Thursday, September 24, 2009

Mini Hiatus

I promise it'll only last like 2 weeks at the most and I'll probably still write that whole time so might have some new chapters then.
I'm trying to finish up a present for my mother and it'll go fastest if I just focus on it for now.
The only story that might get updated in the meantime would be Juniper. The next interlude is written but I haven't really looked over it yet, so if I feel the need to take a break from knitting I'll do that and post the next interlude. Otherwise I can promise some updates the 1st week of October.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Webcomic Recommendations

I asked readers of Juniper to send me at least one webcomic that they recommend so that I would have something to distract myself with.
Sadly only about a third actually did, but I decided I would share the ones they recommended with everyone.
Note: If it's in bold then I already read it and definitely recommend it as well! As some reviewers learned I can be a bit of a fangirl.
I tried to get links to them, but for the most part the ones with links are the ones where I already read them.
Volunteer Blueberry recommends:
Gunnerkrig Court (I adore this one. It's like a slightly smarter, more sci-fish Harry Potter...except not really anything like Harry Potter except that it takes place at a boarding school. I really, really recommend it)
Scary Go Round
Ugly Hill
Goodbye Chains (I read this one too! This one is a bit bizarre, kind of like historical fiction with bank robberies and explosions. Though if you're one of the readers who complained about 'slash' don't go here as at least one character is gay and I don't want to send someone who might be bratty and complain to the author)

Therhoda recommends:
Girl Genius (One of the coolest steampunkish comics out there. Done completely without the need to make things 'gritty' - which typically means the characters just curse a lot. The art is fun, the story is fun - you really can't beat mad scientists)
Sinfest

November 5th recommends:
Erfworld
Grim Tales from Down Below
and a Naruto fan comic on the same site as GTDB called 'Naruto: Heroes Path'

PS recommends:
Least I Could Do

GreyGryph recommends:
XKCD


NaylorFan90 recommends:
Better Days

Azamiko recommends:
El Goonish Shive

AnimeOtaku31821 recommends:
Lackadaisy (A totally awesome comic set in St. Louis during prohibition. It's got gangsters, speakeasies, and my hometown, how could it possibly get better than that?)

Lady Mazikeen recommends:
Questionable Content
Yu+Me Dream
(Very awesome story about a teenaged girl. It gets a bit surreal as the story goes on, but it remains at the top of my list of favorites - though the same goes with this as with GC, the main character is a lesbian and I don't want people to go there and then complain like brats)
I was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space (This is by the same person as Yu+Me and it is equally awesome but completely different. It's basically a hilarious satire of a lot of the pulp novels from the 60s.)

JoriWinter recommends:
Order of the Stick

Serbii recommends:
Wasted Talent


Nantukoprime recommends:
Penny Arcade
Applegeeks
PvP
XKCD
VG Cats
Questionable Content


Veritas in Sanguine recommends:
Goblins
Looking for Group
(I don't even know hot to describe this one except that it's full of enough out of place pop culture references that I end up giggling madly even if I can't remember what's going on)
Order of the Stick
VG Cats

53r4phim act-alike recommends:
MegaTokyo

Sandy11-1990 recommends:
Vampirates (Another one I read, though this one hasn't updated in a few months it is a good story. I think there is a book by the same or a similar name but they don't seem to have anything in common. This is basically a story about Vampires in Canada, at least some of whom are also pirates. It's a really interesting story so far)


A couple of people tried to send links to webcomics but the links didn't go through, if you want, just leave the links in a comment here.

Hope I didn't miss any.


Interludes...

Nothing tells me that people aren't reading the blog more than their reviews.
It's kind of sad really. I've said on all my comments about the Juniper interludes that they would be continuing for a while. I've even mentioned who future ones will focus on.
But I keep getting reviews that are just dripping in disappointment about the appearance of another Interlude.
I am trying to work on the proper chapter for Juniper. My mind is not working properly right now and refuses to let me express in words the scenes that are running through my head - my definition of writer's block. Until then, I'm trying to give you something in return for being very nice readers and it'd make me feel a bit less guilty if people stopped using reviews to up my anxiety level when it comes to a hobby of mine.
I mean, I don't really mean to complain but it's still frustrating.
Oh well.
There will be more interludes. Probably four or five more at least. Hopefully I'll have a 'real' chapter ready by the time I run out of these so there won't be another really long wait, but I really can't promise anything.
Until then, please be patient.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Juniper - Interlude 3

Alright the next chapter is up. The one after this is already written, so I'll put it up early next week.
I still don't really know what happened last weekend, fanfiction.net never got back to me. However, it does seem to be working and I never noticed any problems when I updated 21 a few days ago. Hopefully we won't have problems this time, but if we do, stay tuned here.
Also, I'm still open to suggestions about who to focus an interlude on.
Right now, I know I'll be writing ones for TenTen, Chouji, and more Anko. I might do one specifically focusing on Gai as well, although he did appear in this one we didn't really get much out of him.
And maybe Sakura's father.
Team 8 is not likely to appear in the interludes because they'll be in the chapter, but as I get further in the chapter itself, I might decide that I can work one of them in as like the last interlude or something.

Also, because of the problems I don't think I got back to some of you but it was really interesting to read the different takes on Ino's interlude. Thanks again for all the feedback.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

21 - Chapter 4 C

Part 3 is finally up. Sorry for the delay.
This chapter originally had a slightly different ending, but I though the subdued ending worked well. I will say that even with this ending, Sakura's last line was originally something along the lines of "You're so not hot!" but I thought that came out a bit too valley girlish.

Sorry if all the 'relationship' stuff threw people, I didn't think there was a lot of it but I guess compared to the first few posts it was. This isn't a romance story or anything, but the rookies are growing up so you can expect some pairings, they just won't be central to the story (or based on anyone's whims but my own)...'cept one, but it's not important yet. The Kiba/TenTen thing came about when I looked back at earlier stuff and realized that I was writing a bit of interaction between them and really liking it. I threw TenTen into a few other scenes that she wouldn't normally have appeared in and liked it, so I decided to just go with it.

Also, I know some people have been really annoyed with Sakura lately. I hope this chapter have begun to redeem her a bit. She's felt as out of the loop as Naruto so she's been just as touchy about things as he has. It didn't really lead to great communication between them. I'm actually really happ with her train of thought in this chapter. It probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense (this is Sakura we're talking about) but at this point, she has the pieces she just hasn't really bothered to put them together.
I was also trying to bring out the fact that Naruto's well, a bit of a hypocrite. He doesn't really mean to do it, but he's not very good at socializing outside of the present...that made no sense did it?
I mean, he's fine in the moment at one on one interaction, but he rarely gets to a deeper level. I read a lot of fics where Naruto seems to know everything about everyone, that isn't the Naruto in this fic. He knows about as much about his friends as they know about him, which is one of the reasons that Jiraiya's bet was so unfair.

Going back and rereading the stuff at the tournament, I realized that this chapter might add some confusion about Naruto and elemental training. During the tournament, some shinobi jumped to conclusions about his training based on the jutsu he was displaying. They understood that Kyuubi seemed to be involved with Naruto's ability to create the jutsu but most were still assuming that the jutsu were still based in elemental chakra. However, up to this point, Naruto had not been tested like he was in the manga.
I did consider writing out more of their training with Kakashi...but I decided it wasn't really necessary. If you want me to expand more on it in the future just let me know and I guess I can have them talk about it. It's more likely that you'll get the chance to really see what they learned during another training session.
Also...I was a bit lazy this time and didn't feel like searching for the exact chapter where Kakashi and Yamato/Tenzo test Naruto. Therefore, I couldn't quite remember exactly what reactions the paper had for different elements. I know this was really lazy, but oh well. If I remembered any of them really incorrectly and it like totally ruins the story for you, just let me know preferably with the correction so that I still don't have to look it up.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Site Problems

I really have no clue what's going on with fanfiction.net. Or if it isn't really that site that's having problems and there's something wrong with my account. Like I said below, I have sent an email to them but I don't really expect to hear back from them within the next 24 hours so it if I hear from them at all it'll be a while.
I will say that I've found that if I clear my browser's history and then click on the link in here and in my homepage it takes me to the correct page. If you're still having trouble you can try that but I don't honestly know if it'll work.
If/when I hear from them I'll let you know. Hopefully this'll be sorted out soon.
Until then, I'm gonna put a hold on updating. I don't really want to have to keep track of multiple malfunctioning updates.
I can say that when this is sorted out (hopefully by midweek) I'll have both another interlude chapter for Juniper and the 3rd part of 21 Chapter 4. I'm also gonna try and finish off the next chapter of Role of Seven so maybe I'll manage to update all 3 of them this week.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Juniper - Interlude 2

Alright, 'Snakes: Interlude 2' is up.
No real notes this time but like I said in the chapter, if you have any suggestions for who should be featured in these interludes, just let me know. If I can include them then I will.

Edit ( a few hours later): There seems to be something wrong with the update. The story shows that it's been updated in my account but not on my regular profile and the link to it doesn't work. Therefore I have temporarily taken it down. I'm gonna wait a bit and try again.

Edit 2: Sorry for the extra delay. I didn't have a chance to reupload the chapter last night before I went to sleep and then I've been away from my computer til now.

Edit 3: Okay, the link came in email again, but it still isn't working. I'm gonna leave it up for a bit longer and if the story update still isn't working I'm gonna email, fanfiction.net

Edit 4: I emailed fanfiction.net this afternoon but I read that it can take a while to hear back from them so I'm not really expecting anything for at least a few days. Since reloading the chapter didn't fix the problem the first time I'm going to give it until the middle of this week until I try again. Hopefully by then I'll have heard from the site.

Edit 5: Apparently it's up now. I still don't know what caused the problem, maybe the site was just backlogged. If for some reason your link isn't working, try this one "Interlude 2".

Edit 6: I have no clue what's going on right now. The chapter stopped working a bit this afternoon, though right now the link above seems to work so I really don't know what's wrong with it.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Juniper - Snakes: Interlude I

Interlude I is up.
Okay, here's the deal. Because I was having so much trouble writing out the exam, I wrote these interludes. They'll be posted sporadically for a while as I work on the real chapter. None of them are as long as a normal chapter so I'm sorry if it seems like so little after so long without an update, but hopefully it'll tide some of you over until the real chapter is finished.
First up is Anko, who is not happy with herself right now. We'll probably meet up with her in another interlude later on as well, but this one focuses on her the evening after the Trio went into the Forest.
This one probably raised a few questions for some of you. For others it may have finally answered some. If it did absolutely nothing for you, then I apologize.

A quick note, while I do seem to be back to working on this (knock on wood), I'm not really back to editing heavily. I pretty much ran spell check and left it so if you spot any mistakes, just comment here and I'll fix them when I post the next interlude chapter.
That should be some time within the next week. I can tell you that it'll be from Ino's point of view, but that's all you get right now.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Juniper - Deleted Chapter

I know that it has now been nearly a year since I last updated Juniper. I do sincerely apologize for the long wait, but sometimes, life happens and I can't manage to keep up with a hobby no matter how much I want to.
If you have been reading Juniper for a long while, then I thank you very much for continuing to do so. If you're new to it, then I thank you for picking it up and hope that you enjoy it enough to stick with me until I finish.
For some of you who have been with it for a while, you may be confused by the story line right now for a lot of reasons, one of those reasons is the reason for this post. This past June/July I deleted the most recent chapter of Juniper. It would have been listed as Chapter 18 (Snakes II). The reasons were many. Among those was the fact that I thought it ended up being more confusing than it was supposed to be. It included several flashbacks that weren't integrated very well. I tried to hint at several things that you guys were supposed to pick up on, but that wasn't done well either and I've decided that some of them just need to be spelled out.
Trying to work forward from that chapter proved impossible when I was already facing difficulty with the story and with writer's block, so I decided to just delete it and work forward from a better point, namely the ending of Snakes I.

This note might confuse you a bit more and I'm sorry about that but for those of you who remember Snakes II shouldn't be left in the dark about the changes that will come up in the future. The events in the exam itself are being completely rewritten so I'll deal with them when that chapter comes out. The events in those flashbacks, are being changed a bit as well and I can deal with them now.

Here are the big changes:

Snakes II revealed in a flashback that the fishnet the trio was wearing had a jutsu on it to act as a weight training device. That still stands; however, in the current rewrite, the trio doesn't know this. They'll learn it a bit later. Also, the rules of that have changed a bit as well, so I'll make sure to spell it out in a later chapter for you.

Also, Houkou will not be going into the Forest with them. It still stands that Kakashi had Houkou with him before the exam, but he did not send the dog in with them. Houkou just doesn't have the training for it and Kakashi felt the dog would be a distraction.

The Amarante code is going to be explained more before we catch up with Team 7. I'm going to explain it in one of the upcoming interludes in more detail because it was too confusing to just drop it in the way I did.

Lastly, Kyuubi. I'm going to explain this in more detail as well. Some people caught on that Naruto seemed to communicating with it. Some didn't. So I'm going to use an interlude for that as well.
Since I'm sure I'm forgetting something or just didn't think to touch on something you guys were confused by, feel free to ask any questions you want. Just please do it here in the comments so that I can make sure I get back to you.
Thanks again,
Agent Spielplatz

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Juniper

Sorry for the complete silence here for the past month or so. I was a busy little bee for a while.
Anyways, back to fanfiction now. Because Juniper is still causing trouble I'm trying something a little different from what I had originally planned. So far (knock on wood) it's going well. If it keeps going well (knock on wood) I might be able to get something up this weekend. 21 is also being worked on so those will probably be the first ones I update this month.