Sounds a bit like The Harsh Truth.

 

The first line of that fic is wonderful.

I can already tell this is gonna be one hell of a ride.

Edit because holy fucking shit:

This segue. Oh my dear god this segue, he was talking about entering the academy and then Itachi blurts out of fucking nowhere that his Uncle fucking killed himself? Did a fucking sociopath write this? Goddamn. That's ignoring the grammatical issues and the misunderstanding of beats and tags in the dialogue.

 

Oh my.

What the fuck type of segue is that? I could barely get through the first chapter and, looking at the author, I can't say I'm surprised. I've never understood the appeal of Shadenight123's work and I've only been able to get into a select few because almost all of them are only barely readable and engage in angsty bullshit as if all anyone wants to read about is blood, guts, and dumbass sociopaths.

Has anyone come across anything recently published that's of decent readable quality? Doesn't have to be finished or long but something to rub the stain of what I just read from my eyes.

 

Remember that girl in high school you had a crush on? Who looked pretty average irl, but was the most beautiful babe ever in your mind? Pretty much the same forces at work here. I wish I'd never found this fic again.

 

To be fair, Shadenight123 has said himself that anything before Introverted is best ignored. It was written four years ago, and he's written a shit ton since then, so judging him by his earlier stuff is kinda meh, especially since he started writing to improve his English. I will admit he writes a lot of stuff I'm not a huge fan of (especially his SIs), but his appeal is hardly a mystery. He's a pretty decent writer.

 

Fair point. I haven't read any of his older work in a while so reading that just brought an immediate reaction. I've read a few of his stories, Introverted sticking out more than any other. Decent story but it completely rubbed me the wrong way and sullied my view of Shadeknight123 as a writer. But (I'm looking through some of his stories now) I can understand how his work could appeal to others.

Man, I need to go back through my library to see if any of the other older Naruto fics I loved ages ago are still as good as I remember. I feel as if it's gonna be a sobering experience.

 

Republic

Yeah so that comparison may not have been the most accurate, but what can I say, I'm a man of varied taste!

Hehe.

 

Shadenight123 is a weird one. Their stuff is obviously incredibly flawed, and even when I started reading it (I think I ran through Introverted first) I could tell that the combination of grammar, pacing and general angst overload, even by my teenage self's standards, were going to make it at best a 6/10. But, somehow, everything I read always had a hook that made it difficult to stop reading, no matter how stupid, no matter how incoherent the stories became. It also helped that a lot of the stories were finished, so I wasn't going to be forced to wait for any new chapters.

I think one of the stories had an interesting arc where Danzo was hardcore fucking with/manipulating Naruto by messing with his spouse in a way I thought was believable. Of course, it was kinda ruined by a pretty stupid plot about releasing the branch Hyuuga and starting a revolution. Introverted's Naruto was also something new to me, in that his introversion never really made for much of an advantage. In fact, it gave him a lot more to overcome, compared to your typical angsty edgelord Naruto. Hell , it made me want to see him succeed in spite of it. I don't know, for all the rampantly stupid ideas, there was always something that made it somewhat worth it to follow through.

Also, off-topic, but fuck Black Flames Dance In The Wind: Rise of Naruto, and fuck my young self for taking 20 chapters to realize how fucking terrible that story was.

 

^I've had my own Shadenignt experience. The title of the fic was Boy on the Team if I recall correctly. It replaced Sakura on Team 7 with what was essentially an OC. It also featured a paranoid Naruko, and a living Yondaime. Pretty AU. Like the above poster said though, the guy has a knack for keeping you hooked despite how aware you might be of all the glaring problems in the narrative. He'd frequently introduce plot points, forget them within a few chapters, drag conflicts out, only to get fatigued and bring them to abrupt stops. He even mentioned multiple times that he didn't really plan ahead at all. There's also the "humor" and his fetish for angst and insistence on lampshading it at the end of almost every chapter. Yet, despite all those things, a lot of the things he introduced were fresh and even entertaining sometimes. It also helped that he was updating almost daily at the time, chapters were fairly long, and the grammar was tolerable. But yeah, I'd still call it a guilty pleasure.

On the topic of fics I used to like, there was this really angsty one called the Ghost and the Darkness which I was absolutely enamored with at the time for some reason. Schizo-Naruto, Sasuke befriends him, aaaaaaaangsty. There was also Mouse of Konoha.... I'm a sucker for AUs.

 

Ghost and the Darkness was fairly well written and what angst there was got overshadowed by how Sasuke and Naruto's relationship played out. Really brought out the ruthless side of Sasuke, which was nice to see in a genin fic.

 

Hmm. I haven't read it in a long while. Since I was 12 I think, and most of what I can recall mainly concerns Naruto's disturbing mental state. Here's to hoping it's aged well and is as good as I thought it was back then.

 

Almost afraid to ask...a story where Kyuubi's the Spirit/Lord of Fire, and Naruto keeps turning off the gas everywhere? And the Hyuuga are really into Naruto? :3

 

I'm pretty sure it is this fic.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5128602/1/The-Incarnation-of-Fire

 

Hey, does anyone know of any good Shikamaru fanfics? I've read and loved Chiaroscuro.

Or well, any fanfic that tries to be rational and smart. Not HPMOR styled rationality.. Something like Santi's Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived. Or An Unfound Door by Joe.

Basically those fanfics have interesting settings and intelligent characters. I loved Chiaroscuro because it showed Shikamaru being genuinely smart but he was not OP.

 

Iirc, Shadow and Wind: New Legends had a really good Shikamaru who shared the spotlight with Naruto. It's been a while since I last read it, so I'm not too sure if it's anything near top-tier quality but I do remember it as being entertaining. At the very least, it'll take up some of your time as it's got 52 chapters (though I'm sure by now it's stopped updating).

 

You might like Troublesome Timing

But it's a time travel/reincarnation fic.
It was entertaining for me at least up until it went dormant.

 

I enjoyed Kagemane-complete as a guilty pleasure, flawed as it was, though likely nobody else on the site did. (I believe a mod at the time said he'd rather "Drink liquid shit than read about Shikamaru.") Take that as you will.

 

Do you have any other Shikamaru-centric fics to recommend? I'll actually like to read one, but the ones I've found (Kagamane-complete as well as Chiaroscuro) were pretty bad - the writing awkward, the characters wooden, and all that jazz.

 

Shadow and Wind: New Legends is awful. The author's idea of showing Shikamaru is smart is by making Naruto clinically retarded and comparing. Don't try to write smart characters if you're not smart enough to pull it off properly.

No, seriously, Naruto in that story has less braincells than a semi-obedient and barely trained chimpanzee. He's a danger to others and himself.