While fanfiction has been a vice of mine for about eight years now, this is the first time I've really sat down and written a fanfiction piece, Pink Clouds. I've written a fair bit of regular fiction work, but that's obviously not going on this site, and since this piece is a bit more risque than my normal ones, I'd prefer to keep the anonymity. I am female, have a background in philosophy and anthropology, and have traveled rather extensively, mostly between America, Russia, and Europe.

Pink Clouds

Yes, I did draw the cover myself, though long before the idea for Pink Clouds came along. Then, it just seemed to fit.

Some of Pink Clouds is inspired by the Anita Blake series (a pretty decent urban fantasy novel), and some simply by a sense of outrage that for hundreds of polygamy and harem fics out there, there is only a square dozen or so of good reverse-harem or polyandry fanfiction pieces. Even less of those that approach the subject somewhat seriously and not just as a silly smutfest where the heroine ends up choosing one person anyways. Not that this won't be a smutfest- I'm just hoping that it will be a rather more thought-out one. It will eventually address some questions of the ethics of love, sexuality, and the imaginary politics of the ninja world.

Reasons for choosing the Naruto world? Simple.

First, Akatsuki seem to come as a perfect pre-made bundle of strong, attractive men with individual yet cohesive personalities and a good interpersonal dynamic. I didn't particularly want to deal with the whole subject of male jealousy and egos, at least not for this fic- I'd rather the men already know how to share and work together, no matter how unrealistic it seems. Suspend your disbelief if you must. There are enough regular harem fics that do the same thing. The focus here will be on Sakura coming to terms with her own sexuality and desires, as well as the morality of being an outlaw. SPOILER: later on Kakashi will join, and you will get a bit of the male perspective on this business.

Second, the Naruto universe very conveniently has a large collection of incredibly attractive, appealing men, who in turn have excellent basic personalities that can easily be re-interpreted. It has so many of these great characters, in fact, that very often I have been dissatisfied with a fanfiction heroine/hero ending up with only one of them. Call me greedy, but that's just how I feel. And especially in the ninja world, the ratio of men to women is quite heavy on the former, so it makes more sense to have a lot of men pursuing one kunoichi. I don't imagine many of them are attracted to weak civilian women who can't even follow most of their movements, who could be crushed with an accidental chakra enhancement. At least, our heroes don't.

Finally- this whole ninja world is great, and has numerous parallels to our current world (especially the heavily-militarized America). As a philosophy and anthropology major, I can't wait to play around with this imaginary world, see what conclusions about our own I can draw from it.