I'm thinking about one of my favorite tropes to see in fanfic: Chakra sensors being negatively affected by having their sensing shut off.
(I'm talking about the idea of characters who are "Natural chakra sensors" i. e. Sensors who are constantly sensing and have been doing so since birth. Tobirama is the character I see portrayed with this ability most often)
And I don't mean "they get anxiety from not being able to sense" I mean their whole body goes haywire. They lack stimuli from a sense that has been as ever present as the ability to hear/see/smell/touch/taste, and when it suddenly vanishes... Well, have you heard of "the world's quietest room"? (Continued below the cut)
It's a room where sound is at -24.9 decibels. the baseline "silence" would be 0 decibels, so I can't even comprehend what being in a place of negative-noise is like.
Nobody has ever been able to handle being inside it for more than 45 minutes due to things like disorientation, hallucinations, feelings of sickness, and loss of balance. It's so quiet that people will begin to hear their own organs working as their ears strain to pick up on anything to orient them.
Eventually, it just gets too much, and they have to leave. Obviously the Orfield Laboratories (the place that owns the room) has no interest in torturing people with sensory deprivation, so no one knows what would happen if people are forced to spend longer in there, but my guess would be "nothing good".
...But I'm mean, and I like it when my favorite characters get hurt, so I like it when Tobirama gets a chakra seal slapped on him and is affected negatively by it. Only when he gets comfort though, pure angst is a bit much for me! ( ´ ∇ ˋ ; )ゞ
Usually I see fics where this happens have him fall into a coma, or otherwise fall ill, but I kinda want to see one where he starts hallucinating false chakra signatures or something instead. Or imagine if it somehow "broke" his sensing? *Slaps roof of Tobirama* This bad boy can fit so many self-worth issues in him!
Nah, but seriously, I see Tobirama as a character who considers himself a tool, and as such he probably puts a lot of his self-worth into his abilities, and if one were to stop working, or worse, start sending out false signals? Yikes. Tobirama would not handle that well...
Anyway, that's all for now. Oh! And if you're curious...
Fics I know of where chakra sensory deprivation occurs:
there is not enough hate in my heart - vylat - Happens to Tobirama
Bound and Broken - Kalira - Happens to Indra (Indra as Madara & Izuna's brother AU)
(If I remember more I'll add them, if any of y'all know of any fics like that, do let me know! ^w^)
Oh, last thing! Link to an article on the world's quietest room if you wanna learn more: Inside the World’s Quietest Room, Where No One Lasts More Than 45 Minutes
A question for my readers (or anyone else who wants to chime in, idrc):
Do you think the Byakugan or a powerful sensor on par with Tobirama would be able to tell someone's biological sex just from their chakra signature/system?
I've always kinda pictured the chakra system as being a sort of spiritual nervous system and as far as I know there's no way to differentiate those on the basis of sex, so it doesn't make sense for a Byakugan to be able to identify one without outside knowledge or confirmation. I've read fics where they can, and I just accepted it as part of the author's world building, but I'm not so sure I want to go the same route.
Likewise with sensors. I feel like it would make sense that a sensor would be able to identify individual chakra signatures as belonging to specific people, but whether or not they can learn biological information from sensing is another thing entirely. Being able to spot a henge or a genjutsu makes sense, since the chakra use would give them away, but being privy to information they wouldn't otherwise have seems a bit much, especially when things like the Diagnostic Jutsu exist, a clear sign that specific care has to be taken to learn these things.
Bias and cultural norms are super important, too, I feel, as, even if the Byakugan and sensors could tell the difference, they wouldn't necessarily comment on it or even recognize that the difference was there at all. What we think we know often overrides the facts presented to us, after all.
I guess I just want to know y'all's thoughts on this so I can move forward with the next chapter of Shinobi Isekai: Round Two, wherein the main character (my oc) is disguising herself as a boy in the Warring States era. I want to know just how effective that disguise really is the face of powerful dojutsu and sensory specialists. I always value my readers' feedback, so any advice you might offer would be great! I just need to make a decision before I wrote the next chapter.
