Been a while
. I remember commenting a lot in this story, so I may as well leave yet another one.
I, Fulcon, apologize for ruining the story and allowing my negative feelings toward fanfiction, Naruto itself and toward some of you to taint my worldview and sully a story you all enjoyed so much. For the sake of authenticity and transparency, I'm going to go through how I ruined the story, my thought process and the consequences therein. There'll be explanations, but those are there to provide context for my failure and not to excuse anything because, at the end of the day, injury was done and that's all that matters.
While the story had flaws, it was still one of the most original stories. Maybe not exactly in Naruto fandom per se, but Gamer one? My gosh, Gamer Fanfiction stories are soooo boooring and repetitive, it's disgusting. 99,9% of them go with the friggin The Gamer story mechanic, and always apply ID Create mechanic, which was in canon LIMITED TO ONLY THAT WORLD. Something that ALL OF THEM forgot about.
Of course focusing on one of the most overpowered, and boring gamer mechanic options you may aim for.
So using Fallout mechanic was the main reason why this story worked out the way it was. Charisma 1 to 10 jump chapter is still one of my favorite ones. You showed how such a drastic quick change may affect the user, and you did it well.
Maybe you have no idea how innovative that choice was, but I will tell you - it was a breath of fresh air that Gamer fanfiction desperately needed.
You know Zabuza and Haku? There is an above 50% chance that they were sodomizing each other. Well, actually, Zabuza was sodomizing Haku. I don't remember what a pairing like that is called, but it was a thing in that time period and it grosses me out (was Zabuza a groomer?). Given the obsession everyone had with Kekkei Genkai, it also seemed logical to me that people with special bloodlines would get harems for the express purpose of spreading that bloodline. However, the powerful have this way of getting whatever the heck they want and Daisuke was a god. A god who had abandoned his identity as someone from our world and went fully native as he understood it. Which meant, yeah, inducting underage girls into a harem.
In canon Haku called Zabuza 'beautiful', directly, it's pretty likely.
To be fair Haku's age of 16 wasn't THAT squicky in this case, as in some Western countries in the modern world (like Poland, Austria, etc.) it's already a legal age to have sex, and people at this age are just mature enough (but it may not be the case as well, unfortunately) with proper education to be able to make this kind of decision somewhat responsibly. The education part is VERY important.
So yeah, it could be grooming. There is no direct evidence to it to be fair.
However, a lot of my historical justification and perspective comes from ancient Israel. In the old testament, King David had over five hundred wives. Job, a man called Perfect by God Himself, had seven wives to start and was awarded seven wives by God after his ordeal (EDIT: This is Incorrect, should've paid more attention to my sources). Oh, and at the time of the Roman's, they arranged marriages between girls who were thirteen or fourteen to men who were in their thirties. The girls were that young to facilitate as many children as possible due to childbirth complications being common (as I understand it) and thirty was when men were actually trained and able to have a career to provide for their wife.
It's not just ancient Israel. Pederasty in Rome and Greece was pretty much normal, including male on boys homosexual love being one of the higher forms of love.
Ancient Japan (that Naruto is somewhat inspired with) had zero issues with underage sex. Virginity wasn't even virtue in any shape and form, as that culture applied ZERO value to 'chastity' as the concept.
Medieval Europe had 11-13 years old young women married older men many times, and they never considered it strange. Why? Because back then a concept of a 'child' and 'adult' wasn't understood the way we do. Something like 'childhood' wasn't a thing at all, and children were considered pretty much 'mini adults' that need to 'grow up from their weird quirks' to keep it simple. Pedophilia as a concept never existed back then. Pedophilia the way we understand it is, in fact, a very modern concept, showing up as the Wikipedia page mentions
AT THE END OF the 19TH CENTURY. Earlier? Nothing weird at all.
In other words, in my opinion, it's cultural customs. Morality depending on regions and history varied drastically and it still does in some cases. To put it into perspective,
look at this age of consent map.
The Phillippines, one of the most catholic countries in the world, where abortion is completely illegal, has the age of consent is 12. And it's still not the lowest number in the world, as it's the age of 11 in Nigeria and Angola.
Anyway, my point here is that I can see the issue. Do you want the potential story to be historically/logically accurate, yes, unfortunately, it touched on the subject of pedophilia, because many of those cultures simply never recognized it as an issue, because it simply wasn't one. In some places, it STILL isn't.
If you decide to go with this kind of story again and want to keep writing accuracy as ideal as possible, stick with modern worlds, where only legal age characters enter intimate relationships, and it culturally makes sense to be wary/has banned underage sex.
As unfortunately, otherwise, you either keep it accurate according to historical customs, or admit that this kind of a thing must be retconned. It's either one of those.
Now you'll notice that all of this is the wrong country and the wrong time period. I was literally transposing one cultures values and norms to another based on judgements I made on my limited perspective of warring states. I know Polygamy was a thing and I know that marrying age is 13 in Japan to this day (depending on the province) but I was making a lot of assumptions that may, or may not be accurate and I was doing it to air my negative feelings about the franchise and my own sexual frustration.
This is the case with MANY people. When you see stories in such historical settings, they will never, ever be really accurate, because otherwise, they touch on too big a taboo in modern days for any sort of censorship to let it through.
Also, I wish Daisuke and Anko's marriage wasn't framed so heavily in 'he did something great for her, now he owns her soul'. I had a lot of misconceptions about relationships and marriage, in spite of how much research I had done. Most of these being the misconceptions born from my parents dysfunctional marriage (Dad is a narcissist. Not clinically diagnosed, but he exhibits most of the symptoms) which is not a fun thing to read or recall writing. I apologize for this failure and will strive to do better in the future.
It wasn't an even dynamic from the get-go. Anko simply owed Daisuke too much to make it really even in any shape and form.
Is it impossible to work with? I wouldn't say so. In the end, 'traditional' marriages still exist, and can still function properly.
But I can see why it could simply not 'click' with the character dynamics. It's also a bit jarring, knowing that Anko is a strong, confident kunoichi, so seeing her in more traditional female role may be hard to really connect, and make it work in characterization.
Which included having Naruto turn evil. I'm still convinced that could've worked, but I don't think anyone actually wanted to read it. In fact, people were pretty hostile to the idea, leaving the fic entirely over the conversation between Naruto and Jashin. Which means it wouldn't have worked because what is an entertainer without his audience? So I apologize for trying to force a character arc that was completely out of place and trying to include themes that, while potentially realistic or plausible, clashed with the story and source material itself (Sasuke never got a harem and you know how valuable the Sharingan was). It was wrong, and I will strive to not repeat my mistake in the future.
In canon, we have evidence of Naruto having a 'bad half' with Yami Naruto. To master his Jinchuuriki state, he confronts his issues in let's call it mindscape, and meets his 'bad half'. It would be possible to make it work, but would it work? Maybe?
But it shows that resentment in Naruto existed. Also being 'evil' doesn't exactly being a vicious murderhobo or something similar. It may be something like committing bad sins and believing you do it to make things better later on. Villainy and 'evil' aren't a simply 1+1 equation if you do it right.
"Ignore the people telling you to write what you want to write. Instead, focus on writing what you want to read."
Criticism will always exist. But yes, the most important point here is that if you don't like something, in the long run it will simply tire you out.
I think this concept story would work far better with a fandom you genuinely like, in a more modern world, with modern values, so you don't deal with inner conflicts, like that whole underage sex issue.
The harem part wasn't actually that bad, although it is kinda weird how Anko is insistent on it and doesn't understand why he wouldn't want it, whereas the others are firmly against it. More of an issue is just how much he's stuck on his old world, and how it would definitely be better to copypaste that system into this world. And he even gets things continuously thrown in his face about how horrible his plan is, and he kinda sidesteps a bit but it honestly made me less interested in him succeeding.
I also find it strange.
I think it would be most people are either fine with harems, or against them. This divide still feels off.
But in ancient Japan (and it may apply to Naruto) marriage of more than 1 wife was EXTREMELY RARE, because they were also EXPENSIVE to keep around.
It's also kind of why Muslim marriages today rarely include more than 1 wife as well. Yeah, harem is a nice fantasy, but it's just that - fantasy. People can barely keep their marriages around these days, if it's just 2 of them. Imagine the chaos of trying to keep peace in a group of 4 people, that live together with each other every single day, and learn more about each other in not only positive ways but especially negative ones as well.
Many divorces happen because in the end the early 'good days' very, VERY rarely show how someone is unless your life with them long enough to start seeing how they are really.
My parents divorced after 25 years of living together, and what I learned about my father... is just disgusting, let's say it this way.
If the primary character was Naruto. But there are literally thousands of Naruto centric fanfics. I see an update here, I come looking to read Daisuke.
There are thankfully the ones with Kakashi, Sakura, etc. as main protags as well.
As for the whole harem thing. I didn't mind you want to write that. The characterization of Anko pushing it always struck me as odd. But I gave it a pass. I find harems just make fics more complicated and bring in too many characters that don't have any bearing on the story. Two or three love interests are my limit. Do you want a Harem? Go for it. Write the best harem it can be. We don't kink shame here.
We don't kink shame, but I can assure you that you won't find any real story that shows how hard it may be to maintain more than a single, simple pairing if we add any sort of realism to it. The 'they happily lived ever after' is such a nice dream. But it's just that - a dream, that almost never, ever happens. Adding more people to that mix? Yeah, in most cases I don't see those surviving too long, we are simply too flawed as human beings.
There is also a reason why polyamory, while an interesting concept, has a very, very high ratio of breaks up.
in regards to the harem thing, the harem itself does not seem to be the issue according to what I am reading and to myself personally, it was the fact that Anko was so insistent on getting daisuke one despite his objections towards the idea, and that it also seemed a bit out of character for her to be doing so. at least that is the vibe I am getting.
Yes, I also don't see harem being the issue as well. The main problem is exactly what is said here - why does Anko in particular insist on this? If he is happy with just her, and she would be happy with him anyway, why try to insist on something else?
