Yeah, in the end, that was kind of my conclusion too. Initially I felt pretty uncomfortable with the character as she was written, but I got over it. It's not the kind of story that goes into lots of detail about every little event, so it would have been hard to find a way to fit in all sorts of little characterization details to show who she was outside of the PPD... I don't really see how to do that, without either 1) making the story significantly longer, thus completely changing the nature of how its told, or 2) changing the entire thrust and point of the story, which... I can't see why she'd want to do that.

The POV of that fic isn't neutral anyway... we're only getting Touya's side to begin with, and so in the end I realized that if we are getting a limited and not entirely fair assessment of Natsuke as a person, that is kind of the point. Touya is definitely not the most reliable narrator, and he probably was never primed to give his wife a real shot from the very beginning, since he was in love with someone else before he even met her, and was in denial.


(also, when I say that I'm not especially objective about these kinds of things, mostly I meant that I've had personal experience being the fallback girl, the replacement woman for a man who refuses to admit he's gay... so it bothers me to see a woman placed in that role, but the reality is that it happens, and it sucks, and so the marginalization of the female character also fits that particular issue... and I'm glad the author decided to tackle it, even though it makes me uncomfortable to read about it sometimes.)