#technically this could also just be a general Naruto post

[firecoloredwater]

At some point a few* years ago, there were a lot of posts on my dash about trauma, PTSD, and recovery from the above. Specifically, posts getting into the details of how trauma affects the brain, how recovery works, etc.**

Which means I spent a lot of time reading these posts, and then mentally holding them up next to the sharingan and going hmmmmm.

I can't make as good an argument now as I could have then, because it's been years and I've forgotten a lot of details. (So please don't like, assume this is expert analysis; I am not a neuroscientist or a psychologist, and I am definitely forgetting stuff.) But:

Traumatic experiences are easier to remember than happy ones, sometimes escalating to flashbacks (in the PTSD, not the narrative sense); the sharingan creates permanent memories.

People experiencing trauma are often hyperaware of details, especially details that might indicate danger (and PTSD is in part this hyperawareness lingering even when it's no longer needed); the sharingan gives users better vision with a particular focus on seeing and interpreting details, up to minor predictive abilities.

The sharingan is activated (and upgraded) by strong emotions, especially fear and distress.

I've got nothing for the genjutsu powers though, those are just magic.

I suspect that this was not the canon intention! But I think that the sharingan and trauma parallel nicely, and when I'm trying to figure out how to balance the sharingan's abilities for fic, I like to use this framework.

Another minor headcanon: shinobi clans are, culturally and intellectually, very isolated. Partly it's a result of geographic isolation: the location of clan compounds is at least nominally secret, which means they're remote, not just in some town, nor do they have a bunch of non-clan townsfolk living just outside the gates. That's reinforced by information security concerns, meaning that even when someone from a shinobi clan is visiting a town/the capital/wherever, they're going to avoid discussing anything but the smallest of small talk.

As a result***, information takes a long time to filter back into shinobi clans as well; with the possible exception of the Nara (whose reputation for being geniuses might just be due to having traditionally dedicated a few people to basically go be scholars in the capital, and send back any new research/discoveries/developments they learn about) shinobi clans are generally several decades to a few centuries behind the cutting edge of science****. Because that's what happens when a culture is dedicating all its resources to war and survival.

But the point of all this is that I think it would be REALLY funny if "the Curse of Hatred" was just plain PTSD. But the Uchiha noticed the parallels between trauma/PTSD and the sharingan, and concluded that this was a side effect of the sharingan, a sort of unhelpful partial manifestation, which came with all the drawbacks and none of the benefits. People who have PTSD but not the sharingan still have Uchiha blood, enough to get that partial manifestation but not the full, beneficial version.

...and then Konoha happens, and the Uchiha gradually realize that every single shinobi clan has a bunch of members suffering from PTSD, aka the Curse of Hatred, aka (they think) side effects of partial sharingan manifestation.

(under the cut is just footnotes)

*Anywhere from 2-8. I dunno, time is an illusion.

**Mostly these posts were by (or reblogged by) star-anise, who I'm not @ing because I don't think we've ever actually talked and as far as I know she isn't interested in Naruto. But if you're curious and willing to dig in search of posts from several years ago, that's where.

***Also as a result clans would have REALLY distinct cultures and traditions, which is very fun to play with but not the point of this post.

****If you enjoy the "Tobirama is albino and the Senju hate him for it/think he's cursed" trope, this is very conducive to "every single civilian who ever sees Tobirama immediately go 'oh, he has albinism' but no Senju (or Uchiha) has ever heard of it until a civilian randomly refers to it in his presence/in reference to him one day."

[purpleajisai]

Uchiha Observation n°1: Sasuke’s lineage - headcanons, storyline and hints in canon

This post is part of the worldbuilding process for a fanfic idea that I’ve been maturing over the past year, so I will update this if needed. I have wondered about the relationship between Madara and Sasuke for a long while now, and I knew there has to be a deeper connection than just reincarnations of Indra. The moment that piqued my interest was the point that Hashirama made about Sasuke looking like Izuna, implying that if Madara saw someone so similar to his beloved younger brother he could listen to what Sasuke had to say and perhaps change his mindset in regards to the war.

This cannot be a coincidence. Today, I’m going to share my headcanon regarding Madara and Sasuke’s kinship: Sasuke is Madara’s great nephew, connnected through Izuna. Here is the genealogical tree:

First of all, let’s explain Izuna’s generation. Of course, you can see Madara represented there as an older brother as well as the 4 unnamed younger siblings mentioned in the river flashbacks. The language used by Madara suggest that there were 5 other siblings aside from him, not 5 in total and including him. In the case of Izuna, according to the databooks he died at age 24, which is definitely old enough to be married and have a child.

And perhaps the readers are wondering why I’m not considering Madara to be married as well since he’s not only older than Izuna but also the clan leader. The only reason why I’m not giving him a wife and kids at the time of Izuna’s death is because I want to adhere to canon in this regard (no spoilers about the fic’s plot).

In the storyline I’ve planned, Izuna would die and leave behind a little baby or even a pregnant wife. The exact moment is yet undecided. However, it is through this only son of Izuna from which we can connect him to Sasuke. Once Izuna’s son grows up, having the pressure of being the last surviving heir to the clan, it’s not far-fetched for this man to have more than 2 children to ensure his legacy and prevent the clan from descending into anarchy. The reason why his firstborn son, who would be Izuna’s eldest grandson, is marked as “disgraced” in this chart is because the existence of this generation collides with the 2nd Great Ninja War. A possible reason I may consider to add for his fall into disgrace and shunning by the clan is that he would’ve left some Uchiha comrades to die in order to protect important Konoha intel, therefore gaining the reputation of a traitor and not being suitable for inheriting the clan’s leadership.

With the eldest son banned from the position of clan heir, the younger son would immediately take his place. From the disgraced eldest brother, we get Obito’s ancestry, and from the younger brother we get Mikoto’s generation. For Obito’s case, I theorize a normal Uchiha picked at random wouldn’t be able to handle the toll of Madara’s eyes, whether in EMS or Rinnegan form. Technically speaking, these eyeballs are actually Izuna’s, reinforcing his importance for this lineage. Please consider the importance of genetics in handling kekkei genkai in the Naruto universe. For Mikoto’s case, I added an older brother for her. Why? Because it used to be a custom in the Sengoku period and the subsequent Edo period to follow agnatic (male-only) succession for leadership. The death of Mikoto’s brother would put Fugaku as a leader, given that he’s the husband of a bearer of the lineage of clan leaders.

Finally, we get to Itachi and Sasuke. Neither one nor another were “normal” Uchiha: both unlocked the mangekyo sharingan and handled the toll of the Susano’o, among other remarkable feats. If Sasuke is connected to Madara through Izuna’s descendants, it would imply the existence of a direct line of ancestry that starts with Indra himself. The headcanons regarding the internal structure of the Uchiha clan will be discussed in a future post. The direct family line from Izuna to Sasuke can therefore explain why both looked so similar (recessive genetics) and why Madara felt nostalgic or touched at the sight of someone who resembled his beloved little brother so much.

Thanks for reading thus far, and if you have any questions plkease use the blog’s ask box.

[phoenixyfriend]

Making this its own post instead of an ask.

I divide crossovers into categories or types, and here the most basic ones.

Intrusive:

A character from one setting ends up in another, completely unrelated setting. They do not share a universe, do not share a planet, nada. This is "falls through a portal" type of crossover. EXAMPLE: A Witch's Favor, where Wanda Maximoff and Maria Rambeau (Marvel) end up in the Star Wars universe due to an unexplained spell malfunction.

Shared Verse:

The settings could theoretically, in some manner, exist in the same universe without ever intersecting. EXAMPLE: I usually use Naruto for this example, e.g. the Hidden Continent exists in the Pacific but has had minimal influence/interaction with the rest of the setting up to this point because it's magically cut off from the rest of the planet. For Star Wars, this is usually pretty easy by just putting whatever the second canon is as just. A planet in Wild Space. They exist in the same universe! They just haven't found each other yet! A great example is the fic A Star to Steer By, by @norcumii and @dogmatix. A subset of this is fics where one is the distant past of the other, like Muse on This or Red-Eyed Black Widow.

Mixed Verse:

The setting is one that involves both canons influencing each other to a degree, or being in the same verse without being a fusion AU or shared-verse. The settings exist together, both having strong worldbuilding elements of the original, but are not fully themselves and show obvious elements of the other. EXAMPLE: Unfortunately my most recent example is an HP crossover so. Please keep in mind that this is from four years ago, before R*wling outed herself as a massive bigot: Professor Storm.

Fusion:

More or less 1:1 "this character from fandom A would be this character from fandom B" or otherwise "characters from fandom A reimagined in fandom B with none of the original setting." For a long time, HP was the biggest and most constant example, but uhhh that's clearly been falling out of favor like raw eggs. I've seen a lot of good ones for Hunger Games, though, and even wrote my own, but I know some other common ones are Steven Universe (which gem are they?), AtLA (which bender type are they?), or Pokemon (what trainer type are they). Also, arguably, generic AUs that don't take place in canon-verse, like modern or historical or zombie or Generic Cyberdystopia. EXAMPLE: After Me Comes the Flood.

Element Overlay:

A world-building element from Fandom B is applied to the setting and characters of Fandom A. Common examples are Daemon AUs or Sentinel/Guide AUs. I think a fun thing to point out is that, while they don't technically have a source fandom of origin since they were developed communally by fandom, soulmate AUs and omegaverse count as well.

There are other types, like infusing the plot of one narrative into the setting and characters of the other, which is a really fun kind of fusion (I always come back to thinking about Age of Marvels by justplainrii, which only ever got three chapters but still eats at my brain sometimes), buuuuut I'd say most crossovers are some variant of the above.

[usuratongaychi]

Drawings + Rants + Headcanons/Naruto AU

i finally had some time to draw my versions of tean seven (minus kakashi). im gonna detail more of my AU later in the post but here are the designs and some notes.

For sasuke, in one of my other posts i had the theory that sasuke keeps his hair short to avoid resembling itachi, and thats why it is longer in time skip, because he is coming to terms with his trauma and still loves itachi. I also gave him similar creases to itachi, just from stress.

tbh im not too sure about this naruto design…but at least he isnt balding like before💀.

for sakura, i actually really like her older design, so i just drew her working. she would have her hair up and i gave her sakura blossom hair pins and eyeshadow.

also i havent drawn in forever so..thats why its messy.

(the rest of this is me rambling on..)

Now for changes i made to the story:

1. Narusasu endgame (yk im a stan)

I would have both of them be joint hokages, so technically both are the 7th. I know Sasuke is referred to as the shadow hokage, but that doesn’t really entail anything. I think it’s important because Sasuke would know just how important reform is for the village and shinobi system, but since people are still suspicious of Uchihas, Naruto would be the face. This fulfills Naruto’s dream, which when you really think about it, his dream was just to be loved, not really to be a politician. Naruto has seen how unfair and corrupt their society is, so he would completely work with Sasuke to make sure things like Danzo and Hiruzen’s corruption, child soldiers, hyuuga slavery and the “Uchiha Incident” dont happen again. I could explain more of this in a later post.

2. I would have Hinata look up to Sakura more, instead of Naruto.

I think it makes a bit more sense, Sakura is brave, outspoken and independent, just like Hinata wants to be. I would have Sakura be her first friend, since she can’t stand to see people be excluded or alone. That leads me into changes I would make for Sakura’s story.

3. Sakura. In the original, I would keep her kind of bratty attitude until things get serious in the Zabuza arc. Seeing her close friends so close to death, while not being able to help much would challenge her to become a protector. This also gives motivation for her to learn healing and medicine when Tsunade comes around. Sakura would be the “rock” or “glue” of team seven, which makes sense because she is the only one of them that came from a stable home.

Sakura initially resents Sasuke for betraying the team, but seeing how dedicated Naruto is to saving him, she decides its worth it to help bring him back. Besides if she didn’t, naruto would just endager himself trying.

4. Sasuke. I would have Sasuke after he realizes Itachi was manipulated into a genocide to protect the village, still go through him “i’m gonna destroy the village” phase, but when Naruto defeats him, they make a promise to change things, so no one else will have to suffer like that. I would also show more of the psychological effects of witnessing Itachi’s murders. One of my headcanons is that he’s pretty thin, since trauma survivors tend to have chronic stomach pains. He’s probably pretty paranoid about others betraying him, so he does it to them first (probably why he pushes naruto away so much). Sasuke is also probably still ostracized or “othered” for being an uchiha, since that is what the village is told about them. People still pity him, but dont come near him.

5. Naruto. 😭I actually made up a whole theory on why Hiruzen didn’t take great care of naruto, bc to me it just doesn’t make sense. it’s kinda a dumb theory and doesn’t rlly have anything to do with canon, but- what if Minato wanted to expose the corruption in the hidden leaf and get rid of the foundation, so as a sort of revenge, or just general distaste for Minato, Hiruzen doesn’t really provide for Naruto. 🤷‍♀️idk. A change I would make is to have naruto mature more to match his age. Like ofc it makes sense for him to act out for attention esp when he was younger, but i feel like past shippuden..he didn’t really mature at all? maybe thats just me. I’ll probably have more stuff to add for him, i’ll think of it later or put it in my headcanons post.

😭im so tired yall i will make a better post later on.

[kishimotomasashi]

Alright, Uchiha Clan oppression longpost

This is the unavoidable, and often central, topic people tend to surround their Naruto politics takes on, and is as a result a big, ugly discourse-generator. It's also a subject I'm definitely always thinking about when it comes to Naruto as a noted Sasuke stan, and my thoughts on it have changed gradually over the years. I'm making this post to share what my current interpretation on "how and why the Uchiha Clan were oppressed" is.

Before I do that though, notice on what this post is not:

I'm not writing a "discourse ender", a take meant to be spread around with the claim of being the only correct interpretation of events. This is a post I wrote to share the exact way I rotate an aspect of the manga in my mind, and to convince people that looking at it from this angle is interesting. Basically: it's not that serious, I think about this because it's fun.

This isn't a "character-bashing" post or whatever either, so like if you agree with what you read here, I suppose I can't stop you from using those infamous "anti-[X]" tags, it's just that making a post that warrants them has never been my intention.

Along with that, I do want to address the by now very well established fact that Naruto the series is Not Very Good, and has glaring inconsistencies in its writing. The Uchiha Clan drama is definitely not exempt from this, and in its case the failures in Kishimoto's writing usually show in inconsistent power-scaling, in which we're made to accept weird leaps in logic (how does a 13 year old get rid of what we're told is one of the most powerful and feared clans internationally?) That being said, those particular inconsistencies are kind of irrelevant to this particular post, and don't much change the fact that the Uchiha Clan Massacre did happen. I'll be taking it as a given that if you're reading this, you're accepting to suspend your disbelief of those events on a technical level, and are more interested in how I make sense of it all more on the in-universe social/political level.

With that settled, we can get to the important part now:

The most popular take (as far as I've personally seen) on the events that led to the Uchiha Clan's downfall is the one that takes Madara at his word: the Senju have been oppressing the Uchiha since Konoha's conception, and Tobirama becoming the 2nd Hokage gave him the opportunity to put the Uchiha in a more socially disadvantaged position (police force), gradually earning them the villagers' ire, which was the catalyst for their eventual genocide.

This interpretation works if the end goal of your analysis is to say "Tobirama really fucking sucks". I don't think this conclusion is an unreasonable one, since Tobirama's hostility towards the Uchiha is great enough that he can callously tell a 16 year old genocide survivor that if his clan "self-destructed for the sake of the village, so be it". However, to me, the circumstances surrounding the Uchiha Clan are much wider-encompassing and more fascinating than narrowing their fate to a single man in fan meta written to convince you to hate him, so it goes without saying that I don't think "this is all Tobirama's fault" is a very interesting lens to look at this from.

I also don't buy the argument that making the Uchiha cops was (originally) to their detriment. We'll get back to that in a bit. I suppose this depends on how you look at Tobirama's character, but I think that when he said he made the police force as a sign of trust and to give the clan something useful to do in Konoha, he was being genuine. Arguing the opposite requires you to either believe that a law enforcement order could ever be in an oppressed position by default, or that Tobirama created a fundamentally useless new institution because he just hated the Uchiha that much. I think the former is a weird thing to argue if you're trying to be Leftist about all this, and the latter is a very ungenerous interpretation of Tobirama's character in which his own "racism"/pettiness overshadows his more utilitarian instincts to ensure that the village his brother built was safe and functioning. Obviously you could interpret that, but that leads us back to the "everything is Tobirama's fault" take, that I already mentioned I find lame as hell.

So then, how do I think the Uchiha Clan was oppressed? Because I think they indisputably were, or I wouldn't be making this post. Well, I think it was less "The Senju/Tobirama have always wanted to lord over them and wanted them dead", and more: they became gradually more socially disadvantaged during the era of Hidden Villages, with the consecutive world wars creating a souring global opinion on kekkei genkai clans.

(I'm gonna base my arguments primarily on what we see happen in the manga, and I'll add in some information from the fanbooks/databooks that weren't contradicted by what we see happen in Kishimoto's canon)

Let's start with what we know, definitely, that canon tells us:

Kekkei genkai clans are discriminated against to a very high extent, leading to things such as their mass slaughter (eg, the Uchiha Clan obviously, but also kekkei genkai clans like Haku's clan in the Land of Mist), and a vulnerability which puts them in positions where they're likelier to be targeted and kidnapped (eg, Hinata, but also Orochimaru having a whole criminal entreprise built on kidnapping and experimenting on people possessing kekkei genkai).

The trend for their discrimination is in being scapegoated. When Haku talks about the genocides in the Land of Mist (I refuse to call it the Land of Water sorry it sounds so stupid), this is how he describes them:

(chapter 59)

basically, it's not shinobi as a whole who are badly seen even though all sorts of them were likely participating in those wars: it's kekkei genkai clans in particular. Compare this to the Uchiha Clan being blamed for the Nine Tails attack (I mean one of them certainly was responsible, but was entirely unaffiliated with the rest of the clan) and being roped off to the edge of the village as a result.

Kekkei genkai clans are also frequently described by characters as being a bit "wilder" and more violent than usual shinobi. Tobirama calling the Uchiha "cursed", Kushina describing the Uzumaki as being "a bit savage", and Kakashi introducing us to the concept of kekkei genkai initially with these fun visuals:

(chapter 25)

The thing that's interesting about all this is the context in which it exists: the shinobi villages aren't technically "nations", but I think it would be accurate to liken their possessiveness of their secrets and paranoia regarding outside intrusion + conception of themselves as unified cultural entities + incredibly harsh treatment of dissidents (becoming a rogue is essentially a death sentence) to nationalism. There's an intense "in-group vs out-group" feeling here.

Not to mention that canonically that shinobi have always been tools of imperialism for greater powers. While Hashirama's initial dream was to put an end to that, it eventually became corrupted; there was already discontent regarding land and resource allocations during his tenure as Hokage, and while we have no idea why the 1st War started, we know that by the time we're on the 2nd one, Konoha had become a tool for the Land of Fire's imperialist expansion (and was apparently was expanding its influence as a military village, too).

(chapter 436)

Basically, the "in-group vs out-group" conception that had once solely been clan-centric widened, and became this new concept of shinobi villages.

This is important because nationalistic sentiment inevitably rises during war; as a result, there'd be a sharper eye for who'd turn traitor, who wasn't supporting the military effort, who would endanger their nation/village, etc. With this, there would be greater suspicion directed towards kekkei genkai clans, because they're more "genetically predisposed" to being unpredictable, because they would appear more loyal to their own than to the whole of the village, because they were the likeliest to turn traitor, and so on.

This would be a gradual process going on since the 1st War, but I believe that the 2nd War was where this kickstarted into becoming so much worse, because that one saw the destruction of Uzushio. It was a village composed entirely of a single clan, didn't bend to any of the big 5, and the Uzumaki were "savage" and had abilities that were greatly feared. It would be interesting to consider the idea that their associations with Konoha would have done them more harm than good here, too, given that Konoha was the Big Bad in the 2nd War and an alliance with them would not have been viewed positively.

It's thinking about all this in context, where nationalism was at its peak, where there's an idea that genetic chakra abilities impair swathes of people from being regular functioning shinobi like everyone else, is how we can imagine the Uchiha were discriminated against. They had another disadvantage to them as well, given that one of the first deadly attacks committed on Konoha was done by one of them. If we want to go back to the police force argument, it would be interesting to consider the idea that while it had been a good position for them at first, the utility and influence of the institution gradually eroded over time, and by the time the era where the massacre happened came along it became nearly meaningless since most of its original functions had been assigned elsewhere; as the kekkei genkai clan discrimination rose, the Uchiha also fell victim to it and their influence within the village significantly reduced out of fear of them.

The surveillance and the sequestering of the Uchiha Clan came after two important events; the first being the 3rd Great Shinobi War, and the second being the Nine Tails' attack on Konoha which happened barely a year post-armistice. Konoha was barely recovering from global armed conflict when half of it was destroyed in that attack; tensions are high, the Hokage is dead, and so the village saw an incredibly convenient scapegoat in the Uchiha clan.

So... yeah, that's how I see it! I find this a more fun interpretation than just pointing fingers at individual characters, because it allows me to consider the wider worldbuilding of the Naruto world, and also doesn't assume the Uchiha's position was especially unique and the end-be-all of all the problems with Naruto's politics. It's certainly important, but it's part of a greater network of problems too!

[tianasficrecs168]

Random Naruto Fic recs

Most of these are going to be general fic recs, ones without a ship, just focused on family/friendship and whatnot.

Also I'm obsessed with time travel, so like. There's a lot of that here.

A whole bunch of abandoned works, as well, sadly. This doesn't mean they aren't worth reading just bc they're unfinished!!! Please give 'em a chance.

Edit: some fics from here have been moved to a different list (yes I figured out how to categorize stuff just now, shut up), you can find them on my Warring States Era Naruto Fics

Here's the sitch:

A black dot • means it’s a one-shot

Brackets (…) means it's still being updated/not done/WIP – and I'm paying close attention to it

(000) -> disappeared off the internet (don't worry I have a copy shh)

(general+) -> Time travel or dimension hopping – something along those lines

100demons: "Ten Years Gone" (general+) a series, one of three Thirty year old Kakashi was supposed to have been killed by Pein during the Invasion. Instead, he wakes up in the body of his twenty year old self. (It gets a lot more complicated.)

Chica Blanca: - "One Chance" (...) (general+) last update: 2020 Revenge never tasted so bitter. It never was supposed to be this useless waste of life. Now Sasuke has a chance to go back and change everything.

Frozen Shattered Roses: - “Loop” (...) (general+)                       last update: 2009 My name is Naruto and I'm cursed. I'm trapped in a loop of time, reliving the final fourteen years of my life for the third time. Only this time things will be different, because this time I have a plan to escape.

Phoenyxx: - “Unofficial adoption” (general) • A bed-ridden, sickly Kakashi receives a tiny unexpected visitor late at night, which causes a few interesting discoveries. Another moment to add to an alternate universe.

Jedi Honor Bound Ninja: - “To Be Cared For” (general) • Naruto doesn't often get sick, but when he does he knows his routine: hunker down and be miserable. But this time around maybe he can finally have a taste of what others normally have.

Laurelsblue: - “Summer Grass” (general) • There are many misconceptions about her. 20 Truths about Fuu, the Nanabi Jinchuuriki.

Blackkat: “Sweet baby, I need fresh blood” (general+) • Shukaku fixes the timeline. Grumpily. And with a lot of bloodshed.

Blackkat: “With friends like these” (general) • If she isn’t utterly mistaken, there's a flush rising in Orochimaru’s pale cheeks, one she only ever used to see when Jiraiya was being especially handsy during their genin days. It’s been a long time since Orochimaru got over that particular crush, and Tsunade stares at him now, at the averted eyes and rising color and aggrieved slant to his mouth, and feels glee bubbling up inside of her. “Really?” she says, delighted. “Who?”

Blackkat: “This is the passing of all shining things” (general) • There's a monster whispering in Minato's head, curled around his soul. It’s vast and hungry and full of fury, radiates it and basks in it and lets it spill over through the bars that cage it. If Minato had one ounce more energy, he would rage too, but— Anger is a luxury right now, an indulgence. He can't afford it.

Blackkat: “Switch It Up” (general) • Yamato is assigned to Team 7 as their jounin sensei. He may or may not be an evil mastermind, but it all works out for the better.

QuoteMyFoot: - “In The Name Of” (general) • Slowly, Sasuke forgets what 'living' is. (Post-massacre)

Searching.For.Enadi: “If the shoe fits“ (...) (general+)                     last update: 2020 Time travel. Technically, she could consider this the greatest mission she has ever undertaken, or a brilliant opportunity to finally hit the hot springs. (Or, the one where Haruno Sakura really, really needs a vacation).

Whispering Darkness: - “The life and times of Hatake Kakashi: nukenin” (...) (general+) In the sealed scroll he finds a Bingo Book – his own page marking him as an S-class nukenin with flee-on-sight orders. “Ok. That is definitely different.” In his head he blames Naruto – even if his number one unpredictable student had been nowhere near him on this mission. When things go this stupidly impossibly wrong it must somehow be the future Hokage’s fault. *it's marked as completed but the story's not done in my heart. so i live in delusional hope that it'll be updated one day

Narf—for-the-Garthoc: “Beautiful Day” (general) • Naruto focuses on his last day as Hokage and the people who mean so much to him.

Agent Malkere: - „What You Knead“ (...) (general) last update: 2022 It started, as most things did in Kakashi's life, with a mission gone wrong. (In which Kakashi accidentally acquires an emotionally healthy coping technique.)

Katlou303: - „Time Flies Like An Arrow“ (...) (general+) last update: 2021 Sakura traveled back in time with the intent of changing everything, but something went wrong, and now she's a four-year-old civilian having nightmares about impossible monsters and losing friends she has yet to meet.

Deletrear: - „Kick The Habit“ (...) (general+)                              last update: 2020 Yes, Itachi's emotional and physical well-being is his first and only priority. No, Sasuke does not have anything remotely resembling a plan to ensure this. It's fine, honestly.

Wroth_and_ruin: - „About Face“ (...) (general)                                      last update: 2017 A little yellow-haired boy saves Sakura from the bullies. And everything changes.

Elumish: - „Adoption by Defenestration; or, A Family Can Be A Fox Demon, Its Jinchuriki, and Three Dozen Highly-Trained Assassins” (general) • He will not be the ANBU who let the jinchuuriki plummet to his death out a fourth story window. Let that be another ANBU’s legacy.

Elesrea: - “Anachronistic Drift” (...) (general+) last updated: 2021                                    Her plan was flawless. Save Shisui. Save the world.

Cyan96: - “Kurama” (...) (general)                                        last update: 2018 Namikaze Minato makes a mistake. Uzumaki Kushina makes a choice. Naruto ends up growing up with a red haired, foul tempered older brother who wants Konoha to be atomized, preferably yesterday.

Dragonpyre: - “Time Travel? What the Fuck?” (...) (general+)                                                       last update: 2020 Basically, Team 7 vs. Kaguya, final smack down. Then suddenly POOF they’re twelve again and waiting to meet their sensei on team assignment day. With no way to get back they decide to stop the war before it begins, and maybe save some people along the way. But they’re twelve, how are they supposed to do that? Starring: Naruto Everyone's-My-Friend Uzumaki, Sasuke Maybe-I-Won't-Destroy-Konoha Uchiha, and Sakura Better-Than-This Haruno; with a guest appearance from Kakashi's guilt complex. We'll be in for a ride folks.

Tozette: - “Strike A Match” (general+) • Sasuke could have reversed time to save the world. He could have done it for his mother and his father, he could have done it for his clan or his village. That's... Those are sweet ideas. They're sort of like what might happen if you let Naruto imagine a motive for Sasuke to return to his hellish childhood. Save the village. Save the world. Be a hero. Sasuke makes a terrible hero.

YumeMadarame: - “I’ll fix it for you” (general+) Kurama wakes up in the dark, trapped inside a human body. The memory loss doesn't help. The Uchiha body either. When he finally understands he’s been sent years in the past, – decades, even – before Kaguya’s revival, before the devastation that had come with it, and before Naruto’s birth… he realizes he’s been given a chance to start anew. An opportunity to make things right, this time around.

Microgeek: - “Fox and Son” (...) (general) last update: 2021 Kurama has little love for humans and even less for his jailors, those Uzumaki with wind and tide in their blood, audacious enough to trap a god beneath their skins. But there is enough love left in him for his newest host, who had as little say in this life as Kurama did, and asked Kurama for friendship anyway. (In which Kurama raises a child out of love, hope, and spite, Naruto grows up to be terrifying, and Konoha collectively regrets that an ancient chakra-beast is better at parenting than they are.)

AvocadoLove: “Teach Your Children Well” (...) (general+)                    last update: 2010 What difference can one man make? After Madara and Sasuke's final attack on the village, Rokudaime Kakashi finds a time-travel scroll. Now he's Team Seven's sensei again. And this time, he's going to do things differently. 

Lolistar92: “Kit and kin” (general+) a series, one of 8 (no this isn't a typo. 8) The Sandaime is resolute when he shakes his head. “No, Kakashi. Naruto is safe where he is. Return to your post, as ordered.” Kakashi doesn’t move. “I’ll give you time to reconsider,” he says, jovial tone chilling with how juxtaposed it is from his previous killing intent. ~~~~ Or, former Rokudaime Kakashi wakes up in the body of his 14 year old self, fresh from the Kyuubi attack. He may not have been allowed to save his first pack, but he sure as hell is going to save Naruto.

[sleeplesslark]

Fic writing ask game!

9, 10, 16, 26, 27

Omg thank you!

This gets ramble-y fast so going under a cut

9. How did you get into Fanfic writing?

I'm going to give two answers. How I started posting fanfic vs writing, if that makes sense.

I started writing and posting fanfic because I have always been more "in" fanfic than original fiction spaces. Idk why but the attitudes around writing in fanfic spaces have always gelled more with me. I wrote a lot of shorter fics but couldn't really get into it the way I could with original. I liked the process of fanfic more though, not having to advertise and not looking to make money of stories.

I struggled to find a fandom that clicked with me. The closest was Alice in Borderland but even then it just didn't stick in a hyperfixation way, more a "this is easy and fun" way. Original fiction was my hyperfixation for years.

Then, Kabuto. I've never hyperfixated harder than on him and writing for him was the reason for it. I think the best way to put it is that I'd never wanted to commit to a fanfic the way I did original fiction before Loyalty's Price. It's wasn't just, "this is technically done and I don't have further interest" it was "I want to write this story and write it well". In a way that's probably the best thing that happened to me writing wise, I hadn't finished a draft in almost a decade before LP because I got very perfectionist about it needing to sell and be worth real money.

What got me into Kabuto was initially his english voice actor's work (which is odd for me since I usually don't notice that stuff). Then it spiraled into me looking for fic and while I was complaining with a friend that I was curious about an exploration of him and Naruto's bond, which there wasn't much fic of, the friend told me to write it and I said "idk he seems happy with orochimaru. Ig i can't see how it would happen" pretty much verbatim. It was something on he Every-Kabuto account during the sannin deadlock that had me rethink that postiob and inspired the set up to LP (which is why the account gets a shout-out in LP fics). From there just trying to figure out Kabuto's voice and the Naruto world led to more analysis of the characters and series which led to more fic ideas...and now i hope genuinely I never stop writing him. It's the happiest I've felt writing since I started.

19. Are there any ships or characters you'd like to write but haven't yet?

Naruto, Misumi, and Yoroi. Headcanon, but I tend to have Misumi and Yoroi as survivors of the Nine-tails' attack, and unlike many kids they kind of remember it. I think it'd be fun to have Naruto interact with these two who were directly impacted by the Nine-Tails but are more neutral about it. Yoroi and Naruto also share something with the backstory I gave Yoroi that would be fun to explore.

Kabuto and Iruka, in a teacher student capacity more than a romance, but I tried to set up something for them in LP but it hasn't panned out, not enough room to let Iruka and Kabuto talk really.

I'm enamored with the idea of Iruka taking this polite but underpreforming student under his wing, not knowing he's a spy, and kinda pseudo adopting him alongside Naruto. I think his friendly but hardass vibe would be fun to give Kabuto as a parental figure and teacher.

16. What do you struggle the most with while writing?

Depends on the fic. I'd say generally anything physical like combat or smut that requires knowing where characters are in relation to each other and exactly how they're moving without it making it read like a script.

Resonance, I struggle with character voice, I hadn't written Misumi or Narutos perspective before which was a challenge, and tone. I don't want it to be too dark (lol it may have passed that signpost). I like analyzing my own work so:

Loyalty's Price: not just rehashing canon, I feel like I do sometimes. Early on confidence was a big issue. I could tell in LP and LP Interlude there were times I was almost like "haha yeah this scenario is impossible Kakashi wouldn't let Kabuto on the team" and talking to those readers rather than the people who were there for the what if.

This One's for the Lonely : (childhood friends au) characterization. Idk how to make Kabuto come off as Kabuto sometimes without his greatest tragedy. And plot, trying to decide the details of how this changes canon.

Inverse: (prison au) plot. It's meant to be very character focused but it can be hard to direct scenes or decide how to get to the ending. Part of me wants to give it a plot anyway but I'm not sure yet.

Shiver/Lose Yourself in Pieces: wording.

Oto's finest: characterization, Kabuto Misumi and Yoroi are a hard relationship to nail down.

I also compare fics to each other too much. I am too much of a perfectionist to the point where it actually inhibits more than helps.

26. Do you ever "prep" your fics with outlines or warmups before you start writing or do you jump right in?

Idk if this means before I start the fic or before the writing session and ahh, it varies. Sometimes I write and rewrite a paragraph for 45 mins before I get going. I generally outline as I draft whether that be on the computer or on paper and edit to that outline.

27. Are any of your fics based on personal experience?

How Kabuto and later Yoroi experience anxiety and dread is how I do. I don't do much research so I use personal experience with mental health stuff like that. Kabuto finding out about Nonou is more akin to like, a phobia-type fear and the way he feels post Sasori’s death and Yoroi generally is more like what ocd does to me.

If anyone else wants to ask me things and get a long rambling answer, this is the game!

[tj-dragonblade]

Fanfic Tag Game

Tagged by @softest-punk and @landwriter, thank you both!

1. How many fics do you have on AO3? 133

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? I will break 400K with the next thing I post (unless it is somehow less than 401 words lol) Also, this would require actually focusing on something to finish it

3. What fandoms do you write for? Currently? Sandman (technically, Dreamling). Previously? MCU, Naruto, Saiyuki, and Gundam Wing

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Overall (these are from my Naruto days and more than ten years old): Delayed (or, Why Kakashi Is Never On Time) (GaiKaka) at 3963 Past the Limits (KakaNaru) at 1272 Affirmation (KakaNaru) at 1022 Worth It (KakaIru) at 1005 Vigil (GaaNaru) at 843 (It kills me that I am Just Not That Into Kakashi and yet he's fucked his way into four of my top five, lol)Current fandom tops, just for fun (all of which are at most a year-plus-change in age) Use Your Words at 443 Insatiable at 398 Fluffbruary Fills (2023) at 375 In the Morning Light at 318 Built For You at 308

5. Do you respond to comments? Yes, generally! I am still catching up on Fluffbruary comments, much to my chagrin

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Going aaaallllll the way back to Gundam Wing, I did a songfic where I implied a breakup until the final-line reveal that the character had gasp actually died. There may be a couple other angst-based pieces in my catalog, but that I think is the Most(tm).

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Most everything I write is a happy ending, when there's any semblance of plot involved. Uh. The Umbrella Boys AU had a wedding; maybe that counts? Either that or the Thessaly breakup fic with all the hurt-comfort pining that finally resolves into requited realization.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Never have, would like to keep it that way.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? The good kind *eyebrow waggle*

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I have…three, that could be counted as crossovers, and one that's a proper fusion. None of them are particularly crazy. Duo and Wufei did Naruto roleplay in the bedroom. Kakashi and Naruto took on Princess Bride's fire swamp. Gojyo and Hakkai acquired Jiipu from Count D and his pet shop with a complete disregard for the fourth wall. Maybe that one, then, though it's more crack than crazy-crossover. Hob wearing the Wavemother's Robe is not enough of anything to count as a crossover.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of, no

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes! I don't recall which ones but I've had requests to translate to Chinese, to Russian, and I think Spanish as well? Possibly French also. My memory is shit. Je suis désolé.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic? Yeah, a friend and I co-wrote a couple back in GW and it was…fun? At the time? It started as me helping her with the smut portion of a thing she was doing and turned into a cowrite with a sequel. Not the sort of thing I'd have written on my own, and definitely not now twenty years later with my current kink preferences

14. What’s your all time favourite ship? …yeah, that's not a thing I can answer. Whichever I'm fixated on is inevitably my favorite at the time but once the fixation fades, I still have so much love for each of them.

15. What’s a fic you’d like to finish but don’t think you ever will? Oh my god there are so many. But there are two-three unfinished drafts for ThorBruce fic that I really—see, my MCU fandom experience soured so fast I did not have my usual three-year run of productive ficwriting and the ideas I was working on probably could have been finished were that not the case. I would still love to finish them but the motivation (let alone the time) is just not there.

16. What are your writing strengths? I take great pride in my smut, and I like to think I'm good at it. Painting pictures with my words? Maybe character voice, in certain cases.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Plot. Stories with plot and progression and chapters and such. Follow-through to finish pieces that don't get done in the initial burst of focus.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic? If I had a need for it at some point, I would want to consult a native speaker to ensure correct translation and I would include the translation in footnotes etc. But it would have to be some really specific reason that the foreign language was needed/integral to some story device to not just indicate via some other means (e.g., '"xyz," he said, in perfect French', use of italics, etc) that a different language is in use.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Gundam Wing. If we don't count the 'DS9 novel idea' that I recall making notes on in my journal back in high school, or any of the Mary Sue DS9 thoughts I would also journal about. None of that was ever 'actual writing' nor did I have anywhere I would have shared it in '96.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? Again. How'm I supposed to pick? Ugh. Let's see, fandom by fandom. Gundam Wing…no, nothing there is a favorite. Saiyuki…When the Chips Are Down. Comedy gen-fic based on a tidbit of fandom lore is not something I manage terribly often but I am quite pleased with this one; Jiipu's pov always delights me and I'm proud of all the voice work here also. Naruto…maybe Seized? Sai POV is one of my strengths and I think it came through really well in that one. MCU…Carpe Diem, I'm very pleased with character voices in that one. Sandman…I remain very fond of the Drunken Confessions Fluffbruary 2023 fic and the Car and Cutoffs one might be my favorite smutfic. So far.

If you'd like to do this, please take my passive tag this has been sitting in my drafts for weeks.

[sweet-cuddlebug]

~ Welcome to my blog ~

♤ About me.

• You can call me Mers, Mercy or Mersi.

• My pronouns are they/them/she/her/he/him.

• 18 years old.

• Bisexual Demigirl.

• Also a taurus.

• And neurodivergent.

• Instagram

♡ About interaction rules.

• Do not interact with this blog if you are LGBTQIAphobic, pedophillic or MAP, exclusionis, racist, ableist. Immature and hatefull in general.

• If in some of my posts the information shared is wrong or incomplete, please let me know through comments so I can edit it.

• If you felt offended or attacked in any way due to my post, let me know through private messages so we can discuss and resolve the problem or misunderstanding.

• You can leave comments with tips to improve my drawings (as long as the comment is respectful and refrains from using bad words).

• You can ask about the content I share, sources of entertainment I know, would watch, or could talk about.

• I have no problem blocking other blogs.

◇ About the content.

• The posts I write and publish myself are taged as "original post". The posts I reblog are under the tags "reblog/re blog", usually both. Keep in mind in case you want to see my original content.

• Requests: I'm open to drawing requests if you ask in my inbox! OC, a character you like, etc. Please keep in mind the kind of drawings I've shared so far (see #original post #digital drawing #traditional drawing #pencil drawing)

• Commissions: Commissions not available at the moment, sorry!

• In this blog I will talk (or reblog) and publish fanart about the sources of entertainment that I enjoy.

• Accompanied by occasionally talking and publishing drawings of my own OCs.

• From time to time I will talk or reblog about content that may be considered political or sensitive, I will try to use tags well to avoid discomfort.

• At the moment, Gamzee Makara is a recurring character on my blog, both in my original content and reblogs.

♧ About the fanbases I'm a part of (or just enjoy) ( "☆" currently a favorite)

• Cómics / Webcómics:

☆ Homestuck _ ☆ 13 Cards / 13 Карт (The Land of Kings) _ Crow Strider AU _ Rodney R Rodney _ Heartstopper _ The Little Trashmaid _ Castle Swimmers

• Anime:

☆ Mob Psycho 100 _ ☆ Naruto _ Demon Slayer _ Spy X Family _ High Guardian Spice _ any Ghibli production

• Cartoons Series:

☆ Invincible _ ☆ 13 cards / 13 Карт _ Xiaolin Showdown _ Adventure Time _ Hanazuki _ Danny Phantom _ The Owl House _ Bluey _ Avatar: The Last Airbender _ The Legend Of Korra _ Hazbin Hotel _ Steven Universe _ Villainous _ Final Space _ Rise Of The TNMT _ DuckTales _ Gravity Falls _ Arcane _ Over The Garden Wall _ Monkey Kid _ Invader Zim _ Ok KO Let's Be Heros

• YT series:

Metal Family _ Lackadaisy _ Eddsworld _ The Amazing Digital Circus _ Gaslight District

• Movies:

Turning Red _ How to Train Your Dragon _ Kung Fu Panda _ Trolls _ Sound of Freedom

(pretty much any Disney or Pixars movie to be honest, those are the ones I remember right now)

• Musicals:

☆ Epic: The Musical _ Hamilton _ Dear Evan Hansen _ Be More Chill _ Mean Girls _ Six _ Heathers _ Beetlejuice _ Nerdy Prudes Must Die _ The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals _ Ride The Cyclone

• Video Games:

☆ Little Nightmares _ ☆ Ace Attorney _ Danganronpa _ Sally Face _ Little Missfortune _ Five Nights at Freddy's _ Undertale _ Deltarun _ Night In The Woods _ Detroit: Become Human _ Pokemon Sun & Moon

• Minecraft Series:

Karmaland (4 & 5) _ Hermitcraft (6 to 10) _ Rats SMP_ The Lifes Series _ OriginsSMP _ QSMP

• Books:

Percy Jackson _ Harry Potter

(Ok, technically I don't read many famous books to be part of the fandom, but I usually know what people are talking about)

Dividers made by @enchanthings-a

[dark-elf-writes]

I have never consumed any ff7 media outside what you’ve talked about so here are my assumptions and thoughts on your au built around my very very very limited knowledge (pt 1):

Turks are a thing here. Is this like a post apocalyptic world where only Turkish people survived?

Or is this like a human classification type deal? Or a group?

Local small blond child is being raised by the best Turk. Is he the best at being Turkish or the best at being good? Very important. Ik one Turkish person and I hate them (derogatory x100) so this will affect my opinion of this man (?)

What tf is mako

Why is it in this child’s eyes

Are they mermaids? Have I missed their mermaid tails in fanart? Mako mermaid powers?

Is it magic? Fantasy crack? Secret government shit you shoot up in a back alley for a power up?

There’s a person (?) named Reno that’s probably rly fun to piss off

If angels exist here did Jesus? Did this Jesus have a sword?

Why does this Vincent person need to be tricked out of a box? Is he a cat perhaps?

Why is a blond child setting things on fire to wake someone up? A little extreme but it has spirit.

And why is the person in need of being woken up sleeping in a box? I’m not positive this Vincent isn’t a cat. Are Turks cats? Cat-boys?

The box was a coffin. A little dramatic considering he clearly isn’t dead. Like just get an eye mask fr.

He a vampire or some shit? Did they make him a vampire because he’s Turkish? Did they put him in a box because he’s Turkish? That’s rude

Oh there was a lock

If a tiny blond could break it I’m not convinced this Turkish cat couldn’t do it too

Whoever this hojo mf is I hope they know I’m watching their ass and am in full support of their murder

Who’s chaos and why are they in the Turkish cats head? Is this a naruto situation? Are they paying rent? Is this why Vincent was locked in a coffin?

Is shinra the government or something? An organization? The group of this hojo mf

There’s aliens now?

The alien is wrecking the world AGAIN? As in once the first timeline and now here? Or they wrecked it once already and are coming back for fun?? Do aliens not have anything better to do. So fucking lame.

If I saw an alien trying to wreck my plants shit I’d simply say “that’s loser behavior” and leave.

They’d be so stunned by my confidence they’d just have to stop

Ff7 is frankly just wild trying to explain to someone in general but in the broadest of strokes I can say that the Turks are basically spies/assassins/what have you for the evil uber corporation (Shinra) that is fucking up the planet. Mako is in essence the lifeblood of the planet that said evil corporation make into “renewable energy” (its not and is in fact just trying to heal the planet from the fucked up alien (JENOVA) thousands of years ago before he was banished to the timeout pit and unfortunately unearthed by you guessed it the evil corporation) and makes the very few people who don’t like die immediately insanely strong/fast/etc while also making their eyes glow. It’s weird to see on a child basically only seen by Shinras elite fighting force (SOLDIERs) and therefore worth mentioning a lot. Vincent was technically dead or at least was very much hardcore attempted murdered before being experimented on getting Chaos and a hand full of other murderous entities shoved inside of him by Hojo (evil scientist for evil company) who is basically the reason the alien was able to fuck shit up so bad in canon/the first time around in this au by implanting her cells into his unborn son. Vincent chose a coffin for a guilt/depression nap after he did and didn’t die a la a certain cat.

That’s the barest of bones not going into the whole eco terrorism weird soul bond mommy issues memory/identity theft and the cat robot… or the clones… or

Also the mind control there’s a lot of that too

Yeah it’s a lot.

[myfaveisfuckable]

Rants under the read more

narcistoru/secretoru: Yeah i can gurantee this is the only submission for them for Some Reason. Because no one ships them. Like i have searched the internet far and wide and turn up with like. Close to literal zero. And here's the thing, this is entirely illogical. They work together in this evil group and their deals are essentially that they're. Unhappy people. At first you think they're just annoying but actually they're annoying snd Extremely Miserable. In silly ways, they are such losers and so cringefail. I could write an essay on both of them individually, but basically i love how their focus isn't on being better people, it is on being happier. Individually.

The show is divided into clear parts of who is the main antagonist at the time which really makes you FEEL how unhappy they each are. They're a group but they're also not bc they choose to be unhappy ad get on each other's nerves about it and that's a prime focus of their characters. Anyway, these two make me insane, they spend a lot of time together during the middle part of the show, bc the first villain is gone so now it's just the two of them and their leader who isn't doing much yet. After this part, one of them, narcistoru, is defeated so he's gone for the time being. But these two, they hate each other SOOOOOOOO much it's insane. This is because Narcistoru is an annoying bitch and Secretoru hates that. And they're both generally insane people with dumb beliefs and issues that they view wrongly. It's just so glorious to see them annoy each other so much. Post Narcistoru's main screen time, he gets his conclusion episode. He escapes from prison and Secretoru is supposed to retrieve him. But like not because they need him, in fact, they absolutely did not care that he was arrested because none of these people give a flying fuck about each other. It's just that he wasn't supposed to be a risk. Secretoru and Narcistoru have a rather petty and hilarious fight. Because you see. Now they don't have to get along. They are not on the same side. So the hostility is really thriving here. In fact, she manages to capture him, and while fighting the pretty cures (magical girls), hensays some annoying shit and she goes "actually i changed my mind" and shoves him off this rock in order for the monster (they always summon one) to fucking kill him. Like she tries to murder him in cold blood soley because he's annoying and this was entirely inevitable actually. She wants that twink obliterated. They don't bring this up again in the finale when they're both in prison. They just. Kind of hang out now. They've reached a level of tolerance.

And you may think "why do you ship this" LOOK. THEIR INTERACTIONS. ARE SO FUNNY. IT'S JUST. A VERY FUN SHIP. BECAUSE THEY'RE HILARIOUS. The hostility is so great and i think it would be neat if they had some t4t hatesex. It would solve nothing. They mske each other so much worse. But it would be very hot. Also secretoru has a general "can you shut the fuck up" attitude towards him. I don't even technically ship it but i ENJOY the ship.

And yet. I am so alone in this which is insane because i definitely expected ship content for them even before i actually wanted it myself.

But no, of course people ship Narcistoru with actual fifteen year olds. Like so much. And there is ZERO content for the ship with the other Actual Adult that he interacts with on a regular basis and who he has a fantastic and entertaining and INTERESTING dynamic with. So basically, i am not just sad, i am also SO SALTY. They are so insanely rarepair despite being an absolute epic duo. Awesome crackship, 10/10, literally comedy

Tsume/orochimaru: Scary jock milf x scarier nerd snilf (snake ilf). They'd be so awful. Can you imagine what they'd put kiba through lmao... Kiba Anko Hana sibling supremacy they'd be on a watch list 100%... Even funnier when Kiba becomes a cop. But back to the ship itself I think Orochimaru needs pegged to calm down and I think Tsume can't use technology at ALL so they both provide a needed service. Like I don't think they're in a steady relationship more like consistent hook up slightly divorced bi4bi violence. Yeah. Anyway I think Tsume could and should destroy his snussy

(tsume orochimaru is my (the poll King 👑) ship and I don't know if I can vote against that amazing narcistoru secretoru rant tbh 👑)

[i-left-my-room-tidy]

favorite thing to do in each of your drs?

[thanks for this ask!]

- - -

HP DR

splurging 😭😭😭 I've always had a bad habit of hoarding things in my CR, and the fact that i scripted (technically) unlimited money for myself doesn't help that. i have the backing of two great families (grindelwald and martell; black, crouch, and malfoy don't count; the gaunt vaults have nothing to add, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), and while those major houses took hits during the two blood wars, ultimately, it didn't detract from their wealth.

so, yes, I'm just grabbing as much as i need. as someone who's financially struggling in my CR, it's so fucking cathartic to not worry about a serious restriction in money. i do have a limit set for each shopping session, though—my uncle became stricter with my spending when i came back from leeds with several bags of clothes (rich or not, he said, i can't be careless with how i spend—which, alright, point).

i usually just buy clothes and trinkets—i rarely buy books unless i feel i can actually finish them. I'm still unused to not using a phone to search for articles or stories online. some of the things I'm ecstatic at having spent money on include: an original 59 gibson standard (y'all i actually cried over this), several issues of the antique doll collector magazine, and an honest-to-god ballgown (i can try drawing a replica of it when i have the time). if I'm lucky, i can also find some good vintage thingamajigs at garage sales [i once bought a pair of wooden hairsticks with dangling pearls, which actually resemble the ones i wear in my naruto DR—lmao it made me kinda freak out when i saw them].

- - -

Naruto DR

experimenting with my sharingan, or elemental bending in general. i don't think i can ever get bored with doing either of those things. they're frustrating, sometimes, when i feel as if I'm not making progress with a certain aspect or process (like controlling multiple elements at once, or working on my stamina)—but overall, they're activities i could never stay idle with, and i enjoy that.

I've only recently started practicing with my mangekyō abilities (I'll make a post about the eyes themselves in the future). it's fun, and just the slightest bit morbid, but genuinely exciting. I've used my mangekyō on rats (and afterwards, feeding their remains to my snake), and smaller variants of its power on shady individuals. the actual abilities of my mangekyō sharingan are a bit, erm, psychologically violent, so take it with a small grain of salt when i do talk about it.

elemental bending, on another note, is so fucking convenient. i keep telling my clanmates to be more creative with their jutsu (looking at you, you fucking elders), because any job's easier when you approach situations from a different angle—but everyone mostly leaves me alone to my, and i quote, "freak of nature shenanigans". i actually laughed when madara told me that—shifting really makes you OP, huh. anyways, i use elemental bending not just for combat-related activities, but also mundane ones. even just a gradeschool level of understanding on how science works might suffice. basic house skills: cooking, washing clothes, ironing, scrubbing floors; alright, chores, but they're actually fun when i apply elemental bending on them.

although, the radicality of some ideas i borrowed from history are really seen as strange. and no, nobody's accusing me of witchcraft or foul play, it's honestly just weird to them to see me use the science we're familiar with.

[gaphic]

@strawberryy-fields putting this in a new post bc it's A BIT LONG lol

Unfortunately this is one of those 'describe a chair' questions- the finer points of tagging ARE just something you have to develop a Sense for, so I'm going to attempt to construct guidelines with examples lol

Firstly, tagging for visibility is 10000% completely fine! It's just that visibility works differently on tumblr. When you post on Instagram (for example) you're not really showing it to anybody- there's a middleman. You're submitting it for algorithmic review. So if you only tag #naruto and the algorithm isn't stanning #naruto that day, it's entirely possible that NO ONE will see it, even if they directly search #naruto! Which also means communities can't consolidate into specific tags. In that system visibility means tagging extremely generously

But on tumblr, there is no middleman. If you tag posts as #naruto, people searching #naruto WILL see them unless they've blocked you, so communities consolidate in one or two Main Tags, because checking a ton of different tags is tedious. So if you use the Main Tags, you've probably already maximized your visibility!

For example, with #vino and #wine- tagging both of those doesn't increase your visibility, because nobody uses #vino. If you check the tag it is roughly 200% bots and instagram crossposts, and 1% people speaking italian. #wine is the tag people actually use!

(NB4 'so italians aren't people,' cataloguing distinctions between the same concept in different languages are very useful. Italians searching #vino are probably looking for, yknow, italian posts! If they wanted english posts they would search #wine! Remember, no algorithm to intuit what languages you speak)

Now, synonymous tags ≠ spam, but they COULD be spam if the tags are not used as synonyms. Every now and then airplanes will turn up in the #flight rising tag, which is technically 'correct' (it is a 'flight' which is 'rising') but... #flight rising is the Main Tag for a dragon breeding game. On instagram the algorithm would probably say 'hm. the dragon people won't be interested in this' and keep it out of their feed, but on tumblr, the dragon people just have to look at an airplane now

"How do I know which is the main tag?" You just gotta check em manually, I'm afraid. Sometimes they're obvious, sometimes not

Some more examples that might be instructive are aesthetics and art style prompts!

So, there's a difference between 'flowercore' and 'flowers,' right? If you tag every instance of a literal flower as 'flowercore,' what's the point of the 'flowercore' tag? At best it's redundant, at worst it might be actively disrupting another community's tag. Aesthetic tags have become almost completely unusable lately because people treat aesthetics and nouns as synonyms (imo a lot of people confuse '[aesthetic]' for 'anything an artist would use as ref/insp for [aesthetic]' if that makes sense?)

Art style prompts are nuanced. If the prompt is 'draw Orochimaru in 6 styles' then #orochimaru #naruto is definitely correct. But if the prompt is 'draw your OC in 6 styles' and one of those is the Naruto style, it probably has no business in #naruto. I think of the distinction as 'this post is related to the tag, but is the tag the point of the post?' If your OC isn't from the Naruto universe, the point is probably #art #my art #style prompt

Another very important note in 'tags that are relevant to you, but not relevant to search':

god i miss my childhood <3 #cartoons #kidcore #pokemon

If I searched these tags I do not care about this post, sorry. It's boring and I will assume that you will CONTINUE to tag every inane thought you have, disrupting my search experience, so I will block you. This gets REALLY frustrating when, for example, fanartists do this, and there's no way to block the fluff without blocking the art as well

HOWEVER,

god i miss my childhood <3 #cartoons #kidcore #pokemon #opsthoughts

Is a different story! Because now it has a personal tag. Now I can block #opsthoughts and OP can still use the other tags for their own organizational purposes!

Something I have consistently failed to prioritize is discussing the use of tags for filtration. I mentioned that if you get the Main Tags you've probably maximized your visibility, which is true- if you tag your Orochimaru fanart as #naruto, everybody who wants to see it will probably see it. But if you tag it as #naruto #orochimaru, people who just kinda hate that character can now filter it out!

Now, I don't want to sound like specific tags are ONLY useful for blocking, they just give diminishing returns for visibility. Generally speaking, the more specific a tag is, the less likely anyone is going to search it- #naruto is going to be searched more than #orochimaru is going to be searched more than #orochimaru fanart, and 99% of the people searching #orochimaru fanart will be checking #naruto anyway!

Fandoms with distinctive generations are prooobably a soft exception to this? Like I'm sure there are lots of people who search #mlp:fim but never check #mlp

Now, to move away from fandom and use my Controversial Example Photo

If I'm searching #cherry I do not fucking want to see a photo where two cherries are BARELY visible. This is one of those things that feels really intuitively obvious to me, so I'm struggling to break it down clearly, but like. If I search #mango I want to see pictures OF MANGOES! Not pictures of a picnic table with a plate with some vague yellow slices on it!

I could go on forever because this topic is endlessly iteratively nuanced, but this post is already a mile long lol, so. Hopefully this is helpful?

[imaginativeamateur]

[Sharing Corner] Tips on Starting a Fanfiction Blog

This post is the story of my blog and some tips for anyone that wants to start blogging! A big shout out to @rinnegankakashi for mentioning me, otherwise, this post would not exist in the first place.

I pitched the ball with the mindset to improve my English (in fact, I even put it in the description once😅😅) because I'm not a native English speaker. My story is quite funny to tell. When I started blogging, I was watching Naruto and reading others' works on Tumblr. And I thought they were amazing, and so can I. That being said, I'm amateur and can't be any more amateur😅 but I believe everyone has room for improvement.

Generally, the most important tip I can give you when starting a blog is that you must adore what you do and you must be willing to dedicate your time and energy to it. For me, looking at y'all interactions boosts my energy so much. The second most important one is that you should be able to balance things out. You shouldn't spend too much time on this and neglect other aspects of life. The third one is being persistent. My blog was quite 'uneventful' at first and I definitely felt the input wasn't matching the output. However, everything soon turned the other way and I can't be any happier right now with its current status!

More specific and technical tips👇:

Organizing your blog:

Generating a theme: Aesthetically speaking, I think you should plan how to organize your blog (masterlists, taglists, format for posts, tags, images for posts if you plan to include them, fonts, borders, colors, etc.) Even though it's solely written works, it will definitely be more interesting to work on polishing your blog's appearance, too. For my blog, I'm currently using 'Lilac' by @seychethemes. I changed some stuff around but the basics are still credited to the original creator, a huge huge thank you💖.

Setting your boundaries: Make sure to state what you write and what you are UNCOMFORTABLE❗️ writing about. In my opinion, making it clear in the first place is crucial to avoid any misunderstanding or just undesirable circumstances in the future. I put my 'boundaries' right in the Masterlist, in the Disclaimers section.

Taking request: This one totally depends on you but there's an opportunity cost to it. If you take requests, it might feel a bit pressuring sometimes, that's why having a balanced life is crucial, again. But you'll have a lot of ideas if you open requests (my readers are brilliant💖💖). I suggest if you want a mix of both, close your requests when you have received a certain number of inboxes. Hence, you can also consider opening special requests for events.

Adding a tip jar: Very necessary😝😝!

Planning your content:

Establishing a concrete structure: In my opinion, what you want to write about varies impulsively over time (mine does for sure🙃) so I make sure to have a list of formats or genres that I write for (drabbles, short series, collections, short fics, headcanons). This way, I know when to get back at times I drift away--which unfortunately happens a lot😢.

Knowing your strength: I think if you want to produce great pieces, knowing what areas that you'd shine the brightest with fanfictions is necessary. For me, I can show my full potential with fluffs, mainly corny, overly dramatic (it's cheesy but it's the truth😝😝).

Not forcing yourself: Writing is a creative process and you'll lose creativity when you're forced into it. For me, sometimes it just takes an hour to pour out pages of writing. But for other times, I'd sit for hours rewriting the same paragraph. So if you don't feel like it, just leave it aside, go do other stuff, and get back at a later time.

Coming up with ideas: As to how I came up with my ideas, I use old-school mindmaps🤓. I come up with different roles that the reader could partake in and stem off from there. For example, I'd have the reader be a childhood friend of that character and write about the moment they reunite. I think another essential strategy is to just use anything around you as an inspiration. For 'The Bracelet', I literally looked at a bracelet I won at a fair, and BOOM! a child was born😎.

Reading others' works: Read, read, read. You'll be able to learn their different styles and see what would work for your different pieces! You'd also learn more sophisticated words, too😂!

Writing your masterpiece:

Dealing with repetitive diction: It's a pain in the butt for me, especially since I'm not a native speaker so I don't really know many ways to express something. I mainly use Thesaurus for single-phrased words. And this website is the painkiller😂. There are many great resources online and even on Tumblr. Search for 'body language cheatsheet' or something along the line.

Sounding smooth: I definitely recommend reading your work out loud. It helps with identifying awkward structural issues and grammar, too. This also helps with making the dialogues less stiff.

Achieving 'the mood': To set a specific mood for your work, I personally think that paying more time to describe the setting is crucial. Choosing the right words is important, too. I recommend closing your eyes and imagining the scene before you start writing😇, really helpful for me!

P.S.: I really appreciate you for reaching this far. I just want to say thank you so much for your patience. I've been quite inactive for the past few days on Tumblr due to placement tests in school. But I'll return with some fics this weekend, hopefully!

And to prospective writer @rinnegankakashi, I'll be so glad if we can do a collab soon😙😙! And sorry for the late reply!

Have a great day, Everyone!

[evanescentdawn]

5, 15, 16, 19!

thanks, lovely. 🥰

5. what fic of your own won’t you read?

“won’t read” is a strong phrase. more like detest to read is more like it. I wouldn’t want to reread like that t7/sasusaku old naruto fic, because god, what was I doing there….lot of inexperienced there, and me just posting the fic into the wild with no real plot or direction and just. posting the next chp despite that NFKFKKFKFKF tho saying this, im getting the urge to reread it….

and I really don’t want to read my current long fic, because it’s so embarrassing and because every time I did read, it makes me wanna rewrite the thing. also there’s typos that make me go hhhhhh

I didn’t think I wanted to read my sasusaku fics I’ve been posting recently, but I’ve surprised myself! turns out I do want to read them. ah. that kaneki&kaneki fic and toukabday fic. I don’t want go back to them because I feel like there’s a lot of mistakes(?). no, mistakes isn’t the right word. but there’ll be a lot of want fo reread.

….okay, surprisingly there’s a lot of my fics that I wouldn’t want to generally reread again, ahaha. but also want to, just to see how I wrote them, y’know.

15. How do you think your writing as improved over time?

YES !!!! a partially improve I’ve definitely noticed is how I write dialogues!!! I was so hopeless at them, before, ahaha. still not the best but yoooo, I can write them AND love to write them. I’ve been tracking my writing closer, and do deff see improvements. but — also, it’s hard to see track the improvements because it’s….different across fandoms. what I might be struggling for particular fandoms and such, I might be excelling in other’s. because lmao, I deff to regress in writing sometimes when writing for some stuff which is funny.

that reminds me. a particular improvement that just came to mind. ACTION SCENES !!! lol, okay, I don’t even think you can call also this an action scene. but like it was action adjacent? anyways, I used to be so terrible at them. couldn’t even. but learned !!! like I just focus & cut on things. I don’t have to write things fully. it’s a big advice I’ve taken one and it’s been extremely helpful. AND YES… HAVE IMPROVED ON MY SMUT…. but that one is always depressing, lmao, because I keep forgetting variations of words I can use. but v good generally, compared to beginning, lmao.

cutting off here before I go into a big ramble, ahaha. but yes !!! I have improved in writing !!

16. Do you re-read old fics? Is there a time in your writing you won’t go back to?

YES I LOVE REREADING OLD FICS……! particularly, fics that have that Taste that is just for me. and just generally really love how I wrote it.

I don’t want to go back to the old naruto era, LMAO. like ffnet. but like, eh, some of the stuff WAS good there. but I like where I am rn, much better…..AH. NO. I know where I exactly I don’t want to go to. last year, March. god. my early orv era was so terrible. I don’t know what it was but I felt like I degressed SO much, there. I really didn’t like any of my orv wips, then. it was so….urgh…..

19. If you could write an ideal fic, what would it include?

I’m a cringe person so obvs….

MY IDEAL FIC IS THROWING DIMENSION TRAVEL+TIME TRAVEL AND THROWING ALL THE VARIATIONS OF THE CHARACTERS IN ONE ROOM AND FORCING THEM TO WATCH THEIR LIFE…

the drama, the general horrification of some how future would play out to them — and…jeez, I was gonna say something but lost that train of thought. and like, I want fights !!! I want complicated feelings !!! I want that distant feeling of being connected with that “future self” because it’s technically not you yet and hehe, the denial…..that you’ll Do that…..and OF COURSE, my ships. and how they’re not at all love yet, and is the weirdness of seeing yourself being so in love with a particular stranger OR EVEN BETTER YET ur enemy.

like god, I want to write it so badly. BUT NOT OF THAT SKILL LEVEL YET AND GOD JUST THE SHEERNESS IT WOULD REQUIRE. which ahaha….I don’t have at all rn……but someday…..! someday……!!! ITS THE DREAM

I know it’s possible because I have started some of my ideal fics that I would never think I would be able to before so HELL YEAH !!!! ITS OBTAINABLE….!!!

[maliciouslycreative]

How I played damage control to an anti in a small anime fandom and may have led to her ultimate downfall

I know I had a really nice write up of this at one point but oh well. I’ll spill more of the tea in this one because honestly the tea was so hot.

There are a few things that I have to give context to first. Gaia online was like THE mega forum of the 2000s, you made a little avatar and through posting and doing other activities on the forum you made money to buy clothes for your avatar. There were forums for everything but the fannish portions were really what drew in most of the people. The anime I was into was Beyblade. It was a shonen anime about fighting with tops that were possessed by the spirits of magical creatures. The story was honestly pretty average but the characters were fantastic and the fandom is to this day still one of my favourites. The series had a primarily male cast and didn’t even have a female lead until the second season. This led to the fanfic for the English fandom being about 70% canon/OC, 10 % canon m/f, and 20% slash. The most popular character in the English fandom was by far Kai Hiwatari, the loner badboy of the team.

Also before we get started I would like to add that one of my best friends was neck deep in this and the two of us were more or less fandom married. This is the same friend that I fake dated, had feelings for, and she nearly got me into kpop in 2011 so like if you haven’t read that story please read it too because it will give you a good idea of how stupid I am and how much of a fanfic I have truly lived. 

To set the stage I was 16, soon to be 17 when I joined the fandom and it was 2004. In September of that year I wrote a humour longfic that became an absolute smash hit and I found myself somehow fandom famous. It was around this time that I joined Gaia online. I made my little avatar and immediately went looking for the beyblade thread so that I could make new friends. I found the main thread, made my little introduction and at the end of it mentioned that I was a slash writer but I supported all ships. This is where I met C. She had declared herself the authority on Beyblade in these parts and I had just committed the crime of mentioning slash which was very obviously not canon and we did not discuss in this thread because we only discussed canon things. I was like well that’s a bit severe but like sure whatever I just want to hang out and have fun. 

Oh boy did I have no idea what I was in for. 

C was a year older than me and unfortunately that made her older than the majority of the fans at the time. Her favourite character was Kai, and she was not shy about talking about this fact. She stanned Kai above all other characters, and often at their expense. She was also a fanfic writer of a popular canon/OC series. Actually, she was so full of herself that she didn’t even call herself a fanfic writer, no her stories were in fact novels and were apparently very good. I never read them. But more on that later. 

Eventually the slash fans got tired of her being rude to us in the general thread so we made a Beyblade slash thread. There was a core of like 8 or so of us and we honestly had sooo much fun. When C would be too unbearable in the main thread the people from there used to come over to our thread and we’d chat with them about non slash stuff because we were honestly all multishippers and just wanted to have fun. We’d get comments like “wow, I’ve had more pleasant canon het ship discussions in the slash thread than the regular thread”. We never worried about C coming over and getting upset about comments like this because she refused to be associated with anything related with slash lmao. 

I tried my best to keep the peace between C, myself, and the rest of the fandom because ultimately I hate being in fandom drama. I just want everyone to have a good time. I’m a people pleaser. Unfortunately my newfound fame put me in the awkward position of being the most fandom popular person in our small community aside from C. Virtually every fan that read fanfics that came into our thread knew one of us or the other by reputation and C HATED this. Especially because people would come in to the thread, recognise me and go “oh my goodness I love your fanfics!” and I’d be super sweet with them and it’d lead into “I can’t believe how nice you are, I love you” which would lead to us crying at each other. This was not the kind of fan interaction that C got, no her fans were more kind that were there to praise her and worship her like a deity that had blessed them with some gift. Rarely did they tell her how kind she was. 

Back in the mid 2000s there were really commonly those commercials (usually by Christian organisations) asking people to sponsor say children in Africa or to help build schools or provide drinking water. You all probably know the ones; know the language that they used in those commercials. My fandom wife, who I suppose I shall call wifey because yes we were THAT couple back then, once said that C described her fics like those people described donating money to save the lives of Children in Africa. So we used to joke that her fics were so good they’d save lives in Africa. Looking back at it all, she almost had a very fundamentalist Christian approach to bringing people into her fanfics. She of course tried to get all the slash people into reading it. None of us read canon/oc fic mostly due to our poor treatment at the hands of their fans and creators. Getting fed up I one day told her that if she would read any one of my fanfics that I would read the entirety of her novels. Yes, I was willing to commit to read a couple 100k of canon/oc fanfic that I’d never touch normally if she would even read one of my 1k 1 shots. Heck, I had a fic even that shipped 2 minor characters so she didn’t even have to sully herself reading about one of the main characters. It was honestly a good deal in her favour. I kept this up until the day we all left the fandom. Sometimes I do wonder if her fics were even ¼ as good as she claimed, but I will never know because she refused to read my fics. 

She wasn’t all bad and a tyrant all the time. As long as people kept the conversations on track and didn’t come in to the thread saying things like “KAI IS SO HOT ND T3H BEST N I AM GUN 2 MARRY HIM” she stayed mostly civil. It was always hilarious watching InuYahsa or Naruto fans try to come in and bad mouth Beyblade because they’d unleash the dragon and C was great at chasing off undesirables in the thread. 

The real apex of goings on though on Gaia was the guild drama. So guilds were like exclusive themed mini forums within Gaia. Anyone could buy one and run it however they want, as long as it still adhered to Gaia’s ToS. C of course was the owner of the only Beyblade guild. The fandom wasn’t really big enough to support 2 guilds so we just kind of let it go. Technically she allowed people to post slash fanfics but like everything had to be explicitly tagged and there was absolutely no slash RP. Wifey and I controlled a handful of minor characters together in the forum RP and definitely used to try to push the boundaries a little bit. Some ambiguous flirting here, a stray comment there. It was such a fragile balance though because C was heavy on the ban button. The active portion of the guild was just people that were in the cult of C and worshipped her writing. 

Understandably the other slash fans and myself were getting disheartened by this. So we pooled our funds together and decided that we’d open a second guild that though it was run by slash fans we would welcome anyone into our ranks. We just wanted to have a fun place for everyone to hang out, and to hopefully run a few events out of. In hindsight, we should have seen what would happen. When we opened the guild, with me as the guild leader, it was like somebody blew up the whole dam protecting the delicate ecosystem we had cultivated. Every single person in the Gaia fandom that was not a zealous follower of C applied to be in our guild and left her guild. We of course figured that we’d attract some of the gen population but we did not expect to accidentally poach all of it. All of the moderators were getting messages from people thanking us for giving them a place where they could say whatever they wanted without fear of getting their faces ripped off or banned. 

C lost her shit. She was so mad that we went behind her back to ruin her guild. We literally had to show her posts in the very public slash thread that we had been planning this in public and that it was not to ruin her life. We just wanted a place where we could freely post slash. The two of us had some spicy comments back and forth and then she dropped an absolute bombshell on me. Since Gaia’s mail system is terrible I unfortunately no longer have exactly what she said but it was something along the lines of “Ok, you win. I’m going to close my guild.”. Us slash fans had never been doing this to win anything. We had never been competing. We just wanted a safe space to be ourselves. 

C never joined our guild. The fandom slowly faded out within the next year anyway. We weren’t getting new content so naturally people just drifted into other fandoms. C kept up with the main Beyblade thread for a lot longer than most of us but eventually that eventually faded into obscurity too. 

I learned a lot about fandom bullies from those days. But honestly the thing that stuck with me the most out of everything was that if you provide a positive safe space for people they will flock to it. It may seem like there are so many hostile people out there, but there really aren't. They're the minority but they just make sure that their voice is the loudest. The best way is to ignore them and just do your own thing. The bullies just want attention and if you don’t give it to them and prove to them that their opinion doesn’t matter to you then they’ll move in and find something else to yell at.