you wake up. you're a middle schooler. you meet a boy on IMVU. he's emo, and you like that about him because you're emo too. he sends you an AMV. you click the link. a black screen. "naruto vs. sasuke," written in comic sans, made in windows movie maker. and there... there he is. the anime boy you will spend the rest of your miserable teenage years obsessing over. sasuke. sasuke uchiha. sasuke, the lone wolf of the shinobi world. he's sad. and miserable. and so, so cool! you watch him, not yet knowing the impact he will have on your developing psyche. linkin park is playing. don't stay, forget our memories, forget our possibilities.
you're enthralled. transformed.
a week passes. ep 48, part 2 of 3 is slowly loading on youtube. a bowl of ramen sits on your desk. it's you're favorite thing to eat now. slurp slurp. just like naruto, you think.
years pass. decades pass. you change. become an adult. stop being emo. develop an iron deficiency from your ramen-based diet (you only eat it because it's cheap now). you'll never be a ninja. you'll never be a fighting dreamer, etc. but still. you watch naruto. you rewatch all 720 episodes, including all the fillers. you rewatch it, even though you know the ending sucks (and, if you're being honest with yourself, a lot of the beginning and middle parts, too). but still, you keep watching that garbage. you keep slurping it down, holding out infinite hope, searching for that high you felt as a pre-teen watching naruto for the first time. and then rock lee drops his weight and... woah! that's still fucking awesome actually. yippee!!
gracieabrams
dailybridgerton
areudirty
2087
