squeee!!! art for "The Guardian in Spite of Herself"

[edenfalling]

gabriel_chaos drew Uchiha Tsukime from "Guardian." You can find it in my comments or in her livejournal. Go tell her how cool it looks!

Comments

[askerian]

Uh. She's indeed pretty, and we get a good sense of pride, but -- she's a redhead? o.o; ... okay, there was that one Uchiha who didn't have black but brownish mousey hair, but still. Kinda weird. @_@

>.<

[gabriel-chaos.livejournal.com]

Redhead? what redhead?
T_______________T
I was trying to draw her as a blonde, as the description of her is taken from this quote.

"Tsukime heaved a long-suffering sigh and pushed through the tawny tassel grass to the narrow strip of lush green that hugged the stream bank. She sat delicately beside Naga, arranging her ridiculous pleated skirt to cover her thighs. Then she unzipped the red legwarmers she always tied onto her sandals, kicked off the shoes, and wriggled her toes in the dirt."

and

"Tsukime sighed again and shook her head in mock sorrow; her long, golden hair swayed back and forth like the grass. "They'll come when they come. The code was serious trouble, so I doubt we're the only ones waiting for contact, and unless you screwed up big time, our camp shouldn't be obvious."

-points to red legwarmers, pleated skirt and what was supposed to be long golden hair-

I was using pentel pens. >.<
I suppose that means I should go and get different coloring materials.

[edenfalling]

No, no, she's blonde! I swear, there was, in the manga, a blond Uchiha among the three who came to confront Itachi, when he threw his kunai into the family crest on the wall. I figure as long as she has the dark eyes and the sharp-boned face, hair color differences can be explained as the product of recessive genes and marriages outside the clan.

Truthfully, though, her appearance is a joke, based on a very bad auditory similarity that I noticed after I'd named her back in the spring. Uchiha Tsukime, Usagi Tsukino. If I'd called her Tsuki-hime, it would've been even worse, but anyway. Tiny pleated skirt, long blonde hair, legwarmers on sandals to kind of imitate the stupid boots... See? A joke with myself. :-)

Re: >.<

[edenfalling]

She looks blonde to me, but maybe the highlights are confusing? They are kind of orange.

Re: >.<

[gabriel-chaos.livejournal.com]

True. >.< Ah, well, belated merry Christmas to you. ^^

[askerian]

^^;; it was more of a palish browny mousey color than blond, as I remember it. Black/brown usually is dominant, and if she managed to be a true blonde and not just very-clear-brown, she must not have that much Uchiha blood in her. Though having her be an Uchiha from the fringes, with what it means for her knowledge of tradition and family lore and all, would be interesting for her relationship with Sasuke. She'd still bear his name, but he probably wouldn't know her at all, and since she wouldn't even look like one of his at first sight... hmm.

btw, something i've noticed in the last chapter, but I didn't figure out what nagged me until yesterday -- there's a tiny tiny bit too much harping onto the fact that Naga only managed to save her teammate because of what Yukiko told her/taught her/helped her to attain. It's true, in a way; but in the current situation, she still thinks about it a bit much. Seeing as what Naga managed was so canon-altering (saving an Uchiha from Itachi, even a damaged one)... pointing out the fact that she only got to be that awesome because Yukiko is even more awesome -- a bit much. I don't remember all the instances anymore, but that's the impression I was left with, anyway.

While that's not to a mary-sue-ish level yet, original characters are left with much less leeway in these things than canon characters, so. uh. Yeah.

Also, Yukiko IS a mature, observant and careful character, but I'm really waiting for the first time she'll mess up with Sasuke. He's a minefield; she can't possibly navigate him perfectly, as observant as she is. XD and eeeeeee narusasu chibi interaction~

... While we're on the Mary-sue hints thing. All teams are composed of two males and one female. I suppose they have their reasons to have mixed teams, and there must also be reasons why the ratio is always 2:1 (a friend of mine had interesting suggestions about that before; I'll ask her if she saved the convo if you want), but this means that her teammates should have been boys, or, if there were more girls this year, (possible; it was before Kyuubi, maybe there was a "we need more babies, you can't be a ninja" effect later on)that there should have been two teams with one guy and two girls rather than one normal team and one all-girls team. Of course now it's a bit late to change her old teammates; still, that was something I noticed before and always forgot to point out. ^^; It's a minor detail, though, so eh. ^^;;;;;;;

doesn't mean that I don't want the next chapter very very very much. because eeeeee. gimmeeeeeee~

Re: >.<

[maxhrk.livejournal.com]

curious one thing about Uchiha.. they have black hairs.. but why do that particular girl have blonde hairs that the rest of them have black hairs? oh well...

[karit.livejournal.com]

Honestly, if there's one thing I have absolutely no problem with, it's an Uchiha with blonde hair. It is possible, and as long as Liz doesn't make like, a whole sub-clan of Uchiha with blonde hair, it's not really pushing the line at all. It's unlikely, but not at all impossible.

Take my family, for example. My dad is a blonde and my mom is a brunette. They take after their families: almost everyone in my dad's family is a blonde and absolutely everyone in my mom's is a brunette. Yet my brothers and I all have blonde hair. Realistically speaking, at least one of us should be brunette, but until our hair darkened with age, we were towheads--pushing towards platinum blonde. It's not impossible that we're all blonde, but it is rather unlikely.

Although if we're talking actual genetics, I think I read somewhere it is rather hard to get a blonde with dark eyes so she might as well have give Tsukime blue or green eyes. Still, if one of her parents happened to be an Uchiha with a recessive blonde gene and her other parent was a blonde outside the clan, it is not at all unrealistic. Plus, it's anime and Kishimoto sure as heck didn't pay attention to genetics when he was creating the characters.

Other than that, I don't have much to say. I didn't notice any extraneous mentions of Yukiko's impact on Naga's abilities, but I wasn't looking for it. Nothing popped out at me, in any case.

[askerian]

I know that it's not impossible, but it's still a little unlikely, unless she's from the fringes of the clan. And when you're creating an OC and trying to fit him/her into an universe as a fairly ordinary (for their clan/species/job) person, it's safer to go with the usual.

I don't mind if she's blond, so long as there's some reason -- though even something like "she's not from the three to four families that are from the main branch" will satisfy me, because probably only the core members have been Uchihas (and before that, Hyuugas) for long enough to eliminate all blond hair genes.

The dark eyes, though, are probably mandatory, and not only because if she has the sharingan, it means her eyes are black when at rest (maybe dark gray, if you take anime!sasu-chan's irises in the flashbacks in consideration). This, so far, has no exception in canon. Sharingan eyes are probably genetically different from simple black eyes, so the blonde with dark eyes thing dosn't necessarily apply.

Besides, while you can't make an OC with NO distinctive sign (it would in itself be either suspicious or a sign of a carbon-cutout character) giving him/her too many physical distinctive signs -- well. No. It's already something that she's a blonde Uchiha, but if she has blue or green eyes and yet still has the sharingan, it will REEK of "mi charactr iz MORE SPECIAL". And then Sasuke will feel jealous and start in on his goth makeup even more early than in canon. =p

As for yukiko's impact, maybe I'm too sensitive like that, but that's the feeling I got and I tend to be paranoid about that stuff. Better point it out now and see if she sees some truth in it or not. If I didn't think she was mature and smart enough to consider and weight my comment and see if it's worth something or not, I wouldn't bother giving it at all.

Re: >.<

[askerian]

Actually, there's ONE Uchiha who doesn't have black hair, so it's not entirely impossible. They just tend to have black hair more often.

And Gabriel, I think that's a problem of language. XD in french, blond with orange accents = "blond venitien" = pale redhead. I think for me to see her as a true blonde, she'd need to have brown shadows on her hair instead of orange, but yes, I do see the blond part just fine. It's just the highlights that confused me. XD

[karit.livejournal.com]

Ah... about the blue or green eyes... I was being sardonic. ^-^; Sorry, that clearly didn't come across like I thought it should. I do realize that the Sharingan apparently comes with dark eyes, and Liz even said something about it in an earlier comment. I was just pointing out that if you're going to be picky about genetics, blonde hair and dark eyes might be more genetically odd than a blonde in a family of brunettes. I have no idea if that's really true or not, but my point was that you can be picky about things or you can just let them go.

As for the 'main branch,' do we know, canonically, that the Uchiha had a main branch? I always assumed it was fanon based on what we know about the Hyuuga. I haven't reread the manga in a long time, so you're probably more up-to-date on that than I am.

I agree that you should point out anything that could bring possible future accusations of 'Mary Sue!,' I was just pointing out that it's not as unlikely as it seems and that I personally didn't have a problem with it.

I also want to be sure to say that if I came off as if I were attacking your views, then I'm sorry. I certainly didn't intend anything like that and I do agree that she can consider the weight of your argument on her own. I wasn't trying to defend her fic for her, I wanted to reply to something I personally didn't agree with. Since you, as a reader, had a problem with an Uchiha with blonde hair, I wanted to say that I, as another reader, did not have a problem with it. I thought she might like to know that. Really, though, neither one of us can be wrong, since it's just personal opinion. I do like to debate though!

[askerian]

I used the term "main" as meaning the core of the family, the Uchihas who only have Uchiha ancestors of the purest blood, probably such as Sasuke's family. As far as we know, in canon they still don't have an official structure à la Hyuuga. It's still very likely that the heirs have arranged marriages to make sure that the bloodline isn't tarnished.

As for the rest, i'm tired and cranky and am not going to reply any further, seeing as i'm most probably going to be bitchy about it.

[edenfalling]

When was his hair colored? If it's an anime coloring, then I will just plug my ears and pretend you never told me, because since I haven't seen the anime (well, okay, so I saw the first episode about two years ago on my cousin's computer, but still) I want to keep only to manga canon. :-)

Tsukime is definitely on the fringes of the Uchiha clan -- I thought I implied that via her reaction to Itachi, and the mention that she was a somewhat minor relative, but apparently I wasn't clear enough. I shall think of a way to clarify that.

I see how the implication that everything traces back to Yukiko would grate on the nerves; however, the fire jutsu came from Kakashi, not Yukiko, and Naga's bloodline limit and nosiness are all her own, so it's really a combination of unlikely things that made the rescue work. I will go tweak the ff.net chapters to make those points more clear.

Trust me, Yukiko's going to screw up big time with Sasuke. At the moment she's mostly working on the assumption that if she stays relatively clear and doesn't push, he probably won't explode until she has a bit more breathing space and time to sort through her options. (She's wrong, by the way. *evil grin*)

Actually, I did notice the gender ratios, and I made an all-female team somewhat deliberately. There are never enough female characters in action series, you see, and I wanted to redress the balance just a little bit -- but I made the 'extra' female characters already dead, so it wouldn't throw off the 'visible' ratios too badly. I believe there's canon evidence that sometimes they use teams composed of 3 male characters -- the previous generation's InoShikaCho team, for example -- so I figure the 2-boys 1-girl thing isn't completely fixed in stone. Furthermore, when prospective genin teams are put together, there's an effort made to balance their abilities; it seems reasonable to me that sometimes the best ability balances will create gender imbalances, and vice versa. So unless the academy has gender-based entrance quotas, which would make me very uncomfortable, then I believe teams must sometimes break the 'ideal' gender ratio since a good ability balance strikes me as more important to a team's survival.

(Question: the Rookie Nine are teams 7, 8, and 10 -- do we know the composition of teams 1-6, 9, and 11-upward? That would be an interesting thing to study.)

Thanks for making me think!

[edenfalling]

She has Sharingan eyes! I interpret that to mean either black, or a very dark gray that looks black except in direct light. Giving her differently colored eyes and still allowing her Sharingan would be like creating a Hyuuga with... oh, say, pink eyes and actual irises and pupils. In other words, it would be WRONG. :-)

You can push at canon a little, to see if established points can be made to bend slightly, and you can wring some pretty crazy interpretations out of vague explanations and questionable behavior, but you can't break the rules. (Okay, so I'm crossing the line with what I've done to Kakashi's age, but I don't think his age is ever explicitly stated within the manga itself, and his established timeline makes no sense, so I'm kind of declaring that to be my one broken rule for the story.)

[edenfalling]

While I don't think the Uchiha are as organized as the Hyuuga, I do agree that they probably had a 'core' of several family lines, including Sasuke's immediate family. Tsukime is not from one of those lines. Anyway, she's going to be mostly off-page for the rest of the story -- she's more of a plot device than a fully developed character, though I did try to give her some personality. :-)

I hope you got some sleep!

Re: >.<

[edenfalling]

Officially, she has blonde hair because she's not from the 'core' Uchiha family lines, where they've managed to inbreed variant hair colors out. She's from a more distant branch of the family, whose members have married outside the clan and thus brought other hair colors into their genetic makeup.

Unofficially, she's a Sailor Moon parody, because I have a weird sense of humor.

Re: >.<

[gabriel-chaos.livejournal.com]

Ooh, ok. >.< Thanks for clarifying. ^^