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edenfallingWrote about 500 words for NaNo -- yay fight scenes with bandits, and Totally-in-Denial!Talin.
Then I spent a couple hours laying groundwork for "The Guardian in Spite of Herself." Dude, that story is going to be so much fun to write. It's also going to take a lot of research and coordination (the characters are in different places on different missions, which are all somewhat interrelated) but if I can pull it off... whoo. I am taking shameless advantage of the Uchiha massacre and the early years of Akatsuki (they had to build the organization up somehow), and also gleefully mucking around with theories of how exactly the canon backstory fits together and how I can change it with a tweak here or there.
As for canon characters... I'm tossing Kurenai into the story, because I like her. I also really like genjutsu as a concept and she and Yukiko provide very different approaches to illusions. Kurenai is combat-oriented; Yukiko is very much not. There is a woman -- Suzume, I think? -- who does clerical work of some sort in Konoha. If anyone knows about her, please tell me details. Also, any details on Ibiki and Ebisu would be greatly appreciated, as well as the exact date for the founding of Hidden Sound. And maps. If anyone has a good map of the continent, I'd be very grateful.
(I'm going to research myself, of course, but my research consists mostly of rereading the manga to get a sense of the characters in action. If you have access to other sources of character information, please tell me. I reserve the right to blatantly contradict stuff I don't like, but I'd like to know exactly what I'm contradicting.)
Kakashi, Iruka, and Naga will be returning, as well as some new original characters, most notably Fuuma Seichi, a Leaf jounin who specializes in quiet deaths. This contrasts with Kakashi, who seems to have specialized in messier, more public deaths -- it's the difference between a blatant show of power and intimidation and the quiet chill that runs up the back of your neck because someone might be watching you, right behind you, and you'd never be able to tell... *rubs hands gleefully*
Oh, this is going to be such fun! World-building, character development, desperate searches running out of time, little kids getting into the middle of terrible situations, revenge, redemption, information and disinformation, misdirection, the way things do and don't connect... Yeah, it's going to be fun. Heck, I may even experiment with cliffhangers. :-)
I've been looking back over my stories and I haven't used cliffhangers, with the single exception of Naga's backstory. I meant to use one between the announcement of Yukiko and Akaro's fight and the actual scene in the arena, but the pacing didn't work out that way. It's a technique I'm interested in mastering. "Guardian" will also be a way for me to practice split storylines and multiple POV voices, and an experiment in tying multiple plot strands together so they -- hopefully! -- arrive at a conclusion more or less at once. I'm doing that on a lesser scale in my NaNo novel (only two POV characters, though there are many, many plot threads) and it's a definite stretch for me as a writer, something I've only really been learning to do for a year or so.
You have to keep trying new things. What's the point if you don't?
Then I spent a couple hours laying groundwork for "The Guardian in Spite of Herself." Dude, that story is going to be so much fun to write. It's also going to take a lot of research and coordination (the characters are in different places on different missions, which are all somewhat interrelated) but if I can pull it off... whoo. I am taking shameless advantage of the Uchiha massacre and the early years of Akatsuki (they had to build the organization up somehow), and also gleefully mucking around with theories of how exactly the canon backstory fits together and how I can change it with a tweak here or there.
As for canon characters... I'm tossing Kurenai into the story, because I like her. I also really like genjutsu as a concept and she and Yukiko provide very different approaches to illusions. Kurenai is combat-oriented; Yukiko is very much not. There is a woman -- Suzume, I think? -- who does clerical work of some sort in Konoha. If anyone knows about her, please tell me details. Also, any details on Ibiki and Ebisu would be greatly appreciated, as well as the exact date for the founding of Hidden Sound. And maps. If anyone has a good map of the continent, I'd be very grateful.
(I'm going to research myself, of course, but my research consists mostly of rereading the manga to get a sense of the characters in action. If you have access to other sources of character information, please tell me. I reserve the right to blatantly contradict stuff I don't like, but I'd like to know exactly what I'm contradicting.)
Kakashi, Iruka, and Naga will be returning, as well as some new original characters, most notably Fuuma Seichi, a Leaf jounin who specializes in quiet deaths. This contrasts with Kakashi, who seems to have specialized in messier, more public deaths -- it's the difference between a blatant show of power and intimidation and the quiet chill that runs up the back of your neck because someone might be watching you, right behind you, and you'd never be able to tell... *rubs hands gleefully*
Oh, this is going to be such fun! World-building, character development, desperate searches running out of time, little kids getting into the middle of terrible situations, revenge, redemption, information and disinformation, misdirection, the way things do and don't connect... Yeah, it's going to be fun. Heck, I may even experiment with cliffhangers. :-)
I've been looking back over my stories and I haven't used cliffhangers, with the single exception of Naga's backstory. I meant to use one between the announcement of Yukiko and Akaro's fight and the actual scene in the arena, but the pacing didn't work out that way. It's a technique I'm interested in mastering. "Guardian" will also be a way for me to practice split storylines and multiple POV voices, and an experiment in tying multiple plot strands together so they -- hopefully! -- arrive at a conclusion more or less at once. I'm doing that on a lesser scale in my NaNo novel (only two POV characters, though there are many, many plot threads) and it's a definite stretch for me as a writer, something I've only really been learning to do for a year or so.
You have to keep trying new things. What's the point if you don't?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 02:30 am (UTC)If you meant Suzume the teacher, the only things we know is that she's rather a stereotype/caricature of the teacher with frizzy hair and big nerdy glasses. She gave me a bit of a trelawney vibe, if you see what I mean. She's in charge of the flora discovery/flower arrangement class and probably other kinds of kunoichi-only lessons, too.
Map of the five countries!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/Asher/map_countries.jpg
About Kurenai and Ibiki... :
Yuuhi Kurenai
Kurenai's the teacher for Hinata's team. Even though she's female, she's the newest addition to the Jounin group. She respects Kakashi a great deal and refers to him as "Kakashi-senpai"
Morino Ibiki
Captain of the Leaf Village interrogation (aka, torture) team, Ibiki is the instructor for the first chunnin exam. Kakashi (as well as many other jounins), consider him a sadist. Kakashi silently pities his students for being under his supervision because of that fact. But Kakashi also acknowledges Ibiki in not only having skills of torturing physically, but also mentally.
Ebisu is a special jounin, not a full jounin. He's an instructor, tutoring selected students. he's Konohamaru's tutor. He despised naruto at first, but he changed his mind after seeing him train and help konohamaru change his attitude. He acts stuffy, and he's proud of his abilities as a teacher. He makes me think of Faith's watcher, what's his name again? Wesley?
As for the founding of Hidden Sound, it wasn't said, but I know where you can get an idea...
http://forums.narutofan.com/showthread.php?t=12409
AKATSUKI!!! EEEEE. *_______________* ohhhh that sounds so awesome. *waits* *waiiiiits*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 02:52 am (UTC)I've heard this relative ranking stated different ways in several different places, but I've never seen a single thing in either anime or manga that'd make me think a special jounin ranked -less- than a normal one. Seems to me that it'd logically be the other way around - that is, a Special is a Jounin who happens to have other skills -beyond- those normally expected of someone of that rank. Is it established in the databooks, somewhere, or...?
Ja, -n
(*curious*)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 03:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 03:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 03:24 am (UTC)(Tokubetsu jōnin, 特別上忍, literally "Specialised high ninja") Tokubetsu Jōnin are ninja who, rather than all-around Jōnin training, have chosen to specialise in a single area of the training. They are elite specialists in their areas and are often assigned as subordinates to regular Jōnin when their services are needed.
hmm. that was one of the free encyclopedias thingers. I wonder how reliable they are.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 03:26 am (UTC)http://www.tokubetsu-jounin.net/tokubetsu.html
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 03:46 am (UTC)*makes face* Meh. And I'd already set the Tokubetsu up as the heads of Konoha's various administrative and field service command divisions... Could maybe still work, as one of the things I'd been working into that was that they were given those posts in part because their unique skills demanded that they stay where they could be found easily if needed - ie, in Konoha... so they wouldn't neccessarily get the same field experience as their line service equivalents.
Hmm.
I need to think about this some more.
Ja, -n
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 03:00 am (UTC)I'm already ignoring Kakashi's age and I'd move Itachi's birthday back at least a year, because he looks older than 13 when he officially goes bugfuck crazy, but that's very useful stuff.
I made vague references in "Apartment Manager" to there being a decade of peace (barring the Kyuubi), so I want to push the start of Yondaime's tenure as Hokage back a year or two. That makes sense given that I've already made Kakashi older than this timeline would make him. It also works with Naga's backstory, in which I think I said that she was really young (maybe a toddler?) when Orochimaru was run out of Konoha. She's 13 during "Apartment Manager," and Orochimaru split right around when Yondaime was chosen, so a decade makes a lot of sense. 4 years of Yondaime's rule + 6 years since Kyuubi = 10 years until the start of "Apartment Manager," which does happen right around Naruto's 6th birthday. Yay for happy coincidences!
Shizune is mad cool, especially her throwing things. It's like miniature wrist crossbows that shoot needles, except totally not, but... gah. Yeah. She will not be appearing in this story, because she is off trying to keep Tsunade out of trouble.
If Suzume is the irritating teacher, who is this Ayame listed in the timeline? (And I flat-out refuse to believe that Ebisu is older than Kakashi. Fortunately, in my universe, he isn't! Hehehe.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 03:15 am (UTC)aka, That Chick Who Works At The Ichiraku.
Ja, -n
(who has a brain for trivia)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 03:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 08:46 am (UTC)Correction
Date: 2005-11-04 10:20 pm (UTC)but you can always throw her in just for fun.. heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 03:16 am (UTC)Ayame is the ramen girl. XD she's the daughter of Ichiraku-san (i forget his first name) (and seeing as all we know is that she's a smiling girl who works at a ramen shop, it's astonoshing the number of kakashi x ayame fics i've seen... wy helo thar thinly-veiled canon-sue...)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-04 08:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-05 11:05 pm (UTC)Shizune's needle throwers
Date: 2005-11-04 05:23 pm (UTC)Ton-ton as a nin pig is a conclusion I'd come to also, but I'm half-sold on Valles' notion that Shizune herself is some more or less distant relation to the Uchiha clan, from a branch that developed a different specialty because the Sharingan stopped manifesting in them. Given the conditions required to activate higher levels of the ability, it may be that they were just too mentally stable to have their eyes go red like that...
- ClassicDrogn
Re: Shizune's needle throwers
Date: 2005-11-05 11:57 pm (UTC)But that doesn't necessarily mean mental instability, as such. Just a greater risk of instability, which is exacerbated by their chosen professions. (Killing people for a living is not really a good idea if you want to keep sensitive people from going a bugfuck crazy.)
I'm going with a theory Asuka mentioned once, that the Yuuhi (Kurenai's clan) are an offshoot of the Uchiha, which would explain why Kurenai's eyes are red (and possibly also why she's a genjutsu expert). The Sharingan is already a mutable sort of thing, with it's various stages, so that isn't outside the realm of possibility.
Hmm. I can't remember -- is it canon that the Sharingan is a mutated version of the Byakugan, or is that just a fanon theory?