#if it approaches me like last time

[stunie]

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT GOOOOD MORNING here r some quick stuff i wrote down regarding cats/what to do when approaching one ! Wrote it all in the metro in a lil rush so there might be stuff i missed ;w;

Also I received some Qs regarding cats and rabies etc in the past too so I added a quick smt abt that at the end (my point still stands tho, cats are easier to maintain and take care of, so usually fellow neighborhood cats don’t carry (many?) diseases but if you have a weak immune system it doesn’t hurt to be vary of these possibilities too. (I for one just dig in for the belly rubs and pull my hand back before the cat can do a painful paw movement at me lmao, I’m too at ease w them…)

Oh and! If you see a street cat w the left ear chipped off a lil, that means the cat has been castrated. and! Three colored cats (white orangeish black) are always females (the three color pattern can be presented with the presence of two X chromosomes) while yellow tabbies are usually males (~90%)

Oki that’s all djfjf sorry it’s a bit long ;w; hope these help!! Have a nice dayy — @voidcat

danyl. just know i’ve committed these to memory again. i hope all the cats come to me tomorrow.

you wrote this in the metro ? >: for me ? i am so grateful thank u for helping me when u were inna rush >: OKAY NOTED ABOUT THE COLORS. although i would have to get super close (i refuse to wear my glasses so they look like a one color blob)

these notes … i’ve read them over ever since u sent them. they’re all in my photos and yes i AM committing them to memory.

[the---hermit]

here's a link to the free pfd of Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco. It's a 10 pages long essay in which the author talks about his own experience with fascism and then tries to list the 14 elements that make up fascism in all its historical forms.

[kaiserouo]

i cannot express enough how much i absolutely HATE him

[sacchiri]

r/malelivingspace

[surreal-duck]

lullaby for another

[puppppppppy]

learning abt friendship decay and "not reaching out to your friends for months at a time unprompted is not neurotypical behaviour" has me feeling a certain way

[amaliatheartist]

What is there between us, if not a little annihilation?

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s5 episode 20 thoughts

last episode of the season!!!

things have seemed… tense lately between my best friends mulder and scully. i hope they can work it out. 

anyway, it says here that there is a boy with psychic powers… another child case. they deal with these so often!!!

but maybe he can unlock the secrets of the x files?? how?? i guess i will have to tune in!

post-episode thoughts: scully, i want to hug you. CSM, count your days. destroying information is a crime in my realm, and it will be punished with banishment. mulder, you need to learn how to talk about your feelings. i am no longer suggesting this politely. it must be done. now. skinner, you are the star on top of my metaphorical christmas tree. spender, my feelings towards you are pretty neutral.

we begin in vancouver, where a chess tournament is going on between a grown man and a child. there is a very large crowd and a guy who seems to be up to no good in the ceiling. 

the kid hears voices in his head as this sniper loads up a bullet… can he figure out what is about to happen?? but the voices just sound like weird noises!!!

noooo, don’t kill this little boy!!! he wins just in time, stands up, and the bullet hits the other guy!!! 

so he knew it was going to happen and won just in time to stand up…

leave this little boy alone!! don’t piss me off!!!

OHHH shortened intro AND new words on the screen today… “THE END” <- now there is a movie coming up shortly so i KNOW this is a lie!!!

i am preparing myself for some sort of cliffhanger….

ohohoho kryek is here today, according to the “guest starting” list…. getting ready for some rat-like activities

CSM is buttoning up his shirt as some people arrive upon his frosty property. they have guns… and his alarms are going off… 

BLAM! he shoots one man dead right then and there!! you really cannot underestimate this guy!!! unless we’re talking about his abilities to write fiction!!!

so he’s running barefoot into the snow??? yowch! bloody feet!

the guy in the mask catches him! OH SHIT! IT’S KRYCEK!! “go on! take your shot, alex” <- HOT DAMN! not the first name usage!

he says he was sent to being CSM back…….. by whomst?

there is a sticky note on mulder’s poster. i can’t tell what it says!

OH mulder has a picture of him and scully pinned to his board🥹that's fine that's super fine and i'm not gonna cry!

it’s skinner poking around their office!!! what is he doing down here??

HE WANTS TO KNOW MULDER’S LONG TERM PLANS?! and mulder says they’re right in his hands, referring to the x files

skinner loves his most special and difficult agents. it's true!

“what do you hope to find? i mean, in the end” (mulder looks at skinner suspiciously) “whatever i hope to find is in here. and maybe i’ll know when i find it”

now what is going on…..? something is afoot. somehow i doubt skinner just got randomly curious and started reading through the x files for the funsies.

skinner has a case for him: the assassination of a russian chess player. and agent spender was put in charge of the case by someone from OUTSIDE the bureau!! oh, that must be what has skinner so freaked out. who tf is just putting people in charge of cases?

(i mean, we, the audience, know the answer to this. but if i were skinner, i would be deeply uncomfy at the thought)

“he was very specific that you be excluded” (mulder smiles) lmaoooo

skinner's messy for that!!! and i giggled!!!

BAHAHA scully is in the room listening to spender debrief, and when mulder walks in, spender looks SO mad!! “please continue”, mulder says, after spender gets so caught off guard by seeing him that he literally cannot finish his sentence

you can try to separate mulder and scully, but the universe will find a way to reunite them. like a bonded pair of kitties. 

mulder asks him to rewind the tape and spender says basically no LMAOOO

“let me get through this, if you have any questions, we can talk later” “i-i don’t have any questions, no, i just think you’re wrong” <- LMAOOOOOO i’m at once giggling and cringing in second hand embarrassment 

mulder hates this dude, i'm crying!!!!

scully asks wtf mulder is doing, and he explains he thinks the killer was aiming for the boy!! spender reluctantly does rewind the tape, and mulder points out that the kid pushes back right before the bullet is fired. 

who is this random lady agreeing with mulder that the kid could sense the bullet coming…? he looks utterly shocked to hear her say this!!

and skinner says rewind it again so we can all see for ourselves LMAO everyone hates this spender mfer

(listen. sorry to this man, but i think it would also piss me off if some random guy got put in charge of an investigation because outside forces decreed it to be so)

sure enough, when spender rewinds the tape, the kid looks right at the camera!!! mulder turns to this random woman again in amazement 

meanwhile, krycek is bringing CSM back to the syndicate on a random side street. OH SHIT!! CSM calls them out right then and there for trying to kill him LMAOOO

that had to be awkward as hell! i'm giggling

CSM moves on from that pretty fast. he seems like the type to hold grudges, so perhaps this is part of his secret plot for revenge.

the well-groomed man (and i know that isn’t his name, but i can’t remember what it actually is, and when i tried to google it last time i got spoilers so: to me, he is WGM) says: the boy is a problem to us!! and i say: leave him alone!! let him play chess!!

CSM offers to kill the kid and well-groomed man says “dear god”... umm, well y’all were just trying to do that, so why now are we getting squeamish...!!!

this other dude is called “first elder” by the subtitles! good to know

CSM says he’ll do it… and walks off.

so this lady that was sticking up for mulder is named agent fowley, and scully is making polite small talk as mulder drives them... somewhere. she requested reassignment. hmm…

“1991, that’s about when you started work on the x files”, scully points out. “more or less, yeah”, mulder says. and does not elaborate.

(long lingering eye contact between mulder and fowley)

now… is this woman who i think she is……?

the boy (named gibson) is watching the simpsons. OH SHIT!!! “my name is fox… this is dana and diana”

SHE IS WHO I THOUGHT SHE WAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh man. oh man. okay, so i know a tiny bit about this. going bonkers rn.

what i DO know is enough to realize that diana is a controversial topic among the fandom, but i vow to speak my truth. as i always do. and i hope you will treat me with the grace you typically have afforded me.

gibson says he lives in the philippines, that mulder has a dirty mind, and he does NOT want to play any chess. yes, he truly is a psychic.

scully is like wtf is he going on about…. and mulder accuses the boy of being able to read minds

“i know what’s on your mind. i know you’re thinking about one of the girls you brought” (mildly amused scully look) “one of them’s thinking about you”

diana laughs and asks which one… gibson says mulder doesn’t want him to say.

(shakes head) hey! what’s going on?

mulder declares that gibson needs around the clock protection

oh, a canon-typical fight in the hallway between our agents on if this is possible or not… diana is listening in…. “you know what to do, diana”, mulder says before leaving <- hey. i don’t like that. the tone with which he speaks nor the implication of there being some pre-scully lilith-like figure.

“so you two know each other”, scully points out. “it was along time ago” (long lingering scully glance)

OHHHH spender is NOT letting mulder talk to the assassin… “you’re insulting me when you should be taking notes”, he says <- DAMN!!! the ego on this man! he isn't entirely wrong, but there is no humility about him!

he pushes past spender and gets into the cell, where the shooter claims spender hasn’t given him food or water. mulder orders him off to go get some. 

ohhh he’s playing hardball… he tells the dude that he’ll tell spender he fessed up to the kid being psychic… and if he cooperates with him, maybe he can get him into the witness protection program… does mulder hold this kind of influence?

mulder steals the food that was being brought for him. mulder! you're being a dick! on many fronts!

AWWW, scully and gibson are holding hands as she walks him down the hall :( he didn’t like the tests! poor kid! and he says scully’s wondering about “that other girl” and “she’s wondering about you, too” 

hey…. i get the sense we are pitting two bad bitches against each other via this little boy's mind reading. not a narrative choice i am fond of.

now a group of people are testing gibson for psychic abilities by holding up cards only they can see.

diana says she’s seen clairvoyants, but never of this skill level. she says she spent time with mulder is psychiatric hospitals?? scully.exe is not working 

she has to leave because she is weirded tf out…

(i don't blame her, though. i would also be very weirded out if my partner of 5 years had another partner he very evidently has a history with and never bothered to mention until she suddenly materialized. if i were scully, i'd be like hey mulder... remember all those times i tended to your wounds and held your sobbing body and broke the law for you? yeah, that was super cool. i love how we trust each other. anyway, wtf else are you hiding from me?)

((and i'm not saying that is necessarily the RIGHT or RATIONAL thing to feel, but c'mon. you can't look at me and tell me you wouldn't also be equal parts stung and curious))

shooter guy is being handed a note. it’s on a cigarette pack!!! and it says "you’re a dead man"!!! oh brother... not the CSM on the loose! how is he getting into these buildings still?!?!

LMAOOO???? WHAT IS SCULLY DOING WITH FROHIKE?!?!

look at her looking up into his camera system... she is just so PRETTY!!

bro is in his pajamas and has an absurd number of locks on his door. and i'm giggling!

she’s bringing the whole crew scans of gibson’s brain!! “and you want us to what?” “analyze the data. with an eye to the parapsychological” <- OHHH they’re gagged by that... and i am too! scully opening herself up to extreme possibilities?! or simply trying to anticipate and counter mulder's argument in favor of the kid's clairvoyance?

OHHHH.... SHE WANTS TO KNOW WHO TF DIANA IS LMAOOOOO 

i can’t tell if she’s jealous, or nosy, or both. but i can tell you that i love when scully is nosy. 

frohike says she was mulder’s “chickadee” (LMAO, crazy phrasing) out of the academy. she was with him when he discovered the x files. and she has some sort of background in parascience. whatever that means.

NOOOOO scully looks so sad 💔💔💔 MULDER, DON’T HIDE THINGS FROM HER!!! SHE’LL CRY

stop. stop!!!

gibson is watching cartoons while diana watches him. and here comes mulder. OH, she called him fox. don’t like that. i thought he was adamantly anti-being referred to as fox! is that a development from the past 5 years, or does she not care about what he thinks?

“i sense you could have used an ally, though- someone who thinks like you, with some background” HEY. WATCH HOW YOU TALK ABOUT SCULLY!!!

“oh, you mean scully?” now is that defensiveness i see in his eyes? he doesn’t sound like he’s laughing.

“she’s not what i’d call an open mind on the subject” <- well, diana, you don’t even know her!!! and just because you're right doesn't mean you should go around judging her!

he laughs, but it doesn’t feel like he really means it….

(i was trying to psychoanalyze everything in this godforsaken scene and i had NO idea what the vibe actually was LMAOOOO)

“she’s a, uh… she’s a scientist. she just makes me work for everything” <- HEY!!! what happened to her being “rigid, but in a wonderful way”??? defend her honor in her absence!

“yes, but i’m… i’m sure there were times when two like minds on a case would have been advantageous” <- well girl, from what i've heard, it sounds like you left and went to germany!

“i’ve done okay without you” okay. are we setting boundaries now? is this progress?

NO. it does not appear that this is the case. she is grabbing his hand. “hey. i’m on your side” side eye. from me. sounds like she is implying scully is NOT on his side, which i loathe. and please don’t kiss... i don’t want to see all that. 

where is scully going….? OH NO!!! she walked by and saw them holding hands!!

oh my god, she is leaving….. and i don’t blame her!!

the sad music!!!! stop!!!!! look at her sadly getting in her car!!!!! sadly staring at the wheel!!! sadly buckling up!!!! 

she sounds like she’s going to cry as she calls mulder and says she wants to show him something. and she doesn't want to show it to him there.

now why is agent spender rolling up as she heads out?! we have enough problems to deal with at this time that aren’t him!!!

OH SHIT!!! CSM IS TALKING TO HIM!!!! saying he gave him the case!!!!

he’s trying to give him some fatherly advice despite the fact this dude has no idea they are related. “you’re a bright boy” okay… well that is certainly an avuncular thing to say. perhaps uncomfortably so when coming from a guy you literally just met. “know which men to sacrifice and when” <- now that's some standard CSM advice.

OH SHIT!!!!!!! MULDER SEES HIM!! CSM retreats into the shadows. “i was told he was dead”, mulder pants. “well obviously whoever it is, he’s not” spender has literally no idea who tf this guy is………..

(laughing even harder at his response as i edit my notes. spender must think this mulder fellow is the weirdest dude alive)

i’m kinda laughing, because spender has no idea wtf is going on, while mulder’s world just got rocked upside down and inside out. that’s the devil that killed his dad and took his scully and killed scully’s sister!!! he thought the evil was defeated and it is back!!! poor spender is just here to chat with a stranger. he truly doesn't know anything about the situation! it's comical!

scully and mulder and all of spender’s team are in skinner’s office!!! she has the brain test results from gibson… and she is finding the results hard to believe…

something something about him having intense brain activity in the god something or other. maybe he is the next einstein??? well, that would be cool! yeah, get the little boy into nuclear physics!

but mulder thinks that maybe this intense brain activity will allow him to also explain all sorts of unexplained phenomena. 

i guess i can see the correlation between intense brain activity and psychic abilities, but how will it let him explore the jersey devil?

mulder proposes giving the killer immunity to explain wtf is going on, which spender immediately shoots down: “you want to give a murderer a free ride for the secrets to the pyramids?” <- well that is an oversimplification!

ANGRY SCULLY!!! “you mischaracterize what i’ve said” <- GET HIM AGAIN FOR ME!! “this would be quantifiable scientific proof of everything that agent mulder and i have investigated over the past five years”

i don’t really see the correlation from a plot perspective but okay ❤️ yay ❤️

oh diana, i am suspicious of you…. “how do you quantify the spiritual? it can’t be done. you ask for immunity for a killer on that basis, the attorney general’s gonna go off. you’re allowed to investigate the x files as an indulgence. but draw the wrong kind of attention and they’ll close you down”

okay………… rude. but not necessarily wrong. in fact, she seems quite right, at least about the attorney general shutting down the case part. clearly, some levels of spirituality can be quantified if the results show up on brain scans; scully will use science to find a way. scully glances at mulder, who is staring at diana

“put an end to all your work. something i happen to have an interest in myself” WELL NO ONE ASKED???? girl! it isn't your project!!

perhaps i am the one who will need immunity from the attorney general as i bravely ask the question i am thinking: am i bad feminist, or is diana supposed to piss me off?

scully’s watching mulder stare at diana……. skinner says, everyone go take a break. but you may absolutely NOT leave my office, mulder. 

he says that diana is right. if they poke around too much they’ll get shut down- but mulder is willing to risk it!!!!!

“if what agent scully’s found is true- and i have every reason to believe that it is- then the answers i might have spent a lifetime searching for may fall together like a million puzzle pieces” <- OHH!! FAITH IN SCULLY!! FAITH IN SCULLY GIVING HIM THE TRUTH!

“you’d risk the x files?”, asks skinner.

“how soon can you call the attorney general?” 

so, there is your answer.

mulder is always having some sort of power struggle with skinner. hey. can mulder, buddy. can we use a "please" and "thank you" every now and then? your old pal skinner has put up with a LOT of your nonsense!

bro is in his cranky era.

ohhhh, so he goes and tell the shooter that he gave his request for immunity, but the attorney general needs more information before she can make a decision… “i need answers from you” UH OH!! will he have them before CSM breaks in? because we know he is stalking his prey!

he says the kid is a missing link; he’s genetic proof. spender wants to know of what, and this is very convenient, because so do i. so he thinks the kid is part alien….. spender is heckling him for this. but CSM is on the prowl… we don't have time for interpersonal conflict!

(so, maybe he's part alien but distantly? or maybe they made one of the alien hybrids like emily, but this one didn't die? why did emily die, again? because we know there are plenty others of the alien hybrids because they had that whole bit about saving "their mothers" back in... i think it was s3? maybe a bunch of them, like emily, die, but some of them do survive, and gibson is a son of the half alien? so he is a quarter alien? or maybe he is from a different alien race?

everything is a bit foggy when it comes to mytharc, i suppose. i guess it all comes down to the writers wanting to torture my best friend agent scully)

well-groomed man and krycek pull up to heckle CSM, which is an important part of their job description. they’re saying he failed them, but CSM says it’s all part of the plan. take their pieces one by one. 

hey, you’re gonna kill the kid, aren’t you?

at least JFK was a grown man!!!

do you think he bulk ordered the cigarettes from like, the cigarette equivalent of sam’s club, and had them sent to his snowy canadian hideaway? i mean, the number he goes through, it should have raised some red flags for the people trying to find him!

scully is watching the boy watch cartoons. she is pondering. 

“how do you do it?” “i just hear you thinking… like on a radio. and sometimes there are lots of radios, and i want to shut them off and watch some TV” <- you know what, that is entirely understandably.

gibson says that scully doesn’t care what other people think… “except for her. the other one”

is she trying to impress diana…..? has she moved beyond vying for people's approval after the horrors of cancer and emily, or is it manifesting in a new way as she hopes this mysterious figure from mulder's past will approve of her? does she think that if diana likes her, mulder will let her in about his past? does she feel a solidarity despite their differences in belief because of the fact they are both women in a male-dominated field?

the implications... i must explore them.

ah. and in diana comes. 

scully says they’ll talk about that stuff later. queen of knowing the time and place to have a debrief. and he says “they want to kill me” OHHH poor little gibson :( just let him watch cartoons!

scully promises no one will hurt him :( and he says “i know you do" :(

is diana going to kill the kid…..?

(author's note: LMAO!! listen... i thought they were going with the double agent angle for about 2 minutes. in my defense, i'm still shocked from the whole krycek and marita thing, so i'm trying to expect the unexpected. this is not the most wildly incorrect plot point i have guessed!)

the shooter gets another note…  this time it’s an empty cigarette carton, and BAM!!! CSM SHOOTS HIM!!!

well. there goes any possibility of an explanation.

diana fell asleep watching gibson and he’s looking out the window!!! he says there’s a man with a gun!!! and he says he’s aiming at her!!!! and BAM!! she gets shot too!!

hey guys! once again i ask what’s going on.

mulder and scully are pulling in while diana gets taken into an ambulance. and mulder’s grasping her hand while scully just wants to know where tf the kid is!!!!

the shooter was killed!!! skinner shows mulder the cigarette carton!!!!! 

NOOOO!! CSM has the boy and is bringing him to the well-groomed man. gibson called him a liar when he said he won't get hurt.

“you’ve never had the stomach for our business”

“just not for your practices”

“i’m a necessity. the complement to your cowardice” <- omggg……..

the dichotomy between CSM and well-groomed man... were the girls writing old man yaoi back when this aired? because i bet they would if this show dropped now.

(i was about to joke that if we all work really hard now, we can make that ship trend, but how tf can you write romantic fanfiction between two nameless characters? yeesh. that has to be a pain. "the well-groomed man moved in closer towards the cigarette smoking man, inhaling his burnt, acidic scent; he knew he was as bad for him as the cancer coursing through the other man's bloodstream" <- yeah, i didn't enjoy typing that, and it isn't fun to read either)

“your work is done now” SO WHAT ARE THEY GONNA DO TO THE BOY???

“my work is just beginning” nope. do not like that. 

well-groomed man leads gibson into the car driven by krycek, who says he has a nice straight shot at CSM!!! but well-groomed man says not to shoot. you may need him in the future.

krycek is the last man i would trust with a child.

WOAHHHHH mulder is ATTACKING SPENDER saying he will get him PROSECUTED FOR MURDER!!! “you’re wrong, agent mulder, it’s your days that are numbered” <- NOW WHAT DOES *THAT* MEAN??

is he collaborating with daddy to kill mulder or lead him down an incredibly intricate path leading to his peril?!?

NOOOOO, skinner is on the phone with scully in mulder’s apartment 💔 spender is going after mulder and there are talks of reassignment!

his first question when she gets off of the phone is about diana….

NOOO, the justice department wants to close down the x files 💔💔

mulder says this is all part of plan he couldn’t see and walked into

“this time they may have won” NOOOOO💔💔💔💔you have to find some faith!

CSM is in mulder’s office………. looking at the files….. PICKING OUT THE ONE ON SAMANTHA………… WHERE IS HE TAKING IT???

TO SPENDER?!! “who are you?” “i’m your father” <- YOOO, I DIDN’T THINK HE WOULD JUST OUT AND SAY IT??

DID HE LIGHT ALL THE OTHER FILES ON FIRE???

HOLY HELL, HE DID???

mulder is here in his t shirt and scully is here in a lab coat and they find their whole office burnt to a crisp!!!!

she grabs his arms and leans in, putting her head on his chest as he looks around in fury

woah…. woaugh……….

the end.

CSM ruined the work of their whole lives!!!

this is why archivists are so important. because they always keep files saved on at least 3 sources. inshallah the good FBI archivists had them on a bunch of floppy disks. please please please.

(i started to type “on a bunch of flash drives”, but then i realized idk if those were popular, effective, or invented at the time. and a floppy disk really couldn’t hold much. maybe there is a huge cardboard box in one of the back rooms with all of them backed up! i like the ones that were colorful!)

well, now there’s a damn movie i need to watch!!! but first i have to get all of my s5 content sorted out!!!!

i have many questions. i have a terrible feeling that poor boy is gonna end up another sacrificial lamb. and i know that CSM saved the file on samantha to keep the fire burning beneath mulder, just enough so he meets his dastardly plans. damn. this guy really is an evil genius. which does not translate to literary talent.

what is spender going to do? is he going to believe that CSM is his father? will he follow him in dastardly deeds, or will he reject them? i mean, he sure isn't a believer in aliens like mulder is, so learning his father is basically a diplomat to the alien people isn't going to go over well. or is he going to stand up to daddy and save the day, probably nobly sacrificing himself in the process?

what about scully? i just KNOW she blames herself for gibson getting kidnapped because she promised him he would be safe, and she's all torn up about mulder hiding things from her!!! poor scully!

and mulder, what is he going to do about the reappearance of diana and then her sudden death or near-death? will he stop being so cranky anytime soon? it doesn't seem likely, but a girl can hope.

and i wanna know what is going through skinner's mind, too. because he really is like an uncle to me. i remember my earlier posts about not trusting him, and i think that narrative was intentionally cultivated by the writers, but now i'm thinking, man. that's my ride or die. skinner, i should have never doubted you. not only that, i love your little house buddha and desk globes and i wish i could slap mulder across the face for the way he acts towards you!

well, i have a lot of work to do with the s5 wrapups before i can dive into this film, and so work i must. and perhaps i will save the film for next weekend when i can focus appropriate attention.

i also expect that the movie writeup will be VERY LONG. and my writeups are already SO LONG. i tossed around the idea of splitting it up into parts, but i think it will be better to just do it all in one go. unless there is a very clear midpoint spot where i can divide the post in two, which i doubt???

will diana grow on me? will the movie be enjoyable? will scully get a damn break? will CSM and WGM kiss? will krycek continue to be a problematic bisexual?

hmm. well, stay tuned, and share all of your thoughts!

[mishy-mashy]

Do you think Banjo is the type of person who hides his problems behind a clown mask?

The guy acts like a bit of comedy relief, but I think he's the kind of person to face his problems head-on. I don't think he uses humor as a coping mechanism. We never see him do that for himself. He's just a loud guy

Look at how he first appears to Midoriya

He's loud, and it steals Midoriya's attention. But he's calling him out on why he's messing up

But as a character's debut, the first things he does are:

Call out Midoriya for trying to do things alone, when Yoichi's first message to him was that he wasn't

Tell him that if he can compose himself, things typically work out

Understands Midoriya's side of things, and tells him he knows (like lacking a mouth)

And once he says those two previous things, he exhales, and his eyes show their pupils properly

The parting advice he gives Midoriya is a reiteration of the second point: It's okay to be mad. What's important is controlling your heart.

Blackwhip is a Quirk that responds to the holder's emotions. Like other Quirks, but Blackwhip goes out of control when the user isn't able to get a grip on themselves

Banjo used his Quirk effectively. He'd have to live that advice to pass it on to Midoriya, back when Abilities were starting to become normal, but Japan was still wrecked. And we know that Quirks are influenced by, and influence, the holder's personality.

Banjo would have to be able to be honest with himself, understand his emotions, and has the maturity to say it's okay to be mad. Just control it.

When he said that for the first time, it actually surprised me. Everyone in fiction or reality says "Don't be mad", but a character on his debut and says it's okay to be that. I never heard anyone say that controlling your emotions and outputting them in a healthy manner is what matters. People just say not to he negative or annoying, because it's inconvenient; but Banjo went past that.

And when he fades, he tells Midoriya he's got this. He reminds him that they're all behind him.

Whenever he speaks, he doesn't make the receiver feel bad, or speak down to them. He understands them, and gives the next step in a familiar, friendly way.

On his debut, he told Midoriya to control his heart, and to remember he wasn't alone. Here, he tells him he should try understanding their Quirks better.

He's actually got a mature way of seeing things. He's an adult, and being the holder between Shinomori and En, he wouldn't be able to deal with either of them if he wasn't mature about himself. Shinomori probably wouldn't choose someone who can't be honest with himself upfront, after spending almost half his life for OFA. And En is young, prone to panic, and a guy who acts like his problems aren't there or funny wouldn't help that.

I can visualize Banjo sitting at a small fire with Shinomori, having an honest, calm talk about life (until Shinomori says the wrong thing and Banjo yells something about it). But not Banjo trying to push his problems down with a hearty laugh, and Shinomori being okay with that.

When Midoriya used his Quirk for the first time, Banjo did get loud at the start, but he did lecture him in a way that was kinda teacher-mentor-ish.

I actually like the way Banjo talks about his observances. He's got the demeanor of a good teacher, he's clear, and direct. He's light-hearted about serious things, but doesn't diminish them. He just approaches it in a way that you aren't feeling the pressure, and can feel like it's possible.

He seems to have this habit of being loud to get people's attention, and simmers down once he has it. He's never indirect or leaving the addressed to figure out the answer on their own, he gives it outright.

When Midoriya used Blackwhip for the first time, Banjo was all "You got it all wrong!" and then explained things. Since he felt himself fading, he could've been talking louder to compensate himself past the daze he felt. To make sure he was talking, heard, and to keep himself awake

When the first Three made the void silent because Kudo and Bruce didn't want to help, Banjo broke it with what Midoriya should do next

When Shinomori got yoinked, the first thing Banjo did was report it in a panic to Midoriya. This just tells Midoriya he really has to be careful now, because OFA can really be stolen. Even if Banjo just panics and doesn't say that aloud

Every time Banjo is facing some kind of problem, he doesn't let others panic too hard. He's not pressuring about problems, and steps back to let Midoriya figure things out.

When Midoriya was running himself into the ground, Banjo was one of the vestiges that didn't show up to tell him to rest. He already understood how Midoriya saw things, and was doing them his own way

Rather than trying to be a clown, I think Banjo is just a friendly person. He's honest with others and with himself, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to utilize Blackwhip right, or be the holder between a sagey hermit and young, scared adult.

[ghosts-and-blue-sweaters]

I am going to try writing… the last time I wrote Anything was sometime in early-ish December I think… starting again is quite intimidating and a bit scary. HOWEVER, posting about it on tumblr makes it feel a bit less intimidating and scary.

[milkbreadtoast]

yu junghyeok and prince cedric have like practically the same design (+v similar personality) but listen the Vibes they have r diff... idk if this makes sense but u know charas w tired dilf energy... YJH has that but not cedric.. hes like a baby.. the way I describe it is YJH is babygirl but cedric is just my baby🫂🔥🔥🔥*gets incinerated* SKJDJ idk if it's noticeable at all but I try to capture diff vibes when I draw them....

when i draw cedric i try to go full shoujo... he is a romance novel male lead... sparkly eyes bright colors 90s anime blush... goes full squish mode when drawing him chibi MFNSKJ🤭

but when i draw yjh im like... no i have to convey the Angst and Depression.... *gives him dark circles and takes the light from his eyes*😇🖤

idk if it's noticeable but I also try to differentiate their designs in subtle ways (besides eye color etc),,, I give them diff eyebrow shapes!! I like YJH with triangle brows(thicker at the ends) and cedric w tapered brows(thicker toward the middle) like the webtoon... I also try to make cedric's hair a bit curlier than YJH🥹

[xxplastic-cubexx]

just read the new mutants issue where Charles chose to stay behind in space and my god the juxtaposition between Charles trusting Erik and Erik joining the hellfire club and wondering at his own trust worthiness. I wonder how much of Charles decision was him ultimately trying to avoid the fact that his first class had seemingly betrayed mutant kind and not be willing to face them and how much of it was Dani and Illyana's reaction to him having Karma mind control Illyana. the fact that Illyana was depending on him to ease her mind through limbo and in choosing to stay he forced karma to do it instead, probably fucking up their relationship in the process.

I love him, this is crazy, how much of this is him trying to runaway and how much is this him not trusting himself to fix things and how much is it just him trusting Erik?

i keep trying to put into words my exact thoughts about the sitch but there really is a lot for one issue aintit... oh charles you and your brain...

[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.

[darabeatha]

ㅤThen I heard your heart beating.ㅤ You were in the darkness too.ㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ... So I stayed in the darkness with you.

[dawnthefluffyduck]

Dess from the Deltarune comic Looking Glasses by @ferronickel, I loved her design at first sight so here's the promised fanart; check out the original comic! It's very much worth the read :D

[sleepinglionhearts]

It's all fun and games til you hit something you didn't expect in a construction zone and you pop both passenger side tires in what can only be described as the absolute worst occurence of fuckery you've encountered today