Following the June 26th, 2015 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States of America to federally legalize marriage between same sex couples, the Western otaku-net started to ruminate about the ability to marry a waifu.
For the uninitiated, a waifu is a fictional character someone has a one sided relationship with. A person's waifu is who they would like to be with if physically possible, their fantasy, derived from a fictitious character they feel attached/attracted to.
So lets break this down a bit and desconstruct the reasoning behind there never being a chance to have a legally sanctioned and binding marriage/partnership with a fictional creation.
Perhaps the most important aspect is that one part of the partnership is not recognized them as being a living being. No mater how much effort is established into trying to change that fact, Hatsune Miku is not and will never be real.* Logically and for all sorts of other less than complete reasons, it makes no sense to allow someone to marry something incorporeal. Doing so would open up a lot of issues and conflicts not even related to the waifu issue. Pointless and unnecessary legal issues would arise if someone had the ability to wed themselves to a concept. Hi, have you met my wife, Peanut Butter Oreo.
That segues into the next bullet point. Ownership rights. Fictional characters are the intellectual property of their owners or rights holders. Think of them as the angry shotgun wielding father. Odds are, he's going to put a shell full of buckshot in your ass before letting you defile his precious flower. What would legally binding yourself to a fiction construct ultimately mean in the legal sense. In a patriarchal sense it would give the husband control over the 'life' of the waifu. Giving that person legal abilities to control the waifu. The level of control would vary between societies. Even in more progressive environments certain legal rights would be controlled by the spouse of a waifu. These rights could very well conflict with the property right holders of the character. A waifu spouse could potentially block the use of the character by the property rights holder which would endanger the ability of their property rights holder to monetize its creation.
Next up is what to do about who gets to marry which fictional character. Most industrialized nations legally prohibit polygamy. If a fictional character can be married to a living person that would mean said fictional character would be prohibited from marrying another living person. As if there needed to be another reason for people to viciously attack others on the internet. That being said, a lot of guys in Japan would get married pretty damn quick if they felt they had to snatch up their waifu before someone in a foreign country did. If an American otaku married a waifu from a series that was not commercially available in America could that be used as evidence of piracy? Now, a smart rights holder for a particularly popular character would sell off lottery tickets for everyone who wants to get the right to marry said character. Marketing gold!!
To prevent any issues the property rights holder(s) could issue a marriage contract between two fictional characters they control. The possibility of this happening would set up an entirely new set of problems related to allowing various incorporeal concepts to be legally bound to each other representing a real marriage. I don't even want to fathom what kind of problems the possibility of this happening would create. Plus, having to do this to prevent some hikikomori from co-opting your creations legal rights would ruin the 'surprise' ending to almost every romance manga/anime out there.
If someone could marry a fictional character what would that mean for that character in the continuation of their story? If someone ended up making Otanashi Kyoko their legal wife half way through the manga's initial run what would that mean for Godai Yusaku and the plot of the manga? Would Takahashi have had to revise the manga to show Godai not marrying Kyoko? If not, could the husband pursue legal avenues to prevent Kyoko and Godai from getting married in the manga? If someone married a character from a galge would the galge have to be revised to eliminate that character or change the ability of the player to fully court her?
Most importantly, being able to legally wed a fictional character would make a sham out of the institution of marriage. It would make the struggle and legacy of marriage equality a joke. Desiring to legally bind oneself to a fictional character that happens to attract a persons interest for the time defiles what marriage should represent. Reciprocal love and support between two consenting adults being recognized by a governing body providing additional sanctification and rights for that bond. People have fought and died to be able to marry the person they love. Lets admit it, wanting to wed yourself to a passing infatuation is as pointless as Rush Limbaugh's marriage record. Its not going to last long and when it does dissipate the over reaction of that persons deep fandom will become hollow and pointless. Lets admit it, waifu are a dime a dozen and over the course of an otaku's life they will have gone through them like cup noodles.
*There is one way were the initial bullet point can be made moot, through the development of advanced AI technology. If a fictional character is set up as an AI that can make its own decisions it could possibly want to marry someone. But, that construct would have to be willing to participate in the union. Though, if it is a construct owned by a business that still causes issues with many of the other points. If someone created their own AI and wanted to marry it then sure...I guess there's a case there in allowing that to happen. But, I don't think many people who have a waifu created said waifu in the first place, so this is probably a really rare thing. In the future, I am sure there will be a push for people to be wed to androids and AI and you know what, fuck it! Let it be!! That would demand much more contemplation and discussion, particularly when recognizing artificial constructs as individuals with individual rights, which should really be set in place beforehand. If you want to read a book about a human desiring to marry an AI pick up Idoru by William Gibson.
Until AI exist to the point where we agree as a species to recognize them as individuals with rights (we really need to do this sooner than later) don't try to demand the right to marry one of the characters from PreCure anytime soon. Also...how do you determine the constructs age when it comes to social development and the legality of what age someone can wed? Sure, that character may be 300 years old according to the story but it was first put to concept 4 years ago.
For the uninitiated, a waifu is a fictional character someone has a one sided relationship with. A person's waifu is who they would like to be with if physically possible, their fantasy, derived from a fictitious character they feel attached/attracted to.
So lets break this down a bit and desconstruct the reasoning behind there never being a chance to have a legally sanctioned and binding marriage/partnership with a fictional creation.
Perhaps the most important aspect is that one part of the partnership is not recognized them as being a living being. No mater how much effort is established into trying to change that fact, Hatsune Miku is not and will never be real.* Logically and for all sorts of other less than complete reasons, it makes no sense to allow someone to marry something incorporeal. Doing so would open up a lot of issues and conflicts not even related to the waifu issue. Pointless and unnecessary legal issues would arise if someone had the ability to wed themselves to a concept. Hi, have you met my wife, Peanut Butter Oreo.
That segues into the next bullet point. Ownership rights. Fictional characters are the intellectual property of their owners or rights holders. Think of them as the angry shotgun wielding father. Odds are, he's going to put a shell full of buckshot in your ass before letting you defile his precious flower. What would legally binding yourself to a fiction construct ultimately mean in the legal sense. In a patriarchal sense it would give the husband control over the 'life' of the waifu. Giving that person legal abilities to control the waifu. The level of control would vary between societies. Even in more progressive environments certain legal rights would be controlled by the spouse of a waifu. These rights could very well conflict with the property right holders of the character. A waifu spouse could potentially block the use of the character by the property rights holder which would endanger the ability of their property rights holder to monetize its creation.
Next up is what to do about who gets to marry which fictional character. Most industrialized nations legally prohibit polygamy. If a fictional character can be married to a living person that would mean said fictional character would be prohibited from marrying another living person. As if there needed to be another reason for people to viciously attack others on the internet. That being said, a lot of guys in Japan would get married pretty damn quick if they felt they had to snatch up their waifu before someone in a foreign country did. If an American otaku married a waifu from a series that was not commercially available in America could that be used as evidence of piracy? Now, a smart rights holder for a particularly popular character would sell off lottery tickets for everyone who wants to get the right to marry said character. Marketing gold!!
To prevent any issues the property rights holder(s) could issue a marriage contract between two fictional characters they control. The possibility of this happening would set up an entirely new set of problems related to allowing various incorporeal concepts to be legally bound to each other representing a real marriage. I don't even want to fathom what kind of problems the possibility of this happening would create. Plus, having to do this to prevent some hikikomori from co-opting your creations legal rights would ruin the 'surprise' ending to almost every romance manga/anime out there.
If someone could marry a fictional character what would that mean for that character in the continuation of their story? If someone ended up making Otanashi Kyoko their legal wife half way through the manga's initial run what would that mean for Godai Yusaku and the plot of the manga? Would Takahashi have had to revise the manga to show Godai not marrying Kyoko? If not, could the husband pursue legal avenues to prevent Kyoko and Godai from getting married in the manga? If someone married a character from a galge would the galge have to be revised to eliminate that character or change the ability of the player to fully court her?
Most importantly, being able to legally wed a fictional character would make a sham out of the institution of marriage. It would make the struggle and legacy of marriage equality a joke. Desiring to legally bind oneself to a fictional character that happens to attract a persons interest for the time defiles what marriage should represent. Reciprocal love and support between two consenting adults being recognized by a governing body providing additional sanctification and rights for that bond. People have fought and died to be able to marry the person they love. Lets admit it, wanting to wed yourself to a passing infatuation is as pointless as Rush Limbaugh's marriage record. Its not going to last long and when it does dissipate the over reaction of that persons deep fandom will become hollow and pointless. Lets admit it, waifu are a dime a dozen and over the course of an otaku's life they will have gone through them like cup noodles.
*There is one way were the initial bullet point can be made moot, through the development of advanced AI technology. If a fictional character is set up as an AI that can make its own decisions it could possibly want to marry someone. But, that construct would have to be willing to participate in the union. Though, if it is a construct owned by a business that still causes issues with many of the other points. If someone created their own AI and wanted to marry it then sure...I guess there's a case there in allowing that to happen. But, I don't think many people who have a waifu created said waifu in the first place, so this is probably a really rare thing. In the future, I am sure there will be a push for people to be wed to androids and AI and you know what, fuck it! Let it be!! That would demand much more contemplation and discussion, particularly when recognizing artificial constructs as individuals with individual rights, which should really be set in place beforehand. If you want to read a book about a human desiring to marry an AI pick up Idoru by William Gibson.
Until AI exist to the point where we agree as a species to recognize them as individuals with rights (we really need to do this sooner than later) don't try to demand the right to marry one of the characters from PreCure anytime soon. Also...how do you determine the constructs age when it comes to social development and the legality of what age someone can wed? Sure, that character may be 300 years old according to the story but it was first put to concept 4 years ago.
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