A Braid of Bamboo and Steel
Oct. 23rd, 2018 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrSo I wrote an honest to goodness EIGHTY FIVE THOUSAND WORD novel-length fic over a period of *checks* a month and a half? Maybe two months, I think I waited a little after I'd written the first two chapters before posting. It was like this intense fever dream, I was just SO INSPIRED, and then today I finished it and now I want to just be DONE and NOT THINK ABOUT IT ANY MORE.
A Braid of Bamboo and Steel (85772 words) by sqbr
Chapters: 15/15
Fandom: Hakuouki
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Nagumo Kaoru & Yukimura Chizuru, Nagumo Kaoru/Sanan Keisuke, Toudou Heisuke/Yukimura Chizuru
Additional Tags: Fanfiction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Trans, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Disturbing Themes, casual transphobia, Getting Together, Sibling Bonding, Happy Ending, Drama & Romance
Summary:
I even made a cover image! (using other people's art) See, it's an AU because Chizuru is an INCH TALLER rather than an INCH SHORTER.
And naturally I got this inspired about TRANS FIC FOR A TEN YEAR OLD OTOME GAME. With an age gap and lots of violence, just to scare off anyone who's looking for ~wholesome Issue Fic. But one commenter left really lovely heartfelt comments on almost every chapter, and a couple of other people said nice things, so I'm going to hug those comments and all fifteen kudos to my heart and feel happy regardless.
And now to ramble about it a bit. Especially since I imagine some of you are looking at the tags going "Wait...you wrote trans shipfic about the serial-killing baby-eater and the cross-dressing evil twin?".
YES. YES I DID.
AND I REGRET NOTHING.
So!
As a reminder, the main character of Hakuoki is the sweet innocent cross-dressing cis woman Chizuru. She has an evil cross-dressing twin brother Kaoru who was Fucked Up By Gender Related Trauma that sometimes veers into transphobic tropes, though Koaru is definitely a cis dude.
Two of Chizuru's possible (straight cis male) love interests are sweetie pie cinnamon roll vampire Heisuke, and morally ambiguous scientist vampire Sanan (who varies between hero and villain depending on the path).
As I recall the train of thoughts that lead to this fic:
For a cross-dresser Chizuru sure is VERY CIS-GENDERED. Way to take the fun out of it, game.
Kaoru is the closest thing to a trans character, and he's sometimes sympathetic and charismatic, but mostly he's just horrifyingly awful.
Damn it, part of me wants a redemption arc for Kaoru, but what would it even look like? His main issue is feeling unloved, so I guess either we somehow fix his relationship with Chizuru so he doesn't MURDER HER, or find him a love interest. But who the hell could handle his domineering creepiness?
Hmm, this Sanan path is interesting, but Sanan is really domineering and creepy, and Chizuru doesn't push back on it at all. I'd prefer a more equal dynamic.
Hah ok watching Sanan and Kaoru being awful to each other is kind of entertaining, it's like their nastiness cancels out. Especially when they're both being awful to Kodo/Stabdad.
...oh no.
No no no I don't want to ship this. Sanan is 31-35 and Kaoru is 17-21 and they're both SADISTIC SERIAL KILLERS WITH A POOR GRASP OF CONSENT.
(...but they both see themselves as unloveable monsters too weird for anyone else to understand...)
*reads bits of the canon highschool AU where neither of them kill anyone but they're still pretty creepy and domineering*
OK FINE I SHIP IT BUT HOW THE HELL DOES THIS WORK
*attempts to write Kaoru/Sanan as an extension of regular canon and has it try to go WAY more dubconny than I am capable of actually writing*
*skips past the shippy bits to the part where Kaoru is interacting with Chizuru and they somehow become friends except wait no Kaoru just continues to be awful*
Uuurgh ok maybe someone can explain to Kaoru why emotional torture is not the best approach to sibling bonding.
*starts writing Okita saying, as he does in canon, that even if Chizuru experienced the same trauma as Kaoru she'd...*
Wait. For it to be the same she'd have to be amab, so she'd be a trans woman. And if trans woman Chizuru went through the same awful upbringing as Kaoru then I guess you'd have trans man Kaoru with Chizuru's less traumatic upbringing? He'd still be a creepy trash-fire, but maybe without so much of the intense defensive anger that ruins everything. Plus his misogyny would be undercut by experiencing all the sexism Chizuru does in canon. And Chizuru would get all that "male" demon super-strength...
HOLY CRAP I WANT TO WRITE THAT STORY.
And so I did :D
Heisuke as Chizuru's love interest was an easy decision, since I basically wanted her arc to be "traumatised trans woman woobie escapes terrible family, gains more and more love and support", and he's the sweetest, most non-threatening love interest. Also his canon romance is pretty ungendered, he sees Chizuru as a friend first and girl second, which made it easy to write him as seeing her as a male friend he had to work out his feelings for.
But I tried REALLY HARD not to set up Kaoru with Sanan.
First I thought maybe the obsessive childhood friend Iba, since he'd have the intensity Kaoru would want, but Iba puts Chizuru on a very gendered Perfect Girl pedestal that Kaoru would hate. Then I thought maybe Okita, who Kaoru acts as a dark mirror to on the Okita path. But while they have a lot of similarities, Okita's mean streak is a shell covering a soft sincere centre while Kaoru is insincere and sharp all the way down. Plus I just couldn't get it to seem very interesting in my head.
And then I thought: maybe Kaoru doesn't need a love interest! It can be Chizuru/Heisuke and Chizuru&Kaoru!
And then somehow I ended up with KAORU & SANAN FAKE DATING.
And it was great? I'm not sure which romance I enjoyed writing more, Heisuke/Chizuru was really sweet and affirming but Kaoru/Sanan was this enjoyable mess of somewhat awful people somehow finding happiness together and helping each other become better people (maybe not GOOD people, but, you know. Not serial killers!) Especially once I realised how much fun it would be to write Sanan as agender and kind of quietly trollish about it.
And while age gap relationships aren't my usual thing it was fun to play around with the tropes a bit. Especially since Kaoru is this weird mix of childish immaturity and pretentious pomposity that makes his apparent age wobble all over the place.
Knowing pretty much noone would be interested in reading such a weird mix of tropes was very freeing, too, I just wallowed in Gender Feels without worrying too much about whether anyone else would enjoy it. I mean I'm not a trans man OR a trans woman (or even agender) so I hope I didn't misstep about any of that. But I drew on my own experiences a lot, and it was really cathartic writing Kaoru facing all the sexist and reproduction related crap Chizuru does in canon and having him be his violent nasty self in response. The bit in the Sanan path where Kaoru kicks Kodo while he's down was very inspiring.
Also, wow, I've always loved stories about cross-dressing cis people, but it turns out writing cross-dressing trans people can also be super fun! I realise that just sounds like "closeted trans people", but thinking of it as cross-dressing made it more fun.
The one issue with the story is that it regularly swaps POV between Kaoru and Chizuru, and since they don't come out as trans to each other for quite a while (since it takes them both a while to even figure out that's what they are(*)) they're constantly misgendering each other in the narration for the first half or so of the story. The contrast between how they think of themselves and how others see them is interesting for a while but it got unpleasant after a bit. OH WELL every story is a lesson.
Anyway! I think I got everyone to a satisfying ending and explored some stuff about gender and violence and THE SELF etc. While it's not super historically accurate I did try to stay true where I could to my understanding of how gender and sexuality worked in the Edo era, which made the GENDER FEELS more layered. And maybe next time I get inspired to write a novel-length story it'll be something more than tens of people want to read.
(*)I mean the word "trans" never comes up, because this is 19th century Japan. But they figure out that they're a different gender than the one they're expected to be.
A Braid of Bamboo and Steel (85772 words) by sqbr
Chapters: 15/15
Fandom: Hakuouki
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Nagumo Kaoru & Yukimura Chizuru, Nagumo Kaoru/Sanan Keisuke, Toudou Heisuke/Yukimura Chizuru
Additional Tags: Fanfiction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Trans, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Disturbing Themes, casual transphobia, Getting Together, Sibling Bonding, Happy Ending, Drama & Romance
Summary:
Nagumo Chizuru escapes her demon captors, and Yukimura Kaoru finds himself the prisoner of the Shinsengumi. They're both determined to be reunited, but the reunion isn't quite what they expected.
An AU where Kaoru and Chizuru have swapped bodies and backstories but not genders.
I even made a cover image! (using other people's art) See, it's an AU because Chizuru is an INCH TALLER rather than an INCH SHORTER.
And naturally I got this inspired about TRANS FIC FOR A TEN YEAR OLD OTOME GAME. With an age gap and lots of violence, just to scare off anyone who's looking for ~wholesome Issue Fic. But one commenter left really lovely heartfelt comments on almost every chapter, and a couple of other people said nice things, so I'm going to hug those comments and all fifteen kudos to my heart and feel happy regardless.
And now to ramble about it a bit. Especially since I imagine some of you are looking at the tags going "Wait...you wrote trans shipfic about the serial-killing baby-eater and the cross-dressing evil twin?".
YES. YES I DID.
AND I REGRET NOTHING.
So!
As a reminder, the main character of Hakuoki is the sweet innocent cross-dressing cis woman Chizuru. She has an evil cross-dressing twin brother Kaoru who was Fucked Up By Gender Related Trauma that sometimes veers into transphobic tropes, though Koaru is definitely a cis dude.
Two of Chizuru's possible (straight cis male) love interests are sweetie pie cinnamon roll vampire Heisuke, and morally ambiguous scientist vampire Sanan (who varies between hero and villain depending on the path).
As I recall the train of thoughts that lead to this fic:
For a cross-dresser Chizuru sure is VERY CIS-GENDERED. Way to take the fun out of it, game.
Kaoru is the closest thing to a trans character, and he's sometimes sympathetic and charismatic, but mostly he's just horrifyingly awful.
Damn it, part of me wants a redemption arc for Kaoru, but what would it even look like? His main issue is feeling unloved, so I guess either we somehow fix his relationship with Chizuru so he doesn't MURDER HER, or find him a love interest. But who the hell could handle his domineering creepiness?
Hmm, this Sanan path is interesting, but Sanan is really domineering and creepy, and Chizuru doesn't push back on it at all. I'd prefer a more equal dynamic.
Hah ok watching Sanan and Kaoru being awful to each other is kind of entertaining, it's like their nastiness cancels out. Especially when they're both being awful to Kodo/Stabdad.
...oh no.
No no no I don't want to ship this. Sanan is 31-35 and Kaoru is 17-21 and they're both SADISTIC SERIAL KILLERS WITH A POOR GRASP OF CONSENT.
(...but they both see themselves as unloveable monsters too weird for anyone else to understand...)
*reads bits of the canon highschool AU where neither of them kill anyone but they're still pretty creepy and domineering*
OK FINE I SHIP IT BUT HOW THE HELL DOES THIS WORK
*attempts to write Kaoru/Sanan as an extension of regular canon and has it try to go WAY more dubconny than I am capable of actually writing*
*skips past the shippy bits to the part where Kaoru is interacting with Chizuru and they somehow become friends except wait no Kaoru just continues to be awful*
Uuurgh ok maybe someone can explain to Kaoru why emotional torture is not the best approach to sibling bonding.
*starts writing Okita saying, as he does in canon, that even if Chizuru experienced the same trauma as Kaoru she'd...*
Wait. For it to be the same she'd have to be amab, so she'd be a trans woman. And if trans woman Chizuru went through the same awful upbringing as Kaoru then I guess you'd have trans man Kaoru with Chizuru's less traumatic upbringing? He'd still be a creepy trash-fire, but maybe without so much of the intense defensive anger that ruins everything. Plus his misogyny would be undercut by experiencing all the sexism Chizuru does in canon. And Chizuru would get all that "male" demon super-strength...
HOLY CRAP I WANT TO WRITE THAT STORY.
And so I did :D
Heisuke as Chizuru's love interest was an easy decision, since I basically wanted her arc to be "traumatised trans woman woobie escapes terrible family, gains more and more love and support", and he's the sweetest, most non-threatening love interest. Also his canon romance is pretty ungendered, he sees Chizuru as a friend first and girl second, which made it easy to write him as seeing her as a male friend he had to work out his feelings for.
But I tried REALLY HARD not to set up Kaoru with Sanan.
First I thought maybe the obsessive childhood friend Iba, since he'd have the intensity Kaoru would want, but Iba puts Chizuru on a very gendered Perfect Girl pedestal that Kaoru would hate. Then I thought maybe Okita, who Kaoru acts as a dark mirror to on the Okita path. But while they have a lot of similarities, Okita's mean streak is a shell covering a soft sincere centre while Kaoru is insincere and sharp all the way down. Plus I just couldn't get it to seem very interesting in my head.
And then I thought: maybe Kaoru doesn't need a love interest! It can be Chizuru/Heisuke and Chizuru&Kaoru!
And then somehow I ended up with KAORU & SANAN FAKE DATING.
And it was great? I'm not sure which romance I enjoyed writing more, Heisuke/Chizuru was really sweet and affirming but Kaoru/Sanan was this enjoyable mess of somewhat awful people somehow finding happiness together and helping each other become better people (maybe not GOOD people, but, you know. Not serial killers!) Especially once I realised how much fun it would be to write Sanan as agender and kind of quietly trollish about it.
And while age gap relationships aren't my usual thing it was fun to play around with the tropes a bit. Especially since Kaoru is this weird mix of childish immaturity and pretentious pomposity that makes his apparent age wobble all over the place.
Knowing pretty much noone would be interested in reading such a weird mix of tropes was very freeing, too, I just wallowed in Gender Feels without worrying too much about whether anyone else would enjoy it. I mean I'm not a trans man OR a trans woman (or even agender) so I hope I didn't misstep about any of that. But I drew on my own experiences a lot, and it was really cathartic writing Kaoru facing all the sexist and reproduction related crap Chizuru does in canon and having him be his violent nasty self in response. The bit in the Sanan path where Kaoru kicks Kodo while he's down was very inspiring.
Also, wow, I've always loved stories about cross-dressing cis people, but it turns out writing cross-dressing trans people can also be super fun! I realise that just sounds like "closeted trans people", but thinking of it as cross-dressing made it more fun.
The one issue with the story is that it regularly swaps POV between Kaoru and Chizuru, and since they don't come out as trans to each other for quite a while (since it takes them both a while to even figure out that's what they are(*)) they're constantly misgendering each other in the narration for the first half or so of the story. The contrast between how they think of themselves and how others see them is interesting for a while but it got unpleasant after a bit. OH WELL every story is a lesson.
Anyway! I think I got everyone to a satisfying ending and explored some stuff about gender and violence and THE SELF etc. While it's not super historically accurate I did try to stay true where I could to my understanding of how gender and sexuality worked in the Edo era, which made the GENDER FEELS more layered. And maybe next time I get inspired to write a novel-length story it'll be something more than tens of people want to read.
(*)I mean the word "trans" never comes up, because this is 19th century Japan. But they figure out that they're a different gender than the one they're expected to be.
Hello!
Date: 2018-10-28 02:43 pm (UTC)Going through all the different routes, I was always waiting for the One Where Kaoru is Good and kept being disappointed. But why shouldn't there be one, since other characters get to be different degrees of good or bad depending on the route.
I must admit, I sort of ignored the Sanan/Chizuru age gap in canon, because of the way I felt encouraged to self-insert on Chizuru and, ok Sanan is lots older than her but he's still younger than *me*. Also I tend to give Chizuru different backstories and even different ages in the different routes to go with her different personalities. I felt the age difference a lot more in your fic. But it's also interesting how the meaning of age gaps change a lot based on gender. A young woman with an older man is, like it is in your fic, just what the patriarchy wants. A young man with an older man references a certain set of narrative tropes that Kaoru points out in the fic that he specifically doesn't want. A young man with an older woman - an older infertile woman, yet - feels almost unimaginable, like, why would a man even want that? And if a man does want that, what reason could there be for it other than wanting to take advantage of the older woman's presumed sexual experience? As you wrote so painfully and well. A young man with an older nonbinary person...it's a new thing, that they get to figure out for themselves. Which is really fun to watch.
I'm married to a younger man and it was really powerful how you 'got' some of what was difficult about the beginning of that relationship - how hard it was for either of us to believe that this was more than a 'practice' relationship for him, that it was real love. That's part of why I reacted to that first scene where Kaoru tries to have sex with Sanan so strongly. My previous relationship was with an older man, and it was so interesting how people reacted differently to the two dynamics. When I was with an older man, people just took for granted that the age difference shouldn't matter if I love him. When I was with a younger man, everyone assumed that I was teaching him how to have relationships and that he would move on. It was really interesting to watch the Kaoru/Sanan dynamic go back and forth between the two.
I think I need to disagree about Chizuru not pushing back on Sanan in canon? I think I'm literally the only person in fandom who loved that route and found it a beautiful romance, although like I said I didn't much like the last act in the castle where they're not working together. But I do think she pushes back on him, she just does it by asking questions and saying she wants to understand, which is her way of calling him on stuff while still affirming him. But he responds well to that and it does sometimes make it change his behavior, like when he changes his mind about giving the Water of Life to Okita. Having said that, I also *loved* the more confrontational dynamic you gave Sanan with Kaoru.
it was really cathartic writing Kaoru facing all the sexist and reproduction related crap Chizuru does in canon and having him be his violent nasty self in response.
So cathartic! Also cathartic: Watching Sanan basically defeat the *entire concept of gender* with their mighty samurai warrior skills. Talk about a worthy opponent for a brave samurai.
Ok I need to get to work...but so much to read and respond to here. I'll be back when I can.
one commenter left really lovely heartfelt comments *blushes* Thank you!
Re: Hello!
Date: 2018-10-29 12:46 pm (UTC)Hello! I'm honestly not sure I even know what my lj password is any more but enjoyed reading some of the dreamwidth crossposts. I hope you have fun on dreamwidth!
Going through all the different routes, I was always waiting for the One Where Kaoru is Good and kept being disappointed. But why shouldn't there be one, since other characters get to be different degrees of good or bad depending on the route.
Same. I think the closest he gets is some sympathetic (but not super redemptive) deaths.
I have a pretty intense age gap squick, it's very inconvenient, but I am envious rather than disapproving of people who have less of one! I have this weird double vision with things like the Sanan path, since on the one hand Sanan is younger than me, but if I imagine myself as Chizuru he's much older than "me". It didn't occur to me to imagine Chizuru as different ages per path, that's a good solution! I'm used to doing that sort of thing with games like Dragon Age. The game implies she's in her late teens/very early 20s, but it contradicts itself enough that I'm comfortable ignoring it :)
I've always had a yearning for stories of younger men with older women, because they are so hard to find, and poke at a lot of the heteronormative assumptions underlying ideas about what m/f relationships (and relationships in general) look like, as well as ideas about women (and non-men in general) having value and attractiveness if they're not innocent young ingenues. I've never actually been in that sort of relationship, though I've come close, so I'm glad it rang true! I drew in part on my messy feelings about the dynamics with my partners and me (one is older and agender, the other is younger and fairly masculine leaning). Even when noone identifies as a man there's still something of an assumption that one of you will be The Man (older/more experienced etc) and it can interact uncomfortably with gender identity.
But I do think she pushes back on him, she just does it by asking questions and saying she wants to understand, which is her way of calling him on stuff while still affirming him. But he responds well to that and it does sometimes make it change his behavior, like when he changes his mind about giving the Water of Life to Okita.
True! And she's the one who pushes for them to get together. I was convinced and charmed by their relationship in the end, it just wasn't my personal cup of tea as much as some of the others. I think my problem was partly that I didn't realise what the dynamic was going to be for a while, and found it a bit jarring to see Chizuru so relatively trusting of Sanan, when on the other paths she suspected him more and turned out to be right to do so. If I hadn't been so primed to think he was Up To Something, and had come to the story fresh, I probably would have been able to run with it more easily.
And thank you for your comments, as always :)
Re: Hello!
Date: 2018-10-29 04:58 pm (UTC)Chizuru would still have to be somewhat younger, since he does call her a child as a way of discouraging her crush. But maybe not so much younger.
I did the Sanan route third, after Okita and Heisuke, and while I *loved* the inversion of Heisuke's route I didn't have the experience of watching Sanan be awful over and over. I'm sure that made a difference.
Re: Hello!
Date: 2018-10-31 06:50 am (UTC)Ooh, interesting!
Considering Sanan is (if he matches the historical figure) 31 and "childhood" could end as late as 25 that still gives some wiggle room.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-28 03:55 pm (UTC)To be fair, as you'll see if you read any of my old fic or meta, my taste in fictional romance tends to run to dubcon-y things between people who have inflicted harm on each other. So, not exactly a surprise there.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-29 01:02 pm (UTC)Oh, "dubcon-y things between people who have inflicted harm on each other" is absolutely my jam. I tend to prefer "two people have harmed each other and they both have to come to terms with it", while afaict your tastes tend more towards "One person has harmed the other and they both have to come to terms with it", but I do not in any way claim that my tastes are better in any moral or artistic sense. I mean one of my OTPs is Chell/GlaDOS, eg experimental test subject/The AI violently experimenting on her, and am not sure the fact that Chell semi-successfully murders GlaDOS at one point makes it better in any sense but "more appealing to me personally".