Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions -- continued

　Peter arrives at the pirate’s castle with Wendy and allows her to join the fighting, and gives her the sword he has prepared, but demands that she make one promise.

I brought this. Can you use it? Promise me one thing: Leave Hook to me. ／I promise.

These words were spoken by Peter to Wendy in the original story when he and Hook had a final battle on the pirate ship near the end of the story. The same dialogue exchanged between the same characters transitions from the climax of the story’s concluding scene to the scene closer to the introduction. In line with the transition of the main character’s role from Peter to Wendy, the same line is told in a different context. The genitive elements that form the basis of the assembly that constructs the world of the fictional work will change their arrangement in various ways according to their respective perspectives that determine the phase of the derivative work.
“Perspective” is a notion supposed to play a particular function in the author’s arguments on fictionality. In several study of anime and game works, this word affords opportunities to develop metaphysical considerations on the plane of primordial cosmology, one of which is expressed in the study of the anime Madlax which maintains peculiar “disruptive” structure as a fictional work reflecting the archetype phase of fictionality-actuality continuum, and another is the study of the game work, Fate/stay night which maintains plural story lines and different endings corresponding to them. In fact, this term has been applied to the analysis of the peculiar structure of particularly interesting fictional works.
I cite relating respective parts of these arguments, as follows in the note.

note:
Madlax:
A fictional work contains various perspectives. In a typical SF they might be shown in the arrangement of the star system that provides the stage of the story, or in the physical settings such as undiscovered scientific knowledge and novelties in applied technology. In a stereotypical fantasy they can be expressed in the supernatural condition and mythical relationships linking those beings such as God, demons and sorcerers in the legendary background. As these perspectives are latent behind the story, they can take a variety of aspects. Sometimes they are extracted in the form of an aesthetic norm that defines the meaning of the whole story world as emotional judgment factor of tragedy and comedy, or as potential ethical standards to determine the good and evil of some sort of act. In a speculative notion novel, they can be revealed through the phases of peculiar physical constants and heterogeneous psychic world components, fundamentally different from the ones that regulate the real world, or through hidden variables to imply purely ideological basic axes of another possible world. Readers’ concern and appreciation are not only to determine the placement of the various existences in the fictional world as a spatial disposition, but also to discover the principle mechanism that is associated with all the elements of the fictional world together with the semantic extension behind individual events. In many cases these perspectives are habitually referred to by the stereotypical term “world view”, as achieving important factors that determine the characteristics of a fictional work, but in fact, it is the peculiar metaphysical concept that can be termed “perspective”, that actually reflects the creative strategy of a fictional work and subtly dominate the essential entity of the possible world, beyond the limits of the widely accepted notion “world view”.

Fate/stay night:
Systematically, the intrinsic principle of constructing a value standard that organically relates the act of creation and appreciation in various artistic expressions is inevitably assumed in each work as a “perspective.” Just as Hamlet has a framework as a revenge drama and the popular Japanese drama Chushingura defines the structure of the work at the vanishing point of avenge, the inherent style of performing activities as a player or the basis of appreciation of experiencing the world of the work in “eroge” lies in the distinctive style of promotion of extracting options in order to win the heart of each individual heroine. When the accumulation of conditions such as “favorability” set in advance according to the basic attributes of each heroine to be won reaches a certain level, the expected “event” occurs, and the manifestation of the “route” that was prepared as a possible relationship with each heroine is confirmed, and finally the sex scene with the heroine to be won is led to complete the series of trials by the game player. This is a tacit assumption between the creator and the player, which is equivalent to the core coordinate axis that supports the sense of purpose and value standards that form the semantic perspective of the fictional worlds such as romance novels, adventure novels, action movies, mystery films, etc. This intrinsic rule that governs the progression of the erotic game is a pure systemic provisional principle that determines the semantic construction mechanism that is a prerequisite for the acceptance of the fictional structure as a meaningful world in the player’s consciousness. What is highly meaningful is that in most erotic games, the heroine route is not supposed to converge linearly to a single conclusion, but rather the combination of options results in conflicting narrative ends manifested individually, leading to multiple diffusing “story convergence” scenes.


In the same way that Hamlet would embody the rearrangement of details with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as the protagonists, there must be a variety of potential parallels that embody the rearrangement required by the story of Peter Pan, with Tiger Lilly or Smee and Tootles as the protagonists. In this way, Wendy, who is left outside of the castle by Peter who has decided to enter the pirate’s castle alone, has the opportunity to see the vicious pirate captain up close before Peter does. The figure of Hook, who suddenly appeared in front of Wendy’s eyes on the castle wall, is described in the voice of a female narrator as follows.

Thus, Wendy first laid eyes on the dark figure who haunted her stories. She saw the piercing eyes and was not afraid…but entranced.

Wendy has long harbored the figure of Captain Hook in her mind as a storyteller. And the appearance of Hook she witnessed instantly captivated her. It was a lonely figure of a rebel who resisted the system. A supposedly corresponding account in Peter and Wendy is found in the scene where Captain Hook ambushes the children outside the basement house, and all the Lost Boys are captured by the pirates.