flemmings | Ill-fated Beginnings

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Ill-fated Beginnings

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.)

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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.

But horripilation and grinning psychopaths are so much fun! I agree with you, but I still wonder if Youkai!Hakkai would have stopped (http://pics.livejournal.com/radiofreebanri/pic/0009065p) punching Gokuu if Gojou hadn't been there to stop him.

The scary!Hakkai lovers IME existed long before the current arc and in spite of the Kami-sama gourd activity; they're convinced that Hakkai himself, limited and rational with deep reservations about his own control, is still likely to go off on a murdering spree because he's, well, Hakkai.

Ascribing some of this to youkai!Hakkai is reasonable, though even then the (possible) loss of control and violence is a byproduct of the Minus Wave, not an inherent characteristic of Hakkai himself- even of youkaiHakkai. But I notice that it doesn't take much to stop the killing rage that Hakkai has always been so worried about. A single touch, a look- and we're back to him calling himself boku and wondering what he's doing. Compared to what it takes to get Seiten Taisei back to Gokuu, youkaiHakkai is a pushover.

And come to that, how come no one talks about the scary psychotic dangerousness of Gokuu? Look what he's like in his natural state. Why don't people go on about the dark urges to destruction that lodge in Gokuu's soul? Because they believe cheery smiling Gokuu is the real Gokuu, but cheery smiling Hakkai is a false persona? The evidence doesn't cut that way, guys.

I guess we could revisit Buffy fandom for a moment. As you might recall, Giles, the previously mild-mannered, polite, scholarly, glasses-sporting, tweed-wearing, Brit-speaking school librarian was revealed to have a Hidden Darque and ~~Violet~~ Violent Youth OMG!

At which point, you could hear the deafening thunder of a thousand keyboards, and the fandom was awash in oh-so-tortured-angst-fic on the character's behalf. It's never really let up.

In other words, it's a massively popular fandom trope. Some writers play to it directly -- Whedon et al. are fanon-hoors extraordinaire. Others don't.

I'm thinking it's the same thing really when a seeming uke removes his megane and is revealed to be a dangerous soopah seme! But I think it's trite and boring; I prefer my aggressively cheerful, mild-mannered oppressor types to stay that way. So Hakkai calmly shaking off the gore and refastening his ear cuffs gave me a happy, but I wasn't overly surprised that it sailed past most people -- it wasn't what they expected to see, so they didn't see it. (Or: "Well, that's just your interpretation!" Etc.) When I encounter yet another Hakkai angst-wallow, I hit the back-button. No biggie.

Why don't people go on about the dark urges to destruction that lodge in Gokuu's soul?

Hmm? You don't appear to be aware that Gokuu is actually a Tortured, Abused Child. For, on Sanzou's behalf, Gokuu has run off into storms, and tossed himself off cliffs, and cried buckets. Being a teenager, he also has periodically indulged in cutting. You need to read more fanfic so that you'll be aware of his deep inner turmoil.

Not to play the age card again- but oh hell, let's play the age card: possibly fandom hasn't yet experienced first-hand the fact that yes Virginia you do get over things. You grow older; your personality changes; you become a mild-mannered unemployed librarian. (Now I can cite a dozen James Branch Cabell texts on the sorrow and the pity of *that*, but I'll spare you my misspent youthful reading.)

Not that there isn't a place for angst in the older reader's life, but it has to be done a little more subtly than ~~I did it when I was nineteen~~ that if it's to work.

As for poor abused Gokuu- oh yes, he's asking for it. What I want to know is, why are there no scary yellow-eyed red-taloned Gokuus sniggering menacingly when no one's looking? Why has no one TTBOMK suggested that Gokuu is actually dangerous, malicious and evil? because Seiten Taisei so obviously is, and Gokuu is really Seiten Taisei so our Gokuu is just a manufactured personality. ('Course, no one believes Gokuu *is* Seiten Taisei *really*, except Gokuu who, bless the boy, automatically took full responsibility for what happened. 'Did I go wild again?' he asks. I. Not ano bakemono or any variations on same.)

Being a teenager, he also has periodically indulged in cutting.

You kill me. XDDDD

(takes notes)

Oh dear. Should I be apprehensive?

Hang around fanficrants long enough, since life is too short for the Pit, and you'll discover that everyone cuts. I mean everyone. Cloud. Seifer. L. All the Gundam guys. All the Ikkou. Probably the PoT chappies as well. It's the new black.

Oh, not necessarily. It just struck me that there is some room for interest/AU there which, as you say, is going unexplored.

Mhh yeah. Freud's bastard grandchildren come back to haunt us. Everything has its root cause in some trauma and the trauma doesn't go away, it marks you for life. Thus Hakkai is a potential murderer because he was once an actual murderer: the trauma of losing his sister under violent circumstances made him a mass murderer and since trauma doesn't heal, he still is a mass murderer.

Never mind that one part of Minekura's ethos is Get over it. You did it, it's in the past, get on with your life now. Never mind also that the experience of having conducted a massacre is a fact that changed Hakkai's conception of himself. He knows what he did under extreme circumstances and as far as I can see he takes care that those circumstances don't arise again. If he has to do it by keeping people at emotional arm's distance, he does. The idea of Hakkai being unaware of his own reality and unwilling or unable to control himself just doesn't mesh with the fact that his weapon of choice requires discipline, focus and self-knowledge to attain and use. Hakkai the ticking time bomb just doesn't work for me.

Gokuu and the divided self doesn't get explored much, it's true. But as I say, I think it's because no one wants to see Seiten Taisei as being really an aspect of Gokuu.

I'd agree. It . . . doesn't fit the comfort space.

Worse, they're actual fanfics. ^^;;;
(Fanfiction.net, for all your teen trauma needs.)

Snapping once and carving up a thousand people is one thing. a) It seems unlikely that _anyone_ would do that over and over, much less Hakkai. b) Even extreme nastiness loses a lot of impact if it's revisited multiple times. (What, mass murdering again? Dude, find a better hobby.)

Gokuu is really Seiten Taisei so our Gokuu is just a manufactured personality.

This comes off as a novel thought. I mean, I've always just accepted that as obvious, but it's now occurring to me that I've likely been sitting in an unpopulated corner here. Huh.

('Course, no one believes Gokuu *is* Seiten Taisei *really*, except Gokuu who, bless the boy, automatically took full responsibility for what happened. 'Did I go wild again?' he asks. I. Not ano bakemono or any variations on same.)

One of my most long-standing fanfic pet peeves.

I used to get into the most irritating arguments on usenet over whether a character in a certain TV show ought to be held responsible for his actions.
Me: Yes. He killed people. Ergo.
Everyone: Yes, he killed people, but Outside Forces Made Him Do It. So no.

When the show itself settled the argument by embracing the Flip Wilson defense (y'know, "the devil made me do it!"), I stopped watching. Why are we supposed to have more sympathy for those who evade blame than for those who don the hair shirts? Foisting it off on your inner werewolf / aliens / demon possession / alcoholic intake / whatever is nothing more than the fictional equivalent of shirking. I'm still baffled by this.

But the corollary of Freud's position- which has been embraced fervently by North American culture- is that you can't recover from trauma without the psychoanalytical/ psychiatric process. Hakkai is doomed to be a violent murderer unless he gets professional help to deal with his anger management issues and the innate narcissism that prevents him from being emotionally involved with other human beings. As I see it, he's dealt with the former himself and is learning to deal with the latter. Being cooped up day after day with three other people in a small space will do it to you- though it'd make *me* a psychotic mass murderer.

Gokuu is really Seiten Taisei so our Gokuu is just a manufactured personality.

This comes off as a novel thought. I mean, I've always just accepted that as obvious, but it's now occurring to me that I've likely been sitting in an unpopulated corner here. Huh.

Well, it goes against both what

incandescens calls the comfort space and the tradition of these things east and west. The western tradition- well, you summarized it yourself. If there's a beast within, You Are Not Responsible for what it does.

(I have a long digression on the anomalies of NAmerican culture. Things like, the society that most encourages individualism least encourages personal responsibility for the individual's actions; and the country that was the leader in women's rights a century ago will be the last one to have a woman head of state. Fricking **Pakistan** had a female leader but not the U.S. I'll save it for another time- but point to Papa Freud below for some of the whys of the first anomaly.)

I know manga/anime/RPG does a lot of beast within: multiple personalities, actual shape-shifting monsters- but I'm not up on the shounen and games that give you the best examples. I seem to recall that you just come to some kind of accommodation with them. Subject always to the dictates of the shounen audience- Kenshin can reverse his blade as much as he likes but you *know* he's going to become Battousai so you get a good fight in the end.

Still I was overstating when I said that our Gokuu is a manufactured personality. We actually don't know what he is, though I'd guess he started as a blank slate when STTS's nature was first suppressed, and eventually grew into himself. A separate but parallel personality. Our Gokuu has a long history of personal development, and there seems to be a link between how psychologically mature Gokuu gets and how physically powerful STTS gets. They're sides of the same coin. I shouldn't say Gokuu is *really* Seiten Taisei because that implies that our Gokuu is a sham, and he's not: but he *is* Seiten Taisei just as much as he's himself, and Gokuu at least doesn't distinguish between the two. It's not even the Beast Within: it's "me when I haven't taken my meds."

I think my original point was that, if the existence of STTS doesn't make our Gokuu a lie, so the fact of youkaiHakkai or even mass-murderer Hakkai doesn't make present Hakkai a lie. I get a little tired of 'the face beneath the smile' thing being taken to mean that the Hakkai we see is a clever ruse to disguise the violent person he really is.

I know Hakkai can be violent when needed and I'll even agree that he enjoys the experience, rather than just accepting it as a necessary evil. He isn't Vash the Stampede. But he's no more violent than any of the others, including Yay a fight!! Gokuu. If Gokuu's happy mayhem doesn't give people frissons of Seiten Taisei's mad rampages, then I don't see why Hakkai's efficient blood-letting should give them frissons of Gonou's massacre.

And that, m'lud, is the case for the defence.

(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.

It's the new black.
Indeed.

It's become frighteningly fashionable in real life amongst the teenage set.

I gather it's been a common phenomenon for a while now, just not talked about. Now it's a popular topic, so kids seem freer to talk about it and people who might not have actually acted on their fantasies before have the peer support to do so now. Back in our day I think there wasn't as much self-abuse, but then there wasn't as much anorexia either. (Repeats god I'm glad I'm not a teenager now for the 50 millionth time.)

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.

One can see the interaction in terms of patient and psychiatrist if one wants to, and I'm sure Freud did- your reading of him is more extensive than mine. But surely that's Freud aggrandizing his own role as psychiatrist. "The strong influence of a person you care for would be the best if it wasn't too awkward to apply" seems to downplay what *is* the best and most natural way of modifying behaviour- the kind of interaction that the Saiyuuki guys use with each other, and the effects of experience.

I'd prefer to see the psychiatrist role as mimicking the role of friends and intimates, or parents and relatives, when for whatever reason these actual people don't exist or don't function for the individual. It's the family and friends that are the natural mode, and the patient/ psychiatrist one that's a kind of... well, artificial replacement for it. The fact is that Hakkai has changed from the person he was both before and after the massacre, and that this was accomplished naturally over time; it just irks me that fangirls still say we all know how dangerous Hakkai is- he *did* kill a thousand youkai after all.

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Ill-fated Beginnings

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