Juniper - Snakes 2

Actually, I meant to post this like 3 days after the April Fool's joke, but then I got caught up in the whole 'knitting hermit' thing and decided to knit myself a sweater and that distracted me from posting this. Then 53raph1m act-alike mentioned his/her birthday was today so I figured I would go ahead and get this posted to prove that I am writing the Forest of Death.

Notes – I just realized that Gaara and Gorou’s names are a bit similar. I don’t think it’s so close that you guys will have trouble but if you do I apologize.

Also, this is the first time we’ve really heard from Kyuubi. He’s been making random comments to Naruto for a while now but they’re going to be more frequent from here on out. Would it make more sense if I put Kyuubi’s thoughts in bold? I think I’m going to. Their voices are fairly different but that doesn’t make it any less confusing, let me know and I’ll change it in this chapter too.

I considered making Shino or Kiba the slowest, but honestly at this point in the manga, most of what we’re shown suggests that that isn’t the case. She was probably faster than Sakura in canon, but not at this point in this fic. She'll get her 'redemption' so to speak. It would be fair to say that in general, Team 7 is a bit out of touch with what their peers are capable of.

And I know some people are going to think Naruto got caught way too easily, but when you’re expecting some seriously nasty jutsu, a rag over the mouth isn’t something you’re watching out for. I’ll write more explicit fights in the future, this first one just wasn’t important enough and as is pointed out, one on one the Cloud team isn’t impressive; their skills lie in stealth and ambush. Once they lost the element of surprise, they lost the upper hand. Exactly what this Cloud team did will be explained, but not for a bit (as in not during this exam or the finals…sorry).

If you remember (and I know most of you won’t) Anko mentioned at the end Snakes I that Kakashi was monitoring his students communication through Amarante code. Now you know why he was so drunk; I mean, can you imagine getting just those few warnings and not even knowing who they were going up against (and when he found out the next day…).

I’m sure this new code is going to really annoy people but it’s too much fun to write to take out of something like this.

Reviewers' Answers:

Yes, Naruto's mother in canon is Uzumaki Kushina. I started writing this fanfic before they came out and I came up with a non canon replacement who's identity was actually important to the fic. For this reason, when Kushina was revealed in canon I decided to just keep going with the original character, so here his mother is a woman named Mitarashi Anmitsu who happens to be Anko's aunt and one of Jiraiya's student (along with Morino Ibiki and Namikaze Minato).

Seriously though, I'm like dying to know why so many people decided to tell me this now. Please? Someone?

Juniper - Not an Interlude

April Fool's!
I hope at least some of you figured that out ahead a time based on the obnoxious note at the beginning. I'm not normally that weird during the spiels...am I?
Anyways, I really only did because I was working on the rest of Snakes (I really am going to write the Forest of Death, I promise) and I got a review from Elfsong asking about a flashback to Kakashi burning down his house. It was just a week or so ago and I realized April Fool's was approaching and that it might be fun to mess with you a bit. At the same time I figured I could use to...not really clear anything up but pretend I was. I don't actually expect anyone to read it and feel that things make more sense, but maybe some of you will. As a bonus, I'll now know who is and isn't reading the blog, because reviews that don't know this is a joke will just be directed here!

Thanks again to all my reviewers. As annoyed as I some time get - and as easy as it is to take it out on the anonymous people I know online instead of those in my real life - it's a lot of fun to hear people enjoy this, even if it sometimes annoys the crap out of them.
A few quick notes that reviewers brought up:
I'm sorry not everyone 'got' or 'likes' the fact that Anko and Naruto are cousins. Here's the thing, I don't write 'speculation' fics. Instead, I pick things from canon and I pick things from the back of my brain and I throw them together and see where it takes me. I remember thinking that Anko looked a bit like one of the people in Jiraiya's genin team picture (other's had fun writing that she was the same person, I'm writing that she's the person's niece) and that led to one of the main canon differences for this fic. I'm sorry you don't like it, but it's fun for me to write.

Another reviewer (who may have been trying to flame me, I'm not really sure what people are on about when they don't leave emails) said the level of secrecy around the auto pass was confusing him. The auto pass itself isn't shrouded in secrecy. It's a public decision, the Hokage even says so, what is a secret is Naruto's injuries. That's why he asks Sakura not to talk about her team very much. I hope that clears it up a bit, I thought it would be obvious when she openly admits to Neji and the others that she passed with an auto pass but then won't name Naruto, but I guess not.

Naruto's identity is another thing that is confusing people, probably because I've had so much trouble moving on with the story - it would have been cleared up much faster by my original outline, but writer's block has pushed it back. In this fic at least, I figure if the Hokage and his teammate (Anmitsu/Anko's aunt have been clearly stated as his teammate) were having a kid not everyone would know. Mostly just higher ranked individuals. The same individuals who would not be involved in child welfare. Therefore, I really don't see why it would be so hard for the Hokage to hide Naruto. By the time he's in the Academy even with the amount of trouble he's causing, it's mostly going to be grunts doing the cleanup so I don't think they would have run into him. Maybe that's just me over thinking it, but that is the way it gets explained in this fic.

Juniper - Interludes 9 & 10

Interludes 9 & 10 are up. These are the last two interludes so the next thing that will be posted will be the rest of Snakes, it might take a few months but that's what you'll get.

I also figured I would just address the lack of 'quality' here and get it over with. I think I've said this before, but I'm not really editing these anymore. It's not meant to be disrespectful to you guys or anything and I know the drop in quality will make some of you stop reading, but I've been working on these for years now. It isn't even a matter of lack of interest...okay it is but more because I can't write as fast as I come up with ideas so the chapters (when I can write) never seem to tell the story I want to tell when I'm ready to work on the next chapter...does that make sense? Basically I need to hurry up and finish them so that I stop getting urges to rewrite entire parts of them and editing...it just isn't my strong suit.
Sorry, it's the truth.
A lot of you have been helpful in pointing out things like missed words, misspelled words, and other grammar errors, but I haven't gone back and edited a thing...it's laziness but oh well.

As for updates... I ask you guys to remember one thing. I'm doing this in my free time for myself. I'm sharing it with you because I like getting compliments. But in the end this is fanfiction I cannot make money off of it and I do not intend to spend so much time on it that it looks professional, I hate to say it but it isn't worth my time to do that. I write when I can and I share it with you, please remember that in the future. I'm very, very happy with the fact that people like this and I don't want to sound flippant, but it's the truth. If I'm going to spend that much time polishing something I'd honestly want it to be an original story and not fanfiction.

This is of course the main reason that the interludes even existed. I didn't care that not all of you liked them, I was trying to figure out where most of the other characters were at this point so that the main action of the chapter would make sense to me. I liked most of them, some of them didn't come out the way I wanted but they still helped me make sense of the plot I had in my head. I can't tell you how annoying it was to read that people wanted to cut to the chase when I couldn't figure out what that chase was even going to be.
It was kind of insulting to hear (repeatedly) how alienating the interludes could be because to me they were the only thing keeping me interested in the story at the moment. I could delete the whole fic off the web and just play with it in my free time (and I have seriously considered this), but I like the fact that others enjoy it so I haven't done that. Hearing that I'm ruining my fic for other people...makes that a lot less fun...just letting you know. And if you can't remember what happened...reread it. I do it all the time with fics I like before telling the author that I can't remember what's going on.

That said...I do pay a lot of attention to constructive criticism. I may not always implement on the fics because they're comparable to a 1st or 2nd draft for me, but I do pay attention.

Juniper - Interlude 8

New interlude is up.

Juniper - Interlude 7

Before I get to the notes for 'Interlude 7' (if I can think of any), I wanted to address a running trend in last chapter's reviews. Namely that some of you were very confused by the 'Anko's cousin' thing.

I try not to just spell everything out in my fics. I like leaving people guessing a bit.
...Apparently I did that way too well this time.
I tried over the past chapters to make people wonder just why Anko was involved. I had Kakashi and Sasuke question it, one of them directly to her.
I made multiple notes of similarities between Naruto and Anko.
I had her talk to him more than anyone else about her family...namely her Aunt.
I had her teach him a family style of taijutsu.
Obviously I didn't spell out that Naruto was Anko's cousin until this past interlude, but I'm kind of surprised that no one at least guessed that it was a possibility.
I don't know if this is because Naruto's heritage has been officially revealed in canon, or if I'm just bad at getting readers to consider possibilities.
It could be either. And I apologize to those who were very confused by it.

As for the interlude...not much to say right now. Maybe I'll come up with something later.

Oh one last thing, unless I get another sudden burst of motivation, there will only be 3 more interludes. Unfortunately, unless I get another sudden burst of motivation, there may be a gap before the main chapter is posted because I'm still not making a lot of headway on it. I'll keep you posted on progress but let's just say that right now I've mostly managed to throw out the majority of what I had planned previously and rewrite the summary for the chapter. That's a good start, but obviously isn't much.

Juniper - Interlude 6

Okay I'm gonna use these notes to talk about my characterizations for a bit.
But that's in a minute.
First off, Interlude 6 is up. This is the direct follow up of Interlude 4. Chronologically, this takes place before Interlude 5 but I wanted to break 4 & 6 up a bit. If you were wondering why the Hokage was so...abrupt in last chapter, this is why.
Originally, I was gonna hold off fully clearing up Naruto and Minato's (4th Hokage) relationship until the chapter after 'Snakes', but it just didn't make sense to do that once I sat down to write this. Hopefully the original 'reveal' scene will just be funny now since you know exactly who Naruto's father is - namely that it's the same as canon.

So now onto characterizations!
I tend mention trying to keep characters 'in character' with canon, but I'll be completely honest, if I want a character to be different, they're gonna be different.
I don't label my fanfiction's as 'AU' but I treat them that way just by default. I'm not writing 'speculative' fanfiction here. I'm writing for fun and I'm playing with another person's long developed characters. I let Kishimoto handle the canon stuff. I let my fanfiction handle the 'I'm bored and wanna write weird shit' stuff.
Most of the time when I come up with a story, at least some part of canon is completely dumped so that I can run with a plot bunny. That changes characters by essentially removing a whole chunk of experiences and I try to take that into consideration.
Clearly this story's Kakashi is an example of this. He's possibly insane - though that's up to debate and he's not gonna clear it up any time soon.
Another example: Sarutobi.
I tend to be really, really mean to Sarutobi when I write fanfiction. I like his character in canon. But to mess with these characters, someone in power takes the fall. Sarutobi is an easy target. He'll probably never be a full on villain, but sometimes he is surprisingly pragmatic. And sometimes he is senile. He does care for the characters as he says he does, but he also has a village to run. Sacrifices get made.

I think that's all that needs to be said.

Juniper - Interlude 5

So next interlude is up. I think I know exactly how many more there are going to be. But I'm still open to suggestions.
TenTen and Chouji will both have one.
Anko, Gai, Kakashi, Iruka, and Asuma will all be seen in some.
And there's one more that I'll leave as a surprise for now.

Anyways, onto the notes.
I promise that Kirigakure is right this time but it isn't actually important to the story anyways since they won't be going there.
Also, this chapter contains some of the most straight forward information - if you can pick it out of all the double talk on the Hokage's part.
Lastly, just for fun, Iruka's teammate who joined ANBU...you've met her. Can you guess who she is canon wise? (It isn't actually hard)
If someone guesses in a comment here, I'll post the next interlude as soon as I read it (within 24 hours or so).

I thinks that's all.
I'm going to sleep, see you in a bit, maybe tomorrow if someone guesses.

Juniper Question

I know not a lot of readers read this blog if there aren't chapter notes to go over...okay so I know not a lot of readers read it then either, but I'm going to ask it here first and see if I get any early response. I'll mention it next time I update Juniper as well.
Basically, my original frame for Juniper included a rather small cross over. It isn't really connected to the main plot but it would drift in and out for a while (no it's not Harry Potter, though that might be really fun to play with some day).
Without revealing too much right now, I'd just like to sound out how readers feel about cross overs in general.
The first chapter that would include the cross over is 'approaching' - really, really slowly, but still approaching. And I'd just like to start feeling out whether or not I should take it off the board.
I'll probably give more details later if I'm still undecided, but any opinions now would help.

I suck...I mean "Juniper - Interlude 4"

Yes I know I said two weeks, clearly by now you should know not to expect much from me when I set deadlines.
Anyhow, the latest Interlude is up. I cut this one in half because I think it's going to make more sense chronologically if two other interludes go up before the last part of this one.
It is, however, still unedited. I'll go over it again in a few days so the chapter may get replaced if I change my mind and decide that the interlude I cut in half should be recombined into one interlude.
I'll also put up a post here in a few days explaining why two weeks became longer. If you've emailed, commented, reviewed, or pm'd me in that time and I didn't get back to you, I probably haven't read what you sent so just wait another week or so and I'll get back to you.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Juniper Again

I haven't really worked on Juniper since last weekend because I've been sick all week but I'm looking over it again and I'm still thinking that I'm going to delete at least 'Snakes II' and rewrite it into the next update. I'd do the same with 'Snakes I' but it's long and it isn't as confusing as the second part of the chapter. I'm gonna re-read it again and then decide.

Juniper

So I spent saturday morning re-reading Juniper and then I worked on the story's outline for a bit. I'm getting ready to work on the next chapter but I'm kind of hesitating a bit - not because of writer's block this time.
While re-reading it, I was looking over the first 2 parts of the chapter 'Snakes' and I'm not happy.
Part 1 is technically okay and I don't think I'd mind leaving it as is, though I think I might edit it a bit. Part 2 though was just bad. I can still remember writing it and I was pretty much just hurrying it to get it done. I think it's confusing and I think trying to continue the chapter from that base is going to be a problem for me.
I'm gonna let it sit for right now and then go back and re-read it and go over my outline for the rest of that chapter and then I'm going to decide whether or not to take down 'Snakes II'. If I decide to take it down I'll wait until I'm ready to post the next chapter and just work the old stuff into the new one.

Juniper

It's sad; I'd really like to be working on Juniper right now, but I just can't. It's not like I'm super absorbed in anything else right now, though I am doing ok working on Role of Seven, so at least something is getting done, but not working on Juniper is really bother me because it's been so long since I've updated it (not to mention Yuusen, but I have a bad track record with that story anyways).

Hopefully, the bug will bite soon. I've tried re-reading it a few times, but that almost seems to make it worse. I think by this point it's anxiety that's getting to me. I've been anticipating the chapter that I'm working on now for a long time. I feel like I know exactly what needs to happen in this chapter, but I just can't seem to write it. The transitions especially, but that happens a lot too. I might try just writing one or two sequences that I feel like I know by heart in my head (you know like I have them completely visualized already). Maybe if I can write one of those, the transition will write itself.

It's just that people seem to complain a bit that I'm leaving parts out but that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to write the important stuff and then when I can't write the more boring transitions the chapter feels disjointed and I have to place larger time jumps into chapters.

Bleh, anyways, I'll keep trying and hopefully an update for Juniper will come sometime in May.