Eudaimonia said:
As to your example with her offering passive resistance against being assinged the role of the class representative I actually got the impression that she simly doesn't care, based on her last few lines to the snake god that day which imply that rather than being unable to do something against the class situation, it is just too much of a hassle for her to be bothered by, the hint she wanted the deity to take without her having to spell it out to him. Though I won't deny that your impretation with her being so insecure as a person that she sees any actions by her as futile from the get-go, thus resulting in her inaction, is valid as well.
I can see where are you coming from with the hint she wanted the snake god to get since it's obvious she haven't tried to fulfill her role, but I think the hint wasn't meant to indicate her raw disinterest in the matter, but it was more of a semi-polite way to tell the snake god to stop pestering her after he didn't get the message of Sengoku telling her he doesn't have to anything with the matter. She seems to be aware that both she and the teacher is at fault in this situation, and she tried to convience the snake god that there's no point of grilling the teacher when she's just as much of a part of the problem by not declining both roles (by saying "they weren't exactly forced me"). I can imagine she accepted the roles the same way she accepted the snake god's request ("it was an impossible request, but it was even more impossible to decline"), and while I think Sengoku can't be considered irresponsible by nature, it is however irresponsible to accept requests you know you're not qualified to fulfill, let alone keep on going and never letting the other party know that you can't fulfill their requests. This is where her passive, non ill-willed resistance comes into play, as well as your point about how she can be considered complacent, and how people failed to teach her how to properly cope with unpleasant matters: she got used to deal with these things by going with the flow and being other people's "chewtoy" by not defending herself or objecting at all (= saying "sorry", or just staying silent), hoping they'll leave her alone sooner once they're finished with what they wanted to say.
Sure, she possibly gets mistakes forgiven sooner than other people, can unintentionally "enchant" people and living like this is a convinient method of doing so, but even so, the concept of fighting back is essentially a foreign concept to her, and so is the mindset to fully grasp the effects and impressions other people might feel from her actions. All ranting aside, I still agree that her past experiences are much more of a problem here than her core personality, one could say she's too child-like and naive to see that her way of thinking can be viewed from angles that make her appear not as good-natured and/or neutral as she believes.
Eudaimonia said:
This was one of the instances where I think her insincerity showed (other times where her apologies to Koyomi and Shinobu). It is not the fact that she makes mistakes that is bothersome but her lack of remorse which ties in being unresponsible. Rather than fully grasping the extent of her actions she wants to get over the negative consequences of them as quickly as possible by pretending to be sorry and thus no taking the core message to heart.
Yeah, it seems to be true that any of these core messages can't make a point in her head, and I too get the impression this is because she's so afraid of people paying special attention to her that she just wants to sweep them under the rug and escape as soon as possible, with saying "sorry" or hiding behind her bangs being the default actions. Of course, the word "special" only means attention that is either malicious/questioning, or actively wants to help her, but the way she reacted to Shinobu's arguement makes it seem like that she views "special" attention as a burden, sort of like how she just wants to live in her own little, peaceful bubble where she doesn't want to offend or bother people, and where she doesn't want people to notice and question her. It's easier to notice this when she's trying to apologize or hide behind the bangs when people doubt her not ill-willed/weird intentions or make her want to do something she doesn't want to, but her reaction to Koyomi's and Shinobu's hospitality also indicates that she doesn't want to burden people, sort of like how Hanekawa never asked for help because she didn't wanted to take advantege of people.
If there is any difference in them, is that how they approach remorse: Hanekawa is much more concerned about her own guilt than what people might think of her, and while Sengoku isn't exactly unaware of remorse either, she seems to be more occupied with the thought of not knowing how to handle people, and to just skip to the point where people stop paying attention(= posing danger) to her, thus unintentionally blocking out the lessons she might learn otherwise.
This is why I mentioned the way she agreed to co-operate with the snake god: I'm fairly sure there's remorse in there, but she seems to be more driven by the intention to make the snake god go away without pissing him off, even though she shows signs of getting slowly, but timidly fed up with him. Which, to be fair, isn't a surprise when she has to search for something she doesn't have any info about while being pestered by a deity who can't keep his mouth shut, even if this deity appears to be playing it safe by being tolerant towards Sengoku's reluctancy.
Eudaimonia said:
It were indeed those conversations with Ougi and Shinobu which lead to my impression that Nadeko
is severly lacking self-awareness and prefers to live a life of blissful ignorance.
Saying "sorry" (or just staying silent) that frequently does have it's negative effects, in the meaning that it makes it harder for people to figure out what she wants to say or how she feels, and this of course can lead people to misunderstand her, or even treat her far differently than she is. I would go as far to say she just not ready to face reality where every action can influence how a person is judged, and she's certainly too insecure/not mature enough to face this fact when making her intention/opinion clear to an other person is already an ordeal to her, let alone refute a claim that is a personal insult in her eyes (notice the way her eyes snap at Shinobu when she laughs at her, and the somewhat irritated look she has when Shinobu starts grilling her).
That said, Shinobu still has a point considering Sengoku's naive and child-like nature is effectively the only thing that seperates her from someone who is deliberately insincere, and plays with people like they're musical instruments. Of course, she lying to Koyomi twists things around a little and a sense of guilt may have worked in her in that scene, but the way the scene played out, Sengoku seemed to be more concerned by Shinobu's raw attack on her person, rather than the possibility that she might have noticed the snake god, and this was her way to indirectly make Sengoku crack.
Eudaimonia said:
But I wholeheartedly agree, that it is too short-sighted to label her with just these negative traits without taking mitigating circumstances into account.
In fact I am thankful that you decided to look at her character from a different perspective as I think only the mix of both aspects really brings out the complexity of Nadeko's personality (who would have thought that I would say that about Nadeko at the beginning of this arc, haha)
Tell me about it: Otorimono wasn't as anticipated for me due to how Sengoku felt like the fifth wheel of the franchise who didn't received the same amount of polish as Bakemono's other four girls did, but I have to say, I wasn't expecting an improvement so large there will be an actual reason to have an actual, multi-angled discussion about her. :)
To be fair, Nekomono:Shiro already did a good job at concentrating on an established character and giving a different, deeper perspective on that character, and while Otorimono does a similarly good job so far, I think it deserves bonus credit for doing such a good work despite not having the luxury of using the character's previous appearences/arcs as a base to build upon (in all honesty, I think Sengoku's previous appearences are useless, lazy attempts at characterisation at best, especially compared to what Tsubasa Cat/Nekomono:Kuro did). |