...more of an apology to the readers.

Dear readers,

normally I would just wait until the next chapter and put this stuff into the author's notes. In this case, however, I have deemed it so incredibly important to address this before it becomes too late, as it is something which will likely affect future chapters. It also might technically be against the rules because I am sorta letting the reviews influence the story's general direction and am pretty much admitting it by this point, but...

If I continue the story as it is now, or alter it just based on what I think people would like regardless of it making sense or not, the final product would be, simply put, mediocre crap. I do not want that, and my inexperience is no excuse for it either.

First of all, backstory: Why am I writing this right here? Well, this story just tanked it's first negative reviews. Now this is not me being mad or anything, because I expected this to happen during the third chapter. It's where Matsu reveals that he is not Stupid Good, which is a rare thing for a MC to be, so I expected all hell to break loose. Now, I went through the reviews and was originally dismissing them. However, I then went over them again. Then I went over what I had written. And what I had planned. And you know what? Some points they made were valid, or at least thought-provoking enough that I realized glaring flaws in the story. Not in what I had written so far, but in what was soon to come if I were to follow the original script I had for the story.

Let's jump right into that:

The argument was that the "The Gamer" ability was the most powerful in the setting and a plot-hole in itself because it made the character overpowered. Now, this alone is not cause for alarm as far as I'm concerned. That's kinda the point of the whole GamerNaruto genre. I've read a lot of them, and the MC is always stupidly overpowered to the point of insanity the moment Shadow Clones become a thing, and sometimes even before then. Same thing I was going with for this story here, so if anything, that would be a success.

What threw me for the loop was "the most powerful in the setting," which I considered blatantly untrue: There's the Creation Of All Things Technique, which allows you to create Kekkei Genkei (and everything really) from nothing (what with every Bijuu having one), there's Kakashi's Sharingan which could copy Kekkei Genkei during the whole "Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow" movie, there's Madara's Limbo clones which you can't even perceive without Rinnegan or Senjutsu, there's the Shadow Clone Jutsu which can let you train for years of experience within days, there's Sakon and Ukon's Kekkei Genkei/Chimera No Jutsu/Casualty Puppet which can absorb Kekkei Genkei from others, there's the time powers from both The Lost Tower and "Naruto Shippūden the Movie" (Time Travel and Precognition respectively)... The list goes on, all of which are roughly equivalent or more powerful compared to what "The Gamer" could provide (admittedly, a lot of them are just "What the gamer does, but for free"), aside from maybe easier access. So really, "The Gamer" can only ever be as broken as the powers in the setting are. It is then when I had the one thought that prompted me to make this "chapter:"

"Of course it's gonna have plot holes. It's Naruto, the setting itself has a boatload of them."

Not that that was wrong: Every ability named above has the potential to utterly break the setting in two (yes, "The Gamer" included), and that's not even talking about some things which don't make sense in universe from a more mundane standpoint, like motivations. Yet, just me thinking this made me realize what one of the other reviewers was talking about, which I previously dismissed (sorry about that). It made me see my script for what it was:

The story I had planned was a cheap fix fic. And I dislike fix fics.

Sure, I had "answers" for the inconsistencies, but that makes for a mediocre fan theory at best, not a good story, in addition to the fact that it would explain said inconsistencies, but not actually allow me to do something about them without the end result turning incredibly mean spirited. The whole toddler thing I spent a good bit of time overemphasizing? That was a jab at the "Genin at 5 years old" thing of Kakashi. It hurts me to even look at the script, because aside from the minor Kakuzu Bromance I had planned all of it just reads like an angry rant in hindsight.

So, where does this leave the story (assuming it isn't deleted by the mods)? Well, I'm not so sure about it myself. I can probably still salvage a lot of it, even got a way for him to join up almost immediately with the "Age of Naruto," though that would require removal of the Kakuzu Subplot, which I guess was probably a bit too soppy to begin with. I'm not really burned out entirely, and I might just let the plot holes in basic Naruto and Naruto Shippūden stand where they are. Fight fire with fire at some points even, who knows really, but I want to be able to write something I can be proud of, and that is something which I cannot do if this ends up becoming just another forgotten, cringy fix fic.

Or one of those stories where the MC is effectively "Naruto, but smarter." Might just be the "Two-Dimensionality Of Good" that I've been exposed to, but I probably would rather have this story be forgotten and/or deleted than doing that.

Right now, I'm not sure if I should play it out for now or swiftly enact plan B to immediately "jump forward in time." If there's any suggestions, well, the review section is always open. And sometimes it takes a kick where it hurts for an author to realize obvious mistakes.

With kind regards,

Dax379