Ch.132 and more Akito
Sep. 8th, 2006 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
demeter918A few more thoughts before I go off to read other reaction posts.
The more I read this chapter, the more I want to sing.
To be honest, while I'd wished and hoped for an ending where Shigure and Akito managed to walk the same road together for once, I'd pretty much given up. I love the two of them, but their love for each other was so poisonous and it hurt too many people to ever be really something I could fully enjoy.
This is especially so for me with Shigure. There were times I absolutely hated him because he essentially knocked everyone who was ever in his way into the ditches. He took the feelings of others and dismissed them in the face of his goal. At several points, I wanted to throttle him because how could you not dislike a man who manipulated Rin into all those situations? Sure, he was doing it for his single-minded love, sure, it was because he LOVED AKITO SO DAMN MUCH but for fucks sake, he took Rin's life and basically shoved it off a cliff so he could rip a hole among the Juunishi and engineer hatred between Akito and one of her more beloved Juunishi. It's not admirable (though I do admire it) and it's not pure (though I sometimes find myself wanting to cheer him on) and it's pretty damn disturbing. Shigure has wanted Akito for so long that it's essentially warped him and you know what? He knows it's not healthy and that it's dark and twisted and it's not pure like the love Kureno held for Akito. But he didn't care. Shigure didn't care about any of that as long as he attained that final goal of Akito belonging to him and only hiim.
Most of you know I absolutely adore this pairing and that it's one of the few pairings in my life that's willed me to write fic. Very few other pairings in all the fandoms I've participated in have pulled me in the same way Akito and Shigure did. And yet, it's times like these that I find myself withdrawing because, yes, Shigure was a manipulative, greedy, obsessed, deeply in love bastard and Akito was an abusive, damaged, half-mad tyrant and the two of them are nothing like the traditional or even the unconventional shoujo pairing.
In shoujo, you don't get pairings that drive each other to the depths of despair like Akito and Shigure have. In shoujo, you don't have one man so intent on gaining his one sole end that he throws everything else into the fire. In shoujo, you don't get a woman like Akito and still have her alive in the end. In shoujo, women like Akito die or end up in perilous fates. In shoujo, men like Shigure are properly lambasted by the hero and fall to conventional regret. In shoujo, men like Shigure end up hating themselves and regretting everything they did.
And fuck it. This isn't traditional shoujo. I'm not even sure if Akito and Shigure can be categorized as anything other then themselves. I've been reading manga since I was six or seven and they're not like any pairing I've ever read or seen in my life. And maybe it makes me a bit sick and maybe a bit odd, but perhaps I like it. Perhaps there's something so ultimately hopeful that two people as fucked as they were could be happy in the end. Because even though Shigure's a manipulative, scary, twisted, obsessive, oh, kind of a bugger, well... so is Akito. This is why Kureno and Akito could never work out, as wonderful and tragic as they were.
Kureno was this unusual character who cared too much for others and too little for himself. He wanted only the best for Akito and that might have been the reason why Akito couldn’t bear him the same way she can of Shigure. Everything about Kureno glows and when a person hates herself the way Akito does, to have someone who was so truly pure and devoted and loyal, I imagine it hurt every single day of her life. Her guilt was probably heavy enough to kill her twice over with just Kureno alone and with the rest sitting in front of her? Staring at the unbelievable fact that she's wearing a kimono, that she has her hair pinned back, that she's a OMGGIRLSHEHASBOOBIES.
I liked how their story was gently wrapped up on the same veranda (okay, so maybe it wasn't the same veranda, but it felt like it) where it all started. He had given her a chance; if she didn't want to be with him the way he wanted, she could leave him, never come near him again. But his words, said with that infuriating half-smile of his, was basically saying that this was her last chance to run away. If she came to him again, he'd never let her go and that is frightening when you're Akito and you're in your brand new skin that you'd never thought you'd ever have and now look!
The big bad wolf is salivating and lusting and basically telling little red riding hood that he's chased her from grandmother's house to the woods and that the woodcutter could keep coming after him with an axe and he'd still be pursuing her. He'd chase her until she was dead tired on the ground and then he'd swoop her up to have his way with her and I don't think we've had a more clear case of obsession than we have with Shigure.
This was their beginning and it's their end and maybe I'm glad that the Juunishi reaction was brief. I wanted to see how they all reacted to Akito's 'sudden' gender change but, hey, more room for us ficcers to work with. We needed this conclusion for Akito and Shigure and it was twisted and sad and hurtful and maybe it was abso-fucking-lutely wonderful.
Akito had once asked Shigure if he liked her and you know what?
I'm pretty sure he does.
♥
The more I read this chapter, the more I want to sing.
To be honest, while I'd wished and hoped for an ending where Shigure and Akito managed to walk the same road together for once, I'd pretty much given up. I love the two of them, but their love for each other was so poisonous and it hurt too many people to ever be really something I could fully enjoy.
This is especially so for me with Shigure. There were times I absolutely hated him because he essentially knocked everyone who was ever in his way into the ditches. He took the feelings of others and dismissed them in the face of his goal. At several points, I wanted to throttle him because how could you not dislike a man who manipulated Rin into all those situations? Sure, he was doing it for his single-minded love, sure, it was because he LOVED AKITO SO DAMN MUCH but for fucks sake, he took Rin's life and basically shoved it off a cliff so he could rip a hole among the Juunishi and engineer hatred between Akito and one of her more beloved Juunishi. It's not admirable (though I do admire it) and it's not pure (though I sometimes find myself wanting to cheer him on) and it's pretty damn disturbing. Shigure has wanted Akito for so long that it's essentially warped him and you know what? He knows it's not healthy and that it's dark and twisted and it's not pure like the love Kureno held for Akito. But he didn't care. Shigure didn't care about any of that as long as he attained that final goal of Akito belonging to him and only hiim.
Most of you know I absolutely adore this pairing and that it's one of the few pairings in my life that's willed me to write fic. Very few other pairings in all the fandoms I've participated in have pulled me in the same way Akito and Shigure did. And yet, it's times like these that I find myself withdrawing because, yes, Shigure was a manipulative, greedy, obsessed, deeply in love bastard and Akito was an abusive, damaged, half-mad tyrant and the two of them are nothing like the traditional or even the unconventional shoujo pairing.
In shoujo, you don't get pairings that drive each other to the depths of despair like Akito and Shigure have. In shoujo, you don't have one man so intent on gaining his one sole end that he throws everything else into the fire. In shoujo, you don't get a woman like Akito and still have her alive in the end. In shoujo, women like Akito die or end up in perilous fates. In shoujo, men like Shigure are properly lambasted by the hero and fall to conventional regret. In shoujo, men like Shigure end up hating themselves and regretting everything they did.
And fuck it. This isn't traditional shoujo. I'm not even sure if Akito and Shigure can be categorized as anything other then themselves. I've been reading manga since I was six or seven and they're not like any pairing I've ever read or seen in my life. And maybe it makes me a bit sick and maybe a bit odd, but perhaps I like it. Perhaps there's something so ultimately hopeful that two people as fucked as they were could be happy in the end. Because even though Shigure's a manipulative, scary, twisted, obsessive, oh, kind of a bugger, well... so is Akito. This is why Kureno and Akito could never work out, as wonderful and tragic as they were.
Kureno was this unusual character who cared too much for others and too little for himself. He wanted only the best for Akito and that might have been the reason why Akito couldn’t bear him the same way she can of Shigure. Everything about Kureno glows and when a person hates herself the way Akito does, to have someone who was so truly pure and devoted and loyal, I imagine it hurt every single day of her life. Her guilt was probably heavy enough to kill her twice over with just Kureno alone and with the rest sitting in front of her? Staring at the unbelievable fact that she's wearing a kimono, that she has her hair pinned back, that she's a OMGGIRLSHEHASBOOBIES.
I liked how their story was gently wrapped up on the same veranda (okay, so maybe it wasn't the same veranda, but it felt like it) where it all started. He had given her a chance; if she didn't want to be with him the way he wanted, she could leave him, never come near him again. But his words, said with that infuriating half-smile of his, was basically saying that this was her last chance to run away. If she came to him again, he'd never let her go and that is frightening when you're Akito and you're in your brand new skin that you'd never thought you'd ever have and now look!
The big bad wolf is salivating and lusting and basically telling little red riding hood that he's chased her from grandmother's house to the woods and that the woodcutter could keep coming after him with an axe and he'd still be pursuing her. He'd chase her until she was dead tired on the ground and then he'd swoop her up to have his way with her and I don't think we've had a more clear case of obsession than we have with Shigure.
This was their beginning and it's their end and maybe I'm glad that the Juunishi reaction was brief. I wanted to see how they all reacted to Akito's 'sudden' gender change but, hey, more room for us ficcers to work with. We needed this conclusion for Akito and Shigure and it was twisted and sad and hurtful and maybe it was abso-fucking-lutely wonderful.
Akito had once asked Shigure if he liked her and you know what?
I'm pretty sure he does.
♥
