Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow

[flemmings]

So, having thoroughly plot bunnied myself over at feliciter's journal, I went to bed last night and ran the opening through my head to see if it looked even remotely plausible:

Fu Chai: (from the heights of the dais) Come back to Wu with me and be my attendant.
Gou Jian: (sitting up slowly from where he's been sprawled against the balustrade at dais' foot) Your... attendant?
Fu Chai: (bland smile) I've taken a vow not to sleep with any of my concubines until you're dead. But here you are, alive. That makes for dull evenings. You can at least keep me entertained through them.
Gou Jian: Entertained.
Fu Chai: You play chess.
Gou Jian: (nods)
Fu Chai: (happily) There then! We can play chess together!

At which I thought, 'But this is RPF and I don't do that.'

One reason the entries at metafandom give me the willies is that they're all about ficcing and slashing characters played by real human beings. I'm acquainted with the reasoning: the fics aren't about the actors, they're about the characters the actors play. But some time between me the OST fan at 17 and me the Japanese manga-anime fan at older than I want to be, I seem to have developed a squick about ficcing live bodies. This may be because yaoi is all about teh pretteh, and white male American bodies do not and cannot meet the exacting standards of Japanese doujinka, to say nothing of the original mangaka. But it's also about the fact that that body belongs to a real person and it feels wrong to be playing Barbie dolls with it.

I make an exception for aliens, sort-of. The actor is being something not-human, with the aid of a lot of make-up. It doesn't matter that there's a real human being inside R2D2's shell and under 3CPO's metallic layers. The intention is not-us.

Maybe I should make an exception for historicity. The actor is being someone dead that I'd have no problem writing about from a history book. Well yes I would. Fu Chai's mannerisms, Gou Jian's, are the mannerisms Hu Jun and Chen Daoming give them; at the end of the day it's Hu Jun and Chen Daoming I'd be writing.

Not that there's any reason why I shouldn't, even then. The Chinese fen do, with (AFAICS from the meagre anecdotal evidence at my disposal) Uncle Ming and his best buddy's tacit blessing. It's another culture; they do things differently there. Certainly Uncle Ming and his best buddy *and* his favoured disciple are all pretteh enough to hold their own against any two-dimensional man, which makes it easier to regard their characters as indeed belonging to the same class as the two-dimensional men. (And women- my settei involves a lot of Ya Yu input, because though Gou Jian may be infecting the king of Wu, wittingly or unwittingly, he needs to touch base with his own reality to do it and not get lost.)

Sari nagara.... And yet, and yet...

Mh. Must think about this more.

Meanwhile, who can explain to me why we're playing 'chess' (must turn Chinese subtitles on for that scene when I rewatch) on a fershlugginer *platform* a metre and a half square with iron dolls and iron rakes? Is this Persian influence? Didn't Spring and Autumn guys play go?

(As for sari nagara- Issa's haiku on the death of his kid; to have it handy some place:

露の世は Tsuyu-no-yo wa
露の世ながら tsuyu-no-yo nagara
さりながら sari nagara

'The world of dew'- a world of dew it is... And yet- and yet-')

Comments

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, who can explain to me why we're playing 'chess' (must turn Chinese subtitles on for that scene when I rewatch) on a fershlugginer *platform* a metre and a half square with iron dolls and iron rakes?

Because Fu Chai is such a big BOY sometimes and boys like their toys.

Didn't Spring and Autumn guys play go?

Dunno, but they should have. Certainly it's been around long enough, according to wiki and such. Anyway we call it weiqi 围棋 "surround chess."

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Agreed, boys like their TOYS. He looked like a kid with a train set there.

But was WZX expecting to play great big war games or was he expecting to play 围棋, do you recall?

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Don't really remember but I think all he said was 下棋 play chess.

Oh and before I forget, addition to pronoun list: 在下 zai4 xia4 "here below." Humble pronoun but used by fairly high ranking persons as well; Ye Yong for one uses it.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

I thought that game was actually a scaled topographic map of the region and it was for Fu Chai to plan his conquest on. Bo Pi was just jokingly referring to it as chess.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

So why were the guards all FU CHAI! HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YOUR FATHER'S DEATH??? about it? You'd think he'd say 'No I haven't, what the frick do you think I'm doing *now*, idiots?' and not oh gee no I can't.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Because Fu Chai thinks Yue is conquered and done with, closed book, end of story. He wants to go off and conquer Chu or Qi or Jin and become a big hunchoo. Wu Zi Xu wants him to wipe Yue off the map and strengthen Wu internally before he moved on to other nations. These soldiers are there to remind him to focus on Yue (the murderer of his father etc etc), and not get distracted. Bo Pi's map/game is encouraging him to do the opposite -- look northward and think about more conquests.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Mh- this is the honking big metal 'chess game' Bo Pi brings him before Yue is conquered, not the terrain-form map he presents when Fu Chai's son is proclaimed heir apparent. When the first happens, Fu Chai is concentrating on avanging his father's death by defeating Yue, and Bo Pi's game seems intended to encourage him to practise tactics- precisely the use Fu Chai puts it to when demonstrating to WZX how he'll go about conducting the battle that does defeat Yue.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Okay, yes, I'm thinking of the right thing, the honking big metal thing Bo Pi brought, I just got the timeline mixed up a little. Wu Zi Xu thinks that Fu Chai is too eager to fight and too immature for politics. He just wanted Fu Chai to read the classics and learn from the book, all the while keeping the real power to himself. So Bo Pi's "game" was sabotaging his effort to make Fu Chai study the history and the old sage. Shows how little Wu Zi Xu understands Fu Chai, and how well Bo Pi exploited it to his own advantage.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

You wrote it! Playing (chess) together *_*

there can be more plz?

IMHO it's not quite RPF (even if historical) if one imagines that Woxin is a fandom like Star Trek - Kirk/Spock is perfectly OK to those who find Shatner/Nimoy unacceptable. (Although there is a fair bit of Hu Jun/Chen Daoming RPS.)

was WZX expecting to play great big war games or was he expecting to play 围棋

I think it was just 围棋 or the equivalent, since Fu Chai gave the excuse for his visit as relieving his boredom (not the exact word, but he was supposed to be reading military manuals and under an information embargo while WZX was directing the battle proper. I don't think WZX even knew that Fu Chai had stuff like that.)

a kid with a train set

hee that's exactly it. And he was grinning his head off at *Bo Pi's* gift(at a time when he had promised to keep mourning his father's death, abstain from rich food/women, study governance and laws etc), so the soldiers had probably been given orders to shout that whenever he looked like he was getting distracted, happy and/or ready to make decisions for himself (against WZX).

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

there can be more plz?

There *is* more, but it looks better in my head than in words on the screen. I'd feel more confident doing this if I had Japanese subs to go by, she says for oh maybe the 50 millionth time...

Kirk/Spock gets a pass by me only because Spock is an alien with a cabbage like penis who cannot be conflated with Nimoy nohow. It's still LBF (live body fic) and a bit antsy therefore. Even fic is better than slash: the one merely expands what one sees onscreen, the other pokes about in areas I feel I have no business poking about in.

'Boredom' alas is what the subtitles say. He wants a break from the grind, is that it? Well, surely no one could object to him practising the strategy he's learned from his manuals with a scale model. Most commendable: if he'd just keep his expression straight while doing it.

Though I do have to wonder: one assumes he's married and that sex with one's wife is a proper procreative function not at all in the same category as concubines. Has he promised to abstain from that as well? meaning he isn't getting any? No wonder he's so vindictive.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

He wants a break from the grind...if he'd just keep his expression straight while doing it

ahaha. I think that's his default happi-enthusiastic look for anything he's interested in.

Has he promised to abstain from that as well? meaning he isn't getting any?

No further explanation given in the series (though shortly after Gou Jian and co. move to Wu, Fu Chai's eldest kid appears to be at least six or seven, so presumably was born before he became king), but queen+concubines in those days were all sequestered in the 后宫(rear palace) separately from the king who would visit them for recreational/reproductive purposes (depending on his incliniation and orientation).

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

Oops, mea culpa >_< I see that your objection is to slashing live-action charas per se, and not only the actors themselves.

an exception for historicity

Historians are rather like fanfic writers in that sense, I suppose. I imagine that Sima Qian et al got their inspiration not only from dry-as-dust texts (written by the victors, natch) but also from re-tellings and re-enactments of battles and such that they would have seen at court entertainments or more private affairs. Street Chinese opera, evolved from such lofty presentations, is full of *stories* with historical charas eg Xiang Yu, Yang Guifei and the great Cow Cow.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

ummm... I could egg you on I suppose... ^________^...

I thought I would have found it 'as you have put it' myself but hmm aahhh! Well the latest 'thing' to have bit me seems to have made me rethink things a few times, and still am so doing...aaah well.


I find that no, not yet those with Malay subs are pending. >.<...but it's like your 100 Demons fic...I love them enough without know overly much about them and through you I know enough about Woxin that should you decide to write stuff, I know I will read it with pleasure!

Errmmm ... would this be counting as egging you on??? o_O

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I suppose it would. But. But. I've read too much fic by people who go by the English subtitles of a series and just... miss it. It's not inevitable, of course, and it helps if they know something about where the thing came from, but. But. I don't want to wind up with 'nice try but no cigar' and I'm pretty sure I would- if only because what I'm seeing and what paleaswater sees is so different, and paleaswater is miles closer to the target audience than I am. It makes for a nice story in my head but I don't think it's ready for the light of day.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

That's not true at all. I was amazed at how closely you were divining all the subtleties and reaching pretty much the same conclusions as me from the very imperfect subtitles. I think perhaps what I was trying to say about Gou Jian and his character is not coming across the right way, due to how the Chinese use certain terms. In fact so many of the things you say about characters, Wu Zi Xu, Bo Pi, Shi Mai are spot on. So don't worry so much about that, but finish the series first. There are many more twists, so you'll want to know them.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Ah, a vote of confidence. ^_^; Certainly I'll finish the series- I'm onto disk 6 now, aka The Good Bits. But the real problem writing Woxin fic is wanting to indicate *exactly how* each man says each and every line, because of course I can see it perfectly in my head.