Balance is the enemy of creativity

[flemmings]

There's a couple of chilling lines in vol 15 of 100 Demons, that, well, chilled me a bit when I read them. But I thought no more of the matter until I was rereading the first Kai story yet again and got to that bit about 'I just wanted to protect them- protect them all' including the guy who I *think* (unreliable source for this, you know) is *possibly* trying to get him killed. And then when I was looking at the broken mirror arc, my eye fell on a throwaway piece of dialogue between Ritsu and Kai, about '*Please* stop tempting Akira into using spells; you don't know what'll happen if all that latent ability of hers goes active.' 'If you knew you were going to lose your lover, wouldn't you want to try to do something about it? The least we can do is help Akira reach the point where she understands that there's nothing she *can* do.'

And suddenly Ritsu's passive 'no I don't want to take risks- I saw what happened when you and Grandfather did' approach looks a lot less sensible and a lot more ketchi/ small-souled; and Kai's 'hell let's do it, power is there to be used' approach goes from adolescent thrill-seeking to genuine generosity of spirit; and the very real resemblance between young Kagyuu (whom Ima tortures regularly with his inability to protect anyone) and Kai stands out quite clearly.

Which is all very fine, if it didn't invalidate the whole thrust of my current story. The one I was so pleased about before, yes.

Comments

[incandescens]

It's always so annoying for me when I know something in the story invalidates something in my story. Because however well I write it, however much I tell myself it's an AU or a reinterpretation or a different version, there is always that part of me that says you got it wrong.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

It's not just getting it wrong, in this case. It's the crawling sense of being Unworthy Of One's Mangaka. 100 Demons has an unreliable narrator (*I* think) so even Ritsu's firmest convictions might still admit of another construction. (Within limits: one cannot make Aoarashi a Byronic intellectual even if the costume looks good on him.) But I was accepting Ritsu's jaundiced view of Kai as an objectively correct one, and now I feel, to be true to Ima's multi-faceted approach, that it needs to be undercut in some way. And alas, I can't do that by undercutting Ritsu himself, because he's not even in the story. I must show a sympathetic side to Kai somehow, when this is actually one of the times that he's being very un-. It's doable, I think, but it won't be easy.

[incandescens]

I realise this isn't the most helpful of comments, but I do look forward to reading this.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Thank you, that *is* helpful. Sometmes authorial self-sufficiency isn't enough, and one needs an incentive to justify the suffering.