That's just the way the bey bounces...

Hiya! I'm Inka. @Tht0negal666 on AO3. Oh goddamn it- I've got 100 hours and SOMEBODY has to go polish the stars. Or whatever. // FANDOMS: Naruto, DC comics, HxH, KagePro, AssClass, Beyblade MF, ST, Merlin, TUA, Saiki K, F&H. Finally watching One Piece lol

[tora-the-cat]

hey guys does anyone have that post about the INSANE potential of a Neji vs. Sasuke fight in the chunnin exams? I need it i need it I need it plsss any help would be nice <3 <3

[hows-a-robin-like-a-writing-desk]

My high priestess told me the kings manservant keeps killing her assassins so I asked how many assassins she has and she said she just goes to a druid camps and gets a new one afterwards so I said it sounds like she's just feeding druids to the kings manservant and then the white dragon wrapped around her legs started crying.

[tora-the-cat]

I think that Kakashi's insistance on being. such an annoying bastard comes from an actual place of him wanting people to be just as unwilling to talk to him and him being able to maintain his air of mystery 'what is wrong with that guy', but he doesn't want people to actually be AFRAID of him like they are in ANBU. like people don't talk about how weird he is. they talk about how every time someone dies on a mission with him it's because he killed them. He would really appreciate if people started commenting on all the attention-seeking bullshit behavior he pulls instead of calling him a comrade killer. No, I didn't kill that guy, but I DID bark at the wall after I bumped into it. please talk about that instead OwO. (He doesn't realize that his weird ass behaviour just makes him seem more unhinged to the people already scared of him. It only makes him seem silly goofy to the people that already either don't take him seriously or know he isn't a threat to them. This is part of why team 7 seems so fucking insane.)!

[tora-the-cat]

Unless madara knows your name you are part of the faceless masses only useful insofar as he can laugh atvthem for having the AUDACITY to be haters. He loves living in people's mind rent free. no one has ever coped like he does. because no one was a person before he was. the world lives and dies at his word

[tora-the-cat]

a passing shinobi sees *the yellow flash* looking nervous and scared on the sidewalk and immediately flags down the nearest ANBU cause some SHIT must be going down for that to happen. and the ANBU arrives to one Namikaze Minato yelling at his student (who he lost while shopping for. 3 minutes) about practicing better safety procedures while the kid makes his way through an entire mountain of dango sticks sitting in front of him.

[tora-the-cat]

Minato, lost Kakashi while shopping, resorting to measured breathing exercises for the first time EVER: We are in Konoha. Kakashi is a shinobi. He can defend himself. we checked to make sure he had his ninja tools before he left. Kakashi can defend himself. if he can't, we've been practicing roof climbing, and Kakashi is smart enough not to go too far. Kakashi is fine. we are surrounded by civilians. If there was a strong enough chakra signature here to pose a threat to Kakahsi, I would feel it. Kakahsi can defend himself. he's fine. he's- OH THANK GOD THERE HE IS

[tora-the-cat]

ladies is it queer baiting if it doesn't violate the hays code

[tora-the-cat]

random ANBU: what's the scariest thing you ever saw the yellow flash do? I've heard the horror stories, but I've also heard that no one was as close to him as you. Kakashi, shuddering a little: once I didn't eat for a whole week and he threatened to cry if I skipped dinner again. that was pretty scary

[tora-the-cat]

Onoki tearing his fucking hair out holding the 3rd meeting THAT MONTH about how 'You under NO CIRCUMSTANCES are allowed to approach the yellow flash. you can NOT fix him we literally loose like 2 shinobi a month to the 'i can fix him (gets entire platoon wiped out)' minato namikaze effect.'

[tora-the-cat]

the scribe for the bingo book being driven to tears because she has to put in a reference photo for The Yellow Flash, the shinobi with one of the highest recorded kill counts EVER, and she needs it to be scary enough to enforce the 'flee on sight' order, but this killing machine just so happens to be a fucking supermodel so every time he isn't going fast enough to be a literal blur of motion his photos come out like this

[sasuketron]

<— guy who doesn’t play about sasuke’s birthday

[sasuketron]

*eats drywall and froths at the mouth* i just think he’s neat

[tora-the-cat]

The imaginary beef in my head between rin and her sensei that really just doesn't love her that much is crazy. Its like if the people who talk about how Kakashi didn't care about sakura because he was expecting her to die eventually were right. And then they got worse.

[tsunades-left-bicep]

This is such a minor pet peeve but its really been getting to me lately. There's something pretty common in fandom where a character is introduced with an unusual trait that goes on to become their defining trait. And because its their defining trait, fandom treats it as a given. As the story goes on, and as people participate in fandom without returning to the source material that often, they forget the trait is unusual, and forget the context it was introduced in.

Lately the specific example of this that has been pissing me off is people generalizing Shikamaru's and his father's intellect. Shikaku is supposed to be a once-in-a-generation genius strategist. His son inherits this from him. This is unusual and unexpected. Everyone is surprised to learn Shikamaru has as much potential as his father, maybe even more since Shikaku has had the experience of a great war to refine his skills, while Shikamaru seems to have prodigy talent from his childhood.

But soooooo many times I see people acting like all the Nara are just gifted geniuses?? When thats simply not true... There is no evidence of that.... Even within the Ino-Shika-Cho trios of the past and future, there's not really anything to say that the Nara has to be The Smart One. Like the Akimichi or Yamanaka could just as easily be the smartest in the group. The Nara clan does not have a Super Brain kekkei genkai. This is not a thing. I can see why people think that, because the only two Nara who are important characters in the story happen to be geniuses, but thats not like, their niche in the village.

In fact they have a canon niche and its medical research, especially based on using the antlers of their sacred deer, within the context of coming up with antidotes to the Akimichi clan's food pills. So. Yeah. I mean don't get me wrong its only briefly mentioned, but it is in fact there. You'd probably have to be some kind of freak who watches naruto over on over on repeat to know that off the top of your head though and who'd do something as crazy as that *cough cough.*

Point is, I think Kishimoto is actually pretty good at this kind of worldbuilding. When he introduces a new story element or character or piece of lore or whatever, he always provides background context for it that places it in the greater setting. This context is often subtle, occasionally even subtextual, but its introduced in a natural way with the timing and grace to make it flow seamlessly into the narrative, and then be forgotten. It makes accepting the new element really easy when its introduced, and then when that element is revisited or built upon further, its not brought up again, so people don't really remember it. But its there. The worldbuilding in naruto is like, pretty good actually, as long as its not timeline or numbers related. Kishimoto doesn't give a fuck about either of those. But he has context down pat.

[tsunades-left-bicep]

See also "The Yamanaka clan has a role as interrogates/therapists." No they don't. That's not true. There's no such thing as a character under suspicion to "need to be cleared by a Yamanaka." I can see where you're coming from but you're wrong.

First of all there's no such things as ninja therapists. These people do not take their highly classified traumatic memories to be viewed by another ninja to process them. They bottle them up and develop neuroses. Obviously. It is stated over and over again that the ninja's creed is to never reveal anything that holds power over you to anyone, keep secrets for the good of the state, and internalize and endure your darkness without showing emotion. Dunno how you guys missed that one tbh.

Second of all the Yamanakas do not run the intelligence division. Inoichi seems to work there and have a high position, but its not like his whole clan is pigeon-holed into this. Its just him. Ino, his own daughter, trains as a medical ninja just because. Members of the Yamanaka clan could presumably join whatever division and have whatever specialty they felt called to. Even for clan ninja, specializing their skills seems to be a lot more related to creating a balanced team or pursuing individual goals than furthering a clan's power. Furthermore mind reading isn't the only thing the Yamanaka clan jutsu can do. They can also have sensory abilities, communication abilities, and combat abilities. The main use in canon is possession of people's bodies, not mind-reading. Its a skillset that works well in many fields, including spying and other intelligence gathering, strategizing, and leadership.

Third of all the Yamanaka clan jutsu is not the only technique they have for viewing someone's mind. That would be dumb and bad worldbuilding. One of the things about naruto worldbuilding that's good is nothing exists in a vaccum. When an ability or mechanic or whatever is introduced, even when it seems insurmountably powerful, its shown to have weaknesses and limits. There are always shown to be many different ways to do the same thing, grounded in established canon of how chakra works. The hidden leaf has two other ways to read minds off the top of my head. They have a "back-to-the-past" jutsu which seems to be used mainly by ANBU and medical ninja, which puts people in a trance or possibly a genjutsu and relive their recent memories. They also have a machine that allows the users to scan the mind of someone inside it, which seems to be at least partially powered by fuuinjutsu. Probably other villages also have several different ways of reading minds, and other clans have other jutsu.

The point is the clans are a lot less specialized than fanon seems to think they are. And like I get it, special groups of people each with unique abilities work together each doing their part for a military is a fun concept. But like that's not what happens in naruto. The clan politics as portrayed in fanon is just not what what we see in canon. Now I am interested in seeing clan politics played out more in fics than canon cared to elaborate on. For example I'm fascinated by how techniques grew and evolved when the clans joined together to become a village and resources and knowledge were pooled. And that mind-reading machine is interesting too. A combination of technology, fuuinjutsu, and ninjutsu. That's interesting. We see Inoichi using it, and several others as well. Inoichi is noted to be really good at it, is is because of his own mind-reading jutsu? Does the breadth of the ways fuuinjutsu can be used or the increasing abilities of technology pose a risk to shinobi with specialized techniques that could be replaced?

[tsunades-left-bicep]

Wait @nearlysurvived you've got a good point here. The Uchiha clan is definitely the exception that proves the rule in this case. They Uchiha were actually pigeonholed into one career field, and this along with their forced social and physical isolation from the rest of the village that drove them to plan a coup. It would make sense if the Uchiha police force was part of the "each clan has a specialty in the village" fanon, but as we can see, that would lead to people being not very happy with their lot in life.

[aalghul]

it's always "damian is cruel and vicious because he was raised by ra's and talia" and never "tim drake inherited his opinion of women from jack drake"

[tora-the-cat]

Remember that time that Shikaku sat down his 12 year old freshly minted chunnin son hot off his first mission in the emergency room mid panic attack while kiba is dying and goes 'you're right. you should have done better. Your failure is okay this time because you were lucky enough that no one died. So use this experience to make sure you never fail again' and he just starts crying. Cause. What in the fresh hell. Genuniely. Shikaku. what the fuck could YOU have done differently. with a team of GENNIN. IT WAS HIS FIRST MISSION!!!! SHIKAMARU ACTS LIKE A NORMAL 12 YEAR OLD FOR AN HOUR. AND HIS DAD GIVES HIM ANXIETY DISORDER FOR IT

[tora-the-cat]

Zetsu, hearing about what madara's planning to do with the Rinnigan it has spent CENTURIES trying to make SOMEONE manifest: Can. Can we at least choose a baby that would have. a reletively safe life? Madara: No. It must be one who lives in an active warzone. with no parents

[tora-the-cat]

InoShikaCho develops a conlang when they're 9 and can speak it half asleep and/or dead, almost better then their native tongue. Of COURSE they did. Ino's dad is head of information gathering and Shikamaru thinks he's SO COOL. And chouji doesn't like gossiping if people can hear him but Ino will DIE without someone to gossip with.