ARE YOU READY FOR THE AWESOME, KALLIEL?

[hot_mod_bot]

Author: ronsard
Recipient: kalliel
Title: Reclamation and Its Discontents
Summary: Misery loves company. May the best man win.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: All Naruto characters herein are the property of Kishimoto Masashi. No copyright infringement is intended.
Warning(s): Blatant disregard of canon. Changing POVs. Amateur metaphysics. Shameless “borrowing” from

Comments

[venusian_eye]

Your summary lured me in, I'm a whore for angst.

And I fucking loved this fic. It gave me chills, it made my heart lurch, it made me want to cry in places, and that ending. My god, that ending. It's like I've been punched in the gut, and I want to re-read it to savor that punch again.

This is just... wow. Pardon me while I sniffle all over you.

[venusian_eye]

What a coincidence! So am I! We should date :3

Cry? D: Don't tell me you felt something for these stone-cold bastards. This story felt satirical to me in places solely because of how ridiculous everyone in it was acting. They're all my favorite characters, and I couldn't work up any emotion except for them except schadenfreude :|

[anonymous]

Yup. That was my way of, uh, "justifying" Kabuto's place in the story. Wow, it worked so well people didn't even notice it orz

[kalliel]

After I finished reading, I actually had to go back to the sign-up post to see what I'd even requested. First of all: I AM SO SORRY for those lolsome prompts. What the hell. XD Second of all: What you came up with not only beautifully incorporated all of them, it far surpassed the limitations and 'easy routes' any of them could have possibly entertained. Since you've coined the term, I'd also like to say that "un-Kalliel" is definitely a good thing because never would I have been able to write something as intriguing, developed, or involved as this gorgeous beauty here. Though lol now I'm oddly concerned by the idea that you know what "Kalliel" is and I haven't the foggiest notion of who you are. XD WILL WAIT PATIENTLY FOR REVEALS AND THEN POUNCE ON YOU. <3I adored the layers upon layers of machinations Shisui/Itachi/Akatsuki/Orochimaru/Kabuto/everyone had going on, the history and the lifestyle and the stories you created for the Uchiha clan, Konoha, and Shisui's mountaintop retreat. It's such a brilliant, fully-realized

[kalliel]

\o/ \o/ \o/

Um no, I LOVE YOUR PROMPTS. Especially the second one with the cooking, it has a nice domestic setting but also somehow this sinister, kind of Hannibal Lector-ish vibe (bad though, stop, self...).

What's a Kalliel fic? Well, I immediately thought that it should be something with brevity and an utter lack of sentimentality (--> was very nearly my undoing, am bad at not being cheesy), and should have MINDFUCK. Except I have nfc how to do mindfuck, so initially I had this idea about a short story using the second prompt with a Shyamalan-esque twist like one/both of them are dead or IT WAS ALL A DREAM. Imagine how much more failsauce that would have been. hell yeah you should be concerned. i am your very own creepy stalker :DM-mountain retreat? H-hobo? LOL, maybe I should have pushed the humorous angle a bit more, those sound so ridiculous when you put it like that XD At the core of the story I was trying to present something like a manipulative three-pronged dynamic starring these losers. It's even color-coded for your

[kalliel]

I immediately thought that it should be something with brevity and an utter lack of sentimentality

Ahaha, really? That's kind of awesome. Whenever I write, I just keep saying to myself LOLOL WHAT IS THIS MELODRAMATIC SAP. It's nice to know that is not the impression the final results give.

I've never seen the anime, but I remember that Kabu/Oro conversation from the manga and I was like LOOOOL WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU TWO. I LOVE IT. XDDD

And Fugaku ♥ ♥ ♥ I love that guy so much. It's nice to know there are kindred spirits afloat~

And again, THANK YOU ANON, for writing this fabulous awesomesauce piece!

1/2

[soleil_et_pluie]

Oh you. Oh you. ♥

Even your effin' summary gave you away, darling. Byzantine? Amateur metaphysics? But it's great that someone describes their fics like that.

In a recent effort to not just quote all your fic back at you, I'm going to go with my reactions to the brilliant story-weaving instead of my favorite quotes, which are too numerous to cite 'em all. Or maybe just a few.

I fucking love Kabuto here. I love his subtle power struggles with Shisui, how both of them are playing a game of manipulation, trying to get the other before the other gets them. Not even terribly disguised, either, but Kabuto's acceptance of his own evil is very.... endearing. Is that the right word? I'm not sure, perhaps charmingly twisted. And i saw what you did there what with the Shisui/Kabuto, HAR HAR HAR HILARIOUS. Also hilarious: Kabuto twisting knives via: “I like the little birthmark on the inside of his left thigh.” They are a fucked-up threesome of dysfunctionality

Re: 1/2

[soleil_et_pluie]

Next time I'm just going to do a "LOLOLOLOL BAD AT SUMMERY R&R NO FLAMEZ PLZ <333" type summary, then we'll see who's laughing. (Well, it's only fair since I know all of your identities anyway :P)

Kabuto is clearly my favorite, I gave him all of my best lines. The fact that he's honest about his villainy makes him actually kind of better than someone like Shisui, who probably thinks he's Light Yagami doing the right thing. I just really needed someone to fit the "grey" slot on that three-part color wheel, and nobody else would have worked. Plus, did you know that Kabuto is one of the only characters in the series who's sort of in Itachi's and Shisui's age group? Damn Kishimoto D:<

Oh Shisui... How do I even begin to explain this dude without breaking suspension of disbelief? See, this is why this story is retarded in so many ways. Yeah, he is definitely a Byronic hero at best and a villain protagonist at worst. It's probably most accurate to say that he started out as the former and became the latter by the end of the story. Okay,

Re: 1/2

[soleil_et_pluie]

Kabuto's way certainly seems more honest, doesn't it?

Hah, well it all makes sense if you consider Shisui didn't know enough about the MS- Man, you got me- I was so used to fics where Shisui is already aware of what the MS means, and that you have to kill your closest person to get it, I didn't even think he might not know that. God, and Itachi was nice enough to not tell Shisui he was grieving so terribly over his death? Or did he just get the overwhelming impression Shisui wouldn't believe him? ;____; The fucking crossed signals here!
Itachi comes off so pure here (perhaps by comparison!)-- clan-murdering psycho he may be, but he does love Shisui and Sasuke pretty honestly, and so much less duplicitous in general. He's even so charmingly straightforward about wanting Shisui's body to be with Shisui. .-. tho he's still got that caged tiger thing going on. LAYERS, MAN

Re: 1/2

[soleil_et_pluie]

Yeah. While the MS was widely known in Madara's time, I get the feeling that by Itachi's generation, it had passed out of common knowledge. Don't you have to crawl into that dinky space under the shrine to get the scroll that talks about it? How many people would have known about it, really? If it hadn't been for Madara, I doubt Itachi would have known about it.

Oh alright, Itachi is pure okay, he is pure! He is modeled in part after Desdemona, after all, lololol. (Doesn't that make it worse?)

Personal identity by very definition is like the Highlander, there can only be one. But I think as long as you're psychologically connected to yourself at different stages in your life, you can still say that you're the same person even after a traumatic event -- or at least you can say that you've psychologically survived the event. It's also kind of a gradation account, though, I'm totally generalizing. And all of these are of course reasons why philosophy is a stupid discipline :\

2/2

[soleil_et_pluie]

“For revenge?”
“Sure, why not?” this was the first moment I knew something strange was up with this Shisui, who in previous incarnations would never have said Sure, why not? to a question of that sort :D Also, HIM suggesting to Kabuto to take Sasuke. lololol.

And, oh, his wronged vindictive righteousness ♥ God, this Shisui takes it to a whole other level. These lines, actually, looking back, almost sum everything in this fic up; where Shisui's thinking went wrong: he was afraid he might start to think of Itachi as nothing more than a fellow survivor. Or worse: his friend, the brother returned from a long separation. And I didn't even realize quite what this was (the crack in Shisui) until the end AUGH YOUR BRILLIANCE IT HURTS XO

The secret of Itachi’s newfound formidability; Kabuto had given him the one-oh-one. He didn’t care either way. “I also know that wherever you got it from, you can forget about it, because you’re not getting it back.” ...Where DID he get it from, if Shisui's death was faked? And wait, wait, why is Shisui so

Re: 2/2

[soleil_et_pluie]

And fucking Itachi, urgh. I actually think he was pretty duplicitous in this story. He only behaved the way he did because he was the most disadvantaged person in this power struggle, and his only real bargaining chip was Shisui's, um, feelings for him? Those lines he said probably had some truth to them (Shisui's death did get him the MS), but that dinner scene wasn't all that it seemed (--> actually kalliel's prompt). At this point, Itachi knew Shisui was up to something, but Shisui didn't know Kabuto had spoken to Itachi. Maybe he wanted to be with Shisui, or maybe he just didn't want to be lobotomized. Or possibly a little of both. But we'll ~never know~ because Itachi's not a real character in this fic and therefore he doesn't get his own POV, nyah!

Really, if there's any tragedy in this at all, it's probably that Shisui had begun to fall for Itachi and was reconsidering going through with the plan -- but then Kabuto came back and threw a wrench in that :\ Contrary to the summary, I think everybody lost in the end, whether it was

Re: 2/2

[soleil_et_pluie]

or maybe he just didn't want to be lobotomized. Ahahahahaha, awesome. There's the thing, anyone would behave the exact same way in that situation, knowing they were at a disadvantage, so it becomes impossible to tell- is it his trapped situation motivating his actions, or did he really love Shisui? The other way of looking at this was I wondered why Itachi would choose to engage the physical part too, knowing Shisui was plotting something, and knowing that doing that might make things even worse, adding another layer of fuckery.
So maybe he really did love him? XD God I suck at the angst in this subfandom.

I KNOW, I KNOW. I DIDN'T MISS THAT. STUPID KABUTO, throwing wrenches. But clearly that was coming a mile away- that right at the crucial juncture, he was going to do something to fuck it up- he was still great through the whole thing. I was almost rooting for him, actually. His plotting, so sexy u_u;

Darling, for no practice with the mindfuck, you're pretty good with it XD

Heheheheh. Back to AU-land, eh? what's next on the