About Offer and Demand

	Younger than:
	Blog Home \| RSS 2.0

Currently browsing thread: About Offer and Demand micHELLe Sep 07, 2005 21:50:16

About Offer and Demand
micHELLe Posted on: Sep 07, 2005 21:50:16	A little background talk about Offer and Demand, now that the story is finished. The text below will contain spoilers. Be warned. You might not want to read it BEFORE you read the story (that is, if you plan to read the story, hehe.) I started thinking of this story some (long) time ago, a few months after the infamous article about Hyde's supposed bankruptcy was published in a Japanese newspaper. I think this was around 2002 or 2003. (Bad memory with dates is me) I used to be a lot more active in the fandom back then, and I used to talk about L'Arc~en~Ciel with my friends over messengers a lot. Back then, my life was entirely different. Even my OS was different. XDD As I started writing, I didn't have a good idea of how I would finish the story, I only knew I wanted to portray a very money-desperate Hyde, ready to do anything to get his financial security back. The story was just a draft, like hundreds of stories that never saw the light of day during the many years that I've spent writing Jrock fan-fiction, and as things developed, I started getting new ideas. Hyde becoming a father, Hyde playing in S.O.A.P. lives and forming a band with musicians that I know are quite acquainted with Sakura, Sakura appearing at Hyde's lives, and Gackt's book. Gackt's book was a major turning point. So, I'll speak about Gackt's book first. =D I don't own the book. You see, I'm broke and where I live coming by Japanese imports costs you an arm and a leg. For this reason, I appreciate enormously that some fans took the trouble to translate the book. Even if I am not a Gackt fan, I carefully read every episode that [info]darcenciel kindly translated (his translation was awesome), and when I was done reading the first two or three chapters, I started forming an idea about Gackt... an idea that somewhat made me raise an eyebrow. Not in disapproval, but rather in doubt. As I went on reading, my questions were confirmed. From the contents and tone of the book I got the idea that Gackt is: a) A very smart person. b) A person that doesn't take "no" for a valid answer. c) A careful planner d) A scarred child inside the body of an adult. Laugh if you must, but you see... I enjoy trying to figure out people's psychology. (Aquarian trait? Boredom? Lack of anything better to do? Desire to have lunch already?) All throughout the book it seemed to me that Gackt was trying to convince someone (not necessarily the readers) that he is an admirable person. A man of many talents that should be loved dearly. I can't help but noticing that I've seen this before in other less famous people, and all of them had a common trait: A childhood with little love. Most of the people I've met that have with this tendency(1) keep trying to "earn" the love of those who should have rightfully loved them, who should have been supportive with them and treated them less sternly or paid more attention to them. And even in their adult lives, they keep trying to earn that love... although they probably don't know anymore who they are trying to earn it from. That made me feel very sorry for Gackt. I got the idea (without knowing much about his life) that maybe he keeps subconsciously living again and again some traumatic episode of his past. One that haunts him and doesn't let him be at peace with himself. That traumatic episode might very well be connected to being put down before others, or being treated as "not good enough". Gackt makes it his point in the book that he is amazingly talented. I don't doubt he has talent. I don't doubt hordes of rabid fans tell him so day by day. I doubt the person he wants to get this message across to actually cares to hear it or accept it though... or maybe that person can't hear it anymore. Who knows? We all have ghosts of the past that haunt us.(2) The ones that come at night when we are about to fall asleep and remind us of our every fault, our every faux-pas. We all have tried to please and be liked by someone who didn't like us the way we expected them to... but... if that person was very important to you, the effect could be terrible on your personality. This is all my guessing, and I'm not trying to pass this for fact, I'm just telling you what the book made me think. Episodes like the one where he paints himself as a promising computer programmer, when he's actually speaking about an elementary school assignment (I'm a geek. And in addition to it, I'm only a few years younger than Gackt. I was given that kind of assignments and I also had to record my "programs" to cassette. Square root and other calculations programs were the basis of what was to come in later elementary school years. They were the easiest programs. And yes, computers were so slow those days that you probably could beat them to the answer) make me think that he needs to call attention on himself for reasons other than selling his art. A mind like that, is quite likely to be extremely good at strategy and planning. It's probably very good at keeping pace with detail. A mind like that deserves success... and if it doesn't meet it, it can be terribly disappointing. I mean TERRIBLY disappointing.(3) Not that I'd know what it is like to be smart, mind you. I'm just saying... saying according to psychology books, that is. grin* That, and the whole story about having been in a mental hospital made me portray Gackt as a very smart, very patient, yet very fragile in mental terms, man. Faced with unpredictable disaster, his mind can't deal with it and breaks. If we were talking Linux* here (something I do at my other journal. Haha.) We'd call it "kernel panic". On the other hand, Sakura. I always dread to paint Sakura in my fics. Why? Because I've been a Sakura fan for so many years now... to the point that I'd rather call myself a Sakura fan before a L'Arc en Ciel fan... I've been so totally adoring of Sakura for years and years on end, that I always feel guilty when depicting him in fan-fiction. I know I always do it wrong. If I was a reader instead of being the author, I'd bash myself for depicting Sakura so wrongly. So... I always fall into the unforgivable sin of mary-sue-ifying him. I try my best not to, but the sin is impossible to hide sometimes. In this story, Sakura is a hopeless alcoholic sometimes. (IRL, he drinks a lot more than he should... to say the least.) A wacky driver (IRL, he is a very careful driver, and the one thing everyone says that will make him go ballistic is careless drivers.) A selfish person and a cheater. If you read the story you might disagree with the last line, but let me explain why I'm saying so: In this story everyone is selfish.(5) Sakura is selfish when he confronts Hyde about not having kept his promise of not sleeping with other men. Sakura says he kept his promise to Hyde (a promise of not sleeping with Hyde, that is) but Hyde didn't keep his to Sakura. Sakura is a lot more angry about this, than he is about anything else in the fic. He keeps bringing it up, and most of his fits have to do with it. One would think that he: a) Doesn't actually care about the situation, just about the "promises" made in the past. b) Still has feelings for Hyde... and is jealous. (As much as he denies it and fights it) On the other hand, Sakura is the one that got the contracts out of Gackt, hit Gackt with an ashtray and gave Hyde those contracts even if he KNEW that was against the rules Hyde and Gackt had set. (The rules being Hyde got the contracts as long as he divorced his wife and remained Gackt's lover.) Yes, yes, you might tell me that Gackt had lost his mind by then... but that was still disloyal. What's more: at one point Sakura confronts Gackt about having abused Hyde's desperate situation to get sex, and says it was almost like "abusing a mental patient". By the end of the story Sakura and Hyde abuse a mentally afflicted Gackt by taking the contracts away from him. Only instead of doing it for sex, they do it for money. And furthermore... Sakura implies the only reason why he doesn't intend to have sex with Hyde's wife is because she's skinny and pregnant. No loyalty here either. You might argue that Sakura has to do all the counseling and all the putting up with crazy friends in the story... and that's true. Sometimes his counseling is good, sometimes... it's a little questionable. Then we get Yuki and Tetsu playing the small role of "You are a work-mate, your problems are not necessarily my problems." which some might frown upon. Throughout a long and painful life, I've realized that this kind of behavior is more often the case than the exception. I'm not trying to imply that Tetsu or Yukihiro would act like this in real life. Just... ya know.. it fit the story.(6) On the other hand we have Megumi. Someone I really like IRL. I think she has gotten a lot of bad publicity from Hyde fangirls, and I think she doesn't deserve it. If any of you takes a little time to examine her career, you will see that she's quite a nice person. She used to be a very well-reputed skater and even won some medals for it. She acted in several "dorama" and although she'll never win an Academy award, she's still a better actress than her husband. =P She's rather shy and I've never seen her give attitude... and believe me, I used to have a rather pretty collection of video clips with interviews, acting and miscellaneous stuff showing her. She looks quite sweet. So, all in all, I apologize to the (non-existent) Megumi fans for having portrayed her as such a bitch. All in all, I can relate to her character a little... if I was married to someone who doesn't care much about me and considers me his brainless servant... I'd probably behave a little like her. And then, finally, Hyde. The star of the show. Poor little thing (no pun intended) shows his true nature. Wussy, vindictive, disloyal, stupid, dubitative, lying and treacherous. Quite the role model....NOT. He takes bad decissions, he complicates things, he fears to do what he has to do, he fucks up, he lies, he acts selfishly and doesn't give much thought to others's feelings... and then, at the end of the story he betrays the one person he was planning to spend a long time with. True, that person had lost his final screw by then, but that still doesn't mean he had to take the resources from him that Hyde knew he didn't qualify anymore for getting. He didn't keep his promise to Sakura. He didn't keep his promise to Gackt. (Arguably, he couldn't have.) He used his wife but was angry when she used him back. He lied to everyone. He kept taking it out on others when things didn't go as he planned. And to make things worse... HE INSULTED A DOG!! Gah! He was awkward, scheming, treacherous and selfish. But I know you all love him anyway. =D Why? Because he was pathetic at everything he did... to the point that he was pitiful, and we all felt sorry for him at his misadventures. The poor thing could have done the right thing from the start, and sort out his situation in a nicer way... but then, we wouldn't have had a story. =P In a way, I think I can relate to all the characters and their flaws. Nobody is perfect, and that's what makes us human. I can relate to Hyde's despair. I can relate to Gackt's frustration. I can relate to Megumi's anger. I can relate to Sakura's aggressiveness. And last, but not least, I can relate to Ken-Ken's (Megumi's dog) desire to destroy anything Harry Potter. XDDD I apologize for all the mistakes that you probably found in the story. It was not my idea to keep strictly to the timeline of events. (I'm bad with dates, I told you already.) I also apologize for spelling and grammar mistakes that might have escaped me. I try to spell-check and examine my stories as much as I can... but I've been known to fail at doing so to a 100% degree of accuracy. And finally, I apologize for having made you wait this long for a conclusion. I wish I could twist fate in my hands and accomodate it to my needs, but ne... look at what happened to Gackt when he thought he could achieve that. ^_~ (1) D.H. is an old fart. An old fart who is older than a quarter of a century already. An old fart who has had a very... hmm... peculiar... life. For this reason, D.H. has met many people in her life. Additionally, D.H.'s work makes her interact with lots of people every day. Scary, isn't it? (2) D.H. has too many and she wishes to put them for sale on e-bay. If you are interested, leave me a note. Thank you for looking. (3) So, don't go for success. Be contented with your failures. Uh... ignore that. (4) GNU/Linux fangirl here, of the Debian kind. grep \| pathetic-person. (5) Even the author. (6) I ran out of smart-ass notes. Feel like talking to me about the story? Please, go ahead! ^_^ I'll be only too happy to chat about it.

micHELLe
Posted on:
Sep 07, 2005 21:50:16

A little background talk about Offer and Demand, now that the story is finished.
The text below will contain spoilers. Be warned. You might not want to read it BEFORE you read the story (that is, if you plan to read the story, hehe.)
I started thinking of this story some (long) time ago, a few months after the infamous article about Hyde's supposed bankruptcy was published in a Japanese newspaper. I think this was around 2002 or 2003. (Bad memory with dates is me)
I used to be a lot more active in the fandom back then, and I used to talk about L'Arc~en~Ciel with my friends over messengers a lot.
Back then, my life was entirely different.
Even my OS was different. XDD

As I started writing, I didn't have a good idea of how I would finish the story, I only knew I wanted to portray a very money-desperate Hyde, ready to do anything to get his financial security back.

The story was just a draft, like hundreds of stories that never saw the light of day during the many years that I've spent writing Jrock fan-fiction, and as things developed, I started getting new ideas.
Hyde becoming a father, Hyde playing in S.O.A.P. lives and forming a band with musicians that I know are quite acquainted with Sakura, Sakura appearing at Hyde's lives, and Gackt's book. Gackt's book was a major turning point.

So, I'll speak about Gackt's book first. =D

I don't own the book. You see, I'm broke and where I live coming by Japanese imports costs you an arm and a leg. For this reason, I appreciate enormously that some fans took the trouble to translate the book.
Even if I am not a Gackt fan, I carefully read every episode that [info]darcenciel kindly translated (his translation was awesome), and when I was done reading the first two or three chapters, I started forming an idea about Gackt... an idea that somewhat made me raise an eyebrow. Not in disapproval, but rather in doubt.
As I went on reading, my questions were confirmed.
From the contents and tone of the book I got the idea that Gackt is:
a) A very smart person.
b) A person that doesn't take "no" for a valid answer.
c) A careful planner
d) A scarred child inside the body of an adult.

Laugh if you must, but you see... I enjoy trying to figure out people's psychology. (Aquarian trait? Boredom? Lack of anything better to do? Desire to have lunch already?)
All throughout the book it seemed to me that Gackt was trying to convince someone (not necessarily the readers) that he is an admirable person. A man of many talents that should be loved dearly.
I can't help but noticing that I've seen this before in other less famous people, and all of them had a common trait: A childhood with little love.
Most of the people I've met that have with this tendency*(1) keep trying to "earn" the love of those who should have rightfully loved them, who should have been supportive with them and treated them less sternly or paid more attention to them. And even in their adult lives, they keep trying to earn that love... although they probably don't know anymore who they are trying to earn it from.
That made me feel very sorry for Gackt.
I got the idea (without knowing much about his life) that maybe he keeps subconsciously living again and again some traumatic episode of his past. One that haunts him and doesn't let him be at peace with himself.
That traumatic episode might very well be connected to being put down before others, or being treated as "not good enough".

Gackt makes it his point in the book that he is amazingly talented. I don't doubt he has talent. I don't doubt hordes of rabid fans tell him so day by day. I doubt the person he wants to get this message across to actually cares to hear it or accept it though... or maybe that person can't hear it anymore. Who knows?

We all have ghosts of the past that haunt us.*(2) The ones that come at night when we are about to fall asleep and remind us of our every fault, our every faux-pas. We all have tried to please and be liked by someone who didn't like us the way we expected them to... but... if that person was very important to you, the effect could be terrible on your personality.

This is all my guessing, and I'm not trying to pass this for fact, I'm just telling you what the book made me think.

Episodes like the one where he paints himself as a promising computer programmer, when he's actually speaking about an elementary school assignment (I'm a geek. And in addition to it, I'm only a few years younger than Gackt. I was given that kind of assignments and I also had to record my "programs" to cassette. Square root and other calculations programs were the basis of what was to come in later elementary school years. They were the easiest programs. And yes, computers were so slow those days that you probably could beat them to the answer) make me think that he needs to call attention on himself for reasons other than selling his art.

A mind like that, is quite likely to be extremely good at strategy and planning. It's probably very good at keeping pace with detail. A mind like that deserves success... and if it doesn't meet it, it can be terribly disappointing. I mean TERRIBLY disappointing.*(3)

Not that I'd know what it is like to be smart, mind you. I'm just saying... saying according to psychology books, that is. *grin*

That, and the whole story about having been in a mental hospital made me portray Gackt as a very smart, very patient, yet very fragile in mental terms, man. Faced with unpredictable disaster, his mind can't deal with it and breaks.
If we were talking Linux* here (something I do at my other journal. Haha.) We'd call it "kernel panic".

On the other hand, Sakura.
I always dread to paint Sakura in my fics.
Why? Because I've been a Sakura fan for so many years now... to the point that I'd rather call myself a Sakura fan before a L'Arc en Ciel fan... I've been so totally adoring of Sakura for years and years on end, that I always feel guilty when depicting him in fan-fiction.
I know I always do it wrong.
If I was a reader instead of being the author, I'd bash myself for depicting Sakura so wrongly.
So... I always fall into the *unforgivable sin* of mary-sue-ifying him.
I try my best not to, but the sin is impossible to hide sometimes.
In this story, Sakura is a hopeless alcoholic sometimes. (IRL, he drinks a lot more than he should... to say the least.) A wacky driver (IRL, he is a very careful driver, and the one thing everyone says that will make him go ballistic is careless drivers.) A selfish person and a cheater.
If you read the story you might disagree with the last line, but let me explain why I'm saying so:
In this story everyone is selfish.*(5)
Sakura is selfish when he confronts Hyde about not having kept his promise of not sleeping with other men. Sakura says he kept his promise to Hyde (a promise of not sleeping with Hyde, that is) but Hyde didn't keep his to Sakura.
Sakura is a lot more angry about this, than he is about anything else in the fic. He keeps bringing it up, and most of his fits have to do with it.
One would think that he:
a) Doesn't actually care about the situation, just about the "promises" made in the past.
b) Still has feelings for Hyde... and is jealous. (As much as he denies it and fights it)

On the other hand, Sakura is the one that got the contracts out of Gackt, hit Gackt with an ashtray and gave Hyde those contracts even if he KNEW that was against the rules Hyde and Gackt had set.
(The rules being Hyde got the contracts as long as he divorced his wife and remained Gackt's lover.)
Yes, yes, you might tell me that Gackt had lost his mind by then... but that was still disloyal.
What's more: at one point Sakura confronts Gackt about having abused Hyde's desperate situation to get sex, and says it was almost like "abusing a mental patient". By the end of the story Sakura and Hyde abuse a mentally afflicted Gackt by taking the contracts away from him. Only instead of doing it for sex, they do it for money.

And furthermore... Sakura implies the only reason why he doesn't intend to have sex with Hyde's wife is because she's skinny and pregnant.
No loyalty here either.

You might argue that Sakura has to do all the counseling and all the putting up with crazy friends in the story... and that's true.
Sometimes his counseling is good, sometimes... it's a little questionable.

Then we get Yuki and Tetsu playing the small role of "You are a work-mate, your problems are not necessarily my problems." which some might frown upon.
Throughout a long and painful life, I've realized that this kind of behavior is more often the case than the exception. I'm not trying to imply that Tetsu or Yukihiro would act like this in real life. Just... ya know.. it fit the story.*(6)

On the other hand we have Megumi. Someone I really like IRL. I think she has gotten a lot of bad publicity from Hyde fangirls, and I think she doesn't deserve it. If any of you takes a little time to examine her career, you will see that she's quite a nice person. She used to be a very well-reputed skater and even won some medals for it. She acted in several "dorama" and although she'll never win an Academy award, she's still a better actress than her husband. =P
She's rather shy and I've never seen her give attitude... and believe me, I used to have a rather pretty collection of video clips with interviews, acting and miscellaneous stuff showing her. She looks quite sweet.
So, all in all, I apologize to the (non-existent) Megumi fans for having portrayed her as such a bitch.
All in all, I can relate to her character a little... if I was married to someone who doesn't care much about me and considers me his brainless servant... I'd probably behave a little like her.

And then, finally, Hyde.
The star of the show.
Poor little thing (no pun intended) shows his true nature. Wussy, vindictive, disloyal, stupid, dubitative, lying and treacherous.
Quite the role model....NOT.
He takes bad decissions, he complicates things, he fears to do what he has to do, he fucks up, he lies, he acts selfishly and doesn't give much thought to others's feelings... and then, at the end of the story he betrays the one person he was planning to spend a long time with.
True, that person had lost his final screw by then, but that still doesn't mean he had to take the resources from him that Hyde knew he didn't qualify anymore for getting.
He didn't keep his promise to Sakura. He didn't keep his promise to Gackt. (Arguably, he couldn't have.) He used his wife but was angry when she used him back. He lied to everyone. He kept taking it out on others when things didn't go as he planned. And to make things worse... HE INSULTED A DOG!! Gah!
He was awkward, scheming, treacherous and selfish.
But I know you all love him anyway. =D Why? Because he was pathetic at everything he did... to the point that he was pitiful, and we all felt sorry for him at his misadventures.
The poor thing could have done the right thing from the start, and sort out his situation in a nicer way... but then, we wouldn't have had a story. =P
In a way, I think I can relate to all the characters and their flaws. Nobody is perfect, and that's what makes us human.

I can relate to Hyde's despair. I can relate to Gackt's frustration. I can relate to Megumi's anger. I can relate to Sakura's aggressiveness. And last, but not least, I can relate to Ken-Ken's (Megumi's dog) desire to destroy anything Harry Potter. XDDD

I apologize for all the mistakes that you probably found in the story. It was not my idea to keep strictly to the timeline of events. (I'm bad with dates, I told you already.) I also apologize for spelling and grammar mistakes that might have escaped me. I try to spell-check and examine my stories as much as I can... but I've been known to fail at doing so to a 100% degree of accuracy. And finally, I apologize for having made you wait this long for a conclusion. I wish I could twist fate in my hands and accomodate it to my needs, but ne... look at what happened to Gackt when he thought he could achieve that. ^_~

*(1) D.H. is an old fart. An old fart who is older than a quarter of a century already. An old fart who has had a very... hmm... peculiar... life. For this reason, D.H. has met many people in her life. Additionally, D.H.'s work makes her interact with lots of people every day. Scary, isn't it?
*(2) D.H. has too many and she wishes to put them for sale on e-bay. If you are interested, leave me a note. Thank you for looking.
*(3) So, don't go for success. Be contented with your failures. Uh... ignore that.
*(4) GNU/Linux fangirl here, of the Debian kind. grep | pathetic-person.
*(5) Even the author.
*(6) I ran out of smart-ass notes.

Feel like talking to me about the story? Please, go ahead! ^_^ I'll be only too happy to chat about it.

No comments

This entry is closed for comments

An Orca Script

Writer's Blog