#hi anon! sorry for the delayed response to this lskdfjf i was stuck on mobile all afternoon/evening yesterday

[chojuuro]

do you like or hate kabuto?

short answer: yes

long answer: also yes.

i have what may seem like conflicting feelings toward him, but understand that a) my venus placement is in aquarius and b) he deserves a little throttling as a treat

let me explain (under a cut because i got Started)

kabuto is someone who is SO interesting and weirdly personal to me. a kid who grew up with no identity of his own, who's trying to find his place in this world the way he knows best. which, i mean, he's been kinda fucked since day one and it DESTROYS MY ASS and not in a fun way

he was, i think, 7 when danzo picked him up, after 3 years in an orphanage where they just. gave him a name. because he had amnesia and DIDN'T. KNOW. HIS BABYHOOD. boy didn't know his NAME or his parents or anything

and THEN danzo got his grubby hands on him when he was SEVEN. worst part is he went willingly because he wanted to help the orphanage with the funding that danzo cut.

and THEN THE OROCHIMARU SHIT ASLKFJ and then when kabuto killed nonou unknowingly and then had his entire identity crisis, probably his first real one. hm. HM.

at which point orochimaru showed up, ensnared the poor boy with promises of identity, of finding out exactly who he was, of making a name for himself.

kabuto has been a spy his entire life. dozens of different hats, of different identities, of different masks to hide the kid who never really got to explore or figure out who he is. orochimaru died, and kabuto spiraled.

orochimaru was his only constant. the only thing he could come back to, that he knew, vaguely, would always be there. that he knew he always had a solid place with.

after the amnesia, after the orphanage, after ROOT, the spy work, the death of his mother, orochimaru's slimy grip, after trying to deal with the aftermath of everything? dude is a fuckin shell of the man he never got to be. and it KILLS ME.

don't get me started on how he's a fucking nun now. i do not perceive nunbuto. but i can't help but feel like maybe he wound up running the orphanage because he literally had no idea where else he could go. ROOT doesn't exist anymore, also FUCK that place. orochimaru is doing whatever That era of orochimaru is doing and i imagine part of kabuto wants to distance himself from them, at least for a while. no way the hospital would trust him enough to work there, even though his medical ninjutsu is SO strong and he could be licherally one of the best medics in konoha. he probably IS. but will konoha give him the chance to prove himself for it? not in a thousand years.

and maybe im biased bc little 11 year old me simped for him really hard. maybe im biased bc i can totally get the loss of sense of identity, the identity crises, the wanting to be better. the internal struggle of not knowing who you are, of having other people tell you who you are for you.

he's done a lot of really fucked up shit, obviously. he's literally a criminal. brought souls back from the dead just to fuck around and find out during the war. shows up uninvited at ALL TIMES. he's pretentious and he's smarmy and he's an asshole who worked under orochimaru for a huge chunk of his life, so you KNOW that he's been On Some Shit and honestly? to little fault of his own. he's a victim of circumstance, of grooming on multiple accounts, of his own mental health and the lack of care that konoha takes in anybody's psyche. good thing i have an oc to fix that for me aha

let me be clear that this does not excuse any of his actions. but it does explain them.

anyway *climbs off my soapbox* i love He but i kinda wanna beat him up sometimes