Yay, Blind Go Reveals Are Up!
May. 25th, 2008 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laneroseI've been waiting for this for a bit, in large part because unlike most stories I've written, I have had such an urge to talk about this fic. I wrote God Fingerprints, which appears to have been a lot more confusing than I intended it to be. ^^;;;;; I've gotten some really good concrit on it, which makes me very happy. ^_____^ Anyways, it was the kind of story that has a story behind it, so I'm going to babble and hopefully the universe will ignore me while I do so. XDDDDD
When I started writing GF (before it was GF), I had a reasonably straight forward idea. I wanted to write about how Shindou and Touya stopped playing go. The entire story had been told from the POV of their friends and colleagues trying to figure out what the hell was going on when Shindou and Touya stopped showing up for their games, with lots of scene jumping. There's this one bit where Akira and Hikaru get forced to play a game but trick everyone (at least temporarily) by replaying the last game they played at the salon and stuff (I still have it all, 'cause I hand wrote it initially), but that aside, I stayed out of Hikaru's and Akira's perspectives. Anyway, I got to the part where the reveal should happen - you know, the part where everything about why they're not playing is supposed to be explained - only to realize that I didn't know what had happened. Hahahaha FAIL!
So I stopped to look back through it, and realized that I'd been writing two completely different ideas like they were the same story. The first - which later became Index, for the most part - was the idea that Shindou and Touya had found the Hand of God, but that it hadn't been what they were expecting at all. I'm actually still quite annoyed at myself for everything that *didn't* make it into that section, in the end, but I'll get to that later. The second had to do with finding the Hand of God, but not being able to remember what happened, and basically freaking out about it (parts of this went to Pinky, parts of it went to Ring). And I couldn't decide which I liked better, so I couldn't pick one ending and forget the other and call it done, but I also couldn't convince myself to break it up into separate bits because the ideas were - literally - intertwined. IN RETROSPECT this is probably the moment where it became permanently confusing for everyone else, because this is the moment where I decided to write five variations on finding the Hand of God, a la![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chaineddove's 5 of Five. (Ironically, in reading her author's notes on that story, I realize that people also mistook it for a linear progression, initially. XDDDD)
God Fingerprints - Once I hit on the five hands as an idea,, they kind of wrapped me up in possible permutations. I cleaned up the previous half-impressions, and pulled them into neater packages, and conceptualized two new ones to go with, and here's the rest. I originally was going to call it Fingers of God, because each idea linked up with a finger (tied together by red thread at the pinky, ring in the western wedding ring sense, middle in the American sense, index for the idea of pointing fingers, thumb as an opposable thumb vital but its loss is survivable). Somewhere along the way I decided I liked fingerprints better, though, because what I wrote were the after-images of Five Hands of God, and not really the Hands themselves.
Thumb was the last section started but the first section finished. Oddly enough, I think this section is the most misunderstood, because in it, Touya's dead. Like, as a doornail. No longer living. I wanted this section first because I thought that would keep the confusion to a minimum if something that clearly couldn't be followed by the others went first. I think because Tezuka (who didn't finish his game, but props to anyone who picked up the Prince of Tennis reference!) survived, and because Hikaru wouldn't let Kuwabara finish saying that Touya was dead, the whole Touya-is-dead part wasn't quite clear. ^^;;;;;; Whoops. ^^;;;;;;; Kuwabara's theory, by the by, was that whoever found the Hand of God would, by finding it, die. His opponent's half-finished game left him alive but without go. I just kind of had visions of a much older Hikaru, all alone without Touya, become *just* *like* Kuwabara, right down to the teasing an Ogata-like character because he can and encouraging young rivals and stuff. Kuwabara!Hikaru is love. XDDDD I probably should have gone with the way I originally started this section, though: "The sun shone on the day of Touya Akira's funeral." Less chance of confusion, no?
Index was the reverse of Thumb, in that it was the first section started and the last section finished. I had that first paragraph alone for three months before I finally wrote the rest of it, hours before the BG deadline. XDD In a lot of ways this section was very frustrating to me, because there was just a lot that I couldn't manage to fit in. Some parts were big - like the explanation for what had gone wrong with the Hand - and some were small - like a throwaway line mentioning trying to get in touch with Asumi, Hikaru's wife, and Akari, Akari's wife (LOVED the story with those pairings btw) - but they just couldn't all fit. That Hand of God goes something like this - playing elevated them to a cosmic level where they fought a cosmic battle, and basically were forced to see lots of death and destruction and people dying up close and personal. Afterwards, looking at a goban, that's what they see - the death and the blood and guts and basically just horror, so they stop playing and move away and such. This is my favourite section, but I'm still *really* irritated at it.
Middle - Well, I kind of see finding the Hand of God with someone else as a sort of ultimate betrayal for either Hikaru or Akira, and I wanted to play with that. This section was maybe the biggest stretch out of all of them, because the other four are about Shindou and Touya finding the Hand of God, where as this presents the Hand of God as a related but separate concept from Shindou and Touya. It has Yongha in it, and that line about living at number 55, both of which I love. The latter I didn't realize was in it until all of a sudden it was there - I only *just* missed bursting into laughter on my train home that night, that's how much I tripped over it. XDDD I see Touya going on from here, still playing go, but doing it kinda bitter. Shindou, as mentioned, never plays again.
Ring is the section that I enjoyed writing the least, even though I like re-reading it. Maybe because I have so little knowledge of go? Days of sketching 19x19 grids in my notebook to try and figure out how to set up the ko and then how to talk about it drove me slightly less than sane. That, and for all that I've done it several times over now, I'm still not good at writing smut. But since the Hikago fandom makes go sexual so often... Well. It seemed right to do a Hand of God where it really was.
Pinky - Oddly enough, this and Ring are the sections that I was most worried about having taken as a linear progression because the conceptualization of the Hand of God in them is very similar. Or at least, the way it played out made it feel that way to me, which is why I went from Thumb to Pinky rather than from Pinky to Thumb. (Initally, I'd had it in reverse.) For me this section was the most forgettable, which is why I'd had it first, but it's happy endings as opposed to Dead Touya endings, y'know? I do very much like to end on an up note, and since Ring had to stay where it was for the fingerprint thing to work, this had to stay where it was, too.
On the whole~~~
I think I should probably have gone with my gut impulse, and only submitted the first section for Blind Go, because with Author's Notes on this story that are this long, clearly some explanation was necessary that - because of the nature of BG - I just couldn't give. For me it was all as a single, themed event, but I can see why for a reader it might not have been, which really is the important part. XD
In other news, I wish that I'd been able to comment on more of the BG fics. To be honest, I'm still not completely done reading them. XDDD I'm also majorly impressed withaiwritingfic, issen4, and aishuu for their reading and summarizing / commenting abilities. Seriously, three cheers to y'all. Also, GIANT LOVE to the mods, because y'all are AWESOME!!! ^____^
And yay Hikago fandom in general~ ♥
When I started writing GF (before it was GF), I had a reasonably straight forward idea. I wanted to write about how Shindou and Touya stopped playing go. The entire story had been told from the POV of their friends and colleagues trying to figure out what the hell was going on when Shindou and Touya stopped showing up for their games, with lots of scene jumping. There's this one bit where Akira and Hikaru get forced to play a game but trick everyone (at least temporarily) by replaying the last game they played at the salon and stuff (I still have it all, 'cause I hand wrote it initially), but that aside, I stayed out of Hikaru's and Akira's perspectives. Anyway, I got to the part where the reveal should happen - you know, the part where everything about why they're not playing is supposed to be explained - only to realize that I didn't know what had happened. Hahahaha FAIL!
So I stopped to look back through it, and realized that I'd been writing two completely different ideas like they were the same story. The first - which later became Index, for the most part - was the idea that Shindou and Touya had found the Hand of God, but that it hadn't been what they were expecting at all. I'm actually still quite annoyed at myself for everything that *didn't* make it into that section, in the end, but I'll get to that later. The second had to do with finding the Hand of God, but not being able to remember what happened, and basically freaking out about it (parts of this went to Pinky, parts of it went to Ring). And I couldn't decide which I liked better, so I couldn't pick one ending and forget the other and call it done, but I also couldn't convince myself to break it up into separate bits because the ideas were - literally - intertwined. IN RETROSPECT this is probably the moment where it became permanently confusing for everyone else, because this is the moment where I decided to write five variations on finding the Hand of God, a la
chaineddove's 5 of Five. (Ironically, in reading her author's notes on that story, I realize that people also mistook it for a linear progression, initially. XDDDD)God Fingerprints - Once I hit on the five hands as an idea,, they kind of wrapped me up in possible permutations. I cleaned up the previous half-impressions, and pulled them into neater packages, and conceptualized two new ones to go with, and here's the rest. I originally was going to call it Fingers of God, because each idea linked up with a finger (tied together by red thread at the pinky, ring in the western wedding ring sense, middle in the American sense, index for the idea of pointing fingers, thumb as an opposable thumb vital but its loss is survivable). Somewhere along the way I decided I liked fingerprints better, though, because what I wrote were the after-images of Five Hands of God, and not really the Hands themselves.
Thumb was the last section started but the first section finished. Oddly enough, I think this section is the most misunderstood, because in it, Touya's dead. Like, as a doornail. No longer living. I wanted this section first because I thought that would keep the confusion to a minimum if something that clearly couldn't be followed by the others went first. I think because Tezuka (who didn't finish his game, but props to anyone who picked up the Prince of Tennis reference!) survived, and because Hikaru wouldn't let Kuwabara finish saying that Touya was dead, the whole Touya-is-dead part wasn't quite clear. ^^;;;;;; Whoops. ^^;;;;;;; Kuwabara's theory, by the by, was that whoever found the Hand of God would, by finding it, die. His opponent's half-finished game left him alive but without go. I just kind of had visions of a much older Hikaru, all alone without Touya, become *just* *like* Kuwabara, right down to the teasing an Ogata-like character because he can and encouraging young rivals and stuff. Kuwabara!Hikaru is love. XDDDD I probably should have gone with the way I originally started this section, though: "The sun shone on the day of Touya Akira's funeral." Less chance of confusion, no?
Index was the reverse of Thumb, in that it was the first section started and the last section finished. I had that first paragraph alone for three months before I finally wrote the rest of it, hours before the BG deadline. XDD In a lot of ways this section was very frustrating to me, because there was just a lot that I couldn't manage to fit in. Some parts were big - like the explanation for what had gone wrong with the Hand - and some were small - like a throwaway line mentioning trying to get in touch with Asumi, Hikaru's wife, and Akari, Akari's wife (LOVED the story with those pairings btw) - but they just couldn't all fit. That Hand of God goes something like this - playing elevated them to a cosmic level where they fought a cosmic battle, and basically were forced to see lots of death and destruction and people dying up close and personal. Afterwards, looking at a goban, that's what they see - the death and the blood and guts and basically just horror, so they stop playing and move away and such. This is my favourite section, but I'm still *really* irritated at it.
Middle - Well, I kind of see finding the Hand of God with someone else as a sort of ultimate betrayal for either Hikaru or Akira, and I wanted to play with that. This section was maybe the biggest stretch out of all of them, because the other four are about Shindou and Touya finding the Hand of God, where as this presents the Hand of God as a related but separate concept from Shindou and Touya. It has Yongha in it, and that line about living at number 55, both of which I love. The latter I didn't realize was in it until all of a sudden it was there - I only *just* missed bursting into laughter on my train home that night, that's how much I tripped over it. XDDD I see Touya going on from here, still playing go, but doing it kinda bitter. Shindou, as mentioned, never plays again.
Ring is the section that I enjoyed writing the least, even though I like re-reading it. Maybe because I have so little knowledge of go? Days of sketching 19x19 grids in my notebook to try and figure out how to set up the ko and then how to talk about it drove me slightly less than sane. That, and for all that I've done it several times over now, I'm still not good at writing smut. But since the Hikago fandom makes go sexual so often... Well. It seemed right to do a Hand of God where it really was.
Pinky - Oddly enough, this and Ring are the sections that I was most worried about having taken as a linear progression because the conceptualization of the Hand of God in them is very similar. Or at least, the way it played out made it feel that way to me, which is why I went from Thumb to Pinky rather than from Pinky to Thumb. (Initally, I'd had it in reverse.) For me this section was the most forgettable, which is why I'd had it first, but it's happy endings as opposed to Dead Touya endings, y'know? I do very much like to end on an up note, and since Ring had to stay where it was for the fingerprint thing to work, this had to stay where it was, too.
On the whole~~~
I think I should probably have gone with my gut impulse, and only submitted the first section for Blind Go, because with Author's Notes on this story that are this long, clearly some explanation was necessary that - because of the nature of BG - I just couldn't give. For me it was all as a single, themed event, but I can see why for a reader it might not have been, which really is the important part. XD
In other news, I wish that I'd been able to comment on more of the BG fics. To be honest, I'm still not completely done reading them. XDDD I'm also majorly impressed with
aiwritingfic, issen4, and aishuu for their reading and summarizing / commenting abilities. Seriously, three cheers to y'all. Also, GIANT LOVE to the mods, because y'all are AWESOME!!! ^____^And yay Hikago fandom in general~ ♥
no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 11:02 pm (UTC)Yay for not being confused~. I wouldn't worry too much about missing Tezuka - technically, it's Tezuka grandfather, not Tezuka, anyway. And a lot of what I'd mentioned here could no way no how be discerned from the story I posted - like I said, Index especially was really frustrating because I just couldn't make it all fit. ;_; It's okay, though, I like it anyway! XDD
And you did comment previously, but thank you for saying it again anyway. ♥