Anyway since I'm down here I'll recc some of the billion fics I've been reading for the past month or so, and frankly those of you who are active in the fandom probably know these already but they gave my heart joy so. Avalanche probably has my favourite alternate version of Sakura? Really it has good Everyone. It's an AU sort of thing where characters make some better decisions and also certain plot twists didn't happen. history has its eyes on you makes my heart hurt but it gets better in the best way?? A How To Guide To Shinobi Life honestly I'm only sorta-into the first part of this story which is just how Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura go back to absolutely fuck history but the second story is all about how the surviving characters navigate the fallout for the next ten+ years and it's amazing. The third story is just a really depressing 'Why we needed to go back in time' prequel. Time Travel Tango, or, Rasa and the Cat is apparently what happens when someone who isn't a Main Character has to go back to the past, so they have a much harder time of it than some. This author writes Wierd Shit that I love. You may have noticed a trend. You can pry my angsty time travel fic from my cold dead fingers.
I just opened every dang one of those fanfic recs in a new tab, thanks y'all. Who needs sleep anyway, right? Here's a rec of my own: Aubade, a Gaara/Hinata oneshot that I thought had excellent characterisation and lots of fun dialogue. Been a while since I read it but it's the only one out of the hundreds of Naruto fics I read that I printed out, and also one of the only ones the name of which I can remember off the top of my head, and I usually don't go for non-canon pairings, so I assume it's pretty good.
Sauce is the worst, but at least early on he's cute Spoiler: smol He deserved a less terrible character arc imo everyone did
I want to know what idiot thought leaving a traumatized little kid to live on his own in the home where his trauma happened was a good idea. Oh wait, I know, it was fucking Sarutobi. For someone so "wise" he sure fucked up a lot there.
While we're at it, can we talk about how Itachi could have negotiated to keep the Uchiha children alive while decimating his clan? Surely? Not just his brother? Because strategically, Konoha lost a lot of power by losing the Uchiha, and having a generation of malleable children with powers that you could now raise to be loyal to the village rather than the clan would surely have caught Danzo's fancy?
SARUTOBI IS ABSOLUTELY THE WORST Don't forget that he pretty much abandoned his trusted successor's son to basically raise himself! And that he let Orochimaru do whatever! And let Danzo create Root! iirc one of Itachi's conditions was that Danzo wouldn't go anywhere near Sasuke, he threatened to sell Konoha secrets to other villages to encourage him to leave the kid alone Itachi is the the only one allowed to manipulate, torture and brainwash his baby brother apparently :) (I ALSO HATE ITACHI)
Itachi's behaviour makes no sense even with the whole "he wasn't a WHOLE villain all along" and I think my most nice comment would be "He definitely cracked under the strain of killing his family and took it out on Sasuke"
While we're at it, why put Kakashi in charge of Team Seven? Like he's a very good assassin and probably one of the best shinobi they have, but he's an emotional disaster who spends several hours each day in front of a grave and graduated when he was six or eight or something ridiculous like that. Clearly the best option is to make him teach emotionally fragile children, in a team that basically looks just like his old team before both his teammates and teacher died.
I always thought he was doomed to teach Sasuke as the only person left who had a Sharingan who could teach him, tbh. But yes, agreed.
Okay so we all agree Sarutobi was senile I guess? He was 68 in Naruto which is probably like 100 in ninja years. Unfortunately I guess all the other candidates for the job were traitors or went on a twelve year drinking/gambling benders or were Jiraiya.
Oh... ohh! Sarutobi let his nostalgia drive his decisions! That's why he set up the carbon copies, a desire for "maybe this time it will come out better"
itachi should've just killed sasuke as quickly and cleanly as he could, he was dooming and damning the kid either way, if he really loved him he wouldn't force his poor brother to be a tool in his own self destruction Yeah, Itachi's characterization makes no goddamn sense There's your answer. Konoha doesn't need healthy kids. It needs weapons. Kakashi broke in such a way that he became even easier to use, maybe the thought was his students would follow that pattern. ...no, this is better, it's at least kinda sympathetic
I'm honestly prepared to say she was a better hokage than Nart himself (we didn't really see that much of Kakashi's tenure, so)
Well as far as I know* Konoha didn't suffer any massive wars or tragedies while Kakashi was in charge, and he managed to retire without dying, so that probably gives him a better track record than anyone else thus far. *This is the part where my cobbled knowledge fails me.
In a game I was in this was described as basically, the Kyuubi attack killed most of the Hokage candidate-tier people, the elite jounin on the level of Kakashi or Gai where you probably would bet on a Kage in a one on one fight but it'd be pretty close, because they were the ones holding the line while the rest evacuated. So as far as your basic ninja rank and file goes Konoha is actually pretty strong still, but they've got this huge gap in talent that's only just barely starting to get filled in, which is why Kumo is able to push them around as hard as it does (though I ended up butterflying away Neji's dad dying in my backstory accidentally). Sarutobi was old and retired for good reason, he really comes off as just tired. The fact that Itachi went and killed Shisui, who was one of the only viable candidates, didn't help either.
Huh that's pretty interesting, though it does feel like they should have intensified the training of their younger generations some to try and make up the gap, much like Suna concentrated on bringing out a few talented shinobi with the number limits they had at the start of the series. Ninja politics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
