Yaaayy!
Thanks cuppiecake. And Achika for posting the update notice.
Scary health stuff has turned out to be ok. LadyCupcake, I have to tell you again, knowing someone was thinking of my story was a ray of sunlight in some very dark days. But everything's ok, and now it's back to life as usual. So - fingers crossed - I'll be posting more regularly! And the next chapter is one of my favorites! All naru/saku goodness! (Or rather, Katsuro/Sakura!)
I was enjoying artemisfireflame's Fool Me Once. It's kind of hard to buy Naruto's behavior, even though he was under a genjutsu. But she had Sakura's personality dead on, best I've ever seen in a fanfic, and the way the age peers relate to Sakura is also quite believably in character. I'm kind of sad artemisfireflame seems to have disappeared, I was eager to see how she resolved this.
I liked this story, as well. I was trying to figure out how she would resolve the conflict and mend Sakura/Naruto's relationship.... Guess she's still trying to resolve it too.
I liked the delicate, quasi sibling-esque relationship (lol, just makin' up words now!) with Shikamaru. I thought that was quite realistic: a relationship between a guy and a girl that blurs a lot of boundaries, but is always just shy of love for any host of reasons (not just the ninja ones!). It fits for those two in that story.
But to get to a happy ending, Naruto would have to overcome the betrayal of Kiba or others, the brutalization he's been subjected to by Sasuke, and his very committed realtionship with Hinata. Plus his own hard feelings about being duped by his friends, screwing over the one that loved him, and letting down the village.
Sakura would have to get over Shikamaru's 'betrayal' by withholding information, as well as the cold hard fact of Nartuto's relationship with Hinata, which apparently went much farther than theirs did. (Sleeping together, living together, engaged.) Plus personal feelings of failure for not killing Sasuke when she had the chance and not finding Naruto sooner.
Other than that, it's a really good story!
For the characters, those are bitter pills to swallow. And I was curious to see how she would resolve them. But now, I'm just curious as to whether life has pulled her away from finishing or if she has written herself into a corner. Hopefully she'll update at some point, but I hate to say that after this long I'm not expecting her to finish it. *sigh*
There was another story I liked a lot, a contemporary AU where Sakura was a forensic pathologist, Naruto was the boyish cop and Shikamaru was a dead drug dealer. Can't remember the name, but it was excellently written. But that one seems to be gone with the wind too....
