#<- help what do people actually use in this fandom

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Also, I would like to add that Malleus’s blatant disregard for the autonomy of others and fits of rage is DELIBERATE on his end. Being one of the top five mages in the entire world, I am sure that he KNOWS there is a large disparity between his power/social and the rest of the peers/subordinates etc. His sheer and utter confidence in his abilities to get what he wants and general disregard for others isn’t only an indicator of his awareness about this disparity, but is also a reflection of the abuses of his power AND social status as a whole.

In light of his age, imagine the amount of times he has repeated these mistakes despite others advice and criticisms against his choices. Only Ace has been able to overcome others general reverence and fear towards Malleus when it came to calling him out. He is not an innocent person who is ignorant about the ways of humanity verses faes, and is certainly not the innocent character the fandom (especially those who are infatuated by him) think he is.

[Referencing this post!]

***Standard disclaimer: In sharing my thoughts, I do not mean to disparage Malleus fans. Furthermore, me disliking him should not detract from your own enjoyment of the character. If you do not feel comfortable reading about this topic (ie critique of Malleus’s character), then I encourage you to scroll on and to not engage with this post.***

My thoughts below the cut!

I do feel that, to some degree, the disregard for others and inappropriate fits of rage come from blatant ignorance (since Malleus did have a very isolated and sheltered upbringing). However, it's also hard for me to believe that in his 178 years of living that he was NOT told countless times by those around him (mostly Lilia and his grandmother, Maleficia) to wield his power and social status more tactfully than how he has. Did he take none of those lessons to heart??? What about the 2-3 years he spent living among the non-fae at NRC? Nothing from then too?? Regarding self-awareness of his strength and social status, Malleus has made it clear on more than one occasion that he stands above others. Right from his first appearance in the main story (in book 2), it's implied he's well aware of his position--so much so that he deliberately hides his identity from Yuu. He also cannot propose to Eliza in Ghost Marriage because he is the crown prince of a nation. Time and time again, Malleus's status is mentioned and it plays into his importance as the sole heir to Briar Valley. He must also know he is powerful, given that he is one of the top 5 strongest mages in the world and can perform incredible feats (like reassembling a stage and walking through Vil's poisonous miasma in book 5) like they're nothing. His grandmother and Lilia tell him the Draconias are powerful and shouldn’t use their magic to harm, but to help those they rule over. Yet he seems to have surprisingly few qualms when turning these powers against people who are only at a fraction of his power (Rook, his dorm mates, everyone in the Scalding Sands trip group, Ortho, etc.) or have no magic at all (remember when he attacked those civilians in Terror is Trending and the other Diasomnia students had to restrain him?). Malleus may be emotional in these moments, but the fact remains that he's making the deliberate, intentional choice to wield his magic in this way. He has the ability to hold himself back (as we see him refrain from fighting Rook in Malleus's PE Uniform vignette, only because he knows Rook is baiting him), but the vast majority of the time he fails to do this. For someone who is acutely aware of his power, you'd think he would... I don't know, keep a better leash on it? And what about his identity? So Malleus is concerned about Sebek insulting Leona (the prince of another country) but he ISN'T concerned about how his own fits of anger poorly reflect on himself, who is the CROWN PRINCE of a country??? Please make that make sense... Why is Malleus so selective 💀

I'm actually quite shocked at how little Malleus's pride and arrogance is pointed out; it's usually Leona who gets those labels even though Malleus is also just as arrogant, prideful, and confident in his own powers. Most of the time, I feel like I see Malleus being called "innocent". Maybe his negative traits on display get overlooked because TWST tries so hard to present Malleus to us as someone we are supposed to like (especially with how often they use his overpoweredness or loneliness is used as a punchline for jokes). Our interactions with Malleus are also so few and so short, particularly early in the main story, that fan project their own ideas about what he's like onto him and that forms a certain “image” of him that may not be the same as how he actually is. Him being lonely makes it easy for fans to perceive him as desperate for company and even easier for fans insert themselves as his “special” friend or S/O to fill the void.

It's... quite ironic, really? Malleus says in Riddle's Suitor Suit vignettes that he is familiar with the concept of "noblesse oblige", which is the implied duty of the privileged and nobility to act gracefully towards those less privileged. Yet... he is sometimes overstepping "fae playfulness" or "teenage childishness/immaturity" and continuously creating situations which put people around him in danger (all of Endless Halloween Night, not holding back his attacks against the Magicam Monsters, all the times he let his temper get out of control, book 7 OB, etc.) When defending the extremes he took in book 7 by citing his status and his UM, Malleus has this to say, which is very telling of his lucidity: "Monitoring? Meddling? Heh, how silly. It's a king's duty to govern, is it not? I'm watching over you. To ensure no nightmares befall you in the fairy tales you now reside in... To ensure you have happy dreams that last forever!" It's implied that Malleus's grandma has told him since childhood that their line has powerful magic to protect their people's smiles--and here he is, overextending those words to people that aren't even his subjects, and twisting the meaning to justify his own brutal rule.

What I noticed is... Malleus is often so oriented on seeing the situation from his POV that he fails to consider those from any entity aside from himself. In Endless Halloween Night, he feels sorry for the ghosts who showed up late and were left out of the festivities because he can relate to them, so therefore he wants to make sure they are included. In book 7, Malleus fears his loved ones leaving and projects this fear onto everyone else so he feels right in being the one coming in to be their "hero" and grant them happy endings they never asked for. In his own Dorm Uniform vignettes, Malleus frames the circumstances as, "I wouldn't be mad if you did the same thing to me" instead of listening to his peers' complaints. He centers problems around himself (which admittedly is very frustrating to me), and this is how Malleus tries to understand and navigate the world. This gives me the impression that he has a very particular way of thinking and it's perhaps difficult for him to understand others, even with extensive pointers.

I truly believe Malleus is ignorant about humans and fae. That much matches up with what we know of his history. What I do NOT get is why he continues to remain ignorant when 1) he has spent a few years exposed to non-fae and their ways; even if this pales in comparison to the 175ish other years of his life, he should have some new basis for appropriate social interactions with other races, and 2) most of the major adult figures in his life are exposing to him he should consider others' perspectives and try to learn more about that which he is unfamiliar with. Malleus has so many opportunities to expand his horizons and get to know new people, but he seems to sit around and keep waiting for others take the initiative for him. But he could initiate too, so why doesn't he???? (He has shown he is capable of it, as he approaches Deuce to fix his virtual pet and chatting with Idia about the same pet in the main story; if not by himself, then Lilia can easily assist or invite him into activities such as the Silk City trip.) Even if Malleus fails to socialize in a way that's considered appropriate, at least that's something he can learn from and correct for next time... But why doesn’t he????????? If he did, it would sure help out with his inability to empathize with his peers and could even curb his temper (which would be seen as socially inappropriate). So why exactly does he seem to know so little and make so little effort to try and rectify this???? Why does he keep postulating that his word is above everyone else’s and then get upset when people don’t like him for this very alienating attitude? Aaaaah, it's a sad cycle to witness him devolve into again and again... 😭

P. S. Bless Ace for being the one character who still held it against Malleus for the fucked up “prank” he pulled in Endless Halloween Night (and then convincing everyone the misunderstanding was their faults for “attacking the ghosts first”).

[mothdruid]

Within the past 72 hours the TGM fandom got a fire put under it's ass, for lack of a better term/phrase. Even though I'm not as active in the fandom anymore, it did make me want to talk about a few things. This isn't the first time that I've had to make a post similar to this, usually speaking about reblogs and keeping your fanfic writers feeling wanted within the fandom spaces, but today I'm going to talk more about fandom etiquette and my experiences in fandom spaces. So, if you want to hear my opinion on fandom etiquette, how I learned fandom etiquette, and my thoughts about the doxing situation that has happened, keep on reading.

My Fandom Experience.

The first fandom that I was ever a part of was The Hunger Games fandom in the 8th grade (if you don't include my anime fandoms). I was 12-13 at the time. This was when I was first introduced to Tumblr and being involved within a fandom online. At the time I was super young, barely even knew who I was as a person, let alone in a fandom space. All I did was reblog little gifsets and fawn over Josh Hutcherson. I remember getting my first hate anon, even though I didn't do anything that would generate that to even happen. Even when I was 12-13, I couldn't understand why anyone would send a hate anon. That was when I found out a friend of mine found my Tumblr and actually secretly hated me, so she sent me hate anons. Still, before I knew it was her I didn't understand.

Fandoms were a formative part of my childhood. I think that main one that helped form me though was the Supernatural (yeah, I know, eye roll), Naruto, and The Hobbit fandoms. I had made friends on Tumblr and Instagram through these fandoms. During these times was when I had first started consuming fanfiction. Specifically, destiel and thilbo fanfiction. This is how I started to find the things in fanfiction that I loved, and the things that I hated. Instead of sending hate to the writers for their thoughts and stories that I didn't agree with, I would back out of the story or just scroll past. Not only that, I also started to use the filters on AO3 constantly, ensuring that I was only reading the fics that I knew I'd enjoy. Also, I was careful to read warnings and tags prior to reading the fic. Never once did I blame the writer for something that I knew I didn't like and accidentally read or read for see what it was about.

After high school was when I started getting into fanfiction writing. I've written for a lot of fandoms during this time. The IT movies, Total Drama, Haikyuu, Attack on Titan, Marvel, Bridgerton, Top Gun: Maverick, and currently ASOIAF. As a writer I've never gotten hate, thankfully, but I have had a lot of friends that have. It's sad to see so many people who take the time to write, whether it's enjoyable or not, receive hate. As writers we are simply expressing our creativity for the things that we love. Since posting fanfiction on tumblr, I have experienced a lot of people pestering for new updates and when the next fic is, and so have a lot of other writers on here. Even though people only know us as a little icon and username, fanfiction writers are people. We have lives outside of writing fanfiction. Everyone also isn't the same type writer. One person may easily write multiple fics every week, some of us take longer, and some of us are even just passion writers (me lol).

The TGM fandom has been one of the most negative fandom experiences I've ever seen/had. It is full of some of the meanest people/anons I've ever seen. From writers being attacked for fic ideas, people being sent hate for something that the anon has full control over, and people constantly expecting new stories to read on the daily. Yes, I do know that other fandoms have these issues, but it seems to be almost a weekly, hell, even daily thing within this fandom. A lot of the issues that I see happen in this fandom are from people who don't understand fandom etiquette.

Fandom Etiquette.

If you had noticed there was a few things I put in bold above. These are key things that I learned during my time that attribute to fandom etiquette. So without further a do, I'll list out some fandom etiquette rules that I follow all the time.

Don't send hate anons to people

Block/unfollow people you don't like

If you don't like an idea or fic, don't read it

Read through all warnings and tags that the writer provided

Use AO3 filters

Don't blame the writer/creator for reading things they created that you actively know you don't like

Writers/Creators aren't "content farms"

There are people behind these blogs/usernames, treat them like someone you'd see on the street

Writers/Creators are expressing love/passion for something, don't hate them for doing that

If you see something fandom related that you don't like, scroll past it or ignore it

YOU CURATE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE (ESPECIALLY ON TUMBLR)

The Doxing Situation.

For those who are unaware but decided to read this anyways, recently there was a writer (Mama Mayhem) on here who got doxed from another writer in the fandom. Mayhem has since lost her job due to the doxing. This was apparently from her breaking HIPAA by posting a picture into a private groupchat/discord. This picture was posted almost a half year ago. Meaning that the person who reported/doxed Mayhem had known about this picture for months and only recently decided to do something about it.

I'll start by saying that I also work in healthcare, and know many other people here who do. I understand that a HIPAA violation is 100% an offense that gets you fired. I'm not excusing the HIPAA violation if one did occur.

Some people have brought up the idea that maybe the person that reported the picture, and doxed Mayhem, was doing it out of the goodness of their heart. Due to the timeline of it all, that doesn't seem likely. I had a previous coworker get fired for HIPAA violations and it took a total of a week from the initial report for her to be gone.

The biggest thing I want to convey is that TWO WRONGS CAN HAPPEN AT THE SAME TIME. Yes, if Mayhem violated HIPAA, it is wrong. But at the same time, the person held onto this information for months only to use it out of spite, pettiness, and cruelty, is wrong.

My Thoughts.

Due to Mayhem being doxed, a lot of people have decided to leave this platform, take indefinite hiatuses, stop writing, or move to AO3 exclusively., and I don't blame them. I'll be honest, I'm thinking about moving to AO3 exclusively now. AO3 feels a lot more rewarding in my experience. I already only post my fics for ships to AO3, so why not just post everything on AO3 (which I usually do).

I think a lot of people have forgot what it feels like to feel shame in something they say or do. When I say this, it's directed towards people who send hate or do other malicious things in fandom spaces. Fandoms were never this clique-ish and mean. I think it has to do with the pandemic, meaning that a lot of people who would have never joined a fandom did because they weren't allowed to do anything outside of their house. So, those mean girls that made fun of fandom girlies (g/n) previously, joined the fandoms and decided started bullying the people within them.

This situation is super shitty and people are now scared. It makes complete sense, especially after seeing someone, that many of you were close to, be doxed. A lot of people are scared of it happening to them now. I don't think this fandom will be the same after this situation, but who knows, maybe everyone will just forget and move on. Either way, I think I'll be taking a step back from the TGM fandom. I'll still be here, but until further notice, I won't be posting any TGM fanfiction. Maybe a gifset/picture here and there, but I don't think this is a fandom I feel comfortable writing for anymore.

If you've read all of this, thank you.

[scoobydoodean]

How did, you think, the perception of Dean come to be so twisted/different from what is actually shown to us? Like some things I can see people just not bothering to look past superficial instances (The “no chic flick moment” thing, assuming that him not having Sam’s level of formal education means he’s automatically unintelligent because people assume that irl, for example) but others (Him being emotionally constipated in fandom but genuinely one of the most introspective and emotionally intelligent characters in canon, making him a slob/a bigot/an abuser, or someone that only hunts for the thrill of the kill) just… I can’t even begin to understand and it’s so homogeneous in the Fanon Mindset too.

I honestly do think a lot of these relate to Sam in an interesting way. A lot of narratives about Dean are in "contrast" to Sam. Sam is smart, Dean is dumb. Sam is introspective and emotionally intelligent, Dean is repressed. Dean is a slob, Sam is neat. We get many of these ideas from or through Sam.

Sam sometimes makes digs at Dean's intelligence (though he's far from the only one—even Dean himself is guilty of it) and people just kind of buy into that and regurgitate it despite the many examples we get to the contrary. In fact (and I wish I had tracked this in particular over this rewatch but I noticed how often it was happening pretty late) Dean is often referred to as dim-witted right before or right after displaying exactly how brilliant he is.

I think a lot of the idea that Dean is emotionally closed off also heavily comes down to Sam... because Sam is often the person asking demanding Dean open up, and when Dean refuses to open up to Sam, and Sam starts spouting off pop psychology talk about it not being good to "bury your emotions" or whatever... people buy into what's being sold to them... by Sam. Sam is selling a story that HE is emotionally healthy, but Dean is NOT emotionally healthy, and the details of what is upsetting Dean need to be pried out of him for his own good. When the truth is, 1) in many cases, what we are actually seeing is Sam being pushy and not respecting Dean's boundaries 2) many of these instances show Sam urging Dean to open up to him as a proxy for his OWN feelings that HE is avoiding (ex: 2.02, 5.11, 13.04) 3) other instances demonstrate that he is a poor confidant for Dean who is best avoided because he will harm Dean using what Dean's opened up to him about (ex: 2.09/2.11, 4.08/4.14/4.18/4.21, 6.02, 13.04). 4) Other episodes simply demonstrate that Sam is not always a preferred confidant because of their upbringing or whatever other reason but is still willing to be vulnerable with others (even if spurned by them too) (ex: 2.03, 3.10, 3.16, 4.15, 4.16, 4.22, 5.07, 6.02, 6.06, 7.04, ). And even then... Dean still opens up to Sam quite a lot! (ex: 1.16, 1.18, 1.22, 2.03, 2.09, 2.20, 4.10, 4.11, ... I'm losing steam here but you get the idea).

One of the reasons this happens I think is actually a lack of interest in Sam. Because many fans don't spend a lot of time analyzing Sam, they tend to vaguely grasp who he is based on how he talks. Then the issue multiplies when they use him as a self-insert in a fanfic instead of characterizing him as he is in the show, using him to tell Dean or Cas things the author wants them to hear, or to act as a confidant. That further lends to this belief that Sam is some High EQ Therapist Lite type who is endlessly sensitive and vulnerable and Dean is uniquely in need of Someone To Help Him Get His Shit Together.

The idea that Dean is a slob I give people a little more grace with, because I think it likely comes about more honestly through how Dean eats—and this is one area where Dean absolutely is not neat. He tends to ignore manners when eating, and I think a lot of people extrapolate from "Dean doesn't care about table manners" -> "Dean is a slob". Dean actually having some issues with germs at times is something members of the writing team have messed up before. It might also be related to Sam's weird perception of manners surrounding food (i.e., not eating food in other people's houses even when it's offered to him for some reason) and people associating his overemphasis on that with "neatness" in contrast to Dean.

Another angle here is probably classism rearing it's ugly head. Because Dean has less formal education than Sam, he has to be a slob, and he has to be emotionally closed off, and he must be a bigot, and etc etc etc.

The reasons some people insist on Dean being a bigot or an abuser are more nebulous (many forms of bigotry may be under discussion, many moments might be chosen as "proof" of one thing or another and that may require some more individual attention). In a broad sense, it's sometimes classism at work here. However, a lot of these ideas persist through certain metas passed around by people who already don't like Dean. Many of them developed a dislike for Dean early on and will always choose interpretations of various events that cast him in the worst light based on their first impression, whether their interpretation is all that reasonable or not. I mean, I could go around saying Sam idolizes a known pedophile and is afraid of people with certain disabilities because he's ableist, and I could insist his interactions with Madison in "Heart" are intentionally written to tell us that Sam is an absolute creep who takes advantage of vulnerable women, but if the goal is to analyze the show in good faith, my analysis ends up being more charitable as I dismiss some of these things as Writer Crimes or things that maybe I wasn't intended to take so seriously or things that are a product of their time. Of course we also all know that some Sam and Cas fans love to shit on Dean for doing the same shit their fave did. That does sometimes leave me wondering if people's selective memory on Sam and/or Cas is more of the issue than their selective memory on Dean, but I also think because Supernatural is so long, and there is SO much fanon content, a lot of people's views on the characters are based around fanon/fanfiction they read in ways they simply don't realize, and that ignorance persists and strengthens as memories of the actual source material become more hazy.

NOTE: I know you know this—but for others: I track some of these things in the following tags:

#my smart bby

#dean and introspection

#bad therapist sam

#dean and cleanliness

#dean minimizations

[funnywormz]

I think this shitshow with Toshiro stems from the trend of people INSISTING that interpersonal conflict must be a moral failing. Like I think there's something to be said about how people afford so much less patience to people who are autistic in the "wrong" ways, but also Laios and Toshiro just clash on a fundamental level that has nothing to do with that. Hell, you could read Toshiro as autistic as well. People related to Laios' side of the argument but instead of getting any nuance out of it they started projecting their experiences with ableist people onto Toshiro.

AGREE AGREE AGREE. i think that Fandom Brain gets people very used to thinking of conflicts in terms of "who is the bad guy and who is the good guy", so when they encounter a more nuanced conflict they don't really know what to do. i don't think toshiro is a bad person at all, in his conflict with laios he's just exhausted and starving and has been pushed to the limit and from his perspective, laios doesn't even seem that emotionally affected by the situation. i don't think what he said was right and it was pretty cruel, but i don't think he's a villain or deserves to be permanently hated as a character just bc he fucked up this time lol

also yeah you could definitely read him as autistic, and i think that highlights an issue in the autistic community in general bc like....... a lot of autistic people have conflicting needs which can lead to conflict between them/make them unable to stand being around each other. and it's not because either of them are neurotypical or bad people, they're just incompatible. like autistic people who loudly stim vocally and autistic people who meltdown when they have to be around loud noises, for example. it doesn't mean either of them is bad or not autistic, just that they have conflicting needs

i 100% agree with the last part too. i disliked toshiro at first myself bc i had been (and still do ngl) projecting onto laios hard and the conflict they had reminded me of times when people have been mean or angry at me irl for social blunders i've made unintentionally, or when someone i thought liked me/was my friend turned out to actually hate me. it's a common experience for autistic people and that scene resonates with that! but i think it also helps to take a step back from projecting our own traumatic experiences onto the scene and just look at it objectively. laios isn't perfect either and he's the one who actually starts the physical fight by slapping toshiro (i feel like i don't see many people mention this lol). i feel super bad for him in that scene but he's not a perfect victim and has done things wrong himself too

as an autistic person i've also been in situations where i can relate to toshiro too lol, like where someone is overly physically and emotionally familiar with me when we don't know each other well and i've wanted them to back off but haven't been sure how to say it without hurting their feelings. this kind of conflict is far from just being a "neurotypical vs neurodivergent" thing as a lot of people portray it in the fandom

idk i just wish people would think a little more deeply about the scene and put their own emotions and experiences aside to instead consider the conflict with the added context of the individual characters and their respective cultures + the situation they're in. people don't have to like toshiro but i wish they wouldn't paint him as a villain or make up awful shit about him just to justify their feelings when he isn't even that bad of a dude in canon yknow 😑. also we literally see him at rock bottom struggling and freaking out and i think that's important to remember. in a different context i doubt he would have ever said those things to laios

[agooddaytoscream]

LONG POST: About the situation in Inner Mongolia, Tuva, Kalmykia and Buryatia:

See this red piece of land here?

It’s almost as big as the actual country of Mongolia right?

…Wanna know why?

IT’S STOLEN LAND.

I am a Mongolian person from Outer Mongolia, it pains me to see my fellow siblings being subjected to a cultural genocide right now in China.

ALMOST NOBODY is talking about this.

Go ahead and search “Inner Mongolia” on any social media platform, see anything loosely related to it being stolen, or the eradication of the Mongolian language and culture in schools by the CCP?

Not much or close to none, right?

Unlike Tibet and Uyghurs, the other two biggest ethnic minorities in China, which have a number of campaigns/gofundmes/articles about the situation, there’s only a few articles about Inner Mongolia.

Do you want to know why you don’t hear about Inner Mongolia? Censorship and oppression.

Remember Tibet? And how China oppresses Tibetan Buddhism as a result, resulting in His Holiness, the Dalai Lama to leave his people’s homeland and reside in India? The biggest religion practiced in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia is Tibetan Buddhism.

I currently cannot find ANY campaigns aiming for a free Inner Mongolia, much less any recognizing what’s going on.

The Mongolic people have been the victims of genocide multiple times.

I’ve heard numerous negative opinions from foreigners online and in real life about the Mongol Empire and how “Mongolians deserve to be oppressed, China is doing them a favor, Traditional Mongolian script is used in Inner Mongolia and has a higher GDP, Outer Mongolia only uses Cyrillic.”

( Mongolia was colonized by the Soviet Union, and subjected to communism, do you know what it feels like for your own family members, brainwashed by communist propaganda during childhood, even now swearing up and down that Russians are superior and everything they do is correct. And when asked whether the innocent Mongolian Buddhist monks deserved to die at the hands of Russians, they said it was deserved?! This is how insane propaganda can get, nobody is immune)

Do you realize how fucked up that is?? To hear so many say your people deserve this??

“Mongolian is our mother language! We are Mongolian until death!” shouted ethnic-Mongolian students in China’s Inner Mongolia, in opposition to a government policy, ending bilingual education. Critics of this policy see it as the latest move in a decades’ long campaign aimed at erasing the Mongolian culture.

- PLEASE READ THESE ARTICLES, they’re not the most recent, but they tell the truth.

Why critics are asking if Inner Mongolia is the next Tibet or Xinjiang This is from 2023.

Inner Mongolia in 'War-Like State' This article is from 2011, however the events that were reported are still happening.

Mongolians in China Face 'Cultural Genocide' as Language, Culture Swept Aside: Group

This article is from 2021. It’s recent enough.

This goes without saying, but xenophobia is also extremely prevalent in China against ethnic minorities.

I highly recommend reading this specific tumblr post. I am also apart of many fandoms surrounding chinese media. OP makes many valid points and I cannot support them enough.

From personal experiences, I have also read about my people and Central Asians being portrayed as brutal, savage, uncivilized barbarians in many Chinese-American novels. It’s heartbreaking.

I despise how the world turns a blind eye to my brothers and sisters suffering, just because the severity of what my people endured is less than other groups, doesn’t mean that we should only focus on helping one minority, support all groups under oppression and colonialism no matter the severity of their situations.

I just found this Youtube video detailing the situation in Inner Mongolia, it’s beautifully done. PLEASE PLEASE WATCH THE FULL VIDEO, Beginning to End.

Why China Doesn’t Want You To Know About This Place.

Not to mention, the countries of Tuva, Buryatia, and Kalmykia are stolen by Russia just like Inner Mongolia. Throughout its history, Russia has seized foreign lands, colonizing indigenous peoples and destroying their national identity.

Note: I am not talking about the Sakha (Yakutia) because I am personally not apart of their community and will not talk over Yakut voices regarding Yakutia such as: https://www.instagram.com/verona.petrova?igsh=MXkyMHY3NDVoZjZxMg==

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2iRvYqvu1M/?igsh=MTFucHg5aDdjaDFocA==

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by VERONIKA PETROVA (@verona.petrova)

The Tuvans are a Turkic group with their own language however, they share many cultural aspects with Mongolians. Tuva is the most poverty stricken place in Russia with the lowest standards of living.

The Buryats are an ethnic minority of Siberia whose population of around half a million largely follow a blend of Buddhism and Shamanism.

They are closely related to the Mongols, and the two groups share similar histories, cultures, religious beliefs, and lifestyles.

The Buryat language is considered one of the world’s most endangered languages.

Soldiers from Tuva and Buryatia have the highest casualty rates per 100,000 for Russia in the Ukraine war.

“These are some of Russia’s poorest regions: places where many young men see the army as their only chance to earn a decent living. And it’s these places that are now paying a disproportionately high price as Russian war casualties continue to rise.”

Please see: Free Buryatia Foundation, Buryat Liberation Movement, Mass Deportation and Ethnic cleansing of Kalmykia, The Kalmyk Deportations of 1943. Ukraine war: Tuva and Buryatia pay the highest price, but latest BBC Russian casualty figures show poverty not ethnicity the key factor.

Free Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Kurdistan, Armenia, Haiti, Yemen, Tigray, Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Arakan, Tamil, Eelam, Western Sahara, West Papua, Kashmir, Canary Islands, & everyone undergoing genocide / colonialism.

Spread awareness about the femicides in Kazakhstan:

The Rise of Non-Consensual Bride Kidnapping in Kazakhstan: Developing a Culturally-Informed and Gender-Sensitive Response

Kazakh Activists Urge Authorities To Toughen Punishment For Domestic Violence

Can An Ex-Minister's Arrest In His Wife's Brutal Killing Finally Bring Protections To Kazakh Women?

EurasiaChat: Gender-based violence rears its ugly head again

YOU DON'T NEED TO GO OUT AND PROTEST, SIMPLY REBLOGING, LIKING, SPREADING AWARENESS, AND REPLYING HELPS AS WELL!!!

[ryin-silverfish]

One nerd's musing about Chinese religion and "respect"

-I try to stay away from fandom discourse, but, much like how you can smell the stench from a dumpster fire without walking into said dumpster fire, I've noticed something that seemed to come up a lot in western JTTW + adjacent fandoms: "respect Chinese religion".

-Usually as a reason for why you shouldn't ship a character, because of fucking course it's shipping discourse too.

-And my first reaction is "Man, you are taking Chinese religion too darn seriously, more than people who are born and raised in China."

-My second reaction is "I mean, most of us are atheist/agnostic by default anyways, with a good number of what I'd call 'atheist/agnostics with superstitions': people who said they were not religious, yet believed in Fengshui or divinations and burnt incense at temples for good luck."

-My third reaction: "But why do I get the feeling that when you mention 'Respect', you are thinking about something completely different?"

-Then I reread an essay from Anthony C. Yu, "Religion and Literature in China: The "Obscure Way" of Journey to the West", and the metaphorical lightbulb just lit up over my head.

(Everything below applies more to Daoism + associated folk religions, but by the time when most classic Chinese vernacular novels were written, the blending of the three religions had become well and truly mainstream.)

(The conception of gods differs from dynasty to dynasty. What I'm describing here is mostly based on Ming and Qing ones; if you went back to Han or pre-Qin times, most of these would not apply.)

(I am one of the "atheist/agnostic by default" people. I just have an interest in this kind of stuff. I am also just one Chinese person, and an actual Daoist/Buddhist/Religion Studies researcher would probably have a lot more valuable information and perspective to offer when it comes to contemporary practices and worship. Like any people on the internet: take my words with a grain of salt.)

-Even in the past, when society was far less secularized, Chinese gods are not omniscient, perfect beings whose worship is a solemn, humorless affair. Some's worship are Serious Business, but that has more to do with the sort of gods they are and the patronage they enjoy, not godhood in and of itself.

-And even the ones that you are supposed to "treat seriously" are still very human. To use an analogy I've used plenty of times before: you respect and fear them in the same way you'd respect and fear an emperor's official, or the emperor himself, because if you don't, you are not gonna like the consequences.

-However, unlike Jesus, the emperor & his officials were capable of being temperamental, flawed, or an outright asshole, divine or not. Ideally, they wouldn't be, and if you were one of the "serious" believers——people who actually got an official permit, became ordained clergy, and went to live in a temple, you were unlikely to think of your gods in that manner.

-But it wasn't a complete, utter impossibility. The lower you go in the pantheon, the closer you get to popular religion, the less "serious" the gods and their worship become. By that, I mean general attitude, not sincerity of faith. You still shouldn't be rude to them, but, well, they are more likely to take a joke in stride, or participate in the "vulgar" pleasures of commoners because they weren't as bound to Confucian moral standards or religious disciplines.

-To stretch the same analogy further: you should still respect your village head, they could still give your ass a good spanking for being a disrespectful brat, but you were not obligated to get on your knees and kowtow to them like you would do in front of a provincial magistrate, the emperor's minister, or the emperor himself, nor did they have the power to chop your head off just because you were rude.

-On the other hand, the emperor would never visit a random peasant just to help them fix their broken plow or treat them to a nice meal, but your village head could, and your relationship would probably be warmer and a lot more personal as a result.

-Your respect for them was more likely to stem from the things they actually did for you and the village as a whole, instead of something owed to this distant, powerful authority you might never get to see in your lifetime, but could change its course with a single stroke of a brush.

-Now exchange "village head" for your run-of-the-mill Tudis and Chenghuangs and friendly neighborhood spirits (because yes, people worshipped yaoguais for the exact same reasons), emperor + his officials for the Celestial Bureaucracy, and you'd have a basic idea of how Chinese religions worked on the ground level.

-This is far from absolute: maybe your village head was a spiteful old bastard who loved bullying his juniors, maybe your regional magistrate was an honest, upright man who could enjoy a good drink and a good laugh, maybe the emperor was a lenient one and wouldn't chop your head off for petty offenses. But their general degree of power over you and the closeness of your relationships still apply.

-Complicating the matter further, some folk gods (like Wutong) were worshipped not because they brought blessings, but because they were the divine equivalent of gangsters running a protection racket: you basically bribed them with offerings so they'd leave you alone and not wreck your shit. Famous people who died violently and were posthumously deified often fell into this category——shockingly enough, Guan Yu used to be one such god!

-Yeah, kinda like how your average guy could become an official through the imperial examinations, so could humans become gods through posthumous worship, or cultivate themselves into immortals and Enlightened beings.

-Some immortals aren't qualified for, or interested in a position in the Celestial Bureaucracy——they are the equivalent of your hermits, your cloistered Daoist priests, your common literati who kept trying and failing the exams. But some do get a job offer and gladly take it.

-Anyways, back to my original point: that's why it's so absurd when people pull the "Respect Chinese Religion1!!1!" card and immediately follow up with "Would you do X to Jesus?"

-Um, there are a lot of things you can do with Chinese gods that I'm pretty sure you can't do with Jesus. Like worshipping him side by side with Buddha and Confucius (Lao Tzu). Or inviting him to possess you and drink copious amount of alcohol (Tang-ki mediums in SEA). Or genderbend him into a woman over the course of several centuries because folks just like that version of Jesus better (Guan Yin/Avalokitesvara).

-But most importantly, Chinese religions are kinda a "free market" where you could pick and choose between gods, based on their vicinity to you and how efficient they were at answering prayers. You respect them because they'll help you out, you aren't an asshole and know your manners, and pissing them off is a bad idea in general, not because they are some omnipotent, perfect beings who demand exclusive and total reverence.

-A lot of the worship was also, well, very "practical" and almost transactional in nature: leave offerings to Great Immortal Hu, and he doesn't steal your imperial seal while you aren't looking. Perform the rites right and meditate on a Thunder General's visage, and you can temporarily channel said deity's power. Get this talisman for your kids at Bixia Yuanjun's temple, and they'll be protected from smallpox.

-"Faith alone" or "Scripture alone" is seldom the reason people worship popular deities. Even the obsession with afterlife wasn't about the eternal destination of your soul, and more about reducing the potential duration of the prison sentence for you and your loved ones so you can move on faster and reincarnate into a better life.

-Also, there isn't a single "canon" of scriptures. Many popular gods don't show up in Daoist literature until much later. Daoist scriptures often came up with their own gigantic pantheons, full of gods no one had heard of prior to said book, or enjoyed no worship in temples whatsoever.

-In the same way famous dead people could become gods via worship, famous fictional characters could, too, become gods of folk religion——FSYY's pantheon was very influential on popular worship, but that doesn't mean you should take the novels as actual scriptures.

-Like, God-Demon novels are to orthodox Daoism/Buddhism what the Divine Comedy is to medieval Christian doctrines, except no priests had actually built a Church of Saint Beatrice, while Daoists did put FSYY characters into their temples. By their very nature, the worship that stemmed from these books is not on the same level of "seriousness" as, say, the Tiantai school of Buddhism and their veneration of the Lotus Sutra.

-At the risk of being guilty of the same insertion of Abrahamic religion where it doesn't belong: You don't cite Dante's Inferno in a theological debate, nor would any self-respecting pastor preach it to churchgoers on a Sunday.

-Similarly, you don't use JTTW or FSYY as your sole evidence for why something is "disrespectful to Chinese religion/tradition" when many practitioners of said religions won't treat them as anything more than fantasy novels.

-In fact, let's use Tripitaka as an example. The historical Xuanzang was an extraordinarily talented, faithful, and determined monk. In JTTW, he was a caricature of a Confucian scholar in a Buddhist kasaya and served the same narrative function as Princess Peach in a Mario game.

-Does the presence of satire alone make JTTW anti-Buddhist, or its religious allegories less poignant? I'd say no. Should you take it as seriously as actual Buddhist sutras, when the book didn't even take itself 100% seriously? Also no.

-To expand further on the idea of "seriousness": even outside of vernacular novels, practitioners are not beholden to a universal set of strict religious laws and taboos.

-Both Daoism and Buddhism had what we called "cloistered" and "non-cloistered" adherents; only the former needed to follow their religious laws and (usually) took a vow of celibacy.

-Certain paths of Daoist cultivation allow for alcohol and sexual activities (thanks @ruibaozha for the info), and some immortals, like Lv Dongbin, had a well-established "playboy" reputation in folklore.

-Though it was rarer for Buddhism and very misunderstood, esoteric variants of it did utilize sexual imageries and sex. And, again, most of the above would not apply if you weren't among the cloistered and ordained clergy.

-Furthermore, not even the worship of gods is mandatory! You could just be a Daoist who was really into internal alchemy, cultivating your body and mind in order to prolong your lifespan and, ideally, attain immortality.

-This idea of "respect" as…for a lack of better words, No Fun & R18 Stuff Allowed, you must treat all divinity with fearful reverence and put yourself completely at their mercy, is NOT the norm in Chinese religious traditions.

-There are different degrees and types of respect, and not every god is supposed to be treated like the Supreme Heavenly Emperor himself during an imperial ceremony; the gods are capable of cracking a joke, and so are we!

TL;DR: Religions are complicated, and you aren't respecting Chinese religions by acting like a stereotypical Puritan over popular Chinese deities and their fictional portrayals.

[vsaintsin]

Writeblr Re-Intro

Yo! I'm V Saintsin. Or V or Vin or Saintsin or whatever you want to call me that sounds right on your tongue. I'm a self-proclaimed Social Media fumbler who got a late start to the party and has never quite figured it out. I hate how hipster and edgy it sounds to say "I'm bad at social media" but like I used to work with some people who actually managed the social media accounts for the business we worked for and there were rules and whatnot and damn, I think online media is just not my medium. That being said, here I am! Hah

I'm an author and general mess who's hoping to be the miracle man (somebody who makes a living writing silly little stories). I do use a pseudonym but please hear me out when I say I didn't realize how edgy it sounds, it just has some sentimental value to my personal life. I'm so sorry that I sound like I'm in my emo phase HAHA

About me -

He/Him Transguy from the American Midwest (arguably the south, depending on who you talk to, but the older people still say "Sodi-pop" and "ope").

I'm dysautonomic, bendy, permanently sleepy, and a survivor of Crappy Doctors Who Suck At Doctoring.

I like DnD, Pathfinder, Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk, Dragon Age, and other things in that vein.

I do make art of my stories and characters (Tablet is currently not working so I'm in a dry spell).

My writing background is predominantly ancient, dusty RPs from as far back as the foopets days and fanfic writing on Quizilla - I am an old and wizened elder of the net.

My formal education was music performance and behavioral neuroscience, I don't really know how I got where I am.

This is not my first rodeo with tumblr but it is the first time I have anything to SAY instead of just lurking.

In the event of malfunction, you can put me outside for 5 minutes and I'll probably factory reset.

My existence as I know it hinges on a massive number of sticky notes plastered throughout my room.

What I'm lookin' for -

Idk, whatever? I'm down for most things. Did you write it? Cool, let me see. I'm not too bent on genre or anything, just fascinated by the art of storytelling.

A bit tentative with fanfiction but that's just because if it's not a fandom I'm familiar with I am rather clueless about what the hell is going on and if it's a fandom I am familiar with I HUNT DOWN THE DEEP LORE.

I like art a whole lot, including fanart. Also art advice, love seeing things from different perspectives and learning something new.

Mutuals, really, for any reason. Building better connections on here, getting to know people. I am hideously bad at this but I try.

What I write -

Science Fiction with heavy subjects that matter to me - trigger warnings on a story-by-story basis.

High Fantasy (eventually books I think?) characters and their backgrounds for DnD and Pathfinder - I have been tempted to share these to help people get ideas or just for free use?

Things that I delete because I have crippling imposter syndrome and publishing makes me nauseous (doin' it tho).

Stories that I hope will make people feel less alone or that people could relate to, stories that I wish I had when life was worse and I was reaching out for anything I could find to keep me afloat, stories that try to be critical of things that SUCK in a way that's any helpful.

Lots of curse words and cussing (that's just how people talk 'round here), dubious science, things that I hope might make you cry but in a good way though.

Character-Driven stories that revolve more around the development of the person and less around the plot itself if that makes sense.

I've put blurb things below for my primary project/series which features a grumpy, queer, 37-year old chain smoking Frenchman and his misadventures with life and love and unbridled rage. If any of that sounds cool stick around and hang out? (This part is a plug bc I did a thing and I'm proud of it) And if my books sounds interesting the first one is 99 cents on Kindle and you just need a phone and a free app to read it!

THE SECRET OF LIFE (Published) - Sci-Fi/Psychological Thriller, Bi M Lead, Lovers to Enemies, AI but the oldschool cool kind not the real world thing that's stealing our future

Carlisle-Trystan Antoinette is a mercenary on a hard road, navigating life and death itself in an infinite cycle started by powers above his understanding. He has one mission - warn The Dianican Space Station of the coming threat and put a stop to a war that would encapsulate the whole of the Sol System before it can ever begin. Unfortunately for Carlisle, reality is a tenuous thing, made up only by our understanding of it. At least, according to his Psychiatrist, who tells him that there is no war, that he was never a mercenary, and that what Carlisle is experiencing is a severe but manageable psychotic break. Stripped of his combat enhancements, his bio monitor, and everything he's every known, Carlisle has a decision to make. Does he give in to the thoughts and memories, so real that he can almost taste them, or does he live a life of comfort and ease, returning to a husband and daughter that he left behind?

TWs: Domestic and War Violence, suicide, rape, medical trauma, grief, drug use

THE SILENCE OF ANGELS (Due July '24, TSoL 2) - Betrayal and Rage, Learning how to love again slow-burn romantic subplot, Learning how to Dad, A general inability for any one thing to just go right

(Quick Rough Blurb that offers no spoilers for TSoL) Making connections isn't easy for somebody who's accustomed to burning bridges. Isolation has always been Carlisle's mantra for surviving his life. Playing a role comes second nature, pretending to be the man that everyone else wants to see in him. When an old friend is murdered Carlisle finds himself as the primary suspect with all evidence pointing to him so clearly that even he calls to question what he is capable of. Unwilling to believe that he could commit such a heinous crime, Carlisle sets off to find the truth of his friend's death - was Carlisle framed or does he truly have the capacity to bring such harm upon those he loves? Old and new bonds will be tested, faith broken, and the future of everyone called into question as lines are drawn and sides are picked.

TWs: Violence, mentions of SA, graphic character death, more grief, more death

I don't know what else to say... Later!

[pandalexoxo]

OKAY BEAR WITH ME Y’ALL. I HAVEN’T PLAYED THE GAME SO I’M JUST GOING OFF OF SOME TIRED OLD MAN TROPES.

FRANCIS MOSES x READER

also, i haven’t written down any of my rules, but i don’t have any limits! i’ll write whatever requests people send me! whatever your dark mind can think of will be my pleasure to create!

i don’t mind if you’re not 18+, since, if i ever do make smut i’ll just label it as 18+ and TRUST that 18+ ONLY will read. you all have probably seen, but i’ve just written about my thoughts of different fandoms so far so there’s no 18+ posts YET. (maybe i’ll make this account SFW and do another for NSFW? idk, i normally post on other platforms but randomly decided to give tumblr a try lol)

as a NM/trans man myself, i TRY to keep my readers gender neutral by not really describing the characters features. hard on TRY bc i know the last blurb fic i made of dead plate was Rody x Male Reader lol, oopsies! anywhooo, enjoy~!

WARNINGS! doppleganger mention, possible unconsciousness, possible death, possible unfunny dialogue (bc sometimes i’m the only one who finds me hilarious lmfao), you’re kinda a baddie ngl, you and Francis are besties, Francis is a cat lover?! Francis is a tired old man who hates technology. phone mentioned despite the first wireless phone being made 23 years after the story takes place (use your imagination) uhhh, anything else i forget? comment below!

Francis let out a long sigh of relief, taking his cap off with one hand, using the other to dab away at his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief. Upon seeing the exhausted man, you can’t help but smile softly, shaking your head as you get ready to scold him, once again. You cross your arms, looking at him through the window with a playful disappointed glare.

“mhm mhm, what do we have here? you really should be getting more sleep, mr. milkman, your eyes are starting to sport their own eye bags.”

with this comment, Francis shakes his head but is unable to stop the small, yet tired smile on his face. he bends down to place the crate of milk jugs onto the floor before handing over his ID card. you hum, narrowing your eyes when Francis doesn’t give into your whims. you eye his card, glancing at it a few times before slipping it back to him with a chuckle.

Francis’s eyebrow raises in confusion at your reaction but ends up shaking his head, rolling his eyes playfully and sighing softly. he places his cap back on his head and huffs, deeming your reaction as a go ahead inside.

“now… what if i was a doppelganger? you aren’t even going to call my room to check if someone is there? such a reliable doorman we have.”

despite Francis’s playful tone, your grin slips into a frown as you study Francis from behind the glass. this causes him to tense up, suddenly feeling nervous, like he did something wrong. you hum, tilting your head into your palm as you seemingly analyze Francis for a little while before deciding to speak.

“what’s up brother?”

Francis blinks a few times in surprise, his head tilting in confusion at your question. His eyes narrow as he thinks about the question you asked.

“what’s… up… brother…?”

Francis looks up at the ceiling, taking your question to heart. upon seeing nothing on the ceiling, Francis can only shake his head and sigh at your antics.

“are you done with your tomfoolery, (Y/n)? i’m quite exhausted and would like to go up to my room and rest.”

you can only shake your head, clasping your hands together like a disappointed father getting ready to discuss their kids grades at the dinner table. you begin to explain.

“when Francis first walks in here, he always forgets one of three things… his keys, his hate or the crate of milk. you came in here, although exhausted, you seemed put together, unlike Francis, who is clearly going through a midlife crisis. Francis will then ask me about my cat, well, because he’s a cat person, though he insists no one knows. oh, and, Francis’s home phone has been broken for the past few days and is actually at the store, right now. so, Francis being here so soon, isn’t possible. that, and, well, Francis never understands my references, but indulges me anyway… anything else i forgot, doppelganger?”

you bat your eyelashes, smirking from behind the window like you just cracked down the traitor in your group. with each statement, Francis’s doppelgänger’s face becomes visibly more and more angry until the doppelganger begins to completely change: black eyes with white pupils, a wide and eerie black mouth, adorned with long and sharp claws on the end of the doppleganger’s elongated limbs.

“you… you’ll regret this… i will get in one day and get my feast, starting with you. i’ll gut you, keep you alive so you can watch your organs fall out of your body and your blood splatter against-! *CLANK! BAM! PLINK!*”

before the doppelganger could finish his fantasy, much to your amusement, the doppleganger’s body tenses upon being struck before crumpling to the floor after becoming unconscious. you look up from the doppleganger’s body to see the real Francis hovering above the possibly dead doppelganger. you shrug, knowing that you wouldn’t have to call DDD services to take care of the mess, now you just have to clean up the body.

“mmm… tuesday… tuesday…? did i get that right?”

you hold back a chuckle at Francis’s response to your last question. you can only nod, letting Francis have the win this time. pinching the bridge of your nose and sighing, a loud laugh bubbles up from your throat as the two of you realized what Francis had hit the doppelganger with.

“ngh… i just bought this phone, damnit… his hard head must have broken it.”

[owlyflufff]

haikyu's dumpster batte is only going to be around 1 hour and 24 minutes, oh it's genuinely bokuakaover

[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.

[nostalgia-tblr]

It's time for me to admit something.

I am still a bit confused about how back in the beginning of the Loki series Mobius is introduced to us as "special[ising] in the pursuit of dangerous Variants." But like. That doesn't seem to be a thing that the TVA really... do? They mostly seem to spot nexus events and pop to the new branch and prune it, bringing back the person who caused that nexus event to give them a show-trial and then prune them too.

There's no reason they can't do more than one thing, but what exactly are "dangerous variants"? From the TVA perspective they're all equally troublesome, and they'll be picked up as soon as they do something 'wrong', and the TVA/HWR don't actually care about the moral value or otherwise of that 'wrong' thing. Have I got that right?

They're chasing Sylvie but a) she's targeting the TVA themselves and b) she's got a means to travel from one timeline to another, which she got from the TVA and unless those get stolen a lot..

I'm willing to just roll with it anyway if it doesn't really fit but what am I missing here? EXPLAIN. (pls?)

[maddy-ferguson]

women will literally accuse women and esp lesbian circles of "not unpacking ""man-hating""" alleged ""misandry" sweetie xo" getting offended ppl aren't appropriately uplifting how "men are amazing and awesome and attractive and i won't be shamed for thinking so" as if appreciating men is a real counter opinion than blame whatever gave women of every sexuality instance to be jaded weary cautious and tired and who'll complain every now and then and continue on with her life until she dies putting up with patriarchy. just welcome to the "woke" internet where misogyny's over and "man-hate" "shamed for not hating men" is worth springing to defences for

yeah i've only seen people talk like men's rights activists and think they're being unbelievably progressive on tumblr it's kind of fascinating. like i can see how seeing people hate on men could mess with people and stuff but you can't demand men appreciation posts that's literally the whole world outside of idk your tumblr dash (or even on your tumblr dash because fandom misogyny from people who think they're not misogynistic at all is really something). men get praised for "babysitting" their own kids like be serious? it's very let men be masculine

i don't think being like men are soooo gross and we hate them is actually constructive and it can definitely veer into transphobia (you'll always be a man/"a male" and thus a danger to women/why would you ever want to become a man they're the enemy and the bane of society etc) and homophobia relatively quickly?

but the way people ON TUMBLR ""combat that"" is often so off to me like if the most basic feminist principles offend you then i'm not really sure where to go from here. i remember seeing a post that was like "men aren't your enemy. they're your friend/brother/father/colleague/neighbor" with a lot of notes and like i don't know how to tell you this but that's literally who's most likely to harm a woman, the men she knows?😭 and obviously not every system of oppression is exactly the same but would you say the same thing to someone criticizing white people like...just very weird

i think women who are attracted to men and dating them making jokes about how they only tolerate being attracted to men because they have no choice and especially the whole i'm bi so i love every woman and only find 1 in a 1000 men attractive (very often said while in a relationship with a man) thing is obnoxious and annoying for like everyone who has to hear it lmao but also when women who date men make jokes about it (not about them being ugly or unattractive or whatever but about them being bad partners in general) it's like. what else are they going to do like you said they're gonna endure patriarchy for the rest of their lives and as girlfriends/wives/mothers they go through the most it's very bleak? idk. it's not like you can date a better man yourself out of patriarchy

of course men aren't a all as bad as the worst guy you can imagine and they're not all out to get you or whatever but saying things like "men don't all benefit from the patriarchy rich men benefit from the patriarchy but jake, 23, is not oppressing you" is like. kind of insane. jake, 14, was oppressing me like have you never interacted with boys in school😭 and it's not like it was entirely their fault we all have to outgrow misogyny it's just you know society etc but some of them never outgrow it lmao and just...the takes you see on feminism on tumblr are astounding i hate it here

[sysig]

Reading moodboard #84430940 (Patreon)

[crown-ov-horns]

I was looking through my notes for Good Omens fanfiction, and realized almost every damn story includes Crowley having a baby.

There's the one where Heaven and Hell decide to use an angel baby carried by a demon as a diplomatic tool, leading into Crowley being protected by Michael, and them falling in love.

There's the one where she leaves her baby with Anathema and disappears, which triggers all the following events - from the search, to Aziraphale's trial, and everything else.

There's the one where she has to supply the new Antichrist, which leads to her and Lucifer falling in love, and her being crowned the Queen of Hell. (Well, this one is really two stories set in different timelines, in the second one the "baby" is like 27)

In the one inspired by a dream, she does have a baby eventually, but that's far from the worst thing that happens to her. Gabriel's treatment of her after is... How the Hell will I write this damn thing if I can't even think about it.

There's no baby in the one where she gets tortured with diluted holy water.

I see I have no storyline with male Crowley just yet... Fine, that's not true. I do have some thoughts for Crowley x Fem!Lucifer... It could include a new Antichrist, too. And, Crowley wouldn't be the pregnant one for once. But, dealing with pregnant Lucifer would probably be even scarier.

[da-proti-toku-grem]

.

[ultimate-sword-showdown]

What's the difference meant to be between (tell me about the sword" and "write up a description"?

Okay I know you said you got it but I'm gonna go ahead and answer this anyways because I think people have been pretty confused and I could probably clarify it better.

So the "tell me about the sword" box is intended to be for you to gush about the sword. You don't have to write professionally you can just gush directly to me because I'm the only person who is going to see it. If no one provides me any fully written out descriptions for that particular sword, I'll be pulling information from these boxes to construct my own summary of the sword to post alongside the polls.

The "write up a description" box is for you to use if you'd like to clean up your description in the box above and make it more professional looking so it'll look better publicly on the polls. Cutting out all the fluffy language and grammar errors and whatnot. It's by no means a required box to fill out, it's mostly there in case you'd like to skip the step of having me do my own research and write up my own descriptions, since in theory you're more familiar with the source material than I am.

The box can also be used to point me towards useful resources, i.e. if you found a really obscure wiki that you think would be better to pull from than the usual fandom wiki results that come up first. If you ever wrote a huge tumblr post breaking down every aspect of the sword or something, or know someone who has, you can link that here as well. It's just a way to help point me in the right direction.

Tl;dr, the first box is for you to write knowing I'm the only one who will see it. The second box is for either links to help me write my descriptions, or for you to try your hand at writing a description for me that will be seen by the public.