The appeal of the SasuSaku couple has largely evaded me. I must have missed a memo somewhere, but for some reason I have never understood what makes this couple so popular. At the same time, it seems that this couple is the haven of extreme opinions. Very rarely do you find someone who, when asked about SasuSaku, will reply “meh”. Extreme opinion on this romantic possibility seems to be bordering on ubiquitous in fandom. It seems as though the whole of fandom is divided into two warring camps on it: one that thinks that this pairing is sent down from the right hand of Christ Himself to deliver us all to the Promised Land, and the other that thinks it’s a twisted, demonic antichrist that has come to destroy us all.
Given this omnipresent zealotry, it might not seem so amiss to try to figure out why this pairing has found so much appeal. But as I searched for answers, everywhere I looked just seemed to create more questions. I figure that since I’m going into a ridiculous level of debt paying for my college education, I might as well put it to use right now, and try to cut down to the root of this issue. So the primary question that this essay seeks to answer is this: “What is the real reason for the mass appeal of SasuSaku shipping in fandom.”
Before we can begin to consider this question, we must first begin to understand just how broad the support is. It has been suggested by the writer of the SasuSaku Manifesto, a certain zauberer_sirin of LiveJournal, that SasuSaku “is without doubt the most despised pairing in the Naruto fandom…” But let’s just take a step back from this, and look at the numbers. I think that we can all easily agree that that fanfiction.net probably hosts the largest portion of the Naruto fan community. So let’s break down the number of hits we get on that sight for various Naruto fan pairings.
As of the time of writing, a browse of the English language section of the Naruto category on fanfiction.net will return 4,835 pages of stories. Each page contains 25 stories, to put this into perspective, meaning that there are just under one hundred and twenty five thousand fan fics. Let’s narrow our search down just a bit. Let’s see the number of fics that list both Sakura and Sasuke as primary characters. Our search will return 482 pages of results—fully one tenth of the entire archive. This makes SasuSaku the single most popular het pairing in Naruto fandom, with only NaruHina, its closest rival, pulling in less than half (201 pages) the results. Furthermore, a quick survey of NaruHina fan fics demonstrates that the vast majority of NaruHina fics also have a considerably important SasuSaku element in their plot.
Such ubiquitous support for the pairing can hardly lend credence to claims of being “the most despised pairing in Naruto fandom”. But even if we understand the depth of support for this pairing, this does not tell us why so many fans are so highly supportive of this couple.
Naruto fandom is overwhelmingly dominated with pairing and romantic fiction of all kinds. This much is indisputable. Since the Naruto series has always allowed a wide range of different, competing possibilities for relationship pairs, it is not surprising that a huge level of animosity can brew up. A large part of the “visceral hatred” that zauberer_sirin speaks of can be attributed to the hostility that is always felt to the top dog in any contest.
This emphasis on shipping is itself intriguing. To be perfectly honest, I really do not understand why, and am considerably taken aback by this. I sharpened my writer’s toolkit writing military science fiction for various fandoms, a land where romance and shipping are far more alien than the latest xenomorph of the week. Quite naturally, my transition into the Naruto fandom has been awkward at best. But from the perspective of an outsider looking in, the question of why SasuSaku is so popular becomes a bit clearer, I think.
Let it never be said that I am not willing to give something a thorough post-modernist deconstruction. Let us begin first with some observations. Since I cannot pry into the average SasuSaku fan’s brain and pick it apart piece by piece, our observations of this phenomenon must begin with the record of what the fans themselves say, write and even draw about why they like SasuSaku.
Of course, getting a meaningful answer from someone about such an emotionally charged topic is bordering on futile. Fans of nearly all pairings tend to say that their favorite pairing “just feels right” or “it’s so hot” etc. Never mind that they’re begging the question, this too can prove to be useful.
So, let’s start at the base: the myriad of SasuSaku fanclubs that can be found floating about the web. Quite possibly the largest one of all is hosted on the Narutofan forums. The title of this fan club: “We Like it HOTT!!”[sic]. I think that it would be fair to say that imagery of this pairing is overwhelmingly oriented around passions of some form or another.
The fanart associated with this pairing very strongly supports this conclusion. A quick sampling of the average SasuSaku fanart gives us a series of images that would put the old bodice-rippers to shame. Lust and passion are very much the pigments with which these artists paint. Sasuke and Sakura become transformed from ninjas to sex gods. They very much become the “celebrity couple” in fanart.
Fan fiction, properly executed or not, strongly tows this same line. The verbal imagery of SasuSaku fanfiction is heavily oriented around the passion between within couple. When this is done without the severe mangling of Sasuke’s character, the results can become quite spectacular indeed (the difficulty of doing this notwithstanding). It becomes the sort of passionate, almost consummate love that our society romanticizes and holds up on a pedestal. It’s popularity, then, becomes a bit clearer then.
But why? This answer is a bit more complicated. To understand this, we must look at precisely how devoted SasuSaku fans are to their pairing. From a general survey of fanfiction authors and various SasuSaku fan clubs scattered across the web, I think it is safe to say that SasuSaku fans are the ones who are most sure that their pairing “is canon” or will be confirmed as canon in the near future.
To use the word “canon” to refer to the official plot and characterizations confirmed by the source author is very interesting and quite revealing. We must remember that first and foremost, “canon” is a religious term. In the Catholic tradition of Christianity, it refers to the official doctrines of the Church that, by virtue of the Pope’s supposed position as the mouthpiece of God on Earth, are held to be the Word of God Himself.
So perhaps, in a way, when we’re talking about shipping, we’re talking about something that has taken on a religious significance among fans. I say this not to pick on the SasuSaku pairing in particular; all pairings are guilty of this kind of devotion. Nor do I mean to say that such devotion is bad. But it cannot be denied that the mass devotion to certain pairings replicates in some small way the mass devotion to religious ideas.
There has always been a great amount of effort and time given by philosophers towards understanding how human beings construct religious doctrines. They do not spring fully formed from the mouth of a prophet; rather they evolve over time, perhaps taking their roots from divine inspiration. Who knows, really? But in my mind, one philosopher, a certain Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, seems to have come pretty close to hitting the nail on the head. Sitting in the radical hooligan side of Fredrich Hegel’s classroom, Feuerbach formulated that people’s views of God and religion stemmed from their own humanity.
To Feuerbach, religious doctrines were created when humans extracted the best things that they saw in themselves and used this to form an image of what the divine was. Let’s take this idea, and apply it to the SasuSaku fan pairing. We see it now, not as a “canon” pairing or the romantic idealization of love, but rather as all a fetish created form all of the best traits that its fans see in themselves.
It is therefore the love and passion that its fans see in themselves, given the form of the characters of Sasuke and Sakura. And they worship this fetish they create. Perhaps this is the reason for the appeal of SasuSaku. It is the romantic idealization of all the traits that everyone values in themselves. Strength, passion, love, commitment, devotion etc., the list goes on.
This is one potent way of understanding the immense popularity of and devotion to SasuSaku shipping. Such fantasy idealization leads to some really great escapism, which has always been the function of art. But this is overwhelmingly the self-indulgent form of escapism rather than the cathartic forms of escapism that I found prevalent in other fan pairings.
At any rate, this brings this essay to a close. As I mentioned in the introduction, this is only the first in a series of essays devoted to the most popular fanpairings, so SasuSaku fans need not gather en masse to lynch me. But I do wish to end this essay with something for the SasuSaku fans to think about. Indeed, some do like it hot. Passion is often described as a fiery heat. But that same fiery heat can both warm and burn. Passion betrayed can quite easily turn into hatred. So, perhaps it can be too hot.
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Story notes: Just an essay that has been brewing in the back of my mind for sometime now. It needed to be written.
Chapter notes: This essay is the first in a series of essays delving into the appeal of the more popular couples in fan fiction. I assure you that I intend on being an equal-opportunity offender, so please don’t criticize me for “singling you out.”
Chapter end notes: Comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated.