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#don't mind me I'm in love with my own character

bas-writes · 2 days

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a lot has happened lately, but so far i haven't made any official statement about my decisions and the path i want to take as a writer. it was a long road of trial and error & detailed examination of conscience in regard of my bad habits, gained experience, and goals and expectations. there are some massive changes that i need to address, followed by explanation of my decisions. i know i don't need to explain myself but i feel it's only fair to my loyal readers to share at least little insight into the context.

I. One Piece goes on indefinite vacation...

not going to lie, i was falling out of this fandom for years. it's started in 2021 when i fell victim to bullying and stalking, initiated by a widely-known (and still active, as far as i am aware of) x reader writer. it's the biggest reason for my slow withdrawal but not a sole one: pressing discourse around my comfort characters, toxic environment i fell into when looking for a relief from relentless bullying, forcing myself to write for topics and characters i didn't even like, readers overstepping my boundaries over and over again, falling into a trap of purity culture...oh, the list is long. way too long.

i still love one piece but i don't want to create for it en-masse anymore. right now it's just a wound that's far from healing, i need to treat it at my own pace. aside from an occasional poke at sapphic topics and my fav trio, i doubt it will appear in other way than commissions or gifts for friends. and some characters (kid, sanji, marco, katakuri, shanks & a few more) will never return.

II. ...but new fandoms arrive!

jujutsu kaisen is right now the main love of my life & will remain as the main fandom for long. but i found more series and characters i adore enough to feel that creative spark buzzing in my veins. soon you should see fics appearing for: demon slayer, chainsaw man, haikyuu and hell's paradise!

i'm keeping my head low rn when it comes to requests but i want to hold at least a kinktober open for them so you definitely will have an opportunity to see your faves from those series from me!

III. It's a gender neutral & afab Y/N sphere now!

it's something that was inevitably floating over me and my fics (and some of y'all definitely caught the whiff of it already), but i couldn't quite find courage to put a hard limit. we all know how it is in the y/n circles: way too many people expect from writers to cater to everyone, and treat it as a personal offense if you prefer to play in your own sandbox. as if writing y/ns was "activism", not a fandom activity like any other.

so, i won't force myself to write against myself anymore. i feel the most happy and comfortable when i make my y/ns gender neutral and when i'm giving them vaginas (and sometimes boobs) when i'm writing smut with them. i don't want to battle my weirdly-veiled dysphoria to force female reader out of myself. i don't want to stress myself while writing amab y/n, from the sheer biological fact of being unable to relate via lack of penis, to being sick and tired of the toxicity and misogyny that m!reader circles reek of.

so, gender neutral and afab it is. sometimes i will stray towards afab nonbinary or transmasc direction, if i feel like i need some good gender vibes coming from my fics.

it doesn't mean i will never write different y/ns. commissions, gifts for friends, exchanges, random ideas for a plot that requires a specific kind of y/n, sapphics feels, and such will appear here and there. i will also interact lots with f!reader fics, since it's what i see lots around & don't mind reading, if i feel more fem or if it's from a writer i like and trust.

incoming ino x reader (that i hope to publish tomorrow) will be the last non-sapphic f!reader that will appear for a long while. all requests i'm keeping in my drafts right now will be turned into completely gender neutral or from fem to more general afab reader (i don't have any requests for amab readers rn anyway). unless you really don't want to have f!reader taken out of your request - then please, let me know, i will delete it so you can head with it to a different writer.

IV. Never miss a fic again - sign for a tag list!

and now a little treat! if you don't want to miss a fic about the topic that might interest you, you may sign for a tag list by filling a simple form!

V. And what am I going to do now?

write, write, and write even more! i wanna write the in the heat of spring drabbles before the spring is gone, have three fully-fledged multichapter fics outlined and itching to be written and posted, and an interactive event with which we will welcome the summer 💦

in june i want to publish a few sapphic fics that i had in mind for a while now & later towards the second half of summer (think august-september) i'll smile at you again with a kinktober i really want to complete this year!

there might be a few smaller events on the way, depending on how busy i'll be. there's an idea for dilf enjoyers and for a chubby y/n, as well as many others that still didn't take a clear shape.

i also didn't forget about the kiss event and nonsexual acts of intimacy for the fluff enjoyers!

if you survived this wall of text (or just scrolled down here lol understandable) - thank you for your patience, understanding, and support. whether you're here with me since the very beginning or clicked the follow recently, i'm happy to have you here ❤ if you have any questions or just want to talk, my askbox is open for any kind of interaction! and if you want to support a poor writer who has way too many health-related spendings lately, you can buy me a ko-fi ❤

#bas speaks

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redsparrow2117 · 2 days

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"The End of the World is a Product".

I don't normally make....any posts, but the Fallout show, and some of the response to it has me wanting to actually put some words down here. There will be spoilers for the Fallout show if you want to avoid that.

Several people whose opinion I respect a lot have their own thoughts on the show, Amazon making it, and general disappointment with where Fallout as an IP has gone in the several decades it has existed. I agree with a lot of these statements and think that Fallout peaked with New Vegas, and Bethesda's ownership and usage of the IP has been uninspired at best.

That said, I did watch the show. And generally, I liked it. I have some complaints (like, wtf if the Brotherhood even doing? Who is really in charge? The writers *blew up* the NCR, just like that? For....some reason?) The main thing I have an issue with, is the dissonance between the message of the show, and the company that made it.

I think the parts that really made the show were Coop's flashbacks to before the war. I love his character, so much. And from Coop, The Ghoul, I get my dissonance.

We see him interacting with general Hollywood. It's basically the same as ours. Despite what Some People(tm) will say, Hollywood is a tool of the United States Machine. An extension of the country's will. Coop is making a cowboy movie, one of many he has made. He expresses being uncomfortable with his new movie's seeming obsession with killing, not wanting his character to kill the villain when he is begging for his life. The director tells him "people want to see a good man pushed too far." We see later, after the war, Coop made the movie the way the director wanted.

Coop's wife works in marketing, or something like it, for Vault-Tec. Coop likes the idea of the Vaults at first. Save people from the end of the world. Good stuff, thinks Coop. He was in the Marines, fought at Anchorage. He believes in protecting people and his country. So when his wife asks him to do an ad for Vault-Tec, he says yes.

Very quickly, he leaves making movies, and basically now works for Vault-Tec. Has a big party, invites a bunch of his friends, and only one of his acting friends shows up. Says everyone else declined on moral grounds, because they don't like Vault-Tec, and all the other mega corporations working with them or around the world. Coop's friend mentions he sold his voice/a character he created to the company that makes Mr. Handy's, and how everyone and everything is a product now, and embracing that is the only way to make money anymore. "You're a product, I'm a product, the end of the world is a product."

Coop later meets one of his acting friends, Charles Whiteknife, to talk about the party and why he didn't go. Charles brings up Vault-Tec, the mega corporations, and "Fiduciary Responsibility". I never, ever, in my mind would think a Fallout show, executive produced by "Thanks" Todd Howard, would bring that up.

Charles lays it out for Coop: Vault-Tec makes money selling Vaults. If they want to make money, then everyone's fear of the end of the world is really what is for sale. The end of the world is the product.

So no peace talks to calm down the war between the US and China. No safe feeling. They need fear. They want to make money, so you cannot feel safe. We see a prelude at Coop's earlier party: two Vault-Tec executives are talking about heading off those exact peace talks before anything definite is done so quarterly profits go up. Even the president is mentioned as missing, but that could be a kidnapping or a reference to the Enclave.

Coop doesn't want to believe that. Why would his wife work there if that was the case?

We see, as the flashbacks go on, how much she knows, but won't give away. She needs her job so her family can get into "one of the good Vaults". Coop ends up spying on a meeting between his wife, a Vault-Tec exec, and a bunch of major corporations and private entities. A nice cameo set up for big fans. We see West-Tek, Big MT, ROBCO, all of them. Vault-Tec wants them to buy into the Vaults, so they can make money.

So they can control the end of the world.

They think a total monopoly in the post-apocalypse will save the world from war.

Then the real reveal: Vault-Tec, in order to make guarantees on their experimental Vaults, and to make guarantees to the investors, is going to drop the bomb. Maybe not all of them, but definitely start the Great War.

Because it will make them money now, and when the world is over, they can rule over the ashes with a gaggle of experimented-on, traumatized survivors, brainwashed to do what they want, and led by the preserved executives that helped end the world.

"Well, thanks for the spoilers, RedSparrow, but what is the point?"

Well, when people write about the future, like George Orwell did in 1984, or Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, or even Suzanne Collins in Hunger Games, they weren't really writing about the future. They were writing about the problems they dealt with in their present, exaggerated to make them stand out.

"What happens when the cattle ranchers own half the town?" Charlie Whiteknife asks Coop when they meet at the bar.

"The town burns down."

"Exactly. The ranchers are in charge now."

This isn't really new stuff for Fallout, if you have played any of the games beyond 3,4, or 76. (Hell, 76 tries to act like Vault-Tec are the good guys for some stupid ass reason.)

We now live in that moment. Maybe we didn't when Fallout 1 came out, or maybe it was easier to hide then. At this point, it's nearly impossible to really ignore, and anyone saying that is incorrect or a good thing is just burying their head in the sand to avoid the truth.

Maybe we don't have Vaults, or Vault-Tec, but we have Amazon, selling us everything and grinding employees to dust on vague promises of earning a living.

We have our own ROBCO, and the CEO of our version of ROBCO bought Twitter because his ex left him for a trans woman and is currently trying to sell losers online his idea of a sex bot and shitty cars that rust and explode.

We have social media monopolies that live off of hate-engagement and spreading fear. Hell, the US government is banning social media platforms they can't control, and privatizing things like internet access through Starlink. Elongated Muskrat tried to cut off Ukraine's access to it after one of their generals told him to shut up and stop sucking up to Russia.

None of this is new. I'm probably sounding like your weird boomer uncle online right now.

But your weird boomer uncle doesn't think they will end the world.

But they will.

So here's the dissonance I struggle with: why is Amazon, one of the many companies enshitti-fying everything right now, making a show that tells you the plan?

It's easier to imagine the end of the world, than it is to imagine the end of capitalism, so the saying goes.

But the end of the world is the plan of capitalism. That's the end goal.

And it's wild to me that the Fallout show, made by Amazon, is the one telling us this.

#fallout #fallout spoilers #the ghoul

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taddymason · 1 day

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What do you think about S6 Jay? I've always felt conflicted about his character due to this season, (but that comes from the fact that Skybound is a total mess). I didn't like how he used his wishes to impress Nya so she would date him. It annoyed me that he kept making decisions that wronged his friends because he couldn't let go of the idea she didn't want a relationship with him. I'm conscious this is the consequence of the messy love triangle from season 3, but it would've been nice to see Jay growing up from his relationship with Nya. (And if the writers were so desperate to make Jay and Nya endgame, at least they could've shown us Jay apologizing for everything he did during the season (lying to his friends, not accepting her refusal). They could've shown us Nya bring up the love triangle, and why she went for Cole when she was with Jay. You know, resolve the problems in their relationship and the things each of them did).

But no, they show us Jay making his final wish: "I wish you had taken my hand, and no one ever found that teapot in the first place". That decision feels like he hasn't progressed about his relationship with Nya from the start of the season. At the beginning of Skybound, she clarifies she doesn't want to be with him, so why would Jay wish she had taken his hand? Like, she's dying, and he's still thinking about that moment. What the hell? There were so many ways that scene could've gone, instead of Jay making her do something against her will. (Kind of? I think that depends on the interpretation of each person).

On the other hand, I didn't like how Nya's feelings were handled. One of the main problems her character had to face in season 6 was feeling she wasn't able to choose her destiny. She found out she was destined to be with Jay, and Nadakhan was forcing her to be with him. She literally said she felt that her whole life had been defined by other people, rather than by herself. However, at the end of the season, Jay wishes she had done what she didn't want to do at first.

I don't know, Skybound feels like an amount of missed opportunities for Nya's and Jay's character development.

Oh, skybound. skybound.

This season is a disaster for me and probably the season I feel the most conflicted about.

Overall I think most of the characters this season are pretty ooc. From Cole making sexist jokes for no reason, to Lloyd remaining strangely quiet throughout the EP5 conflict, to Jay throwing his own friends' security out the window to be with Nya. NOT EVEN S3 JAY (which was also a low point) WAS LIKE THIS. Even with all of his insecurities or rivalry with him, as soon as the situation demanded it or Cole was in danger (S3EP9) Jay could focus on what was at stake.

Instead, for some reason during the middle of the season Jay is EXTREMELY desperate to be with Nya to the point that he doesn't even care about his own team.

Look, I don't even mind that they make a season where Jay is an asshole and has to confront the consequences of his actions to learn to be more mature and aware of what he does (most of my fics are like that anyway). Do they want to do a season where Jay lies until his mistakes blow up in his face and where his selfishness is finally tested? I'm on board. If there is something that makes him such an interesting character, it's his flaws. Jay is selfish, he lies very often, he is opportunistic, and that makes his arcs so different from everyone else's.

Now, I hate that this is all solely because of his obsession with Nya. I've said it before but the worst thing about Jaya is when she becomes Jay's only motivation and interest to do everything he does. The season punishes Jay for resorting to wishes, not for continuing to believe that he has the right to be with Nya as if it were a necessity for him. The moral of the season shouldn't be "if you wish something enough, you'll find a way to make it happen" but; you don't need to be with someone else to be happy. Jay doesn't have to depend on Nya for his own happiness, and the season surprisingly never says otherwise.

From start to the ending, Nya remains Jay's final motivation. Literally her final wish is him imposing her will on her again (I know the wish supposedly didn't affect Nya but I think it's a mistake to make a character's wishes remain static from the beginning to the end of history).

so basically the season is a bunch of wasted potential that could have been a really good season to develop both characters. There are good things in S6, I'm not going to deny it. Jay from EP6 onwards has some pretty good moments, like him learning to be a leader, showing that he is a capable and intelligent member who ends up motivating others (Jay inspiring people is a rant for another day). And it's probably the most seriously the show takes his character.

I think the season would be better if it ended up addressing other things as well. There are many hints of Jay feeling worthless, Jay being insecure because he is poor/weak, believing he needs to be with Nya to be happy. And the season doesn't do much with this anyway. So, wouldn't it be better if the season wasn't Jay and Nya getting back together, but rather Jay realizing his own worth as a person? What if Jay resorts to wishes because he doesn't feel valuable as a member of the team? because he starts to believe that Nya is a better blue ninja than him? Or because his powers begin to fail and weaken as he is not maintaining his true potential by allowing himself to be consumed by his own insecurities? There are MANY ways to resolve this conflict without having Nya come back to him as some kind of prize.

...This is spoilers for my Skybound rewrite btw

but yeah, I agree with everything you say, Jay and Nya deserved better this season and I think what affected it the most was making the ending have to be these two getting back together with just ONE episode of them speaking sincerely

Sorry for the long post, Ty for the ask! ^^

#jay ninjago #ninjago #jay walker #ninjago jay #Ninjago Skybound #Ninjago Skybound AU #ninjago analysis

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mylittleredgirl · 2 days

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Least favorite Star Trek character in each series?

i love all my children equally how could you do this to me!!!!

slightly more rational answer: i have been thinking about this since yesterday when i got the ask and it's like every time i think i have an answer i immediately go "oh but i love them for XYZ" and they move up in the ranks. ultimately most treks are ensemble shows and removing anybody from the ensemble makes it all fall apart!

gun to my head, though, bearing in mind that i love all of them:

tos: gun to my head it's chapel i'm afraid and i feel bad about it. she doesn't really get to grow much and the other most-static character is probably chekov and i had a massive crush on him. in 1967 when they went "you know this show should add a mop top for the teenyboppers out there" they were talking specifically about me 30 years later.

tng: i would take the bullet for real.

ds9: man i'm going through main characters and then secondary characters and then tertiary characters and how are they all so essential and good????? literally i have gone thru a list of characters and a list of episodes and am coming up blank. even the villains are fantastic. eddington is annoying but he's supposed to be and his episodes are all great. sloan himself is fun it's just what section 31 did to star trek in general that sucks. like????? there's not a single name that shows up in the credits that doesn't make me go YEAHHHHHH.

voy: if we can count recurring characters i'm saying barclay. i liked him a lot as a character in tng and but go "for fuck's sake" whenever i see "guest star dwight schultz" on the voyager credits. i dislike pretty much every earth-contact episode after "message in a bottle" so maybe i don't like voyager-barclay because he just happens to be there?? for main cast it'd be neelix shut up shut up i love him in the ensemble but sometimes when they give him his own episode it's too much.

ent: sorry malcolm lovers this was the only show that was an easy choice. like we SHOULD dig into the fact that essentially his greatest wish is to sacrifice himself and he won't be happy until he dies on the job. klingon behavior but not at all for the fun and glory of it just because he kind of just doesn't enjoy being alive???? archer is terrible in so many ways but he's also much more enjoyable to watch being terrible.

disco: this is actually a very weird show to even know who to choose from. the cast changes every year! we barely even know the bridge crew! who is interesting enough to count as a main character?? of the main title cast i'm kind of hot and cold with adira. i like them but the sheer amount of anxiety radiating off them at all times makes me tense up whenever they come on screen. (i just realized it's kind of ironic to say adira because they're basically a mix of wesley and ezri, who would probably make this list for most other trekkies but are two of my absolute faves.) (i will think long and hard about this)

snw: i don't know that i have enough of a read on any of them? i still haven't finished it. chapel (again?? oh no) is the one i had the hardest time warming up to early on because she seemed the most wink-y and out of place in a franchise that usually takes silly things very seriously, but i did warm up to her!

lower decks: if we can go with guest characters i hate badgey (only one on here that gathers the "hate" rating!!). i don't find him (it??) funny and i know i SHOULD find it funny which means whenever it shows up i am both not having a good time and feel bad about not having a good time. the main characters are all brilliant. gun to my head it's boims but it's a close one i love them all.

i don't even know what other shows we have i've run out of steam???

oh right picard. captain shaw??? why is such a large subset of fandom so horny for him??? and shipping him with seven of nine of all things???? is it just White Guy With Trauma because there are like. a lot of other white guys with trauma in this franchise to choose from.

#chatter post #anonymous friend #star trek thoughts #this killed me i'm going to eat ice cream straight from the container now and i didn't even get them all

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lgbt-cishet-movie-tournament · 2 days

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Most LGBT cishet movie?

Movie Submissions!

Sometimes a cishet movie is a hit in this community even without any stories or characters reflecting us (or at least not explicitly or intentionally or... tastefully). Either because of its campiness and witty banter, its drama, its weirdness, amazing soundtrack and costumes or its diva-like personality taking center stage. Please don't take this poll seriously.

Examples of movies that follow the rules below:

The Wizard of Oz (1939), Clue (1985), The Exorcist (1973), The Servant (1963), The Sound of Music (1965), Heathers (1988), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), All About Eve (1950), Jawbreaker (1999), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), 9 to 5 (1980).

Rules for Submissions:

Please don't fight we're literally just ranking the straightest gay movies and transest cis people. The most conforming and queer paradox.

Because of the tendency of this site to call something "gay" just because 2 conventionally attractive men stand next to each other for 5 seconds, I'm not counting shipping possibilities that much. The level of drama, camp and the number drag parodies it has is way more important than possible romantic relationships or sexual tension in submitted films. Also there's ace and aro people voting. Keep them in mind!

It has to be cishet but somehow still queer. Can be the camp, general weirdness, gnc clothes, sassiness, the inclusion of a diva, accidental coding, or some other secret option. Honestly if you find a way to reason so hard it works, you could even try to submit The Godfather (... it is very quotable...)

Submit movies that aren't just American!

Submit movies that are cult classic masterpieces or movies that objectively suck!

I love Mamma Mia but it does have gay characters. This poll came about because I found that a lot of older movies had queer fans that were able to connect to others through these movies while creating their own spaces. This was despite the movie being "straight and gender conforming". I love that there's more rep now, but I'm aiming for this to poll contain more vintage movies for a reason. and I want to expand my watchlist. I'm aware that there are movies from the 70s, 1920s, and other older eras with explicitly gay themes and characters like Victim 1961 or Salome 1920 (and I encourage you to widen your scope of historically significant films) but this isn't that poll.

Old movies with very stealth trans or gay coding with its side characters and unintentional lgbt+ coding is allowed, but you know these things can be hit or miss. Besides, I put Heathers on here even though it's homophobic. Fun but homophobic. You can submit movies with homophobia or conformist themes to a degree.

You can submit propaganda videos, text, and images! If you know any drag parodies of the movies, send them my way!

If you don't want to submit directly, you can @ me

Posts with polls will be tagged as #mlcm poll. Movies posts with #user submitted or #user submission means it was submitted through the google forms and will enter the tournament

Given that not a lot of people watch older movies, the battling polls will be paired by decade until it gets whittled down to the finals where old and young will both compete.

Competition will start May 1 in honor of The Wicker Man 1973, which i wish counted as a poll entry, but I limited myself to one movie I'd slip into the tournament despite the fact that there's not a lot of lgbt fans of the movie. And this was my runner up because I really liked The Exorcist's Regan and Karras. Unless someone else submits him, Wicker Man's not gonna be there. Rest in Peace Christopher Lee and his ugly blonde wig.

#mlcm tournament #xanadu #the wicker man 1973 #horror #lsoh #dolly parton #lgbt #movies #polls #tournament poll #all about eve #whatever happened to baby jane?#q slur

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x-liv25-jamieswife · 1 day

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i'm going to be fr, in the first few chapters (when i first read the books) i didn't really like grayson. he just seemed like a stuck up ass who thought he was better than everyone else like "for now, it's best if you just assume i know everything" like ok buddy.

same thing sort of goes for jamie i didn't like that he kept treating avery like she was nothing of importance, but then he'd make up for it by saying smth flirty or smth which made me love him again.. (flirty men are my type)

i liked xander and nash immediately though and never stopped.

avery has always slayed. i don't trust people who don't like her. she is so underrated in her own series and she literally solos all of the brothers. she's a girl boss, how can you not stan her. how can she not be your fav character.

max is such a great friend. she acts all carefree and all, but she really cares. she's always been there for avery. my only complaint is her swearing, but even that isn't really a problem.

rebecca's a little complicated i sympathize with her and have forgiven her for all of her wrongdoings (not telling avery drake was gonna try to kill her) because she's just one of emily’s victims (and imo the most hurt and affected. this isn’t even an opinion it’s just facts).

alisa is a girl boss. she fucking slays. everything about her is just >>>.

i don't really like thea. she may have done some good things, but whenever i think about her, i think about how petty she was in the first book and how she took it out on avery. i do love how much she loves rebecca though. i hate her for letting avery get kidnapped, like, miss girl, what happened to being a girls girl.

oren>> (that's all i have to say and i shouldn't have to say more)

zara is my little underrated pookie. i kinda relate to her honestly.

skye can go f herself

MIND YOU I LOVE JAMIE AND GRAY (ESPECIALLY JAMIE HE'S MY POOKIE). MY FIRST IMPRESSION OF GRAY WAS JUST A LITTLE IFFY AND JAMIE WAS SOMETIMES A LITTLE QUESTIONABLE BUT THEY'RE MY POOKIES AND I LOVE THEM AND I'D DIE FOR THEM (I'D LET JAMIE DO WHATEVER HE WANTS TO ME, AVERY CAN JOIN TOO)

#the inheritance games #the brothers hawthorne #the final gambit #the hawthorne legacy #avery grambs #jameson hawthorne #nash hawthorne #xander hawthorne #grayson hawthorne #libby grambs #maxine liu #rebecca laughlin #john oren #alisa ortega #thea calligaris #skye hawthorne

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panharmonium · 4 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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yuriyuruandyuraart · 8 months

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Opinions on Dream? :^

SO many feelings about him omgg rant under cut please forgive me

okay so i don't really talk or draw him much cause honestly,,,most of the times i just think he's a bit....boring? or more accurately plain? not in a mean way either but just in a 'fades into the background' type of way like don't get me wrong!! he's a really nice friend to his peers, his feelings about his powers and aura making his relationships harder to navigate and trust along with his whole conflict with nightmare and morality about what's good and bad IS very cool!! and i love it whenever they write him to be complex and not on this black and white mentality or when he's just straight up following along his friends with no free will or with a dubious purpose without ever addressing his issues or feelings! it's just unsatisfying to me :')

or when they're making him the 'naive' and oblivious, (sometimes childish?) character being marked as the obstacle and villain along with the other star sanses from the fic's pov, always talking about doing good things while fighting his brother and not hearing him out about the balance, (and for weak reasons most of the time. like it's been so long and you STILL haven't sat down with him when he's, generally, basically begged you to just have a talk? guys please :'( ) or when they go for the victim sad dream always missing the old nightmare, where corrupted nightmare is the incarnation of evil, with no sympathy or emotion except anger and sadistic glee, killing and hurting everyone and dream's just trying to protect the multiverse and dream's always been in the right. such extremes!!!

LIKE!! i hope i'm not the only one that thinks a 500+ year old should have had enough time to idk. learn things? about people and manipulation and deceit? after knowing what the villagers did to night? about the bad things in the world and how there's a lot of grey areas in life and that he maybe reflected on his past enough to process and ask himself if there should to be a convo to settle his differences with nightmare (and you can make nightmare the stubborn one too! or have them BOTH be petty and imperfect and have some things wrong and some right at the same time like why do i always see the good guy vs bad guy cliché with these two when they're the perfect example of why positivity doesn't have meaning without the negativity!! as long as there's a satisfying evolution or growth that doesn't leave me empty i'm good yknow?)

plus i believe dream really isn't as dumb as people view him. i do get some of you saying he probably can't read or write since that's actually a pretty interesting idea to explore! but in general please let him have emotions other than pure sunshiny happiness or endless sadness like he's gotta have more depth than that! let him make mistakes, have flaws that don't just make him the bad guy that's always in the wrong by default, and be angry or suspicious or jealous or bitter or battling his mental health problems/depression or malicious or smart or witty or mischievous and silly or sarcastic or ANYTHING dude i just want him to be put into different scenarios where he can be serious or lighthearted like it doesn't even have to be long or perfect but make him feel real.

it could definitely be that i don't read or see much art about dream or really look for it hard enough but also i just. i feel bad for even saying this fr and i wanna be honest about why i don't enjoy most stories about him cause he always gets the worst treatment along with ink!!! especially ink omg the poor guy has it the worst i think like wow do they mess him up :'(

always one dimensional in non shippy fics, or too plain or easily replaceable by other, more entertaining people in the significant other's life in most of his ships like man. i have read fics out there that made me genuinely FEEL and root for him and love his character so much it restored all hope for me!!! but i can only name one on top of my head and the others? it's been so long i don't even remember their names i just legit feel terrible cause i love him still and i can't find many headcanons that fit my interpretation of him yknow?

not to say people who write him very happy, mislead or sad are ruining him like that's silly- if i see something i don't like i just. move on bro i wouldn't force people to feel or think the same way i do about him cause anyone can have whatever headcanons they want!!! just talking about what i personally look for in him and why i can't exactly find it since most of the stuff out there just isn't my cup of tea :')

hopefully i didn't set anyone off with this rambling opinionated essay i just pulled hhh xD i know i know he's a popular character and i know a lot of people like dream so *sobs* please please recommend me artists and fics about him that you think is good it's been so looong since i've read or seen anything new that makes me attached to this little guy aughg<33333

#ask #rambling #delete later?#probably xD i just wanna love him SO much but sometimes he's just *sigh*...forgettable #i tried to explain myself but also it's like 4 am and i skimmed through the proofreading so don't take this too seriously HHH #like really even when i do read good fics about him he's not on the forefront of my mind and it's painful to me :'(#i used to see him as my third fav but now? ever since i've read and seen characters who get heavier more in depth plots?#i can't say it with as much confidence :') and dream lovers out there i am not bashing your choice or even your headcanons #to each their own but i really wanna hear someone be passionate about him in my feed or askbox like TELL me about him #i've seen ink rants out there that are FIRE like so true!!! but where's the dream defense team???#maybe it's just me tho :') btw i still like cream but not the same way as before if i'm being real #it feels the same...all of it and it makes me wanna bite something ARGHGG #i know i know i ship some stuff that's basic too hhh but dream and cross are always written the same and dream is too innocent #and nightmare is too weird in some of these fics like if MY brother ever tried to literally attack my hypothetical partner????#i wouldn't give him the :'((( sad face and weakly tell him to 'please stop...you're hurting him'' like NO girl they're TWINS #they're the same age i would tell him to BACK off and not insert himself in my love life after years of ignoring and fighting LIKE #especially since most of the time cross is actually good to dream and all- so he doesn't have a good reason to disrupt his bro's dates #UGH i just have so many opinions but basically i would love him a lot lot more than i do now if they also let him be more flexible #and shake things up like with shattered and stuff! gimme alternate versions of him even if it's too ooc like we do for all the other sanses #jaa i am SO sorry you had to read all that dude thank you so much for passing by :'D

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alex-the-bringer-of-chaos · 10 months

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Ok, since there's been a lot of infighting (for some fucking reason) over Mike's sexuality, allow me to state something: Who cares? As long as that bitch isn't straight and ends up with El there will be a satisfying story with good narrative being told.

Please finish reading before getting pissed off :D.

I understand that people want to see themselves represented (bitch I'm aroace and agender, I get it), but we don't need to fight over it. Make your analysis and why you think a certain way, but no need to attack one each other.

Now I gotta say something else: I don't care what Mike's sexuality is, as long as he ends up with Will. The reason for that, you ask? Well simple:

Independent el and byler endgame is the only happy and right ending - I've said that numerous times and the narrative agrees with it.

I'm saying this not because I think that his sexuality is irrelevant or cause I don't care about his character arch, quite the contrary. I think that, regardless of him being gay, bi, pan, queer or unlabeled, Mike will have a satisfying storyline and character arch. A good one, that will make sense with the narrative of the show. And we will get to analyze it. A thing that won't happen if he's straight and milkvan is endgame - cause that would be a shit story due to garbage narrative.

Now obviously some people have their reasons for preferring and believing in one outcome over the other, and that's okay, as long as your not a pussy and a little bitch about it. That's all. Thanks for reading folks. Please don't come at me with pitchforks if you wanna hate, just block me.

#byler #and for those curious #i personally hc mike as demi(romantic/sexual)#he's gay/queer/unlabeled/bi to me for all i care #though i strongly believe he was never into el and just confused platonic attraction with romantic #cause amatonormativity is a bitch and i also like to push my sexuality into characters that don't have a confirmed one #and i also think el confused her feeling as well #both for their own reasons that make sense with the narrative and i'm just to lazy to write down an analysis on #but even if they were ever attracted to each other #they were never in love #that's something you'll never change my mind on #and neither the following statement #independent el and byler endgame is the only happy and right ending #stranger things #mike wheeler #gay mike wheeler #bi mike wheeler #queer mike wheeler #unlabeled mike wheeler #anti mileven #anti m*leven #tw cussing

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ahollowgrave · 9 months

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18. Has your OC ever had a prophecy made about them? Was it a big deal or did they ignore it? Was it straightforward or cryptic? Did it ever come to pass or did they circumvent it?

Scuffs my boot

Hiiiiiiiii friend

She kind of sort of does! The prophecy is generic enough that any nun could fill it. But… she’s the youngest and most likely to succeed so the weight of it falls upon her shoulders. It certainly feels like a big deal, to her, as it is the thing that started her on the path of a paladin. Something to do with lost saints, missing holy weapons, you know! God stuff!

It’s a prophecy from Menphina ‘herself’ so there is zero chance of Odette trying to ignore it or circumvent it. She would do anything for her Holy Lover’s affection.

It is pretty straightforward in the end goal, but vague in the… how to get there. She’s struggling through this part, now. But she has some time! She’s gotta get good with a sword and shield before she can wield the holy relics that are her’s to claim.

My end goal is to, eventually, do a mini-arc with Odette and her friends helping her find and retrieve the items! She can’t do this alone, she’s just a nun, but she is lucky enough to be friends with some very cool people!

Thank you for the ask, my friend!!! > Get to know my OC <

#Answered #about #I say end goal because I am being very slow about putting the story beats together #because I plan to open this up to friends #so I wanna be REAL CERTAIN AND SURE of things before I start it #because I can change things willy nilly when its just me playing dolls #but if I am including other peoples dolls I wanna be extra careful and mindful so they are also having fun #I've had too many friends who have had other peoples' plots make them feel used or like their OC was ripped from them and made to do #out of character things #you know?#idk #I'm also real bad about plots that focus on my own characters #it feels weird and bad !!!#i don't mind and I actually love filling a bit of NPC role for other people because odette is such a helper #but we're getting there!

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islandfate · 6 months

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woooo boy. so – i'm doing a little lost season one character recap just to kind of find my footing and determine how i feel about these characters on this latest rewatch. which, also, i think this is my 12th rewatch? that's crazy. anyway, i'm going to go through the list of the characters and kind of talk about how i feel, how my views have differed from my previous watch, etc. warning for opinions 😔 but these will be in no particular order! this will also be under a cut bc it's gonna get long lol !!

jack – the only thing i really want to do right here is rant about how much i dislike this character, how he puts a bad taste in my mouth, how he can be a truly terrible doctor and how his stubbornness and judgement lead to awful, terrible decisions. but i'm not going to completely bash this character, no matter how much i'd like to. despite this, there's no easy way to say it, but i just don't like jack. i think he can be a good guy, and i think there are aspects to him that make him an interesting character, but in season one – for me – his flaws completely outweigh his positives. there is just something about him that makes me so frustrated. i genuinely think it's his attitude, that is, his constant belief that his way is the right way. and i'm always here for a frustrating character, i enjoy someone with flaws, but jack's simply ... fall flat, for me. maybe it's because he's meant to be our main character, and he just has zero charisma in my eyes. i think there are so many other characters that draw me in. jack is just there. and usually he's doing something to piss me off, but not in the fun way, in the “i really fucking hate you” way. and i truly do not like that he refuses to help people sometimes ( sawyer ), or that he brushes them off for being annoying ( sullivan ), or brushes them off because he thinks he's always right ( such as with claire's nightmares ). it puts a bad taste in my mouth fr !!! even him punishing kate for not telling him what she did, when he's the one who told her that he didn't care? make up your fucking mind buddy.

but of course, jack can be a compassionate person. and he does feel guilt for the things he does – like with claire's kidnapping – and i'm glad for that. maybe too much guilt sometimes, but i'm not gonna fault him for that because i always love seeing that in a character. him watching sayid torture sawyer and realizing that this is a bad thing we're doing here – i liked that. it was a bad call. and i truly adore the flashback where he turns his father in for drinking, because i cannot even imagine how difficult that would be, and the betrayal on christian's face ( and the pain on jack's ) is honestly hard to watch. and when sawyer tells jack about meeting christian, and how proud he was of jack, i do find myself tearing up every time lol. it just really kills me. anyway, i'm hoping to god that i like him more in season two because jack isn't a character i want to feel this frustrated with. i don't want to dislike him! i never want to look at a character and say “i hate them please get them off my screen” but that's usually how i feel about jack. and i don't know if it's the writing, or the acting, or jack himself – there's just something about his character i don't like. either way, i'm hoping for better things from him in season two.

kate – oh kate ... perhaps my second least favorite character in this show, right behind jack. i want to like her so badly but there's also something about her that frustrates the hell out of me. i think her infatuation with jack – for no reason, might i add – is annoying. and i hate their chemistry, because there is none. seriously, kate works better with sawyer, works better with sun, than with jack. though i will admit, i really like the plot twist of kate being the prisoner, and i do think it's interesting how much compassion she has for people, even the u.s. marshal, but something about her also unfortunately falls flat for me. she's just not all that intriguing in my eyes, and i really wish she was. i do like she and sayid's friendship, i think it's cute, and i think kate is far more interesting in sawyer's scenes. but i think i'd like her even more if she wasn't soooo heavily paired with a man, always. not even romantically, but i just mean, she's always in scenes with a guy! she always wants a dude's help! like, give her something to do on her own. but, truly, i have nothing more to say about kate, and i may never have more to say on her lol. i don't remember being super impressed with her in season two, but it's been a bit since i watched all of that season, so we'll see!

michael – truly, i do not have any words for why michael would be my favorite character in this season. he's frustrating, quick to blame, doesn't always make the best decisions when it comes to walt ... but that is what makes him so damn intriguing to me. i think it's his relationship with walt that really kills me. it's like, he's this character who wanted to be a father so badly but was never really able to be one. he fought tooth and nail to be able to be walt's dad and it just didn't matter. and then susan dies, brian comes by, and michael's reunited with walt. and he has to figure out how to raise his kid ( who isn't really his kid anymore ) and honor susan and brian at the same time. it's such an insanely devastating situation that i can hardly stand it. people misconstrue michael's intensions so much – like when they say he hates being a father. but i don't think that's true. he just doesn't know how to be one. he was never given the chance to! michael definitely has a bit of a hair-trigger temper, but i genuinely do think it's because of walt – most of the time. and also, michael and jin's friendship after everything that happened between them?? i love it so much. anyway, michael stays being one of my favorite characters in this season, and there's not a scene with him that goes by i don't enjoy. his centric episode nearly destroyed me this watch and i don't think i'm ready for the next one, which i know is coming soon. overall, i just really enjoy how michael has such this surface level look about him, then you look deeper and see who he truly is, what his motivations are, his regrets. he's just a really great character in my eyes. also, i'm not going to talk about walt on his own, just know i adore walt and i wrote a fic about him! so, he's def a fav of mine.

locke – i'm gonna be honest! locke has always been a favorite of mine, i absolutely love his flashbacks and i think he's so much fun to watch on screen. terry o'quinn really carries here, and i'm excited because i know just how great future locke scenes are. but, how do i feel about him in season one? well, i found myself ... being a little more on the bitter side with him! i think i formed an attachment to boone and to witness what leads to his death really hurts. and when locke brings him back and lies about what happened, causing jack to misdiagnose the problem – well, it really sucks to see. and i know boone was supposed to die, but that doesn't change the fact that if i was on that island, i'd be pissed at locke for this. aside from that, i really like his belief in the island and those intertwining themes of fate and destiny ... he just brings something that the show really needs. i will never get over this man having been in a wheelchair and walkabout still makes me cry to this day. and being conned out of a kidney? phewwww that's a tough one for me to watch. i love the scene where locke bangs on the hatch and the light beams up – it's so great. but, boone's death really hurt my opinion of locke in season one, but i'm sure this'll improve with time ( until season 4 🙄 ). anyway, the ending of this season really teases the jack and locke dynamic – man of science and man of faith ... they're so fun to watch and i can't wait to see them interact more in s2. but locke in season one is great, up until the moment he isn't. but he grew on me in the finale. his acting is so good i can't not like him, lol.

sayid – well, i suppose i might as well get it over with. so, i've never been much of a sayid stan ... i try, let me tell you, but the feeling just never comes. my opinion of him has been pretty consistent throughout my time watching this show, but i think he's mostly good in season one. and i'm not saying he's a bad character or anything, i simply find his flashbacks to be boring and i have no attachment to nadia as a whole. and i think that him torturing sawyer was awful! but obviously i'm not really here to judge characters based on how terrible of people they are ( look at my fav ... ), obviously these characters have flaws and are not always great people. my “meh” feeling toward him more so has to do with the fact that he falls a little flat, too. at least for me, he does. and i know people love him! i've just never felt much of a connection to him, and i'm not sure i ever will. let's just say, i don't watch this show for him.

charlie – charlie is definitely one of the highlights of this season. drug addict characters always, always draw me in, and i think his personality is just so great. he's definitely on the funnier side, but then we get to his backstory and you see just how fucked up things got for him! i love that he goes to the cockpit only to find his drugs – and i love seeing his notion that he's a coward, that really gets swept away come episode seven. i know, i know. people don't like the moth metaphor. but i've always had a soft spot for it, and i think the combination of acting and writing really brings that scene to life. i adore charlie and claire's relationship and they're just ): so cute. so when they get kidnapped ?!? god damn that angst is so juicy. but anyway, i've always been a fan of charlie's character and that hasn't changed one bit. i can't really remember how prevalent he is in s2 ( aside from fire + water ) but i very much look forward to seeing more of him and what he gets up to. i feel like i have less to say here bc ... idk! he's just a silly guy! i like him a lot, always have, and i don't see that ever changing.

claire – you know, i've never had much of an opinion on claire. she's always kind of just ... been there for me. however, i think because elsie likes her so much, it's really improved my view of her. claire is just so sweet and i can't imagine the terror of being pregnant on a fucking deserted island. she handles it much better than i would've, lol. but her pain and fear is definitely hard to see, and made even more difficult because of jack not believing her 🙄 which, of course. but i really like the ethan plotline and i like the little seeds they plant for s2 – such as showing that small flashback between rousseau and claire in the finale. we still don't know what happened to her! i will admit, i don't have a whole lot more to say here, but i think she's a fun character and i like the stuff they play with concerning the psychic. that's really all!

sawyer – sawyer!!! this man has always been one of my favorite characters and he's forever managed to crack me up... i just think he's hilarious, definitely one of the funniest characters on the show. even in the pilot, when kate asks where the polar bear came from and he says, "probably bear village, how the hell do i know?" i laugh every time. ANYWAY! i definitely thought sawyer was going to be more of an acquired taste this season, which, he is, but he really shines pretty early on. i expected to hate confidence man more, because i've never really liked that episode when watching alone, but it turns out i ... really enjoyed it this time around? i thought it was the perfect blend of realistic and horrific and it was a great way to stir up tension, especially between sawyer and sayid. everyone always assumes the worst of sawyer and they truly don't even bother asking him – they just blame him, which makes him mad ( as it would anyone ), and then he acts like an asshole in turn. he's backed into a corner and it's kind of fascinating to watch and see what he does, how he reacts, etc. and maybe i'm crazy, but i don't see having your own supplies as a ... necessarily bad thing? so many characters accuse him of looting from the dead, but it's not like he's the only one that's done that. and we're shown that in truly life threatening situations ( such as boone ) he's quick to help. i also love his relationship with michael and, by extension, jin, and him being a part of the raft is just so fun. truly, i think sawyer is just so interesting, and i'm very excited to see more of him in season two.

boone – ohhhhh boone. this man is someone i've always had a love / hate relationship with, but at the end of the day, he won my heart over. he's always been someone that wants to help sooo badly ( such as trying to give rose cpr ) and even if that doesn't exactly pan out, he still cares to try. his relationship with shannon is .... odd, to say the least, but i do enjoy most of their interactions. i think boone definitely projects his feelings on to shannon, like calling her useless and worthless, which is probably why he tries to help out as much as he does. and when he and locke find the hatch, this kind of gives him a new purpose, and so does locke. so it's devastating to see boone be convinced to follow locke out to this plane, and you can see that the only thing he wants to do is help. it just!! pains something deep inside of me. even when he's in the plane, it falls because he's trying to get everyone rescued – and i think that's how he deserves to be remembered. i do think his death hits so hard, and while the episode definitely prepares you for it, it's not easy to watch it play out. i love the scene where locke sees boone in his dream, when he's talking about his babysitter, and you see the flashes of him covered in blood. it's really trippy and foreboding and just ... so well done! i love the idea that boone's death majorly effects everything and everyone, not only in this season but in the seasons that follow, and it's nice that the show never forgets about him. i just really like his character and, though i'm sad to see him go, i know it's necessary.

shannon – surprisingly? shannon was one of the most enjoyable characters on this rewatch for me. i never thought much of her before, felt like she was a little annoying, but i genuinely liked her this season and i thought she was hilarious. i'm a little disappointed we didn't get a shannon flashback, but i know we will in season two, so i look forward to that. her grief for boone really fucking pains me and when walt gives vincent to her ... man. that scene hurts. i don't love she and sayid's relationship, to be completely honest, but i really like the scene where she tells him off for getting frustrated with her about the map. i still have mixed feelings about her going after locke after boone's death, but maybe it'll make more sense to me on another rewatch lol. anyway! not too much to say about her, except i enjoyed her presence ( a lot ) and that was a little surprising for me.

sun & jin – i'm combining these two into one, not only because i think they're important to talk about together, but also because i'm feeling a little lazy. anywho, i think it's really fun how the show makes jin out to be a pretty awful guy, but once you see his backstory – see his motivations, his fears – it starts to make a lot of sense. it's funny because jin is definitely one of my favorite characters, but it's pretty hard to like him at first. so i really enjoy his development in the first season, and his friendship with michael is really sweet. as for sun, i do like her! she's another character that's always just been kind of there, but i enjoyed her a lot more on this rewatch. her goodbye to jin before the raft leaves absolutely gutted me. the acting there was phenomenal. and i think it's really special we got these two characters because yunjin kim was so impressive when they were casting. it's upsetting to see these two characters who don't speak english, who are pretty much completely isolated because of this language barrier, but then sun speaks english?! the little twist there is just so great. her weird relationship with michael also isn't my favorite thing. i just really love sun and jin's relationship and how much it develops – they're probably my favorite couple on this show, tbh. and i know kate was behind a lot of the poisoning jin thing, but when jack tells sun he knows it was her, and she says, "are you going to tell the others?" that just BROKE me!! the fear and pain in her voice. ugh. she just wanted to keep him safe and off the raft. also, jin's dad is so sweet and i really love that scene between them in the flashback. and when sun is about to leave jin at the airport and he shows her the flower – god, that makes me cry every time. like full on sobbing. it's so good and their acting and chemistry is just amazing. anyway, i don't have too much more to say on them, but i adore sun and jin so much!!! definitely one of the highlights of this season.

hurley – i feel like it's a little hard for me to say much on hurley, mostly because we don't get toooo much development with him this season. like, we get one flashback but that's really it! so i'm excited to see more of him in season two for sure. but anyway, he's one of the funniest characters on this show and i love his interactions with literally everyone. and there is not one scene with him that i don't like. the numbers are probably my favorite part of this show, and i love his flashback about the curse and winning the lottery and all that. it's just great. and for rousseau to be the one person who tells him that maybe there is a curse? and that she doesn't dismiss what he's saying? it's so euphoric for him, and i love seeing it every time. hurley's friendship with charlie is also great – i just love those two. his flashbacks, alongside locke's, have always been my favorites and i just ... wanna see more of his character and past! he's just such a memorable character, and one of the first i think of when i reminisce about this show.

honorable mentions :

ethan – scary as fuck. this guy has always creeped me out, and the fact that he's tom cruise's cousin will never not be hilarious to me. he definitely scared the shit out of me as a kid and even still gives me the creeps. it's hilarious that the characters, especially charlie, start referring to him as a "what" rather than a "who." i love it. death was deserved, this man wouldn't have said shit.

sullivan – we were just calling him john lennon because we didn't know his name. his rash was a little concerning and jack brushing him off was annoying to me. and when he comes to the golf course and says "can i play?" i just love that scene. where did sullivan go ... 😔

scott & steve – i don't really know the difference between them, but rip scott. he deserved better.

arzt – probably one of my favorite side characters. he's so funny to me, and when he gets blown up i just ... bust out laughing every time. cannot wait to see this idiot again in s3 and s6.

#dr dipshit ( elsie rewatch )#the hills have trees and the trees have branches ( s1 )#THIS TOOK ME A WHILE ....#but i'm glad i got this out before we start s2 lol #i'm hoping to do this for every season! which may be a trying ordeal for me but i wanna get all my thoughts down #and i'm not trying to piss anyone off with these opinions! this is just how i feel #my mind is always open to change <3 #also sorry for writing 3.5k words about these characters idk what to say #also i feel like i missed someone. i don't think i did tho #maybe it's because the other seasons have so many characters #wish me luck on s4 jesus CHRIST #and if anyone has any opinions of their own ... feel free to comment i'd love to hear #character recap

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