#which is abi demons escaping the temple

[balteus]

yea actually i think the author of raybearer is bent on messing with me specifically

[neutronstarchild]

Inuyasha Bad Girlfriend Guide

This is a companion piece to the bad boyfriend guide. As a Kikyō stan, I see so many fics where she is cast as the bad guy—sort of rightly—but... I’m hoping that a handy-dandy worksheet of a few more choices and why they make great bad girlfriends will free my girl from the perpetual bad guy treatment (and yup, I understand that she… in her necromanced wraith form in canon kinda deserves it.) Even so <cough>, here are some ladies for your consideration! They can do an excellent job keeping (or tearing) our OTP apart, so let’s let ‘em! (be aware here that Kagome is assumed to be the heroine in these scenarios!)

Disclaimer (I can’t believe that this needs to be said...) but this list assumes that the relationships are age-appropriate.

Yura: How can we not love to hate this vicious queen? She wears pieces of folded cloth as her outfit? Hell yes! Because if you’re not going tits-out in your schemes to further your personal hair fetish, are you really living? She’s mean, she’s over-the-top sexual, she collects heads like they’re trophies, and she has little personality outside of being the ho-out-to-steal-your-man. If your hero needs some terrible vapid awful-teen-movie-stereotype girlfriend, Yura is here for you. If you need someone who has no boundaries and makes your man uncomfortable? Yura is here for you.

Princess Abi: Gotta love someone with mommy issues that believes in her own superiority. She hates humans and doesn’t have time for lesser demons. Yes, fine, she’ll use them to get ahead (or help her mom get ahead), but she doesn’t mince words about those she feels are inferior to her (which is basically… everyone.) Need a snob? She will serve all your snobby needs!

Kanna: She’s an incredible practitioner of the dead-eye stare. Need someone who is so full of themselves that they don’t even deign to talk to the heroine? Well, Kanna is here for you. She can even have the nickname soul stealer because she seems to leech the very soul out of the poor man (or woman) she’s with. Add to that the looking like a doll and you have someone who is absolutely ethereally beautiful (almost to a creepy degree) and arctically cold.

Nazuna: Remember her? The human who hated demons even after one saved her life? The one who put all her trust into a dude who ended up being a spider? (We remember!) She eventually came around when poor Inuyasha turned into a human… She’s got that nice anti-demon bigotry to play with, and perhaps even a bit of the cultish attitude of “come to my temple and we can change you!” feels if needed!

Eri, Ayumi, Yuka: You date one of them, and whoops, you’re suddenly dating all three of them, because they can’t go anywhere without their best girlfriends. The vapid three are really great for name-swapping shticks (is it Eri or Yuka? nope it's Ayumi!), and can serve as a set of three-in-one mean girls to your heart’s delight! Lean into the power of three!

Ayame: Need a fiery redhead in your life? Yes? No? She seems like she would be a wonderful girlfriend except for the whole… she’s been stuck thinking about this one boy who she talked to this one time when she was younger and now compares absolutely everyone else to him. Seriously. Be ready to never stack up against the fairy tale. It’s fun while it lasts (Ayame is probably a pretty wonderful cook!), but you’re never going to be ✨Kōga✨ (the fantasy version, not to be mistaken with flesh-and-blood Kōga) so… ultimately it’ll fall apart.

Kagura: Oh what wonderful things that can be said about this queen of mean. Namely that she is powerful, she is beautiful, and she is desperately trying to escape a terrible home life. If you look like someone who will get her out of that awful situation? Congratulations! You have yourself a girlfriend! Unfortunately, this makes her cold and calculating, looking for where her next jump to farther away from her awful family will be. And lordie if this woman’s father comes looking for her…

Hitomiko: There are a lot of possibilities here! Let’s start with the tragically sick partner, who has been clinging to life and starting to fight a losing battle to an illness. You wouldn’t abandon her on death’s door, would you? Even with the sweet heroine there? The angst you can throw in with that! <chef’s kiss.> And then there’s the… “don’t do this one thing but if you do it’s going to get bad.” Sure, it was “don’t bury my head with my body” but how many other creative ways could you use this? Trigger that dark personality. The one controlled by the spider. The one that Hitomiko desperately tries to hide! The one that only happens behind closed doors! Basically don’t count this tragic priestess out.

Sara Asano: Yes, great, she is musical and can make people stop and listen to her play. But here’s the problem: she’s got that obsessive energy about her. She will follow the hero everywhere he goes, and definitely provides you with that excellent stalker vibe you might need. Would she pull a Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and boil a bunny if someone breaks up with her? Yes she would.

Botan, Momiji: Silly silly girls, taken in by the words of a mean MILF who needs them to act as a shield between her schemes and the heroes. But what can they do for you dear writer? Well… they blindly follow what their mother says, and that means you have yourself some excellent stepsister types! Ones who are dating the noble boy because mom said so and they listen to mom. That extra bit of noble snootiness can be weaved into some great angst, especially if your heroine lacks the thing that makes one or the other snooty! These two also have the interchangeability aspect if Eri, Ayumi and Yuka are useful elsewhere!

Tsubaki: Speaking of the big old mean mommy. Here she is in the plastic-surgeried-to-look-young flesh! She’s manipulative and cunning. She is toxic and will burn everything down to get her way, and she will deceive and deceive and deceive to get ahead! Need an older woman who is pretending to be young trapping your poor hero or heroine? Well, here you are! Tsubaki the evil witch can give you all that sweet sweet old-hag power that your story needs!

Tōran, Karan, Shunran: Nothing like a good old family rivalry to make these two amazingly bad panther demon girlfriend candidates! Oops, they totally forgot to tell the hero that there has been a blood feud between their families for generations and they’ve come to collect!

Midoriko: Listen. Girl has a lot on her plate. She had to use her soul to trap the really bad demons after all. So if you are looking for that impossibly unattainable woman who seems to be able to balance a million things all at the same time while looking and being flawless? Midoriko is there for you. Problem though? She puts work above everything else. Fine, so her job is saving the world, but sometimes somebody just needs a snuggle, right? She’d also probably be that pep-talking ex, who sits down and tells the heroine to stop comparing herself to others, because she’s fabulous all on her own.

Kaguya: That type of narcissist that you could see becoming an influencer that will stop at nothing to become the top influencer in the world. She’s manipulative and powerful, and she is a weakness-seeking missile, so the hero better watch out. The more of his soul he reveals to her, the deeper into her power he will become. She definitely won’t let the breakup go, and will continue to haunt the OTP long after she’s been dumped. We don’t see this beauty enough in people’s stories!

Tsukiyomi: Beautiful, powerful, and has fallen in love with demons before. Problem is, she is absolutely stuck on her ex. She probably texts him while you are sipping wine!

Shiori: Sometimes it sucks to see your love interest with the perfect partner (can anyone tell that I am a Shiori stan?) She’s sweet and she’s smart and she’s supportive. She and the hero really do seem so completely happy together and it tears the heroine’s heart from her chest. Maybe they break up because Shiori realizes that the hero is secretly falling for the heroine, and maybe she moves away and they make the hard decision to part, but they decide to remain friends and continue to support each other. Sometimes it’s okay to have a fluffy and affable ex! And for one of those? Shiori is a great idea!

Inukimi: Lucille Bluth but a near-immortal perfectly beautiful dog demon goddess among mortals (we totally get where Sesshōmaru gets his good looks from). She probably thought of that one date with your hero as being because she was bored. Inukimi definitely likes to play with her food.

Shima: really doesn’t want to be here, but her parents forced her to behind her back. (Who the hell offers a girl to a catfish?) Problem is, she sees a convenient lie about the hero to be far better than the marriage her parents arranged for her. And that bleeding heart hero might just accept to get her out of a really bad situation! She’s a lesson: don’t trap people into relationships!

Honeki/Bone Demon: Gotta love those bait and switch ladies. This demon looks beautiful and lures men to their untimely deaths by feeding their bones to her father (who is basically all bone). Nickname her boner-killer (because clever puns are lifeblood), and make it clear she is really only after the bone and you have a dirty demon set of jokes and a heroine who can endlessly roll her eyes at a hero who is after her.

Koharu: You are too young to be trying to date these older men, young lady! Now go home and do your homework.

Sōten: I blame this headcanon entirely on @witchygirl99 and @nartista. That Sōten, the sweet thunder demon sister to the bad boyfriend brothers is a sapphic queen, who dates the hero in her journey toward being comfortable with who she is and what her sexuality is. Once she figures it out though, the relationship blazes to an abrupt and friendly end! You have the potential here for Sōten to comment on thinking the heroine is gorgeous, helping spur our hero toward his OTP!

Sango: Here’s another hard-to-make-bad girlfriend! Well, she has a tragic family history and really can’t handle trusting people but once she’s found her people, she becomes endlessly supportive. Sango fits the role of the better off friends ex-girlfriend extremely well. Hell, she’d probably be down for fake dating shenanigans to get the heroine to understand that she has a crush on the hero!

Kikyō: Yes yes, Kikyō is here. And yes, she does make a pretty great bad girlfriend. But that’s the thing about her. She’s full of so much baggage and tragedy and anger and resentment that if you’re going to thrust her into that role, she deserves the depth that her tragic priestess backstory provides her. She was burned (literally!) and betrayed! So if she’s clingy, it’s with this desperate knowledge that someone might tear the fragile balance back away from her. Give her the chance to be a broken bad girlfriend instead of the ho-in-the-way, after all, we have Yura for that!

Kaede & Rin are going unmentioned here intentionally. I’m sure that we can bend our imaginations to make them work—of course we can! But… with a most excellent list of 23+ candidates, do we really need to go there?