#lots of obscenities

[fandomfluffandfuck]

(Ignore the fact that this is a screenshot of this ask, lmao, I posted this before I was ready on accident (my app updated and I pressed post rather than safe as a draft because the buttons moved and I'm dumb like that, lol) and didn't have time right then to write what I wanted to for this so I just screen-shotted, then deleted the original post. It's fine, haha. It's here now.)

This reminded me of a fic I wrote a while ago! It's not big dick Steve and it's not mocking in a fun way (in the past, instead, people have been cruel about such a big dick), but... it's big dick Bucky who gets lightheaded when he gets a hard one with size queen Steve praising him and making him feel like no one else, so I just think it's something you might enjoy as well:

"Strangers Who Fit Together More Like Soulmates"

Now, though, YES, we can talk about big dick Steve who gets light-headed and thoughtless whenever he's hard:

If Bucky were feeling confessional, he would describe the way he feels like this--luxuriously pressing his chest up against Steve's broad back and gluing his hips to bubble butt--and, oh, boy, is it a lot of feeling. He can feel the slow, thick rush of his blood through his body, turning the heat up to a feverish, summer level--the kind of summer night that you spend sweating, lying back on your bed over top of your sheets. After all, it's that humid and sticky. So hot that you're thinking about how bad it would really be if some monster came up and snagged your uncovered ankle because... it can't fucking be as bad as this heat. He's fucking hot.

Sweating.

Bucky can feel that, too, his sweat pooling on his skin underneath his clothes. Steve has to be sweating, too. They're going to have to peel apart...eventually. But more pressingly than the heat and sweat and flush afflicting him, he can feel the strain and twinge in his wrist. His muscles ache as he grips and strokes, jacking Steve off while he pretends to be able to wash the dishes. And Bucky hasn't even been at this teasing torture for long!

You'd think after so many months of getting so, so intimately aquatinted with Steve's monster cock, that his body would be used to it. But his body isn't--it still doesn't know what's hit it because he's colliding, regularly, with a fucking semi-truck. Bucky doesn't stand a chance.

With another handful of fast, sloppy strokes that tease more than feel satisfying, Steve sways forward into the counter with a low, aching noise. It's like a tree threatening to fall, Bucky swears it. His big, big body and matching cock. Bucky could climb him like a tree if not for how unsteady Steve gets whenever he's turned on.

The way he twitches and weakens leaves Bucky's arm pinned between Steve's body and the counter, one of the sharp points of Steve's hips and the equally sharp edge of the countertop dig into Bucky. He doesn't care. He's ignoring that ache alongside the lactic acid building up in his muscles--that acid, too, stokes the flames inside him, he burns hot--Bucky murmurs, husky into Steve's ear, "biiiiig boy, yeah, that's it." He won't stop teasing him, no matter how much his arm complains or how stuck it gets.

Instead, Bucky switches tactics, he didn't start this ambush for nothing. So, he squeezes him with his whole hand. He can't touch all of him like this, but it doesn't matter. More than a handful. Regardless, it's more than enough for Steve to be gripped and grabbed based on how he jerks forward quickly, gasping low, under his breath with a barely there huff of, "Buck-!"

Bucky pays his breathy sound no mind, replacing it in the tension-thick air between them with his own words, "I fucking love feeling you swell up in my hand," Steve moans, dropping a thankfully plastic container with a clatter, "gimme it, baby," Bucky goads him, hyping him up, giving up the pretense of just an innocent reach-around-and-cop-a-feel to an all-out fuck-session. "Gimme it. I wanna feel it." Bucky squeezes his hand around his shaft under his sweatpants. Steve's gone from soft and sweet to solid and thick so fast that Bucky's fingers no longer meet around his dick. "One day," Bucky muses, stretching onto his tip-toes to whisper right in Steve's ear, letting his lips brush his skin just a little, just enough to make him shudder, "I'm gonna shove you in me when you're half hard and I'm just gonna sit on this fat cock," Bucky squeezes unforgivingly until Steve makes a stupid guh sound, punched-out, "feeling it get bigger in me."

Steve shivers again, this time more intense. Oh, yeah, he's getting weaker.

Bucky nips at the hot shell of his ear, already turning red. How he still has enough blood in his body to blush while his cock fills up so heavy and thick will remain a mystery to Bucky.

"How's that sound, huh?" He teases.

Steve just whimpers.

Bucky had to get on his tip-toes before, but he relaxes now because Steve is falling, slowly, uncontrollably slouching down the counter. He'll end up on the floor if Bucky keeps going, getting dizzy as his blood finally decides it all has to go where Bucky wants it... in this nice, fat dick.

There's no harm in speeding the process up, making him dizzy, "you're such a slut with this huge thing, getting it up so fast, so often."

"Buck!" Steve gasps again, his muscle-bound body pressed so harshly against the restricted pressure and friction of Bucky's hand in his pants that Bucky starts to feel sharp tingles in his fingers, pins and needles that somehow make the silky hard sensation of Steve's dick in his hand sweeter.

"I can't believe you. I can't believe how slutty you are," Bucky kisses the nape of his neck lushly, then he scrapes his teeth against the top bump of his spine when Steve lets his head hang, the rest of him wilting as his dick swells. "Do you know how eager you are? You'll fucking crumble to your knees for me any time, any day, all I gotta do is get that blood flowing south and you're a goner, babyy--"

Steve inhales so shakily it sounds like he's at the end of a really good cry.

Perfect.

Bucky uses his weakness, his going limp, to his advantage, curling his other hand around his cinched waist to pull him back--giving himself more room to work. That way his hand doesn't tingle so much as he works hard to stroke all the way up and all the way down that big fucking gun he's packing in his sweats. Armed and dangerous.

Steve, with this little (not so little) head talking louder than his big head, lets him move him. Mold him. Stroke him. Jerk him off. Faster. harder.

He slouches another inch. his hands have long since stopped trying to clean their dishes, instead, wet and sudsy, he's gripping the edges of the sink for dear life.

"Should I get you a fainting couch, big guy?" The more he talks, the wider Bucky's Cheshire smile stretches. He's sure he looks feral, how could he not? The weight of his dick in his hand, more and more of Steve's whole body weight pressing back against Bucky, leaning into his chest, letting him have it all. "'Cause we sure as shit need something to catch you when you fall every time I bend over and you see my ass? You fuckin' horndog."

Steve scrambles, suddenly, to touch him. His dish-water-soaked, red-hot hands the size of dinner plates wrap themselves around both of Bucky's forearms. Bucky feels the squeeze as he jerks him slower but harder, much less teasing and more pleasuring. Steve is unsteady. Bucky is all that's holding him up and he won't be able to for long, he's fucking heavy. When his cock twitches in his grip once, twice, leaving Bucky with a mouth full of drool, he starts taking his big guy toward the living room. Walking slow and carefully--pushing really. Pushing this fucking tank toward the nearest soft place for him to crash.

"I can't fucking believe you, big boy," Bucky's mouth runs as he goes, "where do you keep this thing?" As he says it, he goes alllll the way from the base to the tip. Bucky still can't believe how long and how thick he is. He feels like it's a fucking joke. When he first saw Steve naked, he couldn't pick his jaw up off the floor. He thought, o-fucking-kay, you're a show-er then? But as he got to touch and taste and explore, running wild. And it turns out Steve's actually a grower, and then Bucky couldn't only not close his mouth but he couldn't speak. He couldn't fit the whole thing in his mouth and stuffed down his throat either.

"How do you fit it in your pants?" The questions pour out as they get into the living room, Steve stumbling worse now, dizzier. He wouldn't be able to differentiate up from down if he tried, Bucky's pretty sure. The only up and down he knows is Bucky's fist fighting to stretch around his cock, Bucky's mouth gaping to suck him down, Bucky's asshole struggling to swallow him whole. Up and down, up and down, up and down--bouncing on that unreal cock. "How do you fit it in me? I can't believe you do, every time I look at it. Jesus Christ."

For such a big guy, his voice is so cute and small, mewling, whining, and pawing at him with clumsy hands, trying to get him to do more than talk and jerk him off. He wants faster. He wants more. Slut.

"It's good you go so dumb, baby," Bucky murmurs, taking his hands off him and throwing him onto their couch instead. Tiiiimber, Bucky snickers to himself, watching him bounce on the couch. The springs squeak and Steve whimpers, writhing with the unfair treatment. Why'd you stop?, those huge puppy dog eyes, rimmed red, threatening to spill tears, ask. "'Cause if you didn't get so dumb, you'd get some big ideas of doing the work, wouldn't you?"

Steve's too out of it to nod, but it doesn't matter. Bucky doesn't need his silly little input, all he needs is that cock, that gorgeous body, and the stupid expression on his face--eyelids heavy, mouth slack, cheeks hot.

Out. of. it.

"And we can't have that!" He bites, teasing as he climbs onto Steve's prone, sprawled form, straddling his tree-trunk thighs and unceremoniously shoving his sweats down just to watch that horse cock bounce up and slap his clenching tummy. Steve's chest heaves, a wail ripped out of him and causing him to almost double over. Bucky shoves him back, "if you're thinking, you're trying to finger me open and you're just too impatient with a dick like that."

Steve makes some garbled noise, it sounds like he's drowning.

Bucky chuckles, half-amusement, half-breath, throwing his head back with it. He's enjoying himself so fucking much, his hands working that cock and his hips grinding against Steve's solid thigh. "I gotta stretch myself open for you with a dick like what you got. I, I gotta drag it out," he pauses to moan, still grinding, "'cause I'd split at the seams with dick if I didn't get nice and loose for you."

Steve bucks underneath him, nearly throwing him off. It just makes Bucky chuckle more--more moan and breath in the sound. He's so sweet and dumb. Nothing matters to him like this, blissed out, and it's so easy to get him here that it's a wonder Bucky doesn't keep him like this all the time. Yeah, that sounds good, a living, breathing, fuck-machine.

There's no lube over here, though, so unfortunately, Bucky can't start getting sloppy and loose for his human dildo. He'll just have to do the next best thing and jack him off until he cums, then, once he's pumping buckets all over himself, Bucky can scoop it up and use it, along with all his eager, slippery pre-cum to slick himself up so Steve can fill him fuller. More dick. More cum.

It won't be hard to get Steve there--

"If only that brain was as big as that big dick, hm, sweetie? Then maybe you could actually get something done rather than just letting me lead you around by the cock."

Steve whines roughly.

--yeah. No sweat. Give Bucky a challenge, c'mon.

[yrsonpurpose]

#an otp that can do both [x]

[mammoth-clangen]

Next (wouldn't you like to know, weatherboy) Previous First

Loooooong moon that i started making in August and only finished now (1st October) So long, in fact, that i have actually split this page in half since typing this bc it was Bothering Me (and wouldn't upload to comicfury, so enjoy a small bonus moon update coming shortly) I think the break was good for me bc I'm a lot happier with the characters and anatomy on this moon c: Colours in the first panel are a paintover/photobashed from a sunset I took on my phone, but I like how it turned out Lilac has a bow tie in game, but that's... that can't happen he's a 300kg+ sabercat not a domestic kitty

Snares will mess u up though! I had to do a lot of research and I did fudge some things (woven artifacts don't preserve very well) but hopefully it's clear Lilac can't get his head around to bite it without swinging+ claws are actually terrible for slicing (especially Homotherium ones which are only semi-retractable and therefore dull)

[skitskatdacat63]

okay.

[anonymouspuzzler]

it's been a minute but last night I was overcome with the urge to once again draw: Them

[some-pers0n]

I might be poking at a bear here but I kinda really dislike the "all or nothing" attitude the WoF fandom has. This character is evil the worst piece of garbage imaginable or is secretly a great character and you're just a fool for thinking otherwise. It's ridiculous at times

Like I recall the stuff with Secretkeeper a while back. Now, call me crazy, but I don't think she's some horrifically abusive and neglectful parent. She did the best that she could. Was it great? No, but she was trying to keep her daughter safe in a hostile world that she was terrified would reject or, worse, hunt her. Her leaving Moon alone for days was bad, yes, but she wanted to keep Moon free from the horrors of the volcano. She loved Moon and clearly took care of her a lot. You can't just look at a character and paint them as being a "horrible abusive POS" for something that, let's be real here, is much more forgivable and understandable than anything Coral, Scarlet, Diamond, Cobra, Jerboa, or Kestrel did

[transfucksmilfs]

I’m living with an actual gamer

[polarprude]

'i want a boyfriend to watch f1 races with me 🥺'

when someone speaks during the commentary, i yell at them to shut up

[maeamian]

I'm trying to channel it into serious action rather than blind rage, but I cannot tell you how much it pisses me off that Vance and Trump are having a go at refugees, just the evilest motherfuckers on the god damned planet.

[frittercrittern]

I am feeling entirely normal and nothing is going on at ALL in my brain about this triangle and his horrible awful dimension he is from

[the-flying-robins]

I was talking to my spouse about the "Jason Lives" what-if comic they're planning and now I can't stop thinking about it. Unfortunately *I* do not know much of anything about the Jason Robin era and the general state of everything in universe at that time. Because if you assume most of the events of Death in the Family still happen, it's only Jason living at the end that really changes, you still have to grapple with him being pretty injured in a rather similar way to Dick's final injury as Robin.

And that raises the question, how does Bruce handle it? Does he fire Jason like he fired Dick? And if he does, how does Jason handle that. So much of Dick's journey to Nightwing (post-crisis, I'm really only pulling is only possible because of the support system he has, the people he can lean on, and the places he can stay.

(We're only going to stick with Post-Crisis continuity here, I'm trying to think of it more as a what-if scenario than like a fic.)

But I don't think Jason really has that? Dick has the Titans, he stays with Clark for a bit in the immediate aftermath, who does Jason have? Dick? He's off planet at the time, and not back for a couple weeks, a couple months (ngl, I tried to find a timeline that made sense, needless to say, it's comics, I couldn't.)

Also, he's 15 at the time compared to Dick's 17. It's significantly easier for Dick with both those extra years and the support he has to move out become a solo vigilante. Jason is 15, still in high school, and while maybe not a super public figure definitely public enough questions would be raised if he just left. Granted some of that could be solved with Bruce just saying boarding school, but while Bruce isn't always the most conscious of what is acceptable for children/teens, I have to think even he wouldn't let Jason just live on his own at that age, so moving out more permanently like Dick did is off the table at least for a little bit.

It also brings up the problem of "Batman needs a Robin" and Tim's motivation to join the cause. Does Bruce go as off the rails without a Robin if Robin is at least still alive? Tim knows their identities, it's how he knew for sure it was Robin's death that caused it. Would he pester Jason about returning to Robin, or go to Dick because well it's Dick?

And would Jason even want to continue being a hero? Would he be as upset as Dick and go around Bruce to make a name for himself? What would a never killed Jason "adult" vigilante even look like?

I'd love to talk about this more, especially with someone a bit better versed in Jason!Robin, my reading project is focused more on the 90's to flashpoint atm, so I really am not familiar with him at all.

[sincerely-sofie]

Thinking about the Dark Crater confrontation in the Dugtrio Day AU... It would happen much sooner because unlike Twig, Echo would be analytical enough to see through "Cresselia" and the solution she proposes, and Darkrai would be forced to reveal his true identity as a result.

Pinna would struggle through the fire-type centric dungeon leading up to it, being a treecko who also is surprisingly weak for the point in the plot that they are, and the second they get to him Echo is garroting Darkrai on the spot for putting her friend through this.

He doesn't even get to monologue or pull the nightmare shtick. They enter the boss room and she wordlessly strangles him with all four ribbons as well as her paws while staring him in the eyes as she does it.

[timblrdrake]

I…I mean yes I encouraged chaos but not exactly what I was expecting. What else do you have cooking?

-✨

i have so much stewing you have no idea

i was asked about a batfam queerness tier list that i’ve been sitting on for all of august and lots of things i’ve written in …. a state.

[panharmonium]

Hi! I love your Naruto thoughts and meta posts with all my heart and I want to ask your thoughts on something that has been on my mind literally since I was 13: what do you think about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura? I went from being a hardcore shipper when I was a teenager, to being against any romantic relationship in Naruto after finishing the anime when I was in my early twenties. Nowadays I'm very into platonic love and depictions of friendship and I think the anime's obsession with forcing the "romantic interest" curse upon the main female character robbed us of... so much. There are a few wonderful moments in the anime where Sasuke and Sakura acknowledge each other, but because she's always "the girl with the crush", her actions are so often interpret as irrational or selfish by the fandom.

Hi @riemmetric!  It's great to talk to you again! Sorry it's taken me so long to answer this; RL has been making demands of me lately and it took me way longer to finish writing this up than I wanted it to (then again, I knew from the minute I read your original ask that my reply was going to get long, so I suppose I should have predicted a delay XD)

It's funny, my sister once asked me to choose between Sasuke or Sakura for an “unpopular opinion” meme, and I ended up doing Sasuke solely because I think the negative fandom opinions about Sakura are so unhinged and divorced from the actual text that I wouldn’t even know where to start.  People are entitled to dislike whatever characters they want, obviously, but there are some fandom takes that are, for me, so obviously rooted in bad faith viewings/readings that there’s no urge in me to discuss them.  That said, since you asked, I’m happy to go into my own thoughts on this a bit, with the disclaimer for other potential readers that I only write about fandom things for my own personal enjoyment, not as a contribution to The Discourse. If you don’t like Sakura, great!  I have no interest in changing your mind. Please consider this a sincere invitation to scroll on by and go enjoy whatever parts of the fandom appeal to you.

In general terms: I love Sasuke and Sakura’s relationship as much as I love all of the relationships in Team 7.  If we’re talking about them specifically as a romantic couple, then I probably fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, because I do like them together in a post-canon (to be clear: non-Boruto) setting, after time has passed and they’ve continued to develop individually and reconnect with each other, but I also wouldn’t exactly call myself an intense “shipper,” in the sense that I have no interest in pulling things out from the text and incorrectly citing them as evidence that Sasuke has hidden romantic feelings for her during the canon period. He cares about her in the canon period, just like he cares about Naruto and Kakashi.  That’s not up for interpretation; it’s the text.  But Sasuke during the canon time period does not demonstrate specifically romantic interest in anyone.  

[A note before people who might ship Sasuke with Someone Else emerge to rail against this statement - please just scroll past and continue enjoying fandom in whatever way is most fun for you. It is cool to ship whatever fanon thing you want; I think that’s great!  But earnestly citing any loving or emotional thing Sasuke does re: various characters in this story (yes, Sakura included) as indicative of specifically romantic love isn’t supported by the text. I know there are always going to be enormous subsets of any fandom who insist that it is, and I'm certainly not going to barge into anyone else's space to complain about that (because other people having fun together is harmless and none of my business), but I'm not obligated to indulge it on my own blog, either.]

Anyway, that said - the reason why I love Sakura and Sasuke’s relationship (from here on out I’ll use “relationship” in a general, non-romantic sense) is precisely because Sakura isn’t just “the girl with the crush.” Sakura has an arc when it comes to Sasuke, and its trajectory moves in the exact opposite direction of “irrational” or “selfish.”  She specifically goes from “the girl with the crush” to “the girl who steels herself and tries to put her personal feelings for Sasuke aside for the greater good” to “the girl who knows she can’t put her feelings aside, but who also knows full well that Sasuke doesn’t reciprocate them, and who still wants to save him regardless, because he matters to her as a person and a friend.”

[I'm putting the rest of this under a cut to save everyone's dash, and also to emphasize once again that this is a personal post on my personal blog which I wrote in response to a question from a personal acquaintance, the full content of which no one is obligated to read. I am not sending this post to random strangers and forcing them to look at it. I'm not even putting it in the character tags. I'm typing it up on my own blog and putting it under a cut. If you already know that you don't like Sakura, but you still click the link/read the post and then feel an urge to comment and complain, I am going to copy-paste this disclaimer and remind you that I specifically recommended that you scroll past and go have fun with fandom in your own way. Thanks in advance for responsibly curating your own fandom experience!]

So, from the top:

1. the girl with the crush

Sakura is, obviously, completely obsessed with Sasuke at the beginning of Part 1.  She’s also deeply clueless about him and his history (bizarre though it is, the story seems to indicate that she initially doesn’t know what happened with his family, the same way young!Obito is initially clueless about Kakashi’s father).  But what I like about Sakura and Sasuke’s Part 1 relationship is how this changes over time.

The critical scene that kicks this off happens right at the beginning of the manga, when she and Sasuke are talking by that bench - she complains about Naruto and blames his behavior on him being all alone/having no family to scold him; and even says she’s jealous that he doesn’t have parents to nag him all the time.  This obviously triggers an outburst from Sasuke, who tells her she has no idea what loneliness means and that she “makes him sick”/she’s “annoying” (importantly, the exact same thing Sakura said to Naruto in anger earlier that day), which in turn prompts Sakura to reassess herself and wonder whether she’s been making Naruto feel this terrible all the time, too:

From that point on, it’s a process of her putting little pieces together.  She still has a MAJOR crush, and she still acts like a twelve year-old, but as we approach the end of Part I, Sakura actually has a more accurate grasp on Sasuke’s current state of mind than Naruto does.  Naruto is initially excited to fight Sasuke on top of the hospital, because he feels like Sasuke’s finally acknowledging him, whereas Sakura is the one who immediately recognizes that something is wrong about this situation.  She is also the one who, after this fight, is concerned that Sasuke is really unwell and might do something drastic like run off in pursuit of the power Orochimaru promised him, but when she communicates this to Naruto, he assures her that this would NEVER happen:

(Sakura isn't convinced, though, because she goes to monitor the exit out of the village anyway.)

I’m not criticizing Naruto for his response here.  I ADORE hearing him say that Sasuke is too strong to need Orochimaru, with such perfect confidence - I love seeing how much respect and admiration he has for Sasuke underneath all their fighting, because that’s the whole reason he’s always baiting Sasuke and yelling at him and claiming “you're not so great!” He looks up to Sasuke; he wants to be like Sasuke; he thinks Sasuke is awesome! (It’s that Obito @ Kakashi behavior, you know?) But the fact remains that he is clueless about what’s actually going on with Sasuke in Part 1, and he remains clueless(ly optimistic) for a long time.  

(Eg, when he catches up to Sasuke during the retrieval arc and Sasuke climbs out of that cursed seal coffin, Naruto waves at him and calls "Come on, let's go!" as if Sasuke has been successfully rescued and is now going to come running home.  Even in Part II, when Naruto hears that Sasuke killed Orochimaru, he beams and immediately says, “So he must be on his way back to the Leaf Village!”  And everyone else in the room is like, “....,” because they know better.  Naruto doesn’t yet fully understand [or doesn't want to accept] the extent to which Sasuke has willingly chosen this path, and it’s not until after Jiraiya’s death/the Pain attack/the Five Kage Summit that Naruto really starts to understand Sasuke more clearly, which is something he himself admits.)

Sakura, in Part 1, has access to more information about Sasuke - she’s there for his first dissociative monologue during the bells test, she’s there for the curse mark’s placement, she’s there for his first violent transformation in the Forest of Death - she is, in fact, the unwitting catalyst for it (“Sakura…who did this to you?”), and her compassion is the reason Sasuke is later able to overcome the curse mark’s influence - so she has a more accurate/complete picture of “how he’s doing,” for lack of a better phrase, whereas Naruto, who doesn’t know about the curse mark in the first place, is still in the dark.  This means that Sakura is able to accurately discern that Sasuke is struggling more than Naruto realizes, and specifically to predict that he’s going to run away.  

(This dynamic is then interestingly flipped in the back half of Part II, since at any point after the Five Kage Summit, Sakura doesn’t have access to extremely relevant [if currently questionable and unproven] details that would in any other circumstance inform her behavior).

Of course, just because she has more info in Part 1 doesn’t mean she has some kind of miraculous insight into Sasuke’s every thought and feeling.  There are parts of her attempt to convince Sasuke to stay in the village that are as clueless as any of Naruto’s assumptions, and they showcase the kind of magical thinking common to childhood - like when she says that if he stayed with her, she could give him happiness, she’d do anything for him, even help him get his revenge - this idea that she herself can do something to make him feel better, that she can love him powerfully enough to defeat his pain - obviously none of that is rooted in realism.

Is this part of her approach irrational and immature and inadvertently self-centered?  Of course it is!  But it’s no more irrational and immature and inadvertently self-centered than Naruto’s stated plan to drag Sasuke back to the village even if he has to “break every bone in [his] body!” 

Hating on Sakura for her Part 1 attempt to convince Sasuke to stay in the village while simultaneously lauding Naruto for his feels like a bad faith misread of what is, to me, pretty clear narrative intention.  The story doesn’t at any point intend for us to see her begging him to stay as a selfish or conniving attempt to get something she wants.  She’s begging him to stay for the same underlying reason that Naruto is: she cares about him.  She thinks he’s making a mistake that will only cause him more pain in the end (she’s right) and she wants to make it so he feels less pain right now (she can’t.  But she doesn’t understand that/isn’t able to admit that, and she’s willing to try ANYTHING that might help).  

It’s critical that this farewell scene is set in front of that same bench from their first important confrontation - she references that day and how angry he got at her, and this time she tells him that she understands his reaction.  She’s learned things and she recognizes how insensitive she was being back then (“I know what happened to your clan, Sasuke”), even though she still can’t fully grasp all the complexities of the situation. She tells him that him blowing up at her back then helped her understand what loneliness actually meant (as opposed to her previous shallow understanding of it), and she challenges him about his choice right now: "So that's it, you're choosing the lonely path?" And when she tells him that she'll be very lonely if he leaves, we're immediately shown a panel of Sasuke thinking of both his friends, with the very clear implication that if he goes through with this, he will be lonely without them, too - that he's still struggling with the idea of leaving them, no matter how hard he tries to pretend:

Sakura at this point knows that Sasuke isn’t interested in her the way she is in him, but she still wants to give him happiness, however fantastical and immature her ideas sound to us (and, I’m sure, to him).  “I’ll do anything, even help you get your revenge/we'll have fun every day, and...and you'll be happy! I'll make sure of it!” - of course, it’s completely childish.  It’s irrational.  It’s ridiculous to think that any of this would ever be effective, but no more ridiculous than Naruto’s belief that he can simply break every bone in Sasuke’s body and keep him in the Leaf by force.

Both Naruto and Sakura are children who have a deeply oversimplified understanding of Sasuke’s situation.  They both still think they can fix him themselves.  They both think they can save him themselves.  They both think they can convince (or force) him to do what they want, what they think is in his best interests.  Both of them don’t yet understand that he has to want to come back, if it’s ever going to mean anything.  Their attempts to keep him in the village are immature and unrealistic, yes.  What they aren’t, however, is selfish, because neither Sakura nor Naruto are doing any of this with the intention of advancing their own interests.  They’re only thinking about Sasuke - how to keep Sasuke safe, how to make Sasuke happy - even when neither of them are taking an approach that will actually work.

Naruto and Sakura are children.  They’re afraid of losing somebody they care about.  Their attempts to prevent that from happening are desperate and messy and ultimately ineffective, but they are also genuinely felt and rooted in a true desire to rescue Sasuke from his pain, which - and this is the single most important thing that should impact our viewing of Part 1 - is something that Sasuke RECOGNIZES.  He doesn’t spend that agonizingly long moment bowed over Naruto’s defeated body so we can pretend he doesn’t understand that Naruto was just trying to help him.  He doesn’t take the time to murmur, “Sakura…thank you,” before laying her out carefully on a bench, just so we can discount it and pretend that he doesn’t recognize and appreciate her genuine intention to make things better for him, however clumsy that attempt might have been.

2. the greater good

If Stage 1 Sakura is "the girl with the crush," then Stage 2 Sakura is a progression to “the girl who decides to put her feelings for Sasuke aside in order to protect innocent people, including (but certainly not limited to) Naruto.”  She’s driven to this decision by interactions with Shikamaru, who all too recently had to grow up fast himself (“We're not kids anymore...we can't allow a war to break out between the Hidden Leaf and the Hidden Cloud because of Sasuke") and Sai, who risks his new friendship with Sakura and Team 7 in order to speak some hard truths and deliver one of my favorite lines in the whole story: “I don’t know what promise Naruto made to you, but it’s really no different than what was done to me.  It’s like a curse mark.”

(INCREDIBLE.  How can anybody be complaining about a season where Sai gets to say something that goes THIS HARD and Sakura LISTENS and takes DRAMATIC ACTION that actually propels the story forward in a meaningful way - )

[Okay, yeah, brief personal opinion interlude - it is just bonkers wild to me that there are people who complain about Sakura in the Five Kage Summit arc. That entire season is the greatest character arc she ever has.  Literally she has never been more interesting and dynamic than in Season 10; it’s the first time she ever gets to be as deep and fascinating as the boys; what is everybody so worked up about?  Oh, “she lied to Naruto that one time” - Sasuke joined infant-kidnapping baby-murdering human experimentation machine Orochimaru when he was twelve years old in order to (dare I say it????) selfishly pursue his personal goals and yet, somehow, we are still able to root for him.  He abandoned his friends/allies to imprisonment and death (Suigetsu and Jūgo) or outright stabbed them in the chest himself (Karin) in order to (SELFISHLY) get what he wanted, and yet, somehow, we are still able to love him, understand him, and be on his side.  Naruto is canonically not upset with Sakura about her lie after receiving context for the situation and I think we can probably take our cues from him without feeling the need to bring her up on war crimes; please calm down]

[Sorry, I just really love most of Season 10 and think it’s one of the best examples of how good this story can be when every single character gets to do something that matters (as opposed to things being all Naruto, all the time) so I get a little bit worked up over people complaining about some of the best writing Sakura ever gets.  I don’t understand what certain elements of fandom want from her. People complain about her being “useless” and not doing anything that contributes to the story, but then they complain just as much when she does finally get to act decisively and have just as complex/dynamic an inner world as the boys.  She’s “weak” for being unreasonably in love with Sasuke, but when she tries to be “strong” and put her love for him aside and eliminate him in order to protect Naruto and the rest of the world, she’s evil, because she should have been more understanding of his situation (despite the fact that she doesn’t KNOW anything about his situation).  But then when she can’t go through with killing him after all because she cares about him too much despite the things he’s done, she’s not "compassionate" or "kind" or "a good friend," she’s “weak” again. Nothing Sakura does in S10 is more wrongheaded or rash than any of the batshit, buckwild things Naruto and Sasuke have done in the past (and will continue to do in the future), but when Naruto and Sasuke have big feelings or take bold action, it makes them interesting characters, whereas Sakura can’t breathe in anyone’s direction without being minutely scrutinized for moral impurities.]  

Anyway. Back to a more measured response.  

Every single piece of development Sakura has with regard to Sasuke in this season satisfies me so much.  Her initial shock and disbelief at hearing that Sasuke had joined the Akatsuki?  Good, appropriate.  The fact that she starts to acknowledge the reality of what Sasuke’s done sooner than Naruto does?  Also extremely appropriate, very in-character for both of them.  Her taking Sai’s words to heart and deciding that the promise she asked Naruto to make when they were children is causing him to suffer and she has to relieve him of that burden?  Juicy!  AND thematically significant (promises!!!!  the burden that a promise places on a person, especially when it can't be kept - we've seen that before in this story and we'll see it again).  Her anguished pivot from wanting to protect Sasuke to realizing that she has a responsibility to protect the countless innocents who will die because of the war he’s trying to start?  HELLO THIS IS INCREDIBLE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.  Her knocking out the classmates who agreed to help her so they don’t have to share in her burden (and so the only person Naruto will hate when it’s over is her)?  BRUH.  Her being so committed and focused on her goal of saving innocents and protecting Naruto (not just from being harmed by Sasuke/the Akatsuki, but by the possibility that Naruto will someday have to hurt Sasuke himself) that she tries to take everything on by herself and walks into a confrontation that she absolutely cannot win??  INCREDIBLE.  (Literally the first time I watched this, I said, “Finally!!!  It’s Sakura’s turn to go off the rails!”  I laughed with my sister about how Kakashi isn’t even mad, because Naruto and Sasuke have been pulling stunts like this for years and Sakura was way overdue for her own meltdown.)  And then, after Kakashi intervenes in the fight - Sakura barreling back into the battle when she realizes he’s going to take on the burden of killing Sasuke himself in order to spare her and Naruto the horror - “I can’t let Kakashi-sensei bear this burden!”  I love her for that.  

And then, of course, in the end - her not being able to do hurt Sasuke after all.  Despite committing herself to the act, despite forcing herself to put her feelings for him aside, despite resolving to stop him from starting a war and killing innocent people, she can’t harm him.  She cares about him too much.  This, too, is thematically significant - think about Itachi’s “you don’t have enough hatred” - she doesn’t have enough hatred to kill someone she cares about, even if it seems like he deserves it, even if would be the right thing to do to protect others.  She can’t do it, and Sasuke almost kills her for her compassion.  

I love the dynamic this sets up between her and Sasuke, for a few reasons:

1) Personally, I think Sasuke respects Sakura much more for trying to kill him than he would have if she’d just tried to talk him out of his behavior or beg him to come home (a la their original confrontation in Part 1).  This is the first significant interaction he’s had with Sakura in years, and the fact that she does something SO contrary to his memory of her is an important demonstration of the fact that she’s not the same girl she used to be.  Sasuke spends a lot of time after his defection declaring to his old team “I’ve changed; I’m not that person anymore,” but this is one of the moments where he’s forced to acknowledge that his teammates have changed, too.  Time didn’t just stop for them when he left.  While he was turning into someone new, so were they.  They grew up without him, and his old memories of them can’t encompass the whole picture of who they are now.  

(This is a little tangential, but in general, I love the spectrum of reactions that Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi have in this sequence, and the way that all of them are ultimately messages Sasuke needs to hear.  Sasuke - who we know textually regrets what he did here, who apologizes to Sakura for it later - for “everything,” in fact - needs Naruto’s aggressively optimistic open-arms policy, yes, needs that potential, that unconditional possibility of return.  He also needs Sakura’s refusal to let him hurt her friends and start a war that will kill thousands of people, needs her surprisingly ruthless attempt to take him down; needs just as much her failure to do so, because it shows him that she still loves him too much to kill him even as she condemns him.  And he needs Kakashi’s grim line in the sand, needs someone who very possibly won't hesitate like Sakura (despite the horrifying personal cost), someone who will try to reach him but also won't let him escape and become the next generation’s Orochimaru, who won't let him cause untold suffering to untold numbers of people just because a teacher loved him too much to stop him when he had the chance. 

(And then even Kakashi chooses not to deliver a killing blow when he has the opportunity -)

(I know that in fandom people are more likely to be all, “oh, Naruto Good, everybody else Bad,” but I don’t think the narrative frames Sakura or Kakashi as “worse” than Naruto in any way.  The story goes out of its way to make it clear how desperately they don’t want to hurt Sasuke and how much they care about him.  And [this is just my interpretation, so obviously I won’t claim it as fact], I personally think that Sasuke - Sasuke, who, looking back, can see how lost he was then and how tortured he would have been if he’d gone through with many of his plans - would be grateful to Sakura and Kakashi for making an attempt to stop him when he couldn’t stop himself.)

2) On the other side of this, the fact that Sakura wasn’t able to deliver the killing blow means a lot. Sasuke was incapacitated under that bridge; he was completely at her mercy - but she stopped with the kunai an inch from his back.  She couldn’t kill him, even though she knew that he was completely willing to kill her (because he'd attempted to Chidori-assassinate her from behind just a few minutes ago).  That’s huge!  Sasuke is too out of his head right now to process this or understand it, but later, it's going to matter.  She stayed her hand.  She spared his life.  She loved him too much to hurt him, even when he’d given her every reason to take him down.  She hesitated, and he almost killed her for it, but her inability to strike him ultimately gave him yet another chance to come home, another chance to get better, another chance to have a life outside of his pain.  Despite everything, some part of her still hadn’t really given up on him, and that knowledge will matter later, when he’s finally able to acknowledge it.  

The point of all this is to say that I really have no complaints about Sakura and Sasuke’s dynamic in their S10 confrontation.  This season is the point where Sakura fully grows past her “girl with a crush” stage and into her “shinobi must make very harsh decisions” adulthood, but it never means that she doesn’t care about the person she’s trying to take down.  Her ultimate inability to deliver the killing blow remains a dangling lifeline for her relationship with Sasuke, an open door that Sasuke is able to walk through at the end of the story (literally, in fact, when Sakura opens that portal for him and saves him from Kaguya’s desert prison, and figuratively, too, when Sasuke apologizes to her).

3. she only wants to save you

The last stage in their relationship is what Sakura settles into during the war arc.  She started off Part 1 being just a girl with a crush, then tried to harden her heart and put her feelings for Sasuke aside in service of the greater good, but she was unable to actually follow through and kill him, and because of that, what she’s come to accept by the war arc is actually two things: that 1) Sasuke truly is willing to let her die if it furthers his goals, and 2) she wants to save him anyway.  

She has no intention of pursuing Sasuke romantically.  She knows full well that Sasuke isn’t interested in her.  She even knows that Sasuke isn’t really on their side (there’s a great scene where Sai questions Sakura about Sasuke’s return, and she reassures him that everything is fine, and Sai sadly thinks to himself “even I can tell your smile is fake”).  She’s well-aware that Sasuke didn’t try to help her when Madara stabbed her.  She’s well-aware that he left her to die in the lava pit.  She’s also well-aware that none of this is enough to make her stop loving him.  He doesn’t have to care about her - she still cares about him.  She still wants to help him.  She still wants to save him.

This is not hidden, hard-to-parse character development.  It’s explicitly articulated on the page:

Sakura’s not trying or wanting to make you hers!  She only wants to save you.

I’m not sure if people look at this last confrontation and unquestioningly take Sasuke at his word (as if we haven’t just read 71 volumes/watched 700 episodes showing us how how painfully distorted his thinking is), or if they stop reading/watching before the end of the scene, or if they don’t understand that Sasuke saying something doesn’t make that statement an accurate representation of reality.  The entire point of this scene is to show us how deeply mistaken Sasuke is about Sakura (and, by extension, the rest of Team 7).  He’s locked into a false pattern of thinking.  His single-minded focus on revenge and destruction has blinded him to the unconditional love his friends feel for him; he’s become so accustomed to using others and being used that he can’t understand or accept that someone would care about him without needing a reason, without needing him to love them back, without needing to receive something from him in exchange.

Sakura’s not trying or wanting to make you hers!  She only wants to save you.

Sasuke matters to Sakura as more than a love interest.  He always has.  She does love him romantically, yes, but she doesn’t only love him romantically, and her desire to help him is not and has never been contingent on him returning her feelings, romantically or otherwise.  Sasuke isn’t able to acknowledge that in this scene, but that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to just sit back and agree with his warped perspective.  Kakashi is the one who’s explicitly positioned as the voice of the narrative here.  We, as the audience, are supposed to recognize that Kakashi is the one telling us the truth.

[tangential thing 1: You don’t have to love Sakura's last plea to Sasuke here. It’s not my favorite, either - the best part, other than Kakashi’s speech at the end, is the moment after Kakashi collapses when Sakura’s expression changes from pained uncertainty to pure rage, when she grits her teeth together - when I first saw that, I almost leapt out of my seat like “Oh my god.  She’s finally going to let him have it.  It’s finally happening - ”  I wanted that so badly, and I still think it would have been a more effective writing choice for Sakura’s last words to lean more into her anger at the suffering Sasuke is causing all of them (himself included!) and less into yet another of Kishimoto’s “let me have Sakura articulate what a shame it is that she can’t do as much as Naruto despite the fact that I literally just went through a major reveal sequence in the war to show that she’s caught up to the boys; I can’t make up my mind about whether I want her to progress or not” - it’s extremely frustrating (and it's something he does at the very end of the S10 Team 7 reunion, too, which is the ONLY moment of S10 that falls flat for me).  But at the same time, even if there are ways this sequence could be more satisfying, it doesn’t change the fact that her plea to him is not remotely motivated by a desire to be with him romantically and not anything to condemn her for.]

[tangential thing 2: I do like how she remembers that moment when Sasuke says “Thank you.”  That panel precedes her saying “If there’s even a tiny corner of your heart that thinks about me…” (which I’m sure is one of the things that people like to criticize about this scene, aka “oh she’s sooooo self-centered” etc), but that particular line of dialogue is preceded by that particular flashback panel for a reason: Sakura knows that Sasuke DOES think about her.  He thinks about all of them.  Sakura remembers that “thank you,” and it reminds her that despite everything Sasuke has done and said since, despite all evidence to the contrary, she knows in her bones that his expression of gratitude back then was genuine.  He cared about her once.  He cared about all of them.  She’s trying to reach the part of him that still does, if it exists.]

[tangential thing 3: The fact that Kakashi says “she suffers from loving you,” and it triggers Sasuke to remember his own family - thinking about how much he suffered (and still suffers) from loving them - “Perhaps…those are the ties to a failed past” - the idea that it’s not worth it to have bonds if it means you suffer this much…that it’s too difficult, it’s too painful, and if Sakura and the rest of Team 7 were smarter they would just give it up (all Sasuke knows how to do now is sever potential bonds before they can hurt him; so why aren’t Sakura and the rest of his teammates doing that, why can’t they let it go, why are they making this so hard - ) << yeah, he clearly doesn't care about her/them at all.]

4. the shadow of my family

This has all been a really long way to answer the original question, but the short response to “What do you think about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura?” is “I really care about it,” just like I really care about the relationship between Sasuke and Naruto, just like I really care about the relationship between Sasuke and Kakashi. And I don’t think the story ever asks me to choose between them.

I’m not sure whether it’s the impact of Boruto-era “canon” that gets in the way of other people approaching things this way (I don’t consider sequel material when I evaluate the original story), or if it’s Kishimoto’s frequent disinterest in/disrespect towards female characters, which yes, does sometimes make it harder, or if it's a shipping thing (bane of my existence), or some combination of factors, but for me, taking one member of Team 7 out of the equation hobbles the rest of the story.  I can’t read/watch Naruto while hating one of the protagonists and loving the other three.  It doesn’t work like that for me.  The story wasn’t written that way, and there’s nothing in the text that would cause me to receive it that way.

That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with disliking one of the main foursome (or any character, for that matter) - obviously we're all going to have different preferences, and everyone is free to enjoy or reject whatever parts of a story they want, or to like or dislike whatever characters they want. I know that some people have more fun disregarding canon and doing their own thing, which is fine.  My own personal zone of enjoyment comes from receiving the story as closely to how I think it was intended to be read as I can, and personally, when I look at this particular story, what I see is that all the members of Team 7 clearly demonstrate their love for Sasuke in ways that he himself later recognizes and acknowledges. All of them are driven by their desire to save him and their unwillingness to hurt him. All of them make repeated choices to chase after him when he runs away, to trust him when he hasn't exactly earned it, to give him another chance when he doesn't appear to deserve it. ALL of them, not just Naruto, do these things multiple times throughout the story, and Sasuke owes his life (and thus his eventual recovery) to ALL of them, many times over. Kakashi disobeys Hokage-elect Danzō and breaks the law to negotiate for Sasuke's life with a foreign head of state. Sakura and Kakashi both have opportunities to kill Sasuke in the Land of Iron, and they choose to spare him instead. Kakashi stops Sasuke from killing his only friends at two different points in the story, which would have been a mistake Sasuke couldn't have recovered from. Sasuke would have died in Kaguya's desert dimension if Sakura hadn't saved him (Sakura, who knew that Sasuke wasn't even truly on her side yet, who knew he'd abandoned her for dead multiple times already that day). Kaguya's bone bullet would have killed Sasuke too, if Kakashi, with his intention to die in Sasuke's place, hadn't leapt in front of it (Kakashi, who also knew that Sasuke wasn't fully on their side yet, who also knew that Sasuke had abandoned him for dead earlier that day). Sasuke and Naruto would have BOTH died in the Final Valley if Sakura and a severely injured Kakashi hadn't chased after them to heal their injuries.

Remove any one member of Team 7, and Sasuke never makes it home. Without the combined efforts of all three of his teammates, he doesn't survive.  That’s the way it should be, thematically, for a story whose first and most foundational premise was the importance of teamwork, and since Sakura was just as essential to that framework as everyone else, I’m just as invested in her relationship with Sasuke as I am in his relationship with everyone else.  You can’t remove one leg from a four-legged stool without damaging the integrity of the entire structure, and for me, discounting any single member of Team 7 irreparably damages the integrity of the entire story. 

TL;DR: I love all of the Team 7 relationships, including Sakura and Sasuke's, because despite what some segments of fandom seem to believe, the text of the story never gives me any reason not to.

[hekateinhell]

Just woke up and I'm thinking about this AU I've been tossing in my brain for over a year now thanks to a Maid Cafe AU prompt over @priapus-at-the-gate. This isn't really a proper maid cafe fic though, like Armand's working there but he uses it as a way to meet clients for fetish work.

I had the idea to structure it as a one-shot with five different sections, one section per client. So there's Marius on Mondays, Santino on Tuesdays, Lestat on Wednesdays, Louis on Thursdays, and Daniel on Fridays. And I wanted each guy to correspond to a couple specific kinks!

Marius: I don't know if Marius and Armand ever actually leave the cafe but Marius comes in every Monday and all he wants is a private room where he can perch Armand on his knee in that skimpy maid outfit and order the entire sweets menu and two jugs of milk and feed him like a child until his stomach is protruding and sloshing. Not sure whether or not they fuck (uncomfortably - for Armand) afterwards. Armand views this as feederism but to Marius it's caretaking, perhaps even age play--the verdict is still out.

Santino: I'm going to have to consult with the Santino girlies (gnc) on this one but I'm thinking something to with flagellation and sensory deprivation. Maybe even breath play. But I can't decide if I want Santino doing to Armand or Armand doing it to Santino.

Lestat: Lestat's the young, bratty, famous rockstar who walked into the cafe one day and without even knowing whether or not Armand was inclined to do fetish work, offered Armand an obscene amount of money to step on him and degrade him, amongst other stuff. There will also be crying and mommy kink. Maybe Lestat will cry for his mommy, idk yet.

Louis: Louis is a bit of an echo of Santino's deprivation kink but he's nowhere near as extreme. Louis prefers to edge himself and he'll never remove his clothes or let himself cum or even be touched, but he's one of two of the clients Armand would trust in his home, and Louis pays a pretty price to spend the day as a silent, passive observer in Armand's apartment. Watching him clean, see a movie, cook, shower, masturbate, and sleep. Never interacting with him or saying a word aside from a warm 'Hello' and 'Thank you, see you next week.'

Daniel: I wanna open with Daniel as being the guy who pays Armand to spend the day with him and pretend to be his boyfriend aka The Boyfriend Experience™️! They go on dates, they cuddle, they play video games, Armand meets Daniel's mom, they fuck, etc. BUT THEN at the end it's revealed that Daniel really is Armand's boyfriend. Sometimes he even fucks him in front of Louis.

[bedazzlecunt]

hot take. its shitty to make fun of people who can't / don't / won't give head, even if those people are men. not liking giving oral sex does not inherently equal being shitty inattentive partner, and the longer we pretend it does the more we run the risk of people feeling pressured to take part in sex they dislike or which makes them uncomfortable