#shippuden

you're so sweet anon! thank you! i don't think it's a redundant question. im sure ive talked about why i love this pairing a ton, but there's almost always something new i can say about it and i def dont expect anyone to go through my entire blog or track down posts from other blogs to know all my thoughts on GaaLee... which like ive been in this fandom nearly 20 years by now so that's a LOT of thoughts. granted i didn't start writing for them until 2010 because i did find the idea of writing naruto fic daunting and didnt think id be good at writing it 🙃silly me cause now it's all i write!

tbh i think my original interest in the pairing was kinda... flat? superficial? like my friends told me to watch Naruto and gave me 3 things i had to ship and while SNS is obviously very real, the thing that really spoke to me did end up being GaaLee.

iirc originally i was kinda like ??? about them but I did in fact read that one fic we've all read that we do basically owe the existence of this fandom to, and at the time I did like it and think "oh I can see it" but I wasn't like passionate about it until after cosplaying Lee lol like it's silly but I just really love Lee and relate to him, and cosplaying him made me get more into Naruto so then I got more invested in GaaLee. but the fandom itself was really lacking back in 2009 and i am nothing if not a stubborn mf so i also got rlly invested in trying to host events and get more fanfics written in the fandom and started actually writing my own.. but it took years for that to make an impact. i did a lot of practice stuff early on and then i had this... Big Idea (Alliance) and thought it would be like the next DR or something (ridiculous but I was young) and then I just spent... 8 years writing that... i also started to write other stuff as well while I was still working on Alliance but i think alliance specifically was like... I was really living with these characters and this world and it became such a huge part of me and started to grow and evolve.

while Alliance isn't solely about GaaLee, it's definitely the point where I really started to conceptualize them and the pairing with a lot more complexity and to like dig deeper into why they work, why they're compelling, etc.

i think one of the big things that's kept me here aside from sheer stubbornness and love for the ship/characters, is also just... it's a much bigger sandbox to play in than say a canon ship or even a non-canon ship with tons of screentime together.

Gaara and Lee have just enough screen time together to use as a foundation, but so much of the ship itself is really based on their characters. the foundation is necessary--that history they have is certainly vital--but kishimoto doesn't do anything with it because god forbid someone not love the MC the most so there's this huge well of untapped potential that I think offers a wealth of imaginative things to do with them.

i think like all the nuance and all the complexities and all the worldbuilding and themes and blah blah blah etc etc are great but it's the potential that really made me so passionate about them. the possibility of what could be and the fact that we don't have much to go on gives us so much wiggle room compared with other ships. like do Rock Lee and Gaara actually write letters to each other after the Sasuke Retrieval arc? probably not. but there's nothing that says they dont in canon so we all kinda just accepted that as canon. is it an accident that Kishimoto made one of Lee's favorite words 'love' and that just happens to also be on Gaara's forehead? definitely, but there's no proof in the canon that says Lee liking that word isn't cause of Gaara.

like i love a ship with lots of canon interactions but this ship being basically untouched by canon is actually so special for us cause we can do so much extrapolating and i just think potential is such a great concept... and it really holds up as a theme for their relationship and their characters... Lee's potential. Gaara's potential. their potential together.

This is how I imagine their family tree.

The beekeeper has been dwelling in Sora-ku's woods for who knows how long. But if he/she provided honey wine to Senju weddings, that could go as far as Konoha's founding times.

The three -bachi siblings are said to be grandchildren of Ishikawa, but since they're clearly a lot younger than Onoki, I don't think their parents were the same.

Hence I made Muu their father, who would be a lot younger than whoever was Onoki's parent. Also, Muu married into the clan, because I felt that making him too a blood relative would be too much already... but a chance worthy of taking advantage of by his ideology, which fits his character.

In my opinion, it would have been more logical for Kurobachi alone to be Ishikawa's grandson (Muu's son) and Suzumebachi and Jibachi be his great-grandchildren.

The missing Kamizuru members were named by me here, along many other characters.

While Kitsuchi is said to be from the Tsuchikage's lineage, it's never stated he's Onoki's son. And I think if he were, the databook would have said that instead.

Thus he married Onoki's daughter, Shukketsu, a blood-thirsty Iwagakure filler kunoichi that I named here.

weird eyes club..?

oc x canon woohoo yay (i'm really tired)

alt version under the cut