#this isn’t a discourse post I don’t care what you ship

[dropoutconfessions]

Everyone’s allowed to feel how they feel about K. You do not HAVE to like K. K is an imagination people and does not matter compared to reality people.

The actual problems that I think all this discourse is stemming from is a problem in not just fandom here but in fandom as a whole. It’s a problem of trends: Why is our attention so frequently held by the masculine and white? Why, when we expand the world and look into the interiority of side characters, is our focus so targeted on white men? Why are women so overlooked, why are people of color so often ignored?

This is a wider issue. A trickling down of real world racism affecting our little play spaces. And the problem is that an issue which appears in larger trends, an issue that is a general pattern of behavior, is not easy to fix. We can’t fix this by harassing individual people. We can’t fix this by ignoring it. We definitely can’t fix it by pretending like its a problem here and only here rather than everywhere.

I wouldn’t be so bitter about K and dislike of K if I wasn’t overly sensitive to the idea of POC and femme characters getting the short end of the stick. I wouldn’t be so apprehensive about SamEvan, which is a frankly adorable and lovely ship, if I could trust people in general to act right about black women. I wouldn’t be so mad when people call Jammer and his friends rude while ignoring anything Evan did if I hadn’t seen it as the start of a malicious pattern.

If I hadn’t been in fandoms where every single woman got called a Hideous Bitch and every single person of color was Secretly Evil then I wouldn’t even be posting this. If I hadn’t seen people latch onto men with three lines and refuse to even consider thinking about women with entire arcs, I wouldn’t care about the lack of K posts. It would just be opinion. But it’s not just opinion when it happens over and over again to the same kinds of characters every time.

I don’t think it’s that bad in the mismag fandom. I don’t WANT it to get that bad here. But I don’t know how else to stop it, so I type up little confessions, and I hope someone reads them and thinks about this shit a little bit before they post.

I think people should calm down and stop insulting each other. I think people should take a break, if they need one, from fandom. I think people should leave each other alone and quit passive aggressively throwing ‘shade’ at opinions they don’t like because there is NOTHING wrong with individual opinion. There IS something wrong with the pattern its a part of but you can’t blame a person for a pattern you see in them or else you’ll end up snapping at a monster that isn’t even there yet.

Most of what I want is for people to think about how they think. Nobody has to stop liking Evan (ofc) but it is and should be concerning that even in this relatively progressive space, I keep seeing the same patterns creep their subtle and insidious way into the things I love.

I think we can all do better than this. I think we can do much better. I think we deserve better, all of us, than all of this.

-

[porcelaintoybox23]

As someone with common sense, I’m sure there is billdip discourse now that billford seems to be a thing. I was 12 when the show premiered and I did read a few billdip fics. I don’t know, I feel like if we’re bringing back the 2010s we should discuss Dipper goes to Taco Bell because what the actual

FUCK

WAS

THAT

[pearlescent-poppies]

I’m sick and tired of the Flower Husbands discourse. Like really truly it is just making me so upset now. They are my comfort ship. They are. My first tattoo is a poppy with the ESMP1 quote. I want to hold them in my hands and give them all of the good things in the world. When I see people calling them toxic and abusive, it really hurts me. And there’s not a tag to filter out all of it, not all of them tag “toxic flower husbands”. I get it, okay? I do. I get why you might see them like that. But if anything? If we’re going to see Flower Husbands as the most toxic duo, take a look at every other relationship Jimmy has in the Life Series (with the exception of Tango) and you’ll find the same thing. He’s the butt of the joke. He’s the canary they all poke fun of in his cage. He doesn’t care. But Scott does care. If Desert Duo never left the desert, Scott never stopped crying at Jimmy’s grave. Did you watch his series all the way through? Did you see his ideal afterlife? That Jimmy welcomed him home because that is what they had together? Did you hear the way Scott’s voice got sad talking about how quiet and weird it was not to have Jimmy with him? Have you not watched as Scott uses every single opportunity possible to bring up Flower Husbands? He misses Jimmy with every fiber of his being. Jimmy misses Scott too. Did you watch Last Life? Do you know what Martyn did to make Jimmy give him back the life? He promised a life together, Martyn says it himself! That it was all romantic promising to run away just the two of them. How Jimmy was so hopeful. So naive because this was the beginning, he’s not got all of the hope anymore. Jimmy has had to move on. Jimmy made himself move on. 30 seconds. Do you not imagine him turning away from that interaction resigned to his choice a single tear rolling down his face before he rejoins his boys in their shenanigans? Cause I do. That was a man he had devoted his life to. And yeah, maybe it was because of a joke and a silly a poppy. But do you know what a poppy means? Remembrance, dreams, death, and hope for a peaceful future. Do you know what the white daisy, blue cornflower, and red tulip meant at Jimmy’s grave? Purity, life, reanimation, hope, and true feelings. Do you think a character who conveys a message like that capable of the abuse you accuse him of? Scott’s general air of cattiness is just his character. Hard edges that once you’ve chipped away at, reveal someone who is extremely dedicated and fiercely loyal even and especially to his own detriment. Scott will make jokes about finally being free once his husband dies to the war, but I really think that’s just him preparing for the inevitable. Jimmy was going to die. Canary or not. They all were. So why not make a joke out of being lambs in a slaughterhouse. Isn’t that one of the main ways people cope? Scott loved his husband. Still does and will continue too. Jimmy is the same. But he let go. Had to. He would never have forgiven himself for dragging Scott down with him. How many times do you think that man apologised to Tango for dying first. How many times do you think that man apologised to Tango for dying first before they even lost their third life in the first place? I honestly think Scott himself sums this up best: “I don’t always put myself first and sure I’ve made plenty of mistakes and I’ve hurt people. But I’ve always done my best.”

So next time you wanna call them toxic, rewatch the series and think about this post.

[angieblogging]

here are some harmful aro stereotypes 💚🤍🩶🖤

there are probably so many more stereotypes, but those are the ones that i see more often! also i already posted same post about bisexuality, so check it out —> here.

aros are heartless — most people think that, because they assume aromantics do not love, they love. they can love their family, their friends, their pet or even themselves (this one is specifically for my afamilial & aplatonic folks). there is so much more complexity to love than romantic love and anyone who puts romantic love above all else is lame. like im sorry, but romantic love isn’t somehow better from self-love or love to your friends or family.

aro and ace are the same — this is also about asexuality, but aro ≠ ace. i see some people use the term asexual to describe both the aro & ace experience and to me it makes no sense since they’re completely different things. aro & ace can co-exist and one person can be on both spectrums, but that doesn’t mean all people are the same, not all aros are ace, not all aces are aro. so what is aro & ace? both are a spectrum. if you are aromantic you do not feel romantic attraction OR feel it under certain circumstances only (ex. when you know someone well, when someone likes you you like them back or until someone likes you back you like them). if you’re asexual that means you do not feel sexual attraction OR only feel it under certain circumstances.

aros can’t date — aros can in fact date, some people on the arospec experience attraction (rarely or under certain circumstances) so it makes sense they can date. there are also aros that do not experience romantic attraction, some date even though they do not experience the same feeling. they can like the person, care for them deeply and affectionately, but it is simply not romantic love, but they can chose to date the person. not all aros are loveless or romance repulsed.

i can ship xyz, aros can date — this is targeted tbh, i keep seeing people bring this up in Yelena Belova discourse about her aromanticism, while it is true aros can date, some chose not to, some are simply not interested in it and if a character in canon is showing no interest in romance or is repulsed by it, they don’t need to be fixed, they don’t need to be put in a relationship, they can just exist in peace. i especially dislike allos shipping aro/ace characters because they just see them as allo at that point, like im sorry, but they don’t give a shit about aros if they can’t listen to them explaining why you shouldn’t ship a specific aro character.

aros aren’t valid — bs. just bs. they are valid, whether you’re a man, a woman, a gender outside of the binary, whether you’re asexual as well or not, whether you want to date or not, you are valid as long as the definition applies to you!!! honestly here’s how i can explain being aro: if you are straight you are only attracted to opposite gender, so you don’t like same-sex, so just like you don’t like same-sex, aro’s don’t like same-sex & opposite gender.

[signanothername]

Heyy, I was wondering what are the potential reasons why you wouldn't answer an ask (not that you have to obv there can be no reason) but are there like conditions?

Also 💕🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥

Not necessarily conditions as much as what I like to call “common sense boundaries”

But to keep everyone’s mind at ease Imma list the things that I would never answer, breaking these boundaries could either mean the ask is deleted or an immediate block

1-personal questions, such as my real name, where I live, etc

If I do not have it on my pinned post, it means I either do not want people to know, I do not care to put it, or have my own reasons for why I don’t want to put it

2- fandom discourse related asks, whether asking me for my opinion on a certain discourse, complaining to me about it, or “informing me” about it, I don’t care what kinda discourse it is, keep any and ALL discourse off this blog entirely (ship discourse, creator discourse, etc)

If I do not ask for info on ANYTHING directly, the polite thing to do is to respect that I don’t want to be involved in it, this is an ART blog for silly characters, not a discourse blog

3- asks that try to evade the above 2 boundaries by using backhanded tactics just to get info or send in discourse anyway

4- asks that are simply sent to pressure me into answering a previous ask that was sent before, something like “hey can you answer ‘X’”

If you’re unsure whether I received an ask you sent before and doubt/anxiety is settling in, then you can either send the same ask again (I don’t mind when asks are duplicated) or directly ask me whether I received it or not like “hey I sent an ask that talked about ’X’, can you confirm to me that you received it?” And I’d be happy to confirm or deny on whether I received it

And that’s it, very basic and simple isn’t it?

(And awwww thank youuuu <33333)

[queer-ragnelle]

I'm honestly kinda disgusted by the way a lot of authors just seeped their misogyny onto Guinevere to make her so horrible, lol. effectively destroyed a lot of people's view of her and she gets blamed for everything?? people keep shitting on her, saying Lancelot should be shipped with "someone better" and I'm just really annoyed because.. Guinevere is horribly characterized by these weirdos authors 💀. It does not take much to portray her as a complex character while also not making her shitty on purpose because you don't like her for her affair, lol.

I love her so much and it's disappointing how she's been treated :(( which is why I'll never be able to hate Guinevere or her ship with Lancelot

My friend it’s honestly so exhausting at this point. It’s not even limited to writing Guinevere herself as insufferable, but writing other characters behaving worse toward her than they ever were in medlit. Arthur hitting and degrading her when he cheats on her? (Warrior of the West by M. K. Hume) Lancelot using her for political gain and never loving her at all? (Enemy of God by Bernard Cornwell) Owain blocking her passage as she flees danger? (Legend in Autumn by Persia Woolley) Agravaine threatening to rape her? (The Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf) Gawain threatening to rape her? (Guinevere by Lavinia Collins) WHO are these characters bro you got me fucked up!!! The subtext here is that the authors hate Guinevere (read: women) so much they’re willing to warp everyone around her to treat her like garbage!!!

“Guinevere is bad because she has sex outside marriage.” Yeah so does Arthur. He fucked his own sister. In the dark. Leading her to believe he was her husband. So there’s Mordred, but there’s also Loholt and Arthur the Less etc. Arthur has many bastards from his extramarital affairs. (Vulgate and Post-Vulgate) Yet he isn’t canceled. Hm. Wonder what the difference could be? Let’s investigate. Seems authors treat Morgause and Morgan similarly to Guinevere. Gee, what is the common denominator here? Meanwhile in medlit, Morgause didn’t commit any crimes—she didn’t rape Arthur to have Mordred, she never neglected her children, she never cheated on Lot, and she didn’t prey on young men, she had ONE consistent lover who was younger than her AFTER her husband died. And she was murdered for it. (Post-Vulgate) Yet every other author writes her as a rapist (The Once and Future King by T. H. White), child grooming (The Wicked Day by Mary Stewart), pedophile (The Book of Gaheris by Kari Sperring), trying to put one of her sons on the throne (many examples). Now, Morgan is evil. But not for lewdness, for trying to murder people. In literally every source. Hello. It’s very simple. These authors are ridiculous. They care more about highlighting their opinion that fictional women having sex is BAD than writing a good story. When there are plenty of actually bad things happening in medlit they could condemn instead. You know, like the misogyny? Burning Guinevere at the stake??? You couldn’t make this up. It’s the utter disdain for the material for me. Assuming these dumbasses are even reading the material. Write something else where I can’t see it. (To be clear, I don’t even hate all the books I listed as examples, but they are unfortunately examples.)

Thankfully I haven’t encountered the blogger discourse regarding this. At least not lately. My advice to anyone who sees people shitting on something you like is to block them. Just do it. Fuck that noise. It’s not worth it.

Also I have to laugh at ship discourse about Guinevere/Lancelot. Of all pairs! It’s so unserious. They’re not some random comphet duo from the newest tumblr trending fandom. They’re mythological characters from a medieval literary tradition. Lancelot was created for her. In the 12th century. That was 900 years ago. It feels juvenile to reduce them to ship discourse. Especially because the story is fluid, it can be reshaped to fit the author’s narrative. So if Guinevere sucks, it’s because they made her that way. This is the epitome of making up a girl to be mad at.

“Oh but in Knight of the Cart—” Shh stop talking. If you’re pulling out KotC like some “gotcha” about Guinevere’s treatment of Lancelot, then you’re lost, buddy. You may be seeking entertainment in the wrong place! Guinevere and Lancelot aren’t real. Nobody was “abused” because they’re characters, narrative tools, to tell a story. Guinevere is flawed. Nobody ever said she wasn’t. If that’s too much complexity for you then I don’t know what else there is to say.

Honestly? Nobody is obligated to like Guinevere. I think it’s stupid to dislike her but the real take away is—if you dislike Guinevere so much, hate her even, why the are you writing so poorly about her? She’s as old a character as Arthur himself. Show some fucking respect or get out.

Anyway I’m going to end this with a recommendation! Today I started the third book of Sharan Newman’s Guinevere trilogy. The first two, Guinevere and The Chessboard Queen were utterly AWESOME!! Lots and lots of named women, like Guinevere’s mother Guenlain, Cador’s wife Sidna and daughter Lydia, Guinevere’s handmaiden Risa, and so on. The one downside is Morgause and Morgan are your typical modern retelling baddies, but overall it’s two thumbs up from me. Many points of view, but Guinevere is fascinating and complex and most importantly she is beloved!!!!!! Really hoping it stays enjoyable through to the end. Miss Newman is still in print, so I encourage everyone to seek these books out at your local library or from your favorite bookseller. Here’s a quote from book 2, The Chessboard Queen.

[lover-of-mine]

https://www.tumblr.com/lemotmo/755374254590246912/can-we-take-a-minute-to-talk-about-how-todays-bts

This is spot on. The BT fandom has worked so hard to completely try and twist the narrative 9-1-1 has put forward. I’m not surprised Oliver is blocking people and not promoting the ship because there isn’t anything worth promoting and if I were him or a showrunner I would also be annoyed that a small amount of fans are trying to hijack a storyline. BT fans act like the general audience loves Tommy when I genuinely think the general audience just does not care one way or another about Tommy. Because the show has not given any reason to care about him. The only people that care so strongly (either liking or disliking him) are fandom people online who are stuck in discourse. That is not the majority of viewers. We’re going into season 8 - we don’t have a guarantee of how many seasons are left. Now that they’ve moved networks and we’re given the green light they’re going to focus on the storyline that wraps up their main characters arcs in the most satisfying way (which based on everything we’ve seen in this show is Buddie) not trying to start from scratch for both Buck and Eddie with new relationships. And if they DID want to pair Buck and Eddie with other people they would’ve actually tried to develop Buck and Tommy in season 7 and they very purposefully didn’t.

clickable link for the post because it's very spot on

The thing with the cameos is that it turned a narrative that was supposed to be about Buck and turned it into a narrative about Buck and Tommy. There is nothing in canon that backs up the idea that Tommy is anything other than just some guy. The show didn't restart at season 7 and if they wanted to make Buck and Tommy something with a fighting chance, Tommy would've existed in the narrative beyond the coming out plotline. Taylor's storyline was complete with beef with lafd personnel and a canon tragic backstory. If they wanted to make people care about Tommy they would've. They made it with Taylor with 4 episodes. You want me to believe they couldn't do it with Tommy after 6? Lou was putting out headcanon after headcanon and people took that as gospel as if he was reading scripts and had input from writers when Lou said in an interview that they didn't even tell him what label Tommy was supposed to have when they filmed the kiss. The show created a very clear narrative that shows that the relationship is not that serious. And if we are taking word of god as canon, Tim said that it's a "level entry relationship" and used the word "first fling" multiple times. First implies a second and fling is as unserious as it can get. The actual show is saying something, the creator of the show is saying the same thing. But sure, the actor they are paying and prompting has more say than the actual source material 🙄🙄. This story is about making Buck bi. Nothing else. If they wanted to make this be a Buck finally found his person, they would've developed Tommy into someone who's at least a little bit likeable, not continuously make him look worse every time he opens his mouth. If Oliver really is frustrated with this and blocking people because people hijacked the storyline he's telling, he has every right to be. He wanted to tell a nice story about Buck being bi and now he's caught having to dodge people who want him to walk up to the creators and say they have to marry Buck and Tommy by 802 or else he walks, when he clearly just wanted it to be about Buck's identity. Somehow Buck got pushed to the background of his own story by this very loud group of people while being aided by an actor who's creating a pr nightmare. The story is about Buck exploring bisexuality not about Buck falling in love with Tommy and it's painfully clear. The fact that people can't see it because someone paid a dude 100 and something dollars to say they are "thriving" is madness and shows the lack of basic media literacy.

[fireladybuckley]

Antis have completely ruined fandom enjoyment for me. ALL antis. I don’t give a fuck what you ship and nor should anyone else, but why the nastiness? Why the bullying and callouts and snide comments and generalizations? “Buddies” this and “Bucktommys” that, being crappy to people who ship something other than what you do simply because they ship something else… it’s so fucking immature and juvenile. I’ve seen countless people be harassed simply for posting excitement about their ship, or posting a fic or edit.

You are not required to like every ship. In fact you are freely allowed to hate whatever ships you want to hate. You don’t have to understand why someone likes a ship they do (there are certainly ones out there that make me scratch my head or squick me out). But taking your hate for a ship out on the people who ship it isn’t okay. This is the most toxic I’ve seen a fandom get in a very long time, and I was around for the entirety of the SuperWhoLock dominance, and the rise of the Twilight and HP fandoms (yes, I’m old.)

I ship Buddie, I always have and I always will. But I don’t mind BuckTommy. And that’s okay. It’s also okay if you love BuckTommy and ship them instead of Buddie. It’s also okay if you love Buddie and hate BuckTommy. Any of these combinations are okay, literally no one is required to like what other people do. Changing a ship you like is not some moral act, I’ve seen quite a few Buddie shippers acting like those who “jumped ship” and like BuckTommy now have committed some cardinal sin. It’s a tv show. It’s a story. People are allowed to like whoever and whatever they want for whatever reason they want, they haven’t done anything wrong, even if you feel betrayed somehow.

Stop being an asshole about it for fucks sake. Making fun of and mocking other people in the ways that I’ve seen lately is grade school bully bullshit. Why are some of you going so out of your way just to antagonize people? Why can you not just ship what you want to ship and ignore the ships you don’t like? I’m saying this to ALL of you who are doing this, regardless of what you ship. Why tag post a gifset of Buddie and tag it anti-bucktommy? Why post a fanfic of BuckTommy and tag it anti-Buddie? You can just tag it as what the ship is in the story/edit/whatever, why go out of your way to alienate the other “side” or make multishippers feel unwelcome?

You are seriously driving wedges of negativity and toxicity through the fandom. I’ve chatted with a lot of people lately who have said fandom drama is at least partially preventing them from feeling comfortable posting, ruining their drive to make gifsets, art, or write, because they don’t want to deal with inevitable “discourse”. A couple people I’ve talked to said (or I’ve seen posts saying) that they feel like they’re being forced to pick a side, and that some of their mutuals have suddenly started becoming nasty to others and it’s just really putting them off. I myself have unfollowed the majority of 911 blogs that I used to because it is just too tedious and frankly irritating to wade through all this crap. It feels like there are now two distinct sides to the fandom and it’s just ridiculous.

Maybe I’m just too old for this shit at this point, but I’m really disappointed to see the fandom take such a nasty turn. There’s obviously been arguments and bickering here and there from the beginning, but I’ve been in this fandom for ~5 years now and I’ve never seen anything this bad before. The general level of nastiness is too damn high. You don’t like Tommy? That’s fine. But why the fuck are so many people acting like he’s a pedo and saying horrific things about him just because they don’t like the character? Why are people acting like he’s grooming or taking advantage of a grown man who is perfectly capable of taking care of himself? On the other side, you don’t like Eddie? That’s fine. But why do people act like Eddie is the most terrible father in the world (when it’s been shown time and time again that Eddie would do anything for his kid) and that Buck should just take Chris and raise him? Why do so many of you spend SO much time shitting on the one character or ship you hate when you could be focused on loving the characters or ships that you love?

And that’s not even touching the subject of people harassing the actual actors, that just disgusts me so much I’m not even going to talk about it besides condemning it entirely. Leave the actors alone, they don’t write the story, they’re just doing their jobs. Leave. Them. Alone.

Anyway I’m sure this will fall on deaf ears, if it even gets seen at all. But I have felt out of place in this fandom for a while now due to the cliqueyness that developed over time, and now more than ever the fandom feels incredibly unwelcome to anyone who just wants to enjoy the show and post and take part in positive things and not get bogged down in the shipping war negativity spiral. I have so many half-written fics that I just don’t have the motivation to finish anymore with so many people just full-on boycotting anyone who ships one thing or the other. This all just makes me both really angry and really sad. I used to love jumping on tumblr and skimming through the posts, getting excited for the next episode, seeing the newest art and fics. Nowadays I hardly come on, and when I do, even though I’ve unfollowed so many discourse blogs, I STILL see the drama.

I still love the show. I love the firefam, I love all the progress they’ve made. The fandom used to give me a warm glow inside. Now I practically feel dread when I login and hope that I’m not going to see yet another big blowup between the two “sides”.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. I don’t know what the solution is either, besides just hoping that people will drop their petty bs and start being nice, but somehow I doubt that will happen. Just please remember, people, that the others you see on your screen do have real, actual humans behind their URLs. That the nasty things that you hurl at each other affect real people’s emotions and mental well-being. Too many people that are chronically online forget that words have consequences, even when it’s “just” fandom stuff.

Especially right now when the world is getting worse and no one has money or even hope, can’t we please just be kind to each other? I long for the days when a fandom space was more or less for joining together and enjoying the media at hand, not bitterly fighting at every turn. Please just be kind to each other. Is that really too much to ask?

[im-a-hoping-beetch]

In all honesty, idk what happened with the fandom recently for it to suddenly shit out a ton of crappy takes in ATLA most especially for Zutara. I often find myself defending Zutara because a lot of its antis say the most racist and sexist stuff against it. I'm not even a Zutara fan! I'm a rareshipper.

Can't just antis simply say they don't like Zutara and move on to enjoying their own ships instead? No more stupid holier art thou morality takes that just backfire on their faces.

If they want discourse, then use canon material NOT HEADCANONS, FANONS, OR FANFICS as "evidence" to back up their takes. Antis that do that makes my head spin in exasperation. Then you point that out they start whining how you hurt their feelibgs and get all offended as a "minority".

Actually, let's focus on that last bit. It's pretty rancid too how sometimes they pretend to be part of the "minority" so they can use it as a shield for themselves when their bad behavior gets called out. In fact, this tactic hurts the actual minorities who have valid concerns about Zutara. They get drowned out by all the insanity toxic shippers say and get lumped in with them.

Well, with the new live-action coming, there has obviously, been a revival, making the fandom way much more active. Which leads to people having more time to pay attention to the show and all its intricacies.

This is where ship wars come into play. And in all honesty, atla’s ship wars have definitely left a legacy in a way I don’t think we’ll have to ever witness. With the creators perpetuous jabs at zutara solidifying antis need to hate on it and the fans, fuelling the whole thing to another level. To this day whenever something avatar related gets announced or released you start to see a revival of a not so dead ship war. And while they (probably, not sure) aren’t as brutal as they used to be, they have took another turn, with this faux-progressivism being used to fear monger zutara shippers as well as casual listeners about the ship’s legitimacy. I recommend @i-d-e-g-a-f ‘s post about it to get more insight.

On my part, if I were to pin point the moment where this faux- progressivism started taking space in a lot of anti-zutara takes, I’d say that the atla renaissance isn’t innocent for this phenomenon happening. You need to understand the context in which atla’s release on Netflix took place in. One where the blm movement took the entire world by storm. Resulting in people not having the reservations they’ve probably had in the past when it came to talking about racial issues. This was followed by the emergence of numerous movements involving similar cases (not identical, tho). As well as media and the people consuming said media being ready to offer commentary on and call out harmful depictions of racial minorities as well as the rethorics they carried.

Suddenly, anyone and everyone could offer their piece of mind on harm being caused to racial minorities. And while good, it also came with its downside.

When you take into account this context, I think it exacerbated the already existing phenomenon of people saying things in order to put on this front of being good and virtuous, yet failing or simply not wanting to realize how these things are perpetuating the very harm they claim they want to undo. You know, people perceiving and claiming zutara to be a colonized-colonizer ship. As well as comparing katara to Pocahontas, when talking about these two. Which, if these people actually cared about progress, they would know how incredibly racist and sexist it is to make that comparison.

When it comes to antis obsession with hating on zutara, I think it stems from a certain insecurity. You gotta understand that unlike any other non-canon ship, zutara could’ve legitimately been canon. It was constantly talked about in the writers room, many of the team members seriously considering it (head writers, voice actors etc..) Hence why, the creators felt the need to throw numerous jabs (ie. the ember island play, (2008) comic-con) at the ship and more specifically, its fans. Since they themselves were insecure. @burst-of-iridescent perfectly explains it in this post.

[wings-of-fire-confessions]

I have been in the wof fandom for a while, since at least 2016, and I absolutely adore the creators in the fandom. I love getting to see how people view the books and making good critiques of the book series.

However, it annoys me how some people try to make claims that either don’t hold up or may have some validity at first, but falls apart when you put it in context of story of the books, or the world, or when you even just think a bit further about the point.

One of the things I have seen include Tui using Native American stereotypes in a tumblr post and using the fact that the characters (specifically the humans during the scorching) used feathers as accessories and were people of color. At face value, it seems like a valid claim, until you realize that all of the human characters are people of color and their societies don’t try to resemble that of Native American people in the books. Or the fact that the humans were the ones that stole dragon eggs and tried to use them as weapons of war. In total, I think there was one white person ever mentioned in the books (Axolotl).

Additionally, if you are going to talk about an issue in the fandom on a YouTube video, make it an actual video! By that, I mean if you intend to make a point about something, you don’t make a video that has no relevance to the topic at hand and then put the discourse in the description!

If you know the video I am referring to, the creator made a PMV for the fandom then put in their description why they aren’t making wof content anymore and that people should stop reading the books because of “Tui’s dangerous and bigoted writing.” I’m not saying that the person shouldn’t talk about issues in the fandom, but at least if you are going to do that make it its own video so people can actually SEE IT. Not everyone who clicks on a video will read the description, and when people go to read the comments, they are bound to get confused! (For context, the biggest thing being fought over was the freaking Glorybringer ship and how it is/isn’t pedophilia with op arguing it is).

I also watched the video they added in the link that was critiquing the “complacency in fantasy” (but mostly talking about wof) and it had some good points, until it went into saying that the Nightwings mirrored the Nazis and represented Jewish stereotypes at the same time and how it was “trauma porn.”

As I said before, some good points in the critique such as the treatment of Winter and the false DoD, and I get some of the points that the person was trying to make with how some subjects should be handled with more care such as arc 3’s slavery and the racism between tribes in wof, but other things such as comparing the Sandwings to Arab stereotypes without ya know, acknowledging how people that read the series treat the characters outside the books and how the books themselves handle their own characters (Such as Qibli and the whole Deserter winglet) is frustrating.

TLDR; if you are going to make a statement on fandom discourse or want to make an in depth critique about the series and want to make your point known, don’t relegate it to what basically equates to an optional footnote. And if you are going to make claims that relate to the real world, please back it up with evidence of both the in-text and information about the real-world facts (plus acknowledge at least some of the context around a series such as arc 1 and the fact that Tui is flawed but doesn’t mean that it can’t be enjoyed).

Sorry for the rant/long post, the way that some people handle criticizing the books and try to paint them like the worst thing ever just infuriates me because there is good and bad things about this series as all series are bound to have. Crafting a perfect story is hard to do and there will always be shortcomings in some authors stories, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy them or be inspired to create something that may improve or even tackle the issues within the books with more care.

I definitely understand what you are saying. As a Jew (Bar Mitzvah'd so I am connected to my community), the comparison to NightWings is pretty far-fetched and actually pretty offensive.

It's just like how people called Tigerstar a cat Nazi back in the day, when he was more like a racial purist, and even then he somehow was pro-race blending.

[zelkiff]

LOL the hypocrisy of your statement. Wincest shippers are no friends of mine, I hate the ship, but the hypocrisy is STRONG in your statement to "be nice." I don't ship Destiel, either, so don't come for me on that. I don't ship anything on SPN. Why would you want to.

jesus christ, this isn’t just “ship discourse” that stays online, normalizing and treating incest ships like they deserve respect because “respect all ships :)” is ridiculous. this effects REAL human lives like there is REAL LIFE behind all of this. if you can not understand how contributing to the normalization of incest ships is harmful, get off the internet pls

and “don’t come for me bc i don’t like your ship” as if i care that much girl some of us are normal idc if u don’t like what i like !!! you read my post clearly about being nice and respecting people be fr

[panharmonium]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, from the top:

1. the girl with the crush

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. the greater good

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

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

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

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

Anyway. Back to a more measured response.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. she only wants to save you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. the shadow of my family

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

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

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

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

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

[elina-sakura]

Top Ten Favorite MDA Characters

Note: I am referring to both canon and fanon elements, and the ranking is not because of negative emotions but my feelings and preferences.

Major Spoilers for the entire game by the way

1. Yuma Kokohead

Of course, I love the little amnesiac ‘trainee’ full of anxiety. I just love anxious characters who have to struggle being the hero of the story in such dangerous situations. He just makes the perfect candidate for hurt/comfort stories. I love the relationships he has with the Nocturnal Detective Agency, I love how he wants to help everyone (even if he doesn’t have the best tact), and I love his angsty moments in his head (I love me some good angst). And when we learn of his true identity in the end, it really shines a light on his character more both outside and in-game. All of his flaws and the impacts to the story he made and the struggles he had. But most importantly the connections he made with others, the core part of the entire game and his character, is what makes me love him so much.

2. Yakou Furio

I don’t know why I’m so hyperfixated on this character. Maybe it’s because he’s the mentor character of the protagonist, and ended up giving me father-figure vibes to me with Yuma. Despite his flaws, he is such a good character who has been through so much, yet cares deeply for the people he loves and the city itself. And protect the detectives he took in, even with how much trouble they cause. But Chapter 4 and post-game is where I really start to appreciate him with his backstory revealed and how far he’s willing to go for the ones he love. Here’s to hoping he returns in post-game contents or hopefully sequels.

(NOTE: This is purely my preferences. I do not want to cause discourse or make people feel bad who ship Yuma and Yakou romantically; you guys do you with Yumakou and I’ll be happy with Yakou Fathero).

3. Makoto Kagutsuchi

Okay, this is where we really get to spoilers here since it happened post-game, but he became my favorite character right to the top three just because of who he is. An enigma who holds the secret of Kanai Ward, who created the mysteries in his hands, yet his motivations and heart was only filled with good intentions (despite having to make human meat buns). A young man who had to hold the secret for so long all on his own, try to fix many problems that weren’t actually his fault, finding purpose and his own identity outside of his original, and his relationship with Yuma as a whole. Complex, morally grey characters always catches my interests, especially when they are the antagonists.

4. Desuhiko Thunderbolt

I know, shocking. My favorite out of the four Master Detectives in the NDA is the perverted Superstar Detective, but when you look past the trope (and Chapter 2 and that one DLC scene as a whole) you would see there is a lot of depth to his character. He’s kind of the only one (confirmed so far) who had a pretty normal childhood and actually has relatable struggles a lot of people can probably relate to (being a shy and possibly bullied kid who wants to be a better version of themselves), who desires to be a Superstar and a detective at the same time and doesn’t want to be just one or the other, and is an all-around cool guy and loyal friend who could get along with people when he isn’t being a creep or overly obnoxious. It’s just too bad the writers seem to think the pervert trope would be a good way to add comedy when his obnoxious and goofball nature would probably be enough to get some comedy out of him. I want to hope maybe the writers would make Desuhiko less of a pervert in the future, but I’m not gonna get my hopes up. I just hope people can possibly see through the trope to see the real Superstar under the gross exterior (metaphorically-wise).

5. Kurumi Wendy

I’m honestly surprise she’s high on the list, but with how much I try to expand her character and how much fics I want to do with her, I’d say she definitely made it to the top five of the list. Kurumi is someone where I see a lot of potential in her character, but the writers ended up underutilizing her. She’s a high school informant who lost her grandfather to the overarching mystery, and her best friend a few months ago, and finds a special connection with Yuma and become one of his supporting partners alongside Shinigami. There’s a lot of potentials with her character, like seeing how the losses of important people in her life affected her, how she lives as a high school informant, and see her feelings on detectives and her relationship with Yuma, the new friend she feels a connection with and someone who gives her hope. But unfortunately, the writers end up making a bigger focus on making her the love interest of Yuma, and outside of that, make her an exposition dump. Heck, even in Chapter 5, I’m pretty sure Makoto only brought her with Yuma so she could tell him the informations needed to solve Kanai Ward’s Ultimate Secret, and discover that she and everyone else are Homunculi. It’s honestly sad because there’s so much to her character that could have made her stand out on her own, and I wish was utilized more.

6. Fubuki Clockford

Fubuki is such an adorable character and kind of relatable to me in being an airhead (though not to the extremes as she is). She’s kind and friendly to her peers, and is very imaginative as well when it comes to what she hears, like believing the sky is the ocean (if you look at it from an art perspective, it would be pretty cool). And especially her inner struggles on how she recognizes how slow-witted she is and how her time power leads her distraught when she’s not able to prevent the terrible outcomes she witnesses. Chapter 3 really shined a spotlight on her character, and one of the few spots that makes Chapter 3 worthwhile.

7. Halara Nightmare

Now this is a character I feel I have a lot in common with, specifically in real life. I tend to be rude and asocial (though only if I’m tired and overworked). I don’t like to be physically touched at all unless I give permission and told a head of times. I prefer to work alone when it comes to my work (in this case, my schoolwork). And I am definitely, sadly allergic to cats, especially since I feel connected with cats in personality at times. So I can relate to Halara in some aspects even though I sometimes am off-put by how harsh they are with Yuma in Chapter 1. I understand it’s because they want Yuma to figure things out for himself since he needs to quickly relearn things as a Detective and get to work on solving Kanai Ward’s Ultimate Secret (if anything, I commend them for putting in the effort to give some teaching to Yuma in some ways), and in hindsight they were working as an assistant to Yuma so they must have felt they shouldn’t have to do the job for Yuma (which I can’t blame). But sometimes they get a little too harsh and I just feel bad for Yuma.

8. Vivia Twilight

He is definitely an enigma of his own that interests me (though probably not as much as everyone else). A character who’s of his own agency and his own agendas and interests, and I love that kind of morally grey characters. Especially in Chapter 4 and the DLC where we got to know him more. And I enjoyed how he was a rival to Yuma for Chapter 4 who challenged the beliefs in discovering the truth, and that he was the only one who truly knew about Yuma and Shinigami. I honestly wish there were more interactions between the two after that. It really would have feel like their relationship would have been so unique and deep and interesting. And his relationship with Yakou really felt special after the DLC revealed their backstory together.

9. Shinigami

It’s usually kind of rare for me to like and be interested in mascot characters. And Shinigami surprisingly wins me over. At first, she definitely annoyed me with how she doesn’t exactly empathize with Yuma’s predicament sometimes and her callous nature with murderers sometimes (specifically in Chapter 2), but I can also understand that that’s her major flaw: lack of empathy. She’s a Death God whose natural job is to reap souls and uphold the concept of death. So of course, she’s not gonna understand whenever someone is stressed or feels empathy even with criminals. But that’s what make her character arc that leads to Chapter 4 all the more special. The previous murderers she reaped were those she barely got to know of, Yuma included, so it’s understandable to have a detachment with them, but the chapter 4 culprit was someone both she and Yuma knew, someone that really does make her understand his breakdown.

10. Pucci Lavmin

Pucci was one of my favorite Master Detectives I was looking forward to getting know. She’s a young woman (who may be close to Yuma’s age) who loves cute stuff like teddy bears, has sensitive hearing and gets snappy when too many people talk, and has a resting b!tch face. Seriously, I connect with her so much in these elements, and even thought she was going to be the female deuteragonist that we’ve seen/gotten from Danganronpa. So I was crushed when I learned she died and it was real and not a tutorial trick or something. It’s why she’s on the bottom of the list. She didn’t have as much screen time and development with her. Yes, including Kurumi, the real deuteragonist, who even though was underutilized at least had the groundwork for what kind of developments she could have had.

[hibiscus-reign]

I mean, I don’t know if it’s that people suck at shipping, so much as some people might just genuinely not be interested in shipping Buck with Eddie? And I’m not even talking about the shipping war debacle going on. For example, I’m a huuuge multi-shipper. Pairing up different people, or even shipping throuples, is my jam! But with Eddie, shipping him with Buck is honestly the farthest thing from my mind. I just don’t find Eddie all that interesting, tbh. As for the whole top and bottom discussion, I’ve known many men who identify as bottoms who still looove checking out a man’s ass (a cute ass is a cute ass, regardless of orientation or persuasion), so I’ve just never really cared about that? Also, Tim Minear probably isn’t going to care or even put much thought into that either? If I’m being real, I actually find the obsession with whether Buck and Tommy are tops or bottoms to be a bit excessive in the BuckTommy fandom and I say this as a gay person who knows the importance of compatibility when it concerns that type of preference. People seem so damn OBSESSED with Buck and Tommy fucking, like that’s all their relationship consists of, and THAT’S actually what has me thinking, “You guys kinda suck at this. Where’s the drama? Where’s the hurt and comfort? Where’s the hobby exploration that doesn’t involve sex, sex, sex? Two men in romantic relationships are not constantly thinking about or engaging in fucking, I promise you. We have so much more depth to us than that! But that’s just me. I also think, as a gay person, some of my frustration with the fandom making everything about sex stems from feeling like some of these BuckTommy fans are straight women who can’t help but fetishize two gay men. It happens in every single fandom featuring a slash pairing, canon or not, and it can feel gross to witness, again, as a gay. It’s most definitely not just a BuckTommy thing (god knows buddie shippers and every other slash pairing ship known to man has this problem), so I don’t want to give the impression I’m trying to single them out (I am, after all, a huge BuckTommy shipper). But anyway, I guess that’s a whole other topic for another day, and this message is already hella long as it is.

Babe, I’m sorry if this came across so serious, but I meant this as a joke.

You don’t have to ship Buck and Eddie together. I don’t either.

This is just me trying to show the community that we can put our differences aside, and make stupid posts like this one.

As for the sex thing, I agree that being fetishized can be heavy, but as a gay person unless you know it’s a woman doing this, you should be careful calling it out. Sex has always been a touchy subject, often used against us by homophobes, and policing sexuality just works in their favor. I know there’s a lot of discourse about that with the younger gays, but they need to know sex has always been a part of lgbt history, and no it’s not like the media likes to portray it. I found a post speaking on this if you’d be interested. I haven’t read it all the way yet, but so far it’s been a good read, and it’s more educational than accusatory.

As for the people making sexual posts about Buck and Tommy, I agree it can get too much, but that’s not for us to confront. We can just scroll past it.

But the major take away about my post, this is really me extending my hand to any buddie shipper (who doesn’t have to ship BuckTommy) who would like to form a friendship. Posts like these are in good fun and it bonds us if we don’t take it too seriously. I did the same thing in a different fandom and the community was more receptive, so why not try again?

[xx-slug-xx]

(Sorry, brain dump ahead)

I need to tell y’all something, but I feel like only my older followers will understand what I’m talking about

When I was writing my informative paper on proshipping and anti shipping, including all the arguments for and against each side, I realized something very important.

I have family that I live with. I have friends with their own families. I have pets. I have a job now with coworkers who I care about. And while none of these things give a shit about fiction and internet morals (hell, I’ve had conversations with just about everyone I know about this stuff, and we all agree for the most part), I would give a shit if I was doxxed and put the people in my life in danger. I realized that if I post that document, and the right people saw it, I would put them in danger. I’m not willing to be a martyr for fandom drama. I’ve seen what antis are capable of doing, I’ve seen how they’ve indirectly killed people and how they’ve directly ruined lives. I don’t want that. I care about, not only my own well being, but also the people who I care most about. That’s not to say that anti harassment and anti censorship aren’t important to me, by any means. But my real life takes precedence over my internet life.

If there’s one thing I learned from that paper I wrote (but didn’t post), it’s that the internet is cruel and unjust. It’s that I could never feel comfortable with myself if I labeled myself as an anti. I made it clear that I’m proship, and that paper I wrote is the reason I’ve come to this conclusion. I did my own reaserch, form an unbiased standpoint, while choosing to side more with antis, and I came out of it as proship. My tastes in fiction have not changed. But my understanding of the topic did change. That paper has nearly a year’s worth of research put into it, and it would piss people off. It would, more importantly, piss off antis. I’ve seen what happens when antis get pissed, and I’ve been on the receiving end of the mild version of it. Many times. I’m not willing to go through the version where they don’t hold back. My paper included many documented examples of it, and since the time of writhing it, there have been so many more. I’m not going to be another one of those people who have their lives ruined over stupid fandom discourse.

It’s more than just internet drama to me though, regardless. I know that this is more than just fandom. At its core, it’s all forms of fiction and what is and is not acceptable. It’s about bullying and harassment, and how it keeps getting worse as time goes on. Not just internet harassment either. It’s happening in the American school system every day, people I knew when I was in high school were forced to drop out, get their ged, or do online schooling because of the real world harassment they were receiving. The way that my generation, and the generation bellow me, views other people is appalling. Bullying is just “funny”, and I can’t stand it. The internet is at the core of this issue, of course. It’s taught impressionable minds that other people are like npcs. Cancel culture has taught us that if you step out of line, even for non-issues, then you are the scum of the earth and deserve what’s coming to you. And if you see someone who steps out of line, you need to be ruthless. It’s better to attack other people, so long as the negative attention isn’t on you. Even the older generations are affected. This isn’t something we should be ignoring, but we are. Antis in fandom spaces might seem like it’s not a big deal, but it’s a rabbit hole that runs deeper than people realize.

My paper made me realize this, it made me realize that society sucks, the government sucks, the internet sucks, and I’m pro-freedom to do whatever you want so long as it doesn’t hurt real people. At the end of the day, I’m not going to be a martyr. I refuse that role. You shouldn’t want to be a martyr either. Be kind to people, that’s what’s important. Create spaces where people know they are safe to do whatever the hell they want so long as it doesn’t hurt real people. Stand up for real people who are being hurt by others. Stop harassment, stop hate. I’m tired of seeing people hurt each other over fictional characters who don’t exist. Don’t put yourself or others in danger. Block people who spread hate, and don’t give them a platform to be hateful.

I’m rambling, but for me, there’s no real good outcome unless people suddenly realize that being hateful because of fiction is dumb. I’ve become tired of trying to explain to antis why it’s dumb, there’s no way to talk to many of them. I also can’t risk the safety of others for an issue that only I’m focusing on. There’s other problems in the world, and in my personal life. I just want to be kind, at the end of it all. And I want others to feel the same. But then again, just being kind to others would solve a lot of the worlds problems if everyone followed that rule.

I need to shut up now though, sorry for the dump lol

[blackbullet99]

What do you think of this discourse.

https://www.tumblr.com/allnewalldifferentwildspider/748861203442434048/what-do-you-think-of-zuko-and-aangs-friendship?source=share

Alright, fine. I generally don’t know if I wanna read posts like these much, but alright. Considering this is coming from the-badger-mole, who has no understanding of A:TLA and makes it her life‘s mission to hate on a fictional 12 year old, and the other guy throws a hissy fit the moment a book brings up that the imperialist nation that would commit genocide doesn’t put women in many positions of power, their opinions really don’t matter.

Of this person thinks Aang isn’t a good friend who never supported anyone. Ignoring how Aang literally saved Zuko’s life, was the one who allowed him to join the group because he came to believe he had changed, the two go on a whole journey to re-discover Firebending, Zuko literally trained Aang. They both discuss their feelings to each other several times. Their parallels and interactions were a key part of each season. Honey, you blatantly don’t understand A:TLA beyond your middle-school crack ship.

This idiot don’t understand A:TLA either. “Bryke wanted Zuko in the gang as little as possible cuz Zutara”. If the Zuko joined the gang too soon, it would’ve diminished his arc. The reason why Zuko’s arc works so well is because he actually gets what he wanted in Book 3, to go home, to get his father’s approval, only to realize that isn’t what he wanted and he lost sight of who he was. I think Book 3 - Part 2 should’ve been longer, but this has nothing to with Zutara, get a life.

“If ANYONE was Zuko's "best friend" in the gang, it would be Katara. And that's not zutara glasses talking”. Yes it is the Zutara glasses talking. You’re another braindead ZK fanatic who clearly can’t even take Fire Nation criticism and treat Aang like he’s an abusive horndog. Your opinion means nothing.

I’ll say this much, Zuko and Katara are close friends, but only at the very end of the show, and I wouldn’t say they’re the closest in The Gaang. One they become friends, nothing about their relationship stands out especially from the others. Especially seeing as Sokka and Zuko had a close bond, they have a good amount of similarities, they share a two parter and Zuko goes to him asking for advice about Katara.

Once again this moron proves they don’t understand or care about the story of A:TLA beyond their Wattpad ship. Lemme set the record straight, Zuko and Katara’s dynamic is a notable part of the show yes, but Aang and Zuko are two of the key cornerstones of the show. Aang asking Zuko if they could be friends is important because it brings up the fact that the Fire Nation was more peaceful back then, it also shows that Aang is willing to show kindness and offer friendship even to this enemies and Zuko’s expression and the fact that Zuko thinks about many months later shows that despite wanting to capture Aang, it’s something that Zuko did consider, adding more depth to their dynamic. But then again, the-badger-mole thinks Aang didn’t go out of his way for anyone and spends their whole life hating Aang, so of course they’d wouldn’t notice this.

“Aang and Zuko are friends because Bryke said they are. Same reason Mai is a good guy, or Katara was always in love with Aang.” No we see Aang and Zuko as friends several times, we see that Mai is a anti-heroine but isn’t a villain, especially in Book 3 and when she stands up to Azula, we see that Katara has feelings for Aang, multiple times throughout the whole show, but because this has nothing do with Zutara you’re either blind, delusional, stupid or all of the above.

“Very little involving Aang's development or his relationships is important enough to be shown on screen, and as a result, Aang isn't that important to the development of the plot.” Oh boy, we got another “Aang had no importance to the story, he’s a plot device”. F*ck off. You objectively don’t understand this show and don’t care about it at all beyond your crack-pairing, stop making your lack of media-literacy everyone else’s problem, know your place and stick to Wattpad Zutara fics fitting for someone like you.

There are a total of three episode where Aang admires Katara’s beauty and even then it’s a minor thing, that hardly changes anything. It’s painfully obvious you’re just a bitter loser who upset that Bryke didn’t give into your petty entitlement and make your self-insert middleschool Wattpad good girl/bad boy ship canon. Whiny ZK fanatics like you will complain if Aang so much as looks as Katara, but their pants will be soaked if Zuko touches Katara’s necklace and forcefully grabs her. Y’all have issues.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is the greater cartoon of all time (after SpongeBob SquarePants of course). But lost on media-illiterate obsessively Aang hating Zutara obsessed fake fans like y’all who don’t care about this show, nor do they have the capacity to understand it because their pissy that their dumb@$$ ship ain’t canon, so all they can do is cope and seethe for the rest of their lives.

Hope you appreciate my response anonymous asker. Have a nice day.