Way of the Samurai

The Professionals Fanfiction
Title:	Way of the Samurai
Author(s):	Fanny Adams
Date(s):	1980s
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	The Professionals
External Links:	online here
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Way of the Samurai is a Professionals circuit story by Fanny Adams. It is part of her Fox and Wolf universe and is 50 pages long.

The poem, "Legacy" by Rachel Duncan was inspired by this story.

Summaries

"B is 15; his ship stopped in Japan and he was bought by Hara Joji, a Japanese professional killer. They fall in love, and Hara starts teaching B about the Bushido. During one of Hara's jobs, B meets and has a fling with Marikka, his first woman, but he stays with Hara. When B is 22 Hara is killed. B, now empty and cold, avenges him, then leaves Japan for South Africa, and then Angola."

Author's Comments

Ideas find me. I have too much to do to worry about constructing a plot out of nothing. If there's nothing percolating, I'll go and draw for a while. At the end of "The Way of the Samurai", I said that the story grew out of a long-time interest in things Japanese, but that was a simplification of a process that is rather like rummaging through a chest of old clothes looking for just the right outfit for a costume ball. I was in a Japanese mood, I wanted to write, but nothing came together until I had a mental picture of a young Bodie got up as a geisha.

I predetermine about half of what I write. To take "Samurai" as an example I knew that I was writing an alternate universe that would parallel the universe we were given in the series. I knew that it would be a story of a young Bodie who had been trained as an assassin (it was intended as a short background piece for a story which is now obsolete) in Japan, by an older man who was, for a time at least, his lover. I never expected Hara to become so important to Bodie. The shock-waves of his death are following me through the stories I'm working on now, and when I learned who it was who killed Hara (who actually pulled the trigger...it was a surprise tome), I realized that I'd have to deal with this person at some point in Bodie's future.

In "The Way of the Samurai", I wanted to explore some ideas I had about the nature of ethics within a culture, as well as, oh, I guess you could call it painting a Japanese-style picture.

Reactions and Reviews

A Fan's Comment, and Response by the Author: 1988

[comment by [D V S]: "Way of the Samurai" is a superb piece, demonstrating fine characterization, especially that of the fascinating adult-child Bodie. I did not mind that there was no plot evident in this piece. Its sequel, however, I found to be irrelevant to my B/D fannish interests and completely uninteresting. I am in this fandom to read Bodie and Doyle, not two other characters.

[response by the author to [D V S]: What really set me thinking, though, were your comments on Samurai. And the more I thought, the more I felt that your argument was specious. On a purely superficial level, the alternate universe label must be enough to validate the changes I chose to make in the Pros universe. This is not the universe as set forth in the series, though there are points where the two overlap. Arguments based on the series become invalid when you deal with alternate universes. If I wrote an alternate universe story in which Doyle died in Graveyard, would it be an invalid story? Of course not. It's an alternate universe - a place for exploring ideas and themes which cannot fit into the aired series. However, even if I hadn't been writing a.u., I think the argument that Bodie doesn't walk like a martial artist is still invalid simply because you're confusing the real limitations of an actor with what you perceive to be the limitations of a fictional character. You're also confusing the responses of a real martial artists with those responses demanded by the script, the director, the stunt co-ordinator...ad nauseam. If, in any of the episodes, it had been stated that Bodie had never formally studied any martial art, Samurai as a series-based story would have been invalidated. As it is, several episodes do suggest Bodie has at least a passing familiarity with Martial arts. Consider the scene with Shusai in Wild Justice. Television work doesn't demand the illusion of truth. It simply requires that the vast majority of viewers accept most of what is said and done in each episode. One hopes for continuity, certainly, but even programmes which are models of good continuity can fall down on important details. I remember that "Starsky and Hutch" (in which the continuity was superb) contained a major glitch which fans argued about for years. Hutch's ex-wife was called 'Susan' in the pilot, but when she showed up on the show in the third season, she was called 'Vanessa.' I appreciate your taking the time to make your comments which in turn made me think about what I'd written. I enjoy that sort of feedback.

Other Fan Comments

1993

... a lovely strange set of stories by Fannie Adams where Bodie spent the years 14-19 as the lover of a Japanese hit man in Japan. Though nominally B/D most of the stories focus on Doyle's ex-lover Eddie and the modern dancer he falls in love with). I got a copy of the last third from [B], and promptly made copies for other friends. I don't know how many steps it had gone through to get to [B], but my copy is already fairly fuzzy. Any chance that you'd be willing to give an electronic copy to me so that I could make it available on e-mail? (I just realized that this presupposes that you did type it on a computer, and looking at the type face in my mind, it looks a lot like it was type written.