#SORRY FOR THE RAAAAAANT

[team7-headquarter]

Tags by @yappatadwinks :

*From what I remember of the manga and from my interpretation

A big part of Naruto (as a story) revolves around duty and love: what are you loyal to, what are you willing to fight for, what would you sacrifice for it.

The reason why it parallels Sakumo is because Sakumo's death sets the tone for Kakashi's story.

Sakumo's love for his comrades/teammates was enough for him to ignore his duty as a cold-heart shinobi. His loyalty was with the ideal of wellbeing and justice, of friendship and responsibility to the village as in the people, not the politics. He ended up being unable to withstand the backlash of his actions, an emotional attack bad enough to make a war veteran suicide.

He loved his son and his village, but that love and that duty was not enough to keep him alive.

Now, that story is a vital part of Kakashi. It must remind you of Sakumo's 'cause it's a continuation of just that. The narrative is aware of Sakumo and to prevent Kakashi from repeating his death, we get several characters and tasks to occupy him.

The most important figure of them is Obito.

Genin Obito was an echo of Sakumo. The priority for both of them were their teammates, not the mission. Kakashi was already marked by Sakumo, so when Obito gives Kakashi his eye and dies in front of him, what we got is the second impact that would define Kakashi as a character.

Kakashi kills Rin, Minato dies... Kakashi's friends were left picking up the pieces. I'll be honest, for me Kakashi used Obito's words as a reason to keep going, but if it wasn't for Gai or all the other people who cared about Kakashi, it wouldn't have mattered at all. Maybe he wasn't actively suicidal, but he was passively tho. He didn't care about his own life that much, after all.

Later, Team 7 becomes a reason to stay alive too. He gets better, stronger, healthier; finds a reason to be alive for himself.

Now, during the Fourth Shinobi War?

The moment I was talking about in the original post was the end of the line in so many senses. He saw Gai fight Madara, heard about Tenzo and the Zetsu army, was there to witness the frustration of the Kages when they couldn't help like they wanted to, saw Minato frustration, realized that Obito was alive and had done terrible terrible stuff and— well, it was a lot.

At the moment, they were not even fighting with Madara, but with Kakashi thought as a goddess. He was "useless", completely and horrifyingly so. He had a whole moment of despair when Obito and Sakura went to rescue Sasuke and he saw Naruto almost dying to Kaguya. He had lost his sharingan. He was low low on self-esteem.

He called himself useless, powerless, a loser. He implies he had been a bad teacher and bad friend.

Obito and Kakashi decided to die (explicitly so) for Team 7 as a way to make up for their own sins and mistakes. The difference here is that Kakashi was aware that he had no way of helping Team 7 fight Kaguya. His death would be the logical one, given that Obito had his sharingan still.

Team 7 is the reason why Kakashi stays alive.

Obito points at them to tell him they need you AND he goes back to life for some seconds to give his eyes to Kakashi so he could protect them. When he dreams of a world where he had made his dreams come true, he's smiling with Kakashi and his kids, team 7.

Obito reminded Kakashi he was not alone and he was not powerless. That's the difference between Sakumo and Kakashi. Maybe (idk) if someone had stepped up to remind Sakumo of how Kakashi still needed him, or maybe if someone had given him friendship and in it the strength to keep going...

Kakashi is not less mentally ill than his dad. It's just that the village didn't outright reject him; not his friends at least. That's the theme of Naruto, after all. No one can't stand that level of suffering without friends or some type of support.

Kakashi was ready to die along with Obito when they were shielding Sasuke and Naruto. He even wanted to die, I'd dare say, for the way he talks shit about himself and speaks miserably about his life. Team 7 was there and yet the grief of losing Obito was so great, he didn't think about it twice.

Like yeah, Kakashi knew they were all ready to sacrifice themselves, 'cause the rest of the world was good as dead. They were the only ones who could do something about it.

It was Obito who protected Kakashi and basically told him you have kids, you fucker, you cannot die here, they need you. Also he wanted alone time with Rin, which is kinda funny. He was so tired of Kakashi third-wheeling.

Anyway, there's a lot to unpack here...

[herorps]

i just saw this on my dash and i wanted to just raaaaaant, sorry in advance. saw someone getting praised for being helpful for the period rp community but there are so many whites in their list it's like the fucking alpes in winter. they're contributing to the whitest period rpc, so no they're not being helpfulp. them and so many others.

lmao dw, i don’t mind people ranting to me esp if it’s about something as messy as the period / historical rpc. and it’s not to say that like, there aren’t good and inclusive writers and groups in the genre bc there are and they’re usually poc with an understanding of the implications of whitewashed history on non-western countries. in my experience. 

i just don’t understand how period / historical rpers will only think of white fcs or white stories when writing as if ... bipoc people weren’t around. or that bipoc have their own historical figures and stories. and i guess they can argue about the availability of resources but in the day and age where i can literally go on youtube and find all the major historical c dramas or go on netflix and find shows like bolivar and frontier and the number of bollywood films and sageuk kdramas on there. i bet that every non-western country out there has some sort of historical fiction / period piece in their media library, it wouldn’t be hard to , idk , make resources of them. 

[the-busy-ghost]

RAAAAAANT

Ok definitely one of the more annoying things about my field of interest (other than people deriding history as a discipline) is that everybody thinks they know the Middle Ages. I would argue that out of the major divided ‘periods’ of the last two thousand yeads, at least in the west, it is one of the most misrepresented- even though it lasted a approximately a millenium in many places and thus would NATURALLY be very internally diverse.

But everyone thinks they know the Middle Ages, that they’ve got this whole (vast) period pegged and don’t need any more info to pass judgement upon it. And yet, a lot of the time, people’s views of the Middle Ages are informed partially by the romanticised Victorian stereotype, or by scoffing, patronising Enlightenment (and sometimes Renaissance) stereotypes. Or worse, in some (very few thankfully) cases fantasy shows and video games.

None of this is to say that the ‘layman’ (to use a patronising term, sorry couldn’t think if anything else) has nothing to contribute to the study of history, nor that the stereotypes of other periods aren’t worth taking into account sometimes as interesting historiographical phenomena, nor that cultural produce and media isn’t vastly entertaining and important in its own way.

But maybe it would be nice now and again to treat the Middle Ages with a bit more caution. To remember not only the sheer scale and diversity of the period (even in Europe alone, though so many people forget to look beyond Europe for this period) and thus the problems inherent in making sweeping statements, but also that 21st century cultural stereotypes regarding the Middle Ages are often informed as much by other periods and our own time as by the legacy of the mediaeval period itself. And of course, the age-old, do your reading before you start trying to argue with people who have (and like personally I still know jack-shit despite reading about it every day for years so like I’m not excepting myself here).

(And I swear to god if I hear one more person defending racist or sexist aspects of fantasy literature with ‘but that’s just how it WAS back then’ I will explode but that’s an argument dor another day and not really my field. Also if Nazis could get their grubby hands off mediaeval (and also Norse) studies, that would be great.)

[britneyshakespeare]

bratz can't act like they're as iconic and unconditionally adored because they aren't. they aren't. i used to have a friend who just kinda made fun of me about all of my interests (besides my 'smart' ones like poetry and history), especially ones that were a little too girly or too queer for him to accept, being the boring straight man he was, who had no taste for irony, indulgence in pop culture, and kitsch. i don't say that lightly btw bc i do have male friends in real life who are not necessarily as flamboyant and eccentric as i am but they still like respect me.

this ex-friend made fun of me for being so interested in vintage barbies and their clothes, and that to me was like obviously fuckin stupid. i was like well she represents the evolution of the idealized woman throughout recent history. she represents fashion and femininity as young girls were expected to aspire to, in all its beautiful and stickily-embedded intricacies. she's also just a beautiful object, quite clearly, and always has been, but has cycled through various eras of realism, professionalism, and play. there really is something to admire about barbie no matter who you are. there is a barbie for everyone; if everyone had the encyclopedic knowledge of barbies eras and supporting characters and spin-off lines that the collective many generations of barbie fans have, it wouldn't be hard to like, 'get' what's so interesting and fascinating about this little plastic woman. if you have any interest in aesthetics or pop culture or history at all. if you want to commentate upon post-modern culture, look no further than barbie.

but also if you just want to see the evolution of a solid and ruthlessly successful fashion doll line, in fact THE first major fashion doll line, look to barbie. she IS the quintessential fashion doll for so many reasons and no one can touch her. she's the beatles. she's shakespeare. she's in a league of her own. there are many many many noteworthy doll lines out there, if you like dolls, but nobody touches barbie. and you get this undying loyalty, this unshakable admiration, despite whatever other commercial low points or public scrutiny you may be facing (barbie has had much of those things), by being the epitome of a fashion doll for so, so many decades.

barbie can put out however many shitty dolls they want and that will just never change, because whenever they put out a good one it will always be "oh thank GOD!! barbie is back!!" from the fans, and i'm one of them. i'm not here to kick her when she's down. i'm here to appreciate her for what she is, and has always been. barbie fans don't make excuses for their shitty, low-quality products, but frankly, neither does mattel. most of their cheapest products get away with the excuse of being 'for kids' and kids are the ones buying and playing with the fashionistas and those unimaginatively-designed career dolls. it is what it is; they're affordable. when mattel fails to impress adult fans, they just don't buy. that's how an adult collector base works.

i can say all this about barbie and i feel it's just very self-evident upon critical reflection why any adult might still feel inspired by barbie, might still love barbie as a pop culture figure and a piece of their childhood. i can say all this respectable, intellectual stuff to justify my love for barbie, and that's part of it, but primarily i love barbie because i have always loved barbie. when i was a kid, i was playing with dolls or watching tv; that was IT. my sister and i could play dolls all day long for multiple days in a row when we were young and we'd never get tired of it.

i only stopped playing with dolls in third grade when my teacher asked "how many kids here like to play with dolls?" (when discussing hobbies) and i realized i was the only one with my hand up and i felt ashamed. and even then i still continued to play with dolls, but less often; i tried to justify that what i was doing was 'cooler' than the ways i used to play with dolls, the babyish ways; and i certainly never breathed a word about playing with my dolls to any of my friends at school after that. that's the only reason barbie and i ever grew apart, was the social pressure to give her up at a certain age. but tbh even when i was a teenager, while i felt like i shouldn't ask for dolls anymore, i still kept up with the barbie brand and felt deeply invested in her as a character, in a very, very pre-barbie movie world where that was viewed as incredibly strange for a teenager. again, like i've said, the pop culture zeitgeist as a whole was very anti-barbie and none of the points of appreciation were touched on outside of the niche of doll collectors, who have not until SO recently been seen as a cool niche, even among 'nerdy' or nostalgic pop culture properties.

bratz. you are not barbie here. every adult collector loves and appreciates barbie. many adult collectors like bratz, but they do NOT admire them, on the whole, so unflinchingly. i love barbie like i love my grandmother. you're more like my cool cousin i looked up to growing up. you DON'T have the range. you don't have the security as a brand, as a force of pop culture. the attachment is not nearly as deep. the oldest people who played with you as children are not even forty yet. i played with bratz as a kid; i collect them now. i'm twenty-fiiiiive. i have a great aunt who has collected barbie for decades, and she's seventy-eight.

you don't have the universality of barbie. you don't have the history of barbie. you can't BACK IT UP when you start to flop or piss off your fans, like barbie can. you are not untouchable. you have been off the shelves for years at a time, multiple times. some of that ironically was because of mattel and their frivolous greedy lawsuits. you get sympathy points for that, bratz. but you are also too iconic to act like you're an underdog anymore; and you know you're iconic to the people who LIKE you, but your dedicated fanbase is not of the same adoration as your biggest competition.

bratz fans are just fashion doll fans, mainly younger millennials and older gen z. the hannah montana generation. i'm happy to be a 2000s girly; it is part of my identity. i do genuinely love bratz, as aesthetic objects, and for the way they've influenced later fashion doll lines. the way they shook up the competition for girl-marketed toys in the 2000s is genuinely legendary and that decade for dolls, ALL dolls, would be unthinkable without them. but they were always more limited, in many ways, than barbie, in what they could be and do. mainly that they could never be the first, the original. they were the pack, the gang, the group of friends. they were not individually distinct; they were mainly fashion-focused and fun-focused. it was different, and unique, but it was not revolutionary.

and you know what, that's good enough for me. but this brand does not have a leg to stand on for how greedy and cheap it has gotten. like they sure do wanna act like they're so cute and irreplaceable, when they have never, ever emulated the success that they were reaching in, like, 2005.

i love bratz as dolls but i fuckin hate mga as a brand. fuckin idiots