#again i don't mean to sound salty or judgy or mean

[olderthannetfic]

commiserating-about-hard-to-tag anon again: real talk but I don't expect you to bare your soul or anything. how /do/ you talk to people whose spaces you share who really like The Handmaid's Tale style of feminist speculative fiction, about progressive content in fiction, when you are absolutely just squicked by that kind of thing? I don't think it's bad, I just - am virulently squicked by a lot of gender essentialism in some strands of feminism. I don't want to step out of my lane, though

No clue.

What are you trying to say to those women in those spaces?

“Please stop telling me the whole plot of this book. It’s freaking me out!”?

“I want more progressive fiction that looks at gender in a less binary fashion”?

“I think it says something negative about us as a group that we prioritize art about men as monsters and women as victims over art that demonstrates varied gender roles, and I want us to take a look at ourselves”?

Those have the potential to be very different conversations.

---

I usually say I’m a “fluffy bunny” and don’t like depressing things, which is true, though it makes it sound like I prefer domestic fluff, which I don’t. That will usually make annoying people who are trying to force me to watch/read things back off.

If it’s someone I actually trust who wants to have a real conversation about this kind of thing, I’ll talk about how uncomfortable a certain kind of literature makes me because I feel like I’m expected to relate to the women’s horrific experiences in it. Like anybody else alive, I am affected by the patriarchy, but not like that. I find that kind of thing profoundly alienating in addition to depressing.

That feeling like you were supposed to relate and now feel twice as alienated is one a lot of people find relatable even if they don’t share it about this particular media.

A lot of women have felt profoundly alienated by media that is For Women (with the implication that it’s for all women) because that media is about how we’re all victims, struggling to overcome victimhood... or we all hate our bodies but are working on that... or we’re all desperately straight and have to deal with equally desperately straight men... or we’re all jealous of other women and have trouble making female friends... Or whatever. I’m sure there’s some category of All Women Relate To This media that your potential conversation partners hate for this kind of reason.

Or maybe none of that is what bugs you and it’s more about defending a space for yourself to relax with escapist art--even progressive escapist art--and not be pressured to engage with horror at all times.

TBH, this is not a conversation that’s worth having until you have a level of trust and reciprocity with someone. A lot of people will just be jackasses at you and act like there’s one right way to be a feminist. Those people just aren’t worth engaging with unless you’re... like... posting tumblr rants that are for the benefit of the lurkers, not the person you’re fighting with.

(I mean, clearly, I’m not averse to baring my soul on tumblr. It’s not like the facts of what I think are secret. But there are ways I’m willing to have these conversations in private with a friend that just don’t apply to a more public, less safe environment. If a friend really disagrees with me, I’m more likely to hash it out instead of going “You’re wrong” and disengaging. Or if a friend wants to try to change my personal taste, I might consider recs I wouldn’t normally. Or I might admit to more salty, judgy feelings about other people’s taste, which I do some on my tumblr, but which I think can be too negative for a public sphere if they’re too over-the-top/frequent/repetitive/lengthy.)

One thing that came up in anti-fujoshi wank recently was someone complaining that BL, slash, m/m romance novels, etc. aren’t more like fucking Brokeback Mountain. I remember cracking up. I had to tell that person what the reaction around the film’s release actually was. It was widely derided as “miseryporn for straights”. At the same time, Brokeback was an important step in regular movie theaters showing a major gay film, and the unfair tragedy in it is the kind of thing that makes the majority see an oppressed minority as victims rather than threats.

One of the things pointed out about the film was that a lot of queer media looked exactly like that... twenty or thirty years before the film’s release. It was behind the times from the perspective of a lot of people in the community, but it was something people had found valuable at one time.

If you want to have a serious conversation about feminist art and you’re trying to make a case for happier literature or literature that explores subtle problems women face, like still not having partners who behave as partners or being saddled with subtle guilt tripping about being selfless, I would talk about it in similar terms: different art is needed for different people in different phases of a struggle for equality. Sometimes, shared pain is uplifting. Sometimes, demonstrating an alternative way for the world to work is more uplifting.

These conversations are going to look pretty different depending on whether you’re just trying to fend off aggressive reccers/defend your right to personal taste or whether you’re trying to critique gender essentialism in feminist spaces with an eye to making other people change their minds.

#fandom meta #Anonymous

[dyaz-stories]

Hi, recently read inuyasha and I was wondering, why does kikyo say inuyasha's life is hers despite knowing what naraku did? He was a victim too, and it was their MUTUAL distrust that led to that. I don't even remember seeing inuyasha hurt her, and she died due to her injuries and he didn't cuz he's half-human. I mean, the guy was already sad, she just made it worse. She never really says anything like 'my distrust caused this' either. She seems like a shitty person, yet gets glorified constantly

Hey anon! Apologies for being late to get to this, I’ve been pretty busy with the Inuvember going on and, well, real life, but here I am now! Putting my answer under the cut and tagging this as anti-Kikyo because I don’t want people to read it unless they want to, but as always, I’m not trying to be an anti or bash her :)

So, I completely get where you’re coming from with that. I addressed issues around Kikyo’s characterization in my The Biggest Problem with Kikyou piece, and the thing is, this is 100% a problem with characterization in my opinion. To quote it:

[Something that is often overlooked during their first interaction is] that Kikyou hears Kagome telling her that Inuyasha isn’t guilty, that she chooses to ignore her, and that it is only after having failed that she goes to see Kaede, to ask her what Kagome was talking about, meaning that she had paid attention to what Kagome was saying and couldn’t be bothered to look into it at the moment.

This point and the one you bring up show pretty similar characterization, if you ask me. One of the things about Kikyo is that... sometimes she doesn’t give a fuck. That’s why I have a problem with people who seem to assume that ““Kikyo hate”“ is unwarranted and basically just raging Inukag fangirls who can’t accept her existence. Yeah, I dislike Kikyo. I think she’s the most poorly written character in the manga, and I think she’s a shitty person.

I’m not saying I don’t understand where Kikyo’s coming from. She’s mad at Inuyasha during that passage, and being mad at Inuyasha is the easy way out for her. They’ll just go to hell together because she thinks he’s reponsible for her death and that’ll be it. She won’t have to work to get revenge, it’ll all just be done.

That’s understandable, I’m not saying it isn’t. However. Just because something is understandable doesn’t mean it’s right. I’m guessing different people will view it differently, but if you ask me? Well if you ask me it’s bad. She’s condemning an innocent person just because she can’t be bothered to look for the real culprit. That’s shitty. But maybe for others that’s enough of a reason (I hope I don’t sound judgy, I really don’t mean to be, different things get different perceptions and that’s perfectly fine).

To get back specifically to your question, I discussed what it means for Inuyasha in The Wrong Tragedy, and again, this is a characterization problem for Kikyo. Yes Kikyo said that:

She’s using Naraku’s narrative, as he told Inuyasha that Kikyo ‘died for him’ which, as a reminder, isn’t exactly confirmed in canon. So she’s acting like Inuyasha owes her something, because she died “after him”. Only, she didn’t kill Inuyasha. She sealed him, and Kaede even says that the seal was supposed to last for eternity. If she wasn’t deadly wounded, which, it is my understanding that she was,

she could have healed from her injuries (without using the Jewel), and then unsealed him. I’m not saying it would have been easy but they could have worked things out. If she had the choice to do that and didn’t, that meant she thought they were irreconciliable and that she had zero trust in him.

Her hugging Inuyasha right before that moment is actually one of the most disgusting thing she does in my opinion. Like I’ve seen it being shared as an Inukik moment and it’s something that actively infuriates me. Inuyasha just almost died and was badly injured because she gave the Jewel to Naraku, and she has the nerve to say she didn’t want him to die? (also she would have let him die just a couple chapters earlier but you know, whatever at this point)

I’ve said before that I feel there is a shift in the manga when the story starts ‘bending’ around Kikyo to accomodate the narrative that she has done nothing wrong. Do understand, I’m not saying she did nothing wrong. The problem is how it’s handled. The manga does not recognize nor address the shit she did. She doesn’t even have a redemption arc. She’s just magically redeemed at some point. I’m not sure if the shift occurs there or if it’s during the whole ‘Inuyasha picked Kikyo’ debacle, so I can’t tell if this is characterizing her as horribly manipulative, though really, she already was, or if this is supposed to be taken seriously.

So I can’t tell you if she is supposed to come off as horrible, or if we’re supposed to think that it’s part of her tragedy to want Inuyasha, an innocent person, to die with her :) (do I sound salty? I might be a little salty)

The issue you bring up about her not taking responsibility for the whole disaster is super interesting! I’ve discussed her not taking responsibility for plenty of other stuff, but I don’t think I had particularly considered that one, when it’s actually an extremely important one?

In terms of characterization, I mentioned recently that I read her as being incredibly self-righteous, and that comes from her never taking responsibility for anything. I don’t think she believes she’s in the wrong. She probably always has an explanation that’s for ‘the greater good’, like what she fed Inuyasha after trying to kill Kagome.

And you know what the saddest part is? The saddest part is that Inuyasha ends up believing her. He’s so terrified that he’ll lose her again (post-death Inukik relationship is not about mourning, it’s literally about him doing shit because he’s scared she’ll die again until she finally dies, at which point only he starts to mourn) that he’s willing to die with her to appease her and to let go of his relationship with Kagome.

And Kikyo is fine with all of that. In comparison, you have Kagome, who says “I love you and I want to be by your side no matter what”.

I’m not saying Kikyo isn’t complex, though I do think her characterization stops making sense at some point. I’m saying that that complexity doesn’t make up for what she did. So, yeah, I think she’s a bad person. Manipulative? As I said, I’m not sure if she’s supposed to be or if we’re supposed to think she’s sincere. I tend to see it as the latter and therefore focus more on her self-righteousness, but it would be fair to see it as her just being incredibly manipulative.

So, yeah. Either Kikyo said that because she wanted to lead Inuyasha to “pick her”, or because she actively believes it. In either case... It doesn’t paint a nice picture of her if you ask me.

Thank you for the question! I hope you don’t mind the delay and that this makes sense, it’s really late and I hope my brain is still functioning :)

#inuyasha #anti kikyo #anti kikyou #inuyasha analysis #counting this as my inuvember entry for day 7 #which is about kikyo #my analysis #asks