Chunnin Exam Day - Comments Thread (spoliers)

[K sai]

As per 'Da Boss' request I'm putting my comment on the latest chapter of this really bizzare yet compelling fanfic in a thread of it's own...
The latest chapter takes all of the complaints everyone was having a lot of fun with i.e. Super! Naruto is boring...
...and turning them all on it's head.
I cannot recall the last time i read a story where the author spent 12 chapters building their character up to be super and then turned around and not only sent them back past square one but so far into the negatives that they were worse off than what they started with...
...I'm sure he's going to build Naruto back into a powerhouse but for the meanwhile...
owouch... And somehow I don't think repeating the same thing over and over is going to work again, esp. as physically the char is now owned and that can't be improved on due to the resets and the fox is out of the picture for now...
Its definitely a twist I didn't see coming. Usually when the fox enhances N authors go on about how much better that makes him. This reaction is much more scientifically plausible... How would you cope stuck in a new body?

[CattyNebulart]

I keep hoping that the fox is actually responsible for these resets. Afterall they are causing Naruto to go psycho (enough so to scare gaara...)and resulted in Naruto weakening the seal.
The fox sumbitting to Naruto kinda throws of that theory but maybe he's playing Possum to get Naruto to pull more of the seal away several thousand iterations from now?
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Herr Bad Moon]

Well, my complaint wasn't so much that he was getting super powerful, that was bound to happen as the resets gave him huge amounts of knowledge, but the fact that Naruto was an utter ass. I simply stopped caring about him and actively wished he'd die in a fire. And I really haven't seen anything in his attitude that's changed with what happened. Same giant douchbag, but now he just has to do everything all over again, which is kinda funny I guess but not worth having to sit through his smarmy attitude for.---------------
-Jon
Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)
The population density of Wyoming is very low, but that doesn't mean the people there aren't also out to kill you.
---
Jon
"And that must have caused my dad's brain to break in half, replaced by a purely mechanical engine of revenge!"

[drakensis]

He was being an ass (in part at least) because nothing he did had consequences.
Now something that he did has had consequences that stuck with him. How that affects him will be interesting.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Necratoid]

I'm thinking its a deconstruction. This is how a person in a endless loop acts eventually. Like a complete jerk. All in all this Naruto switched ninja theories completely early on. He went from chaos fly by the seat of your pants and ride the fallout, to extremely methodical, to the point of ridiculiousness, change one detail and study the results of the little changes method. That is a major change.
To put it another way, Naruto went from Chaotic Good to Lawful Evil. Which is why he does things like trade techs... even though he knows the other person gets it for all of a day at most. He technically IS giving them a fair deal in the context of the soon to end splinter timeline. Its technically not his fault they don't remember things that happened in previous/simotanious splinter timelines, he did technically honour their deal and give a fair trade. Technically.
In truth Naruto accomplishes more, long term, by doing random acts of stupid than the slow methodical method. It is also is making him get bery, very rigid in his thought paterns. I mean he spent how long trying to kill Pedosnake? He is rather like a horse with blinders on in this respect. He methodically tries to accomplish the hardest goal (Main quest) first and ignores all the sidequests he is logically suppose to use as stepping stones.
For instance, when he could have aimed for lesser goals like killing off Kabuto. In the long term this means that Pedosnake will die outside of combat. Pathetically. As will the bone bloodline guy. Not that Naruto actually knows about that. Another goal is to dispose/corrupt of the sound ninja team. This would make Pedosnake have to pick other, more combat valuable pieces from his army, to get the sacrofices to take down the Hokage. Again not that he knows this.
He could try sicking Gaara on the Snake Sennin. Which would screw up his plans badly. As would exposing the death of the kazekage. As would taking out any of pedosnakes support structure for the invasion... like stopping the Sound ninjas from summoning the giant snakes with a clone wave, lanched in the forest right in the begining of the exam. Stealth kill a few of those groups and stop the giant summons that can break the village walls... and the largest part of the invasion into the heart of the village fails. Naruto could take out the bulk of the Sound forces with the skills he had before removing the seal.
No, this Naruto is currently made of failure. He is seeing everything as a duel with Pedosnake and ignoring the rest of Leaf as useless poorly programmed NPCs. The kind that blindly spend most of the battle running into a single wall. For a guy who wants to rule an army of ninja he is just blind to the fact they exist, most of the time. Its those blinders. He keeps playing this like a chess player that only moves his queen around and wonders what happened? I mean how did the rest of his board get so empty? And why is his king in checkmate? He was moving his queen around to kill off that other queen.
Even his relationship with his person loyal pet, Hinata, is that of a PC with a stupid, but amusing, animal side kick. Basically, they shot his dog. Rather than explain the situation he literally turns his teammates into lugage instead of getting them to help him in his goals. He is missing the point of being a chunin, he is trying to solo a party quest. He is concentrating a peon and wondering where the peasant mob came from, or at least where all these pitch fork perferating him came from and why his hair is on fire.
The Author of this tale is rather clever in his deconstruction. He writes it like a normal uber-X in a timelines story... and makes their Uberness out of total fail. This Naruto doesn't need more power.... he need a surgical procedure known as cranial rectal deinsertion.
Also, I think this time loop is actually an answer to and age old question: What happens when an irresistable force meets and immovable object... Time implodes in protest.

[Bob Schroeck]

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As per 'Da Boss' request

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Waaugh.

-- Bob
---------
I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere....

[Epsilon]

My objection really had nothing to do with Naruto at all. It was the fact that the fic had descended into blatent Sasuke bashing that annoyed me.
I mean, we get the part where Naruto was basically having Sasuke get repeatedly castrated for his own amusement. This rminds me too much of this other forum I no longer frequent because the people there have serious character-hate issue, to the point of conveniently forgeting or rewriting facts from the series to justify their obsessive hate-on for the guy. This fanfic included this.
I mean, Sasuke in the canon already knew about Gaara. he had met the guy. He knew he was dangerous, and comments about this. Yes he is eager to fight Gaara but he's not stupid and doens't go out of his way to fight him. Heck, if Sasuke is so gung-ho about finding and defeating people that are stronger than him why doesn't he make a bee-line for Rock Lee. Rock Lee literally beat him in a straight up fight. So the author rewrites Sasuke's (and Kakashi) so that he is an annoying idiot.
Sorry, instant fail for me these days. If you can't find something you like about a character you are writing then stop writing about that character, period.
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Epsilon

[Shepherd]

Ooh, a thread just for CED. Nice.
In answer to Herr Bad Moon's contention that Naruto is being an ass, how is this different from Bill Murray in Groundhog Day? Bill Murray started the film being an ass and spent half the film being an even bigger ass. It wasn't until he'd glutted himself on his own assery that he finally came to understand how unfulfilling his life was, and moulded himself into a better man.
As to Necratoid's list of things that Naruto should be doing, but isn't, I answer that he cannot do any of them. He has NEVER gotten past the Forest of Death. He cannot stop the invasion until the day of the invasion, and he cannot get to the day of the invasion until passing the second test, and until the most recent reset he did not know how to pass the second test (do nothing useful while your team does all the work). He tried everything he could think of to either fight or avoid Orochimaru, but nothing worked. The only way to get past Orochimaru is to let him bite Sasuke, and doing that ALWAYS kills Sasuke, no matter how much Naruto tries to save him.
Why doesn't Naruto disrupt Orochimaru's plans by killing Kabuto? Because he doesn't know that Kabuto works for Orochimaru.
Why doesn't Naruto disrupt Orochimaru's plans by killing the Sound team? Because he doesn't know that they work for Orochimaru.
Why doesn't he expose the death of the Kazekage? Because he doesn't know about the death of the Kazekage. All he knows is that on the final day of the exam, he saw Orochimaru fighting the Hokage on the roof of a building. Naruto has no reason to directly link Orochimaru to either the Sand village or the Sound village. All he can infer is that they're all allies in the invasion.
Why doesn't Naruto get help? He has repeatedly tried. Nobody ever believes him, and he winds up wasting an entire day putting up with their BS without gaining any benefit."Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM ofthe Rings XXXV
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"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV

[Epsilon]

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In answer to Herr Bad Moon's contention that Naruto is being an ass, how is this different from Bill Murray in Groundhog Day?

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Because Bill Murray started out Groundhog Day as an ass and the story was about his redemption as a human being. Naruto started out the series as an okay human being, and the story so far is about him becoming an ass.
Reader are far more inclined to forgive a character who starts out bad and goes good then a character who starts out good and goes bad, even if they are later planned to go good. While it isn't personal there is a visceral feeling of betrayl when a previously heroic character turns into an asshole. Professional wrestling calls this a "heel turn" and there is a reason some of the most reviled characters in the industry started out as heroes and then turned on their allies.
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Epsilon

[zojojojo]

the thing is, at this (fairly early) point in the Naruto story, he has no allies, really. sakura thinks he's annoying, sasuke thinks he's an idiot, the rest of the rookies think he's an idiot, all the adults (with a few exceptions) think he's a demon, and the sandaime and iruka think he's a kid.
he's tried making changes on his own and gotten nowhere. he's tried getting help and gotten nowhere. he's tried his best and gotten nowhere. and, lest we forget, he's 11 (or is it 13? can't remember)! i think him going a little nuts with taking his frustrations out on his (not at all helpful, and slightly abusive) teammates is forgivable, especially since, in his eyes, the damage is pretty temporary...
quite frankly, the most amazing thing about the whole naruto story is that the kid isn't an ass...
maybe, to him, at this point, it's all one huge prank (even if it being played on him)
-Z, Post-reader at Medium
----
If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.
-Z, Post-reader at Medium
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If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

[Necratoid]

While I agree that things that are written specifically to hose one charicter are often beyond annoying, I point to the resent cannon Naruto Manga... where Sakura has proven she can actually fight now. So instead of having her stand around uselessly... she gets knocked out from a shockwave at the start of the fight (though this is used to make us hate Psy more) and later shows up only after they kill the guy their fighting... only to send her to another fight that is over once she got there. Hosing a character to prove the awesome of another is a part of the cannon in Naruto. For instance, Tenten seems to exist for the purpose of introducing Temari as awesome in the rigged qualifier exame... that and filling a slot on Team Guy.
That aside, how is Kakashi shown to be bad? Keep in mind this story is done from the perspective of a madman. One who jumps to conclusions. Conclusions like Ryoga Hibiki of drugs would make.
All I can think of that Kakashi does onscreen outside the norm is run Naruto through after he literally distracted Sasuke with extreme prejudice while epicly cheering someone on as they killed Sasuke, his teammate. Naruto deserved more than he go for that. What else Kakashi does, that we can confirm, is give Sasuke a few scrolls. Which Sasuke doesn't master and leaves around partically learned or not gotten to.
To justify this Naruto hating Sasuke he starts making things up to justify the level of hate he wants. For instance, he decides that he could have learned many of these moves in less than a week preorginal run though of this month. To justify this logic he had to figure in that this involved doing nothing else for the week... repeatedly injured himself to the point he needs to regenerate and spending more chakra that Sasuke can make in a month, daily. Totally ignoring the limits physical limits of other people... like not being able to regenerate crippling injuries near instantaniously. These are the extents he has to go through to justify hating Kakashi.
This Naruto is so screwed up he apparently never bothered ask Sasuke, Kakashi, Sakura, or anyone else about these scrolls. He keeps covering things up that will not matter in a few hours due to reset. Note he never does something like mock Sasuke for putting so little effort into securing his own appartment. He gave up mocking Sasuke for not noticing Naruto had spent weeks raiding his appartment... infavor of making snipes that don't matter about the ease of learning these camping techs.
The whole 'Setting Sasuke up for being castrated' was not meant as Sasuke bashing so much as showing that this Naruto had gone totally off the deep end. Its rather like kidnapping a Groundhog and teaching him to drive.... and instructing him 'Don't drive angry'.
I understand your points here, Epsilon, but its not a story of redemption... its a story of insanity and deconstructing the usual Fanific of time loops (you did one of these on Crossovers yourself, so you should get that much). Naruto is a prankster. Not near this malignant, however knowing that your actions has no effect on existance besides gaining him knowledge and memories... and its silly to think that he wouldn't do strange things to blow off steam. Sasuke is his rival... and most people would do mean things to their rival if it has no lasting effect. This is like punch them through walls... this is the same thing, only deranged by no consequences.... Its like a gamer doing stupid things after saving the game. And I also think this is Naruto bashing, not Sasuke bashing. These justifications are all about this Naruto's warped world view, not cannon Sasuke.
Also, 'heel turns' can eventually be reversed. If I remember correctly your opwn deconstruction was in 3 phases... This story is still somewhere in a phase 2.
Its a rather minor continuity edit to have him not meet Gaara in town.

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Why doesn't Naruto disrupt Orochimaru's plans by killing the Sound team? Because he doesn't know that they work for Orochimaru.

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You do realise that you just argued that Naruto didn't know the head of sound is in charge of sound ninjas. Also, he can figure all this stuff out if he stops trying to start the game with the end boss battle.
Those were examples of sidequests he could do to stop sound from being as effective in battle. He could find these things out... however he hasn't yet... that would involve the above Cranial Rectal Deinsertion I mentioned.

[classicdrogn]

Actually ... my crystal ball say, that's the point of the kyuubifying thing - it's the result of pushing his lone wolf, make-myself-incredible-and-do-it-all strategy taken to the ultimate extent... when the repeating message of Naruto is that the ultimate power is teamwork, even at the simplest level of one member being a distraction while another recovers, or sets up the final blow. The fact that Kishimoto is getting more and more spotty about it himself is annoying but ultimately immaterial - that message in one form or anoter is hammered on by every white-hat voice of authority from Iruka to Yamato.
Now, Naruto's individual ability is *hosed* and by his own hand. He's already seen the solution a couple of times - let his team mates do their thing in the forest with more or less background support, worry about going solo when the test conditions become solo fights - and he's seen that he can give each of his freinds at least a small edge in only the time before the second test... and along the w
y, found out the best way to teach them something in that limited time, or warn them, or just give them a boost in confidence., and he'd already run up against the wall of what he could do to increase his individual (and dividual, if you consider his Kage Bunshin) ability to gain power during the loop...
So, the bottom line: I expect the eventual victory condition will be to regain enough control to crank out mass quantities of bunshin, then use them to befreind the Sand trio, teach Tenten kibakufuda and kagebunshin, give Hinnata the ultimate morale-boosting date, etc., ... but first to figure out some way to work with his own team mates again and do the same for them, as well. That'll be the real challenge, when he's gone so far in hating them. Maybe it'll even prove impossible after building up his resentment so much, and with their exaggerated character flaws. That would be a shame, because I kind of like post-Exam Sakura at least, and don't actively hate Sasuke until he decides to defect.
- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Shepherd]

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You do realise that you just argued that Naruto didn't know the head of sound is in charge of sound ninjas. Also, he can figure all this stuff out if he stops trying to start the game with the end boss battle.

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Yes, I do. Do you realise that your argument implies that the Hokage knew that an infamous Konoha S-Class missing nin was the leader of the Sound village when they joined the exam? Since it seems to me that the Hokage (who is likely the best informed ninja in Konoha and has personal knowledge of Orochimaru) didn't know about Orochimaru's connection to the Sound village, why do you expect Naruto to possess this information?

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To justify this Naruto hating Sasuke he starts making things up to justify the level of hate he wants. For instance, he decides that he could have learned many of these moves in less than a week preorginal run though of this month. To justify this logic he had to figure in that this involved doing nothing else for the week... repeatedly injured himself to the point he needs to regenerate and spending more chakra that Sasuke can make in a month, daily. Totally ignoring the limits physical limits of other people... like not being able to regenerate crippling injuries near instantaniously.

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You're assuming that Naruto has any comprehension of the training limits of other ninja. The only time we know for certain that Naruto has seriously trained with others is the tree walking exercise from the Wave Country story arc. Sakura learned the technique in minutes while Sasuke took just as long to master it as Naruto did (his greater skill making up for Naruto's greater stamina). From this, Naruto has 'proof' that Sakura is a natural at chakra manipulation while Sasuke the 'genius' is no better than the reviled dead last.
Furthermore, there is no indication that Naruto understands the extent of his healing abilities at this point, or that he realises that there is anything unusual about them. If there was any jutsu training going on at the academy, it probably consisted of spending a class period doing chakra exercises before stopping and going to the next class. While this training may have exhausted the chakra of his classmates, Naruto would have had no way of knowing this, and he likely assumed that the only reason the students didn't spend all day on the techniques was because they had to go to their other classes.
"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM ofthe Rings XXXV
----------------------------------------------------

"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV

[Necratoid]

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didn't know about Orochimaru's connection to the Sound village, why do you expect Naruto to possess this information?

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Remember that this is a story with a Time loop. A time loop that the known end point of which is Hokage and Pedosnake mdeathmatching inside a giant barrier that ANBU is standing around staring at dumbly. I'm going to have to tap an insulting commerical here, the one with the DUH! choir, 'Even a figgy pudding could figure this out'. If Orochimaru is tapped to assassinate the Hokage and he isn't a Sand nin... that only leaves one village for him to be from. Sound.
It doesn't matter if this Naruto knows Orochimaru is the Sound kage or not. He is the one sent to assassinate the Hokage. So he has to be rather highly in ranked in this attack. If a ninja this disporportionately power is tapped for that important a mission he has to be command staff. All he has to know is that Sound is attacking and their are sound ninjas running around in the examine... target them.
It doesn't really matter if he knows Orochimaru is in charge or not... he knows Sound is the enemy and the other target available is Gaara. If you look for the divergence point in this from the cannon its Naruto is there to attack the barrier. Sasuke and Sakura probablly went off to go fight Perfect Gaara. Which makes them dead and liquid by that point.
As for the second point... He spends time training with Tenten and several other places in this. I think that if she couldn't get the Shadow clone in a few hours with an instructer would be a clue. He also trained his 3 minions in shapeshifting... they apparently caught on quickly also.
I agree that his perseptions of what is and isn't possible for genin are warped. Badly... however explaining his thought process more, doesn't negate the thought process itself.

[Epsilon]

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While I agree that things that are written specifically to hose one charicter are often beyond annoying, I point to the resent cannon Naruto Manga... where Sakura has proven she can actually fight now. So instead of having her stand around uselessly... she gets knocked out from a shockwave at the start of the fight (though this is used to make us hate Psy more) and later shows up only after they kill the guy their fighting... only to send her to another fight that is over once she got there. Hosing a character to prove the awesome of another is a part of the cannon in Naruto. For instance, Tenten seems to exist for the purpose of introducing Temari as awesome in the rigged qualifier exame... that and filling a slot on Team Guy.

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The fact that Kishimoto did it does not make it okay. I stopped reading the Naruto manga around the first Ino/Sakura fight because I realised the author is a hack who hates women. (Seriously, name one fight a woman in the series wins that doesn't involve the man letting them do so. Just one.)

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I understand your points here, Epsilon, but its not a story of redemption... its a story of insanity and deconstructing the usual Fanific of time loops (you did one of these on Crossovers yourself, so you should get that much).

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Yes, but in my story I tried to point out why some of the cliches were silly, while still embracing them and having the main characters be heroic about it. I failed in some respects, based on reader feedback.
Also, while the story is told from Naruto's "perspective" there are digressions throughout the text that include information that Naruto is simply not privy to. Some of these digressions include blatent character bashing. The story sounds too much like authorial rants disguised as character rants, if you get my meaning.
If the point of the story is to show how insane (and wrong!) Naruto is, than the author is going about it in a stupidly round-about way. Either way I stopped reading the fanfic. A wise man once said that it takes three negative experiences to unsell someone on something. I've experienced those, and have no wish to continue reading at this point.
That's the problem with deconstruction. You can go too far and move from criticism to outright flaming. I wrote Hybrid Theory because I LOVED crossover and self-inserts and wanted to show how awesome and interesting they can be. From what I can see I imagine this author has nothing but contempt for the characters and concepts of his fiction. It stopped being fun or interesting or awesome.
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Epsilon

[yesilmavi]

Was the wise man bit research? (or something like folk wisdom?)
Bit curious because of the research on needing 10 good impressions/points to get over one bad impression done with job interviews.
I see your point. Don't have the same fic hang-up.
Before i read his author points I thought his sasuke killing was about Naruto being prejudiced.(Sasuke coming from the though-love/hate environment that he is. With the brother saying hate me and grow strong. )
Based on sakure wallowing in misery when naruto made his points and the bit about no-consequences bit on Naruto jack-a' and others.
(2 different linear times, people get mad/make mistakes do bad things to you and slowly over time try to gain your forgiveness for everyone else. Naruto timeline: people get mad/make mistakes do bad things to Naruto, do as if nothing is wrong with him and he is playing a prank/being childish for being in pain and after a while he gets revenge.
The test takes one day with the dead-forest taking the next days. )

[s3yang]

I'm relatively certain that you can take the fic at face value for the most part. If it was truely meant as a way of showing the negative effects of the time loop on Naruto's character, we would have seen more evidence of it in the actual writing. Frankly speaking, the author just doesn't strike me as capable of being that subtle. If he was, we would have seen at least some scenes reflecting on the fact rather than random fluff about Naruto learning more things. No, I'm sure that what we see is what we get, just a story about Naruto getting cooler with no real consequences. Even the recent turning fox thing is obviously just a setup for future powerups.
In terms of the character bashing, he's doing just that, he admits as much in the author's notes of his latest chapter.
That said, I'm still going to read it, each chapter is basically 10 minutes of vaguely amusing fluff. I do disagree with some of the directions the fic is going, but I can't really bring myself to care enough about the story for it to actually irritate me.

[katreus]

Yes -- his latest ANs are quite revealing. I thought it was an interesting idea at first but I don't think the author has the skill to do it properly. Well, that's not the author's intention so it doesn't matter to him, but it isn't even that funny anymore so it's not crack!fic, which has an appeal of its own.

[drakensis]

Update
And the tiniest traces of teamwork are beginning to emerge.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[The Hunterminator]

Shepherd said,

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Chunin Exam has also updated. It may be starting to wrap up (unless Naruto gets blindsided by an unforseen problem).

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Beating the eliminations only get's him through to the third exam. He still needs to repeat his whole 'Victory from the jaws of defeat' fluke in the third exam, and he'll most likely need to find a way to stop the invasion as well. That or he needs to survive.
The consecutive month, though, will hopefully help get him back to sanity.

[WengFook]

The first time through the consecutive month might make him think he has beaten the loop at last I suspect however that he might do something stupid, like get sasuke gelded, and have to live with the results for the whole month before it reboots to day one _______________________________
"Walls are meant to be broken." - Makes sense figuratively and literally.
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

[Necratoid]

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The story sounds too much like authorial rants disguised as character rants, if you get my meaning.

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He is a hundred levels above Skysaber and Skysaber is a trainwreck with a keyboard. He manages to trainwreck the fic and then hides in a closet (sometimes for months) for doing much, much worse at disguising rants of his... his last story was the classic example. GL only stayed together by making itself an SI that spend 75% of the story doing ranting asides. There was more 'asides' than story. The story was based on the theory if Skysaber possed Lockhart he'd declare his operating theory is 'Mind rape and Soul eating is made of win'. People, including Bob, praised it and wondered when the story would trainwreck into the creaming goodness of its death rant.
More important that Skysaber''s ego, the reason Naruto has so much fanfiction is the same reason as what makes Harry Potter and Ranma 1/2 have so much fanfiction. Its because it makes people think they can do better. This is the essessence of the largeest faccet of fanfiction. Another way to put it is good idea, bad execution.
As of part 19, I note that this Naruto is probablely going to have to deal with a Sakura that wants to improve herself. This concept will blow this Naruto's mind. Sakura coasts through the cannon series until about the point that Sasuke runs off. At which point she actually does something. Always remeber that Sakura, Naruto, Sasuke, and the rest are 12. Speaking as someone who has lived with a fangirl as a sister I know what they are like. You have to traumatise them to ween them off being a fangirl, in stages. Sakura acts like a fangirl, at least early series. She gets traumatised into a more sane person as the series progresses. Which is noraml for fangirls.
This Naruto has done basically everthing I said he would. His problem is going to remain the same... he has to get past the divergence point from the series. He stayed in town to jump the Box of Silence.... while his teammates got juiced by Gaara and he then Gaara perfect slaughters Leaf. This loop is what it will take to get him to pull his head out of its warm, blinding confines, which just hasn't changed.

[drakensis]

Chapter 20 is up
Starts with a really good and interesting concept: the matches in the preliminaries are not random, they're handpicked by the Hokage/Head Examiner. I've seen it suggested before but it's done very well here.
Dissection of Kakashi by Anko. Meh.
The fight against Kiba. Seems the writer is having trouble with fight scenes. Naruto is an ass, but he does feel bad about it after the fact since there are likely to be consequences now.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[ECSNorway]

Chapter 21 is up, with yet more pwnage by Orochimaru.--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[classicdrogn]

with ch 31, it looks like Naruto may be about to have company in his looping at last ... and hence, not be so effectively alone that he goes all sociopathic from nothing having consequences, as with the stolen sharingan adventure, or cheering on Gaara as he killed Sasuke over and over.
- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows