sethurnite

[sethurnite]

GO FOR IT IRUKA SENSEI!!

obligatory Iruka Bday post for my all time fav characters!!

Art trade w/ @sethurnite tysm so much for pitching this idea it was so fun!

[sethurnite]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IRUKA-SENSEI!!!!🐬🐬🍜🍜🍥

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Did an art collab with the super talented @pinkprincessert for the Go For It, Nakamura-kun meme!! Check out their part, where they did our favourite teacher Iruka-sensei ^_^

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[sethurnite]

[sethurnite]

[sethurnite]

I have so many thoughts about these two. I think she should steal him from Kakashi. They should kick Kabuto's ass. I think they should bond.

[sethurnite]

An official illustration from Studeio Perrot for Naruto's birthday. Iruka-sensei gives him a present after treating him to ramen.

Happy Birthday Naruto 🎂 🥳 ���

[sethurnite]

Sometimes, I get the feeling that a sizeable part of the fandom has forgotten Naruto has a canon dad, who is just man who isn't flashy, or a genius, or famous, or any number of Hokage/Hokage candidates, but stepped up for Naruto when no one else did. I do find myself wondering why this is the case often, but I find I don't usually like my guesses.

To Umino Iruka, without whom there is no Naruto as we know it.

[sethurnite]

😭💕

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Oh Iruka, sweet hearted Iruka. You didn't even notice Sadoru had a crush on you, huh?

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😉😉😉😉😉😉😉😉😉😉😉

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Smile darn ya, smile~

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Okay so can we just take a moment to talk about how badass this moment was? Iruka just yanked a rucking fuma-shuriken out of his spine and lobbed the damn thing at Mizuki.

[sethurnite]

this didn’t make it into my thoughts recap, but…that last shot of the five troop commanders overlooking their battalions made my heart feel so heavy.  

i know it’s a victorious moment in the sense that “we’ve all come together as one and we’ve put our old differences aside in the face of a common enemy” but just…the whole time when shikamaru was explaining the five units i kept wondering ‘ok, where’s kakashi; why haven’t we seen him yet’ and then he steps out onto that platform and you realize the reason he’s not down there with the troops because he’s IN CHARGE of them, and honestly i just couldn’t feel anything in that moment but sadness.  

what’s happening right now is literally kakashi’s worst nightmare.  getting drafted into a second war?  his kids being drafted into a war, with one of them fighting on the opposite side?  this is every one of his worst fears come to life.  he wanted the next generation to be the one that escaped the kind of hell that consumed his own childhood, and now look where they are.  

how awful must it feel, to be standing up there in front of all the children he helped raise and know that they’re about to enter the kind of horrific landscape he prayed they would never have to experience?  to be thrust into a war for the second time in his life, and to this time be directly responsible for the lives of 20,000 people, when his role in the death of just one person during the last war still haunts him?

this is a nightmare.  this is literally kakashi’s definition of hell.  the conversation where he’s ordered into this position is him being asked to willingly re-enter the ugliest and most traumatic period of his life, and there’s not a thing he can do to avoid it.  of course, he doesn’t complain, and he never will, but the response “then i guess i can’t refuse” is worded in a very particular way.  it’s the same wording he gives when he’s about to be made hokage (yet another responsibility he didn’t ask for) - “i’m afraid that i don’t really have a choice.”  he won’t turn down these responsibilities, because people are relying on him to protect them, and he cares too much about his community to say no.  but these roles are ALWAYS things that are forced on him.  they’re situations where he “doesn’t really have a choice.”  they’re burdens he “can’t refuse.”  they’re not things he actually wants for himself.  

the last thing kakashi ever wanted to be was a wartime general.  and the last thing he ever wanted for his kids was for them to experience the kind of battlefield horrors that still keep him up at night.  so even though the shinobi world in general might be feeling triumphant at this moment, i really think that a large part of what kakashi feels while he’s up on that platform is dread for the future facing his children, and grief for the future he wanted them to have.  

[sethurnite]

do you ever just sit and think about this

mizuki telling iruka that naruto is going to take revenge on the village for lying about the fox, and iruka replying “no…naruto isn’t like that” orochimaru telling kakashi that sasuke is an avenger whose heart desires only one thing, and kakashi replying “you think you can take advantage of that?  not sasuke.”

iruka thinking “naruto…he’s just like i was back then”

gai thinking “he reminds me of you, kakashi…when you were young”

mizuki manipulating naruto for his own benefit (“he used you to get the scroll for himself, for his own power!”) and using a big reveal (“they’ve been lying to you your whole life, naruto”) to damage naruto’s trust in the person who’s actually trying to help him

madara doing the exact same thing with sasuke

kakashi telling iruka “actually, you are the only one who can reach naruto’s heart/i believe if you can just hang in there a little longer, you will find the way”

kakashi later being put in a position where he’s the only adult who has a chance of getting through to sasuke…the only adult who even bothers to try

kakashi telling iruka that reaching naruto is “your personal ordeal,” the task he’s meant to complete, the task that he isn’t allowed to quit, even when he goes to the hokage to try and resign 

sakumo telling kakashi “it seems you have unfinished business waiting for you back home/there must be something you’re still meant to do” as kakashi gets yanked out of the afterlife, because kakashi is living out his own personal ordeal now and he isn’t allowed to quit either

i know you have your reasons, but as your teacher i can’t just walk away

i know that’s how you feel, naruto (i *do* know how you feel)

i’m in charge of this child’s safety (i’ll protect you with my life) 

he’s going home with me.

i think about this a Lot.  in particular, i think about the ways in which the ability to make (or not make, as the case may be) a connection to a single trusted adult has such a dramatic effect on the trajectories that naruto and sasuke’s lives take later.

naruto finds “his” grown-up - someone who’s lived the same life he has and who can understand him in a way that others can’t - and that in turn leads him to more connections, more adults to look after him, an entire surrogate family to believe in him/support him/make him feel like he belongs.  sasuke, for his part, also finds “his” grown-up - but in his case, the situation is much more complicated, and he’s never able to reap the attendant benefits.  events conspire to send him running before he can become truly connected to a loving community, and so he never has a chance to build the larger support system that naruto does.  he never finds a jiraiya or a tsunade or a yamato or a bunch of animal sages to give him guidance or a class of peers to fight for him or a village to admire him and protect him.  he has no support network.  every adult he’s met since leaving the Leaf has been someone who’s trying to exploit him, and the instant he realizes that he might be starting to feel the faintest connection to taka, he ditches them.  to this day, the only friends he’s ever made (and i use that term loosely, because even when sasuke was still in the Leaf his relationships weren’t a first priority for him) are sakura and naruto.  and the ONLY adult he’s ever had a true connection with, post-massacre, is kakashi.

sasuke’s going to need all three of these people if he’s going to survive, but i’m focusing on kakashi in this particular piece, because if ever there were a kid who desperately needed a trusted adult to help them navigate their life, sasuke is it.  sasuke has been left to his own devices for years and years (everybody remember that time when a seven year old who witnessed the mass murder of his entire extended family was allowed to wake up ALONE in a hospital room and walk out of the building and revisit the crime scene without anyone noticing he was gone?  i do!).  he has never had an adult to take care of him or help him process the things that happened to him in a semi-healthy way, and nowadays he’s a disaster driving itself off a cliff.  he has zero coping skills that aren’t completely self-destructive.  he won’t accept advice or assistance from anybody who doesn’t understand what he’s going through (and understandably so - why should he listen to anybody who isn’t feeling what he’s feeling, who hasn’t lost the way he’s lost?  what can they possibly have to offer him?).  he needs somebody who can come to him from a place of credibility, someone who can say “i *do* know how you feel” and not be talking out their ass.  that’s what naruto gets from iruka when they finally make their connection - a relationship with an adult who accepts him and believes in him and (most importantly of all) understands him.  that’s naruto’s first step on the way to him reaching the place he inhabits now, where the lonely and shunned orphan he used to be is beloved by everyone, blessed with multiple parental figures, and supported by innumerable friends both at home and abroad.  meeting an adult who could say “we’re the same” and have it genuinely be true instead of just empty talk is what allows naruto to finally feel like he isn’t alone.  it’s what enables him to eventually become part of a community.  

naruto has these opportunities because he finds His Person - a mentor and caretaker who can say with complete honesty “we’re the same.”  sasuke found someone like that, too, and in truth he still has that person chasing after him, but circumstances being what they are, he hasn’t been able to benefit from that relationship the same way naruto has.  he was removed from kakashi’s supervision at the exact moment when he needed it most (and at the exact moment where they had just broken new ground in their relationship), and because of that, he’s remained incredibly isolated.  naruto has steadily accumulated friends and comrades (and five different people to be his dad), but sasuke has connected with no one.  he’s completely alone.  he is - as neji aptly put it - in the darkness right now, and he’s in there all by himself, without friends to support him, and without the only adult who can point him in the right direction.  

honestly, the only thing that makes me feel better about this is knowing that sasuke still has these people waiting for him whenever he comes home.  it’s high time he was able to have his own iruka and benefit from the same network of loving connections that naruto was able to build.

[sethurnite]

Oh hey guys im alive btw

[sethurnite]

Hey, hey! Friendly reminder to make sure your supposedly “fearless” character gets their darkest fear revealed in the worst way possible so they break down into a vulnerable shaking mess in front of all the people they care about