Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2018
- Messages
- 64
And here we are! Poor Hiiragi, just happened to make a benign statement and accidentally tripped a landmine of trauma and regret. I'm sure things will get better now and won't possibly spiral out from here!
I am so curious to see the perspective of Tomikawa's brothers. "Don't blame us" can be taken so many ways. Do they agree that Tomikawa shouldn't have disappointed her mother? Or are they, too, victims of their mother's abuse, unable to step in and stand up for their younger sister without equally being abandoned? Will they one day be able to talk about their former abuse with their sibling as adults?
Those two actually started as random doodles on the author's twitter, before she eventually spun them off into their own thing. They're roughly contemporary to the chapter where Hiiragi got asked out to a dine-in cafe.
Tomikawa got hit by the one-two punch of being a girl and being the younger third sibling in what appears to be a very strict, old-fashioned family. Her older siblings being two boys means she is already seen as lesser than them, if not a financial burden on the family unit. That she can't even perform as well as they can seals her fate, especially since once she marries she'll lose the family name 富川 and will be carrying on another family's name and lineage. In her mother's eyes, Tomikawa running away from home and dying in a gutter is just one less financial burden on the family. So she treats her as literally nothing - a non-entity that happens to occupy space in her home and eat her food.
And no matter how much Tomikawa acts out, it will never move the needle of her mother's affections even the tiniest bit.
As for Hiiragi's mother, hers is a DEPRESSINGLY common story. Woman has child out of wedlock, father abandons her, and unable to handle the pressures and responsibility of being a single parent to a child she never loved or cared about, defaults to a family annihilation option. With a side implication that she mayyyyyy have fallen in line with a cult (but this is just speculation based on some one-off lines).
I am REALLY hoping this isn't on some level inspired by the author's own life experiences, as some of this feels so deeply personal.
To use an addiction metaphor, Tomikawa is addicted to "love." She is dependent on anyone who will give her love and affection. Igarashi knows that, which is why she's such a manipulative shit with Tomikawa's feelings. Hiiragi can be a friend, and praise her. But in this moment, she's essentially narcaning Tomikawa's high and saying "you need to quit, this isn't healthy." No matter how you feel about someone, when they threaten that high all you can see is an obstacle.
I am so curious to see the perspective of Tomikawa's brothers. "Don't blame us" can be taken so many ways. Do they agree that Tomikawa shouldn't have disappointed her mother? Or are they, too, victims of their mother's abuse, unable to step in and stand up for their younger sister without equally being abandoned? Will they one day be able to talk about their former abuse with their sibling as adults?
Those two actually started as random doodles on the author's twitter, before she eventually spun them off into their own thing. They're roughly contemporary to the chapter where Hiiragi got asked out to a dine-in cafe.
The sad part is, this is very much rooted in real-life abuse tactics that are distressingly common in Japan, buoyed up by the old confucian gender roles.
Tomikawa got hit by the one-two punch of being a girl and being the younger third sibling in what appears to be a very strict, old-fashioned family. Her older siblings being two boys means she is already seen as lesser than them, if not a financial burden on the family unit. That she can't even perform as well as they can seals her fate, especially since once she marries she'll lose the family name 富川 and will be carrying on another family's name and lineage. In her mother's eyes, Tomikawa running away from home and dying in a gutter is just one less financial burden on the family. So she treats her as literally nothing - a non-entity that happens to occupy space in her home and eat her food.
And no matter how much Tomikawa acts out, it will never move the needle of her mother's affections even the tiniest bit.
As for Hiiragi's mother, hers is a DEPRESSINGLY common story. Woman has child out of wedlock, father abandons her, and unable to handle the pressures and responsibility of being a single parent to a child she never loved or cared about, defaults to a family annihilation option. With a side implication that she mayyyyyy have fallen in line with a cult (but this is just speculation based on some one-off lines).
I am REALLY hoping this isn't on some level inspired by the author's own life experiences, as some of this feels so deeply personal.
To use an addiction metaphor, Tomikawa is addicted to "love." She is dependent on anyone who will give her love and affection. Igarashi knows that, which is why she's such a manipulative shit with Tomikawa's feelings. Hiiragi can be a friend, and praise her. But in this moment, she's essentially narcaning Tomikawa's high and saying "you need to quit, this isn't healthy." No matter how you feel about someone, when they threaten that high all you can see is an obstacle.
