I'm No Longer Fit To Hold You

i feel like its easy to forget or miss that the exact reason sora was so emotional here is bc his subconscious briefly came in contact with the memory of aqua telling sora to keep riku "safe". then sora is ripped away from this by the very person who took riku away from him. hes plunged deeper into sleep because his light (riku) was stolen. its not hard to see just why hed be feeling so emotional and delighted to see riku "safe" from harm. even outside of riku risking his life to wake sora up, i feel the fact that sora is near tears and throws his arms around riku was a bit of a nod to there being more at play here. and the reason they show riku waking up here and not sora is because it was more important for sora to see riku waking up this time. and narratively yknow "the world was freed from darkness but has yet to wake from it". at this point, riku is finally no longer trapped in a never ending nightmare of things never getting better for him and sora gets to be the one to personally greet him upon waking from that nightmare.

hes awake and hell be okay.

sora needed to have this moment. he needed to see that.

how do i properly articulate that the problem isn’t people shipping two white men once it’s about the TREND of people shipping two white men (or women) instead of the canon interracial & or poc/poc ship and defending it with the same identical arguments for why they just don’t vibe with it or don’t like it or whatever. 

like if you look back at the ships you tend to gravitate towards, the dynamics and the past fandoms you’ve been in, do you consistently shun the characters of color in favor of white characters and ships? have you considered that maybe there might be some implicit bias there?? 

like frequently with storylines and ship dynamics ppl would go crazy for if they were transplanted onto white characters ppl will call it boring just because it involves one or more characters of color. or they’ll find some petty reason to dislike the character/ship and pin it all on that. or even worse they’ll straight up steal it and give it to their white fave like?? 

the problem is you’re gonna have to make an effort if you find you don’t like characters of color/their ships like genuinely make an effort to seek out those you might enjoy and boost them because when it’s immediately obvious who fandom will choose as their next fanon white character to ship with the (white) main character there’s a real fucking problem lol.

in the end all customer service workers are like the rose bride

i think that kishimoto is certainly capable of writing women (and to pretend otherwise feels like i'm giving him a get out of jail free card or something), but the issue is that he gives them so little narrative attention that it feels like he doesn't? like sakura, hinata and tsunade in particular are probably who i'd pinpoint as "the best written" female naruto characters in terms of having a clear character arc, but so much of their development - particularly sakura, but this is definitely applicable to the other two - occurs throughout the background of the story that it doesn't feel like it's happening, or is given the attention it deserves.

like, all three of them have certain moments that definitely trigger their growth to occur - sakura in the forest of death, hinata's fight with neji, and the search for tsunade arc in general for tsunade - and they all have significant moments that showcase this growth - sakura's fights with ino and sasori, hinata's attempt to fight pain knowing that she'll lose, and the closing of the search for tsunade arc where she overcomes her fear and decides to become hokage. but because either the context required for these moments to hit as hard as they do or the smaller showcases of their character development - or both - are so subtly placed throughout the background of the story that you kind of have to search for them. to give more examples yet again, it requires the audience to realise that sakura and ino's rivalry was never really just over sasuke, and to acknowledge her insecurities and desperate need to fit in with the others in order to understand her motivations and why her decisions in the forest of death are important. if she was a male character, we would have had gratuitous flashbacks placed in every goddamn chapter reminding the audience of these motivations which would really hammer it in, but because she isn't, it the context behind her decisions and growth is left to fade into the background.

this post has just been me rambling so i hope that it makes some semblance of sense but i don't know how else to word this lmao

Here's all the Ikuni series characters (and the man himself) sorted by their astrological sign in case you were curious.

it's not that men can't express emotion but that they're discouraged from expressing emotions deemed "feminine", associating femininity with weakness. I feel like people forget it's all Woman Bad at the end of the day

My favourite genre of gay people is "They didn't have bdsm sex onscreen but, bdsm elements are always lurking in the corner and haunting the narrative through thinly veiled visual metaphorical implication."