anyways welcome to my “kasuka gets dead wife treatment from fandom” ramble
after the extensive investigation i did in multiple fanfiction websites, in which i proposed myself to read each fic in which kasuka was tagged in i discovered that a lot of the times when i name searched him his mentions fulfilled the following purposes: represent an extension of shizuo’s guilt and shame, and represent an extension of shizuo’s motivations
a lot of the times kasuka wasn’t even a character that participated in the developing story, all of his mentions were, mostly from shizuo’s perspective, a fleeting memory of the existence of his younger brother in the middle of a moment of high tension
the “dead wife” trope in fiction is mostly found in action films, but it’s present in other genres, this is a narrative device to represent the male character’s motivations or guilt. this representation consist of a female character who is flawless, and tragically gone before the main events of the story occur.
although it is true that in these stories kasuka was not dead, he was non-present and non-acting, which might have been the same. in some other ones though, in which he makes a brief appearance, it all again revolves around shizuo. kasuka comes in, says something encouraging, then disappears again.
i think that this can be explained through canonical views shizuo has on kasuka, he does think of him as flawless, perfect, to the point in which having his name mentioned alongside his own comes off as a great offense to him, because he doesn’t seem himself worthy of being compared to kasuka. however, shizuo does not acknowledge at any time the negative effect he has had on him. in one point he kinda does is when kasuka mentions in an interview that the reason he is the way he is is due to shizuo, but hearing that his brother respects him, despite it all, makes him smile warmly. he wants kasuka’s approval, he is afraid of letting him down, but he has a hard time owning up to what his behavior has done to him.
kasuka, as a character, is only seen through the perspective of shizuo and ruri. two characters who present similar behavior due to different circumstances. both characters, however, do have a different version of him, therefore why shizuo calls him kasuka, and ruri refers to him solely as yuuhei. kasuka’s perspective is inaccessible, because he has no sense of himself. he is a vessel made to be interpreted by others, but there is no way to access his own personhood, because even he is unaware of who he is. he has no story to be told, no arc to be explored, nothing to develop. this could be tied up to the fact that that’s how he is: static. he is meant to be the companion of characters who are “more complicated” such as shizuo or ruri. this is utterly tragic to me, but again, that’s the path he chose. and that’s why he acts, to perform a character who does have all those things he lacks, to cope
that is why writing kasuka is difficult, and he ends up in these tropes. i do not complain that this is the treatment he gets, i just find it curious. and if it bothers me i take it upon myself to change it. i’ve tried to write kasuka from his own perspective and i get it, at times it becomes hard, but i wanna give him a voice, i wanna give him thoughts, and conflict. he deserves them
