Still think y'all give tenma parents, canonical rich people, wayyyy too many goddamn excuses, but hey whatever. super controversial to say that they definitely could've done better and need to at least know the full extent their unintentional neglect had on both children. WOAH smoking hot take, apparently.
What does them being rich have to do with their capacity for emotional neglect? 😅 Narratively speaking, I mean, given that Tsukasa's dad being a company executive is basically background information rather than a narrative focus or playing into any themes. Like eat the rich and whatever but anyone can emotionally neglect their kids. I would be saying "Hey, let's not act like the Tenma parents were intentionally cruel in their neglect" or "Hey, they still neglected Tsukasa even though they did their absolute best" even if they were middle class or poor. Because it's true.
Did not, in fact, say anything that disagrees with this statement? In fact I have a whole Kasa7 post talking about talking about how Tsukasa proooobably has C-PTSD from the combination of unintentional emotional neglect and constant fear for Saki's health, or at the very least it's a reasonable headcanon based on what the story has given us, and it's actually better to acknowledge that than to pretend that he's totally fine given his childhood (and a whole other post that actually explains this better through our current understanding of complex trauma and why that caused such a MASSIVE negative impact when Tsukasa tugged the string of that memory, but I haven't posted that one yet).
In fact, I'm a massive believer in the nuance of "Tsukasa's parents may not have been outright cruel but he did suffer trauma due to their lacking emotional support while trying to take care of Saki (who I could also talk about because they actually have very parallel brands of complex trauma, should you choose to read them that way, but most of my posts are about Kasa7)".
"They were doing their best and wanted to care for their children despite being stretched completely thin" and "They couldn't provide sufficient emotional support due to said being stretched thin which had profound effects on their children because that lack of support is a key ingredient in complex trauma and in fact is a strong predictor for it" are two statements that can AND CANONICALLY DO coexist. It does not erase Tsukasa's suffering literally at all; in fact, it is still a core pillar of his character that he had to be a pillar for others before himself, which is why he represses so much and why an event of that being dug up in the presence of someone untrustworthy is disturbing but narratively rich!
I feel like I should say exactly what I meant by "This is not a safe space for Tenma parent hate", because admittedly that was poor wording on a post I wrote after spending like three hours on another one that I ended up not even posting: I'm not saying we aren't allowed to say that the Tenma parents emotionally neglected Tsukasa. We totally are, because the narrative literally showed us as such throughout his story. In fact, it's powerful that the consequences emotional neglect are being portrayed as something truly traumatic when usually it's written off as "Oh, so your parents didn't hug you enough?" (Tsukasa is literally having flashbacks about it where the world around him is distorting as he draws closer and closer to his true feelings because of the way that singular event is compounded on top of everything else he's already been through.) It's actually very personally resonant and I'm sure it is for a lot of others too, but I digress. That's not hate to me! That's just a fact.
At the same time though, I'm not going to say that Tsukasa's parents were evil. Because they weren't. The narrative is continuously saying to my face "The Tenma parents were not cruel. They did not neglect Tsukasa out of malice". That doesn't erase his pain but actually failing to acknowledge their lack of intended cruelty kinda...takes a lot away from why he struggles so much, and why a lot of people with complex trauma similar to his struggle when faced with the idea of "Maybe this was that bad for me" in contrast with "But my parents clearly loved me despite that". Those are ideas that inherently clash in a traumatized brain, especially a chronically traumatized one, because you're in this constant struggle between "It couldn't have been that bad because they didn't want to hurt me" and "But it hurts. It hurts so much and I don't know why".
I just think it's important to understand that the Tenma parents did, in fact, have emotional limitations despite being rich (???) due to their daughter being sick (which isn't her fault but was a factor), and the impact of those limitations was profound and is now being exploited by a predatory figure.
One last thing: If Tsukasa was real and I was talking to him about this? I wouldn't emphasize the necessity of this dialectical thinking so much, given that "My parents loved me, though; they did their best!" is an EXCEPTIONALLY common way of minimizing one's own trauma, and he does NOT need any more of that, believe me. But Tsukasa isn't real. He's a character in a literary work whose character I'm analyzing because it resonated with aspects of my personal life, and whose parents I also need to consider as their own characters. So I'm looking at what the narrative gave me, and I'm commenting on it in its entirety.
Sorry, this ended up being a whole ramble because I've been thinking about this a ton recently. But uh, please don't put words in my mouth, anon. Next time, if you take issue with something I've said, you can ask on the post so I can clarify, because I recognize that it was unclear what I meant when the post is seen in a vacuum without the others and would've been more than happy to explain what I meant. 😅 I'm gonna put this in the tags both because it serves as analysis and so maybe you see it even though you might've just sent the anon and blocked me lol. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
