speaking of fandom discourse, i've seen Celine get the Abuela Alma and Ming treatment. basically people saying that she's a terrible mother, she doesn't care about Rumi, she fucked up Rumi's life, etc etc.
and while yes, she did indeed instill a lot of fear and insecurities in Rumi which led to problems with her self-image, i absolutely disagree on the take that she just doesn't care about Rumi or that she hurt Rumi on purpose.
like Encanto and Turning Red, KPDH is also about generational trauma, although only partially. Celine was taught her whole life that demons are evil creatures. she has seen them feed off the souls of innocent people.
added to that, Rumi is not her daughter. to me, it seems like Celine was never prepared to be a parent, it just happened. she lost her best friend and had to take care of her daughter even though she never wanted to.
with all that, she still managed to raise Rumi to be a good, kind person. of course her forcing Rumi to hide and hate her demon side is wrong, but what else is she supposed to do when she's only ever seen what atrocities demons are capable of doing?
this is not a simple harmless thing, it's not about Rumi's appearance or her identity. it's about morality. no one ever taught Celine that demons are capable of being good people. and despite that, she didn't hurt or mistreat Rumi when many people in her place would have. she did her best to raise Rumi despite not realizing that repressing a part of yourself can only lead to problems later on.
all this said, i'm not saying that Rumi should forgive Celine or anything. i understand that even if a person didn't mean to hurt you, sometimes they do and that hurt isn't so easily gotten over. i do like that we don't get a reconciliation between them in the end because it encourages the idea that you don't have to forgive the people who hurt you, even if they were genuinely just misled.
i'm just saying that people are waaaay too hard on Celine and assigning intentions that aren't there. she was not a good parent but she did love Rumi a lot, and saying that she didn't is a disservice to both her character as well as Rumi.
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