#i just. really. really fucking hate when people make characters be overly ooc cute

[kraniumverse]

time to be a little hater

[normal-thoughts-official]

What’s ur opinion on the treatment of Maia’s character on the show??

it was shit and antiblack and the sh writers can come fight me any day. i absolutely hated the way a lot of the time she was written as irrationally angry when actually she was RATIONALLY angry, and the fact that they made j*ia (both stances of it, actually) happen was a punch in the face to me

like maia was such a breath of fresh air for me because she was the ONLY one who was actually addressing what a racist piece of shit jace was, and calling him out and making no excuses or coddling him. it was so great and nice. and then they had her hook up with him, which means one of the two:

it was just pent up sexual frustration the whole time

the fact that he was hot overrode the fact that he was a racist piece of shit

both of those are fucking terrible and i can't even pick which is worse. first one implies that woc being mad at white men for their bullshit is really just them "wanting" said white men, which is a gross, racist, mysoginistic trope meant to shut them up when they complain about the shit they face. it is belittling, unfair, and dismissive to all the shit white men put them through, just like going all "you're so cute when you're angry" when someone is pointing out your shitty behavior is a condescending asshole move designed to make the other person's complaints seem like whiny spoiled child attitude, when they are not. it's fucking disrespectful and sh going with that trope is shitty as hell

and the second one basically implies that being racist is nbd. it's like, oh, they had their differences, but ~desire~. like sorry but no woc on their right mind would want to hook up with a racist white men who was deliberately being racist to them all the time, and even if they DID, taking that narrative choice is inherently different from a real life woc making that decision because it is supposed to convey a message. and the message i get from that is that being racist is alright as long as you're hot, or that racism is not going to be a dealbreaker for A BLACK WOMAN when it comes to attraction. or worse, that it was just banter

then we have the saia breakup which was every level of bullshit on the book. i'll never forgive the way the narrative basically villainized her for needing time and space after going through something traumatic because "simon needed her" or whatever, like simon doesn't have a lot of other friends who could support him, or like MAIA HERSELF didn't need support either. but of course a black woman wouldn't need support, she just needed to deal with everything on her own, but also fuck her for needing that because even that is not enough of not-a-nuisance to make her desirable. fuck u sh writers. and it was ooc and bullshit anyway because they wanted to make the sizzy bullshit happen

and THEN there is the jordan thing which is every level of the worst thing that's ever happened. jordan. was. abusive. i'm not even talking about the fact that he literally turned her against her will out of JEALOUSY, i'm talking about the fact that she explicitly said that he was controlling and jealous and had been stalking her. the fact that jordan didn't respect her no when she broke up with him and kept trying to force her to come back, making her uncomfortable and disrespecting her wishes, made him abusive, end of story. the fact that he then PUNISHED her for it by turning her makes him even worse

there is no world in which it is a good narrative choice to make someone go back to their abusive relationship for whatever reason, mUCH LESS A BLACK WOMAN, because black women are already told that they should endure any bad treatment they get x5981758931751. fuck sh for romanticizing a black woman not only forgiving but GETTING BACK WITH her abusive ex and never even addressing what made their relationship abusive and wrong and acting like the only problem was that he left her, and not the fact that he treated her (a black woman!!!) as property or as if she owed him affection. and their relationship was basically written as maia redeeming him and it's not anyone's job, ESPECIALLY NOT A BLACK WOMAN'S, to make people who treat them like shit a better person. it's just not

and also generally we never got to see maia being vulnerable or getting taken care of, it was always the other way around, which again, racist trope. when things got hard for her the writers just yeeted her, and then, as if that weren't bad enough, villainized her for going away and taking care for herself. her plotlines were never treated as important (then again, no one's but jace and clary's ever were). LUKE, A BLACK MAN, KEPT CHOOSING CLARY OVER HER. she was treated as evil, mean and irrational for having a realistic approach under which violence was sometimes necessary as a means of self defense (see: being willing to kill clary and then killing heidi. both were the correct choice. like, sorry) even though whenever she resorted to violence it was NEVER overly violent or without reason. they basically villainized her for fighting back racism, and that is so fucking shitty and ughh

i love her as a character and she owns all my uwus and she's never done anything wrong ever in her entire life but the sh writer's room (and cc because i know most if not all of the narrative choices i mentioned up there were directly taken from the books) can eat shit

[basketballandtextbooks]

how does fandom ruin tweek????

eh, my wording may have been a bit strong

I don’t mean to say that fandom has destroyed him. There are... remnants of his actual personality that appear in popular fanon and frankly, even if someone rewrites his personality entirely, that doesn’t ‘destroy’ his character. It’s just someone enjoying themselves.

What I meant is that the popular fanon depiction of Tweek nearly destroyed his character for me. Upon watching the show, I loved Tweek and he became one of my favorite side characters. I enjoyed his disinterest in getting into a death match for the boys entertainment, his annoyance at making a million fucking hats, his frustration over no one believing him about the goddamn underpants gnomes, his ability to point a fucking grenade launcher at someone who took his friends (and cartman) hostage.

He’s honestly a great character and he’s always been hugely likeable.

But when I went to the fandom and looked up Tweek... I was so disappointed with what I found. I tried to enjoy the overly feminine troped Tweek, I really did. I tried to find his hairclips cute (despite the fact that most boys would use hair gel to get their hair out of their face and bad hair gel use honestly EXPLAINS Tweek’s super saiyan hair). I really tried to enjoy pictures that made him tiny and weak and cutely hiding behind Craig. Shaking in fear because the world is so scary and he’s so anxious.

I tried. And I think trying is why it nearly ruined him for me.

Because the more I tried to enjoy that character, the more I found him boring. Stupid. Vapid. Idiotic. Tropey. Cliche. I began to associate the fanon version of Tweek with the canon version of Tweek and it made me actually roll my eyes when he’d appear in episodes. “here’s the little bitch baby again, gonna cry and hide? ugh...”

To be fair, I have liked and enjoyed cowardly and/or anxious characters before and since (like Courage the cowardly dog lol), but the way all of his traits had been simplified into just being... so 2-dimensional and worthless. It really made him annoying to me. Like Courage at least saves the day despite being scared, the fanon Tweek I’d become familiar with just shakes and screams and stutters until his Big Strong Boyfriend saves the day.

Stealing Tweek’s personality, justifying dressing him like a girl because he’s SO CUTE (after all, he dressed like a girl in the metrosexual ep... you know... like every other character in sp... and yet.... we don’t see craig in a skirt that often...), and turning him into a stereotypical trope of a damsel in distress.

It was insulting. It was insulting to myself as a person who suffers from an anxiety disorder. That the entire fandom had equated anxiety to ‘weakness’ and ‘cowardice’ despite the fact that Tweek had never been weak or cowardly, only freaked out. It was insulting that parts of his personality that I really loved had to be ignored and changed to make room for noncanon character traits that only served to make him a ‘cute little twink for Craig’.

I constantly reference his connection to Craig as well because Tweek also didn’t seem to exist outside of Creek. He was THERE to be Craig’s cute bottom. No personality. No ideology. He ONLY existed to be the object of Craig’s affections. Or to be head over heels in love with Craig. His entire personality was being scared and in love with Craig. Even when people would ship him with other characters, it was normally an extension to Creek (oh, craig used to have a crush on thomas... what if tweek and thomas get together! oh wow, crenny is really popular, lets make twenny instead!). And even moreso, this hyper feminized ooc cowardly little bitch version of a character I love would go on to be that same bitch in every ship connected to Creek.

AND THE MOST FRUSTRATING PART of his character being boiled down to ‘weak’, ‘fem’, and ‘in love with Craig’ is that Craig has only RECENTLY become a huge part of his life. Yes, he was an on-again off-again member of CATG but so was Jimmy and Jason, yet neither of them are defined solely by their connection to Craig. He had multiple episodes focusing on him, only ONE of them that even related to Craig (which was against his will) and yet he was defined entirely by his connection to a character he’s hardly had interactions with. Yes, NOW Creek are hardly ever seen apart in canon. But Tweek x Craig happened in like season 18 or someshit. There were SEVENTEEN SEASONS of Craig and Tweek NOT interacting much AT ALL. And yet, even prior to the Creek episode, Tweek was defined ENTIRELY by his love to Craig.

I love a good crack ship, for example I’ve recently gotten into clymien, but I wouldn’t define Damien or Clyde’s ENTIRE personality by their feelings for one another. That’s just... ick. I like them together BECAUSE I think their personalities would clash in interesting ways. Creek was an interesting crackship that became canon but god has the fandom for it always been so freaking ooc that its actually painful.

I also bring up Creek bc im ngl, the fandom has practically ruined that ship for me. I’ve been able to regain my love of Tweek but my love of Creek has become... shaky. The constant nonstop seme/uke trope dynamics super-imposed onto what would otherwise be extremely interesting characters within an adorable ship has just poisoned the well for me. I’m still working on regaining my love for Creek, but it’s been very slow.

It’s not fair to say the fandom ruined Tweek. They didn’t. Plenty of people love him, enjoy him, and there’s plenty of fandom that doesn’t completely bastardize his personality... but for me? Every time I see a remnant of that strange fanon Tweek that I’ve grown to hate, I just cringe.

[kopfkinoes]

I’ve been a Naruto fan for like 13 years now but after the manga ended I pretty much left the fandom because I anticipated the vitriol that was going to follow after the ending. Every once in a while I stumbled upon a Naruto post that made me realize I had been right and I didn’t interact. But at the end of 2017 I came back and…nothing has changed. I honestly think this is one of the worst, most immature fandoms out there. I feel like so many of the people in the fandom are perpetual twelve year olds. And it kind of bothers me that Sasuke and Sakura, my absolute favourites since day one, are still disrespected as fuck. Now, mind you, I’m not talking about the ship, I’m talking about them as individual characters although I do ship them. I’ve multishipped for a long, long time but not anymore.

They are the first ones I shipped because I had a feeling stuff was bound to happen between them but then I discovered the wonders of the web and instantly moved to ship Naruto and Sasuke. I never once hated Sakura and Hinata though and even in the later years when “feminist” rhetoric moved into fandoms, I took the “these women are strong and powerful and I love them, they don’t need no man” thing to be good. But after the ending, and now seeing how many of the people who ship Naruto and Sasuke are downright anti-Sakura and insult and disrespect her in so many ways I realized “Wow! I had been an idiot all along. These people never gave a shit about Sakura, they were saying all of that stuff to get her out of the way.” I don’t see people talking about how Naruto and Sasuke’s bond diminishes their battle abilities, I see none of the shippers implying that their development would be flushed down the drain if they ended up in a relationship. Yet, that is apparently true for the women. Right.

Sasuke is a character with a lot of potential. But he was never able to evolve. And do you know why? Because of Naruto. Sasuke was created in order to be the opposite of Naruto and, for the most part, that is all remains to be. I’ve been staning Sasuke forever but this is the truth. He exists in order to be Naruto’s rival and in order to be pissed that he, a guy coming from a clan of prodigies, keeps falling behind the class clown and loser (who is anything but that when you think of it, Minato was anything but a weak guy and Kushina, while we don’t get a good look at her abilities, has loads of stamina and healing powers and her abilities were considered exceptional even among the Uzumaki, not to mention how easily Naruto masters everything new he tries). In the end, he is subdued by Naruto and the Will of Fire.

Even after all of this, he is still not allowed to be around his family. Why? Simply because he needs to be the opposite of Naruto. He needed to point a sword at his own daughter and it was Naruto who had to comfort and reassure her. Sasuke will never be an overly affectionate person, I don’t think he will ever realistically go back to his pre-massacre personality (he wasn’t exactly super bubbly as a child either, he was reserved around other people but very happy around his family) and frankly, he doesn’t need to. He wouldn’t ever be a husband who does grand romantic gestures or a super cuddly father but he’s loyal and devoted and these things shouldn’t be brushed away for some mission or for creating angst just to prove that Naruto is a better, more understanding person that he’ll ever be, even when it comes to Sarada. Like, for fuck’s sake, does everything Sasuke does need to happen right before Naruto waltzes in and puts him in his place by being a better person? Can Sasuke not be a person in his own right without the constant comparisons to Naruto?

What I also find interesting is how often I see Sasuke becoming completely OOC when paired with Naruto. Of course everybody says Sasuke is OOC when paired with Sakura but frankly I’ve rarely seen Sasuke presented as lovey dovey around Sakura, people usually want him to be proud of her but he stays his usual tepid self. Because that’s Sasuke’s personality, he’s not a conventionally affectionate person and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s why it bothers me when I see Sasuke made to be a soft, sensitive, pastel boy aesthetic. He’s not that and he wouldn’t be that even if he were gay. I mean, I understand headcanons but don’t root them in the “seme and uke” dynamics, please.

Moving on, I have a particular kind of contempt for people suggesting Sasuke cheated on Sakura with Karin. It makes absolutely no sense character-wise and it just shits all over Sasuke by assuming he’s a disgusting fucker who would cheat. Are you telling me that the dude who didn’t even consider taking advantage of even a single one of the girls who were fawning over him would have a face-heel turn and cheat? Yeah, right. I don’t understand how you can call yourself a Sasuke fan and genuinely support cheating. Why would Sasuke wait to be with Sakura in order to have sex with Karin when he and Karin had so many opportunities to bang prior to this while they were travelling together as a team? Why would he have a child with Karin and just dump the child on Sakura’s head? I don’t even want to hear superiority arguments that go along the lines of “Karin is an Uzumaki so she has superior genes compared to Sakura who doesn’t come from a clan” because…arguments like these are disgusting. I don’t think it was ever even slightly implied that Sasuke (or the Uchiha for that matter) held beliefs like this. If anything, these guys didn’t like being othered and set apart from the rest of the village. I don’t think Sasuke ever implied that he believes some vaginas are not genetically pure enough for him to get into so please don’t put these shitty beliefs on him. Sasuke was described as “pure”. It’s simply the way he is. I really don’t care that you think he’s not a “True Hetero Guy” unless he cheats and/or has sex with loads of women.

I always see people saying fans who ship Sasuke and Sakura are “disgusted” by the thought of Sasuke having sex with someone else. But do you know how many people I’ve seen saying how grossed out Sasuke must be by being around pussy (specifically Sakura’s) and how he probably cries and is traumatized by the experience? I’ve yet to see people talking about how Sasuke must be super disgusted by dick.

Moving on to Sakura, pretty much 100% of the vitriol I’ve seen thrown at her comes from misogyny. People always like to say it’s not misogyny and yet it always is. It comes from Kishimoto himself and his ideas of women. He constantly described Sakura as “not cute” and “a hard woman”. And it’s true, Sakura’s not demure or submissive and doesn’t appear to be very suited for domesticity.  I don’t believe that just because she is loud and outspoken she would make a dreadful wife and mother. She was very shy as a child (mostly because she was insecure) but she grew into herself. About her not being cute, I’d say that’s debatable. Kishimoto said she’s not cute in the beginning and I see a lot of haters talking about “that ugly bitch Sakura” but let me tell you this, Naruto and Rock Lee had pretty intense crushes on her and Jiraiya compared her appearance to Tsunade’s (although the man’s trash when it comes to women but you get my point). What do people base their opinions on when they say she’s ugly? On her exaggerated anger expressions? Because Sakura is not drawn as prettier or uglier than any of the other female characters. Is it based on the fact that people love to bring up time and time again, that she doesn’t have big breasts? Yeah, she doesn’t have breasts as big as Tsunade’s or Hinata’s or even Ino’s but what does that have to do with anything? Nope, this is rooted in misogyny because, just like in real life, when you don’t like a woman you insult her based on her body and appearance because you believe that’s where all the worth of a woman is. Besides, don’t you think there something wrong with focusing so much on the body type of a girl aged 12 to 17? Because I think there is.

I always feel like laughing at people who call her stupid because Sakura is a nerd. This is why she was paired with the more battle prone Naruto and Sasuke because she was too much brains and not enough brawn. I know that it was Ino, Shino and Sasuke that graduated top of the class but, according to the Databooks, none of them beat Sakura in intelligence, she is equal to Shino and higher than Ino and Sasuke. People love to say that her being able to do the written part of the Chunin Exam all by herself doesn’t prove that she’s actually smart, buddy, it does. The fact that she’s smart doesn’t make the rest of the students who cheated idiots. That was the point of the test, the questions were too difficult for 12 year old genin to answer. The fact that Sakura could, however, isn’t bullshit. You wouldn’t call an exceptionally gifted kid who can answer really advanced academic questions “not that smart really, it doesn’t prove anything”. Freaking Sasuke commented on her analytical abilities, she’s an extremely skilled med-nin, she is able to put pieces of information she’s previously learnt together in order to form a present opinion, her hobbies are trivia games and memorizing medical ninjutsu material for God’s sake.

I definitely don’t think comparing her to Hinata achieves anything. Hinata does represent the ideas Kishimoto seems to have about women. She is soft-spoken, she is never confrontational, she never wants to offend anybody. Sure, Hinata also has her insecurities and doesn’t place much value on herself (we have her father to thank for that) but even after getting out of that shell and discovering she has some iron at her core, she is still mostly soft. That’s not a bad thing at all, it’s simply who she is as a person and it doesn’t make her better or worse than Sakura. I know that Sakura fans have always been bullied online, from forums to YouTube to tumblr to any other comment section of blogs and stuff, people have always thrown shit at Sakura, saying she’s useless, a whore, an idiot. The amount of times I’ve seen people wish violent, horrible deaths on Sakura (for the sole reason that she didn’t spread her legs for Naruto being the catalyst in pretty much 100% of the cases) is immense. The amount of times I’ve seen people wishing Hinata would kill Sakura “for what she did to Naruto” is huge. So based on this, I understand why Sakura fans feel the need to get defensive. I don’t agree with putting Hinata down but I understand why some people might do it. I’ll never put down someone’s fav (especially when the fav is as unproblematic as Hinata who honestly did nothing wrong) but I definitely understand why some people will do it.

Naruto is a shonen, battle manga. We will never get 100% healthy relationships in this because the manga is not focused on romance. It is why the relationships between Sasuke and Sakura and Naruto and Hinata were not greatly developed and why there was an overemphasis on Naruto and Sasuke’s bond which is basically “we’re forever competing to see who’s better”. Kishimoto based it on his relationship with his brother but I’m pretty sure he took it up to eleven in the manga. Because Naruto is a manga for whom the target audience is boys, female characters will never be 100% appreciated. Most of the boys watching identify with the downtrodden outcast, guys such as Lee or Naruto. It’s a thing, associated with the stereotype of the Western man who watches anime, a stereotype that is proved to be correct in most cases, sadly. How many of these guys think they’re gems, that they’re precious souls to have around and girls just don’t see them for what they are? Both Naruto and Lee are very loved among male fans and they are both rejected by Sakura. (I could also say something about the stereotypes Western anime watching men place on Japanese women, namely “the pliant, submissive wife, who would do house chores all day, would never say no to sex and worship them as the much better versions of Japanese men that they are” but I’m not going there.) Never cruelly though, she remains friendly with both of them. Her bond with Naruto is very strong and they’re actually a pretty rare example of a good male and female friendship (the violence that is played for laughs doesn’t really mean much to me).

However, for the male fans that is never enough. How many times did I see stuff like “She chose Sasuke although Naruto never left the village” or “Naruto did so many things for her yet she still chose Sasuke”. Dude, there was never a competition. Sakura loves Sasuke, plain and simple. You can disagree with that if you want, you can disagree with how she expresses her love for him but there was never competition. Sakura has always loved Sasuke, what she feels for him is true love. Many people don’t believe it exists but it is what it is. I find it funny (and by funny I mean idiotic to the heavens) that people always say her development was crushed because she didn’t give up on Sasuke but Naruto’s was improved by not giving up on Sasuke. This is bias and misogyny at its finest. Sasuke is not just a crush to Sakura. People always want to say Sakura was a fangirl to Sasuke and nothing more and that she simply needed to get over her obsessive crush. She wouldn’t have said all she wanted was for him to acknowledge her if he were just a crush, she wouldn’t have suffered so badly over him. Many of the village girls had a thing for Sasuke and I doubt all of them cried over Sasuke at night after he left. Only Sakura anticipated when he was going to leave. People always say that Sakura maturing would have meant her understanding that her and Sasuke are just not meant to be a thing. The thing is, she wasn’t holding on to the idea that her and Sasuke would be “a thing”. Kakashi made it pretty clear (to Sasuke and to all fans who just can’t get it in their heads) that Sakura only wanted to help him, not to get into his pants.

People are also super quick to judge the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura as abusive. Why though? All the times they were violent towards each other (and there weren’t even that many times) they weren’t dating, they were combatants on opposite sides of battle. There is nobody in this series that Sasuke is more violent towards than Naruto and yet I never see this relationship classified as abusive, instead it is considered romantic and heartfelt that he wanted to sever his bonds with Naruto in order to make a martyr out of himself and be consumed by darkness. Like, yeah, that’s super healthy. I see the same thing being said with Karin, that Sasuke impaled her simply because he wanted to cut all of his bonds, not because he actually wanted to kill her. Which is…stupid to say the least. Like, cool story, still murder. He knew that impaling her would result in killing her but damn, was he willing to make that sacrifice. The reasons why Sasuke wanted to murder the people in his life are not important. In truth, all the murder he wanted to commit was because people were getting in the way of killing Itachi and, after killing Itachi, people were getting in the way of his goal to be completely alone in order to destroy/reform Konoha. Sasuke is not a psychopath who murders for fun but that doesn’t mean he was in a good place.

I shipped Sasuke with Karin but I never saw their bond as overly emotional or true love. I’m not saying Karin doesn’t care about him but I do think her feelings for him are more in the realm of sexual than the romantic. She does care for his well-being, she wants him to be happy, she is impressed by him and wants to be around him but it’s not romantic. Does she suffer when she thinks he’s dead? Naturally. Because she cares about him and she does love him but, again, not romantically. Karin’s sexual feelings for Sasuke are not bad, they don’t make her a whore or whatever. But it’s quite silly in my opinion to mistake them for some sort of pure, true love. They’re not that and it’s fine that they’re not. We see Sakura wanting to be alone with Sasuke but she never thinks of how she’s so excited she can barely stand it and how she wants to “ravage Sasuke like crazy”. We don’t see Sakura’s reaction, upon seeing Sasuke arrive on the battlefield to be “I want to lick Sasuke all over right now”.

People always like to remind everyone that Sakura ended her friendship with Ino over Sasuke. However, we never see Sakura and Ino be hostile to each other. Compare their rivalry to the one between Sasuke and Naruto to understand what I’m saying. They had a mild dislike going on but we see them quickly overcome it in the Chunin Exams. Sakura and Ino never really gave up on their friendship, their rivalry was mostly played for laughs, I never took it seriously because I don’t think it was presented in a way that was saying “you need to take this seriously, this is the real deal”. Mostly because it dealt with who has prettier hair and who can get the seat next to Sasuke first. Nope, not serious.

Back to Hinata, this is the reason why so many of the fanboys prefer her. Look at the opinions Shikamaru, another character the fanboys adore, has about women. He is downright misogynistic but that gets overlooked in fandom time after time because of his 200 IQ. Instead, I see people saying it is Sasuke who hates women when there is no indication of that, except, you know, people who think he’s gay and because he’s gay he MUST hate all women and consider them absolutely gross (except for the, sometimes OC, self-insert in fanfiction). Just like his father, Shikamaru has this thing that women should be sweet, soft and tender not headstrong, demanding and even harsh (women like his mother, Yoshino, Ino, Temari, Tayuya). He hates receiving help from women, he is frustrated when he has to fight women. He sums up his views of women himself by saying “C'mon. You know what they’re like. You can never figure them out. You never know where you could stand with them. The smallest things could put you in their bad side. Always playing little mind games with you. Trying to make you do what they want. They’re just a big pain basically.”

For the most part, many fans linked Sakura to Kushina because of her fiery personality. Minato kinda sealed this comparison when saying Sakura reminded him of Kushina. So a lot of people, while calling Sakura an ugly bitch and a whore who needs to be raped and die, still wanted her for Naruto and believed she will ultimately change her mind and go for Naruto. Personally, I don’t care about that because so many characters in Naruto are carbon copies of people who came before them, enough similarities are enough. This idea that a guy should marry a woman just like his mother is weird for many reasons to me. It’s only men that have unhealthy relationships with their mothers that want a woman exactly like their mothers. Then the ending came so Hinata, being the embodiment of what a woman “should be” became more appropriate for Naruto in the eyes of so many fans. The fact that she fits these patterns doesn’t take away or add to Hinata’s character in any way. It just is. However, fanboys will use it in a sexist way. I definitely don’t agree with the criticism for Hinata that it’s wrong her motivation for becoming strong is Naruto. The motivation of pretty much all characters in becoming stronger is in order to protect others and there's nothing wrong with wanting to improve yourself because you feel that would put you on more equal grounds with the one you love. This manga places great value on the power of unity and community and people who seek power for power’s sake, for revenge or for evil don’t do well. They are either defeated or they change their minds. Great emphasis is placed on the “you only become strong when you have someone you need to protect” mentality. And women are allowed to make connections in this life, they don’t have to live “lone wolf” lives in order to be “truly strong”. Loneliness is an enemy in and of itself in Naruto.

Kishimoto’s views on women are not necessarily progressive but they’re not exactly bad in my opinion. It all has to do with how fanboys twist his ideas and make them bad. Because I don’t think he ever blamed Sakura for not hooking up with Naruto. I know there are people who believe that he’s holding onto the belief that people (and women especially) must forever be with their first love. I think it just so happens that Naruto and Sasuke were Hinata’s and Sakura’s first loves but, more important, they are their true loves. Ino moved on and I see people saying she shouldn’t have. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t I guess. To sum up, I’ve yet to see dislike for Sakura that’s not misogynistic. I’m not even talking about people who think she’s weak. She is the only one who’s not from a clan and yet she managed to surpass Tsunade, a Sannin. She was impaled by Madara and shook it off immediately, she saved Naruto’s, Kankuro’s, Hinata’s and Karin’s lives, she saved Sasuke from an infinte desert, she saved Obito from a sea of acid, she punched an alien all-powerful goddess in the face.

People saying shipping Sakura and Hinata with the guys they’re canonically in love with proves their fans are selfish because they just want them to look cute next to Sasuke and Naruto amuse me. That if you really cared about them you’d ship them with guys who “actually” care about them like Lee or Kiba or whatever. Dude, people love who they love. And a woman has no obligation to be with a man who was friendly and nice to her, not even a man who has a crush on her if she’s not attracted to him or doesn’t love him.

[raijindork]

the big 4... haha j/k, how about random ships colu and bixeed

WELL... 

Nah. Okay. 

CoLu is one of my OTPs. Right up there with BixLu, BixCo, and of course, CoLuBix. Literally top four ships involve the same characters. 

Anyway. I see CoLu in a similar way to how I see GaLu and BixLu. They all have the potential (or they straight up do) to have had a really dark, horrible upbringing. And they’ve all done some really shitty things that they’re not completely okay with (or are actually okay with, and more so in Cobra’s case). But then with Cobra, I feel like there’s little he does actually regret or show remorse for. Most of the things he’s done, I imagine he did them because he wanted to or needed to. He probably wasn’t as somewhat misguided as the others were. 

But then I see Lucy as the forgiving soul she usually is, who always wants to see the best in people and that everyone always deserves a second (or third chance). And she’d see Cobra no differently. So that could be tricky. While Cobra doesn’t exactly feel any remorse for anything he’s done (to her specifically, e.g. in that clock filler arc), Lucy would probably end up thinking that he’s actually thinking he doesn’t deserve forgiveness. When really, it’s just a case that he doesn’t want it. I don’t know. 

Anyway though. Any relationship they did have, I imagine it would be a long journey as far as getting there went. Lucy would be more open to it, but Cobra is Cobra and he wouldn’t exactly like the idea of admitting he has feelings for anyone, much less someone of FT (if it’s in the canon verse, that is). Then whenever they did get together, it still wouldn’t be that great right off the bat. Cobra would probably have a lot of trust issues and he’s used to keeping secrets from people, and then Lucy just... Well, it probably takes her a while to actually acknowledge that and realise that. 

Of course though, once they get past that, then they’d be a really, really great ship. Cobra is probably grumpy 99% of the time, but there’s the rare occasion where he’s a total dork and/or sweetheart and it probably makes Lucy cry because she totally doesn’t expect him to do overly nice things. (She knows that he loves her, he’s just not the type of person who is able to show it very easily.) And then Cobra is definitely ridiculously protective of her in extreme cases (or not so extreme cases, e.g. if she was pregnant lmao). 

tl;dr i love colu to pieces and as much as i see it as a healthy ship for the most part, i don’t think it would always be that way. modern verse is slightly different from my perspective, but he’d still be mostly reserved for a long time and it takes lucy a while to realise that he just doesn’t really care all that much about ‘fitting in’ in certain places. 

Bixeed. Okay. I’ll admit, I do like this ship. I don’t love it, but I certainly don’t hate it. It’s kind of just one of those ships that occasionally comes across my dash or whatever, and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah. This is a thing. Cool.’  

My only issue with this ship is that the few people who did/do write for it, tended to write Freed specifically as extremely damaged/constantly needing support/reassurance etc. It was really... one-sided and OOC, at least to me. Also, a lot of those people tended to show Freed as ridiculously feminine and... No. I just don’t like that. Especially when it’s paired with a Bix that is just completely fucked in the head. But that’s not actually to do with the ship itself I guess. That’s more with how others have written it, and I’m protective of my babies and the way they’re written. 

Anyway though. I do like it. I think it’s cute sometimes, but I know people who have it as NoTP so it’s kind of fallen off for me. I’m somewhat influenced by what ships my mutuals like/dislike? I don’t know why. Or at least, they kind of help me realise that I don’t actually love something as much as I think I do. 

send me a ship for my honest opinion.