[Fic] "What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed)" -- Naruto

[edenfalling]

Remix reveal day! I wrote What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed): Madara lied about the eye transplant's effects. Captured and brought back to Konoha, Sasuke must adjust to blindness and his unexpected survival. Remix of Put a little fixing on it, by megyal. NaruSasu, 21,000 words. (And here is an alternate link that will get you a sidebar with links to navigate the collection.)

[ETA: The ever-so-slightly revised final version is now up on ff.net.]

[[ETA 2: As of 12/5/10, I finished the revisions I did not have time to make before the Remix Redux posting deadline, which means the AO3 and ff.net versions are now the exact same text, and the story is now 24,500 words long, plus two sidefics. *headdesk* Look, I never claimed brevity was my forte!]]

...

21,000 words. Twenty-one thousand words. Which I wrote in exactly two weeks, starting the night of May 9 and finishing at 4am on May 23. Actually, it's even worse than that. When I posted the rough draft on May 16, I had about 5,000 words of story plus 1,500 words of outline: scene overviews, some rough-sketch blocking, and occasional dialogue fragments. That means I wrote 16,000 words in one week. And given that on the afternoon of May 22, I had about 15,000 functional words (the ending sections being more a half-assed expansion of my outline than proper scenes), I wrote 6,000 words in one day. So yeah.

In all honesty, the story is so long because I didn't have time to make it shorter. I could likely cut at least a thousand words out of it without affecting the plot or character arcs. (Of course, if I start editing, I may well write a thousand new words to even out the difference in sensory description and Sasuke's obsession with knowing the exact dimensions of his surroundings between the start of the story and the end, but whatever.)

Um. Where was I?

I knew from the start that this was going to be a long story, partly because megyal's story is long (7,300 words), and partly because I wanted to show the gradual progression of Sasuke's emotional arc, which meant that if I wanted to be convincing, I couldn't shorthand the steps. But I was thinking 8,000 to 10,000 words -- maybe 12,000 tops. Instead What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed) is, by over 3,000 words, the longest oneshot I have ever written.***

I sincerely hope I never break that record again.

[ETA: And then I broke it less than a year and a half later with Out of Season, which was written for the 2011 Narnia Fic Exchange and is roughly 27,000 words long. Whoops! But I doubt I'll ever have the patience to write a 30,000 word story as a one-shot, so... *crosses fingers*]

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Okay, on to slightly more relevant points. As I said when I received my assignment, megyal and I share two fandoms: Naruto and Harry Potter. Remix Redux only promises that you will have one fandom in common with your remixee, so that was a pleasant surprise. Most of her stories are shipfic, however, and she has strong OTPs, while I prefer gen and world-building to romance. Her main pairings are Harry/Draco and Kakashi/Iruka, with a bit of Naruto/Sasuke on the side.

I like Harry/Draco, but oddly enough, I have never written them as a pure pairing -- it's either been subtext, or threesomes with Ginny or Luna. Also, I have been pulling away from HP over the past few years, and I wanted to make sure there were some Naruto fics in the Remix archive so it would continue to be a qualifying fandom next year. So I set her H/D stories aside in case I couldn't find any Naruto fic to work with.

I like both Kakashi and Iruka very much, but KakaIru is not a pairing that grabs me. (No Kakashi pairing is, actually.) This is because I view Kakashi as too emotionally damaged to maintain an intimate relationship where he has to actually talk to and live with an equal, and I like Iruka too much to wish him the heartache of trying to resolve Kakashi's issues. I am sure my real life baggage influences this, since my high school boyfriend had serious emotional trauma from a fucked up early adolescence, which he would not deal with nor talk about, except to me -- he expected me to be his absolution and to carry all the weight he pretended wasn't there. I liked him, but that relationship was beyond exhausting. So while I am happy to read KakaIru, I find it hard to believe in enough to write it.

Fortunately, there were three NaruSasu fics. :-)

More specifically, there were (Make things so) Complicated and Put a little fixing on it. My first impulse (otherwise known as the "brilliant, terrible, evil and hysterically entertaining thought") was to take (Make things so) Complicated and redo it as A) a story about Sakura realizing that Naruto is head over heels for Sasuke and rounding up a group of friends to serve as emotional support for Hinata when Hinata inevitably figures out the situation, and/or B) a story wherein Sakura has a crush on Hinata herself and is trying to get Naruto together with Sasuke so Hinata will stop pining after him and notice Sakura. But I couldn't get either of those ideas to coalesce into a useful plot, perhaps because I wanted to write them both but I couldn't get the ideas to resolve in tone between a serious story about female friendship and broken hearts, and a humorous romance that matched the tone of megyal's original story. It's a pity; that would have been an interesting story. :-\

Anyway, I set that idea aside and took another look at Put a little fixing on it, which I find structurally fascinating. It's told as an alternating series of scenes, one present-day, the other flashbacks. The POV also shifts among Iruka, Kakashi, Naruto, and Sasuke. What's even more interesting, to me, is that while the plot resolution happens in the present day thread, that's only the penultimate scene; the emotional resolution happens in the flashback thread, and is the end of the story. Ending in the past is an unusual choice, especially when you're telling the story of a successful relationship rather than a failed one.

Also, the story is constructed as a series of slow reveals. Each flashback scene explains the source of situations and dialogue we've just seen in the present day scenes, so we only gradually understand how and why Sasuke is in Konoha, the logic behind his current job, how he can maneuver despite his blindness, and, most importantly, the exact nature of his relationship with Naruto.

The timeline is a little hazy. The first section informs us that Kakashi has been Hokage for ten years; we later learn that Tsunade never woke from her coma, which means he took over shortly after Pain's invasion. Apparently Sasuke has been teaching at the academy for a year. Before that he spent a year living in Iruka's custody, and an unknown length of time locked up in jail -- I would guess between one and three years, but that's not made clear. So Naruto and Sasuke are probably around 27 years old, and Sasuke was still running around with Team Hawk when he was captured. Some of these details are artifacts of the time when the story was written vs. the publication of various manga chapters, but others -- like what Sasuke was doing between Pain's invasion and his capture -- are never explained.

Anyway. When I read Put a little fixing on it, my first thought was that I enjoyed it; it gave me a lovely warm feeling. If I had not been looking at it as a potential remix, I would probably have stopped there, but Remix is all about picking stories apart. So. My second thought was that I had no idea why Sasuke remained in Konoha after his release from prison -- in canon, he is so focused on revenge, and so far past accepting help, that I thought time locked up in a grim, dark cell (even with Naruto barging in as often as possible) might have embittered him further rather than cooling him down to something approaching civility. My third thought was that I wished Sakura and Sasuke had not been so awkward and bitter around each other, because NaruSasu story or not, I am first and foremost a fan of Team 7, which means I think all four bonds (NaruSasu, NaruSaku, SasuSaku, and NaruSasuSaku, whether platonic or romantic/sexual) are very, very important, and I don't want to see any of them strained. And my fourth thought was that while we saw Sasuke's initial reaction to his blindness and the jutsu that lets him work around it, we didn't see much of how he coped before Iruka taught him the chakra sonar.

What I decided to do was to explore Sasuke's blindness in a little more depth. Initially I thought he might find it weirdly freeing, since he physically couldn't carry out his revenge anymore, and that the attack on his students would force him to explain to Naruto that he didn't think he'd lost anything important, since what he gained was a life rather than just an existence. Those ideas fell to the side very quickly, since Sasuke insisted that being blind was no excuse for abandoning his goals. The emotional arc therefore became Sasuke slowly deciding to give up his revenge and stay in Konoha -- and to stay as Naruto's... something-or-other. *grin*

I did not just unspool megyal's story and write it chronologically. Instead, I blended the two story threads, so the emotional climax was a direct consequence of the action climax. I also kept the pattern of the ending, where the action plot resolves in the penultimate scene but the story doesn't end until Sasuke and Naruto complete their emotional arc. I split Sasuke's decision to stay between the action plot (where he makes that choice) and the emotional plot (where he reaffirms it by telling Naruto). He puts his decision into action first through violence, and then through gentleness. I like that balance, and the way it echoes the structure of megyal's fic.

I am not sure how apparent that echo is -- I think it may get lost in the sheer length of the story -- but it was important to me that it be there.

As part of blending the plots, I had to compress the time frame drastically, so instead of three or more years, my story takes place over... oh, eight months to a year, depending on how long Sasuke was teaching before it was his turn to make the monthly report. This means everyone is ten years younger, which was useful because it gave Naruto a reason to be awkward about his place in Konoha (what does he know about being a jounin-sensei, after all?) at the same time Sasuke was reevaluating his own place.

I also changed some other things. I rearranged the order of a few plot elements -- most notably by having Iruka teach Sasuke false-sight before Sakura examines his eyes. I created a new set of OCs to fill the roles of Naruto's genin team and Sasuke's favorite student. (I had three reasons for that. First, I couldn't resist naming Naruto's team with a silly phonetic pattern gag. Second, I started dreaming up sidefics while I was working on the remix and it felt rude to plot fic about megyal's OCs without asking her permission first. And third, if my story happens ten years before hers, logically Naruto and Sasuke cannot be teaching the same set of people... though that was more a rationalization after the fact. *grin*) I rewrote the second half of the action plot to make Sasuke confront the invaders more directly, and also just because Kirin is fucking awesome. Finally, I kept Sasuke and Sakura friendly -- though there's an undertone of pain to their relationship -- and went so far as to swap Sakura into Naruto's place for the scene in Kakashi's office. (There were plot reasons for that switch, but I also wanted to show Sasuke interacting with her. As I said, I am a Team 7 fan before I am a fan of any two-person subset of those three.)

What I think my story is mostly about, in the end, is how home is defined by people as much as by place, and how the Leaf-nin take advantage of that and slowly, carefully, and painstakingly help Sasuke rebuild his bonds to his friends and his community. Falling into what will most likely become a romantic/sexual relationship with Naruto is the main part of that, but still only one part. Sasuke's friendship with Sakura, the slightly prickly mutual respect he has with Iruka, his amusement at Kakashi, his somewhat distant concern for Naruto's genin, and his care for his students are also important -- which is why I mentioned them all at the climax of the action plot. To mangle a cliché, it takes a village to bring Sasuke home. *wry*

I am not especially good at writing romance or sexual attraction, so I was grateful that megyal's story was very low key in that department. I did, while making my initial outline, think Sasuke and Naruto might kiss after Sasuke's first day at the academy, and have sex after the fight at the bridge, but that turned out to be moving too fast. They never got further than kissing and holding hands.

But mostly What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed) is, as I said, a story about friendship and community. (In fact, I will tell you a secret: in my private thoughts, I call it "the story where Konoha redeems Sasuke with the power of Stockholm syndrome!" -- which is inappropriate, and I know it, but I cannot get the thought out of my head. Hopefully I have now transmitted the idea to you and it will leave me in peace. *grin*)

---------------

I have at least three potential sidefics floating around in my head. One is about Iruka cleaning his house and setting it up for Sasuke to move in. (The room on the ground floor used to belong to his great-aunt -- who is, of course, Aunt Sadako from Lessons and The Way of the Apartment Manager, because I am nothing if not self-referential -- and Iruka has to take all her possessions and move them upstairs to his parents' old room, which he then locks.) The second is about Naruto and Sakura helping Sasuke move into his new apartment, arguing cheerfully all the while. And the third is about Naruto giving his genin the bell test, probably from the kids' point of view.

I will probably never write those, but it is, I think, a measure of how much I was eating, breathing, and sleeping this story by the end that they occurred to me at all. The world megyal created and I adapted became so real to me that it turned into something of a full-on secondary canon.

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***The second-longest oneshot I've written, incidentally, is Paint the Town, which is a 17,500 word Harry Potter fic. The third-longest is, I think, Finding Marea: Truth and Change in the Circle of Kemar, which is 16,500 words and is original fiction, not fanfic.

Comments

[aishuu.livejournal.com]

*is thoroughly amused at you and your hypergraphia* It's actually on my list to read - I DLed it but haven't gotten to it since it is pretty freaking long. ^_~

[edenfalling]

It both amuses and annoys me, because I know I am perfectly capable of writing short -- I have a lot of 15-minute fics and a handful of drabbles to prove it! -- yet when I am handed something with world-building and character arcs and plot, sometimes I go a little mad and, if I am not careful, I wind up with yet more novel-length WIPs. *sigh*

it is pretty freaking long. ^_~

That is is. I have not checked, nor am I sure quite how to check, but I would not be at all surprised if I wrote the longest remix this year.

[aishuu.livejournal.com]

Your remix totally beat the next contender for the length award by 3,000 words. (http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Remix2010/works?sort_column=word_count&sort_direction=DESC) aren't I useful sometimes?

I tend to fall into the same trap - and I am so flighty that I really hate thinking about all the WIPs. Which is why I DO NOT VOLUNTEER!!

[edenfalling]

...I cannot believe I didn't see that button. No, actually I can easily believe that. My tendency to fail at website navigation strikes again. *headdesk* You are not only useful, you are awesome! :-D

You know what's funny? Both the remix I wrote and the one written for me are in the top twenty longest stories this year -- #1 and #19, respectively.

[aishuu.livejournal.com]

I am a mistress of sorting fics for length, since I tend to go for the longer ones. ^_~ awesome is inspired by awesome, you know

I guess we can just say you inspire verbosity?

[edenfalling]

Elizabeth Culmer, Mistress of Verbosity. *examines critically* Not quite as appealing as Mistress of the Obvious, but it'll do as a nickname. :-)

[megyal]

I came over to tell you thank you so SO SO SO much. You did an absolutely brilliant job and I really appreciate the thought that went into it. I really enjoyed reading your process, and I hope you don't mind me linking it in my own journal? I find it fascinating.

I don't mind you plotting fic about the OC's at all! And it would be so amazing to read all those side-fics.

Again, many thanks! When it was revealed, I was positively staggered at the word-count, and blown away by the story itself. :D

[edenfalling]

Of course you can link! I am just really happy you liked the story -- it drove me to despair at times, but it was a good despair, if you know what I mean. :-)

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

Ahh, so awesome! I am still only half way through, but it's been amazing so far

[edenfalling]

I hope it continues to work for you!

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Awesome fic, and now I have to go read the original that you remixed. :D

[edenfalling]

Thank you! I enjoyed megyal's fic a lot -- despite the invasion plot and Sasuke's prickliness, it is a wonderfully warm and fuzzy story. :-)

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Okay, so, reading all the thought and planning you put into this story is really, really cool.

Also, I love the side stories you mentioned. If you wrote those; I'd read them. Also, glad to find I'm not the only one who is self-referential.

Do you mind if I friend you?

[edenfalling]

I really liked your post on your remix writing process as well! It's always fascinating to see how people approach the challenge, and then, of course, the process changes each year because each year you're working with a different story.

I am not as self-referential as I could be -- it's hard to carry every detail from story to story when a lot of my work is mutually contradictory or deliberately AU -- but when I get a piece of a character's backstory nailed down to my own satisfaction, I tend to carry it through every time I write that character thereafter. So, for example, every time I write Iruka, I assume the background from "Lessons," whether that's explicit in the story or not. I like the way that kind of subtle linking gives a sense of greater breadth and depth to individual stories.

Friend away -- I don't bite! :-)

Really long comment, pt1

[hoshi-ryo.livejournal.com]

I can understand something of the appeal of remixing, from this and from the extended AN provided here...and, alright, a few things in this very long comment carry over from issues raised in other stories of yours...

1. I actually do agree with you when it comes to Kakashi/Iruka, but for other reasons. I can see a romantic relationship of Kakashi's working -- but for the reasons you gave, I'd not expect it to work unless it was with somebody else with similar emotional problems, with neither party expecting 'fixing' but acceptance-of-what-is. Expecting fixing is, except in a shrink/patient relationship, unreasonable, damage-dealing and damaging. But aside from this...?

Kakashi and Iruka are most interesting as friends, and the dynamic changes if romance enters the picture. It might retain some of its interest if it's written with the characters kept 'true,' with the likely trajectory of such a relationship (some form of 'doomed') not being ignored, but I've yet to see that and have the feeling it would be rather cruel to them. (And also not something I could write, so I'm setting the plot bunny free in hopes of it finding somebody who is up to it.)

2. I like your stories because a lot of people write Sasuke with...well, one of the things that always amused me is that his being an excellent ninja often felt like an informed ability; between Naruto and Sasuke, Naruto actually demonstrates -- from the very first pages -- better ninja skills.

Let me clarify this: It is established that Naruto was able to, wearing a bright orange jump suit, sneak out of his Academy class, under the nose of a chuunin, and spend an extensive amount of time on the Hokage monument. This is an exposed position. He is wearing a shade of orange usually worn for visibility. Not only that, but as one of the filler arcs pointed out (correctly), somebody with explosive notes getting the time to place them on the mountain could quite well cause major damage to Konoha. One would therefore expect the security around the monument to reflect at least a vague awareness of this...so it's reasonable to expect that Naruto was also managing to avoid being noticed by at least some skilled jounin while he was doing the graffiti.

In some places, Naruto probably would have ended up being placed in a tiger team, whose job is to find security holes in their own organization & play pranks using them just before an official inspection is due.

Re: Really long comment, pt1

[edenfalling]

I can see a romantic relationship of Kakashi's working -- but for the reasons you gave, I'd not expect it to work unless it was with somebody else with similar emotional problems, with neither party expecting 'fixing' but acceptance-of-what-is. Expecting fixing is, except in a shrink/patient relationship, unreasonable, damage-dealing and damaging.

Given those parameters, perhaps Kakashi/Anko might be interesting to explore. She certainly has a lot of issues of her own.

Really long comment, pt2

[hoshi-ryo.livejournal.com]

Compare this to what we see Sasuke do, especially before the timeskip. He proves good in combat, but...direct. Does he attempt to do the sensible thing against his brother--to use every advantage he can get, including surprise? Does he consider that perhaps he ought to have a little patience in going after Itachi, letting time wear at his brother's skills and carefully building his own up? And perhaps allies to ensure that he actually gets to fight Itachi, instead of Itachi & friend(s)? Or, dare I suggest it--bait to draw the target of his revenge to a field of his own choosing, so he can have the advantage of the terrain?

Nope, none of those. Ah, well.

Honestly, I don't think he's going to--in the world of the remix--realize that it might be more effective to cause change from within Konoha, and notice that as a teacher he is in a good position to encourage skepticism about how the village is run and the actual desirability of a counsel that can undermine the Hokage in any matter they wish & little to no accountability?

If the other major clans of Konoha were aware that the entire Uchiha clan had been ordered secretly executed, the fact that they had been (and they'd only have the counsel's word for this) plotting a coup would have been a non-issue compared to the fact that ordering the execution of people who could not have been involved in it. (There's issues with forcing an entire group to the outside, as well; when you get down to it, they caused the coup plot through the power of their own paranoia.)

It would be rather depressingly easy to make a strong argument that Konoha would strongly benefit from the counsel having its power reduced permanently, perhaps with membership removing eligibility to be ever become Hokage & it having no power to give orders directly except maybe in civilian matters. (This would protect against power grabs such as Danzo's, and against it giving unilateral orders for anything that cannot be public knowledge within the village.)

But, well, as you pointed out, Sasuke's refusal to accept help (essential if he is to use subtler means and stick to his true enemies) and focus on revenge (read: his sick obsession with revenge) pretty much ensure that such possibilities would not be likely to float through his head.

Actually, I suspect that, unless somehow Sasuke can be snapped out of it, nothing will be done to ensure this sort of problem will not happen again to Konoha. Of all of Team 7, Sakura is the one to whom all of this is most likely to occur, and the one who is least likely to be able to personally do anything to change the situation; Naruto, should he become Hokage, is. However, for some of the political maneuvering it'd require, Sasuke would have been in the best position to do it...except he had his little break with sanity and fled the village, buring his (metaphorical) bridges. At least he skipped laughing like a loon as he did so.

No, I don't expect the outlook for Konoha to be especially bright. I expect that, unless Sasuke does have sufficient success for them to be less a counsel & somebody who never liked the counsel gets sufficient control to enact reforms before the counsel's members can be replaced, they're probably going to be stuck with it forever, leaving it only a question of time before the counsel manages to cause yet another mess.

Re: Really long comment, pt2

[edenfalling]

I just want to take a second to say this is very interesting and I will respond coherently... Sunday, maybe? I want some time to put my thoughts in order when I am not distracted by my lighting trip to Iowa.

Re: Really long comment, pt2

[edenfalling]

Okay, quick response before I go catch a bus to the airport! I actually was thinking somewhat about the politics of the situation when I wrote More Sins Than Condemnation, which is a sidefic explaining how Iruka got assigned as Sasuke's parole officer.

I agree with you that Sasuke himself would not think sideways about his situation -- he's stuck in a violence-or-nothing mindset. He's an unreliable narrator through most or all of "What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed)," and there are quite a lot of things he doesn't just misinterpret but simply fails to see. But I think that other people around him would be aware of the possibility of changing the political structure of the village rather than either allowing the status quo to continue or tearing the village down entirely. In fact, I have Kakashi making a start at those internal changes, and threatening to tell Sasuke how to apply more political pressure unless Kakashi gets his way on a certain point. Iruka is also aware that Konoha's internal politics are dangerous and coercive.

It is quite likely that Kakashi (or Sakura, or Iruka) will drop hints to Sasuke at some point about how to subtly lead his students to expect more openness from and, I dunno, civilian oversight for Konoha's government. But I think they wouldn't risk that until Sasuke conclusively proves his intent to stay in Konoha, which means that conversation can't happen until after "What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed)" -- and now I have another sidefic idea, argh.

Anyway, thank you for such a thoughtful reaction!

Re: Really long comment, pt2

[hoshi-ryo.livejournal.com]

Replying before I go read More Sins Than Condemnation--any comments it'd inspire are probably best there.

The violence-or-nothing mindset, in fact, is the main reason I say Sasuke's not much of a ninja; he's in a poorer position to switch tactics, though, in What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed) than he was before he left Konoha. If nothing else, he was really good at burning bridges, and ought to be glad he was not entirely successful. I do agree that Iruka would be aware of such--he does work at the Academy, and seems even in the manga to have a position of responsibility and influence within in. In fact, all the jobs he's seen in would require some degree or other of political sensitivity and awareness. (Even when assigning D-ranked missions to genin teams, there'd have to be times when politics--which clan Does Not Like which--would become important.)

I suspect that of those three, Sakura would be the one to drop hints successfully to Sasuke--and she'd probably be doing it to Naruto, too. Any hints Kakashi would drop to his students, Sakura would be most likely to pick up (and she would be needing them only as a clear sign of official support) & I suspect Iruka would have probably have tried to start work on it while he himself was still an instructor at the Academy.

Honestly? I'd love to see an AU branching off from before Sasuke's bridge-burning rampage of a departure from Konoha, since one of the questions long ago raised to me was why the Third wouldn't have opted to, once Team 7 was experienced enough, find them a series of missions that would keep them from staying too long in Konoha...

Re: Really long comment, pt2

[edenfalling]

I have long been of the opinion that Kishimoto is blurring two categories -- ninjas and elite shock troops -- into one muddled catch-all. If he were doing that mindfully, I think it could make for interesting commentary on the cultural mindset that would merge those two very different kinds of fighter. But I suspect he was thinking "Ninjas are cool!" without wanting to deal with the ethical implications of assassination for money, and also thinking that explosions are cooler than patience in the shadows, so he just jammed things together without really considering the practicalities.

Yes, Sakura is most likely to pick up on those hints and to pass them on (whether subtly or bluntly). Sasuke can be perceptive, but only within a narrow range of things he's actively looking for, whereas Sakura is more open in her focus.

...You should write that AU. It could be fascinating.

[marici.livejournal.com]

I really, really like this Sasuke -- my very favorite point is that he never even considers being _bad_ at teaching, or sewer cleaning, or being blind. Hell no, the last Uchiha is going to be a better ninja, teacher, street sweeper, and darts player than anyone else, eyes or no. That is just such a perfect, precious character point. I like the viceral details of being blind, hurt, and that compensating is never effortless, even when it's easy. I love the way he can help opening up to the children first, and that he's pretty much the best scary teacher ever.
I like that you give Naruto a reason to need Sasuke, beyond his simple stubbornness -- that he's the unique connection that battles Naruto forever without rejecting the intimacy that Naruto needs from him. (Ok, or he's not rejecting it now anyway, as he's too hurt blind and confused....) I like that Sakura works for him and fights for him, but doesn't let him tear her heart any more.
I found your work through AO3, and while I'm reading the others, I wanted to say how much I loved this one. Thank you for writing it!

[edenfalling]

Hi, nice to meet you!

You know, it had never occurred to me that it might occur to Sasuke to be deliberately bad at anything Konoha assigns him -- I suppose being deep in his POV automatically blocked off that option, the same way Sasuke walls off a lot of other things. He's very singled-minded. *pets him* And if he's going to be a scary teacher (because there's no way on earth he could be a fluffy one), he is at the least going to be effective at it.

I think Naruto needs people to stand up to him and tell him when he's taking too much on himself and/or generally being stupid. He especially needs that because people who feel bad about ignoring or mistreating him previously are likely to go a little overboard in being kind now. Sakura can see where he's going wrong, but her instinct is to try smoothing things over. (Well, okay, her instinct is to blow up and then smooth things over, but that's still not offering a proper challenge.) Sasuke, on the other hand, would not be caught dead playing nice with anyone. *wry*

I am glad you liked how Sakura and Sasuke interacted in my story. I wanted to make them friends in a way they didn't seem to manage in megyal's original story, because I hate the idea of Team 7 broken and therefore her ties to the boys are as important to me as their tie to each other. But of course I couldn't go anywhere romantic with their renewed friendship since NaruSasu was megyal's underlying ship, and one is not supposed to change ships in a remix. (Actually, it was harder to make Naruto and Sasuke be romantic at all than to stop Sakura from being romantic with either of them. Romance is really not my strong point.)

Anyway, thanks for the review!

[megyal]

Hi!! I am reading over your remix again, and going to tackle the sidestories . I think your approach to the remix was fantastic...so much so, that when I read it, I'm like, "WOW that is what that other one was missing!!"

[edenfalling]

*blush* Thank you! And thank you again for writing such a great story and letting me play with it -- I would never in a million years have thought of making Sasuke a teacher, and it's such a brilliant idea.