#time to change the formatting on EVERY chapter to be consistent then | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

derinwrites · 8 months ago

Text

Do you have any advice for writing in a web serial format?

Let’s look at this in two sections – the business part, and the actual writing part.

The Business Part

1. Consistency. Consistency in updates. Have a schedule and STICK TO IT.

If your schedule is too hectic and starts affecting your health or otherwise adversely affecting your life, change the schedule; update less often. Don’t update in spurts and then randomly stop. The audience will far more easily tolerate a slow schedule than an inconsistent one; an inconsistent one will lose many readers. You’re not Andrew Hussie and you can’t get away with that bullshit.

There may be times where you need to take a hiatus due to some emergency, life event, or health condition. This is fine – your wellbeing is more important than your story. But you need to be up-front with your audience about this; tell them you’re taking a hiatus and tell them exactly how long it’s going to be. If you can, you should tell them in advance (this isn’t possible for things like a car accident, but is very possible if you’re planning to, say, move house in a month). If you’re taking too many hiatuses, then it’s better to slow down your schedule and update less often. Audiences prefer fast and consistent, but if they have to choose, slow is better than inconsistent.

The #1 helper to consistency is having a big buffer – that is, have several weeks’ worth of unpublished chapters. The length of your buffer is personal taste, but I like to keep mine as long as possible so that if there’s some problem that stops me from writing for several weeks, it won’t upset the schedule. It keeps my stress down to know that I have that leeway. Other writers prefer to only write a week or two ahead, though, so different things work for different people.

2. Decide on your monetisation system early and prioritise it.

The most popular and most effective method for monetising a web serial seems to be the patronage method, which is the one I use. You set up a patreon, ko-fi, or whatever sponsorship system you prefer, and offer rewards to those who support you. Having their names in a credit list and getting access to advance chapters are very common rewards. Some people also lock access to their discord behind a paywall, or offer extra stories or let supporters name story characters.

This model is not the only way to make money from web serials. Some people make money via advertising, or selling merchandise, or use the web serial itself to advertise stories that they sell. You can of course use several revenue streams – you can have both a patreon/ko-fi and run ads on your website (I don’t because I hate ads, but you can), or start selling merch related to your story once there’s a demand for it. Many web serial authors (including myself) sell their completed works as books. But the important thing here is that one of these systems will be your main system, and you need to know what it is and behave accordingly. If you run ads AND have a patreon, are you more focused on ad revenue or patreon revenue? You’re going to have to put your time and attention into one of them over the other. You’re going to have to make decisions that will help one and harm the other. So know in advance which one is most important to you.

You don’t have to monetise your story at all, of course. Plenty of people write fiction on the internet for free every day with no thought to making an income at all. But if you’re serious about this, I would recommend monetising it, because that makes a better and more consistent product. The reason I’m still able to keep writing these year after year is that my supporters pay my mortgage; without Patreon and ko-fi, I’d have to get a different job, and wouldn’t have time or energy to write consistently. Also, the reason I can write and update even when I don’t feel like it, and the reason I always push to make my stories as good as possible even when I’m not interested, is because I owe it to my supporters who are paying me real actual money to read my work. If I didn’t owe my readers anything, none of these stories would ever get finished, because writing is only fun about half of the time.

3. Don’t expect to be able to turn this into a career.

This advice sounds silly coming from me, who has through sheer luck, as well as the generosity and passion of my readers, somehow turned this into a career. But I need to emphasise that that luck is not typical. Most web serial writers will not be able to support themselves solely with their writing. It can make a good side hustle, but if your primary goal is “low barrier to entry work-from-home career where I don’t have to answer to a boss and can support myself comfortably,” then web serial writing is usually all of those things except the last one. There’s no harm in trying to turn this into a career – I did it, as have many other web serial authors – but don’t expect that result, is all I’m saying.

Still, if you can do it, it does have a lot of advantages.

4. Don’t expect to make money fast.

I remember when I finally started making an entire $100/month on Patreon. It was a fantastic day.

It was when I’d been writing web serials for four years.

5. Your most valuable resource is your readership.

Your readership will grow and gather momentum over time. The best business decisions you can make are those that grow your readership and allow your readers to participate in community, even if you have to give up opportunities to make money to do it.

A good example of this is discord. Some people have private discords that only their patrons can access; while this is a useful anti-spam and anti-harassment tool, I don’t recommend doing this if you don’t have a major spam or harassment problem. Some people will pay for discord access, yes, so you might get a handful of extra dollars per month that way – however, you will also get a far less active discord. When it comes to readers, population density is critically important; the more activity, the more people talking about your work together (or talking about anything and bonding with each other), the better. Plenty of people have joined my free discord just because it was there and only read my stories after seeing people talk about them there. Then they go and get their friends to read the stories. Enthusiastic readers are inherently valuable, and the best thing you can do is give them the resources they need to talk to each other and share their interest.

This principle applies to a lot of things. I have a lot of free stories on my website that aren’t the usual web serials, and more than once I’ve considered whether they should be paywalled. The answer I always land on is ‘no’; I couldn’t tell you how many readers have been roped into my web serials because they liked Copy <|> Paste, or The Void Princess, or Drops of Blood. These readers may or may not then become monetary supporters, but even the ones who don’t will increase activity and discussion about the stories, have fun and tell jokes in the discord, and may even produce fanart. A thriving community is always going to be more valuable to you than a few extra dollars; make sure to support them accordingly.

Your readership will start very small. In terms of marketing, this is your hardest time. A big readership does the majority of the marketing for you, but when you’re on your own, it takes a lot to convince anyone to give your stories a shot. It helps if you have an existing readership to leverage, which is what I did – I’d been writing Animorphs fanfiction on AO3 for years, and many of my first readers followed me over from there. If you have such a community that already has faith in your writing, leverage it. If you don’t, you can gain one my writing in a place where people go to read stories similar to your work, such as an appropriate subreddit, or a web serial site like Royal Road or Scribblehub. You are looking to gain as high a number of enthusiastic, engaged readers as possible.

And now, the fun part – the actual craft!

The Writing Part

1. Always remember that you are writing for two audiences

A web serial author has to keep two audiences in mind; the serial readers, and the bingers. You are writing a story that needs to be fun and engaging when read very slowly, at the pace of whatever your update schedule is, but that also needs to be interesting when read all at once.

This is not an easy task.

It’s something I fucked up pretty significantly with Curse Words, which was my first attempt at this. Curse Words has a lot of complicated political stuff happening throughout pretty much the whole story, as well as a complex save-the-world plot that’s reliant on a lot of secrets, mysteries and extremely speculative information. With so many wheels spinning, I decided to make the protagonist not particularly smart and move him very slowly through the plot to make sure that the reader would be able to keep up.

This was a mistake.

‘Pretty slow and simple’ at a novel reader’s pace is torturous at a web serial pace. Readers got a full week to discuss the mysteries and implications of each chapter with each other, doing the detective work of ten chapters between each one. The frustration with Kayden’s slow pace was clear, and he came across as an outright idiot rather than an average teen. Personally, I think this lesson was one of the biggest reasons for the difference in quality between Curse Words and Time to Orbit. Don’t slow down for your audience; they’re already slowed down by your update schedule.

At the same time, though, you don’t want to move so fast that you lose the bingers. You can’t assume that your readers will have time between chapters, or that they will discuss each chapter with other readers, or that they will go back over previous chapters looking for clues. Interested people reading update by update will do this, but bingers absolutely will not. So you still need to make sure that everything is comprehensible on a binge read with no backchecking or outside investigation.

My advice on this matter is to move as fast as possible, but take care to make sure that readers are reminded of everything important a few chapters before it comes into play. That way, both audiences can keep up. If you have to make a decision, it’s best to favour your update readers; they’re your most active community. They’re doing the up-to-date discussion, and probably doing the most word-of-mouth and fanart, although binge readers will do that too (I have plenty of dedicated readers who wait five or six weeks to binge a bunch of chapters on purpose, just because that’s their preferred reading style, and they’re still very engaged). But if you plan to publish your story later as a complete work, you also need to keep in mind how it’s going to read as a binge – and also, new readers will binge the earlier chapters of your story to catch up to the current one, so make sure it’s a good experience for them or they won’t get a chance to become update readers.

Two audiences. Mind your pacing and information reveals accordingly.

2. Chapter length

The general rule of web serials is that the more often you update, the shorter your chapters should be. The generally agreed ‘sweet spot’ is 1-1.5k words, 3 times a week, but this depends heavily on individual style. I update once or twice a week (depending on what stories I’ve got going) and try to keep my chapters between 2 and 2.5k words. If you update once a month, your sweet spot is probably about 10k words.

Don’t hold religiously to what other people tell you the ideal word count is – this will vary drastically with genre and personal style – but it’s best to try to stay fairly consistent. It’s not always possible to stay exactly on target because the best break points between chapters will vary (I’ve got 1.8k chapters and 3.5k chapters), but readers like to be able to predict about how long an update will be and they like it to not vary too wildly too often. As with choosing your update schedule, choosing your chapter length will depend on what suits your personal schedule, and what suits the story you’re writing.

“The shorter the chapter, the more frequent the updates” is a good rule for attracting the widest audience. Short, infrequent chapters will have a lot of readers losing interest between updates; long, frequent ones will have a lot of readers feeling overwhelmed. But the most important thing is finding something that you can consistently output year after year (remember, it took me 4 years to make $100/month; this is a long game).

3. It’s a TV show, not a movie

This advice is less useful in our age of Marvel movie franchises and made-to-binge Netflix series, so pretend I’m talking to you in the year 2010 or earlier. If a novel is a movie, a web serial is a TV show. What I mean by that is that a novel is shaped primarily as a complete experience, whereas a web serial is shaped as a chapter-by-chapter experience.

It’s best, in both cases, to have a well structures and paced story that is made of well structured and paced chapters. But sometimes you have to choose between the structure or a chapter and the structure of the story as a whole; making one better will cheapen the other. When you’re writing a novel, you should choose the structure of the whole, but when you’re writing a web serial, you should choose the structure of the chapter. Web serial readers will prefer a chained series of excellent chapters, over a beautiful story of chapters with mediocre individual structure.

In fact, whether you want a structure to the overall story at all is personal taste. My stories have strong overall structure and move towards a planned conclusion because that’s how I prefer to write (and it also makes the story bingeable, since it’s basically a novel being released really slowly), but plenty of web serials out there have no real planned ending and will wander about for years and years in no obviously consistent direction, occasionally throwing in a big twist or major change to freshen things up. These would make absolutely horrible novels, but make very popular web serials. Whether you write like me or like them, the rule is the same – the experience of each individual chapter takes priority.

Come to think of it, this might be why people call my stories “ADHD crack”…

4. Okay, so how do I structure a good chapter?

I generally try to do three things in every chapter.

- Hit the ground running

- Give them something new

- End on an open question

Hit the ground running – Unless it’s the very first chapter of the story, you don’t have to be coy getting into the action. Open the chapter as if it’s the middle of the chapter; start at full momentum. Catch the high point of the last chapter before it falls. It your last chapter ended with “We checked the fingerprints on the candlestick. It’s Colonel Mustard.” then you can start this one with “But he was in the library at the time!”, you don’t need to recap or slow down or anything.

Give them something new – Every chapter should give the reader at least one thing to talk and think about. A new choice, some new information, a shift in perspective, whatever. People are reading these updates one at a time so it is vital that they feel like they got something out of the experience. A chapter in which nothing is learned will make readers feel like their time was wasted, and they have all the time until next update to reflect on that.

This is also true of a novel, but it’s much more critical in a web serial. A novel with nothing chapters in it is just frustratingly slow-paced; a web serial with nothing chapters in it leaves the reader feeling cheated for long stretches of time.

The thing to talk about doesn’t necessarily have to be a big plot reveal or major advancement. An incredibly cute scene, or sad scene, or funny scene will work just as well. But you have to give them SOMETHING. If you’re giving them nothing, consider cutting the chapter entirely and integrating any important foreshadowing or whatever into the next chapter.

One major hurdle of mine with this rule is recap chapters. If you’re writing a very complex plot over a long period of time, you need ways to occasionally take stock and make sure everyone is on the same page and nobody’s forgotten or misinterpreted anything important. This information can be recapped or conveyed in the middle of an action sequence or something, but I personally find that putting other stuff in the scene makes it too distracting and therefore less effective. I like to literally just sit the heroes down in a room and have them go, “okay, we’re spinning a lot of threads at once right now; what do we know, what are we trying to figure out, and what are our next steps?” This is the literary equivalent of the save point or room full of health packs right before a boss battle. Game designers don’t put that room there to be nice; they do it so that they know exactly how much health you’re going to have going into the battle, and can structure it accordingly.

You can make these chapters entertaining with character banter, but you can’t really introduce new threads to talk about, except possibly as a twist right at the end. Introducing new information mid-recap distracts from the recap and makes it pointless. You might have something similar in your stories, chapters that are essential but don’t give the reader anything new to work with.

My advice for these is to just bite the bullet on this one. Release the chapter with nothing new to talk about. You can get away with doing this occasionally, if the chapter has a clear purpose (I get a lot of readers tell me that they appreciate my recap chapters). Readers who get nothing out of the chapter will shrug and talk about older stuff instead, so long as you only do this occasionally. But a chapter with no new information has a cost in opportunity and in reader patience, so only pay it if the chapter’s worth it.

End on an open question– End the chapter with a reason for the reader to come back. You want them to think about the story afterward and be eager to read the next chapter when it comes out. Adhering to this principle is probably why I have such a reputation for cliffhangers, although truth be told I don’t use nearly as many actual cliffhangers as people say, I just try to end by opening a question. By that I mean, the audience should always end a chapter asking a question, which can be something that will span dozens of chapters (“How can Colonel Mustard’s fignerprints be on the candlestick? Is he being framed? Does this mean that the candlestick was in the library and isn’t even the murder weapon?”) or span a single paragraph (“How will the narrator react to learning that Colonel Mustard lied about never touchign the candlestick?”) This could be the emotional height of a scene, or the point at which new information recontextualises everything. It could be the moment where the stakes are raised or an important assumption turns out to be false. Anything that makes the audience eager to learn what happens next will do.

There should always be at least one open question in your story, more if it’s thematically appropriate. You know how mmorpgs and crafting games and suchlike keep you playing for hours and hours by making sure you’re always near the end of an activity – keep playing til you reach the next level, oh but now we’re nearly at the end of this quest so we should complete that, oh but now we’re just 20 gold short of being able to buy that cool new armour so we should just… same trick. Readers should always have at least one ‘quest’, an open question that they’re following, and should always be close to an answer.

You don’t have to dramatically introduce an entirely new question each time; you can end a chapter by reminding the reader of an existing open question. I tend to be a fan of the Big Dramatic Reveal On The Last Line method (cliffhanger reputation), but you don’t have to do it that way. Indeed, it’s a good idea not to do it that way every single time, lest you get stuck in a rut; every chapter ending doesn’t have to be incredibly tense and snappy. Somebody mentioning that they wish they knew how they could get enough food to make it through the winter before a full paragraph of cuddling and falling asleep in their mother’s arms works just as well.

5. It will help if your story is good, but it isn’t required.

You don’t have to be very good at writing to do this.

It helps to be good at writing, of course, and I assume that since you’re asking me for tips, you’re the sort of person who wants to be as good at writing as you can. But there is some true hack garbage out there doing absolute numbers in the web serial circuit. I try not to harp on about this too much because Curse Words fans get really upset at me when I do, but I think most of us can agree that Curse Words kind of sucks. And that just sucks in an ‘author is still learning how to do this’ kind of way; there’s much worse writing, real bullshit Ready Player One-level writing, trucking along out there brilliantly.

The point I’m trying to make here is that this isn’t an industry where there’s any value in hesitating and wringing your hands and asking yourself if you’re a good enough writer to do it yet. You are. You can just start writing a web serial right now and so long as you consistently update, you’re probably already above average for the market. And your first one probably will suck (mine did), but it’ll teach you how to make a better one. I think that Time to Orbit: Unknown is passably okay, and it absolutely would not be passably okay if I hadn’t written Curse Words first. Just go for it. Try to write a quality story if you can, but if you can’t, it’s honestly not that big of a deal. What matters, truly matters, is that you are committed to improving your craft. And that means actually practicing your craft. Which means writing some chapters and setting up a release schedule.

Good luck.

355 notes · View notes

literaryvein-reblogs · 1 year ago

Text

Writing Notes: Self-Editing

Take a Break Before Editing

One of the most effective self-editing techniques is to distance yourself from your writing before diving into the editing process. After completing your draft, give yourself some time away from the text – a few hours, a day, or even longer if possible. This break provides a fresh perspective, allowing you to approach your work with a more critical eye.

Read Aloud

Engage your auditory senses by reading your work aloud. This not only helps identify grammatical errors and awkward phrasing but also allows you to assess the overall flow and rhythm of your writing. Awkward sentences are more apparent when heard.

Focus on One Element at a Time

To avoid feeling overwhelmed during the self-editing process, concentrate on specific elements in each round. Start by checking for grammatical errors and punctuation, then move on to sentence structure, coherence, and finally, style. This systematic approach ensures a thorough examination of your writing.

Add Dimensions

After you are finished with your first draft, flip to the beginning and start anew. As you write and edit more of your story, you may add different aspects to a character that might need to be mentioned in a section you already edited. You might add a part of the plot that should be alluded to earlier in your book.

Fill in the Gaps

Re-reading your first draft might reveal plot holes that will be addressed via revisions. It may expose logical inconsistencies that must be buttressed with enhanced detail. If you, as the author, know a lot of details about a character’s backstory, make sure your reader does as well.

Mend Character Arcs

Audiences want engaging plots, but they also want detailed characters who undergo change during the events of a story. Use a second draft to make sure that your main character and key supporting characters follow consistent character arcs that take them on a journey over the course of the story. If your story is told through first person point of view (POV), this will be even more important as it will also affect the story’s narration.

Track the Pacing of your Story

Find ways to space out your story points so that every section of your novel is equally compelling and nothing feels shoehorned in.

Clean up Cosmetic Errors

When some first time writers think of the editing process, they mainly think of corrections to grammar, spelling, syntax, and punctuation. These elements are certainly important but such edits tend to come toward the end of the process. Obviously no book will go out for hard copy publication without proofreading for typos and grammatical errors, but in the early rounds of revising, direct most of your energy toward story and character. If you consider yourself a good writer who simply isn’t strong on elements like spelling, grammar, and punctuation, consider hiring an outside proofreader to help you with this part of the writing process.

Inject Variety

The best novels and short stories contain ample variety, no matter how long or short the entire manuscript may be. Look for ways to inject variety into your sentence structure, your narrative events, your dialogue, and your descriptive language. You never want a reader to feel like s/he’s already read a carbon copy of a certain scene from a few chapters back.

Check for Consistency

Consistency is key to maintaining a professional and polished tone in your writing. Ensure that your language, formatting, and style choices remain consistent throughout your piece. Inconsistencies can distract the reader and diminish the overall impact of your work.

Eliminate Redundancies

Effective communication is concise and to the point. During the self-editing phase, be vigilant in identifying and eliminating redundancies. Repetitive phrases and unnecessary words can dilute your message and hinder clarity.

Verify Facts and Information

If your writing incorporates facts, figures, or data, double-check the accuracy of your information. Providing accurate and up-to-date information enhances your credibility as a writer. Cross-referencing your sources during the self-editing process ensures the reliability of your content.

Consider Your Audience

Keep your target audience in mind during the self-editing process. Ensure that your language, tone, and examples are tailored to resonate with your intended readership. This step is crucial for creating a connection with your audience and enhancing the overall impact of your writing.

Utilise Editing Tools

Take advantage of the various editing tools available to writers. Spell and grammar checkers, and style guides can serve as valuable companions during the self-editing journey. However, remember that these tools are aids, not substitutes, for your critical evaluation.

Seek Feedback

Engage with others to gain fresh perspectives on your writing. Peer reviews or feedback from mentors can offer valuable insights that you might have overlooked. Embrace constructive criticism and use it to refine your work further.

Be Ruthless with Revisions

Effective self-editing requires a degree of ruthlessness. Don’t be afraid to cut or rewrite sections that do not contribute to the overall strength of your piece. Trim excess words, tighten sentences, and ensure that every element serves a purpose.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References ⚜ On Editing

#writing notes #editing #writeblr #spilled ink #writing reference #studyblr #dark academia #light academia #literature #writers on tumblr #writing prompt #poets on tumblr #creative writing #fiction #lit #writing tips #writing advice #writing resources #on writing

240 notes · View notes

hunipeye · 2 months ago

Text

What Remains of Winter

Read on Ao3; https://archiveofourown.org/works/66008359

————————————————————————————

A little bit of housekeeping; You take the role of Mel Gold. Assume you did all she did in “Thunderbolts*”. However, y/n doesn’t have a personality entirely consistent with that of Mel, she’s not intended to be the same character.

I might interject with the odd Bucky POV chapter but it won’t be every second one and they’ll probably be shorter.

I also don’t intend to include a lot of Valentina Allegra De Fontaine, at least no more than is necessary. I’m too lazy to write about her complex relationships with each character so let’s just consider her an angel investor/spokesperson of sorts! Good? Great! I’m also not American so I don’t have a clue about how the government and shit works, I’m writing horny Bucky fic, not some “House of Cards”, “Succession” in-depth, masterful political drama lol.

While writing this I got so genuinely, unironically depressed over the fact that I couldn’t have Sebastian Stan that I had to stop writing it for a week. I was straight-up bedridden from lust.

This is my first time writing anything so it might not be good but I hope it’s not bad lol

————————————————————————————

It’s been 2 months since the formation of the New Avengers under your boss, Valentina Allegra De Fontaine, months before the beginnings of a momentous space crisis.

The blackmail you have against Ms De Fontaine has benefited you immensely, resulting in an unprecedented rise in rank and salary. Gone are the days of fetching coffees. With Valentina being nothing more than the money of the operation, you now act as a tactical field analyst and a liaison officer between the New Avengers and the public. Frankly, it’s all very new to you, but it’s better than grovelling at the feet of a woman who’d sooner have you killed than fire you. At least you have the guidance of a veteran (quite literally).

————————————————————————————

Chapter 1

“I understand your frustration, Senator, this change is as sudden for us as it is for you. We’re all moving at the same pace, here.”

My voice had become different after the attack on Manhattan, more stern perhaps. In my new position a change like that was necessary. My face was new, my reputation nonexistent. Due to my role in the attack - my revealing of confidential information to ex-senator Barnes - being kept on an entirely need-to-know basis I needed to make an example of myself and prove that I was more than Valentina’s old personal assistant. A goal like that is significantly harder in a world craving superheros when you only have vaguely moral assassins in your ranks.

The senator continued, “I don’t think you grasp the collective trauma the city feels. They need to feel secure. You need to get those Thunderbolts-”

“That is not their name, Senator, and we have established that,” I snapped, growing tired of having to explain our troubled naming conventions.

A huff sounded on the other end of the call, “I don’t give a damn what you’re calling your little band of merry men. What I do give a shit about is getting them out in the public eye and getting them formally associated with the American government.”

I could feel the crease forming in my brow as I retorted, “I’ll ask you once more to mind your language with me, Senator. You had no need for the Avengers to be in league with the Government, why is it different with us? Do you think you can frighten me and back me into a corner? Our group will follow the same outline as the Avengers; we aim to protect global stability, not just within the United States.”

His laugh was cruel, laced with hatred and arrogance, “But will you live up to their legacy? You don’t even have a name, in fact, you barely have a team. What was it I heard about that Bob guy? Can’t seem to keep it up, can he? Shame that your best asset has fallen flat-”

“Senator, I appreciate your interest in our new group but I really don’t see this conversation benefitting either of us.”

I didn’t wait to hear his parting words before I hung up.

My office was located on the top floor of the Watchtower, the floor-to-ceiling window behind me boasted a clear view of the setting sun over the New York skyline. Picture perfect, like one of those insufferable souvenir postcards. My desk was nearly overwhelmed with paperwork on everything from ‘Avengers’ copyright to surveys on what people wanted stocked in the vending machines littered throughout the Watchtower offices. Certainly below my rank. I had just begun organising everything when a telltale heavy knock sounded on my door. I didn’t need to lift my head to see who it was, “Come in.”

Bucky’s footsteps were steady as he entered and shut the door behind him without having to be asked. He was dressed casually, in dark cargo pants and a slim-fit, slate grey t-shirt that stretched ever so slightly over his upper-arms. I noted that his hair was still in that jaw length, wolf-ish cut. I secretly hoped he had no intention to crop it anytime soon.

“Busy?” He murmured, his eyes darting to the stack of papers I tried to put order on.

“Exceptionally Mr. Barnes,” My tone was flat and humorless, “What is it you need?”

He seated himself in the dark leather armchair in front of my desk without invitation, cocking his head to the side as he spoke, “I need clarification on our intentions here.”

My skin grew goosebumps under my satin blouse, the back of my neck grew hot and cold all at once. Intentions? Our relationship was nothing more than business, with the odd flirtation, we had no need to discuss intentions-

He continued, “Everyone’s growing impatient, you know? They need order, so we need to know your intentions.”

I suddenly realised I had been holding my breath and tried to exhale as steadily as possible. Bucky’s eyes seemed to bore into me, tracking every movement like a true marksman.

“I understand your frustration-”

He waved that bionic arm dismissively, “I don’t want your press statement. I don’t want to hear what you’re telling every media outlet. What are your plans? Real tangible plans.”

I bit my lip, forcing down the urge to shout back at him about how maybe this was easy to him but it was all new to me and that I felt like a mule with all the workload I was carrying. His blue eyes followed my bottom lip as it slowly slipped out from between my teeth.

“I’m working on it, Mr. Barnes. I am learning the ropes as I go and ask that you, and everyone else, stay patient as we move forward.”

He didn’t try to mask his scoff, “Fucking P.R.”

My nails dug into my thighs, I barely noticed the ladder that formed as a result, my mind in a haze of stress and frustration, “If you’re so damn eager to get your feet on the ground, what do you recommend we do, Winter Soldier?”

I stood up, my heels clacking against the polished black tile floor as I strode over to him, standing over his seated body. I forced my eyes on his face, not on how the soft, warm light above us revealed the shadows and contours of his muscled torso, or on how his forearm twitched as I moved closer, and not on how his trousers stretched over his thighs and hips, giving a faint outline of his crotch.

Yes, I would keep my eyes on his face.

“I’m working as best I can, Mr. Barnes. If you want to be helpful, by all means assist me. But if you’re going to come into my office and tell me how to behave, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

The soldier held my gaze, his face as serious as cancer as he retorted, “You didn’t mind being told what to do at the fundraiser party. What did you call it? ‘Working you’? All I had to do was give you a business card and you ratted on Val,” His face barely shifted as he continued, “You want my advice? Actually try to work with us. You’re not some higher up executive who doesn’t need to mingle with the talent. Like it or not, you’re in this business now, and that makes you the talent too.”

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean? Is it some veiled threat? You want me to fall in line and just take it?”

The unintentional innuendo hung in air for a heavy, silent moment before Bucky responded, “You’re a public figure now. You’re not some faceless assistant or a glorified waitress. People know what you look like, they know what college you went to, your allergies, your mom’s maiden name.”

I bristled at the mention of my mother, trying to remain composed. My back straightened as he rose from the chair, he was over a head taller than me.

“My point is, you’re the same as us. You might not have blood on your hands and you might be new, but we’re all in the same damn boat. You can’t run this shit on your own, you have no experience. So maybe you could stand to be with the workhorses and get out of this ivory tower.”

His tone was dripping with venomous distaste and the soldier slipped past me, making his way towards the door.

“Mr. Barnes,” I didn’t move as he turned back to face me, I kept my gaze stubborn and hard, “You should know I don’t view you all the way you seem to think. That’s in no way conducive to a successful working environment.”

His laugh was gruff and tired, “It’s all business to you. You want to turn a profit and make us some media sensation-”

“That is not me, Bucky, and you fucking know it,” I snapped back, striding toward him and pressing a manicured finger into his chest, “That’s Val. Don’t you dare make me out to be like that woman.”

I watched as his eyes scanned down my body to the long hole in my stockings that ran from my upper thigh to just below my knee, revealing a strip of bare skin. Bucky seemed to smirk as a cold, metallic finger ran along my leg, “You’re already falling apart”. The touch ended as quickly as it started. He paused a moment before continuing, ”So what is it you want?”

The question stumped me and its double meaning forced me to think about my response.

“I trust you,” My breath caught in my throat, “I trust you and Yelena and Alexei and Ava and Walker. And I trust you all to help advise me on how to move forward with this. But I need you to work with me, I won’t sit by and be a fucking secretary”. I threw my arm back and gestured to all the paperwork left untouched on my desk.

“I never expected you to be. I’ve already explained that.”

Now I was taking my frustration out on him, I sighed at my actions. “Alright, Mr. Barnes, I appreciate your help. I won’t keep you any longer.

“I’m the one who came here.”

I couldn’t bear to see the look on his face any longer, ”And I’m sure you’ve got all the answers you need, so good evening to you, Mr. Barnes.”

He wordlessly turned away from me, exiting my office and striding down the hallway. I let myself observe the tight muscles in his broad back before the door clicked closed and left me alone in my ‘ivory tower’ once again.

21 notes · View notes

fanganfessions · 5 months ago

Note

I personally don't like Project Eden's Garden, and I feel like it's trying far too hard to not be Dangan Ronpa to the point that it seems frankly embarassed about having any association with it from its writing and its consistent attempts to try and subvert DR writing, from the characters to even the execution we've seen (that IMO, lacks the kind of "style" canon executions have in an attempt to be far more brutal and drawn out without anything actually interesting to it in an aesthetic sense. It feels gory for the sake of being gory, even moreso than another execution I'd criticize like V3-2) and like it's trying too hard to subvert the series it's inspired by to the point it genuinely doesn't feel all that fun to engage with.

Things like the idea of a character presenting themselves as an "Ultimate Liar" just feel, for lack of a better word, fanfiction-y. A lot of the actual meat of the project feels amateurish to me, likely a result of the project changing hands due to the fallout between the old director and the original writers parting ways due to abuse 3 years ago or so, like old plot points were left behind and people tried to make them work rather than scraping things that I personally think go against his attempts to make its characters more grounded or realistic.

I don't enjoy any of the characters as they are and feel no attachment towards them or their designs, and I think the decision to replace the mascot with a guy in a mask was a poor one in a somewhat misguided attempt to make the game feel more, I dunno, mature? But to me it just comes off as another attempt to distance itself from DR, which the game fails at anyway because the twist of "characters who seem important both die chapter one" is very much a DR-esque move, for example.

There's a lot I could get into, and these are just mismanaged thoughts, but I feel like the project lacks style and any affection for the original series, and also comes off as exceedingly pretentious at times. (I personally hate the orchestral soundtrack, and I feel like something like "here's a real life orchestral composition of our theme" feels a lot like showing off at that point) I also just don't see the project being sustainable, especially with the prediction of it taking another two years for the second chapter.

All in all, though, I just can't enjoy it personally because it comes off as a very generic Fangan dressed up with high production value that people aren't willing to criticize both for fear of being attacked by an honestly rabid fanbase, and because it's definitely the big kid on the block and it can be hard to criticize a fan project being done for free. I just find it to be, well, not that good, and unworthy of the massive amounts of praise it's been receiving, but I'm biased to finding it kind of irritating due to my own personal tastes and the large amounts of praise its been receiving I personally disagree with.

But beyond that, it just feels like it doesn't want to be Dangan Ronpa, and maybe it shouldn't be, and its attempts to distance itself from it while still being clearly derivative of it (SHSL talents, the artstyle, the format) come off as more irritating to me than anything. I just don't think it's that good or the second coming of Dangan Christ or whatever, and it falls into the same trappings I'd criticize pretty much every other Fangan, and even the official series for, but it sticks out even more due to how desperate it is to be not Dangan Ronpa, or more than just Dangan Ronpa. This one just has more budget.

⠀

#fanganfessions #project eden's garden #project edens garden #p:eg

27 notes · View notes

yatagarasuhonyaku · 6 months ago

Text

The Raven of the Empty Coffin: Chapter 3 "Chihaya" Part 3

Disclaimer: This is a fan-translation japanese-english of the original novel. The events of this novel follow after what's already covered by the anime. For an easier understanding, I recommend first reading the few scenes of previous books I've already translated.

Blog version

For the Index, you can find it HERE

Previously: Chihaya (Part 2)

⊛　　　　　⊛　　　　　 ⊛

Chapter 3: Chihaya (Part 3)

With summer’s end, it was time to return after their long holidays. While the temperatures remained high, clouds, absent during the summer, now blocked off the ever waning sunlight from time to time. The trainees’ return to the Monastery marked the restart of their training.

Suikan’s attitude towards Yukiya hadn’t changed at all, even after Seiken's warning. The vacations may have come and gone, but he kept taking him on as his opponent just as relentlessly as he had before. A custom of sorts by that point, the other trainees had grown quite weary at the state of affairs—but for Suikan, it felt like a duty he absolutely had to uphold.

“The rebels’ base of operations is the temple. The suppression forces are a total of forty men. One General, two Officials. A quarter of the soldiers have Horses, Scouts and Spies available. Meanwhile, the rebel forces consist of one General, no Officials, fifty Half-Horses, no weapons, Scouts and Spies available.” As he heard his coworker dispassionately announce the conditions of the match, Suikan's eyes were fixed on the Field, ironing out his strategy going forwards.

“The Field represents the occupation of Deer Cry Temple, Ariake Township, Western Region. The events take place during the first month of the year, and the emperor orders you to suppress the revolt.”

Suikan stared at Yukiya, who was standing on the other side of the board, before doing the customary greetings. “Thank you for having me.”

“Thank you for having me.”

The loser during a Board Drill was whoever let their guard down first, no matter the opponent. Suikan wasn't planning to go easy on him in the slightest.

While he had used much more difficult Fields with Yukiya than with the others since the very start, he had switched to including Spies ever since the end of the holidays. The battles on the board had become truly intricate.

The newly added Spies were a particularly difficult piece to employ. They served a similar purpose as the Scouts, but the range of the Spies’ reconnaissance wasn’t as limited—they were even capable of accessing the opponent’s camp. On top of that, the Spies, unlike the Scouts, were invisible to the enemy's eyes until they actively sought for them in their specific position. To make matters worse, the range of such efforts was determined by the dice. All in all, it made them quite an annoying piece to handle.

On the upside, Spies were very slow to move, which made it realistic to handle all possible openings as long as one was thorough in searching for them. It was especially true as of late—Yukiya had grown quite fond of drawn-out battle strategies, which made them an inconvenience rather than a substantial problem.

Yukiya had dedicated himself to safe, steady offensives ever since that first big defeat. He played by the book, giving Suikan no opening to attack and giving consistent priority to guaranteed targets. Not like it mattered—his weakness lied at the end of a match, when he would start to panic and whatever pressure he applied would die down. In the end, his time would either run out, incapable of taking down Suikan's tightly formed defenses, or he would attempt a suicide attack right at the very end and get defeated in turn. It was one or the other, every time.

“Scout number two, move to B3. Mounted Units numbers two to seven disperse in rows of three.”

As usual, Yukiya started by building up a defensive formation for his General. He was clearly hunkering down for a long battle.

——Fine. If that was what he wanted, Suikan would let him have his test of endurance.

Suikan started to prepare for the Spies’ advancement, just in case, diligently performing searches around the Field while he flawlessly set up his armies in turn. If the situation didn’t change anytime soon, his defenses would be perfect before the first day's night time period started—or so he thought, as he finished moving his own pieces and announced so.

“Taken,” Yukiya announced with his usual, utterly unflappable attitude.

At first, Suikan couldn't make any sense of the word. He wasn't the only one—the judge too had frozen at the unexpected announcement. The other trainees, who had been watching their encounter, were similarly caught off-guard by such a sudden change to the usual flow of events. They all looked at them in shock, none of those present apparently capable of understanding what Yukiya meant immediately.

‘Taken’ was a fixed phrase. One often heard at the end of a Board Drill—quite the common one, in fact, given how fast-paced the encounters between trainees usually were.

“It can't be—” Suikan gasped, his eyes drifting towards the Assistant Instructor on scorekeeping duty. The man was pale as a sheet as well.

“Judge, please, your verification,” Yukiya asked.

In answer, the scorekeeper passed the encounter's register to the judge. The man was left in stunned silence, his gaze jumping from the paper to the board and back, comparing them with the look of someone who had just seen the most horrifying of spectacles. Afterwards, incredulity painted all over his face, he finally held up his arm in Yukiya’s direction.

“...... I verified it. Winner, upper side.”

Taken——the General's head off.

“Give me the pieces’… the Spies’ movements,” Suikan requested in an utterly quiet voice.

It was only then that the trainees finally got an idea of what had actually happened. In their astonishment, they had been causing quite a ruckus among themselves, discussing the situation. It had to be some sort of mistake, right? That is, until the movements of those invisible pieces became clear to them.

The Assistant Instructor pulled three Spies out of the box.

Suikan had found the first one during the match itself, and it was found exactly where he had expected it to be. The second one, meanwhile, was more or less where he had imagined as well, this time out of pure logic.

The third Spy, however, was the problem. The Assistant Instructor kept edging closer and closer to Suikan, piece still in hand. Finally, while looking at Suikan with actual fear in his eyes, he placed the piece with a shaking hand—it was inside Suikan's camp, right behind his General. It was impossible for his General to escape, no matter which tactics Suikan employed.

A usually impossible sneak attack—an assassination worth the name of miracle.

It cannot be, he thought. He hadn't let his guard down. While it was true he didn't expect Yukiya to send his Spies to invade so early on, he had been performing thorough searches. It couldn't have been that easy for him to miss it altogether.

At that moment, Suikan violently grabbed the Warfare Record's papers out of his Assistant Instructor's hands and started to examine them. Yukiya’s third Spy had moved through the dead angles of Suikan's army with the precision of a thread passing through the eye of a needle. It had moved as if the boy knew all along exactly which squares would be invisible to Suikan’s eyes in the coming turns.

There was no other way to explain it. Otherwise, why would he even move in such an inefficient manner? He had moved back and forth, alternating between retreating and advancing, until he had successfully invaded Suikan's camp.

It was purposeful. Yukiya had to have moved like that because he could accurately predict the range of his searches. But—how did he do it? The range was decided by dice rolls, there was no way to accurately predict random rolls. What the hell had he seen!?

Meanwhile, the trainees’ murmuring remained incessant and even the Assistant Teachers were joining in. ‘It's impossible’, ‘what's this?’ The voices reached him from afar.

And, in the middle of such chaos, Yukiya’s behavior alone was just as usual.

“Instructor Suikan, remember what you told me before?” Yukiya calmly asked him. There was no pride in his formidable win to be seen, as if it was all a foretold conclusion. “The weak have no right to speak. If you have any problems, complain after you beat me at least once, you said. So, taking you at your word, I just earned my right to speak my mind, didn't I?” Yukiya declared with a smile.

“To be honest with you, and for a long time now, I've had my doubts about whether you’re apt to be a Monastery Instructor. I mean, how can you take on such a duty when you just lost against a trainee and, more so, a Seed who has barely even started to learn Strategy?” The commotion at the Hall abruptly died down, quickly replaced by deafening silence. “Instructor Suikan, please, resign from your position. That's probably the best for everyone involved.”

⊛　　　　　⊛　　　　　 ⊛

“What trick did you use?” Kimichika approached them with clear anger in his eyes. Shigemaru felt himself getting cold feet, but Yukiya, the very target of the implicit threat, kept his usual nonchalant expression.

“Oh, are you talking about me?”

“Don't you play innocent. The Instructors are in an uproar at the moment.”

It all happened during lunchtime.

Yukiya and Shigemaru had been on their way to the Dining Hall when Kimichika, accompanied by all the other Southern Court Ravens, came to surround them. The rumors had already spread throughout the entire Monastery—that a Seed had defeated Strategy’s Practical Instructor in a Board Drill that very morning and had even asked for his resignation.

Perhaps it was because of the shock he felt at Suikan's position being challenged, given he had been playing favorites with him, but Kimichika even went through the trouble of approaching them first.

“——You cheated, right?”

“Oh, no way. You really think Yukiya cheated just because he happened to win once?” Shigemaru intervened instead.

Kimichika gave him a terrifying glare in turn. “I checked the Warfare Record. That win is abnormal, no matter how you put it.”

Shigemaru was well aware of that, actually. After all, that very morning, Yukiya had dropped an ‘it’s time to pick a little fight’ to him before he had gone to Strategy. Shigemaru had no idea what trick Yukiya had used exactly, but he knew it wasn’t pure chance at least.

Yukiya had, somehow, cheated—that was the only explanation available. And yet, everyone helping out during the Drill had been staff members. There was no reason to suspect any of them, and nobody could figure out what Yukiya had actually done to begin with.

That said, Kimichika’s fury was unrelenting. “What's wrong with you? You win by cheating and have the gall to ask for an Instructor to resign?”

“I didn't cheat. I'm not you, you know.”

“Not me? What are you implying? That I’ve cheated before?”

“You managed to pass and become a Sapling despite your awful scores at Theory, I’ve heard, only because you had Instructor Suikan's favor. Let me guess, perhaps that's why you're so angry now? If Instructor Suikan leaves, that means you’ll be dropping out next.”

Kimichika fell for Yukiya's blatant provocation hook, line and sinker. “Don't you fuck with me! Who even suggested such baseless crap!?”

“Oh, Sapling Ichiryuu.”

“He's right there, in fact.” Shigemaru pointed to the masses of gathered onlookers, who parted to show Ichiryuu with Akeru and Chihaya at his sides, holding him in place by the arms.

“So it was you who spouted that rubbish!” Kimichika howled at Ichiryuu, who had the look of a man wondering why his life had to turn out like this.

“And Sapling Ichiryuu isn’t the only one who thinks there’s a problem. We do too,” a red-faced Akeru declared.

Chihaya nodded in agreement. “Indeed. As someone who once served you—even if you didn't actually cheat at the exams, I don't think you are any more fit to be a trainee.”

Kimichika’s expression changed in an instant—it was rare for Chihaya to talk so much. “...... Chihaya, who do you think you're siding with?”

“Sapling Ichiryuu, of course?”

“And who the hell do you think helped you get here in the first place? We, the Minami-Tachibana, saved you from becoming a horse! It's thanks to us that you and that sister of yours didn’t die of hunger in the wild! You ungrateful scum!” Kimichika spat out.

Akeru's expression twisted pathetically. “To think I was like him once, I get the shivers……”

“But not anymore, at least.”

Comforted by Chihaya’s words, Akeru gave him a nod and, with a renewed air of dignity, turned again to lock eyes with Kimichika. “It's your mistake to think circumstances aren't ever going to change, Kimichika. I got the deed for Chihaya's sister. He isn't under your family's control anymore.”

Kimichika snorted in answer. “That's impossible, there's no way you can do that.”

“But it's the truth. Sorry to say, it's too late for you to do anything about it.”

The confidence in Kimichika's expression faltered, for a short second, replaced by uncertainty. “That can’t be…… He owes my father and I a huge debt.”

“Yes, and that shows there's a problem with you. Big enough for an indebted subordinate to forsake you,” Akeru replied.

Before Kimichika could respond, however, the sound of Yukiya's laughter interrupted them.

“I'm sorry for the insolence, Sapling Kimichika, but, you know, no matter how much I think about it, I can't understand how you can be our senior. And I swear, it's not to make fun of you. I truly don't get it.” Yukiya spoke with an artificially troubled face, derision in his eyes. “But hey, what can you do about it, really? You may lack the strength and wits, but that's something one is born with, so there's no fixing that. That said,” Yukiya added with absolute delight, “that’s not the main problem—it’s your garbage personality. No positives to be found. Sapling Ichiryuu is a hundred times more worthy of respect as our senior than you, so I hope you realize this is all your own fault?”

Kimichika’s fist launched towards Yukiya’s face, but never reached it. Chihaya kicked the boy instead.

——And so the brawl started.

“It's a fight!”

As the onlookers mostly remained to watch, a few among them quickly ran away to warn the Instructors. On Kimichika's side were his followers and other trainees affiliated with the South, which, adding up the Saplings and Seeds, totaled to about ten people. On the other hand, the study group's regulars quickly joined Ichiryuu's side. As a result, their numbers were more or less even.

Shigemaru had heard the rumors, but Kimichika proved to be a surprisingly capable fighter. Much to his misfortune, however, his opponent was none other than Chihaya, who even the Instructors called a genius among themselves.

On top of that, maybe because of all the pent-up anger, Chihaya’s kicking onslaught on Kimichika was truly one full of passion. He didn’t use his Ornamented Blade at all, despite Kimichika’s use of his own—whether it was because he wanted to faithfully keep his word to Ichiryuu or not, it was hard to tell.

Shigemaru himself was busy handling two of the opponent Saplings, but Yukiya’s loud laughter reached him all the same. “What was that? Don’t tell me you intended to hit me with such a move? That was so weak a fly could have landed on your fist mid-punch. Is everything alright with you?”

Yukiya was blocking off all attacks from Kimichika's Ornamented Blade with just the bare minimum of movement, wholeheartedly dedicated to provoking him. Then, the very second Kimichika lost his focus, blinded by fury, Yukiya closed the distance between them. He grabbed him by the joints and hurled him to the ground without letting go.

“Aurgh!”

“Are you alright? I’m so sorry, does it hurt?” Quite the crude question to ask, given Yukiya had followed it with a kick on the downed Kimichika.

“Chihaya!” Kippei yelled in a panic.

Shigemaru's gaze turned to the boy's direction. Akeru and the others were struggling, but, at the moment, Chihaya was busy punting his heel into Kimichika's nape.

“Leave this to me,” Yukiya said to him.

Chihaya nodded to him and launched into a sprint towards Akeru's group. As if taking his place, Yukiya moved to stand in front of Kimichika.

“Dammit! Fuck you, Wakamiya's dog!” Kimichika spat out venomously, shaking his head.

Yukiya’s lips, in answer, curved into an enchanting smile. “And gladly so. Much better than to be someone like you, unworthy to even become someone's dog.”

Kimichika brought his Ornamented Blade down on Yukiya, who avoided it with ease and in turn pulled him by the arm. He kicked the ground slightly, launching himself into the air in order to trip Kimichika with his own weight. The boy didn’t seem to have even the slightest idea of what was happening to him as Yukiya threw himself to the ground, dragging Kimichika along with him.

Even Shigemaru, who was relatively far away, got to hear the awful sound that Kimichika's suddenly strained joints made. He let out an ear-piercing scream, but Yukiya didn't release him.

“How does it feel, huh? To be bitten by a dog. You made fun of us relentlessly, yet your entire additional year’s worth of training has proven useless. What's it like? You know, if only you had been a bit less of an ass, I may have even given pity some thought!” Yukiya let out a raucous laugh. “Oh, and please do me the favor of placing all that blame on your own idiocy.”

By that point, Shigemaru had finally downed the two Saplings he had been fighting and was ready to intervene if the situation demanded it, but he was instead left momentarily speechless by Yukiya's delight. “...... Enough, that’s overdoing it. Yukiya, stop right there. Continuing won't do you any good.”

Yukiya looked at him in surprise. “I see… If you say so, Shige, I guess I'll leave it at this.”

Yukiya stood up and walked away, just like that. Kimichika, however, was left crouching down, drenched in cold sweat and clutching his injured arm. At that moment, a limping Akeru—he must also have gotten hurt—approached them.

“Shigemaru, Yukiya. Got any wounds?”

“None worth mentioning. How about everyone else?”

“We all got some to our name…… but our opponents got worse. All thanks to Chihaya, he took them all down.” Would it be correct to call this a win? Shigemaru wondered to himself as another voice interrupted the scene.

“What has happened here!?” It was an adult, no doubt about it. They finally arrived.

Shigemaru turned to take a look in the voice’s direction. There was a group of Instructors running towards them, led by Seiken. While he had been expecting them, Shigemaru could never have guessed he would see the man behind them. His was an unforgettable appearance.

Somewhere else in the hallway, he heard someone’s horrified yelp.

“You gotta be kidding me. What's that man doing here!?” Ichiryuu asked in terror. He must have been caught completely off-guard, much like Shigemaru.

——Rokon, Natsuka’s close vassal, was there.

Kimichika's actual older brother had just arrived with the Instructors—and right after Yukiya had thoroughly trashed the boy.

“Who started this?” Seiken closed the distance between them and took a quick look at the people involved. He already had an idea of what had transpired there, obviously enough. In answer to his question, Yukiya immediately raised his hand. Shigemaru had expected him to shamelessly place the blame on Ichiryuu, yet the truth proved to be different altogether.

“I did,” Yukiya gracefully admitted, his eyes fixed on Rokon's direction. “Lord Rokon, first, my apologies for causing harm to your esteemed brother, however—”

“Don't bother,” Rokon's low, gruff voice brusquely interrupted Yukiya's attempt at a defense. “I'm well aware of the situation here at the Monastery as of late. Including the fact that a certain someone snatched my family's servant away.”

“Brother,” Kimichika pitifully pleaded for help, groveling on the ground. “Please, punish them. They forgot their place and rank and dared to deride Lord Natsuka. It's not something we can forgive!”

“Indeed, it's unforgivable.” Kimichika's expression softened after hearing his brother's beast-like roar. But his peace didn't last long, as Rokon walked briskly towards him and mercilessly kicked his own brother in the face. Such was the impact that some of Kimichika's teeth were sent flying along with his body.

Everyone was left stupefied, even those who had just fought him, as they saw his body violently roll on the ground.

“Kimichika! Are you alright!?” A panicking Suikan took the boy in his arms and helped him sit up. By that point, Kimichika's body was wounded all over.

Rokon, the very man who had just sent his own little brother flying with a kick, shook his head in disappointment.

“Brave of you to say those things. Aren't you the one who has forgotten his place and rank? I’ve heard it all, you know.” Rokon looked down on Kimichika. “You shamelessly declared yourself part of Lord Natsuka's Faction and made a show of your contempt towards His Highness Wakamiya within the Monastery. What qualification does someone who openly despises His Highness like that have to become a Yamauchi Guard, huh!?”

“What are you saying? Brother, didn't you—”

“Shut up!” This time, Rokon slapped Kimichika into forceful silence.

“Enough, Michichika!” Seiken stood up to protect Kimichika. Rokon returned his glare, utterly calm.

“These are my family's issues. It's not your place to get involved.”

“This is the Unbending Reed Monastery, and he's a trainee. It's you who doesn't have the right to get involved,” Seiken firmly declared, much to Rokon's sudden and apparent amusement.

“——Have you forgotten the matter that brought me here today, by any chance? It's for Kimichika's expellment.” Shock ran across the until then paralyzed trainees.

“Brother…?”

Rokon looked at his stupefied brother in a manner that could only be described as heartless.

“From this moment onwards, he isn't a trainee here at the Monastery any longer. Oh, and I almost forgot. I had some words for the actual trainees.” The crowd froze out of sheer fear. After witnessing Rokon's brutal punishment, they were all terrified of him. “I don't know what my brother has prated on about, but Lord Natsuka’s loyalty to His Highness Wakamiya is genuine. If you keep ignoring his wishes and imposing your own desires on Lord Natsuka, you'll just end up like my brother here.”

After that declaration, Rokon took Kimichika by the hair and pulled him up as he let out a pained scream. Kimichika’s cheeks swelled up red as blood gushed down from his mouth. “So, sorry for all the trouble.”

“Stop!” Seiken ordered him in a fury, but he was completely ignored and Kimichika, left at the mercy of his brother’s whims, was dragged out of the building by Rokon.

⊛　　　　　⊛　　　　　 ⊛

“I hope you realize why we have called you here.”

“I do.”

The trainee in question remained utterly unfazed even in front of Shoukaku, his expression filled with what one could define as serenity. Shoukaku, as the Monastery's Director, had heard all the rumors about this Seed. He had held the position of His Highness Wakamiya's close aide before even coming to join them.

2-10’s Yukiya of Taruhi.

In the middle of the hall, built specifically for Board Drills, stood a Field. Yukiya and himself aside, they were accompanied by Kashin, the Instructor in charge of the Seeds’ practical courses; Seiken, who held the same position for theory classes; and Suikan, the man who had suffered that massive loss during that very morning's Board Drill session.

Shoukaku had heard of the circumstances that had led to the brawl, and so had decided to start by clearing up the cheating accusations surrounding the cause of it all—Yukiya.

“I've seen the Warfare Records and I'm just as surprised as everyone else. It just can't be a coincidence. You planned to use that Spy piece as an assassin from the start, right?” Shoukaku asked, seeking confirmation.

“That's right,” Yukiya obediently agreed with him again.

“It's embarrassing to admit, but we can't figure out how you managed to do so. It's as if you knew what number would be rolled next and while that's the only explanation available, we had an Assistant Instructor on the task. We must consider he somehow falsified the rolls, assuming it's even a possibility, but——”

“The Assistant Instructor wasn’t trying to make me win, and he didn’t falsify anything either. There's no need to do that to begin with,” Yukiya explained to them, his expression ever so slightly troubled. “Please, take a look. I'm going to roll a one.”

Yukiya took a dice someone had left on top of the desk. Then, firmly pinching the sides of it with his nails, he rolled it on the desk. Just as he said, the result was one.

“See? It's very simple. The Ravine's gamblers often use this trick,” Yukiya disclosed in a nonchalant manner. “You turn the face you want upwards and pinch the dice just like this as you throw it, it will roll exactly three times if done correctly. For the unaware, it will look as if you had just rolled the dice normally, but this method allows anyone to determine the result with near certainty.”

Yukiya had, in fact, seen that Assistant Instructor before—at the Ravine’s gambling dens. He noticed the moment he saw him and, just like that, Yukiya came to realize something. “He used to come at the very least four times a month, which means the gamblers there probably taught him how to do this.”

“Then that means—”

“Yes, it’s just as you think. He was practicing during lessons.” His job was to sit at the desk and roll the dice, then record the results. Under the mask of dutiful work, he had started to play around with the dice, probably out of boredom brought by long battles and their ever dwindling piece movements. “He was really bad at it at first. When I first joined the Monastery he didn’t succeed that often, but he has gotten a lot better recently and, more often than not, actually gets the intended roll. At worst, the dice rolls one more time, or one less. So I thought it was just about the right time for me to try that trick out.”

“Wait. Are you implying you knew what number he was trying to get? Just like that?”

“Yes, of course. There was a very simple logic to it. Even choosing what number to get at random had become too much of a hassle, it seems, after doing so over and over again.” Yukiya poked the dice. “The Warfare Records with the previous Drill’s results remain by the side of the register. He always tried to roll the numbers from the Board Drill immediately before that, just in the opposite order.”

Shoukaku heard Suikan, pale as a sheet, groan at Yukiya’s explanation. Kashin as well had been left speechless, from the looks of it. Seiken alone, as if bothered by something, rushed to ask a question of his own. “......How did you notice?”

“By his eye movements. It was clear he was looking at something before rolling the dice, so I once took a peek at his desk when cleaning up.”

“But you have no way to see those critical Warfare Records on his desk in the middle of a Drill, do you?”

“I mean, yes, but that's solved by simply remembering the results from the previous encounter? I'm paying attention to my fellow trainees’ Drills, after all,” Yukiya announced in a shockingly casual manner. “As long as one is attending the lessons, there's really no need to do anything special.”

——And he said it as if it were nothing.

Shoukaku rubbed his temples to soothe his growing headache.

“I can't accept this…… This is not a Board Drill match….” Kashin murmured with a trembling voice.

The color in Yukiya's eyes changed.

“Then, are you suggesting that a battle of wits outside the board is unfair? Instructor Kashin,” Yukiya called to him. His tone was not so much one of reproach but of warning. “Those words of yours are no different from, say, excusing your own failure to react to the monkeys’ attack based on the fact that there was no forewarning. And tell me, what would saying ‘that's unfair, I won't recognize it’ to the monkeys even achieve? Can you even be entrusted with Yamauchi's safety if you think like that?”

Kashin struggled to answer Yukiya's question, “But—even if you say so, it's not the place of a trainee like you to ask for an Instructor’s resignation, don't you see?”

“I wouldn't say so myself,” someone's laughing voice intervened in the conversation. The entire room turned to its direction, where the figure of a giant man was standing at the door.

“Michichika!” Suikan yelled out his name, opening his mouth for the first time since Yukiya had arrived at the hall.

In answer, Rokon just grinned. He briskly walked towards them, jumping over the fence separating the seats from the Field in the process. Seiken’s harsh glare fixed on him as he approached them.

“What about Kimichika?”

“I sent him over to the Minami-Tachibana's Residence, so they're probably treating his wounds right now. He didn't get anything that can't be fixed at the very least.” Upon hearing that, Suikan let out a deep sigh of relief. His hand was resting over one of his own eyes.

“Now, leaving that aside——what do you mean? How can you say that it is Yukiya's place to ask for an Instructor's resignation?” Kashin asked.

Rokon pointed at Yukiya in an overdramatic manner. “Because this Yatagarasu here shouldn't be joining this conversation as a trainee, but as part of the Monastery's Administration.”

“Lord Rokon,” Yukiya intervened, his brow slightly furrowed. Rokon ignored him.

“I mean, I'm right, aren't I?” Rokon said in between merry laughter. “You’re the one who engineered all the recent events at the Monastery, after all.” The moment he heard those words, Suikan gazed up at the ceiling. Seiken sighed ever so deeply. “Oh, I see… Looking at your reactions, you had figured out that much already,” Rokon nodded in approval.

Yet Shoukaku couldn't make heads or tails of the situation. He wasn’t the only one either, as Kashin too was noticeably confused as he asked Rokon, “There were many times I felt something was off with him, yes. That he should be capable of doing so much more, but he was intentionally slacking off. But, what do you mean he plotted all this out?”

“I mean exactly what I said,” Rokon opened his arms wide. “There were actually two main reasons he joined the Monastery, you see. The first one was to ferret out and make an example of those willing to declare themselves part of the Natsuka Faction, and the second was to help raise anyone with prospects to join Wakamiya's.” Rokon turned to Yukiya. “It worked out really well, didn’t it?”

Yukiya didn't answer him.

“You all got some instructions from Wakamiya about this year's dormitory arrangements, didn't you? It took some close examination of all the registered trainees, both old and new; but it was all Yukiya's doing.”

There were a few people who caught Yukiya's attention before even arriving at the Unbending Reed Monastery.

The first one was Shigemaru of Shimaki, a trainee of commoner origin.

He was second only to Chihaya in the practical section of the admission tests. Shigemaru’s physical prowess was beyond question, and he had no problematic noblemen backing him. That, plus his reasons to join the Monastery, made Yukiya think he would be the easiest recruit for Wakamiya's faction.

The only point of concern was the fact that he came last at theory during those same tests. To fix that, he chose to share rooms with him. Besides making the recruitment itself all the easier, it would make it possible for Yukiya to help him with his study problems.

The second one was Akeru of the Western House, whose circumstances were all too similar to Yukiya's own.

He had already declared himself part of the Wakamiya Faction. His attitude, however, was a problem—a point which both Yukiya and Wakamiya agreed on. He had gotten first place at the admission tests, but whether he could keep up was far from clear even at the time. It was hard to tell if he would manage to graduate to begin with.

In consequence, the plan had been to see if they could get him to fix his personality problem at least and only then consider what to do with him moving forwards.

The third one was Chihaya, a servant working under Minami-Tachibana.

He had proven to have exceptional skill at the practical section of the admission tests, and he was far from stupid. To miss out on someone as talented as him would be a complete shame, so Yukiya figured he could easily use Chihaya's little sister, whom he cared so much about, to easily take care of the problem. “Which is exactly why he got the deed from me in advance, a money loan of sorts, so he could act as soon as the opportunity presented itself.”

“But that means…” Seiken watched Yukiya with mixed feelings.

“That Chihaya's sister was under Yukiya's ownership before the year even started at the Monastery, yes.” There was never any need for complex negotiations or to pull off any tricks. Yukiya had Yui's freedom in his hands the entire time and, had he wanted to, he could have given it to her at any moment. But he didn't.

——He had to wait for the right moment, all to guarantee Chihaya's recruitment.

“Such a caring friend, don't you think?” Not even Rokon's ironic retort got a reaction out of Yukiya, who remained both silent and expressionless. Yet that wasn't even the end of it, as there was a fourth person who had caught Yukiya's attention. This last individual was, in fact, none other than Kimichika of Minami-Tachibana. “Then, he even came all the way to ask me ‘will you let me use your brother?’. It sounded like fun, so I agreed,” Rokon explained without even the slightest sign of shame.

Yukiya had gotten a chance to check the old trainees’ scores and had caught on to the criticisms on Kimichika's personality, which was how he came up with the idea of turning him into a representative of the Natsuka Faction. Before the Seeds’ entrance into the Monastery, Kimichika was just another Court Raven—one with the exact same issues as Akeru, just to a different degree.

But then Rokon, in coordination with Yukiya, pushed Kimichika to openly act as part of the Natsuka Faction. Encouraged by his older brother, Natsuka's close vassal, Kimichika transformed into the acting head of Natsuka's supporters among the Monastery trainees.

“Thanks to that, we could figure out which trainees were secretly part of the faction. A trainee's beliefs are those of the family supporting him, after all.”

And so, ignoring Wakamiya and Natsuka's wishes on the matter, the conflict at the Unbending Reed Monastery grew increasingly worse. Yukiya's plan had been to dispose of them that way. He and Rokon had both agreed to make an example out of Kimichika from the very start. If they made a good show out of it, there wouldn't be any idiots whatsoever left at the Monastery willing to align themselves with the Natsuka Faction.

“That is, if a certain someone hadn't intervened and attempted to protect Kimichika.” Rokon gave a meaningful look to Suikan, who looked away with wholehearted distaste.

“...... When did you realize?” Yukiya asked Suikan, not a single emotion showing in his voice.

Suikan answered with a stifled tone, “The moment I read your answers for the admission test. It was just a hunch back then, but I couldn't help but to feel I shouldn't be treating you the same as other trainees.”

It was obvious Yukiya wasn't even trying. Suikan could already tell back then that Yukiya had three whole years’ worth of theory in his head. Then, his suspicion grew into certainty the moment their quarrel with Kimichika took place.

“You got away scot free because Instructor Seiken was there but, according to what I heard, you intentionally provoked Kimichika into attacking you.” That's how he figured it out. It was clear to him that Yukiya was trying to cause an escalation of the faction conflict at the Monastery, pushing the Natsuka Faction into acting out.

It was also why Suikan stubbornly kept challenging Yukiya to Board Drills.

“...... I don't think we have ever talked properly to one another, but I could easily figure out what you wanted to tell me from the first time we faced each other,” Yukiya said quietly. “I chose a strategy that aimed at the weaknesses of the standard tactics, but you went out of your way to use said by-the-book tactics to defend against me and then, on top of that, changed plans midway and completely blocked off my ambush.”

During their constant Drills against each other, Suikan battled with all his might and overcame Yukiya every single time. It was as if he was telling something to him. ‘I see what you're trying to do, and I won't let things go your way.’ To add to that, Suikan would punish Yukiya and Yukiya alone to isolate him from the other trainees as much as possible.

“...... There had to be many other, more peaceful ways to ferret out Natsuka's secret supporters for someone as brilliant as you.” Suikan glared at Yukiya with hate burning in his eyes. “Besides, even if you were to drop out, you have so many other options to live on. You just have to go and become Wakamiya's close vassal or whatever you want!”

Suikan began to scream at him. “But that's not the case for others. Many trainees don't have anywhere else to go outside of the Monastery. And you used those poor kids as you pleased just to achieve your goals as fast as possible! The kids that aligned themselves with the Natsuka Faction are no different,” Suikan added as he pulled his hair. “Even if their families are politically opposed to you all, that means nothing to them themselves. They’re the second and third sons of low ranking nobility, left with no place for them at the Court. The commoners with nothing left for them in their birthplaces. There are plenty without a place to go among those who serve under such kids as well!”

After Kimichika's downfall, whether those serving and following him would be able to remain at the Monastery as trainees was questionable at best. It had driven Suikan desperate, worried sick about their futures.

“You're as naive as usual, huh?”

“Shut your trap, you cold-hearted bastard! How could you punish Kimichika like that?” Faced with Rokon's utterly happy tone, Suikan glared at him with pure hatred before turning his damning gaze back to Yukiya. “A trainee, you? How?”

Suikan looked like he was about to cry as he denounced Yukiya. Yukiya, however, remained unfazed.

“If you refuse to see me as a trainee, then I'll take my chance to speak as His Highness Wakamiya’s subordinate and not as one of your students.” Yukiya's gaze passed over all the Instructors present before he fiercely asked, “Are you all even aware of what the Unbending Reed Monastery's actual purpose is? There were Yamauchi Guards involved in Wakamiya's assassination attempt two years ago, young ones.

“It made it clear that the Yamauchi Guard, the organization meant to protect the Imperial Family, was no more, and that there was a long-standing problem with the facility raising its members—the Unbending Reed Monastery. It was because nobody in the Administration supposed to fix such an issue did anything at all that I had to take matters into my own hands,” Yukiya brazenly declared. “If you have any problems with my actions, I would first like to ask the Director something. Why won't you do your duty? Where do you plan to guide this Monastery from here on?”

“I—” Shoukaku deeply sighed, Yukiya's accusing glare boring onto him. “The Unbending Reed Monastery's Director is a servant who shares a destiny with his generation's Golden Raven. It's my duty to build a Monastery suitable to His Majesty's wishes.”

“If that's so, what did His Majesty ask of you?”

“...... His Majesty has given orders to me only once in his entire reign.”

The Emperor abhorred the Yamauchi Guard. He wouldn't ever approach them to discuss anything out of his own volition, and this sentiment was extended to the Monastery's Director, the very man supposed to support his reign.

The time had been when Shoukaku went to perform his mandatory greetings upon taking on the position. He was called to the Hall of State Ceremonies, where he got to meet His Majesty through the bamboo curtains. He didn’t speak to Shoukaku even once, however. One of his secretaries, standing right by his side, did so instead.

“You are to treat Lord Natsuka as the Crown Prince, not Wakamiya.” Those were the secretary’s strongly worded orders to him. Orders that left the Director with suspicion.

“Your Majesty, is that truly what you wish?” He asked, confused by a command that blatantly disregarded the previous Emperor's wishes.

The answer that came from the other side of the curtain was a terribly irresponsible “just do as you want.” As a consequence, the Director was never able to settle on a stance on the matter, and the current status quo, with the faction division between Natsuka and Wakamiya, came to be.

“That Yamauchi Guards would attempt to assassinate His Highness should be unthinkable, and yet His Majesty didn't make even the slightest show of reproach to me…….”

“‘Just do as you want’, huh. So your efforts to faithfully follow that one order from His Majesty were what ultimately led the Monastery to become what it is now. How laudable,” Yukiya said, incapable of restraining his contempt. “Laudable, and idiotic like nothing else.”

“I know. And yet, I have only one master and that's His Majesty.”

“Well, much like you're His Majesty’s loyal servant, I'm the same for the True Golden Raven. If it's to follow my master's orders, I'll show no mercy—even against my own teachers.” Yukiya's gaze fixed on Suikan, who bit his lip in frustration. “His Highness Wakamiya is the only one with the ability to protect Yamauchi against the monkeys at present.”

Having said that, Yukiya faced Shoukaku once again. “Were the Yamauchi Guard still raised with animosity towards Wakamiya in their hearts and kept attempting to harm him, it would probably just end in the death of His Majesty who you treasure so much and the collapse of all of Yamauchi. How about you finally open your eyes to reality? The current threat to His Majesty’s life isn't found amongst the idiots of the Imperial Court, but in actual, legitimate monsters—those monkeys. It's not the time to spend all that effort on keeping the balance between the Four Houses! I'm actually furious, you know.”

Yukiya's voice got rougher. “Up until now, His Highness Wakamiya has sought your opinion numerous times. He requested an opportunity to have an open talk with you, even just a chance at an interview, yet you disregarded it all out of scruples about His Majesty or something, I don't know what. You may not have had any other option left as the Monastery's Director, but this isn't a matter in which ‘not having options’ works as an excuse.

“Uncountable talent was wasted, talent that should have been part of His Highness' assets in this crisis, because of you. You failed to train the precious Yatagarasu that would have become His Highness’ hands and legs—Yamauchi's protectors. That ‘loyalty’ you have kept to the very end, Director, is now endangering all of Yamauchi and His Majesty's safety. Don't you see it!?”

“Enough,” Seiken raised his hand as if to stop Yukiya's onslaught on Shoukaku. “I'm sure the Director has gotten your message as His Highness' subordinate. Anything beyond that is for His Highness Wakamiya to say himself, not you. Am I wrong?”

Serenity returned to Yukiya's face after Seiken's gentle question. “...... That's true. I overstepped, my apologies.”

Yukiya bowed his head, and Seiken regarded him with calm eyes. “I have a question for you. It seems Suikan didn't consider you a trainee, but I’ve been of the mind to treat you as one all along.”

Yukiya's eyes went wide and then he smiled wryly. “Yes, I'm aware.”

“Which is why I believe something. That while it's an unmistakable fact that, as His Highness’ subordinate, you used your fellow trainees for your own ends, you also were moved to act out of genuine love for your friends just as much.” Yukiya’s expression, which had remained impassive no matter how much they decried and cursed him, now, for the first time since he had arrived in the room, crumbled ever so slightly. “You believe that to defeat the monsters, you have no alternative but to become one as well, right?”

For a second, Yukiya tried to answer, yet he found himself unable to do so. He stood there, motionless. All the while, Seiken watched over him mournfully. “You may say you don't mind being a monster, but there’s a part of you that most definitely isn't one. Please, don't ever forget that.”

Yukiya looked back at Seiken intently. All of a sudden, the boy’s expression had shifted—he seemed to be at a complete loss.

“...... Even if that's the case, I don't have the right to say so myself, do I?”

⊛　　　　　⊛　　　　　 ⊛

Ah, the moon sure is big tonight, Shigemaru nonchalantly thought to himself as he walked through the Monastery's grounds. As they hadn't been informed about their punishments for the brawl just yet, once they took care of their wounds, their entire group had decided to return to their respective rooms and wait.

Among them all, only Yukiya had been called by the Director and Shigemaru was worried sick about him. The lecture must have dragged on—he still had yet to return to their room.

“I'll go to take a look,” he had said to Ichiryuu and Chihaya before taking off.

As he left the dormitory behind, he was overcome by the smell of dirt warmed up by the day's sunlight and the refreshing scent of grass covered in moisture. The full moon was up in the sky, the same rich yellow as a boiled egg yolk.

Just when Shigemaru was en route to the designated hall for Board Drills, however, he caught sight of a figure slowly walking in the shade between the buildings. Shigemaru immediately sprinted towards it through the moonlight’s shadows.

“Hey!” he called out. “That sure took you long, you must be tired.”

“Shige……” Yukiya raised his head with a start. He seemed a bit out of it.

Uwah, he’s sure feeling down as hell, Shigemaru mused to himself while he offered Yukiya the package he had been carrying around. “You must be hungry, right? I got you this from the kitchen.”

“Ah, thank you. You didn't have to.” Yukiya tried to give him his usual smile, but it was a blatantly forced attempt—and Shigemaru didn't like that one bit. Yukiya sat down on a stone wall close by to eat the cold rice balls in the package, and Shigemaru became all the more certain.

There was something different going on with Yukiya.

“Did they scold you that much?”

“That they did.”

“What did they tell you?”

“Ah, well. They got angry at me, told me my personality sucks.”

Of course, Shigemaru didn’t believe even for a moment that the Instructors used that exact expression, but even if the wording was different, the gist of the message was likely the same. The matter was, then, how he could comfort his friend. Shigemaru pondered the matter for a while, before finally giving a confident answer. “Well, it does certainly suck.”

Yukiya silently gulped before murmuring, “Ouch, even you, Shige?”

As much as Yukiya was trying to keep up appearances, Shigemaru could tell that his expression had gone completely stiff. He, however, pretended to not notice. “I mean, it's the truth, isn't it?”

Shigemaru had been, at first, under the impression that Yukiya was a nice, cheerful kid. However, as time passed, he came to realize the truth—that Yukiya was, in reality, quite the twisted and vindictive young man. The more he got to know him, in fact, the more Shigemaru came to strongly believe that Yukiya was the last person anyone would want as his enemy.

“Well, that’s…” Yukiya attempted to speak, even more downcast than before.

“—But,” Shigemaru intervened, “Akeru, Chihaya, Ichiryuu, Kippei, me and everyone else. We all hang out with you fully knowing that. All Yatagarasu, to a greater or lesser extent, have a good and a bad side to them, you see. The gap between those in your case is exceedingly wide, yes, but there's nothing wrong with that!”

“But, Shige! You can probably only say that because you don't know everything bad about me.”

“Everyone hides the darker part of themselves. So, it's all about seeing the good in people and deciding whether that’s worth spending time with that person.” Yet, despite Shigemaru's many attempts at comforting Yukiya, it all seemed to be falling on deaf ears. His expression remained just dark as before. “—You know, from time to time, you look like a little boy alone on an errand to me.”

“Huh?” Yukiya let out a confused screech.

Shigemaru laughed. “Oh, I’m not saying it because you're tiny. It's just that face—like you know where you have to go and what you have to do so it’s not like you’re about to actually cry, but, with no adults to accompany you on the way, you can't help but to feel oh so helpless and lonely.”

The observation must have caught Yukiya off guard. He remained silent.

Shigemaru didn't ever intend to say this to Yukiya, but he had met a boy with an expression much like his once before. A brave errand boy who properly performed his given duty and politely took off—one whose countenance Shigemaru wouldn't ever get to see again. It wasn't like Shigemaru could have done anything for that boy's sake, yet he still regretted not paying him more mind.

“I'm an idiot, so I have no idea whatsoever what kind of errand you’re on or where you‘re trying to go. But I can at least tell you're trying your hardest to do whatever you can, to fulfill your duty, and I can at the very least imagine it must be something very, very important.” Shigemaru roughly ruffled the still silent Yukiya's hair. “It doesn’t matter to me where your destination is, what your goal is, or how blackhearted you are, I’ll never ever abandon you. So! You don’t need to worry so much.”

“...... You really won't, Shige?”

“Really! And I'm not alone in that, you know? There's others too. People who may complain on the way, but ultimately follow you. Many more than you may think, of that I’m sure. It may take you a while to find them, though,” Shigemaru added. Yukiya’s expression crumpled entirely as he said that, rice ball still in hand. “Don't ever forget it. We got your back.”

After a long silence, Yukiya nodded ever so slightly as he let out one single whisper, “Thank you.”

“Good, now, shall we go back?”

Recommended: Thoughts of the Barren Tree

Next: Yukiya (Part 1)

#Translation: The Raven of the Empty Coffin #yatagarasu #yatagarasu series #the raven does not choose its master #karasu wa aruji wo erabanai #Oh no translations notes you may think.........#wait for the short story where I think there may be easily 6 of those

32 notes · View notes

sebbyisland · 2 months ago

Text

BETTER THAN MY WILDEST DREAMS!!!

losing it i m l o s i n g i t do you see how beautiful she is???? hello? highlighting my fave changes piece by piece below

The way the title is formatted is different! We used to consistently have the text vertical with a white box bordered by blue and red, now it's just the text in a larger font. I'm curious how the translated editions will try to reflect this change

the rendering style is obviously different now. we keep the watercolor coloring but there's a lot more attention to ambient lighting (LOOK AT HER EYES!!!!!! LOOK AT THE WAY LIGHT REFLECTS AHH) + fine details. lineart is now colored and more diluted, which gives room to create shape and motion through the rendering. instead of screentones on the hair or clothes, there is detailed shading. it's so exciting because this is the first time we have seen Akane-banashi in this much detail!!!

color illustration background also very different. we always had the cover illustration bordered by colorful patterns, but this has been completely switched out for sketchy ink drawings on a solid color background. there is no border! Akane is free..

the author + artist names have now switched from horizontal white/black text outlined in black/white to vertical text in a different font, no outline, and bordered by a box made with a brush stroke texture. this adds to the more free/inky composition communicated by the background and the changes to the title text

this is the FIRST chapter volume to only feature one character! considering the simplified background creates more spotlight on the character. I wouldn't be surprised if the covers from now on are mostly one character + simple background from now on.

would i cry if we get a big dramatic composition of hikaru akane and karashi staring each other down? yes obviously of course........

^^^however, if they decide to stick pretty strictly with one character per volume cover (omg like Blue Period hello Blue Period fans), it would fit well with how we've been getting character info-sheets every couple of chapters. idk if those chapters are spaced out enough to align with the volumes. just a thought!

overall i'd say the new volume cover style is trying to take on a more mature look to reflect akane reaching this new stage of her journey as a "full-fledged artist" kinda like the time-skips in one-piece or naruto

TL; DR TAKAMASA MOUE I OWE YOU MY LIFE……i knew he would deliver but oh my god.

#akane fans stay winning #loving akane hours #akane banashi #seb out

18 notes · View notes

rookschnapps · 2 months ago

Note

Previous anon here! I would love to read how you did it. Im suprised you managed to did it in Google Docs. I thought you used a program similar to InDesign or programs that are more suitable for graphic design ANYWAY i am also curious how many chapters you used. Was it seven? Did you stop there because the length was convinient or because a story arc ended there? I am not really good at identifying where an arc begins and stops. okay bcgjkkcj THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME

YAYYY I LOVE TALKING ABOUT ARTS AND CRAFTS!!

gonna put this in main tags as well this time so:

this is my bookbind of trod pt 1 :] by @bamsara which u can and SHOULD read here

ok so this first bit is how I made the pdf and then the next bit is how I turned it into signatures for binding. Then the last bit is splitting up chapters and stuff. If anyone has any advice or tips on what I could do differently (for free or v cheap haha) please let me know!! This is so fun I love learning and discussing and making things

first thing I did was grab a real book so I could take a look at where they put the title page, where they left the pages blank, etc

I then formatted the title and contents and stuff in docs by messing with font and position on the page (etc) until it was to my liking! THEN I realised I wanted an image on the very first page so I went back and put that in. I got to design it it was sooo fun

OH. I ALSO STUCK A SHAMURA QUOTE WHERE THE DEDICATION WOULD BE. HEHE

thennn I went and changed all the heading, title and normal text options for the doc so that they looked nice! I used times new roman size 16 :) but that might be a bit big for most people. I like bigger text

^^ that step was important so that when I started copy-pasting in the text it would all come out the right size automatically. also so that my chapter titles and notes pages looked consistent

next I downloaded trod from ao3 as a html file! I found it works better than pdf bc there aren’t any page breaks

I just copied and pasted trod in one chapter at a time and added in the notes and summary for every chapter where I wanted it and that worked pretty well for me

THEN SPELLCHECK. I didn’t want to do it automatically (docs had some horrible opinions sometimes. Also kept trying to erase bits of the writing style that made perfect sense and sound beautiful???) so I had to confirm every change which took a while but I think was worth it

lastly I added page numbers. They did not want to cooperate with me and I still do not understand the tiny fuckers, but I managed to get them in the middle of the page for book 2 so it looks less weird (hurrah). There’s a button for it

then I saved it as a pdf!

OK NEXT THING : SIGNATURES

this post is my bestest friend (link is to a tumblr post that was really helpful)

and this webpage is how I got a pdf of the signatures (it’s the same one linked in the post)

CHAPTERS:

yeah I split it into chunks of 7 chapters! Book 1 ends on the argument in the field bc a) it was getting wayyy too long and b) I want to lend it to my friends and that’s a delightful emotional cliffhanger. Book 2 (which is actually finished. I’ll try and post photos later today or something) ends after hekets release from purgatory which is I thiiiink another 7 chapters? Book 3 is gonna be a bit longer bc I want to do it up to the most recent chapter, which I was gonna leave out bc of length but then it came out and I went insane haha

OH in book 2 I did drop caps and title decoration which I designed in procreate and then imported into docs and moved around as imported photos. I’ll put a bunch of pictures at the end too

THANK U FOR ASKING!!! If there’s anything else u want to know then let me know!! :]

#crowcraft #bookbinding #cotl #cult of the lamb #anon #ask #trod #the rehabilitation of death #YAYYYYYY

16 notes · View notes

lexirosewrites · 6 months ago

Note

hii!! i want to try and start writing and I LOVE YOUR WORK so i wanted to know if you have any advice because i have no clue where to start 😭

I’m only giggling a little bit at being asked this as I’m just starting to come out of a long writing hiatus. Let me impart the best wisdom I’ve slowly gained over time.

Consistency: Write on a schedule if you’re not sure you’ll stay motivated. I try to write every single night (see visual below where I log my words written each day). I think just keeping up with it is a whole job sometimes, so getting yourself a routine will help you “getting in the writing mood.”

Confidence: Don’t stress yourself out unnecessarily. The more you write, the harder it is to do without second guessing all your work. Focus on just getting words out because you can edit later on once the story is on the page.

Organize: Outline as much as you can because it will make your life easier. “Winging it” works for some people, but if you’re just getting started, I recommend planning individual chapters and the overall plot so that you don’t get yourself lost. I’m constantly changing my own outlines in the middle of fics, but it keeps me on track.

Persevere: Don’t give up when it gets hard. Sometimes you just need to take a break, sometimes you need to rewrite some things. It can be overwhelming, but giving up is not a solution that will accomplish anything. Get a friend to look over it, open a dictionary, do some research!

Enjoy: It sounds so obvious, but don’t lose the plot of why you’re writing. We write for a purpose. Don’t be so focused on numbers and engagement that you forget to write something that makes you happy. Yours is the only opinion that truly counts when it comes to your own work. If you’re happy, don’t makes changes just to please others.

If you need help with specific processes (beta reading/editing, formatting, titles, tags, ratings, moodboards, summaries, etc.) feel free to ask and I can go into more detail!💛

#fic writing #writing advice #fanfic writing #writing process #anon asks #my asks

13 notes · View notes

carriehobbs · 1 month ago

Note

1a, 1c, 6d, 6g for the mix and match asks!! Good luck with internet 😭😭😭

1. Which of your fics is your favorite?

6. Which of your fics is the most serious?

a. What is something you wish more people noticed about it?

c. What do you think makes it deserving of love?

d. What is your favorite line or excerpt from it?

g. Which section was most difficult to write?

Ty for asking 💕💕💕💕

Questions from this ask game.

1. Which of your fics is your favourite?

As I said before, picking a fave fic is like picking a fave child, but for consistency, I'll say from the corners of my room again. This was the second fic I wrote after getting back into writing and it was more experimental for me (as I've said before), so it was a really fun opportunity to try to rediscover my voice and try something new with minimal fear of failure.

a. What is something you wished more people noticed about it?

I answered 1a over here!

c. What do you think makes it deserving of love?

I spent so, so much time thinking about every little detail when it came to writing that fic: at what time of day should each message be written?; how many days should be between each message (I pulled up a real calendar from 2018 too, so I could get the weekdays vs weekends right)?; how exactly do Alina’s emotions change over time?; what things would Alina willingly say, what things would she write down and then not send, and what things would she feel but not even admit to herself in a message she never intends to send to Nate?; how would she phrase something and then how would she rephrase that text?, etc. Every little detail in that fic was meticulously thought out and re-thought at least three times.

And I think all of that planning paid off – I think that Alina’s anxiety and insecurity and fear were palpable, I think her emotional arc (very polite -> emotionally oversharing because she knew she was never really going to send her messages -> convincing herself that her and Nate’s connection wasn’t real -> retreating back to politeness, especially knowing that she was going to see him again soon) made sense and worked within the format of the fic. I think (at least from the comments and feedback I got on it, lol) that it really effectively executed the concepts I wanted to explore and the techniques I wanted to practice. In short, I think it did a good job of doing what I wanted it to do.

6. Which of your fics is the most serious?

It’s not published yet, but my turning fic (post-canon Alina becoming a vampire) is definitely the most serious.

d. What is your favourite line or excerpt from it?

I have so many lines from this fic that I absolutely adore, it’s so hard to pick just one. I even have a full diatribe planned out with IPA and syllables parsed and everything for why I think one particular line is a really good bite in the mouth. I refuse to name an “absolute favourite” (please don’t make me pick 😭) but there is one line I absolutely adore.

This line is kind of a weird choice to me for a “favourite line” because it’s not particularly pretty or prosaic. Maybe it’s because I know its context in the story. But it always gives me this intense shiver-response when I read it. It’s the very last line in Chapter 3, which is the chapter where Alina drinks blood for the first time. It’s only four words:

She’s a messy eater.

g. Which section was most difficult to write?

I have a couple different scenes in the turning fic that I am fighting with (I know what still needs to be written in the scene and what the scenes need to do for the fic but I just have to execute them), but there’s one that I’m fighting with more than the rest which is the first part of Chapter 8.

The first half (part/section/whatever) of Chapter 8 actually takes place years before Alina turns (before she and Nate have kids, are married, or are even engaged). It occurs during this place in their relationship where they've gotten serious about each other and have started talking about and making actionable plans for their future (they’re having the “do you want kids”/“do you want to get married”/“do you want to become a vampire” talks). Ultimately, the entire scene is about Nate asking Alina why she wants to become a vampire.

The scene is really complicated for me because it needs to do several things all at once. Firstly, it needs to go over the different reasons why Alina wants to become a vampire (kind of self-explanatory). There’s a lot of back and forth between Nate and Alina (at least in the current version of the scene) that needs to be tense without feeling outright antagonistic. Alina is balancing trying to answer Nate’s question (why do you want to become a vampire) without actually answering it (she believes that her reason will be considered “unacceptable”, so she has a whole list of other reasons that aren’t untrue (that she has been giving to other people who ask her motivations based on which reasons she thinks they will find most compelling), but aren’t the main/most important reason to her) while Nate is (at least in this version) pretty much calling bullshit on all of them. And the scene needs to build to a particular moment (and particular line) that I’ve had in my head verbatim for over a year, far longer than I’ve even had the idea for this fic. The line needs to feel as natural and impactful in the fic as it does in my head, and it’s always harder for me to write a scene that I already have a strong image of (because the writing never meets the expectations).

Secondly, this scene does a sort of “reveal” that explains characters’ motivations in earlier chapters. This scene happens, chronologically, earlier than every other scene in the fic – this means that Nate, as a character, knows Alina’s reason for becoming a vampire the whole fic even if the audience is only finding that reason out in Chapter 8. So, there’s this tension between Nate and Alina in (quite frankly) every other scene of this fic that Nate is in that isn’t explained or unpacked (like in this snippet) until this moment.

Because everyone who’s likely to read this fic is an N-lover, they will already have the context of his character and backstory, so I’m not expecting anyone to really be surprised by how Nate is acting (I’m sure there are plenty of people who will read this and think, “oh, yeah, Nate definitely would bring baggage about his own unwanted turning to his partner’s turning, even if it was planned”). However, I still want readers to have this feeling of “ohhhhh, this adds so much more richness and complexity to what was going on in previous chapters” when they read this chapter, if that makes sense. So there’s a lot of pressure as well to write this scene in a way that doesn’t… like… flop, lol. I keep hmming and haaing over it because I need it to do what it needs to do effectively while still being an interesting scene to read.

#my second most serious fic is the 13/30 au 🤭 which is probably not what you would expect #answered tag #sorry it took so long etc etc. electricity u know how it is

3 notes · View notes

binaural-histolog · 9 months ago

Text

Storytelling Is Too Effective

There's a podcast I listen to, If Books Could Kill. Every episode, they review a book -- usually popular science or psychology, but sometimes political -- and they poke holes at it. They go back to the original papers that the book cites, they cross reference claims made between chapters and point out inconsistencies, and they draw from other studies and theories to provide contrast and context. It is entertainment, but it's also an appeal to critical thought.

One great thing that the podcast does is to track down anecdotes back to the original newspaper articles, and then point out how the book misquotes or misconstrues the event to serve the narrative. It can be jaw-dropping to hear what some books do with their source material. And yet, this is believable. These books, and these stories, are believed.

But I'm only talking about popular science books that present studies and supporting anecdotes as the truth. There's another category of book, the books that present the argument purely as story.

Who Moved My Cheese is a popular book about workers who have to deal with organizational change, including layoffs and cost-cutting measures. It was famous at the time, and consists almost entirely of made up conversations between mice, detailing how the mice should think about these changes. The podcast takedown is brutal and recommended.

Part of the reason that the book is so effective is that it's entirely story. The mice say what they're told to say, and the arguments are set up to make the right mice look smart and the wrong mice look dumb. The book wants you to engage and believe the argument even though the support is entirely illusory or relies on social pressure. And people believed it.

I think there's a natural tendency for people to believe books when they are storytelling -- either as stories or narrative as dialogue. The mortar that holds storytelling together is belief, and belief by its nature is credulous. You are not invited to review the raw data of a story, or examine the statistics for data dredging. You can't reproduce the results in a double-blind experiment. Story is story: you either believe it or you don't.

And that made me wonder.

What would If Books Could Kill say about Frogs into Princes or My My Voice Will Go With You?

Frogs into Princes is a dialogue about NLP. It's supposedly a transcript from a seminar. It's super effective.

The dialogue based format is effective in part because it's off the cuff --it doesn't come with footnotes or cite references, because who does that in the middle of talking? No-one in the seminar calls them out or challenges them on where they got their results or their thinking. Bandler talks about a therapist repeatedly removing and putting back back a phobia in a single session. Terms like "transderivational search" are dropped in (even though the word "transderivational" is a linguistics term) and no-one blinks an eye. The concept of preferred representational systems (PRS) is introduced, which even Bandler revised as no longer considered an important component in 1986. The audience believes all of this. You are expected to believe all of this.

And yet, if you dig into NLP and Bandler more specifically you find that much of this doesn't actually work and PRS is invented from whole cloth, with no linguistic evidence behind it.

According to Weitzenhoffer, "the major weakness of Bandler and Grinder's linguistic analysis is that so much of it is built upon untested hypotheses and is supported by totally inadequate data."[24]

But the point isn't truth. The point of NLP is to sell NLP, and it does very well at that; the conferences are very successful and disturbing to attending journalists.

My Voice Will Go With You is slightly different. It is the teaching tales of Erickson, written by Sydney Rosen. Erickson presents a series of stories showing how he solved a patient's problems using hypnosis and metaphor. Erickson was a natural storyteller, and because of that, the books present him as a protagonist.

But if you look at Erickson as a whole, his methods and philosophy are not about truth -- Hilgard gives several examples. Erickson never cared about truth. He cared about belief.

His habit of utilization meant that he would not only utilize behavior to point out that they were going into trance. He would utilize any improvement in his patients lives to point out his successful intervention. He was clear that he would lie to his patients for the sake of the case, and it's pretty clear he was lying or exaggerating some of his cases. He projected an image, and his image was so effective that it meant people would uncritically repeat what he said and fail to check and verify his accounts.

Cardena even called out Erickson's approach.

To muddy the waters even more, why have not some of the followers of a therapist known to fabricate false past stories to achieve therapeutic goals wondered whether he used that same technique in his writing and teaching?

And the problem is, some of it appears not to work for anyone else.

The research reviewed simply does not support long-held beliefs by Erickson or those who practice Ericksonian approaches to therapy. [...] Although there are impressive and dramatic clinical anecdotes cited in the literature about Erickson and his work, there is no compelling need to invoke any sort of special curative processes active in Ericksonian approaches beyond those already documented as active in any form of effective psychotherapy (e.g., relationship, expectancies, construction of a compelling narrative, active client involvement). Unlike hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral therapy, it is not clear that hypnosis adds anything to this approach.

When indirect suggestions are tried in experimental hypnosis, they don't work as well as direct suggestions.

The best controlled studies provide no support for the superiority of indirect suggestions, and there are indications that direct suggestions are superior to indirect suggestions in terms of modifying subjects’ experience of hypnosis. Nevertheless, the overriding conclusion is that differences between a wide variety of suggestions are either nonexistent or trivial in nature. (p. 138)

The reason that people still believe in Erickson and in NLP is because the way that the books present the argument is through storytelling. Storytelling requires belief and inhibits critical thought. We are set up to believe: hook, line, and sinker.

#binauralhistolog #hypnosis #nlp is bullshit #Youtube

8 notes · View notes

primnroses · 2 years ago

Text

— Explaining Konohagakure’s Medical Department from Naruto to Boruto:

The information presented in this post has been checked and revised. My aim is not to hate or to discredit any of the characters mentioned. Please read about me for further information.

This post will contain evidence in picture format directly from the manga Naruto (1999 - 2014) created by Masashi Kishimoto and published by Shueisha in 1999. I will also use information from the official databooks.

This informative post will explain the role and utility of the Medical Department from its debut in Naruto to its development and role in Boruto. I will use information present in the novels and the Boruto manga because it includes character development within canon compliance.

This meta is crossposted in AO3.

I give my permission to use or share this thread with informative purposes as long as you credit me.

I do not support the anime or the work of Studio Pierrot in regards to Naruto because I consider it over exaggerated and beyond biased. Furthermore, these fillers include some actions that these characters are unable to do in the canon according to official sources and they also generate unnecessary debate.

This meta does contain anime scenes from Boruto because it is a monthly manga draft that depends heavily on anime for context.

Please, take this into consideration.

This meta will include a small discussion from my own point of view about the Medical Department and its members. There will be strong criticism and complaints, comparisons with other characters, previous leaders, etc.

The Medical Department ( 医療部門, Iryō-Bumon), also known or previously known as Medic Corps or Medical Corps (医療部隊, Iryō-Butai) is one of the three main departmental divisions of Konohagakure. They are organized in the medical-ninja from Konoha Hospital (木ノ葉病院, Konoha Byōin) and they are in charge of providing medical care within the village and in the battlefield by the training field medical-ninja, and developing medical items such as medicines, ninjutsu, etc.

Some time after the Fourth Shinobi World War, the Medical Department has seen the development of new medical branches and facilities. It is also supervised by Sakura Uchiha as department head, hailed as the world’s best medical-ninja.

Sakura is officially known as "The Head of the Medical Department" (医療部門の責任者, Iryō bumon no sekininsha).

Konohagakure's official department organization according to the first fanbook.

HISTORY

It's unknown when the organization itself started or when Konoha Hospital came to exist, but the concept of 'medical-ninja' has existed since the era of the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi. Around the Second Shinobi World War, Tsunade advocated for the inclusion of one medical-ninja per team to palliate the effects of the conflict and reduce the number of casualties.

Tsunade advocates for medical-ninjas to be included in every team to increase the survival rate of each member and the mission in chapter 160.

This department and all of their divisions wear their own unique crest with the kanji for "medicine" or "healing" (医, ishi). This crest is the symbol of Konoha Hospital and the uniforms of the Medical Corps; these uniforms consist of white overalls for the doctors with hats and ear protectors, and skirts for the nurses, both with the crest in red on their backs.

After Naruto, the crest changes places, now adorning the left side of the uniform.

The uniform of the Medical Corps during the end Naruto and how the look now in episode 494.

Naruto:

During the era of the Third and Fifth Hokage, the Medical Department was simply known as Medical Corps, and with the first fanbook, we learn that the Medical Corps are medical-ninja from Konoha Hospital; as well as being the only healthcare organization known at the time. In turn, Konoha Hospital is a building located not too far from the Hokage Residence in the center of the village. It was never specified who was running the hospital during this era.

The concepts of Medical Corps, medical-ninja and medical ninjutsu were introduced gradually as the story progressed.

The manga introduced the existence of a health organization during the Chūnin Exams mentioned by Hiruzen when speaking about Kabuto Yakushi. It was said that a jōnin of the Medical Corps had saved him (his adoptive mother Nonō Yakushi).

This is an early plot mistake. The term "medical-ninja" did not exist around the time of the Chūnin Exams in the plot, so Hiruzen saying Nonō was a Medical Corps is a mistake in the continuity of the story; he would likely say medical-ninja if the term existed.

It was during then that we got the first ever look at a medical-ninja when the Medical Corps took Sasuke Uchiha to Konoha Hospital to heal his wounds. They also showed a different uniform than the one used now. But the word "medical-ninja" had not yet been introduced.

As soon as Tsunade was introduced into the story and after her fight against Kabuto Yakushi, we learn about the term 'medical ninjutsu' and 'medical-ninja'.

Medical-ninja (医療忍, iryō-nin) are those shinobi that learn healing techniques and are assigned to teams to aid their comrades in battle. They use medical ninjutsu (医療忍術, iryō-ninjutsu), like the generic Mystical Palm Technique (掌仙術, Shōsen Jutsu), to heal wounds.

Therefore, medical-ninjas are divided into two types:

Konoha Hospital’s Medical Corps medical-ninja.

Field medical-ninja.

Konoha Hospital before Pain's invasion in episode 153. It also debuts in chapter 89 in the manga.

According to the first fanbook, the Medical Corps are those professional medical-ninjas that are fully dedicated to healing, developing medicine, researching diseases and performing ninjutsu focused on healing that work at Konoha Hospital. In order to do that, they require very advanced chakra control, as well as extensive knowledge of herbs, medicines, the human body and even poisons to develop said medicines and antidotes.

They are also divided by ranks and skills, with the story revealing that not all Medical Corps are able to use healing techniques due to the high precision of chakra control they must possess. They also include nurses among the staff.

We can consider the Medical Corps and Konoha Hospital as the same organization, since the Medical Corps are exclusive to Konoha Hospital.

The Medical Corps according to the first fanbook.

Meanwhile, field medical-ninjas vary in skill and knowledge. They range from just identifying the condition of a patient and using medical ninjutsu as a Chakra Transfer Technique, such as Ino Yamanaka; using healing techniques to aid in battle, like Rin Nohara; or being on par or superior in knowledge and skills as the Medical Corps such as Sakura Haruno, Shizune, Tsunade and Kabuto Yakushi.

Sakura Haruno is an example of a field medical-ninja that also actively works in Konoha Hospital as a member of the Medical Corps, Shizune too.

Medical-ninja must be the last member of their teams to perish, therefore, they must never join the battle, making them support-types. This however, does not apply to Sakura Haruno, Tsunade and Kabuto Yakushi, who use medical ninjutsu variants as fighting techniques.

Medical-ninja are the most valuable members of their squad and it is a priority to protect them in battle.

Yamato guarding Sakura Haruno, the only medical.ninja of the team in chapters 288 and 299.

I explain all about medical ninjutsu and medical ninjas here.

Based on some parts of the story, the Medical Corps send relief teams to special events such as the Chūnin Exams and treat patients in separate rooms outside Konoha Hospital. They also send other smaller groups of Medical Corps on smaller teams to retrieve patients. These teams are called Medical Teams (医療班, Iryō-Han).

Medical Teams from the Medical Corps sent to participate in events or rescue patients. We also see the change of the uniform's design in chapters 68 and 235.

Specialized medical-ninja are needed in Konoha Hospital in case of emergency. Examples include Shizune, Sakura Haruno and Tsunade; Sakura and Tsunade being fighters as well as a medical-ninja and boasting a jutsu that grants them regenerative abilities.

Medical-ninjas are pivotal in a shinobi village are essential during missions or wars, as they are the only people able to maintain a full village healthy and ready to keep fighting.

The Medical Corps had their hands full during Pain’s invasion healing as many villagers as they could.

The Logistical Support & Medical Division of the Allied Shinobi Forces was also the main target of the enemy, especially their most skilled medics, the jōnin rank medics, therefore needed extra protection from sensor-type shinobi to avoid casualties inside the tents. It was thanks to Sakura Haruno leaving the Third Division and helping Shizune lead her division that she could stop the White Zetsu and provide medical care to multiple shinobi from each division.

Sakura Haruno in Konoha Hospital tending to the wounded after the Pain Paths destroyed Konoha; Sakura and with Shizune in the Logistical Support & Medical Division in chapters 429 and 540.

Blank Period:

The next time the Medical Corps and Konoha Hospital appear is mainly Sakura Hiden, this novel including one of Konoha Hospital’s major medical developments; although there are mentions in other novels too:

Six months after Kaguya Ōtsutsuki was defeated, Sakura Haruno started preparations to create a Therapy Center, a mental health branch for children who were indirect victims of the shinobi world.

Two years later, Sakura Haruno successfully founded the first ever mental healthcare institution inside Konoha Hospital; and other villages like Sunagakure also followed her example. Indirectly, it is also revealed that Shizune is representing the Medical Corps and Konoha Hospital during this time.

According to the novel, Shizune is the “Executive/Manager of the Medical Team” (医療班の幹部 Iryō-Han no kanbu) and sits with the other three top officials of the Konoha Council and the daimyō to discuss matters pertaining the village.

Sakura Haruno opens the first mental Therapy Center in the world in chapters 1 and 3.

During Shikamaru Hiden, Sakura mentioned that her and Tsunade are also working on the development of healthcare within the Shinobi Union (previously known as Allied Shinobi Forces) that could be a hint to Sakura's future clinic and her upcoming role as tKonoha's head doctor; in Sasuke Shinden, we see a glimpse of Sakura's leadership within the Medical Corps by leading medical investigations and sending teams to other villages.

Boruto:

By the era of the Seventh Hokage, the Medical Corps rebranded, now called the Medical Department and their supervisor, Sakura Uchiha, is now called “Head of the Medical Department” (医療部門の責任者, Iryō bumon no sekininsha), in contrast to Naruto’s non-existent hierarchical title.

Overall, it has continued to function the same was as before, with the exception that it has been developed into as a more structured and detailed aspect of Konoha's organization.

Now the Medical Department refers to all healthcare aspects of the village, from the hospital, its staff, different facilities and even teaching; all under the command of a single branch but divided in smaller units.

KONOHA HOSPITAL:

One of the most notable changes is the reconstruction of Konoha Hospital into a more modern building. The inside of the hospital looks much more solid in comparison to the building before Pain’s invasion, which had cracks everywhere (more noticeable in the manga).

The hospital in Boruto: Naruto the Movie and earlier chapters of the manga are more similar to the design in Naruto, while the anime changed the design to a more modern building and the manga has also upgraded its design to match the anime, but there are very few panels of it in the manga.

Konoha Hospital in the anime and manga in episode 152 and chapter 6.

Unlike Naruto, the hospital has a clear hierarchy and is directed by Sakura Uchiha, who works from her own office when she isn't actively receiving patients. The building is also significantly more prepared than before, with various surgery rooms, intensive care, the off-screened therapy center, modernized patient rooms, labs and a classroom to train genin in more advanced medical ninjutsu.

So far, Konoha Hospital remains as the center of all healthcare and the source of all medical knowledge of the village.

The director's office. One of the surgery rooms, the classroom, patient rooms and lab in episodes 167, 11, 152 and 219.

The Medical Corps still wear their white uniform with the crest in the back, although they changed the helmet for a bandana with Konoha’s symbol in it. Other uniforms include a blue robe with matching pants for Sakura and Shizune.

Another notable change is the presence of more discernible medical staff among their ranks. The Medical Teams sent on specific missions now wear a personalized version of the standard chūnin vest with the medical crest on their backs, while emergency medical relief can be seen wearing a red armband with the medical crest to identify them among regular shinobi.

The different types of medical-ninja in emergencies.

In addition to the new staff, Konoha Hospital has also started to give individual classes to genin that wish to become future field medical-ninja.

According to Boruto Uzumaki and Mitsuki, the Ninja Academy imparts classes about medical ninjutsu, but not real training enough to become a battlefield healer. For genin, it is compulsory that at least one member of the team trains in medical ninjutsu.

These classes are imparted by the head of department herself. Sakura Uchiha trains Sarada Uchiha for Team 7 and Inojin Yamanaka for Team 10, among others. Although according to Mitsuki’s own character profile written by Ukyō Kodachi, he is the actual medical-ninja of Team 7, which means he must have also trained with Sakura.

Although this is a loose episode or a filler episode, it explains how Inojin and Mitsuki, two medical-ninja according to their official manga profiles, learnt medical ninjutsu. It's canon to the story.

The new medical training explained by Boruto Uzumaki and Mitsuki. Sakura Uchiha begins the special class for genin in episode 152.

MEDICAL OFFICE:

Other than Konoha Hospital with its new branches, there is also a healthcare facility inside the Hokage Residence called Medical Office or Medical Department (医務室, Imu-shitsu), controlled by the Medical Department and used by other departments.

Inside it, some of the Medical Corps work in important cases that need the direct supervision of the Hokage. The room is also used to attend to other healthcare cases, like the Scientific Ninja Weapons staff fixing Kawaki’s artificial arm. Sakura Uchiha and other staff also wear a different uniform more similar to the coat the staff of the Logistical Support & Medical Division used to wear.

Inside the room there is a single bed and several medical and technological instruments, as well as cabinets and a sink. In the manga, the room resembles a normal hospital room.

The Medical Office in the anime and manga in episode 76 and chapter 68.

MEDICAL NINJUTSU IN KONOHA

To understand the development and change of the Medical Department from Naruto to Boruto, first we need to understand the role of the medical ninja in the story:

It's no surprise that the Medical Corps is one of the three main departmental divisions of Konohagakure, since its service has been relevant from the beginning to the end of the story and its existence has shaped the main female character of the story.

The existence of a branch dedicated to healthcare was introduced very early in the story given the importance of providing aid to a group like shinobi who put their safety and well-being at risk at all times. In a military village where shinobi are the backbone, there had to be a system to keep them healthy.

Both medical-ninja and Konoha Hospital boast of importance in all major story arcs, from saving many of the main characters, to protecting the village, to offering aid to allied villages and discovering secrets.

From the Chūnin Exams and their role at healing some main characters

its the very foundation being the source of power of the Hokage and her student, the two strongest female characters.

Key in saving Sunagakure from political collapse.

The presence of medical-ninja part of teams in missions that used healing techniques on major characters.

First look at the emergency protocols of Konoha Hospital before multiple injured during the Pain arc.

The importance of the Logistical Support & Medical Division and the enemy's eagerness to eliminate the Allied Shinobi Forces' healthcare source.

Second look at the emergency protocols of Konoha Hospital before multiple injured during the Ōtsutsuki Invasion.

Sakura healing Hinata Uzumaki after the Ōtsutsuki Invasion where Konoha Hospital became a shelter.

THE NEW MEDICAL DEPARTMENT

Contrary to other teams that have been completely automated and retconned, the Medical Department has not gone through major changes in the story, only small structural touches to match the new era of modern Konoha.

Konoha Hospital doesn't make use of the technology Konoha currently boasts of. Instead, they keep using shinobi for healthcare and medical ninjutsu, rather than adding machines or experimenting with the Scientific Ninja Weapons Team.

There really is no difference between the medical management from Naruto to Boruto, only that the roles are clearer.

Given that in the past there was no relevant medical presence other than that of Sakura, Shizune and Tsunade in Konoha, and that Tsunade was focused on her duties as Hokage, the hospital had no clear hierarchy or leadership. The presence of the multiple Medical Corps staff working to aid Sakura or Shizune were the only reminder of the structure of healthcare.

The evolution and the future of Konoha's medical system was already set in stone when Sakura became a disciple of Tsunade and Shizune. Once the training was completed, Sakura had already secured her spot as a top medical-ninja after her teachers, and she dedicated herself to work in at Konoha Hospital when she was in the village as a member of the Medical Corps, implying that her work was only going to continue until she achieved a promotion and leadership position among her co-workers.

The third databook described Sakura as a top medical-ninja and she began working at Konoha Hospital when she was off mission duty in chapter 343.

Already during the Fourth Shinobi World War, Sakura was already hailed as a jōnin-level healer despite being a chūnin, and with this distinction she co-managed the Logistical Support & Medical Division led by Shizune.

Since Sakura surpassed her teachers and Tsunade retired, already as the best medical-ninja in the world and an official jōnin, the leadership of the medical branch was fully expected to fall into Sakura's hands.

The development of what is now considered the Medical Department is but the pinnacle of the entire process carried out by the most important medical-ninja of Konoha during Naruto.

With Sakura Uchiha as head doctor, her presence in Konoha Hospital to perform her medical duties isn't unusual, and we always see her take care of patients in the village. The anime and manga also remind us of the presence of the Medical Corps, always aiding Sakura and Shizune and making regular appearances.

Shizune, Sakura’s former mentor, seems to be aiding now as an assistant or some sort of deputy director, although no information has been made available.

How does the Medical Department work and what is their role?

Gather professional medics in Konoha Hospital to heal people, study diseases, create medicines and develop healing ninjutsu.

Dispatch Medical Teams to special missions and include one field medical-ninja on teams for support.

Train future Medical Corps and medical-ninja.

DISCUSSION:

How important is the Medical Department?

The Medical Department has experienced a decrease of utility in Boruto compared to Naruto. However, being written out of the story doesn't equal being less important.

Compared to the amount of times the Medical Corps appear and medical ninjutsu is used in Naruto, Ukyō Kodachi and Mikio Ikemoto have drastically diminished the role of medical-ninja to the point of disappearance. In addition to that, the anime has demolished what it meant to train in medical ninjutsu; while it now takes a few hours to learn, it took the best medical ninja in the world 3 months to make advancements.

Unlike other teams, the Medical Department debuted fairly early into the story and it's considered as one of the major Konoha branches with ANBU and Shinobi Forces; it's the main and major support system of the village too. Some of the best examples include the Chūnin Exams when the Medical Corps heal the participants after a fight to continue training, or Pain’s invasion when Konoha citizens and shinobi were attacked by summons or in the midst of fighting the Paths.

The equivalent of the Medical Corps was the Allied Shinobi Forces Logistical Support & Medical Division, also considered an essential support system at the time.

Led by Shizune, the medical-ninja refilled the chakra reserves of every member of every battlefield division and healed the injured shinobi from the frontlines so they could return to their posts with renewed energy. It was the jōnin-level medical-ninja from the Medical Division tents who were targeted by the White Zetsu in order to weaken the Allied Shinobi Forces, as it's natural that the enemy would want to take down the source of energy of a platoon. Sakura and Shizune also performed the autopsy of White Zetsu to discover the uses of Hashirama Senju’s cells.

The remaining medical-ninja were also pivotal in battle by providing chakra to boost ninjutsu in the battlefield.

Sakura Haruno of the Medical Division uses medical ninjutsu to power up ninjutsu. A medical-ninja from the Medical Division explains why they are essential in chapters 613 and 539.

The Medical Department is essential to secure a successful mission, be it by healing the members of the team, creating items such as poison and medical ointments to use in battle by non medics, healing shinobi after missions and also providing healthcare to the rest of citizens.

So far, almost every Konoha shinobi, and non-Konoha shinobi, has required medical care in the hospital and member of the Medical Corps during Naruto, the Blank Period and Boruto.

Some examples of treatment at Konoha Hospital in episodes 208, 205 and chapter 343.

The current problem of the Medical Department:

In Boruto, the Medical Department suffered a downgrade compared to previous appearances, although not in abilities or competency. Konoha Hospital has remained one of the most successful in terms of workforce, so far never needing anyone to step in for Sakura to perform healing or save a life. Rather, it has been precisely the elimination of medical-ninjutsu in the story that has allowed other characters to obtain some sort of healing abilities, although we can still see the Medical Corps stepping in to secure a successful healing process.

The Medical Department still relies on humans rather than machines, very unlike the sensing system for example, but the lack of appearance is a problem for the system overall.

The downgrade is in relevance, often prompting readers to believe its not an essential part of the village.

We used to see the Medical Corps, or, rather, Sakura Haruno, since more than half of the story happened outside Konoha; Sakura represented medicine and took on roles that went beyond simple healing. From elaborating antidotes for poison, creating medicines based on clan’s medical encyclopedias, using poison against enemies or using elaborate techniques other than the repetitive Mystical Palm Technique.

Sakura Haruno creates an antidote. Tsunade creates prosthetic arms in chapters 254 and 699.

The role of a medic has been simplified, just using the basic healing technique by default, the Mystical Palm Technique, to heal anything they get their hands into, rather than identifying different pathologies and applying different methods for each; like Kankurō needing specific healing to remove poison, for example. Now, we see Sakura using the same jutsu on every patient.

There is no space for elaborate medicine crafting either, or, at least, the writing doesn't allow Sakura and her medical team do it in order to give more prominence to Mikio Ikemoto's original characters. The concept of creating antidotes, poisons, artificial arms, studying body pathologies and using different ninjutsu has been given to Amado Sanzu and Katasuke Tōnō, rather than have Sakura, a poison expert, botanist, scientist and medic, do the job. It's a big aspect that has been taken away from the Medical Department.

Sakura Haruno using the same jutsu in every patient in episodes 11, 152, 105 and 227.

The Medical Department in itself is not a failure, nor do their ranks fail at doing their job or need other people to step in for them. The failure comes with the writing quality in the sequel compared to Naruto, rather than the organization itself.

Could they be redeemed?

The Medical Department doesn't need to be redeemed or rewritten, the problem lies in how they are projected in the sequel.

Their functionality is perfect. They have the world's best medical-ninja as their leader, several members of the staff, a great emergency response and a board of teachers.

Some of the things they could do are:

Use more elaborated techniques rather than basic healing ninjutsu.

Make use of their botanists and poison experts, elaborate pills and other substances that are currently needed in plot.

There is no need to erase the Scientific Ninja Tools to make prosthetic arms, just allow them to collaborate with the Medical Department for better results and more possibilities.

Allow them to investigate seals and ninjutsu that are capable of regenerating, such as Kawaki's and Boruto's.

Considering Konoha is the most powerful shinobi village and Konoha Hospital has two of the top medical-ninja in the world, the usage of their staff leaves much to be desired in the script.

#medical department #medic corps #medical corps #medical team #konohagakure #konoha #sakura haruno #haruno sakura #naruto #boruto #naruto shippuden #meta #naruto meta #my naruto post #my publication #mentions of:#shizune #tsunade #tsunade senju

62 notes · View notes