So, overall, even given the massive delays in writing and then revising the final chapter, I think I can consider this one a success.

Over at his new blog, he introduces me to the existence of a fairly significant project to rewrite the Haruhi novels/anime with the genders of all the characters reversed. (Via a link to post on “Moe Check!” ). Pete writes:

I am not amused by the sex swap per se, primarily because I think Ranma squeezed that particular lemon dry back in the 80s…P.S. Truth to be told, Kyonko does play some angles on the swap which Ranma didn’t. Specifically, the favourite joke of Kyonko is how all the relationships and actions become ridiculous after the swap, e.g. Mr. Yuki Nagato inviting Kyonko to his room late in the evening. It’s the schtick advocates of colorblind society enjoy a lot, and it never gets old.

Genderbending fanfic of various sorts is actually one of the more interesting genres to me, and this post made me think about why, which lead into some various thoughts on the different sub-genres of it, which lead to some various thoughts on how I would do it to the Naruto cast (if I wasn’t dreadfully late on finishing the fanfics I’ve actually started). If any readers actually (a) exist, and (b) aren’t completely disturbed by this topic of conversation, then click on the more link for these thoughts. (Minor spoilers for Naruto involved.)

I once read… somewhere I forget… a non-fan of the genre describe genderbending fanfic as an author who wanted to pair up two characters of the same sex, but was too cowardly to actually write a homosexual relationship. While such fanfics do exist, I think there’s substantially more potential to the genre, even if many fics only reach a fraction of that potential.

The simplest type is to take a character of characters and have a plot device change their gender, and this is probably the most common. It can be played for laughs, of course, or – indeed – used to trigger a romance. (Although, this often involves the genderbent character changing his/her sexual preference, which is an exceedingly thorny concept.) It can also be used as a way to give that character a different perspective on life and the other characters – particularly if other characters are unaware of the swap. (Imagine Ranma 1/2 if more of the characters – in particular, say, Akane – didn’t know that “Ranko” was actually Ranma.)

A much more interesting type – to me at least – is to take a character or characters and ask “What if this character was the opposite gender, and always had been?” I love fanfic that posits a single change to canon and explores the consequences, and it’s hard to conceive of a single change of comparable simplicity and universality that has such a wide variety of potential effects. This, apparently, is the nature of the Haruhi fan project that prompted the posts that prompted this post.

Take a case where just one character is genderbent. Suddenly, that character’s relation to every other character is substantially altered. Previous romantic interests are now potential romantic rivals – and vice versa. As much as we might wish otherwise, society is not gender-blind; people are going to expect different things of the character.

Take Naruto, for example.

Switch Naruto’s gender, but don’t change anything else. What changes as a result? Perhaps a young girl is more sympathetic to the people of the Leaf Village than a young boy? Maybe; maybe not. But she might be a bit more subdued than male Naruto is, less likely to engage in elaborate pranks like he does in the first episodes. Most fanfic of this sort I’ve read makes “Naruko” the lone girl uninterested in Sasuke, but what if she weren’t? Suddenly, everything changes. Sakura becomes her main rival; Sasuke her ambition. (Does the Sakura/Ino feud become a three-way brawl?) Imagine the difference in connotation when Sasuke abandons the village, and Sakura tearfully admits that only Naruto has a chance to bring him back! And what of Hinata? Wouldn’t a female Naruto have seemed more approachable to her, perhaps starting a friendship prior to the beginning of the series? How would the female Naruto react to Jiraiya? All in all, it’s a fascinating scenario.

Do the same to Sasuke. Suddenly, Sakura and Ino are probably still friends. Is Naruto likely to be interested in female Sasuke, displacing Sakura? Who else might be? Does Sasuke face pressure to marry into another clan (the Hyuuga perhaps?), ending the Uchiha Clan forever? And so on.

Swapping Sakura alone is less interesting, as without further swaps it removes the romance angle from the triad of main characters entirely. I suppose something could be done on a Sakura/Ino-focused story, but it’s unlikely that Ino and male Sakura would have become friends in the first place. Perhaps “he” might latch onto Naruto instead?

As for swapping all three, or the whole cast (as the Haruhi project does)… well, I’ve toyed with the prior idea in fanfic before, but only humorously. It’s interesting to consider whether the “female Sasuke and fanboys” dynamic would differ dramatically from the “male Sasuke and fangirls dynamic.” Some of the same issues mentioned above would still be around. If you swap everyone – and therefore ninja villages are female-dominated – would that change how ninja are perceived by the greater world?

This would be where my conclusion went, if this post really had much of a point. But then, that “pointless” there in the tagline of the blog isn’t for nothing!

• What’s the difference between the first chapter of a fanfiction I’m not going to read more of and the latest story-arc in Naruto? One swiftly and clumsily eliminates old characters, introduces a host of new characters including a new love interest for a pre-existing character, in a burst of enthusiasm boosts said pre-existing character to new, unrivaled heights of power with little regard to explanation or logic, and generally fails to generate any interest in where the story is going. The other I frequently encounter on Fanfiction.Net.

Record of Lodoss War

• This anime is way, way more boring than I remember it being. I never got around to watching the second half.
• The only amusing bit is noting just how obvious it is that this is based on someone’s D&D campaign.
• Okay, and marveling at how it starts in media res, then promptly goes back in time and tells the long, boring beginning in full detail. Then, when it reaches the point where the mission the characters were on (but did not complete) in the first episode begins, it jumps forward to after that mission, leaving the various very important events and revelations to be slowly revealed in flashback.
• The first time I watched the show, I spent almost ten minutes trying to find the episode I’d accidentally skipped.
• The art is occasionally very pretty, though.

American Comics (About Which No One Reading This Really Cares)

• I’ve been on something of a comics… um… acquiring binge, lately. Exploring DC seriously for the first time, really. Lots of good stuff there, though plagued with many of the same sort of stupid editorial decisions, “big crossover event”-driven plotting, and occasionally just plain bad writing as Marvel.
• Speaking of Marvel, at least the books spinning out of Civil War have been fairly well-done and interesting, even if that event was… not. The pro-registration side is still direly in need of a more favorable portrayal, though, even in their own books.

Claymore Anime

• The first episode has aired. Like the manga, it starts off a little weak, but it was well-done. I’m looking forward to the rest.

This Post…

• …has a lot of categories.

Aaron Nowack…

• …is lazy, and hasn’t posted to this blog or worked seriously on his fanfiction in too long.

Current Status: 9 of 22 scenes written
Current Length: 70.0 KB, 12059 words by OpenOffice’s count

This is… kind of shaping up to be a rather long chapter. I really shouldn’t be surprised.

I did write a short, unrelated snippet of story as a reaction to Naruto Chapter 342 called Softness. For something written in about an hour with no planning, I’m pretty happy with it.

I started trying to write about [DRM], but… it didn’t flow. I was having to struggle with it. I know the signs; it means I was trying to force it, and the result sucked. Maybe if I let it cook a bit longer it’ll come out. And maybe not.

This goes for my writing as well, which is why progress has been slow of late. I tried to force a scene, and unsurprisingly it didn’t work and the result was crap that meshed poorly with canon. Today I got around to rewatching a few episodes to get a better grasp of how Tayuya fights and managed to rewrite the scene more decently.

I’m still not totally happy with some of the stuff; writing a Hyuuga versus genjutsu-user is kind of tough without either trivializing the fight or underpowering the Byakugan. The fact that there’s no canonical basis for how the Byakugan might interact with sound-based genjutsu (even more so such genjutsu that then creates a visible image in the victim’s mind like Tayuya’s) doesn’t help. When the chapter is released to the FFML, I’ll see what that bunch thinks and adjust if necessary.

Current status: 7 scenes of 22 total written.
Current length: 49.0 KB, 8400 words by OpenOffice’s count.

It’s not looking like it’ll get done by the end of the month, but stranger things have happened.

• It’s kind of amusing to watch how Kishimoto (understandably) struggles to avoid definitively establishing Naruto, Sasuke, or Sakura as having killed someone, despite in the context of the world it not only being okay but expected for them to kill.
• And of course, because in context it would be silly otherwise, all those characters have shown themselves not only willing to kill but actually have tried to kill people over the course of the manga. Which makes it all the more amusing how things never work out that they land a killing blow.

Okay, so it was one-and-a-half thoughts. I rounded down, all right?

Episode 220 has aired in Japan, this marks the last Naruto episode. Yes, I know it’s sad. This is the last Naruto episode ever, it was a good run, the last two years have been beyond awesome. How can you forget the time Naruto peed on Ino or that time Akamaru went rabid and humped Naruto’s butt? So many awesome moments where Studio Pierrot took the series to the next level. Characters like Raiga and the multiple Houki’s, all fully-fleshed out characters with great emotional subtext and motivation. Who can forget the times Naruto took on powerful enemies and chose to attack them with kunai rather than Rasengan, or that time he chose to use Rasengan when his boat lacked a motor? Who can forget all those new exotic lands, like the Bear Country, with it’s power hungry Hoshikage or the Vegetable and Bird Countries, with their cross-dressing female leaders? Who can forget those evil groups full of powerful ninja, like Shinobazu, the Fuuma trio, the Kamizuru, the Criminal Brothers, the Shitenshounin and all those wandering ninja. Such a good run. We salute you Tiger Mizuki, may your orange fur never fade and may you cereal always be GRREEAAT!

Gah. It’s hard to believe just how many filler episodes Naruto has had.

This post is a sequel to my previous post of why I didn’t like chapter 340, though in patent-pending bulleted list “Thoughts On” format. As with that post, all real content is after the cut due to ZOMGSPOILERS.

• The two-page “Naruto vs. Sasuke” color cover image is probably the best part of this chapter. The rest is fairly dull.
• This chapter makes the previous chapter entirely redundant and pointless, except as a way to stretch things out. Either Naruto managed to master the “Fuuton: Rasen Shuriken” in a handful of seconds, or the time limitations seen last chapter aren’t particularly limiting.
• It seems as though Naruto’s limit is to do three Rasen Shuriken in quick succession, even using Kyuubi chakra. Assuming that that’s why he’s exhausted and beat up at the end, and not just that he got caught in the backlash of his own technique.
• As a commenter pointed out last time, it wasn’t quite accurate to say that the Rasen Shuriken was just like the Rasengan, only it has a new visual does 400-600 points of damage instead of 300-500 points.
• It would be accurate, however, to say it was just like the old Rasengan, only it has a new visual does 3000-5000 damage instead of 300-500. It’s still not a fundamentally different technique; this whole fight could have gone exactly the same way with just the old Rasengan. That’s just boring. (The area of effect stuff isn’t really relevant, since the new technique still has to be delivered just like the old one.)
• Am I the only one annoyed that all the stuff about elements was ultimately utterly irrelevant? There’s nothing particularly windy about the Rasen Shurkien that wasn’t already present in the original Rasengan. It could just as easily been explained as a super-charged Rasengan with way more chakra involved.
• It’ll be… interesting to see how Kishimoto handles this technique in future fights, since it’s hard to imagine anything vaguely human surviving a hit by it, and it doesn’t have the same built-in reasons not to use it that the four-tailed form’s Black Bullet of Doom has. Then again, Kishimoto (unfortunately, IMO) seems to have lost his taste for vaguely human opponents lately.
• Kazuku goes down, and to all appearances is really dead. The only question is: will we see Hidan and he be quickly replaced like Sasori was or is this the beginning of the end for Akatsuki as a major antagonist? My bet is on the later, but that various members of Akatsuki (including, of course, Itachi) will persist as major villains long after Akatsuki as an organization is no longer an issue.
• Poor Ino and Chouji. Sakura and Sai (Who have been suffering from lack of panel-time throughout this plot arc) will have plenty more chances to do something significant since they’re always around Naruto, but it could be three of four plot arcs before we even see Ino or Chouji again, and they didn’t get to do anything this time. Well, chouji got in a couple of random moves that ultimately did nothing, but I don’t think Ino did anything except stand around and have the fact that she knows some medical ninjutsu referenced.
• Prediction Time: If Kishimoto’s pattern holds, the next plot arc will involve Orochimaru. (He and Akatsuki have been trading turns since Akatsuki’s introduction.) Either that plot arc or the next will likely feature Team Eight (Hinata, Shino, and Kiba). There will be a little bit of Naruto/Hinata fanservice, but many folks’ hopes to the contrary no significant development of that relationship.
• It’s highly unlikely, but I would really like to see a short-to-medium plot arc featuring the new Team Seven on an ordinary mission with no or only minor connection to Orochimaru or Akatsuki, just so we could get a better grasp on how the new team fits together and get a significant Sai fight scene so we have some measure of his abilities.

I’m still not totally happy with all the fighting – tiny, inconclusive bits of fighting seem to be harder for me to write than full-fledged fight scenes – or with the scene I was complaining about before, but it feels good to have another scene with at least a first draft done.

Then I look at the 18 remaining scenes (not counting the not-yet-outlined epilogue) and I feel a bit less good, but such is the life, as the French would say.

Only they’d say it in a silly French accent. While eating a croissant. A snail sandwich on a croissant. And then they’d surrender.

We here at Small Eyes, Big Mouth are on the very cutting edge of humor.