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panharmonium · 5 months

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, from the top:

1. the girl with the crush

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. the greater good

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

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

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

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

Anyway. Back to a more measured response.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. she only wants to save you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. the shadow of my family

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

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

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

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

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

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

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junemermaid · 2 months

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writer interview

I was tagged by @vaynglories, @lynne-monstr and @la-muerta all at one point or another. Thank you all kindly, sorry it took me so long! 💗

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

120 unique works. I have two double entries from when the old Yuletide archive was imported to AO3, so the total on my author page is 122. It's missing any fic I wrote before 2005 but honestly I'm fine with those being lost in the mists of the internet. If you know, you know.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,004,161.

I didn't actually wait to do this meme until I passed the one million words mark, but I also kinda did.

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

bodies full of untold stories (malec, E, Shadowhunters) / 1,343

an act of faith against the night (malec, T, Shadowhunters) / 1,037

House of Ash and Salt (dorian x bull, M, DA:I) / 995

Walkers of the Winding Path (malec, E, Shadowhunters) / 933

Talking With Strangers (malec, E, Shadowhunters) / 930

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I used to and it's my one continuing regret that I haven't been able to catch up with my inbox! The greatest reason why I currently seldom reply to comments is that I have such a backlog. The other reason is that I will either answer comments or write more fic, and I'm sure everyone rather that I do the latter. Still, I miss the conversation around fic that replying to comments often generated.

I mean: I need more writing friends and goddamn, please talk to me because I feel detached from fandom and it's the worst thing.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Probably to make the saints attend them long (malec, T, SH) which ends with extremely heavily implied MCD.

I tend to write hopeful to bittersweet endings, so this was a rarity for me.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Define happy ending? I do have one, all souls sheltered, (dorian x bull, T, DA:I) which IS the soft epilogue I wanted those two characters to have after all their toils and troubles.

These two questions mostly tell me that most of my endings don't fit well on the happy to sad scale. I tend to leave characters at points where they can look forward to the future and any acute crises are over, but I really wish "happy for now" or "a happy middle" would stick as ending descriptions because that's where I live.

7. Do you write crossovers?

I write fusions? Not traditional crossovers but I have a very niche fic thing where I take Alec and Magnus and stick them into the worlds of videogames I love. To wit, the Witcher (Walkers of the Winding Path) and Final Fantasy X (Servant of the Spiral).

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yep. Didn't much care for it.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do! I've written my share of PWP but more typically the process goes something like this:

I find a kink/trope/sex situation I want to try writing

the fic grows copious amounts of plot/worldbuilding/interpersonal drama (exhibit A: the tentacle porn that came with 3,000 words of, uh, creature logistics so I could have tentacles)

I spend two years working on bullet point two before the characters ever get naked in each other's company

My smut fic tends to the tender/longing/emotional, though. I use sex mostly as a vehicle for character exploration or to drive the drama of a story, so most of my sex scenes pull double duty to also move the overall story forward.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge. I'm a pretty niche writer in most of my fandoms, I don't think you would make either much fandom fame or big bucks with my writing.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! to make the saints attend them long is translated into Italian.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No. I'm a slow writer and I have to hew out writing time from the bedrock of my RL, so it wouldn't be very conducive to sharing a creative project, even though the basic idea appeals to me.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I was gonna make a joke about being asked to rate my children, but tbh I would rather not refer to fictional characters by any family term. However! I have changing obsessions and there's always some ship or canon that is eating up my brain at any given time, but I don't really get over ships. The details of canons fade with time but characters live forever in my heart.

Back in the mists of time, Ichigo and Rukia changed who I was as a person. (Then I added in Renji and It Got Better.) I adore Alec and Magnus but the fandom was categorically A Lot. Same with Dorian and Bull. Josephine and Cassandra were a total crack ship in the sense that there's no canon but I still love the idea of an f/f lady/champion pairing.

And right now I have two competing wuxia ot3s vying from my attention so. This is not a question I can answer.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

My general fic writing philosophy is "whatever you can, whenever you can". I've made my peace with the fact that sometimes I'll start a thing and post a bit and then it simply won't get finished. Fic is free and no one has to click on a WIP (much as I love those people who will!)

So, unfortunately there's a few old WIPs on my ao3 that I don't think will ever get wrapped. The older the fic, the less likely it is. I keep them up as testament to the process, I suppose, or in case anyone likes the idea enough to read whatever I managed of it.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Putting canon under a lens until I have a mental Wall of Crazy with ten thousand interconnecting red strings and obscure notes, and then wringing story out of elements in the text that might not seem to connect on the surface.

I know sometimes you have to just wholesale go "this makes zero sense" and drop a bit of canon, but what I enjoy is taking bits and pieces and adapting them to fic. My current project is writing all the Mu Nihuang POV she really kind of doesn't get in Nirvana in Fire itself, and I am having a blast.

Also: character voice, action scenes, evocative description, setting up an emotional punch and taking you out with it 2,000 words later

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm slow, picky, and obsessive. I have to be In A Mood before I can put words to paper (I'm trying to combat this by becoming more of a garbage goblin about my first drafts. All words are good words! Hissss!) I'm bad at humour unless I'm accidentally funny.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

It can be used to good effect but it's best used sparingly. I would generally always prefer that plot-relevant or important dialogue were simply, "This is the murder weapon," she said in French. Don't withhold information or emotional impact for the sake of showing off.

And oh god, never, ever put dialogue through MTL and expect it to come out right. If you absolutely need dialogue in a foreign language, consult an actual person that speaks it.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Very technically, ElfQuest. For actual published fic, Rurouni Kenshin.

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

Mysterious Lotus Casebook tickles my brain but I don't yet quite know what I want to write about! I have enough trouble herding the rowdy cats that are my NiF ideas right now.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Always the one I'm working on. So much of the joy of fic is bound up in the good creative rush of making it happen. Just as so much of the woe of fic is in the fucking toil of making it happen.

Anyway! Flowers in Dreamland Weather (jingsuhuang, E, Nirvana in Fire) got me out of a slump and gave me new characters and relationships to rotate in my head, and I love it for that.

Talking With Strangers (malec, E, Shadowhunters) actually got finished in a satisfying way, and I love it for that.

Maybe those are my current answers.

I will no-pressure tag — @theotherjax, @electricshoebox, @faejilly, @sinni-ok-sessi, @ladymatt, and anyone that still wants to do this! I've seen this doing the rounds, so if you haven't yet, please feel free to blame me for enabling you!

#meme me #june does a meme #june answers #june rambles #my fanfic #I've forgotten all my fic tags #the writing life #writing is the best hobby #writing is the worst hobby

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discluded · 6 months

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On MA and fanservice. Seems like discussion in anglophone spaces misses cultural expectations - many things MA do and say are expected of them as being a cp (even for het cp). Many actors in the thai BL world are very obviously queer - they dont hide, they just dont come out. Unpopular opinion, I honestly do think these couples (when both are queer) are getting together at the same rates as the het cps. Its human nature to like a person who is compatible with you and shares your interests.

[context]

FOR THE RECORD, I think most of his research happened in 2021 or early 2022 so like, MileApo would not be a blip on his radar during the time he would be talking to industry insiders. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Also hilariously just, take his big-headed declarations with a grain of salt. Appreciate it for what it is, but he got into a feud with one of my RL friends about Johnny's fandom a couple of months ago so 🤣 he's very self-important about how he has ~insider access too

Friend, I don't feel comfortable legislating morality. When it's a matter of fandom history / context with multiple perspectives discussed, sure, but in many instances, I don't know you might extrapolate approval or disapproval.

Also, this is not chastisement so don't take it as such, but I want to encourage everyone to be more confident in their own opinions.

If you don't feel it's wrong, like the tone of your message implies, then you don't need my or anyone's approval. And if not seeking validation of your opinions is hard for you sometimes, then practice!

I feel strongly about mentioning this since your message came in the context of me mentioning HP fandom history and toxic fandom participants, and I have no qualms highlighting who some of these people are and what they did when they took advantage of others with their more assertive personalities.

One such individual is thanfict!on (lol don't want them to find me) but this person not only caused drama in HP and other fandoms but also led a cult that eventually led to the deaths of some cult members. (See the fanlore article I linked about them.)

In regards to practicing cult/groupthink protective behaviors, it also help buffer against political propaganda.

But to answer your question: 1) it's not criminal in any way nor is it hurting anyone to believe such a thing and 2) as long as you are aware that an opinion about the people's relationships [general] is irrelevant to how those relationships actually are and don't get angry when there's evidence pointing to otherwise, then it's fine. A . absolutely asinine example of this was I once saw a person said their "opinion" was that Mile was closer to Build than to Apo... *makes Oprah "see" gesture*. Or the toxic solos who keep insisting that Mile and Apo barely tolerate each other, though their narrative is always a mess.

In many cases, we don't know the specifics of people's relationships with each other, and as long as you understand your own opinion has no effect on that actual relationship, there's no problem if you think one way or another. 🤷🏻‍♀️

For the record, I think my opinion is perfectly clear :) I trust y'all ability in reading comprehension. I just don't believe in telling people how to think or guiding them to a conclusion. I have faith in your abilities to do what's right for yourself.

The lovely thing about having differing opinions but civil conversation is that we can still respect each other and disagree! No harm, no foul. Some things set me off more than others, and we all come from contexts in which certain things are more sensitive than others.

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prpfs · 6 months

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👁 Hi. Michael, he/him, ~25-30, GMT+1. I mainly do fandombased NSFW M/M RPs, preferably Canon/Canon or Oc/Canon.

Main rules and wants:

- I'm looking for something weekly or monthly. I work evenings, so I'm often only available during nighttime.

- Loosely connected oneshots are preferable. Longrunning scenes that drag on for weeks wear me out.

- 20+ is preferable. 18+ is a must. - Crossovers OK.

- Single and multipara both work for me, it varies with what the scene needs.

- I shan't lie, when I say that my interest lie mainly in NSFW RPs, I do really mean just that. I like buildup and tension and Will They Won't They kinda scenarios, but the main goal is smut.

- Noncon and dubcon preferable-- if it's consensual, it gotta be weird. We're talking like obsessive and possessive devotion, two people who are into each other in a horribly toxic way.

- Gore is lovely.

- 🍪 is OK.

- My main hard no are Meek Submissive Males. I need characters who know how to bite back.

- RL faceclaims are kinda meh for me.

- OC/OC original scenarios are fine, I think. I love power imbalance scenarios (patient/doctor, priest/normal guy, teacher/student, etc etc.)

- I'm available on Discord or F-List.

Fandoms:

- Elden Ring (I have a Tarnished, and I can try my hand at Miquella and Blaidd.)

- Katana Zero (I write Zero.)

- Fear & Hunger (I can try out Le'garde, Ragnvaldr, Marcoh or Henryk?)

- Baldur's Gate 3 (I have a Tav/OC.)

- Darkwood (Wolfman)

- DOOM (Doomslayer looking for a Samuel...)

- FAITH (John)

- Signalis (ADLR)

- Blasphemous (Pentient One)

- Outlast Trials (Reagent)

... honestly, there's many more.

like if you're interested and anon will get back to you

#elden ring rp #katana zero rp #fear and hunger rp #bg3 rp #darkwood rp #doom rp #faith rp #signalis rp #blasphemous rp #outlast trials rp #fandom rp #fandom roleplay #dead dove

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snowdream · 1 year

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(Endwalker MSQ spoilers ahead)

Okay, I just have to get this off my chest: I wholly love Urianger’s development. I know I’m by far not the only one who feels this way, but I needed to say this. There’s not a single NPC my opinion of which has changed as drastically as Urianger. (Not Alphinaud, either, because I always loved Alphinaud even when most people hated him.)

Originally, I found Urianger intriguing, but soon lost interest when I felt there was nothing behind his facade. For a while, I even thought he’d work with the Ascians - you know, as a twist after the whole ordeal with Thancred.

In Shadowbringers, there were some great moments with him, but I didn’t fancy him. Now in Endwalker though... Gods, I love this man. My final breaking point was when the Loporrits tried to get him to work with them in secret. I fully expected him to agree, given how many times he had done that before. Always keeping secrets, always plotting something behind the scenes, always lying to his friends though never in bad faith. But then he talked to the Loporrits and goodness, how he talked to them. So gentle, so understanding, so caring. There hadn’t been any wrong side in that argument to begin with - it is a matter of course that everyone would try all in their might to save their home planet, yet at the same time I completely understand the Loporrits’ disappointment after they’ve worked for aeons to save us during the final days. And Urianger... he was so fantastic, there is no other word. The way he resolved the situation, but moreover the fact that he did NOT choose the path of secrecy this time was such a great deal to me.

And now I just played the part where he meets Moenbryda’s parents (I’m way behind on EW for real life reasons), and I am all but crying. I can whole-heartedly say that I’m glad that Urianger is part of the game because he made it better, and maybe made me a little better as a person as well.

Thanks for listening; I have no one to share this with in rl and I’m just bursting with emotions right now.

#ffxiv #urianger augurelt #endwalker spoilers #ew spoilers #ffxiv endwalker spoilers #ffxiv ew spoilers

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liesmyth · 1 year

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(2/2) and actually fucking her sleeping body? Again, I really don’t care about people writing or talking about fucked up scenarios and I enjoy doing it myself, but I think when we do that it’s good to be clear on exactly what kinds of fucked-upness we’re talking about

reply under the cut. gonna tag this specific scenario #harrow x the body from now on

I appreciate you sending a good faith follow-up ask! But... I'm just not interested in interrogating myself on the moral implications of this scenario; the question of whether a human-shaped planet would perceive this hypothetical scenario as a violation; whether or not chained-up-Alecto is a sleeping person and whether Harrow would perceive her as such vs. something more like a religious statue or personified deity etc. I don't care enough to nail down the specific shade of fucked up of having sex with a woman-shaped earth who's technically currently dead but also conscious enough to possess Harrow.

It's also a factually impossible scenario, which mean that different people WILL perceive it in different ways and have different visceral reactions to it, and subjectively liken it more or less strongly to RL SA. We all bring our baggage into it. "X upsets me, can you tag it?" = very doable. "we should dissect the specific shades of fucked up of this scenario" = subjective and ultimately pointless, because people will never agree

Same goes for other dub/noncon tropes like fuck or die, sex pollened into incoherence, possessed/bodysharing sex etc. It's wildly personal, might squick or trigger different people in different ways, etc.

#anonymous #ask #harrow x the body #<<< for blocklist

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lilyblackdrawside · 2 months

Text

With the weekend upon me, I took some time today to clear Trial 4 of the currently running Trials for Navigator. Which turned out to just be the easiest of all of them. Basic aside, I cleared the other three versions of it first try.

This one got a bit long. My impressions under the shortener.

Trial 1 - Survival of the Fittest featuring best guy Pancho Salas and Big Ugly + High Priest was actually kinda troublesome for me. Probably/Likely largely due to stubbornness, but I also really didn’t vibe with its Decoder Squad.

„Work Hard, Get Paid“ might be true in some parts of life, but when 30% of my squad is Standard Bearer Vanguards and all non-Vanguards eat all DP all at once, it really throws me off.

I liked it though. Good vibes in both stage parts, I should’ve probably just brought a Medic and Tank to tank Pancho instead of doing my damndest to burst him down. When an enemy punches even through Hellagur, I tend to throw out all notions of facing it in melee combat.

Trial 2 - Blood and Terror with Tola, Dikaiopolis and the Damazti Cluster was pretty alright. Wave 2 was the only one here that gave me trouble, mostly because it’s such a cramped space. I did clear Orientation and Spectacular first try, but it took quite some time both times because I let him refresh his phase one. Eventually brute force and some luck won out there.

Seeing Damazti Cluster as the third boss had me a bit worried, but there weren’t any problems there really. They just don’t do much damage and the Yan Decoder Squad bonus was well enough to cover any kind of desired healing.

On that note, this squad is just busted. You get three very strong operators and a super strong bonus that lets you fly without Medics or a defensive Limiter Unit, freeing up precious squad slots. (Not that I’d have brought Medics otherwise either.)

Trial 3 - Deep in Danger hosted by Bishop Quintus, The First To Talk and The Endspeaker actually kinda sucked, once again solely because of Wave 2.

The First To Talk is just really annoying. I made a good effort to stop the creep droppers in phase one from dropping their creep outside of the little box and it worked out pretty well on all versions of the trial. Had I not done that, I can imagine the dodgey fellas being quite annoying on Wave 2.

But then again, I did have Erato and Gnosis who bring very reliable control to handle them.

On that note: Erato. She clears this one. TFTT and Endspeaker are both not opposed to sleepytimes and with the Overcharge Limiter Unit, Erato has enough SP to permanently sleep an enemy. Just don’t give her +23 ASPD, that’ll ruin her rhythm. Due to that, Wave 3 was a total nothingburger. The Endspeaker aside, there's nothing potentially threatening. Maybe if they had enemies that spread creep, then the handsy guys would be stealthed and that's be rough.

The Rhine Lab Decoder Squad is probably really good, but I lack the operators to utilize it. For some people, this Decoder Squad might just be the most powerful. I could see a glimpse of its strength in Trial 3 and if you can load up your squad a lot of RL operators, it’ll probably go well.

Trial 4 - Path of the Faithful led by Father Agenir, Andoain and Zaaro wasn’t troublesome at all. I actually saw this coming, because Zaaro isn’t a big deal, Father Agenir is easy to handle too and Andoain once again sits on Wave 2 so in the worst case Scenario I could just optimize against him, beat him, lose on Wave 3 and then brute force him with the Entitative Program. But in the end I didn’t even have to do that, because the Yan Decoder Squad is that powerful. I went with a bunch of my usual Snipers as offense: May, GreyThroat, Totter and Fartooth.

Fartooth did a great job here both with handling Andoain, where she deals great damage even through his reduction field while bypassing evasion and for Zaaro, where she has two great sniping spots - one where he waits in the top left corner and one for his final approach on the right.

Totter was instrumental for handling the sneaky guys, and also helped out with damaging the bosses. He has good per-hit damage with S2 as long as there’s only one enemy, so he’s always useful.

May... does May things. With the Overcharge LU she has a perma slow on S1, which worked great vs Andoain to keep him longer in Fartooth’s range. I also sicced her on the dog in Wave 1 together with Totter and did it again with the big dog in Wave 3 who just gets nowhere while slowed like that.

GreyThroat... I mean, she just shoots people. She did decent damage to Agenir, not enough to kill him in Spectacular and Ultimate, and then did good damage to Zaaro Phase 1 where I slowed him with both May and Elysium (+ def debuff) to the point that she could unload two rounds of her S2 with only three tiles of Zaaro being in range. This was enough to clear his Phase 1 in all but Ultimate Trial, where he was left with some 10%. Good job.

As for the Limiter Units... I only used the Overcharge one. You get 0.5 SP/s per stack, so 1.5sp/s after a minute of being deployed and that’s just stupid.

There’s nothing in this lineup that has nearly as much value as this.

I did consider the Recovery Boost for Trial 4 before I went into it, because together with the Yan Decoder Squad you’d get some disgusting sustain but I stuck with Overcharge for looking at it and then I saw that the stage moves super far with each Wave, which would’ve made it impractical anyway. You’d only get anything out of it on Wave 3, but only for left operators and that’s just not the part of the map where you take damage. Offense always wins in the end. (Except for Kirsten, I’ll stall her for 20 minutes any day.)

Recovery Boost gets really strong at level 3 with 45% Sanctuary and 40% increased healing, but I found that I pretty much always pulled my whole squad after each wave with maybe one or two exceptions, which usually included Skalter who doesn't get anything out of it. Good idea, but not the right stages for this one.

Strategy Expansion seems neat, but I don’t think you need redeployment time reduction in a game mode where you can just strategically pull your operators before you end a wave so you have everyone available on time for the next one. You can also find enemies to stall with one operator to recover DP and redeploy time. Having +3 Deployment Limit is pretty good, but I was never wanting for it even with Ling. You’d have to go super Summoner mode to get anything out of this one. Not saying it’s bad, just the most niche of the four.

Experience Acquisition seems... limp. Like, you get +40% ATK. Okay, now what? While you’re sitting at +40%, I’m activating skills five seconds after they’ve expired and get way bigger buffs and utility from them because I’m using the Overcharge unit. And you have to work for your +40% buff too. Dunno, this one doesn’t look great.

Overcharge I’ve already talked about. It’s easily the best one here. You can’t argue with having 250% SP regen.

And that’s that. Quite enjoyable once again, looking forward to the next one hopefully being more painful!

#arknights #long post

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chaos0pikachu · 6 months

Note

your oroborous gmmtv metaphor is etched into my brain so much

obv it's not just them (all media houses that do bl in thailand) but the frustrating way that they fail to cpaitalise on the amazing actors because of prioritising their commodified (rl) ships over the work is such a lost opportunity

most of their 2024 stuff is so stale, and it shows that its written around the ship and not actors casted for a script

I love that that metaphor has proven so apt yees my chaos is rising bless

Also, agree tbh on what you're saying.

I'd say gmmtv is the worse when it comes to this I'm not as familiar with other studios, but I feel like BOC a least would be potentially willing to like, let Apo do a series or film without Mile. From the spoilers I've been told about Man Saung, Apo's char even has a lot of sexual tension with a completely different char not played by Mile. Which is awesome! It shows the narrative takes more importance over this falsified capitalistic idea of "branded couples".

Tinhats will tinhat no matter what, but from the press I've seen while there's some tongue-in-cheek regarding Mile and Apo they mostly talk about their profession as actors, Apo and Bible did interviews together too, the marketing of Apo and Mile can also be separate they aren't depicted as a "branded couple" in the same way ForceBook are from what I've seen. I know Mandee has a series coming out with Nat and Max where Nat has another love interest and it seems like it'll be an actual love triangle not this limp shit Only Friends gave us.

Like gmmtv are out here selling sticker sheets of their branded couples. Not of like the characters they play but the actors. To me, that's the difference. It encourages fans to stop seeing the characters first and see the actors first making it hard to differentiate the two. It turns the actors less into actors and more into dolls that just play dress up in a new fanfic AU.

There were two shows from their 2024 line up that look fun - that big dick boxer one and Golden Blood - but I lack faith in gmmtv's ability to 1) fund their god damn shows and 2) fulfil the premise they advertise in my experiences they always falter hard after the first 4/5 episodes and the rest of the series becomes boring padding to a limp finish. I have no interest in EarthMix's new show and idk who FourthGemini are I didn't watch My School President nor will I b/c I don't care about high schoolers

#chaos pikachu speaks

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ashtraythief · 1 year

Note

If it helps, I always thought you’d finish this fic. I know you won’t abandon it, for our sake but also for yours. It’s your baby!!!! I can’t see you doing that. So anons, calm down and know it’s coming and it’s going to be great. Sorry about the anons asking about it, and know that most of us do trust and believe in you. You’ve been through so many life changes, and you still have been pumping this fic out for us. Thank you for that. We know you wouldn’t give up on it now. Also I love you! Your one of my favorite writers because you are down for whatever niche and strange things we ask you, and very willing to answer questions and talk about this fic. I really appreciate that, and know it must get annoying haha. But you are always so nice, so thank you for being you!

Oh nonnie, I love you. Thank you so much for your wonderfully kind message ❤️

Don't worry, I don’t mind anons asking me if I will finish, not really, because every one of them is someone who cares about this story enough to send me a message about it and that means a lot! And I do understand the anxiety, but there’s also not much else I can say and hope they’ll be there with me until the end. I really just wish I could reassure people better.

But I very much appreciate the support! And the faith! You’re right, this one really is my baby (no less infuriating that a real one I sometimes think lol), and it’s been one of the few constants in my life the last eight year, so yeah. This fic and me is ride or die.

And you do not annoy me! I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the support for this story blows me out of the water every damn time and it means the world to me. And you’re really just indulging me and my love for this verse when you ask me about it. Trust me, it makes me happy every time 😅 Absolutely no annoyance whatsoever!

Lol, I am definitely down for all the strange and all the niche, where else would be the fun in life?

One of the beauties of fanfic is that it’s part of a community, that you use a host of common tropes, fanons, a whole secret language basically to talk to each other about the things you love. I love writing itself, but there’s so much joy in sharing. It’s about the validation of course (who doesn’t love to get told they did a good job?😅), but it’s also about shared joy (or pain), about being together as a community. And for RPS especially, this could be original fic. Like, obviously, I’m building on fandom’s familiarity with these characters, and hitting certain tropes and some fanon/convention characteristics (Chad as agent of chaos, Jensen and his coffee addiction, Jared and his dogs, though Jared is probably the furthest away from his rl persona), but I’m not drawing on a source here like SPN fic. This story doesn't need to be J2 fanfic. It could be anything. But it’s so much fun to do that in a fandom, in this specific fandom, and interacting with you guys is a wonderful part of that. So please never stop 💜

#anon ask #all the love nonnie

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randomnameless · 1 year

Text

I posted 1,740 times in 2022

That's 437 more posts than 2021!

1,185 posts created (68%)

555 posts reblogged (32%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@crushednugget

@randomnameless

@ezralahm

@nilsh13

I tagged 1,737 of my posts in 2022

#fe16 - 731 posts

#anon - 635 posts

#replies - 629 posts

#3 nopes - 349 posts

#fe heroes - 282 posts

#fodlan nonsense - 236 posts

#rhea stuff - 157 posts

#fandom woes - 129 posts

#crushednugget - 116 posts

#heroes nonsense - 103 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#je n'ai pas fait beaucoup d'histoire mais au bout d'un moment se rendre compte que x écrit n"importe quoi dans des posts qui se veulent meta

My Top Posts in 2022:

Have you seen this video yet? Thoughts? https://youtu.be/vnCvO-KMUfo

Alrighty!

Roughly speaking, this video tries to make links between FE16 and RL History. Alas, some comparisons are not really relevant.

edit : after watching this, I lost faith in humanity

edit 2 : i do not have a degree in History, but I know how to make pancakes with bananas

Let’s start with the Church of Seiros!

The church of Seiros mirrors the Roman Catholic Church

It starts with a blast, I see.

IIRC, a friend made a post to debunk it, then it was Bernie’d to death, but ultimately, 360 notes later, everyone agreed it was just an aesthetical flair, and not a comparison based on definite points.

Here :

religious + political influence during medieval and early modern times

the process of coronation

Rhea is a witness, she isn’t the one to put the crown on Emperors + since when only the Archbishop has to crown monarchs from the kingdom? Is it in the sekrit Dedue+Hubert Paralogue?

Monasteries ok

KoS = templars?? Private military? Templars went haywire during the crusades

Since when the KoS were used to fight against Almyrians?

Also, Nemesis was a joint effort between Rom- Adrestia and the KoS (ffs i don’t even know if the Knights were a thing back then)

I don’t remember randoms from the, back then, Kingdoms, being able to petition the Church to help and ask them to send their templars to get rid of bandits.

Indulgence Taxes written in latin so the masses couldn’t revolt since they couldn’t know it wasn’t in the bible (uhh) = Rhea’s rewriting of history to preserve the society based on crests

Rhea rewrote history not to preserve the society based on crests, but to preserve the people who had a crest, aka her own family but also every Elite’s children and grandchildren and etc etc.

Censorship : There used to be an index of prohibited books that were considered as heresy. The Shadow Library has books... deemed as heresy by Seteth?

But Seteth himself only banned porn - is that person even aware what is a heresy or not?

The greatest similarity between the two churches is the use of relics -

Oh god

“it used body parts as relics”

Thank goodness

---

Then a part on Nabateans, this is going to be sterile since FE16 doesn’t give three figs about them.

Nabateans lived in a desert - ancient desert cities carved in stone?

The Youtuber made a link to the IRL Nabateans, living in a desert and who founded Petra, in modern Jordania. The CG for Sothis overseeing people seems to be set in a desert to, so here goes.

See the full post

40 notes - Posted April 18, 2022

I was thinking about something during Tru Piss/Nopes timelines where Dimitri and Rhea could have talked about things, ultimately their issues and found a “kindred soul” in their misery -

But it ended up as Dimitri asking Rhea if people who die always ascend to the Goddess or if they are still walking the earth, full of regrets and hatred, and if there is a way to liberate them from their torment -

and while Dimitri is thinking about his Father, Glenn and the other voices who haunt him -

Rhea’s thinking about her siblings turned into relics, and if Dimitri knows what his Relic truly is

Rhea says they have to win the war, to prevent anyone else from suffering the same fate, and while Dimitri wonders if she also hears voices because why is she using “anyone else” otherwise, he is too polite to point it out.

41 notes - Posted August 11, 2022

I wanted to hijack a friend’s post about this issue but then I forgot and all -

Faerghus has some “reasonable” relationships with its Sreng Neighbour - border issues about land being annexed by some people a very long time ago, raids are launched to recover the lost land, and fortifications are built, etc etc. The two countries have some kind of, let’s say, not super friendly relations, but some people tried to make things better

(then Golden Shower)

Adrestia... annexed Brigid, killed its king, and took its Princess hostage - effectively turning it in a vassal state, the Princess can sometimes return to Brigid, depending on the endings, only if she marries an Adrestian official, otherwise, she becomes Adrestia’s and its current Emperor’s “will”, effectively losing all political future.

Now, both Adrestia and Faerghus (even if the latter sheds some light on those issues) isn’t mainly concerned about border disputes and relationships with a foreign state.

That is reserved for Claude’s stories, and Fodlan’s “mighty” neighbour, Almyra.

All along the Fodlan games, we’re told Claude tries to find a way to make both countries accept each other, mainly fueled by his own history as someone born to Almyrians and Fodlan parents.

Is there a way to stop the “suspicion” Fodlanese people have about Almyrians, and is there a way to make Fodlan accept people who are from other states/countries in the world?

However, each time some light is shed on Almyra, we see a pretty different picture than what happens in Sreng, or even in Brigid.

Claude, through both games, suspects (at first in FE16) that Fodlan’s so called isolationism, and general defiance regarding “foreigners” is the result of the Church of Seiros’s doctrine and tenants.

Effectively pulling an Adrestia, that is using a particular situation to make a general statement - Leicester’s riches exist because several Leicester Houses trade a lot with foreign countries, Edmund won a seat in the Alliance thanks to that trade! Trade routes exist ! - and the particular situation Claude is thinking/talking about is always Almyra.

Now, what do we know about Almyra?

It’s a large nation east of Fodlan, it attempted to invade once, 2/3 of Fodlan sided together to fend them off, and the Church spearheaded the creation of a fortress - the Throat - to defend against future invasions.

Motives for their invasion? For Sreng, we know it is to recover lost land and first and foremost to recover arable land.

In Houses, with Cyril, we learn the Almyrians raid are done for “fun”, without any real motives bar “proving their strength” and ultimately leading to a feast after the battle.

In Nopes, Shahid mounts a giant invading force to... make his father notice him, in a succession crisis.

Sadly, let it be in Nopes or in Houses, Claude doesn’t seem to have anything to say about the raids/invasions.

In his Cyril support, we learn that Almyra has no kind of failsafe for people who have nowhere else to go, or “people without status” in the world, unlike Fodlan who has, well, Rhea.

The political situation in Almyra? We have a king... who has multiple wives (consorts?) and his children are fighting for his throne, and are not above trying to kill each other to get a shot.

The King also seems to be a weak-willed/easy to manipulate person, as shown in Golden Shower, when Nader apparently manages to get him to lend him the Almyrian navy to instigate a conflict in a far away country.

As for Almyra’s, uh, behaviour and relationships with other states...

I’ve laughed about it a lot, but it seems pillaging is not frowned upon, given how, in Nopes, Nader wants to bring “souvenirs” and is lightly chided by Lorenz about a certain “promise” not to pillage the Kingdom...

Combining all of this, and we have Almyra being a country with a “great military might”, who invades for “fun” or to show for X or Y reason that Prince A or Prince B has a very large peepee thus is suited to take the throne (or a lot of muhrit?), and whose most famous general seems to enjoy pillaging. It also doesn’t seem to care for its orphaned children and has a very weak willed king who is abused by anyone/everyone crafty enough.

It’s... kind of depressing.

I know a lot of people really had hopes (lel) for Almyra, given the attention given to details like clothing, or flags, but what the Fodlan games depicted Almyra to be is... Well, I wouldn’t say downright insulting, but we’re back in the Kaga era of “Persia = Verdane = burly axemen who abduct women and have no government” which is very sad on two fronts :

1) I still have faith in IS and KT and put it on ignorance and wanting to paint an “exotic” country, without any, uh, problematic undertones like this fantasy country is heavily inspired by some entities who existed in real life and painting them as happy go lucky barbarians who invade for fun and pillage everything they can isn’t very nice -> Just like the Nabateans issue being sidelined to side with Supreme Leader who spouts at some point very... real life sounding nauseabond rhetoric, the devs didn’t mean to endorse certain real life thoughts and opinions, but damn if it really sucks

2) Claude.

Claude’s entire character is about bringing together people who believe they are different and built borders around themselves.

But Claude never ever engages, or is confronted, to what we see and what we learn of Almyra.

Nopes even jokes about it, since he and Lorenz are gently chiding Nader on his “bringing souvenirs” tendencies.

See the full post

43 notes - Posted September 4, 2022

HCs about Rhea's homonculi?

Oh...

Bael : The first vessel! Rhea has a complicated relationship with Bael, since they were the first and basically the culmination of her despair - find some way to create an artificial body without having to sacrifice anyone. Bael wasn't viable and died after 12 days - Rhea took it very badly and fell in depression for nearly 100 years. Bael wasn't really someone, but they still died, so were they really "alive" even as a host, or not? Disgusted at what she did, she swore to never recreate any vessel.

Agares : Born after the first Faerghian rebellion and Ionius II's words of "minding her own business" since he was tasked with guiding Fodlan, and he would slaughter as many northerners as he wanted. Agares died before uttering a word, his body shattered like sand, and in a night, he disappeared.

Vassago : The first vessel to talk - or to try to. Rhea thought Sothis wasn't able to vocalise, but ultimately, she became unstable and wasn't able to keep a material form after her 30 month of existence.

Samigina : Sam was born as a younger child, Rhea thought Vassago and Agares's bodies failed because they were not strong enough to contain the progenitor God's powers, maybe if their physical body grew - biologically - and became more and more accustomed to Sothis's power, the vessel would work ? Sam lived and grew as a human child for around 8 years, but without any signs of the Progenitor God manifesting - Rhea suspected as much, the vessel didn't like Zanado Fruits.

Samigina fell apart the first time she tried to perform a magic spell (to heal a kitten).

Valefor : Valefor failed to develop any Nabatean traits, or even ability to use magic. Rhea thought she completely failed this time, but the vessel didn't show any signs of deterioration and seemed to be in perfect health, as any human. He preferred to stay inside and play enigmas (Sothis's mischievous nature?) but he too died, not of natural causes though, but when a member of an eastern sect of the Church set the Monastery on Fire.

Rhea was completely devastated.

Amon : Amon grew to be a talented user of magic (on par with Macuil!) even if Rhea insisted on him not using his powers too much. Wanting to know why and what he was, Rhea told him everything when she thought he was "old" enough to handle it.

Amon was found dead the following day, leaving a note to her apologising for being a failure.

Barbatos : Convinced the truth was too much for any vessel to know, Rhea promised to never reveal anything to Barbatos - who managed to nearly reach adulthood! But then for some reason he wanted to become a Knight of Seiros, and while she expressly forbade it, he still did it anyways.

Barbie was super skilled with the axe, and rumor says he never ever used any object, even a mere vulnerary. He died when a certain "wandering" demonic beast popped up near Garreg Mach, while Rhea was in what would become Faerghus meeting Jeralt. Barbie's achievements are still recorded in the Order's history.

Paimon : Paimon often said she'd leave Garreg Mach to travel, and Rhea did not forbid it per se (it might have been the reason why Barbie died, if she never forbade him to fight, he might not have been so intent on joining the Knights) she kept on telling her it would be too dangerous for her health. Paimon thus decided to become a painter, based on the stories merchants would share - Rhea finally relented and allowed her to travel (but not too far, only to Remire!). On her deathbead - at 40 (Rhea thus learnt her vessels's cells declined faster than hers, a nabatean, but also, faster than a human), Paimon made Rhea promise to let the next vessel travel and see the world -

Rhea was shaken, how did she know? Was she truly Sothis? Paimon apologised for not being a good vessel or not even her mother - and died before confessing she saw Rhea as a mother.

Buer : Buer learnt when he was “old” enough what he was, but instead of falling into despair like Amon, he thought he was superior to humans, calling them “inferior beings”. He was sure he was a part of the progenitor God, thus, rightly superior to those “lowlives”.

Rhea felt guilty for fueling his delusions of self-grandeur, but she didn’t want him to break when he’d learn the truth, so made sure to let him know he was special, and very important (to her, but she often omitted the last part).

Buer spearheaded the insurrection of the Southern Church in Adrestia, saying the Emperor has no right to guide humans since he is also one of them - Emperor Friedrich V was furious and wanted his head, especially since Buer taunted him by flaunting his Major Crest of Seiros when the Emperor only had a minor one. Rhea disagreed with his meaningless provocations, but the vessel told her he was special, and those humans were worthless, after all, didn’t they prove it too many time already? However, the vessel went haywire when he used too much of his crest power, and transformed in a mindless demonic (?) beast - Rhea had to put him down, and she still has nightmares about it.

Gusion : Gusion was a silent but thoughtful type of vessel, always trying to give sound advices, from how to feed a cat to building houses with straw when she was playing the Fodlan version of Legos.

Rhea really really really thought Gusion was the one - because the houses resemble the ones in Zanado when the vessel never went there - but when Rhea received Etienne Fraldarius’s relic (Etienne was the first “Holy” Knight, relic wielding knight of the Order), Gusion’s behaviour became erratic and she tried to destroy the relic and the crest stone. What happened happened, Gusion became parasited by the Relic and turned into a Black Beast - Rhea still had nightmares about Buer and her role in his death, so Jeralt had to deal the final blow.

To this day, he still wonders if Rhea hates him for killing that person who became a demonic beast, but to Rhea, it was a sign everything she was doing was worthless, and she needed Sothis’s guidance more than ever.

Sitri was the last homonculi created - she fell in love with Jerry and ultimately they brought Billy.

51 notes - Posted January 4, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

2004-2005 :

Joshua:

“Listen… You can’t reduce a nation to loot waiting to be divided. And more importantly, I made a vow to my mother. I’m going to succeed her as ruler of my homeland. Hey Caellach… You’re the one who killed my mother, aren’t you?”

Caellach:

“Yeah… Sorry ’bout that. Things happen, you know? C’mon, Joshua, don’t hate me. This is war. There’s nothing you can do about it. Besides, grudges get in the way of work, right?”

2022 :