#he'd admit he's always been curious what it's like to be poisoned lol.

[forcedhesitation]

stop fucking flirting with me, you rancid little man

[renaerys]

Don’t take this the wrong way cause I’m just curious and this is my first time on your tumblr account lol (I’ve been following your blossick fics). I’m familiar with Naruto since I was young and I was wondering about how you got into the sasori and Sakura ship cause for me it’s very random. What made you ship them instead of the canon ship? You’ve probably answered this before so sorry if I’m asking!

Not at all! That's a really good question. I'll put it under a Read More because 2014 fandom ptsd re the end of Naruto taught me too well.

The tl;dr for why I don't like the canon SS ship is that I thought they had nothing positive in their foundation, which was only made so much worse in the final chapters. There were plenty of opportunities for Kishimoto to show us that they had chemistry and actually cared about each other in a meaningful, non-superficial way over the course of the manga, but bizarrely he did the complete opposite in a way that felt not just careless, but downright malicious at times, especially in the final war chapters. It was honestly offensive to read, even as an anti-shipper, and I found myself feeling really bad for the people who like that ship in the end. What a shit way for their OTP to become canon.

I'm not going to get into the dirty details here because that ship fandom is fucking demented about anti sentiment, even when it's delivered in a respectful way. Frankly, I don't have the time or patience anymore to debate online about a fictional couple in a manga that ended years ago. If people like the ship, cool! I hope they have fun shipping it and making good content for it. I happen not to like it, and I'm extremely comfortable in that camp and always will be.

As for SasoSaku, go re-read the manga where they fight! It's the hottest villain/hero encounter I have EVER read. There are some very compelling takeaways from that fight:

They have diametrically opposed world views, and yet they both demonstrate a willingness (and even a desperation) to understand something about the other's point of view. And they actually accomplish that, to different degrees, in the end. Sasori lets the last attack hit him because Sakura got through to him and made him acknowledge that he had failed, that he had made a mistake, and that he was never truly alone. I think he realized in that last moment that the "life" he was living was no life at all, and that he maybe could have made different choices if Chiyo had done a better job being there for him and if he had let her. It is so staggeringly beautiful that I literally cry. When she yells at him "why is that the only way you can see the world?" and is so angry and so emotional because it feels so personal to her now, I just completely fall apart. If only he could have seen and done things differently, what kind of life could he have led? I think she mourns this in a way, and I think not a single person has ever shown him that type of empathy before now (that he was willing to listen to) and it totally destroyed him.

Sasori is the second person aside from Tsunade to have ever acknowledged Sakura's real power and capabilities--and he is a villain trying to kill her! And he's a rude, entitled, unspeakably selfish person who would rather get stabbed than not get the last word. If that's not a show of the humanity he still has even if he doesn't want to admit it, idk what is. And then he rewards her for killing him? For a dude who keeps berating her about doing pointless things their whole fight, he sure does feel okay doing something completely pointless for her in the end (not for Chiyo, btw, but for Sakura). He took her seriously in this fight, and we saw her feeling so thrilled about showing off her strength and her abilities and how she'd beaten his poison. Sakura was living in this fight, it's all over her face in the panels, and Sasori was living right alongside her as she visibly impressed him each time he thought he'd gotten her and she got right back up and kept going. They were held up as equals in this fight, not necessarily based on shinobi skill alone, but as people with goals and feelings and a violent desire to be seen in the eyes of another they consider truly worthy. I mean, how is this not art and also super fucking hot?

SasoSaku is the first real ship I ever shipped. It was my shipping awakening. I will never forget when that fight first happened in the manga, waiting each week to see what would happen next, and realizing holy shit, this is what the foundation of a real enemies to lovers romance is supposed to be? Go re-read the manga chapters and pay attention to those points I made. I hope it completely blows you away like it did to me!