Application

[eyes_that_burn]

PLAYER INFORMATION
NAME: Vee
ARE YOU 18 OR OLDER?: Yep!
CONTACT: asukalangley2nd@gmail.com (often on gchat)
CURRENT CHARACTERS: None.

CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Sasuke Uchiha
CANON: Naruto
CANON POINT: Post-War, during his fight with Naruto
CHARACTER AGE: 17 years old.
HISTORY: http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Sasuke_Uchiha
PERSONALITY: Are you looking for a kind, warm person with a heart of gold that can listen and give amazing advice while shining a smile as bright as the sun?

Then really, move along and keep looking. In fact, run. Run far away, because this isn’t the person for you.

Sasuke Uchiha isn’t known for his welcoming stances or his patient ways, instead falling into the old comforts of standoffishness and glares. Not one to wax poetic, he tends to get right to the point of conversations and finds anything else a waste of time, or simply pointless. He’s not above walking away in the middle of a discussion. This doesn’t lead to pleasant encounters and often sours people to his general demeanor (although he is far more patient with his Team Taka than with most, so long as they don't become a detriment to his plans).

Coming from a prestigious clan with quite the legacy, Sasuke has a lot of pride in his lineage and isn’t afraid to show it. Most of his clothes tend to have some piece of the of Uchiha fan, usually stitched into the back of his shirt. Coupled with being considered a known genius (a fact shared among everyone, and nothing anyone is shy about expressing), Sasuke is confident, calculating, and a planner. He analyzes every situation before most people can even recognize the options, and that leaves modesty and a sense of humbleness right out. He has no problem showing his arrogance, either; it’s another brick in a tall, tall wall.

Sasuke craves power and is more than willing to leave everything and everyone behind in the pursuit. At twelve, he severes his own bonds with his village, his team, and his teacher, walking away from everything he knows to train under Orochimaru, a known enemy of Konoha. His own well-being comes second in the grand scheme, as evidenced when Naruto explains to Sasuke that Orochimaru wants to take over Sasuke's body and Sasuke doesn't even bat an eye. The need for strength lacks a selfish motivation, however; it is simply the path he needs to take to enact his vengeance quest. With this need for power, he also respects the strength that others wield, and can acknowledge them appropriately. He proves this at the end of the manga by stating that Naruto is his rival, and he thought, I became jealous of you...you who seemed able to be do anything. … I was always following behind you, wanting to become as strong,and as admirable as you can be.

The rough edges are a complex grid to hide what lurks beneath the surface, though. A painful and bloody past with both his brother (the person he idolized) and ultimately Konoha (his home) has broken his ability to trust anyone. Guarded, careful, he doesn’t keep people at arm’s length; he keeps them at nation’s lengths, trying to put as much distance between himself and everyone else as humanly possible. He works behind walls and makes it a point to sever all of his bonds, then repeats it again and again, doing things to try to get the people who refuse to do the same to do it in return (example 1, example 2, example 3, and example 4 ). For some it works, for one it doesn’t.

Unable to deal with the pain, grief, and betrayal, Sasuke spends much of the manga stuck in a cycle of rage and revenge. Anger is far easier to confront than pain, and he takes up wrath as his mantle while describing himself as “An Avenger”, wanting nothing more than to kill his brother and “restore his clan” (though whether that means in name and honor rather than children and expanding is unknown). When Itachi is finally dead and Sasuke learns “the truth” that Konoha was behind the destruction of his clan, his rage turns to another outlet: the village itself. Even former and current teammates aren’t spared when he stabs Karin and nearly kills both Sakura and Kakashi; it is this destructive anger that motivates him to take Itachi’s eyes, work with the Akatsuki (for his own ends), and other precarious decisions.

Sasuke exhibits many of the traits of PTSD (PTSD symptoms ) and Survivor’s Guilt. The anger, the distance between himself and others, his loss of anything that brought him joy, and his reactions when Itachi or his clan are brought up are expected, but there’s so much more. Obsessed with fixing what was wronged, he does not care what happens to himself and his own well-being. After Itachi is gone, Sasuke simply wants to be left alone until Obito speaks with him and gives him a new purpose, a new perspective where his brother was a hero and martyr. After the war, he is resigned to his fate as the darkness in the world, the one common enemy for the entire ninja community to unite against and keep from falling down the same paths that lead to clans' pointless destructions. It’s his way of honoring his brother, even if he can’t understand that it isn’t what Itachi would want for him (regardless of the fact that Itachi performed the same heavy self-sacrifice and carried a similar burden all for the sake of Sasuke).

Manipulation seems to find its way into the youngest Uchiha's life frequently. Itachi manipulated his brother in the effort of saving him, lying to him and forcing him to hate him. The village was manipulated into caring for Sasuke by Itachi holding all of the cards. Orochimaru manipulated Sasuke with the offer of power while secretly devising a way to steal his body, and Obito manipulated him with tainted truths. However, amid all of the ulterior motives from all these other sources, Sasuke has learned to grow into his own and also manipulate in the same fashion; he uses Orochimaru to gain his own power before disposing of him, and he uses the Akatsuki for as long as he needs in order to hurt the village. He isn't the victim, even when his strings are pulled; he yanks them in return, directing people where he needs them to go.

Sasuke is all about tightly-wound control, inside and out. Not many can see what's under the mask, and he prefers it that way; he is full of emotion (thanks to a curse that affects the Uchiha clan), loves too deep and hates just as hard. There are glimpses when his core is exposed, moments when the rage changes him into a laughing maniac (example) or the grief over his brother brings him to tears ( example ), but for the tip of the iceberg that is showing, the massive depth is a hundred times more intricate.

Relationships are a complex and intricate design with Sasuke, and I'm sure I could write a dissertation on all of them. Itachi is a weakness, a tangled mess that turned from idol to villain to martyr and finally hokage. Through all the different phases, Itachi is a vulnerability to Sasuke, the object that would drive him to push and push beyond what he could, throwing his life in danger, and becoming what he has today, for better or worse. The massacre of his clan hurt and scarred him so much more because it was perpetrated by someone he trusted, someone he loved, someone he idolized. However, since the emergence of the truth, that betrayal is replaced with other emotions, and after their final encounter and his communication with the hokages, there is a certain amount of closure. Even so, there is still a level of pain when he thinks about his sibling and the sacrifices he has made; it is a sacred topic, one that doesn't venture past his lips easily. Some things are meant to be close to the chest.

Sasuke ultimately has a strained relationship with his former Team 7, one in which he pushes them away again and again, but they want to accept him back and bring him home. He fears the distraction and weakness their presence gives him, and he doesn't want to become complacent or swayed from his goals. Again and again, he shuts himself down when around them, and on several occasions, battles them but stops from killing them (sometimes by choice, sometimes by outside forces). However, with each of these encounters, pieces of himself are being shown more and more to Naruto, who can read him when their fists collide. There is a resentment that comes with that, along with hidden bouts of envy that he doesn't dare to tell anyone, even himself, and it compels him to fit Naruto into the role of "rival". For all the shoving away he does, Sasuke wants to reach out to Naruto, but that wall is too tall, too strong, and too necessary for the things he wishes to accomplish. Just as Itachi is a weak point for Sasuke, so too is Naruto, and those around them have noticed and remarked on just that.

As complicated as his relationship is with Naruto, his one with Sakura isn't any better. More often than not, he chooses to ignore her, acting as if she isn't worth his time. However, there are key points when there is a question of his own bond with her, including a time during the genin exams when her being attacked lead to him losing all control; only she was able to bring him back to himself (shown here). The time he left the village and carefully laid her on a bench after telling her thank you and knocking her out, and using the genjutsu to subdue her before the fight with Naruto rather than physically assaulting her are also two of his more "compassionate" examples. However, with every piece of this, there's one where he's letting her fall into lava (here) or trying to kill her (here). However, the end of the manga and his own apology (half-assed as it is) proves that he regrets the choices he has made, regardless of how necessary they felt at the time. Just like Naruto, she is a proven weakness to him, an exploitable vulnerability; he is just able to keep it hidden from her far easier than he is Naruto.


ABILITIES: The Uchiha clan has a natural affinity for fire and fire based attacks. As a child, Sasuke worked hard, harder than most, to find his fireball techniques as a means to impress his father, ultimately succeeding on a dock one dusk evening . From there, he found ways to expand it, using it smartly to run the length of wires, to split up, to hide weapons in the spit flames, and to work with stronger, more varied attacks.

While fire is fun, this attack is trumped by the Chidori, a lightning-like technique created by a concentration of chakra into the hand. Taught to him by Kakashi, Sasuke learns it young and makes it his own, using it almost as a signature move. In the early stages, he has a difficult time controlling it or making it last, but as his own strength and restraint grows, he finds ways to manipulate it. Honed, he can now use it as an electrical current to attack multiple close-range foes, senbon needles for distances, a long spear that spikes apart at the end, among others variations. However, this is not to be confused with Kirin, which is an immense lightning based attack formed with natural weather elements.

The most famous of the Uchiha traits is the sharingan. A bloodline skill, this is a power that appears in Uchiha eyes only, triggering after feeling intense emotion from stress. This gift allows a myriad of different abilities, including an expertise at genjutsu (hypnosis), the ability to read chakra flow (but not to the extent of a byakugan), and copy almost any technique the user witnesses (other than summons he has not signed a contract with). The sharingan is an ever-evolving technique, starting with one tomoe in each eye before moving onto three; when it hits that point, the next step is the rare Mangekyo Sharingan. Brought about by a catastrophic trauma such as the death of a family member or a best friend, the tomoe seal changes, as do the powers and consequences. While it erodes away the user's sight, it also allows for the forever burning black flames of amaterasu to be called forth at a target, along with the immense humanoid shape of Susanoo to be invoked. Susanoo is painful to use, but an invaluable defense and offense.

During the war, Sasuke was able to achieve the rinnegan in his left eye only, another ocular jutsu. While still new, it wears on him more than the others and even now he hasn't mastered its control or the amount of chakra consumption it costs him. He can do some of the Six Paths Techniques (details here), but cannot do them simultaneously, such as absorbing chakra and performing one of the other paths.

Sasuke has the ability to summon snakes, with his personal summon being Aoda, a giant serpent. At one point, he had Manda, another snake who had belonged to Orochimaru, but he was killed during a run-in with Deidara. Aoda is far more respectful than the previous summon, and follows his master's commands without hesitation. Sasuke has also been known to summon giant hawks, but they are not his personal, contracted animal.

As with most shinobi from his world, Sasuke is highly skilled at hand-to-hand combat and Taijutsu. His speed is often marveled over (though, not as much as Rock Lee's), and is paired perfectly with his intellect and immediate ability to strategize in a fight. While strong, Sasuke relies on dexterity and speed versus sheer power or strength. He has been known to use shuriken and kunai, however he uses his sword Kusanagi more than anything else.