#I wouldn’t consider myself a romantic at all but all of my long term relationships began with sparks flying | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

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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in-class-daydreams · 11 months

Text

King of My Heart (Sebastian Sallow x Reader)

Pairing: Sebastian Sallow x Fem!Reader Chapter 1: ...Ready for It? Synopsis: Hogwarts Legacy if Sebastian's Relationship Quest was the main quest. A telling of the in-between, the late nights sneaking around the castle after curfew, sitting on the second floor of the library listening to Sebastian ramble about a book he read, stealing cubes of melon off his plate during breakfast. How we got from "not bad for a beginner" to "there was nobody else, I came alone" to "no matter what happens, I'm glad we met." Alternatively: How your love could pull Sebastian Sallow back from the brink. Told in the style of Percy Jackson, in first-person and with sarcasm. A/N: Starting a new project without finishing the old ones, are we, Aya? Yes. Yes, we are. TW: A lil swearing

Listen, I never wanted to be a witch.

I apologize to all of you romantics who think that the whole thing - Hogwarts, ancient magic, regular magic, being British, fantastic beasts - is all about feeding puffskeins and brewing amortentia. Might I add that the love potion is a bastard to brew, because if it was that easy, it wouldn’t be the most powerful love potion in existence, would it? That, and it’s somewhat unsettling. I, for one, do not always smell like jasmine and citrus. And during my fifth year at Hogwarts especially, I was constantly running through spider-infested caves and fighting dugbogs, and if my soulmate or whoever caught a whiff of that smell, they just might retch.

Speaking of my fifth year, I started off that year like any other new student entering a boarding school where everyone else already knew each other: terrified beyond measure. Of course, I made sure to never let Professor Fig see that. Not that I didn’t trust him, but I was determined to never let him see me slip. Not when he was the only person who ever believed in me.

After everything that happened on the way to Hogwarts from dragons to goblins (I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about that, right? ) I expected a bit… more? For lack of a better term. I arrived at the Sorting Ceremony late, nearly had an aneurysm on that stool with all those eyes on me, nervously chattered with the magic hat, and sat there, willing myself not to fidget too much.

I sat there feeling like I was somehow sitting incorrectly when the Hat hummed to himself (itself?) and made general thoughtful sounds. He spoke of how I arrived with expectations and preconceptions, and perhaps he was right, though I cared less about the house I’d be put in and more about not standing out too much.

“Ah, a difficult decision, indeed. It is quite different, sorting a fifth-year. You know more about the world and less about yourself than a first-year. And yet, you have a certain sense of – hmm – what is it?”

“Is it ambition?” I offered quietly. “I may seem single-minded, but it is important to go after what you want from life.”

The Sorting Hat made another indecipherable grunting sound.

“Is that how you see yourself, child? Not my first impression, to be frank, but other factors considered, I’ve made my choice. Between the two of us… You would have done well in Gryffindor.”

Would have?

I might have dwelled on the passing statement further had the Sorting Hat not interrupted my thoughts.

“SLYTHERIN!”

Slytherin in all caps! Honestly, I understand that he shouts for the benefit of the enormous room, but the ringing in my ears lingered long after I got it off my head.

I expected a sleepless night after that. I lay in an unfamiliar bed and my mind kept replaying the day’s events like a moving picture show. Behind my eyelids, I kept seeing the carriage crack in half, the swift appearance of the thestrals soon after. My first thought was that they allowed themselves to be seen until I realized they appeared to people who had seen death. I may not have seen the blood and limbs disappear down the dragon’s throat, but I had seen death that day. Looked it in the eye. Watched it wink at me and stick its tongue out as if to say, “If I wanted you, I’d have you.”

I don’t know when I slipped into a dreamless sleep, but before I knew it, it was morning. I blinked my dry eyes and sat up to take in the large, circular room around me. It was neat, thankfully. I didn’t know much about wizard boarding schools, but they sure took color-coding very seriously. From green tapestries to green four-poster beds, at least I would never stumble into the wrong dorm.

I quickly noticed I was alone and, not wanting to be the odd one out even more than I already was, I put on my school uniform. Not to sound uncultured, but I had never had such fine clothing before. Not new, anyway. It took me a while to figure out how to layer everything to sit just right. Placing a hand on my trunk, I took a last look at the ugly yellow coat I wore exactly once. I would never touch it again. Not because it was ugly, but because it was Professor Fig’s present to me. The school had provided school supplies and the like, but Fig took it upon himself to give me something just for me. Color be damned, it was the most beautiful thing I owned.

I stood up from the bed and smooth out my new robes, not a patch or stain to be seen. Taking a deep breath, I made myself a set of goals for the day. Step 1, have your uniform on correctly. From what I could tell, my vest wasn’t on backwards and my skirt wasn’t tucked into my waistband, so I could reasonably consider my first task a success. Step 2, introduce myself to someone. No, Slytherins were ambitious, I would introduce myself to three people minimum. I grimaced at the prospect. But no matter, I had already thought the new number into existence, so three it would be.

Even the hallway was fancy. It had elaborate metal railings on the way to the common room. Crossing the threshold, I reminded myself not to pull a face at the much more crowded than anticipated common room.

Back straight, chin up, shoulders relaxed. Play mysterious, but approachable, I told myself. Starting at that moment, I would begin building my reputation however I pleased. I was a blank slate and I’d be damned if I let such an opportunity go to waste.

“Is that the new fifth year?” someone essentially stage whispered.

“The one that came in late with Professor Fig?” another said.

I resisted the urge to turn and run back into my room. Gossip was apparently popular anywhere. I didn’t know how I could ever have thought otherwise.

“Wow, she’s–” A boy to my right cut himself off when his friend nudged him with his elbow. A moment later, a girl chastised everyone and suggested they give me space. Of course, all this happened as if I couldn’t hear them, but I appreciated the bossy girl immensely.

It was time for me to get on with my self-imposed to-do list and introduce myself to some people. I gave myself some leeway by excluding the rumor-mongers from my list of candidates. There was a boy with a book by the fire, whom I made a beeline for.

Damn, I thought to myself, he’s reading. Why would you walk up to one of the only actively occupied people in the room? To my further dismay, as I got closer I heard the boy muttering to his book, annoyed. Actively occupied and agitated. Excellent choice, I thought. While I racked my brains for an excuse to abruptly change course this close, the boy looked up and snapped his book shut, placing it on the couch beside him. The fireplace to my left did nothing to keep my hands from getting clammy.

“Can I help you?” the boy asks testily.

Here we go.

On the bright side, he didn’t have to put down his book just to talk to me, so that was a good sign. Maybe he was just one of those people that sounded annoyed all the time. Yeah. That.

“Ah!” he said, the furrow in his brow and frosty tone dissipating immediately. “You’re the new fifth-year! I’m Sebastian Sallow. Welcome to Slytherin.”

Interesting shift in demeanor, I remember thinking.

“Thank you,” I said as cooly as I could muster before introducing myself.

I won’t lie, I blacked out for a lot of that conversation. I could still hear my housemates muttering behind my back and this Sebastian fellow was being very friendly - complimenting my bravery, saying he’s glad I’m alright. He also asked how Professor Fig and I escaped the dragon, to which I replied that it was all a blur, which was a half-truth, and therefore acceptable. I didn’t know how much time I’d be spending with Sebastian Sallow then, and I’d like to say I was enraptured by him since Day 1, but truthfully, as I walked away, I forgot all about him.

Despite having a raging pureblood fanatic and probable woman-hater (he just seems that way, you know?) as a house founder, the Slytherins put me at immediate ease. My next introduction was to a bossy, outspoken girl named Imelda Reyes, a girl with a thick Scottish accent who insisted that she knew more about flying than our professor. From anyone else, it might’ve seemed like lame adolescent bravado, but based on her confidence, I was inclined to believe her. Unlike with Sebastian, I made a conscious effort to memorize Imelda’s name and face. At my ripe age of fifteen going on sixteen, I’d come to find that people that are a pain in the ass make the greatest friends.

After Imelda, I was drawn to the back wall of the common room by a floor-to-ceiling window that gave us a glorious view underwater. A few of my housemates that looked younger than me were pressed up against the glass, excitedly chattering among themselves about mermaids and such.

“Doubt mermaids find us that interesting.” To my left, a posh British accent broke me out of my infatuation with the view. I turned and was immediately struck by how pretty this boy was. He had a soft air about him. Something gentle. Maybe it was the bluish light from the window casting down on him, illuminating his beauty marks and long lashes, but I’d never found anyone of any gender so beautiful before. He had high cheekbones and perhaps most striking were his cloudy gray-blue eyes that did not move like anyone else’s. Framed by lush, light lashes, his demeanor made it seem like his clear blindness made him more perceptive than the rest of us, not less.

His eyebrows raised. “Ah, based on all the chatter when you entered the common room, you’re the new fifth-year. I’m Ominis. Ominis Gaunt.”

I thought that his parents must’ve been quite vindictive to name their child something like that. As my friendship with Ominis progressed, I’d come to regret how right I was.

“Well, you certainly had a memorable arrival,” Ominis said in a conspiratorial tone. I smiled despite my original nervousness. Then he asked me the generic questions about my trip to Hogwarts. Maybe it was because he was blind, but Ominis had a way of making you feel like you had 100% of his focus. Like nothing else mattered to him while he was talking to you. Something about that, along with the soothing cadence of his voice, set me at ease. I never forgot what it was like talking to Ominis Gaunt for the first time. Eager as I was to finish my third introduction to cross it off my list, I found myself asking him questions about himself. Not because I didn’t want our introduction to be awkwardly brief, like I did with the other two, but because I wanted to know more about him. I didn’t have much to go off of, so I asked the first coherent question I could think of.

“Were you expecting to be sorted into Slytherin?” I asked. Hopefully originality wasn’t a graded subject at wizard school.

“Most certainly,” Ominis replied, sounding amused. “My family on my father’s side are direct descendants of Salazar Slytherin - one of the four founders of Hogwarts.” That last bit was common knowledge for most. Not for me, of course, but it didn’t feel condescending coming from Ominis. When he told you things, it was like the information levitated in the air for you to take for yourself, should you want it, rather than him forcing the information on you because he thought you were ignorant.

I figured he was rich. He looked rich, from his aristocratic face and expensive pomade in his hair. And, of course, the posh accent. My past experiences with people from families like his - that is, powerful old money families - were either neutral or bad, usually leaning towards the latter. Never anything traumatizing enough for me to hate the accent, but enough to make me notice how nice it sounded coming from him. I had to remind myself to focus on what the boy was saying, rather than how well words fit in his mouth.

“Not something I’m proud of, mind you. He was obsessed with blood status. A pure-blood maniac.” His tone turned self-deprecating, as if the bigotry of his ancestor was his cross to bear.

I allowed myself to linger on ‘blood stay-tus’ for a single, indulgent moment, before pursing my lips to keep from smiling too hard. I only allowed that one moment, considering how inappropriate it would be to smile at something so personal to Ominis. Not that he could see it, but I decided then that I would never hide behind his blindness for anything.

“Unfortunately, most of his descendants do not fall that far from that tree,” he said softly.

This time, I let the small smile I was holding escape.

“It must’ve been hard growing up like that, but,” the words had burst out of me before I could stop them, but now that I’d said them, it was time to follow through, as I always have. “I’m glad to hear you’re different.”

His eyes widened. “You are?”

I shrugged, not because I felt casual or because I forgot he couldn’t see it, but to keep myself from getting too intense about the family matters of a boy I’d just met.

“I grew up in--” I pursed my lips, but was determined to pay back the personal snippet he’d given me “--less than comfortable circumstances, so I’ve never cared about bloodlines and all that. I think the choices we make are what make us, wouldn’t you say?”

Ominis smiled boyishly. Soft, tentative. “I completely agree.”

I flushed, suddenly shy under his grateful expression. “Yeah, I’m big into the whole ‘free will’ thing. I think we always have a choice.” I did my best to sound more casual as to not let on just how strongly I believed in the power of autonomy, but felt like I failed.

Ominis looked like he wanted to say something else, but I’d already been too intense for one day, and was worried I’d put my foot in my mouth eventually, so I changed the subject.

“Did that student say he thought he heard a mermaid?”

To his credit, Ominis took the subject change in stride. He laughed, sounding just the slightest bit embarrassed and I quashed the stream of funny things my brain dug up just to hear that laugh again.

“Yes. But I’ve never heard of a mermaid showing up outside our common room window,” he replies. I look out the window. “It is fun to play along, though. Been known to keep some of the first-years on the lookout for hours.”

So the rich boy had a mischievous streak. I smiled. He had a gentle, serene aura, and yet was already one of the most vibrant people I had ever met.

I then realized how fast I was being dragged into his orbit. To keep from rendering myself useless for the rest of the day, I thanked Ominis and said, “Very nice to meet you.”

I’ve heard worse understatements. The ocean has a lot of water in it. People breathe air sometimes. My first day at Hogwarts was somewhat eventful. See? Worse.

~~~

While I was grateful to Professor Weasley for introducing the Floo to me, it made me super dizzy for the first several months. Travel magic was not for the tin tummied, to be sure. Not to mention Ignatia Wildsmith hollering a foot away from me every time I used it. She was a happy, friendly woman who made my life easier, so I was grateful to her, but every day I prayed that she would be just a bit quieter.

The Field Guide was useful and prevented me from wandering around the castle with my nose buried in a map like a lost tourist, but even with the guide, Hogwarts was a labyrinth. By the time I reached the Defense Against the Dark Arts Tower, I was breathing deeply through my nose so no one could hear how hard those stairs made me fight for my life.

When I entered the classroom, everyone seemed to already be present. The first thing that caught my eye was an enormous winged skeleton suspended from the ceiling. A bit of a safety hazard if you asked me, but I figured wizard school must’ve had some pretty good safeguards for these kinds of things.

“Stupefy!”

The second thing I noticed was a lanky redheaded boy wearing the Gryffindor colors having a duel of sorts with someone from my house. Someone broader, looking much more relaxed than his opponent. The brunette closer to me deflected the spell easily.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he taunted before whipping his arm around and shooting a bombarda spell at the Gryffindor, who got his shield up in time, but, in my opinion, really should have been able to counter such an obvious move much sooner.

Don’t start, I told myself. Being judgemental was not a good way to make friends. Until you find equally judgemental friends, which is infinitely better, but I didn’t want to show my cards too soon.

The spell was deflected upwards, knocking the large skull loose onto the redheaded boy. Part of me was worried for him, but the other part of me said, “See? Safety hazard.”

Instead of, you know, using magic or moving two steps in literally any direction, the Gryffindor opted to squat down on the floor at the sight of the oncoming skull. For some reason.

“Levioso!”

At the top of the stairs stood an old woman with short white hair, holding her wand out, having caught the skull like it was nothing.

“Professor Hecat!” a girl cried from somewhere in the throng of students.

“Perhaps you’d be good enough to blast each other to pieces on your own time,” she said matter-of-factly. “I get new students every year, but I only have one Hebridium Black skull. It was a token from the Great Poacher Raid of 1878. No doubt you’ve heard of it. Now, you may be asking yourself how an old woman like me single-handedly took out the largest poacher ring in Eastern Wales and lived to boast about it.”

Absolutely, I thought. I want to be like you when I grow up.

“Knowledge,” Professor Hecat supplied.

Was that like a potion or a mutation or the answer to her question? Are all spells in Latin?

Professor Hecat informed us that age mattered very little in the face of knowledge. I was inclined to agree, and my professor seemed to imply that while being old didn’t equate to being feeble, being young also didn’t equate to being ignorant. She lectured about an important spell that she used during her time against dark wizards, and I took a step forward so I could cling to her every word.

“Levioso?” the redhead whined. “A levitation charm?”

You mean the one you weren’t able to use? The one that the Professor just used to save your bony self from getting crushed by actual bones?

“Levioso!” The boy levitated several feet in the air. “A surprised opponent is a weak one. Care to defend yourself, Master Prewett?”

Ha, eat a dick, Prewett. Then I told myself to be nice, even if the guy seemed like the type to run home to mommy if he could.

From the movement in the corner of my eye, I could’ve sworn that the brunette that had been dueling looked back at me, but I assumed it was a trick of the light.

Professor Hecat let us break off to practice levioso. Professor Fig had taught me the basic spells, and obviously I’d already had my fair share of practice with them. My first spell at Hogwarts was bound to be harder, right?

I mimed the wand movement once. Twice. It was oddly simple. I gestured one more time and said in a clear voice, “Levioso.”

And the feather obeyed without protest. I stared at the floating feather, baffled. There was no way. Basic cast, protego, those were simple, natural spells. They felt like breathing. Other spells had to be more complicated, right? At least, hard enough where it took me more than one try to get it right. Maybe the ancient magic was helping me?

I lowered my wand. Professor Hecat approached on my left and had a whisper of an approving smile on her face.

“Now, let’s try something a little larger.” She summoned a practice dummy over and cleared all the desks. Then she gestured for me to face the dummy. Not one to argue, I stood in line with it and saw a shimmering yellow haze around it. Professor Hecat bid me to strike it with a basic cast.

Okay, but. There’s a forcefield around it. I– You know what, never mind.

I did as she asked and, sure enough, my spell bounced right off.

“See how the dummy deflected your cast?” Professor Hecat asked and I nodded. “This time, cast levioso first, then the basic cast.”

Easy enough. I imagined the end result and let my wand and body guide me through. It moved through me like water, the levioso followed through straight into my basic cast. With the spare energy I had, I whipped my hand back and forth for two more strikes. The dummy flipped in the air before flopping back down with a thud.

“Well done!” Professor Hecat said. “Very good. But!” Because there’s always a ‘but.’ “The best way to practice is by dueling. Well start with you two.”

I looked over to where she was pointing and I finally put two and two together. The tall, broad Slytherin boy that was dueling earlier. Sebastian, I recalled. In my defense, I couldn’t be expected to recognize him from behind after only meeting him once. I fought the savage grin that threatened to rear its head. My blood thrummed in my veins at the prospect of a fight. Something awoke inside me at Gringotts. The surge of power in my veins, the feeling of that final finishing blow, how each movement flowed into each other one after the next. The experience was addicting. For a time, I was worried that I wouldn’t get to feel that surge again.

Sebastian smirked at me. I took note of the freckles scattered across his face. His brown hair was mussed, probably from his duel, but the slightly unkempt look suited him.

“Time for a proper Hogwarts welcome,” he said and took his place across from me.

Oh, it was on.

“Now,” the floor raised below me as Professor Hecat spoke, “I want a fair duel using levioso, basic cast, and protego.”

Damn. I was hoping for a free for all. I wanted to see how my defenses held up against that bombarda spell he used. No matter. With a level playing field, I had the ‘fought for my life less than 24 hours ago’ advantage.

That was the dilemma. I had a reputation to build. Would I absolutely own this boy, bruise his ego, probably make an enemy of him because of it? I would gain the respect of the rest of the class and the professor if I did. Or I could let him win so as to not make waves? I’d have to be careful, as I suspected our wise professor would see through poor acting if I threw the match too hard.

“You may begin.”

I spread my feet in a defensive stance. Sebastian, on the other hand, looked completely relaxed. Waiting for me to make the first strike. Was he being a gentleman or underestimating me? Either way, I’d make sure he never did it again.

I got him up off the ground. He didn’t even have time to try to block it. I hit him with a chain of basic casts before he dropped back down to his feet. Sebastian launched his counter attack. Quick, precise, forceful. Prewett deserved more credit for lasting as long as he did. Sebastian’s arm reared back and time slowed. I interrupted him with a cast of my own, then levitated him off the ground only to blast him off the back of the strip with a dull thud, papers flying around everywhere. The class went up in cheers and I hopped down to weave through the crowd.

Whoops.

Sebastian was still flat on his ass. Any number of reactions were possible. A scowl, a glare. Maybe even tears of embarrassment. Instead, I was met with a wide grin and eyes sparkling with interest. Before I could approach him, he dusted himself off and approached.

“Not bad for a beginner,” he teased. He was trying to seem aloof, but the smile twitching at the corners of his mouth said otherwise. “You give as good as you get.” Then he hummed and walked past me.

Professor Hecat called me over to praise me for a job well done. I stood in front of her, pleased to have her approval.

“I demand excellence from my students. They are capable of achieving it, and they must achieve it,” she said with passion. I had the feeling that Defense Against the Dark Arts would be one of my favorite classes. With the thrill of the fight and an invested instructor, it was everything I could have asked for in an education. She gave me more words of praise and I thanked her before she informed me that she would reach out soon with additional assignments. I couldn’t wait to absorb the vast pool of knowledge she had to offer.

As I made my way to the door, I found Sebastian standing there alone. I suspected that he had matters to discuss with the professor and nearly walked past him.

“Nice work,” he said.

I stopped and turned, surprised.

“I enjoyed that,” I told him.

“That duel was quite something!” he said. “Everyone will be talking about it.”

Why did he look so happy about it? So far, I’d been reading Sebastian Sallow wrong at every turn.

He put up a good fight. It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t had a trial by fire practice. Opting to remain humble, I replied, “It was certainly good practice.”

Sebastian leaned in. “Practice?” he exclaimed. “Felt more like I was dueling an expert!”

My face warmed at the enthusiasm behind his praise.

“Didn’t expect a new student to be so deft with a wand.” He gave me an appraising look, his tone turning conspiratory. “Then again, perhaps this wasn’t your first duel.”

“I’ve dueled enough. Consider yourself lucky I held back.” Something about Sebastian made me want to push his buttons. My track record for getting him all wrong continued, however.

“Fair enough,” he matched my tone. “You owe me an honest duel when you’re not.”

My blood pulsed once more at the idea of another fight.

“You know. You might be a perfect fit for a certain exclusive, unsanctioned dueling organization,” Sebastian said.

Getting into trouble was the last thing I wanted to do, lest everything snowball and I find myself expelled from Hogwarts and back to where I was. Anything was better than that, but I suspected, though, that Sebastian knew exactly what button of mine to push. He had me pegged before I did him, and I found myself almost frustrated at the prospect.

“Exclusive and unsanctioned?” I said. “Count me in.”

Sebastian looked pleased with himself. “Excellent. Knew I was right about you.”

That made me frown. He was indeed. Yet, I’d been wrong about him since the moment I approached him in the common room.

“If you want to get the most out of your time at Hogwarts, you’re going to need to break the rules now and then,” he continued. “Whether it’s joining a secret dueling club or sneaking into the Restricted Section of the library.”

Damn that look he gave me at that last bit. He wasn’t saying it to brag. He’d already figured out what made me tick.

“You just have to be clever enough not to get caught.”

“Thank you, Sebastian.” I said coolly, having had enough of his watchful eye for the moment. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

He gave me that knowing smile again. “Good. Pleasure chatting with you. I’m sure I’ll see you soon. Perhaps somewhere unsanctioned?” The emphasis on the last word told me he was sure I was on board. “We’ll see if your performance today was sheer luck or actual skill. Look for Lucan Brattleby by the clock tower entrance. If you’re interested.”

I tried not to scowl too hard. Of course he’d act like he was letting me think about it, knowing damn well what I was going to do. What a cheeky bastard.

A/N: "Hey, this very much looks like a Sebastian fic!" Yes, reader, it does! And this first part is very much yours and Sebastian's love story. But! (Because there's always a but) I make no promises for the endgame. Maybe the fact that Sebastian needs you doesn't mean he deserves you. We'll have to see.

A good chunk of this will follow canon, but I change some scenarios and conversations entirely, and after a point, it'll diverge from canon completely.

#hogwarts legacy #sebastian sallow #sebastian sallow x mc #sebastian sallow x reader #hogwarts legacy imagines #ominis gaunt #sebastian x mc #komh #a lil ominis gaunt x reader #for flavor #and possible foreshadowing #but this first part is def yours and seb's love story don't worry

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bebx · 6 months

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honestly I don't expect sylki to happen at all at this point. the most I expect is some kind of platonic unity, like them standing with a shared smile a united force, maybe holding hands. unless they go with making them kiss before parting ways or something, a gratitude of what they've given each other. But if the show simply...continues the path it's setting itself on, sylvie will get to be free at the end, live and create her own life, have her own connections, her own friends, like we saw her so settled and at peace in. that would be best for her arc, best as the prize of them winning. unless they make it that she has to choose to sacrifice herself in order to save other people, for some sort of "growth" reasons. (but, that's still just unnecessarily killing her; not sylki.) they've fought, they've both helped each other, and now they grow beyond each other.

as for lokius...idk just being a realist? or pessimist? (optimist?? lmao) I don't expect, also, anything more than showing them as a ""platonic"" (heavily up for interpretation) united front. they'll succeed. they'll win each other at the end. they'll reside over the tva, with beautiful smiles for each other. because loki has no want expressed for a timeline life. his want, over and over, his need, is just to have mobius with him always (for all time). not just his desire for this friendship but the full, complete friendship he's already achieved, through growth, and grown from. he's changed (and he's in love), and he gets to keep it. we've seen him lose it again and again -- it will end with it remaining.

I honestly can't believe, just, the constant care, and softness, the gentle hands and voices he has for mobius. the way mobius's name is always the main one on his lips he's defending, arguing for, fighting for his rights and his happiness, always his advocate, fighting to keep with him as his literal main motivation, tears in eyes and on cheeks. "the man I know...you saved my life when I first arrived. you saw something in me that I hadn't seen in myself." the confession of it all. the high romance. the longing, the comfort.

I expect an ending where you can 1000% interpret them as being in love (because they are). (though with just enough openness that general audience can claim "friendship" if they so desperately need to.) but...any other network, like...the consummation of their romance is the endgame, the pinnacle of them both expressing and feeling what they mean to each other through a high-emotion kiss. because there's such emotional, textual, core-to-the-story setup for it.

either way, I expect loki to keep all his friends (unless ones like casey and B-15 would prefer their timelines), to keep the extra-special connection with mobius, crucially, and, honestly...for sylki not to be a thing or kiss at all, but just be on perfectly good terms with each other now. and if they do make them kiss, it can't break me, because I can read that as platonic, and everything he's felt for mobius as something more. the whole dynamics of their relationships was contained beautifully and perfectly in that bar scene. that's the crux of all of them. I loved it.

I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if marvel still made sylki endgame in the end (look at the steve and peggy case in endgame), but I do agree with you and I hope you’re right here. aside from the whole ship war thing, the bar scene between loki and sylvie feels to me like a breakup scene where both parties are on good terms and are still good friends, and that’s the vibes I genuinely get from loki and sylvie this season.

I’m genuinely happy for her that she finally got a place where she could call home and the people whom she could consider friends and family (not loki or mobius but the people she met in her new life).

making her and loki get back together romantically wouldn’t make any sense at this point. but again, knowing that this is marvel and disney, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they pulled the sylki endgame in the season finale next week.

(there’s also rumor from people who claimed to have seen the entire season that loki and sylvie did end up together in the finale, and while I know there’s no way to confirm this until we all find out next week, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true.)

also I agree with you about lokius. they wouldn’t make it “too explicit” but yeah, like you said, if they were to make lokius “canon”, the most they’d give the audience would be some hint that they could be more than best friends. but I wouldn’t expect an outright love confession or a kiss. would love to be wrong about this, but it’s too good to be true and I’d rather expect nothing than to have my hopes up too high and get disappointed lol

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kairakeiji · 2 years

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“what are we?”

a question that’s been plaguing your mind rather frequently recently, considering your current circumstance with your supposed best friend. if anything, he’s not really your best friend and more of a “no one knows if we’re together” kind of relationship, so much so that you didn’t even know how he truly felt about you. sure, kuroo had his arm wrapped around you while you rest your head on your shoulder but no one ever confessed, no one asked the other out. it was all rather ambiguous, built off of assumptions and inferences about the other side.

and you wanted answers, you wanted them before your heart exploded with questions.

kuroo thinks for a moment, “i’m,” he hesitates, “not too sure myself honestly.”

“alright,” you nod, shuffling to face the boy properly.

“what do i call you then?”

kuroo only stares on hearing your question, “what do you mean?”

“well,” you start. “am i your friend?”

“yes of course.”

you think for a minute, pursing your lips together, “what if i called my baby?”

and that catches him off guard.

“what?”

“you know how i call all my friends terms of endearment and stuff?” you question, your shoulders slumping a bit at his reaction.

“yes, i do.”

“what if i started calling you some of them?”

kuroo blinks before a small smile appears on his face, “okay.”

“what about my honey, my daisy, my only. kuroo tetsurou the love of my life.”

“okay,” he blinks shaking his head as the tips of his ears turn pink, “that’s a bit much.”

you can’t help but laugh at his flustered state, “do you mind it though?”

“i don’t,” he mumbles softly before meeting your gaze.

“okay,” you nod. “that’s good then.”

“and what if i called you my lover?” kuroo questions.

and you smile, “i wouldn’t be super opposed to that either.”

“what about my sunshine? my sweetheart? my beloved?”

and this time your cheeks flush red, “okay tetsu i get it,” you tell him to which he only laughs.

“so what are we then?” you question.

“definitely not friends that’s for sure.”

“we’re the farthest thing from friends,” you add with a small laugh.

but you’re not sure if you’re any closer to being called lovers.

“okay fuck this,” you mumble, “i like you, like you in a more than a friend way, like you in a way where i say terms like that and mean it romantically not just platonically like everyone else.”

“yn.”

“yes tetsu?”

“i swear i told you i liked you last week.”

you blink, “what?”

“when i asked you out for dinner at that one nice restaurant,” kuroo mumbles.

“oh is that why you looked so nervous last week?” you laugh.

“pretty much,” he sighs, “especially since you didn’t really give me an answer.”

“that’s because you didn’t tell me tetsu.”

“i didn’t?”

you shake your head rather confused, “i would certainly remember if you did.”

“oh?” kuroo blinks before giving you an apologetic smile. “well then i like you too. i alwa- ow!” you flick his forehead before a small smile appears on your lips.

“i guess that answers my initial question then,” you sigh.

“it does yes,” kuroo nods. “sorry.”

“no no don’t be,” you tell him. “well then i guess i can call you mine then?”

“as long as i get to have you,” he smiles.

what is this? i’m not too sure either i’m ngl lol

thanks for reading! reblogs and interaction are always appreciated <3

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caralara · 1 year

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Chicago - a close reading & interpretation

This is my very personal interpretation of Chicago, content warning: babygate, Douis & stunting. Here you can find all my other close readings & interpretations of Faith In The Future I’ve written so far.

Close reading of the lyrics:

I saw you had a baby

Interestingly Louis starts the song with a line about a baby - after we speculated from the beginning this song might be connected to babygate. He is talking to someone he used to know quite well and spent time with, but now only “saw” that they went through a major life event, and therefore are not close anymore.

Did you use any of the names we liked?

The person Louis is singing to was someone Louis felt comfortable enough with to discuss names for hypothetical children. What seems odd is that he assumes they would consider using one of the names the two of them came up with for their current relationship’s baby - not necessarily something you would do if Louis is an ex-partner in the romantic sense in this scenario.

And is your brother doing ok? Is he still getting out of fights?

He is bringing in more information to identify the person he is singing about, the person has a brother, which Louis witnessed not only getting into but also out of a lot of fights. He also cares about the brother, asking about how he is doing - it seems Louis has spent some time with him as well.

I’m sorry that your mum don’t like me, I’m sorry that I brought that on myself

He is saying that the person’s mum not only didn’t like him in the past, but still does to this day, and more importantly, that he brought this on himself. Was he simply rude to her? Or did he do something more profound that made her dislike him to this day ? He seems to be sorry about that. Does this mean he sort of understands why she dislikes him? That he is still doing what the mother disliked him for? That he feels sorry that he is doing that?

They say bitter ends turn sweet in time

Another End mention here, hmmm. He is saying he and potentially the other people involved in this, like “you,” were bitter about it ending back then. Why would both be bitter about this? Is the bitterness stemming from frustration? And then he tacks on, that eventually, the bitterness turns sweet, very importantly, with time. Is he saying that because time goes on, the bitterness will fade? Or does something need to change, shift for the bitterness to turn sweet?

Is that true of yours and mine?

He is asking the person, if this also applies to their situation, if the person is feeling the same way about it how he feels now.

Cos if you’re lonely in Chicago, you can call me baby

And then he goes and reaches out to them - respectfully - and putting the ball in their court, stating he’d be okay if they called him up again, to meet up, talk? If they’re lonely? He just said they just had a baby, wouldn’t one assume they don’t really feel lonely at the moment, romance wise? They either are in a committed relationship with the other parent of the baby, and/or have the baby on their mind, not really booty calling their ex? He is specifying they’re in Chicago, and because Louis obviously isn’t always in Chicago, supplying another identifier to who this person might be. He calls them “baby” at the end of the line, a term of affection: he feels positively about them, still, to this day.

Has it been long enough that you can forgive me?

Another identifier, as to when this happened - long enough ago that he considers it possible for the person to have gotten over it. Probably more than a year, but from the tone of it, it is more likely several years - they had a relationship become this serious that they had a baby in the meantime. In the same breath, he is asking for forgiveness - did they blame him for the situation? Did they regret the situation back then?

Just because it didn’t work doesn’t mean it’s meaningless to me

Now he is saying that “it” didn’t work - what is it? The relationship? Or the situation they found themselves in? He says that no matter what - being with this person during that time is far from meaningless to him. He is expressing, that even though it might have gone wrong, overall he still appreciates them and the time spent together.

It just wasn’t meant to be

This sentence is basically “it is what it is” in a different font - now, looking back, he gave up on questioning why it didn’t work out, but accepted it as out of his control.

Have you seen how my life’s been going?

Now he is asking the person if they’ve been keeping up with what he’s been doing. Did they follow his career, and his choices, and the tabloids talking about him? Is he asking if they have seen he’s now suddenly talking a lot about his son, another baby in the mix?

Cos i’ve been wondering what you’d say

Apparantly, this person’s opinion seems to be important to him, especially in regards to his actions in recent times. Is he drawing parallels from back then to now? Back then, the person was involved, and now, Louis deems them to be qualified to make a judgement of the current events.

Would you have told me to keep going, or would you say to walk away?

So this seems to be a hypothetical question about a time between them parting ways and now - it is a little bit in the past. Speculating, it could be about the beginning of the “recent” years he’s asked them about just before. He seems to value their opinion, and missed their advice. It seems he stood in front of a decision, either to go through with something hard, or to leave it all be and walk away.

You always made me feel much better, and I’ll always be grateful for that

Back then, this person gave Louis some relief in the situation, helping him get through it and feel better, and to this and into the future he will be grateful for that. So even though they were going through something tough, this person offered comfort to Louis.

I didn’t have to search cos I still know your number

he isn’t even saying that he still has their number saved, but that he still knows their number - did he call them so often during that time that he would know it by heart? Is it a certificate of how much they talked, and how close they really were?

I bet that you didn’t think that I’d remember

Now he is guessing that they didn’t think he would remember (the number? them?) - maybe he is expressing that he thinks that it seems like they think he doesn’t like them - maybe he is trying to say “look, I know you think I dislike you or don’t want to think about you because I connect this difficult time with you, but I do - you were important to me, and no, i don’t dislike you, and no, I am not disinterested in you.”

It just wasn’t meant to be, no, it just wasn’t meant to be, it just wasn’t meant to be

Then he repeats that it simply wasn’t meant to be - their relationship or what they were going through for - over and over again, almost like a mantra, like something he had to make himself believe, a state of mind, just like “it is what it is” is.

I didn’t have to search cos i still know your number, I bet sometimes you still like to wear my jumper

contrary to the one before this one, where he guesses they think he might dislike them, here now he is expressing he thinks they still like Louis, or at least have a soft spot for him - and even mentions clothes sharing, they are wearing his jumper - where do we know this from? Stunting in the 1D-Universe always includes wearing each other’s clothes, because it’s, as always, a cheap copy of the real thing: the boys all sharing their clothes from the very start. Is this a nod, a hint, to connect this to stunting?

Just because it didn’t work, doesn’t mean it’s meaningless to me, it just wasn’t meant to be

He ends on the repetition of “it didn’t work but it still meant something to me, it is what it is” which is summing up the situation he’s finding himself in now: looking back at the situation, having made his peace with what went wrong, and telling the other involved person that he still cares about them, and that he appreciates them for being there for him back in the day.

Personal interpretation:

Let’s start with the title: Chicago. What comes to mind in connection to Louis? Yes, that very wild and weird time at the end of 2015, where suddenly, amidst all the baby and engagement rumours to Briana, Louis suddenly went public with a steady girlfriend: Danielle Campbell. And because Danielle Campbell is from Chicago, and her family lives there, Louis spent a lot of time there between end of 2015 and end of 2016. He also got the infamous bum tattoo there with Danielle’s brother on a night out, as well as the 28 knuckle tattoos. People in the fandom often are scared to look into the Douis relationship, because - in contrast to Elounor - they actually seemed quite comfortable with each other. Danielle was, in my opinion, the only beard / PR girlfriend Louis chose himself. There were rumours about him holding “auditions” with at least Alycia Debnam-Carey and Danielle Campbell. Speculations are that Louis installed her as a safety net to not get dragged further into the babygate drama by management/pr company and the fame hungry trash family, meaning Danielle was by Louis’ side all the way through the first year of Freddie’s life, there are several photos of her with Louis and the kid. So Chicago is synonymous with Louis spending time with Danielle and her brother and being in the midst of the babygate chaos.

Another link could be the musical Chicago: we know Louis loves musicals (Grease made him audition for the X-Factor in the first place!) and Chicago is a 1975 American jazz musical by Bob Fosse, the original production opened in 1975 and ran for a total of 936 performanences (lol) - it is the second most performed musical ever. It is about a woman,who’s being sent to a woman’s prison in the 1920ies for having murdered her lover, who promised her stardom in the showbiz, but never delivered. In order to regain her celebrity status and increase sympathy towards her in the court of justice, she lies and acts as if she was pregnant (sounds familiar??).

The tone is set - we have both links connecting the song to babygate already. And then he goes ahead and sings about a baby in the first line?! And the best part is - it is pretty obvious by the song who it is meant to be about: Danielle Campbell. He drops enough identifier (“brother,” “Chicago,” “your mother,” “clothes sharing,” to be able to pin down who it is about. Just imagine the spike search results had when the album was released - wait hang on, let me just show you. Isn’t it funny that the collective sentiment will be “huh, but she didn’t have a baby?”

He is very clever about it, though: at first glance it is dressed up as a love song about an ex - in my opinion, though, it isn’t. It is very honest, I think, just not the way the sloppy conclusion leads to believe. To me, it is very much about Danielle, but as exactly what my reading showed: she was someone he could lean on during a hard time, who met him with compassion and understanding, and who was there for him when he had to do things that weren’t easy and black or white. She helped him choose a name for the fake baby he was having (unhinged theory: they were the ones starting the Conchobar rumour /j) He wants to express this and get it off his chest, maybe he wasn’t in the right space back then to show his appreciation and gratefulness properly.

Maybe, because of the mentioned bitterness and “it” not working out, he can only now allow those feelings and speak them out loud. I think the “it” was the whole idea of stunting with Danielle to keep from being dragged further into babygate. Obviously, he is still very much entangled in the babygate stunt, so it fits, saying it didn’t work out back then. The theme of one of his plans not working out and it destroying/hurting a lot of people in his life is a recurring theme in his songs (“took a left, trying to make it right,” “said I had a plan, time came and changed it all”). He is insisting that it was more than just a means to an end for him: she was important to him, in a way someone becomes important to you when they help you through a hard time.

The lines would make a lot of sense also in regards to what Danielle has said in an interview a couple years ago that mysteriously has been wiped off the internet last year and the only evidence we have of not collectively imagining things is on tellmethisisnotlove’s archived blog. She says she regrets deeply agreeing to do a PR relationship and seems to be very careful how to word it and that she would never do that again. Sounds like someone who got deeply involved in very shady stunting, if you ask me - and maybe that is why Louis is asking for forgiveness.

He manages to put “end” in there a couple of times, and he is also saying that with time, the bitterness (about it not ending? not working out?) turns into sweetness - this is kind of along the lines of what I have been theorising, that he is starting to gear up to end it again. I do admit, that it can also be interpreted as him finding peace with it and just accepting that this is his life now “Cos i’ve been wondering what you’d say, would you have told me to keep going, or would you say to walk away?” - he is asking her if she’s seen that he is reviving the babygate stunt (and maybe she knows what he’s trying to do?) and what she thinks of it. It seems they had these conversations before, where she reminded him that he could always just leave it all and walk away if it got too much. And now seemingly he chooses to keep going (with the plan? To eventually end it? Or to just use it to his advantage?) and wonders if she would agree with that today.

To me, this song speaks of affection and respect for someone he considers somewhat a friend, that because of the circumstances was deeply knowledgeable about the predicaments he’s found himself in. The image does fit what I think happened - that they became actual friends and got along great while stunting, and that she managed to relieve some of the pressure and stress instead of adding to it, which is a feat as a hired beard.

Of course I am aware of confirmation bias, but when it makes this much sense, I just go hmmmmm…

I am really glad to be reading that he wasn’t alone during this time, and that she was able to offer him comfort and strength and someone to lean on.

So, in conclusion - Chicago is, just as I predicted, about babygate, but not the way you think. It’s about Danielle Cmapbell, but not the way you think. It’s an honest song, but just not the way you think.

It’s an insanely clever song, and I love that he decided to share this with us. Thank you, Louis.

Find an overview of all my close readings here.

#close reading and interpretation #faith in the future intepretation #fitf #faith in the future #chicago #chicago interpretation #song analysis #chicago analysis #babygate #bbg #danielle campbell #douis #louis tomlinson

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skinnyscottishbloke · 17 days

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A and B for the fandom asks!

Heyaaaa thanks for these : )

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

Well number 1 has to be my ineffables, Crowley/Aziraphale from Good Omens. I’ll read allllll the fic - the angsty post s02 pining/reunion fics, the post s01 long friendship realized fics, the south downs retirement fics, hell even the human au fics (although those are a bit more hit or miss for me). I just cannot get enough of them!!! They are the ultimate to me. The outpouring of fic and art and meta post s02 makes being in the fandom extra fun rn. Also I like both the ace and allo interpretations, if the writing is good.

My number 1 used to be Johnlock, specifically from BBC Sherlock. While we all know how that show fucked up, Johnlock fic still has a special place in my heart and I find myself revisiting favorites often. Similar to Good Omens, the post s02 Reichenbach fall hiatus art/fic/meta was a great great time and makes me smile to remember it.

Nick x Charlie from Heartstopper are adorable and sweet and are definitely my fluffy pairing. Alex and Henry from RWRB are like their older siblings in a way - I just love them too (more book versions for Alex and Henry, although the movie was lovely, I just feel like the book goes more in depth).

Also love Merthur (specificially from BBC Merlin). I don’t even really like the show??? but I looovveeee the fic world, especially when the whole ensemble makes an appearance. Modern AUs are really fun for me in this verse.

Gotta shoutout my OG ot3 Parker/Hardison/Elliot from Leverage. Their canon relationship was beautifully developed and I love when fic takes it to the next level. Lots of found family vibes, idiots to lovers, all the best tropes.

The first ship I ever read fic for was Rose x The Doctor (Nine or Ten) over on whofic.com. They’re still a huge ship for me (Doomsday still makes me cry fuck) so even tho I don’t seek out fic as much anymore I still reblog a lot of gifsets and stuff.

I was on the Stucky train HARD for the longest time, and I still go back and read fic, especially from the Winter Soldier or Endgame fix it era. Another Marvel ship I read a lot of was Matt/Foggy from the Netflix Daredevil. Avengers era ensemble fics (everyone living in Stark Tower) are also a favorite.

I went hard on Drarry for a while and I still go back to certain fics but I wouldn’t say it’s a current favorite per say.

Gonna save my last big favorite ship for the next question cause it fits really well.

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

So!! My last big main ship is Bagginshield (Thorin/Bilbo from the Hobbit) and this is one that I didn’t really even get into until I read The Riven Crown by beautifulfiction. She was one of my fave Sherlock authors and so when I saw she had written Hobbit fic I was like welllllll normally I don’t read fic of written media (especially Tolkien cause I grew up reading Middle Earth); but it’s B soooo I’ll give it a try. And oh my fucking god I was HOOKED. And now Bagginshield is probably #3 in terms of how many fics I have bookmarked and how often I think about them lol. Richard Armitage knew what the fuck he was doing as Thorin in those movies. I also love the ensemble aspect with all the dwarves and I love fics (like the Riven Crown) where it gets into the bureaucracy of rebuilding a kingdom like Erebor and also rebuilding trust in the aftermath of Thorin’s gold lust.

There’s other pairings I love (Booth/Brennan from Bones, Kanthony from Bridgerton, all the Sense8 relationships, some Zutara) but I think these are the main ones for me.

Send me a letter from this list

#cobbbvanth #kate replies #misc fic #johnlock #ineffable spouses #stucky #otp: i believe in her #drarry #ask games #thanks again for the ask!! : )

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tarotmantic · 4 months

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ages ago i remember seeing an orientation prefix that like basically meant ur orientation was influenced by neurodivergency which I definitely feel fits me. I don’t remember the term but yeah, i believe my autism informs my aromanticism (it probably also informs my asexuality and my gender identity but that’s not for this post).

I consider myself on the cusp of loveless, i feel very allied with that community and generally see my experience reflected most there. I’m very solidly on the end of the aro spectrum, I’m not even remotely grey-aro. Never experienced anything I could label as traditionally romantic lol. I often say I love my friends but that’s mostly for ease of communication. I care for them, and I care for many other things- but love? I don’t know. I don’t consider myself aplatonic though.

This is kind of where I see myself in the loveless community because I’ve read people talk about the rejection of the idea of love, and all the baggage attached to it. You can say “oh there’s other kinds of love, love isn’t just romantic” all you want but you can’t deny all the connotations it has within ~society~. Even if I could “love” my friends, because I fundamentally miss out on the experience of romantic love- an experience so entrenched in society and the popular conception of humanity- I feel disconnected from the entire notion. Love doesn’t mean anything to me.

On a minor tangent, this is definitely why I like narratives that twist love, that make love the villain. A lot of the poetry I write takes love and write it like obsession. I like playing with it, because I don’t have any sentimental value on true love, because I don’t know what it’s like to love but I know what it’s like to hurt.

I don’t have any aromantic friends, and I haven’t really talked about it to the friends I do have. I think about discussing is with them but I have no clue how to raise that lol. I kinda wanna know what they think about it, if they have any questions. Especially since they’re starting to get into relationships now.

I am out to my friends, but I’m not out in any capacity to my parents. I don’t think they’d be against it, they’d most likely be supportive but they also definitely wouldn’t get it. I don’t have the energy to explain it to them. I don’t know if they’ll ever ask, especially since I’ve never had a partner. Do they think im just hiding it from them? Who knows.

There’s a lot of things I’ll never experience, like first crushes or break ups or dating apps. Since im also asexual (also no grey, will never ever have sex in any capacity) I won’t ever experience those supposedly universal things like losing my virginity or even just like the feeling of being horny either lol. Whole swathes of the human experience that aren’t for me.

That’s where the grief creeps in, so many things I’ll never have. Ugh, I shouldn’t have to mourn things I never wanted. That’s where voidpunk comes in. I know the creator originally made it for aroallo folks, but also left it open for anyone who felt it fit. The nonhuman thing is very attractive to me with being very queer and very autistic. Especially since my identities are kind of all the absence of something.. void feels very apt.

Anyways.. this was a long post, I enjoyed rambling on though. I don’t put my thoughts about this to metaphorical paper often, but it’s always rattling around my head. If anyone else wants to chime in im all ears! As I said, I don’t really have anyone with similar experiences to talk about this with so im always willing to hear what the community is thinking.

#tarot.txt #aromantic #loveless #actually autistic #queer #voidpunk

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phantomato · 2 years

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Thank u for ur amazing work. I have a (longish, apologies) question about Heartbeat. I'd been a Tomarry fan for some time but recently have become lukewarm. I read your meta posts as to why you consider its not a realistic ship. I also read work by metalomagnetic which made me alive to the fact that Tom would likely never pursue a romantic relationship with Harry outside of some Macchiavellian manipulation arc. How do your reconcile your view on Tomarry with writing Heartbeat and why pursue it?

Hey! It’s lovely to get an ask, thanks for sending in this question! 💕

I’d say a few things in answer to this—

I still don’t like Tom/Harry as a romantic ship. It doesn’t do it for me for all those reasons outlined in my old Tomarry essays, that hasn’t quite changed. What has changed is that I’ve become more comfortable and interested in exploring parts of Tom’s character where he doesn’t get to be his best self: he doesn’t find the self-actualization and contentment that I want for him in an ideal happy ending. He might still get a happy ending! At least, in the sense that he’s whole and healthy, and generally free. But there’s some wiggle room within that—see my stories like Changeling, or Pygmalion, for example. Those, and others I’ve written, are realistic in the sense that they’re ways I see Tom/V believably acting, as I characterize him. But they’re also not especially romantic in the way that I write, e.g., Nottmort. Or there’s Proximity or Lush, for stories that are more happy/romantic but not meant as end-state relationships for Tom/V. He learns and grows, we get to see someone else who is meaningful to him and hear part of their story, and yet he’s not done by the end, there’s clearly more he will experience in those lives before he settles into something long-term and committed.

I tried to write Heartbeat in February, and I failed to do it. At that point I hadn’t yet written any of the stories I name above; I hadn’t figured out what I want out of this kind of fic. That version of Heartbeat meandered too much through Harry’s experiences, because I thought I needed to do so if I were going to write from his POV. And this story needs to be his POV, as it happens. I’ve long promised myself that I wouldn’t write a tomarry fic unless I felt I had something interesting to do with it, I wouldn’t write it just to drum up attention for my other fics (that seems… fraught and likelier to result in frustration than success), and yet I still got caught up in how other people tend to write the ship and imposed expectations on myself that were contrary to the story I had planned. It came out all wrong, I hated the thought of adding more to it, and I scrapped the entire work on AO3. I’d rather lose those subscribers, comments, etc. than be burdened with my initial poor telling. So it really is not the case that Heartbeat has been an easy or comfortable journey for me, and I pursue it anyway, as it’s a story I’ve wanted to tell.

Finally, I will say: you haven’t read the end of Heartbeat yet, whereas I have. I don’t find that I have much conflict that needs reconciled.

—

I’ve got another tomarry in the wings, a one-shot I hope to publish this week. I don’t ship it, no, but I tell stories about Tom. This fandom has decided that pairing these two characters together is a major avenue for telling stories about Tom, and so I will use the ship as fits my needs.

#ask

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romantic-reveries · 1 year

Text

Maybe it’s because I’m close to my period, or the stress of all of these changes, or because I got abruptly abandoned by someone for the umpteenth time that I truly didn’t think was someone who would do that, but I just want to scream with the unfairness of it all. I know that’s so counterproductive and maybe I indulge in that kind of thinking because it feels good and it’s comfortable to wallow, and I should try to break the pattern, but sometimes I just want to wallow, damn it.

All I have ever, ever truly wanted, was to be loved. The only person who loves me the way I deserve to be loved is my grandma. And I’m so so thankful for her and I wouldn’t trade her love for the love of fifty other people, but is it so wrong to want more for myself?

Even this guy that friend-dumped me—it wasn’t romantic for me. He kept telling me how he wanted it to be, how he’d drive the six hours to come see me in a heartbeat, how he loved me, whatever, but I didn’t take it seriously. What I did take seriously was that he enjoyed my company enough to video chat with me late at night when I’m all sleepy-eyed and bruise-like dark circles, or fall asleep on the phone with me. To talk with me every day. To always be kind to each other and support each other. It was a nice, lovely thing. It was enough, even though it isn’t even close to what I really want for myself. It was enough to satisfy that desire, even though it was hollow in comparison. Which is just the thing—every time this happens, I feel irreparably damaged. Chipped away at. It becomes harder and harder for me to trust anyone or believe their words or actions. And like, it may not even be that they stop caring, people have their reasons for things—but how they feel doesn’t matter, it’s how they treat me.

And then I’m working now. And I’m so proud of myself. But part of me is also so scared that I’ve spent all these years thinking that if I could just get over all my issues, if I could “get out” into the world or whatever, I’d make friends. I’d meet someone. I won’t have to explain all these shameful things about myself as a precursor anymore because I’ll be “normal”. I’ll be able to drive to meet people. And after all of this, don’t I deserve it? But what if that isn’t what happens? I know I needed to do these things anyway, but what if that hasn’t ever been the problem? What if the problem has always just been me—that there’s something inherently unloveable about me? That I am something not worth staying for? Not worth choosing?

And then I see things sometimes that feel like a carrot dangled in my face—you know? I started this job and a really cute guy works here who is around my age, who is well-spoken and sarcastic and articulate and kind and plays guitar—except he’s married.

It’s always “except”, in some way or another.

Met a really great guy once who I clicked with super well, except he lived in Australia, which was too far for either of us to consider. Met a really cute guy with everything in common once, to the point that he said it was like meeting himself, except he had too many issues to be in a relationship—or didn’t want me. Met a really great guy that I felt safer and more comfortable with than any man I’ve ever spoken to, except he lives two hours away and that’s too far for him.

I see all these people having multiple relationships, or long-term relationships, and I can’t even get someone to talk to me consistently for more than two months. What’s wrong with me? What is so bad about me? They all give me iterations of the same compliments—that I’m so kind and pure and safe and steady. But no one ever wants me. Not really.

Even in my friendship situation, I was second choice, even though I always treated B better than H did and didn’t bail on her to hang out with boys.

It just makes me want to scream.

#personal

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myfictolovers · 2 years

Text

So Ive played a good deal more since my last update (last night) I’d like to say It’s me getting the hang of playing a whole house of Sims, but as the game keeps going obviously the house gets smaller so that’s not it.

I was mid way through Day “7” eliminations (cutting from 6 to 5 contestants) last night- and now im leaving things off just as i enter Day 13 eliminations, about to cut from 4 to 3. Thats 6 days, plus an extra day for the Speed Dating portion, plus a day for how long eliminations take me, And then there was a day i “cancelled filming” because there was this huge thunderstorm outside and if my Sims couldn’t be outside i didnt trust the elimination process to go well (Jealousy is a nuisance when you’re purposefully leaving a possibility for it to happen by chance, but It’s annoying as hell when you’re trying to follow basic steps of the challenge and suddenly everyone’s Sad and rejecting all advances because they feel their Love Drifting 🙄) i got lucky that the house i chose had a little spot out back in the garden that looks entirely like It’s there for that kinda ceremony, so I just keep the bachelorette in the green, and get the rest of the house in alphabetical order, leaving the bottom 2 for last.

Here’s a recap of stuff that’s happened since Day 7-

Day 7- Bottom two were Harley (Acquaintance 🖤) and Pearl (Friend 💜) I couldn’t bring myself to eliminate Harley, so I vetoed and got rid of Pearl. This left 5 competitors

Day 8-Free Day at home- Harley decided to be angry and yell-y for a lot of her first real conversations with the bachelorette, so I was worried that wouldn’t go anywhere at all. Alex got super jealous of the Doctor, aggravating her and refusing most of the bachelorettes advances, throwing a drink in their face. She also continued to keep her bitter issues with Klaus, and insulted the Doctor. The Doctor noticed the bachelorette’s banter with Klaus getting a little flirty and got hit with her own jealousy, though I think that stood more to cut down her relationship points than cause any drama.

Day 9-“Speed Dating”- Harley had the date on Love Day, I believe it came out gold? Maybe silver. But anyway, it went well. I originally meant them to hang at a museum, but then they got hungry and needed to piss like immediately so, with the lounge right next door to the museum, I decided that as they actually started the date, they’d move to said lounge.

I believe this was also the first Day the bachelorette rolled a Want to ask the Doctor to be their girlfriend. Which puts her there with Klaus on “ones they knew they could really see themself committing to.” They went on to roll this want two other times in the coming days, so we’ll say that whatever they’re really feeling about the Doc, they definitely consider her long-term/wife material. (Yes I know the wants roll that for any relationship Friend or higher but at least while I don’t have them with someone I want to see it as favor. I feel like I’d use that as a tie-breaker if I had a normal sim who had pink bars with multiple girls but wanted to finally pick one to actually date. As far as the annoying rolls to break up in happy relationships- I was glad to see that validated, that other people think it comes out of nowhere, and decided I’ll treat it as an errant thought if there are no problems whatsoever, but if they had a recent fight or have no romantic sentiments or have other romantic prospects, i could use it as a means to pick a fight.

The second “Date” was with Alex- and it was basically a waste. I couldn’t get them the option to make it a real date really easily so I just didn’t. I just set them to talking- and in an embarrassing turn of events, the bachelorette kept trying to flirt with her, and she kept refusing. As if after seeing them flirt with the Doctor, she’s just done in this competition. She’s over it.

Day 10- Eliminations

Bottom 2- Alex (Acquaintances 🖤) and Klaus (Lovebirds 💚). Klaus hasn’t been doing badly, really. Just the other three were all lovebirds, I just kinda did my best.

Alex, clearly, was eliminated.

Day 11- Group date at local venue-

They all went to the park. I didn’t start a party, I just set them on autonomy for 6 game hours.

Day 12- only one 1-on-1 date this round. It went to María José. They had their first kiss. Honestly it shouldn’t be weird to me, but it seems like Majo is in the lead.

Day 13- eliminations

This is where I left off. Next will be some last-chance chats with whoever demands their attention first.

Current contestants left (before today’s eliminations)

The Doctor, Harley, Klaus, Majo. I didn’t check their relationships before I got off, so iderk who’s on the chopping block.

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and-life-moves-on · 2 years

Text

longing

‘It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved before...’ Alfred Tennyson

Is it really though? I wouldn’t know. I have never been in love. Fuck, I have barely been in lust with an actual real person before.

For a long time, I thought I was broken. Now they have better terms on what to call this.

Asexual? I still want to have sex

(with someone, someday, if they are the right person. If I can feel that while knowing them)

Demisexual? Probably the best label out there for what I am.

I still feel like a fraud.

How can I label myself as bisexual when I have never been in a relationship? How can I be considered an adult when I’m almost 30 and still haven’t had sex?

(not just sex. I haven’t fucking held hands with anyone in more than anything but a platonic fashion. haven’t been on a date, haven’t ached for anyone.... am I cursed to be alone)

I found out some pretty fucked up shit lately. When I was three, my cousin walked in on a high school aged family friend doing...

Well, I’m sure you’ve heard that story before.

(it explains so much. the fear that has followed me all my life, afraid to be alone with anyone of the male sex, afraid to be vulnerable, denying anyone could be attracted to me. Is this why im bi? is that how it works?)

But. Of course, these are only... rumors. at best. right? How could something that happened when I was three that I didn’t know about for 20some odd years.... maybe. Maybe happened. Did happen?

How do you process something like that?

_____________________________________________

I have felt lost. All my life. Like I’m stumbling through this.

I tried so hard

to find me

to find happiness

to be content

to be seen

I feel unlovable. Not because of.... I have always felt this way.

I have never felt... seen. Is that my own fault though? If I am a book, I am one of those locked ones, you can’t figure out where the key even goes if you wanted to.

Is it too much to wish someone would spend the effort to see me?

(I know the truth to that is yes. you can’t expect anything from other people, its not realistic, its not fair. we are all alone in the end.)

It doesn’t matter how many times I remind myself of this reality. No one individual means more to the design than anyone else, we are all amoebas in an infinite universe. As you look out, expand your impression of this life out out out-

This galaxy is a body, we are the cells on an organ. Small. Insignificant.

But. I am a creative at heart. I believe in witches and werewolves, fairies and elves. I believe in aliens and alternate realities. Swirling designs and patterns, woven into the greater tapestry we all experience. I believe in Magic, even in mundane forms. I mean for fucks sake, look a the Ocean! Look at science and technology! You can’t tell me that dragon’s aren’t real when we created metal calculators that hold minds born without bodies, based on the whim of a creator who wants power to process more.

(why creative, why not romantic?)

I don’t know how to describe this. I want someone to see me, for me, completely. I want them to love me and hold me and be there for me. To love me enough to look at me and know.

I don’t know if I even want or need sex, if I had that with someone. I want to be able to hug, cuddle, just have someone who will put me right below themselves, tuck me next to their heart and think about me during the day.

(being known is terrifying. people barely like who I mask as, how could I ever find someone to accept me)

Getting older has been... comforting in one hand. As I observe life (theonlythingimgoodatrememberingstupidfactsandthingspeoplesaid10yearsago) I am comforted that a lot of us aren’t alone in the way that we think, in the things that we do.

I still don’t understand love. A few months ago, I saw a tweet (trust me i know, the cesspool of the internet) and it was talking about how hard it is to figure out how to navigate a romantic partnership when you are older. How the years of feeling like ‘no one will ever love me, no one will ever look at me and want to touch me, no one feels those feelings for me’ really fucks with trying to be an adult and meeting people to date. I felt seen, still thinking about it now obviously.

Looking back and observing my own life, how could someone think sexuality is voluntary? I have always felt like an outcast because of my bisexuality and demisexuality. Like everyone else was in on something I have put 10000x more thought than action into.

Maybe I have read too many books? Practiced escapism into others lives and tribulations one too many times?

_____________________________________________

I feel shame.

You can tell yourself truths of life every day, sink them into your psyche, ink them into your skin.

There are still some days I wake up,

and wish I hadn’t.

There are still some days I wake up,

and i dont feel awake.

There are still some days I wake up....

all I can think of is the noose, swinging from a tree.

Depression is hard. It’s subtle. A dark monster lurking under my bed, behind doors, in dark corners. It creeps up into my shadow, through my feet, into my body. My legs don’t want to move, my stomach starts to gurgle, my chest gets heavy. Breathing is hard. My arms flop uselessly, my head feels so full and so

e m p t y

of anything, everything. Joy, Love, Happiness, Hate, Fear.

People think depression makes you sad? Mine is more like... a blanket of self doubt and loathing smothering me. Suppressing everything I am except this existential melancholy that taints everything.

(i am unworthy of life. i am a waste of space. why should i even try to keep living if this is the pain of life)

Sometimes it’s hard to feed myself. To shower. To think. To do anything except stare ahead and hope.... even though you can’t feel the hope.

Would it really be better to have loved someone, see them, let them see you. Lose that completely? I know what the ache of missing is.

Missing Hope

Missing Love

Missing being able to fucking cry, to breathe, to not feel like every breath is a chore.

_____________________________________________

Stoicism saved my life. It helped me see.

We did not choose to be born, we do not choose the circumstances we are born in,

we honestly don’t have that much say over our lives in the (out out out) grand scheme.

Thats okay. Life is not meant for understanding why we are here, its for living.

(but all i want is to know. why. why me? is it true? are we all god? is this reality my hell? are we all parts of the same whole? is any of this real or is it all a computer program? where did we come from? why are we alone? is this by design? is this all chance, random, meaningless?)

I feel like I have already failed life, like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel already. I’m not even 30 yet, how can I survive another potential 70 years like this.

(so lonely, so lost i still have imaginary friends to stave off the a c h e. To keep me company when I am alone, to make me feel known. Important. Cared For.)

I have felt my entire life like I am missing... someone, something. Does everyone feel like this? Does it ever go away?

(i really thought i had it figured out, that i knew what i wanted. that i had goals. and i was miserable. was that my depression? did i just delude myself that was my dream? Icarus flies too close to the sun....)

I feel shameful with my simple life, but at the same time. When I was younger, this is pretty close to the life I have always wanted.

We are always disappointed by something.

(i can’t even escape into the stories anymore i feel like its shameful, like i have to face the reality i have carved out for myself, like i don’t deserve to escape what i have dug for myself. dig our own grave, bury ourselves in it.)

Are you out there,aching for me too? Is the love I want real or am I not meant for someone else? will this feeling of... want... ever leave me or am i doomed to always be looking for something more.

something else.

somewhere else.

someone else.

Is happiness like time? always slipping through our fingers, we never know how precious it is until its gone...

& life moves on

#internal #rambling #This is a personal blog #i hate this #and life moves on

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diaqueenunderthemountain · 2 years

Note

heyy this is for the queer themed asks - 🍁🔮

also how are you? :)

Hi! Thanks so much for the ask! I’m doing pretty well right now. I just learned that you can keep earthworms as pets and they can live up to 10 years, so that made me very happy. (Sorry for the super long answer, I’m not out to 99% of people I know so this blog is pretty much my only outlet to talk about queer stuff)

🍁 - When did you first realize you were queer?

I guess I kind of always knew I was queer in terms of understanding myself, but I didn’t know I was queer in terms of being part of the lgbtq+ community until a little less than 2 years ago. I didn’t find my current labels until like 3 months ago though.

I always really liked my girl friends (I’m afab) and wanted the strongest/closest friendships with them. I know now that it was queerplatonic/alterous attraction, but back then I thought it was completely normal and everyone wanted to date/cuddle/kiss their friends. I also never really connected the idea of love to a man. I thought romance was a cool idea, but I never really envisioned myself going on dates or ending up with someone. I never has a real crush on guys. My friends would all like someone and to fit in I’d pick a random guy I knew and said I had a crush on him. I never really got the whole idea of romantic/sexual attraction.

Looking back now, it’s so obvious that I was a sapphic aroace, but I thought that I was pretty normal. It never struck me to consider that other people didn’t feel the way about relationships that I did. I just went about living my life and thinking that I was straight and cis. (I also live in a super conservative area and met my first queer friends this year, so it was kind of up to me to learn everything about being queer/queer people existing for myself. That’s probably why it took me so long).

🔮 - What Was the Moment you Realized you were Queer?

I wouldn’t really say I had a “moment” I realized I was queer. I didn’t have a big revelation the first time I had feelings for a girl or anything like that. It was more like a buildup of so many small moments of queerness over my life that when I sat back and looked at the whole thing it all came together and I realized I was queer. It was more of a big reflection than a single moment.

I guess I did have the moment that made me put everything together, though. For context I have these crazy vivid dreams every night, and my memory is pretty good so I remember most of them to tell my friends the next day. (Also I’ve had more times I can count where my dreams literally predict the near future, which is super weird) My dreams are usually the weirdest things you’ve ever heard, so it takes a lot to faze my friends. This one day at a football game, I was probably 6-7 minutes into my dream recap when I mentioned part of the dream was about attending my wedding with another girl (being in relationships with girls was a pretty common element in my dreams, but it wasn’t usually important to go in detail about it for the plot. This dream was kind of an exception. Usually I would just say I was at a fancy restaurant with “Susie” not specifying that it was a date, because it wasn’t necessary for the context of the dream and also I was so not heteronormative that I assumed fancy restaurant equated to date no matter the genders). My friends were all shocked out of their minds (conservative area, remember) and I played it off as a joke, like lol couldn’t be in real life, those crazy dreams am I right? I didn’t see what had gone wrong but I knew how to play it safe. I was actually really confused, because I thought that dating a girl would be awesome and didn’t see anything wrong with it. That was when I realized that there was probably something different about me. I had always assumed that anyone could like anyone else, I guess (never something I put a lot of thought into at the time), so the homophobia was new and I figured out for the first time that my attraction to girls (and lack therof towards boys) was not the norm, or even acceptable. I went home that night and just kind of stayed awake and replayed every moment of my life up until then, wondering about what it all meant and what things I thought were normal that other people obviously didn’t. Pretty soon the queer puzzle pieces were coming together fast, and I just needed to learn how to make sense of the picture. This set off a whole journey of self discovery that I won’t really go into here. It did take me a long time to finally work out all my feelings around romance/sex/gender, but I finally found the labels that helped me understand myself and made me feel confident. The thing I got pretty immediately was that the lgbtq+ community existed (!!!) and that I was definitely a part of it. It was such an amazing feeling to realize that there were other people out there like me, and so many ways to discover and define my identity. I guess I would say the moment I knew I was queer was when I first researched about the lgbtq+ community and started learning about all the different identities within it.

#lgbtqia #pride #lgbtq #lgbt pride

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itsapeterthing · 3 years

Text

Her Hand || Bucky Barnes

pairing: 40’s!bucky barnes x rogers!reader

summary: after months of keeping your relationship a secret, your brother steve finds out and bucky has an important question to ask him

a/n: another addition to my bucky x rogers!reader collection because i simply could not get them off of my mind last week and i also love bucky and steve’s friendship with all my heart

word count: 2.5k

warnings: quick fight, none

masterlist || request || taglist

1941

You and Bucky had been seeing each other behind your brother’s back for months. You were shocked you both had gone on for so long without Steve finding out considering how neither of you could keep your hands off of each other. Whether it was sneaking kisses when your brother wasn’t looking or holding hands under tables- you needed each other like you needed air.

Despite the fact that Bucky was his best friend, you knew the moment your brother found out everything would change. Steve was nothing if not overprotective of you since the deaths of your parents and his own struggles growing up. He just wanted what was best for you and you knew that, but sometimes the lines were blurred on what that was- especially when it would come to dating... and dating Bucky no less.

So, not wanting to risk your brother’s rage and his friendship with Bucky, the two of you had been keeping your relationship a secret. You knew eventually you would have to tell him, but you both were in such romantic bliss that you told yourself that was a future problem.

You had first told yourself that ten months ago and the future was bound to catch up.

“Buck, you need to go.” You giggled against his lips before pressing yours against his once again. “He’s gonna wake up.”

“C’mon Y/n.” Bucky chuckled, gripping your waist tighter and pulling you closer to him. “He sleeps like a rock. Just let me in, hmm? Just for one night?”

“Shh!” You hushed him, wrapping your arms around his neck. “You’re not stepping into my room while my brother’s home without a ring on this finger, mister. You understand me Barnes?”

“Doll,” He groaned, throwing his head back which just made you laugh harder. “You know I’ve got a plan- you just gotta be patient, Y/n- trust me.”

Lacing your fingers into his hair, you laughed against his lips.

“Shush, James. You’re gonna wake him up!” You whispered. “You gotta head home.”

“If you insist. One more kiss?” He asked.

“One more.”

Pressing your lips against his, you couldn’t help but smile into the kiss, both of you laughing out of pure bliss.

Pulling yourself away, you opened your eyes and turned your head to the side only to be met with the sight of your brother standing in the doorway of your apartment.

Eyes growing wide and heart thumping in your chest, you and Bucky jumped away from each other, you pushing him behind you.

“Steve, I can explain.” You pleaded, holding your hands out in front of you.

Watching as his hands balled into fists at his sides, you knew you weren’t going to be getting out of this one easily.

“You better have a damn good explanation.” He said, firmly.

“Steve, I-” Bucky attempted to speak up, moving from his spot behind you to be by your side.

“You can have every girl in this city, Buck, and you just have to go after my sister too?” Steve asked in disgust, cutting off his friend.

Glancing from your brother to his friend, catching a sadness you had never seen before in his eyes, you shook your head.

“Stevie it’s not like that-”

“It’s always like that, Y/n!” Your brother shouted, turning his attention back to you while pointing an accusing finger at Bucky. “You don’t know what he’s like! He takes out a different girl every day and I used to turn my head, but God damn it! My sister too?”

You and Bucky had always known that there wouldn’t be a necessarily positive reaction from your brother when you first told him, but standing in the midst of the situation now you both wished you could escape to seconds before.

A part of you felt so guilty you wished you had told him earlier.

Maybe his reaction wouldn’t have been so bad.

“Steve, I- I don’t do that anymore.” Bucky said, his voice faltering. “I know that I’ve done stuff like that in the past, but it’s over for me now. I care about your sister, Steve. I love her.”

Rather than relax at his friend’s confession of love, you watched as your brother took a deep, long, shaky breath.

“How long has this been going on?” He asked.

“Steve-” You attempted to ease him.

“I said ‘how long has this been going on!’” He shouted this time.

“Ten months.” Bucky confessed calmly from beside you.

It happened so quickly that you couldn’t stop it.

Rather than shout once again, seeing red, you watched as Steve threw himself at Bucky, shoving him to ground and climbing on top of him.

“Oh my God!” You shouted in shock, wrapping your arms around your brother’s torso to pull him off of your lover. “Steve, get off of him!”

Rather than let go, your brother pulled the collar of Bucky’s shirt, shoving him against the floor.

“Ten months!” Steve shouted. “You’ve been seeing my sister for ten fucking months and you didn’t say anything? She’s not something that you can just mess around with-”

Throwing a punch to his best friend’s face, Bucky cursing in pain but not moving to throw Steve off of him, you found the strength to tug Steve hard enough to pull him off, you both falling to the ground in the process.

“Shit!” Bucky cursed, holding his eye.

Glancing from your brother back to Bucky, you pushed yourself to your feet, making your way to Bucky’s side. You dropped to your knees and attempted to examine his wound before turning back to your brother.

“You know- this is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you.” You told your brother. “I mean, God, Steve you’re so overprotective of me. You get so mad when people think you can’t fight or handle yourself, but you do the same shit to me. I can handle myself! I’ve known Buck just as long as you and I know what he used to be like but it’s not like that anymore, Steve. I know what I’m doing. I’m with Bucky and you can either come to terms with that or... I don’t know... but I’m not leaving him.”

Noticing how your brother’s shoulders began to relax and his fists loosened at his sides, you turned back to Bucky, gently brushing your fingertips against the bruise forming around his eye.

“I should get you some ice.”

Rather than agreeing, Bucky shook his head adamantly.

“No. Leave it doll.” He groaned, moving his hands up to hold his eye once again. “I deserve it.”

Glancing back up at Steve you saw him sigh before reaching his hand out for Bucky to take. Glancing at you and then Steve’s hand, Bucky took it, Steve pulling him to his feet.

An awkward silence hanging between the three of you for a brief moment, Steve was the first to speak up.

“Y/n, can you leave us alone for a few minutes?” Your brother asked.

“I don’t know.” You shrugged standing up. “You gonna try to throw him over the fire escape?”

“Y/n, it’s okay.” Bucky said, pushing himself up to his elbows. “Head inside. I’ll be fine.”

Eyeing Bucky and then your brother, you sighed, shoving past Steve to reach the open door of you and your brother’s shared apartment.

“If I see another bruise on his face, Steve, I sweat to God I’ll kill you.”

And with that you shut the door.

Watching the door slam and his face, Steve sighed, moving to sit on the steps that led up to your apartment, Bucky following behind.

Groaning as he slowly situated himself beside his friend, Bucky glanced at Steve and sighed.

“I’m sorry for not telling you.” Bucky said, staring out into the dark night in front of him. “I was just afraid of what would happen when you found out. You’re my best friend and I didn’t want you to get so pissed that you never wanted to talk to me again... or never let me talk to her again. I really love your sister though, Steve. This isn’t like the other ones.”

Steve knew without him even saying it that you were different from his past relationships. He had never seen his friend so sincere, so vulnerable. Ten months was far beyond the longest relationship Bucky had ever been in which lasted a total of three weeks. Ten months was a long while for anybody- especially his best friend.

“So uh... ten months huh?” Steve asked, glancing at his friend sat beside him. “That’s a... that’s a long time.”

“Yeah.” Bucky agreed, turning to face Steve. “That’s kinda why I’m glad you know now. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about... if you’re in a good mood anyway. I don’t want a matching shiner.”

Not being able to hold back his laugh, Steve chuckled, nodding his head.

“Go ahead, Buck.”

Although Bucky had run through this conversation since one month into your relationship, as he sat there now next to Steve, he didn’t know if he would actually be able to say it. He had gone through hundreds of different scenarios thousands of times, but choosing the right one in this important moment seemed almost impossible.

His mind drifting to you though, he knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He didn’t want to. In his mind he had already waited long enough.

“I just want to do this right, Steve.” He said, facing his friend, trying his best to sit still and stay calm. “You know, I’ve thought about how I have to do this my whole life- asking the dad and everything- but I don’t know if it’s better or worse that I have to ask my best friend.” Bucky chuckled. “I know your sister can handle herself and everything- she would say that it’s stupid that I’m even asking you and everything- but I love her and I just want to do this right because she’s it for me, pal.”

“What are you saying?” Steve asked.

“I wanna marry her, Steve.” Bucky said finally. “And I don’t want you to think this just came out of nowhere. I’ve known for a while. Ma gave me her ring ‘n everything and I’ve been ready for so long, but I couldn’t do it without telling you and asking you for her hand ‘n all.”

Staring at his friend, eyes growing wide, it hit Steve for the first time just how serious not only Bucky was, but your relationship. You were Steve’s little sister, adopted at an age that he had barely known life without you and Bucky was his best friend- a friendship forged so young that he couldn’t remember not having him by his side. It was hard for Steve to believe the words he was hearing out of Bucky’s mouth.

Not only were you and Bucky in love with each other, but he was ready to devote his life to you.

“Wow, Buck.” Steve exclaimed at a loss for words. “What happened to her being a ‘nosy punk’?”

Chuckling, Bucky shrugged.

“C’mon you know I always had a soft spot for her.” He said. “I don’t know... things changed. I’m sorry for not telling you, pal, I am. I was just scared of losing her ‘cause she’s the best damned thing that ever happened to me.”

Moving his hand to Steve’s shoulder, Bucky gripped it gently.

“I promise I’ll take care of her.” Bucky said sincerely. “As much as she’ll hate it- I’ll do everything I can to protect her. I know I don’t have much, but I’ll give her a good life, Steve. I’m with her until the end and then some. I’ll be haunting her ass as soon as I’m six feet under.”

Not being able to help the laugh that escaped his mouth, Steve chuckled, resting his hand on his friend’s shoulder in return.

“So you really love her?” Steve asked.

“Steve, I’m asking you to let me marry her.” He said. “Of course I love her.”

Removing his hand from his friend’s shoulder, Steve shook his head in disbelief.

“This is a lot to take in, Buck.”

And it was.

You were his sister and as hard as it was, he would do whatever it took to protect you. He almost couldn't help but feel a part of his heart sink, feeling as though you didn’t need him anymore. But as he stared at his best friend and heard both yours and Bucky’s words replaying in his mind he couldn’t find it in himself to stand between either of the people he cared for most.

The longer Steve thought about it, the more relieved he was that his two favorite people had found their way to each other.

“You promise you’ll take good care of her?” Steve asked, glancing at his friend in the dark night, only the light shining through the window of the apartment highlighting his face.

“I promise, pal.”

Staring straight ahead of him, Steve finally nodded.

“You have my blessing- or whatever it is- to ask her.” Steve said, giving his permission. “It’s her decision, but I’m not gonna stand in your way, Buck. Just don’t forget about your brother-in-law, alright?”

Not being able to help the complete and utter joy he was feeling from the pieces finally coming together in his life, Bucky shook his head, laughing.

“God, ‘brother-in-law’.” Bucky repeated. “This is really happening, huh?”

“I guess so.” Steve smiled, standing to his feet. “Now go plan that proposal and everything. You’ve convinced me, now you just gotta convince her.”

Only chuckling in response, still sitting on his spot on the step, Bucky fiddled with his fingers, basking in the relief of the weight he had been under finally being lifted off of his chest.

Moving towards the door of his apartment, Steve glanced over his shoulder at his best friend.

“Hey Buck?” He called.

“Yeah?”

“For uh...” Steve said, clearing his throat. “For what it’s worth... I’m glad it’s you.”

Not giving him an opportunity to reply, Bucky listened as the door shut behind Steve, leaving Bucky on the steps of your fire escape alone with his thoughts.

Slipping his hand into his pocket Bucky pulled out the ring his mother had given him two months before, twisting it around in his fingers. It took everything in his power at that moment to not knock on the door of your apartment and propose to you right then and there. Instead, he closed his eyes, feeling the cool metal against his skin, planning just the right way to convince his best girl to spend the rest of her life with a lovesick fool like him.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes oneshot #Bucky Barnes drabble #bucky barnes blurb #40s!bucky

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thebibliosphere · 3 years

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So I'm currently unemployed because I got fired for taking too much sick leave (it was legally sketchy blah blah blah but in the end I just can't work and take care of myself and investigate my mystery health problems at the same time). So I've been spending more time writing!

I really admire your writing and loved Hunger Pangs. I'm looking forward to the poly elements developing and I'm wondering if you have any advice for writing about poly. I've made one of my projects a snarky take on "write what you know" ... Apparently what I know is southern gothic meets Pacific northwest gothic, chronic illness pandemic surrealism, and falling back-asswards into threesomes.

I know this is a very open-ended question and I don't expect an answer, I'm just curious about it if you have the energy. As a writer, trying to write honestly / realistically about polyamory/enm, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what's different about portraying monogamy or nonmonogamy in books, romance or erotica or otherwise.

I'm trying to read examples but it's hard to find examples that fit the niche I'm looking at. Excuse me if this question is nonsense, it's the cluster headaches.

I'm sorry to hear you've been dealing with all that and solidarity on the cluster headaches. But I'm glad you're finding an outlet through writing! And I hope you're happy with an open-ended ramble in response because oh boy, there's a lot I could talk about and I could probably do a better job of answering this sort of thing with more specific questions, but let's see where we end up.

There's definitely a big difference between writing polyamory/ENM (ethical non-monogamy) and what people often expect from monogamous love stories.

Just even from a purely sales and marketing standpoint, the moment you write anything polyamorous (or even just straight up LGBTQIA+ without the ENM) you're going to get considered closer to being erotica/obscene than hetero romances. It's an unfair bias, but it's one that exists in our society. But also the Amazon algorithm and their shitty, shitty human censors. Especially the ones that work the weekends. (Talking to you, Carlos 🖕.)

So not only do you start out hyper-aware that you're writing something that is highly stigmatized or fetishized (at least I'm hyper-aware) but that you are also writing for a niche market that is starving for positive content because the content that exists is either limited, not what they want, or is problematic in some fashion i.e. highly stigmatized or fetishy. And even then, the wants, desires, and expectations of the community you're writing for are complex and wildly varied and hard to fit into an easy formula.

When writing monogamous love stories, there is a set expectation that’s really hard to fuck up once you know it. X person meets Y. Attraction happens, followed by some sort of minor conflict/resolution. Other plot may happen. A greater catalyst involving personal growth for both parties (hopefully) happens. Follow the equation to its ultimate resolution and achieve Happily Ever After.

But writing ENM is... a lot more difficult, if only because of the pure scope of possibilities. You could try to follow the same equation and shove three (or more) people into it, but it rarely works well. Usually because if you’re doing it right, you won’t have enough room in a single character arc to allow for enough growth, and if ENM requires anything in abundance, it’s room to grow.

And this post is huge so I’m going to put the rest under a cut :)

There's also a common refrain in certain online polyam/ENM circles that triads and throuples are overrepresented in media and they may be right to some extent. Personally, I believe the issue isn't that triads and throuples are overrepresented, but that there is such minuscule positive rep of ethical non-monogamy in general, that the few tiny instances we have of triads in media make it seem like it's "everywhere" when in actuality, it's still quite rare and the media we do have often veers into Unicorn Hunter fetish porn. Which is its own problematic thing. And just to be clear, I’m not including this part to dissuade you from writing "falling back-asswards into threesomes." If anything, I need more of it and would hook it directly into my brain if I could. I'm just throwing it out there into the void in the hope that someone will take the thought and run with it, lol.

I’d love to see more polyfidelitous rep in fiction, just as much as I’d like to see more relationship anarchy too. More diversity in fiction is always good.

Another thing that differs in writing ENM romance vs conventional monogamy is the feeling like you need to justify yourself. There's a lot of pressure to be as healthy and non-problematic as possible because you are being held to a higher standard of criticism. Both from people from without the ENM communities, and from the people within. Granted, some people don't give a shit and just want to read some fantastic porn (valid) but there are those who will cheerfully read Fifty Shades of Bullshit and call it "spicy" and "romantic," then turn around and call the most tooth-rottingly-sweet-fluff about a queer platonic polycule heresy. That's just the way the world works.

(Pro-tip for author life in general: never read your own reviews; that way madness lies. I glimpsed one the other day that tagged Hunger Pangs as “ethical cheating” and just about had an aneurism.)

And while that feeling of needing to justify yourself comes from a valid place of being excluded from the table of socially accepted norms, it can also be to the detriment of both the story and the subject matter at hand. I've seen some authors bend so far over backward to avoid being problematic in their portrayal of ENM, they end up being problematic for entirely different reasons. Usually because they give such a skewed, rose-tinted perspective of how things work, it ends up coming off as well... a bit culty and obnoxious tbh.

“Look how enlightened we are, freed from the trappings of monogamy and jealousy! We’re all so honest and perfect and happy!”

Yeah, uhu, sure Jan. Except here’s the thing, not all jealousy is bad. How you act on it can be, but jealousy itself is an important tool in the junk drawer that is the range of human emotion. It can clue us in to when we’re feeling sad or neglected, which in turn means we should figure out why we’re feeling those things. Sometimes it’s because brains are just like that and anxiety is a thing. Other times it’s because our needs are actually being neglected and we are in an unhealthy situation we need to remedy. You gotta put the work in to figure it out. Which is the same as any style of relationship, whether it’s mono, polyam or whatever flavor of ENM you subscribe to* And sometimes you just gotta be messy, because that’s how humans are. Being afraid to show that mess makes it a dishonest portrayal, and it also robs you of some great cannon fodder for character development.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to my current pet peeve in how certain writers take monogamous ideals and apply them to ENM, sometimes without even realizing it. The “Find the Right Person and Settle Down” trope.

Often, in this case, ENM or polyamory is treated as a phase. Something you mature out of with age or until you meet “The One(tm).” This is, of course, an attempt to follow the mono style formula expected in most romances. And while it might appeal to many readers, it’s uh, actually quite insulting.

To give an example, I am currently seeing this a lot in the Witcher fandom.

Fanon Netflix!Jaskier is everyone's favorite ethical slut until he meets Geralt then woops, wouldn’t you know, he just needed to find The One(tm). Suddenly, all his other sexual and romantic exploits or attractions mean nothing to him. Let's watch as he throws away a core aspect of his personality in favor of a man.

Yeah... that sure showed those societal norms...

If I were being generous, I’d say it’s a poor attempt at showing New Relationship Euphoria and how wrapped up people can become in new relationships. But honestly, it’s monogamous bias eking its way in to validate how special and unique the relationship is. Because sometimes people really can’t think of any other way to show how important and valid a relationship is without defining it in terms of exclusivity. Which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how ENM works for a lot of people and invalidates a lot of loving, serious and long-term relationships.

This is not to say that some polyam/poly-leaning people can't be happy in monogamous relationships! I am! (I consider myself ambiamorous. I'm happy with either monogamy or polyamory, it really just depends on the relationship(s) I’m in.) But I also don't regard my relationship with a mono partner as "settling down" or "growing up." It's just a choice I made to be with a person I love, and it's a valid one. Just like choosing to never close yourself off to multiple relationships is valid. And I wish more people realized that, or rather, I wish the people writing these things knew that :P

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. I hope this collection of incoherent thoughts actually makes some sense and might be useful.

----

*A good resource book that doesn't pull any punches in this regard is Polysecure by Jessica Fern. It's a wonderfully insightful read that explores the messier side of consensual non-monogamy, especially with how it can be affected by trauma or inter-relationship conflicts. But it also shows how to take better steps toward healthy, ethical non-monogamy (a far better job than More Than Two**) and conflict resolution, making it a valuable resource both for someone who is a part of this relationship style***, but also for writers on the outside looking in who might have a very simple or misguided idea of what conflict within polyam/ENM relationships might look like, vs traditional monogamous ones.

** The author of More Than Two has been accused of multiple accounts of abuse within the polyamorous community, with many of his coauthors having spoken out about the gaslighting and emotional and psychological damage they experienced while in a relationship with him. A lot of their stories are documented here: https://www.itrippedonthepolystair.com/ (warning: it is not light material and deals with issues of abuse, gaslighting, and a whole other plethora of Yikes.) While some people still find More Than Two helpful reading, there are now, thankfully, much, much better resources out there.

*** Some people consider polyam/ENM to be part of their identity or orientation, while others view it as a relationship style.It largely depends on the individual.

#long post #writing #ethical non-monogamy #relationship styles #relationship models in fiction #also that kindle link is an affiliate link #because fuck giving amazon free recs

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