Okay, so I reread 'Rooftop Necromancy' and started listening to 'the song' for the series, Gold by Trixie Mattel, and my mind started wandering to things about that world. So I'm gonna share some.
- Hizashi never read all of 'Eraserhead', the book that Shouta wrote. He'd thought that he wouldn't be able to get past the parts clearly written about him but that wasn't the biggest problem. It had been the writing about Oboro that had taken him out because it was such a mix of painful and poignant nostalgia but also, Shouta had written Oboro like he was a saint. There was no mention of how Oboro could be a total flake or how he was perpetually late to everything or his inability to ever be the bad guy. Instead, Oboro had been made out to be the perfect friend and it made Hizashi sick.
- Book reviewers agree with Hizashi on this. The weakest part of 'Eraserhead' is, without a doubt, the first half. 'Sunny', the character that Hizashi is based off of, is so flawed that it's almost cartoonish. He's still well written, a charismatic sweet talker with the ability to spin gold from straw, but he’s two dimensional. Oboro's character is similarly limited, seemingly too perfect of a friend.
- It's the second half of the book that made it a bestseller. That's the part where the main character, out of his mind with grief and exhausted with the almost cartoonishly mechanisms of 'Sunny', takes a job teaching English in Japan and leaves the US. It's at that point that the book finds itself, exploring the impact of grief through the main character meeting his estranged father and meeting the side of his family that he hadn’t known existed.
- That part is all true. Shouta took a job in Japan and, while hammered one night, looked up his dad. Which was a big thing for him since his mom had told him that his dad had left the two of them because Shouta was too much, something that understandably fucked him up. But to his surprise, his dad was ecstatic that he was in the country and wanted to meet up right away. As it turns out, Aizawa’s mom had pushed him out of their lives, having decided that she didn't need him anymore. So he'd gone back to Japan and remarried and had kids, all of whom were surprised to meet Shouta but all of them were incredibly kind.
- Shouta came back to the US when the book started selling like crazy and he decided to stay. He'd loved Japan and still regularly talks to the people he now thinks of as his family but he never really felt like he fit there. Not that he ever fit in the US either, but the US was still home.
- Rooftop Necromancy has developed a cult following. There were three albums that were put out, none of them ever having had any traction when the band was together but with the rise of the book, people gave it a listen. People who'd been deep in the underground scene had always loved Rooftop, though. The band was influential in its own way, a very rare black metal band consisting of Japanese American guys in a time where that didn't really happen. Besides that, Shouta’s lyrics were uniquely deep as they discussed religious trauma but also the toxicity of love. Oboro’s drumming was also interesting, funk influences melded with black metal in a really different sound.
- And of course, there was the front man, Yamada Hizashi. Hidden under all of the Google results about the book and whether Hizashi was like Sunny, you'll find blog posts galore arguing about Hizashi’s influence on the scene. He's credited with bringing some glam rock type inflections into black metal and his voice is generally understood to be one of the best during that era of US underground black metal. But finding those articles are really hard and Hizashi has no idea how he's remembered. That would require him to look himself up and, well, better to let sleeping dogs lie.
- Hizashi is the only member of Rooftop Necromancy to be biracial. His mom is white and he takes after her STRONGLY. Enough that he regularly jokes about his dad being the milkman, something that Oboro would always gently brush away and that Shouta also dissuades him from.
- His dad is the dad on his birth certificate. Hizashi doesn't remember him and Barbie raised him on her own just fine, thank you. He thinks that they just argued and Barbie kicked him out. What he doesn't know is that his dad actually hit Barbie. He did it once when Hizashi was two and Barbie, who had grown up with an abusive father, would listen to none of his apologies because that was what her dad would do. She told him to get the fuck out and never come back and when he wouldn't, she got out her gun. He left then and the only contact they had after that was when he signed the divorce papers and his right to custody. Barbie has never and will never tell Hizashi that his dad hit her because she doesn't want her son to think that those are the kinds of genes he has in him. He's better than that. He's her son.
- There’s a solid reason that Barbie has been single for so long. She has toxic taste in men and is very aware of it. So when Hizashi started dating Shouta and she heard the kind of manipulative shit that Shouta started doing, and the way that Hizashi just forgave him, it was a big time 'he's his mama's son' moment.
- She has grudgingly accepted Shouta. It has taken a lot of time.
- Barbie and Mrs. Aizawa fucking hated each other. LOATHED. Which didn't help Barbie's dislike of Shouta.
- Shouta tries to stick to his promise to be done with writing books. He does. But he reasons to himself that if he writes something, that doesn't mean he has to share it. So he starts to write 'Mic'. It's an autobiography this time and very open about that. It's Shouta coming clean about the massive part of his life that was too raw and painful for him to mention in 'Eraserhead'. It's mostly about Hizashi and their relationship but it's also about the religious trauma and abusive behavior that he suffered under his mother.
- Hizashi really is the focus. And Shouta pulls no punches. He's open about the way that he was terrified that Hizashi would leave and how toxic and shitty his responses were. He didn't really have healthy relationships ever modeled for him, to be fair. But he's honest about the part that he played. And he's honest about Hizashi, about how his anger issues would trigger Shouta very badly and how frustrated he would get that Hizashi would blow up all of the time without ever letting him talk.
- but he talks about going into Nemuri’s bar and how his world just... seemed to snap back into place when Hizashi stepped out on stage. How the world seemed to be real again, how dizzying it was to see Hizashi be so alive, so brilliant, so beautiful. And he writes about the way that they have come together as adults, the painful lancing of a poisoned past and the steps that they've had to take, accepting and working through their shit instead of running from it. And most importantly, he writes about how he was wrong and how sorry he is. He writes about how Hizashi is a flawed person, yeah, but how he's also the person that Shouta has always and will always love.
- when the manuscript is finished, he shows Hizashi, who had all but moved in with him at that point. He refused to let go of his apartment despite the still substantial part of his paycheck that it took up. And that was where Hizashi went when Shouta gave him the book. That was were he read the book, got shitfaced, called Nemuri while crying and read the book again and again. He was AWOL for about three weeks before he finally texted Shouta that he was going to give up the lease to his apartment, if that was okay. He also agreed to let Shouta shop the book out to agents.
- He shows up later that night with a couple of bags and it's like Hizashi had never left. Hizashi does insist on keeping the chair he pulled out of the dumpster. It becomes a favorite of the cats.
