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panharmonium · 2 days ago

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you and i have both found precious friends, haven't we?

every so often, i get the urge to journal out insignificant fandom annoyances. i rarely have the time and generally manage to resist because, again: insignificant. extremely so. none of this is remotely important.

however, stumbling into bad fandom "takes" on the scene i'm about to discuss has prompted me to gnash my teeth so often ("how many times am i going to have to see people refusing to actually read the text?" i repeat to myself over and over) that i'm finally going to just get it out of my system. (i'm making it non-rebloggable, though. me happily typing up my own thoughts on my own blog does not equate to an invitation for internet strangers to debate inconsequential fandom opinions with me. i just like writing things down.)

anyway. i find it deeply frustrating when people complain about kakashi saying "the ones most precious to me have already been killed" as if they think it means he doesn't recognize or value the new bonds he's made, when two panels later he finishes his speech by doing just that.

it's literally the ENTIRE point kakashi is making. we've lost so much - but that's not all there is.

i don't understand how this scene became such a magnet for willful misreads. people either fixate on kakashi saying "the ones most precious to me have already been killed" and don't read beyond that panel, or they fixate on him sharing a relevant piece of his life experience with sasuke and then accuse him of "projecting," or they claim that this is a failed teaching moment when it demonstrably, textually is not! hours later, after the sun has gone down and the moon has risen, sasuke is voluntarily still sitting there, thinking about naruto and sakura, questioning the hold his quest for vengeance against itachi has had on him all his life.

this entire sequence was one of my favorite scenes when i watched/read part 1, and it was so bizarre when i broke my fandom isolation after finishing the story and saw some of the blatantly non-textual takes people had on it. there are people who talk about this scene as if kakashi waltzes in here and tells sasuke that their situations are exactly the same and orders him to "get over it." there are also people who talk about this scene as if sasuke's role in it ends with and is defined solely by his reflexive "what do you know about it?" rejection of kakashi's earlier advice. neither of these takes are remotely accurate descriptions of what happens on the page.

at no point does kakashi say "i know exactly how you feel." there is no point in this conversation where he tries to equate their situations. what he does say is "the ones most precious to me have already been killed...i know the pain of losing somebody more than i'd like to." both of these are true statements, and both of them are offered only after sasuke's highly charged, furious threat to kill the people kakashi cares about, which kakashi (CORRECTLY) interprets as sasuke's way of accusing him of not being able to understand his feelings until he's experienced the pain of loss.

kakashi answers sasuke's threat with that calm, nonconfrontational disclosure of his personal history because sasuke asked him to do so. sasuke asked "why should i listen to you??? what do you know about how much this hurts?" and kakashi doesn't brush that accusation off or say "you just have to listen to me, period, because i'm in charge"; he answers the question! he says "that's fair. here's what I've experienced. here's what i've found, after living through it." and then he steps back to let sasuke reflect on it and decide what to do next.

just because the characters in this story don't use the kind of therapeutic feelings-speak that people think defines healthy conversations doesn't mean something is missing from this interaction. the text is VERY clear about the fact that kakashi makes a successful connection with sasuke here. kakashi's disclosure snaps sasuke out of his rage. it allows sasuke, who is hurting so badly that he can't see anything outside his own pain, to experience a momentary window of clarity - to catch a glimpse of the world outside the cage his grief has constructed around him. sasuke is so activated at the beginning of this scene, incapable of listening or recognizing anything that isn't his own hurt, but the minute he hears kakashi's calm admission that the people he loves most have already been killed, all that anger dissipates. suddenly, for a brief moment, he can see. suddenly he's listening. suddenly he's genuinely thinking about what kakashi is saying.

i know some people would prefer their version of sasuke to get up and throw kakashi's counsel back in his face and march out of the village with his middle finger raised to everyone he's leaving behind, but that's not what happens. that's not how sasuke feels about this conversation. that's not the effect this interaction has on him. he's not sitting there listening to kakashi's gentle disclosure of personal information and thinking "what an asshole; he's trying to minimize my trauma!!!" he's genuinely affected. his perspective is altered. his teacher does precisely what teachers are supposed to do: give their students something to think about! and sasuke recognizes it as something that's worth considering!

does it keep him in the village? no, but that wasn't the purpose of the conversation. when kakashi and sasuke speak, there's no inkling in anyone's mind that sasuke might leave - not even sasuke is planning to do that. the purpose of this intervention is to address the conflict on top of the hospital, where sasuke let himself get so out of control that he attacked naruto with a lethal-sized chidori, nearly killing sakura in the process. kakashi doesn't have to know that orochimaru is about to make a play for sasuke's allegiance to know that sasuke's current situation is a disaster waiting to happen. he isn't "projecting" by recognizing that sasuke is in danger of hurting somebody (or himself!), and it's completely appropriate for him, as the adult in charge, to start addressing that. nor is he "projecting" by correctly recognizing that sasuke is going through a similar change to one he himself experienced, in that sasuke is being drawn out of his isolation and into genuinely caring about his teammates. those are just the observable facts of the situation. sasuke was the first one to pass kakashi's bell test. he sacrificed himself for naruto in the land of waves. he landed himself in the hospital by trying to protect naruto from itachi. right before that, he almost died trying to save sakura from gaara:

"you and i have both found precious friends, haven't we?"

kakashi can see that sasuke's bonds to his new friends have become strong enough that they might actually be capable of displacing the self-destructive desires that have been controlling him for so long. and yet there are still people who talk about the tree scene as if kakashi is wrong or deluded for choosing to have this conversation with sasuke now - as if the things he tells sasuke are trite or irrelevant or insensitive, as if sasuke isn't in PRECISELY the right place in his growth process to hear "your desire for revenge has started to hurt you and the people you care about. are you sure this is what you want?" in the past, sasuke might not have been ready to consider that question, but now - look at how hard he fights for his friends! look at how he refers to them! "my precious comrades," he says, when he used to consider them so beneath him.

it's time. when he first met team 7, he didn't have anything to counter itachi's pull on him, but now he does. he's at a crossroads. this is the right moment for him to hear what kakashi says to him here, especially when kakashi is able to say it in such a calm, neutral way. it would be negligent for kakashi not to say it, after what just happened. sasuke almost killed one of his teammates that morning. it is not malicious for an adult whose responsibility it is to keep these twelve year-olds from hurting themselves to tell sasuke, "i know it hurts. but what you're doing right now is going to end badly." or: "the power i entrusted you with is not to be used to hurt your friends."

and once again, crucially - the text is clear that sasuke hears him. sasuke absorbs what he's being offered. he is still sitting there, thinking about his friends, questioning his old goals, fighting the powerful pull of his revenge, until orochimaru's minions show up and do something that kakashi never did - manipulate him so someone else can use him for their benefit. orochimaru's minions prey on sasuke's pain in order to push him down a path that benefits orochimaru, but kakashi speaks to sasuke plainly and honestly, without judgment or self-interest. his only concern is sasuke's well-being. (you wouldn't know it, though, to hear some of fandom's hot takes.)

the thing is: everything people claim they want this scene to be is already there. "if only kakashi had used this opportunity to connect with sasuke - " that is exactly what happened. you're lamenting the absence of something that is in fact the text. no, it doesn't look like a scene in a fanfic where kakashi sits sasuke down for tea and helps him unpack all his traumatic experiences and offers lots of verbal reassurance that sasuke's emotions are Valid and he is here to Support Him No Matter What, because that kind of explicit emotional exploration would be wildly inconsistent with the source material. you have to approach stories from the inside to legitimately appreciate what they're trying to say. you have to accept their rules. and in this story's context, in no way is this scene meant to convey "kakashi's so out of touch; he totally missed the mark on this talk." this scene, as written, is a powerful moment between him and sasuke, where sasuke does hear what kakashi is saying and takes it to heart, and chews on it, and fights to believe it. ultimately, thanks to some last-minute interference from people who want sasuke to continue suffering because it advances their interests, it isn't enough to save him.

but that's not a condemnation of either party. it's the narrative, and it rocks.

i love this scene. i love how kakashi lets sasuke snarl and shout at him without ever biting back, without ever escalating, always staying quiet and calm. i love how patient he is, how an angry kid with no clue about kakashi's personal background says cutting things like "if i killed the people most precious to you then you'd understand that you don't know shit," and yet kakashi never bristles - he has no ego, no self-interest; he absorbs the anger without protest and responds by offering a private piece of himself. i love the way sasuke's expression instantly transforms from enraged, to stunned, to softened. i love how kakashi is able to tell sasuke "no" with such compassion, every time he has to say it. i love how he still believes in sasuke and gives him space to reflect and make decisions on his own. i love how even the sealing jutsu kakashi placed around orochimaru's curse mark requires sasuke's consent for it to function ("you have to want it to work"). i love how badly sasuke wants team 7 to be enough for him. i love how desperately he wants to be free. he's trying so hard.

it's so frustrating to see complaints about this scene written by people who aren't actually reading it, or who are dead set on interpreting it in direct contradiction to the text. there are enough ungenerous "takes" out there on various aspects of naruto as it is (sakura, you have my forever sympathy). criticizing this sequence in defiance of what it actually shows us on the page has never struck me as a particularly accurate or useful way of appreciating the story.

#obviously everyone is free to do whatever they like or believe whatever non-textually supported opinions they want #it's fandom; do what you enjoy; it doesn't matter #i however am entitled to find this annoying #and complain about it in my own space :)#naruto #naruto manga #meta #he's like me #long post

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