Title: Of the River and the Sea
Author: Aleycat4eva (FFN)
Rating: M
Genre: Humor/Adventure
Status: WIP
Fandom: Naruto
Pairings: None, so far
Summary: They called her lazy, apathetic, and amoral. They also said she was, by turns, too smart and too dumb. She liked to think she was funny. None of them were wrong. OC/Self Insert

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10996503/1/Of-the-River-and-the-Sea (main story)
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11217421/1/Songs-gone-Unsung (sidestory snippets)

Yet another one of the OC/SIs that came in the wake of DoS, this is actually one of my favourites because it's just so... different. It strikes me halfway between crack and serious drama because the narrative is so odd. It uses close third person-POV as opposed to the first person so common to these types of fics, and it's all the better for it.

Ryuishi, our SI, is born in the Village Hidden in the Mists in their red light district several decades prior to the events in canon. There's a bit of the usual sue-ish scares, she's got memories of the Naruto verse, is able to determine where she is, as she's wise beyond her years (natch), and she has a magical birthmark. The thing is, although all of the above are mentioned briefly by the characters around her they don't seem to be the main issue with her because... she's nuts.

And I don't mean 'hah hah look at what she did she's so clever!'-nuts, like she is batshit insane in a rather disturbing sense (apparently the reincarnation did things to her that don't quite mesh well with her psyche). But that's almost the entire enjoyment I get from this fic because the narrative works with it so well.

Ryuishi doesn't seem to be out to save the world, but she does have her pet characters whose lives she wants to improve. Special focus for the first arc of the story covers Zabuza and Kisame. Once she's old enough to be out and about she begins sneaking around and we start to see a few more of the canon cast.

Again, for me the main draw is mostly the characterisation of Ryuishi herself. She is crazy and she knows it. But again, it's not quite to the levels of so-crazy-it's-awesome-and-cool, but rather so-crazy-why-am-I-thinking-about-rabbits?... which makes it pretty awesome.

4/5 from me

As of this writing, the story is sitting around ~190k words with 44 chapters posted between January and June

 

As far as SI stories goes, it is one of the more entertaining ones. It is not going to win awards any time soon and in spirit it is a sprititual companion to Vapors rather than Dreaming of Sunshine, having a larger than life character doing some outrageous and insane things that she really shouldn't be able to do, gaining friendships/working relationships/alliances with certain canon characters much more so than Vapors ever did and yet, I never minded that it was unbelievable. It kept me entertained and invested. Grammar at times was iffy, a forgotten word here and there but English is a second language to the author and it did get better (or at least I noticed it less).

So, yeah, it is not really library material, not exactly, but it is an entertaining story and quite different from most SI stories. The protag is insane, and really damaged, psychologically and emotionally, but also charismatic, inventive and a larger than life person in a setting that doesn't really have someone like her, at least not yet.

I think, it would be easier to accept her deeds if one regards her as a Heroic Spirit in the making, with high ranks in Charisma and Luck, someone destined to be great, which is why you sorta run with it.

So, yeah, 4/5 from me as well. Most people here won't like it, so, I doubt it will ever join the library but it is a story worth reading if one likes the Naruto SI niche. It's a fun story.

 

Solid recommendation, although millage will probably vary. I abhor SIs generally but it works about as well as it can in this fic. References to her knowledge of the Naruto canon are relatively sparse and if you squint it feels more like a !reincarnation or !time travel setting. Either way, Ryuishi is an interesting enough character to over look the SI aspect.

It really helps that it starts in another village and her interactions with the main cast has been extremely limited so far. It's refreshingly original, lacking the standard canon rehash a lot of fics rely on, and there are enough threads in the works that keep you interested in the fic's direction. Definitely a good time waster.

 

Author is technically skilled. Story draws you in with a well created character and her interactions with the Naruto world. They've gone an interesting path in regards to how the protagonist makes their way in the world. I recommend it. 4/5.

 

4/5 from me. It's very entertaining and I'm actually enjoying that the author goes out of their way to help several characters instead of annoying me at how contrived it is. The update rate is a bonus.

 

It had a choppy beginning and I kept expecting it to get better... and it did, for a while anyway. I enjoyed the Shinobi War Arc. But I was just bored afterwards. There's a ton of exposition and not a lot of dialogue which breaks my immersion in a story (to its credit, the exposition is actually not bad but still...) and there are things here I kinda find hard to swallow.
For instance

Spoiler

The SI managing to create the most sophisticated and widespread spy-network all on her own.

I'm afraid that's Sue-territory and requires a suspension of belief I found myself incapable of. Still I could've overlooked that but it just got so boring. I kept waiting for the story to pick up pace and found myself skipping through a lot hoping to get to a point where things start getting fun again and eventually gave up at Chapter 34. Still it deserves credit for being out of the box and it was enjoyable for a while. 3/5.

 

Fucking hell. Have you reached such a level of desperation for stuff to read that you would rate this... thing, 4/5 and 5/5?

Jesus.

 

It's written better than your quest.

 

Which doesn't mean it's not shit, you realize.

 

3/5.

The writing is technically sound, but the protagonist is incoherent and wholly unsympathetic. I was kind of on board with the whole 'revolution' thing, though I was a bit leery of her stated intentions to enforce Western values on an alien world with its own culture and mores, because there's no way such a thing could ever backfire, right? Still, I figured the attempt would fail entertainingly, and maybe catalyze some character development in the process. Boy, was I wrong. Kiri burns, but nothing new arises from the ashes. There is no rebirth or renewal; Ryuishi succeeds in shattering the tenuous infrastructure (not a huge fan of the portrayal of Kirigakure no Sato; one of the great powers of the Elemental Countries should be a little more grand, despite its myriad horrors) that held that corner of the world together. She even manages to finagle herself a cult into the bargain, but all I could think of was how she'd just created a shitload of angry and unemployed nukenin who the now-homeless peasantry of Kiri, conned into burning down their own city, have to deal with. And so nothing really changes, despite her dramatic declarations about how she's doing this 'for the children' and how awful the previous regime was.

And after fleeing her teammates (who she never attempted to bring in on her plot, despite the fact that their reputations and martial prowess would've been invaluable if she were actually interested in creating anything, rather than moralizing and committing ill-considered acts of wanton destruction), where does she go? What does this self-appointed savior do? She gets piss drunk and contemplates suicide while bemoaning her own wretched state, even as the land she spent years killing and bleeding for slides ever further into chaos.

And after that? She gets into bed with Orochimaru. Goodbye, moral high ground. We hardly knew ye.

It gets worse from there.

Ryuishi is right when she says she's not a good person. She vacillates between sickeningly puerile moralism, remorseless manipulation, depression, egocentrism, narcissism, and a number of other unsavory character traits. The end result is an incomprehensible cocktail of selfish randomness, which is poorly explained by a few references in passing to multiple personalities. She is, in short, despicable. The world would be greatly improved if Zakuza had simply discarded his defective tool at the graduation ceremony alongside all his other classmates.

Read this only if you have time to kill and are the sort of person who can sustain themselves via spite and ire alone. If you can derive satisfaction from schadenfreude and have a spare monitor waiting in the wings for when you inevitably put your fist through the screen, this might be a decent way to waste your afternoon.

Also, what is with the fucking prostitutes? Why are there so damned many of them?

 

so as of this post the story is now 80 chapters and a whopping ~440k words.

just wondering how ppl think it holds up?

personally i still enjoy it. there are many moments where it seems the SI seems to have gotten involved in things way above her head on macro level, which is something of a sue-scare. on the other hand it has also been demonstrated that she is very much outclassed in terms of personal power and much of her 'strength' comes from the connections she has made.

best part (although it took almost to the ch70s to do so) is that the story has caught up to canon and now we get to see how much the butterfly flapping has affected

i maintain my 4/5 rating

 

Its well written and an entertaining plot.

However, the SI herself bothers me, because her personality is pretty much the manic pixie girl archetype. Manic pixie girls annoy the hell out of me, especially the people who act that way online because no one can sustain that sort of personality and maintain relationships irl.

Moreover, shes extraordinarily competent in such a wide variety of fields that make no sense. Her first life shes a drug dealing semi-hick who raises her younger sister and dies at like 20.

Her second life shes raised to be a whore, put into ninja school where all you do is fight, put into war where all she does is fight, and then after doing her thing she basically takes over the global economy by being smarter then everyone else. Where did she learn how to manage international trade (better then everyone else no less)? Where did she learn all of her economic strategies? Where did she learn how to manage an entire movement the way she does?

It doesn't make sense, and that combined with her personality annoys me quite a bit. Luckily, the story is actually written well enough that for the most part it doesnt bother me.

The latest chapters though, especially Kakashi talking to Gaara and co, is making it worse.

 

I've just finished reading this and I have to say it's not bad. Definitely has its flaws, but I enjoyed the different take on the typical Konoha SI fic. The SI herself is sort of groan worthy and the weird level of physical intimacy is a bit off putting. That being said I enjoy some of the interesting ideas the plot explores. The best thing this fic has though is its portrayal of Orochimaru. I really enjoy all the scenes that he's in and how much he isn't just a caricature villain.

I'd give this a 3.5/5 rounded up to 4.

 

I read a fair chunk of this and don't think it's very good at all. Almost every chapter has a good few paragraphs from another characters perspective (almost always male) about how amazing this girl is.

Frankly its masturbation in written form in the guise of a self insert in the Naruto fandom, made only more horrendous for just how out of touch with reality this person really is. Par for the course I suppose for most SI fics.

2/5 if only for the relatively unique plot and competent grammar.

 

Updated. I'm enjoying this fic more and more as all of Ryuishi's plans aren't surviving contact with the enemy. All of the non-Ryuishi POVs have been much more enjoyable, though that probably won't last much longer. Still, finally we are seeing her reveal more of her SI knowledge and the consequences there of.

 

I stopped reading the when her identity was out to Naruto and the others and have them act protectively of her was seriously annoying me. Naruto and his "I have to protect my big sister" bullshit was just pure killjoy.

Does that get better?

 

Eh, not really. Everyone who tries to be protective of her are completely incapable of doing so, which makes it likely worse. Also, with the semi-end of the most recent arc I have no idea where this fic is going to go next. It's possible we are near the end, but I could also see this fic being continued for a lot longer.

 

So somehow I managed to completely miss this fic existing and only just got up to date.

Wow. Absolutely loved it, smashing through all 554k words over the past three days and doing almost nothing else. Up there with Vapors from an enjoyment and how much it managed to immerse myself in the universe. There's something to be said about long fics that manage to avoid becoming a drag as they go on. Unlike most Naruto SIs (that aren't DoS or Vapors), it managed to complete avoid retreading the same steps and bring a completely new story full of plot components I've never seen in the Naruto fandom before.

As Nemrut said, this is more like Vapors than DoS. It's not about a person from our world try to get adapt to life in the Naruto world. It's really about a character, how she interacts with the people around her and how she sets off her ripples in the world.

The story starts off pretty stand off from Ryuishi, which simultaneously manages to be intriguing and also hard to get into. The present tense writing along with the completely unreliable narrative (in some case, coming back to scenes chapters later to give you a completely different perspective on what she wasactually thinking at the time) keeps the reader as a distant observer who can't really see into her head. It makes for a sort of vague, depressing atmosphere which sort of suits the fucked up culture of Mist.

In the very early chapters (first 5 or so), there are certainly some of the usual SI issues which are a bit off putting. The SI wanks too much of her skill from her previous life - survival skills, her apparent martial arts, etc. But as the story goes along, her real strength change to being a child of the Bloody Mist rather than her previous life.

After she leaves Mist, the story actually becomes a more intimate story and personal journey. It is usually of my big pet peeves when an SI character tries to change the world culturally like she did, but somehow it actually worked for me. Probably because it never goes into depth about all those changes, it doesn't try to necessarily portray her actions as "good", and because the story really isn't about that.

It's about a girl who is all alone in the world, has no one to trust. A girl who doesn't even seem to know what she is and what she wants, where death has fucked her brain up completely and she's psychotic. Caught between wanting to care for people, having some grand plan for changing the world, wanting to lash out with rage at the world, and just wanting someone to be close to. Instead of focusing on how she's building her power base, we see her desperately trying to reach out for affection while also being completely alone. It manages to keep the focus on her relationships, while simultaneously making her story a very lonely one.

The angst actually worked for me, because of the way it was written into the story. The narrative does a good job of getting that across her insane mind. A single scene can have her mind jump around so randomly from plotting, to raging, to pining for Kisame and Zabuza abruptly. It really gets across how close her fragile mind is to absolutely breaking, just being barely held together. Her angst comes across as less of intentional whining, and more of something beyond her control and along with just how lonely she is, I found myself genuinely feeling sympathetic rather than irritated.

The story also really manages to endear you to many of the characters that are really unrepentant douchebags, and it does that without trying to change their negative traits. Zabuza is still an absolutely psychopath. Kisame becomes a real dick. Orochimaru is just as twisted, and fucked up as ever. But you still feel the strong bonds to all three of them. And god, it's probably the only fic where I've genuinely cheered Orochimaru on as he interacted with his old team and sensei - a lot of his scenes were absolutely fantastic.

I think one of the real selling points of this story is its structure. Unlike most other SIs which kind of just wander through different arcs, there are clear build ups and climaxes that occur over long spans of the story. There are some fantastic, emotionally charged scenes that are built up from the early chapters (such as her reunions with Zabuza and Kisame). And so far, the Akatsuki plot has avoided becoming cheesy (like it became in Clarity).

The issues of this story mainly center around the fact that at times I think it did push too hard in her relationships with others. I loved her fun quasi-friendship with Kakashi early on - her initial fight with him, helping a drunk Kakashi home, saving him from hunter-nin, fake missions, etc - were great. But when she started regularly appearing in Konoha, I think it became a bit much. Similarly, her attempt at mothering Naruto and Gaara started off alright, but naturally evolved into this really cheesy game of "I have to protect aneue/nee-san" in the latter chapters.

But yeah, overall the way this story absolutely immersed me in it for 3 days makes me want to give it a 5/5, though I can't really say it's at that quality - there are a lot of issues and cheesiness that just mean I can't give it that rating. I'll give it a 4/5 but also say this has probably made the same impact on me as Vapors, and the characters will probably be something that stays with me for years.