I'm taking time out for reflecting
I'm going one on one with who I'd like to be
I'm leaning towards the sun
Watching flowers blossom all around me
I tried wailin' to a wall
Standin' like porcelain, mumblin',
Salt water rollin' down side burns,
Searchin' for the answers, handling the truth
Seein' it for myself is the only way
Forget a winner, stop being a sinner first
Ruining your liver, smoking cigarettes and worse
Love is a killer, the leading cause of suicide
How to survive a day in the life of times
[chorus]
I'll rock the vote not to hear you
Tell me that I'm watching too much T.V.
Then I'll hope that I can win with the lazy bones I'm livin' in
It's not my fault I wasn't chosen
I was focused in the open
I deserve so much better than this
I'm shooting airballs from the free-throw line
I'm batting lefty when I know that I'm alright
I'm reaching out for the sun
Being passed by shooting stars overnight
I been livin' with a small inner child
Antsy, I can't sit still for a minute
My shortage of concentration ruins meditation
And my motivation ain't shit
I need a way
My tolerance ain't what it used to be
Dollars make sense sellin' out for a fee
If I didn't have faith, could you still save me?
How to survive the lines we hate to lead
[chorus]
Fuck the future
I'm in the present plague
Can't be a loser, my girl won't stay
I don't know computers, I was sick that day
How to survive the mines we chose to lay
I'll rock you
alright...
Come on!
You can do better than that!
There you go.
[chorus 3x]
-Thicke, "Lazy Bones"
No words to describe how much I love this song; I've got a Naruto AMV to it that's just absofuckinglutely briliant, and I love it.
---------------------
Hey, if I count the bit about Vaz and Asha, I'm still on schedule with the drabble a day. I might even be ahead of schedule, which is cool. (Why is it always about sex, goddamnit? I need to get laid, fuckin' seriously.) Most of 'em are Naruto bits; I've got a Team 10 and a Team 8 drabble, a Sasuke-lusts-after-Naruto drabble, a two-sentence Hinata-is-a-little-bitter thing, a longer, unfinished Lee/Neji thing that mostly involves Neji humiliating himself and me trying to make subtle statements and failing, a longish set of successive drabbles that follow the spiral from the sennin to team 7 (called, originally enough, "Spirals" harr harr I r so clever), and a long, unfinished "Look, I made Naruto cry!" fic that also doubles as a getting-what-you-always-wanted-sucks story and triples as a "Wait, you can't do that to Sasuke" fic. Only I can do that to Sasuke, because I'm evil and because hey, it could happen. Y'all know it. (And then they all die, and my head explodes. Yes!)
Aaaand, of course, there's a saptastic bit of seme!Iruka and angst!Kakashi that I wrote today in verse writing because I didn't feel like being told that Africa was a big place. Jesus fuck, woman. The imagery that evokes scrubland or desert is practically the opposite of the imagery that evokes a jungle. The ground in a jungle doesn't crack, it squishes, because the definition of a jungle involes way too frickin' much rainfall.
And sue me, I prefer poems that evoke landscapes to those that have political messages. I'm a seasonal poet, after all. (Harr harr.)
Anyway. Saptastick IruKaka fluff makes me happy, because reading the Kakashi Gaiden chapters of the manga just cement this image of Kakashi as a prickly, needy, shy young man in my head. Prickly, needy, shy, and schizo, that is. Man, there were a few days there when I disliked him a lot for the pettiest of reasons- he was being nice to Sasuke and not beating the boy over the head. Now I adore him because he's an utter jackass.
And now I go into GIANT GEEKTASTIC FANDOM DISCUSSION mode, and talk about Iruka. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. In other words, I'm going to wank about my favorite character for a while.
I have a huge problem with the way fandom generally portrays Iruka- granted, it's just fandom in the areas that I read, so it's possible that he's portrayed in a less weeping-uke sort of manner with greater frequency outside of the yaoi fandom, but it irritates me. I like Iruka- he's a genuinely nice guy with a remarkably uncomplicated past and no ulterior motives- and the series has far too few of those. But nice does not equal weak, and it certainly doesn't equal effeminate. I haven't watched the anime, but I don't know how anyone could read the manga and come to that conclusion.
I hate the way fandom tends to portray him, but I still adore Kakashi/Iruka as a pairing, because it tends to be cute and fluffy, and I'm a sucker for cute and fluffy. But I hate it when Iruka is referred to as a "lowly Chuunin." Granted, he's the only adult in the series who isn't a Jounin who actually does stuff, which makes him seem a bit like he doesn't quite measure up, but the Chuunin exam arc made it pretty clear that you still rank when you're a middle ninja. It's not like the man's completely incapable of taking care of himself; if nothing else, he's got an amazing pain threshold- okay, so he got kind of royally thrashed in the fight with Mizuki in the beginning, but he was protecting Naruto at the time, so you can forgive him for not dodging a couple of kunai and a giant shuriken when the only other alternative was see the main character of the series snuff it within the first five chapters.
And even after getting turned into a pincushion, Iruka yanked the fucking shuriken out of his back, coughed up some blood, and told Mizuki to go fuck himself. I thought that was pretty badass, even if I am substituting some of my own dialogue into those speech bubbles.
I can accept that, compared to Kakashi or any of the other Jounin (or most of the male kids), he doesn't really measure up. But he's not weak and he's not unskilled (he has to teach this stuff, after all), and he's capable of taking care of himself- and if he can't take care of himself, then he's just as capable of accepting his fate. He's not looking for someone to protect him; he's got too much compassion to allow anyone to risk their own life for his.
(Why yes, I am making glaring assumptions here. I told you this would be full of wank.) I'm getting this mostly from the dead parents thing and the fact that he's a teacher (which also doesn't equal weak). If you're teaching children, then I have to assume you're either a) crazy, b) twisted enough to want to mold all those little minds to your own whims, or c) in need of something to protect and nurture.
Though now that I think about it, I mostly just get the feeling that he'd be irritated if someone tried to coddle him; he's not an idiotic teenager, he's an actual adult. I also get the feeling that no one in the series (aside from maybe Naruto) would be stupid enough to try, regardless of any romantic feelings. They're bloody ninjas, after all. Pretty much everyone in the series has a name on that stupid cenotaph that they care about.
Anyway. The "Help me I'm lonely please protect me" Iruka stereotype just pisses me off. Maybe he's a little more laid back in the anime, but in the manga he isn't shy about voicing his feelings or getting ticked off. Naruto doesn't automatically reduce him to a puddle of goo- he yelled at the brat pretty good when he was pulling pranks and being stupid. And Kakashi may have cowed him a bit in chapter 35, but he was being an ass and even Kurenai and Asuma saw him as being out of line. (Clearly if Kakashi is an ass to Iruka in one of the three interactions they have in the manga it means they're in luuuuv.) It seemed to me more a case of Kakashi being a scary bastard (which he is) and Iruka being outranked by his superiors.
I just don't see Iruka as the sort of person who would need or want a relationship in which he was the one being protected or coddled; like I said before, he's an adult and can take care of himself. But fic that makes him act like a wibbly idiot wouldn't bother me half so much if it didn't always portray him as effeminate.
Hello? What? Slender and delicate? Who? People need to stop looking at the Japanese porn because, dude. Kishimoto did not create an effeminate, waiflike design for Iruka. Kakashi is about an inch taller and three pounds heavier according to the official stats, which would give him a more slender build than Iruka. And really, I don't care how hard you squint, he's not going to look any girlier. The man is the opposite of girly, from his skin and hair color to the shape of his face. It just- gah! It irritates me. Yes, he's all caring and kind and compassionate and manly, damnit!
He's also not flamingly gay or completely innocent like some other characters(*coughcoughsasukecoughgaicoughcough*)- Naruto's sexy no jutsu did work on him, after all. And, once again, he's 25. He's not a kid, he just teaches them. And yes, he was blushing the first time he actually talked to Kakashi, but that's mostly because Kakashi was being an ass- as usual. He doesn't spent all his time blushing, it was just the once when they were talking about Naruto. >_<
So, yes. I like my Iruka strong, confident, snarky, and manly (rarr), and I like my Kakashi fucked in the head with a hefty side helping of jackass and confused. Together, they are unstoppable! ...okay, actually, they're mostly just hawt. But I can pretend, right?
Right. Maybe my next fanrant will be about Shino and how much he rawks the sawks. Awk. ...and stuff.
And, sweet chrisy, I love this feckin' song. *listens to it on repeat for the seventh time in a row* It's so perfect it hurts. "I'm batting lefty but I know that I'm alright..."
No comments:
Post a Comment