Check me out on Ao3 under the same pen name!

Name: Matthew

Age: 26

Current Status: Writing again. Cautiously.

Other than that, I'm also a member of a discord server with a few fellow authors like Big@2955, RifatAlam, NXSE, Glacious, and a few others. You can join by typing in the invite yuF2GYx (it's permanent). So come on by if you want to shill your fics, talk to some fellow readers, or just harass me about updating.

A Reasoned Rejection of Blatant Fanboyism, Misconceptions, and Protagonist Morality Within Naruto

or alternatively:

“Sasuke Did Nothing Wrong”

Criticisms of Sasuke generally boil down a handful of so-called ‘crimes’ attributed to his character, which justify demanding he be made to suffer in order to ‘pay’ for them. These charges are usually some form of the following: Sasuke betrayed Konoha, betrayed Team Seven, and killed Itachi. There are other minor things he’s accused of, such as attacking Killer B or killing a few nameless samurai, but people don’t actually care about these – quite frankly Sasuke’s stint as an international criminal was underwhelming compared to Gaara’s murderous childhood rampages that nobody bothers to even remember.

Let me then address the first real complaint, which can be broken down into two parts. People take issue with Sasuke abandoning Konoha, and then later deciding to destroy it.

Sasuke was clear that he had one goal – revenge against Itachi. Konoha was either unhelpful in this regard or took actions to prevent Sasuke from pursuing this goal. The village seems to have no problem with Shikamaru seeking revenge for Asuma, or Naruto pursuing his goal of becoming Hokage, but Sasuke’s drive to avenge his family is somehow reprehensible. He is warned not to pursue revenge and told that he won’t be aided in this regard, as opposed to supported as he should have been. Given this lack of institutional support, it shouldn’t be any surprise that Sasuke chose to accept the support offered by a third party.

The decision to destroy Konoha is usually seen to be even more ‘irrational’, but that view misses the most salient fact. Konoha deserved to be destroyed. It is quite literally a genocidal regime that discriminates against one of its founding parties, isolates that party, and then slaughters that party. People attempt to justify this by accusing the Uchiha of being traitors, but they miss the point that you can’t convict a population of a crime they didn’t commit without any kind of due process or even evidence presented.

Governments that do this deserve to be agitated against and overthrown, which is what the Uchiha attempted to do. And yes, the Uchiha were discriminated against, and we know this because the Hokages were accused to their faces of doing this by Orochimaru, and they never denied it, only tried to make excuses for it.

This rationale actually not only justifies Sasuke turning against Konoha, it also justifies him killing Itachi, because Itachi has always deserved to die. Itachi is someone that, upon seeing the oppression of the clan at the hands of the village, decided that he would commit wholesale mass murder in order to preserve the rule of a genocidal administration. The ethical thing for Itachi to do would have been to side with the clan, because a civil war to combat an unjust government is a war worth fighting. Not to mention that between Shisui and Itachi, they had the power and genjutsu prowess to win the war against Konoha before it even began.

Itachi’s failings in this regard aren’t even the entire picture of his misdeeds. Every other action he took past the massacre can be summed up as the choices of an obsessive psychopathic brocon with a martyr complex. Psychologically torturing Sasuke on numerous occasions to instill hatred is not the type of thing a good brother does. But it is the type of thing a man would do if he cared more about completing a narrative he constructed in his own head irrespective of reality. I honestly believe that Itachi being a ‘good guy’ is a retcon, because otherwise his actions don’t even begin to make a lick of sense.

This brings us full circle then to Sasuke’s betrayal of Team Seven, to which I simply say ‘so what”. Why does it matter that Sasuke chose to turn his back on his so-called comrades? The relationship Team Seven has with Sasuke can be described as them self-inserting themselves into his life to play savior. They assert that Sasuke doesn’t know what he truly wants, or what is best for him, and that he is obligated to fulfill their emotional entitlements.

Sasuke’s own aspirations and goals don’t matter, because Team Seven has never cared about them. They never at any point offered to help him become powerful or get justice for his family, as true friends do. Instead they lectured him about the so-called futility of revenge, told him to stay in the village and ‘have fun everyday’, and return Sakura’s affection and acknowledge Naruto. In this dynamic Sasuke exists only to abandon his own goals to fulfill theirs.

But in the end what Sasuke did truly doesn't actually matter to most people. They're concerned less with the specifics of what he did and more with the general overarching role he played as a foil to Naruto. Sasuke is evil in their minds not because of who he is, but because he got in the way of the protagonist. The Senju are seen as good while the Uchiha are evil, even if in reality they both made similar choices to become warrior clans hungering for power. Sasuke is evil even if his crimes as vastly less compared to someone like Gaara or Nagato, because unlike them he played a long running foil to the protagonist. That blind protagonist-based ethical judgement is I suppose one of the greatest failings in both the fandom in general and in Kishomoto's work as a whole.

Story Ideas (Feel free to offer collaborations):

Inhuman Ancestry

- His name is Uchiha Sasuke, and he dreams of a pale goddess with three eyes. (One shot)

Fatherland

- It is not a patrol of Svirfneblin that Drizzt Do'Urden stumbles upon after a decade in the Underdark - but the persecuted clerics of Vhaeraun. Thereafter twin scimitar ring through the shadows with a cry of "Revolution!" (AU)

Redivivus

- Striding the line between Sith and Jedi, Anakin Skywalker struggles to master two sides of The Force. In doing so he attempts to mediate a millennia old blood feud. 'Balance' always was an obscure concept for ideological force users.

Ozymandias

- After Senjougahara - after Kanbaru and Oshino Meme and the Fire Sisters, there is only Koyomi. And Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade. Stretching into forever as the world grows old. (One Shot, Bakemonogatari)

Pilgrim

- Satan Jacob steps back into Ente Isla after years of exile, but knowledge gained on the other side of the mirror is not so easily forgotten. (Hataraku Maou-sama One-shot)

Dragonsong

- The War ends, and an ancient song of lineage and ageless wings calls Zuko home. (Oneshot, ZukoxToph)

Kings Upon The Main

- The first lesson any son of Telmar learns is to remember the sea which birthed them, and Caspian - despite the Narnian pressing into his heart - was Telmarine to the bone.

Mātariśvan

- Zuko dies, heart giving out from the strike of Azula's lightning during their Agni Kai. And then he wakes up to the scent of coal and steel with a blazing pillar of light on the southern horizon.

Majestic Constellations

- The Ouroboros Movement has triumphed, but ruling demands more than hope for a promised land. Enemies from without press in relentlessly, and enemies from within are just starting to show their fangs. There is a new creed for a new age: "The unjust war is greater than the just peace."

Halfway to Heaven

- Bereft of revenge and revolution, Sasuke is running on his last guttering flame. Maybe it'll be enough. (Post 699 Naruko/Sasuke)

Rights of Succession

- When Madara and Hashirama join hands, it is not to establish the hidden village system. Eighty years after the Uchiha-Senju party pressured the daimyo into recognizing shinobi as persons rather than tools of war, the second son of the Uchiha Clan's head meets the Yondaime Hokage's daughter in omiai.

Though These Rivers Run

- Struck by balefire, Rand al'Thor should have burned entirely. But The Pattern will not give up its' Dragon so easily, and his tattered strand is rewoven. Waking again in Emond's field, only one question remains. Will Rand conquer Shai'Tan, or will the Taint destroy him first?

Marathon

- "I've waited more than a thousand years for you to come back to me." The deathless centuries have ended, but he's already burned through everything he had left to give. (Hoperai)

"I came here to end the future of this Hell disguised as 'Ninshū'. You have always feared the power of my grandmother, and instead of trying to understand this enormous power you merely ran from it, using 'love' and 'bonds' as a shield. Your selfish misconception will mar the future of Ninshū with wars and calamities." - Ōstutsuki Indra