#so i don't think that's worth hating

[dragon-tamer-1]

To that anon that asked me about why I still follow a certain person, I hope you can understand that I do not want hate for this. I am very much unaffected by the choice of belief someone else has. And while I know that others don't like or care for that person, I still do enjoy the art and writing by that person. Their choice of belief doesn't really matter to me, especially since that person hasn't ever done anything to anyone that was harmful, that I know of. Everyone is free to dislike someone, but I don't feel it necessary to hate anyone, especially over beliefs.

Please understand that I am not attacking anyone, nor do I advocate for hate of anyone really.

#discourse tw #felt that if i didn't say anything i would be given assumptions that wouldn't make sense #as far as i know that person has not been part of any kind of harassment against anyone #and that's why I don't think that person is as bad as people are making them out to be #freedom of religion and all that #free to believe what you want #so long as you aren't doing stuff that actively harms someone else #which. again. is something that they haven't done #that person has not hurt someone that i know of #even so #i think it should be alright if someone still enjoys some things #it takes way more energy to keep hating someone/something than to be either neutral or passively enjoying things #wanna say it again #anyone can dislike someone. you're free to do so #i don't believe someone should be harassed or hated just because they believe in something you don't or likes someone's stuff that you no - #longer like #it just comes across as a bit controlling #i don't think it should matter too much tho #especially since everyone has the ability to block the tags i said you can block so you dont see it #and again #you're allowed to not like someone based on their beliefs or whatever else that makes you dislike them #i don't think people should be telling others who/what they can/can't like if that person/thing isn't hurting anyone #yes i know there were people with those beliefs that did things in possibly the wrong way #but i don't think everyone who has that belief should be grouped with the ones who did it wrong #*by possibly i mean might have done it the wrong way by attacking others for not believing what they do* #and that is absolutely the wrong way #but they haven't done that(again. to my knowledge) #so i don't think that's worth hating #for me anyway #i did delete the reblog from that person tho

[beanghostprincess]

Luffy not knowing about Zoro promising Sanji to kill him if he ever ends up losing himself makes me go feral because that's something they can only know about. Because Zoro's respect for life and death goes beyond anything, and Sanji knows he understands. Sanji knows that if somebody has to kill him, it's him.

And I don't even think it's because Sanji assumes Zoro's opinion of him is hatred and it would hurt less for him to do this, but because Sanji knows only Zoro would be able to treat the promise as it is. Because he would put Sanji's wishes before any feelings he has for him. It's not that Zoro doesn't care, but I think he respects people's ideals and decisions to the extent of being able to kill Sanji if he so desires.

That being said, he'd do it if there's no other way to fix it. If it's either dying or living as an emotionless machine, which is the same as dying for Sanji, Zoro would fulfill his promise. And there is just... Something about Luffy not knowing. Their captain. The man they're devoted to the most as if he were their God. Luffy doesn't know. It's something only the captain's wings are aware of and the thought of these two keeping this from Luffy until the end is just insane. Not even trying to make it romantic here, but the bond and respect these two have for each other is crazy.

Maybe it's the poetry of it all, too. Somebody like Zoro, who has looked at Death in her face multiple times and said "no", ending Sanji's life, who wants to give in to death to not experience a fate worse than death for him.

#bean posting zosan this is so rare and weird don't get used to it sweeties #kind of tired of people jumping to extremes with these two btw like- #they don't hate each others but they're also not best friends-- respect is something they value even more than those things #they're not good for my mental health they make me go insane #this wasn't meant to be in a shippy way but idk if you wanna see it as romantic you do you bc it could def be #it depends on my mood #i consider myself a zosan shippers on random days #you could also say sanji thinks zoro doesn't give a fuck about him and that's why he tells him bc we know this guy's self-worth is awful #but i also like to think it's because zoro's views on life and death are exactly what sanji needs #luffy would try to look for a way to fix this and they others wouldn't be able to do it tbh #i mean if it ever got too serious i think luffy could do it but do you really think sanji's gonna make him go through that #if zoro has to die he wants to die by luffy's hand but if sanji has to die he wants to die without involving their captain #idk if that makes sense okay i haven't slept at all tbf #one piece #black leg sanji #roronoa zoro #zosan

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

#this quote always moves me almost to tears when i remember it #i'm not a trans woman and i don't share the author's specific experiences with transition #but it really moves me that she frame transition as joyfully giving yourself permission to approach your body #not as something that has to be disciplined and deprived and made small in all these various ways #but as a means for experiencing pleasure and joy and delight and for insisting that our feelings and desires are worth #valuing and exploring and treasuring #i always used to think of prioritizing those things for myself as selfish and irresponsible #but who does it harm to want to experience pleasure in your own body? #it's such a beautifully simple and powerful switch to have flip in your head #and equally why are we forced to deny our own pleasure in transition and anything else related to our bodies in the name of moral rectitude #this is why i get so confused and pissed off when other trans people are fatphobic for example #like why are you so invested in politics of shame and disgust that never had any purpose other than #violently disciplining people as if they've violated moral codes by existing in a body #to say nothing of white people being racist in gay and trans communities #like again this system of violence is foundational to homophobia and transphobia #so why are you acting like it has nothing to do with you #even if you are unmoved by the urgency of other people's suffering which btw you should be moved by #what do you hope to gain by acting a collaborator and handmaiden to those systems #Casey Plett #she really is one of my favorite authors i wish more non-canadians read her #this quote is from a series of columns she did ont transition and every single one is a banger #i love when she talks about the people-pleasing elements of dysphoria and transition denial #she's so sharp about noting how many of us deny our own dysphoria on the grounds that others like and validate our bodies #that's how i always felt during my cis conventionally feminine era #it pleased other people so much and also that reception felt so hollow and joyless to me because i hated it #i get less of that positive feedback but that feels so unimportant next to the joy and pleasure i get to experience #said with the understanding that i'm very privileged in being able to prioritize those things without fear. but it was a switch flip #personal nonsense

[uncanny-tranny]

I love giving advice, apparently, so if you are a newly pierced person or are planning on being pierced, here are some of the things I found helpful, as somebody who isn't a professional piercer but has had six plus piercings on my face and body, and multiple ear piercings (which I don't count, since I DIY'd them):

Normal bath towels are your enemy, proceed with caution after bathing. NEVER wipe moisture away from a fresh piercing, always pat it dry

You will hit a new piercing and it will hurt. This is inevitable, just know that you likely haven't destroyed it. Feel free to cry, though, it hurts like hell.

If your piercer gives you instructions, heed them. If you're on restrictions, please take it as seriously as possible

When you're going in for a piercing, please eat or drink something - at least what constitutes as a snack for your body. It really helps

If you're getting an oral piercing, make sure you size down after the healing period - I hadn't sized down for my last oral piercing when I first had the chance, and it was... so annoying to have too-large of jewelry

Not all jewelry is made equally. Do your research on materials, threading, and sizing. I've found that titanium jewelry is really nice for me, and I like it, but that isn't the only option. Make sure you think about your body and its needs and preferences

Close your eyes while being pierced (I found this really helps me)

Don't over-clean a new piercing, twice per day is usually a good place to start

The completed healing period is a very average suggestion - you may heal slower or faster. Try to adhere to that suggestion, though, especially if you do not feel you're healed enough

Personally, I have found that I am completely healed when my piercing feels like just another part of my body, even when it is touched. When my piercings start to feel as though they are foreign when they never do before, I know I likely need to clean them

While I have DIY'd piercings, I personally do not recommend it, especially if you are either not using sterilized equipment, or are piercing a very dangerous place (like the tongue). If you are absolutely positive about committing to the DIY mindset, please try to do due diligence in research at least

Tip your piercer. Body mods are a luxury service, and it takes years to even become a piercer, much less to be proficient at it. Tip your piercer, ESPECIALLY if their prices feel too good to be true - they likely are. Unless you are directed otherwise by your piercer, just assume that you will be tipping them for their services and budget accordingly

Make sure you understand how your piercer wants you to take care of your piercing, and ask questions. There is no question too "dumb"

If you are getting a body part pierced you are insecure about, realize your piercer has most likely seen HUNDREDS of different body parts of various sizes, shapes, and oddities. Your body is not uniquely bad, nor would a good piercer make you feel unwelcome or uncomfortable with your body. If they do, however, DO NOT go through with the piercing. You should feel safe being pierced by somebody, and, indeed, that is the bare minimum.

If you use saline wash to clean piercings, you can DIY it. You will go through NeilMed like no other, and with it being $5USD a bottle, that price can rack up quickly. Make sure you use distilled water and non-iodized salt, though

If your piercing is infected, please don't be too ashamed to seek help. It's in your best interest to make sure you don't get ill or your site gets nasty ("nasty" as in painful)

These are just some of the things I've learned being a pierced person! My piercings are something I absolutely needed, and I do not for a minute regret having them. I want that same happiness to befall you, and that happens when you are able to understand a bit more what goes into piercings. You are, essentially, getting a new body part installed by a pro, and so I don't want you to not be ready for that.

Again, I am not a professional piercer, but am rather a body piercing enthusiast with many different types of piercings. I don't have every piercing, though, so please look at this critically for the piercing(s) that you want or have. At least, treat this like a soft suggestion or ways to help you brainstorm what you will find helpful.

More tips are obviously welcomed, especially if you yourself have more insight or expertise. Good luck to every pierced person or future pierced person reading this💛

#body modification #body mods #piercings #body piercing #long post #honestly i love having a professional relationship with my piercer and i feel so happy to be pierced by her #i think the client and piercer relationship is a very important aspect of getting a piercing #and i don't think people talk about that part much. you should feel SAFE being around your piercer #they are literally creating a new hole in your body with a needle. that is a very vulnerable position to be in #but i'm honestly shocked at how cheap my piercer is... #...so my last piercing was only $50USD and that included the (nice) jewelry. i feel that in that cast tipping 60% was worth it... #...i know that can rack up the cost of the piercing but especially if you LIKE your piercer (like i do) - try being as generous as possible #i personally LOVE tipping my piercer and it's the best way i can show her that i LOVE her work even when i tell her #love having a personal blog that i can be autistic about piercings!!!!! I LOVE THIS ANCIENT TRADITIONNNN #one of my profs let us write about anything as long as it was an essay and i went Insane writing about historical piercing practices #LOVE ALL TYPES OF PIERCINGS especially ones that are used to 'scare' outsiders <3 #when i was a kid they used to tell us about the Mystical African Tribes that STRETCHED THEIR LIPS (scary!!!!)... #...if it isn't obvious i hate that the lip plate especially practiced by the Mursi and many others have been used for frankly rascist ideas #i brought up the lip thing because i learned a lot about iirc the Mursi practice of lip plating and it's given me more appreciation for it!! #it's ENDLESSLY fascinating and i wish i hadn't been shown the negative bias against them first

[bonefall]

Is there a cat in cannon who got a good death who you think didn't deserve it? Especially if they committed crimes?

Tom the Wifebeater and his redemption death. No question. It's not even close.

Not only do I reject to the "redemption death" on the grounds of it being Tom the Wifebeater who is bullying others until his dying breath, even taunting Thunder about Turtle Tail is dead and the kits must be very torn up about it, but I reject "redemption through death" entirely. I don't like it in stories. It's a theme I deeply object to.

And again it's fucking wild that every time a character is a father, even if they are a wifebeater or a child abuser, the writers think that it bestows a glimmer of goodness into them which every abused child is forced to appreciate and cry about. Breezepelt, Thunder, Tallstar, Tom's children, all of them forced to reconcile and admit how much they wuv their papa.

Abusive dads in WC regularly get redemption deaths, too. Clear Sky dies saving his grandchild, Sandgorse died saving a rando in a tunnel, Tom the Wifebeater saving his daughter.

But Tom the Wifebeater is the worst example of it. Hands down.

#Though I will say it's not exactly a matter of a crime being 'too bad to come back from' #ANYONE can change. #But these ones DONT. #These fathers are *recontextualized* by their deaths and their victim is pushed into rethinking their anger towards them #IF they even had anger towards them at all. All of Tom's victims were too dead to have those feelings because DOTC hates women #And his children are destroyed when they learn that the guy they met once who kidnapped them and got their mom killed died #And that's why I generally hate redemption deaths. By their very nature they don't display what's so HARD about accountability #The changing of your behavior. Checking yourself. Admitting that your victims dont have to forgive you. #It's hard work! #It's painful sometimes! It's worth it but it's not always easy! #It's also its own reward. Your relationships improve. You feel better. You understand yourself. #but no. a redemption death is the end. You never really have to face what you did. #And I hate the way that lots of storytellers think it means it undoes the violence they did #IT does nothing. They're gone. The victims continue. #Where are my stories with RESENTMENT for that? How DARE you die for me?? How dare you run away from the hole you cut into my flesh??? #You think the end of you becomes the missing piece of me? #Awful. No thankz #Bone babble #Tom the Wifebeater #child abuse #cw child abuse #tw child abuse

[owlyflufff]

haikyu's dumpster batte is only going to be around 1 hour and 24 minutes, oh it's genuinely bokuakaover

#knowing that we're likely not going to get an ova too is painful <//3 #m sorry to go off on a bit of a tangent #but I can't help but feel bitter that an actually good series with coherence and amazing characters just gets treated like this #and series like jjk and demon slayer get to have such good adaptations? #I don't hate both series btw as I watch them myself but even I have more criticisms in their story and charas compared to hq #jjk at this rate is being carried by satosugu shippers and popularity the story honestly is slowly losing substance :'DD #and it's disappointing such a series manages to get to have a consistent adaptation vs a good and inspiring story #which is why I can't help but feel <//3 whenever ppl rant about the jjk animation cause it's better than the hq treatment TvT #don't get me started on demon slayer I have mixed feelings about that series as well but I love it for what it's worth xD #and if people say the hq fandom is being bitter or biased isn't it justifiable? #a consistent and amazing narrative gets butchered me thinks people have a right to feel the way they do #naturally the fandom is not downplaying the efforts of the animators and voice actors but we also have a right to feel the way we do #we feel the way we do out of genuine love for a series that inspired and helped us so much #it's just so unfair TvT #m terribly sorry again for ranting and dropping negativity but I feel really disheartened about this news #and not simply cause ofc we won't get the bokuaka match #but also because my favorite series doesn't deserve this #eli rambles #bokuaka #haikyu #haikyuu #haikyu!! #hq

[yellowocaballero]

man, reading ch3 was a ride, it's like all fun and jokes and then all of sudden, Nope! It's time to be sad now! but it's so good with it? like, I really enjoyed how seriously you took it, and that moment in the classroom was really like 'oh shit this is legit' in a way that had my heart just sinking in my chest and with the tone whiplash from the rest of the fic so far, it was just literally so good to read. also, seeing byleth and the rest of the class just kinda grapple with wth to do with dimitri while he's deep in this episode is just very interesting, especially when they all have their own hangups and issues with everything. 👍

YESSSSS. I'm always so excited to post the moment the story actually kicks into gear, and this chapter was it for Weekenders. A lot of fun.

I wrote a post a while back about people's discomfort with writing severe mental illness,

and while I wouldn't say Weekenders is a spite fic, it was influenced by how difficult it was to find non-modern AU fic that wrote Dimitri specifically as somebody on the schizophrenia spectrum/bipolar.

It was so hit-me-over-the-head obvious while I was playing! His entire personality and behavior flipped on a DIME in Part 1, and it flipped 'back' in Part 2. He couldn't switch topics, he was ranting incoherently, he was having headaches, he was doing nothing but training, he obviously wasn't sleeping or grooming, he was convinced a 12yo had orchestrated an assasination - that's not depression/anxiety/PTSD, and it's not even just a psychotic episode (mania does have elements of psychosis, hence the paranoid delusions). And, obviously, the actual hallucinations, delusions, antisocialness, lack of grooming, impulsivity, etc, of Part 2 that rang very loudly of a schizophrenic/schizoaffective psychotic break.

But equally important is the fact that Dimitri's illness did not make him hateful and homicidal. Dimitri was always a hateful person. I don't think he's naturally hateful nearly to the degree that he shows while having an episode, but one of the most important lines in the BL route is when Dedue just says that Dimitri was always angry and hateful, and that he just hid it. His behavior in late Part 1/part 2 is him losing all capability to hide it. I don't think he's a pathological liar, and I don't think the Dimitri we see throughout Part 1 is 'fake' - I just think he withholds a lot. Dimitri's cruelty is just as important as his generosity. His hatred is as important as his empathy. The horrible sides of his illness are just as important as the comfortable sides. Do you see what I mean?

That is what interests me about Dimitri so much. Dimitri wants to be Marth. Dimitri tries to be Chrom. Dimitri dresses up like Roy. He is not. He is an angry, paranoid, brutal murderer. Any depiction of Dimitri that forgets that - that unironically only protrays the Dimitri that he shows the world and never the sides of him that he's ashamed of - is kinda buying what he's selling, and it both demonstrates a deep disinterest in who he is and a discomfort with the sides of his illness that aren't palatable.

Dimitri's psychosis did not make him hateful (I think his PTSD had a lot more to do with his anger problems). It made him scared. Mania and psychosis are a very, very scary experience. His mind is constantly telling him that he's in danger, that Byleth's in danger, that everybody and everything around him wants to hurt and kill him, that he is a sinner if he doesn't avenge his dead family. And Dimitri is a good child soldier, and he knows that we destroy our enemies with prejudice. He's a good leader, and he knows that the BL are never safe and that their enemies are everywhere. He's a good son, and he knows that you have to avenge them. Violence solves problems and Dimitri is scared and angry and if he doesn't solve the problem he can't protect the woman and people he loves.

This is serious to me! I'm trying not to make this THAT long but I could go ooooon lol. I understanding wanting to either make him realistically/explicitly schizophrenic OR make him violent, because violent schizophrenics are a bad and harmful stereotype. But I think both sides of him are important, because I don't want to whitewash Dimitri's illness or his experiences. It's scary for the people around you. It very frequenty is triggered from trauma and hardship and it is informed by your life. Like many characters in FE3H, Dimitri is the product of the evils of his world.

Byleth's arc in this story is about her growing into a human being. It is shown as a beautiful thing. It is wonderful to be a person. It would contradict the message of the story to show Dimitri as anything else but a human being - flaws, traumas, SMI and all. He was Marth to her. That's the point.

I went on for soooo long lol but thanks for the ask!

#my writing #my asks #you didnt directly ask about any of this but ive been itching to say it so love and peace <3 #i think its also worth mentioning that sometimes PTSD uh DOES make you hateful and angry and mean #and that it's. normal? expected? it's not inherently bad rep to show a character w/PTSD and anger issues? #like ppl will write a character w/PTSD but only if they get panic attacks and are sad :( #you know. sympathetic people. #i do think connecting violence with psychosis is bad rep but uh it's EXTREMELY hard to argue his ptsd #i felt this same way about Vash Trigun. #when people wrote Vash as GENUINELY #UNIRONICALLY #the person he pretended to be #it misses the point. to me it demonstrates a lack of interest in the character #you can project onto the self-esteem and depression so that's all the character is #and that doesn't leave room for the parts that are uncomfortable so those parts just don't exist #LIKE NOT A CRIME BUT. #JUST BORING? #BAD WRITING? #ok and to me. on the internet. being boring is the greatest crime of all. #fe3h #fire emblem three houses #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd

[panharmonium]

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)

[radiantmists]

man especially having now read the flashbacks i think about how hard xie lian always tries and how many people have told him that he tries too hard, that he never should have bothered and that doing so made things worse, or even more commonly just hating on him for not fixing things or being arrogant or whatever they think his problem is. and some of those people are probably even coming from caring places!

but before hua cheng, had anyone ever sat next to him and said, you tried and that's good, it matters that you cared, you did your best. nobody could have done better than you.

how badly must xie lian have needed that?

#tgcf #tian guan ci fu #heaven official's blessing #the donghua is making me emotional #this arc made me emotional in the books but what can i say people crying in my ears makes it worse #GOD the way xie lian loses his temper for a /half a minute/ bc he's spent centuries in silence about this #got stabbed through the chest and buried alive to preserve lang qianqiu's heart #and now it's all destroyed #and then the second he realizes that he did something as mild as shout at the person responsible #he breaks down apologizing?? #and like. its funnier with the romance parts later but its the same thing #xie lian is still human he can't stop himself from feeling or reacting to things #but he can hate himself for it. he can apologize for ever mildly inconveniencing someone else with his humanity #i don't think he internalizes what hua cheng says here at all #but. at least someone SAID it #at least someone told him what he did mattered and what he intended was worth something #after all that time #and like. you wonder how he can be so cheerful all the time usually despite all the shit that happened to him #but it's because he thinks he deserves every bit of it!! #i feel for hua cheng on a spiritual level i would also move mountains for this poor man if i could

[b4kuch1n]

I lied I think it’s fun to draw animals sometimes

#sonic the hedgehog #miles tails prower #knuckles the echidna #amy rose #team sonic #hey. still dont expect more sonic stuff okay. this is an exception #(I say as I immensely enjoy scribbling these animals) #man. Im mad how good these designs are tbh theyre so (clenches fists) theyre so! scribbleable! #hate that! dont like that dont like how much fun it is to draw them! #also I made amy spiky bc I want to and I can. and also shes a hedgehog #gods. thinking abt it sonic designs cater to me to such a disgusting level... the cartoon gloves... the big shapes.... the varied footwears #it's like psychonauts raz was so fuckign fun to draw. but here it's the whole cast #it's fucked up! it's entrapment!! I didn't consent to this!!! #next time they give any of the characters a big coat I'm sending sega a strongly worded letter. they cant do that to me #well. here it is anyway. genuinely these all took like an hour each I drew them as breaks inbetween work #(an hour for me is equivalent to other artists' fifteen minutes btw. I'm not fast at all I just don't know when to stop) #well. that done. back to work now #I am actually so excited abt the current one lol its just also gonna be a pain in the ass to coordinate #but I really wanna do well with it. go crazy go stupid baku!! #have a good night! a good pair of boots is worth the money but only if you can tie the strings together & wear it on ur neck in emergencies

[mey-rin-is-fabulous]

"Why didn't you go too?"

Oh I don't know Nami maybe because he asked and Luffy said he didn't need help and Zoro is so incredibly whipped that if Luffy tells him not to fight he listens, if Luffy tells him to stay he stays

Like Nami where the hell have you been the past 100+ episodes, those two are about as in love as in love gets without them making out

#one piece #zolu #roronoa zoro #monkey d. luffy #i'm at the jaya arc #like episode 150 i think #and i'm back on my nonsense #look it's about the trust the devotion ugh i hate these two idiots so much #nami i know it's not obvious but they're in love that's why zoro didn't fight and why he stayed #because he knows when luffy says something isn't worth it #it's not worth it #he's also well aware that luffy knows his own strength and that if luffy says he doesn't need help he doesn't need it #ugh these two suck #zoro be like luffy not in danger i sleep luffy in danger already reaching for sword #literally what happened when they met cricket #zoro was napping right up until cricket pulled luffy in the water #zoro just didn't go after luffy because usopp was already on it #otherwise he would have #please don't take this as nami bashing i don't hate her she just doesn't get zoro's devotion to luffy #which is completely fair they invented a whole new love language

[kyouka-supremacy]

I'll be like “I don't really project in any bsd character” [ten seconds later] so Akutagawa is autistic and hates cooking and has never sent a text to a groupchat ever and

#and struggles with eating... #I also feel like sometimes the way I like sskk is very self indulgent ahah. #Like Akutagawa being stupid and evil it's just... So so very comforting for me– #in the way it frames a world where you can be flawed and dumb and imperfect and there'll still be someone to love you for how you are. #That despite everything you are still worth of love. #It's just so unspeakably relieving akdvdjskdbos I dream about a life where I'm not terrified of people stopping loving me if I wasn't kind #Which is weird because I *am* kind and being kind makes me me. it's just. idk brains has thoughts sometimes #On second thought. not main tagging this #random rambles #24/02/23 #Realistically I think it makes sense that Akutagawa *can* cook very basic stuff. to provide for Gin. #In practice I hate cooking so much that I don't want my favorite to undergo that ever

[xxlovelynovaxx]

The point of vote blue no matter who at this point isn't even about getting our needs met, especially as minorities

It's about picking the less autocratic fascist option, the party that would rather neglect us to death rather than outright kill us, so that we're still ALIVE come next election cycle and can continue building community resources independent of our passively genocidal state!

Like, yeah I'm a profoundly disabled trans crip. My vote doesn't "not matter" because politicians will never, EVER give a shit about me. That much is true. It matters because I remember how suicidal I was when Trump wanted to pass legislation that would have made even people like me ineligible for SSI, and how the Biden administration just. Hasn't bothered with SSI. It matters when Republicans are openly trying to force queer people into hiding by way of military dictatorship, and democrats sometimes use lip service in favor of some of us for their platform.

Like. I get it. It's not much of a lesser evil to be left to die than to be murdered. But goddammit, when you ARE building community and organizing and doing the other things to survive as best you can...

Idk. I'd rather that than actively looking death in the eyes. I do in fact think that the preservation of life, no matter how thin the pretense which causes it, still fucking matters

#the epitome of leftist community btw #the person I'm vagueing tbh is one of the people I most admire in so many ways and on so many topics #but the outright doomerism on this. when EVERY POST is like 'its not about change its about buying time and not dying' #when they're usually so good about 'we can't wait for glorious revolution we gotta help people NOW' #but with voting we gotta wait until there's someone worth voting for rather than choosing the one that won't KILL us?? #like I don't hate this person and quite frankly I fucking empathize because I've been a screaming rat in a cage about these things for YEARS #but it just. annoys me. at the end of the day it's just super fucken annoying #and that's okay. I'm still gonna support them in every possible way bc no I don't think they're doing any real harm I'm just. pissed off #and that's my own business #(hence vagueing rather than replying since they don't even follow me lol)

[mostsanescarletspiderfan]

Just wanted to make it clear.

#anti mcu #iron boy jr #peter parker #spiderman #anti mcu spiderman #i have a version of this with Bagley too #honestly I don't even really hate Bagley that much so it's not worth posting #but fucking iron boy jr? my arch nemesis #i genuinely lose sleep thinking about how much i hate him

[uncanny-tranny]

Honestly the dumbest thing about my experiences with queerness is I'd hear people talk about identity and how they navigate queerness and I'd be like, "oh, actually, that matches how I feel to a very weird level. Huh. Guess I'll never know why, though!"

And then a few months later, I'll have a breakdown of, "Holy shit, holy fuck what the hell is happening" before I realize maybe I should have paid closer attention to why I related so much to a queer experience.

The moral of this story is: if you relate to somebody explaining their queerness... there's likely a reason for that.

#queer #lgbt #lgbtq #i'm thinking about the time i incidentally came across somebody talking about their aromanticism and i was like... 'wow i relate.' #and i was then like 'eh i'm not aro tho. i just coincidentally relate to a weirdly specific degree to this aro experience' #spoiler: uh. i'm pretty fuckin aro and i've kinda... always been #anyway maybe don't be like me and let yourself not understand who you are until you cannot take it anymore #because it kinda sucks to have a crisis of identity because you've been kinda... willingly ignoring who you are #i don't say 'willingly' in a bad way just in a... 'please it isn't worth it' way #and i call it dumb because i think i was willingly setting myself up for failure because i didn't fully understand myself #because i didn't fully realize i was aromantic i had forced myself in a lot of situations that i didn't want #and i didn't understand WHY i didn't have crushes or have interest in being in a relationship or why i hated being touched #so i just assumed i 'needed experience' and the lack of experience was why #spoiler ×2: the experience did not un-aro me <3 #it aro-d me MORE lmao

[bonefall]

Feel free to ignore you've probably got a lot going on right now, but considering you know a lot about DOTC and Clear sky, I had a question...

We know that he's a terrible, misogynistic, woman beating and war mongering lunatic who was excused of all his actions because his equally misogynistic brother said " But-But he's nice! Deep down! This isn't the real him! "

But! In a world where the Hunters could write such a character, what do you think Clear Sky would look like as an actual sympathetic villain?

Idk if that makes sense, but what I've thought of doing is taking purely cannon Clear Sky and attempting to change him enough that he's still an antagonist, but not too far where only Reddit defends him.

I don't think he works as a sympathetic villain, on any level, ever. I think you're making a huge mistake to even try, and I have never seen an AU where it was done well nor am I interested in entertaining the thought.

Characters. Are. Tools. They exist to tell a story. The story that people tell me, by obsessing over some alternate universe where he was "ACTUALLY sympathetic and had a REAL redemption arc," is that they're not fucking interested in his dozens of victims. Nor do they actually care about the abusive impact he had on the minds and feelings of his family. They're JUST interested in Clear Sky himself.

Just like the Erins. Everything that happens in DOTC revolves around him. Everything. All his wives die so he can be sad about it. His brother defends all of his actions and BEGS you to sympathize with his pain so he can be 'redeemable.' One Eye comes out of nowhere so that there can be an example of "real" evil to contrast Clear Sky so he's less bad in hindsight.

The first three books of DOTC are bad, but the last three are fucking insufferable because SUDDENLY all that Gray Wing apologia pays off, and they take their main villain and throw him out a window. You CAN'T have "redeemable" Clear Sky and the plot of DOTC without dragging in someone else to drive the conflict, to BE the bigger threat to "unite" against. Slash and One Eye have to be conjured up out of thin air so Clear Sky can WHINE about how people only suck his toes instead of deepthroat them after he killed all their friends.

And yet, in spite of this absolute failure of an attempt, we continue to see this bullshit "redemption" be a mistake because Clear Sky is a fantastic villain, with major antagonist roles in nearly EVERY bit of follow-up material for DOTC that came after.

He's the most consistent monster in all of Warriors.

He's a fragile, egotistical, self-absorbed megalomaniac who ALWAYS sees himself as the victim, REFUSING to self-reflect and blaming everything else for all of his terrible choices. He will USE your love of him against you like it's a chain through your nose, step out of line and he will yank you into place with guilt trips, manipulation, public shaming, and violence.

He's a child abuser. He's a tyrant. He abandons the sick and disabled as soon as they're of no use to him, with grand speeches about "illness" and "weakness." He's a murderer who stands above the shredded corpse of his victim and bellows, "I'M NOT GREEDY! I'M JUST STRONG!"

And you'd write a "good" redemption arc for this, why?

Why are people so chronically unable to accept that there are LOTS of people like him, and you can't save your abuser? Why don't you ask yourselves why you're not interested in exploring Thunder, or Petal, or Gray Wing, and how his toxic influence impacts them? Why does the sympathy fall on Clear Sky? What about the DOZENS of victims who are dead by Book 3, and how THEY could have been saved?

Why ruin a perfectly good villain?

What's behind this trend where a billion people say to me, "Yes Clear Sky is a walking cavalcade of fucked up abuse apologia, and an incredibly realistic depiction of an abuser, but how would you change this while keeping it all the same?"

I wouldn't. You can't. It wouldn't be the same story, or it wouldn't be the same character. Never seen it done well, and I have seen it a lot. So I don't entertain this deeply frustrating "Well What If Clear Sky But Nice" impulse.

#The closest I'll ever get to that is Fallenleaf. And she lost it all #And spent years in the time-out tunnel #BAD KITTIES GO IN THE PEAR WIGGLER TO BE SUFFICIENTLY WIGGLED. #I don't think people in power typically change. If they do it's so rare it's not worth entertaining. Camel through the eye of a needle shit #and I mean ALL powers. this goes for abusive relationships too. I think they need to lose that power before they change. #When you have power. REAL power. You can fill those holes with it. You can force people to not leave. #so im actively hostile to stories that winge and cry about giving powerful people endless sympathy and chances #You've already shown me what you want to do with your power and as long as you keep it you haven't seen your consequences. #Power reveals. #It doesn't corrupt. It reveals. #DOTC hate #clear sky's redemption arc #If you're in an abusive relationship or under a terrible boss or in some other bad environment. You won't fix it. #You are not responsible for fixing it. #You can't fix it. #And they will not change. so GET OUTTA THERE #And that's who he functions best as. To me. #He's the bastard you need to escape. #And that's infinitely more compelling to me than Nice Clear Sky Attempt 32324 #I don't write stories that beg you to sympathize with tyrants and keep your heart open to some maybe-change on the horizon #I write stories where they ruin everything they touch and have to be forcefully yanked out of power before they hurt more people. #And also screw every related take that's like 'ohhh after 5000 years of having his toes sucked he regrets it a bit :(' #no he fucking wouldn't. he had his toes sucked for 5000 years. He's vindicated by how fondly he's remembered. #You can't fucking tell me that he doesnt REVEL in how violent the culture became. That him being offended about the clan's exile- #--was anything but him being offended his namesake was going away. That he wouldn't parade around like every choice he ever made was right. #''I made some vague mistakes which I will never name. BUT Im never wrong and always did it my way even if it was hard'' #If you haven't met a person like that I envy you. #bone babble #Nothing makes me mad quite like this character #Again I yell about his brother a lot because he's widely loved by the fandom