#ask me things i'm friendly

[ceterisparibus116]

Hey. Why do you think Karen Page is a character people seem to hate so much? I’m fairly new to the fandom and I’ve seen people even badmouthing the actress as well, which is awful. I am curious to know what you think about it.

Welcome to the fandom! 💖 I'm so excited for you and I'm super happy that, despite being newish, you're interacting like this. (It took me an embarrassing amount of time to be brave enough to send asks to people lol.)

Also, this is such an interesting question.

I want to address the attacks against Deborah Ann Woll first. No matter how anyone feels about a character, it's absolutely despicable to attack the actor over it. Most of the attacks I've seen have been about her looks, or about her acting abilities. It's fine to critique acting abilities, but looks should be off the table. But even the critiques of her acting abilities aren't actually critiques - they're just, like you said, badmouthing, with little to no analysis. To me, that indicates that they're hating on the actress just because they're emotional (angry or annoyed) over the character.

So why do people get so emotional over Karen?

I think the easiest explanation is: ship wars. Some people struggle to enjoy their favorite ship without tearing down competitor ships. And since Karedevil is one of the few ships that was actually canon (albeit temporarily, but S3 ended with them being pretty flirty again), Karen becomes a huge target.

Another explanation is that Karen appears to be written inconsistently. Personally, I don't think she actually is (except perhaps in The Punisher; I'm not sure because I've only seen S1 of The Punisher). The argument goes: "She loves Daredevil until she finds out Daredevil is Matt, and then she treats it like an addiction, despite being supportive of Frank."

The counter-argument, to me, is clear: she still loves Daredevil, but she hates being lied to and put on a pedestal. Matt did both of those things. Frank (for the most part) did neither of those things. Her issue is with Matt, not Daredevil (which she makes explicitly clear in S3E1, but people still apparently confused on this point). With that in mind, I think she's written consistently in an incredibly nuanced way.

Another explanation is that Karen is a character who doesn't learn from her mistakes. She's rash and reckless and she lies just as much as Matt, and more often than not, people end up dead because of it. Ben is the most obvious and chilling example. Yet even after her actions get Ben killed, and she expresses serious guilt and remorse, she continues to do the same thing. That makes people wonder: is she stupid? Or, worse: was her guilt and remorse only an expression of her personal grief, and not actually the result of evaluating her actions affected Ben?

This, to me, is the most fair critique of Karen, and I sympathize with people who dislike her because of it. I will point out, however, that Matt and Foggy also repeat the same mistakes. It's obvious with Matt; it's talked about less often with Foggy, but I roll my eyes every time he acts like Matt and Karen are being reckless for wanting to operate outside the law - despite the fact that every time they limit their plans to operating inside the law, people end up dead. This makes me wonder: is Foggy stupid? Or does he simply care more about keeping Matt and Karen alive (and out of jail) than he cares about other people dying?

The actual explanation, I think, is that Daredevil is a show about very flawed and surprisingly realistic characters. People rarely shake off old habits and bad ways of thinking quickly. No matter how many times you tell a person that their friends are there for them, they (like Matt) may continue to push people away if that's their coping mechanism. No matter how many times you tell a person to ask for help before doing something alone, they (like Karen) may continue to go rogue if that gives them some feeling of control over their lives. No matter how many times you tell a person that the systems they want to trust are broken, they (like Foggy) may continue insisting that everyone should trust the system if they continue seeing the world through a lens of privilege.

Can it be frustrating to watch? Absolutely. Is it a good reason to hate a character? I'd say no, but I guess that's more subjective. Is it a reminder to all of us to be gentle and patient both with ourselves and with other people when we find ourselves making the same mistakes over and over? I hope so!

I've said before that I sometimes feel self-conscious over the fact that, in my longer stories, a character's growth is rarely linear. It's usually what I think of as a spiral. They make a mistake, they learn from it...and then the stakes rise, and so they fall back on that old mistake again, since it's comfortable and familiar, rather than trying a new approach. Or the character tries to blend the old mistake with the new approach, to varying degrees of success. Sometimes I worry that this feels repetitive, or like the character isn't learning.

But from the comments I've received, people seem to appreciate it more often than not. They resonate with it and relate to it.

So now that I think of it...maybe the root problem is simply that Daredevil doesn't have author's notes telling us why Karen (and Foggy and Matt) are making the same mistake again. 😅

Or maybe people are more compassionate towards characters in fanfiction than on TV? Or maybe people are more compassionate towards the main character than the side character? Or maybe it's misogyny? Or maybe people are just less compassionate towards Karen in particular because she threatens their favorite ship.

Aaaaand this post has come full circle.

[xoxoemynn]

I came up with the idea for today's love fest over the weekend when I saw a lot of comments from people expressing sadness about the cancellation, and then also some embarrassment for feeling that way, or feeling alone in their emotions. I wanted to do something positive that felt personal and that would remind people that fandom isn't going anywhere.

Originally I thought to do it a few days after the WJW with DJenks, figuring we'd need another boost after that high wore off. Obviously the WJW didn't end up happening, but then I realized it was Rhys' birthday today, so that also felt like a great reason to spread a bit of love (not that you ever need a reason for that!).

And honestly, while the whole point was to make other people smile, the whole experience really boosted my own spirits tremendously. While stalking perusing everyone's blogs for inspo, I was reminded quite powerfully just how many extremely kind, talented, smart, funny, insightful, beautiful people there are in this fandom.

So I just want to say thank you. All of you who create gifs, make art, write fic, analyze the show, share shit posts, or reblog all of the above so we can see it again and again and again, you have made a difference in my fandom experience. With every post, you made me fall in love with Ed and Stede and the whole crew just a little bit more. Whether you're someone who's always in the tags or someone who prefers to quietly reblog, you have made my time here very special and I'm so grateful. 💕

[crabsnpersimmons]

question on tumblr etiquette:

if you fall under a user's DNI list, but that user reaches out to you via ask or DM, without knowing you fall under their DNI list, do you still respond?

hypothetical example: user A specifies on their blog "DNI if you're over the age of 18", but then user A reaches out to user B. User B is over the age of 18, but user A does not know this because user B doesn't mention it on their blog. User B does know that user A does not wish to interact with people over the age of 18. does user B respond to user A?

[iraprince]

Hiii, i love your stuff and kinda from a distance really look up at you for, in my perception, being able to express yourself without giving a fuck. Thats sick dude, Im so so afraid, of absolutely everything, its nice to think like i might grow into someone less apologetic of my existence. Nice to see people just being yknow

hey, thank you, this is really really nice. the secret that is probably not a secret is that i am also deeply afraid a lot of the time lmao -- but less than i used to be, and in ways that feel less stifling and self-suffocating, if that makes sense.

like, it used to be "i'm scared that if i express myself the way i want to, everyone will find me obnoxious, so let's just sand those edges down to be safe" -- now my fears are more like "now that i'm expressing myself in a way that feels natural and real, i'm afraid that it's all stupid/vapid/not worthwhile or meaningful" (<- specifically abt my art) or "i'm happy that i talk and act the way i want to now, but what if it makes me impossible to befriend," etc etc etc. which still feels bad and puts me in a funk a lot of the time but at least it's a fear that comes After/in reaction to doing stuff, rather than a fear that STOPS me from doing stuff, you know? like, it's evolved into a kind of fear that's less in my way.

anyway. i believe you'll experience something like this, because wanting to grow is the first step of growing. the fact that u hope or wish for something different means you're already on your way. to fewer fucks!! or at least distributing the fucks u give in a way that serves u better

[panharmonium]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, from the top:

1. the girl with the crush

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. the greater good

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

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

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

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

Anyway. Back to a more measured response.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. she only wants to save you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. the shadow of my family

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

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

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

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

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

[fennopunk]

Yesterday at Ropecon's (a Finnish RPG convention) costume show there was a teeny tiny little Kiki (maybe 6yo, max) at the stage, with broom and all, and not only was she super adorable, but she was so brave because she clearly was shy but she was there at the stage in front of hundreds of people and she did wonderfully. She didn't really know how to answer the host's questions (probably because shy), but she was brave enough to speak to the mic, and that's amazing. The mic is scary for me as an adult and I remember how it felt as a shy child. Needless to say probably, but she got one of the loudest cheers of the show.

From what I could see in the dark, I'm pretty sure she was immediately afterwards escorted to her mom :)

[nickmillerscaulk]

Hi hello - so i have a wild ask here for you. So I randomly, truly randomly, decided to listen to my GG playlist today at the gym for the first time in three years??? Anyway reminded me of how good that show was at music and how good you were at finding the songs.

Soooooo (for a blast from the past) - top five GG songs???

K thanksssss ❤️

Oooooooooh hi friend!!!! It means so much to still be associated with the music from good girls 😭💛

But goddamnit I really underestimated how difficult narrowing this down to FIVE SONGS lmao. I'm gonna try to come up with a mix of vibes/character pairings in the scenes the songs are associated with (it's requiring a LOT of restraint to not list only bangers hahahaha)

Alright, in no particular order:

Blanket Me by Hundred Waters

You So Done by Noga Erez

I Feel Like I'm Drowning by Two Feet

Something For Your Mind by Superorganism

Walk Away by Buzzy Lee

Honorable mention to Cruel World by Phantogram bc every time I hear it in a store (which happens way more often than you'd think?!), my brain goes: GOOD GIRLS. THIS IS FROM GOOD GIRLS. THIS IS A GOOD GIRLS SONG.

[moshieee]

I have a hoard of snacks in my closet because too often I forget to eat dinner and I don't wanna get chased by the stairway demon for the effort to get food. (I don't like the dark It has EYES)

That's a mood. . .

Look I'm sorry friend but im going to ask that you start sending these type questions to my alt blog @moshieee-but-evil

As fun as it is to chat with you, this is an art blog and these types of asks don't really go anywhere

they're not really a question they're more like updates and sound like something you could just make your own post for...

Please understand this isn't me trying to be mean I'll still gladly talk to you over on that blog

[anglerflsh]

*trying not to sound desperate* what's your system for not struggling with social relations?

people like it when they're given subtle compliments and when you let them talk about their own achievements, so, as long as you can get someone to think you're genuinely interested in their life they should come out of it with a good opinion of you + also people love complaining together so if you can try and bring up something you both dislike enough to have a fun rant on

[ceterisparibus116]

Frank has lied to Karen and even put her in explicit danger by using her as bait in the diner to lure out the Blacksmith's men and lied to her by omission by not disclosing his plans. That's worse than any other shit Matt did so? Easily disproves one of your talking points about how "fRaNk nEveR LiEd tO hEr" 🤪 goofy

Normally, I don't consider it productive to engage with someone who...talks like this...but I do think it's interesting to compare Frank's lies vs Matt's lies.

[First, pro tip: if you're going to say a person's point is "easily disproven," it helps to articulate that point correctly. I never said Frank "never" lied to her; I said: "Frank (for the most part) did neither of those things [lied to her nor put her on a pedestal]." I'm conceding that Frank did lie to her, but suggesting that his relationship with her was not marked by lies the way Matt's relationship with her was. Misrepresenting someone's point like this is called a "straw man fallacy." I encourage everyone who's unfamiliar with the idea to look it up!]

Let's talk about the lies. Frank totally lied to Karen and used her as bait, which I (as a viewer) find pretty horrific. And is that "worse" than Matt's lies? If the metric we use to determine "worse" is "which endangers Karen more," then I think Frank did directly endanger her more than Matt did.

But we have to look at this from Karen's perspective, and I don't think the metric she's using is "which lies endanger me more." Frankly, Karen doesn't much care about danger. She cares about Capital-T Truth. She cares about trust. She cares about honest relationships. And by that metric, I think yes, she believes that Matt's lies are "worse."

I believe this for the reasons listed below, but also because it strikes me that her reactions to Frank's lies vs Matt's are quiet different. Like, was she mad that Frank lied to her? Absolutely. But when I watch it, I don't get the impression that she was hurt.

Mad is not the same as hurt.

With Frank, she was mad.

With Matt, she was mad and hurt.

Why? For several factors.

Depth/intimacy of the relationship. She'd known Matt for over a year (I think; timelines are weird) by the time she realized he'd been lying to her. Not only that, but she'd been working with him for that whole time period. Not only that, but she'd had a crush on him for probably that whole time period (or close to it) (which I bring up because a crush is one surefire way to make a relationship feel intimate, maybe even more intimate than it really is). Not only that, but their relationship was fairly intimate. From the very beginning, he invited her to ask him some very personal questions about his blindness, and she was depending on him to keep her out of jail. Then we have him literally falling apart and sobbing in her arms. Talk about intimate! And not only that, but they also literally dated and she invited him to her apartment to have sex, let's be real. So when Matt lies to her, it's not the same as a guy she's known for a few weeks whom she wants to rescue the way you want to rescue a lost puppy lying to her. This is her coworker, her best friend, and her would-be partner lying to her.

Scope of the lies. The scope of Matt's lies runs deep. A) Him lying (by omission) about his senses clearly hits Karen very hard. It feels like a massive invasion of privacy. Now, I've argued before that it's unfair for characters to punish Matt for something he can't control, and I've also argued that Matt is not required to reveal his senses to anyone. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't still hurt (and shock, and even offend) people to realize that he could smell their breath and hear their heartbeat this entire time. B) He's lying about a huge part of his life and personality. Frank's very up front: he might lie about goals and tactics, but when it comes to who he is as a person, what you see is what you get. Whereas Matt presents himself (as Matt) as a very buttoned-up, reasonable, conscientious, safety-oriented, controlled person...the very opposite, in many ways, of Daredevil. C) Matt's lying about things that could have huge direct consequences for Karen (and Foggy) - namely, their law firm falling apart and Karen and Foggy possibly going to prison. D) Matt lied more to Karen than he did to another person. I don't think Karen's reaction to Elektra was primarily jealousy per se; I think instead she's like: "You won't share this part of my life with me, but you will with Elektra." Not dissimilar to how Foggy was mad about Claire knowing more about Daredevil than he did. It just hurts to find out that your friend has chosen to reveal things to someone else, rather than you.

What the lies say about how the other person views Karen. What does it say about how Frank views Karen that he'd lie to her the way he did? Ehhhh. I guess that he didn't want her getting in the way of his plans? Maybe he thought she couldn't handle something, and that would annoy her? But with Matt, wow, we know exactly how she thought Matt felt about her, based on the lies. She says: "Why didn't you trust me? What, did you think I would judge you?" To her, Matt's secret-keeping was proof that he didn't trust her (ouch) and that he fundamentally misunderstood her by believing she'd judge him when she prides herself on finding the humanity in those others would condemn.

All of these factors show why when Matt lied to Karen, she wasn't just pissed off. She was hurt. Matt's lies struck deep in a way that Frank's didn't.

And listen. I say all this as a giant Karedevil fan. I don't ship Kastle at all. In fact the argument from the first factor (that Karen was so hurt by Matt's lies because of the intimacy of their relationship) is, to me, a pro-Karedevil argument.

But being a fan of a ship doesn't mean we can't evaluate it critically. Evaluating all things critically is one of the aims of my blog.

So, dear Anon, if you're still reading this far (which I kinda doubt lol), I hope this made sense. But if you're just going to send me another ask misstating my positions and calling my position "goofy," then into the trash it shall go!

[spocks-kaathyra]

.

[confused-spood]

Something funny happened. Or maybe is happening?

So me and a fellow aroace friend made a lil fun idea for Valentine's, since as aros, we have no desire to do any task the holiday is meant to be done with someone else, and also that we don't actually have anyone, so we told ourselves to make one for each other, but make it that it was supposed to be from someone that was in love with us for so long and it was supposed to be 'anonymous'.

So there I was last night, writing the word to say in that faux love letter, and after many hours, this is what I came up with:

Dear Mika,

And that's it. That's literally it.

Every time I try to write something romantic, by brain.exe refuses to continue to operate. I can't even ask heart.exe for help because that one is even more so confused!

So I opened my phone and texted her about my letter for her, and guess what? She updated her letter for me, and her response was that her head was hurting from all this fake-assery.

It kinda means something a lil deeper for me than a few laughs, really. It's like, as aromantics, we don't just "not experience romantic attraction", it's also up to the point that we are literally unable to understand and grasp the concept of romance as a whole. Even though we may think we do, when faced a hurdle that evolves actual romance, we're unable to jump through it.

There's only so much faking can do, and deep inside, we can't really say that we understand the alloromantics as much as we do, because that's on a completely different brain wave process.

[jabeur]

i need to say something just to get it off my chest

[keeps-ache]

Who’s your favourite oc to draw :3

Ohhh that's a hard one... some designs are just easier to draw but others i Really like the character so..... easy answer, oath bhfvsh :3

[pinkrangerv]

Man, definitely understand being passionate about telling folx to not DIY T, but it's really telling something about your character if you call them an idiot for doing it. Our transcestors did what they had to do to survive - the lack of means plus desperation will result in taking very high (and sometimes lethal) risks every time. Have some compassion mate.

Botched surgeries from dodgy surgeons, complications from DIY HRT... these are the results of systemic issues coupled with desperation. Not of someone being an idiot. Those that become disabled or die from taking actions out of desperation deserve compassion from the rest of us, do better.

Knock off the ableism and direct that anger towards our oppressors.

- an older trans person who has never done DIY HRT, is well aware of the risks, but has compassion and understanding

Yep, I am not compassionate and understanding! And it's for the same reason I'm not compassionate and understanding when someone sticks a knife in a light socket:

Compassion and understanding do not stop you from being fucking dead.

Chemistry and biology are laws of the universe. They do not bend. If you fuck around, you will fucking find out. If you want people to compassion and understand their way into having a fuck-ton of dead kids? You will not enjoy my blog.

There's a block button. If you don't like hearing 'this will make you the fuck dead', I'd use it, because a lot of my blog is saying 'yes, in fact, this popular idea will make you the fuck dead'.

[artsycloudysleepy]

Here it is :)

WOAH!!!! THE ELEANOR EVER!!!

SHE LOOKS SO UNHINGED AND COOL I LOVE IT :000000

THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE HER!! YOUR ART IS AMAZING /gen

also completely expected it to be a fragment so am really happy to be so surprised!!! she looks terrifying in your style!! /pos