#and I bet the majority of them stem from the bullshit that spews outta Akito's mouth

[tardytothepardy]

Fruits Basket - Vol.8

hey I remembered, how cool :D

So this particular book decided to gut punch me, I really appreciated that. Not with anything angsty or tragic or whatever, just with plain ol irl stuff that I've been dealing with for years now, mostly pertaining to the incredibly daunting, terrifying, anxiety-inducing question of, "Ok, so you're finishing up/finished with school, what now?" And, just like a handful of the characters faced with this question, I say, "Shit man I don't fucking know."

First though, an angry cow boy got angry and tore up a classroom. Yep, it's our local cow boy, Hatsuharu Sohma. Tohru and Co. were just going about their day, when they heard that Cow Boy(it's really stupid but I think I'm gonna go with it) lost his shit. Naturally, they go and investigate, and their reactions were mostly

Kyo: (fuck he wants to fight i'll fight him lessgobetch)

Yuki: (smh, just, smfh)

Tohru: (concern & confusion)

Momiji: ( :D )

Anyway, after a teacher comes in and dumps a bucket of water over Haru (and Kyo, who was fixing for a fight), he calms down and is no longer black. Hm. That sounds wrong. He's no longer,,, he's calmed down, that's all that I can say. They still don't know what set him off, but Yuki is interested in finding out. Turns out that Haru was dumped, and his confusion and hurt and anger had been bundling up in the days/week since, and bubbled over to him becoming Angry Cow Boy. So that's out of the way.

After that, a new character arrives on the scene: Ritchan, who is related to that other person a while back who just kinda kept losing their shit over little things. It's kinda draining just reading through Ritchan doing this, I can't imagine how it would be to deal with in person. Like, every little thing just sets Ritchan off, like Kyo asking where the milk went (Ritchan used it all for his cereal), and before you know it, Ritchan's on the roof and people have to talk him off, like, it's a lot. (I don't think that was the specific order but, it was something that like that)

Ritchan faces a lot of insecurities (which seems to be really common within the Sohma family) about how he isn't very powerful, and how he feels his zodiac animal (the monkey) isn't useful. He wishes that he could find his purpose in life, more rather that someone would just tell him (haha can't relate to that at all,, haaaa 😬), but Tohru says that, maybe no one has a purpose in life. Maybe there's nothing that anyone is "supposed to do", rather that life is more about discovering what you want to do and who you want to be. She and her mom have some really good insight.

Continuing with that general idea, and what I was mentioning earlier, the school term is ending soon, and the students have to turn in goals that they have for the future. Naturally, this is an incredibly stressful thing, and so everyone involved is some form of freaked out over it. Yuki is stressed about it, because he seems to have a bad relationship with like,, everyone in his family: his parents and his brother. There's some mention of his parents "selling" him, so that's probably why.

Kyo's stressed about it because he's the cat. He's a Cat Boy, and no one wants to be around a Cat Boy. Within the Sohma family, that is. I doubt anyone else would particularly care, but the family (cough cough, Akito, most likely, cough cough) seems to have a lot of power and the ability to dictate what exactly the members of the family can do, even into their adulthood. And since the family already seems to not like Kyo simply because he is Cat Boy, he sees his prospects are pretty dim.

Finally, Tohru feels anxious about her future because it's all just so much at once. She has no idea where to go after this. She promised her mom that she would get through high school, because her mom didn't/wasn't able to. After that though, idfk man how am I supposed to know?? She continues to get more upset, until Shigure pops outta fucking nowhere and basically says to take things one at time. Sure, there are many things down the road, but more often than not, it doesn't do much good to fret about all that stuff if you're still tangling up in what you currently have to do. Just keep working, keep chugging along, and when it gets to be too much, sit down, take a break, but just remember to keep steadily making your way down the path.

And that's the kinda shit that makes me think, "Hey! I'm reading this to relax, not be reminded of my own problems ;o; but also much thank anime man"

Towards the end, Tohru, Momiji, Kyo, Yuki, and Haru all go to a haunted house, and Tohru is fucking terrified the whole time and acts like an idiot (same lmao), and Haru crafts some weird story between two of the props, which helps calm Tohru down.

Tohru goes in the first place to fight her fears, but I wouldn't have gone in at all. I do not enjoy being scared in any way. I will not watch a scary movie or video to "save face", mright? I am a fantastic wimp and I'm ok with that. If you guys want to go and watch a scary movie or tell scary stories, that's great, but I'll be somewhere else, looking at memes or reading some stupid shit, or like,,, literally anything other than partaking in the scary stuff. I haven't watched a horror movie in years, but the last ones that I was stupid enough to force myself to watch still haunt me, I still am thoroughly freaked out by them. I mean, there was one anti-meth ad that I got when I was outrageously young, and that shit still sticks with me. Did I ever have any intent of doing meth? No. Not in the least, but hey, at least that ad made me scared of taking a shower for a solid month. (I still did shower but I had the shower curtain open the whole time. It was a huge mess.)