Thank you for writing all that. As a victim of parental abuse it pisses me off so much and makes me physically ill when people shrug off the abuse abusive mother characters such as Tharja from Fire Emblem and Lusamine do just because they find her attractive and the such. It means so much to me that you put presumably a lot of effort into debunking that she's redeemable in the slightest.
No problem, I feel the same way. I feel that a lot of it also has to do with the fact that, from a societal standpoint, men are often viewed as moreΒ βlikelyβ to be abusers, or moreΒ βseriousβ abusers than women are. The PokΓ©mon fandom is an excellent example of this. Ghetsis is absolutely abusive, thereβs no doubt about that, but the abuse we actually see him dish out toward N is very minimal, and (as I said in the post) is done through language that very few, if any, actual humans would say in any kind of regular setting. Yet, the fandom (and Game Freak themselves) have no problem labeling him a complete monster and total abuser. But then we have Lusamine, who abuses her children over and over again on-screen, who actually tries to kill Lillie at the end of SM, and who we know was just as abusive in the past in USUM (Gladionβs reaction to Hau calling Lusamine a good person is a clear indication of this, as is his line about being anΒ βornament to [his] motherβ), and yet people want to sweep her abuse under the rug, say that she wasnβt an abuser at all, and redeem her utterly. I canβt help but feel that if their genders were swapped, people would have opposing opinions. Iβm not saying Ghetsis should be excused, because obviously he should not be (and honestly, in my fics, Iβve made him even worse than he is in canon, tbh), but I am saying that I do believe the fact that people are quick to rightfully vilify him, while handwaving Lusamine, has everything to do with her gender and ingrained societal sexism as it pertains to abusers and those they victimize. (See also: How many people ship Lusamine/Guzma despite the fact that itβs implied that Guzma comes from an abusive home, and how itβs blatant canon that Lusamine is an abuser. Because sheβs a woman and heβs a man, it seems people donβt take the fact that she was using and therefore abusing him seriously at all.)Β
But yeah, I feel the exact same way, and part of the reason why I was so upset that Game Freak made LusamineβsΒ βredemptionβ even worse in USUM is because I knew it would continue to further these sorts of behaviors that I was already seeing in the fandom. I know there are probably a lot of people who are sick of seeing me say how much I hate USUM, but I nonetheless do. I really hope Game Freak can redeem themselves come Gen VIII, because boy, at this point they really need to.
