ProperNoun123

Ooooo, can I join in? I haven't posted anything but an intro on this account a looong time ago, but I used to lurk this place a bunch back in the day. Besides, reading you guys' posts makes me feel like I wanna get something off my chest.

I started reading the Manga on NarutoMangaReturns (an old MSN group that would post translated chapters on Fridays) back in 2005 when I was twelve. They got shut down, so I migrated to OneManga which posted their translated chapters on Thursdays. They got shut down too, so I went over to Mangastream which posted their chapters on Wednesdays. I finished reading it on Mangapanda. It was 2014 then, and the digits in my age had switched places.

I used to be insane about reading the latest English-Translated chapter as soon as it came out. I'd daydream about it at school, count down the hours and periods on whichever weekday when the chapters would post. I'd go to sleep that same night wondering what would happen next chapter, and in the future after that. Break weeks would fill me with dread, and chapters arriving a day late would cause a sleepless night from waiting.

And right alongside my love of Naruto was my love of Narusaku. I don't quite remember when it started, but I remember getting into Youtube Comment arguments about it in 2006 Pairing AMVs. 90% of the Internet used IE6 for their browser at the time, so there were no red squiggly lines underneath misspelled words for people typing angry stuff in the comment boxes, and all of us looked like illiterate morons shouting at each other. Good times.

But, the years go on. I remember my first dip in interest took place around the time Sasuke was forming Taka and we got a bunch of Sasuke-centric chapters. I'd read the chapter and then retreat into Naruto/Sakura on FFnet, wondering about when they'd get back to the characters I liked. My interest shot back up like crazy during the Pain Arc. And then, a long, linear slope down for the years after that.

It started with not being antsy about release day for the latest chapter. Then I stopped speculating about what would happen next. And at some point, I would just start forgetting to read the week's chapter entirely, and every few months I would catch up by spending a minute or two per chapter skimming and clicking through the pages. 

I didn't have too much interest left at all when it came time for the ending. I was a little angry I guess, but moreso at what Kishi did to the characters than the pairings. I probably would've been far more pissed if Narusaku did happen, and Naruto treated a canon Shinachiku the same way he treated Boruto in 700. And I knew as soon as I heard about The Last and Boruto that I would never watch/read either of them. The canon Naruto series, as far as I saw it, was truly and completely over when the original manga ended.

And I suppose I felt sad. But moreso for the other NS shippers and all the amazing fanfic writers who had poured their love and attention into the many stories I had read over the years. I had mentally checked out from canon Naruto, but that didn't mean there weren't plenty of people out there who were touched by the series like I was and had to deal with the emotional fallout from Kishi's bad writing decisions.

But through all of this, I never stopped having daydreams about Naruto. All the way through the slow death the manga died, and even today. They're not as frequent as they were when I was younger and more energetic, but every now and again I still wonder. About what it would've been like if the manga took a different direction, about whether it'd be cooler to go with Headcanon A or Headcanon B in my imagination. I used to write a bunch of bad Narusaku fanfiction and read stuff from people who were a lot better than me. I still write NS stuff, but I keep my stories in my head, not in a word processor and not on fanfiction sites. It's a lot of effort to actually flesh out a story and make it enjoyable for other people to read, and a bit harder for me to find the time to do as an adult than it was as a middle-schooler. But stories for me are always ultimately about what the writer wants, not the reader, and if an idea is enjoyable enough for me imagine and idly think about in my free time, then it's enough for me. Canon Naruto is pretty irrelevant as far that's concerned, so I don't really hold any animosity about the Ending today.

I still love the Naruto series, in a way. I still love Narusaku, and it's still my OTP to this day. It'll probably always be my favorite pairing, seeing as how I'm much more of a prick these days and not quite as amenable to shipping as I was when I was twelve, when that fun yellow-and-pink combo wormed its way into my heart. That's really where Naruto, and NS, lives for me now. I suppose I'm being positive--or I'm being immature and I'm still in denial five years later. I don't think I'll ever really forget Naruto and how my own personal interpretation of it shaped me as a human being regardless.

Guess that's a bit more about Narusaku than the Naruto Ending and how I felt about it in 2014 specifically--and it probably feels weird to read because none of you know who I am and I'm just some guy who showed up to post some blocks of text--but screw it, I wrote it and now I'm posting it  :P.