not a gaara fic but i just read it and ho boy that ending is amazing fic rec here Spoiler: tag warnings canon typical violence, non-graphic mentions of sexual violence, character bashing? (kind of), light descriptions of gore, serial killer
that's fine, if curiosity kills the wocky i can give you a summary skipping the bad parts? i've already been considering posting a brain-safe version that completely excludes major triggers, since i'm the kind of person that not so much "accepts" bad shit as "rolls in it like a baby elephant in a mud puddle"
as i approach 50K on my fic I am just steadily increasing the amount I want to turn Kishimoto over a trashcan and shake him until the subtle misogyny falls out
:D thanks for the offer but not at the moment. im still trying to wrangle my "bookmarked for later" folder into something that doesn't resemble kudzu
so it occurred to me that even with all the Kakashi-centric fic I've been reading lately, I've never really seen anyone totally dive in to how he gained the mindset of being the copycat ninja... decided to fix that.
the thing even is, there's not so many female characters Because Kishimoto has a really strong default to male, when he needs a one scene character, they're almost exclusively men. Significant characters have a really poor male to female ratio, but insignificant characters who only pop up to die and stuff like that? Even WORSE. Obviously that's not the only way his sexism represents itself, but it's a really significant one when you step back for a minute. Every single one of his female characters is planned, often in ways that ring with subtle misogyny, but the universe ends up skewing really hard towards the men simply because there are no female background characters.
oh my god you're right man was there even a justification for the stupid default "two guys one girl who does nothing" team set up? i almost want to write fic about the girls protesting it but it's been so long since i naruto'd that. no.
there's not! but also the two guys one girl team setup is actually the best proportion in most parts of the series [indicative gesture to the entire ONE female Akatsuki member] [indicative gesture to the fact that there are two female Kages over the course of the entire world history bc Kishi showed all the previous Kage at the end and THEY WERE ALL MEN, EVERY SINGLE ONE] [indicative gesture at there being only 2/9 female jinchuuriki in Naruto's era] [indicative gesture at Kiri's Seven Swordsmen not ever including a SINGLE woman] [final indicative gesture at the fact that 3/4 of the OCs I've added to my fic universe are female and yet we're still not up to gender parity] anyway I didn't let not having Nart'd in ten years hold me back and you shouldn't either
jesus fucking christ. is kishimoto aware that women are roughly half the world's population???? i don't think he is.
slight nitpicking: there was ONE lady in the seven swordsman. Ameyuri Ringo is listed as a woman in the wiki still proves your point.
screams man, something that frustrates me is that most of the women in naruto have decent to interesting designs. and yet they don't get to do ANYTHING EVER it's almost the opposite of like, bleach, where a lot of the girls had incredibly questionable designs, but everyone who wasn't orihime got to do things in at least one episode.
Spoiler: Big pic The idea alone of an actual ninja relying on pocket sand cracks me up, and it being gaara is even better XD
i mean that's also basically canon, at one point after the time skip you find out that he's literally wearing sand as armor All the Time (presumably this is in fact Lee's fault, tbh. "my ultimate defense didn't work? time to get DEFENDIER." nart ninjas are, after all, 90% hyperspecialists of some variety)
...do i dare to ask what Egg Pepper is it sounds like something that requires brain bleach if i were to just dive headfirst into google for it
Nah. I was just vaguely amused that the whole pocket sand reminded me of something that was reportedly used by historical shinobi - they'd take an egg, hollow it out, and pour in pepper (and/or ash, sand, or even ground glass). Then you throw it at someone's face and get an explosion of blinding pepper dust, mixed with sticky yolk remnants so that it stays in their eyes. Known as the 'black egg' or 'metsubishi (eye-closer).
oooooh. that actually sounds super cool. and effective. and painful *edit* added a thing i thought i had written but didn't, apparently
