#just random stuff that comes up in my mind and stuff
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phillip-bankss · 1 hour ago
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If it helps I have no idea who you are. I think I followed you because of a crash bandicoot drawing some years ago
im sure that's the case for most of my followers. ramble below
that's mainly why nowadays I try to draw what i want to, first and foremost, because I can't guarantee other people will care about anything i do outside of one or two doodles that tickle yer funny bone‼️
I used to be really bad about drawing stuff for fandoms I was "in" (i say "in" cus I'm atrocious with interacting with others in communities on a meaningful level) and putting all my self-worth on how people see my art. it wasn't until I realized that it ultimately doesn't matter how others will see it, because what I do isn't meaningful enough to make a lasting impression in people's minds.
im literally just some random funny fanart guy on the internet, and there's one of me born every minute. if you don't think about me, I don't exist. my goal was (initially) to set out and make people laugh with my drawings, so I can usually achieve that at least, but.. then what?
that's part of why I don't care about being known, or getting any attention or notoriety anymore, because it doesn't matter. it doesn't make me happy, and like I mentioned previously, it'll be forgotten at some point in time. i know it sounds depressing as fuck, or that im crashing out (its almost 2am so itll probably be embarrassing in retrospect when i wake up), but I've come to accept it and I'm working on embracing it.
i also hope this doesnt come across as sounding bitter or snarky towards you, you didnt do anything wrong. this is a response to your very common sentiment that others also share. I hope that in the future I can serve my purpose in filling a spot on your phone's feed with something that activates the dopamine receptors in your head, but if not, that's okay 🫶
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mintyys-blog · 2 days ago
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LA VIE EN ROSE | kon el kent x reader
DC COMICS MASTERLIST | WARNINGS: smut, swearing
imagine this; Kon finds his girlfriend in lingerie and absolutely malfunctions—hard, fast, desperate, and completely hers.
It started with a harmless trip to the garage.
Kon was looking for a charger. Not the futuristic kind he could get from S.T.A.R. Labs, just the old blocky one that fit that one backup communicator. He was humming some random pop song under his breath, shirtless, hair a bit tousled from flying in earlier. That’s when he saw it—tucked behind an old box of Halloween decorations and a cooler that hadn’t been used since last summer.
A Victoria’s Secret bag. And not just that.
Right next to it, a La Vie en Rose one, the soft pink peeking through the white tissue paper like a secret waiting to be unwrapped.
His heart stopped.
No way.
Kon’s eyes lit up like Christmas morning. He ran a hand through his hair and grinned, teeth flashing. “No way,” he muttered again, grabbing the bag carefully like it was sacred treasure.
You had never worn lingerie before—not that he minded. You in one of his t-shirts, bare-legged and sleepy-eyed, was enough to short-circuit his brain. But this? This felt like a sign from the heavens. Maybe you’d been planning a surprise. Maybe you were finally leaning into the whole “sexy superhero’s girlfriend” thing. Maybe—
He hovered into the house like a man on a mission.
“Babe!” he called, practically bouncing into the kitchen where you were sipping iced coffee and scrolling your phone. “Were you gonna tell me about this? Or were you planning on sneak attacking me with it?”
You blinked. “Tell you about what?”
He plopped the bags onto the counter with the most dramatic flair. “This. The finest kind of ambush.”
Your eyes widened when you saw the bags. “Oh my god. Where did you find those?”
“The garage,” he said, eyes gleaming. “Behind the cooler. Are we talking lace? Silk? Something red?”
You burst into laughter. Not a giggle, a full-body, can’t-breathe kind of laugh. Kon frowned, confused and a little concerned his dream was slipping away.
You wiped a tear from your eye. “Those aren’t mine, babe. That’s stuff I bought for my cousin’s bridal shower. I hid them in the garage because she lives two doors down and comes over unannounced.”
Kon’s expression cracked. “Wait… seriously?”
You nodded, still chuckling.
He looked at the bags like they betrayed him personally. “So you’re not gonna randomly show up in red lace and heels?”
You leaned in, smirking as you slid your arms around his waist. “Sorry, Superboy. Not today.”
He groaned dramatically, flopping his head back. “You hate me.”
“I do not hate you.”
“You’re denying me character development!”
You kissed his cheek. “Maybe I just like the way your brain malfunctions when I wear your flannel.”
That got him smiling again. He wrapped his arms around you, pressing his forehead to yours. “Okay… but if you ever want to malfunction me harder…”
You grinned. “You’ll be the first to know.”
“…and I’m allowed to keep hoping?”
“Sure.”
Kon smirked. “Cool. I’ll just be in the garage. Checking behind every box. Just in case.”
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It had been a week since The Great Lingerie Letdown, and Kon hadn’t let it go.
Every so often, he’d toss out lines like, “Wonder what’s behind the rice cooker in the pantry…” or “Just gonna go check under the bed. You know. For science.”
You always rolled your eyes. But you were thinking. Planning. He did deserve a little malfunction.
You timed it perfectly. He was out late helping Nightwing track a rogue android in the city. The sun was down, the lights in the apartment dimmed, and you’d set the scene with soft music and warm lighting in the bedroom. Not too much—just enough glow to catch the shimmer of the little number you’d picked out just for him.
Silky black lace. A tiny bow at the center. Straps that sat high on your hips and a matching robe that slid off your shoulders like a whisper.
It wasn’t about the lingerie. It was about the look on his face you were hoping for.
So you waited, sitting casually on the bed with a book in hand, legs crossed like this was just another normal night.
You heard the familiar rush of air before the door even clicked open.
“Babe? I’m home. You wouldn’t believe how annoying androids are—”
He froze in the doorway.
Dead. Silent.
He blinked once. Then twice. His eyes trailed slowly down your figure like his brain couldn’t quite process what it was seeing.
You lowered your book and met his wide-eyed stare. “Hey, Kon. You find anything behind the rice cooker yet?”
He made a sound you couldn’t quite classify—part choke, part laugh, part whimper.
You stood up slowly, taking your time with each step as you walked toward him, the heels clicking softly against the hardwood floor. His hands twitched at his sides like he didn’t know whether to grab you or drop to his knees in reverence.
When you stopped in front of him, you brushed your fingers lightly over his chest. “You gonna say something?”
“…I think I forgot how to talk,” he whispered.
You smiled. “Good. Then shut up and let me make you malfunction.”
He didn’t need to be told twice.
He didn’t even try to hide the way his hands found your waist, fingers twitching against the delicate fabric. His touch was gentle, almost reverent, like he was afraid one wrong move would make the vision in front of him disappear.
“Holy crap,” he muttered, voice low and hoarse. “You’re real. This is real. You—this is for me?”
You smirked, wrapping your arms loosely around his neck, leaning in close enough that your lips barely brushed his. “Took you long enough to find the secret stash.”
Kon’s breath hitched. You could feel the tension radiating off him—pure, electrified restraint.
“I’m trying so hard not to break the sound barrier right now,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to yours. “You don’t even understand.”
“Then stop trying.”
That was all it took.
His mouth found yours with a sudden, desperate heat—like he’d been starving and you were the first taste of something real. His hands slid down, cupping the curve of your thighs as he lifted you effortlessly, walking the few steps to the bed without breaking the kiss. Your legs wrapped around his waist, body arching into him instinctively.
“You feel so…” he whispered against your skin as he trailed kisses along your jaw, your throat, down the curve of your collarbone. “God, baby. You’re unreal.”
You tugged at his shirt. “Then take this off. I want to feel you.”
He practically ripped it off. You made a mental note to stop buying him shirts—he clearly had a vendetta against them.
Once the fabric was gone, all you could do was admire the way his muscles moved under your hands—taut, warm, real. He laid you down gently, like you were something precious. Sacred. But his eyes? They were hungry. Wild. Focused. His fingers traced along the lace at your hips. “Can I…?”
“You can do anything you want, sweetheart.” That was it. That was all he needed.
The second you whispered “You can do anything you want,” it was like flipping a switch inside him.
Gone was the flustered, wide-eyed boyfriend who couldn’t believe his luck.
Now, his hands were everywhere—strong, possessive, like he needed to touch every part of you to believe you were real. He kissed you like he was trying to memorize the shape of your mouth, your sighs, the way you whispered his name when his palm slid under the lace of your panties and found just how ready you were for him.
“Shit,” he hissed, lips brushing your ear as his fingers teased you—slow, patient at first, then with a growing confidence that made your thighs tremble around him. “You’re soaked. You did all this for me?”
“For you,” you breathed, one hand tangled in his hair, the other gripping his bicep like a lifeline. “Just you.”
Kon groaned—a low, filthy sound that came from deep in his chest—and then he was pulling the lace down your thighs, dragging his tongue slowly along your inner thigh as he went.
“Wanna take my time,” he murmured, eyes locked on yours. “Wanna taste you first.”
And he did.
God, he did.
He buried his face between your thighs like he’d been dreaming about it since the first time he met you. His tongue moved in slow, devastating circles, his hands pinning your hips down when you tried to squirm. And when you cried out his name, tugging hard on his hair? He groaned against you like it was the best thing he’d ever heard.
“You’re not gonna last long like this,” he teased, voice husky, smug.
“I don’t care—Kon—”
He didn’t stop until your whole body arched, trembling, crying out his name like a prayer and a curse in one breath. He watched you ride it out with a wild, starstruck look on his face, licking his lips like he’d found the sweetest thing in the world.
Then he was back up—rising from between your thighs with that same wild look in his eyes, lips wet, flushed and swollen from everything he’d just done to you. His mouth found yours in an instant, kissing you deep and messy, tongue sliding against yours, letting you taste yourself on him. You whimpered into the kiss, overwhelmed, electric, your whole body still pulsing from his mouth.
He groaned at the way you kissed him back, your fingers threading into his thick black hair, tugging like you wanted him even closer—deeper. His hips rutted against yours in a slow, grinding roll, and you felt it: hard, hot, pressing against your center through the fabric of his jeans, so thick and heavy it made your thighs twitch in anticipation.
“Kon,” you gasped against his lips, your voice trembling. “I need you—now.”
Your fingers fumbled at his belt, frantic, clawing and tugging with shaking hands. You couldn’t get the buckle undone fast enough and let out a frustrated little sound that only made him grin—cocky, flushed, and barely holding back.
“Easy, baby,” he whispered, breath ghosting over your mouth. “I’ve got you.”
He kissed you again, softer this time—slower—and his hands moved to yours, helping you unbuckle his belt, popping open the button, dragging the zipper down with agonizing ease. You pushed at the denim, desperate to feel him without the barrier, and he chuckled low in his throat, voice thick with restraint.
“I’m not gonna last long if you keep looking at me like that.”
“Then don’t,” you whispered, breathless, needy. “I don’t care.”
His jeans hit the floor. The moment your hand wrapped around him through the thin fabric of his briefs, he shuddered, hips twitching into your touch.
“Fuck,” he hissed, eyes fluttering shut for just a second, jaw clenched tight. “You’re gonna kill me.”
And when you slid those briefs down and he sprang free—thick, flushed, already leaking at the tip—you sucked in a breath. He was perfect. And he was yours.
“Kon,” you whimpered, wrapping your legs around his waist, pulling him in. “Please. Don’t tease. Just—please.”
He didn’t make you wait.
He grabbed your thigh with one hand, the other guiding himself to your entrance. And with one deep, slow thrust, he slid inside you—inch by thick inch—until your breath caught and your back arched against the sheets, overwhelmed by the fullness, the heat, the connection. His jaw clenching, your nails digging into his back. He was big, thick, the stretch just enough to make your back arch and your breath catch.
Kon groaned like the feeling physically broke him.
“You’re so tight,” he rasped, panting against your neck. “So warm—fuck, baby. I’m never gonna get enough of this.”
He paused for a moment, forehead pressed to yours, letting you both breathe, letting you adjust, and then—
Then he started to move—slow at first, a steady roll of his hips that let you feel every inch dragging against your walls. But that didn’t last long. The moment your nails dug into his back and you gasped his name like it burned, Kon snapped.
His control shattered.
He pulled back and thrust in hard—deep—drawing a strangled cry from your throat as your back arched. You clung to him, breath ragged, every inch of your body sparking under his touch. “God, baby…” he groaned, voice rough, breaking against your ear. “You feel so good—too good—I can’t—” Another thrust, faster, harder “I can’t stop.” You didn’t want him to. You didn’t need him to.
Your fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him in for another kiss that was all tongue and teeth and moaning into each other’s mouths. His pace picked up, hips pistoning into you with the kind of desperate rhythm that made the bed creak and the headboard slam softly against the wall.
You were soaked, your body welcoming him with each stroke, your legs locking tighter around his waist, pulling him impossibly closer. Skin slapped against skin, sweat slick between you, the only sounds filling the room were your moans, his grunts, and the wet, filthy rhythm of him ruining you in the best way.
“You like this?” he panted, one hand gripping the headboard, the other squeezing your thigh as he fucked into you like he needed it to survive. “You want it harder? Say it, Y/N.”
You cried out, head thrown back. “Yes, Kon—harder—don’t stop—please don’t stop!” That flipped something in him.
He grunted, teeth gritted, and slammed into you harder, faster, rougher—every thrust making your breath hitch, every stroke hitting that perfect spot. You felt yourself building again, spiraling up fast, your body coiling like a wire about to snap. And Kon? He could feel it. “I can feel you, baby—shit, you’re gonna come again, aren’t you?”
“Yes—yes—I’m—”
“Come on,” he growled, slamming into you with punishing force, his voice thick and shaky. “Come for me. Let me feel you—now.”
“Fuck, baby…” Kon swore under his breath, hips stuttering before finding a rhythm that had your eyes rolling back. “You feel like heaven.”
He made love to you like he was trying to burn the moment into time—deep, slow, grinding into you with each thrust like he needed you to feel how much he wanted you. But the longer it went on, the rougher he got—hips snapping, teeth grazing your neck, growling things like:
“No one else gets you like this.”
“You’re mine.”
“You wear this kind of thing again and I swear I’m never letting you leave the bed.”
“Say my name—let me hear it.”
You came with a cry—loud, raw, legs shaking around his waist as your whole body clenched around him. He groaned, deep and desperate, and after a few more stuttering thrusts, he was right there with you, cursing under his breath as he spilled inside you, hips jerking until he couldn’t move anymore. You stayed tangled together, skin on skin, his fingers lazily tracing your thigh as your breathing slowly synced.
He leaned down, kissing every inch he could reach, his touch turning from careful to confident—trailing fire across your skin. Every sigh you let out only pushed him further, until he was murmuring things you could barely register between gasps:
You arched up into him, your hand tangled in his hair, lips finding his again, softer this time. Slower. The kind of kiss that said: I love you. The kind that held trust, not just heat.
“You,” he muttered, kissing your shoulder, “are evil.”
You laughed, running a hand through his messy black hair. “Told you you’d malfunction.”
“…holy shit,” he whispered after a long beat, voice dazed and hoarse. “You definitely malfunctioned me.”
You laughed breathlessly, arms wrapped around him, your fingers tracing the sweat-slick lines of his back. “That was the plan.”
He smirked against your skin. “You’re gonna have to reboot me tomorrow morning.”
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godjustkys · 11 hours ago
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oh my god dude you're gonna LOVE newt hes so insanely cute.. thinking abt childhood best friends to lovers with him and learning how to navigate a relationship and then sex... both reader and newt nervously stumbling over eachother in bed trying to figure out what feels good for eachother.. getting to fuck him nice and slow while he tries not to ramble and bring up random creature-related stuff he thinks of.. kissing his freckles and checking in every 2 seconds because!!! hes so!!! ANYWAYS i feel you probably get it by now but have fun watching the movies.. they're so fire
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SYPNOSIS: gentle (clumsy) sex with your nerdy boyfriend
CHARACTER: male reader x newt scamander
NOTE: for the life of me, i swear i couldn’t figure out how the fuck to write reader awkward. I TRIED.
p.s. requests are always open!!
WC: 1.3k
WARNING: both reader and newt are awkward as hell,, soft, gentle sex,, worried!reader,, fingering,, spit as lube,,
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you had known newt scamander since the two of you were small boys sneaking dragon-scale beetle wings into potions class and pretending you weren’t secretly terrified of boggarts. hogwarts had come and gone, and though most people drifted apart, you and newt never did. maybe it was the way he talked about creatures like they were people. or maybe it was the way he looked at you like you were one of a kind.
even after the war, after the travels and letters and long silences that weren’t really silence at all.. you found your way back to each other.
you had known him forever. but kissing him for the first time on a rainy tuesday, both of you shivering in soaked coats and awkward laughter, that was new. Being in love with him — that was new.
newt’s back hit the mattress with a soft whumph, curls haloed around his head, lips pink and already kiss-bruised. his vest had been tossed somewhere in the corner, his shirt hanging open, and chest rising and falling like he’d just sprinted through a storm. you slowly kissed down his jaw, his throat, his collarbone; pausing at every freckle like you had all the time in the world to learn him by heart. “i feel like my mind’s going to split in half,” he whispered, voice thin and wavering. “I keep thinking about— about— bloody mooncalves and whether this is normal for—” you smiled against his chest. “you can talk about mooncalves later.” newt let out a helpless sort of laugh that turned into a shaky gasp when your hand slid down his chest, fingers grazing the trail of hair below his navel. his thighs tensed, and you paused again, looking up to meet his eyes. “you, uh, okay?”
“yes- yes, mhm.” he got out, blinking excessively as he stared at you. it didn’t take long for you to strip him, and yourself, so now here he laid beneath you, in all his glory. when you finally touched newt, fully, his hips jerked like he’d been struck with lightning, head tipping back into the pillow. he was already so hard, leaking at the tip, and the warmth of your hand coaxing him into a slow rhythm had him trembling. your name spilled from his lips and for the first time ever, you felt like your name was holy. the way he sounded lit a fire within you, and he just kept spurring you on, feeding that flame. you stroked him slowly, lazily, still unsure if he liked it, but it was just enough to keep him gasping, flushed and twitching under you. “feel good?” you muttered softly, a small bit of anxiety washing over you as you waited for the answer. “uh-huh, uh-huh—” newt rambled out, his fingers clenching in the sheets. then you decided to experiment, pressing your thumb to the slit of his cock, and he made a sound that was practically a whimper, one hand flying to cover his mouth.
“you’re— ah— very good at that,” he breathed. you let out a small, appreciative chuckle, kissing the crease where his hip met thigh. “you make it.. easy.” by the time you slicked your fingers, newt was so worked up he was trembling, continuing to grab at the sheets like he was about to fall off the edge of the world. easing a finger in, he gasped soundlessly, thighs tensing. he felt as if the silence was stifling, so his eyes darted to the side. “i’ve uhm- read a few things,” he muttered, ears going red. “some diagrams. diagrams are very helpful.” you smiled, nuzzling under his jaw. “i’d rather explore the subject.. hands-on.” he made a sound, half laugh, half gasp when your lips pressed to the soft spot under his ear. “oh..” newt just muttered, staring at the ceiling wide eyed. you started thrusting your finger in and out, slowly, letting him adjust. he did his best to keep his breath even, focusing so hard that he almost started dissociating.
when you eased another finger in to prep him properly (you didn’t really know what you were doing, you were too worried), he made a panicked little noise like he had just startled a hippogriff. you curled your fingers, experimentally once again, watching newt’s face intently. “OH— I— I— fuck,” he squeaked, voice cracking. “merlin, don’t stop— please— i’ll name a niffler after you—” your eyes lit up at his tone. so that felt good. curling your fingers again, newt mewled helplessly, arching his back when you added a third one. “oh bugger,” he gasped. “it’s a bit- bit strange— like, ah, being filled..? i don’t think that makes any sense, i’m sorry—”
after a bit more prepping, you slowly lined the tip of your cock to newt’s hole. you didn’t push in, just looked at him. “you- you’re ready, right? you sure you’re okay?” you asked softly, fingers just brushing against the inside of his wrist. he nodded quickly, a little too fast. “yes— yes, I just— er— this is rather uncharted territory for me.” you smiled softly in response, keeping your composure. “for me too.” when you pressed in and pushed your cock half way in, newt was writhing, and rambling. “did you know— uhm, some nifflers purr when you stroke just under their ears?” he said, breath hitching when you kissed the spot below his jaw. “i’ll make sure to keep that in mind.” you breathed out, sinking in the rest of the way, both of you gasping like you were coming apart at the seams.
he was so tight, his gummy walls sucking you in, clenching around you tightly, his breath catching in his throat, mouth open but silent. you froze. “okay?” you asked, barely holding on. “mhm,” he hummed lowly, face scrunched up. “just— slow..” you kissed his lips as you started to move, keeping the rhythm unhurried, every thrust deep and smooth. newt clung to you, legs wrapped around your waist, hips shifting to meet you every time you sank back into him. and god, he felt so good. every little gasp, every moan, every time he said your name like he couldn’t believe this was real. you kissed along his jaw, whispered how good he felt, how beautiful he looked like this. you kept rolling your hips, slow and deep, dragging yourself out and pressing back in again until newt was shaking, his words tumbling out in a mess of half-formed thoughts. “this is— better than mating dances— those are very involved, some creatures take hours to— ah..— don’t laugh, I’m trying to stay— haah!— intellectual about— oh bloody hell, right there..” you captured his lips in a sloppy yet tender kiss, your thrusts steady, slow, filling him again and again until all he could do was gasp and moan, fingers digging into your back. he huffed softly, chest heaving, clearly trying not to preen. “suppose some creatures present similarly when breeding... fire-crabs, for example, often arch their backs and— nghhgg!—” newt cut himself off. at first you thought something was wrong. “newt? too much?” you murmured softly. “there— hell- again, again.” he urged you in a desperate tone, clutching you closer. your cock prodded at his prostate again and he was blissed out. a couple moments later of that same deep, steady rhythm, he came untouched, crying out your name, his cock spilling between your stomachs, body clenching so tightly around you that it dragged your orgasm out of you too — deep, hot, spilling inside him as you groaned his name into his mouth. you collapsed over him, panting, bodies slick with sweat, completely tangled. “that was—” he began, voice hoarse. “astounding,” you finished for him, brushing sweaty curls off his forehead.
“i.. was going to say impossibly filthy, but yes. that too.”
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stackslip · 22 hours ago
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other mutual just pointed it out on the dash but all these discussions on "(gendered term) is always neutra bc i use it this way l" "(gendered term) is never neutral because it posits masculine as default" "(gendered term) can be used as neutral but you should avoid in these circumstances" hit particularly here when my first language automatically imposes masculine as neutral and default (or more to the point as *dominant*), to the point where if there's a group of a hundred women and a single guy you are expected to switch to masculine forms anyway
and when feminists and trans people and linguists suggested very gently adopting more neutral forms (nvm feminizing language), everyone from the president and academy to random strangers lost their minds entirely and still do. it's more common in activists groups to use this language and it often comes with a huge stigma and barrier of complaints about accessibility and being Too Woke—i wouldnt be surprised if it gets banned entirely in official forms in the future.
and tbc often i find the default gender neutral language ("tou.te.s" "auteur.rice") used feels clunky and we really should have a broader reflection of how best to ungender french but as it is, near all of it has been captured by The Evil Feminists Are Destroying Our Language. in a time of record anti-feminism and doubling down on positing a certain form of cis manhood as not only the default but the only correct way of doing things, near everywhere in the world, im ngl i think rethinking one's base assumptions about language neutrality is worth diving into. i dont think it's worth say making a federal case if someone's slipped when talking to a group, and i myself am tutoring foreigners in french and have to stick to Masculine As Neutral both in accordance to the org's policies and bc i cannot prioritize spending the time i have with people tutoring them about this stuff when they are struggling to hear the difference between "et" and "a"—and herein lies the problem doesn't it. it's never really a priority even though it governs so many assumptions about who's centered and even though it's making life more hostile for people already in agony. hell like ive mentioned before but being nb in france and trying to use any gender neutral language for yourself is something you either give up on entirely soon or get immediately, violently clocked as such and treated with contempt/hostility or at best, like you're a delicate whining flower. so uh. anyway thinking of any language as Neutral or Default already comes with its own bag of assumptions is what im saying
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quibbs126 · 14 days ago
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Oh yeah, a small addendum to the AU idea I posed earlier: I think it’d be funny if by sheer happenstance, despite directly fighting each other, Optimus and Megatron don’t come face to face for a good while. Like by whatever cosmic powers, they just happen to never be in the same room at the same time. Other bots on both sides have seen each leader, just not the two themselves
By the time they do meet, they’ve heard so much about each other (probably a good chunk from propaganda), and have these mental images of each other, it’s very disorienting when they see what the other actually looks like. And the fact that it took them this long to actually meet face to face
Also also, I think it’d be a point that both Megatron and Optimus have false views of one another due to Autobot propaganda, with Megatron depicted as an evil tyrant and Optimus as the fearless soldier who defeated the former evil leader of the Decepticons, as well as in general skewed views of the other faction that they learn to re-evaluate. I mean, Optimus is the one being fed propaganda, but Megatron’s experiences with the Autobots makes him have a hard time believing any Autobot soldier could actually be a good person, not realizing they fall for the lies just as much as any citizen, or that someone of Optimus’ new status could be so in the dark (he just sort of stumbled into a high position by killing the last Decepticon leader)
I feel like I was gonna add something more, but I forgot what
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swhhdr-wthhr · 3 months ago
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don't you hate it when your best friend becomes a cyborg and stops aging and showing emotion?
plain drawings w/o effects and original sketches under cut
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you can't see the other sketch. it's so bad dude. you can't even imagine. i had to change literally everything about it when i did the digital lineart
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panharmonium · 1 year ago
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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:
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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:
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(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.
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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:
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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 -)
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(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:
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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
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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.
#naruto#meta#replies#anyway that's that! hopefully that is a helpful answer#thank you for the question! i honestly don't think i would have ever gotten around to writing about this if i hadn't been directly asked#i love talking about the stories i enjoy (obviously; we all do; that's why we're here)#but i'm usually ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about responding to takes that blatantly misread the narrative to justify hating a particular character or ship#mostly because a) it's whatever. as long as people mind their own business and leave me to enjoy myself they can do what they want#and b) some opinions are so divorced from the actual text that they're not worth discussing#like. what's the point of responding to random internet posts saying that sakura was selfishly pursuing sasuke as a lover the entire time#when that is textually and provably not the case?#if you're that committed to experiencing things in direct contradiction to what the narrative is asking of us then just go ahead#is it mildly annoying to me? sure. but so are lots of things and it's better to just let stuff go#like - i initially planned to take this piece of meta all the way up through sakura and sasuke's last scene together#the one where he tells her 'maybe next time' and finally reclaims and redefines itachi's forehead tap (INCREDIBLE. THIS SCENE.)#but ultimately i changed my mind because everything i wrote for that last section was coming out too harsh#i generally prefer to talk about fandom stuff in a chill/friendly approachable way#but i kept thinking about the most obscenely & disrespectfully inaccurate read of that scene i'd ever seen#and i couldn't figure out how to talk about it in a non-scathing way#that scene and the one where naruto gives sasuke's headband back are the ONLY well-written things about the finale of naruto#they are SO perfectly constructed and i can't respond to people slandering either one without feeling an urge to kill#so i just deleted it. partially because again - this is fandom; it's not that serious; people can do what they want#but also because i know i get extra frustrated about people picking over the text and plucking out isolated bits and pieces#to contort into blatantly misinterpreted mutant shapes that 'confirm' whatever pre-existing judgments or ships they had#instead of experiencing the story as a cohesive whole & keeping in mind the greater context of what it's always been trying to communicate#people on this website say 'we all interpret things differently :)' as if it means no one can ever be wrong about what a text is saying#newsflash: not all interpretations of a text are valid. things can't in fact mean whatever you want them to mean.#the ***story*** persists and exists even if the author is dead to you#if you choose to ignore that then that's fine; it's just fandom; who cares. but i'm not going to pretend you're 'analyzing' anything.#(ok now i'm really done. you can see why i deleted this section XD)
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pa-pa-plasma · 1 year ago
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okay i just marathoned the entirety of ATLA live action & i might do an actual review of it explaining my thoughts more in depth, but the TLDR version basically boils down to this:
if you want to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender, just go watch the 2005 cartoon
#i was trying to keep an open mind & all that cuz of OPLA (my beloved) but. holy shit it was actually worse than i expected :/#like what were they thinking. did they use AI to write this or are the writers just like. really shitty#notes: they linger too much on random bullshit & refuse to move character development along#they tell when they should be showing & when they DO show it's for stuff that benefited from brief environmental storytelling in the OG#the plot drags so hard it was basically stagnant#there were some fun things but like. those things could've been funner if they'd been given the time other useless stuff was taking up#they changed so many minor details that really don't matter in order to make them more important#but this failed spectacularly because now there's just. stupid bullshit clogging up the plot??#instead of having 10 minute monologues 3 times an episode about plot irrelevant things#they should have taken a page out of the original's book & kept minor details to a minimum & focused on ACTUAL PLOT#SO MUCH CGI. LIKE I KNOW THEY NEED IT BUT COME ON. EVEN THE CHARACTERS?????? WHO ARE JUST STANDING THERE????????#they were given 8 hours & almost all of it was Aang angsting (lol) over being the avatar & not practicing actual bending#& then they ended the plot too early so they had to fill in the last like 20 minutes with something else#so they made up random lore that literally makes no sense. & overexplained all of it to the point i was blanking out from boredom#i think this is why i didn't enjoy Korra. they over explain the spirit world stuff & avatar powers & bending#that plus i just don't vibe with the aesthetic#being a writer is a curse because when i dislike something it's because i know exactly what went wrong & why#it's always with the analyzing & the judging & the internal note taking#even when i really try i can't just enjoy shit for fun
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drawnecromancy · 1 year ago
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Nine People You'd Like To Get To Know Better
Tagged by @pizza-hats-of-the-world-1882 !! (hope you don't mind me using my main instead of irianeth to do this LOL) :D
3 ships : Uh. Mmmh. Uhhh. The only things that come to mind r remnants from my time i the Elder Scrolls fandom - The Hero of Kvatch/Martin Septim, the Last Dragonborn/Miraak, and. Baurus/Captain Steffan they're random fucking Blades from Oblivion don't ask me why I'm shipping them.
First ship : Man I have no idea. Statistically it was probably either Ewilan and Salim back when I read the Ewilan books as a kid, or a ship from the Knights of Emerald although I couldn't tell you who.
Last song : According to Spotify, it was Let the world burn by Chris Grey. According to my phone, it was The City Gates by Jeremy Soule.
Currently reading : Life in a medieval village by Frances & Joseph Gies. I am very slow. It's not bad, it's interesting, I just can't fucking focus on shit.
Last movie : Haven't watched movies since the other time i visited my parents sooo it's still A Better Tomorrow by John Woo lol
Currently craving : Beer, which is a terrible idea. Luckily I am in pyjamas, and i have commitments tomorrow which means I won't give in.
Tagging : uhhh I don't think I know 9 people who are chill with being tagged. Anyway i'm bothering @logarithmicpanda @psychofullmoonwerewolf @lee-thee-bee @strawberry-possum @isabellebissonrouthier @nerdlemons
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apologetic-artist · 5 months ago
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Okay, random headcannon and lore tid bit for the people on my space ship:
Tony is afraid of dinosaurs. One of the biggest reasons behind this is that when the "experiments" were happening, he accidentally traveled way too far back in time and witnessed a T-Rex in person, towering over him. It took her a bit to figure out how the whole time travel thing worked and swore she'd never step foot into the Cretaceous, or any time with dinosaurs, again. It's a shame Colin is a dino nerd(in my cannon), huh?
So this means Tony probably has a deathly fear of Barney the Dinosaur(this is for the funnies, but it makes sense, trust)
Also, I'm making a dinosaur oc, so I fear Tony's gotta figure out how to deal with those creatures again.
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my-thoughts-and-junk · 3 months ago
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thinking about a house. the house is sentient but not in a way i would typically recognize. it would view me as both a part of itself (similar to how an animal is a part of its ecosystem) and also something inherently lesser (like how an owner views its pet). i can't communicate with it in any meaningful way. i can't even tell when it's paying attention to me if it doesn't try to draw my attention. it can manipulate whatever is inside of itself except me, which would give me a sort of edge if it ever viewed me as a threat, but since it doesn't it sees it in more of a "awww look at your little claws" way.
#random thoughts#love the idea of being so dehumanized it horseshoes its way around to being in my favor#something that views me as so beneath them it doesn't stop to think i could slit their throat with the blade i shave their face with#there are other houses and though i don't understand them i get the sense they view how the house interacts with me#as deeply wrong and immoral. that i'm being taken advantage of and can't begin to understand that as a lesser being#and the house is very much into the power difference. and i could probably play it up to get stuff if i could figure out#just what the fuck the power difference is???#like i know the house is a different being than i am but due to my nature and how i view things i cannot comprehend them in a meaningful wa#btw i am imagining. this is all taking place in like a white void btw. pocoyo dimension. nothing for miles except me and my house#and other houses when they visit. maybe my house got banished here for how it interacts with humans?#anyway i'm imagining me standing by while my house is talking to another house#and the other house is like. calling out my house? for something?#and i start to understand on some kind of level that the house is somehow taking advantage of me#the other house leaves. dead silence. hit my house with one of these 🤨 and the house PHYSICALLY LEANS AWAY FROM ME#like embarrassed and shit. blushing and sweating. love when sentient objects can physically react to things#'dave are you having sex with this house' i think the house comes from a culture where they have evolved past sex#and my house is fucking FASCINATED. by the idea of sex#probably likes to watch tbh. idk what it gets from it#there's probably some kind of subculture surrounding houses who get together with their humans to watch them fuck?#and like. my house views itself as 'above that'. very possessive. probably tried it out at least once tho before going 'FUCK THAT'#i'm not like ~other girls~ (the house is weirdly attached to me)#horror#the closest i can think of as to why a higher being would want a human partner in an objectifying fetishistic way#is because humans are capable of understanding on a surface level that there are things they cannot understand#like fourth dimensional space and impossible colors and eldritch horrors#and we understand just enough to look for answers but not to understand them when we get them#and it's probably really cute to watch us try and fail to understand what to them are basic concepts#and when we are given the ability to understand and that's taken away from us eldritchian insanity is probably ALSO really cute to them#they probably go through humans really quickly. fucking up their minds to get their rocks off
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quibbs126 · 10 months ago
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Okay because my mind’s still on the subject, I have a bit of a weird question, but I just want an answer
So like, my favorite type of drama in series is usually familial drama, most often ones between parents and their children. And also usually, those dramas that I love are specifically between father and son
And now I’m wondering, what are parent-child dramas/dynamics that involve a female character usually like? As in, mother-son, father-daughter, or even mother-daughter? And additionally, are they as interesting as father-son dynamics? Because I feel like I don’t see nearly enough of them, or at least, they never give me that same amount of intrigue or they just aren’t as focused on
By which I mean specifically in my context, would they be interesting in an action based series? I have a particular taste, namely that I like my series (mostly this applies to shows, I’m a bit more flexible with games) to be more action focused, or at least have some fantastical elements to it, or else I don’t care. I’m not interested in soap opera kind of drama, I want something that would fit in an action based show
Sorry, again this is probably a weird request (and to be honest I really don’t expect answers, posts of mine like these usually get little to no attention), but it’s on my mind. I feel like I see so many interesting father-son dynamics and conflicts, but I never see one that involves a woman, at least not when it comes to parent-child dynamics, and not ones nearly as interesting
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mephiles-the-jester · 1 year ago
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i just spent the whole day building a 4 story apartment complex in the sims 4 decorated for specific sonic characters,,but i dont own the for rent pack so i cant really do much with it,and i have no idea why i did all that
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missdynamighttt · 2 months ago
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hehehe sooo.. pro hero, husband! katsuki not being able to spend time with you took a toll on his agency, so someone said... you two needed to bone.
it had been weeks since katsuki had a proper night at home. pro hero work never let up but lately, it felt like it was eating him—late nights at the agency, barely any sleep, reports, patrols, meetings.
you understood. it was his job, his responsibility, but his stress showed in the way he snapped at people more often, his fuse shorter than usual.
and today? he was especially pissed.
the whole office refused to confront dynamight about it, until some dumbass sidekick, probably sick of his rage-fueled outbursts, muttered under his breath, “tch. man just needs to go home and bone his wife.”
the room went silent.
dead silent.
katsuki stopped mid-step, shoulders going rigid. his head turned slowly toward him, eyes burning like he was about to set the entire building on fire.
"the fuck did you just say?"
the sidekick, to his credit, had the audacity to look innocent. "i mean, you’re obviously tense, and i'm sure she’s—"
he lunged at him. it took three other sidekicks to hold him back as he damn near flipped his desk over.
“YOU'RE FUCKIN' DEAD! BONE?!” katsuki roared, struggling against his coworkers like a wild animal. "say that shit again, i dare you! you think i’m pissed ‘cause i ain’t fucking my wife enough?!”
the whole agency floor collectively held its breath.
the poor sidekick scrambled for an excuse. “n-no! i-i just meant—uh, stress relief! yeah! y’know, intimacy is good for—”
katsuki grabbed a random clipboard and hurled it across him. he missed by a centimeter. “you think i don’t wanna fuckin' go home to her?! huh?!”
“sir—”
“i wanna go home so bad! i wanna see her, i wanna kiss her, i wanna lay on her tits and sleep for the whole fuckin’ day,” he ranted, voice cracking from pure frustration. “BUT NOOO! i’m stuck here writing reports and dealing with dumbasses like you!”
the office was dead silent.
it took a solid ten minutes for him to cool down, grumbling and seething as he rubbed his temples.
but his mind did wander.
to you. to the way he missed your voice. to how fucking long it had been since he held you properly.
to the way he always found you asleep by the time he got home, curled up on his side of the bed, waiting for him.
… fuck. maybe the sidekick did have a point.
katsuki inhaled sharply. then, with wild determination, he grabbed his his stuff, and stormed toward the exit. the agency could handle itself for the night. he had better things to do.
“fuck this. i'm goin' home to my wife."
meanwhile, you had barely settled on the couch, ready to enjoy a quiet evening alone, when the front door slammed open. you jolted, turning toward the entrance just in time to see katsuki storming in—looking like a man on a mission.
“katsu—” you barely got his name out before his mouth crashed onto yours, hot and urgent, like he’d been starving for this. you gripped his shirt as he pulled you impossibly close, practically lifting you off the floor.
you gasped against his lips as his hands cupped your cheeks, tilting your head as he deepened the kiss, pressing his body against yours.
strong hands cupped your face, rough but desperate. his lips were everywhere—your cheeks, your nose, your jaw, the corner of your lips—like he was making up for lost time.
and when he finally let you breathe, his forehead pressed against yours, panting slightly, his hands still gripping your waist like he was afraid you’d disappear.
you were breathless, blinking up at him in shock. “what the hell?”
katsuki exhaled sharply, his forehead resting against yours. “i missed you.”
your brows furrowed. “you left for work this morning.”
“exactly,” his lips brushed against yours again, softer this time. “should’ve come home sooner.”
it was then you realized—he was home way earlier than usual. normally, he'd get caught up in work, buried in reports or dealing with patrols, but tonight…
“wait, why are you home so early?” you asked, still dazed.
katsuki huffed. his fingers slid down to your waist, gripping you tightly. “tch. dumbass sidekick at work said i just needed to fuck my wife to fix my attitude.”
your jaw dropped. “excuse me?”
his lips brushed yours again, softer this time. “so i left early to prove ‘em right.”
your face burned. “katsuki!”
but he was already leaning in again, smirking against your lips. “better get comfortable, sweets. i’m makin’ up for lost time.”
and when katsuki stepped into the office that morning, something was… off.
for the first time in weeks, he didn’t stomp in with a permanent scowl, barking at everyone the second he crossed the threshold. his usual sharp glare was dulled, his shoulders weren’t tense as tense.
instead, katsuki looked, dare they say it—relaxed. his jaw wasn’t clenched, his brows weren’t furrowed, and the usual aggressive boom of his steps was noticeably tamer.
hell, the man even had a post-nut glow so obvious. skin clear, posture loose, and zero unnecessary shouting.
no explosions. no immediate death threats. no one getting yelled at for breathing too loud.
everyone noticed.
by the time he made it to his desk, his coworkers were already exchanging looks, whispering amongst themselves like they’d just seen a miracle.
"uh…" one of his sidekicks was the first to cautiously approach. “sir. you good?”
katsuki just grunted, rolling his shoulders before cracking his neck. “feelin’ great, actually.”
and that’s when it clicked. a murmur spread through the office as realization slammed into them.
“you boned last night,” he stated, like it was the discovery of the century.
katsuki just smirked, grabbing some files off his desk. “what’s it to ya?”
the room erupted.
“holy shit, i forgot he could be normal—”
“i haven’t known peace in months.”
“oh my god, mrs bakugo katsuki, if you can hear this—thank you for your service!”
someone started clapping.
then, the entire office cheered.
‎‧₊˚✧[ it's me, kia ! ]✧˚₊‧ 。゚•┈꒰ა ♡ ໒꒱┈• 。゚ ‎‧₊˚✧[ more of katsuki ! ]✧˚₊‧
⋆˚࿔ kia's note ˚⋆ i think y'all know where this is inspired from but js in case, its from a sitcom named brooklyn 99 where this girl tells her boss he needs to bone his husband lmao😭 hope yall enjoyed!!
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lov3notts · 6 months ago
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"you what?"
ᥫ᭡Theodore Nott x F!Readerᥫ᭡
summary: accidentally drinking a lust potion, you asked your best friend Theo for help.
warning: smut, cursing, unprotected sex, size kink maybe? cream pie.
word count: 2.4k
18+only; minors don’t interact
Navigation; masterlist; request rules
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“You what?” Theo’s eyes widened, you wanted him to do what? He wasn’t sure if this was a dream or not but if it was he didn’t want to wake up
Earlier that day , you had accidentally drank a lust potion. 
How, you might ask?
Well the boys (Enzo/ Mattheo) thought it would be funny to prank Draco by giving him a lust potion as payback for pranking them earlier that week
At lunch the 2 boys were there first, taking their usual spots they slip the potion to a bottle of Draco's favorite drink and placing it on the spot were Draco usually sits
One by one the group gets to the table ,leaving you and Draco left. 
Soon both of you walk in, but you seem to be in a rush
“Sorry guys I can’t stay and chat, I have to get back to studying, i’m just here to get some food to eat while studying” grabbing random things and the only drink you see left, you quickly stuff it in your purse
“Wait y/n!” Enzo saying frantically, giving Matt a worried look
You look up at Enzo as you start to zip up your bag. “Yeah?” 
“We were actually saving that for Draco, um- were having practice later and that’s his favorite”
“Omg I’m so sorry! Here-“ as your opening you bag Draco comes behind you , going to sit down 
“I actually got my own drink, y/n can have it” Dracos says while pulling out his drink from his bag,
Enzo’s and Mattheos’s eye widen.
“I- um, but we got it for you” Matt says with a bit of a shaky voice 
“Its fine, I don’t need it” as he waves his drink showing the 2 boys
“But-“ 
“Omg thank you Draco, I really have to go now guys see you later” you say as you're walking away before the boys have a chance to take away the drink.
Both Enzo and Matt try to call you back but you’re already gone, both freaking out inside. praying you don't find out what they did.
While studying in your dorm you couldn’t focus for more than 10 seconds. Thinking you might just be tired from all the studying you took a break. Getting up from your desk you head towards your bed. Laying in your bed you start to space out
At first it was all innocent thoughts, school, weekend plans but then they started to shift The only thing you could think of was pleasure. Thinking of a certain boy made your cunt throb, making your body hot
Your hand slowly creeps down to your shorts. Slowly playing with yourself imagining it was Theo’s fingers rubbing circles on your clit.
“Oh god Theo” you moaned 
but no matter how good it felt you couldn’t reach your climax. You were so needy and nothing was working. The rising heat from your body only made things more uncomfortable.
“God what is wrong with me, and why is it so hot” getting up from your bed you walk towards your desk, trying to find your drink, in hopes of it cooling you down . You picked up the bottle and before you can finish the drink you saw something written on the bottom of the bottle
“Payback- Enzo and Mattheo”
Your eyes widened with confusion. 
What?
Then you remembered how the drink was meant for Draco. 
everything started to make sense
This is why you were like this
You couldn’t even be mad at them, Your mind was clouded with the urge to get any satisfaction you could. all you wanted was any sort of pleasure but nothing was good enough. it started to get painful and a sudden thought popped in your head. Theo
he’d help right? He was really the only one you can go to. 
Your heart was racing at just the thought of Theo agreeing to help you out, being best friends all these years you had developed a crush on him, of course you never acted on it because you didn’t want to ruin your friendship 
Pacing back and forth your room, you finally decide to ask him for help. Nervously picking up your phone, you open Theo’s contact.
“Theo?”
“Hey Bella, what’s up?”
The nickname itself making you get butterflies.
 “Um- I need a favor, can you come over?”
“Of course, i'll be over in a few”
“Okay see you” hanging up the phone, your thoughts begin to consume you
What if he says no?
What if he laughs at your face and runs off
What if…
What if he says yes… 
Before you can continue, there was a knock on your door. That must be him. Slowly walking to your door, palms sweaty, you turn your door knob
“Hey, what did you need help with?” Theo goes in to give you a hug
Hugging him back, your nose is infused with his cologne  
God why does he always smell so good
He lets go and looks at you closely, he moves a strain of hair behind your ear to have a better look at you. His eyebrows frown, noticing your face is flustered and incredibly warm.
“Are you okay? Your face is warm” resting his hand on your cheek
“Yeah, um actually funny story-“ Quickly leading him to sit on the edge of your bed, holding his hands as you begin to explain
“Please just hear me out. I know it's odd ,but I have no one to go to,- just please-“ falling to your knees, begging.
“Hey hey, breathe. You know I'm here if you need anything. Now tell me, what’s up?” Theo's eyes looking at you with worry.
“Please I- I need you to fuck me” you blur out
That was the last thing Theo thought would come out of your mouth. 
You wanted him to what???
He was speechless, absolutely at a loss of words. jaw wide open
“Please, I'm sorry for asking you for this, I know it’s a lot and we’re best friends. But please I can’t take it anymore. I accidentally drank something that wasn’t meant to me and it had this effect on me. I’ve tried everything but nothing is working. I need your help please” your face heating up from embarrassment . I mean you only ever had the biggest crush on your best friend for years, but what you didn’t know was that so did Theo.
Theo had dreamt of the day he got to be with you.
How’d he spend hours pleasuring himself of the thought of you under him, on top of him and how good you’d take him in your mouth. God, was he hard the second you asked him to help you out.
How could he say no? 
Without another thought he picked you up from the floor. Sitting down back on your bed while you straddled his lap.
Looking into your eyes, moving a piece of your hair behind your ear, resting his hand on your cheek, he leaded in.  
Your soft lips on his, both whimpering into the intense kiss. Licking your bottom lip asking for access. You gladly gave it to him. 
Slowly rocking your hips on his clothed boner, trying to find any friction to satisfy you.
Slowly laying you down your bed, taking off your clothes until you were left in nothing but your matching black lace set. 
“Don’t worry Bella, i’ll take good care of you” Theo whispers as he starts to leave a trail of kisses down your body
“Theo please~” you pleaded, needing to feel something, anything.
“poor thing, you’ve must of been so uncomfortable for such a long time, don’t worry i’m here now”
He stopped to look at your lying body, face all flustered, messy hair. 
“God you’re so beautiful” he wasn’t lying, he’d always thought you were the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. Always jealous of your ex boyfriends because they got to be with you. But now it was his turn and he was going to give you the best you’d ever gotten, he was going to ruin every other guy you’ve been with. 
Slowly pulling your panties off, dick throbbing at the sight of your wet glistening pussy. Trying to ignore his throbbing cock and focus on you, he gives you a sweet smile. 
“You're soaking wet, so ready for me” leaving little kisses around your pussy, teasing. finally burying his face between your legs, painfully slow licks as he takes it in, savoring every moment. 
As soon as you felt his tongue, you became a whimpering mess.  
“Theo~ oh my god yes” moving your hand to his hair, giving it a little tug. 
Theo couldn’t hold it in anymore, he started to devour you. eating you out as if he’d never get this opportunity ever again
“You taste so fucken good” he groaned against your dripping core. The vibrations sending you waves of pleasure 
“More please, Theo! oh my god~” it felt so good, his tongue making you feel things you’ve never felt before with anyone else
“So polite, even when your so needy” Theo smirked as he sees how much of a mess you were for him
He starts so pump one of his fingering into you while eating you out. Soon enough you felt the feeling you were craving for
“M-so close, fuck Theo i’m so close”
He stops what he’s doing, getting up grasping on his zipper and undoing the button. Tugging his jeans and boxers off. 
“Theo? Why’d you stop? I was so close” you looked at him with teary eyes. you were so close, god why did he stop
“Sorry princess, I wanna be in you, want you cum on my cock” godddd was he hot
His cock strung out his pants hitting his stomach , you were lost for words. In no world was Theodore Nott small, he was big- huge even. you’ve never taken anything close to his size.
Theo noticed your starring
“Like what you see?” A smile tugged the corner of his lips
“Don’t worry you can take it, I know you can”
You nodded at his works 
He lined himself up to your pussy, tracing himself up and down, teasing you.
“You have no idea how long i've been wanting to do this for” 
“Fuck ,Theo please, please fuck me” you whined 
“Anything for you, love”
he slowly pushed himself into you. You both let out a loud moan. 
“fuck, your so tight” Theo was out of breath.
You felt so good around him that he never wanted this moment to end.
“fuck Theo your big” you said panting 
“You think you can take more?”
More???
“There’s more??” Looking at Theo with a disbelief face
He chuckled “i’m only have way”
“Don’t worry you can handle it, can’t you baby?”
“Mhm- yes yes, I can take it”
Pushing the reset of himself into you. bottoming you out. heavily breathing, getting comfortable with the feeling of him stretching you out. 
“good girl ,You’re doing so well for me, are you ready?”
“Yes! fuck-please move, please” you begged
Brining your legs above his shoulders and laying them there. Gripping your ankles to keep you steady as he started to thrust into you. Both a moaning mess
“Fuck fuck fuckkk, Theo-” your eyes roll back, arching your back.
“You feel so good Bella, oh god-“ panting 
“Your squeezing me tight- fuck”
One of his hands moving to your waist. fucking you harder now, unable to stop. His cock was so fucking good, hitting your g-spot every time.
“Fuck Theo just like that, don’t stop, don’t stop please!” Your hands holding onto your bed sheets as he rocks his hips.
“You like that huh? You like it when your best friend is pounding into you, god you look so beautiful, taking all of me like a good girl” he groans while leaving kisses on your ankle.
Your walls clenching at his words
He groaned again as he felt your cunt throb at his praise. 
“Oh you like being called a good girl don’t you?” letting go of your ankle to grip your jaw to make you look at him.
“Who's a good girl are you?” Theo says as he speeds up his thrusts
Looking at him with half lidded eyes “Yours, all yours!!~“ you moan
“That’s right all mine, no one can ever make you feel this good, isn’t that right love?”
 “Mhm only you, ah~ i'm so close”
“Cum for me baby, come all over my cock”
You were absolute bliss, god you’ve never seen fucked this good, yeah you’ve had other hookups but nothing can compared to this, to Theo
You moaned loudly, shutting your eyes as you reached your orgasm “im- im cumming!!” Your body shaking from the overwhelming feeling
The way your walls clenched from cumming made Theo on the verge of spilling. He continues to thrust into you through your first orgasm. He didn’t expect you make such a mess all over his dick, your cum spilling out of you as he thrusts into you
You felt Theo twitch inside of you, knowing he’s close you moved his hand from your waist to your breasts.
“Mmm so soft…” Theo whispered. leaning down, putting his tongue on your nipple, swirling it around. “Mmm Theo that feels good” throwing your head back from a little act. Theo was soon approaching his climax.  
“Fuckk- can I cum inside of you? please oh god I can’t hold it anymore, please? Fuck-” Theo begged as he tried to hold it in, waiting for you response 
“Yes!! fuck Theo cum inside me” you practically screamed as you felt you stomach tighten.
He let out a loud moan as he spilled his cum inside of you. You screamed as you felt his warm cum spilling in you, triggering your second orgasm.
Theo’s thrusts became sloppy, riding out both your highs. He pulled out and laid beside you. Dizzy and breathless, taking a moment to catch your breath.  Finally when you both got steady, you look up at Theo
“Thank you Theo, really”
“No need to thank me Bella, you can come to me for anything anytime” smiling at you.
crawling onto his lap you whispered into his ear “stay the night? I don’t think the drink has worn off just yet~”
This was going to be a long night for Theo.
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ᥫ᭡reblog's & comment's are appreciatedᥫ᭡
a/n: Thank you for reading my first ever fic!! a special mention to @leona-hawthorne for being an angel and giving me feedback on my first rough draft. It helped a lot:)!! another honorable mention to @nottsangel!! Im that anon who mentioned writing their first story, hope you like it^-^ thank you both, your blogs have inspired me to start writing. xoxo
©lov3notts ,do not copy, translate or claim any of my writing or works as your own.
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insipid-drivel · 1 year ago
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Horses: Since There Seems To Be A Knowledge Gap
I'm going to go ahead and preface this with: I comment pretty regularly on clips and photos featuring horses and horseback riding, often answering questions or providing explanations for how or why certain things are done. I was a stable hand and barrel racer growing up, and during my 11 year tenure on tumblr, Professional Horse Commentary is a very niche, yet very necessary, subject that needs filling. Here are some of the literary and creative gaps I've noticed in well meaning (and very good!) creators trying to portray horses and riding realistically that... well, most of you don't seem to even be aware of, because you wouldn't know unless you worked with horses directly!
Some Of The Most Common Horse + Riding Mistakes I See:
-Anybody can ride any horse if you hold on tight enough/have ridden once before.
Nope. No, no, no, no, aaaaaaaand, no. Horseback riding has, historically, been treated as a life skill taught from surprisingly young ages. It wasn't unusual in the pre-vehicular eras to start teaching children as young as 4 to begin to ride, because horses don't come with airbags, and every horse is different. For most adults, it can take months or years of regular lessons to learn to ride well in the saddle, and that's just riding; not working or practicing a sport.
Furthermore, horses often reject riders they don't know. Unless a horse has been trained like a teaching horse, which is taught to tolerate riders of all skill and experience levels, it will take extreme issue with having some random person try to climb on their back. Royalty, nobility, and the knighted classes are commonly associated with the "having a favorite special horse" trope, because it's true! Just like you can have a particularly special bond with a pet or service animal that verges on parental, the same can apply with horses. Happy horses love their owners/riders, and will straight-up do their best to murder anyone that tries to ride them without permission.
-Horses are stupid/have no personality.
There isn't a more dangerous assumption to make than assuming a horse is stupid. Every horse has a unique personality, with traits that can be consistent between breeds (again, like cat and dog breeds often have distinct behavior traits associated with them), but those traits manifest differently from animal to animal.
My mother had an Arabian horse, Zipper, that hated being kicked as a signal to gallop. One day, her mom and stepdad had a particularly unpleasant visitor; an older gentleman that insisted on riding Zipper, but refused to listen to my mother's warnings never to kick him. "Kicking" constitutes hitting the horse's side(s) with your heels, whether you have spurs on or not. Most horses only need a gentle squeeze to know what you want them to do.
Anyway, Zipper made eye-contact with my mom, asking for permission. He understood what she meant when she nodded at him. He proceeded to give this asshole of a rider road rash on the side of the paddock fence and sent him to the emergency room. He wouldn't have done it if he didn't have the permission from the rider he respected, and was intelligent enough to ask, "mind if I teach this guy a lesson?" with his eyes, and understand, "Go for it, buddy," from my mom in return.
-Riding bareback is possible to do if you hold onto the horse's mane really tight.
Riding a horse bareback (with no saddle, stirrups, or traditional harness around the horse's head) is unbelievably difficult to learn, particularly have testicles and value keeping them. Even professional riders and equestrians find ourselves relying on tack (the stuff you put on a horse to ride it) to stay stable on our horses, even if we've been riding that particular horse for years and have a very positive, trusting relationship.
Horses sweat like people do. The more they run, the more their hair saturates with sweat and makes staying seated on them slippery. Hell, an overworked horse can sweat so heavily that the saddle slips off its back. It's also essential to brush and bathe a horse before it's ridden in order to keep it healthier, so their hair is often quite slick from either being very clean or very damp. In order to ride like that, you have to develop the ability to synchronize your entire body's rhythm's with the rhythm of the horse's body beneath you, and quite literally move as one. Without stirrups, most people can't do it, and some people can never master bareback riding no matter how many years they spend trying to learn.
-You can be distracted and make casual conversation while a horse is standing untethered in the middle of a barn or field.
At every barn I've ever worked at, it's been standard practice with every single horse, regardless of age or temperament, to secure their heads while they're being tacked up or tacked down. The secures for doing this are simple ropes with clips that are designed to attach to the horse's halter (the headwear for a horse that isn't being ridden; they have no bit that goes in the horse's mouth, and no reins for a rider to hold) on metal O rings on either side of the horse's head. This is not distressing to the horse, because we give them plenty of slack to turn their heads and look around comfortably.
The problem with trying to tack up an unrestrained horse while chatting with fellow stable hands or riders is that horses know when you're distracted! And they often try to get away with stuff when they know you're not looking! In a barn, a horse often knows where the food is stored, and will often try to tiptoe off to sneak into the feed room.
Horses that get into the feed room are often at a high risk of dying. While extremely intelligent, they don't have the ability to throw up, and they don't have the ability to tell that their stomach is full and should stop eating. Allowing a horse into a feed/grain room WILL allow it to eat itself to death.
Other common woes stable hands and riders deal with when trying to handle a horse with an unrestrained head is getting bitten! Horses express affection between members of their own herd, and those they consider friends and family, through nibbling and surprisingly rough biting. It's not called "horseplay" for nothing, because during my years working with horses out in the pasture, it wasn't uncommon at all for me to find individuals with bloody bite marks on their withers (that high part on the middle of the back of their shoulders most people instinctively reach for when they try to get up), and on their backsides. I've been love-bitten by horses before, and while flattering, they hurt like hell on fleshy human skin.
So, for the safety of the horse, and everybody else, always make a show of somehow controlling the animal's head when hands-on and on the ground with them.
-Big Horse = War Horse
Startlingly, the opposite is usually the case! Draft and carriage horses, like Percherons and Friesians, were never meant to be used in warfare. Draft horses are usually bred to be extremely even-tempered, hard to spook, and trustworthy around small children and animals. Historically, they're the tractors of the farm if you could afford to upgrade from oxen, and were never built to be fast or agile in a battlefield situation.
More importantly, just because a horse is imposing and huge doesn't make it a good candidate for carrying heavy weights. A real thing that I had to be part of enforcing when I worked at a teaching ranch was a weight limit. Yeah, it felt shitty to tell people they couldn't ride because we didn't have any horses strong enough to carry them due to their weight, but it's a matter of the animal's safety. A big/tall/chonky horse is more likely to be built to pull heavy loads, but not carry them flat on their spines. Horses' muscular power is predominantly in their ability to run and pull things, and too heavy a rider can literally break a horse's spine and force us to euthanize it.
Some of the best war horses out there are from the "hot blood" family. Hot blooded horses are often from dry, hot, arid climates, are very small and slight (such as Arabian horses), and are notoriously fickle and flighty. They're also a lot more likely to paw/bite/kick when spooked, and have even sometimes been historically trained to fight alongside their rider if their rider is dismounted in combat; kicking and rearing to keep other soldiers at a distance.
-Any horse can be ridden if it likes you enough.
Just like it can take a lifetime to learn to ride easily, it can take a lifetime of training for a horse to comfortably take to being ridden or taking part in a job, like pulling a carriage. Much like service animals, horses are typically trained from extremely young ages to be reared into the job that's given to them, and an adult horse with no experience carrying a rider is going to be just as scared as a rider who's never actually ridden a horse.
Just as well, the process of tacking up a horse isn't always the most comfortable experience for the horse. To keep the saddle centered on the horse's back when moving at rough or fast paces, it's essential to tighten the belly strap (cinch) of the saddle as tightly as possible around the horse's belly. For the horse, it's like wearing a tight corset, chafes, and even leaves indents in their skin afterward that they love having rinsed with water and scratched. Some horses will learn to inflate their bellies while you're tightening the cinch so you can't get it as tight as it needs to be, and then exhale when they think you're done tightening it.
When you're working with a horse wearing a bridle, especially one with a bit, it can be a shocking sensory experience to a horse that's never used a bit before. While they lack a set of teeth naturally, so the bit doesn't actually hurt them, imagine having a metal rod shoved in your mouth horizontally! Unless you understand why it's important for the person you care about not dying, you'd be pretty pissed about having to keep it in there!
-Horseback riding isn't exercise.
If you're not using every muscle in your body to ride with, you're not doing it right.
Riding requires every ounce of muscle control you have in your entire body - although this doesn't mean it wasn't realistic for people with fat bodies to stay their weight while also being avid riders; it doesn't mean the muscles aren't there. To stay on the horse, you need to learn how it feels when it moves at different gaits (walk, trot, canter, gallop), how to instruct it to switch leads (dominant legs; essential for precise turning and ease of communication between you and the horse), and not falling off. While good riders look like they're barely moving at all, that's only because they're good riders. They know how to move so seamlessly with the horse, feeling their movements like their own, that they can compensate with their legs and waists to not bounce out of the saddle altogether or slide off to one side. I guarantee if you ride a horse longer than 30 minutes for the first time, your legs alone will barely work and feel like rubber.
-Horses aren't affectionate.
Horses are extraordinarily affectionate toward the right people. As prey animals, they're usually wary of people they don't know, or have only recently met. They also - again, like service animals - have a "work mode" and a "casual mode" depending upon what they're doing at the time. Horses will give kisses like puppies, wiggle their upper lips on your hair/arms to groom you, lean into neck-hugs, and even cuddle in their pasture or stall if it's time to nap and you join them by leaning against their sides. If they see you coming up from afar and are excited to see you, they'll whinny and squeal while galloping to meet you at the gate. They'll deliberately swat you with their tails to tease you, and will often follow you around the pasture if they're allowed to regardless of what you're up to.
-Riding crops are cruel.
Only cruel people use riding crops to hurt their horses. Spurs? I personally object to, because any horse that knows you well doesn't need something sharp jabbing them in the side for emphasis when you're trying to tell them where you want them to go. Crops? Are genuinely harmless tools used for signalling a horse.
I mean, think about it. Why would crops be inherently cruel instruments if you need to trust a horse not to be afraid of you and throw you off when you're riding it?
Crops are best used just to lightly tap on the left or right flank of the horse, and aren't universally used with all forms of riding. You'll mainly see crops used with English riding, and they're just tools for communicating with the horse without needing to speak.
-There's only one way to ride a horse.
Not. At. All. At most teaching ranches, you'll get two options: Western, or English, because they tend to be the most popular for shows and also the most common to find equipment for. English riding uses a thinner, smaller saddle, narrower stirrups, and much thinner bridles. I, personally, didn't like English style riding because I never felt very stable in such a thin saddle with such small stirrups, and didn't start learning until my mid teens. English style riding tends to focus more on your posture and deportment in the saddle, and your ability to show off your stability and apparent immovability on the horse. It was generally just a bit too stiff and formal for me.
Western style riding utilizes heavier bridles, bigger saddles (with the iconic horn on the front), and broader stirrups. Like its name may suggest, Western riding is more about figuring out how to be steady in the saddle while going fast and being mobile with your upper body. Western style riding is generally the style preferred for working-type shows, such as horseback archery, gunning, barrel racing, and even rodeo riding.
-Wealthy horse owners have no relationship with their horses.
This is loosely untrue, but I've seen cases where it is. Basically, horses need to feel like they're working for someone that matters to them in order to behave well with a rider and not get impatient or bored. While it's common for people to board horses at off-property ranches (boarding ranches) for cost and space purposes, it's been historically the truth that having help is usually necessary with horses at some point. What matters is who spends the most time with the animal treating it like a living being, rather than a mode of transport or a tool. There's no harm in stable hands handling the daily upkeep; hay bales and water buckets are heavy, and we're there to profit off the labor you don't want or have the time to do. You get up early to go to work; we get up early to look after your horses. Good owners/boarders visit often and spend as much of their spare time as they can with spending quality work and playtime with their horses. Otherwise, the horses look to the stable hands for emotional support and care.
So, maybe you're writing a knight that doesn't really care much for looking after his horse, but his squire is really dedicated to keeping up with it? There's a better chance of the horse having a more affectionate relationship with the squire thanks to the time the squire spends on looking after it, while the horse is more likely to tolerate the knight that owns it as being a source of discipline if it misbehaves. That doesn't mean the knight is its favorite person. When it comes to horses, their love must be earned, and you can only earn it by spending time with them hands-on.
-Horses can graze anywhere without concern.
This is a mistake that results in a lot of premature deaths! A big part of the cost of owning a horse - even before you buy one - is having the property that will be its pasture assessed for poisonous plants, and having those plants removed from being within the animal's reach. This is an essential part of farm upkeep every year, because horses really can't tell what's toxic and what isn't. One of the reasons it's essential to secure a horse when you aren't riding it is to ensure it only has a very limited range to graze on, and it's your responsibility as the owner/rider to know how to identify dangerous plants and keep your horses away from them.
There's probably more. AMA in my askbox if you have any questions, but that's all for now. Happy writing.
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