#i really like those references to art - theyre so beautiful while also keeping many connections with the story it sounds like

[good-beans]

Hi, this is Just_a_long_nap_Please on ao3!

In my own experience, titling(?? title…ing?) has never been terribly difficult. I’m fortunate in that regard, but I’m happy to share some of my thought-process when it comes to the whole thing!! 

To pull from my own fics: “A Portrait in Blue” and “Room of Flowers” are both fics with a premise of art in them. “Room of Flowers” is the name of both an actual painting, and is discussed in the fic itself - making it a pretty cool title to use. 

“Portrait in Blue” is a little more ambiguous. I’m like…..95% sure there’s a famous painting called “Portrait in Red”, so its a callback to that. It also ties in directly with the theme(s) in the fic (which focus heavily on Shou’s developing queerplatonic relationship with Ritsu, and the way he views their shared experiences), making the title a lot clearer once you get to the part where Shou starts describing his painting. 

Those are both fairly clear-cut title examples! For something a bit more….loose? lets look at “All the Things We Left Behind” for a better example of this.

The title here (despite the fic itself being,,, woefully unfinished) draws more from the overall message that I wanted to convey in the story. It centers around a more….hm, careful? development of a romantic ritshou relationship. This one also digs into being touch-starved, and how that could effect the more “common” aspects of a relationship. 

I’ll be honest, this title really did just pop into my head. (almost) All my fics are titled from the get-go (bc I store them all pretty exclusively on ao3) and its interesting to see how many of them develop along the implications of said title. 

However! “All the Things We Left Behind” will eventually (and to an extent, currently does) delve into Ritsu and Shou exploring and expanding their comfort boundaries in a safe, respectful environment; “leaving behind” their old comforts as they learn and grow into themselves and their relationship. 

Another easy way to title fics is to pull the classic song title card!! Seriously, if you’re stuck on a title, its so freeing to just listen to some songs that vibe with your fic and pick a lyric that fits! Super easy, often meaningful, a wonderful excuse to use said lyrics as a summary as well :^) 

(fun fact: 7 out of my 48 fics are song-titled! thats uhhhh…..almost 1/7th? more like 6.8 lol but that just means that its an extremely valid way to choose a title!) 

Another thing that I’ve seen people be unsure about is doing a “one-word” title. The most common argument I’ve seen against it is that it can make your fic seem “pretensious”? Not sure how that works, but I love doing it! Its quick, snappy, and can set the tone of a fic before a reader even gets to the tags. How cool is that?? 

My best suggestion for this kind of title is to not think too hard about it. Consider a common or reccuring word (ex: “Static”) or simplify your plot down to a few words and choose the most relevant (ex: “Undercuts”). You can also be super blunt about it and just say what the fic is literally about (ex: “Heatwaves”)! You’d be surprised at just how often this tends to fit as a title for fics, in my opinion. 

Unfortunately (or perhaps….fortunately!) I’m also one of those people with sentence-long fic titles,,, some examples include “What is Fashion, Except to be Petty?”, “No Worries, I Don’t See it Either”, “Make it Last, at Least For Now”, “How to Avoid Sleep while being Productive”, and “Killing Time and Watching it Bleed”. 

Look at those!! Its a whole damn paragraph just on its own! But there’s a benefit to using these titles - you get to be more descriptive/poetic; by extension, more eye-catching to your readers. Its also easier to convey a specific vibe of a fic if you let yourself go ham with the title ;^) 

In the end, though? Its all about what you, the writer, think is best for your fic. I think it’s fun when fics say “x-character falls in love, and makes a fool of themselves”, or when they say “yes your honor, they’re both dumbasses”, OR “xyz-pairing’s Exceedingly Horrible, Miserable, Awful Date (but they dont even know its a date)”. 

Those are all wonderful too! So go wild, my friend! Don’t let titles scare you - its all about the content, in the end :^D 

(although……hmu if u have tips on summaries,,, not my strong suit lol) 

[mokutone]

yo i would love to hear some of ur trans yam headcanons :) (also ps ur art is breathtaking and whenever i see it reblogged on my dash i always come here anyway to read ur tags bc they r so! good!)

thank u 🥺🥺🥺 god im sorry this has been sitting in my inbox for a couple days ksdjghsdkjgh not only have i got a LOT of thoughts to put here (this is only a selection of the bigger thoughts skdjghsdkjhg) i was also super busy the past few days!!!! ty for ur patience, ur compliments, and for inviting me to ramble abt my favorite guy!

maybe the one constant in all trans people is just like. our decision to intentionally and purposefully create ourselves, to forced into an identity by outside forces and to turn away from it in search of something else, and that’s ultimately what makes captain yamato read as a trans character to me! He goes through so many identities, and they are meaningful to him, but you can also clearly tell that he’s searching for something that really fits him.

I don’t really have a lot of firm thoughts on what his specific identity would be, I’ve seen some great nonbinary yams, some lovely genderfluid yams, trans guy yams, there’s a great variety and i delight in them all! 

I tend to imagine him as transmasculine and nonbinary but male aligned (which means he’d feel at least a partial connection to or comfort with masculinity) and while there are a bunch of labels for this experience of gender (demiboy, bigender, etc etc) i don’t see him as somebody who would use any specific labels, I feel like he’d keep his own experience of his gender fairly private! He’d prefer and be fine with masculine-coded terms of address, and happy enough passing as a guy.

AHH and on names...

I think Kinoe is the only name that I really see as like. a genuine deadname. It’s a name that means “The First” to my understanding, and so like, probably refers to him having the genetics of the first. Therefore, it’s kind of. literally a name referring to him as his biology...boy thats as deadname as it gets, huh? kill that shit and also danzō

Tenzō is also a name thats given to him, but to my understanding (all I know about the anbu arc is picked up thru osmosis lol) it’s a name that’s given to him twice, with affection. Once from Yukimi, who sees him as her brother (not a vessel for the first hokage’s powers, probably for the first time ever—even if it’s still another person’s name) He takes the name, gladly! Unfortunately danzō. anyway,

Later, when he starts to introduce himself to the non-root Anbu as Kinoe, Kakashi cuts him off and names him to the anbu as Tenzō. To my understanding: it’s a name at rest, not a name for one singular mission, but a name for his entire time in Anbu. It’s the name he keeps the longest. Again, it’s a name that’s given to him to him by somebody else, but it’s one that is given with the intention to free him of Kinoe, and all that Kinoe had to be. 

(A note on him getting annoyed with Kakashi for calling him Tenzō in main-plot:

Most of this is of course based off of personal experience, but I find it hard to believe that he would actively dislike Tenzō as a name since it was given with such sweet intentions—most of my names have been gifts, and the only one I’ve actively taken out of rotation has been bc i cannot stand the person who used it, and the way it was used, and while Anbu was certainly bad for Yamato...I don’t think it was quite that bad. I think him telling Kakashi to stop calling him Tenzō has more to do with the use of it where it doesn’t belong—for example, while it’s not exactly a name, I am happy to be called “mokutone” here, and you may notice my friends calling me by another name, but if any of those friends called me mokutone in DMs, I would be bothered by that.)

Yamato starts off as an empty codename, given to him for the purposes of his team 7 mission by the Hokage, but I think it gets such a loving and warm association from just...using out in the sunlight, with these kids that he comes to think so fondly of (he’s such a dad. god. he’s such a fucking dad) and with the friends he makes going out drinking and actually having time to socialize—and that means a lot! I think Yamato is probably the name which becomes most meaningful and like a home to him by the end of the series. This is the active name, the name where he is most himself. It’s vital for him to have that space to grow into! 

But that said, I personally feel like, if he were to continue beyond the edges of the story, this would not be the final name he bears. He’s probably well aware that a single name cannot contain who he is, or who he wants to be, and while being Given a name can be a beautiful thing (like i said, most of my names are gifts! i treasure them.) I think that, for his character arc, I would like him to name himself at some point. Even if it’s a name that only exists for private spaces, I want him to complete that self determination, to at least try it out, even if ultimately Yamato is the name everyone else will know him by.

Physical Transition Stuff

i will confess i hurt to imagine these shinobi binding 😭😭 even if an individual is binding safely (well made binder, no more than 8 hours, AND No Physically Intense Activity) they stand to risk hurting themself! In real life we gotta balance out the physical pain and the pain of dysphoria, but this is naruto and I’m Gonna Play Some Headcanon Games!

If chakra is both a kind of spiritual energy as well as directly connected to the body (as we learned in the hyūga fight) then it stands to reason that by manipulating ones own chakra, they can manipulate the body, or at least the way the body changes (such as naruto’s healing factor) 

This probably is not the safest thing to do unless you’re a mednin or following the directions of one, LMAO

The second the hell of puberty started up for Tenzō he tried to hold it back by sheer force of willpower + chakra manipulation alone 

but, manually controlling one’s chakra is like trying to prevent a stream from flowing with your hands alone, which is to say: an exhausting uphill battle.

 He’d probably only be doing it on his down time and not on a mission, but even still the most I bet he could make it doing that without getting figured out is two months.

Luckily blockers are readily available, Tenzō just had no idea and, gender being a private experience for him, was trying to handle the whole thing entirely on his own. Soon after attempting to self-regulate hormones him-fucking-self like a very valid but desperate fool, he gets an appointment, gets a prescription, and can chill out and not have to be as hellishly aware of his body constantly.

 Konoha mednin will say trans rights even if the village itself is garbage, this series is so god damn weird already, nobody can tell me a ninja taking hormones is somehow weirder than a ninja taking his dead best friends genetic superpower eye.

TWO WEEKS, THREE SPARS, AND ONE VERY EMOTIONALLY DRAINING CONVERSATION LATER:

u might think kakashi is passing him a water bottle and they both look so exhausted bc its post spar but no. physically theyre fine, but the emotional toll of having to talk about something either of them care at all about? miracle they survived.