12Jun
2

RK -Clarification and Comments

I’m sure if you’ve been reading Raising Kouryuu on fanfiction.net – that the ending may have come as a shock. (Though, I did try and foreshadow the event. It seems I failed.) So, because my brother asked, I added an ‘Extra Special Epilogue’ that was intended to be a fun little crack ending to lighten the mood. It seems that people took that ending seriously. It may be my fault for not clarifying that further. Which I have hopefully rectified – the last chapter now has a disclaimer with emphasis on the ‘EXTRA’ part.) I do apologize for that confusion – RK ends with Chapter 18 (19 from the chapter pull down list – yay prologues throwing the count off by one).

And now for the spoiler filled ranting comments. If you have not read Raising Kouryuu all the way through please do not read the below – I’m pretty sure that you’ll regret it. ^_^

Raising Kouryuu was intended to be a tragedy from very early on in the fiction. Which means, that the ending where Sanzo shoots himself in the head at the end – was planned out. I do not believe that all fictions should end happy and the fact that I garnered such an emotional response from my reading base (or at least what I’ve gathered from the reviews) can be considered a success.

If you’re wondering how I can justify this event (the suicide)- here is my reasoning:

1) The events that stopped Sanzo from being suicidal in the canon story line, have not happened as far as ‘Kouryuu’ is concerned. He has not met Koumyou Sanzo, nor has he met the elder Monk at Chang-en as seen in the ‘Burial’ saga of the manga.

2) Dr. Nii screwed with Sanzo’s head quite thoroughly. I’m sure most of you noticed that he was more or less a completely different person. And this ‘Kouryuu’ was completely devoted to his father as seen in the Question and Answer session in Chapter 15: Business. “Would you follow me anywhere I go?” also referred to, in this case ‘Death’.

3) It was the ending that I wanted. I’ve been waiting to write that ending since I figured out the details in like chapter 12. It was a pain to wait.

I hope that clears it up just a little bit – and if you’re still really bummed, I guess you can pretend that the extra epilogue is true. Though that makes me upset…*sigh*

And just as a tag – if you’re following along with Keeping Face as well – I can assure you that KF has a happy ending. XD

Posted by Liliy in Fanfiction | Trackback
  1. tathchan says:
    June 14, 2007 at 1:34 am

    Well…. thank you for the explanation, but I’m going to continue believing that the extra epilogue is the real ending. No, I don’t think that all fics must have happy endings (though I much prefer them!!), but I DO think that (a) they ought to be satisfying, and (b) they should follow the flow of the story.

    Honestly, I felt like the ending of RK did neither.

    1) I never bought the idea that Nii could mess with Sanzo’s head THAT much. It has been proved numerous times throughout the series just how tough Sanzo is, mentally. And either way, I never really felt like Sanzo was devoted to Nii to that extent, so yes, him following Nii into death WAS a shock!! To be completely and totally honest (which is hard for me, since I hate critiquing fellow-authors), if felt way too much like you were trying hard to make the ending tragic just for the sake of making it tragic. If that makes sense. Although I’m almost glad of that, because instead of bursting into tears like I otherwise would have, I just kind of snorted and went, “Yeah right. Like that would really happen. She’ll fix it.”

    2) It didn’t seem to match the overall “tone” of the story, either. The story felt typical Saiyuki (which is not at all a critique), a mixture of angst, humor and action in high doses. Which is just what I love about most of your stories – that they can capture this feeling! Nothing about it suggested that it would ultimately end in tragedy. Even as things got darker it never looked hopeless. After all, we’ve seen Nii mess with Kougaiji pretty severely, and he came out of it fine. So the ending seems out of place with the rest of the story.

    3) I also felt like Goku would not recover as fully as you portray him later on. If SANZO gets to be suicidal, I absolutely believe that Goku would do the same. There’s just no way he would get over Sanzo’s death so easily.

    4) And all that aside, Sanzo dying without ever regaining his real mind? That’s just depressing!! I’m willing to accept an unhappy ending, but not one that is pointlessly tragic, which is how I ended up feeling about this story. Ultimately, it makes me wish I hadn’t read it in the first place because now it’s lingering the back of my mind and bugging me. I go from being depressed about the thought of Sanzo killing himself in that state, to being annoyed by the pointlessness of such an ending.

    So no, it didn’t seem planned or foreshadowed at all. Now that I think about it, it felt much more like some nightmare or something that one of them had. Which is how I will just have to think about it, because otherwise it will drive me insane.

    ….Whew. Having said all that, I want you to know that you are truly one of my very favorite Saiyuki authors (which I realize will sound ridiculous after all my criticizing). As I said in my recent review of KF, you have an excellent grasp of characterization, and even though I’m somewhat pissed over RK, I still admire your work on the whole. Which is, actually, probably the reason RK upsets me so much, since your stories are usually such high caliber. I wish I didn’t get so “into” the stories I read, so that I could just forget about RK and move on, but it’s going to linger for ages and continue to bother me. (There is NOTHING worse than an unsatisfying ending to an otherwise good story!!)

    Which, however, is one more reason that I’m waiting so anxiously for an update of KF! Now that you have assured me of a happy ending there, I am feeling much better. You had me worried after RK. Still, KF has always been my favorite of the two, and now it’s much clearer as to why that is. I’m really looking forward to seeing it through to the end.

    So yes, I’m sorry to be so blunt, but you strike me as the kind of person who appreciates honest criticism. I don’t intend to flame you in any way, but I felt that I had to let you know what I really thought. Hopefully I didn’t come off as overly harsh, either, but if I did I apologize. As I said, I admire you and your work very much, and I truly do look forward to reading more from you.

    ~tathchan

    Reply
  2. Liliy says:
    June 14, 2007 at 2:46 am

    To Tath-chan:

    Yeah, I do enjoy honest critiques, so thank-you for that. Anyway, to respond to your comments:

    1. He didn’t brainwash Sanzo – he physically broke his head. This is one of those cases where I probably should have gotten more detailed with exactly what Nii did to Sanzo. It wasn’t so much a battle of wills as a physical wipe of his brain. The little memory at the end with the gun was a fluke, so to speak. And yes, it was planned out – but I didn’t want it to be overly obvious. The death was supposed to come as a shocking moment.

    2. As for the Kougaiji example, Nii did state that Sanzo was no ‘bunny prince’ meaning he did something different. And yeah, the tone changed – but not so much. The Burial arc of saiyuki and much of the manga has a much darker tone than say the anime. I took the liberty to play around in a world where Nii wins – and liked it. Yay for fanfiction and the ability to do so. ^_^

    3. Another mistake on my part – I should have clarified the length of time. He didn’t get over it instantly. There was a great deal of time in between the chapter with Sanzo’s death and the epilogue. He’d had his time to cry it out. Though, either way I doubt that Goku would be suicidal – he’s never struck me as the type to even consider it.

    4. Believe it or not – part of this ending came from the fact that I had no way of letting Sanzo get his mind back. Even if Sanzo hadn’t died, he never would have gotten his memories back – at least not in this universe that I’ created. Nii did his job well, and I wish I had clarified that more during the fiction.

    Ah, that felt good. ^_^ It’s nice to have in depth critiques once in a while – and you’re one of the first to have a good critique of the situation. So no, you weren’t harsh and it was appreciated. :P

    Reply

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