hi! I dont know if youre much into naruto anymore, but I remember you as being a kurenai fan from back when our kkir heydays overlapped (lol) and I was wondering if there were any parts of her character that you find really fundamental to writing her well? im working on a kurenai/yugao fic (rare pair to end all rare pairs, I know) and it's hard to find analysis of both of them to guide my writing ૮(◞ ‸ ◟ )ა
Kurenai is one of the most underused characters in Naruto so this is just my own HC's but one thing that stands out to me with her is that she's a very level-headed person and being a genjutsu expert likely makes her especially good at lying and manipulations on top of the hallucinatory qualities of the craft
Also she seems to be an incredibly efficient teacher as all three of her genin (Kiba, Shino and Hinata) stayed as a trio post-timeskip and became a squad of track & rescue nin which means there's a high likelihood Kurenai is one such ninja herself!
Generally though you want to avoid going for the trope of her being some overly mature woman who dishes out sage advice to everyone bc canonically her and Asuma were mutually blushing idiots around eachother who thought they were soooo slick at hiding their relationship when it was the most obvious thing in the world. She's not good at hiding her romantic feelings for somebody lol! She's kind of a loser and that's endearing!
Obviously I personally believe she's related to the Uchiha given the genjutsu + red eyes combo but that has no canon basis beyond an interesting coincidence so do what you want in that regard. Another important thing to remember is that she's actually a fairly new jonin at the start of the series!
This is mentioned in chapter 43 when the kids are all taking their chuunin exams and Kakashi and Asuma are talking about how unlucky it is for Ibiki to be their examiner (she's even unaware that he's in charge of torture & interrogation)
This is something a lot of naruto fans tend to forget about her because her close relationships with Asuma, Gai and Kakashi makes it easy to assume she got promoted around the same time they did but no she only recently became a jonin when she was given Team 8 so you're allowed to make her a little less experienced than her peers at harder missions!
Final note is that Hinata is her official charge as stated in chapter 78 - she isn't just a regular genin student but somebody the Hyuga handed off to her entirely. Granted Kishimoto drops this entire plotpoint bc he doesn't care to write female-centred anything after these exams but it's interesting to see her at odds with one of the big major clans of the village
So uh. Yeah! That's kinda all I can offer? I hope it helps at least a little bit haha
