#I don't think he ever lets that one go

[purposefully-lost]

Tried to find something and ended up skimming the Rabbit/Alex thread where Alex kills someone/Rabbit cuts him off and it's never not funny how offended Alex gets about being called easy

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[somegrumpynerd]

When you find out years later that you accidentally named one of your henchmen

Image ID: A multi-panel comic featuring au sanses. Panel 1: In Killer's original universe. A dark figure stands in the foreground while Killer is sitting back in the snow, covered in blood. Killer says "wh-what are you?" Panel 2: The dark figure is Nightmare but only his smile is visible. He says "I am Nightmare, guardian of all negativity in the multiverse ...and I have a proposition for you, Sans." Panel 3: Nightmare's hand is outstreched, he says "Come with me willingly and I'll take you out of this desolate and barren universe and let you loose on many others." Panel 4: Killer is looking back at Nightmare warily, a thought bubble shows he is thinking "other universes...?". He says "...in exchange for what? What do you want with me?" Panel 5: Nightmare's tentacles are reaching out towards Killer. He says "I feed off the fear and misery and hatred in this world, stirring these up will keep me powerful enough to fight against the guardian of positivity. In short," Panel 6: Nightmare is looming over Killer now, his tentacles surrounding him. He says "I just need you to be a good little killer." The word killer is in red text. Panel 7: Killer is grasping Nightmare's hand, having accepted his offer. Panel 8: Now in a different au, Nightmare stands beside Killer as he taunts Dream, who is out of frame. He says "You're outnumbered now Dream, I have a killer with me this time." The word killer is in red text again. Panel 9: Dream is lying on the ground looking hurt and ruffed up. Killer is standing in the background, looking ready to continue beating Dream up. Nightmare says from out of frame "You should know better than to turn your back on a killer by now." The word killer is in red text again. Panel 10: Nightmare is standing by Killer again, looking smug. He says to Dream, who is not shown "You'll need more than that pathetic bow next time you meet with my killer here." The word killer is in red text again. Killer is looking towards Nightmare, pleased with this. Panel 11: We are now in Nightmare's castle, present day. It is revealed to be Killer telling these events to Dust, who looks bored. Killer says "-and the name stuck, so that's why I'm called Killer now." Dust says very quietly "did I ask" Panel 12: Nightmare is standing in the corner behind them, he looks very surprised and concerned after hearing all this. Text with an arrow pointing to him reads "Didn't realise he had done this." Killer from out of frame says "he doesn't really call me his killer anymore tho" with a frowny face. Dust, also out of frame, says "that's nice now shut up" End ID.

[lunarharp]

What led to this (orufrey comic, cw an uncomfortable/creepy scene)

[philosophiums]

I have given into peer pressure.

Below the cut is my un-referenced, not proofread, off-the-cuff thoughts on the main JJK characters and their tendencies to have traits that contradict themselves, which not only makes them more rounded characters but also creates a really interesting situation in which characters have mirrors and foils not only with other characters, but also with themselves.

The point of this post is that the characters in JJK are complex. None of them are one-trick ponies and all of them contain multitudes and have, at least once, contradicted themselves and their beliefs.

Might be spoilery? I tried to keep it vague enough that it shouldn't be, but read at your own risk if you're anime only, I guess.

The Obvious One: Gojo

Gojo is "the strongest." It's debatable, I think, whether or not being "strong" is a personality trait, but he makes it his defining personality trait. (And I'm not here to do a Gojo character study, so for my purposes, it will be viewed as one.) Obviously, The Strongest is a title given to him by others, but he fully owns it and believes it. This is his identity; it's how he views himself, how he handles himself, and it is a preceding reputation that he gladly leans into. It's not a mask he hides behind, it's a flag he proudly displays on his ship to warn others of exactly who they're dealing with.

It makes sense, then, that Gojo's self-contradiction is that he has the biggest, most obvious weaknesses of all the characters in JJK. The first of these weaknesses is his knowledge of how strong he is. Toji exploits that weakness in the Hidden Inventory arc, and it almost costs Gojo is life. His second weakness is, very simply, Geto. Kenjaku exploits that weakness during Shibuya. Interestingly, Geto is a victim of Gojo's first weakness (Gojo is so self-assured that he seems to extend that assurance to the people around him, thinking that they are "as gods" like him just for being in his presence, and therefore he does not pay mind to Geto's spiraling), and exploits his second. He, better than anyone else, knows that he is Gojo's weakness, and he uses that knowledge to do everything he does before and during JJK 0 without repercussions.

Gojo is framed by himself and by many characters within JJK as being the "savior" of the jujutsu world, but in many ways he was, in fact, its downfall - because of his strength, and because of his weaknesses.

The Main One: Yuuji

Yuuji is the king of contradictions to me. Not all of it is within himself, and in fact a lot of it occurs because a large part of the plot is happening to him instead of the other way around, but he has one dichotomy that I do think is All Him. Yuuji defines himself as a cog - in his thoughts, he has been used and beaten down for evil already, so why not just be used for good as well. He thinks of himself as expendable and easily replaced; a foot soldier in a war being fought by titans. At some point, his goal stopped being to follow his grandfather's last request and instead turned into the simple act of persevering for as long as he can just in case anyone may have need of him. In a way, his outlook and perspective on everything became rather bleak and inhuman - quite literally, as, again, he views himself as nothing more than a cog.

And yet, for someone who has claimed his only purpose is to be used to kill Sukuna, everything Yuuji does is so achingly desperately human and is born out of his own desires to save people. Every other sorcerer has a CT or a fighting style that disconnects them from their foe - be that ranged attacks or weaponry - but Yuuji uses his fists. It's raw and almost savage in a way that is unavoidably intimate and human. He says, "Use me," (and, don't get me wrong, he is used) but even the act of offering himself negates the connotations that revolve around being used and shines such a lovely warm human light on him.

Yuuji doesn't push people away. The other "strong" characters isolate (Gojo has infinity, Yuuta literally fucks off from the narrative, Geto fucks off from jujutsu society, etc.), but Yuuji hoards people and connections (and yes, those become weaknesses, but the thing is: they become strengths, too). Sukuna takes Megumi away from him, but that just makes Yuuji more determined to kill Sukuna and get Megumi back. Everything he does is out of love, and he has a drive to do what he has to in order to save (or avenge) the people he keeps close. That's not exactly cog-like behavior.

The Fandom Discourse: Megumi

In my opinion, of all the characters (but especially the first-years), Megumi is the logical character. Especially when it comes to his job as a sorcerer (fighting and killing curses). He is knowledgeable about the world of sorcery, the most book-smart of the first-years, and he is smart and methodical when he fights.

He is also the only character who has openly admitted that he really only cares about saving the people he wants to save, as opposed to the general rhetoric of saving everyone. He's selfish, and he's not shy about it. Even he doesn't try to rationalize it; it's just part of who he is. Logical, methodical, smart, but also deeply, truly, selfish when it comes to where and how he expends his energy and efforts.

And yet, he is also the character who is most willing to die. Now, before half the fandom jumps down my throat, I don't mean to say that he wants to die or that he is constantly trying to - I'm just saying that he is willing to. (Obviously, Yuuji is also a character who is willing to die, but Yuuji is only willing to do so if it would also kill Sukuna, and he is determined to stay alive until such a time. Megumi, on the other hand, doesn't have a similar end-goal ultimatum for death). Yes, he comes at dying from a logical point of view, and yes, he only ever brings martyrdom into the equation if he feels he has no other option, but he has no hesitation when he reaches that point. And you (he) can rationalize self-sacrifice as much as you want to, but that is a very emotionally driven response, regardless of the situation. It's a last stand not only for himself, but for his friends, his family, the world. It's the end of the line for him, and it's something he is willing to do if it means taking out his opponent and making the world safer for everyone else - not just for his "select" people.

He is willing to run away from a fight he cannot win, but he is also willing to do something that he knows for sure will kill him if winning and running are no longer options. And I know that not everyone will see these things as opposites or all that detached from each other, but, to me, intelligent and methodical fighting does not naturally go hand in hand with, essentially, grappling your opponent and jumping off a cliff with them.

The Favorite Child: Yuuta

Like Gojo, Yuuta has access to an overwhelming amount of power. There's no doubt that when it comes to raw energy, he is the strongest sorcerer in his generation. He's exceptionally skilled when it comes to fighting and is often able to get by on simply overpowering his opponents (truly, much like Gojo). He doesn't embody being strong, though - he knows that he is, but it's not something that he considers a defining trait for himself. Instead, Yuuta's whole thing is that he has a tendency to shoulder burdens that other people won't (much like Yuuji, actually) (also it's kind of funny because of all the characters in JJK, I would consider Yuuta to be a "cog" way more than Yuuji, but that's a whole other thing). Yuuta is willing to be a monster, to make hard calls and suffer the consequences, because he has internalized what everyone keeps telling him - that, after Gojo, Yuuta is now "the strongest."

Which means that Yuuta also needs an equally large weakness to balance out that power. But where Gojo had arrogance (and his boyfriend), Yuuta has innocence. There's this pure sort of worldview that Yuuta carries with him that completely counterbalances the part of him that is willing to get his hands bloody. He has this youthful sort of hopefulness and naiveté that if he does the dirty work and puts in effort, then things will work out in his favor because they must. If he is sincere, if he shoulders an unbearable mantle, then everything will be fine simply because he chooses to do so. He does things because they are right and just, and he wants to believe that the universe will acknowledge that and be fair - even though he wouldn't have to do these unnamable things if that was true.

The Less Obvious one: Nobara

Nobara doesn't have a lot of screen time compared to the others, and specifically not a lot of time spent planning for/fighting in the "big fights," but she has one thing that the other characters don't have: self awareness. Nobara is the only character who knows what her contradictions are - she even says them out loud.

She wants nothing more than to be a normal girl who is into fashion, who could be a model, who does her hair and her nails and her makeup, who goes on dates, who has a lot of money and spends it freely. That's her ideal, that's her goal. But that's also who she is right now. She dyes her hair, wears makeup, is feminine in all the ways that would mark her as a girl to strangers on the street, goes shopping and buys too much and makes Yuuji carry her bags. She likes being girly and doesn't shy away from it.

But she is also, and I mean this with all the love in my heart, a feral little gremlin who is willing to bash people's skulls in with a hammer. She's brash and rude and loud. She takes up space and is unapologetic about it. She's vicious on the battlefield. She's not afraid to get bloody, and she hates being viewed as a damsel in distress. She's strategic in her fights, and she uses the fact that opponents underestimate her to her advantage. And she knows all of this, too, and she likes it.

She's self-actualized <3 No notes from me; I love my girl.

Anyway, that's it KSJDBVJKLDFVBJKDFVB There's no real point to this. I'm not saying anything profound, I don't think. This was all just a thought that I had, a little thing that I noticed, and I was bullied (affectionate) into sharing.

[butterflysonnets]

yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.

to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!

i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.

also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.

they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.

they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.

i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.

[feroluce]

Lucid Dreamer (2/2)

part 1

Gepard stalls almost a week before he finally goes out to the safehouse, and it takes him a couple days to find it because Sampo didn't have the time left to be wasn't super specific about the location. But he does find it.

It's pretty bare bones, really. Gepard knows that was probably to be expected, but… It feels crushing, when he realizes there are so few personal things here. It's nothing specific to Sampo. Just some food, some medical supplies. A cot and a heater and a lot of mismatched blankets. Nothing to remember someone by.

But he does find the letters, in a metal box stashed away under the bed.

There are two for him. Three for Natasha, and two for Seele. One for Hook, one for Serval, one for Pela, one for Bronya.

Bronya's is mostly business. They knew each other from the whole Stellaron incident, but not much beyond that, and the incoming catastrophe is a more pressing matter. Seele's is actually two copies of the same letter, and Gepard realizes why when Seele is so angry she rips the first one up without reading it. He gives her the copy a couple days later, and she slinks off without a word.

Pela seems completely normal after hers is delivered, but Gepard knows better than to trust that. The next day, he finds her asleep in bed with Serval, bottles abandoned on the floor, both their eye makeup smeared and running and Pela's glasses horribly smudged and crooked on her face. Serval doesn't read hers in front of him, but she's clingy with Gepard, Pela, and Lynx for quite a while after. She throws herself into her work a lot. She insists the heater from the safehouse is busted and she needs to keep it. It's too dangerous for use by someone who's not an engineer. Might burn their house down or something. Gepard doesn't argue.

Hook's letter is short, with easy to read words. The rest of it is actually a treasure map, and she and the moles spend the next several days running through the Underground, finding hidden candy and toys. Hook asks them when Sampo is coming back, because one of the marbles she found from his map looks green, just like his eyes, and she wants to give it to him. Natasha shoos Gepard out of the clinic before he can even begin to think of an answer.

Natasha refuses to let him see what's in her letters, which ok, fine, he'll respect that. He hears from Bronya who heard from Seele who heard from Natasha herself though that one of the letters was a map and the other a catalogue, with all of Sampo's hidden "warehouses." Gepard promptly marches himself back out to the frontlines, where he can turn a blind eye. If a ton of stolen goods suddenly enters the black market, and if the orphanage and the clinic suddenly have new supplies, well, technically that's none of his business.

Gepard goes to bed, curls up under mismatched blankets and closes his eyes.

He doesn't dream.

One of Gepard's letters was also business, like Bronya's and Natasha's. He and Bronya follow everything meticulously, down to the letter, because there has to be some good to get out of all this, there has to be. Gepard can't let it all be for nothing, it would bury him.

And so the catastrophe passes. Not without casualties, and not without a lot of damage and destruction. But Belobog survives.

And after that, time just kind of…goes on. Gepard has been a part of the Silvermanes since he was old enough to enlist. The Fragmentum had gotten so much worse in the years before Welt sealed the Stellaron. He knows the statistics, it is literally his and Pela's jobs to keep track. He knows when he sees a face everyday in the camps and then it's suddenly gone. He's not unfamiliar with things like grief and loss.

He still catches himself checking the trashcans and the supply crates and soldiers' footprints sometimes, though.

But there comes a night where Gepard goes to bed, holding the mismatched blankets to his face, and he dreams. And it's strange, it's off, it sticks with him. Sampo doesn't look the same. He's thinner. His muscles have atrophied. He looks like how Gepard has seen soldiers after months in the hospital.

The most unsettling difference is there's a scar across the left side of his head, Gepard can see it over his ear, peeking out past his hairline, carving towards his cheek. Sampo is always careful about his face. Gepard once saw him dodge a Fragmentum monster and literally let it cut across his neck just to keep his face clear. He wouldn't let that happen for nothing.

Their actions in the dream itself aren't new. Sampo seems tired, run down and worn out, but he announces his presence with aplomb by lobbing a bunch of smoke bombs off the rooftops and sending his soldiers scrambling. Same shit, different day.

The new part is what he says when Gepard chases him out to the edges of the camp, tackles him into the snow. Gepard pins him to the frozen ground to detain him and Sampo doesn't even fight it, just looks up at him like he's seeing sunrise for the first time in months.

"I'll be home in one week."

[askblueandviolet]

Which one of you can eat more? I will only believe the results when I see them.

MASTER POST

Asks Start 💙💜

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[batsplat]

OT3: casey stoner/his neuroses/the concept of valentino rossi that mostly exists in casey’s head

y'know I have this casey stoner... idk what it is. thematic mind map (literal), let's say, that I like fiddling with and adding things to when the mood hits me. and it does always strike me just how many of his struggles during his careers and issues with the sport can in some way be linked back to the valentino rivalry

casey's sense of isolation? super valentino related. casey's feelings of cultural alienation in a paddock dominated by europeans? even when it's not really related to valentino, casey is the one linking those two things together. casey's issues with other riders not being respectful enough on track? very obviously repeatedly about valentino. casey's discomfort with the performance and entertainment-related aspects of the sport? more valentino. casey feeling treated unfairly by the manufacturers, the media, the marshals, the fans.... keeps coming back to valentino. casey's mystery illness really shouldn't be as relevant to the rivalry as it is, but somehow through this combination of public discourse and whatever comparisons casey's brain is cooking up at any moment in time... there valentino is again

one of the most charming things about valentino's feuds is that in each and every single one, both participants end up being deeply weird about each other? just keep knocking off these banger quotes about the other where you read them and go. hm. what's going on there then. I don't want to make it sound like I think casey is the worst offender with this (not when marc and valentino have their whole thing going on, bidirectionally)... but I do think he's the most susceptible to conflating his valentino issues with like... everything else that was going on in his career. to the extent where his alienation with the sport as a whole, his extreme disillusionment from everything related to motogp, really cannot be meaningfully disentangled from the valentino rivalry. at times it feels like, to casey, valentino literally is the sport. and that's the thing casey dedicated his whole life to!! which means you do inevitably end up regularly going 'wow there's a lot to unpack'. add in a dash of neuroticism...

and yeah you're so right anon!! the neuroses are what end up creating the version of valentino that mostly exists in casey's head, a version that casey is just a touch obsessed with. I always think it's interesting how aware casey is that he doesn't know valentino as a person - and to the extent casey does know him, he gets on pretty well with him... but valentino the person isn't all that relevant to him. it's valentino the character who matters - and can you even really know a character? in the end, all casey can do is rely on his own understanding of that character, as imperfect as it is. and, well, in a way casey is trapped with that character forevermore. if one man comes to embody a sport to such an extent and if that sport has been your life's work, how can you not be a little bit trapped? as he tries to make his peace with the sport and his experiences within it, so too has casey settled on a narrative of valentino that helps him make sense of it all... a very specific understanding of his rival that casey has shaped in his mind and still trots out now when he sells his own version of events to the media. casey learned from valentino, casey learned to be a little more like valentino, casey learned to fight valentino with his own tools, casey tells himself a story of that fight. he still continues to do so - and in the end he will never be entirely free of valentino

[lunar-years]

obviously Jamie not being in season 4 would suck mostly because I simply want Jamie to be there and to get more of his story and get to enjoy more interactions between Jamie and the other characters. At the end of the day though, I can just not watch s4, which I'm perfectly okay with.

what sucks EVEN MORE to me, and is far harder to avoid, is that not having Jamie in the show totally changes the *canon* of the character in a way that will inevitably bleed over into fan spaces, regardless of whether or not I'm actively watching. However they write him out (I assume it would just be having him go to another team) becomes the new "Jamie Tartt canon." And that small thing totally changes his story and we don't even get to see it play out! When i was perfectly happy playing in my sandbox of a million equally valid possibilities.

[silverwhittlingknife]

can we have a hint about what the spring break tim patrol chapter of red letter day contains? (you kept having dick say "if the joker shows up" and tim's "he won't." for me to be convinced that goes off without any trouble)

i'm sure it'll be fine. :D

i am delighted you're enjoying the story <333 i haven't updated it in soooo long but i got some very sweet comments lately so i have been looking at my scribbles again <3

[everyryuujisuguro]

[comic-sans-chan]

I adore how unhinged Garak is about the people he likes, because there's this theme of them being similarly unhinged. Like that colleague from the Order in Second Skin that he had to shoot and was like, "Aw :( ...Well Anyway" about. Or like Tain and Mila, both crazy bitches, imo. Or his last remaining contacts on Cardassia who he called up in In The Pale Moonlight who were all down to raid the Dominion’s underwear drawer at the drop of a hat. Like that's what Garak is used to. He likes excitement, he likes a bit of malice, he likes some cunning. And that's part of what makes Garashir so goddamn funny is Julian is actually a bit of a cunning, malicious little shit sometimes. If you watch the series knowing Julian's an augment, these moments come up all the time where it's clear he's fucking with people for his own amusement. Taking people for a bit of a ride just to see what happens. Then ofc there are all the gross incel fuckboy moments, but. 

I just love the idea of Julian going on some insane borderline villainous monologue about something or other and Garak sitting there with hearts swirling around his head. Don't get me wrong, Garak loves Julian for his goodness first and foremost, but Julian's not perfect and I think that makes the ship so much more interesting because I can't really see Garak finding most of Julian's worst flaws anything but thrilling. We go on about Garak loving Julian's infodumping and argumentativeness, but after the augment thing comes out, I think he equally enjoys watching Julian play dumb with people and Knowing he's playing dumb. It compliments his own Just a Simple Tailor routine so perfectly. They're just normal men. Just innocent men.

[drinkingdeadpeopletea]

becoming a magdalyne and nicholas fleit stan immediately. jesus CHRIST man.

[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.

[kuromi-hoemie]

feel like I've genuinely spent at least a quarter of my day too horny to think. i was going to do some kind of art today but I've been thinking about the boy...