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#we don't talk about that scene a lot

beanghostprincess · 1 month

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Sanji and Usopp during The Sabaody Incident™ won't leave my mind.

Usopp standing in front of Sanji protectively because he is wounded and he can't fight, so Usopp will do it for him ("I'll do what you can't do").

There is just something about Sanji's expression when he realizes he might actually lose Usopp. This is my interpretation, at least. He is literally frightened.

Usopp helping Sanji stand up to run away. This is crucial for something I want to point out later: Sanji needs help to stand up. (Also, Brook disappears trying to protect them both and saying he will do anything to save them even if it costs him his life. I am feeling sick).

Sanji being self-sacrificing and blaming himself for not being able to protect them/act sooner is not new. But he does manage to gain the strength to fight when Usopp is the only one left with him and the possibility of losing him is even more real now.

The thing that I love the most about this is not Sanji sacrificing himself for Usopp, because he does that. He is like that. But Usopp not running away or moving in the slightest because he refuses to leave Sanji on his own.

Something I'd like to point out too is that Sanji actually touches Kuma before Usopp disappears. He tries to fight and protect him and Kuma could've easily sent Sanji to Momoiro Island right away, and yet Sanji was just sent flying far from the scene and forced to see Usopp disappear in front of him.

And I am not saying that "not being able to protect both Brook and Usopp (especially Usopp) is needed for Sanji to realize he has to become stronger and find more reasons to go back with the crew" but not being able to protect both Brook and Usopp (especially Usopp) is needed for Sanji to realize he has to become stronger and find more reasons to go back with the crew.

Not to mention that we can't deny (right after Water 7/Enies Lobby) that Usopp is one of Sanji's strongest bonds within the crew. This specific scene focusing on them both is more than enough to prove it.

Sanji seeing Usopp disappear in front of his eyes without being able to do anything to save him.

Remember what I said about Sanji needing help to stand up seconds ago? Well. This is him the moment Usopp disappears. What adrenaline and the power of love do to a mf.

They are so "I can lose everything, but not you. Oh God, not you" shaped.

#sorry for bringing up sabaody i am sure nobody wants to think about it #but they mean the world to me and there is SO MUCH to unpack #we don't talk enough about this i think ?????#sanji spending two whole years having nightmares about not being able to save usopp. about seeing usopp disappearing in front of him #he still has them btw #sanji having to sleep with usopp post-ts because he is afraid of waking up and seeing he is gone #also i am having thoughts about brook protecting them and #and brook saying he will do anything to save them #because sanji has only heard that from zeff so......... so just thinking. i have thoughts. i told you brook is one of sanji's father figure #back to sanuso- thinking about how this whole scene despite having brook too is mainly focused on both sanji and usopp #thinking abt how the others disappear mostly focusing only on luffy's reactions but this emphasizes a lot sanji's attempts to save usopp #why would you give them a whole scene i am throwing up #sorry still thinking abt sanji apologizing to usopp for not being able to protect him or #or having nightmares he definitely has nightmares about it #and usopp just. staying with him and making him see that he is alright now. and letting him cry.#early post-ts kills me #still angry we don't have almost post-ts sanuso #i might start crying thinking abt them so it'll be better if just shut up and post this #one piece #black leg sanji #usopp #sanuso #sabaody

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bonefall · 3 months

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If Sasha had left Hawk and Moth with Thunderclan or Shadowclan do you think Tigerstar would have been able to sink his claws that deeply into Hawk?

In ShadowClan, perhaps. Blackstar starts doing his damnest to stamp support for Tigerstar and his ideas out, but Ratscar is a clever cat. A clever, charming one. I can see him easily leveraging his charm to earn Hawkfrost as an apprentice, or the other Thistle Law supporters coalescing around their "young heir."

There would be less chance of Tigerstar getting his claws deep into his boy than RiverClan, which actively has NO reckoning and is deeply politically divided.

Meanwhile, it would be extremely unlikely in ThunderClan. ThunderClan as a whole HATES Tigerstar. Being part of his legacy is NOT something Hawkfrost would have been raised with-- and I can honestly see Sasha, if she realized ThunderClan was a good place to go, ALSO developing a pretty significant bond with Goldenflower.

...Thinking about it, it really would have been the Good Ending for Sasha here. Goldenflower would have learned about everything and felt a deep need to protect Sasha. Tigerclaw took EVERYTHING from her, and she immediately moved to reject him, but he still managed to convince her daughter to leave her side. TOOK Tawnypaw from her, and KILLED their oldest son Swiftpaw.

Learning that Tigerclaw went on to use Sasha would make Golfy sick. She doesn't have to think through it logically to know, deep in her gut, that what Tigerclaw liked about Sasha was that he could control this one. That Sasha was her replacement, to birth him kits he could own. Stealing her own child wasn't enough-- he wanted ones he could instill loyalty in from the very beginning.

There's a precious memory in her mind, of when their daughter Lynxkit caught greencough. Everyone knew she wasn't going to survive. Tigerclaw took his little kit, so small he could cradle her in his paws, and he hummed her to sleep for the last time. EVERY moon, she learns something that cracks that memory a little deeper, a little further, and one day she feels that she will loose one of the most meaningful images she has of her lost child.

How can she reconcile that image, to the trembling, half-starved woman who stands before her? This thin-boned rogue, who believes she is selfish and stupid for the egregious sin of losing a child while desperately trying to raise them alone?

Hawkkit and Mothkit would have had a very different upbringing. I also don't know if Sasha would have vanished back into the wilderness. World hard and cold. Golfy soft and warm.

#better bones au #I normally don't really like ships that are based off the premise 'we both dated the same garbage guy'#because usually I just find them to be really low in chemistry y'know?#More suited to a good couple of scenes than a whole ship dynamic #But BB!Goldenflower and BB!Sasha would be suuuuuper different. They would have a lot going on #Alas. It wasn't meant to be.#BB!Goldenflower #BB!Sasha #I normally don't answer 'au in au' questions but I felt like talking about BB!Hawkfrost today #And I guess there was a GoldenSasha butterfly just trying to get out lmao

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genericaces · 2 months

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more rambling about a s5 au: lindsey comes back for a redemption arc to act as legal counsel for angel's team. this ostensibly gives gunn a reason to opt out of the lawyer operation, but he does it anyway because he doesn't trust lindsey not to fuck them over.

lindsey acts as a moral foil to gunn, who comes to believe his necessary contribution to the team (since he's no longer their only lawyer) is being the defender of the group's principles while working at w&h. they frequently butt heads while working on a case, but eventually develop a begrudging respect of each other's respective strengths.

this hostile-to-friendly-rivalry arc is tested when it comes out that w&h was responsible for some demon problem that's been plaguing gunn's home community. gunn has, unbeknownst to himself, been somehow contributing to it while working at w&h; lindsey knowingly contributed to it when he was last working there as a lawyer. lindsey is forced to confront who he was, while gunn is forced to confront who he’s becoming.

since he was involved in the project, lindsey uses his insider knowledge to help come up with a plan to fix the problem. they execute it, something goes wrong, and lindsey risks his life to ensure the plan goes off successfully. he expects congratulations and a pat on the back from gunn, but gunn isn't interested in absolving lindsey's sins (or his own), and their warming relationship freezes over.

at some point, gunn lets himself get taken by the senior partners in an effort to deal with his guilt over various lapses in judgment/perceived moral failures. during their rescue mission to the holding dimension, lindsey stays behind in gunn's place so he can escape, assuring gunn that he's the lawyer the team needs right now. their mutual arcs culminate in lindsey rejecting the idea that redemption is done for recognition, and gunn rejecting the idea that guilt/self-punishment is inherently redemptive.

eventually after being busted out by illyria, lindsey is there to empathize with gunn about losing parts of yourself (body, mind, and/or soul) to w&h, relationships to power when you've grown up without it, and what it means to live with the consequences of your actions. both of them reflect on the nature of redemption/forgiveness/intent as they grapple with how to own up to an appropriate share of the blame.

#imagine i'm explaining this to you like the charlie day pepe sylvia scene #now let's talk about two characters who have barely interacted can we talk about two characters who have barely interacted #angel the series #ats #charles gunn #lindsey mcdonald #i think it's about two people who have grown up with a front row seat to how people with power will use it to step on others #the difference being that gunn thinks 'i need to be strong so i don't let people in power fuck over me or my own'#while lindsey thinks 'i need to BE those people in power'#also lindsey's appearance is a big PITA to gunn because he's a reminder that to anyone looking from the outside #gunn now looks a lot like the same evil guys in suits that he once fought against #which also reflects some of the themes in s5 more broadly! can they do good while working within evil inc or will they be corrupted etc #plus there's a lot of parallels to what's going on with spike and angel #art

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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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pastafossa · 3 months

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im watching frank castle edits (he is so hot) and im dying to read some badass scenes with him and jane. i think that if they would start to get along, they would be really lethal combination. do you plan something like this?

YESSSSSS, I definitely have some stuff planned with Jane and Frank after he's out of jail fuck having him in prison is inconvenient but it won't be for long, and especially him getting to work alongside Hound!Jane as they hunt Certain People TM down (I have one scene in mind that, if I pull it off, will be fucking awesome and kickass for the both of them; been working on that one for MONTHS). Because yeah, when you think about it, the way they both operate would flow fairly well together and their hunting styles aren't all that different. They also both, technically, want the same thing: Cyrus and all his people dead, and Jane would absolutely resonate with his own drive to get vengeance. They'll be friends by the end, though there'll be some tugging back and forth a bit between Matt and Frank over her for a little while - not in the romantic sense, but in a morality sense, since Frank's going to encourage very different instincts in her than Matt will, and there's still the thorny murder-y issues that her and Matt are avoiding discussing. Then again, Frank nudging her like that isn't going to go the way Frank thinks it will either...

#the red thread #i have a REALLY badass scene coming that i'm so fucking excited about with them #frankie the sexy fridge man needs to get out from behind bars first and then we can get it #frank and her are going to have to find their own balance and they're going to work it out or that's my plan #but once they find that balance they'll work VERY well together #up to a point #and then a thing will happen but i can't talk about that ANYWAY #don't worry though he'll be at the wedding one day #which is going to make a lot of the people on jane's side of the aisle very nervous hilariously

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sage-nebula · 5 months

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Martha didn't get a Tennant Doctor because she didn't want a Tennant Doctor. Martha was the only one of RTD's companions who left the Doctor of her own volition, and only ever called him back on her own terms, when she had need of him.

Rose didn't leave the Doctor willingly. Rose was trapped in an alternate universe because it was either that or be stuck in a void with Daleks and Cybermen for the rest of time. And when she returned (primarily to warn the Doctor about the oncoming darkness caused by Davros but also because she wanted to be with him), she left with the Metacrisis Tenth Doctor and their own TARDIS because that was the only way to give her a satisfying ending from the viewpoint of the audience. (And even then, there are some fans who will tell you that nothing short of her being with the Time Lord Doctor in the prime reality is satisfying, but that just couldn't happen for reasons outside the narrative story.)

Donna didn't leave the Doctor willingly. Donna absorbed all of the intelligence of a Time Lord into her human brain, and this was going to kill her. She had to have her memory erased and be kept away from anything alien for presumably forever or else the knowledge would return and literally kill her. Donna begged the Doctor not to wipe her memory anyway, because she would rather have died than give up that life. Just like Rose, Donna had planned on staying with the Doctor for the rest of her life.

This was not the case for Martha. Setting aside the fact that Martha was treated like garbage for the duration of her season from a writing standpoint, by the end of season three Martha has realized two things: 1.) that she is goddamn brilliant and never deserved to feel like she was second best, and 2.) that she doesn't want the Doctor anymore. Unlike Rose, Donna, and Captain Jack, Martha leaves the TARDIS of her own free will, to pursue her own life and career outside the Doctor. Even Sarah-Jane says in "School Reunion" that she waited for the Doctor to come back for her; she didn't want to leave, not permanently! But Martha did. She chose to step away. The only other companion to have done this during RTD's run is Mickey, so I guess Martha wasn't the only one; still, she's the only one of the primary companions, the three women, to want to leave. She made that choice herself.

Now, does that mean everything about Martha's ending was perfect? No. As much as the "Smith and Jones" wordplay of her ending with Mickey is amusing (get it, like her first episode), it makes no sense when you consider that she was engaged when she returned in season four, and yet we never hear of that fiance again. I mean, I guess it's fine since it's not like we ever saw him? But what happened there? Why was no thought given to Martha's story there? What was she doing with Mickey in an active war zone? Why no mention of her in these three specials even though, last we heard of her, she was working with UNIT in a really important position? I like Mel well enough, but why couldn't Martha have been there instead? Especially since Martha and Donna had a preexisting friendship, and would have been delighted to see each other again?

With that said though, she doesn't need a Tennant Doctor. She didn't want a Tennant Doctor. Frankly, Tennant's Doctor doesn't deserve her with the way he acted ("Rose would know" right to her face, like -- dude, I get it, you're grieving, but that's fucking rude and Rose would NOT approve you using her memory to make another woman feel bad about herself). Martha's character arc was about recognizing her own brilliance and her own worth; standing on her own two feet as a PROPER doctor, Doctor Martha Jones, walking the earth and saving the world without a TARDIS or Torchwood or a Time Lord brain. Just her own fucking determination and brilliance.

Rose and Donna got Tennant Doctors because that was the way to make their final send-offs satisfying. Rose and a Tennant Doctor got to be in love and happy together in a parallel world, which is fitting considering that they were in love and never wanted to leave each other. Donna and a Tennant Doctor get to be besties and happy together in this reality, so that RTD has a convenient excuse to pull Tennant back into a story if he ever wants to again (since it'd be hard to explain why Tentoo came over, versus having Fourteen right there) . . . but also because, like Rose, Donna never wanted to leave the Doctor, she wanted to be with him forever.

But Martha didn't want that. Martha left on her own accord. She left with a smile on her face and her cell phone on the TARDIS console, so that when she said "here boy!" the Doctor would listen. She left on her terms, with him at her call, only there when she has use for him.

And honestly? Good for her.

#like it was a fucking waste that we didn't see Martha at all in these specials #or even get a mention of her but like #she wouldn't WANT a Tennant Doctor. she was the only one of the 3 who left willingly!#(and honestly who can blame her like fr . . . the shit she put up with bc of him)#(the shit in the Family of Blood episodes gave her just cause to beat his ass into next week honestly)#(she hugs him at the end but honestly she should have beat his ass. just started swinging)#(how dare he do that to her? honestly?? i'm not talking about the love plot bit bc while that was ugh it's like #small potatoes to making her as a Black woman have to WORK IN SERVITUDE TO WHITE PEOPLE #and like the scene where he grabs her arm and throws her from the room? BITCH?????#GOD i'm mad again just THINKING about it #she should have beat his ass so hard he regenerated right then and there. AGH.#ANYWAY #Martha Jones deserved better but getting a Tennant Doctor is not better #not for her. it would be like a punishment honestly #she walked away from him and then you put his sad boy ass back on her doorstep?? hello??? no thank you #doctor who #martha jones #dw spoilers #this probably sounds like I hate Tennant's Doctor but I don't #I just hate how a lot of season 3 was written wrt how Martha was treated #like Martha having very legitimate concerns in the Shakespeare episode about being a Black woman in that time period #and Ten mocks her for being concerned like ???#ARGGGHGHHGHGHGHG #ABOUT TO FLING MYSELF INTO THE TV TO BEAT HIS ASS MYSELF ISTFG #A N Y W A Y

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chirpsythismorning · 1 year

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There’s something sort of patronizing and damn near infantilizing about the way stans (specifically stan twitter), will take something that isn’t that serious, or even is very serious, and will twist it as much as they possibly can, for pity and engagements.

I remember when that lie detector interview with Millie came out last year, and toxic stans of hers made it their mission to accuse the guy in the video of disrespecting Millie, when really it was all a bit? They were rushing to make posts saying, “this is so messed up! she doesn’t deserve this!!” And it’s like?? Are u guys serious rn??

And then there’s all that fucked up shit that happened with that grown ass man who groomed Millie and how a lot of hardcore stans of hers were making plot-twist edits with that horrid ig live he did??? All of that shit blew up and went beyond what it ever should have, and part of it was because a lot of those same toxic fans were out there low-key promoting a very private matter, for clicks???

Right after this happened, she deleted all of her old instagram posts (I think she’s returned recently), and still doesn't allow herself to be tagged in anything (again mostly hardcore fans there), and it’s pretty obvious to me that it's because at this point, not only does she have to watch out for people that hate her for no fucking reason and who actually mean to harm her, but she ALSO has to avoid so-called fans constantly acknowledging all the negativity surrounding her, for attention, with the guise that they support her.

Because like, do we seriously think she deleted all those sentimental posts from her past, to spite people that hate her?? No she did it to punish the so-called fans. That's the place where they could connect with her and she made a boundary that she couldn't let them into her life like that anymore.

Fans took something very serious, like as serious as it can fucking get, and were making it about stan wars. Anyone and everyone who makes one joke or one comment needs to be called out and brought down. Like it's just so obsessive and unhealthy and I get that a lot of these kinds of fans are children, and so there isn't much anyone can do. But still, it's ridiculous.

I support the notion that we should be calling out harmful behavior/language. But it eventually gets to point where it's like, what even is the point? Is there a point anymore? Or are we just speaking to speak, when no ones even saying anything? Are we seeing one negative comment and blowing it out of proportion as if everyone is saying that, to gain pity? Because it starts to get ridiculous.

In reality, people are gonna say what they want. Everyone with access to internet has the affordance of posting shit anonymously without any repercussions. That’s unavoidable. And these same people aren’t going to just be enlightened by someone calling them out. More often than not people like this want to upset others in the first place. They want a reaction. And so by constantly acknowledging their existence, and fixating on it, we're giving it to them.

And now ever since Noah has come out, we're sort of seeing something similar happening with him.

While he is getting unwavering support from a lot of people in his comments, there's undeniably a disgusting amount of homophobia being thrown at him as well.

And then somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, we have people making jokes, INCLUDING Noah.

And yet, the tag has suddenly went from unwavering support (as it should), to obsessing over any and every post/comment/joke that can be interpreted as somewhere between sarcastic, uninformed, mildly offensive and downright offensive, and we're acting like it's the end of the world.

There's no denying that all of this is overwhelming. It's a lot. And I don't blame people for speaking up when they truly feel that it's necessary. It's only natural to get defensive when you think someone is being wronged/harmed and you want to do what's right.

But again, to what point is it truly necessary to keep bringing attention to every single thing we come across that falls somewhere on that spectrum near negative?

Right now this space is filled with the negatives, even if it's coming from a good place. Do we think that Noah or Millie or any of the cast want to have to be confronted with negativity from all directions, even from the people that claim to just be fans trying to do the right thing?

It gets exhausting.

And now we're just seeing this stan twitter behavior create one big mess of delusion, with toxic Millie stans calling Noah a white sexist misogynist because he liked a TikTok referencing his coming out and the homophobic Millie meme?...

Is Noah only allowed to be open to unwavering support right now? Can he not make light of the situation, or are we just imagining that he's sitting there victimizing himself because of any and all of the negatives being thrown at him, that are never going to go away, no matter what he says or does? Because I honestly think that's the opposite of what he's doing or would even want to be doing.

And same with Millie, I don't think she sees anything and everything happening to her, and everything anyone is saying, and allows it to bother her anymore. Because how could she?? That kind of shit drains a person of their sanity.

Noah is out here not only liking TikToks joking about his coming out, he's still liking byler edits, still commenting on fans posts with a lighthearted positive attitude. He even mentioned Will in his post, so obviously he doesn't mind people making some comparisons between him and his character.

And yet here we are dwelling on everything negative we can get our hands on.

It's important to realize that the cast has seen the worst of the worst. And you can see that it's affected them. You can see they went from fairly public public figures to almost entirely private public figures, only interacting with fans when they have to, because they know a good portion of the trauma they experience comes from the fans themselves who just don't understand boundaries and common sense.

The most delusional aspect of all of this is that toxic stans are 100% convinced Millie and Noah hate each other... like they fully believe this lie they've told themself based on videos they've seen of them? Like they genuinely think they know her better than she knows herself I guess???

Now, I do want to say that I understand partly where these fans are coming from. Millie has went through absolute shit with this fandom. And it's mostly because she herself is known for saying stuff that causes people outrage. Whether it's a joke or a comment, that clearly just came off the top of her head, they'll flip it to something negative and use it as ammo to hate her. She doesn't deserve that. And I know a lot of her fans are coming from a protective place because they're so used to people hating Millie for no reason.

But even still, I don't think they realize they are a part of the problem themselves. And we are too whenever we allow ourselves to focus on the negatives, letting it practically consume us.

That sort of shit can make a person feel hopeless. 1 negative comment can outweigh 100 positive ones. And so imagine that by a scale of about a billion?

Again, I know a lot of fans mean well, but if you just take a moment to think about it, like really think about it, you'll realize that your energy would be much better directed elsewhere.

Instead of making dramatic intense posts that focus on all the negativity, BE THE POSITIVITY! Be someone that actually makes our community redeemable. Because again, we're no better than the worst of the worst if we're giving them all the attention, making the very people we're claiming to be supporting and defending, even more miserable.

And don't be surprised when s5 promo rolls around or any other event involves Millie and Noah interacting in a public forum, where they'll inevitably make jokes about all of this, arguably just as offensive as the ones we're getting worked up over right now