#because everything is sugarcoated and seen through rose tinted glasses

[marocato]

a sweet but hazy memory

[s4ijoh]

CHARACTER ANALYSIS. OIKAWA TOORU

DISCLAIMER: this is based on my personal opinion. you have every right to disagree.

WARNINGS: suggestive themes

early on his teenage years, i think oikawa would be one to often mistake having a crush with being in love. therefore, he falls out of love just as fast he fell in - but dont get him wrong, he is still treating his partners with the utmost respect during their time together but once realization hits him, he recognizes he is wasting his time and he is not sugarcoating it, he is leaving - he learns to not get attached to any of his partners because he has seen many of them come and go + will start to grow frustrated with all these hopeless relationships. so he learns to not take them too seriously. his relationships were mainly boring and, to him, always felt temporary, like they were always missing something, some meaning (ill mention this further on!!) 

so, it is true he gets out of a relationship as fast as he got into it: and i think this is where he might get his womanizer reputation from, although that couldn’t be further from the truth - he is not on a selfish quest to satisfy his needs, he doesnt see every girl as someone to conquer. i dont think he is one to actively look for a relationship - if the girl likes him and he thinks she’s pretty, once again, he might mistaken his crush for love and get into a relationship w her, only to realize, later on, that he was not actually in love with her - nor is he one to actively seek for sex, like he won’t seduce girls to get laid. it might eventually lead to that point but it usually happens because it just seems people cant resist his charms and he usually ends up going with the flow. he wont persuade people on purpose tho, hes just being his usual genuine charming and flirtatious self. but dont think im delusional, i know hes not an angel, he will sometimes flirt with people just for the sake of it, no second intentions tho he’s just finds it fun to tease them a little.

that being said i also believe he started messing around very early. (+ im not sexualizing a minor, we all know people are having sex b4 theyre 18 so dont even get me started, ffs). i see him as someone who is curious about sex and so when he got into his first relationship, both parties agreed they were ready so they were like,, well, why not? honestly, it was not too bad but it was not great either, he was disappointed for it was not as extraordinary as he had expected it to be. was this what people yearned for oh so desperately, he doesn't get it.

eventually, when his first girlfriend breaks up with him he doesnt seem all too phased and gets over it in a couple days. - we have seen that on the anime, when his nephew mentions that his girlfriend broke up with him, hes not that bothered although im aware it might as well been him trying to hide his pain but, for the sake of this story, i dont think this is the case.

he learns that despite all his curiosity, sex is not something that is essential to him. on future relationships, he keeps chasing after that ecstatic feeling everyone keeps talking about - he wants to know what the fuss is all about - but to no use bc still, he can’t quite put the finger on it but, he is never quite satisfied, it lacks something.

and this, ladies and gentlemen, is where it gets interesting. i very much believe that, that something, is a strong emotional bond with his partner! he is a gemini mars!! and, bear with me here, it takes a lot to keep him interested but when he has sex with someone that he truly loves... hes whipped. like, the experience is mindblowing, hes immediately wrapped around your finger!! he will put all his effort into making sure your relationship lasts and!! as i mentioned before, hes not one to give everything up for a one night stand or whatever womanizer/fuckboy behaviour people always portray him to have. hes not playing games, he would never break someone’s heart on purpose. and now, that he thinks he finally found the one, much less. he feels it in his gut, that this one is meant to last and he’s definitely not letting go of you!

you introduce him to a whole new world! hes getting butterflies every time you come around, hes never experienced this before? the feeling is so strong and this baby feels so overwhelmed. is this what falling in love feels like? he now gets what people meant about the beauty of being in love.

he is definitely seeing the world through rose tinted glasses, now that he is in love, the world around him is so much more beautiful. he has so much love inside of him that he projects it onto every little thing. he finds beauty in the colourful leaves falling to the ground when autumn is just around the corner and days are getting shorter and suddenly, his walks back home are not as dull for he finds comfort in the dimly lit street, watching as fireflies cling onto the warmth radiating from the streetlamps - yes he is a romantic!

you will find this man talking about you to all of his friends which, despite popular belief, didnt happen regarding his past girlfriends because he had more important things on his mind, had other priorities, but suddenly he is all you can think about, his mind is inundated with thoughts of you! he has an ! urge ! to talk about you, about every little detail he can remember about you; how you snore ever so lightly or how your hands are always warm. he wants to show you off to all his friends and wants them to see how lucky he is to have you. he won’t shut up about you but honestly his friends are so happy for him they wont mind his never ending babbling.

in the end, even though life might eventually send the both of you on your separate ways, he will always hold onto the way you made him feel - he will never forget you were his first true love - and he is so thankful that he got to experience it in this lifetime with you. he is forever in debt to you for showing him what it feels like to be in love. you changed his life, as dramatic as it might sound for once he has experienced this kind of bond he is never going back to his old ways, he now knows what devotion is all about.

[thebluelemontree]

Is it wrong to say that Sansa uses an out of sight out of mind coping mechanism? I noticed it because it's what I do a lot. I know some ppl say she rewrites traumatic memories to make the memories bearable but it doesn't make sense. If that was how she coped, wouldn't she have been telling herself lies about Joffrey still in acok? Or found a way to erase/rewrite Marillion's attempt to rape her?

Yes and no. She does that except all the times she doesn’t. ;) I think that characterization is extremely reductionist (and ignores character complexity and  growth) when it’s applied that broadly to every situation Sansa has been in. You have to take these things instance by instance because they aren’t all the same. Sometimes that labeling doesn’t fit at all. In many cases, it feels more like the fandom pathologizing the act of romanticizing or trying to push aside or reframe something unpleasant or even traumatic when that’s just something most human beings do now and then. Some do it more than others, but its all within the realm of typical coping behavior and being older or more educated or more “logical” doesn’t make one immune to it. So I hope you don’t let those interpretations make you feel abnormal or more fallible for identifying with Sansa in that way. Romanticizing doesn’t even have to be about coping at all, but simply expressing desire through daydreams. People imagine being in idealized scenarios with crushes all the time.  

You also hit the nail on the head. Sansa just doesn’t go around making up false narratives about every objectively awful thing that happens to her. In fact, her actual responses to those moments can be a useful basis for comparison when we’re analyzing the unkiss, for example. Misunderstanding the unkiss is usually where a lot of these assumptions stem from. That’s a whole other can of worms in itself. The unkiss is just too long of a discussion to put here, so I just recommend this post as to the reasons why it isn’t about trauma and take a browse through my unkiss tag. It does bear repeating that Sansa factually remembers every scary thing that happened during the Blackwater and why it happened, indicating she has processed it honestly and critically, before any incarnation of the unkiss happens. The unkiss is a mismemory added on to the facts, which began as her being the actor that kissed him first. It’s not a lie to deny the facts or to excuse his behavior. It’s regrettable to her that Sandor was not able to be the person she could rely on to get her out of KL at that time. Nonetheless, this repressed desire is just so strong in her that it manifested in a kiss so real she could remember how it felt after the reality of his leaving KL for good sank in. 

Early AGOT Sansa tended to want to move past unpleasantness rather quickly. Just sweep those red flags under the rug so everything can go back to blissful harmony. Sansa is naturally averse to conflict and just wants her present with the royal family to be smooth sailing into a bright future. Ned had a very similar tendency when it came to concerns over Robert’s true character. He saw things that disturbed him, but he hoped and clung to his idea of Robert anyway. For Sansa, this resulted in some misplaced blame and rewriting events so she could deal with the aftermath. This is mostly seen in her processing the Mycah incident after Lady’s death and how her perception of all the characters involved shifted in varying ways. This is after she knew perfectly well what really happened, because Ned says Sansa had already told him the truth of what Joffrey did while Arya was still missing. However, it would also be unfair to completely chalk this up to Sansa’s idiosyncrasies. We have to put her flip-flopping in the context of the situation as well. She’s also experienced a gutting loss with Lady’s death and the fact that the first blow to her innocence was her father volunteering to put Lady down. She doesn’t have Catelyn to go to with her confusion and hurt, and Ned has largely been silent. She’s also still engaged to Joffrey through all this, this is still a patriarchy, there are political ramifications to speaking against a crown prince, and she doesn’t know how to deal with seeing such cruelty and vindictiveness in her future husband. Especially when he responded to her tender concern and wanting to help him with venom and hate. 

I mean, jeez, she’s 11. I don’t expect an 11 year old to understand how to identify the signs of emotional manipulation or see how this situation can escalate into domestic violence. Just because Sansa can’t articulate what is happening within her relationship with Joffrey, doesn’t mean she has blocked out any notion that Joffrey can turn his anger on her. Part of the reason she misplaces blame on Arya (and rewrites what happened) is because Joffrey turns scornful of Sansa for being a witness to his emasculating shame. He punishes her with the cold shoulder because she didn’t immediately take his side and pretended not to see instead. He regains power through making Sansa feel small and fearful of his moods. 

“He had not spoken a word to her since the awful thing had happened, and she had not dared to speak to him.” -- Sansa II, AGOT.

Sansa looked at him and trembled, afraid that he might ignore her or, worse, turn hateful again and send her weeping from the table. -- Sansa II, AGOT.

This is coming from someone who is supposed to love her and someone she will spend the rest of her life with. To fix things, she must be unequivocally on Joffrey’s side going forward or suffer the consequences, which we can see happening as her story completely flips over breakfast sometime later. This is not saying Sansa is fully exonerated from not supporting her sister when she needed her, but that it’s understandable how she arrived at this point. Even when things start to get really bad after Ned’s arrest, Sansa still holds out some hope that she can appeal to Joffrey’s (and Cersei’s) love for her to get him to be merciful. Is it really her fault she believed a part of Joffrey really loved her (and thus was reachable by her pleas) if he also heavily love bombed her and treated her like she was the most special girl in the world? Love bombing is a classic feature of the seduction phase leading up to abuse.  

So we can see Sansa does ignore truths and rewrite events sometimes and her personality is a factor; however, the context surrounding it matters a lot. Post Ned’s execution, Sansa does a full 180 regarding Joffrey and Cersei.

Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vain and cruel. "I hate you," she whispered. -- Sansa VI, AGOT.

Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father's head. Sansa would never make that mistake again. -- Sansa I, ACOK. 

"A monster," she whispered, so tremulously she could scarcely hear her own voice. "Joffrey is a monster. He lied about the butcher's boy and made Father kill my wolf. When I displease him, he has the Kingsguard beat me. He's evil and cruel, my lady, it's so. And the queen as well." -- Sansa I, ASOS. 

There’s also her conscious efforts to push away thoughts of her dead family and Jeyne Poole, but she states why she does that. It’s traumatic, the tears start flowing uncontrollably, and she is desperately trying to avoid falling into another suicidal depression. Her survival in KL depends on her holding it together and appearing loyal and obedient to Joffrey. Mourning her loved ones would imply to Joffrey she is plotting treason. Besides, she knows that even if she did ask Cersei or LF about Jeyne, she has no reason to believe they’d do anything but lie to her face in a patronizing way. There’s no point being plagued with wondering what the truth might be when she can’t do anything about it. Still, she prayed for Jeyne wherever she might be. She genuinely thought Arya had made it to WF on the ship and was safe at least until she got word of her brothers’ deaths and her home being sacked by the Iron Born, though there was initially a touch of projection and fantasizing about Arya being free while she remains captured. As of Feast, she believes she is the last Stark left alive and she has no one but Littlefinger to help her. So while she is suppressing her grief, it’s done with good reason, and it’s not being replaced with any false narratives to cope. 

We also cannot ignore that her relationship to Sandor Clegane has instilled in her an appreciation for the un-sugarcoated truth now that she has experienced betrayal and injustice first hand. In his own way, he’s encouraged her to listen to her own inner bullshit detector. The rose-tinted glasses have become a lot more clear compared to where she started. This is a newly learned skill though, and her self-confidence has been wrecked by internalized verbal abuse. She’s also been left on her own to figure out people’s intentions by herself, which runs parallel to her mounting desperation to get out of KL as Joffrey’s violence escalates. Developing a touch more of a jaded, skeptical side does sometimes clash with her enduring idealism and faith in other people (like with the Tyrells). This struggle is not a bad thing. The goal isn’t to become as cynical as the Hound, but to arrive at an earned optimism that has been tempered by wisdom and practical experience.

Her situation with Littlefinger is much more challenging than anything she faced in KL. He moves her where he wants her to go with complex web of lies, manipulation, grooming, isolation, coercion, dependence, guilt and shame. Her safety and desire to go home are tightly bound to being complicit in his lies and criminal activities. She feels indebted to him for getting her out of KL, even though his methods push her past her boundaries and force her to compromise her moral integrity. The thing is, there are things Sansa does know about LF, but she doesn’t seem to be ready to try and put the puzzle pieces together. She’s not daring to ask probing questions about Lysa’s reference to the “tears” and Jon Arryn or about the possible dangers of Maester Colemon prescribing sweetsleep for Robert’s convulsions. While the subject of Jeyne’s fate is still one she doesn’t want to revisit, somewhere in her mind she does know LF took custody of her friend. If it feels like this is somewhat of a regression back to her early AGOT self, there’s probably some truth to that; however, it’s perfectly okay for positive character arcs to be an imperfect progress. There can be relapses, regressions, setbacks, missteps, and misguided actions. All that growth isn’t lost. Everything she knows is just stored in the back of her mind, not forgotten completely. The general trend line moves her toward successfully confronting Littlefinger with the truth when GRRM is ready to pull the trigger. She’s definitely aware of Littlefinger lying to her more than she lets on and she knows his help is not out of the kindness of his heart, but motivated by what he wants her to be to him. But it’s not like she has the option to go anywhere else, does she? She’s a wanted criminal with a bounty on her head and has no other friend or ally in the Vale she can trust with the truth of her identity. Confronting LF without any means of neutralizing his power over her isn’t the smartest thing to do when he’s shown her he can literally get away with multiple murders. Again, it’s not just her personality that makes her hesitant to pull back the veil and face the horrible truth head on. The outside forces pressuring her perceptions and behavior cannot be discounted either.