Autumn Grayson says:

I made another post that answered all your questions, but it says it’s waiting for approval or something. In the mean time I’m going to go more in depth on question 3 with a more specific example I saw recently.

One of the youtubers I occasionally listen to is very passionate about childless couples being represented in media, partly because she herself doesn’t want kids. Growing up she spent a lot of time hating how society seemed to expect everyone to have/want kids, and consequently latched on to Inuyasha as one of the few things that represented childless couples positively(Inuyasha and Kagome are shown together at the end, but not with kids). So, in reaction to the recent announcement that there’s going to be an Inuyasha sequel with Inuyasha x Kagome kids…this youtuber made a post to vent how angry and betrayed she felt.

Her experiences and expectations certainly influenced her reaction to the sequel announcement and even her interpretation of the original Inuyasha anime. Something else we can discuss here is fan toxicity, too, though. If she or anyone else feels angry about the Inuyasha sequel announcement that’s fine. There’s generally nothing wrong with feeling disappointed or bringing up a problem one has with a story. But there are several aspects of her argument that are worth considering when thinking about fan reactions to things.

Firstly…this person doesn’t seem to like Inuyasha. Maybe she actually does and is just harsh when criticizing its flaws, but in this recent post I’m referring to, she basically made it sound like she thinks Inuyasha was lame, but that she still latched onto it because she felt like it was all she had in terms of childless couples representation.

If she mostly dislikes Inuyasha and doesn’t think it’s worth taking seriously, then should she have as much say as fans that actually love the story/want a sequel/feel curious to see what the main chars’ kids would be like?

Furthermore…it’s been ages since I’ve seen Inuyasha, but from what I recall there was no clear or direct promise that Inuyasha and Kagome would remain childless or disliked the idea of parenthood in the first place. If that’s the case, the youtuber projected her own desires onto the show, and there’s no reason a show should have to adhere to such projections. Especially since, for all we know, the author may have never been opposed to Inuyasha and Kagome having kids.

Even if there was a slight indication that those chars wanted to be childless, it would be perfectly legitimate for them to change their mind or end up with an accidental pregnancy. Like it or not, that does happen in real life. If this youtuber had a best friend that voiced a desire to live a childless life, and the youtuber looked up to this friend because of this…would it be right for the youtuber to get angry at this friend for deciding to be a parent later on? No. And the same goes for authors and characters.

Regardless, if Inuyasha and Kagome not having kids at the end of the story qualifies as childless couple representation…there’s not much reason for this youtuber to feel unrepresented. There are other childless couples in media. And in a lot of mainstream movies it’s reasonably common. The main one that comes to mind is Bourne Identity. So it’s not actually an emergency.

Don’t get me wrong, portraying childless people and couples in media is great. I have quite a few childless chars and couples myself. And as someone that is quite content to be single and childless, I’d be annoyed with anyone that acts like there’s something wrong with me for not having a family of my own. But I would be just as irritated, if not even more so, if someone acted like I’m obligated to write my chars a certain way. The ultimate choice of whether or not chars have kids is up to the author…and they have the right to change their minds about their decision later. Writers grow and change over time and it shouldn’t be surprising that their chars would follow suit. If people want to write fanfictions where things turned out differently, that’s awesome, but they shouldn’t act like that fan interpretation is somehow more ‘canon’ than the actual author’s work.

The reason I spent so much time nitpicking this issue is to show that fans often aren’t as justified as they think they are, and should therefore be more mindful of how they treat authors and their work.

Another thing is that anyone posting commentary, videos and blog posts do so to vent, discuss important issues, or escape from every day life. Most people will admit that, on some level, they should speak from their own perspective, rather than someone else’s. They aren’t obligated to be the puppet or spokesperson for any group, so why should it be any different for authors? Authors often write to vent, discuss issues they care about or escape from every day life, so why should they have any less freedom than those leaving comments on Youtube or writing cruddy fanfiction?

So that’s something we have to think about as fans. It’s perfectly fine to criticize shows, give the authors feedback or hope certain things happen in the story. But as much as we may love a story, it doesn’t belong to us. Calling authors or copyright holders bad, stupid, etc for not being the mouthpiece for whatever social issues we care about is unhealthy and controlling. So that’s something we should think about going forward…how to engage in useful discussion without being toxic to each other or to writers. At the same time, though, writers should be willing to at least take their fans’ feedback under advisement. Sometimes fans/critics do raise good points that can help the writer improve, or help a film studio make a show that actually sells. Listening to fan criticisms when it came to the recent Sonic design was a reasonable move, for example.