#the diamond girls

[smol-tired-binch-blog]

SO I filled out a Jacqueline Wilson tier list! There was one with more titles but I haven’t read half of them due to, yknow, aging out of it. 

BUT I do want to give these a reread, although the Lola Rose one was quite recent. Maybe I’ll read em with bae?

I’d love to do like some mini reviews/discussion on these, but I don’t know if anyone would care. I know, I know, do stuff caue YOU want to, don’t make stuff for others sake, blah blah blah, but I actually care about these books!!! I want my thoughts to be seen and heard if I share them!!! So who knows, maybe I’ll do that at some point

[team7-headquarter]

I was thinking how to arrange the events of the Diamond Girls au, now that I've decided that Madara is not in the frame and neither is anything related to Kaguya.

First of all, that means Akatsuki is free to be a group searching for peace within all nations and doesn't have to play the villain role, while able to still play as the antagonists. I want it to be less extreme than in the manga/anime, but still show the conflict of violence in the search for peace.

Rin is alive, right? So I like the idea of Obito still snapping and joining Akatsuki, because he wants to fix the world and make it a better place, for Rin, for Kakashi. But if Madara isn't controlling him, then who killed Minato and Kushina? Who is playing the puppeteer?

Well, we know about the Uzumakis genocide and we know Konoha was planning to do the same to the Uchihas, so I said okay, why not go directly to the point and make the big big conflict of the Diamond Girls au about how the Hidden Villages like their clans strong 'til they are strong enough to overrule them and their authority.

I said from the beginning that I want the au to focus on the normally invisible parts of the story. I don't want to tell the story through the main events, like Naruto unraveling the thread of Konoha's corruption and realizing the depth of his Konoha's betrayal to the Uzumaki clan, or like Sasuke agonizing over the political tension regarding his clan and the fact Itachi joined Akatsuki.

If the hypocrisy of the Hidden Villages is the main problem, I can also do cool things like frame Orochimaru assassination of both the Kazekage and the Hokage in a grey light. It was murder, yes, but he also took the lives of two of the most corrupted leaders around. I can make the Konoha Council try to frame Tsunade as part of the conspiracy along with Orochimaru, allowing Danzo to become the next hokage, forcing the Uchihas to go after the last Senju and her apprentices or go all against Konoha, which would justify their later destruction. I can even twist the story and involve Jiraiya in all of it, 'cause Akatsuki helped Orochimaru and Jiraiya unknowingly had played the part helping Nagato, Yahiko and Konan escape. A real mess.

I can depict the conflict of Sasuke realizing he doesn't want to be a cop 'cause he doesn't want to blindly follow orders, he doesn't want to feed that oppression machine. I can finally involve Naruto with his Uzumaki heritage and say Konoha killed Minato because he wanted to restore the Uzumaki clan in Konoha and I can do justice to Kushina, the woman who knowing the stakes, decided to hide clues for her son to find, decided to build him a whole spy network and a trust circle he could lean on when the time came. Even if they killed them, they could not defeat their son.

And in the middle of it all, our girls.

Hinata having no room to do anything else but turn into politics and struggling to find the words that would help her survive. Ino shouldering the weight of being the heiress of her clan but refusing to let it be all she is, refusing to allow a job to become her life. Tenten being forced to marry Neji so no one can touch her and hating it as much as Neji does, not because they don't love each other, but because they hate how people reduces Tenten for it, while also enduring the Hyuga treatment, rooting and plotting on how to dismantle the structure of that rotting clan with Hinata. Sakura realizing that being a medic with a good heart is something really dangerous in a world full of violence and malice, worse even when she's the spiting image of the woman Konoha has wanted to break or kill now for many many years; she doesn't have the pedigree of a clan, Sasuke and Naruto and Kakashi can't protect her if they are fighting their own battles, she can only run and hide in Suna with Chiyo and hope for the right moment to come back and help her friends fix the whole mess (meaning try to keep them alive as the fight the system suffocating them).

But more than anything, I want the readers to notice how no one really looks at all these girls in Naruto, and how perfect is that set up for a story of political intrigue.

[shitbl0gger]

[the-sp0tless-mind]

[shelavish]

Lil Kim Grammys✨🖤

[eyefoes]

grahh girlfaves part 2 !! 💗

[lanasforlife]

please

[chiamezzano]

I wish I’d been a teen idle…

[owoatmilk]

[dangeroustaintedflawed]

[team7-headquarter]

To be clear, the reason why Minato and Kushina got killed on the Diamond Girls au is because they saw the Hidden Villages system as a step towards a better world and not the final state.

People with chakra and kekkei genkais survived by forming clans bases on family/blood relationships to fight off other clans and take violent jobs that would pay for their sustenance. Later, Hashirama and Madara founded the hidden villages system to stablish an standard of alliances between clans that would offer greater protection, along with the ability to obtain greater resources by liking their services to an element nation.

Knowing that Hashirama and Madara wanted to live in a world where children didn't have to fight and die all the time, it feels stupid to consider the hidden villages system as the final products. The economy of a hidden village is violence and death and suffering; there's simply no way it should be considered the finalization of their dream.

Minato saw that. He realized that Tobirama took many decisions that deviated from the original Hashirama dream, but that were necessary at the moment given the state of the world around them and the pressure of war. For example, Tobirama institutionalized soldier children by creating the Academy. Teaching children how to kill is indeed counterproductive on the long term, but at the moment it was better for kids to learn how to defend themselves and fight, because war knows no age and the enemy wouldn't spare them. If it was Tobirama's line of thinking, no one knows, but it could be rationalized like that.

The real problem came with the corruption of the original dream, which happened with Hiruzen and Danzo. For once, they were more Tobirama's kids than Hashirama's. Danzo saw the hidden villages system as the perfect machine that should be protected and maintained at all costs, which it wasn't. Hiruzen didn't necessarily shared Danzo's point of view, but he was unable to continue the change and limited himself to maintaining the status quo. That means, he preoccupied himself with maintaining Konoha's supremacy over other hidden villages, so that the threat of their power would keep others at bay.

When it came to Minato— well, the man was bold and had the benefit of an outside view (his) and a insider (Kushina). They agreed that society should not be solely on clans or hidden villages, at least not anymore. Clans were good and should be maintained given their tradition, cultures and the feeling of kinship with the family, but to base the shinobi system on clans could lead to maintain archaic practices like the secondary branche of the Hyuga clan, or the prejudice against clans like the Uchihas. Bloodline, kekkei genkais and other clan related elements were important, but again, it could generate unhealthy pressure upon heirs or discard really good shinobis that came from non clan families, among other problems.

The issue with the hidden villages system is that it was too reliable on violence and taking jobs from the elemental nations. It's partially given that the elemental nations want hidden villages to depend on them / fear the independence of the hidden villages, partially due the lack of other military like structures. On paper, the relationship between the elemental nations and the hidden villages is one of mutual benefit, but they don't particularly act like they are all part of the same community. Instead, it's more like an alliance. The division between shinobis and civilians in Naruto is too great for it to translate to our reality.

Minato thought that it was time to start working on lessening the division between clans, civilians and common shinobis. A difficult thing to do, if you consider that "turning shinobis more cilivian" or "going for hidden villages independence from the elemental nations" or even "lessening the impact of clan bloodline in hidden villages politics" sounds awful to the traditional parties, like you're telling them to be more weak.

In reality:

1) You cannot keep an ongoing state of war and then expect war not to break in. Most shinobis are seen mostly as weapons and not at all like people, which is part of the problem (see ROOT, if you want an example). So when you talk about turning shinobis more into civilians, it only means to give them a sense of peace, normalcy and care that reminds them that killing might be their job at the moment, but it doesn't have to be who they are all the time.

2) Minato doesn't want to immediately erase the Hidden Villages, but that's the goal, isn't it? If they aim for peace, having states dedicated to killing and violence is not ideal. Shinobis are bound to disappear one day and that's not a bad thing to want or look forward.

3) A lot of the violence of the shinobi world comes from the difference between common people and chakra users. That means that kekkei genkais and other chakra abilities are feared to the point of genocide (some examples include the jinchurikis, the Uzumaki clan and Haku). At some point you need to deal with that discrimination, creating opportunities for chakra users to live civilians lives and know that being a shinobi is an option, not a rule anymore. It means guaranteeing stuff like the safety of an Uchiha of the main clan if they want to become civilians and never learn how to fight or kill other people. Highly complicated, but you need to start somewhere!

4) Clans cannot dictate most hidden villages rules and, in Konoha's case, being from an important clan should not be a requirement to be a hokage. Minato did amazing proving that point, but he had to further work on it. Funnily enough, this point was easier to tackle. For example, Uchihas were prideful but highly understanding and they were willing to change in order to achieve peace. The Hyugas were a bit more of a problem, but it was not impossible and Minato was a fuinjutsu specialist, he really wanted to deal with the seal of the second branch and erase it once and for all. Minato wanted to protect their heritage and their traditions (like he couldn't do with the Uzumakis) while simultaneously freeing them of the burden of their past mistakes.

As it's evident, it would have changed the whole shinobi world. People like Danzo didn't like Minato because he thought he was brilliant, yet naive. It was not that easy and the process would weaken the village and allow others to attack. At the same time, other villages wanted to stop Konohagakure advance because they (those villages) either still depended highly on working as militaries or they liked the violent system. Of course that elemental nations hated it as much; they were terrified of the day Minato would declare Konoha didn't need the Fire Nation anymore, as distant as it could be.

I'm really enjoying thinking about the political aspects of this au. It's simply to see that I based it way more on the Classic than on Shippuden, but that was an easy decision.

[shitbl0gger]

[the-sp0tless-mind]

[reallyraw]

IG: Vaanessamk

[v1rginsu1cidal]

'Cause I was filled with poison

But blessed with beauty and rage...

[thevisualvamp]

Cinematic moments