GP Fortnight 08
Welcome to the eighth TOP SECRET MYSTERIOUS INVESTIGATION of Golden Pair Fortnight:
Eiji and Masculinity
Are you sick of Eiji without balls? Do you have no idea how to approach him as a proper character, let alone as a MAN? Is it even possible that he's more manly than Tezuka? Join me on this opinionated rant hearing with secret pictorial evidence to free Eiji from the charge of irreparable ditzyness and restore his innate manliness!
Expect to find: Meta, brand new fanart, another brand new doujinshi
Before I start, please rest assured that much of this post is in jest and that I love the yaoi femmy K2 style Eiji as much as the rest of them. However, I also happen to like another type of Eiji, and it is with the task of showing you who he can be that I take a (probably much needed!) jibe at the following...
...like this. How familiar is this sort of thing to you?
'Nya! Hoi! Eat me up like a cupcake, then take me out to dinner!'
THE CHARGE : Excessive out of character femininity that makes Eiji the dullest uke on the planet!
THE ACCUSED: The tenipuri anime. Takahashi Hiroki. Doujinka. And we, the fanfic writers.
THE EVIDENCE: To be presented..
THE IDEAL VERDICT:
by the_seijin
Ok, maybe we don't want to go quite that far. Then again, why not? :D
There is nothing wrong with feminising Eiji, in fact, it is the wont of yaoi. After all, if Eiji wasn't uke-fied, we wouldn't have a lovely Oishi to make mad love to us (and before you pick me up on the personal pronouns, yaoi is about self projection. ;3 You are your uke, it's a fact!)
Theoretically, we could turn Eiji into the seme, in a yaoi paradigm. Unfortunately, in the Japanese paradigms I've seen, usually this sort of thing happens...
by the_seijin
Or even, god forbid, this...
...
...or at the very worst, Tez/Oishi.
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There, I've given you a bit of space to scroll down so you won't have to see that monstrocity. Anyhow, it seems that Eiji just doesn't work as a proper seme in a Japanese paradigm! There's nothing wrong with this, but it just so happens that we notice certain things creeping their way into fanon. I, for one, catch myself writing things like "Eiji let forth a girly whimper as he accepted his newest gift of a fluffy teddy bear with strawberry ice cream" or "Oishi's father came home from the surgery" (Oishi's father is actually a tax agent, go figure. This could lead to all sorts of interesting fic about Oishi & his dad having a success/profession complex, but nobody ever goes into this!)
From these terrible temptations we must cease and desist! :O How could we let ourselves get so carried away as to let Eiji turn into a slow-blinking perfume-wearing squeaky moron instead of a ball-scratching, muscle-training, horny, athletic, good-looking teenager?
Admittedly, the anime really doesn't help sometimes:
But this we can overcome. Remember that this is also Eiji- strong willed, determined and gritty-
I like to think of him as rough and ready- young and headstrong. He's got a compact and proportioned body, like an acrobat. His fingers are long, for balance, his skin is pink and not brown like Oishi's. His voice is scratchy and expressive, just like those young teens from the D-boys and tenimyu, and he can use it in filthy and profane ways if he wants to. Can't you just see him standing on a curb in Akihabara or Shibuya, flipping up his fingers at Gakuto as Hyoutei stalk past like the prissy bastards they are? I like to think of him in terms of these things that teenage boys do.
Like...
Shaving.
Nipple scratching.
Male bonding.
Bonding with nature.
And so on. In fact, Eiji is almost the quintessential teenager. He's obsessed with sport, loves getting out of class, socialises like there's no tomorrow, eats like a pig, and, my favourite, is a incredible stickybeak. Remember the training camp with Hyoutei, around the episode 100 mark? Momo and Eiji spy on Ryoma as Sakuno tries to make the moves on him.
After they were sussed they probably ran back to their room to sit around in their boy-shorts on the tatami to play cards and discuss Ryoma's first kiss at length.
This Eiji would smack Oishi in the mouth if he told him he looked cute in a frilly pink dress with a teddy bear. Or go all quiet at the praise, which leads me to another few quirks of Eiji's personality.
We've seen how Eiji doesn't like being out of control. I suspect that he also doesn't like emotions, and his inability to deal with particularly strong ones rather make him more masculine than Oishi. I don't want to make terrible generalisations about the male species, but we've seen Eiji grow quiet and coy at questions from strangers about his life (ie Itsuki), he prefers to train in secret (a la Rikkai) and wants to solve his problems and work on his weaknesses by himself. He has an immense sense of pride. He's not social in the sense that Oishi is. Oishi has made himself interschool friends (Shishido) and loves to talk. He talks to pregnant women on the train, and tells them all about his life... he talks to Shishido about tennis, doubles and life, he solves his problems with the team rather than away from them.
"Tell me what's bothering you," He asks Seigaku, when Tezuka's in Germany and Oishi is captain. "Tell me about all your problems and we'll work on them together."
I suspect those little exchanges were more about what was bothering Oishi than what was bothering anyone else!
Eiji finds it hard to open himself up to people in this way. I, for one, don't see him being open about any romantic experience that he placed a lot of importance into. He loves to gossip, as we can see above, but I get the impression that this gossip would never be about him. Eiji wants his private experiences to be just that, private. He only tells Oishi about his secret training when he's succeeded, and never really tells Oishi why he did it. He never describes his upsets. He never talks about what he's feeling. Sure, teenage boys rarely discuss their emotional lives, but the point I want to stress is that Eiji isn't public about his inner world. Oishi, on the other hand, is. He tells everyone when he's worried, hence the 'mother hen' reference. He tells Eiji when he doesn't like what he's doing. I imagine he'd be rather forthcoming about his private life, as he would just be so proud of it...he has a boyfriend, and oh~! Isn't it great to be young? Seishun da na! *
He loves to share his private world for that reason.
* Ah, you might point out, but this is fantasy yaoi land Japan when in fact someone as traditional and upright as Oishi would be incredibly loath to go down a path exposed to intolerance, setback and potential abuse such as homosexual individuals might suffer in Japan, or indeed, anywhere... he's aspiring to be a doctor! And a good husband!
Having spoken about Oishi's passion on day 7, I believe that it's precisely this that makes Oishi so appealing... he would find it hard. Oishi Shuuichiroh frequently fights the battle between what is right and what is proper, as we saw in Rikkai when he confronted Sanada. And we love him because he does what is right. He would make the decision to be with Eiji, because in his heart, that's what he knows he wants and knows is right. This applies to any decision too in any context too, even if you don't want to consider the GP in a romantic way. And when he knows what he's going to do, he commits 101%, devotes his whole being to it. But today isn't about Oishi. ;3
I always saw this different approach to experiencing emotions as one thing which might cause consternation in any potential romantic relationship between them. Oishi is free with his feelings, free with love to give, very used to deep emotion, and more to the point, expressing it. It's interesting that he takes anti-anxiety pills before matches: Oishi resorts to a variety of different means to deal with his stress: he deals with those feelings externally. Eiji deals with them internally: he doesn't share them with anyone. As a result of this, Eiji is very private with feelings and unaccustomed to feeling strong emotion, something he can't control. Love would be something that Eiji might find hard to express, or at least, express verbosely or publically. Oishi needs that kind of validation to feel secure in himself, which could lead to feelings of insecurity when Eiji isn't quite as adept at expressing himself.
This doesn't mean that he's completely inept, or that Oishi has to do all the guesswork. It doesn't mean he's neccessarily shy or immature or a crybaby or a tantrum thrower - as someone who needs to sort through his experiences on his own, it might just take him longer. And like Oishi, whose passion is ferocious when he commits, so is Eiji. When he's in love, and passionate, boy does it ever show through. It shows in his fighting tennis, in his support and care for Oishi, even in the subtle ways. He might not be the best at sweet talk, but he shows his love in other ways. Inept, teenage boy ways, but in ways nonetheless. Maybe it's because of this failure with words that it means ever so much more. More than words can express. :3
And, once more, to illustrate my point, here's another doujinshi from Matthew Masaki. Told you she was a kindred spirit!
Eiji muses on what his feelings for Oishi really are.
Cause it's special
Matthew Masaki
Rating: G
Humor, fluff
We get to see what Oishi has nightmares about :D
YSI
Megaupload
And please, tell me what you think about any aspect of GP fortnight! Questions, criticisms, agreements, anything! :D