lalala

i was rereading the book so why not! i have a couple more doodles but i’ll post them all together later. not too happy with how Sophie turned out, but i also wanted her to look plain compared to michael and howl…

a redraw of these i did a year ago:

i think the first example that comes to mind with noragami is yukine. i feel like the entire series is very blatant with how abuse has affected him as a person. a lot of people especially a few years back hated yukine soooo much because he was 'whiny' and 'annoying' which has changed in recent times but god. i remember defending him w my life at the ripe age of like 16. not the point. anyway. it's important to recognize WHY yukine is 'like that'. it's how a lifetime of surviving abuse and eventually being murdered by his abuser shows up in a child. in all honesty i don't actually have a lot to say about yukine because i feel like that is a central point of the series and they handle it really well in my opinion and it's not my problem if other people don't get it read the series again (joke)

but i think our other most notable examples would be yato and nora / the stray Watever

i think with the way yato and nora are abused it's very easy to pass their traits off as nothing because we don't really see a lot of like. explicit physical and verbal abuse and so on. and that is probably the intention at first. at the beginning you're meant to dislike nora because she targets hiyori for no real reason and yato's just a silly funguy who aurafarms on occasion #awesome

but as we get more information we see that like. both of them are very isolated people who are sabotaged and beaten down into submission. granted that is more prevalent with yato but just walk with me. nora doesn't really have to be isolated the same way yato does because she is already solely dedicated to their father and she doesn't really make any attempts to leave. i think this is for various reasons whether it be her feeling that she 'owes' something to him for him being her father or because she's scared of him or something else. or all of the above who know. but nora is a lot like yukine in that she is a little kid who was left alone with an abuser and i think she reacts to abuse in similar ways (the lashing out namely) but i think she also is very good at putting on a 'mature' facade. just. like. acting 'older' but blowing up childishly when pushed. on account of her being like 10. whatever what am i talking about. moving on #my train of thought is leaving

i think that sabotage and beating down comes more into play with yato like we see with sakura and his repeated disappearances and how yukine and hiyori and hiyori's family are targeted. it feels like a more subtle form of abuse but it is still abusive and a form of isolation and destroying (or trying to destroy) the attempts he makes at building outside connections and his own forms of work and so on.

i think all of this is soo obvious in hindsight when you look at how yato just acts about everything. the lying and the secrecy and the fact that his friends are all 12 (said jokingly) it's just. like. he is a very socially and emotionally stunted (?) person and it all makes soooo much sense when they show how he's been isolated and abused and manipulated and been beaten down into thinking there's no real hope for changing or 'getting out' because no matter what he will have to go back 'home' and do what his father tells him to do. i think also this in part really heavily affects his relationship with hiyori but that is another ramble for another day and it is a bit of an anti yatori one. peave and love to the yatoris out there not me tho. tangent again

but urhhg both nora and yato are treated as objects rather than like. actual people. and i don't mean this to say father doesn't care about them. i think he does genuinely care about them in a way but that doesn't change his abusiveness towards them and how it's hurt them. i think there are also physical and verbal aspects to their abuse which are shown a few times if memory serves correct but i. it's not that they're unimportant it's just i think these other specific ways of abuse are more.............. reflected in how they act. ??? does this make sense. i don't think it does. whatever

both of them are also very passive (?) about their abuse which. i mean yeah after like 1000 years of it i'd give up too. regardless. you see it in how yato accepts doing work for their father and he warns others to just leave it alone (until it gets to the point where it CAN'T be left alone) anddddd so on

but i think also additionally why i appreciate how father's abusiveness in particular is written is because of its subtlety. it's not as overtly depicted where it's like 100000 pages of a kid being beaten (which speaking generally i don't think this is a 'wrong' depiction but i've read a few books where abuse was written this way and i really did not like it. i think in particular one book i read was a list of cages by robin roe and i felt the scenes of abuse were really excessive and while i found the reactions to them and the behaviors caused by it relatable it felt bad to read that kid getting beat over and over. i liked this about how noragami handled abuse in general though because it felt a bit more respectful? or just like. not making a spectacle of it. whatever sorry not the point)

but regardless, i think the primary way father's abuse shows up in his isolation of nora and yato. he doesn't NEED to be constantly beating them and verbally abusing them (which he does do these things!) if he can force them into being alone and only having him then they have no choice but to do what he wants them to do.

and i think isolation on its own is a very damaging form of abuse and it shows up with how both nora and yato interact with other characters. neither of them are GOOD at socializing and [unintentionally] antagonize other people and push them away. neither of them have the skills to form good healthy relationships with other people (and it's not to say that their relationships with others are all bad. i think yato really does well for himself finding yukine and hiyori and so on. but within the whole timeline of noragami those are all very new relationships that he struggles to actually make. and tbh half of them only get nurtured because hiyori acts somewhat as a mediator which is crazy!!! she's 16!!! moving on)