Sai. Emotion. What you said about him being 'defective' as a Root member because Shin dies before they can fight each other to the death in that final 'killing off' of emotion/attachment/etc. I may have more thoughts once I've actually read that bit, but here we go.
That tends to be one of the things that I stick on in developing him; he has demonstrated a clear ability to feel emotions and attachments and desires, but it seems he doesn't always recognize them for what they are. Or doesn't know how to name them. That conversation early on where he tells Sakura that he doesn't know what kind of face he should have been making when his brother died--that struck me as knowing that he was feeling something, but not how to express it or even what to call it. Finding out that his Root training wasn't ever technically completed kind of backs that up; it's like he got all the Root 'software' but never activated the licensed version, didn't get the full AV package to go with it which leaves him vulnerable to 'infection' once he's deployed to Team Kakashi. Which makes me tend to settle on the idea that he does (or can, at least) feel things, be they emotions or attachments or desires, but doesn't necessarily recognize them for what they are or know what to do with them or know how to express them. There's probably a lot of hind-brain/subconscious feeling going on underneath a lot of fore-brain/conscious-level repression.
But he's definitely 'defective'; I very much doubt he would have been so intrigued by the idea of bonds and friendship otherwise, would not have had the desire to stay assigned to Naruto's team for the chance to learn more about such things. That boils down to Curiosity, which may or may not be an emotion but is definitely Feeling Something in any case.
I tend to have him operating from a place where, while he's still not inclined to actively want a thing, he is able to speculate that this or that might be pleasant or enjoyable or somesuch and will eventually put together enough of these small thoughts to realize that he is cultivating a desire to act on them.
I think his art has definitely been an anchor-point to his humanity, also, and grinned when you said the same thing because I've already got Yamato thinking that point in one of the WIPs. Art is a pursuit that's often very closely bound to emotion; if Sai's battle jutsus were the only drawing he did I'd probably give it less weight but he's got the book he was drawing of him and Shin, and all his abstracts and even if he can't pin down how he feels about them or what they should be named, the fact that he's creating despite it all shows at least a remnant of individuality, of personality, of all the things that Root aimed to purge. It's stunted and repressed, but it's still there and even if Sai's attachment to it is sub-conscious and largely unrealized, it's still kept him from being totally swallowed up by the Dark Side.
Other points I want to discuss that will be way too long for this comment: - ANBU vs. Root; ideals and methods of both groups - Social ineptitude and social conditioning and how Sai's blankness relates - Directness and honesty and how much is deliberate vs. conversational misteps - Sai and naivety, logic and analysis - Physiology vs. emotion vs. learned response - What It All Means for Sai and sex and non-platonic relationships - Specific examples of Am I Over-Doing This?
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That tends to be one of the things that I stick on in developing him; he has demonstrated a clear ability to feel emotions and attachments and desires, but it seems he doesn't always recognize them for what they are. Or doesn't know how to name them. That conversation early on where he tells Sakura that he doesn't know what kind of face he should have been making when his brother died--that struck me as knowing that he was feeling something, but not how to express it or even what to call it. Finding out that his Root training wasn't ever technically completed kind of backs that up; it's like he got all the Root 'software' but never activated the licensed version, didn't get the full AV package to go with it which leaves him vulnerable to 'infection' once he's deployed to Team Kakashi. Which makes me tend to settle on the idea that he does (or can, at least) feel things, be they emotions or attachments or desires, but doesn't necessarily recognize them for what they are or know what to do with them or know how to express them. There's probably a lot of hind-brain/subconscious feeling going on underneath a lot of fore-brain/conscious-level repression.
But he's definitely 'defective'; I very much doubt he would have been so intrigued by the idea of bonds and friendship otherwise, would not have had the desire to stay assigned to Naruto's team for the chance to learn more about such things. That boils down to Curiosity, which may or may not be an emotion but is definitely Feeling Something in any case.
I tend to have him operating from a place where, while he's still not inclined to actively want a thing, he is able to speculate that this or that might be pleasant or enjoyable or somesuch and will eventually put together enough of these small thoughts to realize that he is cultivating a desire to act on them.
I think his art has definitely been an anchor-point to his humanity, also, and grinned when you said the same thing because I've already got Yamato thinking that point in one of the WIPs. Art is a pursuit that's often very closely bound to emotion; if Sai's battle jutsus were the only drawing he did I'd probably give it less weight but he's got the book he was drawing of him and Shin, and all his abstracts and even if he can't pin down how he feels about them or what they should be named, the fact that he's creating despite it all shows at least a remnant of individuality, of personality, of all the things that Root aimed to purge. It's stunted and repressed, but it's still there and even if Sai's attachment to it is sub-conscious and largely unrealized, it's still kept him from being totally swallowed up by the Dark Side.
Other points I want to discuss that will be way too long for this comment:
- ANBU vs. Root; ideals and methods of both groups
- Social ineptitude and social conditioning and how Sai's blankness relates
- Directness and honesty and how much is deliberate vs. conversational misteps
- Sai and naivety, logic and analysis
- Physiology vs. emotion vs. learned response
- What It All Means for Sai and sex and non-platonic relationships
- Specific examples of Am I Over-Doing This?
Will probably take this to email, at some point.