#also i know this approach is unbearable to some people. but truly it is what made poetry work for me. so!

[familyabolisher]

hi!! i hope you’re having a lovely day :-) i really enjoy reading your blog and how you pick apart Things & was wondering if you have any tips and guides for reading and analyzing poetry? ive always struggled w forming coherent thoughts abt poems and would love to know how you approach it. thank you sm for your time ✨

so the big thing that made poetry "click" for me was realising that i was trying to read it the way i might try to read a novel -- identify a discourse taking place, look for points in the text that supplement my argument, construct a position on what the piece is "about" based on these points -- all very undergrad essay-core and frankly a v boring way to think about novels as well, but like, completely mind-numbing when it came to poetry. i think a better approach is to interface with the poem at the level of language and technical construction. i find that it helps a lot to know the technical terms for particular phenomena in the language of poetry, but even without that shorthand knowledge, you'll get a lot out of poetry when you start looking at the choices being made at the level of individual words or even syllables. so instead of asking "what is this poem about?", we can start to ask, for instance:

what is the tone of this poem? is it sparing or loquacious? emotional or detached? asking questions or answering them? what's the vantage point - is this a detached omniscient third-person narrator making observations, or are we as the reader being guided towards a particular perspective on the part of the speaker?

what is the mouthfeel of this poem? can you find any 'shapes' -- any assonance, any internal rhyming, alliteration, anything that causes you to pay attention to particular words, phrasing, etc. why is your attention being called to those moments?

what is the rhythm of the poem? is it free verse -- if so, can you find any points in the piece where more or less attention to rhythm is being paid? why does the line break on this particular word? are the sentences short or long? how is the poet interfacing with their chosen meter? what does this meter lend to the poem? if you're reading multiple works by the same author, compare their use of meter -- do they use the same meter regularly or switch it up, and why were those switches made?

if you can annotate a poem, do so. note down anything which seems linguistically interesting, even if you don't know the "correct" technical word for it -- any clusters of words with similarities whose placement might be interesting (eg. what words are rhymed!), any noteworthy rhythmic discrepancies, placement of line breaks, anything that sticks out. i like to think of reading poetry as a playful exercise -- you're playing around with the words, seeing how they work, enjoying the rhythm and texture of the piece as it comes to you, and trying to construct "a reading" only after the fact.

i think there are times when the reading-for-a-discourse approach can be v helpful and illuminating, but it's best to stumble on those opportunities organically rather than focusing all your energy on trying to answer the "what is this trying to say?" question. if a particular discursive component of a poem sparks your interest (like eg. you read the rime of the ancient mariner and notice how the poem interfaces with contemporaneous abolitionist discourses as well as colonialist ideas about polynesia, just as an example), you've obviously got a compelling hook from which you can anchor a reading, but going in expecting such a reading to jump off the page will often just result in frustration.

this doesn't mean that we don't take the discourse of a poem seriously, or that we don't understand the "rules" of poetry to be postdiscursive phenomena highly contingent on social context. if anything, understanding poetry at a mechanical level opens up significant doors for answering these types of questions -- we can understand, for example, the reactionary nature of the academic revolt against free verse and the desire to return to metered poetry better once we understand the function of form and structure in fascist aesthetics. similarly, spending this kind of time with a poem makes it a lot easier to get a handle on what it might be "about," and what sort of choices are being made to render that "about"ness coherent.

also -- and this is true of anything, including poetry -- if a poet isn't working for you, try reading somebody else. a lot of poets that people will say are good and interesting are neither of those things. poetry has the advantage of being (usually!) a quick read compared to novels, so it's far easier to shop around, read widely, realise what you like and dislike, and engage accordingly.

one of my favourite pieces of literary criticism and examples of the value of this sort of reading practice comes from nabokov's epilogue to lolita, in which he both defends the novel in question against accusations of salacity and speaks very disparagingly of efforts to read a thesis statement into it. he writes:

Every serious writer, I dare say, is aware of this or that published book of his as of a constant comforting presence. Its pilot light is steadily burning somewhere in the basement and a mere touch applied to one’s private thermostat instantly results in a quiet little explosion of familiar warmth. This presence, this glow of the book in an ever accessible remoteness is a most companionable feeling, and the better the book has conformed to its prefigured contour and color the ampler and smoother it glows. But even so, there are certain points, byroads, favorite hollows that one evokes more eagerly and enjoys moretenderly than the rest of one’s book. I have not reread Lolita since I went through the proofs in the spring of 1955 but I find it to be a delightful presence now that it quietly hangs about the house like a summer day which one knows to be bright behind the haze. And when I thus think of Lolita, I seem always to pick out for special delectation such images as Mr. Taxovich, or that class list of Ramsdale School, or Charlotte saying “waterproof,” or Lolita in slow motion advancing toward Humbert’s gifts, or the pictures decorating the stylized garret of Gaston Godin, or the Kasbeam barber (who cost me a month of work), or Lolita playing tennis, or the hospital at Elphinstone, or pale, pregnant, beloved, irretrievable Dolly Schiller dying in Gray Star (the capital town of the book), or the tinkling sounds of the valley town coming up the mountain trail (on which I caught the first known female of Lycaeides sublivens Nabokov). These are the nerves of the novel. These are the secret points, the subliminal co-ordinates by means of which the book is plotted—although I realize very clearly that these and other scenes will be skimmed over or not noticed, or never even reached, by those who begin reading the book under the impression that it is something on the lines of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure or Les Amours de Milord Grosvit. That my novel does contain various allusions to the physiological urges of a pervert is quite true. But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions.

It is childish to study a work of fiction in order to gain information about a country or about a social class or about the author. And yet one of my very few intimate friends, after reading Lolita, was sincerely worried that I (I!) should be living “among such depressing people” —when the only discomfort I really experienced was to live in my workshop among discarded limbs and unfinished torsos.

[miss-hyoko]

HIIIII !!! can i please have a "babysitting cheka" klepon with bae leona <3 i can totally imagine leona sees him as a little competitor for our attention, like he would sulk when he sees us cuddle-napping with cheka <333 have a great day kakk!!

"Thank you for your patience, dear customer. Here's your food, [Babysitting Cheka] klepon. I hope the food is to your liking."

Babysitting Cheka

Character(s): Leona

Summary: Leona's not very happy you pay too much attention to Cheka

Tag(s) and warning(s): GN!reader, fluff, romantic, reader is NOT Yuu, Cheka makes a cameo, jealous protective Leona

Note: Hope you don't mind that I changed the ask a bit to add more DRAMA make it even better for y'all Leona's simp😌👉👈

Most students would say that the most dreadful days are exam week, but for Leona, the holiday season is the real hell.

Holidays are fun, he admits that, but Leona couldn't really enjoy it because he had to go back to the palace, his so-called 'home' where many people didn't truly welcome his return.

Fortunately, this holiday, you will also come back with him as his fiancé(e). As long as you're by his side, that damned place he called 'home' would become less unbearable.

… or at least, that's what he thought.

***

Normally, Leona would be fast asleep in mere seconds. But after a few minutes lying down with his eyes closed, he still couldn't fall asleep. Forget sleeping, he just got even more irritated as time went on.

And it's all because of you. More precisely, it's because the child who's currently playing with you, taking all your attention that should belong to Leona. His nephew, Cheka Kingscholar.

How can Leona fall asleep when you, his favorite pillow, are spending time with that brat instead of accompanying him to sleep?

Also, why did you two choose to play in his room when the palace has a perfectly able courtyard?!

Leona's patience finally ran out when he realized that his scent that he had left on you was starting to be covered with Cheka's own scent.

“Oi, brat! Let go of my fiancé(e) and go play by yourself.” Leona got up from his bed then approached you and Cheka who were playing some kind of board game.

“Ah, Unca! Do you want to play with us?” The boy beside you waved his hands excitedly, inviting his uncle with eyes full of hope.

Leona only gave a light snort, neither rejecting nor agreeing to his nephew's request. Instead, he looks straight at you.

“Herbivore, I'm sleepy,” he tells you matter of fact, signaling that he wants you to accompany him to sleep.

Before you could reply to him, Cheka threw himself at you and hugged you tightly, preventing you from moving any further.

“No!” He half yelled, looking at Leona with puffed cheeks, “Unca can sleep alone! I still want to play with unca/aunt (Name)!”

A frown appeared on Leona's forehead when he heard his nephew's words. Nevertheless, he still tried to control his emotions in front of Cheka who's blatantly trying to take you away from him.

“Brat, in case you forget, the herbivore is MY fiancé(e). Not yours. They had NO obligation to keep you company or play with you.”

“It's because unca didn't want to play with me, so I'll play with unca/aunt (Name) instead.” Cheka replied, hugging you even tighter.

“Oh, so now it's my fault?”

The uncle-nephew pair start debating about who's going to spend time with you.

You can't help but find the situation a little amusing. Especially, when you see Leona's annoyed face facing Cheka's pouty one.

Even though you want to enjoy their childish fight a little longer, you know you can't let this continue.

“Oh my, look at the time now~ it's the time for little ones to take a nap,” you said in a sing-song voice, slowly carrying Cheka on your hip.

Seeing you take his side, the frown on Leona's face lessened a bit and he looked haughtily at Cheka while crossing his arms.

“You hear that, brat? It's nap time. Go back to your room and take your damn nap. Don't disturb us again.”

Cheka who was in your arms suddenly became dispirited. His eyes started to get teary and his lips trembled ever so slightly.

That made Leona smile even wider, feeling very proud of his victory. When he tried to gloat again, he heard you continue talking.

“That being said, why don't we take a nap together with your uncle?”

“Hah?!”

“Yay!"

Hearing your suggestion, both of them immediately gave two different responses. Leona was dumbfounded, meanwhile Cheka became excited.

Although Leona was very dissatisfied with your stupid idea, he really couldn't say no to you. Hence, he finally compromised and lets Cheka sleep with the two of you.

The three of you take a nap together in Leona's room. You sleep in between the two lions, Cheka in the front while Leona is behind you. In the middle of your sleep, Leona instinctively wrapped his arms around you and nuzzled his face against your shoulder. Unbeknownst to you, Leona quietly got rid of Cheka's scent that had clung to you using his own scent.

Only after you're covered once again with his scent did Leona stop his action, smile satisfyingly, and go back to sleep.

[dragonseeds]

what are your thoughts on rhaegar and lyanna?

oh i love them! there’s all this talk of them haunting the narrative and they do, but i’d take it further and say they are the black hole at the center of the story. the choices that they made, starting with lyanna’s decision to defend howland reed and what that meant to both him and rhaegar, who was very likely at his lowest point at harrenhal after the ruination of his careful plans, touched or changed the lives of every character and plot line in the series. the story itself is such a fun mashup of tristan and iseult, lancelot and guinevere, helen and paris, the fall of camelot and all of arthuriana really, the classic trope of the princess in the tower and the dragon and the knight: all of that in one couple and we don’t get to experience any of it with them. we can guess and speculate, but we can never truly know them. we experience their story only through the memories the people who survived the war they ostensibly kicked off, and those memories are all heavily colored by trauma, guilt, nostalgia—alternately faded and sharpened by time. it’s this incredibly fun and brilliant reconstruction of some of the most enduring tragedies in folklore and mythology and i adore it.

hate beyond articulation the way asoiaf.tumblr.edu approaches their relationship and the individual characterizations of both of them, though. just absolutely some of the most insufferably sanctimonious disingenuous decontextualized analysis i’ve ever experienced—much of that coming from people viewing this through a historical lense instead of a thematic one. like, imagine approaching the battle of the trident as “rhaegar is a bad person for fighting for his father who was evil! he lost the moral high ground with that one” as opposed to “rhaegar as a character exists to fail and die; he was the last dragon, carrying the unbearable weight of his family’s legacy and the burden of the prophecy for which they conquered westeros: the end of his life is the end of the targaryen dynasty. he must fail and he must die, so that dany and jon can grow up free of that weight and that power. daenerys gets to redefine what it means to be targaryen on her own terms. she and jon separately and unknowingly do the things that he thought he had to do—the things he was conceived and born to do—but never knew how: they do it because of their circumstances, because of the people that they have grown into, because they believe it is their duty, because they have the power to do it.” also, like, re: interpretations of battle of the trident, is there maybe another battle that occurs later in the series that is exactly the same thematically and contextually? where perhaps a character who was missing for a while shows up on the eve of battle, knowing that the opposition is right and their cause is just but that his family will die if he doesn’t fight with them? anything that adds an extra layer of meaning to what happens, aside from dany’s own connection—which is not as thematically similar but is still incredibly meaningful. like i certainly don’t think there’s any one interpretation of a character or story, but the worst ones are consistently applied to rhaegar.

and then with lyanna in particular, it’s like people cannot stomach her or find her sympathetic as a character unless they’re wallowing in her eternal victimhood. the constant dismissal of the importance of lyanna’s actions and what they meant to rhaegar is pure misogyny, by the way. her choices and her agency, the inherent meaningfulness of the struggle for both of those things in a system that seeks to reduce her to her body and the use men can make of it—all of that is important. the person she was and what that meant to people was important, but from the way i most often see her discussed, it’s like her gendered death is the only thing that matters. it’s okay to lament her because she got crushed by the wheel. if she hadn’t, if she wasn’t a victim to write flagellatory meta about, she would be a hypocrite, someone who needed to learn a lesson—as difficult for some of these people to relate to as dany or rhaenyra apparently are.

like, it’s just wild to me because her kindness to howland reed and her choice to defend him, to disguise herself as the knight of the laughing tree and risk her life and reputation to fight for him—is the answer to and the embodiment of one of the most thematically significant questions in the series. we see it most prominently in dany’s chapters because she asks it directly: why do the gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves? that’s what lyanna did, when no one else was doing it: she had more honor than any knight at that tourney or any man sitting on the small council, and it meant something to rhaegar. like what about this is hard to understand? i think he must have idealized her immediately: she must have seemed like something out of a song or a story to him, and rhaegar was a singer, a songwriter, a bard: he knows how stories are supposed to go—how to finish a song, or at least he thought he did.

bran, who also loves stories, says it himself: “and the mystery knight should win the tourney, defeating every challenger, and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty.” like obviously bran has some critiques i cut out, but he has the ending right—only the wolf maid was the knight, and she couldn’t have won. in the feudal gender prison, women are rewarded for being beautiful and their worth is derived from that and from what their bodies provide. she should’ve won the whole thing, but the system doesn’t allow that, so rhaegar—in a fit of single-minded capital r romantic hero idiocy—dedicates himself to winning the tourney to honor her in the only way he can: the only way the system allows him to recognize her. it was the worst possible move he could make at that time because of the romantic connotations, but i love him for doing it, as stupid as it was and even though there is no way it didn’t hurt and humiliate elia, or make him look terrible when he desperately needed to make a good impression on the lords of the realm—it’s just such a Moment. being reminded that there’s good in the world—feeling hope in the face of endless abject overwhelming despair—how do you express gratitude for that? the idea that he could only doing it by hurting someone who didn’t deserve it and making himself look like an ass is fucking awesome. i’m genuinely so sorry for people are incapable of enjoying that. could not be me!

but that’s just my interpretation of what happened at harrenhal. like i said, part of why i like them so much is that we truly don’t know. while i love darker relationships in general, the idea that he crowned her at harrenhal because he wanted to impregnate her then does not work for me. it’s a popular theory, but it renders some of the very few contextual clues we are given about what happened meaningless. for one, he didn’t know that elia wouldn’t be able to have more children at that time. this was discovered after she gave birth to aegon, and that is the point at which the question of the third child appears to have become a motivating factor for him. i personally think he left for the riverlands to consult with the ghost of high heart—the one whose prophecy is the reason he was born, the reason is parents were forced to marry, the reason his family burned alive the night he came into the world—and ran into lyanna somewhere near harrenhal. it’s possible he had been in contact with her prior to this (how? without her family knowing? what are the logistics of that?) but i think it’s just as likely it was pure chance. i really like the idea that his crowning her queen of love and beauty caused lyanna’s father to set a date for her wedding to robert or talk of moving it up, maybe even suggest a double wedding at riverrun, which would have almost certainly caused her to balk. either way, high heart is located between harrenhal and riverrun. arya also stops there while she’s kidnapped by the brotherhood without banners on the way to ransom her to her family at riverrun, and they trade songs to the ghost for her dreams and prophecies. i think it’s worth noting because arya’s journey in the riverlands mirrors lyanna’s right down to her “death” as arya stark when she leaves for braavos, paying the ferryman’s fee with the coin jaqen h’ghar gave her—just as jon’s journey at the wall mirrors rhaegar’s in many ways right up until his own death.

i also don’t think rhaegar and lyanna eloped because they were in love—this is implied by lyanna’s famous quote—but that they did come to love each other deeply, which is suggested by the way they died: her roses and him saying her name. notably, rhaegar did not leave the tower of his own volition—someone had to come and get him with news of war, which is hilarious because i think the tower of joy is right in the middle of like three major battles of the rebellion? like quite frankly, if he didn’t love her or care for anything beyond the prophecy and if she didn’t love him despite how badly things went wrong, then where in their story is the heart in conflict with itself?

i do want to clarify that i love the tower entrapment and the power imbalance aspects of their relationship as much as i love (what i interpret as) the genuine respect for each other that grew into love: it’s really the tension of those disparate elements that interests me. a dragon can love the maiden, but he’s only ever a dragon—still liable to hoard her like treasure or burn her up and rip her open trying to be gentle, to protect. that FUCKS, sorry! love is sweet and hopeful, but it’s also at exactly the same time horror, consumption, destruction.

idk it’s myopic to act like the beginning or the ending of their relationship—of their lives—is the summation of it. i think people want their story to be easy when it’s not: a clear case of a villain and his victims where everyone knows who to root for and no one has to think too much about things that are difficult or uncomfortable, questions where there probably isn’t an answer that doesn’t hurt someone. what a sad, tedious way to approach any text, but specifically this one. i’ve sometimes seen it suggested that if their story is romantic then it’s an endorsement or justification of all the “bad” things that happened because of it, and that’s also stupid. grrm as an author is never going to be someone who tells us how to feel about anything: he presents these characters and situations, often as a means of exploring certain facets of the human condition, and each of us has to come up with our own answers and find our own meaning. i don’t think he always knows what he means, or what those answers are, you know? but for me rhaegar and lyanna are one of the most fascinating parts of story, and whatever the truth is—if we ever find out—i can’t imagine a scenario where i don’t love them or find them really interesting and wonderfully sad.

[ddollfface]

Hi, can you please do headcanons for kaiou retsu? If you want to...

𝐀 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐢𝐚

𝙆𝙖𝙞𝙤𝙝 𝙍𝙚𝙩𝙨𝙪 𝙔𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙤𝙣𝙨

Warnings; bad writing, really ooc, not proofread stalking, me rambling, manipulation, pretty short, I'm 90% sure that this isn't really yandere, but whatever. If I missed anything, then please let me know ♡ Pssh, what kind of question is that? Of course, I want to write for Retsu! I'm just really happy that someone requested something from baki... Anyway, I hope you enjoy! If you have any questions/suggestions, then feel free to ask!!

I find Retsu to be a very, very intriguing character, seeing as he's had so much development throughout the series. Not only that but when you look just at his past, you'll find that he's adapted and changed so much from his younger years. Restu has multiple different layers to his character, as most Baki men do, but I find that there are a lot of contradictions in his personality, which I'll get into why I think that is. But let's start from what we know because we have to establish what kind of man Restu is before we decide what kind of yandere he is (I also just like to talk lol).

We don't know too much about Restu's past, but we do know that he grew up in the temple, with no mention of any parents. I like to think that his mama (or both parents) just left him at the temple for whatever reason, the possibilities are truly endless. It doesn't matter too much, as Retsu's never shown to care too much for discussing his unknown parents, seeing as he holds his sensei/s in high regard.

I like to think that Retsu considers the martial arts his family; what comforts him when he's distraught or doesn't know what to do. Not having a family, someone to rely on, can cause a person's mental health to be warped. And that's why we always substitute it for something else, whether it be a father/mother figure, a sport, a job, or a lover. Whatever it is, we use it as a substitution for the emotional stability parents are supposed to give us (not saying that they always do).

And this is why I hypothesize that the martial arts is Retsu's substitution. He was conditioned to rely on it, to think of it as a way of life. Therefore, he doesn't rely on other people for emotional support, instead, turning to martial arts to lead the way, y'know?

Martial arts have consumed his life, taking control of his mind, and everyday activities. There's never a moment in the day where he isn't either actively practicing or thinking of it. There's nothing else he can think about, seeing as he was raised to; it's ingrained in his psyche.

This leads to a dead social life. Unless they're fellow fighters or some type of service worker, Retsu doesn't go out often and doesn't enjoy the company of others. This is partially because I think he's more of an introvert or never at places where he can make many friends. Don't get me wrong, he has allies, (After all, we can't forget when Shibukawa punched Musashi for Retsu), but do they do "friend things," y'know? I don't think they just hang out together or things of that nature.

And don't even get me started on Retsu with women, god. You can't convince me that he'd be a flustered mess if a woman ever took interest in him. It's not like he's some shy babygirl-type character, hell no, he's a badass, but he doesn't interact with women, growing up in a temple surely didn't help.

There likely weren't any women at the temple, unless they were there to clean or something (don't @ me, I have no clue), meaning there's no experience there. He's a fighter. Let's be honest, not many women are actively interacting with the fighters. Sure, they'll attend the fights and crap, but I don't think that it's often the fighters are being approached unless they're in a club or bar. Which I don't think Retsu is doing.

Now going back to the original point, Retsu is unbearable with women (if they're flirting). I don't think Retsu can't speak to them. He just can't flirt. He doesn't know how to handle romantic interest from a woman. If you were to hold his hand, kiss his cheek, or touch him in any way. His face would flush, and his eyes would widen. If you were to compliment him, I'd imagine him bowing or trying to maintain respect for you.

I can't really imagine too many ways you'd meet Restu, but it'd probably be with him swooping into your rescue (figuratively or literally). It could be that you were getting harassed, and he escorted you out of the situation, or you could've been struggling with picking something up (like groceries, a box, or something similar). I can even see that you're his new neighbor, and you bring him some food to introduce yourself (I like this idea the most, so we're going to roll with this one).

Assuming you meet Retsu through being his neighbor, you'll be able to grow a more organic relationship, seeing as you two see each other every day. I like to imagine that you'd bring him some sweets or something to introduce yourself, and Retsu will quickly rebut it by inviting you over for dinner, as a way to show his gratitude for the gift.

From there, you're relationship will subtly grow more and more, advancing from neighbors to close friends. You'll begin to notice that you're feeling eyes on you like someone is watching you. It's as if Retsu's always there now, somehow knowing where you are. He'll begin to show up at your local grocery store, but you'll brush it off. After all, you're neighbors, of course, you'll both attend the same stores! But then you'll see him at your work, subtly passing by right as your shift ends, stopping you to chat and walk you home. It's a little odd, you think, but Retsu's so considerate! He just wants to ensure your safety! There's nothing to worry about.

I think that Retsu will quickly realize that he's growing an attachment to you, as I think that he's the most emotionally aware man in the series. He knows that he became a little too attached, a little too paranoid over your being. But Retsu would rationalize it by telling himself that he's taking care of you, watching out for you, you, you.

He'll always be there for you. Whatever you need is did and done. You need someone to walk you home 'cause you're too scared to go alone, don't worry Retsu can do that for you, no problem. You're sick and need someone to take care of you? Pssh, not even a question. Retsu doesn't mind; he'll even bring over some herbal tea from his motherland. Oh, and don't even think about opening a door for yourself, nope. Don't worry, Retsu's there. He's such a gentleman, always there for you, conveniently knowing where you are at all times.

You have to understand that there are a lot of people who are out for Retsu, and by proxy, you. Retsu has to make sure you're safe and sound. No one can lay a finger on you, so just stay where he can see you, yeah? He'd never do anything to hurt you. He's always had your best interest in mind, making sure you're well-fed, properly clean, and having the attention you need, so just trust him, okay?

Don't mind him cutting all of your friends out of your life. They were just too toxic, leaving you out of everything, talking behind your back, so you should just let them go. And for your family? Well, they've been manipulating you into thinking that they want what's good for you, but you just don't realize how harmful they've been to you, don't you? It's okay, Retsu will help you. He can see how horrible they are.

Little do you know, this whole time Retsu has been threatening, cutting off, and hoarding you all for himself. He can't trust anyone with your safety. For all he knows, they could harm you, could take you away from him. He can't let them do that; he cares for you too much. You understand, surely, he's just looking out for you, so just turn the other way and do as he says.

Don't worry, he's going to handle everything.

[hexblooddruid]

@thedragonagelesbian

The fight with Ethel was the first combat post death and Ethel's tricky but not a hard hitter (at least, not on normal) so Bryn didn't have to heal anyone in that fight but when she uses Bitter Divorce to bring back Connor and he comes back as a zombie, even though it's illogical (Bryn's trained in Arcana, she knows how wands work) she thinks it's her fault. That this curse that killed her and won't leave her ruined the thing she values most about herself, being a healer. The first time she uses magic to heal someone is the next day in the Whispering Depths, casting Healing Word on Wyll. She's relived that it works and when they rest afterwards she does ask him how it felt, if it felt any different. He reassures her, saying it felt like summer morning mist, and she is so relieved. That's where she is at the moment, just relieved that it hasn't ruined everything.

She will eventually get to a point where she accepts it and will remember what she was taught and knows to be true (that decay is an important part of the natural life cycle, and this is truly just an extension of what's already insider of her, but for now she's glad that she can compartmentalize.

As for the how do the companions react...

It's very interesting because Karlach, Shadowheart, and Wyll first hear about it from Ethel which makes them (well mainly Shadowheart and Wyll) very suspicious at first. In that moment in the Ethel fight where she tries to bargain with the group, Ethel mentions that she already gave Bryn a little gift. After Wyll gets the last blow on Ethel and they finish talking to Mayrina, Shadowheart immediately questions Bryn, accusing her of making some sort of pact with the hag. After hearing the explanation from Bryn, Shadowheart accepts it but remains suspicious and insists on nightly examinations to "keep an eye on it."

Wyll, though initially suspicious, reassures Bryn after hearing her explanation, and lets go of any lingering suspicions (though of course, he's still concerned).

Karlach doesn't say anything immediately, only approaching Bryn once the other two step away. And you're exactly right, Karlach immediately recognizes the similarity in their situations. And the thing about Karlach is that her heart is so open. She came out of the hells so ready to live her life finally and to love that she just wants to be the what she always needed for Bryn. Someone to just be there, to listen, to understand. So as soon as she can she expresses this to her.

“Listen Bryn, I’m just-I’m so sorry. Hags, devils…they’re all the same. Love to play with people when they’re at their lowest. You’re like the only one of us that hadn’t been touched by something dark…and I’m so sorry that it’s happened to you.”

Bryn smiles softly, sadly. “Thank you. And..I’m sorry that it’s happened to you too.”

Karlach lets out a short huff, almost a laugh. “Well if I can get my engine fixed, I’m sure you’ll end up okay too. In fact I know it.” Karlach reaches down as if she’s going to touch the golden ivy creeping up Bryn’s neck but stops just short. Bryn can feel the heat roaring off her, nearly unbearable even though they aren’t touching. “I can still see your light.”

It's not surprising that two nights later Karlach wakes Bryn up to confess her feeling to her.

As for the others...

-> Astarion at this point encourages any bit of darkness he sees in Bryn, especially if it comes with new power, and hopes that her experience with death will give her stronger self preservation instincts.

->Gale also sees a similarity to his own situation and is immediately concerned with Bryn' health at this point. Bryn goes straight to her tent when they get back to camp, so he ends up interrogating Shadowheart about Bryn's condition. The next day, though, when he sees her new Fey Touched spells in action, he's very curious and will ask her about it when they get back to camp.

-> Lae'zel sees it as another reason why Bryn shouldn't be the leader. She's soft, she's weak (died because she didn't want to fight!), and now she's tainted by a hag.

Thanks for asking!! I know you've written Cyrus comforting Bryn afterwards but how would he immediately (and I guess, internally?) react to it?

[maxwell-grant]

what makes laura a worse rep than blanka in your opinion

I'm not sure if I'm gonna say "worse rep" because I feel like quantifying representation as a tangible game or competition seems worthless and vague. Yes, it is better representation on the baseline for your Brazilian character to be a brown-skinned woman over a green jungle monster. Yes, I've seen plenty of Brazilians who don't like Blanka and find him offensive, and I've seen and even known fans that like Laura, I'm obviously not speaking for everyone. I know there was an attempt with Laura, I would have absolutely loved a representative of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a concept, I think the character might have even had promise if someone else had created her.

Blanka tends to get a pass mainly because, being a great lovable hero aside, he is too exaggerated and fantasy-like to even qualify as a stereotype and was created in a vacuum of ignorance that spared Blanka from being as racist as he could have been. We can argue whether Blanka represents a nasty idea of Brazilian people as savages, and I've seen some people take that impression, but I find that a stretch because, well one I've seen that idea a million times and know what it looks like and this is not it, and his design doesn't really have any racialized elements, and he's really only Brazilian by a technicality. Blanka could have come from anywhere, in fact his first draft was this really grody awful racist African character that they stepped back from and just kept making less and less like a person (and in turn less and less like a racist cartoon). He's a character who could have come from anywhere and got attached to Brazil because they wanted to make him green and thought, hey Brazil uuh they have green and jungles there.

Blanka would have been a lot worse if they hadn't altered his design to make him less human or if they had set out from the start to tie him to explicit national elements like they did with other characters. For the longest time, it wasn't even entirely clear whether he was even supposed to be from Brazil or just had a plane crash here (the record is more clear now that he was born in Brazil). I'm not going to say he's harmless because, again, some people have felt harmed by him as the lone representative, but nobody buys, or was ever supposed to buy, Blanka as representing a real person or standing for any group of people, he is just an exaggerated fantasyland monster with a very sympathetic story who happens to come from Brazil. It's not "great", but he was there, and he was there at a time nothing else was, which also goes a long way. There's a lot of reasons Blanka is beloved and embraced the way he is by me and so many others.

Where as Laura, well yes, I'm biased because I love Blanka and find Laura unbearable, obviously that's a deciding factor here. But for one, times have changed a lot since then, we can and must expect better especially from a new character that actually purports to be representative. Two, her story whitewashed Sean and completely cemented in him joke character status, in essence ruining the closest the series ever had to a truly great Brazilian character (he was never *quite* there but Sean had such a great design and I will die on the hill that he could have been something if they had approached him differently) and ensuring Sean will never go anywhere again without that dead weight character weighing him down (I seriously dislike their dynamic and don't think it's funny), so yes, I could say she's worse rep on the basis that at least Blanka is just one character, where as Laura not only exists but actively drags a better character down with her. And three, I don't hate Laura because she's scantily-clad or sexualized, I hate her because she was made in the image of a very twisted stereotype that pushes gringos to constantly and frequently treat Brazilian women like shit, and I just have to quote Ono himself to explain why:

"I've always heard that there were lots of beautiful women in Rio de Janeiro, but that wasn't quite what I saw when I went there in 2011. So for Laura, we decided to work with the more fanciful vision Japanese men have of Brazilian women, not exactly depicting the Brazilian woman faithfully. Oh, and there's some of my personal preferences as well."

I mean, I'm really really not asking for actual faithfulness here but, to put it gently, doesn't that sound kinda fucking disgusting? The audacity of him to say that to a Brazilian interviewer even. Putting aside the larger discussion of oversexualization of black/brown-skinned characters and how Japanese game devs perpetrate it, which this is part of, yeah no, I don't think it's cute that gringos are obsessed with objectifying Brazilian women. I don't think it's cute what tourists come here to do and how they behave around Brazilian women, I don't think it's cute that my friends and family members have been heckled and harassed and mistreated on overseas trips because gringos cannot respect Brazilian women, even white or white-passing ones, and of course I'm couching my language here to avoid getting into the topic of sexual harassment in a post that's just about a dumb videogame. To be clear, I don't have to have personal history with family members being on the receiving end of this to think this is disgusting and vile, and neither do you, but I do have it. And I don't think this gets talked about or criticized enough, in large part because gringos still think this is all just so harmless and funny and sexy.

No, I don't think sexualized Brazilian/brown women are inherently unforgivably offensive or off limits for character design (although maybe then people would think of something else for a change), no I'm not accusing Ono or Capcom of having a sinister agenda or however you wanna interpret what I'm saying to dismiss it as unimportant, I'm just saying it's part of the reasons why I find Laura irritating and upsetting. It would be one thing if she was just an annoying nothing character, but the circumstances of her creation and what she's meant to represent I find personally offensive on top of everything else.

And frankly in matters of representation, I don't think any of the SF characters (or Tekken/KOF/you name it) hold a candle to the cast of Capoeira Fighter, and it's deeply unfortunate that nobody knows of this series and that it was stuck in flash limbo for too long and that it's gameplay is a little too rough around the edges still, because that is a standard of character design I would have loved to see applied and held up to the rest of the fighting game genre (and just pointing out here that the main dev is a white guy from Utah). Still, I just discovered that this game is getting a remaster for 2024, so I do hope it might eventually get a proper release.

[laura1633]

do you have any headcanons about lestappen and one of them has chronic pain or an illness?

Hi anon, thanks for the ask ❤️

I have some ideas how I would approach a Lestappen fanfic about chronic pain. I have put it below the cut.

Just as a content warning - this is about chronic pain for one of the drivers so avoid if you think it may be triggering for you. As always with all these things this is fiction. If I were to write something like this I would probably do quite a bit of research but this is just off the top of my head....

Charles is in a heated championship battle with his teammate Lewis. It's super stressful and there is a lot of noise in the media about how Lewis has the psychological advantage given he already has championship titles.

Charles starts to experience aches and pains that don't go away after normal treatments such as ice baths and physiotherapy. As the season progresses things start getting worse and the pain goes from uncomfortable to almost unbearable and driving is getting harder and harder. After each race he is in agony. Unfortunately everyone keeps assuming his pain is psychological and a result of the pressure of fighting Lewis and they keep telling him to relax. It's not helping and Charles is getting desperate because nobody will believe him but he knows his body better than anyone else and something is wrong.

Cue Max who has known Charles since they were young. He has also been infatuated with Charles for years and is the first person to start noticing changes in the Monegasque - the way he holds himself, the way he moves, how he looks after a race, the way he winces when Max wraps an arm around his waist.

Max confronts Charles and Charles breaks down and tells him what is going on and Max becomes the first person who truly honestly believes that Charles is suffering. Max doesn't just pass off Charles' issues as 'not being able to cope with pressure'.

Max is forceful when it comes to people that he cares about and he has always cared so much for Charles. He becomes an advocate for Charles in terms of medical assistance and isn't afraid to come across as a dick in order to make people listen. He also becomes an outlet for Charles to vent to and tries to provide emotional support and physical help where he can.

Their relationship becomes more intense but Charles is also terrified of getting into a sexual relationship. He tries to be spontaneous with Max but often ends up curled up in pain and getting frustrated and upset with himself. Max is surprisingly patient and they work through the issues, making sure Charles stretches, applies heat pads, does all the things he needs to do in order to get his body to move in the way it should.

Their only point of contention is that Charles is still putting himself in the car and Max doesn't think its worth it given what it is doing to his body. Charles doesn't want to be held back, he is so close to the championship he has worked his whole life for. If he can just hang in there a few months he will have achieved his life dream.

[alexandros-deathwood]

Well here is the scene!

Character B was hanging around the attic and a rotten smell attracts him.

He opens the closet and finds corpses (I don't know how to put details here... but you can tell him they are disfigured and stabbed) he turns and finds character A, who is responsible. Character B reacts petrified while Character A speaks emotionlessly.

this is almost like an Au Apocalypse. Which the corpses were infected.

I've been trying to write well for weeks and get a conversation between the two of them but they don't come out.

Fun fact: Character A is emotionless and don't care about their actions or consequences

Character B is an old friend who thinks that their friend is not the same anymore

I hope you can help me and that it is not too much trouble! Also thank you again!

Oooooh.... That is juicy I LOVE IT.

Okay I'm used to writing specifically prompts but I am dealt with writing scenarios like this.

Just gotta harness your mental illness/lh

You can have two approaches either B is shocked and in awe at the horror or my favorite approach: them absolutely losing themselves to the horror of the situation.

Okay so description is VERY important as you must convey to the reader WHY it is so horrifying. So describe with as many senses as you can.

The smell would be the first to be sensed.

You could also describe a brown, reddish trail to the closet.

-

Person B creeps his way to the closet afraid of what could be on the other side. Fearing the worst, he swing up the closet, the smell burning his senses forcing him to take a step back and truly grasp the situation.

What they saw was truly unimaginable. A pile of corpses had erupted out of the closet. Their faces permanently stained with the horrors that they witness before meeting their end. The smell was truly unbearable. Their bodies were wrong. Misshapen, contoured (this is were you describe the infection such as puss, spots, or darkened areas of the skin). They were haphazardly stuffed in the closet, judging by their broken bones that would have allowed them to fit. Their bones were jutting out of their flesh, still stained with blood and bits of torn flesh. The bones were stabbing and piercing the other bodies. Each body was covered in wounds, to clean to be caused by broken bones, as if someone had stabbed each and everyone of them to death.

Person B can't handle what they are seeing. The fall and stumble to the ground.

"no no no no no... This can't be- This can't be. This can't be real- No no no no. Why would they... No no no no.... (Person A) this can't be- you couldn't have done this. They wouldn't. This is just a misunderstanding....this has to be. Why would they have done this...there has to be a logical explanation...there has to be..."

They are slowly losing it, make them stutter and repeat themselves. That's how the mind acts in a situation like this. I know from personal experience, be glad if you have never felt this way.

If you are too describe grief or stuff akin, make them speed up their words as the body will have a physical reaction and will try to force to get it over as fast possible preventing them from breathing. This is called panic. I also know from personal experience.

You want to truly get in character and make the reader believe that the character is real.

Here is something I have written recently.

⚠️Abuse warning ⚠️

-

- now for some dialogue. Put them in any order you like.

—Person B: "Wha- *pants* wha-" his breath is heavy. "What did you do?..."

Person A: "I did what I had to. If you weren't so much a fool, you could see that."

—Person B: "We- we could- could have done something! This wasn't the only way-"

Person A: "This IS the only way."

—Person B: "You- You killed them! You don't know that they couldn't be saved! You could have done something."

Person A: "They were already dead, there was no saving them."

—Person A: "Calm down you are acting irrational."

Person B: "Calm?...Calm Down!?! YOU KILLED PEOPLE!!! They...they had lives (person A)... They had families! They had partners.....they had- friends.

—Person B: "I...I can't believe I trusted you! Look at what you have done! Yet you feel nothing! What kind of monster are you!"

Person A: "You don't mean that."

Person B: "I trusted you. Let you back into my life. I trusted- I sacrificed for you!"

—Person B: "What have you become..." They fall to the floor sobbing uncontrollably. "GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT!"

You could also write how they make a break for the stairs or whatever method used to get to the attic, try to act cool and calm about but failing miserably.

Hope that helps ☺️

[darkpoisonouslove]

Last day I heard Revenge by Tentacion and since then I can't think about Griffin and Valtor and so many diffrent way they both could've end!

But the question that came along for me was if Griffin had the chance to kill Valtor, do you think she could've done it? Don't get me wrong, I know she wouldn't have the power. But if the CoL find any way to kill him (something where they need a sacrifice from anyone else), do you think she would/could do it? It was right after she left the coven and if she would do it, it would kill her with him.

I can see her that she could think her sacrifice is something like her redemption for the things that she did in the past. But I don't know if she was at this time already at a point where she accepted that she could be the one who kills him. Like, mabye she already know that there could be no other way because she knew Valtor would never stop but do you think she was ready/ ever thinking about that it could be her who would kill him? And COULD she actually do that at this point?

Uff, I'm so sorry I hope you understand what I tried to write. Please forgive me for my bad english

Lot of Love

ANON! That song!!!!!! It wounds me, in the best way possible! Thanks for that.

I love that question. I'm kind of working right now on something that deals in some kind of capacity with what you're asking so I'll insert a snippet below. But first, let's talk about this!

From what I gathered the idea is that killing Valtor means that the other person also has to die. In which case Faragonda would sooner sacrifice herself than let them even discuss the possibility of Griffin doing it. She'll be damned if she lets Valtor take Griffin away from her (again) in any way, shape or form.

As for Griffin, I headcanon that she was suicidal right after she left the Coven because of the situation with Valtor, her own sins, and because the Coven killed her mother. But in my version she doesn't get to meet Valtor again for about half a year after she leaves him. By then she's recovered somewhat from the suicidal impulses and wants to help the Company because she wants to fix her past mistakes. I don't think she would mind sacrificing her life to kill him. If anything, that might be the thing that would allow her to proceed with the spell because she can both make up for the damage they did and NOT have to suffer the knowledge that she killed him.

I think it'd be way more interesting if they could kill him but the spell is somewhat obvious meaning that he would know what they're planning as soon as they approach him with it. So the only way to actually use it is for Griffin to do it because Valtor would never believe that she's capable of going through with it and killing him. I also don't think she'd be able to kill him. She knows she has to, that this is the only way to truly protect people from him but she can't bring herself to do it. And I think the others from the Company would get that, as much as some of them don't believe in the strength of the love between her and Valtor.

And this is a good segue into the fic snippet:

She didn’t remember getting on [the ship]. She couldn’t forget the ballroom, the ardor of Valtor’s touch. His hands may as well have been covered with Faragonda’s blood. Sooner or later they would be if it depended on him, if it depended on her to stop him.

Marion startled when Griffin's–bloodshot–eyes found her across the ship from where she was keeping an eye on her. Her back straightened, taut like a bowstring, and a wave of unbearable heat radiated off her again. Her magic gathered in her palms – just in case.

Griffin wet her lips and forced her voice through the maddening tickle in her throat, as if full of cotton. “You have to kill him.”

Marion acknowledged her returning sanity with an imperceptible nod. “We will.”

Her power lingered in a halo around her and her tense shoulders didn’t relax, giving no illusion that Griffin had any place in her plans or her inner circle.

She was no fool.

Also, here's the song because it also goes with the fic:

[txnichtgut-archive]

@bishonenprince•*⁀➷ MISC ACTION MEMES | AVAILABLE

╰┈➤ ❝ [ 🩸 - to approach your muse soaked in blood . ]  ❞

"i would appreciate it, if you didn't just come up behind me." griss turned around to look at sora, the blood still apparent on his hands. sometimes he'd take foes out with bare hands, but that certainly did not mean it would be any less bloody---or maybe he liked it that way. he had never questioned his actions or the lord he served. that was the only connection he had in this world, something like a family although he and his "friends" were colleagues at best.

what sora was to him? he'd say a toy, but that didn't really describe it well. he served a purpose to griss, mostly keep his needs tended to. why? he also didn't know. he never truly talked to sora and... he also didn't question why sora chose him of all people.

"unless this sight of me gets you unbearably hot." he looked like a psycho, like some sort of mass murderer. if sora was slightly sane, he'd keep his distance.

[faithsbookdiary]

Come Back to Me: BELLE is a journey of rediscovery

I cried in the theater. Ugly cried. I was by myself in a one o'clock showing on a weekday, so I figured I had every reason to be as loud as I wanted, and I did not hold back.

I'm an avid fan of Mamoru Hosoda and Studio Chizu's work. That, with the combination of Beauty and the Beast being my favorite fairytale princess story of all time, made the anticipation of Belle unbearable.

I've been waiting for this movie to come to the US since its announcement in December of 2020. I watched The Boy and the Beast in 2016, a trip that forced my sister to drive me some odd 50 miles to the nearest theater that was showing it. Mirai was an emotional force of nature (part nightmare fuel with that top-of-second-act train nonsense) that I enjoyed in the comforts of my own bed. We don't need to mention Summer Wars or Wolf Children or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. We know.

These gorgeous films are just a few of the many that have risen in the wake of Studio Ghibli's success, and each one tells emotion-driven stories of rediscovery and family and wonder. Actually, I shouldn't compare them to Studio Ghibli; Hosoda has once again proven that his style and storytelling is more than capable of standing apart on its own two legs, and fantastically so.

GKIDS tagline for Belle, for those unfamiliar:

Suzu is a shy, everyday high school student living in a rural village. For years, she has only been a shadow of herself. But when she enters “U”, a massive virtual world, she escapes into her online persona as Belle, a gorgeous and globally-beloved singer. One day, her concert is interrupted by a monstrous creature chased by vigilantes. As their hunt escalates, Suzu embarks on an emotional and epic quest to uncover the identity of this mysterious “beast” and to discover her true self in a world where you can be anyone.

At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Belle received fourteen minutes of standing ovation. And rightly so. Belle tackles a heart-wrenching narrative of a freckled princess and her beast that have faced both trials and the need to escape them, and as much as this is a story of coming together to overcome obstacles, this is also a story of rediscovery, healing, and personal growth.

Buckle up for a very long and thorough deep dive as to why this movie was such a special experience for me!

THE FOLLOWING CONTENT WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS OF BELLE.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

What initially attracted me to Mamoru Hosoda's films was the beastly aspect to them. Belle from Beauty and the Beast was my favorite Disney princess growing up because she thrived in a story that focused on inner beauty and the process of forgiving past behaviors and mistakes, a "good girl x bad boy" cliche dressed up in beautiful gowns and monstrous creatures and books (lots and lots of books). It was another example of how love could heal deep emotional wounds.

Any version of this story was welcome in my rolodex of fairytales, so imagine my excitement upon discovering that most of Hosoda's films herald beastlike creatures, whether that's through internet personas or beast men in a parallel world or child werewolf transformations. Hosoda likes to approach humanity by contrasting people to their animalistic counterparts, because that's what we are: animals with our own version of order. It's especially telling when the true monsters of the film are human- that evil is a human-constructed concept, that you can't truly judge a book by its cover, etc. etc. I'd love to make a series of Hosoda's movies for this blog and address the use of beasts as one of his central themes, but that's for another post. I'll get there.

Where The Boy and the Beast touches on a world of beastsxhumans and loosely ties the narrative of Beauty and the Beast- because there has to be some connection there, a familial one- Belle is a direct retelling. I kept looking for the telltale signs of the classic and unconsciously made comparisons between the two. Belle's entrance to the castle was reminiscent of Disney's. The roses were present, though their functions were different. Beast's room was torn to shreds, a rejection of a past haunting him. There's a rescue scene; despite his harshness and initial inability to accept his mistakes, the Beast is altruistic, and doesn't let his negativity cloud his judgement when it's essential. There's a gorgeous, iconic dance between the two. I can go on and on, but my point is that Belle is definitely Beauty and the Beast.

But as well as the narrative keeps true to its plot points, Hosoda turns the classic on its head. This isn't a romance (this doesn't include the little side plots of crushes sprinkled in) but a story of platonic love, one rooted to a deep sense of care and empathy. One of Hosoda's strengths is his exploration of love outside of the romantic, as most of our own connections to the people in our lives lie in the realm outside of our significant other.

Belle's motivation was also a refreshing twist compared to the original. The Belle in Disney's film was led by her curiosity (and her eventual love) towards The Beast, which originates from the small seeds of kindness in him and her ability to transform his selfishness and pain into care. Hosoda's Belle, on the other hand, was motivated by her sympathy. She recognized the Beast's pain as her own, and unconsciously realized that if she could heal his emotional wounds, she could heal hers.

That's what I love about this movie, and why it's a stand-out among its collection of other retellings: Belle isn't a movie about fixing someone else but about healing yourself. Our titular character is not bored of her provincial town or looked at weirdly for reading books or belittled for her larger-than-life ideas- she's in her own pain, in her own castle, facing her own demons, "a shadow of herself."

There are many things to explore in this film. The animation? Superb. Gorgeous. We got whales- another popular Hosoda theme. Alternate realities/personas? Check. How media transforms the accessibility of a crafted world, and how that connectivity differs from large-to-small scales? Sure. Belle is also a story about a normal (albeit shy and detached) girl with the sudden pressure and burden of becoming a global sensation overnight, and as much as I want to tackle this and everything else, I've managed to pace myself and condense my many thoughts into the five concepts/themes that impacted me the most, disguised as songs from Belle's own setlist because I saw an opportunity and I took it.

"U"

Belle is built on a vibrant virtual reality called U, an alternate scape that boasts an expansive internet society full of countless possibilities. The avatars (AS) are "automatically generated based on personal biometric information", and promises an opportunity to start over, a second chance at life. It doesn't explicitly state that you can be whoever you want to be, but we can all read between the lines. U is everyone's dream escape from the cruel reality we live in, and when Suzu is given her chance, she takes it. Of course she does. She knows that her life isn't satisfactory.

Despite the appeal of a second life, it's interesting how users aren't given a choice over their persona. Some of the users look monstrous, and I wonder if it was a theme that some easily accepted knowing that it was their own biometrics that built that image. Suzu's biometrics give her Belle, the gorgeous princess that even she wasn't sure belonged to her (but sweetie those are your freckles!!), which ends up becoming a visual representation of what Suzu is like on the inside- she's kind, sensitive, talented, gorgeous. The beast is also a shadow of his true self- a poor kid angry at the world he has to endure. I wonder, however, if the two would have looked differently if they were given a choice?

U offers that escape from reality, sure, but it only does so by presenting a different one, one that almost seems more vulnerable. It touches at the deepest roots of oneself and draws out hidden strengths and potential, like Suzu's ability to sing in the virtual world instead of the real one. The initial idea I had about U was that it was that chance to be different, that there's a general fear of being "unveiled" and revealing your true self, but isn't that backwards? Isn't your true self the one that's deep in your core, the one that only you know? The one that AS ends up building?

I walked into this section totally ready to tear down the concept. I had this idea of "if U was about being anyone you want to be, then what happens to the theme of accepting oneself?" But what Hosoda did sent me on a loop. Suzu knew who she was all along, but her trauma and self-esteem prevented her from being that person. U gave her the chance to step out of that shadow, and eventually embrace it during her own unveiling.

The contradiction of accepting yourself by becoming someone else somehow contradicts itself: Suzu's transformation was not a step away but a homecoming, and allowed her to fall back in love with the person she already was.

Here, I'll introduce a common thread that I've found while listening to the songs I've chosen on repeat: all of the songs have a common line between them. Suzu's "lalalas" scattered throughout her music are symbolic of her return to singing, the skill that sent her into U to find. Our opening song "U" starts us off with a rapid "lalalai/lalalai", a confident bell-like opening ringing in the beginning of Suzu's journey to reunite herself with her passion.

"GALES OF SONG"

The reveal of Belle's arrival to U, "Gales of Song" is a number teeming with anticipation. Suzu had just brought the audience along for her traumatic backstory of loss and grief, and we got to know our mousy high schooler who didn't think much of herself in the wake of her peers. She has a desire to sing, but trauma prevents her (emotionally, psychologically, physically) from opening her mouth. It's tragic. The scene of her losing her mother ripped my heart out of my chest; I can still hear the screaming.

So what does losing your mother in an accident have to do with losing yourself? Great question. We can always delve into that well-known narrative of a loved one always being a part of you, even when they're long gone, but I'd also like to touch on the opposite- that when someone leaves, they take a part of you too. In this case, Suzu lost her music, a gift from her mother. Her happiness stemmed on that part of her life, and suddenly she had no access to it.

There's self-depreciation here, too. The climax of this movie anchors heavily on one sentence that's mentioned in act one, when the news of Suzu's mother's death is being played in the back of Suzu's mental anguish of not being able to compose. She asks herself, "Why did you choose to save that girl instead of stay with me?" And it was that question that became her undoing. It was such a small line, I would have missed it if I never felt the same before. There's a reason I'm writing this post. This movie touched a part of my soul.

When you believe you're not worth it, when someone's choice puts your value into balance, you minimize your impact on the world so that no one has to make that choice ever again. You make that choice for them. When Suzu denies her love for her childhood friend in order for a more popular friend to get a crack at him, she breaks down, but she'd rather nip a loss in the bud then experience it out of her control. When sadness is manageable it's easier to carry, even if it consumes you.

That's why this song is so powerful. It's ranked 3rd in my top 3, because it's Suzu's release from her sadness. I gasped audibly- "thank god, she can breathe now" is what I must have thought. She's finally detached herself from that shadow she's trapped herself in, which is why the entire scene afterwards sees her grinning from ear to ear. She's finally found herself again. Things are working. Living has become a bit easier.

There's a desperation in this song, of her hoping that the "gales of song stay by her side", as it's a plea for happier times. This song starts with our "lalalas" as a tentative step into a new world, a test to see if her wishes will come true- and when they do, she embraces herself, and the love for what she does spreads to those who watch her. She has finally found her voice.

"LEND ME YOUR VOICE" (+ draft)

THE. BEAST.

I love foils in relationships. Give me a good girlxbad boy pairing and I swoon. The reason that bad boys are attractive (to me) is their confidence, a tangent I can go on for a long time if you'll let me. But I won't subject you to that. Not here. Here, we talk about The Beast.

Our dragon is a large, monstrous creature, defined by his ruthless victories in battle and the bruises muddling his back. The narrative spends much of its time deciphering his true identity, a search that seems strangely motivated at first. Because why search for the beast? What draws you to him, Belle? What makes an angry, violent guy like that worth paying attention to?

Suzu has a special way of looking at the world, that's why. She's seen things she wishes she hadn't. Her world is a dark and lonely one, a place where she shies away from a group photo with her friends or a microphone at karaoke or talking to the boy she likes. And when she spots our beast for the first time, she doesn't see him for the monster U makes him out to be, but immediately his eyes stray to the bruises on his back. He's hurt. He's hurting. Who is he?

He's you, Suzu. He's hurting just like you are.

Belle's motivation to help the beast is led by her empathy to his pain rather than her kindness, and this detail is what makes Belle a powerful narrative. She goes out of her way to uncover his secret not because she's swept up in the craze of his identity, but because she sees someone who needs help- desperately- and there's an internal clock ticking in her to reach out before it's too late.

It is later revealed through a strenuous search that the beast is a fourteen-year-old boy who spends the days after his mother's death protecting his brother Tomo from their father's abuse.

Despite experiencing similar losses in their lives, Suzu and Kei deal with their trauma differently. While Suzu minimized herself and navigated her life with indecisiveness, lack of confidence, and stifling self-inflicted loneliness, Kei lashed out as aggressively as he could. The world wasn't fair to him, and he wasn't going to live by the rules because of that. He became violent so that violence could not be done to him.

Belle mentions that the bruises on the Dragon's back are a sign of strength, but it's one of endurance, a lonely strength. It's the layering of pain that hardens one's shell. This pain does not lessen- it really can't- but instead, the body gets used to that suffering and gains the ability to carry it around. It's a method similar to how Suzu carries her grief, but these are defenses against attacks, not from a world reaching in to help. The fact that these bruises come from verbal abuse (it's hinted, but we're not sure if it's physical) shows that Kei is just as affected by the cruel words of his father as he would be if he was struck.

There's another lesson of worth here, too. Kei's been protecting his brother for who knows how long, but those words are nasty, and the saying "sticks and stones" has no power here. There's a point when victims start to believe their abusers words, because it's what they're used to hearing, and nothing has happened to prove them wrong. Kei's dragon persona may be a version of his strength, but I wonder if it's also the version of himself that he's convinced he is. He certainly acts that version when he pushes everyone away.

"Lend Me Your Voice" is our "Beauty and the Beast" of Belle- #2 on my list of top songs. Here, we see Suzu using what she's best at to reach the heart of someone she feels attuned to, and it's incredibly important. Not because of the dance sequence. We all loved the dance sequence. It was gorgeous. But this is our penultimate midpoint to our film- Belle's intentions change for the better.

Let's start with the draft of this song. Suzu is given the idea of writing a love song to Beast from her mother's choir friends, and on her way home she gives it some thought. Under her breath, she starts to hum a tune. That "lalala" comes in, shaky, and she trots along, but she's singing. This song is the first song that Suzu sings in the real world, and it's a powerful moment because she's singing for somebody else.

What made Suzu's detachment to music unbearable was that her mother was no longer there to listen to her songs. Sure, Belle has an audience of 5 billion people, but what got Suzu composing again was that she knew her song would touch the heart of someone that mattered to her, and her understanding of the Beast is a mirror to her getting to know herself a little better. Suzu is undoubtedly at her brightest when she sings songs dedicated to others.

And THE. BEAST. He's so taken in during her performance. This moment is just for him. It is a labor of love, a girl asking permission for him to open his heart and be vulnerable for him because she'll accept everything. And that's so important for fourteen-year-old Kei, who had to handle the burden of taking care of a broken family, of being dealt pain and abuse and suffering. He probably forgot that he was worth loving, too.

Belle asks the Beast to lend his voice to her, so that she can become his strength and source of love when he himself can't muster it.

And this. The light in his eyes. The pure adoration and wonder of this hug. She accepted him. This was everything.

"A MILLION MILES AWAY"

"But she cried in the theater, didn't she?? Where? Where did she cry??"

I cried at the climax. Obviously.

I wasn't the only one that cried. Didn't you see? The entire universe of U did too. Wonder why? Let me break it down for you.

Desperate to search for Kei in order to help him from his abusive scumbag father, Suzu has to take the leap and sing as herself in order to gain his trust. This decision was highly debated by the friends who rallied by her side for support (which I loved to see, because even when you make yourself small and insignificant there's still so many people who love you). Hiroka, her bestie and producer, is terrified of what'll happen if Belle's true identity is revealed, because all of Suzu's self-confidence will return to what it was before. Shinobu (oh handsome heartthrob Shinobu) urges her to take that step- not for Kei, but for herself. It was necessary to unveil herself, because she needs to be vulnerable to reach him. He has ulterior motives, which we'll get to shortly.

Suzu makes the move to unveil herself, and to everyone's awe the famous global superstar is... a normal high school girl?? What a power move. There were snickers from those who thought ridiculing her would make them somehow superior (she's just a normal girl), but I HAVE to mention Peggy Sue, her briefly mentioned rival who at the sight of Belle whispered, "She's just like me...."

Suzu starts to sing an emotionally charged song. She's asking Kei to reach out and return to her. "Come back to me." She's turning herself into a beacon so that the wounded boy can find her- and in turn, find solace.

Right?

Remember what the title of this movie is?

Belle is a story of rediscovery. It's a story about a girl who's lost her way, who finds a boy who's lost his. It's a story of this girl saving this boy, but she is not worthy of saving him until she is able to find the courage and strength to save herself. Shinobu knew this. That's why he told her to sing.

"A Million Miles Away" landed as my favorite song for a reason. It is not only a call for The Beast's trust, but it is a song for Suzu. Suzu's love for herself- one that could stand alone from her mother's affection- drifted out of her reach alongside her mother's death. There's a stark image of that child in the river during the middle of this song that stops Suzu in her tracks and dries her throat. She's asking for her happiness to come back to her, but does she deserve it? Is she worth that happiness, for even doubting her mother's decision in the first place?

When depression takes a hold of you, there's a desperation for returning to what once was. Happiness is a faraway dream, and you forget what it feels like. Even in my own dark moments, I wanted nothing more than to be able to write again, and it was hard knowing that the inspiration just wasn't there. But being desperate for happiness shows just how important is- the desire for light, for an unbothered breath of fresh air, for a moment of peace. Suzu's been in the dark for so long now. When she sings "come back to me", she's begging for that pain to finally leave her.

She gains an understanding. Just as her mother sacrificed herself for that little girl in the river, Suzu sacrificed the security of her persona in U so she could save Kei. This was never about worth- in order to save Kei, she needed to save herself, because how could she live with herself if she didn't?

The "lalalas" of this song are the most prominent. Her breath is shaky. She's startled by that flashback. She wavers, confused, unsure of herself, but its then that the voices of U's users sing back to her. They're all crying. We're all crying. They know that this world is an escape for them, and the desire for healing is strong and overpowering. They're rooting for her. They want happiness to find a way back to them, too.

The voices of those around her urge Suzu to be strong. They care. She matters. She's worth it. A celebratory motif sweeps into the soundtrack, her hope returns, her voice builds. Suzu urges herself to sing. She's found her voice, and she's never been happier.

Community is also a strong theme Hosoda carries through his films. It's a security blanket that wraps the protagonist in warmth and care. They're never truly alone, despite what they believe. Kei isn't alone now. And Suzu isn't, either.

"FACES IN THE RAIN"

There was one thing I was looking for in the final act of Belle, and I'm properly convinced that everyone else was looking for it, too. What happens, now? Will our antagonist get what he deserves?

Because we have an antagonist now, don't we? Kei's father is abusing his kids, and abusers must be punished so everyone can have a happy ending. Right?

Suzu makes it her mission to save these boys, despite the negative reaction from Kei when she offers her help. He's convinced that this is a situation he can never escape from, and he has to endure. Endure. Endure. So when Suzu does everything to find him against impossible odds, it's a moment of shock for everyone. Belle came for them. She's here.

But what can a high school girl do?

Scare the crap out of a grown man, that's what.

I love how this was handled. I know that there's a sense of dissatisfaction to the resolution- because their father wasn't arrested or even punished, as far as the audience knows. I was hoping to see that bastard in the back of a police car or behind bars- and maybe that's what happened to him.

But this story is about Suzu.

She arrives and takes both of the boys in her arms, and when their father tries to claw her away, she stands firm. Suzu is not that cowering girl in the beginning of the film. She doesn't say a single thing. She holds onto those boys as tight as she can and protects them with everything she has, and when she turns and stares down the true monster, he cowers. How could he not? This girl comes out of nowhere and sees him for the monster he is. She is not one of his victims. He has no power over her, and that is a terrifying realization for a man pushing people down for his own... ego? It's an awful thing to find a reason for why people hurt others, and I'm not here to find that out.

The open ending of the brothers is frustrating, sure, but Suzu's grown so much throughout the story that it's forgiven. She's found her voice. She's standing on her own two feet. She's protecting those that need her. "Faces in the Rain" is only her "lalalas" drifting against an orchestral accompaniment, and here we know that Suzu is who she's meant to be. This is her song. She's filled her voice in quite nicely. I love her for it.

Belle is a call for self-love and healing. It's a wonderful addition to Hosoda's collection, and I'm grabbing at it as soon as it gets a home release. It touched me deeply as someone looking for reason to return to better days, and I highly recommend it for those who haven't watched even though this post totally spoiled it for you. I hope you get as much out of it as I did, even though watching for the sake of the animation and the gorgeous music is a wonderful experience in itself!

I could say so much more about the importance of rivers or the cute sidebar of Ruka and Kamishin or even do a cute little post about avatars because how fun are those!!! But I'll leave you here.

This is my first post for my new blog, Faith's Book Blog, and even though I started out with a movie analysis post, I hope you can stay for future content! I'll also be doing some more deep dives on the other Hosoda movies because they're very near and dear to my heart, so a follow would be much appreciated!

Thank you for reading this ramble. Have a wonderful rest of your week!

(My favorite shot in the movie for your viewing pleasure.)

[winter-soldier-vibes]

I have a request for your future work. If you are comfortable writing this topic, I'd love to read it.

I have always had very bad cramps when I'm on my period. I also have PMS so I struggle with pain a week before my period starts. And It makes me think, if I could not let go of this cruel pain until menopause, I'd rather stop living. (Sorry it sounds heavy)

I want Bucky to comfort women who are struggling with serious period cramps ( Dysmenorrhea ) and PMS.

Thank you for reading my request! You can ignore this if you are not feeling right!

I love you so much❤️

Of course!!!

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PMS for Please Make it Stop

Bucky x reader

Summary: Reader suffers from severe cramps and PMS symptoms on and in between her periods. Bucky, her boyfriend, comforts her as much as he can.

Word count: 1666

Warnings: talk of everything that comes with periods, pain and cramps, PMS, fluff

A/N: Thank you for the request, and I am so sorry that it’s so painful for you! I’ve had a lot of experience with “that time of the month” feeling completely unbearable, and I hope that this fic is helpful! I don’t know exactly what you’re going through because each person has different symptoms with different severities and time spans. I truly hope that this helps you! I’m always here to talk as a fellow person with periods and the emotions that come with them!

Tags: @mardema @buckfics @stucky-on-spiderman @buckys2thicc @abitgryffindorky @barnesplums @thatfangirl42 @freigeistundanderes @babyboibucky

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You rolled over in bed, curling in on yourself and using your pillow to suppress a groan. It was early morning, you could tell because the sun was up but Bucky hadn’t left for his run with Steve yet. It was that time of the month again, the one you hated so goddamn much. The one every woman hated so much. But it was never just the few days of blood they had taught you about in sex ed.

You hadn’t been prepared for the cramps, bloating, mood swings, headaches, cravings, and pain…

So. Much. Pain.

You could handle blood, that wasn’t an issue for you. You had seen your share of bloodshed on the battlefield. It was the horrible cramps that felt like something was stabbing you from the inside out constantly for a week preceding the bloodshed that was too much for you. It paralyzed you in a way. It hurt to do anything at all. As much as you hated to admit it, you could deal with any cut, burn, or broken bone. But these cramps had you curled in a ball with tears in your eyes.

You let out another groan and felt Bucky stir next to you. He turned over and rubbed one of his hands up and down your arm and pressed a kiss to your shoulder.

“Sweetheart, why are you awake?” he asked softly, sleep still lacing his voice. There were only 2 reasons that you would be awake. Either you had a nightmare, or...

You let out a small whimper as another wave of pain came over you.

...cramps.

“Hey, it’s okay, come here,” he said before carefully wrapping his arm around your stomach, rubbing small circles over your stomach. He brought his body flush against you so his chest to your back, without squeezing you too tightly. You sighed in relief, his warm body easing your pain slightly. He pressed soft kisses to your temple, whispering reassuring words in your ear.

He had learned a lot rather quickly when it came to helping you with your pain. He hadn’t known much at all at first, growing up in the 40’s where people never talked about it. When he had first walked in on you curled in the fetal position, crying and whimpering, he had been so worried. So when you referred to it as ‘just a period’ and that ‘it’s happened before', he was very confused.

He thought a period was something you ended a sentence with.

You had sent him to Nat and Wanda to explain what was happening. You had synced up with them naturally, but their cramps weren’t as severe as you. Everyone's experiences of periods, their symptoms, and PMS differently, but they felt bad for the severity of yours.

He was very confused as to why he had to ask other people about your pain. When he approached the two wide-eyed and confused, asking why you were in severe pain with no injuries, they had to try not to laugh.

They explained the basics to him, and what was off-limits. No assuming it was happening because of mood swings, no expecting you to keep functioning at peak condition, no mentioning how the emotional mood swings were happening

He was just in awe of it - how women were expected to just act naturally as if they weren’t bleeding at a constant rate while dealing with horrible pain and emotional mood swings. He thought that it was amazing that it was expected that they act naturally.

It took a little bit of trial and error and a lot of patience on both your parts, but he knew how he could help make these days as bearable as he could.

He would spend these days close to you, showing you a lot of affection. He would be gentle and patient with you, reminding you how much he loved you. He would get you anything you needed, be it food or pads or tampons. Once you had sent him to get pads and tampons and he had come back with one of every box with a sheepish look on his face.

“I didn’t know which ones you wanted so I got...all of them.”

You had laughed so hard that it hurt, but it was worth it. He made you promise not to tell Sam.

But eventually, he had learned what you needed. How he could help. The heat helped ease your cramps, so he’d hold you close, but not tightly. Rubbing your stomach helped too, in slow, lazy circles.

While he hated seeing you in pain, he loved taking care of you. Anything he could do to help you he would do.

Another cramp made you shift slightly, trying to find the impossible position that would help relieve the constant pain. You let out a small groan, trying to curl in tighter on yourself. Bucky pressed a small kiss to your temple.

“It’s okay angel, it’s alright.”

“It hurts,” you said, voice cracking.

“I know it does, I know,” he said, using his left hand to brush some hair out of your face.

“I just want it to stop hurting so much,” you said, letting out another pained whimper.

“I can’t imagine,” he said, sincerely. He couldn’t imagine the same pain every month with no relief or solution. He knew just how strong you were, strong as anyone on the team if not stronger. Seeing you in this much pain must have meant it was unbearable.

“I can’t make it go away but I’m here to do whatever I can to help, okay?” he whispered against your skin.

“I’m sorry about this,” you said.

Bucky took a deep breath. “Did you choose to go through this?” he asked softly.

“N-no.”

“Then you have nothing to apologize for.”

You nodded slightly, your heart melting. You tried to take slow and even breaths. After a few moments passed, he asked “Can I help you to the shower? You always say how much the hot water helps.”

You paused for a moment before you nodded, and he pressed another kiss to your temple before standing up and moving to the other side of the bed to help you stand. Moving from your position sounded like the worst idea right now, but you took a deep breath before taking his hands. You sat up slowly, groaning as your hand wrapped around your stomach. You stood up shortly after, bending forward slightly as you made your way to the bathroom with Bucky. He had noticed a bloodstain on the bed, but he didn’t say anything. You didn’t need to know that.

He turned on the water for you, checking the temperature every few moments. Once he deemed that it was hot enough but wasn’t going to burn your skin, he told you and gave you a quick hug before giving you some privacy. You had always enjoyed intimate showers together just...not when you had your period to worry about. When he closed the door, you started to slowly undress to get into the shower. You got into the shower, sighing in relief as it helped soothe your cramps.

Bucky, meanwhile, was working fast. First he texted Steve that he wouldn’t be able to make it to training today, knowing he would understand. He then moved to make the bed with clean sheets, so you wouldn't see the small bloodstain on the current ones. He didn’t want you to worry or feel bad about it. He grabbed a pair of sweatpants and one of his t-shirts that you had always loved. He cracked the bathroom door open and placed them on the counter, careful not to disturb you. He then quickly ran down to the kitchen, still empty for the moment, and grabbed a few of your favorite snacks along with a few water bottles to bring back upstairs.

When he came back to the room, he noticed the water had been turned off. He set the water and snacks on the bedside table as you opened the bathroom door, hair in a messy bun and looking much more refreshed. “Feeling better?”

“A little,” you said quietly before wincing slightly. Bucky gave you a small smile before taking your hand and bringing you over to the bed, him sitting down and leaning against the headboard. He helped you sit down between his legs so you were able to lean your back against his chest. You laid your head back against him and he wrapped his arms around you so his human arm was on your lower stomach, his metal arm resting over it. You let out a small sigh, relaxing back against him. He pressed a small kiss to your temple, rubbing smooth lazy circles on your stomach.

“Try to get some rest, doll.” he whispered. “We can watch your favorite movie when you wake up.”

You turned slightly to look up at him. “But you hate that movie.”

“But you don’t,” he said simply.

You felt tears brim your eyes even though it felt so stupid. “I love you, Bucky.’

“I love you too angel,” he whispered, pressing a last kiss to the side of your head. “Try to get some rest.”

[lestwritewhilewaitingforajobcall]

The Odd Rumble of Thunder - Thor x Reader

(A/N)

Hey guys! I wanted to personally thank you all for the kind comments and messages, they really inspire me to continue writing more and the support truly means a lot! Also, I just found out how to access post replies, I apologize I haven’t gotten to reading them since my first story, I’m still trying to figure out the gist of things here on Tumblr! Anyways, recently I’d only been posting more on Poseidon, so here’s a special one for our Norse god of thunder (aka the god I simp for the most). This idea came to me while out on a camping trip, I hope you guys enjoy it! Feedback would really be welcomed and appreciated!

This is for entertainment only. Record of Ragnarok belongs to Shinya Umemura, Takumi Fukui and Ajichika. I also do not own you, the reader.

The Odd Rumble of Thunder

Thor x Reader

Even before the news spread like wildfire, Thor had become under the tyranny of a good habit to bringing his wife with him wherever he may go. It stood to reason that he would never be so careless to invite you over to danger, hence why, at a god’s ephemeral notice, he had stopped seeking direction for his combative side, but when, at last, he had to venture, he made much quicker work of it than when he would have otherwise.

Inarguably, if you’d wanted to lay down and rest instead, it was a surety you’d receive your meals in bed, unbothered. But for Thor there was no guarantee he’d ever have to worry about you, so the whole of Asgard knew by now he’d drop whatever he was doing to accompany you, uncaring about diplomacy in the first place.

Not that Odin nor Loki minded either; especially since the Allfather knew more about the concerns of a father expecting their first child. Moreover, Loki enjoyed shapeshifting into his cousin during days he was absent. It was much more fun to cause mischief legally, as he would say.

Today, Thor stood by his wife who sat comfortably in her rocking chair on the porch, allowing a full view of the hills that sloped gently down to the grand gardens. You were seven months along, approaching the eight month, the swell of your stomach now far more prominent.

At the very moment you had begun to show, you had a companion of whom would almost never leave your side, your husband’s absence in the kingdom gradually becoming more frequent, more lengthened, till at last his presence among his people became an exception. Despite your constant reassurances that you would be fine, Thor insisted on staying, casually sweeping aside your thoughts regarding his habitual sense of duty.

“I would only be gone for nine months to tend to my wife and child, they should fare well on their own lest they are more incompetent than I would’ve thought.” Thor had told you once before, and you’d decided not to question him further on that. You understood your husband’s concerns, to be truthful, you had a few of your own as well, so having Thor assist you alleviated some of the stress and worry concerning your child’s safety.

Especially now that you were nearing your due date. For instance, you were having the toughest time moving, suffering primarily from the weight in your belly and pains in your back and legs that made walking and even standing difficult. What made the physical strain worse too was your child’s eagerness to know you and Thor both, unable to stay long in one position, much like their father’s enthusiasm for battle.

“How are you feeling?” Thor’s question rested upon a rather precise calculation of the last time he had asked the same only a short moment before. It was quite visible in his actions that he did not want to cause any negative feelings if he could help it, though desiring you to avoid stress as much as possible.

You smiled. “Come close. You’ve been standing there for ages just ogling at me.” You opened your arms out wide. “Are you not tired?”

Truth be told, despite Thor’s constant need to remain close to his wife, he felt a real, undeniable fear of touching you, specifically, your abdomen. He closed the distance between until he was right in front of you, staring down at you with hard eyes. Longing leaped like a flame reaching out in his celestial yellow orbs.

“Love, I am always grateful for your concern for me. And I am feeling much better just knowing you’re beside me.” You raised yourself up, pushing against the chair to try to stand. Thor rushed forward, held you then put his hands under your arms to lift you up. Your child was growing fast. “But how about you? How are you feeling?”

You inched closer, your fingers playing with the locks of his hair that you could reach. “Aside from the stress of waiting, I’ve noticed that you have something else weighing on your mind.

“Tell me, what is it?”

At the sight of you through his warworn eyes, his mind was filled with bliss. For that loving glance of yours, he felt a divine presence and holy atmosphere that seemed to pervade everything around you. Having an inkling of what you were hinting at though, he broke your gaze, in an attempt to avert the guilt you conferred on him.

“Please. We’re in this together, I would want nothing more than to help you back as much as you’ve helped me.” Thor felt you shift in his arms, get more comfortable. He felt the bulk of your child across his legs, the weight no doubt pulling you down. Seeing you in pain like that, was sad and unbearable, and the gnawing feeling grew stronger. And since he knew you were always so full of strength and determination, always unrelenting in your attempts to make him feel better, he began,

“I am afraid.” Red eyebrows drew together.

“Afraid of what?”

“That I might accidentally hurt you and our child,” Thor took a deep breath in then let it out in a sigh while taking a step back. “I do not want that to happen, even if I want to be at your side at all times. And this frustrates me to no end.”

Thor did himself a favor by giving attention to anything other than his wife, refusing to be a witness on the sadness and any he may have caused. Dealing with his own disappointment was nothing new, but he had trouble dealing with the fact that he was the cause of yourpain. He wished he could take his troubles which escaped, hanging in the air, and all the bad feelings on himself and let things continue as they were, but he knew it didn’t work that way. You needed to know that he only wanted you and your child safe and protected, even from himself.

He could not understand how the cosmos could play such a cruel joke on the both of you: you, bore so much pain because of one of the greatest affairs of life, and him, the strongest deity in the Pantheon, was powerless against the natural laws of existence.

Strong shoulders slumped, head bowing as stray strands of red hair fell over Thor’s brow. Not again. He did not wish to be reminded of the cautious sympathy his father and cousin had approached him with. His stomach lurched whenever the subject of your frailty came up. Dread and a terrifying fear overwhelmed his soul for the first time, the thought of losing you−

“Hey,” Your voice which lingered on the gentle breeze brushed against Thor’s face, pulling him out of his stupor. He refocused, turning his gaze onto your sweet face.

How were you able to hold yourself up well despite your obvious pain and suffering? Did you not bear the same nervousness as he did? The answer was obvious, practically screaming in Thor’s ears but became deaf following his guilt and clouded instincts. For a long time since you’d first told him about the news, he bore these worries in silence; but when at length he’d been perplexed by your introspection−or seeming lack of it. Why, in fact, did you concern yourself with him at all? Compared to you, there was hardly any threat to his own life posed. Why had you always done more to make him feel better when you were the one who needed it most?

Cutting through the haze he found himself in was the shape of you, or maybe your hair billowing in the wind, a wisp of it across your face, and then suddenly the feel of your skin, the sense of your head on his chest. Even if it were fleeting, that alone brought him the possibilities of comfort that he’d so needed. Oh, how he missed this; you cupped his big callously marble hands around yours, caressing them so tenderly, as if he were fragile and might break, so short it could never be pulled back.

As he relished the warmth of the blaze you gave him for the winter of unease, he’d realized much sooner that the coldness that inched its icy fingers up his spine still threatened to battle your kind words, you, his very own wife, and he detested himself for being unsure whether or not it was of his own doing; was he pushing you away when you’d only wanted to offer your help?

Thor’s immediate impulse was to pull back from you, abruptly halted by your fingers which slipped between his now splayed hand. You wrinkled your nose in a delightfully unguarded manner that caused his breath to hitch in his throat.

“Do you remember the first time we said our vows?” If only you knew the way Thor perceived you: in his eyes, your radiant smile reflected the morning sunlight of Valhalla, for a split second picturing the moment you’d walked down the aisle, that headpiece on your head instantiating the paradox of mystery that once lifted revealed your beautiful face, marking it the best day of his long life. Something warm bloomed in his chest once again and spread its heat out through every vein in his body. He remembered the smooth feel of the veil against his cheek after sealing your promise with a kiss, his lips parting with a breathless sigh.

“Your hands caressed my fit of nerves with light, tender touches and then inspired me with hard, passionate embraces,” With effortless ease, you lifted your intertwined hands to your mouth and kissed his knuckle. Thor watched with great admiration your every move, the desire to distance himself was now but an afterthought. Nothing would ever separate him from you when all you’d ever done was pull him closer than ever.

Then, you sought out his hand, kissing his palm as he stroked your face. You clung onto his arms, gripped at his chest as if you were searching for warmth, as if you needed his touch, and much like him, couldn’t bear to be even an inch away. His mind was still slowing its racing to let him mutter something in response, so he allowed himself to be entranced by how smooth and sure of yourself you were, with nothing to mar the calm serenity of your features. Your smile seemed to be a natural adornment, the utter gentleness in your eyes, reminded him of every morning when he woke up, he would see you by his side, as well as your sleeping snoring face. Right at that moment, the silly scream finally made it to the deaf god’s ears:

He was your haven,

The place you called home and went to find peace.

As Thor immersed himself in your smell, your sparkling eyes, he felt the excruciating cold all melt away in your warmth. No more seeds of doubt with which to sow and seek his destiny. Slowly, he began to see his surroundings from a keener point of view, realizing, then appraising them: from the passing wind your hair messed which he pushed aside, tucking it behind your ear, to how his sash seemed to fit him better indeed, rather than cling onto his skin even tighter as brutally as it had done before. He noticed the minute changes since he’d last taken a good look at you months ago: a little flusher on your skin, lines around the eyes a little deeper, a little increase in body temperature.

He pulled you closer, his actions not arising from calculation instead led by instinct. You let him take more of your weight, your belly pressed against his stomach as you sighed, his fingers working wonders on massaging the muscles that had been much abused in carrying the baby’s weight. A sudden wrenching through his sash struck Thor’s heart and had him holding his breath.

The baby had moved, and he’d felt it.

Bending down, he buried his nose in your hair, closing his eyes as he drank in your scent. Your arms wrapped around his back as he connected in this loving embrace, feeling his heart beat in rhythm with your own.

“Our child would no doubt love to be enveloped in their father’s safe arms,” With a light, gentle touch, your fingers ran through Thor’s hair, making him shiver with delight.

On that day, only the beautiful gardens of Asgard became privy to nothing more than a moment in which husband and wife reached for the same comfort and their concerns met. These gardens were simultaneously the very same place where Thor had first avoided the problems that plagued his mind, but also became exactly the same place where he’d find solace in the arms of his lovely wife.

Resting his hand on where his child was, he recognized that familiar feeling turning up, but upon realizing the bittersweet irony of and within these gardens, the revelation came to him: happiness could also come from the very object of fear.

And as you had an unmovable trust in him, there was an unspoken mutual understanding that he too, should put his trust in you.

[captnjacksparrow]

SNS Dynamics - Sasuke's Perspective

Lengthy post ahead

On completing my rewatch of Naruto part I and part II, many things which never made sense started to make sense. One among them is the relationship between Naruto and Sasuke. I used to ask why Naruto is going so far for Sasuke. And why Sasuke is helping out Naruto even though he wants to kill him. And I used to think that Episode 478 was retconned to make the final battle ends in a draw and Sasuke somehow made to reconcile with the titular character. Yet, I instinctively felt, ‘Something is very different about them’. But on careful rewatch, all the clues which consolidate their relationship was there. The way they love each other is totally on a different level and the creator very carefully planned this from the beginning of the Manga.

Though I really don’t like the ending for making every characters into a child rearing machine at an age of 20 to make way for an abomination called ‘Boruto’, I still loved everything till Episode 479.

I wanted to discuss about both Naruto and Sasuke's perspective. But that cannot be accommodated in a single post. So, I decided to start with Sasuke. Since Naruto's side of SNS is very open and vocal, we clearly knew what is going on in his mind. But Sasuke's side is usually very subtle but much more intense than Naruto which makes it worth analyzing.

Before getting to that, for most of the characters in the Naruto universe (I mean 99%), Sasuke is a person who looks cool, aloof, rude, overbearing, blunt, genius and emotionless. And that’s the truth. Except for Itachi and Naruto. So when I say he is rude or arrogant, it is from the people’s POV.  And since I always see myself in Itachi, I see Sasuke as that adorable innocent child who is very honest but forgiving.

I strongly feel that Sasuke has some innocent enchantment towards Naruto ever since he lost his family which later transcended into a bond which cannot be put under Friendship or Bromance. Enchantment, here I meant by, is not in a sexual way but more like the unconscious need to be in the presence of other person. Like walking beside each other eternally. Or even warming up next to a campfire near a chilly beach. You don’t want to fall into the fire but just enjoy the warmth. It maybe totally a platonic love like many claims to be. But his absolute disinterest in any other characters (even just as a friend) and the following traits he shows only to Naruto are clearly not just distinctive of platonic love either. It’s completely beyond platonic.

The following are the traits which Sasuke shows only towards Naruto, could have been avoided or delegated to other characters if the creator really wanted to assert their relationship as just friendship. There are lot of subtexts and emotions which I cannot accept it under the guise of bromance or friendship. It’s just not possible. If someone you like shows all these traits to another person, you should stop thinking about that person and move on.

The traits are :

Preferential Treatment

Attentive

Protective

My body moved on its own

One and Only

Powerful Eyes

Unconscious Closeness

Preferential Treatment

This is the very basic and first thing you show to someone whom you love. Meaning, I will treat this person much different from everyone else. When I was exploring this trait, I couldn’t stop laughing in many places. Because Sasuke is such a trolling machine who mercilessly trolls people who are in his way. He also inspire certain amount of fear which makes him even more unapproachable.

He has this cold bearing where people find it extremely difficult to manage or approach him. It comes off as very rude most of the times. One such example is Sai told Sasuke that he will get along better with him than Naruto. Sasuke put a Genjutsu on him for comparing himself with Naruto. LOL.

What's more funny is most people (Sakura, Orochimaru, Kabuto, Sai, Hinata) usually talk to him politely with honorifics like 'Sasuke-kun'. But he didn't give two shits about them and shitted them all mercilessly.

Here is the infamous proposal from Sakura in part 1.

Well she deserved this one to be honest. Throughout the entire conversation Sasuke never saw her face and responded very bluntly even though she was pouring her heart out crying. There was no visible distress or sadness from Sasuke’s side.

Whereas with Naruto, in the final Valley of The End, we saw him turning towards Naruto and answer him properly when Naruto asked the same question of what Sakura asked. There were so many emotions throughout the battle and Sasuke’s pain of leaving Naruto was clearly shown. Which explains the difference of where Sasuke keeps Naruto in his heart.

The following is the one from Chunin Exams prelims where Sakura is begging for him to quit with tears. The response is an usual 'Stay out of my business'.

Me: Sasuke!!!! Even I don't know how to approach you!!!! I understand you don't like to talk unnecessarily so you just shitted on Sai. But Sakura is your teammate, isn't it?

And then there is this little orange blonde who literally trolls Sasuke.

I really thot Sasuke was going to trash Naruto too, like he could have easily said, 'Naruto, you should also stay out of my business'.

But then

These words are something precious for Naruto. He wished for these words to come from Sasuke someday in his lifetime. But not at that time. And he was truly shocked and very excited. Believe me, when watching that scene, it was really great. But while making analysis like this, it’s absolutely hilarious.

This dynamics is similar to

Sakura: *cries unbearably* Sasuke-kun, I am worried about you. Don’t act so strong.

Sasuke: Shut up. Mind your own business.

Naruto: Bastard! She is worried about you.

Sasuke: Alright, I love you. Now shut up.

ROOOFFFFL :-D

I thought all these childhood bickers were over by part 1 and we will never see it in part 2.

Nope. I was wrong. Kakashi and Sakura were the scapegoats here.

Here's another round of applause from Naruto.

And I honestly cannot comprehend what was going on in Sasuke's mind and why he is really rude to Sakura and Kakashi. It seems he was really irritated by their presence or he maybe thinking they were useless or both.

When Naruto asks him something, he responds without any insults. What baffles me most is that during Infinite Tsukuyomi, Sasuke wanted to kill Naruto for his Revolution and awaiting his fated battle. And yet he answers him properly.

Can you see the pattern here?

He shits on people asking some question even with an utmost polite attitude but when Naruto asks the same question he was like "Alright Sweetie, Am gonna answer anything you want and say anything you like".

The following is the beginning of everything where Naruto can't even swear properly but still Sasuke couldn't even bother.

In short, the way he treats Naruto is quite different and hilarious when compared to the others. With his cold bearing, he absolutely has no need to put up with Naruto's outburst but he still accepts without a care every time. RIP to those souls who got the short end of the stick.

He must have an extreme tolerance towards Naruto's tirades to the point where he can never insult him back. And I also believe 100% that, nobody dares to make such frequent insults on Sasuke to his face except Naruto.

I know SK shippers jump in here to say Naruto is not the only one. But still the dynamics between Karin and Sasuke is simply a mirror image of Naruto and Sasuke, probably she reminded him of Naruto and hence made some exceptions for her because Sasuke never gives a damn about any other clan other than his own, but when Kabuto tells him Karin belongs to Uzumaki clan, he was shocked. I am pretty sure the only other Uzumaki member he knew is none other than Naruto.

Now, does this means he is in super love with Naruto? No.

But the way he treats every other characters and how he treats Naruto exclusively speaks volumes and this trope shouldn’t have existed in the first place. The creator should have made Sasuke treat both of his teammates equally which could’ve deflected the shipping angle. 

Attentive

Am not talking about how attentively he analyzes his enemies in the battles. Of course, in that department, Sasuke flies high. This is about how attentive he is to Naruto to the point where he can deduce what Naruto thinks and how Naruto looks without the need to communicate with him.

I know Sasuke suspected Sakura was acting strange before Chunin Exams when she said 'Good Morning' with some hesitation. But the difference here is that Sasuke can identify Naruto without even talking to him.

Funny thing here is that Sasuke was sitting somewhere far behind from Naruto and yet he could pick up Naruto getting freaked out without seeing his face.

Who could forget about the famous ‘Where’s real Naruto?’ episode during Chunin Exams?. It would’ve been fine if this happened once. But the creator went ahead and made this thing happen twice under entirely different situations. And everytime Sasuke can find fake Naruto without fail. This scene conveys Sasuke is very observant towards Naruto’s appearance & fighting skills (the way he evades an attack).

Now, being attentive to someone is not a special thing which attributes to love. But considering Sasuke’s personality who is aloof and focused on his own world, knowing Naruto like the back of his hand  is way too descriptive. Only someone who really understands the other person or constantly paying attention can find out such subtle changes. It doesn’t end here.

This is the battle between Gaara and Naruto. Where Naruto was literally confused about how to save his friends from Gaara who is much more powerful. And yet Sasuke can find Naruto’s mood just by seeing him.

Me: Yes, Sasuke!!! Gaara happened to pass by Naruto and forgot to kill him on a whim!!! So, Naruto is scared to the shit!!

Also Me: You guys always bicker with each other and are not best of friends. Sasuke!!! How could you analyze his mood just by looking at Naruto????

In Shippuden, There’s no inner monologue like the above, but whenever Naruto appears before him (Orochimaru’s hideout, Bridge, War arc), Sasuke gives his undivided attention to him. He even went so far as to advice him to pay attention to the battle. And I was like “Wait!!! you wanted to kill him... why pay attention to him at all? Geez”.

As much as you want to think that Sasuke doesn’t care about anyone, he does care about Naruto to the point where he doesn’t want him to be worried. How thoughtful just for a ‘teammate’.

How did Sasuke knew that Naruto would worry about him?, I wonder.

But all these things started from this

This boy has been noticing Naruto from way back when he was around 7 when he lost his family. Of course he would know every little things about Naruto because for some undefinable reason he couldn’t stop paying his attention to Naruto. A lineup of girls vying for his attention because of his cool appearance, whereas Sasuke simply loved Naruto without any reservations but because of his childish and warm personality which reminded him of his family.

‘I couldn’t stop paying attention to you’  and in some translations the words were ‘I couldn’t take my eyes off you’. Either way, these words are not for someone you see just as a friend let alone a brother.

Protectiveness

I can go on and on about how protective Sasuke is towards Naruto. I can write a separate post about it. This is the most important aspects of this ship which makes it sail higher than any other ships.

Of course, this is the Ninja world where people wants to protect each other and at the same time kill each other too. Sasuke protecting Naruto and Naruto protecting Sasuke is not too special. In fact, one of the weak and pathetic character like Sakura was saved once in every three episodes by Naruto or Kakashi or even by Sasuke sometimes.

And yet here I am mentioning protectiveness as the most important aspect of this ship. So what differentiates?

The way Sasuke protects Naruto is one of the intense thing I’ve ever seen. When I watch this series, I gained this immense ability to put myself in other characters mind just like Naruto. When I put myself in Sasuke’s mind whenever he tried to protect Naruto under different conditions, I simply cannot put their relationship under Friendship.

Here, Naruto is fighting Gaara in part 1 and Naruto was repelled by his own attack from the paper bomb. Sasuke being already battered by his curse mark bruise and he couldn’t move an inch. And yet he is shielding Naruto even though it is completely unnecessary because Naruto bumping into a tree log is completely normal. The creator even went under a lot of pain to draw that panel which took 40% of the page.

Now you may question, many characters even died protecting someone. What’s so special with just shielding?

Like Hinata jumping in for suicide before Pain, Iruka blocking Mizuki’s attack, Tsunade blocking Orochimaru, Neji dying as a ‘Love Cupid’ for hinata and Naruto.... I can cite many things here. What’s common among them all is that they were all perfectly capable of moving around and yet decided to save Naruto.

But that’s not the only point. 

Is there any need for him to save Naruto? No.

Will Naruto die if he didn’t shield him? No.

Then why? He could have spent that energy trying to do something for Sakura rather than do a pointless shielding. 

And then there is Kushina.

Naruto’s mom was already on the verge of dying as she had Kurama extracted from her body and Jinchuriki without a Tailed Beast will die. Because of Uzumaki clan’s strong life force, she could hold off for a bit longer. When kurama attacked Naruto, she shielded him with her body and saved her son from an imminent death.

Even though Sasuke didn’t die shielding him, but there is a semblance.

Both protected Naruto even when their body condition is worse. That is, Protect at all cost attitude.

I intended to put Land of the Waves arc here as it is very similar to what happens with Kushina. But that’s for an upcoming section.

Now, as a Mother her instinct to protect Naruto is very strong.

But who is Naruto for Sasuke? What makes his instinct so strong to protect someone who is not even related by his blood? Until and unless you love that person dearly you won’t do it.

That brings me to the next thing.

Yeah, it kind of looks ‘very friendly’ to give a 3 layered protection to someone who is already powered up like you and most importantly you want to kill him.(Can I say that looks really romantic?). Anyways my point is different.

What really happens here is this

It is a well established fact that Minato, the Yellow Flash is the fastest shinobi in Narutoverse. It wasn’t surpassed yet. He uses the Hiraishin No Jutsu to teleport at the speed of light. It was invented by none other than Tobirama Senju who is the fastest shinobi of his time.

We basically have two fastest shinobi in the battlefield here. And Minato being the fastest among them, definitely don’t want to blow up near his son for whom he died protecting him once. He wanted to teleport somewhere away and before he could do it, Tobirama teleported the bomb back to Obito.

What many fails to notice here is that all these things are happening in mere seconds. But Sasuke realized it real quick as usual and protects Naruto in an instant. How fast his instinct you may ask? Quicker than the two fastest shinobi on the battlefield and one among them is Naruto’s dad.

What I want to say is Sasuke’s protective instinct is quicker than Naruto’s father and similar to Naruto’s mother.

And you know, I questioned myself during the Chunin Exams arc “I think in the Zabuza arc, Naruto conveniently happened to be near Sasuke, So he protected him at the cost of his life. What if Sakura happens to be there? Would he have done the same? Maybe he would’ve died protecting her too.”

But all of my questions were thrown into drain by Sasuke as if he was able to read my mind. The answer is “Hell! I don’t care if she died. That’s her loss. I will not die for her sake.”

This is really confusing, hilarious and romantic at the same time.

Me: Sasuke!!! I understand why you want to save Jugo... Even though you abandoned him in the Land of Iron. LOL. What are you going to do with Naruto anyway when the whole world is blasted off?

He proved this again in the Kaguya’s Lava dimension too. Before you tell me that he saved Naruto because he needs him to seal off Kaguya, the previous scenario nullifies your argument.

And SS wankers shamelessly defending that Sasuke don’t want Sakura to die by Kaguya’s hands, that’s why he left her to die. Geez!!! Who the hell is Sakura to Kaguya anyway? Even if she were to die by Kaguya’s hands, it would almost look like how Obito died. It’s not bad at all. But falling into the lava pit, burning, screaming.... sssshhhh. Wake the f**k up!!!

Now how can you convince me that this is just Friendship? What’s more funny is Sasuke wanted to kill Naruto later at some point. Throughout the War Arc I was always confused as to why Sasuke even care about Naruto at all? He didn’t care about him ever since he left him 3 or 4 years ago and he doesn’t have to. After all everyone have their own paths to walk on.

Even if I put myself in Sasuke’s mind and see Naruto just as a friend whom I want to kill, I wouldn’t go under so much pain to save him. I would feel like it’s better for him to die by something else rather than me. Because I can’t bring myself to kill someone I know well.

These scenes are not just put there by chance.

Such a strong reflex to protect someone is only possible when you consider that person’s life more than yours.

Does any other ship has such things to show? I’ll wait.

Yeah Sasuke protected Sakura from Orochimaru and Gaara. But he also went so far to wait for Karin and awakened a new power to protect her. So does this means he love those girls?? No. He was just showing a team camaraderie. But it’s funny that later, he tried to kill those girls knowing full well they are unprepared to fight him. While with Naruto, it always comes with a warning. Try to understand this difference. Which is exactly why I didn���t put Sasuke saving Naruto during his Chakra training, or falling from the waterfall and many more. Because they are just a team camaraderie.

I don’t even have to compare with other ships, did Sasuke ever protected anyone like this in the whole series?. These are the things which could’ve been avoided or handled in a different way, like there was no need to emphasize on saving Naruto alone while ignoring others.

My body moved on its own

I don’t need to explain this any deeper. There are many people who says Sasuke is incapable of showing his true feelings. He is cold, rude, aloof and stoic so he always hides his feelings for everyone (mostly this line was used by Sakura wankers who wanted to portray that Sasuke always loved Sakura deeply but never shows). But they fail to understand the irony that one of the most beautiful line in this entire series was told by none other than ‘Sasuke Uchiha’, “My body moved on its own”.

Yet I find Sasuke shows his honest and heartful emotions before the people he loves. If he can show that to Itachi and Naruto, why not with Sakura?

I know those wankers try to say Sasuke repressed all his feelings until Chapter 698, so he has some romantic feelings for Sakura too. Bullshit!!!

Even though he repressed those feelings in his mind, his body always betrays him in the end and his feelings pours out from time to time. That is what this section explores about.

Man, this is the most painful GIF I have ever made.

In his battle with Itachi, he was completely consumed by the feeling of revenge and hatred for his brother. But when Itachi approached him in his final moments with an intention (seemingly) to snatch his eyes, he still couldn't push Itachi away though he could have. Sasuke just looked into his eyes and let him do whatever he was about to do.

Why?, Because he loved his brother so much once that he don't know what to do but simply embrace that moment. These are the moments your mind says to close your eyes or even run away (he totally could have) but his body will not allow him to.

This is what I meant by your body betrays yourself. Even in your darkest moments, you cannot fake. You always show your true emotions towards the person you love. The more you suppress, the more it will burst out.

Here Sasuke’s hatred is glaring through his eyes because Sakura is persuading him to not do something he wants to (as always). His only motivation is to kill that man. His resolve is a real deal.

But in a matter of minutes after giving that long hateful speech with some heavy determination, when he saw that hungry blonde boy who was tied up for trying to steal food, Sasuke just acted on his own and served him food even though he was told not to which could jeopardize his career.

This bipolar dance is something to notice throughout the series and is always interesting to explore. When Sakura tries to dissuade Sasuke from something, he always retorts to insults or an angry stare. But when Naruto accidentally stands in Sasuke’s way, he always involuntarily helps him out.

In short, towards Sakura he was like “Even you cannot take that path away from me” but when turning towards Naruto, he was like “Well, I can risk everything for you at the cost of my path”.

This seals the real deal for SNS ship.

At this point, for us viewers, Naruto is just an orphan who has no friends but always carries his life with a positive spirit hoping that someday he will be accepted by everyone.

Unbeknownst the fact that he already has one person who was willing to die for him and putting all his dreams into fire.

Important thing to notice, It’s entirely at Naruto’s fault for them being in this situation. If Naruto had used a bit of brain to attack from outside the mirror, they wouldn’t have been in this situation. But still Sasuke plunged into the trap without any regrets. That’s the beauty of this scene.

What’s more thrilling is that the creator told us Sasuke loved Naruto in the very next chapter itself. 

How?

By making Haku jump before Zabuza knowing full well that he is going to die which is not very different from how Sasuke shielded Naruto.

And not only that, but by making Naruto say “He really loved you”. I got to say the creator may sucks at writing Sakura and Hinata for God only knows for whatever twisted reasons. But when it comes to male characters like Naruto, Sasuke, Itachi, Obito... he was just amazing and on another level.

How?

By indirectly drawing parallels between Sasuke and Haku in a matter of successive chapters.

By dropping indirect hints and crumbs like these to tell us, the audience, the motivations of the characters.

I always had the thought why did he risked his life for a boy who always fights with him? This became more emotional when we get to know the real reason for why Sasuke risked his life much later in chapter 698.

Having faced all the turbulent things in his life, somehow seeing Naruto doing all those childish stuffs made him feel relieved. That warmth was what he needed at that time. He wanted to escape from it but couldn’t. That’s why he embraced his warmth unknowingly in his Team 7 days by constantly reaching out to him starting from asking tips, concerned about having breakfast and training with him to climb the tree.

Sasuke even come to like Naruto more than himself and that’s why he was willing to die for him.

This feeling is definitely not a bromance or friendship. It’s an innocent enchantment you hope to last forever. Which again explains why he tolerated Naruto’s insults and hostility all those times. Because Sasuke knew those childish things were the ones he got attracted to him ever since his childhood. Rather than saying tolerated, I should use the term enjoyed. He really enjoyed those moments being bugged by Naruto for no reason.

Because just like Itachi said to Sasuke once, ‘If you are excellent you become alienated and arrogant even though you were sought after at the beginning’ . But Naruto pestering him means he is very curious about Sasuke which no one else tried. He was adored by those girls for his coolness and revered by those boys for his excellence but nobody really tried to befriend him. But Naruto tried to befriend him through Rivalry. That’s why Sasuke unconsciously started to like him. This also explains why he roasted Sakura for badmouthing him even though Naruto attacked him and tied him up earlier.

If Sasuke can show all these feelings even though he was trying to suppress it towards Naruto and Itachi, Why can’t he show a single normal feeling towards Sakura??? Because there isn’t one. Except for an old Team 7 camaraderie where he saw her as an acquaintance and nothing more.

Many NH shippers claims, but Hinata loved her ‘Naruto-Kun’. She jumped in front of Naruto to save him from Pain, when in reality she just acted selfishly and couldn’t pull out the Chakra rods. Meaning she failed whatever she was about to do.

Another interesting thing to cite for NH shippers, they claim for Naruto, Hinata is the most important person his life. Since when? With that shitty movie called ‘The Last’ with shitty retconned stuff? In all the 699 chapters he always claimed Iruka Sensei and Sasuke were the important people in his life. And you know what? For Hinata to like Naruto, he has to jump in to save her from the bullies. But for Sasuke he just saved Naruto without any validation. He saw Naruto and liked his presence and just did it. 

When you could accept that failed attempt as a love, why not accept Sasuke loves Naruto when in fact he succeeded in saving him and that too unconditionally?

This is one of the tropes which should have been avoided if the creator wanted Sasuke and Naruto to be just friends.

One and Only

This is something very special that is offered to that one person in his life. That is Naruto. Even Itachi knew it. That is the Power to influence Sasuke’s heart. This is the fact even Sasuke himself knew it and that’s why he wanted to kill him.

Now don’t compare this with the manipulation shit which Orochimaru and Obito were doing. It’s not that. Many Sasuke fanatics always blame Naruto that he is also manipulating Sasuke just like everyone. That’s totally wrong.

Manipulation is something you do by talking about some twisted facts and make the other person to do what you want to.

Naruto never did that. Ever. Whenever Naruto and Sasuke meet, they always talk about themselves and how they feel. Not the world, not Team 7 or anything. Which is exactly why Sasuke himself willingly left that space in his heart for Naruto when he left him in the Valley of the End which he badly wanted to destroy. Sasuke, of all people, know Naruto is also very honest.

Sasuke lost all his rationality when he went into darkness by stabbing Karin who was helping him in his battle with Danzo. She even replenished his chakra many times. He not only just stabbed her, after when he found her still alive, he decided to finish her off with his Chidori.

And then the pink haired bitch appears before him and started to concoct lies with malicious intent to kill him. This provoked Sasuke more and more to reach this point.

Believe me, when you are lost in darkness, all you need is a small light which can show you a path. Someone who can extend helping hands to lift you up with honesty.

Sakura, being a crass woman, riled up Sasuke further with full of nonsense.

If you want to picture the darkness,

This is exactly how Sasuke feels. He is in so much pain and don’t know how to face it or deal with it. So he started to destroy everything he sees. For him Karin, Sakura, Kakashi are all just some pebbles in his way and want to trample them as he goes. His entire life has become farce after knowing his beloved brother’s real pain and miseries. Now he has no one left from his family.

Until Naruto appears.

He may not be his family, but he is the only person left for him in this world. Which is established in many Naruto endings and even Sasuke himself accepts this with Sage of Six Paths. 

But my Cherry Blossom queen really loved Sasuke, she only wanted the good of him. My question is ‘Then why the fuck she tried to kill him? She looked at Sasuke and find that he changed. She didn’t even bothered to find out what’s going on from his side.’ Then how is this considered as wanting only good for him? 

Surprisingly Sasuke calmed down a bit, the moment Naruto appears and even started to respond to him which he didn’t before with Kakashi and Sakura. Deep down Sasuke himself knew in his heart that the path he is going through is Self-destructive. Just like Kurama tells Naruto ‘Destroy everything you see’ in the Pain arc when he sprouted upto Eighth Tail, Sasuke’s traumatic mind tells him to ‘Destroy Konoha’.

All he needed was someone to extend an helping hand to tell him what to do without any malice. Naruto did that. Just like what Minato did for Naruto in Pain arc.

After clashing Rasengan with Chidori ,they meet inside the White bubble space and Naruto talks to Sasuke which evoked all his past memories which he never wanted to awaken.

That’s why Sasuke was visibly shaken with Naruto’s words. Because those were the words which mirrors exactly how Sasuke feels too. He was surprised and shocked that Naruto also felt the same way without him ever openly confessing those feelings.

When everyone tried to kill him for his monstrosity, Naruto is the only person standing there seeing him as his friend. Just like how Iruka saw Naruto way back in 1st chapter.

Believe me, even at the depth of darkness, when you see the person you love so much, you will stop and rationalize.

That is exactly why Itachi left Sasuke in Naruto’s hands. He even admitted to Sasuke that his words will not reach him no matter what.

Sasuke may not have abandoned his ambitions at that point. But Naruto gave him a clear path. That is ‘Show all your hatred on me’ and then do whatever you want.

I know SS shippers will claim that back hug from Sakura changed his murderous behaviour during the Chunin Exams. Yes. That’s true. But right after that, when Sasuke was fighting Yoroi in a one-on-one combat, his Cursed Seal flares up again. He retracted that seal out of his sheer will and thought about both Sakura and Naruto who was freaking out without even knowing about the seal. So, it’s not only a Sakura exclusive moment. The creator even went ahead and drawn a panel asking Sakura to not say anything about the Curse Mark to Naruto. Why do that?

As far as I understand, Sasuke saw Naruto and felt the warmth of his family. He singled that out in chapter 698. When Naruto was placed in the same team as him, he started to extend his good side to his other team members as well. But the moment he decided to leave the village, he severed the ties with Sakura (was there ever one apart from considering her as a teammate?) by saying Thank You. Meaning, you helped me many times so thanks for all of that. What’s more pitiful is, he didn’t even look at her face for the entire conversation except for saying ‘You are really annoying’. There is nowhere in the manga where Sasuke singled out Sakura for making him feel anything and did something for her exclusively. It’s all in the context of Team 7.

If Sakura is the most important person in Sasuke’s life, he should have stopped the rampage the moment he saw her but instead he got riled up more and more. Which explains where Sasuke kept her in his heart. Literally nowhere. He threw her into the trash. LOL.

If Hulk can calm down after seeing Betty Ross and you call that love, why not accept Sasuke loves Naruto??

Powerful Eyes

You know, Even in real life, Our eyes always reflects our true feelings, just like how your body betrays your mind , your eyes even betray your body.

Just like how Itachi could never fake his evil brother act in his final moments.

Just like how Sasuke couldn’t turn away from Itachi when he was approaching him to seemingly snatch his eyes.

Uchiha boys being a romantic bunch, always expose their awakening/ reawakening/ evolving their Sharingan in a most distressed situation. Just like Madara and Sasuke exposed their brimming eyes for Hashirama and Naruto. But in this department, Madara is wildly romantic as always. LOL. Despite losing 3 brothers, he awakened his Sharingan only when he was breaking up with his ‘friend’. And Sasuke, he reawakened / evolved Sharingan when trying to save / breaking up with his ‘friend’. Such a Biological defect!!!!

Poor Sakura pathetically fails in this department.

Anyways this part is not about Sharingan anyway. It’s about how such a powerful eyes becomes powerless before those Blue Eyes.

Eye Symbolism is something I really enjoy exploring in this ship.

Like I mentioned earlier, Sasuke has never shown his emotions atleast starting from Part II. He usually never shows any positive emotions like happiness, laughing, pouting, love, excitement (although he has shown all these towards Itachi and Naruto) and is known for negative emotions like anger, annoyance, hatred.

Look at how Sasuke is glaring with hatred for her insensitive words. She deserved this to be honest.

Now, is there any need to show your fury towards Kabuto?

Since the beginning of the Shippuden, some facts have been established strongly:

1. Sasuke has changed by leaps and bounds in terms of his attitude and hatred.

2. Sharingan is pretty dangerous. Many characters including kurama acknowledges it. Sasuke is very adept at using his Sharingan.

Orochimaru maybe right. But he doesn’t know the weakness. LOL

His hatred has reached to a point where he couldn’t think anything rationally and started to kill everyone, just like how Naruto kicked Sakura in his 4 Tailed Kyuubi Mode engulfed with the hatred of Kurama. Meaning, to reach his goal, Sasuke will kill anyone in his path without any hesitation. This shot is the representation of this.

And yet when he saw those particular Blue eyes, he stops his rampage immediately and visibly shocked even.  That’s the look of ‘why is that blue eyes here?’

You have every right to accuse me that I am over exaggerating this scene. I am not. Even I wanted to think that way too that I am deluding myself. The creator has only consolidated my view pretty strongly.

There’s no need to emphasize on eyes at all. The anime team has went under so much pain to animate this scene in a satisfying and compelling way.

What’s more? The creator even went under further extent to draw a whole page in the manga focusing on their eye contact after the Rasengan vs Chidori clash. Meaning, Sasuke has calmed down visibly and became very easy to reason with.

Trust me, even in your darker / vulnerable moments, your eyes will reflect your true feelings to the person you love. You cannot be stubborn. 

Now did it stop here?? Nope, it happened again in the Final Valley of the End battle too.

Sasuke is usually confident of his Sharingan (rightfully so) and likes to flaunt his eyes just like Madara. He was very sure that he was going to win.

While Sasuke had a clear resolve to kill Naruto when he was showing his back, but the moment he comes close with those Blue Eyes, his heart even pounded strongly (in the anime), and lost the resolve completely which made his Sharingan retract itself unconsciously. Meaning, his eyes betrayed him.

It’s funny that not even a minute ago he was very proud of his Visual Prowess as an Uchiha and his victory is inevitable but the moment he saw those Blue eyes, he just lost. You think I am again exaggerating?. Nope!!!

Oh Dear!!! This doesn’t get more romantic than this. An inescapable gaze from those blue eyes he loved all along.

Sasuke!! What happened to your proud Uchiha eyes?. You just stole Chakra from Naruto, isn’t it? Hints like these are really heartwarming, to be honest.

My entire point is, every character from every arc hypes up Sharingan starting from Zabuza, Haku, Rock Lee, Orochimaru, Kabuto, Kurama and many more, but why put a weakness for Naruto’s eyes? 

What I really loved exploring is the way Sasuke totally expressed everything through his eyes in Episode 478.

Sasuke shows his vulnerability towards Naruto with just his eyes. These are not something you show to everyone. Even when Itachi departed finally after releasing Edo Tensei, Sasuke looked sad, shocked and pained but didn’t cry. He accepted the reality of it. The last time when we saw him crying, it was after knowing the truth of Itachi, facing towards the beach and was weeping unbearably because there was no one else for him in this world. But this time, he is next to the person whom he feels truly loved and he doesn’t mind showing it with his eyes.

Well, on multiple rewatches, the clues for their love was already dropped in the 1st Valley of the End fight itself. Sasuke already lost his resolve to kill by balling his chidori fist rather than ramming through his chest. So the feelings inside the bubble are their honest emotions like always.

The pain on the verge of their separation inside the white bubble is clearly evident from their eyes even in their monstrous form. Even in the manga it was mentioned that ‘I can’t turn my back  Vs  I am not letting you go’

But what they really wanted to be from their childhood was this.

Look at Sasuke, how entranced he was on looking at that innocent boy. Now put yourself at Sasuke’s mind. Will you ever look at your friend like that??? Now, they are probably just 7 here, am not romanticizing. But Sasuke looks enthralled innocently.

But somehow, their paths separated them for who knows how long. But the pain in both their eyes is unbearable. Even the databook, mentioned that separating from Naruto is like ripping half of his body. Well, this proves it.

Now, if they really wanted to portray this as friendship, they never should have given Eye symbolism at all. They should have gone with ‘I was always jealous of you’ thing, like they portrayed in that filler episode 450.I would’ve gladly accepted it as friendship. Because that’s how friends behave when they are jealous and I wasn’t feeling any romance at all. There’s no need of that lengthy monologue on how he was always looking at Naruto and felt pain.

I am telling you, I won’t be looking at my friend like this. 

Unconscious closeness

Remember, I’ve written in the beginning of the post that Sasuke enjoys the warmth from Naruto. Meaning, he likes that person’s presence unconsciously and want to be near him. Sasuke proved this many times.

This is the most intense and confusing section I have to dissect for this post. But it’s the most entertaining nonetheless, atleast for me.

Starting from the Land of the Waves arc, here Sasuke is speed walking to match up with Naruto.

Initially I thought, he is trying to be competitive. But instead of walking ahead of Naruto to show who is faster, he just walks beside him. I find this really hilarious and adorable. This just shows Sasuke likes Naruto’s presence so much so that he wants to walk beside him.

Now many SS shippers tries to make this scene for themselves, when it is clearly not.

If you notice Sasuke in the Bell Training, he compares his strength difference with Kakashi and determines to get stronger. Same with Might Guy, he compares Might Guy’s speed with his own Sensei. Meaning, he respects people with strength. Naturally, he should’ve asked her and Sakura would have given him tips wholeheartedly. Because she really succeeded in that training.

Why bother to ask a deadlast?

The only reason I could find is that he wants to befriend him in his own stubborn way. But Poor Soul!!! He didn’t get the tips anyway. LOL. But despite getting the short end of the stick, he never hold it against him. Just like he never held anything against Naruto when he tied him up in Episode 3. All he did was just flaunt how he escaped.

Pretty cool for a 12 year old kid. Because If I were Sasuke, I would hold it for sure.

Once again Sasuke proves how he can care Naruto in his own adorable way.

He could’ve said ‘I am going to train too” if he really intended to train. There is no need to say ‘Going for a Walk’ and ask Naruto about breakfast. This explains that Sasuke simply missed the boy’s prolonged absence and reached out to him in his own cute way.

Now all these doesn’t mean he was in love with him. It’s just a childish attraction which makes him act like that involuntarily.

I just added this GIF to compare with the next scene.

Now Shikamaru falling on Naruto in an unconventional way doesn’t look anywhere romantic. Instead it’s the opposite. They are pretty friendly here.

But Sasuke’s approach to Naruto does looks undeniably sensual and I couldn’t deny the sexual tension that brings with it. (Even when I watched it for the first time having no idea of shipping anyone, I lowkey got creeped and thought, ‘Sasuke!! What have you become? ’)

This scene is something even I can’t dissect. Because honestly I don’t know. Sasuke is a person who never appreciates physical touches nor does he initiates either.

I get this crazy femme fatale vibe when seeing Sasuke with his sexy costume landing at a speed of lightning with his hands wrapped around Naruto and taunting near his ear about what was he doing there? The only reason I could think of is that maybe he missed him for 3 years which made him go unconsciously so close near Naruto. It’s also funny that he could’ve shoved his sword into Naruto’s heart before landing and no one could’ve batted an eyelid.

Damn you, Kishimoto!!! Is this scene absolutely necessary??? What are you trying to convey? Why do you give Sasuke, a sexualized aura?? I understand you love this character so much and you want this character to be desirable among women. Yeah, you succeeded by making Karin behave like a woman in heat, the moment they met. But instead of letting her get close to him, you made Sasuke to say ‘You... Don’t get so close’ whereas with Naruto, you made Sasuke to go willingly touch him in a half hugging stance. Geez!!!

Here comes the most interesting part in this section.

It may seem irrelevant at the beginning but trust me, it will make sense later.

Before that, I would like to appreciate the creator and especially the anime team to bring the battle sequence so lively and different in its own way. If you notice the purpose of every battle that happened in Naruto series, each carries it own meaning and deliberately distinguished. How you ask?

The fight between Deidara vs Sasuke.

Logically Deidara should be dead in the Gaara retrieval arc itself. There is no point for him to chase Sasuke who killed Orochimaru to whom Deidara had nothing to do with. It didn’t impact the story in any way. But the purpose of that battle is to show how far Sasuke has grown up in those 3 years. The way he can use his Sharingan to analyze his enemies abilities and weakness so quickly and take multiple steps ahead, the way he can use Genjutsu and other incredible jutsus in his arsenal were a visual treat.

Now, let’s analyze Sasuke’s arsenal of Jutsus. He can do Teleportation Jutsu, a decent Genjutsu, Chidori Senbon (needles), Raikiri (Chidori sword which ranges to 5 metres), Chidori Nagash (Chidori from his whole body), Transformation Jutsu, Substitution Jutsu Shuriken Jutsu with wire works, Kirin, Gokakyu No jutsu, Sword fighting, basic Hand-to-Hand fighting (I’ve never seen him do it ever since the Chunin Exams with Orochimaru), Archery fighting, Susanoo, Amaterasu and all the Rinnegan abilities.

Based on the jutsus he learned so far and how he applies in every battle, it all confirms two things:

Sasuke is a Medium-Long Range Shinobi

Sasuke’s battles are usually based on his Cleverness

Let’s go for Naruto. He can do Teleportation Jutsu, Sexy Jutsu, Harem no jutsu, Rasengan, Rasen Shuriken, Oodama Rasengan, Biju Dama, Tailed Beast Mode, Kage Bunshin No jutsu, Sage mode jutsu, Frog Kumite, Better Hand-to-Hand combat skills (better than Sasuke), Transformation Jutsu, Substitution Jutsu and all his Six path abilities.

Compared to Sasuke, Naruto’s jutsu variety is very less. But for every 4 punches from Sasuke equals 1 powerful punch from Naruto. Analyzing all of them,

Naruto is a Close-Range Shinobi except for his Rasen Shuriken

Naruto’s battles are usually based on his Jutsu Timing and Unpredictability

Now, Let’s rewind back to 3 years and look at the 1st Valley of the End battle. That battle was cleverly choreographed which carried very intense emotional baggage. Things we never knew about those boys until then were openly admitted and acknowledged. That is, for Sasuke, Naruto became his closest friend. For Naruto, he always wanted to be Sasuke’s friend way back when he was 6 or 7. For both, they already have some unexplainable bond by just looking at each other and smiling secretly.

The theme of that battle started as Am going on my own path vs I can’t allow you to tread on that dangerous path and ended up with I want to break our bond vs I don’t want to.

Now, this posture represents, Naruto is the one who pursues Sasuke to stop him from whatever he was about to do. Meaning, Naruto is the one who is constantly reaching out and Sasuke as usual kicks him out violently, that is he is pushing him away. That’s the essence of the whole battle.

Considering all the battles in the Naruto universe, I categorize them as follows:

Best Calculated (and emotional) battle - Itachi vs Sasuke

Best Hand-to-Hand combat - Kakashi vs Obito (what a fight it was!!!)

Best Mega Powered Up battle - Hashirama vs Madara

Best Emotional battle - Naruto vs Sasuke (1st valley of the end)

Best Unpredictable/Entertaining battle - Naruto vs Pain

Despite having all the potential to fulfill the above categories, The Final Valley of the End Battle never bested in any of them.

As analyzed before, the boys have grown up to greater heights. I expected a battle between Cleverness of Sasuke Vs Unpredictability of Naruto

But what I observed was something so intense. That is Unintentional closeness.

This battle symbolizes one thing: I am going to kill you to get lonely vs I won’t let you kill me because you will be alone.

Being a long range fighter, I expected Sasuke to go for this.

If you have to kill someone you love, it is best to keep your distance. Sasuke knows this full well when he battled with Itachi. Except for some Sword fighting, he maintained a certain distance to fight Itachi throughout, until the very end.

But when fighting Naruto, all I got was this.

That’s when I finally understood that this posture means, the fight is very personal. Which means, Sasuke or Naruto won’t be fighting by sitting on top of each other with their enemies or anyone else. That’s just between them alone.  

There was no analysis or cleverness from Sasuke’s side or any Unpredictability from Naruto. It was very bland and Sasuke looked clueless throughout the fight.

It started with some boxing style combat, including stealing hand seals and then some power punches. Very quickly it propels to Susanoo vs Tailed Beast mode. I expected some Hashirama vs Madara level power battle.

But all we saw there was this.

I mean, Come on!!! Man. Even the most Crazy and openly Romantic Uchiha, Madara himself never fought like this in Susanoo with Hashirama (Though Madara must be thinking ‘Damn Hashirama! I should’ve tried this with you’. LOL). Those mega battles carried variety of tactics.

Another thing I noticed was, Sasuke is the one who does lots of talking and constantly pursuing Naruto. Whereas Naruto is uncharacteristically quiet for the most part. 

And finally it leads to this.

Sasuke was unconsciously getting closer and closer to Naruto which is the opposite of what he wants to do. Because of that very closeness, he couldn’t look at his eyes with his Sharingan and eventually got an uppercut. It’s like Sasuke was screaming, ‘Hate me’ and Naruto was like ‘Keep talking’.

Every jutsu he had for attacking from a long-range were forgotten. He didn’t even try to put Naruto under Genjutsu. I mean with his Rinnegan, he was capable of putting all the 9 Tailed Beasts into a powerful Genjutsu. Why didn’t he try that with Naruto? There was no Chidori Stream or Lightning Blade.

I can imagine Naruto doing close range fights with someone or even sitting on top of the enemy. Example, part I, Naruto head bumped Gaara. He was literally fighting with his Shadow Clones against a Monster so he had to get closer. Naruto monstrously punching Deidara not knowing the fact that it was a clay clone.

But Sasuke??? Can you imagine Sasuke sitting on top of the enemy and punching to pulp??? No way. Not a chance.!!!

In one way or other way, Sasuke was always in the close proximity with Naruto throughout the battle and touching each other which is totally uncharacteristic of him when compared to his other battles.

Every battle he ever fought was always at a distance which is the clear representation of his own character. He is calculative, analytical, precise and moves fluidly with a flair like a true Ninja unlike Naruto who is always reckless, noisy, powerful and clumsy. 

Sasuke is someone who never lets his emotions get ahead in the battle, unlike Naruto. This is evident from the War when he was yelling at Naruto to stop worrying about Hokage as they were Edo Tensei who can regenerate. Even when fighting with Itachi, he calculated every move and attacked Itachi without any emotions except at the very end. Sasuke in this final battle forgot who he was and telling us viewers “Am just gonna get closer to Naruto and punch him hard”.

In short, Sasuke completely forgot all his battle tactics he had with Itachi and let his emotions get ahead of his cleverness and got himself closer to Naruto which eventually ended up weakening his resolve to kill him. This is what I meant by Unintentional Closeness.

Anyways, what I understood was, the creator didn’t put all this by without any meaning. It’s all very deliberate and drawn carefully.

Moving onto the final and the most defining moments of SNS.

When I watched this scene for the first time, I can’t comprehend the exact meaning. And I forgot about this later because of my excitement to know what happens next. But what I understood on my rewatch is that, the feelings exchanged here is very pure and innocent but distressing.

Sasuke already lost his resolve to kill by not ramming Naruto with Chidori instead balled up his fist. So he is not contemplating whether or not to kill Naruto.

Sasuke made every effort to leave Naruto and succeeded in it too. But somehow, accidentally, when faced with a person whom he considers so precious in such a close proximity, despite have a stinging pain in his arm, he is feeling the warmth he once felt. He just wants that warmth to prolong for some more time and he can’t able to evade it. So he totally gave in to that desire and feeling it unconsciously. Sasuke always watched Naruto (unbeknownst to him) and felt warmth, relief and weakness. This scene is the symbolic and innocent representation of all those feelings when he saw Naruto and he is exeriencing it for the final time. 

Does this means, does Sasuke wants to kiss him? No.

But every symbolism of that being happening is there. It’s just all open to interpretations. The creator could show us how Sasuke fell on his knees and staring at Naruto intently but never intended to show when he got up and left. I don’t understand this twisted mind of the creator.

Added to that, Sasuke was about to say ‘Naruto, I....’ God only knows what he was about to say. But every possibility of Sasuke confessing and kissing is there.

I know the creator cannot approach this directly considering the situations he worked under. But is there any necessity for such an intense scene? Even the anime creators loved this scene and made their own version of making Naruto’s eyes wide open and even more closer.

I wont be watching my friend or sister like that. 

That explains all the way back to this fated accidental scene.

There is nothing special about this scene. It’s all very clear that the kiss was accidental. It was really funny. But my point is why Sasuke never beat him to pulp or even push Naruto away like he did with Sakura and Karin? Why did he stood up for Naruto before Sakura? Why did he let go off Naruto even though he tied him up? Too many leeway for a single person in a single episode. And the most important part is, Sasuke thought it was intentional and remembers the taste. LOL.

Does this means he enjoyed the kiss? Not at all.

Most probably he was shocked to see Naruto in such a close proximity after seeing him from a distance for all those years. And he enjoys this as just another prank from Naruto in his own innocent way. But he won’t mind getting another one from Naruto either.

So, to conclude

I believe I made this post from an objective standpoint without making crazy theories and I don’t have to..... since canonical resources were plenty. Obviously my own bias will also be there which is unavoidable. But I tried to question the creative choices of why this scene even exist in the first place many times. Because those are the scenes which made the most impact inside me.

My first watch of Naruto gave me the benefit of doubt that ‘Are they in love? Nah... They are friends. Maybe I am just overthinking...  but why does it feel different??’ and that too only after finishing episode 478. After rewatching it again and again, it only consolidated my view.

For Sasuke, his worldly ties are pretty thin and runny. He was always a loner from the beginning even when he had his family. He never bothered to make any friends nor did anyone tried to befriend him. He was pretty close to his family especially Itachi. When he lost everything, somehow he got attracted innocently to Naruto and started to like him. But beyond Naruto he never bothered to add anyone in his heart. He considered Kakashi and Sakura were like his acquaintances who helped him a lot and that’s all.

Then after using Orochimaru, he gathered some high skilled shinobi for killing Itachi. But he made it clear that there don’t need to be any understanding but just co-operation would be enough. But along his way, he just abandoned Jugo, Suigetsu somewhere. He openly said to Karin that she is nothing but a burden to him. When his hatred reached upto a maximum boiling point, he didn’t even hesitate to kill Karin, Kakashi or Sakura. But the moment Naruto appears he calmed down. The proof? He was shocked to see Naruto at first. Then Naruto calls, ‘Sasuke!!!’, to which Sasuke responds with, ‘What?’. Despite becoming a maniac, he could find it in his heart to listen to Naruto.

It took an Edo Tenseified Itachi to bring him some rationality to question his beliefs about destroying Konoha. When Jugo and Suigetsu appear again, he casually asked them, ‘What do you want with me at this point?’, I mean, Come On, Man. LOL.  Even during the war arc, when things were about to blast off he only cared about Jugo (who helped him many times, so understandable) and Naruto (Geez!!! LOL).

Even after their final battle, the anime went so far as to create a scene where they were alone in a bright Konoha. But Sasuke looked very peaceful and listening to Naruto intently. When Naruto freaks out about Infinite Tsukuyomi, he casually laughs off and says ‘you still care about the world’. Meaning, he is happy there spending time alone with the person he loves. Doesn’t give a rat’s ass about missing anyone else. (How romantic!!!). Honestly, Sasuke wouldn’t mind if they were to stay that way forever. He would gladly listen to Naruto all day.  But when Naruto disappears he freaks out and starting to make up his mind about joining his brother.

It’s very clear that the people he adores are Itachi and Naruto. Towards Itachi, it’s super understandable, because he is his own brother. But Naruto??? Why should the creator go so far as to make Sasuke adores Naruto even after breaking up with him?

And why make Sasuke possessive about Naruto’s life? When Obito was about to kill Naruto with that Black Orbs, Sasuke blocked him and said ‘You are not the One to sever the past, I am’. I understand the logic behind Sasuke’s possessiveness on Itachi’s life because he destroyed his family, childhood and even Itachi wants Sasuke to be the one to kill him. But why possessive on Naruto? He is not related to him by blood. Naruto never did anything wrong to Sasuke to warrant any hate either. You will become possessive on something only when you truly hate it or wholeheartedly love it. There is no middle ground. My point is why put Naruto here at all in the first place?? Believe me, If Sasuke never paid attention to Naruto in the War arc, I would be the first person to jump out of this ship. 

Just to give you a basic example, Imagine you are living in a place far away from your family, friends and that loveable person. When Corona hits everywhere and forced Lockdown to travel outside the city, and the situation is getting worse day by day. Whom would you desperately reach out first? You would reach the person whom you are connected well in your family and that loved one. You will prioritize your friends only later. This is the Universal truth. Sasuke was seen showing that same instinct in the War arc towards Naruto whom he was not related by blood. And you all just want me to believe Sasuke sees him as just a friend?? Give me a break!!!

If all those traits I’ve mentioned above have been avoided to a greater extent, I would be happy to believe that they are friends. If not all, at the very least delegate some of the tropes to other people or share some of the tropes with other people along with Naruto. But dumping it all on Naruto alone makes me only curious and incredibly romantic too. 

It’s no wonder, Naruto would go so far as to reach out Sasuke even at the expense of his life.

Oh, Did I forget about the cutest and most exclusive trope to SNS?

U-SU-RA-TON-KA-CHI, the most personal word which carries its own meaning and is only for Naruto. So funny that Sasuke has to spend a certain amount of energy to call Naruto using a 6 syllabic word rather than NA-RU-TO, a 3 syllabic word which is much easier.

Disclaimer: This post constituted everything from from Chapter 1 to 699 or Episode 1 to 135 (part 1) + Episode 1 to 479 (Shippuden) excluding fillers. Though Sasuke shinden novel was made into anime, I don’t want to consider that here. As much as I loved the prologue in that novel, I still don’t want to cite that here, as I consider everything after 699 is $$$$ making bullshit.

FUN FACT:

If you put yourself in any character in the Naruto Universe except for Naruto, and ask them, ‘What do you think about Sasuke?’. You know the answer from Sakura, she will say ‘Sasuke-Kun looks very cool and acts aloof, that’s why I love him’. Kakashi will say ‘My favorite student’. And all the other people will say somewhat similar, ‘He is an excellent Shinobi who belongs to the proud Uchiha clan and Naruto’s rival’

But Naruto will be the only person to say this.

“Lot of fun to be around” ....... LOLLLLL.

Me: No, Naruto!!! Clearly not. No one in your universe can have fun with him except you. Go and Ask Sai, Team Taka or your own Team 7. They adore him for being Cool and Talented. But Fun is not the word that equates with Sasuke unless there is no You, Naruto.

Thanks for reading :-D

[allisonlol]

green tea and rosehip tea with jouno please please!!

a/n: i got a bunch of jouno reqs (which i love very much) so i’ll just be combining them into one post here!!

rosehip tea; how romantic are they? how do they show affection?

jouno never considered himself to be romantic at all before he met you

but, unfortunately for him, you bring out his softer side

in public, it’s very unlikely he’ll be affectionate towards you

he does have a reputation to uphold, after all

in private it’s a whole different story

can become very romantic if he feels so inclined to be

^will lightly flirt and tease you just to see your reaction

yes, jouno is the type of person who shows affection by bullying you 🙄 the more bothered you get, the better

try to retaliate in any way and he’ll simply mock you with a smile

this isn’t the only way he shows affection, however. he’s always down for innocent physical intimicy as well

really loves to hold your hand?? whenever you’re in reach, jouno will expectantly offer his hand out to you (and you BETTER take it)

plays with your fingers a lot too. if he’s bored, he’ll just start fidgeting with them or tracing shapes on your palm

jouno also shows affection by doing acts of service for you

if you’re too busy with work or whatnot, he’ll make dinner for you and complete any other chores or tasks that needed to be done 

won’t even mention to you that he’s done them 

^you’ll go to wash the dishes and see that they’ve already been finished?? 

idk why imagining jouno doing everyday household tasks is adorable, but it is 

green tea; how do they comfort their s/o?

just a fair warning that this man isn’t the best at comforting

i’d like to believe that he feels some level of empathy so, for the sake of this post, let’s act like he does 

if jouno ever saw you upset, the first thing he’d have to do is supress the rage directed towards whatever it was that made you sad in the first place

if it was a person? best believe he’d go kill them on the spot

jouno truly does try his hardest to cheer you up when you’re feeling down

it’s also one of the only times you’ll actually see him worried 

gently pulls you towards him and asks if you want to talk about what’s bothering you

you’ll end up curling up in his lap and venting about your problems while jouno plays with your hair and offers advice when he can

usually that advice is just “i’ll hurt them for you”

to which you have to reply: “no jouno, they’re my parents 😐”

his sarcastic comments and insults towards whatever made you upset is good for making you laugh tho

coffee; do they get jealous easily? how do they show it?

omg ok so

he’ll never admit it out loud, but jouno can be a very jealous person

^not to the point where it’s crazy overbearing or anything; he just doesn’t like when you talk to certain people for longer than you should

mainly tecchou lmao

all of you work together so interaction with tecchou is going to be inevitable; doesn’t mean jouno’s happy about it tho

once he’s jealous it becomes very obvious

^goes unnaturally quiet while maintaining a very serious & irritated expression

literally: 😑

if anyone tries to talk to him during these times he’ll snap at them (with more bite than usual)

has to practice a lot of self restraint to stop himself from drawing his sword and stabbing it through the chest of the person you’re talking to 

instead, he’ll approach to stand by your side and say something like “y/n, you should come with me. your assistance is needed ☺️💢” 

once he gets you away from the person (aka usually tecchou) he won’t say anything about what transpired so you’ll have to confront him about it 

“soooo jouno, what was that all about??”

this mf will deny EVERYTHING

“i’m not so sure of what you’re talking about y/n. i’ve never been jealous in my entire life...😌”

yea mhm ok 

earl grey tea; how did they court their s/o?

you were the one who had to confess first, i’m sorry 😶

jouno was very well aware of the moment you liked him

at first he probably thought you had a heart condition by the way your heart rate would rapidly increase whenever he was near

but jouno’s a smart cookie and figured out pretty quickly that it only happened when you were aware of his presence

used this to his advantage for awhile simply to torment you

went out of his way to tease you and lean close while doing so just to hear how frantic and erratic your pulse got

at first you thought that was just jouno being his usual sadistic self (and it was) but then you started to suspect that maybe it was possible he liked you back??

it’s funny because, at first, jouno was only teasing you to take advantage of the fact that he knew you liked him

but over time he slowly started to take a liking to you as well due to this

this man PANICKED when he realized he was starting to catch feelings

not that you’d be able to tell, since he still appeared so nonchalant on the surface 

since he always went out of his way to tease you & be in your presence, you took this as an opportunity to confess your feelings since it was getting almost unbearable at this point

knowing jouno, you didn’t expect him to actually ACCEPT your confession

little did you know, this was all part of jouno’s scheme to make you confess to him?? smh

very ironic how out of touch you were with his feelings while the rest of the hunting dogs were busy shipping the two of you-

milk tea; what are their kisses like?

surprisingly soft!!

his kisses are almost always very gentle and uncharacteristically sweet

will lightly hold your face in both his hands before leaning down to softly press his lips to yours

hhjdshjhjhhhhhh i’m malfunctioning

gives you quick kisses on the cheek a lot too

^does this as a way to express “i love you” or simply as a greeting when he sees you after awhile

also a fan of inuit kisses!! where you rub the tip of your nose against the other’s 

his kisses become slightly more aggresive during make-out sessions or...etc 

in these instances, he kisses you much more deeply while keeping a hand on your jaw so you can’t pull away 

[swanlake1998]

Article: The Unbearable Whiteness of Ballet

Date: April 22, 2021

By: Chloe Angyal

In an exclusive excerpt from her new book Turning Pointe, contributing editor Chloe Angyal lays out the ways that white supremacy is embedded in ballet's most basic foundations.

Wilmara Manuel and her 11-year-old daughter, Sasha, were at the world finals of a ballet competition, the Youth America Grand Prix, in 2015 when it happened. Shortly before the competition began, the young dancers were on the performance stage with their parents, warming up and preparing to dance the solos they’d been rehearsing for months.

As Wilmara, who is Black and originally from Haiti, and Sasha, who is biracial, stood there, a young white dancer looked around the stage, checking out the competition. “And her eyes land on Sasha,” Wilmara remembers, “and I saw her look [Sasha] up and down, and then look at her mom.

“And her mom said, ‘Don’t worry. They’re never really good anyway.’ ”

Wilmara did her best to contain her shock. Sasha didn’t hear what the white mom had said, and Wilmara wasn’t about to tell her, because “that’s not the thing I want to discuss 10 minutes before she takes the stage.” But Sasha could sense that something was amiss. “Just the look on my face, she was like, ‘What? What happened? What did she say?’ ” Wilmara brushed her daughter off.

Don’t worry. They’re never really good anyway. An entire worldview of white resentment of Black progress and excellence passed quietly from mother to child in just seven words.

That white mother could not fathom that Sasha, a biracial child with a Black mother, might be really good—as in very good, or truly good—at a traditionally white art form at which her child was presumably also quite proficient. She could not imagine that Sasha might deserve to be at that competition, might have qualified on her merit—her talent and skill and persistence—rather than because of what she might consider a misguided or even unjust attempt to diversify ballet by lowering standards. They’re not really good, but they are allowed to be here. In this space that is rightfully yours, in this art form that is rightfully yours. They’re never as good as the white girls, a sweeping generalization that grants no individuality, no humanity, to any nonwhite dancer. They’re all the same, and they never deserve to be here. But don’t worry. Your excellence is a given. You belong here, while their presence is conditional or even ill-gotten.

A few minutes later, Sasha took the stage and performed her solo. She ended up placing ahead of that white dancer.

From then on, Wilmara traveled with Sasha to every competition, paying the additional travel costs to make sure that, if something like that ever happened again, she’d be there to support her daughter.

“That has stuck with me,” she says. “And it’s one of the reasons I make the sacrifice and I go with her everywhere. Even if there are others going, I feel like I need to be around should comments like that pop up. I just don’t feel like I can take that chance, you know? And what cracks me up is that . . . she doesn’t even look as dark as I do, which makes me feel like, ‘Oh my God, if you were darker, like, what else?’ ”

Sasha grew up in a suburb of Indianapolis and is now 16. She trains at the Royal Ballet School in London, an exclusive training ground that serves as a feeder school for the Royal Ballet. It’s widely acknowledged to be one of the best ballet schools in the world.

Wilmara says that people often express their surprise at the quality of Sasha’s training and technique. “Oh wow, you’re really good,” Wilmara says by way of example. “Where do you train? Have you been dancing for a long time?” She says that while she tries to give these white people the benefit of the doubt, she knows what they usually mean, and she’d prefer they just come out and say it: “I’m surprised you’re that good. You’re Black and you’re dancing and you’re good.”

Now that Sasha is a little older, Wilmara talks to her about the racist assumptions embedded in those surprised comments. “You know she’s asking because she doesn’t think a person of your color can do this,” she’s told Sasha, who now “gets it when she hears that tone of voice.”

And, she says, she’s been frank with her daughter about the kind of resistance she should expect from the overwhelmingly white ballet establishment if she keeps excelling—which she shows every sign of doing.

It’s moms who do the bulk of the work of ballet parenting: the sewing of costumes, the schedule keeping for rehearsals and recitals. And when you’re a ballet mom to a dancer of color, there’s an even higher price to pay.

“Not everybody’s gonna be thrilled,” Wilmara says, paraphrasing her conversations with Sasha. “Even if you’re not a dancer of color, it’s cutthroat. And on top of that, you are a dancer of color, and so that poses another threat in some ways. So you have to be mindful of your things and what you are doing, and know what things are okay, and [pay attention to] when you are uncomfortable.”

This emotional labor, the work of helping young dancers understand what “that tone of voice” means and why it’s being used—or the work of deciding whether to tell your child about the racist remark you just overheard or absorb it yourself and shield them from it—is a part of parenting not demanded of mothers of white dancers.

Then there’s the payment in time and money required of Wilmara to make sure that Sasha’s ballet experience is as fair and worry-free as possible. Once, at a competition, Wilmara forgot to color in the “nude” pale pink straps on one of Sasha’s competition costumes. Wilmara scrambled to find brown foundation because none of the vendors at the competition had a leotard in Sasha’s skin color.

“Come on, people, you are here,” Wilmara remembers thinking. “There may not be that many [dancers of color], but they are all here and you should be able to bring various shades of nude leos.”

Succeeding in ballet, or even just surviving, requires extra talent, extra work, extra resilience, and extra sacrifices from dancers of color, especially Black and brown dancers, and their parents. White ballet moms might have to talk to their white daughters about how cutthroat ballet is. But they don’t need to issue additional warnings about how a white girl’s success will be received by that cutthroat culture, because almost all the successful girls and women in ballet are white.

“They’ve had to grow up a lot faster,” Wilmara says of Black and brown ballet dancers. “I think the ballet world makes you grow up a lot faster, but on top of that,” there are the “extra hurdles that other dancers don’t have to think about.” There are the overtly racist comments backstage before a performance and the subtly racist “compliments” after. There is time spent frantically searching for the right leotard or adapting the default pink leotard. There is the knowledge, internalized first by parents and then by their kids, that if you make it over all those hurdles your success will be viewed with suspicion and resentment—that ballet does not have a “diversity” problem; it has a white supremacy problem.

“Our kids,” Wilmara says, “are thinking about this and thinking about it early on.”

The organizing principle of ballet—of training, of performance, of making a ballet body—is control. Control of your rigid torso while your foot shoots upward from the hip in a battement. Control of a silent and compliant class of otherwise giggly 9-year-old girls. “The traditional and classical Europeanist aesthetic for the dancing body is dominated and ruled by the erect spine,” wrote dance scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild in her landmark book The Black Dancing Body. “Verticality is a prime value, with the torso held erect, knees straight, body in vertical alignment. . . . The torso is held still.”

It all demands control. Control of your smiling face as your feet scream in your pointe shoes at the end of a long pas de deux. Control of your weight, of your turnout, of your stretched and strengthened feet that now arch into a shape no ordinary foot can make. “The ballet audience, attuned and habituated to view control as a prime value, applaud its display and are embarrassed when it isn’t fulfilled,” Gottschild wrote.

Discipline, order, adherence to strict and unquestioned rules. That’s what ballet is. When Gottschild asked Seán Curran, a white dancer and choreographer who performed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, what he pictured when he thought of white dance or white dancing bodies, he said, “Upright. . . . For some reason, ‘proper’ stuck in the head a bit, something that is built and made and constructed rather than is free or flows.” A body that is rigid, obedient, and disciplined, remade from something natural and unruly into something refined and well behaved. Proper. “Whiteness,” Curran said, “values precision and unison.”

Curran’s assessment identifies a central underlying prejudice of white supremacy: the belief that people of color, and their bodies, are wild. Uncivilized, animalistic, subhuman. That white people—who, by contrast, are assumed to be organized and civilized—have both a right and a responsibility to tame that which is untamed and impose order, precision, and unison on it. To suppress and control that which is savage; to press it into something that approaches whiteness but will never be truly white and thus never truly equal.

This is the logic that underpinned white colonization and American slavery. It is also the logic that makes racial segregation possible: that which is pure and organized must be kept separate from that which is profane and undisciplined. And central to this worldview is the idea that the work of white supremacy is unending, not because white supremacy is flawed, but because the very people it seeks to suppress are inherently inferior, naturally incapable of complying. Because of some inborn lack—of will, of understanding, of discipline—people of color will never fully obey, never properly assimilate, never be redeemed by whiteness. In this way, white supremacy perpetuates itself, justifying both its worldview and the permanent need for its existence.

It’s little wonder, then, that ballet—with its fixation on control, discipline, and uprightness—wraps itself so neatly around whiteness. It makes sense that white Americans, reared on the belief that whiteness is synonymous with order and refinement, also believe that people of color have no place, or a limited place, or a conditional place, in classical ballet.

Furthermore, it is easy to see how the ideal ballet body—so controlled, so upright—is everything that white supremacy imagines a Black body is not. And because of deeply ingrained American cultural associations with musculature, loose movement, brute force, and untamed sexuality, the Black body is believed to be everything a ballet body is not permitted to be.

“When we talk about the ballerina,” says Theresa Ruth Howard, a former dancer and a teacher, diversity strategist, and the founder and curator of the digital ballet history archive Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet (MoBBallet), “we’re talking about the ideal, our stereotype of the desirable woman, and that is reserved for white women.”

Howard has made a career of helping the people who run ballet companies and schools to examine their ideas about what makes for a “good” ballet body, asking them to question their biases about the inherent fitness of white bodies and unfitness of other bodies, especially Black bodies. She says that long-standing racist tropes about Black women’s bodies make Blackness and ballerinas seem antithetical.

“You have the trope of either the jezebel, the mammy, or the workhorse of the Black woman,” which are incompatible with desirability, fragility, and sexual purity, the ideal of white womanhood at the heart of the ballerina’s appeal.

“She’s desired. It’s the epitome of beauty, of grace, of elegance, and these are not adjectives that are assigned to Black women,” Howard says. “Especially not darker-skinned Black women. This is why the closer you look to the white European aesthetic as a Black woman, the better chance you have at occupying that role. Especially at a higher level.”

Despite the long tradition of Latin American dancers carving out successful professional careers in the U.S. and the enormous success of Misty Copeland—a light-skinned Black dancer whose ascent to the pinnacle of American ballet was a watershed moment for Black dancers and audiences alike—the archetypal ballerina is still a pale-skinned white woman with slender limbs, negligible breasts and hips, and long, sleek hair. In the American cultural imagination, the ballerina is still white.

George Balanchine famously said that “ballet is woman,” but that’s not the whole truth. Ballet is white woman, or, perhaps more precisely, white womanhood. Ballet is a stronghold of white womanhood, a place where whiteness is the default and white femininity reigns supreme.

Excerpted from Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet from Itself by Chloe Angyal. Copyright © 2021. Available from Bold Type Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.