#Towada Yae | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

connan-l · 2 years

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Long Rant incoming, but I finished playing Yoigoshi from the Higurashi console arc and god, it really reminded me of how much I hate how it handles Yae Towada's character.

I like Yoigoshi in general, I even think it's one of the best Higu side-arcs, but man the entire abuse narrative has such an insensitive and gross undertone and framing.

There’s always been criticisms about how Ryukishi handles abuse, especially in Umineko, and generally I'm more lenient than most on the topic because I think that Ryu still manages to portray it in a very nuanced complex way, but damn Yoigoshi is the only instance where I’m really like "hey fuck this." The story is just so insistent to tell you it was Bad that Yae killed her abuser that it ends up feeling like insidious victim-blaming.

I have no problem with humanizing abusers or portraying abusive relationships as complicated. I think it's even important, because that’s often how it is in real life. But there's a difference between giving depth to an abuser, and putting the abuser's feelings over those of the victim and then downplaying and shifting the blame of the abuse, and Yoigoshi 100% fall in the latter. I think what pisses me off the most is especially... the implication that Somehow her boyfriend was about to get better; that if she'd just waited long enough instead of taking matters into her hands then he would have stopped abusing her and their relationship would have turned out for the best. Even though there is zero evidence that he would have stopped hitting her, and that we know how these stories turn out in real life, with the girlfriend dead. But here we're supposed to believe that she's in the wrong for killing him, and so the story put the blame on her for not… loving and trusting the guy who put her in the hospital enough somehow??

And like, okay, obviously it's awful she ended up having to kill him, and usually I always respect and appreciate Ryu's insistence that violence only breeds further violence and is never a good answer to problems, but here the general vibe feel so much like a "well okay it sucks he was abusing her, but murder is still worse" and highlighting the fact she "made a 'mistake' instead of properly trusting him," which comes across as just so unsympathetic towards her situation and how she was still the primary victim in all this. Honestly fuck the boyfriend, he had it coming

The other thing that bothers is the other characters' reactions too. Like okay Journalist Dude is an asshole so him victim-blaming makes sense, but none of the others actually defend her? Everyone agrees she’s 100% in the wrong?? The most sympathetic is probably Otobe, but even then he’s pretty mild. I genuinely feel it's insulting that Mion, who has a personal experience with abuse victims via Satoko, doesn't try to defend Yae at all, even saying Journalist Dude has a point, like what.

The console arc actually makes it worse tbh because we're stuck in Journalist Dude’s head who is just The Worst + Miyuki having this horrible speech at Towada and victim-blaming her even more, wtf?? (which, okay, she's a cop to be fair so that does feel in line with what cops do orz, but that still feel so wrong because Miyuki within the story is portrayed as a pragmatic, intelligent person, like she’s a voice of reason, and no one call her out on her bullshit speech either, so that just frames it as if she’s Objectively Right about this when. She’s just not!!)

And then Yae’s sidelined after the reveal, play no role in the final confrontation when even Journalist Dude get to play hero and just show back up at the end so that we know she'll "pay for her crimes" and go to prison.... urgh, I hate everything about it. The only way I’m staying sane with this ending is by headcanoning Shion afterwards being all "nah that’s bullshit" and busting Yae out of prison thanks to her Sonozaki connections so that she can live free without having to throw away years of her life because of her abuser.

To continue on this, suddenly it hit me how Yoigoshi actually feels pretty similar to Tatarigoroshi regarding their narratives about abuse; however the difference is that to me Tatari manages to works in what it’s trying to say, or at least that it manages to say it in a more sensitive and compassionate manner, whereas Yoigoshi fails badly at it.

The two arcs have that same premise of having a victim stuck in an apparently inescapable abusive relationship, and the solution the characters comes up with is to remedy to it via violence in killing the abusers. Doing so result in the situation becoming worse and making them lose what they wanted the most. The message put forth that in the end violence only ever creates more violence and problems, and that no matter how horrible the situation is there are always (peaceful) alternatives to be found.

Ryukishi always had a general emphasis in all of his stories that violence only breed more violence and for a push to find other alternatives solutions instead (with a few exceptions and muddy framing here and there), and this is something I usually like. Tatarigoshi/Minagaroshi are specific narratives that function really well when it comes to this, and manages to do so while being (mostly) respectful to the abusive circumstances and the victim it portrays. The reason why I believe that Tatari/Mina is able to work compared to Yoigoshi comes down to two central differences:

First, there’s the fact that in Tatari the one killing the abuser is not the victim of the abuse (Satoko), but an outsider (Keiichi). Tatari’s second part really highlight the fact Keiichi becomes increasingly self-righteous in thinking he’s the only one who truly cares about Satoko and that he can solves the problem by himself; he doesn’t consult his friends or any adults properly (not about the murder), and more importantly he certainly doesn’t consult the primary concerned, Satoko --- something the narrative reproach him, and in the end 'punish' him for in how he completely wreck his relationship with Satoko and ultimately even fail to protect her at all, when that was the goal in the first place.

In Yoigoshi, the killer, Yae, IS the abuse victim. Unlike Tatarigoroshi, she’s the one with the agency deciding to carry out the murder because she feels she has no other ways of escaping. Neither of these are ‘better’ than the other per se, but that’s an important distinction, because Tatari puts into perspective the thing Keiichi’s murder really does in the end is denying Satoko’s input and agency as the victim and dismissing her own feelings on the circumstances; something a lot of people tends to do in these situations, thinking they already have the whole thing figured out without actually listening properly to what the primary concerned feels and what they want to do.

The second point is the entirety of Minagoroshi. Tatari has the benefit of proposing an actual alternative on the murder, and by doing so emphasis it has to be done with 1. the help of a community; even with the system failing Satoko badly, the story says there’s still hope in relying and working with people he trusts. 2. It finally let Satoko have agency and highlight her feelings as the victim; SATOKO is the one who has to makes the final decision to leave her abuser, to tell the social services that she’s abused. No one can makes that for her, and this is what saves her. In the end, the others can offers her help, but SHE’S the one who has to save herself.

But Yae, on the other hand? Yoigoshi doesn’t have a ‘Minagoroshi’; the only alternative Yae is offered is that she should’ve... just trust that her abuser was going to be ‘better’ now, because he said so and found a job he hasn’t even started yet. That she should just believe he was going to stop hitting her; despite the fact even in the brief scenes we're shown with them together before his death he's still seen as having to actively force himself to not be violent with her. No community or support is offered to her; she vaguely mentions having friends from college but she never seems to be in contact with them, we're told nothing about her family, or about having any kind of support network who could help her, really; we’re told she thought about leaving, but the story never really explore that more that it. Yae’s only alternative to murder is just... to blindly hope that her boyfriend was truly going to 'change.' (I suppose you *can* make an argument the story say it was just the murder that was bad and that she could’ve left him afterwards, but it’s never hinted at anywhere, be it in them manga or the VN). And there's nothing offered of the sort a the end of the story once she committed the murder either, except for her going to prison.

Tatarigoroshi/Minagaroshi and Satoko’s original arc are very important to me and ones of my favorite aspects of Higurashi.

I’ve seen criticisms of it because of how passive Satoko seems to be in them, only being there to be ‘saved’ --- hell, even Ryukishi himself said last year GouSotsu had kind of been written because he wanted to give her more spotlight because she felt too much like a ‘damsel in distress.’ There are some ideas and premises about GouSotsu I do enjoy and respect, and Satoko never having a proper spotlight in the original Higurashi is a fair criticism, but calling her a ‘damsel in distress’ actually annoys me, because as I’ve said here, she was anything but; she’s an abuse victim whose story is entirely about how her agency should be prioritized and how in the end she’s the one who saved herself, and I’ll always cherish how much Higurashi consistently make a point in saying and showing that she is genuinely a very strong and brave person.

And Tatarigoroshi/Minagoroshi is able to do all this all while acknowledging that yes, generally, murder and violence are wrong, but even in Tatarigoroshi the narrative never entirely blame Keiichi for coming to this solution --- and that's pretty clear in how it treats Satoshi too, whose situation was pretty much the same as Yae’s, and who is offered a lot more compassion and understanding on the matter, here too emphasizing that even if he did murder his aunt it was only because he was a child everyone around him failed and that he felt he had no other options.

Yae Towada’s story /should/ have been more like this, because in the end what she did was very similar to what Satoko did. She saved herself, the only difference being that there was no community to help her out like Satoko had, and so she had no other choice but to resort to violence.

The story does makes a point in saying she’s determined and, in some way, a strong person, but it seems to be mostly there as a weak attempt to parallel Rena, and the attention focus more on the fact that she made a ‘mistake’ that she has to pay for at the end. What Yae was led to do is definitely a sad thing, but one that was done out of desperation; and as it is, the framing only makes it seems like the narrative’s punishing her for this, when just like Satoshi it certainly should not be something she should be blamed for.

#Higurashi no Naku Koro ni #Higurashi #Yae Towada #Yoigoshi #Satoko Houjou #Yoigoshi-hen #Houjou Satoko #Towada Yae #Abuse #Tatarigoroshi #Domestic Abuse #Connan's Ramblings #Long Post #Higurashi When They Cry #Minagoroshi #Connan's Posts #Putting it out there too cause why not

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