Fate Series: Sakura Matou (ISFJ)

Si:

“Everything around me was just scary! I was no longer able to take even one step forward! I just didn’t know what to do at all! I wanted to protect my time together with you going forward, as well.”

Sakura’s goals tend to be set more on the present or past rather than the future. This is reflected in the way she voices her desires. Rather than saying that she wishes to have a continuing happy future with Shirou, she words it in a more present/past centric way. She states that her desire is to preserve what they have and that she doesn’t want it to change. This points to her having more of an Si mindset rather than a Ni one. She is timid and quiet, oftentimes struggling to speak up or voice her opinions.

When it comes to goals, she seems to have a focus on replicating and refining skills rather than developing something else. She states at one point that she wants to be able to make meals better than Shirou’s. This means she wants to meet and then exceed the standard of cooking Shirou has set. While coming to help Shirou while his arm was broken, she watches attentively to the way that he does his chores and tries her best to replicate him. She learns through the process of observing and then repeating the task over and over until she gets it right, which is consistent with the approach most Si doms take to learn.

When talking with Shirou, Sakura on multiple occasions asks him for clarification or more specific answers. She does not prefer to read between the lines or to keep intentions unsaid. When asking him if he likes her, she follows up that question with whether he likes her as family or as a girl. Even though it was probably understood what her intentions were with that question, she still wanted him to clarify.

Fe:

“Shiro, where have you been? Oh just look at you. You’re injured again. You can’t keep this up. Please take care of yourself!”

“Just leave him with me and be quiet. You’re only hurting him further.”

“I can’t cause any more trouble than I already have.”

Sakura is mostly timid. So while you do see a lot of Fe in her, it comes out as an auxiliary function rather than a dominant. She is a very caring girl, especially when it comes to Shirou, but she generally tends to be concerned about anyone who is currently in her social circle. She is constantly worrying about Shirou’s well being and frets every time he leaves the house as he frequently comes back hurt in some way or another. Her Fe comes out strongly on one of those occasions when she snaps at Saber and tells her to leave Shriou’s care to her. (See the quote above.)

Sakura tends to base her self worth off of what she is doing for others. She has a very tolerant nature and has taken the ‘endure anything that comes your way’ attitude toward being mistreated by others. She is mistreated on a daily basis by all of the Matou household, but she doesn’t utter so much as a word to anyone about it. She is left racked with guilt for the things that have been done to her as she let herself be used. I do understand her circumstances didn’t really allow for her to do much fighting back, but the mere fact that she doesn’t so much as try to even attempt to escape shows her approaching her situation with others over self mentality that is in line with an Fe user.

Ti:

“No, you are strong, senpai. It’s not because of your Magic Circuit or your talent, but because your mind is pure… I knew that from the first time I met you. I knew you would never betray anyone.”

“I don’t deserve to be protected by you!”

As mentioned in the previous section, Sakura’s abusive home life has left her with a very poor opinion of herself. I am including this in the Ti section because identity lies within either Ti or Fi. Sakura has warped her logic and views herself as a wretched and defiled person. She has an unhealthy self loathing. Being self critical often ties back to Ti, as it will cause someone to view themselves through a subjective lens, only focusing on a closed loop of negative information they have gathered about themselves.

Another trait of tertiary Ti users is their tendency to appear or feel ‘invisible’. Those leaning on Ti have a tendency to appear apathetic, placid, or blank, when not mirroring others via Fe. The Ti/Fe combination helps users to blend in with their surroundings and to not unnecessarily stand out. This is all consistent with Sakura, and she definitely does not tend to stand out very much. The result of this is Sakura’s fear that Shirou will overlook her and want to be with some other girl like Rin or Saber.

Ne:

Being an inferior function, you don’t see a lot of Ne coming from Sakura. The few times it does surface is when she asks Shirou some hypothetical questions like whether he would be mad at her if she became a bad person. Another possible example of her Ne could be the strange Alice in Wonderland esque dream she has when being mostly taken over by the shadow. The strange dream overlays reality, shielding her human side from the atrocities she is actually committing.