#this better give us SOME ANSWERS!!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

panharmonium · 11 months ago

Note

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)

54 notes · View notes

batsplat · 3 months ago

Note

hiii your weekly sete ask:

wow his 2005 season was really Cursed affggghjk. like what do you mean he’s 7th with 7 retirements (more than that years top 4 combined) but also is the only guy aside from valentino in top 7 to not finish lower than 5th place…..

valentino was the curse really worth it being runner up to capirossi and melandri TWICE and in a row (joking)

haha... yeah... 'retirement' in motegi... definitely wasn't so eager to seal the title at honda's home race that he made an ill-advised overtake attempt on melandri and cleared them both out... two completely unrelated dnf's... haha...

anyway!! yeah!! valentino would make that trade with you all things considered - always got on well with capirossi, with melandri admittedly you have the whole drama of melandri thinking valentino switched up towards him... but tbf you do have to say valentino was impressively dogged at keeping melandri's first win at bay for as long as possible. the six races valentino doesn't win that year are estoril (very wet, kinda just settled for second), laguna (unfamiliar with the track and would never be one he really liked, finished behind the two americans who knew the track well), motegi (crazy how we'll just never know how that dnf happened... oh well let's move on), sepang (a bridgestone-dominated weekend, sealed the title there though), turkey (hampered by a poor start) and valencia (my god is he mid there, also he tried to smash himself up before the race which I swear he does like. repeatedly at that specific circuit. guess he knows he has the off season to recover)

the way the curse shakes out is that for the rest of sete and valentino's careers, whenever they both finish a race valentino is ahead. not a single exception! not one! but the thing is, right, sete's actual finishing position of seventh in the championship in 2005 is extra cruel because it... just is not representative of how competitive he was that season? this is where it becomes useful I have my 'curse tally' notes... 2004 we've already covered, 2006 is more depressing than fun (how is your luck so bad your ambulance crashes into a bus fifty metres before the hospital entrance), but 2005? oh yeah that sete season is fucked. do you know who won the best qualifier award that year?

narrator: he did not win his home race on sunday

you can also read the qualifying prowess from the average grid positions, and it's not even particularly close. sete averages 2.82 for the season, ahead of valentino at 4.12 and hayden at 4.29. he bags five pole positions, exactly as many as valentino. his average finishing position when he actually makes the chequered flag is 3.6, the third best that year behind vale's 1.44 and melandri's 3.5. unsurprisingly, 2005 is the only season this century where the strongest qualifier does not win a single race. that just isn't a thing that happens!! it shouldn't happen!! this is not a man who was suddenly slow. he also hadn't been particularly crash-prone in his previous honda seasons... one dnf in 2003, two in 2004... and seven in 2005. a nightmare

which raises the question... okay, not winning races is one thing, but what the fuck happened to sete? if you're not just slow all of a sudden, how are you suddenly dipping from p2 to p7 in the championship standings? so. *cracks knuckles* *gets out notes* let's go one by one and tally up exactly how sete's season went wrong (parentheses used to indicate grid positions, e.g. 'g2', and finishing positions, e.g. 'p2')

jerez (g2/p2): after a feisty start, sete leads the entire race up until three laps to the end - when valentino executes his overtake and looks all set for the win. but valentino makes a mistake on the final lap that lets sete back past, and he's frantic in his attempts to correct the error... it looks like sete might have this one won, until valentino steals it from him at the last corner, barging him aside with one foot off its peg. (more on the final lap here.) valentino's victory, immediately controversial, is followed by various post-race theatrics as the spanish crowd voice their displeasure and valentino rubs it in their faces. on the way to the podium, valentino breaks the fourth wall to mock sete for clutching at his shoulder - which he is then forced to walk back in estoril as it turns out sete had actually been injured (clips here). more on this, from broadbent's 'ring of fire':

(details of the gresini/zerbi dispute included below the cut)

estoril (g2/dnf): an increasingly wet race - conditions in which sete has always been excellent in (first 500cc race was won in the wet too). sete's shoulder is still injured from the jerez collision and he'd crashed that weekend already, but he leads comfortably at the start... it's always tricky to be in the front in those conditions and he ends up crashing out of the lead in lap 16 out of 24. would valentino have been so comfortable settling for the podium if sete had still been in the race?

shanghai (g1/p4): another wet race, this time at a new circuit. perhaps sete's confidence was dented by estoril, or perhaps he just wasn't quick enough in the conditions. he doesn't get the ideal start from pole, though he briefly runs ahead of valentino - before vale overtakes him and disappears into the distance. for most of the race, sete runs second, until eventually wildcard jacque overtakes him. with a few laps to go, sete's suddenly losing speed... it looks like he's dealing with some kind of mechanical issue and he's shaking his head down the straight. on the very last lap, his teammate melandri overtakes him for the final podium position. after the race, sete said he had already felt on the warm-up lap that something was wrong with his tyre, and that it was all he could do to minimise the damage and coax the vibrating tyre to the end

le mans (g4/p2): sete had won the two previous races at this track, beating valentino on the final lap in 2003 and extending his championship lead in 2004. this year, both sete and valentino get quite a poor start, and exit the first few corners seventh and sixth respectively. valentino starts his charge to the front before sete does - and sete's progress stalls for a bit when he makes an absolute hash of one of the chicanes. eventually, valentino is on the rear tyre of his teammate edwards, but takes his sweet time overtaking him.... sete hunts them both down, firing in lap records as he muscles his way to third, and valentino is quickly informed of just who is catching him. valentino overtakes edwards, but edwards quickly gets him back - which opens the door for sete, who slips past for second. the three once again converge and valentino eventually manages to get sete back. edwards runs it a little wide and valentino squeezes past, with sete able to take advantage of the open door to get through too. they quickly gap edwards and as sete stalks valentino, the commentators hype up the prospect of revenge, of 'payback time'... valentino takes a new circuit record on the final lap to hold sete off. he extends his hand for sete long enough that sete eventually acquiesces - in doing so affording valentino a courtesy his rival had not extended to him at sepang the year before

mugello (g2/dnf): this time last year, the first public cracks of the valentino/sete relationship were just starting to show. but a fight for victory between the two of them was not to be this time round. sete keeps p2 off the line; after some opening lap scrapping that includes a valentino overtake, sete is still in p2. then his teammate melandri rudely forces him wide while overtaking, so that sete briefly drops back to fourth - before muscling his way past capirossi and into third. he tussles a bit with biaggi... but ends up crashing on lap five. it already feels like curtains on any championship aspirations

catalunya (g1/p2): before the weekend, valentino says he believes melandri and biaggi, not sete, will be his main championship rivals. sete starts on pole, with valentino likewise on the front row. valentino gets a somewhat poor start... by the end of the first lap he's back in the mix at the front. the first few laps are frantic, with melandri leading most of them and making his teammate's life, uh, unpleasant - but eventually both valentino and sete make their way back and break away from the field. soon after, sete gets past valentino and leads the race. for a while, it looks like he's breaking away from valentino just a little... eventually, it becomes obvious valentino has just been biding his time. with three laps to go, vale eases past down the main straight into the braking zone of turn one, and immediately proceeds to destroy sete's circuit record on dying tyres. he wins the race fairly comfortably from there

assen (g2/p5): juan martinez, sete's crew chief, is taken ill on thursday with a migraine. he recovers to come back to the box on saturday, but unsurprisingly the team is on the back foot as a result. (remember, martinez used to work for valentino, and he is someone valentino explicitly blamed for what happened at qatar 2004.) sete starts reasonably well from the front row, second early on behind his teammate melandri before eventually falling behind hayden. meanwhile, valentino has gotten a typically atrocious start and gave himself a bit of work to do. sete eventually makes his way back past hayden - but unfortunately lets valentino through too. at the end of the seventh lap, valentino gets past sete at his beloved final chicane. after that, valentino goes on to win the race while sete languishes in fifth

laguna seca (g13/p5): sete executes a strong comeback ride, besides losing a duel to biaggi which I suppose is a new low. but the main thing I have to bring in at this juncture is one of my favourite sete's moments. this is from broadbent's 'ring of fire' again, in the context of the re-introduction of laguna to the calendar and the discussions around that. just remember that valentino has been tormenting sete for like, over half a year, and sete has not lashed out at valentino once publicly. but here... he finally snaps - and takes it out on the real enemy: marco melandri

quick friendly reminder that melandri was sete's teammate that year

donington (g2/dnf): the race is held in truly appalling conditions. sete - who, remember, was a known wet weather specialist - takes the lead early on. he crashes on the third lap, one of ten riders not to finish the race. after wobbling about in the front-running pack for most of the race, valentino eventually takes the lead before pulling comfortably clear. he mimes playing the violin while crossing the line; this was interpreted by some as mockery of his less fortunate rivals, which valentino refuted

before the race, valentino took another opportunity to twist in the knife:

"when I see gibernau I always want to arrive in front of him" uh huh

sachsenring (g2/p2): valentino had quite a few problems with his bike that weekend, with a tricky build-up to the race. initially, hayden gets the holeshot, as valentino starts piling up the pressure and sete gets stuck in traffic. but the race is red flagged - and while hayden again gets the holeshot at the restart, valentino quickly disposes of him and sete soon does likewise. sete swiftly overtakes valentino ("'take that', said sete gibernau, 'I mean business'" says one of the commentators) and leads from there, with valentino in hot pursuit. for a few laps, valentino ends up behind hayden - and once he gets past him again, he's seven tenths down on sete with six laps to go. valentino closes in and on the very last lap, sete goes wide into the first corner, letting valentino through

always thinking of the suggestion valentino was intending to overtake sete at exactly the same place he had been overtaken in 2003 (from here):

brno (g1/dnf): despite the summer break in between (where sete reportedly did a lot of training), this might as well have been a direct continuation of the previous race. sete leads out front as valentino determinedly muscles his way into second place so as to not let sete escape. on the very first lap, valentino overtakes sete - in a section of the track where sete was planning to overtake capirossi if capirossi got the holeshot (more on how forthcoming sete was being to the commentariat here and here, icl when I replied to those asks I didn't remember quite how bad it was). on the third lap, the two exchange a few overtakes, and then it's sete in front. valentino makes a mistake to give sete a bit of breathing room and almost let the pack swallow him up, but he escapes again to get on sete's tail. around halfway through, valentino takes the lead - and then, with just over four laps ago, valentino deliberately slows down and practically invites sete to go past, before slotting back in behind him. valentino takes the lead at the final chicane of the penultimate lap, setting the stage for a final lap showdown, except sete is beginning to lose touch... and then he slows down. sete has run out of fuel

japan (g7/dnf): all eyes on valentino - who starts from eleventh for his first matchpoint race - as he starts making his way through the pack. on the first lap, valentino's already made his way past sete for sixth. tragically, all footage of the race after this point was erased so we will simply never know what valentino got up to after this point in time, but sete reportedly crashed on lap eleven. "gibernau's wretched season continues, when will it end for sete gibernau... it's almost a year now since valentino rossi put that witch's curse on him at qatar and said he would never win another race, you've got to wonder..."

sepang (g2/dnf): as the riders storm down to turn one, sete and hayden make contact and barely keep their bikes upright - sete is knocked down to sixth. valentino ends up right behind him on the first lap once again, but gets stuck behind him for a little longer as sete works his way past hayden... before sete and nakano go down when the former attempts to overtake the latter on lap two. "sete gibernau's appalling season continues...." - sete begins to walk off before sinking to his knees in despair

qatar (g2/p5): back to the place where it all started. sete deploys some feisty riding to keep that second place off the line against both valentino and hayden. he takes the lead from capirossi on the third lap and valentino takes advantage to immediately force his way into second - ready to exert pressure on his enemy. but sete builds up a healthy advantage as his teammate melandri increasingly puts pressure on valentino. melandri and valentino exchange overtakes as sete's advantage ebbs and flows, eight tenths at one point while his two rivals tussle. could this really be the "resurgence of sete gibernau"? with six laps to go, valentino shows his front wheel to sete, but it gives melandri the opportunity to get past. as valentino attempts to return the favour, melandri cuts off his nose and causes valentino to almost run into the back of him - payback for motegi, which makes valentino run wide and almost fall back into the clutches of hayden. it looks like it will be a fight between the two gresini riders for the win as valentino is 1.2s back, but he quickly claws his way back into contention and is helped by the gresini duo scrapping. and when melandri has another go at sete, sete runs on into the gravel... "the man who has cracked once again is sete gibernau" "and I'm sure both marco melandri and rossi are smiling under their visors" from the commentary team - valentino snatches the win once again, with sete finishing a disconsolate fifth

phillip island (g3/p5): so much for another front row start, with sete getting battered around to fifth through the first few corners and quickly being pushed down to sixth by his teammate. from there, it's an unspectacular ride to fifth, as valentino claims another victory

turkey (g1/p4): another start from pole, but melandri gets the jump on him from the start. sete puts pressure on melandri and eventually gets back past to take the lead...... and then goes wide and runs it into the gravel. he recovers from sixth to a painful fourth. "you can just imagine valentino rossi grinning, can't you, behind his visor, when he saw that happen"

valencia (g1/dnf): once again, sete starts from pole.... surely, surely he has to win one of these? valentino starts from fifteenth on the grid, which you'd have to say is as good a chance as you're going to get to catch a break from the man. sete is shuffled down to third on the opening lap but is right on the tail of melandri and hayden, setting the field's fastest lap on lap two. on lap four, sete slows down... "and the spaniard's wretched season could end in the only possible way, another disappointment at his home round and yet more misery for movistar" - an engine failure. his teammate escapes out front while sete works through his grief on the side of the track

so, having assessed the evidence in an appropriately scientific manner... well, yes. sete was kinda fucked. you have plenty of bad luck, you have races where he's simply not fast enough, you have races where valentino forces the issue and beats him in a straight fight, and then you have quite a few races where sete makes a clear 'unforced' error. it's not even necessarily the crashes that are most painful - with sachsenring, qatar and turkey standing out as real low points, times when he feasibly could have had valentino (as well as his teammate, who he also dislikes) beat. his wet weather dnf's will also have been a bitter pill to swallow, as well as valentino's lovely habit of snatching circuit records as he pulls clear from sete right at the end of races. and all the while, valentino is happy to taunt him with his failures, reminding sete again and again of how he is no longer the challenger he once was. all the while, the narrative of the curse gathered momentum, ever more likely to make its way back to sete. with every failure, the pressure grew. there's got to be at least ten races where sete on pace could have been in victory contention, five races where he bags pole, fourteen front row starts... not a single actual win. and that's how you put together a curse, kids

here's the gresini/zerbi dispute:

Movistar Honda team manager Fausto Gresini sent an open letter to the media on Thursday night in response to a private letter sent by FIM President Francesco Zerbi to MotoGP riders Valentino Rossi and Sete Gibernau following last weekend's clash during the Jerez race. Mr Zerbi´s letter had invited the riders to reflect upon the incident, and to remain as positive examples for all MotoGP fans - asking them to fight fairly and without will of revenge. The FIM President also wrote that he didn't see any infringement to the rules, but stressed that this kind of situation shouldn't be repeated. The comments made by Gresini were: "I fully agree with President Zerbi about the fact that sportsmanship is the most important thing. There's no room for bitter feelings between two great riders, but in the meantime, I'm still perplex." "In this letter, Sete and Valentino are treated equally as if Sete had some responsibility in the facts, and I can't agree with that. I believe there is a contradiction when the FIM president writes 'there isn't anything to reproach you for from a legal point of view', and then warns that what happened in Jerez must not occur again." "It means that we're still far from a situation where all have equal rights, in a sport as dangerous as ours," concluded the Italian manager. [here is the presidents response]: Dear Mr Gresini, I should not respond personally to your open letter given to the press, but through the intermediary of my lawyers; however, considering that I subscribe to the rules of courtesy and that I believe private life is a right that no-one can deny, I am not going to enter into a controversy - an easy one given the ridiculous arguments in your letter. The only thing that I want to stress and which, as a man, mortifies me is that I am mistaken in my judgement of men. And that I say on an individual level far more than on an institutional level. With much bitterness, Francesco Zerbi FIM President NB: I am sending this letter to the press because your employee, by violating all principles of education, more so than of law, did not hesitate to betray the confidence that had been granted to him.

like "with much bitterness" why is everyone in this sport so dramatic. what was everyone on this year

#weekly sete ask!! answered very late!! bless u anon #writing out my lil journal of doom #i like how it's implied that not only is valentino whispering into sete's ear but he's also giving his crew chief headaches #'this isn't ballroom dancing' the extent to which valentino and jb matched each other's freak isn't really acknowledged enough #jb always on the sidelines explaining how valentino's opponents should have simply tried not being axe murdered. skill issue #anyways. melandri has whatever the opposite of main character energy is #i am also unconvinced the curse was worth finishing behind him twice anon #sete being publicly ruder about melandri than he ever actually manages to be about valentino iktr #it's soooooo funny to me like melandri barely even moved??? what WAS that #//#brr brr #batsplat responds #the process of writing this post is me coming back to my notes like once a week and laughing at the sete/melandri quote #like i'm laughing typing this. what even was that #melandri (amongst others): hm i'm not sure this track is suitable for us to go racing on #sete: pls kys i can't do this any longer #valentino a worse man than me in some ways but also a better man than me in that i would've just started laughing #curse tag

12 notes · View notes