February Post 13 - Naruto and fic idea
Oh Naruto, I do believe you are the flame I will always come back to.
I don't think I've read any of the manga since chapter 511 -- the semester got too sucky, and I just never got back into reading it -- but I was skimming Askerian's post on 574 and noted someone's comment about Sasuke calling him Tobi, instead of Madara, implying he knew he was a fraud... *record scratch*
THIS MAGNIFICENT BASTARD IS NOT UCHIHA MADARA? HE'S SOME ASSHOLE WHO RODE ON THE NAME TO GET ATTENTION? SON OF A FUCK!**
So yah. Need to start reading it again now. Also because I hear we get more characterization for the dead Jinchuuriki... and they feature in this fusion plot bunny that will not leave me alone.
May as well start talking about that -- if it's silly, I trust you guys to talk me back into my senses. So:
How many of you are familiar with Digimon Tamers?
JesuOtaku has a web-series reviewing anime, and she has been doing a long-running retrospective on the Digimon franchise, discussing plot, characters, and technical details of each season of the series. She's still working on Tamers (S3), and what she's said about it so far (the subtle character writing and well-fleshed cast of kids and adults, interesting sci-fi take on what was before essentially a fantasy story, and oodles of nightmare fuel in what's technically a kid's show) made me hunt it down.
I love it. It is fantastic. The characters especially. they're written like actual people instead of fleshed-out tropes, but have interesting, distinct dynamics. Also, they react realistically (or at least plausibly given their established character traits) to everything that happens. Strangely one of my favorite aspects is the Adult Fear; the different reactions of the parents to their kids' involvement in this very alien and dangerous situation. Also, so much psychological trauma and Lovecraftian imagery, courtesy of the head writer of Serial Experiments Lain. Is good stuff.
So, to explain the Bunny: one of the Digi-leads, Renamon, is fox-based and has a higher form called Kyuubimon. My fate was sealed m(_ _;)m
Can't really picture an over-arcing plot (other than what played out in DT, which I don't want to redo), but I keep getting little scenes and ideas that I might be able to string together.
Main players, the Jinchuuriki - at least some of them. I think (I)t would benefit from a smaller cast, and as I said, I'm not really familiar with all of those characters and don't want to contradict anything by making my best guesses. But I wanted to see how one set of characters tied to different animals would translate to another setting.
So far, not well.
Naruto with Renamon is a straight-forward match to me, and I've already got several backstory tidbits about how Kushina was Renamon's original partner before she died and how their relationship is affected by that. Naruto's thrilled to have a real Digimon partner and having hir* fight others, but is also terrified of losing hir like his mother. Renamon spent a long time alone after Kushina died, so s/he's getting used to a new partner with a very different style and skill level. Also, family is a new concept.
For Yugito Nii, I thought Gatomon, but there might be a better choice, I'm not sure. Tiger-based?
For the others, no fucking clue. Going through the index of 995 Digimon looking for a type that makes sense as each character's partner is a pain in the ass, because I can't just google "is there a tanuki-themed Digimon? Sand-Based? Desert? Oh, your index isn't structured by types or even ranks. Hell."
And then there's Killer B, who'd either have a bull-based or octopus-based digimon partner. Though there's another issue with including him (and Nii and a couple others for that matter): age. B has almost 20 years on Naruto, Nii has 14. In Tamers, there were older characters who were significant to the plot, but they did point out that when dealing with Digimon and the weird Digital World, children had an advantage :/ I could play fast and loose and bust them down to teens, I suppose. Would that be too silly?
... I'm picturing him as an exchange student living with a homestay family in Yokohama. Rhyming helps him remember Japanese better. Maybe he's vaguely aware of the game via his younger host-brother. Finding and helping a monster on the street was an accident. Stop me, I'm crazy.
But, I'm having fun. I'm also noticing surprising parallels, like Gaara having a lot in common with Ruki/Rika. Bad relationship with his family, tends to avoid other people, got into the game as escapism, devoted himself to it and got really, really good at it. It was completely unintentional (I really don't want a cast of characters that have exactly the same traits and dynamics as the originals, just with Naruto names), but it makes sense to me that that's how he'd be ;A; It's set in close-to-real-world Japan, so I don't think he'd be completely psychotic and define his existence by murder the way he did with a demon in his head, but he'd certainly have some issues with abuse, self-esteem, possibly identity and sense of self, and loneliness. He'd probably be obsessively competitive about the game (counterproductive to any initial goal of making friends), but I'm not sure whether he'd have a hard time thinking of the Digimon as real creatures, the way Ruki did. It's likely >_> I have to pick a partner and figure out what made him accept it - its strength or his empathy; if he saw two monsters fighting, would he rescue the underdog?
(oh crap it's 5AM) Also the Hypnos equivalent is... not fully figured out. I think it grew from a well-funded program nurturing artificial life, like the Wild Bunch/Monster Makers were doing, but the government scooped it up when things seemed to get out of control. Itachi has worked there since the accident that killed his mother. He moved into an apartment with Shisui, and though he and his dad still butt heads, he tries to spend as much time with Sasuke as possible. Things get complicated after Sasuke gets introduced to Renamon.
Anyway, those are the thinky thoughts I've had on this. I'mma sleep now.
* It was a minor plotpoint for Renamon that Digimon are technically gender neutral, but her partner's family interpreted her as feminine, and probably accepted her as a second daughter. This is not the same Renamon, and may be interpreted differently. Either way, using gender-neutral pronouns in a story might be too distracting. Thoughts?
**(after skimming Gaara's wiki page) And his uncle and mother did love him? Kishimoto, why the hell are you pulling more "No, it was all NOBLE" flip-flops? I mean, I guess that's nice for Gaara? But it's a moot point and doesn't impact anything! They're both long gone, and he's managed to come to somewhat-sane terms with the idea that they hated him and get on with his life. Fucking with his world-view again for the sake of an epic image of his mother in the sand protecting him is a cheap shot to inspire sentimentality.
I don't think I've read any of the manga since chapter 511 -- the semester got too sucky, and I just never got back into reading it -- but I was skimming Askerian's post on 574 and noted someone's comment about Sasuke calling him Tobi, instead of Madara, implying he knew he was a fraud... *record scratch*
THIS MAGNIFICENT BASTARD IS NOT UCHIHA MADARA? HE'S SOME ASSHOLE WHO RODE ON THE NAME TO GET ATTENTION? SON OF A FUCK!**
So yah. Need to start reading it again now. Also because I hear we get more characterization for the dead Jinchuuriki... and they feature in this fusion plot bunny that will not leave me alone.
May as well start talking about that -- if it's silly, I trust you guys to talk me back into my senses. So:
How many of you are familiar with Digimon Tamers?
JesuOtaku has a web-series reviewing anime, and she has been doing a long-running retrospective on the Digimon franchise, discussing plot, characters, and technical details of each season of the series. She's still working on Tamers (S3), and what she's said about it so far (the subtle character writing and well-fleshed cast of kids and adults, interesting sci-fi take on what was before essentially a fantasy story, and oodles of nightmare fuel in what's technically a kid's show) made me hunt it down.
I love it. It is fantastic. The characters especially. they're written like actual people instead of fleshed-out tropes, but have interesting, distinct dynamics. Also, they react realistically (or at least plausibly given their established character traits) to everything that happens. Strangely one of my favorite aspects is the Adult Fear; the different reactions of the parents to their kids' involvement in this very alien and dangerous situation. Also, so much psychological trauma and Lovecraftian imagery, courtesy of the head writer of Serial Experiments Lain. Is good stuff.
So, to explain the Bunny: one of the Digi-leads, Renamon, is fox-based and has a higher form called Kyuubimon. My fate was sealed m(_ _;)m
Can't really picture an over-arcing plot (other than what played out in DT, which I don't want to redo), but I keep getting little scenes and ideas that I might be able to string together.
Main players, the Jinchuuriki - at least some of them. I think (I)t would benefit from a smaller cast, and as I said, I'm not really familiar with all of those characters and don't want to contradict anything by making my best guesses. But I wanted to see how one set of characters tied to different animals would translate to another setting.
So far, not well.
Naruto with Renamon is a straight-forward match to me, and I've already got several backstory tidbits about how Kushina was Renamon's original partner before she died and how their relationship is affected by that. Naruto's thrilled to have a real Digimon partner and having hir* fight others, but is also terrified of losing hir like his mother. Renamon spent a long time alone after Kushina died, so s/he's getting used to a new partner with a very different style and skill level. Also, family is a new concept.
For Yugito Nii, I thought Gatomon, but there might be a better choice, I'm not sure. Tiger-based?
For the others, no fucking clue. Going through the index of 995 Digimon looking for a type that makes sense as each character's partner is a pain in the ass, because I can't just google "is there a tanuki-themed Digimon? Sand-Based? Desert? Oh, your index isn't structured by types or even ranks. Hell."
And then there's Killer B, who'd either have a bull-based or octopus-based digimon partner. Though there's another issue with including him (and Nii and a couple others for that matter): age. B has almost 20 years on Naruto, Nii has 14. In Tamers, there were older characters who were significant to the plot, but they did point out that when dealing with Digimon and the weird Digital World, children had an advantage :/ I could play fast and loose and bust them down to teens, I suppose. Would that be too silly?
... I'm picturing him as an exchange student living with a homestay family in Yokohama. Rhyming helps him remember Japanese better. Maybe he's vaguely aware of the game via his younger host-brother. Finding and helping a monster on the street was an accident. Stop me, I'm crazy.
But, I'm having fun. I'm also noticing surprising parallels, like Gaara having a lot in common with Ruki/Rika. Bad relationship with his family, tends to avoid other people, got into the game as escapism, devoted himself to it and got really, really good at it. It was completely unintentional (I really don't want a cast of characters that have exactly the same traits and dynamics as the originals, just with Naruto names), but it makes sense to me that that's how he'd be ;A; It's set in close-to-real-world Japan, so I don't think he'd be completely psychotic and define his existence by murder the way he did with a demon in his head, but he'd certainly have some issues with abuse, self-esteem, possibly identity and sense of self, and loneliness. He'd probably be obsessively competitive about the game (counterproductive to any initial goal of making friends), but I'm not sure whether he'd have a hard time thinking of the Digimon as real creatures, the way Ruki did. It's likely >_> I have to pick a partner and figure out what made him accept it - its strength or his empathy; if he saw two monsters fighting, would he rescue the underdog?
(oh crap it's 5AM) Also the Hypnos equivalent is... not fully figured out. I think it grew from a well-funded program nurturing artificial life, like the Wild Bunch/Monster Makers were doing, but the government scooped it up when things seemed to get out of control. Itachi has worked there since the accident that killed his mother. He moved into an apartment with Shisui, and though he and his dad still butt heads, he tries to spend as much time with Sasuke as possible. Things get complicated after Sasuke gets introduced to Renamon.
Anyway, those are the thinky thoughts I've had on this. I'mma sleep now.
* It was a minor plotpoint for Renamon that Digimon are technically gender neutral, but her partner's family interpreted her as feminine, and probably accepted her as a second daughter. This is not the same Renamon, and may be interpreted differently. Either way, using gender-neutral pronouns in a story might be too distracting. Thoughts?
**(after skimming Gaara's wiki page) And his uncle and mother did love him? Kishimoto, why the hell are you pulling more "No, it was all NOBLE" flip-flops? I mean, I guess that's nice for Gaara? But it's a moot point and doesn't impact anything! They're both long gone, and he's managed to come to somewhat-sane terms with the idea that they hated him and get on with his life. Fucking with his world-view again for the sake of an epic image of his mother in the sand protecting him is a cheap shot to inspire sentimentality.