Ill-fated Beginnings

[flemmings]

The latest Saiyuki ep arrived Monday (and is on its way in the usual fashion, those who know.) Lovely interaction with Hakkai and Gokuu, leaving me shaking my head yet again at the insistence, by those that way inclined, on Hakkai's scary semi-psychotic dangerousness. Even being sensible as a doorknob, as here, and empathic and tactful and down-to-earth, can't save him from people who want to harrow up their souls and indulge a little horripilation over the grinning psychopath. "Hakkai is a dark and twisted man! He killed a thousand youkai!" Yes: and the slaughter was clearly just a passing whim of his that had no repercussions worth mentioning, and that certainly left him with no special feelings about it at all. So one may reasonably expect him to wander out some afternoon and murder another thousand youkai. Because people work like that. If I bang my fist into the wall in a fit of rage and break my fingers, next time I get mad I'll certainly hit that wall again. Unh-hunh. Is the idea that actions have consequences, and that those consequences change you profoundly, so foreign these days? Or is some perverse Calvinism at work: your character is decided forever by 18 and you are predestined always to act as you acted before?

Which is partly why I'm not reading the comments over at radiofreebanri. And partly to avoid the 'forget Hakkai and Gojou how come us Sanzou lovers didn't get any Sanzou love?' wails. I think the Sanzou lovers got a lot of Sanzou love. Seems to me the man has a pretty good idea what he's doing and quite possibly he couldn't do it with the other three along. They can pick him up later, as per Rikudo. Yes this breaks the New Saiyuki Rule of one for all and all for one and we don't go off on our own. But Sanzou made the rule so Sanzou can break it.

Otherwise I started Tooth and Claw. I don't think I'll get far in that one. Unpleasant people doing unpleasant things are unpleasant people etc even if they're dragons. (What do I expect dragons to do? I expect them to defy the Jade Emperor in order to bring rain to the parched common people and get imprisoned under mountains for it. (Man, if I could embroider I'd so have these all over my shirts. My shirts always get bleach stains and grease stains and so on, and I've always wanted to be able to embroider little flowers or something to cover them up.)

Comments

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(Thanks)

See below for discussions on STTS.

I think someone or something down below limited STTS long before he was taken up to Heaven. Should check whether manga canon as well as anime has Gokuu happily remembering life and the people down there and comparing Heaven unfavourably to them, but I'm pretty sure it does. Meaning Gokuu down there was a peaceful nonvioent person. STTS is overwhelmingly violent and mindless. I can't see him ever being a happy dabbler in pools, chatting up the locals and finding them all so kind.

But if he was, and if he was limited in Heaven by Kanzeon presumably, then it was Nataku's death that turned him into this... mindless ferocious blood-thirsty killer. And shocking though Nataku's suicide was, it still doesn't seem enough to bring about that extreme a change in Gokuu.

So I have to think that STTS was originally a quasi force of nature, and that someone decided to limit his- well, slightly unnatural force of nature-dom for the good of all. (Saw a doujinshi once in which it was the buddha himself, who looked rather like koumyou.) The ascetic who discovers him realizes that if he became unlimited he'd be dangerous and brings him to Heaven, and all goes as before. Is my settei at least.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Isn't it accepted that the fantasy reported in 'A child is being beaten' was one of Anna Freud's, and that it's a very recognizable fannish scenario? My memory's fuzzy but I'm pretty sure that's the essay in question.