I went back and forth on whether to respond on a comment all evening, and since my motivation is ruined I might as well, cause if one person said it there’s probably some others that were thinking it. Spoilers for the chapter of Mercury that I just posted so if you haven’t read ch 7, it’s on you if you click under the cut.
Kagome is not a prude.
This entire chapter is essentially a bottleneck episode in that we don’t see InuKag do anything beyond bathing, and I did this solely for the purpose of them coming to grips with the reality of being switched. You have two very insecure people that can talk a lot of smack, but they’re not going to handle their routine being different. You see people all the time making jokes about how fun it’d be to be the opposite sex for a day, but chances are if it were you in the situation you’d be apprehensive too.
Kagome and Inuyasha are 19, getting close to 20. It feels like a slap to someone at that age whose not promiscuous to any degree to even suggest that a character who hasn’t had the experiences a reader might have had be called prudish. As someone who dealt with being called similar names at that age, it really stings. People have their reasons for why they don’t run out and explore every Tom, Dick, or Allen, and that doesn’t make them prudes. Sometimes it’s just a choice. Sometimes something personal pushes that person to make that choice.
Canon Kagome was never a prude. She was a 14/15 year old that had other priorities, believe it or not. She was raised to be respectful and not throw out her bits and bobs because it wasn’t considered a trait that people would favor. It would be bad character. Which brings me to my next part of the comment: just because she has a little brother and a grandpa that’s a “dirty old man” and lives in the modern world, doesn’t imply she should be more open.
First, Souta is roughly 9-10 in canon. In Mercury I think I made him 15 and ended up closing the age gap between him and Kagome. Either way, there’s enough of an age gap that she’s not going to want to see her brother naked. And I am well aware about families bathing together but in canon even this would be a stretch. Kagome is going to want her privacy. If it were implied that the siblings bathed when they were younger, it would’ve been a very small window because Kagome probably wouldn’t want to share a bath with a toddler once she started developing. If that’s up your alley, more power to you.
Second is calling Grandpa Higurashi a “dirty old man”. I haven’t read through the manga but I’m sure if there were any instance of him being a perverted old man someone would’ve said something by now. I don’t know what anime was confused with this one, or if there’s some other fic out there were Grandpa is a dirty old man, but I have not and will never write that. The very notion has had me physically ill all evening. Not sure if this is just a trope that the reader has assigned to all grandpas in fics or if this is an assumption about grandpas in real life - someone will have to tell me because I don’t have a grandpa anymore.
Furthermore, I haven’t written Grandpa into this story yet, and the only time Souta has featured has been chapter 1. Nothing about him telling Inuyasha “I really don't want to hear what you want to do to my sister” says that he’d be open to seeing his sister naked either.
So how is Kagome considered a prude, then? She’s spent her teenage years fighting demons and trying not to fail her classes. There’s not time for dealing out handjobs or whatever the hell people assume all teenagers do. Is she late in getting around to exploring her feelings for Inuyasha? I don’t think so. I think it’s a matter of seeing the bottom of the plate for the first time in years, so she has a moment to really think. It’s hard to think about the future when you’re drowning under everything else. When her thoughts keep circling back to agreeing to moving in with Inuyasha, it’s because that future is more real now than it would’ve been while she were in school.
Her having an existential crisis about seeing and having to clean Inuyasha’s body while she inhabits it is basically her being thrown head first into the pool again. She has no experience with the situation. It’s not something she’d seek out within the family to answer questions, so she has limited knowledge from the books she read. Frankly if she went to her brother or grandfather and asked, I’d be horrified, but that’s just me. Also should point out that if I’d written Kagome in such a way that she had no qualms about getting to business and scrubbing away without a care while in Inuyasha’s body, it would be deemed OOC or she’d be accused of being improper.
On the flipside, because Inuyasha was never mentioned once in the comment, I think it really says a lot about reader views in general. It’s fine for Inuyasha to look over Kagome’s body and ask questions, but Kagome’s not allowed to be nervous? Inuyasha is equally nervous - like when he has to ask Kagome if it’s okay to take her panties off. It’s new territory for him too, but because he’s more outspoken and blunt it’s fine. For Kagome to internalize her anxiety is wrong? She doesn’t want to make Inuyasha feel like he’s disgusting (he already assumed that from her grumbling and it was discredited at the end of the chapter) so she tries to be mindful of what she says.
I don’t know...I’m just...tired. This story was one that I have been nervous to even dig into, and when I started writing parts of it here, no one seemed to mind. I’m in the process of editing ch 8 but haven’t written any more, and tonight my motivation sunk. I’ve read this chapter twice today, but not once did I think Kagome read as a prude. I’m confused at what part made someone choose to leave that comment, but if you’ve read it and felt the same way, I hope this explains why I wrote it the way I did.
