I bring you a more sizeable update than usual this month. Sadly, I missed the update in early august due to being busy with moving, and I figured I would do a solid update this month instead to compensate.
I’d intended to accompany this update with a lore post, but said lore post is seeing some major rewriting and adjustments right now due to feedback from a collaborator (mentioned later in this post). Ideally, I will be releasing it sometime this next week. I’ll have time to work on it in the weekend, and I might be able to snatch some time during the working days of next week. At the very latest, I should be able to finish it by next weekend.
Things to report
In terms of progress on the story itself, not much has happened on the writing front, but many things have happened on the development front. A whole slew of issues have been resolved:
- I now have a fairly comprehensive overview over how exactly it is that chakra works, its characteristics, all of its states and variations, and how it is used to perform techniques and create written seals.
With this system, I could now take most, if not all, techniques from canon and describe roughly how they work, which seals are necessary and how they are performed by the user. Or I could gauge how one might achieve certain effects with written seals. It also conveniently explains why inventing techniques is far more difficult than performing them, and why certain kinds of things are doable with hand seals but not with written seals, and the reverse.
In short, I finally have something to base all of the Naruto brand “magic” on instead of just hand-waving everything with “magibabble” and bullshit-on-demand, as is the general trend. While I will generally not be going into much detail, even privately for myself, I will now be able to constrain myself to operating within the rules of this system, so that I know that I can always generate detailed post hoc explanations if necessary. As a result, the story will see an overall increase in consistency even without belabouring the reader with any technical explanations of anything.
It should be noted that I have had an explanation for the existence of chakra (and all other ‘supernatural’ elements) for some time now; this is different. This is not the interior of the chakra black box, this is what the exterior looks like to the people who use it. It will be the subject of a later lore post, in the guise of excerpts from an academy textbook.
- There’s been a total rework of the Sharingan, its exact nature, and how exactly its various abilities work — it is now seriously cool, while still remaining at its core fundamentally the same.
Like many other things in IFF, the low-level nature of the Sharingan has been tweaked so that it logically results in high-level behaviour that is very similar-feeling to canon, but which is ultimately far more grounded in the ‘reality’ of the world, so to speak.
For example, I now know exactly how one might go about doing things like implanting Sharingan abilities with highly complex, hidden triggers into other Sharingan users, something which I’d previously had great trouble explaining. Also, Amaterasu will finally be given its due justice.
- Events that must happen in volumes two and three have always had some prerequisites, both in terms of foreshadowing and elements that must have been introduced in the story before in order for said events to be able to occur.
Before, I was not sure exactly how I would meet some of these prerequisites, but I now have a much better idea of how I am going to foreshadow certain things, and the exact nature and timing of the elements that must be introduced.
Sadly, explaining more about this would be rather spoilerish and would give some heavy hints towards what kinds of events we’re going to be seeing in the story’s endgame, so I’ll refrain from going into any detail.
Introducing: the mysterious collaborator
All of the world building and story work on IFF has not been done solely by myself. Much of what is described above is a result of collaboration with another person, who is also working on a Naruto story of their own. This collaborator shall remain unnamed for now as I’ve not asked their permission to identify them, but they will likely feature heavily in the future of IFF. This person has been instrumental in developing many parts of IFF, pointing out flaws and offering possible corrections, and has introduced countless ideas and concepts into the work, like the meat of the Sharingan rework. The effect they’ve had cannot be understated.
And of course, some of my time has also been occupied with performing the same role for them. In the course of our countless long, rambling discussions, I’ve been the cause of some similarly major changes (and improvements, I think) to their story. So even when it looks like IFF is standing still, I’ve still been productive in other ways.
In the future
I moved at the very end of July, and I spent most of August settling in and working. Said settling in is still not quite done with, but every day becomes more routine. While I still make no guarantees regarding IFF, which is difficult to get started with, I can only say that I am writing more and more every day. Whenever I get the chance and feel the inclination, I sit down and write something. Anything at all. I’m doing more and more of this every day, and I can only see it as promising. My muse is still weak, so I pounce upon any idea that strikes my fancy even remotely, but the muse is still returning, slowly but surely.
Many times now, while writing, I will feel a vague urge to open up the ever-present Scrivener tab in my taskbar and begin getting to grips with IFF again. I feel more and more like returning to it, every day, and I feel more and more like I’m beginning to have the energy to do it as well.
So that bodes well!
The next progress update shall be sometime in early October (I have learned that I cannot keep precise deadlines, so I will state something fuzzier instead). But before that, I shall see you sometime soon for the lore post on the modern ninja in the elemental nations, and the history of ninja in general, featuring excerpts from The History of Ninja, 3rd Edition, by Takumi Kichirou, a well-known historian from the Land of Fire.
Until next time!
The Forge 