Have not read since 290. Is it true that Orochimaru-in-Sasuke's-body has the possibility of becoming canon? I am not taking on the Harry/Hermione shipper role here, am I?

I don't want to go all keyboard-smash/cheer until this is confirmed!

I imagine everyone is all THUMBS UP :DDD! over this development! This was, like, my ideal solution after Sasuke ran away from home. (Obviously, he probably won't end up being Orochimaru's container... but I can dream, now that it's gone this far. :D) I definitely like Sasuke more when he's being realistic and doing what Orochimaru wants.

I don't think Sasuke can return to Konoha, either, which makes the Team 7 dynamics even more interesting. Naruto & Sakura have bonded pretty hard over the promise to bring Sasuke back--but what happens if he can't be brought back? Do they hold onto their bond and let Sasuke go? Does their bond also dissolve? Do they redefine "bring back" as reforming Team 7, outside Konoha, in some way? At least until Naruto needs to go back stronger than ever and having defeated his inner demon (...) to be Hokage. If Kishimoto is going for the sannin parallels still, I guess it'd be a dissolution of the bonds between Naruto & Sakura--but how sad is that! And also unlikely: team 7's relationship was pretty different from the sannin's, because where it seems that Jiraiiiaaiya & Tsunade never really tried to hold onto each other and bring Orochimaru in with the good guys, Naruto and Sakura have the pact to get Sasuke back. They're just a stronger, more balanced team.

I have this beautiful vision of Sasuke and Orochimaru being in a position of Naruto and Kyuubi!
That'd be pretty great! :D (In one version of that ff.net badfic in my mind where Sakura becomes a Sound nin, she carries on a relationship with Orochimaru-in-Sasuke's-body because it's Sasuke's body, and she sometimes thinks that she can see something of Sasuke in there too.)

At least half of the reason I make fun of Sasuke is his unrealistic arrogance, where he thought he really could carry out his plans (kill brother, rebuild clan--all alone!). :D I definitely see where your more hope for his future could come from. He seems more mature these days, in a much less shallow way than Naruto. The way it seems to have played out, it's less agreeing to Orochimaru's demands out of despair, and more of a calculated self-interest thing--like Kabuto.

Konoha's almost definitely going after Sasuke for two reasons: firstly, they don't want to lose face; secondly, and maybe more importantly, heaps of village secrets are in their genes. (I.e. why they originally brought in ANBU at all, during the Haku arc--to destroy the bodies of exiled ninja & bring them home to their village. And this really is underlined by Yamato: we know that gene technology in the villages is good enough that at least Orochimaru is able to figure out the gene that allows a certain jutsu to be used and to manipulate it well enough to get to the point where at least one of his experiments with it works. It seems like they can do gene transplants almost as well as we can transplant organs.) I totally understand their position here, where they want Sasuke back as a matter of village security (and the "losing face" point would also be a matter of security, in a world where alliances are made and broken easily, and villages might be invaded because they seem weak)--but it is reprehensible on an individual scale. The kids who are trying to get Sasuke back are doing it because of him, personally--because they think he's made a mistake--more than because they've been sent on the mission. That's where it gets morally murky. I mean, obviously, they should try to convince him that he's doing the wrong thing--but they'll probably just whack him over the head and drag him home. :/

Konoha actually seems better on the human rights scale than any of the other villages we've seen, though. Ninja villages pretty much are the living weapon centres of the real countries they protect. I can't imagine why these people let their kids stay, unless their genes are not allowed out of the villages once they become ninja. (Yeah--I just read the bit where the new guy was saying that they're not genin who need to be protected anymore--it's scary to think that Kakashi's view, and the way the other jounin leaders treated their genin, was a hugely protective way to ease them into the ninja life. The ninja villages do want to save their weapons, but the mission is just as important.)

I'm way more interested in Sakura than I ever have been, actually; we haven't seen much of her, ever, but she's grown more mature & stronger than she was (and not just physically), and I can see her doing a lot more if this weren't primarily a story of Naruto v. Sasuke. (It's no surprise that you & fandom focus on them, when Kishimoto does too!) It'd be interesting if Sasuke follows the "new village" parallel with Orochimaru in order to change it, by not focusing on the revenge motive that threads through Orochimaru's dealings with Konoha. (His revenge would already have been taken care of, after all--a person is easier to topple than a whole village, no matter who it is.)

Re: actually giving a damn, that is the difference between Team 7 & the Sannin. It's a big one, I hope.

But, dude. You really, honestly think Sakura wouldn't do it if Naruto were out of commission and she thought she could possibly get Sasuke back if she could get his body from Orochimaru after Orochimaru was rejected from the body and had to move on? (She's a smart girl, and who knows what she could have learnt from Tsunade... Kabuto... Chiyo... about bringing people back?) Assuming she were on Orochimaru's good side, that is. I don't think she's incapable of becoming somewhat corrupt for the sake of people she loves--she is learning to do whatever it takes. :)

I wonder how Sasuke's control freak nature would play against Orochimaru's "let it all out/go with the flow" style.

Re: evil manipulative dick elders, yeah. Even if they have little actual power in day-to-day events, they can choose the new leader--and the leaders are distressingly short-lived. The whole Sai situation seems to go into this a bit? Their powerlessness in creating policy, but power over individuals/institutions within Konoha & desire for more. (I hate Sai, but I like the politics he represents. :D)

It really makes you wonder why non-ninja stay in Konoha, when the best they seem to be able to do is open a few stalls. They're kind of second-class citizens. If they're not prohibited from it, why do they not go into the rest of Fire Country?

I'm not so worried about the genin being sent on the mission--after all, most of them had gone far enough in the chuunin exam that they were basically chuunin without leadership skills--but I was really, really annoyed by the negative reaction when they came home near-death without completing their mission. WTF, Konoha. You make Shikamaru a chuunin because he knows when to stop, but you disapprove when that attitude comes out in practice? After that, I really did not believe their bullshit line on teamwork.

I seriously do think that Sakura is more mature than Naruto. She's more thoughtful now (remember when she complained about her parents to her teammate? :D), and she's finally understood that she can't just sit back and do nothing while her teammates rock Konoha. The problem is that she's not a tensai like half the village--she's just a bright girl. Her teammates are out of her league; that's why she's likely to be left behind to some extent even if she tries harder than either teammate for the rest of her life, even if she's more mature and more knowledgeable than they are. Naruto, on the other hand, hasn't grown up yet. That's one of his good points, really, as well as an indication that he's not yet ready for the post of Hokage. (Unlike Jiraiiaiaya, I think we'll see him becoming mature at some point, but I hope without losing his enthusiasm & trust.) The three of them will always come as a group for me, though; I think they're all necessary to balance each other out, even if they end up in three different villages.

while I wholly believe that Orochimaru will not die he will have to disappear... or at the very least stop being a threat
Maybe when he gets over the pain of not getting chosen as Hokage by the Third, he'll step back and let Sasuke rule. :D Then he can spend his days working towards immortality and having every jutsu. (All of Orochimaru's problems seem to stem from daddy Sarutobi not loving him enough, man.) Sasuke as a leader would be interesting--and since even Gaara made it, it's definitely not impossible.

I hated the comparisons until I started to see them as being alike-but-with-a-twist. That is, even though Konoha LIES when it says it's all about teamwork, because that spirit got into Team 7, they could overcome the flaws of the Sannin: Naruto mischievous & powerful but not perverted, Sakura strong & smart but not an alcoholic, Sasuke accomplished & driven but not, um, morally damaged. Hope for the future and all.

I can see how you think that of her--but I see so much possibility there, dude. Especially from a fairly normal, somewhat emotionally sensitive girl who's growing up in a ninja village. It's led to pretty screwed-up adults, of all the ones we've seen. I'm basically thinking of: what will a woman do to protect the people she loves? I don't think that Naruto could do it, because his style is to go in with his ideals hanging out and not give up until other people live up to those ideals--but Sakura or Sasuke, without Naruto's influence? Definitely.

Sai is that lame type that's all "I have no feelings" while carrying around things for the sake of nostalgia. He's mysterious & opaque like a four-year-old (i.e. NOT AT ALL). He's like a try-hard reject for the part of Fuji Syuusuke, estranged Yuuta version.

Let me put it this way: in a war, I'd rather be out in the cities with all the other civilians than living on a military base. The problem with civilians is that there just can't be all that many jobs for them. Even paperwork is done by ninja (for good reason: I imagine a lot of it is pretty sensitive information), not to mention babysitting and finding lost cats. Which is where my second-class citizen prediction comes from: if the only jobs they can do are manual labour, food service, etc. and they can't go into government/the police force/teaching or have anything to do with local power relations, they're not set up for rising to the top or bettering themselves or anything like that. (I've always kind of thought that Sakura's parents are non-ninja, though: she has such a different attitude towards learning everything than the other kids--great with the concepts, but bad enough (uninspired, I should say) with the practicals that she's not at the very top of the class--she really doesn't seem to understand the gravity of her job in the beginning of the series, she has no family jutsu, and as far as I recall we don't see her parents in the war against Sand & Sound even though they obviously exist.)

But Kakashi got the teamwork thing from the Third (-> Jiraieaiiya -> the Fourth -> Kakashi), and Sarutobi was always going on about that sort of thing around his death. And a good part of the Chuunin exam was about teamwork, too. Although I guess that Kakashi had the lesson reinforced with the Obito thing, which wasn't the case for everyone else.

We'll have to agree to disagree over Sakura (although I do see your point post-Haku arc, pre-time skip), like with Dr Cameron. :D

I want to read the Orochimaru & Kabuto spin-off when Orochimaru steps back and goes to work on genes. I can't be the only person interested in a shounen-style mad science contest that goes more deeply into the ideas behind chakra, etc., while those two battle it out in a tense race to immortality. :D

Man, it would be pretty neat if Naruto and Sasuke died at the very end of the series as an end to the rivalry. I'd probably be disappointed (unless Sakura tried to come between them to save them and was killed as well, so there's no breaking up of Team 7), and it'd have to happen after another time-skip to Naruto-as-Hokage, but it'd be interesting. Even more so if Sasuke actually killed Naruto, thus letting kyuubi free, and then had to find a way (with Sakura's medical knowledge) to bind him again. And Sakura and Sasuke die in the process.