Fallow Fields [Naruto SI]
- Thread starter zarinthel
- Start date
Seiko's throwing a lot of bitterness in all directions there (except at chibi Kabuto's).
I get the (possibly mistaken) feeling a lot of it stems from that line: "I'll retire".
She's done the thing, she's irrevocably changed the cannon timeline. Naruto doesn't get to grow up an orphan, a lot of people that would've died from the Kyuubi rampage didn't, she (and Ensui) gave Obito a splitting headache he's not just gonna walk away from. She might've given the Uchiha a decent chance of not getting genocided.
So why does the disabled vet in constant pain keep getting saddled with all this bullshit?
I get the (possibly mistaken) feeling a lot of it stems from that line: "I'll retire".
She's done the thing, she's irrevocably changed the cannon timeline. Naruto doesn't get to grow up an orphan, a lot of people that would've died from the Kyuubi rampage didn't, she (and Ensui) gave Obito a splitting headache he's not just gonna walk away from. She might've given the Uchiha a decent chance of not getting genocided.
So why does the disabled vet in constant pain keep getting saddled with all this bullshit?
Pretty good stuff, and it seems reasonably accurate to me. But I'd like to give Seiko a try before you give it a shot, see how it goes and where the two of us differ.
Seiko started this life with certain...assumptions for how important she was going to be to the course of events, and all the wonderful changes she was going to make. Obviously, those made an ass of her, and she got traumatized seven ways to Saturday. So when this story started she's in a position where she's aware of that screw-up, and is now caught between her ambitions to do Great Things and the to-the-core terror of realizing that not only can she be killed just as easily as anyone else, she can be broken. She can be made less than the mighty figure she wanted to be.
As is usually the case with traumatized people, it hasn't really occurred to her to debrief herself, to figure out what went right and what went wrong and why. This also leads to her externalizing a portion of the blame onto others, particularly "Konoha" as responsible for what's happened, which makes it harder to see how she fits into things and how other people see her.
This conflict is what leads her to taking the desk job - she still harbors dreams of being Great, but she's terrified of suffering more for it (or worse, breaking again and leaving people she cares about behind); she addresses the contention by picking a job no one else wants to do that offers her a measure of control over and support for others. And the jagged pieces rubbing together just keep sparking on and off as she goes.
This cognitive dissonance means that whenever somebody, like Kakashi, comes along and either does impressive things in their own right or pushes her to do more or do something different (or some combination thereof), it leans on either side of the rubble pile and forces Seiko to start paying more attention to the dissonance she's very carefully been ignoring. So her gut reaction is to make them go away, with a side order of subtle blame shifting as shown in the latter half of the argument since that makes them go away faster. And since she's chasing them off instead of using them as diagnostic foils to figure out what's wrong and why, she's increasingly incapable of distinguishing between differing pains and what they mean.
So when something comes along that forces her to choose - no more deflection, no more hiding - and she follows her dreams by, say, tearing off into battle on a fucked knee in a...hmmm, 2.75-v-7 against the Seven Swordsmen, then she immediately shuts down to ignore the pain and refuses to elaborate further - well, that comes off as a little insane and very very confusing to everyone else. And even more so when with no apparent reason or warning, she shoehorns her way into the Hokage's trauma/support team and is instrumental in stopping the Kyuubi assault.
And she goes right back to "Ignore everything that would force me to make a consistent choice between glory and safety" to once more linger in variably-pained malaise. Which is rather hypocritical for a lady insisting that everyone changes unless they're dead.
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Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
Obviously, ground floor apartments are popular because they don't want the hassle of dealing with the elevator genjutsu!
- Location
- Massachusetts
Read through everything and came back just for this. I admire this little chunk of writing for how it encapsulates so much cultural nuance. There's an implication of ruinous amounts of tragedy over generations of warfare - but also the stubborn refusal to go peacefully into that good night.
Dealing with that sort of continuous loss and getting up again day after day takes an unimaginable level of emotional strength. And the best part is that all this is ten times more effective in the form of indirect implications and allusions.
That's all. Just wanted to indicated massive respect for setting such a mood.
One of the most fascinating parts of naruto's setting for me is how concentrated and all-consuming warfare must be for ninja populations. At the show's start the world's barely begun recovering from a WWII equivalent- which depleted every nation so badly they began throwing children on the frontlines. But with how concentrated power is, instead of a gap in men ages 18-65 creating a loose spread of holes in the patchwork of a society, all of that loss and grief and pain is funneled into a much smaller network of shinobi numbering in the thousands.
All the horror of mass casualties and lost generations and no place to ward it away because every family member/friend/lover is also on the field, dying. There's no dream home you can return to and raise your kids in. It's already empty.
In canon it goes mostly unremarked how nearly every character who's part of a clan is one of the last living members, but Zarinthel's doing a great job communicating the subtle horror of that kind of environment.
Really want her to get her hands and knees fixed already.
For the love of god, please. I can appreciate the novel concept, but there are VERY few things more depressing than getting sent to a mystical magical alternate universe and having even worse crippling pain than I already deal with.
...
About my only other thoughts here is she ought to have phenomenal chakra control by this point, since even daily mundane function - like holding a fork - requires her to perform chakra control exercises.
That sentence makes me imagine Seiko truly free in death, return to her past life self before she became Seiko, made a few sincere comments to Sakumo waiting at the campfire in limbo before walking onwards with surety and Biter by her side once more.
As she said she need to say in life and death.
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Mission Accomplished! Seiko has... become even more bitter about the whole thing!
Gotta suck seeing your big accomplishment happen but at the same time you need to get up in the morning, your body aches, and nothing really feels different. Like it matters but only in regards to the alternative
Gotta suck seeing your big accomplishment happen but at the same time you need to get up in the morning, your body aches, and nothing really feels different. Like it matters but only in regards to the alternative
It probably won't feel like she did anything until Kushina and Minato invite her over, Assuming Minato wakes up and is able to do so.
Yikes. Welp, nice that Kakashi is trying to help now. He'd be better off just talking to her without trying to help but...
Seiko is definitely not letting him live down pretty well shunning her for years. Can't blame her, but it's a rough time for all concerned.
Seiko is definitely not letting him live down pretty well shunning her for years. Can't blame her, but it's a rough time for all concerned.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
If Seiko was ever to recommend somebody as a great Jounin Sensei, it wouldn't be Kakashi, it'd be Gai. Which is why she made the comment about Danzo being unwilling to recognize people's talent - because he's the one who dislike Gai, and was critical of him when Seiko praised him.
Should have killed Danzo like 5 years ago. He alone is responsible for like 60-65% of bullshit for the whole continent.
I am delighted to see the Feelings Showdown finally happening! My only regret is that Gai hasn't appointed himself their family mediator.
I'd have though Fugaku would have at least entertained supporting Kushina. With the stakes being so high for his clan even getting a pro-Uchiha Hokage he doesn't think much of would do a lot to protect his clan. He's even pettier than I'd thought.
Also very sweet of Ensui to try to get a ground floor apartment so Seiko could visit. If that's such a common problem Seiko needs to drop the concept of an elevator to Minato and Kushina when they recover.
They have Gai, Dai, Biter, Ensui, Minato and Kushina! I don't know how much further the decks can be stacked in their favor.
There's too much going on to understand in one reading but I'm 75% sure Kakashi's flailing around for some accountability for what he's come to realize was/see as his abandonment of Seiko when she was struggling to adapt to her disability. He's wanting to know why she isn't blaming him and why the village/society isn't blaming him. If Minato wasn't such a sore topic right not he might even be demanding to know why he didn't say shit about this either.
Then answer is that he was a kid who was going through shit and shouldn't have to be his disabled older sister's carer on top of being a child soldier but that isn't an answer he wants to hear or would accept.
I'd have though Fugaku would have at least entertained supporting Kushina. With the stakes being so high for his clan even getting a pro-Uchiha Hokage he doesn't think much of would do a lot to protect his clan. He's even pettier than I'd thought.
Also very sweet of Ensui to try to get a ground floor apartment so Seiko could visit. If that's such a common problem Seiko needs to drop the concept of an elevator to Minato and Kushina when they recover.
They have Gai, Dai, Biter, Ensui, Minato and Kushina! I don't know how much further the decks can be stacked in their favor.
There's too much going on to understand in one reading but I'm 75% sure Kakashi's flailing around for some accountability for what he's come to realize was/see as his abandonment of Seiko when she was struggling to adapt to her disability. He's wanting to know why she isn't blaming him and why the village/society isn't blaming him. If Minato wasn't such a sore topic right not he might even be demanding to know why he didn't say shit about this either.
Then answer is that he was a kid who was going through shit and shouldn't have to be his disabled older sister's carer on top of being a child soldier but that isn't an answer he wants to hear or would accept.
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And Ensui was there too! In spirit.
And he had to have been listening to this bit. Ensui was only in play for like five minutes, but I do wonder what his debriefing was like? How complete a picture has he drawn when that night was understandably confusing what with the stress, Kurama's hate aura, the pain of immediately afterward ripping out his eye with his bare hand.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Hmmm.
Okay. Per the books and anime, it went down like this in canon.
After the Third War, Danzo is pissed off enough about the Peace Terms to basically pull his support from Hiruzen.
Hiruzen is old and tired so he decides to just retire.
Orochimaru was groomed to be heir for years, but never "got" the Will of Fire.
Jiraiya threatened to run away.
So, Hiruzen picks Jiraiya's apprentice, the young war hero Minato.
The Uchiha, probably feeling owed at least one stint at Hokage as cofounders, are upset that Fugaku was not even a nominee. And/or that no one in the Village cares about Fugaku's war contributions.
It is unclear how (in)famous Fugaku actually was outside the clan.
Fugaku also got the Mangekyo during the war, but kept it hidden because of the negative associations.
During the Kyuubi Attack, Danzo was given control of the Uchiha Police Force by Hiruzen and ordered them to avoid the fighting to prevent the possibility of one of the Uchiha taking control of the Kyuubi.
After the Attack, Danzo reasoned that the Kyuubi's behavior indicated it was being controlled or influenced. Not to mention all the assassinated ninja. He implicated the Uchiha as suspects. And convinced the Council to force all the Uchiha into a singular district around their remote Shrine under the guise of rezoning during the post-Kyuubi reconstruction. To isolate them and more easily place them under observation.
So, Fugaku knows his Clan is under suspicion from hour one.
His own Mangakyo could not control the Kyuubi, implying the accusations another Uchiha was already doing so are true.
The only witnesses are either in a coma or are refusing to publically absolve his Clan, despite being friends or at least friendly with his family.
He himself knew about the birth and has the Sharingan, making him a prime suspect. If it gets out he actually has a Mangekyo--one he kept secret--he goes from a suspect to the suspect.
And his Clan is almost certainly badgering him about he ought to be a nominee for Hokage (a position he could use to protect his Clan) now or it really is an insult (evidence the Village fears and distrusts the Clan).
The man must be quietly panicking.
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- Location
- Louisville, GA
Don't forget that Seiko, who seems to have magic analysis powers, and has a whole lot of dead bodies, that just happened to become dead while she was around, had started poking into his business not too long ago. If she had decided Fugaku wasn't in on it, then she would have apologized, or just left him alone, but nope, she wants to meet with him...
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
For support, spelled out here:
Seiko throws it in his face that she had no expectations of him as a person or as a family member, only as a ninja.
- Location
- Georgia
When there's a trap in everything you see
You see everything as a trap
A broken clock is right twice a day
A broken net can still ensnare
A broken pot can be fixed with gold
A broken spirit is not so easily repaired.
Two broken people with two broken hearts
A broken family living in a broken system
And the world tries to break them further.
When the world has only taught him how to destroy, how can Kakashi hope to fix something as complex as a relationship? How can Seiko? How can anyone?
By trying again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again...
You see everything as a trap
A broken clock is right twice a day
A broken net can still ensnare
A broken pot can be fixed with gold
A broken spirit is not so easily repaired.
Two broken people with two broken hearts
A broken family living in a broken system
And the world tries to break them further.
When the world has only taught him how to destroy, how can Kakashi hope to fix something as complex as a relationship? How can Seiko? How can anyone?
By trying again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again...
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
You know between her intentionally doing this (even if she immediately regretted it) and her accidentally accusing Inoichi and Shikaku of driving her father to suicide...
I wonder if Seiko comes across as less bored and tired and more snide and bitterly caustic.
Like a less animated Hoheto.
I'm reasonably certain that, after singing praises for her skills and willingness to sacrifice for Konoha, everyone not in the Might family would likely describe her as a pile of jagged glass and barbed wire masquerading as a person.