#I say as it takes me too long to write

[hinterlost]

The most unrealistic thing about Stardew Valley is the fact that Elliot lives in a shack with no electricity or internet access. How tf is an author going to google synonyms without electricity (don't say thesaurus I am old enough to had to of used those and they are a pain in the ass if you don't know what you're looking for). You're telling me this man writes on a TYPEWRITER? With no BACKSPACE button?? What if you want to quote something? Are ya gonna go down to the library that got literally all of it's books and artifacts stolen??

[thelaurenshippen]

finally taking the time to read through the SAG agreement summary and oof, I hope they have an AI town hall soon because...well, there are things to discuss!

so, in case folks are curious, here are my immediate takeaways from the deal as a SAG actor, a SAG producer, and person who is not any kind of expert but spends a lot of time being skeptical of contracts I sign. this is a summation/commentary, not a holistic breakdown of every point, nor even an in-depth discussion of the points I do talk about. and it is, of course, in no way legal advice or voting advice.

this post is already maybe the longest post I've ever written on tumblr (lol) and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. to be clear, nothing I'm saying here represents how I'm going to vote, how I think other actors should vote, or my be-all-end-all stance on a particular issue. this is me reading through, flagging what concerns me, and asking myself questions. and I'm here to take your questions too! though of course my expertise is limited.

(what?? something I wrote got annoying long?? in my tumblr? it's more likely, etc. huge write-up after the cut)

the good

self-tape stuff: this is one of the more niche/the thing that the general public will find least interesting, but they've put in a lot of provisions to make sure self-tape auditions have limits (# of pages, no stunts, no nudity, doesn't have to be professionally shot, etc.) which is amazing because these types of auditions have gotten out of control since the pandemic. this feels like a great gain

data transparency: in no world did I think the streamers were ever going to agree to any data sharing with either the wga or sag so even though the data is limited, this still feels huge to me.

folks who sing and dance will be paid for both of those things now, which is great

they've added MLK day and Juneteenth as holidays (about time)

a performer cannot be required to translate their own lines

principal performers are required to be given hair and makeup consultation or reimbursed for obtaining their own services - this seems like a small thing, but it's being put in here pretty much entirely because HMU services have generally been appalling when it comes to textured hair/a variety of skin tones. there's also stuff in here about working to hire more diverse HMU artists

it looks like it's going to be easier/provide a path for folks getting IMDb credits even if they're not credited on screen

miscellany: there's a bunch of gains in wage increases, P&H increases, relocation fees, franchise language etc. that all seem good to me, though my limited knowledge on those subjects prevents me from going in depth on them.

this is not important, but it tickled me, there's a term to replace all instances of "telegraph" in the contract with "email & text" which like...why has it taken us thirty years to do that lol.

the "...hm..."

intimacy coordinators: oof. when I watched the press conference SAG gave, I was fucking thrilled when they said that the new agreement required folks to hire intimacy coordinators for nudity and simulated sex scenes. that was almost reason enough for me to vote for it tbh - not requiring it is the exact reason I voted no on our last contract. however, reading the contract summary now, the exact language is: "Producer must use best efforts to engage an Intimacy Coordinator for scenes involving nudity or simulated sex and will consider in good faith any request by a performer to engage an Intimacy Coordinator for other scenes. Producer shall not retaliate against a performer for requesting an Intimacy Coordinator." this....sucks. "best efforts" and "good faith" are not the same as "required". IMO, an intimacy coordinator is the same thing as having a stunt coordinator or, like, any number of health and safety requirements. OSHA doesn't say you must "in good faith" put your "best effort" to providing fire exits. it's great that performers can request coordinators for any kind of scene, and this is still the strongest language we've ever had in a contract but....c'mon guys.

residuals: look, I can't speak to these new terms in any concrete way. there are increases, there are bonuses for streaming success, there's a whole thing about a fund regarding those successes that I need explained to me more in depth, but overall, it looks like we made some in-roads here. as someone who employs actors under digital distribution contracts that has no residuals (podcasts), I know how genuinely cumbersome the unholy trifecta of "views-success-profit" can be (as in views do not equal success, success does not equal profit, etc.). I also have no sympathy when the majority of companies dealing with that cumbersome trifecta are massive media conglomerates. anyway, long story short, idk if this is good enough, I'm hoping to attend the next info meeting sag has.

the bad

the new hair/makeup provisions are explicitly for principal actors. while I hope it leads to better, more inclusive HMU services all around I haaaate that this implies supporting or background actors (who oftentimes also have to sit in HMU) don't deserve the consideration. (then again, background actors are usually required to do their own HMU/bring their own costumes, but for productions where that's not the case, the same HMU provisions should apply IMO)

as with every contract, there's language that could be stronger, clarity that needs to exist, and important things missing - but this isn't the final contract and I'm not a lawyer, so I'm gonna leave that stuff to the experts.

but, "lauren", you say, "what about all the AI stuff? where does that go?" well, reader, I was planning on including that in the above but it's the hot-button issue right now and I think it's wickedly complicated, so I wanted to break it down separately, after I had a chance to point out all the good-bad-in-between stuff that's not getting talked about.

a note: in my career, I've learned there's two big things to keep in mind when reading a contract you might sign:

what is the worst case interpretation of this language (thank you to my lawyer, prince among men, for teaching me how to do this in practice (that said, anything I say here is not legal advice, he'd also want me to say that lol))

what are you willing to lose/compromise on/what are the limits of your pragmatism? contracts are not about a company giving you everything you want out of the goodness of their heart - it is always a compromise. pragmatism has to be a part of the equation.

so, with that said, I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here, and a) try to find the good/the pragmatic and b) catastrophize the worst case scenario. but first, it might be handy to look at this SAG infographic for some basic definitions. let's go.

the AI good

a ton of stuff here requires consent. that is not a small thing, and the consent continues even after your death (whether it was a yes or no; though this can be complicated by your estate/your union)

the language does establish that the consent must be a separate signing from the employment contract, even if its in the contract, which is great (but more on that below - timing matters)

actors often do get paid for use of their digital replicas, though it's different based on the use/type of replica.

the actor must be provided with a "reasonably specific description of the intended use". this language is vaguer than I would like, because it allows producers to decide what "reasonably specific" and "intended" means - there's always going to be some vagueness when it comes to this specific thing, but a good start would be for producers to require not blanket consent, but conditional consent for each significant use of digital replicas.

if the replicas are being used in other mediums, that must also be consented to, thank god.

replicas cannot be used in place of background actor counts on a given day - if I'm understanding this correctly, this means a production can't just have a bunch of fake background actors by themselves, they have to engage real people up to a certain number first (which in this new contract is 25 for TV and 85 for movies). we're already filling in background with digital people or copy-pasting of the same crowd over and over and have been doing so since at least the late 90s, so it's good we're continuing to put up boundaries around that.

the AI "...hm..."

it's unclear (to me) when an actor can be asked to consent. IMO, everything is meaningless if the consent is happening as part of regular contract negotiations. these things have to happen when - and only when - the actor has already been engaged in a role and feels empowered to say no

the use of independently created replicas (replicas pulled from existing footage, not created by the actor) being allowed without consent under first amendment reasoning - this is obviously concerning a lot of people bc first amendment arguments are so broad. that said, there's a pragmatism part of me that understands this is already happening/has been happening for a while and used in ways I think are perfectly fine - I was just watching the new episode of For All Mankind (one of the best TV shows right now!) and it's an alternate history, which meant that in the opening scenes of this season they had some bonkers good deep fakes of Al Gore saying stuff he never said. I think that's okay to do in a fiction show that imagines a different US history! "but Lauren", you might be saying, "Al Gore isn't a member of SAG!" are you sure? are you positive? because I'm pretty certain he is - he was in several episodes of 30 Rock, way more people are in SAG than you think (every NPR reporter for instance), and the two worst presidents we've had in the last 50 years (yes, those ones), are both definitely members of SAG (even if one is dead). now, the other side of this is that public figures like politicians are under a different social contract than actors, and if they wanted to sue, they could, unlike the average SAG actor who might have their image abused. this is why this is in the "hm" column - deep fakes and parody/satire/commentary use of replicas is already here and there's always going to be a 1st amendment argument to make, so we need to figure out how best to limit those and protect the most vulnerable.

alteration: with this language, a project can digitally alter without consent if the script and performance stays "substantially" the same. again, this language is too mealy-mouthed. I don't know that I have a huge problem with a line of dialogue getting replaced with a digital version of that actors voice if, for instance, a word was mispronounced, or wind garbled the sound or whatever - yes, it would eliminate the need for ADR, but if we put some limit on it like..."if there are more than 5 lines in a given episode/movie that require digital alteration in the service of clarity, the actor must be engaged for an ADR session or paid for the digital replacement" then I could see this being workable. I'm also personally okay with things like costumes being digitally altered but, again, we need limitations on that. digital altering cannot replace the art of costuming but, for instance, if a costume needs to be altered to include a hate symbol or something, I think that's fine (example: I have friends who worked at the VFX house for an alternate history TV show that involved a lot of Nazi costuming and set design - a huge part of that VFX house's job was to put swastikas in places, rather than props making nazi flags. I'm okay with that!) but again, these fringe cases do not a compelling arugment make, and this contract language can be interpreted too broadly for my comfort! like everything else in this "hm" category, I need to see the final contract language to decide.

the AI bad

there's a bunch of circumstances in which actors don't get paid for creating their replica/use of it and those circumstances are too broad for my taste.

synthetic performers - this is just awful. no. no, we should not be allowing AI to generate entire actors. just............no. there's some language about the producers having to talk to the union if the synthetic performer is "used in place of a performer who would have been engaged under this Agreement in a human role" but this doesn't apply to non-human characters so....wouldn't that be all roles?? leaving the producers room to be like "this role has to be synthetic, we never would've cast a human!" is bullshit. also, even if we're having AI create a magical talking unicorn whole cloth (which, like, also no, we have artists for this), that unicorn still needs to be voiced by a human person. this whole section is a disaster.

the exceptions to consent for digital alteration are bad-bad. I talked about the potential ADR replacement above and that has a whole host of issues with it that I didn't even get into, but I can see the argument. the rest are very troubling:

there is an exception under "any circumstance when dubbing or use of a double is permitted under the Codified Basic Agreement or Television Agreement" - okay, so does this mean we can replace dubbing artists and stunt performers entirely? this section is about digital alteration, but who's to say alteration couldn't turn an actor broadly miming a fight into an entirely digital, expertly performed fight that usually a stunt double would have done? with AI translation technology, does this mean we're replacing VO artists for dubs entirely? bad!

similarly, "Adjusting lip and/or other facial or body movement and/or the voice of the performer to a foreign language, or for purposes of changes to dialogue or photography necessary for license or sale to a particular market" - Justine Bateman has a great twitter thread on the terrible puppetry potential of this but I want to draw attention to the particular market bit - we all know that selling to china is such a huge part of studios' strategies that they'll remove entire scenes or lines around queer stuff. to me, this clause makes all of that so much easier. I know the argument here is going to be "we can replace swear words and license it for kids!" which.......sure? fine? but, uh, we already have ways to deal with that? and the potential for abuse here is terrifying to me. with all the digital alteration stuff too, there's just so much icky implication for the beauty/body standard to get so much worse.

if a background actor’s digital replica is used in the role of a principal performer, they'll be paid as if they actually performed the days for that role, which, sure, but uhhhh why are we saying it's okay for a digital replica of a background actor to suddenly be a leading role!?!?! I can't think of anything more demoralizing than going to set to act in background (a job I've done! an important job! a fun job a lot of the time! but creatively limited) and then getting a much bigger role (the dream!) and.....not being able to, you know, act that role or be in scenes with other principal actors or do the thing that you've dedicated your life to doing. nightmare stuff.

woof. there's so much more to say but I'm going to leave it there. these are the concerns I'm going to go into SAG's meetings with, and the concerns I'll be considering as I decide how to vote. I know there are things I didn't address and very possibly things I misinterpreted or misrepresented - if you're an actor, I highly recommend a) reading that Justine Bateman thread and b) attending SAG's meetings to ask questions and express your concerns. and I'd love to hear what y'all think! my ask box is open.

[inoreuct]

thinking about mermaid sanji and sailor zoro,,,

the sky is cloudless, the sun’s glimmering off the calm water, the crew’s relaxing on the deck as they’re sailing through a clear patch of ocean; by all accounts, it’s a perfect day. luffy hasn’t gotten them into another shenanigan as of yet and zoro’s chilling up in the crow’s nest, half asleep and lethargic with the heat— and then he swears he hears laughter. and it isn’t coming from the ship.

he’s up on his feet immediately and squinting against the glaring light, wondering for a second if he’s seeing a mirage or a trick of the heat shimmer, because they’re sailing by a large, flat rock.

a rock with merfolk on it.

zoro’s shimmying down the mast in record time, ropes lashing around him as his boots hit the deck and he tries not to look like he’s running to the taffrail to catch a better look. (look, he’s curious, alright? merfolk aren’t a total myth, but they aren’t a common sight either.)

(that, and he feels oddly like someone has cast out a fish hook and it’s lodged behind his sternum, tugging him forward and forward until his hands are pressed palm-flat to the railing and he’s leaning over the edge.)

he hears that laugh again, rich and bright, wide eyes snapping to the mer who made it. golden waves shimmer over a leanly muscled shoulder, curling around a sharp jaw to reveal the mer’s pale, slender throat as they tip an oyster back into their mouth. leaning back on his hands — zoro is rather sure he is a he now, as a deep, smooth voice fills his ears, though he’s had enough tongue-lashings from nami to know not to assume — and tossing his hair back affords zoro a glimpse of a beautiful smile and bright blue eyes, blue as the goddamn sky. or maybe the sea. or perhaps the bioluminescent algae that had speckled the walls of this one cave that he’d been to ages ago—

he’s getting sidetracked. some sound must escape him, because suddenly a gaze so keen he feels his skin prickle is on him and he gulps involuntarily. and then for some reason, he opens his mouth. “are you a siren?”

the man’s curly brows narrow in irritation. “are you dead yet?” he snarks, casting zoro a flat stare and sighing in annoyance when zoro just stares back blankly. “no, I’m not a damn siren. lucky for you, we happen to be their… less bloodthirsty cousins.”

“less bloodthirsty meaning…?”

he shares a bored, bemused look with the woman on her elbows beside him, a mer with the richest purple colouring zoro’s seen in his life and a one-shoulder top made of shiny black kelp. “meaning we wouldn’t drag you down to the depths and feast on your carcass, but keep running your mouth and I might just change my mind.”

the mer’s tail is folded elegantly to the side as he lounges, fan-like tail fin trailing in the water, turning his body so that he can look at zoro properly as he tips back another oyster like it’s his god-given right. a tiny voice at the back of zoro’s mind whispers that this isn’t a good idea, whatever this is. it goes ignored. flaxen hair flutters in a slight breeze, sticking to the man’s milky skin in darker spirals where the tips are wet, and zoro’s breath catches as he watches the mer smile with teeth that are just erring on the side of too sharp.

the words register all at once and zoro lurches back, away from the railing, away from golden curls and blue eyes and pale skin. “what did you do,” he grits, resisting the urge to press the heel of his hand into his chest where it suddenly aches.

the mer shrugs. “nothing.”

“bullshit.”

“what’s the matter, sailor? feeling charmed?” that laugh, again, and zoro feels his heart throb. he watches the other man cock his head, studying another oyster in his hand, tilting the shell back and forth as he sucks on his teeth. “we can’t thrall,” he says finally, posture slackening with a sigh and a pout that seems to say what a shame as he picks up a knife and spins it deftly, shucking the shell open with a neat flick of his wrist. “only sirens can do that. whatever you’re feeling, whatever it may be, hasn’t been borne of any influence of mine.”

the oyster goes down and somehow, that sentence makes zoro feel even worse. it’s like he’s had the air punched out of him; he’s rooted, eyes wide, breathing hard as the mer makes a noise of pleasant surprise and pulls a pearl from his mouth, shimmering between his elegant fingers under the sun.

(zoro doesn’t know it yet, but he’s doomed. he was doomed from the start.)

*

back under the ocean, sanji has a crisis. he doesn’t see humans. he doesn’t meet humans. he and robin had just gone up to enjoy the sunshine and then this— this— brute swings by, with his stupid green hair and his three earrings and his obscenely grimy used-to-be-white shirt— sanji is fuming and he doesn’t know why. swimming laps back and forth across his cave isn’t helping either.

"might you possibly have something to get off your mind?" robin asks lightly, the pages of her book drifting in the water.

sanji does an about-turn and holds in a screech with all his might, forcing himself to relax with an exhale. "i'm just fine, my dear. peachy keen."

"you're making grooves in the floor."

"i'm redecorating."

he rolls the pearl from earlier between his fingers, squeezing it tight until his hand aches. "are you a siren, he asks," he mutters mutinously, fins fluttering as he throws himself onto a seaweed bed with a scowl. "how could a human be so stupid? if we were sirens he'd have been a waterlogged ball of moss on the sea floor by that point— and that hair. he looks like— like—"

"algae?" robin supplies helpfully.

"algae! sentient plant life, that's what he is, a kelp bed. water lettuce. duckweed, even." oh, he's so mad. that marimo pisses him off. the whole lot of them had sailed away, good riddance, because sanji never wants to see any of them ever again. they probably all smelled horrid anyway.

*

the merman's been following them.

the crow's nest is zoro's territory for a reason; he's the crew's lookout, and he's damn good at his job. for the past few days he's been seeing flashes of a broad tail fin and twists of golden hair. (he very firmly tells himself that he's not just seeing what he wants to see, because one, he might have one remaining eye but his eyesight is still as sharp as he keeps his cutlass, thank you very much. and two, why the hell would he want to see that merman? he isn't about to win any awards for his own manners but that guy had been stuck up and prissy and just rude. he's only been allowed to tag along this far because he hasn't presented himself as an outright threat. zoro doesn't want to see him. nuh-uh.)

(zoro sees things in his dreams, too. ocean eyes and a sly smile. a pale torso, knife in hand and teeth too sharp. he reaches out to see if the other man's hair feels as soft as it looks and he always wakes before he finds out.)

rum doesn't help to loosen the tension that settles against his spine at night, like he's waiting for something. he doesn't know what. anticipation, maybe, would be a better word— but that has a slight positive connotation, and— no. this man might not be a siren, but zoro’s enough of a sailor to know that it sure as hell doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous.

he can't afford to go off chasing pretty mermen when he has a crew to protect.

*

the ship docks for a few days at a barren island. sanji swims laps around the sandy coast and pretends that the thought of his the sailor being beyond his reach doesn't make an anxious itch ripple beneath his scales.

*

water splashes against the side of the boat, and zoro's at the railing in an instant whether he wants to be or not.

“hello, marimo.”

the merman treads water leisurely, golden hair swirling about his shoulders and gleaming in the faint lantern light. it's early enough after sunset that the stars aren't out yet and it's dark as hell. zoro squints.

a laugh echoes in his ears, light and melodious. already familiar. zoro tries to be mad about that. “a little more to your left, moron.”

“well, i can’t very well fuckin’ see, can i?” he scoffs, and bites back a gasp when the water starts glowing, what the fuck. his stupid heart stutters when he sees him, lit up with gentle blues and yellows from below, flickering with the push and pull of the tide and sweeps of that powerful tail. "hey."

"hello," the mer hums again, lashes long and wet enough that they catch the wavering light. "gonna tell me your name, sailor?"

zoro almost lets it slip. almost. but he bites his tongue as he feels a chill run up the back of his neck; sure enough, a glance over his shoulder confirms that nami is glaring at him. don't do anything stupid, her gaze says, and he turns away with a shudder. their navigator is a threat in her own right. "no."

"okay. marimo it is."

"you— that is insulting," he hisses, because it is. he is roronoa zoro. he came from nothing and made a life for himself out of it. he's one of the best swordsmen on the damn seas and he's part of the best crew he's ever known, and he's been reduced to, what? a floating ball of moss?

"it's accurate," the other man corrects with a smirk. "unless you tell me what else to call you."

zoro fumes, fingertips digging into the taffrail. he's sure his nails are gouging scratches in the wood. "no."

"marimo."

"shut up."

"mosshead."

"shut up!"

"algae-brained, kelp-haired, water cabbage-headed—"

"zoro!"

the mer finally stops, lashes fluttering as something passes over his face.

"my name," he ekes out, "is zoro." nami swears somewhere behind him.

the merman's lips part around the syllables of the word, before he draws in a breath and grins, smug. "okay, marimo."

"wh—?!" zoro throws his hands up in exasperation, scofffing. "you bastard!"

"i asked for your name. never said i would use it."

"you're a piece of shit, blondie."

"call me that again and i'll show you how hard i can bite," the mer sneers with all his teeth on show, blue eyes lit up furious, turning away as he prepares to dive and—

"wait!" zoro yells before he can stop himself, and he curses under his breath. ah, fuck it. already got one foot in it anyway. "what's your name?"

"...oh, darling," the mer sighs, half-amused and airy, his voice slipping away. "you're gonna have to work a little harder for that."

it feels like hours later when zoro steps back with a shaky sigh. the merman reminds him of a strong brandy he’d had what feels like lifetimes ago, burnt caramel and warm sugar and smoke with enough hidden bite to take you by surprise, to sink its teeth into you three shots down. enough to intoxicate if you weren’t careful.

he yelps when nami slaps him across the back of the head, faking a lunge at her with bared teeth even as he rubs a hand over his aching scalp with a huff. her nagging about being more careful barely registers. his hair's getting long; maybe he needs a trim.

(that little voice in the back of his head is wary. hesitant. but now it's asking what if.)

*

the ship docks again. this island is teeming with life, thriving, lush with rich green foliage and thick forestation— and beautiful women who all seem to find zoro the height of masculine appeal, apparently. sanji curls himself into a nook in the coral reef and lets his fins trail in the water, the corner of his mouth ticking up a little when a baby clownfish comes to nibble curiously at his fingertip. he's not sulking. he's not. that would be fucking embarrassing for so many reasons and he refuses to think about even one of them.

it's the first time that he starts to feel a little stupid. it had been all fun and games, in the beginning when he'd upped and left on a whim; curiosity and intrigue and the good old urge to stick his fingers in all the cracks this human had until sanji understood every part of him, laid out in the sand like the skeleton of a great sea beast.

but now he's so far away from home, aimlessly following a ship— no, not even a ship. following one person on a ship for no real reason at all.

the clownfish ducks beneath his hand, and sanji cups it carefully in his palm. "you're lucky you don't have to deal with romance yet," he tells it sagely before gently shooing it out of his hiding spot. the water above ripples. it's dark again; the crew must have returned to their boat for the night. sanji sighs and unfurls his tail.

it honestly seems like blind optimism at this point, but he really hopes he's not being played for a fool.

zoro's there when he surfaces, peering over the railing and backlit by the lanterns. sanji focuses and brings out his bioluminescence until the little cove they're in is filled with coloured light. "marimo."

"swirly brow," zoro greets in return.

sanji raises one said swirly eyebrow. "that's new."

"i've got more. blondie, of course. curly head. fishboy—"

"fishboy?!" he squawks, enraged. "fuck you!"

"you wish."

"more like the ladies did," sanji scoffs, and immediately wants to try drowning himself.

zoro frowns. "the hell you talking 'bout, curls?"

the burst of bitterness at the back of his throat is just enough to take him by surprise and loosen his tongue. "they were hanging off your arm like—" mm. nope. he's not gonna go there.

the swordsman's eyes widen like he's just realised something, and sanji does not like that at all. "you're jealous."

"no."

"you are!"

"fuck you," he spits, gills flaring. "i am not." he has no reason to be jealous. they are nothing. this— there is nothing between them.

zoro just grins. "catch."

a white thing drops downwards and sanji darts forward on instinct to let it fall into his cupped palms. "what, s'this supposed to be a present for me, marimo?"

"it's— yeah."

he opens his mouth to reply, before he realises what exactly it is he's holding.

the water lotus fills his hands, its soft white petals edged in pale pink, velvety against his fingertips. something catches in his throat and he dips beneath the water to submerge his gills, carefully holding the flower aloft. his heart squeezes.

the waves lap at the bridge of his nose, hiding half his face as he watches zoro rub at the back of his neck, uncharacteristically shy. zoro isn't shy. sanji knows this much. he is loud and unabashed and unashamed with everything, with how he lives, with how he talks, with how he loves his crew and everything they entail.

but he looks almost— he's blushing, just a little, red across the tips of his ears as his gaze darts away, looking very much like he's mad at himself. "nami said it means strength and resilience, or something." the breath he huffs is harsh as he scratches at his nape. "i don't know, it's stupid, curly, i just—"

"sanji."

"what?"

"sanji. my name."

sanji doesn't want to know what he looks like as he rises out of the water to cup the flower to his collar. dumb, probably. rightfully so, because all of this is a very dumb decision and it's probably going to end in shambles with his heart broken into pieces in the silt but zoro— he looks up, floating on his back, and zoro's already looking at him with something that could be wonder, if sanji dared to name it.

"where did you get this?" he murmurs, tail fin creating large ripples as he swims a circle, holding the lotus like it's fragile.

"there was a pond full of them on the island. thought you'd like it."

"you don't know what i like." it comes out breathy. his hair melts against his shoulders as he tries to push himself closer, closer, across the space between them, like a fool. "you don't even know me."

and yet, he startles back when zoro jumps the railing, splashing feet-first into the water boots and all and shaking his head like a dog when he resurfaces. sanji shrieks and shields the lotus with his body, everything else momentarily forgotten as he whacks zoro with his tail just hard enough to send the sailor back underwater with a sputtered laugh. "you fucking brute!"

"i want to."

"that made no sense—"

"i don't know you, but i want to." zoro treads closer, and sanji's light ripples off his skin. his eyes are grey. warm granite and the inside of an oyster shell. "will you let me?"

sanji wants. there is nothing between them, but he wants there to be. he wants so hard it hurts. it feels like he's holding his heart in his hands and not a flower. it's the only way to explain how he's suddenly aching, hollow, in the face of something that isn't even a goddamn confession but feels too much like one. there is a flower in his hands and he wants.

“why?”

“dunno.” he gets a shrug, blunt and earnest as ever even as zoro’s mouth twists up at the edge. “maybe i’m charmed.”

he swallows hard, his mouth dry, and he doesn't want to say it but he has to. "if this is some sick thing about me being a mer—"

"wh—? no!" zoro blurts, and he looks so fucking horrified at that moment that it settles something in sanji's stomach instantly. "god, fuck, no. no. it's not like that. i swear on my life."

there are reasons why merfolk don't interact with humans. sanji grew up with the stories. he's seen the skeletons on the sea floor, mangled with the hunting tools of man, incomplete remains of his kin tossed away to their deaths, unable to swim or save themselves— still a better fate than the ones who never returned. the ocean is gentle after the burn of her salt; her waves are familiar, and her children are raised in their push and pull. captivity, at the hands of men for whatever reason, is never so kind.

he inhales sharply as callused hands cup his.

"i'm sorry," zoro says softly, rushed and maybe a little desperate, throat bobbing as his eyes dart across sanji's face. "i'm sorry. i didn't think of that at all."

"good," he finds himself replying as he looks down. "that means it didn't cross your mind."

a muscle ticks in zoro's jaw. "that's fucking sick, curls."

"i know." sanji's tone is matter-of-fact. "but it's what we have to deal with, sometimes." he deflates with a soft huff at the expression on the other man's face, looking away. "if you start saying shit like i'll protect you or whatever, i'm gonna smack you. i can handle myself."

zoro sighs through his nose, slowly, and his hands tighten around sanji's. "i know you can. i've watched you hunt. doesn't mean i can't be mad about it."

his eyebrows go up. "you saw me hunting?"

"mhm," the swordsman hums. "you're strong. fast. resourceful, too."

sanji preens. he knows he is, knows he’s one of, if not the best, but hearing it from zoro is another thing entirely.

"...also, my captain's been begging me to get you to fish for us because we're all crap at it."

that startles a laugh out of him, and he smiles so wide so quick that his cheeks ache. "that can be negotiated."

up this close, it's easy to see that zoro's hair is shorter than it was before, shorn short at the back and blunt enough that it just had to be freshly cut. the possibility of it being for him does something funny to his chest. the dark green strands are spiky, sticking up everywhere now that they're wet, and sanji wants so badly to touch.

he looks down at the flower in their hands, and he doesn't.

"this can't survive in saltwater," he murmurs instead, carefully putting his lotus into zoro's scarred palms. "take care of it for me."

he watches zoro trudge back to shore, one hand with the flower held above his head. he yells, "it better still be alive the next time i come check, marimo!" and he doesn't bother waiting for an answer. he knows zoro heard him.

sanji's gonna play this slow. he's gonna play this smart. and if zoro fucks up, well— he’s on friendly terms with a particular shiver of great whites.

*

zoro does not, in fact, fuck up. but now he’s constantly being given shit about his pretty merman boyfriend and as much as he pretends he hates it, he really doesn’t. luffy takes one look and declares that sanji’s crew now, zoro, you can’t hog him! dinners are now seafood more often then not, mussels and clams and all sorts of fish, even lobster when sanji finds out it’s nami’s birthday, and franky engineers some sort of transportable bathtub to get him on board.

(sanji brings robin around and franky falls all over himself making transportable bathtub 2.0, but that’s not the point.)

*

“bioluminescence, right? am i saying that right?” zoro asks, spinning this way and that as he tries to get a good look at sanji’s glowing tail under the water, eyes wide.

“mhm.” the mer lifts his tail fin out of the water, pulling himself closer so zoro can hold both of them up seeing as the pool they’re in is shallow enough to stand in. zoro’s hands twitch around nervously until sanji reaches out and grabs his wrist, pressing his palm flat to wet scales, and his chest aches at the look on zoro’s face.

the cave they’re in is small enough for every little sound to echo. sanji’s tail drips rhythmically, punctuated by the staggered breath zoro sucks in as he hauls sanji closer with an arm low over his stomach. careful fingers trace over the glowing patterns on his tail, fading upwards into his torso, and zoro slides a palm flat against sanji’s spine to lift him up as he presses their foreheads together.

“beautiful,” he breathes, reverent. the reflections from the water dance off his wet skin, and his eyes are mother-of-pearl.

sanji wants to touch, and so he does. he winds his fingers into zoro’s hair and pulls him down and kisses him, tastes salt and rum and the promise of blood when his teeth catch and zoro doesn’t shy from the bite. for the first time in a long time he is safe enough to let himself drift; his tail drapes itself over zoro’s side like a elaborate feather fan, and he giggles at the mental comparison.

he feels zoro smile at his laughter. feels calluses and gentle hands as zoro carries him back out to sea. tastes love when zoro pulls him in for one last kiss before saying goodbye for the night.

*

it starts with more flowers. then jewellery, intricate metalwork that would be hard to come by under the sea, fishnet cords and crystal pendants and pretty trinket rings, then daggers, silver hairpins with edges sharp enough to slice bone and a particularly beautiful watered-steel knife in a sheath of butter-soft leather. sanji cannot help but feel like he’s being courted, which makes no sense, because zoro knows nothing about merfolk courting traditions.

and then they talk as zoro braids shells into his hair the way perona taught him to (“you didn’t tell me you had a sister?!” “she just never came up!” “what do you mean she just never came up, marimo, what the fuck! this is important?!”) and sanji finds out zoro talked to robin about it, the sneaky bastard.

a tail doesn’t stop him from tackling zoro to the sand to kiss the crap out of him, braids unfinished and hair wound through zoro’s fingers. his heart feels fit to burst when zoro turns to ensure he takes the brunt of the fall because they both know how much sanji hates getting sand stuck in his scales.

*

the first time sanji gets hurt, zoro goes rather frantic.

it’s barely a scratch, just a slice near the base of his tail courtesy of a rock he hadn’t been able to avoid while hunting, but zoro bodily hauls him back to the ship between bouts of very concerned yelling and yanks off the black bandana always on his arm, scrubs it clean in hot water for good measure before wrapping up his wound, all while making sure no parts of sanji were drying out in the tub.

“marimo, i am fine,” sanji stresses for the twentieth time, shifting up to cup zoro’s face and sighing in resignation as zoro just shakes his head again.

“i don’t care,” the swordsman announces, throwing his hands up like deal with it. “i don’t care. no more hunting until this is completely healed.”

“it is a scratch. a scratch.”

“i don’t give a shit. you’re staying with me for the next few days.”

sanji groans and grumbles and bitches about it, and when zoro bickers right back it just riles him up even more.

(he stays put. he lets zoro scoop him into his lap with unnecessary care. he leans into the kisses zoro presses to his temple and he feels like crying because he is grateful. always.)

*

slavers attack the ship. sanji may not be a siren, but that does not mean he isn’t dangerous. he has his tail, and his knives, and his love for his crew. this is his crew.

he drags those slavers into the ocean and drowns them one by one.

*

now, sanji’s friend ivankov is a literal sea witch— so when they toss sanji an amulet and a wink on his birthday, sanji already knows it’s gonna be good.

the amulet gives him fucking legs.

only while he wears it, of course, but when he stumbles out of the surf like a newborn fawn zoro nearly chokes in shock. they spend the day falling over each other laughing as sanji tries to walk. he eats shit more times than he can counts and gets enough sand in his mouth for a lifetime.

later, there is a blanket beneath them and the moon above them and the endless ocean, shimmering under the light as zoro gathers his hair out of his face and kisses him so softly it hurts.

“beautiful,” zoro breathes. he preaches it like the truth. swears it like a promise.

their hands fit, calluses against calluses as zoro thumbs over the tiny patch of scales on sanji’s wrist, iridescent yellow-blue. their fingers lace in a motion they’ve done hundreds of times and still it never feels different than the first.

sanji lays back, and all he sees are stars.

[katierosefun]

hm maybe i’m going to get flack for this, but i genuinely don’t understand how some self-claimed fic lovers can be the same people who a) pressure and harass writers into producing more and more stories, regardless of their current health or personal lives, b) pressure writers when they aren’t updating fast enough, again, regardless of their current health or personal lives, and c) now, apparently, feed their supposedly beloved writers’ stories into ai bots. it’s becoming incredibly disheartening and clear that some folks don’t care so much about writers and really care exclusively about feeding whatever greedy need they have to just consume.

[wintaerbaer]

thinking about doing a teaser for twds 6 in the next week if people are still interested?

[petricorah]

[muckyschmuck]

mostly bear but deaddog’s there too

[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.

[cerise-on-top]

Could I ask for some fluff of a Hank x Reader x 2BDamned? If that's okay, please!

Hello! Of course you can! Here you go!

Poly 2BHank x Reader Fluff

I would say that the both of them are rather busy people, so you won’t be spending too much time together. It’s not like they can make too much time for each other either, though. However, they’ll try. It’s fairly risky for everyone involved, especially for you. If you’re not part of S.Q. then you’ll likely become the target of some attack if you’re seen with Doc. If you’re seen with Hank, if people can tell you’re affiliated with him, then they’ll attack you as well. So really, you’ll be at a disadvantage either way. However, it’s not like either of them feel like going out too much with you. Yes, Hank will want to get some hot dogs with you at some point since he does like those, but after a mission he’s usually torn as a rag and just wants to sleep. Doc is well aware of the dangers he poses towards your wellbeing, so he actively chooses to not go out with you too much either. However, that doesn’t mean that the three of you can’t be lovey dovey at home. It’s very rare to see Hank and Doc cuddle properly with each other, but it happens. Neither of them are touchy people, but sometimes you just desire the touch of a loved one, so you might catch Hank sitting on the floor next to Doc from time to time, his head in his lap. Hank could fall asleep like this too, actually, but he wants to protect you and Doc, so he usually doesn’t. Doc sometimes has a hand on Hank’s shoulder and gently rubs it to show he’s there for him, but he needs his other hand to go through files. If you join Hank on his endeavours, cuddling up to Doc yourself, then the grunt will sigh in feign annoyance and get away from his work for some time to give the two of you some attention. You can get him to settle down for the night like this as well, but he will only begrudgingly do so. 2B may not be the cuddliest person out there, and neither is Hank, but he does enjoy some physical touch from time to time. You will likely switch it up when it comes to cuddling. While you may be the little spoon now, chances are you’ll be the big spoon next time. 2B and Hank are versatile like that. While Hank may prefer holding someone as he falls asleep, if he’s not headed to bed then he can go either way.

Although it’s rare for Hank to show his softer side, he will do so for you and Doc only. Sometimes he’ll come back from a mission, bloody and almost entirely disassembled, holding a few flowers he found. Maybe even a nice scarf or a cool weapon. Despite being a very confident grunt, he knows he can easily protect you, he does believe that you having a weapon yourself would help you with defending yourself. Sometimes he’ll get you a nice katana, one like he has. Other times you can expect a rocket launcher or chainsaw from him as well. His metaphorical tail starts wagging whenever either you or Doc accept his gifts and thank him. He did a good job on this one, you will be safe and sound from here on out. Give him a nice pat, either on his arm or head, and he’ll happily grunt away. Doc pats Hank from time to time and Hank absolutely loves it. However, only you and Doc are allowed to do that, anyone else will be dealt with immediately. Hank definitely doesn’t mind being treated like a dog from time to time. If he’s in a good mood you can call him a good boy and put his face in your hands, he eats that right up. Be enthusiastic about it as well and he’ll lightly headbutt you. Don’t get mad at him for doing so, he doesn’t know what to do with these positive emotions, so he goes straight for gentle violence again.

Going on dates with the two of them mostly consists of something simple. Doc usually suggests Burger Gil’s since no one cares that Hank is there. People are there for the food, not to get mauled by Hank, so they usually leave you alone. Sometimes the three of you go to take a look at the red sun on a cliff as well, though, and reminisce about the better times. Hank still remembers the greenery that used to be in Nevada. He doesn’t remember it well since he doesn’t miss it in the slightest, but he’s lived a good chunk of his life surrounded by plants. Doc barely remembers them, but he still thinks back on them fondly. While neither of the two of them may be sentimental people, they do like discussing the past. There’s always something new to be learned about each other. There’s this unspoken trust between the three of you, so you know each other better than anyone else. For example, you know that Hank likes being picked up, even if he’s far too tall and heavy for that these days. Sometimes you pretend to try and pick him up just to make him feel good. One fact you’ve learned about Doc is that he sometimes, when you and Hank are asleep, likes to hold one hand of each of you. Sometimes he can’t sleep well, or at all, so he opts to spend that time resting from time to time. He won’t particularly go all out in holding you since he doesn’t wanna risk waking you, you’re both extremely tired, after all, but he does like holding your hands, sometimes playing with your fingers as well. He denies this, but you both know it happens. Sometimes Hank makes fun of Doc for it in his usual demeanour, but he secretly loves it. Hank’s favourite activity aside from killing and maiming is helping you and Doc out with whatever you need, even if it’s just holding the wrench. Doc loves showing you his creations. While he knows you likely won’t understand a word he’s saying, he explains them to you anyway. Besides, if he’s made a mistake thinking it over, then he’s more likely to find it while talking. Besides, he gets to spend time with you, what else could he possibly want?

[ahundredtimesover]

Hi 👋🏽 I’ll be going on an indefinite break that may (or may not) be for good.

Writing fanfiction was an escape for me these past 2 years. It was a way to express my love for the tannies in how I wrote them as comfort characters, and it was a way for me to make sense of my own experiences and emotions. These fics have always been very personal, with a bit of me in every OC, my pains reflected in their stories, and words I wish someone told me growing up expressed in the dialogues. And I’ll always be so thankful that many of you related with them, found meaning in them, and found comfort in them. That will always be my favorite part 💜💜 stories are so powerful! They’ve allowed me to connect with so many people and make memories in this (mostly) lovely part of the site.

But the process of writing has also been draining, not as cathartic as it used to be, and not as fulfilling. So much as I find myself going back and forth with the numerous stories in my drafts, I can’t bring myself to continue with them. Not anytime soon, at least. Maybe one day the itch to write will be so intense, or JJK1/KTH1 drops and I’ll lose my shit (Untitled and Belong were born out of Indigo and D-day after all), or after rereading my stories, I’ll miss writing so much. The thing is, I’ve never loved BTS as much as I do right now; perhaps I’m content with screaming about that love to myself in the meantime.

I’ll be lurking around here, maybe pop in every once in a while (so plagiarists, keep off my work, pls). My stories will remain here as your comfort 😌 and I’ll do my best to put out the PLM drabbles I promised! Other than that, all the stories are complete for you to enjoy (sorry to those waiting on TLA 😔 I hate that I’m unable to continue). I also have Twitter (jmimi_mi). I’m also just a lurker but say hi if you want! 😊 we can talk bts and fics and whatnot over there (I’ll try, I promise).

Please give love to the authors who are still lovingly putting out work for the community! 🥰

[lonelylonelyghost]

Under the Skin analysis nobody asked for

a.k.a why I think that Du Cheng is pretty awesome actually.

SPOILERS for Under the Skin - Chinese drama, NOT a vore? body-snatcher?? movie with Scarlet Johansson. You have been warned.

*********

OK, let's get one thing out of the way first. People give Du Cheng a lot of shit about how he treated Shen Yi at first, which - fair, but hear me out.

Captain Lei for Du Cheng was not just a mentor and a fellow police officer, he was practically a father to him, the one who supported and showed young Mr. Du that he could redirect his anger and strength towards greater cause and help other people.

So imagine, in a very short amount of time, during the phone call with your almost-PARENT you hear him getting stabbed, find his dead body in a ditch, and then the reason the killers were able to identify him at all - a smug little shit of an artist who bragged about remembering every face he saw - couldn't draw for some reason the only face that mattered.

You'd also probably flip out and hold a grudge for 7 years.

Du Cheng also didn't know at this point that Shen Yi couldn't remember the face due to being dumped into the sea, he assumed that the artist just didn't want to do it.

I'm not saying that all this excuses Du Cheng's behavior, he's still a dick to an innocent person, a victim of circumstances - the fact which he already knew. What I'm saying is that it makes sense.

The scene in the interrogation room was amazing but I think we all know it

*********

Now, onto the thing:

The initial impression of Du Cheng's character is that yes, he's the police captain, and he's capable, but he's also kinda goofy. Like, where the work is not involved he's simple, straightforward person, not a genius like Shen Yi with his art or good with technology like Li Han, not very sophisticated, etc.

He's pretty chill overall (unless it's about murder cases or Shen Yi). Typical big gruff police captain that can be a butt of several jokes in other shows, but here is where things get interesting.

*********

When we first see him in the series, he's submerged in a bath inside of a suitcase, trying to figure out how a crime was committed. (Typing this I realized that there's even more of a theme of water and drowning, specifically of self-inflicted kind, than I'd thought before).

It shows that he's willing to go to great lengths to solve a case, including getting himself in a harm's way in the process, and this is demonstrated constantly throughout the show.

Later we see that he's also a good leader of his team, street-smart and physically strong.

A lot of wet men this show has

Speaking of physicality, I like how Du Cheng carries himself. With his height and size he could seem awkward, but Du Cheng is in complete control of his body.

His movements are big (wide? idk but you get my point) but fluid and calculated at the same time, partly because of the years' worth of training, partly because like many other tall people he's used to moving in the world that's occupied by smaller humans and a lot of fragile items.

He's not using his size for his advantage in everyday life, unless it's for the case and he needs to save one ever-unlucky Shen-laoshi from trouble for the tenth time that week.

He moves with the grace of a wild animal, calm and seemingly tame until he isn't, which is why although I understand his comparison to a dog in the show, I feel like he's more of a wolf.

Basically, there are three things I can watch forever - how the fire burns, how Shen Yi draws, and how Du Cheng jumps into the swimming pool.

*********

Another little mystery about Du Cheng that just doesn't let me go is - what the hell is his family background?

At first it seemed like he was just an ordinary rebellious teenager from some kind of tumultuous household. We don't hear anything about his parents, so we're simply left to assume (the same goes for Shen Yi).

That was until Du Qing comes into the picture. Du Cheng's sister is like rich-rich, so she could either amount to such power herself (girlboss ❤), or she's already come from money.

If the latter is the case, then what was Du Cheng doing on the streets all those years ago? Rich boy's tantrum? It didn't seem like it. Also, Du siblings seem pretty close, so I don't think that Du Qing would let her younger brother roam the streets if she had a choice.

Maybe I missed something? I don't know, but this tidbit just tickles my fancy for some reason, like what's his deal?

*********

But the thing that proved to me the fact that Du Cheng is as complex of a character as She Yi was when he framed himself as M's killer.

(I mean, I knew that he was innocent from the start, because hello, this is s Chinese contemporary show about cops, there's only so much wiggle room in terms of morality the censorship would allow - either he's guilty and he dies at the end, or he's not and everything will be fine. It didn't seem like the first option, so...)

Even before the whole thing went down, Du Cheng in general never seemed like a sidekick, simply a load of big muscles compared to Shen Yi's torturous genius, but this particular decision really cemented the quality of this partnership - in different ways, but they're equal. Neither can do without the other, and both of them can adapt and change their usual tactics when required.

And do you realize how rare this kind of thing is??

When two people have this sort of dynamic in a show - where one is very smart and the other is more down to earth - the second person more often than not would just feel like an assistant to the first one, and it's incredibly annoying to me personally.

But here it's different and oh my god IT'S SO GOOD! I practically screamed in excitement when it happened.

The motherfucker can scheme! This guy fell down from the stairs, hit his head, saw that M was dead, instantly understood what was happening and came up with a whole plan, which granted, involved getting himself in huge trouble, but it's not like Du Cheng is the only one who likes to be self-sacrificial fool in this show.

He sets a trap for the villain like a predator for the prey and then patiently waits. He knows that the price for this stunt is not only getting framed for the murder and demoted/imprisoned/executed? (I don't know the terms for death sentences in China very well), it's also the trust and potential well-being of his colleagues, and Du Cheng still agrees to pay it. He's ruthless both to himself and others, and I LOVE IT.

The later parts of the show provides us with not only deliciously tense moments, full of suspicions and drama and angst (the dinner with Du Qing, and Shen Yi drawing the eyes from the security footage are especially great), but also proves that BOTH of main characters have this darker undercurrent beneath their friendly exteriors.

And although it can't really be explored properly due to censorship, it still is fascinating to think about.

[good-wine-and-cheese]

Writing is such a fun hobby. I will write a few sentences then stop and scream into my hands because the words hurt but then smile because I'm gonna make someone else feel that too. and then keep writing words

[thelaurenshippen]

open ai made a little post about how they chose their chatbot voices and two things stood out to me:

a) I am genuinely pleased and surprised that the voices come from specific real people that they hired and paid, rather than being built off of all of the data open ai has scraped. the voice for siri did one job for one company 20 years ago and now she is literally everywhere without ever being compensated by apple or even acknowledged as the voice. there's simply no way she was paid enough in that original job. whereas, open ai says "each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products." this could mean literally anything (what market rate are we going above? does continue mean they get residuals or get paid for doing more sessions?) but, christ, at least the actors are doing it with full knowledge of what their voices are being used for and can decide for themselves if the compensation is enough

b) the post talks about working with "award-winning casting directors" to get the voices. first of all, yay for paying casting directors! we love to see it. but they also say the CDs received over 400 submissions in a week and they state that like a big number and it's just...not at all. and look, without knowing the intricacies of the casting process, it's hard to know what approach the CDs took - it's very possible they were selective from the jump and 400 is a lot from the pool they were tapping. 400 would be a lot if you were going to the agencies directly and asking for names, but there's just no way in hell open ai went after big stars for this. so it would've been a pool of unknowns. in which case, 400 is laughably small. even if you're not using the big casting sites like actorsaccess, I've worked on projects with CDs and their own internal systems where we've gotten over 100 submissions for a single role. I've posted roles on casting sites and received literally thousands of submissions in just a few days

look, I have a very limited perspective on this - I am not a casting director (imo, one of the most important and undervalued jobs in hollywood) and I, in fact, hate the process of casting with a passion. but 400 just seemed like such a tiny pool to pull from and, idk, it heartens me! it's heartening to think that there's very little interest from actors and agents to be doing this kind of stuff. and absolutely no shade to the actors who did--I want actors to get their bag however they want as long as it's, like, safe sane and consensual, you know? but there's something encouraging about thinking that open ai hired some big casting agency to get their foot into the voice acting door and people didn't come running

[lunarharp]

into the deep end - 29k T orufrey fic.

the sweet oblivion of the victim, the poisoned freedom of the other.

for one moment - it had felt like two parts returned - the needed reunion of two disparate halves. no more secrets, no more pain.

the moment you get to give back what you never wanted to take. that moment, under the night-blooming flowers, when they had both let out the same single broken sigh of relief.

but they were never whole to begin with, were they?

qifrey swore he wouldn't say 'sorry' to this man any more if he could help it - sorry is cheap now. he didn't want to be in a position ever again where you only have 'sorry' left. so he just looks down into the threads of his blanket, strains his eye until it hurts, feeling his insides - his throat, heart and head - burn with pain. he expects more, but olly says nothing.

olly says nothing.

[good-beanswrites]

My translyrics for Salamander, written out under the cut :D

This one was much more difficult than the last, but I'm still very satisfied with it! 😤 I'm both sad that my version lost a lot of the fun soundplay of the original, and also waaay more impressed with the lyrics and vocals after digging it like this! I tried to keep it balanced between the original and Fuuta's version, though maybe it ended up leaning more toward the cover, idk. Leaving my specific notes in the tags 👍

Salamander~ Hot's nice, don't you agree? This pa- passion's fine, see?

"But" isn't what I wanna hear, so say "more" loud and clear.

It's heating up all through my mind when I'm with you.

I want a taste, but all this spice may prove more than I can take, (eh?)

Something's on your mind. So spit it out and tell me, don't waste my time, kay?

I'm hooked on this, pass me a dish.

The way I'm starving here without you -- it's a crime

A spicy treat, put on repeat,

Can I get seconds with the same heat? One more time!

Salamander~ Hot's nice, don't you agree? This pa- passion's fine, see?

"But" isn't what I wanna hear, so say "more" loud and clear.

It's heating up all through my mind when I'm with you.

I can't stop anything, although I wouldn't want to stop, oh no --

Take a breath, it's best to cool down or you earn yourself a burn.

I want a bite, I can't help giving in to this new appetite.

Again, again, I want to be on fire when I get to the end.

We live too fast, we burn to ash,

I never handled spices well and it's a crime.

A spicy treat, put on repeat,

Can I get seconds with the same heat? One more time!

I want to burn bright red

I want to burn bright red

Salamander~ Hot's nice, don't you agree? This pa- passion's fine, see?

"But" isn't what I wanna hear, so say "more" loud and clear.

Tell me I'm not alone in my mind!

Salamander~ Look what's happened to me. This pa- passion's crazy

Tell me I'm not delirious, I'm being serious.

It's heating up all through my mind when I'm with you.

I can't stop anything, although I wouldn't want to stop, oh no --

Take a breath, it's best to cool down or you earn yourself a burn.

I want to leave I want to go, but I can never stop, oh no --

Take a breath, it's best to cool down or you earn yourself a burn.

[brittlebutch]

finally found a place to read With the Light online and i'm thrilled; if you haven't read this manga i do Legitimately recommend it