started thinking about @rockthesham’s ninja swap party au and then i couldn’t stop thinking about it

(Please ignore the remnants of the DA watermark, it is my character but the original picture was lost so i had to use the one from deviantart, which had a watermark on)

So this would be my first time, however I would like a review of my OC please?

(A/N things are subject to change even after this, but not stray too far from this) (and i used this template for filling out, but changed a bit here and there and took out information i felt wasn’t necessary at the moment)

Name (last, first): Tokage (トカゲ meaning Lizard) Chiharu (千春 meaning one thousand springs) Nickname(s): Haru. Age: 12 in part 1, 16 in part 2 Species: Human Gender: Female Sexual Orientation: Straight Birthday: March 1st Body Type/Looks: slightly larger than average build, wider hips and bossom (when she’s older). Height: 160cm in part 1, 170cm in part 2 and after Weight: 55kg in part 1, around 70 in part 2, fluctuates between mission types due to eating.

————————————————– Life Story: Chiharu is part of an old clan specializing in lizards. At the time she was born the clan leader was a fanatic, obsessed with perfection, and she would dispose of any imperfect children born in the clan. However she was not heartless, and let the children live, hidden away deep within a basement, telling the parents their children had been still born. Chiharu had been one such child, born from another ‘imperfect’ child, the clan leader’s own daughter Tokage Ichigo. The clan leader led the Clan only because she was the oldest, in reality she was part of one of the branch families, closest to the main family.

Her first years were spent in the basement, along with other ‘imperfections’. Her mother had been expelled in secret from the clan, and came to rescue her one night along with the other children. She lived with her mother for another 2 years until Chiharu was 5, when Ichigo was attacked during the night. Chiharu were turned to the orphanage, and her assigned guardian had been Hatake Kakashi, who was just 19 at the time. Ichigo had considered him a good and close friend, and thought the responsibility would be good for him. Kakashi felt burdened by the responsibility, and wanted to have as little as possible to do with the young girl. Never the less, he visited her a few times between missions, still wanting to check up on her.

Chiharu tried hard to impress the young man, who she began calling father when she was 6 years old, due to her understanding of what a father was. Kakashi ordered her to not call him dad in the beginning, but begrudgingly came to realize the young girl was set. It caused him to visit her far less, which just prompted the young girl to try even harder. She began training with old ninja weapons she found around, trying to make them stick to the trees surrounding the orphanage.

Kakashi still didn’t pay her too much attention, until she started at the academy. On her first day he came home late from a mission, just before nightfall, only to find her sitting outside the gates of the school. Her excuse was that all the other kids, as far as she could tell, had been picked up by their parents and taken home. Kakashi brought her home to the orphanage that day, and promised her to at least take her home whenever he could from school. 5 months into her first year, she moved into his house.

She became a Genin at age 12, along with the rest of her team, also consisting of orphans of Imperfect children, Hana and Kisara Tokage. She participated in the Chunin exams along with Naruto and the rest, making it to the third round where she defeated a ‘proper’ Genin from the Tokage clan. Her teammate Hana passed, while Kisara failed. But both Hana and Chiharu opted out of the third round, not feeling good about possibly going up against the likes of Neji, Sasuke and Gaara, all whom they had a certain level of fear of after seeing their elimination fights.

After Sasuke left the village, Chiharu was not personally affected seeing as how she didn’t know they boy very well. She began training her jutsu, trying to develop her own or change the ones she knew. She began going into Water Manipulation jutsus, and became quite skilled. Due to her reputation with Water based jutsu, and news of her developing a jutsu to create water out of seemingly thin air, she helped out Suna during a time of drought. Her first escort from the Konoha to Suna was with Gaara and two other ninjas. It created tension as Chiharu still remembered how he acted during the Chunin exams. But she did her best to not show fear towards him and be civil.

Tension was created by her and the two Chunin ninja. Chiharu was still unable to sleep without a light on at night, and had a lamp with her on the trip. The two could not sleep properly with the light flickering most of the night, and on the second night they demanded that Chiharu had the lamp unlit during the night which she promptly refused. When night fell the two approached the lamp, which woke Chiharu up. Before any conflict ensued Gaara defused it by saying he’d make Chiharu a tent out of sand, blocking the light from the two others. They agreed to this and went back to their sleeping bags. Chiharu requested that the ‘tent’ would have at least one hole, facing away from the two others. Gaara allowed this and the rest of the mission went smoothly.

Chiharu offered her services to Suna as often as she could, using the time to train her ability and maximizing the amount of chakra converted to water.

She was present in Suna for one such mission at the time of Gaara’s kidnapping, but did not know about it until he was returned home. After he was returned home she fretted about him, though not directly as she wasn’t allowed close to him at all times, and vented her concerns to Temari. ——————————————- Personality: Chiharu is cheerful and loud. She doesn’t stand out in personality as much as others do, but she tries to remain cheerful as much as possible. One example is if her arm’s cut off and she’ll Good Habit(s): Bad Habit(s): Due to her treatment and label of ‘imperfect’ Chiharu has problems with people commenting on her appearance in negative ways, mostly when it’s about her hair. Like(s): cooking, sweets, meat, singing. Dislike(s): sour candy, extremely hot days and dry climates. Hobbies: She likes cooking, mostly coming from the fact that Kakashi didn’t have time to cook with his missions, and so she made him dinner every day she came home from the academy. Fear(s): Dark, closed small rooms, the scent of vanilla. Strength(s): She can convert her chakra into water, allowing her to survive longer when not near water. Weakness(es): She can only do Genjutsu when she’s lying still, and only one kind using moist in the air to create a mirage. Special Powers/Abilities: She can convert chakra to water and keep hydrated in dry climates, this drains her of chakra quicker in dry climates (she gets over this the more she stays in the desert, as she’s not been outside of the land of fire when she was little.) Extras: ———————————————– Ambition/Life-long Dream: ridding the main part clan of the ridiculous standards of perfection. Occupation/Job: She a ninja specializing in assassination due to her water control. Best Class(es): Ninjutsu Worst Class(es): Genjutsu Family and Friends Parent(s): Ichigo and Takashi Tokage. (She calls Kakashi dad, but is 100% aware that they’re not related) Sibling(s): None of direct blood, a half-sister from his father’s side named Aki (written as 秋 meaning Autumn) Relative(s): the Tokage clans main and closest sister branch.

Also two daughters Ai and Hikari, One with Gaara as the father and another with the son of a clan branch leader. Pet(s): lizards Momo and Koko. Best Friend(s): Hana (deceased) and Kisara when she was younger, Temari once she starts to hang around Suna and Gaara, mostly because Temari was protective of Gaara, and therefore kept close to Chiharu to begin with. Friend(s): most of the Konoha Genin, with varying degrees of friendship. Crush(es): like many girls in Konoha Chiharu had an unexplained crush on Sasuke when she went to the academy, which disappeared as he began changing into his more power hungry self. After many escorts and much time spent together in Suna, Chiharu starts having feelings for Gaara, but doesn’t know how react to them properly, and therefore expresses them by being clingy and over the top (Gaara ends up confessing first) Rival(s): Yet to be named Tokage clan member Enemies: those who oppose Konoha and Suna. ——————————————————– Birth Village: the Tokage clan village. Current Village:  Konoha in part 1 and 2, Suna when she grows up. Rank: Jõnin. Ninja Status [missing-nin, medical-nin, etc.]: Regular Ninja Are you in the Akatsuki?: No. Teammates: Hana and Kisara Tokage in part 1, two male Tokage clan members in part 2. Sensei: Yet to be named Tokage clan member, both part 1 and 2

—————————————————— Chakra Element: Water. Learned Jutsu [jutsu you learned from the Academy or from other people]: Shadow clone and transformation jutsu. Personal Jutsu [jutsu that you have created on your own]: Water Evaporation, Control, Absorption, Repulsion and Extraction jutsu. Strength in Jutsu: see below Ninjutsu [ninja techniques]: 7/10. Genjutsu [illusion techniques]: 1/10. Taijutsu [martial arts techniques]:5 /10. Kekkei Genkai [bloodline traits]: (I have yet to decide on whether she should have a Kekkei Genkai)/10. Doujutsu [eye techniques]: 0 (does not have one)/10. Kinjutsu [forbidden techniques]: 0/10 Fuuinjutsu [sealing techniques]: 1/10 Strength in Missions: see below Accuracy: /10 Weaponry: 3/10 Stealth: 7/10 Speed: 9/10 Traps: 0/10 Tracking: 2/10 Chakra Control: 8/10 Analytical Skills: 1/10 Strategy: 5/10 Leadership: 3/10

———————————————————————— Clan: Tokage. Clan History:  the Tokage clan is a large clan, mostly consisting of Non-shinobi. They mostly keep to themselves and not many are social with outsiders. They are not a hostile clan, but do not wish to interfere with outsider politics. This way of living appeared once they saw how different clan interacted, finding the fighting unnecessary. They retrieved to their own villages and kept to themselves. Over time the leaders of the clan became obsessed with the idea of Perfection the perfect looks. And from that time they cultivated and bred on the most beautiful clan members, while any little imperfections were promptly expelled and proclaimed still born to their waiting parents. Then turned over to various orphanages.

This way many clan members are spread all over the world, some without knowledge of the clan’s existence. Clan Status: Alive and blooming, works more like a people at this point in time. Kekkei Genkai: (yet to be decided)

I like the start of her history – it’s a cool and twisted concept, the idea of disposing of imperfect children. Reminds me of the Vikings and Romans leaving unwanted children to die in the wilderness. How did Chiharu’s mother know where she and the other children were though to rescue her? I like that you kept Kakashi’s awkward personality in mind and that he wouldn’t warm to her immediately. How did Kakashi and Ichigo know each other though?

The need for her guardian’s approval is a good impetus for her to get stronger too, especially with Kakashi acting contrary to it.

What exactly made Kakashi change his mind about taking her to school and letting her stay at his house? Was it peer pressure from Gai/Asuma/Kurenai maybe? Or did she remind him of Rin? I think there should be an internal reason Kakashi suddenly changed his attitude towards her in the space of five months.

I like that you mentioned her apathy towards Sasuke leaving; not everyone was affected by it after all.

The act of using Water Jutsus without a readily available source is considered one of the highest demonstrations of ninja skills there is – the fact that Tobirama Senju could do it proved to many that he should be Hokage. How did Chiharu come to master this skill enough to even help with a drought in a Sand Country? I doubt she could have reached that level without training under a ninja with a Water Jutsu speciality at least.

I think Chiharu having to sleep with a light on would have been stamped out of her very quickly during her academy/genin days – to have a light on all through the night would signal one’s position to any passing enemies and so would put the whole team in danger. You might have to think of another way to have Chiharu and Gaara get closer.

Just a note, but Genjutsu doesn’t rely on moisture or anything like that; it’s a psychic illusion, or a form of hypnosis depending on whom you ask. Do you mean Bunshin technique? So Water Clones?

How exactly would her water control help her specialise in assassination?

Maybe don’t make her be clingy and over the top to Gaara? I expect his reaction to that would be to push her away rather than fall in love with her more, considering that it was only recently that he received any form of physical human contact or positive emotional reactions to himself.

I would lower her Speed a bit – you didn’t show any particular focus in her description to her being known for her speed. A 9/10 is almost on the level of the Yellow Flash or Shisui Uchiha.

 Definitely a good start :)

-Mod Ida

dreamers: don’t die

I know you think none of this matters anymore. You don’t even care so much to abide by sentence structure. The newest version of the new you could give two shits about what the Oxford comma even is. You don’t write to attain a grade anymore. You don’t write to get into college anymore. You write because……...

Dot. Dot. Dot ...still thinking, uploading, pending, synching. The world you once believed in, the audience still waiting on the last time you gave serious, genuine, interested, effort into your skill...

But something always causes the pen to stop writing before it actually intended on stopping. Suddenly the fingers stop typing at the keyboard...

You look up to kiss him goodnight (you realize he’s filling up his water bottle to head to bed), & so you shrug silently to yourself, “oh, this isn’t anything big I’m working on anyway right now, I can pause this and put it away.” NBD! Easy! 

Dot. Dot. Dot. 

The laptop closes and we don’t even recognize the severity of the moment. Such a subtle, little... moment, right?

My dad, born in 1953, believed in a lifelong dream of getting a Corvette. He got it when I was like 5. I’d sit in the back and stare up at the Wisconsin stars and think “I’m gonna chase my dreams like this one day, and never stop driving.” I’m 24, he hasn’t driven it regularly since I was 9. 

One day that garage door closed for the last time that he’d ever take that red corvette out, before giving up on remembering why he’d made it such a life goal in the first place...

And suddenly years and years later, so many pauses, so many put away ideas, brainstorming lists, and even frickin potential tweets and instagram captions fill up nothing but receipt space in your Notes app (a habit kept like my mom’s iconic giant black purse, all too familiar: like a landfill of thin crumpled papers, dollars, and big break ideas, always meant to go somewhere someday, right?).

Ideas are only dangerous if you feed them. House them. Watch them age, and help them develop into actions. As an artist, but really as an overthinker; it’s a game within your own creative intellect to balance the test of modern revolutions and trends & the analytical application of methods classically proven to work. We must not think we have to choose one or the other, but learn how to derive new opinions, ideas, and experiments by utilizing both thought-habits to new, peaceful third productive outcome to remain open minded to perspectives of people with much different life experiences and lives, different reality lenses than our own. 

Three dots that wait to continue the conversation, as eager as a new college grad awaits the dialog after sending a cover letter. The art of a cover letter? Is that really an art? I find well crafted writing with any purpose other than for the passion that letters themselves inspired one to pursue opportunity, to be a mockery of language itself. Do not exploit my talent, do not disrespect my education, for you have no idea what I’ve learned behind the closed doors of my personal life and interests, of things beyond what the ACT scans for. I might have read AP Chemistry in 5th grade, I might have read my father’s divorce journal during the military, you have no academic acclaim in my eye to judge the motivation behind why I type what I type. What I say and why I say so is something I’m still discovering myself, but I question the validity of my talent, of my career, every day that I realize I don’t have a stupid Bachelor’s Degree Paper saying that I majored in English and also sucked up to the professor’s particular philosophy. I’ve read more books in my lifetime than days I’ve spent in school. I’m not lying. I’m 24, one year out of college, one year a resident in the city of Angels: dying. Dying of Apathy. The same criminal that tried to take me when I tasted a life of comfort.

You need more than ambition now. Now, more than ever, you need to focus. To stop picking up your phone to see if he viewed your story, even if you’re alone in a foreign world and don’t know a single soul who understands your context. You can’t drop the mask now and visit Aunt Linda after church at Starbucks. You can’t force smiles anymore to strangers, trying to convince other people why you moved here with a dream. But why not? You can’t force strangers, you can’t force friends, you can’t force family to believe in you if you’ve chosen to stop believing in yourself. So cheesy, those words must have come from someone from Wisconsin. Regardless, reality.

The months fly by like EXPO tickets at a busy restaurant, once they’re gone they’re forgotten. 

So many months, so many days, so many interactions with strangers on the street. Things we don’t think about. It’s been a year, what the fuck have I accomplished? I haven’t even written a Goddamn thing on a computer since I worked at ESPN. When my voice felt validated. I could have stayed. How many nights do I wake up jerking, imagining the best case scenario of an unrealistic positive scenario of the other side of the crossroads we faced when we were only a little bit younger? But I chose to move from Wisconsin to California. I believed in myself when I bought that flight, when I wobbly-handed my debit card to the TJ Maxx cashier for that suitcase, the one suitcase I moved here with. Flyin’ solo sounds more glamorous in quote form. It was really lonely. But day by day things can really, really; really improve. 

Those restaurant tickets are forgotten. We take shots at the end of the night with both BOH and FOH together, completely forgetting about that side of chipotle ranch for that lemon lady that was never ran. We move on in life and don’t care about the little details that occur around us as we take in the information overload called being alive. 

But among those tickets, among those many little random tickets, big, small, we know the clock out feeling still leaves us smiling, wondering why even if work was hectic, it was worth it. It was and is always worth coming back again, even when we have slow nights. Just kinda like how, even if we haven’t gotten verified on Instagram or Twitter, we still kinda like life in LA.

Tickets fly by like days, weeks, months, even years lived in Los Angeles, and I don’t fast forward through those moments as I previously had. I used to guilt trip myself for not being “critically acclaimed” whatever the fuck that means, yet if I were to forever focus on that rubric as the sole way to define my sense of self, I’d land up where my brain of creative fire fears most: apathy. Not caring. Not having emotion. Make excuses to replace the thoughts of guilt, the thoughts that comfort me into affirmation that my negligence, my lack of work ethic, my dwindling inspiration that was once the sturdy backbone I had as my secret weapon during the fight.

Those tickets don’t matter. A side of ketchup you forgot to run a few days ago that you just remembered doesn’t matter. But the concept of tickets not mattering ever is just as common and dangerous a mistake to make as getting caught up in labels, titles, and details. 

The days I’ve been in Los Angeles, I haven’t acted in feature films, modeled free outfits on Melrose, made out with Halsey backstage, or had some magical unrealistic moment where someone wants to read my poetry or script ideas drunkenly on the patio at Berkshire House. At the end of the shift, the restaurant tickets don’t matter, right? Or do they?

At the end of the day, the time I spent in LA without getting a self affirming job doesn’t matter, right? All this time I have spent living in LA with strangers and paying rent that seems so expensive, is it a waste of my life? These days in LA that pass by without me making my “big break” are a fucking waste of time, right? Or are they? 

But,

Did you learn Street names? Freeway names? Did coffee shop faces begin to become recognizable by name? What about your favorite parking spot at work? What about when the Uber app recognizes your patterns and little favorite spots? Do you have a coworker you vent to about all the BS banter from certain regular customers? What about the checkout lady at the grocery store where you get your favorite coffee creamer? Has the weight of meaning of seeing a familiar friends’ handwriting on a postcard carried its weight a little differently? All these little things, all those little tickets at work, never seem to matter in the moment, but at the end of the day, at the end of our shift: they’re what makes us feel at home. Habits are what makes the difference between what feels like a house and what feels like a home. 

You’ve made what was just a house, now a home. Through habit. Through noticing.

Although Apathy is a real phase we all sometimes experience in life due to comfort and lack of change, apathy doesn’t have to corner us into self imposing a giant change upon our lives, forcing us to lose something we love. We can fight these fits of apathy, of self doubt, of questioning everything, by …

Dot Dot Dot...

Does anyone have an answer?

My answer to Apathy, to a dead soul, to feelings of  “why hasn't anyone noticed what I’m capable of yet?” is that the answer never mattered to a dumb self conceited question to begin with. 

Remember those tickets. Remember those days. Remember those that laughed at your jokes, asked to take pictures with you, invited you to parties, or smiled at you with a sense of familiar relief when you punched into work. People have been noticing you. Have you been noticing them?