Quote Originally Posted by Amaril View Post
The story of Naruto as we know it is not the story as it "really happened"--it's a mythic retelling, viewed from far in the future of the setting, based on the actions of real people, but greatly distorted by time and dramatic license. This helps explain the insane power level it gets up to (in my mind, the "real" shinobi of the setting have always been far weaker than those we see in the story), and the nonsensical personalities and actions of the characters.
Haku was always a girl. She was just claiming to be a guy out of justifiable caution when around strange male ninja. I know, its not a unified theory of disney, but its my headcannon and im sticking to it!

Dumbledoore was a xanatos gambit level manipulator of everything. He wasnt evil, he was willing to sacrifice himself after all, but he had a plan for how to ensure the prophecy worked out in favor of harry and he made it happen. Every year at hogwarts was carefully arranged to create exactly the outcome we had.

There is no way the main staff of hogwarts could have created such lame traps and challenges to get through, so carefully tailored towards the skills harry and his friends "just happened" to have.

There is no way he never bothered to ask myrtle how she died, or figured out who the real heir of slytherin was.

Third year there is no way he didnt know sirius was in the castle. He has ghosts and elves, and talking paintings everywhere. He should have had no trouble tracking down sirius within 30 seconds of learning he had entered the castle.

Dont even get me started on 4th year. He had everyone involved with the tournament right there. It should have been childs play to either declare the tournament a draw, change the "challenges" to something they could do in 5 minutes to get it over with, or otherwise get harry out of competing.

5th year, he intentionally had a man he KNEW hated harrys guts tear through his mind so the visions would both happen more often, giving him more info, and would lead to a possession attempt, bringing his mothers protection into play.

6th year he finally got around to giving harry some of the vital info he needed and some clues for the rest. He then made sure through snape that draco would be the master of the elder wand. Someone harry could crush easily and thus unite the hallows. He knew that being the master of death was harrys best shot at returning after getting rid of his scar.

So yeah, the genial twinkly eyed wizard was a puppet master beyond compare, only his deathly terror at the idea of turning into grindelwald stopped him from being evil and seizing power for himself.