Tanabata and the Duel

- All chapter links listed below will take you to the Fanfiction.Net versions. -

Now that Chapter 37 ("Agonies and Thrills") has been up for a full week and we've moved on to Chapter 38 ("Two Steps Forward....", posted 2009 Nov. 11), I think it's relatively safe for me to go off on a tangent as regard to the duel challenge plot and its culmination.

But just in case, I'm going to SPOILER mark it for those who have not read Chapter 37, so rollover to view the rest.

In Chapter 30 ("Star Princess"), Chie's grandfather Kazunori relates the story of Tanabata. The chapter title refers to a couple of different things. One is the heavenly princess Orihime, the heroine of the Tanabata story; the second is Kuma, whose Arcana is the Star; and the third is Chie, whose fate, at least so far as the duel is concerned, is linked very closely with sweet Orihime's.

Pet names are not common in Japan, but I felt it was important for Yousuke to give Chie the pet name of "hime-chan" or "princess," because that's what she is to him. He's a bit of a chauvinist in this regard - wanting to protect and take care of Chie...not necessarily because he thinks of her as a lesser person because of her gender, but because he thinks she needs someone to protect her and take care of her. (I'm not saying he's right - and she needs to prove time and again that she's the better fighter of the two of them - but that's the way that he thinks. Chalk it up to a patriarchal society.) The princess symbolism doesn't end there, of course...but that's a topic for another day.

Nevertheless, readers who have been paying close attention to what happens in the story will notice that the story of Orihime and Hikoboshi - which Kazunori relates to Kuma and the others - relates almost directly to what occurs with Chie and Yousuke at the conclusion of the duel fight. In the simplest of comparisons:

Chie (Orihime) goes to her father, Hitoshi (Tentei), and begs him to let her stay with Yousuke (Hikoboshi), the man whom she loves. It's specifically Orihime's tears - much like it is with Chie's - that sway Tentei's/Hitoshi's heart in favor of his daughter, despite what his feelings may be for her future or for her lover.

Now, I also felt it was necessary to have Yousuke and Chie grow as adults, as well as both friends and lovers, during the trials of the training chapters. And it was very important for the characters to venture into the Mayonaka TV world, because the Shadows (and Personas) come into play quite significantly in Part IV. And I wanted to build up some tension in the latter chapters, especially, to keep readers interested in seeing what was going to happen in the fight itself. But, for readers who were paying attention, I was giving away the ending of Part III very early on, all the way back in Chapter 30.

END SPOILER

So, this was just a small glimpse into the workings of the mind of an author who's trying to keep everything in a plot moving toward a culminating goal of neatly-woven entertainment. (Or maybe not so neatly-woven. You can judge that for yourself.)