#similarly with folks who want to write about kakashi having facial differences or fearing how people will percieve his face

[mokutone]

On the subject of dog nose kakashi, there’s a headcanon I’ve seen that the reason he wears the mask is because it helps block out smells so he can focus. I like that one combined with him hiding his fangs to protect his mother’s identity for whatever reason and to hide his ethereal beauty because it makes him stand out too much lol and now to also hide his dog nose!!

i have seen a lot of these headcanons, and they are cool and valid!

my personal take is honestly less that he wants to hide any one specific feature of his face (whether inherited clan attributes like teeth or nose) or facial differences, ethereal beauty, etc,

the one i give most personal credence to is probably the blocking out smell, but even then i'm sometimes wishy washy on whether i go for that hc depending on my mood

but here's something interesting and dog related, i got it from another stanley coren book "How to Speak Dog" again, i have mixed feelings on his writing, but his studies and conclusions are interesting and worthy of note if anyone is interested in dog science and communication. anyway here's the fun tidbit, it's talking about why dogs tuck their tails as a gesture of fear.

"In essence, the dog is making its presence less obvious by preventing the release of the odors that identify it as an individual. Some scientists have suggested that the tail-between-the-legs action is the canine equivalent of an action seen in insecure human beings—especially children—who hide their faces when brought into the presence of a dominant or potentially threatening person."

(worth noting that stanley doesnt use dominant here in terms of the weird stupid wolf hierarchy thing)

anyway. my point is that i don't really see kakashi trying to hide his face as anything specific to his face at all—his students certainly do, and all theorize about what could be so "horrible" beneath his mask that he "needs to hide it", but imo what he's hiding is not physical, it's emotional, hiding his face because he is ashamed/insecure, etc.

i know this might seem a little odd since he's worn this mask since he was a kid, before his fathers death, before obito, rin, etc, and he may have seemed outwardly arrogant as a child, but Sakumo was clearly somebody who carried a lot of shame and guilt, not just for the one incident but as a matter of course, and children can often take on that worldview. similarly, arrogance is also usually a protective mechanism to keep the individual from having to confront the inadequacy they fear, etc etc