Why are there so many more Kakashi/OFC fics than Itachi/OFC fics?
So I noticed that there are waaaay more Kakashi/OFC fics on AO3 than there are for another extremely popular Naruto character, Itachi, for instance.
As of 30 July, Kakashi/OFC has around 1,363 works, while Itachi/OFC has around 630. Kakashi has more than twice as many!
And that includes all the poly, harem and yn-adjacent pairings I did not bother filtering out. The numbers for strictly monogamous pairings might be slightly lower, but the difference would probably still be there. Both are extremely popular side characters, so I wondered why the gap was so large. I expected their numbers to be more similar.
My very surface-level guess (which I might write a more thorough analysis of another time) is that Kakashi is simply easier to build a romance around. And by easier, I mean structurally easier.
Unlike Itachi, who, well, died, Kakashi survived all the way into the Boruto era. An OC could theoretically be introduced during almost any phase of his life: his childhood, the Team Minato era, his ANBU years, his time as a jōnin, the Team Seven era, the timeskip, Shippuden, the Blank Period or the Boruto era.
You could have an OC who was his childhood friend, a fellow genin, an ANBU teammate or another jōnin. Heck, she could even be a civilian (a (florist who moved to Konoha after the Fourth Shinobi War) and you could establish a romance without substantially disrupting his canon narrative arc, which already ended fairly well.
But Itachi? His entire narrative existence is central to Sasuke’s backstory and the Uchiha Massacre. His pre-canon life does not leave much room for romance in the traditional sense.
Under a canon-compliant timeline, the OC has to confront the moral horror of Itachi becoming the butcher of his own clan. If I hazard a guess based on what I've seen so far, the relationship is either going to become extremely angsty, short-lived or both.
An OC could be his childhood friend, Academy classmate or ANBU teammate for a pre-massacre romance. But after the massacre? Oooh. That becomes a very different kind of relationship (possibly a dark romance) because the OC is now dealing with the apparent murderer of his clan, not merely Sasuke’s kind and loyal older brother. It is all rather… narratively heavy, you know?
Add in the fact that Itachi’s personality is so thoroughly shaped by his devotion to Sasuke and Konoha (not to mention that he has the emotional communication skills of a rock) and sometimes I wonder how an OC relationship can develop without disrupting or replacing Sasuke’s importance to him.
Perhaps that is also why I seem to encounter more non-massacre AU romances than canon-timeline Itachi romances.
Urgh, I wrote much more than I intended.
But TL;DR: my tinfoil-hat theory for why there are so many more Kakashi/OFC fics than Itachi/OFC fics, despite both characters being extremely popular, is that Kakashi is structurally much easier to build a romance around.
Itachi is possible. He is just narratively exhausting.
