Lucas And Maya

So if you’ve been following me for a while now (I’ve had this blog for well over a year now), you know that I am without a doubt a HARDCORE, DIE HARD, Lucaya shipper. Like one hundred percent. BUT I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT SOMETHINGS, ALRIGHT??

So okay when I first started shipping Lucaya, it was a wonderful and truly magnificent time. Lucaya was on the rise. People in the fandom rarely hated each other and actually stuck to their own tags more often than not (YES A TIME LIKE THIS ACTUALLY EXISTED). It was exciting times indeed.

But to be completely honest with you, Lucaya has been on a decline ever since. The thing that bothers me more is that the writers have not given a good enough (or even logical enough) explanation as to WHY they seemingly (and officially as of GM Ski Lodge) decided to end Lucaya. To say the least, it was done in an abrupt manner and in too unsatisfactory kind of way that it left most of us with a bitter taste in our mouths. It was an unpalatable resolve to Lucaya and (for most of us) was simply unacceptable.

Imagine almost a year (or more) of not-so-subtly hinting at Lucaya. And I’m not joking when I say “not-so-subtly.” The writers pretty much spent the entire season two highlighting Lucaya. So why after spending so much time focused on these two, have they decided to steer in another direction? I don’t have the answer. And to be honest at this point I’m not very interested in the cryptic non-answers, non-explanations of the writers. I’m really not anymore. Listen, I want to talk about something else. Something more important than just the problematic buildup and decline of Lucaya. I want to actually focus this post on Lucas.

Until now, I have not done a character analysis. Mostly, I’ve been giving commentaries on Lucaya as a couple. But now, I’ve reached my saturation point and it’s high time for me to let this out. Okay, so the problem with Lucas is that he is too okay with anything that happens to him. And the thing is, this is not even uncharacteristic of him! Remember Girl Meets Yearbook? He was voted most likely to be okay with anything that happens to him. Yes so, everything that he has done (or actually has NOT DONE) until this episode has been a clear demonstration of that trait of being “okay with anything that happens to him.”

Here’s my problem. On a smaller scale, I realized that THAT is not good enough for Maya. She doesn’t deserve a guy who won’t even fight for her because he is okay with literally anything. He won’t even tell her that he likes her and mind you, it has been almost a year since *gasp* TEXAS– aka the campfire episode when she first told him straight up that she likes him. Has he ever said it in return? NOPE. He may have hinted that he reciprocates the feeling but he hasn’t actually said anything or done anything to clearly show it. He is literally the embodied version of Newton’s first law of motion: that a body at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.

Do you see how problematic that is? Maya can just tell him to go to Riley (and even though–let’s say for argument’s sake, that he really wants to be with Maya– and he will just go to Riley. And to be honest, Riley can do the same thing and he will follow because he is OKAY WITH ANYTHING. He hasn’t really fought for anything, the way that Cory fought for Topanga, the way that Maya fought for Shawn, or even the way Eric fought for Mr Feeny (seriously though y'all should watch this episode of BMW it’s so touching). No he has not. Because he will take anything that falls on his lap, because again, HE’S OKAY WITH ANYTHING! Does that sound like the kind of guy that either Maya or Riley deserves? The answer is a clear and resounding NO, OF COURSE NOT. They deserve better. They deserve someone who will challenge those who make them feel left out (ahem ahem…Zaya), they deserve someone who will fight to be with them, they deserve someone who will walk all the way from goddamn Pittsburgh to Philadelphia for them (y'all should watch this episode too). They DO NOT deserve someone who is okay with being caught in the middle and not doing anything to change it.

But on a much larger scale, this seemingly inextricable part of Lucas is so problematic because of the message it sends to people–that being okay with anything that happens to you is actually okay. And to take it a step further, it is even more problematic given that in light of this characteristic, Lucas has not seemed to develop!! What is this telling people? It says that it’s alright to be okay with anything. It says that you don’t have to fight so much or half as hard because someone else will do it for you. This is not the kind of value people should be learning from the show. Yes Lucas is not perfect (obviously). And yes he is only in high school and clearly has so much to learn. But still, I find it to be a problem that this is Lucas’s characterization and that the writers aren’t doing much to change it.