“Tobirama, you can’t wear that,” Hashirama blurts out when Tobirama emerges, dressed and ready to accompany his brother to Konoha’s first festival. Tobirama has been anticipating those very words in that very tone for the entire time it took him to put on the kimono, and says nothing. Merely crosses his arms—hands very carefully placed under the sleeves—and waits.
The lack of response throws his brother off but does not deter him, and eventually Hashirama rallies. “Tobirama, that’s—those are your funeral robes,” he says, voice lowered awkwardly, as though Tobirama could have merely missed that fact. And still Tobirama does not dignify that with a response, fingers tightening on his arms.
He is indeed wearing his funeral best, a plain white kimono he last wore when their father finally died. He has grown taller since then, and had to get the layers adjusted separately to fit, hiding this set in amongst several others so as to not arouse suspicion.
Tobirama has planned to wear this from the moment Hashirama first mentioned the idea of a festival. His brother forgets some things far too easily for all that he clings to others; and while Tobirama has always believed that the past should not bind the future, neither can it be simply tossed aside. Like a viper sleeping beneath a pillow it may lie forgotten for a time, but if the past is not acknowledged and addressed, sooner or later it will rear up and strike. His brother’s dream is a fragile hodge-podge of war-torn shinobi, looking for a place of safety, yes, but still untrusting, still with their grudges and grievances. This festival cannot be mere celebration.
“We’ll be late,” he interrupts as Hashirama starts to splutter further, and the so-called ‘God of all Shinobi’ falls silent, still gaping at him like Tobirama is the most impossible thing to have ever walked the earth. Then, as he is wont to do, Hashirama shakes his head despairingly, sighs the way he does whenever Tobirama tells him to stop acting the fool, and slouches out the door.
“Sometimes I think you don’t respect me at all,” Hashirama says halfway to the village center, when he has finally stopped pouting and Tobirama is still mentally running through the roster of who is on guard duty when. He hums noncommittally, ignores his brother’s put-out expression. The Inuzuka and Hyuuga agreed to take the first watch on the wall; their scouts’ keen senses will allow them to enjoy the inaugural fireworks from a distance. And they will be relieved by a contingent of Aburame and Nara, both of whom are comfortable in the deepening shadows of the night and prefer quiet to noisy celebration.
The problem is that Tobirama cannot, for his brother’s life or the village’s survival, recall who the Uchiha, set to follow that round of guards, ended up paired with. He thinks—hopes, prays, furiously tries to remember—that Sarutobi Sasuke volunteered his clan members for the task. The Sarutobi are a generally inoffensive lot, with not much bad blood between them and any of the clans taking refuge in Konoha. It is by far the most sensible grouping, and yet—
Hashirama slips an arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. “Enough,” he murmurs in Tobirama’s ear, in that voice of command he so rarely uses. It shakes Tobirama from his thoughts, leaves him blinking and disoriented, and Hashirama smiles, half tender, half exasperated. “We went over the duty roster half a dozen times together; three more times with Madara and twice with the other clan heads. Stop worrying. This is your festival, too; enjoy it.” Then his lips quirk and his eyes widen into what Tobirama can only ever think of as Hashirama’s frog face and he stage mutters, “Just because you’ve dressed for a funeral…”
Tobirama shrugs the arm off, and almost, almost reminds his brother that there are many who deserved to see this village, this fantasy turned reality, who will never get the chance, starting with their brothers and expanding out to all those trampled under the specter of war. That he is not being obstinate but rather respectful of the fact that many who will attend this celebration do so out of duty, not desire; that there are hearts that will be mourning, for all that they must outwardly appear joyful.
That he has himself been the source of grief for many, the killer of fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers.
But Hashirama is a soft-hearted fool, eager to see and rejoice in the apparent success of his dream, and for all that he wishes his brother understood him better—
Tobirama will not deprive him of this moment. That is why he dressed as he did, the symbolism subtle enough that the reasoning behind it will not occur to Hashirama, will not taint his enjoyment of the evening. He sighs, and tries to put practicality out of mind as he takes his place by Hashirama’s side, face neutral and unbothered by the murmurs that follow him for the duration of the night.
Over the years, he will relax, trading the plain white funeral kimono for something less austere; faint under-patterns of ice blue tracing veins through the outer robe, different textures and cloth softening the impression, but Tobirama’s festival garb will always be mourning white.
So we all know Kishimoto’s Naruto series is one part “do it for the aesthetic”, one part “coherent world building? I don’t know her” and two parts “FUCK WE’RE ON A DEADLINE”, but the fun part as a fan is that trying to make headcanons that tie together all of canon’s unepxlained gaps, inconsistencies, and “because I thought it looked neat” leaps of logic is a good challenge.
In Konoha, almost all the characters have family names. Moreover, these aren’t mere family names in most cases but clan names, with associated symbols that clan members slap on everything that holds still long enough. Konoha itself was founded by two clans, and later joined by other clans, which were independent entities prior to joining Konoha. Loyalty to the clan is a separate thing than loyalty to the village and serves as a major driving force in the plot. Clans are permitted a frankly immoral level of internal sovereignty, to the point that a clan leader (the Hyuuga) is permitted to inflict agonizing pain on “disobedient” branch members, even children, through a cursed seal.
Konoha also seems like a fairly homogenous society. While there is hair and eye colour diversity, the names of the characters are almost all traditionally Japanese. The few characters who don’t have traditionally Japanese names are coded foreign (Tenten, Rock Lee, even Might Guy to an extent).
In contrast, I can’t think of any Kumo characters that have a family name. Instead, Kumo characters all seemed to be named along one of two themes, either letters, or the -ui/-oi names. Kumo is also unique among the nations for having a striking diversity in skin colour, from ultra light to very dark. Yet there doesn’t seem to be any internal conflicts about skin colour, with leaders of all skin tones (I’m counting Samui as a leader since she’s team leader). Instead, everyone seems to interact like family—bickering family, but still family, with clear concern for one another.
One big plot point in the canon narrative from Kumo is that they attempted to kidnap Hinata when she was a child, and the fall-out resulted in Konoha killing Hizashi and supplying Kumo with his sealed corpse. There seems to be an assumption in the fandom (and possibly intended by the creator) that if Hinata had been kidnapped, her eyes would have been stolen and given to someone else. But what if that wasn’t the case?
What if unlike Konoha’s clan-centric mercenary culture, Kumo was formed out of a very different culture, a raiding culture? In my headcanon, rather than mercenaries who took jobs from the wealthy, the ninjas who became Kumo were raiders who plundered, and one of the specific things they would plunder would be promising children. These children would be raised as full members of the society. In Kumo society, children are raised mostly communally, even though of course some people do give birth and thus you have brothers like Ay and Killer Bee, there is still a sense that everyone is your sibling and all the adults are your parents. Kidnapping would become, in fact, an integral part of Kumo culture. This is why so many kids have names that seem like code names (Cee, Jay) or names based on personalities or quirks (Samui, Atsui). It’s not a culture that cares about your lineage, to the point that’s it’s not even part of your name.
A number of fans have commented that Darui looks like he could be Kakashi’s “brother from another mother”, as well as certain personality commonalities and their shared lightning affinity. (Darui’s shoulder tattoo even has a Hatake-like tilted diamond field as a replacement for the “field” part of the lightning kanji.) In my headcanon I also include that Lightning ninja would deliberately attempt to get pregnant by highly talented foreign ninja. So in my headcanon, Darui really is Kakashi’s half-brother and Sakumo’s son. (I haven’t decided yet whether Darui knows and doesn’t care, or just doesn’t know.)
Within Kumo, they don’t consider kidnapping to be an evil crime, but rather a liberation. I can imagine them saying to themselves, “Look at how other nations treat their children! We are saving them!” So in my headcanon, if they HAD succeeded in kidnapping Hinata… she actually would have had a much happier childhood, and ain’t that a kick in the head to the Will of Fire and its supposed defense of the next generation.
In conclusion, Kumo is basically the Lost Boys with no Peter Pan, and they think every other village is Captain Hook. And they have a point.
Tobirama, as a mid-teen? I don’t know. x’D I’ll redo it one day on my Kindle. It’s a bit uglier on the computer than irl, because I took this pic with my cheap-ass phone.
So. Iruka is a chuunin. He’s a teacher. He’s also super tricky and pretty damn clever, able to use a lot of misdirection and traps to fight. He’s very good at what he does, too, or he likely wouldn’t have been allowed to teach pretty much all of the Clan Heirs at such a young age. He has a tragic backstory, but he manages to overcome it because of his big heart and his massive amounts of empathy.
However, what I usually see in Iruka as he’s presented in fics, he’s…not that. Usually he’s Naruto’s immediate best friend and supporter, and while I love Naruto having a person like that, I feel like it takes away from the absolute steel spine that let Iruka actually work through his trauma and decide to do what was best for Naruto despite it. Iruka’s incredibly brave and strong. The way he shows it is by being kind to the person housing the monster that killed his parents, and you can say anything you want about it being unfair that Naruto is seen as Kurama, but technically he can very much let the Kyuubi out and that’s what everyone is afraid of. It’s what Iruka is afraid of. And despite that, because he sees in Naruto the same truant, argumentative brat that he used to be when he was dealing with so much loneliness, Iruka overcomes his fear. He reaches out to Naruto when no one but Hiruzen and Teuchi previously have, and that’s amazing. People taking that away from him is…disappointing.
This part’s entirely because of personal taste, but I really dislike it when people write Iruka as a badass secret ANBU with a thousand skills who goes on terrifying missions and is one of the village’s best, etc, etc. Because to me it says a hell of a lot that Naruto’s role model, the closest family he has, is a simple chuunin teacher. Iruka is a schoolteacher. He’s strong, but he struggles when he’s fighting Mizuki and nearly dies. Naruto has to save him. And yet Naruto sees him as one of the coolest people in his life, because he’s brave in a different way than most shinobi. He’s kind, and he’s selfless, and he’s willing to risk his life for his students because it’s the right thing to do. He’s strict and he has a tendency to yell and Naruto looks up to him even though he’s not this pinnacle of shinobi-ideal warrior bravery. In the manga Iruka is the first person to teach Naruto kindness, and friendship. And it says a lot about both of them that this is the person Naruto takes after the most, no matter how hard things get.
There’s also this tendecy to make Iruka perfectly mild-mannered and sweet and the Perfect Mother Figure, and just. I always wonder if we know the same canon. Iruka is loud and fierce and a bit of a hardass, at least 45% of a disaster at any given moment, and he’s hotheaded, too. He makes mistakes and yells when he’s worried or can’t find the right words. It makes him incredibly human, and sanding that away to create a Perfect Uke for Kakashi or someone drives me bonkers.
Canon Iruka is one of my favorite characters. Canon Iruka is amazing. What people patch together from different tropes and call Iruka just….doesn’t feel like the one I fell in love with.
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