Me: [looks At Kakashi] My Sweet Baby, Absolutely Pure

I'm looking back at random things I was taught as a kid by various adults and media and. did nobody bother to factcheck anything? was that just not an option or

“Killing Intent”

LIghthouse keepers will never be memorialized like soldiers or cops because they didn’t kill anyone (as part of their job) but they’re like, heroes who saved untold lives through discipline and self-sacrifice doing an impossible lonely job and I’m worked up about  it 

Nimona and the Myth of the Perfect Victim

Nimona is great at showcasing why “If you didn’t act so threatening people would stop being bigoted” doesn’t work. That idea has been rampant in social movements for so long, the concept that if oppressed people were just more passive with their wording, and never got angry or defensive, people wouldn’t have reason to oppress them.

When the village attacks her, Nimona doesn’t initially fight back, but tries to explain to them, showing them her “acceptable” form as a young girl.

But they don’t care that Nimona looks acceptable, they still know her for a shapeshifter and attack anyway. Then, when Nimona fights back with fangs and claws, Gloreth becomes convinced she is indeed a monster. Never mind the context of the provocation, Nimona looked scary, so is now a monster.

Far in the future, Nimona now doesn’t worry about looking respectable. Ballister tells them they should look like a girl, because it would be easier for to be accepted.

To many people, this would be valid reasoning - if Nimona assumes a non-threatening form, no one will be scared. But Nimona knows this isn’t true. If people catch sight of the shapeshifting even for a moment, it won’t matter that Nimona takes the form of a sweet, innocent girl. They will attack anyway.

And staying as a girl forever, never letting them see, is something she doesn’t see as an option. Other people might see it that way, that it is better to forever rigidly conceal their identity so they never once face any hatred, but as Nimona says, while it’s not true death, it sure isn’t living.

Earlier, Ballister was caught destroying the prison with Nimona, adding fuel to the idea of him as a villain, which he blames her for. But he was labeled as one anyway. Had Nimona not gotten him to wreak havoc, he would have remained in prison and never seen as innocent.

While Ballister initially believes that Nimona is ridiculous to dramatically break standards of acceptability, he realizes that some people won’t accept Nimona even if she is “the perfect victim.”

We see this in real life, where even someone who is the epitome of moral decency will still eventually be targeted. Illusions to the contrary are disproven.

Of course the city screams and runs when Nimona transforms into a giant creature, but they screamed and ran when he turned into non-threatening creatures as well. So Nimona is driven to view it as not mattering which she does. Of course, in the end she chooses to help them anyway, and calm herself from her giant form, because Ballister shows her recognition while she is in it.

Ballister sees her in her most terrifying form and recognizes she is lashing out from fear and anger at the treatment she received. He doesn’t demand she stop and be more respectable, he sees them as they truly are and shows them understanding, and that is what calms Nimona down.

There is no perfect victim. Everyone is messy and flawed and will lash out. If there were a perfect victim, it wouldn’t matter anyway. A perfect victim is one who never dares raise an arm against attack, even out of desperate self defense. Nimona would be a perfect victim if she had laid down and succumbed to the pitchforks. Ballister would be a perfect victim if he sat in prison to rot.

A “perfect victim” will always die before being being recognized as such, because the only true acceptable way for a marginalized person to exist is to be dead.

A reminder that Kakashi outsmarted Itachi in their second fight and Itachi couldn't beat him anymore, since people in this fandom always loves to remember their 1st fight and absolutely ignore their 2nd one.

Why Kakashi lost the first time? He said it himself

The Uchiha clan kept so many things about the Sharingan secret and those secrets died with them in the Uchiha massacre, he didn't know anything about the Mangekyo Sharingan, he didn't even know he had one himself or that each Mangekyo Sharingan had it's own special abilities and so he didn't know that rhis particular Genjutsu Itachi was using wasn't like the regular Sharingan Genjutsu, he didn't know that it's absolutely impossible for anyone to break Itachi's Tsukuyomi except if they are Itachi's blood relatives so the only person that existed in the world that would be able to do that was Sasuke and absolutely no one knew this except Itachi who stated this fact later.

Kakashi lost this fight because he was misinformed, because the had no one to tell him about the Mangekyo Sharingan and because Itachi spent 2 years being Kakashi's subordinate that he knew everything about him, his fighting style, the way he thinks and everything while Kakashi knew nothing about Itachi's Mangekyo Sharingan... Kakashi had a great disadvantage here and this is why he lost but he learned from that and stood right back up and kicked ass.

It doesn't matter if you lost once or twice, what matters is that you won't drown in that loss and that you use it to learn and get better and stronger and that's what Kakashi did.

Kakashi isn't like those other ninja gods who were handed godly powers from thin air, he's one of the most realistic characters in Naruto, he stumbles and falls but refuses to stay down, he gets back up and learns from his mistakes and work harder and gets stronger and stronger as the story goes and we've all witnessed how his power level kept improving from the beginning of Naruto until the end... Kakashi in og Naruto who couldn't use more than 3 Chidori per day is different from Kakashi in early Shippuden who was still learning how to use Kamui, and both are different from Kakashi in mid Shippuden when was fighting Kakuzu and Hidan and was able to use Chidori a lot more than 3 times or the Kakashi in the Pain arc who literally died from using Kamui twice and all of them are different from Kakashi the powerhouse we saw in the war who was spamming Chidori and Kamui like it was nothing for 2 days straight without any rest and even before getting any chakra from Naruto and all of them pale in comparison to his powerlevel now after losing the Sharingan and after working and training so hard, learning and inventing countless of powerful Jutsu until he became much much stronger than he ever was.

It's so exhausting seeing your favorite character being constantly and unfairly downplayed all the time like this.

this was the moment where i knew i was a goner.  

i didn’t even LIKE this show back when i watched these episodes, and yet i specifically remember mumbling “oh my god” when i heard those steps on the porch and kakashi’s gentle voice saying can i talk to you.

the idea that this man would even take the time.  kakashi met these people two days ago.  he’s a total stranger to them.  he’s not responsible for inari.  he’s not a part of inari’s family.  he’s a temporary employee, one who’s not even being paid for his work, thanks to tazuna’s lie.  he has absolutely no reason to get involved when this tiny child has a meltdown at the dinner table - and yet.

out he goes onto the porch, after the crying child.  the fact that he does this at all would be admirable enough in its own right, but it’s not just that.  it’s the way he’s such a natural with children, the way he’s such an intuitively skilled teacher, the way he treats inari with the same kind of respect that he would afford to a fellow adult, while still addressing him in a way that a younger mind can easily understand.  it’s the “can i talk to you” - giving this little child the autonomy to say no, instead of using the fact that one person is an adult and one is a child to force an interaction.  it’s the way he always refers to kaiza as “your father,” even though inari and kaiza weren’t technically related (and even though the first thing tazuna says about kaiza is “he wasn’t [inari’s] real father”) - kakashi takes his cues from inari, and for inari, kaiza WAS his real father, and so that’s what kakashi calls him, every single time.  it’s the way he acknowledges that what naruto said wasn’t very nice.  it’s the way he gently explains the circumstances that might have prompted naruto to say something like that, opening inari’s eyes to how naruto and inari have experienced similar pains.  and it’s the way he does all of this without giving away a single hint that his own childhood might have been anything other than perfectly pleasant - the complete decentering of the self, the mending of the children around him without them ever realizing a single thing about why he does it.

kakashi tells inari “i think [naruto] knows better than any of us what you’re going through” - and at the time when i was watching, i was like “sure, sounds legit!”  but now, looking back, and armed with so much more information, i know the truth, which is that there’s someone in the room who understands inari even better than naruto.  naruto grew up without parents, yes.  but the story tazuna tells Team 7 isn’t about growing up alone and shunned as an orphan.  it’s about inari having a father who he loved and revered (“the man who taught us the word courage, who was known as a hero”), and then having him be (literally, on an actual cross) crucified for standing up for what’s right (“this man has defied the gato corporation…he has disturbed the order of this land”), and then inari having a trauma-induced crisis and rejecting his father’s heroic ideals because they no longer feel real or possible to him (“since then, inari’s changed.  so did tsunami, and all our people…we lost our will”), and then inari ripping his father’s face out of their family photo in the kitchen (“[inari] never laughs or smiles anymore.  ever since that day when everything changed.”)

naruto and inari do end up connecting eventually, because kakashi helps them recognize where they have common ground.  but the person at the table who really understands the crying child (the child who’s shouting “there’s no such thing as a hero!”) is kakashi.  the person who really understands inari’s anger at being left behind - at having a beloved parent make a decision that takes them out of your life forever, when they could have just kept their heads down and stayed with you - is kakashi.  the person who understands both inari’s rage at others’ idealism and his unwillingness to break gato’s rules as feelings that come from a place of fear (“gato’s got a whole army; he’ll beat you down and they’ll destroy you!”) is kakashi.

you told me that you’d protect me and this land with both your arms.  you made me believe you could do it.  but it was all just a lie! 

kakashi understands.  he knows, and just like always, he steps in to help.  he sees a suffering child, and he knows he can do something about it, and he gets involved, even though he doesn’t have to, even though it’s not his job, even though there is literally no reason why he should be the one to comfort this kid when inari’s mother and grandfather are sitting right there in the same house.  kakashi doesn’t do it because he’s obligated.  he does it because he can’t NOT do it, because this is who he is, because this is how much he cares, because he’s the avatar for what jiraiya tells young!nagato in the pain arc: “it is because one understands such pain that generosity towards others becomes second nature.”

this scene with inari is in episode TWELVE.  twelve, of one thousand.  at this point in the show, we know nothing about kakashi.  we have no idea what his life has been like.  but this show still tells us exactly who he is, right then and there, when he walks out onto that porch and asks a stranger’s crying child “can i talk to you?”  from that point on, we know - he’s The Teacher.  he’s the one who walks ahead of everyone else, enduring his own pain and using it to help others navigate theirs.  he’s the support structure.  he’s the guide, the protector of children.  it was true nine hundred episodes ago in the land of waves, and it’s true where i’m currently watching, too, in the shadow of the infinite tsukuyomi, when kakashi asks sasuke “what is your current dream?” - because never mind the war, never mind the three intervening years of conflict and bad blood, never mind the danger encroaching on all sides - kakashi is still kakashi.  he’s still the one who sees a lost child and asks, “can i talk to you?”  

i’m not sure he’ll get a response as positive as inari’s this time, or that he’ll get any response at all, but i think it matters to remember that nothing - nothing - has ever changed him from being the kind of person who asks this question.

~accurate representation of team 7 lmAo

I just want to say something about Kakashi and the fact that he never lashes out against the system or tried to fix it himself.

Something i’ve seen him compared to is Gojo who states he ‘could kill all the higher ups’ but i think a lot of people forget that he also says ‘nothing would change’ (which is funny to me because i saw the manga shot once and remembered it and i don’t watch JJK)

There’s a few reason’s this doesn’t work for Kakashi

1) OG Kakashi couldn’t do that.

Kakashi in OG Naruto wasn’t on par with Hiruzen. He’d lose that fight. Yes he’s an assassine but Hiruzen is a Hokage level shinobi.

He’s not going to be snuck up on that easy and in a 1 vs 1 battle Og Kakashi is not winning. War arc or Hokage Kakashi might win, but not OG Kakashi. He still has a lot of growing to do in his skills.

2) as Gojo said, nothing would change

If Kakashi could and did kill Hiruzen, then what? Tsunade maybe gets convonced to take the job or Danzo gets it. Kakashi ends up a Rogue Ninja away from all his friends, painted as the bad guy for trying to in-force his beliefs over everyone?

Gai is on par with Kakashi. Maybe he could take the rest of Konoha but Gai, Jiraiya (if he’s there), Tsunade (if she’s there)

Like, they’d all probably turn on him and try to kill him. He wouldn’t be there hero. No one would be throwing him parties.

He’d be the bad guy in everyone’s eyes.

This man has lost so much that i think that would shatter him. He wouldn’t have any more will to fight ir change shit. His will to fight the system is already so broken even when we see him go against orders.

3) it doesn’t match Kakashi’s established ‘style’

Kakashi isn’t someone who does things alone. His main motto is teamwork.

If Kakashi were to go against the system and try to change it, he’d do it with his friends. He’d convince them that the system is broken (or maybe they realize themselves like Gai) and that they need to change it.

He’d probably avoid killing.

Kakashi was an assassine but as soon as he gained power he changed the law so instead of killing enemies shinobi were to capture them.

If Kakashi can think of a way to do things without killing, he will. Everyone has a different answer to changing things (Sasuke=kill everyone, Obito & madara= eternal dream, Nagato = making everyone else suffer). Kakashi’s answer is peaceful solution where there can be one.

4) that’s not the point of this story

Naruto wants to be Hokage. Do i think he should have changed and recognized the system? Yes. But that’s not how Kishi wrote it.

In Kishi’s story as we read it, anyone directly against the system is bad no matter what their solution. Zabuza is bad until he ‘changes his mind before death’, Obito is bad until he switches side, Sasuke is bad until Naruto ‘convinces him’)

Kishi would only write Kakashi lashing out directly against the system if he wanted to make Kakashi into a bad guy in his story. Since Kakashi is one of his good guys, he had him silently and slowly changing the system with his own actions and teachings.

Kishi simply didn’t write Kakashi being against the syatem in the same way the JJK author wrote Gojo being against the system because his world is very black and white. Good and bad. (Even though Gojo’s solution is the exact same as Kakashi’s).

Kakashi is a character i believe should have been more against the current system, demanding change because he has lost so much to that system. But that’s simply not the character Kishi wrote.

I didn’t want to make it as dark as the original.

But damn he’s so fine in that shot that couldn’t resist redrawing it 🥵

Fun fact: when I first saw this shot (I still haven’t seen the episode or where is this from? The movie? 🙈) I noticed myself since then folding my arms this way 🤦🏼‍♀️

What traits have you ever picked up from your fictional crush? 🤭