#i love harmless memes so much

[puppppppppy]

who up seeing their disorder in a fictional character but feel like its not their place to put a name on it

[okiedokrie]

Seventeen's Red Flags 🚩🚩🚩

This is just for fun!! All light-hearted and harmless (I think)

S.Coups - WAYY too jealous, bro would glare daggers at you if you helped to open a milkbox for someone else like bro calm down its not like I blew them a kiss

Jeonghan - he's gaslight gatekeep girlboss and therefore that makes anyone he's in a relationship with mansplain manipulate malewife regardless of gender

Joshua - a J name from LA

Jun - communicates exclusively through cat memes, yes, even during arguments; yes, even during verbal ones.

Hoshi - fully convinced he's a tiger and is lowkey a furry

Wonwoo - plays genshin impact

Woozi - loves work more than you

The8 - calls you delulu when you caption ur posts with "loml ♡" even though you've been officially dating for a significant amount of time

Mingyu - probably clumsy enough to drop the urn of a family member

DK - no red flags from dokyeommie my beloved

DK (Updated 240424) - a musical theater tenor

Seungkwan - sassier than you

Vernon - your friends are convinced you just edit him into photos because bro does NOT move

Dino - got called out for excessive frat boy levels of drinking before so that is pretty much canon

[cottonlemonade]

hii! may i please order a medium pineapple lemonade with extra ice for suna? your work is always so wonderful 🥹🌸

Accidental Confession

word count: 1317 || avg. reading time: 6 mins.

pairing: rival!Suna x chubby!Reader

genre: fluff with some suggestiveness, enemies to lovers

warnings: mdni

request: fluffy-spicy accidental confession with rival Suna

It all started with a meme. If Suna hadn’t taken that picture of you stretching during class and added a little Simba into your hands, you wouldn’t have photoshopped his face onto a mop.

To be fair, his was harmless. Yours was downright rude and so he fell in love immediately.

He followed you around - not as inconspicuously as he might have hoped - to sneak a photo in the most meme worthy moments, flooding his camera roll with dozens and eventually hundreds of snapshots of you. The whole front of a silly little meme war was a great excuse to mask his steadily growing crush and his friends didn’t think anything of it when Suna set a picture of you mid-sneeze as his lock screen. Granted, he himself was still very much in denial about his feelings as well, so it wasn’t that difficult to pretend that he wasn’t bothered when you talked to an upperclassman and laughed loudly at his, undoubtedly, mediocre joke - although Suna did sweep his pencil case off his desk in an attempt to wave Osamu off when he asked if he was okay.

The class groaned when the teacher announced that for the impending field trip they’d be split into teams of two via random lottery. Half the students got assigned a number while the other half drew a little piece of paper from a box held out to them to match with said number. Quiet cheers and not so quiet disappointment could be heard and the teacher called for silence.

Annoyed that he didn’t even get the minuscule chance to work with him, Suna leaned over to Osamu, “Who do you have?” His friend unfolded his paper and turned it over to read.

“5. That’s…”, he craned his neck to check and count, “Y/n, ya?”

“Switch with me.”, Suna said.

“Why? Who do ya have?”

“Don’t care. Come on.”

Osamu frowned and raised an almost disappointed brow.

“What happened to ya, dude? Ya know, yer bein’ real obvious at this point, right?”

Suna rejected the allegations, waited a moment, then simply exchanged his slip of paper with Osamu’s.

“Ya owe me.”, Osamu noted.

“Yeah yeah.”

Meanwhile, you seemed less thrilled about the match and when the bell rang you threw an annoyed look at Suna who gave you a blank stared wave and went to lunch with your friends. He was a very unfortunate long-term crush you had nursed since the beginning of the year and was as handsome as he was annoying. In spite of this, you had a great time complaining about your matched partners over your bentos while enjoying the mellowing summer sun under the shade of a tree.

When the next morning arrived, Suna made sure to be only two minutes late instead of his usual 15, so he could secure the spot next to you on the long drive to Kobe. The class would be headed to the big art museum in the city and as an assignment got a list of 15 art pieces they had to find, like a scavenger hunt. The first team to get a picture from each of their art works would get to choose where to go for lunch.

With a sigh you dropped in the seat next to him, frowning at his sleepy grin. When you only scoffed and looked away, his heart started pounding and he had no idea why. And this wasn‘t a “oh Suna, you‘re just in love, silly“ kinda pounding. No! This was more similar to that one time when he went out for coffee with his friends and instead of admitting that he wanted his favorite - a sickeningly sweet vanilla latte with extra syrup pumps - he ordered an iced Americano with a triple shot because he thought it sounded cool and for hours it had felt as if a tiny panicked bird was trapped in his chest. In short, he concluded, you were not good for his health.

“Alright.”, you said once you turned to him. You stood in the entrance together with the rest of the class, holding the reference paper in hand listing the artwork, “I’ll take the top 8, you take the bottom 7.”

He bit back a comment about how there was nothing “bottom” about him, but one look from you and he was quiet. That icy stare of disdain made him want to do the cooking and the cleaning and ask how your day had been while he finished up the ironing. “Let’s do this.”, he replied and nearly whimpered when you rolled your eyes at him.

With some quick online searching, the artwork was quickly found and the pictures taken. To keep up appearances he snapped a few pics in between of the NPCs in baroque paintings with increasingly weird facial expressions, fully intending to ask, “This you?” the next time he saw you. He could also airdrop them during class and looked forward to receiving a less than flattering emoji or thumbs down.

But now he had a different objective. Excited at the prospect of finally having an excuse to get your number, he jogged through the museum to your previously agreed upon meeting spot, finding you seated and waiting for him on a bench. You were scribbling on a notepad precariously balanced on your knees. He snuck up behind you, leaned in close to your ear and in a low calm voice went, “Boo.”

The yelp you let out had museum goers turn to you and a man with a lanyard, who was guiding a tour, threw an exasperated sigh in your direction.

“You better sleep with one eye open.”, you pressed out through gritted teeth, a deep red tint on your cheeks.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”, he said simply and in one smooth movement sat down next to you.

“So, how do you wanna do this?”, he then asked casually, waiting for you to say the words.

“Just airdrop them to me.”, you frowned.

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Luckily his deflated shoulders were masked by his chronically bad posture and he quickly selected the necessary pictures.

Your phone gave a little buzz and you accepted the stack. “That’s all. You’re excused. Go off and do… whatever it is you’re doing.”

“I can stay and help, you know? I skimmed some of the plackets.”

“What great work ethic.”, you deadpanned but moved your notepad closer to him so he could see.

With your other hand you swiped through the photos, double checking if you had everything.

He was too busy catching a whiff of your shampoo to notice you furrowing your brow.

“Uhm, Suna.”

You turned your phone screen to him and the blood drained from his face.

It was a picture of you - of course, what else could it have been. You were absently staring out the window in the classroom, your hair a little messy from a regular day of fending for your life in high school. Your chin rested on your palm and the sun shone beautifully against your face. He knew the picture well, because just last night when he couldn’t sleep, he edited it. Black and white hearts bordered the snapshot, a slightly blurry filter gave it a dreamlike feel. He gagged when he saw just how mushy he must have felt to add words around your head. Pookie. Baddie. Loml. My Bbg.

“What kind of prank is this?”, you asked, suspicion clinging to every syllable.

Suna thought.

Telling you that this picture was born out of post-nut hormones would only lead to a somewhat compromising confession that he fondled and humped his body pillow thinking of you, having no problem at all imagining your so very tempting love handles spilling between his fingers.

“Would you believe me if I told you my dog took my phone?“

You stared at him for a moment, then broke into giggles.

a/n: thank you so much for continuing to participate in my events! I’m so happy when someone comes back for more 🥺 I hope you enjoyed this one! 🌟

And once again thank you to @haikyu-mp4 for letting me surf her brain through the storm ✨

[paragonrobits]

in adventure time stuff, Marceline is front and center as indisputably the single most popular character, widely loved within and out of the fanbase; she's kind of a distillation of the series' wacky tone because she is unironically a vampirized half-demon child of Satan Stand-In, a heavy metal rock star who's dated a mad scientist princess, her adoptive dad is arguably one of the most powerful entities in the setting and a terrifying ice wizard who survived the apocalypse through cunning BEFORE he was consumed by his curse, and the greatest hero in the land who is otherwise a mundane human won her friendship by punching her so hard she went 'FUCKING SWEET, WE ARE NOW BROS FOR LIFE'

but the thing about Marceline that is arguably the single most essential aspect of her character, and not something that is apparent from the joke or memes around her

is how nice and genuinely sweet she is.

Yes, she's a badass. Yes, she is probably the single most powerful character in a conventional sense among Finn's friend group, to the point that she is less present in serious situations because her picking a side would trivialize just about anything short of the Lich or the apocalyptic arrival of Golb.

But as we see more of her character, we see that she goes out of her way to actually avoid seriously upsetting people. The most recurring motif of her songs is that while they sound threatening or spooky, she says them in a very sweet and loving way that makes them too silly and harmless to take seriously. At her core, that's kind of who she is; she's honestly a genuinely nice person who deliberately distances herself from people because she outlives everyone she cares about, one way or another, and she pushes people away so she doesn't have to see it happen, but she can't help but get close to someone.

In a lot of ways, Finn helps her grow out of this mindset, and the relationships she establishes through him, or rekindles because of him, help her grow out of this. But even then, she has no real mean-ness in her

ironic, given the "MARCELINE WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN" song, but she gives her own answer right there:

"I'm not mean/I'm just a thousand years old and I lost track of my moral code"

Tellingly, when we see her as a young girl (and before meeting Simon, likely almost right before she met him), she has internalized the idea that she's a horrible, awful monster who scares people away. That she loses everyone around her, because SHE'S a scary monster. We see the source of her tendency to push people away, because that way she has some kind of control over it, and otherwise she thinks its inevitable.

But she can't help but get close to people anyway, and in many ways, her relationship with Ash is a very clear example that she is NOWHERE near as violent or ferocious as she looks. Their relationship openly has her abused, meek and quiet, and she is a nigh-unstoppable soul-eating monster that NO ONE could reasonably fight. Even so the closest she gets to actually lashing out against a guy who sold her most cherished possession (and the last remaining reminder of a father figure who can't ever come back) is to just end their relationship instead of lashing out against him.

Much like the reveal of her relationship to Ice King (which interestingly also maps to his slow recovery from being a villain at all, to the point that around the time this becomes a big aspect of his character he is functionally not really a villain, though still a danger to himself and others), its a slow burn. Showing that she's by far one of the least malicious beings in the entire setting, and she could be a hero.

And the answer to that one is: because she used to be. And that part of herself isn't as long-gone as she would like to think.

[midnight1nk]

PRESENTING:

THE OFFICIAL WOTFI 2024 BINGO CARD

Come one and all to Puzzle Park, where fun truly never ends...

:)

[BOX EXPLANATIONS & EMPTY CARD UNDER CUT]

BOX EXPLANATIONS (+CREDITS)

Mario Ruins The Show — me, @sardix

No matter what Mr Puzzles does, Mario is the only character he can't control. The one who never obeys. The one who ruins the show. So, it wouldn't be the first time Mario would save the day.

Past Arcs Or Trauma — /sardix

it's bound to happen some time, right? :)

Karma

After what he did to Meggy, it makes sense that Mr. Puzzles will face the same demise. The fate that's popular within the fandom would be his death. But if he lives, he could turn into Leggy himself, his TV head with tiny footsies. Or just his head. Either way, he would end up harmless.

It also refers to Puzzles's defeat. He tried to destroy the crew multiple times, it's only natural that the SMG Crew will try to fight back.

Mr Puzzles having a grudge against SMG4 — /sardix

We already knew that Puzzles hates Four, jealous even. How did Four, a ridiculous YT shitposter, get more attention than him? His original ideas pushed aside for memes? To add salt in the wound, Puzzles's steaming service of 5 episodes only managed 4.5 stars at his highest while Four surpassed him with 5.5 stars within an hour. An hour. And then, Four had the nerve to destroy his perfect screen at the end of the Puzzlevision movie. Then, there's the Meme Factory arc. Four took his only friend away, it's only fair if Four gets what he deserves. Why don't we have some fun with it while we're at it? :)

Park Destroyed — @34saveme34

By the end of WOTFI, Puzzle Park gets destroyed similar to how the simulation lab crumbled by the end of Western Spaghetti, seeing that there are a lot of similarities between Wren and Puzzles with the whole wires thing going on.

It's Gotta Be Perfect — me, @time1srunout, and literally everyone

Interestingly, the show crew brings back moments/parallels from IGBP. After all, everything started at that arc. Perfection, the keyboard, the eyes, the goo, the Showgrounds, Puzzlevision. And of course, Four and Puzzles being Narrative Foils(TM). I mean, you gotta love it.

The reason why it's in its own box is because of how significant it is. And besides, many theories stem from this arc. For me, I'll be looking for eyes, Goop!Four, and absolute karma.

References, confirmed theories, motifs, flashbacks, it all counts.

Freak Show

Referring to the poster made by the SMG4 crew with Tari, SMG3, Boopkins, and Bob being labeled as freaks. Someone's gotta bring this into WOTFI somehow.

(Carnival-Themed) Rap — me, @porschas-palette

Just as a heist-themed WOTFI happened in 2023, an awesome carnival-themed rap will happen this year. And it will be a BANGER!

Puzzles' Backstory — me, @yullalightk

As much as Puzzles is an interesting character, we have yet to learn more about his past. We have already seen some in his Creative Control song and in the 'Mr Puzzles' Clubhouse' episode with his dad. There simply has to be more. The puzzle pieces of his past :) ...I'll see myself out

The Bell Tolls 🔔

For the past few weeks, Ben and Shadow have been trolling the SMG4 twitter with their ;) and the bell emoji.

Stop stop [*points at SMG4 twt*] they're already dead/ref

On one tweet, Ben posted a few lyrics of the song "For Whom the Bell Tolls", a 1984 song by Metallica that was apparently inspired by a book of the same name, which basically tells a scene in the story where 5 soldiers died in the Spanish Civil War. Exploring death in modern warfare. As for whom the bell tolls, it's all of us, being bounded together. It's all of them who the bell tolls for.

Any reference to the heavy metal song, signs of bells, or even death, it marks this box for sure. Sure, it may be trolling, but hey, anything's possible.

Not So Different

With Four and Puzzles being Narrative Foils(TM), I've been waiting for a scene of Puzzles telling Four:

"You and I, we aren't so different. You wished to make people happy. I'm simply doing the same..."

It also be in reverse with Four OR Three telling that to Mr Puzzles that they get where he's coming from but he doesn't have to go down this path. They know what it's like. Whether Puzzles accepts defeat/change, it'll be up to him.

(Ending) Twist — me, /porschas-palette

At the very end of WOTFI, Mr Puzzles finally came out in all this glory of a model, showing he also pulled the strings of WOTFI 2023. Aside from IGBP and Western Spaghetti, of course. It's likely to happen again. Old/new characters, foreshadowing, fake death. It all counts.

Merch

...I mean, it's pretty obvious, right? I'm gonna bet on a poster, shirt/hoodie, a keychain, and something related to the WOTFI ticket. 5 bucks, all in.

Star Rating System

This whole arc constantly comes back to the ratings. Mr Puzzles in the negatives in the "Lowest Point" episode, Mickey referring the single star as the power source in the Engine Room in "Mr Puzzles' Clubhouse". And no, we're not going to forget about the broken star Mr Puzzles had left at the end of Puzzlevision. With Mr Puzzles being THE power source, it has to come back.

Sacrifice — me, /sardix, /porschas-palette

"Character Death" and "Character Fake Death" were great suggestions. But then, when sardix stated "Mario saves the day doing something stupid/protects someone from dying", it made me realize something. That's right, each one of the Crew would do anything to protect the others. Even if it costs them their lives. But it's worth the risk if it means they're safe. Three technically did in the "Welcome to Puzzle Park" episode, trying to warn Four and Mario. I mentioned in my theories that someone will sacrifice themselves, so this might be it.

It could also mean in terms of the exchange of something else, not necessarily a life. It could be Meggy's physical condition, knowing that she was forced to become Leggy again. Based on all those screams, I think her body's not going to be the same. A loss of a limb or something. Or perhaps, after seeing what he's done, Mr Puzzles might admit defeat. The sacrifice of his dream for creative vision.

Tender Tunnel — me, Nicc

What other reason would there be to have the equivalent of the Tunnel of Love in Puzzle Park? Literally, why would they do that? They could've put anything else in there. Popping balloon stand, the horse racing game, any other ride. Why this? And not just that, they keep pointing the camera right at it as if they're like "hey, this is going to become relevant later, so remember it".

SMG4 Kids

This whole arc also revolved around the children. Karen's kids, Beeg4, Eggdog, JubJub. Like I said in my "The Unexpected Guests" theory, they could still be relevant here. Also, the whole Didney thing and their large kid audience and the carnival being fun for kids (and all ages ofc).

Puzzles Dies 💀 — Nicc

As much as some of us don't want it to happen, Mr Puzzles may die, similarly how Wren did. For how to defeat Puzzles, it seems like the Crew would have to destroy the power source that's currently controlling the park... aka Mr Puzzles

Meggy Confronts

By the near end of WOTFI, in the final showdown between the Crew and Puzzles, Meggy might be back to normal and might have a few words with him in regards to what happened to her. In song or pure dialogue, she might confront him about his wrongdoings.

Or perhaps, for the very first time, Leggy might defy him. The whole time, Leggy is like "Join the winning team, he was such a great boss". And what if something snapped in Leggy that made her say "no" to Puzzles? That, no, this is going too far. No, I can't let you do this.

"You Saved Me" 💫 💣 — me, /sardix

SMG4 x SMG3 shippers, we're all too familiar with this line. Ever since SMG3 redeemed himself, the two have constantly said this line, after one indeed does save the other. Actually, it kind of happens in every movie if you think about it. And it works just as well here.

SMG3 being in a horrible minigame trap might get saved by Four and Mario with Four pulling out of it,

Three: "You... saved me?" Four: "Why wouldn't I? You were literally in a trap, dude." Three, hitting the back of Four's head: "I... Augh, just forget it, baka."

OR in reverse, when Four thanks Three for trying to save him and Mario. They didn't exactly escape in time but Three really has grown to become a true friend.

This box also works as a "Four and Three moment that can be seen as romantic" box :)

Brand New Look

This could be new outfits, bringing back old ones (like Three's bunny ears or WOTFI '23 suits), a new Puzzle face, or a new look of the Puzzle Park.

Puzzles Tune

Puzzles' musical motif dubbed as "TV Time", the one we're all familiar with, could come back. Either in the background, as a new arrangement, or as part of the Rap(TM) instrumental. It did that for WOTFI 2023 to foreshadow his subtle involvement so I don't see why it couldn't happen.

Dynamic Change

After rewatching "SMG4 and SMG3 come up with an episode", I predicted that something would change in Four and Three's dynamic, for better or worse. (For better, hopefully). As I said, it could be Three's revelation. Sure, the episode is a silly one, it should not be taken so seriously. But it's also the same episode that "hinted" the idea of a carnival coming to the Showgrounds, so anything could happen at this point.

And it doesn't have to be between Four and Three, it could be anyone in WOTFI. Leggy and Puzzles, the Crew within, etc.

Leggy's Flag

As shown in the "Lowest Point" episode, Mr Puzzles kept Leggy's flag after all this time. It wouldn't be a surprise that it might be used for a turning point in the plot in some way. Maybe it could be used as evidence of Puzzles' humanity, or for Puzzles to realize the damage he has caused. That he lost himself. All for creative vision.

BLANK CARD

If you want to fill in your own card, I leave here a blank version for your use AND a marker png:

Also, feel free to post this on other platforms, the more the merrier. All I ask from you is to credit me.

.・-: ✧ :--: ✧ :-・.

Have fun with it, bring in your moots or discord server! But as always, enjoy what WOTFI has to offer. "Love always wins", after all.

I would like to give a big thanks to everyone who has given me suggestions, great job honestly!

And feel free to share your cards after WOTFI either by tagging me or using #wotfi 2024 bingo, I would love to see them! I'll see you all on the other side, my dear fellows.

[franki-lew-yo]

Mouthwashing and fandom discourse as a whole.

So I recently explored the tag for Mouthwashing after watching two no-commentary lets plays of the entire game. I'm seeing a lot of posts pointing out how annoying it is that this game has a fandom and that this fandom is doing fandom things and stanning/"uwu-ing" characters from this incredibly nuanced, raw and not-fandom friendly piece of art. To paraphrase someone I just saw "you don't want mouthwashing; you want Among Us ocs but darker". And

for a moment I wanna talk a bit about how I absolutely agree with this statement while also talk for a moment about how and why fandom and catharsis fan fics exist and shouldn't be shamed inherently. Or, I guess, not in theory.

The "come on! Stop trying to make everything shippable/cutsey/memey/have a happy AU and face unpleasant emotions someone's trying to tell you about!" is SUCH a vibe with me. I felt this way in the 9 fandom a lot as a kid and that was just 9. Mouthwashing is like 9 on bathsalts emotions and theme-wise. It's a game where you play as both the flawed but caring captain of a doomed ship who's life becomes a Johnny Got His Gun-nightmare, and also a deplorable, hateful piece of garbage who got himself and his friend in that nightmare situation to begin with. Both characters, moreso Jimmy but Curly too, are the causes of their own misery. They're complex dealing with one of the two committing SA and doing nothing really about it/dodging the responsibility and humanity needed to support the victim whom they've wronged.

I fully admit it's groan-inducing seeing people be shipped up Anya with anyone on the ship considering what happens to her. On a pure pr level I think it would be illegal even since romance between coworkers in a workplace is considered conflict of interest/harassment as it so often is. (NOT that what Jimmy did to Anya is 'romance'. I'm talking about the shipping of Anya with the other three guys. I know there's people out there who do ship Jimmy/Anya; you don't have to tell or show me I believe you and also I already hate it.) It's ALSO groan inducing to see people ship Curly and Jimmy considering all Jimmy does to him- and just the fact that this incredibly tragic, toxic one-way-gone array friendship is reduced to "toxic yaoi teehee". It's annoying AT BEST.

I get the hostility towards fandom-tastic stanning and fandom behavior in general...the issue is it's still hostility and I wish some of you guys got that.

Like it or not (you don't have to like it) fandom culture is inevitable to some degree. You can and should complain about your hangups but that's all you can do besides avoiding tags and just not engaging with that side of the fandom at some point. Save your call-outs and rage for when you see active deplorable bs being committed that people are excusing for dumb fandom reasons, like lolicon, hatespeech or harassment. I'm sorry but you can not actively go after and try and take down the innocent people involved in your trigger that aren't directly hurting you by liking the thing that triggers you; ie. people who get all shipping and fandom-brained about Mouthwashing's characters which you find offensive to do at all.

This type of convo is the crux of most 'antifandom' v profandom discourse in general; for Antis I think there ought to be a difference between the people that set you off bcuz of fandom nonsense vs sociopathic 'got mine'-creepiness. There's a difference between someone who draws r34 v Shadbase. For profandom types you out to face the fact that yes- maybe NOT EVERYTHING is meant to be shippable/memed. Maybe try practicing that a bit. Yeah it's mostly harmless and makes you feel happy, but considering how people outside of your hyperfixation-of-a-hyperfixation is a thing. Asking to care or think about others once in awhile is not an attack on you as a person, believe it or not. The thing about the "don't like, don't read" argument is it goes both ways. If you're truly a "good fan" like you say you are than you have to realize that people will not like your problematicisms. Learn to interact with characters and stories without the possibility of shipping sometimes- or at least understand that that's the crux of what makes a story like Mouthwashing engaging, even if you also partake in the fandumb and AUs on the side. You can call Curly your babygirl and ship him or make him happy all you want but PLEASE acoknowledge that the game doesn't woobify him or excuse what he did to Anya as well. You can make some kind of AU scenario where Jimmy gets out somehow and becomes/is a slightly better person for all I care...so long as you PLEASE remember that he is canonically a r@pist and awful. Also, even if I'm okay with your fan decisions, note that myself and others are still going to be critical and be upset that you wrote it at all because of what kind of character Jimmy is. 'Critical' =/= declaring something evil.

Fandom behaviors are not souly a destructive parasocial outcome of brainrot; they're also a natural reaction to what happens canonically and the emotions you have to experiencing a story. It's normal and rational to sympathize and love Curly and despise and hate Jimmy. You can love/like/enjoy a problematic-to-DEEPLY DISTURBED-character based on their complexity in canon. They are fiction. They are not real. The reason you are so invested with them is because of that complexity and yes because they are fiction they are your 'toy' and you can doll them up in any kind of speculative AU crap you make. That's fanfiction, baby. Make yourself a fixit fic if you really want

BUT-

remember: it stays as a fixit fic. DO NOT cross the streams, or insist that your active misreading of the text is the same as the text itself. EVER. You should care about your special interest's escapism as a means of self-care. What you shouldn't do is demand that EVERYONE ELSE LOVE your coping mechanism and that any complaints by people on their own terms on their own blogs is #badfaith or an inherent attack against you. It isn't. You'll know when it is an attack against you and that's when you, the profandom-type, need to be prepared and save your call-out posts and blocklist for.

To me that's the fragility to fandom debates and fandom as a whole. You can not/should not police or control an entire group of people and how they perceive or interact with media. That's not fair and it's definitely not sporting or decent of you in a community. You have to share your community -your fandom- with people who hate ur fav and people who love your least fav. Agreeing to disagree means not tagging your nOTP as their shipname or by tagging your shipname loud and clear. It means filtering out posts with those topics but enjoying and/or reblogging the fandom takes you do share with your fellow fandom-mite that obviously posts abt those topics.

When schmit REALLY goes down and some assface reviewer/fan/SOMETHING is being an assface or doing something amoral under the guise of fandom-ing, that's where you out to put your foot down. Callouts and complaints are for people who did an egregious thing and refuse to take responsibility(lol) for it. They're not for "soandso likes the thing that triggers me, kill them"/"so and so is hating on the thing I'm kinning because it triggers them, kill them". Be an adult.

Your DNI lists should consist of "lolicon defenders" not "proshippers", as those ARE NOT one in the same. Same goes the other way around. List off "bigots, purity culture bs", not "antis and critics". These positions ARE NOT interchangeable. If you make them interchangeable than you're making things a lot harder for yourself.

-sincerely, a message from autistic ADHD/OCD woman who likes horror and media analysis as much as she loves popcorn fanfic schlock.

We don't all have to be friends and buddybuds. I just hate us hurting each other over being different kind of fandom-folk rather than for when someone sincerely mucks up and does something bad. Can't we all stick to our guns and just boycott Harry Potter like god intended?

[robin-evry]

What about Pixie yuu?

Sure thing, ask and you shall receive

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐔𝐔 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐏𝐈𝐗𝐈𝐄 🧚‍♂️🧚‍♀️🧚

A pixie is a mythical creature that resembles a mischievous fairy. If you spy some adorable little sprites in green pointed hats sneaking around the woods, you can bet that they're pixies. Pixies appear in folk and fairy tales from the southwest part of England, making minor mischief and dancing in groups.

Pixie Yuu is always buzzing with energy and curiosity, darting from one adventure to the next. They are full of mischievous charm, often pulling harmless pranks on their friends, especially Grim. Their lighthearted nature makes them a joy to be around, but sometimes their antics can get them in trouble.

Despite their whimsical attitude, they are sharp and quick on their feet, both mentally and physically. They have a knack for getting out of tricky situations with their clever thinking and wit.

Like a pixie guardian of nature, they have a deep connection to the environment, especially plants and animals. They takes care of the plants around the school grounds and sometimes communicates with the magical creatures that reside in the woods surrounding Night Raven College.

Can control their size, but their original size is the size of a palm similar towards a fairy. But they can manipulate their size to their liking.

Even tho they have a tiny stature and innocent appearance, They swear like a sailor, they swear as an everyday vocabulary, they also have a sharp tongue throwing insults or roast towards literally anyone no matter who it is. Btw a big fan of yo mama jokes

They also uses every creative, colorful phrase imaginable, often leaving others shocked or laughing. Their favorite exclamations usually include bizarre combinations involving nature, like “By the roots of the cursed oak!” or “Wings of a twisted nettle!”

During the time when riddle insults them during the heartslabyul arc, pixie!yuu release a barrage of swearing and insult towards, causing the entire dorm with their mouth open. Their cursing can almost make him pass out

Best friends with epel, throw insults at each other on a daily basis, but not in a rude way but a way of greeting each other, when they wake up epel message them an insult as a way to say good morning.

Their way of cursing is the way of showing dominance, many savanaclaw students are too afraid to face them. Scared of them to filet by them using their mouth.

They also have bad memories of remembering most of the students names so they use nicknames.

Riddle : "Anger issues / mommies boy"

Leo : "lion furry / Lazy Tail Twitcher"

Azul : "Ursula knock off / calamari

Kalim : "nothing will ever go wrong guy / happy go lucky"

Vil : royal pain in the ass / pretty boy

Idia : otaku human torch/ nerd boy

Malleus : horny guy / dark and broody

They also mistake people's names with others, they always mistake jade and Floyd's name, by calling jade : Floyd as well calling Floyd : jade. The twins find this amusing. ( Reference to the I'm just ken meme, with Ryan Reynolds and odell Beckman junior )

Though Pixie Yuu loves nature, cooking is where their chaotic energy shines. They throw random plants and ingredients into the pot, and somehow, it usually turns out delicious. Their creations are unpredictable, but they have a unique charm—except when they accidentally adds too much pixie dust and causes the food to float!

They often sprinkle a little of their pixie dust on their friends when they need a boost. Whether it’s to help Deuce during exams or to give Riddle a rare moment of carefree joy, they always knows when someone could use a little magical lift.

They challenges Lilia to flying competitions every now and then. Despite Lilia's age and experience, he always seems to find their pixie agility impressive. They never backs down from a good aerial race.

They love playing harmless pranks on their friends and teachers. They'll shrink objects, make things float with their pixie dust, or create tiny illusions to confuse people. Their favorite target is Ace, who never seems to catch on when things go missing or shift around him.

Pixie Yuu has a habit of making cozy little hideaways in places no one else would think of. They been known to sleep in flower petals or inside teacups. Whenever they feeling overwhelmed, they retreats to these small, quiet spots to recharge.

Thanks to their deep connection with nature, they are is the go-to student when anyone needs advice on magical plants. They know how to handle even the most dangerous flora, often with a quick swear and a smack of their hand.

Pixie Yuu’s magic is often unpredictable. A simple spell to help with gardening might accidentally turn the entire garden into a sprawling jungle or on fire. While their intentions are usually good, things tend to spiral out of control quickly, often ending with them swearing like a sailor while trying to fix the mess.

Yuu is fascinated by small, shiny things, and they have a collection of them hidden away in her room. From tiny crystals to miniature figures, if it’s small and glittering, they probably has it. Grim often teases them, calling them a “magpie,” but Yuu just shrugs and says, “Better than hoarding tuna cans like you, furball.”

Yuu has a small entourage of woodland animals who follow them around—rabbits, birds, and squirrels that assist her with tasks or simply keep them company. Grim occasionally gets jealous of how much attention she gets from the animals.

They have a beautiful, translucent wings with a soft glow, similar to those of a dragonfly. They're delicate but strong, and they shimmer in a myriad of colors depending on the light.

When things get intense in a fight, Yuu’s sailor-like mouth is in full effect. Their small size and pixie wings make them a speedy fighter, darting around enemies and cursing them out as they go. Grim swears they once made an opponent surrender purely out of confusion and shock from her language.

They also use their pixie for battle by sprinkling pixie dust on any object that is a heavy, example a dresser and they would just throw the floating heavy object towards the enemy, example them using pixie dust on a table in heartslabyul and throw it on overblot riddle

Their wings give them unparalleled mobility in the air. They are a master of aerial combat, darting around opponents with lightning speed. Their size makes them harder to hit, and they can weave in and out of attacks with ease. Their aerial maneuvers include flips, barrel rolls, and sharp dives that make them a difficult target. While flying, they can strike from different angles, keeping their enemies on their toes. They often taunt them mid-air, yelling or curse at them.

They have deep connection with nature and allow them to control plants and the environment. In battle, they can summon vines to entangle enemies, create walls of thorns for defense, or use flowers that emit calming spores to pacify aggressive foes. They have an attack called “Thorn Whip,” where they lashes out with thorny vines that deal damage while immobilizing the opponent.

They are able to manipulate magic. They have access to various elemental spells, with a particular affinity for wind and earth magic. They can summon gusts of wind to knock enemies off balance or send blasts of wind like invisible slaps their earth magic allows them to create small rock barriers or spike the ground beneath them foes, making them trip or lose balance.

They also have the ability to shrink objects and sometimes even opponents, temporarily reducing them to a comically tiny size. This disorients enemies and renders them nearly harmless while small.

They are also very skilled and a swordmaster. Their sword style mostly focuses on offensive moves by and overpowered the enemies. They are able to catch up with Lilia who's an experienced warrior.

They have pointy ears, this helps them hear from miles that is considered possible, they are also described to be very beautiful by the most of student body.

They also called Lilia an old bat as well a beg of old bones and skins meanwhile they are also a few hundred years old.

[libraryofgage]

PJO Steddie Seven

One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six

PJO show is living rent free in my head everyone. I love that funky little fantasy show

Anyway, welcome to part 7, where we learn more about some of the kids' powers, get a peek into Steve's growing troubles with his powers, and Steddie get a fun little development too

As always, if you see any typos, no you didn't ;)

Oh! And a meme, another meme for you at the end lol

---------

While the kids have no problem adjusting to Camp Half-Blood and making friends (several of the other campers have asked El to freeze them if only because they think it's funny), Steve runs into a few bumps. He's not used to relaxing. He's not used to letting his guard down and having the children out of sight for so long. And he's definitely not used to his powers feeling beyond his control whenever Eddie is around, which is...well, always.

Don't get Steve wrong. He likes being around Eddie. In fact, he looks forward to it. Steve hasn't smiled or laughed this much or been around someone his own age in a while. It's new and kind of weird and just a little scary.

But it doesn't at all help with his growing nervous energy. He keeps waiting for a shoe to drop, quickly followed by another. It never does, and Steve fully realizes what a problem this is when Eddie is in his room one day and casually says, "Your clouds are different."

Steve blinks, looking over at Eddie in one of the chairs. He has a guitar in his lap, idly strumming as Steve's phone plays music for them. Steve had just been nodding off, feeling relaxed and sleepy when Eddie spoke. "What do you mean?" he asks.

"They changed again." Eddie says, frowning slightly as he points at the clouds drifting along the ceiling. They're a slate color now, not exactly brewing up a storm but looking ready to start pouring down on them. They aren't gloomy, though. It's more like...like the tension you feel when a natural disaster is about to strike and the clouds are the only warning you'll get of its arrival. "They were starting to turn white, but they're grey again."

"Oh," Steve says, flopping back on the bed with a sigh. "They're supposed to reflect my mood."

He hears the chair shift and steps coming closer to the bed before Eddie sprawls across the mattress next to him. "What's got you so grey, sweetheart?" he asks. Their hands aren't touching, but Steve can feel that now-familiar buzz at his fingertips, the little arches of lightning begging to reach out if he'd only let them.

Steve curls his fingers into a fist, refusing to succumb to the urge. He considers lying, just brushing off the question, but then he makes the mistake of looking at Eddie. He looks right into Eddie's brown eyes, and his resolve crumbles. His fist uncurls, their fingertips brush, and he allows a harmless spark to pass between them. "I'm just on edge," he says, looking back at the ceiling and watching the clouds. "Restless, I guess."

"You're used to fighting monsters and moving across the country, Stevie," Eddie says, sliding his hand closer to Steve's so their fingers are tangled together and a current begins to pass between them. "Being all...still is getting to you."

"Yeah, no shit," Steve says with a quiet snort. "Can't do anything about it."

"Well...there is Capture the Flag next week," Eddie points out, shifting closer, like their hands aren't enough. Now their arms and shoulders are pressed together, and Steve inexplicably feels some of that nervous energy disappear, like Eddie is taking it from him. "It can be an all-out bloodbath, you know."

Steve huffs softly, getting a wry smile. "I'm not sure anyone's gonna want to be on my team," he says. The other campers avoid him. Despite his best efforts, his attack on the patrol campers spread fast and mean, and everyone is a little wary. "So, unless I can be on a team by myself, it probably isn't gonna happen."

A few beats of silence pass, and Steve is about to assume he's somehow fucked up the conversation when Eddie says, "You wouldn't be alone. There's me. And the kids. And I could get the Hermes Cabin to partner with you. Plus, you know, you're a Zeus kid, Stevie. You ask to be in charge and nobody's gonna argue."

He...hadn't thought of that. Steve frowns slightly, letting the idea turn in his mind. It would be a challenge, of course, especially if all the other cabins decide to team up. But...a challenge means pushing himself, reaching limits he's never come close to, letting go completely and losing himself in the battle, whether he wins or not.

The clouds above them start to roll, broiling with the energy of a storm that's all thunder and lightning, and excitement surges through Steve. He doesn't even realize he's letting it get the better of him until Eddie yelps and jerks his hand away.

Steve blinks, jerking up and reaching out to Eddie but stopping halfway. "I'm sorry," he says, frowning slightly as he watches Eddie look at his hand. "I'm really sorry. Are you hurt?"

"No, no, it was more...," Eddie trails off, and then he gets an obnoxious grin and looks up at Steve. "It was more the shock of it."

A beat passes before Steve groans, grabs his pillow, and whacks Eddie in the face with it. Eddie dramatically falls back on the bed, lamenting Steve's cruelty and superior fighting skills as Steve laughs. When Eddie finally stops hamming it up, he pushes the pillow away and says, "So, I'd guess you're excited?"

Steve rolls his eyes, his cheeks hurting from smiling. "I...have an idea already, yeah," he says, looking at Eddie and leaning closer. "Wanna hear it?"

"Hell yeah," Eddie says, his eyes lighting up as Steve lays it all out.

And so begins a week of planning.

It's a week (most of which was spent convincing the Hermes Cabin to join his team and agree to just sit back and guard the flag) that leaves Steve buzzing with energy on the day of Capture the Flag. Eagerness makes his limbs tingle and his body beg to pace as he looks over the demigods in front of him. It's just the Hermes Cabin, Eddie, and the kids, meaning they're facing off against the rest of the camp.

He can't blame the Hermes kids for looking like they've already been defeated. The only reason they're still hanging around, Steve is sure, is because he and the kids promised to do all of their chores for two months if they lose.

Steve takes a deep breath, rolls his shoulders back, and consciously lets go of the Mist around him. He's used to holding it close, using it to cover himself and make him look, well, weaker, that he has to purposefully send it off. He knows the moment it's completely abandoned him; the demigods all stand straighter, only the kids and Eddie dare to meet his eyes, and the snakes poking through the hole in El's beanie start tasting the air with interest.

"You've put your faith in me," Steve says, his volume normal but his voice still booming in the otherwise silent clearing. "You probably think we're fucked, but you'd be wrong. So, listen up. I will be offense. Eddie, Will, and El will be extraction. And you, with the strength of numbers, will be defense. Guard this flag with your life, and we will win. If any of the enemy manages to slip past me, hold steady. You are the final line of defense. Your job is the most important, and I expect you to give it your all."

The hesitant expressions have become impassioned, if not a bit confused by the fact. Steve grins at them, feeling the air crackle between his teeth as his excitement grows. He exhales sparks, his fingers buzzing and his skin close to bursting.

Steve doesn't often pray to Zeus. He's never felt a need to, and several goddesses have made themselves better known to him. But now, as excited for the fight as he is, Steve thinks to Zeus, If you've never watched me before, then watch me now.

He puts on his Blue-Team helmet, the distant horn ringing in his ears as the lightning floods through him, and heads into battle.

-------------

Eddie's role is simple: keep El and Will from getting hurt. He'd be offended at the simplicity if he weren't already plenty aware of his inability to fight well. He's built for defense and retreat, which is why he's got his shield at the ready and is preparing himself to jerk the kids back at the slightest hint of danger.

They're crouching behind some dense bushes, Will and El peeking through the gaps at some Red-Team campers, the first line of defense for the red flag. "So, what's the plan?" Eddie whispers, shifting slightly as he looks between the two kids. Thunder rumbles, and it takes every shred of Eddie's self-control to not look at the gathering storm clouds above them.

"Will makes them daydream," El whispers back, her beanie squirming as though the snakes can feel their imminent freedom. "If that does not work, I will turn them to stone."

Eddie slowly nods, glancing at Will as he cups his hands to his mouth and whispers unintelligible words into them. "And, uh, how is making them daydream supposed to help with distractions?" he asks.

"They are very strong daydreams," El replies.

Will finishes whispering, and a purple dust-like swirling mist is nestled in his palms. He nods to El, waiting for her to carefully make a larger opening in the leaves before gently blowing the mist from his hands. Eddie watches as it twists and curls around the Red-Team campers, slipping under their sleeves and floating to their ears and eyes. The mist settles there, a thin and nearly imperceptible film that Eddie wouldn't know to see if he hadn't watched Will make it.

A few seconds pass as the campers slowly relax, their grips on their weapons loosening until a few swords fall to the ground. El waits a few more seconds before picking up a sizeable pebble and throwing it at a tree across from them. Despite making a loud thud when it hits and falls to the ground, none of the campers blink or move an inch. The only movement Eddie can see is a slight sway and the occasional twitch of fingers, like their body is trying to follow through on movements they make in their daydreams.

"Metal," Eddie whispers, keeping pace with El and Will as they move out from behind the bush. If everything is this easy, they'll get back in time to see Steve fighting. Eddie would love if he could see Steve fighting again. "How did you do that?"

Will flushes slightly, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's not a lot, really," he says, his voice quiet and a little embarrassed. "I mean, I just use dream-speak to give the daydreams specific emotions and then send it over."

"Dream-speak?"

"You know how you can't read in dreams? And if you try to remember exact conversations, you can only get snippets or a word or two? That's dream-speak," Will explains. He thinks for a few seconds before adding, "It's, um, supposed to feel intangible."

"How long does it last?"

"Usually," El says, her voice soft as she pauses and gestures for Eddie and Will to follow, "around twenty minutes. But it depends on the person." She leads them to large boulder, all of them ducking behind it in time for some Red-Team campers to walk by.

"Holy shit," one of them says, looking in the distance at the gathering storm clouds as she slows down. "Man, I am fucking glad we're not fighting that Zeus kid."

"No kidding," the other mumbles. "He's a monster."

Eddie has heard plenty of people call Steve a monster in the past week. Most of them say it with awe in their voices, unable to find any other word to describe the sheer power they saw from Steve. But others, like the one here, say it like Steve is a monster for them to defeat for the glory of it.

He clenches his jaw, grip on his shield straps tightening some. Before he can do anything, El reaches up to her beanie, and Will slaps a hand over Eddie's eyes. He hears the hiss of a writhing mass of snakes, aborted shouts, and then nothing. When Will takes his hand away, the two campers are statues, shock and terror contorting their expressions. El, with her beanie back in place, considers them for a moment before turning. "We should keep moving."

Eddie doesn't argue, but he does hold up a fist to El, grinning when she slowly bumps it with her own. She then turns to Will, her expression expectant, and she flashes her own tiny smile that matches Will's when their fists gently bump together.

Of every game Eddie has participated in, this game of Capture the Flag is by far his most relaxed. Will and El seem to have plenty of experience sneaking around and launching sneak-attacks. The closest Eddie gets to seeing any kind of action is when a Red-Team camper happens to stumble across them on their way back from the bathroom. Even then, before Eddie can raise his shield to block their sword, El slides in front of him and rips off her beanie.

"Thanks," he says, keeping his gaze away until the beanie is back on.

"You are welcome," El replies, staying quiet for a few seconds before adding, "Steve would be sad if you got hurt."

With that statement dropped on him, she continues leading the way to the Red-Team base. By the time they reach it, several Red-Team campers have been deployed to support the other campers fighting Steve. Between those, the ones stationed on the other side of the forest, and the campers they've disposed of, only twenty remain to guard the flag.

"I'm surprised the Athena kids aren't more prepared for you," Eddie whispers, glancing at El. She's the kind of secret weapon everyone knows about and prepares for, but he hasn't seen any of that so far.

El glances at Eddie, considering her response for a few moments before looking at Will. When he nods, she says, "I have not told Steve, but the Head Camper for Athena approached me two days ago. She offered me a personally-designed weapon if I did not use my powers during the game."

"El agreed," Will says, picking up the explanation with ease, "and promised not to use her powers to steal the flag."

"I am not stealing the flag," El finishes, a proud smile tugging at her lips, "I am capturing it."

"You're a little devil, you know that?" Eddie asks, grinning brightly.

"No. I am a little gorgon."

-----

They leave a garden of statues in their wake, and El takes a few moments to sigh and say it's not as good as her mother's before they leave with the Red-Team flag carefully hidden under Will's shirt. As they approach the border between the team territories, the sounds of battle grow. Swords clash, fighters shout, and lightning cracks between them all.

"We can take the long way," Eddie offers, his tone reluctant as he glances in the direction of the fight. They're close enough that a few trees are singed on the edges from lightning strikes, and Eddie holds his shield tighter. Letting the kids get anywhere near that fight isn't protecting them, and he should direct them in a wide circle around it.

But something is calling him, urging him closer to the fight in a way he's never felt before. He's not an Ares kid---Eddie has no desire to enter a blood bath---but he gets the feeling that Steve is going to need him soon.

"El and I can make it by ourselves," Will offers. "It's only a few feet away, and the game ends once we cross, right?"

Eddie nods, frowning before taking a deep breath. "No, it's okay," he says, waving for the kids to keep moving. "We'll try to head straight through and end the game sooner."

It's a choice he was expecting to regret, but doesn't get the chance. Nobody notices them, even when they get close enough to see a swarm of Red-Team campers surrounding Steve. None of them glance in their direction, too distracted by the fight to spare any attention to three insignificant campers sneaking by. Thunder rumbles endlessly above them, a deafening soundtrack that's only broken by cracks of lightning striking the ground and knocking campers back a few feet.

"Steve is having fun," El observes, sounding happy for him as they approach the Blue-Team border.

"He's never really let go, huh?" Eddie asks, getting a quick peek at Steve through the swarm. He lost his helmet at some point, leaving his feral expression and static-raised hair in full view, and arches of lightning jump across his body, occasionally reaching out to strike any Red-Team campers that get too close.

"No," Will says, his voice soft as they approach the border. The moment Will steps over, the horn sounds in the distance, and Eddie waits for the fighting to stop.

But it doesn't. Nobody in the swarm seems to realize the game is over. They continue to attack Steve, and Steve continues to fight against them, the air churning and sparking and ready to burst. A few seconds pass before Eddie realizes they won't stop until only one side is left standing. He gets it. Kind of. Steve carries the air of royalty; a challenge. If you can beat the son of Zeus, a literal Prince of Olympus, the glory of that achievement is untold. And it seems his fellow campers have fallen prey to that glory, utterly lost to it

Eddie feels that urge to join Steve surge through him again. He swallows around a sudden lump of nerves in his throat, searching for any other peek at Steve he can get as he says, "You guys go ahead. I'll help Steve. We'll catch up."

He doesn't bother waiting for El or Will to answer. He just rushes into the battle, something he never expected himself to do. Somehow, he doesn't meet any resistance. Lightning strikes the ground around him, pushing Red-Team campers back and urging him on, and Eddie wonders if Steve knows he's coming.

When he finally reaches the center of the battle, he sees Steve swing his bat against someone's side, the nails dragging painfully before he kicks the person back. Steve has lost his chest plate as well, and the only armor he has left are the wrist guards. There are slashes in his clothes and the edges are burnt. Eddie is almost distracted by the sight until he sees a daughter of Ares rush Steve from behind, her sword raised to bring down on his back.

In a move of unprecedented grace (seriously, Eddie will look back on that moment and never understand how he managed to not trip over himself), Eddie springs into the battle. He rushes at Steve, sliding behind him, twisting, and raising his shield in one smooth movement. The sword comes down on his shield, sending vibrations down his arm but otherwise causing no harm to him or Steve. Eddie pushes back as hard as he can, sending the daughter of Ares sprawling before pressing his back to Steve's.

"Thanks," Steve says, his words crackling and sparking against Eddie's ear. He thinks it's just a phantom sensation at first, but Eddie soon realizes lightning is literally arching between them, jumping across their shoulders and through their hair and buzzing down Eddie's chest.

He licks his lips, electric ozone lingering on his tongue, and Eddie is fascinated by the taste. "No problem," he says, his body following Steve without thinking. It's easy when he can feel the bolts of lightning between them start to shift, telling him which way Steve is going so he can keep up. "You know the game is over, right?"

"This is the most fun I've had in years," Steve replies, his tone implying that should explain everything.

And, yeah, it kind of does. He sounds genuinely happy and thrilled, his voice teeming with eagerness that's punctuated by the sound of his bat hitting a Red-Team camper in the head hard enough to make their helmet ring.

Eddie knows Steve would stop if he asked. Eddie knows he could talk Steve down from this lightning-fueled battle high. Eddie decides that wouldn't be nearly as fun.

"Okay," he says, pressing closer to Steve's back and blocking an arrow headed straight for Steve's shoulder. "Have fun, sweetheart."

Eddie didn't know it was possible, but Steve's power surges again, like it was just simmering under his skin, waiting for permission. And Eddie gave it. Bolts strike from the clouds above while arches jump across Steve and Eddie, running down their arms and leaping at Red-Team campers who get too close. They don't stop; the lightning continues to jump from camper to camper, electrocuting whoever it touches, and Eddie realizes he should have been electrocuted, too.

He blocks another sword, lightning crackling along the edges of his shield and shooting off sparks when its hit, and looks at the white-blue arches running along his arm. Without thinking, Eddie touches one, a gentle buzzing spreading through his hand as the arch transfers and jumps around his palm. It tickles more than anything else, and Eddie would think it's harmless if a Red-Team spear didn't get close enough for the lightning to jump and shock the camper unconscious.

It's not that the lightning jumping between him and Steve is harmless, Eddie realizes, it's just that it won't hurt him. He feels like some of the lightning has settled in his chest, crackling and warm and soothing. Eddie glances over his shoulder, taking in Steve's breathless smile and the way light splashes across his face with each bolt that hits the ground and the sparks that jump from his bat.

That feeling he got when he first saw Steve, the breathlessness and awestruck realization that the whole prophecy was just him, hits Eddie all over again. He lingers in it for a few seconds, letting it wash over him and settle in his limbs, before getting yanked out by a particularly close lightning bolt that makes his ears ring.

Right. A fight. That he's part of.

Eddie forces himself to focus on defending Steve's back. He blocks arrows and swords and shields and, once, a battle axe that makes his shield groan. That one pisses him off some. This shield was a gift from Hermes, a gift that showed surprising knowledge of Eddie's interests, and he'll be damned if it breaks. As though fueled by his anger, the lightning on his shield crackles and shoots down the battle axe, converging on the camper until she drops the axe with a yelp.

He doesn't get to linger on that too long; another arrow comes straight at Steve again, and Eddie is far more occupied by blocking it. And so it continues. Steve fights, lightning strikes, and Eddie defends him the entire time, giving Steve the space and security to just let go and release all the energy that had been building since he arrived at camp.

It's over sooner than he expects. One moment, Eddie's arm is buzzing from a particularly strong hit to his shield, and the next, the field is silent. Thunder still rumbles above them, lightning still crackles around them, and Eddie's heartbeat is pounding in his ears. Campers are scattered around them, all breathing but most knocked out for a while. Eddie takes a deep breath, feeling the air spark harmlessly in his lungs, and slowly lets it out.

He rolls his shoulder and retracts his shield, placing it around his neck again before turning around. "You good?" he asks, looking Steve over for any obvious injuries. His clothes are even more singed, the hem of his shirt blackened, and his hair is sticking up wildly but still somehow perfect. Steve's tense, his muscles strained as he pants, looking around them before his gaze finally lands on Eddie. He's still gripping his bat tightly, his knuckles white, and Eddie is about to gently pull it away when Steve just drops it.

Eddie blinks, frowning slightly as he starts to ask Steve if he's okay. And then he can't speak at all, because Steve's hands are cupping his cheeks and Steve's chest is pressed against his own, and Steve's lips are thoroughly occupying his. Lightning shoots through Eddie, jumping down his throat as Steve's tongue licks past his lips.

It doesn't hurt, though. Nothing from Steve could actually hurt him; instead, it makes his fingers tingle and his lips buzz and his heart jackrabbit against his ribs. Eddie is filled with an inescapable energy, and there's only one way to expel it.

So, he kisses Steve back. Eddie wraps an arm around Steve's waist to tug him closer and pushes a hand into Steve's hair, finally feeling the soft strands tangling between his fingers. He tilts his head and lets Steve have the quiet groan that slips from him when tiny bolts jump from Steve's molars to Eddie's tongue.

Eddie is breathless and floating and completely under Steve's spell and...and...and he's confused. Because Steve yanks himself away, a panicked noise in the back of his throat as he takes a step back. His chest is still heaving, but Eddie knows it's for a different reason now. Steve starts to say something, his lips swollen and red and begging Eddie to kiss him again, but no words come out.

And then he does something Eddie never expected Steve to do. He runs. He panics so badly that he runs back toward the Blue-Team base, leaving Eddie in the middle of the Red-Team carnage with a floaty brain and a stupid smile.

Maybe, if it had been anyone else, Eddie would be panicking, too. He'd be worried about the person actually liking him, worried about what the kiss meant, worried about any number of things, really. But it's Steve. Eddie knows Steve. He knows Steve's laugh and his walk and his lightning and now his kiss.

There are only two possible reasons for Steve running away: either he panicked because the kiss was too sudden, too heat-of-the-moment, or he panicked because of the literal lightning he sent through Eddie. Both are easily addressed, easy to soothe Steve down from freaking out about so they can get to kissing again.

Eddie's smile widens some, and he takes one last look at the campers around him before carefully making his way past them, figuring he should tell Chiron they'll be needing ambrosia and nectar.

-------

Tag List

@mugloversonly, @mentallyundone, @hairdryerducks-blog, @carriethesaint, @lunabyrd, @weekend-dreamer7, @farfaras, @littlelady03, @my-tears-are-becoming-a-sea20, @mogami13, @a-little-unsteddie, @itsall-taken, @queenie-ofthe-void, @tinyplanet95, @littlebluejane, @hangoversandhandgrenades, @rabbitwhoeatsstars, @bisexualdisastersworld, @steddieinthesun,

@paintgonewrong, @sadcanadianwinter, @deehellcat, @blanketlicker, @angrydonutdestiny, @booksareportal, @fallingchemicaldiscos, @am-i-obssed-probably, @anne-bennett-cosplayer

@estrellami-1, @fandomcartographer, @steddie-as-they-go, @cris-wants-a-word, @potato-of-the-lord, @plasticcrotches, @enigmahaze, @melodymeddler, @lololol-1234, @sageclipse, @steddiehyperfixation, @livelaughlexa, @genderless-spoon

For those who made it this far, a meme:

[zones-spinterest-corner]

Fuck it, why not end out the year with some TPC headcanons :] (but only the characters I have headcanons for)

Cube:

Half-monster, freakishly tall and strong (even by cube standards) because of it

Has a rather soft voice, you know when he’s angry because that softness goes outta the window

He’s muscular, but not in the dehydrated “sexy” sense, but in the actual strongman sense

WILL crush your back in a hug

Iris:

Posh twat /aff

Morally questionable at the beginning, gets sense knocked into him and is now trying to unlearn some harmful rhetoric he learned growing up

Paradise’s most hated man /hj

Malewife

Seems like he’d be a tea drinker only, actually prefers coffee

Wasn’t revived by Calcifer/The Reaper, was instead revived by Prism/the Trees due to being needed as a caretaker (Calcifer refused to revive him)

Pentellow:

Southern. She’s southern you can’t convince me otherwise

The only competent caretaker

Lowkey shit at cooking, can make a mean apple pie though

Reckless due to the natural polygon durability boost, worries the shit out of the others on a daily basis

Likes dirt

Girlboss (if Iris is the malewife she’s the girlboss I’m sorry)

Pyrare:

Kind of a cryptid, will appear behind you ominously and scare you when he asks if you want casserole for dinner

Aromantic, but not asexual (I mean. Britt never said anything about his sexual orientation, just his romantic one, so I can hc him as aroallo if I want) (besides, he’s got a canon son lmao)

Likely autistic, but has lived for longer than the concept of autism in society so therefore he can’t possibly have it (he very much can)

Very flat voice, rarely has tonal changes unless he’s like. Really feeling an emotion

Ajacent:

Gossip machine, will find out the latest tea and spill it to her friends

Doesn’t live in the mountains anymore and doesn’t communicate with her sisters often either (hmm I wonder why)

Not a fan of the heroes, she finds them a little too child-like (she’s not a fan of children in general)

Circubit:

Fat and proud of it <3

Really good at playing the piano thanks to his mother, though he prefers an electric keyboard

One of Ajacent’s gossip buddies

Does not like Lythorus due to Lycanthropy being the most unlikeable fucker in existence (Lyth is better in that regard but Circubit still hates him lmao)

Learning robotics purely to maintain Cyanogen (Cyanide)’s body, gets frustrated with it easily

Gold:

Snake boy (hc adopted from MugzyMiik/October)

Has a small hiss to his speech

Takes after Pyrare in being the cryptid of the heroes

Likes fluffy things :3

Tsavorite:

Literal embodiment of :3

Impossible to hate, he’s too nice to everyone

First hero to truly bond with Cyanogen

Learning some recipes left over by Pentellow’s mom (she can’t cook but he can)

LOVES pie, no matter if sweet or savoury (though he’s particularly fond of cheese and onion pies)

Orange:

Nicknamed “grapefruit” by Iris, only lets him, Pente and Tsav call him that

The most laid back of the heroes

Has very fluffy hair under his hat

A little protective of Tsav (they’re brothers don’t take this the wrong way)

Has a sweet tooth

Cyan:

Filled with RAGE

Cube has to stop him from fistfighting Dub on a near daily basis

Annoying lil shit

Still wary of Cyanogen, hasn’t taken the time to bond with her

Lowkey racist towards pink shapes even though they’re harmless and natural now

Desperately needs a reality check

Cyanogen:

Wants to bond with Cyan, but is scared of him

Has at least 4GB of memes downloaded onto her, will rickroll you at any given opportunity

Cheeky, likes to pull pranks

Changed her name from Cyanide because she didn’t want to be named after a literal poison anymore </3

Caretaker is Circubit :3

[visionthefox]

I just want to say I love your Bloodmoon design and the massive cat-energy they emit.

I saw this picture and my brain immediately conjured up your Bloodmoon and Sun butt-biting comic.

Naughty Bloodmoons get put in the Anti-Bite Dome to atone for their sins.

THANKS YOU SO MUCH!! I been having THE NEED to draw more BM as cat! specially something with Sun, but couldnt get to choose..BUT THIS!! ohh thiis send me into a hype to draw some cat memes saved for LAST MONTH enjoy~

I could have just send the last pic, but I needed to make a whole "why" ,I like to think BM loves to bite A LOT, cant help it! Sun lets it happend (soon more art related to that!) but there's time he cant take it, and Bloody wont stop,sooooo.. he gets the HOOD OF SHAME how did they-? easy, while he's eepy, get him after eating a whole barrel! of course this punishment is NOT hurtfull (only in pride) and only meant as a way to put each other in "time outs" , Sun will never do real harm or shame them in a way that will hurt them seriously! (see it as Solar turning NMoon into a furry, is fun, harmless, and wont last long)

[stalkiwi]

Something I find myself wondering a lot is; is it ok to mischaracterize a character from a media?

I am of the opinion "everyone can have the views and headcanons they want on a character", after all, this is harmless, and most people use it as a coping mechanism or for projection. We, other users, don't have to agree with these takes, and can simply ignore it. Ideally, this is how things should be.

But, is there a point where it would go too far?

Let's say: you're not a content creator, you don't know art or don't feel like you can write a piece of fanfiction well enough. But you are really fan of a character, and you wish to find other people to discuss with about them. However, this character is fairly impopular, may it be because of their poor on-screen time or because they are barely relevant to the story. As a result, a lot of people in the fandom are unfamiliar with the character, outside of really surface knowledge.

As you do your desperate search on this character, thirsty for content, you discover a popular artist or writer, who do in fact, make content of this character! ...But you realize that the content they make is really different from the view you had on the character. Heavy headcanons, projections, out of characters memes, biased takes... You clearly don't recognize the character you love and tried to hard to study and understand in the most objective way.

But, this is a popular person - their influence on the fandom is hard to deny. Many of their followers, many which never cared enough of the character, base their opinions on what this content creator spreads. As a result, they end up loving this new, out of character version, and even make content of them, following the headcanons and version of this popular user.

You feel alone. A large majority of the fandom sees the character you love in a false, different version. You can't have a conversation about this character, because you quickly realize that the people you talk to don't understand the character and simply spit back what they learned from the popular views. When you try to share what you believe is objectively the character for what they are, people frown at you. "If you don't like it, then ignore it!", or even worse, they will argue that the version of the fandom is the correct one. You may try to bring proofs from the text, screenshot evidence, you will be seen as evil for trying to "break" their headcanons and not letting them do whatever. You just feel horrible, like you are the one in the wrong, the 'evil' one. You can't create content of your own views, you can't make a fanbase and hope to share this version you love. You may find one or two person who agrees with you, but they are often out of your reach, maybe they don't speak your language and you struggle to communicate with them.

You can't share what you love, because you feel like you're the different one around - maybe even that you're bothering, annoying, just trying to "force your headcanons" into people.

When this happen, can we really say mischaracterization is alright?

I wonder what could be done for such cases to not happen. Outside of reading comprehension, maybe we should be self aware that we are out of character, maybe we should promote other people's opinions rather than try to ignore them or invalidate them. Maybe it's better to say, "my view on this character may be biased, because I tend to project a lot and see them as a comfort character, so please don't use me as a base to build your own beliefs". Maybe, instead of saying "I hate when people think this of that character", we should say "I see people having this opinion on that character, and I see where they come from - it's genuinely good that people can find comfort in the character and love them as much as I do, no matter how different it might be."

Fandoms and other large communities are really difficult to communicate with, myself I tend to despite the "fandom view", the general opinions on characters. I wish more people could understand what the author(s) tried to communicate with the character, and not deny it. If you want a character that fits what you want, why take an already existing one and alter it, when you can build your own?

I can't stop people, I am powerless to do so. I don't want to, to be clear. It's really heavy on my mind, because I genuinely wish I could find more people like me, who agrees with me, with who I can share my ideas. I am lucky to be an artist and a writer, because I can build a fanbase around my views. I wish it was as easy for everyone, though

We should start to give more respect to the different opinions, or accept that ours is not necessarily the closest one to the canon, no matter how much we may be convinced it is.

[ericsprincess]

baby we don’t need words

nc-17, Kevin Moon/reader, first date, cunnilingus, a tiny bit of dubcon

~~~

Your date talks way too much. 

~~~

A/N: My love and hate letter to Kevin. 

~~~

Shut up. Shut uuuuup. Shut the fuck uuuuuuuuup.

You take a sip from your glass of red wine and inconspicuously check your watch. Sigh. You are only 24 minutes into this date and you already want to bail. You’re this close to dramatically stabbing yourself with a fork, anything that would get you out of this situation. 

It’s not even a bad date per se. Technically, it’s probably the most “perfect” date you’ve ever been on. This guy - Kevin, as he introduced himself, when he asked for your number as you were waiting in the line at Starbucks - obviously put a lot of thought and effort into it. The restaurant is extra nice and fancy, but not an obvious dating spot. The table is perfectly placed with a view on the city. The candles are glimmering, making a beautiful atmosphere, together with the quiet music. Even the food he recommended to you is amazing, the wine he chose is even better. 

And Kevin himself looks stunning, in perfectly fitting black slacks and navy blue shirt, just tight enough to show off his body - tall, lean with the right amount of muscle and nice frame. His hair is done prettily, he smells expensive. Genuinely a stunning piece of man, that would make you straight up salivate, usually. Especially since he looks so sympathetic, he’s friendly and smiling and not at all threatening, like some men use to be when they hit on a woman. 

What’s worse, he made such a good first impression that you invested a lot of effort too. Getting asked out by a guy this hot is not a daily occurrence, not even for you. Your hair and nails are freshly done, your dress is new. Your underwear is matching. 

And it’s all for nothing, you think bitterly. 

Everything is perfect, save for the one fatal flaw - this guy just doesn’t shut up. And not only that. Whatever comes out of his mouth is cringe of the worst caliber and you’re about to break out in hives from it. 

He watches the cringiest shows and finds them funny.

He loves internet memes, but his taste is one of a 10 years old. You force out a laugh when he shows you some. Jesus Christ.

He loves music and plays instruments, but his obsessions with some singer is borderline unhealthy. No, you don’t want to go to the concert with him. 

He looooooves his job, but haaaaaaates his company. “But we are all just slaves of capitalism, aren’t we?”

His political views. Who even discusses politics on a first date? Time and place, dude. 

You try to participate in the conversation to your best abilities, but often you don’t even know how to react. You don’t want to be rude, so you try to find any interest and reply honestly and thoughtfully, despite it wearing your patience down, and it seems it’s working, judging by the bright smile he’s giving you. 

He obviously likes you more and more every minute. 

The worst is that despite all of it, you can clearly tell he’s a harmless, genuinely nice guy with a heart of gold. Someone who is a whole person, with interests, hobbies and opinions. Someone who loves his friends and family and has values he stands by. 

That all makes you feel even more shitty about the whole situation. You don’t want to hurt his feelings,

Plus, he’s really fucking hot. 

You look up at his face from your glass of wine and force a smile. You hope it doesn’t look too fake. Kevin leans forward and takes your hand in his. It’s dry and warm, and it feels really good. 

“What are you thinking about? You seem like you got lost in your thoughts for a minute,” he asks. He rubs your hand a little, and tilts his head in anticipation for your answer. Because, of course, he genuinely gives a fuck about what made you space out. 

He looks really beautiful in the candlelight. 

You down the rest of your wine and put the glass on the table. You decide in a split second. Ah, fuck it. 

“Yeah, I think I just felt something snap in my dress. Like, a zipper or something. I have to go to the bathroom to check it, will you go with me in case I need help? I’m not sure I can reach it,” you smile at him apologetically. 

“Sure, of course, no problem,” he agrees and gets up to follow you to the bathroom.

You open the door to the ladies room and check if it’s empty so that he can come there without hassle, then gesture to him to come inside. You find for you two an empty stall, push him in and lock the door. 

“Where exactly did you feel the zipper snap? Like, in the back? I can check it for you..” he rambles and you can’t take it anymore. You grab him by the shoulders and slam him against the stall wall. 

“There is nothing wrong with my zipper, and you better listen now. I’m at my fucking limit,” you lower your voice.  

“I had to listen to your stupid bullshit for half an hour already, which is 30 minutes too long,” you growl at him. “Do you ever stop and think about what’s coming out of your mouth? Like, think for a second and wonder, Maybe I should not say that?”

He opens his mouth to protest, but you immediately slap your hand over him to stop him. 

“No, no, no. No more talking from you, now you’re gonna listen, get it?” you ask. 

He nods, looking almost nervous, and swallows visibly. His eyes are almost bulging out. He’s definitely surprised and caught off-guard by the change of your demeanor. 

“Now, we are going to make a little deal and I will give you a choice. Either we end this date already and go home. Separately. And we will never speak again. Or, I can give you a second chance, but first you will reflect on whether every dumb thought you have needs to be said out loud and act accordingly,” you lay it down in front of him. You take your hand off his mouth, awaiting his answer. 

“The- the second, please,” he stutters out. He’s all red and embarrassed. 

However, what you can’t see, but definitely can feel, is a boner tenting his slacks. 

“Okay, but just know I’m giving you another chance only because you’re really cute and seem like a nice person,” you frown. “One more thing though. You have to apologize to me for wasting my time with your dumb rambles today.” 

“H-how?” 

“Very simple,” you grab the front of his shirt roughly and flip you both, so that you’re the one leaning on the wall. 

“On your knees,” you command and push on his shoulder, so that he kneels in front of you. 

And he does. He slowly, hesitantly falls on his knees on the ground, looking at your face, as if he weren’t sure if he heard you correctly.

You push up your tight dress and at that moment he snaps out of it and rushes to help you, taking off your panties for you. 

He doesn’t waste a second to kiss up your thighs, nuzzling into them and licking and sucking, leaving little marks on your skin. 

“You’re so beaut- ahhh!” you interrupt him by grabbing his hair. You pull him away from you and look into his eyes. 

“I said no talking,” you frown and push his head to your pussy. At least now he gets the hint and starts licking you, collecting all your wetness on his tongue and savoring your taste. 

You’ve already been so wound up from the adrenaline and also the fact that you’re in a public restroom, you know you’re not gonna last very long, so you close your eyes and enjoy how his tongue flicks quickly over your clit, getting you close at a rapid pace. After a little while, he must be getting tired, but he’s not stopping, only sometimes switching from using his tongue to sucking gently. It makes you feel so warm and everything is wet and you’re already almost there.

Clearly, he’s trying to earn that second date. 

You look down and for a moment just enjoy the sight of Kevin eating pussy eagerly, not saying a word. He looks so pretty like that with hair mussed up, cheeks red, barely breathing as his face is pressed closely to your body. You can see the hints of glimmering wetness on the lower part of his face, obscured by your body.

“See? You can be good for me, maybe you’re worth keeping…” you sigh and he moans in reply, but you let that one slide. Seeing the movement of hand sneaking down to touch his cock, although only over the pants, but clearly rubbing and squeezing with the purpose of getting himself off, you finally come, holding his head at your pussy so he doesn't even think of stopping or slowing down. 

Your orgasm has barely stopped ringing in your ears when you notice him gasping as he comes inside his pants, his face buried in your crotch still. His hips are barely humping the air as he’s rubbing his cock through his orgasm, finally slumping down when he’s finished. 

You smile brightly at him, as he kneels, spent and sweaty and ruined in front of you. There is a stain spreading in front of his dark slacks that will be only barely concealed by the restaurant’s low light.

You grab him by his shirt again and get him to stand, which he does, almost in haze, still not over his own orgasm. You pull him closer and kiss him deeply, so that you can taste yourself in his mouth. 

“So, about that second date….”

[blackbullet99]

I don’t understand why Zutara shippers are so obsessed with hating Aang (or Kataang).

I understand they wish Zutara was canon, and that’s perfectly valid. I get why people ship it, and even though a good chunk of the toxic side of the ZK fandom say some pretty racist stuff, the ship is harmless. But the hate is vitriolic. You got to people like the-badger-mole, sokkastyles, longing-for-rain and they spend more time whining about Aang and his relationship with Katara than they talk about Zutara. They say the most objectively untrue stuff about Aang, Katara and Zuko as if making false claims about these characters is the only way to make their ship look good.

For example:

“Zuko did some bad things throughout the show, but Aang is worse because he never supported Katara and sexuality assaulted her. Not to mention Katara never had feelings for Aang, he was practically her son that she had to take care of”.

What ZKs actually sound like:

“Zuko did some bad things throughout the show, so we have to make Aang look worse by comparison to ensure that Zuko is a better match for Katara, despite his own problems, because surely a poorly timed kiss is the same is sexual assault. We falsely believe Aang never supported Katara because he didn’t agree with her seeking vengeance of the person who killed her mom, unlike Zuko who helped her out, meaning that one single episode must mean he’s the only one who supports Katara. Lastly, we have to find a way to make Katara’s obvious affection for Aang problematic, so let’s blow her motherly traits way out of proportion and say that any time she shows Aang affection, it’s a mom coddling her toddler, and yes Aang is a toddler because he’s BALD. So what that they kissed, they’re a mother and child. Also Katara emotionally supporting Aang is bad, she actually hates it. Dude trust me”.

They reason I bring this up is because I don’t understand why they have to be so bitter, it just makes them look pathetic that these people, some fully grown adults are so butthurt about a non-canon pairing from a 20 year old cartoon. Their media-illiterate ramblings don’t prove Aang and Katara are a bad couple, they just make it painfully obvious to anyone with a brain that these types of pathetic ZKs are just seething and coping.

Sure, you might say “I’m not one to talk” seeing as Kataang is canon, but let me tell you, I have my fair share of non-canon ships that I love.

I love Ichigo X Rukia, I think they have great chemistry and strong bond, I wish they were endgame, they felt like the heart and soul of Bleach. But I don’t hate Orihime, such a sweetheart (plus she gave us the Leekspin meme) her and Ichigo are cute, I just think Ichigo and Rukia are better.

I love Black Widow X Captain America from The MCU, they would’ve been a cute couple, they had good chemistry, they kissed for corn’s sake. I don’t care that much for Steve X Peggy, they’re kinda cute, but whatever, although I do really like Captain America’s ending. I don’t like Nat X Bruce, seeing as it came out of nowhere, but whatever, it didn’t last long anyway and I have nothing against either character.

If anything I’m more prone to getting annoyed when a beloved canon couple are broken up, all the build up thrown away and replaced with another character whom has less chemistry with the original. Case in point, Haley and Andy from Modern Family, they were so cute, they had great chemistry and there was so much build up, only for Andy to leave in the season where he and Haley become a couple. Then later Haley and her initial on again off again guy Dylan get together and I gotta say, I don’t like it. But I have nothing against the character, Dylan’s a sweet guy who genuinely loves Haley and matured a lot, and they’re in no way a bad or unhealthy couple, there are people who genuinely like them as a couple too. I do think Haley’s character was kinda done dirty, but that had absolutely nothing to do with what guy she ended up with.

The moral of this story is, you can like a non-canon ship and even dislike a canon ship without making up ridiculous reasons why and acting like a spoiled entitled brat like the vocal minority of ZeeK freaks from the the toxic side of the fandom.

[lotusarchon]

I think I'm being too lenient with some of you anons recently. Some of you are getting too entitled and far too bold to be a) persistently asking about my relationship with people I'm friends with, b) demand information of things I mentioned (ie my brother) and c) demand updates or schedules with my writing.

1). I don't care if your intention is harmless. Maybe others are fine with being questioned about their relationship, but I'm not. I've said it before; there's only one person in this world that deserves my love, and for another, I'm aroace and do not care for romance. My interactions with my mutuals are simply as such; friendly and platonic. There's nothing romantic and there will be nothing romantic, and it's gross having to see people ask me "are you dating [person]." You people are the reason I don't feel comfortable interacting with my close friends anymore on Tumblr, because of this gross habit.

No, I don't care that you're curious. I don't care that your intentions mean well. You're gross to think two friends together are in a relationship.

You're also a bit too in your head to have the audacity to ask me something like that. What makes you think you on anon have the right to certain information about me??

2). I've been deleting them but I've hit my limit. Don't ask me about people I mention. Yes, I tend to post stuff about my personal life or mention people I've met irl or on the internet without mentioning names, but you aren't obliged to be given additional information on them. Your curiosity is meaningless and to be frank, the one thing that's stopping me from punching you in the face is the fact you're hiding behind anon, and on the internet.

I am a pretty violent person you know. I don't care for peace and love. If you want to get on my bad side this badly, I don't advise hiding behind an anon.

3). Oh, my favorite. You. Are. Not. Paying. Me. For. My. Writing.

I'm a very simple person. I don't mind allowing the shittiest of people beat me up if it means I can get payment from it. As far as I can tell, I write fanfiction as a) a hobby, b) to expand my writing, and c) because I want too.

Fine, you happen to like my stuff, and that's nice, don't get me wrong. But even if you, or anyone else for that matter, don't like my stuff, I don't care. My writing has always been for me, and will forever be for me.

I don't have a writing schedule nor do I want too. And I don't have to give you updates just because you're impatient or annoying that you believe you're entitled to my writing because "you're giving me likes + follow for that." What the hell is a follow supposed to do, exactly?? Are you not aware if I was concerned about followers, I would've curbed my opinions in the god fuck fandom I'm in??

You on anons are being incredibly insufferable and rather BOLD FACED. By the gods, do you believe hiding behind an anonymous ask will grant you an immunity?? I like insulting people, you know, so you're not getting much for me. Plus, if you're that desperate for attention or soooo thirsty or hungry for content, there are tons of writers on this app alone. I'm sure they're dumb enough to tolerate your bullshit, but not me.

So, less you're giving me cash....fuck off, okay?

This is genuinely the last time I'm stating this. If I have to keep repeating myself, or even see one more ask that relates to the statements I've made, I'm taking my asks off in general. I try to be lenient for the nicer anons that might speak memes or just innocently ask about my day, or even my friends to send me memes and bother me for the funs of it.

And some of you are just too comfortable. Did your parents not teach you human decency or respect, or were you raised in the pigs shed? Even people who might've been raised in a barn have more decency than the little fucks in my anons.

[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.

[wisp-of-chaos]

Wips meme

Rules: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous and tag other people. People can ask about the title(s) that most intrigues them !

Tagged by @tea-and-magic

Alright you asked for this, buckle up! (I'm excluding any WIP's I know I won't ever touch again or else we'll be here all week) GW2:

Submitting to Love

The Pwizz Dillyn Paradox Part I A Bug In The System

The Pwizz Dillyn Paradox Part II Interlude I

The Pwizz Dillyn Paradox Part III Long Live The Lich

The Pwizz Dillyn Paradox Part IV Interlude II

The Pwizz Dillyn Paradox Part V A Star To Guide Us

Meeting you

Slutty Brownie (if you know, you know)

Boating Around

Bodyworship

The Battle of Claw Island

Quinaith's Journal

A Day in Paradise

A Deadly Flower

All I ever wanted

Chance Meetings

Dangerous Pull

Dining with the Devil

Hands Off

Harmless Secrets

Praise Joko

Seamless

The Sour Taste of Revenge

The Red means I Love You

TF:

His

Corpses, Puke & T-Cogs

Medical Addiction - not delphi - close your optics

Medical Addiction - not delphi - walking the wire

Medical Addiction 1 - show me your face

Medical Addiction 2 - how they met

Medical Addiction 3 - scared

Medical Addiction 4 - better

Medical Addiction 5 - hold me

Medical Addiction 6 - stay

Medical Addiction 7 - gotcha

Medical Addiction 8 - secret

Medical Addiction 9 - follow 2.0

Medical Addiction 10 - butterfly

Medical Addiction xyz 1 - pharma is raging (love this title so much)

Medical Addiction xyz 2 - aid knows pharma is seeing someone and asks who he is

Medical Addiction xyz 3 - pharma is raging again (I'm so normal about this guy)

Monster

(Become) The Beast

Genshin Impact:

Ballad of the Lonely Bard

TLoZ BotW:

Purple

Dear Friend of Mine

Grand Finale

Raincoat - Standalone Modern Days Hylian AU

I Wanna Ruin Our Friendship

Oceansong

Still Into You

Sushi

BG3:

Down by the River

Hunger

Blurg Omeluum Sunset Date IDK

Of Mushrooms and XXX (the XXX is a placeholder, people)

The Worth of a Single Mortal Life (technically done but not yet edited or proof-read so ... kind of a WIP?)

Sunset

The sweet taste of your teeth

A meeting of Friends

The Serpent's Bride

Hanahaki

Qirilissk masturbating IDK (don't judge I can't even remember where I wanted to go with this one don't look at me)

Mentor AU

Fake Dating Gone Sibling Mode AU

On Your Nerves

Them meeting Duzisk and Qirilissk gets protective IDK

Fix You

And that's about it, I guess. The list is shorter than I thought, but then again this is like ... less than half of what I have in my folder BUT the only ones I feel like I might actually finish/come back to, so ... yeah.

Tagging @sumi-sprite @melodicwriter @mielwriting @sweetmage @revoleotion (if you feel like it)