[Commentary] Saiyuki: Dark Horse

[springgreen]

rilina asked for commentary on "Dark Horse," so... here it is!

Here's "Dark Horse" if you'd like to read it before the commentary.

I've marked all parts of the original story with a line in the left margin and a slight indent (at least, if my code is working properly....). Commentary is below.

Notes: for miyukis_4, who requested Konzen&Goku, with the prompt "impervious." This has a little less Goku than I anticipated, but he's still in there!

This is a fic that I wrote as a part of a drabble request thing (I still take requests, btw). I'm pretty new at this whole fiction thing, so I figured any prompts would be a good thing. miyukis_4 asked for "[Saiyuki Gaiden] Konzen&Goku please. Prompt: Impervious," and I immediately knew I wanted to write something on how Konzen seemed impervious to everything and ended up being felled by wee!Goku.

Other than that, I had no idea what to do.

It ended up stewing for a while as I got through the other fic requests, so by the time I had gotten to this one, I wanted to write something that wasn't too angsty, since the last two request pieces I had written were horribly angsty. To make things worse, I had just written Un/scarred, which is dreadfully angsty and about Konzen, Sanzo, Goku, and Konzen and Sanzo's impervious-ness. So I had to do the same theme without repeating myself dreadfully.

Amusingly enough, I ended up writing Red Thread after this, which is basically on -- wait for it -- Sanzo's impervious-ness and Goku. Go fig.

On a more minor note, I also wanted something with past tense, because of the ubiquitous present tense everywhere.

Some random time while I was brainstorming, I figured I'd do it from an outsider's perspective of Konzen, which led to the denizens of Heaven. It was pretty easy to go off from there into the betting territory, given that I suspected the denizens of Heaven didn't think too highly of Konzen.

Some of the more bored officials in Heaven had an ongoing bet — whoever could catch Konzen Douji with an expression on his face would win the pool. They didn't particularly care about the money, but it was something to do.

For weeks and weeks, Konzen had a number of badly disguised shadows. They watched as he picked up his paperwork and organized the files by date, type of issue, status, and assorted other measures that the men couldn't quite make out. Konzen went through each stack methodically, carefully pressing his seal in red ink and stamping it, always a finger's width from the edge of the page.

Some of the men were impressed by the mathematical precision. Others simply assumed that being the nephew of Kanzeon Bosatsu would be enough to drive anyone crazy.

And now, a ton of set up stuff. Konzen's probably so anal that he does do paperwork and filing like that, and of course I had to include his shumi.

Word of the pool got around, as things were wont to do in Heaven, and even Tenpou Gensui ended up chipping in. No one quite dared to accuse him of attempts to cheat, given his rank, but there were a few suspicions when the new general was seen delivering assorted papers and forms to Konzen.

I imagine there's some great fic to be written about Kenren delivering assorted papers and forms to Konzen hidden in here. But I was very amused by Tenpou siccing Kenren on Konzen. I suspect he did it half because he knew Konzen was bored out of his mind, and half because Tenpou is evil like that.

Though the new general caused a bit of a ruckus, the fuss died down in time, which no one in Heaven was short on. Gradually, the contributions to the pool dwindled, despite the hefty amount in there. People grew distracted, moved on, gossiped about other things instead.

Still set up. By this point, I wanted to emphasize the boredom in Heaven, the time, the thought that these people had so little to do that they just stood around and gossiped and poked at the trivial, which is, of course, why Konzen is so impervious.

Popular topics were Nataku Taishi, Li Touten, and Kanzeon's latest joke, which no one understood. By the time sie brought the strange monkey creature to the palace, the grapevine was already humming with rumors.

And now, enter Goku! I also couldn't figure out what in the world people in Heaven would gossip about, but Nataku seemed like a good topic. I wasn't quite sure how to stick him and Li Touten in without the fic turning into my standard angsty Gaiden fic, but I hoped that the outside POV would somehow temper that.

There were a few snickers when Konzen was appointed as the animal's caretaker. There were even more as people caught sight of him chasing the animal everywhere and as the faint strains of Konzen's yelling echoed through the halls.

No one was there when Konzen cracked a smile for the first time, but if they had been, there would have been guffaws of laughter.

I suspect Konzen's first smile was witnessed by absolutely no one, but that Kanzeon knew when it happened anyway. Sadly, this is the most Konzen&Goku that I put in the fic, which, uh... yeah. Oops.

The day Nataku Taishi ran a sword through himself was the day Konzen punched Kanzeon Bosatsu in the face. Sie watched as he knelt protectively over the fallen demon child of his, and sie walked off with all the money in the pool.

I think maybe a little too much angst crept in here for the light touch of the fic, but I wasn't quite sure how else Kanzeon would win the bet. I knew from the start of the bet concept that Kanzeon would end up winning, but I thought that was going to be all of it. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Kanzeon got many, many people to enter that pool because sie knew something like this would happen.

To be honest, I just realized it doesn't really make sense that Kanzeon won. Probably because sie got punched in the face. And probably because no one would stop hir from walking off with the money!

***
Sanzo looked up in confusion and annoyance as Kanzeon chucked a small plastic card at his head.

"What the fuck is this?"

Sie shrugged. "You should feed that monkey of yours."

"The Sanbutsushin have a credit line?" Sanzo asked in disbelief.

"Never question where money comes from" was all he got in reply.

And the punchline!

Embarrassingly, I didn't actually know that the fic was headed here. I thought it was just going to end with Kanzeon walking off with the money and everyone in Heaven sort of stunned and even a little saddened by how Gaiden played out. But then once I remembered Sanzo's gold card, everything just fell into place.

Also, I think this is Kanzeon's own sneaky way of letting hir old nephew know that sie cares, and that sie is smiling down on Sanzo and Goku.

Naturally, it's a wicked, evil smile.

So that's that! I tried to write a Konzen&Goku fic, but I think it ended up more a Konzen-Sanzo-Kanzeon thing.