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nohrianseneschal · 6 months

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Paradise Kiss: A Lesson on Dreams and Being Happy (heavy spoilers) Part 1

Thanks to this totally random tweet about anime endings, I'm reminded of an old shoujo manga flame of mine from the early 2000s: Paradise Kiss, nicknamed ParaKiss by its mangaka and fans. In stereotypical Ai Yazawa fashion (baddum tss), this manga revolves around a hopelessly flawed yet peak relatable girl undergoing the trials and tribulations of self-discovery. It just so happens that the setting takes place in a generic, average-sized town in Japan, and it just so happens that this town is home to an eclectic ensemble cast of aspiring fashionistas and designers. And it also just so happens that this cast is at a crossroads: their 3rd year in high school. Yukari was initially on the conventional path of graduating with top marks and entering into a prestigious university. By the time we get to the 2nd chapter of the manga, we see Yukari cast all her mother's dreams aside to become a model in the cutthroat fashion industry.

We begin with our protagonist Yukari, who is enrolled in an elite private high school. She spends her days studying for college entrance exams, but early on, we discover that her hard work is very extrinsically motivated. Specifically, her mother has had an iron-clad grip on her life, and if not for a chance encounter on the street, Yukari would've continued on in this way. Living without living. Doing things that don't make her happy or give her any meaning -- a shell for others' aspirations and desires.

As I said, a chance encounter brings her to the hole-in-the-wall atelier, which was an antique bar rennovated into an... well, atelier for fashionistas attending the local art school. Yukari has been scouted by one of the students to model for their upcoming fashion show in the school's Culture Festival. Although she vehemently opposes the idea at first, Yukari decides to model for them, after witnessing firsthand the extent of their conviction and earnestness of their efforts.

I am deliberately downplaying George's role in here, because I do think future readers should get to know George (the manga's romantic lead and 90s toxic boy) at their own pace and through Yukari's perspective. Describing him would remove some of the magic that is necessary to experience through Yukari's besotted eyes, and Yazawa does a great job staging the cognitive dissonance Yukari herself feels when she's around George. What you should know right away is that George is the de facto leader of the Atelier group and designer behind the label Paradise Kiss. It is his word that becomes the final voice in asking Yukari to model, and it is his intoxicating presence that drives her to join them.

All this to say, that there's a reason -- I think -- that ParaKiss, out of many other Shoujo or even Shounen romances of the 2000s, is still the only one being reprinted. Its 20th-anniversary edition was reprinted back in 2019. In the wake of Nana's permanent hiatus (Yazawa's more popular manga), ParaKiss's fandom is alive and well. More and more people are discovering it, thanks to the reductively short anime adaptation making its way to streaming services. The promise of a (very satisfying) conclusion provides a healing balm of sorts for deluded Nana fans, and the story in its entirety holds its own as a romance masterpiece. The art style, the fashion, the romance, and the writing are all top scorers, but something about ParaKiss remains startlingly unique despite more than 20 years passing us by. Very few shoujo manga dare to try what Yazawa has done with this story, and very few shoujo manga do it so seamlessly -- devoid of the mandatory witticisms and marvelizations so common in today's media. ParaKiss is honest. Brutally honest. Yukari's inner monologues and expressions anticipate what the audience is thinking, not because she's so clever but because we can all relate to her. We've all made that mistake we can't help making. We've all watched ourselves undergo the consequences of our stupid actions, with nothing but self-pity to help us weather the storm. And all of us have known the beauty of believing the world is full of limitless possibilities, and we've tasted the bittersweet revelation that limitations do exist, and that's okay.

In other words, you don't have to be an intellect to enjoy and feel the takeaways of ParaKiss. The mangaka isn't trying to wink and nudge you into believing you're a smart consumer, because Yukari's story (or perhaps, Yukari herself) speaks of a hurt deeper than narrative conflict. Her hurt comes from one's first love, whatever or whoever it may be. First love isn't always romance (although it's a huge part of Yukari's story in ParaKiss). First love is the feeling that everything is new and ripe for discovery. First love is the disappointment that this period of discovery is finite, but you're so much stronger and better for having gone through it, brief as it may be. That is Paradise for Yukari: first love as the Edenic coming-of-age journey she needed to become who she is meant to be.

Many fans and critics agree that Paradise Kiss is a story about one's first love, and how you can have an impactful romance without it ending into a happily ever after. Of course I agree with this take. George is the 2nd protagonist, no question. His presence, actions, and personality catalyze the journey of self-discovery that Yukari finds in her last year of high school.

That said, I don't think enough attention has been paid to the other first love Yukari goes through: the world of fashion. Indeed, the story begins and ends with Yukari's time in the fashion world - her first thrills of modeling and her final, bittersweet acceptance of its inevitable end. This part of the story is so underhanded yet profoundly philosophical, I'm surprised discussions of fashion have become afterthoughts in any serious commentary of ParaKiss.

It's worth noting that Yukari doesn't exactly have insecurities directly related to her physical appearance. It's probably the most unrelatable part of her. When people comment on her beauty, she doesn't deny it, but she doesn't affirm it. We're meant to see and understand Yukari's natural beauty as a fact of her life, like the color of her hair or her height. She even brags about being able to stay skinny no matter how much she eats, which is the closest I came to hating a shoujo protagonist to be honest. Rather, her feelings of self-inadequacy stem from her immaturity, lack of style, and overall lack of self-confidence. In other words, when she starts the story believing her crush on classmate Tokumori is hopeless, she reasons, "Tokumori won't go for girls like me." Yukari doesn't mean she's too ugly for him. She means she's too inferior; too stupid; too 'uncool' for someone she perceives as the ideal. Even when she swiftly moves on to George and sets her sights on him, Yukari's feelings of worthlessness influence her behavior and decisions in the relationship, ultimately affecting how George himself treats her.

If Yukari's psyche sounds incoherent, it is and it isn't. It's realistically incoherent. Women are socially conditioned to find themselves inadequate in some way, and that self-perception is ultimately dictated by how men receive and project it back. This is the genius of ParaKiss. Whether or not you relate, this facet of Yukari's personality is an apt observation on what it means to be a woman as a high schooler, and I don't think it's an accident that prior to meeting the ParaKiss fashion team, Yukari's self-worth came entirely from her mother. For Yukari, growing up and leaving the nest means learning your place in the world in relation to men, and perhaps that's why Yukari's first love is riddled with so much pain, beauty, and joy.

In this cut-out of a panel, Yukari finally asks herself the question that must be in the fore of everyone's minds: 'What am I to George?' What is she to the man she considers the most important to her? What are we in relation to men? It takes Yukari 6 months to figure out that she doesn't need George to answer the first part of that question. By the time the series ends, Yukari is able to ask the same question without George.

These romantic pitfalls and triumphs become more meaningful when you realize this occurs in the context of breaking out into the fashion industry. Similar to Eve in Milton's Paradise Lost, Yukari looks at a mirror and discovers herself. She falls in love with that image. She falls in love with what fashion (not George!) reflects back at her -- a confident, cool woman who can don all sorts of masks and clothes.

When she asks a veteran model for advice on how to walk the runway, the model cryptically replies, "Just tell yourself you're the most beautiful woman in the world." This is a hurdle for the likes of Yukari, whose low self-esteem has prevented her from truly being alive prior to the events of the story. When she does walk down that runway, fully confident and basking in the crowd's reaction to her beauty, Yukari finally understands what it means. Telling yourself you're the most beautiful woman in the world is akin to believing yourself a woman; akin to believing yourself a woman worth existing and hogging the spotlight, without a man to justify it. Yukari might have been wearing clothes that George designed, but one can argue that the dress would not exist without Yukari. Indeed, he designed it with her face and body in mind. Yukari herself inspires the art George believes he's creating, and Yukari herself embodies and imparts the meaning of that art for the audience when she walks down the runway.

Thanks to the fashion show and Yukari's success, George himself realizes he cannot design for ready-to-wear clothing lines. Yukari too discovers that modeling isn't something she can just do. It's something she can work hard at, succeed, fail, and still enjoy. Unlike the grind of studying endlessly for exams she'll never pass, Yukari finds fulfillment in trying and failing in the fashion industry, and this self-realization lets her redefine what it means to succeed and fail, as we all come to understand by the end of the manga.

Given that Ai Yazawa studied fashion, it's no surprise that clothing, design, and the industry's connections are all important for Yukari's coming-of-age. Modeling and wearing George's clothes aren't all butterflies and roses. As we later see by the end of the manga, fashion leaves Yukari feeling dehumanized at times, which Yukari outright states in an inner monologue by calling herself a 'doll.' The liberating potential of modeling becomes a prison, in the right context. When another woman -- particularly one who rejects modeling or being a man's muse and instead aims to be a designer herself -- enters George's life, Yukari feels helpless. The autonomy she gained by modeling bites back in a mocking display of her own shallow disregard for other women's agency. Indeed, she acts vile toward Kaori (the aspiring designer in question), solely because she's threatened by how George sees her as an equal. The potential of self-fulfillment comes crashing down when the implication here is that, as his muse and model, Yukari will never be his equal.

I'm going to take a second and point out how brilliant this brief love triangle is on the part of Ai Yazawa. We are so used to shoujo protagonists who are sweet, understanding, and unfailingly good. Yukari is a surprise, to say the least. She's not afraid to be mean and flaunt her beauty to intimidate her competition, and at the same time, she's not afraid to own up to her faults and wallow in self-pity when humbled. Although George is the intermediary in the love triangle, you can also see how the fashion industry itself pits women against each other. Yukari can't measure up to Kaori, the talented and mature designer with true compassion for her peers and classmates. The culture festival led Yukari to believe that she, as their model, takes center stage, but with the show over, her status as model reduces to her one of the many cogs that prop up designers' creativity and will. If God is the designer in this paradise, then Eve is just a shell of and for his designs, just as Yukari recedes to a doll when George no longer respects her. Life, it seems, is difficult for a fashion model who seeks to affirm her existence and purpose in a world that devalues such traits in the first place.

Spoilers: George and Yukari's relationship lasts only 6 months, but Yukari's relationship with fashion lasts much longer: 10 years. In the manga's epilogue, Yukari is nearing retirement, and she mentions 'plateauing' in her career as a model. Although as a teenager she aspired to be a world class super model, her work only takes her to other cities in Japan, and she is content to end less with a bang and more like a firm sense of dignity and pride at her work.

It's also no shocker that, rather than confirm her retirement, the manga ends with an announcement of her engagement and imminent marriage to her Tokumori, her high school crush and classmate. The last panels mock the sense that first loves are more powerful than the present love they experience (which is so amazing and Part 2 will be about that), and while these lighthearted panels tell us it's a joke, you can easily see how those words apply to Yukari's love affair with fashion.

Her crush and first love spur her to 10 years of a successful career. Perhaps she never realized her ambitions of modeling in the West, but she nevertheless finds and declares herself successful. This is what first love is. You might start out believing it needs to be 'happily ever after,' but you can end it and grow and realize that 'remembered ever after' is just as good, for the role it had in your life and your growth.

Yukari isn't just telling us the story of her first love with George. She's also telling us the story of how she fell in love with herself through fashion, and how her job as a model helped her live the many lives she otherwise would've never experienced if she had stayed on her mother's preplanned course.

Fashion isn't just about the clothes, the romance, or the glamorous lifestyles. Fashion is looking back and basking in being looked at. Fashion is making meaning out of how others perceive you, and fashion can be a cruel reminder that those meanings are already preordained and predetermined. Yukari doesn't necessarily fight against that. She embraces it all and learns from it.

I'm going to stop here, because I don't think an essay about ParaKiss and first love is complete without talking about George's own implied ending and Tokumori's constant presence in the beginning, middle, and end of Yukari's story. There's still so much to say, so I'll save it for Part 2. For now, let me conclude with the argument that Paradise Kiss is so unique in so many ways. It takes on the typical rhythms and beats of a shoujo manga, but it also embraces the flaws, ugliness, and messiness of love as it manifests in romance and fashion. You can't appreciate and love ParaKiss without understanding how Yazawa carefully crafts and packages a coming-of-age story into a seemingly typical love story. To use the jargon of the trade, we come into ParaKiss believing the firm and distinct boundary separating haute couture from ready-to-wear. Fashion is both, and to fall in love with it is beautiful.

#paradise kiss #Ai Yazawa #lia rambles #meta #ParaKiss

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kittyunzzn · 4 months

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i want two boyfriends so i can dress them like twins

#lia rambles

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arthurmorganwateringhole · 1 year

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I'm genuinely curious but why do you care if people headcanon that Arthur is himbo? I'm not trying to start a fight, sincerely. I'm coming from the perspective that we should let people have their headcanons, y'know?

Yeah, I get that! I guess, to answer this question, I have to talk about my philosophy (if you can call it that) when it comes to media consumption and my critical takes on fandom culture writ large. So if you have time, buckle up!

I should point out that I both don't care and care very much about people's hc's when it comes to my favorite characters. I don't care, in that I'm not going to get upset or get my panties in a wad if you headcanon something that is easily proven to be inaccurate wrt the canon. Like, if you want to headcanon Arthur is bad at reading, go for it. Lol, I'm not going to be upset or go out of my way to stop you.

However, I care enough to point out when this is inaccurate, especially when it enters into my sphere of fandom interactions. Now, this is where I get into trouble? A lot of people feel when I point out something is wrong or inaccurate, that I'm invalidating them or censoring them? Lol, like it's okay to be wrong/inaccurate. It's not the end of the world! If you choose to adjust your headcanons so that it's more canon compliant/accurate, then good for you. If you choose not to, also good for you! I promise, Lia isn't going to come after you :)

That said, in general, people need to be more open-minded if they're 'corrected.' Like I said, it's not the end of the world. Take the note and move on with your life.

Now, let's get to the larger, heftier part of this question. This need fandom has to transform their favorite man into a himbo (when he isn't) is a projection issue to me? Like, the unspoken assumption here is that it's safe and unproblematic to like himbos. Force this character into the himbo mold, and you can stan unproblematically! A couple of issues here:

As a Marxist, I should point out that there is no such thing as ethical consumption. It's fool's gold, and you're better off abandoning this all-or-nothing way of thinking and accept that life has its compromises WHILE still trying to work on yourself and your habits

Flanderization often leads to more problematic representation, as it erases the nuance that went into the writing of Arthur. He is a very complex dude. A lot of his sense of humor is subtle and off-the-cuff. Many people mistake it for genuine stupidity, and that's just... unfair? Like my boy did not just whip out witty repartee that belittles the presumptuous upper class of America for you to dismiss it as stupidity.

Now, as for himboism itself...

Okay, I love himbos. Kronk from Emperor's New Groove is a great and lovable example of a himbo? Big beefy dude with a big beefy heart but of very little brain UNLESS it involves his favorite pastime: home-making and cooking. Himbos aren't necessarily dumb, btw, they're just not considered conventionally intelligent (the way Yzma is). The charm of the himbo is that their kindness overpowers our traditional valuations of intelligence, and it reminds us that emotional intelligence (which, stereotypically is not recognized in cis men) is worth appreciating.

The problem here is that Arthur Morgan is both emotionally and intellectually intelligent. To overemphasize the former at the expense of the latter makes you miss a lot of his more complicated and unsavory personality traits?

For instance, one of the MAIN character traits (recognizable anywhere) of a himbo is that a himbo would never say a nasty word to ALL women. Now, don't get me wrong, Arthur is indeed a feminist who respects women, but a himbo would not be caught dead saying this line (credit to @papaue00 for reminding me it exists):

It's worth listening to how Roger Clark deliver those lines. Arthur speaks with malice here :)

Now, the point isn't, "Arthur is sexist! Cancel him!" Because that is NOT true. He's not sexist. Rather, he has moments where he gives in to petty malice? And he goes out of his way to demean her by bringing up sex work (i.e. she isn't a lady so she doesn't deserve his respect) to get back at the embarrassment and irritation he feels given the situation.

If you insist on him being a himbo and read him as only himbo, you miss out on his flaws. His flaws are key to understanding why he is the way he is; why he is perfectly capable of making his own choices and making the wrong ones. An unintended bias people have of Arthur as himbo (and therefore wholesome and unproblematic) is that they end up blaming other characters for his decisions. A famous example is Mary's missions. The fandom writ large tends to blame her for stringing Arthur alone, solely because he uses the phrase, 'play me like a fiddle' in his journal. Rather than reading that phrase as self-deprecatory (he's poking fun at himself while also expressing a vulnerable side of him that still loves her), they take that to mean she's manipulating poor helpless Arthur who is totally unaware of what she's doing to him.

Another example, someone wrongly attributed Arthur's pedantic interests to Dutch in one of my reblogs. Dutch and Hosea may have taught the boys how to read, but Dutch has no interest in botany. A quick conversation overhead between him and Lenny shows that his intellectual pursuits are actually just grandstanding and peacocking. He doesn't know and understand wtf he's talking about. Not once does Dutch even talk about botany. Arthur, though? Loves drawing plants. Can identify them. And he has a book of it by his bedside. Like, reading him as 'an idiot' sincerely (and not with a hint of irony, as Arthur does) misattributes his strengths and weaknesses to others, and that's just... unfair to the writers who WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY TO WRITE THOSE LINES OF EMULATED 19TH-CENTURY SCIENTIFIC PROSE!!! Like, people worked hard to characterize him environmentally. Don't let their efforts be in vain!

Do you see why I care a little bit if people mischaracterize him? It's like, I care in the sense of: okay have a good life. But I also care enough to point out an inaccuracy if I see one. I know it's more polite to not say anything, but it's also condescending of me to treat you like you're a child and just give a bemused smile from behind my screen. I think it's more helpful??? when I point out things you might have missed in game or are deliberately erasing when you choose to ignore the game.

I don't really care about being polite. I care about having good, healthy discussions and endless obsessions over my faves. So yeah there's your answer.

#Lia rambles #Arthur Morgan #oy

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junghelioseok · 8 months

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unfortunate reminder that i am ancient, thanks tumblr

#don’t remind me how old my main is #lia rambles

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cecilianotthesaint · 2 months

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So my mom, went to a metaphysical fair with one of her best friends yesterday and apparently had a lovely time

For context, she does not know that I’m a “witch” (or whatever term I’m currently using) but does know I’m “spiritual” or whatever. She is Christian at her base and continues to be, but she has always been interested in the metaphysical outside of that and over the years has leaned into that more and more. But she’s been talking to/reading about psychics pretty much as long as I can remember

But anyway while she was at the fair she got a “spirit drawing” done. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the artist is a woman who sees spirits around people and draws them pretty much in the moment

I’m not going to share the drawing because it’s a fair bit more personal than just telling the story, but my mom thought it sort of looked like some of the men on her mother’s side of the family, and I do enough ancestor work and genealogy research that even though I’ve never actually met any of those men, I can recognize the family’s general appearance too. It did look like her mother’s family to me, so I went through some records and stuff and found a couple pictures of some of them. He wasn’t an exact match to any of them, although the general feature were similar, but the drawing has a very specific little smile, and I found a photo of my great uncle and he’s smiling in a way that we (my mom & I, plus my dad for a less biased opinion) all agree looks pretty much identical to the drawing

I don’t know that I’ve ever interacted with him directly in my ancestor/spirit work (though of course in the genealogy I’ve spent some time with him) but that side of the family is one that I’ve always connected to pretty easily. Would not shock me at all if any number of them were to stick around my mom

Anyway, idk, I know this isn’t the most exciting story but it was really cool and interesting to me

#the drawing overall looked more like some others in that family #specifically my great grandfather #but I could only track down one photo of him so far and he’s not smiling at all in it #it could be someone else entirely too #who knows #but definitely it was something she resonated with and happy for her #and it makes me feel good in general #what can I say #we’re family people #ancestor work #personal beliefs #words #lia rambles #anyway idk it was a fun/interesting thing that happened today

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liamyalgia · 1 year

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I’m in a weird autism-achizoaffective-borderline-osdd limbo that prevents me from having a sense of self. It’s pretty torturing to feel this empty every single day,

Also I’m terrified of suddenly not liking pink anymore because that’s the last piece of “personality” I feel like I still have. The only thing that doesn’t constantly change around. Drawing used to be my only personality and I’ve (hopefully only temporarily) lost this skill. I feel like a nothing, just a robot waiting for a missing prompt. I still have my alters, but they feel like themselves, not exactly a part of me. Altough I don’t usually experience memory amnesia I still get severe emotional amnesia, after an alter is out I usually can’t really relate to their emotions and interest that much. For me being a system fells mostly like parenting; Meanwhile I myself am just empty. I feel very dissociated from things most of the time, probably the schizoaffective aspect of my brain. This probably explains why I used to think I might be a psychopat, I’m often not able to care about things, its usually fine (I don’t care, afterall) but sometimes it just gets really annoying, I sometimes really wish I could care about things like FOR REAL. I oscilate between uninterested and obcessed, and thats it. Sometimes I wonder how is it to be normal, to feel the right things at the right time, to be able to care about someone’s birthday or a holiday... Unless it’s a special interest or special person... I just can’t make myself care. I didn’t choose to be this way.

#lia rambles #osdd things #Schizoaffective disorder #autism #actually autistic #actually osdd

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chocolate-mallowmelt · 3 days

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Ahhh I forgot about KOTLC pride month 2024, I need to write some of these asap. Please send me an ask with one of the prompts and a character or ship!! I will tag and credit people when I post the final fic (I would never not but I just want to clarify)

Thanks!!

@kotlcpridemonth2024

#kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #lia rambles #kotlc pride 2024 #lia writes

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liabegins · 3 months

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i just watched love and monsters and i can’t, i love this movie so much😭 how can dylan o’brien play each of his characters that they all end up as my favorites

#LOOK AT THEM #❤️❤️❤️#i know the whole movie but i’m crying every time #joel dawson #dylan o'brien #love and monsters #lia rambles #random things #happy thoughts

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miupow · 5 months

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songs i want to make into fics, a collective

Leith Ross - We'll Never Have Sex

Ethel Cain - Crush

Jhené Aiko, Swae Lee - Sativa

H.E.R - 2

Bon Iver, St. Vincent - Roslyn

#lia rambles #the last one giving away that im a twilight girlie #oh well

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berriesandjunnie · 2 years

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jeonghan taking his arm out of his sling to dance during the concert last night and none of the 12 other members stopping him just further proves my point that one of them could murder someone and the others would continue to do an endless concert rendition of aju nice without blinking an eyelid

#cafeshuaaa #seventeen #lia rambles

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kittyunzzn · 4 months

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#lia rambles

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arthurmorganwateringhole · 2 years

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Why do you think so many people hate Mary? I want to blame misogyny, but a lot of women hate her too.

Oh you sweet summer child. Misogyny is a concept that describes how gender structures our society. For example, we live in a patriarchal society, therefore many of our beliefs are either deliberately misogynist (taboos and traditions rooted in fearing women who express sexual, financial, or social agency; re: Salem witch trials which targeted many a rich widows!) or indirectly misogynist. The latter is less about hating women but privileging cis men.

For example, due to our world's history and the fact that cis men dominated it, many in the US, UK, and Australia believe that, for women, to succeed, they need intelligence and hard work. On the other hand, the same 28,000-people sample cited that men would need connections to succeed.

This isn't 28,000 people saying this is how it is. This is them observing what actually happens. Men promote men because they are products of a patriarchal society that basically conditions cis men to rise to high profile jobs, and this sort of behavior isn't ACTIVELY misogynist, because those employers might not be deliberately trying to be sexist. Yet, all the social strictures placed on women (like needing time for children etc.) end up perpetuating this vicious cycle of cis men getting ahead generally via connections rather than merit.

Now I just went on a long ass preamble, and for why? What does this have to do with Mary? Because I want to address that part of your question that assumes women can't be misogynist or subject to the same biases that are built into a patriarchal society, like the one we live in. Because guess what? Women can definitely be sexist despite their self-proclamations of being feminist or progressive. Just like how people of color can also harbor racism against themselves and their own community, or racism against other ethnicities. You would think sharing the same experience enables empathy or something, but nah. People are that conditioned to passively allow this sort of bullshit. So long as it isn't blatantly or deliberately misogynist, they're going to go around holding Mary to an impossible standard and not examine their own biases regarding the role of gender in how they view her complex and messy emotions.

Just take for example how this fandom talks about/reacts to Dutch in comparison to the general feeling wrt Mary. Except for a few deluded fools, most people in the fandom find Dutch to be a flawed character, i.e. he serves the narrative purpose of being a complex and fully fleshed out character whose problematic actions drive the momentum of the story. In this case, Dutch is an example of 'good writing' (and I don't disagree with that). Even outside RDR2, any male character with a sociopathic, manipulative streak will be heralded as the pinnacle of writing. And I don't disagree. People who can write complex and flawed characters are actually great writers!

The problem is, people lose that type of rationale and analysis when you take even half the imperfections a character like Dutch has and put it on a woman/female character. Suddenly, she's not evidence of great writing, but she is a living, breathing person whose abusive behavior is condemned by a living, breathing 'trained therapist' so Mary apologists are clearly wrong and any attempt at understanding her role in the narrative is abuser apology.

lol sorry for being a bit on the nose, but you can't deny this pattern fo behavior in fandom and across other fandoms. Flawed male characters are complex and PEAK storytelling. Flawed female characters are bullies/manipulative/straight up bitches who need to burn in hell (sorry to use really outdated gender language, but I'm more broadly speaking to the cisnormative array of characters mainstream media tends to feature).

And I wish these same people who invest so much energy in justifying their dislike of Mary on the basis of moral condemnation could just STOP for a second and think about how insane that is. Here is Arthur, shooting, killing, stealing... but see he is a complex and complicated character!!!!! Fuck Mary though for using whatever means at her disposal to help her family. That fucking bitch!!! Look at how insane this is once you contextualize Mary in the actual fictional universe she exists in, rather than taking her out of context and cherrypicking 10-second clips to apply harebrained psychological analysis to???

So yeah TLDR I think people hate Mary because of plain misogyny. It's weird because I was never like an enthusiastic Mary fan when I first played. Like I loved her as a love interest for Arthur, but I never thought I'd spend THIS much energy defending her. And yet I do, because I cannot stand seeing people fall into this problematic pattern of thought any longer. I want people to sit down and just think for a moment. Is it okay to dislike Mary or not like her or not care about her? YES IT'S PERFECTLY OKAY. It's not okay though to overstate the harm of her flawed actions in order to shut down discussion and use her character as an excuse to basically be closeted misogynists. You guys are WAY more obvious than you think you are.

#Mary Linton #lia rambles #oh my lord

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