#Especially after reading fanfics that give me an unrealistic appearance of his mental health

[asmuchasidliketo]

#can you tell i want to know more about jay's time as a soldier and his struggles with ptsd? #because what did his anger look like? #who did he take it out on? #did mouse who is kind of skittish and struggles to make eye contact and has his own traumatic brain injury just stand there and take it? #is that why he doesn't talk to father halstead any more? #was his mom already gone by this point? #or did he take his anger out over war and losing his brothers in arm and his mom's cancer on her too? #how did he stop doing this? #did mouse yell at him or get him the help he needed or did he just break down like he did after maddie was shot? tags by OP

tell me more about jay halstead’s past [5/∞]

[ghoste-catte]

okay so I've been a big fan of your work for like almsot three years now and you kinda inspired me to want to start my own gaara fanfic. I am absolutley in love with your characterisation of him (especially in sleep talk with me) and wondered if you maybe could give me some tips? because my story would also take place in the sweet inbetween after the chunin exams and before he becomes kazekage. (and to write him in this time frame is so so hard. damn you barely excitent canon content.)

OMG anon?? That’s such a nice thing to say!! I’m so thrilled that you’re inspired to write your own stuff! I hope you’ll drop me a link to it when it’s finished!! I’m sure it’ll be amazing!! I love that time period for Gaara. 

To be honest, I don’t feel like I’m super qualified to give writing “advice” (I say, preparing to give advice), because I’m really just an amateur doing this for fun. But that being said, there’s a couple things that I think are fun or interesting or compelling to explore with Gaara during that timeskip period between OG Naruto and Shippuden ... (Caveat here that these are just my opinions and there’s no one right way to explore this character, and that there’s plenty of interpretations that are worthwhile and fantastic and honestly better than mine!) 

So, the first and biggest thing I had to keep drilling into my own head as I was writing Sleeptalk was how staggeringly YOUNG all the characters are pre-Shippuden. Gaara is, like, twelve or thirteen at the chuunin exams and he becomes Kazekage around age fifteen. I don’t know if you remember being fifteen, but I was barely qualified to work my little part-time job at that age! Hell, I’m shocked they let me drive a car (with a learner’s permit, but still). So picturing someone making the decisions he did at that age, even in the context of the militaristic, child-soldier-normalizing context of Naruto is ... a lot. 

The biggest thing I think with Gaara--as an adult or as a teenager--is keeping in mind how strongly his trauma shaped him. What Gaara goes through between the end of the chuunin exams and his first appearance in Shippuden is basically an (unrealistically) accelerated trauma recovery. From age 6 to age 12, he basically has no personal connections, no affection, no mentorship or anything other than what appears to be basic “wrangling”. The Naruto wiki says that his dad is the one who trained him in ninjutsu, but it’s hard to picture him being particularly tractable after Yashamaru’s death, so I imagine those trainings were short-lived and probably fairly brutal. After all, it’s said Rasa’s magnet release was the only thing that could control Gaara if he let Shukaku take over. If anything, Rasa’s training methods are probably a lot closer to the Hyuugas’ than to, say, the Akimichi. So I think in addition to the onscreen traumas (the early loss of his mother, his overall rejection by Suna, the forcible termination of his relationship with his siblings, the assassination attempts, and of course Yashamaru’s betrayal), we probably also are looking at someone who was abused in addition to being neglected. Healing from trauma is a lot of work, and it has missteps and backslides in addition to forward progress, so there’s a lot of potential for development of his character there. Thinking about what his healing journey was like, what his setbacks might have been, and how he handled those. And what his major milestones were, too. What were his big signs of progress? His red letter days?

There’s actually a lot we don’t know about Gaara’s childhood between when Yashamaru died and the Konoha Crush, and there’s a lot of room to play in that space and explore possibilities. For example, who took care of his basic caregiving needs? Who made sure he had clothes and food? What did he eat? What were the major events of those six years? Did he ever try to reach out to Temari or Kankuro? To his dad? To Baki? What was the context of the additional assassination attempts? Did he play, and if so, what sort of games might he have played? We know, for example, that he has some artistic talent with the sand--was that something he ever explored? What did he do at night, since he couldn’t sleep? How was he kept awake, and by what or whom? There’s a lot of potential to explore additional, non-canon events that might have been formative. And how did any of that change after the chuunin exams, when he decided he wanted to be seen as more than a weapon? What sorts of things did he have to learn?

We know a very bare minimum about the Suna Council and the politics and culture of Suna, too, and I think there’s a lot of potential interest there. How would the Council have approached Gaara’s announcement of his intention to become Kage, when there were two older (and more emotionally stable) candidates from the same lineage? We know from the light novels that there is still backstabbing and subterfuge and that Gaara’s appointment is controversial even when he’s an adult, so I think there’s a lot of opportunity for political intrigue in the years between part 1 and Shippuden, if that’s your thing. 

One of the biggest and most important things that I think was sorely neglected by canon was Gaara’s relationship with his siblings. There’s so much growth that needed to happen there, and Temari and Kankuro were probably still pretty scared of him at first! There’s so much potential for them to grow together as people and to form a new family unit, and exploring how they went from being wary of him (and potentially needing to be prepared to kill him if he got out of control) to a loving sibling relationship! There are a lot of firsts that could be explored there--when did he first acknowledge Kankuro as his older brother, for example? Who was the first to try to give him a hug, and did he (or the sand) allow it?

Finally, I do really want to emphasize the mental health component of Gaara’s journey. Canon leans really heavily on the fact that he has a literal demon sealed inside him and that he’s protected by his mother’s spirit through magic sand, but a lot of his reactions and ways of handling things are really just that of a traumatized child, with or without the additional magic component. If you took a kid Gaara’s age and put them through traumatic events on the scale of what he went through--with or without magical ninja skills--you would likely see similar reactions. The only difference is that Gaara has access to fundamentally unlimited power. (And I think learning that, too--that he can’t just kill or hurt people to get what he wants--would be a huge part of his development and learning process.) So I personally don’t really care for interpretations of his development that lean too heavily on the ‘literal demon voices in his head’ and ‘actual conversing with ghosts/spirits’ interpretations, though they’re perfectly valid ones given what canon portrays. I much prefer an interpretation where a lot of Gaara’s symptoms--and they are symptoms!--are actually things that are going on with him emotionally and internally rather than being literal magic events that are happening. For example, I like to think his discomfort with the full moon has a lot more to do with negative emotions associated with the memory of Yashamaru’s betrayal than a literal issue with Shukaku thirsting for blood.  

Anyway, I’ve rambled on forever, but if you have other questions please feel free to pop back up! And I hope you’ll link me to your story when it’s done--I’d love to read it!!