I said I would follow up on my stances so before anyone can say it, no, I don't hate Doumeki. Among other things, I very much appreciate the narrative value in showing someone, especially him, doing the things he does whether good or bad. Therefore I'm primarily judging him as a character, not a person. This is the same reason I can't easily say I hate Inami, for example. He's too valuable. I can't disrespect a person that doesn't exist, only disregard a character's value.
This might seem like a total tangent at first but I promise it's not. So often I've seen conversations tangle around the topics of trauma, realism, and bias. Dig too deep into trauma and you're asking fiction to be too realistic. Make a case for realism and you're letting your life bleed too much into the story. Here's the thing: Yoneda Kou has spoken before about her attempts to make Saezuru and her other stories realistic, presumably including when it comes to trauma and relationships and how the two intermingle as these are recurring in her works. "Realistic trauma" is quite vague, but if you pay attention to Saezuru you'll see trauma appears differently for each character, affects some more obviously than others, and highly influences each one's view of the world. For example, I would say Yashiro is hyper aware of assumptions and values predictability so as to maintain a level of control, Doumeki retains a strong sense of guilt and can be quite impulsive, Misumi is sentimental and has a habit of isolating people, Hirata trusts literally no one and can't be trusted in return, etc. When people talk about realism, they're talking about attention to detail and believability. Trauma is an observable thing and therefore an objective thing, as well as a description. By that I mean the thought process of identifying it in fiction can be as simple as xyz events were portrayed negatively and that negativity was lasting. Since it comes up so often as well, I'd like to say the word victim is also a description. It's used to refer to a character like in the italicized example as experiencing said events. These words carry no other connotations on their own, and yet they are conflated with favoritism and infantilization. When we're talking about what happens in the text, something as minor as another reader's favorite character should be considered inconsequential unless details of the story relevant to the conversation are being omitted. Bias, as an outside source, can't change the direction of a story either way, right? The infantilization, though, I have nothing to say about other than why? Genuinely, why conflate those two words? Because that kind of bias exists separate from the story and is much more of a concern imo.
Moving on, forming a reading is forming a theory of sorts on why certain things happen in a story, not if. What is the story trying to say. This is where you take your observations (objective) and give your interpretation (subjective) on the full picture, the framing, the 'why'. And yes, that can change person to person. That's why different readings are valuable whether you relate to them or not as long as they use the text. There is a level of personal significance to an analysis, to a reading, when you get into the why's. Everyone will see a different angle based on their experiences. That's good. Stories breeding these kinds of discussions is one of the main reasons we tell them. The point of having a message in a story is to say something not just about a fictional world but about the real one. The specific message you interpret is the thing that verifies which scenes tie together and which don't (and vice versa). Without it, one can easily gloss over important details. This is the kind of logic which challenges why we ask why the curtains are blue. The curtains are blue because that's what subtext is, and the ability to recognize those patterns in the text comes largely from an understanding of real life systems. This is one major way in which fiction meaningfully reflects real life without the literal, superficial events of the text being universal. This is also why I can't take it seriously when I see people making arguments about how a story is "just" fiction and "not that deep". It fundamentally misunderstands the value of fiction and of the reading(s) it's responding to. How "deep" a story is depends on the individual regarding their own reading. For the record I'm coming from a place of believing that interpretations don't necessarily have to align with authorial intent, although audience members may benefit from considering it separately, at least.
To summarize: Observable text, what literally happens = objective, independent of the reader. Narrative interpretation or 'why's' = subjective, relating the story and its message to real life.
With all that in mind, Doumeki objectively traumatizes Yashiro. It's an ongoing thing and a major plot point so I (and others) talk about it a lot. Mostly about why, again, from a narrative perspective. Why them, why then, why in that way. These characters represent larger things than themselves and I want to know what they are. Of course I think about Yashiro's actions too, but it just so happens that most of his actions are in response to Doumeki's (or whoever else's) actions, especially in recent volumes. Dare I say that's kind of his whole thing (at least imo). Instances outside of that tend to make for more specific conversations, if that makes sense. The scene about the nurse, for example, stands out but isn't referenced very often afterwards. What I'm trying to say is that it's usually more topical to write about Yashiro and his perspective. He is, may I remind you, the main character and the reason Saezuru exists as it does. Looking at it that way, Doumeki is not only a character with frequent proximity to Yashiro, but also one whose actions regarding him consistently move the plot along considerably. Those very actions are often negative in context, creating conflict the story needs. For all else that he does and everything that happens to him, that is a major part of his role and one that gets massively overlooked by the majority. Even putting all that aside though, if you want me to appear biased the most personal thing I can say is that I do happen to relate to the overlap in trauma and queer identity that is presented with Yashiro, specifically, and yet I didn't decide he was the focal point; Yoneda Kou did. I don't decide what happens to him or who has a hand in it; Yoneda Kou does. All I do is watch and ponder existentially at what she gives me, basically.
