Saro proves she's a bad person.
Now, I like to believe I'm a fairly laid back person. That I'm not the sort who revels in fandom drama, even if I do watch with morbid fascination sometimes, particularly if I'm bored. I have to reassess though.
There was a secret on F!S today about what pairings there will be at the end of Naruto, and whatever, I'm not really into shipping wars. If there are pairings at the end, I expect they'll be among the very obvious possibilities, and if there are none at all... I'll be neither surprised, nor unhappy. I honestly doubt any pairing in Naruto is ever going to get much attention. A couple of lines of dialogue, a couple of panels of togtherness--more than that, and I will be shocked. So one would think I'm not particularly invested in how the romances pan out.
One would be, at least very slightly, wrong.
I do have a scenario I want to see.
Epilogue, set ten years after. Page of Naruto being Hokage, yay, achievement! Page of Sasuke back in the village and, oh, being police chief or something, yay, redemption! Show a bunch of characters doing awesome, successful adult things. Show Hinata taking on responsibility as head of the Hyuuga clan, yay, happy squee of character growth! Shikamaru has a genin team, and Asuma's kid is growing and getting into everything, and Lee is doing something Lee-like, whatever that might be, I don't know, I'm bad with Lee. But yay, happy Lee. But no pairings. Not a single canon pairing. Nothing confirmed. Nothing denied. Just adult positions and careers and mature characters.
Except for Sakura. Sakura is sitting in a café, chatting with Ino, and she is hugely pregnant.
No mention of the father at all.
The end.
Now, why do I want this?
Well, like I said, I am biased toward an ending without canon pairings at all. I won't be shocked if there are some, or upset, or anything like that. I just don't really have a lot of interest in Naruto as a romance manga (and luckily for me, it isn't one), and while I don't have a problem breaking up canon ships in favor of crack... not having canon ships just turns it into a huge, wonderful sandbox. So there is that.
But I'd be lying if I said I didn't want that for the wank. That's why Sakura's pregnant--the wank would be epic.
Epically epic.
31 flavors of glorious crazy.
SasuSaku shippers would say they were canon, and NaruSaku shippers would say they were, and LeeSaku shippers would say they were, and SasuNaru shippers would support the LeeSaku shippers, and pretty much any ship that has Sakura in it would be in there with the craziest members coming up with conspiracy theories about how Kishimoto was secretly sending a signal through the fact that Sakura was eating this, arranged on the plate like that, and she said this, so she's totally married to ______! And a small, but incredibly happy yuri fandom would say that the biological father didn't matter. Sakura and Ino were going to raise that baby with two mommies in a beautiful nontraditional family configuration. After all, Ino's the one actually appearing in panels with Sakura.
I'm sure it's wrong to wish for an ending that would probably turn the fandom into the biggest mess of fail since HP, but I can't help it. And really, it's and ending that I think most sane readers could get behind. It's just the people who need their pairing to be canon who would implode under the weight of their own need for validation.
But I'm pretty sure wanting to see that still makes me a bad person.
There was a secret on F!S today about what pairings there will be at the end of Naruto, and whatever, I'm not really into shipping wars. If there are pairings at the end, I expect they'll be among the very obvious possibilities, and if there are none at all... I'll be neither surprised, nor unhappy. I honestly doubt any pairing in Naruto is ever going to get much attention. A couple of lines of dialogue, a couple of panels of togtherness--more than that, and I will be shocked. So one would think I'm not particularly invested in how the romances pan out.
One would be, at least very slightly, wrong.
I do have a scenario I want to see.
Epilogue, set ten years after. Page of Naruto being Hokage, yay, achievement! Page of Sasuke back in the village and, oh, being police chief or something, yay, redemption! Show a bunch of characters doing awesome, successful adult things. Show Hinata taking on responsibility as head of the Hyuuga clan, yay, happy squee of character growth! Shikamaru has a genin team, and Asuma's kid is growing and getting into everything, and Lee is doing something Lee-like, whatever that might be, I don't know, I'm bad with Lee. But yay, happy Lee. But no pairings. Not a single canon pairing. Nothing confirmed. Nothing denied. Just adult positions and careers and mature characters.
Except for Sakura. Sakura is sitting in a café, chatting with Ino, and she is hugely pregnant.
No mention of the father at all.
The end.
Now, why do I want this?
Well, like I said, I am biased toward an ending without canon pairings at all. I won't be shocked if there are some, or upset, or anything like that. I just don't really have a lot of interest in Naruto as a romance manga (and luckily for me, it isn't one), and while I don't have a problem breaking up canon ships in favor of crack... not having canon ships just turns it into a huge, wonderful sandbox. So there is that.
But I'd be lying if I said I didn't want that for the wank. That's why Sakura's pregnant--the wank would be epic.
Epically epic.
31 flavors of glorious crazy.
SasuSaku shippers would say they were canon, and NaruSaku shippers would say they were, and LeeSaku shippers would say they were, and SasuNaru shippers would support the LeeSaku shippers, and pretty much any ship that has Sakura in it would be in there with the craziest members coming up with conspiracy theories about how Kishimoto was secretly sending a signal through the fact that Sakura was eating this, arranged on the plate like that, and she said this, so she's totally married to ______! And a small, but incredibly happy yuri fandom would say that the biological father didn't matter. Sakura and Ino were going to raise that baby with two mommies in a beautiful nontraditional family configuration. After all, Ino's the one actually appearing in panels with Sakura.
I'm sure it's wrong to wish for an ending that would probably turn the fandom into the biggest mess of fail since HP, but I can't help it. And really, it's and ending that I think most sane readers could get behind. It's just the people who need their pairing to be canon who would implode under the weight of their own need for validation.
But I'm pretty sure wanting to see that still makes me a bad person.