You probably haven’t read my book Akayama DanJay. Not many people have. But I’ve been submitting queries to publishers, and I’ve heard a query sounds better if there’s a sequel in the works, and I’ve have some ideas kicking around anyway, so here we are. In the first chapter of Akayama DanJay: Blind Faith we see what happens to Jango after he sets Dan on fire.
In this commentary I’d like to outline my hopes for the book. That way, if I mess up, I can point to the commentary to explain what I meant.
Akayama DanJay is a faux-anthropology psychedelic trip a la Carlos Castaneda, wrapped in a giant anime space-robot fight which provides a tangible secular mythology. My goal was to mix religious iconography with cheesy pop-culture to provoke the sensation of spiritual experience in people who don’t think they can have one. The winning robot is obviously the one whose philosophical outlook matches my own self-righteous worldview, preaching kindness eternal and niceness when circumstances permit.
The book is politically masturbatory at times, with Dan’s arguments with Leo, but I tried to restrain that political masturbation to a context which clarifies that neither of those characters has it all put together. The overall message is (I hope) a non-partisan treatise on how to exhibit unconditional compassion without being a doormat.
If someone read that book and enjoyed it, then I think they’d enjoy a sequel which got even more pretentious and meta. At the very least, that’s what I wanna write. The first book was all about accepting impermanence, so Blind Faith will be about accepting the existence of suffering. A third book in the series would be about accepting non-self to complete the whole wabi-sabi aesthetic I’m spinning, but that’s for another time.
It’s easy for Jango to accept the existence of suffering, because he’s a Virgil who spent decades studying the Mountain. He screams when Nemo eats him alive, but he knew it would happen and climbed up to Nemo anyway. Being eaten alive is Jango’s role in a cosmic plan he’s proud to take part in, because his suffering will lead to others suffering less.
Not everyone is so selfless. There are people who would gladly let others suffer out of convenience, or even cause suffering for profit. Akayama DanJay: Blind Faith must be about dealing with those people in a skillful manner.
To convey such a message about suffering, we’ll dig into Professor Akayama’s past. Akayama confessed to causing a whole lotta suffering by creating the Hurricane, but even that will pale to what we’ll learn. I want the reader to condemn Akayama for her involvement in atrocities, but feel uncomfortable doing so because of her role in rebuilding the universe. As a symbol of the godhead, Akayama has an implicit get-out-of-jail-free card because her actions have metaphorical heft—but I figure any godhead worth its salt should be able to handle all the punishment it knows it deserves. When we eventually forgive Akayama, we’ll be forgiving a secular image of the creator for the suffering we must endure as sentient beings (or, if not forgiving, hopefully at least understanding).
I also want to continue blurring the line between the mundane and the divine by having the “real world” characters like Dan, Jay, Faith, and Beatrice interact with “actually real world” characters like Lucille, Akayama, Charlie, and Daisuke. This should tie the esoteric fights between philosophies (represented by anime robots) to the interactions we have every day. Like in Akayama DanJay, small things in the mundane world should have big consequences in the divine world (of anime robots).
In the end, I want the reader to have endured the unspeakable, but feel stronger for it. I want you to feel like you’re a giant space-robot, because in a pretentious cosmic sense (my favorite kind of sense!), that’s exactly what you are.
Ted Writes 