If you want a pure romance story, I'd recommend The Line, which was written by the same author as Devil's Advocate. It's a nice short story on the romance.

 

Gimme a few minutes on Hurricane Suite lol.

 

I've seen others jump on this one, so let me put on my hipster pants and drop a title you may not have heard of: Beast Wars by Copper Clouds

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9110983/1/Beast-Wars

Nah, it's not a Transformers crossover.

It's a story where Hiruzen doesn't dump Naruto into the general population and hope for the best.

Instead, he sends the newborn Naruto away to a tiny coastal town to live under an assumed identity with an ANBU agent posing as his father, teen Yamato playing the part of his big brother and a civilian they've brought in to pass herself off as his mother. It's a fantastic example of changing one thing and changing everything. The early going is slow but more than worth it to establish Naruto's new normal, and why he reacts so poorly to the revelation that he's a ninja pet project.

I've seen stories where he hates the Leaf, but this is the first time I've seen a Naruto who mistrusts the entire ninja system.

 

I tried Beast Wars before, it was a decent time waster, nothing more.

 

So when are we getting Breast Wars, the crossover in which Susan Bones, Hinata and Tsunade team up to fight evil?

 

Haven't you seen Boruto? Hinata lost hers in a tragic motorboating accident.

 

So I read what's been written of beast wars, and find Naruto to be wholly unsympathetic. A quarter of a million words of him running away and whining, completely impervious to the troubles of the world around him (except to bitch about ninja) while he laments his comparably good life.

Anything which willingly adds elements of "rationalism" immediately loses points, the authors are invariably less intelligent then they think they are, the plot elements added are always beyond boring, and for whatever reason the stories ALWAYS end up proselytizing the reader with modern political dogma. In a story about kids gutting each other to secure finances for their village, I have close to zero interest reading on the evils of guns. In a story with kids traveling above the speed of sound, I have close to zero interest reading about how effective a gun would be.

The story is long, drawn out and boring. 2/5.

 

I wouldn't call it a rationalist story by any means, and I avoid that particular brand of BS anyway. It doesn't bill itself that way, and a fair number of the characters act on petty grudges and emotional investment, which are treated as the actions of sub-humans in a lot of "rationalist" stories.

Sure, Naruto spends a fair bit of time acting like a whiny little brat because he is a whiny little brat. He's not even ten when the story jumps ahead to his new life in the fishing village. He's a kid. Kids are annoying. That's why I'm not having any. I am glad that condoms are cheaper than kids.

I thought he improved by leaps and bounds when he started growing up and growing into a more coherent philosophy than "ninjas are bad because they broke up my fake family."

I will say that a lot of his schtick is descended from a suspiciously modern line of thought. He is a bit of a weird one with the way he rails against the feudal system in an era of feudalism that should make it feel like business as usual, but even that satisfied me as a fairly sensible view to take when his own bitterness toward his broken family starts to gel with what he learns about the old world through the Wind Temple monks and what little Kurama is willing to dole out.

Besides, the original Naruto was guilty of saying the system of ninja butchery he was born into and an instrument of was horrible and wrong and needed to change. That's the gist of his talk with Nagato after Nagato dropped a chakra bomb on his loved ones. Naruto has always been a dreamer and an outlier who wants to change the world.

I can see how you came to your conclusions, but I never found them to be a very big deal. They're pretty minor things overall.

 

This. Absolutely fucking this. There is nothing more tiresome than reading about a dumb or normal person's idea of a smart person, because it almost always ends up as a parody - aping all the tropes of smartness (big words, arrogance, needlessly complex reasoning) without the actual clever thinking. And of course they can't do that, they don't know what the fuck it's like, and it's about as edifying to read these rationalist fics as it is to read a 13 year old teenage virgin's account of romance, or a sighted person's account of being blind.

 

I'll like a rational fic when the protagonists rationality matches that of the universes setting; given that every single rational fic ever written completely misses the point of the story, I'm not holding my breath.

 

The best rational fic i've ever read is He Who Fights Monsters. And the reason why it was so good was because the protagonist wasnt a smartass trying to sound like he's better then everyone else and point out all the plot holes in a decade long running manga or a book made for children by a lady who flunked her math tests.

It took away it's anime goofiness and weak isekai protagonist and made it more realistic while keeping the true plot of the story.

 

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13076923/1/Kurama-s-Day-Out

I fucking lol'ed.

 

I read through Myrmidon in the last couple of days and I've really enjoyed it. I vaguely remember HunterxHunter from a few years ago, and I could read through the story with a few visits to the wiki. I think it was brought up back when there were only 8 chapters posted, and the biggest knock back then was that there wasn't enough of plot development. It's now 22 chapters in and reaching the climax, and Ser Serendipity's woven some interesting bit of Naruto canon into the HunterxHunter World and set up a believable conflict for potential future arcs/sequels.

Spoiler

The shinju trees are present in multiple dimensions, including the HunterxHunter world

It's developed nicely and worth the read even if you haven't read HunterxHunter

 

Hunter x Hunter is great and you should definitely read or watch it before you read any HxH fanfiction. That being said I really enjoyed Myrmidon which surprised me since I was lukewarm on Not Sick. So if you like Ser Serendipity's other stuff or even if you don't and you've read HxH, Myrmidon is worth at least checking out.

 

Myrmidon is great, and I say this as someone who is not all that familiar with HxH. I've picked HxH up and quit reading again at least three times, but Ser Serendipity has done a fantastic job keeping me invested.

I'm especially keen on the little cultural differences, like Hinata noting that one of the HxH people pronounces "hello" as "hallo" to her ears and the way both sides are trying to puzzle out how each other's battle systems work with Nen and chakra.

 

It's been 4-5 months, but I wanted to check back in on what people thought about Tale of A Setting Sun. The author picked it back up and is updating at a regular rate. The characterization of Naruto leans towards NINO, but the author is really handling taking canon off the rails well. Naruto's been lacking in quality recently, and this is one of the better ones still updating.

 

I remember putting it down, but I can't remember why.
Could you perhaps give a resume in spoiler-tags of the first half of the story to refresh my memory?
Also, NINO?

 

<X>INO stands for <X> In Name Only, so NINO here is Naruto In Name Only.

For example, a fic where Naruto is a brooding edgelord that's constantly angsting about his family situation would be NINO, as nothing really of canon Naruto is in the character, it's just some guy the author made up and decided to call Naruto.

 

Ahh, thank you. I know the expression "in name only", but I haven't seen the abbreviation.
I'm gonna give the fic a try one of the coming days and leave my opinion here.