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 “director’s commentary” on a story / section / set of lines. or send in a ⭐ and I’ll pick something!
What he misses is Gon-chan—who brought him home, and carried him, and talked to Masaomi, all with Hanzawa unseeing and unfeeling. She must have been something entirely beautiful—a stark contrast to who he’s taking stock of, now. He sighs, and pushes his hair—limp and unkempt—up so he can wash his face.
here’s 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 I’m just going to discuss the above section.
to start off, there’s some pronoun-swapping for tashiro going on, here. I puzzled over how to handle this, because in japanese, I think that it’d be possible to omit any gender-specific terms from a lot of hanzawa (masato) and masaomi’s conversation. that plausible deniability, gender-wise, makes hanzawa’s faking a little less elaborate, and a little more real, whereas using “she” all the time feels like a really active choice. on top of that, tashiro is operating in this loose space of… maybe genderfluid, maybe transfem, maybe just a guy in a dress sometimes, but in this moment very much pretending to be hanzawa’s girlfriend.
what I ended up with is this: when hanzawa and masaomi are speaking, “she” is always used in reference to tashiro. since hanzawa means to have tashiro as a fake girlfriend, and since masaomi believes in that, it’d be natural for “she” to be used there. but hanzawa also uses “she” when he's thinking specifically of gon-chan—aka #girl tashiro. I think this approach balances the fact that there is some deception going on, all while honoring the fact that it’s not entirely fake.
as for “she must have been something entirely beautiful,” this is actually the first time in the fic that hanzawa uses “she” to refer to tashiro, outside of dialogue. I think that helps the impact of the line.
the phrasing here is specific. whenever i’m writing hanzashiro, no matter how romantic it gets I always want to give it some aroace flavor. so it’s “something” to give a bit of distance from “beautiful,” and it’s clear he’s thinking more about her actions than how she physically looked. “something” can sound hedging, though, so it’s also “entirely” because hanzawa’s acknowledging that even in the midst of deception, tashiro is so fully herself. her beauty, there, isn't put upon or faked, it’s inherent.
there’s not too much else to the paragraph—hanzawa describes himself unattractively afterwards, in part because he just woke up, in part because he’s annoyed at having missed seeing tashiro like that, but in part because he’s feeling the weight of his dishonesty. now this is a guy who can’t be himself, even when he’s literally himself.
