𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐄 | sasuke uchiha

not an update (spoilers; don't read if currently reading)

hi! it's been forever since i've last touched this story (or any of my stories, for that matter) but i just wanted to write down the alternative plot lines that i had for "rise" before it ended up taking the path it did. mostly because i'm beginning to forget the alternative plots, and want to write them down somewhere in case i feel inspired to use them later on for something else lol

original plot; [name] and sasuke were meant to be platonic/just friends, and after sarada's birth the kouhage clan were meant to suffer a huge loss in battle to another clan while in the land of rivers, thus weakening their prestige and giving sasuke grounds to divorce [name] and send her back to her family. instead of sending her home, they both planned on sending her to naruto, where she would have lived with him and hinata as his second wife. hinata would still have died giving birth to either their second child (himawari) or the third unnamed child; if she had died giving birth to their second (at that time, unnamed) child, himawari would have been the name given to [name] and naruto's first daughter. overall, the original plot was meant to be shorter, lighter, and ✨happier✨

alternative plot one; after [name] and sasuke had unplanned ✨coitus✨ (trust me, i was the most surprised. when people say that stories write themselves, they aren't kidding 💀) i had to scramble and think of alternatives because i had just skewed my original plot and shot myself in the foot. in this alternative, the marriage to madara and the kouhage clan moving to join the uchiha would have still happened, but instead [name] and sasuke would lie and say that she was pregnant at the initial meeting with madara and the council. the marriage would have still continued, but the child (would have been a boy) would be adopted and raised as madara's. madara in this storyline wasn't going to be as possessive and would have raised the boy as his own, but then i remembered that madara isn't dumb and the whole room of uchiha sharingan users could have told that she wasn't pregnant, so i dropped this one before i got to the intricacies lol

alternative plot two; following the plotline i ended up using, i would have tweaked it a bit so that naruto and menma were twins and not just brothers. in the end when [name] runs away with menma, the plan was for them to stage getting married so that naruto could come for the celebrations and then switch places with menma so that they could live happily ever after together. however, i remembered that hinata had already given birth to boruto and naruto isn't that much of an asshole to palm off his responsibilities to his brother and treat hinata like that, so that plot was also a bust 🥲 alternatively, i was just going to have [name] end up with menma (he would have been naruto's younger brother, not his twin), but it really didn't make any sense and i didn't want to go through the process of having her getting used to another man, fall in love, etc 🥴 it just wasn't clicking for me seeing [name] x menma

alternative plot three; after [name] left konoha, madara was not going to give a shit about anything hashirama said, and was meant to go after her. the last few chapters of the story were meant to be about madara tracking [name] down with the goal of bringing her back (he didn't bother touching her clan in this storyline), but i really could not be bothered writing about that because it sounded boring and i couldn't think of any way to do it. in this storyline, hashirama was meant to go after madara and be the one to kill him just to fulfil his duties as hokage, but then it felt lacklustre because like... how did the story go from being about [name] and her lovers to an ending centred around madara and hashirama? 😂 after madara being offed by hashirama, everything would have been the same ending in the original plotline where she would go to naruto, become his second wife, etc. i was not feeling this plotline because it felt boring and too tame

alternative plot four; this was the one that got me the most, i was like hell naw are you delusional? 😭 when shisui offered his advice to naruto and sasuke at the end, i contemplated him being the person to accompany [name] away from the village instead of menma. instead of just dropping her off to kushina and minato, he would end up staying with them to look after her because he'd always been fond of her, and then somewhere along the line they would become romantically involved... but then because it was meant to be sasuke's redemption story, i was like "how the hell does this help sasuke redeem himself?" and because the story title at the time literally said naruto x reader x sasuke i couldn't imagine adding a "x shisui" in there 🤦🏽‍♀️ luckily i didn't, because shisui in "bete noire" made me cry, and then i made up for my lack of shisui material in "these days"

alternative plot five; after [name] and madara got married and she continued her extramarital trysts with sasuke, he (sasuke) was meant to get her pregnant. i didn't know what to do about madara and whether he would be able to tell it wasn't his child, what would happen when it was born etc, so i scrapped it. if i can't easily envision a plot with future consequences and end goals, i tend to leave it be cuz it just means that it wasn't meant to be the plot for my story lol

alternative plot six; sasuke and naruto team up while they're still at war and kill madara on the battlefield (with tobirama spearheading the campaign lol) so that sasuke can live with her happily ever after 💀 but then the whole "redemption" thing came up and i was like argh why can't i just let sasuke be with her HAHAHA  so i canned the idea entirely because god forbid sasuke be happy 🤣

as you can see, i had several storylines playing out in my mind while i was writing "rise", but out of all of these points, i can tell you that i had two consistencies in all of them:

1. hinata dying - it just made it easier for me to plaster [name] with naruto in the case that the plot allowed it. even if [name] had ended up with someone else, naruto being left alone to raise boruto and himawari would still have been fine lol

2. sasuke not getting to be with [name] in the end - it was meant to be his redemption story, after all. idk why i was so hell bent on this part, because "rise" could have been a standalone story and not a sequel to "mine" and could have been so different if i hadn't approached it as a sequel 💀 alternative plots five and six are the shortest because the ending involved sasuke being happy, so i terminated the idea before i could consider it any further 🥲

also, can yall believe i chose the title "rise" just because i wanted a four letter title to match "mine"? 😭 like who tf uses such weird criteria to choose a book title? the one line that uses the word "rise" in the story was literally slipped in there because i knew i hadn't used it at all throughout the story 😭 that shit at the end about [name] being "free to rise?" TOTAL BS 😭 

THE STORY TITLE WAS NOT THAT DEEP, I WAS LISTENING TO "RISE" BY MY KING TAEMIN AND WAS LIKE YEAH THAT'LL DO!!! 😭

anyways, that's all i wanted to say. i'm more than happy to answer any further questions in the comments!

thanks!