through our own deliberate fault

[incandescens]

Ahhh. Back again.

(Varus, Varus, General Varus, screams the stamping crowd, give us our livejournals back!)

I had a image for something that might happen at the end of Saiyuki Gaiden, but I don't know whether or not I'll do anything with it. After all, if I get it wrong, then I will be niggled at by the fact that I know it's not right, oh the personal shame, oh the ignominy, and if I get it right, then I'll probably still end up looking at Minnekura's eventual visuals and muttering, "yes, but it wasn't exactly right." I feel like Harriet Vane in Gaudy Night, refusing to buy an out-of-period chessboard for her new gorgeous chess set, because she'd always feel obliged to tell everyone that, well, it was out of period and inappropriate to the pieces. It annoyed me then in her, and it annoys me when, more than once, I've come across the same attitude in myself.

The Great Christmas Food Rush has begun at work; that is, people have begun bringing in casual boxes of biscuits or cakes or mince pies or similar in the run-up to Christmas, and given that I'm on a corridor of offices, this means that there is much food around the place. I was going to try to diet. Really I was. (Score today; six chocolate biscuits, a satsuma, and a mini mars bar, and it's only the 5th of December. Wince.) The season of raffles has also begun -- well, this is a hospital, so there are plenty of wards and departments and other groups staging raffles or tombolas for charity. I realise that the only way of winning anything at all is to definitively renounce all hope of so doing, but I'm bad at that.

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Comments

Dryhten, dryhten, lat us yn!

[(Anonymous)]

(Who was Varus?)

But I like your image so much. *That*'s the karmic connection I was looking for through however many stories it was. It'd work so well. Especially in context of Goujun as he is now and what his reflexes will tell him to do before his head has a chance to say maybe this time you should do the other.

I too always wanted to kick Harriet for her mingy more-discriminating-than-thou pharisee in the temple-ism, and kick her all the more for the suspicion that she herself actually didn't care about provenance. The thing is beautiful in itself, who cares if it's from three centuries later than the rest? But she couldn't bear to have Peter know that she in fact didn't care, and be Found Out as being not sufficiently discriminating by that terribly discriminating snot. (Living with Peter must have been terribly *wearing*, one thinks.)

Meaning in your case, it's a neat image, write it for the image's sake. Think of it as an illo from a Backgammon book. No, Sanzou will never be drowning in black water with a gun to his head, but what a great image. Probably Minekura's Goujun won't do what you see him doing here, but what a great image. Let it go and sit in that Great Image Repository In The Sky, where all artists' cuts play among the asphodel fields. Your Goujun can join my Goujun in Ariel and my KenTen in Departure, who are also A/Us now.
-mjj

Re: Dryhten, dryhten, lat us yn!

[incandescens]

(Varus was a Roman general, who lost three legions while fighting the Germans, together with -- more importantly -- losing the eagles of the legions. In I, Claudius, Claudius gives the history of the matter (at least from his viewpoint) and quotes a popular ballad about, if I remember correctly, "... Augustus three times bawling / As he gave his head a crack / "Varus, Varus, General Varus / Give me my Eagles back!" Or along those lines. One of those bits of doggerel that resurfaces at unexpected moments. The very best pond flotsam.)

As to Goujun -- okay, you've talked me into it, not that I think I needed very much talking with that image. I suppose the real question is, who was the target? Kenren, and Tenpou got in the way, or Tenpou (who _was_ the superior officer and _did_ just try to kill Litouten publicly) deliberately? Either works, but the resonance is different. The second is more interesting in some ways, less obviously tugging on the heartstrings.

Living with Peter must have been very wearing indeed. It's charming having someone say they love you for your intelligence and discrimination, at first, but then you wonder, what if I'm not always that intelligent and discriminating? Will they stop?

Your Ariel is one of my favourites, btw, up there with Gonou, both for Goujun and for Kanzeon Bosatsu. ;)

Re: Dryhten, dryhten, lat us yn!

[(Anonymous)]

Tenpou deliberately, by me. Offing him by accident while aiming at Kenren doesn't provide the requisite karmic tie. Though it would be worth a lot to see Goujun's face when he registers what he's done; and possibly, though it beats me how one could convey this in the very confused context of the moment, his feelings at reliable/ sound man Tenpou choosing ultimately to be on what Goujun must register as The Wrong Side- or more precisely, choosing That (slovenly disgrace to the force) Man. Once a yaoista, always a yaoista. It's a curse we bear.

(And thank you. The gen stories do tend to turn out rather well, I think; it's a pity I find them so hard to write.)
-mjj

Re: Dryhten, dryhten, lat us yn!

[incandescens]

Perhaps not just That Man, but That Everything. That Child, That Civil Servant, That Context, That Deliberate Insubordination. If he'd been willing to tolerate Tenpou's little eccentricities, not just because of the man's talent, but also because, deep down, he was sure that Tenpou understood the importance of good order in Heaven, the integrity of the army, everything, and then to see Tenpou choosing his personal concerns over that -- like your reference in the Ariel fic to them "deserting". It's a betrayal of everything that Goujun wants to stand for.

Re: Dryhten, dryhten, lat us yn!

[(Anonymous)]

"Unconventional, but basically sound. He gets things done in his own way." I have to struggle not to turn Goujun into a Col Blimp. He's still the Dragon King of the Western Ocean, and probably happy to tolerate a little individuality amongst the faceless ranks. And who knows how much of it is an unconscious sense that Tenpouan unorthodoxy is in some way necessary, if not actually... enviable. If one were not so very much a part of the ruling structure oneself...
-mjj

Re: Dryhten, dryhten, lat us yn!

[incandescens]

So in a way . . . Goujun acts instinctively in striking Tenpou down, the dragon defending the settled order of Heaven, and ends up sentenced to live as a creature of instinct . . . yes, that has a painful sort of logic to it.

Re: Dryhten, dryhten, lat us yn!

[(Anonymous)]

I leave it to you to tell me who sentences him for the crime of doing what Heaven expects him to do and defending Heaven. What system of justice is there outside Heaven's own? (Which one may find out in this month's ep or the next. *Could* the final authority be Kanzeon?)
-mjj

Re: Dryhten, dryhten, lat us yn!

[incandescens]

Kanzeon may be the final authority at this level, perhaps. It's her I see as delivering judgment, for what it's worth.

Oh, incidentally, I was rereading my original Journey to the West, and in the bit where everyone beats up on Monkey after he's caused havoc and run off, we get Erh-lang (in my translation) being sent to subdue him, and Erh-lang is apparently the son of the Emperor's sister and a mortal consort. Sounds familiar . . .

Re: Dryhten, dryhten, lat us yn!

[(Anonymous)]

Conflate your sources, Johnson, go ahead. That must have been where I got the idea from.

Someone was telling me about Erh-lang (was it you, Eline?) ages back. Another of those trad Chinese charas IIRC; not Homura but doubtless what suggested him.
-mjj