How Ky came to be Kai and other stories
Jul. 8th, 2010 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopAuthors notes on my latest fic were banished to a separate post for being too long, so here they are:
A few pieces of Guilty Gear trivia
Remarkably few facts had to be invented to get this AU to work. The 'Senga' or 'Flashing Tooth' is a known piece of the Outrage that gets name-dropped in one of the guidebooks, and sounded like it could be just the kind of weapon that would suit Baiken. Anji does actually use a sealing spell (albeit a less effective one) to restrict Baiken's movement in one of their encounters in XX, and they both seem to be able to tell that Sol's not a regular human. Invisibility as an extension of what they could do with Ki magic might be stretching things a little, but it is magic they're using. As for Kai and Baiken knowing each other, after moving them to the same setting their backstories - both of which involve their hatred of Gears starting with their parent(s) death in a Gear attack - become so similar that it was only logical the same attack might have been responsible. Also, since most of us (including me) wouldn't have known without looking it up, the official date for the end of the Holy War should have been in 2175 - three years before Sol and Ky even meet in this universe.
I'm currently undecided about whether there'll be more from this AU. There's certainly more in it, but it stands alone alright as is, and lord knows I've got more than my share of other WIPs. On a final note, while this fic actually doesn't get the 'things that are velithya's fault' tag for once, I do owe her a lot of gratitude for all her help and encouragement while I was writing it. I still missed the official deadline of the challenge I was writing for, but I got a lot closer than I ever would have otherwise.
A bit about the Racebending Revenge Ficathon
The idea for this fic came from the Racebending Revenge Ficathon – a challenge that responded to the now infamous whitewashing of the Last Airbender movie by asking participants to do the reverse: change a Caucasian character from any fandom into a POC and write a story showing how their lives would have been made different. Having shared in the collective frustration of everyone else in fandom watching the mind-blowing levels of Not Getting It from everyone involved in the Avatar casting fiasco – not to mention being a big fan of AU fic – I loved the idea and immediately wanted to participate.
Figuring out what to write for it was trickier, considering most of the fandoms I've ever written for (not that many Caucasians in xxxHOLiC, for example). I toyed with the idea of how much worse the American reaction to Providence might have been if Cable hadn't been born white, but it wasn't really crystalising into anything very fast. Then it struck me that, given the history of the Guilty Gear universe, there's every reason to believe the war could have gone quite differently if Ky had been born Japanese instead of French. There's a canonical AU which shows us what would have happened if he'd died young, but what if he'd been kept from taking command of the Order by other reasons? Plus it would be an excuse to finally write something with a couple of my favourite canonical Japanese characters (Anji and Baiken) and generally have fun mixing up the timelines.
I'd had just long enough to get myself too attached to the idea not to write it when it dawned on me that, on second thoughts, it might not fit the parameters of the challenge as well as I'd like. The Japanese are singled out for some uniquely horrible treatment in the Guilty Gear universe – almost wiped out, the survivors confined to protective Colony and hunted down if they try to leave – but half the explanation involves their own efforts to preserve their race, and the other half involves the whole race having exceptional magical powers. The fic would certainly fill the letter of the rules, but inasmuch as the original motivation was to produce commentary with real world relevance, it might not fill the spirit of the challenge that much better than, say, writing an AU where Frodo Baggins was born an Elf. The community mods okayed the idea when I asked them whether they thought it was appropriate, but given that they aren't familiar with the game its based on, I'm still a little hesitant to add the fic to their collection. (If anyone reading this has any strong opinions either way, I'd be happy to hear from you.)
Anyway, the stories by other for the main challenge can be found here, and even going only by the few I've read so far, well worth checking out.
On the subject of Kai's costume
Going right to the other side of the serious business scale and on to another topic completely, there was no way I was ever going to write this fic and not come out with at least a few thoughts on the all-important question of what Ky would look like in this AU – and in particular (since 'similar, but more Japanese' isn't a very interesting answer), how he'd dress. Guilty Gear is, after all, well known for its awesomely ridiculous character design, and what kind of costume Ishiwatari would have given to a hypothetical alternate Ky who grew up in Japan and never joined the Order raised some very interesting possibilities.
A couple of basic principles sprang to me right away. It'd be a safe bet he'd be keeping the blue/white colour scheme of every costume we've ever seen him in before. Since both the other canonically native Japanese characters (namely Anji and Baiken) wear (pseudo-)traditional Japanese costumes, it made sense that he he would too. Being a Guilty Gear costume, let alone a Ky costume – it had to be needlessly complicated. Gratuitous belts and buckles not essential, but obviously a plus.
With those three guidelines in mind, I came up with a couple of different possibilities.
The first option came out of a bit of hunting around the web for the most complicated piece of old-fashioned Japanese clothing I could find, which lead to the discovery of something called a Junihitoe. Literally: twelve layered robe, a garment which could weight up to 20kg in total, worn only by upper class court ladies in an era when they it would have been considered terribly uncouth for them to do much more than lounge around at home all day. But it is Ky we're talking about – the ship for dressing him up in feminine clothing sailed waaaayyyy back during that lovely dress-and-tiara incident of Overture, and it's not like minor issues like practicality have ever stopped Ishiwatari before. And if all else failed, hunting for Junihitoe pics had to be good for inspiration.
That's how I found this thing:
It's a Junihitoe created by a modern designer, probably as a display piece. Note especially the colour scheme and the leather strips (*cough-belts-cough*) around the edges of the sleeves. You would probably still have to lose the train and at least a couple of intermediate layers, but that design could easily be modified into something that would suit Kai very well.
I could have stopped there, but by then I was having far too much fun, especially when the next idea hit me. The second idea came out of the thought that, by the year 2180, logically most present day Japanese Goth Loli/Punk fashions would be old enough to count as 'traditional' Japanese dress. There's even a fashion category specifically for Japanese themed designs – called Wa-Loli, or for these purposes, probably something more like Wa-Punk. If you want to find fashion with traditional elements mixed in with gratuitous buckles, you need look no further than real, commercially produced Japanese clothing lines.
If there's anyone I know who comes close to being an authority on bizarre Japanese fashion, that person is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaseroque, so my next move was to grab her on chat and see if she could give me any pointers on where to find references for male-wa-punk-goth-whatever fashion. The Internet let us down a little on that account (reference pics of fashion found fitting all requirements: ...one, and it was practically a thumbnail), but we found a decent collection of girl's fashion that was close enough to give us ideas.
We both liked the idea of long kimono sleeves in white, over a blue underlayer that would be visible around the the open end of the sleeves (and possibly the neck) and hence mimic the blue trim on his canonical costume. We both also liked the idea of having some kind of decorative blue outline pattern on the white fabric (something like the dragon here), as well as the the lace-on sleeves here. The leather belts woven around the bottom of the sleeves on the Junihitoe above might work too. Less decided were the questions of whether or not to give it a traditional-looking kimono front, whether the back could be made to work like a coat or cape, whether or not hakama pants would be a good idea, and where any extra buckles ought to show up. At the end of the day we were still a long way short of having a complete design (let's face it, neither of us have a lot of real skill when it comes to with art or design), but we'd had a ball doing it - and found an excuse for another haul through the Qutie Frash catalogue, which is never a bad thing.
I guess the takeaway point of all of this is that I think a Japanese themed version of Ky's costume could look really awesome, and if any of you who actually do have artistic talent would like to take a crack at drawing it, I would love to see the result – whether or not you use any the the ideas suggested here.
A few pieces of Guilty Gear trivia
Remarkably few facts had to be invented to get this AU to work. The 'Senga' or 'Flashing Tooth' is a known piece of the Outrage that gets name-dropped in one of the guidebooks, and sounded like it could be just the kind of weapon that would suit Baiken. Anji does actually use a sealing spell (albeit a less effective one) to restrict Baiken's movement in one of their encounters in XX, and they both seem to be able to tell that Sol's not a regular human. Invisibility as an extension of what they could do with Ki magic might be stretching things a little, but it is magic they're using. As for Kai and Baiken knowing each other, after moving them to the same setting their backstories - both of which involve their hatred of Gears starting with their parent(s) death in a Gear attack - become so similar that it was only logical the same attack might have been responsible. Also, since most of us (including me) wouldn't have known without looking it up, the official date for the end of the Holy War should have been in 2175 - three years before Sol and Ky even meet in this universe.
I'm currently undecided about whether there'll be more from this AU. There's certainly more in it, but it stands alone alright as is, and lord knows I've got more than my share of other WIPs. On a final note, while this fic actually doesn't get the 'things that are velithya's fault' tag for once, I do owe her a lot of gratitude for all her help and encouragement while I was writing it. I still missed the official deadline of the challenge I was writing for, but I got a lot closer than I ever would have otherwise.
A bit about the Racebending Revenge Ficathon
The idea for this fic came from the Racebending Revenge Ficathon – a challenge that responded to the now infamous whitewashing of the Last Airbender movie by asking participants to do the reverse: change a Caucasian character from any fandom into a POC and write a story showing how their lives would have been made different. Having shared in the collective frustration of everyone else in fandom watching the mind-blowing levels of Not Getting It from everyone involved in the Avatar casting fiasco – not to mention being a big fan of AU fic – I loved the idea and immediately wanted to participate.
Figuring out what to write for it was trickier, considering most of the fandoms I've ever written for (not that many Caucasians in xxxHOLiC, for example). I toyed with the idea of how much worse the American reaction to Providence might have been if Cable hadn't been born white, but it wasn't really crystalising into anything very fast. Then it struck me that, given the history of the Guilty Gear universe, there's every reason to believe the war could have gone quite differently if Ky had been born Japanese instead of French. There's a canonical AU which shows us what would have happened if he'd died young, but what if he'd been kept from taking command of the Order by other reasons? Plus it would be an excuse to finally write something with a couple of my favourite canonical Japanese characters (Anji and Baiken) and generally have fun mixing up the timelines.
I'd had just long enough to get myself too attached to the idea not to write it when it dawned on me that, on second thoughts, it might not fit the parameters of the challenge as well as I'd like. The Japanese are singled out for some uniquely horrible treatment in the Guilty Gear universe – almost wiped out, the survivors confined to protective Colony and hunted down if they try to leave – but half the explanation involves their own efforts to preserve their race, and the other half involves the whole race having exceptional magical powers. The fic would certainly fill the letter of the rules, but inasmuch as the original motivation was to produce commentary with real world relevance, it might not fill the spirit of the challenge that much better than, say, writing an AU where Frodo Baggins was born an Elf. The community mods okayed the idea when I asked them whether they thought it was appropriate, but given that they aren't familiar with the game its based on, I'm still a little hesitant to add the fic to their collection. (If anyone reading this has any strong opinions either way, I'd be happy to hear from you.)
Anyway, the stories by other for the main challenge can be found here, and even going only by the few I've read so far, well worth checking out.
On the subject of Kai's costume
Going right to the other side of the serious business scale and on to another topic completely, there was no way I was ever going to write this fic and not come out with at least a few thoughts on the all-important question of what Ky would look like in this AU – and in particular (since 'similar, but more Japanese' isn't a very interesting answer), how he'd dress. Guilty Gear is, after all, well known for its awesomely ridiculous character design, and what kind of costume Ishiwatari would have given to a hypothetical alternate Ky who grew up in Japan and never joined the Order raised some very interesting possibilities.
A couple of basic principles sprang to me right away. It'd be a safe bet he'd be keeping the blue/white colour scheme of every costume we've ever seen him in before. Since both the other canonically native Japanese characters (namely Anji and Baiken) wear (pseudo-)traditional Japanese costumes, it made sense that he he would too. Being a Guilty Gear costume, let alone a Ky costume – it had to be needlessly complicated. Gratuitous belts and buckles not essential, but obviously a plus.
With those three guidelines in mind, I came up with a couple of different possibilities.
The first option came out of a bit of hunting around the web for the most complicated piece of old-fashioned Japanese clothing I could find, which lead to the discovery of something called a Junihitoe. Literally: twelve layered robe, a garment which could weight up to 20kg in total, worn only by upper class court ladies in an era when they it would have been considered terribly uncouth for them to do much more than lounge around at home all day. But it is Ky we're talking about – the ship for dressing him up in feminine clothing sailed waaaayyyy back during that lovely dress-and-tiara incident of Overture, and it's not like minor issues like practicality have ever stopped Ishiwatari before. And if all else failed, hunting for Junihitoe pics had to be good for inspiration.
That's how I found this thing:
It's a Junihitoe created by a modern designer, probably as a display piece. Note especially the colour scheme and the leather strips (*cough-belts-cough*) around the edges of the sleeves. You would probably still have to lose the train and at least a couple of intermediate layers, but that design could easily be modified into something that would suit Kai very well.
I could have stopped there, but by then I was having far too much fun, especially when the next idea hit me. The second idea came out of the thought that, by the year 2180, logically most present day Japanese Goth Loli/Punk fashions would be old enough to count as 'traditional' Japanese dress. There's even a fashion category specifically for Japanese themed designs – called Wa-Loli, or for these purposes, probably something more like Wa-Punk. If you want to find fashion with traditional elements mixed in with gratuitous buckles, you need look no further than real, commercially produced Japanese clothing lines.
If there's anyone I know who comes close to being an authority on bizarre Japanese fashion, that person is
jaseroque, so my next move was to grab her on chat and see if she could give me any pointers on where to find references for male-wa-punk-goth-whatever fashion. The Internet let us down a little on that account (reference pics of fashion found fitting all requirements: ...one, and it was practically a thumbnail), but we found a decent collection of girl's fashion that was close enough to give us ideas.We both liked the idea of long kimono sleeves in white, over a blue underlayer that would be visible around the the open end of the sleeves (and possibly the neck) and hence mimic the blue trim on his canonical costume. We both also liked the idea of having some kind of decorative blue outline pattern on the white fabric (something like the dragon here), as well as the the lace-on sleeves here. The leather belts woven around the bottom of the sleeves on the Junihitoe above might work too. Less decided were the questions of whether or not to give it a traditional-looking kimono front, whether the back could be made to work like a coat or cape, whether or not hakama pants would be a good idea, and where any extra buckles ought to show up. At the end of the day we were still a long way short of having a complete design (let's face it, neither of us have a lot of real skill when it comes to with art or design), but we'd had a ball doing it - and found an excuse for another haul through the Qutie Frash catalogue, which is never a bad thing.
I guess the takeaway point of all of this is that I think a Japanese themed version of Ky's costume could look really awesome, and if any of you who actually do have artistic talent would like to take a crack at drawing it, I would love to see the result – whether or not you use any the the ideas suggested here.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 12:09 am (UTC)I want you to write the story where Kai sees Sol without his headband for the first time!
<.<
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 02:35 pm (UTC)I meant the scene where Sol takes the headband off (in a fight or something) and Ky sees for the first time <.<
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 02:44 pm (UTC)Tangent: The only story idea I have which does explicitly have a Ky-seeing-Sol-minus-headband scene right now is Skin and Bone, so I just spent a shower thinking about that story seriously for the first time in ages and it's actually starting to feel like it's coming together. So there's that. :3
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 02:52 pm (UTC)DLJGNLKJDSGNKJLSDGN yessss
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 10:13 am (UTC)The second idea came out of the thought that, by the year 2180, logically most present day Japanese Goth Loli/Punk fashions would be old enough to count as 'traditional' Japanese dress.
...This is slightly terrifying.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 11:28 am (UTC)...This is slightly terrifying.
Unless the war completely stiffles all cultural change for a long time, if they haven't made it to 'traditional', they'd at least have to be 'old fashioned'. I am reminded of a quote about the fact that waltzing - when it first became popular around the late 1700s, so about three hundred years ago - was originally considered 'scandalous and abandonned'. (Also this (http://xkcd.com/647/), though on a slightly different scale.)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 12:28 pm (UTC)