Safi Deserves So Much More Understanding
I just need to get this off my chest because people are so quick to judge Safi, but honestly, her story is heartbreaking, and she’s been through things most people can’t even imagine. It's so easy to call her immature or arrogant or even "bad" because of her god complex, but nobody’s actually stopping to understand why she is the way she is.
Let’s start with her mom, Yasmin. Safi has every right to be messed up given the emotional neglect she suffered. As Safi herself puts it:
"Mum was broken, and the way that she dealt with being broken was to make sure I wasn't. I was her project, proof that she didn’t need him to do something right."
Her mother didn’t give her love or support—she made her daughter into a project, something to fix to prove she didn’t need her father around. Imagine growing up like that. No warmth, no empathy, just a constant feeling of being used for someone else’s validation. And Safi, in her pain, wanted to be the perfect child for her mom. She says,
"I remember wishing so much I could just be the way she wanted me, magically, instead of struggling all the time and still falling short. Then I started wishing I could be someone entirely. Then, one day, I could."
The pressure to be perfect for a mother who would never accept her for who she really was—how could that not break someone? So yes, Safi eventually did gain powers to change herself, but it wasn’t out of malice—it was out of desperation. A desperate need to escape from the cage her mother built for her. She was traumatized by that.
And then there's Maya Okada, Safi’s best friend. Safi loved her so much, and Maya was so brilliant, so fucking smart, as Safi says. The injustice Maya faced—her work stolen by Lucas, which essentially killed her—is something Safi could never forgive herself for. She even says,
"What Lucas did to her? Stealing her work? It essentially killed her."
But what’s worse is that Safi blamed herself for it.
"And as incandescently angry I am at Lucas, at everyone, I'm so much angrier at myself. God, I... I told her to stay quiet about it. My silence catapulted Lucas fucking Calmenero to literary stardom and sent Maya to an early grave."
Safi told Maya to stay quiet. She was silent, and Maya paid the price. That guilt? It haunted Safi. And it didn’t end there.
Now, we all know Safi is a secretive person. I’m willing to bet she never told Maya about her powers. She never shared that burden because, for Safi, that would be another thing to hide, another thing to be judged for. All of this was building up in her. She was drowning in grief, guilt, and trauma. Her best friend died, and she couldn’t even share what she was going through with her. But Safi poured all of that pain into her writing. Her book, as she says:
"Every part of that collection was about Maya. Maybe I told it a little too clearly."
She loved Maya so much, and her book was her way of processing everything, but her mom—her own mother—was the one who canceled it.
Safi’s mom, Yasmin, canceled Safi’s book deal.
Let that sink in. After everything Safi went through, her mom crushed her dream, just like she crushed Safi herself. Yasmin even kept Safi’s father from her. Her own mother tore her apart from the inside out, and Safi never had a chance to feel loved or accepted.
And then... Safi’s death. The most tragic part of all of this. The assisted suicide. It’s hard to even talk about because it’s so real and raw. At one point, Safi says:
"Stop stalling, Max, you saw what happened. There wasn’t any of me left. It was all Moses, and Vinh, and Lucas, and Gwen. It hurts so much, I hurt so many people. Help me fix it, please."
In that moment, Safi was begging for help. She had been so broken by everything—her guilt over Maya, the betrayal by her mom, her own struggles—and she felt like there was nothing left of her. She wasn’t just hurting herself; she was hurting everyone around her, and it was eating her alive. The pain of it all shut her down. She wanted it to stop, she needed it to stop.
Yes, Safi lashed out. She shot her mom. And yes, that caused a lot of bad things to happen. But does anyone really think she wasn’t justified? She's only 25, and her life had been nothing but trauma and betrayal. She didn’t know how to deal with it anymore. She had spent her whole life carrying that burden. And it was too much.
She said at the end of the game:
"I spent my whole life thinking I was the only one, knowing I could never tell anyone."
She had no one to turn to, no one who understood her, and everything she thought she knew came crashing down.
So, no, Safi is not a "bad person." She’s someone who’s been abused, neglected, and forced to keep it all inside. She’s someone who is hurting beyond what most people could comprehend. She’s someone who deserves understanding, not judgment. She was a product of her trauma, and while she made mistakes, it’s not fair to dismiss her as just "immature" or "bad." People need to stop seeing her as a villain and start recognizing the brokenness that made her who she is.
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