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hailsatanacab · 3 months

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I'll ask after that secret number 8!

I only remembered secret number 8 because I saw your wip here! I'd started this one based on the same prompt, then lost said prompt and stopped working on it 😅

Instead of a snippet, I'm just dropping it all here - maybe that way I'll feel inspired to finish it?

———

It’s a full house for dinner tonight and, really, that should have tipped him off.

Bruce sits at the head of the table, smiling softly as he watches over everyone’s antics. Damian is regaling Dick with everything they saw at the zoo that day (Danny had been so happy to see Delilah the purpleback gorilla again, and her new little additions to the troupe, too!) and how well they are implementing the grant the Wayne Foundation had gifted them. Tim, Steph, Cass, and Duke are all engaged in a thumb-war tournament which Danny has no interest in participating in. It just wouldn’t be fair on them.

Danny loves that look. The one where Bruce’s eyes crinkle when he thinks none of the kids can see him. It oozes love and it makes Danny’s heart, his core, ache.

It’s been a little over a year since Alfred found him on the street and managed to wrangle him back to the manor to stay—even after the whole biting thing when he realised how rich they were.

A little over a year here and Danny’s starting to feel like family.

Starting to feel like he might, just maybe, like to make it official.

“Danny,” Bruce says, drawing everyone’s attention. Danny starts at his name, but Bruce’s voice is warm and calm, and his shoulders lose their tension almost immediately. “Danny, I have something I would like to tell you.”

“Uhhh…” is all Danny can croak out, eyes flicking back and forth between Bruce and the rest of them. Smooth. Looking good, Danny.

Except… they’re all happy. All smiles, all relaxed body language, all radiating calm and love and acceptance. Well, not Damian—his face is as thunderous as it always is—which at least means it’s nothing too out of the ordinary.

“Danny, first of all, I just want to impress upon you that this is in no way something you have to do. You are under no obligation to join us and, no matter what, you shall always be welcome with us in the manor.”

Wait, what? Danny squints at Bruce, trying to parse exactly what he’s saying… Is he—is this them asking to adopt him? Do they want to make it official, too?

It’s been a little over a year and of course Danny has imagined calling Bruce ‘Dad’. Of course he’s imagined being part of the family, of course he wants to make it official!

He can’t help the beaming grin or the bright and bubbling “Yes!” already waiting on his lips. All Bruce has to do is ask, all Danny needs to hear is—

“I’m Batman.”

The smile freezes on Danny’s face.

His lungs stop working, his heart stops working, he stops working, he just—

“And I’m Nightwing,” Dick smiles, breaking the awkward silence.

Danny’s eyes snap to him, and then down to Tim when he admits to being Red Robin. Duke is Signal, Steph is Spoiler. Damian begrudgingly tells him he’s Robin, but Danny can barely hear it over the ringing in his ears.

“I’m Black Bat.” Cass cocks her head, almost looking concerned. It always felt like she understood him the most. Whenever he was feeling low, too in his memories, or stewing after a nightmare, she was always there, ready to card her fingers through his hair and never mention his tears. It makes his heart ache to think of it now. “It’s okay, Danny.”

It’s meant to be reassuring, but how—how can it be okay? How?

Danny’s spent a little over a year with them. A little over a year with Batman.

Batman, who works with the Justice League, who works with…

A little over a year.

Just under 16 months since he escaped.

“Danny? Are you alright?” Bruce asks

Finally, his lungs kickstart and suck in a shuddering breath, only for everyone to drop their smiles.

Didn’t take them long, did it? Now that their ruse is up, there’s no kindness in their eyes, they’re just… cold, calculating. Evaluating.

“Why?” Danny gasps, his fingers tingling, his heart in his throat.

Just under 16 months since he—has he escaped? Or was this just another one of their experiments?

"I... I trusted you, why—" Danny chokes back a sob, gritting his teeth as his shoulders shake. Why? Why would they do this? "I was happy here, with you. I thought... Weren't you happy?"

"Danny..." Bruce is looking at him, eyes narrow and eyebrows pinched, in some cruel facsimile of confused concern and all Danny can think is how much of an actor he is. How well he can play the part of a doting father. How much he made him want that.

"I don't understand, why..."

"I'm sorry we didn't tell you before, I can imagine that it comes as a shock. We shouldn't have lied to you, Danny, but—"

"Stop it!" Danny slams his hands down on the table and pushes himself up on wobbly legs. Even standing, he feels so small. Smaller than Bruce, than all of his adopted siblings. They crowd above him when they all stand, too. "Just stop it! Why are you doing this, why are you still pretending? Stop it!"

It was easier, with Danny's biological parents. The knowledge that they'd do anything to get him on a lab table, to open him up and see what makes him tick, to rip him apart molecule by molecule, had always been there. He knew they hated ghosts. He knew they hated Phantom. He knew they hated him. It was easier because it was something he'd known all his life. When he died, when he became a ghost, he knew what to expect from them. It hurt, of course it did.

But it was easier than this.

"Danny, I'm going to need you to take a deep breath. You're having a panic attack and you need to breathe."

"Breathe?" Danny laughs, the sound harsh and choking, too high pitched in his hysteria. "You're joking, right? Or is this just more of the—the experiment?"

"Danny, please, we don't know what you're talking about, you—"

"You don't know? You're Batman! You work with the Justice League, you work with—" His words choke off as his stomach churns, bile rising in his throat. His whole body itches, screaming at him to leave, he can't go back, he can't, he can't, he can't!

Bruce takes a hesitant step forward and Danny scrambles back, his feet catching on the chair behind him and sending him careening to the floor. Where are the agents? Why aren't they swarming in, ready to apprehend him, strap him back on the table, carve him from the inside out.

"Please, Danny, calm down. We don't—"

Danny stops listening. His back hits the wall and he pulls his knees into his chest, his shoulders dipping down as he begins to sob. His heart throbs inside his throat, too painful to swallow around. Tears fall hot and heavy on his face.

Sure, he could run. He could phase out through the wall and he could be out of Gotham in a couple of hours. He's escaped the GIW once, he can do it again.

But that was before Batman knew who he was. Before he had the World's Greatest Detective on his tail.

Before he...

He really thought this would be different, you know?

He wanted to make it official.

"Why did... Why were you so nice to me? Why did you make me like you? I really—I really liked you. I-I thought we could be a family."

"Danny, we are a—"

"Don't lie to me!" Danny snaps, but the force of his anger leeches all the fight from him, and suddenly all that's left is a bone-weary tiredness. There’s a lump in his throat that hurts. There’s a line down his chest that burns. "I don't care. I don't care anymore, I don't. Just... don't make me go back there. Please."

Is it futile? He thought he knew how the GIW operated by now, the depths that they would go to achieve their results, but this... this was a whole new level of pain that Danny thought he had left behind him in Amity.

"We're not going to make you go anywhere, Danny, you're safe here, I promise."

"Safe? Safe? You must have—" he takes a deep breath, tries to stop the quivering of his voice. It’s all starting to make sense, now. "The reason you're telling me who you are is because you must have told them everything already. I know the Justice League—I know you're working with them, which means the ex-experiment is over now, and they're coming to take me back. And I can't go back."

"Danny—"

"I can’t!” Danny glares at Bruce with all the rage he can, fingernails digging into his skin. “I’m not going back!"

"That's right, you're not going back, Danny. I won't let that happen." Bruce crouches down in front of Danny, his hands open and raised as if he's trying to say he's not a threat. "I don't know who you're talking about, and I'm sorry about that, but I can promise you that you’re not going back there. We will keep you safe."

Danny pulls himself closer, tucks himself further into the wall, eyes flickering all across the room waiting for that tell-tale flash of white as the agents start to swarm.

He should take his chances now and run, he should go, he needs to go!

The rest of them, his brothers and sisters of a little over a year, are spread out, giving him and Bruce some space. The same concern colours all of their faces. Why are they still pretending?

Steph is chewing on her thumb.

Danny liked Steph and her brash confidence, her jokes. She's been promising to paint his nails for months now, they've just never found the time. He was going to go for green and black, or maybe a galaxy theme, depending on what she felt comfortable doing.

He likes them all.

"You were supposed to be my family." His mouth turns down at the corners and his voice shakes like a child. "You were supposed to—why? Why would you—I don't understand why you would make me like you..."

"This isn't an experiment, Danny," Bruce's voice is steady, soothing. "I promise."

"But you work with them and—"

"Who do I work with?"

"The Justice League."

"Yes, I do, but we—"

"And the Justice League works with them. The GIW." Danny trembles with the name, clutching tightly onto his hoodie. "I'm not going back there, Bruce."

Danny doesn't miss Bruce's look over his shoulder, nor Tim's nod in return. Tim turns slightly to the side to hide his movements, but Danny bets he has his phone in his hand, probably letting them know they can take him now. Guess this is it, then. They'll be here soon, and he'll be gone.

"Kill me."

"Danny? What do—"

"If you ever had any kindness for me, if you ever cared, kill me. Please, Bruce. I can't do it again."

"Danny..."

"End me now. Take my core out and break it, please, before they get here."

#dpxdc #dcxdp #dpxdc fanfic #wip game #thanks for the ask <3 and thanks for helping me remember this fic lol #also huge thanks for having the prompt linked because i have S O M A N Y prompt wips that i can't ever post because i've lost the post #didn't really know how to get danny to calm down #that's a lie #i have a few ideas of where this can go but no motivation for it - not against all the other wips #i'll keep at it and ig post to ao3 should it actually start looking alright #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#dudes did u kno u can pin shit to your clipboard on desktop because i fucking love that #also if you use the windows key + . there's like emojis and shit #(((φ(◎ロ◎;)φ)))#<- and kaomoji too!!!!!#anyway that's been fun facts and fanfic with me. ur welcome #oh shit my writing tag #hailsatanacrab🦀🦀writes #at some point 'oh shit my writing tag' will just become my writing tag #anyway thank you again for the ask #good night everyone!!!!!

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asexualbookbird · 27 days

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I'm tired! So no gif! Slim month for reading, but I did some neat crafts and made great progress on Secret Knitting Project I. Kicked some ass at Project Sekai, started rewatching Leverage, life goes on.

The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten ⭐⭐ - A strong start, but it quickly went downhill once we got to the court. It was boring, everyone sucks, and the magic is not as cool as it originally seemed to be.

Among Thieves by MJ Kuhn ⭐½ - I was SO hyped for this when it was released. It's been sitting on my shelf since because of who I am as a person, like an IMPOSTER. Took more than half the book just to get to the heist, and the heist wasn't even GOOD. Too many POVs, no one felt fleshed out enough, and the Secrets were just handed to the reader in the first third. It will no longer live on my shelf.

Mislaid in Parts Half Know by Seanan McGuire ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - not my favorite Wayward book, but still enjoyable. I thought it rehashed the ending of Antsy's last book a little too much, but it was nice to see more of her and go back to the Store. Also loved seeing Kade's Door and Cora's ending.

I have one (1) concrete book plan for April, and that's Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch. Consider me successfully bullied (friendly). I very much want to finish Secret Knitting Project I so I can move on to Secret Sewing Projects and Momther's Blanket I'm still waiting on a few audio holds too, so that will be fun for crafting purposes. Haven't been in the mood to do much art, but I have some fun ideas for paint! Let's go!

#bookbird babbles #monthly wrap up #march wrap up #reading wrap up #books #booklr #idk gang its hard to read when everything hurts and life sucks lol #but i feel like i say that every month so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#anyway ive been using paint in piping bags with piping tips to make flowers its been neat #and by doing that i mean i did it once and bought stuff to do it again lol #i want to try to make lilies

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lesbianfakir · 3 months

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It is my god given mission to NOT draw fakir as a white boy idc what’s canon, this interview annoys me so bad

[ID: rough transcript of an interview with Ikuko Itoh. Someone asks “since fakir is an Arabic word, does that mean fakir is Arab and/or was he intentionally made to look so, and if so why?” The transcriber writes “her response to this is that while in her mind he is not Arab, she wouldn’t rule out the possibility that fakir has Arab ancestry in his family tree”]

WHY’D YOU GIVE HIM AN ARABIC NAME THEN?? It’s okay mr fakir I won’t let her whitewash you

#that one Reddit thread that’s like my friends want to name their white baby jungkook #maybe there’s an argument for him being named after an Arabic word rather than a proper common name BUT #I did my research and all instances I can find of fakir being used as a first name are middle eastern or south Asian men #hmmmmm 🤔🤔#tho disclaimer I’m white so I’m not the person to be complaining about this #I’m sure someone can articulate the ick much better than I can #or maybe I’m complaining about nothing who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#anyways when I draw fakir he’s Arab btw #like mixed ig because drossy is in there somewhere #princess tutu #like urghhhh the vibes I get are that she chose the name because she thinks it’s cool and mysterious but I’m like. GIRL #ITS AN ARABIC NAME

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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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blujaydoodles · 6 months

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WIP-- I've been working on updating my huge ridiculous Too Many Gnomes height chart recently, and have spent a frankly absurd amount of time just on very minutely adjusting proportions, because that's my idea of a good time, for some reason. Also I added Indigo and it's really funny to me because for some reason between my designing them and now they've taken on a distinctly Tall Energy in my mind, so actually drawing them at their canon size is almost jarring jkghdfkg like OH YEAH SHORT KING, OKAY!!

These are just my guys, but there are currently twelve gnomes in this file! But I'm still fixing a lot of old bad anatomy and stuff, and also I might even fuck around and color it before sharing the full thing 🤔

#dnd #dungeons and dragons #gnomes #character art #illustration #sketches #[squinting at this] idri's hips need to be wider.#like do you see what I mean! why am I like this jdfghdgk #in theory I started making this so I could use it to help me doodle gnomes doing stuff together for funsies #in practice drawing a bunch of guys Just Standing There is its own reward it turns out #the other night I was talking about it kind of self deprecatingly like 'I'm spending all this time on stupid & pointless art for no reason'#and my husband very sincerely was like 'no??? are you having fun?' -- me-- sheepishly: ... yeah I am 'THEN IT'S NOT DUMB OR POINTLESS.'#I am. I AM having fun! sorry to my audience/ friends that my art is so boring to look at but I AM having fun making it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#anyway [scoops a bunch of gnomes into a big pile and sits on it like a broody hen]#my OCs #idri #melliwyk #felix #indigo #dungeons and doodles

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pearl-kite · 2 years

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Been complaining how I need to learn to draw multiple people, so here, multiple people o3o;;;

#kirehn draws #flats actually looked better than shading once the paper texture it applied so this went a lot more quickly than usual o3o #seeing things that I wish were different but we're just gonna call this done #I give up trying to figure out what sam looks like in my head and I'm just going to settle ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#uh idk I think I'll try to do more things with multiple people for practicing and such #ref from pinterest o3o #redacted asmr #redacted sam #redacted darlin #redactedverse #pk:adrian #going to start doing different oc tags that won't be too generic I guess #anyway hc that darlin is intensely touch averse except once they get used to sam #then they become ridiculously clingy

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badolmen · 8 months

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I can fix him*

*bad writing, underutilized gameplay mechanics, characters with unfulfilled potential, funded by bootlickers

#ra speaks #personal #sorry I made dr phone calls and have like. ten minutes til I gotta get ready for first class of the semester. let me have this.#I think I should get every COD game ever for free. it’s MY tax dollars at work after all (actually anything produced w us military funding #should be free I think I can trap even my bootlicker tax hating dad into getting onboard w this one)#anyways. ghosts was…decent. but jfc if you give me a silent protag I expect SOME self awareness in the writing.#why are characters calling to him on comms when they know he won’t respond? why doesn’t he have an AAC device or something more futuristic?#I’m just saying if you explicitly limit a character you need to respect those limits in te writing. it’s not that hard.#like non of the characters even acknowledge that Logan never talks. esp weird when he first meets the ghosts #also. obv not a big fan of ‘all of South America has United into evil space terrorists’ but it was 2013 so ¯\ _(ツ)_/¯#wish we got to see some SDC civis y’know? get a bear on the average attitudes abt the whole. invading the US thing.#(jfc do not get me started on The Wall like this is a 2016 trump voter’s power fantasy)#also Riley was such an interesting mechanic why couldn’t they have at least substituted him w drones or something on the other missions??#you get him for like. two missions. and then he gets shot and you have to protect him (gosh I actually loved that section)#just. it was clear Logan was The Dog Guy with an aptitude for tech. honestly Hesh felt more like the MC than Logan.#and while Logan doesn’t have a ton of personality we can glean as a result of non speaking + ZERO communication at all ever #seriously he doesn’t even like. wave or give thumbs up to people wtf dude do ppl just assume he’s psychic or something???#I do LOVE the few scenes we get with him acting outside of player control/where he actually has agency (Elias’ death. the final cutscene)#and like it’s not much but it’s enough that I WANT to see what happens next #but alas. a decade old game without a true sequel (I think??? haven’t actually looked into it.)#my brother is making fun of me for being a COD gamer now like boy. I have no defense pls be nice to me T-T

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too-raph · 7 months

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Every Single Day I think about Cheongsan smacking Gwinam in the face with a music stand, and Gwinam turning back to him with that amused little grin......

#taking up 110% of my rent-free headspace #...this was meant to be a sideblog post but yknow what fuck it I went to the trouble of gifing for the 1st time in years it's going on main #all of us are dead #yoon gwinam #lee cheongsan #gwinam x cheongsan #looks like hot garbage on mobile but I am inflicting it upon the masses anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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mycotoxin · 10 months

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“Saying you’re a lesboy and anti-terf is contradictory” <- guy who has never encountered a terf regarding the matter

#like man they do not like us.#they like the idea of trans men identifying as lesbians. but in practice? they start foaming at the mouth #they don’t actually want lesbian trans men because they don’t want trans men. they want ‘dysphoric female homosexuals’.#they only accept you if you don’t acknowledge your male identity in a genuine way. or if you only acknowledge it as a falsehood or otherwise #downplay it #you have to call yourself a TIF. or a dysphoric female. or a terfy ftm or something #you just have to constantly clarify that you’re not some evil TRA and are actually a ‘’real lesbian’’#anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#not about anyone in particular btw

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purpleshadow-star · 3 months

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So, the season finale of Hazbin Hotel came out last night.

Spoilers ahead

I was never part of the Hazbin Hotel or Helluva Boss fandom(s), though I have been watching Helluva Boss since about midway through when season one was being released. I only watched the pilot for Hazbin Hotel maybe six months to a year ago, and I only ever watched it once. I never kept up with VivziePop or whatever was happening behind the scenes. I watched Hazbin Hotel as it came out the past few weeks, I’ve watched some TikToks about it over the past week, and I read through a few (like, three) of the character’s wiki pages like, yesterday.

So, with all of my inexperience in the fandom and in this universe, I’m going to try to predict how the show is going to end.

Kind of.

Well, I’m going to make a prediction.

I think Angel Dust will be the last resident of the hotel we see get redeemed.

Angel was the first resident of the hotel. It’s only fitting that he’d be the last (that we see, anyway).

I think that season one was almost like a set-up season. The main characters and their characterizations/arcs have been established. The main problem, the extermination, has been temporarily dealt with. It’s been proven that the main objective in the show, redeeming sinners through the Hazbin Hotel, is possible. Seeds of a bigger plot and future trouble have been planted.

Now that the bigger plot things are out of the way, I think the show will be able to (hopefully) slow the pace down now and really focus on the hotel itself and the redemption process of the sinners that choose to be there, along with the individual characters and their personal journeys and arcs.

I think that Sir Pentious getting redeemed and making it into Heaven proved that the concept of the hotel can work, so now that they have the bigger, newly built hotel, they’ll start to get more residents. We’ll meet and bond with more characters as the seasons go on and they’ll go through the hotel and eventually get redeemed and go to Heaven.

I think that during all of this, for the next few seasons, we’ll see Angel work towards redeeming himself too. At this point, he’s accepted the hotel. He’s accepted his place there and he’s been visibly getting better. We’ll see him continue his path to redemption while also dealing with Valentino, his contract with him, and any other personal conflicts that arise.

I think that partway through the show, we’ll see Angel start to kind of put off becoming fully redeemed. Maybe he’ll just slow down, but I think we’ll see him become more apprehensive about completing his redemption.

At this point, he’ll probably already be in an official relationship with Husk, and his situation with Valentino might be resolved or at least not as much of an issue anymore. I think he’ll start putting off officially moving on into Heaven because he realizes that he doesn’t want to leave his friends behind. He won't want to leave the friends he’s made at the hotel, so even though he might be ready or almost ready to go to Heaven, he’ll just keep putting it off.

I think Angel’s ascension to Heaven will be the big series finale. I think that it’ll be a big emotional moment. Angel will accept that it’s time to move on, and there will be an emotional scene where he says goodbye to Charlie (who, as a Hellborn demon and not a mortal soul, can’t go to Heaven like the other sinners), and Vaggie (who will choose to stay with Charlie and has no desire to go back to Heaven), and probably Alastor (who loves his power and control too much to want anything to do with redemption himself) and maybe Niffty (I’m undecided about whether she’ll try for redemption, but I’m thinking no, at least as of right now). If Husk stays behind, that’ll be an absolutely heartbreaking goodbye too, but I’m thinking that, at some point in the show, Husk might decide to try for redemption as well, so maybe he and Angel are going together and saying their goodbyes together.

I think we’ll get a teary goodbye for the people Angel is leaving behind in Hell, but we’ll also get a joyous reunion scene where he meets up with all the redeemed souls in Heaven as well. He’ll get to see all the former residents we got to meet throughout the show, and maybe he’ll even have a moment where he gets to reunite with his sister, too. It’ll be a somewhat bittersweet moment, but a happy one overall, because Angel Dust, the first resident of the Hazbin Hotel, who didn’t take it seriously in the beginning and thought redemption wasn’t possible, who went through so much in Hell and who didn’t think things could get better for him, will have finally completed the journey to redemption and moved on to Heaven.

And then maybe we’ll get an epilogue-esque scene or series of clips of Charlie and Vaggie happily continuing to help redeem sinners in the Hazbin Hotel, of Angel and the other redeemed souls happily living their best afterlives in Heaven, of the redeemed sinners meeting and welcoming new redeemed souls into Heaven as they come in.

And maybe, taking place some time in the future, maybe years after Angel goes to Heaven, we’ll get a moment of Charlie and Vaggie, and any of the other original cast that stayed in Hell, being allowed to take a day trip into Heaven. Maybe we’ll get to see them reunite with the redeemed sinners in Heaven in person for the first time since the redeemed souls left, and it’ll be a happy reunion where they’re all just happy to see each other again and catch up. Maybe at this point the show has already established a way for the redeemed souls to still be able to communicate and keep in touch with those in Hell, so maybe this isn’t the first time the two groups have spoken to each other since the redeemed souls left the hotel, but maybe it is the first time since the redeemed souls left that they’ve been able to see each other in person, so the teary hugs all around are expected and maybe even appreciated.

Maybe the show will end on a happy note, where our first and most skeptical hotel resident ends up happily redeemed with a partner who loves and values him for who he is and friends who care for him, and where our main character is able to fulfill her dreams of helping her subjects find the best version of themselves and move on to a better place.

Maybe the extermination no longer happens, so there’s no more deadlines. Maybe being redeemed is no longer just an escape from second death. Not every soul in Hell is going to want to change, but for Charlie, it’s not about redeeming every soul. The Hazbin Hotel started as a way to decrease Hell’s population so that the extermination would no longer be necessary, so that no more souls, however awful, would be needlessly killed, but Charlie knows that the extermination was never about overpopulation, and yet she’s still going through with the hotel and she’s still working to redeem sinners.

So, maybe the extermination is a thing of the past, but Charlie will still continue running the hotel and giving sinners another chance, because everyone deserves another chance. Because Hell isn’t forever, and despite whatever some people did when they were alive, they deserve the chance to try to redeem themselves. They deserve the chance to try to be better. And that’s Charlie’s dream. She just wants to give her subjects the opportunity to do better, and not everyone will take it, but in the end, we'll see that all the effort was worth it for those few souls who do.

So, to recap: I think Angel Dust will be the last sinner we see get redeemed. We might get clips and/or mentions of souls after him, but he’ll be the last character to go to Heaven who’s journey to redemption we’ve seen. In the series finale, he’ll be the last major character to be redeemed, and we’ll get to see him live his best life in Heaven while Charlie happily stays behind in Hell to help guide more souls along the path to redemption.

Or at least, that’s something I’d like to see, anyway.

#even if this doesnt happen i think it's a cool idea lol #i love the idea of angel starting the hotel and then finishing it (for us)#like i feel like angel moving on should be a big deal right?#there's no way they wont make it a big deal #and i feel like they'll keep him in the hotel for as long as possible because he's a very popular character #and sending him to heaven earlier would split the focus of the show too much bc there's no way they'd write him off the show #and he has a lot to resolve in hell before going to heaven ie the situation with valentino and his slow burn with husk #there'd not be enough proper time for that if he goes to heaven too early #but there's also no way he doesn't go to heaven in the end lol not with his current tragic 'life' story #i also really hope husk tries for redemption and goes with angel in the end #it would suck for angel to finally find and bond with someone who actually loves him for who he is only to have to leave him behind #that would suck #so idk this might be a hot take but i really do want husk to eventually start working towards redemption #but i also want it to be bc he wants it. not just for angel if that makes sense #like getting to stay with angel is definitely nice and good for him but i want him to ultimately try for redemption for himself yknow #anyway ive gotten way off track lol #i also kinda got off track in the post at the end oops. but charlie can actually be so interesting #anyway this might all be wrong and maybe vizziepop has already said smth about angel's fate but like i said im new to all this so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#hazbin hotel #hazbin angel dust #angel dust #huskerdust #hazbin hotel theory #hazbin hotel thoughts #hazbin hotel angel dust #hazbin hotel analysis #hazbin charlie #charlie morningstar #vivziepop #hazbin hotel spoilers

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