emimoo:

I’ve been wanting to write this out for awhile. I just. Do not understand why people hate Sasuke so much for leaving the village.

So first off, lets keep in mind how old he was. He was 12, like all the other main kids. From the time he was a baby he was expected to live up to Itachi standards of skill and smarts by his father and, albeit on a more passive level, by his teachers and other members of his clan. Obviously he can’t keep up, he isn’t Itachi no matter how much his dad would like to believe he has one son in two physical forms. In fact, the only person who really looks out for him on this front is Itachi himself, but Sasuke has the grudge every younger sibling has. His parents pay a lot of attention to Itachi and not a lot to him. That’s just what happens when you have a 5-7 year age gap between you and your sibling. Except his is amplified, because he’s also compared to him constantly in a way that makes him feel inferior. So from a young age he’s got this idea that he has to be better, he has to measure up to his fathers standards because he wants praise and to be noticed as his own person for once. Now despite his grudge, he also looks up to Itachi. He’s his goal, his big brother, and if he could get really noticed by Itachi? Then he’s done good! But Itachi is unattainable, and that is a rough mix for a kid to go through. Distant siblings are hard to work with. Especially when you want to love them, but you’ve got a grudge. Itachi was much better for Sasuke in this stage than their father, granted, I mean his dad didn’t even realize that his 8 year old son had burn marks around his mouth because he was training for days on end to impress him, to live up to his brother. And when he does get noticed? Its after Itachi and their dad have a falling out. He feels like a replacement, and that fuels him to be as good as his dad wants him to be, but it also makes him feel awful. 

So now that little Sasuke has all these awful, confusing feelings and conflicting complexes, the massacre happens, and simultaneously his role model status of Itachi is crushed, and that unreachable persona of Itachi is amplified. He also gets fuckin tsukuyomi-ed at such a young age which alone can cause so much mental damage. So now, our lowkey abused child has ptsd, almost certainly depression, and he still has a lingering complex from his childhood that spurrs him to chase after Itachi that grew increasingly complex and twisted by Itachis little speech about how he needed hate to kill him and avenge the clan. He has no close friends, the best interactions he has are from afar with passing glances to Naruto- one lonely boy to another. He is still held to genius standards, and now he’s got people whispering about the massacre every corner he turns. May I point out, Hiruzen is an awful caretaker, he all but abandoned Sasuke and Naruto both??? After 4 years of isolation and being left in a stagnating pool of mental illness that just grew his complex into his lifes purpose, he is FINALLY put into Team 7 and forced to make some meaningful connections. Sakura and Naruto are his best friends, Kakashi is the closest thing to a dad he’s had in awhile (Although even Kakashi is just a close teacher, he doesn’t act like a dad until much later and even then it’s with distance. And I can’t fault the guy, he’s had his share of shit but thats not what this post is about.). Unfortunately, having friends doesn’t fix trauma. It’s not the other kids fault. Naruto encouraged him, having a healthy rivalry? Having good friends? It helped him, he really enjoyed it, he had fun while he was part of the team! But most of us know the feeling of having fun with friends and going back home for everything to come back down to earth and we remember we have anxiety, we remember we have depression, and we lay on the bed for awhile while we readjust to that. Sasuke no doubt had that. It’s all fun, but at the end of the day, his family is dead and his brother is still out there. 

Now that could have been stand able, he could have stuck around, but here’s the issue: Haku comes around, almost kills Sasuke, Naruto has to save him. He can’t beat Gaara, almost depletes his chakra, pops his seal, Naruto has to save him. Itachi comes back, he gets thrown into a tsukuyomi induced coma where he relives the entire trauma that caused these issues again. He’s saved by Jiraiya, but he can only assume Naruto had a hand in it. In the racing arc? He and his clan are both insulted, Sakura almost dies saving his out cold body, and Naruto saves the day. He’s knocked out often in their fights, and if he’s not knocked out he’s unable to do much. He has to watch Naruto grow rapidly, while he’s almost stagnant. That’s enough to make anyone feel helpless, but Sasuke? Sasuke is supposed to be the genius, he’s supposed to be the Uchiha clans avenger. How can he do what he’s meant to do when he can’t even beat Naruto. When he can’t outwit someone who doesn’t think things through, when his biggest competition is someone who couldn’t even make a solid clone at the end of their academy days. And when all that weight is too much, yeah, he lashes out and fights Naruto on the roof. And now his strongest jutsu, his chidori, is so much weaker than the rasengan? Of course he breaks. And no amount of time trying to calm down in the trees is going to help. Kakashi lectured him, yeah, he connected with him, yeah! Kakashi tried. But before he could reflect, the sound 4 came along and offered him hope. Misguided, sure, but he was 12. A 12 year old is going to take your offer if its what they want. Frankly, someone who’s been suffering from mental illness with no relief is going to take something if it seems like a fix from all this hell. And when you’re a 12 year old whos been suffering from mental illness? Of course he accepted. 

And don’t use Sakuras attempt to retrieve him as reason for him to have stopped. Sakura was selfish, first and foremost. She has a big ol complex of “Well I love him so if I’m around I can fix him!!” and literally wasn’t even trying to keep him in the village. She asked to go with him. She didn’t want to save him from the darkness, she wanted to be around him and use him as her self assurance that she was doing all she could when she wasn’t. Frankly, if Sasuke wasn’t damaged the way he was, I doubt she’d like him half as much. Now, she was also a 12 year old, did she understand? No, of course not. But that doesn’t mean that its a good argument for why he should have stayed. Naruto was more successful, but honestly if he beat the shit out of Sasuke and dragged him back to the village, it would have further solidified the idea that he’s weak and needs to improve. It’s not the kids faults, but like. they’re no reason to hate him for not listening. They were selfish, and he is being selfish too. Also, Neji, Choji, Shikamaru, and Kibas sacrifices weren’t actually explained to him, and seeing as he was in a half death state and likely in immense pain if he was able to register anything at all- which i don’t think he was- he couldn’t have known anything beyond what Naruto said: “Your comrades risked their lives for you”. Which isn’t believable at all when in a state like Sasukes, he probably thinks Naruto is blowing it out of proportion. He tends to do that. 

Not to mention, he ran off to Orochimaru, master of manipulation. Of course he never grew out of it, he grew up through his teenage years in an environment that encouraged him to give into hateful impulses and hurtful behavioral patterns. If you pay attention to how he acts once he kills Itachi, he’s lost, and it’s obvious his whole life has been so centric on achieving that one goal, the first thing he does is do what Tobi tells him to do, because thats the only source of direction he has. Like, this boy is battered in the mental health department. He shows remorse for his actions, and only comes to fully grasp things and mellow out when he’s around adulthood. like.. c’mon y’all..

Anyways, I just don’t understand why people hate a 12 year old with 4 years of increasingly stagnant trauma on his back because he’s mentally unstable and went to the closest form of hope and comfort that he could think of, and then continue to hate him because he was on his own after being in such unhelathy and abusive situations and made decisions- that he changed his mind on and grew from- that made him seem like a bad person.