Day 15 - Favorite female character.
Jul. 15th, 2014 08:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerDay 15 - Favorite female character.
Writing about Fruits Basket’s Kyo yesterday reminded me how much I adore the heroine of that series, Tohru, who is warm, welcoming, easy to please, and instinctively compassionate. She loves almost everyone she meets, and not because she ignores their flaws, but because when other people behave badly her first impulse is almost never to judge, but to try to understand where they’re coming from.
Everyone deserves to have a Tohru in their life. I have met a couple of people like this, and their genuine affection for everyone is a balm on everyone’s souls: they have this dual effect where people relax around them, because there’s no need to put up a front - they’ll love you without it - but at the same time, most people want to live up to their example, and behave better as a result.
Just reading about Tohru has a little bit of that effect.
And on top of everything else, she’s so persistent. When we first meet her in the very first episode, Tohru is living in a tent because her beloved mother recently died and the relatives she’s supposed to be living with are renovating. She’s working an after school job to pay her expenses, and it doesn’t leave her enough time to do her homework, and everything’s very difficult...and nonetheless Tohru crawls out of her tent all Determined Face. Things may be tough, but she’ll keep on trucking!
She’s such a source of support for everyone else, in fact, that she’s not sure how to ask for support herself. Before her mother Kyoko died, she was clearly Tohru’s rock, so her death has left a tremendous hole in Tohru’s life. Let me pause to add how much I love Kyoko , who adored Tohru and told her so often and enthusiastically. That rock-solid adoration is clearly the basis of much of Tohru’s strength: she’s had so much love in her life that she can shine it out like a lighthouse.
Much of Tohru’s character arc in Fruits Basket concerns her learning how to ask for help when she needs it. She doesn’t need to be strong for everyone all the time. Sometimes, they can be strong for her.
Writing about Fruits Basket’s Kyo yesterday reminded me how much I adore the heroine of that series, Tohru, who is warm, welcoming, easy to please, and instinctively compassionate. She loves almost everyone she meets, and not because she ignores their flaws, but because when other people behave badly her first impulse is almost never to judge, but to try to understand where they’re coming from.
Everyone deserves to have a Tohru in their life. I have met a couple of people like this, and their genuine affection for everyone is a balm on everyone’s souls: they have this dual effect where people relax around them, because there’s no need to put up a front - they’ll love you without it - but at the same time, most people want to live up to their example, and behave better as a result.
Just reading about Tohru has a little bit of that effect.
And on top of everything else, she’s so persistent. When we first meet her in the very first episode, Tohru is living in a tent because her beloved mother recently died and the relatives she’s supposed to be living with are renovating. She’s working an after school job to pay her expenses, and it doesn’t leave her enough time to do her homework, and everything’s very difficult...and nonetheless Tohru crawls out of her tent all Determined Face. Things may be tough, but she’ll keep on trucking!
She’s such a source of support for everyone else, in fact, that she’s not sure how to ask for support herself. Before her mother Kyoko died, she was clearly Tohru’s rock, so her death has left a tremendous hole in Tohru’s life. Let me pause to add how much I love Kyoko , who adored Tohru and told her so often and enthusiastically. That rock-solid adoration is clearly the basis of much of Tohru’s strength: she’s had so much love in her life that she can shine it out like a lighthouse.
Much of Tohru’s character arc in Fruits Basket concerns her learning how to ask for help when she needs it. She doesn’t need to be strong for everyone all the time. Sometimes, they can be strong for her.
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