All Purpose Naruto Fanfiction Thread

Maybe. Though I'm not sure what the skill difference between the cutting leaves and cutting a waterfall is beyond 'more of'. I always took that to represent how much wind chakra he could produce at a time, which is what he needed to make his rasengan bigger and more deadly, because it wasn't like he was doing anything fancy with it.

One is a solid object, and stays cut once it has been cut. The other is falling liquid, and requires both strength to sustain the wind chakra and the precision to keep the wind chakra in the same place in order to keep the water separated.

In the manga it just says more of (chapter 319, p.8), but also that the leaf bit only takes about six months, so I guess I am going to have to go back in and make him further along.

Wowzers, it only takes him two days to get both down in the manga too, I thought it was longer. Good thing in my story shadow clones give you alzheimers or else his power levels would be insane.

edited 4th Sep '15 12:27:01 AM by Ironypus

Important thing:

You could always have Naruto be actively downplaying how good he is at wind manipulation because he doesn't know how good he actually is at wind manipulation. If he was Orochimaru's student, then Orochimaru would not have been impressed with the amount of genius he displayed no matter how good he was, because, well, Orochimaru at his age was better, so Naruto performing at a level that would leave everyone else awed is just barely satisfactory for Orochimaru.

End Result?

Naruto doesn't know how good he actually is, and would most likely use Orochimaru's reactions as a gauge, leading himself to believe that he's much less awesome at it than he really is.

edited 4th Sep '15 3:36:08 AM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

Even canon Orochimaru praised Anko. And how would he not know? It's not like he didn't go through school with teachers to justly praise him for stuff. Though that's one of the changes from canon I never really expanded on much, of course if you can spit fireballs at age seven or are training to use wind chakra the teachers would desire be informed so they can provide you with help if you need it so you can perform to your highest and be a better soldier for the leaf army.

I mean, it'd be a shame if you could spit fire but were rubbish at knowing when to use it because you only ever practiced on your own at stationary targets.

Yeah, but the difference here is, if Orochimaru is competent, and that's what you should be going for, then he should know that if he doesn't downplay Naruto's achievements, he'll get a big head and most likely, and promptly, get himself killed for it.

And Naruto would know that Orochimaru is a way better judge of his abilities than all the academy teachers put together, so he would trust Orochimaru's opinion over theirs.

edited 4th Sep '15 4:30:15 AM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

That doesn't sound very competent to me, it just sounds like a good way to keep someones self esteem and confidence down; not a good thing for jinchuriki. You can be a teacher who praises when deserved without over-inflating your students ego.

It's called being a good teacher.

edited 4th Sep '15 4:49:26 AM by Ironypus

Esteem and confidence are secondary to actually making sure Naruto is strong, in this case. Seems like a Naruto who's aware that he's terrible (wrong about it or not), would work harder to get stronger than a Naruto who thinks he's a hotshot.

Of course, that's assuming he doesn't just go 'ah, I'm never going to be good regardless, time to ditch class.' That said, Naruto seems more like the kind that work harder (and possibly dumber) rather than give up altogether.

You would have a hell of a time hiding from him that he's outperforming everyone else when they have classes together, which when coupled with a teacher who downplays your achievements and never praises you would just wreck you mentally. If he was kept isolated and trained only by the best, whom he's told are mediocre, then yeah maybe this would have some merit but telling him he's not that great when he's quantifiably outperforming his peers would make anyone resentful. It just seems like a Bad Idea that only works if you're running completely on bad shounen manga logic.

edited 4th Sep '15 7:50:45 AM by Ironypus

Fair enough. (I only read a bit of your fanfic. Kept getting distracted by the words, since they don't sound like the way a twelve year old would think. Not sure how you'd fix that, though.)

Oh man, what? Can you give me an example of that?

Alternatively, the Academy just doesn't cover elemental chakra, and Naruto was asked not to use it in the Academy, with Orochimaru dropping the implication that he's really not supposed to be learning it yet. Naruto doesn't let the Academy teachers know to avoid getting himself or Orochimaru in trouble.

That's completely illogical, for what purpose would a school teaching them to be ninja ban aspects of ninjutsu because they're a bit high level? If anything they'd be trying to teach it to people, in some sort of advanced class because their whole society and way of life hinges on these kids being able to do enough jobs to bring in the cash and having any sort of leg up over the competition is worth it.

@Irony

This one might not be the best example, since you might be deliberately making the first scene sound different from the others.

That said, a more 'kidlike' sentence would probably be : A leader famed for dancing his armies around the enemy, seemingly on the run until it was time to snatch victory from the enemy's grasp.

Note, a kid would not write that sentence, but it sounds more kid like because the words are shorter.

That's only how I think, though.

This sentence is a tad clunky in general because the words don't flow well, but the words: certainly, favor, rotation, tactician, respectively, unfortunately, and attached do not sound like words a kid should be saying that often.

(Note: favor is one of those odd words where the longer version is more kid like. Everyone knows favorite, and a kid would scream about her 'favorite dolly' or whatever, but I don't know a single kid who'd say a phrase like, 'my favored dolly.')

With Naruto and Shikamaru out so early, Sakura had a stacked deck. Her team had both the runner up brains and the runner up fists, a pack of wolves against two herds of sheep, now that the lions were taken down.

I chopped off the entire last sentence since it'd be redundant after the modified first and second, which got the point across.

This is just what sounds nice to me, though, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Edit: The modified versions still feel clunky to me, if I were writing them, I'd probably take like half an hour more to polish them up. (Part of the reasons I can't finish writing my fanfics, they keep looking horrible whenever I look back on them.)

edited 4th Sep '15 10:12:06 AM by DNC

I did write that first segment intentionally like that, it drops off once Naruto 'comes out of character' after the first scene change, maybe that's why nobody's really reading it, the start's off-putting.

Yeah, best to have a consistent voice throughout, otherwise the people who liked the first part will ditch after seeing the second part, and the people who would like the second part wouldn't reach it.

Eh, if that's what I get for being a bit too experimental then I guess I deserve it.

I'm not saying they would ban it, I'm saying that they canonically did not cover it due to being considered too advanced to try to teach students who have not achieved the rank of genin. And Orochimaru could mention this, only for Naruto to misinterpret that as "we're not allowed to learn elemental jutsu until we're genin."

That said, now that I think about it, one potential reason why they might not allow academy students to learn elemental jutsu is that elemental jutsu can be dangerous, and academy students are not actually part of the military yet. It sure would suck if they taught some kid to breathe fire or tase people with his bare hands, only for the kid to turn around and quit the academy or fail his genin exam and go missing-nin on them.

Konoha might be the nice guys but they still practice Hyuuga slavery, some overtrained less than loyal pre teens aren't going to make it very far.

And that's canon levels of meanness, mines even stricter.

edited 4th Sep '15 11:23:21 AM by Ironypus

Actually, the first time Kakashi sees Sasuke do a fireball, he's impressed because it takes a lot of chakra to do it.

It's less "Pre-Genin aren't taught elemental jutsu 'cause they're too hard" and more "Pre-Genin aren't taught elemental jutsu because they are physically unable to perform them".

Either way, Orochimaru could very easily sidestep the whole "outperforming his peers" by saying that his peers don't have his talent. So it's less "You're not good" and more "You're not as good as you could be so stop slacking off".

That would just swell his head even more. If he's outperforming everyone but is told he can be so much better because of his talent if he just tried harder, and they're just scrubs in comparison, that sounds like a good way to make him haughty.

Why can't he just be aware and confident in himself? You can do that and still be cautious, a life of top notch military education could easily see to that.

Not if you're Naruto.

If allowed to, he'll stagnate, grow lazy and overconfident.

And he'll only do that if he has no outside help pushing him which, I imagine, could be easily solved with good teachers and a learning environment that works well with him. All things you would want your human weapon to have, to both reach his fighting potential and remain mentally stable enough so he doesn't wig out and kill a bunch of people with his demon powers.

And it's the "a learning environment that works well with him" part that I'm providing. Because Naruto works best under pressure, and when he's not put under pressure, he underperforms.

And combining that with a snide teacher who never really praises your achievements is definitely sub optimal. You can pressure someone to excel without undercutting their merits.

It's called being a good teacher.