#and bc they don't really know how to criticize any sakura devt without falling back on the fact that she's a girl

[roobylavender]

the problem with sasusaku is that sakura has no reason whatsoever to love sasuke and retain such feelings for so long, i think kishimoto wrote himself into a corner with her initial characterization and arc that he stuck with for too long

i'm going to have to respectfully disagree lol. i feel like one practice that has become really prevalent within naruto fandom over the years esp the further and further we move away from when part one was originally published or aired on television is this willful memory loss of how the relationships were actually built between team seven when they were a team. the entire point of sakura's part one arc is that she starts out with a very superficial worldview and interests that are gradually fleshed out and weighted per her and the rest of the team's traumatic experiences. sakura's school girl crush on sasuke at the start of part one isn't comparable to the very real care she has for him by the end of part one because he's a teammate she's genuinely come to know and feel protective over. the entire chuunin arc progression is particularly emblematic of that bc she understands even before naruto does the kind of strain sasuke is undergoing due to orochimaru's bite and the harm he risks to himself by giving into its whims. worry over the effects of the bite are a consistent concern for her thereafter esp once he does decide to defect. so i'm not sure what you mean when you say she has no reason whatsoever to retain her feelings for him for so long. by that logic neither does naruto. it doesn't "logically" make sense for either of them to continue caring so much for someone they barely knew for a year and a half and who proceeded to reject them by any violent means possible once he realized he would be powerless to protect them and killing them himself was a better alternative. ultimately they still care about him. they know he's suffering enormous trauma. and that aside he's their teammate and they love him and there doesn't have to be some grand justification for why they continue to keep loving him. that's kind of the whole point. they survive the trauma of their world bc they commit to love. we were alone and starved of love. kids that lived in a world full of hate. it's literally in the thesis statement

#i know the bulk of my naruto posts particularly wrt ss make it look like i'm not open to criticism but believe me i am it's just #(no offense) this is the kind of level one criticism that doesn't even really track if you read the story without letting the fandom #tell you what the story is. like i get it i've been there i used to be ss anti number one about seven years back #but once you reread the story in a vacuum with no fandom opinion to influence you whatsoever there is like #a very real and concrete development there that people are simply loath to recognize bc they don't want to #and bc they don't really know how to criticize any sakura devt without falling back on the fact that she's a girl #even though she and naruto possess a lot of the same reasoning and behavior wrt sasuke #like i really do think a lot of naruto fans need to ask themselves why they don't think naruto should have given up on sasuke too #a lot of the things people are okay with naruto feeling in the name of sasuke they're not okay with sakura feeling. bc it's sakura #anyway. once again no offense to you i mean that genuinely and wholeheartedly ajkgjfhklgf #outbox