#and maybe some contradiction

[frog-with-no-therapy]

That villain scientist peter parker au won't leave my head

Worst of all is that it's evolving to something more, much more, and there are some twists?? And character development?? Found family that may end up tragically??

Also somehow Felicia Hardy, Johnny Storm, and Miles Morales become something of a main characters themselves in this, and their interaction with peter is sweet, funny, a bit tragic, and found family vibes over all

And listen I love this a lot but I also know that if I let this be any deeper I may start taking things into my own hands, and I absolutely can't afford nor the time nor the effort for that so please for the love of god someone take this off my hand and write something for it please

[bonefall]

I personally like Thunder's prosthetic. Explained it to my friend (who does use a mobility device, a cane and wheelchair, and listens to me rant and infodump about BB) and they agreed, it's important to know that not every person needs what someone wants to give them. It's another example of "bad ableist person does a thing that hurts a disabled person because they are bad and ableist".

Clear Sky got Jagged Peak killed and would have killed Sunlit Frost! He would absolutely force his disabled son to be "normal" and present it like a privilege. "I wouldn't do this for anyone else, it's special, why don't you want to be helped?"

Thunder Storm should toss it in Clear Sky's face. (I would say toss it into the river but we do not pollute waterways in this house)

Thank you for telling me this, and tell your friend I'm thanking them too! If they have anything else to add please forward what they have to say

Since BB!DOTC tackles some of the heaviest topics in the entire series because its canon equivalent is so dark, I think very carefully about what I do here and how I show it. I take feedback on its sensitive aspects very seriously. If I'm understanding the criticism properly, it's that I should avoid stigmatizing prosthetics by making sure Thunder Storm's not the only one with it-- which he's not! And I'll add even more.

I don't want to avoid something only because it's uncomfortable if the topic is important, and my portrayal is respectful. Ableism IS uncomfortable! There are some situations where a prosthetic is not wanted! I think the rejection of this particular one is both a good opportunity to show a type of ableism and ALSO is very fitting for the characters.

In BB!Clear Sky's mind, the villain, he's fixing an old mistake. He can't admit that he got Jagged Peak killed or take REAL accountability for it (though he will, occasionally, apologize insincerely), but deep in his bones, he knows what he did was cruel. He'll never tell anyone this because he doesn't really cognate it himself, but Thunder Storm NEEDS to take his gift.

If Thunder doesn't take it, it blows a hole in his newest story. You see, throwing Jagged Peak out was All That Could Have Been Done back then. It was a Tragedy and he simply Made A Hard Choice. He regrets it very much, But You Have To Understand.

But now? Now? Well, behold. Look at what he's accomplished since the tragic death of his little brother. His cats are well-fed, cared for, and stable enough to make such incredible advancements. If only Jagged Peak had been able to hold on longer, if only he could be here now, I could fix him.

Just like I can (MAKE YOU JUST LIKE ME) fix you.

"Everything I've ever done is for Jagged Peak. For Fluttering Wing. For you." Thunder Sky is SPECIAL, but if he rejects any gift, tries to turn down the "privileges" offered to him, in an instant that becomes ungratefulness and arrogance. He both forces him to be special, and then leverages it against him if it's rejected. "Spoiled brat, doesn't appreciate what I've worked so hard to give him."

It all goes back to him and his own guilt. He can NEVER be wrong. He can't accept his family doesn't have to be "normal" or reflect his own ability. He won't see himself as a bully, let alone a murderer. It was never about his son's comfort or finding out what Thunder Storm wants or needs, it was about his own ego.

...All that said I'm still taking feedback if there's anything else I should keep in mind, or if anyone has a counter point, especially if you also have experience here.

(In the interest of having a link trail for posterity, here's the critique/call for feedback this is in response to)

[metaphysicpareidolic]

moments that should have been in the sandman tv show

1. Dream’s far superior mind duel outfit

2. John Dee eating a fly

3. this

4. literally described as looking like a “wet puppy” (something along those lines) by neil himself

5.

bip

6. world’s worst laugh

7. the most twinkified fit ever concieved

[fite-club]

it’s still so sad when trans guys are like “transandrophobia is real, i lost my support systems when i started taking T” like i’m sorry baby but that’s just transphobia. they don’t particularly care that it’s a man you’re transing into, it’s the transing at all that makes those people stop being around you. losing friends/etc after transition is not a transmasc-specific experience, it’s a trans-specific experience. i’m not downplaying anyone’s struggles when i say this i’m literally pointing out the systematic oppression you experienced and calling it the correct name

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

I think that the "Spy is ultra-controlling of Scout's romantic/sexual life and who he dates" fic trope is not only 1) tired and 2) representative of a tendency to portray controlling parenting as "quirky" or "cute" or w/e but ALSO so completely out of character for the both of them. The most extended Scout/Spy interaction we get in canon is literally Spy teaching Scout how to date. Both of them are clearly guys who value dating and getting (Scout voice) LADIES as some kind of representation of their personal character - it doesn't really make sense to imagine the guy who brags about his romances-in-groups-of-six to suddenly shut down around the idea of his weenie Boston son trying to date. I think there is a source for comedy if you ship Scout with other mercs and show Spy being disappointed in his particular choice of date, but this tendency to characterize Spy as some like shotgun-toting uberprotective father is just rlly out of character and a weird application of an already extremely weird trope

[commsroom]

the "big picture" - whether that refers to some detached, calculated greater good; ruthless ambition and progress for the sake of progress; or even the dear listeners' cosmic indifference - as an antagonistic force in wolf 359 is so fascinating to me because of the way eiffel as a protagonist is set up to oppose it, just by nature of who he is. eiffel retains his humanity even under the most inhumane circumstances. his strength is in connection, and with that he's able to reach others who share his core values, but he's operating under a fundamentally different framework from the show's antagonists. he can never understand where they're coming from or be swayed by their points of view because, for better or worse, he can only see the world through a close personal lens.

it's an ideological conflict he has with all of them, but notably with hilbert: "you talk about helping people, but what about the real, live people around you? [...] that's your problem. you're so zoomed out." eiffel will never, ever see that "big picture" because he is so zoomed in. at his best, he puts things into perspective and grounds the people around him. at his worst, his perspective narrows so drastically inwards that he becomes blind to everyone and everything else. his failings are deeply, tragically human - they're personal, they're impulsive, they're self-destructive. they're selfish. no matter how much he might try to narrativize or escape from himself, he's still left with doug eiffel: "it's taken me this long to realize that running from everyone else means that you're alone with yourself." eiffel could never be convinced to harm others on purpose, but he has hurt people, and it's never been because he didn't care. the very fact that he cares so much, that he's incapable of reconciling the hurt he's caused with the things he values, is what keeps him from real growth for so long. where many of the other characters in wolf 359 will justify their cruelty in service of something they consider more important, eiffel is so caught up in vilifying himself and the fear that he's always going to harm the people he cares for without meaning to that he shuts himself off from the people who care about him and perpetuates his own self-fulfilling prophecy.

[hephaestuscrew]

Pan-Pan, Boléro, and Minkowski's different responses to loss

I want to compare two key lines of Minkowski's which indicate very different responses to grief:

In Ep29 Pan-Pan, Minkowski breaks down and says "Doug Eiffel is gone! There was nothing we could do to save him. It wasn't anyone's fault. It's horrible, and pointless, and it just happened."

In contrast, after arriving at the funeral in Ep46 Boléro, she says "[Lovelace, Hilbert and Maxwell are dead] to make the fact that we're not gone yet important. They're gone... so that we never forget how important it is that we're still here." 

TL;DR: In Pan-Pan, Minkowski expresses her unprocessed grief through despair and hopelessness. Whereas in Boléro, she is able to find hope in the loss and lead her crew in trying to move forward. I suggest a significant reason of the difference is the presence of Eiffel to force Minkowski to confront and process the sense of loss.

Pan-Pan: "It's horrible, and pointless, and it just happened"

In Pan-Pan, the whole episode is full of anger and despair, but Minkowski speaking about the horrible pointlessness of losing Eiffel is one of the most painful and hopeless moments. It doesn't feel like she's really speaking to the others. She's focused on her internal despair (as suggested by the fact that she goes on to talk about the cracks, which Lovelace and Hilbert aren't supposed to know about).

The only potentially positive thing Minkowski says here is her recognition that "it wasn't anyone's fault". When Hera and Hilbert have been blaming Lovelace, and Minkowski has been blaming herself, it's significant that she acknowledges that sometimes a horrible thing just happens without there being anyone to blame. 

But in this context, and in the tone of voice Minkowski uses, even the lack of blame doesn't really feel like a positive thing. If Eiffel becoming stranded was just pointless and random, if there was nothing any of them could have done to save him, then the next tragedy might be just as unpredictable and unpreventable. Minkowski strikes me as the kind of person who can sometimes fall into the trap of subconsciously wishing that the awful thing is her fault because then at least she'd have control over something. In her train of thought here, the lack of blame is followed by focusing on how horrible and pointless what happened to Eiffel was. The only conclusion she can draw is "it just happened". There's no sense of hope in those lines. Eiffel being stranded just happened, and so do the cracks, and the crew are at the whims of brutal fortune with no meaning to any of it.

Boléro: "They're gone... so that we never forget how important it is that we're still here"

In Boléro, Minkowski can't even say that the tragedy wasn't anyone's fault. For each of the deaths, someone pulled a trigger. There is blame, and some of it lies at her feet. She didn't want to come to the funeral because at first she didn't know what she could say about the deaths she feels responsible for.

Yet even so, this time she finds something reassuring she can say to her crew, a grain of hope she can provide without attempting to diminish the loss: "[they're gone] to make the fact that we're not gone yet important. They're gone... so that we never forget how important it is that we're still here."

In another show, or another context, this kind of line might have had an 'everything happens for a reason' tone, which is something I deeply dislike as a response to other people's loss. But it doesn't feel like that's what Minkowski is saying here at all. She isn't trying to make any grand philosophical statement about the ultimate beneficence of the universe, or about how mortality gives meaning to human life. What she says here is working on a much more personal level. It's more about finding something other than despair that the crew can take from what has happened. This tragedy may still be horrible, but it provides a reminder that they are still alive in a context where that's far from guaranteed. Minkowski emphasises that the fact the survivors are alive matters - her crew matters. I'd argue that this contrasts with the 'it just happened' outlook discussed above. 

I don't know how much Minkowski fully feels the importance of them still being there in the moment, but it's something that she can offer her crew, something that she can say in a situation that words can't grasp. I think the moment when she joins the funeral is such a key moment of her leadership. In the end, despite her doubts and struggles, she's there for her crew. Eiffel brought them together for a funeral, but he doesn't know what to say when Hera asks why they have to be gone. Minkowski enters just at the right moment to support her crew and she provides an answer to Hera's question. It's not a perfect answer, but it allows the funeral to move forward. It allows the crew to move forward (even if that emotional movement is somewhat thrown off by a dramatic change in the circumstances). Minkowski starts off the eulogies; she leads her crew in the acknowledgement of what's been lost.

Why such a difference in responses?

There's lots of ways you could interpret the difference between the outlook of these two moments, and there's probably more to say about it though the lens of Minkowski's character development than I'm going to say here. But for me, the main difference between these moments is that, in Pan-Pan, it feels like no processing or recognition of grief has really occurred. When Minkowski says "Doug Eiffel is gone!", it almost feels like the first time that Minkowski has fully confronted and acknowledged the loss. Eiffel has been lost in space for 116 days, but it's only at the end of this episode that Minkowski brings herself to say in her distress calls that he is "presumed dead". Whereas in Boléro, she's already eulogising the dead and thinking about what can be learned from the loss, not even a full day after the mutiny.

Obviously there is much less ambiguity to a body bag (or least there would be, if not for alien interference). But I can't help thinking that the difference between the attitudes towards loss which Minkowski displays in these two quotes is less about the difference in the kind of loss, and more about a situation that prompted and enabled the processing of emotions in Boléro: namely, the funeral. After Eiffel was stranded in space, I think Minkowski probably went months without looking her grief in the eye. But after the deaths of Lovelace, Hilbert, and Maxwell, Eiffel's suggestion of a funeral forces Minkowski to confront her complicated emotions and provides a space in which she can offer direction to her grieving crew.

This is a good illustration of how I think Minkowski and Eiffel complement and support each other in a really valuable way. On his own, Eiffel couldn't provide the leadership that the crew needed for the funeral to work. But without Eiffel, and his determination to recognise the emotional weight of the three deaths, the funeral would never have happened and Minkowski would never have been in a position to provide hope and direction to her crew. When Eiffel was the one the Hephaestus crew were grieving, Minkowski couldn't offer much emotional direction to her crew beyond despair. But when Eiffel is beside her in the grief, saying that the grief deserves to be felt, then Minkowski can find a way for them to move forward emotionally. It's not the deaths that remind them how important it is that they are still here. It's the grief. It's the ability to confront that grief together.

[panharmonium]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, from the top:

1. the girl with the crush

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. the greater good

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

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

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

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

Anyway. Back to a more measured response.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. she only wants to save you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. the shadow of my family

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

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

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

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

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

[dinoserious]

poke mythos notes

giratina is canonically a representation of antimatter, which doesnt particularly play friendly with the matter the universe is composed of. this manifests in giratina as a chronic discomfort that eventually developed into a pain terrible enough to drive it mad, which is what its "rebellion" is. it was put in the distortion world as a blind, last ditch effort to let it survive without having to mercy kill it, and it eventually did stabilize in there, taking on the more solid appearance of canon giratina. in modern times it would be able to survive in the "overworld" fine

the distortion world is actually rather hard to access and very hard to see into from outside. arceus would not know the state of giratina from looking in from outside. dialga and palkia were the ones to tunnel into there in the first place, and it was rather difficult. after they left for their own pocket dimensions it left it practically impossible to access, and when arceus left it became completely impossible. nowadays the fabric of the universe has been unstable enough for entry to be less of a hassle, for better or worse

arceus is not a fully omniscient being. it can turn its perception this way and that, viewing the universe from the outside, but it does not have full knowledge of the proceedings inside. it also did not know what was happening to giratina as it progressed; it did not know how to alleviate its pain, as the base structure of the universe acted against it

giratina did not have a full grasp on the events leading to its placement into the distortion world, as the pain had clouded its mind rather thoroughly. it views being in the distortion world as something of a punishment, and reflects on this with both shame for its violence and anger at being put away

i use it/its pronouns for a majority of legendaries/mythicals, even the ones with a gender ratio. this is a personal preference so i dont care that much abt what you call them in the tags i just wanted to put this somewhere

[the-kipsabian]

hey respect the fact that not all fic writers are comment dependant tho

its okay to want and need them. its also okay to not want or need them. people write for different reasons and not everyone is only fueled by receiving visible hype and feedback

to each their own. dont be a dick about it

[rmbunnie]

I am alone on this barren earth (Jason Todd liker and Mia Dearden liker who honestly thinks issues 69-72 of the 2001 Green Arrow run are fun and good and would really like to talk about them beyond "Jason Todd was ooc and irredeemable there because he was trauma-dumping on Mia but also everything he said was fake and made up and he was manipulating her to become his sidekick and he blew up her school in retaliation because she didn't so really we should ignore the whole comic as bad writing /or agree he should just be read as an sadistic sidekick killer" (None of which is true and over half of which is directly stated to be false in the comic's text) but all people ever have to say about the comic is weird wrong takes about the three pages in which the gym fight happens ripped out of the very interesting and fun surrounding context)

[turtlecleric]

Hey cleric? Random ahh thought but you got recommended to me

What should I expect?

Hello dear! Oh. Ummmm.

1) Being insane about Symphony. I'm deeply, deeply unwell over it.

2) Very short fics (if you'd even call them that) and imagines that sometimes occur multiple times a day but more often are very spread out

3) A fair amount of dark (?) content, including non con/dub con, somno, yandere behavior, and anything and everything angsty (mind the warnings, tread carefully)

[samarecharm]

If i start posting dc stuff on here, it means i lost the fight w myself. The demons won. Im sorry

[flythesail]

I really hope episode 7 isn't 95% flashback but considering the amount of time left... I don't think they'd do that? (Fingers crossed)

[honorthysalad]

does like anyone else sort parts of hgsn into tiers of canonness? Maybe it’s just my warrior cat origins where all the information was directly contradicting so you had to decide how to sort everything yourself but like, I just go into media expecting stuff to be retconned.

Like I tier it:

>Ch3 = anything after chapter 3 with preference to the most recent chapter being the most correct. Maki says in ch23 that after the unuki was made, the illness and famine died down, but according to Kouhei in 25, it only really stopped after the Indoh sin. In this case, I would take Kouhei’s explanation as the more correct explanation unless a subsequent chapter contradicts him.

Len’s Twitter extras = Generally supplemental and trustworthy but occasionally taking them at face value can create conflict with the manga. One comic strip says that ‘Hikaru’ has to manually beat his heart, but during his stint in the hospital, he was completely unconscious. Certainly the hospital staff would notice his heart wasn’t beating, right? Therefore, we will discard this comic as not canon nor representative of how ‘hikaru’ actually works.

Chs1-3 = A separate tier because just about everything in them has been retconned and they’re riddled with beginning weirdness. The example I’ll point to for a clear retcon is ‘Hikaru’ blushing at Yoshiki at the end of ch1 when we know he doesn’t experience romantic or sexual attraction. This fits with the genre change after chapter 3, and so, it can be assumed that it was retconned and is no longer considered for the plot going forward.

Light novel = the light novel wasn’t written by Mokumokulen, but any extra information is just that. Extra. There’s no real contradictions. Yet. If anything in the light novel or extra chapter is contradicted by the manga going further, the light novel will be entirely tossed aside.

Misc hgsn art = Anything lacking text or explanation (such as the decapitation pieces) as well as the pilot. While sometimes these act as foreshadowing, most of the time they’re just cool images. Dont think we’ll see ‘Hikaru’ with a bottle of ketchup anytime soon for example.

[misc-obeyme]

Grey Asmo here

Whats your take on the whole Solomon/lilith?

I know it wont happen but humour me

Ah like OM Solomon/Lilith?

I know that theory has been presented in the fandom, that it was Solomon that Lilith fell in love with.

And honestly, I think it's quite possible.

Solomon states that he met a friend while he was locked in the basement who he talked to for hours before their family came to get them.

If that was Lilith, it's possible that she came back to the human world when Solomon was older, too. That she found him again. That they fell in love. That Solomon was the human who became ill. That he was the one she had eat food from the Celestial Realm in order to heal him. You could even make the argument that was the reason he became immortal.

Buuut the game doesn't really give us enough specifics to determine if this is the case or not. So I kinda feel like it's entirely up to personal preference at this point. It's vague enough that you can headcanon whatever you like about it.

And while I agree with you that it likely won't happen (just because I don't think it's likely they're going to give a LI such a sad romantic backstory with someone who isn't MC, even if they are descended from her), I think you can decide how the story goes for yourself at the moment. It's possible that they'll reveal more about Solomon's past that would contradict it, but even then, you can just say it's an AU and go with that.