SasuSaku Shoujo Week Day 5: Secret Love

Sasuke and Sakura being precious friends, precious comrades and a bit like lovers since childhood.

Sasusaku/Uchiha family scenes that changed/removed in Naruto/Boruto

This is a small change, probably unimportant, but in the manga Sasuke doesn't wear a cloak with the Akatsuki symbol, the anime just decided he would use that symbol for no reason.

Little Sarada talking to her mom about how stupid boys are, while remembering that she and Boruto have similar dads (removed)

Team 7 in official art

why is it always "the princes fight and plot against each other in order to inherit the crown"? i want a story about lazy princes who all try to convince the elderly king they're too incompetent to rule the kingdom because they really don't want that kind of responsibility on their shoulders, they all just want to be left alone

Comission.

Daily reminder: Akane is among the weaker characters in terms of strength, but never the weakest.

An army of Ghosts.

TW: racism

I think the way that comic book media has uncritically pushed anti-Arab racist propaganda (among other kinds) for decades upon decades is an important thing to acknowledge. Like it's not just a couple of bad apples here and there, it's always been pervasive. So many stories, so many villains, so many Arab coded fake evil countries. That kind of thing desensitizes people, dehumanizes entire groups. The politics of media designed for young men and boys (and not just them but for years that was the only audience that mattered, thanks sexism) has consequences.

Seriously, what was this:

As far as I'm aware this never even got an explicit retcon.

I was a little Muslim boy in the mid 2000s reading a Death in the Family because I wanted to know what happened to Jason Todd, and I didn't understand the depths of the propaganda that was being fed to me. I was so desensitized to hearing about terrible things happening in the middle east, and evil terrorists that I didn't question it. And my parents talked to me about what was going on and how it was wrong. But I was still a little kid and I loved Batman and I wasn't at the point where I could really look at the narrative critically, to realize that the authors have worldviews that are biased. I don't think I even grasped that different people wrote the characters. Iran electing known super-terrorist-serial killer-baby eating clown The Joker to represent them because he understood their values is yes, notably crazy, but most of this stuff isn't so loud and obvious, and we didn't leave it in the 80s. Just look at what happened to the depiction of Talia and Ra's post 911 and how they progressive became less human. So just think about the generations of kids reading this crap who had no counter messaging at all. Where does that leave their empathy?

I'm not saying that everything we're seeing is the fault of comic books, that's stupid and reductive and insulting to the complexity of the reality. But what I'm saying is that a lot of these narratives are actively complicit in the kinds of inhumanity we're seeing. Marvel thinking it's appropriate to throw Sabra into a movie in current day is a glaring transgression but it's not some kind of strange outlier. Lots of those films are actively funded by arms of the American military, just look at Captain marvel and Iron Man. And if anyone likes imposing an agenda onto the narrative, it's the military. A lot of this is baked into the fiction, and we owe it to ourselves and others to actively contend with what that means.

I dunno I'm just mad, and disappointed and maybe a little guilty that it took me this long to really realize the full state of things. I spent a lot of time blindly consuming. Like these books were created to be aspirational, to show good people trying to make a better world. But as always happens when art is completely beholden to money, they still serve the politics of the ruling class at the end of the day.

Somthing about the way Snow always despised chaos above all else and was killed not in a clean, controlled execution but in the very definition of chaos: a wild, violent rush of an unnamed crowd. Poetic justice.

Don't worry about your answer sounding like an essay(I also write like that), feel comfortablein writing whatever you want in any format, I feel the same way though in my opinion snow(because dude is self-centred)might have thought katniss might have been both lucy gray and sejanus's revenge(since as much as he might try to forget them, they were a major part of his life at a time), though the best part is that katniss is technically everybody's revenge, who suffered because of the capitol especially snow and they definitelysaw a bit of themselves in her. I love how every character in tbosas parallel the characters in the original trilogy .And I noticed those parallels between lucy gray and katniss and I absolutely love them and I would like to add that lucy gray and katniss are very loving towards their younger family member who is their/is like a sister to them(maude ivory and prim) and both deeply cherish their families. And I love the fact that both of them are very influential in their own way and can make people root for them. And that they are somewhat connected to the wilderness. And you are right about them being underrated like the fandom(this is a problem in every fandom faces) obsesses over male characters even if the protagonist is a woman like there is nothing wrong with stanning male characters but our female characters also deserve love and attention.

I wanted to know, what do you think of katniss and lucy gray separately and regarding their parallels to each other? Personally, both are my faves(being badass and iconic) and I love their parallels.

Alr sorry this low-key sounds like an essay

Okay so as we all know in the movies there are some oblivious parallels between them like the bow and the angry look at the camera at the end of The Games, but I also like the ones like "The Songbird and The Mockingjay" and "A fighter forced to perform and a performer forced to fight" and while I do love them both as characters individually, these parallels make them so much better.

But for me, one of my favorite parallels that I've seen no one talk about is how they both moved so many people in their own way, while using their own voices. As we all know, Lucy Gray got lots of fans because of her music and the only things Katniss ever said that truly moved people was when she was speaking from her heart and not the things they told her to say.

Also I find people saying that Katniss was Sejanus' revenge and Lucy Gray is actually Peeta and blah, blah, blah, all of that misses the point of their characters. Because the thing is they aren't anyone's "revenge" or anything like that. They are their own people born in a time and place where they're not allowed to be their own people, but one of them meets freedom and the other doesn't. And the reason they resemble so many characters is that they're relatable people once you get to know them and especially with Lucy Gray being VERY COLORFUL (hehe, see what I did there?) and Katniss being the face of the revolution because people saw themselves in her and she opened their eyes.

Yeah I love them both so much and they're both, especially Lucy Gray, very underrated even tho they're the main characters. Again, sorry this sounds like an essay, I just ramble a lot.

My baby girl katniss is usually smart and observant but when it comes to people's positive feelings towards her, she is mostly oblivious. She is really funny though when she misunderstood oeeta's feelings and making her own theories regarding his motives.

peeta: hey! since we're gonna die soon and i've had a crush on you since forever, wanna be friends? :)

katniss: you are a ruthless plotting scheming killer who is going to kill me the moment i let down my guard

how do you look at the multiple human rights violations against kashmiri muslims and think "what a normal place! clearly it's healing!" you have to be another level of wilfully ignorant to believe that kashmiri muslims are the ones engaging in settler-colonialism + ethnic cleansing and not the indian state

also if your response to any of this is to say "what about kashmiri pandits" you quite literally have no understanding of what's going on or you just like to engage in whataboutism lol

starfire redesign

Dancing Sakura

katniss everdeen coded