I’ve Been Trying To Be The Person Someone Else Wants Me To Be For… I Don’t Know How Long.

I’ve been reading some of these and just. ARGH.

The idea of chase and foreman sitting in House’s office, because it’ll never quite be chase’s, and just looking around at the room the first time back after his death. Both of them are so lost in their memories they basically forget the others there, and then their attentions cross paths again. For a split second they see the other all those years ago, foreman newly hired and Chase baby faced. They notice the stress lines and the fatigue that’s deep into each of their bones now that they carry like an old friend, and they don’t want to break the silence, because then it’ll be real.

It’s foreman who eventually does it, seeing the shine of nearly shed tears in Chase’s eyes. “Hey, what’s the betting that they’ve actually ran off together to watch monster trucks and trashy soaps in peace?” And it’s said with a small smile, a hopeful attempt to make chase laugh. Chase blows out a shaky but amused huff, “you think Wilson’ll allow that? He probably has house drinking a carrot and kale smoothie as we speak.” the reply is quiet and thick but it’s there, both finding relief in the fantasy of what should be and isn’t. Chase will tell himself it is, foreman won’t correct him.

With a final look in the office for the day, the air becoming too stifled with the clutter of old memories and not enough room to make new ones. They’ll face that tomorrow, so they head to foreman’s office, not quite ready to go home to face their separate apartments alone just yet.

“Hey, if you’re dean of medicine, does that make you Cuddy and me House?” Chase asks, and it’s the first time Foreman has heard him sound like himself since the news. Not wanting to break the delicate atmosphere, he replies,

“House doesn’t cry at Christmas movies”

“And you don’t have Cuddy’s ass.”

“6 hours of clinic duty.”

“..foreman?” Chase hesitated

“Yeah?”

“We’ll be okay?”

“We’ll be okay.”

House being so excited over getting to organise Chase's bachelor party just to lock himself in Wilson's bathroom and hallucinate alone during it is so real actually.

It's what life is. It's a series of rooms. And who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are.

“Theres something about you. It’s like you’re hurt too.”

this episode means everything to me

“You wanted this conversation

You wanted to talk about something that matters

Talk”

it's actually kind of funny how like. the second duckling squad of taub/kutner/13 get along much better than the first one. like chase and foreman and cameron barely liked one another for a long time. cameron and foreman both loved letting chase know he was a privileged idiot with daddy issues. chase and foreman both call cameron insufferable and annoying. cameron and foreman had arcs about their beef. when house asks cameron about his bedside manner she says "worse than usual." foreman openly told chase repeatedly he did not like him. cameron and chase got along slightly better by comparison, but only because they both hated foreman more and were less likely to have major arguments. and then they started fucking and got all toxic lesbian everywhere so?? improvement??

and then you have the new gang and like. taub and kutner are best friends. 13 is more aloof but gets along with them great. they all hang out and eat lunch together. like i bet 13 one time got an article published in a medical journal and kutner bought a supermarket cake and taub sincerely was happy for her and cameron and foreman were just SEETHING

i wish so badly that we had gotten to see foreman and amber really really interact cause they're very like eachother in terms of narrative function and character. both of them ARE house, one step removed - foreman is black and amber is a woman, and neither of them can afford to be as messy and reckless as house can afford to be, because they know that they won't be seen as good enough even if they're right all the time. foreman is running from his personal life and feels like an outsider in every situation. amber understands her place and knows that if nobody likes her, she has to be right, to make up for it. both of them have the guts and the brains to be house, but they are just too far removed from the qualities about house that allow him to get to where he is in the world with very few barriers. they're both such fascinating examinations of what you can get away with when you're not at a disadvantage from the beginning

Locke makes me so sad man, Michael makes me so sad man, Claire makes me so sad man, Jin and Sun make me so sad man, everyone just makes me so sad man

Thot daughter:

Gay son:

Boy mom:

Girl dad:

weaponized incompetence uncle:

Trauma bonding aunt:

Black cat neighbor:

Golden retriever:

Sister-in-law:

/

Golden-retriever-sister-in-law:

“I can’t get away from this fucking family”:

I’m still not over this conversation from the most recent episode. Yes, we knew that Tanjirou would be able to get through to Giyuu, due to their shared loss of family and loved ones at the hands of demons. And yes, we knew that Tanjirou still carried immense amounts of grief and sorrow when it came to these (still fairly recent) deaths.

But this is the first and only time Tanjirou has ever admitted to wishing that he had died instead of someone else. This is a huge and devastating thing for him to acknowledge about himself.

With his family, his survivor’s guilt was about not being there when Muzan attacked. Even though, realistically, he wouldn’t have stood a chance against Kibutsuji at the time, it doesn’t matter to him. This fact still constantly haunts him.

Rengoku’s death, though—this is the only time Tanjirou’s survivor’s guilt takes this shape, that his confusion and grief is so severe that he wishes that he had died instead.

Tanjirou tells himself that it’s because he believed Rengoku was capable of defeating Muzan someday. And there is some truth to this rationalization, but deep down, it’s an excuse. Rengoku didn’t survive against Akaza, a demon who—though incredibly formidable—was ultimately bound to have only a fraction of Muzan’s full strength.

Once the viewer understands this excuse for what it is, it hurts even more to understand why Rengoku’s death impacted him so heavily.

Tanjirou only knew Rengoku for a short period of time. And in that brief window, Rengoku managed to leave one of the greatest, deepest impressions on that him that few other characters were able to match.

There are many reasons why, but I think a huge part of it is because Rengoku was everything Tanjirou wanted and needed in his life at the time. He had other mentors up to this point, yes. But Rengoku was so similar to him, and his communication style was easy for Tanjirou to follow. He was affectionate, kind, morally sound, and near incontestable in a fight. Due to this, I think Tanjirou inadvertently saw Kyoujurou as the ideal demon slayer. The ideal fighter. The ideal person.

It doesn’t diminish his love for anyone else, not by a longshot. But Rengoku was, in ways Tanjirou may or may not have understood at the time, the perfect mentor for him. And that perfect person—someone he was desperate to learn from, someone he came to love so quickly and so fiercely—was snatched away from him before he could fully understand what he’d lost.

That’s why Tanjirou cried when Giyuu told him about Sabito. That’s why Tanjirou understood, without being told, that Giyuu was suffering from survival’s guilt. He heard and witnessed Giyuu’s despair firsthand, saw his loss and his struggle to live on and immediately empathized because it reminded him of how it felt to lose Rengoku.