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carriesthewind · 11 months

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Good evening everyone! As I said in an answer to a previous ask, there wasn't a public call-in line to listen to the Show Cause Hearing in Mata v Avianca (the ChatGBT lawyer case) today.

However, while we are waiting for a transcript of the hearing (because there was a court reporter! yay!) and a written decision by the judge, we did get this absolutely anxiety-inducing live tweet of the hearing:

(Caveat: this thread was not an official transcript of the hearing and should not be taken as such. It is possible the actual events and statements made in the hearing differ significantly from this report - i.e., take this with a grain of salt and reserve final judgement for the actual transcript.)

I'll put the full thread with some (light) commentary below the cut.* But the overall impression I am left with is that the judge seems to feel this pair of attorneys are treating their duty of candor toward the tribunal with the same seriousness with which they are treating their duty of competence to their clients. (And in this case, that's a very bad thing.)

*The full thread except for a soon-to-follow part 2 because I ran out of space for images again.

(All of the following screenshots are from the above tweet thread by Inner City Press @ innercitypress on twitter, made on June 8, 2023.)

Normally I would overlook that "you, personally," but in this case, you really get the feeling that the judge is concerned that LoDuca might just start talking about what Schwartz did again.

Establishing LoDuca's base of knowledge - he should know how to look up cases and check if they are real; he should know what a real case looks like.

The March 1 submission was the plaintiff's opposition to the motion to dismiss, where they first cited the fake cases.

How bad this answer is depends, I think, on LoDuca's wording here. Best case scenario, his statement about Schwartz was a specific statement about what inquiry was reasonable for him to do under the circumstances (which - for that first filing - I think is actually a reasonable argument. You don't expect your colleague to just make up cases). Worst case, this reads like him trying to wiggle out of his obligations. I will withhold judgement until I see the official transcript.

Rule 11, by the way, refers to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 11(b) states:

(If you remember the Order to Show Cause, we are dealing with a Rule 11(b)(2) issue here. Rule 11(c) allows the court to impose sanctions for violations of Rule 11(b))

Oh no, bad answer. (If anyone reading this is good at photoshop, I cannot express how badly I want a version of the "this sign can't stop me because I can't read" meme with the sign being the quote from defendant's reply where they say, "The undersigned has not been able to locate this case by caption or citation, nor any case bearing any resemblance to it.")

Oh that is not a good way of characterizing those orders. (Those were the orders, remember, where the Court said, "By April 18, 2022, Peter LoDuca, counsel of record for plaintiff, shall file an affidavit annexing copies of the following cases cited in his submission to this Court: as set forth herein. Failure to comply will result in dismissal of the action pursuant to Rule 41 (b), Fed. R. Civ. P.")

I would simply perish on the spot.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention in my original attempted summary of "Varghese" - the first paragraph states that it is a wrongful death suit by the widow of the passenger. Then the second paragraph states that the passenger was denied boarding on a flight due to overbooking and thus missed his connecting flight and therefore incurred additional expenses. The case was such nonsense that I legitimately forgot about that inconsistency by the time I got to the end.

Your honor I plead "2 stupid 2 sanction."

(I believe the "different fonts" is in reference to the April 25 affidavit, in which the case names - and some of the surrounding text - are in a different font from most of the text in the affidavit. It seems like this is because they may have been copied straight from ChatGPT. See e.g., #3 below. It's hard to tell just based on this twitter thread, though.)

A short and simple answer! You did it!

"I have all the answers I need" is not a good sentence in this context.

Very genuinely: shorter is better here. At least I don't think he hurt himself with that statement.

Judge Castel: How do you conduct legal research?

Schwartz: I research cases.

Judge Castel: Do you read them?

Schwartz: Well, I may have once upon a time, but after hearing you ask that question in this context, I have decided to retire from the practice of law forever and also possibly sink into the ground and die. Also, by answering "yes," here, I just realized that I'm either admitting that I read the cases I submitted and therefore must have known they were fake, or else I just possibly committed perjury. Oh shit oh fuck.

Oh god I'm cringing myself into a pretzel just reading this.

Hey, by the way? You can actually use google (esp. google scholar) to do legal research. (It's not a good tool and you will miss things, but it will do in a pinch.) But. Um. If you know that...why didn't you double check your cases at very least on google when you were told they seemed to be made up?

So, once again, I am going to withhold judgement until I see the actual transcript. That said, if Schwartz did say this, I would like to compare it briefly to a part of the chat transcript he provided to the court. Here is the first question asked about the Montreal Convention in the provided transcript:

"analysis"

Oh god. I can't even provide commentary on this one. I hope this is worse than the actual transcript will prove to be. I'm reading through my fingers like I'm watching a horror movie.

"Misperception" (or "misconception") doesn't work once you have evidence that should cause you to doubt - like not being able to find a case that was supposedly published in the Federal fucking Reporter.

This is overshooting "2 stupid 2 sanction" into "too stupid to function."* You either looked for "Varghese" or you didn't. If you looked for "Varghese," it is not credible that you continued to have a good faith assumption that ChatGPT couldn't lie. If you didn't look up "Varghese," you just lied to the Court under oath.

*Just to be clear: for an ordinary person, this would be a very understandable lack of knowledge issue. A lawyer has no excuse not to know this.

Judge Castel: Mr. Schwartz, I think you have the fucking audacity to try to lie to me to my face in my fucking courtroom.

Honestly at this point I'm surprised he could still talk. I think screaming, "I'm melting, I'm melting!" as he vanished into steam, leaving his crumpled suit behind, would be an appropriate response.

NO.

Oh no, oh honey.

Ok. Two options here (again, assuming he actually fucking said "They said they couldn't find them," in response to the Court asking, "When Avianca said you cited non existent cases?"):

Schwartz is once again trying to purposefully downplay what the defendant's reply brief actually said and dodge responsibility.

Schwartz honestly, truly believes that when the defendant filed a reply containing the line, "The undersigned has not been able to locate this case by caption or citation, nor any case bearing any resemblance to it," they were just asking for assistance with their legal research?!??!

I honestly don't know which is worse.

Oh no....

Oh man, I haven't gone over it here yet, but I think that "I looked up the judge" is a panicked attempt at bringing up a talking point the Professional Responsibility Lawyers raised in their memorandum of law. (Again, I'm giving this reading of his response with the caveat that it is based only on this thread, not the official transcript, which might read very differently and contain different/more info.) The Professional Responsibility attorneys noted in a footnote that two of the judges listed in the "opinion," including the "author," were actual 11th circuit judges, and the other is an actual 5th circuit judge. My read of this footnote was as an extra little detail tossed in by the Professional Responsibility attorneys to try to dress up their argument that the "opinions" had various "indicia of authenticity."

But here's the problem. If Schwartz is telling the truth - if he was reading carefully and critically enough that he bothered to look up the judge (why would you do that if you didn't think the case might be fake?!) there is no way he could have missed that the case was gibberish. Again, if this is really what he said at the hearing, he either lied in the hearing, or he must have know the "opinions" were bogus when he gave them to LoDuca to file.

"Did it cross your mind" - if the court actually said this, oh my god.

Hey, that's the point that I made in my original post(s)!

This whole thing about the "+h" to "th" with the notary date is from the recent affidavits filed on 6/6/23, you can read them about them if you want, I'll be honest, I don't really care as much about the notary stuff so I'm going to skip it for the moment.

....and I've run out of space for images again. Part II to follow shortly!

#ai bs #2 Stupid 2 Sanction

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jeonginsleftcheek · 15 days

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R for Rimming

sub!felix x gn!dom!reader

genre: smut, fluff

word count: 2.5k

warning/s: felix gets spanked twice, degradation for one sec

a/n: friends with benefits, college au, reader is a tease, i wanted it to be more smutty but it ended up more fluffy

Sunday afternoons became Felix's favorite part of the week. After all the long hard days filled with obligations like lectures, studying and work, Sunday can't come soon enough. It's the day that's dedicated to spending time with you, just you and him, and that excites him. His excitement shows in the way he can't sleep on Saturday night, tossing and turning in his bed and thinking about your smile and your lips. It shows in the way his heart skips a beat when he hears you knocking on his door.

He's quick to get up on his feet and almost run to the door, but he calms himself down, not wanting to look too eager but you know him better than he thinks you do.

You have this arrangment, no strings attached, you're just friends who help each other relieve stress that inevitably builds up during the week. But, Felix thinks, well he knows he doesn't see you as just a friend anymore, it runs deeper than that. It doesn't help that you're always so sweet to him, always there to talk to him about anything no matter how insignificant it may be, so happy to tease him and bring him to the brink of passing out from pleasure, so gentle when you hold him and praise him for doing so well for you.

When he opens the door, you beam at him and it's already hard for him not to cling onto you and kiss you breathless.

"I brought food." - you chuckle at his starstruck face. You noticed, you're not stupid. You know he likes you a lot, you can see it in the way his eyes shine and soften when he looks at you, how his smile is slightly wider when smiling at you, how he uses any excuse to touch you, even in public.

But, in this game of pleasure, you have the upper hand and you're having so much fun edging him before giving him exactly what he wants.

Before anything else, you and Felix share food and gossip, sitting on the floor in front of the sofa, filling each other in on the latest 'drama' happening at your college and in your friend group. You complain about your assigments and professors together, you laugh at stupid memes and tiktoks.

When you finish with your gossip sesh, you play videogames together and it always starts out with you convicing Felix to play some horror game with you. And every time he almost starts crying, saying that 'how can you find this relaxing, I'm scared for my life and stressed!', but you just laugh and ruffle his hair. Ofcourse you end up playing whatever he wants to, because you don't wanna make him feel bad and you love the way he gets excited, his eyes lighting up when he plays his favorite games or talks about them. You also think it's so funny how he almost pulls his hair out and starts cussing whenever he gets frustrated and loses (which is often, but you don't comment on it).

In the middle of the game, your hand ends up on the back of Felix's neck as you massage him lightly. His fingers tremble, his concentration broken for a moment, his body responding to you right away. You ghost on his skin with your fingertips before playing with the ends of his hair.

"You smell good." - you say, bringing your face closer to his hair and inhaling his sweet, intoxicating scent.

"T-thank you." - Felix whispers as you drag your lips on his jaw slowly, continuing down to his neck. "You smell good too." - he adds.

"Mhm." - you mutter against his hot skin, pressing your lips into it and watching as he keeps getting more and more flustered, the redness of his cheeks spreading down to his neck. No matter how many times you kissed and fucked, he would still get shy and flustered and this drove you kind of insane, made you want to ruin him just to keep getting reactions out of him. You sink your teeth into his skin and suck lightly, listening to his breathing getting faster.

"Y/N..."- he whines a little. "Don't leave a mark there, please. Everyone will see."- he adds, since no one knows you're hooking up but you're pretty sure your friends sensed it.

"So what?"- you smirk against his skin. You're mine, you think, but you don't say it out loud.

He gives into you anyways, his head leaning back, giving you more access to his neck.

"Lixie. I wanna suggest something." - you say, leaning back a little and pressing your hand into his thigh. He finally pauses the game and turns to you, pupils blown and cheeks red, his adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallows.

"Yeah?"- he tilts his head curiously.

"I want to rim you."- you smirk and his brain short-circuits, big innocent eyes staring at yours.

"Ugh. Like... With your tongue?"- he says nervously, playing with the hem of his shirt and you roll your eyes playfully.

"Ofcourse Lix, what else?"- you chuckle.

"Well I don't know. What if... what if I don't taste good?"- he asks, butterflies flying around in his navel as you look at him intensely.

"I've had your cock in my mouth and I can confirm that you taste very sweet."- you smirk again and Felix sputters.

"Don't say that."- he says, looking away from you in embarassment. "This is different anyways."

"Getting shy on me, Lixie?"- you purr into his ear, your hand inching closer to his crotch.

He opens his mouth to answer, but you cut him off by grabbing him through his sweatpants and he whimpers before looking at you.

"If you're not comfortable with it I won't make you."- you say as you palm him lightly, feeling him growing under your hand. Felix spreads his legs ever so slightly and bucks up into your hand, chasing your touch.

"I want to. I'm just scared."- he admits.

"Of what, baby?"- you ask and he shivers. You should know what nicknames like that do to him by now.

"That it will taste bad and you will be disgusted by me."- he whimpers, his bottom lip trembling as you squeeze him gently.

"That's impossible."- you shake your head, leaning in closer to him.

His eyes fall to your lips, and you close the gap, taking his upper lip between yours, sucking on it gently. Felix melts into you, leaning back on the couch behind him slightly as you keep kissing him and palming him. Your hand slides into his sweatpants as you suck on his tongue, you grab his hard leaking cock and Felix whimpers, feeling like he's already about to unravel.

His hand comes up to grab at your arm, just to have something to hold on to as you start pumping him, spreading the pre-cum all over his length.

"Lixie."- you whisper as you part your lips from his, a thin string of saliva connecting you.

"Y/N."- he whispers back and you squeeze him a little.

"How about you take off your clothes?"- you say retracting your hand from his pants and he pouts a little at the lack of your touch.

"Okay."- Felix complies and swiftly takes his shirt off, throwing it somewhere on the couch behind him. He hooks his fingers into his pants and pulls them down together with his boxers, also throwing them somewhere behind him carelessly.

Something about you being completely dressed, while he sat there completely naked, his legs spread open, made him feel flustered and vunerable. Your eyes scanned his body, everything right there on display for you, except what you wanted to see the most today.

"Touch me, please."- Felix whimpers when you just stare at him. You snap out of your daze and grab his face gently.

"You wanna try what I suggested before?"- you ask again, wanting his consent before you do anything else.

"I'm not sure. I mean, I'm curious about it."- he says, his cock twitching a little.

"Do you trust me, baby?"- you ask, caressing his freckled cheeks.

"I do."- he nods fast, biting on his lower lip.

"Then get on all fours for me."- you order and the way you say it makes Felix's head spin and his heart beat fast. He obeys, his palms pressed into the carpet underneath him, legs spread and ass up in the air. The arch in his back and the plushness of his ass and thighs are delicious and you feel yourself throbbing at the sight.

"If you feel like you wanna stop at any time, just say the word, okay?"- you hover over him, your hand resting on his hip. He nods and you shake your head at him.

"Use your words, baby."- you say, squeezing his hip a little.

"Okay, I will."- he rasps, his voice breaking a little.

He was anticipating your touches so much that he was practically vibrating on the floor, waiting for your next move eagerly.

You decide to ease him into it as you hold his hips and lean down, pressing slow kisses on his shoulders, down his back, your lips touching his freckles, worshipping them. Felix's breathing is shaky and he leans his cheek on the carpet, his eyes fluttering closed for a few seconds. He almost forgets what you were planning to do, so when you plant a kiss on his plush ass cheek, he goes rigid.

"Relax baby."- you say, caressing the back of his thigh as you keep kissing him. Felix breathes in, his nails digging into the carpet, his cock still hard, aching to be touched, but he stays still and tries to relax. His heart beats hard against his chest as you leave wet kisses and little bites on his cheek, and he can't control the needy whimpers coming out of his mouth.

You bite into his flesh, close to his fluttering hole, your hand grabbing him, pulling him more open for you. Felix whines loudly as you suck his skin, the pain of your teeth biting into him hard making his cock leak onto the carpet. He is so close to just touching himself to get some kind of relief but he knows better than to do anything without your permission.

You keep leaving love bites on his skin, grabbing at him roughly just how you know he likes it. He would never say it out loud but he loves when you get rough with him, you know it by the high pitch in his moans and the way he cums faster whenever you manhandle him. When you're satisfied with the marks you left, you lean back and spread him apart.

"Y/N..."- Felix whines and you smirk leaning over him. His face is red, a thin sheen of sweat covering his forehead. His eyes are so hazy and filled with lust and it spurs you on.

You hover your lips over his hole, gathering spit before you let it drip down. Felix shivers and moans, leaning his ass towards you, he's already desperate for you.

You put your thumb on him and play with your spit, smearing it all over his entrance and Felix swears his brain seeps out of his skull at that moment.

"Oh my- Y/N!"- he whimpers when you press your finger into him, just teasing him a little, rubbing it in circles.

"Just stay still for me, baby."- you smirk and lean down closer to him. Your breath hits his pulsating hole and you watch it clench around nothing. You've had enough of teasing him and you're getting impatient, wanting to taste him already so you keep him open for you as you lean in and lick a few experimental stripes.

"Oh god."- Felix whines loudly, twitching for a second as he grips the carpet for dear life.

You take that as a good sign and start moving your tongue up and down slowly. His moans flow beautifully and steadily as he pushes back into you. You smirk as you grip his ass and start moving your tongue faster.

"I knew you'd enjoy this Lixie."- you lean back for a second. "Cause you're just a dirty little slut, aren't you?"- you spank him, making his body jerk forwards as he moans loudly.

"Yes, yes, Y/N! Please, more, please."- Felix whines and begs, pushing back into you but you grip his hip harder and spank him again.

"Patience sweetheart."- you say and lean back in, your breath ghosting against his skin again, you enjoy seeing him desperate for you. You kiss his fluttering hole and then stick your tongue out and start moving it fast left and right, and Felix whimpers loudly.

You keep playing with your tongue in different directions for some time and when he got used to the motions you push your tongue into him and start fucking his hole with it. Felix completely loses his mind as you hold him roughly and keep fucking into him faster and faster. You know he's close and even though you love teasing him, you still wanna let him come. Besides, this was just the beginning of your night together, you'd play with him more later.

You snake your arm around him and grab his cock, as you messily lick and fuck his hole, your other hand grabbing at his thigh. His cock twitches in your hand and you don't remember him ever being this hard.

"Y/N please let me come for you!"- Felix begs, legs shaking.

"Come for me, baby."- you say and dive back in, jerking him off at the same speed. Felix moans your name followed by something unintelligible that sounds like curse words as he explodes onto the carpet, his body tensing and twitching.

"Wow."- he says as he drops down, breathless.

"You did so well for me, Lixie."- you smile at him, caressing his hair. His eyes flutter as he looks at you, hand reaching out for yours.

"I'll clean you up first, okay?"- you say, squeezing his hand for a second and he nods as you get up and leave to the bathroom.

You come back a few moments later with a warm wet cloth and clean him up gently, all the while he looks at you with hearts in his eyes and your own heart starts beating fast against your chest.

You hold Felix in your arms, as he comes down from his high and clings onto you, burying his face in your neck and inhaling your comforting scent.

"See, that was better than you thought it'd be, right?"- you ask, caressing his hair.

"Mhm."- he mutters. "Next time I could try it on you, if you want."- he adds, looking up at you sweetly.

"Sure. I have something else to suggest now though."- you smirk suddenly, twirling his hair around your finger.

"Already?"- Felix's eyes widden.

"Not like that."- you chuckle. "Let me take you out on a date."- you add, smiling at him as you hold his cheek.

"A-a real date? Like an official one?"- he asks, his eyes wide and sparkly.

"Yeah."- you nod, chuckling at his cute reaction.

"I would love that."- he smiles at you so brightly that your heart skips a few beats.

"I know you would."- you smirk a little, trying to act cool even though Felix can see the redness on your face and feel the erratic beating of your heart, he smirks back at you.

Guess the game's over.

#skz x reader #skz felix #skz smut #stray kids #lee felix smut #sub stray kids #lee felix x reader #skz fluff #lee felix fluff #skz scenarios #skz imagines #lee felix #sub!skz #sub felix

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lizzieisright · 1 month

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JUST READ YOUR OMEGA!ABBY FANFIC AND OMFG?? THATS SO GOOD!!! LITERALLY AMAZING WRITING<3

If your requests are open, how about Omega!Abby and Alpha!reader where they mark and scent eachother? :D

Thank youu

thank you so much! I call this one "All The Times When Ellie Williams Questioned If She Still Wanted To Be Friends With Abby" ft. Abby's alpha.

female alpha!reader x omega!abby

Palestine: what can you do

Tags: dead dove: do not eat. a/b/o universe (female alphas have dicks), modern AU, there's some smut. 1.3k words.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Ellie Williams is the biggest victim of your relationship. She thinks she has a right for moral compensation for what she has to put up with, because you two are disgusting.

(She is jealous)

It starts innocently enough: Abby texts her about how cute you’re and how you scented her totally by accident. Ellie rolls her eyes, but smiles and sends Abby a meme.

The first time when you scent Abby it happens unconsciously. You're hugging goodbye after one of your dates, and as you put your head on Abby's shoulder, you nuzzle into her neck. Abby freezes, while you get confused. And then it dawns on you.

“Oh god.” You say, horrified. Abby is blushing, shocked, but she doesn't smell bad. “Oh god, I'm sorry.”

“It's- it's okay.” Abby says as she touches her neck. She can smell how your scents mixed and it makes her feel giddy. “I like it.”

You grin widely and toy with Abby's fingers, like a lovesick idiot. Abby doesn't reciprocate, and yeah, maybe it hurts your feelings a bit, you don't say anything. Abby is not obligated to scent you back.

Then it goes to: "I scented her back today and she looked so happy!!" Which is great to know, but Ellie's lonely ass doesn't want to read it right after she embarrassed herself in front of Dina.

When Abby still doesn't reciprocate after the third time you scented her, you start worrying. So you talk to her.

“Do you want me to stop scenting you? You don't smell uncomfortable, but-” Abby looks at you with wide eyes, probably panicking. “Fuck, I should've asked before I did it, I'm such an idiot.”

Abby panics more and grips your hands tightly.

“I like it. Don't stop, please. And you don't need to ask.” Abby smiles gently and you turn into a puddle. Then Abby frowns. “I guess I feel embarrassed, you know- Because my scent is so weak. That's why I don't scent you back.”

You blink. And blink again. It's true, Abby doesn't have the most suffocating scent, not sharp vanilla or god forbid, lilies, but once you know how Abby smells, you can always catch it. And to you it doesn't matter - you smell her on yourself, and this is all you need. Just have a piece of her on you, comforting you.

“I love your scent.” You say and Abby's pheromones burst. “I want your scent on me.”

Abby smiles, happy to hear it, happy to be enough for you. Then she shyly moves closer and nuzzles into your neck too, making your knees wobble. Your scents mix perfectly.

It becomes quite a common ritual for you: you nuzzle each other when you cuddle, when Abby sits on your lap, when you sit on her lap, you always bury your noses in each other's scent glands. It's safe and soothing, and makes you both feel like you belong to each other, comforting and protective. And Ellie understands that - it’s cute. You two are cute, and she is very happy for Abby, especially since you look like you genuinely believe the sun shines out of Abby’s ass. So she keeps her teasing to herself and lets you two enjoy each other.

Then one day Dina tells Ellie how scary you are when you get territorial and Ellie thinks she will kill you, but then Dina asks if it’s true that Ellie broke Owen’s wrist for cheating on Abby and Ellie’s bloodthirst subsides.

You can't help it, you hate when other alphas look at Abby and fucking sniff her. She is yours. Abby finds it endearing, because she is so not scared of you, you're safe, but she starts to notice how other alphas turn away when your scent gets stronger. She doesn't piece it together until Dina points it out, when your alpha presence affects her alpha presence.

“You make her so fucking scary, Abby.” Dina laughs while you stare down yet another alpha, radiating aggression. “One day she is going to rip someone to shreds for you.”

Again, Abby would laugh, but she knows alphas are more than capable of doing it. Abby tells Dina about what happened to Owen when he cheated on her and Dina smirks, while her scent changes to attraction. Abby grins, knowing that she just made Ellie look more appealing in Dina's eyes.

Ellie can live with that. She understands, she also gets jealous easily, and it is hilarious watching you get all over Abby without even realising it.

You get possessive unconsciously: you see an alpha staring at Abby and you wrap your arms around her, rubbing your cheek over her neck, making sure your scents are mixed, and Abby giggles.

“What are you doing?” She asks and you freeze like a deer, your arms locked around her.

“I-um.” What are you supposed to say? Sorry, this guy was looking at you so I claimed you?

“Yeah?” Abby keeps teasing you and you bite her shoulder lightly.

“This guy was looking at you so I claimed you.” You admit and Abby laughs.

“Oh, I needed that.” Abby says, taking a breath after laughing at you. “Silly, silly alpha.”

You huff, but when Abby kisses you, you melt.

But then you stare her down and honestly, Ellie feels like challenging you out of pure fucking spite. She obviously doesn’t - first of all, because she understands, second of all, because unlike weakass Owen, you will kick her ass. Abby is fucking glowing and Ellie swallows her pride for the sake of her friend’s happiness.

When Ellie gets “you know I just realised that she is MY alpha. like. she is *mine*. it do be crazy out there” Ellie doesn’t expect to see you next day with two hickeys on your neck and a lovesick grin. Abby looks embarrassed and Ellie makes fun of her for it, but then you growl at her and Ellie starts making fun of you for being so whipped. (she never mentions that you’re wearing marks and not Abby, she is not an asshole).

Abby doesn't use scenting as a form of claiming you, because she thinks her scent is not strong enough. She much prefers to scent you in order to soothe you, especially when you're stressed, because it calms you down, but when Abby gets territorial, she leaves marks.

It happens for the first time before you two have sex, but you're already getting handsy with each other. You're making out on your couch and Abby smells your arousal, feels your hard-on against her thigh, and you whine so prettily into her mouth when she grinds against you.

Abby suddenly feels so possessive - she wants to claim you, she wants everyone to know you're hers, and her kisses become rough. You whine when she starts kissing your jaw and then moves to your neck, licking your scent glands with her hot tongue.

“Fuck, I'm gonna-” Abby sucks a bruise on your neck, just under your scent glands, and you cum, wetting your pants. “Fuck, holy shit- Abby-” You keep whining and Abby growls, sucking another hickey. “Holy shit, baby-”

She leaves your neck alone and bites your collarbone. Your eyes become red and Abby whines herself when your thick alpha presence starts filling her nose. She pants into your neck, too turned on, and you grip her waist tighter.

“Please.” Abby begs and you push your hands down her pants, rubbing her clit. “Yes, fuck, right there- fuck!”

She is so pretty when she cums.

And okay, it’s all cool. Ellie is cool with everything. But she fucking hates your ruts. Not only it reminds her of her own loneliness, but it also turns you into a fucking idiot. It’s unbecoming. You’re smart and funny and Ellie, despite her complaints, is actually fond of you. You’ve become one of her closest friends, since when she was really stressed out about Dina and being in love with another alpha, you’ve never judged her and helped her through it. But your ruts come and Ellie wishes she could strangle you.

You're close to your rut, Abby is supposed to study with Ellie in the evening, and your monkey brain needs to make it clear that Abby is yours, even though you know Ellie is not a threat. You actually like her, she is cool and keeps your baby safe when you're not around, but alpha instincts can't be really defied. So in the morning you fuck Abby in the shower and suck a hickey near Abby's scent glands when she cums. She doesn't pay attention: you always play with her neck, so it's nothing new.

So when Abby shows up to their usual study session in the library Ellie is appalled. Abby, oblivious as ever, doesn't even notice it, but Ellie can't stop staring at a hickey on Abby's collarbone: she knows why you put it there, you rut-induced jealous moron.

“She marked you?”

Abby blushes.

“What?”

“You have a hickey.” Ellie nods at her collarbone and suddenly the room smells like arousal. “No, you're not getting horny in the library, Anderson. Have some respect.”

Abby blushes harder.

“I swear to God Abby.” Ellie hisses and Abby laughs, but the smell of arousal goes down. “Keep your alpha in check.”

“Come on, you know I'm worse with the marking than she is.” Abby smiles. “Last time I made a fucking necklace around her neck because Nora hugged her.”

“Please, I don't want to know.” Ellie whines and Abby laughs, a manic grin forms on her lips.

“Oh, you know what she does when she is in a rut? She rubs her c-”

“Fuck off Abby! I don't need to know!” Ellie groans, tired of her shitty best friend and her shitty alpha and their shitty sex life.

“Maybe Dina will do it too, you know.”

Ellie blushes and doesn't say anything, too embarrassed to admit that Dina already did.

“Why am I friends with you? Why am I friends with your girlfriend?” Ellie shakes her head and Abby laughs.

Ellie thinks you’re the worst when you’re in rut with how possessive you are, but she has to find out the truth the hard way. Abby comes to lunch all grumpy and pouty, and Ellie smells the sour spice of jealousy in her scent. She doesn’t smell hurt, which is great, but it bothers Ellie.

“She got paired for a project with that bitch who always stares at her!” Abby bursts and Ellie nods. She knows the bitch - a cute omega from your class who always stands too close to you during student guide’s meetings and looks at you like you hang the stars. You keep your distance, but it doesn’t stop the omega. So Abby is furious.

“Well shit.” Ellie sighs.

“I’ll kill her.”

“I’m not visiting you in prison.”

It sucks, Ellie knows. She also hates seeing omegas smile at Dina, especially since she is so friendly. But Ellie can’t control other people, and Abby can’t too.

So it turns out, Abby comes up with a creative solution.

There are moments when Abby scents you to claim you. You know she is upset about Ollie, and you keep trying to soothe her until Abby decides to take the matter in her own hands.

She pushes you on the bed and strips under your shocked eyes, but you quickly catch up and start taking your own clothes off. You reach for Abby to give her a kiss, but instead she pushes you again until you lie down, and straddles your chest. You grin and wrap your arms around her thighs, tugging her down until Abby sits on your face, her hot cunt suffocating you. It’s heaven. It’s pure heaven. You grip her thighs and eat her out like a woman starved, licking and sucking her clit, lapping at her drooling hole and moaning when you taste her. Abby is whimpering above you, but then she finds herself and grips your hair to yank your head down, holding it one place.

“Stick your tongue out.” Abby growls and you obey, so turned on by your girlfriend you start humping air.

Abby starts to ride your face aggressively, until your damn eyelashes are wet with her cum and you let her, moaning into her cunt as you get yourself off. Abby starts growling “you’re mine” on every tilt of her hips, her puffy clit twitching on your tongue, and you’re done. You cum and Abby keeps going until her thighs trap you and her slick drowns you while she shakes and whimpers on top of you.

The next day Ellie, poor unsuspecting Ellie, hugs you hello when you meet her in the morning in a coffee shop, and she catches a very strong scent. Abby’s very strong scent. It’s not the one that she scents you with - it’s something richer, deeper, as if her usual scent of fresh roses was condensed and spilled on your fa-

You have the audacity to laugh when Ellie connects the dots.

“I hate you both so fucking much. Why do I even bother.” Ellie huffs while you laugh, pleased. “Go wash your fucking face, you stink!”

But you can only smile, absolutely love-drunk. It's fair to say, Ollie backs off immediately after this.

Of course, eventually Ellie makes peace with it.

(She gets her revenge)

#abby anderson x reader #abby anderson x you #abby anderson #abby tlou #omega!abby

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olderthannetfic · 2 months

Note

audience question: how did you approach having to explain jkr's descent into madness to people who are chronically online but aren't tapped into the major fandom community, without just sending them contrapoints' video? (i mean, i can, but i'd consider it as a last resort if they want further info)

context: my old college friend who is a hp fan (the usual childhood book geek backstory) recently bought the legacy game and i had to bite my tongue when they try to engage me with it. it's in the scope of our usual topics, which is just sending memes to each other and minding our own business in different fandoms, but now i feel like i should say something, except that opens up a can of worms because of the *waves hands* discourse surrounding it.

i'm not sure how to unpack this without me having to come out to them in some capacity first (which is something i've been planning to do for awhile now, i know i'm not obligated to). it's such a charged topic for a friendship that's built on daily posts of cat gifs and i'm not sure how to bring it up without seeming like i'm shaming them for it? it's astounding to me that they have no clue why 'they're not seeing any fanart of this character on twitter when they checked' and actually went to tumblr to find some, without bumping into any bullshit, but i guess the tags self-contain the topic so they don't get see any discourse against it.

tl;dr: should i even bring this up? or should i just let it die down? i feel kinda bad ignoring the topic, but it's also something that i would not prefer to engage with said friend because i don't want to spend my energy having to address it. (i should just send the contrapoints video, huh)

I think I would say something like "JKR turned into kind of a jerk over the years and it soured me on HP-related things." If they ask for details on her being a jerk, send the video link.

I don't think it's necessary to come out, nor do you need to elaborate a lot until they ask. You can get into the issues with the game itself if you want to, but if your primary aim is to get them to not talk to you about HP and/or to be aware that there's something going on with HP, you don't need to get into that level of detail.

The experience of not liking a creator anymore after they change or you find out things is pretty common. If you keep it more to "I feel sad now", that gives them less to get offended by or argue with and feels less like an accusation.

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guilty-shot-au · 3 days

Text

Okay, I have been meaning to say this for a while, because I think this is a noticeable problem in our community:

Every ask matters And yet there are NONE

Do you feel bored in this RP fandom?

Tired of browsing a rarely updating tag?

Notice how half the community is joining ask games?

Ever wonder why many OS RP blogs go almost completely inactive?

Notice how there's half a dozen boring and slow as hell arcs going on recently?

This is because many blogs get NO asks at all. Popular or not.

Even OS Game RP giants like @diginiko-asks and @nyat-a-cat (currently shadowbanned so ask @the-kerfus-machine ) can experience a complete lack of asks sent sometimes!

And we need YOU to send some to the blogs you follow!

No matter what you send, no matter if they get answered or not, having asks to answer is good for everyone!

If you find yourself constantly waiting for asks all day, without actually sending asks out yourself, you are a part of the problem!

This community thrives on interaction, not waiting!

Want to help this community? Want to improve people's days? Try sending three or more asks to random blogs a day!

Feel anxious to send asks? Nobody in this RP will do anything to you, and the characters do not reflect any of the blog runners intentions. Also, the anon option is there for a reason! Always remember that you have good intentions!

Feel like you will worsen someone's day by sending an ask? As long as you follow the rules set by the blog runner, you won't! At worst, it's a forgivable annoyance.

And if you are running an RP blog, remember: you are not obligated to reply to any asks sent, do not let this hobby cause you burnout.

"Oh, but I don't know who to ask!"

Just browse the "#OS game RP" tag, it's more effective than you might think at finding new blogs!

Check the blogs you follow, there's likely an RP blog or two you forgot about.

There's already large lists of OS game RP blogs out there, check out Mapmaker's interview list and the fifh masterpost!

"Oh, but I don't know what to ask!"

Here's some ideas:

Philosophy, hobbies, and specific preferences are simple topics to form questions in, and can tell a lot about a character!

Ask something as YOUR character! - Have a casual conversation between two different characters with someone else in a thread, share lore on the way, tell stories, and have fun!

Question some lore! - If you can ask something regarding a character's backstory, especially to fill in the potential plot holes, that can be very healthy for the writing side of running an RP blog!

A lot of blogs are actually fine with M!As, if they are simple or interesting!

Found yourself questioning or answering something interesting out of RP? Great ask!

Found something interesting in a quiz? That's a great ask idea!

Came up with something that would probably cause funny reactions? - Ask away!

Heard a silly question in general? Great! Guess who you can redirect it to!

Remember: Questions do not have to be complicated! Don't feel bad if something of yours does not get answered, because you had good intentions in the end!

But I am never going to tell you to send people random nonsense just for them to not have empty inboxes, so try to avoid:

Random memes/words - These are hard to work with and are unlikely to lead to interesting things.

Basic compliments - Most characters will probably say "thanks", unless they have a backstory for it.

Repeating jokes - No one's gonna have fun if you just send "Fifh" to Freeware entity for the 15th time without putting a unique twist on it.

Spam, NSFW, exc. - Just no.

In general, it's best to put thought in your asks.

If you have anything to state on the topic, please do so in the reblogs. I encourage you to check them.

Share this around and tell your friends to send out asks regularly!

Anyways good night, sleep deprived ramble over.

#os game rp #guilty-shot-news #guilty-shot-rps

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beomiracles · 2 months

Note

Hi (: i know this is a weird request but i was wondering if you could maybe do a txt x reader where the reader is blind on one eye?

I would be so happy if you could do it but you can also not :3

WHEN YOU'RE BLIND ON ONE EYE

pairings: txt x gn!reader warnings: mentions of insecurity

A/N ─ such a unique request, loved making it (∩˃o˂∩)♡

YEONJUN

thinks your eye is beautiful.

always compliments it.

makes sure to press kisses to your eyelid.

literally tells you off about wanting to wear contacts to cover it up.

The deafening sound of your alarm breaks the silence of the room as you sit up with a groan. Turning the alarm off you stretch your arms out, followed by a yawn. Your boyfriend groans from somewhere beside you as an arm snakes around your waist. “Going so soon, babe?”, he mumbles, eyes still half shut.

“Yes I have my interview today…”, you climb out of bed and scurry toward the bathroom. Half an hour or so later you reemerge to find Yeonjun still asleep on the bed. “Babe, wake up”, you gently shake him awake. Your boyfriend swats your arm away as he turns to face you, squinting as his eyes adjust to the light, “uh uh?”.

“Have you seen my contact lenses, the brown ones?” Yeonjun frowns, “why?”. You shake your head, “I need them for the interview, I want to leave a good impression”, you explain as you begin to search the bedside drawer. Yeonjun sits up as his hand grabs onto your arm, pulling you down on his lap.

Pushing a strand of hair out of your face he looks at you, seemingly more awake. “You look just fine like this”, he says as he gives your lips a peck. You sigh, “Yeonjun I’m serious-”

“I threw them away”.

You blink, “what?”. Your boyfriend shrugs, “you don’t need them, your eyes are beautiful babe.” You bite your bottom lip hesitantly, “anyone who fails to see that isn’t worth more than a second glance from you”, he says as he presses a kiss to your closed eyelid. You smile “you’re right”.

SOOBIN

very surprised when you first showed it to him.

is now his favorite thing about you.

gets lost in your eye(s) a lot.

gets seriously offended if you talk bad about it.

You’re in the midst of explaining the rules of the board game the two of you were playing for the evening when you catch your boyfriend spacing out, again. It was something he did a lot. “Soobinnie?” you snap your fingers in front of him making him jolt in his seat, “y-yeah?”.

You grin, “you’re doing that thing again”, you say as you place the characters down on the board between you. “Doing what?” he asks innocently, you roll your eyes, “spacing out”. A pink blush rises to his cheeks, “...‘m not”. He sighs as he props his chin up on his palm, “can’t I enjoy the stunning view that is you?”.

His words make you giggle slightly though your laughter is short lived when you realize just where his gaze is fixated. Shifting uncomfortably in your seat you clear your throat. “Don’t stare at it for too long, you might change your mind about it”, you say as you try to give him a grin.

Soobin frowns, “why would I?” You pout slightly as you think of an answer, “I mean it’s not exactly…”,──“not exactly normal?” he asks as he tilts his head, you nod. Your boyfriend shakes his head, “that’s why I like it, it’s you, no one else”.

Your boyfriend smiles, “and you’re the only thing I want”.

BEOMGYU

sends blind people memes to you.

tries his best to turn your insecurities into something fun instead.

probably only covers one of your eyes when he’s showing a surprise.

the type to say, “you get 50% off at the ophthalmologist”

“Okay, close your eye”, your boyfriend says as he sits down on the bed in front of you. You oblige as you close your eye. Beomgyu holds up his hand in front of you, “alright, how many fingers am I holding up?” You frown, “baby I love you but what is the meaning of this?”. Beomgyu sighs, “to test your intuition, I read that blind people have a higher intuition than the average person!”

You frown, “I’m not blind”, Beomgyu shakes his head, “you’re halfway there”, he chuckles. “Alright fine”, you groan and your boyfriend holds up four fingers in front of you. “How many fingers?” he asks.

“Four”. Beomgyu’s jaw falls open, “alright that was just luck”, he composes himself before continuing, “okay now?”. “Three”. Beomgyu frowns, “no way…okay how about-”─”six”, you cut him off.

“Alright you’ve got to be cheating”, he exclaims and you suppress a giggle. “You never told me which eye to close silly”, Beomgyu frowns, “wait a minute”. You burst out into full blown laughter as you double over on your chest.

Your boyfriend groans as he facepalms, “why couldn’t you have a brown eye instead of blue, would’ve made my life so much easier”, he whines. “But it would’ve made mine a lot more boring”, you grin.

TAEHYUN

does whatever he can to make you feel comfortable.

loves your eye so so much, wants you to embrace it to the fullest.

silently admiring it whenever he can.

will 100% wear a contact lens to match you when going out if you feel uncomfortable.

Taehyun softly closes the front door behind him as he makes his way to the living room of your shared apartment. He finds you on the sofa, book in your hand as you flip the pages. He smiles as he sits down next to you, not saying anything as he lets you finish the page you’re on.

When you look up he frowns, fingers reaching out to pull your hair from your face, he tucks it behind your ear. “How was work?” you ask as you place the book on your lap. “It was fine”, he says as he goes on to tell you about his day. At first he pretends not to notice the way you subtly pull your hair back to cover your eye.

Until he can’t take it anymore, “quit that”, he mumbles as his fingers catch your hair, tucking it back behind your ear. A subtle blush rises to your cheeks as you avoid his gaze. Long fingers grab hold of your chin as he turns your face to meet his.

“What’s the point of having a lover if I can’t even look at them?” he tilts his head, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as you squirm in his grasp. Taehyun is quick to claim your lips with his, “did I tell you that you look fucking beautiful today?”.

HUENINGKAI

thinks it's so cool and unique on you.

always finds ways to cheer you up whenever you’re feeling insecure.

“i wish i had a silver eye >.<”

just holds a lot of admiration for it and you in general.

Your boyfriend's large arms snake around your waist as he hugs your back against his chest. Inhaling the sweet scent of your hair he mumbles a quiet “hi baby”. You don’t reply as you continue to scroll anxiously on your phone, bottom lip pulled between your teeth as you gnaw on it.

Huening frowns as he looks up from your hair, “something wrong?” he asks as he takes a peek at your phone. You’re scrolling through the comment section on what looks to be your instagram account. “Huh? nothing just..”, you trail off as your finger stops on a particularly harsh comment.

Your boyfriend is quick to snatch your phone away from you as he reports the comment. You try to get your phone back but Huening holds it out of your reach as he goes through the comments with furrowed brows. “I thought I told you to turn them off”, he mumbles but you heed him no mind as you reach for your phone yet again.

“I just…I don’t know”, you say as you defeatedly slump down on the couch, tears threatening to spill over at any moment. Your boyfriend is by your side in seconds, “look here”, he says as he hands you the phone. The screen is now filled with comments all admiring and complimenting your eye.

Huening grins, “see? you’re a badass!”. You try and hold back the smile tugging at your lips as you like the comments, you glance up to your boyfriend, “you think so too?”. You’re quickly engulfed in a tight hug, “pfft, I think you’re the baddest of them all babe”.

#txt #txt fanfic #kang taehyun #choi beomgyu #choi yeonjun #choi soobin #hueningkai #txt post #txt fluff #txt x reader #txt imagines #kpop imagines #beomiracles soft thoughts ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 #beomiracles ₊˚⊹ ᰔ #kpop #tubatu #txt ot5 #tubatu's dreams

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bi4bihankking · 6 months

Text

Okay the main reason that you should read Infinity Inc. Do you like cute college students who are fun together? Do you like found family? Do you like your favorite characters being friends forever and nothing bad happening to them at all?

Well TOO BAD! If you read Infinity Inc. your favorite character has a 92% chance of either dying or going evil! You will love these stupid children and you will be so upset that DC refuses to have an actual full Infinity Inc. Reunion and instead decides that every few years former members should attempt to murder each other.

For characters you have: Boy with daddy issues, other boy with daddy issues, gay angry boy with daddy issues, (unfortunately not canon gay yet) boy with EVIL daddy issues, and 7’6” himbo. It’s just... daddy issues all the way down. Also sexist 1940s man who is incredibly annoying. Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, or Jade, who you should all know, and frankly I think if your only exposure to Jen is Kyle Green Lantern you should be OBLIGATED to read Infinity Inc. I have seen some awful stuff flung around about her by Kyle fans. “Jade is only important to comics to tie Kyle to Alan and since she can’t do that properly she might as well stay dead” and that’s just what I’m willing to quote.

Read Jennie-Lynn RIGHT NOW to properly appreciate her or learn to keep her name out of your mouth. I say while shipping her other ex with her dad and her brother.

Lyta Trevor who has been through so much and deserves so much more than being hated because of Sandman, you do not know Lyta and you have not read her struggles, how dare you, I am assigning you the homework of Read Infinity Inc. or shut up.

Okay that is the big sexisms it’s time to get to the big homophobias, or both. Hey remember how the mini series that Beth and Yolanda were killed off in either heavily implied that they were dating or ramped up the sexual tension so much that it seems that they are. I think you should read Infinity Inc. and join me in demanding that Geoff Johns brings back that relationship. Yeah it would be cute.

Read Infinity Inc. now to fall in love with the cutest college age idiots you’ve ever read, ship a ship that is definitely considered problematic now (it’s Hank and Todd I don’t mean problematic problematic I mean, my god people are weird about non-canon gay ships involving canon gay characters, they just have a ridiculous amount of UST and you have to understand Hank was absolutely in love with both twins you have to you have to), be destroyed by the only death in the main series as you learn to care about them all, and also read further in the main characters lives and see the horrible shit they all but especially Hank gets subjected to...

I forgot someone...

MISTER BONES

MOST IMPORTANTLY

Infinity Inc. is the origin of this meme!

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hellsite-hall-of-fame · 11 months

Note

My lad, I can't deal with this anymore, I feel bad for you. Really should stop answering the asks shaming you for not knowing some ancient memes. Not just because these asks flood the dash, but because fuck it, really, you're not obliged to know any of this like it's some vital knowledge, because it's not. It all feels like some elders who laugh at younger ones for not knowing what a rotary phones are (do you...do you know what a rotery phone is?..) Or at least start goofing around and answering insane bullshit to every single ask like that, possibly creating a new layer of memes in the process.

that is definitely good advice that I do sincerely appreciate, thank you

but tbh I really don’t feel bad about the asks, and legitimately find it quite amusing lol

I might take your advice on answering with complete bullshit that makes no sense and possibly creating new memes in the process…. could be fun

….oh also what if I told you that I actually have been laughed at irl for not definitively knowing how to use a landline phone??….. random info, but your example felt a little too real :’(

#I do apologize for flooding your dash….#but still I take no offense from the asks #ask #anonymous #the hellsite answers #hellsite hall of fame curator’s bullshit

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tobylovesspence · 1 year

Text

Rule No. 4: No Marvel Stans

Warnings: Petnames like baby, sweetheart, dear, and kissing (not a lot) fem!reader, sick simpbur, the usual cursing

~The one where Wilbur’s girlfriend likes Marvel and finds Tommy funny.~

Wilbur had gotten sick and the perfect stream to do when he was sick was a ‘You Laugh You Lose’. And even more perfect his girlfriend had dropped by so of course his perfect idea came to mind. “Baby pleaseee~ Please stream with me! It’ll only take like an hour or two of your time!” His voice was whiny but gravelly due to his fever. You smiled and shook your head, “No hun that’s your time.” He whined, “Please, babyyyy. You’ll have fun!” You laughed softly. “I don’t doubt I will.” And so his whiny self won, you gave in to his begging.

So you sat in the chair. As he greeted his chat. “Hey chat! So today,” He was cut off by his own sniffle. “I’m sick, if it wasn’t obvious, and my sweetheart,” He motioned down to you seated in his chair as he sat beside you. “will be doing a ‘You Laugh You Lose’ for me.” He gets cut off by a video of Tommy, the infamous ‘That’s What I Like’ video and you burst out laughing. “That was not funny Y/n, do not laugh at them, you’re trying not to laugh.” He said with a joking pout. “Sorry sorry, I’m bad at not laughing.” You try to straighten your face as Wilbur talks to chat for a moment. “OBJECTS I’VE SHOVED UP MY ARSE!” Blares in your ears and you turn away. “Trying not to laugh dear?” You shook your head, “No, it hurt my ears.” And he laughed at you for a second. “Oh Wilbur lost a life! Goodbye Will!” He frantically shook his head. “No, this is you not laughing not me!” You sat back up, staring into the camera. “Should we kick him out chat? Chat says yes!”

Wilbur whined, “Chat is mean to me Y/n, don’t encourage them.” You just looked at him, trying to keep your face straight. That one anime video he hated flashes across the screen and he quickly shut it. “No! Fuck you guys! No!” You bit your bottom lip as he glared at you, “Uh-huh, yeah, laugh...do it.” You held your breath. You turned back to the monitor, waiting for the next video while Wilbur continued to stare at you, leaning in. “Wilbur, I swear if you yell in my ear.” He just giggled and laid his head on your shoulder.

Just then a stupid Marvel video came on and you laughed. Wilbur tilted his head up to yell at chat without realizing before he did and turned around to you. “Did you just fucking laugh at a Marvel meme?! Are you a fucking Marvel stan?!” He then turned to see who sent it. “I’m banning them.” He continued to chant it over your giggles and protests. “Oh my god, it was sent in by FUCKING TOMMY?!” He turned his head slowly, staring at you. “You just laughed at a Marvel stan video...sent in by Tommyinnit.” It made you giggle even more when he dropped his jaw.

Then Charlie’s corn skit came on and your giggling increased. “Y/n, you’re out. You laughed at unfunny videos, you’re done for, goodbye chat-” He began to bid farewell to chat when you jumped forward, pulling his arm away from his keyboard. “They say one more life, yes they said, one more life, baby pleasee!” He looked back at you as you pleaded, “Please?” He leaned in, “A kiss for a life.” You chuckled at his feverish state but obliged, kissing his cheek. “No, my lips!” You shook your head, “I’m not getting sick.” He whined and “That’s What I Like’ blasted in your ear followed by a dono from Tommy, “ISTG ONE MORE FUCKING TIME U PEOPLE SEND THAT VIDEO!” the dono yelled in your ear as you continued to laugh. “Alright, I’m done, goodbye chat!” And Wilbur shut off the stream giving you a kiss. “You aren’t allowed on my streams anymore, Rule #4. No Marvel Stans.”

#wilbur x reader #wilbursoot #wilbur soot #wilbur x y/n #wilburylyl #wilbur soot x y/n #wilbur soot x reader #wilbur soot x you

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scoobydoodean · 16 days

Note

absolutely obsessed with your dedication to the kevin poll, it’s so funny lmao. idk if you’re keeping it up just for shits n giggles or if deancrits/samgirls are like keeping you involved by tagging or messaging you, but it’s very amusing and you’re awesome and also fully right so standing ovation for you 👏👏👏

Just trying to protect our 8 point lead to the very end as sometimes sudden surges occur 😒 But also just because this whole thing amused me.

Dean being commandingly in the lead at first and then within like 10 minutes of Leyla and I reblogging the poll Sam rushing ahead.

A samgirl accusing Pollsnatural of cheating (???) when Sam surged ahead.

Pollsnatural trying to explain to the samgirls that Sam surged ahead because of Leyla and me and all the samgirls had to do was look in the reblogs to see that and them refusing to look or believe that because it hurts their fragile egos too bad.

Me realizing that one of the samgirls who didn't believe Pollsnatural couldn't see my reblogs because I've had them blocked for months so to them Sam's commanding lead really did come out of nowhere and they are genuinely flabbergasted by my vengeful ghost in the notes 👻

Me having blocked the blog above because they came onto one of my deancas posts to make it about salmon dean and call Dean "the little black dress" of the SPN fandom who SAM gets to wear and now I’ve been unwittingly exacting double revenge via memes. 👻

"Mental health break"

"Proxy war over rape" what the actual fuck.

Do... do we remember this poll is about Kevin Tran? No? Okay.

Disk horse about how a poll blog has a moral obligation to keep samgirls from seeing the opinions of other fans.

#mail #dont feed the stans after midnight

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thethingything · 2 days

Text

I love mental health advice that sounds slightly ridiculous but ends up working really well.

like there's that thing about pretending intrusive thoughts are being said by someone that you would absolutely not take seriously and it makes them easier to dismiss which helps in the long run too

and then there's stuff like replacing self-deprecating comments with really over the top sarcastic self-agrandising comments so it still feels like you're making fun of yourself fucking up, but your brain just internalises the meaning of the words without the sarcasm and you fee better about yourself over time

and then there was one post about challenging those "something's going to jump out at me/there's something scary behind this door/etc" paranoid thoughts by being like "well in a horror movie nobody would get attacked while this song plays. they wouldn't even be able to license this for a horror movie in the first place" or whatever similar logic and we've now used this on several occasions when our psychosis is bad

plus there's all the stuff that's not so much advice, but just pointing stuff out, like the "if it sucks, hit da bricks" meme which got us to actually start paying attention to whether we were doing things out of enjoyment or for any kind of actual benefit, or just because we'd started and felt obligated to keep doing it while having a shit time.

"the time will pass anyway", "do it scared", "if it sucks, hit da bricks", and "you can do whatever you want forever" have just kind of become things we repeat to ourselves constantly at this point and it's been genuinely helping with doing more things we enjoy

#personal #thoughts #🍬 post #mental health #this is basically the premise of our ''posts that changed how our brain works'' tag #just stuff we've seen that's ended up sticking with us and helped in some way #there's advice we've seen on here that's helped us so much more than anything we did in therapy

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panharmonium · 5 months

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Hi! I love your Naruto thoughts and meta posts with all my heart and I want to ask your thoughts on something that has been on my mind literally since I was 13: what do you think about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura? I went from being a hardcore shipper when I was a teenager, to being against any romantic relationship in Naruto after finishing the anime when I was in my early twenties. Nowadays I'm very into platonic love and depictions of friendship and I think the anime's obsession with forcing the "romantic interest" curse upon the main female character robbed us of... so much. There are a few wonderful moments in the anime where Sasuke and Sakura acknowledge each other, but because she's always "the girl with the crush", her actions are so often interpret as irrational or selfish by the fandom.

Hi @riemmetric! It's great to talk to you again! Sorry it's taken me so long to answer this; RL has been making demands of me lately and it took me way longer to finish writing this up than I wanted it to (then again, I knew from the minute I read your original ask that my reply was going to get long, so I suppose I should have predicted a delay XD)

It's funny, my sister once asked me to choose between Sasuke or Sakura for an “unpopular opinion” meme, and I ended up doing Sasuke solely because I think the negative fandom opinions about Sakura are so unhinged and divorced from the actual text that I wouldn’t even know where to start. People are entitled to dislike whatever characters they want, obviously, but there are some fandom takes that are, for me, so obviously rooted in bad faith viewings/readings that there’s no urge in me to discuss them. That said, since you asked, I’m happy to go into my own thoughts on this a bit, with the disclaimer for other potential readers that I only write about fandom things for my own personal enjoyment, not as a contribution to The Discourse. If you don’t like Sakura, great! I have no interest in changing your mind. Please consider this a sincere invitation to scroll on by and go enjoy whatever parts of the fandom appeal to you.

In general terms: I love Sasuke and Sakura’s relationship as much as I love all of the relationships in Team 7. If we’re talking about them specifically as a romantic couple, then I probably fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, because I do like them together in a post-canon (to be clear: non-Boruto) setting, after time has passed and they’ve continued to develop individually and reconnect with each other, but I also wouldn’t exactly call myself an intense “shipper,” in the sense that I have no interest in pulling things out from the text and incorrectly citing them as evidence that Sasuke has hidden romantic feelings for her during the canon period. He cares about her in the canon period, just like he cares about Naruto and Kakashi. That’s not up for interpretation; it’s the text. But Sasuke during the canon time period does not demonstrate specifically romantic interest in anyone.

[A note before people who might ship Sasuke with Someone Else emerge to rail against this statement - please just scroll past and continue enjoying fandom in whatever way is most fun for you. It is cool to ship whatever fanon thing you want; I think that’s great! But earnestly citing any loving or emotional thing Sasuke does re: various characters in this story (yes, Sakura included) as indicative of specifically romantic love isn’t supported by the text. I know there are always going to be enormous subsets of any fandom who insist that it is, and I'm certainly not going to barge into anyone else's space to complain about that (because other people having fun together is harmless and none of my business), but I'm not obligated to indulge it on my own blog, either.]

Anyway, that said - the reason why I love Sakura and Sasuke’s relationship (from here on out I’ll use “relationship” in a general, non-romantic sense) is precisely because Sakura isn’t just “the girl with the crush.” Sakura has an arc when it comes to Sasuke, and its trajectory moves in the exact opposite direction of “irrational” or “selfish.” She specifically goes from “the girl with the crush” to “the girl who steels herself and tries to put her personal feelings for Sasuke aside for the greater good” to “the girl who knows she can’t put her feelings aside, but who also knows full well that Sasuke doesn’t reciprocate them, and who still wants to save him regardless, because he matters to her as a person and a friend.”

[I'm putting the rest of this under a cut to save everyone's dash, and also to emphasize once again that this is a personal post on my personal blog which I wrote in response to a question from a personal acquaintance, the full content of which no one is obligated to read. I am not sending this post to random strangers and forcing them to look at it. I'm not even putting it in the character tags. I'm typing it up on my own blog and putting it under a cut. If you already know that you don't like Sakura, but you still click the link/read the post and then feel an urge to comment and complain, I am going to copy-paste this disclaimer and remind you that I specifically recommended that you scroll past and go have fun with fandom in your own way. Thanks in advance for responsibly curating your own fandom experience!]

So, from the top:

1. the girl with the crush

Sakura is, obviously, completely obsessed with Sasuke at the beginning of Part 1. She’s also deeply clueless about him and his history (bizarre though it is, the story seems to indicate that she initially doesn’t know what happened with his family, the same way young!Obito is initially clueless about Kakashi’s father). But what I like about Sakura and Sasuke’s Part 1 relationship is how this changes over time.

The critical scene that kicks this off happens right at the beginning of the manga, when she and Sasuke are talking by that bench - she complains about Naruto and blames his behavior on him being all alone/having no family to scold him; and even says she’s jealous that he doesn’t have parents to nag him all the time. This obviously triggers an outburst from Sasuke, who tells her she has no idea what loneliness means and that she “makes him sick”/she’s “annoying” (importantly, the exact same thing Sakura said to Naruto in anger earlier that day), which in turn prompts Sakura to reassess herself and wonder whether she’s been making Naruto feel this terrible all the time, too:

From that point on, it’s a process of her putting little pieces together. She still has a MAJOR crush, and she still acts like a twelve year-old, but as we approach the end of Part I, Sakura actually has a more accurate grasp on Sasuke’s current state of mind than Naruto does. Naruto is initially excited to fight Sasuke on top of the hospital, because he feels like Sasuke’s finally acknowledging him, whereas Sakura is the one who immediately recognizes that something is wrong about this situation. She is also the one who, after this fight, is concerned that Sasuke is really unwell and might do something drastic like run off in pursuit of the power Orochimaru promised him, but when she communicates this to Naruto, he assures her that this would NEVER happen:

(Sakura isn't convinced, though, because she goes to monitor the exit out of the village anyway.)

I’m not criticizing Naruto for his response here. I ADORE hearing him say that Sasuke is too strong to need Orochimaru, with such perfect confidence - I love seeing how much respect and admiration he has for Sasuke underneath all their fighting, because that’s the whole reason he’s always baiting Sasuke and yelling at him and claiming “you're not so great!” He looks up to Sasuke; he wants to be like Sasuke; he thinks Sasuke is awesome! (It’s that Obito @ Kakashi behavior, you know?) But the fact remains that he is clueless about what’s actually going on with Sasuke in Part 1, and he remains clueless(ly optimistic) for a long time.

(Eg, when he catches up to Sasuke during the retrieval arc and Sasuke climbs out of that cursed seal coffin, Naruto waves at him and calls "Come on, let's go!" as if Sasuke has been successfully rescued and is now going to come running home. Even in Part II, when Naruto hears that Sasuke killed Orochimaru, he beams and immediately says, “So he must be on his way back to the Leaf Village!” And everyone else in the room is like, “....,” because they know better. Naruto doesn’t yet fully understand [or doesn't want to accept] the extent to which Sasuke has willingly chosen this path, and it’s not until after Jiraiya’s death/the Pain attack/the Five Kage Summit that Naruto really starts to understand Sasuke more clearly, which is something he himself admits.)

Sakura, in Part 1, has access to more information about Sasuke - she’s there for his first dissociative monologue during the bells test, she’s there for the curse mark’s placement, she’s there for his first violent transformation in the Forest of Death - she is, in fact, the unwitting catalyst for it (“Sakura…who did this to you?”), and her compassion is the reason Sasuke is later able to overcome the curse mark’s influence - so she has a more accurate/complete picture of “how he’s doing,” for lack of a better phrase, whereas Naruto, who doesn’t know about the curse mark in the first place, is still in the dark. This means that Sakura is able to accurately discern that Sasuke is struggling more than Naruto realizes, and specifically to predict that he’s going to run away.

(This dynamic is then interestingly flipped in the back half of Part II, since at any point after the Five Kage Summit, Sakura doesn’t have access to extremely relevant [if currently questionable and unproven] details that would in any other circumstance inform her behavior).

Of course, just because she has more info in Part 1 doesn’t mean she has some kind of miraculous insight into Sasuke’s every thought and feeling. There are parts of her attempt to convince Sasuke to stay in the village that are as clueless as any of Naruto’s assumptions, and they showcase the kind of magical thinking common to childhood - like when she says that if he stayed with her, she could give him happiness, she’d do anything for him, even help him get his revenge - this idea that she herself can do something to make him feel better, that she can love him powerfully enough to defeat his pain - obviously none of that is rooted in realism.

Is this part of her approach irrational and immature and inadvertently self-centered? Of course it is! But it’s no more irrational and immature and inadvertently self-centered than Naruto’s stated plan to drag Sasuke back to the village even if he has to “break every bone in [his] body!”

Hating on Sakura for her Part 1 attempt to convince Sasuke to stay in the village while simultaneously lauding Naruto for his feels like a bad faith misread of what is, to me, pretty clear narrative intention. The story doesn’t at any point intend for us to see her begging him to stay as a selfish or conniving attempt to get something she wants. She’s begging him to stay for the same underlying reason that Naruto is: she cares about him. She thinks he’s making a mistake that will only cause him more pain in the end (she’s right) and she wants to make it so he feels less pain right now (she can’t. But she doesn’t understand that/isn’t able to admit that, and she’s willing to try ANYTHING that might help).

It’s critical that this farewell scene is set in front of that same bench from their first important confrontation - she references that day and how angry he got at her, and this time she tells him that she understands his reaction. She’s learned things and she recognizes how insensitive she was being back then (“I know what happened to your clan, Sasuke”), even though she still can’t fully grasp all the complexities of the situation. She tells him that him blowing up at her back then helped her understand what loneliness actually meant (as opposed to her previous shallow understanding of it), and she challenges him about his choice right now: "So that's it, you're choosing the lonely path?" And when she tells him that she'll be very lonely if he leaves, we're immediately shown a panel of Sasuke thinking of both his friends, with the very clear implication that if he goes through with this, he will be lonely without them, too - that he's still struggling with the idea of leaving them, no matter how hard he tries to pretend:

Sakura at this point knows that Sasuke isn’t interested in her the way she is in him, but she still wants to give him happiness, however fantastical and immature her ideas sound to us (and, I’m sure, to him). “I’ll do anything, even help you get your revenge/we'll have fun every day, and...and you'll be happy! I'll make sure of it!” - of course, it’s completely childish. It’s irrational. It’s ridiculous to think that any of this would ever be effective, but no more ridiculous than Naruto’s belief that he can simply break every bone in Sasuke’s body and keep him in the Leaf by force.

Both Naruto and Sakura are children who have a deeply oversimplified understanding of Sasuke’s situation. They both still think they can fix him themselves. They both think they can save him themselves. They both think they can convince (or force) him to do what they want, what they think is in his best interests. Both of them don’t yet understand that he has to want to come back, if it’s ever going to mean anything. Their attempts to keep him in the village are immature and unrealistic, yes. What they aren’t, however, is selfish, because neither Sakura nor Naruto are doing any of this with the intention of advancing their own interests. They’re only thinking about Sasuke - how to keep Sasuke safe, how to make Sasuke happy - even when neither of them are taking an approach that will actually work.

Naruto and Sakura are children. They’re afraid of losing somebody they care about. Their attempts to prevent that from happening are desperate and messy and ultimately ineffective, but they are also genuinely felt and rooted in a true desire to rescue Sasuke from his pain, which - and this is the single most important thing that should impact our viewing of Part 1 - is something that Sasuke RECOGNIZES. He doesn’t spend that agonizingly long moment bowed over Naruto’s defeated body so we can pretend he doesn’t understand that Naruto was just trying to help him. He doesn’t take the time to murmur, “Sakura…thank you,” before laying her out carefully on a bench, just so we can discount it and pretend that he doesn’t recognize and appreciate her genuine intention to make things better for him, however clumsy that attempt might have been.

2. the greater good

If Stage 1 Sakura is "the girl with the crush," then Stage 2 Sakura is a progression to “the girl who decides to put her feelings for Sasuke aside in order to protect innocent people, including (but certainly not limited to) Naruto.” She’s driven to this decision by interactions with Shikamaru, who all too recently had to grow up fast himself (“We're not kids anymore...we can't allow a war to break out between the Hidden Leaf and the Hidden Cloud because of Sasuke") and Sai, who risks his new friendship with Sakura and Team 7 in order to speak some hard truths and deliver one of my favorite lines in the whole story: “I don’t know what promise Naruto made to you, but it’s really no different than what was done to me. It’s like a curse mark.”

(INCREDIBLE. How can anybody be complaining about a season where Sai gets to say something that goes THIS HARD and Sakura LISTENS and takes DRAMATIC ACTION that actually propels the story forward in a meaningful way - )

[Okay, yeah, brief personal opinion interlude - it is just bonkers wild to me that there are people who complain about Sakura in the Five Kage Summit arc. That entire season is the greatest character arc she ever has. Literally she has never been more interesting and dynamic than in Season 10; it’s the first time she ever gets to be as deep and fascinating as the boys; what is everybody so worked up about? Oh, “she lied to Naruto that one time” - Sasuke joined infant-kidnapping baby-murdering human experimentation machine Orochimaru when he was twelve years old in order to (dare I say it????) selfishly pursue his personal goals and yet, somehow, we are still able to root for him. He abandoned his friends/allies to imprisonment and death (Suigetsu and Jūgo) or outright stabbed them in the chest himself (Karin) in order to (SELFISHLY) get what he wanted, and yet, somehow, we are still able to love him, understand him, and be on his side. Naruto is canonically not upset with Sakura about her lie after receiving context for the situation and I think we can probably take our cues from him without feeling the need to bring her up on war crimes; please calm down]

[Sorry, I just really love most of Season 10 and think it’s one of the best examples of how good this story can be when every single character gets to do something that matters (as opposed to things being all Naruto, all the time) so I get a little bit worked up over people complaining about some of the best writing Sakura ever gets. I don’t understand what certain elements of fandom want from her. People complain about her being “useless” and not doing anything that contributes to the story, but then they complain just as much when she does finally get to act decisively and have just as complex/dynamic an inner world as the boys. She’s “weak” for being unreasonably in love with Sasuke, but when she tries to be “strong” and put her love for him aside and eliminate him in order to protect Naruto and the rest of the world, she’s evil, because she should have been more understanding of his situation (despite the fact that she doesn’t KNOW anything about his situation). But then when she can’t go through with killing him after all because she cares about him too much despite the things he’s done, she’s not "compassionate" or "kind" or "a good friend," she’s “weak” again. Nothing Sakura does in S10 is more wrongheaded or rash than any of the batshit, buckwild things Naruto and Sasuke have done in the past (and will continue to do in the future), but when Naruto and Sasuke have big feelings or take bold action, it makes them interesting characters, whereas Sakura can’t breathe in anyone’s direction without being minutely scrutinized for moral impurities.]

Anyway. Back to a more measured response.

Every single piece of development Sakura has with regard to Sasuke in this season satisfies me so much. Her initial shock and disbelief at hearing that Sasuke had joined the Akatsuki? Good, appropriate. The fact that she starts to acknowledge the reality of what Sasuke’s done sooner than Naruto does? Also extremely appropriate, very in-character for both of them. Her taking Sai’s words to heart and deciding that the promise she asked Naruto to make when they were children is causing him to suffer and she has to relieve him of that burden? Juicy! AND thematically significant (promises!!!! the burden that a promise places on a person, especially when it can't be kept - we've seen that before in this story and we'll see it again). Her anguished pivot from wanting to protect Sasuke to realizing that she has a responsibility to protect the countless innocents who will die because of the war he’s trying to start? HELLO THIS IS INCREDIBLE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Her knocking out the classmates who agreed to help her so they don’t have to share in her burden (and so the only person Naruto will hate when it’s over is her)? BRUH. Her being so committed and focused on her goal of saving innocents and protecting Naruto (not just from being harmed by Sasuke/the Akatsuki, but by the possibility that Naruto will someday have to hurt Sasuke himself) that she tries to take everything on by herself and walks into a confrontation that she absolutely cannot win?? INCREDIBLE. (Literally the first time I watched this, I said, “Finally!!! It’s Sakura’s turn to go off the rails!” I laughed with my sister about how Kakashi isn’t even mad, because Naruto and Sasuke have been pulling stunts like this for years and Sakura was way overdue for her own meltdown.) And then, after Kakashi intervenes in the fight - Sakura barreling back into the battle when she realizes he’s going to take on the burden of killing Sasuke himself in order to spare her and Naruto the horror - “I can’t let Kakashi-sensei bear this burden!” I love her for that.

And then, of course, in the end - her not being able to do hurt Sasuke after all. Despite committing herself to the act, despite forcing herself to put her feelings for him aside, despite resolving to stop him from starting a war and killing innocent people, she can’t harm him. She cares about him too much. This, too, is thematically significant - think about Itachi’s “you don’t have enough hatred” - she doesn’t have enough hatred to kill someone she cares about, even if it seems like he deserves it, even if would be the right thing to do to protect others. She can’t do it, and Sasuke almost kills her for her compassion.

I love the dynamic this sets up between her and Sasuke, for a few reasons:

1) Personally, I think Sasuke respects Sakura much more for trying to kill him than he would have if she’d just tried to talk him out of his behavior or beg him to come home (a la their original confrontation in Part 1). This is the first significant interaction he’s had with Sakura in years, and the fact that she does something SO contrary to his memory of her is an important demonstration of the fact that she’s not the same girl she used to be. Sasuke spends a lot of time after his defection declaring to his old team “I’ve changed; I’m not that person anymore,” but this is one of the moments where he’s forced to acknowledge that his teammates have changed, too. Time didn’t just stop for them when he left. While he was turning into someone new, so were they. They grew up without him, and his old memories of them can’t encompass the whole picture of who they are now.

(This is a little tangential, but in general, I love the spectrum of reactions that Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi have in this sequence, and the way that all of them are ultimately messages Sasuke needs to hear. Sasuke - who we know textually regrets what he did here, who apologizes to Sakura for it later - for “everything,” in fact - needs Naruto’s aggressively optimistic open-arms policy, yes, needs that potential, that unconditional possibility of return. He also needs Sakura’s refusal to let him hurt her friends and start a war that will kill thousands of people, needs her surprisingly ruthless attempt to take him down; needs just as much her failure to do so, because it shows him that she still loves him too much to kill him even as she condemns him. And he needs Kakashi’s grim line in the sand, needs someone who very possibly won't hesitate like Sakura (despite the horrifying personal cost), someone who will try to reach him but also won't let him escape and become the next generation’s Orochimaru, who won't let him cause untold suffering to untold numbers of people just because a teacher loved him too much to stop him when he had the chance.

(And then even Kakashi chooses not to deliver a killing blow when he has the opportunity -)

(I know that in fandom people are more likely to be all, “oh, Naruto Good, everybody else Bad,” but I don’t think the narrative frames Sakura or Kakashi as “worse” than Naruto in any way. The story goes out of its way to make it clear how desperately they don’t want to hurt Sasuke and how much they care about him. And [this is just my interpretation, so obviously I won’t claim it as fact], I personally think that Sasuke - Sasuke, who, looking back, can see how lost he was then and how tortured he would have been if he’d gone through with many of his plans - would be grateful to Sakura and Kakashi for making an attempt to stop him when he couldn’t stop himself.)

2) On the other side of this, the fact that Sakura wasn’t able to deliver the killing blow means a lot. Sasuke was incapacitated under that bridge; he was completely at her mercy - but she stopped with the kunai an inch from his back. She couldn’t kill him, even though she knew that he was completely willing to kill her (because he'd attempted to Chidori-assassinate her from behind just a few minutes ago). That’s huge! Sasuke is too out of his head right now to process this or understand it, but later, it's going to matter. She stayed her hand. She spared his life. She loved him too much to hurt him, even when he’d given her every reason to take him down. She hesitated, and he almost killed her for it, but her inability to strike him ultimately gave him yet another chance to come home, another chance to get better, another chance to have a life outside of his pain. Despite everything, some part of her still hadn’t really given up on him, and that knowledge will matter later, when he’s finally able to acknowledge it.

The point of all this is to say that I really have no complaints about Sakura and Sasuke’s dynamic in their S10 confrontation. This season is the point where Sakura fully grows past her “girl with a crush” stage and into her “shinobi must make very harsh decisions” adulthood, but it never means that she doesn’t care about the person she’s trying to take down. Her ultimate inability to deliver the killing blow remains a dangling lifeline for her relationship with Sasuke, an open door that Sasuke is able to walk through at the end of the story (literally, in fact, when Sakura opens that portal for him and saves him from Kaguya’s desert prison, and figuratively, too, when Sasuke apologizes to her).

3. she only wants to save you

The last stage in their relationship is what Sakura settles into during the war arc. She started off Part 1 being just a girl with a crush, then tried to harden her heart and put her feelings for Sasuke aside in service of the greater good, but she was unable to actually follow through and kill him, and because of that, what she’s come to accept by the war arc is actually two things: that 1) Sasuke truly is willing to let her die if it furthers his goals, and 2) she wants to save him anyway.

She has no intention of pursuing Sasuke romantically. She knows full well that Sasuke isn’t interested in her. She even knows that Sasuke isn’t really on their side (there’s a great scene where Sai questions Sakura about Sasuke’s return, and she reassures him that everything is fine, and Sai sadly thinks to himself “even I can tell your smile is fake”). She’s well-aware that Sasuke didn’t try to help her when Madara stabbed her. She’s well-aware that he left her to die in the lava pit. She’s also well-aware that none of this is enough to make her stop loving him. He doesn’t have to care about her - she still cares about him. She still wants to help him. She still wants to save him.

This is not hidden, hard-to-parse character development. It’s explicitly articulated on the page:

Sakura’s not trying or wanting to make you hers! She only wants to save you.

I’m not sure if people look at this last confrontation and unquestioningly take Sasuke at his word (as if we haven’t just read 71 volumes/watched 700 episodes showing us how how painfully distorted his thinking is), or if they stop reading/watching before the end of the scene, or if they don’t understand that Sasuke saying something doesn’t make that statement an accurate representation of reality. The entire point of this scene is to show us how deeply mistaken Sasuke is about Sakura (and, by extension, the rest of Team 7). He’s locked into a false pattern of thinking. His single-minded focus on revenge and destruction has blinded him to the unconditional love his friends feel for him; he’s become so accustomed to using others and being used that he can’t understand or accept that someone would care about him without needing a reason, without needing him to love them back, without needing to receive something from him in exchange.

Sakura’s not trying or wanting to make you hers! She only wants to save you.

Sasuke matters to Sakura as more than a love interest. He always has. She does love him romantically, yes, but she doesn’t only love him romantically, and her desire to help him is not and has never been contingent on him returning her feelings, romantically or otherwise. Sasuke isn’t able to acknowledge that in this scene, but that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to just sit back and agree with his warped perspective. Kakashi is the one who’s explicitly positioned as the voice of the narrative here. We, as the audience, are supposed to recognize that Kakashi is the one telling us the truth.

[tangential thing 1: You don’t have to love Sakura's last plea to Sasuke here. It’s not my favorite, either - the best part, other than Kakashi’s speech at the end, is the moment after Kakashi collapses when Sakura’s expression changes from pained uncertainty to pure rage, when she grits her teeth together - when I first saw that, I almost leapt out of my seat like “Oh my god. She’s finally going to let him have it. It’s finally happening - ” I wanted that so badly, and I still think it would have been a more effective writing choice for Sakura’s last words to lean more into her anger at the suffering Sasuke is causing all of them (himself included!) and less into yet another of Kishimoto’s “let me have Sakura articulate what a shame it is that she can’t do as much as Naruto despite the fact that I literally just went through a major reveal sequence in the war to show that she’s caught up to the boys; I can’t make up my mind about whether I want her to progress or not” - it’s extremely frustrating (and it's something he does at the very end of the S10 Team 7 reunion, too, which is the ONLY moment of S10 that falls flat for me). But at the same time, even if there are ways this sequence could be more satisfying, it doesn’t change the fact that her plea to him is not remotely motivated by a desire to be with him romantically and not anything to condemn her for.]

[tangential thing 2: I do like how she remembers that moment when Sasuke says “Thank you.” That panel precedes her saying “If there’s even a tiny corner of your heart that thinks about me…” (which I’m sure is one of the things that people like to criticize about this scene, aka “oh she’s sooooo self-centered” etc), but that particular line of dialogue is preceded by that particular flashback panel for a reason: Sakura knows that Sasuke DOES think about her. He thinks about all of them. Sakura remembers that “thank you,” and it reminds her that despite everything Sasuke has done and said since, despite all evidence to the contrary, she knows in her bones that his expression of gratitude back then was genuine. He cared about her once. He cared about all of them. She’s trying to reach the part of him that still does, if it exists.]

[tangential thing 3: The fact that Kakashi says “she suffers from loving you,” and it triggers Sasuke to remember his own family - thinking about how much he suffered (and still suffers) from loving them - “Perhaps…those are the ties to a failed past” - the idea that it’s not worth it to have bonds if it means you suffer this much…that it’s too difficult, it’s too painful, and if Sakura and the rest of Team 7 were smarter they would just give it up (all Sasuke knows how to do now is sever potential bonds before they can hurt him; so why aren’t Sakura and the rest of his teammates doing that, why can’t they let it go, why are they making this so hard - ) << yeah, he clearly doesn't care about her/them at all.]

4. the shadow of my family

This has all been a really long way to answer the original question, but the short response to “What do you think about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura?” is “I really care about it,” just like I really care about the relationship between Sasuke and Naruto, just like I really care about the relationship between Sasuke and Kakashi. And I don’t think the story ever asks me to choose between them.

I’m not sure whether it’s the impact of Boruto-era “canon” that gets in the way of other people approaching things this way (I don’t consider sequel material when I evaluate the original story), or if it’s Kishimoto’s frequent disinterest in/disrespect towards female characters, which yes, does sometimes make it harder, or if it's a shipping thing (bane of my existence), or some combination of factors, but for me, taking one member of Team 7 out of the equation hobbles the rest of the story. I can’t read/watch Naruto while hating one of the protagonists and loving the other three. It doesn’t work like that for me. The story wasn’t written that way, and there’s nothing in the text that would cause me to receive it that way.

That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with disliking one of the main foursome (or any character, for that matter) - obviously we're all going to have different preferences, and everyone is free to enjoy or reject whatever parts of a story they want, or to like or dislike whatever characters they want. I know that some people have more fun disregarding canon and doing their own thing, which is fine. My own personal zone of enjoyment comes from receiving the story as closely to how I think it was intended to be read as I can, and personally, when I look at this particular story, what I see is that all the members of Team 7 clearly demonstrate their love for Sasuke in ways that he himself later recognizes and acknowledges. All of them are driven by their desire to save him and their unwillingness to hurt him. All of them make repeated choices to chase after him when he runs away, to trust him when he hasn't exactly earned it, to give him another chance when he doesn't appear to deserve it. ALL of them, not just Naruto, do these things multiple times throughout the story, and Sasuke owes his life (and thus his eventual recovery) to ALL of them, many times over. Kakashi disobeys Hokage-elect Danzō and breaks the law to negotiate for Sasuke's life with a foreign head of state. Sakura and Kakashi both have opportunities to kill Sasuke in the Land of Iron, and they choose to spare him instead. Kakashi stops Sasuke from killing his only friends at two different points in the story, which would have been a mistake Sasuke couldn't have recovered from. Sasuke would have died in Kaguya's desert dimension if Sakura hadn't saved him (Sakura, who knew that Sasuke wasn't even truly on her side yet, who knew he'd abandoned her for dead multiple times already that day). Kaguya's bone bullet would have killed Sasuke too, if Kakashi, with his intention to die in Sasuke's place, hadn't leapt in front of it (Kakashi, who also knew that Sasuke wasn't fully on their side yet, who also knew that Sasuke had abandoned him for dead earlier that day). Sasuke and Naruto would have BOTH died in the Final Valley if Sakura and a severely injured Kakashi hadn't chased after them to heal their injuries.

Remove any one member of Team 7, and Sasuke never makes it home. Without the combined efforts of all three of his teammates, he doesn't survive. That’s the way it should be, thematically, for a story whose first and most foundational premise was the importance of teamwork, and since Sakura was just as essential to that framework as everyone else, I’m just as invested in her relationship with Sasuke as I am in his relationship with everyone else. You can’t remove one leg from a four-legged stool without damaging the integrity of the entire structure, and for me, discounting any single member of Team 7 irreparably damages the integrity of the entire story.

TL;DR: I love all of the Team 7 relationships, including Sakura and Sasuke's, because despite what some segments of fandom seem to believe, the text of the story never gives me any reason not to.

#naruto #meta #replies #anyway that's that! hopefully that is a helpful answer #thank you for the question! i honestly don't think i would have ever gotten around to writing about this if i hadn't been directly asked #i love talking about the stories i enjoy (obviously; we all do; that's why we're here)#but i'm usually ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about responding to takes that blatantly misread the narrative to justify hating a particular character or ship #mostly because a) it's whatever. as long as people mind their own business and leave me to enjoy myself they can do what they want #and b) some opinions are so divorced from the actual text that they're not worth discussing #like. what's the point of responding to random internet posts saying that sakura was selfishly pursuing sasuke as a lover the entire time #when that is textually and provably not the case?#if you're that committed to experiencing things in direct contradiction to what the narrative is asking of us then just go ahead #is it mildly annoying to me? sure. but so are lots of things and it's better to just let stuff go #like - i initially planned to take this piece of meta all the way up through sakura and sasuke's last scene together #the one where he tells her 'maybe next time' and finally reclaims and redefines itachi's forehead tap (INCREDIBLE. THIS SCENE.)#but ultimately i changed my mind because everything i wrote for that last section was coming out too harsh #i generally prefer to talk about fandom stuff in a chill/friendly approachable way #but i kept thinking about the most obscenely & disrespectfully inaccurate read of that scene i'd ever seen #and i couldn't figure out how to talk about it in a non-scathing way #that scene and the one where naruto gives sasuke's headband back are the ONLY well-written things about the finale of naruto #they are SO perfectly constructed and i can't respond to people slandering either one without feeling an urge to kill #so i just deleted it. partially because again - this is fandom; it's not that serious; people can do what they want #but also because i know i get extra frustrated about people picking over the text and plucking out isolated bits and pieces #to contort into blatantly misinterpreted mutant shapes that 'confirm' whatever pre-existing judgments or ships they had #instead of experiencing the story as a cohesive whole & keeping in mind the greater context of what it's always been trying to communicate #people on this website say 'we all interpret things differently :)' as if it means no one can ever be wrong about what a text is saying #newsflash: not all interpretations of a text are valid. things can't in fact mean whatever you want them to mean.#the ***story*** persists and exists even if the author is dead to you #if you choose to ignore that then that's fine; it's just fandom; who cares. but i'm not going to pretend you're 'analyzing' anything.#(ok now i'm really done. you can see why i deleted this section XD)

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