#blablablah

Watching the Naruto anime with @shyyren and new favorite detail:

This super-skilled ninja, with reflexes on a whole other level, who knows how to block, parry, redirect and evade... gets "surprised" with a tackle hug by his 12-year old student who he definitely could have predicted doing this a mile away, to the point of doing this whole little spin before setting him back down gently, and then carries on with his speech like nothing happened.

Another update cutscene recorded, for the current story event "The one of darkness absolute"! Again, no actual spoken lines here, but there's enough I thought it might be of interest! It's also just a pretty epic scene, in general imo

Bonus: the screen art. I have fun dissecting the layout of this one ngl, I may make a post on it later but we'll see ^^;

Just a quick update so no one gets confused: I’ve changed the name of Revna’s & Halsin’s story from “The Bear and the Mushroom Shepherd Ram” to simply “Mushroom Knife” in AO3.

Why? Well, the original title was always meant to be a placeholder. I always felt it sounded a little too "whimsical" to how dark this story can get. While it has a lot of slow burn and softness, it’s also pretty dark and touches on some very delicate themes—themes I’m planning to explore more deeply as the story goes on. The new title fits the overall tone of it a lot better.

Mind you - I'm not some great celebrated author, fanfic or otherwise. I don't write very often, either. But one thing I've learned in life is to explore alternative ways and formats to do things to make it more intuitive for you, and this way works for me - and for all of the more prolific writers in my social circles that I've shared this idea with, it seems to make a lot of sense to them. So take it with a grain of salt, but hopefully if it doesn't exactly work for you, it'll at least inspire you to shake up your writing approach to streamline it for you!

There's a long walkthrough of how I do it under cut, but the summarized tip is:

Rather than editing the whole piece at once, I paste it into a fresh doc one paragraph or so at a time, only adding the next part once I'm satisfied with my rework.

This prevents the work from feeling overwhelming with a wall of text to have to edit, as well as makes it easier to tell where I have worked and where I left off.

This also prevents me from being too attached to the idea of forcing the paragraph to align with the upcoming ones - it's good to keep the gist, but if I see the future parts I get fixated on how to connect point A to point B. Removing "point B" means I can focus all my attention on rehauling Point A, and I can hook it up to Point B once I'm ready to edit or add to B.

A new document also gives me a "work table", where I can put the sentences and words and bits I like anywhere on the document I want until I'm ready to address them.

All in all, it reduces the amount of rigid structure without forcing me to freeform it - which, as someone with bad memory, is not optimal. I also can choose to Kill Some Of My Darlings, but keep others that just needed that little extra polish.

So.... How does this process for my "second drafts" look? :3

Hands: hmmmmmm persnaps now is a good time for. Joint pain perhaps? Swelling, even?

And I'm coming from a pov of someone who tends to stay on the outskirts and never got directly involved in the fandom, and the only memes I ever really became even remotely familiar with were things like 'u liek mudkip' and. Well. My least favorite, "Sinnoh Remake When", which has heavily affected how I understand the fandom, and why I bring this up now.

Full disclaimer, DPPt is a good game run, very fun, I enjoyed it and it introduced some of my favorites. And I fully understand how it's a darling for so many who started pokemon with one of those games. But if you didn't get to live the first 3 generations I don't think you understand just how revolutionary the RSE line, specifically Ruby and Sapphire, was at the time.

Because I started with the first games. Yellow, and Red. Gold, Silver and Crystal. But Ruby and Sapphire have always been my nostalgia games because despite not being my first pokemon game, they were a game of Firsts in a whole new eye-opening way.

Ruby and Sapphire was the first game in full technicolor, and the first game to have music that sounded like it was made with Actual Instruments. It introduced weather effects from your surroundings, and pokemon abilities and natures first made their debuts here. Double battles were introduced, revolutionizing pokemon battles in a fresh and exciting way, but so too were ways to play the game that Didn't revolve around battles. Pokemon contests and beauty stats, with ribbons and portraits to commemorate them, secret bases to decorate and personalize and make all your own.

These secret bases, along with tvs, also introduced fresh excitement when interacting with friends - you could trade records with each other so your exploits were televised in their games, and you could battle them anytime in their secret bases so long as you could find them (I spent many hours grinding pokemon to lv100 in a matter of days thanks to many op friend records saved to my file).

Diving underwater was also introduced at this time, and with it some of the most gorgeous scenery and music to date for underwater levels in this series (yes I'm biased but it really was incredibly serene for the graphics)

The rivals were the first to truly be friendly to the player. which - maybe is not entirely preferred for some; but after having Gary/Blue and Silver, rivals who ranged from aggressively competitive to downright hostile, was another fresh twist for the gameplay, to have Brendan/May to support you and help you along the way, or to have Wally test himself in battle with you, not to prove a point or beat you down, but to grow as a person himself and to cheer you on as you did the same.... it encouraged a sense of camraderie not seen before these games.

And then the plotline and villains? Mindblowing. This was the first time you fought an evil team that WASN'T Team Rocket, AND there were two of them that played a part no matter what game you picked? AND they actually had depth and nuance to their motives?? Say what you will about the character writing itself, but 'evil team that steals pokemon just to be evil bluh bluh' to 'evil team that commits atrocities and will not stop, but in a misguided effort to make the world a better place for pokemon'? That is a MONUMENTAL leap, and suddenly made them engaging! You weren't just thrashing faceless baddies for being thieves, you were trying to stop a group of misguided people from making a severe mistake!

And oh, what a mistake it was! A mistake so grand even the evil team leaders themselves stared in horror at the destruction they inadvertantly created. Awakening a legendary, and making it not only directly story relevant but threateningly so, because of their actions this legendary would rampage until it destroyed the world's ecosystem! There were stakes and motivation to stop that legendary, and no matter where you went the far reach of that legendary followed you, torrential downpours or blazing sun beating down on the routes furthest on the map possible from the pokemon.

I'm sure that honestly I'm forgetting some of the many new features brought in with these games, but Ruby and Sapphire really laid down the groundwork for future games in a way I don't feel like I've really seen since. Yes, the games reinvent the contests and side games, or new battle layouts, they create new weather effects and make the villains and story better and more engaging than ever. Some games introduce new graphics, sometimes they introduce an entirely new mechanic, such as poké ami or stat boosting. But no singular game has achieved nearly so much as Ruby and Sapphire did, nor has its impact carried forward to shape future generations in the same way.

I have played and loved many games in the main series, since the beginning of this franchise to now. But none of them have managed to reinvent the series in such a new and exciting way that Ruby and Sapphire did in a way that lasted. And I feel like that's something that deserves more recognition.

*note - Emerald got the short end of the stick in credit here because I played it far less than the first two, and because a lot of these defining features preceded its release, but if any Emerald fans want to add on and sing its praises feel free!

do the serve (yass!) or are they a civilian?

how did they meet your fav!!?

i’m tweaking my sona, her name is luella : ) she’s just a lil infantry soldier!!

Uzumaki Naruto - ok many of us know his name means fishcake 🍥. But do we also talk about the last name which I'm reasonably sure could be translated as "spiral roll". Look at my beautiful son, Fishcake Spiralroll.

Umino Iruka - ok so. "Dolphin of the sea", yeah, sure, this tracks as a name pattern given Sakura's name. But you are the least dolphin-coded guy I've ever seen named after a sea creature, you've gotta give me something to work with here. Currently my best theory is the first name is a homophone/play on the phrase of "iru ka?" "Are you here?" And it just spiraled from there - weak theory at best but since Presence is a big factor of your character in Naruto's life that's the best I've got.

Ebisu - forgot this guy showed up multiple times tbh, Konohamaru's stuffy teacher? But I'm 90% certain his name means "shrimp" - having Naruto butting heads with him strikes me as very funny given they're both potential ramen ingredients.

Uchiha Sasuke - Last name escapes me overall - though, it is indirectly an overlap with uchiwa, as in the fan style, so that explains the family crest. "Sasuke" is, from what I can tell, meant to be like an iconically ninja name. Like naming your dog "spot" or "fido" but with more gravitas. Can't say I know more on the etymology but seems straightforward to make Naruto's rival in his ninja aspirations be named to bring the epitome of a ninja to mind.

Haruno Sakura - "cherry blossom of the spring". Pink hair, green eyes, we get it you're a flower child. Moving along.

Hatake Kakashi - ok so. First exposure to "Kakashi" as a name having any meaning was actually in Wizard of Oz-like parodies where the scarecrow character would be named accordingly. However, western scarecrows seem hyperspecific and not really connected to our favorite mentor. I realized however - if you broaden the term, it could be it's originally a term for the "training dummies", like the one we see Naruto make as an effigy of his new mentor on night one to train against and beat into a pulp. His last name could also theoretically be written for "take" as in bamboo, which strengthens the imagery. Everyone's favorite bamboo training dummy <3

Yuki Haku - idr seeing his last name mentioned but it probably comes up later so including it - "yuki" as in snow, very straightforward. My understanding of the name "haku" is it's typically linked to amber - but I may be getting it mixed up with "kohaku"? I don't think that's the intent here either way - unless you wanted to say his mirror jutsu is like seeing someone frozen in amber, maybe. There's an argument there.

Rock Lee - took me way too fucking long to realize his name - and fighting style compared to his peers - is probably just an elaborate mixed reference to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Bruce Lee.

Hyuuga Neji - clueless on the family name. I think the first name can mean "screw" though, like screws in furniture? Given he fights by hitting key points on the body to weaken it, you could liken that to removing screws from furniture to make it structurally unsound, so I can see it. (Also smth smth screw loose- /j)

Might Guy - I don't think this one needs speculation.

Yamanaka Ino - wish I could pinpoint her first name, but her last name meaning "inside the mountain" suggests an interesting setting contrast to our bright, springtime-themed sakura.

Nara Shikamaru - Boy. Is your name just "famous-deer-place deer-son". Are you some convoluted "froze like a deer in headlights" joke. Boy look at me. I need answers.

Akimichi Chouji - very loose guesses here but "aki" can mean autumn and "chou" can mean butterfly. I think if I could parse the second half of either name I'd have something Better here, sorry dude sjfjsjgjd

Inuzuka Kiba - not sure on "suka/zuka" but first name is Fang and part of his last name is Dog. Pretty straightforward.

Hyuuga Hinata - not sure on last name but first name means "sunflower" which oh my god it just hit me. Make parallels of naruto to the sun and the meta writes itself.

Orochimaru - ah yeah ok, "Name of the rampaging snake/dragon demon from mythology + common suffix for boy names". Yeah that's pretty straightforward.

Yakushi Kabuto - no idea on the last name, but the first name is most commonly attributed to a type of beetle and/or samurai helmet named after said beetle, I think? Which is an interesting choice. I don't think the pokemon factors into this at all but I could be wrong, if we have a walking Dwayne Johnson reference in this series too /lh

Gekkou Hayate - first name means to be "fast" - pretty straightforward for a ninja name, made ironic by his slow, sickly default behavior.

Would love to have literally any ideas on the sand siblings but loose thoughts are, Temari makes me think of the name for a type of lantern/ornament kind of? And Kankurou... I could see 'kurou = crow = now THERE'S the scarecrow reference I was looking for" since, I feel like his puppet is more literally named Scarecrow maybe? Or maybe that's fanon idk