every time i get really interested in a movie, i do this obsessive thing where i watch youtube reactions to the movie
i almost always have thoughts but most of the time i just talk them out into the empty air but there was some common stuff this time so here this is for probably no one but me:
reactions to turning red reactions
the quotes are all obviously paraphrased and when i say i watched a sHIT TON of reaction videos, i'm not kidding so if it sounds like im only targeting one person im not. most of these reactions are from multiple videos and im very much aware that most of the people reacting on youtube are coming from different experiences than me so it's really no biggie.
(also u should know im korean american so when i talk about asian experiences im not speaking on something i dont know. its obviously not a one-to-one with her story (even if i was chinese it wouldn't be cause everybody is different) but many asian and immigrant parents and families share similar experiences. it's why seeing stories that might be even just adjacent to yourself is so important)
- "oh god, why is her mother doing that? she's crazy. she's a stalker" (at the mother arriving at school with the pads): okay, so i will say: this is way past the point that my own mother would do (and i'd say my mom has quite a bit more social tact) but showing up at school? helicoptering? very familiar feeling to me.
story time! during my high school years, i was in the tennis team. (varsity captain actually heheh) but i was also struggling with anemia at the time. so after one particular scare my freshman year, my mother was reminiscent of ming: candy bars, water, towel-anything i needed as soon as i needed it all of the time. she became team mom, not because she was particularly dedicated to the sport or my success but because she was worried about me fainting again, throwing up again, or having to go to the hospital again and her not being there this time.
so, obviously not as mortifying or intense as ming, but it's not exactly unbelievable, just exaggerated.
- "why are they acting like that about 4-town?": *nervously looks over to my deep rooted history with fangirling* so... how do i really...
- "why do they keep hammering that she thinks she's an adult or that she thinks she's gonna become a woman?? she's 13!": that's,,, kind of the point? like was there never a time in your tween/teen life where you were like iM AN ADULT AND MATURE AND I KNOW WHAT IM DOING or was that just me? it's short-sided and inaccurate for us now obviously but that's because we are watching as people who are past that age, but it's similar to the thing with middle school or high school where you think that's your entire life, that everything is banking on how you are and how you feel right now even though years down the line you don't think about it at all.
- "what's up with the dad? just speak up": so,,, this might just be me projecting again with my own experiences of having a quiet and/or absent father, but in this dynamic, it's not really his place. ming has taken control, become the matriarch and it is she that has domains, moves, and opinions on what happens with mei mei.
is it a bit neurotic and in this case slightly detrimental? yes.
is it wholesale inaccurate? no.
- "what's wrong with you, mei mei? stand up for your friends!": i'm gonna start this again with obviously it's fucked up. like you should be able to defend your friends, the ones that actually provide solace and comfort to you at this age. but also that does on some level erase the reality of what this character is. we learned early on that above all else she follows her mother, deeply values the image of who she should be to her family to the point of unable to stand up for herself, take responsibility for what she has done, set boundaries and separate herself from the expectations of her family, and very specifically, her mother.
(for example, with the daisy mart incident, one person might have confronted their mother saying, "it's not my fault i have a crush on devon and it was crossing a line to not only pry into my business but also confront him even when i said i didn't want that to happen and i'm really upset that you did so" but mei mei goes directly to attributing it privately to her own self-control and follies since she knows devon is not to blame the way her mother thinks.)
as messed up as it might be to abandon her friends, it is keeping in line with who she is up to this point. she is spunky and outgoing when she is separate from her family and their obligations, but when she is in these structures and places, she has always up to this point fallen in line.
(she already has abandoned her friends in one way at this point, actually. the first evening, we learn that her mom thinks miriam is odd and that she might disapprove of her. mei mei makes no real move to defend her friend.)
mei mei views her mother as an unmovable object. she may be unstoppable at school or with her friends, but it is not until the end that mei even attempts to really push against the supposed rigidness of her mother and the generational patterns that lay in her way. (honestly, i might speak about this more later but there is a bit also here about how her mother views her and how that affects her own view of herself)
- "why did all of the aunties and grandma and her mom just get to walk through when it was so hard for mei?": i mean one logic that was brought up in the video was that meilin kept on using it over and over, but like everyone else also already banished their spirits. these spirits technically already belong to the astral plane. although they were able to utilize it for a little bit, they all successfully already had their initial ceremonies. they already made choices. even with the loophole of being able to use it in crisis by breaking the artifact that holds it, i doubt that any of them (other than mei obviously), would even really be able to maintain a level of control over it at this point. they have separated themselves from that part of themselves and even if it is a part of their blood, it's not one that they are thoroughly in sync with anymore. the separations for them is how it should be. and what they decided for themselves.