I Feel Better Just Being With You

like. when i read/watch anime/manga i brace myself for misogyny, i expect that the female character will be badly written so i end up giving them a lot more leeway in terms of interpretation and potential development. it takes a lot for me to dislike a female character, is the point.

its almost effortless with saukra. because sakura, unlike other badly written female characters, does not have a single consistent redeeming quality. Even the worst cases have something (even if it's so stereotypical it makes your teeth hurt) because the writer WANTS you to like them. sakura is NOT written like that.

In their genin era, both naruto and sasuke show more kindness and empathy (traditionally & stereotypically feminine traits) than sakura. this is further compounded by the fact that she is the only one without a tragic backstory on a team of sad angsty orphans tm.

but its like fine whatever in the beginning because the premise is that all three of them are bratty twelve year olds who'll eventually grow and mature. but saukra.....she doesn't grow. not in my opinion. like yeah sure, she has short hair and she's a med nin now, but she's still entitled and she still completely misunderstands her teammates and their motivation (for eg. genuinely believing that naruto is trying so hard to get sasuke back because of her).

also she's strong now, because she asks(???) tsunade to train her and she immediately(???) agrees. (i would have found it far more compelling if tsunade had said no, or "do this Impossible Task then i'll train you" and sakura was forced to prove herself but no tsunade just has a lot of free time apparently) i am equally skeptical of the whole Med-Nin arc, because at no earlier point does she express the slightest desire to do that. sakura is a med nin because: 1. she has good chakra control and 2. tsunade is a med-nin. Those are not compelling motivations!

EVEN THEN, i was like okay. never fucking mind. fandom will fix it, fandom will give her good writing. (personally i don't mind when fandom discards canon entirely to start from scratch) but the very FIRST sakura-centric fanfic i read bashed every single character except sakura (yes! including other female characters!) sakura was The One Who Suffered Most, the Most Beautiful and Powerful and also the only Correct person in the universe. completely ruined fanon sakura for me. i tried some other fics that were less blatant about it but it still read like y/n or mary sue to me. urggh.

sorry, for the long-ass rant in your ask box i couldn't help myself. (i also love narusasu! love your art!)

Do not be sorry I absolutely enjoyed reading all of this! And you're so right about the med-nin arc. I think even in the anime they pretty much just tell you she's now strong because she trained under Tsunade and that's all which ofc could be seen as her not getting the same screen time but I thought it was treated similarly to Naruto and Sasuke also advancing off-screen under the other Sannin. She also had her big fight against Sasori to show said power up unlike Sasuke who was basically MIA so this is all making me realize how much we didn't see Sasuke's years with Orochimaru past a few cameos? Ya know if that's another argument for why Sakura isn't supposedly treated well in canon lol...Also the med-nin arc for her doesn't really put her in any real higher standings in the end because as far as I can remember Ino also has med-nin qualities (which honestly I'm just now thinking about how I wish we'd seen more of her because as a healer she lost both her sensei AND her dad!) and I feel like Karin's whole character arc is about her healing qualities but with some actual meaning behind it. In the end I think it's just one more thing Sakura put herself on a pedestal about (even ironically over her own mentor) but we see things in canon that contradict or that muddy those seemingly redeeming qualities (such as her lying to the patient about having a significant other when he expressed interest in her, etc.).

I can't remember if I already posted about these but to those of you like me who are still here in the club I have sheith and allurance stickers on my Etsy!