Dressing up and Ukoku's brain

[louiselux]

puddingcat came to Reading yesterday to get fitted for her coat of many buttons, so in the afternoon I met up with her and her dressmaker friend Claire and landlady Laura. We hit up the John Lewis haberdashery and Fabricland and a couple of shoe shops and now I feel so enthused about dresses and fabric and shoes. I can't wait to see puddingcat's coat - she showed me the pattern and it's a sort of pirate frock coat with panels and huge cuffs.

I'm thinking of commissioning a dress from Claire too. I just have to decide on what I want: either something 60s style in a simple A-line/shift dress style, or a full skirted 50s style dress.

Also, when we were randomly chatting about stuff, puddingcat made a really interesting point about Nii - he's a sanzo monk, so can he really be so evil? Is he really going to suck Sanzo into his black hole of doom and destroy him, or is he just teaching Sanzo something, but doing it in a particularly nasty way? Maybe he is working to the greater good. Innnnnteresting.

puddingcat compared him to Kanzeon Bosatsu, who isn't exactly pleasant in the way she goes about things. She didn't have to let Goku be imprisoned in a cave for 500 years after all.

I like this idea, because it balances Ukoku's character somewhat. Also, I don't know if Koumyou was actually such a nice person. Discuss.

Comments

[avierra.livejournal.com]

Also, when we were randomly chatting about stuff, [info]puddingcat made a really interesting point about Nii - he's a sanzo monk, so can he really be so evil? Is he really going to suck Sanzo into his black hole of doom and destroy him, or is he just teaching Sanzo something, but doing it in a particularly nasty way? Maybe he is working to the greater good. Innnnnteresting.

Well, I don't think there's any particular requirement that Sanzo priests be "good." Also, Nii has not been accepted by the gods as a Sanzo priest (hence no bindi on his forehead), so I would think it would make it even more likely that, while he does have Sanzo powers and controls a sutra, he has no particular requirement to be "good." Neither is Sanzo himself, for that matter (although he does have a bindi).

I do like the idea that Nii may be kicking Sanzo's ass to teach him a lesson. Perhaps that lesson is "How can you hope to defeat Gyumaoh, who put the gods themselves on notice, when you can't even defeat me, who is a human being." Or maybe he's just a bastard who is toying with Sanzo just because he can, before he kills him.

Also, I think Nii's taking revenge on Sanzo, the favorite child, for various slights that Nii feels Koumyou dealt him. Dying is a big one, and neither he nor Sanzo have ever really gotten over it. He seems to have a great deal of resentment towards Sanzo for Koumyou's death (although I personally believe at this time that Nii was responsible for that death in terms of trying to get the sutra away from Koumyou (and perhaps kill chibi-Sanzo while they were at it -- he just didn't think Koumyou would sacrifice himself). And hmmmm.

Maybe there is some sort of weird, twisted, pseudo-fratricidal sibling rivalry going on on Nii's part, with Sanzo.

So, why is Koumyou not a nice guy? I don't think he's all that nice because he was playing some sort of long game with a thirteen-year old kid and his emotionally troubled protege-of-sorts Nii, and deliberately setting them against each other (the bet) and set the bet into play by sacrificing himself. Nii had a very valid point about that, that Koumyou was powerful, so it was deliberate.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I wonder if all sanzos end up playing this game with each other... It'd be funny, considering how technically they're not supposed to hang around together unless the sutras explode.

I agree, I don't see how some random youkai could kill Koumyou, unless he wanted to let it happen. So it was definitely a sacrifice. It's funny, both Koumyou and Ukoku baffle me - it's so hard to see their motivations.

Maybe Ukoku resents Koouryuu for being the person that Koumyou would die for - there does seem to be a strong hint of sibling rivalry in the things Ukoku says, like stressing that Koumyou was his father.

It strikes me that Sanzo is also not functioning on full power - he never is, and never will be until he has Seiten sutra, and that was taken away at the moment he received it. Maybe that was partly Ukoku's purpose too, in having a hand in taking them, to make sure Sanzo would actually be reduced significantly in power. I am just going off at tangents now, sorry.

Thanks for your interesting take on this.

[katmaxwell.livejournal.com]

(although I personally believe at this time that Nii was responsible for that death in terms of trying to get the sutra away from Koumyou (and perhaps kill chibi-Sanzo while they were at it -- he just didn't think Koumyou would sacrifice himself)

The thing with that is, by the time Nii sent the youkai to the monastery (if it was indeed Nii who did), Sanzo was the one in charge on the sutras -- so he wasn't sending youkai after Koumyou at all. It would make sense that Ukoku would blame Sanzo for Koumyou's death -- and drive those feelings home when he's kicking the crap out of him -- because Sanzo was his only target.