Sanitize

Sanitize is an OC-insert Naruto fanfiction by Sage Thrasher about an original character who was a modern-day doctor in her past life and is reborn as a peasant in a small village in the Land of Fire in the Warring Clans era.
The summary on fanfiction.net reads:
As of May, 2019, Sanitize has 2,637 favorites, 8,329 follows, and 2.527 reviews on fanfiction.net.
==Contents==
Sanitize follows its main character, Yui, starting at around the age ten when she's jolted out of her peasant life with a memory of how to set a dislocated shoulder and begins to grapple with her remembered medical knowledge compared to what her small, pre-Industrial peasant farming village has access to. Yui sets out to do what she can with what she has, focusing on improving sanitary conditions and basic medical knowledge and maybe, if she's lucky, proving the germ theory of disease and develop penicillin. 
Yui quickly finds that due to her village's location she has plenty of access to merchants and patients, but she's also unfortunately right between the bitter blood feud that the Senju clan and Uchiha clan have been engaged in for generations. Yui brings economic and social change to the region due to her radical view on healthcare and information, mainly that both should be free and easy to access.
Major themes focus around Yui's narrow view of the Warring Clans era and her even more narrow effect as she seeks to triage or solve problems she didn't cause and has no easy answer for. The difference between internal and external lives is also stressed, so there's focus not just on how Yui views herself as compared to how people view Yui, but also how non-ninja view ninja compared to how ninja view themselves. Sanitize features a great deal of worldbuilding and original characters, as the Warring Clans era isn't very fleshed out in Naruto canon.
===Original Characters===
There are more recurring OCs than are listed here; these are only the most plot relevant. 
;Yui
:The main character. A doctor in her previous life, she now struggles as a Land of Fire peasant to provide medical attention to anyone who needs it despite not having the tools and infrastructure she remembers from her previous life.
;Sen
:Yui's younger brother and apprentice.
;Eiji
:Yui's apprentice and Sen's best friend.
;Dr. Makoto
:A doctor who was trained in the capital and met Yui when she was first starting out as a healer on her own; he reconsidered his own gender biases and medical knowledge following his first meeting with Yui and came back about a decade later to ask her to teach him.
;Tsubaki
:A merchant who largely deals in glass and travels to Land of Wind and around Land of Fire regularly; she helps Yui get the glassware she needs to start trying to make penicillin. She also has a Hatake bodyguard.
===Canon Characters===
Characters in this section are described with regard to their role in this fanfiction, rather than summarizing their canon roles.
;Senju Hashirama
:Senju clan heir and accomplished healer; seeks Yui out as a friend often after they bond over wanting things to be different. Wants to rekindle a childhood friendship with Madara so they can reach peace together. Becomes clanhead after his father dies.
;Senju Tobirama
:Hashirama's younger brother, a suspicious and sharp ninja; he and Hashirama have a great deal of tension around Hashirama's dreams of peace. Tobirama is somewhat slow to be won over by Yui.
;Uchiha Madara
:Uchiha clan head and childhood friend of Hashirama; through interacting with Yui and because of her mostly-unrelated dealings with the Senju, he comes to hope that his and Hashirama's dream of peace might not be dead after all.
;Uchiha Izuna
:Madara's younger brother, and completely unwilling to believe in peace so far. Madara says that his refusal to consider peace stems from the death of their younger brothers at the hands of the Senju. He and Izuna seem to have less outright tension regarding the peace than Hashirama and Tobirama, but they still definitely disagree.
Also briefly making appearances are: Senju Butsuma, Hashirama and Tobirama's father; Senju Touka, a Senju clanswoman; and Senju Kawarama, Hashirama and Tobirama's younger brother.
===Excerpts===
==Inspiration, process, and development==
In a 2016 tumblr post — before Sanitize was published — Sage explained how she approaches the Naruto universe and its many moral challenges:
In response to an ask, Sage discussed her direct inspiration for Sanitize as well as how the idea changed as it developed:
In response to an ask about if she would be diverging from Yui's point of view, Sage explained that she wouldn't be using other characters' POVs and that it's "a conscious decision; I want to emphasize the limits of Yui’s perspective. She’s been in this village her whole life, and all she knows of the outside world is what travelers tell her."
Sage goes on to say:
===Worldbuilding===
The Naruto timeline is full of vague statements and contradictions, and the farther back in the timeline one is the more sparse and vague the information is. Sanitize takes place before the village is founded and therefore only some very vague information about character deaths could apply; everything else must be constructed wholecloth. Sage briefly elaborated on Yui's personal timeline in 2017:
What technology is or isn't available in Naruto is also a messy snarl of contradictions and unexplored questions, and backing the timeline up so far to explore a historical time based on the Warring States period is even more complex. Sage explained both her general decisions regarding the technology available to Yui as well as some specific choices:
===Shipping===
Regarding ships in Sanitize, Sage said:
The comments on the first chapter — at the end of which Sage asked her readers what their shipping preferences were — seem to lean towards ambivalence on the subject of romance, one fan saying, "I don't mind romance as long as it doesn't overtake anything and as long as it's given reasonable development."Lazuli-Quetzal, Sanitize by Sage Thrasher - Review for chapter 1 Posted 3 April 2017. Accessed 24 October 2018.
==Fan Reactions==
==Further Reading==
* The Ninja of Sanitize — More info about the ninja OCs.
* Sanitize, starred reviews on Ficdb
==References==
Category:2010s Fanfiction
Category:2020s Fanfiction