Smiter

UPDATE: The backup was successful, and I will be closing H&E on Wednesday morning (UK time) to make sure everything is saved.

If all goes to plan, H&E will be reopened by Friday/Saturday this week!

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This is to give you all a heads up, so you know exactly what is happening.

Our webhost has decided to close its doors and shut down operations.  This means that H&E will have to quickly find a new host in order to stay online.

Unfortunately, there was no warning until they sent out the e-mail notice, and they have already removed some access to the servers.  Right now, I am backing up everything as quickly as I can, and hopefully we will be able to transfer everything to a new server.

I've already got a new server lined up, and I plan to make the move as quickly as possible this week.  It's possible that H&E may be offline for a day or two while we wait for the domain name to point to the right place.

I'm sorry about this sudden drama, but it's out of my control, and I will do my best to make sure that we are back up and running as soon as possible!

Hang in there, everyone.

I'm glad to hear that he's walking away from Naruto now.  It's a real shame that he butchered his own story and threw nearly 15 years of his hard work out of the window with that ending, but at least we can all now find closure and move on.  Hopefully, the Boruto movie will also be the last we see of the New Era Project.

We do have an awesome NS community, so here's to fanon!  Better than canon!

If you want to see a new emoji added to our collection on H&E, you can make a request by posting it here. 

Not everything will be picked, but we admins and mods will try to include any emojis we find really interesting!

Thanks for reading, and we look forward to your submissions! 

Thanks for reading, everyone. 

I'm sorry that I've been slow with replying, my life has been very busy in the past months due to personal and professional reasons!  But - fingers crossed - hopefully it will be easing up now, and I can gradually spend more time on H&E to read your posts and try to help make it a better site for you all. 

The kitten filter was inspired by the official forums for a game I like to play; Guild Wars 2!  They are the original creators of the kitten filter, and it was designed to help defuse tensions and make people laugh.     We know that sometimes you feel like you just need to let your frustrations out, so the filter enables you to just swear away in your original post, then replace all the bad words with "kitten" so that you don't get in mod trouble or put off people who don't want to read excessive profanity.  Besides, readers can just use their imaginations to substitute the kittens with bad words if they so wish. 

I know that some of you are concerned about not being able to publicly swear, but we do need to try and keep a friendly atmosphere in this place.  After all, we are a public forum.

Hanabi suggested replacing kitten with Naruto phrases such as shannaro and dattebayo, which I think is a great idea.     Maybe we can periodically change the words in the filter to keep things fresh?

By now, you may have noticed the kittens flying all over H&E.  
 
For some time, the mods and I have been concerned about the increasing amount of bad language, and we have decided to take some action.
 
I know that it's painful and frustrating for everyone to see that Kishimoto is twisting the characters, story, and the very essence of the manga in order to try and justify the ending and the New Era Project.  We do understand what everyone is going through (after all, we're feeling the same way that you are), and we do truly feel that Kishimoto, Shonen Jump, and Studio Pierrot do deserve to be criticised for their questionable decisions.
 
But continually swearing about it is only going to damage the reputation of our community.  We need to try and keep H&E as an oasis of calm, what with all those other Naruto sites losing their heads.  Foul-mouthed posts will only drive away Naruto/NaruSaku fans who just want to find a peaceful place in the chaotic Naruto fandom.
 
When the ending happened, we let a lot of profanity slide, because we knew that everyone was shocked and upset at what had happened.  But, as incredible as it seems, it has now been 6 months since Kishimoto's complete twist ending.  So it's time to rebuild our site and work towards making H&E better than ever!
 
Over the coming weeks/months, we will be working hard to make this community even better, and forge closer ties with the NaruSaku community at large!
 
As part of this drive, we will be stricter on language.  Not only will we be deploying kittens, we mods will also be cracking down!  Any posts that contain excessive profanity, or any attempts to get around the language filter - such as posting images that contain profanity - will be deemed warn-worthy.  Posts may also be hidden or deleted, and enough warnings will result in a temporary ban.
 
Again, we are doing this not to punish people, but to try and make H&E a welcoming place to visitors, and it will be part of a whole bunch of improvements I hope to make.    
 
Thank you for reading!

My Steam backlog says hello. 

It's a lethal combination of big game sales and not enough free time.  Maybe I'll be able to make a small dent in the backlog when I go on holiday...

There is one Wii game I never finished, and still regret.  It's Skyward Sword.  The game is fantastic, and I got all the way up to the final boss fight... and stopped.  I'm a fit guy, but cutting down endless waves of minions is bloody exhausting, especially when you're trying to relax after a busy day.

I might be wrong, but I thought that the Yellow & Pink festival was a fan-hosted event, and not an official SJ event?

I've been staying out of Naruto news since last Christmas for obvious reasons, so I'm really out of date on what's been happening.      How is Sakura's novel confirmed NaruSaku?  I'd have thought that Shonen Jump and Studio Pierrot wouldn't do anything to promote NaruSaku, since they went to all that trouble to pretend it never happened.

I do hope that the Japanese NaruSaku community do have something happening, it would be a pity if the manga ending and New Era Project destroyed their enthusiasm for NaruSaku fanworks.

I don't regret being a Naruto fan, and I definitely don't regret being a NaruSaku fan.

NaruSaku is still a strong ship for me, as it represents my view of a healthy, loving relationship.    I loved how their bond developed over the course of the manga, their dynamic, and how they both gave everything to protect and inspire each other.  There really was proper mutual build-up between them and, like Phantom_999 said, it was significant enough that Studio Pierrot had to retcon the story to hell with the Last Movie and Kishimoto kept having to answer questions on why NaruSaku never happened.  Kishimoto kept contradicting himself and what the manga showed as well.

While I think the ending is a bunch of bullcrap, I still care about the story and characters leading up to it.  Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke really deserved better endings, and the ending should have been all about Naruto Uzumaki.  We should have seen him finally have his love for Sakura reciprocated in kind, and we should have seen him receive a hero's welcome upon returning to Konoha... and eventually the very moment that Naruto was crowned Hokage with his friends watching with pride.

It was Naruto Uzumaki's story, and Kishimoto lost sight of that.  I just hope he fully realises what he's done and is feeling bad about it.

I hope you have a refreshing break, and that you return full of energy. 

Thank you for writing that fic!  It's a shame that you may not write any more NaruSaku, but I hope that you will be able to drop by here now and then. 

Kishimoto may have royally screwed up and burnt his bridges with the fans who cared about the story and characters, but I will never regret shipping NaruSaku and creating H&E, and I hope we can still be an active community for a long while. 

Best of luck, and may our paths cross again someday so that we can catch up on stories!

Thanks for bumping the topic, Trix. 
 
Voting is now closed, and I can announce the winners!  But first, I want to thank everyone who entered the contest.  It was really nice to read all these stories, and I'm sure many others have enjoyed reading them as well. 
 
Thank you to everyone who voted as well!
 
Without further ado, the winners are...

Congratulations to the winners!    Each of you will receive 3 months subscription of Crunchyroll, or an equivalent value in anime/manga merchandise (subject to posting fees)!

While we are voting on the fanfiction entries for our 10th Anniversary Contest (go read and vote if you haven't done so already!), I am also announcing an extension to the fanart contest!

Unfortunately, so far we have had only one entry to the fanart contest (thank you very much for entering, Saku-chan!), and we need more entries before we can dole out the prizes!  So, please get your pens and pencils out and draw something for the chance to win a Crunchyroll subscription or some anime/manga loot!

You can draw pretty much anything involving both Naruto and Sakura, and AU is fine.  You can check out the contest page for a list of suggested subjects, or you can create your own alternative ending for Naruto and Sakura!

The new deadline is now 11:59pm GMT on Sunday the 29th of March!

Go on, draw something and show it to us in the Contest Gallery! 

Thank you all for reading, and I look forward to seeing your art!

I've been hearing some people asking about where H&E is headed, now that the manga is finished.  The ending took everyone by surprise, to say the least, and it's still an extremely controversial topic for the entire Naruto fandom.

First of all, I would like to say that Heaven & Earth will always remain as a NaruSaku shipping site!

H&E was created by passionate NaruSaku fans, and it has always had a strong NS community that has posted lots of great topics, fanarts and fanfics!  I know that some of us still care very much about Naruto and Sakura, and we still care about the Naruto characters and story before the whole New Era storm hit.  We've built up a really strong identity as a fandom here, and we risk losing that if we change.

So, that is why H&E will not switch to shipping any other pairings or fandoms.  There are - or will be - other websites and communities that focus on those, both from Naruto and the New Era. 

I would like to plan a new direction for H&E; a focus on fanworks and the community!  It would be great to have a new positive direction that everyone can enjoy, no matter what happens with the official Naruto and New Era franchise.    That way, we can continue to enjoy talking and posting new stuff!

If you'd all like to see H&E putting out lots of new content for you all to enjoy, you can help with ideas and feedback!  Please post what you would like to see from H&E, such as ideas for contests and challenges, new topics, new forums and so on!  Two ideas I can think of would be drabble challenges and a possible Alternative Endings forum.

Thanks for reading, and I'd really like to hear your thoughts. 

Smitter I will give a million likes to your post if I could. EPIC post nothing but the solid truth. The sad part is I think Kishimoto knows very well he screwed up big time but he doesn't care. He only cares that he has lots and lots of money. And with the new era project he's going to get more money.

Thanks, Graven. 

Yeah, I agree.  I just hope that one day Kishimoto will regret what he did to his story in the end, if he doesn't already.  He could have been fondly remembered for the Naruto series, but a lot of people are now going to think of him as a fraud and sell-out.

It's sad to think that Naruto could well end within the year with its deeply unpopular "Part 3".  There was no need to tack on a Part 3 with a different "hero", and the series has completely lost its focus on Naruto Uzumaki.  It was supposed to be HIS story.  It was supposed to be the story of a lonely boy who grew up to become the hero of the village and fulfilled his dream of becoming Hokage, as well as winning the heart of the girl he really loved (hint, she has pink hair).

It's just sad to think that the whole thing could fizzle out within the year because of plummeting ratings and the fans leaving in droves.  It would be nice to think that the whole disaster could cause Kishimoto and Shonen Jump to reconsider their actions, but they just seem to be completely focused on trying to paper over the cracks instead of addressing what really went wrong.  They keep committing such terrible screw-ups with the fans, that I feel those poor people in their PR department will have an aneurysm or something.  I fear that they will just end up cancelling the series and leaving it in such a mess.

Junko Takeuchi is the only person to walk out of the wreckage with her head held high, because she has been nothing but honest and tactful.  She deserves huge respect for not peddling the same crap we've been hearing from Kishimoto, Shonen Jump and Studio Pierrot.

I think that kishi intended NH to happen, but accidentally developed narusaku instead. Then, in the last volume, realized his mistake and tried very hard to develop NH And SS..
but failed..

 
Sorry, but I have to disagree strongly with you on this.
 
It's not possible to develop something "accidentally" for FIFTEEN YEARS.
 
When Sakura was first introduced in Chapter 3, Naruto said that she was the girl he really liked.  Later in that chapter, while disguised as Sasuke, he understood why he really liked Sakura.  She was the same as him when it came to her desire to be acknowledged.
 
As we go through Part One of the manga, we see more and more of Naruto's feelings towards Sakura.  He drew extra strength in his fight against Gaara because he saw Sakura as his most precious person, and he never stopped fighting until Sasuke told him Sakura was safe.
 
Sakura also grew closer to Naruto as Part One went on, as she cast aside each of her prejudices towards him.  By the end of Part One, she had gone from seeing Naruto as an annoyance, to seeing him as the person she trusts the most in the world.
 
In Part Two, Naruto is still in love with Sakura, and we begin to see Sakura develop feelings for him that go beyond friendship.  The databook at the time said that Sakura's heart beats faster around Naruto, but she hasn't understood her own feelings yet.  We even get to see other characters like Yamato hint that Sakura has strong feelings towards Naruto that are more than platonic.  Naruto even reaffirms his love for Sakura when he tells Sai that he can't confess to her because he hasn't kept his Promise of a Lifetime.
 
Those are not the actions of a guy who sees a girl as a trophy in a "rivalry game".
 
When Sakura confessed to Naruto, Kishimoto said in an interview at the time that "Sakura's confession was honest".  If we understand it right, she was telling the truth when she spoke of how Naruto made her feel.  You can see it right in her body language and expressions.  The only time she lied was right at the end when she claimed to feel nothing at all for Sasuke.  Sakura's feelings were still in conflict between Naruto and Sasuke, and she is not the kind of girl to cut someone off just like that.  That's why Naruto told Sakura to stop lying to herself, because he knew she wouldn't just cast off Sasuke like that.
 
After that, we continued to see development between Naruto and Sakura as they grew closer and their dynamic became stronger.  Naruto even tells his own father that Sakura is his girlfriend, and he was NOT joking.  Why would he joke about that to his own father in the middle of a war?
 
Not once in the entire manga did Naruto show romantic feelings towards Hinata.  Not once in the entire manga did Sasuke show romantic feelings towards Sakura.  There were NO hints that both boys would fall for those respective girls.
 
Like Gravenimage said, Kishimoto had plenty of chances to develop NaruHina and SasuSaku romantically over 15 years.  He didn't do that until the very last two chapters.  Instead, he developed NaruSaku.
 
Kishimoto knew full well what he was doing.  You cannot call it a red herring, because he never bothered to develop NaruHina in a romantic sense.
 
The ending was so sudden and so badly written that the majority of the fanbase was shocked and angry.  In Japan, ratings for The Last movie and the Naruto anime have plunged.  Studio Pierrot are most likely losing money.  I've even heard that Studio Pierrot have introduced fillers in the anime RIGHT BEFORE Sakura was due to kiss Naruto in the CPR scene, in an attempt to downplay its impact.
 
Shameless, huh?

They had to retcon the manga to death in order to make NaruHina look "realistic", and they haven't even explained how SasuSaku happened asides from saying that Sakura would be a "terrible girl" for moving on from someone who didn't love her.
 
Even Naruto's VA, Junko Takeuchi, is disappointed and angry.  She was a fan of the manga and had read it for over 10 years, and she is a well known NaruSasu/NaruSaku fan.  Since the manga is published in her native Japanese, she understands every meaning of the dialogue in the manga, every nuance.
 
There's no accident here.  Kishimoto was forced to change the ending or sold out.