scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2xrgor.md

[RST][FF][HF] Team Anko, Chapter 1

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• u/omgimpwned:

  (Warning - I got lazy and only spoiler-tagged 2YE and Team Anko spoilers in the first bits. Later I didn't bother. Be warned, ye who enter.)
  
  (Warning - this is *seriously* long, and rambles a *lot.* There is no TL;DR. In fact, somewhat to my horror, this post *is* a TL;DR in some sense.)
  
  (Warning - I may have gone a little insane for staying up writing this until 3AM. I take no responsibility.)
  
  Aaand off you go again, Eaglejarl. I admire your ability to keep up the writing pace, and would love any tips you can spare as to how you do it. Let's get started.
  
  Okay. Okay. There are several things I want to say. Lots of tons of many things.
  
  This is not just a review of Team Anko, Chapter 1. This also talks about 2YE and all kinds of other things. So apologies for not being entirely 100% on topic.
  
  First of all, allow me to state that I hope you will take everything I am about to write as it is meant: as loving, well-meant constructive criticism which will hopefully be helpful and all that. I am perhaps a rather critical reader, and, as a fellow author, I feel compelled to point out as many things as I can.
  
  Note that I've liberally strewn what sounds like absolute statements of fact "you do, you are, you tend to" and so on throughout the text. I'm merely lazy and don't want to couch every single statement with phrases like "I think" or "I believe" or "in my opinion" - this is all merely my opinion. Also note that I am *not* in any way saying I am without flaws as an author at all. This is merely the best feedback I can think to give, and I accept that parts of it may be entirely wrong, or misunderstood, or up to individual taste.
  
  Second of all, allow me to apologize for not leaving more reviews on 2YE. Don't tell me I shouldn't - I feel like it was owed of me, somehow, and this is how I absolve my guilt. Anyways, I started writing up a big final mega-review of 2YE when it ended, as a sort of way to (over)compensate. I had mixed feelings, and a hell of a lot of critique and feedback that I wanted to share. This review quickly began to turn into something that was more like an essay that could've spanned dozens of pages, liberally strewn with examples, suggestions, theories, generalizations of literary principles that seemed relevant, and so on.
  
  I promptly stopped and thought about what in the world I was doing, got confused, and halted there temporarily. I've been busy, so temporarily has turned into a more permanent thing for now. The not-review is still there, not even remotely finished or saying everything I want it to say, and I'm not even sure I ought to want it to say everything it's supposed to say.
  
  However, I will here write a... mini-edition (no really) of the mega-review-essay-paper I originally intended to write. You get a rambling, shortened midnight-writing-frenzy version instead of a neatly structured PDF document with a table of contents. So here we go.
  
  (I can, should you so wish, post the relevant parts of this in a review on 2YE on ff.net to make your counter go up.)
  
  You are in many ways a good writer. In many other ways, you are not yet a good writer, though you mostly appear to be working on improving yourself in the areas in which you are not yet good - which is awesome. Keep doing that! Mostly your weaker areas are character, plot and tone-related, as far as I can tell.
  
  Let's start with tone and feel. In 2YE, it feels more like the reader is invited to sit back and enjoy the ride, however silly that ride may be, than that they are actually supposed to take any of it seriously on any emotional level at all. I mentioned this issue in a review of 2YE where [The Two Year Emperor Ch. 52](#s "Jake sacrificed his enormous secrets and the mood suddenly turned much more dramatic and serious. I was impressed, my toes tingled slightly, and for the first time in a while I actually *felt* something in regards to the story - in short, I *cared* for a moment, rather than being idly amused - it was ominous, foreboding, thoroughly awesome, and almost instantly dispelled next chapter when things immediately turned more slapstick and less real again.")
  
  You tend to fall very easily into slapstick^1 and rather generic (more on that point next paragraph) humour, and, at least to me, this kind of humour, while mildly enjoyable on its own level, makes it extremely hard to keep up the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. This is mostly because, most of the time, it feels like the jokes are out of character, and it feels like any one of many characters present could have said the exact same joke for the exact same effect. I could give numerous examples just in this one chapter you've posted of your new story, but most prominent is [Team Anko Ch. 1](#s "The Hokage's nosebleed. I wince, *wince,* in excruciating pain every time I see an author employ this ought-to-remain-purely-graphic manga/anime comedic effect in a story. It is unrealistic. It isn't even that funny on its own, though you managed to *make* it moderately funny with his excellently written garbled speed. The problem is that it is a massive, *massive* WSOD-breaker. What would have been much, much funnier (and harder to write) would have been a straight description of the actual Hokage character actually struggling desperately to react to a deeply awkward and embarrassing and funny situation in a very elderly and Hokage-ish way. He is so old his gonads withered decades ago. Painting the Hokage as a pervert just because this comedic effect was used once in canon Naruto completely ruins him in the written medium. In my head, he is no longer the Hokage. He is a plot-role called the Hokage wearing a Hokage-shaped hat and doing Hokage-like things, and also providing comic relief when necessary.")
  
  As an example of extremely funny situations which does not have this effect, I would use HP:MoR's scene in Madam Malkin's in chapter five. The scene works better, I think, because the characters are acting like themselves, doing things that are so extremely in character that it ends up on the other side and almost becomes caricature. Another example of this, which does practically nothing at all but be funny and joke around, and somehow still makes characters work on some level, is the Naruto crack-fic [Reload](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4203131/1/Reload) (NSFW warning). The fic is mediocre at best in most respects, but it does humour incredibly well in my opinion. It constantly jumps from one joke to another and rarely pretends to be serious, but the jokes are *laced* with character, and most of the funny scenes are only funny because the characters are being themselves. I have no idea how it makes it work, but Reload does this kind of humour so well that I was capable of ignoring the occasional glaring grammatical issues almost entirely - something which does not come easily to me.
  
  *Continues...* (1/3)
  

  • u/omgimpwned:

    In short, the characters themselves are being funny - they are not telling generic jokes that mostly anybody well versed in pop culture could tell. I think this is an extremely important distinction, and it brings me to the next point: character.
    
    Jake in 2YE started off well. He was smart, sarcastic, scared and bewildered. He reacted like a person would react in that situation. You got the faint sense that he was offended on some levels by the medieval society around him. You got the sense that maybe he would try to change this. You got the sense that he had a strong sense of morality. Particularly the scene where he kindly rejected a young, beautiful servant maid who has every expectation of being taken advantage of conveyed this feeling strongly.
    
    However, this feeling of implied depth of character slowly vanished during the course of the story, absorbed into the generic pop-culture-reference-making sarcastic munchkin plot device called Jake, whole role was to be moderately clever and make the inferences and munchkin hacks that the plot required of him at the time. Occasional overtures towards character were made, but these were often overdone so much as to not work at all (his constant mental breakdowns, or worked into jokes or humour which made the character moment fall flat).
    
    I feel like I could apply this same critique to almost every character in 2YE on some level. That might sound overly harsh, but understand that this is what it *felt* like to me, even when I really wanted to like the story because it had elements I thoroughly enjoyed as well, and it was so, so promising.
    
    As a last example on the topic, let me promote to attention the one instance where you got it terrifically, completely and utterly right. Loki was an awesome, hilarious, scenery-chewing character, and it was the only character at all where I *not once* felt remotely like he was being out of character or doing something that he would not do in order to serve some joke or other. However, since he is *literally* the god of jokes and weird shit and you can never ever count on anything he says being true or not an act... well, I think you see the conundrum. I will state unambiguously that he worked, though - reading scenes with Loki was always an utter delight.
    
    Thirdly, we come to plot. The plot of 2YE was a big, rambling thing. You started off quite promisingly, veered slightly off course as you got further into the story, and then promptly ran off a cliff in the second volume. For the first volume, it's hard to exactly put my finger on what it was that made the plot... not work that incredibly well, and not be super exciting. You did a lot of things right, and followed by far most of the advice that I've read in many different places regarding what to do and what not to do regarding plots.
    
    A big factor, no doubt, was the fact that it was very hard to care about the struggles of the characters, and thus it was very hard to get genuinely excited about what happened in the plot. If I had to try to describe the effect, it was that, while, yes, we've been told there is a plot, and even mostly what the plot is, and the characters are doing stuff that is relevant to the plot, it still mostly feels like we are just going through the motions of the plot rather than *experiencing* it in any fashion.
    
    Actually, having just written the above, I realize that the plot in the first volume of 2YE fell a little flat to me because I did not really care that much about the characters or their struggle. There wasn't any emotional investment, so I wasn't invested in their success. The plot interested me solely on an intellectual level, as I was extremely curious as to just how in the world they were going to win this one, as it seemed, frankly, completely impossible.
    
    Now, the second volume of 2YE was... less than stellar. Let me first talk about the premise, and missed opportunities. The premise was *absolutely brilliant.* I had thought and hoped from the beginning of 2YE (as you *might* recall from one of my earliest reviews) that this story would eventually turn into a Rage Against the Heavens plot, where the gods, collectively, became the final enemy. It was *perfect* for this. A munchkin released into a D&D universe. Even better, a munchkin who mostly espoused modern moral and clearly had a complete lack of respect for the innate superiority of the divine. What better and more challenging foe could there be to munchkin against than the gods themselves, what better force to challenge than the laws of the universe itself? This notion of challenging the fundamental status quo on such a hardcore level, of indulging in the ultimate lèse-majesté against the literal evil tyrant dictators of the universe, struck deeply with me.
    
    But the first volume did not turn out like this. Oh, sure - a god was the final enemy, but other gods were on the side of the heroes, and the conflict was not, fundamentally, *about* the gods in the sense that I'd hoped. And then you did the awesomest thing: you made Suze into the frigging god of death. I lacked words for the awesomeness of the potential that entailed, and suddenly I was very hopeful, because you had just set yourself up for the *perfect* continuation of 2YE, where Jake and Suze - the uber munchkin and the fledgling god - abhorred by the arrogance of the gods and the cost of their power games, banded together to eliminate this threat to a free universe entirely. It was so perfect. You'd even set it up, with Jake's "fuck y'all bullies" speech to the gods.
    
    And then you didn't do that at all. You showed Suze struggling with godhood, and that part was good. It felt like you struggled a bit with the character, but this time there was clearly an effort involved to portray the sheer confusion, despair and heartbreak she was going through. Alas, you also had to hand her an idiot ball of staggering proportions, turning this formerly smart character into a complete and utter dunce. You, alas, ignored Jake entirely apart from interspersing various mostly-irrelevant snippets from his daily challenge-less life, though I held up hopes that he would get more firmly involved later.
    
    And then, out of the blue, in a *single chapter,* you unveiled an entire plot against Suze, we saw the villain of the story for the *first time,* and then *it all ended.* I don't even know how many rules that breaks. There wasn't even a denouement. Up until the very end, it felt like the start of something bigger. And we were left with a universe still ruled by a bunch of arrogant, bullying, entitled tyrants, and no satisfying ending anywhere in sight. I had to cook up my own head-canon - an entirely alternate story - just so that I could feel right about the whole thing inside.
    
    I suspect that it's mostly something you were aware of, though. I got the feeling, from the sheer suddenness with which you aborted the story, that you felt the Suze plot wasn't working out that well at all, and that you decided to cut it short before it got too far - you had bigger fish to fry and better stories to write. I may be guessing wrongly, but it seems that way, at least.
    
    I think I shall end my feedback on 2YE here, and move on to the next part. (Think we're done? Hah!)
    
    *Contines...* (2/3)
    

    • u/omgimpwned:

      You are now beginning a new story. As I've already mentioned, you appear to be running headfirst into the same issues with too much comic relief and too much humour being in danger of ruining the rest, though I would say that the characters here are already much stronger than any in 2YE ever were.
      
      This story looks like it will be perfect practice for character based humour, and the expression of character depth in general. You already have fairly strong and deep characters to work with from canon and you can utilize the mannerisms you already know so well, so a lot of the work is done already, and you can grow into it with the practice, so to speak.
      
      My advice for the future is the following:
      
      Try to be aware when you're setting up a humorous situation, of the different ways in which you could make that situation humorous without compromising character or WSOD or leaning too heavily on the fourth wall. Don't sell your characters short. They have very good foundations and a solid concept and potential, like Jake and Suze did.
      
      Remember to lend emotional weight and significance to the plot, or it becomes harder to care for the reader. Show the characters truly caring about everything that is going on, don't just tell or imply that they do care. Don't just have them act on the plot without *reacting* to it. Make the stakes deeply personal. Ensure that the characters have something to lose that they truly care about, and also that they sometimes *actually* lose that. *Show* it. *Describe* it. Be emotional and *visceral* about it. Let your characters laugh and scream and rage and cry and feel on their own.
      
      Try to not fall into the pattern of mimicking canon too well, particularly in the case of Naruto canon. If you want a rational story, you are going to have to start making excuses, or the hand waves are going to start piling up. I've spent more than a year and thousands of words and endless (hundreds, if not thousands of) hours of Skype arguments on trying to turn the world of my Naruto fanfic, In Fire Forged, into a consistent, sensible, solid, rational universe full of competent, sane people, that retains canon Naruto flavour in the most important respects. You would not believe the hoops one has to jump through to have Naruto's canon world make any sense at all! The characters' ages, the numbers, the politics, the economics, the demographics, the *technologies oh dear god help,* the geography, the world history, the physics! None of it makes any sense at all! It doesn't even not make sense in a way that makes sense, it literally *cannot be rationally explained away* as presented. I had to build all of that bottom up, to spec. Spreadsheets were involved. I may have gone overboard on this, but I love world-building for its own sake. Look up [Black Cloaks, Red Clouds](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8654967/1/Black-Cloaks-Red-Clouds) for a Naruto fanfic that perhaps strikes a better balance.
      
      Naruto canon is one big, huge, enormous, humongous hand wave. Just having the Shadow Clone technique as presented in canon and a remotely sane Naruto plausibly results in a singularity event in a few days! I had to nerf clones so hard in IFF that they're not even remotely like the canon thing, even though they now *actually* serve the purpose they were originally stated to serve in canon.
      
      Consider this point about Naruto canon closely, and have a plan to deal with it. I worry that you will, as I did, stumble into some of the glaring inconsistencies, and have to start over, abort or blatantly ignore them. I started over twice before I decided to just *fix it all.* If you want, I can give you my contact info on Skype - I've spent a long time thinking about how to resolve many of these issues, and I would gladly share my thoughts.
      
      Finally (*finally*), I will give a bunch of more specific feedback about the actual chapter which I have just read.
      
      I like the basic twist, with the team setup. Anko is a promising character and you've handled her pretty well so far. It seems obvious that Orochimaru should feature as a big, important, huge villain, given the lovely potential that provides with Anko. I think you're being a little too heavy-handed with Shino and the Aburame. Yes, true, they're generally typecast as the "rational" or "coldly logical" types in the fandom, but making them use actual betting markets and having Shino, a twelve year old, talking in the way he does, feels... off, on some level. I like NaruHina in general, and that appears to be where you're headed, so good on that. And what is up with nobody even raising an eyebrow at Naruto's ridiculous levels of chakra? Why hasn't he been assassinated as the obvious jinchuuriki of Konoha yet? Why-- *ahem,* and there it begins. You get my point.
      
      And on this ending note, I should also, perhaps, point out some of the things I enjoy most about your writing. Your evil munchkin strategies are lovely (Graham's number of XP points, oh how I chortled with deep satisfaction at the sheer brokenness of that). Your sense of humour is on occasion hilarious, when it isn't acting up and being blatant. Your description and prose in particular is generally very solid, and on occasion, it is really good. Just the phrasing of the very first few paragraphs of 2YE had me caught completely.
      
      I think you've got a lot of room to grow and are in a solid position to do so, and that is meant in the best possible way. And I really hope you won't take offense to any of this, because it took a bloody long time to write and I should have gone to bed four hours ago.
      
      So cheers, mate - this is the end. I hope you find this hopefully constructive feedback and criticism useful, and that you will now consider the review-debt paid.
      
      
      1: I use slapstick here as a general word for the kind of humour you tend to employ, full of genre comedy, puns and pop culture references and sarcastic 4th-wall-nudging commentary. The term is not strictly correct, but I could think of no better one.
      
      *This is it.* (3/3)
      

      • u/alexanderwales:

        I appreciated the work that you put into this review - it always hurts to read stuff like this as an author, even if it's intended respectfully, but it can be very helpful.
        

      • u/Anderkent:

        I love this review and it pretty much accurately describes my experience with 2YE; except I've dropped it around the middle where it was clear Jake is not going to change.
        

      • u/eaglejarl:

        > my Naruto fanfic, In Fire Forged
        
        Speaking of, when is that updating next?  You have a note in your final chapter that says 'Updated February 14' but doesn't specify a year.
        

        • u/omgimpwned:

          The update is this February, 2015. Current chapter is about halfway done, and is languishing in writing hell while I am really busy. Sometimes I sit down and manage to write a few hundred words. Just a few days ago I had a really good spell and wrote more than a thousand. My writing speed is slowly, well, speeding up again, after crashing absolutely back when I stopped updating.
          
          It was mostly a combination of upcoming exams, over-ambitious hobby projects and, um, well, [depressing emotional stuff](#s " A good friend of mine committed suicide very suddenly and without warning right around that time, and that took a while to deal with and adjust to on a mental level.")
          
          By the time I'd settled again, I was going to Canada on a student exchange program and I'm currently doing two academic tracks at once while I'm here. So events have really conspired against me recently, but hopefully the schedule clears up quite a bit this summer - I've begun just saying no to various projects and requests for my time.
          
          IFF will update again! And once that happens, it will start doing so at a ferocious rate!
          

      • u/eaglejarl:

        Hm.  When getting a review like this, there's an instinctive desire to defend various points, but I don't think I want to go there.  I'll just say this:
        
        * I appreciate the deep and carefully thought out feeback
        * 'Team Anko' is not a funny story so WSOD-breaking humor won't be a thing.  
        * I fully intend to make the world make sense.  It is definitely an AU from our universe so it may have a few extra primitives, but everything above that point should be consistent.
        * I feel very little obligation to stick with canon, other than to make characters consistent to themselves.  In particular I feel no requirement to make shadow clones work the same way as in canon and, in fact, they do not.
        

        • u/omgimpwned:

          > When getting a review like this, there's an instinctive desire to defend various points, but I don't think I want to go there.
          
          I know that feeling far too well, yes.
          
          I'm glad you're thinking about those canon issues, though a lot of them really do need serious consideration ahead of time. You already appear to have bought into the absolutely tiny scale of the villages, for example, and the early graduation ages - and neither of these things make a lot of sense when you really think about it. IFF!Konoha graduates more than a thousand genin per year just to maintain a force level of 15.000-20.000 ninja (which is an actual stated number at one point in canon... not that that makes sense). This seems to me like the absolute minimum you'd need to wage true war on a large scale when you include administrative branches and logistics and the medical corps and so on.
          
          (In fact, in IFF ninja serve a specialist role in warfare and do not even form the brunt of a country's military strength. There's just not enough of them. That would be the regular armies, which can field hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and in some cases more than a million. Then again, IFF is in *most* respects edging rather close to WWI level tech, mostly with the twist that gunpowder technology is much more primitive in the elemental nations, and medicine is much more advanced due to the knowledge that can be gleaned by chakra scanning and so on.)
          
          Things like this is part of why I emphasized it, as it looks like you're already making a few potential missteps and committing yourself to these features of the lore. Features which, at the very least, require unrealistic twelve year olds and a tiny world where a few hundred people can wage war between nations.
          

          • u/eaglejarl:

            While I appreciate the writing advice you've offered, you are straying into some invalid assumptions.    Please wait until you actually see where the story goes before telling me what I'm going to do and why it's a misstep.
            

    • u/eaglejarl:

      Huh.  Have to admit, I'm a little surprised.  I just went back through the first couple pages of reviews to find yours; every single one that you left was positive, except for chapter 24.  I didn't realize that you had so many issues with 2YE.  These are useful criticisms, and I wish you'd made them earlier.  (Aside:  You're the guy who used to be...Silver4Silver, or something like that, right?  [Offtopic question about offline life ](#s "Did you finish university yet, and did you ever make it over to Berkeley?  I'm not there anymore but I'll be back eventually. If you do make it, let me know."))
      
      As to book 2:  I could have run it out longer and added more frills and subplots but (a) it wasn't testing well with the audience and (b) I had already set up everything that needed to be set up.  [Spoilers ](#s "Suze's worshippers were drow, and there was clearly another god targeting other worshippers that Suze tried to get -- I even showed that god onscreen, as the robed figure hovering in midair and watching from thirty miles away...I thought it was pretty obvious that it was Lolth.  Suze was clearly having her personality altered, and I'd made it very clear that gods are powered by, and defined by, their worshippers.  I'd even explicitly said before that worshippers can rewrite a god by changing their beliefs, so the idea that the drow were deliberately modifying her had been foreshadowed.")  I had reached a point where I felt that it made sense to stop, so I did.
      
      You're absolutely right that the off-topic chapters didn't need to be there.  I was experimenting with some new techniques (multi-thread storytelling, achronic narrative) and eventually decided they didn't work well for me, so I went back to standard narrative.  Were this to be published I would cut many of those chapters out and put them in into a collection of short stories.
      

  • u/eaglejarl:

    > I admire your ability to keep up the writing pace, and would love any tips you can spare as to how you do it. Let's get started.
    
    There's no magic.  You just need to commit that you are going to put something out *every week* and *on a specific day*.  Then don't let yourself crap out, and don't let yourself produce shoddy work.
    
    > First of all, allow me to state that I hope you will take everything I am about to write as it is meant: as loving, well-meant constructive criticism 
    
    Uh-oh.  This is pretty much a rephrase of "Honey, we need to talk"  -- nothing good ever follows it.  :>
    
    > humor fail, Hokage fail.
    
    Hm.  Interesting points.  I'll think about it and maybe go back and remove / modify that bit.  It's not plot-critical after all.
    

    • u/None:

      I disagree with some of the anime visual jokes not translating across media, the fact that most naruto fics included them has made me immune to the cringe factor and I pretty much enjoy them now. 
      
      But I guess it'd be jarring for people new to Naruto fanfiction, so I won't whine too much about it.
      

      • u/eaglejarl:

        Meh, I think it was a fair cop.  I went back and rewrote it to clip that bit out.  Thanks for chiming in, though -- nice to see that not everyone hates it.
        

        • u/Escapement:

          For what it's worth, I agree with /u/omgimpwned about this issue. I personally hate using the visual cues of anime/manga outside of the actual medium itself. These include, but are not limited to, facefaulting, sweatdropping, and nosebleeds. My best guess is that these sorts of things were probably invented to make visual cues for facial expressions and emotions more obvious in a medium which frequently eschewed the detailed facial expressions that would actually occur in real life, because they wouldn't be perceived up on the simplified and abstracted cartoon figures being used for the characters. In writing fiction, of course, you can easily make people wince slightly or the like as appropriately and have it easily noticed by virtue of simply putting it in the text - and therefore sticking to the conventions of a genre not your own and putting in sweatdropping or whatever in lieu of a facial expression is both pointless and immersion-breaking. Thanks for editing that out before I ever read the story.
          

• u/eaglejarl:

  My new project now that 2YE is finished.  This time I'm shooting for actually rationalist instead of rational / munchkin.
  

  • u/Shrlck:

    you promised a mail for each new project! I demand my email!
    
    (Great news btw)
    

    • u/eaglejarl:

      Did you sign up for [the mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/dks-writing) ?
      
      (The one that I created three days ago, so I'm not surprised you haven't.  ;> )
      

      • u/JackStargazer:

        And then I signed up for a mailing list.
        

        • u/eaglejarl:

          Woot! Thank you.
          

• u/daydev:

  How much foreknowledge about *Naruto* do I need? Would I be all right if all I have are second-hand bits from *Waves Arisen*?
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    Everything you need to know should be in the story.  Failing that, if you've read any other Naruto fanfic, including *Waves Arisen*, you should be fine.
    

  • u/qznc:

    Some vocabulary (Hokage,kunoichi,jonin,genin,Konoha,...) seems required. However, some googling once in a while should be enough. You could look up people like Orochimaru from Naruto canon, but I do not know if /u/eaglejarl changed them in this fanfic.
    

• u/cowsruleusall:

  I LOVE IT. Please please please continue. If it's anywhere near the quality of 2YE,  expect rave reviews.
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    Have no fear, I've done too much plotting on this to give up any time soon.
    
    If you do like it, feel free to leave a reply in the thread.  Plot suggestions and character requests are welcome; can't promise they'll be used, though.
    

• u/qznc:

  First chapter looks great.
  
  I dislike the forum layout, though. Lines too wide and font too small. My feed reader fixes this for me, but you might consider fixing it for other readers as well. ;)
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    > you might consider fixing it for other readers as well. ;)
    
    How would you suggest?  Just mark all text with the 'Larger' font size?
    
    Although...hm, actually, it WILL allow me to use an external CSS.  I'll see what I can do with that, because I agree that there could be some better typography here.
    

• u/Kodix:

  I quite liked it. The characters are, well, in-character, and yet the take on the world is already quite different. 
  
  Why, it's almost like they're actually *being trained* instead of just looked after! Things are taken to their logical conclusion instead of being for show! 
  
  I'm genuinely unsure if this is because Anko is a great teacher and this team composition promotes some interesting behavior, or if the entire world works on different rules and Kakashi is similarly more competent. This is a good thing - it is *very* believable that the characters I know from canon/fanfics would act like this in this particular situation.
  
  What I'm trying to say is that you're writing a rational fic, and it's working, and yet so far I see no major character changes. Again, that's really cool.
  
  I disliked the premise of 2YE (RAW D&D is just so insane) and that colored my enjoyment of the entire work, though I did enjoy it.
  Here the premise, the writing, and the characters seem like they'll align very well with my preferences, and I can't wait to see more.
  
  I agree with the criticism about physical gags used as plot devices being rather silly. For instance, the Hokage being vulnerable to Sexy No Jutsu should very obviously mean he *wanted* Naruto to have the scroll (not saying that Team Anko should have realized it already, necessarily, just that that is hopefully the actual reason).
  
  All in all, though, very promising, and even this little was already very enjoyable.
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    > I'm genuinely unsure if this is because Anko is a great teacher and this team composition promotes some interesting behavior, or if the entire world works on different rules and Kakashi is similarly more competent. 
    
    Nope, Kakashi is still lazy and useless. Anko is just a good teacher and motivated. She might bitch and moan when given an assignment but, once accepted, she will do it to the best of her considerable abilities.
    

• u/Cuz_Im_TFK:

  I really liked it! Keep it up! When do you expect to have chapter 2 posted? (I haven't read any of your other work yet. Just trying to get a rough estimate of your posting frequency)
  
  One piece of constructive criticism on the writing style (that may be more personal preference than anything) is that 3rd-person omniscient narration of this kind is always a bit jarring for me to read and, I think, presents certain challenges to writing a rational!fic with believable characters. If all characters' minds are available to the reader at all times (without demarcated swaps between POV characters) I feel like anything that is not mentioned explicitly as a thought *didn't* *happen.* Let me try to explain:
  
  It puts a burden on the author to mention anything relevant or else the readers will assume that it didn't happen (because otherwise they would have been told about it) or that the author is deliberately withholding available information.  You definitely had certain characters being *more* the POV character at any given time, but there were no logical breaks between them. It feels like I could be given a thought from any character an any time and (though it's too early to say this with any real weight) it lessens my connection with the characters. I just find that 3rd person omniscient narration with frequent, unmarked jumps between the characters' minds makes it easier to describe the content of *scenes,* but results in the reader not having a chance to really experience anything *as* *one* *of* *the* *characters,* which is, IMO, the main way that readers develop a connection to them. 
  
  Having set POV characters at different times also allows you to easily get the reader asking questions (eg. about what's going on in the minds of other characters, why they're acting a certain way, what information they have that the current POV char doesn't, etc.). I find this is especially important in a rational!fic, as you're able to formalize the state of knowledge and uncertainty within a particular character at any given time and then explore how they approach the situations they are faced with given their uncertainty. 
  
  Anyway, just my two cents. I did enjoy chapter 1 and am looking forward to chapter 2. Cheers!
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    > I really liked it! Keep it up! When do you expect to have chapter 2 posted? (I haven't read any of your other work yet. Just trying to get a rough estimate of your posting frequency)
    
    I post at least once a week.  Now that I'm writing full time, I intend to crank that up to twice a week.  I have an original story that I will be starting on soon -- manapunk / magitek, battles between rural and city dwellers, looming eldritch evil that no one is aware of, etc.    I plan to do one Team Anko post and one Manapunk post per week; we'll see if I can sustain that, but I'm at least going to try.  
    
    As to the perspective -- that's good advice, thank you.  Let me think about it and see how it would change the writing.
    

    • u/AmeteurOpinions:

      > manapunk / magitek
      
      nooooooo
      
      *furiously poslishes rough drafts*
      

      • u/eaglejarl:

        I'm assuming that means you're working on such a thing?  :>
        

        • u/AmeteurOpinions:

          Yes, and I have been for a couple of years now. [Summary](http://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/1ppyqx/is_anyone_doing_a_rationalist_nanowrimo_or_really/cd4v573):
          
          >Yup. The story is about the son of a legendary adventurer and his unlikely friends as they search for his recently vanished father in a world of power crazed (or just plain crazy) blood magicians in dystopian steampunk megacities fortified against a zombie alpocalypse that grows stronger, faster and *smarter* the more it eats while airship merchants and sky pirates do battle overhead.
          
          > There's a lot going on in the novel, but I've been planning it for more than 2 years and eliminated every plot hole I could find, even those in the math that result from my magic system. I think it qualifies as "Rationalist" because the protagonist has been trained by his father and is actually competent and genre-savy and plans ahead and takes precautions. He falls deep into the category of *a little bit dark, and a whole lot Slytherin*, and overall I'm looking forward to writing all the different arguments and fight scenes.
          
          Unfortunately, it hasn't progressed much further than that point, due to the fact that my claim of "eliminating plot holes" turned out to be completely incorrect. I've written and deleted thousands of words, leaving the manuscript to languish at around 20k words. Add in influence creep from other epics like *Worm* and *HPMOR* along with getting a job and falling love... it's stuck in the literary equivalent of development hell.
          
          A shame, really, because I do want to write it. It's just... very hard.
          

          • u/eaglejarl:

            My advice would be to start writing it.  When you hit a plot hole you can probably paper over it with sufficient ingenuity.  A fireball spell was used to melt iron, but it was previously stated that fireballs aren't that hot?  It's a mana-heavy area and there was a wild surge.  Or this is a sign that the character isn't actually human, and has larger mana reserves than a human would so s/he can make the fireball hotter.  Etc.
            
            If it has plot holes, then it has plot holes.  If you never write it it will be one gigantic plot hole.
            

• u/xamueljones:

  Why are you posting this on a new website instead of on fanfiction.net?
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    I'm seeking to monetize my work.  The first step in that process is to get everything centralized and build a following at the place where the for-sale work and, soon, the Patreon link are.
    
    I'm crossposting at FFN as well, because it has a large audience.  I'll post the first few chapters there, then leave a pointer saying "the rest is at davidstorrs.com".
    

• u/Wereder:

  This is really interesting, I can tell the amount of effort you put into writing the story just from the first chapter.  I'm really curious to see how you build this world.
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    Thank you. :>
    

• u/None:

  Only a little bit into it, but your team has the exact same setup as Team 8 in the fanfic of the same name, minus Kurenai as the jonin. I'm moderately surprised. I'll definitely be reading this, though, because I can't get enough Naruto fanfiction.
  
  Edit: I've now finished the chapter. It was good, and I will continue reading, but the similarities between it and Team 8 are rather large. Hopefully they're accidental, and hopefully it starts to branch out a bit more, but it's not too big a problem (yet). [Link](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2731239/1/Team-8) for reference.
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    The similarities are not accidental.  I was reading Team 8 and liked the character matchups so I wanted to play with it a bit.  Don't worry, Anko is *nothing* like Kurenai, and my plot outline isn't like that of Team 8.
    
    EDIT:  In case it's part of what you were noticing:  yes, [Hinata is ](#s "being abused and is very un-self confident as a result.")  That was used in Team 8 but my understanding is that it's pretty much canon.  I think Team 8 may have enhanced it, but the basic fact is canon.
    

    • u/eltegid:

      I'm pretty sure it's not canon. It is, however, a good explanation for her personality. That's how I recall Team 8 doing it (I'm not sure, it was so many years ago): Kurenai sees Hinata's behaviour and deduces there's something wrong. That would have been very nice for a rational fic, and I can't help but feel it's a lost opportunity. On the other hand, since you change from the internal point of view of one character to another, it'd hard to do.
      
      Anyway, I have to say that this: "she had disrupted it with a panicked Jyuuken strike; she had too many bad associations with being grabbed." felt jarring, like you were going out of your way to show that she's abused. It could be more subtle, you'll build upon it later in the chapter anyway (later tells also feel a bit forced, but not so much).
      

      • u/eltegid:

        Don't misunderstand, though! I have quite liked it and expect to like it more (I have to confess I fell off the 2YE wagon at some point after following it for a while: got saturated with munchkinry, or how central was munchkinry, or something... so I guess I'll like this one better :) )
        

        • u/eaglejarl:

          I hope so.
          

      • u/eaglejarl:

        I'm really not trying to be subtle about this.
        

    • u/AmeteurOpinions:

      You may want to tone down the tells for Hinata. I've never even read canon but it was incredibly blatant here.
      

      • u/eaglejarl:

        I wasn't trying to be subtle.
        

      • u/JackStargazer:

        In canon, it's also pretty obvious. Until the Chunin Exam (pretty much the climax of the first series), and even a bit after, it is clear her family is at the very least emotionally abusive to her, and if you count her regularly getting beaten up by her sister who she refuses to fight back as physical abuse, there is some of that as well.
        
        By the second series / post time-skip, she seems to be a bit better situated. We never learn too much about it of course though, because she is generally a side character right up until the last movie.
        

        • u/AmeteurOpinions:

          Thank goodness for fanficftion.
          

    • u/None:

      What sort of update pace should we be expecting?
      

      • u/eaglejarl:

        Once a week on Sunday.
        

• u/qznc:

  > The number of points is based on a logarithmic scale so as to strongly reward or punish comparatively larger moves.
  
  I have not encountered prediction markets with a "logarithmic scale" or I did not notice. Where does that come from?
  

  • u/Anderkent:

    It's so that the incentives are for betting *exactly* your estimate. In a linear reward system, if you believe X is true with 51%, you get higher expected value for betting X at 99.9% than 51%. In a logarithmic system, betting 99.9% and being wrong is very punishing, so the incentives align so that your highest expected value is exactly at your level of belief.
    
    I can't find the link but I'm sure this was described on lesswrong; it's also what CFAR uses in their workshops.
    

• u/Anderkent:

  Good read. Not sure about the forum as the medium, but the story looks great.
  

• u/fortycakes:

  This seems like a perfectly good story that I almost didn't bother with because I couldn't find any email update functionality on the forums you linked to. Fortunately, I found the [fanfiction.net mirror](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11087425/1/Team-Anko), so I'll be following it there.
  

• u/Nevereatcars:

  is the update schedule still "Every Saturday"?
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    Probably Sunday, actually.  But, yes.  Once a week, on a specific day.
    

• u/rumblestiltsken:

  Rationalist? Interesting. 
  
  Very intrigued as to how you will approach this. Naruto doesn't lend itself to rationalist well, not the least of which being there is no psychology literature to draw on in universe. 
  
  Changing graduate Shino from straw Vulcan to master of interpersonal dynamics is a bit of a leap for me, but I enjoyed 2YE enough that I'm happy to see where you go with it.
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    The way I'm writing it, there *is* psychology literature in-universe.  You've got a bunch of ninja who notably include sorta-telepaths like the Yamanaka, mental illusionists (every genjutsu user), and an entire department devoted to interrogation.  I'm sure that psychology has actually been heavily studied.
    
    The tricky part, actually, is the tech level.  Ninja fight with knives and swords, not guns.  They travel long distances on foot, not on any sort of motorized vehicle, yet a common fisherman in the Wave Arc had a motor on his fishing boat.  There are [more troubling examples](http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Technology).
    
    > Changing graduate Shino from straw Vulcan to master of interpersonal dynamics is a bit of a leap for me, but I enjoyed 2YE enough that I'm happy to see where you go with it.
    
    I'm confused -- are you saying that my Shino is a straw Vulcan, or a master of interpersonal dynamics?
    

    • u/rumblestiltsken:

      Your shino comes across as smarter than shikamaru at this stage, he was definitely a straw Vulcan in canon. 
      
      Re: technology... They also have a computer doing random selections in the chunnin preliminary exam! And headset radios in the akatsuki arc.
      
      I think the only way it can make sense is if technology creation is a skill as heavily shrouded in secrecy as sealing.
      

      • u/eaglejarl:

        Yeah, the one that gets me is that they have a *satellite dish*.  There is just no friggin' way that's possible without a *massive* tech base that is not seen anywhere.
        
        I have a solution, but it's going to really complicate the story.
        

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