#I prefer to just like read the stories and stuff

[thomaslittlegirl]

Hi! I really enjoy your writing! 🥹 I was wondering if you could consider writing about Cillian being the reader’s boyfriend/husband. He suddenly discovers the reader’s obsession with Tommy somehow, and he makes her dream come true by roleplaying as Tommy in bed. He’s rough and, of course, the complete opposite of how gentle Cillian usually is. 👀 Thank you! 🫶

im glad you like my works! if i remember correctly i have read a similar story, so i tried to make the plot as different as possible. anyway i hope you enjoy it, angel. 🩷

roleplay. cillian murphy — thomas shelby.

warnings; slaps, pussy spanking, creampie. age-gap.

𐙚

cillian was very private when it came to his work. he liked to keep things separate; work on the one hand, his family and personal stuff on the other. he didn't like the lines being blurred and the two things getting mixed up.

for this reason, he preferred his family not interacting with his work. he didn't really like close family watching his movies, it made him a little shy if he was one hundred percent honest.

that's why you kept a secret from him. when you were alone because he was going to some filming, a note or a photo shoot, you looked at the peaky blinders.

there was something that made you completely fierce... seeing your husband, your sweet and tender love being so hard, so bad. you couldn't explain it, you never really talked about it with anyone and it was something you would take to your grave.

how could you explain that it turned you on to watch the series your husband worked on? seeing cillian so out of context was just something else.

since the two became a couple, the relationship has always been based on a lot of love and mutual respect.

having a noticeable age difference, cillian saw you as someone he should protect, someone he should pamper and shower with kisses and affection.

the number of times your boyfriend had raised his voice at you could be counted on the fingers of one hand. the same when it came to getting angry. cillian didn't get angry with you, ever... and if he did, he would simply swallow his anger and solve everything with a sweet kiss on your lips.

he was not someone hard in bed either. although he fucked you like the gods, he was never mistreating you or being mean in the bedroom. he really liked the missionary when you had sex; that way he could see your face and kiss your tears of pleasure, that way he could be attentive to whatever your needs were. simple man.

he never pulled your hair, hit you nor called you degrading names... although some might escape his mouth, never too much.

that's why you felt that way when you saw thomas. the shelby man was really a threat; fucking any whore he came across, treating them as what they were, whores for his pleasure. the hard way he fucked them and how he made them scream with pleasure.

you felt like a teenage virgin, but it really made you wet. it was also weird because your boyfriend wasnt like that irl.

but your secret is revealed; one day you are too tired to notice that your eyes are closing and you simply let sleep overcome you.

the television in front of your bed continues playing the video while you sleep peacefully, hugging your boyfriend's pillow.

cillian arrives home late, a little exhausted from spending so much time outside doing the things he needed to do. the man takes off his leather shoes and begins to walk towards the bedroom, shuffling his feet.

when he opens the door to the room he gets a surprise. he recognizes his own voice, he recognizes that gangster accent that he knew how to use for a long time. his eyes go to the television and he watches as scenes from the peaky blinders play on the screen.

he feels out of place and a little confused too. you never looked at his works, you knew it made him a little shy... so why was the whole damn search based on videos of him, being thomas shelby? why were all the videos you had seen small frames of him playing the role of the gangster?

cillian laughed when he saw that the previously played videos were based on fight scenes, but his laughter was silenced when he saw all the clips of him fucking the women.

you had watched too many of those... for not saying almost all the scenes. his cheeks turned red and his gaze returned to your body; sleeping, hugging his pillow bathed in expensive perfume... as peaceful as a good girl, as if you hadn't used his hard and dirty sex scenes as white noise.

murphy suddenly understands it, or thinks he understands it.

cautiously, cillian turns off the television and walks to the bed. the light from the nightstand is not that high but it is enough to allow him to see you resting peacefully. murphy goes to the changing room and grabs a beret, a gray one. he takes a look in the mirror and smiles shyly; his heart beats desperately as if he were a child about to do some prank.

he comes back to your side.

the man positions himself on top of you, with both of his legs at your sides. murphy licks his lips and bends down to start leaving bites on your neck.

"cillian?" you ask, smiling as you smell the man's characteristic perfume.

"try again." he says, pressing his crotch against yours. you open your eyes, suddenly feeling horny.

"baby?" you insist.

"negative." he answers, his tongue running over your neck and part of your jaw. "maybe i should fuck you until all you can think about is me."

you listen to the accent which he speaks to you... and you understand it.

"tommy?"

"finally."

you blink several times trying to get used to the light on your nightstand. cillian lies on top of you, in his black pants, white shirt, and beret. a copy of him.

"am i still dreaming?" your question comes out in a whisper, confused. the man in front of you laughs.

"maybe. " his hand outlines one of your tits and then slowly lowers until it enters your underwear.

"what are you doing?" you ask, wetting your lips with your tongue.

"taking what belongs to me, playing with my favorite cunt." cillian's middle finger presses against your clit and then down to your entrance, testing with the tip of his fingers.

“cillian…” you gasp.

the man slaps your pussy. "wrong, whore. try again." you bite your lips at the burning you feel in your lower part and murmur again.

"tommy... it feels so good." thomas laughs. "it was supposed to be a punishment, but sluts like you like anything i give to them." you squeeze around nothing, dirty talk doing wonders to moisten your walls. "hands on the headboard." he orders, and you quickly obey.

thomas takes off his belt and uses it to tie your hands to the bed. the older man pulls down your underwear, delighting in having your sex naked in front of him. "now you're going to count for me." he indicates, and starts slapping your cunt. "come on, pet. count."

one.

two.

three.

four.

five.

when thomas finishes your pussy is red hot, burning and dripping, contracting in the air and begging to be filled.

"poor pussy." he laments, caressing your hip bones. "its so sore i don't know if it can handle daddy's cock." your eyes open.

"can handle it." you say quickly. "please."

shelby smiles and bends over, spitting on your pussy to make it even wetter. he smiles when he sees your face of pleasure, totally lost in the sensations, in the vulnerability.

the man spits into his hand and pumps his erection a little. his cock is about to explode, eager to paint your walls white with his warm semen.

he hits your pussy with the head of his cock a few times, teasing you until he finally sinks into your warm walls.

cillian would have waited for you to get used to it, but it's thomas who's fucking you, so he starts pounding you hard. "balls deep inside your cunnie." he says, as if you don't feel it in your gut.

he fucks you hard, hard and deep.

"god... god..." you murmur, and you feel a slap on your cheek.

"i didn't say you could talk, whore." he says, giving you another slap. "keep quiet, you're nothing but a cunt."

you clench painfully on his cock, biting your lips to try to shut up. it's useless, your moans escape alone.

"tommy..." he continues to fuck you like an animal, harshly raping your warm walls. the sound of your wetness and the slapping of the skins is driving him crazy.

thomas squeezes one of your tits and plays with your nipple.

"thomas is going to give you his hot cum in your beautiful pussy." he talks, caressing one of your cheeks.

you look at him, teary. feeling so good.

"open your mouth." he asks, giving you another slap. when you open your mouth, he spits into it. his saliva sliding down your throat feels as good as drinking water after spending days dehydrated.

thomas lets go of your tit to start rubbing your clit, making you cum around his cock. you squeeze so hard that the man is forced to cum too, filling you with his seed.

"there... there you go... daddy's hot milk for his princess."

cillian pulls out of you, watching as your abused pussy lets his cum flow from your insides.

the man caresses your cheek and unties your hands. your little pout asking for a kiss makes his heart melt and he grants it to you, kissing you sweetly.

"we have to do it again." you ask, and he laughs out loud.

"you're really crazy, my baby."

[weavingstarlight]

Read the fic here!

My New Year's gift for @musical-chan ! Of course I had to do something with Fierce Deity for you, darling Musica! I hope you like it! I… went a little overboard, as usual, but I’m so happy with the results that I don’t mind.

And by “went a little overboard” I mean this is actually a FIC with COVER ART, so please go read the fic! Here’s the summary:

During the War of Eras, Captain Link faces insurmountable odds and struggles to protect even one life. Little does he know that something watches over them both.

Sometimes, prayers are answered.

The story technically started as a Linked Universe fic, but it takes place entirely during the War of Eras, so it can be read as a Hyrule Warriors fic if you’d prefer. ~ The cover art I painted entirely traditionally, with the text added digitally. Pose reference (as often) from the lovely Adorkastock, go look at their stuff it’s great.

8 x 11 in. Black ink, watercolor pencils, watercolor markers, regular watercolors, colored pencils, and white ink.

[IMG: A watercolor and colored pencil painting of Fierce Deity Link. He is standing facing away from the viewer, looking to the left, on a background of red-and-blue clouds and a flat plain. He is holding the double helix sword in his left hand, which is glowing white. He is wearing plate armor, a white tunic and hat, blue leggings, and knee-high boots. Superimposed over the image is the fic title, “Offer Him Your Children,” which is written in dark blue outlined in white.]

Also, just because I love the lineart so much, I’m gonna share that too! Anyone can use this as a coloring page if they want, I don’t mind, just obviously don’t share without credit and don’t sell.

[IMG: Lineart of the above image of Fierce Deity Link. The black pen drawing uses contour lines to denote shadows.]

Okay that’s enough words here, go read the fic for the rest of them!

[msbarrows]

100% agree with ltleflrt's tags:

#doing this will guarantee that i probably won't ever see your fic #because i sort by wordcount #and read the long stuff first #and it's pretty rare for me to get down to the less than 20k fics #if you're splitting up your story like this #it won't show up in my search

For when I'm not doing a sort by wordcount I have a minimum word count set on my saved searches (usually 10k unless it's a small enough fandom that that filters out most of it) so yeah, if you're doing a 'series' of chapters, I'm probably not going to ever see it unless there's a longer entry in the series. Even then it's going to rely very much on the summary for that one being interesting enough to get me to go look at the series page. And if I look at the series page and see a bunch of <2-3k fics? Yeah. Unless it sounds incredibly interesting I'm generally not going to be bothered to do the repeated 'download-open-page to the start of the actual work-set TTS running' every few minutes needed to read it.

That said, I prefer the people who post as a pile of short chapters over those who keep marking as complete an incomplete or otherwise ongoing work (such as a prompt collection); at least the chapter-per-series posts are easily filtered out by that minimum word count. The people who go "OH this actually long enough work is complete.... psych!!!"? Yeah, no. Those people make it onto my mute list. Not only will I no longer see that work, but I won't see any of theirs unless I see a glowing rec for one somewhere and specifically seek it out.

Don't lie in your tagging. It's there for a reason, and circumventing it just pisses off readers. And in some cases is reportable (tagging things for 'clout' that are not actually in the fic).

Okay, I have a little rant, and because I don't like to leave negative comments on people's works, I am putting it here. So ao3 has an amazing filtering system, it is truly beautiful and remarkable, but some people try to work around it and that bothers me. There are many things I could say about this, but the one I want to talk about right now, is the complete works filter, and how people circumvent it by saying "It's a series". No, it's not, if it is under 5000 words, and just abruptly ends, with zero resolution, that is a chapter, not a complete work, and you mislead me. You abuse that label, you got me hooked and this is fanfiction, so I have no guarantee that you will ever finish it. When you read an incomplete work, you know that going in, you make that choice and accept that it may never be finished. But when someone games the system, and posts an incomplete work, but labels it complete, they disrespect me and the entire, beautiful tagging/filtering system ao3 has. Just be honest, it's a wip, 1359 words with zero plot resolution does not a complete story make. Please and thank you, thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.

Please share if this annoys you too. I'm posting this here because I refuse to shame people directly on their works. As a fellow fanfiction writer, negative comments, no matter the context, can be devastating. At the end of the day the only reason I'm mad is because they started something amazing, and the last thing I want to do is discourage people from writing more, negative comments have been holding me back on some of my fics (well one of them) so as frustrated as I am, I won't put that on them, besides, it's not just one author I'm annoyed at, so many people do this. Either finish it, or be honest.

[mifluffy-thoughts]

MLQC & LaDs Comparison: Sylus and Gavin

This is the first post in my planned series comparing the LIs of LaDs to the ones from MLQC. I am doing this as InFold has already shown they have a few things they tend to gravitate towards in their writing, and common themes between the two stories can help better understand both and possibly even come up with theories. Originally, I planned to do a comparison between Sylus and all the MLQC LIs, but I just had too many things to talk about with these two so I'm going to do it one by one. For clarity's sake, the MLQC MC will be referred to as P!MC (producer MC) and the LaDs MC will be referred to as H!MC (hunter MC).

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING FOR BOTH GAMES

General Stuff

Sylus and Gavin are practically polar opposites if looked at from afar. Sylus is a criminal, Gavin is a cop. Sylus loves fancy suits, Gavin absolutely hates them (even if he looks great in them :3). Sylus's main colors palette-wise are black and red, Gavin's are blue and white. Sylus has very particular tastes and will barely touch anything he finds to not be "good enough" (you will not catch this man wearing Shein) meanwhile Gavin just wants his stuff to be functional. Sylus does not have the best musical abilities, while Gavin can play the guitar and sing on-tune. I could go on and on about the things they are complete opposites in, and they are on a surface level, but there's a lot more to look at with these two. Dates and Birds

The first thing that came to mind while I was thinking about this is the fact that they have dates that are terrifyingly similar in concept. When I was reading Sylus's Nightplumes memoria, my jaw hit the fucking floor. The concept is fairly simple. H!MC finds an injured dove and asks Sylus to take care of it when she has to leave Linkon. When she returns, they have a cute romantic moment when they meet up and when they free the dove.

Now, let me tell you the concept for Gavin's Brilliant Date. This date is attached to a card from an event in which the player had to log in daily and do a small task to eventually get the free SSR card. The story behind the event is this: Gavin finds an injured dove and begins taking care of it, however he gets a mission and has to leave, so he asks P!MC to take care of it. The date attached to the card shows their meet up once Gavin comes back and the romantic moments that takes place before, during and after they release the dove.

Sound familiar?

While the romantic moments that take place in the dates (as in, the scene with the snow and fireworks for Nightplumes and the window and rooftop scenes for the Brilliant Date) are very different, the overall concept is practically identical, the roles are just switched. And listen, I don't know if "nursing an injured dove back to health while the character who first found the bird is out of town" is a common trope in Chinese VNs (I have only played LaDs and MLQC. I tried Tears of Themis, it wasn't my jam), but in all other otome games that I've played, and I've played a lot, I have only seen this happen in these two occasions. Please correct me if I'm wrong, tho.

Now, what does this imply about the connections between these characters? Well, I feel like this was mainly just to strengthen both of the characters' bird connections, as they are both associated with birds. Sylus's bird association is much more concrete, with the crow imagery basically being yelled at us every other second. Gavin, on the other hand, is much less connected with one bird but rather all birds (that can fly). Gavin acts a lot like a bird- he eats everything with little complaint, he prefers to enter P!MC's apartment through the window, he is very curious and often gets into shit he shouldn't. As such, these two dates serve to highlight these two characters' "birdiness". Tracking MC and Protectiveness

You read that right, both of these characters track MC (with her consent, ofc), albeit in different ways. Sylus tracks H!MC via Mephisto and Gavin tracks P!MC using his Evol (although at first he tells P!MC it's through a GPS tracker in the bracelet he gifted her, probably because this was only a few hours after she found out Evol existed and didn't want to freak her out even more and to have a easy way to identify her). The reason they track MC is the exact same, to keep her safe. Both of them know their MC is being targeted by dangerous forces, and they are unwilling to risk her getting into danger.

However, there is one major difference in the ways they track MC that show a key difference in their protectiveness. Due to Mephisto having a camera and microphone, Sylus doesn't just know where H!MC is, he also knows what she's doing and what she's saying. This gives him a perfect image of what she's up to and, more importantly, who's around her. Sylus knows H!MC is in extreme danger not just because of her Evol and the aether core and whatnot, but also because she's involved with him. She's a target for countless of people. Not only that, she's a hunter. Her job puts her life on the line constantly as she fights to protect Linkon from wanderers.

Sylus knows how reckless H!MC can get if it means saving others. He's experienced that first hand. He knows the lengths she went to just to save him. Of course, we all know how that ended, since he was willing to do the same. But H!MC way back when they first met didn't love anyone aside from him. Now, there's so many people she loves, and he's terrified of that being used against her in any remotely similar way to how it was used in the past. Gavin, on the other hand, only knows where P!MC is. From what I gather, his Evol lets him "feel" what's in the wind. The bracelet was probably just a way for him to easily know that it's her since it's one-of-a-kind. Once he got used to how she felt, he didn't need it anymore. And while he may be protective of her, and he may be terrified of what could happen to her, he has much less to fear than Sylus.

Unlike Sylus (so far), Gavin knows he's not the only one looking out for MC. At the bare minimum, he knows Lucien will protect her, and implications from chapter 18 show that he might also be aware that Victor and Kiro are also looking out for her. And those are just the strongest. Minor and Anna are also keeping her safe in their own ways. Gavin will protect her the most he can, and is willing to go to any lengths to keep her safe, but his worry is much less about who could be a danger to P!MC, it's about what. When P!MC is about to get shot, who saves her? Gavin. Because he knew where she was and he could feel both the sniper and the bullet. And this happens twice. When P!MC is falling from Loveland TV Tower, who saves her? Gavin. Because he could feel her falling and could save her quickly. And in all but one of these situations, Gavin isn't the only one keeping P!MC safe. The first time someone tries to shoot her, Lucies further protects her with a force field. When P!MC is falling, Kiro is making sure Black Swan doesn't get to her.

So yeah, this is something where they are both extremely similar and also very different.

MC Saving them Through Music

The way Gavin's Evol awakened is pretty iconic (if you're in the MLQC fandom). For those who are unaware, Gavin fell off the roof of his and P!MC's high school. Unless something miraculously broke his fall, he was going to die. But then he heard P!MC playing the piano. Something about the tune she was playing awakened the Evol within him, allowing him to fly by controlling the around him. This made a ton of gingko leaves fly around him, and he was able to survive. Had it not been because of P!MC's song, he would have died.

Then there's Sylus. The way her song saved him is in a much less physical sense, but it was because of her song that he was not only able to begin understanding human emotion, but also get the will to survive for long enough to save H!MC. When he first hears the song on the organ, he is genuinely moved. Up until that point, he thought he was basically unable to feel anything aside from desire. Whether it was the desire for acceptance, the desire for gold or the desire for revenge, that was all he knew. But the song made him feel something different. When he was injured to near-death, it was that song that gave him the will to live. Of course, we all know how this story ends.

Honestly, both of these moments are extremely heart breaking. Neither Sylus nor Gavin really cared about their own lives. Sure, Sylus pretended he was happy just collecting treasure and getting revenge on those who trapped him, but he was absolutely hated by everyone. As soon as his horns started growing, his world fell apart. Everyone attacked him, everyone thought he was a monster and he hated it. And then Gavin was made to feel like dirt by his father. The only reason Gavin was alive was to protect his mother and his brother, but eventually he lost them both. And as soon as his father saw any potential in him, he became just another pawn in his games. Music reminded both of them that there's more to life then just surviving.

Other Stuff

To wrap it all off, I'll just list some other things I noticed about these two that are worth mentioning but don't have enough juice for me to write paragraphs and paragraphs of.

Both of them went through some kind of "rebirth". Gavin had his rebirth with his Evol awakening (keep in mind he thought he had no Evol as far as I'm aware) and Sylus had his dragon rebirth

Both of them learn that justice isn't as simple as it's made out to be in the worst way possible. Sylus through how he was hated by everyone due to being a dragon and how P!MC was tried in court and Gavin through basically his entire arc in S1

Both of their backstories are heavily linked to a plant. Gavin has the ginkgo while Sylus has the datura

Both of them are often perceived to be cruel or monstrous by others, especially when they were younger

Both of them have several occasions where their MC has to patch up their wounds

And that's it! Hope you enjoyed this very thorough comparison. Up next will probably be Zayne and Gavin because I just cannot stop thinking about their similarities. No promises, tho! -Fluffy

[elisemochi]

Me sighing dramatically: I miss Sidem

as if I didn't mostly engage with it through listening to the music(and lives) and looking at the art

so really nothings changed because i still do all that

Like have you seen these recent(ish) collab art pieces

[gingermintpepper]

hi, i haven't read the iliad and the odyssey but want to - do u have a specific translation you recommend? the emily wilson one has been going around bc, y'know, first female translator of the iliad and odyssey into english, but i was wondering on if you had Thoughts

Hi anon! Sorry for the somewhat late response and I'm glad you trust me with recommendations! Full, disclosure, I am somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to translations of the source text of the Iliad + Odyssey combo wombo, which means I tend to prefer closeness in literal verbiage over interpretation of the poetic form of these epics - for that reason, my personal preferred versions of the Odyssey and Iliad both are Robert Fitzgerald's. Because both of these translations (and his Aeneid!) were done some 50+ years ago (63 for his original Odyssey tl, 50 flat for his Iliad and 40 for his Aeneid) the English itself can be a bit difficult to read and the syntax can get confusing in a lot of places, so despite my personal preferences, I wouldn't recommend it for someone who is looking to experience the Iliad + Odyssey for the very first time.

For an absolute beginner, someone who has tried to read one or both of these epics but couldn't get into it or someone who has a lot of difficulty with concentrating on poetry or long, winding bits of prose, I fully and wholeheartedly recommend Wilson's translation! See, the genius of Emily Wilson's Iliad + Odyssey isn't that she's a woman who's translated these classics, it's that she's a poet who's adapted the greek traditional poetic form of dactylic hexameter into the english traditional poetic form of iambic pentameter. That alone goes a very very long way to making these poems feel more digestible and approachable - iambic pentameter is simply extremely comfortable and natural for native english speakers' brains and the general briskness of her verbiage helps a lot in getting through a lot of the problem books that people usually drop the Iliad or Odyssey in like Book 2 of the Iliad or Book 4 of the Odyssey. I think it's a wonderful starting point that allows people to familiarise themselves with the source text before deciding if they want to dig deeper - personally, researching Wilson's translation choices alone is a massive rabbit hole that is worth getting into LOL.

The happy medium between Fitzgerald's somewhat archaic but precise syntax and Wilson's comfortable meter but occasionally less detailled account is Robert Fagles' Iliad + Odyssey. Now, full disclosure, I detest how Fagles handles epithets in both of his versions, I think they're far too subtle which is something he himself has talked at length about in his translation notes, but for everything else - I'd consider his translations the most well rounded of english adaptations of this text in recent memory. They're accurate but written in plain English, they're descriptive and detailled without sacrificing a comfortable meter and, perhaps most importantly, they're very accessible for native english speaking audiences to approach and interact with. I've annotated my Fagles' volumes of these books to heaven and back because I'm deeply interested in a lot of the translation decisions made, but I also have to specifically compliment his ability to capture nuance in the characters' of these poems in a way I don't often see. He managed to adapt the ambivalence of ancient greek morality in a way I scarcely see and that probably has a hand in why I keep coming back to his translations.

Now, I know this wasn't much of a direct recommendation but as I do not know you personally, dear anon, I can't much make a direct recommendation to a version that would best appeal to your style of reading. Ideally, I'd recommend that you read and enjoy all three! But, presuming that you are a normal person, I suggest picking which one is most applicable for you. I hope this helps! 🥰

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT,

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I absolutely love the recs you've given (you've introduced me to tomione, and I love it!) and I was wondering if it's possible to give you some recs in return? There are some books and fics that definitely have dramione / got vibes, and I was wondering if I could share them with you!

So glad you've enjoyed them! Feel free to rec me anything you want. I've read most of the classic recs in terms of fic and adjacent content (Cruel Prince et al), but I'll try anything that's well-written. My tastes run towards weird and/or audaciously creative stuff, and I can forgive a lot of weaknesses in plot on the grounds of (1) ambition or (2) character work. My turnoffs are instalove, protagonists who can't fail, and most Y/A (I'm not a hater, I swear, I just need characters who can say "fuck" when their leg gets chopped off.)

I'm also a fan of weird and fucked-up dynamics.(Wuthering Heights was my favorite book for a while, and as a teenager I wrote an AU in which the book ends on a long sex scene where Heathcliff fucks Cathy's ghost and then immediately gets murdered by Catherine 2.) Obviously, I am very normal.

[princess-nobody]

Me after spending 30493039949393 hours filtering out every variation of [avatar character] x Y/N or Reader on fanfic sites/tumblr

[panharmonium]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, from the top:

1. the girl with the crush

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. the greater good

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

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

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

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

Anyway. Back to a more measured response.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. she only wants to save you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. the shadow of my family

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

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

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

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

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

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Key Lime Sky

sci-fi, romance

an autistic pie blogger who’s struggling to make rent witnesses a UFO explode over xyr small town, and after posting about it xyr readers want xem to investigate

nobody else seems to remember or notice the weird things going on, except for a handsome bartender who helps xem investigate

and when people start disappearing, the landscape starts changing, and they’re unable to escape, they realise they’ll have to find the source and stop it before their town is consumed entirely

arc from netgalley, out August 13

[danielsarmand]

present tense get behind me i will avenge you i will write in present tense in a way that is so scrumptious no one will ever underestimate you again ever

[tojiscrack]

Recommend us some good jjk things u already read 🎀

say please 😐

unfortunately, i don’t read jjk fics… like, at all. i have two main reasons why:

i write them, sure, but i have this intense fear of reading jjk/reader fics (hypocritical, i know, but idc 🌝) simply ‘cause of the fact that i have these characters a certain way in my mind: VERY CANONICALLY-CENTRED.

when reading, i’d enjoy that with only a TOUCH of fanon, seeing as it’s usually romantic, reader-insert, love interest fics, and we’ve only ever actually seen two couples in jjk, and not even in depth — miwa and mechamaru + toji and mamaguro — therefore we can’t exactly say for certain what other characters would be like in a relationship and stuff: what we picture and write here is fanon.

but i did try a couple times. it just wasn’t for me, ig.

secondly, literally every gojo/reader story ever (i say gojo specifically cuz i’m only interested in reading about him and no one else 😭) has smut in it.

unpopular take, but i dislike smut. very much.

so essentially, i’m useless in this department.

p.s. that’s not to say that you yourself can’t read other fics and enjoy them the way they are. that’s great for you, and lovely for the author, but my personal opinion is that i just can’t, and that’s alr. i’ll silently move on and write my own :)

[icyfox17]

i love seeing how different people format their drafts/docs for their stories, it's so lovely seeing the personality on the page sobsobsosbos

people are so cool...

[dreamsy990]

my laptops like super fucking dead and its gonna be a couple days before i can get a new one so uh. have a ghost roxas au doodle from procreate instead. returning to my roots i suppose. do not ask me to explain the story context for this or whats going on because i will not explain ok. you can figure it out yourself <-( theres absolutely not enough information for you to figure it out for yourself )

[thelediz]

Spoiler warning: I write happy endings

So I’ve been reading this fic series which is actually just one very long story that for some reason the author has decided to break into separate stories EVEN THOUGH you cannot feasibly read one without context. Believe me, I have tried to skip stories only to end up confused because I have clearly missed a plot point. Seriously, why is this a thing people do, it's so frustrating and -

I have been reading this fic series.

It’s really good, and I really enjoy the author’s writing style. I find it super easy to read, and I want to know how the story ends. But each time I read a chapter story, I walk away feeling low-key annoyed, anxious, or upset. And I find myself wondering, this morning, why am I doing this? I am not actually enjoying this story, so why am I still reading?

When I interrogate myself about it, I realise I’m falling into the same trap I often do with fiction: I want to know how the story ends, so I’m tolerating lots of things I don’t like in the HOPE it will end well.

This is actually why I like spoilers. Because if I know how a story ends, and I know the character motivations, then I know whether the journey to get there is going to be worth the pain.

At the moment, with this fic, I don’t. Because it’s told entirely from the perspective of a very unreliable narrator, and this particular author has never written from any point of view except this character’s. So I don’t even have context clues to tell me what this author thinks of the other characters and their motivations. And as the story goes on, while I am becoming increasingly certain that we’re not supposed to trust this character’s perspective, it’s just a constant slow build of tension, all from this one character, who I increasingly dislike.

Now, the story can be saved, I think, if something happens and the narrator is forced to confront the things I’m not liking about them. If the other main character can be rounded out and properly seen. But that’s not going to happen until a climax that I keep waiting for and not getting. Right now, I'm not even sure the things I dislike are supposed to be bad things! Sometimes I think I'm supposed to feel sorry for the poor baby! (I don't and will not)

I don’t personally write fanfic about characters I don’t like, and I wouldn’t want to write a story about a character or relationship that’s objectively doomed. Doomed by their personal perspective, maybe, (get loved Alastor) but I just really personally dislike unhappy endings.

That’s what the real world is for. Entertainment is supposed to entertain and comfort and give me hope.

I don’t read or watch things that I know won’t end well, even if I know they’re amazing works of art. Which is unfortunate, because it means I miss out on a lot of the zeitgeist, but it makes me a happier and more hopeful person.

So I read spoilers, so that I know, in the end, there is going to be a happy ending, and these are the characters I should be rooting for. If I have to engage with something I won’t enjoy, I can quietly disengage and disassociate and let it wash past.

But here I am, with this story series that I’m not enjoying, waiting for a happy ending I’m currently pretty sure won’t come.

I need to break up with this thing and it is so much easier said than done.

Harrumph.

So for those who read my stories, here is a blanket spoiler: I believe in happy endings. It may take a while to get there, whether literally or figuratively, but I always believe in happy endings. So please, judge my silly fics purely on the characterisation, the dialogue, and my incredibly poor proof reading, because it’s always going to end with someone smiling somewhere.

I hope that’s a comfort to someone.