#i think we can all agree that the biggest tragedy is the fact that sasuke turned out to be a fucking bootlicker

[dai-nana-han-agenda]

i would actually love to listen to a sasuke rant there's so many parts of his storyline that still confuse me

hello!! so i am not the most eloquent person, especially since i’ve been out of school for past 6 months and my brain feels fried/mushy from the lack of use, but imma do my best to put my thoughts into words! putting everything under the cut because i kinda went off oops.

ok so to be completely fucking honest, i don’t remember anything that happens in naruto after the pein arc. i’ve watched all of shippuden once, when it was airing, but when i go back and rewatch, i never go beyond the pein arc (aside from certain moments/arcs later on). all this to say, most of my understanding of the characterization of sasuke comes from the og naruto to the beginning of shippuden.

so let’s talk about genin!sasuke. yes, as a fandom, i feel like a lot of us tease him for being “super fucking emo” & how he will, canonically, spout out the darkest little rants to anyone who will listen. but it’s important to put into context that he’s 1.) 12 years old at the beginning of og naruto and 2.) HEAVILY traumatized. like, my poor baby boy saw his brother, literally his favorite person in the entire world, murder his entire clan in cold blood. itachi literally tortured him, forcing him to relive the events of the massacre, in an attempt to goad him into “getting stronger.” and as much as i post abt how much i love itachi, bc i tend to ignore canon & live in my deluded fantasies of the massacre never happening, i know he’s not the hero kishimoto tries to paint him to be. i’m not gonna get into it, bc this is about sasuke, but i do just wanna say: itachi was also been manipulated by the shinobi system, but he continued that vicious cycle when he chose to torture and traumatize his brother in the cruelest way possible. itachi’s story is also really fucking tragic, because he was just a kid. he deserved to be helped. he’s both a victim and a perpetrator. but i digress.

so, we go into og naruto with the knowledge that sasuke is extremely traumatized and has, since the age of 7/8, been plotting to avenge his clan by killing his brother. on top of all that, he has no one who helps him through that. i’m not entirely sure he has any real bonds until he’s placed on team 7. like, he’s still living in the compound, where he saw his entire clan murdered. he’s literally living with the ghosts of his dead family. that’s extremely fucked up (fuck u hiruzen u piece of shit).

throughout og naruto, there are multiple moments where you can see sasuke’s true nature. for one, he genuinely cares about his team. he literally threw himself in front of haku’s sebon for naruto. in the chuunin exam arc, sakura’s super depressed abt something and he purposefully compliments her genjutsu skills to make her feel better. in the gaara retrieval arc, he talks about how naruto & sakura are his precious people. when kakashi ties him to the tree after his fight with naruto, sasuke thinks about naruto and sakura as his reasons to stay.

before the massacre, we see that sasuke is a sweet, gentle boy who loves his brother and his family. that doesn’t just go away. at his core, sasuke is a good person. but his trauma is never addressed by any adult in the series & his quest for revenge is left unchecked for too long. he wants power so bad, and who can blame him? when he runs into itachi in og naruto, he’s determined to kill him, and he’s confident that he can. very quickly, sasuke learns that he’s powerless & nowhere near the level he needs to be to kill itachi. even after learning the chidori & basically defeating gaara, who was the strongest in the chuunin exams, he doesn’t have enough power to take on his brother (who, in a totally dick move, goads him about it, like the little bitch he is.)

sasuke doesn’t just leave the village without hesitation. like i said earlier, kakashi’s speech affects him. in both the manga and the anime, he’s visibly struggling over his choice. people say sasuke doesn’t feel anything, but i would argue that he feels too much. he feels really fucking deeply. he has to pick between his team, people that genuinely make him happy enough to forget about his revenge, or his quest for power. if he chooses his team, his happiness, does that mean he’s betraying his family? is he letting his family die without the justice they deserve? he can’t accept that, so of course he chooses power. he forces himself to cut ties, no matter how much it hurts, because killing itachi means letting his family finally rest in peace (and, he thinks, will bring peace to himself.)

so he leaves sakura on the bench (but he thanks her for caring, for loving him). he leaves naruto (but not before the iconic rain scene, where he struggles to leave him behind).

sasuke’s true nature doesn’t just disappear after og naruto. during shippuden, when he first forms team hebi/taka, he bonds with them in the same way he bonded with team 7. he doesn’t leave them behind (kakashi’s influence), he saves them when they’re in trouble, and he even establishes a no-kill policy (aside from those related to his revenge plot). he’s also openly disgusted by orochimaru’s experimentation (not to say that makes him a good person, because the bar is super fucking low if so, but i think it’s important to note).

jumping forward to after he kills itachi/learns the truth, he’s understandably so furious. his brother was used by the village to massacre his entire clan. it’s state-sanctioned genocide, plain and simple. of course he doesn’t wanna go back to konoha. of course he wants to destroy konoha. of course he’s gonna spiral. sasuke’s descent into darkness is a fucking tragedy because you can understand why he's in such despair. he locks away all the goodness inside of him because he’s so consumed by rage and grief and sadness and darkness (until naruto finally pulls him out.)

as a viewer of the show, of course i believe/can say, “omg, but that doesn’t mean you have to eradicate all of konoha when the civilians did nothing wrong. just take out the people in power (aka danzo) and be done with it.” but honestly, put yourself in his shoes. what would you do if your family/friends were murdered? what if you found out it was your favorite person who murdered them? what if you found out that they did it because the government told them to? i, for one, would burn the world down. or i’d just be consumed by grief/depression. like seriously, how the fuck do you come back from that? how do you keep living?

i personally believe everyone deserves compassion (cough, fuck the US prison system, cough). children don’t have the autonomy to protect themselves from trauma, nor do they choose the environment they're born into. and yes, of course i believe that when you’re an adult, it’s your responsibility to unlearn that trauma/work on yourself instead of taking it out on everyone else/using it as an excuse. but what if you don’t have the resources/support to do that? sasuke certainly didn’t. not when he was a genin, when everyone ignored his revenge plot (like seriously, get the boy some goddamn therapy!!). and, after itachi died, he’s stuck in a world where his entire clan was wrongfully murdered because of konoha (danzo) and he doesn’t know how to fix the hurt and pain and rage he’s feeling because of it.

on a quick side note, i do think there’s also an argument that could be made about how sasuke’s self-destructive tendencies & his extremely violent plans/actions were exaggerated to discredit the validity of his desire for revolution and systemic change. like “omg all revolutionaries are violent and out of control!! we need to put him down instead of understanding that he’s actually right, the shinboi system fucking sucks and needs to be revolutionized!” idk if kishimoto did this purposefully (with the way his writing goes from brilliant to absolutely fucking stupid, i really can’t tell with him). but i’m going off topic.

do i think sasuke is 100% justified in all his actions? of course not. i, for one, really wish sakura had buried him six feet under when he tried to kill her (yes, i know she tried to kill him first but that’s another rant for another time). i wish karin got to kick his ass bc she definitely did not deserve to be treated that way (she literally almost died because of him and sasuke didn’t give a flying fuck, like fuck him for that.) i think we can be compassionate and understand why he acted the way he did while also acknowledging that he did do some really dark, unforgivable shit.

idk. sasuke is just such an interesting character. i think he's an easy character to misunderstand, because it's easy to be pissed off at him for the choices he makes (especially when you have naruto as a main character, who's ideals are... well. we're not gonna get into that.) he’s not all good, but he’s certainly not a villain (which i feel like a lot of people paint him out to be.) i just have a lot of Feelings about him and i definitely don't think i did him justice in this rant but it's also like, 1 AM rn and my brain is scrambled lmfao.

so yeah, that’s my soapbox. i don’t even know if any of this makes sense (truly, i feel like my brain is malfunctioning half of the time help). but, if u wanna talk about it more, or talk about specific parts of the manga/anime, lmk!

[teamsasukes]

why did sakura love sasuke?

to be honest, the “sakura never knew sasuke and only loved him for shallow reasons” argument is something i’ve always had a problem with and here’s a rushed but lengthy breakdown of why

double standards

have we been told explicitly why naruto crushed on sakura? or even lee? lee said outright that he was drawn to her because of her beauty. naruto introduced sakura as “a very cute girl that i like.” their infatuation with her is not questioned or used to paint them as vapid people. it’s true that neither of them ended the series romantically entwined with her, but naruto still expressed great affection for sakura all throughout shippuden and beyond. despite this, no one pretends that naruto is superficial or easily charmed or whatever. yet this very same line of reasoning is used to portray sakura poorly? 

shippuden - naruto vs sakura

naruto expressed blind devotion towards sasuke in shippuden, to an even greater extent than sakura did. in fact, sakura decided during the kage summit arc that it was in everyone’s best interests for sasuke to die, and resolved to kill him herself. (she couldn’t go through with it, because she still cared for him, but the intent was still there, which is more than can be said for naruto.)

despite this, it’s always sakura’s motivation for wanting sasuke to return that is questioned?

naruto’s and sakura’s backstories (or lack thereof, in sakura’s case) and why we love

the biggest reason people protest sakura’s commitment to sasuke and not naruto’s is because, seemingly, naruto had a reason to love sasuke. they mirror each other in many ways, and they understand each other’s loneliness because sasuke grew up isolated after the massacre.

sakura can’t claim to relate to sasuke in this way, but my question is, why has the naruto fandom deluded themselves into thinking that the only way for two people to connect is for them to share similar tragedies in life? 

the answer (and how sasuke’s misrepresentation contributes to this)

it’s generally agreed upon that sakura’s “love” for sasuke started off as just a juvenile crush. from what we can glean from the text, sakura admired sasuke’s competence (which makes perfect sense given how her entire arc was to empower herself) and his looks.

it’s worth nothing that sasuke was a catalyst for sakura’s growth multiple times. first, sakura recognized that she was becoming ino’s shadow. realizing that she and ino both liked sasuke served as the final push for her to declare the two of them rivals, and she grew a great deal as her own person. (an important point here is that the rivalry was not really about sasuke, but regardless, vying for sasuke’s affection was something that sparked her growth)

then, between part 1 and part 2, sakura wanted to become more powerful so that she could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her teammates and help naruto retrieve sasuke. (again, note that while sasuke isn’t the primary reason -- after all, this part of her arc really begins during her fight with the sound nin prior to sasuke’s defection -- he’s a big motivator in this journey)

so what did sasuke do to inspire this? before the show started... well, nothing, really. 

but something that people fail to consider every time this comes up is that sakura and sasuke spent months together as teammates, where their relationship changed from a one-sided crush to mutual respect and friendship. sasuke stayed with her until she awoke from kakashi’s genjutsu during the bell test, opened up to her in his own way to impress upon her why it was so important to his goals that he didn’t waste his time. sasuke was the reason team seven passed the bell test (sakura was a stickler for the rules but sasuke suggested they share food with naruto). then he dove in front of her (and naruto, almost killing himself in the process) in battle during the land of waves mission to protect them. he saw when sakura was troubled and provided meaningful praise to boost her confidence before the chunin exams began. it’s completely believable and reasonable that sakura’s feelings would become genuine during their adventures as genin because she saw that sasuke really was someone to be admired.

that is to say, sasuke was not a cruel boy, which is a misrepresentation i often see parroted by the fandom. many people seem to think that only naruto could see through his hardened exterior due to shared life experience or something, but sasuke was openly good to both of his teammates on numerous occasions. the three of them spent a lot of time together offscreen (or off-page). why is it so hard to accept that her feelings became something real during this time?

“but sakura’s behaviour towards sasuke never changed! she never understood him on a deeper level! he never cared about her!”

really? because by the end of part 1, sakura had straight up called sasuke a coward to encourage him to fight. and she praised naruto while doing it, just to further demonstrate that she wasn’t blinded by her feelings for sasuke when it came to the boys any longer. she threatened to snitch about sasuke’s curse mark and have him withdrawn from the chunin exams because she was concerned for him, knowing (and not caring) that he’d hate her for it. (+ sasuke said here, "i won't be able to forgive even you.")

also, the idea that sakura didn’t understand sasuke is laughable. sakura was the only person worried that sasuke would abandon the village and join orochimaru. her concerns were dismissed by kakashi and even naruto was oblivious. and what did sasuke do? he defected.

meanwhile, the idea that sasuke never cared about sakura is not only laughable but shows a gross misunderstanding of his character. you can argue all day about whether it was romantic or not, i frankly don’t care, but this is the same sasuke who went out of his way to praise her when she felt insecure in her capabilities. sasuke told naruto that he had to make sure sakura survived if it was the last thing he did. sasuke’s curse mark receded because sakura hugged him. sasuke thanked her before leaving. and while i don’t care much for how the relationship was written in part 2, he only ever tried to harm her when at his lowest, and when he knew that she had already set her mind on killing him herself. 

canonically, why did sakura want sasuke back? is her love selfish?

this is the one that bothers me most, because people seriously act as though sakura was throwing herself at sasuke on the battlefield during the war arc lol

throughout part 2, sakura never once thought of sasuke with anything akin to romantic hope. she always brought him up in one of the following contexts (paraphrased):

“we must get sasuke back to the village so he’s safe and sound”

“i need to help naruto get sasuke back”

“i need to grow stronger for my team so that i’m no longer a liability to naruto and sasuke”

“i feel so sorry for burdening naruto with this promise to retrive sasuke”

“my dream is to see my team laughing together again” (side note: considering that we never get to see her family in canon it’s interesting that she latches on to team seven so strongly, even though she spends months with them and then two years where she had no contact with any of them. missed opportunities for development, check)

then, to spell it out for the people who can’t comprehend all of that, kakashi even explicitly said at the valley of the end that sakura’s goal was not to “make sasuke hers.” sakura simply wanted him to be safe, out of the clutches of an enemy sannin who’d invaded their village and killed their hokage, and mentally sound. 

conclusion

so yeah, all of that being said, i do understand why people don’t care for sasusaku in canon. i think their relationship, mostly in part 2 (boruto is disgraceful for quite literally everyone) leaves a lot to be desired. but oh my god it’s infuriating to see people act as though sakura loving sasuke is some unforgivable crime against her character development, or proves that she’s never matured, or whatever it is anti sakuras are saying these days. 

sakura grew a lot over the course of the series, and her loving a boy with whom she built an important bond throughout it all does not negate any of her development.