Mia Kitty

Naruto Thoughts

It’s kind of funny to go through AO3 and see how pervasive certain canon has become that has either been implicitly or explicitly contradicted by the text. Little stuff and big stuff scattered throughout.

Like, how everyone assumes Kakashi only read Icha Icha, but I’m pretty sure the implication is supposed to be that, during the bell test, it was his first time reading the series. Then there’s all this stuff about how Kakashi never taught Team 7 anything just because we never see it in the page. It’s pretty clearly implied that time has passed between the bell test and the Wave Arc, with the assumption being that training happened during that time. I think Kishimoto just doesn’t like drawing training scenes. Then there’s the bit about Sakura being super weak, like yeah, she’s not written super well and she’s definitely weaker than the boys, but her standard is still super human. Sakura, even in the first half of the manga, would be able to beat any regular person without any kind of problem. Sasuke seems to lose a lot of personality too, he didn’t get all stoic until after the time skip, he’s actually pretty expressive throughout the first half. Then there’s the idea that Naruto was outright abused by the citizens of Konoha. Okay, so we have no idea how he was taken care of between baby to kid in an apartment, but there’s nothing to indicate that he was treated nearly as horribly as a lot fic seem to write him to be. In the flashbacks it looks like he was pretty much the target of a lot of neglect and poor treatment with a lot of glares and people talking badly about him. But I don’t think there’s any evidence he was physically harmed. Not that abuse needs to be physical to be bad but people seem to really like to turn Naruto’s backstory into just the worst. The Sandaime might have made a lot of mistakes, but I don’t think even he would have allowed Naruto to be the regular target of people throwing things at him and feeding him rotten food. I don’t know, it’s just kind of funny how things got all twisted around in the fandom.

My Buffy Problem

I like Spuffy as a couple, I intensely dislike Bangel, but I really like Angel as a character. Angel might actually be my favorite character, I just can’t stand him with Buffy, I think they bring out the worst in each other. My problem, why do so many Spuffy stories have to come with Angel bashing? They give plenty of evidence for why they don’t work together that doesn’t take from either character. Why do they have to turn Angel into this huge bully? Why can’t they just have Angel naturally mature away from Buffy? I get he had a lot of problematic behavior around her when he was with her, treating her like one of his former victims minus the killing at the end, but he hadn’t been around humans in decades, he didn’t know how to act around them. Angel’s show is all about him learning to be human, really, Buffy showed him that he could be redeemed, that’s why he’s so attached, but they don’t work. Also, what’s with everyone saying he lost his soul because he had took Buddy’s virginity? It was about her acceptance of him, he felt absolved by her so he could feel truly happy for a brief moment. After Angelus returned, Angel realized he could never be absolved by someone else, he just has to be better on his own and help people. I’m just frustrated by people feeling the need to detract from Angel as a character in order to boost Spuffy, Spuffy doesn’t need it, Spike and Buffy work as a couple on their own because they’re compatible people.

One Piece Thought

Don’t know if there’s anything out there that contradicts this but as far as the main manga goes, Luffy met Shanks when he was about 6 or 7 and living in Foosha village. He went to stay with Dadan afterwards and lived mostly in her care until he was 17, but what about before? I think it’s pretty common fanon that Luffy was mostly cared for by Makino and was otherwise some kind of wild village child. We also know that he had to have been with Dragon for at least a bit before being handed over to Garp, but we don’t know what age that happened at, only that Luffy was young enough that he didn’t remember his dad at all. So here’s my thought, what if Luffy was, like 3 when he ended up on Dawn Island? That young enough to not have any permanent memories. I don’t know, I just like the idea of Dragon actually getting to raise his son for a while. Maybe Dragon decided to take Luffy to Garp after Luffy’s mom was killed in a raid or something. There’s just room to play around with things.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Headcannon

I was feeling nostalgic thinking of the show and had this thought, where did Yusei, Jack and Crow learn to ride their duel runners? The show says that the duel runner Jack stole from Yusei was the first one he built, but they already knew how to drive and do so well enough that Jack became the King of turbo duels shortly thereafter. All three do some pretty spectacular stunts while riding, and that’s not the kind of thing you learn in a day. So I was thinking, Satellite’s a dumping ground for junk and trash, and something that probably became a lot less popular after duel runners were invented are regular old motorcycles. What if the guys found some, or parts of some that Yusei and Crow then built into bikes, and taught each other how to ride. Martha’s great but there’s no way she had the time to keep constant supervision over all the kids she was raising all the time. It’s canon that Yusei, Jack, and Crow had the time and lack of supervision to get caught up in gang fights, so clearly they had pretty free reign to get up to who knows what. So we’ve got three pre-teen boys with little supervision who find and reconstruct some old motorcycles where they then teach themselves how to drive. They would have had plenty of space to run around and I imagine they probably dared each other into doing stupid stunts. They also probably taught themselves turbo duels with regular duel disks. I’m just picturing them being the adrenaline junkies that they are and doing all sorts of stupid stuff that probably eventually ended in the three beat up motorcycles being destroyed and then after they met Kyousuke and made their gang. We never got a full idea how long that stuff went in for, but I’m guessing only like a year or so. So, pre-teen trio teach themselves to drive and run their bikes into the ground over the course of a few years. Then the three, probably age 14-ish meet Kyousuke and all that stuff happens. The three split after the gang fell apart, at some point Yusei falls in with the three friends we see at the start of the show and he builds his first duel runner. This was something he probably started after their motorcycles broke and worked on off and on over the next three-ish years until Jack steals it at age 16-ish. Two years later and we’ve got the beginning of the show with Yusei at 18.

Hetalia - Hogwarts

I don’t actually have much interest in the Harry Potter fandom, not anymore. I think the entire series is overrated and that there are way too many Hogwarts AUs out there.

That being said, America would absolutely be sorted into Slytherin no matter what he likes to say about him being the Hero.

Kakashi’s Sharingan

So for some reason most of the fandom seems to think Kakashi was stronger with the Sharingan, and yeah, without it there’s no more Kamui or Chidori, but I still feel like not having a constant chakra drain would be vastly superior to those two techniques. Like, it always seemed to me that the Sharingan kind of crippled him, with it he had to constantly be careful of his stamina and chakra reserves, which are the two most important parts of being a shinobi. I feel it was made pretty clear that the main reason Naruto was able to do most of his most impressive feats was because he could throw around chakra like nothing else and just, never got tired really. I always imagined Kakashi having to hold back in fights because he never knew when he’d run out of chakra. That would have limited his ability to practice too, because he had to be careful to not overdo it all the time, which would be a lot shorter of a period for him than other people. Even in taijutsu, pretty much everyone uses chakra to enhance their speed and strength, not to the degree of Sakura and Tsunade, but they all still did it. Kakashi always seemed to be fainting from chakra exhaustion, just, imagine if Kakashi had, instead of adjusting to the Sharingan for the past 16 years, spent that time improving himself overall. The kid was a genius and had started to figure out how to add nature change to the rasengan when he was 10, what would he have been able to do if he could rely on his chakra reserves. I just picture Kakashi being seriously stronger after the fourth war without a Sharingan crippling him anymore.

Frustration of a Fic Reader

One of the most frustrating things about reading fanfic is finding a story that has a really interesting sounding premise, or is one of the very few about a rare ship, only for it to be really poorly written. This is even worse with small fandoms because you’re completely starved for content but what little you have isn’t any good. I don’t have the ability to look past grammatical errors and shitty dialogue to enjoy what good there does exist. So it’s there but I can’t enjoy it and I don’t really have any other options.

There’s also the frustration of stumbling across a really good story far too soon, when it only has one or two chapters. With official webcomics or a webnovel, there’s a schedule you can rely on for releases, but with fic, you’re stuck waiting in ambiguity until the writer posts. Though, at least this frustration is balanced out a bit by the feeling of excitement you get when you’ve got that email in your inbox giving you a new update. I love that feeling, brief as it is.

Fairy Tail

My extremely belated list of Fairy Tail ships:

Natsu x Lucy

Gray x Juvia

Erza x Jellal

Wendy x Chelia

Levy x Gajeel

Laxus x Mirajane

Elfman x Evergreen

Freed x Bickslow

Lisanna x Cana

Loke x Mama Pisces

The Fanfiction Question

The one thing I’ve never been able to understand are those unfinished stories that have no proper explanation as to what happened to the author. The ones that say they haven’t been updated in years but when you read the author’s note it sounds like they are still writing it and plan to regularly update, some even specifically promise an upcoming update that never came. What happened? I get that since it’s fanfiction these stories are being done at the author’s leisure and we can’t expect too much, but is it that hard for the author to write a quick note saying they’ve abandoned the story or they’re going on hiatus? Why just leave it without explanation? The not knowing is one of the most frustrating things about fanfiction, even when compared to the over abundance of horrible out of character stories.

Star Wars Thought

So...did Bail Organa basically kidnap Leia? Luke went to his aunt and uncle, which is already kind of suspect because it doesn’t seem like either of them really had much of a connection to Padme or Anakin but at least there’s a legitimate familial connection and I guess Anakin probably lost all rights to decisions over his kids after he became Vader, but I really don’t think Padme would have been all that on board with a.) her children being separated or b.) neither of them going to her family or people she trusts to raise them. She met Owen and Breha all of one time? And I get Bail was probably her friend, but I really don’t think a work colleague would have been all that high on her list of guardians over say...her sister? Her parents? Her handmaidens/best friends? Luke can be explained, he went to nominal family in a place outside the purview of the Emperor where his father couldn’t find him. But Leia? She was raised on a stage in the very heart of the Empire, very obviously not related to Bail or Breha and being given the same title and position as her mother. She could not have possible been in more danger, besides that, no way Bail had any legal right to take her, whatever his intentions, he basically kidnapped her from her proper family who definitely would have done a better job of keeping her away from Vader and the Emperor. Even if Padme’s family were considered too dangerous, Padme’s handmaidens could have easily disappeared outside the Empire. I just can’t stop thinking about how Padme’s agency as a mother was violated by these three men who had very loose connections to her and really didn’t have any right to decide how her children would be raised.

I’m also never going to not be angry that Bail had C-3PO’s memory wiped without any kind of by your leave. He had no right to either of those droids either. The more I think about it the more angry I get.