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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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verflares · 8 days

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i Wish i had some degree of sewing/plushmaking powers because honestly that might be the only thing between me and diying my own light dragon plushie. if i can be so real

#this has haunted me ever since totk came out btw i need merch of her SO BADDDDD (read: britains aforementioned merch problem)#i HAVE considered making a jacket patch for her or smth that i could stitch on a jacket/beanie. but... marketable plushie..#not just that. if i could make a good/malleable pattern i could hobble together More Dragons also #maybe i could even make a plushie for my link dragon in the ultimate self-indulgent move. but well. its out of my hands #im Mostly familiar with the building process of plushmaking. but not so much the actual Doing #eg i could probably make a pattern and/or mess with a similar one. but. materials are another issue #also im being pretty loose with size and stuff. id probably make chibi-ish ones but also a Long one would be fun. in my opinion #anywayyyy im having so much fun w my latest wip. hope all is well #personal.txt

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bonni · 3 months

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I truly do believe that the amount of cishet ace/demi people out there is exaggerated on the internet. I have been a part of lgbt clubs and groups since I was literally 11 years old, in new york city of all places, and every single ace/demi person I have met irl has been either fully aroace or bisexual/gay in addition to whatever ace label they use. even online, I have seen maybe 2 people with "straight ace" in their blog description compared to the hundreds of aroace and gay/bi ace people I have seen and met on here.

I don't doubt that cishet ace/aro/demi people exist but I'm also kind of like. who gives a shit? if they want to be part of lgbt groups that invite allies anyway then why the fuck shouldn't they be. and if you're running a group that strictly doesn't allow cishet people then you can deal with those seemingly incredibly rare "I'm a heteromantic ace but that doesn't make me straight" people on a case-by-case basis. and fwiw if you have a bad experience with a cishet ace/aro/demi person and allow that to impact the way you treat all ace people, especially if it reaches the point where you're calling fully aroace people "basically straight" (which is rhetoric I have absolutely seen before) then you're just being a dick. aroace people move through the heteronormative world differently than straight people do, and they have their own unique experiences, some of which align with the experiences of sga people, and some of which don't but are still entirely separate from the straight experience. grow up.

#chatter #also before someone points this out i am aware that ''cishet aces are lgbt'' is a common opinion in some parts of the ace community #and i have my own opinions on it but despite thinking it would be mostly said cishet aces spreading this rhetoric #i mainly see it spread by otherwise lgbt ace people or aroace people #again. i have my own opinions about that ideology. i don't particularly agree with it.#but pointing to it as an example of how cishet aces are supposedly rampant in the community just doesn't hold water #like ultimately this is lgbt infighting. actual cishet people don't seem to be as heavily involved as many people think they are

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marvel-unofficial · 1 year

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i cannot overstate how much i hate hate HATE any reading or interpretation of bruce banner that presents his whole deal as "weak nerd with a power fantasy" like shut up. shut up!! shut UP

#i'll be honest this is mostly about ultimates banner but. my opinion on the matter at large still exists bc #ppl out there with bad takes will always exist !!!#contra.txt #marvel #c.post #hulk system #bruce banner

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doctorwhoisadhd · 1 year

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i have just had a troubling thought. what if we DID alt sixpack and she just turned back into thomas england.

#sixpack dogwalker #blaseball #thomas england #Fuck #the mental math here is so bad guys #its So Bad #ari opinion hour #to be clear please do not do this. if i am wrong the league will pay the Ultimate Price which is that me and the fridays and mostly #me will never ever shut the fuck up ever again

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tngldd · 5 days

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might give nine a sideblog attached to this one

#ive been dying to write him since the show ended #mostly cause i write him based on my headcanons #im forever upset with how poorly they handled him in s3 #like there were GOOD bits but ultimately his character fell off near the end #in my opinion at least

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danshive · 7 months

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I sometimes see people argue about one of these circles as though it were all three circles.

Sometimes something can totally make sense in-universe, and fit with the themes of the story, the characters, etc... And you just don't like it for whatever reason. Maybe it wasn't done well in spite of that, or touched a nerve, etc.

Maybe you loved a story, and it was an excellent exploration of a character, but it would be totally fair to call out the technical nonsense, and how, even in-universe, it doesn't add up.

And maybe you thought this episode of a show was GREAT! But it was non-canon, nothing made sense, and, ultimately, it was UTTER NONSENSE.

And so on, and so forth. Heck, you could fairly add more circles to this. I'm keeping it simple with three.

My point is mostly that there's nuance to opinions, and sometimes, someone not liking something in a story has nothing to do with whether it made sense, or complimented the narrative.

Those things can be separate points. Stories don't have to be a failure at everything to be disliked, or succeed at everything to be liked, and arguing as though that were the case is silly.

#dan shive says stuff #communication

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thefunniestguy · 7 months

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hhey . i love you . gives you a tier list ranking each adventure time episode

#the normalness is trying to get me to give a short review of each episode but i finished the tier lists and was like . nono #have self control man #tbh my opinion on some episodes do fluctuate tho . w how i'm feeling or what i'm craving #ALSO i feel like . the way i did this #S = ultimate fave . really very good #A = fave . very very good but just not Ultimate #B = good and i'll rewatch happily #C = okay . i won't complain to rewatch but i don't really sit down intending to watch them #D = DON'T LIKE YOU . sometimes not bc they're bad - a lot of them are mostly bc i don't like the way it interrupts the vibes #(but some i just . straight up don't like)#however not all of the ones in each category exactly fit that description . but a lot of them do which is why i gave it #idk interpret as you will ultimately . or don't . idk man

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bravesaboteur · 2 months

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The more I think about it, the more Laios and Falin's different perceptions of their parents are a case of "same parents, different childhood".

Whenever someone asks Laios about his and Falin's family, he comments on how they treated Falin but never comments about how how their childhood affected him - in fact, he kind of glosses over it. It's Falin that everyone is rallying to save, it's Falin that's Marcille's friend, it's Falin that everyone has a positive opinion of - he's just the weirdo brother that gets to share some of her light sometimes. He's the one who's only tolerated when he's useful in a dungeon. Falin's treatment is a large part of the reason that he left, but it's the symptom of a larger issue.

When we see Laios' thoughts of his parents in his nightmares, it's all about the expectations that he's supposed to live up to: the expectation to stop being "childish", the expectation to get married (to who his parents picked) and have children, the expectation to take over from his father as the village chief, the expectation to adapt to something that he isn't able to be in the way that people want him to. And these are all things that he has had to be told in some way: he had to be told that Shuro didn't like him, he had to be told that told that the gold-peelers were taking advantage of him - these aren't thoughts that just appeared on their own, these are all failures that someone has explicitly pointed out to him and they haunt him. Some of the things he considers his biggest failures are his failure to provide for and protect Falin and those have very tangible examples he can point to.

We get a glimpse of what happens when he fails to live up to his father's expectations when Falin is born. He expects a certain reaction from Laios and when he fails to give that reaction he physically puts him down, dismisses him, and underestimates how much he understands.

And that's something that's shown to be a bit of a sore point for him - people thinking that he doesn't understand something because he doesn't express himself like people expect. The few times we see him snap at people are because people think he isn't understanding something because he isn't reacting "normally".

On Falin's side, the expectations seem to be a lot different - she's the younger one, for one, she's a girl, and she was so young when the fallout from her having magic happened. She too had an arranged engagement, but that was broken off when she was sent away to magic school and since then, their parents only seem to be passively involved in her life. She's mostly been freed of the expectations that their parents had for her in her village - she won't be coming back after all. She understands why they sent her away, she wasn't completely oblivious to the villagers treatment of her and it was, arguably, for the best so she is at peace with what their relationship is for now. But she still wants to go to her hometown and see for herself with adult eyes because she has never really had the space to do that.

I don't think their parents are inherently evil people - the truth is probably somewhere between Laios and Falin's version of the story, Laios' side tinged by too much cynicism and Falin's by too much naivete.

It just strikes me that when he tried to provide the "normal" way he failed, but given the space to do something similar to what people expected of him, but in his own way, he succeeded. He isn't perfect but his efforts are ultimately fruitful and he is able to carve out a place for himself, Falin, and others who had been ostracized like them to call home.

#dungeon meshi #dungeon meshi spoilers #dunmeshi analysis #laios touden #falin touden #i have a lot of touden feelings #i'm not letting mama and papa touden off the hook that easy #dunmeshi spoilers

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mourning-again-in-america · 9 months

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@centrally-unplanned said: As someone who doesn't follow law too closely I individually hear a lot about his decisions being unsupported and ill-considered, sort of a "just isn't that good at the law" compared to Alito's "he sure has some hot takes", but as someone who only reads opinions as-needed for other non-legal topics I ofc don't hold that opinion myself, just things you hear. I see the distinction you are drawing, which makes sense!

first of all, i am, how you say, crossfaded right now, second of all, i have barely read any of his opinions, third of all, i am extremely not a lawyer, fourth of all i am a known ~will baude simp and he might be characterized as such wrt thomas tho i would not say so. furthermore, some qualifications i would like to make: I am not trying to defend his opinions in the criminal justice sphere, I think he's overreacting to a trend among the Dems that was dead for 20-30 years, was temporarily resurrected, and appears to have been quashed (see: "victimology"); this especially goes for capital cases, I disagree with him on the necessary and proper marijuana case Randy Barnett argued, I also think that he overreaches when he posits the powers of the Presidency (esp the exclusive and *non-overridable* powers of the Presidency) via Article II and welcome much more scholarship on this before various aspects of this are set in stone (see state secrets cases and many many others), as well as the qualifications on the other post, and so many more and yet furthermore, I reject argumentum ad Bostock, textualism before original public meaning and original legal meaning before "original public meaning", and I'm anti-Borkian on the 9th amendment, and probably so many other things AND YET.

i think that he has done a real service to law by demonstrating how one can try to struggle and do originalism. if it had been just him, or just scalia, people would have dismissed it as eccentrism, an odd quirk. but with *both* of them on the court, duelling and concurring to their heart's content, people took it seriously! and now we see gorsuch, kavanaugh, and barrett are each trying to show to the country that *we can do it*. we can *actually* live under constitutional government. i especially appreciate him disagreeing very publicly with the supposedly settled precedent of the Slaughterhouse Cases. i also think that contrasting New York etc. v. Bruen (authored by Thomas) with Dobbs (Alito), one sees a much sharper view of how to provide a determinate view of ascertaining rights, rights supported by text and the history of the founding etc., and less susceptible to the critique by libs that originalism is just "yadda yadda i got five votes, here's some bullshit that's sorta related that happened in the past, here's some social conservative moralizing, fuck you!". There's some more that I could go on, but I'm not sure what would be relevant to you (or any readers of this blog).

If I could offer some hypotheses as to why I think such a belief may have been propagated (and may Allah forgive me for attempting "realism" and possible assertions of bad faith), although this is a bit before my time, I believe a lot of people who are more Democrat inclined were burned hard by Bush v. Gore, and the concurrence by Rehnquist, joined by Scalia and Thomas only rubbed salt on that by suggesting (quite rightfully imo, but thankfully cabined in Moore v. Harper (2023)) that a state legislature could declare by law how that state shall delegate its electors to the Electoral College before the election, superseding the voters, and *possibly* (but now no longer as per Moore v Harper) superseding a state's constitution and the state courts (I shall refrain from speaking as to whether there could be any such emotion from the confirmation hearing and Anita Bryant). Also, I don't think that people really "got" what Alito's deal was like at his confirmation, or until possibly even a decade later when it became so obvious that Alito wasn't just a wingnut libertarian, he was a cranky sonofabitch much further to the right than John Roberts, who I have heard the media focused their fire on much more, allegedly (source: insinuations on FedSoc podcasts) because of his view on the amendments to the Voting RIghts Act during his time in the Reagan admin (I personally think there's a quite humorous analogy between the initial reactions to Gorsuch vs Kavanaugh, Josh Blackman iirc has said that Kav probably wouldn't have gotten in had not the Senate majority leadership felt it had to go "nuclear" for Gorsuch). Also, a lot of my evidence for my respect for Justice Thomas comes from the questions that he would ask during oral arguments, which he only began doing recently, because of, I believe, first the change in argumentative procedure during the remote COVID days, and then the outcry from the general listening public that his questions were much more than welcome -- and I separately respect him for his reason why he didn't ask questions much before: he didn't like interrupting people for his own purposes.

Even beyond this, I have *much* hatred for Alito, who I have never seen an opinion I've liked from, and from listening to 2+ years of oral arguments, I have *very rarely* heard an argument where Alito asked better questions/made better use of his time than Thomas, and based on a frankly very limited sample of opinions and shadow docket stuff, I don't think I've ever found Thomas saying something or agreeing with something that Alito didn't also agree with, when I found it outrageous. Also, Alito just generally strikes me as at least a bit of a political hack (a very broad umbrella that also covers Kagan, Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and maybe Thomas, Jackson, and Sotomayor, and maybe maybe Gorsuch). Also also, he seems to have very little to say about abstract issues that aren't also political (this being something I quite respect the *actual* originalists, such as they are (Thomas and Gorsuch imo), for), see the previously referred to opinion about the govt acq'd entity that is Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac as a point for Thomas. Also also also, as sort of argued above, his opinion in Dobbs is just so *meh* if not straightforwardly disappointing in Dobbs compared to Bruen. Alsox3.5, I think that he brings "turnabout is fair play" to a harmful level of "tu quoque -- it seems that if you've ever been a hypocrite in a way that he disagrees with, you may be forced, just for that reason, to suffer his wrath! But *really*, putting aside my terrible fears that eventually Alito & Barrett can get the votes endorsing *truly* theocratic rule (and putting aside as well that I think that this has a 0.25-1%ish likelihood of happening, maybe up to 5% if strategical political assassinations are normalized), my vociferous objection to Alito comes from a comment of his during oral argument in either SEC v Cochran or Axon v FTC, where he suggested that the eventual winner, trying to get the ability to challenge the constitutionality of the administrative so-called "judge" (if i'm remembering the cases right) via their allegedly unconstitutional removal restrictions in a federal district court before submitting to/requiring finalization of possibly interminable agency process, could have gotten what they were looking for via a writ of mandamus, which is supposed to be *extraordinary relief* to correct an injury under *clearly established law* (the supposed "clearly established law" that Alito suggested was Seila Law, which was itself suggested as being a drasting break from how things have been, and I think, having not read that opinion, it was not necessarily settled how the decision should impact the SEC and FTC esp given Humphrey's Executor). I could dismiss this as a one-off comment, were he not also similarly arguing on the shadow docket (stays, injunctions, etc.) in either motions granted or the newly-so-called "dissentals" (dissents from denials of X where X may be an injunction, a grant of certiorari, etc.), in a similar way, for such hasty new application of very strong changes to the law, and i have not heard a good theory or explanation for this -- in fact, when i've heard will baude forced to take a position on these things, iirc he has described it as "not great", and I have heard very little/no discussion of this from my feed of FedSoc's YT channel!

To prevent it very simply, I think that Thomas offers a vision of judging that, while ofc susceptible to critique and improvement (like all human reasoning), in my view, offers analytical tools that can be used regardless of partisanship and my main issue with him is that I don't think he goes far enough -- I really cannot wait to hear his ideas on the original meaning of the 14th amendment. Alito, however, what does he have to offer? Fear of being a chump? Advanced game theory? I do not expect to weep if he is easily forgotten.

#and also this is mostly considering his opinions post ~2013 and only to the extent i'm aware of them #i'm not sure if you're following Steve Vladeck on twt but in addition to him being more leftish than me (ish) he has a *very* understandabl #issue with what counts for mandamus in the DC circuit which is where a lot of Gitmo litigation goes to die like many of the attempts to #try to cure many of the defects in the al-Nashiri case (which ive covered here b4) & some other similar cases. so he's kind of ~triggered #with regard to the supreme court's orders list. (again all of this is just IMO from listening to him for more than 200 hours)#also also also also i think the way Alito presented the case in his opinion in Glacier Northern v Teamsters & his reasoning therein are bot #quite wrong and quite bad even though there's at least a 20% chance if not 40% chance i agree with him entirely in the ultimate judgment`#those who were not witnesses to me composing this live may not realize quite how fucked up i was when writing this but may it be noted #that this took me probably an hour to write up

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justaholeinmysoul · 10 months

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How on earth half of tumble says they're in college or have fancy jobs like doctor, writer, historian but to find a real educated person they gotta fall from the sky into your arms?

#like ofc i don't come here for science and culture but usually i see posts that are total bs and look at the notes and i expect someone to #refute the main thesis or to add info but somehow what u always get is BIAS a gigantic wave of biases and personal opinions and people go #I'm a[insert smart job here] you're stupid and a weaboo begone kys ok but what is ur opposition? why insult the person and not the thesis?#why if u are in science field u take one study or book as the ultimate truth? u should know it doesn't work like that #and most times u can understand that the refutation is as dumb and wrong as the bs post even if u barely finished high school #mostly bc the truth lies in the middle and yall love extremism and personal experience over facts a little too much

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collaredkittyboy · 4 months

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Well it's come up multiple times today so I'll make a post about it.

I think the popularization of the word "twink" has ultimately been really bad for people in general.

I know it's hard to track the positive and negative effects of language but I don't think it's hard to see how creating a word for a group of people wherein the most consistent qualifying trait is "being skinny" is healthy for people's self image. Obviously people have lots of ideas about what it means to be a twink- gay, lacking body hair, feminine, beautiful, young, white- but the most consistent descriptor I've seen is "skinny." Hell, it's even a body type on Grindr; the size below "average."

So it kind of functions as a code word in the gay community: anyone can say that they're only interested in twinks and they don't have to look shallow by saying they only like skinny guys. It's such an accepted attitude that no one really bats an eye when they hear it.

I'm not even going to get into how it's become part of the larger issue of people turning "top" and "bottom" into gender roles 2.0, but that is closely related, because people with any internalized homophobia can look at a skinny, feminine man and turn off their fag alarms by viewing him as a woman or not a "real" man, and it makes twinks more acceptable to society at large.

No, ignoring all of that, one of the biggest issues is that gay men are taught by society that they are only attractive while they are skinny. Just having the label "twink" reminds a boy that people are looking at his body and judging it. There were countless times when I was growing up that people would tell me, "You're such a twink," or argue about whether or not I qualified as a twink because I had body hair. People around you, unpromted, judge your body and give you a label based on it, and that label has a large influence on whether or not you're seen as objectively attractive. I know many other gay people who say they wish they were a twink so they could be more attractive to guys.

So think, you have all these kids growing up being told whether or not they qualify as a twink, and then we have the gay community as a whole where it's completely acceptable to say you're only attracted to twinks. I think its because of all of this pressure to be a twink (in other words, to have a below average weight) that many of the gay people that I interact with struggle with a negative body image or eating disorders.

I mean, people talk about "twink death" like it's an actual event that makes a gay man much less attractive, and no one thinks that, maybe, it's harmful to tell a guy that the very day he stops being young and thin and pretty, he will stop being attractive and celebrated?

I'm not qualified to speak on fatphobia in physical queer spaces because I don't have the ability to frequent them where I live, but I can't imagine that these aren't issues at social gatherings as well. I also can't speak on my own experiences with weight discrimination because so far in my life I have had a naturally thin body, but I have experienced a lot of outside pressure to be thin that have caused me to pick up unhealthy eating habits to reduce my weight in fear that I could become fat later on. Thankfully that is something that I've mostly been able to work past. I'm not an expert, but idk, I just wanted to rant on my silly tumblr blog.

Obviously it's impossible for a word to be inherently bad. I'm not trying to imply that saying "twink" is a magic word with evil powers. Obviously the real issues at play here are fatphobia and harmful beauty standards and body shaming. But in my opinion, the popular use of the word twink has made it much easier and acceptable to express fatphobia, etc, in the gay community by turning "skinny person" into a "type of guy that you should try to be so you can be attractive."

#i know i sound annoying and woke but this is my blog and i can post whatever i want :3 #theres so much more to say but this is long enough as it is #no ones gonna read this anyway #gay #queer issues #fatphobia #cw ed mention

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kuiinncedes · 2 years

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Friendly message to say sometimes it feels like you're the only one going through those hardship of speaking your mind but I promise you aren't. You should not be beating yourself up about it. Communication can be so hard and pressurized

<3333333333333

ur gonna make me cry again and this time my roommate is actually here lmfao

#literally sobbed while on the phone w my mom talking about it #not even bc it was like that bad just bc i fucking cry so hard when i get stressed lmao ;-;#but my roommate was not here and now she is lol #thank you <333 this is very kind of you to send #and i think i kinda needed it lmaoo i teared up again XD and turned to face away from my roommate even tho she's not facing me lmaooo #i was just thinking like i know i shouldn't be so judging/negative to myself about #speaking my opinion even tho it was like several hours late lmfao and caused a slight delay in our deliberations/getting newbies process #the process that everyone is apparently very tired of and wants to be over so ya i feel bad about stretching it out :]#i am ultimately mostly glad i did it tho i just feel like ppl think it was for nothing i guess :\ and i guess it was since we didn't end up #changing anything #idfk anymore lmfao ugh #but yeah talking to my mom and her talking about her similar experiences..... ugh yeah #im still absolutely gonna think about this too fucking much and make myself slightly miserable about it for no fucking reason lmfao #buuuut . it's ok #like i spoke up about my opinion when i had something to say #i am doing that more obviously in board lol and it's very stressful :]]]]]#esp when there are 4 very opinionated/quick-to-say-things members of board #idk i just like can't Say things so fast i need time to think and then when i've thought about it enough things have moved on lmao #i was so stressed about this all day and i know i shouldn't have been like literally was so upset all day and for what lmfao #we're adding newbies to the discord soon tho and hopefully thatll be a lil pick me up #sorry about all this tag stuff XD but ya know that's what i do here lmfao #ugh ugh i had a bunch more but i deleted it bc tag limit probably XD #newbies r joining yay and the discord hi stickers are being spammed <3 #other-room-mate is there w her bf and talking and stuff and i dont rly want to deal w it :''''') but it's fine im listening to music #ok anyway anon if ur still reading ty for this ask lmao ily <3 #asks #anonymous

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ambrosiagourmet · 2 months

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Did Laios have a plan

... when he made his deal with the Lion? How much of it was intentional and how much of it was out of his control?

Well. If I'm being honest I don't really want to try and provide a definitive answer to that question, because I think the ambiguity is, itself, part of the story. I've gone back and forth a few times myself, and I don't think either category - "fully intentional" or "fully coincidence" - is entirely true.

That being said, I would like to point out a few things that I've seen taken for granted as true. Things that, imo, are much more about the character's perspective, or about what the character WANTS people to think (well, that's really just the Winged Lion).

Consider this not exactly an argument for "Laios masterminded everything from the start and saved the world with his cunning," but more... "Laios considered what he was doing more than people give him credit for." Make sense?

Alright then, let's go:

So to start with, I want to show every time (that I could find, at least) that the question of 'does Laios have a plan' gets brought up. This is specifically after his Ultimate Monster Form is revealed, to be clear - the question isn't about if he has a plan in general, it is if he has/had a plan when he made this specific deal with the Lion.

Here they are:

You'll notice, in all of these instances, there never really is an answer given to the question. Either because there is no way to get one, or, with Kabru at the end there, because he explicitly doesn't let Laios answer. There's even a bit of an arc here: we start with a sort of desperate 'I've mostly given up but maybe this isn't as bad as it looks,' then get a more optimistic 'maybe we really are saved,' and finally end on 'it all worked out in the end, so we maybe don't need to know.'

But, as much as there is some genuine growth in Kabru's 'accept the outcome, rather than dissecting the truth,' I also think it says a lot more about him than about Laios. Kabru is the one trying to handle his questions and his uncertainty - as he said, he wants to confirm his judgement of character. He wants to feel like he had control over things.

And he lets that go! But he also doesn't actually get the truth, either, and his implied assumption here (that Laios, the wide-eyed monster-lover, probably just followed his desires), still relies on his judgements and assumptions about Laios.

But okay, these bits are all focused on the characters theorizing about Laios. How about we look at the character who actually tells us the facts ("facts"): the Winged Lion.

The Winged Lion has quite a bit to say about Laios and his monster form.

He says that Laios hates humanity, and would rather be a monster

I've talked about this a bit already, but the Lion makes a lot of claims and assumptions about Laios that aren't necessarily true.

First of all, let's just make sure we clearly establish that the Lion is being manipulative here. That may seem obvious, but it's important to understand that there is a difference between 'the truth' and 'a version of the truth specifically framed to prey upon your deepest shame and insecurities about what you really want.'

To point out a few quick-and-dirty contradictions here:

If Laios really hated all other humans, then the Lion wouldn't hinge so many of his other arguments on Laios' love for Falin and his friends.

the Lion claims that Laios "[doesn't] even care enough about the future of [the] world to express an opinion about it," even though Laios has literally expressed opinions on what he wants for the world, to the Lion's face.

In general, the Lion does not make a distinction between urges and choices (see, for instance: him using Marcille's subconscious fear of the canaries as a way to keep her from stopping the monsters from attacking in chapter 86).

I'm not saying there is not a piece of truth here, but also... we are not our darkest thoughts, and we especially are not those thoughts as defined by someone who wants to hurt and control us.

But let’s move on to the stuff the Lion claims about Laios once he has been turned into his monster form.

2. He says that (or rather, acts like) Laios is under his control

The Lion really enjoys grandstanding about how Monster Laios is an ultimate tool he has control over. He gloats about making Laios fight the others, and has him smash through the magical barrier.

But smashing the barrier is kinda the only thing that Monster Laios actually does for the Lion. He doesn't attack anyone. He doesn't hurt his friends, despite Chilchuck thinking that Laios has "turned completely into a monster." And he certainly doesn't simply let the Lion go through with his plan to eat everyone.

This barrier smashing is actually an interesting and odd thing for Laios to have done specifically, so remember that one. I'll come back to it later.

But, yeah, to the original point... despite the Lion's dramatics, all that Monster Laios does is pose, smash up a magic barrier, and then eat him. Not exactly under his control.

AND SPEAKING OF EATING THE DEMON...

3. He frames Laios attacking and eating him as thoughtlessly violent

This one is pretty funny to me, and the Lion keeps it up for the whole scene. I'm not sure how much of this is his genuine understanding of the situation, and how much is him intentionally framing things in the most insulting manner, but like... truly. The ego involved in this. To see someone who has, multiple times, tried to stand against you - someone who has literally wished for your non-existence, to your face - to see this person attack you, specifically, and have your first reaction be 'huh, I guess he's a reckless weirdo to the core???'

Incredible stuff.

And this part, too:

He claims that Laios can't recognize anyone, that he's out of control. And yet, the Lion is the only person that gets eaten here. He is Laios' singular target.

Hell, Laios even specifically attacks one of the bodies that is actively hurting Chilchuck. I don't know if that was entirely intentional on Laios' part, but I do think it's notable.

The Lion torments Laios' friend, and when Laios does something that interrupts that action, the Lion reframes it as unhinged violence. I don't know, there's something here about the way that cruel people only talk about the things people do to resist them as violent, and ignore the violence that causes such resistance in the first place.

In any case, the main point is that the Lion insists on treating Laios like an unthinking animal during this fight, despite the fact that Laios is clearly trying to accomplish something here.

And what exactly is Laios trying to accomplish? Well, the Lion isn't entirely wrong. Laios is trying to eat something. He tells us as much.

And truly, everything Laios does as a monster points to this. He had a goal. And he accomplished it.

Let me back up a moment. I need to explain smashing the barrier.

So, Laios first starts considering how to kill the Lion when he is confronted with the fact that his only other choice would be to kill Marcille. Immediately and entirely discarding that solution, because of course he does, he tries to wrap his head around what defeating the Lion would even look like.

He clearly continues thinking about this, as a nearly identical conversation happens a few chapters later, when Laios is once again told that killing Marcille is the only way forward.

Only, this time, he's started to come up with an idea for how to do this impossible thing.

Harkening all the way back to the Living Armor chapter, Laios draws on the same lesson - if the Lion has made itself part of the world, if it has made itself into something alive, that means he can kill it. And eat it.

But there's an important extra detail to this. If he's going to try and kill (and eat) the Lion, he needs to strike when it’s vulnerable. He needs to strike when it's eating.

This is why he smashes through the barrier. Again, nothing else he does as a monster really benefits the Lion. He doesn't attack anyone else. The only command he obeys is to smash the barrier. Because the Lion has to think he has won for Laios to be able to eat him.

Beat him. For Laios to be able to beat him.

The question of why Monster Laios wanted to eat the Lion is, I think, the most ambiguous part. Was he curious? Hungry? Did he fight for his own life, for his friends, or for all of humanity? Did he know how to win because he had planned everything from the start, or because he was driven by an unquenchable instinct to do whatever it took to survive?

I don't know that it is possible to say for sure. But I do know that the Lion underestimates Laios, through it all. He underestimates Laios as a human, and he underestimates Laios as a monster.

And in the end, after he is bested, even then I don't think the Lion ever gets Laios. I don't think he understands how much Laios means his words about the Lion being burdened by hunger...

or what Laios cares about most...

or what meaning there is in life, for him.

So I don't buy what the Lion is selling about Laios, generally speaking. I don't buy that Laios didn't ever know what he was doing, and I don't buy that he was nothing more than a hungry beast.

Well. I mean. He was a hungry beast. But he was a more than that too. He was the Devourer of All Things Horrible. And he didn't just happen into that title by chance.

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #laios touden #winged lion #dissecting how the Lion's negging works is a great exercise in understanding manipulation honestly #dungeon meshi spoilers #dunmeshi analysis

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