Curiosities of Hisoka's brain

[branchandroot]

Hisoka went for years without remembering being assaulted. Once he's dead he understands that it was not of natural causes, but he still doesn't remember being raped and cursed.

And then it gets dumped into his head; the clear memory; the clear, much younger memory.

I think this makes his general lack of specific trauma over it much more understandable, because I can only think that it would feel alien. False. Perhaps as if it were a story he heard. Hisoka is not a victim sort of person, and I can see him dealing with the dissonance by simply rejecting it and treating it as if it were, say, a horror movie. Vivid and upsetting, but not his in the same way that his abuse at the hands of his family, and his empathy, are, because he's been processing them right along.

This is the only reason I can come up with for how he acts toward Muraki during King of Swords. Hisoka is a fighter; if he'd internalized the memory, he should have been at Muraki's throat.

Comments

[branchandroot]

*dryly* YnM just about mandates picking and choosing, if you want to wring any kind of consistency out of it. It's true, though, rape, and especially gratuitious rape, is one of my red flags in manga and anime. It's invariably a sign that the story is going to go places I won't like, and that the author has that hideously common Japanese take on sexuality and gender and violence that makes me cringe. Sometimes I can over-write it and revise canon in my head, but all too often not. The more you start noticing the pattern... well, the more you notice it.

I'm very tempted by the shiki story. Of course, I also have fic ADD in the worst way, these days, and who knows when I'll be working on what. *wry*