For the ship ask game, 10 and 26? For Takara/Kabuto. Thank you!
Ooh, thank you for asking! Here we go!
10.) What are the top three fondest memories involving this ship?
There are two directions my brain wants to take this one in: memories for me as an author, and memories for my characters, so I’ll explore both!
The top three fondest memories for me are:
(Me 1) When I first started drafting What We Treasure in late 2023. Takara has been my main Naruto OC since 2005, but I didn’t try shipping her with Kabuto until 2020, and started drafting WWT when I got covid three years later and needed something to keep my mind occupied during my week home in quarantine. Despite being sick, I had a ball with writing. I had a LOT of ideas collected for what I wanted Takara and Kabuto’s story and relationship to be, as well as Takara’s lore and clan independent of Kabuto, but I’d never had quite enough faith in myself to try writing a whole fic (or any kind of story that wasn’t roleplaying). But for some reason, their chemistry was what made the process and story start to click and feel accessible.
(Me 2) Getting a piece of ship art of them from a reader and friend! It’s from the mortuary scene in WWT. It is the same scene I reimagined from Kabuto’s POV in my one-shot, “Death and the Maiden.”
(Me 3) Just… nice memories of things readers have said. That they like Takara. That she feels like she could be canon.That they ship her with Kabuto. OC x canon island can feel particularly isolating, and I’ve always felt self-conscious about pushing my OCs onto people, but I need to remember that people are under no obligation to say these kind things, but have taken time to anyway.
(Them 1) Their early time together in Otogakure and the wacky things they did in the name of trying to figure out how Takara’s abilities work. Takara vaporizing Kabuto’s bowl of noodles with sonoluminescence, and Kabuto making Takara stand in the shower fully-clothed to test how the presence of steam affects her ability to use sonoluminescence (and to prod at her compliance with doing silly things in the name of figuring herself out).
(Them 2) Kabuto accompanying Takara on her first mission from Orochimaru: grocery shopping in the closest Rice outpost. Them both getting their cheeks pinched by one of Orochimaru’s eccentric exes, who is still their primary tea supplier.
(Them 3) Going to the old Tengai temple to dig through Takara’s clan artifacts. Takara trusting Kabuto to pierce her ears so she can wear a pair of earrings she finds there.
26.) If you were to compare this ship to another ship, which would it be and why?
This is an interesting one. As it turns out, I’m a pretty predictable being, and most of the ships I like tend to either be similar, or be different, but draw me in with similar packaging. I’ll compare and contrast with three other ships that I ship.
Harmony and Corbeau (Pokemon Legands Z-A) - They look the most similar, I think! Scrappy active girl with a bi bob x smarmy glasses man. Beyond that though, they’re pretty different pairs. Maybe opposites, even. Harmony and Corbeau are definitely classic-but-comedic enemies-to-lovers, while Takara and Kabuto are… strangers to coworkers to friends to lovers to enemies to friends to lovers(?). Corbeau and Kabuto are both pretty cryptic people, though Kabuto is intentionally and strategically so, and Corbeau often seems laughably unaware as to how he comes across. Harmony and Takara also react very differently to this. Harmony finds it simultaneously frustrating and endearing, while Takara has never been taught to expect honesty from people who love her, and that if anything, it robs her of the chance to figure things out for herself and learn more about the other person and how they think and operate. Both pairs have one person who starts off with a pretty strong sense of self and identity that only grows stronger through the work that they do serving others (Corbeau and Takara… even though Takara eventually has to defect from her service to Oto to keep growing, her time there did a lot for her sense of self), and a person who neglects themselves in favor of service to others (Harmony and Kabuto).
Yoroi and Misumi (Naruto, as I write and headcanon them) - I haven’t posted too much of their ship yet (lots of rewrite stuff or old fics in drafts I haven’t worked on in a bit), but I do ship them, and have lots of thoughts about them as a ship and how they compare to Kabuto and Takara.
Shared tropes between them are: coworker romance, and veteran (Yoroi) x rookie (Misumi). Though Kabuto and Takara are more akin to a couple of nerds taking turns infodumping on each other and marveling over the same things. Yoroi and Misumi, to me, are more about enduring differences and ultimately benefitting mutually from that. Yoroi gives Misumi tough love and drags him to the gym for weight training guidance to help him adjust to his body modifications, even though Misumi would rather be slithering around in the most remote and weird recesses of the base and reading all the reports that are none of his business. Meanwhile, he’s the one who finally gets Yoroi questioning the nature of what they’re really getting (or not) out of their service to Oto, and eventually sets him on his own self-actualization journey. This is all firmly headcanon territory, as we know we only get crumbs about these guys, but this also lines up with the sort of “be present, do your duty and hope you get rewarded” vs “there in body, but mind is off doing what it wants to and probably kind of skeptical” vibes that I get from them.
On the “accidentally triggering the other’s self-actualization journey,” thing, I kind of think Kabuto does this for Takara, too. She tries to be that for him first, but since he wasn’t in the place to receive the lesson, she failed.
There’s also the fact that Takara and Misumi share a role when on a team with Kabuto and Yoroi at different points. They both serve as the team scout, and are both the smallest and quietest members of the team. They both also have their curiosity about the world at odds with their introversion and desire to stay in the nice dark, quiet base. Takara and Misumi don’t get to spend a lot of time together, but I think they’d be besties if they did.
Both Yoroi and Kabuto are both the “does the talking at parties” partner (to whatever end), while Misumi and Takara are off in the corner, petting the host’s cat.
Princess Kida x Milo Thatch: I couldn’t not talk about this one. “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” was such a formative childhood movie for me, and while I wasn’t thinking about this pair at all when forming Takara and Kabuto’s story, I wonder how much subconscious influence is there. We’ve got a dorky young round glasses-wearing guy, entrusted with a huge project by an old eccentric, and a woman who is a member of an endangered group of people who finds herself at the center of the project. They collaborate to reach their own goals within the project (uncovering lost knowledge about the Atlanteans/Tengai), while surrounded by a grey cast with ethics and objectives that are questionable in multiple directions. There’s also the fun fact that Milo and Takara both have short hair that is the same color, and Kida and Kabuto have long hair that is the same color. Also, both have a sort of bookish guy x action girl thing happening.
I know this took a bit of time, but I had a lot of fun thinking about these! Thank you again for the asks! 💜
