Fuck If I Know

Where I whore out about HP and AU’s//Main:Spydermayne

[preasoiafsource]

top 20 pre-asoiaf characters as voted by our followers: → #3: argella durrandon (194 votes)

You may take my castle, but you will win only bones and blood and ashes.

[cj-k]

I'm delulu, just let me be (I love the twins but…ah. I'm not a big fan of their parents together) so I made new fanchilds lmao

[altyuni]

WiP; this will probably never be finished and rendered. But I enjoy using my ability to draw for my own selfish desires.

[altyuni]

Using procreate to fulfill my own agendas

[mustardyellowsunshine]

[inu-fanon]

Anime vs. Manga: Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru's Relationship

We all know that Sesshoumaru kept coming after Inuyasha because he felt he was the rightful heir to Tessaiga.  But how bitter was this sibling rivalry really?

If we go by the anime, the hatred between Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru was mutual, and both were all too happy to kill the other.  Sesshoumaru also never got over his hatred of Inuyasha and their rivalry continued through the entire series.

The manga, on the other hand, gave Sesshoumaru clear growth throughout the series and never let him relapse aside from when he found out that Tessaiga was to one day absorb Tenseiga (and he had every right to be pissed about that).  Sesshoumaru’s continuing hatred of Inuyasha’s presence felt more like a recovering alcoholic getting angry at someone for drinking a beer in front of him.  He’d grown weary of the fight and let it go, but he certainly didn’t want to keep getting reminded of that.

The anime, essentially, really liked the sibling rivalry angle and artificially augmented it and extended it at the expense of actual character development.

Episode 35 was the first particularly egregious example of this.  After Inuyasha struck Sesshoumaru with the Kaze no Kizu, the conversation afterwards progressed like this:

Anime: Everyone assumes Sesshoumaru is dead.  No one seems particularly bothered that Inuyasha just (apparently) killed his own brother.  Toutousai announces Sesshoumaru is still alive because Tenseiga protected him.  He questions Inuyasha asking if he felt his strike hit Sesshoumaru, and Inuyasha answers “no”.  Toutousai asks them how they plan on defeating him if Tenseiga will protect him. (video of scene in question)

Manga: For comparison, here’s what is ostensibly the same scene in the manga, although the content of the conversation is so glaringly different, it’s hard to tell:

Yeah, let’s make sure we can fight Sesshoumaru!  Or, wait no, we recognize he’s starting to change and will give him the benefit of the doubt, and admit we don’t actually want to kill him.  But if we did that, that means we can’t make a bunch of filler episodes and movies where Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha fight each other.

The last canon battle between Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru in the original anime series was episode 52.  However, even that battle was simply for Sesshoumaru to verify Inuyasha’s dependency on Tessaiga, at which point he pretty much put the whole feud behind him and switched his primary focus to Naraku.

At least until the whole “Yeah, Inuyasha is supposed to get Tenseiga, too” crap came up to force him into relapse.  But he handled that pretty well, all things considered, and once he had Bakusaiga, he was a happy fluffy puppy.

And the anime writers just couldn’t have that, so cut this scene out of episode 22 of Final Act:

(On a side note, I love how once Sesshoumaru gets his left arm and Bakusaiga, he’s almost always drawn with his left hand clutching Bakusaiga’s sheath, like, “I FINALLY GOT A THING!  THIS IS MINE!  DON’T YOU DARE SCREW ME OVER ON THIS, TOO, TAKAHASHI!  MIIIINE!”)

In place of this deleted material, Kagome instead worries that she shouldn’t mention Inuyasha in Sesshoumaru’s presence, Sesshoumaru declares that he never considered Inuyasha a brother, and threatens to hit Inuyasha with Bakusaiga.

Inuyasha and Sesshoumru do have a rivalry, but they learned from it and got over it fairly early in the series.  But in order to capitalize on it, the anime version did as much as it could to stunt Sesshoumaru’s character development in order to leave room for additional confrontations.  In Final Act, they even went so far as to regress him a few episodes before the end for no logical reason since the remainder of the battle played out the same.

Sesshoumaru developed probably more than any other character in the series.  He had his jealousy, he got over it.  It was briefly rekindled, he got over it.

The point that the anime can’t seem to comprehend is just that: He got over it.

[inu-fanon]

Lord of the Western Lands

By far the most widespread piece of fanon in the series is the term and concept of “Lord of the Western Lands”.

“Wait, fanon?!” you ask?  That’s right.

The concept of “Lord of the Western Lands” appears nowhere in the series.

If you don’t believe me, go check for yourself.  I guarantee you will not find this term or anything reasonably implying it anywhere in the manga or anime.

Yeah, I already see you coming back with stuff that seems to “reasonably imply” it, and I can guess what it is.  So let’s take a look at it.

“But the manga said Inuyasha’s father ruled the Western Lands!”

What the manga said was this:

KAEDE 犬夜叉、おぬしの父は、西国を根城にしていた化け犬であったと聞くが… Inuyasha, onushi no chichi wa, saigoku wo nejiro ni shiteita bake-inu deatta to kiku ga… Inuyasha, I heard that your father was a monsterous dog that had based himself in the lands to the west…

INUYASHA あんまり覚えてねえけどな。 Anmari oboetenee kedo na. I don’t really remember, though.

MYOUGA 強くて立派な大妖怪でいらした…　なにより美味しい血をしておられた。 Tsuyokute rippana daiyoukai de irashita… naniyori oishii chi wo shiteorareta. He was a strong and splendid daiyoukai… with blood more delicious than anything.

The tricky term here is “nejiro ni shiteita” (根城にしていた), which literally means “to make a stronghold”.  The English version of the manga translated this line as him “prowling” the lands to the west, which is a suitably vague term.  So what extent of rulership does “nejiro” imply?

The best way to figure that out is to Google the term and find it used in other contexts.  Here are some examples:

お向かいのうちの縁側を根城にしているぬこ様 My cat has taken over the neighbor’s porch.

赤坂を根城にしている美容師さんと飲んだ I had a drink with the stylist based in Akasaka.

その盗賊たちは山の中を根城にしていた Those thieves were holed up in the mountains.

In all of these cases, the term “nejiro” doesn’t necessarily imply ownership, but rather using a piece of property for one’s own purposes.  In this regard, Inuyasha’s father didn’t so much as “rule” the land to the west, but was more like that dog who comes into your yard and digs things up and doesn’t give two sniffs what you think because he’s a big dog and he does what he wants.

The “Western Lands” isn’t even a horribly well-defined region.  The Japanese term “saigoku” (西国) refers to the area of Japan west of present-day Kyoto.  Its usage is pretty much the same as how Americans refer to the part of the country to the west of the Mississippi River as “The West”.  It has no definite boundaries and isn’t even a valid political entity, and no one really “rules” it.  You just got famous cowboys and bandits who operated in the area and made names for themselves, and the implication is that Inuyasha’s father’s authority was roughly similar.

“But the first movie said Inuyasha’s father ruled the lands to the west!”

… Okay, you got me there.  Rather than “nejiro”, the first movie used the term “shihai” (支配) to describe Inuyasha’s father’s authority over the west, which carries a much greater implication of rulership.

So, fine, according to one line, not written by Takahashi, in a film that already has plenty of other continuity errors and questionable assertions, it was stated that Inuyasha’s father “ruled” the west.  I can’t just go around throwing out evidence because it comes from an unreliable source, since it is technically official material.  Just one little problem…

His title still isn’t “Lord of the Western Lands”

It’s “Inu no Taishou”, meaning “Dog General”.  Since he already has a canon title and role that appear directly in the series, what’s the point of inventing another one that covers exactly the same thing?  It would be like saying that Kikyou carries the title of “Shikon no Tama Protector” instead of “priestess” (that’s right, I’m looking at YOU, Inuyasha Wiki).

The problem with the “Lord of the Western Lands” title is that it implies a whole host of things that “Inu no Taishou” does not.  It implies officially recognized land ownership.  Subjects.  Political authority.  Hereditary rule.

That last bit is the big kicker, because it’s typically not the Inu no Taishou who I see as called “Lord of the Western Lands”, but Sesshoumaru.

Sesshoumaru is not “Lord of the Western Lands”.  Full stop.

While the one line from the first movie could be twisted enough to make the case that in some implicit manner you could kind of sort of call the Inu no Taishou the “lord of the western lands” as a descriptive term rather than an official title, there is no such implication with Sesshoumaru.  Sesshoumaru carries no political power.

While a title of “Lord” can be inherited, a title of “General” can not.  And Sesshoumaru has stated, repeatedly, that the only thing he inherited from his father was Tenseiga.  He’s not just being an ungrateful whiny brat that aside from a kingdom and servants and political power he just got a sword.  He just got a sword.

TOUTOUSAI 殺生丸、おまえの言うとおり、おやじどのはいずれおまえの天生牙を鉄砕牙に吸収させるつもりだったのさ。 Sesshoumaru, omae no iu toori, oyaji-dono wa izure omae no tenseiga wo tessaiga ni kyuushuusaseru tsumori datta no sa. Sesshoumaru, it’s as you said, your father intended for your Tenseiga to one day be absorbed by Tessaiga.

SESSHOUMARU 父上はなにひとつこの殺生丸に遺す気はなかった…ということか。 Chichi-ue wa nani hitotsu kono Sesshoumaru ni nokosu ki wa nakatta… to iu koto ka. Meaning that… Father had no thoughts of leaving me with even a single thing.

He’s got the fancy clothes and the fluffy, and somewhere along the way he picked up Jaken, Ah-Un, Rin, and Kohaku, but that’s it.  That’s his “kingdom”.  He is Lord of the Little People.

But in the anime Jaken said Sesshoumaru was trying to build an empire.

This is Jaken we’re talking about.  When has he EVER made an assertion about Sesshoumaru that wasn’t horribly embellished?  In episode 162, Jaken states, “Once he reigns as the strongest youkai, Sesshoumaru-sama will no doubt be able to realize his empire.  And, of course, once that happens, I’ll be the prime minister of that empire."  By that second sentence, hopefully one can figure out that Jaken is talking out his ass, as usual.

But everyone calls Sesshoumaru "Lord”!

In English, they do, yes.  The problem is that English has no equivalent to the honorific “-sama”.  The honorific “-sama” merely conveys high respect, whereas the English term “Lord” implies specific powers and authorities that are not meant to be implied by the Japanese.  I mean, Miroku and Kagome each refer to each other with the “-sama” honorific due to them being a monk and a priestess, respectively.  It doesn’t mean they’re rulers of their own countries.

In summary, the actual title of “Lord of the Western Lands” appears nowhere in any official material.  Once could potentially use it as a descriptive term for the Inu no Taishou, such as the lower-case “The Inu no Taishou acted as a lord of the western lands”, however there is no canon basis for it to be used as a title in and of itself.  And whatever role the Inu no Taishou held, it was not passed down to his children, therefore Sesshoumaru has no title, holdings, or duties whatsoever.

[momoro66]

[inu-fanon]

shippouthebrave

((I just saw your post about Sango’s character development and I actually agree with the beginning of it and how it spiraled the more the manga went on but there’s one thing that bothers me. I don’t want my question to seem like I’m anti-feminist but for historical accuracy sake, maybe the reason Sango was treated that way by Miroku was because it took place during the Feudal era? Kagome and Inuyasha can’t be held under the same standards either since Kagome is from the future and Inuyasha is more demon than human in that he accepted that side of himself more - but Miroku’s attitude is probably something that would have happened during that time? I think I even read that Rumiko wanted to make it accurate to the time? Still I really enjoyed your analysis and all the other ones you’ve done! :D I went through your entire blog the first time to read them and to better help my own understanding of the series. Thank you for taking the time to read my question! ^^))

The problem with appealing to historical cultural norms as justification for a behavior is that it often ends up turning into an “is-ought” problem.  This arises when the act of pointing out that something exists is conflated with the implicit moral justification of that thing.

So, in this example, yes, it is true that womens’ needs were held in little regard in the era, and Miroku was quite potentially a product of his time.  This is the “is”.  However, this does not automatically mean that it makes Miroku’s behavior somehow “okay”.  That’s getting into “ought” territory. 

Yes, it was unusual for a woman to hold Sango’s profession (as was noted in the series)

However, the tone of the above conversation seems to indicate that we’re supposed to think the lord is a jerk for distrusting Sango’s abilities because she’s a girl, even though such an attitude would be standard for the time.  Generally when a “product of the era” situation comes up, the series tends to frame it from a 20th-century moral reference.

Thus, it’s fine to point out the historically-accurate notions that Miroku could be a jerk to women with no societal recourse, and that Sango would settle down and have children simply because she was expected to.  But it’s a bit of a stretch to then say, “and thus the audience ought to find these attitudes acceptable because they were acceptable for the time.”  If anything, playing the historical angle may only make the situation more tragic, as it points out that there was little to no social support for them to escape those roles.

So long as everyone is happy, though, I suppose that’s all that matters, regardless of the limitations on their options.

[inu-fiction]

This is actually an important note for anyone writing InuYasha fanfiction. While misogynistic attitudes and behavior would be historically accurate, the reader is supposed to see such behavior as evidence of poor character and unsympathetic motivations. When Sango beats Koharu’s master with a ladle, we’re supposed to root for her, not criticize her for acting historically inaccurate.

In addition, the late Muromachi period had more liberated women than you might suspect, especially among the “lower classes,” like Sango and the people in Kaede’s village. Hagakure Productions makes it clear: while the men were off fighting and dying, the women got things done. 

As a side note, it took me three tries to reblog this to inu-fiction and not my personal tumblr. Ah, well, the more notes on inu-fanon’s work the better.

[g3rladthel4d]

Martin Septim with his two sons Auriel and Patrizius, the early years of the 4th era.

welcome to my sick and twisted fantasy land where Martin lives and Alduin and Paarthurnax get reborn as his sons.

[aldruiel-scribbles]

In a crossover scenario of The Dragonborn landing on Thedas (Dragon Age Inquisition x Skyrim) would you rather read:

DB is the Inquisitor and the Inquisition has to follow this weird crazy person

DB is a mentor/parental figure for the Inquisitor teaches them how to be a hero

Voting ended onJun 13, 2023

[brambeag]

morrigans mini me. veilguard era. + variants

[ealyblu]

[overlord-angelito]

Dunmeri Bridal wear exploration and concept art

Got a bit too inspired with my last sketch and decided to take a deep dive.

This is all fan speculation and fun little fashion design work

[igorlevchenko-blog]

The Dreams of a White Guar

Collection of my Ashlander-themed paintings. Feel free to repost.

These are about to receive two new, exciting additions.

[bizzren]

isabela what is wrong with you (affectionate)

"friend-fiction"

[deimcs]

DRAGON AGE: THE VEILGUARD / Rook's backgrounds (credit)