#I'm really really sorry but

[bright-hope-spot-19]

I agree that Tenten got shafted, and she deserved better, but I don't think she really could've beaten Kankuro in the finals. After all, if we suppose she was given a chance to fight anyone else, other than Temari in the pre-lims and won, then that would already be giving Kankuro enough information about her fighting style, and how she battles. So, in the finals, he'd know to simply stay away from the range of her weapons and hide in a dark corner where she wouldn't be able to see him. After all, the stadium where the final stage took place was huge, giving Kankuro plenty of space to hide in a far away corner and manipulate his puppet from afar. His chakra strings can be made as long as he needs them to be if he needs to hide, and he can also make them practically invisible to the naked eye. In addition to that, he can use a transformation technique on his puppet to turn Crow into himself to distract her and catch her off-guard. Like, at first, he enters the arena, unveils his Crow, and throws a smoke bomb to blind her. While she can't see, turn Crow into himself while he hides somewhere she won't see. Then turn it into Crow again and into himself once more. Do you have any idea how confused she'd be? Seeing Crow changing from its original form to Kankuro to being Crow again, all while throwing smoke bombs at her to lower her accuracy. Once she's ran out of things to throw at him with her scrolls, he can either poison her and stall or catch her in Crow's arms and squeeze until she either gives up or loses consciousness the same way he did with the dude he fought in the pre-lims.

The problem is that as a Konoha genin, at that point in the story, Tenten would obviously not know anything about puppetry, how puppets work, how to fight them, or what tricks to predict, while her attacks are way easier to predict and plan around, after having seen her fight only once. Kankuro is also ridiculously good at hiding. As a puppet user, stealth and hiding his presence are two of his strongest stats, so if he wants to hide and not be seen, then she won't see him. Tenten has crazy accuracy and always hits her target. But in order to hit her target, she needs to be able to see it first. She doesn't have super eyes like Neji to be able to locate him if he decides to hide in a dark corner of the stadium battlefield. With him also very probably playing mind tricks on her, by constantly switching between Crow's forms (puppet form and turning it into himself to confuse her) and very likely poisoning her, (as long as it's a non-lethal poison) it's just a matter of minutes before her scrolls run empty and she has to give up. After all, if there's only one moving target on the field that she can see (the puppet), she's gonna aim at it, even if it's not really the target she wants to really hit. Also, even if she manages to land a lethal hit on Crow, disabling it, the puppet's body parts can still be launched and used individually for sneaky attacks. It'd even be very hard for her to pinpoint the puppets' weak points that would disable it and stop it from moving completely. Kankuro's puppets have hard outer shells/structures that aren't easily destroyed with simple attacks. She'd need to either hit all of the limbs precisely in a way they completely stop moving or get rid of the head part. Which I imagine would be very hard with the puppet constantly moving, switching between forms, throwing smoke and gas bombs in her face, and Kankuro hiding where she won't be able to hit him. Who's to say he has to use poison? He could use some kind of tranquilizer or something to slow her down and lower her efficiency.

That's the weak point: Kankuro has waaaay too many tricks he could pull out with his puppet, that'd be very hard to predict for genin Tenten, as someone who's never seen a battle puppet before. Whereas her fighting style is way easier to plan against: just stall until she runs out of her scrolls and stay away from her reach; and as I've said Kankuro is the king of hiding and stalling. If Tenten can't land a vital, critical hit within the first minutes of the fight, then she's already lost, especially if Kankuro decides to gas her with God knows what dangerous chemicals.

In case they'd fought in the prelims, I still believe he could pull it off. The pre-lims stadium was smaller, offering him fewer places to hide, but it was still reasonably big, to where it could offer him a few safe, hiding spots away from her. Also, from what I remember, Tenten still needed to do hand signs to activate her scrolls. He could send his puppet after her, when she's jumping into the air to perform her jutsu, and trap her before she finishes her hand signs. By either catching her in Crow's arms or blinding her with smoke or poison.

After all, that's the beauty of puppetry: Kankuro can potentially install whatever th he wants into his puppets. He could equip them with wind turbines to generate enough wind currents to keep her at bay. He could install two flamethrowers into Karasu to burn her scrolls. Heck, he could even turn the puppet into a bomb. Attach some explosive seals to it, and at one point, turn his puppet into an injured version of himself. Get her to lower her defenses, and the moment Crow-as-Kankuro is close enough, fucking explode in her face. With only her scrolls of weapons,there's no way Tenten can plan for and predict all of those tricks. In fact, I think the only Leaf genin who could realistically plan for a puppet; a weapon he's never seen before, is Shikamaru, and we all know why. I can realistically only see Tenten defeating Kankuro postwar with the bashosen, the sacred fan she got. I believe that thing is as strong, if not stronger than Temari's tessen, so yeah.

I like the Temari vs. Tenten fight. It might be really short (esp in the manga lol) but I think it's for a good reason! Temaris powerset isn't as involved as most of the others, and it's a character moment showcasing her brutality and skill more then anything else; such a short fight is jarring, and shows that she understands the political Angle of what they're doing better then most other (younger, probably don't remember the war) contestants. And also punctuates her own mercilessness, since between her siblings she's been placed in the 'exasperated/placating big sister' role- she is NOT a better or kinder person then her brothers, just Hella good at reading the room and forged in the fire of 'born during a war and spends her days placating what is both her brother and also The Devil from The Bible'.

It's a strong, punchy character moment for her just as much as kankuro's fight showcases his unexpected (as he's mostly been like. A meathead that bullies children and picks fights he can't win- no shade, temari was a Girl Character in the most Naruto of ways up till now) predictive and strategic thinking, setting him up as quite clever and thorough in his contingencies. Both fights subvert the shallow characters they previously portrayed, making it all the better for the audience when the invasion is revealed, because all three siblings have proved themselves ruthless and powerful, and 2 of the 3 have already deceived the AUDIENCE, so it makes sense they'd be trusted with a mission like this (gaara is a bad liar but he'd have to talk to someone without killing them to ruin anything, and it's more then reasonable to assume that won't happen).

[climbingthefloors]

obsessed with this baby hippo from thailand's khao khew zoo.. she has been so utterly betrayed by the world

[cottagedreamy]

God told me to draw this

[beif0ngs]

THE BOY SAVIOR ⏱️ THE BOY WHO SHATTERED TIME

[captainjonnitkessler]

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

[gertritude]

severance subreddit is really good actually

[pseudowho]

Nanami Kento who, when asked what his sexual orientation is, simply responds "my wife".

[egophiliac]

don't think I'm not still obsessing over 7-12

[purpleangiie]

Damian: "Grayson, what are you staring at?"

Dick: "Sh!"

Tim: "Leave him be, D. He's emotional."

Damian: "Over what?"

Dick, staring at the two quiet figures in front of them: "Would you believe that? Jason and Bruce existing in the same space and not throwing a tantrum, but actually behaving like two adults? They're even working together at the same desk. Unbelievable."

Damian: "Wait, has father just ruffled Todd's hair?"

Dick: "And he didn’t even punched him back! I'm so proud of how far they both have come. *sniff* Now we could all be one happy family."

Damiam: *looking absolutely bewildered, gazing up at Tim who just shrugs*

Tim: "Give them 15 minutes."

Damian: "12."

---

Jason: "Bruce. Bruce WHERE IS MY PEN?"

Bruce: "Y-your pen, Jason?"

Jason: "Oh my god. You don't even remember it. My pen, Bruce. My personalized red and golden Montblanc you gifted me for my 14th birthday. I left it here, where is it? You threw it away, didn't you? LIKE YOU DID WITH ANY REGARD YOU EVER HAD FOR ME AND MY FEELINGS? DID YOU FORGET I WAS YOUR SON TOO? WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR YOU TO LOVE ME?"

Dick: "Damn! We got so close."

Tim: "And that'd be 10 minutes and 35 seconds."

Damian: "-TT- Pay up, Drake."

[mourn-and-watch]

ekko describing jinx from his timeline to powder as someone who's just different but whose ideas change the world. jayce saying to machine herald!viktor that his imperfections are a part of everything that made him so admirable. powder getting mesmerized when she sees different timeline!ekko before he leaves. jayce building his whole life around the idea he got from different timeline!viktor when he saved him. love does transcend reality after all

[asocketwrench]

it's all coming together

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

I am such a big Werewolf Stan advocate I had to jump on this particular train 🙏 (but I didn't really wanna commit to full line art, you guys understand)

Oh, and you guys aren't gonna believe this, but here's part two 🙌

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[bigskycastle]

helly r

[effemimaniac]

new kink rating scale

[hel7l7]

I don't know how to talk about this