Rewritten in Review

It goes without saying that I find negative reviews amusing. Most of the time they aren't even what classify as a review, saying 'this sucked' doesn't encourage nor does it offer a critique so the person can get better. Add to that they are either left anonymously or the person leaving their 'note' doesn't have an ounce of literary talent... and well, I get amusement from that.

Seriously. If you're bored go through my reviews for rewritten, take a look at all the negative ones, and bask in their glory of not having a single story written among them. I may have overlooked one, but for the vast majority they haven't written a thing.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, Rewritten. I actually started writing this thing back in March/April of 2012, and was pumping out a chapter a week then. I did have an entire story written and ready to go by the time I started posting it in June, but then I realized I should probably change the ending up a bit just in case Tobi actually did end up being someone other than Madara.

Hints were more and more leaning towards Obito, so I pretty much scrapped the last two, two and a half chapters and effectively re-wrote them. Perhaps I should have just left it as it was, but my final chapter would have been released within a week or two of Obito's actual reveal... so I didn't want the end of the story to be buried by happenstance.

But then everything else worked against me as I was finishing up the last chapter and the epilogue. Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy, the holidays, working in retail, the holiday game gamut, other stories to read... I couldn't focus and had very little time to actually just sit down and write. Like I mentioned in my last post, the period of October through early January is probably the worst for me to attempt to write anything. That's proved consistent in the last 5, almost 6 years I've been writing fanfiction.

As for the Madara fight... oh boy, where to begin. To put it bluntly, Madara is a pompous asshole, full of himself, and believes himself to be unbeatable.

In an attempt to be fair, he is nigh unbeatable. I mean, canon continuously trumped him up as having no equal other than Senju Hashirama, and even those two seemed to stand on a level all of their own. So it was no small surprise that eventually Madara would indeed see him above anyone else. His ultimate objective is to essentially become a god, to control everyone's whims and desires, effectively eliminating their free will.

He can't technically die because he knows pretty much all of the secrets of the Sharingan and Rinnegan, and is also a master manipulator when a person is clueless (Nagato). However, Naruto coming back in time threw several huge wrenches into his plans, so in an attempt to regain control of he situation, he exposed himself early as to eliminate his competition as it were.

Then, confident in victory, he could go back to his behind the scenes work of being the manipulator until his plan comes to fruition. Sadly for him, Madara didn't know just how far Naruto went to fight him.

Originally I had planned a larger role for the Kiri clans, but with me doing rewrites, they sadly fell a bit by the wayside. They were still responsible for making Konoha much larger, and the fact that Naruto's encounter with Yagura is pretty much the pivotal turning point where Naruto announces his presence and throws down the gauntlet, so to speak.

For their fight scene, I simply tried to give a little credit to everybody. In canon, look how much trouble just the five Kage were having against the man, even if he did have access to unlimited chakra. This Madara doesn't have unlimited chakra, but thanks to Nagato he has a new, fresh body and quite a lot of it. None of them would survive a one on one, and he was starting to pick off the stronger ones like flies before Naruto got back into the fight and rallied them all into working together.

I also tried to give everyone a moment or two to shine. Personally, I like a couple chapters with a roflstomp Naruto who just completely dominates the opposition. Naruto came to the past armed with knowledge of the future, which when combined with his brute strength equals a formula for success quite a large percentage of the time.

That being said, if an entire story is a roflstomp, what's the point? That just gets plain boring. Naruto couldn't beat 'Madara' in his time, so by what rights should it be easy? Naruto makes a concerted effort to end the wars and ally people so that they'll all  be working together by the time Madara makes his move with Akatsuki...

But Madara sees what is going on and acts early. Something Naruto doesn't anticipate proving he's not infallible - he thought he'd have more time. Sadly for Madara, he wasn't as prepared as he thought he was either. The stronger you get, the more you're willing to overlook holes in your plans.

Mikoto and Naruto were supposed to be the two that finished Madara, and they were. For Naruto it was entirely personal, while for Mikoto it was both personal and somewhat professional. It was her family and clan, but Naruto just didn't want to lose people.

I just wanted to show it took more than one person to take down a man of Madara's caliber. Besides that, this was written as a family/romance story, but so many people seem to ignore that little tag as soon as any fighting is involved. Go figure.

Now, for the epilogue -

I was conflicted about first person. I admit to that. But I had written some of it in third person and well... it just didn't flow nearly as well. I think when introducing the new characters as the next generation it worked so much better when they were gradually revealed one by one instead of a scene by scene infodump of all their likes, dislikes, hobbies, appearance, skillset, team, friends, etc.. You get the idea.

Hikari wasn't my first choice to be Hokage. I was actually going with Itachi first but... that just struck me as incredibly cliche. Maybe it's just me, but I think he fit the bill pretty well as ANBU Commander too. He's a skilled guy, hands down, and there's no one I'd rather have in charge of my protection than my big brother. Well, I would if I had a big brother, I guess.


Anyway, next I'm going to work a little more on B-Side, and it seems as if most people are clamoring for me to return to Fire Shadow, so I'll see what I can do with that. I can't promise another 1-2 combo like I did with these last two Rewritten chapters, but since I have some time to myself now I can actually do a decent amount of writing.

If anyone has any questions or comments... leave them below as usual. Or perhaps a person or scene you'd like to see in B-Side, that too.