Yeah Yeah It's Silly How Obsessed With The Kotatsu Tamaki Is Especially In The Manga But It's At Kyoya's

Regulus is a naturally grumpy person. He frowns all day, rolls his eyes, and scoffs at everything. He rarely smiles—almost never. Many people have never seen him smile.

Whenever James sees him frown, he pokes his cheek and says, "Smile."

Regulus cannot resist this. He smiles every time.

the institution of family

*poor punctuation/grammar, what are capital letters again? :) mention of divorce, dysfunctional view of family, might not make sense, i wrote this while trying to fall asleep, therefore not proofread as i fell asleep, see that makes sense doesn't it?

i have only seen the anime, but ouran has taught me so much about the meaning of family. as a child of divorced parents, even though i am blessed to have always been safe and loved, family has always been a confusing, and borderline negative term. familial pressures and societal views have no doubt shaped my view of the institution of family growing up. according to (segments of) society, there was a formula to a functional family, and mine didn’t quite fit the bill. according to (members of) my family, the things I did should be based on the preferences of (said members of) my family, and the stress i faced was only collateral damage for the happiness of (or maximum peace between) everyone else. 

thus, i deduced that my family were merely people who felt a moral obligation to love me; whom i was bound to love in return because of my own moral obligations. I wasn’t satisfied with this answer, because if my family were merely people i was biologically related to, why are morals at play? the only explanation was that the term “family” meant obligations, expectations and responsibility. an obligation for your family to love you, and you them, an expectation to do what those who love you ask of you, and a responsibility to act in your family’s interest. familial love came with such strings attached. if that were the case, wouldn’t we all be better off without family? no strings attached, free to do as we please. it was harsh, but that’s how the world works, isn’t it? the only problem was that even I didn’t fully believe in this black and white world i created in my mind. 

the high-society families in ouran matched my understanding of family perfectly. obligations, expectations, responsibility. the family that encapsulates this in its entirety is none other than the ootoris: kyoya, as the third born son — obligations — has to do more than his brothers to please his father, yet should not outshine his brothers — expectations. That would be overstepping his role. his father frowned upon his involvement in the host club — responsibility. He should have prioritised his family’s preferences over his own and acted in the interest of his family. he accepts the burden of being an ootori, just as I accepted my own loaded definition of family, until we met tamaki.

if you are willing. Please expand more upon the hikaru/haruhi/kaoru dynamic

This is going purely off of the manga; the anime never gets this far so if you’ve only seen the show then this answer probably wont make much sense. But the chapters between Kaoru’s realization of his own feelings for Haruhi, up to his decision to step back & let his brother pursue her instead, and the way he goes about communicating those thoughts to Hikaru in the most convoluted manner possible; I find those scenes to be some of the most captivating in the series. Hikaru and Kaoru have a toxic codependent relationship to begin with, and it all comes to a catastrophic head before it gets better. But it could only get better in part because Haruhi did not feel the same way about Kaoru as he felt about her. While Kaoru, Hikaru, and Tamaki all behave as though Haruhi’s affections are something malleable, something that can be won, they are absolutely not. Haruhi is in love with the person she loves, regardless of anything anyone else does, and that person is Tamaki.

So because of this, I always wonder what would have happened if the person Haruhi happened to so resolutely fall for was Kaoru. If that were the case, then she would have loved him regardless of his willingness to step aside. What then would become of the relationship between Kaoru & Hikaru? Like I mentioned before they are already in a toxic codependent relationship that comes to a head when Kaoru takes Haruhi on a (semi-fake) date. How much longer & greater would the friction be then, if Haruhi had reciprocated? How much worse would the fallout be? Kaoru has been the most important person in Hikaru’s life for his entire existence. Unlike his late-stage rivalry with Tamaki, Kaoru is someone he can’t walk away from when things go sour, even temporarily. It would be torturous for him to see Kaoru and Haruhi together. And it would be torturous for Kaoru to be in this position as well, with no possible answer that wouldn’t hurt both Hikaru and Haruhi in the process. I do believe that the twins would eventually make up and come together again, but it would be a much longer & more painful process than what happens canonically, both between them & between Hikaru & Tamaki, because of how tightly interwoven the twins are with each other.

fem hikaru

“I’ve always thought of school as a simulation ground to practice the manipulation of people. But if I find even one person I consider a true friend here…that is more than enough for me.”

— Kyoya Ootori

Well, I believe this happened to this boy. Just saying...

Can you guess who his crushes are?

Not uncommon phenomenon is people watching Ouran through TikTok clips or Youtube videos which in itself is one thing but there is this side issue which is these videos are often mirrored to avoid copyright takedowns. So it leads to this amusing occurence where people will be like I love Kaoru (picture of Hikaru) and vice versa

I read a post a week or so ago but Tumblr refreshed and ate it on me. But the jist of it was something along the lines of Kyoya not being motivated by romance. And I think that's so correct BUT I would push it a little further and say it's not just that Kyoya's arc is unromantic and he's motivated by factors other than romantic love. I think...most characters are. Ouran is fundamentally a bit of a bait and switch when it comes to romance. It's supposedly a rom-com; where no one's arcs have much to do with love.

The love triangle doesn't significantly come into play until about half way through the manga. I made a post before about the primary character motivations being friendship, family, and freedom. I stand by that! Because sure, people are in love in Ouran. Hikaru loves Haruhi, Haruhi loves Tamaki, Tamaki loves Haruhi, there's other stuff happening lmao. But all of these "loves" can also be read through the frame of friendship, family, and freedom.

Family and friendship is SO important to Tamaki that he's willing to operate entirely in the delusion that his love for Haruhi is familial. Hikaru's realisation that he's in love with Haruhi is framed entirely by the breakdown of his familial relationship with Kaoru, and then as it develops past that Hikaru spends half of his narrative time crying over possibly ruining his friendship with Tamaki. So much of Haruhi's arc is realising that she actually cares about these guys, she has been consumed by their found family, and they are genuinely her friends. Her crush on Tamaki is there, but her actions towards the end of the manga (AND ANIME) are because she loves the host club as a unit, and they can't be a family without Tamaki. Ouran the anime, classically ending with no kiss kiss fall in love but instead the heartfelt declaration that Haruhi LOVES the host club, they all do!

Back to Kyoya- of course Kyoya isn't motivated by romance. I can't think of a less romantic guy. But, like every other character, he's motivated by family, friendship, and freedom. And like every other character, these elements come into conflict. So I think that actually makes Kyoya a hysterical rom-com protagonist. Completely unwilling to be there, adamantly refusing to participate in the asinine qualities of a rom-com, refusal to even accept that this might be the genre he's stuck with. He deserves his corporate BBC drama! He deserves a CBS procedural about international trade! But he's got terminal side character syndrome so he's stuck in this rom-com with these other gay losers!

(cough) Anyway. I don't think Kyoya would ever do anything for love. But he doesn't have to because Ouran is a series where everyone does everything in the name of friendship, family, and freedom. And Kyoya would do absolutely nothing for love, but he would do it for his friends, he would do it for family, and he certainly would do it for freedom.

(And technically, if you're in love with your friend, it's tearing the closest thing to a real family you've ever had apart, and this game doesn't feel like winning your freedom any more; well maybe that's motivating enough without love ever really coming into it. Who said that.)

Monty’s FNAF history is all too familiar with Michael,,