naruto fails utterly as a political allegory because it does not even come close to recognizing WHY shinobi are motivated to do battle in the first place - economics!!! it’s not just that there’s hatred between clans; it’s manufactured hatred designed to keep the shinobi subservient to their feudal lords, while maximizing the feudal lords’ own power, land, personal wealth, etc. and once hashirama and madara throw a wrench in that plan the daimyos quickly realize they can recover by simply continuing to increase the scale of these fights until it’s nation fighting nation, rather than just family fighting family. this is why madara and hashirama’s falling out makes NO sense in canon. madara going into despair after learning that humans continually fight each other because moon fruit is insulting tbh and you would think that the uchiha leader would have recognized that the root of the problem was the feudal lords meddling in shinobi business for profit. but no, kishi had no intention of tackling the economic exploitation of shinobi past the land of waves arc apparently
HI YALL i come bearing the next installment of CAULESCENT! don’t we all need a little more hurt/comfort hashimada in our lives.
i honestly do NOT know what happened…i meant to have this finished and published weeks ago, but october completely got away from me. anyway like, comment, subscribe, etc, i promise it’s gonna be one hell of a time.
5: What character that you’re writing do you most identify with?
i try to identify at least a little bit with all my characters. i want to find things that we have in common in order to write them more realistically. i do identify with madara a lot (obviously, i roleplay as him) as a protective older sibling though.
6: What character do you have the most fun writing?
i really love writing super slimy evil characters. idk what that says about me. i just think they’re fun to write. writing takeda was a blast in the last chapter of caulescent, he was just so unpleasant and nasty.
20: Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)
[redacted]
ok for real i’ll get into this a bit at the end of the fic but caulescent is VERY much inspired by the works of bernd heinrich (winter world, mind of the raven, the homing instinct, etc. he’s an incredible naturalist and a great writer and i’m always in awe of his observational skills.) and heather macdonald, who wrote this kind of ode to t.h. white and to goshawks that i think is really remarkable. i try to write and publish one longform hashimada fic every year (2020 really nerfed me, i’m so sorry lol) based on whatever lessons i’ve learned that year. 2017 was an amazing and positive year full of new experiences for me, so i wrote a fic about finding love and existing peacefully in nature. in 2018 i had some hard times, so i wrote about the different ways that depression manifests in these characters and about finding strength in one’s own weaknesses. in 2019 i wanted to write an ode to hashirama and madara’s relationship that coincided with me overcoming some serious challenges. 2020 was supposed to be the year i wrote a super experimental and metaphor-heavy hashimada fic, and it still is that, but i’ve added some serious political overtones to it as well based on real world events. i guess the point i’m trying to make with caulescent is that nature is not inherently fair or kind, and it’s not fair to try to apply our human morality to it, so sometimes it can seem cruel. but we humans are part of nature too, and we can choose to be fair and kind, or we can destroy each other with greed.
also i was telling a good friend of mine about this earlier this week, but cmd+f the word “braid” in chapter 3 of caulescent and note the EXQUISITE parallels i’ve drawn between hashirama and the mokuton. there are TONS of little bits of foreshadowing and setups/payoffs in this fic, through either word choice or story beats or dialogue or all three (i hope it is my most tightly plotted fic to date) and i can’t wait for you all to reread and find them
2: Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project
without spoiling anything, i am VIBRATING at the idea of publishing more of caulescent. and i literally cannot talk about why without revealing huge spoilers (the entire premise of the story is a spoiler itself), but the next chapter in particular is like….my personal 2020 revenge fantasy and i hope it’ll be as cathartic for yall to read as it was for me to write. LOL
3: What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)
caulescent actually falls into this category but i can’t get into it without SPOILING THINGS, i am so sorry
8: Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?
yeah, i’d say so. i love found family and…i guess i’m reluctant to invoke the terms “whump” and “hurt/comfort” because there’s something kind of fetishistic about the way some authors put their characters through constant abuse without any resolution, and i find it really awkward to read. but i do love closed-off characters who learn to be vulnerable, strong characters who learn to rely on others, prideful characters who accept defeat. basically i love dynamic characters who evolve over the course of the story. if your character hasn’t changed in some way from the start of the scene to the end, cut the scene.
19: Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)
this is a little cringy but there are certain books that i was OBSESSED with in high school to the point of near-memorization that i’ll pull phrases from even to this day, almost without thinking about it. i got into a phase using “rather” at the end of my sentences after seeing it in a diana wynne jones book, for example. unfortunately some of those books were written by some awful transmisogynistic writer who i’ll not be name-dropping here, may she fall into obscurity, so i’m trying to get away from that. basically if you think you’re being clever by including certain word choices, don’t.
