What I love most about I Love Amy is the character writing, specifically how Amy and Bibi’s personhoods were curated to foil and complement eachother.
This may be obvious to anyone who’s read the story, and the author did answer in the Q&A how the story came about because she wanted a yandere character to have a happy ending, and so it makes sense that if Bibi was the question, the author wrote Amy to be the answer. I’m not saying anything new..
I just want to take this opportunity to wax poetic about the genius of it all because I just finished the series and love it so much.
So, first of all, their motivations. I think it isn’t a stretch to say that, if we were to boil down their philosophies at the start of the story, Bibi’s would be ‘I want someone to love’ and Amy’s something along the lines of ‘I can’t ever fall in love, for myself and my family’.
That’s what makes the narrative so compelling. They’re drawn to eachother and also repelled by eachother because of these opposing motivations, and so to remain together they had no option but to break down eachother’s walls.
We see this in flashbacks of their childhood that help us understand what events formed them to think this way. We see it in their internal dialogue so it’s clear to us as readers how they think and how their actions logically make sense. But the characters themselves find out through interactions with the other girl and through genuine connection.
That’s another thing I love about this story — it feels really well-paced in my opinon. The romance is given time to develop and breathe, and you can come to understand why Bibi would grow fond of Amy, and vice versa. It wasn’t a one and done deal. They had so many moments in the story to grow closer as friends and as people before lovers.
This is especially interesting with a character like Bibi, who doesn’t feel emotions in a typical way.
Now, I don’t know if her writing is accurate to a neurodivergent experience. Lord knows I don’t have enough knowledge on disorders that affect things like lack of empathy or selective memory like Bibi has. But the author has not made any statement (as far as I know) saying Bibi’s behavior was referenced using real-world medical knowledge, so I will be referring to her further as an analysis of the yandere archetype, as the author has mentioned before.
If the way I talk about her is insensitive to a neurodiverse experience, I apologize and please let me know. I came into this rant fascinated by her writing but I feel like it is more based on tropes now that I think about it.
(I don’t know much about the yandere genre either…) Okay so basically what I wanted to say was that Bibi is so interesting because she’s so much less emotionally perceptive than Amy, especially when it comes to herself.
This makes for a great romance arc, I think the most delicious part for me is when Amy rejects the jar of cookies. Because she recognizes that Bibi has fallen for her, even when the girl herself hasn’t. Amy didn’t need any words to be said, because unlike what some people say about her Amy is very emotionally intelligent. Or maybe just when it comes to Bibi. Idk. No one can refute that she understanda how Bibi’s brain works best though.
So Amy rejects Bibi, and the latter feels that feint bit if rejection, even if it takes a while for her to figure it out fully.
That part in the story marked an ‘upswing’ in Bibi’s arc, I’d say, because she finally pushed past her idealization of Peter and started realizing her true feelings for Amy. She found more honesty within herself.
At the same time, this created the ‘downswing’ for Amy’s inner turmoil, because as said before, she is someone who is deeply afraid of being loved. Cue the isolating and running away.
That’s something I always love in stories — two character’s having opposite arcs. In the sense that when one is finally doing well, the other starts going on the deepend. Flipping the script. It’s so enticing I loved reading that part of the story.
Because it felt like while some part of Bibi’s story was ‘resolved’ — (somewhat, I also love that the author acknowledges that things are never really ‘resolved’ in life you just move forward) in that she lets herself care for somebody honestly and in a way that also focuses on them instead of herself — we now shift the focus to Amy and her story, not neglecting that she has development to do as well.
THATS ALSO WHAT I LOVE, BOTH CHARACTERS’ DEVELOPMENT GETTING ATTENTION FROM THE NARRATIVE.
So Amy’s great breakthrough comes when Bibi hunts her down and they end up in the hospital room. As she herself says, she can’t keep running anymore. She admits her biggest internal belief: things would be better if I wasn’t here.
And Bibi, in true Bibi fashion, smashes that to pieces. She, for all intents and purposes, forces Amy to accept being loved. And when Amy does that, her arc js somewhat ‘resolved’ as well.
So what we come to is two characters whose influence in eachother’s lives upended their whole initial philosophies. Bibi is a selfish and lonely girl who searches for someone to love, gets that someone isn’t who she selfishly expected and decides to focus more of her efforts outward instead of purely inward. She is still self-centered, that is her character, but it’s also self-centered in a way that cares for Amy, I’d say? She’s found a way to make Amy room in her heart, and so when she protects herself it’s a no-brainer that she’s protecting her lover too.
And Amy’s the type of person who needs that observant forcefulness. Amy is a terrified and lonely girl who believes that love hurts, that she should never let herself be loved. And when she finds out the person she loves returns those feelings, she isn’t ready for it, but learns to trust again. Learns to push past that fear and into the hope that, though it is painful, it’s also healing.
The author mentioned that’s how she sees love. I think there’s nothing more beautiful than that.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is I love their dynamic. The crazy girl who only Amy sticks around to understand, who only she wants to make happy despite everything. The anxious girl who only Bibi can shove her way into her life, who despite every wall she puts up is no match for someone as unrelenting and delusional as Bibi is. They make me sick. I love them.
They’re both unwell, as Amy said, and they’re both delusional. Why does Amy want to make Bibi happy even if she does terrible things? Why does Bibi focus on Amy even if she doesn’t show any indication of wanting that? I don’t know. I think only they would.
A lot of what makes this work is Amy’s personality. As the author said, she was made to love Bibi. I don’t think anyone else could have. Someone with just low enough self-preservation and self-esteem to allow herself to be treated terribly. But also just high enough to recognize that’s just how Bibi is, not really a reflection of her. I think her wanting to be able to grow herself as a person and not just be reliabt on Bibi is a great example of this. She’s also really observant of Bibi’s emotions, as I’ve said before, and so she has the understanding equipped to deal with her irrationality and unusual tendencies. Amy also doesn’t GAF much in certain cases. (I’m especially thinking about the college boys who Bibi snapped at on their vacation).
HONESTLY A LOT OF WHAT MAKES THIS WORK IS BOTH OF THEIR PERSONALITIES AND THE WAY THEIR WHOLE DYNAMIC IS WRITTEN AND AGHHHHH.
They slot together so well. They were handcrafted for one another. It doesn’t make sense any other way, this universe. They’re so different. They’re so alike. They hurt in different ways, but love the same.
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