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skull-storm-daily · 2 years

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Sorry to disturb, but bad player here still trying to work out how to beat the Skull Storm. Any general advice on how to defeat it?

Absolutely, happy to help! This response ran a little long, so I’ll put the rest of it under the cut.

There's really two key components you need to consistently keep track of to win your skull storm runs, those being:

1) making sure you have a surefire way to deal 6 damage on your first turn (especially important for map 3 when the totems get more dangerous and combats can quickly overwhelm you), and

2) having a contingency plan to get past the Bear Rush on phase 2 of each boss battle.

The first point here is fairly easy to succeed with, at least more so than the second, and this is by manipulating an internal game mechanic present throughout the entirety of Inscryption, called fairHand- which essentially makes sure you always have at least one usable card that isn't a pelt you can place down on the first or second turn. fairHand accounts for every kind of card in Inscryption, including energy- and mox-cost cards, as well as rules for bones, but the only important part of this we need to know for skull storm is the rule for the blood cards: essentially, a squirrel and two other cards are drawn, and if either of those does not have a blood cost equal to the number of free cards you have in your hand (ideally only the squirrel, meaning one blood cost), then the last card you draw will always be a card of that cost.

How to use this to your advantage requires you to be pretty careful with your deck management over the course of the run- in order to consistently win combats quickly and effectively, you need to stick to a single 1-blood cost card for the entirety of the run, since you'll always draw it on the first turn, and do everything you can to not have to pick up any other 1-blood cost cards for the rest of the run, or to get rid of them as quickly as possible- via sacrifice stones, campfires if you haven't gotten rid of the survivors yet, or the rare bone lord event. (It's also probably best to avoid picking free cards along the way too, like tadpoles, since they can mess with your fairHand.)

I should also note, that any starting deck can win a skull storm run, including the Curious Egg deck! Some are certainly easier to do so than others, but it is possible to win with any of them through playing carefully and maybe with a little luck.

Here are a few notable good 1-cost cards to consider picking up, plus a few notes on each:

Black Goat - excellent for when you have a lot of high cost cards that you've buffed fairly well, and is even included in the high cost starting deck. Best buffs to consider are Undying (when you have many high cost cards to play) and Searcher (when you have a single powerful card, ideal for winning on the first turn.)

Warren/Beehive - helpful in the same vein as the Black Goat, but only Excellent with the Undying sigil. Generating large amounts of undying rabbits or bees (which you can then use to play the Warren or Beehive again) is the ultimate recursive strategy to play just about any card you have. (Warning: Bees also fly and deal 1 damage and work with Insect totems while rabbits don't- but be VERY careful, as Beehives require them to be HIT first to spawn your bees, and they cannot stop flying enemies. My suggestion to solve this is to either stock well up on items or somehow put the Mighty Leap sigil on your Undying Beehive as well, whether via fusing two different Beehives with each sigil at the Mycologist event, or with an Insect-Mighty Leap totem.)

It should be worth noting that the Skink can also perform the same role as the Beehive as mentioned, with the same shortcomings as it requires being struck first, but has its own benefits and detriments as well- it requires space in combat to move to, and only leaves a single tail behind before it is killed, but this tail also keeps any sigil inscribed on the Skink, as well as retains the Skink's stat improvements from campfires.

Mantis, Mantis God - these cards are good if you want to deal damage directly on turn 1 rather than setup- and can even win right away, if the Mantis is buffed to 3 power or the Mantis God to 2. The Mantis God deck notably already starts with one, although the two ringworms with it can make it hard to use since they're also 1-cost and can trigger fairHand- although they're actually less difficult to get rid of, since they come with the Annoying sigil, which you can put onto another card you don't care about at the sacrifice stones, and the second one gets fed to the campfire folks, obviously.

The Mantis and Mantis God's Bi-strike and Tri-strike sigils make them work well as 1-cost cards, but you could put their sigils onto just about any other 1 cost card instead, as long as it's powerful enough to make use of them, if you really wanted. However, using them in tandem with each other is better- since they'll strike 5 times instead of the usual 2 or 3.

Outside of our Mantis buddies, the purpose of most of these 1-cost cards are to make the rest of your cards easy to play- and what really cinches your win is filling the rest of you deck with cards you can win with. Some easy clues to keep an eye out for:

Grizzly - by itself it isn't that helpful, but it's bulky and strong enough at 4/6 to be something to keep you standing until the next turn, at least- and even better if you buff its power with a campfire. It's a more worthwhile card if you put sigils on it like Bi-Strike, or...

Double Strike (and to a lesser extent Dire Wolf Pups) - Dire Wolves naturally have Double Strike, which you can sac onto just about any card with 3 power or higher (some common cards are Moose Bucks, Wolves, Wild Bulls, Great Whites, even Grizzlies) as an easy win card if you draw it turn 1. Alternatively, if you have a Dire Wolf or Dire Wolf Pup on hand and none of these other cards, you can buff them at a campfire and boost their power by 1 (no risk involved) to get a 3 power Dire Wolf and win with that. Double Strike cards are also the most common method of getting past the Bear Rush, since they only need one opposing tile to be free to work. All these cards are fantastic to put Double Strike on, but my personal favorite is to save it for my dear Lammergeier, which I'll speak about in a moment.

It's helpful to have as many of these cards as you can manage, especially if your 1-cost doesn't have the Searcher sigil to find the card you want.

Now, for point 2), the Bear Rush.

Since every phase two boss fight is the same, you can plan around all three of them relatively similarly, depending on what cards you have- although most of the time it will be rng based, since often you will need to pick up items along the way in between boss fights. Here are a few strategies that work:

Scissors/Carving Knife/Wiseclock + 5 damage - The concept behind this is simple- just use an item to remove a bear or otherwise create an empty space on the opponent’s side, then attack that space with 5 damage however you can- whether from a card attack forward, attacking to the side via bi-strike, adding a damage from pliers, whatever works. However, this only works that turn, since the bear behind it will come forward to fill the space on the opponent’s turn. Other means of getting opening up a space such as attacking with a death touch card and then attacking that space for 5 damage or more also works, but isn’t as easy to set up (however, this also means you don’t have to rely on items at all). One other thing about the Wiseclock in particular- the placement of your cards especially matters here, as you could end up accidentally blocking your win card, or even sending your win card to the opposing side. If you’re using a wiseclock and have a win card that attacks the space directly opposing it, put it on the second column from the left, and if your card attacks to the side, put it on the third column from the left instead. This will plop your cards exactly into the places they need to be once you use your wiseclock.

Brute Force (+ optional Hourglass) - This strategy is usually reserved for very late in the run, when you’ve had more chances to buff your deck and pick up powerful cards. Essentially, if you have a card that attacks the same tile twice (whether with Double strike or having both Bi- and Tri-strike sigils) and has a power of 6 or higher, then as long as you play that card and you are able to attack with it on the first turn of Bear Rush, you will win. If you have cards that can only deal 6 damage total to a single space instead, that works too, but only if you have an Hourglass item to stall the turn, or enough cards in your hand to stall TWO turns, to give you a chance to take out the second bear and then attack on the third turn of Bear Rush. Items such as spare Frozen Possums or Boulders can also help to stall, and both last at least two turns of Bear Rush. This strategy can be a bit spooky to pull off, but with strong enough cards you can win.

Magic Bleach + Fan or Flying cards - This strategy is clear enough, especially if you have a Fan to give flight to your non-bird cards: use magic bleach on the first turn of Bear Rush to remove the Mighty Leap sigils (I just had an unrelated thought of how terrifying bears would be if they could leap into the air like that), then play as many flying cards as you can to add up to 5 damage, using a Fan if you have one if necessary, and win. However, bird cards aren’t usually very powerful, with few exceptions, and it’s easier to pull this off if you have a Fan. This isn’t the only strategy Flying cards are essential to, though...

Starvation stall, Flying card - really for your last ditch effort attempts, like running into a boss with no items or you had to use your items to survive phase 1, no cards powerful enough to brute force it, and maybe you have a Fan or you stocked up on some good flying cards but never picked up any Magic Bleach to go with it. This strategy can be pretty tricky to pull off, but it’s really your best bet if you have nothing else. The strategy is essentially this: stall in phase 1 of the boss fight for as long as you can (usually easiest with Trapper or Angler, at least in map 1) so you draw almost all your cards, then defeat the boss’s phase one on exactly the turn you draw your last card- but don’t play your good flying card to win. The idea here is that as soon as the Bear Rush rolls out and it passes to your turn again where you draw a card, a Starvation card will replace ONE of the bears at the front- which critically, does not have the Mighty Leap sigil on it. As soon as the Starvation is played, play your good flying card (or any other win card if you have a Fan at your disposal) in front of it, and deal direct damage.

The absolute BEST card to use this strategy with is my lovely dear Lammergeier, as hopefully by the time phase two rolls around you’ll have plenty of bones to capitalize on (hopefully at least 7, since the last 3 will come from the cost Lammy needs to be played- unless you have a black goat, or something). However, if you have some cards to stall the bears with, such as the aforementioned Boulder or Frozen Possum bottle items, then you can use flying cards with a slightly lower attack power, such as a Turkey Vulture (3/3) if you can stall the rest of the bears for one turn, or even an unaltered Raven (2/3) if you can stall two turns. Risky, and depends on you still having cards in your hand that don’t have the Waterborne sigil, but works.

Those are the key points to keep in mind when playing a Skull Storm run- but as much rng manipulation is often involved, developing your own skill as an Inscryption player is a major part of this too! You can’t pick up an absolutely perfect deck every time, of course, and learning to think on your feet to handle those unexpected situations that come your way is important, too, like running into an unwanted inescapable 1-cost card, or encountering a combat with the Thorns totem when your best cards only have 1 health. All I have to say is, practice! Experiment with different strategies and starting decks, discover what way to play feels right to you. Here are some extra tips of things I’ve picked up playing for as long as I have, that I’ll let you know now:

Pack Rats - If you have trouble with your item luck, picking up a Pack rat or two can go a long way- ESPECIALLY if you put the Undying sigil on it! If you draw your Undying Pack Rat during a combat, that means you’ll get multiple chances to roll for new items, which is especially helpful if you’re in the third combat in a map and you still haven’t found any Scissors or Wiseclocks.

Soft Resetting is your Friend - This might be a bit cheating, but if you’re quick with the escape key, you can quit out and reload the game to back before you load the coming event, and choose differently. This can be done to check different cards on cost-choosing or tribe-choosing Add Card events, Cave Trial events if you fail the trial (before you’re sent back to the map), Item Backpack events, Prospector mining events (although the card placement is still randomized), and notably also the Campfire events- but ONLY if the card was not eaten, since the game autosaves the instant a card gets eaten (a good way to manip this is to put a card you want to get rid of first, and if it isn’t eaten, quit out and buff a card you want instead), and of course, Combat encounters. Just about all of these choices can be redone without penalty, since each event and outcome is rolled at the very start of when a new map is generated. You can even reroll the whole map if you’re looking for a specifc pathing at either the very start or when you move onto the next map, since it saves after you beat a boss and doesn’t save again until you complete an event on the new map. If you run into trouble and feel the need, a quick escape key and quit out can save your whole run, no joke.

(Interestingly, soft resetting also does not work for Goobert's Card Painting event, as it autosaves once your copied card is revealed- I suppose to keep you from fishing for better copies. It usually doesn't matter though, as fusing the og card and its copy at the Mycologist event is one of the quickest ways to buff the attack power of your best cards, since the attack and health are usually doubled.)

Woodcarver Totems - Not usually necessary for Skull Storm runs, and going out of your way to pick some up can mess with your pathing and collection of Necessary things you need to win- but if you stumble upon a Really good sigil for a totem, then complete it as fast as you can and lean into it. HARD. Pick up as many cards as you can of that creature type, or switch to a better totem head if you find one- essentially feel free to base your whole strategy for the rest of the run around that totem. Some particularly good sigils and combos that I recommend are Undying, Searcher, Item Hoarder, Bi-Strike, Double Strike, Blood Lust, Death Touch, and Morsel on just about any creature type- although in my experience the Elk creature type seems to benefit the most from most of these sigils (Elk-Morsel is my personal favorite, especially when use in tandem with Undying Black Goat- if you ever stumble upon that totem, give filling out your deck with elk type creatures and let me know how it goes!) Another sigil you do not want to sleep on is the Dam Builder totem, as the Dams created by each card who has it gains every sigil on the card with Dam Builder- especially neat for cards like Black Goats with the Worthy Sacrifice sigil on it, since that sigil makes those cards with that sigil on it able to be sacrificed! Also useful if your dams get Fledgeling- it’s a really good sigil, god dam. Another totem combo I should mention again is Insect-Mighty Leap, which absolutely erases the risk of using an Undying Beehive as your 1-cost card if you have one, but that’s really the only use I can think of for it, other than maybe Undying Corpse Maggots being used as a stall card...

Do not pick up Ring Worm it’s not good :( - Ringworms can really mess with your run, bud. They’ve absolutely killed more than a few runs because I hadn’t managed to burn them in time and they showed up instead of a card I needed in fairHand... If your strategy involves killing the Campfire survivors and you aren’t already starting with Ringworm (whether from the Mantis God starting deck or if you’re running without pelts), do not under any circumstances pick up a Ringworm- kill the Campfire people with an Adder instead, or any other card that has the Death Touch sigil on it (having it via totem doesn’t count).

And that’s all from me- have fun with your Skull Storm runs in the future, give Royal a kissy on the forehead for me when you see him!

#inscryption #kaycee's mod #not skull storm daily #but i think i'll pin this post anyway because i think it might be helpful for other visitors in the future #good luck and happy skull storm running!! don't forget to bring your bone-proof umbrella :)#inscryption kaycee's mod #inscryption spoilers #kaycee's mod spoilers #not-a-snowman #thanks for the ask btw- i needed to get down most of my skull storm strategies implicit knowledge down on paper anyway for a while now #and just hadn't gotten around to it #so thanks for the opportunity!

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panharmonium · 5 months

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, from the top:

1. the girl with the crush

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. the greater good

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

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

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

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

Anyway. Back to a more measured response.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. she only wants to save you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. the shadow of my family

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

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

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

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

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

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

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