I must admit that I enjoyed some of the politics involved in the Chuunin exam. That was a fun arc, and I am sad we never got to see other Chuunin exams though I know logically that it wouldn't have worked well story wise
TAKE ALL MY AGREE RATINGS Honestly, Zab and Haku (and Kisame, and Itachi, and Sasuke, and Neji, and Kakashi, and) were dishonored and betrayed by the ending, and how the system that created them and destroyed them was allowed to continue unchanged. And Orochimaru's still out there :) and received no consequences :)
Also, I am kind of a fan of the idea that there wasn't a "Curse of Hatred" for the Uchiha, but rather, that their bloodline talent brought with it the side effects of wonky brain chemistry that led to trauma with the shinobi system and some really unhealthy coping systems promoted by the clan as an insular community, rather than integrating better with the whole village and having more support. Which is just another way the whole system failed and used people, even those ostensibly with power and benefitting from it.
I like that - it is pretty much canon that they're all high strung and cope really poorly with loss Being born an Uchiha: pros: you get the most OP bloodline limit ever cons: all your emotions are cranked up to eleven, you have a really hard time dealing with the shitty world you live in, you'll end up blowtorching your most important relationships if the people you care about don't all die first, there is absolutely no support available, and the only coping mechanism you've got is "do as much violence as you possibly can" ...man, where's my magic eyeball, then?.joke
I actually had a discussion with a close friend where we theorized that because all the Uchiha we saw were men, and that a marriage between an Uchiha and a Hyuga would result in one Byakugan and one Sharingan, and that both were descended from one woman (Kaguya Ootsuki) to two sons, that the Sharingan is actually an X determined trait... so that most Uchiha women would be carriers but the Uchiha sons were more likely to actually manifest it. If one woman does get two copies of Xsharingan, (XsXs), then she would actually exhibit the sharingan, but also more likely be more emotionally wrought than the men who carried only one copy of the gene. And that the byakugan and sharingan are codominant X carried, but that the Hyuga clan is more inbred than the Uchiha (who were already pretty damn inbred) and so the women are very likely to inherit enough Xb to express the byakugan. I also had a whole chart where I tried to track the relatedness of clans descended from Kaguya, including the Senju, Uzumaki, Kaguya, and Ootsuki, not just Uchiha and Byakugan, and from which brother they were likely descended.
I mean I don't remember any of them getting beyond like 2 chapters and also i do not really want to hunt through my old ff.net subscriptions and bookmarks.
That's so cool omg I love fantasy genetics? Maybe Xs is homozygous lethal? But then females with the sharingan phenotype could only exist in the very rare case of XsXb, if they're condominant. And that would be sad. I actually had a theory that trying to hybridize bloodlines normally results in inviable offspring, since we only see one person with two bloodline limits (Mei Terumi, the fifth mizukage). Even with clans wanting to keep purity, you'd think someone would try it in the name of moar power, and then discover it really doesn't work out - put too much chakra into one organ (say, the eyes and head) and it will fail to develop properly. For example, maybe if an Uchiha and a Hyuuga showing their respective phenotypes were to have a child, it would be born with anencephaly or some other severe neural tube defect. This is supported by (sigh) the endgame pairings and the next generation, none of which are inter-clan crosses. (Except Hinata and Naruto technically, but he doesn't have a bloodline limit.) (If we choose to take Boruto as canon, actually, then we know for sure the byakugan is a dominant trait, since Himawari has it. Whatever Boruto has going on can be safely disregarded because he's The Protagonist TM) (Mei, of course, is from Mist, which killed almost all their bloodline users, so I imagine she's the product of two survivors gambling on preserving their clans' legacies despite the risk. We know next to nothing about the character so her backstory can be whatever I say it is.)
I'm going to go with homozygous Xs as non-lethal, personally, because I find the lack of important Uchiha women ridiculous. I think that makes sense, that there is a risk where mixing bloodlines, because you don't know what will happen. Chakra is complicated and human bodies are complicated. I think it isn't like, guaranteed or even a majority of the time, but enough that there is a taboo about it and together with clan purity it is enough for them to concentrate on conservation. If I remember correctly, Boruto was meant to have the byakugan at first, but something something decisions made so it doesn't happen. I theorized, personally, that Uzumaki, since it is known to have been descended from Kaguya in canon (like half the important bloodlines), has members that are likely to have carriers or at least, perhaps, no gene supression. If we add gene suppression being common in people outside of the family, so that people need not just Xs or Xb to manifest it, but also an X-y (Xy being a normal chromosome that supresses the expression of s or b), it would make even more sense for inbreeding to happen, since it is two inheritable factors that need to be present. Anyways, so Uzumaki has a chance of not repressing Xb or Xs, hence Himawari being able to express the byakugan, where XbX-y work, whereas Boruto is XbY where the Y does have repression of some sort. ... I think that kind of makes sense, anyways, if we think of it. But that brings up, how do people bring in ne wblood into a clan! You can't just all marry your cousins, you'd have too many weaknesses. No, I think that clan leadership also requires a lot of finessing and managing who marries who in the clan to ensure the conservation of the bloodline trait, but to also allow enough diversity to seep through to avoid the problems of inbreeding. So perhaps there is a set number of outside marriages the clan can have at a time, and everyone tracks your heritage and trait displayal very carefully, to ensure maximum health and maximum expression of the bloodline trait. Otherwise, how do you get such big clans. You need at least a minimum of 60 people to be able to have a maybe healthy gene pool, and war whittles numbers down. You need some outer marriages.
This would also mean clan heads and their families must marry within the clan, from a limited number of candidates that are diverse enough to encourage healthy children, but also close enough to guarantee expression of the bloodline trait. So Hinata is SUPER breaking tradition.
Looking at some Boruto stuff, and I have a few questions : Spoiler: These are almost certainly spoilers What in the heck happened to Kakashi's Sharingan? Like I know he had one, he was named after it and crap. Did he learn how to turn it back to a normal eye or did he get second eye transplant? Neji Hyuuga dies but fucking Orochimaru gets to stay alive? Didn't he experiment on babies and steal bodies and start a war and creep on Sasuke? Did anyone even arrest him? Did Rock Lee produce a child by mitosis.
What... Spoiler: Boruto question I thought Orochimaru had died?!! Kabuto reformed, I remember, but Orochimaru??? Was killed by Sasuke or Itachi? I thought??!!
Spoiler: Continuing Yep, he's alive and chilling in some hide-out somewhere, and he whipped up a synthetic clone son ten or twelve years back. As you do. Also when Orochimaru appears he basically implies that he still periodically body snatches folks and nobody even tries to beat him up or anything.
...why was Sasuke not using all his time spent wandering around ignoring his family to instead murder Orochimaru with extreme prejudice
Spoiler: Orochimaru is basically a cockroach It turns out he exists in like any hint of his own power in potentia or something, so Sasuke was able to resurrect him from the material Kabuto had integrated into his body. He then went and had Orochimaru help him resurrect the first four Hokages or whatever to come fight Madara. And then afterwards I guess they just sorta...decided killing him permanently would be too much work or something?
And here's the whole thing if you'd like. The translation is pretty low quality, but it's fansubs so beggars can't be choosers (the official DVD release didn't have subtitles apparently) You should be able to follow all the major plot beats, anyway. Events are condensed quite siginficantly, but it's got all the interesting stuff from the first anime pretty much It's pretty fun! Very over the top, but it works for the source material obviously. The effects are cleverly done, and the guy who does Naruto is actually really good.
So all this talk of Naruto has made me revisit my AU with my friend, so here are a few more old doodles of the characters we made up. Spoiler: NERD DRAWINGS For starters, I made my own ridiculous clan and bloodline trait. I had way too much fun coming up with this and the clan culture. Two characters showing the type of clothing the Ecesis clan wears in general. The taller girl, Tsubaki, is obviously not as somber as most of the clan. This is Miwako, their mom, who is also a medic. Medic training happens to be really good for the Ecesis clan in maintaining the chakra control that stops their bloodline trait from killing them. This is the youngest child, Shiragiku, as she grows up. I might actually redesign the stuff on the farthest right, I'm not a fan of how she looks there.
