#oh no I am a weeb

[birdwithsocks]

*sailormoon + onepiece sounds*

[cthulhu-with-a-fez]

i started naruto a few years ago and made it to like the second arc in shippuden before stopping so i never made it to the kakashi backstory but....your notes compel me. tell me more.

okay so like take this with several grains of salt because the sum total of my sources here are "my understanding of the plot and characters as synthesized from the Abridged Revised Illustrated Edition my datemate's been writing me over the last two months", a handful of clips, and the only three (3) episodes of this 600+ episode show i've seen in my life, none of the three of which were relevant to the kakashi backstory

h o w e v e r

oh my god. my dude. my man. [holds him up like longcat] there is so much wrong with you and i'm enthralled.

so like here's the thing. here's the big takeaway that i'm understanding. this whole series is an ongoing exercise in generational trauma bullshit and everyone trying so hard to course-correct from their own tragic backstories that they accidentally set up their kids/students to have completely different but still somehow exactly the same tragic backstories, and naruto's chronic case of shounen anime power-of-friendship-itis is, i mean. yes it's him being the platonic ideal of Pure Of Heart And Dumb Of Ass but it's also a direct response to seeing ninja society's perpetual tragic backstory generator and going "this is bullshit, why are we even fighting? tell me what your side is, and i'll tell you what our side is, and then we can figure out how to make our sides the same side so none of us have to fight about it at all!" and honestly i love that but this ain't about him

so like. to explain kakashi we have to explain kakashi's father sakumo first. because sakumo was one of konoha's powerhouses, been on tons of successful missions, well-liked, well-respected, one of the earliest and loudest adopters of konoha's then-new and radical pivot towards a ninja being people first and disposable tools never ideology.

he really, genuinely believed in that.

except then he and his team went on a mission. and it went really, really badly. and he had to choose between completing the mission objective or saving his teammates' lives, and he chose their lives, because those who fail their missions may be scum, but those who abandon their teammates are worse, right?

... no, actually.

just because the ideology had been circulating and people were broadly toeing the party line didn't mean they actually believed in it, and sakumo's mission failure was already causing critical backlash.after sakumo made it back to konoha he was a fucking pariah for it. he was never officially reprimanded, but he didn't need to be if people went out of their way to personally spit at his feet, and... one day young kakashi comes home to find his father's body on the floor, wrists slit and suicide note devolving into begging apologies beside him.

this, as you may imagine, fucked him up, and didn't exactly predispose him towards believing the party line about the value of life.

he gets put on a genin team that was. basically the alpha build of the sasuke-sakura-naruto team dynamic. because it was him, and rin the healer girl with a massive crush on him who he never gave the time of day, and obito the Loudest High-Vis Uchiha Who Ever Lived who had a massive crush on her, and minato their teacher who was doing his absolute best to try and get them through to understanding each other, which is an Ordeal

because kakashi at this point has internalized that the party line is pretty lies for the gullible, that his teammates are only there to drag him down, and it drives obito nuts because that's the same exact bullshit that his family keeps spouting that he's rejected as thoroughly as a 12.9-year-old can, how does kakashi not see that it's bullshit? and there's rin who's looking at kakashi like i can fix him?? and getting upset when he doesn't let them in at all or even really visibly care that they're trying, and it's one hell of a dysfunction junction but minato is working on it.

... and then the worst happens. their team is caught out alone and everything goes wrong. rin is captured and obito's body is half-crushed under a rock and one of kakashi's eyes got slashed out and none of them are going to make it out of this, at this rate, until obito calls kakashi closer and tells him to take his eye. take the sharingan. he'd give him both but the other one got squished. kakashi will do more with it than obito ever did, so use it to save rin. please. and here's kakashi in the middle of field surgery on his dying teammate finally, horribly realizing that sometimes the win condition is, actually, protecting your friends, and he's already lost. but he can still try to save rin, it was obito's dying wish.

by the time he found her it was already too late.

the people who'd captured her had tried, poorly, hastily, messily, to seal one of the Tailed Beasts into her, and she was already dying. she had a demon thrashing in her soul that was tearing her to shreds around it and all kakashi could do was mercy kill her

and she thanked him for it.

and he goes back to konoha, sole survivor of his team, charred by the newfound comprehension of why you have to care and what it feels like to lose what you love and with obito's sharingan in his head and rin's blood on his hands and something in him that was already hanging on by a thread finally snapped.

and the only thing he could think to do, the only way he could even parse that grief through, is to just... make himself into a living memorial to them. he started trying to live as obito. adopt his mannerisms, his interests, craft his entire adult persona around his memories of his friend like a grave offering, and quarantine the bleakly mercenary anything-to-get-the-job-done ice in him off into the hound mask he wore as part of konoha's black ops division, which he joined at the ripe old age of way too fucking young.

he uses the sharingan to incredibly brutally efficient effect, copying enemy jutsus and bringing them back until the library's overflowing with them. but in the end, no matter how many he can technically use, they're still just cheap copies. and so is he.

and in the meantime the uchiha are collectively losing their shit about this random outside kid having one of their eyes in his head and getting all kinds of dubious 'glory' with it, and oh, wouldn't you look at that, they have a prodigy too!

... yeah.

itachi gets shoved through the rank advancements on a timeframe of "whatever he did you have to do it faster and better." and then the kyuubi broke free. and minato and kushina died, and a fuckton of the home guard uchiha died, and suddenly he's the most able-bodied fighter in their clan overnight at age 11 and the uchiha pull strings to get him into ANBU as well.

and kakashi is his teammate.

kakashi is his teammate and kakashi sees in itachi a whole awful lot of the edges of the way kakashi used to be, sees itachi trying to live up to and embody the absolutely impossible ideal of the perfect ninja, and he tries so god damn hard to nudge him gently towards something, anything, other than that.

but in the meantime, the uchiha have been... scheming. with danzo, Guy With The World's Biggest Chip On His Shoulder About Not Being Hokage, who's been marinating in a paranoia spiral for years. danzo had tried to set himself up as kakashi's palpatine, and tried to get him to assassinate hiruzen, and kakashi hears him out, and turns right around and goes to hiruzen with it instead, and danzo is pissed. the uchiha are pissed. danzo warns hiruzen that they're almost definitely going to try again and they're gonna make the uchihas' little prodigy do it this time, and kakashi silently braces to have to fight and maybe kill his teammate he was trying so hard for, and then...

and then itachi, who'd been watching his clan get. worse. for a long time. finds his cousin shisui, his best friend shishui, bleeding out in the dirt, who tells him everything, tells him danzo tried to have shisui killed for finding it out, and it worked, he's dying, but he's not dead yet, so please. make it count.

.......................................... And Then The Uchiha Massacre.

and now itachi is one more person that kakashi tried to care about who got destroyed.

and then fast forward a little bit further, he's been retired from active-duty ANBU after a decade-plus of service because the sharingan is starting to burn him out, he's starting to lurch to a halt like unwound clockwork without something to Do, and... he gets given team seven. the worst of konoha's gremlin children.

a bitter, disillusioned loner with a chip on his shoulder and the skill to back it up, the healer girl with a crush on him that he never gives the time of day, and the Loudest High-Vis Pest In The Village.

you see where this is going.

kakashi who at this point has been coasting along by bouncing between mask-personae for years is now having to dynamically engage with life again because if he isn't present and actively responding to his team then there's a nonzero chance he'll turn around to find all three of them chewing on the drywall and he cannot default to scripted responses because they don't work on a pack of middle schoolers hellbent on squabbling til the cows come home. and it's kind of good for him?

but also, uh. [gestures broadly towards... Sasuke(TM) and the rest of the plot]

and yeah i'm not gonna get too much further into it because i'm not confident enough in my own comprehension of the timeline to do that XD but like.

hatake kakashi is a scarecrow of a man stitched together out of his dead best friend, a hunting hound, and his dead best friend again, who's spent his entire life behind one mask or another, who over the course of the series keeps surviving shit that by all odds he shouldn't have, or survives specifically because the people he cares about throw their plot armor around him before they die, and he has a personality mostly composed of the crumpled-up pages of the memetically worst-written trashy bodice-ripper novels ever published because obito used to love them and the inexplicable receipts of other people's love for him, and i want to put him in a gas station hot dog roller and perceive him.

thank you for coming to my ted talk XD

[hua-fei-hua]

at church reading the hymn lyrics like "hey i learned that word from genshin!" and "hey i learned that word from genshin!" and "hey i learned that word from translating song lyrics so that i could write genshin fic!" and "hey i learned that word from genshin!" and finally "omg i learned that word from the king's avatar"

[vamptoll]

"God I wish there was a magical girl series that didn't have such reductive views of gender!"

Oh boy do I have a magical girl series for you! There's a butch lesbian in it! And even magical girls who are boys who transform into girls when they use their power! It's a little obscure but maybe you should give it a shot- the director did some pretty popular Yuri anime afterwards

[bleuberrygliscor]

honestly if you sincerely think that any humor that is even slightly crass, but is aimed at an adult audience, is "problematic", you need to go back into the locker for a bit. youre not done cooking.

[daughterofsarenrae]

fajsdlkfjslkfjsdlkfj my dad is upset with my bc he just discovered kill la kill and i told him i watched it in like high school and apparently i should've recommended it to him back then

[douwatahima]

just finished watching trigun stampede and holy fucking shit

[bootyful-seventeen]

but anyway on a more posative note what are y'all up to nowadays

[angy-grrr]

i see many people saying they want fandoms to be like they used to, cringy and stupid, and while I do agree with that I think some are not remembering some things extremely normalized in mainstream fandoms just 7, 8 or 10 years ago.

Some of the most influential people in anime spaces, who also created content and even some organized events (with no age restrictions), were fucking perverts with a disgusting morality. Idk about other contexts, but in my case introducing yourself to anime bc you liked the cute drawings ended up becoming dangerous, with those guys teaching harmful stuff and making jokes over serious topics (usually, racism, lgbt+phobia, femicides and basically any form of paraphilia im not even exaggerating).

The far right was there, sex offenders were there, and they were so popular... I dont think people are remembering these things, and it makes me feel weird when I see those posts, or when people act like they have never seen something like that before.

I understand how annoying it is to see basically "normal" people taking fandom spaces and hating them for what they are (silly, playing with dolls basically), but can we please remember how creators would normalize sexualizing characters and scenarios? For my autistic ass it was like mandatory to accept it even if it confused me as a child (im one of those who got into anime very young, I wish I and others didn't tbh), im talking about those levels of normalized. And tbh, it didn't really matter if you were a man or not, in the demographics for girls there were extremely harmful dynamics and normalization of assault.

Like- im still working on unlearning all this shit because I literally trained myself to be attractive to those guys from a young age until very recently (less consciously in the last years, but still finding my own value in appealing to them even if they actually disgust me)! AND I DONT EVEN LIKE GUYS GAHGHGH

Of course not all creators were like that, and basically starting in social media, specifically YouTube, meant subjecting yourself to the far right but in super casual ways sometimes -like gamers. Again, idk about other contexts, but here those guys ended up being lgbt+phobic, even when they tried to appeal to LGBT+ young audiences, really racist, violent towards women, sex offenders and endorsing the far right. And none of them were that young when they started, many were 25 and now in their late 30s are still fucking disgusting and are still making content for young audiences.

Like... these thing still happen, and they are teaching young people to ignore their own ideas and feelings to follow theirs, because how could they ever be bad, how could they ever wish harm upon innocent ppl?

(Does this count as grooming when the content creator tried to do this to their whole audience and ends up affecting ppl even years later? I genuinely ask, I feel so pathetic needing to unlearn seeing myself like that for the longest time fjsjxfksjfksjl)

I hate dudebros bc of this, but also lets not forget any anime space was like that, including the "queer spaces" (honestly, just the yuri and yaoi sides; in yuri you found content for men mainly, even if it looks sfw and cute. In yaoi it was for women who couldn't see themselves represented in hetero media but still wanted to see kind hetero media, and there were many disgusting topics normalized in these spaces).

Old fandom spaces had good things, but also rotten stuff. I think we should work into creating fun fandoms in the present instead of romanticizing nostalgia.

[ahopelessprincessreincarnation]

I must be some sort of dumbass because when I was looking through my dashboard wanting to find new blogs to follow atleast until my mom gets home from work so that I can get out of the house, I found one account that seemed to be of a mentally struggling person who was more on the ahem "988" side of Tumblr I guess??While that may be triggering to some, I didn't exactly mind since I struggle too despite not having self-harmed for a couple of years(not like I could anyways). My problem however, was when after I read their introduction post and scrolled down I quickly found them replying??to like...a "TCC" post(it's the more deranged part of the true crime community if you know you know-)so yeah...there goes my follow(I understand that mental illness is not cute I atleast have some sort if understanding for that but that's not excuse to publically and lightheartedly joke about murderers on the internet lol).

[ursa-mediocre]

I shouldn’t be this anxious on a Friday but here we are

[mirohtron]

Girllllllllll TOTALLY UNRELATED but do u watch anime

i actually don'tttt,,,,, with that being said I actually have like watched a couple over the yrs but like it's not an interest so idr watch anime. like I watch a couple episodes of spy family time 2 time & then like at the recommendation of friends I was thinking of watching ouran & kamisama kiss. i also was thinking of watching assassination classroom whrjwjjf

I've watched another 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 I've also watched maid sama ! and apparently usui was less annoying in the manga but idk. last episode killed me I am ngl kept rewatching that hand scene. i think i watched a bit of my little monster as a kid but I barely remember the plot. I've also watched tsuredure children but idk if I completed it it's like an anthology tho so idrt that matters

omg but like :3 I've watched a couple studio ghibli films hehe. i also watched suzume ! n I liked it. but i liked your name better. omg i also watched a bit of your lie in April but I never finished it whejwjfj but I love hikarunara. technjcally i guess I've watched plenty of anime I just never finished any 💀

I've watched noragami too 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 studio bones please please please please PLEASEEE... also watched wonder egg priority & I loved it but oh my god....why did she forgive him 😭😭😭😭😭😭 omg i also liked yuri on ice !!! 💔💔 so muchf. i also had the misfortune of watching c*rpse p*rty 😭 at a very young age. there was also chunibyo. oh god ive watched a lot of shitty anime. but like uhmmm lately I've been in the midst of watching cherry magic :3 and aside from that I tried to pick golden time back up :3

im not rlly super interested in mainstream anime 💀 idt I've watched any aside from spyfam?

[maukuja]

Somehow I've ended up exactly where teenage me thought I would be and planned to be at at this age and it is so weird, especially since it happened way different than I thought. Not that I'm not happy about it but it feels so weird.

[vamptoll]

Onisama e is such a gorgeous show, it's incredible how they translated Ikeda's art style. Very much also enjoying the ridiculous levels of dyke drama on display obviously

[maliciouslove]

idk why but i want eveyone to know my dog is named after the one and only one punch man

[gallusrostromegalus]

Hi! I enjoy your stories very much. As a shy person myself wanting to push myself out of a shell I am curious if you've always been naturally good at meeting people, or do you get social anxiety too? Sorry if this is a super random/personal question. I appreciate you!

I used to get REALLY bad social anxiety but then I accidentally threw myself off the deep end on the first night of college when I heard people assembling furniture out in the hall and thought "If I do not get up right this second and go hang out with those people I'm going to lie here crying about how much I miss my family all night and they wouldn't want that."

So I went out in the hall and said "Hi! I'm [Gallus], and I thought I should meet people instead of being a miserable wreck in my room!"

And then we spent the rest of the night assembling dorm furniture, talking about weeb shit and generally having a good time! and every single time I've gone and introduced myself to someone since then, I've either made MORE friends and had a good time, or had, at worst, a perfectly neutral time. So that positive re-enforcement really helped.

Anyway, the three Guidlines to Meeting People:

Meet people at places they expect to meet people. People do not want to make friends when they are busy with something else- see how much we hate it when people come to the door when we were working or cleaning. But when they're at somewhere they expect to socialize like a Hobby Meeting, a convention, The Club? they're THRILLED to make friends and tbh probably glad you broke the ice. Go to places where people who share interests with you are meeting. They'll probably adopt you.

2. The Worst Thing that will happen is that you will lightly confuse someone. No for real. Nobody is going to scream at you and you're not going to terrorize someone by saying hi. It's fine.

3. Sample conversation script for those of us who have brains that make us act like we're in a movie:

*Be At Place to Meet People* *See someone who looks interesting to talk to, who is not actively doing a physical task or already having a conversation* You: Hello! I love your (Physical aspect of their appearance they chose: Hair color, lobster-themed dress/Dog/Orbital mechanics tattoo)!" Them: Oh, thanks! It (single sentence of explanation: I did it myself/It has pockets/He loves people/I got it for completing my thesis!) (this is a sign that they are open to social activity) You: That's so cool! I'm (you name), and I'm new here. You seem like cool people, can I hang out with you? Them, and I actually for real swear this will be the answer 90% of the time: Sure!

Congratulations! You have introduced yourself to someone. Continue to be a huge dweeb about the thing you have a mutual interest in and you will shortly have a new friend!