#preferred way to do things honestly
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One of the earliest examples of Leo’s “I’ll do my own thing to accomplish our goal without discussing it with my team first” is in episode one. It’s super, super quick, and ultimately inconsequential, but it subtly sets up a great precedent that I think is very interesting.
When the boys need to grab the medallion from Splinter without Splinter noticing, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie huddle together with Raph taking the lead in trying to devise a plan to get the mystic device. Meanwhile, Leo slinks away and grabs the device by clocking the situation (by knowing his father well enough to predict his actions - something he does with each family member multiple times in the series) and making a move on his own.
It works out perfectly fine, and is ultimately the best move, and it’s honestly okay that he didn’t consult everyone for something so small when it’s such a non issue to get it, but it nicely sets up how this tends to go in the series, including how it goes in the movie.
To be honest episode one is actually really good at setting up a lot of things for each character in the long run, this is just one example that caught my attention, as small and unassuming as it is.
#rottmnt#rottmnt leo#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#im just ranting at this point feel free to ignore me I’m tired lol#anyway#Leo constantly just goes off and does his own thing#and yeah honestly his own thing often works??? but he alienates his brothers/team in the process#BUT also this isn’t necessarily a one way street#when Leo DOES try to consult his brothers or give his thoughts on matters he’s not really taken seriously#best example here is bug busters where he CONSTANTLY makes his worries and suspicions known only to have them ignored#so it’s almost understandable that he doesn’t often open up about his thought process when it’s easier to just do it#than to try and fail to justify it#after all it almost always works out for him when he does so why not?#and then the movie happens#and that line of thinking doesn’t quite hold up does it?#BUT ON ANOTHER NOTE#like I said episode one is super good at setting characters up#from showing off Donnie’s preference for tech vs magic/mystic#from showing Mikey’s innate talent for mysticism#from showing Raph’s anxieties and how easily they can stack up#there’s more but I’d have to do a closer deep dive on the ep and man am I tired#so off the head rambles it is for now#sorry everyone for my constant spam of Too Many Words into things that are prob Not That Deep#it’s honestly just fun haha#EDIT: bc I saw someone mention it! yeah all the boys have communication issues through the series and it’s super interesting and realistic#Leo in particular stands out to me here because his communication issues are a constant theme that pop up much more often#but each of them experiences this in some form
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after two years i finally draw the favorite
#my art#still learning honestly. idk how to explain it but some medias youre so fixated on and obsessed with u instantly want to draw everyone#for me dunmeshi has always been the opposite. series and characters i enjoy sm i cannot bring myself to pick up a pencil#for some reason. it got a lot worse once the anime started airing idk. simply forcing myself to get some of my energy out. in a way#dunmeshi#dungeon meshi#thistle#dunmeshi thistle#thistle dungeon meshi#delicious in dungeon#>_< series i was into since late 2021. yet u wouldnt know that unless u follow my side twitter account. sowwy ig#i do this with a lot of franchises honestly. cannot bring myself to draw even if i think abt the characters constantly. ie skip to loafer#u will nvr catch me calling this guy sissel sorry. save that name for Mr. Ghost Trick. another thing i. also. dnt talk abt. which i adore#i need to get better at talking abt and expressing myself for the things that i enjoy. ive been wanting to draw laios for a good#while too but im scared. for some reason. u-u should nvr let a white man do that to me honestly.#for now i'll thistle tho. maybe we will get kabru namari or mithrun next from me >_< i have to talk myself into it#i think the closest way i can explain why i cannot bring myself to draw for some series is that i dnt want to mess up somehow#like 'ilu so much [character] what if i cnt draw u the way u deserve even tho i love u sm what if its not enough.' <- leaves it to sm1 else#tbh [scratches head] i prefer the version with less coloring ^-^ but i realize the one thats more colored would get more eyes on it... hm
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Hiya! I love your writing and I'm so glad to be seeing you on my dash bc I haven't in a while! For your writing revival game, can I suggest:
"Incandescent" and either Ushijima or Osamu?
hi cheesy! 🥹 this is so nice of you to say, thank you 🥹 i've been a bit on and off here and there over the past few months because work has just been so busy 🥺 but i'm glad to be back here too!! thank you for sending in a prompt 🥹
contains: established relationship, halloween outfits, miya dynamics
osamu + incandescent
there are a lot of reasons why atsumu loves you for his brother―you bring osamu food when he barely has time to eat in the shop, and you send picture updates in the group chat you have with the two of them and ma. you also give him your extra onigiri when osamu says he's had too much.
you're there for osamu in times when he can't be, and for that, he's grateful.
this time though, he thinks he might just be indebted to you.
"people're g'na ask ya to sit on me," osamu glances at your costume before staring at the mirror again. from the dining table across the room, atsumu is holding in his laugh, doing his best to keep the water in his mouth.
tonight is onigiri miya's annual halloween party, and you've managed to somehow convince osamu to dress as a burner―red incandescent light and all.
"so i will," you smile sweetly, adjusting the foam handle of your outfit. the theme for the party is: onigiri miya, and truly, what is more essential to the shop than an electric burner and its pan?
from the side of the room, you think atsumu nearly chokes.
"it'll be cute," you step towards him, reaching for the black switch along his hip, "plus, you even light up!"
in an instant, he glows red, the spiral pattern along his chest lighting up like an electric burner heating up. atsumu snorts, erupting into a fit of laughter as he slaps his knee.
"shit," he wipes a tear while holding up his phone camera, "can't wait f'ma to see this."
osamu looks at him from the mirror, deadpan, "yeah, show'er ya shitty dye job too."
because atsumu doesn’t look any better at all, dressed as none other than osamu for halloween―black long sleeves with an apron, a pair of gloves and osamu's actual work pants. the cap on top of his head rests on temporarily dyed jet black hair, but he's done it in such a haste that his blonde roots are still showing.
you laugh, never quite getting used to their antics despite being a witness to it for years. halloween with the twins is always a memory you look back on fondly, and you don't think this year will be any different at all.
#osamu x reader#hq x reader#shotorus.workbook#hope you like this cheesy! it's a bit shorter than the others but i tried to stick to the 20 minute time limit i intended#and i love exploring the miya dynamics 🥺#incandescent was tough bc i didnt know that not all things that lit up were incandescent 😭😭😭 apparently there's a difference#from flourescent and LED etc. and so on#so i was trying to find the one thing that was incandescent and could relate to osamu#this honestly went through multiple swaps jhsbdfjs i was initially thinking of fallen angel osamu then i changed it to soulmate osamu#but finding ways on how to fit incandescent into it was a bit tough until i thought of this one !#anyway ! additional stuff: i thought atsumu dressing up as osamu would be funny esp if he still manages to fuck it up somehow HAHBAFSH#i also like the idea of a reader who just gets him to do outrageous things like this#+ i love the addition of the lights hsdbfsd i think it's so creative and so cute#i also know that most commercial food shops/restaurants would prefer gas burners/stoves but for the sake of the prompt#lets assume that osamu prefers electric ones for onigiri miya HAHAHA#there's rlly minimal cooking anyway ....#ask#rep#cheesypuffkins87#ask game answered
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When the interviewer asked when we should expect s5 to be coming out, that’s when Shawn mentioned that a little bit of an answer to that might be out there soon.
He actually mentions that this answer could be out by the time the video for this interview comes out, and since this interview was filmed mid-May and it’s now mid-June, I’m assuming we could be getting something soon or within the next couple months, potentially about a release date aka possibly a small teaser with 2025 stamped at the end…
#byler#stranger things#st5 predictions#idk I’m just praying for a vague quick 15 second teaser with 2025 at the end#idc if it’s late 2025 which is most likely#and so they’re just pulling this out of there ass to put something out there#but they have decent amount of footage already they should be able to pull from#even if that’s not what they want to do rn#they could release something vague that doesn’t even involve actors being in it and just maybe a build up of s5 vibes with 2025 at the end#I do feel like it has to be release date related even if it’s small af tho#bc we’ve gotten bts nonstop so just a mere screencap of s5 won’t be enough#it’s also worth considering that they might release s5 in very far away volumes like they did with cobra kai#not saying I want that but it’s possible#that could mean an earlier release date for those first episodes#i don’t think late 2024 is possibly honestly#but I know Maya mentioned in an interview they were like 1/3 of the way through filming s5#and this was about a month ago#so it’s possible a split could result in a serious waiting period between seasons#idk if Netflix is even willing to do that for st though#but I’m not ruling it out!#especially in the finale or even the second to last end up being longer l#we could be looking at a series finale on its own potentially taking up that vol 3 spot#but i still think late 2025 is likely for the ending regardless of how much earlier the initial part could come#also thinking about how they prefer to release the show during the season the show is set#if they can do that I feel like they will
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calling harry a “can opener” was SUCH a good play for so many reasons i think about it every day.
in the context of his work, it makes him a tool. as many people have pointed out, including martin luiga, part of the hdb tragedy is that he simply cannot leave the force, and his superiors know that and are using it to their advantage. no matter what happens, even if harry hated every nanosecond of every bit of the work and wanted to leave, he can’t and won’t leave. they can leverage anything they want against him and then reel him back in with a facade of kindness when they “allow” him to keep his job, as long as he does what they want him to. the 41st knows he has this inexplicable talent with people and they use him for it. he’s a cop: that talent can be used in so many awful ways, to push so many different agendas. and they won’t even be his own. a can opener has no particular desire to open a can, aside from maybe the satisfaction of fulfilling a purpose. a can opener has no agency, it’s just a tool for someone else to use to get what they want. and he’s learned to be okay with being used as long as it means he gets to stay. his complacency with this system makes him guilty even if he’s also being harmed by it.
but in the context of his personal life you kind of... flip it. the people around him are going to be opened up whether they want to be or not, and it’s terrible for his relationships. it’s shown that the questions, the prying- the can-opening- it’s become inextricable from who he is as a person. it’s like he doesn’t know how else to communicate, except it’s hardly communication when you’re just ripping people open. he’s invasive as all hell, although whether he means to be is debatable. he’s the kind of person that wants to take things apart to see what makes them tick. he dissects people, but really that’s too delicate of a word for what he does; if he doesn’t get what he wants right up front, he’ll abandon all subtlety and go for brute force. if he can’t get your screws loose he’ll just smash you on the ground and pick through your pieces until he’s satisfied, and if what he did to you isn’t fixable? oh well, there are other cans to open.
and he’ll use it for personal gain: we already know he is (was?) manipulative. once he knows how you operate, he knows how to make you keep him. he can yell or he can cry; he can threaten you or he can threaten himself; he can be completely suffocating or he can withdraw completely; he can be an incorrigible liar or brutally honest; he can present himself as a threat or a joke or a talent. he’s a chimera- that’s why he’s got this inexplicable magnetism, even when people know they shouldn’t like or trust him. fidelity of character means nothing to him. he’ll be whatever he needs to be as long as it gets him what he wants. the can-opening is just his way in.
#disco elysium#harry du bois#and it works on us the audience as well!#look at how many different versions of harry there are out there. each tailored to our individual preferences#we exaggerate and minimize his traits according to what we want to see. he's can-opening us too!#it's just like. of course his job will frame the can opening as a positive thing#but it's honestly one of his worst traits. or at least it is when he doesn't keep it in check#there's nothing wrong with wanting to understand people but the way he goes about it is harmful to everyone including himself#he's doing it because he has ulterior motives like 99.999998% of the time#this is mostly about pre-martinaise harry but i have no doubts that post-martinaise harry can go right back to this btw#a lot of us prefer to think of harry as drastically improving after martinaise which is great and i'd like to hope he does but.#it's also good to consider the overwhelming possibility that he will go right back to being a total shithead#and that may be completely unintentionally! which almost makes it worse!#ALSO. this is part of why kim makes a very good foil#for the most part kim will stonewall anything he doesn't feel like sharing#harry needs to respect boundaries and by god does kim have a lot of those (affectionate)#HOWEVER kim is definitely susceptible to the can opening as well#wait okay i have another post idea.#anyway thanks for reading. as always feel free to add and share thoughts!#kiwipost#hdb meta
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Broke: Damian is bad at being a Robin because he's too violent
Woke: Damian is bad at being a Robin because he's afraid to hurt people
#obviously it's always funny to do the whole 'what do u have there Damian?' 'a knife!' 'nO' thing#and like make him a horrendous and silly evil gremlin who can and will pull a sword out in the middle of a parking lot to fight#but listen#he doesn't like the assassin background that much and once he learns about like The Normal World he's honestly in anguish about it#that's canon! that's the truth! (right?) (the whole thing with Goliath?? I'm not making it up right???)#i think he's just the kind of guy who loves his swords because they're what he knows and they're a strong connection to his family#but I think it's nice if he spends his time on field telling others what to do because everyone else learned to fight the OTHER way#(by defending and subduing opponents rather than maiming and killing)#so he prefers to take on a tactician general role despite being perfectly capable as a fighter because he knows what everyone else needs#to do to succeed in fights - especially when things are a bit of a mess - but is afraid to be too rough or scary or violent or Demon Son-is#(the things that make him feel like he doesn't belong in a happy civilian world - WHICH IS WHAT HE WANTS IN MY HUMBLE OPINION.)#in this essay I will explain why this allows for him to show awe and love for each of his siblings' fight styles by utilising all of them#and I just think Dami Babs and Tim could really work together as a detective/tactician comms team (with varying distances from the field)#because I think that'd be so fun: Tim is solving (mid-range) Babs is watching/providing supports (far) and Damian is commanding (close)#because the others are like The Bruisers (in their non-lethal way) who trust themselves to only hurt as much as is needed and are good at i#PLUS babs is SO stretched thin and literally the backbone of the bats so I just want a future where some of the kids become HER robins yk#anyway back to the point of the post:#it's kind of alluded to in 2017 supersons; EVERYONE in it comments on how Robin is JUST doing flips and shouting orders#and jon is like The Muscle and the one Doing Stuff - but Jon IS following orders 85% of the time and it works out well for them because#that dynamic of 'I'm not sure I can do it right by myself and I trust you to be my partner so we can do it right together' really#is my favourite like.. they're both filling these ideas of who they're meant to be and they just :( they just seek their own path together#oh no I lost the point again immediately and it became another WHY DO THEY SEPARATE THEM rant#I just think it's really fun to think of Damian as 'the most well trained fighter but ALSO the most likely to step back from a fight'#like yeah when we add in my thoughts on pit rage it adds some angst but that doesn't matter here in THIS post#have I even talked about my hc on pit rage/madness? I don't think I have LMAO (maybe another day)#anyway it's late I'm tired why do I always chat in the tags so much#my posts are literally all in the tags 2% post 98% tags smh#damian wayne#damian al ghul#damian al ghul wayne
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Anyone else think it's weird that only like half the ghosts in bbc ghosts have spooky powers? Like okay I get it, and I know they don't need to have powers, and this isn't really a criticism, I just think it'd be... neat, y'know?
Honestly tbh it's one of the few things I almost prefer about the cbs version - I like how they expand the lore and give almost all the ghosts powers, it makes things interesting. Trevor and Julian can move things a bit, Thor and Robin can fiddle with the electricity, Mary smells like smoke, Flower gets you high, Fanny can be seen in photos, Isaac smells like dysentery, Alberta can be heard singing, Hetty's husband makes you horny, and Rebecca Wisocky has implied Hetty has a power different to the one the other ghosts thought she had (sending people to hell), so there seems to be an expectation that each ghost in the US version has a power/ability even though not all of em have been revealed yet (i.e. Sasappis, Pete, Crash, and ofc Hetty). And it's the expectation of powers that makes me think it'll be all of them having one as the show goes on. Only 3 of the core cast of 8 ghosts (not including Crash, he's even less relevant than my guy Humphrey) do not have CONFIRMED supernatural abilities. Compared to BBC Ghosts, it's definitely a bit different.
I'm reminded by what Nigel said about Isaac's power - that he still has an effect on the living world from beyond the grave. So it kinda saddens me more than anything that the other 5 ghosts don't have anything like that, yk?
I just-- wouldn't it be cool, and hear me out, if the other British ghosts could do something in that way? Like okay I think it was kingofthefrog's Ghost Swap AU (it's on ao3 and plot bunnies on tumblr) suggested that Kitty can be heard with a spirit box? That's genius. Kinda like Alberta's thing where her singing can be heard and Alexa hears her. I'm not a very creative person, but what if the other ghosts are walked through and it makes the living person feel a certain way or they have an unusual reaction? For example, Kitty walks through someone and they get the giggles and/or dance fever, or it's Thomas and they're suddenly depressed and/or romantic and/or Scottish, or it's Captain and they get butterflies in their stomach/they get all lovesick or their heart starts hammering and/or they're really anxious or get the sudden urge to listen to Kylie Minogue, or it's Humphrey and their neck hurts real bad and the Marseilleise is stuck in their head. Some of those I'm kinda joking but I just think it'd be neat, okay?
Let them have some nifty and/or stupid ghosts powers pls it would be so awesome it would be so cool etc etc
(I mean, BBC Ghosts is ofc over, so... it's not happening. In canon. 😈)
#bbc ghosts#ghost powers#cbs ghosts#btw this isnt me saying they need ghost powers to be valid or useful or anything. again i just think it'd be neat :>#i had WAY more captain power ideas than i thought i did very sorry--#listen yeah i prefer the bbc ghosts on basically every account#but the LORE EXPANSION of cbs ghosts is truly commendable and i just#[sigh] i really like how they basically all have some kinda thing they can do it's really intriguing to me#i sure would like it if my british faves had the same thing#i honestly might write this at some point it’s tickling me icl#if anyone else wants to write this though oh my goddd please oh please tag me and send it to me i will love you forever 😭
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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:
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.
#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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In preparation for the Laudna book, I'm trying to watch LoVM again.
And idk I like Vox Machina a little more as backstory?? Not a starting point??
Having the reverence for Keyleth, seeing how time and tale have aged her, it made me want to know how she grew so confident.
Vex cackling at Delilah being trapped was fantastic. But there was also such a relief in that mockery? Like she didn't have to worry about her family anymore? Like the person who ruined the love of her life was finally gone? I gotta know more.
Percy is such an asshole. But Keyleth seems to have a soft spot for him. What the fuck is up with that?
And Vax is a Liam O'Brien character. That mans got me by the throat.
Idk if I'd ever go back to watch the actual play but getting this insight into the people who hold such weight on the history, history they made together? Idk it's nice. It's fun. I like it better this way.
#silver sending stones#critical role#the legend of vox machina#campaign 1#idk im also the bitch who always seems to start book series on like 2 or 3#i do not mind spoilers in the slighest and honestly i prefer it this way#theres something about know the history of a thing first that gets me.#the first thing i watched was calamity#idk man. how many comic are there?
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2024 reads / storygraph
The Loudest Silence
YA contemporary
a newly Deaf-Hard of hearing girl moves across the country and starts a new school, struggling with navigating her disability and love for singing and lost friendships - determined to not make any new friends for the year she’s in Florida
and a boy struggling with family expectations and anxiety, after being made the fútbal captain even though he secretly ways to be on broadway, who quickly befriends her
bi & aroace-coded MCs
#The Loudest Silence#aroaessidhe 2024 reads#hm this was okay! it’s a sweet and light YA contemporary focusing on friendship and disability.#It’s a little cheesy; and I liked the immediate easy friendship (well; after a few false starts) and how welcoming Hayden's#friend group/family were. I like how they all jumped to learning/practicing ASL.#I liked how Casey was dealing with her newfound Deafness with a lot of positivity - the main frustrations being how other people treat her#but there’s also the underlying isolation and grief. At the same time it didn't go as deep as it could have with that?#The friendship is central to the story - but honestly I feel like Casey and Hayden’s relationship doesn’t develop past ‘they’re friends now#[continues other subplots] - it ends up being a bit telling not showing their friendship. And then she gets a love interest.#I feel like if you’re centering your book on being a platonic love story - rare in YA! - giving one a love interest kinda goes against#what’s supposed to be unique about it? Like it wasn’t overwhelming and I thought it was sweet actually; I just didn’t come here for that.#I always find it a little odd when YA contemporary books don’t explicitly name their aroace characters as aroace -#obviously I prefer an exploration of experiences to just using the word and nothing else; but in this genre; why not both?#considering various other identity labels are used and discussed there were various points where it felt like it was walking circles#around where it would be obvious to say “no I’m aroace” lmao?#And there’s a point where Casey mentions seeing an ace sticker on his guitar - the only reason it wasn’t an aroace sticker is bc#that would have ruined the minor subplot of her assuming he’s gay/dating his other friend. It felt like a slightly odd way to mention it?#but also I guess I appreciate it being evident throughout but also being a non-issue plot wise - while there’s a couple of moments#of people making romantic assumptions about them;for the most part it’s just treated normally for a boy & girl to be friends (as it should!#It does get points for mentioning people watching by conan grey LMAO (not that it really explores him feeling that way specifically;#but I mean same lol)#Overall plot-wise - there were kind of a lot of things going on and it petered out a bit? I wanted some more depth in some areas.#Also I feel like some of the references seemed out of date for current teens haha.#i do love the love for unusual pets (hairless cat and iguana)#aroace books#bisexual books
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I love the crocodad theory a lot but I fear that the fandom will start misgendering him or respect the character less because of transphobia.
Oda have written queer characters before who are respected by the fandom such as Bonclay but for Crocodile its another story. He is their alpha male badass character and adding queerness to his character might make them mad. Not that I care about those bigots feelings but its already not easy to navigate this fandom without queerphobia being thrown in your face.
Ppl can digest a queer character who fit in the stereotypes but once they dont, its another story.
Same, people are weird as fucking hell and gross about Crocodile maybe being trans already, we can be sure it would get worse if him being trans was confirmed in the story, there would be absolutely no avoiding it
But at the same time...
Transphobes are gonna be transphobes regardless, and I don't want that to become a reason for any storyteller to not create trans characters. I don't want Oda to bend over backwards to please the transphobes when they're the ones in the wrong. If anything, I want Oda to just go all the way with the message of queer liberation and freedom in One Piece. Like it's not perfect, but it's already there, but it's so subtle many queerphobes have been able to ignore it this whole time and I don't want Oda to let them ignore it anymore. I want him to rub it into their faces so hard they'll start complaining about "Oda going woke"
And like, let's be real. If Crocodile was trans and Oda pulled it off just right (without falling into certain pitfalls that he's be stumbling with this whole time with queer rep), that could unironically be like. Great not just trans rep but trans masc rep in particular
Like maybe it's just the media I've consumed but trans masc rep is typically very non-existant and/or very much like Yamato, who, while valid as hell, might not be how many trans masc people want to be seen as by others (as in, "confused girls")
We've known Crocodile as a character for 23 years at this point, and for the first 8-9 years of that he was very much seen as A Manly Cis Man (like you said) without a hint of a doubt (until Impel Down). If it turned out he had been trans this whole time, that would force people to rethink how they view trans people.
As just regular fucking people
That person you knew for years turned out to be trans? So what? What does that actually change about them? It's still the same person deep down. Those are the things Oda could force people to think about.
And honestly? If that helped convert even just a single transphobe, or educate someone without an opinion on trans people, to just letting trans people live their lives in peace, I think it'd be worth it
But like, yeah. The transphobes are gonna be loud regardless. It fucking sucks, and I hate the fandom for it. But, damned if you do, damned if you don't, there's no avoiding it. And I think the potential positive impact would outweight the already festering negativity.
#Moon posting#Sir Crocodile#CW Discussion of transphobia#Mind you this is assuming Oda pulled it off right#By which I mean he doesn't give Crocodile some stupid fucking excuse to why he transitioned#Like ''wanted to escape being a woman'' or ''because being a woman was weak'' or something fucking stupid#I don't think Oda knows what gender dysphoria even is so the idea of Crocodile transitioning to deal with that feels like a bloody pipedrea#But literally even just ''preferred being a man'' would be fine#The bar. Is so fucking low#My other thing is that I absolutely do not want to see him get detransitioned. At all.#Like a lot of people have been speculating that the reason we never see Crocodile use Haki might be because it could detrans him#And regardless of if that's canon or not-- I do not want to see him detransition. At all.#If we see him pre-t in a flashback that's fine#I just don't want to see him have to sacrifice his comfort for a dramatic scene where he has to ''go all out'' or something#(Especially because knowing Oda there is no way he would do that without sexualizing him for no good reason)#Honestly I am more concerned about Oda fucking it up than the fandom being gross#My bar is so fucking low and yet so impossibly high for Oda#Also what gets me about Crocodile is that usually the queer characters are young and/or amab#And this is true for literally all of the other queer rep in OP rn#Crocodile is almost a middle aged trans man and honestly would that not be like a breath of fresh fucking air#OP Meta
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Hilarious end to the final king gleeok!
I may have forgotten the kg over the far west of hebra existed. I did not know the game registered this as a kill (though I'm not sure it actually does? The music kept playing like nothing happened lmao). Either way, third last sage orb acquired!
#I've two more to go and three gleeoks left ToT#I don't know where any of them might be!#I am bound and determined to 100% this game without a guide for anything#And I am THIS CLOSE#TO DOING IT#If I'd lost that kill I'd have been so annoyed lol I broke so many weapons on that thing's hide#And flying there took forever#Honestly king gleeoks are pretty fun#If you get a good rhythm it's over for them and you can mix and match their final phase at will XD#Still prefer my lynels tho#Those guys have killed me way more even in this game#If you factor in botw it's not even close#totk#loz#legend of zelda#tears of the kingdom#loz totk#totk spoilers#botw totk#totk link#loz tears of the kingdom#tloz totk#the legend of zelda#The amount of troubleshooting they must have done for this game is hilarious#'hey we need to make it so the player still wins if a gleeok falls off the island'#'can't they fly??' 'yeah'#'and the player can't hope to move them or back them up?'#'we're pretty sure they'll find a way but that's not important right now'#'and they don't fly outside of their island so they can't accidentally escape the player?' 'yea'#'so why would we need to do that?' 'trust me dude'
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On the topic of Mochijun, Im sorry to say, but the pace of Vanitas no Carte is just so killed for me right now, I cant really feel anything about it for more than a moment, catch me when chapters are normal length or something spectacular happens and its impact can be properly conveyed through 16 pages- 😔✌️
#dee p thoughts#not to say nothing is happening buts its just kind of. okay cool#its hard to look forward to and say much when its like. 16 pages on an inconsistent basis ajfadkljn-#not that I particularly blame mochijun per se but I really wouldve preferred if there was just a long hiatus for health or obligations to#properly resolve and then returning to form because I feel like it really impacts the writing and nothing has been back to standard ever#since pre-vnc anime tbh- the thing that really got me is the chapter where the concept of racism had to be spoonfed in such a...#This is a Childrens TV show or intro class teaching you the subject like WHAT- it couldve been done...but I think it was a ''I really do#want to touch on this topic and convey this message but dont have the ability to do it in a natural way so make do lol'' like honestly Ill#sacrifice any prospects of a second season beyond the fact they steamrolled my favorite geuvadan arc I abhor the idea of seeing that chapte#get animated adljafknkln- the only think that could particularly save this for me is if the funkiness is a result of p*ndora hearts getting#rebooted or something ngl afddanlkja#machina reveal was really cool tho but that was last chapter lol 👍#really enjoy johann btw but anyways lol
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Some scribbles :) (Patreon)
#Doodles#Original#Texture work is original sure lol#Went in hard on one of those Drawing Advice posts about ''Hey - literally just put pencil to paper and go no worries''#It was fun :D I Do still want to just doodle freely sometimes!#I still enjoy some structure to it so I ended making a grid of various like map-style textures to tell different biomes apart lol#But just general funsies scribbles were pretty good! I enjoyed the lot :)#S'good to just Make with abandon sometimes haha#I really like the hatching effect generally and it's something I want to improve at/implement more so the practice was nice there :)#Layering on paper/with only the one digital layer is always an interesting exercise in negative space and keeping things readable#I like drawing clouds with notably flat bottoms haha I think it's funny that they just sit there#I guess I'm used to cirrus clouds a lot so seeing cumulus big puffies with a clear delineation between bottom and the rest is just fun to me#They look like toys! Designed to sit! But they're just up there! How fun!#Squiggly branches/veins was something I did a tooon as a kid before I got into Drawing On Purpose y'know#Just pages and pages of branches on branches#And curls that curled away from each other - did a little bit of that with the circles and lines but not that much haha#I dunno if I still have any but it's interesting how that dwindled down to basically never over time#I definitely know what I prefer to draw these days but hmm still wonder a bit!#And loop-di-loops haha I was thinking of Erase quite a lot for that one honestly#And the way some Disney Princesses give autographs which one is it-#Belle! I remember when I got her autograph years ago and was really enamoured with the flourish :D#Grace and elegance in shape! Ah! So cool#That and RGB from TPoH haha - all these swoopies! I like them very much :)
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🍕🥊💼 for Felix :]c
Her favorite food!! (Strawberries are a bonus)
What she does for a living! (She does like makeup, it’s just not her #1 thing)
What she loves to do, and what she HATES doing
#pea art#ask#about my ocs#digital art#oc Felix#my art#my ocs#ocs#oc#my oc#my characters#original character#original characters#she honestly prefers just doing her own thing away from others. not including Mason of course#she doesn’t really *enjoy* all the attention she gets from being albino. she just uses it as a way to make something of herself#she just wanted to be another face in the crowd
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checked the mail today to see that I received the card invite to my old highschool bestie's wedding next year and suddenly its much harder to be fine</3
#j.txt#like Im happy for her obv and im glad she thought to invite me bc we had talked it over before. but I still genuinely have so many#conflicting feelings about the whole thing and honestly a bit at her too at this point. bc of course im likely being oversensitive but#I just feel so resentful over how she handled some things with me and how she doesnt reach out like at all#unless I do first. which I get that shes busy and lives a very dif lifestyle than I do but it still hurts you know?#anyways ill get over all this eventually but getting the official invite just kind of brought it all forefront again#also I literally still dont have any idea what my role is supposed to be at their wedding? bc she asked me to be in one of bridal/groom-#parties but never specified which (bc of the transness of course) so idk if theyre doing mixed parties or what#but her maid of honor (also a mutual highschool bestie) has mentioned me doing events w the bridal party before so like#im assuming thats whats happening still?? her fiance is honestly kind of transphobic in that straightman way so.#i would Prefer not to be involved with his side of things yeah. hold on just reread the invite its also cocktail attire#tian ah i dont Have anything like that I dont think . I am not a cocktail kind of person. auhhhgh#throws it onto the pile of Things to Worry About Later ig...
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