Fanfiction – Brutality

Brutality by Viperflamer

Length: 18 Chapters, Incomplete
Sources: Naruto
Rating: 3.5/5

Rating Breakdown:
Plot and Events: 4/5
Composition: 3/5
Grammar and Spelling: 2/5

Taking a short break from my parade of fanfiction favorites, we come to “Brutality”, a fic I just happened to be reading which I found noteworthy enough to comment on. Specifically, because it takes several ideas that are rather cliché and manages to make something out of them which feels half-decent. In fact, it’s biggest flaw is that it could really use some proofreading and editing. (Which I’d happily do if I could spare the time)

The basic plot is “Naruto loses an arm and an eye to an attack as a young child, gets replacements from Kyuubi, and is raised by Tsunade” and it includes the “Naruto’s mother is alive… just in a coma” cliché as well but, the author also threw in a large number of additional changes. It’s this previously un-tried combination of ideas which makes for the first of the three reasons I like it.

Second, despite their need for a decent beta reader, the author does seem to have a reasonable idea of what not to do in a fanfic. For example, he doesn’t add things “just because they’re cool.”

Finally, the primary focus is on the characters rather than the events or the “special effects”. This alone is one of the big things many fanfics lacks and, all by itself, it can make many otherwise boring fanfics worthwhile.

Of course, it is a reasonably long story and I did say it could use some proofreading or editing, so unless you’ve got time to spare, you might want to save this one for a rainy day. It doesn’t help that, as of this writing, the last chapter ends on possibly the worst of possible cliffhangers.

Fanfiction – Brutality by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.