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thecorteztwins · 4 years

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I love how you care so much about obscure characters. Who is your favorite underrated female X-men character

Awww thank you! I love bringing them love, so it makes me really happy for you to say that! My absolute fave is Haven, but I read “faves” as plural so I wrote down a bunch...my faves can bounce around a bit but here’s a list of some of them! It’s under a cut because it’s long, I really like to explain who these gals are and why I like them so much! Warning, there is some description of pretty horrendous sexism and racism for some of these, since nothing makes me latch on to a woman harder than wanting to defend her from the SHITTY THINGS WRITERS DID TO HER! I kinda wrote novels for Haven and Madelyne, then I did links to previous things I’ve written about others. This is a LOT, I’m so sorry, I just love sharing!! Thank you for asking!!

THE BIG ONES Basically my consistent mega-faves I’m always ready to talk about! RADHA “HAVEN” DASTOOR - This lady has been at the top of my list for over five years and counting! She just really resonated with me on a deep level. She’s this mysterious woman who turns up in X-Factor for seven issues, and though she’s very benevolent towards them (even when they attack her) she is technically a villain, as she’s trying to destroy 3/4 of the world to bring about the Mahapralaya, a sort of Hindu apocalypse that will bring about an age of peace and end to suffering. So, her motives are very compassionate, and as it turns out, the horrible things she’s trying to do aren’t actually her fault. She’s being posessed by the Adversary, a demon of the highest order and an entity of cosmic evil. Or more specifically, her unborn child is. See, Haven was a really, really good woman. She was not a mutant, but she was sensitive to the pain and suffering of others from an early age, and she devoted her life to helping the poor and needy. She’s incredibly rich, so she could have helped just from afar, but instead she not only used her wealth to help others, she herself went out in the streets to attend to the poor and sick with her own hands. She bathed lepers, cradled dying babies, everything. She actually GOT the name “Haven” from a children’s hospital that she renovated, the kids started calling HER that instead. What a villain, huh? It all goes super wrong when she fell in love with a guy. After he took her virginity, he took off, leaving her pregnant. This was in 1970s India, and she was a very a religious woman, she felt INTENSE shame and horrible guilt and sunk into a deep depression, now living on the streets herself she was so broken. And then...then her fetus started talking to her. Yeah, see, technically she wasn’t posessed by the Adversary, her unborn child was. It incubated in her for twenty years, corrupting her mind, making her its pawn, all basically for its own amusement til it could be reborn into the world, killing her. And the guy who knocked her up? Got off scott-free. Basically she had sex ONE time and she had to be punished for it by being stripped of her agency, forced to betray everything she loved and believed, and then finally killed in the mud while a Marvel deity stood over and told her how she brought this on herself. It’s a slut-shaming Victorian morality tale of how no matter how good a person you are, you’re tainted forever if you violate purity culture just once, and we’re expected to AGREE with this narrative as readers. It’s sick. It gets even worse in how X-Factor treats her. She first appears RESCUING Polaris from government agents who are trying to kill her, because despite WORKING for the government at this time (X-Factor was a government team during this period) Polaris’s energy signature matched Magneto’s. Haven is the one who saved Polaris by teleporting her away. Polaris was distrustful and threatened Haven. Haven tried to talk her down, but also opened her arms and said that if Polaris truly did not believe her, then she would not resist. Polaris decided to “give trust a try” but I also truly believe that if Lorna had attacked her, Haven indeed would have let her. Haven is a human but the Adversary gave her INCREDIBLE power, she could WIPE PEOPLE FROM EXISTENCE by THINKING ABOUT IT, but she was a pacifist every step of the way, even as a villain. X-Factor would REPEATEDLY attack her later...she NEVER retaliated. The worst thing she did was, once they kept on attacking her, she just kinda put them in her pocket dimension as a time-out, but didn’t hurt them any. I really don’t think she COULD, possessed or not. Anyway, after meeting Lorna, she ‘ports Lorna back to safety and leaves her be. She is interested in recruiting Lorna and the rest of X-Factor to her cause, but she’s very moral about it, and never uses situations like these as leverage; for instance, when she heals Rahne of the Genoshan bonding process and gives her back her free will and her ability to resume her fully human form, Rahne is ECSTATIC and ready to do ANYTHING for her. And rather than exploit this, Haven just hugs her and tells her that her joy is thanks enough. Again, what a villain! Anyway, it turns out this Haven lady is also an activist! She’s big on promoting peace between warring groups (which I think makes it very significant that she’s an Indian character from Mumbai, then Bombay, who was created in 1992, the same year when Hindu/Muslim tensions in India resulted in the Bombay Bombings and subsequent riots, and she indeed mentions Hindu/Muslim tensions in her pro-peace speeches) and she emphasizes accepting MUTANTS in particular. It is very rare we see humans who are pro-mutant, though they had happened before, but this is the first time we see a human who is pro-mutant WITHOUT any affiliation or friendship with the X-men, and who is a public figure who seems to have some real social power---she’s a best-selling author, lecturer, and apparently her being a very wealthy woman has made some very wealthy people listen to her. She is basically the perfect ally for mutants if you take out the demon-possessed part, and I always found this super interesting and wish more had been done with it. So, she’s speaking at Brahma Hall (Brahma, notably, is the Hindu creator god) and...THIS happens. It’s...it’s really distressing. I’m sure it’s bad enough in its own time, but reading it NOW, in a post-9/11 world, a world where POC are routinely slaughtered by law enforcement (they always were but social media has made us more aware) it’s chilling. And we, the reader, are supposed to see X-Factor as JUSTIFIED in how they treat this unarmed, non-threatening, apparently-human-for-all-they-know woman who is promoting peace. Because no matter how nice she is, the US government says she’s an evil terrorist, and the US government turns out to be right! Yay, America! This might be a good time to mention Haven was the first Hindu character in X-Men comics, and the philosophy that the Adversary is manipulating her with comes directly from Hindu cosmology, and that is WAY IFFY to say THE LEAST. Holy xenophobia, Batman! And in an X-MEN comic of ALL PLACES! Oh yeah, and our good guys also describe her beliefs as “New Age psychobabble” and make fun of her temple decor as "very 60s" when BOTH ARE FROM HINDUISM, WHITE USA HIPPIES DID NOT INVENT IT, YOU IGNORANT SHITS So anyway, Haven’s very interesting to me as someone who is so deeply pacifistic and compassionate, that even when she’s being steered by a literal demon that has been talking in her womb for 20 years, she’s still someone who is perpetually polite, who won’t hurt the HEROES even when they want to hurt her, who SURRENDERS during a FIGHT in order to HEAL ONE OF THEM, and...who ends up with an abruptly aborted arc where she’s killed by her own “child” and victim-blamed in her last moments by Roma, the Omniversal Guardian Goddess and foe/counterpart of the Adversary. It’s made all the more tragic by the fact that Haven’s last pleas to Roma weren’t for herself, but for Roma to stop the Adversary, as she had realized now what her “child” really was. Even in her final moments, Haven was thinking of others, of the world. It’s just....awful to me that a character as interesting and unique as she was was thrown away like that, and that she was treated in such a sexist, racist, xenophobic way by both the HEROES and the story itself. I stan Haven 4 life. MADELYNE PRYOR- She’s maybe not “obscure” per se, I think most X-Men readers have a basic understanding of who she is, but the problem is that “basic” is not enough. What most people know is ”she’s Jean Grey’s evil clone” and some might know that “she was married to Scott Summers and went evil when he ditched her for Jean”. But that’s so far from the whole story, and it really does Madelyne a disservice, and canon has done her ENOUGH disservice already. Madelyne was originally created by Chris Claremont to truly be just a human woman who looked just like the dead Jean, with whom Scott would settle down and have a kid, and leave the X-Men. It’s a pretty nonsensical notion, the idea that this woman just happens to look exactly like Jean and meet Scott and fall in love, but this was his plan, he has confirmed it. And like...that’s pretty sexist from the start, in that she’s very literally created as a replacement for Jean on a narrative level, there’s NO REASON that she should have to look exactly like Scott’s dead ex besides as a way for Scott to still “get” Jean in a way. But Maddie rises above that swiftly by being a super strong, super cool character in her own right. She’s a pilot, she’s fearless, she’s adventurous, she’s got a mean right hook, and she’s got a tragic backstory when she crashed her plane and cost the lives of over three hundred passengers. She gets involved with Scott and by extension the X-Men, and she holds her own despite having no powers. Weird fact, this means that some of the X-Men, like Rogue, met Madelyne before they ever met Jean. She also gets a cool story where she gained healing powers, and the reason her powers specifically took the form of healing is because they were what she wanted them to be. She’s a good person, and also a total badass. Then, Jean came back, and the Powers That Be wanted her back together with Scott. But Scott was married to Madelyne. Rather than have them get a divorce or something, it was decided Madelyne had to be very literally demonized and then murdered, because we can’t just have two women co-exist, no, they must be divided into a “good” woman and a “bad” woman and fight over a man. Actual quote from Chris Claremont: “ Then, unfortunately, Jean was resurrected, Scott dumps his wife and kid and goes back to the old girlfriend. So it not only destroys Scott's character as a hero and as a decent human being it creates an untenable structural situation: what do we do with Madelyne and the kid? ... So ultimately the resolution was: turn her into the Goblin Queen and kill her off.” So, after something like EIGHT YEARS of being a character unto herself, Madelyne gets retconned as actually having been Jean’s clone all along! Which, okay, does make sense, certainly more sense than ‘this woman just happens to look EXACTLY like Jean and hook up with Jean’s ex” but then the REASON that Sinister cloned her...is nothing to do with Maddie or Jean themselves. Madelyne’s creation isn’t ABOUT her the way so many other clone/created-in-a-lab type stories are, like Laura Kinney. She wasn’t important. She was made literally just to have a baby with Scott, the BABY is what’s important. She is REPEATEDLY called a “brood mare” in fact (a female horse used specifically for breeding) So basically, her only value, her only REASON for existing, is her reproductive capacity. A lot of people think that Madelyne either found out she was a clone and went crazy-evil, or she went crazy-evil when Scott went back to Jean. That’s not what happened. Madelyne goes through a long, long series of arduous tragedies that piece by piece dehumanize and violate and traumatize her, and even then she doesn’t become evil until she’s TRICKED into being infected with demonic energy. Being “evil” was NEVER her choice, and everyone forgets that. See, first Scott walked out on her and the baby. Then, the Marauders attacked her, nearly killed her, and stole her baby and left her for dead in a coma for months. When she woke up, her baby was still missing, and she rejoined the X-Men to help them while they also helped search for her son. She sacrificed her LIFE alongside them to defeat the Adversary (yes, the same one Haven was pregnant with!) and then was resurrected with them too by Roma (yes, same Roma). She continued to work with the X-Men, despite the fact Scott had left her, and used her tech expertise to be the X-Men’s computer gal in Australia. When she saw X-Factor on one of the news monitors, including Scott with Jean, she realized why he’d abandoned her. She punched the screen and the explosion knocked her unconscious. While she was knocked out and dreaming, the demon Sym invaded her mind showed her a few different reflections of things she could be, one of which was a demonic reflection of herself. She chose that one, saying “What the heck, it’s only a dream.” And then Sym infected her with demonic energy. So she literally JUST found out her husband left her and their now-missing son for another woman, and she thinks she’s dreaming so yeah she picks the idea of being a demon IN THE CONTEXT OF A DREAM, A FUCKING FANTASY, WHEN SHE’S GOT EVERY RIGHT TO BE PISSED and oh well now you’re gonna be evil for real honey you don’t get a choice. Serves you right for being angry even for a moment, woman! But even then, she didn’t instantly turn evil. Horrible shit had already happened to her, but she still held out…so of course, more shit happened to her. While she and the X-Men were trying to help an escapee from Genosha (which was still enslaving mutants at that point) she ended up captured herself, and since their readings indicated she was not quite human (though what exactly she was, they didn’t know) they tried to put her through the “mutate bonding process” that would enslave her too. As a result, her latent psychic powers finally manifest, and she telekinetically explodes the place. From there, we start seeing big hints that something is going really wrong with Maddie, she seduces Havok and she’s entered into a secret bargain with the demon N’astrih, who promised to help her find her still-missing son (whom she still wanted to find and save at that point because she was still mostly herself) and of course, that bargain transformed her into the Goblyn Queen. After this transformation, though, she STILL had not gone past the point of no return. That didn’t happen until she met Sinister and she found out the truth of her origins—-not only was she a clone of Jean Grey physically, the few memories that she had also came from Jean, and her emotions from Scott had been PROGRAMMED into her (meaning she never had a choice at all in the man she loved) and it was all to be a brood mare, to produce a child with him. Only then did she go off the deep end completely, and agreed to N’astrih’s plan to sacrifice her own son (who he now found and gave to her, as this was his plan all along) because it was the absolute BIGGEST fuck you she could give to Sinister and to Cyclops. And like, yes, that’s evil, but given at that point she was not only magically infected/corrupted with demon energy AND insane with trauma that had been building up for months if not YEARS of development…she basically had a better excuse than ANYONE in all this who was also corrupted by Inferno. Yet she’s the one who doesn’t get a break. The unfairness is just…staggering, really. Even her death isn’t without indignity, violation, and depersonalization---she tries to commit a murder suicide, linking her mind with Jean’s and killing herself so that Jean will be dragged down into death with her. Jean, who really is the kindest to Maddie, urges Maddie to live instead, but Maddie’s last words are “not in the same world as you”. Jean survives. Maddie does not. And then...Jean takes Maddie’s memories and psyche into herself. It’s meant as beautiful, but to me it’s a heinous violation. Maddie wanted nothing more than be APART from Jean, so much so she KILLED HERSELF, and now Jean has made her a part of her forever, and we’re meant to applaud this? It’s DISGUSTING. Madelyne gets resurrected in the 1990s by Nate Grey, but it turns out that was an accident on his part, his mind was subconsciously seeking...Jean Grey, of course. And we he finds out he’s the one who brought her back to life, HE TRIES TO KILL HER. Jean stops him, but it’s no wonder to me that poor Maddie runs to the arms of Sebastian Shaw...who, of all people, actually treats her as an individual from the get-go and ends up being a pretty good boyfriend to her. Never even tries to use her in any evil schemes, it’s crazy. Madelyne has come back and died again and come back a few times since then, but she’s never really been “Maddie” again, whether it was brave adventurous Badass Normal pilot Maddie who just wanted to help people, or the bitter, conflicted, morally grey Maddie of the 90s. No, she’s just....she’s not even Goblyn Queen anymore, she lacks the pathos, she’s just this sexy evil misogynist caricature of herself and I hate it. I really love Madelyne Pryor. She came into this crazy world as a normal human, and when she got pulled into superhero shenanigans she held her own. She was a badass, she was a spitfire, she had a huge heart. She deserves a lot better than just being a gross Sexy Evil Lady with no personality, especially since she no longer has the whole “demonically possessed” issue going on. It’s just stupid and sexist at this point. I personally love original 80s Maddie, and also 90s Maddie where like...this shit has happened to her and she’s darker for it now, and understandably so, but she’s also still HER. Like, she leaves Sebastian Shaw not because he ever treated her badly, which he did not, but because he was doing things that could hurt OTHER PEOPLE, and that was where she drew the line. She was an enemy to the X-Men now or at least really hated them, she killed Threnody for bringing up her past as being “bred to breed”, but she also wasn’t about to be with a man who would risk the lives of millions of innocent people with his schemes, no matter how well he treated her, no matter if he was the one man who ever saw her for HER. Real Maddie is INTERESTING and Real Maddie is GOOD and I want Real Maddie back so she can call everyone on their shit and then go off and live her best life instead of being eternally dragged back into pointless villainy by authors who can’t think of anything better! MEGGAN PUCEANU - As with Madelyne, she’s maybe not UNKNOWN per se, I mean she’s one of the lead characters of Excalibur, but I also don’t think she’s an A-lister at all either. I’ve written about her HERE and HERE and her relationship dynamics with Brian Braddock/Captain Britain HERE so I feel like those links will probably be better than another novel like I did for Haven and Maddie! CATSEYE AKA SHARON SMITH - The deaths of all the Hellions were a tragedy, but Catseye is the one I found most interesting and with the most potential! I’ve written about her HERE and the Hellions in general HERE with a segment on her. She’s just so cute and innocent and INTERESTING, I want to know so much more about how she behaves, how she perceives the world and interact with others, how she gets on with her teammates, how she reacts this and that, I just love her! MINDMELD - Appears for only one issue, is arguably the first transgender mutant in Marvel, and also a total badass who I think is really sexy. I write more about her HERE and HERE. HONORABLE MENTIONS I’m not freaking out over these girls AS MUCH or AS CONSISTENTLY but they all have a place in my heart!! Really all it takes is someone MENTIONING them to get me revved up all over again!

THRENODY AKA MELODY JACOBS- Another Marvel gal who can’t catch a break, when she’s remembered by anyone at all. I wrote about her HERE prior to her most recent return in Deadpool, then HERE about said return. I just really, really want Threnody to be happy. She’s suffered enough. Admittedly, that could be said for most women on this list, maybe all of them. GOSAMYR- Wrote about her HERE! Most people who know of her at all typically hate her but I find her extremely interesting. She’s like everything people HATE about women, every stereotype of “toxic femininity”, but then this is explained as part of her culture and biology, and this is, to her, what is normal, and how is she to KNOW that everyone acts nuts around her when she has no basis for knowing how they act when she’s NOT around? She interests me in the questions and dilemmas she raises, and I just kinda have a thing for women we’re supposed to hate because of their feminine traits. KWANNON- The Japanese woman whose body Betsy Braddock had for years. I was very excited when she was brought back to life and given her own series, I wanted for her at last to be a CHARACTER with her own PERSONALITY and LIFE that wasn’t just an excuse to give a white woman a ninja makeover, and then I got...Fallen Angels. And she’s just...she’s literally just 90s Psylocke. I was very disappointed. But I still like Kwannon HERSELF in terms of potential, and now that she’s back maybe she’ll become a real person sooner or later. SATURNYNE AND SAT-YR-9: Wrote about them HERE! I really like Sat-Yr-9 as a villain (I especially enjoyed her short stint in the Hellfire Club as White Queen with Viper as her lieutenant and not-so-subtle girlfriend) and I like Saturnyne as a sort of celestial bureaucrat, someone who isn’t a force of good or evil but a force of ORDER, like the opposite of “embodiment of chaos” type characters. MURMUR AKA ARLETTE TRUFFEAU: I have not written about her before but HERE IS HER WIKI ARTICLE. As with Gossamyr, she seems like the “sexy shallow slut we’re supposed to dislike” type, so of course I like her. BIANCA LANEIGE- A Generation X villain who bore a grudge against Emma Frost from her days in the Hellfire Club, I wrote about her HERE. She’s pretty comedic as a bad guy, but that’s not a bad thing! I’d like to see her around again one day, either as silly as ever or made more serious. LIFEGUARD: Wrote about here HERE. She was in the first X-Men graphic novel that I bought and I’ve always had a soft spot for her since. I really liked that she didn’t give a shit when she found out who her bio-father was, it’s such a refreshing reaction compared to the usual “what if I’m just like my father/I can’t believe I’m adopted/etc” angst. Comparatively, she’s super upset about her Shi’ar lineage, because that actually altered her INTERNAL self when it manifested, she started seeing everyone around her as PREY and I reckon that’s pretty distressing for someone like her. Always wanted to see her come back; she’s in the background at a Krakoa party! SILHOUETTE CHORD: Wrote about her HERE and HERE. I just like her I guess! She’s maybe not obscure per se since she’s a main cast member of The New Warriors, but I’ve never really seen her get any attention. BLACK MAMBA AKA TANYA SEALY: Wrote about her HERE! THE ASP AKA CLEOPATRA NEFERTITI: Wrote about her HERE! SKEIN AKA SYBIL DVORAK: Wrote about her HERE and HERE! She was on the “Woman Warriors” team with Black Mamba and Asp, and I like the idea they just hang out as friends a lot!! ANACONDA AKA BLANCHE “BLONDIE” SITZINSKI: Wrote about her HERE! I just want her to hug me...really, really hard :) SHARADA DARTHRI: A minor villain that shows up during the “all female X-Men” team era in...2013, I think? Wrote about her HERE. DRAGONFLY AKA VERONICA DULTRY: Wrote about her HERE MANTIS : Despite the fact that she’s very well-known for her film version in Guardians of the Galaxy, most people don’t seem to know much at all about her comics version even though she’s been an Avengers member since the 70s. Wrote about her HERE and HERE and HERE, someone else writes about her HERE PENDING These are characters that I have not had the chance to personally read up on myself yet, but I want to! Their names link to their Marvel wiki articles! TOPAZ FIREBIRD SNOWBIRD SILVERCLAW There are honestly countless others I’m probably not remembering but this is a good handful I think! Oh, yeah, and also...COOTER. Because her name is COOTER oh my god.

#xmen #marvel #marvel women #x men women #women of marvel #x women #out of cortez

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incarnateirony · 6 years

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The Problem with DreamHunter...

Is that there is no problem with DreamHunter.

You're probably like "wait, what?" So let me clarify: This is absolutely not a Dreamhunter!Critical post. In fact, I have a lot of accolades for DreamHunter. I'll address a few complaints I've read from a surly, never-happy swath of stan twitter, but this post isn't actually about that - it's about a pervasive cultural issue involving coded phobia and how Bobo Fucking Berens showed his level of quantum literary and social brainfunction to do everything from canonize an LGBT ship to run a far deeper and more exposing social experiment on the fandom at large.

We've all seen the gif sets. I can't find the video in my vat of poorly maintained blog, but I'm sure someone else could, wherein Bobo on Twitch was talking about being ecstatic over us seeing what he wanted us to see. To the fandom that keeps their ears open, none of DreamHunter's premise is new to us. The only new thing was a certain confirmation, "First love strikes quick."

First, to the part that is NOT the point of the post, but I feel needs addressed before people start yelling at me:

Now, this has opened up a floodgate of hard-end-stan-twitter complaining like "Oh so they didn't just kill a WOC but a queer WOC and then after-texted it?" Well, no, fam. They were setting up a queer romance of the century with her dream half and potential return to the self while facing the darkest parts of challenging the self and deleting our weaknesses, and maybe even going so far as to make a statement of self imposed biases. Wayward just wasn't picked up so they've had to funnel and condense the concept in other ways. Dark Kaia wanting to target Claire after seeing what she meant to Kaia isn't an arbitrary and random sentiment. But arguing literary romantic value with stan twitter is like arguing algebra with an ill-behaved goose, so that's as far as I'm going to take that explanation beyond "y'all are often our biggest enemies on content."

Now then... to the actual point of the post:

I've mentioned it before, but it really deserves its own rebloggable master post not attached to some overlong thread, and able to be brought into fuller scope. The problem with DreamHunter is almost nonexistent. In fact, the simple fact is: with a line that simple, it was universally accepted as a truth, whether people are screaming about tropes they want to read in the worst light before the romantic element ever got a chance to get its feet under it. Nobody's out there saying it doesn't exist. Nobody's out there downtalking that line.

THAT is the problem with DreamHunter - that there is no problem with DreamHunter. And by that, I don't mean to say we should have a problem with DreamHunter. It's that DreamHunter reveals a hugely systemic coded bias in our culture.

And honestly, I think Berens did that on purpose.

There’s a certain level of coy battle in acceptance going on. First of all, people naturally seem to accept F/F before M/M due to a bunch of cultural reasons. Mostly because F/F has been convenient to publicly fetishize while M/M freaks out dudebros that are really uncertain about themselves, so for a longer time, GA has been exposed to and accepting F/F. And I think of anyone out there, My Big Gay Author King Berens is going to understand that.

WLW still has its own stigmas, I'm not saying it doesn't, but acting like resistance to it is on any cultural coding level parallel to the stigma against MLM is a weird display of intersectional privilege and lack of awareness.

Acting like it’s coincidence that they monkey-stomp packed as many identical lines and scene arrangements into all of one episode as possible, then dropped a bomb like that episode two, is silly. We know exactly what he’s after – hell, he said he was ecstatic we saw what he wanted us to see. So the real question is, why is it that “first love strikes quick” is taken without argument from the GA but a thousand up-nods for the M/M pairing with the same content – and TBH, far far far more that could never be packed into a single episode – has people take lines like “attached at the everything” and immediately have a portion of the audience start laughing, despite the surrounding substance around it?

Destiel fandom read into yet-again heaven and hell believing DeanCas are an item; antis decided it was an insult to “annoy” them. Even the angel in the past threatening to gouge Cas’ genitals over it. Because that’s what I do when I don’t believe it but am a religious zealot. Threaten to cut dicks off to annoy people. But somehow, it’s far easier to negotiate, to these people, that the male queer coded content is a punchline, rather than either a genuine or perceived truth. Antis choose to interpret MLM as a punchline. It’s that simple. No amount of surrounding content or story thematics can convince them otherwise.

The same substance they monkey stomped, condensed, and largely stripped down for time limitations, into DreamHunter?

I’ll give a hint: it’s the same cultural stigma that – which late night show was it, where they started playing well-edited slash videos and the audience started laughing despite it being well timed and edited? It’s that. It’s the same thing that made Ateo unable to play queer roles in the industry as being “not believably gay” despite being a gay man himself, until the Hunter Husbands. It’s a horrific stigma that the audience has been coded to bite and gnash back against M/M content unfairly to the queer male audience and it’s gross, but it’s just there, sort of in the collective mind.

I absolutely don’t think Berens, of all fucking people, is unaware of this. And I see what he did as a really, really fucking coy set of actions beneath already masterful writing.

Berens knows exactly what he’s fucking doing and has basically coded a social experiment into the show that betrays people’s biases against M/M queer pairings while allowing the saturation (largely by fetishization) of F/F pairings to do the heavy lifting for him. Nobody out here yelling that Jody could be wrong about it or that “we didn’t see a kiss so it didn’t happen LOL they’re just in a sismance” – it is what it is. And here we are.

So on a social level I am fucking fascinated to see where he takes this next.

Berens has come out swinging for the queer male community whether anybody wants to accept it or not. Which is, modernly, by our demographics, at least an equal if not the greatest portion of our primary male demographic of viewers for the show. And I'm not just talking about the fandom census. I'm talking about Nielsen's demographics shift on gender since season 10, and general Kinsey-scale-esque testing of the true target demo at large in the US. Our ads count 18-49. CW targets 18-34.

Following the work of Berens within Supernatural will give you a very blatant papertrail. It started in deeply layered subtext; his first episode Carver directed Misha to play Cas as a Jilted Lover; after that, he took Robbie's work on Cain and manifest the Colette parallel coded into our story; he chose to take Dabb's Dean-speech from 12.1 and turn it into our coffee-Mixtape-Win spree that other authors shed from their pen in his wake, just like later in season 10 people continued his Colette grind. Berens has been an internal motion for the legitimization of truly structured and admittedly intentful elements of Destiel in the show. And people can scream that they don't like or see it all they want, but it's right there -- and with DreamHunter, it was What He Wanted Us To See.

It's grossly disingenuous activism to try to accuse SPN's first overtly queer author of queerbait while internally shifting the motions of our author room mechanics towards genuinely structured and intentful romance-skewed storytelling, whether it remains subtextual or not. Especially as that author continues to throw wrench upon wrench upon wrench into the no homo gears in ways the GA is perpetually exposed to and spun into having to think about. An eternal negotiation of poignantly delivered lines that catches even the most resistant ears and at least plants a seed in their mind about something else. A true normalization of it as a potential element to the story.

The same sort of normalization hyper-condensed into DreamHunter, but as per the above discussion, far more readily accepted. I have literally heard, from people who argued the "bromance, I'm not entirely convinced" on Destiel, that DreamHunter had been "obvious" to them and the "first love strikes quick" wasn't even necessary, because everybody knew. Cue me sending simple gifsets and script line side by sides and blowing their brains because suddenly their entire world scope just got bent sideways in -- why do I accept the one while I negotiate away the other?

Well, I covered why, above.

The problem with DreamHunter, I repeat, is that there is no problem with DreamHunter. People accept and see that it exists, without argument, even going so far as to label it "obvious" from a single episode, of a highly condensed version of only a fraction of the moments of another queer-coded duo in the show, but simply with culturally differing gender dynamics.

The concern troll of "bromance" or "why not let men be close" dies here. The idea of a bromance is letting two men have a friendship with the form of openness platonic female friends can have. That's fine, that's great. Dean-Benny would be a great example of this, and even then we once again had the offset of Dean-Cas to show different operations. I might even say Dean-Sam as an idea of that, but I don't think "bromance" is necessarily needed since brothers natively have a different sort of dynamic from growing up together. But once you are going out of your way to dismiss elements that we accept in hetero pairings with a laissez-faire “duh”, or even WLW scenarios as “it’s so obvious”, because it's MLM, we have left the area of "bromance" and "why not just let men be close without making it gay" and into “I am negotiating this away due to some sort of coded unwillingness to accept it, perhaps subconsciously, even if I consciously consider myself an ally.”

And that's the true masterpiece of this social experiment Bobo planted in the Supernatural universe with DreamHunter.

The world is grossly unfair and tilted in remaining cultural stigmas about queer males after ages of repressing them to limited niche capacities and stereotypes so strong that masculine gay men couldn’t even get cast in roles as gay men, where the world reads queer men as a punch line rather than a “duh” or “it’s so obvious” or “it’s just right there”, and DreamHunter is a walking fucking social experiment putzing around in Supernatural universe that gives no choice but to pick a side of the fence once you’re aware of these things.

Whether or not it’s physically consummated does not make it not-romantic. Being queer isn’t just about sex. It’s about feelings. And yes, we want our feelings to lead somewhere, and they deserve to lead somewhere, but is Jody acknowledging Claire’s “first love” now what suddenly makes it romantic, or is it the motions, the stories, and the feelings that preceded those lines, even though they never kissed and all hand-holding could be negotiated away the same way we can negotiate away our canon touches for two very emotionally involved men? “She was just leading her through the gate because she was scared,” “she was just consoling her as she died.” See how easy that is? But we won’t do that. And now, frankly anybody that does looks like a jackass.

So why, oh why, is this treated with ambiguity? This is a canon statement of “this relationship is being in love.” It was young love - it struck quick, in only an episode - but it was love. But name an element DreamHunter has to define that love that Destiel doesn’t? If you bend over backwards and try for the handholding, I can raise you hundreds of moments of intimate style contact. Try again.

Canon just confirmed what we already knew -- that Destiel is romantic. That there is love there. And not the kind of love we dismiss as Bros. Bobo just did that. Because every element of their relationship exists in Destiel, and a hundred times more. But it was first love. Dreamhunter was young love that came quickly, and not a single soul argued. Destiel is the same showcase of love, older, more matured, grown over years with dozens more moments of contact and display -- but in the very least, those moments -- those ones lived through DreamHunter in parallel -- that’s love. Canon literally just painted those sparse, compacted down elements, these behaviors we’ve seen, these moments, as coded romantic and in love. If you take nothing else from that -- take that. The elements that build Destiel are canonically romantic, when within DreamHunter and the question is -- without any physical affirmations or DreamHunter on screen, why is it romantic to them and not to Destiel? Why do we even humor this as a discussion, though we expect it, and what does this say of the coded phobias in fandom that we even have to expect it?

Dean and Cas haven’t kissed or dual-confessed to it in public, but you know... neither did DreamHunter. Unless of course we don’t talk down the timely placement of Need Yous and Love Yous and Big Wins and whatever else like people insist on doing with the MLM arrangement. Nobody’s talking down Jody’s third person “first love,” because we know better, and there’s not a mix of MLM and ship warring in play with DreamHunter. Bromance ends at the same line platonic female friendships end. Everyone accepts that DreamHunter is not platonic. Even without ceasing previous negotiations around poignant DeanCas lines, DreamHunter has established the romantic and loving engagements in retrograde. Canon has literally confirmed -- this relationship is romantic and in love.

And until this post, not a single person has tried to argue it down as Just Young Sis Love. Because we all know. Just like, deep down, everybody knows it about the mothership, some just don’t want to accept it. For whatever reason, subconscious or otherwise. I’ll laugh if the same antis that just tried to blind parallel it to W*ncest as a proof of love, while disconnected from the very origins and confirmations of DreamHunter, suddenly start rambling that doesn’t make DreamHunter canon either once this post gets around.

Berens is a fucking master ISTG.

I mean, I guess you’re free to celebrate any network level blockades going on right now while Bobo does Big Queer Fatal Combat from within, but allow me to celebrate DreamHunter whether or not we get consummation for Destiel, an MLM-scenario ship that has to deal with entirely other stigmas on a network primarily run by a bunch of old dudes. This is there. This will never be taken away. And cheering any blockades being run against MLM content with blatant intent does not make you the gr8 person here, m8.

This post is probably gonna have a low level of spread because it’s also something that forces even Destiel fandom to negotiate with themselves too -- how many lines and moments and whatever-else have we negotiated down, talked around, and chosen to interpret in the most left field way as if arguing ourselves from the position of an anti, only to get crack slapped across the jaw in this? How many have yelled queerbait without really observing what Bobo has been doing from within, how many have to face-or-deny the unfair queerbait shouting? How many hold-outs are we putting up, ourselves, because it isn’t the type or level of confirmation we want; we’re sitting here waiting for a bigger more dramatic reveal than a third person statement like that, or what-have-you, but when it’s not “our ship” that we are eternally defending from antis, and not a ship being targeted due to a mix of ship warring and MLM social issues, this is fine? And why is it okay when it’s not The Mothership and we totes accept it for DreamHunter canonization but we’re still talking circles around DeanCas like we’re our own antis? Why do we let anti-dom spin everyone’s head up in such knots that the majority expect Dabberens to live in stan twitter, abandon narrative properties and quality, and have Sam walk in on something while they profess their love and walk away with pictures as hard sealed photographic evidence when that isn’t expected of literally anybody else?

Can anybody tell me why Bobo Bookends Berens, who penned Cain -- Dean’s kindred spirit and fated path parallel -- calling out -- as confirmed -- that Castiel was his Colette, his wife, the love of his life that knew who he was, and what he was, that loved him unconditionally, forgave him, and only asked for him to stop -- a third person perspective -- has a third person, offscreen confirmation of the same sort, with far less plot weaving, taken universally as canon without the play of shifting goalposts via MLM social stigmas and/or ship warring stan twitter getting up in everybody’s heads?

Cuz it’s the same dude, guys. Same pen. A moment nobody even dismissed or TRIED to heckle out. If we just want to go third person while dropping punchline perception, we have everything from The Angel In The Dirty Trenchcoat Who’s In Love With You to Attached At The Everything. Y’all really think Bobo Berens is out here using his own sexuality as a tool and a punchline to be laughed at though? Bobo, “I protest human trafficing and ICE engagements front line in the body walls while people are being arrested” Berens? That guy?

You’re gonna go out of his way that hard to miss the point just because you have phobic asshats on twitter, and/or asshole haters with “opposite ships” on twitter, or it’s just not the kind YOU wanted to see for Destiel, even if it’s enough for you to take it as canon in DreamHunter, when you already Been Had It for Destiel?

Meh. So many problems with DreamHunter, in there not being any problems with DreamHunter.

All Dabberens. Every Dreamhunter moment was a Dabb or Berens written previous Destiel moment. The meaningful third party line from Jody was Berens. Just like the meaningful third party line in Executioner’s song, also by Berens. Not just a random jab - someone who knew them inside and out. And that - people will take that as canon, again, when there’s no rival ships or MLM phobias in play. Every inch of Dreamhunter (and far, far more) existed in Destiel, by the same authors, porting the same concepts across, piece by piece, and like magic, nobody protested.

And if you’re protesting, or worse if you hilariously ship Dreamhunter but reject Destiel, despite -- I dunno -- Bobo’s own book reviews on issues like queerphobia and intersectional issues -- you may want to introspect on the real reason you’re denying it.

Because that, my friends, is a strictly personal problem.

#supernatural #lgbt #destiel #dreamhunter #bobo berens #mine

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gurenaii · 7 years

Text

My SS Analysis (Part One)

SasuSaku. A canon pairing between Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura.

I posted earlier that I wanted to do one of these, so here this is!

This is an analysis for only part one, not for Shippuden. It’s too long for one for Part One as it is.

I spent a long time on this and I’m really proud of how this came out. In this I’ll be addressing some, if not most arguments against the ship and I’ll be using the manga and databooks as well; not the anime. I’m getting the manga translations an screenshots from Kissmanga.

I’ll also be doing this with an open mind, while inputting my own thoughts as a shipper of SS.

Now, let’s begin.

WARNING: THIS IS VERY LONG, THOUGH ITS MAINLY THE AMOUNT OF MANGA PANELS THAT MAKE IT LONG...

CHAPTER 3

When Sasuke and Sakura are officially introduced to the series, Sakura is shown and described by Naruto:

Naruto has a lil crush on her, and she’s shown as a Sasuke fangirl shortly after.

Sasuke then gets introduced right after, described as the class heartthrob.

Then yes, Sakura is officially portrayed as a girl who has a crush on Sasuke, a fangirl of his. And he pays no attention to her advances. As well of two girls there hissing “who does she think she is” which I find kinda funny by the way. It also proves the whole “class heartthrob” comment by Naruto, it’s shown that not only Sakura, but other girls also have a crush on him. Though it’s based on his looks and his coolness as the rookie.

He ignores all the advances by his fangirls. Right after Naruto comments how Sakura looks totally ecstatic while she has heart eyes at Sasuke. And then the little funny comical scene happens where Sasuke and Naruto kiss accidentally.

Let’s skip ahead a bit. We get to where Iruka is pairing up the three person squads. Team Seven is paired together as: Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke.

Skipping ahead again...

After Sasuke gets free from the restraints Naruto put on him he finds Sakura who was basically just in an encounter with Naruto disguising as Sasuke. He obviously doesn’t know about that and he asks where Naruto is and Sakura does her little rant about how he keeps ‘getting in between them’ and how he has no parents and how kids with none grow up selfish and annoying, then right after he tells her that being scolded by your parents doesn’t compare with loneliness. Sakura is oblivious to this and then Sasuke calls her annoying then leaves.

Some SS Shippers I now have said that he didn’t really think of her as truly annoying here, but yes, he did. She rambled about something that hit his nerves. He was actually annoyed at her here.

So here, he isn’t very fond of her.

CHAPTER 4

We are introduced with this cover which is really nice foreshadowing by the way.

Where they are talking about themselves, while Sakura talks about herself like everyone else did, this happens:

Take it as embarrassment or moved, I personally think he’s embarrassed since she’s basically fawning over him in front of his teacher and yeah. I also think he’s just embarrassed because this takes after he called her annoying, where he wasn’t really liking her.

CHAPTER 6

After Kakashi puts Sakura under a genjutsu of Sasuke on the verge of death, she screams and passes out. Meanwhile Sasuke hears the scream:

CHAPTER 7

After Kakashi sends Sasuke underground, Sakura arrives and believes that she’s seeing his severed head and passes out again.

She wakes up to see Sasuke leaning over her, he waited for her to wake up to see if she’s okay or not, despite wasting his time.

She sees that he’s fine, not dead, and hugs him in relief, and he reassures her that he’s fine and tells her to let him go now.

And he explains to her how it’s almost noon and time is running out (cough, and yet he stayed with her until she woke) and that he almost got the bells last time.

*clears throat*

I don’t think this is embarrassment. What even is there to be embarrassed about? Nobody else is around except for Sakura. And there isn’t any reason to be.

Boy, I see you.

After, she says how “there’s always next time!” and that he should give up, and then he opens up to her by saying:

Pretty sure he’s never told anyone this yet other than briefly hinting it when he was describing his likes, dislikes, goals, etc.

Also going to mention she’s concerned here.

And she remembers this.

She may be his fangirl in this part, but she isn’t dumb.

CHAPTER 8

moving on

CHAPTER 9

Included that because I found this panel to be humerus, and that eye smex is a big part of his ship. *giggles*

CHAPTER 10

The team is on a mission and they get attacked. Sakura gets in front of Tazuna with a kunai and tries to protect him, Sasuke goes and gets in front of both of them, if Kakashi didn’t step in here he could’ve died or gotten seriously injured.

Proving the statement wrong: Sasuke didn’t care about anyone or anything in part one, he was only focused on revenge.

Yes, he’s focused on getting stronger and getting revenge. But stepping in front of two people where he could have died, where he would be unable to get his revenge, yeah.

There are also more examples that prove the statement wrong, but I'll go over it when I get to those parts.

Another example that Sasuke does indeed care, even if it’s slight.

Mhm~

CHAPTER 19

During chakra control training, Sakura could easily walk up the tree with ease. Meanwhile Naruto and Sasuke were struggling. Sakura gave Naruto tips, and then after a while...

Sasuke asks Naruto what Sakura told him earlier about the tips, with a blush on his face.

You can interpret it as a blush of embarrassment or a blush that he’s interested in her, I take it as embarrassment. I mean, he obviously isn’t one for asking people for help or advice and he’s embarrassed that he had to ask Naruto of all people.

CHAPTER 26

Another example that Sasuke does care for his comrades this early on in the story. He heard Sakura scream and was panicked that something bad might’ve happened to her and Kakashi back there.

CHAPTER 27

Another example that he cared or his comrades this early on...

CHAPTER 31

Then comes the scene where Sakura see’s Sasuke’s supposedly dead body.

-And she is shocked to see this.

You can see it in her expression. She’s shocked that the Sasuke, top rookie in the class whom she praise to be cool and good at everything he does, is laying down dead in front of her.

And she’s holding her emotions back now. She states that this isn’t an illusion this time and says he feels cold, rather than the warmth that he’s supposed to have and that confirms it in her mind that he’s actually dead.

She is holding her emotions back until Tazuna says that it’s alright for her to shed tears.

Sakura hears this, and talks about how she always got good grades on all her tests in school.

And she states the 25th rule of the Shinobi Conduct, and finally lets her emotions out and she cries.

This moment here, I think opened her eyes about how anything could happen, and how easily she could lose somebody. I also think this moment, her character develops. She obviously really cares about him more; more than his looks or his “coolness” or else she wouldn’t be crying this hard.

If she truly didn’t care about him then she wouldn’t be this affected by it.

CHAPTER 33

Sasuke hears someone crying and recognizes it to be Sakura.

And he wakes up.

She is grateful that he’s alive, and quickly hugs him. This is like a parallel to chapter seven, except this one has more emotion and it’s more meaningful.

While she hugs him he tells her he’s hurting him so she lets go and apologizes. And Sasuke’s eyes are concealed.

He tries to get up and she is against it, because he might worsen the wounds he already has. He reassues her (just like chapter 7) that he’s all right and asks about the situation about Naruto and Haku and she answers him.

CHAPTER 34

No, he didn’t insult her. He reminded her that instead of flirting, she should work on her skills more. Sasuke is Sasuke. He’s blunt about his thoughts and he’s not afraid of letting them out.

If you want to know what or who he insults, it’d be Naruto from the amount of times he’s called him an idiot and made fun of him.

Calling someone an idiot (which is making fun of how smart they are) and mentioning to someone that they should they should practice on their skills instead of using their time of flirting are two different things. You can take it as an insult, but just don’t forget he’s called Naruto a variety of things that are rude.

Also, again, Sasuke is extremely blunt.

She actually even admits that he’s right.

CHAPTER 36

The next day, Sakura is still reminded of what Sasuke told her the day before. She’s reluctant to join the chunin exams because she knows she isn’t good like Naruto or Sasuke are.

And Sakura puts on a front, and Sasuke of all people saw right through her.

When two people are standing in front of a door, not letting anyone through to enter the exams.

Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura come up and see this and:

And:

He compliments Sakura on her genjutsu immunity skills in front of everyone, winks at her, and has a smile on his face when see sees that her mood has been lifted to happiness.

CHAPTER 38

This is quick, but:

After Sasuke’s fight with Lee, Sasuke is falling and Sakura saves him from falling and hurting himself.

And she asks if he’s alright because she’s genuinely worried.

CHAPTER 47

While in the Forest of Death, when Orochimaru approaches Sasuke and Sakura and forces them to see their death and are paralyzed, they cannot move.

Sasuke looks over and notices Sakura cannot move either, and that she’s shaking from fear.

And he needs to do something. He needs to get them both out of there alive, so he stabs his leg and goes to get Sakura out of there.

And she tries to talk to him and he puts his hand over her mouth to shut her up so he can think of a plan to get them out of the situation.

She also notices that he’s more jumpy and that she’s never seen him like that before, and she’s worried about that.

CHAPTER 48

We’re given this as a part of a cover. (I don’t know if you noticed but I’m putting the covers here as well)

CHAPTER 49

Something that we haven’t seen from Sakura yet, is if she’s as submissive to Sasuke as she usually acts.

She may seem like she doesn’t, but she doesn’t take shit from him, and she’ll call him out if she ever needs to or if it’s necessary.

And what she says here, pushes him to snap out of it and then he proceeds to fight Orochimaru.

And when he loses and gets bitten, getting the curse mark, Sakura is angry and wants and demands to know what Orochimaru did to Sasuke.

After not much of an answer she goes to try to comfort him, to try to help him in any way.

And their hands get intertwined, Sasuke squeezing hers, trying to ease the pain he’s getting.

She pulls him close to try to ease the pain, trying to figure out what to do and what’s happening to him.

She is NOT taking advantage of him. She is NOT trying to take advantage of him. She’s worried about him and she’s trying to figure out what to do to help.

CHAPTER 50

Sakura is taking care of both Naruto and Sasuke.

And she is determined to protect the both of them.

CHAPTER 51

She’s taking care of them to the point where she isn’t letting herself sleep. If she didn’t care about them dearly, she wouldn’t be doing this, and she wouldn’t be this determined.

When three sound ninjas come in and want to fight Sasuke, and Sakura obviously declines, he’s still injured. So she demands answers about the mark on Sasuke’s neck, and about Orochimaru.

CHAPTER 53

It shows that she has liked Sasuke ever since she was really young.

Later on, she tries to protect them as well as Lee, now, and she gets pulled by the hair by a sound ninja.

She goes on in her head about how she feels llike a burden, and how she always has to be protected. She wants to protect the people she cares about, and now she feels useless, like she just gets in the way. And so she then cuts her hair to get free from Kin’s grip on her.

CHAPTER 54

Sakura thinks about how her teammates protect her, and how she just watches them from the back.

She thinks of her teammates + Lee, and guess who’s right in the center.

She then proceeds to fight for her teammates.

A series of flashbacks show with Io and Sakura, and it’s revealed that, again, she’s like Sasuke ever since she was at a young age, and she didn’t even know he was popular and that a lot of girls liked him, too. She didn’t start liking him because he was popular.

CHAPTER 55

Sasuke wakes up.

...But it isn’t the sight she thought she’d see.

Sasuke wakes, the curse mark is active, and he’s angry at seeing how injured Sakura is and demands her to tell him who hurt her.

He is pissed.

The background behind Sakura is black, and I learned recently that when the background of a panel is black, the thing in it is the sole focus of a character is looking at.

It indicates her state of injury is the one thing he’s focused on at the moment. That is the reason he’s so angry after all.

CHAPTER 56

Sakura is worried about the marks on Sasuke’s body, and she points it out.

And he reassures her that there’s nothing to worry about and that he feels strong with power.

And once again. he opens up to her.

And yes he gets even more pissed. Especialy when he figures out who hurt Sakura.

Also, he pays no mind to anyone else around, not Naruto who’s right next to him, he woke up demanding who hurt Sakura, not Naruto, not Lee, not why or who these people are, but who hurt her.

He then goes to defeat Zaku by breaking his arms right out of his sockets, and then goes to the other standing sound ninja.

Sakura notices that this isn’t the Sasuke she knows, this isn’t him.

She then takes it upon herself to try to stop him, so she runs up to him screaming for him to stop, and pulls him back from behind.

Even if you don’t ship it, you gotta admit this was a very powerful and well done scene, props to Kishi.

The eye smex:

And then she pleads again but with a softer tone, to stop.

And because of her doing this, the curse mark goes away.

CHAPTER 57

Naruto wakes up, and is alarmed to see Sakura and Sasuke far away, and he notices something.

He notices that something happened to her hair. Not her injuries, her hair.

Sasuke and Ino are not amused xD

CHAPTER 60

Sasuke is determined to get Naruto to get those fish. He’s really into it lmao

And then:

okay then sasuke

This moment isn’t really relevant, but I am doing an analysis on all their interactions, so...

She’s worried about something, and he asks her to explain what she means...if Sasuke didn’t care about her at all and found her hella annoying, he wouldn't have asked her to talk and he wouldn’t be listening to her.

And he’s obvious listening to her proven in a few panels ahead. It is a very important topic. Normal conversation about important matters, nothing more, nothing less.

CHAPTER 61

Another example that she isn’t as submissive to him as some may seem to believe.

CHAPTER 62

Still trying to figure this out...

CHAPTER 63

screeeeech~

riiiiiiiing~

CHAPTER 66

She doesn’t take shit from him...She isn’t as submissive to him as people may think...

He’s pretty shook and alarmed to see her cry like this, especially for him.

She doesn’t want him to get hurt with that mark.

Again: She does not take shit from him.

She doesn’t want to see him suffer, she says it herself.

Some eye smex, though it’s angsty and intense eye smex:

He opens up to her again.

And then he says, not even for your sake.

CHAPTER 68

In the midst of his battle in the preliminaries, the curse mark activates, but he thinks of Naruto and Sakura, and it goes away. He does in fact care for his teammates while people say he doesn't and never did, but he does, and they do have an effect on him.

CHAPTER 69

Apparently, Sasuke made Sakura promise that she wouldn’t mention the curse mark to Naruto, he trusted her to keep the promise...

And she kept it.

CHAPTER 99

Sakura is worried that Sasuke wont show up to the exam.

CHAPTER 111

Sasuke arrives to the match, and Sakura is worried that the curse mark is still there and it might interfere, so she asks Kakashi about it.

And when he answers something positive, her mood gets lifted up.

She isn’t a fangirl anymore. She isn’t obsessed with him anymore. She deeply cares for him as seen here, if she really just liked him for his looks, then she would not have been this worried.

CHAPTER 129

After Naruto jumped into the fight with Gaara, he gets out and goes after Sasuke to attempt to kill him.

But Sakura jumps in front of him with a kunai, wanting to protect him.

If she only cared about Sasuke for his looks, would she have jumped in front of him, knowing full well that she would either die or get extremely injured?

And Sasuke would have probably died if she hadn’t stepped in front of him.

CHAPTER 133

Sasuke gets up, and tells Naruto rescue Sakura from Gaara’s hold, and then to get her and himself out of there. He trusts Naruto to do it.

So he can delay Gaara, so there would be a chance for Naruto and Sakura to get out alive.

If he didn’t care about Naruto or Sakura, he wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t say this, he wouldn’t call him and Sakura precious comrades to him.

CHAPTER 138

Gaara is defeated, and Sakura is getting free. She’s about to fall when Sasuke goes and catches her before she hits the ground and gently sets her down by Pakkun.

He then looks at her softly and tells Pakkun to take care of her while he goes to check up on Naruto.

CHAPTER 144

Sakura thanks Sasuke for saving her, but he tells her it wasn't him, but it was Naruto.

And she's thankful.

But Sasuke isn't happy with it at all.

He felt that he couldn't do anything, he felt useless. He was unable to defeat Gaara when he was his original opponent, and he wasn't able to prevent Sakura from getting held by him when she stepped in front of him, and because she did so was because he wasn't "strong enough" is what I get from this.

And from then, he wants to get stronger, he wants to make sure he's ahead of Naruto because he's catching up to him at a rapid pace.

CHAPTER 153

After the encounter with Itachi, Sasuke is put in Konoha Hospital, and is in a coma. Sakura is shown sitting at his bedside.

CHAPTER 172

Sakura is shown at Sasuke's bedside when Tsunade arrives in the room.

Tsunade then heals Sasuke and tells Sakura that he'll wake up.

And Sakura starts to cry tears of joy that he'll be okay.

Sasuke wakes up and Sakura immediately embraces him. Sasuke doesn't tell her to let go and lets her hold on and just stays silent. He isn't annoyed or angry that he was embraced by her when he just woke up.

Naruto leaves the room, noticing something (:)) and gives privacy.

Maybe he noticed Sakura's feelings for Sasuke were in fact pure, and maybe there would be a chance he (Sasuke) would return the feeling. Still a mystery, but I like the look on Sasuke's face :)

CHAPTER 173

Sakura is in Sasuke's hospital room cutting apples for him, when he starts to get disturbed.

His encounter with Itachi changed a lot of things with his mindset. This is where things start to really go downhill.

He is disturbed, again, that he wasn't strong enough to defeat Gaara, he wasn't strong enough to prevent Sakura from getting captured, he wasn't strong enough to do anything. Naruto did everything while he sat there injured, he feels weak.

He is so disturbed, he gets angrier and angrier the more he thinks about it, and even smacks the apples Sakura cut for him out of her hand.

He's angry and yeah, things went really downhill. His mindset is completely different. The Sasuke before the Itachi encounter chapters prior to this wouldn't have done this.

He's different, and Sakura notices that something is wrong before anyone else does as proven in a few chapters.

Also, keep in mind he looks away from her after he smacked it out of her hand.

CHAPTER 174

Naruto enters the room, and right off the bat Sasuke looks at him like he was the one who ruined everything, even though he didn't.

They are both alarmed at the look on his face.

Sasuke demands Naruto to fight him, he's really out of it, he's really angry now, he isn't himself.

Naruto agrees, totally oblivious to the way he's acting and agrees to fight him with enthusiasm, while Sakura protests Naruto not to.

CHAPTER 175

Sakura protests no, to cut it out but they don't listen to her.

She notices the darkness now, she notices everything now, before Naruto or Kakashi have. She did experience that certain darkness herself when the curse mark activated and went out of control the first time.

And his darkness really makes an appearance when he goes at Naruto on the rooftop with an intent to kill him.

CHAPTER 176

She jumps inbetween them, and that's what snaps them both out of it, but they can't stop the attack. Thankfully Kakashi stops everything.

Then Kakashi states how they were too into it to be just a normal fight. And there, it's proven by what Kakashi says and Sasuke's expression that he really was intending to kill Naruto there with the Chidori.

And he gets angrier.

So to those who complain and use Sasuke smacking apples out of Sakura’s hand as the worst thing on the planet that makes the ship bad, keep in mind too that Sasuke was completely out of it and he tried to kill Naruto right after.

CHAPTER 177

Kakashi has a talk with Sasuke, and does nobody remember the crazy look in Sasuke's eyes? No? Nobody is paying attention to what he told Kakashi? And people throw a hissy fit over Sasuke smacking apples out of Sakura's hand and then they ignore the entire reason why he did so, forgetting that he tried killing Naruto and was acting mentally unstable in his conversation to Kakashi right after?

Why is Sasuke smacking apples from Sakura more brought up than this?

And if things couldn't get worse he gets an invitation to go to Orochimaru for power.

CHAPTER 178

Naruto noticed Sasuke's darkness and truly knew his intentions before Sakura who?

"Sasuke wont be tempted by him!"

That's exactly what happens. He decides to leave Konoha because he was tempted by Orochimaru and the four Sound Ninjas.

CHAPTER 181

Heavy chapter...

Sasuke decides to leave, and before he does that he looks at the Team 7 picture...with an expression of longing maybe, or something that indicates when he leaves he'll miss them? It's definitely a pained expression.

Right when he's about to leave Sakura comes and meets him near the gate. She knew he would be leaving, while Kakashi and Naruto assured her that he would be fine and everything would be okay. But she knew.

Another confusing facial expression from Sasuke on the bottom left panel.

She knows he's leaving Konoha.

And she asks why he never tells her anything, and why he's so silent, and why he never lets her in.

But she fails to notice that he let all of Team 7 in, and failed to notice her how he did in fact tell her things he didn't tell anyone else. He has opened up to her in the past but she didn't notice.

And then Sasuke tells her that he shouldn't have to tell her anything, that it's none of her business.

Sakura asks him if he remembers the time he called her annoying at the same exact place they're standing now before when they first became genin. He says he doesn't remember.

sasuke stop talking out of your ass

She talks about the old happy times. How it was so fun during missions with each other and Team 7.

And she tells him that getting revenge wont make anybody happy, including him. And then he tells her that he's different than everyone, and how yes, they worked together for a while. And that yes, maybe, they were a team once. And she starts pleading.

She tells him that how she knows the feeling of loneliness now, and if he left she would feel lonely. (which I didn't necessarily like and i'm a shipper)

But then there's an unknown expression in Sasuke's eyes, which I still fail to see the emotion to this day.

When he refuses, she drops the bomb.

Notice he stops walking, like he just stops.

Also keep in mind he listens to her the entire time. He doesn't interrupt her with a rude ass comment, he doesn't reject her, he just stands and listens to what she has to say.

And then he says:

Creating a complete parallel to when he first called her that in their first actual conversation. Sasuke "I-don't-remember-but-I'll-make-a-parallel-anyway" Uchiha, you really were talking out of your ass when you said you didn't remember...

moving on :)

No, that wasn't a rejection. Sasuke is blunt, and if he really attempted to reject her he would have outright told her: I don't like you, leave me alone, go away, I won't ever return your feelings.

But instead he does a parallel to their first conversation.

Sakura then threatens to scream and yell when he starts walking away, and then he quickly goes behind her and...

He thanks her.

He doesn't say, I don't like you, leave me alone, go away, I wont ever return your feelings. He thanks her.

And Uchiha Sasuke doesn't thank anybody unless he actually, truly means it.

And his eyes are not shown, they are cut off.

And he knocks her out, picks her up and carries her to the nearby bench and sets her down.

If he seriously didn't give a crap about her at all, he wouldn't have wasted his time listening to her confession, he wouldn't have thanked her, he wouldn't have carried her to a bench, he would've knocked her out and left her there with no words spoken from him.

And I've already put down panels showing he indeed cares for all of Team 7. Just because you hate Sakura or the ship doesn't mean you should spout bullshit. He considers all of Team 7 as family, Sakura isn't an exception just because you don't like her or the ship.

CHAPTER 182

The next morning, Sakura's still laying on the bench, and she wakes up. And she remembers Sasuke's "thank you" right off the bat.

I find these panels so very sad. The boy she loves just left to the enemy and walked into the darkness and she couldn't do anything to stop it, all she could do is get a thank you from him and that's it.

CHAPTER 183

Even after Naruto hears of Sasuke's departure, he still can't understand why Sasuke left.

And then Sakura shows up before the Get-Back-Sasuke Squad leaves.

Wait- Shikamaru?

The second time she's reffered to as an "even you" related to Sasuke. First time was when Sasuke told her he couldn't forgive even you.

It's like people around know her importance to Sasuke. She is his teammate after all, she has got to have an affect on him, right? Just like everyone else in Team 7, and Team 7 only at this point.

Moving on, she is heartbroken that she can't do anything else, and all she can do now that she isn't allowed to go with the squad, is to plead Naruto to bring him back, because now he's the only one at this point who can do it, except Naruto would have to do it physically, not having a conversation like Sakura tried.

Honestly if you see this as an obsessed fangirl, I don't know what to tell you anymore.

Even Naruto says it right in the same page.

She does, and it's genuine.

And so Naruto promises her that he'll bring him back.

CHAPTER 236

Sakura goes to visit Naruto in the hospital, and then she hears that the mission failed: They couldn't get Sasuke back.

And she's heartbroken again, but she refuses to show it.

She wants to keep a smile on, to be postitive here even though it's the opposite of what she really feels. She avoids Naruto's apology.

And then shortly later, she approaches Tsunade and asks to be her student.

And she thinks of both Naruto and Sasuke.

She wants to get stronger to protect the ones she loves, and to do that she needs to train hard, and she will (and she did)

That's the finished analysis for part one. Want me to do a Part Two? Doing this was fun despite how long it took me to finish.

I made this for one of my friends who recently just joined the Naruto Fandom and she ships SS, so I made this little analysis for her so it's more understandable.

I actually would like to do more of these but not just for SS...Not sure though, but I do like doing these.

I hope you liked this :D

#sasusaku #pro sasusaku #pross #prosasusaku

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squirrelly831 · 5 years

Text

Long Distant Girlfriend Pregnant [Seokjin and Yoongi]

This is part of the daddy!au. Basically an alternative to how they became dads. So the ocs are the same people they are married to in the au :D

Some of these are canon and I’ll let you know which ones are. In this part Yoongi’s is canon.

Enjoy~

Seokjin

Naeun let out a sigh of relief as she exited baggage claim with two months worth of necessities in the suitcases behind her. She was back in her home country and she was so excited to be home. She looked about for her family who were supposed to pick her up.

“I’ll take these” a hand reached out and took her luggage from her. Naeun was about to decline the offer when she turned to see her boyfriend of five years, Seokjin, in front of her with a radiant smile. “Welcome hom—“

Naeun ignored his greeting as she jumped up and hugged him. Seokjin let out a chuckle as he held her close to his body and his head pressed against her vanilla smelling hair, “I missed you!”

“I missed you more.” He pulled back to see her promise ring glisten under the sun’s rays. He took her hand and pressed a kiss to it, “Your family is waiting at home, come on.” He lead her from the airport neither phased by the fans who took pictures and gossiped.

The night before Naeun was set to leave, Seokjin and her spent one last night together. It wasn’t unusual that they didn’t use a condom. She was on the pill and they wouldn’t see each other for about five months. He was about to head off to tour and Naeun had another semester left of the institute she attended in Paris. They just wanted to be as close as two people could be in that moment not thinking of any consequences.

It had been a month since her trip to Seoul. Naeun had dealt with terrible nausea and morning sickness, but didn’t suspect being pregnant until the month passed and her period didn’t assault her. After pressure from her dorm mate, she bought several pregnancy tests that only confirmed lingering suspicions when she saw the two lines.

Naeun was glad that her dorm mate was there when the tests gave her a positive reading. She crumbled to the bathroom floor and cried which alerted her dorm mate who ran to the bathroom to see Naeun sobbing. She was scared, but excited. Seokjin was the only man for her, but he wasn’t just hers. He was BTS’s. He was his fans. How could she tell him about the pregnancy when he already had so much on his plate? What about her university? She was so close to graduating and she couldn’t take off when the finish line was right under her nose. Naeun, against her dorm mates advice, decided to silence her communication from Seokjin for the first month after the discovery. She wanted to figure out what to do. Abortion was out of the question, but she wasn’t sure if Seokjin would want to raise a child when he’s so busy.

A knock broke her thoughts. She looked up from her textbook as a second knock echoed, “Coming” she called out. Naeun crawled out of bed where there was piles of notes and recipes for her project. She swung open the door expecting her dorm mate to be outside with an excuse of losing her key, but her heart stopped when the door revealed her boyfriend. “Seo-seokjin?” Her voice squeaked as she stared at him.

Seokjin walked past her with a solemn look and entered her dorm, “You may want to shut it before the others see who I am.” Naeun said nothing as she gently shut the door and locked the bolt. His back was still to her as he tried to formulate what he wanted to say to her. The moment BTS landed in Paris, Seokjin grabbed a taxi and went straight to Naeun’s dorm. His mind had been on her for the past month since Naeun began to ignore him. He tried to figure out what happened and what made her shut him out, but couldn’t come up with anything to cause her silent treatment. He walked into the living room as he glanced around for just moments as he heard his girlfriend trail close behind. With a clenched jaw, Seokjin turned to Naeun, “Why have you been ignoring me? What did I do wrong?”

Naeun gnawed at her bottom lip as she tried to think of the words to say. Her hands tugged and twisted the bottom of her sweater as her eyes blurred. She choked on her words as she finally spoke up, “I’m sorry…” Alarmed, Seokjin ushered Naeun close to him and held her in his arms. “I didn’t mean for it to happen…” Her hands were pulled off her sweater and Seokjin wrapped them in his own.

“Baby–Jagiya–talk to me… What happened?” With how upset she was, Seokjin had expected her to confess to cheating.

Naeun pulled away from Seokjin and wiped her face, but her tears continued to fall. “You’re going to want to sit down.”

Seokjin sank to the love seat, his eyes focused on a picture of him that Naeun had framed in the living room. He couldn’t face her, not when he was prepared for something like–

“–nant.”

Seokjin’s ears tuned in at the last second and he looked over at Naeun who looked like she was seconds from collapsing where she stood. “What?”

“I’m pregnant… 2 months now…” Her legs quaked, “I didn’t know how to tell you–you’re an idol, a really famous idol, and we’re not married. And I–” a tear fell as she watched Seokjin’s head turn to face forward again. He said nothing as she stood there ready for everything to fall apart.

Seokjin’s lips parted into a smile as his eyes fluttered back to his panicked girlfriend. There was nothing but love in his eyes, “Come here…” He opened his arms and Naeun nearly collapsed in his arms as her legs gave just as she went to sit by him. He kissed the top of her head as her face pressed in his chest. Sobs echoed in the room as Seokjin combed his hand through her hair, “Shhh, it’s okay. You must have been so scared and pressured dealing with this alone” he cooed. “You’re not alone anymore, okay? I’m here for you-both of you. I love you.” Seokjin wanted to reassure Naeun she wasn’t going to be alone in the pregnancy. Once she was calm, Seokjin knew they would need to talk about what their next steps would be. His main concern was their relationship and the wellness of Naeun and their baby.

Yoongi

When Katelyn and Yoongi were outed by media about their relationship, it didn’t go too well for them. Especially for Katelyn. She was some non-Korean foreigner who didn’t fit the ideals of Korean beauty and just dated Yoongi for his money. Katelyn never fought the hate that she got because it came with the territory of dating a man who was world wide famous. However, Yoongi did and went as far as press charges against those who threatened to spread malicious rumors against her.

Their relationship wasn’t a perfect one. She had dated him for a good 3 years and it had its share of bumpy roads. However, even with the bumpy roads, Yoongi never let Katelyn call it off. He was the most sensible of the two. The rational thinker than Katelyn who acted off her emotions. Yoongi refuses to let her walk out of the relationship without sitting and discussing it even if it meant taking a night away from each other. It was his determination that kept the two together and Katelyn learned to communicate better to make them work.

However, neither of them expected their relationship to turn long distance, but while she helped her parents settle back in her home country, Ireland, Katelyn’s father took a stumble off a ladder and hurt himself. She extended her stay much to Yoongi and her disappointment. But Yoongi understood the situation, Katelyn was the only child and she knew her parents didn’t have family in Dublin. So, while she stayed, she decided to transfer to the nearby university to attend her classes that she was still in back in Seoul.

Katelyn didn’t expect to see Yoongi for a few more months. He was on a break before a tour and she was overwhelmed with finals. She made plans to go out to see him during the break, but she was surprised when she returned home to see Yoongi on her couch with her parents. She was ecstatic to see her boyfriend who went up to Dublin to spend some of his off period with her.

It had been two months since that day. It was the last time she saw Yoongi in person as he went on tour. It was also they last time they were intimate with one another which lead her to this moment.

Katelyn’s mother squeezed her shoulder as she read the test results, “You’re pregnant–” her mother stood there for a moment as she absorbed the information. “BRADAN, WE’RE GOING TO BE GRANDPARENTS!” Her mom hollered as she ran to her husband.

Katelyn’s mouth felt dry as she read over the pregnancy test for the fifth time. She was pregnant. “Holy shit…” She cursed herself for telling Yoongi not to wear a condom. For her not thinking of the consequences of that night. She thought back of the backlash she received just from the dating scandal. That would be nothing compared to the shit they’d receive if the news got out about her pregnancy.

After discussing it with her parents and Yoongi’s parents, Katelyn decided it was best to return to Seoul. Yoongi would be home in the next month and they could decided where their relationship would go from there. However, she was scared of what would come of this pregnancy. Would Yoongi want to stay with her? Would he want to deal with a child? Katelyn knew the answers to both of those, but her mind played devil’s advocate. She refused to tell Yoongi of the pregnancy until she saw him when he came back on tour. It wasn’t something she was willing to talk about over phone or text.

By the fourth month of her pregnancy, Katelyn had readjusted back in Seoul. She returned to her old apartment, transferred back to her old university, and picked up a job at the nearby daycare. She got a text from Yoongi to let her know that he had arrived back to Seoul. Her hands shook, she hadn’t even gotten around to tell him she was back in Seoul. Katelyn let out a shaky breath as she sent a text asking for them to meet up which Yoongi immediately replied with pure excitement.

Once her work let her out, Katelyn hopped in a taxi and headed to her apartment to see Yoongi, Jimin, and Taehyung outside. She swallowed hard as she approached them, “Hey” she stuttered. “What’re all you guys doing here?”

Yoongi gave her an apologetic look, “They insisted on coming… Sorry.”

“We wanted to see you! We didn’t know you moved back” Jimin grinned.

Taehyung looked her over noticing her stiff expression. Katelyn glanced back at her best friend and her eyes dropped. His eyes followed her gaze down her stomach and a flicker of realization hit him. His lips fell as he nudged Jimin, “We didn’t mean to interrupt. We just really wanted to say hi, so we’ll head back to the dorm.” Taehyung gave a boxy smile. Jimin went to protest, but Taehyung grabbed his arm and pulled him away. As they walked passed Katelyn , Taehyung hugged her, “Congrats. He’ll be really happy. Relax” he whispered. He let her go and winked at her as he watched her shoulders relax.

Once the two were alone, Yoongi noticed how scared she looked. “Babe, what’s wrong?”

Katelyn sucked in a breath, “Can we talk?” She noticed a concern look cross his face.

Yoongi straightened as he nodded, “Sure.”

Katelyn walked to her door and pulled out her keys to unlock her front door. She opened it wide for him to follow her. Her blood pulsed in her ears as she vaguely heard the door shut and lock. Her heart hammered against her chest.

“Katelyn.” Her name shocked her back to reality. Yoongi stood in front of her with a worried expression etched on his face as he looked at her, “What’s wrong? You’re worrying me.”

“I-I–” she shook as she sucked in a breath. “Damn it, I told myself I can’t get panicked–” His eyebrow rose as he watched her. “Well–When you surprised me in Dublin–that night we didn’t have protection and–” she ran her hand in her hair.

Yoongi looked off to the side as he thought on it, “You’re pregnant?” He guessed. She looked down and nodded prepared for the worse. Yoongi took a seat on the couch as he took in the information, “That’s why you suddenly moved back to Seoul.” He had his hand over his face and Katelyn’s heart dropped. Suddenly he let out a laugh, “Thank god.”

“Wha-what? How is this a thank god moment? Am I missing something? I’m pregnant! We’re not married. Your fans hate me.”

Yoongi’s hand fell into his other and he rubbed them together, “I thought you were going to leave me. I was not ready to fight you on that.” His hand raked through his hair, “Fuck, we’re having a kid. Fuck that sounds so surreal. Do our parents know?”

“Yea…” Her eyes mirrored her cautiousness. “I’m sorry, am I missing something. You’re not shocked or mad.”

“Oh, I’m shocked” he laughed. “We totally fucked up not using protection, but what’s done is done.” He held out his hand and she took it. He pulled her on his lap and his hands fell on her stomach and waist, “I’m sure you’ve been stressed out about this.” His voice fell an octave as he spoke, “But we’ll handle this. Together.” His hand traced her stomach, “My real fans will be happy for us. I won’t let anyone hurt you. If getting married now will make you feel better we can.”

“We’re not even engaged.”

Yoongi looked up at her, “Fuck engagements. I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I want to be with you the rest of my life. I don’t give a fuck about some engagement.”

Katelyn’s eyes watered as she leaned down and wrapped her arms around his neck. Yoongi held her tightly to him. “Why are you so smooth with your words?” her voice cracked as she let out a laugh. “I was so scared you’d be mad.”

“It takes two to make a kid, Kat. I couldn’t get mad at you for that. I’ll talk to Namjoon and the others so I can take some time off to be with you.” Katelyn pulled back to protest, but Yoongi shook his head. “I want to be here for the rest of the pregnancy and birth. I love you. I want to be with you through this, okay?”

Katelyn nodded as tears slipped down her face, “Okay…” She pecked his lips as a smile grew on her face, “But you’re not skipping our engagement. I’ve been looking forward to your proposal and you’re not ruining that for me.”

Yoongi’s head fell back as he let out a loud gut laugh, “Damn, you’re bossy. I guess I can do that.”

Part II | Part III

Credit to gif owners

Written & revamped by Squirrelly831

♕ REQUEST

☮ BTS MASTERLIST

∞ ULTIMATE MASTERLIST

#kpop #kpop reactions #kpop scenarios #bts #bts reactions #bts scenarios #seokjin #seokjin scenarios #seokjin reaction #yoongi #yoongi scenarios #yoongi reactions

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kusunokihime-a · 7 years

Text

OKAY rant part two time for @littlelilypetal – this time about the more general plot of Arc Three because...reasons.

Also small disclaimer AGAIN for anyone else who pops in here, curious: this is from a fic written from a verse I wrote with two friends LONG before I joined Tumblr. It was written over literally hundreds of pages (I have the threads saved don’t try me boi, and the fic itself is 300,000 words and counting), and it’s very dear to me. It’s nothing that has to happen here, but it’s still a thing, and any whining about OC x Canon pairings will be met with fingers in my ears going lalala can’t hear you.

SO. Small disclaimer: this first part here is still a bit of a WIP, as my original draft had a plot hole in it. This is my attempt at fixing it xD

Arc three starts technically before the end of Shippuden, aka before Sasuke leaves. Ryū ends up going with him to raid Obito's old lab to make sure all the Uchiha bodies and parts are properly disposed of or buried. Among them is Itachi's body.

Now, Ryū at this point already has Itachi's permission to resurrect him (as noted in the other rant lol - he’s gotta come back and clean up his mess, and take care of his kids), she just doesn't have the means how, as she's lacking his body. And, of course, the body he had was ravaged by illness and worn out, let alone missing its eyes. So, while clearing the lab, she takes a DNA sample without Sasuke's knowledge, and then proceeds to help him clean up. She hasn't told Sasuke her plans yet, as she's still not 100% sure it will work.

As a test, she uses her soul retrieval technique on Neji, managing to retrieve his soul and replace it into his healed corpse. Knowing she can get it to work, she moves forward.

(Quick note about that technique: it's HELLA dangerous. Basically, a person uses a very thin connection to their body, and goes into the void to take ONE soul at a time. BUT, the longer a soul has been departed from the mortal plane, the further away it is – so she can't just take anyone who's died like a hundred years ago. Her limit is like...a few months, at best. But the void constantly eats at her chakra, and if she stays too long, she'll just...die. So it's a powerful technique, but EXTREMELY risky and limited. Hopefully it seems balanced that way ='D)

So, Sasuke then leaves a few months later, and she begins her work. At this point she’s still working in the hospital, focusing on surgeries to give her more time at home with the twins, who are about 8 months at this point. But, after her shifts, she sneaks to the basement of the hospital (aka the morgue), where there are cryogenic pods for storing bodies. They're almost always unused, and it's there she pours every spare ounce of chakra she has into regrowing an entirely new body for Itachi. It takes her months, and she nearly kills herself doing it, using up too much energy, but eventually she finishes it.

After her collapse, Tsunade confronts her, and she has no choice but to reveal her plans. Of course, Tsunade FLIPS her table, because one: that's hella dangerous, and two: how is this going to work? A few select people know the truth behind Itachi, but there's a few issues with him being revived. One is that he's still guilty in most eyes. And even if they break the truth behind the massacre, that's highly dangerous. The administration of Konoha – the Hokage and the elders – WIPED OUT an entire clan due to dissent. If the other clans learned of this, it would surely break the village apart.

Ryū announces she has a plan. Due to her connections with Sasuke as his guardian/sibling figure, she's also bumped into most of the Konoha Twelve during her years in Konoha. Most of which are heirs or at least high-ranking members of large clans. She plans to speak to them first, as they're likely the most receptive after everything they faced in the war, and knowing Sasuke's loss as his friends and comrades. By securing their agreement to help with the issue, she hopes to avoid a total meltdown.

She also has a few favors owed to her by the Hyūga, who are arguably the most powerful clan now that the Uchiha are “gone”. One for attempting to protect Hinata during Pain's invasion (I didn't elaborate on that in the other rant, but if I wrote the whole thing out we'd be here for DAYS lol), and then of course reviving Neji. She plans to rely heavily on them and her friendship with Hinata to help keep the other clans in line, by talking to her and Neji first. Hopefully, that way, the Hyūga - already knowing the plan - can lead by example by being calm, and hopefully help the other clans keep from flipping tables.

Unfortunately, Tsunade lets the plan slip to Sakura...who then tattles to Sasuke. She confronts Ryū about it, asking why she wouldn't tell him, and Ryū argues that she didn't want to get his hopes up if it failed. But, Sasuke shows up anyway, and agrees to stay and help with the plan to break the news about the coup and the massacre.

With Tsunade and Sakura's help, Ryū performs her technique, their Byakugō helping bolster her chakra alongside her sage state. Normally, Itachi would have been dead far too long. But thanks to Edo Tensei, the “distance” has sort have been...reset. It wipes her out, but she manages it, and returns the soul to his rebuilt body!

Of course, one thing they have to deal with is getting Itachi mobile. The body is basically the same as a newborn's – it has NO muscle strength, so he ends up needing months of physical therapy to get up and moving. And until he's fit (and able to defend himself, as there's fears he'll be attacked), they work with the young heirs of Sasuke's generation to move their plans forward. Ryū has a meeting with the Konoha Twelve and explains everything, and of course they all agree to help.

Once Itachi is ready, the elders are called into a meeting with Tsunade...only to find themselves surrounded by the leaders and heirs of all the major clans. They reveal that they know the truth, that Itachi has returned, and if they refuse to admit to it, they can Edo Tensei summon Hiruzen to confirm their story. Basically backed into a corner, the elders are forced to step down, where they can't bring about anything else like the massacre.

The last thing that remains is Itachi's official pardon. Tsunade decides to use Kakashi's coronation as a platform, as everyone will be gathered anyway. He explains the truth behind the massacre, and official pardons Itachi. But there are some in the crowds that look...less than happy about it.

So, from there, the general premise is how the Uchiha have to get back on their feet – forming an alliance with the Hyūga, and doing their best to settle into Konoha again.

But it doesn't end there :3c

One day, while Itachi is speaking to Kakashi about rejoining the shinobi force, Ryū senses an intruder in the compound, walking up the Naka river. She runs out to confront them...only to realize that it's SHISUI.

(which is actually the Shisui from my sideblog lolol)

BASICALLY...I think it's bull that Shisui leapt into a RIVER to dispose of his body...like...really? There's a HUGE chance it would have washed up on shore and been found by gods know who. SO, MY Shisui instead went into hiding – the only way he could know his body was safe was to keep it alive, but have everyone THINK it was dead. Even Itachi. Of course, he PLANNED to die later, but couldn't be 100% sure it would be safe. So instead (super short summary), he lived in a cave along the Naka for about ten years and learned echolocation via chakra from bats (think Toph from ATLA, only with chakra lol)

So...suddenly, Shisui is alive. Ryū is ecstatic, of course...but Itachi is PISSED. Because...had he known Shisui was still alive, he might have kept trying. He might not have had to kill the clan. A LOT could have been different. So...it takes time for him to come around, due to the guilt he feels about the massacre, and now knowing there was a chance it could have been avoided. But in reality...not really.

So now we suddenly have five blood Uchiha rather than three: Itachi, Shisui, Sasuke, and the twins. It's obviously nowhere near the clan it was before, but it's more than it was!

And this is where things start to go to shit, lol

So, remember those people, unhappy about Itachi's return? Well...there's a rather volatile group who feel the same way. See, some of the old Root members, led by Danzō, still harbor a LOT of resentment, and are still loyal to his memory. Among them is Okano Sumire, a woman obsessed with Danzō, who was a high ranking officer under his regime. She's been plotting revenge against Sasuke already for “killing” Danzō (though he technically committed suicide), and now she's got a whole lot more to be pissed about. With the massacre's truth revealed, Danzō's name is now just...dragged through the mud. And with the revelation of Itachi, she now also knows that the twins are blood Uchiha.

So, she regathers the scattered remnants of Root who are still loyal to Danzō, becomes their new leader, and basically begins plotting to wipe out the Uchiha for GOOD, as she feels they are all guilty for Danzō’s death and subsequent dishonor.

This causes the family problems all throughout Arc Three. It starts small – threats left on their doorstep, people jeering at them in public, etc. Though it's partially helped by the Hyūga, who – as the Uchiha's allies thanks to Ryū's work with them – do all they can to help bolster the tiny clan's reputation. But Sumire begins spreading dissent into the village with rumors and lies, and eventually things starting getting dangerous, including Ryū and the twins being attacked in broad daylight. She manages to hold them off with barriers, but she's obviously pretty freaked out after being attacked in the middle of the street with her KIDS with her.

So that's like...the main conflict, alongside the twins' conflict with each other. They end up on a team with Mirai, as I mentioned, with Shisui as their team leader. They later enter ANBU when able, and do their best to counteract Root. The rest of the story is basically them trying to wipe out Root before Root wipes THEM out. Of course they don’t face it alone, but it’s also pretty much THEIR problem.

And, uh...there's a rather volatile event just before the actual epilogue where it's Ryū who confronts Sumire...and someone gets killed.

But I won't spoil that :3c

ANYWAY. So yeah. That's the basic conflict (well, conflictS) of Arc Three. I had to kinda change things a wee bit after chapter 700 and Boruto became a thing, but...it's mostly unchanged. Just gotta account for other kiddos, like Sarada. Otherwise, I’m completely ignoring the PLOT of Boruto, and just sticking the pairings/kids in it to keep close-ish to canon.

But uh..yeah! Second rant, finished xD

#sylvie speaketh [ ooc ]#long post #essay number two #and this is like...the short version lmao #basically i stopped writing at the part with shisui #i haven't made any progress from there so it's more like...bare bones #but i've got most of the main plot points figured out #i just have to rewrite the 300.000 words i have #and then finish it x''d #littlelilypetal #whoh spoilers #because i'm sure there's people who care about that pfffffffffft #character essay

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