Retrospective after-thoughts, Part 16 (still a long way to go huh...):
To start this reflection off with, I want to point out that the way I set this up as one main story and two chronicles worked quite well and was pretty much an unique thing to do at the time (there were some other writers with something similar but not in the way I did it, especially with the interconnectivity of it all at the time). I had also planned to do a Konohamaru Chronicle and a Jiraiya (Naruto's son) chronicle, but due to scheduling issues, time it took to write it all, and well, to keep it more organised, I ended up incorporating the ideas I had for those 6(?) chapters into the 3 first chapters of Returns instead. Funny part of that is that it made 'Returns' stand out as its own entirely new thing at first, before I ventured back to the story I had laid out in this first work and the two chronicles, something which I at one point didn't think I would do as I thought I would go straight into the story of 'Legacy' and sort of leave all of this on an open-ended note. I probably ended up doing the end of the war anyway after 'fan' demands, lol. My only gripe now would be that it all took so long to do and that it might have been too far between some of the main chapters in order to do these chronicles, but overall it was a nice idea I came up with back then which I had much fun doing. It also made joining the contests more variable, since I didn't rely on one huge endless work but could spice it up a bit by having different stories that were all in the same main story so to speak, to join with.
So, Sasuke Chronicles chapter 3 was one of those few older chapters in my entire The Master Timeline Legendarium series I could probably only tell you a single plot-point or two from at the most, from my recollection, before I started rereading it all (Sasuke repelling the invasion of Kabuto and Zetsu and being elected Tsuchikage), and there aren't a lot of them to be honest as I remember the general layout of the story in most of them. Not because they are bad or uninteresting per say, but being a side-story it's one of the works I spent the least time on and also probably haven't read more than once or twice in total. Sure I don't remember every single detail and dialogue from all of it now looking back, far from it, but the overall inner-workings and frame of the main story I do, especially the later ones since I spent so much time with them, writing and polishing, compared to the earlier ones. So this was one of those that I was intrigued rereading going into it to sort of see what I actually wrote in it and how it held up compared to the main story, what worked and what didn't at the time. From rereading the 2 first ones in this chronicles I learned that my reflection on them now compared to back then seemed to be a bit different, so I'm curious to see what I'll think about this one. I have a feeling it's going to be an alright one, and I also have a feeling some of the comments on this one are going to be interesting rereading as well all these years after, so without further ado let's dive into it...
First of all, I do think the grammar fluctuated a bit in this one compared to the recent standard of the other chapters that was released around the same time as this, or more so in the beginning part, which is weird considering this one was released towards the very end of my first work. The fluency and structure seem to be fine but already in the first two scenes or so there are two misspellings, one of which is not even the right word, lol. Kind of hilarious to read that I wrote the word 'leech' when I obviously meant 'leash' lmao. At the end of the day though, even though I revisited the whole first story and the two chronicles in 2011 I do recall always thinking the grammar and structure fell short compare to the stories I was writing from 2013 and until the end so either I have an obscure idea of how different they really were (since realistically speaking, the structure and fluency is getting a lot better here than the first few chapters, despite the lack of proper narration at times) or I have forgotten how much better it actually got. If I remember when the time comes, I should perhaps reflect a bit more on the difference if it's really that big when I get to the later stories as right now it doesn't seem that crazy, maybe the vocabulary expanded a bit and the writing itself became more rich, especially with going over to narrative style eventually. What is funny to me though is that the writing in the chapters themselves are pretty on point for most part, but the replies I give to some people have a lot of misspelling and janky structure, which makes me think that the revisiting I did for this whole first series and chronicles later on in 2011 really did help, a lot more than I thought it would xD. That would also explain why it doesn't feel as bad now as I thought it would, hmm...
"After the end of the 4th war, Kiri decided on disbanding the swordsmen of the mist. Meaning that Chōjūrō was the last official one. The rest of the swords have been gathered and locked up under tight surveillance."
- I wonder if this was one of those predictions I have that somewhat turned out to be true or if it was already talked about in the manga at the time. I suspect the former but I have no way of confirming that, lol.
I've been trying to pay close attention to certain titbits that have been dropped here and there throughout the story so far to see how they paid off later, like in this one I dropped a Suigetsu foreshadowing that really didn't come into play before a chapter I wrote closer to 2 years later in 'Returns' which is bonkers, something which I recall now rereading this, and also reading the author's note which is a testament to how bonkers that 'overview' of all the details really were. I had everything penned down back then and was so in control at the time that there was no chance in hell I would have any plot-holes or forgotten things that didn't make sense later. So that's something I wanted to pay close attention to, to see if I could find something that I actually forgot to resolve, but with a story this big and intricate, and me not having the same grasp of the story as I did back then, I can feel that the attempt will be futile, lol.
I remember thinking long and hard on the decision to match Sasuke up with Kurotsuchi of all people, mainly because she was like the only female character from Iwa. I think the decision was made because I wanted Naruto and Sasuke's kids to be the same age, but I also needed Sasuke to stay in Iwa for those 12 years to become the new Tsuchikage, and also for the future storylines of him and his family moving back to Konoha and one of his sons taking over as the new Tsuchikage (at least I think that is what's going to happen, lol) to make full sense, or rather, to have the impact it has. I do recall thinking it was an odd choice though and I do recall a lot of folks thought it was funny. Might have been a better way to just move Sakura to Iwa instead, but I digress. I suspect the main reasoning was to actually make Sasuke the Tsuchikage, since if he wasn't married to Kurotsuchi, he wouldn't have held the same 'value' in the election process realistically speaking, and they would probably have just ended up electing Kurotsuchi, like the manga eventually did, so yeah, I can understand the choice from a in-verse logical perspective that way which my replies in the comments seem to support, but it is still an odd choice at the end of the day, lol.
Reading the comments makes me reminisce how I wrote and released the chapters back in the day, rushing home from school to write, being excited to show everyone where the story would go and what would happen next. Not a single worry in the world, makes me kind of miss those simpler times for sure, but alas, everything comes to an end eventually...
It's kind of interesting seeing that I incorporated Naruto characters that the manga/anime seem to have completely forgotten about, like Kitsuchi. I made him the 4th here which is not a bad pick at all. I do believe that I learned a lot about the characters in the Naruto-verse because of my writing and would probably have forgotten about a lot of them if I didn't, as seen in the comments later on in this story where I had to explain to some who he was, if my memory serves me correctly
Anyway, this is getting HUGE so I'll get on with the rating...
As far as the story and build-up in this one goes and the dialogues themselves between the characters, and the believability of them, this is one of the best so far, if not the best one so far in terms of fluency, and thus, in my opinion, the best of the three chapters of this chronicles no doubt about it. Easy on the eye to read as well. I can't go too high so I'll rate it a...
To start this reflection off with, I want to point out that the way I set this up as one main story and two chronicles worked quite well and was pretty much an unique thing to do at the time (there were some other writers with something similar but not in the way I did it, especially with the interconnectivity of it all at the time). I had also planned to do a Konohamaru Chronicle and a Jiraiya (Naruto's son) chronicle, but due to scheduling issues, time it took to write it all, and well, to keep it more organised, I ended up incorporating the ideas I had for those 6(?) chapters into the 3 first chapters of Returns instead. Funny part of that is that it made 'Returns' stand out as its own entirely new thing at first, before I ventured back to the story I had laid out in this first work and the two chronicles, something which I at one point didn't think I would do as I thought I would go straight into the story of 'Legacy' and sort of leave all of this on an open-ended note. I probably ended up doing the end of the war anyway after 'fan' demands, lol. My only gripe now would be that it all took so long to do and that it might have been too far between some of the main chapters in order to do these chronicles, but overall it was a nice idea I came up with back then which I had much fun doing. It also made joining the contests more variable, since I didn't rely on one huge endless work but could spice it up a bit by having different stories that were all in the same main story so to speak, to join with.
So, Sasuke Chronicles chapter 3 was one of those few older chapters in my entire The Master Timeline Legendarium series I could probably only tell you a single plot-point or two from at the most, from my recollection, before I started rereading it all (Sasuke repelling the invasion of Kabuto and Zetsu and being elected Tsuchikage), and there aren't a lot of them to be honest as I remember the general layout of the story in most of them. Not because they are bad or uninteresting per say, but being a side-story it's one of the works I spent the least time on and also probably haven't read more than once or twice in total. Sure I don't remember every single detail and dialogue from all of it now looking back, far from it, but the overall inner-workings and frame of the main story I do, especially the later ones since I spent so much time with them, writing and polishing, compared to the earlier ones. So this was one of those that I was intrigued rereading going into it to sort of see what I actually wrote in it and how it held up compared to the main story, what worked and what didn't at the time. From rereading the 2 first ones in this chronicles I learned that my reflection on them now compared to back then seemed to be a bit different, so I'm curious to see what I'll think about this one. I have a feeling it's going to be an alright one, and I also have a feeling some of the comments on this one are going to be interesting rereading as well all these years after, so without further ado let's dive into it...
First of all, I do think the grammar fluctuated a bit in this one compared to the recent standard of the other chapters that was released around the same time as this, or more so in the beginning part, which is weird considering this one was released towards the very end of my first work. The fluency and structure seem to be fine but already in the first two scenes or so there are two misspellings, one of which is not even the right word, lol. Kind of hilarious to read that I wrote the word 'leech' when I obviously meant 'leash' lmao. At the end of the day though, even though I revisited the whole first story and the two chronicles in 2011 I do recall always thinking the grammar and structure fell short compare to the stories I was writing from 2013 and until the end so either I have an obscure idea of how different they really were (since realistically speaking, the structure and fluency is getting a lot better here than the first few chapters, despite the lack of proper narration at times) or I have forgotten how much better it actually got. If I remember when the time comes, I should perhaps reflect a bit more on the difference if it's really that big when I get to the later stories as right now it doesn't seem that crazy, maybe the vocabulary expanded a bit and the writing itself became more rich, especially with going over to narrative style eventually. What is funny to me though is that the writing in the chapters themselves are pretty on point for most part, but the replies I give to some people have a lot of misspelling and janky structure, which makes me think that the revisiting I did for this whole first series and chronicles later on in 2011 really did help, a lot more than I thought it would xD. That would also explain why it doesn't feel as bad now as I thought it would, hmm...
"After the end of the 4th war, Kiri decided on disbanding the swordsmen of the mist. Meaning that Chōjūrō was the last official one. The rest of the swords have been gathered and locked up under tight surveillance."
- I wonder if this was one of those predictions I have that somewhat turned out to be true or if it was already talked about in the manga at the time. I suspect the former but I have no way of confirming that, lol.
I've been trying to pay close attention to certain titbits that have been dropped here and there throughout the story so far to see how they paid off later, like in this one I dropped a Suigetsu foreshadowing that really didn't come into play before a chapter I wrote closer to 2 years later in 'Returns' which is bonkers, something which I recall now rereading this, and also reading the author's note which is a testament to how bonkers that 'overview' of all the details really were. I had everything penned down back then and was so in control at the time that there was no chance in hell I would have any plot-holes or forgotten things that didn't make sense later. So that's something I wanted to pay close attention to, to see if I could find something that I actually forgot to resolve, but with a story this big and intricate, and me not having the same grasp of the story as I did back then, I can feel that the attempt will be futile, lol.
I remember thinking long and hard on the decision to match Sasuke up with Kurotsuchi of all people, mainly because she was like the only female character from Iwa. I think the decision was made because I wanted Naruto and Sasuke's kids to be the same age, but I also needed Sasuke to stay in Iwa for those 12 years to become the new Tsuchikage, and also for the future storylines of him and his family moving back to Konoha and one of his sons taking over as the new Tsuchikage (at least I think that is what's going to happen, lol) to make full sense, or rather, to have the impact it has. I do recall thinking it was an odd choice though and I do recall a lot of folks thought it was funny. Might have been a better way to just move Sakura to Iwa instead, but I digress. I suspect the main reasoning was to actually make Sasuke the Tsuchikage, since if he wasn't married to Kurotsuchi, he wouldn't have held the same 'value' in the election process realistically speaking, and they would probably have just ended up electing Kurotsuchi, like the manga eventually did, so yeah, I can understand the choice from a in-verse logical perspective that way which my replies in the comments seem to support, but it is still an odd choice at the end of the day, lol.
Reading the comments makes me reminisce how I wrote and released the chapters back in the day, rushing home from school to write, being excited to show everyone where the story would go and what would happen next. Not a single worry in the world, makes me kind of miss those simpler times for sure, but alas, everything comes to an end eventually...
It's kind of interesting seeing that I incorporated Naruto characters that the manga/anime seem to have completely forgotten about, like Kitsuchi. I made him the 4th here which is not a bad pick at all. I do believe that I learned a lot about the characters in the Naruto-verse because of my writing and would probably have forgotten about a lot of them if I didn't, as seen in the comments later on in this story where I had to explain to some who he was, if my memory serves me correctly
Anyway, this is getting HUGE so I'll get on with the rating...
As far as the story and build-up in this one goes and the dialogues themselves between the characters, and the believability of them, this is one of the best so far, if not the best one so far in terms of fluency, and thus, in my opinion, the best of the three chapters of this chronicles no doubt about it. Easy on the eye to read as well. I can't go too high so I'll rate it a...
7.5/10
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