#and if history teach as anything

[owlithere]

Missed Opportunities: Naruto #2

Sasuke should not have been the last Uchiha! And I am not counting our dear villains, because by the end of the story, they have all died.

For as long as I can remember I've always questioned the Uchiha massacre. I understood pretty well why it happened, it wasn't Kishimoto's biggest screw-up in terms of plot either, but I never understood why only Sasuke survived. Ba, to create a narrative in which it would turn out that more people survived, further leaving the plot of Sasuke being the lonely prince, seemed quite simple to me. It wouldn't even have been necessary to change the main plotline, because it would have been enough that Sasuke would not have been aware of it.

Ah and I'm not including the Boruto storyline here, involving the existence of Sarada. I was never convinced about that continuation.

Why is it illogical that Sasuke was the only survivor? The simplest answer: experienced ninjas and a matter of chance.

Without questioning the abilities of Itachi (who, let's remember, was 13 years old) and Obito (who, while a bit older, was not in the best mental state).

Firstly, Konoha has highly developed medical assistance. The decision to massacre was made by three Hokage advisors. Even if he approved it, I do not believe that if it turned out that help had arrived quickly enough and someone could be saved he would not have allowed it. He has plenty of guilt anyway. (I don't deny that Danzo could have ordered his minions to finish everyone off, but well statistically as they say there is always someone.) Plus being in this profession - most tend to learn how to take a punch, and millimetres sometimes mean a lot.

Secondly how come everyone was supposedly in the village on the Uchiha land at the same time (and only Sasuke was returning late from the academy, where did the rest of the students go, were they faster than Sasuke?). I saw a post once that touched on this, but to repeat. It is known that as a result of the repression and resentment of civilians and some of the shinobi, the Uchiha tended to stay on the sidelines, but that doesn't change the fact that some of them were actively involved in missions - not all of them were in the police force. (I still don't believe that only Itachi and Shisui were in the Anbu.) And even if by some miracle no one had a mission outside the village, or Obito managed to kill all the active shinobi on a mission and no one noticed. It is to be believed that just that day, no one had any urgent business to attend to that would knock him out of his planned rhythm from even that morning. Sickness or childbirth that would have required the main hospital. A sudden visit to a further acquaintance, ba a visit to that cat village of theirs. People really are unpredictable and this kind of stroke of luck happens more often than we think. For example, the survivors of aeroplane crashes - the one girl who fell out of the plane, ended up in a jungle and found her way to civilisation.

Third, even persecuted societies are not homogeneous and the proverbial black sheep will be found everywhere. The proverbial considered from various angles. No matter how many times it was emphasized that everyone wanted to rebel against the village authorities, surely if a poll was conducted the results would not be everyone "- Itachi, Shisui and maybe Sasuke". Statistically there would certainly be votes of I don't know, yes but not strongly, or no but not strongly. So there were definitely a few people who had friends of friends or lovers outside the clan.

And this brings up the argument about infidelities, secret lovers and unplanned pregnancies. Regardless of the situation the clan was in and what rules were in place (trying to maintain the bloodline within the clan, etc.) - people are only human. Hence, as far as I remember, a good example is Izumi, who was drafted into the clan with her mother after it turned out that she had a sharingan (or maybe it was a fan interpretation? anyway). You mean to tell me that there were no Uchih children in the village who either didn't know they were Uchiha, or kept it a secret because that's what their parents wanted - so there wouldn't be a scandal. Especially considering that no matter how good a contraption is it's not foolproof. Additionally, from what I remember it was said somewhere that not every Uchiha needs to activate sharingan. Of course, if one succeeds, there is pride and all, but even considering Obito, no one denied that he was one even if they had different expectations of him. So there's probably a chance that the gene responsible for sharingan could skip a generation-which gives even more room for maneuver when it comes to these types of children.

Truly, I think there is a need for people with Uchiha blood who activated the sharingan, and thus confirmed their blood, as a result of the massacre - as they learned of the death of someone close to them. Or during an attack during the third round of the chunin exam. Or when Pain attacked. (Especially knowing that some activated in through Kyubi - Izumi). The chances that someone was pregnant with an Uchiha child and no one knew about it at the time of the massacre may not be that high, but the possibility that it happened a few times in the past is quite high.

Lastly, the argument goes back to our dear "villains", because if I'm already thinking like that, I could go back to them after all. Although their deaths had a purpose, I still think that both in Itachi's and Obito's cases, if they survived by some miracle, it would be more interesting to see them atone for what they have on their conscience. Particularly Itachi who we know was sick and went untreated anyway. Probably even if they had started treating him after the war he would not have had many years to live.

I would really like to see a scene, especially after the final battle with Naruto, where Sasuke learns that he is not the last one and that if he had stayed in the village he would have found out, either as he gained the rank of chunin (if they were untrained adults) or as soon as it became safe again (in the case of children, to help them - especially if any had trained at the academy).

Let's not kid ourselves, Sasuke always wanted a family (or at least when he was younger he certainly would have appreciated it).

[literallymikewheeler]

i have my ap world exam next thursday. i dont know shit about anything or how to do anything other than mcqs. my teacher did not do anything to prepare us ALL year, and this is my first ap exam. what the fuck do i do.

[deathandnonexistentialdread]

this field card looks somewhat like the temples in Bhubaneshwar

The temple in the field card shares some similarities with the Deula Style of temple architecture found especially in the Odisha state of India.

They both have the dome at the top with the finial (also known as shikhara) as well as the ridged architecture.

[un-pearable]

people in the archaeology subreddit digging up the corpse of indiana jones again for the annual discourse. somehow seem to have forget the most important scene in the film if you’re critiquing his status as an academic

[glauces-notebooks]

rewatching night at the museum for the first time in a while and wow. i missed this film.

[quatregats]

Being constantly reminded in the class I'm TAing for this semester of my 7th grade history teacher who decided to spend the year teaching us about the history of Haiti, South Africa, China, and Chile - by which I mean basically the contents of The Black Jacobins, anti-Apartheid activists (I remember that we watched the biopic of Stephen Biko), the Cultural Revolution, and the coup against Salvador Allende and the repression under Pinochet's government - at a school which was about 70% Black, less than 10% white, and solidly 80-90% immigrant kids. Also she was a lesbian and I know this because she mentioned her wife once or twice. Literally who was doing it like her

[spaceshipkat]

do we think this author can handle this challenge when so many other authors who tried to do the same epically failed?? suppose we’ll find out

[chaoticprussia]

im not super well versed on the history of africa. yet another thing the school system decided it wouldnt bother teaching me. sigh. but i absolutely LOVE all the flags theyve got.

eventually one of these days im gonna sit down and try to read as much african history as humanly possible. its gonna happen. when i find the time and the will to read.. but it will happen.

[cervinae-canine]

i have to know what presidents you used to have a crush on as a kid. i require this information /lh

fine. you'll get the forbidden knowledge.

it was barack obama, abraham lincoln and george washington off the top of my head. also john f. kennedy when i was 14/15 at a brief time

[thebirdandhersong]

Respectfully. I am tired of being helpful :)

[newsies-united]

haha i remember last year when there were two gun threats and a bomb threat at my school. i remember being fucking terrified to go to school for a week. i remember my brother going to seventh grade and my first thought being how do i help him if there's a real gun threat. this country is bullshit

[spokelseskladden]

im from northern norway and i've been pretty lucky with the way most teachers tried to fulfill the learing requirements in the sense that I've actually learned about saami history and erasure, because apparently down in the south of norway a lot of teachers just. skip over the part where the norwegian government tried to erase saami culture and very nearly succeeded so yeah. kinda fucked up that.

[phinnking]

its occurring to me that i might not actually hate geography and just thought that bc every time i had to do geography as a kid it entailed perfectly colouring in and labelling a map of canada

[chomesuke]

every time some usamerican complains abt their schools never teaching them the rest of the world exists I wanna say congratulations, now try learning things outside of school

[ancanthus]

"i was just starting to like james charles 😔😔💔" HE LIKES KIDS?????????????

[lord-squiggletits]

I need to reread the comics again to have specific arguments/evidence for this, but like

I feel a bit like I could've been sympathetic to the way other Cybertronian colonies view Cybertron, if it weren't for the fact that at least several of them (as in, ones that get notable dialogue/screen time) are so low-key self-righteous?

Like, idk... there's a lot of criticism of Cybertronians because they're so "warlike" and how their obsession with violence and vengeance is just dragging the whole galaxy down with them, but uh. The Autobot-Decepticon war was basically a product of societal ills bubbling over for like 6 million years beforehand and then finally boiling over into a 4 million year war that lasted as long as it did because the people involved had immense social/psychological trauma from being "raised" in an oppressive society.

So when the colonists come in being all 'omg you people are so violent and uncivilized why don't you just like, stop fighting' it kind of pissed me off a little bit as a reader/person like. Idk the colonists really came into this society of people full of massive amounts of trauma where even before the war society was super oppressive and no one has any experience of living "normal" lives unaffected by violence and bigotry. And the colonists were like "ummm wow why don't you guys just??? stop fighting???." Like idk it wasn't EVERY SINGLE MOMENT, in fact I think that when it was played for laughs it's quite a funny "fridge horror" type element. It was just annoying because like.... IDK???? It's just really annoying to watch a bunch of people who lived relatively sheltered lives on their own planets come to a different planet full of traumatized people and be like "omg why are you people so fucked up" IDK BRO MAYBE BECAUSE THEIR SOCIETY WAS OPPRESSIVE AND THEY LIVED THROUGH A LIFELONG WAR???

It also doesn't help that the colonies were literally founded based on imperialism and conquest so like, it's fucking rich to hear colonists scolding Cybertronians for their violence ruining the whole galaxy while literally sitting on planets that their Primes colonized from others. The hypocrisy of this is briefly mentioned in Unicron (literally the FINAL STORY OF THE SERIES) but like, that's basically the only time Cybertronian characters are given a reprieve of sympathy from other characters in universe and it's so tiresome.

I've talked to other people who didn't like the colonists and thought they basically (narratively speaking) existed just to shit on the existing characters, and it's actually really easy for me to sympathize with/outright agree with that assessment of the story considering how much of exRID/OP seems to be preoccupied with "Cybertron/the Primes/Optimus sucks" with very few reprieves for anything positive happening and even fewer chances for characters to get to explain themselves and experience a little bit of justice? Like, as the audience, it's just very frustrating to see the characters you spent hundreds of issues keeping up with get shit on by a bunch of "literally-who"s and then not really get a chance to ever defend themselves, either by literally defending themselves in conversation or having some sort of narrative thing happening that vindicates them at least symbolically