Some notes and commentary on what I was thinking when I wrote the stories and why I made the choices I did.... for any who are interested in a peak behind the scenes, as it were.
spoiler notice: As I ramble I talk about what I know (or don't know) of the original Takahashi, including the ending, and also what happens (or what I want to happen) later on in my stories, so... just fyi.
I can't read this story anymore without laughing uproariously. In fact, it's hard for me to read it at all and I kind of hate it; I was so immature when I wrote this- what 5 years ago now?- and I think it really shows in my writing style. In the plot, too; I can't believe that I ever did write this. I don't think I'd have the guts to post it if I wrote it now, rather than those years ago that I did write it; I've always been interested in bondage as a plot device, but I don't have any RL experience in that area and nowadays knowledge of my ignorance might have kept me from posting the story. What a mistake that would be, hmm? I write this now having just recently finished "Devotion"; the series has turned into a sort of inverted pyramid of awesome and it has been just a lot of fun to write.
I first wrote "Inglorious" because I wanted to read a story like it but was completely unable to find one that fit my tastes. Most of the Inuyasha/Sesshomaru fics I read conformed rather heavily to seme/uke stereotypes and just weren't enjoyable to me. I hate seme/uke stereotypes; really, part of the whole fascination of yaoi to me is the ability to take a couple and completely separate its internal workings from expected societal norms, while at the same time playing with how that society deals with this departure from the norm. What attracted me to the idea of this particular pairing was that it is such a match between equals, and exploring a give and take of power was what I really wanted from fan fiction for this pairing.
As I've discussed previously, the concept of "She" was a sort of send up of Mary Sues which is why "She" doesn't have a name. She's the perfect little yaoi fangirl... And "She" in her existence is, on another level, a metaphor for fan fiction itself- for all the fangirls who get their hands on characters and force them into having sex whether or not that works for those characters, and which their characters then strike back at but can never truly break free of. "She" is me, as much as the whole story is a fangirl fantasy; though I wonder what it says about my self image that "She" dies at the end?? (Well... I would hope that it shows that I try not to take myself too seriously!)
While the story is rife with self mockery, in a weird way I think is also really works on the level of this being a believable situation for the boys to begin a relationship. Even if he doesn't like Sesshomaru at this point, I've always imagined that Inuyasha is a very sympathetic individual and I think he responds deeply to the idea of a strong individual being forced into such a degrading situation. He doesn't see it as "oh, he got his!"; he knows that if it were a fair fight Sesshomaru would kick her ass, as happens later on in the story. I'm not sure if I can account for Sesshomaru's corresponding sympathy toward Inuyasha at the end of the story. I don't think he's a particularly sympathetic individual, but I do think he is a fair-minded individual. Inuyasha displayed a great deal of trust in freeing Sesshomaru from his binding without any expectation of return and I think Sesshomaru respects the courage such a move displays.
In many ways Inuyasha is the narrator of the story, and as such sets himself apart from the action; there's a certain level of detachment in how he responds to what is happening that I think is a reflection of my immature writing style of the time. I hope that's something I've managed to become better at.
When I first wrote "Inglorious" I never intended there to be a sequel, much less a series. I don't know if it's just the Inuyasha fandom, but "Inglorious" was the most well received story I'd written at that time, and even to this day the series gets more reviews and comments than most of the rest of the fics I've written combined. As I write this now I see the story has almost 15,000 (15,000?!?) hits at AFF and almost 40 reviews, just for the one chapter. Ideas come into my head independently of reviews, but knowing that people are interested in the story makes me more interested in taking those ideas and hammering them into linear shapes, thereby turning them into stories that others can share.
With this story I began my "tradition" of introducing each new story with song lyrics. I didn't really mean for it to become a continual thing, but music is very important to me when I write and these lyrics from "Desperado" just spoke to me about Sesshomaru, especially the line "your prison is walking though this world all alone." Even more than him choosing to be alone, Sesshomaru is alone because he's hardened his heart to keep it from being touched by anyone, which practice has resulted in there not being anyone who can reach him even if he should want to change. Because of the events of "Inglorious," Inuyasha has managed to sneak into a crack in that heart and is currently festering like a splinter under the skin- more than Inuyasha, "Fraternal" is about Sesshomaru learning how to live with a relationship.
I am well aware, and was at that time, that Inunotaisho (or, as I spelled it before I took Japanese and learned about particles, Inutaisho) is not a name but rather a title. I can still imagine Sesshomaru thinking of his father by this title rather than his actual name, whatever it may be, because to Sesshomaru I think referring to his father's title would convey more respect. I was also at that time reluctant to assign names to canon characters whose real names might be revealed later on. This story was also written long before Sesshomaru's mother appeared in the manga; she was a mysterious character and I enjoyed using her as a springboard to create a connection between the boys and the villains. I had assumed she was dead; I don't think I'm the only one who assumed that the only reason the Inunotaisho took up with Izayoi was because he previous mate had passed on. Obviously, as was later revealed in the manga (and the brand new anime), this was not so.
The "details" that Kagome knows about her family history, which Inuyasha is remembering in chapter 2, are actually incredibly vague references to the anime Rurouni Kenshin and Saiyuki; Tokio is the name of Saitoh's wife, and Gonou was Hakkai's name when he was human.
From the beginning I did not want to discount Kagome in this story. Inuyasha's relationship with her, as well as with the others of their "group," is very important to him- to his idea of self and to his recognition of the possibility of a relationship between himself and Sesshomaru. I think I've covered that concept pretty well in the story, so I won't get into it too much here... but I don't like yaoi stories that immediate turn all the females in the vicinity into rabid, hormonal bitches. Strong female characters are something that is really lacking in a lot of yaoi/BL stories, and while I understand the need to "eliminate the competition" being the motivation, I believe it to be fallacy to think that men and women can exist in separate spheres without influencing each other, and without needing each other in ways that are completely not sexual. I also think that it weakens the m/m relationship to think that if there was a female present who was a halfway descent person then the central gay relationship would dissolve. I don't believe that attraction works that way.
I am unreasonably proud of the chapter Aristocratic Dance. Sometimes I have a hard time going back and rereading my old writing, but I think that chapter is 100% win. I also particularly like the line: "as if women threw themselves at his feet all the time"- because Sesshomaru is such the bishonen that fangirls really do throw themselves at him all the fucking time.
Ever since I first created her I have been utterly paranoid that people would think that Ros was a Mary Sue. She has mysterious powers and an instantaneous connection to Sesshomaru; sure it's a blood connection and he never feels even slightly attracted to her, but this fear is the reason that many of the things which happen to Ros end up happening, such as her death later on in "Fraternal" and her eventually hooking up with the most un-bishonen-like character in the story. It's a totally unreasoning paranoia... but I can't seem to shake it.
I can't remember now what I imagined as the physical basis for Chernobog when I first wrote this story. Fairly early on I did find out that the demon from "Night on Bald Mountain" in Disney's Fantasia is called Chernabog, and I now picture some kind of cross between him and Thailog from Gargoyles when I think about my character (but without the wings). The name means "black god." In Russian/Slavic mythology Ros is apparently a mermaid who was the mother of Dazhdbog; I picture her looking kind of like Toran, with Sesshomaru's coloring but paler and kind of washed out. Baikal is the name of a lake in Southern Siberia (it is the oldest and most voluminous freshwater lake in the world); I don't remember how I picked this name... but I do like the way it looks on the page, and I like to have names that start with different letters. My main idea with how he looks physically was "cadaverous."
Sesshomaru states, and thinks, several times that he wants to and will kill Chernobog. I thought it was a nice turn of events that this doesn't actually happen.
Chapters 3, 5, and 6 are all named after songs I became slightly obsessed with during the time that I was writing this story. The version of "Son of a Preacher Man" that I have is sung by Aretha Franklin, "You Wreck Me" is a song by Tom Petty, and the version of "Ill Wind" I like best is when Julie Benz sang it on the TV show Angel.
I love Jaken. I really do. He has that honesty of spirit that I really admire in characters, even if he is a trifle simple.
I made a conscious decision in these stories to use as little Japanese as I could, including honorifics. I'm reminded of this as I read over chapter 7, where Rin is reintroduced, because I think her character suffers the most from this. In Japanese she refers to both Sesshomaru and Jaken, as well as most everyone else she runs into, with the honorific -sama; in English she says "Lord Sesshomaru" but calls all others by their names. I think this detracts from her character by not allowing her humility to really come through. My reasoning in not using Japanese words was that in essence the entire story is in Japanese, because that is the language that the characters are speaking to each other and in which they think. The only Japanese words I use are clothing terms for which there is no direct translation (and obviously I don't translate names). Although even those are not entirely accurate; I use the word haori to refer to Inuyasha's fire rat coat, though technically it's some other type of jacket with a far more specific name that I at one time had looked up but now have forgotten.
We never really get a whole lot of Sesshomaru actually being the Lord of the Western Lands in the anime, or the manga either though I'm less familiar with that version. (The only instance I can even think of is the flashback scenes in the three episode arc that starts with "Plot of the Panther Devas.") What the hell is he supposed to do in that position? Are there Lords of Eastern or Northern lands who come over for tea now and then? I tried to skirt around issues like that in this story because I thought that Takahashi would eventually get around to talking about it more and I didn't want to too badly contradict any possible future canon. Of course, that was then... now, I don't care so much.
I deliberately made Sesshomaru's "home" first of all a fortress, as opposed to a palace, and secondly a place that has seen better days. With all the wandering around he likes to do, I don't imagine he spends a lot of time there. I wanted to avoid the lavish, servant filled palaces that I'd seen in a couple other fics. This was probably heavily influenced by Patches365's DeviantArt work called "Sesshomaru Is..."; I think I broke each of the three rules she presents in that art piece, but I really was trying to follow "he does not have a castle." That in mind I knew I still needed someplace for him to live, or more precisely for his parents to have lived in.
I'm reading over chapter 8, the scene where Baikal attacks Jaken. I think this scene really helped Jaken be more at ease with Inuyasha. But what strikes me the most about Jaken and Rin, and which I have tried to keep true in these stories, is their utter faith and trust in Sesshomaru. Both of them extend this faith to him before he, in my opinion, proves worthy of it. (Jaken does "doubt" occasionally, thinking that Sesshomaru will abandon him, etc, but to my mind this is not doubt of Sesshomaru but of Jaken's own worthiness.) I am led therefore to believe there must be something about him to inspire this level of trust. This is why I do believe that he has a desire to protect those under his care for no reason other than he believes it is the right thing to do; it is his duty- going back to him being "fair-minded"- to protect those who have sworn themselves to him. ...These observations have less to do with the story, but I try to reexamine characters and go back to the source material so that I don't get too caught up in what I want to happen without making sure it'll at least make something that resembles sense. Sesshomaru is particularly enigmatic but there's a line from A Knight's Tale that I've always liked and I believe applies; if I remember correctly it goes: "Your men love you. If I knew nothing else about you, that would be enough."
Inuyasha is very childlike in personality in this story. I'm not sure where that came from... I think in Takahashi's story he is immature at times but not to the extent that he is in this story. My only defense is that this is new territory for him; that in a sense he is a child when it comes to relationships. ...And there's nothing like hanging around your siblings to make you act like a kid again.
I can't remember, but I think I've had people question how, in chapter 10, Sesshomaru saves the whole army. Opposite to Tetsusaiga which can slay 100 demons in a stroke, Tenseiga can save 100 souls in one strike. So, Sesshomaru merely unlocks this potential of the sword; which I don't remember ever actually being done in Takahashi, so maybe it's fair that people had forgotten that it can do that.
As for Tetsusaiga, a person requires 2 things to wield the sword: demonic energy and compassion for humanity. To my memory it does not and never has repelled demons, just demons who want to kill humans (which, face it, includes about 99.9% of the demon population). A Sesshomaru with compassion for humans- or for one who was half human- would be perfectly able to wield it.
I am fairly proud of chapter 11, too. I have a hard time writing action/battle scenes; I have to picture the whole thing out in my mind beforehand and again as I write to make sure it all makes sense spatially.
However, I do not like how the story ends; I think the last lines are kind of cheesy.
As I think I've mentioned before, part of the sex scene in the last chapter is based off of a fanart image by Yana Goya; I believe she entitled it "Shadow Dance II."
For each story in this series the title is a single word that is an emotion or a state of being. This was the first story where I consciously continued that pattern; "Fraternal" was called suchly because I wanted the idea of brotherhood without actually using the word brother.
Especially in this story and "Fraternal" there's a lot of my cat in the way I write Inuyasha's mannerisms, particularly the movement of his ears, and there's a lot of me in how I write Sesshomaru; not that that really means anything because there's a lot of me in all the characters, especially Kagome too. It was a pleasure to write Kagome's PoV again. Well, for the first time really, because for this story I had to get more into her character than I had previously. After spending so much time with just the boys in the last story it was fun to write everyone again, though by the middle of the story I was driving myself crazy trying to coordinate multiple PoVs.
I'm only noticing this because I just read "Fraternal" but there is no consistency between stories in whether or not I hyphenate "half breed..." Ah well. Also, I add the extra "u" in all the names that have it except for Sesshomaru. (Shippou, Kouga, etc...) There's no reason for that... except that maybe Sesshomaru's name is long enough already without an extra letter.
Sango initially mentions that Sesshomaru has been polite as if he was "trying to gain favor with us." I intended for her to be mistaken in this observation. She is assigning human desires to his actions, which even she observes she is doing. Sesshomaru couldn't give a rat's ass what they all think of him, especially having just met them. He is being polite because if there is conflict between himself and the humans then Inuyasha is the one who will suffer for it because Inuyasha is the one who cares about what they think.
The title of chapter 2, Righteous Guise, is supposed to be a pun... I was trying to emulate the Angel episode "Guise Will Be Guise," but I don't think it worked as well as I wanted it to. It kind of revolved around the temple priests and their guise of righteousness contrasting with Miroku who is in fact a righteous guy. The "relative" in the title of chapter 3 is a pun as well... I think I wrote those two chapters while staying at my grandparent's house; my dad's family has a habit of bringing out the pun in everything.
There's a lot of flirty behavior between Inuyasha and Kagome in the first couple chapters of this story. This was apparently misleading, and unwelcome, but I felt it was a necessary carryover from the show. Necessary as well, to the redefinition that their relationship was undergoing. Neither of them really have any idea what's going on and I would go so far as to say that neither of them- certainly not Inuyasha and probably not Kagome either- has had a friend before that they cared about this deeply. I think it's natural, especially on Inuyasha's part, to assume that it's something "more" than friendship, and to want to, on the surface, nudge the relationship into the pre-established gender roles that society and culture demand. "Fraternal" was mostly about Sesshomaru learning how to accept and deal with having a relationship; "Camaraderie" is mostly about Inuyasha's own self discovery- learning about what it means to be in a romantic relationship and about how to order and distinguish between different types of relationships.
Ah, chapter 4... I remember several readers thinking I was going to make this chapter a threesome. Now that I read the end of chapter 3 again I guess I can see where they were getting that thought from... Honestly, the thought had never crossed my mind and I was slightly annoyed by the assumption. Of course it had never crossed my mind because I am by nature an observer, a voyeur- so I knew exactly what Kagome was after. I'm rather proud of the chapter; I think it turned out well. For some reason Kagome's narrative "voice" comes very easily to me.
I like that Sesshomaru, the supposedly emotionally frigid one, is the first to confess his love and Inuyasha doesn't return those words until a good 11 chapters later, in another story. I think it's because Sesshomaru doesn't have a lot of experience with emotion in his life that he is more easily able to recognize what he feels as love. And he is fair-minded enough that once he recognizes it the feeling is easy enough to confess. Inuyasha has a lot more baggage with people he loved, or thought he loved, leaving him and/or hurting him; I can see him being unwilling to confess to just how deeply his emotions run even long after he recognizes them. If Sesshomaru was perhaps of the mind previously that emotion was a weakness, Inuyasha has previously experienced in his own life that emotions have great power, and that power has been used primarily to hurt him- not just by Kikyou/Naraku, but even when he was a child and he was shunned by the humans. He does confess to Kagome a couple chapters later, in chapter 7, but she's Kagome. Firstly, she is not the object of the feelings in question, and secondly she's comfortable. He's known her longer (as in he's been having actual conversations with her longer, not as in he's been aware of her existence longer) and I think her caring and feminine presence reminds him of his mother- not that he thinks of her the same way as he does his mother, but they project the same comfortable, protective energy that he has learned means safety.
The sexual position they use in chapter 4 I imagine being Sesshomaru's favorite- with Inuyasha beneath him and inside of him. That's just a random observation... ;b
One of the things I regret/dislike about what I did in these stories is the defamation of the character of Kikyou. I actually don't dislike Kikyou in the anime. I don't really like her either, mostly because she's usually really boring when she does show up, but I sympathize with her search for meaning in her un-life. I mean, through no fault or asking of her own she has become what she previously would have found to be abhorrent; that's gotta ruin a girl's day. Yeah, she does have the annoying habit of stealing things and giving them to Naraku- but I find her being boring to be a far worse crime. At any rate, she fit kind of perfectly into the "frigid bitch, man hater" role that is usually reserved for Kagome in fics like this, so it just kind of happened. In chapter 4 she also serves as Kagome's foil, forcing Kagome to acknowledge her feelings and put words to them, even the parts of her feelings that she might not otherwise have wanted to acknowledge- such as the fact that had Sesshomaru not shown up Kagome believes that she and Inuyasha would have gotten together. (Yes, Kagome thinks this; whether or not it's true doesn't matter. She also believes what she said about Inuyasha being happy: as long as he is, she is, even if he's not with her. She has no intention of trying to break them up or anything so petty.)
The amusing thing that Sesshomaru is remembering at the end of chapter 4 is his earlier conversation with Inuyasha about Izayoi, and how Kagome is much like her.
Chapter titles 5 through 7- broken, beaten, forged- are meant to evoke metalworking while also representing the state of the group and the mental state of the people in it.
Of all the characters in this story, the one I had the hardest time writing was probably Kouga. I wasn't helped by the fact that his primary interaction here is with Sesshomaru, someone he has about five seconds of screen time with in the anime, but I think I did a pretty good job with him. I had some trouble with Kagura and Naraku as well, but I didn't care so much about getting them right; I had a roommate at the time who loves Kouga so I wanted to do him justice, even though none of my roommates have ever been into yaoi of any kind, making the chance that she'll ever read this story extremely slim.
Now that I'm rereading this, it seems highly unlikely that Rin would not have seen Inuyasha's new moon transformation, which she professes she hasn't in chapter 6. She's been in his company for at least two months now, probably longer... though if the first one was the night of chapter 9 of "Fraternal" and this was the second one, I suppose that would work...
In chapter 7, Sesshomaru thinks "I know this blood": he said this in the episode where he first meets Rin, when she is killed by wolves. Of course, this time it is not Rin but Inuyasha who is bleeding.
Hmm, I just realized that this monster is the second time I've made Toukijin entirely ineffectual. lol I don't like Toukijin any more than Inuyasha does...
"Bakenoshyuu" means "Monster of the Week." (rim shot) Naraku is one of the few characters in Inuyasha that I actually thoroughly dislike, and that dislike extends to all of his many pieces. With the exception of Kagura... I don't like her, but I don't hate her either. I had always intended in this story to have Naraku kill her as he does in the original; when that happens in Takahashi it really pisses Sesshomaru off. I know that's been fodder for a lot of shipping, but even the non-yaoi fangirl part of my brain thinks this angered him because the act was, on Naraku's part, a betrayal of a trust, rather than because of any particular feelings Sesshomaru might have had toward Kagura herself. This is the same reason he was so angry at Chernobog at the end of "Fraternal," and here in "Camaraderie" it's part of the reason Kouga gets righteously pissed off at Naraku; while Naraku's killing of Kagura does circumvent Kouga's own revenge, I think Kouga here and Sesshomaru in Takahashi are both angered by Naraku's action because of the sheer lack of any sort of redeemable quality it would take for someone to casually murder a vassal who was bound to them so thoroughly.
People have asked about Kagome "glowing" when she shoots the arrow at Bakenoshyuu. Isn't this something she does in the anime? That's why it's in there.... It's a manifestation of her great spiritual power; nothing special.
I've also had a lot of comments about claiming marks, or permanent mating claim marks, between Sesshomaru and Inuyasha. Um, I think this idea is kind of silly and I have no intention of ever using it in this series. Not that the concept of exchanging a physical symbol of love is silly, but the whole "claiming mark" idea seems like an ill thought out product of fandom rather than of any sort of canon or reality. I don't know any animals that do this and as far as I know there is nothing in Takahashi to support it. The way I've seen it used in fandom it's usually part of some sort of dominance contest between the pair and is usually bestowed on an unwilling recipient. If such a mark or symbol is exchanged I believe it should be a product of a promise between the pair, rather than an announcement to the world, warning them off someone else's property. Anyway, anyone who could see the mark and know what it represented would also be able to smell the fact that the two people in questions are fucking like bunnies; among dogs, wolves, cats, and many other animals scent is the most powerful way of staking a claim to something. So if you read words to the effect of "claiming mark," as I just noticed in chapter 7, it's pretty much just your average hickey.
There's a moment in the last scene from chapter 7- when Inuyasha is playing with Sesshomaru's hair- that's a small homage to Ai no Kusabi, the classic yaoi anime.
The rosary beads were always something that I had to remind myself to remember when I was writing this, because I would forget to mention them when Inuyasha was disrobing, or some such, so I was excited in chapter 8 to remove them from the story entirely. (It was also a nice Inuyasha/Kagome moment, I thought; another step in their relationship.) The Fluffy is something else I forget to mention, which I could possibly blame on the fact that Zyephen (my favorite IY fan-artist to stalk via the internet) usually doesn't draw it in her pics, but I will actually blame on my own inability to remember anything that's oddly Takahashi. So, for all intents and purposes in my "universe," there is no Fluffy...
In the beginning of the manga, Tenseiga is very much a mystery. Compared to Tetsusaiga we don't hear a lot about it in canon, until the very end of the manga and things just get weird there so I'm not sure if I care to read about all that... I liked playing around with some of its other possible "heavenly" powers. As a priestess, Kagome has a connection to that kind of power; that's why she can (sort of) use the sword. Also, as Inuyasha and Sesshomaru develop their feelings toward each other the swords develop in their own abilities and connection to each other. I think even from the beginning of Takahashi's story it is easy to tell that these swords were designed and gifted by a incredibly intelligent and crafty individual, and I think it makes sense that the Inunotaisho would have designed them to grow with their bearers even if he could not have foreseen exactly how the brother's own relationship was going to turn out. (Again, I'm ignoring the end of the manga, but um... oh yeah, I don't care. I've only read through chapter 475 or so- and if I remember half of what I read that's being far too generous- but from what I've read about the way the story ends it feels like Takahashi got tired of everything and just wanted to wrap it up.)
Out of all the stories, "Camaraderie" is probably tied most directly to the original Takahashi. I'm not sure where I think it falls in relation to the original; somewhere after meeting Kouga (and Rin) and before the Band of Seven... maybe season 4-ish?
I knew I wanted to kill somebody at the end of "Camaraderie." (Somebody important; Naraku doesn't count.) I toyed with killing Kohaku, but I didn't want to do that to Sango after she'd fought so hard to keep him, and also Kohaku presented in himself a way to open a different plot thread. Miroku, however, was the perfect person to kill. He was already injured, so I could kill him without impugning his fighting skills, and he'd saved Rin, so "fair-minded" Sesshomaru owed him one which meant that I didn't have to resolve any sort of "why the fuck would he care enough to use Tenseiga?" debates.
I figured I'd cock-blocked him enough and it was about time Sesshomaru got to let out the demon... ;b
Killing Naraku is something I've always wanted to do. Well it's something I would have been happy to see Takahashi do, but since she took her own sweet time about it I decided the only way I was going to be satisfied was if I did it myself. He's such a slippery bastard that you can't really hack him to pieces; I figured being sucked into Miroku's kazaana was not only poetic justice, but also, like blood clotting in a wound, the logical answer to "curing" the curse.
I know in the original Takahashi, Kagome stays in the past (well, after she goes back to finish high school or something like that). Obviously in my version she doesn't get with Inuyasha, but more than that I think she belongs in the future. Maybe I'm being unduly influenced by Escaflowne, but everything has to end up on the right side of the barrier or else whatever was messed up before is still messed up. And it's not like I'm planning on leaving her alone in the future...
Sesshomaru obviously doesn't know Rin as well as he thinks he does if he thinks she's going to meekly remain with Sango & Miroku while he's out gallivanting. ;b
It's been awhile since I reread chapter 11; and I'm just now realizing that all three stories- "Fraternal," "Camaraderie," and "Devotion"- end with Sesshomaru topping Inuyasha. That's a weird pattern... and one I'm not sure I like. I like to make sure they stay pretty even, but I think Sesshomaru gets to play seme more than his fair share.
Ugh, why do I do that lyric thing at the beginning of each story?? Sigh... well, I do love music. These lyrics are from a song called "Where's the Girl?" from the musical The Scarlet Pimpernel; in the song the villain of the piece is bemoaning the fact that his ex-girlfriend is now shacking up with his mortal enemy. I've not seen the play, but Terrence Mann (whom you may, or may not, remember from The Dresden Files or as the voice of Oberon in Gargoyles) sings the song on the recording I have; his voice is amazing and the image "cut from the same surly star" just stuck in my head.
The first scene of this story is one that I think turned out rather well. I had wanted to do a new moon night sex scene, and while the scene itself is nice it also serves as an interesting counterpoint to chapter 9, in which the scene is the exact opposite. I hope the sex never gets boring to people... I do try to keep it interesting, but they damn well had a lot of it in this story.
While Sesshomaru obviously can't skip town without at least leaving someone nominally in charge no matter how quiet things are, the real reason the boys stop in to see Ros and Jaken is because sometimes it takes an outsider to be able to see what's really going on inside. I wanted to reaffirm the status of Sesshomaru and Inuyasha's relationship at the beginning of this story, and also reaffirm the fact that they themselves are not fully aware of how much they've changed. I also wanted a reason to leave Jaken where he was for the foreseeable future, which is one reason why he and Ros end up a couple.
Men seem to relate with violence and the testing of strength against each other. Saying "hello" can become a painful, bruising experience... but one which they then look back upon with fondness. It's not something I fully understand, not being a testosterone laden being myself, but it's something I've observed innumerable times and which I've tried to keep true to in this series. This is what Inuyasha is looking forward to when they meet the other demons in chapter 2: just a friendly beat down. He doesn't want to kill, he wants to fight. It becomes more a serious situation when the demons refuse to accept him as someone to say "hello" to and instead are of a mind to exterminate.
Inuyasha is, by preference, a brawler rather than a sword fighter- an observation that I think is borne out by Takahashi. I think he finds it more satisfying to beat the demon bare fisted rather than use Tetsusaiga, which is why he gives Sesshomaru the sword.
Sesshomaru uses the "kaze no kizu" attack to scatter the group of demons while Inuyasha is fighting their leader. But, I think that naming attacks is cheesy so I try not to use that device in the narrative. I also don't really get into any of the other attacks that Tetsusaiga uses...
Chapter 3 amuses me. Firstly, the character of Doror (from the slightly Japanized spelling of the Spanish word "dolor" meaning, "pain") is introduced. Unlike Kunya, whom we meet later in the story, Doror was never intended to be anything other than what he appears; he is interested in sexing up Sesshomaru. He is intelligent enough to realize that being nice to Inuyasha is something that Sesshomaru will appreciate, even if Doror does get bored with that course of action and allow his true colors to show through in the end. I love the scene where Doror is trying to get Sesshomaru's attention and Sesshomaru is thinking about Rin. I hope this illustrated perfectly what Sesshomaru says to Inuyasha later: that he's just not interested, and so he just doesn't notice what Doror is after.
One of the hard things about writing demons is that they don't really require food and rest the way humans do... They're also rather hardy; in chapter 3 I needed a situation where Doror would step in to "save" Inuyasha, but at the same time I had to make clear that falling in an icy river wasn't exactly the calamity that it would have been if they were human. I also find it slightly amusing that Doror is doing here what Sango accuses Sesshomaru of doing in chapter 1 of "Camaraderie"; he is deliberately seeking to ingratiate himself with Sesshomaru by protecting what he sees as Sesshomaru's "pet."
It wasn't a conscious decision, but the theme of this story seems to be Inuyasha's mixed blood. Both he and Sesshomaru prove in the first couple chapters here that they are extremely sensitive to comments from others on this issue. Later, in chapter 11 and the following arc, they both become incredibly aware of the disadvantages of Inuyasha's division of self and Inuyasha seeks help from someone who appears to have "resolved" the issue.
I think because of the fact that he has been truly valued by so few people in his life that Inuyasha is incredibly insecure. In chapter 4, when he finally confesses his love, part of him is still waiting for it to end- for Sesshomaru to realize that he can do better. While in the past he's used his attitude as a shelter between himself and the world, here he has to be honest; he is completely open and vulnerable. He trusts Sesshomaru incredibly to show him that. But the wonderful part is that Sesshomaru trusts him as well, and through his explanations regarding Doror Sesshomaru reveals to Inuyasha information that begins to really cement Inuyasha's own confidence in their relationship.
In his pre-Inuyasha sex-life, I can see Sesshomaru being experimental in the types of partners he allowed. I didn't mean to imply that he knew the pair from chapter 5 from the same previous encounter, which some reviewers apparently thought; rather than he had encountered them both separately previously, and that they were now traveling together.
Making Sesshomaru human was an idea I had after seeing the fanart "Something's Wrong" by jbramx2 at DeviantArt. It was something that at that time I had never imagined or heard of before; from what I understand now it is a fairly common plot device in fan pieces and if I had known that when I started this story I don't think I would have used it. Ah well; c'est la vie. People commented that he looks like Inuyasha as a human; I thought that he should because they are brothers, and it didn't really occur to me until later that their shared blood is from their father and Inuyasha gets his human appearance from his mother. Again... c'est la vie. If it is bothersome, human-Sesshomaru has violet eyes because, as a friend once told me, a character having purple eyes is used as a sign of supernatural power in otherwise human seeming characters. Take whichever explanation suits you better...
The something that "cries out in pain" to Sesshomaru at the beginning of chapter 7 is Tenseiga, which is attempting to shield him from Toukijin's suddenly unchecked power. I'm not sure if that was entirely clear in the chapter...
Tenseiga loses its battle with Toukijin because, alone, Toukijin is the stronger of the pair. I think Tenseiga pulls a lot of its energy from Sesshomaru, the way Tetsusaiga does with Inuyasha. However the sword itself is a consciousness of sorts- well, all three of them are- which consists of demonic energy. Also, Tenseiga and Tetsusaiga are bound to each other, because of their shared source, so together their demonic power- and perhaps the shadow of the man who made them- become a powerful force to protect the Inunotaisho's sons. Hmm, that's just my "logic" toward why the swords work to defeat Toukijin. Here in chapter 7 is probably the time I've used the swords' strange powers that I have the weakest defense prepared for why they do work the way they do.
The meeting at the end of chapter 7 with the group of Kunya, Rustam, and Shadi is I think a first in this story in that no one in this group has designs on either of the brothers. At least, not of a sexual nature... Kunya does not want Sesshomaru in that way; as Sesshomaru observes, Kunya is a born vassal and this makes him harder to get rid of than any of the others because he won't just leave and because Sesshomaru doesn't really want to kill him just for being what he is. Also, Shadi doesn't have any designs on Inuyasha of that nature (she's looking to hook up with a home town man, not an exotic stranger) but she is the type who enjoys taking care of people, especially those who are looking a little lost. In early outlines of the story I had planned a subplot where Sesshomaru became jealous of her and Inuyasha's friendship, but once I got to the village in the actual writing of the story I was already ready to leave, so that never developed.
Shadi reminds Inuyasha of Kagome mostly because she's the only other human female of approximately the same age that he's had contact with in the past two years. I've noticed a couple readers leaving comments, throughout the series, to the effect that Inuyasha needs to get over Kagome and realize how much Sesshomaru loves him. Love is great and everything, but I think the love of friendship is incredibly important. The companionship of friends is something that I believe to be integral to a full life. I won't go off on that like I could... but, Kagome is important to Inuyasha; deal with it.
As a kind of side note, one of my (former) roommates is always saying how one of her pet peeves in novels where people journey to another land is that no one ever has to learn the language, they can just magically understand each other. Her pet peeve is the reason that Inuyasha doesn't just magically develop the ability to understand the people he and Sesshomaru run into. Demons, being long lived, I imagine are interested in traveling, and traveling leads to talking to people from other places, which requires learning different languages... which is why Sesshomaru speaks Chinese, random Tibetan-Mongolian dialects, Russian (which he can read in the previous story), and Arabic; and it's why Ros, Doror, Afzal, the random female demon they encounter in chapter 6, and the pair from chapter 5, speak Japanese.
I think chapter 9 is one that turned out pretty well, too. I guess I write good sex when one of them is human... I'm not sure how that works out. I've mentioned elsewhere previously that I wrote this chapter soon after I had read Twilight; being forced to endure Edward whining constantly about how he might accidentally break his human girlfriend if he moved too suddenly was so annoying, and such utter bullshit, that whether or not I wanted it to, it influenced the writing of this chapter. A predator of such strength, unless simpleminded, would be fully aware of the power they held and how to use it to advantage; true power, as the slogan at my gym likes to remind me, doesn't come from how hard or how often you strike, but in the control you exert over the force you are capable of bringing to bear. That was something that I played with in this chapter; Inuyasha is fully capable of physically dominating Sesshomaru at this point, but while he both wants that and realizes that on some level it is something Sesshomaru needs in order to be able to let go of the tension that is eating at him, he also knows that it's something Sesshomaru has to fully and willingly accept and submit to in order for it to work to full advantage.
When Tetsusaiga transforms for a human-Sesshomaru in chapter 9, that's because it's pulling the demonic energy from Inuyasha. Tetsusaiga and Sesshomaru, indirectly (through Tenseiga which is connected to Tetsusaiga), are both connected to Inuyasha. See, I do have "logical" reasons for most of the crazy things that I make happen...
In chapter 10, the woman they meet... I'm not sure what language I think she's speaking. Ah well, the only thing she says that Inuyasha really reveals he understood is "no" which is a word that is similar in many languages. And I don't know if it was clear, but the reason she was in the village looking for "food" is because she eats people.
I'd promised to throw Sesshomaru off a cliff at the end of the previous story... not realizing when I did so how difficult a proposition it would be to throw off that cliff a powerful creature that doesn't want to be thrown. It all worked out brilliantly, I don't mind saying; I even managed to get Tetsusaiga away from Inuyasha for the duration and work his transformation into the theme of the chapter.
I picture Seiten Taisei Son Goku from Minekura's Saiyuki when describing full-demon-Inuyasha... It's been awhile since I watched any part of Inuyasha where he goes full demon, and Saiyuki is a story I'm more familiar with anyway; I wanted to be able to evoke the vacantly minded, yet incredibly focused destruction of which he was capable without having to be pedantic and actually say "Inuyasha was a full demon."
At the beginning of chapter 12 it's not supposed to be clear who's who until the third paragraph... I'm not sure if that worked entirely, but as the author I think I'm too close to it to determine; I do think the first paragraph sounds like Inuyasha while the second sounds more like Sesshomaru "narrating," so maybe it does work.
In chapter 12, when Inuyasha sits with his arms around the legs of Sesshomaru standing beside him: this pose is also inspired by a fanart. I don't know who drew it, but it's a picture of Itsuki and Sensui, from Yu Yu Hakusho, in the same pose. Also, the ruined city where they are messing around was supposed be some famous ancient ruin that now I have forgotten the name of... if I remember it I'll add the name of it later.
The description of Inuyasha struggling through the wind storm is based on my own personal experiences with winter weather in north Texas; the wind is just killer, and usually shockingly cold- colder than you'd think it would be.
From chapter 12 to the end I think I rewrote each chapter 3 times at least. I had not planned out the ending at all. I knew they were going to get as far as the Arabian Peninsula and that they were going to meet a demon there who was hand-of-god kind of powerful, but other than that the details were all pretty much worked out as I went.
"On a Gathering Storm" is a line from the song "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave. "Shifting, Whispering Sand" is also a line from a song, but it's some oldies song I heard on the radio so I don't know the name of it.
Badr means "full moon"; Afzal means "superior." Both are Arabic... I don't remember what Kunya means; I think it's an article of speech in Arabic. Sometimes I pick names that mean something to me, like Doror, and sometimes I pick names that mean something to the character, like Afzal, but sometimes I just cruise the lists at www.behindthename.com till I find one that looks like it will fit what I need, like Rustam.
Initially I brought Kunya back in chapter 13 for two reasons: 1) I had always wanted Inuyasha to know what Shadi's parting words to him were in chapter 8, which Kunya was going to translate; but it never really felt right to the story to go back and add that so it never made it in. And, 2) I had this idea that Kunya was like Gollum- that he would be the one to destroy Afzal in the end, through his own selfishness. I held on to this second idea, but decided that I didn't want to kill Afzal. He's crazy, but he's not evil; and besides, he's hand-of-god powerful so he doesn't kill too easy. But it is still Kunya who, through his own crazed self-centeredness, helps them to "defeat" Afzal. (Though he ended up being Old Yeller more than Gollum I guess...)
In chapter 13, as Afzal shows him around the oasis, Inuyasha realizes that Afzal had contradicted himself, saying in the previous chapter than Inuyasha had only been there "a few hours" and then saying that it would take several days "even with demonic speed" to get to the oasis from anywhere else that isn't desert, including the gulf. I personally don't think Inuyasha ever trusted Afzal, but this is the first instance where Inuyasha knows he is being lied to. Or at least that Afzal is not telling the whole truth.
I wanted to do more with the oasis... particularly I wanted to recognize the fact that it has been there for quite awhile and not all the half demons there are the product of unhappy human/demon matches, but that the half demons have been reproducing amongst themselves mixing their demonic, and human, ancestry so that Afzal's whole spiel about a new and separate race seemed a little less like crazy talk. But I realized I'd been writing this story for over 2 years at that point and I just wanted to get it done. I guess I'll just have to go back to that in another story...
In chapter 14, this conversation between Sesshomaru and
the little half demon girl initially looked like this:
Her eyes widened and she started to step away. "Abuna says I should stay away from demons."
He frowned. "Your father is
here, in this place?"
"No." She stopped moving and her
eyes were sad. "Not really. Abuna says our parents didn't
want us, so he brought us here. But I remember a little; Mama
yelled a lot."
Sesshomaru sighed. "Your Ab is correct; you should stay away from demons. Many of them
will kill you."
"Abuna" is an Arabic term which means "our father" with connotations
of "sir/lord." ("Ab" is a sort of base word for "father.") I
love etymology and playing around with words so I have an unconscious
desire to do that playing around at times to see if I can add a level to
the story that would not be obvious when everything is in English.
The main concept here of course is that Afzal has fully adopted these
children and treats them a hell of a lot better than their real parents
did, which does come across in the English so my linguistic playing
around wasn't really necessary. And I realized, after I
spent a lot of time looking up all this information about how to say
"father" in Arabic, that I had eliminated most of the Japanese from the
story for a reason and it would be stupid to start throwing in Arabic of
all things (which is a language I don't even know anything about) and
expect people to know what was going on.
Afzal goes on a lot about "purebloods" and says in chapter 15 that no one of pure blood is allowed in his oasis. Technically, humans are "pure-blooded," and he does allow them to come and trade with him within the boundaries of the oasis. But they don't stay, longer than 36 hours at the outside anyway. And he views demons as more of a threat to his children in any case; I don't think he respects humans enough to consider them a threat- which, if this story was about him and I had the plot time to give him, would so come back to bite him in the ass.
I went ahead and did the dreams in chapter 15 in italics like I had done with dream sequences before. Initially I had wanted to do something like the X-Files episode "Field Trip," where the dream is melded with reality until you aren't sure which is which; it's a really brilliant episode of the show, but as I got into writing the actual chapter I realized that "Inuyasha" was going to have to be an ass in the dream, because his image was the vessel for Afzal's hate, and there was no way that pretending he was the real Inuyasha was going to work. Plus, clearly separating the dream and the reality I think helped in the end scene where Rin eventually pulls Sesshomaru out of it.
As for Rin, I was really excited to bring her back into the story. I know that some people were wondering what had become of her. As important as Kagome is to Inuyasha, Rin is not only the first indicator of Sesshomaru's softening heart but is incredibly important to him as well. I have big plans for her...
In chapter 15, Sesshomaru notes that "Inuyasha was not like him," saying that Inuyasha would not have been deliberately cruel to him, in the way that he had been cruel to people, including Inuyasha, in his past. In the next chapter Inuyasha avows that Sesshomaru has never lied to him. At second glance these seem like slightly contradictory statements, but I meant both of them to be fully true.
Originally, chapter 16 was called "Disentangle." This was a reference to an earlier chapter that would have been entitled "Imperial Entanglements" where I had originally planned a longer exchange with the Ottoman Empire. Once I decided to skip that plot thread I felt that the final chapter needed to be renamed. Unfortunately at that point the only thing I could think of to rename the chapter with was the first guitar riff in the song "Carry On, Wayward Son" by Kansas, which was firmly stuck in my head courtesy of my new obsession with the TV show Supernatural. As it's rather impossible to name a chapter with a sound clip... it ended up being called "Truth and Reunion," which I still think is kind of cheesy.
There's a part in chapter 16 where Sesshomaru dismisses Inuyasha's concern for him but then relents later and discusses how Afzal tried to trap him even though he doesn't want to talk about it. I wanted to use this scene to show how Afzal and Sesshomaru treat Inuyasha differently; where Afzal dismisses Inuyasha's concerns as unimportant, Sesshomaru will address them even if he would prefer not to. To me this shows that while Afzal truly wants to save and protect others, if he continues with the same superior behavior he has used toward others in the past he will never have or be able to appreciate a true relationship of equals like what Inuyasha and Sesshomaru have.
In the last chapter I wanted to emphasize that while Inuyasha wanted to submit to Sesshomaru fully it's not because he's weak. There is a real power in submission, and I hope I was able to get across that neither he nor Sesshomaru think that it is "weak" of him to want that.