#and i'm taking baby steps toward confronting the tough stuff when i can

[yaku-paisen]

Reblog & answer in the notes/comments:

What's the single most impactful lesson you took away from Haikyuu? There's so many great options, but I mean the one you think about the most often, the one you apply to your everyday life more than all the others.

[rahleeyah]

I wanna trust you, I do, but I was actually talking about the part where she answers the question on how angela is feeling towards elliot now that it all went down, and she keeps using the present tense and talking about their bond as a mutual thing and I just snapped. I'm sorry, I never meant to bring you any negativity😞

please do not feel bad for wanting to talk about stuff and please buckle up and forgive me for the ramble i'm about to go on:

So we know that OC is gonna divided into 8-episode arcs this season right? so the first 8 was the albanians, second 8 is gonna be wheatleys, third 8 will be...whatever idk

so we are entering the 8 episode wheatley arc

which means that angela is back. for the next 8 episodes.

so of course we have to deal with her. and yes i see tamara out here talking about how angela is in love with elliot and how they have messy, inconvenient feelings for each other that they each would rather not have. and i'm still ok with it and i'll tell you why. they're talking about being bonded through grief. they're talking about mess. and then we got ilene talking about growth. elliot grew, during the 8 episodes he was under with the albanians. he's gonna grow again through these 8 episodes. and i really, really do think that part of that growth is confronting whatever happened with angela, and finding his way out from under the mess. he doesn't want to be messy forever. neither of them, per tamara, wants to have these messy feelings. it make take some time for them to untangle it, but that is part of the arc. we start tangled, we end untangled. the only way out is through. so yeah we're gonna see some angela and we're gonna see some elliot having feelings about her.

but ilene has given us you mean the world to me. ilene has given us it will always be you and i. ilene has given us come home. ilene keeps pushing eo together. ilene keeps serving honest steps forward for eo. yes they are slow but like. not that slow, in the grand scheme of things bc yes eo met 23 years ago but romance was never actually on the table until april of this year when kathy died. they got a lot of shit to work through - and ilene! has told us that they will! - and they're not gonna do it all in the first half of this season. they are gonna take steps.

and one of those steps needs to be dealing with angela. we gotta lance this wound, fam.

and re: liv being lovely - she is. and like. when your boyfriend cheats on you and the girl didn't know your boyfriend was taken you don't get mad at her, you get mad at him. did angela even know liv existed? did she have any idea of elliot's connection to her, and does liv have any reason to believe that she did? probably not, right? so it's elliot to blame for that, if we're gonna call it blame, but it's not like he was with liv. liv wasn't answering his calls. liv was putting space between them. she's gonna understand that, and she's not gonna be like fighting angela over elliot.

and she's gonna understand about fucking somebody you shouldn't - which elliot didn't even do - and she's gonna have compassion for a woman who was manipulated into catastrophe bc that's who liv is. she's gonna have compassion for both of them. now does that mean she's gonna roll over for elliot? she hasn't so far. she's not given him an inch. since you were the most, single most, important person she hasn't said boo to him about how she feels about him or how she felt about him. he passed out in her arms and she didn't let him stay with her, she called bell to take him off her hands. she did come to check up on him, bc she was worried about him, but that was more of a tough love what the fuck is wrong with you thing than a baby lemme hold your purse. she's not given him everything. she's listened while he emoted at her and tried to offer help where she can but she's keeping herself in reserve.

and he's her friend. she cares about him. she's not gonna leave him twisting, and she's not gonna leave his kids and his mom to clean up after him on their own. so like eli is missing; shit, even if you're in a huge fight with your friend and you're mad at them and they treated you bad if they call you bc their whole ass child is missing, you go, right? like that's just being a person.

all of this to say, there's gonna be a lot of dramatics coming up, and there's gonna be twists and turns, and it's gonna be up and down, bc that's the nature of the narrative. the narrative train will roll into the station many, many episodes from now and until then we just gotta ride it.

[palamig]

hi! i'm reading furuba and there's something i don't quite understand so can i ask you a little question? so after tooru fell and ended up in the hospital why does everyone acting so rude and accusatory towards kyo? saying it's his fault, he need to apologize etc. i suppose they are doing this to help (?) but it feels so hurtful... and overall i can't help but feel so sad for kyo during the progression of the story, people treat him so poorly and i barely see anyone actually being kind to him :(

Hello anon!! Thank you for this question!! The hospital arc is really the toughest one on kyo :( but it’s also the same arc that finally gave him a reality check. Kyo’s biggest flaw has always been that he’s too (unintentionally) self-absorbed with his issues. His struggle to deal and cope with his trauma has had a disastrous effect on his relationship with the people he interacts with like kyoko, kazuma (for that period in time he refused to let himself call kazuma as his dad), and to a really great extent yuki. It reached its peak at the hospital arc, when instead of accepting tohru’s feelings for him, kyo, blinded by a really awful mixture of guilt over kyoko’s death, his self loathing, and the sincere expectation that there was no other future for him except for being imprisoned for eternity, said some really terrible stuff to her

No one is truly, sincerely blaming kyo though. Cat boy really had too much stuff going in his head. The problem was, not only did kyo really really hurt tohru, because of his brooding, he ended up never going to the hospital to visit her at all. Whether or not for understandable reasons, it certainly pissed off a bunch of people. Yuki was the first one to confront him because at this point, he’s just fed up with kyo’s infinite problems.  Tohru fell from a cliff, sustained serious injuries, and is literally confined in a hospital!!!! Meanwhile kyo, the closest person to tohru, the person tohru’s so clearly in love with and vice versa “that it’s obvious even to a middle schooler”, is sulking around on the balcony like he was in some linkin park music video or something. Like what the fuck man!!!! What the fuk!

That’s how we got the oscar award winning Shut The Fuck Up scene on the balcony. Yuki got even more pissed when he found out that the reason why kyo didn’t go was because kyo blamed himself for tohru’s accident and he thought she’d be better off if he never came because all he ever did was hurt her. And honestly, if you’ve been watching your two housemates flirting and being gross like it’s no ones business for almost 2 years now, and you hear this kind of shit from one of them “im like..only hurting her dude…” you’d be super pissed too like im sorry kyo but its true

For the most part of the manga yuki’s been an unwilling spectator to most kyoru scenes, and a lot of people attribute this to him trying to understand the nature of his feelings for tohru—which is true! But when we finally get to the hospital scene, we also see that maybe a small part of that is also yuki’s slight frustration that he can’t make tohru happy the way kyo does. The Shut The Fuck Up Scene takes their mutual jealousy into its final form: because now it involves tohru.

At this point “jealous” isn’t the right term. More of, both of them sincerely believed that the other can treat tohru much better. But we see that this is an issue that affects yuki—their unwilling spectator—so much more, not only because of the way kyo hurt tohru, literally one of the most precious people to yuki, but also because of yuki’s awful history with kyo. A lot of people have already talked about this scene from the yuki and kyo perspective, so i’ll limit my discussion to what i believe is the kyoru aspect.

When Yuki kicks the wall and starts crying when he tells kyo “do you really think it would be the same if I were beside her?” — you know from the many panels we’ve seen of yuki watching kyoru flirting from afar or kyo noticing stuff about tohru yuki never noticed, he’d been thinking about this a lot. So kyo telling yuki that tohru would be much better off with him is, to yuki, a load of bull! fuckin! shit!. But poor cat baby is way too oblivious to notice just who exactly he was to tohru. To ignore tohru’s own feelings. How tohru sees him, and only him. There were some things only kyo can do. And the most effective way (possibly even the only way) to get stubborn kyo to finally understand it is thru some screaming and a nicely aimed punch on the face. Because this is no longer about kyo’s issues, this is also about tohru, her feelings, her loneliness,  her quiet struggle to fight for her favorite person and to save from his destiny as the cat. This scene was beautiful because yuki finally explodes, both for his own sake and for tohru’s.

And then there’s saki and arisa. I think saki and arisa were also rightfully pissed. Like, more than “rejecting” the girl u’ve been shamelessly flirting with for the last gazillion years, u just called tohru, the nicest purest kindest girl in the world “delusional” like boi???!? Let’s just say if kyo was just some other random guy he wouldn’t have come out of that confrontation at school alive. But because saki and arisa genuinely love kyo, they cut him some slack. While neither saki nor arisa knew about the curse and the imprisonment, both of them, especially saki (who has been reading kyo’s ~feelings~ since the first time they met) know that despite this one instance of him seriously hurting her feelings, kyo is a positive influence on tohru. There was really no other person for tohru than kyo. They wanted him to stop moping around and blaming himself. 

Saki told kyo that tohru wasn’t looking for an apology. What tohru really wanted was for him to return her feelings. Everyone and their mothers knows that kyoru is written in the stars; but kyo, way too absorbed with his issues, actively pushed her away, when he could have let her in. They wanted him to realize this for himself before they could let him see tohru again. And kyo knows deeply within himself that he needs to get his shit together. He didn’t need other people to figure that out for him, but what he does need is other people to drag his ass to finally get it done.

These three showed kyo some tough love during the hospital arc and i can understand why people might think kyo is getting too much bad treatment, especially in this arc. But personally i think these three did the right thing. Kyo needed to take a step back from the chaos in his mind and see the big picture; to see what he’s been desperately trying to avoid. Tohru’s out there ready to love him, and all he needed to do was to let her in. But cat boy is furiously stubborn there was really no other way to make him realize that than to be harsh on him

The hospital arc is one of my favorites because from there we see how kyo finds the courage to face the one person who was the root of all of his trauma—his biological dad—and come into terms with all of his complicated issues, even (and i really want to emphasize this) before akito told him that the cat room has been destroyed. He was willing to let go of his shackles to be with her, despite a future of being caged forever. All of it for tohru. So that when he finally saw her again, he’d be a man free from all the shit that had truly been imprisoning him all his life. So he could be with tohru, and she could be with him, with nothing holding them back.

Ahh there are so many more beautiful things about this arc but i hope this is a sufficient answer to your query!!

[hopelesstvaddict]

Jon and Sansa's relationship is fragile because of Jon's insecurities

[So we're back. Instead of full reviews I think I'm just gonna write about specific subjects that make me pause and think, more than the general episodes]

So we've been treated with Jon's return to Winterfell and his rocky relationship with Sansa resumes. Again. Ain't this old by now ? Perhaps not.

Jon and Sansa are at their most affectionate when it comes to hugs but this second time, Sansa keeps focused on what's important. I don't really understand why Jon would take issue with Sansa speaking up at the council in the Great Hall; she brought up very valid points. Saving the world is important of course but people tend to forget what needs to happen behind the scenes in order to ensure that. I think I'm not alone in this but I also wondered why she didn't take into account Dany's army when preparing all the food storing. While that can be blamed on sloppy writing and it's fair to say that she could have at least entertained the idea, it's also fair to remember that Jon's main idea was first to mine dragonglass and then try to convince Dany to help them. Sansa was not convinced he would succeed; in her mind, Dany would only care about her throne. So far she's not proven entirely wrong. And we also have to remember that Jon didn't send any message to her for a long time and certainly not before he knelt. Probably the last scroll she got was something like 'Hey I'm ok' and then next thing she knew he had bent the knee. So by this time it was already too late to gather whatever food was necessary. Plus I think it's safe to say the entire North brought what food was available FOR THE NORTH ONLY. Obviously there wasn't much and in any case, even if she had been warned she'd have to feed many more, there wouldn't have been enough. Sansa takes care of all this, and all the political stuff - things that both Jon and Dany do not care about and have little regard for. Jon still doesn’t quite realize how much he needs Sansa to handle all of this because he doesn’t realize how important it is. Yet.

The scene that stood out the most takes place during Jon and Arya's reunion in which Jon tries to dismiss Sansa. Live reaction: Ok so we're back to this 'Jon-putting-down-his-sister' nonsense? At first view, it's quite infuriating to see Jon acting this way and it's hard to believe these two ever found a way to unite and effing retake Winterfell. But once you stop and think about it, this little exchange yields so much to analyze.

As many pointed out, Jon likely tries to revert to a childhood joke he shared with Arya when they were younger and used to diss their sister together. Fair point. Siblings often side against one another. But that shows several things. Jon has been away from Arya all series long and he doesn't realize yet that she's not his little baby sister anymore. His conversation about Needle further proves the point. In any case, Arya is having none of it and supports Sansa. We're all here for this.

Here Jon seemingly tries to diminish Sansa's intelligence. But he knows that she really IS smarter than everyone else. He knows it. So I think part of what's going on here is that Jon works as the embodiment of the last part of the general audience who still thinks that Sansa is useless and this scene was written for Arya - a known fan favorite - to dismiss this and assert her support of Sansa - to really drive home this idea. The scene with Tyrion (another fan favorite) serves a similar purpose.

Narratively, beyond Jon dismissing Sansa yet again, this reads as another instance where it's more about Jon than it is about Sansa. Several times Jon has confronted Sansa about her asserted cleverness - and all those times, she's been right - and each time it boiled down to Jon's lack of self-confidence and the need to prove himself to his sister. When she told him that Ramsey was more devious than what he thought, his first reaction was to boast about his military achievements. When she told him to be smarter than Robb and their father, his reaction was to half-jokingly dismiss her offer of counsel. This essentially is a version of him saying 'Yeah she's smart but so am I and I wish she saw it too'

This ties closely with the rest of the exchange where Arya tells him that Sansa is defending the family. Pay attention to what Jon says next - specifically the choice of phrasing it.

There is so much to draw from that line. He doesn't say 'She's my family too' or 'she's our family' or 'I'm your family too'. His choice of words means 'I, Jon, am part of Sansa's family too'. That singles out Sansa as Jon's focus for discontent. He could have said 'I'm your family' or just 'I'm family too' and that would have included Bran and Arya as well. But no, Sansa alone is who Jon focuses on. This shows that he still has some unresolved issues with her - even after all that happened between them. After two seasons of her repeatingly validating him, her saying out loud 'You're a Stark to me' he still doubts HER in particular

Perhaps that boils down to her behavior towards him when they were children since this comes up again later. A seemingly random bit of conversation but one can't help but wonder why this was brought up again. Jon and Sansa weren't close growing up and Jon is a deeply insecure person, being a bastard and all that and it's understandable that he would have a hard time letting go of all these presumptions when they all but defined his childhood. She was the sole of his siblings to make him feel like he didn't have a real place in the family (to make it very simple), hence why he doesn't have a problem with Arya or Bran. Yet.

But how can Sansa change that ? A girl can repeat her support for him so much and reassure him all the time but really it's up to Jon to get past childish jabbing and accept the woman his sister has become and that she's genuine in her concern towards him. That she's changed.

'I'm her family too' is another way of saying 'I'm part of her family too so why is she always antagonizing me/fighting me/disagreeing with me?' Jon still thinks Sansa doesn't consider him family and she's the last one not to in his mind.

The choice of words also emphasizes the 'I'. Rather than say 'she' and put focus on Sansa alone, the use of 'I' brings the sentence back to Jon and puts the spotlight on him as well. 'I am part of her family too'. As if he's saying it out loud and repeating it so that perhaps his thick brain will finally accept it. This is a clever exchange that foreshadows the existential/identity crisis that he's going to go through no later than before the end of the episode. Which renders Arya's 'Don't forget that' quite unsubtle. This will be Jon’s final storyline, the resolution of the one problem that defined him at the beginning of the story.

This need to gain Sansa's approval is driven further in the scene the two of them share later on (another candlelit setting). We have yet to see Jon interact with Bran or Arya but Jon is decidedly different with Sansa. Perhaps that's because they're the eldest. Perhaps that's because they're closer in age. Perhaps that's because they are the leaders of their House. Perhaps that's because they went to war together. In any case, Jon is wary, unsure and insecure about how she feels about him. He doesn’t look to Sansa the way he affectionately looks to Arya or Bran. A smile is rare when he interacts with Sansa. He yells, they don't see eye to eye, he feels like she belittles him, he feels hurt and at the end of it, this :

This is him asking her for reassurance. Asking for a clear answer. 'Please trust me. Please tell me that you support me'. He craves her validation. After he all but dismissed her in front of Arya. Why go see her? Why take her intel so close to his heart then ?

To which she responds 'You know I do'. Two things to take from this. First, once again she reassures him and reasserts her support and loyalty to him. Second, 'YOU KNOW I do' means 'you already know the answer'. This shows that in her mind, Jon should ALREADY know that he has acquired her undying support - probably against her better judgement. Newsflash : he doesn’t.

Can we stop now for a second and breathe a sigh of relief that Sansa has grown confident enough to be sure of who she is and not question Jon's lack of faith in her ? Thank the Gods one of them has their shit together because if she were like him, this wouldn't go anywhere.

It's possible that her not lashing out at him and instead adopting this quiet, sad behavior is also the manifestation of her own fear towards him - that he effectively abandoned her. For all the tough 'no one can protect me' behavior, anyone is going to be touched to have someone pledge to protect them.

Anyway, Sansa trusts Jon but he doesn't. It's quite interesting that he was the one asking for mutual trust before and yet he is the one in the end who can't totally do it because in his heart, he is still deeply insecure about her. Sure there were some steps made. Ensuring the safety of the North and entrusting her with it was a huge improvement. But still, we see that on a personal level he is quite not there.

The obvious question then is WHY. Why is he still insecure ? And why Sansa in particular ? The beginning of an answer can be found in the relationship he had with her while they were children and how it compares to Arya and Bran. Maybe that's just remnants of that strained relationship.

But if Sansa has changed and for the better and Jon still struggles to accept it, let's just hope that a similar situation doesn't arise with Arya and Bran. Let's rule out the latter since he's all about the zen attitude but we've already seen that Arya is not Jon's Arya anymore and that she will stand beside Sansa when needed. For now, Jon has no reason to doubt Arya like he does Sansa. When the reveal about his parentage comes out, how will Sansa and Arya react ? If he can't handle the thought of one sister seemingly doubting him, what's it going to be if it's two sisters ?

All of this insecurity regarding Sansa - for now - is at least partly in preparation of the drama that is sure to unfold in the next weeks. Jon fears that Sansa doesn't see him as family and now, he has even more reason to be afraid. All the drama that has happened between them for seasons boils down to this deep fear of not being accepted by her and now we're in for the culmination. There will be a lot of fighting, we’re told. Jon will sulk and convince himself that he was right in the end, that he wasn't part of the family and more so, that SHE was right not to accept him. Sansa on the other hand, I suspect, will mainly fight to make him accept once and for all that he is a Stark. That's the passionate fight for her this season. To make her family complete.

Another interesting thing to note - as others have observed - is that the conversation is left unfinished.

Sansa asks if Jon loves Dany and he doesn't respond. Once again, Sansa demonstrates - to us and to Jon - how perceptive she is, how well she can read people, and him specifically. As of now, Jon’s relationship with Dany is still a secret and yet she has figured it out.

What's really notable is that this is a pattern in a lot of Sansa/Jon conversations, specifically the ones where they argue in private. Compare this one to the tent scene in 6x09 or the one in 7x01 right after the council or even in 6x07 when they argue about the men they have. We have Sansa and Jon arguing heatedly then the conversation tones down to soft, sad voices and then it ends before resolution can happen, either because they choose to end it there, someone else interrupts or we simply are denied to see it.

Sansa and Jon have been arguing ever since they reunited. Every season they were pitted against each other as the siblings who fought. Now in the final season, it's still brought up and used in the narrative. Meaning that it means something, that it's important to the story. We saw that Arya and Sansa fought in Season 7. It was tied to their old bickering from childhood and ultimately it was resolved and now Arya stands by her sister. Narratively, a conflict plaguing characters has to be resolved when the story comes to its conclusion. Sansa and Jon’s storyline has been going on since Season 6 now, so their relationship HAS TO come to a resolution, one way or another. And it'll be all about Jon finally accepting that he is a Stark and about him accepting that Sansa has accepted it.