Quote: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.)
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.
Quote: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.
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).
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