#anyway hopefully it answers the question

[the-crow-binary]

Hi! I hope you don't mind me asking, but how do you draw anatomy? It looks really good.

Oh. 🥺 Hello. 🥺 It's okay I don't mind 🥺 And thank you, it means a lot to me 🥺🥺🥺 Here's a messy, quickly-done guide of how I do it

Generally, my bases are even messier than that lol

I always start with a circle for the head and then draw from there. Even if I always end up modifying it, it's a good start (the circle doesn't have to be perfect, nor does it have to be a circle lol, unless you want to draw a bald person with a perfectly round head). I can't really explain the proportions for the torso because I always draw it based on how good it looks, and if it doesn't look too long or too short. With time and experience it just became natural. But I do still sometimes uses little clues for the members such as the arms and legs, based on the torso, to keep it all well-proportioned.

I drew only slender bodies here because the clues I wrote are basically the same for all body types, and it's also the body type I draw the most lol (with the only twist being that I had a little bit of muscles sometimes, wich shows with slightly bigger/rounds pecs, rounder arms, visible abs...) Here's an example of one of the very few muscular characters I drew (i just added the red lines)

The chest and back are much bigger, the arms much rounder, every muscle is more visible, but the elbow stil reach the hip, you still can put one head between the head and one shoulder (the shoulders are just larger), and the hands still cover the face.

If I can give one advice to how to learn to draw the muscles, it would obviously be to use references. I still use some today tbh, especially for the most muscular body types that I don't draw often. One thing that is nice, and that you can use to learn to draw anything, not just human anatomy, is to trace pictures and make your own base out of it. Example:

(found the picture on pinterest)

Now you draw your base however you like, what fits you the best. The goal of this exercise is not to mindlessly trace a form and then draw whatever you want on top, but to understand the forms you are learning to draw, so you can progress. I used a clothed model here but a half/completely naked one works better lol (well, depending on what you are trying to learn). I could've put more details in my own base (such as drawing the parts hidden by the hands and arms to fully get the forms it's suppose to have), but that's just an example. I use digital pictures because I'm on ipad (and have been drawing on computer for a few years before that) but if you draw on paper, you could very well use pictures from books, comics, etc... you can use any source, any media and any style (if it's drawn). Just keep in mind to give credit if you ever post your exercise online!

Of course you can also draw on a blank piece of paper while looking at and trying to replicate the picture, wich is also a good exercise, but tracing might be easier to learn the anatomy, especially at first. This being said, there's a plethora of guides out there and examples of bases, but that's how I do it and learned! Just add a lot of practice and a few blood sacrifice :')

[baeshijima]

u know what would be a cool genshin fic idea? isekai/transmigrated reader, but instead of appearing within the general timeline, you come into the genshin world 500 years prior to the start of the storyline in khaenri'ah.

honestly it could be either a little before the cataclysm, giving enough time to delve into some relationship building + explore some world building with characters like dainsleif, traveller's sibling (which would probably be lumine bc i actually do like her as abyss sibling & aether as traveller), and npcs like halfdan (still crying over him to this day ;w;) and possibly the khaenri'ahn royal guards (assuming you either join them or have a good enough relationship with them), OR it could be you appear during the crisis, completely and utterly lost as to why you were brought amidst the chaos and bloodshed as you watch everything you barely knew about this nation crumble before your very eyes.

either route will still result in reader's existential crises and constant "why am i here? just to suffer?" monologues because really, who would be fine after going through that after coming from /our/ world? and not to mention you've had to endure the next 500 years wandering with no real set path because you don't know this world— this era of teyvat or of genshin. you're merely stuck, unable to die, and forced to live a life of uncertainty with no clear direction for you to go to.

despite it all, you've at least been able to see dain during this course. while your meetings pass far too quickly for your lonesome, and his solemn demeanour is something you're yet to be accustomed to after having been with him before the fall of khaenri'ah (assuming it's the route where you appear before the cataclysm), you're glad to see a familiar face every now and then. after the messy departure with the lumine who left for the abyss order, you've come to appreciate his quiet presence more and more each time.

and then you decide it might be time to settle. you soon realise it's difficult to do so when your lifespan has become far more than that of a human's — of a mortal's — and so you find yourself becoming used to staying in one place for a few years before setting off for the next. rinse and repeat. over and over. it's come to a point where you've witnessed the nations undergo various changes each time you visit. you know change is inevitable, and yet your heart stings each time you witness it; a testament to how the world is ever-changing, yet you're stuck in place as a bystander.

one thing you're grateful for, however, are the bonds you've established amid your back-and-forth over the centuries. from archons like zhongli and venti to long-life beings such as neuvillette and the adepti to regular mortals who have showed you kindness as if one of their own... you've grown to cherish those memories, often reminiscing them when the nights get too long and surroundings too quiet. it was difficult at first, and still is, but you've become used to the inevitable change and the passing of those you once knew.

and after 500 years, you find yourself face-to-face with one you haven't seen since before you appeared in this world; the protagonist of this world, and the one you eventually join in hopes of finally finding a means to an end, aether.

little side notes/extras:

from /our/ world, you would probably know the storyline from up to around current (5.0) or maybe a little after the fontaine aq conclusion. it gives a lot to work with, but you definitely won't remember a lot of the lore after so long other than some main events, especially since most of your knowledge is pretty irrelevant for the next 500 years,,,

i think it would be cool if you had an inteyvat on your person as a little homage of khaenri'ah, which may or may not invoke some opinions from certain characters (*cough* aether immediately being reminded of lumine and having an existential crisis *cough*)

post-cataclysm you would go through a, uhm, long phase of helplessness, wondering why you were even brought to this world so far back if you couldn't even make any contributions. it does eventually morph into a resolution to do what you can to help those you come across if it's within your capabilities, but the nightmares and helplessness come back every now and then as a reminder for what you can't do :D yippee :D

honestly i'm on the fence whether you would have a vision or some other type of abilities (think on the similar lines of aether/lumine's and dain's), but i think having some type of purification mechanic would be a must in your arsenal !! would definitely lead to some moments between you and characters like dain or zhongli who suffer from the erosion as you give them a slight reprieve from what rages within and corrodes them

a little self indulgent, but i'd like to think your first /proper/ meeting with zhongli happens during a lantern rite festival, wherein you're admiring the lanterns in the sky after making a wish of your own and he comes up from behind with "they're beautiful, wouldn't you say so?" and !!

also as for love interests, as much as i would love for human/mortal characters, a part of me feels like this story would be better suited for the immortal/long-life characters as love interests?? idk i feel like considering that 500 years is, well, a long time, the bonds you would have with them compared to characters like, say, alhaitham or diluc would be way too different ?? though i would definitely still add them as love interest bc i am a sucker for so many of the human characters ;w; it would also add to the angst and hurt/comfort ahahha...

anyway thank you for reading this massive brain dump of a fic bc i absolutely would put this as a long term project, and if u made it this far then i would like to say that dain solos—

[shima-draws]

You’re not into doing art anymore are you? :-/

Homie my dog died last week and I’ve literally been bedridden since then with a really bad cold. Cut me some slack 😭

[nemotakeit]

i've said it before but i really want to see the lore from torchbearer's perspective as well. we've followed the storyline mostly from tyler/clancy's pov so far and we're very familiar with his vulnerable moments and insecurities. from his perspective it's almost as if tb is this unwavering guiding light who perfectly knows what he's doing all the time, helping him and working in mysterious ways - which, again, reinforces the godlike image tyclancy seems to project onto him. unless tb is ACTUALLY a supernatural being, which i don't think he is, he has to have his own doubts/vulnerabilities/insecurities etc just like clancy. i kinda want to see past the near-divine frame clancy (an unreliable narrator i'd say) encased him in and get to know his side of the story.

[campbyler]

do you think that both of you think about the world and your lives the way that you write? As in, are the inner thought styles of mike and will the same as the way you guys think about the world and have thoughts, not in subject matter obviously but in style? Like the highly detailed thinking that observes every tiny thing and notes down every aspect of each choice and action and surroundings? Or did you both adopt this as a way of characterising mike and will as teenagers?

ooh this is such an interesting ask and i have actually thought about this quite often over the last couple years, and we’ve talked about it a couple times as well!! for me, the way i write is often really similar to the way my thoughts work, mostly for larger blocks of narration where the character is just thinking or reasoning with themselves, and especially for more casual/humorous sequences as opposed to ones where i’m trying to be a bit more flowery or evocative with my word choice. it’s really easy for me to get carried away writing these bits because usually whatever is in my brain will get directly word vomited out onto the page, which often means long nonsensical thought loops and very accidentally unserious figures of speech. i do find there are certain characters that are easier for me to do this with: mike for one, obviously, but also buck in the 911 wip i was working on for a while (rip) and patrick zweig in my challengers wip (rip x2) — which im realizing as i type this is basically just a list of characters that scream adhd to me. lol.

other characters like will are not As natural for me in this specific way, but i’ve gotten comfortable enough writing him and his voice for it to happen anyway. and others (vi from my arcane wip, loki from my lokius fic) are muchhh harder to write because they don’t really feel like my inner voice nearly as much, so i have to hold myself back more and really think about whether i am writing from My head or Theirs, if that makes sense. i also get a lot of “yeah i can really hear your voice coming through in this” from my friends when i share excerpts of fics in certain povs with them, so i guess it’s not just in my head! + thea might have thoughts to add but i can confirm that there are also lots of times where she’s written something and i just like read it in her voice because it’s totally something she would say or do, either irl when we are together or just over text. and a lot of the hyper-describing of thoughts and surroundings is honestly equal parts a mixture of my natural thoughts and also just my process for setting a scene, which mostly goes something along the lines of “picture the place, picture the things in the place, describe the things in the place in the clearest but least awkward way possible.” probably this leads to some more describing and noticing and such than i would naturally do in my own head but 🤷🏽‍♀️ honestly it’s pretty close i think

[all-our-turf]

it's implied that the names that warriors and the other gangs have aren't their real ones, which means it isn't just a stylistic choice, so like, what do you think they could be?

(also, just curious, how old do you think the warriors members are?)

it hasn't really come up while writing but honestly for convenience sake (and also what i've seen most other authors do) is have their previous names just be the name of whoever plays them. i think nearly all the warriors chose a new name / were given a new name and stop going by their previous names at all as a way to leave their old lives behind and get a fresh start. swan and fox were both given their names vs most of the others chose their own. i think rembrandt had already started using the name as her graffiti tag even before joining the warriors.

as for their ages, honestly i tend to change them depending on whatever hc or dynamic i want to explore. i think in general cleon and cochise are the oldest in their late twenties (like 28 29 ish), then cowgirl around 26, and ajax around 24 or 25, although sometimes i can see her being a bit older and closer to cleon's age. rembrandt i move around between early or mid twenties just depending on what i'm writing. swan to me is pretty much always early twenties, around 21 or 22 (i explained some of my reasoning and thoughts when it comes to swan's age in this post from a while back). mercy is also around 22 to me. fox i usually think of as around 18 or 19.

[pushing500]

So is French a second language for you or are we going to see you slowly learn French for your blorbos?

I sadly don't know any languages other than English, and I have a heavy accent and a particular fondness for Australian slang which means even my English could be side-eyed suspiciously lmao.

I mostly rely on phrasebooks when I can. However, for some reason, my French phrasebook is sadly lacking in French phrases about cults or tentacles or anomalous entities sent from the Void created by a maddened archotech, so I do use Google Translate or Reddit for some of the more nuanced phrases.

How funny would it be to try and explain to people in future that I learned another language thanks to my oc blorbos though XD

[stillness-in-green]

Dabi also is my least favorite of the league, as a matter of fact. I dont like how he is written very much. But what makes him your least favorite?

(Sent in re: a post from earlier this year where I talked about Shouto's arc. Footnotes are at the end today; they're fairly long but there are only two of them and the post itself is pretty short, so readers shouldn't have to scroll too far to find them.)

I’d say it’s part Dabi’s characterization running afoul of a trope I strongly dislike, part mismatch between what draws me most to the League versus what I like most about Dabi, and part reaction to the way he’s long been treated in fanon/by certain of his more hyper-defensive fans.

To the first, I realized several years ago that I have got no taste and less time for relationship dynamics – particularly romantic ones, but not limited to them! – in which Party A is plain-spoken and genuine about their feelings and Party B is a jackass who makes fun of Party A for having those feelings.  Regardless of whether Party B has feelings for Party A that they’re denying and why, and regardless of whether Party A is actually bothered by it or not, it almost universally comes off to me as one-sided verbal abuse masquerading as funny, romantic or touching.

Now, I’m not saying that a dynamic like that Is Definitely Abusive, nor that it’s an insurmountable hurdle or an unforgivable offense, nor that people who do like the dynamic are problematic or wrong in some way.  But for me personally, I just find it deeply unpleasant and unappealing.  So, asking me to get invested in Dabi’s deep and genuine (sic) feelings about the League when I’ve spent most of the series watching him insult and dismiss them?  Sorry, fam, I’m just a lost cause there, and I was from the start.

To the second, there are things I like about Dabi, but the things I like about him (his role in the family drama, his dynamic with Endeavor, in particular his interplay with Skeptic) just don’t have much overlap with the things I like about the League.

Basically, I like the League for being scrappy underdogs with sympathetic backstories finding refuge in each other from a world that fiercely, unceasingly rejects them, who get radicalized even harder than they already were for their own sakes because of their growing care for one another.  Dabi just doesn’t play into that aspect of the narrative, at least not with any kind of consistency.  He's absent from a big chunk of important, emotional League scenes,[1] and even when he is there, he’s usually acting like an asshole to someone (see again the first point).

So if I’m fairly sanguine about Dabi as a League character, it’s only because I think Dabi in the canon is, too, that while I believe he has a sense of camaraderie and fellow-feeling towards the League,[2] I also believe those emotions are far overshadowed by the roaring furnace that is his derangement, hatred and obsession towards Endeavor, to the extent that, for the greater part of the series, I don’t know if Dabi himself is aware that those warm feelings for the League exist within his heart.  Since what I like the most about the League is the sense of camaraderie and fellow-feeling among them, and I actively dislike being told that I should be interested in relationships where one party is consistently derogatory towards a party that’s consistently sincere, then yeah, of course Dabi is the one of them I like least.

As to the fandom…  Well, that’s a whole-ass rant that would be much more negative towards specific, identifiable (albeit mostly blocked) parties than I really want to be in this space.  Let me simply say that, back when I was first getting into the BNHA fandom, I realized pretty early on that I profoundly disliked Fanon Dabi and the spillover effects he tended to have on fanwork/meta containing him; I therefore found his wild overrepresentation in the villain side of the fandom deeply wearying.

Also too, while Fanon Dabi himself was annoying, I care even less for the people who were so staunchly married to their belief in Dabi’s absolute incapacity to harm a single character who might not deserve it that they were willing to not only trot out repackaged discriminatory rhetoric and bog-standard victim blaming to redirect criticism onto otherwise blameless characters, but also to send hate mail and harassment to real life people who were less than deferent in the face of defenses of Dabi’s obvious snow-driven innocence.  The behavior of his fans is, of course, not Canon Dabi’s fault, but it’s not like I even liked the in-series version of the guy much to begin with!

With all those factors working together, I trust it’s not hard to see how Dabi wound up at the bottom of my personal LOV Faves List.  For what it’s worth, though, that’s only true for the core MVA-era League!  If only for reasons of greater exploration and exposure, he (probably) wouldn’t be at the bottom of a more expansive list that included e.g. everyone from the training camp attack + AFO and his cabal.

In any case, on the occasions when my own fanwork/meta touches on him, I try to be as fair and balanced towards him and his clear importance to the story as can reasonably be expected, but I don’t feel an obligation to go beyond that.  Lord knows there’s no shortage of Plus Ultra Dabi fans out there to take up all of my share of attention and more.

Thanks for the ask!

1: In fairness to Dabi, I suspect many of his absences are due to the fact Horikoshi just never got a good handle on incorporating his quirk into the story.  Dabi’s nominally really dangerous, so his presence creates complications in a battle if he isn’t distracted or taken out of commission early on; see e.g. his absence from the scuffle with the CRC, how he spends the entire Kamino fight unconscious, how the version of him that actually confronts Aizawa at the training camp is a clone, and how, when Horikoshi finally stops being able to sequester him away from open combat, those ludicrously Not Safe For Life flames of his suddenly become about as meaningfully dangerous as an accident with the kitchen range.  That said, as with the "asshole who belittles others for caring about things" issue, the reasoning behind the reality doesn’t change the reality itself, in this case that Dabi's participation/effectiveness in fight scenes is frequently disjointed and arbitrary compared to the rest of the League having much more clearly defined, consistent capabilities in combat, and that has an unavoidable impact on my view of him as a member of the League.

2: My citations for Dabi actually caring about the League as anything other than a stepping stone towards his goals would consist of the following: his manic reaction to Twice’s death, my belief in Toga as a reasonably reliable judge of character when she calls Dabi “kind” for burning down her family home, and Dabi’s inclusion of other Villains/the League specifically in his rhetoric about the limitations of super-powered society when he fights Shouto in Hosu.  Note how the latter incidents come only after he’s revealed the truth about Todoroki Enji’s abuse and Todoroki Touya’s survival.

[louferrignojrofficial]

EXAM IS OVER FINALLY

[umblrspectrum]

hello that one person in my askbox asking my about my opinion on cyn. I think this should answer your question.

[smilesrobotlover]

May I offer you a hug? This time change sucks so much :/

Oh also I enjoyed all your little love at twilight notes earlier, they were fun to read :) Can you remind me what the deal is with the rest of Link and Midna’s kids? I know they have more but I forget the details lol (I do remember I love them tho)

-Sky Floor

Thanks Peggy 🥺🥺🥺 daylights savings time has killed me and I guess I’m not catching up 😭😭😭 but at least it’s gettin warmer lol. Might be that time of the month too which is just lovely lol

And I’m glad! I hoped people weren’t annoyed with the little notes cuz I like to ramble about stuff a lot XD

And yeah! Nisha is not Link’s biological daughter. She’s fully Twili cuz of the whole heir situation, but with a tiny piece of the fused shadows she’s able to visit Ordon, but while Kori and Elk stay primarily with Link, Nisha stays primarily with Midna. But Link basically adopted her since her real father doesn’t really care to be a real father to her. He only wants the pride of being the father of the princess. I honestly don’t have her personality figured out unfortunately. She’s a little spunky tho!

And Elk was another accident XD idk when he was born but Link and Midna had a little bit too much fun on their honeymoon or something and then he was born! They adore him but want no more kids lol. He’s kind of a grump but loves his mom and grandma lol.

[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.

[procrastinatingwritersblog]

my tumblr friend is ignoring me :(

i mean we’re not even moots (she doesn’t follow me) and we don’t talk much but i need to scream at her (in a good way i think) and i dropped by her askbox and her messages but she’s not online and she won’t answer my questions that i asked her days ago and she’s def been very active and i think she hates me

[bloodfueledmachine]

day 28

[mxwhore]

embarrassing sex!!¡ fuck yea!!!

[measureyourlifeincake]

just took an adhd assessment and... i honestly dont see how this will be sufficient for giving me a diagnosis? i just had to take two tests, one where i had to hit the space bar when hearing a high pitch after a low pitch (as opposed to after *just* hearing the high pitch), and one where a bunch of letters flashed on the screen and i had to hit the space bar when any of them except for x popped up and like... i don't see how this has anything to do with any of the issues i actually experience in my life due to my probable adhd???? like ok i guess it has something to do with focus? which is a part of the whole adhd thing but not all of it? i did take a (very brief) adhd questionnaire as one of my intake forms before seeing this psych for the first time but that wasn't part of the assessment itself but even that (which was only like. 15 questions? maybe?) seemed like it had more to do with how i experience adhd