when we find out sakura’s job title
I’m already anticipating SS fans going “HA! TOLD YOU Sakura IS strong and in charge! Eat your words, you hating fucks!!” once we find out what her occupation is in Konoha. Because let’s be real, she probably does have one. She’s paying off that monthly mortgage bill somehow. That’s not the problem though.
The problem is that she’s become an emotionally unstable, abusive, isolated, physically exhausted, dishonest mess. That’s what we’ve been shown of her since 699.
Look at chapter 700. Although I am very, very unhappy with the portrayal of many of the female characters and their bastardization at Kishimoto’s hands, they’ve fared better than Sakura. We see Ino training her child, Tenten running a business, Temari maintaining her relationship with her extended family. I’d even argue that Hinata goes beyond the role of ‘housewife only’ by showing her at Neji’s grave with her daughter (though zero mention about Hinata doing anything about the Huuyga’s mutilation practices…wasn’t she supposed to be clan head? Her little sister truly does seem better suited to the job at this point).
Naruto is Hokage, Shikamaru is his advisor, Choji’s the clan head, Rock Lee’s training as hard as ever with his son.
But Sakura? She’s talking to her kid about boy problems and cleaning house at a time of day where everyone else is training or at work. And this was before we got an even closer look at her life in Naruto Gaiden.
I don’t give a shit if we find out Sakura’s running her own hospital ward in the next chapter. The first chapter has already implied that her job really isn’t particularly important, not even important enough to be mentioned in passing to give as an indication she actually works. No, we just know she gives into temper tantrums and violent rages with her child and plays arts and crafts with old pictures of Sasuke. Sasuke, who has not been presented as giving a single fuck about her other than that cringeworthy head poke after she begged to follow after him like a twit.
SS always tries so hard with diversions. Making a billion graphics and essays about how Salad is definitely Sakura’s kid doesn’t make up for the fact that SS is canonically a pile of depressing, demeaning horseshit. Sakura having a job won’t make her mess of a life and screwed up relationship with her daughter somehow undone. If Sasuke ends up coming back and playing happy family it won’t erase the fact that he fucked off for 12 years and has yet to give any indication that he even likes Sakura, much less loves her. But they fucked once, right? That’s all they about because there’s nothing else of substance they have to support their claims.
I don’t understand why being a mother to Sasuke’s is such an all-encompassing plot point for Sakura to the point that that’s all we know about her. She’s not Team Taka or one of the Sand Siblings, who had supremely fucked up family lives such that seeing them raise healthy, stable families of their own would actually mean something special. Sakura was for all intents and purposes the one with the loving home and two normal embarrassing parents who made corny jokes and asked her to clean up her room.
If this sequel didn’t exist, we’d still have the image in chapter 700 of Sakura sweeping up the Uchiha house as our last glimpse of her, and it’s pretty fucking sad.
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