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i’m in the mood to play devil’s advocate tonight cus you sns shippers thought you were safe from my lashings? lol.

anyways, sns fans love to claim they’re not misogynistic when they critique ss and nh, when sns as a ship/dynamic is literally in the same boat and, arguably, even more problematic. (i’ll make a proper blog about this soon.)

the way some of you niggas constantly villainise sakura and hinata just to defend your mid-off ship is actually hilarious.

writing whole think pieces dissecting sakura and hinata just to project onto them and paint them as these evil manipulative women who make naruto and sasuke “suffer so much.”

i’ve genuinely seen some of you put sakura and hinata on the same level as fucking danzo (huh?). i wish they were as villainous as you make them sound, but that would require giving kishi way too much credit. the man can barely write female characters to save his life.

and you really don’t wanna bring up danzo because we all know that if sasuke hadn’t killed him, your status quo bootlicker naruto probably would’ve let him roam around the village the same way he let the elders who participated in the uchiha massacre face basically no meaningful consequences.

then there are the headcanons…

yall make up these weird, misogynistic fantasies about sakura raping or forcing herself onto sasuke (wtf?), while simultaneously kii-ing at kishi’s misogynistic writing where her own motherhood gets questioned. or you insist hinata was just a surrogate or call her an incubator because you refuse to accept that she and naruto actually ended up together and had a kid. then there are all the fics where people get excited over naruto and sasuke cheating on their wives. like… how do you manage to outdo kishi in the misogyny department? you enjoy women’s suffering that much? yall are just as bad as the dudebros you swear you’re different from.

everyone also rightfully criticises sakura’s childish crush, persistence, and “obsession” with sasuke. but the second someone points out that naruto behaves the exact same way (and worse), suddenly it’s excuses you dig out of your fucking ass.

when naruto transformed into sasuke and tried to kiss sakura without her knowledge or consent, some of you genuinely tried to blame her for it. now yall know damn well naruto wasn’t planning to stop. the only reason he didn’t go through with it was because he got diarrhoea. but somehow sakura’s the problem?

everyone drags sakura for wanting to see sasuke pee when they were 12, yet we literally see her grow out of that childish, perverted behaviour.

meanwhile, naruto repeatedly acts like a creep, especially in shippuden. he tries to peep on sakura at the bathhouse, constantly uses sexy jutsu to sexually harass or embarrass people, and sakura is treated as unreasonable whenever she retaliates. somehow, i’ve seen people excuse all of this by claiming it’s because of his “repressed homosexuality.”

first of all, naruto isn’t a queer story. it has transphobic gags, and kishi is a straight man. please stop giving him credit that belongs to actual queer writers telling actual queer stories.

second, that excuse is counterproductive because you’re literally defending sexual harassment by suggesting closeted queer people naturally express their confusion through inappropriate heterosexual behaviour. that’s a harmful, homophobic stereotype that associates closeted people with predatory behaviour. but i’m supposed to take these arguments seriously?

what gets me is that you don’t even care that sakura is consistently the victim in these invasive or perverted scenarios because yall hate her that much. then you turn around and act shocked when people call your takes misogynistic.

and don’t even get me started on how quickly you rely on misogynistic talking points against sakura and hinata while simultaneously writing essays about how sasuke is a victim of misogyny.

the real victims of misogyny in this fandom have always been sakura, hinata, karin, and honestly all of kishi’s female cast. both the writing and parts of the fandom constantly reduce them to emotional punching bags or plot devices whose only purpose is to facilitate naruto and sasuke’s story. meanwhile, naruto’s own misogynistic behaviour gets ignored, downplayed, or endlessly excused.

every time i check the anti-sasusaku tag it’s either sakura getting dogpiled because, apparently, she’s the perfect scapegoat. somehow she’s the biggest villain in the series who would’ve personally killed baby naruto if given the chance (that’s genuinely how some of y’all sound). or it’s sasuke getting dragged and reduced to this one-dimensional misogynistic abuser who’s solely at fault for never reciprocating her feelings. and don’t even get me started on the sns shippers… pot calling the kettle black. y’all are just as bad, if not worse.

my actual problem with ss is that they barely know each other, and the writing never gives their relationship the narrative importance it needed. their moments are a mess, and this becomes painfully obvious in shippuden.

sakura never gets to learn the truth about itachi or the uchiha massacre, despite that being fundamental to sasuke’s character and the driving force behind almost everything he does. instead, kishi regresses her character and repeatedly uses her as a victim within an already unbalanced dynamic, to the point where sasuke is constantly humiliating her. meanwhile, sasuke never reciprocates her feelings, barely interacts with her, and never properly learns why she tried to kill him during the five kage summit arc. for a pairing that’s supposed to be romantic, kishi does a really poor job at actually developing it.

part 1 actually laid a decent foundation. yes, sakura was infatuated with sasuke, but she was also willing to call him out on his bs. for example, when she calls him a coward. sure, it was a little ironic coming from her at the time, but the point still stands. then during the five kage summit, kishi finally gives sakura an arc where she has some autonomy and decides she’s going to kill sasuke herself. and what does he do? drops the ball. like he usually does with her character.

sasuke, on the other hand, clearly cared about sakura in part 1. he was willing to risk his life for her, saved her during the chunin exams, and stopped himself from killing the sound ninja because she begged him to stop. right before leaving the village, he thanks her for everything she’d done for him and acknowledges the time they spent together as team 7. those moments mattered.

then shippuden happens.

sasuke becomes almost entirely cold towards her. and whenever kishi does try to show that he still cares, it’s either through crumbs or moments that are immediately overshadowed by the overwhelmingly negative interactions between them. and when i say the negative moments overshadow the positive ones, i really mean it.

the war arc somehow makes it even worse. when sasuke tells sakura there’s nothing she can do, she just… accepts it and sulks. which feels completely out of character. sakura has always been headstrong and stubborn. she has no problem calling out naruto, sai, or literally anyone else on their bs, but when it comes to sasuke in part 2 she just takes whatever he says. and don’t even get me started on the genjutsu. ss fans, i’m sorry, but there really isn’t any defending that.

then we get chapter 699. sasuke apologises and gives sakura the forehead poke. yes, it’s a nice moment in isolation, but there’s barely any build up for it. especially when you consider that the forehead poke was an incredibly personal gesture between itachi and sasuke. we’re never really shown, from sasuke’s perspective in part 2, how his feelings towards sakura actually changed. it almost feels like kishi forgot about team 7’s interpersonal dynamics during the war arc.

and i genuinely don’t know what kishi was smoking when he wrote gaiden because it was such a disservice to both of their characters.

the uchiha have already been explored extensively throughout the manga, so he easily could’ve taken a more interesting direction with sarada’s story by focusing on what it means to be one of the last surviving members of her clan. instead, what do we get?

we get sakura’s motherhood being questioned for cheap drama (which was just misogynistic writing, like wtf?), and sasuke, whose entire character revolves around family and the loss of it, gets turned into an absent father. then, instead of sarada having those important conversations with either of her parents, she gets them from naruto.

you honestly can’t convince me kishi doesn’t constantly position naruto as the character who “does things right,” while using sasuke and sakura as contrasts to reinforce how correct naruto’s methods and worldview supposedly are. it genuinely starts feeling like a self insert fantasy.

what kishi should’ve done was have sasuke and sakura actually participate in each other’s character arcs while naturally developing their friendship and eventual romance throughout shippuden. instead, he keeps them emotionally disconnected for most of the story and then expects the audience to accept the relationship because he says so.

and honestly, this isn’t just an ss problem. it’s a consequence of kishi dropping the ball with almost all of sasuke’s relationships outside of naruto and itachi.

his dynamics with sakura and kakashi lose their narrative importance, while his bond with taka gets sidelined too, all so the final fight can happen and naruto can become sasuke’s end-all be-all. and you can’t tell me that was always the intention because part 1 proves otherwise. og naruto worked so well because characters like sakura and kakashi actively moved the plot forward, highlighted sasuke’s positive qualities, and helped build towards the VoTE 1 fight. by shippuden, almost all of that gets sacrificed.