okay I see everyone talking about sorting by kudos but am I the only one who sorts by bookmarks? like I want to discover the fics that people come back to over and over again and can't bear the thought of losing. To me, a kudos signifies that someone got to the end of the work and enjoyed it, but a bookmark means "I intend to revisit this and this work dwells in my heart and lungs"

Debunking the notion that Ino was a perfect friend to Sakura

disclaimer: I love both Ino and Sakura and won’t judge them for their behavior in the context of their rivalry, whether as kids or young adults. This is just to show that Ino wasn’t infallible when it came to helping Sakura, because many like to incorrectly antagonize Sakura in favor of Ino to this day.

Ino did show regret about helping Sakura once Sakura confessed about her crush.

強がってはしゃいでるだけよ= Tsuyo gatte hashai deru dake yo which translates roughly to ‘just acting tough’ which is exactly what she says in the anime (the following screenshots are from the Netflix sub)

this one is from another website

this is a translation from online

and this is the Viz translation, which is inconsistent with the rest

Even the “Him, hah!” is wrong because all she says in the raw is “フン” = hun = hmph. She says nothing about Sasuke and isn’t talking about Sasuke. She’s talking about Sakura to the girl next to her; she’s not responding to the girls in the foreground telling Sakura that Sasuke is popular, that wouldn’t even make sense. She’s sensing a rivalry, and a significant part of her wishes Sakura would go back to being shy and insecure. It’s therefore no wonder that when she hears of Ino’s crush from other sources, Sakura has doubts about Ino and realizes she can no longer be a tagalong. Ino didn’t tell Sakura about her crush because it would mean confronting her feelings of jealousy; it wasn’t because Ino was prioritizing the friendship. That’s the real reason Sakura broke off the friendship.

Ino herself comes to understand this:

Ino was forced to recognize Sakura as an equal, and it was for the benefit of both girls. Sakura did nothing wrong.

I completely disagree with this!!! I see that the user for this is ‘shannaro-kamo,’ so perhaps this account is only here for Pro-Sakura takes, and so maybe this is me shouting at a wall, but this is such a strange take that’s completely inconsistent with Ino’s character, the plot parallels, the fact that Inoichi’s literal dying words are that Ino’s best quality is her ability to be a GREAT FRIEND?! and the reoccurring meaning of that quote.

Ino actually says

“(彼女は)強がってはしゃいてるだけど”

And words meaning the same thing twice; once as a kid in the quote OP used, and then later when Sakura cuts her hair in the Forest of Death as she tells Naruto that the reason she cut her hair was for an ‘image change,’ which is obviously not true. Of course, since Naruto was unconscious when she cut her hair, he believes her, while Ino (and Sasuke, probably) rightly identify that she’s fronting instead of being honest. In the chuunin exam context, anyone can induce that Ino uses such words to say ‘Sakura is putting on a front to hide her true feelings.’

See here;

So what does is mean when she says these words as a child? Kishimoto loves to have characters echo their own words and the words of others in parallel meaning afterall. There has to be a link in the meaning, not just a random attribution.

You used some bad faith on Ino’s part to say that she was… Somehow aware of some future rivalry brewing between her and Sakura over Sasuke and getting mad at Sakura for becoming confident and challenging her to the point of even regretting her past goodwill??? But that is SO inconsistent with everything the canon establishes about Ino.

Consider;

1) Ino is absolutely fine with the idea of Sakura one day surpassing her using floriography metaphors when Sakura asks why she gave her the ribbon (remember that Ino is symbolized as a cosmos!);

So why would she suddenly go back on her word with no explanation and feel a sudden rivalry when she herself already acknowledged that Sakura, perhaps, had even more potential? Ino only ever tried to make Sakura bloom, or do you think she’s lying about considering it a shame when others don’t reach their full potential too? And that she only wants herself to bloom? Her regretting helping Sakura would go against her core beliefs. Ouch. Bad faith : /

2) Ino is a sharp, bold, and confident girl who easily thought on her feet to shoot flower stems into the mouths of the girls being mean to Sakura, and who pretended to get mad over Sakura’s later taunts just to use her jutsu. Although she gets loud and obnoxious, Ino is a planner. So does it really make sense for an Ino who was already sensing a rivalry and regretting helping Sakura to look THIS upset and shocked over her Sakura leaving and have no pithy words in response? Shouldn’t she look more resigned? Angry? Does this look like the face of a girl who is already certain that Sakura is her rival? Or is it the face of genuine devastation? Besides, where is all her characteristic yelling and self-righteousness from literally any other time someone ‘challenges’ her?

3) Ino didn’t need any time after tying with Sakura to immediately express happiness that Sakura had bloomed beautifully, because she never had any doubt that Sakura would one day bloom and never regretted helping her get there.

Why? How? Because Ino wasn’t the one harbouring an inferiority complex about Sakura, or underestimating Sakura. All of her 'I’m better than you!!!’ dialogue was clearly posturing - posturing, mind you, that was so good that nobody even on her own team realized her acting prowess lol. Her happiness at Sakura’s growth is what is genuine - no resentment, a Naruto-like close-eyed smile. It’s Sakura who is unable to say anything positive about Ino after the fight…

So what exactly was baby-Ino trying to say up there in OP’s quote? To be completely honest, Kishimoto doesn’t give us many Ino-centric pages… But let’s use what we have instead of making up awful, unfounded characteristics to attribute to Ino, and understanding that when she says these words, she’s referring to Sakura covering up her feelings.

If you ask me, the most evidence lies in the idea that Ino was worried that Sakura was pretending to be someone else, someone who fronted, competed with other girls, put other girls down - becoming the type of girl that Ino is shown to hate.

Remember that most of the girls around them were the sort who liked Sasuke and weren’t nice to each other or any other girl because of the perceived competition - and Ino knows this. Ino was afraid of Sakura becoming someone she disliked by being so explicit with her crush on Sasuke and throwing herself into the vicious ring of girls who tore each other down over Sasuke and changed for the worse. These girls don’t believe that every person should be made to bloom into the best flower they could be, they tear each other down, and that goes against everything Ino stands for. Compare Ino’s expression in the screencap below to OP’s screencaps - they’re almost identical. She’s not being petty or jealous. Those narrowed eyebrows over her eyes mean that she’s pissed and concerned.

Although I’m not even sure if Ino specifically liked Sasuke, because it seemed like she liked ALL pretty guys (Neji, Sai, etc.) and likes to flirt, it’s clear that Ino has a problem with girls who bring others down and make fun of others for wanting to look/be better, and that she implicitly didn’t want Sakura to become a girl like that. Consider the way Ino dealt with her (alleged) crush, she kept it private and to herself, and only had it thrown her face via rumours - not reputed facts. She wasn’t interested in the drama of liking Sasuke and what that did to the other girls. Not to mention, on the flipside, if she really thought Sakura was no match for her, why not tell Sakura about her crush to her face? Why not declare it like the many other girls? Is she jealous? Or superior? How can she logically be both? Or is it that Ino isn’t interested in hating on other girls over mutual crushes and getting competitive to begin with? In defense of this, Sakura was the one who made it an issue first and set the precedent.

Moreover, it’s telling of you to assume that two girls can’t like the same guy without provoking a fight over it in repressed jealousy or dismissing each other as lesser and not a competitor, when it actually is more often than not in Naruto. For instance, Karin never diminishes Sakura nor does she challenge her over their feelings for Sasuke. They co-exist while simultaneously liking Sasuke, and even in the Gaiden, when Karin is shown to still have feelings for Sasuke, she never puts down Sakura. Hinata similarly never takes to tearing Sakura down over the fact that Naruto likes her, she is neutral. Ino, by Kishimoto’s pattern in dealing with girl’s crushes, was probably neutral at first until Sakura threw it in her face, because Sakura, as the protagonist heroine, is the exception who needed to 'surpass’ Ino. You would need strong evidence to the contrary to disprove that Ino was always a two-faced bitch, and you don’t provide that burden of proof with the simple 'フン’/‘Hm” and the aforementioned repeated quote that means something else. Plus, more than Hinata and Sakura were friends, or Sakura and Karin were friends, Ino and Sakura friends - so you would need a very high burden of proof to recast Ino as a worse friend than any of the other girls.

Plus, Ino even gets proven right in her worries about Sakura fronting and becoming mean when Sakura throws the exact kind of crap her bullies said to her back in Ino’s face, even if it just to provoke her (which, you know, outside of this analysis, it’s always classy to provoke your enemy by straw-manning them into a weak girly girl archetype when they were the one to give YOU strength when you needed it regardless of context. Wanting someone to fight you doesn’t give you the justification to disrespect them);

This is actually the only time Ino grits her teeth and the SFX says that she visibly bristles, which she doesn’t do elsewhere. Plus, the nature of SFX shows the reality of her feelings, not just her acting for her jutsu. So Ino’s actually offended. Sure, Sakura was trying to provoke Ino, but what a low-ball way to do that. 

“Sakura did nothing wrong! ~” you say…

(Sure, Jan. I’m sure you get looooots of friends by treating people in this way. Couldn’t be me, lol. Me and my decade long girlfriends will see ourselves out.)

Their whole rivalry is barely even 'mutual.’ Sakura declares it, Ino is first SHOCKED before anything else, and then half-heartedly reciprocated for a few panels. Sakura is the one who says their entire friendship and all Ino’s ever done for her is meaningless unless she surpasses her. Ino just rises to Sakura’s challenge understanding that the other girl needs this, though she herself definitely doesn’t because she always acknowledged her own abilities and Sakura’s without a problem. Ino doesn’t change at all, her character is consistent, but forced to move with Sakura’s own changing perceptions of Sakura, Ino, and their relationship. It’s not Ino’s fault that Sakura retconned all of the good things Ino said to her as proof that Ino never acknowledged her - when she already did in the memory with the cosmos. The idea that Ino never acknowledged her as a kid and spoke down to her is a weird one based on the warped and traumatized Sasuke & Naruto dynamic that the only way to acknowledge someone is to want to fight them or be jealous of them, which even Sasuke & Naruto realize isn’t right towards the end of the manga. It’s not Ino’s fault she never drank Team 7’s 'how to (badly) relate to people’ Kool-Aid?

If you want to find someone who 'wasn’t that good of a friend,’ I’m sorry self-described 'Sakura apologist,’ but the girl you’re looking for isn’t top kunoichi, defender of bullied girls, floriography nerd Ino Yamanaka. Consider that Ino and Sakura barely interact towards the end of the manga, but even so, Kishimoto goes out of his way to establish that Ino is defined by her positive friendships when it’s barely even relevant to the plot, through both Asuma and Inoichi Yamanaka’s last words, for no other reason than to clarify Ino’s character.

Unless you think Inoichi and Asuma are liars too, or don’t understand their daughter and student respectively…. Unlikely, right? So don’t come for Ino for being a bad friend when she was the best one. #thankunext

the kitsune is not afraid, he just can't fly, that's all

it's like. I used to think my autism didn't really include the need for routine but what I've found is that when it's a Planned divergence in routine that's fine (going on trips etc) and when I can Choose to divert my routine bc I know I can handle it that's also fine (like deciding to go out for drinks or deciding to go to a movie or deciding to change dinner plans). but when Other People or Circumstances change my routine without prior warning that's when my brain goes absolutely fucking insane.

and I feel like that's not talked about enough bc I've always seen "needs routine" represented as someone who is unwilling to divert from their routine when like. no it's absolutely fine just as long as I'm the one deciding when and how to divert it or I've been given plenty of advance warning that it'll be changing.

A cat may go in a box of its own accord but it does not want to be put in a box

Archived : Mo Dao Zu Shi Translation by Fanyiyi on Wordpress

Chapter 1- Rebirth

Chapter 2 - Feral I

Chapter 3 - Feral II

Chapter 4 - Feral III

Chapter 5 - Feral IV

Chapter 6 - Pride I

Chapter 7 - Pride II

Chapter 8 - Pride III

Chapter 9 - Pride IV

Chapter 10 - Pride V

so while i was writing the book, i became violently suicidal.

this was mostly due to the fact that i had a very bad reaction to some meds and my brain stopped producing any serotonin. also i was in the last semester of grad school where it's actually illegal to feel anything but dread. so it wasn't going well.

somewhere in the fog of it i became aware i needed help. nobody was taking clients or my insurance. i didn't want to do inpatient care - it wasn't right for my needs. there's not really an "in between" stage between "inpatient" and "no care," but i was trying to do the right thing. i was trying to activate the chain of command that was my emergency plan. i knew i needed help now.

i used betterhelp.

i know, i know. i'm a straight-A student and so smart and so clever, how could i ever use something so blatantly bad. to be honest with you, i didn't feel particularly keen on it from the getgo - things that seem too good to be true usually are. also, if something online is free, the price is usually your privacy.

the thing is that there was kind of a global pandemic happening at the time and i worked 5 jobs alongside of being a fulltime student and also like writing a book on the side. it is a miracle that i even thought about getting help. i would love to tell you i had the mental wherewithal to like, process whether this was the right choice for me. mostly i was desperate. i was so suicidal that i was trying to find a reason to stay inside of fortune cookies. i was the kind of suicidal that looks like splatterpaint. i hadn't been that bad in an entire decade.

they took my data. i gave them it freely. somewhere out there, they have a dossier on me. on everything i survived. my story in little datapoints, scattergraphed beautifully.

the first woman told me that really i should be grateful, because (and this is a direct quote): "at least you're not anne frank." i said that i felt that statement was antisemitic, as anne frank's life and experience shouldn't be compared to like, a nonbinary lesbian in western massachusetts. the therapist said that i should try to use lucid dreaming to try to picture myself in an actually scary situation, like running from nazis.

i applied for another therapist. i was willing to accept the possibility that there was a bad apple in the bunch. the next therapist and i even laughed about how inappropriate that statement was. and then, in our next session: the new therapist said if i was struggling with body image issues, i should just work harder on my appearance. she spent 3 sessions in a row talking about how she was grieving, and made me memorize facts about her grandmother so "she can live on through my clients."

i am a three's-a-charm kind of person. okay, so what if the last person made me uncomfortable. i figured it was just a misunderstanding of priorities - she had felt she was sharing with me, i had felt like i had to take care of her. i applied for another therapist.

the last woman asked me to help her pray. she bowed her head. i stared at her, frozen, while she said: lord, i beg you: cure her. take the pain of being gay away from her.

i spent somewhere between 2.5 and 3 months on betterhelp. in that whole time, i was not getting the professional help i so desperately needed, even though i was fucking trying.

in the end, i survived this because i finally could get off the meds that were literally killing me. a request for a real therapist finally went through. i survived because my friends saved my life. because nick let me sob myself dry in his arms. because maddie took the razors out of my room when i asked them to. because grace slept over in my bed for like 3 weeks in a row since nobody trusted me not to hurt myself when i was alone. i survived because i got fucking lucky. because even when i was desperately suicidal, i was too old and too self-aware to take "you need to be prettier" as good advice.

the thing is that there's a 19 year old me who isn't like that. who would have heard "just think about how grateful you should be" and said - oh, i see. i would have assumed that is what it means to be in therapy: the same thing my abusers used to tell me. that i am just pretending and lazy. that i am ugly and unworthy.

betterhelp positioned itself to take advantage of an incredibly vulnerable community. it preys on desperation. it knows it is serving people who are not doing well mentally. it saw that there is a huge need for real, immediate, compassionate mental health care: and then it fucking takes your money and privacy.

i still get their ads on instagram. last night i watched as a woman in a pool pretends to talk to a different woman. they discuss her anxiety.

there's a 19 year old version of me, and she didn't survive this. she was too tired, and drowning. i almost fucking died. this thing almost fucking killed me.

in the ad, the woman playing the therapist takes a note on a clipboard and then nods once, sagely.

i have to admit it's a pretty scene. the steam and light coming off the pool water lands on the actresses. like this, it almost looks baptismal, holy.

We've temporarily disabled the ability to request a new account invitation as a preventative measure due to a spam attack. If you already have an invitation, you can still use it! However, anyone currently in the queue will not receive an invitation until we turn it back on.

Additionally, we have temporarily disabled the form on the Technical Support & Feedback page and taken the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports page offline. Anyone attempting to access the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports will receive an error page about being blocked from archiveofourown.org, but don't panic -- this is not the case! It's just the default error displayed by Cloudflare. You can continue to access the rest of the site as normal.

Lastly, the Organization for Transformative Works' donation page -- which is hosted by a third party provider -- is currently offline due to a DDoS attack. This is the only donation form the OTW uses, so please be cautious of scammers impersonating AO3 or the OTW to solicit donations. We are unable to take them at this time.

July 11, 2023 - 23:50 UTC

Both the Technical Support & Feedback and Policy Questions & Abuse Reports pages are back!

Additionally, we have re-enabled the ability to request new account invitations and resumed sending invitations to people in the queue.

July 17, 2023 - 00:20 UTC

That one fnaf poster but uzumaki jinchuriki

always fun to force someone to learn against their will what Bort did to everything they liked about original Naruto

Oh there's nothing new/recent. I too try to avoid learning things about Bort, because of everything I already know, which is already too much. But the basic issue is part of the overarching problem with lazy, badly written sequels, which is lazy and at times incoherent repetition of things from the first version of the show.

Haha isn't it funny if [2nd gen character] is just like [1st gen character]? And [1st gen character] parents them just like [1st gen character's parents] did? Isn't it great and not at all lazy writing that cheaply trades on recognition?

So in this particular case:

Shikadai thinks his mother is a drag and marriage is a woman-dominated nightmare! Haha, just like Shikamaru, get it??? GET IT??? We're literally going to put them on the screen together JUST TO MAKE SURE YOU GET IT.

This is funny, right? You like this, because you liked the exact same joke on the previous show, RIGHT? It's inconceivable that anything about society could have changed in the 20 years since the first Naruto manga debuted; surely everyone still agrees that women hitting their husbands and sons is just as funny as it has always been, and will always be! Certainly, we as the audience have zero right to expect Shikamaru and Temari to develop as people and make different choices than the choices previous generations made; what a ridiculous idea! Hurray and thank God, because otherwise writers would have to come up with new ideas!!!

“You can explain Boruto to southerners pretty easily” from @chef_lu_bu on Twitter

since I’ve discovered that the OP on Twitter’s been suspended, I’m bringing this back with a transcript:

(in a US Southern accent)

UNMUTE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

the lip syncing has me shook to absolute death

YOU CAN’T WATCH ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER HALF!!!

“naruto would’ve killed sasuke if he wasn’t holding back-” “sasuke would’ve killed naruto if he didn’t have main character privilege-” naruto and sasuke would’ve made out in the battlefield if kishimoto was allowed to do that

how is kishi going put sasuke in a kimono the colour of naruto’s eyes with naruto’s wind motif while he puts naruto in a kimono the colour of sasuke’s eyes with sasuke’s lightning motif. they are literally clothed in each other. they’re wearing each other. 

🎐 Kikyo

I used to not like her as a kid but re-watching as an adult made me appreciate her and understand her character a lot better 🥺

The scary Yilling Laozu caught eating a watermelon

DDoS Attack Against AO3: Correcting Misinformation

Normally I don't make any posts like this, but I have an interest in cybersecurity and sadly I've seen people are being really ignorant about this recent DDoS attack against the site AO3 (Archive of Our Own), so I thought I'd remind people of a few things:

My advice to people who've noticed this attack is two-fold: calm down since this is part of a larger pattern that has literally resulted in basically no loss for the end-user of any of the sites, and... I don't really know a better way to put this, but don't believe everything you read. A religiously-motivated hate group wouldn't use terms like "LGBTQ+" and "smuts," and it's so blatantly obvious that the timing of every single one of these attacks is being used to smear Muslims and Sudanese people if you think about current events for like. One second. And if you look up Anonymous Sudan, you'll see their string of attacks and how all experts know that they have nothing to do with Sudan at all. Even AO3 itself told everybody that the group is lying about their motivations... though I think I'd go further than that personally because even their name itself is almost certainly a total sham.

To be clear: this post isn't targeted at anyone in particular. I've just seen a lot of people falling for this overall or not realizing this is part of a pattern, and I also wanted to remind everyone that this isn't anything to be concerned about. What is something to be concerned about is not doing research or thinking critically and then unwittingly spreading racist ideas.

i don't even give a shit if they pack the site with algorithmic garbage to appeal to new users i dont look at the 'for you' page anyway and xkit blocks out all that other dumb shit but the phrase 'the outdated decision to focus on the following page' is like if one million canaries marched on stage with red flags and died in perfect synchronization with each other

extremely funny when AI artists feel the need to put watermarks on their images

like oh you're worried about misattribution and image theft huh. you're worried that someone's gonna take the image you made and claim it as their own. or strip away the context and your name. or use it in ways you didn't consent to. boy that sure would suck huh. i bet that would feel really bad. i bet that would be really annoying. i b