Naruto....Naruto is an idiot, but he isn't dumb. He's perfectly capable of understanding things and solving problems, he just has a very narroow drive, and, oddly, a bit of a slackerish attitude. He'd rather learn the things that actually interest him, instead of the things others say are necessary knowledge. His interests just lie in the more physical and practical.

Nor does he really tend to actually try and focus any of his mental energy towards things, at least not when they aren't serious. He's not one for overtly complicated explanations, either, preferring simple.

Really, that's Naruto in a nutshell. Direct, simple and drastically uncomplicated, he just wants himself and everyone around him to have a good time.

I find it refreshing, because overcomplicatings is a real problem the world tends to have. It only get's grating when his personality, and idiocy are flanderized and exaggerated for comedy.

 

The problem is, this happened pretty constantly. His idiocy was frequently used for comedic relief. Often along with the equally egregious AbusiveTsundere!Sakura, or FaintingWallflower!Hinata.

I mean, one moment that stands out, at least to me, is when he's first returning to Konoha.

Sakura, his major crush, the girl he wants so bad, someone he hasn't seen in years BLUSHES, looks down and away, runs a finger over her face in a cute/nervous gesture, and asks him in a softer, gentler voice than she almost ever uses on him, if she looks more womanly.

But Idiot!Naruto just misses all those HUGE BLARING SIGNS from the supposed girl of his dreams and says she looks just like she did before, totally missing the way she was flirting with him BLATANTLY.

Of course, we now know this is because Kishi always intended to troll all NaruSaku fans, but he still uses the Retard!Naruto plot device to do it in this instance.

Seen through the lens of his long-running 'joke', the scene makes more sense: It adds NaruSaku tension for the fans, but also damages it a bit by making Naruto fuck it up horribly.

I've always wanted to write a long oneshot about Naruto, who is supposed to be intuitive and understand people well, actually getting the signals she's sending and answering at least semi smartly.

 

I'd have been totally okay with Naruto always being annoyed at the over-complicated way Kakashi (or any of his teachers) went about explaining things. If he was just a simple, no-nonsense, get to the point type of guy. That is refreshing. 'I don't care about the 'whys' just tell me what to do!'tebayo' etc.

As WD said, the way Japanese tend to go massive OTT (virtually slapstick) in their humour though always got to me. Naruto is no different.

Eventually, it made me stop watching/ reading - though the DBZ fight scenes played a bigger part if I'm honest.

 

At times he shows hints of being perceptive and cunning. There are plenty of practical areas where he should be... more. The disheartening part is that he was continuously developing as a character, growing with every single story arc, throughout pre-timeskip. Compare how he was in Wave Country to how he was at the Valley of the End. Night and day.

I get what you're trying to say and if he treat Naruto as being very heavily skewed towards being a kinesthetic learner then we can explain away a good bit of it.

However, lazy or slackerish he is not. It's stated that he worked hard in school but just wasn't any damn good at it. That's a HUGE part of why Hinata likes him (that he'd fail consistently but never give up -- did you think she was referring to his efforts to make friends?) and it plays a role in his Heroic BSOD moment where he meets Minato.

 

Guys. This isn't the Naruto thread. It's the Quality Naruto fics thread. Let's not derail more D8

Reading A Political Perspective atm. Good so far, if not spectacular just yet. I'm rather fond of how it skips parts that we all know how they would go.

 

This feels like a slight knockoff of Eilyfe's T7A fic. So many ideas are the same it's not even funny. On the other hand, the fic's well written. It reads well.

 

I probably didn't get far enough to see much of substance, but as far as I got there was little that I hadn't read before and this didn't really do anything new with it.

 

Like I said, nothing too spectacular, but it's a decent time waster if you've got nothing else to read.

 

On that note, Silver Queen, the author of Dreaming of Sunshine, has a number of such fics in her favourites list if you're looking for more. Her faves mainly consist of a bunch of SIs (some are decent), some close to unreadable stuff, some good time wasters, and a small number of gems.

 

SI. I fucking hate SI fics. Don't ever reccomend them to me, for I will hit you. In the kidneys. With a bat. Not a wooden bat, but a live bat. And it will bite.

 

The thing I hate the most:

Lets take the obviously powerful Naruto, have him get to a different dimension/reality/universe, but lets have him have amnesia forgetting everything and lets also have him loose all of his power then for fun lets change his looks and name. And then somewhere down the line lets have all these things cause problems for him even though he has no idea why or how, but still get blamed for it.


But SI is annoying too.

 

I don't think I've ever read a story like that

 

I've read several stories along similar lines. It's not exactly uncommon for someone to write a fic about some random other shounen series, make a complete OC, slap the name Naruto on it, and call it a Naruto crossover. It's a rather aggravating bait and switch.

 

Yeah, think that sort of Naruto is especially prevalent with Marvel and Fairy Tail crossovers, but should be with other fandoms as well. Never really finished one such story as that Naruto always grates on my nerves.

 

Can anyone recommend any decent post-series stories? Preferably with Naruto as the main character. Won't mind AUs either.

 

Soo, since there haven't been any rec's for a while, here's one that I enjoyed. I'd say it's high Almost Recommended quality.

(It's been a long while since I read it, so bear with me if it's not quite what I remember.)


It's a well enough written time travel fic that goes way off the canon rails. There are some rather extreme, though certainly interesting, plot points that take many major players out of the game and leave everyone else scrambling. There are times when the fic suffers from following too many characters at once (especially minor characters that no one gives half a shit about) but those parts can be skimmed/skipped easily enough. The story puts many characters in unique positions and I really like the scenes that explore what characters like Itachi and Nagato do with a second chance and the scenes that focus on what all of the (remaining) characters do in the wake of nearly complete disaster.

 

The next best thing after a self-insert is a time-travel fic! Failed Reset does have quite a unique plot too. Honestly though, that summary was one of the funniest I've read and I was hoping the story would have more comedy (before I read the categories of tragedy and adventure). I feel that the story didn't live up to its own summary.

Minor spoiler.

Spoiler

Itachi's mental breakdown lasted about half a chapter? I didn't think it was going to be good to read, but I was disappointed. He was introduced and then his problem solved almost immediately. Kakashi's probably won't be any better.

I'm a third of the way through and overall, I like how it's living up to its premise of everyone getting screwed over. I am, though, skimming a couple of minor characters. I want to see where things go from here.

 

Swear I've read Failed Reset before and it was firmly in a "Eh... Its... okay." territory but let me try again...

Ah yes I did read it. The one where Konoha turns to obsidian for... some reason.

And that's right I dropped it shortly afterward since the story couldnt keep a hold on me. The move to

Spoiler

Suna and all that entails was interesting and then it promptly lost all of my interest. Sorry but watching Tobi farting around gathering akatsuki 2.0 was entirely too boring.

The story does put a lot of canon characters into different places but dear god there's a thing called story bloat. I found many instances where I asked myself "And I should care about this person... why?"

Not my cup of tea.


Personally: Also I know this might be something that makes sense in storytelling but really? Okay so you kill off a majority of the cast, great we can narrow the focus on to a small cast of char- AAAAAAANd you immediately it expand with a bunch of people I dont care about.
Sigh.

 

Here's a story that caught my eye for while not itachi-centric has a interesting take on his character in Chapter 3 "Duty". Whether the rest of the Fic is good i leave up to you.


Fragments of a God -

The Tailed Beasts are not demons or constructs of Chakra, they are the remaining fragments of a God. The largest fragment, Kurama, has no desire to live within a glorified drain pipe inside of a bratty shinobi's gut. Escape may be impossible, for now, but if the Kyuubi must live in a cage, it may as well be a gilded one. How will Naruto fare with a piece of a God advising him?
Naruto - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Spiritual - Chapters: 6 - Words: 31,918 - Reviews: 82 - Favs: 241 - Follows: 316 - Updated: Jan 22 - Published: Jun 8, 2014 - Naruto U., Kyuubi/Kurama

Link - https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10433439/1/Fragments-of-a-God

 

It'd been forever since I read it, so I was basing my rec on some of the scenes that stuck with me. And really, reading it again, there were several parts that were pretty awesome.

But yeah, I agree with your point. I skipped a significant portion of the fic because I just didn't care about many of the characters. The story could have been so much better if the author had just focused on a few different people and had Tobi's bullshit occur off screen. Hell, I think a major reason I enjoyed it is because I skipped so many of those parts.