Gen fic part 2

[finnimbrun]

Title: Apropos of the Wet Snow
Rating: PG-ish (K+)
Genre: General/Drama
Characters: Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, Sai, Pein, Kurenai, Shikamaru, mentions of various others, strong references to Sasuke, Obito, Minato, Itachi, Jiraiya, et al (no pairings, really, unless you count implicit Pein/Konan)
Spoilers: For the recent manga chapters, though at this

Comments

[paperninja]

Okay, it is just me or is there a sneaky NaruSaku tinge to this fic? Or maybe I have shipper tunnel vision. Relevant point here would be- I liiiiike how you handled their interaction.

Juxtoposing the end of Pein's life with the birth of Kurenai's baby is a neat idea, and one you didn't tell me about before. It's a nice touch.

The fact that Naruto assumes it's Sasuke at first is really heartbreaking. And it's a natural assumption given the way Ibiki and Inochi talk about the prisoner. It's a neat device, since really you can put Sasuke into this role of extremely dangerous captured enemy, and one that would (one would hope :/ ) ask to see Naruto. Actually, it's double-heartbreaking because chances are, Sasuke would never ask to see Naruto, it's too natural for him to just pretend that he wants nothing to do with Naruto. So in essence, that's a situation where Pein reaches out to Naruto more than Sasuke does. Geeeez, poor Naruto. (But a niiice angle. :D)

I know that you don't think you get Pein right, but I think you handled him just fine here. He's a balance between crazy and a vague sense of decency and deadened violence imo. I thought you held those elements in tension and balance to one another just fine here. He's a fabulous foil to Naruto. And actually, I think in a weird way, it's fortunately that Kishi HAS had Pein loose his crazy destructiveness on Konoha in canon. When people read this, they can understand exactly what Naruto has prevented by defeating Pein in this story. Because... well, it happened. And the image of Konoha leveled by a quasi-nuclear blast is fresh in the minds of the fandom.

Pein's :FFFFFFFFF abstractness is handled very nicely. Naturally Naruto can't make heads or tails of it. xD

Funny that Pein would look at Naruto like Naruto is the one who needs to grow up and accept the reality of this situation. They completely miss one another in most of their conversations in this story. And that's exactly how it should be. A deep thinker Naruto is not.

Anyway, I agree with the consensus here. You did very well with this story. There's a LOT of stuff in it, characters and implications and ideas and angles and interactions. It's very much an aftermath story, a requiem. But it's all integrated nicely. So awesome work. :D

[repppplyyyyy nao]

[hieronymousb]

Hmm, I suppose there MIGHT be a tinge. I did intend it to be gen, but one can always read into subtext, I guess, and one can see things in their friendship. *g*

Thank you for the long review, and I'm glad you enjoyed it (and sat through me whining about this story until it was :FFFF done).