#outofspirals

So here’s a fun fact - Kirie is the first main character out of anything I ever liked. Previously to her, I can say that I liked none of the protagonists out of horror stories especially that I had read beforehand. ( keep in mind this was some odd 5+ years ago I believe ). Now, it’s not that good main characters didn’t exist before her, far from it, but I very often have trouble connecting to a main character. Kirie was the first character that showed me I could.

I was so used to the trope of a horror movie or story using a character as a plot device moving from one spectacle to the next, often by making the stupidest decisions possible.A lot of horror stories I’d read before would just have a character be all around jackass you didn’t really care got hurt - the little effort that was put into them making a lot of stuff I watched not scary at all. I’d had some experience with certain protagonists I liked - but they were often very proactive and badass in their own way. 

Kirie, on the other hand, does serve as a vessel from one story to the next, but she stands out with just how likable and believable she is. She’s not smart, she makes dumb choices like going out in a hurricane to give her boyfriend lunch and blocking out his warnings about the spiral at first, but she does so in a very believable way, clearly just being a terrified teenager in denial at first, and later doing chores at the worst times to give herself a sense of control. You can actually see her psychological descent from being a strong-headed girl to a timid and frightened one. 

Kirie is...honestly the opposite of me. She enjoys pink, cute things, cooking and housework where I’m much more of a tomboy. But that didn’t stop me from forming a connection with her, because lord, this girl wants to do everything she can to take care of her family and her boyfriend. No matter how bad things get that’s always her main ideal.

Uzumaki’s concepts are rarely terrifying on their face, they’re downright ridiculous to explain most of the time, save for the first few chapters. But it’s scary. It’s stuck with me because sometimes I got choked up imagining myself in her position, because it’s so so easy to connect to that.