Naruto: Romance, Politics, and the Uchiha Problem - Daastan_Go (2024)

Chapter 1: The Poor Framing of Fascism

Chapter Text

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It's been a while since Naruto ended (six whole years; how time flies?), but, at this point, I'm certain that it's nothing more than the most heinous kind of fascist propaganda; and this is coming from someone who actually likes (and occasionally defends) Kishimoto's writing; however, there's no denying it: Naruto's basically Fascist Propaganda aimed at impressionable children, but it's the "pairings" that you'd see many (especially Sakura wankers who're still under the impression that a privileged self-aggrandizing jester like her was robbed of anything at any point in the manga) crying hysterically over. Self-projection is a powerful thing, folks. Don't underestimate it. Or is it a Fascist Propaganda but a product of many decisions taken by a man who slept less than 4 hours a day (literally), got only Sundays free, and didn't even get to mourn his father's death properly (he was only given a week in this regard, for which he received many death threats)? Heck, the man couldn't celebrate his honeymoon till after the manga's end; all that and the market demands. Nothing is that simple, is it?

The following post is copy-pasted from pointers I found from other sites. I truly don't have the time to type out long posts (one of these posts is from someone I'd talked to on Fan-Fiction, so it has a lot of my own points, as well, that were discussed over the Private Messages.)

I'm going to list few general ones if you read the manga from a particular angle and call it a day:

• Genocide for the greater good (of the state). This one is fairly obvious, so I thought I'd get it out of the way first. Slaughtering dissidents of the state is apparently an honourable and justified choice.

The problem with this "genocide" is that the granting of political power was a fair demand by the Uchiha. The village was founded on the basis of justice, and that's based purely in equality. You can't be just and fair if you're unequal in your policies. That's completely antithetical to the idea of justice. Baring one clan from politics, decision-making, and representation is a sure way to isolate a clan; however, Leaf didn't stop there. They physically moved the clan (something that was started by Tobirama) to the outskirts and limited their role in the village to one profession only. Not to mention we have the "dog-whistling" to further alienate the clan.

It's also rather curious that only the Uchiha that supported this racist policy were allowed into the Anbu Branch; it's no surprise that every individual involved in the massacre was directly or indirectly related to Tobirama and opposed the Uchiha. The rest of them? They weren't entertained, at all.

• Brainwashing children into military violence goes completely unchallenged by aspects of the narrative. The only people who challenge this idea are portrayed as "hateful". The best example of this is how the narrative feels the need to over-emphasize that Itachi murdering his clan was his own decision. It's awfully strange that we're expected to believe that a 13-year-old fool like Itachi (whose decisions do not make a lick of sense at any point in the manga), who was sent to fight in a bloody war for his country when he was a toddler, apparently, wasn't brainwashed with threats of war on his impressionable child brain when he was already completely numb to the concept of killing people. Itachi's history details the story of a brainwashed child soldier yet goes to great efforts to brush it aside and give Itachi the autonomy that's done to press the "justifiability" of the genocide and state-sponsored terrorism Leaf practiced in spades. Time and time, Itachi's brought to the fore so that he can re-assert fascist dogma as being just, heroic, and effective whilst being in a completely different body, a body that's no longer tied to his previous one; yet he leaves no stone unturned to double-down on the atrocities he committed, going as far as to spew gems like "a 7-year-old child Sasuke should've changed the clan because it's their lack of change that got them slaughtered" and "he's the Itachi Uchiha of the Leaf, irrespective of the heinousness of Leaf's sordid past". Never mind the cascades of "praise" casually thrown at a man, who butchered every last child to uphold status quo of a repugnant state, by the people who've never even laid their eyes on him; yet they shower him with ludicrous accolades simply because he killed every man, woman, and child for preserving an imperialistic war-industry that's doled out nothing but death, misery, and starvation to all and sundry.

People claim that he did it to protect Leaf. But is it really that simple? Not quite. Why did Itachi do this and to protect whom? Konoha against outside forces if a civil war broke out? It's strange that we know for a fact that Konoha was completely obliterated once (Pain's attack), lost Hokages twice, and during one attack, even Kurama broke loose. Each time, Kohona suffered massive casualties and damage to its infrastructure. Massive! I won't count the Sand Village as one to take advantage of the situation because they were fully involved in Orochimaru's plan to attack the village from the inside during the Chunin exams.

Now, why did no village take advantage of the chaos and take Konoha out and even take Kurama? These look like golden opportunities, don't they? It's that "treaties" with the other villages were in place, or the villages were dealing with their own issues. Mist had its own problems with the "Bloody Mist" affair, which was only cleaned up properly when Mei took charge. Mist became "Bloody Mist" because Obito was controlling the Mizukage from behind the curtains. Cloud's Hachibi had just found a more suitable host, and Bee had gone into training to learn the Tailed Beast Bomb. In fact, he never left the village during the time he trained to become a perfect Jinchuriki, which means that his fights with Minato happened before all of that. Similarly, Raikage was amassing Jutus during that time, and he'd also tried to kidnap Hinata, after which a peace-treaty was signed by offering him Neji's father's head. Onoki makes a reference to that that it takes a lot of time to take control of the Bijū. It isn't something a host can accomplish overnight.

Sand was already too weak to attack Konoha on its own as Gaara's father repeatedly tried to assassinate him (he couldn't control the Bijū properly), and he killed people for sport and tried to kill himself, too, because of his deep-seated mental issues. He was unstable due to the psychological abuse he was being put through, which is why he changed before the plan ever took shape during their attack on Leaf. Onoki was busy paying the Akatsuki to commit terrorism through Akatsuki. Who else's left behind? No one. So who was Itachi going to protect his village against? It makes no damn sense.

This is not only absurd but bone-chilling as a message of peace as Itachi, a remorseless génocidaire, is passed off as not only someone admirable but also a force of peace. If you don't find anything wrong with this, it's time for some serious introspection as this is as morally distasteful as it can get.

• Consistent denial of blatant military violence and State-Sponsored Terrorism that are collectively labelled as Will of Fire. In the manga, the truth about the Uchiha massacre is covered up by Naruto and Kakashi (Sakura only wanted Sasuke's magnificent Uchiha penis to snugly fill up her orifices, so she never cared about anything beyond herself) to "maintain the Uchiha Clan's honour". This makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. How is it more honourable to say that a clan was slaughtered by a rogue criminal of their own (further perpetuating the selfish, bloodthirsty, and power-hungry stereotype) when the truth is that an oppressed group of people was slaughtered by the government? How can an act of genocide be prevented by a future government when the truth is actively censored by the government? Neither Naruto nor Kakashi did anything to implement some sort of bill of human rights, laws, or policies (heck, anything!) in the honour of Uchiha to prevent more innocent bloodshed at the hands of the state.

Also, do people actually believe that if the truth of the coup and genocide came out, the Clans would side with Leaf? I'm aware that this Fandom isn't particularly bright, but to state that the enslaved Hyūga Branch Family and many others would side with an establishment that chooses genocide in lieu of dialogue, policy change, and political representation . . . is complete lunacy. Many of you clearly have very little idea about revolutions, do you?

• Ultranationalism is the key to lasting peace. The village is literally gated off. No one enters or leaves without permission from authority. The unification of the village under the statist military plus the slaughter of any and all potential defectors is pretty telling. It's frightening that "the will of fire" and protecting the state is the only honourable and good goal or ideology to have in this series as shown by Sasuke only ever being seen as "not evil" when he's beaten down into conforming to the very government that committed genocide against his people. In fact, the manga goes as far as to equate this repulsive Will of Fire dogma to Godhood through Shikamaru during his battle with Hidan. That should tell you something. (God, I truly can't stand Shikamaru as a character, another greasy byproduct of self-projections from people who firmly believe that they can be geniuses, too, if they weren't lazy.)

• Evil is in the genetics of the oppressed. This was pretty unsettling to witness and I'm surprised there haven't been more people speaking out about it; however, Naruto is fairly well-liked by many American readers, and we all know how USA (world's greatest terrorist state, along with her allies) has killed over 8 million people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq alone . . . in the name of freedom, peace, and democracy. It's pretty hilarious. (Yet Obama's still the democrats' best man!) We love onto which we can project our own perceptions. Keep that in mind. As challenge is the first step to change, most people simply keep on spinning at the same spot. (Basically, most are the Ben Shapiros of the world, without the helium sexiness added.)

Apparently, ideologies are inherited not just by fate but also by your genetics. The Senju-Uzumaki obviously have "The will of fire", which is known to be the supreme ideology. It consists of uniting and enduring the hardships of the world under the totalitarian government but never pursuing revolution or change for the better. "The curse of hatred" is its counterpart which has its origins exclusively in the Uchiha ancestry. It's explained to be Uchiha culture to a degree. The narrative very desperately tries to paint the pursuit of revolution to prevent more violence as evil, bloodthirsty, and selfish. (That's why you have a slew of Sakura wankers writing "bad bitch!" Sakura fictions in which she lets the meanie "hater" Sasuke get it, and, afterwards, she wins the better Uchiha co*ck, of Uchiha Itachi, as her prize! Yay! Queen!)

This, in reality, makes no sense. Why are the Uchiha hateful for trying to fix a situation for the better of their family, yet, somehow, the Senju aren't characterized by hatred despite openly antagonizing the Uchiha? Simply put, the Uchiha are genetically undesirable and their push for equal rights are characterized as hateful, selfish, and lonely. None of the "bloodthirsty" actions of any Uchiha add up with this narrative in the light of what we've seen; but they're a fictional race of people that are only evil by the design that aggressively portrays oppressed groups as selfish, violent, and aggressive whilst simultaneously lauds the violent, inhumane, and wanton practices of the states. Towards the end of the fourth war, the story of Ashura and Indra is told to Naruto and Sasuke. Apparently, Indra is the original Uchiha who was influenced by some deranged evil spirit to pursue power over unification for completely selfish purposes. This is very unfairly equated to Sasuke and the rest of the Uchiha clan to explain to the readers that the Uchiha are inherently evil and selfish detractors; yet we're shown that the Senju through nepotism, fascism, and totalitarianism not only multiplied conflicts but also started wars (all of the wars were directly or indirectly started by Leaf) and engaged in the same things the Uchiha are accused of. This creates an odd paradox in the narrative, but the narrative still presses upon the fact that, no, the Curse of Hatred is the cause, fascism isn't.

• To be a revolutionary is to be hateful, selfish, and lonely. This ties into my last point. Sasuke is constantly referred to as lonely by just about everyone in the cast, especially Naruto. This has always been bothersome because Sasuke wouldn't have been lonely if his entire clan wasn't slaughtered by the very same people that Naruto stands by. This point is incredibly simple, yet it's overlooked because the fandom's obsessed with its version of anti-Uchiha narrative to a laughable degree. To add to this point, what if Naruto had simply said to Sasuke, "I believe you have every right to bring the murderer of your clan to justice and I'll stand by your right to justice every step of the way," instead of physically fighting him and screaming at him all the time? Sasuke isn't inherently lonely exclusively by his own means; no, he's alienated by everyone around him. The narrative acknowledges Sasuke's tragedy, but the fandom and the narrative, to an extent, ignore the real reason as to why he's lonely and then state that the only way that Sasuke will find a sense of family through the acceptance of his peers is if he conforms to the government and adopts the hegemonic ideology . . . after "repenting" forever in the aftermath of daring to get justice for his clan in the first place. This eerie emotional manipulation of a very emotionally vulnerable man is completely normalized and unquestioned by the fandom. It sends a harrowing message to the audience that it's more desirable and fulfilling to conform to the government in spite of their cruel treatment of your people, and, should you question otherwise, you must repent for forgiveness!

• The leader of the village is the most powerful member of the military, who is chosen exclusively through nepotism by a rich man who owns the land instead of the people, and is in power for an indeterminate length of time. Again with the military obsession! Not even necessarily the best military commander or anyone with experience in any leadership position, at all. This is quite fascist due to the fact that there's no limitation, no checks and balances, on what a Kage can do to their village: they're selected through nepotism, not democracy, and they're in power for as long as they please no matter how the public feels. The leader is not necessarily someone who is shown to be compassionate, responsible, trustworthy, intelligent, or reliable. In fact, you could be a known, un-prosecuted war criminal (like every Kage) and still get the position. Being a war-criminal is actually a preferable position in the village, apparently.

• To add on to that, war criminals in the Government or Military go completely un-prosecuted and often unpunished - as shown by Danzō and the village elders. The village elders are still in the same position during the events of Boruto as they were in over 20 years ago when they conspired to execute the Uchiha massacre. Naruto, Kakashi, and Tsunade know of their involvement yet haven't held them accountable in any way.

• Child soldiers are sent to die for the government. It seems that only Obito notices this when Rin dies. The second he becomes critical of the fact of this reality is the second he becomes "hateful" and "evil". This is too good!

And all this can't be ended on just that. This is my perspective on the Tobirama and the nonsense he brought to the narrative that's bereft of logic:

Let's start with the "jobs" thing and that Tobirama wanted to work with the Uchiha and that he didn't hate them. All right, first we have this "jobs" argument that I've never been able to understand. He gave the Uchiha jobs to limit their political hold (I'd elaborate on this in the next point), not help them. He's called out on it by Orochimaru of all the people that not only did Tobirama physically "move" the Uchiha to the margins of the village but also that his "policies and Jutsus" created nothing but strife, as well. (Let it be known that population movement is a war-crime that demanded an open revolt, not a covert one; yet this fandom is too far up its own bum, with the nasty self-inserting antics, that it keeps on doubling down on the Sasuke-hate to the point that I've seen people write masturbatory torture-p*rnography to kill, maim, or torture him in colourful ways, sans half-decent prose; maybe it's time to take a trip to a therapist? Your mum may find you cool, but this isn't normal—seek help.)

Tobirama himself stated that the "job" was given for the sole purpose of stopping another Madara (basically, the isolation tactic was deliberate, and he's outright admitted to that that he had an underlying agenda in mind); and both Orochimaru and Hashirama agreed that he persecuted the Uchiha repeatedly and that his Jutsus caused problems for everyone. Two people can't be wrong.

If he didn't hate the Uchiha, why did he react in an antagonistic manner to Sasuke, without knowing his intentions? He called the Uchiha "scoundrels" or "a clan that sides with scoundrels" quite frequently as this is literally his first reaction to Sasuke as soon as he introduces himself to him; furthermore, he doesn't even know what Sasuke was up to, only we readers do. This isn't prejudice? Bigotry? Racism? If not, what is it? I'm lost.

He also lied through his f*cking teeth that no other clan was limited to the Police Force or one job that defined them save the Uchiha, a thing he accepted himself when Orochimaru called him out on it. The only Uchiha that were fit to be in his "cool" fascists' club were the ones that spied on the clan (or model génocidaires like Itachi). Which other clan was ghettoized, moved to another location, and isolated from village policies? I like the fact that he contradicted himself in a single chapter, repeatedly, yet the Fandom simply rolls around the ejacul*tory Sasuke-loathing and laps it right up faster than that "two girls, one cup" video's stars. Ain't that a sh*tty mystery?

In fact, he could not only prophesize the genocide but also could predict that the coup would take place? Fascinating! He should've become a fortune teller in Hokage's stead. And Itachi committed a genocide (if it were lawful, it wouldn't have been kept under wraps, with Itachi being made the sole scapegoat). Also, Itachi's a model Uchiha in his view, an Uchiha who butchers men, women, and children in the name of the state? Oh, no, you see, he gave them jobs! In his view, "either you're with him or you're against him (how can anyone call this hard-right fascism, amiright?)". So he wanted to work with them, but he one) removed them from the political infrastructure and limited their power to stop a "fictional" Madara; two) he started the surveillance on them; and three) the only Uchiha that are model Uchiha in his view are either the ones that butcher every single Uchiha down to the last child or the ones that are totes cool with his segregationist policies. Heck, he's literally praising Kagami and Itachi. By praising the latter, he's fully endorsing the genocide.

And did he want to work with the Uchiha? First, Leaf was to be a democracy, but why was it a democracy? Because there was a danger that Madara could gain control; so Leaf was to be a democracy when Madara could become the leader, but it wasn't when Tobirama's segregationist policies had been fully enforced? Even the Police Force job he gave them was without power as the Uchiha couldn't arrest the Anbu (a branch that he used to spy on them) and Root. That's about half the military right there.

Hashirama promised Madara that Hokage was meant to protect the children and people. What a crock of sh*t that turned out to be, eh, Hashirama? Not only did Hashirama allow Tobirama to create the entire political infrastructure (in which children kill to progress forward in the military hierarchy) that was copied by other villages, but he also didn't come through on any of his promises. He said that he'd handle Tobirama. Well, did he? No, he allowed him to do the aforementioned and appointed him as the next Hokage. He's the one who started the nepotism in the village. Madara had realistic reservations about Tobirama, and all of them came true, one by one. He didn't leave because he wanted power. No, he left 'cause he didn't trust Tobirama and Hashirama. Madara challenged the latter and he had no answers to any of Madara's reservations. (Why, Hashirama doesn't seem like a fascist to you people? Is it that he acts goofy and laughs with his mouth wide-open? A friendly fascist, you say? I've heard that our very own "kill Iraqi children with phosphorous" Bush is a fun guy these days, as well; heck, I've heard many liberals say that he has a . . . soul, unlike Trump!)

Hashirama was fully willing to end anyone's life who threatened the state. Is that the sort of ideology he prattled on before Madara? No, he lied to him. Nothing in the village's built to safeguard the children or all the clans. It's a breeding ground for corruption, racism, and exploitation.

Tobirama's statements on the Curse of Hatred are absolutely laughable, middle-school-faux-philosophy rhetoric that only the people with very tiny intellectual capacities would ever buy. Were the Senju any different? No. Both Hashirama and Black Zetsu have talked of the Senju Clan's tendency to look for strife, blood-shed, and power. If both Uchiha are Senju are the same, how are Uchiha more blood-thirsty when this statement's directly contradicted by Hashirama and Black Zetsu? Why would Zetsu lie when he was playing both the clans? However, I'd say that the Senju were worse as they never wanted to change. They simply organized, multiplied, and intensified conflicts. That's all.

At first, Tobirama also considered his own words on Curse of Hatred to be nothing but "rumours". So he basically started "dog whistling" over no concrete evidence as his analysis has nothing to do with "curse". It's a genetic ability of the Uchiha to awaken the Sharingan in response to "heightened emotions". The heightened emotions are simply translated into a physical manifestation of chakra that in turn triggers the latent ability in the Uchiha genes to respond. Going by this logic, any person who feels "heightened emotions" is not only "cursed" but is also "full of hate". Do people know how f*cking absurd this sounds? Do people even know that emotions are nothing more that basic chemical reactions?

"Emotions come from the arousal of the nervous system. Millions of chemical reactions take place in the brain at any given time. Chemical reactions occur because of synapses. Synapses are parts of the nervous system, and it is through these that neurons are able to transmit messages using neurotransmitters." Did you hear that, everyone? We all suffer from "curse of hatred"! Why? St. Patrick Tobirama can't be wrong. Hail Mary!

Guess what? There's nothing complicated about emotions or whatever Hollywood has filled your heads with; moreover, emotions of grief are more powerful as the memories they're associated with them are recalled vividly by people. The memories can resurface any time and are called "anniversary reaction":

"When a loved one dies, you might be faced with grief over your loss again and again — sometimes even years later. Feelings of grief might return on the anniversary of your loved one's death or other special days throughout the year. These feelings, sometimes called an anniversary reaction, aren't necessarily a setback in the grieving process. They're a reflection that your loved one's life was important to you."

"During an anniversary reaction you might experience the intense emotions and reactions that you first experienced when you lost your loved one, including:

Anger

Anxiety

Crying spells

Depression

Fatigue, or lack of energy

Guilt

Loneliness

Pain

Sadness

Trouble sleeping

Anniversary reactions can also evoke powerful memories of the feelings and events surrounding your loved one's death. For example, you might remember in great detail where you were and what you were doing when your loved one died."

It's repulsive how any individual can consider the most common reactions to grief as "curse of hatred" when, frankly, genocides, wars, and slaughters are so out there compared to a mere loss of a loved one that … I don't believe any normal, sensible, and decent individual would even venture such a statement.

Also, nothing in his own hypothesis points to anything even remotely along the "clinical" nature of hate, power, or blood thirst that he himself calls the "curse of hatred". He's presented literally squat to back up his hypothesis; and he was cutting up the Uchiha years ago, but he considered it to be "rumours" when the village was founded and then later "hardcore facts"? Based on what? What changed? Nothing is given from his side to validate it. It's ridiculous that Tobirama fanboys seem incapable of reading what Tobirama himself has to say on this. These three things can't be right at the same time: either "only the Uchiha clan has the curse of hatred" or "both Senju or Uchiha showed the same disposition for the curse as they both had engaged in same code of conduct, therefore, they both are affected by the curse of hatred" or "every person who experiences heightened emotions is affected by the curse of hatred". If one is right, two and three can't be right. If second is right, one and two aren't right. If the third is right, the first two are wrong. Tobirama's hypothesis being some kind of "hard fact" falls apart as soon as it's analysed in the light of the evidence given by other characters.

Furthermore, if the Uchiha were the only ones affected by the "curse of hatred" that's triggered by "heightened emotions", then why didn't they exhibit it when they were ghettoized? What about Tobirama himself? What would anyone call his tendency to not move on from past conflicts? A "unique curse that's not curse of hatred as that's reserved only for the Uchiha"? Again, if "heightened emotions" are the "curse of hatred", then the entire shinobi world suffers from it (as stated by Nagato and Jiraiya)? Nagato even acted on it, so he, too, has a "curse of hatred"? Gotcha, St. Patrick Tobirama! Perhaps Tobirama's fans are incapable of the most basic hypothesis as whatever he's said is not only infantile but also rooted in bigotry.

I forgot to add another minor argument: if Tobirama is right about the "Curse of Hatred" as he's a scientist, then why's Orochimaru wrong when his experience with the Sharingan and knowledge on Tobirama's own Jutsus far exceed anything Tobirama has ever done? We know for a fact that Izanagi's time was extended via Orochimaru's experimentation, and he's the one who created the whole arm for Danzo. We also know that he's the one who created the Shin clones, as well.

Then we have Sasuke's own disgust at Orochimaru's experimentation on the human bodies to learn the secrets of immortality (that's how he invented his Immortality Jutsu, you know). We also know that he's the only one to reverse the Reaper Seal.

This shows that Orochimaru's anthropological research on clans far exceeds Tobirama's, as well; otherwise, Tobirama would've left his research scrolls on the Uzumaki Fuinjutsu behind, but he didn't. Heck, Orochimaru was skilled enough to completely manipulate and close off Naruto's Kurama-seal with relative ease, too. He was using Tobirama's Edo Tensai so casually that Tobirama was taken aback by it. In fact, he perfected Tobirama's own Jutsu to the point that Tobirama himself couldn't overcome it.

So let me get this straight, Orochimaru who's got intimate knowledge of the Sharingan, genetics, and bodies to the point that he's even able to create artificial versions of Uchihas doesn't have anything to state on the Curse of Hatred, but Tobirama who only began to name the curse after the village was formed and has very little experience in Sharingan experimentation is right? Why? How and why do Tobirama's opinions outweigh Orochimaru's, a man who's managed to even create Sharingans? He's also calling Tobirama out on his policies. On a purely pragmatic level, Orochimaru doesn't care about the village or the Uchiha (beyond obtaining their bodies), so his opinion is the most objective out of everyone. Then why isn't more value placed on his opinion compared to Tobirama's despite the scientific knowledge of the Sharingan under his belt? Is there any scientist in the manga who backed up Tobirama's hypothesis? If the only other (and a far more capable) scientist, Orochimaru, is not only speaking out against Tobirama's hypothesis but also calling him out on it, shouldn't that raise a red flag as the only person to back Tobirama's theories is Tobirama himself? That itself should work against him, but Naruto fandom simply adores any scrap of material they can get their dirty little hands on, with which they can malign Sasuke. It's pretty cartoonish, if you ask me.

Then we have the scans in which Tobirama equates love to hate (what is this, high-school dorm-room philosophy?) and Hashirama states that Madara loved Izuna a lot. (It's curious that in Tobirama's view evil equates any sort of vengeance against Konoha!)

He also states that it's for the best if a group of people is butchered for the sake of the village. No one finds anything wrong with this brand of hard-right fascism? I don't understand. The Uchiha are evil for being dissidents, but Tobirama is righteous for inventing a policy in which even genocide is A-Okay for the preservation of status quo? Isn't this what every forward-thinking individual keeps whining against? Man, you guys are complete cartoons, aren't you?

I'd say this (a post I copied from somewhere, but I can't find the source) as it sums up my arguments fairly well: "People often argue characters like Itachi or Tobirama made difficult choices, but it's not true. They're small-minded, lazy in thinking, and they took the easy way out. Massacring people isn't difficult. What would've been difficult is navigating a myriad of social and moral issues like managing volatile historical inter-clan grudges, integration, pluralism, sharing of power, phasing out slavery and other inhumane practices, figuring out an economic model that doesn't rely on making kids killers and weapons, and at the same time trying not to antagonize all the traditionalists and interest parties. These things are really difficult, much more difficult than killing people. It'd actually require political talent and leadership."

Did Tobirama have these leadership qualities? If you say, "yes!", then you're being a deliberately obtuse, because we're all well-aware that that's not how you lead people in any socio-political and economic set-up, because that way lies disaster.

Then the Uchiha are often accused of war. The first world war began because of the combined issues that arose from the distribution of tailed-beasts to other nations, which Tobirama distributed on power-balances between the villages (his exact words), and the shinobi-system that Tobirama created was copied by all (again, exact words by Hashirama). Tobirama was attacked by Cloud, not Rock, Shinobi who ambushed and killed him. He also appointed Hiruzen, knowingly that Danzō had "forever been vying with Saru over one thing or another"? But Danzō didn't have the hater-gator Uchiha-curse, so Tobirama was cool with it.

Why would any sensible leader select such people as the village's torch-bearers when he knows that it'd cause political strife in the future? And it didn't? (Danzō paying Orochimaru to murder Sarutobi, anyone?) Who didn't see this coming? So to pin the whole thing on Madara's attack on Onoki and throw away everything else is simply bizarre to me. We don't know when this happened. We don't know why it happened. Madara also asked Onoki to bow before Konoha, and this is backed by the facts that Konoha 1) started an imperialistic and corrupt governmental system that everyone copied (Tobirama created the system), 2) they distributed all Bijū on the basis of power-balances between the villages (Tobirama outright states that despite the Kazekage's reservations about the whole thing; heck, the rest are already ready for war to crush wind—Madara was the cause!, my arse), and 3) the second world war was literally started by Konoha. In fact, Kumo tried to steal Kurama long before Madara ever tamed it, and that escalated things, as well.

What about the third shinobi war that was again started by Leaf as it'd lost its power? What about the fourth war that started 'cause of Konoha's state-sponsored terrorism that killed Yahiko? What does all this have anything to do with Uchiha? From the looks of it, every single world-war was either directly started by Konoha at the loss of power or indirectly through fascist practices. Madara or Uchiha had nothing to do with any of them.

Then we have the "Uchiha become vengeful, hateful terrorists" and "Tobirama was being cautious as the clan became vengeful terrorists . . . Lol, it's not racism" bits.

I like how the term "vengeful" is often used for people who fight back against the oppressors. It's kind of … curiously interesting. You know, leave it to the anus-sniffing gremlins to over-use the "terrorist" term as it's so en vogue among the terrorist white states' leaders and citizens these days. A term popularized by USA and her Allies who've mindlessly slaughtered over 8 million innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone:

"According to the figures explored here, total deaths from Western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan since the 1990s - from direct killings and the longer-term impact of war-imposed deprivation - likely constitute around 4 million (2 million in Iraq from 1991-2003, plus 2 million from the "war on terror"), and could be as high as 6-8 million people when accounting for higher avoidable death estimates in Afghanistan." (Source can be provided.)

I've yet to touch USA and her Allies' glorious exploits through CIA (an agency that trained operatives to kill people for sport in South America—no, seriously, for real; Project MKUltra; torture of prisoners; etc.) or the genocides in North Korea, Vietnam (over 2 million people in a couple of days alone; forget the full death-toll), and its unbending support of an apartheid state like Israel (who in turn funded war-crimes against the Muslims from Rohingya and Bosnia and Chechnya) and now India; however, you'd never hear any popular news outlets calling these states for what they are, Terrorists! I like it how "vengeful" is quite tactfully used for the Uchiha whilst state-sponsored terrorism conducted by the villages is deliberately put aside.

I'll be blunt here: if you're willing to kill off a group down to the last child, you'd better expect the same treatment in return. Heck, it's justice, a term that means to "make things exact" in its original etymological usage. So the "Collective Punishment" Sasuke and Nagato had in store for Konoha was not only fair but also just.

Leaf started the second war and engaged in mass-slaughters and pillaging of resources to stabilize her own economy. This is outright stated by Nagato. Tsunade, who fought this war and murdered Nagato's people, doubled-down on her bullsh*t like a typical fascist c*nt, but she's . . . cool, I guess? It's strange how the fandom absolutely adores nasty fascists but hate any character that stands against it. I wonder why? Nagato's death (brought about by a fascist's lemon-y "don't like, don't read!" Fan-Fiction; doesn't that just melt your heart? The tenderness of it all!) was the death of Ame's short-lived freedom.

She was on the front-line in the second war that Konoha started. She lied through her f*cking teeth when she said that Nagato was lying and that the nations suffered tragedies. Man, f*ck off, you smacked bag of twats! I suppose, she gets this laudable quality from her Uncle, Tobirama! How adorable. She's one of the "good" fascists, you know? A "war-criminal" feminist icon! She only sent in Jiraiya to further de-stabilize Rain when it was finally enjoying peace under Pain's rule after years of strife, despite Shadow Villages still trying to cause conflict there and make money; however, Tsunade was crying "women tears" (over Dan's precious one-of-a-kind penis), so it's all very sad and not terrorism at all! It's only the "hater-gator Uchiha-curse" suffering Uchiha that are terrorists.

Nagato's dialogue about his friends, family, and village isn't so different from Sasuke's (when he gave his impassioned speech before Kakashi and Sakura), now, is it? Heck, Sasuke's retribution is exactly like Nagato's, as well, who killed Hanzo, his family, and all associated with him, down to the last child. I wonder, why are people only pressed about Sasuke? It's almost as if it's self-inserting rearing its ugly head, something that I previously explained. (Uchiha hate is always about self-inserting and Sasuke-hate—always!)

They're exactly the same, aren't they? Victims lashing out at extensions (shinobi) of Terrorist States that have exploited, butchered, and pillaged them relentlessly to build their own economies and capitalistic war-machines. Obito told Kakashi and Naruto the whole thing; but their responses are gold! They range from endorsing genocide to outright whiny denial that why would Sasuke choose revenge and not serve the state that butchered his clan? And while I'm at it, can we all stop pretending that Kakashi is anything more than a fascist c*nt-bag (Naruto isn't any better)? Thank you.

I mean, what about the other sorts of terrorism conducted by the states? (Haha, Raikage talked the big talk at the summit when he'd attacked Konoha several times and kidnapped Hinata and then wanted Neji's father's head! Yet the fandom still loves him, you see, because he "showed" Sasuke! Whoohoo!)

All of the Kages' confessions at the Kage Summit can be translated into the following: cross-border terrorism, murder of civilians to get funds from Daimyos (which is what started the Third Ninja War as Konoha and other villages were dry on funds), proxy wars, etc. None of this is terrorism? None of these are terrorists? No, you need to be suffering from the "hater-gator Uchiha-curse" to be a terrorist. Nice morality some of you have. It's as if all of you are . . . f*cking ducks! Organized mass-scale state-sponsored terrorism? A-Ok. Victims lashing back at the system? Vengeful terrorists. Neat-o! (I've decided to forgo orphan exploitation and slavery they all practiced, too, aside of the slaughters, genocides, and pillaging on the side-lines—all that irrelevant stuff that needs to be over-looked because Sakura sniffed Sasuke's penis once and then her brain went out of her vagin* in lovable spurts, with her so-called "perfect" chakra control in effect, of course; and we and Sasuke had to endure that for 700 chapters and beyond . . . people robbed her, you see? They robbed her dead—potential!)

Furthermore, to bring the argument back to the Uchiha, the Clan had entered into a "treaty-based contract" with the village, a contract based on equality principles. If you don't uphold the contract, you don't get to decide what the treaty-makers choose afterwards. This is a dangerous "submit or die" mentality that the Fandom preaches to espouse.

The Akatsuki are called S-class criminals and terrorists by many, but they willfully brush aside the fact that these so-called criminals were funded by all of the villages to commit genocides (Obito), pogroms, terrorism, murdering of people against certain policies, etc? Where do you people think they got all that money from? The damn villages! The Akatsuki are criminals, but these villages getting their just deserts is a bad thing when Akatsuki didn't do anything the villages didn't commission them to do? This is said in the manga by Onoki. The Fandom don't seem upset by these villages that are nothing more than Organized Fascist Terrorist Governments that kill people in large numbers and hoard their resources (Nagato explains it) as they see fit, but God forbid it if someone decides to give them their long overdue comeuppance! Morals! This fandom's like a large group of sociopathic imperialism-loving, nationalistic nutters that think that as long as governments protect their own people, no matter how many innocent people they kill, it's all fine and dandy.

Why would you think like that? Think . . . think hard!

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Chapter 2: Senju Tobirama and the Uchiha Ooga Booga Booga

Chapter Text

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It's fairly bizarre to imagine that anyone would think of Senju Tobirama as some kind of, Lord forbid, voice of reason. This is especially bizarre for few reasons: one) he's the only character who's invented a Jutsu that requires live sacrifices (yes, you heard me, live); he straight up dismantled democracy in Konoha and set up a fascistic system so hard-right that it'd make the Nazis blush in envy (violence of children against children is not only sanctioned but also lauded; as the better "theatre-show of carnage" they put up, the more the Shadow Village's chances of receiving funding for its "philanthropic adventures"; this is literally spelled out by Hiruzen before the Chūnin Examinations); three) he systematically kick started a political "dog whistling" campaign, a segregational village infrastructure, and political isolation of a founding Clan and that resulted in its complete genocide.

Yet, lo and behold, we've actually got supporters of this guy's lunacy; and they don't stop at liking the guy (hey, I like Danzō, but I won't be suggesting any time soon that he was a "misunderstood great guy"); no, they find his politics justifiable. When you read that, you automatically think: is this stone-age wanker nuts or does he just get himself wet over depictions of fascists?

First, this guy signs a treaty that's based on "equal rights" of the founding clansmen. Then he decides that this treaty thing isn't going to work as the Uchiha Clan might put Madara in charge (horror of horrors!); so he plays the democracy game to specifically limit Madara's power and, by extension, his people's. Once Madara overhears Tobirama's dog-whistling and voices genuine concern over his racist rhetoric (to which Hashirama had no solution nor answer), he confronts Hashirama and leaves; and, all of a sudden, democracy isn't feasible anymore; because, by God, people having representation in a just and fair political system is horrific! (Democracy has its own set of problems, but let's stick to this for now.)

He goes behind the established treaty precepts, removes a founding clan's political power, with which he'd signed a binding treaty (that makes this political maneuver bereft of ethics, justice, and morality by default, so let's not take this "morality" route with Tobirama; it's pretty stupid), and creates a fascistic political system that's a stuff of horrors. It's also a system that was copied by every single prominent Shadow Village. Not my words, but Hashirama's. So whatever corruption, political mess, and terrorism you see from the villages, Tobirama literally, f*cking literally, laid the foundation for that, a system against which any kind of retaliation results in a full-fledged genocide. And if that wasn't bad enough, he didn't even spare the children! Great guy—truly someone who should be looked up to for "visionary" political policies!

The fact that "impartiality" is associated with this guy is f*cking parodical. You'd have to be an arse-wipe extraordinaire to locate impartiality, wisdom, and political acumen in anything this guy did. Nothing this guy did was in any way sensible. A common statement I've seen from his wankers is the following: he gave the Uchiha Clan jobs to keep the "Curse of Hatred (let's call this the Uchiha Ooga Booga Booga)" in check; he was great!

I understand that common sense, basic intelligence, and political know-how have never been this fandom's strong-suits, but this is pretty much a new low. So Tobirama thought it was politically sound to contain the Uchiha Ooga Booga Booga in the confines of a peaceful village where the chances of their Ooga Booga Booga surfacing were close to nil; however, he'd got no qualms about sending the Clan that's a "ticking time-bomb" in his view to the frontlines of all f*cking wars? You do realise that it makes no sense, right? (Never mind the whole "but he had Uchiha in his council, so he can't be racist! I'm so f*cking smart!" f*cking idiotic reasoning from half-caricatures that litter this fandom like a bitch's fresh turds as if "I've got a Black friend, so I can't be racist" and "people throwing their own race under the bus and shaking hands with oppressors" haven't been en vogue in the human history; this fandom's parents probably taught them to use any half-decent books' pages on anything other than white exceptionalism as arse-wipes, nothing more.)

If he really wanted to put a stop to this Ooga Booga Booga, he'd have made sure that the Uchiha never went to wars where the chances of their loved ones dying and their trauma causing mutations to their Sharingan were astronomically high! I get it that the Tobirama wankers are really f*cking stupid, but you don't have to be that stupid not to see any absurdity in his statements: it's "scientifically sound" to isolate a "crazy" clan, whose "trauma power" is triggered by loss, in a peaceful environment just as it's "scientifically sound" to send the very same clan with the very same issues to full-fledged wars, which my village has directly or indirectly started every single time, because what could possibly go wrong? I'm very smart! By God, it's nuts! This is stupid—this is very, very, very stupid!

Then we've got the whole Uchiha Ooga Booga Booga "facts", yo! The guy never studied Madara's Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan (that was a Kage Bunshin the real Madara left after he used his delayed Izanagi), so his hypothesis is incomplete. And if your theoretical framework is incomplete, you can't call it a fact. You can't back up your own analyses and call it a fact yourself, without anyone to cross-check your scientific findings. What a load of tosh! How on earth can anyone call this f*cking tosser anything but a smacked bag of twats? (Most Uchiha can't even read the Stone Tablet properly as it requires the highest Dōjutsu, EMS, to decode it completely, so the whole "manipulation" yodeling is pretty much a complete bust.) In fact, he called the Curse a "rumour" when the village was made, but as soon as Madara left, it became a fact. How? Lord knows. His statements are backed by no one but himself, and Orochimaru never confirmed any of his statements, either. He actually called him out on it, and Orochimaru, as stated by Tobirama, made Tobirama's own Jutsus … better! So he's more of a scientist than Tobirama himself is.

Also, "Curse of Hatred" has been used to define vengeance by Nagato and Jiraiya, so, basically, the whole Shinobi world suffers from the Uchiha Ooga Booga Booga? What about Black Zetsu's statement that he tempted both the Uchiha and Senju to battle against one another—a statement that's confirmed by Hashirama when he fought with his father? He's presented literally squat to back up his mumbo-jumbo; and he was cutting up the Uchiha squishy-thingies years ago, but he considered it to be "rumours" when the village was founded and then later "hardcore facts"? Based on what? What changed? Nothing is given from his side to validate his fear-mongering dick-waddery. It's ridiculous that Tobirama wankers are incapable of reading what Tobirama himself has to say on this. These three things can't be right at the same time: either "only the Uchiha Clan has the curse of hatred" or "both Senju and Uchiha showed the same disposition for the curse as they both had engaged in same code of conduct, therefore, they both are affected by the curse of hatred" or "every person who experiences heightened emotions is affected by the curse of hatred". If one is right, two and three aren't. If two is right, one and three aren't. If the third is right, the first two aren't. Tobirama's hypothesis being some kind of "hard fact" falls apart as soon as it's touched in the light of the evidence given by other characters. (And this guy thinks the Uchiha are too "jumpy" when he lost his marbles at an Uchiha who's . . . pretty much a mere kid.)

Folks, not all of us lack the most basic common sense that envies a Tobirama wanker's garish stupidity. And then I read statements such as "you'd have to earn his respect"; "he did the best"; and "he meant well". And I can't help but question the juvenile disposition of the wanker who's making these statements. Why should anyone want the respect of a smelly dick-wad who did the aforementioned? How did he do his best by literally moving a clan to the outskirts of the village (a tactic that's a war-crime)? How did he mean well when he did nothing to rectify his fascistic political mishaps?

Tobirama himself admits that he gave them the Police Force job to contain their "uppity" rage when . . . do I have to repeat how he exploited them in the war-time? These two tactics are so paradoxically opposed to one another that anything save bigotry just looks like a farce! And how's a guy that created a system that exploits orphaned children, conducts terrorism, endorses slavery (Hyūga Clan), commits genocide, sanctions and engineers mass-slaughters to keep the funds flowing . . . unbiased, wise, and someone worthy of respect? Tobirama literally invented this whole system that was later copied by every single village. Again, not my words, but Hashirama's.

Furthermore, I've noticed a lot of Sakura wankers suckling this guy like there's no tomorrow, and you can't help but think that it's that "self-inserting" to court hot cartoon-men talking, given how they over-indulge in these cheap reverse-harem fictions. And as she's passed around like a discount blunt amongst the Uchiha hotties (who didn't throw less than half-a-quarter of a f*ck her way in Canon, and they never will—a source of her wankers' endless mental anguish that pushes them towards insanity night and day, trickle by trickle, self-aggrandising fiction by fiction) that engage in dick-waving in Uchiha Reverse-Harem Fictions that right the wrongs of Sakura's tragedies by ensuring her the Uchiha penis-compensation the poor, traumatised, sad thing deserved, you know how that smaller-than-a-chicken's-arsehole-brains' Itachi can't ever be wrong, amIright? (How astounding that they want to perish at Solo-King's hallowed alter, as well, ji*zz and all, hair dyed pink!) And you've got to make Sasuke pay, too, so any man that stands against him drips with logic, drips thickly from his anus—never mind what the canon illustrates, or the fact that Sasuke's literally one of the three characters that viciously challenges this fascism to the very end. They've got to be punished for standing against status-quo (rejecting the pitiful reader's self-inserts), hard-right ideologies, and fascism, dotchya know? (It isn't a surprise nor a coincidence that every person involved in the massacre was a Tobirama wanker: Hiruzen and co? His councilmen. Shisui? Kagame was his ancestor. Itachi? He was Shisui's bestie.)

Is this the Senju wankers' "highly moral" champion, a hard-right fascist whose bollocks tighten at the thought of butchering every man, woman, and child in name of the state (a statement Hashirama made when he stabbed Madara from behind)? Amazing! This is what a Genocide is defined as:

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

You don't need to even kill the group to commit genocide. How incredibly shocking! (Many of us already knew what a genocide means, by the way.) It's as if many Uchiha had realistic reservations about this guy. The Uchiha didn't like the discrimination, racism, ghettoization, isolation, constant surveillance, population movement, etc., that was leading up to a full-fledged mass-murder (towards which Tobirama showed utmost nonchalance); and wanted to . . . my goodness, retaliate to safeguard their lives, culture, and integrity? The f*cking inhumanity of it all! How f*cking dare they?! Not only that, but Tobirama was called out by his own brother (who enjoyed this system, too) for the clan's relentless persecution.

Then I often read statements like the following: what the Uchiha experienced wasn't ghettoization! What he did wasn't Racism! Man, why's this fandom so stupid and why does it love to suck fascist characters' collective co*cks, a steeple they enjoy perishing on?

This is what ghetto is defined as:

verb

put in or restrict to an isolated or segregated area or group.

And:

a part of society or group that is in some way divided from the main part.

And:

a section of a city, especially a thickly populated slum area, inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other minority group, often as a result of social pressures or economic hardships.

any mode of living, working, etc., that results from stereotyping or biased treatment.

This is what Racism is defined as:

prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

And:

the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.

Itachi outright told Kakashi that he doesn't have "Uchiha blood" to make the Sharingan work as well as an Uchiha's (the primary condition for breaking free from Tsukuyomi, too, as he himself stated); Tobirama accepted the "unique chakra" that's specific to the Uchiha Clan; Part I and II talked about Blood-line Powers or Kekkei-Genkai. The fact that this guy built his whole logic on "Eugenics" with passionate zeal and sanctioned segregation on the basis of "genetic characteristics" . . . isn't bigotry, racism, and fascism, then what is? Remove your jaws off his genitals and, perhaps, open a book. Your empty-headed stance on this isn't adorable. It's rather Pavlovian.

And, last but not least, Naruto wankers would always defend any trickle of urine that makes him look as if he's got some kind of depth in his forefathers' barren culture that's built on video-game-y power-ups and trendy red hair compared to Sasuke's—a character that's a source of their perpetual trauma. The Senju Clan is but a clan of five pages, with little to nothing in its lore, and it's carried forward by its wankers by seething dislike for the Uchiha, for it's a Clan that makes their validation-seeking manga-projections look bad. It's almost as if . . . it's kind of lame and paper-thin as a Clan, like its wankers for whom zealotry and discovery of Self are but a missing page in the "my precious Nippon's" manga. Let it go, Tobirama wankers. Let it go.

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Additional Remarks on Tobirama's Fans and their precarious Intellectual Capabilities

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Often, too often, I see statements that double down on the idea that the Curse of Hatred (COH) is correct as it sprouted from the Uchiha's undying love (I've already presented a detailed breakdown of it in one of the previous chapters) and that Tobirama meant well—relatively speaking.

Then we have many of the . . . crazed fans (and I say that in the nicest manner possible) that claim the following: Uchiha hunted down their own for Mangekyō Sharingan (MS) and Izanami was invented to quell the Uchiha blood-lust over Izanagi. Proof of this in canon? Nowhere save Itachi's slab of a face that was contorted to that of a low-paid jester; however, that was only for MS and not Izanami, of which he presented a detailed account after the brothers' battle with Kabuto culminated.

I'd have to liberally suggest that it's very telling of the sort of people that engage with this manga as these two supposed "facts" not only outright contradict Tobirama's entire stance but also showcase the exact opposite.

Let's tackle Izanagi first: this is a Genjutsu that was invented to make sure that the Uchiha couldn't overwhelm others in battle all the time; it isn't "Time Reversal". Izanami that's also a Genjutsu was invented to make sure that the Uchiha didn't abuse the Izanagi's "results cancellation" Genjutsu and overwhelm all foes in battles, without any repercussions. Where does the discourse of the Uchiha indiscriminately killing their own to invent this even surface from? Why would the Uchiha kill people to invent a Genjutsu to counter . . . a Genjutsu? That makes no f*cking sense!

Then we have the infamous "Uchiha going on a killing spree of the other Uchiha to get MS". First, this is pretty much negated time and time again at every turn as to how the main Uchiha that guided the narrative got the MS: all of them were traumatic experiences that in turn caused the Sharingan to mutate.

My argument is simple: either the Uchiha love so much that they develop the Curse of Hatred (an anomaly that develops with the Sharingan mutation, apparently), or they have no issues about killing their own brethren in cold blood for MS and Izanagi abuse, for which Izanami was invented? You people do realise that a logic can only be stretched so far that it stops making sense, right? How can any individual with even two functional brain cells come up with this bizarro world statement that the Uchiha love so much that they develop a "generational curse" and "go on a killing spree of their own loved ones" at the same f*cking time? Do you people even read what you type? Why are you Tobirama wankers so f*cking stupid?

This is precisely what I mean when I say that Tobirama wankers' and his manga logic exhibit complete lunacy. Your mothers should have fed you more greens when you were children; and I also get that you despise the Uchiha and have to uplift every tardy wanker that says one bad thing about them, but this is just embarrassing! Don't you feel any shame? I do on your behalf—don't worry, I got you!

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Chapter 3: The King Turd that Solo'd it all!

Chapter Text

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Ah, Lord Itachi-Solo-Kun. Where to begin? The Solo is too bright with him. I'm going to begin the argument by stating this right off the bat: people pick Itachi over Sasuke for many reasons. One of the main reason is that their hate for Sasuke is so f*cking comical (and abnormal that many of them should be carted off to asylums) that they pick any character that stands against Sasuke in any manner and begin the frothy show of co*ck-suckling as if their life depends on it. They're always waiting for these dangling pieces of meat like famished bitches, and then they jeer with glee when they get them. And as Itachi is Sasuke's anti-thesis, he's an automatic pick for many. Why else do you think Tobirama became an instant hit with many? He put the "emo" boy in his place, you see! Had he not done that, no body would've given a sh*t. (Tobirama has nothing interesting to him save his Uchiha antagonism—how tragic that even the slight relevance his character has is due to the four pages on which he fumed over the Uchiha Clan.)

Then we have the values that Sasuke espouses. Filial piety? Itachi didn't care for it. Family and clan? Itachi maligned it. Honor and nationalism? Itachi chose the latter. Itachi stands against everything Sasuke stands for. Itachi's like this "edgy" kid who's a "rebel without a cause" as the only thing he did was that he rebelled against his father. That's one of the things many high- or middle-school going kids would relate to, or people who're mentally still in that phase. He put his "controlling" father in his place, set boundaries for him, sought independence, or something absurd like that. They don't care nor understand the kind of stress Fugaku was going through as his Clan stood on the brink of destruction, because they don't care what their own parents go through for their education and well-being. "He put that asshole in his place! f*ck yeah! Woohoo!" It's like that with his fans. Nothing deep, really.

Itachi's angst is really petty, because it's made no sense to me; but it's made sense to many teenagers from these first-world countries. "Don't tell me what to do! Grr grr grr!" He could've have said that during his infamous speech to his father at the compound and it wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever. That's another reason why during that time he reads like this Xbox-playing dude-bro who acts up over the tiniest of things. God forbid it if his mother ever asks him to take out the trash. That guy probably has Itachi as his hero, too.

His faux-philosophy is shallow enough to be understood by a high-school going "edgy" douche and goofy enough to be passed off as something grand. Highly quotable lines, too: People aren't fish, and . . . hungry human . . . Greed . . . Shushi is good . . . something; you see your true-est self at death; never trust that cracker-selling Uchiha lady; and always keep your aim straight during COD; otherwise, getting "no-scoped" is your fate (the first two are actual quotes from Itachi, by the way—honest!). It isn't as if his fans have ever opened a decent book on philosophy in their entire f*cking lives, and they're never going to, anyway; and it shows, given how f*cking seriously they take this guy. Most of them are less-than-half-illiterates and media consumption is how they engage with life (another reason why many of them take Sakura's supposed "fall" so seriously like it's actually a thing); so you can tell that their cognitive "slips" are hardwired into their brains.

A lot of western people also take nationalism pretty f*cking seriously, so they're naturally taken by this guy (you should read an average westerner's comments on journalistic pieces that challenge the mass-deaths in the Middle East). He's like this "trolley problem" guy come to life; and as life and death on mass-scales are a "trolley problem" to these people (their brains can't follow any patterns that aren't simple enough to imitate their crayon-drawings-esque schemata), Itachi's their go-to guy for many a moral philosophising. You see, he's everything they themselves want to be! He's this hard-edged twerp, with his pop's legal guns (with which he shot up the school—err, I mean clan), who's charming enough to grimace and cry only once; his philosophy's not a day over a middle-school activity on "what's lyif?"; and he knows how to "rebel" against the family norms. Shut the front door, my dudes! We've got ourselves a gamer's role-model! Throw in the whole pairing shtick and he's the ideal "anime husband" many western women would get off on.

And to top it off, he's not too many weed-pipes far from a Cheeto-munching and Dew-guzzling teenaged self-proclaimed maverick, who's got no pimples, nice flowing hair, and a child-friendly philosophy that's rolled up in the candy-wrapper of "deep sh*t, yo!". Basically, he's the "no-scope" veteran in COD who's got all the trophies on Steam. Yes, the "gold" one, too. Not to mention their whole "legal versus illegal" shtick that they throw around in debates like it means anything in the highly complex concepts of law, morality, and justice; but, like Itachi, they're too shallow to "get" anything at all. They probably weep while talking about his life-story and the justifiability of the "trolley problem" burdens he had to face. By God, let's start sniffing this lump of turd and weep while sniffing it!

First, let me start by saying that this, perhaps, is a very volatile topic that is sure to cause controversy due to the classically dreadful Itachi fanboy syndrome or IFBS (you can swap F for W, if you can guess what 'W' stands for) for short.

I, personally, always thought Itachi to be severely lacking in all departments: characterisation, itty-bitty wisdom (he doesn't possess any), and logic; and as much as I respect Kishimoto, Itachi's, probably, a true highlight of his narrative's short-comings. His character makes no sense. None. It's as if he's these five different characters from five different narratives are trying their hardest to find a common ground that'd glue them together into a whole that either defines a coherent or an incoherent (a structure that has its uses in many character study works) structure; and it isn't even a narrative contrivance with regards "personae"; no, it's more along the lines of several bald chickens trying to stick their heads into the arsehole of a single headless chicken. Just try and imagine that: it isn't a pretty sight.

Itachi wankers think that no one's capable of plumbing the puddle of Itachi's depths, but rest assured, some of us see him for what he is—better than you ever would. His arm in sleeves? Bushido code for Samurai without masters. His line about "running and clinging to life" that he said to Sasuke? Lifted straight out of the 47-Ronin. His challenging Fugaku and backing down upon Sasuke's request? He valued Sasuke more. His name literally means Weasel in Japanese? A metaphor for a clan betrayer. His face is fashioned like a crow's? In some folklore stories in Japan, crows are cunning creatures that lead humans to their ruin (Japanese myth doesn't create a dichotomy between good and evil like the west, so, technically, evil in a western sense isn't a concept in their lore). I can highlight one or two more, but they're hardly that important. Did I miss anything? Not at all—that, of course, is another story altogether that none of these themes are utilised beyond some vague superficialities in Naruto Canon; so let's drop the "connoisseurship" with regards his character's comically tragic shattered remains that define his wankers' less-than-delicate sensibilities.

Let's briefly look at few things in this regard before tackling more prominent slips:

Let's start with some very basic argumentations that are the true shining examples of Itachi wankers' complete illiteracy on the subjects they endeavour to talk on: He's a pacifist.

All right, what's a "pacifist"? The word pacifist, from the Latin word 'pacem' (meaning peace), has nothing whatsoever to do with the word "passive" (as in non-active, at least in modern usage, and derived from the Latin word, 'passivus,' meaning capable of feeling suffering). A pacifist is someone who is opposed to war, and speaks not at all to the question of whether that person is passive. They probably mistake it for the word "passive". That applies to Itachi to some extent, but that's blown out of the water, too, when he became a direct agent in a genocide. Did we get this out of the way? Great, now, we can all agree that Itachi wankers always try and pass an elephant through their own arseholes when they yell at us all that any facet of his character makes sense, and they always fail—miserably. Don't you illiterates feel any shame? Not even a little?

Itachi was brain-washed down to a Leaf-co*ck-taking vegetable by the cruel, cruel world; he's innocent, you hear me?! Innocent! All right, let's entertain this notion for a teeny-tiny moment. The thing is, the brain-washing argument doesn't work. Reason? He was being personally groomed by his own father to lead the Uchiha, as well. For argument's sake, let's call that "Uchiha Indoctrination", albeit I wouldn't call it that in an objective sense; but let's do this for the time being regardless. In regard to this claim, my question is simple: Why didn't this indoctrination work instead of Konoha's?

The argument regarding Konoha's brain-washing possessing his mind to the point that it washed everything clean would only work if the other brain-washing, the Uchiha one, wasn't a great factor every single day of his life. Fugaku, a desperate leader who fought for his clan which stood on destruction's threshold, had groomed Itachi to support his clan from a very young age: he took him to missions and trained him; he read the Uchiha Tablet with him (which is why Itachi told Sasuke of the Tablet's location before he left in this regard—never mind the fact that the Tablet can't be read fully by a mere Mangekyō Sharingan wielding Uchiha, anyway); and he showed him where the clan stood in relation to Leaf. Then why reject the Uchiha brain-washing in favour of Leaf's brain-washing? To suggest that the latter worked more effectively than the former would require a proof which his wankers never have. They basically take all agency from Itachi in this regard, and it's quite senseless to place the onus of responsibility on the shoulders of others when Itachi as an Edo Tensai, a dead body, didn't reject Leaf: he endorsed it from beyond death's door! Who was slipping the brain-washing Leaf-co*ck into his wisdom-back-channel in death? Surely, Leaf's co*ck didn't rival a Naruto Harem Fiction's Kit's co*ck that its reach managed to tear down all veils to bugger Itachi's fragile little mind—maybe it's about time you folks gave up as it's a wee bit farcical.

There are other aspects of this "his father and Leaf brain-washed him, so he didn't know what he was doing!" co*cks-and-bulls; so let's look at them briefly:

"He killed the clan because his father showed him war. That traumatic experience made him cold." All right, one can make a case for it; but what kind of trauma is that in which he's actively perpetuating it to the point that he became its most active engine? That's utterly bizarre. When a person suffers from a certain trauma, he's got a few triggers. What are Itachi's triggers, exactly? He doesn't have any. Am I to sincerely believe that watching a scene of war, completely removed from himself, turned him into a génocidaire, even though Leaf's the sole reason why all of these wars (directly or indirectly) started—shouldn't he feel some revulsion towards Leaf on this front? There's literally nothing backing this outlandish nonsense in the entirety of Canon.

The people who are recruited to be in insurgency groups, for instance, face a personal tragedy that leaves them vulnerable; that's how people are recruited into cults, as well; however, Itachi couldn't effectively adjust into the "cult" (let's call the Clan's precepts that for argument's sake) of the clan when that was the first window that was available to him? The whole theory just falls apart there and then.

"He experienced trauma, so he didn't know what he was doing!" How does that make any sense whatsoever? If he was so unstable, why was he promoted to higher posts in Anbu? It means that he was cognitively of sound mind to perform Leaf's tasks; furthermore, for a guy who's so traumatised, he chose a profession in which active killing was a part of everyday activities? Why not choose something off-field? Like a research medic? We saw through Kisame, Zabuza, Haku, Obito, Sasuke, Neji, Kabuto, etc., pasts that the whole "indoctrination" concept only goes so far. When the Ninjas themselves come under state's heels, they react. If Itachi was so deeply traumatised, where's the suggestion? He was of such a sound mind that the entire sensitive operations of spying on his own people, genocide, and Akatsuki Infiltration were left in his hands? So either he's of sound mind, or these are untrue. You can't have it both ways. His character is just so completely idiotic as it doesn't work from any angle.

Now, let's look at the themes he brought to Canon:

Heroism and Self-sacrifice: Many concepts surrounding his "heroism" are morally misguided, simplistic, extreme, and fairly ludicrous; however, the narrative relentlessly shows him in a heroic light and tends to destroy the ambiguous morality in the series.

I think most of his wankers are unaware what this phrase entails. He sacrificed other people's lives, not his own. He took other people's lives, including children, for his own ideals and beliefs. What did he sacrifice of himself? Nothing that I can recall. Tears? Some other leaky-anus syndrome? I can't find it in the manga.

The narrative takes an awful lot of time in explaining to us that he had to leave Konoha, become a criminal, and lead a miserable life ever since that fateful night. He was an ANBU Captain before the massacre ever took place—a career as an undercover who spies on enemies would've been highly likely for him even if the massacre never happened. He's a professional assassin, so he's not going to join, say, the Naruto Red-Cross Committee and do something meaningful in his (pathetic) life in the first place. Pacifist, my f*cking arse!

Greater good: The idea that "greater number equals greater good" is pseudo-intellectual dreck. (Nietzsche's Nihilism isn't about what an average IFBS sufferer thinks it's about; read it with both eyes open and your Seinen-anime-marathon tab closed.) It utterly disregards minority's rights. Kishimoto used the "there'd be a civil war and other villages would attack them" excuse to justify Itachi's position, in a way. (Though I'd argue that he did present the other side of the argument, as well.)

He tried to justify the genocide with one of the possible eventualities in the wake of a failed coup—such an outcome was shown to never materialise in any situation. The ethos of heroism are about saving the ones you can, not playing God and deciding who should be killed so that others can live. Heroism isn't about the ability to count and decide which group holds the greater number. Heroism isn't about preemptively killing everyone based on personal speculations that hinge upon possible bad consequences of actions or crimes, which were yet to be committed. This is crazy! And it's so simplistic in the manner in which the highly complex topic of morality that it's ludicrous.

Even if I do go along with this for a moment, Konoha was absolutely obliterated thrice, with its leaders dead twice. No one attacked. It would've been fairly easy for any village to take advantage of the situation and attack Konoha when, canonically, Akatsuki were just hired-hands for various villages to commit vile acts of terrorism, massacres, genocides (Obito knew Danzō, as evidenced by their interaction right at the beginning of Danzō and Sasuke's decisive battle), random incursions, killing of hard-liners and dissidents, so on and so forth. (Orochimaru had left Akatsuki when he attacked Konoha with the aid of Rasa, the previous KazeKage!)

Why didn't it happen? Well, treaties were in place. Ae was hoarding Jutsus, and a treaty was in place in the wake of the whole "Hinata's kidnapping debacle"; Sand was dealing with Shukaku's rampages, following which Rasa decided to take Gaara's life; Mist was embroiled in the Bloody Mist chaos, Obito's doing; etc. See where I'm going with this? So, even under this lens, the whole thing just falls apart!

Patriotism as heroism: Itachi lives by the philosophy of "Will of Fire" that demands absolute loyalty, no questions asked. Itachi once said, "as Itachi Uchiha of the Hidden Leaf, I will be able to save my homeland once more," when he defeated Kabuto and, "the village does have its dark-side and its inconsistencies, but I'm still the Leaf's Itachi Uchiha," when the matter of the Uchiha massacre was brought up by Naruto. He didn't care if Kabuto was threatening the ninja world on a worldwide scale, nor did he care about the social repercussions of the complete eradication of a race and the precedent it sets in the light of "absolutes" of radical political philosophies: he was just concerned with his village. He only cared about Konoha because that's his homeland. He saw the village's collective interest as the only thing worth protecting and fighting for. That's not heroism—that's just radial Jingoism.

Mistaking forced peace and oppression for pacifism: The narrative tried to portray Itachi as a sensitive and adorable pacifist who didn't know any better. In truth, he's not a pacifist as he believed in preemptive killing to maintain stability. He's a "peace at all costs" state-backing lunatic. Itachi is no different from Danzō. Like Itachi, Danzō (Senju Clan's torch-bearer) believed that the way to achieve peace was to kill everyone who might become a threat to the government due to dissatisfaction with their policies. For him, policy changing and flexible governance weren't the solutions to political matters, massacres and genocides were. Even children had to be killed as they might resent the government for killing their parents (how dare they!): for example, Nagato and Sasuke. This isn't pacifism; this is an active purging of dissidents and rebels and forced peace maintained through violence and oppression. That's how fascist regimes operate as they rely on violence and fear to silence people into submission, compliance, and obedience.

Another thing I keep seeing in this regard is that the other clans would've sided with Konoha in the wake of the coup allegations. Would they have? Why would the clans side with Konoha, a regime that chooses genocide right off the bat to deal with matters of dissidents, power-imbalances in the ruling sphere, and clan-isolation (when a simple solution is to grant a founding-clan a place in politics and decision-making—hardly an unreasonable claim under the lens of Treaty Politics)? Today, it's one clan; tomorrow, it'll be another clan's turn if they put a toe out of line. (Would the Branch Hyūga family allow Konoha its lofty ideals of peace when they already live as slaves?) Food for thought. Trust me, an average fan might be blinded by the pearls from Itachi's fecundating, narrative-permeating organ, but most sane folks aren't this stupid.

Intelligence and Wisdom: This is a good one! I've seen this guy being masturbat*d to till wanker's doom doesn't become an average reader's fate; but, truth be told, his canon self is nothing like his fans would have you believe. How shocking, I know! His supposedly positive personal qualities like intelligence and wisdom are absolutely awful in terms of penning. He's not wise; in fact, his views of the world and ideals are simplistic and extreme; and the narrative just adores turning into a self-actualizing show of monkeys to elaborate on his . . . justifications that remain firmly embedded inside the deep reaches of his hindquarters.

Itachi's deep (cartoon) philosophies on human will . . . and stuff: He once tried to forcibly Genjutsu Sasuke into being loyal to Konoha. He just couldn't deal with the high-brow tragedy that not everyone enjoyed suckling on Konoha's proverbial co*ck and pressing kisses to its corpulent arse; he either killed people who went against "Will of Fire" or he tried to brainwash them into becoming "Will of Fire" chanting pricks like himself.

Furthermore, I'm led to believe, through this stupid fandom's grandiose wank-a-thon, that Itachi was just out-of-this-world smart. Let's look at a few of his "smart" choices:

1) He asked Sasuke to kill his best friend. Now, you can argue that Naruto wasn't in the picture when he originally stated that; however, he reiterated the exact same things to Sasuke when he beat him into a coma, with a nice seasoning of the sights and sounds of Uchiha clan's genocide to boot. What a selfless guy! Sasuke didn't know what Naruto was, but this guy did! He always did!

Imagine that, had Sasuke gone through with this, he would've committed "High Treason" as the Seal on Naruto's designed to kill the Tailed-Beast, too; so Konoha loses two of its most valuable assets, and Sasuke gets this nice bulls-eye on his tight-arse forever! He's never getting pardoned for this. Ever!

Naruto actually deflected the attack, which Sasuke had aimed at his heart whilst he was under the severe influence of the Cursed Seal (CS), at the last second—granted, Sasuke had blunted his Chidori the second time, but he hadn't the first time. Had the attack landed, Naruto would've died as we know from Kabuto's incident (when he damaged Naruto's chakra-network-carrying tissues that surrounded his heart) that Kurama can't heal that (Tsunade healed him back then). Naruto survived solely because of sheer dumb-luck: Sasuke's blow didn't land where it was supposed to! And looking at this from this angle, his whole "I'd make Sasuke a hero!" crashed, burnt, and exploded before it ever took off the ground. Never mind his countless other missteps on this front that go completely against the "he did everything for Sasuke and wanted to make him a hero!" narrative. None of this works. His grand plan doesn't work on any level!

"But he was doing what was the bestest, goodest, cutest thing for Sasuke. Wish I had a bro like him who stuck his cooler-than-ice sword inside my mum and dad's stuck-up arses, too! Best bro for life!" said one deranged wanker with stage-third IFBS.

2) He, apparently, came to Leaf to warn Danzō, but he's so smart that he mentally and physically tortured Sasuke within an inch of his life (Itachi literally placed Sasuke in a coma—literally—through the mental and physical torture he put a mere child through). Sasuke's genes, miracles, and Tsunade's healing saved Sasuke from certain death. So Itachi nearly killed Sasuke to . . . save Sasuke? Wow, my mind is so f*cking blown-ed! What a character! Utterly genius!

3) This guy's such a f*cking thumb-suckling stupid co*ck that it's irritating just talking about the sheer senselessness of his character. Imagine being told in advance about a massacre and being told to kill everyone (except Sasuke) or else the Council would kill everyone. Why fight back or tell anyone or run away or make an escape plan if, perhaps, all goes south? Itachi goes, "okay, guess I'll kill them all!" instead of questioning why his government wanted to kill him for half a second, too. Does this guy have any functioning brain-cells? How does his brain function? Is this the "genius" character the fandom wets itself over? Jesus . . .

4) He was fully aware of the "othering" techniques used by Tobirama and his leftover crew that ran the village. Ian Haney-Lopez calls them the "dog whistle". They call the Uchiha "The Cursed Clan", "A Clan Affected by Evil", "Clan with a Curse of Hatred", and "a Power-Hungry Clan". All of these, by the way, are rumours. Tobirama didn't believe in the "cursed clan" accusations for a fact because he had no scientific evidence to back them up; and these aren't my words, but his own. Even Orochimaru disagreed with these methods to corner the Uchiha clan. Imagine a heinous criminal like Orochimaru disagreeing with your political methodology!

Itachi fully endorsed Exclusion and Dehumanization. In fact, Uchiha clan's movement from the village to the outskirts began in Tobirama's era, and it was completed in Hiruzen's era. When the "population movement" was completed, the Uchiha were literally pushed to the outskirts of the village, and here's the real kicker: all of this happened before the Nine-Tails attack ever occurred!

Population movement's a war-crime as it's always paved the way for pogrom and genocide, so the Uchiha were well within their right to openly revolt, let alone covertly over-throw the regime through a coup. If you recall Madara's conversation with Hashirma, he predicted that his clan will be massacred if Tobirama ever took charge. Tobirama also abolished democracy after the first election, so nothing less could be expected from him.

Furthermore, what was done to the Uchiha falls under the first stages of genocide: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, and even organization as Itachi was made to be the complicit criminal in the whole situation when, according to Hiruzen himself, everything, literally everything, was left in Itachi's hands! Ultimately, it was Itachi's decision to go along with the plan, or not!

Still more, Leaf was formed on the basis of a treaty that had its roots in "equality". No individual, Tobirama or anyone else, had the moral, ethical, or legal right to go behind the agreed upon precepts of the treaty and remove the clan from the power-structure when it wasn't a part of the agreed upon "terms and conditions" of the treaty itself.

Now, I'm aware that IFBS is a terrible thing, but that's really not how treaties work; and why did I type all of that? Well, Itachi was the agent from Fugaku's side, as well. He was involved in the missions with his father, along with the secret meetings (explicitly stated in the manga), so he was well-aware of the clan's planning in regard to attacking the top echelon. He also partnered up with Obito (whom he thought to be Madara who was involved in causing the original affair) to massacre the whole clan.

So, let me get this straight, he was well-aware of the fact that the Uchiha didn't have a hand in Kurama's attack on the village (this is the sole reason why the coup was even planned that the clan had been unjustly implicated of the crime they didn't commit), and he also partnered up with a man who was directly involved in Kurama's attack. Why did he not tell the council of these things? Why didn't he just inform his father of the fact that the coup's cover was blown and that the council was looking at a lethal response to any transgression from the clan, so it wasn't going to work any longer? That alone would've averted the coup indefinitely. "So smart! Wisdom of a Hokage's anus at the age of seven, yo!"

5) Shisui gave Itachi his KA eye, but Itachi didn't do anything of value with it.

6) What were his plans to stop Orochimaru from taking over Sasuke's body, since he himself told Sasuke that he was weak and useless, and thus, Sasuke leaving the village was inevitable, anyway? What were his plans if Orochimaru did take over Sasuke's body? None that I can recall.

7) Sasuke tried to kill Naruto at the hideout meeting, as well. Orochimaru stopped him. (Keep that in mind that Sasuke didn't know what a Jinchuriki was till after Itachi's death.) Why didn't he do anything about this? He's the reason why Sasuke chose all of these paths in the first place, and he's comically idealised for being so far-sighted and smart! (Are you wankers f*cking kidding me? Did you read the manga upside down? Is basic elementary-school-level reading-comprehension too damned hard? By God!)

8) Why didn't he know about Obito's Kamui and its Intangibility variation (in ability) when he spent seven years with him? If he did know that Kamui ability, why didn't he know about Izanagi when he knew about Izanami (both of these are forbidden Uchiha Kin-Jutsus)? It was one or the other technique which Obito used to escape Amaterasu (the Data-book creates mystique in this regard and doesn't state which one Obito used to escape). The funny thing is that he did know about Izanagi. He told Sasuke as much before their battle with Kabuto: He praised Sasuke that he was surprised that he survived.

No matter which way you slice it, his use of planted-Amaterasu is . . . chimp-on-acid stupid. It makes no sense both ways; but this was the best he could come up with, apparently. Under these conditions, Obito's escape was inevitable! The best solution would've been to plant the crow into Sasuke, not Naruto. That way, Obito's killed with a different KA command, and everything's good in the world or whatever this lout thought.

9) Why did he decide to leave a crow with KA's command inside Naruto—his supposed fail-safe plan for Sasuke? What were the odds of Naruto getting killed along the way? Pretty high, actually, as Naruto solely survived because of his narrative protections (for some inexplicable reasons, Naruto was standing outside the fully formed Chibaku Tensai [CT] when Minato's chakra suppressed Kurama, for f*ck's sake; and Nagato, magically, didn't decide to make CT bigger); otherwise, Nagato possessed enough chakra to bring everyone back to life. He could've just used Attraction Force and Human Path to end Naruto's life.

Seriously, why? He didn't know Naruto was on Akatsuki's hit-list? Of course he did! He failed, anyway, which shows how poor his plan was as anything could've happened given the state of affairs at the start of Part II.

Honourable Mentions (yeah, I've got still more):

- Starts talking smack about the clan in front of his father when he's supposed to be undercover. I get that his "Meme-Solo-King side" was at an all-time high at that moment, but good God! What a f*cking moron!

- Tells Kisame to make two Jōnins disappear (exact words in the VIZ translation). Gai arrives just in the nick of time. Gai was nowhere in sight at that moment, so don't even bother. Itachi isn't a Sensor.

- Does practically nothing to thwart the assimilation of Bijūs. In fact, actively participates in it.

- Do you remember the "invaluable" Intelligence Reports he sent to Konoha during the seven-year period in which he worked for Akatsuki? Yeah, me neither. (Don't even try and bring up Jiraiya; that lout got murdered because of poor Intel; he didn't even know that Nagato ended the "civil war" that intimately concerned Konoha and Hanzō.)

- " . . . but now I think that perhaps you could've changed father and mother, and the rest of the Uchiha . . . with me who failed . . . " Dude thinks that a 7-year-old child would've averted a coup, certainly not all the options he'd got at his disposal! It's as if the narrative gave this guy a shovel, and he just kept . . . digging new lows every single time he appeared on the panels! Good God!

- "It's not that if you become Hokage everyone will acknowledge you. It's the ones who are acknowledged that can become Hokage."

Christ, this is so f*cking stupid! This is yet another nonsensical statement this man ejected out of his anus: you need the approval of everyone to become a political figure! (Why is it that every single time this guy opens his mouth, he hits a new low?) Konoha hasn't practiced democracy since Hashirama's appointment. No, really. Democracy ended when Hashirama appointed Tobirama, and he, in turn, appointed others and abolished democracy (an action through which he controlled the Uchiha's political influence on the village-controlling council, and that's canon); and the cycle continued on. What's this guy on? Did no one give him the damned memo on his own Village's history, a village whose co*ck he was born suckling?

I can add more, but do I even need to? Dude's a f*cking baboon!

He doesn't even respect truths, government transparency, or clan history. He once begged Naruto not to let the truths about the massacre come out into the open. He thought superficial "reputation" was more important than truth and justice. Have you ever heard of justice, morality, and ethics thrown into the same sentences like the ones from this lout's wankers that talk about perpetrators of genocide pushing the truths of genocide under the rug? No one bar the sh*t-heads from Itachi's fangirls' club has. It's got the strangest lingo that defies reason, I swear it.

Man, Kishimoto tried really hard to make this loopy thumb-sucker look intelligent and humble, but Itachi-Sama-Chan-Kun-Dono's "much-o awesome-o" "es-pah-shal" genius was a wee-bit hard to swallow. Let's face it, dude's a f*cking buffoon and he's arrogant, too (not a good combination). He had the audacity to decide whether the truth behind the Uchiha Massacre should come out or not when he was one of the perpetrators of the massacre; yet he, of all the people, considered that he had the right to sweep the truth under the rug! I'm not even going to touch upon the key-chain accessory Buddha-Naruto's viewpoint on Will of Fire and genocides, but . . . you know what I mean!

Even in the end, he had nothing bright to say: " . . . but now I think that perhaps you could've changed father and mother, and the rest of the Uchiha . . . with me who failed . . . " Look at this guy, admitting that he's a failure, but slipping in that tacit self-masturbation along the way: "Uchiha needed to change, fam—not me!"

Some people might argue and say that all Uchiha characters are a bunch of mentally unstable nut-jobs, but that's canonically incorrect as Black Zetsu explained that both clans fought each other for power (and that's when Kaguya's holding Sasuke and Naruto hostage); and since he's as old as Kaguya, his view-point is objective and trumps over all; Hashirama told his father that Senju Clan being the "clan of love" was a joke as they were just as war-hungry as the Uchiha; Tobirama's elaborate rumour mill and that "I've got a black-friend (Uchiha-friend), too, so I'm not like that" racist tirade thingy was a paper-thin excuse because it's used by literally every single racist on the planet ("I've got a so-and-so friend from the said race, so I'm not racist!"); etc.

Itachi, comically, believed everything he did was right, even though he said that he was a failure; but "wink-wink!" Sasuke and everyone else called him Solo-King every time to keep the humble-brag going. Sasuke wasn't insane because he literally said, "I don't care if you people think I'm a brat—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." He didn't care, but, at least, he wasn't deluded to the point where he thought he was a righteous hero like his brother. He was self-aware; Itachi wasn't! Where's this cartoon-messiah's self-awareness? Can someone find it for me on this oaf's design? Kishimoto was on that serious kush when he wrote this bell-end!

I sincerely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, believe that Itachi was the only Uchiha character in this series who was legitimately mental! Yet everyone managed to trip over themselves to suck on the scum he left trailing in his wake. His own father decided to die like cattle in lieu of fighting back: "you're so gentle," he whispered as he took Itachi's sword like a true man! Now, a case can be made for this one: either he used Tsukuyomi on Fugaku and killed him before he could break out (as Fugaku's personality on this night straight up clashes with what he showcased before as he was trying to get Itachi arrested on suspicions of murder); or he's lying to Sasuke again. I don't see any reason to believe that he isn't lying. He's lied before—why can't he lie again?

Let's keep the ball rolling, shall we? I've got more:

Such a or what a sad life: Yes, I don't understand this. What's so sad about Itachi's life? Is it that he shed three tears whilst he butchered his parents? Imagine the horror, the screaming and crying, when he butchered the Uchiha children in front of their parents in cold blood. Look at those elderly arseholes who sold crackers, which poor Itachi (the prettiest and tragic-est guy ever!, according to one IFBS suffering twat) had to cut down! Imagine the mothers shielding their small children (Danzō outright states that the clan had "innocent / unknowing" children), begging him to spare their lives whilst he butchered them, anyway. The nerve of the Uchiha for dying on his blade and causing him mental trauma, or something! But I guess he had a pug-faced little girl-friend (canonically incorrect as he had more than one lover at the time of the massacre—Viz translation), so all is cool, projecting and self-inserting female-wankers and all that jazz.

It's like that one Bruce McGruff cigar-smoking thug who pulls out a random bystander's eye-balls through his arsehole; but he sheds a single big fat tear at the end to show us that he truly cares!

And whilst thinking is seldom discovered by his wankers' minds, it's still prudent of me to ask: if Itachi's a hero for doing what he did, why's Danzō not a hero for orchestrating the path to hero-dom for this pud? After all, Itachi would've never become a hero his wankers know, f*ck (every passing moment in their heads—he's so booti-fool and so tu-wa-gic!), and love had Danzō not made sure that he reached his "True-est" potential. Why does this freshly wreathed, wankers' jism streaked crown only belong on Solo-King's head? Is Danzō not deserving of it? Why, 'course not! He's not pretty! Who'd want to see the lumpy arse and an old arsehole of an old arsehole? (Who'd want to self-insert into Sakura's place to get buggered by that?! Only Solo-King can make yay-bigger! their glory points.) They like their psychopaths nice, tight, and young (spring-like his sphincter, nestled rosy and ballooned between the smooth cleft that divides his eighth wonder of the world arse, that their tongues twitch for!). Danzō's bollocks dangle down to his ankles and trail Leaf's grass, for f*ck's sake! Does his co*ck even stand—does he even have a co*ck or did Leaf's seasons bear down upon it and it fell away? Bloody hell, his hair looks like the loofah bath sponge with which Itachi wipes his arse on Sunday—only on Sundays, of course. No body wants to see that, right?! Right?! We want our bitc—beau's bollocks to exist right between the things that represent him the most: a prick and an arsehole! It's as if he was made to belong there!

And what about his "shinobi's endure" mantra? Why didn't he endure? Why didn't his Leaf endure? Why did he only demand endurance from his kin—from Sasuke? I'm aware that the honeyed taste of Leaf's musky, proverbial co*ck was how he lived, belched out throw-away loony-tunes script (his philosophy quotes that are enough to compel his wankers to not throw themselves from their terraces in despair), and self-wanked himself to glorification, but it's just silly that an average wanker simply fails to see the complete stupidity behind this nonsense. (No, don't dye your hair pink—he won't like it, nor would he call you, "my tigress!" Why? He isn't real!)

Because Canon Itachi wasn't bad enough, you've got Fanon Sakura's-vagin*-makes-me-cry (!) Herbivore Itachi!

Most Fan-Fictions on this lunatic focus on pedestrian-level Itachi-syndrome victim-hood complex psychology (rest of it is well-covered by mundane fluff), which many a female writer have a f*cking PHD in. Not even Kishimoto was this well-versed in this side-field of PTSD melodrama of genocide players (in which the perpetrators of heinous crimes are misunderstood, weepy, and mopey hotties of the tight-arse, long-lashes, long pony-tails, and tortured-soul-hottie variety). His coloured wig anime-wanker game for Solo-King Psychology was too low!

Itachi: Uchiha had to change. I did no wrong!

Fangirls: Hysterical hair-tearing and breast-beating crying! "This poor, poor (super hot) tragic guy! Oh My Gosh!" Screams rising into the sky as they rip off their roomy trousers, brassieres, and sh*t-smeared knickers in grief!

God, if there's anything worse than the ill-horrendously conceived and manically obsessed self-inserting Sakura-loving twats (replace her with Naruto, and it's the same story) that infest this fandom like insidiously numerous gutter rats, it's the female (-Incel) Itachi wankers who're Itachi x Sakura (ItaSaku for the cutesy tone; just try pronouncing that out-loud in public, and, I swear it, it'll make you look like a c*nt!) fans, too! The kind of defence-force they pull out for this guy for the sheer fact that they write f*cking terrible self-insert Fictions, in which their vagin*s break whatever fourth-walls that exist between them and Canon to engage with the "tortured soul" that was Itachi and his penis.

And, not so miraculously, they also like KakaSaku (try pronouncing this one, too!) and MadaSaku (good grief!), as well! I'm shocked! Predictable in their self-inserting antics, aren't they? Oh, and they, somehow, loathe Sasuke but absolutely adore (!) a man who committed genocide and killed defenceless women and children by his own hands; a man who stood by an apartheid, genocidal, pogrom-committing, etc., governmental institution (which has killed innocent men, women, and children in spades [like in Rain as Nagato stated], but he's such a good guy, apparently, because he took Sakura's side for her OTP! and stopped her from turning into a roasted side-piece in the lava!); and a man who chose to plunge the whole world into a full-on acid-trip till the population was a pubic-hair breadth away from having its genitals loosened through the enjoyments it received from the funky dreams, endlessly! (He also unceremoniously shoved a dangerously thick rod—no pun intended—up her c*nt, from which her fangirls derived vicarious and wet pleasures [aah-ooh, that could be me!], and tossed her aside like the most useless piece of refuse and never bothered to give her even a passing second glance for the entirety of canon manga; but, apparently, he'd have loved her so very much if the circ*mstances were "different" [ha-ha, what?!]! Let's stop pretending that, like Naruto-wankers' most lofty and favourite Fan-Fiction Harem-theme, this is anything but pathetic, virtue-plagued, desperate, and/or sexual-frustration-fueled self-inserting!)

They're, not so shockingly, white feminists, too, who speak about "women rights", yet they adore men who butcher women in the name of state, as long as "Queen" (white trailer-trash's self-insert) is kept satisfied and status quo is maintained, in which the oppressed never find justice; they should just shut the f*ck up and bear it! Splendid! How dare Sasuke and Nagato want to show Konoha the same courtesy it's been doling out to oppressed groups since its creation?! Poor white Feminists' self-insert and her tears. Won't someone think of Sakura and her tears regarding her lost OTP and potential OTP's? Sexism! Misogyny! Toxic Masculinity! These women "love" playing this empty and hilarious game of "women rights"! f*ck the rest of the women Konoha and its supporters have relentlessly butchered to maintain status-quo. They had it coming, fam! If these blithering buffoons truly cared about women rights (and not their thinly-veiled self-insert's position in the co*ck-pecking vagin*l-order), they'd, at least, find Itachi and Kakashi utterly repulsive! Yet here we are. No body even half sensible is buying what you're selling, Sakura wankers—no body.

All that aside, am I supposed to feel sorry for this guy who ended an entire race in front of a small child, tormented him endlessly through the most cruel Genjutsu, and left him to fend for himself? He didn't even stop there as he beat him up and repeated the process one more time to make a good little hero out of him! Sounds a lot like the thugs employed by Zacapa the Butcher to do away with dissidents, because that's exactly what Itachi's like. He's mine and yours—Solo-King forever!

And last but not least, we've got the infamous "Itachi's such a Tragic Character, Sasuke isn't! I hear this masturbatory-fluid soaked statement all the time, and it makes no sense to me! None! Let's do basic mathematics for the time Itachi put Sasuke inside Tsukuyomi. He put Kakashi under Tsukuyomi for 72 hours:

Itachi: "In the Tsukuyomi dreamscape, I completely control time, space, and even substance. For the next 72 hours, you'll be continually stabbed over and over again . . . "

Kakashi: "Unh . . . three days in that realm and less than a moment passed in this one . . . "

Kisame: "Hm . . . after all that, the fool's spirit is intact. Meanwhile, you've overused those eyes of yours. You know that's dangerous."

When Tsukuyomi lasted 72 hours, Kakashi was stabbed hundreds of times; and that was only 1 second in that dimension. Sasuke was put under Tsukuyomi to re-play the traumatic event in a loop, twice!

Itachi: "You're weak . . . "

Sasuke: !?

Itachi: "From now on . . . for 24 hours . . . you'll relive that day . . . "

Therefore, when Sasuke was put under Tsukuyomi, every moment he watched his parents die was equal to 1 second; so he was forced to watch his parents die over a hundred thousand times by Itachi. How many times does it exactly make? 259200 times to be precise.

And if he actually put him inside Genjutsu for 48 hours in real-time, which it does seem like he did, then Sasuke watched his parents die for 259200 years in Tsukuyomi time. As a result, Sasuke slipped into a "life threatening" coma, from which only his resilient genes and Tsunade saved him.

Poor Itachi—the horrific tragedies of committing genocides! "It hurt me more than it hurt you, Uchiha and Sasuke!" Imagine doing that to a 7-year-old and a 13-year-old child. What an awesome and tragic guy. How dare Sasuke show anger at this treatment—how dare he? Poor Itachi "I stabbed my mum and dad; butchered innocent men, women, and children; made my lil' brother watch utterly wanton content unmatched in its cruelty (canon and beyond) well over hundred thousand times in the name of a fascist government" Uchiha; but fangirls like his cute little anus (and that he's an anus), out of which his entire plot-line was taken, which they adore moulding to drop down on his pud through pink-haired stand-ins, so it's a'right!

Itachi's such a "tragic" character, no? How awful and tragic for him that men, women, and children died on his sword; that he made a small child watch the slaughter well over hundred thousand times that resulted in his coma, during which he could've easily died; that he did that more than once; that he physically brutalized and tortured his own brother, unarmed elderly, women, and children. I'm weeping as I type this! It isn't Sasuke that's tragic after going through hell or the people that got utterly butchered whilst watching their loved ones being put to death, including small children; no, it's Zacapa the Butcher's thug's imitation that's truly the greatest stuff of Sophoclean tragedies! As Evil with a Relive Term so self-indulgently and self-assuredly stated (whilst salivating, with her right hand inside her knickers as you can't type that content with both hands!): "Sakura: ' . . . because he was one of the most beautiful and tragic men she'd ever seen . . . ' (Kill Your Heroes, chapter 42.)"

The lack of self-awareness and self-inserting antics in this single line absolutely hurt one's heart, head, and soul; however, it hurt my head less than it hurt her genitals. And this isn't even a parody: it was said in complete seriousness in this fiction that cruises along on these loony shenanigans. Liking Itachi's character is one thing, supporting his actions and calling him Tragic (ha-ha?!) is another. How far up your own anus must your head be to actually support this guy's actions and call him Tragic? Don't be a complete nutter like her: stop sniffing a discount-prized Itachi underwear that some fat Itachi-cosplayer, who possessed a Sword-Totsuka too thin and short (hence his infatuation with Itachi to over-compensate for his short-comings), ejacul*ted all-over, during his Itachi's Mangekyō Sharingan's re-acting moments in unbridled excitement, whilst he stood under the roof of a hallowed Comic-Con. Learn from her before it's too late—before you start liking a guy that did the aforementioned. No body would think you're cool—I gurantee.

I like Kishimoto as a writer. I really do. He did great stuff in the manga, but good God, he was tripping big time with Itachi. I don't know which bong he was hitting when he wrote him, but it seems as though it was good stuff; and then he distributed his invaluable stash amongst Itachi wankers, a good-will gesture which unleashed an unending plague of unspeakably horrific, brain-rotting, self-inserting ItaSaku (or Itachi-supporting, along with KakaSaku or Kakashi-supporting) Fan-Fictions, of which Kill Your Heroes is a shining example, dripping thickly with smelly masturbation fluids for everyone to rue over . . .

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More Insight into Itachi's Brilliance

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Itachi, as a character, works even less as a "fascist soldier" than he does as Sasuke's "loving brother". Forget the "perfect soldier" tag attached to his action-figure like a sticker, he doesn't even perform the bare-minimums to function as a brain-washed soldier.

One, why did he leave Sasuke alive? You could argue that he loved him, but he's shown the exact opposite—at every turn. There was a high chance that Sasuke would find out the truth sooner or later; and that would've resulted in what happened later. Why not do away with the threat entirely? And if he had done that, why heinously torture Sasuke to the point he nearly died, making his decision to join Orochimaru easy? So, basically, he sent Sasuke (gift-wrapped) to Leaf's threat, allowing him the full chance to gain Sharingan and a robust body to learn Dragon Sage Mode (as that was the main reason why Orochimaru opted for the cursed mark and checked Sasuke's and Kimimaro's compatibility with the Sage Mode by granting them the only two best cursed seals), too—basically, intensifying the threat tenfold? He didn't even do anything to remedy the issue!

And that's not all: two, he forced Sasuke, through the most cruel humiliation and torture, that he has to kill his best friend to gain Mangekyō Sharingan (MS) to fight him. As I'd already explained in Itachi's section, Naruto survived because of sheer dumb-luck, not his skill. As the seal on Naruto is designed to kill the nine-tails, as well, Konoha would've lost its only war deterrent against foreign attacks? So he forced Sasuke, with exceeding aggression, to . . . cripple Konoha and leave it wide open for attack? Orochimaru was also a man with knowledge on Konoha's Kinjutsus such as Edo Tensai; so he was sending in the best Ninjutsu user with the most powerful Sharingan to . . . Orochimaru? I'm sorry, but this is too funny. How can any person take this character seriously? You've got to be f*cking sh*tting me!

Three) he spent about eight years in Akatsuki, and he knew about Nagato's plan: he planned on taking the funding from villages to engage in incursions (so that the villages always kept receiving military funding from the daimyos) and assimilating all the Bijūs to bring to life the f*cking nuke (the sleeping Gedo Mazō) that sat right under their hide-out! Itachi was right there in the meeting when Pain scolded Hidan about their actual goals; and Itachi had known them well before this; so what was he doing all that time?

Did he send in any Intel to Leaf to thwart Akatsuki's plan of creating the most powerful nuke in the world? No! He actively participated in the Bijū assimilation. The most sensible thing to accomplish would've been to send in Intel and to stop the assimilation through counter-strikes planned against the taking of Bijūs. Itachi didn't even send one lousy Intel to stop all this! He was aiding the Akatsuki in making sure that a nuke is formed to eradicate Leaf from the map? Huh, what?

He sent Intel to Jiraiya about Pain, but he didn't even tell him that the Civil War had ended in there? He didn't tell him about the excessive surveillance done over there by Pain and Konan, either? He, for the lack of the better word, was sending in Jiraiya in to get slaughtered! And in doing so, it'd have reduced Konoha's military power, as well; as not only is a failed incursion an invitation to invite the enemy to your doorstep for a deadly counter-strike in retaliation, but it also opens doors for future incursions!

Four) what was stopping Obito from going to Konoha after Itachi's death and taking Nine-Tails? Seriously, what? Did he actually think his lousy plan would work? Did he tell Konoha about another Uchiha being involved in Akatsuki? No! All right, Danzō knew about Obito, but Tsunade and others didn't. Why not slip Intel into Konoha that the leader of Akatsuki is none other than Madara? Why not send in some Intel about what he knew about his abilities?

In fact, they wouldn't even require Naruto to awaken the Mazō; Kinkaku and Ginkaku were more than enough! Is this the guy all that the Itachi Wankers (and Sakura wankers who suckle on his co*ck through their less-than-thinly-veiled self-inserts/avatars) lose their collective minds over? Have some shame, please.

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Chapter 4: Kakashi and the Caricature problem

Chapter Text

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If there's one character (well, two, if I consider dear ol' Solo King, too; and Shikamaru, as well, but he's fairly idiotic in whatever he does) whose so-called "character complexity" straight up eludes me, it's got to be Hatake Kakashi. Absolutely mediocre, unchallenging, and stupid in regard to being the absolute King of Shōnen clichés in Naruto canon. Nothing about this guy operates on evolving out of the "a sad guy who wears a mask to hide his sorrows, 'cause he's very sad!" trope the manga/anime industry is rife with. No, he keeps digging into this nonsense face-first and I can't even fathom the depths of this guy's pointless presence in the narrative.

Kakashi's character, at the heart of it, is nothing more than a classic example of a "circular caricature": he's a caricature first and foremost as he's entirely built from a trope that leads nowhere in the manga, a trope that's meant to be pleasing, not conflicting; and he's circular as his caricatural persona comes back full circle every time he tries anything of value within the narrative's framework. Like Itachi, Kakashi is another narrative failure—a sort of attempt at studying state war-criminals through the savoury lens "what sad lives do the war criminals have?", without offering anything of value on the subject-matter at hand. It's precisely about the lack of intellectual effort that went into his character and the lack of it that's exhibited by Kakashi himself that he's so well-liked (and shipped with Sakura a lot, too): you won't require much thinking to understand him; he's very common; and that's not meant to be endearing.

I'm going to break down Kakashi's character into some pieces and deconstruct them one by one. The lessons we usually get from Kakashi's character are instrumental with regards his sheer pointlessness as a character:

There's a difference between maturing and being mature.

There's a difference between getting better and being better.

That's it? Cool. Does he embody these? f*ck no! Now, as you can see, Kakashi's a character that's custom-tailored for little kids who like the flags, the military-complex enigma, and revered "cool" soldiers that protect the state—after they've butchered several million people "over there", of course. I can't imagine any adult (with two very alive and wriggly brain-cells) to think that this guy brought anything "intelligent" to the table beyond these superficialities a child would find impressive; but most of this fandom isn't bright, so that's a given.

As a character, Kakashi is the mouthpiece for a lot of ideas. Kakashi says, "those who abandon their comrades are trash." That reminds many of the dead military men, of the fallen and forgotten. He admits that the system is broken. He tells Sasuke not to give into hatred or revenge. It "seems" that he cares, and it "seems" that he's insightful.

He speaks a lot of "friendship" and has a weepy past (which makes very little sense, by the way) that'd resonate with many school-going children; however, most people, sensible people, grow up out of this phase. Not Kakashi wankers who're under the impression that his pain's the greatest tragedy since Lord knows when; and that's why it not only needs to be put on a pedestal, because his story's (somehow) the saddest of all, but it also needs to be consistently used as a yardstick to measure the horrific traumas faced by the likes of Sasuke, Nagato, and others; and this is where the actual issue arises: Kakashi's defined by the trauma that's glorified to gargantuan proportions that's bereft of any common sense.

Let's look at the general "idea" Kishimoto tried to present: Kakashi is stuck in the past. Naruto itself operates on a nostalgia filter. It talks about making way for the new generation. Kakashi Hatake is a character that "supposedly" represents humility and the price of not valuing relationships in the present. He represents the tension between valuing one's place in an institution and valuing the humanity surrounding the institution. Kakashi values the institutions. He carries out his duty like a martyr. He has his own moral code, but he's always Pro-Konoha.

That's why he injects himself into Sasuke's personal life. That's why he puts himself in SasuSaku business. (He's still a wee bit sore about Rin despite doing everything to malign her legacy and embrace the forces that caused her tragic death.) He feels like a failure constantly and he's naturally inclined to put others on a pedestal. He uplifts Sakura to drag down someone who reminds him of his personal failures.

That's why he can swear on the Hatake name that Team 7 was prepared for the exams despite his doubts, despite wondering whether he was right or not. I can't stress enough that those kids could've died. In short, Kakashi can say he won't let his comrades die, but the practical moments to define this theme don't exist; in fact, he's shown to actively shun anti-status-quo sentiments in favour of butchering people for the status quo; so Kakashi's humility is largely a farce and he never has to pay the consequences of that faece.

Kakashi isn't the nice guy archetype his wankers pretend that he is. He fed Naruto and Sasuke's insecurities. He fueled their rivalry. He repeated the mistakes of his predecessors because he never truly questioned anything. Ignoring the author, it could be argued Team 7 and Team Minato look alike not because they are alike (they're very different teams) but because Kakashi repeats the same patterns.

One of the best examples of this occurs in part I: he ignored Iruka's genuine concerns and straight up mocked him. Kakashi said a lot of f*cked up things in part I, such as mocking Sasuke's dead family (which was put through a genocide) because he couldn't climb a tree in time. It was part of his character, and, the funny thing is, he acted that way even as a kid! Basically, Kakashi's the classic "man-child" of Naruto—a character who's passed off as this "wise hermit" by his unsavoury band of slavering wankers. Yes, Kakashi-wankers: everything you accuse kid Sasuke (and even the semi-adult teen-aged one) of, that's basically kid Kakashi—and then some!

And the Fan-Fiction-ers double down on this nonsensical, vapid, and feeble-minded piles of middle-school writings passed off as grand scholarly treatises into human psychology. It's just . . . laughable! Kakashi isn't broken, because there's no such thing as "fixing" people. You can't fix something that was never broken in the first place. When psychologists suggest "mental fracturing", it's nothing along the lines of the "breaking of glass" that's going on in your head. No, a rewriting is; however, as amygdala is deeply involved in traumatic memories, they're far more vivid, stark, unforgeable. That in turn affect a person's behavioural patterns and they in turn affect their traits; the former are malleable; they latter aren't.

We're fluid. Some parts of us solidify. Some parts of us stay fluid. More importantly, we're capable of change; but we never change all at once and our changes couldn't be mistaken for something new and different. We change in all the ways we're capable of. We change in all the ways our past and present allow us. We change in ways the choices given by life allow us. I don't know why this fandom believes that change is becoming a better person (as if a person is a video-game character that powers up by "1" every time something good happens in his life); but this lack of understanding of something so basic is another shining example of this Fandom's (or Fandom Culture in general's) pit-less stupidity.

And as many try so hard to become idealised versions of ourselves, they make mistakes, and the lessons I put above are the mistakes many make when they idealise characters like Kakashi. Kakashi is traumatized. There's no doubt about it. I don't deny it; but what good is this trauma if it amounts to nothing more than a wanker's cheap yardstick? Yes, let's talk about Kakashi's trauma and how he responds to it.

A good deal of the reverence surrounding Kakashi's character is that "he's just trying his best". All right, but what's the point of Kakashi's character? He decides to go against his father and abides by the rules (his whole "trash this" and "trash that" loafer talk, I'm sure, is wholly relatable to a high-schooler who never grew up, but I'd leave it at that). It's his way to cope. Fair enough. What then? He turns around and replaces rules with friends after the Obito (whom he knew for few months, at most, as teams disband as soon as they become Chūnins; and Kakashi became a Chūnin fairly early on in his career as a Shinobi) tragedy; his obsession with Obito would always be hilarious. Again, fair enough? What then? . . . nothing? No, really, what then? . . . nothing? Well, all-righty . . .

He never bothered to visit his father's grave in Canon Manga, by the way. He sits by the graves, and then ... ? He talks about the injustices, and then ... ? He realises that the system killed his friends, and then ... ? He sees the conflicts that surround Sasuke, and then ... ? He sees Naruto acting, and then ... ? (Well, he did speak out for the Sasusaku OTP and felt bad for Sakura, so that's a super-deep character right there, yay!) You keep waiting for the thing that should come after "and then", but it never comes. Kakashi, technically, always stayed true to the very first mantra he fashioned his life around: "those who abandon the rules are worse than trash." So the change his fanboys keep blithering about ... never happened. Digressing here for a bit, he wears a mask to hide his sorrows.

Is that it? Is this what this fandom keeps weeping about? What am I, as a reader, supposed to do with this farcical cliché that adds squat to the narrative? Literally, it adds ... squat to the narrative! His arc is an arc of "in-action". He does literally nothing. He adds literally nothing. He improves literally nothing. The manga also doesn't do a "Character Study" on him like it does with Sasuke, Nagato, Madara, and Obito, etc. A plot demands action, and Kakashi is antithetical to the very idea of a plot-driven narrative, which Naruto as a manga falls under. So he's antithetical to action, a plot-driven-narrative's most crucial ingredient. He's the poster-child of badly written caricatures (yes, he isn't even a well-realised caricature like Dickensian Caricatures) that're parodies of the concepts they're supposed to exhibit in a serious manner.

No matter how hard I try, I can't take Kakashi or his lovers seriously. He's ... abysmal as a character and a complete waste of panel space as he adds nothing to the narrative. He's morally repugnant, as well, so I don't understand how people can bad-mouth any other character on basis of morality whilst using Kakashi as the example of a ... good person through the classic Nuremberg Logic? He's brain-washed and stays brain-washed? All right, but where's the character study for it? Nowhere. He states that he recognises the fact that the system killed his loved ones, which is an indication of a lack of complete brain-washing, but where's the action to counter that? Nowhere. Forget his wishy-washy morality, in this light, he's got little to no bearing on the plot, either, because as soon as Naruto came face to face with Obito, it became a game of "I wanted to be a Hokage, too, Dattebayo!" between them. Everything about Kakashi adds to Obito's character dynamics. You may not like them, but it's true. Kakashi's just there, but his lovers think that I should like him because he's got a silly sob-story and he wears a mask and he looks very, very, very sad and ... okay?

For all the illogical loathing anti-Sasuke (which always have Kakashi in their "favo character development" list) zealots vomit all over the internet with little shame, at no point in the manga did Kakashi ever change (and we've already established what change is, so let's not revisit that route). Kakashi has no fight, no backbone, no independent thinking of his own; he submits to his circ*mstances passively and blindly. Kakashi remained a child who didn't really develop—not an inch—since his days in Anbu; and I'm utilising the "video-game character development" scale here. He miserably fails there, too. Don't worry; I'm not leaving you "illustrious arm-chair Fan-Fiction critics" behind!

As a minor digression, I'm not going to bother making fun of the fact that this guy's "wisdom" and "battle acumen" are all made-up; he lost every single battle that he's ever taken part in one-on-one: he jumped into the water against a Mist Shinobi and had to be saved by Genins (it's the most shameful defeat in the entire manga bar none; yes, he overcame Zabuza later, but he lost first); Itachi tore him several million arseholes after he failed to counter Itachi's strategy, and he fell for every single one of Itachi's feints, might I add; Kakuzu killed him twice; Pain killed him; in war, Obito duped him; he couldn't land a single decisive hit on his opponents despite being backed by Bijū Mode and Kurama Chakra Mode Naruto, Gated Gai (who only operated in sixth and seventh gates in war, save his battle with Jūbi Madara), and Bee and powered-up thrice by Kurama's chakra; an exhausted and nearly blind Sasuke gave him a hard time and nearly killed him; I can go on, but I'd stop here. Truth is, he hasn't come up with a single strategy in battle that was worth a damn. My point is, his wankers make up a lot of sh*t that isn't even remotely canon.

Forget his hilarious characterisation that's a stuff of parodies, why does Kakashi even matter as a character? What purpose does he serve that I'm unaware of? He isn't about character study. Do the differences between Kakashi and Zabuza matter? Why do the differences between Sasuke, a revolutionary, and Kakashi, a state co*ck-sucker, matter? He doesn't define the latter, either, as there's nothing in the narrative to penetrate that layer of him, a layer that never existed.

The manga doesn't even bother to study his cheap doublespeak, designed to vilify victims of state terrorism, a mode of communication around which his entire character flounders, aimless as a headless co*ck. It's easy to see many facets of the manga that can appeal to the humanity of villains, but what about the inhumanity of the heroes? This is basically Kakashi's, and by extensions all of Leaf's, mantra:

- Cherish your friends, but for optimal success, use them as goal posts.

- Love is acceptance and Love is acknowledgement, but it's okay to dispose of the one's we love for fascism.

- You and your values matter the most, above everybody and everything, except the fascist state.

Which part of this appears "good" to anyone? What kind of morality starts with and ends on state-sponsored terrorism? Why's Kakashi presented as this ideal "good" side of things that Sasuke, Nagato, Obito, etc., should emulate? If you're going to throw this into my face, you better have something half-intelligent to attach with this as this is something only a child would hyper-fixate on and find "complex", "good", or "moral".

And to top it off, in order to defend the pro-konoha characters, people find it in themselves to foolishly sift through a lot of regurgitated sewage of arguments that makes them think of themselves as incredibly smart. For example:

Konoha is right or "good".

Konoha should be valued.

Konoha lives have more value than Uchiha ones (or any other lives).

Going against the government is always wrong.

However, where's the proper defence that falls into the same categories that have been chosen as "de facto" markers to put other characters down? Good? None of these Shadow Villages are good in any sense of the word. They're fascist villages, and nothing they do can be justified; and if they're fascist, the military war-machinery is also fascist on principle as it can't operate without the state. In other words, no Shinobi is less or more fascist than the village itself is; hence, any character that fights for the villages and fights against the ones wronged by any village are fascists, too. This isn't anything complicated.

Why should the villages be valued more than . . . well, anyone? Is there any moral element to this? There isn't. Is there any ethical element to this? There isn't. Is there any other element to this? No; and for that purpose alone, the lives of the citizens aren't more valuable than the rest. In fact, they're far less valuable than the ones that lie outside the villages, given that the villages purposely utilise the war-machinery to spread terror, misery, and conflicts to reap funds. These villages only exist to perpetuate war, mass slaughters, and pillaging. That's the only reason they exist: they exist to make war! That's more than enough cause to either eradicate them or isolate them to the point that they wither out of existence. I don't see any moral hang-ups in ending fascists' lives. How sad that a couple of thousand fascist shinobis were butchered by Obito! My heart weeps! (Kakashi reads like that brain-dead American war-veteran that's crippled, screams his guts out when the fireworks happen, and stuffs his body up to his eye-balls in drugs; but he still finds within his huge, big, and humungous heart to vote Republican and Democrat because the war machinery must go on, ever ready to take the co*ck of fascism straight into his anus sans logic's lubrication that's supposed to represent his "bite the pillow, mate, for Shinobis endure!" theme; it's bloody bollocks, his logic, and that of his wankers.)

Furthermore, if Konoha (or any other village) is valid in inflicting violence, then the wronged lobby has more right to use violence as a "deterrence" to keep its violence in check. The fact that this Fandom has the f*cking nerve to talk about "morality" whilst talking of "unethical" nature of violence from the victims is . . . basically one of the best exhibitions of fascism co*ck-sucker-y that I've ever had the displeasure of witnessing; and they drag Kakashi of all the people into their cheap arguments to "show us" how bad and mean and nasty our favos are! You've got to be f*cking kidding me!

Then they bring up his "revenge" argument that he didn't "turn" bad like Sasuke (or Nagato, Madara, Obito, etc.); and I can't help but laugh at the unfiltered stupidity at display here: his father (a man he hated most of his life; later, he didn't even bother to remember him, nor did he ever visit his grave) committed suicide because Leaf f*cked him over; he barely knew Obito and Minato; Rin was butchered because of Leaf's own policies; why the f*ck is it a "good" thing that he endorsed all this, never mind the fact that he barely knew almost all of these people? How's it "good" to remain a fascist to the detriment of the legacy of the people you pretend to care about after their brutal deaths? He might as well have urinated on their graves daily—whenever nature called. That'd have been infinitely less offensive than his political stance. Then he decided to aid Shikamaru in his idiotic revenge (which is word-for-word the same thing what he told Sakura to avoid and make her decision on ending Sasuke's life—never mind the fact that why would Kumo target Konoha at all when Sasuke's a Missing Nin, but Shikamaru always rolled into himself to dine out of his own arsehole; so "making sense" was never a quality he possessed), even though Asuma died in the line of duty. Am I supposed to notice some "grand" tragedies in these? For the life of me, I can't.

Kakashi's sole character defining moment is that he remained a fascist, that he accepted that his father and his friends were thrown into Leaf's meat grinders (for Leaf's prosperity as the greatest terrorist state in Naruto-verse), and that he's an active agent in this war machinery! Is this a joke? Besides, if you have to turn to Sasuke each and every f*cking time and put him down by jumping through all sort of "holes-in-knickers" to exalt the character you like, you've just admitted to the fact that Sasuke's character grossly over-shadows that character to the point that you've got no choice but to diminish Sasuke's worth to make anyone even notice that he (or she) exists as a character; proves me more right than you ever thought possible; and that's . . . very sad and very funny.

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Chapter 5: Uchiha Fugaku: A Desperate Father and Leader

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Chapter 6: Sasuke Versus Itachi: A Case of Skewed Interpretations

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I'm going to begin by getting straight to the point: you can't talk about the curious case of Itachi Fandom without discussing the elephant in the room; how they unceremoniously drag Sasuke into the midst of every single one of the bizarre opinion pieces (sans common sense, decency, and logic) that simply can't uplift Itachi without insistently going at Sasuke, with a deep-held grudge. The first aspect that Itachi Fandom go for, without failure, is Sasuke's behavior. Since Sasuke's "behavior" is perceived in a light that he errs all the time, readers expect the narrative itself to magically reprimand him. This can be elaborated on by highlighting the fact that Itachi's seen as the primary narrative tool for Sasuke's behavioral "rectification". What it means is that all the so-called "flaws" of Sasuke require someone to viciously remind him of the said flaws and/or humble him. And that involves beating him down to allow the readers the satisfaction as they're far too deeply invested (in regard to self-projections and poor identifications) in Naruto's and Sakura's storylines. "He's too arrogant! Did you see how Itachi showed him that he's nothing?"; "He treats Naruto and Sakura like dirt! Itachi kicked his ass! He thinks he's something special!"; "He doesn't value people and got kicked around. He thinks he's so skilled, but he couldn't even take on Itachi! Haha, he was shaking like a coward!"; "He was always jealous of Naruto, because he was jealous of Itachi!"; etc. And these, unsurprisingly, become the backbones of how Sasuke's character is supposed to be examined, not how it is in the narrative itself.

In this regard, Itachi becomes a personification of a desperate reader's retribution: he does what they want to do themselves; he accomplishes what they're thinking of; he tears Sasuke apart in their place. Therefore, it isn't about objective morality; it's about the perception of what the readers themselves value: "it's good when Naruto and Sakura are valued as they themselves feel valued"; "it's good when they're validated as they themselves feel validated"; "it's good when they gain traction as they believe that they vicariously gain social traction"; etc.

As Sasuke's left outside the loop of "I", "me", and "myself", none of that applies to him: it doesn't matter if he's valued, validated, or respected as he deserves none of that. Reason? Social stature. Sasuke's everything an average person (usually in America) mostly dreams of: he's exceptionally intelligent, good-looking, and popular. He's at the upper-most end of the social hierarchy and possesses the things an average individual deeply covets; so, to them, it's nothing more than vindication when, at the very least, one or two of these attributes are taken from him as that'd mean that he's closer to where they are. This is another reason why his so-called ego and arrogance (and by extension the clan's) are vastly exaggerated; as without these hyperbolic attacks, you can't bring Sasuke down to the level where Naruto and Sakura stand—two social mediocrities, with egos bigger than they can sustain, in every sense of the word.

And that's the primary reason why you'd never find any Fan-Fiction or Fandom Meta on these two characters that doesn't involve the tearing down of Sasuke to uplift their status. Simplicity demands that you'd have a hard time uplifting the character that exists in the other's shadow, without this moral pearl-clutching. And by going for this route, it's an admission of all the aforementioned accusations that I've levelled against them; therefore, Itachi embodies the reader's vengeance that's meant to counter the aggression Sasuke embodies, exhibits, or harbours; it simply becomes a matter of how fiercely Sasuke can be attacked in opposition to Sasuke's own thematic value: the more spiteful the attack, the more effective the perception of the attack against the character, the more successful the opinion's value at being considered a reasonable criticism. Basically, how loud, brash, and vicious you can be in gathering together a crowd of "yes men!" to stand behind you? And from the looks of it, you just gotta be a goddamn bitch about it—halt, and bark louder and louder still.

Unfortunately, the issues presented in the aforementioned paragraphs are manifold. For one, the "tearing down" of Sasuke's character requires people to justify the massacre. I've spoken about it time and time again, but you can't devalue the characterization without attacking the pillars on which it stands; and in regard to Sasuke, his character is entirely dependent on his clan's standing; therefore, you discredit the clan, declare the massacre as just, and believe the Uchiha Curse of Hatred (UCH) to be a constant phenomenon to which only Itachi was immune, allowing him a "superior moral standing" compared to the cognitively unstable clan, you've created a recipe that makes the entire plot parodically stand against Sasuke's themes itself: whatever Sasuke did steered the plot into the territory it, supposedly, was never meant to go; and to rectify this colossal blunder (in these readers' very humble opinion), the plot should've removed this particular agent (Sasuke) and taken up that particular agent (Naruto or Sakura or Kakashi, etc.); as in doing so, it simply makes the narrative "better". How? You're back to the part I issues; and, yes, it makes the whole self-satisfying opinion (passed off as a critique) a circular issue.

Thus, this sentiment is routinely reflected by gems such as these: "he hogged the panel-time!", "Naruto and Sakura were ruined because of him!", "Naruto and Sakura should've killed him.", so on and so forth. This presents a curious dilemma: if Sasuke's the main Causal Actor that generates actors and events, then the entire manga as a result is without value; therefore, the only reason the manga can regain the "lost" value is that if Sasuke never existed, which is another reason why you'd see many posts that highlight the following caricatural elements: "Hinata had as much importance as Sasuke", "He was never thought of from the start", "If you take Sasuke out, Naruto and Sakura become so much better", "Itachi should've killed him at the massacre", etc. Never mind the simple fact that what they're suggesting is basically the reimagining, restructuring, and rewriting of the entire narrative—only, now, it's on their terms … so that makes it better? Does it truly make the narrative better than before? One look at their Fan-Fictions (and opinion pieces) would tell you that that's not even remotely true, given that the content never finds any value beyond the mundane nature of self-fulfillment fantasies. Sometimes, the ego of highly average manga readers, Fan-Fiction-, or Naruto Meta-Writers is far more than what the they can chew. And what better way to exhibit a "I'm better than Kishimoto!" posturing than making Itachi the sole torch-bearer of the accursed clan who caused people a hell lot of heartache? It's almost poetic justice!

This brings us to the moral standing of the readers themselves: you can't interpret any context without your own moral values; they're one of the main pillars in narratological analyses. It isn't shocking to see many justifying Obama's war-crimes in the name of American (or Western) freedom. Wars and mass deaths and imperialism are termed as "mistakes", "character failings", and "flaws" from which the cult of American personalities is born and the personalities are redeemed. As Sasuke stands against the very institution Americans deeply associate with (State Dogma), he automatically becomes the "other"; and as he's othered, he, according to the readers, should be shown the same viciousness America shows to the dissidents in other countries. That's another reason why "redemption" is firmly associated with Itachi and "lack of consequences" and "punishment" with Sasuke. It's the venue of redemption that's always open for Itachi that creates the marked difference; it's a "blessing" Sasuke can't avail, not till ... he doesn't uphold the same State Dogma Itachi, and by extension the reader, deeply cherishes. This is another reason why Gaiden and Post-Gaiden Sasuke is the "best" Sasuke for countless American (and sometimes Western) readers; you'd see many claiming that he's finally calmed down, matured, cherishing Naruto and following his lead. In other words, this Sasuke is the Sasuke whose behavior has been "rectified", the behavior they wished for towards their narrative avatars from the start. (It's almost as if the Fandom isn't that complex, but rather Pavlovian in the way it interprets the content before it.)

In Understanding Cinema-A Psychological Theory of Moving Imagery, Per Persson states: "According to the psychological model of reception, meaning emerges out of the interaction between a disposition-equipped spectator and the film text … Dispositions and processes of understanding transform, abstract, and add to the text to such an extent that we may talk about creative and constructive processes." He goes on to add further: "Meaning requires a disposition-rich spectator who is actively searching for coherence in the film. According to this approach, meaning is not contained in the film (or book, or image), but emerges in the constant negotiation between discourse and the dispositions of the spectator (Persson, 2003, pg. 23)." This makes the reader or the spectator a "constructor of meaning" and gives this process a "mental" nature; thus, the idea that the spectator's morality, or a reader's in this case, is compartmentalized in the process of "reception" is a complete myth: your analyses of the text reflects your mental disposition as, without one, you can't interpret what the text has to offer.

This facet adds a very curious "moral simplicity" to Sasuke's doctrine: it's immoral simply became it's anti-State; it reflects what the reader feels morally about the situation. Sasuke's anti-State nature, quite literally, places him into the domain of the abrasive, over-emotional, and irrational characterization corner. After all, rationality, morality, and controlled emotions are all a part and parcel of "tough", "measured", and "far-sighted" decision-making—irrespective of turning the regions into meat grinders and active grounds for endless mass-killing, pillaging, and exploitation. Upholding the State Dogma is considered the mark of an "intelligent" individual who's also automatically an agent that exhibits the aforementioned qualities; since Sasuke doesn't uphold the Dogma, his every action is over-emotional, born from irrationality, and a window into character aberrations; and by extension, he's unintelligent, as well! (That's another reason why you'd always come across accusations of "heel-turns", of which Sasuke's "traitor" status is a dominant part, associated with "lack of intelligence".) Never mind the sheer illogical nature of this argumentation as it's a matter of impossibility to even reconcile Itachi's personae with one another, let alone making sense of each; but as he's perceived as "just", "moral", and "righteous", his characterization is simply accepted at face-value. It's quite automatic for many of his readers.

By being against the State, Sasuke's none of these; and by being for the State, Itachi's all of these; therefore, Sasuke's lacking in rational thought, far-sightedness, and cool-headedness; and Itachi's a brimful of all these. Why? State actors, naturally, in America's political landscape (realpolitik and geopolitics—two words for the easy transition of heinous war-crimes into the domain of the acceptable) have to make "tough" choices and "bear" the impossible burdens of massacring innumerable people to "maintain" world peace; and wars, in their highly cultured minds, are not only inevitable but also an intrinsic part of human nature (a nature that suddenly turns very moral when the concept of "retaliation" is on the horizon; then all actions are suddenly unjust, unethical, and immoral); therefore, Itachi was only doing what was "inevitable" and a part of his "nature" whilst Sasuke was doing everything that's not inevitable and not a part of human nature. This creates an easy apparatus of complete absolution from war-crimes when they haven't even been committed; and "guilt", "remorse", and "burdens" are only added character qualities (which Itachi displays none of) that are meant to make the character in question gather more moral weight, behind which an average American reader (with highly precarious morals) can stand.

Didn't Itachi do the exact same thing? He made the "tough" decision of ensuring "world peace" by killing the "trouble makers" that threatened State Peace (never mind the explicit canon fact that Leaf was utterly destroyed brick by brick during Kurama's, Orochimaru's, and Pain's attacks, yet no one took advantage of the situation and no World War broke out). And which Tragedy (with a capital T) is greater than "suffering" through mass-killings? The tears. The grimaces. The burdens. These are the hallowed precepts of the American Romanticism of their Killers, their soldiers, their leaders, their state actors! Itachi's literally created to metamorphose into a visage of the American Romance whilst Sasuke exists to shake its very foundations, tear it down, and burn it up. (It's not a happy coincidence that Kishimoto studied Mossad to create Leaf, an Intelligence Organization that's very closely associated with the CIA; no wonder the Americans feel right at home whilst reading about Leaf and its "plights".)

A great example would be of The American Sniper by Clint Eastwood, starring Bradley Cooper. Now, that film portrays Chris Kyle as a hero who's struggling with PTSD (oh so like Itachi!); and that's a wee bit funny because, in his book, Chris Kyle definitely comes across as a typical American Solider (look no further than the Trophy Hunting of innocent people, even children, carried out by American Soldiers in Afghanistan with full impunity from the higher-ups; they, too, had invented "Jihadis" as a moniker for all Afghanis), considering he views the people he's killing as savages, wishes he killed more of them, and finds it "fun". (Queue some "let's not criticize the deceased" response). The "Missing Nin" and the Uchiha business aren't too dissimilar, either: the Uchiha Curse "others" them to be considered "savages", mentally unstable dissidents that can't be controlled; so it becomes a necessity, another lofty Romantic "burden", to do away with them, not a matter of moral dilemma! Can this not be applied to Itachi, as well?

Well, there's this art, a romantic notion, associated with the "compartmentalization" of the soldier from the family-man: he kills and covers his hands in blood, but he comes home and values his loved ones, state, and culture; he has his emotions under control; he doesn't let this manifest on his face, silently suffering (oh, the tears! The grimaces! The silences! The faces behind the smiles to hide the sorrows! So very Kakashi-like, too!) from the "burden" he carries! It almost sounds caricatural, but pick up any film, or arguments made by the Western Hegemony supporters, from various Western states that are a part of the world's "white hegemony", and you'd see the same patterns repeated ad infinitum. Itachi, too, "compartmentalizes": his lack of emotions is seen as a "burden" due to the "guilt" he carries from having "made (and I'd come back to this point in the next paragraph)" to kill his own family; so that one time he wept, it's seen as the surest sign of the romantic solider qualities (guilt, remorse, and burden). Sasuke, by comparison, compartmentalizes nothing: what you see is what you get; and it's that honesty that the readers can't seem to reconcile with their own brand of vile hypocrisy. (There's a reason why death2america, an anti-American Tumblr-poster, receives a volley of attacks quite regularly from Americans who can't seem to understand the world beyond their hilariously limited perceptions and moral bankruptcy; and the topics that invite these derisive attacks on her person are always about American Imperialism—and, yes, its soldiers.)

And the aforementioned aspects almost compel these readers to play the "Blame Shifting" game (quite popular amongst the Sakura Fandom, as well, but that's a topic for another day), in which they humorously try to shift the blame of the actions from Itachi onto everyone else—even Sasuke, even though it sounds absolutely mental; and as Itachi's to blame for nothing, everyone else is to blame for everything and is the "Trouble Maker" that needs to be dealt with. Itachi's at a superior moral position, after all! This brings forward an interesting side to the Fandom and its sheer refusal to accept Itachi's "Agency" and see a "Fascist Imperialist" that he personifies so completely. For one, his recruitment is seen as a consequence of Fugaku's "abuse". When, in reality, it's a logic that's quite far removed from the manner in which the villages function: Fugaku did no better or worse than any other father who sent his child into the Academy, with the full knowledge that he could die in the Examinations or Forest of Death (a legal facet of the Chūnin Examinations); in fact, Kakashi's father, Sakumo, had sent his own son earlier than Fugaku; for many children, such as the Shinobi who became The Sannin, this happened even earlier. Then why's Fugaku made to shoulder the blame when no other father is? Well, you see, he doesn't like the State the readers align with!

To elaborate further on this argument, the charge that "he abused his son by compelling him to spy on the Council" is thrown at Fugaku, and even that is grossly without merit: it's almost as if Itachi's seen as someone who's separate from the very idea of Shinobi (a fancy Japanese term for a spy) whilst being the "True Shinobi" in these readers' perceptions somehow. (A father asking a spy to … spy isn't abuse, nor is the notion to carry on the torch of a clan in this world, as, by this definition, every father is abusive; yet only Fugaku, save Hiashi, receives this wrath.) That creates a wonderful paradox that causes Itachi to be a Pacifist (a word, thoroughly abused by many, which means anti-war, not a genocide-committing and tough-decision-making génocidaire) and the complete embodiment of a "Romantic Solider"—at the same time! It also grants the readers a convenient "double-speak" method that they gracelessly misuse to shift Itachi from the Pacifist to the Perfect Soldier and back again at the drop of a hat. As Itachi, you see, is not responsible for anything!

And because of this double-speak, his persona is conveniently shifted from one to the other to keep the blame squarely off his shoulders. In fact, even the argument of "brain-washing" is utilized to save these readers the trouble of asking tougher questions or making semi-intelligent argumentation: if Itachi's brain-washed, then Danzō or anyone else from the Council, too, is brain-washed (their stances being completely unshakeable after being under Leaf Dogma's influence till ripe old ages) by Tobirama's Dogma; and if brain-washing is the sole tool that created Itachi into what he became, then why didn't his father's grooming produce any fruitful results? And this is where Itachi, as a character, utterly fails: there's simply no room to coalesce the Pacifist (a moniker I find deeply troubling for its association with a génocidaire—hilarious, too) with the True Shinobi; but you'd come across many a "highly intelligent" poster accomplishing the impossible by making the Uchiha and Sasuke the carriers of Itachi's moral failings in the narrative. (To digress here a bit, I've never understood as to why Kishimoto opted for the "arm in sleeve" Ronin stance for Itachi, nor have I ever understood the line "run and cling to hate!" that's taken from the Classic 47 Ronin … which master is Itachi living without? The Council? They live. His father? He killed him himself. It's quite bizarre that his Fandom can't let go of the superficial decorations that not only muddy his character even further but also make the reconciliation of his personae a matter of complete parody!)

And from this idea is born the infamous "X is right/good because Y is wrong/bad", not "X is right/good because X is right/good irrespective of Y". You might think this to be something out of a middle-school children's class-session on creative writing, but, believe it or not, this mode of anti-intellectualism is Itachi Fandom's go-to tool to absolve him of any and all wrong doings. After all, when you consider Y to be responsible, morally questionable, and unintelligent, X, somehow, is automatically not responsible, morally sound, and very intelligent! That's the sort of argumentation you'd often see many Americans making about the very real (thankfully) prospect of the ending of their Terrorist State's hegemony: "If America lost its 'Super Power' status, China and Russia would take over! Can you imagine what would happen to the world under their rule? They're so much worse than us! The World needs America to keep peace!" Just like how the Naruto's world "needs" Fascist States like Leaf to function in a spiral of endless imperialism, wars, and exploitation; because the sheer possibility of an imaginary war (which is beyond the notion of paper-thin in Canon) that may end these States' tyranny, singular hegemony, and fascism once and for all is much worse than the complete restructuring of the system that would allow the "othered" people more freedom! This very idea throws a lot of people into uncontrollable bursts of anger, hysterics, and paranoia as it hits way too close to home. Isn't Itachi just the perfect symbol of the martyr that gives up his life for the endless continuation of Status Quo rather than its abolition and better rights for all? I can't think of anyone who drives this point home more than Itachi.

This exact same "logic" is gleefully incorporated at micro- and macro-level to attach this … "divine" status to everything Itachi's associated with and this "profane" status to the Uchiha, especially Sasuke. (They don't call him "Solo-King" for nothing.) Therefore, Itachi can only be right if Sasuke is wrong. (The State's concept was practically crafted by associating it with Divine Law at the Time of Innocent the Third; so Americans are quite taken with this "godly" retributive mode of the state's machinery.) So if Itachi's divine and all that is good in the world, Sasuke and the Uchiha have to be everything that's profane and all that's … bad in the world. A simple enough logic, and this is why the Uchiha Curse of Hatred (UCH) is such a convenient tool to tear them down and deem them as trouble-makers. What's more just than divine punishment delivered to the trouble-makers on the side of the profane? Itachi's only doing God's work—the biblical transition into the domain of the anime/manga is never lost in translation.

UCH is quite remarkable as a multi-purpose Uchiha take-down device (no questions, and even less thinking, required), as it's frequently refereed to grant merit to Itachi's stance. The most common argument brought in its favor is this: "Tobirama gave them jobs to contain their Curse." Surely, it's simply enough … but is it? If that were taken as "Truth", then why did he send the Clan to the war's frontlines, a place that'd trigger their trauma, and by extension their Curse, with the greatest certitude? That makes little sense. Either the Uchiha are a ticking time-bomb or they're perfectly rational to belong in active warfare. For a person that's so paranoid about the Curse, Tobirama has a funny way of showing it, given that the loss of family is a sure affair in war. This makes the segregation and war-inductions of the Uchiha outright paradoxical: they're so unstable that they develop a "Generational Curse" over the death of the loved ones and they're perfectly suited to belong on the frontlines! How can these two be right at the same time when the chances of developing the Curse that enhances up their powers (which were the source of Tobirama's whole paranoia) are exponentially higher in wars than in the village's peaceful environment? The only manner in which you can reconcile the two is if you simply accept the simpler argument of state-sanctioned bigotry. Occam's Razor and all. Even if we consider the "Curse" to be a true result from loss's occurrence, then Tobirama, somehow, saw it fit to abuse their "mental disability", because it's profitable in the war machinery? That's unquestionably more vile than my previous issue with UCH. I suppose, asking these question would require people of sound mind, not Itachi Fandom.

Then we have Itachi's ardent lovers using the scan in which he's boorishly screaming that the Uchiha "killed their own for the Mangekyōs (MS)". If that were true, then why are the Uchiha afflicted by a love so deep that they develop a Generational Curse over it, an affliction that only seems to stem from attachment? How can you exhibit excessive love that turns into an unshakeable Curse and be predisposed to ending the lives of the loved ones over which you develop the said Curse? These two can't be right at the same time; however, it isn't as if we'd ever see the most basic reason from the Fandom. You're what you consume, or so they say.

To put it simply, all this perception automatically makes Sasuke and his clan trouble-makers, agents that possess faulty cognition (UCH), and people who lack rational thought. When, realistically, if you look at the reality of the canon agents, all of them take up the contracts that involve mass-killings for day to day pay-checks, and, without Nuremberg Logic, you can't sanctify their actions (or that of countless other war-crimes that should be shown the same courtesy); however, that thought never crosses their minds as they've never thought of the world beyond anything more than one "trolley-problem", like America's entire war machinery, to tackle at a time; and as Itachi's the best narrative agent to solve these "trolley problems", he'd always be the state-lovers' pick! And, frankly, what's the greatest Justice than one of their own taking the righteous side and ending the conflict and all future threats in one swoop? You can't get more Romantic in the cult of American "Holy Crusades for Democratic Freedom!" than this! He's the ultimate dream, the ultimate freedom, the ultimate ... American Hero, A True Soldier ... A True Shinobi!

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Chapter 7: Haruno Sakura and the Pairing Woes

Chapter Text

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I don't believe I've ever seen a more aggressive group that's got a voracious appetite for consuming, digesting, and producing (and I'm saying that in the kindest manner possible) content that's so intellectually dishonest, made-up, and maimed that you're left with an irritating sentiment: have we read the same manga? Yes, I'm talking about the infamous Sakura Fandom. Who else could it be? From the over-zealous attachment to shipping to the fanatical penchant for cutting up canonical content to pieces, you'd find it all: every worse aspect—worst of the worst, in fact—of every fandom (of a particular character) is magnified and can be found amongst this lot.

I tend to avoid them altogether, but then they take it upon themselves to hijack Uchiha- and Sasuke-Centric Fictions and shower us with their buy-one-get-one-free wisdom, and you can't help but think that they're trying to convince themselves more than others of the supposed high-end virtues Sakura possessed in Kishimoto's rough scribbles, but Kishimoto's own id got in the way of their journey to the manga panels themselves. If they stayed in their own lanes, most wouldn't even be bothered; but it's as if they can't help themselves from seeking endless validations to stroke their ego. It's banal.

(And don't ever trust KS [Kakashi and Sakura] wankers. They're out to rob you of common sense, decency, and time. Lunatics. Every single one of them!)

The main issue with Sakura Fandom is this: no one detests canon Sakura more than they do. No, it's the truth, and to obfuscate this obvious matter, they try to make the earth and sky meet to convince us all that, no, it's we who loathe Sakura whilst simultaneously presenting versions of her that have no existence in canon altogether. You'd seldom find an organised group this large (in Fandom space) who gather together a host of false aspects and endlessly echo it back and forth, all the while fooling themselves that what they pass around has any backing in canon. This begs an important question: if they don't like canon Sakura, why exalt her at all? The whole thing is . . . beautifully senseless.

Their preferred method to go around this is doublespeak or blame-shifting, without any canonical evidence in sight. They hardly have anything else in their arsenal to mitigate the tough road that's Sakura's canonical presence—or lack thereof in relation to her narrative strength. In this regard, they make everything an issue of "morality", and, for the life of me, I can't fathom the concept of morality and its deep association with fascist soldiers that they keep humorlessly spinning. A time comes when you ask yourself: is this some kind of farce? It sure as hell feels like one.

And in order to accomplish this impossible task of "moralities", they can't help themselves from creating a moral dichotomy where their side needs to have this morally higher position for the other to have a morally lower position; and they tirelessly work to reach this, and because of that, every aspect associated with Sasuke has to have a lower moral standing. Because if he can't have a lower position, Sakura (and Kakashi or whomever she's f*cking or wants to f*ck in these tasteless Fictions that are supposed to make Canon's flaws that much better) isn't right, and they go into convulsive hysterics over this mere notion. And, frankly, I don't even understand as to why they believe themselves to be "smart" while they utilise this short-sighted logic simply to get their genitals wetter. It's very comical.

The thing is, they lose the argumentation both ways: if it's an issue of morality, then an imperialist-army-serving shinobi, who receives pay checks for butchering all and sundry, doesn't possess it; if it isn't an issue of morality, then might is right; and whomever exercises it is right; therefore, any character amassing power to punch down Leaf, literally and figuratively, should be allowed to do so without any moral scruples. It's either moral or it isn't; and they lose the argument both ways.

Then they go for the "grey" argument while looking at Naruto through the same moral lens of a high-schooler's tunnel-vision that's hyper-focused on "niceties". If they kept it grey, they wouldn't bring out the morality card and that Sasuke isn't "nice". Their arguments are childishly binary, and this mindset's very middle-school by nature. What does being "not nice!" even mean in the scenario of state-sponsored genocide? It's very absurd.

Funnily enough, I've yet to see anything to this but self-inserting, and the unsubtle nature of it is so in your face that it's bizarre. Since they see themselves in Sakura (only Lord knows how many times you'd see "relatable" in their posts on Tumblr, Reddit, or other random blogs), it turns into this: You see, I can't be morally wrong and what I'm vicariously f*cking most definitely can't be, either.

Many of these posts are dime a dozen. It isn't as if the "I see myself in Sakura's middle-class life that's a stuff of rocky turmoil, misery, and tragedy" argument is anything novel; you can go from page to page on any Sakura fan's blog, and you'd find this punctuating her tired old "Sakura is so me!" routine. It's the same on any other Fan-Fiction site.

And it's hardly limited to that: you'd see many a post that claim, without any evidence (what did I say about Sakura Fandom's echo-chamber?), that Sakura's more intelligent than Sasuke and that's why the "robbery" of her talents causes them a painful whiplash; and, at this point, I firmly believe that all of Sakura wankers are out there to collectively troll the sh*t out of me, because that's the funniest thing I've ever read. You might as well have read nothing save the pages with bubbles attached to Sakura's head throughout the course of the manga to make a claim this ridiculous. No, I genuinely mean that!

And what do they have to show for it? She's book-smart (because she got the questions right, apparently); her chakra control is great (because Shizune said it, though she said "delicate chakra control", not anything wondrous); she's got political insight (because reasons, which can't be found in the manga)—something of the sort. I want to make one thing crystal clear right now: there's no proof that Sakura (or Hinata) got even a single one of the questions right. Zero. I'd like for anyone to actually prove it to me that she did. Any panel would do, but it can't be proven at all because Naruto passed the examinations with a blank sheet of paper! This information is literally false! And, please, don't even bother with the "Hashirama complimented her" argument when he compared Tsunade's natural strength to Sakura's Byakugō-enhanced strength (and still he used the word "might"). You people do know that Tsunade invented Byakugō in her forties, correct (its advanced version, The Strength of a Hundred, was invented during the time-skip)? Orochimaru didn't know about it, either, when he first saw Tsunade release its lesser variant way back in Part I; and he's fought alongside her during the Second World War, which glorified her war-criminal ways. You do know that Hashirama was long dead by this point, right, so how, exactly, would he know about any of this? Reading this manga sure is hard, mates.

What Sakura Fans don't want to admit is that Sakura was wrong through the entire course of the Chūnin Examinations (is there any part of the examination that she did get right? No!): she got the test's purpose wrong; she couldn't understand the purpose of The Forest of Death; she couldn't figure out intruders and Orochimaru's intent and his disguises in the forest (she failed both times, actually); her plan to stop Dosu was a bust (he figured out both of her traps); and she only won against Ino because of dumb luck. (By the way, she didn't make the traps; the forest already had plenty of them; and she didn't slow down Team Dosu in any manner; Lee and others did.)

In the Medic department, she was unable to create from, improve, and research on any Jutsu. Her wankers take the "delicate chakra control thing" and run off with it when she couldn't handle just a teeny-tiny drop of Naruto's Bijū chakra whilst Sasuke handled the chakra of all nine beasts and invented Sage rivalling Jutsus on the battlefield, in a matter of seconds, simultaneously. There's literally no one in the entire manga who's done that save the Sage and Kaguya. (As unfair as this is, I'd only be comparing her to Sasuke as this is the character that upsets them the most.)

Her Byakugō is a poor compensation for Hashirama's Sage Mode healing. She kneads small chakra and stores it because she can't handle large volumes of it at the same time. That's precisely why Tsunade even invented the seal: she wanted to replicate Hashirama's healing, who's a chakra power-house. Another important thing about Byakugō is that it's got nothing to do with clans and bloodlines—a "feat" that they can't stop bawling over—so the suggestion that Sakura learning it is a grand feat in comparison to "insert the obvious Uchiha here" is very silly: it's just a technique that requires storing kneaded chakra for later use. That's it. That's got squat to do with any natural genetic superiority others may possess.

Her knowledge of and skill in elemental Jutsus that are canonically far superior to non-elemental Jutsus is zero, zip, zilch; and her strategic feats are mediocre at best. Her best feat is her deciphering of Obito's Kamui, which she accomplished after gathering the information offered by Kakashi and Shino, whilst all it took for Sasuke was a single swipe of his blade (he did that in a moment what an entire squad couldn't do in several moments); and that, my friends, is the difference between their intuition. To top it off, she's offered no political insights on any of the main political issues. I don't know what her ardent lovers keep smoking, but their antics sure are embarrassing.

The biggest factor that goes against her chakra control is Byakugō itself, along with the fact that the chakra volume is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is to control (Kakashi outright mentions it; Madara bloated because he couldn't handle a sudden large surge of chakra, which turned him into Kaguya; Kaguya herself couldn't stabilise the large upsurge of chakra that came from the Infinite Tsukuyomi victims and exploded up into visible Bijū): it's literally designed for people who can't handle, knead, and control large volumes of chakra at the same time; so the seal was fashioned to make sure that they transfer small controlled chakra over a period of time for a backup use. It's like a civilian using an assembled gun that's co*cked, doesn't possess much recoil-effect, and is fitted with a laser sight as opposed to a weapon's specialist who can assemble a tricky gun and shoot with accuracy despite a massive recoil-effect and hit the target without the laser sight.

She also took three whole months to make one fish wriggle (forget learning any Jutsu itself) whilst Sasuke learnt Chidori (an Elemental Jutsu) and Lee's gated speed in under a week, albeit he was still injured. He copied, learned, and invented his own Taijutsu maneuver in a single day, something that isn't even possible with the Sharingan (Gai's words, not mine) as it takes years to accomplish that. Never mind the fact that he could surround various objects with Elemental and Non-Elemental chakra before he ever joined the academy (he used that against Orochimaru). Even Kakashi couldn't do that at that point and he's more than twice Sasuke's age at the start of Naruto.

All of these are facts, and they don't ignore them; no, they play the blame-shifting game. If she didn't accomplish this or that, it's either Sasuke's fault or Kishimoto's; and it's so silly, because if it weren't for Sasuke, she'd have dropped out of the examinations (she tried that several times) and disappeared from the manga altogether.

For this reason, they've got the ready-made "unfairness" argument. Who was unfair to Sakura and why? In order to determine the nature of unfairness, you'd have to understand the idea of fairness first. Was Sakura not provided with the opportunities to learn? Was there any inhibition in her path to become a shinobi? Was she discriminated on the basis of class, of being a woman, of being from a civilian family? Since the answer to all of this is "no", I don't understand the argument as it's the creation of an issue for the sake of it.

As far as "I was lied to!" argument is concerned (in that Sakura was meant to be like the idea in my head, and that's what I was promised), then the tone of the manga being centered on bloodlines was established as early as Waves Arc when Haku compared himself to Sasuke. By the time the first Vote Battle happened, it'd progressed onwards to the basis of what later became the generational bloodlines conflict: Kakashi very clearly mentions the creation of the valley due to the legendary battle. Sakura doesn't fit into any of this, and that's been true since chapter five. Since there was no lie, there's no truth to be found on the topic of fairness.

They also go for the "she could've been Hokage" and that "she should've surpassed Tsunade and opened Naruto Red Cross" and what not, but they forget one simple thing: Sakura herself never wanted any of that; she's never showed even a hint of political acumen; she's never given any insight into any political issue. Since the character in question doesn't want it, why's there an issue of unfairness? Their "political insights" are solely limited to the fact that she didn't move on from Sasuke, didn't try and kill him, and didn't try and act as his antagonist. It's as if, in their minds, her romantic life is a multi-purpose device for her salvation in all walks of life: you move on from Sasuke and you become the ninja president of all five nations—guaranteed! And that makes no f*cking sense to me. Why would Sakura suddenly gain more aspirations, political acumen, and drive in Sasuke's absence when he, technically, was absent from her life for years? In fact, Sasuke was barely present in her life!

Then we have the chakra control argument that I've already explained above, as well. Sakura fandom want the manga to be rewritten with Sakura at the helm of it, and it's preposterous to me. Their Mokuton argument show-cases their lack of understanding of the manga basics: first, Mokuton is a very advanced Kekkei Genkai, not just an Elemental Jutsu; it requires the intrinsic combination of Doton and Suiton, facilitated by genetics (in Hashirama's and Haku's case, not in the case of Muu and Onoki's Dust Release, though that's Kekkei Tōta, and not in the case of Ae and Darui's Black Lightning, either), into a third element; and Sakura has displayed no predisposition, talent, or intuition for this field.

Second, her chakra control in regard to her field, which is painfully restrictive, shows its peak through Byakugō and Byakugō only, and it works solely on putting small amounts of kneaded chakra aside on a rainy day; she's never worked with large un-kneaded chakra volume. Not even once! Mokuton, or Hashirama's Mokuton to be precise, works on drawing on, kneading, and controlling colossal volumes of chakra on the basis of Yang Release. He literally breathes life into the earth on a grand scale, and the Uchiha create forms through illusion, but without life. (They're the Yin to Senju's Yang.) Sakura can't even fathom that volume when Hashirama's system had far more active chakra than the entire chakra BM Naruto had distributed among the living Shinobi Alliance members and inside his own system. Sakura would literally collapse, burn out, and die before she'd handle even a fraction of that. (We saw that outright when Minato nearly perished from the weight of Kurama's chakra; and Sakura herself collapsed, unable to knead chakra, when just a trickle of Kurama's chakra leaked into her system from the scratch.) This canonically shows that she's not capable of handling complex, heavy, and large chakra. And that's true for every other person save Sasuke, Madara, Nagato, and Naruto. They don't understand chakra control, do they?

Hashirama is the most powerful non-Rikudō character, and it's not even close. The chakra that he handles simultaneously to create Mokuton? Only Sasuke can handle that. And why am I saying this? Well, Nagato couldn't even easily absorb the Bijū, one at a time, despite having help from several other Akatsuki members (Deva Path uses ninety percent of his power; so if he's only using Deva, he's using almost all of his power). It still took him days to accomplish that. Even Madara couldn't accomplish that without using the Gedo Mazō Chains and the Bijū number rule (the most powerful one goes in last). Sasuke, on the other hand, did all that in less than half the time Madara accomplished the task and gathered, kneaded, and changed the chakra and invented new techniques to compensate for the Bijū Chains—at the same time! The volume he handled is something even Hashirama can't dream of; and the volume Hashirama handles is something that'd outright kill Sakura in moments. How do people forget that he had so much chakra inside his Wood Dragon that it managed to put Yin/Yang Kurama—basically, the full Kurama—to sleep with a single touch? f*ck outta here! Sakura should've had Mokuton based on where the canon was going, my f*cking arse.

This whole fairness versus unfairness that's a hot topic among her fans only centers on why she didn't move on from Sasuke. What would that act have accomplished? Does it erase the fact that she's talentless in every other field save the medic field? Does it erase the fact that she's never had any ambitions regarding the shinobi system? Does it erase the fact that she never had anything even remotely bright to say on the topic of shinobi politics? How was Sasuke a barrier to any of that?

It's as if you remove Sasuke and suddenly she's Mozart, Newton, Marx, and Shakespeare all rolled into one. It's only Sasuke that killed each talent. Oh, she could've been able to play the mouth organ, too. Grits teeth . . . Sasuke . . . !

(Wasn't Sakura willing to abandon her career so that she could span the vast distance that existed between her and Sasuke's genitals, when he was on his journey of redemption and self-discovery? Sakura's always been willing to drop everything for Sasuke, despite the character in question never wanting anything to do with her; so Sasuke clearly isn't the character that's responsible for her "choices" in life.)

I'm also kind of sick of their "agency" argument: what does that even mean? If you go by the agency, then it's true for every other character. If so, then why are you so hyper-charged over the whole Sasuke affair? And the funny thing is, when Sasuke's not around, she's such a f*cking arsehole to literally every one for no conceivable reason: she physically assaulted Sai (that wasn't comic relief) and was generally mean-natured to him, a boy who's nothing more than a branded slave; she stabs people in the back (knocked out the whole team in the enemy territory; they could've been easily killed by Akatsuki or Sleeper Cells from other villages); tapes her own picture over a woman's who helped her birth Sarada and sends in gifts for her, as well; speaks ill of Ino before Sarada that she'd take Sasuke from her (read the end of Gaiden where Sarada asks Ino to back off from Sasuke); breaks off friendship over a boy who doesn't even speak to her; berates Naruto's intelligence constantly; hardly thanks him when he goes out of his way to aid her; tries to play his insecurity against him during that confession; bad-mouths her own mentor the moment Sasuke steps into the battlefield, "she's so f*cking old, lol, but I'm young so I don't use the seal for that!" to get inside Sasuke's pants; etc. Did Sasuke ask her to do any of that? How's this Sakura not exercising her own agency? Or is it just her failures in "romance" that bother you? He wasn't even present during almost all of these incidents as he was absent from her life for years! In fact, her meekness is a blessing because, otherwise, she's just a complete arsehole to every f*cking person for no reason! And you know what? I like Sakura precisely because she's got a mean-streak, makes blunders, and doesn't apologize for anything; her tunnel-vision when it comes to Sasuke that's nicely balanced by moments of clarity in the face of antagonism ... is f*cking fantastic; that means that she isn't a traditional Shonen female character, and that's a good thing! That means that she's got dimensions as a character, a proper characterisation. Why's that a source of this fandom's scream-sessions?

The problem with Sakura Fandom is that they don't care about what the character is about and cling onto about five panels dedicated to romance and reread the panels with her tears on them for . . . "retributive" Fan-Fictions to show Sasuke as to what he missed. There's a Fan-Fiction centered on KS that's titled "Better Man", so . . . uh . . . yeah. Why's there any pretension on this front that they see themselves in Sakura and are angered that her advances are met with nothing but rejections? If that weren't the cause of this contention, there wouldn't be so many "fix-it" fictions that intrinsically involve Sakura getting another romantic partner in place of Sasuke; and in these fictions, Sasuke's always shown to be jealous, remorseful, and sad over "the one who got away". If not that, it's Sasuke himself who's "fixed" and turned into a chaser.

If they're not accomplishing any of that, they desperately try and turn her into this less-than-half dimensional caricature of Sasuke: they toss at her a sad past; grant her trauma; make that affect her in profound ways that are comically sudden; fashion her to turn into this "hard-edged" solider who takes "no sh*t from no one and does her own thing!"; attribute a "retribution" theme to her quest; etc.; à la Sasuke; and it's very silly as they want Sakura to be Sasuke, basically (it's the same with Dark Naruto narratives). It isn't even subtle as it's a weird sort of envy that they experience at the expense of a manga character that, apparently, was robbed. I want to ask them this: why do you want, in obvious desperation, to turn this character into that character that you take issues with? The whole thing's tone-deaf.

The problem with this Fandom is that it's never bothered to understand Sakura's characterisation; so they try and fit her into several moulds when none of them define her—not her Canon persona. As a result of this, she's everything what the reader or writer of her stories want herself to be in her own life; and Kishimoto isn't responsible for your life and the "manga characters" you hilariously adopt as "role models", I'm afraid. (What a despicable failure of parenting that is?) The stories that focus on her are the highlight of everything that's vile about today's hyper-consumerism that's steeped in the "selfie-fad" culture and turns everything into a product that's meant for your satisfaction: everything has to reflect you; and Sakura has hilariously turned into this "one-size-fits-all" object through which every unsatisfied fool can live in her own way:"change Sasuke for whichever male character you found attractive; why stay with one when you can create her own harem of hotties; compel others to chase after you now; make her mistreat Sasuke simply because he dared to exercise his right to consent despite her repeated aggression; turn her into Sasuke, so that she can be better now!" And all this reads like some bizarre label of a Chinese sex-toy that's all-purpose in its granting of mechanical miracles. What sort of "trends" are being broken here when this is simply another side of the spectrum Naruto wankers are woefully familiar with since that one time some random girl rejected them in middle-school? (Let it go, folks! These people don't remember you.) And to top if off, they take this nonsensical waste so f*cking seriously that you can't help but think that there's something functionally wrong with this lot. You're not altering the landscape of systematic oppression by living your (white suburban girl) fantasies through a middle-class manga-girl that's simply not self-satisfied in a world rife with fascism. This feels mental.

A byproduct of this is that there are countless posts about how SS (Sasuke and Sakura) is abusive, but let's use this quote to start this off: "It isn't even a case of abuse where he's actively trapping her physically and psychologically into a harmful relationship. It's that she throws herself at him constantly."

This is why no sensible person has ever approached SS from an "it's abusive!" standpoint (at least, not traditionally abusive). Sasuke's not going out of his way to hurt Sakura. He doesn't pay her nearly that much attention or regard. It's not like with Naruto where his insults are there to get a rise out of him and feed his superiority complex and nurse his inferiority one, as well as a part of their friendship. The insults and sometimes murder attempts are offhandedly tossed her way. He's not being purposefully antagonistic with an intent to hurt her as an objective. He's just being honest, and that she might be hurt by his blunt nature (and Sasuke's very straightforward and blunt by nature) doesn't occur or matter to him. It gives him no satisfaction or fulfillment (the way abusers feel in abusive relationships). It just happens. For example, Sakura asks about what's happening outside, and he responds that she doesn't need to know as keeping her in the loop isn't worth the effort, and he's right. She's hurt, but he doesn't care or notice; he was just saying what he felt (and Sakura couldn't handle it). Why should he take notice or care? It's the "why" Sakura Fandom refuses to answer. Why should Sakura be shown "special treatment" when she's a Shinobi? Why, indeed.

The issue with Sakura Fandom's that they're perfectly "all right" with Sakura's own mean-spiritedness when it comes to every other character she interacts with. It's Sasuke that they take issue with. Why? He doesn't take her nonsense, and she knows it. He retaliates, and it's his streak to respond to her aggression that compels her to be meek: she's not meek because of Sasuke; no, she's meek because Sasuke's not like the others who let her antics slide. Others either let her physically and/or verbally attack them. Sasuke doesn't. If she throws a remark at him that he doesn't like, he won't stay quiet. He'd put her (or anyone else) in her place. If she comes at him with an intent to physically attack, he doesn't miss a beat and responds in kind; and it's that "special treatment" that she receives from everyone else and doesn't from Sasuke that bothers them; and, suddenly, it becomes an issue of "sexism" when it isn't. Why should Sakura, a Shinobi, be shown a treatment that isn't reserved for other Shinobi? Should Sasuke not attack her when she comes at him with an intent to hurt and/or kill (as it happened at Orochimaru's Hideout and the Kage Summit)? Should Sasuke not aggressively reject her when she won't take "no" for an answer? (Reverse the Genders and let me know if your answer to this this isn't an "agreement" because, otherwise, you'd be in agreement with the men who harass, emotionally manipulate, and aggressively pursue women who're uninterested in them; after all, the men love these women, too, so they should be compensated like Sakura should be compensated for her "efforts", no?)

Let's remove Sasuke from the equation and think of another Shinobi. Was Sasori a misogynist for attacking Sakura and Chiyo, for trying to put a sword in the latter's back when she was turned away from him, for poisoning her that cost her her life? Was Itachi one for berating Kurenai (and he did that with great relish after his Sharingan reflected her Genjutsu back at her) and kicking her away to add insult to the injury? Was Kakuzu one for endeavouring to murder Ino (and others)? Was Nagato one for looking down on Tsunade? What about Madara? For this "Sasuke is sexist towards Sakura" argument to hold any water, you'd have to hold every other Shinobi accountable for his so-called gender-based mishaps, as well. Why just Sasuke? In fact, Sasuke treats Sakura in the manner he treats everyone else: she's, literally, not an odd one out for him; and that's precisely why he's made out to be this mean boogie-man who hurt her in more ways than one! I hope you realise the self-defeating nature of this argument that sprang out of "pairing woes", nothing more. To call this anything but that is very dishonest—cheap even.

Sasuke doesn't care enough about Sakura to put the effort into abusing her intentionally. That's how little influence or impression she has on his character; and that's just a fact. She's got no weight in his narrative that runs completely independent of her, and that bothers her Fandom. They want her to matter in his narrative (Sasuke is the plot, but that's a discussion for another time); and to make this preposterous argument work, they've got all sorts of infantile attacks against Sasuke.

You know what I think about Sakura? This is less about Sasuke and more about herself. See, as person who doesn't mind Sakura's Canon character (who even likes her) and has read the manga with two functioning eyes (unlike her Wikipedia and Fan-Fiction hogging Fandom), I'm not biased due to Fan-Fiction interpretations and have a better grasp of Sakura's character than some people who love her. Sakura, despite her bravado, is not a person of confidence. She has low self-esteem and very little self-worth. A great part of the reason she's so hung up on Sasuke is that it's a sense of validation for herself. She was shy, friendless, unpopular, and overlooked as a child. She liked Sasuke, but even better, to be acknowledged by someone everyone likes, everyone admires, that would make her special. That would make her somebody worthwhile, no?

I do believe that Sakura does have feelings for Sasuke (albeit they're mostly driven by lust), but is she really in love with Sasuke the person, or is it the idea of him? That he doesn't notice her or pay attention to her only makes this insecurity worse as she's built her entire identity around Sasuke: he's the reason why she chose to stay in the Chūnin Examinations; he's the reason why she chose to improve and went to Tsunade to train; he's the reason why she wanted to better herself; he's the reason why she always persevered. Sasuke's at the epicenter of all her efforts; he literally constructs her character's dimensions—the few she possesses. You remove Sasuke and she's left with no human dimensions; she's just a banal medic. That's it. As a result of this, Sakura is constantly saddened by not doing enough, not fitting in with her team, not belonging or being someone of necessity. As she herself stated (in the only time she ever elaborates on her feelings), she's attracted to Sasuke because he's ridiculously good-looking, talented, and "cool". (So the very idea that Sakura's canonically better than Sasuke on any front is rejected by Sakura herself from the start.) Sasuke, in essence, is a person who personifies everything that she is not. He's everything she wants herself to be; and she said that quite plainly during her monologue in that fight with Ino: before Sasuke, she wanted to be Ino. It's the "shift in persona" that's to be her behaviour's nucleus that defines her character, nothing else.

Shippers portray the ship in the way that leads Sakura's strange behavior. They ship it because they love the idea of Sakura being the "special one" who is the exception to Sasuke's personality and his greatest weakness and is the "special girl who's different from all the other ordinary girls", which is so irritating because she's not. Sakura is the antithesis of these concepts. There's nothing different or special about Sakura's love. There's nothing different or special about her as far as her relation to Sasuke is concerned. She doesn't know him; she doesn't understand him; she doesn't even have a basic grasp on the concepts that are necessary for these things. Sasuke hasn't singled her out. She doesn't appeal to him or interest him. She doesn't challenge him in any emotional, mental, or physical way. They're not even close. What does Sasuke even know about Sakura, or understand about her? Sakura, as far as SS goes, has nothing different or special about their relationship or dynamic that couldn't be done by any other generic admirer. Absolutely nothing. Nothing that transpired between them is anything that wouldn't have happened had any other girl been placed on his team. That's really the only thing Sakura had going for her or that separates her from, I don't know, Ino. Do any of you honestly think that if Ino was on his team he wouldn't have saved her life? That he wouldn't have grown to care for her as a teammate? That he wouldn't have thanked her for caring about him? That he would have left her to die? Come on! And they try and replicate this "specialness" by either fixing Sasuke or the narrative around Sakura so that she attains this "specialness" in another hottie's (preferably an Uchiha, so that Sasuke really feels it, you know? Feels the loss of "the one that got away!") life. It's painfully common as a trope.

And that's my whole issue. You can't say that about Itachi; can't say that about the Uchiha Clan; can't say that about Taka; can't say that about Danzō; can't say that about Leaf as a character; and, to an extent, can't say that about Naruto. I can't say that if Kiba had been his teammate, everything about their relationship would be more or less exactly the same. Or Shikamaru. Or Chouji. Or Neji. Because, you see, the manga has elaborated on this. It's illustrated the depth, the reason, the relationship, the uniqueness between the aforementioned characters that were involved in Sasuke's life. Seriously, replace Ino with Sakura and think of what would change in regard to Sasuke. Ino would have cared. Ino would have tried to stop him. Sasuke waxed lyrical about Itachi (and Naruto at the end, but that's debatable due to the characterisation finding its culmination on a shaky foundation that Kishimoto himself doesn't agree on) and how much he's always loved him and the ways in which he enriched his life in many chapters whilst Sakura got no mention (except, of course, in the Team 7 picture where he refers to them as such). Sakura was just afforded the opportunity of being the closest girl. That's all.

Sakura has nothing to do with Sasuke's character or story arc; and as Sasuke runs the entire plot structure, quite literally, any character that doesn't have a presence in his narrative is unimportant to the main narrative; and that's been true since chapter five. Sincerely, remove Sakura from the manga and tell me what about Sasuke's person or journey as character throughout the story changes. Which begs the question: how's he singlehandedly responsible for her character's ruination when her character's worth in his character's structure is nowhere to be found? The "pairings" that involve Sakura and Sasuke (or any of his "dick" replacement characters) are just vicarious fantasy-stories where her "chaser" is standard Shoujo angsty bad-boy bishōnen and Sakura is the "independent, normal, middle-class girl who's different from all the rest", which is pretty much the antithesis of these characters; and, frankly, this doesn't "break" any writing pitfalls Kishimoto "supposedly" landed into. How's the not-so-subtle replacement of one "hottie" that ignored your self-image's receiver to another "hottie" that won't any different from how it was in the manga? How's the "turning of Sakura into a cheap Sasuke" cliché any better? How's a lack of shift in "shipping" the cause of this character's fall? This is so f*cking absurd! You're utilising the same wasteful clichés that you're bemoaning; but now, they work on your terms. This isn't "genius" writing; it's a dog chasing after its own tail! A little self-awareness would do you lot a whole lot of good.

That's the point of her Canonical character: she's naïve, a fool, and insecure. Not everyone changes. Not everyone can change. Not everyone is affected by change. Not everyone can bring change. Many stay the same. Sakura's got a tendency to cling to people that award her any sense of worth, validation, and security; and that's true for countless people. In this regard, she's aggressively simple, human, and uncomplicated. (That's the primary reason why she always, without fail, desperately tries to show off whenever Sasuke is around; she wants for him to notice her, validate her, like her as that's what she's always worked for; it isn't anything malicious, but very banal in its humanity.) She isn't complex, but her lack of complexity is the point. Her achieving more in the Medic Field is simply vicarious living and won't add anything to her characterisation save a pointless achievement. It doesn't bring any depth to her character. A lot of her fans, as they see themselves in her, get very upset when she reminds them of their own life choices: she's hung up on a boy when she can move on and achieve bigger things in her career; but the problem is that that's her character and "career goals" isn't the point of story-telling, especially not in Naruto's world. (Narratives aren't real life; they're an exploration of the aspects of life; know the difference.) Either you buy it, or you don't. It's got nothing to do with sexism. In fact, Obito's entire life philosophy was centered on Rin. Is that misandry? If that isn't sexism—this isn't either. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. (Trust me, the lack of your Harlequin Fantasy's realisation through Sakura isn't Kishimoto's fault.)

And that's why I actually have a soft spot for Canon Sakura: she's bullish in her tendency to remain entangled in her flaws, a fact that's true for most. My point's fairly simple: at the very least, read the manga before you offer your analyses. As none of the "plights" Sakura faced and the "heights" she was robbed of are canon. She never wanted any of that herself. Are you sure it isn't you speaking through her? Maybe it's time to take a step back and smell fresh air; because if you can't stop talking about, writing on, and investing in Sasuke's character every time you come to Sakura, you've simply admitted to a simple fact that she's always buried in his shadow—even in your interpretations of her, let alone in Canon. Heck, you can't even make her her own person without dragging Sasuke into the narrative, and that's simply pitiful on every front. I think we can all agree that none of this is anything deep.

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Additional Remarks on Sakura Fandom

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The one thing that I don't understand about the Sakura Fandom is their tendency to create this bizarre debate that's centred on what Sakura "deserved"; and thus, what she was deprived of (robbed of, being their most favourite phrase) that was rightfully hers. This is a very odd thing to suggest. What did Sakura deserve, exactly? A career? She already has it. An arc that illustrates her rise from a mediocre girl to a young woman of merit? It's been done. What more does a character that's unimportant to the narrative arc require? Nothing that I know of.

Sakura Fandom enjoys to spin this into yet another case of "gender marginalisation", forgetting that that's true for every single character save Naruto and Sasuke. It's the association with the latter that decides as to whom gets to gain the strength in the narrative, given the fact that Sasuke's the primary causality generator. If you hold any value in his arc, no matter how small, you're important to the narrative; if you don't, you're not. It's a matter of structural choice that compels the other characters to "give chase" to him: they're not simply chasing him as an actor; no, as it's a plot-driven narrative, they're literally chasing the plot as Sasuke is the plot.

Since Sakura never quite gained that value in Sasuke's causal apparatus, she holds very little footing in the manga. Are you understanding what I'm endeavouring to suggest? A character (let's call an actor a character for the sake of simplicity) only gains value if it's associated with the "cause and effect" events that trigger further "cause and effect". It's this chain that creates plot; and Sasuke's, very literally, the only primary narrative-instrument that generates a whole host of events that formulate the structure of Naruto as you know it. There's no arc, no event, no actor that exists in Naruto without its direct or indirect association with Sasuke. In fact, Sakura's very existence or what little presence she has in the manga is due to Sasuke's character (look no further than her Chūnin Examination antics and her rise as a medic for this one).

Therefore, the sole reason why she's awarded any narrative presence at all is due to the simple fact that she's narratively linked to Sasuke. (You lot should be thankful to this actor.) You remove Sasuke from the equation and the manga's entire structure falls apart and the plot collapses—its other structural issues notwithstanding, but that's a different matter altogether. The only way in which this can be remedied is that you rewrite the entire manga, but with Sakura at the nexus of it; and that's where her Fandom loses me.

Here's a thing: you can offer criticism in regard to the missteps that Kishimoto couldn't avoid, which resulted in the paradoxical thematic dichotomies at the end, and that would be fair; however, what you can't do, and shouldn't be allowed to do, is that you demand, like a typical disgruntled consumer, to be compensated for whatever fantasies you concocted in your head regarding this particular character or that particular character. This isn't your choice to make; and creating a "moral dilemma" about this is precisely why I abhor "Fandom Culture" that's turned into this conglomerate of hyper-consumerism-driven wankers that deeply associate their identities with fictional characters to the point where they see themselves in them and want for them to succeed in their place. No writer, Kishimoto or otherwise, is responsible for this aberrant behaviour. You aren't owed a fictional life. Get over it.

And to get around this wall, Sakura Fandom pull out all stops: she deserved this ending or that; she deserved this career or that; she deserved this man or that; etc. the fact is, if you look at Sakura's journey, she got everything she wanted: she's a Medic; a protégé of one of the Sannin; married to a man whom she wore down, chased after, and coerced into marriage (just try and reverse the genders and tell me with complete honesty: what would you call this bullish chasing that's met with refusals over and over again?). What did she deserve beyond this? Did she deserve a political seat? Of what sort? Did she deserve a better career? Of what sort? Did she deserve a . . . better romantic journey? I could say, "of what sort?" here, too, and call it a day; however, it's this demand for a "satisfying" romantic conclusion that's the main issue here, nothing else.

The issue mainly exists in the method of reading itself. The reader, I'm afraid, is far more culpable here than the writer regardless of the framing he's used; and how the reader interprets the work is largely a matter of hyper-consumerism these days. You can read the fantastic work Franzen and the "Open-Minded but Essentially Untrained Fiction Reader" by Seth Studer and Ichiro Takayoshi to ascertain the notions of today's reader and what he wants in the narratives: an endless wave of his own life reflected back at him; and when it comes to women, it's got to have romance at the heart of it all.

Women find it misogynistic when it's pointed out to them that they obsess over romance to a degree that goes beyond the concept of "infantile adults"; it's just ghastly; but it's true. Sasuke's character becomes a subject of over-analysis here, too, as it doesn't fall into the romantic tropes that they've come to cherish. Illouz discloses that Romance novels are a billion-dollar-a-year industry and make up 46 percent of all mass-market paperbacks sold in America; the publishing company Harlequin claims that half of its customers buys 30 of its novels every month; it also claims to sell more than four books per second. That's . . . fairly absurd if you look at this, but this lack of "sellable romance" in Naruto is what goads this subset of readers to churn out "fix-it" fictions faster than Ben Shapiro's twitter-talk of his wife's very dry vagin*.

The thing is, these female readers read Sasuke's character with many expectations in mind that centered on his "coming around", "coming to his senses", "coming to her rescue", "coming to a realisation", "coming to acknowledging her", etc. These are the kind of expectations they have when they read a romance work or look for romance or fantasize about it. As they find Sakura deeply recognizable, they're appalled by Sasuke's tendency to stray from these expectations: he doesn't come around; he doesn't come to his senses; he doesn't rescue her; he doesn't come to any realization; he doesn't acknowledge her; etc. As he does all of these things that fall inside the "un-recognizable" domain rather than the "recognizable" domain, he becomes an easy target for attacks again on shallow, self-serving, and cheap "niceties" that they've always come to expect from the romantic partners (real life or fantasies). (It's very telling that SS [Sasuke and Sakura] or any Sakura-centric Fiction reads like a Buzzfeed's weekly "Ten Signs he's into You!" check-list, with a little middle-school "political intrigue" thrown into the mess.)

Since none of the "expectations" that they carry over from thousands upon thousands of these vapid romance-fantasies turn into a "Canon" reality in Naruto, they . . . create the "fix-it" fictions to remedy that, because they firmly believe that Sakura did deserve far more than what the structure itself warranted. Let's make one thing crystal clear: women can be just as mean, shallow, and selfish as men; one gender is not better than the other based on some arbitrary biological reasons. Sakura's just mean. That's her character. The "good traits need to be balanced out with the bad, otherwise, it's sexism!" is a very high-school-er comment. Look at her journey, because that's what matters in a "plot-driven" narrative as Sakura certainly isn't a part of a "character-driven" narrative—these two couldn't be more structurally dissimilar—but you would've known that had you lot ever bothered to pick up a single book on criticism. (Sure, Kishimoto has done character studies of few characters [Sasuke, Nagato, and Obito being three of them], but the structure itself is counter-productive to this endeavour.)

And they keep struggling to re-create this Sakura who'd be the centre of attention—many a time, it's the male attention—in a plot to reach a conclusion that'd be finally "satisfying". (I could bring Kafka into this to tear this "satisfying narratives" argument to shreds, but I neither have the time nor the energy to delve that deeply into this; but you should be aware of the fact that dear ol' Kafka scoffed at this). As she "deserved" the male attention, every male character is apparently "fixed" and Sakura's turned into the epi-centre of his quest— à la her own character in Naruto, which her readers absolutely consider to be sexist, but misandry's cool, I suppose? If it isn't sexism for men to be aggressive pursuers of women in fiction, it isn't sexism if the tables are turned, as well, because both are true and reflect life.

It should be noted here that it's this lack of "specific" male attention—not just male attention—that bothers these readers a lot than anything else. There's a reason why no male character from rich, socially dominant, and established clans (in Canon) ever found Sakura even remotely attractive (and, no, Jiraiya never called Sakura a "beauty" in the official translation; in Boruto's canon manga, which is associated with Mitsuki, she's referred to as a "self-pro-claimed" beauty; and Kishimoto called her "not cute" and/or "not attractive" in his Canon Introduction; Sakura, like Hinata, was never a beauty; the latter's called "crumpy" by Kishimoto, so your half-dimensional, but blissfully corpulent wife [because she's got to make up for her "fill-in-the-blank-between-her-thighs" personality, somehow], is sort of banal, my fellow Naruto wankers); Naruto never knew his lineage, and when he found out, he moved on, as well; and Sasuke, in spite of Sakura's repeated aggression, was constant with his refusals. The only boys (or young men) that were attracted to her were either not from Clans or were lowly grunt soldiers (as it happened in war). Now, it's a subtle narrative dimension but any individual who's from Asia (preferably from long family-lines that associate prestige with their bloodlines, and the "pure blood" in families is still very much a thing in many Asian sub-cultures, who're intrinsically religious and/or cultural), as I am from my mother's side, would pick this up almost immediately as the families that have a long history behind them will either not take in women from the outside or they'd prefer to take them from well-established families—basically, they'd take in the best of the best. My mother was fairly quick to point this out.

Since Sakura is neither, it's no wonder that she's got no admirers from any families that have . . . a certain cultural, socio-economic, and political "status" associated with them. (Does it come as a surprise to anyone that these dime-a-dozen "fix-it" fictions always make the men only from prestigious, especially from the Uchiha, clans chase after her, not middle-class men like her? When your aim is to "fix" the faults through these means, I'm not sure as to who is it that you're fooling when this is the spine of every damned cliché in the romance genre: a rich, good-looking, and powerful man who's obsessed with a middle-class woman, because she's "es-psh-shal!" You love to make everything about you, don't you?) Why not write a story that's centred on friendship between Sakura and another middle-class young man or woman like her, who breasts the difficulties in navigating amongst long-standing clans—without putting any Clan (or male character) down? Whilst hardly original, or novel, sun might rise from the west before I ever read anything of this sort. I mean, she's literally moved from one prestigious "pole" to the next, and to the next, and to the next . . . till she runs out of "upper-class poles" to sit on and goes off into another realm to begin her "upper-class pole-sitting" anew. (She even engages in "pole theft" by robbing Mito of her marriage to Hashirama, which was arranged for the sole purpose of unity between clans; but Sakura Fandom is very f*cking stupid to understand that that Sakura can't bring the financial, social, and cultural power to Hashirama's clan for regional security, like Mito can.) This is so f*cking original—every cliché ever, broken! Bravo—bravo—bravo! (Intersectional Feminism is beyond this lot.)

In these narratives, every single male character is reduced to his genitals: he tosses aside his quest, clan, family, chases after Sakura, and worships her at the expense of all else. Again, à la "a superficial reading" of Sakura's own character? When this duplicitous pearl-clutching is pointed out to them, all hell breaks loose! Because, at the end of the day, they simply wanted their avatar to succeed in the romance, a genre that truly failed her; and to get around that, they go through the predictable steps: they "fix" Sasuke so that he's loopy over her this time, because turning men into sex-crazed lunatics surely is the end of sexism as we know it; "fix" the narrative so that that revolves around her; "fix" the themes so that they reflect a middle-class "white woman's" Sophoclean misery in the suburban life (who cares about state-sponsored terrorism and the millions dead and suffering it leaves in its wake? It's a neo-liberal white-woman's woes where it's at!); "fix" the people that admired Sasuke so that they only admire, acknowledge, and adore her now in his stead; etc.; and you can just feel the desperation of the writer (and reader) behind the words in all this. (Maybe, it's prudent to seek help if you're this mentally scarred by random people not acknowledging what "worth" you believe you possess?)

And as every damn niggle is to be "fixed", it inadvertently gives rise to the baseless claim that as all of the aforementioned concepts exist as "Truth", Sakura . . . just "deserved" better. Why? They've got no answer, but a loop of the same clichés that they've regurgitated for years now. Never mind the fact that these "re-fashioned" narratives, even the ones (like Kill Your Heroes) which claim to be a thorough study on politics, have quite an abysmal understanding of the very basics of hegemonic state-machineries that you're left with a singular thought that these women (few men, too, but Sakura has very few male admirers) are just plain stupid and enjoy over-estimating what little political acumen their buddies think they're blessed with. Actual commentary on the idea of state dogma itself? Let's not start over-estimating a Sakura-Centric fiction, shall we, because that'd be akin to taking the "heart-felt" attempts of Naruto-wankers seriously, who weep over not getting enough cartoon-women shifted to the domain of their "poles". (The aforementioned Fan-Fiction reads like this neo-liberal, pro-war, pro-American war-crimes wet-dream, with Sakura as this white-feminist c*nt who revels in state-sponsored terrorism simply because it allows her to fully experience the cheapness that the "Identity Politics" award her in Leaf's "liberal" space; the irony of it all is lost on many.) Basically, Sakura Fandom is just unhappy that there weren't enough "female war-criminals" in Konoha. (I remember reading this Reddit thread on Kamala Harris, another war-criminal that was made for the gallows, in which many a woman lamented that there aren't enough female war-criminals and that there should be more to even the odds; no, I'm not making this up.)

My question is this: what does any of this solve? What does turning the narrative into a mopey middle-class woman's career, romance, and financial woes solve—in a narrative that's hyper-focused on the very ideology upon which the state stands? Does it make your life better? If so, then why should the rest of us bear this tragic pointlessness? I've never understood vicarious living. You can call me insensitive should you wish, but I'd always look down upon it. It's cheap. Vacuous. Infantile. There's an age for it, and people should grow the f*ck up beyond that "phase" of "imaginary worlds" and move on; and they do this "living through two-dimensional entities" thing in such silly ways: self-harm is introduced to Sakura's boring life, because edgy "wrist-cutting" and "suicide ideation" (very slippery slopes that need to be handled with utmost care, preferably not by "fix-it" writing buffoons) is just the spiciness that was missing from her story; her parents are abusive; she's mentally ill, because she just has to be to compete with every other mentally ill boy who's at that state because of state-sponsored terrorism, and we're supposed to sympathize with her as that, somehow, overtakes the tragedies of war-crimes; etc.

They even write "date-rape" fictions that are fashioned in a manner that they're nothing more than "diddling" material, but they take that sh*t so f*cking seriously: I remember reading a "forty-year-old billionaire Madara is obsessed with Sakura, a twenty-two-year-old fresh out of college graduate (because that's what the writer's own age is; in fact, you can just predict the pairing through the writer's own age; it's that easy)" Fan-Fiction way back; it's called Modus Operandi (I don't think this means what you think it means), and its non-consensual content is dripping with p*rnographic, lascivious, and masturbatory aspects that I laughed at it—a lot, especially as this lot enjoys taking the "moral high-ground" when it comes to their eternal competition with the poopy, self-inserting Naruto-wankers! There was another one called "Help Wanted", but in that one, Tenten took on the role of the writer's mirror and Itachi was "hotly" coercing the girl into sleeping with him—for a child. You see, Kishimoto's writing is being made that much better through these poetic literary pieces that drip with third-grade first-Samsung smart-phone recorded p*rnography. When your inept handling of sensitive issues comes across as delightfully humorous, it's time to take a step back and stop writing—preferably forever. (Perhaps, that's how the first-world copes with its lack of deeply systematic issues: they create them!)

The very idea that Sakura should've been at the centre of a narrative that's got nothing to do with middle-class life is not the writer's fault—it's yours. You lack the ability to understand the underlying narratological aspects that are obsessively focused on the state—and state only. To shift the focus from that, in lieu of rectifying the narrative mishaps on Kishimoto's part that intimately concerned that thematic frame, and grant the narrative a "feminine touch", in regard to the aftermath of failed romantic endeavours, is an exercise in tediousness. Not everything should be your playground.

And, frankly, why did Sakura deserve better? What theme did she carry? What weight did she hold? What aspect that Kishimoto talked of did she illuminate? None that I can recall. It's characters like Sasuke, Nagato, Neji, etc. that "deserved" better, not Sakura. Sasuke singlehandedly assimilated all thematic references and inferences into himself—every theme that every antagonist (it simply means "one who opposes", not "an evil man!") brought, left behind, and ended; yet he was tethered to the very establishment that sanctioned a genocide against his people—through his marriage to Sakura. So, technically, it's Sasuke that deserved to reach a consummation through a theme that was ever-present in the narrative since the beginning, not Sakura. Sasuke's character was utterly ruined when he married Sakura: Sakura received everything she ever wanted. I'm surprised that no one's thought of this simple fact yet. (Which person in his right mind even cares about a fictional character's matrimonial woes? Who the f*ck cares? Why does it even matter that she's, a damned cartoon, leading an unfulfilled marriage life? Get over it and stop seeing yourselves in her. It's insipidly cheap.)

Besides, what good does it do when you lot turn an aggressively heterosexual character like Sakura into a vulva-craving individual who carries the rainbow-spectrum flag now? I truly laugh at the Ino and Sakura shippers who pretend that Sasuke came between them when Ino dreamt of Sasuke during Infinite Tsukuyomi (the final words that she exhanged with her father involved Sasuke; Shikamaru acknowledged her feelings being genuine for Sasuke, enough that she might opt for revenge if he were to be killed by the state), as well, and Sakura broke off the friendship between them over Sasuke. And Sasuke? He didn't even speak to Ino and never cared about Sakura; and if it's not that, they all pretend that "she's too good for him!" nonsense. I suppose, "the grapes are sour!" when you don't attain them, especially since Sakura herself struggled through the course of the entire manga to make herself worthy of Sasuke's affections. That's got to . . . sting. (You lot literally shift her from one pairing to the next and to the next and to the next . . . endlessly, but then you turn around and term the original concept as sexism? There should be a modicum of self-awareness in this circus-show as what you're bringing to the table is a lot worse than the original accusation that's levelled at the writer; because, here, Sakura is literally a narrative instrument whose only purpose in life is to get the pipes from every man from a powerful [Uchiha] clan imaginable, with a poorly thought-out plot as a superficial wraparound; she's basically a "Pokemon" for "prestigious co*cks"—gotta catch 'em all!)

The better question should be this: why does the narrative not deserve better than to be turned into a middle-class woman's suburban playground? Trust me, no one deserves to live through this tragedy.

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Chapter 8: The Fandom's Double-Speak Method: Morality, Law, and Justice

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This talk of "justice" amongst the fandom is the prime example of why I consider Naruto Fandom to be delightfully skewed (and quite dull-witted) in its perception of what it means to be just in Naruto's world. The thing is, this argument begins on a very wrong footing: you can't speak of the Justice System (and all the other less-than-fancy terms you're throwing around willy-nilly) without illustrating how you treat entities, not just one entity; so if the point of contention is that Sasuke was treated unfairly compared to so and so, that argument not only holds weight but it's also the bedrock of any fair Justice System, Law, and Morality; therefore, to pick up Sasuke and discard every other state actor (along with the State itself and the mores it espouses) shows how incredibly skewed you people are in your confirmation bias, especially if you're opting for something so silly: the singling out of one entity to dispense some sort of True Justice and discarding of the contextual complexities around it and all other entities. (And, yes, I'd be going on a tangent to discuss as to why many of us find these posts, Fictions, and Author Notes quite unsavoury whilst their posters suffer from their American Dream syndromes or something of the sort.)

For one, why do you consider State Dogma to be some kind of religion (which it is in western thought, aptly covered in "Political Ideology as a Religion: The Idolatry of Democracy by Maxwell O. Chibundu" and "Biblical Foundations of Democracy by John A. Hutchison") that no one should dare question in the light of these accusations that concern a character that many stop just short of referring to as "toxic" (many don't possess any reason to draw a line anywhere)—a rebel and persecuted minority, illustrated as racially inferior in a narrative that lauds state-sanctioned terrorism? However, when something so obvious is pointed out to you, you people draw out the deflection card when, in reality, it's you who are deflecting from the complexities the context offers, not others. (A cursory look at such blogs, Fan-Fictions, and Author Notes shows the lamentations that surround poor Sakura and her poorest treatment at Sasuke's hands; so many come at Sasuke's character with a chip on their shoulders and a bone to pick with a character that you lot can't seem to leave alone; let's not be too dishonest with ourselves.)

Before I suggest anything, I've got to say: Naruto and Sakura are so bloody American in the way they keep bitching about wanting to be "acknowledged", "seen", and "validated". Honestly, put a confederate flag in their hands and their stories might be the stories of all-American pillocks that weep over not being popular with all and sundry. All they need to do is chant their confederate song and the image will be complete. That's the main reason why they're associated with the un-holy trinity of self-actualizing, self-parodying, self-masturbating useless vocabulary items: relatable, likable, potential. Their over-zealous wankers are beyond insufferable as they try and make these character into much more than Kishimoto ever intended them to be. (It comes to no surprise that the brain-rotting item "relatable", too, was invented in the sophom*oric bowls of America's intellectually bankrupt collages and the world ran off with it because it sounds kind of super rad!)

They wouldn't even begin to understand the plights of people who survive by the skin of their teeth in the war-torn regions (people whom Sasuke and Nagato reflect). Most people are too self-absorbed, self-centered, and self-parodical to even realise that they merely live on, by, and from hyper-consumerism, showy drama, tardiness, silly social issues, and whatnot. They're avatars of the same things they bemoan. They're caricatures in their own stories. No more, no less.

In the light of the above, many fail to realise, as evidenced by their by-the-book and painfully narrow insights into the concepts of terrorism and criminal justice system, that the manga ended on a hopeful, albeit debatably dubious, note; however, its continuation gave the following message: status quo is fabulous; everyone should try it, even at the cost of state-sponsored "every war-crime under the sun" and then some; government sponsored war-crimes should be exalted; revolutions against terrorist-states are terrorism; genocide victims are just wrong; Fascism is cool; endorsem*nt of states that commit war-crimes against dissidents, minorities, oppressed groups, even cooler; you should never fight back against this system; revolution's so f*cking lame; acceptance of Fascism is a great moral trait; so on and so forth.

It's that dogma you don't want that challenged, and I've got to ask: why? Why's Leaf's dogma some sort of sanctified moral code that none has the right to discuss in a narrative that itself offers fruitful grounds for discussion? When you simply go straight for self-serving definitions of terrorism and justice, one has to ask that why are so you hyper-charged about the fictional possibility of retaliations and not appalled by a dogma that can't function without exporting terrorism? What's the purpose of this faux-outrage, as none of this debate exists anywhere near the verges of morality?

"Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic by Alister MacQuarrie" highlights a lot of what I want to state on the merits of revolutionaries in the narratives. Ideological dogma is but a face of that system. Characters like Sasuke are vilified because, as the article stated, they "mirror" the public's fears: "what if, one day, the people we oppress stood up against us and doled out the violence we've subjected them to?" Then such characters become less characters and more "agents" that represent the deep-seated fears of the people that directly benefit from their state's "sanctioned" violence. "Unsanctioned" violence means that they aren't safe and can't hide behind the state's protection anymore; so it isn't Sasuke that's hated; it's the ideology behind him that's reviled.

That's what happens when God vanishes and you're only left with dogma: Shikamaru wasn't incorrect when he declared his brand of religious fanaticism before Hidan. That's what people have been doing since the time of organised political set-ups: they switch from one dogma to the next, and then to the next, and then to the next . . . endlessly. It's a tedious process of the "modification of dogma" to mold or fashion it in the way they desire; otherwise, it's still dogma. Why is Sasuke's fanaticism, borne of tragedy, unethical to you and Leaf's fanaticism, an organised war-machinery that capitalizes upon blood-shed, ethical? This is the question others have elaborated on, yet Leaf wankers (who behave like f*cking miniacs as if they're actually on Leaf's payroll) remain unequipped to answer—in fact, that's true for most in this fandom.

Justice in fiction has always been reduced to "state sponsored" . . . well, basically, anything. Anything the state (or organised government body) does is justified, for the "greater good" works on this principle: it's wise to slaughter some for the benefit of many; if ends are justifiable, means ought not to matter; if the maintenance of status quo leads to happiness for many, then it should be maintained; etc. You'd see many of these arguments regurgitated word for word by many who hold a satirical hatred for Sasuke, a fictional character. It isn't all that surprising as these people can't shame their own political outlooks, can they? It simply becomes as issue of defending their own identities because, if they agree with Sasuke (or characters like him), they'd have to make peace with the fact that their complicity in their state's sponsored violence is wanton, monstrous, vile; and, let's be honest, people like being told that they're "nice"! Nobody likes to be told that he's a sociopathic asshole.

It's precisely why that Kage Summit Sasuke is the most hated among the western fandom when it's the Sasuke that actually develops an ideology for himself, or we start to see its shape there. Funny, how he's called "crazy" by many for that specific reason. The points raised inside the article (by Alister MacQuarrie) ring true here, too.

Sasuke is called evil for attacking the Summit because people project onto the characters he attacked and consecrate government bodies. I've seen countless people align that Summit with UN Summit (an organization that's benefited no country save the hegemonic states) and call the Kages equivalent to presidents when both of these statements are comical: Kages aren't the rulers, Daimyos are; Land of Iron isn't UN for it's holding a meeting of self-assured fascists, though it's probably better than that sham of an organization that only protects white imperialists. And suggesting that no one can attack the war-criminals under the mantle of the law speaks volumes about the general public's sentiments of protecting their own leaders that are steeped in war-crimes, as well (as evidenced by the casual use of "terrorism" by many). They don't want them to be accountable, because they don't want themselves to held accountable for anything. As I keep stating: it isn't Sasuke they attack; it's the ideology behind him that they abhor.

Then comes the issue of complicity. Konoha has f*cked over plenty of villages. It's slaughtered, exploited, pillaged, and subjugated countless people and continues on to do so. It's engaged in every war-crime under the sun, with no push-back from the public. Why? The people benefit from the goodies the village's status brings with itself. It's perfectly fair to strike back at Konoha in the same manner. Tit for tat. It's completely fair to eradicate it completely. In fact, it's justice (a word that, in reality, means to make everything exact) to eradicate it as it's done nothing to reform itself, overhaul its military set-up, bring criminals to justice; it does the exact opposite for it nurtures these leaders, tendencies, ideologies. Ending its reign through a violent overthrow ends the village's reign of terror and reduces these fascist villages' numbers by one. I see nothing but good in that. My point is, you can't keep f*cking people over and expect no push back. At the end of the day, it'd always result in a violent push-back and resistance. It's a matter of when, not if or how.

All ideologies grapple with the dictum of sanctioning violence. That's why they exist as everything else is constructed around that single facet. They have little purpose beyond that. How much violence can be sanctioned; how far can it be sanctioned; and how long can it be sanctioned? That's why all ideological dichotomies exist; therefore, if terror is spread from one side, it's just, ethical, and proper to respond in kind. To fall back on tired old "niceties" tropes that are meant to exempt the oppressive regimes of any repercussions is nothing more than empty moral pearl-clutching at best and romanticizing fascism at worst. Marx talks about the merits of violent revolutions in Capital and Errico Malatesta, In Towards Anarchism: Violence in regard to social revolution (political, as well) against oppression is very much a matter of morality in the most egalitarian left philosophies. Why shouldn't it be sanctioned, practiced, and performed? A simple "too wrongs don't make a right!" infantilizes the very notion of putting an end to violent regimes. It's an anathema to me that people in this fandom talk of nuances when it comes to "collateral damages", "greater goods", and "lesser evils" when state bodies leave mountains of corpses in their wakes, but God forbid it if non-state actors take up arms to dismantle the systems with the very same ideological markers many readers can't help but salivate over—only this time the "collateral damages" would occur for the "greater most good" and for the "lesser most evil". A simple "Gandhi (who, by the way, was an abhorrent racist)" quote isn't good enough to do away with the sober logic that the new system will emerge for the good of all. What's your response to any of this save the farcical, "he was a criminal because the law said it!" (I can almost picture a stereotypically grizzled, square-jawed, gun-totting, teeth-gnashing Texan state that line with two loaded guns in his holster)? It's absurd!

You can't expect the oppressed to respond oppression with kindness, violence with love, brutality with morality. Confucius was correct when he stated that as you can't respond to kindness with violence, you can't respond to violence with kindness. To expect this from the victims is cruel, wanton, depraved and the depth of heinousness. At the end of the day, an aggressor is responsible for the consequences. You can't keep throwing punches and not expect a punch thrown right back at you at some point down the line. It's inevitable; and it's that "inevitability" of the reaction that most people fear; it's that inevitability that they despise; it's that inevitability that they want to curb.

The problem also arises with what these villages "export". They export only terrorism. That's something we know for a fact; they don't have any other aspects to offer. They don't engage in agriculture. They don't engage in industry (not even weapon's manufacturing, which I'm sure is manufactured by labour in another village in the country, though the Uchiha did seem to have their own weapon's industries from the looks of it). They don't engage in labor beyond Shinobi hired-hands, either; so beyond that, these villages have nothing to offer; and if they have nothing to offer, then the theory of "civilians" being caught in some hypothetical cross-fire is very ridiculous.

And, for this sole reason, the "Curse of Hatred" is nothing more than an endless exportation of terror in form of "manufactured conflicts". The villages export conflict, terror, unrest, and the Daimyos provide for them to keep the ball rolling. If they had any other skill, labour, industry, agriculture, goods, etc. to offer, they wouldn't hire organized militia to tilt the odds in their favor. (That's one of the main reasons why US of A doesn't put an end to its war machinery: it's invested trillions into it; it's an entire infrastructure that's run by fossil fuel, Boeing, weapons, etc. industries; millions of people earn their livelihoods directly through this senseless bloodshed; putting an end to US's hegemony would literally obliterate its entire economic structure and crush its labour; as it should be, but that's another topic for another time.) Their desperation to keep the war machinery moving is proof enough that the shinobis in any of the Kage-led villages, which aren't self-sufficient by any stretch of the imagination, have nothing else to offer than keep the candle of terrorism burning. (It's mentioned in the Chūnin Examinations and other instances that the Shadow Villages run entirely on commissions from the wealthy patrons; when Leaf was being reconstructed in the aftermath of Pain's attack, the Civilian Council was brought forth from the Country to prove funds for its rebuilding; even the labour was imported and the rest of the reconstruction was carried out by the Shinobis themselves.)

From this standpoint, it makes sense for these Shinobis to wipe out powerful bloodlines as they present a threat to the "organized" nature of their ventures and their villages' "sovereignty". A powerful clan can desert the village and make a new alliance, thereby not only reducing the military strength of the village but also its stability, integrity, reputation, etc. They lose more than just a clan: they lose their military assets, secrets, and customers to other villages. In this regard, it's better to do away with the clan altogether and breast the loss of military strength than lose face with their current and/or potential investors.

Adding civilians into this equation changes everything; therefore, keeping all of this evidence in mind, I don't see how it makes any sense for these villages to have a large civilian population, especially when they don't offer any services for the functioning of the village beyond minor businesses, many of which are run by the Shinobi. (And don't even bother with the "clothing" argument as most of the Shinobi wear civilian attires that are emblematic of their clans, save during war-times.) So what's all the fuss about Sasuke's "supposed" killings of the innocent civilians? Oh, the poor civilians! Won't something think of the poor civilians and the poor children civilians that hardly exist in these Villages? Oh, the woes. The f*cking woes!

Then there's the issue of "complicity". The soldiers are fully complicit in expanding the imperialistic ways of these Fascist villages. Most "enlightened" fandom members go for the Nuremberg Logic: soldiers doing their job with the whole "machinery" argument. Orochimaru, too, reached to this level precisely because of Leaf. He was not only let off for butchering countless people but also repeatedly employed to expand Leaf's tyranny. Sasuke joining up with him that could lead to problems for a fascist village doesn't sound like a moral scruple to me, because Leaf doesn't have any moral ground; furthermore, they aren't just born into the village; they uphold its precepts and take an oath of its military mores; and people like Shikamaru equate Leaf's Will to Godhood, for crying out loud. They're all a bunch of fanatical little sh*t-heads that need to be dealt with.

What's the fault of the marginalized groups, poor and small villages used as war playgrounds by these tyrannical regimes, indiscriminate slaughter of people at the hands of these soldiers to amass more wealth? How do you end any of this? Economic sanctions? From whom? Who would enforce them? Who would maintain them? How would anyone maintain them? It's neither practical nor realistic given the sort of hold these villages have on smaller militias world-over. They start small scale conflicts by paying militias from poor villages, and then they do away with them by getting funds. They only get richer by engineering countless political conflicts. There's no end to this, unless the villages are dismantled altogether. (Sounds exactly like America who's, in the name of justice, liberty, and freedom, got a finger up every arsehole.)

You do realize that whatever's going on in these villages has a lot to do with Leaf, right? Mist? Obito. Who created Obito? Leaf. Sand? A Bijū arms-race stated by Leaf to keep the strongest one for itself (also, attempts on Gaara's life were made well after he started killing people by the droves; Rasa outright states that); Kumo? Left with no choice but to blunt Leaf's defenses in the light of the cross-border terrorism Leaf keeps exporting to other villages through its Sleeper Cells; their kidnapping of Hinata is a desperate attempt to cripple its military force; etc., etc., and many more etcs. I'm unsure as to what's so complicated here. It's as if many of you have read summaries from Wikipedia in the wake of your cheap Harlequin Romances not finding their culmination through Sasuke. I can't fathom this level of ignorance. Nuking Konoha wouldn't end up in instant peace, no; but it would start a chain of political events in which the system would start to crumble as the strongest Bijū would vanish, leaving others without theirs, too; this would make wars far less deadly. I don't see that as anything but a plus.

Also, Konoha has won all Great Wars save the last one. It's behind all the major conflicts. Every single one. It's the starter of the Bijū-supplying (Weapons of Mass Destruction) political initiative as a poorly thought-out deterrent policy. It's the one that exported the Fascist political infrastructure to all other villages (Hashirama outright states that in his "heart-felt" story). Konoha's, for lack of the better word, a Nexus of Fascism in the Naruto World. It's started every single major conflict in the whole world; so, yes, its eradication solves . . . pretty much all of the Shinobi world's problems as the heart of this deadly nexus would cease to exist.

And here's where I don't understand the casual use of the word "terrorist". It's so en vogue amongst the Americans, isn't it? Never mind their stupidity in not seeing the bigger picture that all of the terror groups (yes, ISIS included) were trained, set-up, and organized by America's war machinery to destabilize the countries for further exploitation. The Taliban were practically radicalized by a curated syllabus that was meticulously designed by the CIA. How shocking! Saddam? America installed him. The Ukraine mess? America was behind it. Guatemala Death Squads? CIA. I can go on and on, and the list will still keep on stretching; so to fish out the "manufactured" terrorism card and "just see how this flies in the real world!" threat (which is pitiful as it's juvenile) just reeks of American stupidity that ought to be contagious at this point. (And, now, America's set-up an elaborate Media Group, in collaboration with NATO, to generate the "Red Scare" again and the whole Uighur genocide turned out to be nothing more than a politically engineered campaign to malign China; every single source who made these claims turned out to be linked to the Right Wing cults; Hong Kong protests, too, were started by the CIA.) Why are you (sociopathic) people so f*cking stupid?! This "terrorism" argument is completely worthless. Let it go. It's just a lazy crutch, which is telling of your intellectual bankruptcy, to fall back on, not a sound argument. In fact, there's only one rogue terrorist state in the world, and that's United States of America!

The Akatsuki aren't terrorists. They're a revolutionary group that intended to end the tyranny of these villages, uproot their influence, and dismantle their system. That's an admirable goal. Akatsuki are in it for the money to build their enterprise. Pain gives a pretty big lecture to the Akatsuki in this regard (they never knew about Itachi's alliance and his blowhard Will of Fire and True Shinobi bullsh*t). And who's supplying them with money and resources? These villages, predominately Leaf, to keep churning out terrorism. They're a far smaller threat compared to the "organized terrorism" practiced religiously by these villages; as, without these villages, not only is this version of Akatsuki never created but it also never gets to amass this much influence, capital, and support. You're pretty much removing the real culprits from the mechanism and calling them terrorists . . . for what, exactly? (It's delightfully predictable how most of these arguments are almost always belched out by Americans.) They're taking the Bijū? Big f*cking deal! Just because Hashirama bartered them to keep his political fascism train going doesn't make them these Villages' properties. Besides, without the Bijū, how do you expect the Akatsuki to fight these villages that are backed by whole countries and endless resources? You people are f*cking laughable—it's so idiotic that it's insane!

When direct military interventionism and incursions don't yield results, these villages have Sleeper Cells to spread more terrorism: Sai's arc lays this bare. He was given classified papers on people to kill at random through the Council's orders. (This is a lot like Mossad [Kishimoto's primary inspiration for this manga] and CIA's MO; in fact, I wonder how many know that many hard-right terrorist Jewish groups that butchered Palestinian by the droves were heartily assimilated into IDF and Mossad by Israel; Hamas is IDF's creation, as well.) Ae outright states that in the summit's meeting hall that the reason why he even resorted to his methods was that the villages' employment of militia left him with no choice. Onoki and others never denied it. Only Gaara's shocked (the kid who killed people for sport, which makes his shock and holier-than-thou morality a stuff of comedies) because he didn't know. He used simpler methods, like slaughtering people on a whim till Naruto head-butted him and he turned magically righteous. Pain, too, confirms it that the villages employ paid militia all the time to keep the terrorism count up so that their funds wouldn't dry out. Heck, Akatsuki's outrageous capital outright proves this. After all this canonical evidence, it makes perfect sense to do what Ae did. What alliance did Leaf ever abide by it? The bullsh*t they've pulled over the decades proves otherwise.

And why did Mist do any of this? It all boils down to Konoha keeping the strongest Tailed-beast for itself. It's basically nothing more than a massive nuke, for which other villages have scrambled to keep their own nukes as war deterrents. Leaf's always been at the epi-center of every major conflict in canon from the start. And why did Madara do what he did? It boils down to Hashirama and Tobirama's exclusionary policies that resulted in a clan's genocide. Why are the villages employing child soldiers and running things in the manner of ranking systems? Again, they copied Tobirama's political infrastructure. Not my words. Hashirama states that pretty explicitly. You're looking at things in isolation when this isn't how politics works. All of this is inter-connected. Your tossing aside of this context only proves that you lot are simply ill-equipped to discuss the finer points many people take issues with: if it's fair one way, it's fair the other way, as well; one-sided violence is oppression and fascism, so you have to meet violence with violence to create conflict.

I'd ask the same question again: under which moralistic pretension would you absolutely not justify the complete eradication of these fascist villages that promote nothing but terror, slaughter countless innocents, and pillage their villages' resources, and keep their villages destabilized for further exploitation (something we were shown through Jiraiya and Rain quite plainly) that result in even more senseless deaths? I'd say, f*ck 'em. Such regimes bring bloody revolutions upon themselves. Nothing stops them from rectifying their ways, offering economic reparations to the wronged, and bringing war criminals amongst their ranks to justice; but they don't want that, now do they? They benefit from oppression; and as long as oppression exists, people have an inherent right to resist, even through violent methods.

Frankly, these self-congratulating pieces are a pain in the bum to read, and you can't help but gnash your teeth at the sort of mediocre and classless moralizing that emerges from their substance-less impressions: throwing away Medea's racial otherness that metamorphoses into vengeance and the killing of her children in Euripides' Medea; Heathcliff's ostracization on racial and economical grounds that fuels his resentment in Wuthering Heights; Satan's isolation in the wake of singular oppression that fires up his revolt in Paradise Lost; the poor's plight from social segregation in Parasite that paves the way for the inevitability of a contained chaos; and looking at the childish moral scruples that surround the acts themselves not the contextual realities where the characters are located narratively is exactly what a moron from high-school would accomplish. Congratulations, you're as witty as a witless high-schooler! Aren't your parents proud?

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Chapter 9: Uchiha Sasuke: Part I

Chapter Text

The What versus Why Issue

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Before I start, I'd like to make something as plain as possible: you can't analyse anything socio-political and -cultural in fiction without applying your own political knowledge, affiliations, and leanings and pouring them into the topic and reaching a conclusion you'd reach to rationalize what you believe in. Nothing takes place in a vacuum, not even the fiction you consume and its context that you try and understand with the knowledge you've got at your disposal. In this regard, what you internalize become your tools to understand what lies in the world about you. This is precisely why the debate rages on that does art affect life or does life affect art? Perhaps it's true both ways.

Sasuke as a character represents the perfect dichotomy between your own approach to Why and What. It depends on how you look at Sasuke as a person, or a character to be more precise. His flaws become strengths and vice versa depending upon your perspective. If you look at Sasuke from a nationalistic perspective, he's anti-State, and thus, stands against everything the State stands for; furthermore, if you stand at the center and to the right of ideologies (what we'd normally refer to as centrists or moderates and conservatives for those that are to the right of the line; liberal, moderates, and centrists are mostly to the center right, but that's a different debate altogether), Sasuke's too extreme. He upsets the balance and, as a result, upsets the very concept State as a whole is built on. He veers too far to the left. In this regard, he's a radical as he doesn't believe in the idea of hierarchy on which modern democracies are built; and that's the intimate dogma people have grown up with.

Remember, what is limited to what you see (listings of things), but why opens up a whole new dimension to the aforementioned categorical listings. If you remove the latter, you've confined the character to your understanding only.

To elaborate on this a little more, let's take the idea of democracy and State. The entire modern idea of democracy is dedicated to the development of State from divine law. It's mentioned in Political Ideology as a Religion: "The Idolatry of Democracy by Maxwell O. Chibundu", "Biblical Foundations of Democracy byJohn A. Hutchison", and Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution", as well; my point is, that's how you'd define Religion. If it has a set of dogmas, a cosmogony, a list of "saints" and a congregation, then you can call it a religion. The dogmas are clear. For instance, USA can't be wrong, nor can it be trialed for war crimes, everything it does is for the common good, etc., and that has been made much more obvious by its recent deplorable attitude against the ICC. The cosmogony is the constitution and the writings of the founding fathers. The civilized world started with the USA. Saints? The slave-owning holier-than-most founding fathers. And the congregation is the list of people buying into this.

Can you, in all honesty, expect the people that value nationalism to not view the context they come across (fiction or otherwise) with the same tunnel-vision they exhibit in real life? After all, art imitates life or vice versa. For instance, Jaws led to a massive decline in the shark population in the seventies (we've always been very content with animal cruelty whilst pretending to be very morally upright). The earliest known example of "suicide contagion" caused by media relates to a German novel titled 'The Sorrows of Young Werther', written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. (Thirteen Reasons Why is a more recent example.)

In his autobiography, Goethe claims that writing the novel had a therapeutic effect on his own thoughts of suicide as a young man. Imagine that the story written that helped exorcise the author's personal demons ignited in many of his readers something more lethal, and alt-right misread both The Matrix and Fight Club. The affects of "Birth of a Nation", a silent film steeped in racial propaganda, on race relations were devastating, and its reverberations are still felt to this day. (The Influence of "The Birth of a Nation", 100 Years Later; What's The Legacy Of 'Birth Of A Nation'?; and "The Birth of A Nation" opens, glorifying the KKK highlight this more elaborately.) It's a film that glorifies the Ku Klux Klan.

I can go on and on here and they'd be no end to how art directly affected real life and vice versa (there are times when it affected nothing, but that's not the topic of our discussion). Then why's Naruto so different? The answer is, it isn't. Naruto, too, creates an ending that aggressively dehumanizes anti-State rhetoric to the point where characters like Tobirama outright utilize "dog whistles", a dehumanization and othering technique as described by Ian Haney López, to malign the other clan and justify their racial propaganda; and its proponents, readers, in turn adopt the same approach as Tobirama's (without any hard evidence which he himself accepts) when he calls Uchiha, "The Cursed Clan", "A Clan Affected by Evil", and "Clan with a Curse of Hatred". These are nothing more than "coded racial appeals" that are new forms of modern racism. I'm unsure as to how anyone would see them as otherwise. Kishimoto himself stated in this interview that he finds none of this "anti-State" stance justifiable, no matter what the victims had suffered through:

"Kishimoto: Oh, but you did a beautiful job. I mean, dealing with hate is hard. Like, okay, so people want to get back at others who've wronged them, but what's justifiable about that?" (Given Japan's denial of the atrocities it committed and Kishimoto's own conservative socio-political stance, I don't think any anti-State character was ever going to receive any justice in his manga; however, you can tell as to how Sasuke got out of Kishimoto's own hands as, at the manga's end, he himself confessed that he agrees wholly with Sasuke, not Naruto.)

If the aforementioned fiction (and many, many more) affected people, then Naruto has the power to affect people, too. You can't consider it as the odd one out when it's written for impressionable children with a very specific message in mind; and many of whom that grew up whilst reading the manga absolutely adore the deplorable soft-framing of Leaf, an extreme fascist state ruled by despots, whilst simultaneously justifying all sorts of extreme violence unabashedly utilized to maintain its hegemony. On the other hand, it has the power to be affected by the socio-political leanings of the author himself. This isn't anything unheard of. After all, nothing is created, understood, and internalized in a vacuum. Your knowledge of the real world is your tool to understand things, fiction and real. You don't create knowledge out of thin air: you acquire it, use it, and apply it. Your understanding is limited by your knowledge. Your understanding doesn't exceed your knowledge. In fact, your understanding is hampered by your lack of knowledge.

This is quite aptly elaborated in 'Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic' by Alister MacQuarrie. Everyone should give it a read as it elaborates on the concept that why people are abhorrently antagonistic towards radical characters. "What" simply isn't good enough for critical-thinking, I'm afraid.

Seeing Sasuke from this perspective creates a tunnel vision that puts aside the context: you'd only see "what" he stands against, not "why" he stands against it. The what takes away the context; and, as a result, it takes away every facet of why. You only look at what and its dimensions, not why and its dimensions. From this angle, Sasuke's a character of "whats" to you: what he did was selfish; what he did to his friends was selfish; what he left behind was selfish; what he left to was selfish; what he turned into was a traitor; what he became was a terrorist; what he did in the war was a war-crime; etc.

What this additionally does is that it drags the what to his identity, as well, and throws away the why: what his clan stood for was treason; what they did was not justice; what they invited was war; what they wanted to bring forth was destruction; what they invited was their own destruction; what they got was what they deserved; etc.

As you can see, "what" creates a completely different character, a one-sided character. What this perspective does is that it removes the contextual evidence that should surround it, expound it, encompass it into a complete whole that doesn't strip away from the character its value in the narrative. What sticks to the character (even people in real life that are no more than characters to you, as well) is your own understanding of how things ought to be, not how they are. As you discard the why, you assume that every action should fit into the what idea, regardless of the fact that whether it fits the idea or not: what he did was selfish, so everything he did was selfish; what he stood for was terrorism, so everything he did was terrorism; what he defied was just, so everything he defied was just; etc. What focuses on the flaw in a manner that doesn't consider the reason why any particular trait exists in the first place. Traits, negative or positive, don't emerge from nothing. They have their origins. To throw them away is to throw away the basic idea of human psyche. That's another reason why people create more whats: what he did was unethical as another character did it right; what he supported was extreme as another character did it right (or chose a moderate option); what he fought for was immoral as another character did it right; etc.

What "what" manufactures is a series of "rights" from the supposed ideas of "wrongs". In this regard, no matter what Sasuke does, the readers have already decided as to what they'd choose to see; and no matter what they're presented with, their minds will keep swinging back to what as they've never asked themselves the whys, even in real life. For instance, you'd see this Fandom talk a lot of Justice, without delving into its mechanics. They erroneously and absurdly conflate Justice with morality and law that the State is built upon, when all of them couldn't be more different from one another. That's why you'd see words like "they committed treason", "they broke the law", and "they were put down because they broke the law". It's … predictable given their complete lack of grasp of political issues (Kishimoto isn't to blame for more than half of the issues hurled his way; most of the criticism doesn't have anything to do with morality, at all, which isn't surprising given what the Fandom supports). They enjoy over-simplifying concepts and reaching conclusions that are of little to no value for discussions.

Digressing here for a bit, I'd like to quote from "A Theory of Justice" by John Rawls; and, even though I don't agree completely with this book, this excerpt puts my argument across fairly well: "Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests."

The idea of "justice" is based in equality, not law. It never has. The clan was pushed to the brink, and their rights were taken from them; furthermore, they were also barred from politics (an isolation, physical and metaphorical, which resulted from decades of discrimination, segregation, and surveillance) when none of this was agreed upon in the sighed "Treaty" between the founding clans. (I don't believe for a moment that this Fandom is intelligent enough to understand the idea of "justice", though it does enjoy lunging headlong into it.) To breach the treaty means to alter the agreed upon precepts, without the clan's consent. That isn't ethical, moral, or just in any civilized set-up (there's a reason why none of this was made public; because if it were, it'd have galvanized the other clans into action out of self-preservation; no clan would choose to stay with a regime that, in lieu of meeting just demands, chooses genocide as its first option); furthermore, "population movement" is a war-crime that demanded an open revolt, not a covert coup; so I don't know why all of this upsets this fandom so much when this isn't supported by the very idea of "justice" in any non-fascist break down of its dimensions.

In this regard, what "what" does is that it removes the "challenge" the characters (along with their themes) present to the central theme of the manga itself, which in Naruto's case is a morbidly antagonistic stance towards any character that stands against established fascistic hegemonies, no matter what the costs. That challenge is created by why. When you don't ask the "why", you only define things with "what". The challenge disappears. The other perspective disappears. The other narrative disappears. What you're left with is your own tendency to align your identity with that of the characters on the basis of your understandings of a myriad of contexts that create socio-political mores world-over.

As a result, Naruto is identifiable on the basis of being a social pariah; Sakura is identifiable on the basis of being a middle-class faceless person in a world of powerful families; etc.; in this context, victims of mass-slaughters are too alien to identify with (never mind the fact that many of these readers support the troops that mass-slaughter people in many middle-eastern countries as we speak; so to stand against this ideology is to stand against the state); and as they're the aliens (Kishimoto went for the literal thing, too; isn't he clever as nearly the whole Fandom bought it? This Fandom likes to over-estimate its talents), it's easier to not only disassociate from them but also easier to desperately reconcile the soft-framing of fascists with knee-jerk reactions from the readers themselves via identifying too deeply with characters shunned by Sasuke; it becomes a silly game of "what I identity with is superior to other characters as it defines me" rather than "why should I identify with characters that represent fascist regimes, at all?" In other words: "what I like is well-written as I see myself in this; and what I don't like is poorly written as I don't see myself in this; this character defines me socio-politically, therefore, it's just; but this character doesn't, therefore, it's unjust." It's never a matter of true justice (that's born of true equality). No, it's a matter of what reflects the concept of me. And once you search for yourself in everything, you can't understand anything that goes beyond Self. (It isn't uncommon for people in the western world to build their identities even around the products they consume, as well; In fact, it's obscenely common.)

The "why", on the other hand, presents Sasuke as a completely different character. Why defines the what: why was he cold to his friends? What happened in his past created a harsh and aggressive demeanor in which he experienced bouts of superiority and inferiority to others; why he went to Orochimaru? What Itachi did to him further pushed him downwards and made him re-experience the torments that compelled him to seek the man out that could give him solace; why did he betray Konoha? What the Leaf ordered was unethical as it took from him his entire identity as an individual and subjected him to an unimaginable suffering that created in him a lack of Self, for which he fought; why he sought to break the Shinobi world's hierarchy? What the Shadow Villages stand for is a hegemony that's built on a constant exploitation of others, his clan's included; therefore, he desired to end the hegemony so that his clan's tragedy couldn't be repeated again; etc.

Why defines a Sasuke that's so far-removed from how what defines him. What's interesting is that people don't ask the whys when it comes to Itachi: what Itachi did for Sasuke, not what or why he did to Sasuke. That little prepositional change in the middle alters everything: the former makes Sasuke the aggressor; the latter makes him the victim. It's the little differences between whats and whys that create victims from aggressors and aggressors from victims.

It isn't about "right" or "wrong" nature of his persona, but how you see it. Narratively, it's about the mechanisms of his passions and which way he directed them. It isn't about flaws; it's about facets. It isn't binary; it's non-binary. It isn't stasis; it's dynamism. By throwing the character in one box robs the character of its brilliance. In my eyes, Sasuke is passion. His clan is wholly defined by it. He doesn't define stillness. He's defined by the god that's associated with storms; and a storm is un-feeling, un-thinking, un-assuming. When it comes down, it strikes down whatever it hits. It's the most simple explanation of the effect of storms. In this regard, Kishimoto stating that Sasuke is "pure" does the character justice.

In many ways, Sasuke is like the storm. Leaf and her followers became the receivers of his aggression. And he unleashed his fury on them in whichever way he saw fit. Every action from them got responded with a passionate severity. (Nothing defines this more than the Kage Summit where anyone who stood with Leaf, stood against him; which is why he exhibited the same violence Leaf-Nin had prepared for him; you're with me or you're against me; no middle ground.) He's restless. He doesn't sit still. And neither does his mind.

Depression is stasis, in-action, stillness. Sasuke redefines that as he … moves the plot. In fact, Sasuke is the plot as he personifies the causality that creates it, so it's his action that moves the plot and defines the narrative.

For instance, people don't ask as to how Sasuke doesn't use honorifics in the manga. That was done to showcase that he doesn't respect hierarchy, a foreshadowing of what he would become. Sasuke also called himself a "true" Kage of Leaf, but the readers forget that he went for the "literal" meaning of Kage, which means "Shadow". Becoming the world's Shadow completes his theme to be the Yin of Yang and his own brother's and clan's collective burden. People also overlook as to how he switched his name from Hebi to Taka. The hawk devours the snake. One flies whilst the other crawls. This ties back to his dialogue to Orochimaru in which he called himself a "chick" and Orochimaru, a great serpent. The shift to this name means that he's capable of flight; and what flies can see far and wide. A snake's perspective is limited to the ground; a hawk sees all.

Many completely overlook that how utterly brilliant this shift is. It isn't just a change in name. No, it's a complete alteration of personality, for which the groundwork was constructed back in part I: his lack of interest in hierarchies.

This bleeds into his complex relationship with Itachi, as well. To Sasuke, Itachi isn't human: he's either a deity (the perfect brother) or he's the devil (the perfect source of his suffering). Itachi, too, is extreme for Sasuke as he sees things in the extreme. Sasuke's a character of passions and extremes, which is why when he swings, it's the other extreme end because his character doesn't know stillness and peace is stillness. When that "collective", which existed inside Itachi's image, is taken, he immediately shifts it to Leaf. There, the "Collective Punishment" is meant to deliver justice, make things … completely exact. Justice is the great equalizer, and what's more equal than returning the same courtesy to the source that delivered it? (This is another facet of godhood.)

Sasuke's also a character that represents "conflict" and its every facet. He's in a constant state of conflict with his brother, colleagues, state, and himself. Sasuke, in a truer sense, is his own antagonist as the word antagonist means "one who opposes". It's Sasuke that represents the true theme of antagonism. Without Sasuke, you'd have no conflict in any dimension of the manga as everything is either triggered by him, through him, or for him. And without any conflict, there's no causality; and without causality, there's no plot; and without plot, there's no Naruto manga.

Sasuke, in this sense, is the perfect antagonist and, in turn, the perfect candidate to become god; and what is god if not an amalgam of extremes? People say a lot that Sasuke's desire to fly for godhood came out of the blue, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Sasuke's tendency to defy hierarchies, alter names, be an aggressive force of nature … has been a thing from the very beginning.

He also cuts his ties in the event of his mind's alternation, softly or aggressively; so his nature to cut ties to evolve has been a constant factor in the manga. The closer he is to the extreme, the greater his reaction. Remember, why is challenge and what is acceptance; and this can be applied to anything in life. Anything. It just depends upon how you, or rather, why you see it the way you do.

The "tragedy" Sasuke represents is very Japanese in nature and very unlike the Western concept of tragedy. The reason for the tragic themes and endings of most Japanese fictions is philosophical in nature. Tragedy is attuned with the idea of a 'closed world' and a 'contained place' where values are known. Thus, Kabuki and Stuart tragedy exist where the premise exists: Tokugawa Japan and Cavalier England.

The Kabuki tragedy works on the idea that 'duty and inclination' are incompatible. It focuses on the aspects of choices of an individual. This oversimplification creates the suggestion that there is nothing more to life than this and now one knows the worst. Which is the reason for West's fondness for Hamlet and Japan's for Forty-Seven Ronin as such tragic views offer the people a security.

Then there's the Japanese concept of Mono no Aware that Sasuke completely embodies and its association with the past and the acceptance of burden. There is a Japanese insistence upon the acceptance of the "unattractive traits" along with the "pleasing" ones. Thus, there are many "less reformed" characters in the Japanese cinema and "becoming better" is never a major theme, because bad is accepted along with the good as it's a part of the way things are. This is why (again, not what) Sasuke, too, accepts Itachi and what he stands for and his family. In a way, his older brother and his clan are his greatest burden.

This is a part of mono no aware that talks of the transience of all earthly things and it celebrates the idea of resignation. Actions that arise from such a viewpoint tend to be melodramatic and sentimental. Such mono no aware films often suggest the Shimpa, by the way.

Thus, Rashom*on, with its multiple worlds of reality presented something that is uncommon to Japanese thought. Japanese drama and film usually deal with a single reality and it is rare for them to penetrate this existence, which is why Japanese films are mostly concerned with emotionalism than any higher tragic feeling. For instance, to a Japanese reader Hamlet is a faithful son who is avenging his father. He is a good son who loves his mother like all good sons should. In Western thought, higher emotions are those that allow the individual and his problems to be sacrificed for the society's well-being; but, in Japan, society remains the family system. Again, Sasuke is about a single existence that has a single path and that path is entirely defined by clan. To reject that is to reject the Japanese nature of Sasuke's character.

Take, for instance, the Yamato-e paintings and how Kishimoto translated them into Sasuke and the Uchiha Clan's tale. In the past, their Japanese subject matter led to some unique features in the illustrative narrative handscrolls, which was the art drawn by the members of the court and were made to be circulated amongst the aristocratic connoisseurs.

The public was linked to the masculine (otoko) principle and seen in hare manifestations such as Chinese-style architecture and poetry script. The inner would was the feminine (onna) principle, and had indigenous arts associated with it.

The contrasts between the exterior and interior worlds of Heian courtiers were expressed differently and in different styles and techniques: onna-e with introvert and emotional feeling and otoko-e with extrovert and physical action, which is why the latter is often linked to historical events such as the founding of monasteries or where the focus is on actual events. It's interesting that the Sharingan is the eye that manifests the emotions. It's the eye in which the inner and the outer worlds meet. The architecture of the Uchiha Clan is the most Japanese.

Japanese religious education mimicked the aforementioned artistic practice. Thus, e-bushi illustrated the 'glories of Paradise' and the 'torments of Hell'. These were called the Rokudo-e paintings (paintings of the Six Paths) and their main subject matter was the dichotomy between the Impure Land and the Pure Land. It warned those people who didn't recite Amida's name that were risking disease, deformity, and the horrors of hell. Hungry Ghosts graphically showed that the attachment to things in this life led to a bondage in the next. Gluttons experienced hunger pangs. All of these link back to the Uchiha mythos and define Sasuke's identity as he merges both of the ideas that were popular in the Heian and later periods.

The best example of the "Impure Land" is that of the "Blood Pool Hell," which is so obviously defined by the bleeding eyes just before Amaterasu and triggering of the Mangekyou Sharingan. It has several traditions, but "bleeding tears of sorrow" after the loss of a child (when a mother dies in birth) is one of the most prominent one; and the Uchiha feel love "deeply".

Again, it's defined wonderfully through Sasuke's journey from the lowest regions of Impure Land to his desire to reach Pure Land through godhood. The groundwork for it is his entire journey: genocide; suffering; paranoia; cruel illusions cast by Itachi to deepen his resolve; acceptance of his destiny; etc. In this regard, godhood represents the ultimate escape for him. He'd still have the burden, but in a state of peace. Eternity is … peace.

Sasuke, throughout the course of the manga, has several moments of aggressive emotional breakdowns; however, before that, the narrative builds a slow descent that peels away the "haughty" exterior of an impossibly gifted boy to show the aggression that's underneath. When Itachi comes by, he's reverted back to the same state he'd left behind: a child who sought peace in others; when Obito tells him the truth, he experienced a trembling attack that threw him back into a state of restlessness; when Zetsu betrayed him, he's cornered and has no choice but to respond to aggression with every bit of his own; when he comes face to face with Sakura, having seen Leaf's treachery through Danzō (who wore his clan's remnants on himself as if they were clothes that intensified his loathing of Leaf), he strikes at her as she's a metaphor, an embodiment of everything Leaf stands for; when Itachi shows him the truth of that night, he goes back to worshiping him, deciding to take on the mantle to uphold his values; etc.

This shows that his "conflict" merely shifts from one aspect to the next, then to the next, then to the next … The best example of Sasuke's conflict, that lack of peace, was seen when he ran out of chakra and Orochimaru was about to come out. Itachi was approaching him, and he knew he had nothing on him. At that moment when all of his bravado was gone, his legs … started shaking. In that single moment, he turned back into the child who wept and trembled that night at the sight of the man who inflicted great suffering on him; and that is the very reason why Sasuke is the way he is; and that is the reason why he's a character that goes beyond the idea of "flaw".

Last but not least, you'd find heinous posts in this fandom, littered across various social-media platforms that "support" what Sasuke stands againt. Say whatever you want to say, but when a Fandom backs genocides by using real-world atrocities (while backing them up, too), I get the feeling that it isn't only about the character. MacQuarrie sheds light on this:

"The closer rebel characters come to a definable ideology, the more likely they are to be written as villains. At the same time, the emotive aspects of rebellion - the heroism of the underdog, the thrill of fighting the power - are rendered safe for public consumption by taking out any explicit political ideology. Even when rebels jump out of the screen, like the Guy Fawkes masks borrowed from V for Vendetta by real protestors, they are often diluted. In the transition from comic to film to symbol of protest, the more detailed exploration of anarchism in the original text is lost, leaving a void that can be filled by a wide variety of groups whose only common thread is opposition to authority. The effect of all this is to suggest that violence is somehow more sympathetic the less its perpetrators believe - that heroism decreases the more detailed your policy proposals get. If Luke Skywalker was fighting for galactic communism, or Daenerys intended to create a series of peasants' councils to govern Westeros, or Harry Potter wanted to smash the Ministry of Magic and overturn wizard supremacy, we would have to confront serious and difficult questions about when political violence is appropriate, for whose benefit, and for what purposes. I don't believe those are questions pop culture is incapable of asking. They are questions we do not want to ask."

Is it really about a fictional character or is it about what he represents? The visceral loathing for Sasuke isn't just self-inserting into the people that he shuns as the above article demonstrates. People, I suppose, enjoy one side of the argument, one that aligns well with their political outlooks ad infinitum, many of which are rooted in imperialism, nationalism, and jingoism. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie rightly stated (in The Danger of a Single Story): "So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become." And at the end: "Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity."

Or perhaps it's as Orwell stated (in his essays on Charles Dickens): "What people always demand of a popular novelist is that he shall write the same book over and over again, forgetting that a man who would write the same book twice could not even write it once."

"A 'change of heart' is in fact the alibi of people who do not wish to endanger the status quo."

The thing is, Sasuke's story is akin to the oppression faced by the downtrodden in many states world over. He also challenges the reader to rethink that stance on politics. How hard is it to rethink; and how easy it is to just … think of the same things you keep thinking about? You all know that it's almost always the latter.

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Chapter 10: Uchiha Sasuke: Part II

Chapter Text

The Readers' Caricatural Anger

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Sasuke hate being misplaced is putting it lightly. Frankly, it's hard to pin-point the reasons behind it without some elaboration, but I'd do my best and try and keep this as concise as possible. The main problem with the lack of understanding is the lack of empathy; and by empathy I don't mean emotional empathy but cognitive empathy. That's the kind of empathy that's required for the true understanding of various actors, real or fictional.

This argument's fairly well-represented by Robert Wright in his fantastic piece "Suleimani's assassination and the muddled moralism behind it":

"My larger argument was that the authors of the Times piece suffered from a failure of "cognitive empathy"—a failure to put themselves in the shoes of the world's various actors and see how the world looks to them. It apparently hadn't occurred to these reporters that maybe American troops in Iraq, or American proxies fighting in Syria, look to Iran the way Soviet troops occupying Mexico, or Soviet proxies in El Salvador, would have looked to the US during the Cold War.

One of the surest ways to shut down cognitive empathy is to depict someone as an evil, implacable enemy. So, from the point of view of warmongers, depicting a country's leaders that way is a twofer: it makes violence against them seem justified, and it makes exploring their perspective—an exercise that might undermine that justification— elites—politicians, commentators, think tankers—have been remarkably cooperative in sustaining the image of Iran as almost uniquely evil. Iran is "the most destabilizing country in the Middle East"—even though, by any objective reckoning, the United States is in the running for that title. Iran is the world's "leading sponsor of terrorism," even though settling on a single winner of that trophy, too, can get complicated, especially once you acknowledge that, as the old saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

The various kinds of moral disclaimers that critics of Trump's killing of Suleimani engage in—he has blood on his hands, but; the world is better off without him, but; the killing was morally justified, but—also, in some small way, help sustain the image of Iran that has brought us to the brink of war. I realize that as a matter of rhetorical strategy, these kinds of disclaimers sometimes make sense. I've used them myself. I guess I'm just saying that, even though such tactics may sometimes be necessary, we should deploy them discerningly, mindful that they bring collateral damage."

Here, "but" plays a very important role as it muddles the "morality", casts doubt over the intentions of one actor, and presents a single side as the righteous one. Once that's achieved, the other side's painted in a single color, vilified as a singular source of evil, and its interpretation suffers similar consequences. It isn't all that surprising that the same argumentation is used in the fictional discourse to not only interpret the narratives but also to create them:

"Sasuke's a victim of genocide, but his clan was in the wrong; he suffered trauma, but others (?) suffered more; he wants to bring change, but he's selfish; he experienced severe mental and physical torment, but Itachi (and others?) experienced worse; he's somewhat sympathizable, but he's abusive; he wants to change the system, but his methods are wrong; his clan was murdered, but they were involved in illegal operations; etc."

Like the whole "what versus why" problem (which I wrote about in Part I), "but", too, moves the argument away from the nature of the character. In that regard, it creates a rift between what the character's meant to represent and what's interpreted by the reader. As a result, Sasuke's character assumes whatever comes after "but". Whatever comes before it is ignored, distorted, and discarded in favor of deep-seated bias that's based on many factors. As I've already highlighted in the previous post, "Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic" by Alister MacQuarrie" pin-points the issue with the greatest accuracy: "the characters are made villainous when their ideologies take shape, not before it."

That highlights an issue that's mostly rooted in "projection" of all sorts, not just of non-political identity: we like what reflects us, not challenges us. Ai Weiwei's documentary "Never Sorry" shows how intertwined one's political beliefs are with one's art.

Hence, if political beliefs are reflected by art, they aren't simply reflective of the creator's art but of the reader's interpretations of art, as well, as elaborated on in Alister MacQuarrie's article: Sasuke's political philosophy simply doesn't align with that of the readers, which is why the reactions to his character, along with his beliefs, range from apathy to outright hostility. There isn't any reason to beat about the bush here. Many people are averse to the political doctrines that veer too far left of their own; hence, it isn't unsurprising to find striking similarities between centrist doctrines (that veer to the right and far-right fairly easily) and that of many Naruto readers.

The issue mainly exists in the method of reading itself. The reader, I'm afraid, is far more culpable here than the writer regardless of the framing he's used; and how the reader interprets the work is largely a matter of hyper-consumerism these days. In order to elaborate on this, I'd use the fantastic work Franzen and the "Open-Minded but Essentially Untrained Fiction Reader" by Seth Studer and Ichiro Takayoshi.

The essay takes the work The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and looks into the authenticity of the statement he made: "open-minded but essentially untrained fiction reader." But what is the untrained or uncritical reader? The essay uses several parameters and uses Amazon reviews on the aforementioned work to elaborate on the concept:

" … the consumers with a keen sense of entitlement, namely those readers who view purchasing and reading of literary works as part of an economic transaction … "

You'd find many such examples on Naruto or other fiction works that center on the idea of "time as a commodity" in the interpretations from these readers: "I wasted 15 years!", "Kishimoto didn't respect my time!", "I wasn't respected as a reader", etc., are often over-used to highlight this bizarre consumerist phenomenon in which the text itself becomes an economic transaction. This evokes a sense of entitlement in the readers: "I entered into a contract with the work, therefore, its content should satisfy my reasons for purchasing the said work." This makes it less about criticism and more about the nature of readers' preconceived biases that are based on the "expectations" they've created about the text, regardless of the aims of the text itself. It isn't about the text but what's read into the text.

The essay highlights the go-to responses of the negative reviewers that are emblematic of the "contract-minded society": "Negative reviewers react exactly as the contract-minded society expects them to react: as cheated consumers. Bitterly disappointed reviewers typically issue a 'buyer beware' warning, and this is where these reader reviews most resemble product reviews we find in other departments, like home electronics: 'I've given up—halfway through the book. My advice—save your money. Luckily, I borrowed it from a fellow book club member'; 42 'I HAVE TOO MANY BOOKS I WANT TO READ TO WASTE TIME FORCING MYSELF TO READ THIS. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY'; 43 'Trust me when I advise you not to use your hard earned money on this one. Borrow the book from a library or a friend (she'll probably be happy to fish it out of the recycle box)'; 44 'Don't waste your money or time'; 45 'I've put this one down smack dab in the middle. I cannot fathom wasting another moment of my life on this ill-conceived, unfocused piece of trash.' "

A lot of Western, especially American, readers have learned to bypass this whole thing as they don't pay a cent for the manga volumes, but they enjoy this "nose turned up" contract-mindedness to the fullest; however, what's this mindset based on? Identifying with aspects of content. You'd find many aspects of this term used online liberally: relatable, likeable, identifiable, etc.; however, all of them are about the same aspect. Let's look at some motifs that use this concept as a tool to craft an interpretation on grounds of realism and character-development (the most cherished phrase of many a self-proclaimed internet-critics):

"There are three at least: verisimilitude, recognizability, and care. First, verisimilitude: characters and, to a lesser extent, the plot must follow the basic canons of plausibility and probability. Stated otherwise, for a character to qualify as "realistic," the readers must be able to agree that someone may plausibly think and act like the fictional character they are reading about given the situation furnished by the plot. And verisimilitude in this sense gives the story an attribute that many readers vaguely call 'believable'.

Second, recognizability: characters' traits, behaviors, and inner lives have to evince some degree of familiarity. For many readers commenting on the realism of character development, that these characters obey certain basic laws of physics, psychology, and physiology is necessary but not sufficient. These readers demand to be given representations of mental states and outward behaviors that they can recognize as their own.

This reviewer essentially equates the entire alchemy of "characterization" with the crafting of care-worthy characters."

All right, does Sasuke fit these criteria that are quite fuzzy in the way in which they develop the boundaries? Verisimilitude is subject to many things. Not all plots are the same, not all situations are the same, and not all contexts are the same; hence, what constitutes as verisimilitude for one character in one situation might not for the same in another. The recognizability and care make the argument even fuzzier. What makes up as "basic laws" in regard to the character in question? Is one basic law applicable to all basic situations? If so, then how does it account for complicated laws and complicated situations? Are complicated laws more suitable for basic situations and vice versa? Since the whole argument of verisimilitude is limited to one's own perceptions, the concept of "projection" becomes the only tool for interpretation and the subsequent care: "I don't find genocide relatable, therefore, I can't imagine why Sasuke wouldn't choose X instead of Y"; "I don't find filial piety relatable, therefore, I can't imagine why Sasuke wouldn't choose X instead of Y"; "I don't find betrayal of state to be relatable, therefore, I can't imagine why Sasuke wouldn't choose X instead of Y"; etc.; "and since I find none of his choices relatable, I don't or can't care about the character; and since I don't or can't care about the character, I don't like the character; and since I don't or can't like the character, it lacks verisimilitude and is therefore poorly written."

This is the sort of "elementary school child's analytical pattern" you'd see repeated across many narratives, fictional or real. Readers in general lack the critical tools and the needed intellectual capacity to ascertain, understand, and absorb the aspects of "cognitive empathy". As their source is their own highly skewed perception, they choose not to tread too far into the unfamiliar as they don't want any challenge posed to the said perception; they want affirmation that's rooted in validation through recognizability. What isn't recognizable isn't written well; what's recognizable is written well. In the end, the whole context hinges about the interpretations of "me, myself, and I", not context. Once you look at it from this angle, Sasuke's entire characterization becomes a source of constant scrutiny.

The other factors that determine recognizability are "likeability" and "dislikeability":

"Literary scholars have also passed over these common readerly reactions that, for the critical reader, are perhaps the most galling characteristic of uncritical reading. Even James Wood, at whose practical criticism more academy-oriented scholars often look askance, cannot quite contain his disdain for amateur appraisers of literary excellence: 'A glance at the thousands of foolish 'reader reviews' on , with their complaints about 'dislikeable characters,' confirms a contagion of moralizing niceness.' "

The essay goes on further to add: "Yet, this initial agreement on the unlikeability of characters bifurcates into two contrasting judgments: 1) disapproving reviewers who find the characters dislikeable, which ruins the "pleasure of reading" (a concept that we will examine shortly) and 2) favorable reviewers who enjoy the novel despite the fact they find the characters dislikeable."

As these two factors are closely linked with recognizability, Sasuke's character again gets hurled into the war-zone of likeable versus unlikeable, and the "critical reading" is forgotten in the quagmire of what's recognizble to the reader himself, not the character: "I find the anti-State stance to be unlikeable, therefore, Sasuke's unlikeable"; "I find treason to be unlikeable, therefore, Sasuke's unlikeable"; "I find vicious anger to be unlikeable, therefore, Sasuke's unlikeable"; etc. In order to reach the perfect recognizability, the very characterization itself becomes a topic of contention.

The essay highlights this well through various examples:

"Again and again, aggravated reviewers deplore and protest Franzen's perverse fascination with ugly feelings, abnormal behaviors, irresponsible life choices, and dark themes. The Lamberts are dislikeable because they are 'dysfunctional,' 'self-destructive,' or 'gross.' 61 The believability and even the recognizability of their pathologies are not contested. Their very negativity is in fact amplified by their lifelike verisimilitude and repels these readers even more … the untrained readers enjoy well-adjusted and positive-thinking people, uplifting stories, and happy endings."

And still more:

"The first group of reviewers—those who claim that empathy alone is not sufficient, that sympathy for likeable characters is necessary for fun and pleasure—roughly divide themselves into two groups: A) those who moralistically upbraid the author and the characters and B) those who view their liking or disliking the characters as an accident of personal taste, a reaction for which the reader alone is responsible … A considerable number, we found, write about the enjoyability of the novel in the same way that some moralistic reviewers write about the likeability of characters, that is, as though these pleasures are a fluke, a result of the serendipitous encounter of a right commodity with a right customer."

As you can see, the arguments are quite perfectly similar across these wildly different topics (political and fictional): Sasuke's character isn't wholesome as he's self-destructive, selfish, and makes terrible choices; his lifelike verisimilitude is the very reason why he repels this brand of readers that look for positive-thinking people who don't think too far from what they think; look for uplifting stories, not constant conflicts; and look for happy endings, not tragedies (another reason why, despite Kishimoto's own disagreements with the ending, Sasuke was made to settle down with a woman he never held any feelings for and abide by the very system that he held nothing but contempt for). It's the kind of reversal that people expect, desire, and wish for … in their own lives; hence, as the essay rightfully points out: "It is quite logical to posit that the untrained reader's consumerist rationality, contract-mindedness, fascination with "realistic" and "believable" characters … "

The concept of relatability is more simple than most would like to believe. Beneath the idea of "untrained reader's consumerist rationality, contract-mindedness, fascination with 'realistic' and 'believable' characters" is the simplicity of a incredibly stupid, profoundly ugly, and comically aristocratic sense of entitlement. The Scourge of "Relatability" by Rebecca Mead elaborates on this quite well:

"But to demand that a work be "relatable" expresses a different expectation: that the work itself be somehow accommodating to, or reflective of, the experience of the reader or viewer. The reader or viewer remains passive in the face of the book or movie or play: she expects the work to be done for her. If the concept of identification suggested that an individual experiences a work as a mirror in which he might recognize himself, the notion of relatability implies that the work in question serves like a selfie: a flattering confirmation of an individual's appreciate 'King Lear'—or even 'The Catcher in the Rye' or 'The Fault in Our Stars'—only to the extent that the work functions as one's mirror would make for a hopelessly reductive experience. But to reject any work because we feel that it does not reflect us in a shape that we can easily recognize—because it does not exempt us from the active exercise of imagination or the effortful summoning of empathy—is our own failure. It's a failure that has been dispiritingly sanctioned by the rise of 'relatable'. In creating a new word and embracing its self-involved implications, we have circ*mscribed our own critical capacities. That's what sucks, not Shakespeare."

The whole thing repeatedly keeps spinning on the same axis that can be, for the lack of the better word, termed as nothing more than "Selfie Fad": "what isn't recognizable to me isn't of value". As Sasuke's character demands a kind of hypothetical leap of faith, a different kind of (cognitive) empathy, and an out-of-box thinking that hinges upon reading between the lines, not reading into the lines, the issue becomes largely binary: "what's black is black; what's white is white; Leaf is white; Sasuke is black; Sasuke is evil; Leaf is good; I relate to Leaf; I don't relate to Sasuke."

It isn't surprising that you've got a generation of complete f*cking lunatics that can't seem to get past a work that's written in the plainest English (aimed at middle-school readers) as they can't see themselves in Sasuke's character. Couple that with the "en vogue" fad of Cinema-Sins level of criticism that's centered on "plot-holes", and you've got yourself a great combination that's pretty much peak modern consumerist stupidity that's utterly insidious in the manner in which it revels in its own arrogance while simultaneously denouncing it: "Shut up about Plot Holes" by Patrick (H) Willems (a youtube video) presents a good analysis of this phenomenon.

It isn't all that surprising, either, that the painter of that distasteful Holofernes painting (Sakura cutting Sasuke's head off, with an aghast Ino by her side) enjoys that dreadful Star wars pairing despite the male character in question being the killer of billions of people; again, that's recognizable to her as that's what she hopes for in a romantic fantasy (a génocidaire who's bleeding his heart out over one woman while mercilessly butchering billion other women); Sasuke isn't as he doesn't align with the sort of accommodation he was supposed to provide for Sakura, this painter's (and many other similar female readers') avatar inside the narrative.

Women find it misogynistic when it's pointed out to them that they obsess over romance to a degree that goes beyond the concept of "infantile adults"; it's just ghastly; but it's true. Sasuke's character becomes a subject of over-analysis here, too, as it doesn't fall into the romantic tropes that they've come to cherish. Illouz discloses that Romance novels are a billion-dollar-a-year industry and make up 46 percent of all mass-market paperbacks sold in America; the publishing company Harlequin claims that half of its customers buys 30 of its novels every month; it also claims to sell more than four books per second (Article: "Finally, an Academic Text Devoted to '50 Shades of Grey' When a very smart scholar takes on a very dumb book" by William Giraldi).

These female readers read his character with many expectations in mind that centered on his "coming around", "coming to his senses", "coming to her rescue", "coming to a realization", "coming to acknowledging her", etc. These are the kind of expectations they have when they read a romance work or look for romance or fantasize about it. As they find Sakura deeply recognizable, they're appalled by Sasuke's tendency to stray from these expectations: he doesn't come around; he doesn't come to his senses; he doesn't rescue her; he doesn't come to any realization; he doesn't acknowledge her; etc. As he does all of these things that fall inside the "un-recognizable" domain rather than the "recognizable" domain, he becomes an easy target for attacks again on shallow, self-serving, and cheap "niceties" that they've always come to expect from the romantic partners in fictions (real life or fantasies).

Here, the metaphors a characters like Sasuke (change, mono no aware, honour, conflict, etc.) is meant to display are thrown aside in the quest to see "mirror images of Self" in the narrative. There's a method to decoding the narrative that's presented to you. Sasuke requires a different approach. Another character might require another. That approach determines what we gather from the narrative, not what we expect from the narrative: "Annihilation and Decoding Metaphor" by Folding Ideas (a youtube video that talks about how metaphors define characters).

Annihilation is a rather peculiar narrative as it presents the metaphors in a very straight-forward manner (the above analysis is too concise in my view as it misses many things, but I thought it was appropriate for this argument). Sasuke is no different. In fact, Naruto's no different: it's simple and straight-forward and the required interpretation hinges on the said simplicity. You can make an argument on the missteps the manga makes on structural aspects and the framing; however, to reduce a brilliantly variegated characterization like Sasuke's to few markers that are deeply uncritical by nature and obsessively leeching on the reader's own arrogance is quite … appallingly douchey in my eyes. It exhibits the sort of nauseating narcissism among the internet armchair critics that's the very definition of faux intellectualism and self-parody these so-called "deep" thinkers decry.

Orwell wasn't wrong when he wrote this: "What people always demand of a popular novelist is that he shall write the same book over and over again, forgetting that a man who would write the same book twice could not even write it once (Essays on Charles Dickens)."

People, technically, ask for a "cheer-up writer" that accommodates their expectations, validates their identities, values their political philosophies in the narrative while playing the "this story's so f*cking deep!" game of pretension (what's deep is basically what represents the reader, nothing more). What they don't want is the narrative to tread too far from leaving their sense of identities behind. What I want to know is this: where does this arrogance end and where does stupidity begin? Maybe the line doesn't even exist.

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Chapter 11: Hyūga Hinata: A Pair of Corpulent Breasts that Walk

Chapter Text

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When it comes to Uzumaki Naruto's woes, our average male reader is a tad bit sensitive: lonely at school, he always wanted to be as popular as that hottie who draw all the "Stacys"; he always wanted a big—no, huge—chested bimbo who'd see him for what he is, a benign and misunderstood soul who represents the everyman's tale (and he's kind enough to shove nivea-lotion-coated hand into his trousers—like a ninja, a shadow, a slick rat)! Alas, real life doesn't work that way, and for that, Kishimoto cursed us with Hyūga Hinata's pitiful existence that's neither of use nor of value to . . . anyone who isn't a socially suffering middle-school-er pariah . . . in the head, because some rejections go deeper than words (my unattended stick and your stones) and really strike your penis till it hurts—it really hurts!

So, with Sasuke, this reader's battle is deeply, intimately, exactly personal: the super-hot cartoon drew all to himself—all but dear ol' Hinata wasn't, apparently, superficial as, you see, Naruto was neglected, unattractive, and lonely, yet she was . . . understanding. Sasuke can't have it all, right? His "bitches' basket" is full to over-flowing. It's beyond unfair to demand that last stuttering bitch to be transferred to Sasuke's wankers' club. How inhumanly wanton! Naruto wankers, rise up! And, lo and behold, Fan-Fiction dot net was never the same as a flood of masturbatory "poor me, no bitch I have!" self-projection-soaked fictions littered its domain till its canals were choked with refuse, a complete ecosystem collapse of the "Fandom Culture" till kingdom come (Sakura Wankers' collective urination did it no favours, either)—DxD seems to be their go-to channel to bring more of these empty-headed toons to our fandom veterans' few generous inches.

And that's Hinata's whole purpose: she's an obligatory token-character for that sort of male reader to feel the unnecessary ego boost; and I use "ego boost" very loosely as, by God, Hinata's nothing to feel proud of—no matter how far gone you're in this "self-projection" writing-game. Rather crumpy in appearance (Kishimoto's exact words), she's not meant to be attractive, a fact that's highlighted by the lack of any remark about her appearance; she was practically invisible to all male characters; Naruto himself called her a "weirdo"—no, that's literally his first remark about her appearance. (Neji called her "cute" when he was about four; so he hadn't even hit puberty yet.) She isn't remarkable as a Shinobi, either; and this aspect of her is well-highlighted: Hanabi in spite of being five years her junior always beat her up with ease; she couldn't learn Kaiten and Body Blow that are Main Branch Family Jutus, which Neji knew since his Genin days; she barely performed Sixty-Four Palms, a hilariously poor attempt as the Jūbi Clone was still rising up (mind you, she's the only character in K-13 who couldn't take out a single Jūbi Clone on her own); her Twin Lion Fists is a Head Family Jutsu, so she never invented it (please, stop spreading false information in this regard). What's there to feel proud of? She's unattractive (all right, average?), untalented, and unimportant; she's all three things that a "cartoon wife-replacement" shouldn't be! (Oh, here's an insult to the injury: she's the only Chūnin in K-13 at this point.)

So why's she popular amongst this suffering lot? Well, she's not Sakura—she didn't reject Naruto. It's this rejection that decides for Naruto wankers as to who was "irredeemable" and who wasn't. As Sakura rejected Naruto for the "hottie", Hinata was the only one who was left behind; and, let's be honest with ourselves, she does have some copy-pasted traits of an average empty-headed, silicon-filled, and utterly submissive character they want as their wives, when they reach the precious Nippon as "Charisma men": she's got a very round top and bottom; a completely empty head, with a mug that wasn't completely caved in with a shovel (it was stopped mid-way); and you can always put a paper-bag on her face to hide away the unsightliness, of course! Beyond that, she's got no use. She's not important to the manga; she's not important to any plot-thread; she's not important to Naruto's own character; and she's, despite being aware of Naruto's canonically tiny weenie, Naru-Chan (Sai was rather revealing on this front as to how tiny it is), still cool with it as Naruto can compensate by making four clones to not make her feel . . . roomy in her lady bits! (It strikes too close to home for many—too close!) Why, she's the full-est package—pun intended—as she doesn't even care about her future sex life; she'd be content with "two pumps, a wee lil' piss, and there he goes!" routine. How delightful!

What makes me chuckle the most are the anthologies written on her supposed talent: her father was literally fed up with her as she was so talentless; despite being taught by her father and Neji (a once in a generation prodigy, as Hiashi himself states), she still couldn't learn Kaiten and Body Blow, and her use of the Sixty-Four Palms Jutsu wasn't anything wondrous, either. People make a big deal about her deflecting the Jūbi spikes, but they forget that she was not the only one deflecting them: we were shown grunt no-body Shinobis doing just that on the same f*cking panel; and the only reason she was even able to do that is that Hiashi and Neji were using Kaiten at the front; she, along with the grunts, was handling the stray ones—literally. What's a big deal about any of this? I don't see anything note-worthy about her character.

The biggest source of my amusem*nt is how they compare her to Sakura as if she'd done anything special; and their modus operandi is to create this bizarre difference by comparing Sakura's "weeping before" to her "taking on" Pain, and it'd never stop being utterly farcical to me. What's the difference between Sakura running at Jūbi Madara and getting half-paneled and Hinata running at Pain and getting the same treatment?

Really, what? Sakura's hastiness (which arose from her wish to win Sasuke's heart) wasted valuable time as Naruto and Sasuke had to rush to her aid; and as a result, it allowed Madara to cast Infinite Tsukuyomi later; Hinata literally condemned everyone to death, simply because she wanted to confess. Let's get this argument out of the way first: Hinata never helped anyone against Pain; no, she condemned everyone to death.

Sometimes, I wonder: how many of you have actually read the manga? Honest question. Does Hinata's breast-size blind people to the obvious issue with her confession? All right, let's start with her terrible confession that only the eternally-miserable Naruto dude-bros that launch themselves deep into Naruto's conscience find adorable (they like their anime-wives to have their heads completely empty and chests filled with more fat than it's needed): she confesses, and then she gets one-paneled, or less-than-half-a-paneled.

God, this confession and her take down would never stop being funny. Anyhow, coming back to the topic. A piece of her long and boring confession is important. She said: "And that's why I'm not afraid to die, defending you!" What exactly was she defending? Naruto? All right, but she didn't touch the Rinnegan's "black rods" in any manner. The anime showed her doing that, but the entire battle between her and Pain lasted for less than half the manga panel. Why go at a guy when you know that you don't have a chance?

Why do people keep forgetting that Hinata knew since the Sasuke Retrieval Mission that Naruto was a Jinchūriki? Kakashi told K-11 that Naruto was a target for the Akatsuki, and Hinata was right there in the squad. We also know that Hiashi knew who Naruto was, as well, since Part I. This isn't surprising as the whole village knew. A decree was passed by the Hokage to simply prevent the knowledge from being talked about openly. People talked in hushed whispers around Naruto, but they didn't talk openly about it. Hell, the story of the fearsome Nine-Tails that destroyed the village was famous among the villagers.

Do you people truly believe that Hinata didn't know about any of this? So she knew that Naruto was a Jinchūriki, that the Bijū can escape from their hosts under questionable circ*mstances, and that they're volatile; and she still decided to attack Pain, knowing that there were people around?

Minato had left a last safety-net to save Naruto if the situation ever got out of hand; but Hinata didn't know about that. Nobody did! Not even Kakashi and Yamato who were in charge of the seal on Naruto (as Ino's father states). She decided to move away from the party that was forming a plan to track the man who was controlling the body as it was common knowledge at that point among key Shinobi that the bodies were corpses. They had the whole plan made. They were planning all that to make sure that they wouldn't get in Naruto's way, harm more people, and unleash the Nine-tails on the population of Konoha that's still alive; but Hinata? No, sir! She was even told by her fellow Hyūga Shinobi to stay put and not get in Naruto's way.

So she knew Naruto was a Jinchuriki; knew that Nine-tails had escaped before and killed many; knew that once it gets out, it's impossible to control it. Then why did she charge at Pain? To accomplish what? She didn't even touch the rods that had pinned Naruto to the ground! The anime tried showing that, knowing that she looked f*cking stupid by going for Pain only. She's so empty-headed that she doesn't even realise that if Pain wanted to kill Naruto, why'd he pin him to the ground? It's obvious that he was capturing Naruto, not killing him, as a part of the Sasuke Retrieval Mission was to keep Naruto safe from Akatsuki. Kakashi outright said that and Hinata was right f*cking there! The Team even knows that Naruto has "triggers" for the transformation. My God!

And for all the fun people poke at Sakura that she was crying during this battle (she wasn't as she's shown saving people), she's the one who came up with the plan to evacuate the survivors away from the battle as Naruto was out of his damn mind and could attack anyone! She was also the one who retrieved Hinata's body; otherwise, she'd just been caught up in the blasts, with her top-side blown to bits. So Sakura's the one who saved your anime-wife, mates! Also, I find it very funny that when Naruto repelled Pain's Almighty Push back at him, he sent Pain flying; but Hinata who was lying close by was completely unaffected by the blow-back that, from Pain's side, blew up the stones into the air. f*cking solid stones! (We can't have the anime-wife losing her most valuable assets, now can we?)

Anyhow, they got lucky that Nagato made Deva Path move away from the area as Chibaku Tensai can't be cast if Deva Path isn't close to Nagato. Why? Well, Deva uses 90% of Nagato's power as all of the Paths had to be completely shut off for Nagato to use the stronger Almighty Push or any powerful, chakra-taxing Rinnegan Ninjutsu; it also shortens his life-span. (The Paths also take a large time to recover, as a result.)

Naruto knew this as Tsunade gave him the Katsuya with this information. (This whole battle was rigged in Naruto's favor; heck, he didn't even summon the frogs; Ma did; and they all helped him get into the Sage Mode, too; God, this guy is so damn talent-less!) Now, Hinata didn't know any of this. No one handed her that Katsuya with Intel. Only Naruto had it. I love Kishimoto's damage-control in this regard, and her fans are so dull that they bought the whole thing when no one knew that Pain's paths can be shut off for powerful attacks, that they recover slowly when Deva's recovering, and that Nagato needs to call back Deva close to himself to seal the Nine-Tails. Amazing isn't it?

Kishimoto: "dude-bros will go mad if her titt*es got damaged in any manner. Quick, Kishimoto, make Nagato call Deva to himself for no reason so that Naruto (in Six-Tails form) kills no one 'cause that'd make Hinata-Chan look like an evil c*nt!"

Since Gaara's arc, every prominent Shinobi from Konoha knew that the Akatsuki were capturing Jinchūrikis, not killing them immediately. K-11 were briefed on this so that they could protect Naruto more effectively during their Sasuke Retrieval Mission. The most sound course of action would've been to re-group with the veteran Shinobi and device a sensible plan to save Naruto (like the rest of them were doing?); but, no, Hinata decided that all the other Shinobi were morons, and it was totally cool to charge at Pain and rouse the Tailed Beast and kill everyone in the process. Why? Because she loves Naruto, is very nice, and is very much selfless . . . brave and sh*t like that—all the goodies that are contained in her biggest . . . heart! Doesn't that just … melt your soul right down to your bollocks? (I can't believe Sakura is attacked here when Hinata deserves all the lumps of fresh turd thrown her way for being a prolapsed anus.)

It's as if her fangirls think that she's got this innate knowledge of the manga the readers possess when she knew literally nothing! No, admit it that she condemned every person alive to death just so she could confess her "feelings" to Naruto, knowing fully well that he was a volatile Jinchūriki as the knowledge of Perfect Jinchūrikis is known to only few people who were shown at the Kage Summit, and Naruto at this point is nowhere near that level!

It's absurd that people think that her confession is selfless. It isn't. Let's not talk about this ever again; now that I've already over-explained this argument in detail, don't even bother your tiny head anymore. My point is this: she didn't know that Minato was going to reverse the seal. Just like how Sakura didn't know what transpired between the Sage and her teammates. Both of these are literally the same: two girls who take foolish decisions in order to score points in front of the objects of their desires. Is it that people somehow laud the characters that sympathise with Naruto and assume the roles of caretakers (as they see themselves in the pitiful f*cker)? Is it that Naruto didn't explicitly reject her (he did, by not reciprocating till that The Last's manipulative Genjutsu) and Sasuke did? Does the lack of overt rejection make one worse than the other? Is this the merit for better characterisation now, the presence or absence of the cheapest romantic tropes? Really?

Aren't these the same people who attack Sakura for not doing anything of value in war, but they do it, anyway, when she tries to do something . . . when Hinata isn't any better? On what grounds is she being lifted up to the sun and beyond and Sakura's being attacked? They both got half-paneled. They both wasted time and doomed people. They both had pitifully idiotic reasons for their actions; none of them is more righteous than the other. They both didn't think through anything. (While Sakura isn't exactly a genius, I've got to say, Hinata's condemnably stupid as she didn't even touch the damn rods in any manner and got squished like a co*ckroach in less than half the panel.) There's literally no f*cking difference between these two scenarios. Is it that Naruto showed that macho anger at his "future girl" for getting hurt and Sasuke was apathetic? Is this why the Pain Arc is so damn popular among the garden-variety wankers (it's a fairly passable arc)? This has to be it. After all, Hinata's "sacrifice" is lauded and considered the "highlight" of this arc. A cheap middle-school "love-confession" is thought to be this arc's "literary peak" (it speaks volumes about the people that make this claim)! What sacrifice? Canon has no proof of it. She just ran at Deva at random to kill herself. It's actually pretty f*cking hilarious, not tragic or anything deep. Is that all it takes for you people to shed tears, a f*cking potential pairing? This is all what Hinata stands for. She just a stuttering, big-titted girl who's not attractive to look it and doesn't have even one bright line to belch out, accidently; and you know what Kishimoto himself has to say about her? Here's the interview:

Interviewer: "Who is your favourite character in Naruto?"

Taniguchi: "It's Hinata."

Kishimoto: "Eh, you like big-breasted girls?" (laughs)

Taniguchi: "It's not that." (laughs) "I like the fact that at the beginning she was a weakling, but due to Naruto's influence she steadily became strong."

Kishimoto: "That's because Hinata doesn't stand at the main character's side like normal heroines . . . she's the type that watches him from the shadows."

Interviewer: "I thought the heroine was Sakura?"

Kishimoto: "That's right. But Sakura is addicted to Sasuke." (laughs) "The reason why Hinata came to like Naruto is clear, but I've deliberately avoided writing down the reason why Sakura came to like Sasuke." (laughs) "That's because somehow, I had the feeling that it would conversely end up sounding contrived."

(Sakura's touched in the head and Hinata's all breasts—Kishimoto.)

And here's what he has to say on The Last:

"でも別に二人の恋愛話に僕はあまり思い入れがなくて（笑）、その話を描くつもりはなかったんです。" - Kishimoto

"But I didn't really have any devotion about the love story of the two—Naruto and Hinata (laughs). I didn't plan to write this story." - Kishimoto

Also:

"So the idea of a [NH] love story wasn't my idea at the start, however Pierrot staff suggested the movie to revolve around it (hence, the final product being the way it is)." – Kishimoto

Lord damn these dry-peckered Otaku wankers; they'd be the death of us all!

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Chapter 12: Humble Shinobis: Part I

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A diligent Hard-worker or a Hidden Genius-Part I

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Naruto's readers are always divided into two clear types: either they're diligent hard-workers or hidden geniuses who were promised a second-hand "win" in the manga, but Sasuke single-handedly robbed them of this delightful experience. There's no in-between. That's the primary reason why you'd see many suggesting (with complete seriousness) that canon began with . . . "hard-work beats/versus genius" trope. No, really. When did that happen? Nowhere. It's either that or "if I begin to work hard, I'd be a genius; but I'm not, because I'm simply lazy . . ." trope. The "hidden potential" as many would call it. Heck, they use the exact same word in many a throwaway phrase for everything that they didn't like: wasted potential, throw-away potential, unrealised potential, etc., etc., etc. The list is too long, but it's very irritating how it's so intrinsically rooted in the concept of the Fandom's collective projection of their "potential" onto the characters and making something out of it.

It's true that we're hard-wired to compare, and we, apparently, find failures more . . . uh, "relatable"? That's the primary reason why Sasuke's supposed "failures" are so delicious to watch: Lee beat him into the ground, an arrogant prodigy who had it all (never mind the context around it, but this Fandom was never known for its critical-thinking skills, or thinking in general) but threw it away, unlike the poor, poor, poor Lee who was dealt a "humble man" card (he looks kind of basic, too, so he isn't wetting any puss*es anytime soon); so that sets the mind into action that if we work hard enough, we can beat geniuses, mind, beauty, and soul; and become Tik-Tok hotties just like that; and I so want to go into that "boot-straps" rant and how without altering the very landscape of the system, you can't accomplish a thing and clinging onto vicarious living is f*cking preposterous as it gets you nowhere in life, but this isn't the time nor the place for that.

Now, this is a prime example of many not only not "getting" the series' primary message but also making stuff up along the way to show their disdain for a piece of writing purely for the reasons that it didn't go their way. The series' main theme, for the lack of a better word, revolves around bonds. That's it. That's the whole theme of Naruto. It's how that theme is portrayed that determines the other thematic forces. (The fractured relationship between Hagoromo and Indra in Sasuke's shape is the primary driver of all themes; all else branches out from it.) It's very easy to determine this when you look back at the manga from the revelation. Then it'd all make sense to you, especially as the climax to the entire build-up to the first Valley of the End (vote) battle is illustrated by Kakashi's statement on the literal and metaphorical schism between Madara and Hashirama. That's the point where Part I ends. Everything before it intimately concerns the facets of conflicts that go deeper than blood. That's the primary reason why "Kekkei-Genkai" is the primary instrument for this theme's realisation. Anyone who isn't located within the boundaries of this theme is automatically excluded from the narrative. I'm sorry Sakura, Lee, and some-other-minor-character-from-Naruto fan, but these characters were never going to grant you the closure in life that you demanded. I know it's tough to brace this frightening reality, but it's the truth.

I've noticed that people get deeply offended when they aren't given their "power fantasies" of an "underdog rising above a genius through hard-work". Their feelings get very hurt over the lack of narratological opportunity to receive a vicarious "win" in life. Don't you people get tired of this well-worn trope? I keep saying this, but how hard is it to understand a manga that's written with a middle-school child's comprehension in mind? It's horrifically difficult from the looks of it.

When the manga began, Naruto let loose Kurama (unintentionally) against Haku, breaking all Ice Mirrors that . . . no Jutsu could break; and that, my simple friends, happened way back in the Waves Arc. That's the first volume that's composed of mere seventeen chapters. How does that associate "hard-work" with Naruto's character, upon whom many poor souls project their misfortunes to feel vindicated, when two geniuses (Sasuke and Kakashi) in the near-vicinity failed? Naruto powered through this via nothing but brute force; and that isn't a precursor to hard-work. That's the exact opposite.

With the beginning of the next Arc, the "if we work hard, we could beat all odds, too" trope lovers got their kicks from Sasuke's humiliation at Lee's hands (or gates?); but then they conveniently forget that Lee himself stated that what Sasuke accomplished was literally impossible for someone like him (he even emphasised on this argument). Gai even went so far as to state that even with the Sharingan's power, Sasuke should never have been able to do what he did (he literally invented his own Taijutsu maneuver from Lee's in a single day; if that's not prodigious, I don't know what is); and Gai, last I checked, is an authority on the subject of Taijutsu, not you—yes, you! Lee's lack of importance in the narrative was made crystal clear from the onset: we're talking about the manga's second arc, for Lord's sake!

This wasn't some deeply obscure, hidden message that you couldn't pick up from between the lines. No, all of this was explicitly stated by the Taijutsu expert and his student that Sasuke's genius was able to over-ride years' worth of experience in . . . well, a single day! If that wasn't all, we came to know that Sasuke matched Kimimaro's experience by exerting perfect control over one out of the two best Cursed Seal (CS) marks (Orochimaru ever created) in under an hour or two at best (if the total release time is counted). Sasuke's Seal is the Heaven Seal and Kimimaro's, the Earth Seal; and we came to know from Jūgo, the original CS bearer, that Sasuke's and Kimimaro's seals are exactly like his and that his seal's just Sage Mode; so Sasuke matched Kimimaro's talent and learnt to control Senjutsu in under two hours? Which part of it was made unclear to everyone when Kabuto and Orochimaru both made these explicit statements well before Part I consummated at Vote I (Jūgo's statements come in early Shippūden, but the rest still holds true)?

How did Lee perform? Yet again, Sasuke mastered Kimimaro's CS in under two hours whilst Lee survived simply because Kimimaro was dying and he literally died whilst delivering a death-blow to Gaara and Lee; so thematically, narratively, and metaphorically, Sasuke matched an adversary against whom both Gaara and Lee lost? That and Lee was outshined by Sasuke twice in a row, going so far as to undermine Lee in his own life endeavours that involved years of sweat and tears? Which part of it translates into "hard-work versus talent" to anyone? You see, here's the thing: no matter how many times you exhibit a pettiness in undermining Sasuke's feats and nit-picking the hell out of them, it doesn't change canon; and canon goes quite far to illustrate as to how hyperbolic Sasuke's progress as a boy is; once he picks up something, he puts it to use in combat, and he masters it in a few hours—at most. He puts Itachi to shame on every single front: his Ninjutsu, his strategies, his learning speed—all super-exceed Itachi who was trained by his father and instructor. There's a reason why Sasuke's Indra's Transmigrant, not Itachi; it didn't come out of nowhere—not if you read the manga with both functioning eyes open, but I digress.

Where does Lee fit in all of this? With Itachi, the line "I'm an obstacle in your path to overcome, because that's what big brothers are for" holds true, as Sasuke's meant to narratively fly ahead of Itachi in every single way. (If you count Sasuke's metamorphosis from Hebi, Snake, to Taka, Hawk, that's even more true, as it happens exactly at the point the battle between the siblings reaches its end; his death as a snake occurs there and then, and we're outright shown this through the stray snake's death, who burns to ash from Amaterasu's flame; when Sasuke learns the truth from Obito and develops the Mangekyō Sharingan, a Hawk is shown flying into the sky.) When a boy whose barely seventeen is able to invent, re-invent, and improve Sage-rivalling Jutsus on the battlefield (in mere moments), the fandom's hyperbole around Itachi looks rather . . . stale, desperate, and comical, especially since that's something Kurama stated, not me. Nowhere does Lee fit into all of this. I keep reiterating: whoever isn't associated with Sasuke in the narrative is literally unimportant. There's no other way of putting this. It's just the way it is.

Lee's importance is simply this: he's a stepping-stone to show you as to how fast Sasuke's capable of rising above it all, rising above his obstacles—one of the major themes that define Sasuke's entire characterisation, not Lee's in spite of your poorly inventive mind's creations. Remember, Sasuke's a reincarnation (not exactly that, but let's call it that for simplicity's sake) of a man who invented Ninjutsu—something Sasuke does with such perfected ease that he left Kurama in awe, and Sasuke's literally the first and last individual Kurama praised in this manner except the Sage! That's precisely why Lee exists in the narrative. You're more than welcome to invent a million daft statements against it (some of which might involve Lee's supposedly better "characterisation", a laughable statement for sure), but it doesn't change a thing. How do I know this to be that way? The first time Lee's shown, it's when he challenges Sasuke (what did I say about your character having no importance if it's not associated with Sasuke?) and Sasuke loses, but he vows to do better; then he barely survives against an opponent, Gaara, who Sasuke not only hurt thrice (not my statement, but Temari's and Gaara's) but he also learnt something Lee had spent years learning in under a day (his first gate speed, which Sasuke hadn't seen, was learnt by him in under two weeks, together with Chidori); then Sasuke matched Lee's opponent's talent in one of the two best CSs in under an hour or two, against whom Lee survived by sheer dumb-luck despite being backed by Gaara. Do you see a pattern here? And all of that happened in Part I, not Shippūden.

(I don't want to go into the whole "Naruto didn't win against Gaara, but rather woke him up" clarification, but the self-inserting disease that plagues his Fandom hurts them to a degree that they're . . . a little sensitive about the buffoon's so-called accomplishments.)

This might hurt your feelings, but it's true: the only reason why Lee was ever introduced in the manga was for Sasuke to overcome him. I'm not inventing this—look above! What's Lee's presence in Shippūden? He's utterly pointless, and he's pointless precisely because Sasuke's no longer required to overcome him—Lee's something he's left behind in Leaf's shadow! You can cut Lee out of Shippūden and nothing would change; but in Part I, he's intrinsic to Sasuke's journey to where he reached; he's a teeny-tiny part of Sasuke's puzzle—no more, no less; and to experience an emotional response over that is puzzling, to say the least, absurd even, because Lee was never meant to be anything more than another character to gain a bit of importance through his characterisation leeching off Sasuke's; once Sasuke broke free and ran ahead, Lee's importance ended exactly at that point. None of this is that hard to understand. It's plain as day!

Another "hard-worker versus genius" trope's leftover is . . . you guessed it, Sakura! I've stated this so many times that it's turned into a "beating the living sh*t out of a dead horse's paste" argument, but here it goes: Sakura's "delicate chakra control" is nothing to write home about for anyone who understands middle-school English (she took two months to make a fish wriggle, let alone learn any basic technique, whilst Sasuke learnt Lee's gated speed and Chidori in under two weeks, even though he was still healing from the torture Itachi put him through); it's good when it's compared to the ordinary folks, but compared to prodigies like Sasuke, it's fairly abysmal. I've already talked about it in great detail in the chapter that concerns Sakura, so you can refer to that for the full break-down of her "talents"; but she's another character that . . . merely exists for Sasuke's mono no aware theme to find its realisation in the shape of severing the past relationships. Beyond that, she's got no purpose.

Her fandom weeps over her not "growing up", not "moving on", and not "developing further", but here's the problem: whatever "development" she experienced is precisely because of Sasuke, not in spite of him. That's been true since Part I: she went to Tsunade because she wanted to bring back Sasuke (she's the only member of Team 7 who had to convince one of the Sanin to train her, and Sasuke's the only member who was outright sought out by the best of them; so that creates a naturally vast difference between their talents); she trained further after she failed to subdue Sasuke at Orochimaru's hideout; and she kept storing her chakra in regard to Byakugō to catch up to Sasuke and for Sasuke to appreciate her (she failed at both). You take Sasuke out of the equation and Sakura drops out of the Chūnin Examinations, never to be heard from ever again; so to discard this obvious Canon aspect of her is bafflingly ridiculous.

The problem with both of these characters is that they're seen as the go-to power-fantasies of people who're, very clearly, not exceptional in any manner; so they want to see themselves become exceptional through Lee and Sakura, if only vicariously, against people who're exceptional like Sasuke. Whilst this is as easy an explanation that can be offered, it doesn't detract from it being very silly. In this regard "winning versus failing" becomes a seemingly logical off-shoot of "hard-work versus talent": you fail at life if you don't overcome the prodigy; and you win, if you do.

Lee's seen as a failure because he didn't get anything out of beating Sasuke (yes, your 'Lee made Sasuke weep' memes don't mean anything; because as I said, no matter what you perpetuate to feel vicariously good about yourself, the canon's still there, and Lee's the one who's very, very sad about the situation); and Sakura, too, is seen as one because she didn't detach herself from Sasuke. Never mind the fact that not winning against Sasuke doesn't mean that Lee has magically lost his gates or that Sakura's lost her abilities as a Medic; but as both of them are forever stuck in Sasuke's shadow, it makes these readers very upset; but here's a thing: how can something exist in spite of Sasuke's shadow when it was created from it? It's a writing choice that you'd just have to learn to deal with, and making Sasuke "pay" for your second-hand fictional heart-aches, which you experienced through Lee or Sakura, don't mean much of anything.

What would Lee accomplish by beating Sasuke? Does it automatically make him become a genocide victim, a receiver of state-sponsored terrorism, a sufferer of state oppression? Does it draw a dissident, a revolutionary, a singular force of justice from him? How would you make Lee matter by forcing him into taking Sasuke's place? You'd just have to turn Lee into . . . Sasuke. What would Sakura accomplish by besting Sasuke? Does it make her look at the Shinobi world's heinousness, its oppressive policies, its exploitation when she hasn't experienced any of that herself? You'd just have to turn Sakura into . . . Sasuke. You see where I'm going with this? Because the moment you take something from Sasuke's theme that's quite literally a singular force that permeates every facet of the manga from top to bottom, you're just desperately trying to turn these two into Sasuke, and that's why it's parodical. (And if it isn't that, her crazed wankers simply swear by the "she punches harder" philosophy—literally and metaphorically; so much so, that they turn her into a psychopathic jingoist who simply exists to crush Sasuke, the only lasting force of dissidence, reformation, and revolution in the manga against a hegemonic status quo that purely exists to create profit from exploitation, pilling, and mass-slaughters—never mind the underlying obvious implications of a vile imperialism-loving bend of mind, but hey, who am I to judge whatever fascistic neoliberal politics you get off to?)

Lee's purpose is complete: he existed as an obstacle for Sasuke to overcome; Sakura's purpose is complete (though she hilariously over-stayed her welcome): she existed for Sasuke to leave behind as she represents an extension of Leaf that's a character that stands in opposition to Sasuke and his off-shoots, of which Nagato and Madara are a part, and that's what the entirety of Canon is built from—a conflict, not the mundane nature of middle-class issues that plague your life. (Yes, Leaf's very much a character; and, believe it or not, Konoha-maru personifies it.) Making Lee and Sakura into extensions of everymen who'd succeed against prodigies and make something of themselves in the Shinobi world, get married, and pop out five unpleasant bastards (akin to an average Disney magic-making affair that you've coveted since your standard childhood) just reeks of a middle-class mindset that's got nothing to do with canon's themes. That's exactly why you'd see countless Fan-Fictions written (mostly) by women who desperately try to tear apart Sasuke's themes, grant them to Sakura, and fix her cheap matrimonial issues—Lee's less so, but he's "paired up" with Sakura to fix her life that's, apparently, in shambles. You'd have to laugh at all this as the endless spinning of these five tropes is supposed to make canon so much "better" (heck, even their trite critiques aimed at the manga stink to the heavens' heights that make God's divine arse of this same-y murder of rationality); and here's a thing: people fail; that's all there's to it. Sakura and Lee are meant to fail for Sasuke to rise in their place, and their win is not your win at life. Food for thought. Frankly, you'd have to be emotionally a rotting corpse as to not find any of these Pavlovian antics side-splittingly funny. I know I do!

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Chapter 13: Humble Shinobis: Part II

Chapter Text

A diligent Hard-worker or a Hidden Genius-Part II

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No part on the over-estimation of one's talents can ever be complete without talking about Shikamaru: utterly ineffective in the manga, he's yet another character whose genius "sticker" is the endless source of my amusem*nt. Basically, "Dunning Kruger Effect, the character", he flip-flops all over the place with whatever nonsensical voice of reason he's . . . supposed to be in canon; he's basically another one of those "if I just try, I can be a genius like Shikamaru, too; but I'm just lazy!" character types that people assume to illustrate "humble beginnings" of a character whose arrogance is justified, apparently. The problem is that Shikamaru is none of those things and many of other . . . unsavoury things.

The first issue that began with Shikamaru is that he was introduced as this impossible prodigy (who, by the way, by his own admission, looked up to Sasuke for just about everything—I'm not even making this up as these are his exact words) whose strategizing was out of this world—so out of this world that many would stop in awe that how could any mortal come up with f*cking two-hundred steps to get ahead of the enemy? Sadly, Shikamaru barely exhibited five per battle and, even then, he created about half of those mid-battle, and still every little detail blew up in his face—quite spectacularly. His talk on politics is even less intelligent than what he brings to his horrendously strategized battles.

The only time that Shikamaru actually put forth something of value was against Team Dosu's Kin. There, he won fair and square against a young girl of fairly mediocre intelligence. What else did he do? Nothing—no really, I'm speaking the truth. Rattle your brains a bit and you'd see that the "big-todger-energy" that he's supposed to bring to canon is non-existent. Oh, and that one time he devised a plan whilst being inside that big fat Sound Four's member's boulder trap that sucked the Retrieval Team's chakra? Neji was the one who noticed everything first. See what I mean? It's hard to think of anything impressive that this guy's done. Against Temari, he was promoted to Chūnin just like that when his promotion makes no f*cking sense; since, the Chūnin Examinations were designed to vet the best candidates, there's no reasonable rationale for anyone to pick this guy as a Chūnin whose poor strategy led him to not only forfeiting the match but also not coming up with a proper counter to not prolong the battle; but not only did the judges deem it fit to raise this guy's rank, which people like Neji and Sasuke were literally robbed of, but he was also selected as the mission leader—the same guy who can't strategize effectively and ends up forfeiting battles? Why would any individual invest money in this guy? He'd be like, "my body's Judas—a slave to leisurely pastime. I'd be a genius in another time!" And everyone's jaw, tit, and prick would drop to the floor, because he's just that f*cking cool!

However, lo and behold, it came to no common-sense holding individual's surprise when he ran out of counters (only after eight mind you, not two hundred—screw you, Asuma; how does that rod feel?) against a far better opponent like Tayuya, and Temari had to step in to end her. (What a f*cking kick in the bollocks that battle was?) And from here on out began Shikamaru's "impressive" streak of failures from beginning till the end—with a foot in the mouth for his quotable lectures on politics. I do like Kishimoto (in fact, I may even love him—no, not like that, because he's not my type), but, sometimes, the man makes it kind of hard, you know?

The first time we're introduced to Shikamaru in a serious light, beyond his tedious sexism (which he exhibits with great liberty), is that he's shown playing Shogi with Asuma, because playing that means that you obviously must be a genius, even though playing these "thinky-brainy" games, which might include lego for all we know, is the oldest trope in the book that's meant to show that the character in question is "very smart". What it means is that he'd instantly tell you that where his arsehole is—that kind of smart—without a Shinobi flare in sight!

Then Asuma went and got himself . . . err rod-ed (?) and Shikamaru fell off the cliff alongside him—in great depression, of course. First, it makes no sense for this guy to take this sh*t that personally. Asuma died on active duty. That's what he signed up for. Am I supposed to feel sorry for him? The whole drama surrounding this was inane as Chūnins disband immediately after attaining the ranks, which means that he'd nothing to do with Asuma after he attained that rank. What was Shikamaru going to do if it wasn't Akatsuki? Would he have taken out another Shadow Village's Shinobi for daring to kill his former mentor? Would he have carried out an unauthorised espionage act against another state-actor over this? What then? Incur a counter-aggression in response? You see, when people claim that Shikamaru's revenge was justified and within reason (lol?) compared to Sasuke's, it's a very stupid suggestion as Asuma's a soldier, and that's the part and parcel of military life. You can get killed on duty, but that doesn't invite a state-level response. A victim of a state-sanctioned act of violence isn't the same as a young man who lost his teacher to random violence against a rouge shinobi (he was literally on a mission). It's very absurd to compare the two. Shikamaru should've sucked it up and dealt with it. It isn't as if that violence forced him to ponder on the Villages' hegemon (he's not that bright), so the "point" of the revenge arc is . . . well, there's no point beyond the fact that Naruto had learnt a bigger Rasengan—only now, it was windy, too. He just wanted to say, "my Will of Fire dogma is greater than your Jashinism, so I'm your God." No, I swear it upon my tit*, that's what he said.

And that's what brings me to the infamous battle against Kakuzu and Hidan, which was built through this long-winded collage of scattered scenes that told us that Shikamaru was this out-of-this-world prodigy that you wouldn't believe, who was so f*cking righteous that the Lord himself shone out of his hindquarters with extra shine on his robes; yet you tentatively touch that short arc and it falls apart piece by piece; it just tells you as to how petty, stupid, and egoistic Shikamaru is; and there's no characterisation to back up any of that pomposity.

That battle between Kakuzu and Hidan against these rag-tag idiots (save Ino, whom I actually like) was so f*cking stupid that I question anyone's intelligence, who took it even remotely seriously, let alone being the defining example of "morally sound decisions". You people crack me up! A lot of misconceptions are spread about the battle in this regard, so let's break them down:

- Asuma and Kakashi were never close friends. Not even f*cking close. This is absurdly made-up. People should put an end to their desperation to grant Kakashi some modicum of characterisation when he has very little of it beyond his circular-caricature antics.

- Shikamaru was pretty much content with dragging along a three-team unit (when a four-team unit is the minimum requirement for missions) to take on Hidan and Kakuzu when he had no f*cking clue about the latter's abilities save that he's capable of using threads. Literally. That's all he knew. f*cking genius!

- It was by a sheer coincidence that Kakashi intercepted the team, and that's purely because Tsunade was smart enough to actually stop this f*cking lunatic, which would be Shikamaru, at the gates. Kakashi never intended on joining them. This was never a planned battle. (People poke fun at Sasuke's decision to take Taka along to Bee's battle when that's actually genius strategizing as all his Team-Mates offer a plethora of advantages; get back to me when any of Shikamaru's team-mates can deflect a Bijū-Dama and heal mortal injuries, including completely blown-to-bits organs.)

- Now, here's the real kicker: Hidan and Kakuzu had sealed two tailed beats for six straight days and nights (that's the sole reason why Asuma's idiot brigade survived as the two were called back to Pain's hide-out to seal right after killing Asuma—and when I say right after, I literally mean a moment after); and as soon as they got out, Ino found them via her mind-transfer technique on a bird! There was no resting for Hidan and Kakuzu between killing Asuma, sealing two tailed-beasts, and their battle with this troupe of jesters. So, basically, they were beyond exhausted when the Team decided to take them on as they'd been sealing all this time while Shikamaru thought of his "genius" strategy that'd put an elementary school child's plan to shame. You go, Nara!

- Right before this, Shikamaru thought over this idiotic "simulation" of his when he had, as I mentioned before, no f*cking idea about Kakuzu's entire skill-set, save the threads!

- As their kiddy plan went, Kakashi aimed at Kakuzu from behind. He went at him with the intent to kill. Now, here's where everything falls apart: why did he use the blood-capsule on a guy he knew he was killing? He literally took his heart out. Why would he use a blood capsule at all? And that's why I find Shikamaru's character deeply obnoxious, absurdly stupid, and just full of hot air when he's delivered nothing (literally nothing) of even a little value since that one time against Kin from Team Dosu: it's almost as if Kishimoto wrote Shikamaru with the secret knowledge of the hearts; otherwise, why'd Kakashi take the blood when he was shocked (after getting his ass drilled into the dirt) that Kakuzu survived? He could've been killed! Kakuzu could've gone for Kakashi's heart right off the bat and killed him there and then. He got insanely lucky that Kakuzu didn't do it, or it's his usual impenetrable immortality in the narrative. After all, this idiot died against Deva and was brought back, so his immunity in the narrative is quite satirical.

This turning point in the battle is so out there that it's beyond senseless. I get shocked by people who think that this fight is even remotely strategic. It's not. It's a one long list of very idiotic decisions, a senseless juncture which the narrative itself had to solve. (It's like that decision by Hinata against Pain that made it way too obvious that, somehow, she knew that Minato would reverse her colossal f*ck-up.) Really, as thick-headed as Kakashi is in almost all of the battles, why would he put himself in a compromising position that could prove to be highly fatal if he knew about the hearts and the fact that Kakuzu can take them out—just like that? This manga isn't that deep, but do the readers ever bother rubbing their two under-worked brain-cells together? Really, to overlook something so simple is . . . impressive!

- And so Kakuzu pops out his remaining hearts, and it's Kakashi that analyzes almost all of the ability, not Shikamaru; and he's so f*cking smart that this is point where he decides that they should split up Hidan and Kakuzu. When you learn that, it forces you to think: what was this buffoon's simulation about, anyway, if he's thinking of doing this now, in the middle of the f*cking battle? Christ, he's so offensively stupid. (Now you guys know why I can't stand his character.)

- And what was his "grand" plan? The Raiton mask launches Raiton, and he starts pulling out scrolls to cancel it! Scrolls! Against Akatsuki! Choji and Ino would've f*cking died several times over had Kakashi not stepped it to cancel that and his other Jutsus. What the f*ck was this guy thinking? He only took scrolls with him to battle one immortal and the other guy who he knew almost nothing about (he didn't think of anything even slightly intelligent to counter the two)? Is this the guy people fanboy as being smarter than Sasuke, whose Strategic Feats are literally the best in the manga? Christ on a unicycle! You people aren't even subtle about this stupidity, are you?

- And Kakashi himself died twice, but he was saved, because . . . reasons. And the second time he nearly got killed? Had Naruto not shown up, Kakuzu would've butchered all of them and taken their hearts; but, hey, let's forget about all of this and pile on Sasuke!

- And what was Kakashi's plan in all of this "I'm going to help this pitiful doofus get his revenge"? None that I know of. It isn't even a matter of moral quandary; he had no foresight to handle this situation. No, he tagged along like a f*cking child in Shikamaru's plan; so the excuses that play the "he's a depressed guy" and "he was looking at matters in a level-headed, cool, and mature manner over that Sasuke incident as both of these revenges aren't the same" games are very desperate in their reach. Very sad, too. They couldn't be further from the truth or this guy's actual portrayal in the manga: a blundering fool who's not very good at assessing even slightly complex situations; he's more along the lines of a "sic 'em!" Leaf's guard-dog who's got very little idea about most things, which would explain his dismal performance in the Third Great War as a newly appointed Jōnin. Boy, did he get his arse flattened at every turn in Gaiden!

And this has nothing to do with the over-played "he's emotionally stunted" bullsh*t that's seldom backed up by the manga. He literally had no plan, and by agreeing to accompany Shikamaru, he got the whole team slaughtered (if we take his sheer dumb-luck out of the equation when Naruto showed up in the nick of time while Kakuzu had his threads stuck up his arse). Really, his lack of plan and foresight have nothing to do with his "depression" or "wow, so sad" past; so why do you people even make this connection? He was nearly just as stupid as Shikamaru whom he chose to aid on his suicide mission. Let's face it, Naruto saved all of them. Kakashi doomed them all. So I'm going to say this here: I'm glad that this jackass didn't let Sasuke get his revenge or didn't help him; because if this is what his "help" looks like, I think Sasuke was better off without it.

I went on a tangent on Kakashi there, but what did Shikamaru himself learn? Oh, he can expand his shadows a bit—how cool—something which only came in use once when he decided to split them up! That and he smokes now, which is a very, very, very . . . very deep metaphor for the fact that he's taken on Asuma's Will of Fire. Boom! Who saw this coming? And when he blew up Hidan, he declared himself to be a God . . . over this dreadfully conceived strategy: his ego and pomposity are inversely proportional to his IQ—I can't stress this enough! Why? Well, we didn't learn anything grand from this battle; we didn't come away with any narrative aspect; this wasn't even an effective portrayal of a Shōnen battle. We just learnt that Naruto's new Rasengan is really f*cking huge and it's really f*cking windy and it makes really f*cking big holes—literally. That's it, and I'm shocked that people think that Shikamaru had anything decent to add to any of this.

The thing is, Shikamaru's praise as a "level-headed genius" that's rife in this fandom is an anathema to me. He's one of the few characters that have been bungled beyond belief as Kishimoto wrote him with the intention of "character depth", not this.

A part of this Fandom, as I've repeatedly noticed, has a lot (and I mean a lot, like "Sasuke pissed into my eyes" lot) of issues with Sasuke's prodigious status, and their issues are extensive to the point that they're blind to the superficiality of other characters. They, with glee, enjoy taking any moron that presents himself as Sasuke's antagonist; and Shikamaru is a fantastic illustration of that stance.

And while there are quite a few examples of his complete short-coming as a character, thematically or narratively, none highlights it more than the Kage Summit Arc, during which Shikamaru endeavoured to bring Sakura to his side in regard to ending Sasuke's life.

That isn't something that I have any issue with. Within Shinobi-creed, that'd be an expected outcome; but what I don't understand is his faulty reasoning: why would Kumo attack Leaf in the wake of Sasuke's "transgressions"? He's a Missing-Nin, remember? And, furthermore, why Sakura or any other active Leaf Shinobi ought to shoulder the responsibility of hunting down Sasuke when it's the duty of a Special Ops (Anbu) Branch that exists specifically to eliminate Rouge-Nin and to engage in covert operations?

This leads to a very odd juncture that's as preposterous as it's farcical because, by turning this into a "moral quandary", Shikamaru has created a strange premise that's outright paradoxical to what's been written in stone: we must hunt Sasuke as it's our duty as Leaf Shinobi because he's gone rouge; and we must hunt Sasuke as Leaf Shinobi because, if we don't, that'd lead to serious consequences.

These two present a contradiction to the Shinobi mores that Kishimoto had established since Part I: if it's the duty of every Shinobi to hunt Rouge-Nin, the purpose of the Special Ops Branch is purposeless; and if serious repercussions would occur in the wake of the Missing-Nins' "escapades", it'd have been political suicide for the sitting Kages to hire them, even though that's never been canonically proven, or it'd have resulted in many wars between Shadow Villages in the aftermath of their so-called "terrorist" activities (Akatsuki didn't amass this much capital out of the thin air; they were repeatedly hired by the Kages for this). Only one of these can be true, yet Shikamaru tries to bring these two together, and I found it very absurd that this was taken as something "remarkable" by the Fandom. Why? Well, he dislikes Sasuke, so he must be a f*cking "gee-ni-us!", dotchya know?

And while we're at it, I want to make one thing crystal clear: Raikage's purpose when it comes to the meeting wasn't to gather together a squad and hunt down Sasuke; it was to collectively deal with Akatsuki as a threat; Sasuke was but one aspect of it. That's the reason why Samui, Omoi, and Karui took Sasuke's details directly from Leaf in lieu of a surprise military aggression. (Are basic politics beyond you people?) That means that everything points in the exact opposite direction in regard to what Shikamaru established before Sakura. There's nothing even remotely intelligent about what he stated and whatever "urgency" he created was entirely preposterous.

People enjoy attacking Sakura's poor decisions (in fact, they take excessive pleasure out of this) to ad nauseam and beyond (heck, I've done that myself, but that's done within another context to take a piss at her diehard Fandom who, somehow, blame Sasuke for her mishaps in this arc!); but what do you expect from her? She hasn't been trained in tackling the Missing-Nin business. She just took this responsibility upon herself because of Shikamaru's childishly pedantic moralizing that had nothing to do with the realities of Shadow Villages' Shinobi-Creed. Shikamaru simply pushed quite a few of his Team-Mates into death's maw without any sensible plan in sight. How did he plan on subduing Sasuke, let alone killing him? Did he forget that Madara (yes, I know that that was Obito, but it wasn't brought to light at that point in canon) was with Sasuke? Knowing that Sasuke moved with Akatsuki, what was he planning to do about Kisame who was very much alive at this point? Nothing? Brilliant! What a remarkably intelligent guy, because he doesn't like Sasuke, a true Scholar among mere mortals! (Not that that's anything new as any half-decent reader can easily recall the few simple facts about his previous endeavours!)

Keep that in mind that the characters that decided to tag along with Shikamaru didn't read the manga, so they don't know that how his defeat of Hidan and Kakuzu was due to Kakashi (who, by the way, was never a part of Shikamaru's oh so awesome "simulation") and Naruto and a hell lot of pure dumb-luck; and during the battle, it was because of Kakashi that Shikamaru didn't die twenty times over, along with his friends; therefore, all these naïve characters placed their trust in him based on his "illustrious" performance against the Akatsuki. They genuinely believed that he was some kind of "expert" on taking them down. Because, let's be honest, who else from Leaf had taken down Akatsuki before Shikamaru? No one! (Yes, I know that you'd bring up Sasori, but he took his own life and Sakura was backed by an experienced Puppet Master bar none; so let's not try and think that every situation which involved the Akatsuki was the same, especially since that was a Joint Operation in which seasoned Shinobi like Chiyo, Kakashi, and Gai were involved; it wasn't akin to a couple of naïve rookies taking on colossal threats.) An experienced Jōnin (Asuma) died horrifically in battle against them; and to top it off, he was Shikamaru's Squad Leader; hence, in their eyes, Shikamaru triumphed where Asuma failed. That'd … truly be a big f*cking deal, and it's shocking that this aspect is wholly ignored in this Arc's or Shikamaru's contextual criticism. That's why I always advise people to not analyse content in bits and pieces, cherry-picked chunks, and complete isolation. If you do that, you'd miss the rhythms and beats each actor and event bring to the narrative's overall value.

And, frankly, you can attack Sakura all you want in regard to her Fandom's vapid stance on many aspects, but that doesn't change the simple fact that Sakura was never trained for this situation; and it isn't unrealistic that, faced with a high-risk threat like Mangekyō Sharingan (MS) Sasuke who's a force to be reckoned with, she panicked and made very poor decisions. That's fantastic writing that's rooted in verisimilitude as a person who's untrained for hair-trigger situations would fumble, panic, and make extremely terrible choices. A good illustration of this would be Test Pilots versus Commercial Pilots response in the event of an emergency; the response to active action between the two is about 5 seconds too late for the latter, which in life-threating situations is a f*cking life-time; so you don't allow a commercial pilot to flight-check newly purchased air-crafts; no, that's a test pilot's job!

In the light of the above example, Sakura, along with the other rookies, would be like a commercial pilot who's unceremoniously thrust into a test pilot's situation when she shouldn't be; and all of the blame lies with Shikamaru; and you can't brush it off with some wildly foolish statement that her training as a medic, which allows her to keep a cool-head in case of patients with life-threating injuries, would magically translate into tracking down, tackling, and taking on S-Class Missing-Nins. That's an incredibly stupid claim! (It isn't a surprise that Sai was the only sensible individual out of them all; it's that he's killed plenty of targets before on Danzō's orders, so he's aware of the risks involved.) Then why's it shocking to people that Sakura's plan was poorly thought-out and she hysterically veered between conviction to kill and confusion to desist? I didn't see any "sexism" in any of this, just an untrained individual who was in well over her head. This wasn't the sort of situation that Sakura or the other Rookies ever should've been in. It was legitimately beyond her capabilities, and there's no "misogyny" in suggesting that. Now, you can claim that Sakura and others shouldn't have taken up Shikamaru on his offer, and really, it doesn't work that way: for one, he's a Jōnin at this point who's presenting a very threatening scenario that could potentially affect Leaf's sovereignty; two, Shinobi sort of jump into any opportunity that'd bring their village prestige; and three, with Tsunade in coma and Danzō taking charge, Sakura was between a rock and a hard place, as he could've passed any order against Naruto in Tsunade's absence in regard to his obsession with Sasuke (he would've outright taken Naruto's freedom!); so keep everything within the picture when you analyse this Arc.

To digress here a bit, everything Shikamaru stated to Sakura can be applied to himself, as well, when he took on Hidan and Kakuzu; his flippant attitude could've resulted in anyone's death and a "cycle of vengeance" would've been created between his friends' families and Akatsuki and the people (which are almost always from Shadow Villages) who hired them; however, the narrative absolutely fails to frame this in a neutral manner as Shikamaru's shown to be a voice of reason when he's not. He hasn't said one intelligent thing in the entire manga—not a single one.

My point is, Shikamaru's capacity to blunder even in the most straight-forward situations is impressive! Here, he concocted a reasoning that's bereft of any code of conduct that's known to Shadow Villages' Shinobi. What was Kishimoto's purpose in showing that? That's hard to suggest, but what I see is a gargantuan military mishap from a rookie whose unearned arrogance got the best of him all the f*cking time; and Sakura, or any other Shinobi, wasn't responsible for that. She simply received the brunt of his profoundly stupid logic.

And that's not the only time he was utterly clueless. During the Pain's arc, he had little idea how to piece the codes together; Sakura figured that out quicker than him, and I don't consider her to be a prodigy. She's superficially intelligent, but nothing to write home about. The figuring out of the fact that the real body that's controlling all the bodies is somewhere close by due to the chakra-signals' range (like signal-boosting towers)? Ino's father, Inoichi, laid out the whole thing in front of Shikamaru, and the dude was still clueless. During the Fourth Shinobi War, he decided that it was a bad idea to make the Jūbi lose its balance, apparently, by making someone raise a wall under one of its feet (it'd have toppled it instantly; and we've seen a Shinobi, Onoki's son, from Rock completely immobilize it between two stone-walls) and a great idea to put walls in front of mini-nukes that wiped out two islands. Had Minato not shown up, he'd have only killed . . . everybody!

People think that this fool's some sort of actuary who can predict not insurance risks, but battle risks; but, you see, he doesn't like Sasuke, so he's obviously a very smart guy!

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Chapter 14: A Reader's Self-Projection: The Political Justifications for Uchiha Itachi and Konoha

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Whilst the justifications for the state and state-actors are unintentional mistakes on the canon's part, its readers are hardly that innocent. Kishimoto was hemmed in by the constraints of the genre, editorial demands, and market needs. Itachi simply took a lot of the manga down with him. It's hard to endure his character.

Yet in the western sphere, no matter how narratively parodical Itachi's actions, he was always lauded. He was elevated because the western public liked him—quite a lot. The reader-demand in the competitive market like Shōnen can be any manga's undoing. That's another reason why Naruto ended the way it did, even though Kishimoto had little conviction to end it in that manner.

Itachi's blind worship has a lot to do with the public's perception of soldiers, imperialism, and status quo (basically their general views on state, ideological markers, and morality). Many a time, when they're defending Itachi on the western social-media sites, the comments read like CIA talking points. This love for Itachi is neither accidental nor unintentional: our bias defines how we interpret the context as our perception dictates it; hence, there's no meaning inside any event unless meaning isn't attached to it as Stuart Hall states. Many don't practice any detachment to view the context with a neutral stance. Itachi's interpretation is a byproduct of this hyper-projection.

It's a broader cultural issue, or more importantly, a post-modernist hyper-capitalism issue. Western socio-cultural mores are obsessed with "decency" and "appearance", nothing substantial beyond that, that when a state actor like Obama paints a large group of people in the Middle East as angry, dangerous, and violent and jokes about how good he is at killing them (Obama's exact words in his new autobiography), they brush it all aside and continue to worship him as long as he's on "our side" and able to deliver a nice speech here and there. "The Cult of Personality" is a cultivated aspect of public sphere.

"Niceties" are seen as the bedrock of Western moral system, not duplicity, nor an anomaly in the social system. You can see this in the Itachi's genocide apologia and aggression against Sasuke's character all the time: Itachi was respectful; Sasuke wasn't nice; the former was loyal and the latter was a "meanie" to his comrades; etc. And whilst this realistically abandons all rational contextual complexities as to why Sasuke was the way he was, it does lay bare the anti-intellectual train of thought that's more centred on the sort of "feelings" the readers take inward and project outward rather than the meaning the canonical events associated with the characters and narrative (Mark Fisher talks about that at length in Capitalist Realism, a book that everyone should read).

That's another reason why market leans towards the narratives that are easily received by the public; anything that confronts is just not lucrative and brings out a mob of aggressive twitter-aficionados who've got one too many bones to pick with the creators. As I said: feelings take precedence over basic contextual realities, and Capitalism by its very nature carves out a path of least resistance for the people (who already favour it) for most profit.

This is the line of logic that justifies the USA playing "world police" and any of its allusions in the narratives receive the same adoration (it isn't a surprise that Konoha is modeled after Mossad, as stated by Kishimoto, CIA's doppelganger). The idea of "stability through bloodshed" is verbatim what any warmongering fascist would use to justify state-sponsored aggression; however, it isn't seen in this light; no, it's considered to be a "burden" a "righteous state-body" has to bear through its extensions (soldiers) to maintain peace at the cost of some lives. A trolley problem, basically, only that it's global now.

It's also the epitome of "politics as a game" thinking. When people say that, they expose their politics to have no moral basis; it's just "my guy over the other guy". That's why you'd often see words like "rooting for so and so character". They root for their team. They actually don't care about anyone or anything beyond that team. The western narratives or the ones the westerners immensely favour and write on in their incredibly self-righteous, trashy, and cheap "fix-it" Fan-Fictions follow the same ghastly pattern for this very reason. After all, you're a product of your environment; you don't exist, thrive, and react in a vacuum; nothing reflects your socio-cultural surrounds more than you and your thought. You are your culture—you are your society.

You'd even see the reasoning that politicians have to take a tougher stance on "terrorism" (western readers' favourite word when their happy stupidity in regard to its complex history is beyond their grasp) as people believe that not doing so would result in their chosen state-actor or others in his party to lose office. (You'd see this argument often reflected in the flimsy statements that the Uchiha shouldn't take over and that these morally bankrupt military-parasites that let corruption thrive are beloved by their people, so ousting them is the morally repugnant action, not letting them continue on their reign of terror.) The war crimes are the political response to that calculus. So you'd always see the idea of state-engineered "conflicts" as a necessity for social, economic, and/or nationalistic facets of "winning" and not being in the "losing" team. It's also about being in the system, not a change in the direction of the system. Whomever takes the system wins!

Politics really is just a f*cking sport to many people; they'd hand-wave or deflect anything that makes their side (and, by extension, themselves) look "bad". Niceties, remember? That's another reason why "euphemistic" language is so popular in modern discourse: tough decisions as opposed to state-engineered mass-slaughter and/or genocide; collateral damage as opposed to senseless, wanton, and callous violence; fight for freedom as opposed to a calculated foreign-policy that's built on a forever chugging war-machinery to generate profits; unfortunate incidents as opposed to brutal aggressions against a subjugated population; nameless people caught in the cross-fire as opposed to victims created through endless wars with no end in sight; so on and so forth. None of this is accidental; no, it's a deliberate manufacturing of a tone in the "history-making" rhetoric that favours the violent, senseless, and evil methodology of imperialism that affords west the very lifestyles they enjoy. (It's not surprising that Syrian-oil fields and grain are being pillaged by the American Forces as we speak; the cheap food prices, by comparison to the rest of the third-world, 24/7 Air-Conditioning, and consumable and disposable products don't work without any of this.)

The whole "terrorist" rhetoric is a funny one, I gotta say. It's the core contradiction of American (Western) Liberalism as, to uphold their way of life (in their mind), the American Empire (or the Western Hegemon) must be allowed to churn the bodies of "terrorists" through its gears to oil the machine, and, if innocents get caught in that, it's a "necessary evil" because this is how the world works to them. A game! A lot of it is working backwards, as well: they start with the opinion that the Democrats (or their side) are good, and then they have to work backwards to justify it, even though there's no way you can actually believe that when you look at all the independent journalism on this, unless your measure of "good" is "less bad than the Republicans or that other guy over there in that right-wing party". Isn't Itachi defended the exact same way? You'd be hard-pressed to locate a single argument in his favour and one levelled against Sasuke (heck, any state-actor-type or rebel character) that isn't a direct imitation of this process.

You'd see all of this word-for-word, disgorged like cesspool from a gutter-pipe, from anyone that dislikes Sasuke and the Uchiha (especially Fugaku because "how dare he go against the state?!") and likes Itachi and his ilk: the "western moral principle" of "worthy victims" versus the "unworthy victims" is what the entire western political discourse is at its heart; it's its true nexus. Whatever the state deems to not be a necessity becomes worthy of sympathy; but, when it's included in the philosophy of the lesser evils, greater goods, and a lot of trollies and problems, the victims are unworthy, their lives, expendable. Look no further than the Iraq invasion that was carried out on grounds of Saddam's supposed "tortures" that made the victims of his aggression worthy; but, after "freedom" was disseminated upon the "rude" populace, every victim that was martyred at the altar of Western Ideology was just unworthy! It just happens as that's how wars are fought and blood-shed is but an inevitable state of affairs, but retaliations from the said "unworthy victims" drags the discourse back to the domain of the moral. (I won't even touch upon the phenomenon of Pink-Washing as it's another debate altogether, though it's an integral part of western thought, as well.)

That's why suggesting anything unsavoury about minority groups doesn't receive any censure on the western-populace dominated social-media platforms, because Americans (or people from other prominent Western states) empower politicians and systems that butcher groups under the guise of "national security"—just like how they empower law enforcement to kill black youth under the guise of "law and order" or "war on drug", just like how they brutalise Hispanics under the guise of "border security". It's endless conflicts, endless profits, endless unworthy victims; but, to them, that's how the world works, and, as that's how the world works, it's how it's meant to be interpreted in a fictitious setting, as well; and without any confrontational and/or consequential elements from any sphere of life that ought to challenge the public's perception, it'd be that way for a long time—or not that long as climate change would kill most in the coming decade. Surf's up, bros, waters are rising!

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Chapter 15: Uchiha Madara: A Failed Third Indra

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When you look at any character, Madara or otherwise, you're forced to examine—rather, analyze it in the light of what you've read. Madara as a character suffers from what I'd call the "imitative syndrome (IM)" (this isn't really a phrase; I coined it, though let's call it a term instead); and what's that imitative syndrome, you'd ask? Characters that rebel, but don't rebel further than how Sasuke rebelled.

This may seem like a strange thing to suggest, but I've repeatedly mentioned that and I'd repeat the sentiment here, as well: if you aren't associated with Sasuke, you have very little narrative worth in Naruto's Canon. The issue with this interesting structural choice is that you're left with advantages and obstacles—in regard to whatever theme you've chosen for the narrative.

The advantage is that you can simply refer to the repertoire of structural and thematic inferences and references and construct a way forward (they're already there, simply waiting for you to pull out another causal juncture)—the obstacle is that you can't go beyond the themes on which you've constructed your complete narrative, not without tearing apart the entire casual chain and reshaping it in another manner; to put it simply, your characters can't run beyond the bounds you've created for them, and Sasuke—fortunately or unfortunately—is that set boundary, beyond which neither the actors nor the events exist; and Madara is an illustration of that . . . "problem".

When you look at the Uchiha, you can only think of the coup, massacre, and what followed; and what followed is the very spine on which the manga's apparatus stands. Yes, you (as in any reader) can infer to the "flashbacks" and make a claim that that happened (or was shown) well into Part I's culmination; however, consummation of the narrative's pieces doesn't mean that that's how the narrative is constructed, as well. To reuse my analogy of a painting, if you reveal a painting piece by piece, you're only shown parts of the painting, not the whole of it. The "claims" that Kishimoto hadn't thought ahead are always illogical as art isn't created for you to maintain a "time-line" of events (and try and feel smug in one-upping a collection of pictures and bubbles, pitifully), as art doesn't occur in the real-world, it imitates and/or reflects it; furthermore, very few authors have ever constructed elaborate plots to fill up their narratives—not even Shakespeare, God of English Literature, was exempt from that (Portia in The Merchant of Venice, disguised as Balthazar, travelled back to engage in the Shylock's case, from Belmont to the court of the Duke of Venice, in a time that's inconceivably impossible, yet its "timeline" is never brought into question as the focus is the trial—Naruto Fandom isn't smart enough to realise this simple detail.)

Therefore, Sasuke's the character that's the root, tree, and seedlings of the manga's past, present, and future; and Madara, in more ways than one, is but a seedling of his rebellions, not the root. (Fugaku's the father of Sasuke's conflict, but he, too, can't exist without Sasuke's existence.) Once you make peace with this structural choice, you'd have to make peace with its facets, advantageous or disadvantageous as they may be; hence, when Madara is truly introduced, his antagonism is made to "feel" bigger than it is; and that's Madara's true fault as a character: he feels "larger than life" when he . . . isn't.

The IM that I talked about works well with Indra, not Madara. The reason for it is that the former remains a myth, the latter converges from myth to reality, yet fails to reconcile both. Villainy is what you require for a convectional protagonist (a brimful of expectations that are clichés) to engage with, a construct that's got to meet defeat for the conflict to slide down from the crest of climax. That's how plot's function. You don't like it? Then seek out character-driven narratives, which Naruto (a plot-driven narrative) isn't; in fact, which most narratives aren't.

The confrontation that leads to Madara is embroiled in the Curse of Hatred (CoH) tale, a tale older than the Uchiha, a tale that's as old as myth, a tale that perseveres in the Uchiha Clan's reality; so when you think of the Uchiha, you can't think of the clan as an entity without CoH: it's a curse that propels the Clan from the annals of the Clan's muddled past on the Tablet, a relic from a distant father, to the future that could ensure a better tomorrow—a tomorrow in which the curse is purged and the blood is freed, but on Indra's terms, not father's.

Therefore, Indra's path (punctuated by CoH) is more than just a cure from the father's curse, a nurturer, creator, tormentor of the older son: it's a curse that engenders conflict; a curse that perpetuates conflict; and a curse that ensures conflict. The conflict is in the blood, an ever-lasting scourge that's more than vestige; it's the very purpose of the Clan that others and is the othered; creates conflict for it's always at the end of it; perseveres and annihilates itself to achieve a Shinobi Martyrdom that Itachi could never taste—Itachi's but a poor imitation of the "True Shinobi" credo, a belief that Indra invented through Ninjutsu, a deliberate parody of a futile peace that's won through injustice at Ashura's hands. The curse is a generational prison and liberation—a paradox that encapsulates the Clan; and none of it is as wonderfully illustrated as it is in Sasuke; and here's where Madara fails; here's where he vanishes; and here's where he loses . . . to Sasuke's shadow. Yes, Madara, for the lack of the better word, is Sasuke's shadow—a character that suffers perpetually from an IM, nothing more; and that blunts his narrative effectiveness in ways that never allow him to recover.

And that's the primary "fault", if you venture that far, with this structure; because when you come late into the narrative, you don't generate, but imitate aspects; you can't run beyond the revolutions that Sasuke's laid the foundations and waxed lyrical for (a thematic aspect Nagato spoke before, but strangely repeated as his theme can't be completed without the original rebel, the true rebel, the headstrong rebel that won't lie down no matter how far you push him!). There's the reason why Sasuke's Mangekyō is the only "inverted" Mangekyō, because it's more than a "different" artistic choice; it's an inversion of Uchiha martyrdom, legacy, fate; and even when cut through with Itachi's Shurikens, literally and figuratively, it maintains that inversion, a foretelling of Sasuke's convictions that assimilates but doesn't let go—not entirely. So when Sasuke inherits the contrast between "a setting sun and a waning moon" that's the Uchiha Symbol, he sets out to alter the very dimensions of his own history, his clan's history, and by extension, his father's. It's a rewriting of the blood's legacy, not a drop short of it.

The curse is triggered by father, and Madara fails to become the bridge between Hagoromo's and Fugaku's sons (Indra's two dimensions, two faces, but one man)—men who nurtured, created, and tormented a son, albeit the latter's more metaphorical as a "burden" that torments Sasuke. Madara's burden is more of a father's than a son's, as he becomes his father's heir and fathers the clan, a stark shift from the denial of inheritance to Indra and Sasuke both. What Indra of Madara's past and his future lose out, he gains; but at a cost.

The narrative shifts somewhat interestingly from Itachi's lies (because all he does is lie, albeit he never manages to embody the theme of the Devil, a word that simply means "The Father of Lies" and predates Christianity—a poor narrative actor to the end) to an oral narration that morphs a man, from lies to somewhere between mystery and truth. No longer a thief of his brother's legacy, he gains Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan (EMS) out of love, an imitation of Sasuke's story. You might be tempted to say, "so what?" and I'd be tempted to reply, "why?" The narrative of a "thief" truly connects Indra with Sasuke: Indra never knew darkness, because he never had Sharingan; Sasuke sought to eliminate it out of necessity, not out of love for brother; Madara's tale takes it a step further and makes it about love, a love that summons back the lost . . . bond? The theft makes it so that Madara's future as another Indra listens to the tale and carves his own way for an affliction his first "Self" had never experienced. Here, Sasuke does just that, but the association between the two is tainted by the IM, an Indra in the past that takes on the colours of Indra that's meant to be his future.

What does that accomplish as a tale that's meant to be a divide between two Indras—irrespective of the time lapse as themes seldom have anything to do with "timelines"? Nothing, really. Madara loves and that's the end of that. A curse that began from a "loss of love" harbors an insidious need to protect it, shed blood in its name, and . . . change the way the world sees blood? An expected progression, one which didn't need to be stated out-loud by dear ol' (bigot) Tobirama and given a name, because CoH was always about that—Jiraiya and Nagato stated as much.

From here begins a long list of missteps that do more to fracture the association between Indras than bring them together as a single entity that lives, relives, and lives again to experience the same curse over and over again—till it isn't purged, sated, or altered to become something more than it is, a curse in the blood, a denial of birth-right, and a loss of inheritance, of greatness, and of innocence.

One of the greater themes that define Sasuke's character, surprisingly, is never talked about, and it's the "loss of innocence", a "state of mind" rather than an "accident" that concerns the circ*mstantial nature of birth (which are always biological accidents rather than karmic ones); and that's the theme that binds Indra and Sasuke as Indra together as fiercely as cosmic forces, so that they truly feel a single Self bifurcated by Time, not Madara. No, he's a piece that doesn't fit, doesn't mend, doesn't bridge. A failure as a third Indra.

Where Hagoromo's decision corrupts Indra's innocence, slowly but surely, enough that he develops a method to weaponize Hagoromo's own philosophy against him—a corruption of his father's creed that Ashura's line, too, indulges in, perhaps, too liberally—Sasuke's innocence is taken by a father who was blinded by lies of the other son. Both flounder in lies, each in their own way; but the lies originate from father, not words on a stone.

Yes, you may say that Black Zetsu is the original "Liar", and that'd be somewhat correct; however, that doesn't solve the piece that doesn't fit in Indra's own legacy; and Madara truly is that piece that doesn't fit. That's not to say that Madara doesn't reveal Indra's colours at all—no, that'd be too harsh a judgement on his character. The one aspect that connects all Indras is the "curse", but as an affliction that haunts the blood in a many a lifetime, it has many faces through which it generates this … trauma.

One characteristic "quality" of CoH is that the bearer can't gain anything without losing something in return. It's as if Indra's Self and his blood can't find liberation without sacrifice; and what's Sharingan if not an instrument that reflects sacrifice, a continual martyrdom to gain power? Where Ashura's "power" is a natural consequence of camaraderie (look no further than Naruto gaining the Bijū Mode and chakra of all Bijūs simply because they liked each other very, very, very much), Indra's is born from accidents that rattle the innocence, tragedies that cause the bearer to endlessly suffer; yes, he's stronger than before, but at what cost (blindness is no more than a punishment that seals the light of an eye whose power is all but fruitless without sight)? In this regard, Madara, too, is another Indra: beguiled by Hashirama's promises, he loses everything, brother, clan, and trust; and in the end, he's left with nothing but the curse; and faced with this dilemma, a burden he can't bear, he seeks to imprison the world in the myth his father wanted.

It's a character trait that's rooted in self-affirmation, but it's an odd expression of it as Indra always sought to create hope for his own world … in reality; and that's the main reason why Sasuke as Indra chose to bring together the myth of Eternal Tsukuyomi (ET) and reality of Revolution: two worlds under a single God. Madara wanted to become a God, but he wanted to remain in myth, a reiteration of Obito's dilemma and a disservice to Indra's legacy, I feel. While you could claim that Sasuke "corrected" the course of Indra's previous "fault", and I'd agree with it—but only to an extent, not more.

The biggest culpability lies with the readers and their demands for the genre, a genre that has to endlessly generate villains for the protagonists to defeat, power through, and overcome. Shōnen demands that Kishimoto dispatch the villains he creates before ushering in a happy ending, an ending that concerns marriages and babies and … some graves—here and there, but nothing too depressing. Indeed, how many truly doubted Madara's—no, Indra's fate? The male audience that projected endlessly onto Naruto for him to assume the seat and a back-shot of flying robes streaked with Leaf's consuming fires, a face carved in the mountain that casts a tall shadow on the graves of the subjugated, and a sleeping beast content in the belly from the food of . . . "friendships"? The female audience, too, did the same and wanted that marriage to an Uchiha … so badly (a very small minority's screeching not withstanding as Sasuke and Sakura's "pairing", which stood at number 15, wasn't in China's all-time favorite anime-pairing for nothing)? People enjoy reaffirmations, validations, and fantasies, not matter how impractical they can be, how fanatical the obsessions can be, how … pointless they can be; but that's how they are, and that's how the author, a slave to market demands in a very commercialized industry, has to meet them.

Therefore, no one's an "impartial judge"—neither the characters who seek to draw characters from the dark of sacrificial revolution to the light of fascistic salvation, because that's expected of them, nor the readers. (The world has to metamorphose into binary domains for it to make sense to the readers who, to this day, lament as to why Sakura wasn't granted a quality husband, career path, and friendship to lead a middle-class life, albeit the narrative has nothing to do with any of this, but they so want for it to play ball with their ridiculous sentiments.) As a result, "niceties" take hold and "truths" vanish back into the darkness as the rule of sentiments over truth is the very essence on which capitalism runs: you have to make your consumers happy, because "customer is king". It's not shocking that "what so and so deserved" is always at the heart of these parodical outcries that don't serve the narrative in any manner whatsoever. In fact, had any of them ever been realised, they'd have devalued it to caricatural degrees; therefore, to stroke the customer's "egos", every Indra must fall one by one—some sooner and some later—but the fall is inevitable. The conviction (jokingly referred to as Talk no Jutsu) against Indra, though forced, isn't anything that the reader wouldn't expect, and with glee at that as by condemning the Indras, revolutionaries, of the world, the enlightened Status-quo-adorers satisfy themselves with their own brand of kindness: now, Indra's curse is purged at last; he's "normal"; one of us!

You see, when you're a child, you want to be "one of them", other children, but not every child seeks to follow; no, some choose to create legacies—others merely exist in them; and that's the difference between Indra and Ashura; as a force of destruction the former strives to change, progress, and create; Ashura isn't anything more than a facet of the world that resists that change, destruction, and creation. It resists its nature, and in that theme's subservience, Indra locates his true death.

If they, readers (fancy term for hyper-consumerist costumers), don't indulge in this self-masturbatory turn of events that the genre absolutely promises them, they'd have to question the very nature of naiveté that governs the Ashuras of the world, pillars that stand against change, because destruction is indistinguishable from change, and rebirth's but a cosmic process that's incomplete without this transition. Then Ashura's naïve nature is no more than a dangerous idealism that exists to crush—any and all change; and a system that doesn't change stagnates, rots, and collapses into itself in time. It may take a hundred years or more; and from its ashes begins a new story, with or without an Indra or Ashura, because that's the law of cosmos and that's how things are meant to be . . .

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Chapter 16: The "Good Girls" of Naruto

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Online discourse is very strange, and it remains hyper-focused on "female agency" with respect to the supposed "male agency". On reddit, it's just as hyper-focused, but on things that men usually lament over, and the lamentations are always centered on what should've, would've, or could've been done to mitigate Naruto's "loneliness". Do you see how these things may seem to you as wildly different, but they're intrinsically similar at the same time? Empathizing with people who look like me, think like me, or belong to a country like mine. If that's art's only purpose, what's the point of engaging with art?

The issue with this discourse is a bit varied. When people create expectations, it's impossible to change their minds regardless of the fact that their expectations are formed on shaky grounds: people preserve their own reality (or world), no matter how small it is. It's no different from this "small" world: a world of the "good girls" and "bad boys", because girls can only be good if boys are allowed to be bad. A very simple premise, but one that works for most—every time.

The best thing about this idea is that how binary it is. Yes, some things, in fact, many things, are binary: either you lied or you didn't; either you stole something or you didn't; either you lost or you didn't; etc.; however, there's context in-between the binary blacks and whites: why did you lie; why did you steal; why did you lose; etc.? And since we're talking about good girls and, rather versus, bad boys, where are the whys that define the context? And that's the problem with this sort of criticism: it's self-serving and it's not very subtle about it and it's got very little to say on any theme canon liberally tackles.

So what's "good" to the supporters of this idea? Again, it's very binary and bereft of any contextual details: you move over "abusive" boyfriends, get highly paid jobs in the military industrial complex, and marry a man who "sees you for who you are (a courtesy they only demand, but don't want to extend to male characters)" and you get to have an influence in the governmental policy-making (another aspect that they vehemently deny to the male characters that they dislike). That's it. Any and all actors that create narrative hurdles in these paths are "bad boys", because they're always men who prevent these "poor good girls" from realizing their narrative "potentials". And what are these "potentials", you might ask? Refer to the first part of my previous elaboration—a much-coveted middle-class life.

Naruto, as a character, established a "new order" in a way: Leaf emerged as a new global power, with no balance of power. Keep that in mind that it's human nature at this point to abuse absolute power; and what truly bothers Sakura fans is that she was relegated to a status of a "house wife" and had little share to cash into that power. And that's from where the complaining starts as Sakura neither got a good husband (but a supposedly bad husband) nor a powerful enough post to influence the politics, which in their view was Sakura's right, reminders of her "untapped potential", to oversee. Never mind the fact that nothing in the narrative shows Sakura as anything more than a character that's as much of a fascist as any other fascist. The only difference between someone like, say, Kakashi and Sakura (or Ino) is that she's a casual fascist, not a serious one—or a passive fascist, not an active one.

And this is where the "good girl lost to a "bad boy" analysis finds its true roots: it truly is a matter of missing out on influencing fascist policies, being left out in this infrastructure, and casting out of their in-put—all aspects that they deny to male characters. My question is simple: what importance do these female characters possess that'd introduce anything meaningful to the themes that create antagonism as a singular force against Leaf's singular fascism? You'd have to have something more on you than the comical "rewrite the manga with Sakura (my surrogate) at its helm" or "throw her a bone in this fascist's buffet, too". These reasons just aren't good enough. Not even close!

If the reasons just come down to being "left out", then, at the end of the day, they, too, are genocide, mass-slaughter, and exploitation promoters; yet I don't see anyone bringing up this very crucial argument. Why's that the case? A lot of this is due to projection, as well, and where the people who practice this come from. Most of these women are from white America (most of them) and American Nationalism overwhelms the individual and merges it with American Idealism. That's a long-standing issue with white individuals that they tie their insecurities and the small starving egos to the "big egos/things" as it makes them feel bigger, too. And by attaching themselves to something bigger, they're no longer insecure. Isn't that basically the crux of Sakura's entire characterization: she attached her smaller ego to Sasuke's impossibly bigger one to gain social stature, leave behind her frailties, and make something more of herself? I can't be the only one who saw the obvious similarities between these two. Maybe that's the reason why Sakura hits so close to home for many; she makes them uncomfortable that they, too, attach their egos to bigger things, people, and concepts to feel bigger; however, they're "good" because that's how things are meant to be; you just have to overcome some insecurities, not all. In fact, moving the object of projection from one boy to another and the Will of Fire banner at large, simply shows movement of the same concept, not a different one.

However, despite what they want to change in the "starved egos" of these female characters, and by extension themselves, they still try very hard to shield them from any and all criticism, because, after all, they can't be "good" if others, with wildly different perspectives, are "good", too. And so begins their long tirades against male characters, often distilled down to immature charges of "sexism", without engaging with the actual aspects of "goodness" versus ... "badness", I guess? I mean, what else would you call this?

A major problem with the prominent discourse on the internet is that of a "you hear what you want to hear" mentality, and none of this is more glaring to witness than in the bottomless, pedantic, and dull dirges churned out by the Naruto's neo-liberal "feminist critics" lobby. They want to read what they want to read into the manga. The fans of these female characters don't read analyses to come away with anything new; no, they read them to keep reaffirming their views. (It isn't as if they understand much of canon, anyway, so might as well just go with the flow.) And there's something very cyclic about this: do you engage in reading to reaffirm or does it result in writing to reaffirm? It's hard to say.

And it's in this light that the whole concept of "good girls" versus the "bad boys" of Naruto is born; because no matter what they do, who they support, and where they stand, they're good simply because an injury to their "agency" was apparently made; and it's very silly, because what does that even mean? No, really, is an action of the "attachment of ego" to one actor any different from attachment to another? You see how nonsensical this is as, in both cases, her agency spins about very similar aspects. Is "better life" all that matters in a female character's narrative? If so, then how does that corelate to "goodness" or "agency"? You see how this argument makes no sense, right—right?

Agency has little or nothing to do with fulfillment in life. Agency is simply an ability to make a choice, and all female characters exercised theirs. The choices that are available to us are the ones that decide how we'd end up. If we make mistakes, that doesn't mean that agency wasn't in play. It absolutely was. You simply made the wrong choice. Making a less favorable choice doesn't equate to "badness" nor does it have anything to do with "goodness". It's just a choice. An action. It just is.

However, the issue is larger than this as "good" is simply attached to anything these female characters engage in, and all the "bad" is coincidental, a stuff without agency, and/or a male character's fault; and then we're thrown into the "right" course of what "could've been (potential, basically)" as opposed to the "wrong" that we received in the ending. This brings me back to the desires of these female readers who wanted a part in the state, nothing more. The new order. The new world. The new Leaf. As they're left out, they're unimportant in this grand order, and we can't have that, now can we? (f*ck Sasuke, of course; he didn't deserve any of this; it isn't as if his clan's removal from participation in the state's affairs was of any importance to his Clan and their subsequent annihilation or anything like that; f*ck him harder! Girl power all the way!)

Let's look at how the manga ended for Sakura and few others: Sakura opened a "hospital" (not just any hospital, but "hospital"—get it?) for the people affected by war-crimes and Ino helps out with it, as well; Hinata married to the Hokage, forever maintaining her slaver-owner status; Tenten was always irrelevant, so it's pointless to talk about her. Is this really a "good" outcome? Again, as good has been distilled down to how much these female characters can benefit from the system, it's seen as an effective, but superficial win. I, on the other hand, won't even call this superficial: it's a coat of acceptable paint on a fascist regime's face to render it palatable, a female touch as many would call it.

The "hospital" is just that, a place for fascist soldiers to be "righted", so that they don't turn into "Sasukes", Nagatos, Obitos, or Madaras, trouble-makers that cause "grief" to female characters, take away their agency for "goodness", and don't allow them to "grow" into this new order, whose share they deserve (you see, Sakura deserved better!). You see how heinous this is, don't you? Opening this "hospital" is nothing more than a band-aid for a broader issue that centers on the continual exploitation, subjugation, and suppression of any and all forces that want change. These are the same kind of readers who'd conveniently overlook Hinata's inherent privilege in a system that sustains her rank by persistently ragging on Hiashi, when, realistically, what's stopping Hinata now, now that she's the Hokage's wife? Who or what ever stopped her from doing anything valuable for Neji? You'd think that they'd understand this notion that how the privileged retain their privilege by not opting for the alteration of the system they inhabit, but the damn bitch stutters, and that's the greatest tragedy that there is—that and her father was a wee bit mean to her, not that she benefits from an active system of slavery; but look over there at that bubble; her father was very, very, very mean to her, and she looks so sad (she also sadly twiddles her thumbs, which is sadder), and she was just trying to be "good" to Neji, even when he was so mean to her—Alas, meanie, prodigious "bad boys" don't know how hard the socially struggling "good girls" have. The true unsung "underdogs" in this tale.

Ino's no different. She goes to "coach" traumatized children, to "correct" the course of their "wrong" mental leanings (because you wouldn't want more Sasukes, now would you?), after her duty in "torture and interrogation", but she's a character that got the most out of life, because ... her husband likes her? At the end of the day, there's no difference between one facilitator of fascism and the other facilitator of fascism save the husband, apparently. The fact that all of this is distilled down to "better boyfriends" should tell you the extent of these people's grasp of canon's issues. Basically, if you grant "wall-flowers" too much importance, your analyses is bound to reflect the same perspective: small, limited, and remote.

And that's another reason why being left out of this world-order bothers them so much. In the real world, all the oppressed are under the heels of the first-world: we've subjected the world to our order, our world, our law. It's just that, in this world, women aren't allowed to be subjugators, not in a very active sense, anyway. (Tsunade got to do that once, but, goddamnit, she didn't want to take the fascist seat, so that's a very bad thing, obviously.)

No, their job is that of nurturers, turning these soldiers into proper martyrs, not traitors—you know, Sasukes. That's the reason why the "healer" trope upsets them a lot: these female characters aren't active purveyors of the "new order" like the "bad men", a world in which they've got a slice in the pie; it's that what concerns them, not any meaningful change. That's the main reason why they've got a way of couching their pointless argumentation, and then they run off to "niceties" to preserve their female avatars' innocence in the face of the bad, mean, and angry men whom they were only trying to help—a correction of the anger the subjugated men display! Basically, as long as you speak nicely, you're allowed to speak, not otherwise. And all of these are any imperialistic nation's (mostly USA's) talking points. The scourge of niceties.

That's why the "healer trope" is a subject of so much contention among these female readers: it's not that it exists; it's that the men aren't "reformed" by women as these readers expected they would be—none of them is; it's not that they dislike the "good woman healing the bad boy into reformation" trope; it's that these characters are left dangling half-way into this trope, never achieving any realization—neither here nor there—as the reformation they offer is outright rejected by the male characters and the narrative equally; so the issue isn't the existence of the trope; it's its lack of realization—an important distinction—because if not even your (potential or otherwise) husbands/lovers are "reformed" through the reader-receiving avatar (and the "griefs" she was put through), what's the point? It's the sort of "my expectations were dashed, and not in a good way!" on full display, and I find the results ... quite poetic. Maybe, just maybe, in lieu of performing neck-breaking, spine-snapping, and bone-cracking mental gymnastics, accept that these female characters are kinda ... morally sh*tty people. Here's a thought, no?

In all of this, most lovers of these female characters forget that there's nothing in the manga to highlight their "goodness". If they're less functional in a fascist system, that doesn't take away their participation, facilitation, and romanticization, or rather, preservation of it; and to deny all of that is quite dishonest, because I don't think the "cartoon patriarchy" would get you for a sliver of honesty. Stop turning into cartoons yourselves, perhaps?

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Chapter 17: Uzumaki Naruto: A Naïve Fool or a Dangerous Fool?

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When you read Naruto as a character, you can't quite understand as to what he is or what he personifies, provided that you read it without a clear confirmation bias. There are only two questions that you might ask when you turn over the final page, a shot of Naruto's back that bears Will of Fire flames: Is Naruto a naïve fool or a dangerous fool? The schism between the two lies in the fact that these questions can only be asked and answered by two different readers that approach the manga in a certain way. Not in one way.

Contrary to what people might state, Naruto's an unusual protagonist. A very unusual one. He's not kind, provided that you understand what kindness is. He's not very perceptive. He's not far-sighted in a sense that'd change things for the better. None of these traits are conventionally heroic, especially since the narrative itself compensates for his glaring short-comings by allowing other characters to take the falls instead of his fall: their falls are his rise. Perhaps that's where the division exists: an unevenness that the narrative merely conceives for the character to the path that'd allow him to assume the heroic role indefinitely. Still, an odd choice, but it comes with many issues; and most of them spring from Naruto's less-than-heroic character. He's not the hero that your mind would invoke when you think of the word hero; but why's that? And that's the question that creates the division, doesn't it?

Naruto, for the lack of the word, wants to be a hero; he isn't one in the beginning; and even if you could convince yourself that the narrative's "hero journey", with all its sense of adventure, found the right culmination, then its lack of change for the world around him ought to challenge your view of this trope altogether. Why's the hero himself unable to bring all else to a "heroic transition"? Isn't that what heroes are ... supposed to embody, a character that saves the world? A simple conclusion, but one that never reaches to this conclusion in canon; however, we're so used to seeing this after-effect that the theme's correct course mostly turns into an after-thought for many: he's a hero, so he's in the right, not that he is right. There's a difference between the two; it's subtle, but it's quite large.

The thing with Naruto is a little simple than most would let on: he actually lacks empathy altogether. Really, he doesn't possess any empathy, especially cognitive empathy, a type of empathy that's imperative for a broader understanding of the collective and individual within the collective. Think of it this way: all that he latches onto from others are the aspects he projects back onto them; anything beyond that not only doesn't concern him but he also bullishly beats the person into the ground till he doesn't become colored into his own colors. This just shows that his kindness is a manufactured superficiality that's simply intended as a reception of kindness, nothing more. To put it in very crude words, the dude's just a narcissistic attention-whor*. That's it. This isn't heroism as that's rooted in understanding the perceptions of others and uplifting them the same way you'd do for yourself. Basically, heroism is about making the world rise above itself, not just the hero's world, which is but one world, but the entire world. In this way, Naruto's world is very limited, spatially, thematically, and, yes, heroically; but if his world's heroically limited, then what's the point? What's Naruto's point, as a manga, to have him as his hero? This, I'm afraid, is not easy to answer.

Naruto's character can be distilled down to few simple things, because he is a simple character: he was enamored with the idea of his people and their respect, not the people themselves. The same way as he was enamored with the idea of Sasuke, his rivalry and his salvation, not the person himself, to the point that he attempted to make himself a "personal messiah" for a boy who just wished to be left alone, without ever interacting with his circ*mstances or even trying to comprehend the 'why' behind Sasuke's hatred. It's savior complex dialed up to the nth degree. Look closely enough and that's textbook sociopathy (no, really!). I can also call him a narcissist, and that's true enough—but I'd take it a step further as it's there even in his earlier "never give up!" attitude, and that mostly goes beyond narcissism, at least in my eyes. People who're narcissists, clinical narcissists, always clamor for validation, endlessly; that's their main defining trait as everything's about them, not others; their suffering is greater, and so, the rewards should be, too; that's one of the main reasons why Naruto likes being center-stage in every antagonist's suffering, and he does that by making everything about himself. (Sakura, too, suffers from this, but her presence in the narrative is too tiny for it to matter.)

However, was this the intention? You can read Naruto as a common "Shonen Protagonist". It's what sells. Perhaps Kishimoto didn't allow himself to think about it too deeply, beyond a "common" Shonen Hero, because if you realize you're writing a "madman" as your beloved protagonist in a work themed around forgiveness and idealism, you'd more likely than not lose the desire to write for it. Would you? It's possible he was aware, considering just how much time he gave the Uchiha and the counter-narrative through Sasuke, Pein, Obito, Madara, and the like; but probable? He wanted to write a work on forgiveness, but it kept lapsing back into common Shonen themes, at least whenever Naruto got involved. (Itachi's "unintentional" worship does make it seem that way.) I'd agree and disagree with this notion.

I don't consider anything in writing to be an accident. It doesn't work that way. No matter how many times people try to discredit Kishimoto, it literally doesn't work that way. Also, agree or disagree, Naruto's a fairly unique Shonen protagonist. He's very selfish, and that's been true from the start. All of his actions exist to invite attention. Yes, he was deprived of it, but he doesn't look at the world beyond seeking attention, and that, to the surprise of no one, becomes his only drive: he just wants to be acknowledged by everyone. It's kind of like that: I'm small, so if I'm bigger than everyone else, they'd have to see me! (The quest for the Hokage Seat is a not-so-subtle metaphor for that.)

In itself, this "mantra" doesn't seem that insidious, but given the fact that he's attached himself to a seat of power, a fascist power, it takes a very sinister turn. Here, his idealism is no longer right; it's just a power that overwhelms and practically demonstrates how "might is right" and "history, past, present, and future, are written by the victors". None of this is anything deep (and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense; it's just that, it's very easy to grasp). All of his interactions reek of that: you're either a receiver of the Will of Fire, or you're meant to change—or die. Naruto's world (Naruto as a character) is binary, but heroes are binary forces; yet the domain that they inhabit doesn't crush the opposition the dogma itself created.

He's also psychotically obsessive about Sasuke, but that's due to two things: one) the narrative springs from Sasuke, so naturally, all characters gravitate towards him; and two) it boils down to his constant need for validation; he wants better people to say that he's better, too. (It'd look good on him, you know?) It's about how you'd interpret this, doesn't it? How you read Naruto itself, because it can be read as a well-meaning kid who doesn't know what he's doing, which would be true to an extent; but you can also read this as an idealism that masks a dangerous dogma; and Kishimoto said as much as to how he thinks that Naruto's a fool and unrealistic. It just depends on whether you think a fool can be dangerous, and I think, he absolutely can be.

Maybe only the man knows the true answer: he is this manga's creator, after all; but you can't deny that, as a kid, you'd have absolutely adored the unending positivity and optimism and drive that he displays. He set his sights on the seat and he wanted it. Many kids are like that. In their desires lie innocence as they do represent the future, another beginning for the past; but in here is your problem. Maybe it just is forgiveness from a child that wasn't wanted and who pursued Sasuke, a boy he loved (yes, I mean platonically), and wanted to do nothing but let him know that he'd forgiven him. Maybe it truly is as simple as that.

However, I do believe that Naruto as a Shonen protagonist does have depth, and that's the reason why he can be read in two ways: two Narutos for two different readers. That's a demonstration of good writing. As I said, it just depends upon how you see it: a well-meaning fool or a fool who's dangerous? The thing is, a fool that's got a finger on a nuke-detonation-device is dangerous, whether you see him as dangerous or not; and, frankly, there's nothing more dangerous than fools who sell imperialistic ideologies—nothing more dangerous—because that way, they're easily able to sell them because they're fools; and Naruto, as a narrative, can absolutely be read that way.

As for the forgiveness argument, then, yes, you can read it that way; however, I'd go as far as to suggest that a forgiveness that only works as a conditional transaction that makes it imperative for the detractors to embrace what the "forgiveness monger" is selling is not really forgiveness but subjugation with a deliberate "shine" of niceties. And that's exactly how Naruto's character is, he's the "shine" on Leaf's imperialism, a sales pitch that makes it palatable as an ideology.

Fools that serve dangerous ideologies are dangerous fools, no matter how you slice and dice it. The only thing up in the air is whether or not the writer intended for him to also read like a sociopath ... maybe it truly is a matter of how you read Naruto, a manga with two facets that are as stark as they're fascinating. If it's just a matter of which side you take, then maybe, just maybe, it's the reader's own dogma and its inevitable projection that truly counts, not anything else; and what are heroes if not less-than-elaborate metaphor of state and religious propaganda? After all, you only see what you want to see, not a dot more.

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Chapter 18: Naruto wasn't going to revolutionize the system!

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Did people really expect Naruto to revolutionize the system? Really?! I don't understand, but how? There's nothing in Naruto's character from the start to paint him as someone who ever wanted to change the status quo in any manner whatsoever. No, "acknowledgment by my (Leaf's) people" is to become a part of that status quo, not to exist as a separate entity from it. Remember, despite being a Jinchūriki, Naruto was excluded from the system, considered a social pariah, a fact he desperately wanted to change. That's the main reason why he always went into his long speeches, which many of you find tiresome, but they present a window into his character: his desire for every pariah like him to not be a pariah anymore. That's the heart of Naruto's character, nothing more.

Naruto at his core is about being Konoha's personification, or rather, being another one of its personifications, because Konohamaru (notice the name Konoha in Konoha-maru's name) is its true personification: a collective who's still in infancy. He's meant to reflect Leaf's collective, not individual; and here's where the "conflict" between Sasuke and Naruto begins: Sasuke's individual is meant to clash against Naruto's collective. There's no "reformation" in the idea of a collective that follows a dogma as its identity. I don't know when this fandom will "get" this, but it's been over five f*cking years now. I expected some progress on this front. Where's this fandom's character-development? Develop, mother f*ckers, develop!

That's the main reason why it's Sasuke who chooses to take on the form of a God, not Naruto. As God is meant to be the singular that encompasses the collective. It isn't the other way around. That's why I've never understood it when people claim that Sasuke's mind would've collapsed in the aftermath of this. In the real world? Yes; however, you're forgetting that Naruto exists in a world of magic where magic is power; and you can fight power with power. From that angle, I can't see Sasuke ending his own life as all the past troubles are mitigated quite realistically by his power; and in a world that values might, I can see such a kid surviving by clinging to power alone; and that's why Sasuke values power: it's the only force that provides him with balance.

Would he even be human after the transition? I doubt that as all the "complaints" people forward are human troubles. A God doesn't desire companionship. We require that because we can't start over, our days are limited, and our frailties compel us to seek strength in others. That's another reason why Naruto works so hard to crush Sasuke's dream as in Naruto, believe it or not, lies the most mundane lesson of humanity: reliance in others. Naruto can't understand Sasuke, because people don't understand anything beyond that. Our mortality restricts us within the dimensions of an endless need for these manufactured strengths. You can say that there's beauty in this, but there's great stagnation in this, as well, an ugliness you can't deny. Kishimoto almost tackled this—almost ... however, he was too busy getting this all over with, which is a shame.

That's also the main reason why there's a need for people in our world to create a single face for "social ills", because we can't understand anything otherwise. A good example of this would be the show Chernobyl. It's a very ... let's say, stylized version of events that took place at the time (never mind the wholly cartoonish "anti-socialism" stance that's so in-your-goddamn-face that it's begging to be mocked, but that's another topic altogether). The show created very clear "bad guys" for the audiences to understand, when, in reality, Valery Legasov's own collogues turned against him, to the point that he was driven to suicide. There was no Ulana to rouse the panel's conscience. Why? Because when people stick with a dogma, they go down with it. They don't have a sudden spark of consciousness to stand against it. Very few ever do. Very few. This may be difficult for you to grasp, but it's the truth. Naruto is no different from Legasov's colleagues. He's very much the same. Kakashi's very much the same. Sakura's very much the same. You can create as many "those who abandon their friends are worse than trash" mantras you want, but in the end, your mantra—one that connects you to the collective—would always win out, because when people choose, they choose the path of least resistance.

Naruto's very similar, in that, it, too, shows us characters that, despite being exposed to contradictions, keep falling back to the same dogma over and over again: people will always choose the familiar as they always prefer the path of least resistance. That's the reason that, no matter how many times Naruto's challenged on a philosophical level, either he parrots Leaf's mores or he doesn't have any answer. There's a very clear tendency in the Leaf's collective to remain the collective as, without being a collective, there's no more collective but a mismanaged throng of individuals—each with his own set of dogmas; and in the collective, I'm afraid, you can't function if your dogma, your slogan, your mantra isn't shared by others, as it's with this belief system of a "shared legacy" that most ideologies survive. Sasuke's decision to become a God removes him from this collective indefinitely—he chooses to become an individual because his power affords him that luxury. You don't have that luxury in the real world—you never do; hence, Sasuke's journey from an extraordinary individual to an extraterrestrial god is ... well, very much possible as it's in the realm of the fantastical. His journey, I must say, completely scorns an average fool and his more foolish "power-trips": after your day-dream "flights", you always come crashing down to reality, a Naruto (without his narrative-breaking bureaucratic seat, of course, because even Kishimoto didn't see that one coming, not without a lot of editorial nudging) to the very end; and there's something very funny about that—off with you to the "they're all the same!" group again. How else would an "every-man" like you survive? A manufactured collective can only culminate in manufactured change, not anything tangible; and that's how the mundane works. (These poor souls manage all their social demons through the intense butt-clenching cartoon-land battles with Sasuke; fix-its, as they call 'em—victory, victory, victory, hurrah! It's quite sad ... almost!)

This presents an interesting question: are revolutions a clash of one collective against the other (status quo, too, is a collective)? I'd say, yes. There's no such thing as a "one-man revolution". In a world of magic, anything is possible, and that's why Sasuke is hurled into the role of Indra: a singular force to be reckoned with. It's almost Biblical in its implications: perfections are marred with ills, oppositions, and fears. It reminds me of the story of Satan, and yes, Sasuke isn't exactly like Satan, but there's a human need to stay in the mundane (the everyman's tale, which I'd get to in a little bit) and consider it triumphant. Naruto makes this argument, as well, as "perfect prodigies", Indras, are simply born to fail because they never embrace their … perfection? Is that why Sasuke chooses to become a God, because a God's removal from the domain of man is all but inevitable? ... maybe?

I always found this to be a very fascinating read of Naruto's mythos, because people truly require "faces" for everything, don't they? If a country fails, it's always the ruling class that's responsible, not the masses, even though, if you look at our current times, Capitalism thrives simply because the corporations fulfill the demands with the supply. Yes, you can create a demand, as well, but it isn't simply that, now is it? It's that the system flourishes because of us, pushing us all collectively to the brink of destruction (yes, climate change is very real, and we're living through the sixth mass extinction—the Holocene Extinction; so don't try and slink around this); but we always require the faces, few men not all men, to take the fall for everyone else—individuals for the collective—because we don't want to get our own comeuppances. How many would face up to the fact that the hyper-consumerism that they practice to thrive is built from the ground up from centuries of oppression, exploitation, and subjugation—wars, genocides, and mass-slaughters, an entire military industrial complex, simply created to feed our endless consumption? Hence, if the "men behind the curtains" are responsible for the system, then a system isn't a system without the people in the system. There's no military industrial complex without millions working and feeding their families in your business conglomerate. Naruto's world is no different; because if the Kages are at fault, so are the Shinobi that make up the very system that leeches off the aforementioned social ills. The civilians are just as culpable, silent, passive, and quite obviously complicit.

Is it that Sasuke seeks to punish the masses the he's not that well-liked? In fact, how many times you must've heard this nonsensical argument that Sasuke should only punish the Elders, no one else, because the Shinobi aren't responsible for this tragedy, forgetting that the Shinobi directly benefit from this system of cyclic aggression to illicit aggression so that it can be crushed—and the inevitable profits that come from this social game? That'd be akin to suggesting that only the top echelons of the USA's military are responsible, not the soldiers when it's because of the soldiers that the military even exists, functions, and thrives. I would very much agree with this sentiment. After all, do we ever want to be truly held accountable for our actions? We want the everyman to win at all costs—and others to fall, especially the "perfect prodigies", "the rich", and "the corporations"; when the middle-class is the very reason why the rich are rich, poor are poor, and corporations are corporations. Without the middle stratum, there are no rich and no corporations and certainly no poor. It's the middle that creates this dichotomy. Simple, isn't it?

This plays into the Biblical idea of beauty and perfection and the perversion of good-will in favor of other pursuits that aren't for the good of all. I find it strange how beauty, which is always associated with perfection, is either meant to be protected from perversion or it's a source of perversion. It's almost as if Man has feared and envied it. Envy engenders fear, resentment, and anger. It's an offensive emotion, unlike jealousy. There's a tendency in people to want things to return to the mundane. (Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is about the envy that Christianity engenders, which in turn creates control.)

The orthodox religions are built from the idea that Satan was the personification of perfection, and it's that perfection that fueled his downfall; yet man, inherently mundane, common, and imperfect, is God's best creation because he's imperfect. It's a celebration of the ordinary. Evil is truly analogous with perfection. Good (in our world) is about ... trying, I suppose? Try, try again, and maybe, you might get there someday? It's a very celebrated mantra, a stupid one, but it's so well-loved precisely as to how ineffectual it is. That's why half-way measures are so lauded; incrementalism is the well-spring of good, apparently; because someday, maybe, you'd get there, and that ought to be enough. Obsessive child-bearers go as far as to lecture us de-natalists and de-growth supporters that their children might become the next mock-Jesus saviours of the new world-order (an anti-abortion Christian-rhetoric, but they aren't concerned about that), so they should never stop f*cking each other and the earth and the rest of us along with it—when they can just do something here and now, and not wait for their "supe" children to wear some lord-forsaken marvel cape and butt-over-craking-tight knicker and woosh climate-change back into lockheed martin, raytheon, shell, etc.'s, collective arsehole. Something of the sort ...

Let's be honest: you haven't noticed that "character growth" is about how any particular character is dragged to the domain of the common? The entire idea of "relatability" comes from that. (Sasuke is only accepted by many when he decides to stand with the everyman, not against him, no matter how despicable the everyman of Konoha is; otherwise, he's evil, simply because his perfection is "unearned", "meant to be torn down", and "desecrated", so that he can finally be brought down to the level of everyman!) It infuriates me, but that's always been historically very trendy (the tall-poppy syndrome; the evil eye of the one who envies). Look at the bible: Satan's lambasted because he's not mundane whilst that chum "everyman", Adam (a Hebrew word "adamah" that merely means "son of the red earth", which could be anyone—yes, even you), is lauded precisely for being ordinary and in that ordinariness lies his penchant for obedience, not defiance. In this regard, the everyman's character is nigh biblical as triumph in orthodoxy is about being as mundane as possible, being as imperfect as possible, being as obedient as possible. Because if you're not mundane, you're closer to God and that's a pathway to hell. It's so strange that how books on the nature of divine have practically defined the culture to this point: a very wordy guide to heaven because you're an ordinary mother-f*cker, a man like all the others, a f*cking ... loser? I'm sorry, but I can't seem to read it any other way as it's the validation most look for to feel special whilst not being special in any way.

Sauron's narrative in Tolkien's mythos is Satan's narrative refashioned. (They all steal from the Bible, man, and the damn Christians stole from Zoroastrianism.) He was also called Annatar and was later capable of shape-shifting into serpentine forms, as well (the serpent's temptation in the Garden of Eden over Ambrosia became the reason for Adam's, everyman's, fall from God's Grace). Basically, Annatar means Lord of Gifts or Lucifer in other words. The term Sauron is a perversion of his original status as a Maia (from Maiar that means "the Beautiful" or "admirable, excellent"); hence, Sauron that means "the abhorred" or "the abominable" is the perversion of his original Mairon ("the Admirable", from Maiar). Devil, Father of Lies, too, is an off-shoot of Lucifer that means "light bringing" or "morning star" in Latin. And Lucifer was beautiful—utterly perfect!—and God himself waxed lyrical about his beauty and perfection, not once, but many times; and it's that perfection that caused his fall. It's almost as if you're meant to fall if you're not … ordinary, which makes perfect sense as you can only fall if you're in a state of flight; you can't fall whilst you tread on the ground, can you?

Is Indra's ascent to godhood the true answer to Naruto's everyman? Almost like an Übermensch against the masses, against whom Itachi was almost created as the collective's Übermensch, but not quite; and the Uchiha really are your Übermensches, aren't they—extraordinary men that had to be "regretfully" removed for the system to keep going without a hitch, few men who're to fall for the "ordinary" Konoha "middle-men or -class" masses, men who're unstable and "cursed" unlike the stable and obedient everymen Shinobi? I would say that that's how it is. Is Indra's repeated fall as Indra, Madara, and very regrettably, Sasuke the fall of but a few for the collective? Yes, very much so. The real question is, what's there to celebrate if the collective is a collective of men who thrive on a vile dogma, perpetual obedience, and tyrannical governance? Perhaps we do need our own collectives to battle it out against this collective. Not everyone can be an Indra in many lifetimes. As I said before, Kishimoto almost got it—almost. Alas, he, too, had to answer to this … everyman's collective that only wanted its happy ending—if nothing else, just vicariously.

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Chapter 19: The System, Fathers, and Your Sasukes, Nagatos, Nejis, Hakus, etc.

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When people use five throwaway lines (in their manga "criticisms") to talk about the Shinobi System's "faults" in regard to its unrepentant endorsem*nt of the viscously singular military-industrial-complex and then turn around and rag on Sasuke endlessly through their chuckle-worthy posts, you ask yourself: what's even the point of this contemptable nonsense?

I'm aware that many in this Fandom aren't that bright, but I'd try this regardless: if you look at the framework of Konoha, none of the fathers were truly horrible people. Hiashi pushed Hinata to put work into her training, because she's his heir. When he realized that she wasn't up to it, he decided that Hanabi was better suited for the heir-position. What was he supposed to do in this system, molly-coddle her? The entire future of his clan hinged upon a strong heir to carry forth the system that they'd created. He doesn't have the luxury of keeping Hinata as an heir when she isn't up to it. That's just the way it is. Applying your western parenting clichés at the expense of everything else to a military industrial complex is pitifully idiotic. The only thing that you can talk about is the Slavery System; however, within the Hyūga Clan's framework, that also makes sense as it's designed to safeguard the clan's future. "Lesser Evil", you know?

Minato? He was the Hokage. He shouldn't have bought himself the one-way-entry Senju-farm, but his decision to put Kurama's other half into Naruto for the village makes sense. It's a nuke. A war deterrent. Without a Jinchūriki in the village, it's open to all sorts of attacks. The removal of the most powerful Bijū from the equation delivers a direct blow to Leaf's power, sovereignty, and security. (Why else do you think Hashirama kept the most powerful one for himself? It wasn't out of the "goodness" of his heart, I can assure you.) Within the framework, this, too, is a rational decision, whether you like it or not.

If you look at Rasa, then he was in a far worse position than all others combined: he had to weigh the future of the entire village against the life of one person, his son. (Keep that in mind that the attempts on Gaara's life began after Rasa had squandered all options, including the infamous uncle one.) Gaara went on routine mass-murder-rampages in the village and had probably killed half the village by the time Rasa decided to take his life. And, yes, that's canon. Gaara didn't try and kill people in retaliation to Rasa; it's the other way around. What do you want him to do, let Gaara keep murdering left, right, and center? Is that a good option for the village's Kazekage that's a nepotistic position to begin with? You can't be serious? Should he have been "nice" about the murder? If not that, then what?

Fugaku is practically saintly by comparison, and his unintentional neglect is a byproduct of his desire to save his people—basically, the entire clan. His decision to push Itachi into Anbu at an early age is no different from Sakumo's decision or the decision of the Sanin's fathers. The only difference between them is that Fugaku wanted Itachi to lead the clan's charge and safeguard its future. The horrors! Think of the children! Won't someone think of the poor children?! That's possibly his only crime, 'cause you can never safeguard the Uchiha Clan's future, ya know? That's just mean—to Sakura, probably, or some other pointless female character; even Naruto, 'cause Sasuke's Chad-dad, too, takes the spotlight from us Beta-cucks—err, Naruto, they mean. He can't keep getting away with this!

The problem arises when people attack Fugaku and leave others like Sakumo be, for some inexplicable reasons. When, within the framework of oppression, coup is a very measured response; otherwise, annihilation is the only other option. They also attack Rasa and Hiashi viciously while leaving Sakumo out of the equation. What's really the difference between them? Sakumo, too, is sending his son out into a competition in which murder is not only legal but also an integral part of progression in the Chūnin Examinations' competitive market. That's how the "undeserving" candidates are weeded out of the system. So to leave out people like Sakumo from the equation, because you happen to felate Kakashi a lil' too much, makes no f*cking sense from any angle, as Sakumo is doing literally nothing different: he, too, is sending his son out to be potentially killed for the examination, investment, and military; he, too, is sending him out to war where his survival rate would be minuscule; he, too, is supporting the system, which you people rag on endlessly, that creates this whole circus-show (remember, how he got almost killed at nearly every turn in Kakashi Gaiden? Reboot your memory if you haven't already; the chapters aren't that hard to "get"). Then why leave him out and attack others? Is it that Sakumo was "nice" about the whole process and others were ... honest? Is that it?

This is why the attacks on Sasuke and his decision to exact Lex Talionis on Leaf and the Shinobi Systems mean f*ck all. If you're deliberately (yes, deliberately, because it's so hard to tell with you people) suggesting that Hiashi is wrong for mistreating Hinata (a negligible offense once compared to the slavery that's hip in the clan, but let's play this game, anyway) and creating the slavery system to safeguard his clan; that Minato is wrong for putting Kurama's half into his own son for the village; that Rasa is wrong for not only putting Shukaku into his son but also attempting to murder him for putting an end to his genocidal rampages; and that Fugaku is wrong for pushing Itachi into the system and overlooking Sasuke; then Sakumo and any other father is just as responsible. That, and the entire notion to keep beating the dead-horse of "this manga didn't fix the social problems, so it's so bad, yo!" makes as little sense as possible.

The argument is simple: what are your solutions to these problems? Incremental? What would those be? Remove the marks from the Branch Clan Members one by one while the rest suffer and are sent to die into wars in the place of the Main Branch, anyway? Splendid! Hiashi should be "nice" to Hinata, because "father of the year!"? Minato shouldn't put Kurama into Naruto ... because reasons? "He's his son!" isn't good enough when he's got the charge of the entire system to manage. Rasa? He shouldn't put Shukaku into Gaara for some bizarre attempt at "he was a bad, bad, bad father!" argument while ignoring the simple fact that he has to so that his village, a very poor village at that, has a chance at survival in the world that'd outright crush them in the wake of any aggressive military adventure (Suna was threatened with military aggression from every village save Konoha, just as a show of military power). He wasn't taking Gaara's life because he was a sunday-morning cartoon-villain that was twirling his mustache, because he woke up on the wrong side of bed one day. No, he was doing that to save the lives of everyone else at the expense of his son's.

What about Fugaku? Should he let his clan perish? Keep them isolated so that they brace for the inevitable annihilation? He should be "nice" about things? What is this nonsense? All of this is so f*cking surface-level that it's baffling to me that any adult would even make these arguments, because if you're trying to remove something from a system that's integral to it, you require something to replace it for it to function; otherwise, it'd just collapse because in this world, Clan Secrets are everything as they ensure a Clan's continual survival in the harsh, cut-throat, and dog-eat-dog Shinobi world. It's a cliché, but by God, it's the truest cliché in this universe.

What are the laws that should replace any of this? Everyone should strive to be "father of year", otherwise, they're just meanies? This is juvenile! Slavery? All right, let's remove that, and then who would safeguard the Hyūga Dōjutsu? Some other clan? Why? Anbu? Again, why? What would the Hokage relegate an entire military branch to coddle the Hyūga? You people don't even try to make any sense! The whole reason why the the head of an innocent man was offered was so that a cold-war wouldn't escalate into a hot one between two Villages that both housed Jinchūrikis. A war like that would've been extremely deadly, especially since Kumo had a trained Jinchūriki in the shape of Bee and Naruto was soiling his diapers. (And Bee was a Perfect Jinchūriki at that as he went into training immediately after the Third Raikage's, Ae's father's, death; and Ae never allowed him to leave; he'd fought Minato before all of that; and guess what, Minato couldn't even touch Ae and Bee save that one maneuver in which Bee allowed his partial-transformation tentacle to be hit; he was actually forced by a f*cking teenaged Bee into a retreat.) Leaf had no choice but to offer Ae Hizashi's head to appease Kumo who'd lost face internationally. It was nothing more than a show of might. Leaf was in no political position to take Kumo on, not when their only deterrent was crying about swings in playgrounds every night. Naruto's world, considering the Shinobi System, and most decisions made by the people make a lot of sense if you rattle your brain just a tiny bit. Trust me, guys, it isn't hard. Do it from time to time. You wouldn't spontaneously combust.

And who should Minato have placed Kurama into? Some other kid because putting it into your own kid is sorta mean? What does that even change? It just removes the suffering from Naruto and makes it someone else's problem. How's that an ethical action? If he doesn't do that, then he should open the entire village to an aggressive military attack? I'm spit-balling here, and I've barely scratched the surface of this nonsense. You see how none of this makes sense, right? It's almost as if, here it comes, Sasuke was right! Horror of Horrors, I know! How was he right? It's almost as if the system itself needs to be overhauled; needs to be abolished altogether; and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, because there's no solution in any way, shape, or form to dent the system.

The reasons are simple: all of the clans behave the way they do because they're thrust into a system that functions the way it does; they're merely reacting to that. None of them is performing these actions out of spite. They all simply struggle to find their way into the system's dynamics; otherwise, they're crushed like the Uchihas, Hakus, Nagatos, or Kabutos of the world. There are no other options: either you become a part of the system, or you go against it as none of the "incremental laws" fix any of these problems; they simple lessen their immediate impact for another time. It's ineffectual policy-making at best and the maintenance of status quo in a different form at worst. (And I've already highlighted the "extreme individualism" of godhood in the previous chapter, so I won't repeat myself.)

That's the reason why I don't even understand the attacks on Sasuke's characterization. If you find faults with the system, then what are your reasons for attacking Sasuke's stance at all? There's no conceivable reason to stupidly keep going at a character who's literally the only one who ever offered a tangible solution to the problem: remove the system and keep the rest in check to stamp out any threats of future military-driven violence. Sakura's decision to open a hospital does what? All it does is that it "rights" the paths of the mentally traumatized men so that they can function like effective soldiers and never think of altering the status-quo (and live a sugar-sweet nuclear-family dynamic, 'cause that fixes just about everything, dontchya know?). There's nothing "good" about any of this: therapy doesn't "fix" genocide-survivors; justice, repercussions, and consequences (in regard to the perpetrators) offer some semblance of peace to them. In fact, this "magic-pill therapy fix-it" fad is f*cking vile as it ignores the deeply systematic pitfalls that lie well outside the therapeutic nirvana most people have constructed in their heads.

All of this is just Euphemistic Propaganda, which has always been very popular with all imperialistic states, that brushes aside the issues in the system for surface-level "niceties": you murder, maim, and butcher people; but you see, you're nice about it! Making this about fatherhood solves nothing as all of them, every single one, had reasons of their own to take the actions that they took—just to survive! This is literally propaganda that over-shows the compartmentalization of the remorseless soldier from the good father, husband, brother, or whatever have you. (CIA operatives, who've got the blood of millions of innocents on their hands, are quite notorious for this show-and-tell of "good family man" antics on their social-media profiles; in fact, their new recruitment campaigns are quite woke, I hear.) If Sasuke was a good husband, the system is suddenly ... fine? We should all be like the CIA operatives, guys: rape, maim, and butcher, but never forget to kiss your bastard brood and f*ck your asshole wife on time, because that's what social moral-fabrics are all about! You people aren't even hiding this properly, are you? The very reason why the Danzōs, Tobiramas, Hanzos, Aes, etc., of the world exist is that people don't allow the system to change; and such a system has no alternative save to keep nurturing these people for its own preservation. It's the oldest law in the book: self-preservation!

Really, what's your reason for going against Sasuke? It better be more than "he was mean!" I mean, this is a typical case of "girl-boss war-criminals" neo-liberal-speak: we've got a problem with war-crimes because men were in-charge; we require "girl-bosses" to commit them, as well, for true equality! If it's not that, it's that the village should become a "social pariah's" playground for bootstrap-realization, because he was socially neglected or something? It seems to me that the actual point of contention isn't the war-crimes, but who's in charge of the war-crimes because status-quo's restoration is the issue, not its abolition for the betterment of the isolated, oppressed, and subjugated; however, the restoration absolutely needs to be under the care of this character, not that character over there.

Do people believe that building hospices for the traumatized "future war-criminals" is some sort of grand "leftist" statement in the face of Leaf's hard-right fascism? What's even the point of bringing up the "faults" if the one character that rages against the machine is not only contemptible in your "moral booklet" but should also be put down by the purveyors of the very same system that you believe to be plagued by moral failings? You people are joking, right? Please, stop vomiting out your barely obfuscated desire to see your validation-receiving manga-avatar at the helm of this status-quo with "this system bad, so good female/social pariah make good" argument. It's not cute.

And that's another one of the reasons why people don't "get" Sasuke and make up all sorts of nonsense. There are two main issues with Sasuke's interpretations among the readers who hate (let's face it, it's never just dislike) Sasuke or love him: "his love for Itachi made no sense, so he's not completely well-written" and "he was power hungry, so he didn't deserve power"; so on the basis of these two reasons, there's a "fault" in the characterization, apparently. Is there?

First, we've got this issue with Itachi, and I don't think the Sasuke fanbase (the one that isn't plagued by the nightmares of the "correct" or "incorrect" pairings of his character) truly understand what Itachi means to Sasuke. The thing is, "love" can stand as an antithetical argument to "hatred", not neutrality. To want Sasuke to be "neutral" is sort of ... not the point of his character. Like the conventional haters, I do think the Sasuke fanbase doesn't quite "get" Sasuke, either.

Sasuke considers Itachi to be a symbol, not a man. Itachi's figure in Sasuke's life holds a symbolic value in that it personifies whatever he wants it to personify, and it's always black and white. He's not a person to Sasuke, but a very effective symbol of concepts. Once you understand that, you'd understand all of Sasuke's character and the extremes he swings to as the beauty of his character lies in the extremes, not inside neutral aspirations.

In that regard, Itachi's the personification of a foe on which vengeance has to be exacted; once Obito reveals everything, he becomes the personification of all that's left in the wake of injustices; and in the end, he personifies the spirit of revolution—an end and a new beginning. From this angle, Sasuke's character is very easy to understand. Once a man's existence is there simply as a pathway to another conflict, you'd have to think that Itachi's more symbolic to Sasuke than a person. I'm not sure what more you can make of the man in Sasuke's life.

Then we've got the "power-hungry lunatic" argument that's persistently used against Sasuke, and it's especially foolish given the world it finds itself in.

What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anaemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Where Do We Go From Here? (1967)

Why did I use that MLK quote? It's simple: power is an inherent requirement for navigation in a world that's driven by brutal competition (Chūnin Examinations?), militarism, and state; basically, you can't fight power with ... "love". The notion's completely f*cking bonkers; therefore, when people get upset by Sasuke's drive for power or call him or his clan "power-hungry" (a very knee-jerk and comical complaint), it goes against the very nature of Shinobi, its mantra, its ethos, that's about the enactment of that power to champion your own banner. You must have not paid attention to any f*cking thing in the manga to deny one character power and claim it to be legitimate for others—if power is evil, then why's some power legitimate and not all power within the military context? You'd have to be very simple-minded to come up with this simple-minded solution when, the fact of the matter is, Shinobi as a philosophy—or rather, "Shinobi Philosophy" is inherently about power. Endurance? Sustenance of "personal power" in the face of oppressive power. Will of Fire? Sustenance of "collective power" in the face of "whatever's thrown at the collective". Would it be wrong to assume that the idea of Shinobi is about hunger for absolute military power, only one that's sanctioned? No, it's one of the few objective, within manga's context, realities in the shinobi world.

Regardless of what you'd like to call this, it's still a system that grows from the seed of power, nurtures it, and disseminates it (among the Shinobi, its preachers, practitioners, and purveyors) for the express purpose of its expression in every facet. Villages run on military power—literally and metaphorically. What are Jutsus if not displays of power on a domestic and an international scale? Powerful Clans? Bijū? Jinchūriki? Ninjutsu's evolution from Ninshū for its implementation in advanced Shinobi warfare? Is any of this not power? I'm bamboozled how anyone would deny this. Then why deny this particular character that particular power, basically the Sharingan or Uchiha power? "It's irresponsible," "criminal", or "unlawful" simply isn't a good enough response against the rationale of its acquisition. Besides, if you truly believe that all power and its acquisition is evil, you've simply given up on the ambition to acquire power, which guarantees your complete political irrelevance in a world that runs on power structures. As MLK said that you need some power to implement the demands of justice. You can't enact, transmit, and impart justice without power—in a system that works entirely on political power. You can't be that far up your own arse that you're incapable of understanding this simple logic. Come on!

Or maybe you are? Just keep it real, sis/bro!

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Chapter 20: Sakura, your friendly neighborhood shipping plot-device!

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Chapter 21: It isn't about "women rights"!

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I don't care how many of you believe in this trite, masturbatory bullsh*t, but I generally can't stand this line of thinking; and I'm going to speak my mind about it.

What do you want this guy, Kishimoto, to do? Should women never be put into compromising situations? Should they never be physically attacked? Should they never be emotionally attacked to lower their morale? Damned if you do and damned if you don't, huh? They attack and get attacked back? Misogyny. They don't attack and get attacked? Also misogyny. Should shinobi follow some precise code of conduct for female shinobi, not male ones? If so, why should they be awarded special treatment? Is it that they're women? That makes no conceivable sense, given the contextual realities of the military, and is an argument rooted in the "delicate female constitution", which is, in and of itself, sexist. There's no right way to write violence; and that's precisely why it's called violence. It wouldn't be violence if it were...well, right. Am I taking crazy pills here? Naruto's world, like many parts of our world, is very harsh; you either sink or you swim; and there's no one there to take you to safety, make you flourish, lend a hand so that you, too, can find a place, if only to survive. Sasuke, Ame Orphans, Sai, etc;, are an embodiment of that tragic unpredictability of a future that neither has a closure nor a better end. Just a manageable one. That's what the manga is about, its narrative's spirit. So to hyper-focus it on "women rights" isn't even missing the forest for the trees; it's not seeing any tree at all and clamoring about the bushes instead.

(And let's be honest here, with ourselves and others: it's never Itachi or Kakashi, curiously, not even Tobirama, who're brought under this hair-splitting "feminist scrutiny". It's only Sasuke, obsessively singled-out to peddle moral-isms in all variety, when they all brutalized women; but hey, Itachi only killed his "anti-state" mum, along with defenseless women who died shielding their children from his swords, and an old hag cracker-lady and not some mildly attractive white-woman stand-in like Sakura, so the bitches probably had it coming; Tobirama fixed the "uppity" ones; and it was also Fugaku's fault for killing his own clan, anyway; It hurt Tobirama more than it hurt Fugaku, to develop an entire political infrastructure that f*cked women and children over; and Fugaku that wife-beater-Uchiha never liberated his girl-boss half, relegated her to the kitchen—the nerve; Tobirama...liberated them!; and Kakashi? Well, he lugs around the women...that matter, obviously; I'm not sure why the readers who develop this heart-felt conclusion and then aggressively work backwards from there to legitimize their hare-brained bullsh*t believe that everyone buys into this self-fellating absurdity; let's just keep it simple with the typical, "I hate Sasuke! That emo-bitch! Die—Die—Die!" and not whatever it is that you're cooking; it's not clever, and you're not clever for weaponizing it.)

And the world thrives on abuse, progresses on it, turns a leaf (pun intended) on it. You can't run a system or an anti-system without it. And abuse, violence's euphemistic half, is essential to anything the world throws at you, for better or for worse. And aside of physical abuse, unchecked physical abuse, shinobi use verbal abuse as a tactic all the time: Shikamaru declared himself to be a God to Hidan; Kakashi practically said that he was writing down Zabuza's demise; Madara called, checks notes, countless people weak and worthless, and countless people, mostly men, didn't put up any fight against him and died like dogs; burnt alive, in fact (yes, I'll bet you found the panels very cool and didn't think much on it, thinking that it could've been a "girl-boss" in his place, when they were trying to make a point; you simply didn't see it); etc.; it isn't anything personal nor is it directed at one gender or the other. If you're in the way, you'd be made to get out of the way. Shinobi mean business, and whether it's the fascist business or the revolution business, it is business. As violence is direct, uncomplicated, and easy; and that's why it's delivered with swiftness in the manga, time and time again. So this argument makes nary a sense.

Hence, what's the meaning of helpless? When Itachi attacked Leaf, Asuma and Kurenai stood nice and still like frightened ducks in a barrel and Kakashi got several thousand orifices as a reward (Itachi delivered death by a thousand cuts to Kakashi for three consequence days, over and over again; that's a remarkable level of violence; and Kakashi didn't resist and took it like a good...girl, I suppose, going by this comical argument?); they barely fought back. And during Tsukuyomi, they did nothing. Literally nothing. What does that make Itachi? A misogynist and a curious misandrist, with a self-loathing touch to boot as he's full o' sh*t?

When Shikamaru took Kakuzu on with his band of morons, Kakuzu nearly choked Ino and Choji to death, and both of them couldn't break out of his hold (which showed a great difference between their strengths, albeit it's the same Choji that trapped the Jubi between two Doton walls with his father). Shikamaru didn't do anything, either (please, reread that battle; I'm begging you); all hail Kakashi, I suppose? Ino and Choji did almost nothing, too. Does that make Kakuzu a misogynist and a fat-phobic republican? No, that makes him an opportunist who wanted to harvest the hearts of a couple of incredibly weak Shinobi, Ino included. Danzo's guards didn't do anything against Obito; he slaughtered them for the confirmation of Izanagi later. He tossed their lives away as though they were disposable little trinkets. Does that make him a garden-variety misandrist, and thus, a cringe rad-feminist by default? Sai, when Sasuke so much as looked at him, was unable to even move and he couldn't recover from that humiliating incident. When Team 7 met, Sasuke pretty much subdued Naruto with ease. None of them put up a fight. Etc. I can keep going, but I haven't got all day. What would you call any of that? Is it targeted abuse or is it opportunity? And frankly, Naruto, during that Orochimaru incident, attacked Kabuto first, not Sakura (he attacked anyone who approached him); however, people conveniently forget to mention that and dial it up as if she's always the target of men's attacks, for some inexplicable reason (and it'd make perfect sense to attack her first: shes a medic, remember? What sort of dementia do you lot suffer from that something that's explicitly stated in the manga as a military tactic has been comically taken up as a sexist charge against any combatant that dares to touch them, on the battlefield no less? Go outside once in while; it wouldn't kill you and might do the rot in your brain good); but hey, it wouldn't be pop-feminism without this soap-box moralizing if it bothered to approach the context outside this full-of-itself hypocritical lens.

And these examples are absurd and the Karin one is the most absurd of them all. Karin was pierced through, so that makes it gender-specific violence? No, because violence against male characters, specifically male children, is disproportionately cruel; and Sasuke left Suigetsu and Jugo buried under the rubble not long before that. He knew Jugo was injured and Suigetsu was pinned to the wall. Literally. What would you call this, when he himself made the building come down? Why is it personal all of a sudden when it's a woman? Instead of asking the why, this is where you people go to?

Here's a spoiler alert for those who never "get it": Sasuke didn't care at this point. He wasn't going to let the man who massacred his family get away; it wasn't going to matter who was between him and the object of his blood-lust; he'd have torn through whoever or whatever it was. (It reminds of the fandom's slightly darker days when Sasuke was made out to be an animal-torturer, simply because he saved his skin from using Manda as a shield, forgetting how Shinobi turn entire villages into meat-grinders just for a paycheck; but Sasuke, man, he just can't keep getting away with being an -er suffix of everything mean you can think of!) If that took a sacrifice, of his life and/or someone else's, he was willing to make it. You may not agree with it, but that doesn't make it a gender-based dilemma. And you know what? Whilst it isn't a moral decision, it's the best decision he could've made. Once Danzō flees, he's gone. He goes underground: he's lost forever! This was the only chance Sasuke was ever going to get. (Danzō had stayed underground for decades; this was either going to be Karin or Danzō going for good.) And killing her, believe it or not, when she was dying on the bridge is a very intelligent decision. She's of no use to them; and as she's aware of the hideouts, she'd become a liability. You see, how this scene completely changes when you haul your head out of pop-feminism's backside and actually contextualize it? Try it. It isn't that hard.

Shinobi are all about use: whether it's about the villages or the factions against them; one wrong step, one left liability, or one cast aside pawn, and everything comes down: if f*ckagu had killed Itachi, the clan wouldn't have met a gruesome end; he let anger, treachery, and arrogance flourish in Itachi; and everyone paid the prize; Itachi leaving Sasuke alive made Leaf pay the price; Danzō making a wrong move against Yahiko's faction (the original Akatsuki) changed everything, including the re-branding of Akatsuki, which was changed into an anti-shinobi group of shinobis, walking ironies. And you know what Nagato learned from this? He massacred everyone related to Hanzo; everyone, including children, who were so much as vaguely related to him, which I'm sure never put up a fight. Why did he do this? So that Ame, a pillaged hell-scape, Leaf's and other villages' plaything, could finally locate peace. And who did he learn it from? Well, he learned it from Leaf, and Orochimaru's wise words. Why don't you people contextualize in lieu of floundering about tacky, cheap, and pointless pop feminism? I simply don't get it. You can and can't agree with any of this, but it's basic determinism at play here, not female oppression that the author has sneakily shoved at the backdrop for nefarious reasons.

As for Karin, then she was brought into the battle in lieu of Suigetsu and Jugo, not because she's a woman and that Kishimoto wanted to shame her because she's a woman (well, young girl), for f*cks sake! My goodness! She was brought in there as it's a simple writing contrivance: she's a sensor, and her being a sensor utterly transforms the battle scenario; as this is the first time Izanagi is being elaborated to the reader through someone intimately analyzing it (Obito used it before, as well, but that's a different argument). Without Karin here, you wouldn't know that it's not a conventional genjutsu; it's not a clone; it's not some sort of a space/time jutsu; etc. (What would Jugo and Suigetsu contribute to this? Nothing.) However, it's something that's allowing Danzo to, seemingly, come back from the dead over and over again, with no end in sight. And as Sasuke's going at Danzō full-force, it creates a hair-trigger situation, in which you don't know whether Sasuke even has it under control or whether he's just emotionally charged and beating his head against an unwinnable battle; we don't have access to his mind, but we do to Karin's; she's an open-book during the battle, reading their every move out-loud for the reader to understand. It makes the situation nail-baiting, tense, and completely unpredictable. And without Karin being there, it can't be written that way. So in lieu of appreciating the brilliance here, your go-to "criticism" pit-stop is this: Sasuke stabbed her, so he's a misogynist; and if he's a sexist pig, then so is the author? f*cking seriously?! This is some kangaroo-logic right there, and I can't believe it's a thing in the fandom. Any fandom! It's f*cking crazy!

Here's a thought, and I'd be brutally honest: why's it so hard to understand any of this? You can't write a deeply political piece without -isms. Time and time again, people, women, too, will be brutalized; they will be subjugated; and they will be murdered in colorful ways, ways which you wouldn't approve of. You can't create high stakes in a manga like this by presenting an inconceivably sanitized encounters with women. They're helpless? Well, they'd be mowed down. They can't fight back? They'd be killed. They can't talk back? They'd be mocked. Is their treatment somehow worse than what so many male children went through? None of them could fight back; and they got tortured; and, after the torture, either killed or brain-washed to be recruited into Leaf's, or any village's, friendly brand of kumbaya-fascism. It's almost as if you lot read and reread that stinky Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg and ran off with it; stuffing it down your throat, regurgitating its girl-boss-isms, and nothing much afterwards. These are stories. They're meant to serve a purpose. They're not there to champion with the program or practice shut the f*ck up once in a blue moon.

Representation doesn't mean anything in a world that's rife in stratification, and the only women on top are the ones that are monstrous, either passively with showy healing; or actively with warfare (Tsunade's brand of healer-girl-boss trope is especially heinous, given her direct involvement in Ame's tragedy; but hey, she...fought men, or something and took up a fascist post; so progress and yas kween?). None of these women are even that emotional, as most over-emotional characters, to the point of hysteria, in the manga are men. None of them, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of their reasons, ever reconciled with their pasts; and the only thing that lets them bypass that calamity that can be brought about by jumping headlong into battle is power. The men who don't have power are eradicated; hence, their persistence to have that; and that's the only commodity that can speak the Shadow Villages' language in that world, get the point across; however, when Kaguya is brought out to match and then exceed that power, it's misogyny yet again. How can anyone even remotely sensible win against this pitifully idiotic bingo-book that's got a thousand little boxes to check? Stop looking at every goddamn thing through pop/neo-liberal feminism. It's irritating. Is the manga perfect in regard to women? No; however, it espouses far from the maliciousness you lot are so desperate to attach to it...in a bid to feel morally upright, I suppose.

Go outside and touch grass. This discourse is infuriating!

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Chapter 22: Uchiha Itachi: Woes of a Fascist Pacifist.

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Will of Fire is when the Senju arrive, belch fire and brimstone and an assured damnation to Leaf's own brand of hell, a tradition that's only bequeathed to the "yes men". And that's the point, right there at the beginning of all the mess, where Itachi's character just utterly falls apart, to the sort of pieces you can never bring together.

There's some vagueness to Itachi's outward semblance, his persona, in the beginning: embellishments from 47 Ronan (his arm in the sleeve); one of the lines that he states to Sasuke is lifted from the aforementioned narrative, word for word; and his seeming, and I truly mean seeming, soft heart for Sasuke, enough that he quells his anger in front of his father and others who'd come to implicate him for Shisui's murder. All of that (during Sasuke's recollection of the turmoil leading to the massacre) represent parts of the puzzle; yet when the full picture is put together, his character doesn't change for the better; it's the exact opposite.

Through Kishimoto's erroneous structuring of Itachi's narrative, we're to assume, from what fractured bits are presented to us from his boyhood, that he was a boy who stood apart from all; and that instilled in him a sense of being a pariah amongst others, whose ineptitude and the arrogance that stemmed from that ineptitude pushed him away from his own roots towards greener pastures—leaves or Leaf, basically.

And all that molded him in ways that he engendered a deep contempt for his own, willing to extinguish them in a moment of great foolishness, a catastrophe borne of youth's audaciousness in being headstrong and too willing to tread too far for what he believed in. (Strike first and think later, which is what youth and its risks are all about, especially for young boys as they take great risks in adolescence.) You can state that he was a boy who was butting his head with a generational problem that was way over his head, having no agency in reaching the right juncture in spite of being supposedly intelligent, gifted, or what have you.

Then Obito spills the Senju beans (to Sasuke), and when all the pieces fall into place, it's a very messy picture that ought to have stayed as vague as before. Where did it all go wrong? Kishimoto's inhuman schedule? Fandom popularity, a horde the called the shots? The editors that forced Kishimoto to fall in line with the popular demand (which has happened time and time again in the manga)? I'd say that it's all three as you can't conceive a colossal narrative f*ck-up as big as Itachi on your own; it's, given how many aspects in the manga are utterly brilliant, just not humanly possible.

And I'm going to jump straight into this without any dillydallying as the f*ck-ups are as numerous and colorful and as they're scroll-thin. The very first blunder that the narrative makes in the "revelation pages" is his handshake with Obito (whom he was dead-sure was Madara, but I'd refer to him as such). What's the purpose of letting another Uchiha live, one that could bypass even Leaf's defenses? Sure, Obito was beyond his capabilities, but it isn't as if he even inched towards creating the tiniest possibility for that confrontation. Did he join hands with Obito as he was Itachi's only way into Akatsuki? You can make that claim, but it isn't as if they don't take dissidents into their group, because that's what Nagato wanted, a place for powerful Shinobi who'd forsaken their villages in the wake of injustices, disagreements, or simply for the sake of freedom. A line than ran across their place of alliance, one which was akin to loyalty on the brow, was enough to offer them his sanctuary.

The unshakable disloyalty was enough to create a camaraderie (of sorts) between them all, the makings of a unified step towards salvation that all of them wanted—each in their own way. What was stopping Itachi from letting his government know that another Uchiha—except for the very malleable youngling, Sasuke—existed out and about, heart of the "band of terrorists" that not only meant business but also to see it through all the way to the end in regard to that business? Hence, nothing was more dangerous than the Akatsuki, a threat that was armed to the last teeth to make true to that promise of a greater world that lay beyond these villages' wanton thresholds, grotesqueries of their worlds, dreams, freedoms.

If he'd grasped even the tiniest bit of the situation's seriousness, Konoha would've had detailed dossiers on each of these so-called S-Ranked "terrorist threats", but they were in the dark; and Itachi, by choice, remained in the dark himself, not lifting one ringed-finger to sabotage, delay, or muck-up even one of these bijū-gathering events. No, he participated in them with gusto, throwing out decidedly cheap philosophical musings when the mood presented itself. And if we're to take Obito's and Danzō's brief encounter seriously, and we ought to, we can safely assume that the two knew each other, hence, the sharing of Sharingan stashes. Since they did, can we also safely hazard a guess that Itachi was played for fools? And after all that, he went back and tortured Sasuke once more—a boy that was already teetering on the edge of sanity—expediting his descent into a self-destructive pit, a maw to which Sasuke directed his course after a miraculous recovery from a life-ending coma (which Itachi had gifted him as a reunion present).

If Obito, a living relic of the past in his eyes, one whose ideology he hated, was calling the shots of the very group in which Itachi decided to camp out in, what were the odds of this "sacrifice" of his ever finding any right course? And knowing that he was about to perish, what did he do to warn the world of the group's plans? You do see that how this character burns to ashes before he even takes off the ground for any meaningful discussion?

The thing is, there's "something" there, something painfully ambiguous, in all that muck that could afford him a charitable interpretation, but it isn't nearly enough to save his every aspect from being undercut by the obvious writing pitfalls. For one, the Uchiha demands were very benign. Fugaku and his sympathizers asking for a Hokage post isn't the sort of demand that they were in any position to make, not with a forceful hand. It was within Hiruzen's power to deescalate the situation: desegregate the clan, police, and compound, which was in their power. The job is done. The crisis, averted. Why wasn't it done? Why did any of the so-called "demands" tick Itachi off to the point that he decided to make a choice? What are the negotiations that keep getting referenced, but with no tangible evidence in sight? If the council, together with Hiruzen, were bent on never making even a single change to the way things were, am I supposed to believe that Itachi was in the right? If the clan was asked to smoother the dissidents, then what was the Council offering to even set the plan into action? And knowing all that, what prompted Itachi to declare at the end that the clan had to change? Change to what? Stop the resistance? Stop any demands? Accept the subservience? Accept the social degradation? Espouse the village's brutality? Espouse its…will of fire at their own expense? When no reason is awarded other than what the manga shows, how can any individual tell me, with sincerity, that Itachi wasn't a callous jingoist, a single-minded, wanton, and uncompromising zealot? You can't tell anyone to bring out any sympathy—even empathy—for a monster such as Itachi.

And all of that sprung…from what? Conspiracies and unfounded bigotry levelled against his clan at every turn? And to risk repetition at this point, am I also to believe that he didn't know that Tobirama set up the Uchiha to be smothered to death tortuously or quickly depending upon which stance they took against the injustice he structured into the village's very pillars? We know that from Hiruzen that Itachi, from a very young age (7, in fact) took great interest in the village's history—that he thought like a Hokage (let's assume that to be a compliment for now). Tobirama himself admitted to all that, declaring how prophetic he'd been about their inevitable demise. Am I then supposed to believe that Itachi was unaware of the fact that Tobirama didn't let any grudges against the clan go, which he'd harbored from the Warring Clans' era, refusing to embrace the other clan, choosing a path of constant provocation and escalation against them? You ought to be aware that Itachi was aware of the clan's history to the point that he perverted its aspect to lead Sasuke astray (he recreated a brand-new tale on Madara, one which took pieces of history and rendered them in ways to cast a terrible light on the clan's past)—to redirect Sasuke's anger to a path that he desired: contempt for his own; furthermore, he was a double-agent, playing both sides, so he knew which surveillance mechanisms were in place; he was one of the very mechanisms to keep the clan in check.

And to be candid here, Tobirama's the most insidiously evil mother-f*cker in the entire Shinobi World's history—Itachi's a good shadow, a great Shinobi, of the doctrine Tobirama engineered. The 4th war sprang out of the political infrastructure, malice, and the culture he created. This is stated in the manga—by his own brother. The other wars are consequences or actions that he and his followers took.

Once you reach this realization, Itachi's character loses any semblance of sympathy—even a façade of it—in the process. He comes across as nothing more than a misguided and ruthless patsy, an attack dog who turned against his own for a fascist state that never had any reason to act out for "survival", when all the power, all the cards, and all the courses existed in its domain from the very beginning. The most charitable, and stretched to great thinness, reading of his would be that Leaf charmed him so brutally that any and all cruelty from its end was a justified course in his mind, as long as the state's dominance was upheld; something that, to no one's surprise, culminated in Leaf's final escalation with the Senju "prophesied" ethnic-cleansing.

Then I'm, by his insistent and sociopathic and moronic sympathizers, asked to believe that he sold out the clan to safeguard his brother, whom he mentally and physically terrorized for the better part of a decade, with the end-goal of fracturing the child's psyche (through the KA command, might I add) and forcing him to assume the role of Konoha's solider—one that would replace him as the next Leaf dog, next perfect solider. Did he…really care about Sasuke? After all that I've said, can you truly reach that conclusion when the object of his love was seen as a replacement for his absence in the village? You can't sincerely believe in this, can you? As from this perspective, he only spared Sasuke because he saw him as his own replacement, not that he nurtured any love for him.

Itachi reads like a f*cking awful, inhuman, and psychopathic military man; and any argument, from his sympathizers or the manga, comes across as blatant war-criminal apologetics. Even his disdain against the Uchiha Police Force (PF) makes nary a sense as it was a poisoned chalice; and lo and behold, it was described as such, even by people like Orochimaru who were objectively detached from Leaf's politics. The "illusion of power" that the PF was granted to investigate and arrest their peers didn't bear any fruit; as not only were Anbu and Root created to be utterly immune to their reach but canon also showed people like Itachi (who belonged to Anbu) retaliate with great aggression for this innocuous transgression, proving yet again that even the lowly soldiers had full authority to overrule any of the investigation attempts at any given moment, and with force at that.

This gave the clan power's illusion, to which they quickly became very aware, and also denied them any power at the same time. A paradox that existed solely to humiliate them consistently. In the meantime, the entire setup attached the stigma associated with PF, investigation, and incarcerations with the clan; and that in turn created another great barrier between the clan, Leaf, and all other perks that come with being a part of a powerful military junta. And that was the sort of cornering that the clan had no hope of ever overcoming, not in any meaningful way, to turn things around for the better, salvage their repute, change the course that assured their destruction. It was a poisoned well from the start as they couldn't take a single step without any approval from the political stronghold that denied them the very aspects that they desired. This was a lose-lose situation, one which Itachi single-handedly tipped over the edge.

Suggesting, "it was all Danzō's fault!" doesn't represent the nexus of the trouble: it's the argument that's conveniently chosen to side-step a very real reality: Danzō was Tobirama's protégé, like Hiruzen; and like the rest of the council, he inherited his bigotries against the Uchiha. So did Kagame. So did Shisui. So did Itachi. It's a chain of command, a hierarchy of power where all play their own part; and Tobirama lies at the apex of this issue; Itachi, at its tail-end.

The worst part of it all is the manner in which he flaunts his clan's legacy, gloats about his Sharingan's power, and belittles his opponents through the possession of the very same power that he ended in a bloodbath at Leaf's alter. And that brings to the fore another repugnant side of him that he considered the clan to be unworthy of that power; and himself, worthy. And his supposed "pacifism" is rooted in this phenomenon: power to end lives shouldn't be in the hands of the ones not collared and restrained by the state; once that changes, it becomes a source of utilitarian good, and all the lives lost are mere mistakes that are correct in that journey to greatness.

Doesn't that send a chill down your spine? A teenaged, and later a young man, fascist whose arrogance is nigh biblical, who did all that he could for a state body that perpetuates the Shinobi Doctrine that's perpetually stagnated in the waters of an unending cycle of life and death and a cold war? And here's the truth of the matter: Itachi destroyed everything he touched—everything—save for Danzō, the council, and Leaf. Sasuke, the great object of his "love", suffered the most at his hands, in his own narrative to write a replacement of him out of Sasuke.

But hey, apparently, all that's required to detach yourself from the past as a dedicated serial killer and cleaner of contrarians on a pay-check (à la Kakashi, Gaara, and others like them) is to swallow down Naruto's sandal and by extension the Leaf's. Then watch the lovers burst out their love-juices in their jorts in glorious details, most of which pollute the Fix-it Fan-Fictions shipping gutters (Sakura Fandom being at the forefront of this fascist vicarious fantasy; they didn't like the "canon robberies" she went through) and the "he was a kind soul" discourse in great numbers. Some people deserve all the mockery. They're born for it!

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Chapter 23: "Fix it" Fictions

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"Fix-it" fictions have an inherent flaw in the manner in which they tackle Canon's "flaws". There's a reason why the characters behave in one manner and not the other.

There's a reason why Naruto is the way he is: he represents the naïve idealism for tomorrow in a world that's uncertain. Sasuke's the way he is, because he represents the martial aspects that governed China's and Japan's male youth in times of turmoil, especially in the past when Confucian thought was intrinsic to the political landscape in many Asian Countries (Honor, Clan, Family are integral parts of its precepts.). Sakura's basically a fool, a no body who's thrust into a world in which she doesn't feel like she belongs. Kakashi's a man who refuses to grow from an infantile disposition in an attempt to hold onto the past; he's childish in every sense of the word. So "fix-its" toss these away and keep the narrative beats intact, and that's why they come across as parodies.

The issue with these "fix-its" isn't that they're written; it's that they discard the thematic aspects while keeping the narrative aspects; and by doing that, they remove the connections that bind everything together. It's no wonder that every single one of them comes out as an impressive cluster-f*ck of ideas that don't blend together at all. Really, no matter how many times you want to turn Sakura into this "neo-liberal girl-boss", it wouldn't work as the narrative disallows her extreme transformation at the very basic level. Sakura's meant to appeal to people, ideas, and Leaf at an emotional level that's remote, civilian, and detached; to thrust her into Clan Politics would indefinitely come across as absurd as she's always been an outsider looking in; and that's her character's whole point. Sakura literally wouldn't know a damn thing about Clan Politics, and to assume that she would because "book-smart" is a very childish interpretation of Canon and human psychology in general; she's never compensating her lack of integration into Clans for studious endeavors that'd magically make her an "expert"; it might shock you, but not even real people work that way. (In fact, look at all the Kages in every single village, and you'd notice that they all have something in common: they came from clans or were intimately associated with them through their mentors; they were groomed into the position from an early age.)

Why do you think Kakashi doesn't work in the manga post Pain-Arc? The reason is that once the "those who abandon their friends are worse than trash!" thematic shift happened, Kishimoto really had no choice but to keep the shift intact; however, by flip-flopping between the themes, it ruined the character's integrity, and the reason is that you can only accomplish this in two ways: either you deconstruct the character itself or you deconstruct the theme entirely; since, Kishimoto did neither, the character remained as messy as before, floundering between the themes when the canonical evidence doesn't back it up. (The sword he carried was a transference of his father's symbolic reference to himself; yet the manga refused to stay there.) So if you turn him into this "tactful father" figure who's suddenly so caring (and I've seen this a lot, and that's completely non-canon; it's made up!), it's a comical transformation of his character. It'd make no f*cking sense as his "lack of growth" is precisely the point and to make him grow up out of the blue is tone-deaf writing.

Naruto's foolhardy idealism is the very reason why he works. You may not agree, but disagreements shouldn't exceed canon's own fictional truth to accommodate yours. Naruto was never revolutionizing the system (as I explained in the eighteenth chapter); he was always going to bullishly pursue his own brand of salvation through a personal dogmatic interpretation of the impersonal state dogma: a mantra of forgiveness that's quite paradoxical in that it forgives when it should brace for consequential political action. That's the reason why Kishimoto expressed remorse at having to choose Naruto's forgiveness over Sasuke's relentlessness as, by opting for that, the narrative pats itself on the back for allowing Leaf to congratulate its own self-aggrandizing kindness, an action that it unabashedly takes in spite of its liberal fascism. That "choice" became the narrative's "answer" to the flaws it presented. It's a little thing, defeat, but it had severe consequences in regard to how it wrecked havoc on the narrative's own elaborations of the system's "faults". You can't simply defeat the main theme driver of the manga and not expect any lasting consequences. (I feel great empathy for Kishimoto and his crushing schedule that was completely dehumanizing, but it is what it is.)

Therefore, turning Naruto into this "all-powerful" Shinobi who breaks legs, pops out several fancy eyes from his every functioning orifice, and spews middle-school philosophy on vengeance first and asks questions later doesn't fit in with the aspect of naivete (which is very much dangerous) that was meant to draw everyone into a mass of Ninshū followers that rejected war (and by extension Ninjutsu) for peace; you know, under a "benign" leader who understood the common man as he himself was common to Sasuke's uncommon? Basically, a "hermetic shinobi", something Itachi preached about, but we don't talk about that fool. In fact, by weaponizing his foolhardiness (in these power-trip take-down fantasies in which Naruto's an angry man, because you were angry on his behalf), you've done the narrative no favors and have missed the great forest for the sodden, dead grass. That's something the narrative itself did, but it was more "look at this fool who dreams big!" thing rather than anything that blatant. Focusing his arc on "pairings", believe it or not, works even less as now, you've just abandoned the baggage he brought to the narrative altogether and have turned him into an insufferable moron who's less self-aware than he was in Canon; but hey, at least, you got your pairing in?

With Sasuke, the issue is far simpler: no matter which aspect of his character you carelessly touch, change, or modify, it either butchers the character completely or over-amplifies one aspect at the expense of others; and that in turn results in a messy character that's more caricatural than human. That's the primary reason why Sasuke's the most difficult character to pen as every theme not only originates from him but also ends with him. That's his character's greatest achievement and his greatest dilemma as Naruto's forgiveness becomes his undoing. His character, for the lack of a better word, is completely undone when Naruto's given the higher ideological ground right at the end; however, he's this manga's engine in every sense of the word, and that's not something that should be taken lightly if you attempt to write on his character.

The problem with "Fix-it" fictions for Sasuke is that they don't realize the depth of his character's contribution to Canon (yes, yes, your emotionally charged denials are very funny): Haku's "ethnic-cleansing" theme is brought up because of Sasuke, a comparison Haku himself states, and he's the one who carries it forth; Neji's "othering" is linked to Sasuke; Gaara's aggression becomes Sasuke's aggression; Nagato's revolution finds its true purpose through Sasuke; Sasuke becomes Kimimaro's avatar, Orochimaru's purpose, and Itachi's salvation; he takes on the personification of Naruto's promise for a better future; he's Indra's vengeance, past, and genius; so on and so forth. (There's a reason why each and every one of these characters were removed from the narrative's focus in varied ways; and I think you know why.) As you can see, that's a lot; so to reduce the character to a love-starved monkey whose only purpose is to appease some fan-fiction writer's self-validating fantasy is clumsy writing that shouldn't ever be taken seriously; and by trying to brutally crush him in various ways for some "catharsis" because the canon upset you ... really, I've got no clue what you're even doing save over-indulging in a masturbatory power-trip that should never be considered a sincere attempt at story-telling. Your peers might put their jaws on your genitals and tell you otherwise, but the rest of us know better.

I mean, seriously, what the f*ck are you people even doing? Don't make your poor attempts at writing sound grand or anything. Bring yourselves down to the ground. You aren't writing anything special. A little self-awareness wouldn't kill you. My point is, write whatever you want, but don't expect any of this to work.

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Chapter 24: Naruto Wankers' Literary Endeavours

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Warning: Strong Language. This will hurt a lot of feelings, so refrain yourself from being curious about my terrible pastimes if you're of a fragile constitution (in other words, a Naruto wanker); and, no, I remain remorseless about all this deeply moving content that I've typed out.

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Naruto-Centric Fan-Fictions can be distilled down to the following "sensible" choices that reflect their readers' bend of mind to perfection:

Mikoto adopts Naruto (never mind how Kushina and Minato treated her and her Clan, by continuing on with the state-policy of isolation, surveillance, and oppression—if trollops like Kushina are your "friends", you don't need to make more idioms with "knife" as the central theme).

Hiruzen adopts Naruto.

Iruka adopts Naruto.

Kakashi adopts Naruto.

Some other "cool", and he better not be uncool, Shinobi runt adopts him, because why the f*ck not?

All of them should just stop whatever is it that they're doing and clean Naruto's soiled pants, mine out his boogers, and take him to the whor*-house to initiate him into manhood—before Sasuke, of course, and preferably at eight when his little balls are still tight because that'd just be mean! (This little runt was created to be adopted or something—never mind the fact that how every other orphan save Bee had it way worse than he ever did.)

Jiraiya adopts Naruto (he was never his God-father, but a "naming parent"; this f*cker was never his responsibility).

Sasuke treats Naruto like a little brother (as if this kid didn't have enough problems, but he absolutely requires a whiny excess-baggage that belches out narcissistically long "that guy's f*cking literally me!" speeches on top of his genocide, torture, and isolation trauma).

Itachi adopts Naruto (lol? He should drop Sasuke, his own brother, and adopt you, I mean, Naruto? Why? This reminds me of "A World Full of Monsters" in which Itachi lauded that Naruto-imposter Self-Insert after he butchered his six-year-old brother and kicked his dead-body in the face, with impassioned Spark-notes' Shakespearean summaries, urban dictionary enlightenment, and 'my dear diary' middle-school memories as his guide, which drive him into these metaphoric hysterics in the shape of Self-Insert Fan-Fictions to truly feel alive; and he went down on one knee and called Itachi a "God"; you could almost taste the ardour of hom*oerotic ca*wk-fetish off the text in that one; however, as the writer professes, through his Naruto-esque-c*nt-slime-drawing power tirades, that he's a sexual of the hetro variety and only Itachi-curious, we believe in him, because "believe it!", mother f*ckers!).

Akatsuki make Naruto their leader (instead of pulling Kurama out to complete the Gedo Mazo, you mean? Just . . . why?).

Some random girl takes a chance on Naruto while everyone laughs at her by running after Sasuke, but when he turns traitor and abandons his followers (?), they regret it and that random girl now is the cause of every girl's envy. (There's a whole thread on reddit for this very topic, I kid you not; and a quick scroll down the guy's profile shows that he's a virgin who doesn't care about getting laid, apparently; some of you soap-drop your way deep into these penetrative revelations and then pretend sincerity.)

Sasuke's dick is cut off and he's turned into a chick so that Naruto can f*ck him. (It's done purely to emasculate Sasuke as, keep that in mind, that for the longest time, "Sasgay" was used as a slur against him by many of these base-dwelling overweight Fandom-aficionados; that and Naruto's canonically tiny Jutsu-making-rod upset them so much that an emotional turmoil over it exists to this day, which compels them to cut off the long ones of every man . . . just to level this "genetic-odds-are-stacked-against-you, bros" playing-field.)

Satsuki (Sasuke's "girl-version's" name) is drugged or drunk and is raped by Naruto or Kiba or her own brother, and then she falls in love with Naruto because he rescues her. ("No fear and have no tears, your date-rape rescuer is f*cking, no pun intended, here, believe it!" Subverting date-rape expectations, one Naruto-Centric Fan-Fiction at a time!)

Sasuke's tortured to death by an all-powerful Naruto. (What did this poor kid ever do to this candy-floss sugary-Fascist dunderhead? Also, he wears an all-back outfit, together with the combat boots as an added "bamf" touch, that's Slauter Xstroyes's aesthetic meets a seedy hippy's painted candy-man van by the beachside, only without any of the self-awareness in sight.)

Sasuke makes a move on Hinata, and he's killed by Naruto. (f*ckers, he doesn't care about this stuttering c*nt; canon Naruto himself doesn't, either, only you do, as she had to fall back on an entire Genjutsu to get his prick to respond to her incessant whining; must we all be privy to your "charisma man" and "dumpy pure Asian wives" fetishes?)

Sasuke spends the entire fiction making up to Naruto, because . . . reasons?

Naruto goes through this middle-school three-dollar melodrama session in which he doesn't forgive Sasuke and vows to kill him! (Again, that's you, not Canon Naruto; you f*ckers are so desperate to turn into this other Uchiha guy, huh? If "not like the other girls" had a male version, this would be it; and I didn't even know about this concept till about a month ago.)

He turns into a vengeance machine, a one-dimensional caricature of Sasuke, who takes on Konoha, because the swing was very upsetting to sit on for the round-ish nates that tuck away his true disposition.

(People just desperately want Sasuke, a fictional character, to care about their self-inserts, don't they? And we deal with the stink of it that'd make a "skid-mark-wearing" warrior blush! Heck, many of them write this stuff, man; it's deeply personal to them, O-kay? The pee-bottles, whose colours range from cautionary yellows to may-day mustards, which line their cabinets is a proof of their labour of love.)

Sakura marries Naruto, but she cheats on him by having Sasuke's kid, and that makes Naruto try and take his own life. Ah, the tragedy of it all that Harold Bloom forgot his obsession with Hamlet and his bones wanked the air where his prick was once located. (There's a Fan-Fiction named "To Live is So Much Harder" on this exact topic, by the way, where Naruto redeems his canon narrative's mediocrity through the pitfalls of self-assured fanon-adultery.)

Every "breedable female" or that looks like a "breedable female", but might not be a "breedable female", is open-season for Naruto; yes, even your boomer republican or neo-liberal "girl-boss", but semi-retired, grand-ma, provided that she's still tidy! And all of them are virgins; yes, even that grandma. Kurama's powa(!) makes Naruto's kit-pole so freakin' long (and someone seriously debated with me on this over the private-messages) that he's in Ame, but he f*cks women man—he just f*cks! f*ck, yeah, he f*cks! "Satanic rock-n-roll sign"

Haku is also transferred to his pole, because it isn't as if the story of his ethnic-cleansing is important or anything like that. (Also, it was very trendy in Heian and Edo Japan for beautiful boys to cross-dress; so it shows cultural illiteracy, as well, not that I expected anything much from the bozos of American Naruto Fandom; the term Shōnen, which developed from Wakashū, for instance, used to mean "sexually appealing youth" in the Edo Period.)

No one should cheat on Naruto, because I hate NTR (not projections at all, right? Many a thread on this phenomenon exist on reddit, and the heartfelt, cloying sentiments that come with them; and many gather round to share their sob-stories whilst being a wizarding virgin—Merlin's beard!).

Throw in a hefty dose of thinly veiled pro-white-imperialism harems, Sasuke take-downs, Banshee Sakura, and some other power-trips and the "literary" endeavors of these dude-bros are complete. (They've making canon better, dotchya know?) Then some people tell me that I get the "core" of fan-fictions wrong and that it ain't mountains upon mountains of desperate validation-seeking pile of nasties. Be self-aware!

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Chapter 25: Back when hom*osexual slurs were trendy

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Chapter 26: The "Nice People" Syndrome

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Chapter 27: War and Social Meaning

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Chapter 28: This dumbarse was manipulated!

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Chapter 29: Let's all get that f*cking "Chad"!

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This fandom is littered with f*cking insufferable little twerps (most of whom are now in their late thirties as they grew up with Naruto; some of them even have children; how embarrassing) whose only hobby seems to be to self-insert the f*ck out of Naruto and Sakura—a habit that they should've outgrown back in their school days, but alas, none of us are that lucky; and Naruto and Sakura are perfect as self-inserts: annoying little arseholes, with a huge baggage of petty self-esteem issues, who had no friends, got bullied, and were sidelined by others. So Naruto and Sakura are exactly like how their own middle-school sob-stories went. Zoinks!

Sasuke, on the other hand, is everything they wished they could be, a beautiful, hyper-talented, and popular kid they hated at school. Heck, I've seen people post this bile about their college and university fellows, as well. In fact, "popularity" is the most coveted social aspect amongst the western youth (don't believe me? Go and google it), so it's no wonder that it factors a lot into their interaction with art, its analyses, and the inevitable "fix-it" cesspool that springs forth from their barren imaginations; and it's also no wonder that they they find most literature and academic content "pretentious". You are what you consume, after all. Many kids are also committing suicide over Instagram these days; they've got chronic depression over their lack of popularity; and movie stars are their role-models whilst the rest of the kids from a lesser world have very little prospects in life, save some that belong to the privileged social-strata. As someone (who's from a lower-middle-class strata) from a third-world country, I can't even begin to wrap my head around this circus-show (I can't "relate", as they say). And, frankly, hate me all you want, but I've got little empathy to spare for any of this superficial bullsh*t. (People have a limit to their empathy; this is my limit.) You shouldn't be surprised that that's exactly how their Fan-Fictions read: masturbatory fantasies about popularity, desire, and status-quo! Art (even this "scum that floats atop your gutter-canals" art) reflects life, you know?

So it doesn't matter to them that Sasuke's a state-sponsored terrorism or genocide victim, or that he was nearly tortured to death, humiliated, and horrifically brutalized by the state, its machinery, and his own brother; it's that ... he had it socially better than Naruto and Sakura (something which isn't even canon, given the treatment the Uchiha received), like that chad at school; so in these illuminating Transformative-Fandom "literary endeavors", he just has to pay for walking aaallllll over the nice-guys and nice-girls like Naruto and Sakura. (The poor things tend to even the playing field, even if it is in the fictional world.) Which is why the irony is so delicious and indicative of their resentment towards such people: they turn their own characters into shoddy versions of Sasuke, or that chad at school. In simpler words, they just want to be Sasuke whilst simultaneously ripping all the things that make him ... well, Sasuke! It's like saying, "take away his good-looks, genius, and status, what does he have that I don't have?" You get the point; and the adage, "old age is the revenge of the uglies!" is about how youth and all its delights fade, so carpe diem; but in Sasuke's case, he's "not that attractive!" you see? It's all fake-canon-news, and it's Sakura that's the flower-blossom-something queen all the Uchiha men wet themselves over and Naruto that's Uzumaki Kurama-powered-co*ck Fabio ... or something no bitch can survive without; so they tend to write long, very long, shameful paragraphs to establish the characters—or rather, themselves as such. So many life fix-its, so little time! Their real-world hyper-consumerism of cookie-cutter entertainment and hostility towards challenging art and academia illustrates that succinctly, which is why they choose to wallow about in FFs rather than ... evolve.

Pick up any Naruto- or Sakura-Centric story and you'd see that they behave a lot like Sasuke, with none of the sociopolitical depth that he brought to the narrative at large. (It isn't even a micro aspect that's limited to a little society like the village, but a macro analyses of realpolitik and its very real repercussions across the state-terrorism landscape that Sasuke single-handedly assimilates into himself as a character.) They've just really f*cking angry over ... middle-school slights and some vague attempts at "women empowerment"; because Sakura was robbed of ... something (god knows what that "thing" is beyond cheap romantic escapades and making us all "believe" that she was that misunderstood beauty all along, a prodigy that everyone, especially talented men, sidelined; like how they believe themselves to be like, as laughable as it sounds); Sakura-Centric Fan-Fictions are a parody of feminism and represent everything wrong with white neo-liberal feminism at large; and because Naruto should've had everything Sasuke did and more, so he's got to be compensated by throwing a throng of dim-witted and status-obsessed bimbos at his feet (bitch, you go for the nice-guys, not the jocks!), a Hokage position, and what have you. Basically, if you throw away all that makes Sasuke, Sasuke, you've got a character that's just very, very angry, and over nothing-burger issues at that; and his canon sociopolitical praxis now is just some middle-class status careerism in so-and-so-centric fanon. (Social issues, which canon liberally tackled, even challenged, are aggressively, brutally, and utterly crushed to make way for romance that's placed squarely within the very institutions that breed intolerance, bigotry, and murder at large; state-sponsored terrorism, colonialism, and war are written on with absolute glee, with self-insert avatars at the helm of it all, occupying fascist seats of power to receive vindications for school and other rubbish social slights; with the manner in which the antagonized world today challenges, stands against, and questions all of this, why would you write slavering content to pat yourself on the back as an imaginary state-backed terrorist? Tell us how you really feel!) How delightful because, if the anger that was rooted in generational injustice, intolerance, and inequality is out, what are they even angry about? Beats me!

As much as they try to pretend that they're different, both of these fandoms operate on similar mechanics: Sakura and Naruto are always shown to go through similar motions in the "glorious Fan-Fictions (FFs)" penned about them, albeit Sakura Fandom considers itself to occupy a loftier moral hill (lol!), but not before all and sundry, especially the Uchihas, don't smooch their "godly" hindquarters and humiliate themselves silly over every little slight these two bitches supposedly suffered. ("Men or women slighted me, so my manufactured moral-vengeance across thousands of trite sentences to reach genital nirvana is on!" is the go-to theme to begin their fanon sermon.) To top it off, all of these FFs utilize the dreadful 'Therapy Language' in place of believable dialogues. FFs like Legacy and Kill Your Heroes drip thickly with it like no other; their versions of Naruto, Sakura, and the other unfortunate canon-characters that they set out to murder talk as if they're conducting a sermon on some f*cking lame topic no individual, sane or lunatic, would care about; it's so f*cking stupid! Get out of your mom's basem*nts once in a while, breathe fresh air, and talk to people, because no body talks like that! And the funny thing is, Kill Your Heroes' author has admitted that she can't talk properly to people in real life, which makes her "characterization" endeavors all the more comical; it's a self-parody that's happening in real-time. Any half-decent writer would've mitigated around that issue, not ran into it headlong like a fool; but she's got the locked down backing of a troop of bile-spitting and hysterically masturbating baboons that can't seem to pry their jaws off Itachi's maggot-riddled chode for Itasaku glory, creatures who've never read anything but FFs and who really, really want to gurgle his ball-sack's drippy rot through Sakura. We get it—you want to f*ck this wonky and messily pieced together drawing real bad; just don't be like Evil is a Relative Term and make it that perversely obvious. (The woman's in her late thirties, for Lord's sake; and for that, I can confidently state, "what a long-cherished and difficult-to-part-with chastity does to a mother-f*cker"; she's a shinning example of that virgin-shipper wizardry, so don't be like her, kids, and do us all a favor: learn to talk to men/women, stop being a f*cking weirdo, and get laid so that you don't have to write desperate pro-genocide and child-torture apologia and frame it squarely into your self-insert and terribly conceived p*rnography, where the character you abuse your twat over to numbness touches your hair so tragically that he's got to call you "tigress!" for that endeavor—my brother/sister in Christ, get f*cked by someone and stop being a moralistic c*nt about this cringe shipper-content!)

How are these FFs, with utmost conviction, used to mock canon, which has some of the most believable dialogues I've ever read, is beyond me when they're live treatises of self-mockery? (Jesus Christ, she admits that she can't seem to talk properly to anyone, and least of all to the men that she finds attractive! The unnatural, wooden, and absurd dialogue-exchanges that she's written between Itachi and Sakura are a testament to her complete failure as a writer; at best, she'd be a hit amongst the lot that adores third-grade discount erotica, written by their saint-patron Coleen Hover, but that's it; the fact that this woman's "writing attempts", and I'm being generous here, are used as a shining example of "bettering" canon and a "penetrating" feminist-role-model treatise is the very definition of everything that's wrong with Transformative Fandom as a whole, a woman whose fiction's dialogues read as if a bunch of half-greased robots that run on a college IT department's messily cobbled together AI are fumbling through "twitter woke-speech"; if you genuinely talk like that, seek out a pricey therapist; I implore you!) And Legacy's horrendous machismo gives the impression that the dude spends his days looking out the window at random women, seething that they don't throw him a bone, open their legs at his command, and bear him a dozen children to carry on his ... dud legacy (pun intended); he probably has an account on 8-Chan where he laments his virginity and dating prospects and blames women for his repulsive attitude. The dude has written an Incel-Manifesto disguised as an FF. (Evil is a Relative Term is his female counterpart.)

And you know what? I don't even mind all this, pitiful wish-fulfillment as it is (things that they'd never achieve, given their mediocrity like the characters they see themselves in, so let them dream on), but what I do mind is that how this discourse that should never leave the confines of Fan-Fictions is weaponized into "how the little guys, men and women, are sidelined in real-life"; "how art should reflect mundane suburban struggles"; "how art should always be relatable"; etc. Are you mother-f*ckers mental? The real issue isn't that the status-quo is anti-women or anti-middle-class or what the f*ck ever; it's that the status-quo should assimilate the middle-class into its power-structures? That in itself stands in complete opposition to the very fundamentals of progressive-ism, which these fandom writers pretend to espouse, and is f*cking anti-feminist, a movement that's about the abolition of power-structures, hierarchies, and status-quo. Have we come full-circle that stinky "girl-bosses" and "little men" are our role-models and that we adore integrating them into the hallowed annals of Transformative Fandom? Then these bitches start scouring the internet and harassing anyone who doesn't agree with their brand of ... whatever it is that they're selling. And here I am, thinking: how long has it been since you last touched your local library's grass? If you want art as an instrument to bend to your very petty whims, it's about time you had some serious introspection as you represent one of the integral aspects of modern and post-modern world's anti-intellectualism. We've gone well beyond the Society of the Spectacle Debord predicted, folks. Heck, if he'd seen all this, he'd have screamed himself to death.

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Chapter 30: Short Commentary-1

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Another salient addition to the chapter Senju Tobirama and the Uchiha Ooga Booga Booga

I've talked endlessly about Curse of Hatred being a calculated racist dog-whistle and nothing more from Tobirama, quite endlessly, but I wanted to add just a tab bit more. A key element that people forget is Danzō, one of the four last surviving members of his squad. People don't realise as to how Danzō was basically itching to find any reason, no matter how little or remote, to kill off the clan and get away with murder (and gain all eyes in the process to up his game): if he knew or had even the tiniest reason to believe that he could argue against the Uchiha, using their "Curse" against them—as in that he believed that they had an "Evil Gene" of some sort—he'd have stayed silent on the matter? He'd have shouted it from the rooftops. Why did he stay silent on such a huge "scientific break-through" that, according to Tobirama, was a "biological inflection"?

In fact, if this were true, his every interaction with Sasuke would've gone markedly different: he'd have mocked the youth that his clan "deserved it!", something which a chunk of Western Fandom never stops telling us (regurgitating racist talking points that they've learnt by heart over the years, only in which they replace x, y, or, z race with the Uchiha and come out incessantly repugnant in the process, as many of us have heard these accusations in in our lives; so it's very easy for us to sniff them out); he'd had died with this mockery fresh on his lips. Why did he stay mum about something so big when he had no qualms about mocking Sasuke that his Clan was still "useful" through the eyes he was carrying on his arm? (Sigh, what a stupid fandom.) This "I told you so!" would've started from as early as Sasuke's defection to the point when he took over the Hokage seat. That'd have given him ample power and reason to connect the "Evil Gene" rhetoric, perpetuated by Tobirama, with Sasuke's "violent behaviour", thereby validating it all by declaring Sasuke's "uppitiness" as a self-fulfilling prophecy. He'd have outright lobbied about it in front of the Daimyō that the youth, Uchiha Sasuke, was a threat as he came from a genetic lineage that was . . . well, genetically evil. What stopped him from doing any of that?

Yet Danzō didn't even let slip a little whisper about it; the one person in the whole world, like Tobirama, who had the most reason to vilify the Uchiha, who, by the way, was one of the experts on the clan's genetic make-up outside the Clan; however, somehow, and for some inexplicable reasons, he had no reason to believe that they suffered from any "Curse of Hatred" or anything of the sort. Why? Oh, maybe, you know, Tobirama's "science" was just scientifically unproven racist bullsh*t that even people like Danzō couldn't back? Wow, what a thought, huh, that he could actually just be racist?

I've already talked about Orochimaru in depth in the chapter, mentioned in the title, but I want to add another thing here: Orochimaru had no qualms about possessing the body of a youth who was genetically predisposed to . . . uh, "craziness"? Why would he occupy the body of someone (who he was getting for life, by the way, and not just three years; and I can make a post on this, as well, as it's easily provable) who would turn crazier and crazier with each tier of Sharingan that he gained? How does that benefit him? You Tobirama wankers do realise that this makes no sense, right?

What about Black Zetsu? Even as he outright mocked Sasuke whilst he absorbed his and Naruto's chakra about tinkering the writing on the Tablet he, just like Danzō and Orochimaru, just didn't think that he should tell Sasuke about his crazy f*cking clan? What stopped him? He was only going to slowly kill literally everyone through the Shinju. Seriously, what stopped him from adding this very important detail that Tobirama swore by? You know, this creature that's thousands of years old and knew the entire Shinobi history, including Indra's? Yet he forget to mention this, somehow? Huh . . . how strange?

The fact of the manner is, the only thing that does make sense is that Tobirama, basically, created the Naruto-verse version of Colonial middlemen/model minority-system; and he accomplished that by making uchiha the exclusive police-force of Konoha, and this in turn not only excluded them physically, economically, and politically from the village but it also planted a clear anti-Uchiha sentiment in the general populace. And he did that by creating a justification called "Curse of Hatred". Funny, how, in his own words, Leaf's Will of Fire was enough to cure the "fault" in their genetics, which makes so much sense, amirite, guys? You hear that, guys, genetic problems can be healed through Tobirama's Christian . . . err, Will of Fire mongering or something. It's totes doable; you just gotta believe it!

This theory literally has no backing beyond Tobirama's racist conjecture as what he peddled as "facts don't care about your feelings!" about the Uchiha before Sasuke (and others) can apply to other clans, as well, especially the Uzumaki Clan who were literally, yes, very literally, known as Savages in the Naruto-verse. Yet which Clan met its genocide at the hands of the very vestiges of Tobirama's own squad—a genocide he, apparently, predicted with great accuracy—and which one was an unfortunate erasure at the hands of random incursions? It's no wonder I consider Tobirama apologists to be very sus!

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A very Short Commentary on Tobirama's so-called "OP Jutsus"

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Tobirama's a scientist because he invented Edo Tensai by studying human bodies. Orochimaru cited him as his sole inspiration in his human experimentation endeavours. (You know how Edo Tensai works? It requires a live sacrifice; I wonder how many people this man must have experimented on, tortured, and butchered before he ever invented ET as Jutsus aren't created overnight; they take years to be created, let alone perfected for use; and we know this through Orochimaru's perfection of Tobirama's own Jutsu, ET, for a fact!) What "most OP jutsus in canon" are we talking about here? Shadow Clones? A dunderhead like Naruto learnt it in a few hours, and it's worthless for most Shinobi as it requires a chakra volume and stability almost all the ninjas don't have. (Who's even used it outside Leaf? I recall one mention of it in the Third War, but it's probably a mistranslation; it's a Kinjutsu because it poses a danger to the user's well-being, not because it's "OP".) Its main use also isn't combat, but intelligence gathering (remember how Kakashi taught Naruto to cancel his clone and gather together what the clone had learnt? I'm glad I'm jogging everyone's memory here). This is outright mentioned in the manga. Naruto uses it the way he does as Kurama's chakra has been leaking into his system since birth, and that allows for the mass-clones and their stability. Really, I can name at least 30 OP Jutsus right now that Tobirama never invented. (Let alone "most OP Jutsus" in canon.) Heck, never even encountered. Which "most OP Jutsus" are those, then?

The paper-tag explosives? It can't be used without an Edo-Tensai body (Tobirama used it on himself as he possessed an ET body; this Jutsu literally can't work without an ET body at your disposal); and his Edo Tensai was abysmal to the point that Orochimaru and Kabuto both took it to a level that Tobirama had to praise Orochimaru for it. Hashirama praised him, too. So Tobirama's ET isn't really OP as the ETs that were brought back using his version were at a mere fraction of their original power; and ETs can be sealed fairly easily if they're average or weak; they just have to be subdued. (S-rank doesn't mean super-dooper Jutsu; it simply means a "Secret" Jutsu; and that's got little to do with its learning curve or power.)

That just leaves Flying Thunder God Jutsu, and that I can give you; but its variant was invented by Minato, not him. So beyond that one Jutsu and some f*cking pathetic Suiton Jutsus, which accomplished jack-sh*t in war, which OP Jutsus am I missing? Some of you really need to read the manga in lieu of making fanons in your heads.

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Chapter 31: The "nuances" of war machinery

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Chapter 32: Oh, my God! Sasuke's a mass-murdering terrorist!

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Chapter 33: Fiction doesn't equate reality? No f*cking way!

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Chapter 34: Framing this and framing that!

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Why does the fandom keep using a journalistic phrase “media framing” for narratology? The correct term is either frame-story or framework; and both of these are markedly different: the former's just a manner in which a series of stories are structured; and the latter's the structure of a particular story.

The term “framing”, to my knowledge, doesn't even exist in literary theory. The reason for it is that there can be various genres that muddy that term: how would you define this so-called “framing” in a narrative that's either overrun with unreliable narrators or running on unreliable narrators; what about absurdism; what about satire? It's just a layman's term that’s abused by a lot of Fandom-Discourse writers to lend credence to whatever argument they've come up with on Saturday. The media-framing is there as a narrative (for the express purpose of the creation of a particular meaning to broadcast) is created from a scenario that isn’t a narrative; to utilize that term to define a narrative that’s … a narrative makes no sense whatsoever.

I'd be the rude one here and say it outright: the fandom’s argument on framing is incorrect. This isn't how framing works. In fact, this fandom has a fundamental issue with grasping framing (or whatever that means as they seldom define it) as a whole. Journalism is a very different topic. It's got little to do with visual grammar in narratives. It's mostly about the manner in which sentences are structured.

The most accurate comparison can be made between advertisem*nts and narratives, but only to an extent. Literature is also a part of media. Media is just a plural for different mediums. And all of framing (I'm starting to really hate this word) in narratives are directly picked up from literary theory; and the basic method to decode most visual grammar is just based on 5 (or was it 6?) rules of grammar in regard to syntax. So "framing" isn't far removed from basic grammatical structures to begin with; hence, your best bet is to go for “framing” in regard to the structures with the narrative, not outside it. You can't ignore the 99% of the narrative and only stick to the last bits that do abide by what you say. Throughout the manga, the framing is either neutral or close to it.

However, the author’s intentions are unjustly dragged into the discussions. But what are the author's intentions? In the earlier interviews, you can see that what many Pro-Sasuke readers are accusing him of is very much correct: he did portray Sasuke as misguided, but a narrative that's built on Will of Fire wouldn't show it any other way; but then as the narrative went on, Kishimoto showed a different stance; and his interviews back it up.

At the heart of it, the manga is about bonds from Naruto's side in regard to community (or what it means to be in a community); and in many ways, Naruto reflects Kishimoto's own fears (he's said so himself); Sasuke exists as a metaphorical challenger to Kishimoto's own views on politics, family, and friendship, which is why there's very little reconciliation between them in this regard; they're fundamentally very different people.

That's why you never get any insight on anything from Sasuke (I can count maybe five panels in the entire manga that do that); it isn't till he opens his mouth that you know as to what he's thinking. This is a conscious choice, not an accident, because Kishimoto can't understand Sasuke; he's an anomaly in Naruto's world, and by extension, Kishimoto's. This manga is just a very long self-expression of empathy in regard to Sasuke: why does he do what he did; why can't he come back; why can't he let go; etc.; etc.; etc.? There are so many "whys" and all of them are delivered from various iterations of Leaf’s community. It's a desperate bid to understand, rationalize, and observe a character that's far removed from Kishimoto and his views—and that is ... fine! There's nothing malicious about this. In fact, I commend Kishimoto's effort to even go this far into the criticism of the military, given the fact that he comes from a very small village (the lack of trees in the city frightened him initially), which is a part of a country that's nothing more than a terrorist empire's vassal state, designed to butt heads with her foes.

You'd think that it would be easy as pie for a man like that to just ... pen whatever the f*ck he wants. It's not. This isn't how it works, and the process—or rather, progress in that development to understand the victims wronged by the state ... frankly, is beautiful.

Sasuke started as someone walking "into the darkness"; yet his Mangekyō is the only one that's inverted; and in the War-Arc, when he opens his eyes, he outright states, "these eyes can see through darkness!" It's the very same "walking into darkness" flipped over its head at the very end. Even Kishimoto understood that it isn't as simple as a walk into darkness and everything goes black; no, it's a constant struggle between autonomy and state's aggression and the essence of survival that lies at the heart of it.

The fandom takes to heart the former "he was in dawkness" and the beats the f*cking sh*t outta it, not even f*cking bothering to analyze the character in its entirety. Heck, many fans revile Kage Summit Arc’s Sasuke, and I want to ask them this: why the f*ck do you even like this character? Is it the duck-arse hair? The long list of abilities that their “favos” would never have? Is it that he's broody and cool? If you aren't even engaging with the arc that presents a clear divide between what Kishimoto thought and what he was going to think in the future, a tussle between two sharp dichotomies, then why even f*cking bother with these empty self-serving, criticizing (Fandoms criticize; they don't know a thing about criticism) tirades that center horrifically on "why doesn't he behave the way I want him to; why's he not like his Hebi version; why was he shown in dawkness (Kishi hates him; f*ck you, kishi; I can do better than you!)" and not what the character is trying to illustrate: a confusion in the narrative's direction itself, clearly from an author who's lost; so Sasuke's lost; and that's ... not bad writing, I'm sorry. I'd stand by this, it's brilliant writing from a man who's struggling to make sense of a character who's so f*cking remote to everything he believes in.

When you ask for the author to do more, you're asking for an author to procure some sympathy out of thin air to understand the people he doesn't understand—not in the beginning, anyway. What's superficial about initiating a process like this? Sasuke was never going to receive some long-standing ovation in the narrative. People like Sasuke are viewed with a hostility; this narrative, on the other hand, blunted that considerably and left with the readers a challenge, which almost all of them failed rather miserably. Look at about half the people who do sympathize with the kid: they don't like his methods. How do you expect the author to please their fragile sentiments that're wounded over a little violence. At this point, you're asking for the impossible!

To suggest that all of this wasn’t intentioned is a dishonest position to take. There's no evidence as to what you're suggesting, either. It's an easy dismissal, one that I just can't agree with—as either something is well-written and thus well-intentioned, or it isn't. You can't argue at both sides of the fence here and come out with a coherent answer. Did his brutal schedule affect his ability? Of course it did. Look at Itachi, Kakashi (he didn't want to bring this guy back, so there's that), Shikamaru and the goofy end to the Pain Arc; but that doesn't mean that everything else around it is devoid of rationale, intention, and value. At this point, you might as well just dismiss the whole thing and call it a day—because, if you go for this view, then everything's a happy accident; and we both know that that's not true.

To reduce the whole thing down to “the hero won and Sasuke was labelled a villain” is a very reductionist stance—very much so. The manga doesn't have to meet you at your terms. It's got its own. It's just a refusal to engage with the text, not unless it meets you at your own terms. You do know that Sasuke stands as an opposition, right? So what he's saying is the opposition; and that's more than enough to create a marked schism between two dogmas. Why's that not enough for you? What's there not to get? Why should Sasuke get an affirmative from outside himself? Why's his view not enough, even if it anchors only the entirety of the damn manga? What are you looking for? Therapy language, "Sasuke, you are valid"; "we acknowledge your trauma"; or "you're right"? This isn’t middle-school; you’re required to bring to the narrative your own moral apparatus; it isn’t Kishimoto’s responsibility to break it down at a fundamental level for you. That's never happening in a narrative like this. Not even Paradise Lost that illustrates the greatest vengeance and the greatest wrong in the history of humanity ever went for this route. Why? Satan’s out-matched by a cosmically effective force; and he alone has to take up the arms and create a difference between two sharp views: holy and unholy and what it means to be at the wrong end of judgement. Sasuke's no different; so either you accept this approach or you don't, because that's how Sasuke is; and there really isn't any flaw in this approach; it just doesn't match up with yours.

Why do you want Naruto to acknowledge Sasuke? This isn't how it works. Would his acknowledgment suddenly take away the flaws in the narrative? The ending, of course, is a stinking pile of rubbish; but that doesn't detract from the rest of the manga—only 99% of it. This isn’t a conundrum you can’t fathom—it’s a rather simple logic, and not everything is about “heroes winning it all”. I'd go as far as to state that heroes are a less-than-elaborate metaphor of state and religious propaganda; the fact that the manga even challenged it—on any level—is a marvel in itself. And whilst yes, Naruto is idealism; then Sasuke isn't. And that's perfectly fine. To demand from the narrative a Sasuke-heavy view goes against the very nature of politics as a whole—even historically. You might as well just ask for a miracle.

Chapter 35: “Haku is just more tragic and a better person than Sasuke; and so is Batman!”

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For starters, bogging things down to the simplistic selfish versus selfish does a disservice to Sasuke's character that's got many crests and troughs to formulate an entire characterization; and he'd have to be selfish and selfless at the same time to make this work: what's more selfless than returning the lost honor to the dead; what's more selfish than assuming godhood? It's between these questions that Kishimoto locates Sasuke's character who's ever bit 'pure' as he defines him to be: he's neither here nor there and swings to the extremes over and over again. And without these extremes, you can't challenge a system of extremes.

The truth of the matter is, the world's always forced to change with violence and devastation; and Sasuke's only one who doesn't let go, doesn't forgive, and doesn't back down; and it's because of that you get these two extremes. Sasuke is a character of extremes. He's never mild. That's how he's meant to be. I get the feeling that the Sasuke fandom, with their "he was so noice!" dissertations, does his character more harm than good as, in their desperation to match the other characters' "niceness", they lose the extreme a revolutionary is meant to occupy as an opposition to the status quo--another extreme. The sooner the fandom realizes this and embraces the Sasuke canon shows, the better. As mild reason would dictate, it's fine to point out the hypocrisy, but a Sasuke that's nice ... doesn't exist in canon. I'd go as far as to state that Sasuke's good isn't what most would call good, though it is what you can call "good for the great good". Take it as you may.

First, we’ve got the “batman” wankers and their sensible bits about letting things go, pulling up the justice underwear when the blinky light comes on, and watching the rest from an ivory tower--almost literally. These posts have no point. The reason is that Sasuke's got no reason to let the genocide go, no matter how many "perfect victim" decorum many a guy demands; the reasons are just not good enough. And frankly, is that all what characterization amounts to, sympathy versus lack of sympathy? Such a middle-school mentality to hold. The fact that many also use Haku as a model ninja to emulate, a kid who was helping Zabuza in starving an entire population to death, alone proves that the criterion isn't morality; it's simply decorum, civility politics, and other surface-level social niceties. That's why criticism of Sasuke's character has always been laughable to me as, even on morality grounds, Sasuke still triumphs--it isn't till you drag in the "but he was mean to them, though?!" mentally deficient look at societal fracturing that he falls short. Well, then, it's not the character's fault, now, is it?

Besides, if people can't sympathize with genocide, then they need to self-reflect as, like most people from imperialist nations, they demand the victims to experience misery passively; as the moment they react actively, they lose their sympathy. It speaks volumes about them than it does about these characters. And whilst I’m at it, f*ck batman, yet another obscene caricature of America's design, a billionaire whose other persona wants to make things right. It's absurd as to how transparent it is; and there’s no equilibrium to be found between a billionaire vigilante and a victim of state-backed genocide. His parents died to a thug whilst Sasuke’s entire culture, family, and identity were mowed down in a single night at the state’s behest. Sasuke’s narrative is rooted in social isolation, marginalization, and oppression (gateways to their eventual massacre); Batman’s parents fell victim to an unfortunate event. How are these two the same?

The caretaker and therapy argument is another odd one. Even if Sasuke was given a caretaker, what then? Does it erase state-sectioned brutality practiced against his people? I feel that people go at this from a very weird angle: therapy is a magic pill that makes all your troubles go away! Its as if, as long as you get therapy, justice isn't important, which is why the insistence of Sasuke fandom in this regard that he needed therapy is bizarre to me; it's the way I'd said in "The Good Girls of Naruto": therapy serves as a course-correction for people wronged by the state body; that if they received mental and emotional support, they'd stop their "meaningless" vengeance and work for the state, not against it; it’s as if, if you’re against the state and not for it, you’re irrational, crazy, and don’t have a grip on your psyche. The entire discourse can be distilled down to dog-whistling of anti-state actors when it’s seldom that cut and dry. It never is; and for this reason, I'm glad that there wasn't any therapy in canon; its romanization in the western world, irrespective of context, is bonkers to me.

And to finally drag this to Haku, he was far from "good", and he was doing exactly what Sasuke was doing. Crazy, right? Who would’ve thought?! The reality is, his theme got transferred to Sasuke and Kimimaro's association with Orochimaru and Jugo's reverence of him also got passed on to Sasuke, as well. That's why Kimimaro had the earth seal and Sasuke, the heaven. (Look into the Heaven and Earth references in Japanese mythos; they might blow your mind.) This couldn't be more blatant.

Furthermore, Haku was blockading Waves so that he, together with Zabuza, could collect funding for Kiri's overthrow, which Mei crushed sometimes later after they both died. Seriously, what the f*ck do you all keep going on about? Haku's character didn't end because he thought, "wow, Kiri is so f*cking cool, so I should just, like, die now!" No, it ended because he gave his life up for his master and their cause. Ya know, Konoha f*cking up another uprising? And Gaara? He was always a sh*te character that was mildly interesting in Part I, so like I give a damn as to what the many buffoons think in this regard.

And the most interesting thing about all is is that Haku was directly challenging Kiri. He was being paid by the dude, Gato, for blockading Waves and funding dissidence. This is yet another one of the intellectually bankrupt criticisms of Sasuke: he's doing the exact same thing as Haku; in fact, a lot better as he freed the poor whilst Haku starved them; but he's still bad, because he was so mean to poor lil' Naruto and Sakura! This has always been about self-inserting. Don't fall for this.

Here’s my point: Sasuke practically ate up Haku's theme; he was its continuation; yet Sasuke was hated in Part I, well before Shippuden ever happened. We see Haku outright state that Sasuke is just like him--another dead giveaway of the thematic transference that's working at middle-school level. Then why’s Sasuke hated and Haku isn’t? Sasuke threatened Naruto and Sakura; Haku didn't. That's what makes him stand out. Direct threats and all that? Sure, but at its core, it's just another one of the reasons that serve as an add-on to their raging hate-boner for a character that, for all intents and purposes, is a lot more benign that Haku ever was--in actions; however, as Haku is mild mannered, he doesn't stick out. Oratory is important to these maggots; you'd best believe when I tell you this. (Neoliberals felating Obama for his oratory skills isn't just a joke; it's how it goes.)

To elaborate further on this: it's the scope of the threat; Sasuke's a bigger threat to their world; Haku isn't, albeit the former has the latter as the first stepping-stone in the journey; they're, from a thematic stand-point, the same characters.

However, as Haku never antagonizes Naruto and Sakura personally (on the contrary, he's beaten quite brutally by the former), he never reaches that level Sasuke does who pummels Naruto's shovel-in-the-face mug into the dirt every time they come face to face. Sakura is the same. Sasuke humiliates Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi, with his words and deeds and he’s never ashamed of these actions, whilst Haku was humiliated at Naruto's hands.

As a result of that, Sasuke becomes an object to chase, match, and covet, not one to leave behind in the dust. Naruto and Sakura catch Sasuke’s leftover dust, and with it come the political shenanigans. Their egos, political and/or social, are just rent asunder every single time by Sasuke; and as most people survive by attaching their smaller egos to the larger egos of the state, Sasuke's taunts become deeply personal.

It isn't that Haku's a better person (give me a f*cking break!); it's that his ego is ruined by Naruto's and Sakura's; so theirs remains intact. As Sasuke is confrontational by nature, they're always on their toes, unable to destroy his ego for themselves. It happens the other way around: Naruto gets his mug punched in by Awa Shinobi over Sasuke; he hyperventilates; his every ability is learnt for Sasuke (yes, every single one; he didn’t even befriend Kurama without his drive to stand alongside Sasuke as his equal); and Sakura is no different, who gets nearly offed by him at every turn; whose words are thrown back at her with added mockery; and who becomes a medic shinobi so that Sasuke would get impressed enough to finally get with her; Kakashi's every Jutsu is refashioned and made a million times better by his own student, an unprecedented feat; so on and so forth. Their ego-validation entirely hinges upon Sasuke's acceptance of them, not the other way around; and as he never accepts them, they’re never validated on any level and on their terms. Their chase continues--volume after volume, chapter after chapter, panel after panel; when one round of this mad chase ends, another begins, a never-ending game of humiliation (you gotta laugh at the simplicity of it all)! And on and on they go, getting shamed by their peer and the student at every turn. Sasuke shows them up, and that, my friends, makes it hard for the “that character’s so me!” lot to process through, live with it, ya know? It’s psychological (manga) trauma at every turn, a lack of the MC-syndrome’s culmination; and boy, does it sting! (If the Lord-awful fix-its and “Sasuke’s a bad, man, so feminists, rise up!” dissertations don’t tell you as much, nothing will.)

Why else do you lot think they write fix-its whose sole purpose is to best and move on from Sasuke? It's a joke, and it's always written itself. This fandom is filled with pathetic f*cks and none lays this bare more than Sasuke: he doesn’t just show up the rest of the dreadful Team-7, chasers of the characterization morsels he drops in their paths; he shows up the average relatability chaser, as well; and that is very clearly ... unforgivable!

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Chapter 36: I've got some thoughts on Sasuke: Part 1

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1: How in the fresh living Sage-f*ck is Sasuke responsible for the 4th Ninja War?

The manner in which people throw the 4th Great Ninja War (GW) on Sasuke's shoulders is laughable as all f*ck! Can you people even read? Even if Sasuke had been killed at the Kage Summit (KS), it wouldn't have changed a damn thing! Danzō had attacked (to kill, might I add) Ao, Mizukage's right-hand man, a political official who had the second most important post in Kiri; and he survived to tell the tale. You think Kiri would've just let this go, simply because KS had come to an end? Really?! Also, Mifune had been brainwashed, a seemingly neutral party (casting doubt on the impartiality of all meetings that had happened there before whether they involved Danzō or not), and Danzō was exposed to be the sole culprit; or rather, Konoha was the sole culprit as he was elected through an official process; he didn't take over anything. Ae directly threatened everyone, literally everyone, over Akatsuki's recruitment. And Onoki didn't take that well. All of these are not "posturing"; they were direct threats that'd lead to war; and most of this happened before White Zetsu ever revealed Sasuke's location!

Where do you all think this was heading had Sasuke not been revealed by White Zetsu on Obito's order to be in the summit? Had Obito sat back only for two seconds, the Fouth Great Ninja War would've been declared, anyway; however, Obito was impatient and wanted to desperately accelerate Sasuke's blindness (for EMS, so that he could be synced to the Gedō Mazō and the Infinite Tsukuyomi could be brought about), and he didn't know that Danzō had already done what he wanted to do: he'd practically granted Obito a war on a gold platter! (This detail adds more depth to this arc: desperation and the profound consequences of that.)

The thing that makes this arc even better (if it wasn't the best f*cking arc by a long-shot already) is that they did unite only because they perceived Madara (Obito) to be a bigger threat, not out of the goodness of their hearts. How right was Sasuke, a mere kid, about their courage, conviction, and camaraderie that sprung from this fact alone: a threat that stood up against their hegemony? This brought the sort of "food for thought" that many don't think about-too busy dunking on Sasuke to ever engage with the context at hand.

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2: Why are Sasuke and Kurapika (even Killua) comparisons even made? They're beyond idiotic!

I just don't get the Kurapika and Sasuke comparisons, especially when they're used to glorify the former and put down the latter in regard to the "characterization" debate debacles. They're nothing alike save the massacre and revenge tropes; but what goes on behind the tropes, or the manner in which they're elaborated on, is so ridiculously different that you can't tell me with absolute honesty that your penchant for putting down Sasuke is not just you being a f*cking twat.

For one, revenge stories are dime a dozen in Japanese history; and when I say that, I truly mean it. Their whole 'unification' period, starting from Oda, continuing on with Hideyoshi, and ending on Ieyasu is rife with bloodshed of clans, families, and alliances. There are just so many till the decisive battle of Sekigahara that it'd make your head spin; and even afterwards when Ieyasu, taking the Toyotomi legacy away from Hideyoshi's son, had over 10,000 people (entire families, including men, women, and children who so much had the misfortune of being even remotely associated with the Toyotomi heir) slaughtered to thwart all opposition against him; only then, he felt that the unification of a state in constant turmoil could ever be achieved. A peace that'd last.

Who aligns more closely with all this political upheaval and all the messiness that ensued? Kurapika? Don't make me laugh! His clan was massacred by a group of f*cking hooligans (Phantom Troupe) whose alignment with politics is about as threadbare as characters like Sakura, Lee, and what's his face's. (Yeah, yeah, I'm aware of the whole "tossed aside by the cold, cruel soh-sai-tee!" bits which Togashi seldom bothered to elucidate, in a manner that'd mean something-f*cking anything!) That's it.

That's not the same as state-sanctioned massacre of a boy's entire family and then the subsequent tortures at the hands of the familial perpetrator, who aligned deeply with the very same philosophy that brought about his family's ultimate and entire fall. You really, with complete honesty, think that Nagato, through Pain, culling all those associated with Hanzo is a mere coincidence and not what Ieyasu did against Toyotomi's heir (he wanted to do for Ame what Iyesau did for Japan)? You think it's a coincidence that Itachi's actions are based directly ... on lord knows how many take-downs of clans on the so-and-so Lord's order? It's almost as if Sasuke's a broader commentary on Japanese history itself, a scrutinization of actions and the sociopolitical and the deeply emotional and personal consequences of the said actions. It's almost as if Sasuke's absurdly more complex as a character than Kurapika ever was; hence, the reason why he's so controversial as history and its actors and their actions always are a matter of moral divide, of absolutes, and of cultural schisms that shift the present's opinion of them-at every f*cking turn!

The fact that people can't see something so simple, that it has to be broken down for them in childish terms, and that they can't seem to piece this two and two together is yet another reason why media discourse stinks and its proponents stink even more. I mean, how in the fresh living f*ck does Hunter x Hunter have dedicated fans that sing praises of this manga's "unmatched" Shonen writing? Seriously?! I get it that it's cool to hate on Naruto and Kishimoto, hyperbolize the heck out of his mistakes, because the ships you coveted night and day, sticky sheets and all, never sailed the oceanic gutters of your tightest imaginations; but you don't have to cling to this one just to one-up through this pathetic discourse. Find a better manga; or better yet, a better hobby.

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3: "I'm gonna ship myself with Sasuke and hide it as SNS, SS, or SH!" f*ckery!

The greatest issue with shipping Sasuke or Ships that involve Sasuke isn't that he's shipped: no, it's that his sexual orientation becomes his entire character; so either he's pulling all stops to please his "woman" and be a model heterosexual man; he's making heaven and earth meet to please his "man" and be a role-model gay man; or if he's not accomplishing that, he's actively scheming to come between Sakura's other "potential" heterosexual/hom*osexual ships, and that's just bollocks (no, Sakura Fandom, Sasuke's never going to care who she sleeps with; it's just you wanting very desperately for this character to give even the slightest bit of damn.) And in both the cases, it's his sexuality that's the whole character, not his political philosophy that ought to be front and center and with everything else in the background. (They don't even use his sexuality in any creative manner; it's just a bunch of clichés that they like and tropes that you can count on your single finger.) Basically, the second you make his beliefs secondary to the character, you've not only lost the plot but that's also not Sasuke; and it shouldn't surprise anyone that we state that, because it's very true!

In fact, I challenge you all to unearth a ship-focused fan-fiction where there's some semblance of plot structure and everything else, without hom*osexual/heterosexual shipping being the focus and shame not being attached to Sasuke's canon decisions. You can't because these stories are fashioned in a way that, if you take away that one "personality trait", nothing else is built, works independently of it, or gets off the ground to establish anything else that's important to the said character's varied dimensions.

So don't act shell-shocked when we tear down these lesser versions of the character that purely exist to drive some wish-fulfillment fantasy, and not an exploration of his belief system. They're terrible from the ground up, and you can't stop people from stating otherwise. Get used to this very valid criticism; because if you're free to write them out, obscenely derivative works of an original work, we're more than free to offer reasonable criticism as to why they don't work. It isn't that complicated to grasp any of this.

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Chapter 37: I've got some thoughts on Sasuke: Part 2

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Chapter 38: It's time to rag on Sakura Fandom again!

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Chapter 39: Don't use the R word against my favo!

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I'm going to be blunt and straightforward here; and I don't care whose feelings are wounded over this: people have very vague ideas about politics, political infrastructures, and, if they aren't well-implemented, their far-reaching and devastating consequences that last for decades till the system in place isn't attacked, dismantled, and replaced with something better or worse. They've got some threadbare notions about political theories that allow them the endless opportunities to keep the bandwagon effect alive and kicking, but they've got little idea about the fundamental aspects of political ideologies and how they're sustained by figureheads for generations to come. (For instance, people jumping on the BLM movement and hash-tagging Free Ukraine or something of the sort; but if you take a good look at their profiles, they malign Palestinians; stand by Israel and call its genocidal policies a necessary evil; have no care in the world about the military industrial complex and how much brutality it's inflicted on MENA; and the after-effects of that violence that occur to this day in the shape of mass-starvations, civil wars, and extra judicial killings to curtail these many little wars, which have sprung in the aftermath of military chaos, for the net-benefit of the aggressors.)

Politics to these people are mere aesthetics, the en vouge facet of participatory liberalism, and "we're the good guys!" game and not a contemplative stance on the friction between ideological divides, why they occur, and how the can lead to progression. A good example, or the illustration of his phenomenon, would be Leo Strauss, creator of the Neo-Conservative (neocon) movement. Inspired by Gun Smoke, a Television-Show set in the lawless world of the Old West, he deified the idea of heroics, actors that can assume the role of heroes, and evil that needs to be vanquished for a nation to thrive, stay untied, and be free of "seflish desires" as he'd called it. Here, the birth of new American Nation took place, one that believed in the national myth of vanquishing evil as a force of good. Sounds familiar? If it does, then it is: it's the story of every hero, real or imagined.

If you look at Tobirama, he reads the exact same way: a national myth (will of fire) for the masses to stay united; evil (Uchiha or any disruptors of stability) that needs to be vanquished in the name of good; and a conservative vanguard (his little troop of hyper nationalists) who'd lead their nation (Leaf is a state, but let's keep it simple) to glory. Is there any difference between Strauss, Tobirama, Zahwari, or any other neocon whose ideology stems from notions of nation/state supremacy and its deification in the annals of state heroics?

What Tobirama did, like Strauss, was to break apart the story into easily digestible pieces, one that a common man can understand: heroes, evil, and glory in vanquishing that evil. That's how he created will of fire; that's how most rallied behind him; and that's how he got away with placing down the fundamentals of atrocities, obfuscated them somewhat behind this children's tale. Why? Because the notion that your collective is a force of good allows that collective to bypass the complexities of systematic racism, oppression, and brutalization. Everything is washed down into black and white tones, and a common man doesn't have to think too hard, mull over much, and contemplate very long on the vagaries between ideologies that create friction in the first place. A friction that's essential for growth, progress, and betterment as a whole.

The world, then, turns into a battleground where sides have to be picked, evil has to be branded (COH is branding in every sense of the word), and battles have to be fought to cut the hydra's head at its lair. Then and only then can a collective stay a collective, fight for a common cause, and come away with riches; and in the process, deliver freedom to the masses. That's why Itachi is more liked than Sasuke; Ashura is more liked than Indra; and Senju are more liked than the Uchiha. It isn't that they don't have any ideology to offer; it's that theirs is one of friction, one of complexities, and one that goes beyond the binaries. And beyond these two extremes, the myth ends, and when that ends the nation has nothing left to stay as the collective. It breaks apart at the seams, and that's something Strauss realized. Tobirama, too.

The Uchiha are your pot-shakers, trouble-makers, and challengers of this simplistic narrative Tobirama has sold to the fictional masses and the readers that align with similar philosophies in their realities: good shall prevail; evil shall be defeated; and glory shall be ours! And with this simplistic view, armies (populaces everywhere) are easy to galvanize and keep the myth alive for as long as possible.

It's not a coincidence that Tobirama is considered separate from Danzo's fanaticism, when the reality is that he laid the very foundations on which Danzo (and Orochimaru) and the Elders' Council built their future. That's like suggesting that the person who created the blueprint, building, and precepts to function in the building shouldn't be held accountable for any mishaps, just the people that come afterwards and follow the precepts down to the last detail.

Danzo, basically, is Tobirama with his mask off: there are no inhibitions as Leaf has left behind its precarious past that was fraught with danger that arose from flimsy treaties and shaky foundations. Pretenses had to be kept up. With uncertainties came more care; but even during that time where caution had to be exercised for Leaf's own safety, Tobirama and his Senju bro fashioned a legacy that pushed the world into a lethal conflict through the distribution of powerful weapons: one for me and one for thee!

The fact that he opened the door to bilateral relationships through nukes should ring alarm bells for everyone; but not this fandom; and the reason goes back to the neocon mindset: good guys versus the bad guys, a philosophy that was repeated during the Cold War, which is being turned to again, the fall of the Soviet Empire, and the subsequent war on terror; and every single time, the enemy was reduced to the "great evil" that had to be vanquished, create a tale of heroes for the masses. If you don't believe me, just read any news, watch any political discourse, and listen to the general public and their savior politicians talk about the issues; and you'd realize how pitifully simplistic their notions of good and evil are, a bifurcation in the world, a good side that they happened to occupy via destiny.

That's why Tobirama's ideology is something that resonates with them: it's simple, creates an evil to be defeated, and a myth to be upheld for supremacy. It offers a shared legacy to people to fall behind, adopt, and find salvation as a collective. A state/nation's large ego that's capable of assimilating their smaller egos, granting them more purpose beyond mere segmental social realities.

Sakura Fandom is viciously guilty of this, locating her salvation in the paradise of nuclear family, a career, and an opportunity to vanquish the evil that was Sasuke; their fix-it Fan-Fictions (FFs) are plagued by this repugnant intellectual bankruptcy that bullishly keeps everything nice and simple, centered, and not too radical at the expense of every theme that tackles the horrors of the military industrial complex in canon; however, she, apparently, "deserved" better for putting in the work to make this system flourish whilst not being rewarded the chance to exact punishment on Sasuke for slighting her "honor" as woman, a citizen of the state where the "good guys" flourish; but she wasn't allowed to be good, you see, not allowed to get even and flourish like her male counterparts. Can you read this with sincerity and tell me that this isn't Tobirama's doctrine, only with a wash of the dreadful neoliberal/pop feminism to give it a "women rights matter!" spin? You can't because it's exactly that, the "good guy syndrome", a national myth, only that Sakura was "robbed" of the chance to display this goodness, this violence that Sasuke so deserved! (Kill Your Heroes is exactly that, distilled down to even simpler bits, an ideology so pitifully stupid that even Strauss would blush in shame over its minced shambles.)

The neocons created a fiction, an illusion, a distortion of reality in which they occupied the place of good; and overtime, that myth, that fiction, that distortion became their reality. Tobirama, too, did the same, and in time, his distortions considering the Uchiha, Leaf's place as a force of good, and its myth turned into his realities and that of the masses that occupied Leaf. The fans cling to what resonates with them. It isn't that Tobirama sold his ideology well (Lord knows that the guy isn't exactly a charmer). Not at all as it's a very simple and almost childish "good versus evil" mantra; it's that it's what they understand.

That's why they very desperately seek out deflections for his very clear, very simple, and very effective policies. In that they're effective because they're simple, understandable, and easy. And in that race to absolve him of his vile doctrine, they use Danzo as the scapegoat, refusing to answer the simple question: which new policy did Danzo implement? Danzo, in his entire tenure, introduced no new policy regarding the Uchiha. Tobirama created the village's system, its infrastructure, and all the segregation policies. (Yes, the population movement occurred in Tobirama's time, not in Danzo's.)

Danzo didn't invent a Jutsu created from human experimentation; Tobirama did and Orochimaru simply refined it. All the ghastly images you see in Orochimaru's secret labs? Tobirama liberally engaged in them. Danzo didn't lay down the COH fearmongering; Tobirama did. Danzo didn't create the Police Force and all the political policies that isolated the clan, choked out their political influence, and branded them as "ticking timebombs"; Tobirama did. When Tobirama is the primary creator, influencer, and formulator of the aforementioned, how does that place the mark of evil on Danzo and not him? This argument is bereft of logic.

That's why Itachi is considered sacred and Sasuke isn't, a boy who only meant well as he's one of the good ones, of the good guys, of the good nation against all that's evil in the world. Once you establish this awful narrative that one side is just good, then everything that they do is good. And once you establish that the side they stand against is evil, which it has to be as forces are always singular, then everything they do has to have an "evil" caveat, a selfish agenda, and an arrogance that's rooted in the hunger of power.

What lies within the national myth is sanctioned: its mass-butcheries are lesser evils; its prejudices, unwitting mistakes; its victims, collateral; its political f*ck ups, little mistakes; and its thirst for more and more power to maintain the myth, a right that's needed for the good ones to remain good as, without it, we all go over to the "evil side", allow the evil forces to win against good, and let them take away our national myths for their own nefarious purposes. And that's why everything the Uchiha do is magnified by comparison: their right to resist is an unlawful hunger for power; their killings are evil as they're no longer performed in the name of national myth; and their quest to value their sovereignty is an act without value before the state sovereignty that's supreme. This is the us versus them, good versus evil, and right versus wrong repeated over and over again in various flavors; yet all of them meet at the same destination: a desire to preserve the national myth of heroics; it's us against the world; and the charge to right the world of its wrongs is ours! (These arguments have been and are regurgitated word for word by the proponents of the Socialist Evil, war on terror, and freedom through democracy; the actors change but the precepts remain unshakeable.)

So it isn't that Tobirama is wrong or that what he did was evil. No, it's that his philosophy is that of simplicity, one that the readers associate with, a reality that's so familiar to them. It's a neocon's best dream, and the readers are helpless because it's a dream that they've shared, a myth that they sustain, a reality that they find easy to imagine.

It's not that complicated; and like Senju Tobirama and Leo Strauss and their neocon ideology, it's, in fact, childishly simple.

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Chapter 40: The Akatsuki: Monsters of Naruto-Verse

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It's interesting to note that all the Akatsuki were designed to appear like monsters: each has some sort of mutilation, dis-figuration, mutation, physical traits that set him apart from the rest. That makes them monsters of that world, creatures cast out from the public's domain. The others. Is it that simple? Maybe not.

Nagato? He's got rods embedded into his back, a ghastly aftermath of a power he couldn't control effectively; and, as a result of that, he's physically emaciated, skin and bones; and the paths that do his bidding are dead bodies that he governs remotely, grants them temporary life to fight for his cause. Konan? She physically transforms into paper, so she's got less of a physical appearance, a tangible body like others. They, as a pair, represent the simplicity of a Kami-complex, which makes sense: it was that lack of power that rent asunder their lives; so if they themselves hold supreme power, that would even out the odds, put them back on the map as rulers of their own destinies. And it's through Pain/Deva that the monstrous statue, the frozen God (Gedō Mazō), is introduced, a world-changing monster in chains, one whose reins are to be transported to Sasuke's hands.

Kakuzu and Hidan are a pair of immortals. The former looks like a monster as he steals the hearts and stitches them into his masks in a bid to extend his own life. He's also very greedy. To present a contrast to his material greed, Hidan presents spiritual greed. Where Kakuzu steals the heart, Hidan steals the life, very literally, and takes it for himself. He, too, transforms, albeit only during the ritual. A religious craze that overtakes him. If Kakuzu is stitched together, then Hidan can be stitched together from pieces of himself.

Deidara and Sasori are two sides of artistic sensibilities: Deidara is an artistic calamity, and in destruction and deconstruction does he see art (his "art is a blast!" mantra is taken very literally by him), which is why his hands are mutilated, objects that create art are imperfect. Sasori sees art in permanence through perfection, which is why he created a puppet of himself. To him, beauty and youth are art! Where only Deidara's hands are mutilated, from which he spits out chakra-molded clay to create shapes for destruction, Sasori mutilated himself to create the perfect shape, and he does that to others, too. So this pair is about the permanence and impermanence of what they feel "art against the world" ought to be. These two, along with Kazuku and Hidan, exist as extensions of Akatsuki, men kept in the dark, which is why they never knew Obito's true face nor of his plans for the world. They only knew what Nagato told them. That makes them expendable soldiers, something which Nagato said, as well.

Kisame and Itachi, believe it or not, represent the monsters in a literal and metaphorical sense. In that, one who looks monstrous has a conscience (he defected from Kiri because of their brutal military methods that forced him to kill his own brethren for a mission; he's very much like Sakumo; but where Sakumo buckled under pressure and took his own life, Kisame fled after punishing the man who ordered him to kill his comrades; he chose to end his life rather than rat out his remaining comrades, hoping that they'd find their mark, even after he's gone). In that, his outward appearance is monstrously different from that of a human. For instance, if you look at Kazuku, you can tell that that's a human being, a severely mutilated and pieced together one (in a very visual and literal way), but a human being nonetheless. You can't say that about Kisame as he's not mutilated, he transformed entirely into a creature whose only human quality is that he's bipedal, I suppose; and once he merges with Samehada, even that's thrown away. In that state, he assumes a completely inhuman appearance, but its effect is in appearance only.

Contrast that with Itachi, and tell me: what do you think he is? He's metaphorically a monster. As in, he doesn't look like a monster, but he's very much a cruel and wanton young man who, unlike Kisame, has no conscience; and where Kisame defected for his people; Itachi defected against his people. This pair, then, is about the absence and presence of conscience and the antithetical appearance it does that have to do with Sasuke? Well, Kisame fights for Obito and his cause; hence, Sasuke is the one he fights for at Obito's command; and Itachi joined Akatsuki as a bargain to Leaf's echelon that they'd keep his sibling safe.

Then we've got Orochimaru and Kabuto (to an extent). Orochimaru is vain and, like Sasori, has an obsession for permanence and youth (reasons why he sought out Sasuke with a single-minded obsession, because Sasuke was to be his last and permanent vessel; the perfect mold); however, where Sasori's concerned with beauty for the sake of it, artistic aestheticism, Orochimaru wants it because a robust vessel allows him to transcend human boundaries. He, too, has transformed, inflicted upon himself many a experiment to transform himself into a white serpent, literally, and is like a parasite that eats the hosts from the inside, becomes it after a while.

Basically, every host is like a skin he wears, and when the time comes, he casts it off and searches for a new one. Very much like a snake. (The best way to determine a snake's age is to see how often it sheds the skin; if it sheds it too often, it's young; if the frequency is less; it's old; through Sasuke, Kishimoto inverted this process, as in, he'd never have to shed skin ever again as the skin would allow him the permanence he always wished for; Sasuke, basically, would allow him to bypass nature altogether.) Sasuke was going to be the body, a home that his snake would inhabit for all time: he knew about Sasuke's ability to awaken the Rinnegan and his powerful chakra that's got no equal. Both of which would've throttled the corrosive nature of his snake, which exudes poisonous vapours and destroys the body over time, allowing him to live symbiotically with Sasuke's body at the cost of his psyche. Why else do you think Sasuke was able to not only withstand the Cursed Seal State 2's psyche- and chakra-corroding effects but also keep Orochimaru suppressed without a hitch at the same time, and without a helping hand from any seal as it's the case with the Jinchūrikis? The reason is that Orochimaru's chakra is so absurdly weak compared to his own that it didn't matter one bit that he'd absorbed the mad man and scientist willingly into himself. (Remember, Sasuke's natural chakra is far thicker and more potent than Senjutsu chakra; a fact Karin mentioned very explicitly during his battle with Danzō.) And you do know that the ritual did take place, right? It's just that Sasuke took over that world and kept Orochimaru on a leash; and as an aside, and as I keep saying over and over again, that's the sort of feat that's unheard of in the manga; therefore, Orochimaru is a monster of ambition and Kabuto, his extension, in a way. And Sasuke is that ambition, a true personification of it.

That just leaves Obito and Zetsu (black and white): they represent the idea of a remnant. Obito is the remnant of wars, which is why half of him is permanently disfigured, ruinously patched up by the Senju vestige, Hashirama's power. The other half is an Uchiha, one with power towards which he's guided by Black Zetsu; hence, the black half of Zetsu represents the will for power; and the white half, a will for stagnation as, keep that in mind, white Zetsu controls the other Zetsus who're just transformed people trapped by Infinite Tsukuyomi (IT). Basically, they're Yin and Yang in a very literal sense: Black one carries on the Will, and White one illustrates the effects of that Will (Kaguya's, albeit Madara thought it to be his own); former represents a dream and the struggle towards that dream, and the latter the aftereffects of the dream. Cause and effect, basically. And none highlights this more than its human counterpart, Obito. That's why he wears a spiral mask (I can't believe people didn't realize that this guy had Kamui before it was revealed when his mask is shaped exactly like the spiraling distortion in space/time) and has multiple personae. Each offering a different will, a different dimension of Akatsuki and of himself.

Does it all fit in with the term Akatsuki, which means dawn and/or daybreak? Well, yes, it does. All of them, each in their own way, dream of a new world. A world that'd break away from the chains, ruin itself, and begin anew. All but Itachi. Isn't it strange that, the one character that exists for the old world is the only one that doesn't look monstrous? The only one who represents the trick? The illusion of the good old days? It's no wonder his ability is Tsukuyomi, the ultimate illusion as he's the youth who's in illusions of the old world himself. A misfit in Akatsuki. The only one who's an irony, one who doesn't look...off. (Learn to connect the dots, folks; it isn't that hard.) Doesn't that make you curious, even a little? And interestingly enough, the Uchiha Symbol, which only Sasuke wears (Obito doesn't, either, though he does don the Uchiha high-collared shirt, albeit Itachi discarded that even; his shirt's design is completely different from the ones Uchiha wear), has the rising sun (and the waning half-moon) as its symbol? And as Sasuke is Obito's goal and that of Nagato's, he's the personification of the term Akatsuki itself: a revolution towards a new age!

Now you know why Kishimoto laments the ending as all the ingredients are there, all the players true to their cause; it's just the final act that's missing. And what a shame that is?

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Chapter 41: Sakura Fandom's petty obsession with "humbling Sasuke"!

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Post from the tumblr user, ludiharambasha (mostly corrected for minor errors):

Chapter 42: Author's Note

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I'm moving all my stuff to squidgeworld, where I go by the name DaastanGo (https://squidgeworld.org/users/DaastanGo/pseuds/DaastanGo). I won't delete anything from this site; however, due to the involvement of OTW (owners of AO3, which, as it's come to my knowledge, has been involved in vicious racism and sinophobia) in spreading the genocidal Zionism by directly supporting Israel through monetary funds, censuring Palestinian voices, and suppressing opinions on its ongoing ethnic-cleansing at the hands of USA and NATO-backed apartheid state, my conscience doesn't allow me to liberally interact with the site much longer. I'm informing people of this so that, if they want another alternative, they can choose that platform in lieu of AO3. (I might post there, but I still haven't decided as I want to be absolutely certain that I'm not adding to their revenue by engaging with it.)

Kindly, stop funding it. You can interact with it as, from what I've heard, that costs them money, but putting a dime in their pocket makes you culpable in their actions. It's as simple as that. Do the right thing whenever you can and however you can. Frankly, I've got no patience, empathy, or compassion for genocide supporters; and given the fact that the starter of that venture is an unhinged band of white, neoliberal feminists (one of whom was an overly invested incest-shipper whose stories involved salacious incest between real people), are dedicated racists, the joke writes itself. Basically, the liberals are scratched and they're bleeding out profusely as fascists in these dire times. All things considered, at the very least, I feel quite vindicated.

P.s: You can get the details from this post: https://www.tumblr.com/le-bjorn/734993891615555584/just-got-a-second-official-warning-for-my-use-of.

Chapter 43: Itachi did...f*cking what?!

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AN: I've heard that AO3 loses money if you engage with the site (as clicks cost them money); so they require donations to work. It's pretty reliable information, so I'm going to post here for now as I haven't finished updating my writings on squidgeworld. (You can get more details on this from the previous chapter.)

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Dramatic title, but it's got to be this way as click-bait titles are all the rage these days. You know the drill by now, and here it goes: the more I think about Itachi, the more silly he seems. Yes, I’ve stated that a million times on here, and it does sound woefully tedious at this point (you might have felt a strong urge to roll your eyes, but that'd make me sad); but believe you me, you’ve probably never thought of what I’m about to confess. I don’t think I’ve ever commented on this part of his character. In fact, I’ve never come across this criticism of him. Very strange.

The problem goes as follows: Itachi’s character doesn’t even take off from the narrative ground, let alone work into his later disintegrations that are this fandom’s very beloved, though comical, shonen stereotypes and shipping cliches. (Because what is Itachi without Sakura wankers defending him with all their might as a spare instrument for their lonely self-insert's slot? One that Sasuke brutally rejected? Rise up, pop feminists; it's time to end Sasuke's patriarchal assault on Sakura's womanhood!) How, you might ask? Why did Itachi torture Sasuke? Yes, I’m aware that he wanted to make a “hero” out of him—whatever the f*ck that means; but what does the idea mean? Have people never thought about this, even a little? (Colour me shocked.) Why would you want to create a hero out of a Genin who’s only 7 at this point and 12 later?

No, I’m serious. Ponder on this for a moment: why would you want to create a hero out of Sasuke? Is his reputation at stake? No. Is the Clan’s reputation at stake to the point that their honour needs to be restored? The massacre and Itachi's failed stint as an Akatsuki spy wouldn't have been kept under the rug if that was the case. What sort of stain does Sasuke have to wash from his clan’s history to regain his honour? Sasuke’s desire to get back the honour is rooted in injustice, a personal journey as he felt that his honour was ruined, not that his family was a dishonourable one.That was a personal quest he undertook. That had little to do with Itachi's rationale.

The issue is that there’s nothing in regard to honour that’s got to be regained as Sasuke hadn’t lost that, not in a sense of public perception. (The discrimination is a different discussion.) In fact, Itachi was considered a criminal; and not even a "we'd look the other way when it comes to this f*cking fodder" kind; no, he was the S-rank kind. That gained sympathy for the clan from many, something which we witnessed in the Kage Summit (KS). Sasuke’s personal vendetta doesn’t have much of anything to do with Itachi’s brutality to make a hero out of him.

Again, think on it: why? Sasuke isn’t a criminal at this point as per the decrees of Shinobi Law. In fact, Itachi forced Sasuke down that path through relentless tortures, coercions, and intimidations. He wanted Sasuke to attack the Jinchuriki, defeat him (Itachi), and then come back home as a hero. His head held high, because, somehow, Itachi's defeat will magically make Konoha forgive Sasuke for obliterating their functioning nuke. (Great going, Solo-King, f*cking arse.) Again, my argument remains the same: what sort of heroism was missing from Sasuke’s life that he had to take this bleak, arduous, and tragic path to wash this unshakeable mark off himself that he was…no longer a hero; hence, the only way to return to the path of herodom was to defeat his devil of a brother and become, err, great again? f*cking what?! It's a miracle that Sasuke didn't lose his f*cking mind and stick his dick into Garuda. The kid had the patience of a saint!

Remember, Sasuke’s resolve to end Itachi had nothing to do with him becoming a hero for the masses. He had no f*cking clue at this point about the discord between Leaf and the Uchiha, so what sort of honour was Itachi prepping him for? The kid wanted to become a popo like his pop. Come on, use your head! This only works if Itachi had laid out his personal disdain for the clan before Sasuke because, in Itachi's tunnel-visioned eyes, their honour had to be restored as their redemption was that requirement that'd integrate them back into the village at last in the shape of Sasuke.

You'd have to recall a crucial detail that I've talked about before that Sasuke was meant to be Itachi's replacement as he himself was dying a slow and painful death, and the village, in his humblest opinion, required a strong vestige of his labour; implanting KA (with the "protect Konoha" command meant for Sasuke) was that fail-safe plan; that, in Itachi's twisted view, was his greatest sacrifice at Leaf's alter, his brother as compensation for his demise, a brother that he, in his own absurd way, adored; so Itachi truly felt that that would be his greatest, hardest, and most painful sacrifice, in that he was giving away Sasuke over to Konoha in his place, someone he loved the most. It's very much like that "sacrifice what you love the most to get this", and that this to him was world-peace or something. It's the most basic mythical tale acted out through the utterly f*cked up dynamic Itachi had created between Sasuke and himself.

This part...believe it or not, works. Surprise--surprise! It's probably the only portion of Itachi's nonsensical characterization that works. You have to understand that violence is all Itachi knows, and he does everything to legitimize it; its hegemony defines his nature; so his cruelty towards Sasuke makes sense (save for the times when he almost killed him, but I've talked about that before) within the context he's created for his own world; and we all see things through our world, our nature; and damn if Kishimoto didn't almost get it right; but that's a topic for another day.

Point is, Itachi's just pompous, and his self-righteous nature is what programs him to judge his clan. Judge everyone against this "lawful and dutiful jingoist/soldier" that he's created, one he strove for all his life, one that he failed to attain in his own words (he didn't get the Hokage definition right, poor thing). A mould for everlasting peace. A loyalty that's a prerequisite, an imperative for the world to usher into a peaceful age. And without that course, people are without honour, one that his clan refused to engage in, an ever-lasting source of his chagrin and disdain. One that he wanted them to accept. So he came to this simple conclusion that the Clan, thus, naturally lacks honour, so it has to be judged; and after judgement, there has to be a rehabilitation, a reboot of its tarnished image; and Sasuke, Itachi's most cherished possession (yes, Sasuke's less of a person to Itachi and more of a concept of love that has to receive his every whim and exhibit gratefulness), would be just that, a symbol of his clan's redemption! (Remember, Itachi confessed as an Edo whilst he was getting booted back into Yomi that Sasuke could've changed the clan whilst it was alive; in death, Sasuke, one that would abide rather than dissent, would be that change, the clan course-corrected through Sasuke.)

There's just one problem: it only works in isolation, not once you bring all the aspects together into a whole. That whole doesn't have to make the character coherent for it to be considered good (in writing). Coherence has nothing to do with characterization; and what's more incoherent than a fool of a boy who believes himself to be judge, jury, an executioner and a martyr and pacifist soldier--at the same f*cking time? That's mental incoherence, and I've said it time and time again, f*cker's just crazy; but the writing fails to reflect that; and that's the problem with Itachi as, in between the portion that works, you've got a mess with no hope to validate it in any manner.

My point being, clan's honour? It being in shambles? The redemption that was nigh in the shape of Sasuke? It's all in his f*cking head. There's not even any material to vaguely infer anything from the chaos and lend it a chaotic spin that makes it tick. Sasuke doesn't know. The people at large don't know. What's the use of this restoration that's, and I repeat, all in someone's head? You see, Sasuke waxing lyrical about the restoration of his and his clan's honour are contextualized by the cultural complexities of where Naruto was written: he can't rest till that humiliation isn't returned back to the aggressor beat for beat, the clan's souls avenged, whatever the ethos of filial piety dictate; however, what's in your head requires an outlet for it to find its way on the…ya know, panels. Sasuke had these moments (his mental breakdowns, rash, and at times cruel actions fired up by grief). We don't get that with Itachi, so you have to take what you're given.

Sasuke didn't read the script, so this makes no sense, anyway. What sort of honour is being restored when it hasn't been lost in a manner that it needed to be repaired? It's almost as if Itachi was so incredibly dull, narrow-minded, and foolish that he took everything Shisui said to heart, who took his own life for no f*cking reason, without acknowledging the context at hand. (I maintain the fact that Itachi was the one who took Shisui's life as that's the only reality that makes canonical sense, because Itachi is defined by lies; and many a time, that's been used interchangeably with Genjutsu and illusion in canon; I might write out a post on this as to why Kishimoto left these bizarre caveats in Itachi's character, but let's leave it at that for now.)

In order to accomplish that, he’d have to defect, kill Naruto (whichever comes first), and then go on this wild goose chase to get even with Itachi. That wouldn't be heroism that's enshrined and/or understood in the Shadow Villages and endorsed by Itachi as the "divine code" for peace; it's a comical contradiction that's never reconciled within and by Itachi in any reasonable manner; anything could’ve gone terribly wrong, and Sasuke, for all intents and purposes, would’ve ended up as a lifelong criminal, forever hunted down for putting down the state’s WMD. (I've already commented on as to why Itachi wanting to commit suicide by Sasuke's hand as some twisted sense of justice in another post, so I wouldn't repeat myself here.)

Think on it some more as Itachi wanted to make a hero out of a child whose reputation wasn’t at stake in any way; and in order to do so, the said child had to go through the trials and tribulations of a standard shinobi-criminal (his high S-rank in the Bingo Book makes him more susceptible to state-sponsored hunting campaigns, not less, campaigns which can take place with the blessings and cooperations of other states, as well); gain notoriety along the way as a Missing-Nin due to the fact that he can kill Shinobi that get in his way from other villages, who're always itching to kill missing-nin for shinobi glories (Bingo-Books are international kill-lists in canon, not local material), thereby inviting their scorn, as well; end the brother and then…claim herodom? That goes against everything Itachi believed in; against his "master plan" to create a replacement out of Sasuke; and against the fact that, if Sasuke's caught in the clutches of the "protect Konoha" command after crossing the thickest red line in the sand (Leaf's WMD destruction), along with some other "international incidents", he'd just walk off to his death in Konoha. Only now, he's be happy about it, I suppose? Then what was even the point of any of that? And there and then, Itachi’s entire character crashes and burns before it even attempts to take off into the ether of greatness that his wankers would have you believe. (Kishimoto, my man, I love you, all the hetro; but your terrible schedule, fandom screeches, and Shonen Jump's pressures did you no favours.)

Has no body ever discussed this? Thought of this? I’m sorry, but this group called Itachi fandom is very funny, rather stupid, too.

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Chapter 44: Short Commentary-2

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1: It's "cartoonishly evil"; therefore, it ain't real!

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2: Two Worlds...

The more I re-read the Kage Summit arc (for the post I promised you all), the more I love it. It’s so f*cking good that even the chapters’ covers tell the characters’ stories; and none do it better than the chapter-drawings and the sharp contrast that exists between Sasuke’s world and Sakura’s.

This is how Kishimoto depicts them:

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Look closely. What do you see? The Sasuke’s cover, which is the 2nd page of that chapter, Danzo vs. Sasuke, shows the Uchiha Village, abandoned, broken, and lashed by rain; this is what Sasuke remembers of Konoha. A bleak reminder of his legacy whilst the village about the graves that Konoha desecrated flourishes.

Now, look at Sakura’s, Master and Student Reunited: her world is that of the village, vibrant, sunny, and bursting with activity. If you can’t tell that how violently different they are, then I don’t know what to say. Sasuke’s is isolated and the colors are bleak; Sakura’s is the exact opposite; and the most striking thing about this is that when the clash occurs, it’s during that reunion between the former teammates. Sasuke’s world is embroiled in what his panel suggests whilst Sakura has progressed in her world; a world that’s noticed her. Whilst Sasuke’s kin lie buried, forgotten.

This shows that Sakura and her team can’t understand Sasuke and the broken world from which he comes. Heck, albeit Kakashi accepts, he’s quick to suggest that Sasuke should be ended; in that he’s a victim, but one that has to be silenced for the village’s good:

Forget the chapters; how can anyone read the two chapter panels that show two vastly different worlds the characters occupy and come away shocked from the way this ended. They weren’t going to reconcile as the world where Sasuke’s exists is antithetical to the world where his former team resides. This lays bare the fact that Sasuke is right: the village has prospered over his clan’s graves! The imagery is a dead giveaway as this is the arc of consequences for the village. Just this once, it has to pay for its transgressions! Just this f*cking once!

I...don’t get it. This fandom has a hard time getting the most basic things, so I’m not surprised.

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3: The difference between Kushina and Itachi isn't that large...

That’s why it’s very telling that, as the hokage’s wife, she offered no diplomatic support for the genocide survivors, wholly content with just the power the position provided her with, albeit she knew that her clansmen were scattered, without a home to return to, hunted down relentlessly.

I, personally, notice very little difference between her and Itachi: both thought their clansmen to be dangerous, savages, eradicated because of their powers; both of them felt that they were “special”, given the positions Konoha offered them compared to the other savages in their clan; and both acted in accordance with what was required of them, protection of an asset for Kushina and eradication of miscreants for Itachi. They’re both duty-bound, down to the last letter!

If you switch their places, for argument’s sake, can you sincerely tell me that Kushina wouldn’t have taken the same steps? Thought the same way? Gone down the same path? Itachi, too, started off with these sentiments that, accompanied by ghastly undertones, were somewhat benign: an impressionable youth that wanted to belong, away from the clan’s savagery.

Yet overtime, they were nurtured, transformed into something very sinister; and that savagery that was accidental, if nothing else, became its long-standing curse. The Curse of Hatred. First Madara was in the wrong, misguided, and egoistic; and then he just became a boogeyman, one that tempted his clan, tempted it in ways that couldn’t be remedied anymore. Madara, and Indra before him, had turned into curses themselves. Then all he wanted to do was purge that curse out from Konoha, expunge it from its domain, make his Leaf mighty again; however, the seed, root of that evil, is present in both; and where someone else cleaned up the savages for Kushina, no one did it for Itachi: he had to clean up the mess that was his clan himself. (Nagato, in that regard, becomes another accident, a child of prophecy that was one of the savages!)

In the end, as nearly all my discourse is empty without Sasuke like Canon is, I’d say this: I find it fascinating that, as I mentioned in another post, Kishimoto’s views greatly evolved throughout the manga; at this point, you can see that there’s an undercurrent of that doubt that’s apparent through Kushina’s gusto, a doubt that gives way to slight chagrin from Naruto; he didn’t find justifiably in retaliation here, only later, but the censure is quite mellowed as Naruto had forsaken his reason when, nearly at Kage Summit’d end, he naively thought the genocide to be a kind of inconvenience in Sasuke’s life, not the factor in his life. (Kishimoto, if you haven’t noticed, started to make Naruto more and more naive, too foolish and blinded by Will of Fire to be reasoned with and taken seriously, a flaw that’s very intentional as idealism like Naruto’s isn’t real, it’s very much childish, which Kishimoto didn’t agree with at the end!)

It’s hard to say that where Kishimoto applied the breaks and truly changed, but I’d say that it’d be around the Kage Summit Arc as, immediately afterwards, you see Sasuke state very plainly, “these eyes, EMS, can see through the darkness!” and carve a path through that darkness, his gait bold; when, earlier, darkness was shown swallowing him up, especially at Part I”s end; and that’s another reason why you never get to see Sasuke’s inner thoughts, because he was Kishimoto’s struggle as a writer; he couldn’t understand him, either, not internally. That closed window is very much intentional as your hindrance to Sasuke’s mind reflects Kishimoto’s; and the more I think about the narrative, the more layers it reveals. It’s f*cking...fascinating that much more is concealed here and there, just waiting to be discovered and discussed, a narratological aspect called depth in literature!

Chapter 45: Sakura’s Mokuton and “Sharingan-Rivelling” Genjutsu is f*cking absurd!

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Sakura possessing Mokuton and Sharingan-Rivelling Genjutsu (in Sakura-Centric Fan-Fictions) is such stupid sh*te when it’s utterly divorced from the theme that as to why Hashirama possessed Mokuton and the Uchiha, Sharingan in canon. The former had it because, gasp, its Yang at its peak—as in Life. Yin, its counter-part, is about creating form from nothing. And guess who possesses Yin at its peak? What do ya know, it’s the Uchiha Clan!

Unless you lot can’t read to save your lives, you’d know that Hagoromo utilized it for the very first time through The Creation of All Things: with Yin, he created forms of beasts, and with Yang, he breathed life into them. That’s how he created the Nine Tailed-Beasts in Naruto.

How do the Uchiha and Senju work? Uchiha create things out of nothing: Susanoo, Amaterasu, and Genjutsu are all peak Yin. Nothing even comes close to the Uchiha’s use of Yin. Hashirama, Senju’s mascot, can’t create things out of nothing; so he breathes life into the earth, and from there his disney-princess routine is realized.

You know why he creates a forest? Oh no, it’s almost as if the village he created is called Konoha, a village hidden in leaves! He’s the metaphor for the very village whose foundation he laid. Who gave the idea for it? My goodness, it was Madara! How can this be? The manga’s so f*cking basic to understand? You don’t say?! So Madara’s imagination was taken to fruition by Hashirama? Gasps in horror! And the Valley of the End’s schism, literally and figuratively, broke apart the village’s ideology into two? No f*cking way?!

Naruto is but a continuation of that ideal; and so is Sasuke. Naruto’s entire arsenal is about harnessing Kurama’s life-force, which is also capable of giving life to long-dead stumps (we were very literally shown that after his KCM training), and Sasuke holds absolute mastery over the Uchiha Clan’s Jutsus (his arsenal is more than Obito’s, Itachi’s, and Madara’s combined).

That’s why the Uchiha are capable of messing with the tailed-beast’s—heck, anyone’s chakra as their Yin comes all the way from the God Tree’s flower’s Sharingan; and it’s because of that Sharingan that they hold such great domain over the mind. “The Uchiha are so broken that it’s bullsh*t, blah, blah, blah, and blah!” is a complete inability to grasp the basic themes of this manga. In fact, if I go all the way back to Indra and Ashura, the former governs the realm of imagination; and the latter, material. Is it a coincidence that Indra sought out a one-man ideological position against Indra’s collective? Ideology springs from imagination, not what’s already there in the material world; a change is felt in the abstract before it’s given the garb of realization, a concrete shape. Good God, how hard is it to understand all of this?

What the f*ck does Sakura do with that Mokuton? She sprouts great oaks out of her arse and beats men up bitch-girl-boss style, but what does it do thematically? What does her Sharingan-Rivelling Genjutsu do beyond her fandom’s tedious, trashy, and terribly conceived power-fantasy to best Sasuke? Both of these accomplish nothing in the Naruto-verse; and that’s the problem with Sakura, not a problem: she doesn’t, no matter how “straining my arse enough to pass gas” hard you try, fit into any main theme. Unless you don’t mitigate this f*cking elephant in the room, create something from scratch for her, and integrate that effectively into the plot, your entire endeavor is just a desperate attempt to attack the author; and the irony of the matter is that your attempt is structurally just poor. So what are you attacking when you can’t even fix this one theme in the manga in any manner whatsoever? Stop being such f*cking arseholes about this and sit yourselves down.

Long story short, my point is this: write all the power-fantasies you want; shift Sakura from Uchiha pole to pole and then to the Senju poles, and then, maybe to other poles, because that’s always been a source of this fandom’s greatest heartache; or make her grow out a dozen types of Sharingans from her orifices; but don’t pretend that you’re fixing the manga when this theme in particular is pretty much iron-clad in regard to what it set out to achieve. You didn’t like it? Too f*cking bad, because there’s nothing to fix as this theme was never broken.

Goodness ...

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Chapter 46: Sakura’s characterization in the Kage-Summit Arc is impeccable!

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I see a lot of people attacking every character under the sun in the arc that is The Kage Summit Arc (KS for short); and it always gives me a great whiplash and makes me think: did we read the same arc?

Normally, I talk about Sasuke often, given the influence he has on the manga in its totality, in regard to this arc; however, I’d focus on Sakura this time around. The question I have on me is this: what’s wrong with Sakura’s characterization in KS?

On the surface, you can make plenty of pointless attempts to poke holes into her characterization: she cried; she couldn’t fend off Omoi and Karui; Sai and Shikamaru manipulated her; she manipulated Naruto; she used gas bombs on her “friends”; and she couldn’t kill Sasuke. The list is made to seem impossibly long; and Kishimoto’s writing, predictably, is brought into question.

The fact of the matter is, this is just another googled opinion. There’s no merit to these complaints as you won’t be able to answer as to why Sakura was badly written without launching into a Pavlovian version you happen to prefer. And this is my main issue with fandom discourse: the arc’s theme is tossed aside and versions are invented to cast doubt on the writing process. Then you’re just criticizing for the sake of it, not offering any criticism. (Yes, no matter what your dullard friends may tell you, criticism is markedly different from criticizing.)

For one, KS is about several plot-threads hurtling towards a chaotic climax: Sasuke’s botched attack on Bee that results in a political incident; Kumo galvanizing into action over it as a peace-treaty has been put into jeopardy; the aftermath of Akatsuki’s direct assault on Konoha, which means that Leaf is no longer the juggernaut it once thought it was; Obito’s hastiness to make sure that Sasuke’s Mangekyō Sharingan is put quickly through degradation, so that the boy would be forced to opt for a higher tier; and Tsunade’s coma that propels Danzō’s to lead Konoha’s charge. All of that has Sasuke’s Dōjutsu maturation as the main driving force of it: Obito absolutely has to speed things up so that the Gedō Mazō (Shinju) has a host indefinitely to guide it; and that host is none other than Sasuke.

With Bee’s retrieval in Kisame’s hands, which also happens in the very same arc, Obito decides to reign in Sasuke who, at this point, was out of his control—rebel youth and all that; Sasuke’s always been a wilding from the start. And how does he do it? He tells Sasuke about a little bird named Danzō; and naturally, Sasuke’s filled with a rage that he can’t contain; and he doesn’t miss a beat to get even. The die is cast!

How high are these stakes? Aside of Kaguya, I’d say that not even the 4^th War had stakes this high as the entire Shinobi Alliance that stands on flimsy treaties, deterrences, and stand-offs is starting to crumble—over one boy’s botched attempt at taking a Jinchūriki (Jin) for himself. You see, this is the juncture where Sasuke becomes a real threat. Before this, Sasuke was cleaning up Konoha’s messes, not creating political confrontations with a trigger-happy, thuggish village like Kumo, bringing Akatsuki to mainstream trendy politics, and throwing entire peace (albeit showy) processes into the Shinobi bin to pave the way for another Great War!

One wrong move on Konoha’s part would hurl the world into a 4^th Great War (GW); and so far, Obito would have nothing to do with it. Brilliant, isn’t it? How the little problems you create fester and become bigger problems later on, problems you’d have to cut out if you want to survive? Sasuke is that problem; he is that festering ailment; and he is that threat the Greater Shadows are feeling for the very first time in years! Can a mere boy sneak into a village and whisk away a Jin, un-apprehended, unfazed, undeterred? If he can do it, what else can he get away with? What a frightening thought?! A thought that forces all the Kages to knock their heads together and come up with a solution—pronto: the Akatsuki can’t go on like this; something has to give; it’s us or them; etc.

Sasuke, single-handedly, creates a scenario in which the Kages are at it again; whatever was bubbling below is rising up to the surface; and nothing stands in their way to tear apart one another, throw away the faux-civility, and carve the boundaries anew—boundaries defined by military might: Ōnoki’s generosity towards the Akatsuki has unfathomably increased their capital; Ae, like his pa before him, has been amassing Jutsus to battle it out with Leaf (kidnapping attempts on the side, as well); Kiri has just done a mission clean-sweep of their resistance groups, one was lead by Zabuza, so it’s back into the fray to make its mark; and Suna is barely finding its footing, though it was always a rather poor village given its climate and geographical position. Konoha? Nagato may have brought back to life the fascists with “hearts of gold”, but it still lies in ruins, scrambling to fill the political vacuum left by Tsunade and to gather together the funding from the wealthy civilian patrons (yes, the “civilian council”, whilst never named, is real) to rebuild itself to its glory days. What a f*cking mess! And Sasuke opened the door to this international mess, no one else. And to top it off, Kumo’s trippy nin are at Konoha’s doorstep, asking for blood!

This is the conflict where Sakura finds herself: she’s been thrown to the wolves; and that, my friends, is the point. Sakura isn’t reading the manga; she isn’t even reading the whole situation clearly, because she’s very sheltered, a wall-flower in Naruto’s world—to Sasuke’s world (the change in preposition is important).

Knowing that Danzō has been made in charge, she doesn’t have Tsunade to guide her any longer. That leaves Kakashi who, regardless of your made-up canon, has always been a fool. He’s Konoha’s watch-dog. That’s all he is. You can’t expect a lot of careful thinking or long-term planning from him as that’s something he’s never been about. His character is about mitigating issues, not finding solutions for them; and in a very Kakashi fashion, he stops Sakura and Naruto from butting heads with Danzō; and naturally, he’s right here: what would that solve? Danzō would just put both of them in jail and Sasuke would be judged in accordance with Konoha’s laws; and as Tsunade had shown a lot of leniency to Naruto, Kakashi has to, as well; but whilst he mollifies Naruto’s fears, he doesn’t Sakura’s; he tells her that he’d “figure it out”; that she should “leave it to him”; and that “they’d all be Team-7 again”. And this is where he blunders—like he always does. He makes a promise he can’t keep, and Sakura, only 16 (possibly seventeen here or close to it), buys into his promise. Sai … doesn’t!

It's Sai who first saw through Sakura’s whole “tough act”. The truth is, Sakura isn’t tough; she isn’t a saboteur; she isn’t clever. Both Naruto and Sakura, in some ways, are similar to one another, which is why their friendship flourishes in Sasuke’s absence: they wear their hearts on their sleeves; they long to be noticed by the object of their fantasies (Sasuke for one reason or another—as for Naruto it’s that generational conflict, spiritual desire; and for Sakura, it’s physical desire; it’s the spiritual and physical nature of their wants that Sasuke’s character is meant to complete; without Sasuke, their themes are incomplete, something which isn’t true the other way around); and their want to be something more than they are. This shouldn’t be hard for people to understand after more than 400 chapters!

And Sai has worked with Danzō: stalking his targets and delivering Konoha’s judgement has been his MO since the start. This isn’t sexist writing when Sai’s, for the lack of the better world, a by-the-book trained killer—even for Konoha standards. The youth carried out extrajudicial killings from a very young age on Root’s behalf. Him reading Sakura like a book shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. And Shikamaru? His plans have always had disastrous effects. (Remember when he dragged off his friends into the wilderness to be killed off and harvested for hearts by two immortal Akatsuki members? Lucky for him, Kakashi was around.)

So when Shikamaru confronts Sakura, hitting the iron whilst it’s still hot, it’s realistic that she breaks down, because Sasuke is around whom she’s built her entire life (and she’s also a f*cking 16-year-old!); now that that fantasy is crumbling away—piece by piece—she doesn’t know what to do. Her skills as a Medic Nin aren’t going to magically translate into this: all of these people (more like different flavors of fascist thugs) are markedly different as Shinobis, and no arc lays this as bare as KS.

This is the arc where Sakura, who has had rose-tinted glasses in regard to many aspects, steps into the real world—the real shinobi world for the very first time. Now, you’d correct me and say, “she took on Sasori, so you’re wrong!”; and I’d say that this is the first time that she’d face the dilemma of being a Shinobi: the only fate for a shinobi is obedience or death; these are the only two possible options for a shinobi. Sakura, now, stands at the juncture: hope and optimism of youth; and the compromise at the doorstep of adulthood; and Sasuke’s at the epicenter of this optimism and compromise.

What people don’t understand is that she, as a Shinobi, has to negotiate the best possible future for herself, Naruto, and Konoha as a whole in a world that provides very little options; so who has to pay the price, take the fall, turn into the compromise? This is subtext that emerges, with a great brutality, into real text: Sakura has no choice but to make a choice; and when push comes to shove, she makes that choice: Sasuke has to take the fall for the good of all!

Our past events shape us as people, and Sakura has known nothing but Konoha as a place of security, progression, and camaraderie. Remember, Sasuke is the remote to her mundane. This encompasses more than just his prodigiousness, beauty, and heritage; it reflects his world that’s so different from her own that she, try as she might, can never understand it, because characters don’t exist in a vacuum and stories aren’t mirrors. You can’t simply pick Sakura up from KS and start blithering about her short-comings without understanding the entirety of the narrative that exists about her.

She’s biting off more than she can chew; she’s a fish out of water; or she’s a wall-flower—pick whichever one you want, but all roads lead to the same answer: none of this would’ve ended any other way. Sakura, crushed by guilt, indecisive, and foolhardy, hurtles head-first into trouble; and Sasuke is this manga’s number one trouble-maker, a fire-starter, and a rebel with a cause, a very big cause that’d send nothing but sinister chills running down any Shinobi’s spine. A “law-abiding” Shinobi’s spine. He means business, and Sakura is only a girl who … dreams; she’s never seen the boy close enough to know him; but she dreams.

And Kakashi’s tardiness that’s as specific as it’s eternal nearly costs her her life; hence, it’s the arc of repetition in a way: old habits are hard to kill, but they might kill you this time. He made a promise he couldn’t keep, because that’s what he does; and Sakura paid the price for it. Again, it isn’t about the blame-game, wrongs or rights, meanness or niceness; no, it’s about real reactions to very real actions that go beyond the world you know—and the world you don’t know.

Kakashi knows the world; Sakura doesn’t; and that creates a rift between their worlds; and where do they meet? Who else but the lost boy, Sasuke, a bridge between a rosy past and a miserable present and a brutal future, for which he’d have to put up the fight of a life-time—several lifetimes, in fact? You can’t expect me to believe you that that’s terrible writing when it’s all there in the panels before you—each as clear as the brightest day.

So what would happen when a dreamer would come face to face with the boy who she’s come to take out—object of her dreams, wants, desires? Nothing good. She takes one foolish step after another, because she doesn’t want to burden Kakashi, Naruto, or anyone else. Team-7 she feels is only a dream—something she has to wake up from. “Sasuke-kun” is no longer “the Sasuke-kun from back then” (it’s something she even states).

The lies, the little manipulations, and the little “sabotage”? All blow up in her face as she’s never been to the world beyond the pretty picture her village represents. Sasuke lashes out, nearly chokes her to death, lets not a moment slip by to cut her throat open. This is Sasuke—her Sasuke? It’s a whiplash that, now, stands in a bleak contrast to her nostalgia of the good ol’ days. It’s f*cking brilliant writing, and the scans show all this with a directness that I never expected from a Shōnen manga of all the things! All of this … so f*cking good that I can’t elaborate on this any more than I already have!

And when the moment comes to stab the boy in the back, she can’t do it, because it’s … very hard to let go of the dreams you’ve been dreaming for as long as you can remember; and she reverts back to the little girl she was, a dreamer; and the arc—this f*cking arc that’s perfection in every sense of the word—ends on that note where there’s a sense of direction now to a previous little sense of direction.The chaos finds a sense of calm. The jumble is set down into neat pieces.

That’s what KS was, an arc of chaos, a lack of direction in a confusion that threatens the entire world. Obito declares a war on them all, and they all unite, content that they’ve found a new foe to battle on, create new legacies, histories for their villages. In that sense, Sasuke becomes a convenience to be violent together as one! And Sakura, as always, remains a wall-flower, a girl on the doorstep of womanhood, hoping, dreaming, wanting…

If this isn’t good writing, I don’t know what is.

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Chapter 47: Sarada is a trash fire of a character

Chapter Text

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Sarada is a trash fire of a character, and her Magekyou looks hideous as f*ck. I must confess: I don't even like Itachi (in case, after all my discourse on this guy, you were still unsure), but his Mangekyou Sharingan (MS) is f*cking beautiful! He has a very sharp Shuriken pattern, which is also quite thin to facilitate the throw, if you haven't noticed; and that represents his connection to the whole "Shinobi" mantra: it's one of the few most common tools used in the manga by Shinobis, though his is closer to the Fuma Shuriken pattern that Sasuke always uses. So, regardless of Kishimoto's fumbles (whom I don't blame that much due to his brutal schedules), there's some very good narrative depth to his design. Shisui's Mangekyou is also very much like a Shuriken, only with one additional point and added thickness. And they were friends. Not that surprising, now is it?

Obito's MS has a much sharper Shuriken pattern, with long points jutting out of the ends to connect to the next Shuriken projection. It's almost as if it's an uncommon Shuriken, like Obito who in the past wanted to assume the seat but then veered away from it quite violently. Obito, as shown in the manga, wields very large Shurikens. He throws gigantic-sized ones out of his Kamui's Pocket Dimension, enough to slice clean through Hachibi's tentacles; the very same tentacles it'd used to guard against the Jubi's Bijuu Dama and create a whirlwind that destroyed a sizable portion of the forest and broke apart stone and rock with ease. (He took out three of its legs with these house-sized Shurikens, and his eye pattern, save that stylized sharp points, is very much like the Shurikens he uses.)

Madara's MS is nothing like the aforementioned. His looks as if the Sharingan's Tomoes themselves have coalesced into a spinning pattern. An evidence of his desire to see his clan be free. Prosper. His brother Izuna has a very interesting MS pattern. Basically, to me, it looks like the Uchiha Fan Symbol from all three sides, each with its own holding part. If you place three fans on top of one another and point out the sticks in different directions, it'd appear very much like this pattern. What a surprise that Izuna didn't trust the Senju and died the same way? It's almost as if his MS reflects that? It could also be the Hitobashira pillar from a top-down view, especially if you take away the additional points, which could just be handles for turning the pillar, making this more ghastly than the aforementioned interpretation. I'm not too sure of this visual interpretation, but given that Izuna became a sort of sacrificial lamb, a pillar for Madara's evolution and Leaf's creation, for Leaf and the illusion of peace the alliance offered to the Uchiha, I'm not too far off from this. Even Madara thought that the "bridge" of peace, one of the aspects for which the pillars were created in the past, between the two clans that Hashirama proposed was built on his brother's sacrifice. The Hitobashira pillars represent the wantonness of the utilitarian mindset, kill the few to make the many prosper, one which permeates Leaf to this day. Maybe I am spot on about this!

Sasuke is naturally the holder of the most unique pattern. His is a flower that possesses six petals, not three, one with inverted design unlike the rest: red pattern against a black background, which makes it so that the entire clan resides in him as the red is very large and very pronounced, a rising sun pattern from the fan that finds most ground in his eyes. Also, what is more pronounced in the forest, a flower or a leaf? A flower is far more rare, and a striking red one is even rarer, especially since it's blooming among countless leaves that are very common. That makes Sasuke the uncommon among the common. A boy that means business. One that won't let go and can't go unnoticed in the vastness of the forest. I think what I said is self-explanatory.

(I'm very undecided on Indra's pattern as that spiral won't be a correct representation of what he actually had; it's more of a depiction of a circular pattern, but one which has become myth; still, a spiral represents repetition that takes the same path every single time; and as a Transmigrat that chose champions in every era of conflict, it does fit.)

Sarada's? Her pattern looks like one of those pointy rings that I've seen in my drains, and I'm not even lying: it looks that similar. Kishimoto isn't even trying, is he? He doesn't care, does he? God, what an ugly design that doesn't mean anything visually. Is this your Kween, one who sports an eye-sore of a Sharingan pattern and wants to take over the state that butchered her father's family in a bid to "right the wrongs" of the Uchiha Clan (what a great pro-oppression narrative Boruto is turning out to be; they aren't even sneaky about it; it's mask off pro-fascism up in this Uchiha bitch)? I'd even take Itachi over her. At least, he had some merits, speculative ones, but merits nonetheless. You lot can have her as I forsake Boruto a long time ago, and from the looks of it, I made the right call!

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Chapter 48: "Neji's bad 'cause Sasuke's bad!"

Chapter Text

AN: This was compiled from the replies to a reader in regard to the similar treatment both characters are shown by the fandom.

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Too many times you'd come across people that belch out an endless supply of word-vomit that intimately concerns the cruelty these boys extended to the sufferers of "domestic wife-battery" that are Hinata and Sakura (don't you just want to weep, be hysterical in the name of pop-feminism?!); and too many times, they're similarly derided. What's the issue?

Let's be as candid here as humanly possible. The issue with the fandom is that it lacks empathy altogether: most people get into reading x, y, or z fictional (or even non-fictional) content for the sole purpose of contentment. They aren't interested in expanding their cognitive empathy and learning more about other realities. That's the reason why a mediocre girl on whom her father puts a lot of pressure is more appealing to them than, say, a slave that suffers at her hands. As in the case of the former, their own victim-hood takes center stage, and everyone and everything else is cast aside as it's I who matter, not so and so.

That's the reason why "civility politics" are dragged into the discussion and characters like Sasuke (because let's face it, Neji's disliked because Sasuke's disliked, not the other way around), Neji, etc., are derided as they don't keep quiet about their injustices. They lash out. They show anger. They exhibit sorrow. In fact, anger hides the immense grief that they've experienced in life due to the injustice. Characters like Hinata don't deal with the wider issues, such as, the military industrial complex, its unfettered violence, profiteering, and the consequences of the said policies. No, her issues are absurdly domestic, very mundane; and through that mediocrity, she's upheld as this bastion of "ideal responses" to tragedy: she's meek, nice (not kind, mind you, just nice; two different things), and non-confrontational. She's basically the idealized picture of garden-variety trauma that's supposed to be the template for every traumatized individual, for some reason. Why? Well, because she represents the benign-reader types who, then, themselves turn into moral gauges: "if I were a genocide victim, slave, etc., I wouldn't do this," when this is a preposterous argument, but one you can't lose as it's purely hypothetical. That's why characters like Sasuke and Neji are torn down for not offering emotional support for these cry-baby types, not shouldering their emotional burdens in spite of their own immense tragedies: Neji was mean to Hinata; Sasuke abused Sakura (this one is a real rib-tickler); they ought to have been nice to them; their trauma doesn't excuse their behaviour; so on and so forth, and other blah-blah-blah loose-yapper-confessions that go down the same well-trodden road. When they're, what, 12 f*cking years old? Even if they were much older, they'd have no ethical, moral, and rational reason to offer emotional support to these girls or anyone, for that matter; but as these female characters catch a lot of shy and poor self-esteem types for the dreaded business of self-inserting, the slights are deeply personal; and you can never beat the parasocial-relationship-holding (with a fictional character) toss-pots at their own game, and you're back to square one. There's no point to these people's "discourse" against these characters as it purely exists to validate them.

And what's mind-boggling is that many themes the narrative introduced and elaborated on, which intimately concerned military violence, that certain characters carried were transferred to Sasuke. That's another reason why the characters lost their value. Haku and Kimimaro were about ethnic cleansings; however, the reasons behind them were a bit different: Haku's clan was killed as it was feared; Kimimaro's clan was killed as they took Kiri head on, and they were also considered dangerous and crazy. You see where I'm going with this? Both genocides were carried out by Kiri, but the reasons are different. The Uchiha clan was considered dangerous, crazy, and a threat as they took Konona head on; and that resulted in their demise. Orochimaru spells that out pretty bluntly to Kabuto.

Neji is about otherness. He's branded. The Uchiha clan are othered via relocation and a dog-whistle; hence, Sasuke isn't physically branded, but he's still very much branded due to the reasons behind the massacre. Gaara was just aggressive as he was terrorized by his own kin. Sasuke shares a similar thread with him through Itachi.

Nagato was about revolution, so this one is self-explanatory; and Indra was about change. Sasuke pretty much took all of these aspects into his character and turned into a singular force in the narrative. Why would any reader even remotely interested in Naruto ignore a character like Sasuke? Yet this fandom struggles night and day to manage just that, convinced that its fixed version of canon is just better!

As a result, the "walking in some one's shoes" isn't even attempted; and everything simply turns into a game of "I'm like this character, but as I'm the better person, that character's a better person and vice-versa," to pat yourself on the back that, deep down, you're a very good person. A self-congratulation in the tragedy's aftermath, without any process through the tragedy. The reason's that these people don't want tragedies to reflect the very real trauma and the very real consequences of this type trauma that's very specific and very harrowing. They want them as window-dressings to fetishize these characters for the express purpose of shipping, one-upping them for power-fantasies, and what have you; and till this isn't addressed, you won't ever see any improvement on this front. It's just an empty discourse to self-fella*te en masse, without ever engaging with the questions the canon asks; hence, it's unsurprising how this surface-level drivel is easily uplifted to "lol, owned!" discourse, whenever these characters experience defeat; it isn't the character that interests them; it's the humiliation of the character that they expect to see.

What's at the heart of the issue? It’s projection. They’d talk about the themes the manga talks of if they ever bothered to stop from filling up the shoes of these mediocre cartoons (Naruto, Sakura, Hinata, Lee, etc.); since they don’t, every character that stands in the way of their “promised greatness” (it’s so f*cking Christian, I swear it), whether literally via battles, talent, and skill or metaphorically via ideology, would receive derision for x, y, or z reasons, most of which are rooted in the post-modern neo-liberal/centrist respectability politics.

The schadenfreude is there as many truly believe in the trappings of The American Dream and the Christian values that have comically been integrated well into the discourse to the point that they’ve become default. When a character denies them “the promised greatness”, it’s due to their belief that state is sacred, supreme, and divine; and the code of conduct (the “nice people syndrome”) ought to greatly decide as to who gets to be at the forefront and who gets to stay at the back. That’s why being nice is better than being kind as, when you’re nice, it’s empathy that’s for a specific moment, not something that encompasses praxis against a wide range of issues that breed contempt in the marginalised; as, in order to understand their contempt, you’d have to let go of passive empathy, which is being nice, and go for active empathy, which is kindness; something that’d compel you to rectify the faults in the system that produce people like Sasuke and Neji in the first place; however, then you’re back to square one, and the state trumps all; hence, all the empathy is manufactured and doesn’t extend beyond what the state deems of be worthy of its compassion. That’s why Itachi’s kind for ending a threat whilst Sasuke’s not for creating it for a system that brought into existence the entire conflict. That’s why Hinata’s kind for being a pushover whilst Neji isn’t for pushing back at her in spite of her power over him.

And with it come the added extensions that simply add superficial code of conducts, ones approved by the “popular discourse”, of bearing the emotional burdens of the kids who are just being nice, barely getting by, and are in need of support as so and so are mean to them, don’t care for their self-esteem, and treat them like dirt--look down on them. Sounds familiar? Because it is. There, right there, is the distillation of this entire discourse and why Sasuke and Neji are expected to bear responsibilities of their emotional short-comings as they’re unsympathetic in the state’s eye–-or rather, the socio-political discourse online has created these sympathetic and unsympathetic victims and the code of conducts to go along with them; and as they don’t fall into any category, certainly not into the ones that create victim-hoods for consumers with throwaway incomes (their low self-esteems, which stem from a plethora of hyper consumerist slip ups), they catch additional derision. Why? Well, it’s so easy to inhabit Naruto, Sakura, Hinata, or Lee, isn’t it? In this day and age when “body image issues”, born of late-stage capitalism and the populace’s rampant engagement with it, dictate the gradations of sympathies for the poor souls that fall “victim” to these self-inflicted miseries, why on earth would they ever want to engage in the topics that confront their world--a world whose excess consumerism stands on the very injustices Sasuke and Neji represent? Why would they when a meek girl, a bratty kid whose lonely in middle-school, a kid who tries so hard, and a girl whose forehead is a target for bullying…are right there?

It isn’t that difficult to understand that why it happens; it’s fairly clear as to why it does: genocide, slavery, and oppression in various forms and the seething, incomparable anger that’s a consequence of these harrowing injustices is just not…relatable. That’s why the post-modern heroes, status quo mongers whose tragedies are very middle class, mundane, and domestic, take to the fore and the othered kids have to be beaten down, humbled, knocked down a peg to reassure the middle-class that their efforts will one day be realised, one unsympathetic vanquishing of a victim at a time. Itachi, by comparison, is the cream of the middle-class crop, the place where they want to reach: a good prodigy who’s humble, recognises that his fellow men just aren’t worthy of sympathy, and culls them in a very “killing your people make our soldiers cry/it hurt us more to hurt you” fashion; and as a result, upholds the militaristic grandeur that post-modern middle-class culture lionizes, utterly reeks of. (It's no wonder that they can't wrap their heads around the fact that this guy did zero A-Rank missions, literally zero; and his speedy climb in Anbu ranks had squat to do with his intelligence or lack thereof.) That’s why Minato’s popular, a very peculiar character that reads like this “1950s cold-war soldier and a family man” propaganda poster; and Kakashi, whose military depression is fetishized to lend credence to this endless wave of violence: see, how men can weep, too!

You’d have to realise that all of this is extremely deliberate, and the victims have to be healed of their trauma, put back in their place; for if they don’t fall in line nicely, the state can always dispatch its sensitive heroes (Itachi and Kakashi) to smother down the insensitivity of the matter, coat their hands in blood, and exhibit the classical “weeping war-criminal with a heart of gold (a pigsty in which Full Metal Alchemist wallows)”. That’s why you’ve got these two segments of Sakura wankers: one that weeps that she wasn’t like the template that Itachi occupies, a monstrous killer who hunts down minorities in the path to great careerism; and the other perpetually sniffles that Sakura wasn’t allowed to heal Sasuke and that he ought to have showed consideration for an imperialistic foot-soldier, no matter how many times she fetishized, dehumanized, and objectified him in a bid to get access to his body. Both of whom occupy the same spectrum; both of whom cull the minorities in their own way; both of whom want themselves to take the spotlight. It’s never about righting the wrongs of the system, but about righting the wrongs of their lack of integration into the system. If the plethora of “torture of Sasuke at the hand of x, y, or z cartoon boyfriend” fanfictions that float atop this creatively bankrupt gutter don’t define this, I don’t know what does.

In this regard, Neji’s a mere extension of Sasuke; and as Sasuke catches derision for the aforementioned, so does Neji. Their traumas are belittled, gleefully used to torment them (the Fanfiction Kill Your Heroes literally has a scene in which the “white feminist author”, a massive red-flag already, wrote down a prolonged torture of Sasuke at Sakura’s hands where she uses Mikoto’s mutilated body to call him a bastard; and the female fandom was cheering on; tearing and hunting minority coded characters at the hands of a white woman stand-in, of course, is the most feminist thing in the world); and female empowerment is practically enacted through their culling, a complete genocide of their legacies (Kill Your Heroes pretty much is a long and vile genocide-apologia written by an unhinged white c*nt that goes as far as to give the charge of the Uchiha Clan to Sakura; this is literally cultural genocide, but the audience is fine, because “white women empowerment”). These sensitive souls, you see, who got denied access to the greatness as Sasuke and Neji got in the way have to be emotionally fella*ted, literally, too, to over-compensate for this glaring narrative short-coming by providing them with minority-hunting opportunities, arse-kissing from important men, and a slew of "hot and career-minded men" as sexual playthings to right the wrongs. Naruto chuds are cut from the same cloth, so the female side of the fandom never had any moral high-ground to stand on.

If all of this isn’t a self-tell, this deranged tendency to keep hunting down starkly minority-coded characters who’re victims of state-sponsored terrorism (Konoha is literally based on Mossad and British Intelligence Service), then what is? It’s championing ur fascism and allowing the “little guy”, a middle class hyper-consumerist whose entire lifestyle flourishes on slavery and genocide, to shine. That’s why there’s only accountability for the state-targeted victims. Why? The middle class is only trying to get by. Poor things!

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Chapter 49: Namikaze Minato: Military Propaganda, The Character! (Part 1)

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Which character (from Naruto) comes to your mind when you think, is this even a character? Ladies and gents, boys and girls, yes, I’m talking about the flash that thunders in a little fem- and in-cel’s mind, makes shiver their teeny timbers, and the hopes, putting out gargantuan tears from their eyes, that they could be like him or have him, too—someday! You got that, right: it’s your friendly neighborhood war-criminal with a hipster-fascist bend; the Flying Thunder God user, hoverer, and abuser; a bona fide jutsu-slot-machine on which all mediocrities can project their hopes and dreams and loneliest genitals—your one and only, Namikaze Minato.

(It’s an all-in-one debunking post on Minato, so be prepared; and fr stands for for real, just in case you didn’t know.)

To start off this little piece of mine, have you ever seen a “nothing personal, kid!” meme? You must have as it’s fairly old now (google it if you haven’t; you would gain nothing novel, and that’s how Minato comes across as a character, as well); now, imagine, what if a character personified it to the point that become its perfect embodiment? That’s what Minato is, a nothing-personal-kid meme taken to the extreme, dialed to eleven thousand and beyond, propelled forward at thundering speeds to Naruto-poll’s top on a masturbator’s ferocious desire to be that too-kwel-for-Genin-school kid-turned-man—ice cool, in fact.

With Kishimoto, you can tell what sort of intention he had with Minato: a talented young man who died young protecting the village (his tenure lasted for less than 6 months; Orochimaru taunted him for it when Sasuke summoned back all the Kages from the Shinigami’s belly); he’s less a person and more a character, even within the universe. He’s only meant to be thought of as the “good ol’ times” the character; but the fandom took up this mantra and dove headlong into this nuclear-family propaganda that he reeks of. What’s he liked for? It certainly isn’t his “impeccable” characterization (he barely has any); he doesn’t move the plot much, other than that one time when Hinata f*cked it all up, and her fandom shoved it in the candy-wrapper of weeaboo-sacrifice (what did she sacrifice other than everyone else for her throwaway Shōjo manga confession? Beats me); but Kishimoto had to think of something—and fast—to cover up Hime-Chan’s egg-in-the-face moment that cost Naruto and what remained of Leaf their very lives. He swooped down . . . erm, rather into Naruto from the seal (waaaoow!), somehow, and fixed everything and flashed away. That’s always been his character from the very beginning: he flashes from point to point, gets the job done (as his fans scream, with guts and spit flying out, foaming at the mouth; so I’d get to this in a bit), and goes back to the wife whose son’s fanbase finds her hot enough to mount by proxy; however, what’s better than the real deal? You tell me.

I'd go out on a limb here and confess it outright: Minato isn't a character; he’s fashioned in the narrative as a semblance of it for Naruto to measure his worth, a previous place-holder for the seat he wants, a daddy that was just better; so if Minato was this school-yard-jock cool, he could be cool, too, no? Hence, he's a concept that elaborates on no particular concept, because he isn’t meant to. A host of clichés, as you can call it, that stay clichés. He's basically there for a lot of dude-bros to self-insert into, the cool-dude effect. Bearing all of that obvious “mirage of greatness” Naruto Fandom associates with Naruto, I'm not surprised that he won as he's what many of these nerds would want themselves to be like: handsome, very popular with the ladies, successful, pretty wife, and an edgy solider on the side who'd take no prisoners (that's why they always wanted Naruto to not a have a receding hairline and a hideous mug, which he had since his teenage years: they wanted him to transform from an ugly duckling into a swan that is Minato; they bitch and moan about it to this day and edit his pictures to turn him into his pretty dad, lamenting, “Naruto could’ve been this!”; hence, as Sakura Fandom often hollers pathetically in every crevice of the internet they can lodge themselves into, Naruto was robbed of the genetic goods his mug deserved; they even grant the frog-aesthetic-holding loser a sharper chin; “no weak chin shall grace this normie’s visage on my f*cking watch; he was prettier than Sasuke, meant to rizz up all the bitches and his mom! Robbed-robbed-robbed!” they yell when the night is still young and beyond). Kind of like those CIA operatives and their posts on twitter handles. Minato reads exactly like those posts. What a surprise? Not really.

And that’s what makes the dude blander than the white-trash bread. He acts like this . . . devoted family-man on the side when he’s got “flee on sight!” order from Cloud, so he’s your seasoned war-criminal; but look over there, away from this heinousness: he wears the apron, washes the dishes, smiles as his heavily pregnant wife rests (who looks as if she might explode with Kage Bunshins Naruto was abusing before his vag-popping time); he even rescued her via a trail of red clumps, which went on for miles, that didn’t leave her with several bald patches, daaaaw! (The pretty war-criminal and his girl-boss nuke-carrying-wife who’s a tomboy, too; she’s so me, like fr; romance of the century!) Your trad wife fantasies realized, basically, and that’s why even Sakura Fandom can’t help themselves from tossing aside the Uchiha fat co*cks every sunday to slow-flash-step their way onto his dick . . . to feel a flash of batter and a thunder of aftereffects (Kushina went full-on bald in this AU; that trail had come pricey; so as legend has it: whenever a hot-alpha-man-slot is empty, or made to be empty, it’s the right time for the Sakura Fandom . . . erm, I mean, Sakura to fill it up from below; by Kami’s design, as your mum would say!); however, at the other end, he’s also this calculating solider that gets his hands dirty on the side, coats them with the blood of his “enemies”, and you’ve got to say that with a deep Southern accent—all smiles. The dude is like this traditional family man, together with the poster cut-outs of a hideously smiling wife by his side who’s secretly the nation’s mother, a first lady who’s relatable and goofy (also like me, fr, fr!), with a nuke in her boiler, and God fearing (Will of Fire fearing in this case) solider who’s just perfect. Is he the very embodiment of 1950s Western Cold War propaganda? Shut the front door!

Am I wrong? No, with complete seriousness, just look at this guy and tell me with honesty: change his clothes and give him and Kushina funny hair and clothes and slap them on any 1950s poster of a family man who was out there risking it all for his nation, family, and future jingoistic bastard brood; and you’ve got yourselves a Cold War poster number 1000^th on your hand. It’s no wonder that the dude can’t carry the whole narrative to save his life, because he isn’t anything more than the aesthetics of that poster: a panel like that exists, as well, and it’s disturbingly hilarious as to how close it looks to an average trad-wife and family-man poster from the 1950s America that was deeply embroiled in Cold War that it was the “American Values” versus the “Barbarism of Socialists”; only with Minato, he bought the Senju Farm quickly into his tenure, so we all got saved from the denture-filled grins Naruto would’ve bestowed us with on each of the panels, with his ma and pa shouldering the good (genocidal fascist) state and its burdens, smiling: it hurts them more than it hurts us all! Thank heavens for small favors (and Kishimoto truly lost it at this juncture as his “my village was closer to the American Base” is laid out naked for everyone to read, and it’s pretty silly).

And the thing is, in spite of all the “myth” associated with the character, he doesn’t live up to any of that save the myth the real people constructed about him. This can be read in two ways: Kishimoto deliberately deconstructed the myth and showed to us that legends are ordinary; he showed to us that myths are constructed in public discourse, not reality; or it could be both as Minato’s performance . . . is less than stellar every time he’s brought into the panels later on, to the point that the man turned into a farce of the very concept he was supposed to embody.

Let’s look at his strategic feats first. When he came across Obito, who he thought to be Madara (without Obito telling him that he was), he struggled fairly hard against him. Obito kept up with Minato’s so-called out-of-this-world speed just fine, to the point that Minato had to constantly teleport with Flying Thunder God (FTG) to counter Obito’s foot-speed, of all the things, and get out of his chains. That isn’t the feat of someone who’s very fast, but the exact opposite:

(He matched Minato slash speed easily here, enough to grab hold of his wrist.)

(Minato was so slow to counter Obito, with any Taijutsu, here and had to teleport away to save his life.)

It’s so silly that he wasn’t even fast enough to jump out of Obito’s chains and had to resort to FTG (again!) to break free; no, he practically landed into them!

And contrary to what his belligerent wankers would have you believe, he couldn’t land a finger on Ae, the 4th Raikage, and a teenaged Bee, who had yet to be confined in the village for the Perfect Jinchūriki training, something which happened after the 3^rd Raikage’s death and Ae’s coronation as the 4^th one; so this war was fought before that as Ae isn’t a Kage yet here and Bee is free to roam about and spread terror. Bee anticipated both of Minato’s dainty flashes and stalemated him with ease:

(Bee intercepted him once here with no trouble, even though he’s using FTG, not foot speed/ Shunshin no Jutsu; he couldn’t even lay a finger on Ae, contrary to what you’ve heard, and Bee allowed him to attack his Partial Transformation.)

(Funnily enough, it’s Minato and his team that’re asked to retreat when Bee reveals himself to be Hachibi’s Jinchūriki, not what the internet that’s filled with his belligerent wankers claims.)

(His FTG “trick” isn’t anything novel as even a fool like Ae, who’s like Bee a pure brute force fighter, figured it out just fine; and so did Bee who stalemated this supposedly super-fast shinobi that was using FTG this whole time, not flash-step/foot speed.)

In the War Arc, despite being in Kurama Bijū Mode (BM) and accompanied by his clone, he failed against a bloated Jūbi Obito and got kicked and thrashed about, together with his clone. Whilst Sasuke flashed from so far away and saved Naruto in the process; he also used Susanoo that is known to make the user slower:

(Notice how close Obito is to Minato’s Kage Bunshin, who’s about to call the original to him: Obito’s landed right in front of him!)

(Minato’s KB teleports the original to himself; and Sasuke’s way over there whilst Naruto and Gamakichi are in front of Minato and his clone, and so is Obito: if you look closely, you can see Naruto falling down from Gamakichi.)

(You can see the scene much more clearly here as Obito has fallen right in front of Minato and his KB; and Naruto is falling right behind Obito who’s used the Truth Seeking Orb, TSB, turned it into a rod, and stabbed it in Naruto’s direction; and at the bottom left panel, as the manga is read from right to left, you see Sasuke’s Ribcage Susanoo’s formation, its fist, basically.)

(Sasuke’s caught the TSB’s end with the Susanoo’s fist, long enough for Naruto to fall and land safely; and this is the orb that cancels out all Ninjutsu, by the way, including Edo Tensai, which I’d explain in a bit; so that’s quite the chakra potency feat by Sasuke that the rod, which obliterates all Ninjutsu, didn’t immediately break through his Susanoo that allowed Naruto to fall down with his life intact; you can even see the place which was struck by the TSB; and all the while, Minato couldn’t do a thing and he and his KB are kicked away by a bloated Obito.)

(As I mentioned: Susanoo makes the user slower, so that’s an incredible speed-feat by Sasuke as he’d have been much faster without it, and yet another poor show of speed by Minato.)

Before that, whilst Obito was still struggling against Madara’s control to use Rinne-Tensei on himself to bring Madara back to life, Minato was so slow that he had to teleport his Kage Bunshin to Obito as he still had Minato’s FTG marking on him from their past encounter. He was absurdly slow that he couldn’t run on foot whilst Tobirama, with his clones, and Hashirama, also with his clones, covered the distance quicker than him. And Sasuke covered the distance the fasted, and with Susanoo (which canonically makes the user slower, as I showed above) might I add, and reached there the fastest—right before Minato used FTG to reach Obito.

(Hashirama is mentioning here that they have to stop Obito, who’s being controlled by Madara, from using Rinne-Tensei and bringing Madara back to life; so it’s a race against time here.)

(And Immediately, Hashirama and Tobirama scramble to create Mokuton and Kage Bunshins; they can make less than what they should be able to as the remaining are busy holding the barrier around the Jūbi intact.)

(Minato makes a handseal to create a KB here, the quickest guy in the manga, apparently; look above as they’re much closer to Madara, who can be seen as a flaming dot above Hashirama and his Mokuton Bunshins, than Sasuke is to Obito.)

(Look at how small Susanoo is in comparison to Obito’s size; Hashirama and his Bunshins in the previous panel don’t look much larger than Madara; and Sasuke, again, is using Susanoo and an Enton Jutsu, rendering him slower.)

(Sasuke uses Chidori Blade here, too, so that’s three Jutsus in a single flash-step; all the Shinobi in the manga don’t ever use more than one Jutsu during fast movement, but Sasuke does that all the time because he’s simply that fast; and he’s still closer to Obito than Hashirama and Tobirama are to Madara, and Minato’s still nowhere in sight.)

(And this is when Minato decided to slash Obito, and he’d send his Kage Bunshin instead, which makes it funnier as that means that the seal he used way back was for this very purpose.)

Another poor speed-feat, one of the many in the war. Even when Minato jumped away from Obito, whilst in BM, Sasuke matched his speed easily.

Then when Obito came at them with a TSB again, after he managed to sync himself properly to the Jūbi, Minato stood around like a f*cking moron whilst Sasuke, again, used Susanoo (which, to remind you all for the third time, makes the user slower) to guard all of them against its blast:

(Sasuke has formed a full Ribcage Susnaoo whilst Minato has yet to teleport the orb away, which Tobirama does for him through FTG, a Jutsu which Minato abuses regularly to get away, not foot speed, by his own admission in the above panel.)

However, apparently, for some curious reason, it’s Minato, despite having his speed massively augmented by Bijū Chakra through-out these above panels, who’s very fast and not Sasuke. Hmm, odd. And if you haven’t noticed, his speed feats are excruciatingly mediocre, only all of them, even though he’s well beyond his regular speed as he’s in BM. And why wouldn’t they be? Cloaked Ae is faster than Minato without his Teleportation, anyway. Don’t let the pitiful “I could also be a trad wife holder!” wank fool you!

Then are his acclaimed S-Ranked, as his wankers put it, strategic feats that are straight up preposterous in canon. He countered Obito’s Kamui with pure dumb luck as he had no clue that it was an ocular ability: it’s mentioned nowhere in his analysis that it’s an ocular ability, so his decision to teleport to Obito’s back had little to with how Intangibility works and more his assumption that Obito would be vulnerable when he’s solid; so he just teleported behind an opponent’s back (again, like he always, a complete meme) on a whim:

(I love it that he’s so f*cking stupid, the “elite prodigy” that kids like Sasuke just can’t compete with, that he just lands headlong into Obito’s chain and its obvious loop-trap, isn’t even fast enough to jump out, and has to resort to FTG, again!, just to make an escape; and Obito’s just 14 here!)

So not only is Minato not that fast compared to a 14-year-old child but he’s also a goddamn arse. And in order to overcome this Raiton-coated kunai-up-the-arse slight against their patron saint of basem*nt-dwelling would-be “chaddies”, they just keep abusing this last scan to feel special about themselves that Minato delivered this “whoop-arse!” in totality to Obito when the scans illustrate the exact opposite; and as if Minato didn’t fail repeatedly on all fronts during this battle before this final strike! And his little plan could’ve massively backfired. It worked because he was lucky. And we later learned that Obito was merely 14 here, a little kid, who nearly cost Leaf Kurama, managed to kill off his middle-class simpleton-perfection trad-wife, Kushina, and Minato himself in the process, and cost Leaf plenty of casualties; so it was a job well-done from his end, and Minato had no choice but to the seal Kurama into his own perpetual loser of a son, a decision that’s lauded by the fandom, because . . . ideal solider, remember? It’s a cliché as they adore to be that cliché some day, or in another life vicariously if their balls haven’t FTG’d down to hit the water yet!

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Chapter 50: Namikaze Minato: Military Propaganda, The Character! (Part 2)

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It isn’t as if his poor deduction was done in record time or anything to grant it any “wowzers!” factor. Not only was it incomplete, but it wasn’t as if anyone couldn’t figure out Obito’s Jutsu: they all broke it down faster than he did and better than he did. Sakura? She broke down Intangibility perfectly, granted she had the help of Shino’s Sensing Bugs, Yamato’s Mokuton, and Hinata’s Byakugan; but she did it regardless:

(It cracks me up that the above deduction by Sakura took Kakashi only 200 chapters to reach, “is that my bro, Obito, and our eyes are connected, fr?! Huh, no way!” another S-Class smarty pants like Minato and Itachi; did he let Sakura’s very accurate conclusion enter from one ear and exit the other? What a f*cking thumb-sucker.)

Toruné and Fū? They figured it out even quicker than the above lot, and their deductions were perfect, unlike Minato’s:

Sasuke figured it out the quickest in the entire manga. Sasuke did that with just one swing of the sword. That’s it, just one! We know this when Sasuke explicitly mentions it here; and that’s a call back to this. So where are his “amazing” battle feats? Nowhere. (He had this one one-decent feat in the War-Arc to bypass Madara’s Truth Seeking Orb, but that’s just about it; but that strategy is so dull that I’m not even interested in posting anything about it on here; and that’s pretty much the complete list of his earth-shattering accomplishments on the battlefield; but he peeked from behind that unwary Jōnin in Kakashi Gaiden that one time, so isn’t he, like, kwel, fr?!)

The claim “Minato killed 1000 Rock Shinobi” is made up and complete conjecture. It’s got no basis in canon or filler anime. None. For starters, Ōnoki’s quote from the Shadow of the Anbu arc is maimed to pass this off as some sort of fact, when he implied or stated no such thing.

Ōnoki stated: "With the pride on our line, we sent 1000 of our shinobi and I hear that it took just one of them, the yellow flash, to stop the invasion. And that's the reality of it." Minato was simply credited by Ōnoki for stopping the Stone's invasion. He never stated that Minato took down a 1000 shinobi for it.

The manga goes more in depth in Kakashi Gaiden: Minato lays out the situation to his team and tells them that the Stone Village has deployed 1000 Shinobi to the frontline to invade the Grass Village. Minato then tells his team that, after they make it to the border, team Kakashi will sabotage a crucial bridge while Minato will head to the frontline:

Minato shows up to the frontline when the opponent’s forces have dwindled to just 50 whilst Konoha only has 4 Shinobi remaining. He didn’t even throw the FTG-Jutsu-taped Kunais himself—his men did!

As Ōnoki stated in the Shadow of the Anbu episode, they were about to succeed in their invasion (50 against 4) before Minato showed up and took out the remaining 50 and ended the invasion; however, as always, when you want to embody a caricature, things have to invented for you to feel perfect enough in that perfect mold.

And the manner in which he got his arms lopped off was the most hilarious bit as he witnessed how Obito made short work of Hiruzen and his jutsus with his TSBs, which he’d fashioned into various shapes:

You can see Minato witnessing all of that in the above panel and mulling over the regeneration of the Edo Tensei, so it isn’t as if he didn’t know what was going on; and still, he’s so f*cking elite-class, with Rank S up his arse, that Tobirama had to break it down for him when Hiruzen had done that on his own just fine:

Imagine constructing an entire character as Elite Prodigy (what the ef does that even mean? However, it’s a very real category on his wankers’ ready-made checklist of prodigies in which people like Sasuke, Orochimaru, and Madara are just mediocre, yet canon states the exact opposite) over his mere passing out early, which was due to war time and war time alone, from the Shinobi Kindergarten that literally doesn’t exist in canon.

To put the fat nail in this Minato coffin (and consider that for Itachi and Kakashi, too, while you’re at it), it’s mentioned thrice in the manga, especially in the first two panels (1 & 2) of Kakashi Gaiden. Mikoto also mentions it. Even the novel backs this up, albeit it’s non-canon:

Kakashi, Itachi, Sannin were all allowed to early graduate during war time (something which happens in our militaries, as well). Consider this quote from the Itachi Novel # 2 (Kakashi speaks first):

“When I graduated, it was in the middle of the Great War, and they needed ninjas. The situation’s different now.”

Now that Kakashi mentioned it, the current system at the academy was different from how it had been when Itachi graduated. The Great War and its aftereffects still lingered when he graduated. Because of that, once his actual abilities were recognized, he was skipped ahead, leading to his early graduation. But now that it was a time of peace, the Hokage was determined that ninjas must be carefully cultivated over a number of years, and it was no longer possible to graduate in a short time, as it had been in the past. Thus, no matter how talented Sasuke was, he couldn’t become a ninja until he was eleven years old.

Are we done with this? Good!

His Jutsu repertoire? It’s very tiny as it took him a good three years to create and perfect Rasengan, which, by the way, is an incomplete ability as it’s just an A-Rank Shape Manipulation, nothing else:

(The data-book oddly categorizes it as S-Rank, when the manga doesn’t? I suppose, when Minato invented it, he did that without aid, so when passing on the Jutsu, the rank would naturally be lower; that’s how Raikiri and Chidori are; they’re the same Jutsu, with the same Hand-Seals in the manga, but the former is S-Rank, in spite of being massively weaker in feats when it comes to its potency and destructive power compared to Chidori, and the latter is A-Rank; Raikiri is just a nickname given to Chidori.)

His FTG is inferior to Tobirama’s as he can’t mark objects and use them at will; but Tobirama can, as evidenced by his Flying Thunder God Slash, with which he took Uchiha Izuna’s life, and his skirmish with Madara where he’d marked the Kunai to use against him:

Minato can’t do that as he’s not skilled enough, so the FTG Jutsu tag is literally pasted on the special kunais he uses; and I’ve provided many panels of them thus far. And he only invented one variant of FTG, with which he teleported away Kurama and the Jubi Bijū Dama (BD). No, really, his offensive skill-set is just 3 Jutsus, discounting the Summoning. His skill at Senjutsu is as good as worthless in combat by his own admission, and Kushina taught him all the Fuinjutsus, including the one which he used on Naruto to seal Kurama’s one half, so it isn’t as if he invented or reinvented them with his own spin on them:

There’s your “perfect specimen”, a string of made-up fanon myth and none of the canon myth as “never meet your heroes” seems to be the theme of this guy, given that he lived up to . . . basically nothing in particular.

My point being, this character never could support the whole narrative because of how he’s supposed to be, not is, perfect in every way (as a man, father, husband, soldier and a leader, a kwel-dude that supposedly aces life all the time, things most men in capitalistic/neo-liberal set-ups want to be and women want out of men).

That’s why people can’t apply this logic inwards and wrap their heads around the fact that the Prince Charming/White Knight in shining armor trope that men want to be and women want is such a boring and lazy writing cliché; however, when you caricaturize your life, you, too, would want your ultimate “man goal” and “woman male-ideal-partner” to be spotless models of virtue all the time, people who never showcase the conflict with their ideals, but embrace them wholly, never rubs them off the wrong way, and never do or say something they disagree with or disapprove of. Why? Because Minato is charming to become and to pair off with as he compartmentalizes his “pesky emotions” in a manner that’s ideal.

In other words, he’s a soulless automation, a perfect Shinobi, an illustrious solider that’d make their dreams come true. This isn’t a character that’s real, but an ideal to live up to or attain, a man who’s perfect because he aligns with their morals without a contradiction in sight (Itachi, who’s at number 2, is just his slightly “edgier” version, but they’re very much the same characters). Then you all wonder why he won, voted en masse by the men, poor dreamers in all ages? It’s not that hard to see.

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Chapter 51: Short Commentary-3

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Chapter 52: "Sasuke's a 'bad Person'! Don't you get it?"

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I keep seeing complaints levelled against Sasuke (when are they not?) that he isn’t nice; that Sakura’s the most harmless character in the manga (very debatable); and that the coup wasn’t justified because of so and so reasons. The dashing of dear Itachi’s wishes is another one of the “grave offences” Sasuke committed, because what is this fandom if not stuck in the perpetual quantum-loop of sucking his disease-rotted co*ck? It may rot away and get jammed in their gullets, a mouthful of hellish plums, but we’re never getting out of this, folks.

Here’s the simplest argument in favour of coup: in a military settlement, access to power is everything. You bar that, and you open the doors to hell. These aren’t even good intentions whose road is paved in hell; there are no good intentions, only roads paved in hell.

Why’s the concept of good even brought up? Is your concept of ethics so f*cking wonky that you have to be grasped by the neck and made to listen that you say…is just very stupid? What good is there in these villages? No, let me ask this another way: what’s your definition of good? Either you like the character regardless of its moral proclivities (no harm, no foul, as I happen to like characters like Orochimaru, as well) and recognize that its ideology isn’t very moral; or you like a character and then start stepping backwards to justify as to why you like it. Two different things. The latter’s simply the most mentally unsound and vapid activity fandoms generally engage in. Are you projecting your own morality or something? You lot seem to come across as fairly impassioned about this. It might be time to self-reflect a little.

No, seriously, what good are we talking about? Is some sort of cancer research being conducted in these villages? Are they centres for refugees? Are they neutral grounds that uplift the poor and the down-trodden? Etc.? What? Last I checked, they’re in the habit of relocating their wars to extremely poor villages (Ame), which contain starving populations, in a bid to keep the losses at minimum (they literally blockaded Ame and starved its population to death; your “girl-boss” Tsunade was a part of that, so she isn’t good, either; and it’s perfectly fine to cut her down just for that); they practise, sanction, and allow slavery in their back-yard; desecration of people’s dead loved ones and necromancy were hobbies of one of their founding fathers, who, by the way, if your memory isn't totally f*cked, started this whole "ultra-progressive turbo-nazi" military doctrine and candy-wrapped Bijuu-WMD race (Tobirama-wankers, rise up!, for he was one of the "good ones"); children are branded with marks (Caged Bird and Root Seals) that serve as torture-devices so that they don’t flee from villages and pay the price with their lives if they try to even rat out these f*ckers; so on and so forth, and all that is state-sanctioned. Doesn't it make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, like you're a part of something "es-pah-shal"? I can go on. I’d ask again: what is your good? Care to share?

So let me put this into words that you lot can understand: it’s a f*cking military village. Repeat after me: it’s a military village. Did you get it this time? You can repeat it the third time if you want; it might sink in. Who knows? (No body hold your breath; you might turn blue and die.) It’s “morally very wrong”, and you can insert hysterical and mouth-foaming reactions here, to try and destroy it/them? Turn traitor against the f*cking military...cause? (I'm sorry, because I chuckled at the last bit, because how can any person in his right mind turn his back against this equal-rights-brigade, mokuton-hugging, and custard-rainbow utopia Marx and his commie-band perished wanking to? Amirite, guys?) Is it? Its destruction is part of the environment it has itself propagated. A hydra that eats its own tale. That’s what happens to all military juggernauts: they’re whittled down and then brutally dismantled. It’s a fact of life. A matter of military principle. A “what goes around comes around”, “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword”, “f*ck around and find out when you run out of hot air and pomp”, and stuff like that. It’s nigh scientific as the apparatus, in the end, consumes itself. What a tragedy—or not? Are you new to this? Konoha didn’t want this? Then it shouldn’t have engaged in the aforementioned and then some.

Can’t risk world-war, all of which were a result of Leaf’s great foreign-policies and military aggressions, in the wake of “Uchiha coup” or what have you? It’s a military industrial complex, not a philanthropic venture. It only exists to spread its hegemony through violence. You block its progression via violence, and it’d be appropriate. The most appropriate art of war. So no, Sasuke wasn’t mean for attacking that war-criminal Bee. It’s the best strategy to take on the villages: use their own weapons against them. It’s not an issue of morality at all. What the f*ck do I keep reading in this regard? You bellends can’t produce one coherent argument against this. Not even one. Bee's kidnapping was veeeerrrrry upsetting to you and your fee-fees that perpetually remain in the hospital? Bee’s a state-terrorist, a WMD; you take him out and you cripple Kiri. Who cares? It’s the right thing to do, given their propensity for jutsu-hoarding, military posturing, demanding the heads of slaves to save face after failed incursions, and kidnapping female children for Allah knows what (you can guess, and you'd be right), etc. We get it that you don’t like Sasuke, but it seems like you’re allergic to common-sense and basic intellectual-capacity, as well.

You change the leadership in Leaf or whatever and all is well? The rotatory system, which I’ve talked to death on here, doesn’t solve anything. Benign fascists are still fascists; and the trigger to make them skittish, bear their teeth, and turn violent is like a coin toss at the end of the day. Heads, we go back to status-quo. Tails, you get f*cked hard, without a vaseline of law to cushion the buggery. No, the law is there to make the status-quo function, make sure that the “you get f*cked!” never stops, either via showy benignity or precise brutality. It’s hard or soft power, but it’s power either way. You’d have to be a complete fool to believe in a system like this—or just not very literature, or, Allah forbid, both; take your pick.

Law exists as agreed on tenets of any social system; it has squat to do with morality, ethics, or good. So if that is your metric, then all the aforementioned moral failings shouldn’t be a concern to you, whether they’re done to some unfortunate f*cker Leaf doesn’t find up to its standards or to itself. What seems to be the issue?

The only reason the villages exist is to make, engineer, and/or spread war. They've got no other purpose. Violence, blood shed, and conflict is their purpose. Wars are the nexus of their power. How do you stop war-mongering of the village that was constructed to do just that? That’s like suggesting that you can keep a man alive by cutting off its oxygen supply. It’s completely contradictory. You stop its means to create wars; you kill the village. It doesn’t matter how you do it (swift revolution or simply choking it out); you will end the village once you cut off its jugular vein that’s its military aggression. Really, am I taking crazy pills here? This needed to be spelled out?

Therefore, it’s fine for the coup to be bloody as Shinobi exist to revel in bloody wars. What the f*ck are you people talking about? These aren’t Doctors without Borders; these are killers with the state's blessings to commit untold atrocities. Save me this “they’re innocent” mantra. What’s even your definition of innocent at this point? Shinobi-jacket on, evil? Jacket off, weeaboo plushie?

Christian redemptions are a product of your cultural notions that allow endless chances to war-criminals (do I even need to mention the “killing your people made our soldiers cry and sh*t themselves” meme?). None of us has to abide by them. Heck, the characters don’t, either. You mother f*ckers project so hard that you create this scenario that “I wouldn’t do this if x, y, or z happened to me”. Who asked? Are you so important that your arse can be transported and venerated in another world, together with whatever harebrained crap you keep vomiting to pat yourself on the back? Unpack this. All of us will thank you.

Is this why you endorse niceties and peace rather than good and justice—the bedrock of neo-liberal politics that turn fascist real f*cking fast? I mean, you lot learn politics through films, so it isn’t that far off. Harry-Potterism is practically your bread and butter to navigate the world and fight these "tense" moral-battles, erosion of rights, and endless wars at the polling booth. (Even IOF are utilising memes to the nth degree to get their point across, make their extended list of genocides just a little hipper, because they know that you're so brain-rotted on this deeeep content.) To change the f*cking world, make it better, one poll at a time! Woohoo! f*ck, yeah! Put that guy/gal with a receding hairline and no moral-fiber who looks like me and talks like me at the Kage seat! It's what I always wanted! Sniffle-sniffle...

What is it at this point? Is it about being nice or about being good? It ain’t the latter. So why dress it up that way? Does that make your stance flattering? Your character, which exists to mooch off your daily, and very cheap, head-canons? You flattering? Your cheat-code to power-fantasies? Be honest.

Akatsuki are evil terrorists? Propagating militaristic motives and sounding like heroes doesn’t make anyone a hero. The whole Akatsuki argument sounds a lot like this: bomb the sh*t out of some country; create terrorist organisations for proxy wars; fight them when they wriggle out of line; and wow, we’re heroes now! How did you think Akatsuki made such a huge bank? They engaged in terrorist activities commissioned to them by the villages. (Orochimaru was hired by Suna for Konoha’s destruction.) What does that make these villages? Terrorist states? Why, yes. Does it hurt your feelings that your characters don’t have any moral grounds to stand on?

What about Sakura and her heart and puss*-aches at Sasuke’s hands (latter’s more about not occupying that ache)? Why’s she good, exactly? Tell me in simple words. I've already tackled this topic in-depth in The "Good Girls" of Naruto, but I'd bite. Is she helping society progress to a better version of itself, or is she helping it function efficiently? What kind of society is it? What good is she practising? Social good or personal good? It’s neither. The society isn’t fundamentally good, so any of her actions that contribute to its better functioning places her in a morally lower position, not a higher one. It’s odd that people even bring her reduced harm in relation to Sasuke’s, when her contribution to a military’s betterment is in and of itself a morally repugnant endeavour. She’s never helped any non-state actors. Not even once. Never out of the goodness of her heart. Sasuke, on the other hand, freed prisoners, civilians from poor villages. By comparison, she’s not kind. She’s nice, but being nice isn’t the same as being kind. Why do you people remain stuck in this middle-school phase? Where’s that character development, huh? Is it ever happening as this argument is f*cking absurd. It’s so comical that I question the intelligence of anyone who makes it, because when you truly compare them, she fails even here. Miserably, in fact. Yet another of her long list of failures when she’s placed next to Sasuke.

As a minor aside: can you coomers stop comparing Kakashi to Sasuke? They’re not even remotely alike, nor are their tragedies; there’s nothing good about Kakashi, either; and his tragedies are not some sort of “I pissed myself in throes of agony” like you make it sound like, especially since, he chose to uphold the same system that tore his father and friends down; and no amount of your pathetic head-canons can fill any of his holes—pun intended. He chose the military over his father’s principles. His choice. Big f*cking whoop! Am I supposed to feel something here? Oh wait, he’s ship-fodder for lonely soccer-mums, Snape-wives of Naruto-Fandom, who haven’t had that pump of charity-dick since last summer—perhaps longer; and Kakasaku is their only refuge. (If it's not that, then they're up on that Uchiha compensatory-dick to feel validated by and included into the domain of the humourlessly bastardized commie-feminism they keep screeching about.) My bad. And frankly, Kakashi’s like the bootleg, trailer-trash version of Sasuke; and deep down, even you know this. Mr. “I’m so sad that I hide my sadness behind a mask, bro! Get it?” mind-breaking originality. I’m, like, floored by this bumper-sticker wisdom-device! Aren’t you?

And then we have that dreadful Itachi bit. By Allah…his fandom's whole “he had no choice!” thing bothers me more than it should. It’s stupid. You know it’s stupid. Everyone does. He tortured his brother, for f*ck’s sake (not once, but twice; he was a f*cking adult the second time); and no body asked him to do that. Not even Danzo! In fact, you don’t have to be older to understand that that’s not right. It’s f*cked. Itachi’s f*cked. That’s all there’s to it. Now, I can bring it up that he never even stated that he was in the wrong for killing the entire clan (“perhaps you could’ve changed our parents”); but his jism has clogged everything on you (in you?) that could translate that into coherent thoughts. So why bother?

However, I’d say this as you lot like comparing yourself to Itachi and his deeply emotional and hard-edged tears and choices that give you the willies and character-motivations (to get ahead in life): if a goat escaped and ran to a baby in a tub, and it had a dynamite shoved up its (I’m talking about the goat; calm down) arse and its wick was sizzing to a shorter size by the second, what would you do? Shove your hand in the goat’s arsehole and pull the thing out and save your neighbourhood? Dump the baby with the bath water? Hug the goat and say, “it’s been real?” Tell us, because these "kwell-dude move-sets" are what “complex characters” are made of. You’re like Itachi already! Bless you!

Chapter 53: Debunking Some Common Fandom-Myths

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Chapter 54: Tunnel Vision: An Important Distinction Between Obito and Kakashi

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Chapter 55: This "Sasuke is a misogynist" discourse doesn't die, huh?

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I'm planning a big post on this topic in the near-future, which I'd summarize in this post; however, I'd say this: the "benign sexism" you lot play at to label Sasuke a misogynist is neither clever nor anything more than a projection of white-feminism that seeks to protect imperialistic minded women from the violence of the male populace that it directly oppresses or indirectly oppresses via being a part of the military's ranks.

Sasuke choking Sakura out, an imperialistic foot-soldier who came at him literally with an intent to take his life and uphold Leaf's status-quo in regard to foreign policies, shouldn't bother you; however, it does because you want Sakura to perform the role of an imperialistic soldier (which is from where the fantasies of the cheapsters that mostly make up her fandom spring from) and not be held accountable for her actions. You want to create a double-edged sword around this entire discourse: she's a soldier, but she's also a woman; she's brave in the military, but she's also physically weak compared to a man; she took that step, but it's Sasuke that forced her hand. It's almost as if she can only have any agency if she brutalizes, but the moment the tables are turned on her, you lot can just flip the script to instantly convert her into a f*cking victim: as she's a woman who's weaker than Sasuke, less capable than Sasuke, and less powerful than Sasuke, she doesn't deserve his violence; he, on the other hand, does as he created that situation for her.

Like I said, a double-edged sword which compels the other party to write a thesis to course-correct the petty and very flimsy argument that's got no logical basis. Why? Violence is common amongst villages, and creating WMDs simply opens you up for incursions, especially when your village thrives on it. Sasuke has done nothing out of the ordinary, and Bee isn't some innocent bystander, given that he'd helped fight plenty of wars for Kumo; and thus, he can be targeted on that ground. You can talk treaties and international law (two of this illiterate fandom's favorite terms, when they've got little idea that law and justice aren't the same) all you want, but it doesn't change this argument even a tiny bit.

This is common for that world. Kumo tried to kidnapped Kushina as she was a Jin (or she'd been very close to that ceremony) and Hinata. What Sasuke delivered was pure irony which was lost on Ae; he didn't bother to introspect that, perhaps, it was better if cooler heads prevailed; however, in the past, he demanded the head of an innocent man as Konoha couldn't afford a war with Kumo; now, he demanded answers as his Jin was stolen; and in broad daylight, too. This military posturing is never about morality but keeping matters right and straight in that shinobi-world. Why embroil yourself in that, when you're aware that this is well above your pay-grade? This fandom refuses to acknowledge something so simple that Sakura, quite erroneously, thought that as she handled Sasori last time and helped make things right, she'd just swoop in, fatally attack Sasuke, and walk away. This was her "right and straight moment" as a Shinobi. Make things right again, you know? Did no one notice that when she went to rescue Kankaro that's exactly what he'd done? He went after Sasori and bit off more than he could chew? If it isn't sexism there, why's it here? Is it that she lost because she's a woman and "girl-bosses" must never lose? You tell me.

Sakura personally took it upon herself to track Sasuke down and deliver a death-blow. Just because she came across someone who was beyond her capabilities doesn't mean that she didn't take the steps herself. This was never her business, given that she's just a lowly medic (you lot can weep hysterically and churn out your cheap fix-its copiously for all I care, but she's no match for Sasuke on any front, and that's just a canon fact), not a saboteur or a part of a team that dispatches missing-nin. She chose to meddle in this situation.

What if she'd come across Obito? Do you think he'd have not, I don't know, sniped her head off with Kamui? I'm aware that your shipping fantasies, which you lot take as some biblical fact that's translatable to real life, state otherwise, but think for a moment, if it isn't too much trouble. Would that have made him a misogynist, simply because the opponent he took on was a weak female-soldier rather than a male one? What about Kisame? He'd have ripped her to shreds with Samehada, because it's a shredder-type weapon. Would that have made him a misogynist, too? Yes, I'm aware that Kisame's in awe of her in one of the fix-its from a talent-less "writer", because he's slipping her his shark-co*ck; but that doesn't make it canon. He wouldn't give a f*ck about Sakura in canon. She'd just be another problem for him to dispatch, and he'd do it with violent apathy. What then? Is he out there to end women-kind, too? Of course he isn't, because your shipping stories tell you that isn't.

What if Itachi had turned her into a pin-cushion (the way he'd done with Kakashi) had he been alive and learned that she planned on harming Sasuke? Again, I'm sure his dick wriggles and moistens at the head uncontrollably, soiling his Akatsuki robes the way it happens in that cesspit fix-it that's Kill Your Heroes (KYH), in your fix-its for her (you, basically; and how sad is that penchant for obsessive self-inserting that you're convinced that these men would truly give a f*ck; some of you are so dick- and male-attention-starved that it's obnoxious). That's very much not canon. I know that it comes as a shock, but there, there. Would that make him a misogynist? What about Sasori? He'd attacked her from behind the way Sasuke had. Then why's he not that? Is it that he's "shippable"? Holds a door open (snort-laughs) for your fantasies whilst Sasuke slams it in your face?

Seriously, what's the criteria here? What makes a man a misogynist in canon? Even Madara stuffed her up, pun ended, with the rod, but many of you lot are convinced that he'd care about her if they'd met under different circ*mstances. Why and how? Lord knows, when Sakura, save that Sasori battle, was such a non-entity in the lives of these men that either they retaliated to her attack and tossed her aside, without giving her a second glance (like Madara); they didn't even bother to mention her by name despite naming every other character they'd come across (like Itachi); or they just became extremely annoyed with her persistence (like Sasuke) and tried to dispose of her when she became a threat.

So, basically, the only reason any important man ever showed her any attention was when she either attacked him and got a response or she turned sniveling and completely intolerable for the man to take notice of her; or they, like Itachi, just acted as if she didn't even exist (no, really, you can go and re-read that Itachi encounter in the forest; his sheer apathy towards her might blow your mind, because he felt that she was so beneath him that he didn't even bother acknowledging her presence, albeit in your fix-its he's consistently leaking his juices at the sight of her and admonishing Sasuke whilst stroking himself silly, which he never did in canon). I know you lot obsessively remedy that; perhaps it gives you a taste of that real life problem, but it isn't canon. Heck, it didn't occur to you that she behaves in this in-your-face manner as she begs to be noticed; otherwise, she's beneath the notice of these men? It's almost as if her shenanigans are about her being starved for validation, given that there's nothing about her that'd make them take notice of her? That she's kinda smidge ordinary? It's almost as if it's canon. Just a thought.

Does that bother you, hm? That the men that matter...well, Sakura doesn't matter to them? That she's not special to any of them? Isn't that what these fix-its remedy, making her special like Sasuke and tearing him down, but why him? Why not others? It's obvious why he's the target: she chases and gets humiliated, and that hits way too close to home for many. Why do you think she's disliked by a lot of male readers? Her rejections of Naruto hits too close to home for them: they identity with him, like you do with her, and that stings; otherwise, there's no logic behind these accusations. It's just a comical fantasy to be desired by good-looking, accomplished, and powerful men. Pretty much a leaf out of an average Incel Manifesto: "women go for the chad, not the normies, homies; alpha f*cks and beta bucks; nice guys finish last!" Etc. Etc. It's fascinating how this entire female fandom fits that mold so perfectly that it gives you a whiplash. Not because they ship. No, not at all. It's that they take this so f*cking seriously that they've spun an entire discourse of faux-leftism around something as simple as a female foot-solder that attacked an oppressed youth, who, in turn, retaliated and rejected her advances.They've turned their masturbatory pastime, shipping, into a left issue. Wrap your head around this, please, because this is a real doozy!

Sincerely, consider this for a bit as there are only two choices here: these men aren't misogynists simply because they attacked female combatants, so Sasuke isn't a misogynist; these men are misogynists as they attacked female combatants, so that also makes Sasuke a misogynist; since none of you lot consider these men to be misogynists and single out Sasuke for it, the only logical problem left is that...she wants a romantic attachment; and his rejection bothers you. To the point that you've generated volumes of this hurt and glazed it with masturbatory takes on feminism. You've made it personal. How embarrassing?

It reads like the worst form of pink/woke-washing of fascist regimes and their soldiers. She serves one. If she becomes the target when she goes out to fight for its cause, she's a fair target. You lot are regurgitating IOF propaganda at this point: "I'm a soldier and I protect my country against terrorist threats; I'm a brave, strong, and progressive woman!" they say whilst they go out and butcher an entire populace in the name of "freedom". I'm citing that as it's current; otherwise, what feminism has Sakura endorsed, enacted, propagated? None? What leftism has she been a part of? None? Then what exactly makes her a leftist and feminist, then? She has a c*nt? That's it? That's the sole requirement for being a leftist? Her selective niceness that's limited in its use isn't a part and parcel of leftist politics. She's a grand case-in-point of liberal values: a performance of virtue, allying with people that make me good and feel good! You're projecting your own ideology, which is light years away from leftism, onto her and picking targets to pass judgement, simply because they stand against her. You, basically. Just poke at this idea even a little bit, and it completely falls apart as this is just one illustration of the gutter that's "choice feminism": whatever women do, no matter how heinous, capitalistic, and right-wing, it's feminism, because "women are wonderful" syndrome or something of the sort.

The only leftist characters in the manga are the ones that seek to dismantle these institutions. Sakura solely exists to keep them from falling. (Her and her mentor's entire "mental health" and healing endeavors exist to keep the soldiers from lashing out against the establishment, to keep them from rebelling, make sure that they stay conforming; in which realm is this "progress" in the domain of the military?) That literally makes her, and by extension you, right wing. (Liberalism is to the right of center, which itself depends on the overtun window; these days, liberals are closer to fascism than right.) Are basic politics that hard? Is her vagin* a precursor to left? Are you f*cking high? You do realize that your entire moral projections are completely worthless, right? You lack the basic understanding of what makes a character on the side of left, and Sakura isn't that character. Not even close. Sucking off Kakashi's sad-wee-wee simply because you think he's hot (non-canon; sorry, I gotta be very petty here) and safeguards Sakura doesn't mean anything as he represents the many extensions of Konoha's imperialism. Just because he's sad doesn't mean that he's good. Being sad isn't the first-page of a book called good. He's just...sad. So what?! This is so f*cking childish and an elementary understanding of all this as any character you feel kisses her arse is suddenly on the side of good, because you identify with her; or any male character you fantasize about buggering you raw also turns into a saint for some reason. No questions asked. Sometimes, they go at her orifices in great numbers for the express purpose of "female sexual-empowerment", and they don't even show others the courtesy by writing them as crack; no, they think that this is serious business. You reverse-harem the entire military as girl-boss Sakura and you make "comfort women" hip again, because whatever Sakura does and her fandom conceives is so leftist, bros! Don't you get it: they've turned the tables on genocidal rape by transforming the "es-pah-shal" Haruno vag into a petri-dish for STDs! Women-kind world-over liberated! Patriarchy obliterated! Right annihilated! The trifecta of leftism. Thank you, thank you!

Reasonable adults grow beyond these black and white divisions to see the greys in life. It's like you lot are playing a very long game of doll-house at this point; however, instead of keeping it as a hobby, you've given it a garb of serious discourse. A fight against "patriarchy", which is side-splittingly laughable as all Sakura, and you lot do (in your fix its), does is whine constantly about her desire to be wanted...in all aspects of a capitalistic life: hot and rich husband for the status and trophy that she's won a lottery against all the other girls, that Sasuke picked her (which is why she never stopped pursuing Sasuke as he's everything she's not; her low self-esteem lays it bare); good job for accolades; and ranks for her future. The bare-bones of the upward mobility the American Dream promises! Which part of her by-the-book capitalistic life, which you all make so much worse in your FFs, is in any way even left-adjacent? Open my eyes, please.

See, that's my problem with this fandom/any fandom: its media literacy/literacy is extremely poor. There's no grasp of basic political structures, but a lot of frothing at the mouth and generous use of the word "terrorist", which, by the way, is a very obscene term in today's political climate; but without any knowledge of as to what entails this term, its history, and context, you're just trigger-happy with it and its flippant usage makes you look...so f*cking stupid, detestable, in fact. There's no grasp of the basic idea that fascism is a broad spectrum and it can absolutely be located outside a nation-state's borders; but as Konoha and the rest of the villages don't engage in "sieg heil!" salutes and don't have square-mustache-donning villainous dictators, it's not fascism, apparently. Never mind that all fascism isn't nazism, but that'd require a semi-literate individual to make a statement (write a fiction/fanfiction inspired from this), not some tunnel-visioned, dick-sniffing lonely shipper whose analyses begin with and end on the "upholding of womanhood in all walks of life". Yes, every single one, even fascistic imperialism, and Allah forbid it if you ever try and knock her off that pedestal...then it's a genocide against all womankind! How dare Kishimoto focus on the marginalized men instead of my morally bankrupt, white-feminist c*nty props? Riot! White/neoliberal/pop feminists rise up!

How can any of you expect to be taken seriously when you can't seem to parse the very basics of politics? Then you wonder why your "political endeavors" are mocked?; and I swear to God, someone in KYH's review-section, a 30-something dipsh*t, referred to the brain-dead, cheap, and horrific grasp of the author's politics in that fiction educational; no, I'm not even lying:

(Source)

This unabashed lack of media literacy and strict engagement with character-wanking results in reviews like the above and this one:

(Source)

(You've got an entire page of women cheering on the torture scene that involves Sasuke for no apparent reason; and you can't help but wonder that what did Sasuke do to her that was so cruel beyond rejections that requires a gaudy torture of his at her hands, like that infamous and tawdry "Sasuke beheading painting"; and you reach a conclusion fairly easily.)

No individual who's touched a dictionary or any political discourse would call Itachi of all the people, your friendly neighborhood staunch fascist and genocidaire that tortured a child for hours and killed people indiscriminately in the name of an imperialist state, a pacifist. Are you f*cking pulling my leg? Is that skull empty? You can't be an active imperialist and be magically a pacifist at the same time. These are two extreme ends of militarism. To be a pacifist is to abstain from the military and its violence altogether, not actively propagate its hegemon. Why are you people so mind-numbingly crass, unintelligent even? How are you learning your politics (as adult women) from an excruciatingly poorly written FF, one which has no grasp of the political spectrum and what it means to be critical of right that flirts and courts fascism? What does it say about you as a person if these are the politics you openly flaunt as agreeable, learnable, and endorsable, even educational? (I'm not saying this; these women are.) At this point, you're just saying that Sasuke has no right to defend himself (a very hip phrase these days), but the imperial forces do, which includes Sakura no matter how many times you side-step this giant elephant in the room? You see, how this exact rationale has always been used by imperialists, including IOF these days? It just does to show how this fandom, which considers these despicable takes "leftist", and the world in general consider the people crushed by the hegemon to be legitimate (capitalistic) sacrifices to maintain the status-quo, keep things going as they are, not shake up the pot that'd lead to the apparatus's deconstruction. How can you not see that you lot sound like fascists/liberals/moderates (very little demarcation between these three) when you call these FFs educational and want more of these to be created?

Politics some Itachi-masturbator considers to be the zenith of progress, simply because she cloaks it in "women process", isn't the side of "good". This is text-book pink-/woke-wishing and white feminism that are contextually against intersectional feminism and leftism; that's all what KYH is, pink-/woke-washing! It's just a "revenge of the nerds" fantasy where the "poor, side-lined guy/girl takes over the powerful clan (Sasuke's clan) and shows the jock who's boss!". A liberal fantasy (the harry-potterism of politics) that tries really f*cking hard to sell meritocracy (don't you know that she was f*cking robbed?!) and presents this absurdly surface-level understanding of morality in militaristic set ups. Comically stripped down from anything even canon attempted. But hey, she trained, like, real hard in these FFs, don'tchya know? So that makes it deep!

This is just Rowling's "liberal utopia" fantasy. What are you doing that makes it anything but derivative trash? What makes you different from her? You're not breaking any grounds. The f*cking ego of this fandom! This has been done a trillion times before. By all means, write derivative trash. There's nothing wrong with it, but why aim for "leftist fandom-discourse" with this disposable sh*te? Give me a break! No wonder the romance genre is teeming with white supremacy as that's all you lot do; and many of these novels that drip with romanticization of fascism, co*ck goes in coochie and something grand happens, curiously, were FFs before (we've come full circle!); you project your white-savior fantasies onto these characters. A lot! Sakura fandom, just endless iterations of JK Rowling, bitches who think they they send their best sons/daughters to right the wrongs around the world. The roles the likes of Sakura, Itachi, et al., take on. The burden they must bear to liberate Leaf from "barbaric" individuals like Sasuke; and they talk a lot about the pains she, even Itachi, went through to save Sasuke, don't they? The justifications aren't created in a vacuum; the entire post-modern western entertainment rolls about in this power-fantasy sewage: from King Solomon's Mines, which became the inspiration for Indiana Jones, to corporate junk like Marvel movies. At the fundamental level, all of these are the same (the basic ethos of the superhero movies in general are lifted from Birth of a Nation beat for beat, KKK darling cinema; how awesome is that?). Add white-women tears to it, which this lot so sees in Sakura's "episodes", and they plummet this down to hell's cesspools. The strategic tears, the "deserved better" bullsh*t, and the sans-romance robberies, all capitalistic dreams. All patriarchal. All right-wing. Surprise, surprise!

The whole “female rage” that these neo-liberal feminists keep spinning? It’s without any bite. It’s not rage against the machine, no—it’s rage against not fitting into the machine, or what pop-culture dictates that they need to be upset about next. Basically, it’s rage against whatever affects white women/the women who believe religiously in white feminism. The women who live in marginalized communities? They don’t care. Funny, how they never talk about how these villages brutalized women in poor states like Ame in their FFs. That was just, you see. It’s only a real-real tear-jerker when slave-owners like Hinata and whiny, romantically rejected women like Sakura do not get their due rewards in the military establishment that truly matters. They deserved better—or something.

And in order to remedy that very obvious problem, they transform Sakura into this raging bitch who’s—what’s she raging against, again? Beats me. (She’s like that in all these arse-wipe BAMF narratives, whose writers, and I use this word very loosely, are under some serious delusions that they’re fighting against the evil male-horde who’re out to get them in nerd-spaces; it’s in retrospect f*cking hilarious as these are the most privileged bitches in the entire world.) It isn’t anything meaningful, worth a damn. It’s just patriarchy rebranded. Now, a heel instead of a boot! Don't you just love it when women like Tsunade, who helped enforce a blockade on Ame that starved its populace to death, do fascism? Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy and empowered inside!

They love to use patriarchy to define their endeavors. They’ve abused this word to the point that it’s turned meaningless. Penis doesn’t equal patriarchy; it’s a genderless socio-cultural apparatus that permeates all center and right spaces to create disparities. Doesn’t seem like they’ve read anything beyond “wehmen oppressed”, have they? I wish these women weren't so rancidly illiterate and pathetic, in your face. We all would've ignored their existence.

Female rage, which dictates everything in their discourse and fix-its, is just a tool of the patriarchy. They buy into this corporate inauthenticity and sell it as female-empowerment; when, in reality, it’s another facet of neo-liberalism, capitalism, and neo-colonialism. This same “female rage” branding was used to sell colonialism in Rhodesia and maintain its apartheid system. If you look at their posters from the 70s, you’d notice how white feminism and its desire to be included in patriarchal systems for state-backed brutality has never changed. One of the posters reads: These Women Will die for Rhodesia

LEFT: A family outing on a Sunday afternoon is the same as always in Rhodesia- except for the automatic rifle at the ready "just in case"

RIGHT: If the terrorists come, the girls will be ready for them. They practice regularly because they know that the first shot could be the one that counts

See what I mean? f*ck, I can’t be the only one to sees no difference in this and the “wehmen soldiers are cool” narrative in post-modern media today; you don’t need to think about why the people you’re hunting down in the name of empowerment are terrorists (these women have pigsh*t for brains)—no, you just need to establish your own “female rage myth” in the canon of neo-colonial patriarchy, and that’s feminism, apparently. That’s why, in order to open the door of Sakura's “latent female rage”, they have her cosplay as a poor, an abused girl to one-up Sasuke’s trauma. Who then rises from the “ashes of womanhood” to take on the “terrorist Sasuke” that threatens her home. (Look above at that poster’s punchline, and tell me, do you see any difference? It’s chuckle-worthy how these plastic bitches keep rebranding their adoration for white-supremacy and its flavors in all walks of life, even something as pointless as FFs.) Basically, she’s this all-around capitalistic barbie, who’s cool, badass, and takes no sh*t from no man (regardless of context)—it’s the “political activism” that they sell via these fix-it and fandom discourse turds, which is performative and empty.

God, and let’s not forget her failures in romances that are shoved into all this to complete the picture. Her disenfranchisem*nt is entirely about privilege, extreme privilege at that, andpeople who’re oppressed are made to apologize for their anger—orever having wronged her in any manner. I wonder when that day will arrive when these hysterical cretins would put out anything other than how they were romantically wronged in canon and life. Talk about something other than their sickening privilege. It’s as if they consider Taylor Swift to be their role-model.

This smacks of colonial fantasies that most of these endeavors are known for. (Mark Hamill, whose claim to fame came from his role as Luke Skywalker, a character who stood against an empire that, according to Lucas, reflected America and its imperialism, is using that image to sell Biden's genocide; The Empire is an allegory for the Vietnam War.) The joke writes itself as any politically charged narrative that comes out of the west is just dripping with this archetype; and lo and behold most people who populate FF and AO3 and other popular FF sites are predominately Americans. (Decolonizing the Mind speaks about how language and literature, and in this case disposable literature, are used to perpetuate these ideas indefinitely.) A country whose American Exceptionalism has completely polluted all popular genres with the idea of "rational freedom-loving denizens and military-men against the irrational horde that spread anarchy". Heck, the use of entertainment to create backing for the current genocide, even reducing it to harry-potterism memes, should tell you as much as to how much this sort of engagement is popular with this lot. (Also, you don't need to be white to believe in any of this; so let's be perfectly clear here; just like you don't need to be white to practice white/liberal feminism.)

Good intentions and female rage aren't good enough. Being a smidge less privileged than the male counterparts isn't good enough. Their beloved characters don't even have the former. Suggesting that the "female side-lining" in the military is the same as systematic oppression, so it, somehow, allows her this massive empathy to judge and if need be convert to jury and executioner...is so despicable. This is not only sidelining your own privilege but also cashing in on the "exotic" nature of the otherness they attribute to the marginalized characters. (It's no wonder that they take Sharingan from Sasuke and hand it over to her or, at times, his entire clan's reins; as in their eyes, she can handle that exotic object better; you see, she's not crazy and is more worthy of it as a result of her "loyalty and mental stability" as opposed to his "savagery and instability".) Which is another reason why her "saving Sasuke from himself, so that makes her a good f*cking person and makes him a bad f*cking person" is beaten to death in their discourse and is so like that Dany from The Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones white-savior trope that they've bought hook, line, and sinker. It's like all their favorite female-characters overlap on grounds of "saving the savages from themselves and expecting unconditional support in return". This is regurgitated ad infinitum in all their narratives/fandom spaces. The idea to save people rather than offering any long-lasting change. You'd have to be remarkably mentally deficient to not notice any of that.

That's why they penetrate canon with the idea of western values and the redemptive rewards for war-criminals as it's O-K to subjugate people if it means the society can function appropriately. (Why else do you think Tobirama is so popular in this fandom or that these female readers enjoy sucking his co*ck, going as far as to justifying his policies? He's barely a character in the manga, so it certainly isn't his writing; it's one thing to like a character; it's another entirely to justify it.) That's why they can't seem to stop themselves from refashioning all narratives with the same trope: she, like men, saves the world from destruction that's brought about by the undesirables, those who're savage in their nature, unstable for the "good society" and returns the world to the "natural order", which is just status-quo and endless subjugation to keep the order churning; it's her turn now to show men who's boss, show them that she can be just as good, too! Why should anyone like this neo-colonial fantasy that exists in the candy-wrapper of FFs, made to look harmless, benign, almost naïve when it's anything but that?

Returning to KYH after that detour: how hard is it to sniff this out? What would that make any person from the outside looking in think about you, given that this FF absolutely revels in the pigsty of genocide, even promotes it to be the right call that ought to culminate in a cultural genocide, as well? A complete and total obliteration? (And this is not the only FF of this kind this fool has typed out; she's got plenty on this exact same topic; one of them has Sakura weeping into Itachi's robes, so you get the idea that "Evil-Sama", a moniker she uses for herself, has a raging hard-on for Itachi.) We get it. You hate Sasuke. Cool! Why give this petty penchant for making your dislikes known a sophisticated garb of left politics? (I snorted.)Why call any of this misogyny? Why cloak it in intersectional feminism when it's just pink-/woke-washing at its most naked, yet another tributary of the gutter that's white-feminism? Why consider "desirability" in an extreme patriarchal structure to be leftism?

Grab a book, please, and stay away from this discourse while you're at it. You make the leftist critical-inspection of narratives to be insufferable.

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