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How he stays sane while putting up with Kakashi, we'll never know

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I've done so many drawings of them istg

Gotta write a fix-it fic for them asap

(I keep tweaking Tenzo's design to make his characterization more consistent and deepen the First Hokage connections more angsty)

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need to smoke with him

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why would you lie like that Google ai???

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my mom didn’t believe in lying to children so when I first asked about santa claus as a small child she was like “oh santa claus is another name for a man named saint nicholas who lived a long time ago. he was a very kind and generous man and he loved giving people presents and he would do things like put presents in people’s stockings when they were hung up to dry by the fire, so they would find them and be surprised. so now when we give presents at christmas it’s fun to pretend saint nicholas or ‘santa claus’ brings them. and we hang up stockings by the fire and when we get up in the morning there are presents in them, just like if saint nicholas was still alive to bring them!”

so that thanksgiving one of my uncles said jovially “so mac, are you being good for santa claus?” and little (not quite three year old) mac looked up and raised an eyebrow and said witheringly “he’s dead.”

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sometimes i think about the golden record and i want to cry

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i think its very funny that madara actually canonically said 'kill urself' as a stress response to an argument w someone that he had no other solution for in that moment. rasgfdsfdfs. he is just like the tumblrinas fr ..

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funny how many fics have lan xichen be wangxian's unconditionally supportive cheerleader when his canonical reaction to their reunion was to pull wei wuxian aside and go "hey just between us, here's what happened to my parents. a cautionary tale :)))". and when it became apparent later that wei wuxian didn't understand wtf he was talking about, he hit him with an exasperated "you were my brother's only mistake in life, i can't stand watching wangji act like this because of you, stop leading him on!"

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I CANNOT stop thinking about Genma...

(shit ton of Genma headcanons under the read more)

Nowhere Kid from another nation who doesn't know what the hell he wants out of life besides love, peace and acceptance...

some of his family defects to Konoha with the idea to give him a better life/future so he's already got a rough start as an Outsider

plus he's got this kekkei genkei that people say is disgusting beyond belief because he's literally gotta spit loogies on people in order to use it

bullied as fuck because of it so he's labeled as an outcast x2

he gets assigned to Team Choza, bullied for getting the Fat Sensei, bullied for getting one of the Prestigious Royal Clans Sensei, with a foreigner who can't use anything other than Taijutsu and another guy who's supposed to be a fellow 10 y/o but he's got the vocabulary and vernacular of someone from the 1950's and dresses like it too

literally GROOMED for the role of JONIN SQUAD COMMANDER/LEADER from the age of 13 onward (a la Shikamaru except his dad isn't around to stabilize him so he puts his whole heart and soul into this ideology)

"Protect and serve everyone else before yourself" becomes his life motto on the battlefield and personality

"Obey the Hokage if you want to protect your family"

"Serve Konoha as a whole if you want to protect your friends and fellow shinobi"

"Actions speak louder than words," as he learns the hard way that anyone and everyone will make the promise to serve, protect, and defend their allies, friends, family, and loved ones. He quickly learns the contrary that though a lot of people might say it, they don't have the strength, knowledge, or prowess to make good on those words, so it's actions that make a difference and not what comes out of peoples' mouths...

"Yeah you say that, but--" is Genma's actual catchphrase to all his friends and comrades, almost everyone except Raido, Aoba and a handful of others who aren't a few years his junior. His genin missions were spent protecting kids from Kurama's attack, locating missing children from Orochimaru's various labs, and attempting to spread peace on behalf of Konoha through his Hokage-mandated travels once the stress of being a teenage soldier finally threatened to break him and Hiruzen had no choice but to send him out to expand his horizons and worldview beyond Kill Maim Destroy Protect & Serve...

IDK MAN THAT'S A LOT OF PRESSURE TO BE UNDER and i feel for the dude so bad. plus he's cute as hell and i'm sure so many people wanted to lock him down with a ring and a promise of a peaceful future but he's just Not Built For The Domestic Life......

Domesticity was something he never got to experience so it's a far more horrifying concept to tackle than a battlefield full of bloodshed and lifeless bodies...

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Miscellaneous Naruto Headcanons

Hanabi is next in line as clan head and Hinata completely cut off her family because she decided she doesn’t want anything to do with the people who wanted nothing to do with her.

Hashirama and Tobirama actually have a really complicated relationship with a lot of mutual resentment. They love each other as family and respect each other as shinobi, but still. Hashirama holds a grudge from the river incident, resents how he was the favorite child of their father, and is frustrated by how he prioritizes utilitarianism over kindness/morality a lot of the time. Tobirama resents how he grew up in his shadow, is jealous of how easily he interacts with others and gets them on his side, and commonly thinks that he makes their lives significantly harder. Do they talk about any of this? Of course not! Hashirama is deeply ashamed of these feelings and Tobirama approaches all of his emotions with an “if I don’t look at it, it doesn’t exist” mentality.

The three shinobi vices come from the sage of six paths, but Tobirama was the one who introduced the shinobi rules.

The fear of aging is incredibly common amongst shinobi. However, it’s less about dying and more about deteriorating; like a weapon rusting or dulling in a way that’s unpreventable and irreversible. Orochimaru’s fear is pretty obvious, part of the reason Sasori both values eternity so much and turned himself into a puppet is this, and Guy goes on about YOUTH!!! all the time because he’s in denial about his own fear, especially since taijutsu specialists are on a shorter clock than most due to muscle deteriorating faster than chakra.

Deidara values ephemeralism so much because he was forced to become a suicide bomber and he used this life philosophy to find value within himself even when he could be ordered to kill himself at a moments notice.

While the three shinobi vices are only taken very seriously amongst groups like the guardian shinobi twelve, it’s still baked into a lot of shinobi life. For example, you can be discharged from anbu for things like drinking, gambling, and paying for prostitutes even if it doesn’t impact your work-life. Some people, like Tsunade and Kurenai, are very against this, arguing “if I’m allowed to kill and die on a battlefield, I should be allowed to cope with that however I want!”

Kurenai is an alcoholic btw.

Tsunade got her gambling habit from Hashirama, but her drinking came from Tobirama.

Yamato is transgender.

While there isn’t much or any stigma against queer relationships, there is a lot of pressure around people having kids. This came from the warring states era when they needed those kids to become soldiers and replace their armies (also child death was very common and having more kids rose the chances of one of them surviving to adulthood).

The first thing Hashirama did as Hokage was outlaw child hunters and give the order that any child hunters encountered on missions should be dealt with with extreme prejudice.

Kekkei genkai hunting and trafficking is disturbingly common.

Sakura, Rock Lee, and TenTen come from civilian clans and started bonding over that during their sparring matches.

Ableism is pretty common within shinobi villages and especially in the Hyuga clan, so Neji went through a period of having to unlearn a lot of his biases while working with Rock Lee.

Rock Lee is considered disabled btw.

Also ableism is one of the reasons why Nagato doesn’t show his body. Because he’s also disabled (can’t walk because of paper bombs, and has severe chronic chakra exhaustion).

The noble clans (Uchiha, Hyuga, Aburame, Akimichi) were the first/founding clans of Konoha. The Senju used to be included, but because they mixed themselves into other clans to the point of dying out, they aren’t anymore.

Despite being memorialized on the shinobi uniform, the Uzumaki clan were never an official clan of Konoha.

The sharingan and mangekyou sharingan were extremely common during the warring states era, but is exceedingly rare in peace times. So much so that Uchiha’s who got it were congratulated (by people both inside and outside the clan) without others remembering that the sharingan is rarely unlocked for a good reason, making them feel even more upset/isolated.

Although people who get married usually still have wedding rings, it is so rare for shinobi to be seen wearing them (considering their job) that they’re viewed as a sign of retirement.

Ino and Karui did not get along at first because Ino takes great pride in clan tradition and Karui thought she was behind the times. They only get along now because they’re both romantics and they respectfully avoid that topic of conversation around each other.

Shino has to be very particular about his doctors to avoid them freaking out them accidentally healing the holes in his skin closed, making long missions away from Konoha all the more complicated and dangerous.

The rookie nine (-Sasuke) all really enjoy the outdoors so they set up a whole park/garden for them to hang out at. Naruto, Sakura, and Ino plant and tend to the flowers. Hinata picks and presses flowers into journals with the date they bloomed, type, and flower meaning written. Shikamaru (and sometimes Choji) likes cloud gazing. Shino and Choji like admiring (and sometimes catching) the bugs they find; Shino appreciates how he can exposition dump about all sorts of insects and Choji will actually listen. Kiba will either run around or take a nap with Akamaru depending on the day. Sakura also sometimes brings a stack of books to read/annotate in the grass.

Ino was the peer leader of their classroom during the academy.

Because Sakura was the introverted friend adopted by the extroverted leader (Ino), when they stopped being friends, Sakura functionally lost all of her friends.

Shino was right behind Sasuke in academics all throughout the academy, resulting in them having a bit of a silent rivalry. Sasuke actually knew Kiba through this because Kiba was one of the few people who acknowledged that Shino existed.

Choji taught Ino and Shikamaru how to cook as team bonding.

Shino and Hinata are pretty close friends after bonding over having to reign in Kiba during their time on team 8.

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re: this cooking kabuto hcs

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ftr my thoughts on jin guangyao portraying himself as being small and weak and harmless and vulnerable are essentially that it isn't an act, because an act in this context implies a duplicity and/or disingenuousness that i don't think is present. but i do think it is a performance--it's just a performance that he has to play given the power disparity between himself and the rest of the cultivation world, at least until he becomes chief cultivator. in short, jin guangyao is performing the role of the non-threatening, subservient retainer that is expected of him to ensure his own survival in a world where he knows that the only person he can rely on to put his needs first is himself.

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re: my tags about jgy and qin su in my reblog of that "does your blorbo have ptsd" tumblr poll, can we revisit that excruciating conversation in the jinlintai treasure room in cql? because one of my least favourite reads on jgy's expression and body language here is that he's being "creepy." and to be clear, i'm not trying to say you're wrong to draw those inferences here, because his behaviour is deeply, deeply unsettling, and i also find this scene hard to watch and to read in the novel. but i think if that's where your examination of him begins and ends here, you're doing yourself--and zhu zanjin's exquisite performance--a disservice.

so the 'creepy' bit is preceded by what jgy says to qin su while she has her back turned, and i find his words heartbreakingly sincere and very reflective of a man who has spent his life forced to feel shame and embarrassment over his mother, who he loves dearly and who he watched suffer right up until the moment of her death:

there are a few more very poignant lines in there about his mother and the depth of his gratitude to qin su (these show up in the novel, too), but i think the above encapsulates the same message. then the atmosphere shifts, and so does jgy's expression when he talks about jin rusong and how his death would have been inevitable--essential, even. this is also where i most often see him described as acting like a creep, and i have two separate responses to this that i don't really have the time to get into right now, but which have both doylist and watsonian components to them so 👀 you can probably make some guesses about what my arguments would be. if there's enough interest, i might come back to this later and put together a separate post about it, idk. anyway, i'm not going to get into the 'is he a creep' argument here because tl;dr no, i don't think he is, and also--

i find jgy's expressions here to be more indicative of a man who is, shall we say, Not His Best Self At The Moment 🫠 rather than a man who is intentionally trying to make a wife who, by her own admission, he has treated very well for the entirety of their marriage, uncomfortable. his attention isn't even on qin su or the hell that she is experiencing right now--because he is re-experiencing his own hell. because he, too, is traumatized by this knowledge! he's just had a decade and change to develop some deeply unhealthy coping mechanisms and masking techniques to hide it.

at this point qin su whips around and slaps him, which i know everyone likes to gif and fistbump and holler about in a positive way, but given there is no one in this scene who isn't enduring profound trauma in this moment, i, uh. you know. won't be doing that. i will focus on his face journey in the expressions that follow because they are just so

disassociating

disassociating

disassociating

/executive function switch is flipped in his superbly wrinkly brain, and then "qin su :) we still have so many guests to attend at the discussion conference :)"

a-yao? sir?? hello??? also i do not have the quote from the novel directly in front of me, but iirc he says something very similar here to what he does in the novel, which i'll have to paraphrase: that this revelation is only bothering qin su so much because she is actively thinking about it! it's only thoughts, you see! just don't think about it! haven't they actually been very happy all this time, while only one of them had to live with this knowledge and could not share it with anyone?

to which i can only respond with abject, horrified shock because, like. have you, jin guangyao? been happy and unperturbed by this devastating knowledge? because i think the answer is a pretty definitive no.

anyway i just wanted to quickly keymash my thoughts on this before they fled my brain completely but tl;dr yes, while jgy would not use this language to describe himself, he's absolutely got ptsd specifically around his marriage to his own half-sister, and their son.

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You just don't have enough information to explain yourself yet. Your glasses, your name, being someone's child is not something that can show who really you are. But that is fine. If you're not happy on what you have now… you can just find new things to find up. …You see, I also want to find who I really am. That's why I'm collecting a bit of everything.

_Orochimaru to Yakushi Kabuto - Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto

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orochimaru is actually real as hell cuz if i had to grow up transgender in the fucking naruto universe of all places? i would be weird as fuck too. i would snap

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orochimaru is actually real as hell cuz if i had to grow up transgender in the fucking naruto universe of all places? i would be weird as fuck too. i would snap

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you may kiss the bride Happy Halloween 🦇🎃