Naruto legitimately has a problem with how it handles female characters. There aren't a lot that get the spotlight to begin with (which is honestly fair, it's a comic for teen boys who want to watch ninjas fighting) but those who are included are almost universally motivated by their feelings for a man, while the male characters all have unique backgrounds and motivations. The psychological depth on the boys tends to far outstrip the girls (even though the series, broadly speaking, isn't really that concerned with 'psychological depth'). There may be a few outliers (I dropped the series after Itachi revealed he was actually a double-agent the
whooooole time, piss off) but from what I recall this was almost universal among the female cast.
That said, Naruto also has a general problem with how it handles page economy and a
lot of its extended cast gets shafted. My boy Shikamaru gets all but forgotten in Shippuden, and I am to this day pissed off that they took Kabuto's really fascinating implications that he was doing his own maneuvering and just using his ties to Orochimaru to further his own aims and then Shippuden turns him into a man who is obsessed with literally
becoming Orochimaru. (Which I guess technically makes his motivation very much like the girls'; obsessed with another man to the end.)
Singling out the girls isn't necessarily without merit -- even the boys who enjoyed that comic will mention, uh, they kinda wanna see the cute girls kick ass too? -- but Naruto as a whole collapses into a lot of structural problems that I think just serve to exacerbate the issue. It's one of those things where people get increasingly frustrated with how the story was handled and suddenly things you were once willing to overlook get a lot harder to ignore.
Either way.
It's
incredibly stupid to imply that Naruto has somehow
harmed women. I have never seen
anybody imply that Naruto's handling of women has harmed real women. I know there's long been Discourse about how fictional objectification of women can cause psychological priming for the audience, but the two examples she chose between Harry Potter and Naruto... don't... objectify women? At all?!
To pivot a little but address the same question-- have Mik or Lily actually
read Harry Potter? I can actually sort of understand why you would think its treatment of its female character is lacking if you just watch the movies, where Hermione is the only 'real' female character and the extended cast being mostly reduced to a single, easily-digestible character trait (Lune is Weird! Cho is Clingy! Ginny is Barely There!) Those characters are much more complex and interesting in the books, but the movies spend their screen economy on other things and wind up shoving a lot of their character to the side.
Wow! CD-Call Read the Thread!
Congrats, AM!
Now imagine if Lily gets hyperfixated on this project and rops Into the Void because it stopped being fun, like she did with Iris and Kiera. And the Aliana Extended Universe. And Madhouse.
So what G was doing to c!Lily.
I also notice that Lily has a real fascination with brain damage these days. Iris' mutism was a result of a (somehow undiagnosed) brain tumor; Julie is believed to be mute because of brain damaege; now we have a 'brain growth' that causes two people to share thoughts and synchronize.
There's something kind of interesting about actually exploring this from the perspective of characters who have never known any different and digging in to how tragic this actually is. People hurt themselves all the time, physically and psychologically, because they can't disentangle themselves emotionally from what's hurting them. I could go into addiction, that's the obvious one, but the more appropriate analogy would be abusive relationships-- where somebody from the outside can see how harmful a relationship is, how it's rotting a person from the inside, but the person
in the abusive relationship is unable to look at their situation objectively and becomes defensive or even aggressive when somebody points out how they're being mistreated. "It's for my own good! He's just protecting me! She loves me too much to hurt me!"
Of course, Lily, abuser as she is, thinks this is actually the best possible thing to just turn somebody into another copy of you.
Maybe
this is why she likes Kingdom Hearts.
That said, while I think that's an interesting premise, something occurred to me about Lily's work, generally-- it's always a premise. 'Two space-siblings adopt a space-child in spce"; "A mute girl is a highly gifted child psychiatrist"; "Space Elves (Also in Space)"; "The Avatar is over-attached to her sister"; "Two siblings become one person". These can be fine starting points, conceptually, but notice something vital.
None of them are a
plot.
None of them even make gestures toward
being a plot.
There are plots to be told based on all of these. But none of them actually provides one, and when it comes time for Lily to write, you can see that she has nothing. She thinks of individual scenes she wants to write, but there's no connective tissue. Even Into the Void is mostly disconnected scenes only barely held together, and it oftentimes forgets its own premise (Lev and Kestri adopting Julie). Even 'gather components for the water engine' is only relevant to maybe two chapters (with the Pomia and NPO foremans); every other stop is just a basic resupply.
I imagine most people do start with a premise before they necessarily start with a plot, which is totally fair. "What would happen if X?" But Lily seems functionally incapable of actually move past the question and into the answer. This thing about the two siblings merging into a singular consciousness would be interesting for a short story or, at best, a novella, but based on that very thin premise I don't think you could get a fully, novel-length work out of it. At least, not a decent one. Lily would just write a bunch of scenes of the two being synchronized while their parents fret over the implications or their friends... who am I kidding they wouldn't have any bonds beyond each other.
(Honestly really interesting character concept-- you get two people who have always been able to read each other's minds and so form a deeply co-dependent bond not just because they blur into each other, but because they are
terrified of talking to other people because they
can't read their minds. They don't know how human beings are supposed to communicate if you aren't constantly aware of the other person's thoughts and intentions. I'm 100% sure there's already a sci-fi story that incorporates aliens that function like this but it's still a really cool idea.)
But Lily has already decided that they're totally happy with this. She isn't interested in examining the real implications, how this destroys somebody, the ethical burden on outsiders who want to preserve two people versus the singular person who is being 'born' between them, no. It's just two siblings who get to be super in-synch and it's basically a comedy where the only joke is 'other people are concerned about us, how irrational!' Probably a lot of melodrama about psychiatrists or evil doctors without having the ball to actually turn this into a thriller. "They see specialists" yeah I'm sure the fucking
government wouldn't be fascinated with acquiring them and studying them to try and replicate this phenomenon for spy work or something.
Is she implying this takes place in the Nebula? I guess that actually obviates literally any stakes or consequences this could have.
ETA: Also it would be
inherently more fascinating if this happened two people from radically different families, like that's
actually a real foundation for a plot. Having siblings who are in synch with each other doesn't feel like it's a huge jump from two siblings who are close to each other. A lot of stories about twins usually treat them as one blended unit already, and even imply some low-level psychic or soul connection.
My routine frustration with Lily as a writer (as opposed to a human being) is that she introduces ideas that could actually be really cool and then approaches them from the most milquetoast, boring direction possible.
Holy shit, how do you hate parents this much? If Lily's mom was fine, why rebel so much? Again, they treat Lily decently, but not perfect.
No parent is perfect. And any parent that's perfect is going to make their child upset with them at some point, unless the child is also perfect. And no child is perfect.
But Lily is a self-centered narcissist who never grew out of the "Screw you, DAD!" mindset. She's never had real responsibility, even for herself. She lives in government subsidized housing, making most of her money off donations provided by other people who live off government subsidies, and if that falls through her dad has made it clear he's willing to support her. I dono't think she's even owned a
pet. She has no idea what it is to take care of herself, let alone somebody else who's reliant on you for their very life.
But parents are abusive and kids can just ignore them and it's not a problem because twelve year olds should be allowed to decide if they want gender reassignment surgery and not doing so is abusive.
at least he got to shit talk Sasuke to his face.
