Shimanami Tasogare Chapter 10 Discussion

YTk said:
After reading this chapter I think I might have a grasp of what happened with Misora in chapter 9.

So a couple of factors probably happened to cause Misora to lash out like that. I'm going to list them out because I don't think I can articulate them in prose.
Firstly just a recap:
- So Misora in chapter 8 or 9 has been questioning their gender for a while.
- All Misora knows about their gender is that they are happy when presenting female, and that they don't want to go through male puberty. But they are unsure if that makes them a 'girl' or not.
- While Misora has interacted with the people inside the lounge in a female presentation, they have not done so in public.
- So what Tasuku did by asking them to come with him to the fireworks festival is essentially giving them the opportunity to present female in public and see if that is affirming of their gender.

Before I talk about the remaining, there's a little detour. While what Tasuku did was actually a good thing trying to help Misora explore their gender. But exploration a bit paradoxical when it comes to trans people. Because while doing things to confirm one's gender can make that person more sure of themselves, it can also easily trigger heavy dysphoria when external factors are involved. These triggers can be a lot of things. In Misora's case, it seems to be multiple things from what I'm seeing in this chapter:
1. Envy for their sisters feminity and also being deprived of a childhood as a girl
2. Angst over knowing that despite everybody saying they look cute as a girl, with puberty coming soon their body will change in a way that they don't want it to.

Anyway, getting back on track now. So just as Misora was getting somewhere with figuring themselves out ("I think, I wanted to do stuff like this" meaning just be a regular girl), they get groped and that throw everything off balance. Top this off with them running into Misora's beautiful sisters etc. Misora in a vunerable state, then turns to Tasuku for reassurance and he throws in the worse phrase he could've said in that situation. That is a recipe for a disaster.

The purge in this chapter (Misora giving all the clothes back to the lounge) is of huge significance. It's pretty much Misora going completely into denial and trying to block everything out. D:

I probably didn't cover even half of what was going on, and you totally beat me to starting this discussion Accelerity.

Edit: Whoa whoa whoa, just accidentally stumbled across the discussions on Dynasty Scans, and some of the theories suggest that Misora might be non-binary and maybe even ace? As they look up to Anonymous. This is entirely possible because the mangaka is ace and nb. Although I guess it is all still conjecture at this point, and nothing will be concrete until more chapters come out.