Title: Dreamcatcher
Author: Airyo
Rating: T
Genre: Drama/Romance
Status: Complete
Words: 76,317
Pairings: Hinata H./Itachi U.
Summary: Nothing about Itachi, she realized uncomfortably, was ever by accident...Nothing about Hinata, he realized with exasperation, could ever be considered normal. Drabble-esque.
Link: ffn ao3

I found this story recently while binging on Naruto fanfiction, and discovered that I actually quite liked it. It's a really cute AU set in a world where Hinata fails the genin exam and never becomes a ninja. Oh, and Itachi never killed his clan, but that's a much more common AU event than the other thing.

I think the best part about the story is definitely Hinata's characterization. She's a tough character for most fanfiction authors to capture correctly, and often ends up as a sort of shallow background prop playing second fiddle to Naruto. The author in this story did a great job at creating a character that is both quietly competent yet full of self-doubt. The Hinata in this story isn't the exact same as the one you see in canon (due to a difference in circumstance), but yet she is still very recognizable as being the same character.

Another point in the fic's favor, in my opinion, is the relatively good worldbuilding that this AU has. There aren't that many key differences from canon, but those differences have consequences and explanations. Minor AU details that you might have overlooked in the beginning end up being relevant later on in the plot. It wasn't until I was nearly finished with the story that I started noticing how everything tied together, and that moment was really when I started appreciating the effort the author must have put into the plot.

In terms of rating, the story started as a 4/5, pretty good, type of story to me. But I think it got better as a read on, and I would be comfortable bumping it up to a 4.5/5 after finishing it.

Also, one minor quirk. The author's writing style in this story is very short and episodic. On fanfiction.net, the fic has a enormous 105 chapters, but the entire work is only approximately 75k words. The AO3 version has condensed those 105 small chapters into 15 separate "chapter arcs", which in my opinion are a much closer equivalent to what most stories would call a "chapter". So if you're turned off by the fact that there are a million and a half chapters on FFN, know that the real number of chapters is much more like fifteen.

 

Well, it's certainly an unusual pairing though it's not the first time I've encountered. This one was a damn sight better at least.

Hinata becoming a member of the Branch House is nothing unusual but I've never encountered a version where she never actually became a genin. She's a believable evolution of her canon character where, despite her circumstances making it easy for her to be a lame ass character, I didn't mind reading about her at all.

Her "genjutsu sensitivity" was a more original idea than you usually see. And I was surprised by how the plot became a lot more complex than expected, tying into that ability, when I figured that it was just a device to get the ball rolling on this romance.

On the negative side, I felt like the story dragged on longer than I'd like and the early childhood meeting between Itachi and Hinata felt like some contrived, rom-com scenario.

Ultimately, I enjoyed it but I doubt I'll read it again in the future either.

3.5/5 rounded up.