I Fucking Love That C!tommy Is Aggressively A Teenager Because. Gafghafsga. In General If You Were A

i fucking love that c!tommy is aggressively a Teenager because. gafghafsga. in general if you were a teenage character in a piece of media but you were hard to love? if you weren’t the cowed, polite, and quiet type but you acted in all the “negative” or “ugly” ways teenagers do sometimes? you get like. vitually no depth or sympathy or any redeeming qualities. c!tommy, for example, has a lot of these less palatable trauma responses — lashing out, rebelling, cursing, not listening to authority, talking back, fighting, generally things that are rough and abrasive — so he basically gets crucified as “throwaway destructive lost cause who likes being an asshole.” with no depth and zero humanity like a lot of characters do. it really unfairly vilifies a lot of things that he does because he’s hurt that are really just poor coping mechanisms and boil it down to “teenager does bad things because they are a teenager and they are immature and dumb.” and look. i am not saying you should be forgiven automatically for hurting people just because it’s a coping mechanism. this goes for teenagers too. i’m just saying, a little understanding goes a long way. tommy is usually mean/destructive to himself or in relatively harmless ways or as a defense against people he perceives as trying to hurt him or those who have more power. he consistently regrets it and tries to make amends. it’s not for no reason. a lot of it is just from being confused and hurt with no guidance. teens are usually not assholes for the hell of it.

i really like that c!tommy is allowed to be a little shit and a bit of an asshole who scams and fights and questions authority and lashes out and makes mistakes but also it’s well understood that he has a heart of gold? that he tries his best? that he loves his friends? that he feels lost and alone and hurt and he’s not just destructive because he’s “immature” or for the fucking fun of it, but because he had to learn how to survive? that he feels like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders and everyone who was supposed to look out for him left him behind? that he genuinely wants to be good? he has a very quintessential growing up story and i love it so much. it’s important to me that c!tommy is allowed to be imperfectly a kid — clumsy, mean, loud, scared, angry — and also shown to be incredibly big-hearted and brave and human. his character sends the message of “just because you’re a kid who fucks up sometimes, doesn’t mean you aren’t deserving of love.” and “teenagers can be dicks sometimes but that doesn’t mean they don’t care about things or try to be good.” like he can be an Annoying Teenager and also full of love. that coexists. and i think that’s epic.