after much deliberation.... perhaps some directors commentary on afterimage.... particularly on the "she must have been something entirely beautiful" part. but also all of it. of course
ask me for ādirectorās commentaryā on a story / section / set of lines. or send in a ā and Iāll pick something!
What he misses is Gon-chanāwho brought him home, and carried him, and talked to Masaomi, all with Hanzawa unseeing and unfeeling. She must have been something entirely beautifulāa stark contrast to who heās taking stock of, now. He sighs, and pushes his hairālimp and unkemptāup so he can wash his face.
hereās the relevant paragraph from afterimage, which you should read if you like hanzashiro and/or me. sunnnfish I appreciate that you asked about all of it, but Iām just going to discuss the above section.
to start off, thereās some pronoun-swapping for tashiro going on, here. I puzzled over how to handle this, because in japanese, I think that itād be possible to omit any gender-specific terms from a lot of hanzawa (masato) and masaomiās conversation. that plausible deniability, gender-wise, makes hanzawaās faking a little less elaborate, and a little more real, whereas using āsheā all the time feels like a really active choice. on top of that, tashiro is operating in this loose space ofā¦ maybe genderfluid, maybe transfem, maybe just a guy in a dress sometimes, but in this moment very much pretending to be hanzawaās girlfriend.
what I ended up with is this: when hanzawa and masaomi are speaking, āsheā is always used in reference to tashiro. since hanzawa means to have tashiro as a fake girlfriend, and since masaomi believes in that, itād be natural for āsheā to be used there. but hanzawa also uses āsheā when he's thinking specifically of gon-chanāaka #girl tashiro. I think this approach balances the fact that there is some deception going on, all while honoring the fact that itās not entirely fake.
as for āshe must have been something entirely beautiful,ā this is actually the first time in the fic that hanzawa uses āsheā to refer to tashiro, outside of dialogue. I think that helps the impact of the line.
the phrasing here is specific. whenever iām writing hanzashiro, no matter how romantic it gets I always want to give it some aroace flavor. so itās āsomethingā to give a bit of distance from ābeautiful,ā and itās clear heās thinking more about her actions than how she physically looked. āsomethingā can sound hedging, though, so itās also āentirelyā because hanzawaās acknowledging that even in the midst of deception, tashiro is so fully herself. her beauty, there, isn't put upon or faked, itās inherent.
thereās not too much else to the paragraphāhanzawa describes himself unattractively afterwards, in part because he just woke up, in part because heās annoyed at having missed seeing tashiro like that, but in part because heās feeling the weight of his dishonesty. now this is a guy who canāt be himself, even when heās literally himself.
