Who would go into relationships feeling entitled to the other person's entire being and completely refuse to acknowledge their interiority?
@diedrangea
hi loverboy <3 there are a few answers to this, actually! there are four, and both parallel each other-- it's two sets of friends, with one of them the more overtly dangerous one, and the other being the more subtly dangerous one
for overt, that would be both yoshie and meiji-- yoshie is outwardly very possessive and demanding of taro, seeing herself as entitled to his time and attention and that she's intrinsically the best woman for him because she's better than the Other Women Here on a genetic level and on a social level-- she's prettier, smarter, an ultimate when no other affluent girl at the gala is, AND she understands The Rules of affluent life; she put in the effort to be there ergo she should be entitled to her prize!! and of course as we all know, this attitude does culminate in her taking advantage of taro sexually after he's been through a trauma-- mirroring the common trope of "if you save and/or comfort a rape victim, your reward is sex from them." that's the attitude she's going into the encounter with, and she just sort of does whatever she wants even though taro is just kind of laying there and anyone who respects the interiority of the other person would very much be like "hey well that's weird, i should check on them" at the very least
meanwhile meiji isn't a predator per se, but he is a godawful boyfriend who only really considers himself, not the other person in the equation. his ex gf, bijou, is at this party, and he broke up with her out of jealousy because his father liked her more. which, while understandable feelingswise from meiji's pov, shows an inability to understand or care that this will break bijou's heart. past the gala, in the Real World, he goes through a couple of divorces before he finds a woman actually willing to have kids with him, he's THAT inconsiderate and shitty of a husband. this woman also ends up divorcing him btw, and he puts her through a custody battle because he wants to keep his son, not caring about her OR her kids' reactions to this. like genuinely the only good thing i can say about meiji is "he's not a rapist" like thats. literally the only good part. meiji's absolute awful rizz is bad enough that kijo womanizer togami has to be like "i do not think you should talk to women like that." the bar is in hell brother!!
and the subtle ones are.... well, the friends of these first two!
maina is the other girl interested in taro, and she and yoshie have a quasi-betty and veronica thing going on, where maina is the sweet cute girl next door and yoshie is the badass Other Woman. i say "quasi" because well i mean. none of these girls are very good for taro, because neither of them actually give a fuck about his personhood. maina doesn't stalk taro, sure, but she does brush off yoshie's behavior and how uncomfortable taro is when he confides in her as "oh, she's just playing!" when taro tries to confide in her again, about something that sounds really serious (his depression,) she changes the subject to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. she acts like her and taro share the same political views, but when he tells her "hey. i am breaking an NDA to tell you this, but they're going to use you for pro-munitions propaganda if you show up to this gala," she acts horrified and says she'll stay away..... but shows up anyway, because a band she likes is playing. speaking of said band, she loooves punk music, but doesn't seem to care about the okinawan frontman's clear discomfort and rage at her, the heiress to an ARMS DEALER company, while wwii is still very much in living memory. she is completely dismissive of the things her family were complicit in, again, despite claiming to care. she won't get possessive like yoshie if taro ends up with another girl... but she WILL take it as a personal betrayal if he were to come out as gay, especially later in life, acting like He Personally Lied To Specifically Her and not taking into account the absolute nightmare of being gay in the 70s/80s/90s/2000s/even 2010s honestly, ESPECIALLY when taro is the sole heir to his family and is expected to have a lot of kids. she's nice, but not kind. she cares for taro only on a surface level, and is willfully ignorant of anything deeper. when they do start having kids, she tries to do the whole "run away and be with me <3" thing, while not caring about anything thats going on in taro's head, knowing he's seriously mentally ill and has been in a hospital for it, and still getting mad at him when he answers this bombshell with a non-answer. She Does Not Care about taro, despite seeing a lot nicer than yoshie at first glance
and the Boy Version of her is.... tokuichi towa. taro describes tokuichi like this, and this is the best summation of it, honestly
"He'll use you, and you won't even realize you're being used."
tokuichi is only nice as a surface level veneer, concealing bigotry which is hand in hand with dehumanization. you can see this in his udg appearance, being demure and polite when meeting komaru, but spiraling into calling monaca's mother a bitch and saying that he ALLOWED her to keep HER baby, and saying that it's a mother's job to raise her children. this man is Incredibly misogynistic and just has this veneer of politeness; a veneer that..... okay im gonna be real, this ask just made something dawn on me and i had to go write something down for actual development. so due to spoiler reasons i cant say SHIT ABOUT THIS!! but ur my boyfriend so ur on my devteam. rip to the rest of u tho </3
