In case it isn't clear, that last paragraph is an obvious callback to Friendship is Optimal (with a little nose-thumbing). It's completely ridiculous, but it does make more sense if you've read that.

 

I get the feeling that kaleidoscope doesnt take itself seriously (I hope...).

Self inserts are usually put into one of two catagories - wish fulfillment or fucking shit.

Are they're actually any good male self inserts in fanfiction not named This Bites? Like at all?

 

Found a couple of good Naruto quests on SV:

Shed Skin - Orochimaru-centric

and

Spotted Cherry - Madara-in-Sakura, which is about as awesome as it sounds.

 

Is it legally self defense to kill someone who recommended a VFSNAKE fic to me?

If you want to understand stuff wrong with non-si fanfiction. That's you're guy. Fucking hell

 

Found this fic which is pretty good. Sakura as Kyuubi jinchuuriki, abandoned in 2012 but 100k words.

Dead Garden

 

Out of curiosity, what are DLP's thoughts on "rational" Naruto fanfics like the Waves Arisen or Lighting Up the Dark. I know in particular not a lot of people here are fans of HPMOR. Wondering if that translated over to this fandom as well

 

To be fair, you have to have very high IQ to understand rational fics.

All joking aside, I vaguely remember enjoying a Sakura-centric fic at one point that purported to be "rational". That said, I generally dislike the label "rational" - as if to imply that your characters behave in a more rational way than they do in canon, or in other fics. While a "rational" fic can be good (obviously), the label itself is a bit of a red flag for me.

 

I'm assuming that was In Fire Forged. It's the only "rational" Naruto fic I could ever get into.

 

Well the reason I ask, is I tentatively recommend Need to Be Stronger. It is a "rational" fic, and seems to take inspiration from HPMOR, which is a bit of a red flag. It does have issues, mostly that Naruto is an asshole, and also rather OOC. But, on the flip side, it has interesting combat scenes, and a solid amount of world building. The pace is slow, but the author has started to re-update on a consistent basis, and the plot is original.

 

In Fire Forged is really good. For the people who mistrust Sakura-centric fics, don't worry; it's more of a Team 7 fic, in truth.

In any case, does anyone have a good recent fic to recommend? The fandom feels dead.

 

Illimitable - The Child of the Sannin
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11123130/1/Illimitable-The-Child-of-the-Sannin
For me, it's the best fic in fandom. The protagonist is very powerful but has foes to match. Most times he wins by outsmarting his opponents, which is great. Fights and science-based approach to jutsu is also amazing.

 

In Fire Forged is excellent but I have to ask, how is that a rational fic? I mean, it was actually good, had characters, an actual story and interesting interactions. What made it "rational"?

 

I think there are two kinds of rationalist fics. There's the hard sort (e.g. HPMOR), where the story is basically a vehicle for exploring rationalist/Less Wrong ideas - and if done badly, as it often is, it just comes off as the author doing some intellectual masturbation and trying to show off how smart they are.

In the soft sort of rationalist fics, however, in whose ranks I count In Fire Forged, it's simply an attempt to iron out the logical flaws in the original story. So, you get stuff like fixing logical inconsistencies in the plot, or changing key story mechanisms (e.g. the magic system) to make it less arbitrary. Characters also tend to get fleshed out with more believable motivations; they are also made "rational", not in the self-parodying Yudkowskian sense, but in the basic means-end common sense way - characters do X or Y to achieve their goal Z, rather than doing stuff just because the plot demands. Thematically, these soft rationalist fics also seem to tend towards exploring political or deeper moral and philosophical questions, sometimes surprisingly well (e.g. Animorph's The Reckoning).

The latter kind of fics tend to make good stories, I think, for obvious reasons; they're also often not written by the self-identified less wrongian type rationalists, who are otherwise too busy with stuffing in their rationalist ideas, at the expense of good writing.

 

Uhh, I hate to break it to you, but all that "soft rationalist" stuff you mention? That's just the fundamentals of quality writing. I'm not sure where the rationalist part actually fits into that.

 

It's true that it's basically just good writing, but it does seem to me that the "fixing plotholes" and "ironing out logical flaws" part takes centre-stage in soft rationalist fics - it's kinda the express purpose, as opposed to other fics where the central concern is perhaps some idea or premise (e.g. Naruto goes back in time) and any fixing of plotholes and the like is incidental.

In general, I would agree that there's no hard and fast division.

 

So if you write a story, not with the intention to actually write a good story but with the intention of sticking it to the original author by "fixing" all the "problems", that's rational writing?

I dunno man, changing thinks one didn't like with the original content has been something fanfiction in general has been doing for as long as fanfiction has been around. Only few people were as pompous or douchy as to proclaim themselves as rational for doing so, which really doesn't endear the whole thing to me or am I misunderstanding something?

 

The author did share the story on /r/rational before they shared it anywhere else and said that one of the main features of the story was a:

So that's enough for me to call it a "rational" fic.

I can see why people don't like the rational label, since it might imply that other stories aren't rational and are therefore inferior but I've never seen it that way.

 

Actually the r/rational subreddit has a pretty good summary on the difference between rational and rationalist fics: