on villains -- Itachi vs. Tom Riddle

[edenfalling]

Am attempting to come up with plausible motivations for Itachi.

Oh, my head.

Tom is so much easier, you know? I know what he wants -- to get out of the diary, and to figure out how the fucking hell Harry survived Voldemort -- and I know that he has no moral qualms, and from there his actions are quite straightforward. He's probably the easiest character in "Secrets" to write... to the point where I occasionally get freaked out and cannot write him for a while because I'm having a quiet panic attack over my ability to think like a sociopath.

I don't have a clue what Itachi is really after, particularly before he joined Akatsuki. Gaining Mangekyou Sharingan, okay. But he'd already done that. Keeping others from being able to do that themselves? Maybe. But then what about Sasuke?

I think people go slightly wrong by considering Itachi emotionless, despite his portrayal in his occasional manga appearances. I think his emotional responses are limited, yes, but he strikes me as having a fair sense of melodrama and a taste for theatrics -- witness his nice shaming of his father while Sasuke was listening. Witness the way he (whether he admits it or not) shows off to Sasuke while practicing his knife-throwing skills. Witness his use of ravens in that strange genjutsu he threw Naruto into. Witness the way he declaims about the workings of Mangekyou whenever he gets someone into that strange half-world.

He may have started killing relatives for one reason -- I think he might have genuinely hated his father, for various reasons -- and kept going because it made good theater. He may have left Sasuke alive because there has to be a single heir to avenge the slaughtered clan; narrative tradition demands it. Itachi is a thwarted artist as much as he is an assassin. His primary weapon is genjutsu, and he creates whole worlds. He's playing storyteller-as-god, except instead of doing it with words, he does it with real people.

...I think I need to go do something else for a little while.

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In other news, Ranna and Shae are currently doing a little verbal dance prior to cutting a tentative deal. I like Shae. She's visually based on a girl I used to run into in the library computer lab, with an expression of fierce concentration and perpetually wide eyes (not innocent-wide, but painfully wide, as though she'd nailed her eyelids to her brows to keep herself from falling asleep) who always gave me the impression that her eyeballs might pop out of her face without warning. Shae's personality, though, is entirely my own creation.

Comments

[askerian]

ohhh, niiiice interpretation. never saw it like that. The way you're presenting it, it certainly works.

... of course it doesn't help that we know almost nothing about Itachi. But I don't think he's really emotionless. He was truly angry at the Uchiha, whatever his reasons. In the flashbacks, he really seemed to have some feelings for sasuke -- now if they're good or bad I don't know, because he's a total sociopath, but there was something. Whether that was a "Hm, Sasuke might make a good experimentation subject" or "I wonder if given sufficien trauma motivation even such a loser could reach the height I'm at" or a "i need a spectator for my play to have meaning"... eh.

and now I want to work on my uchihacesty fic. oops.

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

My take on Weaselpants runs something like this - he wants to be God. I'm not talking about the power thing... well, not -just- the power thing... I'm talking about the vengeful, vicious 'grovel and worship me or I'll not only torture -you- to death, but your whole family, too' Old Testament God.

When he was a kid, he had all these people around him telling him how wonderful his bloodline was and how cool -he- was for being such a genius and all, right?

Then he gets to going out and doing missions and discovers that there is no time in someone's life that you can have more influence over them, more power, be more important in their universe, than the moment you take away their life, the thing most precious and elemental to them.

And it feels really good. But there's something keeping him from really enjoying that - the laws and limitations of his role in Konoha and in his clan. Oh well, he can live with that. He has the respect of his peers - who aren't so inconsiderable themselves, really - and he has this sweet little brother who worships him.

Then his father finds a new favorite, and his brother is finally getting the attention the kid's been craving all along, and That Will Not Do At All.

Hence, Shisui, Mangekyo, That Night, etc.

Why is Sasuke still alive? Well, first, because Itachi -does- actually care for him, in however sick and twisted a way. He cares about what he thinks, what he feels, believes. Second, and leading off of that, as long as Sasuke is living for his vengance, Itachi is the most important thing in his universe.

Ja, -n
(And don't worry about understanding Tom - after all, I have to live with the fact that I actually created Hell!Sakura, and she's worse than him, Elizabeth Bathory and Hannibal the Cannibal put together.)

[acechan.livejournal.com]

I suspect (despite the fact that I do not like Itachi at all and have no particular wish to understand him) that the reasons behind the massacre are something that Kishimoto is keeping under his hat to surprise us with at a later time (especially because nobody in the series has ever even wondered if Itachi has a reason). I think it probably has something to do with those ominous secret clan meetings the Uchihas seem to have been having (I heard an interesting theory once that they might have been plotting to kill Naruto). And really, if the Uchihas were plotting something ominous, and you'd been raised in an attitude of "Uchiha is all, the village is Uchiha" the way Itachi and Sasuke seem to have been, and you'd recently been morally disillusioned with the world by being sent out on numerous ANBU missions when you're too damn young, and been brought up in a way that tends to encourage an egocentric, "I am solely responsible for the family honor" kind of attitude like Itachi seems to have been, you might snap and try to "fix" the problem yourself, too. (If you were an idiot, and a little carzy to begin with.) Although, to be fair, neither Itachi nor Sasuke seems to have any conception of how to deal with difficult situations that doesn't involve heavy drama and theatrics. But then, I'm just babbling here.

[edenfalling]

*insinuating whisper* Write it, write it!

[edenfalling]

God complex. Yeah. The more I think about it, the more logical some sort of god complex seems, though I think my details differ from yours.

For example, I'm not sure his father ever said much by way of praise -- he struck me as more the type to say, "Oh, you did X. Congratulations for upholding the honor of the clan and not being a pathetic failure. Now go do Y and do it in less time." I don't get the feeling that Sasuke's nuclear family was particularly good at expressing emotion in helpful ways.

Also, death is powerful, but it's the end. No more influence, no more story, all done, game over, close the book. And you have to go to the trouble of finding a new subject. Maybe that's why he's left Sasuke alive...

[edenfalling]

I am quite willing to believe that the Uchiha were Up To Something, but I'm not sure Itachi cared enough about the clan to 'fix' it himself. Granted, I don't think he'd bring other people into the situation either, but I'm not sure he'd really see it as a problem, per se.

Besides that, the clan seems to have had a somewhat hierarchical structure, so I doubt that all his relatives were in on whatever plot was brewing. Killing the 'noncombatants,' then, is useless overkill. Pure theater, if you will. He did it, to some degree, just because he could.

Mneh. My brain is going fuzzy again.

[(Anonymous)]

Just a quick opinion - I suggest reading Sasuke's flashback again, but I was under the impression that, though Itachi was kinda off (read "crazy") from the very beggining, it was Shihsui's "death" and attaining the Mangekyou that drove him *really* nuts.
(I say "death" because Kishimoto created a really great world to write in, but knowing him, next thing you know long-dead characters will drop by to say hi.)

[edenfalling]

Mmm. That was certainly the temporal trigger -- that is, once he killed Shisui, sooner or later the consequences were going to catch up to him -- but I don't think his insanity is of the bugfuck crazy variety. Itachi has some sort of goal/plan... we just haven't been told exactly what it is.

[shikomekidomi.livejournal.com]

Forgive me for intruding. I was enjoying "Way of the Apartment Manager" and wandered over here.
I find your ideas on Itachi interesting. I also agree that he's not emotionless per se (I can't conceive of a way to be motivated to do the things he did the way he did without some fairly strong emotions involved).
The problem for writers becomes that Itachi is, at his core, psychosis aside, a Good Ninja. And, though many Naruto characters seem to forget, secrecy is essential to Good Ninja. Thus we are left without the standard villian response of blabbing all their plans, hopes, dreams, and life history to us. Actually, come to think of it, he may have slaughtered his entire family except for Sasuke partially for theatre and partially to obscure the exact nature of his plans. The sheer seeming senselessness of it leads to many assuming he just snapped and then he goes along his way unimpeded by people looking for a plan. I'm not certain I believe that one but the idea struck me as I was typing here.
Well, hopefully my feedback was interesting enough to overcome any rudeness.

[(Anonymous)]

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York,
And all the clouds that loured upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments,
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbèd steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

Just curious, but was the war and subsequent peace within Itachi's lifetime? (And, rather interesting point of view, particularly since I think Erasure's "Drama!" is the Sasuke's angst about Itachi theme song.)

[edenfalling]

No rudeness, not at all! (I don't bite. I promise.)

Hmm. Slaughter and insanity as misdirection? Interesting...

[edenfalling]

Let's see...

Theoretically Itachi is 13 when he knocks off the Uchiha, which makes Naruto not quite 8. Assuming Yondaime was Hokage for 2-4 years before the Kyuubi attacked Konoha, and that he became Hokage around the end of the great wars, then Itachi would have been 1-3 years old at the start of peacetime. So I doubt the wars made a huge impression on him, though I'm sure he noticed that his family was preoccupied with something and tended to stop being around at unexpected intervals.

My own timeline makes Itachi 14 during the massacre (and Naruto still not quite 8) and sets Yondaime's ascension to Hokage firmly at 4 years pre-Kyuubi, so that Itachi would have been 4 years old at the war's end. Still not old enough for it to affect him on too personal a level, and the war was definitely over before he entered the academy.

(I refuse to believe that even a 'genius' would be admitted to the ninja academy before reaching the age of 5 -- most kids can't even tie their freaking shoes when they're 5. Kakashi is seriously pushing it, and even there I take Kishimoto with a grain of salt and say he graduated the academy at 6 instead of passing the chuunin exam at 6.)

However, according to Yukiko the chuunin exams were still on a wartime footing -- that is, they emphasized open battle skills instead of stealth and trickery -- during Yondaime's rule. So Itachi's education might very well have been geared toward war and therefore harsher and more brutal than what Naruto experienced later.

Excellent, excellent point!

[shikomekidomi.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear it.
Mind you, I'm not saying that he's sane. That would be silly. Killing dozens of people just to obfuscate one's trail is the act of some one either insane or so sane that it makes no difference as to how far he is removed from the average person. I'm merely saying that it may be an entirely different sort of madness then one might expect. I don't know how likely it is, but it's interesting, of course.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I never thought he's that kind of crazy. His insnity's always been of the "cool, logical and obsessive" variety. And I agree with you in everything else - in fact, wasn't Sasuke's entire family composed of actors? The cold, distant, powerful father, the loving mother and perfect housewife, the role-model older brother. They were all just perfect for their roles.

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

Also, death is powerful, but it's the end. No more influence, no more story, all done, game over, close the book. And you have to go to the trouble of finding a new subject. Maybe that's why he's left Sasuke alive...

I'd go with that - I'm not saying that the death-god thing is his be-all and end-all, just that I think that that may have been part of what started him off.

How does Kyuubi fit in?

Well, as powerful as Itachi may be already, there are still some people who are more so, and a -lot- of Jounin who are close enough to get lucky. Which, if he's anywhere near as ego-focused as I think he is, must just stick in his craw sideways.

But, multiply scaryscary missing-nin by Kyuubi-chakra and you have something that can play god even to a kage.

Not that it really matters in the end - after all, you don't need to understand a scorpion to squash the loathsome little thing.

Ja, -n

[edenfalling]

Not that it really matters in the end - after all, you don't need to understand a scorpion to squash the loathsome little thing.

It probably doesn't matter to his enemies, but it very much matters to me as a writer! Otherwise his actions will not have any sort of internal coherence, and I'm quite sure that's not the form his insanity takes. :-)

...I don't know that Itachi thought one way or the other about Naruto and the Kyuubi until he joined Akatsuki. The whole 'capture the jinchuuriki' thing is very much a group project, and Itachi is not the head honcho of the group. This raises the questions of when he learned about Akatsuki, when he joined the group, and when the group decided on their project. Also... did he join the group because he heard about the project and decided it might be interesting, or did that come later?

(This is relevant to my story. The other reason I'm not posting any chapters until December is because I want to know more about Kishimoto's conception of Akatsuki, etc. I've accepted that I'm already contradicting his canon in several places, but I like to break rules knowingly rather than inadvertently.)

[rianax.livejournal.com]

See Seishiro from X:1999 and you'll get a big insight into his not motivations, but line of thought ie. killing best friend/parents/clan to free himself.

Seishiro, Clamp's sakura petaling assassin, comes from a long line of magicians that seek to protect Japan through death (feeding their victims to an evil sakura tree), and the ascention of the heir involves him willingly killing his predessor and anyone else connected with the former Head.

That pretty much seals the mental breakdown into functioning sociopathic tendencies where falling in love involves torturing a boy over a decade by any and all means possible.

[rianax.livejournal.com]

The entire genius bit gets on my nerves in Naruto-- I can understand an advanced child understanding and comprending complex shinobi lore, but physically there is no way a six year old can be what a warrior is. The body can't deal with the stress and more so with the mind.

I personally think that all that stress and expectation warped Kakashi and Itachi around the bend and upriver to the funny farm.

[edenfalling]

I suspect very young shinobi are probably used more on assassination missions than as guards or straight-out fighters. Nobody suspects a little kid, after all, and they can make great distractions even if they're not the actual killers. (And yes, that would give them psychological issues up the wazoo.) They probably do some infiltration/spying as well, working as support, since a family unit looks much less suspicious than a single adult.

[edenfalling]

Eep. That is one seriously screwed up family!

[edenfalling]

Itachi would have been 2 years old, not 4, according to my personal timeline. (Or 1 year old if I capitulate to canon and say he's 13 when he slaughters his clan.)

Cannot do math -- am as bad as JKR! Argh.