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a-damson-in-distress · 5 years

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The Protégé 4

Pairing: MadaSaku

Plot: In search of a new cellist for his prestigious orchestra, an infamously feared maestro stumbles upon a young rising star.

The Protégé 1

The Protégé 2

The Protégé 3

Edit: I almost forgot to add this super important note: A thousand thank yous to my regulars who have followed this story from the get-go. There are a few of you who never fail to show their appreciation and never forget to leave an encouraging comment. Don’t think I don’t notice you, you stalkers ;). I am immensly thankful for your feedback and your comments, they keep me so motivated and give me a sense of validation, like this isn’t just some sort of private thing that I only create for myself and nobody else gives a shit about it. If five hundred people read my story without leaving a comment or anything and I’ve only got the few reviews from you guys, it’s still enough to show me that my work is appreciated. So thank you!

Note: For those of you who are as confused about orchestral stage etiquette as I am and have no idea what’s going on with the whole handshake thing in this chapter, here’s what I found out about it while doing research for chapter four: The first violinist in an orchestra is also called the concert master, he represents the entire orchestra and functions as a sort of “team captain” if you will. So whenever the maestro invites a soloist, the soloist is supposed to shake hands with the maestro (thanking him for the invitation basically) as well as the concert master (though there are variations to this, some only shake hands before the performance, some before and after, etc.). By shaking the CM’s hand, the soloist essentially thanks all of the other musicians for their collaboration as solo concertos are usually a group effort, and you know the soloist can’t go around shaking the hands of a hundred people so they usually only shake hands with the CM *gasp* wow that was a long explanation. Aaaaaaanyway, here’s a video of the concerto Sakura is performing in this chapter: Camille Saint-Saën’s Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor.

Enjoy, have fun reading, let me know if you liked it, leave a comment, send a carrier pigeon, send a smoke signal, you know whatever floats your boat. You know the drill.

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“A little to the left. Chin up. Perfect, stay that way.”

Sakura had trouble not squinting her eyes when the photographer unleashed another onslaught of camera flashes upon her. She was currently in his studio doing a photo shoot for the orchestra’s and the theatre’s official websites. Her probation period was over, and they were only a week away from kicking off their tour after their first performance at home, so now the New National Theatre was going to officially announce her as the principal cellist of Maestro Uchiha’s ensemble complete with interviews, articles, videos of her rehearsals, and ridiculously over-the-top photographs.

The nickname the press had given her after her solo in Sapporo spread like wildfire, and the orchestra’s publicist decided to capitalise on her image as the Imperatrix Furiosa. So they put her in a majestic velvet evening gown dyed in a scandalous scarlet with a skirt wide enough to allow her to spread her legs to accommodate her cello on the throne-like chair she was currently sitting in. Her hair was tied up into an overly dramatic and intricate updo and fastened with fancy kanzashi hair pins that were sticking out in such a manner they made it look like she was wearing a crown.

The dress and accessories paired with the red lipstick and dramatic eye make-up made her look every bit the Furious Empress and the enticing femme fatale of Japan’s classical music scene the publicist wanted her to portray.

And Sakura hated every second of it.

“Do you think you have enough pictures now?” the young cellist asked tentatively while trying to hold her unnatural pose.

Deidara, the orchestra’s publicist, looked up from the laptop where her photographs appeared right after being snapped. “Just a few more, sweety. You’re doing great, though.” He gave her an encouraging thumbs-up and shot her an apologetic smile. Great, Sakura mused silently, she must have looked more uncomfortable than she thought. And here she was thinking she was good at hiding it.

“Seriously, though, we need to wrap this up. She’s got rehearsal in an hour, and Madara will chop off my head if his MVP is late,” Sakura heard the blonde publicist explain to the photographer. She sincerely hoped the heavy make-up was covering the deep blush she could feel spreading across her cheeks at his remark. Did her Maestro really tell the publicist she was his most valuable musician?

“No grinning, please,” came the photographer’s command from behind his lens.

Right. Stop daydreaming, Sakura reminded herself.

Straightening her back and schooling her features, the pink-haired cellist remained motionless on her make-shift throne. After a few more minutes of clicking, snapping, repositioning, and flashing, Sakura was finally free to get out of her dress and wash off all that make-up. She undid her complicated updo and gathered her hair into a high puffy ponytail. Putting on her pastel green boat neck dress with box pleats and slipping into her simple white ballerinas, she immediately felt more comfortable, like her young and goofy self and not the mature and seductive diva the photographer wanted her to be.

“Chop-chop, darling. Maestro Menacing is waiting for you.” Sakura was torn from her thoughts at the sound of Deidara calling out from the other side of the closed door. The young musician had to supress a smirk at the sound of the nickname she knew the publicist secretly used for her Maestro. He wasn’t entirely wrong, Mr Uchiha really could come across as menacing and unapproachable. But Sakura had gotten to know another side of him over the last weeks as well. There was a gentleness to him he only rarely showed, tiny little smiles of satisfaction and subtle gestures of encouragement. As much as she appreciated his constructive criticism, she loved his nods of approval and his well done, Ms Haruno’s even more.

And she couldn’t wait to prove herself to her Maestro during the upcoming tour and hope for a bit more of his praise she so selfishly craved.

After Deidara and Sakura left the photographer’s studio, they immediately headed back to the theatre where the rest of Maestro Uchiha’s ensemble was already preparing themselves for one of their last rehearsals before kicking off their tour. Sakura took her usual seat to the right of the conductor’s music stand. She was so busy tuning her cello, she didn’t even notice her Maestro approach his podium.

“Ms Haruno.” A deep voice made her look up in surprise and she was met with the sight of the raven-haired conductor casually leaning on the rail of his podium with his strong arms crossed in front of his broad chest, clad in a meticulous three-piece suit sans the jacket.

The young cellist prayed to God her blush wasn’t as visible as she thought it was.

“Yes, Maestro?” she answered in a small voice.

“How was the photoshoot?”

Sakura gave him a weak smile and chuckled softly. “Honestly? It was horrible. They dressed me up in this heavy, floor-length gown and backcombed my hair so much it looked like I had a bird’s nest on my head in the end. And I had so much make-up on I could literally feel my pores dying a horrible death by asphyxiation. Please don’t look at the photos once they upload them.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad. But if it makes you feel any better, I will not go actively looking for your pictures. Though I have to admit, I would love to see a pink bird’s nest.” Her Maestro’s teasing grin made her giggle, and Sakura looked up at the raven-haired conductor with a huge smile on her face.

Just in that moment, she could hear the sound of a camera shutter from her left. Both her Maestro and Sakura turned around in surprise and spotted Deidara standing in the middle of the countless rows of seats with a camera in his hand.

“Finally. Do you know how difficult it is to get a photo of two people together who both hate to pose for pictures? You two are a publicist’s nightmare, but you’re lucky you’re so goddamn photogenic.”

Sakura turned to Maestro Uchiha and looked at him questioningly. With an annoyed eye roll, he explained, “Deidara said he needed a picture of the two of us together for our countless social media profiles. He wants to make a post about me welcoming you to the ensemble or whatever, and apparently, I cannot officially welcome you without a picture.”

His obvious annoyance with the blonde publicist elicited another laugh from the young cellist. Sakura watched her conductor narrow his eyes at her before his own lips spread into a tiny amused grin.

“Alright, that’s enough giggling now, Ms Haruno. If you keep enjoying my jokes like that, the other members of my orchestra might start to think I actually have a heart.”

Biting on her bottom lip to keep herself from chuckling at his quip and again hoping that her blush wouldn’t betray her, the young cellist focused her gaze on her sheet music and readied her instrument for the rehearsal. The other musicians took their seats as well, filling up the vacant space around Sakura, and fixed their eyes on the conductor.

Maestro Uchiha gave his final orders, raised his baton, and the musicians started playing.

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“I finally got Naruto to accept my karaoke challenge. He’s going to do Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love at the bar tonight, you gotta come with us!”

The pink-haired cellist looked up from her sheet music and was met with the face of her new roommate Ino, the principal clarinet of their ensemble. After her first rehearsal with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Temari had introduced her to some people she claimed were the only tolerable ones, and Sakura immediately hit it off with the blonde musician. Not long after getting to know each other, Ino offered her to move in with her after her previous roommate accepted another job in a different city. Though some of her newly found friends in the orchestra, who had all known Ino for a long time now, jokingly advised her against it with the explanation that she’s bi and you’re annoyingly adorable and totally her type, she’ll eat you up and spit you out, Sakura hadn’t regretted a single second of being the roommate of the exuberant and feisty clarinet player.

“Sure, I’ll be there. I just need a minute to talk to the Maestro,” Sakura answered with an amused grin.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ino bounce up and down with excitement. “Yay, it’s gonna be so great. We always go out the night before our first performance, without any alcohol of course,” the blonde musician added in a loud voice, pointedly looking in Maestro Uchiha’s direction before continuing, “but still, you’re gonna have so much fun with us. I’ll see you at home. And don’t be late, missy, I still need to do your makeup.”

Sakura was met with the end of Ino’s perfectly manicured index finger pointed accusingly at her face before the blonde turned on her heel and strutted off the stage as if it were her own personal catwalk.

Gathering her things, the pink-haired cellist made her way to the Maestro, who was currently busy berating his principal percussionist Naruto for goofing around with his timpani sticks during a break and pretending to have a swordfight with his fellow players. She decided to wait for them to finish and came to a halt in the middle of the string section when she realised that their orchestra’s concert master Kabuto was seemingly also waiting for a word with their conductor.

The grey-haired violinist was one of the musicians who hadn’t even spared her a glance on her first day. But while most of them seemed to have come around in the meantime or have at least started greeting their newest member, Kabuto was still adamantly giving her the cold shoulder. Whenever she tried talking to him, Sakura was met with nothing but haughty looks and condescending remarks. Though she had to admit, the moments of interaction between them were few and far between, because Sakura tried to keep them to a minimum. Their concert master was clearly of the highly competitive sort, and Sakura had no intention of letting him drag her into a musical pissing contest.

And still, manners were manners, so the cellist forced a tight smile and greeted him.

“Hey, Kabuto. Excited for our first concert tomorrow?”

The grey-haired violinist slowly turned his head and looked down his nose at her. He studied her for a second with narrowed eyes, as if trying to discern whether or not she was worthy of an answer, before opening his mouth, “I’m sure you are.”

Supressing the urge to roll her eyes at his usual cryptic answer, Sakura instead ignored his remark and cleared her throat. “So um, every CM seems to be handling stage etiquette a bit differently, so I wanted to ask you how you want to do the handshake tomorrow? Before and after, or just after or do you –“

“Honestly, Haruno, I couldn’t care less about the handshake or your solo. But if this really is so confusing to you, why don’t you go ask Daddy for help? It’s not like our Maestro has anything better to do than take his new little girl by the hand and show her how things work around here.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Sakura could feel her cheeks heating up at his embarrassing remark, and she stared at him open-mouthed, stunned into silence. Luckily, she didn’t have to come up with an answer, since Kabuto was approached by another violinist in that moment, asking him whether he wanted to go out tonight.

“No thanks, I’ll be staying at the theatre for a while longer. I’ve got other plans for later,” the concert master explained with a devious grin.

After the violinist left, Kabuto made no attempt to address Sakura again, and Maestro Uchiha was still not done chewing out Naruto. Since she felt so incredibly uncomfortable in Kabuto’s presence, the young musician decided to grab her cello case and leave. Not even the prospect of talking to Maestro Uchiha for a few minutes was worth it, if it meant she had to spend another second in awkward silence with the concert master who seemed to hate her guts.

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There was a ritual Madara had long formed a habit of going through before every concert he was going to conduct. It consisted of him mumbling every single articulation in chronological order of every piece of that night’s programme while he re-arranged the seats of his musicians on stage. Even though the stage crew of every theatre he ever worked at never failed to position everything correctly, the conductor still felt more at east when he could move every chair and every music stand to just the perfect spot.

Madara was currently contemplating whether to push a sax player’s seat half a centimetre to the left or to the right when he heard a commotion from backstage. He followed the noise to the labyrinth of dressing rooms where his eyes caught sight of three blonde musicians rushing from one room to the next, frantically looking for something.

“What do you mean, she can’t find it. It must be there!” Temari came rushing past him with a handbag before she promptly dumped its content on a table and started digging through it.

“I don’t know. When we got home last night, I asked her if all of her stuff was ready in the dressing room. She told me she checked everything three times, even tried on the shoes just to be safe, because she was afraid they gave her the wrong size.”

Madara watched his principal clarinet go through the countless makeup bags before she turned to another person in the hall. “Naruto, did you check the clothing racks in all the dressing rooms?” Madara’s gaze landed on the blonde percussionist who just entered the room with an apologetic shake of his head.

Clearing his throat to get their attention, the raven-haired conductor leaned against the door frame and let his gaze wander around the dressing room in which the three musicians were currently bustling about.

“Our concert starts in half an hour. I sincerely hope you’ll find whatever you’re so desperately looking for.”

Madara’s accusatory gaze met the desperate look of the blonde clarinet player before she approached him, grabbing his arm and tugging him down the hall.

“Maestro, you need to help us. It’s an emergency.”

Ino came to a halt in front of the closed door of another dressing room and knocked twice before letting herself in. Madara stayed behind, still unsure of what was really going on.

“Oh God, Ino, please tell me you have it, please! I need to be ready before anyone finds out, or before he finds out. Please, we need to hurry, Maestro Uchiha absolutely can’t know about this, or I’m screwed!”

Madara’s heart suddenly lurched in his chest at the sound of Sakura’s distraught voice so close to tears. He took a step forward and entered the room where he was met with the sight of his principal cellist dressed up in her concert outfit, a dark-green fitted pant suit, black patent leather Oxford’s, and a white blouse fully buttoned up – and missing a bow tie.

“Ms Haruno, what’s going on?”

She fixed her scared, wide eyes on him, and Madara was immediately hit with the urge to envelop her in his arms and assure her he’ll make everything right for her again.

The conductor couldn’t help but let his gaze be drawn to her beautiful mouth, invited by the sight of her teeth chewing on her bottom lip before releasing it to speak.

“Maestro, I’m so so sorry, but I … I can’t seem to find my bow tie. But I swear to God it was here. After the rehearsal and before I left the theatre yesterday, I checked if all of my stuff was ready like you told us and I swear to God my outfit was complete, I know I saw the bow tie with the rest of my clothes. But now it’s gone and we looked everywhere and I don’t know what to do. God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry to disappoint you.” Her voice was shaky and on the verge of tears and Madara had to consciously restrain the urge in his feet to run to her.

He was just about to say something to comfort the distraught young cellist when he heard more voices approaching the dressing room. The maestro turned around to see a small crowd gathered outside the door, all asking and wondering what was going on with their youngest member.

“Nothing to see here, alright? Just looking for a lost bow tie. We’ll be ready any second now, so scram, got it?” The blonde clarinet player fixed the crowd with a stern gaze and waved her hands in front of her to signal the other musicians to disperse.

“Maybe we should help look? I’m sure we’ll find it faster that way. Then we can all get back to our preparations in peace.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Madara could see Sakura’s head shoot up and her eyes widen in surprise at the sound of his concert master’s suggestion. But before anybody could say anything, Kabuto had already turned around and left.

“I’m sorry for troubling you with this, Maestro. We actually promised Sakura not to tell you anything, but we really couldn’t find it anywhere after looking for so long, and now we’re kind of lost.” Ino’s apologetic gaze was shooting back and forth between the conductor and his principal cellist.

“It’s quite alright, Ms Yamanaka. I’m glad you told me. Now I can get to the bottom of this myself.”

When he saw Sakura’s worried expression turn even more desperate, Madara felt like slapping himself. That came out way more threatening than he intended it to. He was just about to clarify his statement when he heard a knock on the open door which made all their heads turn around.

Kabuto was standing in the doorway with his right hand raised, a bow tie dangling from the edge of his middle finger. “You’ll never guess where I found this,” he said in a casual tone, a barely visible smirk gracing his features.

Madara watched his principal clarinet cross her arms in front of her chest. “Oh I’m sure I will.”

Kabuto ignored her, instead stepping into the dressing room and approaching Sakura. “Somehow, it landed in a drawer of one of the dressing tables.” He slipped the bow tie off his middle finger, and Sakura barely had enough time to catch it. “Lucky for you I’m so thorough at everything I do.” He gave her what was probably meant to be a half-baked attempt at a sincere smile and then turned to face Madara, his fake grin widening, before he left the room.

The maestro’s eyes landed on the young cellist in front of him again, who was still staring after the concert master with a look of confusion. He glanced at his watch and cleared his throat.

“Everybody out. I need a minute with Ms Haruno.”

After her friends hesitantly left the room and closed the door behind them, Madara let his gaze rest on Sakura’s downcast head. It was then the maestro realised she was playing with the bow tie in her hand, tugging at it and turning it around between her fingers. She was nervous.

“Ms Haruno, look at me.”

At the sound of his soft command, Sakura slowly raised her head to meet his gaze. Madara had to supress a groan at the sight of her teeth chewing on her bottom lip again.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” her whispering voice pleaded with him.

“I’m not mad, Ms Haruno. I know none of this was your fault, trust me.” He closed his hands over her fidgeting ones and took the bow tie.

“Chin up.”

The young cellist just stared at him for a second, jade-green eyes wide with confusion.

Madara took a step closer to her, put a finger beneath her chin and forced her head up. He then proceeded to turn up her collar and fasten the bow tie around her neck.

“You’re not going to allow this incident to rattle you, you’re better than this and we both know it. Once I call you up on stage, you’re going to walk up there like you own the place, play your solo to perfection, and blow everyone away.” He gave her bow tie a final tug.

“Have I made myself understood, Ms Haruno?” Madara looked down at her with a strict gaze and a tiny amused smirk gracing his lips.

“Yes, Maestro,” Sakura nodded enthusiastically while smiling up at him with a look of pure determination.

“Good.” Madara grabbed her chin between his fingers and leaned closer to her face before murmuring, “I wouldn’t expect anything less form my protégé.”

He watched with satisfaction as a deep blush spread across her cheeks and her jade-green eyes widened in surprise, staring up at him with that look of wonder, reverence, and gratification she only seemed to have reserved for him, as if his praise was the only thing in the world giving her life meaning.

Unable to resist, Madara allowed his gaze to rest on her inviting lips for a split second before letting go off her chin and forcing himself to leave her dressing room.

His thoughts kept swirling around the young cellist even as he stepped onto the stage amidst tumultuous applause. The conductor had to admit that it was a good decision not to have Sakura join the ensemble for the entire programme but only for her solo in the last half hour; he probably wouldn’t have been able to keep his eyes from her. Though that wasn’t the original reason for not having her on stage for the entire performance. What Madara was really hoping to achieve with the late entrance of his principal cellist was to give her the grand introduction deserving of a musician of her calibre. After all, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra was one of the most prestigious ensembles in the world of classical music, and Sakura Haruno wasn’t just anybody. And a good maestro knows to save the best for last.

Despite his mind being distracted with the image of her inviting lips only centimetres away from his own, Madara was still able to focus on the musicians in front of him as he led his orchestra through the concert’s programme. After they finished their second to last piece and when it was time for Sakura’s solo, he signalled his ensemble to quiet down, turned around on his podium to face the audience and grabbed a microphone.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, as you may have heard the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra has signed on a new member. As of this April, our vacant spot of principal cellist was filled with an immensely talented young musician from Kyoto. Though she doesn’t need an introduction, she’s going to get one anyway. She is an award-winning cello prodigy who was the youngest ever recipient of the first Grand Prize at the Rostropovitch Cello Competition at the age of sixteen. She studied under Takanori Nakano, Stjepan Hauser, and Steven Isserlis, to mention but a few. After establishing herself as a world-renowned cellist in her previous orchestras, she will now join us for our tour as the newest and youngest member of my ensemble. Ladies and Gentlemen, you will now hear Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto number 1 in A minor with our new principal cellist Sakura Haruno as the soloist.”

Madara put down the microphone, stepped off his podium, and walked off the stage to where Sakura was waiting for him.

“Ready?” he asked with an encouraging smile.

She answered with a determined nod as her lips spread into an excited grin. “As I’ll ever be.”

The maestro signalled her to lead the way. As the cellist stepped onto the stage with her instrument in hand, the audience erupted into thunderous applause. Madara followed after her, clapping his hands like the rest of the guests and the musicians of his ensemble. He watched her bow deeply to the audience before turning to Kabuto and shaking his hand with a smug grin plastered on her face. She waited for Madara to step onto his podium before shaking his hand as well.

“Give ‘em hell, Ms Haruno.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see another one of her blushes he liked so much taint her cheeks as she took a seat and readied herself with a subtle, sincere smile gracing her lips.

Madara raised his baton while Sakura steadied her bow above the strings of her cello. They shared one last look, the cellist looking up at her maestro for guidance and the maestro giving her a tiny smile of approval. He nodded to his entire ensemble.

As the music enveloped the large concert hall, Madara could see Sakura sway in her seat, eyes closed and completely surrendering herself to her instrument. He knew in that moment that she was gone now, transporting her mind into whatever utopia she conjured up whenever she let go and allowed her music to simply take her away.

As easy as it was for him to get and hold her attention, the maestro had to begrudgingly admit that music still seemed to be the only thing able to ensnare her in a way he could not. He was going to have to change that soon enough, he decided.

But for the time being, Madara let her be. His protégé was lost to the world now, anyway.

#naruto #naruto fanfiction #naruto fanfic #madasaku #madasaku fanfic #sakumada #madara uchiha #madara uchiha fanfic #Sakura Haruno #sakura haruno fanfic

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originalladyscythe · 7 years

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On The House

@madasakuweek and @beyondthemoor (in case the first tag didn't work)

Fanart, impiled MadaSaku

Prompt: Waiter

#madasaku weekend #madasaku week #MadaSaku #SakuMada #Uchiha Madara #Sakura Haruno

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olliya · 5 years

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How popular is MadaSaku in context of other Madara’s and Sakura’s ships? Part 2

@madasakuweek

I am honestly shocked how many people liked my ship popularity analysis. Well, prepared for the second part - Fanfiction.net. It’s even longer!!! But imo more interesting.

Finding the popularity of ships on ff.net is both easier and more complicated, depending how do you approach the problem.

Let’s break up the task into two parts.

Approach 1

FF.net has a Pairing Option that was introduced in October 2013. This function makes the names of characters appear in square bracket, for example: [Madara U., Sakura H.] indicating that those characters form a romantic pair in a given fic.

When using Filters (Figure 1.a.) after choosing the character of interest, one can tick the Pairing Option, and then browse (using up and down arrows) through all the characters of the fandom. The number of fics tagged with Pairing Option between the character of interest (here: Madara) and every character B (here: Sakura) appear on the bottom of the panel (Figure 1.b.).

Data gathered through browsing through all of the Naruto characters with Pairing Option On give unequivocal results. The only limitations of this method is the relatively late introduction time point of Pairing Option (introduced in 2013, while Naruto started publishing in 1999), and sometimes peculiar definitions of “Characters” on ff.net (example: Naruko as a separate character, “Team 7” as a “Character”).

Results for Madara and Sakura are presented below (Figures 2. and 3.) For clarity, ships with four or more fics are shown for Madara. In case of Sakura, all the ships with >4 fics in a graph would blur the picture. Therefore, her Top 20 ships are presented in Figure 3., and the rest is summarized in the Table 1. The analysis was performed on 22.10.2019.

However, ff.net was launched on 15.10.1998 (which precedes publication of Naruto by one year) so there is a 14 year-worth of fic creation when the Pairing Option wasn’t available. To get the complete overview of ship popularity it is necessary to include the body of work created in the earlier years of ff.net.

This issue was addressed through Approach 2.

Approach 2

During the period of 1998-2013 fics were labelled with ship names in the summaries, and readers would look for ships of interest typing ship name into the search box. During those times certain conventional phrases were coined for the ships, and putting those in the summary allowed potential readers to find the story. Searching ff.net using selected phrases and collecting the corresponding fic numbers gives insight into those part of fanworks. Employment of search engine is shown in Figure 4. on the example of phrase “madasaku”.

I performed searches for common ships, basing the list on the ships with 4 or more fics as found using Pairing Option (see: section above).

I searched for the phrases that were and still are still commonly used ship names in Naruto fandom.

In general, there are three common ways to indicate a ship:

a) Merger of names, usually using first two syllables of both names, usually (but not always) with male name being first part of the phrase. Example: madasaku, and (less commonly used) sakumada. For the M/M and F/F couples, both orders are used, and it is impossible to predict which form is more common. Example: sakuhina and hinasaku would be used with similar frequency.

In case of names composed of two syllables or shorter, one syllable is often used.

b) Name_1xName_2 – complete names of characters separated by letter “x”, without spaces in between. There is no strict preference as to which name goes first more frequently, i.e. sakuraxmadara is equally plausible as madaraxsakura.

c) A combination of the above, i.e. shortened versions of names connected with an “x”, without spaces (example: madaxsaku)

Search engine of ff.net is case-insensitive, i.e. searching for “madasaku” will bring the same results as searching for “Madasaku” and “MadaSaku” (thank gods).

Other possible naming convention, even if there are/were used, aren’t correctly recognized by the search engine of ff.net. If there are spaces between the words of the phrase (example: “Madara x Sakura”) the search results in all fics containing words “Madara”, “x” and “Sakura” in summary, but not necessary together. Separating character names with slash “/”, even without usage of spaces (example: “Madara/Sakura”) results in list of fic containing “Madara” and “Sakura”, not necessary together (slash symbol gets ignored).

Therefore, the ship names of the kinds described above weren’t included in this analysis.

Other potential ship names variations (using “*”, using “&”, and surely a multitude of others variants that I couldn’t think of) were not included due to their relative infrequency (and limits to capacity and imagination).

For every ship included in the results of Approach 1 (total 43 searches for Sakura’s ships, and 12 searches for Madara’s ships), I searched for the following phrases (on example of MadaSaku ship):

madasaku

sakumada

madaraxsakura

sakuraxmadara

madaxsaku

sakuxmada

Certain ship names don’t follow the usual rules and/ or required special treatment. For example, for the ship Gaara/Haruno Sakura the common names merger is GaaSaku (and not GaaraSaku). Tsunade/ Haruno Sakura is equally often (or rarely, because it is very rare) abbreviated to TsuSaku and Tsunasaku. Fics tagged with TobiSaku name merger may mean Senju Tobirama/Haruno Sakura as well as Tobi (Obito’s persona)/Haruno Sakura – in this case, fics were manually inspected, and assigned to correct categories. Ship with Naruko (which scored relatively high in Pairing Option analysis), was not really possible to assess, because the merger name “narusaku” is identical for the merger of Uzumaki Naruto/Haruno Sakura (for good reasons).

This list presented in Table 2 is not a comprehensive one. There are certainly more ships with <10 fics that were not included. One prominent, detected example is Chōji, who has 13 fics in as a ship partner of Sakura, but was not included in Table 2 because according to the Pairing Option he had no fics with Sakura.

Limitations of the method

Employed method depends on performing six independent searches and summing up the numbers from those searches. A fic tagged with more than one of the searched phrases will be counted multiple times. For example: if a fic contained phrases “MadaSaku” and “MadaraxSakura” in its summary, it was counted twice. In extreme case, one fic would generate six data points: one real, and five false.

Nevertheless, since the same treatment was applied to all the pairings, the errors should be distributed in the same way across all the ships. Therefore, even if the numerical values obtained through this analysis don’t necessarily correspond to reality, the results should reflect respective relations between the ships (i.e. “ranking” should be correct). This assumption is true however only if all the subdivisions of the fandom follow the same customs and tagging etiquette. I.e. if creators writing for SasuSaku followed a habit of including only one Ship Name in their summaries, while creators of MadaSaku tended to include multiple Ship Names, then my method of analysis would overestimate the significance of MadaSaku ship. However, I am not aware of such trends existing in Naruto fandom.

Additionally, Ship Name tagging system allows for tagging infinite number of ships in one fic, therefore certain fics have been counted multiple times.

Discussion

When considering fics tagged with Pairing Option, Sakura ranks as Madara’s second most popular ship partner, after Hashirama and before Tobirama. As on AO3, it is telling that a relatively “exotic” pairing with OC ranks 4th among Madara’s ships.

Madara is the 9th most popular ship partner of Sakura. Comparing and contrasting Sakura’s data between ff.net and AO3 would be an interesting analysis in its own right, but here I will only point out the switch of positions between Naruto and Kakashi as Sakura’s ship partners (Naruto is a strong 2nd on ff.net, while Kakashi takes this position on AO3); and relatively low, 7th place of Ino (strong 4th on AO3).

When taking into account data gathered though Ship Names Searches, Sakura ranks as Madara’s 2nd most popular ship partner (after Hashirama and before OC).

Madara, on the other hand is Sakura’s 15th most popular ship partner. Since Ship Names Searches results are mostly derived from fics published in earlier years in Naruto fandom, his lower place can be explained by his very late appearance in the franchise (on-panel in February 2008 - almost 9 years after Naruto started publishing and in person in the story in October 2011 - 12 years after begin of publishing).

Data gathered in this analysis present a unique opportunity for looking into the development of ship popularity over time.

Results from Pairing Option reflect mostly the state of fandom in years 2013-2019, while the results from Ship Names Search show the status from the earlier years. The exact division is however somewhat blurred as some fics published before October 2013 has been retroactively tagged using Pairing Option (even if the majority of older fics remain untagged). The reverse is also true – many fics published after introduction of Pairing Option, even as recently as end of 2019, fail to use it. Additionally, many fics are tagged using both systems: the Pairing Option and Ship Name in summary.

Nevertheless one can tentatively regard Pairing Option results as “new”, or “current” ones, while the ones coming from the Ship Names Searches as “older” ones.

Figure 7. presents position changes in Top 12 Madara’s ships. Ranking from Pairing Option analysis was regarded as current and compared to the “older” ranking composed from all the fics tagged with Ship Names (regardless their publishing date). A positive value in the Figure 7. indicates a gain of popularity, for example: Tobirama gained 2 positions among Madara’s ships when comparing the “current” and “older” results.

This analysis reveals that certain ships (with Tobirama, Naruto and Hinata) gained, while ships with OC and Itachi lost on popularity. Dramatic loss of Itachi ship popularity is very interesting and one can speculated that it could be caused by Tobi/Obito reveal.

The same analysis was performed for Sakura’s ships and is presented in Figure 8.

Inspecting changes in Sakura ships’ rankings allows for several interesting observations. Minato, Shisui, Madara and Sasori are among greatest winners. It is symptomatic that all, except Sasori, are characters that appeared (or became relevant) later during the franchise. Among the characters losing in popularity as Sakura’s ship partners are members of Konoha Eleven (Lee, Kiba, Sai, Neji), an Akatsuki member (Deidara) and OC. It should also be noted that five top positions (Sasuke, Naruto, Kakashi, Itachi and Gaara) remained unchanged.

To further examine the “current” and “older” state of fandom, upon harvesting Ship Names data I sorted the fics according to publication date and took note of how many fics were published before and how many after 01.10.2013 (approximate date of introduction of Pairing Option tool).

If one repeats the analysis from Figures 7. and 8. considering only fics published before 01.10.2013 as “older” ones, the following pictures appears (Figure 9. and 10.):

Using this definition of “older” fics (i.e. fics tagged with Ship Names that were published until October 2013), the gain of popularity of Tobirama ship becomes even mor evident (gain of 7 positions). Ships with Itachi (as in the previous analysis) and Sasuke (undetected in the previous analysis) lost on popularity.

Sakura ships’ dynamics according to this definition of “older” fics show even more pronounced position gains of Minato and Shisui, but otherwise similar trends to previous analysis.

Analysis of ship popularity on ff.net is a challenging one, but since this platform was, and still is main archive for Naruto fandom (407 thousands fics vs 49 thousand on AO3) it is important to address this issue even if methodology is far from perfect.

I am open to all the comments, suggestions and hints, as the data collection was a major effort and I’m sure that this data can be used in many other different ways.

#madasaku #multisaku #fandom statistics #madasakuweekend2019 #naruto stats

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kinokami · 5 years

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Please repost, do not reblog! Feel free to add to any of your answers! The purpose is to tell your partners about the way you write! :) For the multiple choice ones, bold all that apply and, if you want, italicize if it’s a conditional answer!

– B A S I C S –

NAME: peri ALIAS(ES)/HANDLE(S): periplaneta, eisengrave, billywick ARE YOU OVER 18? Yes / No IS YOUR MUSE? Yes / No ( verse dependent ) WHEN WAS YOUR BLOG ESTABLISHED? late cretaceous 2018

– W R I T I N G –

ARE YOU SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO YOU WRITE WITH ON THIS BLOG? No (anyone) / Semi (most people) / Yes (some people - i answer prompts from non-mutuals) / Highly (few people) / Private (mutuals only)

ARE YOU SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO YOU FOLLOW ON THIS BLOG? No (anyone) / Semi (most people) / Yes (some people) / Highly (few people) / Private (mutuals only)

IF YOUR MUSE IS CANON, HOW MUCH DO YOU ADHERE TO CANON? Not at all / A little / Some / Mostly / Strictly / NA

I’m liberal about headcanons and there’s no cohesive time line. Blame Kishi for not giving enough craps about the Founders.

WHAT POST LENGTHS DO YOU WRITE? One Liners / Single-Para / Multi-Para / Novella

DO YOU USE ICONS AND/OR GIFS? No / Gifs / Icons / Yes

DO YOU WRITE ON OTHER PLATFORMS? No / Yes

WHAT LEVEL OF PLOTS DO YOU WRITE? Unplotted / Open-Ended Plots (set up a meeting and see what happens) / Semi-Plotted (one or two steps ahead) / Fully Plotted Epics (plotted beginning, middle, and end)

HOW QUICKLY DO YOU USUALLY RESPOND TO THREADS? Very Slow (more than a month) / Slow (3-4 weeks) / Average (1-2 weeks) / Fast (less than one week) / Very Fast (less than three days).

Several times a day if I’m feeling it.

WHAT TYPES OF THEMES DO YOU LIKE? (feel free to add!) Fluff / Angst / Smut / Violence / Tragedy / Domestic / Family / Conversational / Dark

WHAT GENRES DO YOU LIKE? (feel free to add!) High Fantasy / Supernatural / Science Fiction / Historical / Horror / Comedy / Romantic / Drama / Action / Adventure / Espionage

ARE THERE ANY THEMES YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE WRITING ON YOUR BLOG? (not triggers) No / Yes / Sometimes

I hate ABO. I really do. Anything that supersedes self-control just makes me tired and annoyed. Anything that is a lazy excuse for ‘chemistry’. Work hard for it, reap the rewards.

DO YOU HAVE ANY TRIGGERS? HOW DO YOU REQUEST IT TAGGED? No / Yes

– S H I P P I N G –

WHAT TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS ARE YOU OPEN TO? Romantic / Platonic / Familial (canon) / Familial (OCs)

WHAT TYPES OF PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS ARE YOU OPEN TO? Romantic / Platonic / Familial (canon) / Familial (OCs)

DO YOU HAVE OTPS? No / Chemistry Only / Yes

DO YOU HAVE NOTPS? No / Yes

A lot of them. TobiMada, Itasaku, SasuKarin, NejiTen, SakuMada, MadaObi, HashiMito in a romantic sense. I don’t need to explain them. I just don’t like them ;D I generally have them all blacklisted and any additional tags used by ppl also go on the list because I know how to filter my content. (I say, fully indulging in never tagging hashimada on my posts)

WHAT IS YOUR MUSE’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION? Heterosexual / Heteroflexible / Bisexual & Pansexual / Homoflexible / Homosexual / Demisexual / Sapiosexual / Asexual

WHAT IS YOUR MUSE’S ROMANTIC ORIENTATION? Heteroromantic / Heteroflexible / Biromantic / Homoflexible / Homoromantic / Panromantic / Demiromantic / Sapioromantic / Aromantic

ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WRITING SMUT? No / Selectively / Yes

HOW EARLY IN A RELATIONSHIP DO YOU SHIP ROMANTICALLY? Autoship / During plotting / After a couple IC interactions / Several IC interactions / Slow burn / Never (not open to romantic ships)

I have been dragged back to tumblr.com for the sake of one (1) gay ass long hair ship so I’d say I ship pretty early

ARE YOU OPEN TO TOXIC SHIPS? No / Selectively / Yes

ARE YOU OPEN TO PROBLEMATIC SHIPS? (incest, canon history, age difference, complicated, etc.)

No / Selectively / Yes

ARE YOU OPEN TO POLYSHIPPING? No / (very) Selectively / Yes

ARE YOU AN EXCLUSIVE SHIPPER? No / Sometimes / Yes

DOES CRACK SHIPPING EVER HAPPEN? No / Yes

– T A G G I N G! –

TAGGED BY: @sennokami

#mostly about peri #ooc: out of trees

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leafmedic · 8 years

Note

talk about our ship ♥

Ship Roulette || @forlornwind

;; Which one?

MadaSaku/SakuMada: FUCK YES I SHIP IT. I shipped it without RP to show me the way. I shipped this one pretty much as soon as I stumbled on my first fanfic of the two. This one needed no convincing, but then you showed up and fleshed out more of their dynamic. More of how they would interact in the canon verse and how they would grow with each other.

How you characterize Madara as a sensor to pick up all the nuances of her emotions is one of the biggest things for me to love on. It just lets her feel so freely and helps her embrace her emotional reactions. But those reactions are so honest – to see the effect they have on him is wonderful. Open communication and honesty is so important to both of them and they have it with each other.

JiraMada: Biggest fucking crack ship I’ve ever sailed. And that’s saying something. I never would have thought of them, I never would have shipped them. If I came across any works for them, I might have read out of curiosity and that’s it.

But then I started forming a Jiraiya. And seeing how they would interact is just wonderful. Madara being a sensor works differently with Jiraiya than it does Sakura. It allows him to see past the jokes and teases and perverted innuendos. And that is what’s going to draw Jiraiya’s attention, to find someone who doesn’t write him off and understands the man underneath the facade.

I honestly love both of these ships so much. Your Madara forces an honesty from both of them they wouldn’t normally offer – with Jiraiya, it’s his actual thoughts and opinions underneath everything. With Sakura, it’s her reactions and why she has them. Normally, she can figure that out later, but Madara makes her acknowledge them when they happen. He’s just so good for each of my muses.

#forlornwind #;;answered #;;nikki

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mariegocf · 11 months

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#Naruto #Sakura #Sakura Haruno #Madara Uchiha #Madara #Kid madara #madasaku #sakumada

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chalabrun · 3 years

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how i ship madasaku (woyy ver.)

Disclaimer: This is not an analysis of how the fandom ships Madasaku. This isn’t pertinent to any other version other than my own that exists in my WOYY AU. This is not the result of fanon influence, nor should it be taken as such, because this is not a fanon analysis. If any other Madasaku fans want to know how your favorite authors/fanartists portray Madasaku, I highly recommend you ask them. They’ll probably love the interest. This is a subjective take and it shouldn’t be blown out of proportion as anything but.

So, with The Maiden wrapping up (it’s finished, I’m just staggering the posting rate) and The Mother (its sequel) coming very soon, I thought I’d round out the year with my thoughts on this ship as it exists in my series. It doesn’t need saying that Madasaku is a controversial ship at best, and has extreme potential for dark fic at worst. At its absolute best, time travel AU’s that occur before Madara snaps highlight what can be fantastic about this pairing as much as more villainous, post-canon takes can showcase how toxic it can become.

(And for the record, people who utilize more toxic dynamics shouldn’t be shamed for it. The potential is there, easily. Madara after he left Konoha spirals into depravity despite his endgame being anything but (”a world of peace, of winners, of love” is basically the tagline for the Inifinite Tsukiyomi) and there’s a lot to address for the harm Madara does, of how inhumane and merciless he can be. The toxicity is already there post-canon if an author decides he lives, but it only takes certain nudges to make it glaringly apparent.)

Which I think is what makes Madasaku such a fascinating character study. As I’ve come to find, healthy fic of this ship post-canon are rare. Very rare. Have I read them? Not greatly. Do I know they exist sparingly compared to time travel AU’s and modern mafia AU’s that draw so many people in? Certainly? Now, on to the discourse!

To begin, I think it merits saying that Sakura, as the main character, exists in a curious space of potential and underutilized latency despite being the main heroine. Now, in light of the well-established reincarnation cycle that Sasuke and Naruto share, it goes without saying that inserting Sakura as part of it as Naruto and Sasuke’s past lovers IS a popular trope, especially since Sakura married Sasuke (yes, they do love each other; Sasuke can’t be forced into a relationship, ya’ll!) and Naruto’s crush did flourish into true love. With the love triangle that flourished in canon well and true, it makes the potential of past love interests and finding ardor in those past incarnations who loved Sakura’s past incarnates a fun possibility to mess with in fandom.

That being said, what about a relationship with one of Sasuke’s past incarnations and Sakura?

I think what makes Sakura such an interesting choice (beyond what I’ve established here) is that she simultaneously inhabits two extremes. At once does Sakura embody the bull-headed, strong-armed approach of Tsunade with the strength to match. She has a temper, bonks offenders on the head as much as she smashes her way through the world, and responds to challenges with a tomboyish, undoubtedly masculine glee. Tsunade’s power was described as being like a “god of war”, while Sakura has undoubtedly surpassed her in every way, justifying Sakura’s own intense, warlike nature. To say that Sakura has an intense amount of masculine traits like Tsunade is valid. In Part II, she’s very battle-ready, warlike, refuses to give up, and someone who won’t back down from a challenge. And the same time...

Yet, Sakura embodies the feminine just as much. She was a victim of bullying that revealed itself in her demeanor, which in turn made her chronically insecure. From her introduction on, she’s established as someone who is a romantic, very centered on love (that doesn’t always have to revolve around Sasuke), has motifs that are strongly associated with Japanese femininity, and is established as being a kind and caring person who puts others before herself on many occasions; while Tsunade is definitely a caring person herself, she’s not as soft-hearted as Sakura, which is fine. But still, the crux of Sakura’s character is that she encapsulates both in equal spades.

Which is what makes contrasting her to Madara so extremely interesting.

Now, Madara is a complex tangle himself. Madara before Izuna’s death is a kind man, as Hashirama said. As a child, he had the same boisterousness and inferiority complex as characters like Naruto, and was the underdog in his relationship with Hashirama. As an adult, he seemed to be shier and tended to avoid confrontation/directness, even after Izuna died. Despite his uneven morality, even when revived did he himself state the belief that he wouldn’t seriously fight a child due to how unequal it would’ve been. Even during the war, in his interactions with Sasuke he wasn’t proactive in fighting him, it took him a long time to fatally wound him after offering an alliance and it seemed to be as a last resort. Does this mean he’s entirely gentle? Not at all. Despite the fact that he saved Obito as a child, or that he wanted to save the world from despair, at the same time, he’s the reason Rin died and can kill thousands of people without second thought (bonus addition that his name itself can start wars, as a testament to his power in a negative light); he also stole Sharingan without remorse (threatening to take Obito’s), and did it to Kakashi during the war and threatened Sasuke with Sharingan theft, too.

Outside of the extremes Madara embodies in canon, one thing that is a fulcrum of his character in The Maiden is the fact that he’s grieving. The reason for this was established early on, but Madara was never made aware of the fact that the Uchiha were massacred, or that he was halfway responsible for it. When he first met Sakura, he makes it plain that he believed the Uchiha were killed off like the Senju, mostly from the Shinobi World Wars that killed thousands over the decades. When he discovers the truth, it crushes him; he wanted nothing more than to protect the Uchiha, even when he couldn’t. Especially since Obito, the boy he mentally and spiritually destroyed to gain a pawn, was half-way responsible for the Uchiha massacre. Of which makes it Madara’s fault, not even considering how those still loyal to Madara’s ideals wanted to start a coup that implicated them by Danzo.

In this happening, his grief is compounded by the fact that WOYY Madara saw himself as dead when Hashirama killed him them first time. Like a ghost returned to his own corpse, he shut down his humanity to enact the Tsuki no Me/Eye of the Moon Plan. When he meets Sakura, after learning the truth of the Uchiha, that grief is the start of his spiral back into humanity through his vulnerability. And Sakura plays a huge part in guiding it along, both intentionally and not, over the course of the year they work together to begin exposing the Uchiha Massacre and other dark crimes Danzo facilitated.

A phrase I think suits their interactions the most is that Sakura very much puts her foot down, but keeps her fists up with Madara. Despite the fact that Madara is deeply depressed and in a state of mourning over the Uchiha, she’s not his doormat, nor is she there to perform emotional labor to help him cope even if it does play into their growing relationship.

To put it simply, it’s Sakura’s presence at the start of Madara’s fall back into humanity that makes him fall for her (even if it takes a lot time); it’s her place throughout its reawakening that steadies and develops it. More than that, in sacrificing everything to clear the Uchiha’s name and their reviled status in the world (which is what Sakura continued for Sasuke when he had that hope snuffed out by the end of his final battle with Naruto at the start of The Maiden), he grew to know her as someone who didn’t blindly worship the Leaf and wanted to set things right (as blind love of Konoha earned Madara’s hatred, like with Hashirama). In this happening, he grew to trust Sakura. And in trusting her with both his humanity, his clan, and faith to make Konoha atone, it allowed his heart to open and for feelings to enter through their times together.

I know it’s a popular Uchiha fanon that they tend to be powersexual and fall for people who can beat them up, but for WOYY Madara, this couldn’t be further from the truth. If anything, people more powerful than him earn Madara’s hatred because it taps into a feeling of insecurity in his own abilities he hates feeling. Even with Gai--the only other person besides Hashirama who has the power to kill him--and the enthusiasm Gai earned from Madara, he would likely hate him if they ever came to interact due to how much of a Leaf patriot Gai is. Hell, the reason Madara fell for Hashirama was because he trusted Hashirama with their dream and, more than that, he trusted Hashirama with his clan despite his faith not being ironclad. Before the cracks showed, that consideration for his clan is what made Madara fall for Hashirama, and it was the same with Sakura.

Although Sakura does become much more powerful in The Maiden--and will continue to grow exponentially into The Mother--he doesn’t care about her power at all. It’s the trust she earned, the sanctity of the Uchiha to Madara she honored and fought to salvage, and his vulnerable humanity she was there throughout to foster and protect (even unknowingly) that earned Sakura his heart.

As for Sakura, what made her fall for Madara was the fact that she was saving him when she couldn’t save Sasuke, as the want to save Sasuke made Sakura fall in love with him in the manga. It was the same case with Naruto, too. Even if it wasn’t her intention, nor does the plot revolve around Sakura saving Madara, it happened and she fell in love with him. She fell for his vulnerability, for his heart, for his humanity that showed him who he really was. She fell in love with who he really was as someone there for her throughout her trials and one of the hardest journeys she’d taken to date.

In The Maiden, Sakura fell to her lowest point in doing what she did almost entirely solo with its success riding on her shoulders alone. But, like Hashirama, Madara was a light for her. Even though he was difficult at times, she stood up for herself and shut conflict down, especially when it was inappropriate (like Madara haranguing her for her dual feelings for Hashirama as much as him).

With her foot down and fists up, it’s more or less the story of how Madasaku came to be in the WOYY.

#sakura haruno #haruno sakura #madara uchiha #pro sakura #madasaku #sakumada #my meta #the way of yin & yang #if this ship isn't your thing pls move on thank #sorry for the length i just HAD TO ramble #i have so many thoughts on them holy shit #esp since post-canon madasaku is such a dicey area to explore #but damn is it fun

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a-damson-in-distress · 6 years

Text

From Dusk Till Dawn - Chapter 5

Pairing: MadaSaku

Plot: Sakura was searching for a purpose. Madara was thirsting for revenge. Little do they know their fates intertwined centuries ago. Once he broke free from his banishment, he would usher in a new dusk. Until he realised that she was his dawn. Historical/mythological AU.

Note: Salutations, my lovelies. I’m back from the dead. So I know most of you will have probably forgotten this fic even exists (hell, even I forgot lol), but guess what - IT’S BACK BITCHES! I honestly have no idea what came over me today, but somehow I got reminded of this blog and the fics I started here, so I decided to dig it up out of the depths of my browser history, and you know what? I totally forgot how much fun I had writing these and that daaaaaaamn I had some good stories going on, which were in desperate need of updating, if only to ease my guilty conscience.

Speaking of which, I honestly have no excuses for going AWOL for so long. I know some of you may have been bummed, because I think this fic did have a teeny tiny bit of a following, but honestly guys, this writing blog was only one of my many hobbies and it was never meant to take up too much of my time. It was one of these things I occasionaly devote my time to, but that was always doomed to be second place to my life/relationship/university responsibilites. But on the bright side, I did finally get my Bachelor’s degree, whoooo! Buuuuuuuut I am still at uni doing my Master’s, sooooo ya know - still not going to be a regular thing here.

Anyways, TL;DR: I wanted to update this little nugget here out of pure nostalgia and curiosity to see how many of you will still remember the story, to see how many will appreciate and like this update and depending on your reaction, I might actually take up writing again. Goodie, I’m excited to be back. Have fun! :)

Oh also, please check out the first 4 chapters before reading this one, since - you know - I let so much dust settle on this story none of y’all will probably know what’s going on.

EDIT: I had to delete the links to the first 4 chapters, because this chapter wasn’t showing up under the madasaku tag or any of the other tags, but as soon as I deleted the links it did? Soooo yeah whatever, fuck you Tumblr links. You’re gonna have to scroll through my blog to get to the other chapters, I’m sorry. I’ll figure out a way to post all of it in one piece, promise. Have fun and let me know what you think! :)

500 years ago…

The heavens stood still.

Silence.

Death.

Victory.

Tsunade watched a tired Jiraiya fall to his knees and let out a pained groan. Allowing a nervous sigh to escape her lips, she closed her eyes.

They did it. They finally did it. After decades of warfare, bloodshed, and carnage, they finally managed to seal away the bane of their existence.

The last of the dusk gods had fallen.

Opening her eyes again, she let her tired gaze wander across the scene of their final battle. Slain gods lay scattered across the barren field, the ashen ground beneath them stained in the colour of their blood. Giant craters burning with the dreaded flames of the underworld tore through the otherwise idyllic scenery of the heavens like wounds from blade. The black flames of the dusk god’s feared Amaterasu eating up what little was left of the trees that once made this surrounding a forest.

It matters not, she kept telling herself. He is gone. And the dawn gods shall rebuild.

Just as Tsunade was about to join Jiraiya to take a look at his wounds, an ear-piercing screeching tore through her head, forcing her to her knees. Barely managing to open her eyes against the penetrating pain in her mind, she watched the other surviving gods around her writhe and hold their heads in agony.

All of a sudden, the screeching ebbed, giving way to a low hissing sound before a mysterious voice whispered into all of their ears:

At the fall of dusk, at the fall of old, spring shall bring forth his keeper,

who will call to him until his return at the night the darkness swallows the heavens.

Young and weak, the Eastern light shall seek out the old power in the West,

who will envelop her in darkness to unleash their true might.

Dawn will be his light, and dusk shall return.

It was only when the throbbing pain in her head finally dissipated that Tsunade dared to look up. The remaining gods looked at each other questioningly.

They were familiar with this pain, with this feeling. The hissing voice in their head. The dawn gods all knew what this was.

A prophecy. Foreshadowing the return of Madara.

The survivors did what they could to tend to the wounded on the battlefield. When no one else could be saved, the gods set them aflame and watched their bodies dissipate into golden dust, releasing their divine essence into the vast expanse of the universe, praying for them to be reborn again. Then, they retreated to their respective homes – or what was left of them – to lick their wounds, celebrate their survival, and grieve the death of the fallen.

Tsunade felt a heavy sadness weighing down her heart that night. Despite their unimaginable victory over the mightiest god to ever grace the face of the heavens, they had lost so many. She knew more peaceful times lay ahead of them now, and yet she felt restless. It had been ages since the universe had whispered a prophecy into their ears. And this one was particularly unsettling.

Dusk shall return.

But they sealed him, Tsunade reminded herself. And with one of Hashirama’s seals, no less. She was the one who studied the dusk god’s inscriptions, who knew his incantations like the back of her hand. She was certain Hashirama’s seal would be enough to imprison Madara for the rest of his miserable days.

And yet, mere minutes after the dawn gods managed the unthinkable and sealed away the last dusk god, the universe decided to warn them of his return. And prophecies always came true, the dawn goddess knew that much.

Not only that, but the prophecy also spoke of some Eastern light, who would supposedly help him unleash his true might. A cold shiver ran down Tsunade’s spine at the thought of Madara teaming up with such a force of nature that will grant him even more fearsome powers than he already had.

Yet the goddess of healing had no time to dwell on her worrisome thoughts, as her mind picked up the desperate prayer of a mortal couple. Never one to abandon the ones in need, the blonde goddess raced down into the mortal realm and materialised unseen in the living room of a small hut. She watched the couple on their knees, huddled together in front of the fire. They were rocking back and forth, with the woman holding a small bundle in her arms and the man raising one arm pleadingly into the air, calling out to the goddess of healing to save this poor baby.

This baby? Is that not their own child, Tsunade thought suspiciously. Babies do not just fall from the heavens.

Taking one step closer to the fire, the goddess suddenly felt a divine glow emanating from the bundle in the woman’s arms. Tsunade would recognise that anywhere – the essence of the gods. This was indeed not the mortal couple’s child, but a newborn of the dawn gods.

Still hidden from the mortal’s view, she leaned down and caught a glimpse of pink hair and emerald green eyes, staring knowingly, yet tiredly at her. As Tsunade stretched out a hand towards the babe to check its body temperature, a tiny chubby fist suddenly enclosed her index finger. This little touch was enough to flood the goddess with a feeling of warm motherly love.

Tsunade knew in that instant that this deity shall be hers to raise, care for, and love.

With her divine power, she mentally reached out to the mortals and willed them to lay the small bundle on the floor by the fire. She watched them carefully lower the baby and step back from the fire, worriedly glancing around the living room and waiting for something to happen.

In the blink of an eye, the small bundle was gone. The couple sighed in relief and fell into each other’s arms, knowing their beloved goddess of healing would take care of that weak little girl.

“Do you really think that was a wise choice?”

Tsunade ignored Jiraiya’s incessant nagging and kept bouncing the little babe on her arm. Immediately after taking the young goddess from the mortal’s hut, she returned home to her half-standing palace in the East, where some of the surviving gods have retreated to recuperate. One of them being Kakashi, the feared god of lightning, who was pinning her with a scrutinising gaze.

“Jiraiya’s right, you know. Tonight, of all nights, with this new prophecy looming above our heads… Have you even thought for a second that she could be this Eastern light, his keeper that was prophesised?”

Tsunade scoffed and shot him a challenging glare. “Please, Kakashi, don’t be paranoid. It was just one of the millions of prayers I receive every day. Only this time, it happened to involve a newly born dawn goddess, instead of a weak mortal. Just because she is one of us, does not mean she is tied to the prophecy. In fact, we should be thankful our pantheon is growing again after we lost so many.”

“The prophecy clearly said that at the fall of dusk some kind of keeper will emerge who is destined to help Madara unleash his full power upon the heavens. The fall of dusk was tonight, and after decades of no new deities, tonight is the night the universe decides to give us a new goddess, during spring no less? Coincidences like these might happen to the mortals but not in the heavens,” Shikamaru grumbled before taking a well-deserved puff from his ivory kiseru.

Rolling her eyes at the god of wisdom and strategy, Tsunade switched the little bundle to her other arm and kept bouncing her up and down, before she said, “What you all fail to see is that she cannot be the Easter light from the prophecy, since I found her in a mortal village in the middle of nowhere, not even remotely close to anywhere East. And don’t you think that if such a powerful force destined to be tied to Madara emerged that we would not have felt its birth? Elemental abnormalities, time standing still, earthquakes – anything that might indicate a new divine force has emerged. But there was absolutely nothing when this little goddess here was born. In fact, she is so tiny and weak, I honestly doubt that she will have a purpose grander than making flowers grow, that’s how harmless she is.”

Tsunade saw the uncertain faces around her, their doubtful gazes boring into her determination to keep the babe. She had to convince them, somehow. She could not just leave a part of her divine family, especially now that her kin was nearly wiped out. As soon as the young goddess had touched her, Tsunade felt responsible for her. She had to ignore the nagging feeling at the back of her head screaming at her to listen to the prophecy.

Yes, there were too many coincidences, Tsunade had to admit that herself. The prophecy clearly talks of a female, emerging during this particular night, during spring. All of which applied to the little dawn goddess in her arms.

But there was no way she could be the Eastern light; the goddess was not tied to any particular region. And Tsunade could not – for the life of her – imagine this tiny, frail little thing would be capable of stoking the fire of Madara’s wrath to the point that she would be the one to unleash his true might.

Shaking away her doubts, Tsunade gazed into the tired emeralds of the little girl in her arms. A smile spread across her lips when the tiny goddess snuggled closer to her chest.

There was absolutely no way she would abandon this little thing, not now after she lost so many of her family.

Raising her head, she shot a determined glance at all of the surviving deities in her presence and exclaimed, “I will not resign this precious goddess to a prophecy we have not even fully deciphered yet. None of us know what half of that steaming pile of donkey dung even means, so nobody is going to determine her fate based on any of that. Besides, even if she really is this keeper of his, this way we can at least raise her on our side. Teach her our story, our ways, our kindness. She will never be corrupted by him if we have the power to tell her the things we want her know. If he really does come back and they really do cross paths, there is no way she will choose him. I will tie her to me as tightly as she tied me to her.”

Lowering her caramel eyes, she cast a loving glance at the newest addition to her family and whispered softly, “I will protect my daughter from him. No matter what.”

Went to him… willingly … kidnapped … she chose him … sacrifice …

Sakura’s muddled mind started picking up fragments of speech as she slowly started to wake from her slumber. Forcing her weak body to sit up, she cast a disoriented glance around her only to find herself in her chambers at her mother’s palace.

All of a sudden, memories started flooding her mind and she felt her heart rate pick up.

Madara.

She finally met him. She was in his palace. She was so close to getting some answers. A blush crept up her neck at the thought of his calloused fingers holding her chin in place as he was leaning closer to her, before… Before the dawn gods laid siege to his palace to take her away from him.

Wait, from him? Where did that thought come from? Since when did Sakura think she belonged by his side? She had only known him for a few moments and from what she had seen on the battlefields, he was not a god whose company she should be yearning for. And yet, she had never felt so strong, so alive as when being close to him.

And now that they were separated, her old familiar frailty had returned as well.

The young dawn goddess could feel frustration bubble up inside her. Rarely did she get mad at something or someone, but her constant state of weakness had been a source of anger for all of her short life. And the one being who could rectify that just had to be her mother’s mortal enemy and the one who had been waging war against her kin for the last weeks.

Sakura felt like throwing something against the wall. Alas, all the smashable things in her room were solid gold or heavy ivory, all of which was too difficult for her to even pick up now. In Madara’s presence, however, she felt like she could carry the entire heavens on her shoulders.

Her depressing thoughts were interrupted when she felt the voices on the other side of her door grow louder.

“Look what Tsunade’s tying down has brought us. She went to him, willingly. All that keeping her close was for nothing!”

“She is so weak, she cannot even open doors without struggling, and you really think she made that trip all the way to the Western end of the heavens on her own? He clearly kidnapped her. We are lucky he left her alive for whatever reason.”

“Then tell me why she was reaching out to him when I-“

The angry voices were silenced when her mother suddenly burst through the doors and stomped into her room, glowering at Sakura with a furious expression.

“What in the heavens were you thinking?!”

#madasaku #naruto #naruto fanfiction #Sakura Haruno #Uchiha Madara #madasaku fanfic #sakura uchiha #sakumada #sakura haruno fanfic #madara uchiha fanfic

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olliya · 5 years

Text

How popular is MadaSaku in context of other Madara’s and Sakura’s ships? Part 2 - revamped

Thank you @purple-possibilities for your suggestions about searches of multi-words phrases on ff.net. Putting the phrase between quotation marks worked and I could include 4 additional phrases into searches for each ship!

Additionally, I noticed and error! Grrrr... Even though I took under consideration that Tobisaku may mean Tobirama x Sakura and Obito x Sakura, later on I switched from manual to automatic layout of formulas in my excel. And, of course, automatic layout had no clue about Obito/Tobi thing...

So, important errata: Tobirama had only 13 fics (as opposed to 31 which I reported) according to Ship Names Searches. I corrected it also in the original post.

I’m posting the improved version below, but for those who are not into reading this again: Including additional Ship Names in my search didn’t change much. Lee and Ino switched places 6th and 7th, Madara x OC ship gained a lot of entries, but not enough for a position change, and that’s basically it.

Finding the popularity of ships on ff.net is both easier and more complicated, depending how do you approach the problem.

Let’s break down the task into two parts.

Approach 1

This issue was addressed through Approach 2.

Approach 2

I performed searches for common ships, basing the list on the ships with 4 or more fics as found using Pairing Option (see: section above).

I searched for the phrases that were and still are still commonly used ship names in Naruto fandom.

In general, there are three common ways to indicate a ship:

The same naming scheme exists also in a version with spaces (example: Madara x Sakura). Searching for such phrases (and all phrases including spaces) required putting the Ship Name between quotation marks (”Madara x Sakura”).

c) A combination of the above, i.e. shortened versions of names connected with an “x”; with spaces (example: mada x saku) and without spaces (madaxsaku - again searched using apostrophes)

Search engine of ff.net is case-insensitive, i.e. searching for “madasaku” will bring the same results as searching for “Madasaku” and “MadaSaku” (thank gods).

Naming convention that is common on AO3, i.e. separating character names with slash “/”, isn’t correctly recognized by search engine. If the phrase is written without usage of spaces (example: Madara/Sakura) the search results in list of fics containing “Madara” and “Sakura”, not necessary together (slash symbol gets ignored). When phrase “Madara/Sakura” is searched with quotation marks, slash still gets ignored and results include all entries with any symbol between the names. Therefore, the ship names weren’t included in this analysis.

madasaku

sakumada

madaraxsakura

sakuraxmadara

madaxsaku

sakuxmada

madara x sakura

sakura x madara

mada x saku

saku x mada

Certain ship names don’t follow the usual rules and/or required special treatment. For example, for the ship Gaara/Haruno Sakura the common name merger is GaaSaku (and not GaaraSaku). Tsunade/ Haruno Sakura is equally often (or rarely, because it is very rare) abbreviated to TsuSaku and Tsunasaku. Fics tagged with TobiSaku name merger may mean Senju Tobirama/Haruno Sakura as well as Tobi (Obito’s persona)/Haruno Sakura – in this case, fics were manually inspected, and assigned to correct categories. Ship with Naruko (which scored relatively high in Pairing Option analysis), was not possible to correctly assess, because the merger name “narusaku” is identical for the merger of Uzumaki Naruto/Haruno Sakura (for good reasons).

All the fics for given pair were summed up (i.e. for Uchiha Madara/Haruno Sakura ship the fic numbers retrieved through searches for “madasaku”, “sakumada”, “madaraxsakura”, “sakuraxmadara”, “madaxsaku”, “sakuxmada” “madara x sakura”, “sakura x madara”, “mada x saku” and “saku x mada” were added together). The obtained results will be referred to as those of “Ship Name” in this analysis.

Results for Madara and Sakura are presented below (Figures 5. and 6.). In case of Sakura, including all the examined ships in a graph would blur the picture. Therefore, her Top 20 ships are presented in Figure 6., and the rest is summarized in the Table 2. The analysis was performed on 22.10.2019. The additionally searches performed on 31.12.2019 did not take under consideration fics published after 22.10.2019, to reflect the state of fandom on the day of main analysis.

This list presented in Table 2 is not a comprehensive one. There are certainly more ships with >10 fics that were not included. One prominent, detected example is Chōji, who has 13 fics in as a ship partner of Sakura, but was not included in Table 2 because according to the Pairing Option he had no fics with Sakura.

Limitations of the method

Additionally, Ship Name tagging system allows for tagging infinite number of ships in one fic, therefore certain fics have been counted multiple times.

Discussion

When taking into account data gathered though Ship Names Searches, Sakura ranks as Madara’s 2nd most popular ship partner (after Hashirama and before OC).

Data gathered in this analysis present a unique opportunity for looking into the development of ship popularity over time.

Nevertheless one can tentatively regard Pairing Option results as “new”, or “current” ones, while the ones coming from the Ship Names Searches as “older” ones.

The same analysis was performed for Sakura’s ships and is presented in Figure 8.

Inspecting changes in Sakura ships’ rankings allows for several interesting observations. Minato, Shisui, Madara and Sasori are among greater winners. It is symptomatic that all, except Sasori, are characters that appeared (or became relevant) later during the franchise. Among the characters losing in popularity as Sakura’s ship partners are members of Konoha Eleven (Lee, Kiba, Sai, Neji), an Akatsuki member (Deidara) and OC. It should also be noted that five top positions (Sasuke, Naruto, Kakashi, Itachi and Gaara) remained unchanged.

If one repeats the analysis from Figures 7. and 8. considering only fics published before 01.10.2013 as “older” ones, the following pictures appears (Figure 9. and 10.):

Using this definition of “older” fics (i.e. fics tagged with Ship Names that were published until October 2013), the gain of popularity of Tobirama ship becomes even more evident (gain of 7 positions). Ships with Itachi (as in the previous analysis) and Sasuke (undetected in the previous analysis) lost on popularity.

Sakura ships’ dynamics according to this definition of “older” fics show even more pronounced positions’ gains of Minato and Shisui, but otherwise similar trends to previous analysis.

I am open to all the comments, suggestions and hints, as the data collection was a major effort and I’m sure that this data can be used in many other different ways.

And, your feedback showed me that people are interested in such stuff. Thank you for this!!! I have at least three further ideas for analysis, and now, when I have some experience and first insight into data, it will be easier.

#multisaku #madasaku #fandom statistics #naruto stats

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