| User Name: | Firuze Khanume |
| Name/Nick: | Firuze Khanume |
| Last Visited On: | Feb. 06th, 2007, 10:48:32, PST |
| Registered On: | January 01, 2002 |
| Email: | |
| Homepage: | http://www.crouchingtiger.scriptmania.com |
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| Yahoo Handle: | n/a |
| AIM Handle: | n/a |
| Biography: | I love to read, Politics, History, culture, Sci Fi, mystical things...and writing!
I HATE: Bush, Bush supporters, warmongers, those who say that they come to spread freedom, democracy and peace while invade other countries, violating international law and UN resolutions in the process (because what they have is SO GOOD that they want to share it with the rest of us... Pity, we DIDN'T ask them to in the first place...)
Another RL pet-peeve of mine: conservatives, though you could call me personally a `fundamentalist´ and you wouldn't be wrong. Conservatives are (to me) these people who want to impose in others their cultural, religious, sexual or intellectual choices in others. I can be a fundamentalist, but I respect (and defend) other people's choices.
Fanfiction Pet-peeves: Character bashing, for the sake of making the oh-so-wonderful `good boys (and girls)in RK look even better, Triangles of deception (fake alternate pairings that ends with the canon couple together), Mary Sues, those who think that OC are Mary Sues by default, twisted characterizations to fit impossible plots, good style of writing, but zero plot, stories in the Meiji period with no research, School based AU (I SERIOUSLY hate these, because most of the time the characters only share the name and external appearance with the canon cast), Battousai/Kaoru pairing without a serious explanation and a credible background behind, writers who uses serious themes (bi and homosexuality, AIDS, rape, domestic violence, suicide, mental illness, child molesting, and any kind of abuse) without the due research OR/AND the seriousness these themes require. These can be used, yes, they are legitimate themes, BUT the author can use them ONLY if he/she will do in a respectful way for the victims, or to show the horror of some deeds and the life/long consequences (like in rape). If it’s only to excite the decadent curiosity of the readers, as if it was another literary recourse, it’s a cheap and low option, like the ones used by yellow newspapers or reality shows, and I despise both. DEEPLY.
I live at the end of the world (well not quite... but near...), in Argentina, South America. I'm married and I have a pre-teen daughter.
Due to the current ban on NC17 fics adopted by FF net, I decided to upload only teasers for lemon chapters in FF net and the complete versions in www.mediaminer.org and www.adultfanfiction.net
Important notice: EK is preparing a renewed version of the Crouching Tiger site (thanks, EK !!) here: http://www.geocities.com/ek_kaoru/enishi
This hasn't been the best of years for me, so bear it with me and please, be patient with my updates.
I want to explain a little why I chose Enishi as the main character of my fics.
Firstly: I want to make clear that I pair him ALWAYS with OCs. I know some people think that fanfiction should be free of them. Personally, though I respect their choices, I think these people are slightly close-minded. As long as the OC is not a Mary Sue, it's a perfectly valid choice.
While I favored E/K, I'm losing enthusiasm concerning this pairing, because Kaoru has turned into the ultimate Mary Sue in most fics. To be honest, I dislike the character more and more with each passing day (Her fans are to blame, though, not the original Kaoru, as designed by Watsuki). Anyway, Kaoru is a character tailor made for Kenshin. An alt. pairing with Enishi could work (and Triangles of Deception aren't included (this is fics were she is paired momentarily with Enishi (or other character) just to bring anguish (with Enishi as a dirty abuser/rapist, etc, in later stages, after deceiving our poor damsel-in-danger, disguising himself as Prince Charming in flesh and blood (or ink and paper...)) and later, this is used by the 'author/s' to sing the praises of the 'Divinely Meant To Be Couple' (i.e. Kenshin/Kaoru). Anyway, the fic must be VERY well done, which is the exception, and not the rule in the 90% of E/K fics. At any rate, what made me lose enthusiasm with this pairing is that the relationship is mostly described through Kaoru eyes. As I said, my tolerance towards her lately is VERY limited, at best. I'm a Enishi fan, I want to hear HIS POV, not Kaoru's.
The other pairing I favor (with the same rule: It must be made CREDIBLE) is E/Misao (Read Midori, EK and Sabbie's fics. There is also a really wonderfully made blanket scenario by Tiian, it's an one-shot, don't miss it.), but I do have a deep sympathy for this girl. I see her misunderstood and frequently poorly represented(VERY POORLY, like a Kaoru clone, when she has her own rich personality.) Lately, a friend of mine (Kamorgana, check her fics please: http://www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=301507)has written an EXCELLENT Enishi/Megumi (Children of the Revolution:http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1311530 ), and if she experiments further with it, I know I'm going to love it.(BTW: the phrase 'Triangles of Deception' is hers...)
Anyway, all these characters weren't primarily thought to fit Enishi, so why should I deprive the 'canon' couples of their respective mates? Instead, I tailor-made his own mates.
You'll see that both characters I created for him, are extremely different, though they react to his needs in the way he'd require. They both have a very intricate personality, a whole background and each one of them belongs to a complete Universe on their own. I put a lot of work in creating them. Yeah, I know, I know: OC should be shadows, ambiguous background, etc, and never stay in the front. Sorry, go and read other fics, because in mine, they have a background and all.
Still, you are free to consider them Mary Sues, if you want. You are in your own right. If you think that OCs sucks, and that the writer should not include them interacting with the canon RK characters, or they should not have a major role in the story, please, stay away from my fics or you’ll get disappointed. I can easily construct an original fic whenever I want. But at this time, I prefer fanfiction, INCLUDING OCs. (OFC, to be precise, though there are a couple of OMC too). Sorry if it does disappoint you.
If you also hold the belief that females must be the shadow of white knights in armor, only supporting our very macho males, etc, etc, etc, my fics aren’t for you either. White pure maidens in trouble, being rescued by their God-sent/chosen knights make me want to puke my guts off. Trembling, naïve virgins (that later turn into rabid Love Goddesses at the very first touch of our main hero (sorry, celibate Love God), causes the same effect in me. Sorry. That's not my kind of romance.I’m a fan of assertive, strong women, who don’t fear to face the world, and stand side by side of their chosen mates. I also like men being men, with men’s flaws, who can face temptation, and even, fall into it.
As I said, my fics are HEAVILY ENISHI BASED, if you consider that he is a few grains of rice short of an onigiri, as someone else put it poetically, ( this is ‘he is nuts, wacko, psycho, has lost it, etc, etc, etc’ and all the variants of ‘he is insane’) and giving him the chance of overcome his misdeeds and obsessions is writing him impossibly OCC, you can read a lot of other fics where he is the perfect irredeemable psycho. They are not mine, of course.
I want to mention first that I have nothing against any of the characters I mention in this rant, I do it with the purpose of giving some examples for better understanding. Now, lets go ahead with my rant:
I’ve been noticing lately a small wave of critics on those fics where Enishi is portrayed as something more than the irredeemable psycho, or it’s too ‘kind’. (Please, refer to the Jinchuu chapters of the manga, he is strangely well behaved, even polite in a dark way of being so, especially in the first part of Jinchuu. His temper jumps just when he meets Kenshin for first time in the bridge and later with Wu, his second in command, dares to question him, a fact that it’s not minor in a crime syndicate… to allow such challenges is the line that separates life from death.) And he treated Kaoru better than Kanryuu and Aoshi treated Megumi...
While I do not condone what he did, or how he did it, I think that according with his cultural background he was fully entitled to revenge. We can disagree and say that we must put the other cheek (A VERY Western concept. Note to the readers of this rant: Western values can be good for Westerners. This does not mean theey are UNIVERSAL values or that other peoples must accept them as valid ones. In Japan, there was (and still is) a WHOLE culture about revenge...), but ask yourself if this happens IRL, and consider your own feelings if someone you loved is killed in front of your eyes what you’d do in a situation like this. Some people would act like him, for sure, and I've heard and seen enough of these people in my life to know that the feeling is more common than we are comfortable to admit.
Now, none of the other RK male cast members are Charity angels, from Kenshin to the rest of them. They all killed innocents more than once. Why would Kenshin feel guilty during fifteen years if not for this reason??
Aoshi (and Misao and the rest of the people at the Aoiya) are members of an onmitsu organization. Do you know what it was? Onmitsu had the task to spy on the daimyo and other important figures, and even to kill them. That's why ninjas/onmitsu were well versed in the Dark Arts of killing (poisons, darts, etc,etc, etc). Do you remember when the Aoiya is attacked by the group of Ninjas sent by Sadoshima (Shishio's right hand)? What did they do to one of the survivors of the attackers? They sent him back, to Shishio's lair, after clearly having enduring... a TORTURE session.
Saitou, when stops Eiji to kill the former strong man in the Shingetsu village, tells the boy that the guy will face a wore destiny at the hands of the government, because he'd be executed AFTER receiving torture to extract information from him. That's the background of our heroes. Shadows of gray, I say. We'd cry in outrage in RL, but we are dealing a) with a time/place where these practices were common, b)these are not the average pink stories heroes.
“But Enishi talks to his sister all the time and thinks she wants revenge, etc, etc… hehehe he has ‘visions’ and hear voices, and think she conducts his goals. C’mon, accept it: he is nuts! And he is evil! Poor dear innocent Kenshin!” You would not believe how many times I’ve read this simplistic opinion.
Misao, Sano and Kenshin himself had visions of ghosts (refer to the manga for more information), and Kenshin saw Tomoe in the bridge by Enishi’s side in their first meeting during Jinchuu, and later on, it was Tomoe who informed about Kaoru’s whereabouts. Kenshin, Misao and Sano TALKED to ghosts too, you know.
Misao saw Hannya, and Hannya delivered her a message about the returning of Aoshi and the fulfillment of Kenshin’s promise… Sano talked to Capt Sagara’s ghost during the Kyoto Arc, while he was trying to master the Futae No Kiwami (hehehe… it’s not a coincidence that since XVIII century in Japanese lore, ghosts had no feet. Remember Sano’s remark about it in the manga? Interesting detail.) and Kenshin saw Tomoe in the bridge by Enishi’s side PLUS she delivered him the news about Kaoru’s being alive in Enishi’s Island. Ah, we can see in the OVA a spectral Tomoe embracing a sleeping Kenshin slumped against a tree at the very end of Trust/Betrayal OVA.
Have we a trend here? Yes. Like we have with the revenge theme in several characters (Anji, Shishio, Eiji, Sano, even Aoshi) or several degrees of what we could call madness (from Kenshin to Aoshi, to Soujirou, Shishio, Houji Sadoshima, etc, etc). Back to the ghosts, here, we have the very Japanese concept that the dead are around the living, protecting them, or haunting them (O-Bon, Tales of Genji, etc anyone?). In the RK world, the supernatural has a presence.
This is not strange in Japanese based stories. There is enough literary evidence, as well as mythology and traditional lore about the theme to take it for what it is. Psychobabble and psychoanalysis approach aren’t applicable here, sorry… (BTW, I have no sympathies for a Victorian misogynist guy, who thought that the roots of all female conflicts laid (pun intended)in some inches of flesh that females lack between their thighs. I can't seriously take his theories concerning Oedipal complex, while he was a guy of Jewish descent (Yiddish momele anyone?), raised by his nanny. Not to mention his experiences with drugs... He doesn't seem the most balanced guy in the world to me... Were you Mr. S. Freud? Dear reader... can you take him seriously?) *grins*
Is Kenshin really innocent? No. He killed Akira, and later, Tomoe, (this last onein front of the eyes of a child, who was far from the place, and couldn’t been aware of what was truly happening). Again, could you blame Enishi for thinking that her death was cold blood murder, considering that first brother-in-law-to-be, and his sister later were murdered by the most feared assassin of the Bakumatsu? Why should he have assumed Kenshin didn’t want Tomoe’s death? After all, Kenshin was Hitokiri Battousai, and Tomoe had worked for the Bakufu, to kill Kenshin. Why should Enishi think that Kenshin did not kill her on purpose, for her betrayal?
“But Enishi killed that family in Shanghai…” I have also heard this a million times… as if the other RK cast members were lil’ white doves… (no offense meant for other character’s fans, please)
Yes. And Kenshin killed civilians (politicians and bureaucrats). And Aoshi went against his mentor almost killing him, and was ready to kill Megumi (read Saitou's comments about it) and attack the Aoiya, HIS PEOPLE, to get Kenshin’s whereabouts…
And Soujirou killed his family too, when was YOUNGER than Enishi. Sou did it in order to protect himself, you could say. Yes to certain extent it's true, but did he need to kill all of them?. Enishi did it because he said he felt jealous. Is that his only motive? He also said that he could have taken their money, because certainly he needed money to enter in the Triads (that requires a fee in order to get the membership). I also think that he needed to bare himself from the last moral remnant before entering into the criminal world, because, from that moment on, he’d need to kill in a daily basis to get his goal. It’s not stated if it’s first killing, but because of his age, it’s very likely. Let’s us call it a 'baptism of blood' in his mind, then, to prove himself and his new mates what he was capable of. He was a boy, and a boy needed to impress his new mates to get a better place, ne?
“Bah, he has Oedipal complex…”
First, those who keeps this view, have the slightest idea of the correct definition of the term?
Second, are you aware of the mother’s (step-mother/ substitute) role in Eastern culture? It would be VERY enlightening to do some research about it. It would be VERY enlightening, really, believe me... You'd get SURPRISED.
Third: just because Enishi’s attachment to his sister is deeper than, let’s say, the average American, this does not mean that the average American is the universal rule to judge a typical sister/brother relationship in other cultures (in fact, in some cultures, the average American family ties would be regarded as ‘too loose’). The deaths for honor in Middle East and the Latin typical ultra-protective behavior of bothers towards sisters are just examples of how the same matter could be perceived differently in other cultures, where the honor of a sister could deserve spilling blood. Just because it does not fit the average behavior in a small part of the Western hemisphere, it does not mean it’s wrong…
Other thing I’ve heard is that Enishi lacked the insight to see his own role in Tomoe’s death. What role? Helping her to get revenge? After all, he had not all the elements in front of him to truly know what was happening. He didn’t know Iizuka or the Yaminobu final plans. In his eyes, he only was a messenger.
I want to remind you that revenge was LAWFUL during the whole Edo Shogunate and the first years of Meiji Era. (you had to go to the police quarters and they gave you a paper, a written permission to carry out your revenge… yeah, revenge was standardized)
I also want to mention that in Japanese lore, the vengeful ghost is commonplace. Why should he think she did not want revenge? After all, she kept her mouth cryptically shut and did not explain clearly her change of heart concerning Kenshin. For all he knows, she had been wronged, in life, and in death. In any case, Akira’s death and all the tragedy in Otsu, as much as Enishi’s misunderstanding of the situation is caused by Tomoe’s silence. So, which is the role of Enishi in her death? She chose to avenge Akira, she chose to keep contacts with the Shogunate operatives, she chose to work towards Kenshin’s murdering and finally, she chose to do everything in her power to save him. From her interaction with Kenshin, the rurouni with the non-killing vow is born. However, Enishi had no way to know this, because SHE DIDN’T TALK TO HIM. He had only witnessed her anguish and pain at Akira’s death that led her to go for Kenshin’s head.
And for K&K fans, please, lets not forget that he DIDN’T KILL KAORU, rather he SAVED her from Wu.
Is a second chance in life possible for Enishi? Let's see...
Aoshi, Soujirou, Anji, Kamatari, etc, all were given ‘a second chance’, a wink by the fans (but most obviously by the creator, who wanted to show us that we live in a world of gray, and redemption is possible, even for the vilest creatures), forgetting what all of them did and the ways they did it. It seems to me that a man who is ready to kill and probably torture her former captive (Aoshi to Megumi) to get information on Kenshin, and later throws away his family and his city-country for a title, to appease the spirits of his fallen comrades, is not perfectly in his right mind. Nor a man who suppress consciously most of his emotions and ENJOYS killing (as Soujirou does), and walks free in a trip to LEARN what is right and what is wrong (still with all his lethal potential intact) or a man who is bent in destroying the world to purify it and build a new one. However the fans/writers are mostly ready to overlook indulgently over these ‘mistakes’ of these character, while they decreed harsh about Enishi that he is a complete wacko, without possibility of redemption. (while, it's obvious during the reading of the manga, that Enishi is given the same chances that the rest of these characters.)
His redemption is as much as possible as Kenshin was. After all, when Kenshin meet Tomoe, he was at the brink of pure madness, and the reminder of this madness was so strong in Kenshin’s soul that after FIFTEEN YEARS he still feared this state.
When Soujirou starts his trip, he does not know whose philosophy was right: if Shishio or Kenshin’s. However, nobody question that he’ll become in an instant Kenshin's clone. Is he in far better mental condition than Enishi when he started his trip? Yes? How so? After years and years or repressing emotions and enjoy killing? He was, at best, in a worse state than Enishi. Soujirou doesn’t know if killing the weak because he is strong is right or wrong. Enishi, when we see him for last time, is bent by the weight of revelations, as much as Kenshin was when he discovered the truth of being the cause of Tomoe’s grief. In Saitou’s words, to chase him down is useless, because he is incapable of killing again. And then, while Kenshin is at Tomoe’s grave talking about the real Tomoe (the real spirit of Tomoe) and her kindness and how she would always protect her brother, we see how Oirbore (Tomoe and Enishi’s real father) meet his son, giving a promise for a better future for Enishi than we had with the last view we had of Soujirou.
So, my personal take is that we must see Enishi’s character in PERSPECTIVE, comparing it with several others along the way, which mostly, were ‘redeemed’ one way or another. So, if ‘redemption’ is possible for Aoshi, (who consciously sold his service to a drug dealer, kept captive a woman to force her to produce drugs, tried to kidnap her again, and kill her friends, then, months later, it´s implied that in order to get information on Kenshin, he is ready to extract it from her and later kill her), then redemption is also possible for Enishi. If ‘redemption’ was possible for Kenshin, a shadow assassin, who killed defenseless politicians from the shadows (he converted in a soldier AFTER Tomoe’s death, not before), and who by his OWN DEEDS created Enishi’s wish for revenge, then redemption is possible for Enishi. If redemption is possible for Soujirou, it’s even MORE likely for Enishi, who counts with his father’s help.
But I think (after deep thought and hearing several opinions) that the problem with Enishi is that he represents the darker part of us, a part that we feel as ugly, that part that is unforgiving and resentful. That’s why Enishi’s character, having the same potential for redemption than many others, is denied this possibility by the fans. The ‘revenge’ feeling is kept in a very negative light in OUR culture (while held in high steem in Eastern ones), thought it’s widely practiced. Part of our double standards…
So, well, by now it’s clear that I do see him differently, using strictly the hints giving in the manga, and some historical/cultural background.
Well, I thought I needed to explain a bit my reasons to write him as capable of redemption, and beyond the simplistic ‘psycho’ label. Some like him because he is stronger than Kenshin, others for his determination, others because he is visually ‘cute’ or has sex appeal. I like him because he is a deliciously complex character.
People, you are totally entitled to disagree with me and think he is nuts, he has a sister complex, and he is beyond redemption, but then, my fics aren’t for you, as I already told before, because if you think he is all these things, you’ll have serious problems with my characterization of him. Also, if you don't like OC, stay clear from my fics, I’m sorry, I won't pair him with any of the RK females. In fact I already have the design for two new OC for two different stories, both in the RK timeline (one, pre Jinchuu, with a Uygur slave girl, the other story post Jinchuu, with him in the American West, sharing adventures with an orphaned Chinese boy, who is searching his kidnapped sister, finding Sano in the way, and meeting a white female, who they help to escape from a brothel… I’m doing a lot of research on Asian immigration and ‘integration’ in America in the post 1880 period for this one… This will be the fist one I'll attack as soon as possible, after finishing one of my current projects.)
I’ll copy this, and add it to the Authoress Notes at the beginning of my fics. Thanks and sorry for the very long rant…. |
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