#kindly forget genma x shizune for now and let's focus on the next mission yeah?

[justjstuff]

Shizune’s Character Study...ish

This is an answer to this comment <3 I always love a good character study

First of all, I found your observation about Shizune not being in love very clever and astute. This was exactly what I intended to show through my writing without spelling it out. Shizune left the village for what? Close to two decades? She spent more time away then in Konoha and she came back to a mountain of responsibility. Sure, she loved Genma when she was a child and some of it lingers, especially since Genma is, well, Genma. He’s a lovable hottie and a total flirt. But I don’t think she really let herself fall back in love with him. 

Now, this is a specific answer to your rb but also to a lot of reviews I got for the last chapter, so bear with me while I take this and go on a tangent xD

DoF is Sakura’s story. While we get a few sneak peaks into other characters’ PoVs, this is ultimately a story told by what she sees and understands. For over four years Sakura kinda shut down this part of her life that was “holding her back” before she became a proper ninja. She focused on her career and her training and just now she’s realising the repercussions of that. Namely, not being aware that people in her own team were together, the Genma and Shizune situation and in a way the impact she has around Konoha. So Sakura doesn’t know the whole story here and Genma x Shizune isn’t the focus of this story so while I explore some of it, it will mainly be the part of it that affects Sakura directly. People are allowed their privacy and even though Team Ro is close, that doesn’t mean that they have to know every single thing that goes on with each other.

So yeah, back to Shizune. When you said she was just waiting for him to fuck up and not telling everyone was a way for her to have a clean way out, you were absolutely right. This is the video that inspired me to write Shizune telling Kurenai about their relationship. In my head, she wanted to vent for a while but was scared of other’s reaction and then it slipped when she was drunk talking to her friend. Shizune is allowed to be cautious with her heart. Just like Sakura is. 

I think there’s a trend in media that we need to break when it comes to how we see women. A man can be a jerk and then be called deep because he was just protecting his feelings while a woman is a bitch when she’s looking out for herself. This comes from a place where we hold women in a position to always be nurturing and kind, to put others before her. Women can’t be mean, women can’t be angry, women can’t be assertive without being immediately judged by us as bitches (*cough* specially asian women, tiger women? yeah i see u *cough*). So yeah, Shizune is a bitch for not trusting Genma when he’s shown to be deeply afraid of commitment, a frankly unreliable partner with his long days away on extremely dangerous missions. 

Now, all of this I will briefly touch upon in later chapters (I think about three chapters from now? It’s already written) but you have to keep in mind the type of person Shizune is. She’s the Hospital Director and she’s aware there’s a very serious war brewing in the shadows. She works a lot and she’s always in the village dealing with all of this bullshit while Genma is a part of the most dangerous team in ANBU. She’s scared and frankly she’s tired. She wants stability and she wants something that she might not find in Genma. Y’all know I love Genma but in my eyes there’s no way Shizune can be condemned by the way she’s acting. She should be mindful that she’s hurting Genma (and she is, you just don’t get to see it bc again, not their story) but she can’t hurt herself in the process of making things comfortable for him. 

Now, there’s something that worries me about some of the comments I’m receiving. I get that a lot of people love Shizune and heavily ship Genma x Shizune but you have to take a step back and actually read the characters I’m writing. See them for what they are in this fic and kind of let go of your preconceived notions about them. Either that or stop reading the fic, lol. Anyways, some people were worried that this would drive a wedge between Sakura and Shizune and were sad because they feel like Sakura needs more female relationships and that they wished to see their closeness in a way they didn’t get to see in canon...

I get that. Y’all know that DoF was created with this heavily in my mind and it’s something very important to me, to give these characters that were done wrong some form of justice. That does not mean I’ll simply put every single female as super close friends and call it a day and yay female power. This is also a current trend I see where authors (and I mean screenwriters and the such, mostly) are heavily leaning into this woke version of feminism that just feels demeaning to me and while it’s leagues better than blatant misogyny it’s not exempt from criticism. 

My female characters have depth and they have their own personality which does mean that they’ll clash sometimes, there will be girls who don’t really get along with other girls, there will be petty grievances, there will be angry women, and sad women, and fucking deranged women. Because that’s what I want to see in mainstream media. I don’t want a simplistic version of what it means to be a women broadcasted to everyone and I will never write that even though I don’t have all of that reach. 

Oof, all of that to tie back to Shizune’s and Sakura’s relationship. In canon, I did miss seeing a strong bond between them but not in the way that some people want to see in this fic. I wanted them to be family. And you don’t always have to have a lot in common with family, or even like them, to deeply care for them and love them. DoF!Sakura left the hospital work after six months. She trained her ass to the ground and she was most often away on missions. She moved into the Senju Estate but Shizune always had her own place. DoF!Shizune is buried in hospital work, she has responsibility and most importantly, she has distance from Tsunade. She’s still seen as her former apprentice and she’s still her pseudo niece but she’s making her name outside of Tsunade’s shadow here. She’s not an assistant and she’s not always glued to Tsunade’s side, she’s the fucking Hospital Director. Sakura and Shizune drifted apart and no amount of woke let’s-scream-feminism-at-the-top-of-our-lungs can change that when they simply do not have that much in common. They grew apart and that’s okay. They still love each other. 

@hatake-sakura88 , I won’t answer everything in your comment because some things will be addressed later on and I don’t wanna spoil anything yet. Thank you for caring enough about my fic to engage and for being super polite and a sweetheart in general <3 

This post will probably be reblogged later with a more in depth character study of Shizune (both in canon and in Daughter of Fire)