munghoeng:

I’ve only recently caught up on tgre and have not been really
active/in the trenches of the tumblr tgre community, but I do want to address
the Arima/Akira hate in relation to Haise. I am in no way justifying fans’
belligerent behavior, rather just giving my own personal reason for not liking
Arima/Akira in the “surrogate parental” positions they take in
Haise’s life.

Some people have justified
their lying to Haise about who he was before because he had a “terrible,
tragic” life before and who would want to remember that, right? Well,
equally frightening is a void. Before I actually read tgre (I was just
following the spoilers), I saw an animated picture by yanderechild where there
was a decapitated body holding Kaneki and Haise’s heads. The gif below it had
the dialogue bubbles saying, “Who am I?” and “Does it
matter?” The caption was, “it’s a different type of sad.”

And despite loving the series and all its characters, I have
never really identified with any of them. But looking at that post really hit
home and hurt in an indescribable way. And I when I saw manga caps of Haise
yelling at Akira and saying things like “I don’t even know my own parents…Where
did I even come from…? Who am I?”, I identified with that pain so deeply.

As an adoptee, coming into existence as no one, not having the
biological privilege of knowing exactly who
you are and where you came from is
a trauma. It really does feel as if you died once before and the person you are
now is only alive and possible because of that death. And you can’t help but
mourn that death and that unknowable person left behind. Names, birth dates,
and little, inconsequential things like that don’t matter until you don’t
actually have real ones.

Unfortunately, the adoption industry was built on a lot of shady
practices and imperialism. I know in terms of Korean adoption, a lot of Korean
mothers were manipulated into giving up their children so they could have “a
better life,” and then denied records and communication when they wanted to get
in contact with their children. As far as I know in the US, adoptees aren’t
allowed access to their adoption files without parental consent until they’re
18. And many Korean adoptees who have tried to find information, files, and
contact information of their birth families are denied and frustrated when met
with a lot of bureaucracy.

How is this related? 

Akira and Arima are withholding information from Haise and actively lying to him about it. They completely fabricated a new
identity for him and Haise knows that. There’s an uncomfortable power dynamic in this whole thing, since Akira and Arima are his superiors and “surrogate parental figures.” Akira was specifically given orders to act as a motherly figure for Haise as leverage/in order to keep him under control. Even when pleading with Akira in chpt.
45, Haise is only met with resistance then a weak attempt at consolation (“You’re
yourself… Names are [not important]). Expect names are important – taking away
someone’s identity is wrong. People should have the basic right to know about
themselves. And I don’t care how “nice” Akira and Arima are to Haise or if they
genuinely care for him because the bottom line is: withholding information and lying about something like that is emotionally
abusive and manipulative.