le-feline

[le-feline]

This is so my thing. Hahahaha. Not gonna lie, it makes me want to write... things... 

Happy Valentine’s day! Here’s My GF Is an Orc Warlord comic from last year

[le-feline]

My Siegfried is only level 90, 10/10/10 and 1.2k Fou. 

I dunno. I have a soft spot for good people who get a bad hand in life. I feel like wanting to make them happy. You get me? 

[le-feline]

Could you please give us the name of your published books ? :D

If you google search the pen name NPD Khanh, you will find results for a couple books (one of which is a biography and available on Amazon. The other book is one on culture and cuisine although I'm not sure if the producer has put that book on Amazon or even international market or not) and lots of magazine articles having to do with culture and human stories.

My current book is wrapped up in NDA because the client is tangentially involved with French upper-crust who dapple in international money laundering. In about a month and a half, you will also see my name attached to some Eroge tower defense game on Steam.

[le-feline]

Status Update - July 2017

Ah, I disappeared for a month and received no less than 4 concerned messages from people wanting to know if I was ok. 

I bet you thought I died!!!!! 

But the truth is even more amazing! I became a zombie!!! A coffee zombie!!! 

…… cooooofffffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee……..

Haha!! Ok, ok, I’ll tell you what happened in the last month and why I disappeared. You see, I took the CELTA course. 

https://www.studycelta.com/?gclid=CLP1wrqk-tQCFdglvQodBW8ICQ

For people who don’t know what it is, the CELTA is arguably the most prestigious cert for teaching English language to non-native adults. The course is incredibly intensive and requires you to commit to it a hundred percent for one month (at least 9am - 5pm but usually it’s a lot more than that). During this course, I regularly worked 14-16 hours a day (class time, prepping for teaching practices, doing the written assignments, so on so forth) and had roughly 3-4 hours of sleep per day. And that went on for an entire month. 

And so that is why you did not see me for that month because I was just up to my eyeballs in work and study materials.

Now, why did I take the CELTA when I have a perfectly good job as a pro biographer and freelance mag writer? Well… because it was a gift. You see, apparently, my father had had enough of my hermit way (helped along by the nature of my job which does not require me to go to any office like the typical office drone people). He … also wanted grandchildren… and I wasn’t giving him any because of my strict rules of never ever mixing personal and professional life barring me from having a steady relationship in recent years… so…. well… you know what desperate Asian fathers can sometimes do (aside from borrowing the neighbor children to play with and pretend that they are grandparents)… he went and gave me this course as a gift and I wasn’t gonna turn down free learning…. 

… So… I went… I cleared out my entire schedule for a whole month and went. 

… But my friends, there’s more!!!! 

You see, during the course, I… developed a crush… on the tutor (or teacher). Ahahahaha….. how embarrassing, but it happened. He’s this grim and dour no-nonsense professor type who speaks softly but never fails to get your attention (because if you don’t, woe befalls you) and who will only occasionally crack an obligatory smile at somebody’s poor attempt at a joke. When I first saw him… well… there was no spark, just a foreboding feeling. I knew then that I don’t want to mess with this person for whatever reason. But then my friends, one day he smiled at me for whatever reason that was I can’t even remember. And… damn… what a smile it was. He looks like a different person when he genuinely smiles. I was completely caught off guard. And for some reason, he just smiles at me a lot. So, my friends… it happened. Before I knew it, my heart started going badump badump badump around him. 

I’m an INTP (Myers-Briggs type). Despite common misconception, INTPs are actually incredibly passionate people. It’s just that we don’t normally show it. My emotions when I admitted to myself that I had it bad were extreme…and sorta bipolar too… 

Sometimes I felt like a teenage girl on her first crush. My thoughts and feelings were… innocent and tender… for a lack of better words. I wanted to embrace him and kiss him on the cheek and tell him to take me home already where we can build our lives together. I would be a happy housewife and devote myself to making him happy. We were gonna have like 5 children and a house with picket fences together. Yes, my teeth nearly rotted during those times too.

But then there are times when all I wanted was just to throw him into a locked room where I would have my wicked ways with him (involving a whole lot of BDSM stuff too). I just wanted to rip off his clothes and make him cry and kneel before me and writhe on the floor, completely helpless. I wanted to break him, to put him in chains and collar, to trample on him, to draw bloody lines on his skin and kiss the lids of his green eyes and leave a trail of bite marks on his face, his neck, his shoulders. I wanted to mark him thoroughly. I want to stamp him with a line saying ‘My possession! Mine! Mine! Mine!’

What did I say about INTPs being secretly incredibly passionate people? Yeah… haha

Well… you know… nothing happened during the course, of course. I’m a grown ass person after all and I wasn’t going to make it uncomfortable for anybody nor jeopardize my getting the ultra hard certificate (that cost a frigging lot of money too). But on the day that the course ended and I knew I had passed, I wrote a love letter… and gave it to him… 

You can read it here right below: 

……..

You normally look like such a grim and dour person, it’s sorta scary. But surprisingly, you have a very nice, kind smile. 

OK. Serious question. Are you single? 

If it’s a no, well… I wil say I enjoy the many times my heart went badump badump badump whenever you made that ‘quietly amused’ expression and write this off as yet another silly crush of mine. 

But in case it’s a yes and I’m not shaking the wrong trees hoping for apples to fall down, then…. wanna share cat-related battle scars sometimes? 

………….

Well… a day after that, he replied by email. Oh my friends…. my grim and dour person… was already taken…. ahh…     

This is my reply: 

‘Ok,

I’ll go play Heartbreak Hotel on loudspeakers now. Thank you for giving me a straight answer. It was nice to have a crush for a short while. I knew it was a long shot anyway. I hope you and your partner have a happy and fulfilling relationship.’ 

Ah, my friends, I sounded so calm and chill in that email, but in truth, my heart was a storm. I writhed in pain and pleasure. Ahh…. it hurt… so… so good…. 

You know… to have your heart go badump badump badump when someone smiles at you is one among the many great joys of life. Even when it doesn’t come to anything, even when you make a fool of yourself in the name of love, it’s still all worth it. And with me, it’s doubly worth it because… I… I love the way it hurt… I love the way he cut me like this… 

Ahh… my heart trembles even now. You know… I said I was a passionate creature didn’t I? But it’s not easy to make me feel. I need something like this to move me. 

But.. but it was too short! The course was too short! My crush was too short! So it didn’t quite have the impact it could have had it been longer!! He didn’t make me cry! It was too short! This pain passed too swiftly! He was too gentle and considerate! Ah, as expected of my no-nonsense but surprisingly kind teacher. 

Ah, I want to scream out ‘hurt me more! Cut me deeper! Make me gasp for breath and hang onto you desperately! Break my heart properly, won’t you?’

Ahahahaha, now you are reminded that I’m the person who wrote Tis Femina and Gaara Interlude and enjoyed every minute of it!!!! 

Ah… 

And that’s what happened to me in the last month and a half. Anyhow, I finished with the course now (and passed it!) so now I’m back in the game with extra creative juice flowing (courtesy of that swift heartbreaking!!!). I’m gonna try and finish the several half-written chapters I have lying around. 

Anyhow, have a great weekend, everyone!!! 

P.S: anybody wants to date? I’m on the hunt!! I gotta assuage my desperate Asian father who wants grandchildren already you know? 

I’m serious! 

[le-feline]

FtGoG Snippet: Mouse sees the Wind fall - part 4

Part 3 here: https://asksythe.tumblr.com/post/159451523190/ftgog-snippet-mouse-sees-the-wind-fall-part-3

………………………………..

She stills as she hears this. The expression on her face grows hard and cold and sad for a split second, before it thaws, softens as she studies him and sees nothing but honesty. She draws back a little and starts with a simple statement.

“My power…. It’s growing.”

A power that can wipe out a continental population in its infancy, is now still growing. Mouse thinks to himself. It says something about her that he is more concerned about the way she speaks of her power as if it is an entity separated from herself rather than the actual content of her declaration.

She allows the Lord Kazekage a moment to think about this statement before forging on.

“My enemy…I have no words to describe him to you. His nature or… what he could do. Remember that one guy, that soul eater, who tried to kill you and failed? And you tried to kill him in retaliation and you did kill him but somehow he never stayed dead? Somehow he just keeps jumping from one body to another, like… a snake… shedding its skin, but the things he sheds is not skin but bodies?”

“Orochimaru.” There is frustration in the Lord Kazekage’s voice… and not a small amount of grudging respect. In their world, strength begets respect, regardless of the atrocities committed. That the disgraced Sanin of Konoha has committed an act of war against Sunagakure does not change the fact that he is one among the strongest warriors of their world.

A tiny smile appears briefly on her face as she savors his frustration, the parts of him that aren’t the unfeeling, implacable leader of a village of trained soldiers. But it disappears in the blink of an eye, chased away by thoughts of her once enemy. She presses on.

“Magatsuhi…” There is something in her voice as finally, she puts a name to this great enemy. Some dark emotion too complex and contrary for Mouse to nail down. Not entirely fear, perhaps some hate, a pinch of revulsion, a hint of sadness, and something more, something else. An unnamed something that lies at the crux of it all, in between hate, revulsion, sadness, fear. “… is similar… I suppose. The way a shark is to a goldfish.”

Lord Kazekage raises an eyebrow at that comparison. There are not that many individuals in their world who can stand on the same level as Orochimaru. When one takes into account the disgraced Sannin’s vast knowledge and genius as a Ninjutsu researcher and inventor, there are even fewer such individuals. To have him be the little fish in her comparison. She must know Lord Kazekage’s silent question. She knows him too well to not have seen it, but she doesn’t even pause, doesn’t second guess herself, doesn’t backtrack and rephrase her statement. Instead, she forges on.

“He was born… partly from humans, from our darkest parts, from our malice and our hatred and our thirst for violence, but he never was one of us. He was… an entity far beyond your tailed beasts, powerful beyond compare, cunning, ruthlessly determined, and possessing a patience that comes with a lifespan measured in centuries. He was all but unkillable even to Midoriko, the most powerful of us.”

“Even when it appeared that he was crippled and sealed away for good, he found ways to slip through the bars of his prison, even if it took him hundreds of years, even if he had to borrow the hands of creatures so much lesser than him. He rose, again and again, in different forms and under different names to visit maladies on the humans he despised. He was a disease, a mockery of humans. In some places, people revered him as a dark god, a devourer of the sun. As eternal as he was dreadful, immovable, unchangeable, a shadow that awaited the absence of light. I have battled divine spirits less powerful than him. I… the only reason I could even stand against him is because of a quirk in our power’s interactions. Because from the day I was born, he held a part of me, and I held a part of him, and so it was I alone that could truly hurt him.”

Well, that didn’t sound ominous at all, signs Eagle. For once, Mouse finds himself agreeing. Mouse’s imagination, a pool of combined thoughts and subconsciousness from the seven hosts that make up his gestalt sapience, draws an ugly picture from this description. Something more powerful than a tailed beast, equipped with the mind of the snake Sannin and the spite and malice of the most craven members of their shadowed world. A worrisome enemy indeed, if what she says is true. Mouse has no reason to doubt the Miko, but bias gets the better of even the most logical humans.

She pauses, draws a long breath. The act of speaking of things held in secret for so long tires her more than she thought.

“How did you kill him?” asks Lord Kazekage.

She smiles in response. It is not a nice smile, but one filled with bitterness.

“I didn’t,” she says, then goes on to explain. “In the aftermath of our battle, I broke his heart and shattered his soul into a million pieces. But even then, I had doubts. How do you kill a shadow? How do you wipe out the malice in the hearts of men? You may spend your entire life trying to pursue a futile cause. He was something that we weren’t entirely sure could truly die. He was a child of humans, born from the dredges of our hearts. Our violence and malice nurtured him. If there was even a shard of his soul left in a world filled with filth and darkness to nurture it, then, there was a chance, a microscopic chance that he would one day rise again. I knew this. I thought of it, even as I fought him in those seven days and seven nights. What is death to a creature like him? I could harm him, hurt him, but he needed no air to breath, no light to see, no grounds to stand on. He did not even need a physical body. He could feel pain, but that would only feed his hatred of humans. To truly end him, I… I did something unthinkable.”

Uh oh… thinks Mouse, already seeing where this is going and not liking it one bit. At once he recalls what she has said she did earlier. He thought it a figure of speech, but it seems it is not.

“Once the dust settled and I made sure that nothing remained of Magatsuhi’s physical shell, I scooped up his broken soul, and devoured every last piece of him.”

She pauses once more, leans back into her chair, turns her eyes skyward—“How do you kill an unkillable entity?” she repeats the question to the silent chamber. “It’s simple. You infect him. You corrupt him from within. He drew strength from the purity of his purpose. So… I… infected him… with myself.”—and then back at Lord Kazekage.

“Us humans are inherently flawed. Though we seek purity of heart and of purpose, in truth, we are tainted with life. We know love and loss, sorrow and joy. We are easily swayed by doubts, regrets, distractions, temptations. Magatsuhi didn’t know any of this. He was like a child in that regard. I wielded my humanity against him. I cut him with my human joy and sorrow. I crushed him with my human doubt and regrets. I corrupted him. My humanity became his death.”

She stops there, looking out the window behind the Lord Kazekage. The sun has set over the horizon of the village. She watches the last light stretch in a single fiery line across the open vista. In the distance, the sounds of great bells ringing, reverberating through walls and stones, white smoke rising from red brick chimneys. In the air are the scents of spices and bread fresh from the ovens. A symphony of life arises from the village ground. It is autumn, the third autumn Sunagakure has ever witnessed. She sees red leaves floating in the wind. A gentle breeze ruffles the papers on his desk.  

In the rafters, Mouse fidgets with nervous anxiety. He doesn’t know what to think about all this. Souls, demons, the human heart wielded like a weapon against an entity beyond even the tailed beasts. They all sound like nonsense to him, but the Miko’s power is something very palpable. He doesn’t know what to think. It is almost like the Miko’s old world does not function by the same metaphysical rules as their world. He cannot even begin to imagine what that world is like, where souls are weapons unto themselves and young women like the Miko can send monsters like the Biju packing with the barest efforts.

She’s a Jinchuriki! Eagle signs, which then prompts Diamondback to look over to its comrade in what is likely annoyance.

Oversimplification. It states with a single, curt gesture. The Miko is entity far more complex. Different metaphysic system. Different methodology. Different starting parameters and outcomes.

Tomato tomahto, replies Eagle. She has got a thing in her and it’s a dangerous thing. She’s a Jinchuriki, same as Lord Gaara. No wonder she has a soft spot for him.

Mouse ignores his bickering comrades in favor of carefully observing the happening going on below him. Despite the disturbing connotations of the Miko’s statement, Lord Kazekage appears remarkably calm. Unlike previously when she told him of her seventeen million people body count, this time, he doesn’t even bat an eyelash. In contrast, he looks as though he’s expected this and appears deep in thoughts.  

After about a minute or so, the Miko makes to say something, but he holds out a hand in a stopping gesture. He stands up, and walks to the side of his large desk, takes out a hip flask and two brass cups in a drawer, pours himself a cup, pours her a cup. He hands one to her. The liquid inside is a glossy rose gold color and carries a faintly sweet scent. Something to calm her frayed nerves. Something with which to soothe her parched throat. She has been doing a lot of the talking and it is obvious that she will be doing more momentarily. He sits down, drinks from his own cup, and gives her a look as if to say ‘go on’.  

She frowns at him, but eventually brings the cup up for a sip. The sip turns into a long gulp, and then before long, her cup is empty. She looks at it, then back at him. The mar on her brows goes away. A wan smile blooms on her face. It is pregnant with a tenderness that makes Mouse want to sneak out of the room and leave them be.

“Koshue?”

He nods. ”Six years old. That wine’s been in my drawer longer than you have been around here. You shouldn’t drink so fast. Good wine is to be savored. Besides which, I don’t normally share.”

She puts the empty cup on his desk. “When I first came here, I wasn’t even at drinking age yet.” Her voice turns a little accusatory. “You taught me all the vices of adulthood.”

“Would you rather learn them from someone else?” he parries right back. Setting the flask aside, he makes a vague gesture pointing at her.

“So… this Magatsuhi… you talk of him in past tense, but you don’t act like he’s already behind you. Is he in there?” There is the barest stress on the last word of this question. Pointed intention.

“A piece of him. A vestige,” she says simply.

“Should I worry?”

She takes a moment to think things through. “No,” she says finally. Laying a hand on her heart, she explains. “We are bound, he and I, in ways that you can’t comprehend. This is not a seal like the one you used on Gaara… nor anything anyone in this world can hope to replicate. He’s no Biju waiting for my lapse of control to escape and wreak havoc upon our village. He’s a part of me now, and we… we are never to be separated.”

She takes another moment before continuing on, addressing concerns yet unvoiced.

“He’s a shadow of himself, a speck, a shard. It’s not even coherent… or sentient for that matter. Even when he was whole and at the peak of his strength and I was younger, I was still his equal in power. I suppose… if it had a few millennia, it might grow into something that could actually threaten me, but… “

She looks down at her hand, at her unmarred palm, an expression on her face like she’s seeing something that used to be there.

“… But I’m not an eternal thing like him. I’m only human you see. I don’t live that long. When I die, I will take the last shard of Magatsuhi with me to the grave.”

Immediately, an image came forth from the shared well that serves as Mouse’s repository of memories—an event not that was long ago witnessed by a host of Mouse’s consciousness. The Miko, looking slightly younger than she is now and holding onto an unconscious Jinchuuriki, stood beside the Lord Kazekage in the council chamber. She extended a hand and told him to cut her open. Blood welled from the wound in her palm, ran down her bare, pale arm, dropped down onto the floor. It made a sound like breaking glass. In that memory, Mouse hears her voice crisp and clear.

I am made of flesh. If you cut me, I will bleed like everyone else.

Back then, this was said to reassure the anxious council members in the wake of her swift defeat of the Shukaku—something not even Lord Kazekage could do, at least not with such contemptuous ease—but Mouse sees now that the meaning of this statement runs far deeper than any sitting in that room could ever imagine.  

There’s a brief spell of silence, one broken when Lord Kazekage speaks next.

“And this thing about your power growing?”

She doesn’t answer. Not with mere words anyhow. Instead, she turns to the window behind him. She doesn’t do anything, doesn’t gesture with her hands nor frown in concentration. She gives no sign that she’s doing anything at all, anything beyond sitting quiet and motionless in her chair and looking at the skies above the village. Nevertheless, something happens. Something twists in the empty space between her and the skies. Something vast and heavy and infinitely beyond mortal comprehension. At once, the clouds darken. The skies become overcast. A shadow overtakes the setting sun. Bolts of lightning streak the suddenly overcast skies. A rumble of thunder that shakes the cups and rattles the papers on Lord Kazekage’s desk. And then, it rains.

A thick, gray curtain poured over the village. A torrential downpour the likes of which Mouse has only heard about in some far off land where the skies cried three hundred and sixty-five days out of a year.  

“The last gift from my dearest enemy I suppose. Or a curse… This used to be difficult,” she says, her voice somehow still clear and audible above the sound of the rain. “The first time I did this, it took everything. But now…”

As suddenly as it started, the rain peters to a stop. Some invisible pressure leaves the room.

“Now it’s not.”

Lord Kazekage regards the Miko then the skies with pondering slowness. “Impressive,” he says finally, with a casualness that is more fitting for a conversation regarding the weather than phenomenal feats of power. “But what does this have to do with the boy… and the mother? What is the point of all this? You didn’t just tell me you house the fragment of an eldritch abomination for nothing, did you?”

His questions jolt Mouse’s thoughts. That’s right. All of this talk of demons beyond even the Biju and world-rending power, all these secrets unveiled, but she has yet to answer the one question that started this all. Why?

Why did she ask to see the widow? Out of a sense of responsibility? Of guilt?

No.

There’s something else here. Something more. She’s waffling, dragging her feet. She is a child hesitating to confess to some naughty deeds.  

In his thoughts, Mouse goes over the event that precipitates this talk between Miko and Lord Kazekage. An attempt on the Miko’s life. Not the first one, there have been many more before that, ever since she made her position clear to the council and the village at large. But the first that she knows of. And the hands that delivered that attempt, a child’s hand. The move is well calculated. The dissidents in the shadow well knew whether it succeeded or not, they would still have struck a blow against someone they viewed as an existential threat to the village.  

Mouse peers into the Miko’s face down below. A lovely face that would not look out of place in Wind’s royal court, young in features, but her eyes are old. Something passes through in her expression, and she says.

“Because I needed to see… that they were real, as real as you and I. I needed… to stop pretending that there weren’t consequences to my actions, to my existence. And you…need to know…”

She withdraws something from the pocket of her dress, presents it to him. A bone pendant, speckled with blood. The child’s missing pendant it seems, the one the widow has been asking about, her gift to her son on the day of his graduation from the academy. The Lord Kazekage frowns, but she offers no more explanation.

“You have been hiding things from me,” she says softly. Despite the statement, there’s no hint of accusation in her voice. “What do they call me when your enforcers aren’t around to make sure they are nice and quiet?The Calamity? Bloody Maiden? She who walks on the bones of children to preach peace to a mercenary village? So many names for only one person. I know them all. I’ve heard them all.”

He freezes, face hardened in the blink of an eye. She’s not supposed to know that, any of that. That was an explicit order to all those who are allowed to interact with her. For her to know means that someone somewhere went against an order from the Kage. In other times, perhaps this could be overlooked. But in this time when ideological struggle threatens to tear their people apart? She smiles again in the face of his suspicion.

“Your people are well-trained. None of them tattles. But I don’t see the world the same way you do. People who are dead to you…”

Oh…

“… aren’t dead to me. And the dead don’t need to obey the Kage’s orders, do they?”

Lord Kazekage takes the pendant from her. He looks at it for a brief moment. Has she been keeping this since the day of the failed attempt?

“So now you know,” he says finally. “But does it change anything? To know that you aren’t loved by everyone in this village, that someone even now is plotting your death, that people died and will keep dying because of your actions… or your inactions. Now that you know, has your dream changed? Will you stop waking up tomorrow and go to work on your crusade? Has anything changed at all?” He looks at her long and hard. “No. Nothing has changed. It doesn’t matter that the world itself is against you. It doesn’t matter that everyone else tells you, you are crazy for even trying. You aren’t someone who will let that stop you from doing what you believe in.”  

She shakes her head in response.

“Context changes everything. And you… still don’t comprehend what I can do.” She pauses once, looks out the window.

“I feel them,” she says. “Their thoughts are thorns, and they think of me always. They have plans, and they know now that they can hurt me… even when you protect me, even when you shield me from the consequences of my own actions. If I stop holding back,” Her voice grows quiet, heavy, as if the thought of it alone is difficult to conceive. “… I can just reach out and… “

She stops there, unable to continue until Lord Kazekage prods her.

“And… what? You can just reach out and do… what?”

She doesn’t say a word for a full minute. When she finally does, it is with a quiet, almost muted voice.

“I can make it stop.” She looks at the bone pendant in Lord Kazekage’s hand. “I can make them stop. I won’t even need to step a foot outside of this room. Their minds are like clay. I can touch them, change them, and they won’t resist at all. Not like you.” Then up at him.

That moment, it feels as though every drop of Mouse’s blood curdles in his veins. He thinks of what she implies, the consequences. The many rationalist personalities that make up Mouse’s gestalt consciousness scream in protest. This is insanity. She is talking of something so far above what they have seen thus far in this world that it bothers on being surreal. If this weren’t the Miko, he might have thought her a liar. But the more cynical personalities in him call for caution. This is the Miko. This is a power that managed to uproot seventeen million souls in the surge of its first awakening. Nothing is ever simple with her.

“I can… change this world… with a thought,” she whispers and in her eyes, it seems like something finally breaks. Her words, soft and quiet as they are, rebound in the chamber.

“No more violence. No more war. No more senseless death. No more child soldiers being given an illusion of a choice and forced to fight in the place of adults. No more little boy assassins like the one that died because of me and we will never have to face another grieving mother like we had to today. This world… “

Her voice breaks as something spills forth from beneath her usually moderate veneer. Anger, frustration, a cutting fierceness that she seems to display only in the face of Lord Kazekage…. And beneath even that…. teeth, and claws, and thorns, and eyes that looked up from the depth of the abyss.  

“… is wrong.”

Something ripples through the air. A quiet scream tears through space as everything visible and not seem to warp. Something stretches. Something tears. The fabric of spacetime is bent and twisted to its very limits. Something vast and terrible is trying to come through to their end of reality, beckoned by the sound of her voice and the black fury in that one word of hers, and the sheer weight of its presence is pressing down on Mouse with the sharpness of a thousand steel blades. Mouse’s hand twitches around the handle of his kunai. Useless. There’s nothing he can do, in the face of this dark goddess. Useless! For the very first time in his artificial existence, he feels the touch of terror.

“But I can make it right again. You always talk of the ends justifying the means. So what does it matter if I need to mold a few… if I need to…”

But it appears he won’t need to do anything, because suddenly the Miko comes to a jolting realization, as if remembering herself. At once, the dark fire in her face abates. Reality reasserts itself as she crumbles in her seat, trembling in fear and shame. Her cheeks are flushed and her breath comes from her open mouth in wet, heavy gasps. She looks away from a pale-faced Lord Kazekage and finally, Mouse sees a tear sliding down the curve of her cheek.

“But that’s… the beginning of the end, isn’t it? Road to hell and all that…” She whispers, voice hoarse, almost broken. She gets no reply from Lord Kazekage, only a heavy silence. Another minute passes as she slowly collects herself.

“That… is why I needed to see the widow, and why you need to know. I needed to see that she was real. People are not… clay… to be molded.”

……………..

TBC

……………..

A/N: Just a bit more and then it’ll be finished. My status update coming up next for the people wondering why I dissapeared for an entire month. 

[le-feline]

If I have to read this, so do you!!!!!!! 

@erimies @nobody11112 @mugetsu2777

i wish i never learned how to read

[le-feline]

Original story concept: global temporal crisis

So, this story concept happened entirely by accident. A friend of mine (@erimies https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5374016/erimies , yes, for you Naruto fans out there, that Erimies of Clan of Samsara and I didn’t sign up for this) has been sharing her original story ideas with me. We do this a lot. Just bounce ideas around and do snapshot world building speed battles (it’s tote battles! You can’t tell me otherwise!!). So today we talked about an old idea she had left on the burner for awhile. Her idea involved temporal pocket shenanigans and magical world (of the fantastic science variety). I won’t go too deep into it because it’s her idea and maybe one day we will all get to read it in a book. But my ADD ass apparently forgot completely about the original fantasy setting and assumed that the temporal crisis happened in our current real world instead and … because as usual, I’m like a rabid dog being thrown a world building hook bone, I just went completely crazy and before I knew it (and before she could type ‘wait a minute. Wrong setting! Wrong genre!! Stop! Stop!), I had already written the basic premise for a completely different story also involving temporal shenanigans and global scoped world building (and yes, I flooded her tumblr message app with 99+ messages in under 15 minutes. It happens a lot, I’m proud to say!).   

And well, what do you know? After some sheepish back and forth and mutual marveling of each other’s story ideas, I (or rather we because I made sure she was ok with this) decided to type it down and post it. Why? Because… well… because I’m the kind of writers that tote subscribe to the practice of sharing ideas and premises. I like to bounce ideas and concepts around with other people. I think it makes for much richer and more varied concepts and premises. And I would like to hear other people’s takes on concepts, see how different people view it differently. I don’t get possessive over creative ideas and concepts (well… mostly I guess). My boss told me that that’s bad habit for a published author, bad for business and all that but… eh… I guess I can’t change who I am. I just like to share you know? I think the more merrier (or bigger / more mutated /more fun, as ideas go).

So, without further ado, here it is:

I. Premise: our current world, as in, today, May 18th, 2017, Gregorian Calendar, the world is suddenly hit by an unexplainable phenomenon. For a split second, time stops moving for our planet. And when the next second arrives, it splits, branches, implodes in on itself. Our time zones fracture and warp and create bubbles within bubbles. One clock becomes a hundred thousand, each moving to its own rhythm. The next thing we know, our world is fractured into countless temporal zones. Time moves wildly in each of these zones/pockets. In some, it moves far slower than it should. In others, it moves far faster. It rewinds, warps. There are nations where the flow of time goes backward, and then forward, and then backward, winding around itself. The natural world does not escape the effect of the fractured temporal zones. Forests become deserts in a matter of days (the concept of days is fast approaching either an end or transformation too). Mountains rise from the sea. The ice caps enlarge and expand into the territory of northern Europe.

In the human world, the crisis is unprecedented. In the span of a second, global communication, trade, transportation, and the world wide web all immediately cease. Pandemonium erupts as people swiftly transition from confusion to disbelief, to panic.

What is this? A natural cosmic phenomenon? Terrorist action? Alien attack? Scientific experiments gone horribly wrong? Divine reckoning?

Nobody knows. Nobody even has so much as a hint. In their panic, people look for someone to blame. But time waits for none, least of all now when all of time has gone haywire. Our current world is one that is built on the foundation of global trade and communication and now that all of those have ceased, the world is on the precipice of a global collapse. In some nations, wars skid to a stop as both sides is rendered inoperable. In others, the sparks of revolts lit the skies in fire and ashes (looking at you, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, etc…). In some nations, people dread the onset of mass starvation as their agricultural demand far exceeds their output. In others, machines start failing as the national oil reserve dips lower and lower.   

This is the story of our world in crisis and the approaching new world order as each nation on our Earth attempt to weather the fallout of the temporal crisis and muddle their way into this new world!  

II. With this setting established, now let’s go into world building from there (hah! World building on top the basis of our real world!). Based on economic and scientific principles, four factors determine whether any one nation can survive the initial fallout and thrive afterward:

1. Agricultural bases and resources.

2. Oil; the lifeblood of modern industry

3. Central government stability

4. Temporal sciences and research.

Factors 1 and 3 determine whether a nation can survive. In order to survive, you need to be able to feed the population and avoid mass starvation and the panic that ensues from such. You also need to be able to maintain law and order. In the time of crisis, opportunistic factions may seek to overthrow the current government, leading to violence, bloodshed, and possible civil wars. For countries with divisive issues or with public unrest, this will be particularly hard.

On the other hand, factors 2 and 4 will determine whether a nation will thrive in the new world. Without oil, you will be pushed back to pre-industrialization economy, which means that a massive portion of the population will fall into poverty and any developmental prospects will die stillborn. Oil is especially vital to maintaining an economy now that the global economy has collapsed and each nation must seek to remain self-sufficient. Other sources of energy may lessen the pressure of oil (e.g. wind, thermal, solar, etc…). However, since the majority of our global industrial bases have yet to transition to clean/hybrid energy and such transition is now too costly in this crisis, oil remains the main source of fuel for the economy.

The last factor, temporal science is the only way humanity can hope to make sense of the crisis and this new natural phenomenon of their world. Current researches on temporal sciences and temporal energy harvest are still nascent and a hundred percent theoretical. However, the crisis has supplied ample opportunities for testing. Countries with existing researchs on temporal sciences will have a definite edge as they quickly learn the ins and outs of the temporal zones, exploit them (e.g. navigate and energy harvest), and perhaps find out the root reason for the crisis.   

III. A brief look into several nations in crisis:

1. China:…. is in a bad place…

The current China already has issues with public unrest and maintaining stability and a united cultural identity (e.g. what with the suppression of ethnic and religious minority, the overly centralized government, the bulky bureaucratic machine, the non-existent democratic process, widespread corruption, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, the uneven development between provinces, with some provinces not that different from first world countries neighboring provinces that would not look out of place among war-torn third world nations. Their vast land puts even more pressure on efforts to maintain stability and order.) It’s quite likely that the centralized government will be swiftly beheaded once some factions start gaining a foothold and communication / security remain frozen.

Their oil reserve is not so good either. Compared to other nations, their reserve is not small. However, it is not sufficient for their massive economic machine. They are known as the factory of the world, and such title carries weight. In February 2017, China oil import already hit 37.8 million ton (aka 8.286 million barrels per day). Without this imported oil, total economic collapse is imminent.  

Agriculture-wise, their situation is… uneven. Decades of non-existent pollution-control policy have led to massive tracts of Chinese territory being ravaged beyond hope of recovery in our life time, thus rendering their potential agricultural yield to zero. However, China is vast, and with good management and labour allocation, they can hope to avoid starvation and widespread panic.

Temporal science and research: currently to my knowledge, they have none. Due to purposefully shortened development time, the state of sciences in China is fairly unevent. Chinese government deliberately encourages progress in hot scientific disciplines (e.g. weapons, energy, heavy industry, IT, medicines) while ignoring other disciplines with less immediate practical uses.

2. Russia: a mystery within a mystery.

Heh… I don’t know much about Russia. But a world game with no mention of great Russia? Impossible. Russia simply is too large and too influential to be ignored (also they have way too many nuclear warheads). That said, we do know that they are fine in the oil department. Agriculture-wise, they are likely to be ok too. Russia is fairly self-sufficient. Temporal research science… well…probably yes… because cold war and stuff and possible exotic weapon development.

On the other hand, Russia has a very centralized government and extremely low democracy index score (coming in at 3.24 out of 10 on the global democracy index compiled by the UK-based Economist Intelligence Unit and designated an authoritarian government) with ongoing issues over freedom of press and oppression of minority. With this crisis, it’s likely that this authoritarian rule will be challenged by opportunistic factions. Only time will tell if the great Russia will be able to weather the immediate fall-out of the temporal crisis.

3. The United States of America:

…. Is united no more.

Tadadaadadadadada….

No really, you guys have deep and insidious divisive issues. From half-way across the world, I see people from different parties demonizing each other and good people being separated along religious, ethnic, and political party line. With this crisis and the current White House, you can’t convince me that folks are going to keep their sane cap on. America’s vast territory and distinct cultural identities  across different states and regions will also be a minus for the united and stability factor. Besides which earlier this year your democracy index score just fell below 8, marking you as a flawed democracy. Also, way too many trigger-happy folks with guns and bullets in their hands. And that’s not mentioning racial friction. Good luck with the crisis, folks! Taleh hoo!!

That said though, US is good as far as oil and energy resources go. With their current reserves and expanding shale oil industry as well as a thriving alternative energy source industry, the US won’t see a collapse based on lack of fuel and energy anytime soon.

Agriculture-wise, they are good too as not only do they have a large agriculture industry, their land is still comparatively virgin next to the soils that have been cultivated and farmed for millennia in Europe and Asia.

Temporal sciences and researches: yes… very… but again, uneven due to vast territory. American territory itself is divided into countless temporal zones so likely we will see the start of many small nations and likely collapse of a great one. Having large tracts of land is a minus on control and unity issues, who knew eh?

4. Europe (sing me a song, beautiful Europa!!!)

Has much the same issue with America in terms of centralized government (Brussel this time) and different cultural / ethnic identities that stand in the way of unison. Racial tension is also on the rise due to Islamophobia and fear of terrorist attacks. In the initial fallout, confusion will reign as Brussel is separated from the rest of Europe. Without swift actions from the authority, the European Union faces the risk of implosion. But then again, Europe has pretty good democracy index score so maybe it won’t be so bad?

In terms of oil reserves, hmm, not bad. However, the issue lies with the uneven allocation of oil. Norway holds the largest oil reserves and in this new world setting that is rapidly heading towards a ‘every nation for itself’ scenario, will be loathed to let go of an edge. Without good diplomacy and concession, tension and conflict may arise. That’s not to mention the cut-off of communication and transportation as Europe is trapped in its own myriad pockets of temporal zones. However, many European countries are fairly far along in terms of conversion from oil-based industry to clean energy-based industry so really this factor should have less weight for Europe.

Temporal science: yes. Europe as a whole has larger grants and investment into scientific researches than America. Now is the time to reap that reward! Could this be the second coming of the European Golden Age? Only time will tell!!!

5. North Korea (because why not? Everybody likes to talk about that one poor country with the big gun and trigger happy fingers right?)

Good bye, NK, it’s been nice knowing you.

Total collapse, likely in a matter of months if not weeks. Despite its healthy stock of warheads and other tools of war, North Korea survives by foreign aids. Infamously known by economist as the world’s worst economy, North Korea receives millions of dollars of foreign aids every year. Despite its hefty investment into weapons, it does not actually produce enough food for its own population and has had several famines and mass starvations within the last 5 years.

Without foreign aid (due to cut communication and transportation), the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) will swiftly collapse when massive portions of its own population starve to death. There will be widespread panic and violence as a dieing government struggles to maintain control over a panicking/berserking civilian population. Unlike previously, this time, the elite ruling group likely will not be able to escape out of the nation due to cut-off global transportation. If desperation seizes the day and the warhead codes fall into unwise hand, we may see the start of the collapse of the Korean peninsula as weapons stockpiled for some hypothetical war against the West go up in their own backyard.

…Really, I feel sorry for the Korean people (both North and South). Once, Vietnam was known as North and South Vietnam too and 40 years ago we weren’t that much different.  

IV. A new world order!

The goal: to survive.

The goal: to thrive.

To live is to struggle. As the world rocks and fractures under the weight of the global temporal crisis, each and every nation must keep in mind the goals. To survive the initial fall-out of the crisis and perchance to thrive in this new world order. To do that, they must feed their own population, maintain law and order, resuscitate their economy, re-establish international contact and cooperation, and relentlessly push for scientific progress into temporal sciences. Only then will they find out the secret behind the global temporal crisis that rocks their world!

So… that is my story concept. As said, I thought it up (well, from the basis of Erimies’s fantasy concept) in about 20 minutes. It’s just… you know… the start. Because of the massive scope of this story / setting, it’s impossible for me to accurately cover every country. With that said, which country/region do you come from? and how do you think your country/region will fare in this scenario? 

Hmmm.. I also want to take into consideration the natural aspects of this setting. For example, natural changes caused by the temporal zones. Our seas are trapped into countless pockets. As a result, ocean currents are in disarray which will eventually lead to changes in global ecology (impacting the migrating patterns of fishes for example) and weather patterns (impacting global temperature and wind current). So on, so forth. But I will need significant research in order to venture into this part. But… just imagine, you know… our world.. transformed in a second because time has fractured. What a world it will be!!! 

So, what do you think? Do you have ideas? Questions? Criticism? Come! I want to hear your thoughts and bounce ideas around!  

[le-feline]

How does the whole "choose your own route" thing in the FTGOG AU work? Are we supposed to message you and tell you what we like? Is there a poll somewhere I don't know about? Thank you !

Heh… it’s a bit of a joke and a bit of future planning. If I have time (maybe. Not sure), I plan to write the full FtGoG AU (not the draft form) as a role-playing quest in which the readers / quest players get to make choices on what Kagome’s actions will be. It will play like a ‘build your kingdom’ + adventure + some romance game. This quest thing basically came to be when I planned the possible romance aspect of the story and somebody mentioned that this read exceedingly like the plan for an Otome game what with all the routes and unlockable secret route (joke route… or maybe not. Depending on player choices I guess) and I thought… well.. why not? It would be something different for sure. 

So to answer your question, the choice of which route to pursue (4 normal routes, 1 unlockable secret route, and a no-route scenario in which there is no romance and Kagome either ends up single at the end or marries a nameless noble to stabilize her kingdom’s relations with other nations in the epilogue) is entirely up to quest players. Depending on which route it is, it can be a very straight forward ‘pursue him: yes? no?, or a complex series of decisions that allow Kagome to slowly grow closer to a specific LI until the time when the choice is locked on. Think of it like a Bioware game romance subplot. You can flirt all you want with all the available LIs up until a certain point in the story where you make your choice… except for FtGoG AU, this ‘point’ is a period with variable narrative time frame depending on routes. 

With that answered, I’m kinda curious though. I have never run a poll to see which route is the most popular with the followers of this blog. I just sort of assume… well… you know what, how about we do one casual poll now? 

Hey, guys, people who actually follow my post and shenanigans, which FtGoG AU route do you choose? Remember, No. Harem. Route (I’m looking at you, erimies. Grabbing both Kagami and Tobirama eh? Too greedy!)  

[le-feline]

Nobody convo - FtGoG

Holla, 

Recently I had a discussion regarding a what-if scenario in FtGoG with a friend (@nobody11112). It results in a very interesting possible scenario (good enough for me to consider maybe writing an alt draft snippet for it specifically). I figure I should share. So here it is with some small edits for better readability (and some cuts in between when we talked of other things including embarrassed looking cats and truant college students….. hahahahahahaha). Anyhow…  

……………….

nobody11112

You know. Reading the last ftgog makes me want them to give Jiraiya a surprise in suna. They know why he is there. They know he is going to try everything to see Kagome and they can’t force him out due to diplomatic reasons. So why not do the unexpected. Surprise jariya by having Kagome go and greet him. Have them meet under their terms when Jiraiya is not prepared instead of having Jiraiya discover who knows what while he is doing his search to meet Kagome and instead have more control over the situation. Also i really like the mental shock image that comes to my mind when Kagome knocks on his door and he discovers who preemptively came to him

asksythe

heh! That’s an idea

that would be a shock to Jiraiya alright

only problem is that it goes directly against Rasa’s characterization

this guy is too paranoid for something that high risk

and with fairly dubious rewards too

nobody11112

Well i didn’t mention booting. I specifically said they can’t. So instead take the initiative and prepare the field and information that Jiraiya can get by arranging a meeting on their terms

nobody11112

The base premise is that due to political reasons they can’t interfere with Jiraiya actions within reason. They have to wait for his and konoha move. And instead of waiting for inevitable moves from the sennin which can result in a who knows what against their stretched out man power they arrange a meeting the idea is that such a meeting can be fully monitored and timed. And prepared for with what information you want to share… And give them enough information to somewhat satisfy konoha and have Jiraiya called back while also doubling as a supposed act of good will among ’ allies’… Honestly the more i think of it the more holes i find to iron out so i guess I haven’t thought it out enough

Guess i might have wanted it for the sake of comedy

asksythe

Nah , I think it’s a very interesting and valid premise . It merely needs ironing out

It needs the right time and place

The right factors

Give me 10 mins for me to walk home

And then I’ll type out a possible scenario

nobody11112

Think of it along the lines of what they did for the counter espionage by spread a lot of informations some of it false, except now they aren’t dealing with spy network, they are dealing with a great ninja that they cannot dislodge sitting in their village, no matter how great of watch they keep, the bottle will eventually leak, this is a known fact with information and spies and what I think fueled their entire counter espionage strategy, so instead they lure him with the truth and feed him a selected maybe mixed truth.

asksythe

ok, so the premise here is that instead of a complete block of info and a wall of misinformation, it’s more control the flow of actual information

Suna understands that it’s a matter of time until Konoha gains concrete, actionable intel on Kagome

perhaps with other villages, they could have avoided it

because of distance

and because of the lack of actual diplomatic relation with the other villages

but Konoha is not only Suna’s neighbor, but also is supposedly its ally

so we are looking at a political move

so, if the information is going to get out anyway, better it be on their own terms and under their control correct?

nobody11112

that was my thought process, yes.

asksythe

so, the way for this to happen is that Suna must come from a position of strength, and it must have an end goal for this meeting

the end goal here: soft intimidation

Suna shows Konoha that yes, it has a superweapon

and yes, it has complete control

but at the same time, they needn’t be enemies

after all, they are allies

so in allowing Jiraiya to meet the real Kagome, Suna acknowledges their alliance

but underneath that

is a message

we are strong now

our dynamic has changed

you are no longer the stronger village, capable of taking our things, our jobs, infiltrating our royal court with impunity

look at our super weapon

and think carefully of the consequences

should we one day cease to be allies

that’s the end goal

that is worthy enough to let Konoha have solid confirmation on Kagome’s existence and the sheer scope of her power

after all, Suna has to think carefully of relations with other villages

competition is unavoidable

nobody11112

reminds me also of what Jiraiya was thinking when he saw the grass when he entered suna

is this just a show of power

or are they really trying to terraform

asksythe

the answer is both of course

Suna being who they are

nobody11112

yup

asksythe

however, as political statement, it’s not quite enough

sure it’s creation power is great

but they are warriors

if it doesn’t destroy or has the capacity for destruction

it’s not going to send a strong enough message

for someone like Jiraiya, he would understand the significance of being able to grow grass and micro terraform the desert

but for your everyJoe

your average ninja

they aren’t going to give a crap

so if it’s a political statement and grandstanding show

then showing her with her power unmasked

is the better statement

instead of… oh hey, this girl can grow plants and trees in the desert

it’s now… look at this super weapon in human form with energy enough to have Biju for breakfast

do you want to face this thing in battle?

you can barely hold yourself against a normal Biju

let alone this thing!

so Suna letting Jiraiya meet Kagome

is basically a unspoken statement and a warning

it’s basically: now if we go to war, you are the one who is fucked, not us anymore

so think carefully the next time you try to bully us

because that’s what happened in Canon

Konoha bullying Suna out of jobs

and out of political clout… in their own royal court.

the one major flaw I see with this premise however

is that it’s next to impossible at this point in the story

see, this all hinges on an image of power

Suna shows off their new super weapon

as well as the fact that they can control this super weapon

unlike those unwieldy Jinchuriki that go berserk once in awhile

problem is…

… at this point in time, Suna… does not have that level of sway over Kagome

sure she’ll grow whatever plants they want

but to release her power willy nilly?

and meeting this foreign person in a meeting with obvious intention?

out of the question for Kagome at this point in time

if they try it, high chances are Jiraiya detects that they don’t actually have complete control over Kagome

that means that perhaps she can be swayed to defect

unlikely of course, but entirely possible

so that statement from a position of strength is no longer a statement

but more showing Konoha an opportunity

so at this point in the story, impossible

however, if this meeting were to take place at another point in time

when Kagome is much more attached to Suna

say… after she enters into a relationship with Rasa

and is closely connected to his children

that is when this scenario becomes possible

but of course, to make that time line possible, it will require the complete rewrite of the progression of Rasa and Kagome’s relationship

and a massive part of the plot line as well

not undoable

but certainly fairly intensive

nobody11112

Mmm, nice fleshing of the premise and dissecting it

I guess my mental image did have Kagome too cooperative to the plan now that you point it out

considering the current point in the story

asksythe

exactly

Kagome at this current point is an asset that needs very careful management

she is not that attached to Suna just yet

if she feels disenfranchised enough, she may just up and leave

especially if she feels like she’s being used to harm others

and this Kagome, if she really wants to leave, nobody in Naruto verse, with the possible exception of Kaguya, will be able to make her stay

so Suna really cannot chance it right now

this is a major part of why Rasa is keeping her in controlled isolation

he doesn’t want her to get ideas

or to start feeling curious about the world beyond Suna

it is still a very interesting premise though

it takes a lot of work

but it certainly is fun

like a scenario in which Kagome is a hundred percent committed to Suna and Rasa way earlier

so then it becomes Suna’s slow but inevitable soft conquest of the world

heh… probably not something she necessarily likes

but if Rasa produces results and shows that he’s making the world a better place (for a measure of better)

then probably she will go along

the ideal scenario for that meeting to happen is not only for Kagome to be a hundred percent committed

nobody11112

Well, you can present it to Kagome in a way that she would co-operate with such a scheme without being fully committed, a protective act for the village and herself from outside possible hostilities.. but that has its own stretch

asksythe

but also for her to also be pregnant with the first child of this new super power bloodline

nobody11112

and still risks being revealed

so thats a no go as well probably

this isn’t guile Kagome we are talking about :p

asksythe

hmm…. it depends

it requires series of events

and timeline

and for Rasa to preset things in certain ways

but it is doable

also fun

I like fun!

that is the sort of scenario in which I say ‘screw canon’ and go full throttle for AU

the world of Naruto is very much a crapsack world

nobody11112

maybe if she was revealed to some of the outside cruelty toward suna before.

asksythe

the idea of slow and soft world conquest may not be acceptable to us

but in that kind of world

if it’s for a better world

Kagome maybe up for it

exactly

when you think about it, Naruto verse really is a very bad place

where the good guy village has state sanctioned child soldiers

and 12 years old children can kill each other without anyone batting an eyelash

for such a world, taking it over and forcing it to develop in a different way

really isn’t so bad, is it?

Rasa needs only let her see that

and tell her, if you want the world to change, then become that change yourself

then… well… our Miko is going to be a hundred on board

after all, in a sense, that’s what she’s doing in FTGOG AU

soft world conquest

conquest does not necessarily require soldiers

or for wars to be waged

at the end of the day, conquest is about making the world develop the way you want it to

for the laws of the land to be the way you want it to

you don’t actually need soldiers and wars for that to happen

if you are sophisticated enough

………………………………………………….

… So, who wants to read about world-conquering Sunagakure like the scenario above described? 

[le-feline]

I came home today to this … Sometimes I wonder where that cute kitty I used to have went …

[le-feline]

In your story Tis Femina chapter 9 part 2 you layed out a beautiful, sophisticated, and intricate plot. How did you come up with it?

Imagination + 14 years of world history study + knowledge of political science and statecraft + too many Asian historical fiction (sort of) + 15 years of being a Jin Yong fan

Trust me when I say this, but that part of TF plot is not nearly as brilliant as you think it is . Compared to our real world history, it’s rather lacking in both viciousness and sheer cunning.

Human history = the greatest novel ever told

[le-feline]

What attributes does Ame have that would make it strong economically and what could they do to improve it? Like with how FTGOG!Kagome is doing with Suna and all those new businesses and jobs opening up. Only Ame doesn't have a Magical Miko by the name of Higurashi Kagome.

To be perfectly frank with you, we don’t actually know enough about Ame to make a solid hypothesis. What are the confirmed facts for Amegakure as a land?

1/ It’s poor and its population consists mostly of war refugees from other countries. 

2/ It’s sandwiched in between the three great nations: Fire, Wind, and Earth. This led to its being used as battleground when the hidden villages went to war in the past, decimating the country and its people every time such wars happened.  

3/ It rains a lot. This is apparently a combination of the nation’s natural weather patterns (it is named the land of Rain and all of its depictions in canon, barred one when Konan battled Tobi, featured heavy rain) and ninjutsu (there are several mentions of Pain and Hanzo using surveillance ninjutsu that made use of the rain). This probably also leads to poor soil condition due to the constant water washing away the top soil and eroding everything else, and thriving conditions for all sorts of diseases due to the constant humidity (e.g. malaria, etc…) 

Outside of that, we don’t know much else about this country. We don’t know what sort of resources they have, nor their policy on trade (especially after Hanzo, Pain, Konan), nor their main industries. 

From what I can see, they are in a poor position. Too many weak points, not enough strong points. 

1/ The population is not only poor but is also not unified due to their background as war refugees from different countries. Rain people have little cultural cohesion nor shared national identity. This will lead to difficult in administration and organizing a coherent government (unless we are going full dictator mode… which… while it will work in this scenario, is also a ticking time bomb in itself) 

2/ The constant rains make for poor agriculture base (waterlogged soil with poor top soil conditions, lack of sun, etc…), low public health (due to thriving conditions for all sorts of diseases), difficult conditions for public welfare (possible floods due to constant water backup), poor and costly infrastructure and public transportation (rain making it difficult for constructions and making everything that much more high-maintenance)  

3/ Sandwiched in between hostile nations which necessitates high military/security expenditure. This is a massive drain on the country’s economy and preventing development in other area. That’s not counting when wars do break out, Rain is in an even shittier place, what with bearing the splash damage from the fighting. 

The only solid strong point I can see is that its location, with proper management and development, holds the potential to become a trade zone with all the biggest trade routes going between the three great nations all going through it. But then again, do remember that Rain is not the only nation sharing this geo-location in Naruto verse (Gem is another contender in FtGoG AU). That’s why I said with proper management and development. 

From where I’m sitting, Rain is prime materials for a poverty trap nation. It has too many cons that holds it in place as a poor, divided, disaster-ridden, potentially lacking in natural resource country. It has one pro that needs solid work put into it before the rewards can be reaped. If it has other strong points, canon has not enlightened us to those points. If it has some special resources that all the other countries want (e.g. oil analog for example), then it’s much easier, but canon doesn’t say anything on this. 

So… really… I don’t have a lot of ideas on how to make Rain thrive as a nation. I have some, but they are the vague, applicable to most nations in this category type of ideas rather than actual, custom-tailored plan for that one specific country. I would say, to make Rain work, we need to model it off of real world nations with similar statistic (e.g. poor resources, limited land, fractured population), specifically Singapore (limited land, no natural resources whatsoever aside for fishing, but has prime location that required management and development) and post world war 2 Japan (fractured population. Post World War 2 Japan suffered a massive cultural shock. For much of the war, the government told their people that they would win, that they were in the just, that expansion and conquer were theirs by birthright, that they had to do this for the shake of the emperor, that defeat was as impossible as the sun rising from the West. They sent their people off to suicide against the enemy lines. And these people went willingly, joyfully. Such is the strength of their self-inflicted massively scoped brainwashing. And then what was the result? They were the first victim of the atomic bombs. They lost the war. Their government and emperor came out to admit defeat, to admit that they were in the wrong, and now they had to make nice with the enemy. Really, if you have the time, you should read literature studying the public psyche of Japan in the immediate post world war 2 era. There’s a whole lot of nihilism, suicide glorifying, and Nietzsche wannabe to go around. In some ways, it’s kinda sad. They did it to themselves. The scars linger to this day). To make their nation work, Rain has to:

1/ invest in diplomacy. Security and army is needed for them to survive and maintain stability, but long term, it’s too costly that it effectively cripples their development. They need solid diplomacy with surrounding nations to lessen the pressure on security spending. 

2/ Invest in trade. This also requires that first step of diplomacy. They need to weave themselves into the economy of other nations in such a way that if they are hurt, other nations also feel it in their pockets. A textbook economic golden straitjacket scenario (search it up if you don’t know it. Its mere existence is the reason why I call bull on the Naruto-verse claims that alliances cannot last between ninja nations and that treaties are not even wort the papers they are written. News flash, ninjas are not the only kind of humans who break treatises if it serves them. We as a species have worked past that particular trust issue / double handcuff scenario centuries ago). Not only will this create more stability and lessen security spending, it will serve to enrich Rain and make it incredibly difficult / painful for surrounding nations to attack Rain or wage wars in its territory (golden straitjacket and double handcuff) 

3/ Assuming they are poor in natural resources, then the only resources left to them is the human ones. They need to invest in growing local talents and nurturing future intellects in their young generations. Poor resources mean that heavy industries and agriculture give insignificant yield to them as a nation. So they need the talents to start high-tech industries and service sectors. They need scientists, engineers (more software and high tech kinds rather than heavy industrial kind), doctors, financiers, bankers, so on, so forth. Basically the Singaporean model. 

4/ If they have any sort of heavy industries, agriculture at all, they should be heavily automated as their human resources should be pushed to industries with better yield. They need to make maximum use out of their labor force. Not only are they working against several crippling weakness (poor resources, conditions, general stability), their starting population is unlikely to be large due to war and diseases (humidity part leading to lots of diseases above)

5/ Eventually, they need to steer away from traditional military and move their security sector to the more espionage side. In other words, prevention before treatment, and smart prevention at that (and not the crude, brute force way they did in canon. Sure erecting a war and running stringent security measures at the ground level work, but they are also costly and crude, and unlikely to prevent large scale warfare or more sophisticated hostile attempts on their nation. They should be a last resort and not the de-facto mode of operation). Due to the general climate of the Naruto verse, conflict is unavoidable. However, instead of going all Krogan/Turian in their neighbor’s face, they should take a page out of the Salarian’s books. Not only is espionage and aggressive intelligence actions cheaper as defense measure, they are also more effective for a country like Rain (which will always lose if a big war breaks out in their general proximity. So the only way they win is not by winning that war, but by making sure that war either doesn’t happen in the first place, or if it has to happen, then it happens somewhere far away from them, in someone else’s backyard preferably), and their fallouts easier to contain.    

[le-feline]

Is there a similar moment between Kagome and her LI in FTGOG!AU like there is between her and Rasa where she tells him about how she killed 17 million people? What is the general reaction to the confession by the LI?

With the possible exceptions of Reto route and the secret route, no, there is no such confession scene in FtGOG AU, at least not on screen. 

That confession scene is a milestone, a turn point for the relationship between Kagome and Rasa. It takes a long time and many many conflicts between the two in the past, as well as mutual willingness to work together to bring about that scene. It is made possible also because of the proximity of their living arrangement and their mutual desire to improve the lives of Suna people. Without those two factors, it’s next to impossible for Kagome to ever disclose something like that to anyone else. Remember, until that point in the story, she hasn’t never said this out loud to anyone, not even herself. 

If the confession scene happens in either Reto or the secret route: it will happen in 2 possible ways. The first one (Reto’s route) is in a similar vein with Mouse interlude. The second one (the secret route) is when she says this as a boast and as she prepares to mindbreak the secret L.I into becoming her slave/dog (I did say the secret route is the dark goddess / unusual gameover route, didn’t I?). I haven’t decided whether the confession will happen in those 2 routes tho. I kinda want to keep this something unique to Rasa due to the different nature of their relationship and its progression. 

That said however, at certain points, certain people will start guessing that she likely has committed something very horrible or has a body count when they notice her self-flagellation complex.   

During the romance subplot climax / night before the final battle event, Kagome may allude to this 17 million body kill count in route Tobirama and route Kagami but is very unlikely to come out and say it in full. 

[le-feline]

What is Kankuro and Kagome's relationship in FTGOG? I was curious bc we often see temari and gaara but not kanky

Kanky is the only sane man / reader’s every-man surrogate. 

Heh… To be honest, I am fond of Kankuro. As you pointed out, in between woobie destroyer of the world Gaara and feisty warrior princess Temari, poor Kanky with his weird man-makeup and plain features is often the forgotten sibling. But… I feel like he has a lot of potentials as a character and as a narrative device. I have a fondness for characters who can build and create on top of holding their own in combat-heavy series like Naruto. Any person can hurt and break and destroy, but it takes something extra to build and create. So that’s another point in Kanky’s favor (in my eyes at least). I have such plans for him!!! Ehhh!!! Excited!!

As for the relationship between Kankuro and Kagome, heh… it’s nothing so dramatic as the relationship between Kagome and his father and younger brother. Kankurou is very grounded, very every-day kind of character. He has his own issues, but his chips aren’t the titanic sized ones that Gaara and Rasa have. Their relationship starts out… hmm… I guess Kanky is both curious and intimidated by Kagome whereas Kagome is mostly apathetic towards him (to be fair, during that phase, Kagome is actually apathetic to almost everything with the exception of perhaps Gaara and Rasa. Gaara because he reminds her of herself, and Rasa because the man keeps infuriating her to no end). 

As time passes and Kagome starts to interact more with the Kazekage clan, Kankurou grows increasingly perplexed, worried, wary, and somewhat grateful (and a tiny bit jealous) towards her. Why so many emotions? Because Kagome does things nobody in their sane mind would (in Kankurou’s eyes that is). Trailing behind the homicidal Gaara to supposedly help him with his issues? Treating him like a confused and wounded child instead of the trigger happy murder baby that he is? Going against the Kazekage for the silliest things? Her actions boggle the mind. Kankurou’s view of Kagome goes from intimidated/curious (at the begining when Kagome is something new with the power that promises a better future for Suna) 

-to wary/afraid (when she shows that she can send Shukaku packing in three shots and is fully capable of disobidience against the Kazekage) 

-to perplexed/pitying (when he watches Gaara fight her attempts to help every step of the way. He thinks she’s wasting her time on a lost cause and is perhaps a little dim for trying the same thing over and over despite the many failures) 

-to perplexed/regard (when he sees her seemingly futile attempts finally bearing fruits in the most unexpected way, her breaking through to Gaara, her strange insights on things he hasn’t even thought of)

-to grudging respect / jealous (when he sees her actually changing the village and the people in ways he didn’t think possible. Respect because anybody who can do what she does deserves it. Jealousy because… Kankuro tries so hard his entire life. He is the normal every-day guy in a family of power house ninja. He is overshadowed by his father, his sister, his brother. And yet… he has his pride in his own puppetry. He’s unique in that he’s the only builder of the house, capable of feats other than pure destruction. He holds dreams of changing things in different ways, in ways outside of combat and violence, of creating grand things to help his homeland. It’s a tough thing, a far-off dream, he knows, but it’s something he constantly works towards regardless. And all of a sudden, here comes this girl who is not that much older than him. She appears one day and does the things he has always wanted to do - change the world - in a matter of months. It feels a little like she steals his dream from him. He knows that’s irrational but he can’t help but feel like he’s overshadowed again when he’s just starting to hit his stride)

- to irritation / a little fed up (when she becomes more and more tangled with his family. She starts a relationship with his father. She is friend with his sister. His little brother develops a possibly unhealthy crush on her. It’s like she’s this intruder/virus that he just can’t get rid off and he can’t run away from. She just walks into their lives and changes things as she pleases)

- to resigned / reconciliation… because Kanky is a grounded character. He’s a no drama kinda guy. He has a flare for the dramatics when he’s fighting and when he’s on the stage, but his real life is where he doesn’t want any of that drama. He’s chillax like that bastard Shikamaru from Konohagakure, except he’s more handsome and has wicked makeup skills. While he feels all of these emotions towards her, he’s very aware of himself and his own reactions (He is probably the one with the most self-awareness in his family) so there will come a point where he feels like he needs to come to terms with the fact that Kagome is a fixture that he can’t get around and can’t get rid off and that he feels both respect and annoyance when it comes to her.  Heh… poor Kanky… but really when you think about it, he’s the most normal person in that household and in some way, that’s kinda a super power in itself. 

So… eventually their relationship will develop. Acceptance leads to familiarity. He starts picking up a thing or two from her, starts getting steam from her grand ideas and willingness to go against convention to change the world. 

As for Kagome’s side, as said before, at first she mostly feels apathetic towards Kankurou, but as she interacts more and more with their family and her life becomes entertwined with them, she also becomes more aware of him. When Kankurou starts becoming irriated by her presence, she knows it. If Temari is the eyes through which we see how the Suna ninja view Kagome, then Kankurou is the mirror through which Kagome becomes aware of her impact on the Suna people, both the good and the bad. Kankurou’s presence is a constant reminder for her that she needs to be aware of her own actions. She is an intruder in many ways. She bears ideals radically different from the average Suna people and because of her power, she wields massive influence over their life. She may not mean harm, she may be trying to help, but that does not mean the impact of her actions is always good. 

Once she gets past her apathy, she starts feeling curious about Kankurou. He builds these things, these contraptions that remind her of home especially in a world where a significant part of the populace can casually bend the laws of nature to their whim. 

Once the reconcilliation / acceptance happens, she will start to seek him out more and more for his opinions and to sometimes sees him build his constructs (and perhaps gives him a few ideas too).

In other words, they bond over robots and mechanical sciences (she doesn’t understand most of what he talks about but she enjoyes hearing him talk nuts and bolts regardless because it reminds her of home. Besides which, robots are cool!!).

Eventually, their relationship will come to an easy state of friend/family member where they are used to each other’s presence and know where they stand with each other. An easy dynamics, normal, with no drama whatsoever. 

Heh!…. and then Kankurou becomes Kagome’s second and third children’s idol figure (twin boys. Think the Weasley twins except with ninja magic and a penchant for robotics and mechanics). They think Kanky is way cool with his many contraptions and traps primed for all sorts of mischief! That’s when all the hell breaks loose in the new Kazekage-Higurashi’s family!!! 

Hah! I’m sorry Kankuro. The drama you deftly avoid for most of your life has now caught up to you in the forms of two little rascals following you around everywhere you go while trying to learn all the cool puppetry techniques from you for the sake of epic pranking!!! Like their mother, you just can’t get rid of them. Just what are you going to do, Kanky? Your easy, peaceful no-drama days are now effectively over!! Ahahahahahaha….

…. Oh I can’t wait for the part where I get to play with Kankuro in FtGoG! 

[le-feline]

Wait so FTGOG!AU Kagome and Kagami route has an out of wedlock kid? Does any other route or do they all have children born in wedlock? Oh! Scenarios for how each individual baby daddy reacts to his unknown offspring (funny somewhat serious please)? Does Kagome get heat for having a kid outside marriage?

1/ Yep, Kagami route has an out of wedlock kid. We get to see this kid in the epilog of the route when Kagome brings him/her over to meet the daddy. 

2/ One other route has the potential for out of wedlock children. The Hasharima route. More specifically, the horrible tragedy permutation of the Hashirama route where Kagome (or rather players choosing her decision) loves beyond rationale and despite knowing that she’s in for a lifetime of pain and loneliness, decides to keeps loving him regardless. In the normal route, Kagome and Hashirama know to stop before too many people get hurt. Their attraction is undeniable, but their being together hurts too many people and even the courses they are walking towards. There is, however, one permutation of Hashirama’s route that can be unlocked with the right quest choices. In that permutation, there are two children from Kagome by Hashirama. I do not recommend this permutation however since it requires some extreme breaking of Kagome’s character. It will require me to execute some pretty extreme scenarios to bring her to the point where she lets her feelings overwhelm her reasoning and past experience at being the side woman to Inuyasha and Kikyo. There’s a reason I call this specific permutation ‘moth to the flame route’. 

3/ In Kagami’s route epilog, three years after the end of the great war (against Madara and Kaguya), Kagome visits Konoha again ostensibly to open a new chapter in their diplomatic relations. In truth, however, the trip is so that she can meet Kagami (who she once thought of as a little brother/protege figure up until the moment he confessed that he loved her, and then died for her) and sees if he still feels the same about her.

They meet in Hashirama’s office, with Kagami being summoned without being told who he is meeting fresh from a mission. Kagami, up until then, has been pretty miserable since he believes that he’s nothing more than a fling for the love of his life (which is kinda true in a sense since his feelings for her were pretty one sided until the moment Kagome decided that fudge it, she’d been lonely for so long and she wanted to be loved). He reacts to her presence with… well… how do you react to seeing the love of your life after three years of missing and longing and thinking you were nothing more than a momentary lapse of reasons for her? 

Well, anyhow, their interactions from that point start out coy and hesitant, with neither side quite sure of themselves. Eventually, Tobirama suggests that Kagami guides her around the village for a tour (haha! Only sane one Tobirama sees the writings on the wall and this is basically his apology for screwing with / abandoning Kagami in the aftermath of the failed assassination on Kagome). It’s during this walk that they refamiliarize themselves to each other. Eventually, Kagome asks Kagami point blank whether he still feels the same about her. He’s surprised and a little skittish. By this time, she’s the most powerful woman of their world and a monarch and he’s just… a soldier of Konoha and a member of clan Uchiha. By the conventions of that era, he has no business even standing within five feet of her as anything more than a bodyguard or a vassal. Still, he decides that he has nothing to lose, so he answers honestly that yes, he still feels the same. 

That’s when she brings out the kid (or rather, her bodyguard brings him to them). Kagami breaks down crying then (a little) because he comprehends what she means to say behind this gesture. Their relationship when viewed by the conventions of this era is incredibly unequal and in bad taste. The man is supposed to provide for and protect the woman, but Kagami has almost nothing for her. More than that, he was the traitor who once sought to kidnap her from her own country. That whole guilt/sinner complex I talked about in the big Kagami post. By their own conventions, he has no chance whatsoever and he knows it. To ask for forgiveness from her is already pushing it, let alone to ask for her love and her hand in marriage. Certainly, affairs between royalty/noble and their ninja guards have happened in the past and there are a handful of instances when the individuals in question were indiscreet enough to let their flings resulted in children, but usually the parentage of such children or even the children themselves were kept secrets out of shame and propriety and also as a warning against the ninja parents who might think to use those children to ask for benefits or influence the politics in those countries. Kagome could have easily done the same thing. Hide the parentage of said child and carry on as if nothing is wrong at all. She is more than powerful enough to do that, and having Kagami be known as the father of her child does nothing but hurt her political position. So, in allowing him to know and allowing him to even see his son in the first place, Kagome is basically declaring that she accepts and cares for him enough to do something deemed very unwise by the majority of nobility and fellow monarchs. It’s a more powerful declaration than words of love at that moment. 

And then she goes one step further. She asks if he still wants the same thing he said three years ago. She asks if he still wants to be with her, to see the world, to raise a family, to grow old together. It’s basically Kagami’s best day at this point. 

So after a while, they go to the Uchiha clan compound and talks of marriage and clan relations start. It’s not only a new chapter for Kagami but also a new chapter for clan Uchiha. Royal marriages are huge and have far reaching implications. There’s a reason nobility and royalty don’t acknowledge the ninja parentage of their bastard children after all. A Kagami-Kagome marriage means a blood link between the Uchiha clan and the world super power nation Gems. So by marrying Kagami, Kagome basically gives the Uchiha (by then already feeling the pressure from the subtle machination and politicking from Tobirama and other anti-Uchiha factions especially in the aftermath of a world war caused by Madara). 

That’s the ‘a new future for the Uchiha’ sub-ending. This sub-ending can only be unlocked via Kagami’s route (the good permutation where he doesn’t just die) and leads to the half of the Uchiha clan migrating to Gems. And oh yeah, this is the only sub-ending with crown prince Shisui (and long-suffering royal bodyguard Itachi who is constantly pestered by a small squad of royal Uchiha children and that infuriating Shisui)!!!!     

4/ Yes, Kagome does get heat for having a child out of wedlock especially once the parentage of said child becomes known. But she simply doesn’t care, and by that time, her position is strong enough and her nation wealthy enough for that heat to be irrelevant to her and her work.  

[le-feline]

How were Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura important enough to be placed on a team headed by Senju Tobirama? How are Ninja Teams decided? By tracker teams, Ino-Shika-Chou, Taijutsu Specialists, etc.? What made the two advisers so important that they, who were probably civilians, got placed on a team with important Clan member and brother of the Hokage?

I.

According to canon, there are at least some levels of intention behind genin team composition and design. We have seen that with the Ino-Shika-Cho team (a team created based on clan history and synergy) and Hinata-Kiba-Shino team (obvious tracker team). On the other hand, canon is also notorious for showing us only the exceptions to the Naruto world and not the actual statistical average. Why do I say that? Well, according to numbers during the 4th ninja world war, the allied ninja force numbered at 80 000 ninja and samurai combined. If we disregard unequal force contribution between villages and assume that they all contribute the same number of soldiers, then each village has roughly 13 333 ninja/samurai at the time of the 4th ninja war. 

So… 13 thousand active duty ninja per village. It’s not that much as far as army sizes go, but it is indicative of the number of academy students and genin hopefuls that the ninja academy has to put out per graduating class. Simple calculation utilizing turnover rate. Assuming the average shinobi stays active duty until 30 years old (which we were often told is a very good age for ninja since they tend to die young or be rendered unfit for combat. This number is even lower during war time), and the average starting age is 12 years old, then the average ninja has about 18 years of active duty as a soldier. Which means that every 18 years, the ninja academy has to produce enough actual genins (and not just genin hopefuls who get past the academy test but not the actual test from their jounin master) to replace the ninja population going into either retirement or KIA. That’s 740 genins per graduating class. 

Which again means that the number of ninja kids who get past the academy test and are assigned a team (but have not yet taken the actual genin test from the jounin master) must be above that 740 number. Maybe 800, maybe 1000. We don’t know. Canon hasn’t given us anything solid on that front.

And out of those dubious 740+ number, how many genins were shown to us? a measly 9, all of whom are either clan heirs or have some special relevance to the plot (8 clan heirs including Naruto who is both the son of the previous Hokage and the previous Jinchuriki, and Sakura). 

So that’s what I meant about canon being shit at showing us the actual average ninja child’s experience. We were shown the cream of the crops, the clan heirs and kids who won the superpower lottery, the exceptions and not the norms. We then see that these clan heirs are all grouped up in their own elite teams full of heirs and special snowflake kids. What about the other 731+ average ninja kids? How were they grouped up and what was their experience in the ninja world? Nobody has a fucking clue. Canon certainly did not give us anything regarding that. But considering all the special kids were already separated into their own little niche groups, my guess is that the plebe kids had to hang with other plebe kids. 

So from that observation, I’m extrapolating that just like our real world, the ninja verse group its own kids using two different standards: kids from the rich, influential families, and kids who don’t got shit going for them.

For the rich clan kids, they are grouped into specially designed teams with good synergy that compliments their skill set and promotes their growth (i.e. Ino-Shika-Cho). I imagine there would be some politicking behind the scene too. Parents pushing for their kids to be put on the same team together or getting this or that jounin master, or certain team placements acting as wordless statements from one party to another. Sure we don’t see any of that actually happening in canon, but clans are a thing in Konoha and we know they each holds power and influence (i.e. the fall of the Uchiha clan showed us that there are politicking among ninja, clans, and the village management. Tobirama specifically pushed the Uchiha into a position where they couldn’t jockey for more political power and influence, and their fall depicted how they gradually lost their sway over important village administrative decisions), so various forms of politicking both discreet and not are only logical. 

For the poor kids, the kids who don’t have big clan names backing them up, kids with no special power to speak of, who may stay a genin for the entity of their career, I imagine their placement comes with fewer frills. Because the village is still interested in efficiency and producing quality soldiers and workers, they probably have some forms or formulas for placement, but unlike the rich kid’s custom designed team composition, theirs is a more mass production style format.     

II.

Going from the reasoning above, I think that there is a definite intention behind Koharu and Homura’s placement in team Tobirama. The reason for that? Because their jounin master is Tobirama. 

As you yourself pointed out, Tobirama is important. Not only was he the brother of the first Hokage and the second in command in their newborn village, he himself was a powerful ninja with a bloodline and who would go on to become the second Hokage. Anything regarding him had an incredibly high chance of being political in nature, especially something as important as genin teams under his tutelage. 

The way I see it, there are 2 possible explanations for Koharu and Homura being placed on Tobirama’s team along with Hiruzen who was both a clan kid (small clan) and whose clan was apparently allied with clan Senju. 

1/ Koharu and Homura were also clan kids albeit from very minor clans that weren’t explicitly mentioned in canon. Just because canon did not explicitly state that they were clan kids does not necessarily mean that they weren’t. They could very well be but Kishimoto simply didn’t deign to tell us about it. This wouldn’t be strange at all considering canon Naruto’s tendency for ass pull stuff with no explanation nor forewarning whatsoever (for example, that whole sensor thing. It just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of Shippuden. No forewarning, no nothing. Just one day, pop, it’s there. Deal with it).

In this case, then their being there is similar to Sarutobi. They were there because of clan alliance and to foster a bond between the clans and the village. 

2/ They were actual civilian kids from families with no prior experience in the ninja world. Which means that their placement in team Tobirama is likely a political statement. What sort of statement you say? Well, one of inclusion of course and that even civilian born ninja are important to the village. A sort of ‘even if you are the baker’s son and the maid’s daughter, you may still be taught by the Hokage’s brother!!! So join the army today and contribute to the course!’ political statement. 

Think about it for a second. Out of a graduating class of upward of 740 children, you get maybe double digit number of clan kids and kids with special powers. The rest of them are either civilians or ninjas from small families with nothing special going on for them. Narrative wise, they are nameless cannon fodder, especially in a universe where superpowers are the prerequisite to your having any sort of voice or influence whatsoever. However, logistically speaking, these clanless ninja are the actual meat of the village. They are the people at the ground level, the foot soldiers, the ones doing the million nameless jobs that keep the village running. A ninja village is a pseudo military organization, an army of specialized soldiers and operatives so to say. Regardless of how powerful some individuals are, you can’t run an army with only a double digit number of people. War can be a game of attrition, and in games of attrition, you need numbers. Especially during that tender time when the village was newborn. The ninja were enterring a new era then, one in which their wars would be in much larger scale as they were no longer between clans but between villages. Battlefields and territories would be larger which in turn makes supply chains and logistics that much more complicated and manpower intensive. Death toll and attrition rate would also be far higher than the days of clan to clan fighting. More than ever, they needed numbers. They needed new blood to hold up the clans which had taken a toll after all the years of fighting. 

More than that, there are also social factors to consider. Back in the days of its founding, Konoha was made up of a lot of clans with histories with each others. Some of them were allies. Some were enemies who had laid down the war axe under the new banner. In some ways, the ninja world is a small place. People ran into each other. People knew each other. People had history, had things to settle. That they belonged to the same village now doesn’t make all that go away. So civilian born ninjas and clanless families should also serve as social buffer to gently and gradually ease the clans into living with each other. 

There’s also genetic factors. Despite the fact that Naruto verse seems to function on lego genetics, my guess is that not all bloodlines play nice with each other. The fact that the more influencial clans tend to maintain bloodline purity instead of opting for breeding powerful hybrids (i.e. Hyuga and Uchiha all looking the same and placing heacy emphasis on purity at least in the case of Hyuga. Also, the fact that apparently pure Senju DNA is too much for normal folks as Hashirama’s DNA implanted in 60+ embryos killed all of the fetuses bar one who eventually grew up to become Yamato). Close proximity and the comraderie of fighting for the same side tend to breed passion though. Eventually, you are going to have people from differeny bloodlines bonking each other and probably producing children whose genetics don’t play nice. Best case scenario, maybe they have some health issues growing up. Worst case scenario, they die or are born with horrific birth defects. Neither of those cases are good for a newborn village. So again, they needed the genetic buffer provided by ninjas coming from civilian or clanless families. 

Civilian born ninja maybe weak compared to clan ninja on an individual level. However, on a village or national level, they are vital to the village’s existence. Without them, Konoha would literally cease to be. 

Tobirama, smart guy that he is, should be able to see that from a mile away. With this sort of reasoning, Koharu and Homura, two civilian kids, being placed in the team taught by the Hokage’s brother and second in command of Konoha is an obvious political statement meant to court more civilian families and ninjas. 

[le-feline]

Why do all the Kunoichi become housewives or just not get married? Can't that have both? Or do Kunoichi become housewives so that if someone's stupid enough to invade the Village they have angry wives and mothers that are Jounin rank trying to kill them? Seriously, what do you think the career of a Kunoichi is like? When does she marry, have kids and retire from active duty and return to active duty? Difference for Kunoichi from the Fouding of Konoha to Naruto's time?

Because of good old sexism. That’s why.

https://www.quora.com/Are-Japanese-people-sexist

https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/japanese-sexism-and-the-ideal-woman

That ever since world war 2 and its aftermath, Japan has been incredibly closed of culturally speaking only worsens that particular issue. Having lived and studied there for a short while, I can say from first-hand experience that Japanese culture even to this day and even in modernized cities like Tokyo and Osaka is shockingly and deeply sexist. This is not the pervasive but still very nuanced and low-key sexism of America or Europe. This is in-your-face and strangers can insult your womanhood for culturally perceived shortcomings (such as choosing to keep working after marriage or for asking the husband to help a little with household chores or even for the right to visit your parents) sexism. 

Just look at all the manga series and the undertone and sometimes plain tone of sexist behavior in them. 

Logically speaking, it doesn’t make sense for all these Kunoichi to just drop whatever they are doing and become a full-time housewife upon marriage. Aside from the fact that it’s an individual choice and individuals can go different routes in life, there are so many factors that impact the average kunoichi’s choices in life: mentality (especially in a culture and society like Naruto verse which is pretty far removed from actual modern or pre-modern Japan), socio-economic factors (shortage of manpower caused by wars and constant skirmishes means that every able body must enter the workforce, so the state should have discouraged full-time housewife because for every one housewife staying at home with her babies means that there is one less soldier out in the field. Same situation as our real world World War 1 and 2 really. The men all went to war so the women had to get out of the house and enter the workforce to ensure society would not collapse due to manpower shortage), even politico-demographical factors.

But sexism is as sexism does, and so this is what we get.