I do love this fic and love it so much!
OroJira friendship is very heartbreaking!
and your A/N is perfect to this story, I love it as well!

Wow! This is...Wow...Amazing! I love sentimental Orochimaru fics, you should write another chapter on this, I would love to see how Jiraiya reacts to the letter! Please!?! I would love you forever! -puppyeyes- -laughs- Thanks for the good story!

Ara

It was...interesting. It gives you a different thought of how to look at a character...not everyone has to be seen in a certain light...(despite my the fact that my friends say that Orochimaru is a pedophile, (and a few other unmentionable things...)).

I can't think of anything else to say. Nice oneshot; I think I'll check out the fics that you mentioned.

(P.S. - I am also a huge fan of your story, 'Life'. I am not going to ask you to update, I just want to compliment you on the story. It has managed to hold my attention throughout the plot so far. (This is quite a feat and very hard to do, by the way.) For that I commend you and wish you luck and it and any other projects that you decide to churn out in the future.))

I have said my piece.

okay I'm reviewing, now you should go review Ddriana's fic!
xD

Anyway I loved this! Orochimaru knitting is so unexpected, but it fits really well.
It was a very meditative story, I liked that too.
And I really liked the end. It left so many possibilties open!

Thanks so much!

While this fic doesn't actually fit into the real story that well, I do think you convey the point quite nicely.

Fans often forget that Orochimaru was at least for a while a true friend to Jiraiya and Tsunade. He was not born evil even if he was predisposed to it and he likely did many good things.

For the countless human experiments and deaths he caused I can see him making a similar remark to what he does in this fic. That he was merely ending the lives of useless people and weak ninja who all would have died eventually anyway, but through him could have meaning via the knowledge he could gain.

I see Orochimaru not as someone who was inherently evil but as someone who killed his own heart as a sacrifice for his dreams. He feared becoming like his parents, nothing but a name on a gravestone, to one day be forgotten. So he sought to be something more. Soon he found that he could not hang onto any ideals if he was to continue that path. He then decided that this path was more important than his friends and loved ones.

So he sacrificed them in his heart, not because they meant nothing to him but because they meant so much. Its that now famous principle of how to gain something, something of equal value must be lost. Itachi murdered his best friend and clan as the sacrifice he was willing to make for power. Sasuke fought Naruto to break his bonds with Konoha so that he would no longer be held by them. Orochimaru did much the same, and spiraled ever more into depravity from there.