NTRiza

canto 9 speaks very intensely of systemic misogyny and exploitation/commodity of women and is generally saturated with feminist themes but i have to admit i do get kind of irritated when people refer to rien as a misogynist and nothing more. not only is it dense, surface level, and barely sufficient or even meaningful enough of a label (considering who its coming from) to account for all that he's done it's nothing but redundant of his interactions with all 3 generations of the shiomi yoru bloodline. he treats all 3 of them very peculiarly and all they can derive from it is that he holds prejudice for women, which I'm not denying at all nor do i hold distaste for readings of rien having internalised prejudice, bigotry, and general discrimination against marginalised individuals because it is very much shown directly in the chapter that he does have some of that of sorts, but i feel it is necessary to whine about this because it spreads the idea that acts this way simply because it was his moral failing to do anything/own volition to harm them * because * they were women (and all the presumption that comes with it you get the gist) despite the four dimensional tensions between him and those 3 generations of women individually. riens actions towards shiomi, ryoshu, and araya all account for disastrously different things it's actually unthinkable for me to attribute it all to one single factor even if it's just something as abstract as underestimating/infantilising women because of misogyny. it's also not wrong to think that supports part of his actions, it just should be known that his commodification of shiomi, abuse + manipulation (as well as other specific transgressions) against ryoshu, and his contempt and exploitation of araya as a fodder or more accurately, deliberately planned out 'fetter' to complete the House of Spiders are all influenced by individuals within that very bloodline (i wish people had the balls to outright discuss why rien treats araya like that) and the internal battle between epistemology (the right to know) and duty (hermes) it's just all so broad and abstract in other words goes way beyond just the labelling of misogyny which is a perfectly fine interpretation it just starts to undermine both the subject of the reading and their relationships with other characters and thus those other characters as well. and considering we're in project moons fandom interpretations like these are unironically crucial to how the entire community perceives this character depending on what becomes popular (which often is just the most acceptable and digestible interpretation of a character)

And somehow despite calling Rien a misogynist people still use kid gloves when discussing that aspect. Take what you said about Araya for example. Rien manipulated and groomed her into assuming Shiomi’s role just so she could be the sacrificial trigger for Ryoshu’s mental breakdown into Muga form. However, some people genuinely think the traumatized elementary school girl consented to assuming Shiomi’s role. It feels less like people want to genuinely examine misogyny in canto 9, and just shallowly mention it so they can briefly acknowledge it and then ignore it out of discomfort.