I love stories, don't you? We explore ourselves with stories, entertain ourselves, express ourselves, examine the world around us with stories. Medium is unimportant, whether text, image, movie, music, the expression of ideas is a fundamental part of our society and always has been, so I decided to give writing a try, I hope you enjoy it.

Current projects: Sticks and stones. Technically an SI, but rather than stand in as Naruto (in name only) or some main character or their brother/cousin/father, I decided to cripple the insert by placing them in a new position; and thus I found my counterpart replacing inner Sakura. Limited almost elusively to the power of words, Ishi has to try to keep one of the more wasted kunoichi alive without revealing the full extent of his knowledge, which, like all Naruto fans, includes at least one secret that every major faction will kill to keep quiet.

On Sakura (spoilers ahead): Oh Sakura, poor, little, stupid Sakura. She had the potential to be one of the most interesting characters. She starts as a useless damsel, waiting to be saved by her precious dark prince., and I found myself hating her and desperately hoping she would grow out of her status as a plot device and NPC for the real ninja to save. She didn't have a clan or bloodline, like the VAST majority of other named characters. She couldn't draw on some secret art, like puppetry. If she ever developed power, it would be entire hers. Even jinchuriki rely on their partner for a large amount of their power (which does fit the theme of conflict between individual power and the power of bonds that is so prevalent in Naruto). Her growth as a person was hinted at in the Forest of Death hook of the Chuunin Exam arc, when she went against the genin from Oto, only to be immediately crushed to introduce Lee and Team 10 and their respective characters.

She really is Lee's counterpart for the chakra arts, and when she started learning under Tsunade, I was so excited, because I thought Kishimoto was finally tapping into a side character to demonstrate that growth was possible without deus ex machina or some form of inheritance.

Oh how wrong I was, Sakura was sidelined almost immediately sidelined, never accomplishing anything on her own. Even the skills she does have are trivialized when she acts as a living puppet to beat Sasori, removing her intellect (what should be one of the deadliest weapons in the whole manga) from consideration as an asset.

Seriously, there's been like 4 different points where she steps up and finally stops standing in the shadows of the others, only to punch something and immediately return to the shade. So the concept of developing power without a bloodline or dues ex machina is instead relegated to Naruto as he completes the Rasengan and masters Senjutsu.

Hell, Hinata makes 3 major appearances appearances, in the chuunin exam arc, pain's invasion, and awakening of the juubi, and with those 3 appearances demonstrates more consistent character growth and individuality then any other kunoichi in the entire series, making Sakura's growth look like Tsunade leaving an AA meeting only to immediately enter a liquor store, and Kishimoto wonders why the American audience loves her.

Sakura isn't even the best when it comes to medical techniques: she's the only member of team 7 who doesn't demonstrably surpass her Sannin teacher, and Kabuto and Karin are both better medics from her own generation of ninja in addition to offering better utility (with Karin's sensory abilities) and more combat effectiveness (Kabuto is best medic nin).

Kabuto, by contrast, is one of the most interesting characters. He masters the Impure World Resurrection, learns Senjutsu, weaponizes medical jutsu to form powerful offensive AND defensive jutsu, all without a teacher. He pulls new senjutsu techniques out of his ass, making Naruto's "Rasengan with extra oomph" look like a neanderthal's club. He does more harm to the united shinobi alliance than pretty much anyone not empowered by the juubi, and then gets curb stomped by Itachi, who needs to use deus ex machingan bullshit and author's fiat to do so. Between his phenomenal growth and struggle to find a meaningful individual identity, he could have been a more compelling hero than Naruto, as it was he was a better foil as a side character than Sasuke as a pseudo-protagonist.

The contrast between "Ninja should use their own power and will to grow and win against impossible odds." and "Dojutsu means you win always, forever" is so jarring. If you're going to let ninja cheat to curb-stomp difficult foes, let all the ninja do it, not just the ones with angst and special eyes. I don't expect Shino to be Taylor Hebert (which is a crossover fic I plan to write in the future) and every ninja to be a min-maxing, deceptive, magnificent bastard abusing the exploits in the world to achieve god-mode, but the rare occasions when they show the slightest bit of creativity (clone combo Rasengan, Shikamaru's everything, Shuriken on wires, water clone bait tactics, the real one is not among the clones/bodies), the ploys are stupidly obvious, something you'd expect from an 8-year-old civilian to come up with, not seasoned ninja.

There are tons of political decisions hinted at with potentially very deep motivation and subtle implementation, but that forethought never carries over to combat. Limiting tactical awareness to a few ninja picked to be special at birth kinda subverts the whole "Destiny is what we choose to make it" message that Naruto makes in EVERY. SINGLE. PLOT ARC.

Empowerment without mental growth or physical hardship is just wish fulfillment.

So with that in mind, I decided to give Sakura a shoulder ninja who wasn't selectively retarded, and show that a ninja doesn't need a bloodline, forbidden technique, or massive chakra reserves to win in the ninja world.

Consequences of Number Crunching: Spoilers: Konan, the origami angel of Ami, used her ultimate technique, the Paper Person of God in an attempt to kill Tobi. This technique is apparently the sequence detonation of 600 BILLION explosive tags.

Excrement.

To start, she ostensibly started making her stockpile of tags when Tobi first forced her and Nagato to form the Akatsuki, but even if she started making tags when she was BORN (with an age of 35 at her time of death and assuming she died the day before her birthday) this would require her to make a little more than 500 tags EVERY SECOND OF HER LIFE, to reach the 600,000,000,000 she claims to have when attempting to kill Tobi.

If you taught Naruto to make explosive tags, then had him make 1000 clones start mass producing the tags, taking 5 seconds to make a tag, it would take his army 95 years to make that many tags, assuming perfect logistics.

So either Konan is full of shit, or she has some means of mass producing explosives on the level of the Manhattan project (600 bn explosive tags is easily pushing hundreds of kilotons TNT eqiv.)

That said, for 600 billion tags to only last 10 minutes, she'd have to detonate 1 billion tags every second.

Are we sure Deidara is the explosives nut?

Future Ideas for stories:

Commodities Market: Rational!BTVS, Jesse gets turned by Darla in the pilot, but has a rational ethic that carries over to his vampire side, he fakes porphyria, gets home-schooled, and spends his nights bringing awful law to the streets of Sunnydale.

Leafcutter ants: Taylor Hebert wakes up post golden morning in Konoha, in a toddler's body, without her powers, replacing Shino Aburame . She becomes a ninja, and re-triggers with her original powers on her first C-rank. She promptly takes over the shinobi world, with optional Eldritch shipping chart.

Wands and Stones: Concept of Sticks and Stones ported to Harry Potter. After almost being kissed on the train at the beginning of PoA, Harry wakes up with a voice in his head, Horcrux-SI.

Ship of the Line: Honor and Duty; Xander goes dressed up as either a Space Marine or as Lord Castellan Ursarkar Creed and gets the Bucephalus (Also known as the Emperor's Great-Crusade Flagship) from the Astra Militarum of the Imperium of man. Snyder is a commissar. Hilarity Ensues.

Fate's Bitch: TTGL and DC comics. Simon the digger leaves his home after the final battle and ends up in the DC universe. Doctor Fate promptly has an aneurysm, because the tomorrow Fate sets out for us isn't the tomorrow we choose for ourselves.

Killa' Worm: KillLaKillxWorm: Scion and Eden land on a world that has been slated for consumption by life fibers. The entities object to someone else trying to eat their lunch. Strenuously. Starring Jack Slash as a Real American Hero. This story free to a good home

Non-Hellmouth Apoc: PsyrenxBTVS; Some of the Scoobies receive strange phone-calls from the future and are sucked into an apocalyptic wasteland that has nothing to do with the Hellmouth. Can they prevent this new apocalypse without abandoning their original doomsday McGuffin? Will not require knowledge of psyren's plot to enjoy the story (hopefully).

Militia of Zero: WormxFamiliar of Zero; After Golden morning, Miss Militia is cast into the ether when one of Doormaker's doors collapses with her partway through it. She is swept up in a familiar summoning ritual. This isn't the first time she's been dropped in a strange new culture following a traumatic experience. Beware a Gandalfr who can spawn weapons at will and isn't taking shit from anyone.

Administering Snakes: Post!GoldenMorning, Taylor wakes up on a world ruled by the Goa'uld, and is selected as a host for the local god, Khepri: gods, bet you can't kill just one.

Skitter Rising: Post!GoldenMorning , Taylor wakes up on the earth of Jupiter Rising, with QA restored to its initial specs, and is immediately mistaken for royalty because of her control of bees.

Addams Family Spring Cleaning: Not writing this, but begging someone else to: The Addams family gets a Lemarchand box, Hilarity ensues.

All According to plan: Totally not writing this either, but I would love if someone wrote a short story or oneshot WormxDeathnote crossover where Accord gets a Deathnote, just for the "All according to plan" jokes.

Wilkins Family Reunion: In DH, when Hermione sent her parents into hiding as Wendel and Monica Wilkins, she didn't pick the names out of a hat. Unintentionally, this put them on the radar of her distant Uncle Wilkins III, who isn't too busy as mayor of Sunnydale to reconnect with estranged family members.

Imperial Creed: 40kHighschoolDxD Sanguinius dies protecting the emperor, but his father manages to free his soul from his body in the hopes that Sanguinius can be reborn, unfortunately, Tzeentch tosses the primarch into the Tyrant Star to remove him from the galaxy. On his journey through the warp, Sanguinius learns a bit about the nature of Faith and ultimately wakes up on Holy Terra, but not a Terra he recognizes. Faced with multiple factions of xeno's ruling mankind from the shadows, the primarch continues his path as a guardian from mankind. Maybe Lorgar wasn't completely wrong with the Imperial Creed

I will post more ideas as they come to me, If one of them interests you, message me about it. If you have suggestions, message me. When Sticks and Stones is done, or far enough along, I'll host a poll to vote on my next story.