Tenchi Muyo

Sanctuary and Asylum

Afterward-Aftermath

(No one should need a warning of spoilers in an afterward, but there it is.)

---

This is one month and two days of calling myself finished and 23. This mixture of context, symmetry, and confession was not intended to also fall on an older holy day, but I doubt it will see submission this day anyway. I'd welcome all later contributions to my timing as I would requests on my time, however, as many interests as I may have captured since the first submission, it would seem I've been able to keep only two.

This changes my approach to the Afterward, but not the fact that I've spent more time dreaming its content than planning any section of its context.

And if there must be three beginnings to a single eulogy, the last-r-best must be the reflection most resistant to tax-n-time:

This story was not a labor of love.

This story was an enslavement of hate.

---

When asked about this project I most often referred to it in terms like 'bottom of the literary barrel'. Head over heals into the drum of justification, I might say that a barrel without a bottom makes only a short tunnel and a simple fashion statement. Indeed, this project, more consuming in pursuing than any in my life, should and must remain an exercise of my capacity rather than an example. It deserves little of pride, and less of recognition, regardless of the conundrum that arises in finding an audience that I'd hold in the right regard. The line between gaining a complement from one I hardly envy and giving insult to one I heartily emulate; it is a slow-healing cut and a slow moving- mollusk.

Which brings me to my initial motivation for this quasi creation...

---

This is two months of calling myself done and 23. Interest remains mostly matching motivation. How should I begin but from a meeting point that might de-alienate the introduction?

Tenchi used to be on TV. I don't remember my first glimpse of him and his, but I remember that it came shortly before recognition of my television addiction. I remember recognizing 'Tenchi Muyo!' as the best variation and affirming for years that surely there must be more chapters hidden somewhere. I remember that the final episodes of Tenchi Universe marked my conscious attempt to end the said compulsion that had taken more of my life than any other. I was successful, for all relapses have been and will be comparatively short. I was successful, in part, because one obsession replaced another.

I remember that Tenchi in Tokyo, tragic (in all senses) as it was, must have planted the idea that the Tenchi characters could be wielded by any will.

I remember discovering fan fiction by accident, perusing fan sites in delirious defiance of common maturity, a state unlikely to ever fully leave me now.

I remember what it was to care about a set of characters so much that I'd deprive myself of sleep just to see what a lax, if not unforgivably incompetent narrator would do with them.

So how then could I forget those who actually retained the faint odor of literacy? How could I not lavish upon and after them with bombastic praise and entreaty? However did I resist the profound affection between nostalgia and megalomania for as long as I did? Was it a month, or even two, before I was roaring at the screen my will to be ineffable Lord of them all?

But then, as again, it was long and.....difficult to begin.

Lemons.

I make a point to define this genre specifically as sexually-themed fan fiction, as there are some that could easily isolate certain scenes and some that slap a plot on smut. I can count the merited former on one hand while regarding the latter with various gestures.

Though I began with a series, a four seasons, of Lemons, I was all the time conscious that they were serving mainly as a warm up to Sanctuary and Asylum. I knew what a initiating challenge it would be to compose such things without spreading nausea and who knew what else.

For what humility is worth: the feedback was more than encouraging, and I've yet to encounter a finer bushel of true lemons.

For what confession is worth: I was then, and am likely to remain, for all my sentimental bents, a wretched lecher.

There remains a plain text version of them on the TMFFA.

There was nearly a near-scene in S&A &.....

There were conflicting climaxes up to and through every verse.

But, before I return to the first forwards, before we tempt nostalgia again, let us let megalomania have its favored place in grand entrance:

From the onset, I set my mind to a head start or bust or icon or I can, and I will--- not submit a single chapter till the whole story has been written.

This first incarnation was written like dirty crack and read like healthy crap. There remains of it only two printed copies of the first few chapters, one of which is lost, the other forgotten. In any case, I had every scene to the last annotated and planned out before the first file was even clicked away.

All that, just to ensure that someday, today, I would be able to say, that unlike the few fan fiction authors I consider equals and the two I'd consider as more:

I can finish what I start!

So sucks to you and your fickle attentions!

Had the bulk of this work not been cultivated in sleep-depriving mania, had I not stepped onto the playground like a bully, not been out to glorify the lowly tendency to extort affection's currency by tormenting its objects, not alternately fled from and set upon pedestals rather than nurture consistent growth, not already lost the passion when the time came for the resurrection, and were I not certain of its deceptions I might remain offended by its eventual reception.

I planned, though I already knew, that the afterward aftermath would have to mean something, would have to justify all the time I've spent ingraining my fiction addiction in various forms and functions. There is still a despair that laughs loud through lockjaw at every grand endeavor that forms a chrysalis, hidden like a bomb or dropped like an ad, only to release the larvae more pale and atrophied. There is yet something to be said for supporting a habit by becoming a pusher. In tantrums and martyrdoms there are the same conflicted impulses to relate.

Sanctuary & Asylum began as merely another cry for attention that both Tenchi and readers would fall for. It is not now a tribute to any favorite character, though I had one. It was never intended as a SI (self insertion), though I can't imagine not suspecting, or accepting it as such.

Seita (spelled 'Sayta' till I realized the allusions to The Morning Star would be too obvious) was almost named Tetsuo, after the power-maddened character in 'Akira'. I almost selected this for his 'real name' before I developed a termed affection for the Germanic spirit of the age, but I eventually constructed a name from Anglo terms for nothingness and champions and a Japanese term for island (also Tetsuo's family name). I had his physical attributes, though hardly his allure, when I began, but in the years since I've chrome domed, then grown and cultivated a Dali-like handlebar dandyism, retired that, and thus far I content myself with persistent stubble and moderate mad scientist waves. I might compare my scholastic and social choices to him, but they have a more significant influence on the story overall. Of course, seeing as the story behind it all revolved and remained ravenous for every possible allegory and metaphor, it might be best to clarify some content to amend my style's mockery of clarity.

The use of 'Oblivion', the emptiness over which existence spreads itself, reflects only one of my metaphysical theories. Saying the same for all the other ideas would be easy and accurate enough if some of them didn't actually mean something to me. One of my deepest disappointments remains and will remain so long as I'm uncertain how many I might have offended by Seita's revelation to Yosho. I don't refer entirely to the almost cliché or more use of characters from Grandfather's past to generate a plot (though this has worked for most of the shows and all of the movies), but I'm rather loathe to spell out the connotations of that 'session' to any but those clueless and curious enough to ask. As for scenes that seemed to go past scary, through ugly, and into disturbing; I may be sentimental, I may not be a criminal, but I never claimed to make bad-guys for show.

With Seita, I hoped to both indulge my ego and redeem my emotions; not even the most sub-human hero can do this as well as a post-human villain. The idea, though, that those who spread suffering want to draw out a discipline-salvation, hits close for someone who long ago decided they'd rather be terrifying than pitiful. As for the final resolution, I can explain very clearly why this turned into 'another' Tenchi and Ryoko story:

Because that's who he's supposed to end up with, obviously!

For those of you so very determined to be different, well, you might as well just make Tenchi a eunuch, otherwise you better be sure Ryoko's dead and buried first.

More important to me than who or how Tenchi loves is the idea that he can love at all. The final interaction between himself and Seita was designed as a literary ritual for cleansing redemption. And when I first wrote it, it was, to an extent. But when I first wrote it I was a sleep-deprived geek working with only enough ability to maybe be, on a good day, worth spitting upon. I'm a little better now, reminded fully that wanting love does not mean it's real and does not mean that I deserve it. This work was always intended for a hopeful, uplifting, if not entirely 'happy' ending and, incidentally, rereading the final lines of the closing verse prevented me from officially abandoning the project countless times. If anything positive came from the whole endeavor it was an acceptance, much as I disdain the term 'acceptance', that true satisfaction will continue to elude me till I can make my stubborn wordplay my lasting work.

It's anyone's guess how much longer this afterward might have been delayed had I not taken a sick day from work to keep a minor cold from lasting the rest of the year.

It's anyone's guess whether I'll still get misty the next time I watch the opening sequence to Tenchi Muyo, that arrangement of stunning profiles to the coolest elevator music I've ever heard.

I shouldn't have to guess at what it would take to lure back all the well-wishers I failed to keep hold of. And if I should tempt discrediting my claim of completion by going back, just once, to change the scene that fit the least.....well, that would give me an excuse to make appropriate amends.

Fanfiction is most likely the first fiction of every great storyteller, and if this were only half true or all wrong it wouldn't change my plot.

The Tenchi series profits most from prepubescent little girls, and diving it into the depths of drama is silly, but so is thinking that stories matter.

I've nursed a stillborn child for the sake of aesthetics and alchemy. I've let a tick big as a puppy suck my shoulders, periodically vomiting in its rear till it finally fell off dead. I finished Sanctuary & Asylum, and even if I never successfully publish a damn thing there's no way I'm giving up now.