so curious to hear more abt your thoughts on sakura’s dynamic with sasuke and naruto respectively in a romantic lens? are you satisfied with the canonical ending?
hello, hello !!! thank u so much for sending this in ꉂ(˵˃ ᗜ ˂˵) first and foremost, allow me to apologise for the delay in answering ! the busyness of life aside, i spent a bit of time thinking how i could answer this because i have all the information in my head, the argument in scatters, the [manga] scenes in my memories, but not one chronological order of sequence nor topics that would make the best presentation for my case. maybe it also didn't help that i never intended prior to the ask to ever fully elaborate on s.asuke/s.akura as much despite my open disapproval of it because... i understand that that ship meant so much for other people who grew up loving them, and also because i was lazy (ᵕ—ᴗ—) hehe
but i did think about your ask some more, and i think i could finally present something that may not be so thorough, but hopefully it would get some conversations going for any potential partner and i, as well as giving any readers or mutuals a bit of context on how my version of sakura is interpreted. so, let's get into some disclaimer, and we can begin addressing a few points. to add, i might touch slightly on s.hikamaru & s.ai being somewhat a very faint antithesis to n.aruto & s.asuke's dynamics to s.akura, as well, but that argument might be a more farfetched study of them than anything concrete, and i'm not even sure if i would have the space to add it. but just know i've had some thoughts about that okay? okay.
adding this later : predictably, this ends up way too long so i will split this meta in two parts ( hopefully ) ! this one will address s.akura / s.asuke.
disclaimer: this discussion will involve the pairings of n.aru/s.aku, s.asu/s.aku, and even n.aru/s.asu ( the dynamic and sub-dynamics of team 7 as a whole ) which will be categorically viewed under a critical lens. this particularly interpretation also discussed affairs of canon event specifically from my sakura's point of view, and may differ if viewed from a larger context. warning: discussion of [mental] assault, normalisation of violence and brutalisation.
before we get into anything, i would like to preface that i have addressed the general overview on sakura's perspective of romance, and how it connects to both s.asuke ( her first puppy love ) and n.aruto ( her more likely truer first love ) and how skewed and damaging her perception of romance / being loved has existed to her thereafter from the mentioned affiliations even if that may not be the intention of the characters. you can read more here, but i'll summarise for now:
to be loved is to be abandoned. in regards to s.asuke first leaving her by the bench in part 1, then n.aruto with j.iraiya shortly after, and the pre-assumption that even k.akashi left her primarily under tsunade's care after that. ( k.akashi here is viewed strictly as a mentor and not a romantic interest.) we also see this insecurity overlaps a lot with her inferiority complex with the boys in her team because 'seeing the boys' backs' were aways such a prominent imagery associated to her point of view.
to be loved is to not be believed. in regards, particularly, to s.akura's controversial confession towards naruto in the land of iron. funnily, ever since i've put down that meta, i also think s.asuke has also unintentionally gaslit her when he kept putting down her determination to follow him, even as she risks becoming a traitor, but, like, in a way that i couldn't blame s.asuke for because i think he was right in the assumption that she could not have endured it. again, i'll probably address what i mean later !
to be loved is to expect violence. in the first meta, i gave s.asuke putting her in a genjutsu of his arm piercing her chest as the most extreme example of this, but having sat on the major themes of it, i cannot dismiss that even n.aruto may have inadvertently contributed to this because a lot of the more tense moments of their relationships are so intertwined with s.akura quite literally having to heal n.aruto from death or heavy injuries. yes, n.aruto would have never intentionally assaulted her. all the same, she did not escape team 7's purview of devotion being associated so closely to violence, to death, to blood. she may even understood the implication much better than n.aruto and s.asuke who may view [their own] death more as an escape, whereas s.akura would've viewed it as a major loss. and we haven't even touched on the very fact that it was s.akura who found them after their fight, and had to heal their arms / both of them from bleeding out, which again, perpetuates how closely intertwined she is to violence as a showcase of devotion.
before we go any further, i would like to once again put in the disclaimer that, the genjutsu aside, i don't truly blame s.asuke and n.aruto for having behaved the way they did towards s.akura even if it may contribute to her negatively, neither would i ever claim s.akura is all saintly or haven't done anything wrong as i'm sure there were some expectations from s.akura that may feel burdening for both s.asuke and n.aruto. the existence of a meta and critical discussion of a media is not to assign blame, but to simply break apart themes, concepts, thoughts, and to build interactions out of it if you're a roleplayer of these characters.
now, let's move on to the first dynamic i'd like to discuss.
answering your question, in this case, might be the easiest way to catapult us into observing the s.akura / s.asuke pairing further.
you ask: are you satisfied with the canonical ending?
and my answer, specially for the pairing, would be no.
in truth, i could actually give you a lot of reasons why i don't believe they work in the canon setting, most stemming from the absolutely lazy writing that these characters were given, especially towards the end of the series and right into next-gen. however, instead of listing them all, let me just present to you what i believe might be the simplest, but best, reason why i think this dynamic should be presented with more complexity than we ended up getting:
s.akura and s.asuke have never completely understood each other, and i don't believe that they were ever meant to.
it's no secret that s.asuke's reflection — s.asuke's true opposite, s.asuke's sun to his moon symbolism — has always been n.aruto. a large part of s.asuke's conflict has always been rooted in how he could obliterate nearly every connection he has to the leaf, except n.aruto. one could almost argue that the whole series is about them, this is besides the already interwoven theme of breaking the cycle of hatred with love, acceptance, forgiveness. but why i mention this dynamic specifically is because i do believe n.aruto was created partly in the image to be s.asuke's true opposition, and as such, he evidently became the one person who have to know s.asuke fully. because that was how much the fight between them contributed to the major overarching theme: n.aruto wasn't simply fighting s.asuke in a showcase of power, he had to be courageous and strong enough to have taken s.asuke's hatred and wound and mental injury, by understanding it, accepting it. forgiving it.
s.akura wasn't given this privilege.
or, rather, there was always this dissonance or a gap between s.akura and s.asuke that she couldn't across, and he did not want to cross.
even from the beginning, particularly in chapter 181 ( part 1 ) when s.asuke was leaving the village, we see the first obvious confrontation of this dissonance as s.akura, in her effort to stop s.asuke from leaving, tries so hard to appeal to values that s.asuke clearly did not, or no longer, resonate with. she tries appealing by the effort to empathise ( "why don't you ever tell me anything? why did you have to be silent?" ), she did try to close the gap of experiences in grief and loss that she clearly does not share a similar depth to ( "it was right here. you were with me, alone, the first time... remember how you blew up at me?" and we had a flashback of s.asuke scolding s.akura because she was complaining about her parents ), she tried appealing to their youth and time spent together as team 7, until finally, seeing all of it failing, she leverages on her feelings ( "i'm so in love with you that i can't even stand it! s.asuke!" )
which is funny, because, in real-time, i'm realising how she uses this same tactic in the war in chapter 693.
img: the comparison of confessions between part 1 & part 2.
looking at the panels side by side, this is most likely a detail everyone else have probably noticed a long time ago (⸝⸝⸝-﹏-⸝⸝⸝) but yes. interesting, isn't it ?
but far interesting is also what s.asuke followed up with in chapter 181 in response to her effort, which i believe really set up the tone of their dynamic further across the series, which is, "you will never change". i've sort of went on a mini rant about it here, but i do think it spoke about how both of them will always carry with them, like, an idealisation / presumption of each other that are not wrong, but they weren't fully true. for s.asuke, it was that s.akura is this naive girl who never outgrew her romantic association, who can never commit to the kind of atrocity he would be willing to go through ( we witness the first evident of this in chapter 483 and 484 when s.akura cannot go through killing s.asuke ) ; whereas for s.akura, her whole hope to return to how it was in their childhood aside, i feel like she could never entirely disband nor understood the depth of mistrust s.asuke must have held over the village that betrayed him.
img: s.asuke feeling betrayed by most of the village's ignorance towards i.tachi's sacrifice.
like, i think she understands the concept, make no mistake, but she cannot resonate with what must be a very deep paranoia and a source of trauma the village left in s.asuke because, and this returns to a wider scope in which i've always envisioned or encapsulate this team's roles around, s.akura was majorly built in the image of an ordinary kunoichi who has stayed loyal to the village, who grew with it, who had most attachment to it. s.asuke wasn't, and n.aruto was the bridge to these two juxtaposition. ( we see this symbolism particularly during the war, presented in my first attached image for this meta : s.akura was represented with the full shinobi gear, n.aruto with only the k.onoha headband as opposed to the allied forces', and s.asuke with no physical affiliation to either causes. )
thus, long story short, they just don't get each other. and that's okay!
there are definitely many reasons for it, particular in how they were raised and how they had continued to grow during the two-three year period before sh1ppuden ( presumably s.akura finding most attachment as she became more integrated with the rest of konoha 11 when n.aruto and s.asuke weren't around, and growing to be the village's healer, further enhancing her role as to empathise with the masses; whereas s.asuke had grown under o.rochimaru's grooming and ended up becoming fully motivated to invest in his hatred especially after learning what had happened to his family, to i.tachi ) and each of them should not exist to invalidate the other. yes, s.asuke's pain must be acknowledged, but that did not mean s.akura's attachment to the village should be seen entirely as naive and gullible — and vice versa, s.akura's dedication to the village, her trust in it, her loyalty to it, should not erase the misconduct with which the l.eaf had left s.asuke to suffer from.
so yes, to round back to the point, particularly from a romantic lens: when i stated that 'they were never meant [to understand one another]', i meant it more that s.akura and s.asuke presented themselves with a unique dynamic of their own, where they shared an undeniably significant early bond but clearly have this clashing values growing up, that i do think the canon oversimplifies or glosses over entirely. it's like, they could have a unique, complex interaction where s.akura and s.asuke could continue to struggle to come to an agreement from both of their trauma and misunderstanding of one another, but maybe in that continuous disagreement, they could be the person to hold each other accountable. and that, in and of itself, had it played well, could be a foundation for an interesting dynamic and something entirely separate to their respective dynamic with n.aruto, which they need.
it's like, yeah i am constantly arguing with this person about this policy or fact or strategy ( this may or may not a hint to my perception that s.asuke ought to have stayed in the village and bullied his way into being in the council and had a hand in changing so much of the village's system, thus breaking u.chiha m.adara's pattern, but that's neither here nor there ) but to hell if i let anyone else mistreat them or lay a hand on them. that is one way i could definitely see them being developed towards, but yeah, to summarise —
tl&dr: i do believe that s.akura has fallen out of 'like' from s.asuke, and we do see evidence of this from s.ai's confrontation in chapter 693 ( where we inevitably saw the infamous fake smile ) and k.akashi's own observation in chapter 675 ( "s.akura, i bet your feelings for s.asuke has changed from what they were back then" ), but all the same, i don't think s.akura has ever allowed herself to properly distinguish between her idea of romance, to the hope that their childhood team could reunite again, as well as the confusion from all the anger and betrayal s.asuke himself has committed when he was a criminal, and/or when he was actively dismissing her / assaulted her. i think a lot of it is incredibly muddled to her, so if she can't figure that out, how can she truly "like" him, you know? she barely knows him at the end of the war. and similarly, he barely knows her.
img: s.asuke correctly states that they have no reason to like each other.
in the end, though i am certainly not the biggest ship for this pairing, i would not deny that i am 100% looking forward to developing them further, whether that ends up platonically, romantically etc and hopefully without the constraint of what canon material have basically boxed them to be, because i do think there is a lot of unspoken affairs that could be addressed here and whatever ways that goes, i'm already a big fan of it. conflict, to me, in a media, is absolutely delicious.
before i end this first part, i would like to reiterate that there are probably so much more nuances and scenes that i couldn't possibly fit into this (╥﹏╥) that could lead to a lot more discussions, parallels, symbolism etc. and i do believe that, in some context, a s.asuke writer could elaborate far better than i from the perspective of s.asuke, given that my focus is only from the perspective of my character, s.akura. regardless, i thank you sooo much, anon, for sending the ask in. i feel so bad not being able to answer in one whole post, though i hope a bit of this insight may be able to quench a little bit of that curiosity hehe
in the next part, in addressing n.aruto & sakura, i would love to divulge in the symbolism of s.akura being the one who literally held n.aruto's heart to keep him aive as well as a lot of those hints that indicate how much closer n.aruto truly is to her love interest, and ( in my interpretation ) her first love. but how ultimately i don't think she will ever be convinced that she is worthy of him ( and how she may or may not have subconsciously view s.asuke as a competitor to n.aruto's attention, and she is not winning ).
