#thelionwrites

I've imported most of my projects I work on, but I also have a catalogue of WIPs that aren't in here yet and only get added when I do work on them. 46 new writing projects started this year. I'm afraid to add a colum for Progress/Complete for this one.

This is also in contrast to where the written words go. Recent projects get the most attention, with the only exception being Sundial in the Shade that was started in 2019.

Below are all projects that got at least 5000 words progress in 2023. It's a nice mix of different projects, while clearly showing bias to the stories I'm most enjoying writing.

Sundial in the Shade: My main project that I'm writing and updating monthly on AO3. A retelling of Naruto with more emphasis on hard work and introduction of much alternative worldbuilding. Words written include the editing of what I've already written and the entirety of Nanowrimo 2023. Part of Nanowrimo 2022 (that I finished in January) also counts for this, but was registered differently for reasons.

Konoha Celestial Forge: New story that I started writing this year about a Konoha civilian getting super powers... and being depressed and secrative about it. Little planning, much improvisation, which makes it fun to write. And a bit more relaxing without my usual standards.

To Those Who Don't Fear Death: Jumpchain story that's very ambitious and fun to work on because it's basically 10 WIPs strung together with twine. Massive crossover, written completely out of order, and I keep getting lost reading the parts I've already written and cursing myself for not finishing.

Nowhere to go but up: a plot idea for a NaruSasu story that I ended up writing up extensively. One of those 14 page outlines that I may have to publish as-is because I don't think I'll have time to actually write it. Naruto gets kicked out of his apartment and Sasuke takes him in. And they fall in love from there.

Haruno Sakura and the other members of Team 7: another outline, this one written out of spite, in which Sakura is completely overpowered and the whole of Konoha has to learn the lesson that women can have power, actually, without having to fear them.

Just a taste/Caught in the Rain: stories I was commissioned to write and not public.

Life is a frolic rump old chum: The story that is in desperate need of a better name. It's Gamer!Naruto, which I only want to start publishing if I can finish it. There are too many Gamer fanfics that are published incomplete. An incredible joy to write and I have Excel spreadsheets to track experience points and all the stats.

Queen Hayate: Writing prompt that was super fun to do! I'll have to add it to my Tumblr collection this week. Girl was stolen as a toddler and became basically a goddess in a different universe, now finally back in her normal body and dealing with the PTSD (and realising this reality has some evil that needs war declared on them too). I should do more writing prompts again. They are super fun, when I have the time and energy for them.

I've added slicers to my graphs so I can only look at the 2024 data, and have another round-up next year. Curious how it'll compare!

The absolute delusion of [A young Nara complimenting Sakura].

So, context matters. This is a flash from the future, somewhere 10-20 years after canon wrapped up. A lot can happen in that time. It is being said by an Academy student, who has limited information, in response to a Hyuuga student thrashing Sakura and needing to make sure that the Hyuuga shuts up and gives Sakura some respect before she starts thrashing the entire room.

It is also a literary device called foreshadowing. Because until then Sakura in present time has been relatively weak compared to her teammates, and at the end of the chapter she gets a massive power boost (Mokuton) that would let her rival and surpass Naruto/Sakura. This boasting from the Nara is supposed to mystify and intrigue.

In no alternate universe whatsoever could Sakura EVER be considered the strongest of her team. I can’t believe anyone could say that without laughing.

I pity your lack of imagination.

Sasuke with Perfect Susanoo alone is impenetrable. We’ve seen what happens when Tsunade at full strength tried to break it. It took her AND the Raikage to make any progress at it.

Sakura in canon needed about two years to get to Tsunade’s level, and did it without a tailed beast or bloodline helping her. Is it so hard to believe that she could be stronger than Tsunade and the Raikage combined if she had another 10-20 years?

Sasuke has Amaterasu. Good luck healing from her torso being covered in that fire. She’d have to start removing flesh but if he covered her with enough flames, there’s no healing from that.

Okay. So? If Sasuke killed her with a kunai, she would not be able to heal herself from death either. You’re making the assumption that Sasuke can land his attack on her. That she is unable to shield herself. That she would even let Sasuke get as far as using that attack on her. At least Sakura can heal herself. If Sasuke gets hit, he’ll have to deal with the damage. In a battle of endurance, Sakura actually has more chance.

Do you really think Sakura could beat 6 Paths Naruto?

Depending on the setting, easily. Naruto is weak to genjutsu. Boom. Threat neutralised.

There is a limit to what Sakura can do with her small chakra reserves. Even with the best control and techniques in the world.

So she gets bigger chakra reserves. Problem solved. Why do you keep arguing about the state of canon compared to what we’ve chosen to do in a fanfic? Is there no part of you that can imagine maybe, just maybe, some people would like to see Sakura as a strong ninja and will make whatever changes are needed from canon to get that result?

Just pretend she could get even close to high reserves. Do you really think Sakura could pose a threat to a village with a widespread attack? Sasuke and [Naruto] can destroy cities in a single attack. Sakura has nothing.

This is a nice pivot that I’d like to point to. Until now most arguments have been about whether Sakura would be able to defeat Naruto and Sasuke in battle. And they’re largely irrelevant because the three of them are fighting together against enemies. It’s hard in general to look at the three of them separately (in my fanfic) because of how much they work together.

Their strength would in fact be measured in how destructive they could be against enemies. Naruto can manifest a Kyuubi mode, make copies of himself and be a real force to be reckoned with. Sasuke can deal massive natural disasters. But Sakura? She can use her mokuton to create custom flowers that blow poisoned pollen into the air. Mokuton, in this version of fandom, is basically free to use because creating life generates more chakra than it takes. She can use this boost in chakra together with some channelling plants and use genjutsu to put entire villages to sleep. She assassinates anyone who could pose a threat, with zero casualties.

It's a different kind of frightening. A different kind of strength. And anyone who thinks she’s weak enough to attack (to break the genjutsu) gets their asses kicked.

Sasuke and Naruto are strong in a traditional sense, but Sakura is the one with options. She can deploy poisons that weaken enemies that even Sasuke and Naruto couldn’t fight. She has genjutsu that’s more subtle and versatile than always needing eye-contact. And on top of that she has surpassed the strength of Tsunade which was capable of tussling with Kage.7

The delusion of this statement is so unreal. I hate Sakura simping so much. It ruins fics.

If your fragile male ego can’t handle a competent woman, don’t read fanfics with the BAMF!Sakura tag. Don’t know what else to tell you. I’ve written a story about an overpowered Team 7, and since canon keeps insisting Sakura is the weakest, it’s most satisfying when she is raised up higher. She gets a bad deal from canon, so I feel it’s fandom’s job to make it up to her.

For context, in a Dutch hospital, the Spiritual Care Professional is available to talk with patients who are dealing with unsettling news. Often these are people who are dealing with terminal illness and need help accepting their diagnosis. Often this just means they need someone who will listen to them talk without saying much in return. Never to tell them what to do, just to help them realise what they want themselves.

It was to be a twenty or thirty minute session, and after five minutes it already felt like I’d spent an eternity with them. No, that’s not fair. The Muslim hardly did any of the talking, explaining some points of his religious when prompted, and I had no specific objections with him. It was the Christian who was the main speaker and my frustrations are with him.

I knew I needed to step away, but it was already too late. We were in a circle of about 20 to 30 people, only a third of which I was familiar with. These are not social situations where I can easily act in the best of times. When presented with something unfamiliar, I have a very brief window where I have the confidence to act differently than all those around me, to be the non-conformer, before the situation I’m in starts to drain so much energy that I can’t even fathom pulling unwanted attention towards me.

I don’t want to sound so pretentious to say I’m immune to his semi-intellectual rhetoric, but I have been exposed to the way he talked before and developed a dislike. Questions like ‘what does Christmas mean to you’ and then pondering like a Greek philosopher to explain inconsistencies. Presents are an integral part of Christmas, but that’s not a bad thing. After all, Christmas is when humanity got the greatest gift of all time: Jesus Christ. When we give presents now, that’s just in honour of that gift. Many people have dinner together on Christmas, because food and company are fundamental desires that humans have exhibited going back to ancient times.

It's… conjecture held up as explanations. Like reality does not matter, as long as we can feel better about our current situation for having thought about it. It’s something I do a lot in writing fiction, where there are other expectations from my audience. I don’t mind brainstorming these ideas and bouncing them around. I do mind when someone lectures at us and uses these brainstorming ideas as a way to pretend to be saying something profound from a position of power.

I do not care for it and I am not the audience for this kind of event. I would have much preferred a straight up lecture with actual knowledge about Christmas traditions, or even a public speaking event where I learned more about my colleagues through their own traditions. But not everyone can get what they want. I realise that. Like I said, I’m not the audience for this kind of event, and these events do not have to please everyone.

But then this man had to go on to expand the conversation towards those who don’t believe in anything higher than themselves or *smug grin* ‘at least those who say they don’t believe in anything higher’.

It was at that point that I clenched my fists and tightened my jaw. I knew if I were to speak, I would start yelling things I would soon after regret. I’m describing it like this because I do not want to downplay my emotions at the time. I was angry and insulted, which I not often am. I was annoyed at the situation, annoyed that I had not stepped away sooner, annoyed that even when something like that was said to me, I was still not walking away because I did not want to be rude. Because if I was rude I would be asked to explain myself, and I did not have any nice words to do so. And also, I felt a little bit betrayed.

One of the unspoken rules is that we don’t talk about religion in the workplace. And that serves me fine. I can work with Excel and make policies and we never have to talk about religion. So to bring religion into this space, in a public enough event that I don’t feel comfortable freely expressing my own feelings as an atheist, in such a way that it’s making me seethe, that felt unacceptable to me.

At the time, I was in no mood for drinks after work. I knew if I kept feeling that angry, I would simply walk out. I was lucky this event was sandwiched between the other two. I had already had fun with the walk which had lifted my mood, and the kitchen’s demonstration was a lecture on the effect of food on patient care including samples. It was distracting enough that it gave me time to set aside my feelings. I made it through the afternoon.

Instead of ruining the whole day, the insult was a sour note in an otherwise pleasant Christmas celebration.

Over drinks, I was asking what others had thought about the Spiritual portion. A close colleague said she had doubts going in, but felt like she could have a respectful discussion in the end. She was pleased with the experience.

So that leaves me, overanalysing, wondering exactly what set me off so much. Shouldn’t I be able to respectfully discuss religion? If my main complaint is that I can’t express myself without being insulting, then isn’t it my problem?

I had a streak of atheism interest in High School and college. And the recurring theme in atheism spaces is searching desperately for a good argument for god. And yes, there’s a lot of intellectual wanking going on in the atheist communities, by people who act that by virtue of disbelieving in god they are going to be smart and knowledgeable in all things. Which usually manifests in sexism and racism, to worrying degrees. That is to say, society has these problems to worrying degrees, the atheist community is no exception, but there’s a special kind of stubbornness from supposed intellectuals who have decided these behaviours can’t be wrong because they’re exhibiting them, and they’re too smart to have ingrained prejudices.

But avoiding all that toxic behaviour and sticking with the ‘good’ communities, for a lot of atheists there is a desperate need to find the best arguments for God and engage in them. And then a growing disbelief when we cannot find anything.

Each argument that pertains to prove something must have created the universe because nothing comes from nothing, automatically assumes that God came from nothing. There’s Pascal’s Wager, which posits that it’s always rational to belief in God when being wrong costs so little while being right is an infinite reward and avoids infinite damnation. Which is a decent argument, except for the part where it says nothing about which of the mutually exclusive Gods one should worship.

The more you dive into the logic, the clearer it becomes that religion has no good arguments in favour of it. And it is mostly about the vibes instead.

When I was younger, me and my siblings would sometimes lament that we wished we could believe in god, because we saw how much comfort it gave others. Culturally ingrained, we believed that faith is a beautiful thing and there is something precious lost if you don’t have the capacity for it. But over the years I’ve learned to reject that thinking.

It’s not that I merely lack faith in God. It’s that I went looking for evidence and could find nothing. It is that cherished facts held among those of the Christian faith don’t hold up to the tiniest bit of scrutiny. Do you know why we know Jesus was born on Christmas? The date isn’t in the bible. So when a priest three centuries after Jesus’ death needed to know when Christ was born, he used logic. Christ was the most important of humans, therefore he had to be born on one of the most important days. The equinox to be precise. It only made sense. And a thousand years later we’re still being taught this conjecture as fact. Even though most scholars now agree that considering all the descriptions in the bible around Jesus’ birth it’s actually more likely that, if Jesus even existed, he was born somewhere in March.

Faith, in the meaning of belief without evidence, is not a good thing. It’s what keeps us believing in wrong things. Homeopathy, charlatans, quacks, con-artists, anti-vaxers, covid-deniers. If you have faith without evidence, you are going to be consistently wrong and often taken advantage of. Why would this be a bad thing in all areas in life except religion?

It's considered rude to say that belief in God is on the same level as belief in the Fey, belief in superstitions, or belief in Santa. But I do not know another way of expressing my own views in these matters. We know, know, that humans start believing wrong things when left to their own devices. We know humans are unreliable narrators and can misinterpret and embellish. Sometimes, we just make things up. All of us should be naturally sceptical of any extraordinary claims that isn’t backed by evidence.

For me, there are two straightforward explanations to Jesus. Either there really was a person capable of performing miracles 2000 years ago who claimed to be the son of god, or there was simply someone with kind words that encouraged others to be better versions of themselves. Someone whose stories were exaggerated in the roughly 100 years between his death and the New Testament’s creation. In the same manner that humans have always exaggerated stories and people.

Isn’t the second option so much more likely than the first?

If I were to tell you that I managed to turn water into wine yesterday, would you take my written word for it? If there were twenty-six witnesses who also saw it happen, would you belief the written word then, knowing that there are inconsistencies between the witness testimonies? What is the Bible if not just the witness testimonies of a few people who claim they saw miracles happen? Why would that be enough to convince you?

And yet, we are faced with a conundrum. Because there are many, many people who are convinced. And who do believe in god. That is something that begs for an explanation. And so I have some thoughts. I think we are taught from a young age not to question religious beliefs as we do other beliefs, in part by viewing it as a personal(/cultural) preference instead of a factual question. I think religious communities carry many benefits and humans naturally avoid thinking about subjects that would carry negative effects if questioned. Much like we don’t like thinking about the ethics of eating meat, because thinking it through might mean becoming a vegetarian.

Mostly, I think it’s habit. It’s a rare thing to have Christian parents raise a Muslim child. Children aren’t usually raised with many religions from which they end up choosing the one that they think is most likely to be true. They usually adopt the religion of their parents and have to make a conscious effort to adopt a different faith.

A religious person might counter by asking if that’s even the right way to look at it. When there are no arguments to give, they shift away from asking whether it’s true, to asking whether it’s valuable to belief, whether believing it brings good things into the world, whether it makes people happy.

So I feel, in the end, that religious people do not care about Truth. Not when it comes to religion. It’s sacrilegious to think your own religion isn’t true, but it’s not something they actually care about. Truth is optional. The religious just need enough arguments that they can pretend they believe that it’s true, so that they can reap the other benefits.

How does that assertion feel to the religious person? To be told that they don’t really believe what they say they believe? To have my world view forced upon them?

I imagine it’s somewhat similar to being told I’m only ‘saying’ that I don’t believe in a higher power.

There are some Christians who cannot imagine a world view that does not include a higher power. So desperate are they to explain the conundrum of the atheist, that they assume we must have some other ideal that we hold up as God. They accuse us of having science as a religion, or that a belief in humanism is the greater force that we believe in. Doesn’t an atheist have any ideals or hopes or ethics? Of course we do. They’re just created without an appeal to higher authority.

This behaviour is a refusal to accept our answer. These religious people have concluded that something higher is needed in every viewpoint about the world, and therefore they do not belief us when we say for us there is nothing. For us, at least for me, believing in anything more is a delusion.

And I do not know how to convey that without stepping on people’s toes.

Christians and Muslims can get along because they do not talk about the natural implications of their believes. If you’re a Christian, you traditionally believe that you need to be a Christian to get to heaven and that otherwise you go to hell. For Muslims, it’s something similar. How do you have a conversation where you’re respectful to each other, but also believe the other person is going to spend an eternity being tortured for being wrong?

As an atheist I get along with religious people because our differences to do not come up in conversation. Because I limit myself from saying what I really think. Because the natural implication of my belief is not only that the most logical conclusion is that there is no God, but that all people who do believe in God are wrong and have not followed the logic in pursuing this question. And that I’m mostly fine if they all want to believe something that is most probably false, but that I’m tired of pretending the question of God is something unknowable and all answers are equally likely.

I’m sorry, but that’s just not how I see it. God probably does not exist. Me treating other religions with respect is avoiding the subject of how unlikely they are to be true. It is saying: you are entitled to your wrong opinions as long as you don’t bother me with them.

I can’t go back in time. I can’t speak out retrospectively in a workspace against the Christian who should have spoken from respect and avoided the subject. But I can imagine how it could have gone if I had a bit more confidence.

When he said: “How about those who ‘say’ they don’t believe in a higher power?”

Perhaps I could have said: “That’s me. And I don’t just say it, I truly believe in nothing above us.”

“Ah, but surely there is something. Just this morning I accidentally brought an extra can of cola with me to work, and one of my patients’ dying wish was to have a can of cola. How would you explain that?”

“Coincidence.”

“Yes, there are people who believe in coincidence as something bigger than us. Also called destiny or fate.”

“No. Not destiny. That implies there is a plan. I mean coincidence as in random chance.”

“Having faith in randomness is still faith. Surely not everything is random?”

“And in those cases I don’t believe in the randomness. And frankly, I don’t like how you’re conducting this conversation. Whatever appeal you wish to make against something higher, it’s a distraction. All the problems in the world are human made. And that’s scary. But it’s also empowering. Because that means all the problems can be solved by humans too.”

“Ah yes, humanism…”

“Humanism is a philosophy that I agree with. It’s not higher than me and I am at liberty of tearing it asunder and rebuilding it from scratch if it defies the values I hold dear.”

“Well, you say all this now, but what if you need support? If, like in my line of work, you find yourself terminally ill and with nowhere to go? What will you grasp when there is nothing left?”

“Then I’d rather have no hope, than the false hope you’re peddling.”

He would probably just shake his head, unconvinced and still thinking I was lying. And I would at least be able to point out that for someone asking me questions, he seems incapable of listening to my answers.

That did not happen. I grit my teeth and bit my tongue until we were allowed to leave. The others applauded. I did not.

To close, he handed us a poem printed on a small piece of paper.

I scanned it and there was some nice sentiment in there. They wished us happy holidays and spoke of light in darkness. Just enough symbolism to leave a bitter taste in my mouth. But that was not enough for them. It also had to mention God explicitly.