Kira Yukimura: A Case Study
People tend to respond to my accusations of fandom racism with the idea “I can like who I want to like and not only can it not be influenced by race, but it has no effect on anything.” Here is why I say that fandom’s and the show’s response to Kira Yukimura was racist and it had a real effect.
It is true that the show clearly intended her to be Scott, the main character’s, love interest, which should have been enough to garner her attention. However, whatever her relationship with Scott would be, the show also established her discovery of her own kitsune powers as its own separate plotline, her strained relationship with her mother as its own separate plotline, her living of thousands of years as it’s own seperate plotline, etc. Yet, during Seaons 3B and 4, fandom expressed almost no interest in any of those plot lines. If you look at tumblr, if you look at AO3, if you look at other fandom sources, all the interest in Kira (if there any appeared) focused on her role as either Scott’s present obsession (even though he wasn’t obsessed with her, because they were imposing Allison on top of her) or her awkwardness with the pack.
Fandom influences writers, just as much as writers influence fandoms. No matter how many badass moments or vulnerabilities the show gave her, the Teen Wolf fandom failed to express any sizable interest in those plots or character developments (whereas there was, for example, a significant debate about whether Stiles locked or unlocked a hospital door with his mind.) I find few times when she was actively disliked; she was more often treated as if invisible, which was stunning when she was the main characters’ love interest.
It is possible that someone might think of Kira as a poorly conceived of character. That’s one thing. But even when a lot of people in the fandom thought Malia’s origin story was a ten-kiloton shit-bomb, they didn’t ignore the character.
When you take into account that the show wrote her against the Asian stereotypes of the ‘exotic, unknowable Easterner,’ this is even more surprising. She didn’t have a secret agenda; she wasn’t the silky femme fatale; she didn’t even speak Korean or Japanese, and her combat skills were a surprise even to her. Her concept, on the other hand, even employed a well-worn and popular cliché: a girl with a secret past who didn’t quite fit in with her peers and was awkward and insecure because of it. Fandom should have been beating down her door, given how often that trope appears in fanfiction.
She was a new shape of an Asian character. Yet, people still paid little attention to her, and the only reason they can give is ‘taste.’ She was no more one-dimensional than anyone else on the cast. She shared the same risks as other characters. What more did she need to do? What should she have not done? The fandom wound itself into knots over every single new character that was brought into play, but not her. Finally, after 44 episodes of disinterest, the show gave up.
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