#as shown during various moments of the chunin exams arc

[soaringpigeonshovel]

Hijacking this post to say that my pet theory is that to have 'revolutionary s*suke' at the forefront of your perception of sasuke you have to have entered naruto fandom before finishing naruto (probably because it was still in serialisation). Because reading the whole thing all the way through makes it pretty clear that s*suke's fatal flaw is his (completely understandable and fair, trauma-induced) decision to view everyone else as pawns. He's right about the system, but he can't be the one to fix it because he doesn't actually care or even really perceive the common individual. His sudden desire to be Hokage immediately after planning to massacre everyone in the village is a culmination of his fatal flaw, ie: that he wasn't a revolutionary for the people, he was a revolutionary against some fuckers. Which, again, completely just and reasonable, speak your truth king, but sasuke in power would have been a definite Bad End scenario for the average poor sod. Indeed the ideal scenario for s*suke is him getting to knock down the current corrupt system and then fuck of into the wilderness to pet crows and kick people he dislikes in the balls—which is pretty much what happens, bar the actual dismantling of the system because, yknow, b*ruto needed space to happen.

Wait this got away from me a little. What i wanted to bring this 'round to is that blaming any of team 7 for s*suke pushing them away is missing the point. He's traumatized. It makes him a bit of a dick in some situations. That's fine. Him not being perfect doesn't invalidate him being a victim or even a hero.