Zax (Prologue)

Fanfiction
Title:	Zax (Prologue)
Author(s):	Sebastian
Date(s):
Length:	4300 words
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Facelift
External Links:	online here
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Zax (Prologue) is a Facelift Zax/Bodie-clone story by Sebastian.

This story has a companion piece, Who Gave Us Delight.

Reactions and Reviews

A sequel of sorts--or perhaps more accurately a companion piece--to Who Gave Us Delight (see my comments here) that recounts the history of Zax and his Number, M4375, from two disparate points of view. The story begins with a frame of an unnamed third-party Name (who I suspect is Bob) speaking from the future. He first speaks with hindsight, then offers up for our perusal diary-like entries written in the past by M4375 himself. The diary begins six months after M4375 has left his life at the Centre to join Zax in the world of the Names at the theatre. I enjoy the story's structure, with the varying viewpoints and distinctive voices.

I particularly enjoy M4375's reflections on the strange new world he lives in once he joins his life with Zax's. One of the unexplored but intriguing things about the movie is the very different worlds the two classes of people inhabit. We get through the diaries both a sense of the general cultural differences between Names and Numbers, and M4375's awareness of his own oddity amongst Zax's extended family even while they accept him as an appendage of Zax.

They are much more--vivid than Numbers, full of emotion; they laugh together, quarrel, share, fuck. They are all fiercely loyal to Zax--and also, a little afraid of him.

Zax is at the centre of the story, the point of focus for each character, as dominant in personality and power as he is in the source film Facelift. If Names are vivid, Zax is the most vivid of all, the bonfire to their candle flames:

He's their hero, their god, their lover, better than human; mysterious, compelling.

But M4375 knows and loves, has changed his life for, the real Zax: the backstage, stripped-of-glamour Zax. We also get a sense of M4375's own personality, the essence of this man whom Zax has chosen as mate.

The story ends very abruptly. It feels, indeed, like an unfinished fragment of a planned longer story. The title is curious, with the parenthetical "prologue" appended to it. Is it merely the beginning of a proposed longer story, of which this part was meant only to be the prologue? Or is it a prologue in the sense of giving us a grounding in the Zax/M4375 relationship we're introduced to in Who Gave Us Delight?

Or, on the other hand, it might intentionally have been broken off abruptly, with the central mystery introduced at the start unresolved as M4375's diary entries simply stop once they return to the place where Zax met his original end. It's notable the diary entries are offered up--in the introductory frame--not as explanation for the mystery introduced at the start, but to try to convey insights into Zax's appeal.

Either way, even if unfinished, abrupt ending and all, I enjoy the glimpses we get from the inside of the world and the relationship between Zax and M4375. But, then, I'm happy enough with ambivalent endings--for which I have no trouble projecting my own appendices. Readers who like their stories rounded off, however, might not find this one satisfying.