The fandom's collective reaction to the genocide Sasuke experienced (committed by his own vile bother, who also put Sasuke through two horrific torture-sessions, the second of which nearly took his life) as a child reeks of an inconceivable pettiness that you’d seldom notice across Fandoms (they treat him as though he’s an entity that exists in reality, who torments them); so they write all sorts of horrendously conceived Fan-Fictions that they stuff up with peak masturbatory content to make the manga all better (no, they subject the manga’s best parts to utter ruination and engage in vicarious sexual encounters to feel deeply pleased). Unfortunately, they bring this same intensity to Fan-Fictions, which showcase the “mental traumas” they suffered at a cartoon’s hands, so it’s quite impossible to locate decently written ones that grant a definite perspective to Sasuke’s side of things, as well.
The most delightful approach that the Fandom takes is that it tries to project its own middle-class issues onto the victims of war-crimes; so you can tell that the results ... aren’t pretty. So here are my recommendations: these are the best Sasuke-Centric Fan-Fictions that I’ve come across, and they don’t focus on “pairings”. (I apologize, Sasuhina-shippers, but Sasuke won’t ever throw Hinata a bone nor would he “open up to her”, a favorite trope among these shippers.)
Here are my three best picks from a mountain of Sasuke-Centric Fictions that are free of pairings that involve him and focus on the political aspect of his character, which intimately defines him in Canon. Click and find out. (Oh, the suspense!)
I’m messing with you guys. There’s no suspense. I simply don’t like long-posts on my profile, so the cutting tool works for me. Anyhow, onwards and forwards!
Hymn of the Forsaken by ctt
Elegy of the Wronged by ctt
Murasaki by Daastan Go
The first two break-away from canon after a certain point (I won’t reveal which points), and they do so in a straight-forward manner. Basically, they get straight to the point and things get going from there; hence, if that's your thing, ctt is your man.
ctt's fictions focus on as to how Itachi was in the wrong in regard to the trauma he inflicted on Sasuke in that he's not even the same person after the massacre and the subsequent tortures; but that isn't illustrated in an exploratory sense, but more in a "this is how it is" sense. This isn't necessarily a terrible thing. It's a different approach in comparison to the last one.
The first two are far more plot-driven than the last one. That's the prominent difference between them. (The first one is on-going and the second one's complete.) Both are good (I like Hymn more; Elegy has some issues), but they handle the topics that they’ve undertaken quite differently: Elegy’s focused on Naruto's involvement as a character more; so I, personally, don't find Elegy to be as effective as Hymn.
Hymn is quite different from Elegy as it tackles the idea of myth to explore the fantastical origins of the entire "Curse of Hatred" conflict that started way back in the Sage's time; so there’s a lot of “calling out” of Hagoromo. The author also does a sort of “take-down” of Itachi’s Canon Characterization, which, while it isn’t anything new for the readers and writers who are critical of Itachi and the decisions Kishimoto took in regard to his character, I found it to be a refreshing approach compared to the sermon-laced writing practices of many Fan-Fiction-ers. In Hymn, he’s shown to stand with Konoha and is quite active in the ideological disjunction that always existed between him and Sasuke compared to Elegy. Sasuke's very ... calm and collected, you could say, so your mileage may vary. (I prefer the Taka-esque Kage-Summit Sasuke in Murasaki as KS Arc is my most favorite Arc in Shonen and Seinen.) Hymn’s Sasuke is a part of the long conflict; so If that’s what you're looking for, the first one’s is your ticket!
The third one by Daastan Go (I’d just refer to him as Go) is an Epic-Length Fiction; hence, it doesn’t get to the “point” that quickly—if that’s the only aspect you look for in Fictions. It isn’t entirely plot-driven; no, it treads very closely to “character-driven narratives”. In fact, it commits to the “character study” side of writing; so it remarkably endeavors to explore the very idea of Itachi as a psychopathic prodigy—in-depth. The fiction’s more along the lines of a study of Sasuke’s and Itachi’s characters and the strange relationship that defines their so-called brotherhood; so it truly doesn’t prioritize plot.
This isn’t a pro-Itachi Fan-Fiction (people might think of it that way during the early Arcs) as it’s quite metaphorical in the manner in which it approaches the characters; so many things aren’t made “crystal clear” to you; you’d have to read between the lines; and it’s the “little” things that matter in the end, not the “big” things; hence, Itachi’s treatment of Sasuke isn’t as explicit as most would like to imagine, but I enjoyed this approach more than the previous two. (Sasuke’s more talented of the two in canon, but he’s consistently undermined by his brother in varied ways.)
Go’s narrative that’s AU is also deterministic by nature, so cause and effect are felt more palpably than most of the endeavors that focus on the brothers. It's the same world as the story follows the spirit of canon rather than canon. The world's quite feudal and is rife with para-military forces, state-sponsored terrorism, inter-clan and state politics, prostitutes and much more. The Uchiha Clan’s leadership, too, is granted a voice, strength, and purpose.
The characters’ humanity (yes, our flaws are a part of it) is well-realized, so don’t go into this expecting any “niceties”. Basically, Sakura’s obsession, Hinata’s weakness, and Naruto’s hysteria are key elements of their characters that are elaborated on against an expansive socio-cultural and -political plot that concerns the Uchiha Massacre—it’s handled in a different manner from canon, but it happens regardless.
Tsunade, Danzo, and the two Elders are deeply embedded into the plot-threads. Taka's greatly involved and elaborated on. Each Taka member has a past that links the member to Sasuke. Sasuke's very similar to his Taka self, so if you disliked that Sasuke, you should avoid this at all costs. Itachi's, on the other hand, been offered a commanding position in Leaf’s Military as he's a zealot supporter of Leaf’s dogma: he outranks Sasuke by a pretty fucking big margin, so you can imagine how that would translate into his nigh-narcissistic bend and approach to control Sasuke’s life.
This fiction's very different from Hymn and Elegy in its approach to the conflict between the Uchiha Siblings—that how deep-seated it is. Clan politics are a grave threat in Murasaki. A very real threat that doesn’t simply exist in the background like a hazy decoration (in many a Sakura- and Naruto-Centric fiction which are written as long-winded “fucking” tales with even less merit); however, this one demands patience, so if you’re not patient and a reader who reads Fan-Fictions whilst about fifty other tabs are open, forego this altogether. It demands a lot of attention to piece things together.
Anyhow, that’s my tiny list. I hope you like my picks, because that’s all I’ve got.
Hello, one problem about trying to reach people with triggers to warn them about trolls is how do you tell them what the trolls are doing without triggering them?
So if you have triggers, this is a vague post to say that the Naruto fanfiction stories by Daastan Go and BurnLikeAnAnimal on FFnet appear from their summaries to be simple, positive romances, but the content within is horror or dark fic that contains many triggers. The contrast between the summary and the content is so stark, that I believe they are deliberately attempting to trick people into consuming content that will trigger them.
If you want more details/proof, the full post is here.
Daastan Go targets Sakura Haruno, BurnLikeAnAnimal targets all the female Naruto characters but seems to go after Hinata especially savagely.
Noted anti-Sakura reviewer Daastan Go (link goes to his tag here on my blog) paid a visit to a discord I admin this morning!
I wasn’t actually even around for the four minutes he was there before getting kicked out but apparently he was spamming it with scat pr0n.
This poor gentleman clearly is dying for attention so I thought I’d help him out by publicizing how much he loves scat pr0n! I mean that’s obviously the reason why he needed to post his scat pr0n all over the place. It couldn’t possibly be that he’s jealous of how much fun, enjoyment, and encouragement other Naruto writers are having without him, and how many more reviews and hits we get compared to his terrible fics. Yep, it’s definitely a sincere desire from him to let the entire world know about his kink. So I’ll signal boost it for him!
Just went through the troll-links you posted a couple of days ago, and I believe you blew that out of proportion. I do respect your opinions, but Dastan’s humor is pretty disgusting by nature. Like he had a giant-dick kill a large part of shinobi forces and Gaara calling a paste of dead bodies jam, so you can guess the kind of stuff he writes. I’ve talked to the guy over the private-messages as well. He’s pretty reasonable. I might be a bit biased about his writing. To me it’s very poetic and pretty.
InsideA14YearOldGirl (not a very subtle name) just seems silly, but he had placed his tags properly. Everything was there in the tags: rape has been mentioned twice. I knew what I was expecting when I went to read his stories. The story was pretty bad, but the triggers were there.
So, I’m not sure if it’s wise to relegate everyone to a troll role simply because they’re antis. You should be more unbiased. You were spot on about some others and were off the mark about a few others. Thank you for making the list, though. I will avoid quite a few one of these! But I think it’s better to contact the authors to try to reason with them. If they don’t listen, then, yeah, I agree. I mean, you said as much yourself in one of your posts. Or was it someone else? Sorry, I’m new to Tumblr, but I wanted to contact the original poster.
Anyway, I just wanted to speak as I’ve recently stumbled upon your page. This isn’t a hostile message in anyway, so I hope I’m not dogpiled for this. It’s just my opinion. I liked Sweet as Honey Wine and Marshmallow Fluff. Good writing. I’m not much of a reviewer, so I hopes these would do. I hope you write more serious stuff as well as you’re a talented writer. Happy belated Easter!
P.s: The pictures you post are very nice. I spent a couple of hours going through them and saving them on my computer!
Above is from “Sarah” (not sure how submitted stuff shows up)
Just to clarify–my problem with InsideA14YearOldGirl is not his account on AO3, where I agree he currently properly tags, but the same person’s account on FFNet BurnLikeAnAnimal, where there is no warning about the content.
“Romance” and such a vague summary is misleading. That’s why I call it trollish.
If Daastan Go categorized all his fics as horror or put “Sakura bashing” or “contains explicit child abuse as a joke haha aren’t I edgy” in the summary, I would still find his work distasteful, but I wouldn’t be categorizing him as a troll. But instead he puts vague shit like this:
About a story where Sasuke beheads Sakura and it’s described in disgusting detail. Yeah. As it is, I think he’s intentionally trying to get Sakura fans to read gross bashing content, which is trolling.
I have zero desire to speak to him honestly. If someone else wants to tell him “Hey, moron, maybe make it clear in the summary that this fic is only for people who have a fetish for seeing strong female characters get degraded and murdered, you asshole,” but as you can see by the way I worded it, I am not the right person for the job. Plus I think he knows exactly what he’s doing.
Well, no sooner had I seen your post for this Dastaan Go person then I’m milling around on FF earlier today and notice one of their fics. Sure enough, it was a rated M fic with a vague (but in this particular case a mildly childish summary that normally wouldn’t make me click anyway) summary and “SakuraxMass Harem”. Thanks to your warning imagining what might have been in the contents of that fic have me cringing. Thanks for warning folks.
You’re welcome.
It’s really sad that people like this poison the well and make people less likely to click on stuff from new authors and so on.
I feel sorry for anyone who gets tricked into Daastan Go's stories. I remember seeing a fic written by them that had Sakura as one of the main characters with a large number of reviews and before reading it, I checked their profile. I was fortunate enough to see them state that they hated Sakura's character (plus a large spiel about be up to debating with anyone about how bad she was). I'm glad I never saw their fic. Unfortunately they updated their profile so it doesn't say it anymore.
I fully admit that I’m just armchair diagnosing the motivations, but it seems to me like this person gets some kind of sick joy at the idea of hurting people who dare to like Sakura.
Also, I gotta say, I’ve read fustian like what this guy writes before; preening, unbearably pretentious doggerel that clings to the scrabble value of its sentences as proof of its value. The dude who sits in a duster in the corner of the creative writing class with the Sword of Truth series peeking out of his bag and smirks through everyone else’s readings. And what I always say to myself is, “now here’s a guy who loves the taste of his own asshole.” Metaphorically speaking of course.
PSA: Troll Writers Possibly Attempting to Trigger With Deceptive Summaries
I can only conjecture about the motivation behind WHY these two individuals are doing this; I only know that these two writers are consistently writing extremely misleading, miscategorized summaries to stories that turn out to contain content most people would consider shocking/offensive and which might trigger depressive episodes, anxiety attacks, PTSD etc in some people.
I consider this the equivalent of putting an innocent seeming link that goes to shocking imagery of animals being abused.
I am going to try to be as simple as possible here, but there’s no getting around that I’m going to have to mention potential sex and violence triggers in order to explain why you need to be careful. I am going to make a separate post with just their usernames and a link to this one also, so if you have triggers and you just want to take me at my word that these two are bad news, just don’t click on stories by Daastan Go and BurnLikeAnAnimal. Okay.
Daastan Go
I have not clicked onto this particular story, but I know from reputation that this guy likes to write extremely gross-out fic targeting Sakura. Notice that the fic is categorized as “romance”.
Here’s a guest review that pretty much sums up the problem with Daastan Go:
congrats on a new low. for real, you keep coming up with stories (child porn and rape? really?) which are all to mock a character you clearly hate but cannot stop writing about. that's sad, dude. you need to find yourself something new to fixate on. and hopefully something healthy. lol.
I suggest you DO NOT click on his stories, DO NOT leave reviews yelling at him (he probably feeds on the attention). If you want to, you can report his stories for breaking FFNet’s TOS but FFNet will probably do nothing.
BurnLikeAnAnimal
That’s what the summary says on FFnet. Very vague summary, categorized as romance, what’s the deal?
..........Oh.
Yeah, when this guy mirrors his stuff to AO3 (under the gross username InsideA14YearOldGirl), you discover this story contains underage rape, stalking, etc. He actually didn’t used to use warnings on AO3 either. I first came across him because I clicked on his story “Primitive Mind”, which had the summary “Naruto receives an anonymous letter from a secret admirer. Who could be?” and was listed under the NaruHina pairing. The contents are so bad that I will put them under a cut.
Again, I suggest you DO NOT click on his stories, DO NOT leave reviews yelling at him (he probably feeds on the attention). If you want to, you can report his stories for breaking FFNet’s TOS but FFNet will probably do nothing. I’m pretty sure he uses tags on AO3 now because while AO3 defends free speech they do not allow miscategorization or lying (that is, you can click “author chose not to use archive warnings” but if you make a pattern of clicking “no warnings apply” when they really do apply, AO3 will step in).
My only motivation in publicizing this is to avoid more people with triggers being hurt by these stories. I can see in the reviews that people have already been hurt by being surprised with the gross content.
I am a firm believer in freedom of speech, that fiction is not reality, etc, but this is not about that. This is about attempting to trick people into seeing content that may cause them to have panic attacks or nightmares. That is not okay. This is not artistic freedom, this is someone trying to hurt people.
Description of “Primitive Mind” behind cut.
I am tagging the pairings and the characters that these two tend to target: Hinata Hyuuga, Sakura Haruno, NaruHina, NaruSaku, SasuSaku, MadaSaku. If you are active in fandom for these pairings/characters, please signal boost.
The story “Primitive Mind” starts out like an ordinary “Hinata confesses to Naruto” story but quickly turns into Naruto turning into the nine tails, raping Hinata to death and then eating her.
