hot boyband, I am quite fond of this” and put Star Rider on repeat and hammered out a good portion of this fic where Taguchi was not like Taguchi at all and was more like Tasui (from my original world, he’s a very good example of power and authority and apathy and being a manipulative jerk). And that was pretty terrifying because while I adore Tasui, he works best when he’s interacting with characters from his world, not the Kamenashi Kazuya I was writing.
So, yes, had to make some changes there. Thankfully by the time I got further in the story, I had managed to get a bit better of a bead on Taguchi. Hopefully. I mean, I didn’t even bother to go look up interviews or anything like that because, really, effort. EFFORT. Do you think I actually had time to do research? I’m a grad student here-I attempt to teach undergrads how to not kill themselves in organic chemistry lab and they reward me with enough pay for me to pay rent and food and get some ridiculously overpriced gas. Anyways, I wrote this in about 4 days, so really, while there was plenty of time to do research, I was busy doing more important things, like playing DotA.
So let’s actually start talking about the writing. LOL.
Kamenashi in Hitman!AU plays a very minor role. Nakamaru knows him as Kiritani Shuji (his role when he was undercover), yet by the time Choices happens, he hasn’t been going undercover anymore. In Like Flowers Blooming, he’s coming back from his undercover mission, and he isn’t talking-he communicates entirely through post-it-notes. When Rei wrote her remix, she wrote a broken Kame, struggling to reach out to a Taguchi who seemed too far away. But her remix takes place pretty much throughout Choices and LFB.
I could have done that, wrote my own version of Kame’s POV of Choices and Flowers and destroyed Rei’s remix. But you see, this is a gift for Rei, so instead I wrote her canon into my canon. I suppose that means that Rei’s canon is now official canon-the parts of it-but the entire time I wrote We’ll End It Here (original title), I remembered her Kame, and I tried to figure out a way that when Kame left to become Kiritani Shuji he would return as her Kame. There are problems, because Rei’s writing is, in general, raw and rough and full of sharp edges that are hard to get through-she actively tries to bring the reader into the chaotic mindset of a character, and that’s something I, personally, hate to write-I believe a reader should be able to get a deeper understanding of the emotions by subtext alone.
So Kamenashi had a ridiculously hard characterization to get a bead on. But then Rei said: “I write Taguchi/Kame a bit like me and you,” and I went: “Ah, that’s what I do too” (but I don’t believe I said that, because, again, writing), and something clicked and I understood what Kame would be. Somebody who can go undercover is somebody who can become another person completely-and who are the people who feel the need to put up a front? The people who are scared, immature, anxious. So then I started to write Kazuya separate from Kamenashi.
You probably can’t realize this, but that wasn’t in the first iteration of the first few scenes. The first scene is written from a child’s perspective-a child who clearly thinks of himself as Kazuya. People who know my writing should have realized quickly that I was doing something with the naming convention because I actually am quite consistent in my use of last names for everybody. But I also haven’t been in fandom for a while, so I suspect that everybody’s forgotten about me (I still get comments for my DBSK fic, so I guess I was a better writer when I was in high school and hadn’t cut out my heart yet).
Kazuya is the scared child inside everybody’s heart. I realize that most people probably don’t have as defined an aspect as I’ve written, but I am writing for Rei, and I am writing for me, and so I am writing it as a defined aspect. Kamenashi-the front that’s strong and snarky and what is pretty well accepted as canon-gets formed in the first meeting with Ueda and the others, and that’s a heavy driving force of the story.
So I guess I’ve rambled for a long time and I haven’t gotten to the point. So here is what I was trying to write. Kazuya is a scared child who can’t face the real world. Taguchi is the person who’s trying to bring him out-to integrate him with Kamenashi. As he starts to find more and more of Kazuya and get Kazuya to open up (about his fears), Kazuya is pushed to create a persona that can integrate into the police-he tries to avoid it for a while, but ultimately, he creates an elaborate front that has no substance (99% of all of Kame’s drama characters, cough, cough). It’s then that Taguchi suggests that he give the persona “heart”-specifically “Kazuya’s heart”. And here is where I love Japanese conventions of not addressing people by pronouns and instead addressing people by names-there’s a double meaning here… is he saying “your heart” (as in give him a part of your heart) or is he actually talking to the Kamenashi aspect and suggesting that Kazuya give up his heart for Shuji? Ultimately it was meant to be the second-and hopefully people realized that by the end. That Kazuya sacrificed himself to become Shuji-Kamenashi asks Taguchi to kill Kazuya for them, because after losing the Odagiri aspect, they have a need to control how it happens. And then Taguchi goes and kills Kazuya-asks him to come back, and Kazuya promises, but he also “falls until there was nothing of him left.” And then somebody is calling for the other, but there is no reply-who’s calling, Taguchi or Kame? That’s really up for the reader to decide. Either way, it’s tragic.
I guess now that we know what I wanted the plot to be, we can start talking about why everybody clicked the story-the pairing!
Really, I don’t know why I initially shipped Taguchi/Kame anymore. I’m sure it’s something like “I like Kame and I like Taguchi so I am going to ship them and make up some flimsy excuse to ship them but really I just want an excuse to write them equally in a fic.” Somebody else can explain why they ship Taguchi/Kame and I’ll agree.
So I’ll be frank. Since I fall on the ace end of the sexuality spectrum, sex really doesn’t interest me that much. Actually, for me, sex is pretty squicky. I technically can read and write it-really, it’s not that hard to come up with something-but it bothers me because I really don’t feel too much sexual attraction in general. Kissing, as well, is something fairly mediocre and doesn’t need to be used in order to express the depth of a relationship. The beauty of a relationship lies in the things left unsaid. If you’re still wondering, my favorite love poem is Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XVII-specifically the last two stanzas.
The entire piece is almost about things unsaid in their relationship. Taguchi offers to kill Odarigi (but doesn’t), they hold hands, on brief occasions, Taguchi pushes Kazuya to learn how to use a knife, to learn how to shoot (because he wants to protect Kazuya), says that he’ll protect Kazuya even it means protecting him from himself (which, given that the story is written to explicitly show the different aspects of Kamenashi’s personality, is quite terrifying), etc, Of course, if you want to get into the specific lines below are some of my favorite:
“I’ll always find you,” Taguchi said, eyes tightly shut. “Even if you’re lost. As long as you’re calling, I’ll always find you, Kazuya.”
I added this scene after the first draft-it completely shifted the story pacing and set up for the kicker of an ending, but here Taguchi promises to always find Kazuya. Ironic, given that it’s Taguchi killing Kazuya at the end.
And Taguchi reached forward and said, “I see you, Kazuya.”
Or: Taguchi explicitly discusses how he sees Kazuya instead of the front that he’s putting up.
Kazuya pressed his cheek to Taguchi’s, whispered, “I don’t know who to be.”
Taguchi said, “Be Kazuya for me.”
Again, Taguchi asks for the most intimate part of Kamenashi.
“You should pinch yourself if you think you’re dreaming.” Taguchi absently dismantled a gun and began reassembling it. “And then you’ll be Kamenashi Kazuya again.” He said, “I like Kamenashi Kazuya more than I liked Odagiri-kun.”
Kamenashi said, “Odagiri Ryu is dead,” and, “Akanishi killed him” and then, “I wish you had killed him instead. I think you would have been kind about it.”
Kamenashi reciprocates in his half-fumbling fashion, giving Taguchi a piece of control.
He smiled. “But that just means I need to smile more.” His hand was warm on Kazuya’s cheek, his smile fond rather than blinding. “We’re more alike than you think, Kazuya.”
Taguchi admits to putting up a front, just as Kamenashi does. Also kind of how I’ve always characterized Taguchi: somebody who is, in general, happy, but also tries hard to be happy, so he tries to find joy in everything he can.
Taguchi murmured, “I will always protect you, Kazuya,” and reached through the layers of Kamenashi and Kyohei and even Yuya and Kosaku and Hiroto until it was just Kazuya, clutching the tattered remnants of Odagiri Ryu around him.
Arguably one of my favorite lines for the extended metaphor, the idea of a person reaching for a scared child.
Taguchi said, “I only wanted you safe, Kazuya.”
The reason for all of Taguchi’s crazy.
“His name is Shuji. Kiritani Shuji.”
“Can I still call you Kazuya?”
“You can always call me Kazuya.”
Kamenashi opening up to Taguchi.
“I’ve never been anybody other than Kazuya. Not for so long.”
“Are you scared?”
He reached up, took Taguchi’s hand. “I’m always scared,” he admitted. “I don’t know anything else.”
Kazuya has never admitted that he is scared to anybody before. Here, right before the story ends, he admits that he’s scared to Taguchi. We already know this, because of his characterization throughout the entire story, but here he openly talks about it.
That night, Kamenashi went to Taguchi’s room and let him strip the last vestiges of Kamenashi away, until there was only Kazuya, lying there, Taguchi’s hand around his neck.
One of the first lines I wrote, and one of the defining lines of the story… which I then edited to the final version you see in the story. Here, you have him letting somebody else break him apart-he lets Taguchi past all of his shields, and then he lets Taguchi kill him.
You’ll note, of course, that the majority of these are dialogue. It’s the interaction that I’m interested, the space in between one person and another person. Of course, here are two micro-scenes that ended up being cut.
“I want to be the only person who can see you for who you really are,” Taguchi said, one night, when Kazuya feigned sleep and Kamenashi feigned sleep even better. “Isn’t that selfish? Mustn’t be selfish anymore.”
I cut this because it was too much Taguchi and the story is narrated through Kame’s point of view. It’s cute, it’s a nice look at Taguchi, but I didn’t think it fit well at all with the story.
“What do you think you’ll be in a hundred years?” Taguchi
“I won’t even live a hundred years.” Kamenashi batted the hand away.
“You don’t know that,” Taguchi said, laughing. “Turtles can live hundreds of years.”
“I’m not a turtle,” Kamenashi said. “I’m Kamenashi Kazuya.”
Taguchi smiled. “Kazuya,” he said softly. “I’d like for you to be Kazuya, a hundred years later.”
This was really hard for me to cut. I actually wrote this near the end of the writing of the piece-it was one of my first attempts to start trying to bring in Kiritani Shuji. Taguchi suggests to Kamenashi that he create a persona that can last 100 years-Kame responds by saying he won’t even live 100 years. The issue with this scene is that it’s too peaceful and sweet when the story needed to start degenerating into sorrow and anger. Also, the lines that came after this was Kame snapping at Taguchi-did not fit well, and in the end it made more sense to cut this micro-scene entirely instead of try to get it to fit somewhere in the story. It was sad though-I liked this exchange, but there are other exchanges that are better and fit better with plot and pacing.
Here’s the issue though. When writing this, I wrote the first scene, and then I wrote the last scene, and then I filled it in-between. What it actually looked like sometime during the writing process was basically the snippets I like-bits and pieces of dialogue. Some are lost forever-I didn’t save some that I wasn’t extremely fond of-and the rest are randomly arranged. I come from flash fiction-I used to only do drabbles (and by drabbles I actually mean a piece of flash fiction exactly 100 words long, thanks very much). It’s trained me to think mostly in dialogue-you can say more in the space of two lines of interaction than you can in one person’s musing-and it’s also made me write very short scenes. The majority of these scenes had to be expanded with a lot of effort; I don’t like writing long scenes-it’s not something I’m comfortable doing or anything. I’ve been told to go into graphic novels (and I do, technically, write for graphic novels, I guess), and so essentially, I hate writing long scenes. None of you have clearly ever seen me write otherwise you would want nothing to do with me-I sit around and whine and complain and go: “TRELL, WHY DON’T MY SCENES WRITE THEMSELVES” and she goes: “I DON’T KNOW” and then I say something along the lines of: “I HATE WRITING.” And then I spam like, 2 line dialogue snippets at people. That being said, I wrote the last sentences of about 6 of the last 8 scenes, and then went and filled in the rest. If the end feels choppy, it’s because of how this was written…but it’s probably fine because Trell OK’d it, and Trell’s one of the best editor’s I have ever had.
So I guess now that I’ve rambled about characterization, how I write relationships, and how I write, in general, I guess it’s time for me to finish this ramble.
Tl;dr:
This was written for Rei. If you didn’t like it, and your name is not Rei, you can deal, because I really don’t care about you. If you sat through my rambles, good for you. The story is about trying to find yourself, and once you do, it all goes to hell because sometimes external responsibilities and pressures force you to give up on personal health and joy. This story is written primarily through dialogue because it’s far more interesting to look at the space between two people than to have things be stated explicitly. I come from flash-fic, which is why I write short scenes, generally. I also don’t care about fanfic anymore and so there will probably be no more fanfic until next Christmas when I write Rei something else because original fic and teaching and work is more important to me.
Merry Christmas, Rei. Some things are easy, but those aren’t the things that you should work on. Instead, smile, even when you don’t feel like smiling.
But since I’m no longer in fandom, I feel absolutely no shame in producing this.
Hitman!AU: We’ll End it on Our Terms: Post-writing notes.
Warnings include: the fact I wrote this while sleep-deprived, so I'm far less polite than I usually am. Discussion of death, tragedy, etc, etc, etc,
To begin with, this story is for Rei. I wrote it with Rei in mind, I wrote it knowing that I would not write a happy Christmas story for Rei, because that is not how we work. We work with me calling her a bratling and her calling me “o superior one” and the both of us knowing that our meeting was chance, but our friendship was the result of many hours and emotional investment on either side. A happy Christmas story would cheapen that relationship.
This story is also for Rei because I wouldn’t have re-opened Hitman!AU for anybody except for Rei. But she didn’t want cybernetic dystopia or vampires (what type of person says no to cybernetic dystopia?!), and I haven’t paid any attention to KAT-TUN at all since about 1 month before Jin left (in case you don’t know, I have this curse where if I get into a band and then stop liking them, they break up (DBSK) or some member drama happens (KAT-TUN)) so there was no way I was going to write canon, seriously, I know my limits. Rei was like, “Write Todai!AU” (or: that AU where Rei and I write entirely self-indulgent fanfiction and where JJ Lin has appeared, Yamada features as a main character [Yamada is the best character that we’ve ever made, seriously], Yoochun is an Artist and sleeps in Jaejoong’s bed) and I was like “No,” because I’m a good friend.
And then I was like, “I will write Hitman!AU, you can deal with it.” And she said something along the lines of: “Oh dear,” but I was busy writing so I didn’t really pay attention.
See, actually, Rei always wanted me to write an Akame story for her, but I refuse because I hate Akame with the passion of dying suns (quite passionate), and also because I’ve never liked Jin (no idea why some people never seemed to realize that). I think Jin is an idiot. End of story.
But since I don’t write Akame, I wrote Taguchi/Kame. I used to do it, so I knew it wouldn’t be too hard to figure it out again, except I couldn’t quite write it. In fact, if you read We’ll End it on Our Terms, you might realize that Taguchi’s characterization was a bit iffy in a few early scenes-hopefully I’ve managed to fix all of that, but you might get lingering traces of it.
That being said, Hitman!AU was written for a prompt of Taguchi/Nakamaru (I think, the details are actually pretty fuzzy), and while Rei’s remixed Hitman!AU into a Taguchi/Kame love story (I actually like quite a bit), I’ve never actually figured out how Taguchi and Kame would work in Hitman!AU. Mostly because I never actually paid much attention to Hitman!AU. It was really fun for the 2 hours I wrote the fic (and then fun for the like, other 1 hour I wrote Like Flowers Blooming), but it was never anything good, and I never particularly cared much for it-circular structure was pretty decently executed, I liked my use of Taguchi’s pun, imagery in Flowers was pretty good but really roughly done), overall it was pretty sloppy writing and more of a quick type-up than anything good. I mean, yes, I like it, but I don’t actually care too much for Hitman!AU because the world building was flimsily done, I CONTRADICTED MYSELF in the two stories I wrote and went: “whatever, somebody else can deal with this” etc,, but that’s not the main issue with reopening Hitman!AU.
The issue with Hitman!AU is that it’s impossible to write a sequel to it. It has an open-ending, it’s meant to have an open-ending, and while I don’t care about fandom anymore, I do care about my writing enough to not retcon the open-ending. I know exactly how I wanted hitman!AU to end-I wrote the last scenes first-and hell if I was going to compromise that for a Christmas gift. Maybe that comes across as quite selfish, but even Rei knows this (I can dig out the chat logs), but the open-ending is completely necessary. (And yes, I do know the actual ending. That’s why I’m not writing it.)
That’s why I didn’t write a sequel. That’s why We’ll End it on Our Terms is set before Hitman!AU officially starts, and focuses on Kame.
That being said, it was ridiculously hard to figure out how to write these characters. I went back and winced my way through all my old writing (goodness, I can’t believe how bad I was during my J&A years, the only one I could half bear was Like Crystal.), and then I went and watched a bunch of videos on youtube, and then I was like, “oh my gosh, why are there no videos on youtube” and then I found some con clips and was like, “excellent, this is a hot boyband, I am quite fond of this” and put Star Rider on repeat and hammered out a good portion of this fic where Taguchi was not like Taguchi at all and was more like Tasui (from my original world, he’s a very good example of power and authority and apathy and being a manipulative jerk). And that was pretty terrifying because while I adore Tasui, he works best when he’s interacting with characters from his world, not the Kamenashi Kazuya I was writing.
So, yes, had to make some changes there. Thankfully by the time I got further in the story, I had managed to get a bit better of a bead on Taguchi. Hopefully. I mean, I didn’t even bother to go look up interviews or anything like that because, really, effort. EFFORT. Do you think I actually had time to do research? I’m a grad student here-I attempt to teach undergrads how to not kill themselves in organic chemistry lab and they reward me with enough pay for me to pay rent and food and get some ridiculously overpriced gas. Anyways, I wrote this in about 4 days, so really, while there was plenty of time to do research, I was busy doing more important things, like playing DotA.
So let’s actually start talking about the writing. LOL.
Kamenashi in Hitman!AU plays a very minor role. Nakamaru knows him as Kiritani Shuji (his role when he was undercover), yet by the time Choices happens, he hasn’t been going undercover anymore. In Like Flowers Blooming, he’s coming back from his undercover mission, and he isn’t talking-he communicates entirely through post-it-notes. When Rei wrote her remix, she wrote a broken Kame, struggling to reach out to a Taguchi who seemed too far away. But her remix takes place pretty much throughout Choices and LFB.
I could have done that, wrote my own version of Kame’s POV of Choices and Flowers and destroyed Rei’s remix. But you see, this is a gift for Rei, so instead I wrote her canon into my canon. I suppose that means that Rei’s canon is now official canon-the parts of it-but the entire time I wrote We’ll End It Here (original title), I remembered her Kame, and I tried to figure out a way that when Kame left to become Kiritani Shuji he would return as her Kame. There are problems, because Rei’s writing is, in general, raw and rough and full of sharp edges that are hard to get through-she actively tries to bring the reader into the chaotic mindset of a character, and that’s something I, personally, hate to write-I believe a reader should be able to get a deeper understanding of the emotions by subtext alone.
So Kamenashi had a ridiculously hard characterization to get a bead on. But then Rei said: “I write Taguchi/Kame a bit like me and you,” and I went: “Ah, that’s what I do too” (but I don’t believe I said that, because, again, writing), and something clicked and I understood what Kame would be. Somebody who can go undercover is somebody who can become another person completely-and who are the people who feel the need to put up a front? The people who are scared, immature, anxious. So then I started to write Kazuya separate from Kamenashi.
You probably can’t realize this, but that wasn’t in the first iteration of the first few scenes. The first scene is written from a child’s perspective-a child who clearly thinks of himself as Kazuya. People who know my writing should have realized quickly that I was doing something with the naming convention because I actually am quite consistent in my use of last names for everybody. But I also haven’t been in fandom for a while, so I suspect that everybody’s forgotten about me (I still get comments for my DBSK fic, so I guess I was a better writer when I was in high school and hadn’t cut out my heart yet).
Kazuya is the scared child inside everybody’s heart. I realize that most people probably don’t have as defined an aspect as I’ve written, but I am writing for Rei, and I am writing for me, and so I am writing it as a defined aspect. Kamenashi-the front that’s strong and snarky and what is pretty well accepted as canon-gets formed in the first meeting with Ueda and the others, and that’s a heavy driving force of the story.
So I guess I’ve rambled for a long time and I haven’t gotten to the point. So here is what I was trying to write. Kazuya is a scared child who can’t face the real world. Taguchi is the person who’s trying to bring him out-to integrate him with Kamenashi. As he starts to find more and more of Kazuya and get Kazuya to open up (about his fears), Kazuya is pushed to create a persona that can integrate into the police-he tries to avoid it for a while, but ultimately, he creates an elaborate front that has no substance (99% of all of Kame’s drama characters, cough, cough). It’s then that Taguchi suggests that he give the persona “heart”-specifically “Kazuya’s heart”. And here is where I love Japanese conventions of not addressing people by pronouns and instead addressing people by names-there’s a double meaning here… is he saying “your heart” (as in give him a part of your heart) or is he actually talking to the Kamenashi aspect and suggesting that Kazuya give up his heart for Shuji? Ultimately it was meant to be the second-and hopefully people realized that by the end. That Kazuya sacrificed himself to become Shuji-Kamenashi asks Taguchi to kill Kazuya for them, because after losing the Odagiri aspect, they have a need to control how it happens. And then Taguchi goes and kills Kazuya-asks him to come back, and Kazuya promises, but he also “falls until there was nothing of him left.” And then somebody is calling for the other, but there is no reply-who’s calling, Taguchi or Kame? That’s really up for the reader to decide. Either way, it’s tragic.
I guess now that we know what I wanted the plot to be, we can start talking about why everybody clicked the story-the pairing!
Really, I don’t know why I initially shipped Taguchi/Kame anymore. I’m sure it’s something like “I like Kame and I like Taguchi so I am going to ship them and make up some flimsy excuse to ship them but really I just want an excuse to write them equally in a fic.” Somebody else can explain why they ship Taguchi/Kame and I’ll agree.
So I’ll be frank. Since I fall on the ace end of the sexuality spectrum, sex really doesn’t interest me that much. Actually, for me, sex is pretty squicky. I technically can read and write it-really, it’s not that hard to come up with something-but it bothers me because I really don’t feel too much sexual attraction in general. Kissing, as well, is something fairly mediocre and doesn’t need to be used in order to express the depth of a relationship. The beauty of a relationship lies in the things left unsaid. If you’re still wondering, my favorite love poem is Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XVII-specifically the last two stanzas.
The entire piece is almost about things unsaid in their relationship. Taguchi offers to kill Odarigi (but doesn’t), they hold hands, on brief occasions, Taguchi pushes Kazuya to learn how to use a knife, to learn how to shoot (because he wants to protect Kazuya), says that he’ll protect Kazuya even it means protecting him from himself (which, given that the story is written to explicitly show the different aspects of Kamenashi’s personality, is quite terrifying), etc, Of course, if you want to get into the specific lines below are some of my favorite:
“I’ll always find you,” Taguchi said, eyes tightly shut. “Even if you’re lost. As long as you’re calling, I’ll always find you, Kazuya.”
I added this scene after the first draft-it completely shifted the story pacing and set up for the kicker of an ending, but here Taguchi promises to always find Kazuya. Ironic, given that it’s Taguchi killing Kazuya at the end.
And Taguchi reached forward and said, “I see you, Kazuya.”
Or: Taguchi explicitly discusses how he sees Kazuya instead of the front that he’s putting up.
Kazuya pressed his cheek to Taguchi’s, whispered, “I don’t know who to be.”
Taguchi said, “Be Kazuya for me.”
Again, Taguchi asks for the most intimate part of Kamenashi.
“You should pinch yourself if you think you’re dreaming.” Taguchi absently dismantled a gun and began reassembling it. “And then you’ll be Kamenashi Kazuya again.” He said, “I like Kamenashi Kazuya more than I liked Odagiri-kun.”
Kamenashi said, “Odagiri Ryu is dead,” and, “Akanishi killed him” and then, “I wish you had killed him instead. I think you would have been kind about it.”
Kamenashi reciprocates in his half-fumbling fashion, giving Taguchi a piece of control.
He smiled. “But that just means I need to smile more.” His hand was warm on Kazuya’s cheek, his smile fond rather than blinding. “We’re more alike than you think, Kazuya.”
Taguchi admits to putting up a front, just as Kamenashi does. Also kind of how I’ve always characterized Taguchi: somebody who is, in general, happy, but also tries hard to be happy, so he tries to find joy in everything he can.
Taguchi murmured, “I will always protect you, Kazuya,” and reached through the layers of Kamenashi and Kyohei and even Yuya and Kosaku and Hiroto until it was just Kazuya, clutching the tattered remnants of Odagiri Ryu around him.
Arguably one of my favorite lines for the extended metaphor, the idea of a person reaching for a scared child.
Taguchi said, “I only wanted you safe, Kazuya.”
The reason for all of Taguchi’s crazy.
“His name is Shuji. Kiritani Shuji.”
“Can I still call you Kazuya?”
“You can always call me Kazuya.”
Kamenashi opening up to Taguchi.
“I’ve never been anybody other than Kazuya. Not for so long.”
“Are you scared?”
He reached up, took Taguchi’s hand. “I’m always scared,” he admitted. “I don’t know anything else.”
Kazuya has never admitted that he is scared to anybody before. Here, right before the story ends, he admits that he’s scared to Taguchi. We already know this, because of his characterization throughout the entire story, but here he openly talks about it.
That night, Kamenashi went to Taguchi’s room and let him strip the last vestiges of Kamenashi away, until there was only Kazuya, lying there, Taguchi’s hand around his neck.
One of the first lines I wrote, and one of the defining lines of the story… which I then edited to the final version you see in the story. Here, you have him letting somebody else break him apart-he lets Taguchi past all of his shields, and then he lets Taguchi kill him.
You’ll note, of course, that the majority of these are dialogue. It’s the interaction that I’m interested, the space in between one person and another person. Of course, here are two micro-scenes that ended up being cut.
“I want to be the only person who can see you for who you really are,” Taguchi said, one night, when Kazuya feigned sleep and Kamenashi feigned sleep even better. “Isn’t that selfish? Mustn’t be selfish anymore.”
I cut this because it was too much Taguchi and the story is narrated through Kame’s point of view. It’s cute, it’s a nice look at Taguchi, but I didn’t think it fit well at all with the story.
“What do you think you’ll be in a hundred years?” Taguchi
“I won’t even live a hundred years.” Kamenashi batted the hand away.
“You don’t know that,” Taguchi said, laughing. “Turtles can live hundreds of years.”
“I’m not a turtle,” Kamenashi said. “I’m Kamenashi Kazuya.”
Taguchi smiled. “Kazuya,” he said softly. “I’d like for you to be Kazuya, a hundred years later.”
This was really hard for me to cut. I actually wrote this near the end of the writing of the piece-it was one of my first attempts to start trying to bring in Kiritani Shuji. Taguchi suggests to Kamenashi that he create a persona that can last 100 years-Kame responds by saying he won’t even live 100 years. The issue with this scene is that it’s too peaceful and sweet when the story needed to start degenerating into sorrow and anger. Also, the lines that came after this was Kame snapping at Taguchi-did not fit well, and in the end it made more sense to cut this micro-scene entirely instead of try to get it to fit somewhere in the story. It was sad though-I liked this exchange, but there are other exchanges that are better and fit better with plot and pacing.
Here’s the issue though. When writing this, I wrote the first scene, and then I wrote the last scene, and then I filled it in-between. What it actually looked like sometime during the writing process was basically the snippets I like-bits and pieces of dialogue. Some are lost forever-I didn’t save some that I wasn’t extremely fond of-and the rest are randomly arranged. I come from flash fiction-I used to only do drabbles (and by drabbles I actually mean a piece of flash fiction exactly 100 words long, thanks very much). It’s trained me to think mostly in dialogue-you can say more in the space of two lines of interaction than you can in one person’s musing-and it’s also made me write very short scenes. The majority of these scenes had to be expanded with a lot of effort; I don’t like writing long scenes-it’s not something I’m comfortable doing or anything. I’ve been told to go into graphic novels (and I do, technically, write for graphic novels, I guess), and so essentially, I hate writing long scenes. None of you have clearly ever seen me write otherwise you would want nothing to do with me-I sit around and whine and complain and go: “TRELL, WHY DON’T MY SCENES WRITE THEMSELVES” and she goes: “I DON’T KNOW” and then I say something along the lines of: “I HATE WRITING.” And then I spam like, 2 line dialogue snippets at people. That being said, I wrote the last sentences of about 6 of the last 8 scenes, and then went and filled in the rest. If the end feels choppy, it’s because of how this was written…but it’s probably fine because Trell OK’d it, and Trell’s one of the best editor’s I have ever had.
So I guess now that I’ve rambled about characterization, how I write relationships, and how I write, in general, I guess it’s time for me to finish this ramble.
Tl;dr:
This was written for Rei. If you didn’t like it, and your name is not Rei, you can deal, because I really don’t care about you. If you sat through my rambles, good for you. The story is about trying to find yourself, and once you do, it all goes to hell because sometimes external responsibilities and pressures force you to give up on personal health and joy. This story is written primarily through dialogue because it’s far more interesting to look at the space between two people than to have things be stated explicitly. I come from flash-fic, which is why I write short scenes, generally. I also don’t care about fanfic anymore and so there will probably be no more fanfic until next Christmas when I write Rei something else because original fic and teaching and work is more important to me.
Merry Christmas, Rei. Some things are easy, but those aren’t the things that you should work on. Instead, smile, even when you don’t feel like smiling.