We Are Fucked

yeah ok. tbh this is actually just me talking abt my own experiences with my older cousins LMAO

edit: cont

Fighting dreamers…

My favourite kind of fics to read and to write

★ 【parapiro】 「 推しの共通点 」 ☆ ✔ republished w/permission ⊳ ⊳ follow me on instagram

“For some time, Hollywood has marketed family entertainment according to a two-pronged strategy, with cute stuff and kinetic motion for the kids and sly pop-cultural references and tame double entendres for mom and dad. Miyazaki has no interest in such trickery, or in the alternative method, most successfully deployed in Pixar features like Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3 and Inside/Out, of blending silliness with sentimentality.”

“Most films made for children are flashy adventure-comedies. Structurally and tonally, they feel almost exactly like blockbusters made for adults, scrubbed of any potentially offensive material. They aren’t so much made for children as they’re made to be not not for children. It’s perhaps telling that the genre is generally called “Family,” rather than “Children’s.” The films are designed to be pleasing to a broad, age-diverse audience, but they’re not necessarily specially made for young minds.”

“My Neighbor Totoro, on the other hand, is a genuine children’s film, attuned to child psychology. Satsuki and Mei move and speak like children: they run and romp, giggle and yell. The sibling dynamic is sensitively rendered: Satsuki is eager to impress her parents but sometimes succumbs to silliness, while Mei is Satsuki’s shadow and echo (with an independent streak). But perhaps most uniquely, My Neighbor Totoro follows children’s goals and concerns. Its protagonists aren’t given a mission or a call to adventure - in the absence of a larger drama, they create their own, as children in stable environments do. They play.”

“Consider the sequence just before Mei first encounters Totoro. Satsuki has left for school, and Dad is working from home, so Mei dons a hat and a shoulder bag and tells her father that she’s “off to run some errands” - The film is hers for the next ten minutes, with very little dialogue. She’s seized by ideas, and then abandons them; her goals switch from moment to moment. First she wants to play “flower shop” with her dad, but then she becomes distracted by a pool full of tadpoles. Then, of course, she needs a bucket to catch tadpoles in - but the bucket has a hole in it. And on it goes, but we’re never bored, because Mei is never bored.”

“[…] You can only ride a ride so many times before the thrill wears off. But a child can never exhaust the possibilities of a park or a neighborhood or a forest, and Totoro exists in this mode. The film is made up of travel and transit and exploration, set against lush, evocative landscapes that seem to extend far beyond the frame. We enter the film driving along a dirt road past houses and rice paddies; we follow Mei as she clambers through a thicket and into the forest; we walk home from school with the girls, ducking into a shrine to take shelter from the rain; we run past endless green fields with Satsuki as she searches for Mei. The psychic center of Totoro’s world is an impossibly giant camphor tree covered in moss. The girls climb over it, bow to it as a forest-guardian, and at one point fly high above it, with the help of Totoro. Much like Totoro himself, the tree is enormous and initially intimidating, but ultimately a source of shelter and inspiration.”

“My Neighbor Totoro has a story, but it’s the kind of story that a child might make up, or that a parent might tell as a bedtime story, prodded along by the refrain, “And then what happened?” This kind of whimsicality is actually baked into Miyazaki’s process: he begins animating his films before they’re fully written. Totoro has chase scenes and fantastical creatures, but these are flights of fancy rooted in a familiar world. A big part of being a kid is watching and waiting, and Miyazaki understands this. When Mei catches a glimpse of a small Totoro running under her house, she crouches down and stares into the gap, waiting. Miyazaki holds on this image: we wait with her. Magical things happen, but most of life happens in between those things—and there is a kind of gentle magic, for a child, in seeing those in-betweens brought to life truthfully on screen.”

A.O. Scott and Lauren Wilford on “My Neighbor Totoro”, 2017.  

Every time I see Kakashi in this meme he's always drawn as the startled, shocked, scared one and my mind instantly goes "bold of you to assume that Kakashi would give a single F" so here's how I think Kakashi would react in this meme XD

You gotta love that little sassy 4 year-old who have that huge effect on his feared by nations, marked as flee on sight in bingo books, stronger than the Legendary Sannin, legendary white fang dad.

Look at those little hands on his hips silently challenging his dad 😂

I don't understand how some people are saying that Kakashi's story wasn't as sad as the others..

1- Most likely his mother died giving birth to him based on the fact that his father said that no one died as young as her and there was no memories of her at all.

2- At the age of 4 his father has been disgraced for doing the right thing which is saving his friends and the whole Village looked down on him and treated them like trash which drove sakumo into severe depression

3- Few months later his father who was all he had killed himself and Kakashi a 4 years old child was the one to find his corpse and report his death to the Hokage, in Sakumo's funeral 4 years old Kakashi heard everyone at the funeral trash talking his father calling him, weak, traitor, disgrace including the friends he saved, they literally said "first he abandoned his mission then he committed something so weak as self harm, what a disgrace, we didn't even ask him to save us"

4- The village treated him as a son of a traitor which forced him to act only by the rules in fear of being like his father he forced himself to leave all of his emotions and childhood behind.

5- At this point Naruto and Sasuke had the 3rd hokage kinda looking after them (although he did a bad job at it) then assigning iruka to look after Naruto but Kakashi had no one at all he had to go fishing everyday in order to survive because he couldn't afford to buy food, he taught himself to cook from books and eat the fishes he cought himself everyday.

6- When he finally tried to let go and feel like he had friends and people who cared about him he was put in the exact same situation that killed his father choosing between the mission that would stop the war or his friends, his friend (Obito) died saving him telling him to protect the girl he loved (Rin) as his dying wish and giving him his eye which constantly reminded him of the pain he felt that day.

7- Few months later the girl who was his only friend now (Rin) and who he promised his dead best friend (Obito) to protect chose to use him as a weapon to suicide, the Sharingan forced him to see Rin's blood on his hand everytime he looked at it.

8- Drowning on his pain, self beating, guilt, nightmares and waking up to see Rin's blood on his hand that wont wash off no matter how hard he tried like all of that wasn't enough agony his sensei who was the last person remained of the closest thing to family he had also died leaving him all alone drowning further into his depression.

9- he had PTSD and severe depression for more than 10 years, he wanted to die but he didn't wanna die the same way his father died so instead he was taking the most dangerous solo missions in Anbu hoping that one day the enemy would out number him ad kill him

10- When he finally saw a little hope by teaching team 7 and getting to love them Sasuke left the village and yet again he blamed himself for something that wasn't his fault and felt like he lost yet another loved one.

He spent his whole life suffering between the graves of all the people who had been precious to him.. he almost lost everything and everyone he loved. He never had a childhood at all and as an adult he tried so hard to distance himself from the world and hide his pain behind acting nonchalant which wasn't how he truly felt because he was afraid of getting too close to people just to end up losing them again not only that, his friend that he spent his whole life idolizing and living by his memory turned out to be the master mind of the biggest terrorist organization and declared the war, he had to fight him then watch him dying all over again.

ko-fi

this was the moment where i knew i was a goner.  

i didn’t even LIKE this show back when i watched these episodes, and yet i specifically remember mumbling “oh my god” when i heard those steps on the porch and kakashi’s gentle voice saying can i talk to you.

the idea that this man would even take the time.  kakashi met these people two days ago.  he’s a total stranger to them.  he’s not responsible for inari.  he’s not a part of inari’s family.  he’s a temporary employee, one who’s not even being paid for his work, thanks to tazuna’s lie.  he has absolutely no reason to get involved when this tiny child has a meltdown at the dinner table - and yet.

out he goes onto the porch, after the crying child.  the fact that he does this at all would be admirable enough in its own right, but it’s not just that.  it’s the way he’s such a natural with children, the way he’s such an intuitively skilled teacher, the way he treats inari with the same kind of respect that he would afford to a fellow adult, while still addressing him in a way that a younger mind can easily understand.  it’s the “can i talk to you” - giving this little child the autonomy to say no, instead of using the fact that one person is an adult and one is a child to force an interaction.  it’s the way he always refers to kaiza as “your father,” even though inari and kaiza weren’t technically related (and even though the first thing tazuna says about kaiza is “he wasn’t [inari’s] real father”) - kakashi takes his cues from inari, and for inari, kaiza WAS his real father, and so that’s what kakashi calls him, every single time.  it’s the way he acknowledges that what naruto said wasn’t very nice.  it’s the way he gently explains the circumstances that might have prompted naruto to say something like that, opening inari’s eyes to how naruto and inari have experienced similar pains.  and it’s the way he does all of this without giving away a single hint that his own childhood might have been anything other than perfectly pleasant - the complete decentering of the self, the mending of the children around him without them ever realizing a single thing about why he does it.

kakashi tells inari “i think [naruto] knows better than any of us what you’re going through” - and at the time when i was watching, i was like “sure, sounds legit!”  but now, looking back, and armed with so much more information, i know the truth, which is that there’s someone in the room who understands inari even better than naruto.  naruto grew up without parents, yes.  but the story tazuna tells Team 7 isn’t about growing up alone and shunned as an orphan.  it’s about inari having a father who he loved and revered (“the man who taught us the word courage, who was known as a hero”), and then having him be (literally, on an actual cross) crucified for standing up for what’s right (“this man has defied the gato corporation…he has disturbed the order of this land”), and then inari having a trauma-induced crisis and rejecting his father’s heroic ideals because they no longer feel real or possible to him (“since then, inari’s changed.  so did tsunami, and all our people…we lost our will”), and then inari ripping his father’s face out of their family photo in the kitchen (“[inari] never laughs or smiles anymore.  ever since that day when everything changed.”)

naruto and inari do end up connecting eventually, because kakashi helps them recognize where they have common ground.  but the person at the table who really understands the crying child (the child who’s shouting “there’s no such thing as a hero!”) is kakashi.  the person who really understands inari’s anger at being left behind - at having a beloved parent make a decision that takes them out of your life forever, when they could have just kept their heads down and stayed with you - is kakashi.  the person who understands both inari’s rage at others’ idealism and his unwillingness to break gato’s rules as feelings that come from a place of fear (“gato’s got a whole army; he’ll beat you down and they’ll destroy you!”) is kakashi.

you told me that you’d protect me and this land with both your arms.  you made me believe you could do it.  but it was all just a lie! 

kakashi understands.  he knows, and just like always, he steps in to help.  he sees a suffering child, and he knows he can do something about it, and he gets involved, even though he doesn’t have to, even though it’s not his job, even though there is literally no reason why he should be the one to comfort this kid when inari’s mother and grandfather are sitting right there in the same house.  kakashi doesn’t do it because he’s obligated.  he does it because he can’t NOT do it, because this is who he is, because this is how much he cares, because he’s the avatar for what jiraiya tells young!nagato in the pain arc: “it is because one understands such pain that generosity towards others becomes second nature.”

this scene with inari is in episode TWELVE.  twelve, of one thousand.  at this point in the show, we know nothing about kakashi.  we have no idea what his life has been like.  but this show still tells us exactly who he is, right then and there, when he walks out onto that porch and asks a stranger’s crying child “can i talk to you?”  from that point on, we know - he’s The Teacher.  he’s the one who walks ahead of everyone else, enduring his own pain and using it to help others navigate theirs.  he’s the support structure.  he’s the guide, the protector of children.  it was true nine hundred episodes ago in the land of waves, and it’s true where i’m currently watching, too, in the shadow of the infinite tsukuyomi, when kakashi asks sasuke “what is your current dream?” - because never mind the war, never mind the three intervening years of conflict and bad blood, never mind the danger encroaching on all sides - kakashi is still kakashi.  he’s still the one who sees a lost child and asks, “can i talk to you?”  

i’m not sure he’ll get a response as positive as inari’s this time, or that he’ll get any response at all, but i think it matters to remember that nothing - nothing - has ever changed him from being the kind of person who asks this question.