22 | sideblog Header Description: gif of Claudia from Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire lighting a cigarette. Profile Icon Description: Karin from Naruto.
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THIS being literally all we have abt Sakura’s parents is fucking crazy btw. Kishimoto elaborate on Sakura’s collective mommy and daddy issues and you will be reincarnated as a lotus flower
Thinking of Suigetsu spending all his days in Orochimaru's lab waiting for Sasuke. Not truly believing he'd stay true to that promise but having nothing else he can believe in.
I've said it before but I'll say it again I refuse to believe anyone that likes turning themselves into the opposite gender as much as Naruto does is anything close to cis I cant prove it but I know in my heart that lad is gender fluid
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Would loooove to hear more about your IWTV trans headcanons :3
oh ummm what would u like to know in particular.? like any character ur interested in? the easiest char i can delve into without prompting is probably claudia (or lestat. but claudia is more interesting)
i think i explained it pretty briefly in the pic but i think that claudia's story could be a lovely but still tragic metaphor for being a trans woman. i kind of envisioned her turning and subsequent adoption as an opportunity to start totally anew and its kind of free real estate because we dont know much about her before that point.
and i think louis was more than happy to help shape her into not just a girl, but a daughter, specifically his daughter. a "charitable" action giving this girl a new life to express how she likes in comfort but also within the unsaid parameters of being the ideal forever daughter.
because of this i think claudia leans towards a butch identity as she grows older
Omg I love butch claudia so much, she is freeeee from that childlike dress from the play, it feels healing to see her like this instead. Please PLEASE tell me more about her
thank you im glad you can understand my vision :] me and some trusted associates were discussing the potential dynamic between butch claudia/femme madeleine and were talking about madeleine helping claudia shape her fashion identity via custom made clothing... its literally a match made in heaven..
had they led a long life together, i think at first claudia wouldve stuck to her typical feminine presentation though likely way more mature as a means to FINALLY portray herself as the woman she was prevented from being, but i dont think that wouldve healed the hole in her soul... because in a way it'd still always be attached to those previous expressions of femininity forced onto her. (and when it comes to anne rice characters, femininity is closely tied to infantalization. it drives me fucking crazy)
i believe claudia taking on a more masc aesthetic would be genuinely freeing because its a whole rejection of the girl she was molded into! she can explore it at her own pace with someone who wants to see her truly as she is!! (but i still think she'd like to lean towards very classy looks)
Honestly when it comes to comparing this ship to other canon ships, it’s not that terrible. However I really don’t see what people mean when they say it’s a beautiful romance and a healthy relationship. Obviously a lot of it comes from Kishimoto’s inability to write female characters without 500 sexist tropes, eg. Kushina abandoning her dream of becoming Hokage and instead making her husband Hokage while she stays at home getting pregnant (a pregnancy that’s incredibly dangerous! And we’re supposed to believe Minato loves her more than anything when he willingly impregnates her). Their first meeting was cute, alright, but then Minato just lets her get bullied. Sure he does offhandedly say later that it’s because she’s strong and he trusts her, and she is, but he could’ve offered his friendship, instead of spying on her (I also find it interesting how Hinata, who canonically kept trying to befriend Naruto, is presented as a stalker by the fandom and called misogynistic insults, but Minato, who does stalk Kushina and doesn’t try to befriend her, is called romantic). Standing by while someone is getting bullied (and I can’t remember if it happened in the manga or the anime but one of her bullies threw actual kunai at her, so it escalated to the point of attempted murder) is being complicit. Yeah he was a kid, but I think we can acknowledge it was a bad move on his part and Kushina wasn’t being a bitch for disliking him, like I’ve seen a lot of fans imply.
The kidnapping scene is…well. Minato wasn't necessarily being toxic there (still stupid to go after grown ass Jonins instead of alerting authorities, but I guess Naruto had to get his saviour complex from somewhere) but again. Sexist writing. It also implies Kushina is only into Minato because he saved her, there isn’t really any indication that she likes him as a person, and they start dating right away as children.
Then we get to adult them and that’s where the power imbalance is really bad. Kushina is a genocide survivor who’s completely cut off from her original culture and even exiled from her country, she’s inherently in a vulnerable state especially because she has no support system due to being a hated jinchuuriki, and we don’t see any bond outside Minato, with the sole exception of Mikoto, who’s part of an oppressed minority. At the time, the Uchiha weren’t being spied on nor pushed to the outskirts of the village, granted, so most of the oppression we see them face hasn’t happened yet, but it’s safe to assume that Mikoto doesn’t have the power to help Kushina. Meanwhile, Minato has ties to the Hokage, to one of the Sannin, has his own genin team, etc. He has a life outside Kushina, and the power to punish her socially and legally if she steps out of line. Kushina is confined to being his girlfriend (there is no mention of marriage so I’m gonna assume they weren’t married), she’s viewed with suspicion (at best) while he’s viewed as a hero, and she is stuck in a village whose culture is completely foreign to her and which has been actively hostile towards hers (their mockery of her Uzumaki features + the fact Konoha didn’t come to Uzushio’s aid). His whole reputation as a powerful shinobi is entirely built off the back of the Uzumaki clan. Most of his jutsus were taught to him by Kushina, who’s kept away from the Hokage position despite mastering them better than him on top of having the hiden jutsu Adamantine Chains (which we’ve seen can bind Kyuubi even while she was weakened by both Bijuu extraction and childbirth, and we see Karin use it to destroy the Buddha Mokuton jutsu which is a jutsu Hashirama uses to defeat Susanoo-clad Kyuubi, and Orochimaru says Karin’s chains are weaker than Kushina) + her being the Jinchuuriki of the most powerful Bijuu and having a very strong will and chakra to suppress him. There is no reason she was kept from being Hokage that’s not pure xenophobia and sexism. The Yellow Flash only exists because the Uzumaki clan was massacred, and there is nothing that shows he cared enough to preserve her culture, find survivors, or anything to repay the Uzumaki clan. It feels very exploitative. The only two jutsus he uses that aren’t Uzumaki related are the Rasengan (which he admits is his own less powerful version of a Bijuudama, something Kushina has used as a Jinchuuriki of Kyuubi) and Hiraishin, a jutsu invented by SENJU Tobirama, who belongs to a clan related to the Uzumaki, and who gets no credit from Minato, which again ties back to Minato only using the Uzumaki to further his career while doing nothing to help them. It also feels a lot like he’s trying to cosplay Hashirama (even going as far as mirroring Hashirama’s behavior in the War arc despite having a completly different personally pre-Edo Tensei) but that’s a whole other can of worms.
Of course, a lot of those are circumstances that are mostly outside of Minato’s control, but he doesn’t make things better, and it does establish an environment where Kushina is essentially tied to him as her sole provider of attention and love and as a man who holds an incredibly amount of political and societal leverage over her, while exploiting her heritage with no credit and no reward for her as a person and shinobi. And he does use it against her eventually. While he gets to tell Kakashi about her pregnancy and have him guard her day and night, and is free to meet people as he pleases, she’s kept away from her only friend Mikoto, to the point where she didn’t know that Mikoto was pregnant with a boy and not a girl, and wasn’t able to be present at the birth or even the days following the birth (Sasuke was born in July, so he was about two months and a half when Kushina finally saw him BY ACCIDENT). That is an insane level of isolation and while we’re told it’s for “her own good”, for me it just shows Minato doesn’t care about her as a person + is himself filled with bigotry towards the Uchiha.
We also know that Kushina kept being discriminated against for her appearance as a “foreigner” and that she felt like only Minato could love her (or rather her red hair) and that much of her self worth hinges on Minato’s love of her hair. So again, I’m rehashing this point, but it’s crucial to see that the relationship was never equal.
Where Minato gets seriously toxic though is Naruto’s birth. He simply ignored her wishes, which confirmed my assumptions earlier of him not seeing her as a person but as a concept, and her culture as just an accessory he can throw away whenever he wants. Using an Uzumaki jutsu to put her son through the unbelievable horror and pain of being Jinchuuriki (while not even being sure Naruto would survive having a Bijuu inside him) is beyond bigoted. Her begging doesn’t phase him. Her asking him to survive so he could be there for Naruto also falls into deaf ears. He claims he’d rather die and give Kushina five minutes with her son later, but I honestly don’t think it’s entirely that, especially since he pulled the “I’m a Konoha shinobi and so is my son”. That line solidified him as a terrible father and husband, but also shows that again, he doesn’t give a shit about Kushina being from Uzushio. Naruto is his, and therefore Konoha’s. He should suffer for Konoha. But also he, as an Uzumaki, should be exploited by Konoha like his mother was. He didn’t even have any last words for him. The worst part is if his dumb fucking ass sealed Kyuubi back into Kushina, she would’ve LIVED. She is a full Uzumaki, and Naruto being half still survived the extraction as soon as Kyuubi was put back into him in the war arc. Hell, she outlived Minato, whose pathetic ass died right away (also he didn’t even have enough chakra to keep fighting Obito, while Kushina was spamming jutsus despite her mortal injuries, but that’s again another can of worms).
For me their death scene was only a tragedy for Kushina. Exploited since she was eight years old, dies at only twenty-four for a village that hated her and her culture, knowing she’s leaving behind a cultureless, parentless son who will grow up alone and just as exploited. Nothing justifies what Minato did. The fact he never regretted it nor even paused to consider Kushina’s words shows just how little he actually values her input and her opinions. She was never his equal, and that was made clear when he made the decision on her behalf for both of them to die and for Naruto to be a weapon.
Now yeah, don’t get me wrong, I love toxic ships. I’m a toxic HashiMito truther. But MinaKushi is pushed on us both by the narrative and fandom as the perfect romance and I don’t see it. Minato is self-centered, exploitative, bulldozes over his girlfriend’s DYING wishes, disregards her culture and only brings up her trauma as a genocide survivor to convince her that they should die for the village that abused her till her last breath. Just because he washed the dishes once doesn’t make him a good partner. Kushina was essentially chained to him, and I can hardly see a scenario where her leaving him would be without consequence. That’s just not a healthy relationship.
Thanks for the ask! This was fun to write, although I fear I might get hated by the entirety of the fandom lmfao. This came out longer than expected (thank god I’m too lazy to add manga panels) because I have so many Kushina feels. She’s my baby
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I feel like making Itachi’s goal be Infinite Tsukuyomi would’ve bridged the gap between Naruto-Itachi and Shippuden-Itachi’s characterizations really well.
you ever think about how sasuke is not really inclined to be lonely and stoic and sad all the time and its really just a defense mechanism for him and just. stares at the ceiling
I always thought his childhood flashbacks should have been right after the Land of Waves so we could see right off how outgoing and people-oriented his nature is. He's a little ball of sunshine as a kid and that matters for more than the tragedy aspect. Because trauma changes big aspects of your personality but not your core. Having that flashback during the first Valley of the End is too late for a lot of people (over 200 chapters in) and so they cling to their first impressions of Sasuke—instead of realizing that we were only just getting to know the real Sasuke before Itachi threw him back into that prickly, wounded defense mechanism.
Even without the flashbacks, though, you see him opening up with Team 7; as he says while leaving the village, he thought that maybe they could be with him even on his revenge journey, and he wanted that. We saw that in his behavior, even if it's subtle like most of Sasuke is. He is more emotionally expressive around them. His eyes go soft, he smiles and smirks, he lets them see him afraid, he is as vigilant for them as he is for himself, he even worries about merely their emotional states and tries to support them. Eventually he tells Naruto to take Sakura and run while he holds back the enemy even when he's exhausted and outclassed and will certainly die, all because he cannot bear losing precious people again...and he doesn't just think this, he says it explicitly to Naruto's face. It's all right there in the Chunin exam arc!
The next few arcs show us a Sasuke who is all clammed up and avoidant again, for Reasons, but then Team Taka...oh man, Team Taka. He tells them that he's been thinking about building this team for years. Literally calls them his "dream team". He's been longing to break the solitude. And just like his last team, with Taka we see him relax again. Soft gazes, little smiles, far fewer raised hackles in their presence compared to how he presents himself to the rest of the world. He trusts them and, as soon as they're in danger in the Killer Bee fight, he panics onscreen and goes to great lengths to save them all. He doesn't just need people, he wants them. He didn't need Naruto to tell him that.
Even when he first comes back in the war arc, he settles comfortably right back into team form with Naruto and Sakura. He smirks when Sakura punches the Ten Tails and sashes Naruto to "not hold them [him and Sakura] back", and then when he lands a perfect combo attack with Naruto he's laughing with him. The only reason this behavior changes over the course of the battle is that he is more determined to save the world than to protect his friends. Eventually he knows his strategy will demand that he be lonely for eternity, but he can't fucking help enjoying having his friends back for a bit. Because that is the real Sasuke.
Sasuke has his reasons for pushing people away, but what's most important about when he does this is that it's self harm and he knows this intimately. He's never lied to himself about hating loneliness. He only chooses the loner life when he thinks he has to sacrifice his own happiness for duty or the greater good. Because clearly, canonically, he's only happy with his people.
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There have been arguments about how well Bardugo "represented" Slavic culture in her books and whether or not the characters' surnames should have been properly gendered.
Personally, I believe that if you take it upon yourself to "represent" an existing culture, not doing at least minimal research is just downright embarrassing.
Using names and surnames that do not really exist (Malyen, Baghra, Nazyalenski, etc.) might not actually be a problem if the authore bothered to make up her own names that sound vaguely Slavic(or resembling some other language, not everyone has to be Ravkan, obviously) but do not mean anything specific in any actual language could work, if there was any consistency to it. Yes, you don't have to strictly follow the grammar rules of existing languages; you can make up your own—that's creative worldbuilding. For example, you can make characters' surnames directly linked to their class and status in society, even if such strict division does not exist in the real culture. Maybe your magical populace is forbidden from having surnames that have a certain suffix in them or something—that could enrich the world, add a fantasy element without losing the "vibe".
The problem is that to make it authentic and imaginative, you'd need a deeper understanding of the language and culture you draw inspiration from. Picking random words that fit your "aesthetic" is the exact opposite of deep understanding.
On top of that, there are the words that DO mean something in Russian, and they unfortunately do not have the meaning the author was going for.
"Otkazats'ya" is a verb in its infinitive form, and I suppose it would be jarring for an English-speaking reader to read about a group of people that gets referred to as "to refuse."
"Etovost" sounds like a linguistic crime.
"Privet" means "hello," and I'm pretty sure nobody in the history of the Russian language named their child "hello."
"Reznya" does not mean "scars", it means "slaughter", which makes Nikolai "a King of slaughter" (Nicholas II (Nikolai in Russian) with his Khodynka and Bloody Sunday says "hi" to the namesake).
Altogether, it all looks exactly as tacky and thoughtless as a white American getting "chicken soup " inked on their body just because a random Chinese character looked cool to them.
To tell you the truth, personally, that pseudo cultural mess wouldn't be as much a big deal, and maybe I could have been more lenient towards this frivolous use of the language, if EVERY other aspect of the books hadn't screamed the same ignorance, slopiness, and tone-deafness. No, I don't believe it was "a creative liberty" or there was any amount of research put into it.
The whole trilogy, and especially the last duology, creates an impression of a deeply ignorant person smugly yapping about things they don't understand but somehow deem themselves enlightened.
And what is even more annoying is that people still sing praises to that obvious hatchet job as "diverse" and "subversive" and even try to lecture people who are not satisfied with the represantation of their own culture that "aKsHuaLlY iTs jUsT fiCtIon aNd hEr cHoIcE!"
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