Zuko, Kylo Ren And Sesshomaru Ruined My Life

dark haired

has a growly voice

slightly murderous tendencies 

with a tragic past

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply. 

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start “rewarding” the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

That one is actually something that strongly gets to me, for… Well, reasons. One of the said ‘reasons’ is that I think it’s pretty rare, when we see this being praised instead of the opposite in some sort of ”Oh that’s self-sacrifice how generous” fashion. Don’t get me wrong, I like my angst as much as anyone, but I don’t think it’s all that interesting of a lesson to take back into real life that you shouldn’t care about your own feelings and completely put someone or something else above yourself.

As a quick side note, this is also (supposed to) be an important lesson for Kikyou (”Free to love, free to hate”) but… I find it more interesting, and I think we actually see it better with Kagome.

To me, there are three steps for Kagome to learn that lesson and to actually determine what it means.

Step one would be accepting her more ‘positive’ emotions.

We see this when she finds Inuyasha hugging Kikyou and telling her that he will protect her, and honestly, just typing that and looking at the screenshots I took weeks ago my heart aches for Kagome and for how she must be feeling, but that’s not the point. I’ll just… Take deep breaths.

Alright, so Kagome sees this and then goes back home. She’s confused, she’s hurt, she doesn’t know what to do with her feelings. She has every reason to be going through that. Inuyasha and her are pretty much together at that point (the ”I want you by my side Kagome” expressed that), and Inuyasha acted extremely jealous over Kouga, even implying that she was seducing him or something along those lines.

(Seriously guys. What gets to Kagome is that she thinks Inuyasha is acting jealous over Kikyou.

She wasn’t even that mad about his comment about Kouga, but then she sees this. He acted jealous over her, and then she left, and then she came back and she sees what she believes to be Inuyasha acting jealous over Kikyou. Sure, on Inuyasha’s side it’s more disgust for Naraku and guilt towards Kikyou, but she doesn’t know/realize that. Not to mention, Inuyasha accused her of being responsible for Kouga’s actions, but now he’s not accusing Kikyou, and this is all happening to her in the same day/on the span of a few days.)

She first tries to reject her feelings. First because of how awful she feels about them. She has that very angry thought about Kikyou, but she immediately rejects it strongly and loathes herself for even thinking that.

Now, don’t get me wrong, wishing someone’s death (well, not death really, but still their disappearance of the planet) is not normal. At this point though, she’s in a very bad place, and I would go as far as saying that this is the result of her bottling up so many stuff, including emotions. Keep in mind, Kikyou tried to kill her. This is not just ‘wishing death upon her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’, even if it is painted that way.

She then has that acceptance of her own feelings, and realization hits her hard.

Now, this is where the decision must be made, and where the lesson comes into play. Kagome was thinking that she wished she’d never met him, if it was going to hurt that much.

This is probably meant to parallel, almost exactly, what Kikyou must have felt when she thought Inuyasha had betrayed her (hence the whole ”I know what Kikyou is feeling” speech later). Kagome, however, is in a very different situation. At this point, she has no reason to go back to the Feudal Era. Sure, Inuyasha and her friends are there, but the Jewel quest is not really hers anymore. Actually, Kikyou stated that she would be the one to kill Naraku and all that stuff, so Kagome technically doesn’t have to go back.

Kagome, however, decides to act on her feelings, which is something a lot of people give her shit for in the fandom. I’ve read a lot of people saying that it was wrong of her to go back even though ‘Inuyasha chose Kikyou’ (he didn’t, really, but let’s not get into that). She did think about that, actually.

Kagome decided to do what felt right to her (and maybe she didn’t want to leave the guy she was in love with his ex who wants him dead, what a bad person that makes her). She acts on what she wants, which is selfish…

But also not all that selfish.

Because that’s who Kagome is. She isn’t repeating Kikyou’s mistake, as Kikyou was precisely completely alienating herself, at least before her death, but that doesn’t make her a bad or selfish person.

Why? Because listening to your emotions and treating yourself with respect doesn’t make you a bad nor a selfish person.

Second step is her accepting her more ‘negative’ emotions, all the while still having her more positive ones and admitting that they can go hand in hand.

As mentioned before, Kagome completely buried her thought about wanting Kikyou gone. However, while that thought was definitely a ‘bad’ one, her emotions about the situation were not inherently wrong. On the contrary, in the arc with the baby, we see that her trying to bury them and to alienate herself helps the baby get a grip on her. The reason the baby can control her is not because of those emotions, it’s because she’s repressing them. As soon as she accepts them and is willing to admit that she has these emotions because of her love for Inuyasha, he can’t control her anymore.

The arc actually ends with her being at peace with that. She will probably be hurt and get angry again (which is really the same thing for Kagome but I’ll have to talk about that at another point), but she is willing to accept that as a counterpart to her feelings and relationship with Inuyasha.

(On a side note, I want to point out that this is something I personally dislike about how Kagome and the InuKagKik triangle was handled. Pretending that Kagome’s feelings for Kikyou come solely from her love for Inuyasha is just… Not true. But it’s not something I want to get into right now.)

But what about Mount Azusa, then? Is it a regression?

Well, I do have a lot of problems with mount Azusa, particularly for what Kagome has to go through, but that has more to do with the ‘Show vs Tell’ problem that I have with the storytelling in Inuyasha whenever Kikyou is involved. I think I can tell what mount Azusa is supposed to mean for Kagome’s character. I’ll probably make an analysis of that arc at some point, but since I’m super salty about it and I try not to get too angry when I do that stuff, it’s probably going to take me ages.

Mount Azusa is about balance and reason. At first, we saw Kagome accepting her positive emotions, namely her love for Inuyasha, but rejecting what she actually felt about Kikyou, jealousy. Then, she accepted the fact that there was a contradiction between what her mind told her and how she felt. Finally, with mount Azusa, she manages to reconcile both, through questioning her feelings: she realizes that they can evolve and that people change with time.

Basically, Kagome’s ‘mistake’ was to be too focused on the second lesson. She ‘blindly’ accepted her feelings, including the bad ones, and now she gets to understand that they can change. We even see Inuyasha chiming in, because Kagome feels bad for her past feelings now, and he tells her that they don’t matter because she was still doing her best, which is about how it’s okay to do mistakes.

I think that lesson is a good and important one as well by the way, I just have problems with its execution. But that’s a story for another time. For example right here, Kagome says “Kikyou hated me and tried to kill you”, and it’s just left out that Kikyou also tried to kill her. I said it was a story for another time.

So here we are. Kagome went from not being able to accept or understand her feelings for Inuyasha to not only do so, but also make a choice that respects those feelings instead of throwing them away. She later reaffirms those feelings while accepting less shiny ones, such as jealousy, and she doesn’t give herself a hard time over it, because she knows she can’t help it. Finally, she learns that those feelings can change, instead of giving herself a free pass for having those bad feelings because it’s ‘normal’ and she evolves, one more time. She also understand not to blame herself for said past feelings and to see past her own mistakes.