#I mean if you feel like I'm glossing over Kaori or aspects of Kenjaku's character than that's that I guess

[cursedvibes]

I appreciate your response, but I still feel like you’re glossing over the part about Kaori, which is honestly what I feel like most Kenjaku fans gloss over the most. I’ve even seen artists make sexual fanart of Kenjaku in Geto’s body with Gojo as if that’s not Geto’s body. Geto obviously can’t consent to sex. Same with Kaori.

I agree with what you’ve posted about Jin for sure. I don’t think he was unaware that Kaori was possessed like some people like to claim, which obviously also makes him a rapist since he used his dead wife’s body like that. But Kenjaku did too. I get that there are other things to talk about with Kenjaku’s character, but again…it’s hard to see this ignored and downplayed again and again.

I mean, I didn't go that much into Kaori's situation because your ask seemed more focused on points about Kenjaku's character and their fans in general, but that doesn't mean I'm unaware of it or glossing over her? Like the complaint about the backshots meme is, besides the bigoted comments about what sex position Kenjaku chooses, also about how people talk about Kaori's body. I've also talked plenty about her, Kenjaku, Jin and Wasuke in the past. And like half my AO3 account is dedicated to the horror the Itadori family had to go through, including Kaori & her body. I don't expect you to have read all that, but then you also can't make any judgements about me or how I engage with a character based on one post.

Obviously, everything Kenjaku does in someone else's body, including sex, is exploitative and non-consensual because that's not their body. That's a given. Honestly applies to every reincarnated sorcerer, including the likes of Choso and Kashimo. We just found out that their vessels' souls always remain inside, suppressed, they aren't even dead and moved on like in Kenjaku's case (like Geto's body had some instinctual responses, but his soul wasn't submerged inside like in other cases, we see him in the afterlife).

I see Kaori and the way Kenjaku used her brought up a lot more actually, especially since we found out that she had a cursed technique (the first substantial thing we know about her as a person), than for example the Death Painting mother. Despite us knowing more about her than Kaori. People like to talk about what a hard time Choso, Eso and Kechizu had (which of course is also true), but mostly ignore their mother or even the remaining 6 Death Paintings who got eaten to power-up Kenjaku's latest project. Which I partially also blame canon for because Choso had ample time to bring her up in front of Kenjaku, confront them about one of the most horrible experiments they did, focus on the torture she went through, but he didn't. Comparatively, people are a lot more interested to dig into Kaori because of her connection to Yuuji and Kenjaku. So yes, both are Kenjaku's victims like many more, there's a good reason there are headless pregnant bodies in their domain, and both don't get talked about nearly enough unfortunately, but that also has to do with us simply not knowing a lot about them. People have no problem writing novels of angst about possessed Geto, which sure is tragic as well, but that's because we know who he is and we saw him being possessed. There is simply more to dig into. All we know of Kaori's fate or her as a person is contained to two pages at this point. Believe me, I want that to be different, the Itadori family flashback is one of the main reasons I still follow jjk, but I can't speed up Gege's writing process.

It actually bothers me a bit when people call her Yuuji's mother or make any prescriptions about how she feels about Yuuji because we simply don't know her. We don't even know if she ever wanted a child, we just know that Jin wanted one and they couldn't have one for whatever reason while she was alive. Especially with JinKen, I always see Kaori brought into it though, on the basis alone that it's a common interpretation that Jin didn't know who he's talking to or sleeping with. You could say there's slightly more of a focus on Jin being used by Kenjaku than Kaori I guess, but she's rarely completely forgotten. Kenjaku and Jin having sex is in its essence fucked up, just like Yuuji's birth, but that's what draws people in in many cases exactly because it's so disturbing but hidden in a veil of domesticity. Even with art or fics that are "cute" there's often an aspect about how it's a farce, relies on deception and manipulation and that simply by Kaori being possessed any scene between Kenjaku and the Itadori's will be tainted. I like when it gets further explored and focused on how both parties disregard Kaori and what she would've wanted or twist her wishes while she was alive in some way (Wasuke always makes for a good voice of reason in those situations and to give an outside perspective on what is actually happening), but I also don't think that has to be the centre every single time.

While I try to ignore stsg and goken, basically goken's entire dynamic is based on Gojo and Geto's feelings for each other, which is exactly why it doesn't interest me (besides not shipping Gojo in general). So Geto being exploited/raped is like the big topic there. Or Gojo's conflicting feelings about which person he's with. At the very least, the disregard for Geto is there in some way with people leaning into this fucked up aspect. It's dark, but that's what it's supposed to be. Sure, there's smut of them too like with basically every vaguely popular ship. Some of it incorporates what I mentioned, some of it doesn't because people will draw any hot guys making out no matter what kind of or if they have a relationship. Characters will get dumped down, bend out of shape, misunderstood, ignored all together in favour of something else. Fandom is like that and I don't think that's gonna change any time soon and I honestly don't want to police what people draw or what people ship. Again, if you can't stand something, block button is your friend.