Omg idek what you said but if someone’s a Tory fan and they DON’T hold her to account for the bullshit she did, THEY’RE a fake fan of hers lmao. Sorry but if you don’t understand her flaws and say “girl wtf”, then you don’t love her you idealize her. Loving her means wanting to watch her be a better fucking person. Sorry, I just can’t stand people who think Tory has never done anything wrong (or villainize Sam for… I don’t even know, most things about Sam in this fandom go in one ear and out the other because I look at Sam and all I see is sunshine). Anyway. Rant over. Continue being awesome.
THANK YOU.....honestly i don't even know what i said either but yeah. i just reblogged a post about this which explained it way better than i could but i do find it frustrating that a lot of this fandom insists that liking/being a fan of a character means ignoring every bad action they've ever done and treating them as this morally infallible being, where like they're completely absolved of any blame because they've been through trauma. for a show that started out as being fundamentally about the kind of mistakes people make as a result of trauma and how they are nevertheless responsible for those mistakes, it's a really weird direction that both the writing and fandom culture went in. and like, i'm fine with people blorbo-fying their favs on their own, whatever. like i'm a jason todd stan. i get it. and ofc at the end of the day how people choose to engage with fictional media is their prerogative. but i just find it suuuper weird that it's turned from like "i love my problematic fav they've never done anything wrong ever lol :3" to "you're actually a fake fan/don't really like them if you criticize this character". like how far back did we lose the plot.
with tory in particular, i genuinely do love her and she is one of my favorite characters on the show. she goes through a lot and comes out of it stronger, and her redemption arc is one of the better written ones imo. at the same time, the fandom perception of her (and the writing of her arc, particularly against sam) does really frustrate me. because a lot of it boils down to people disliking sam and then deciding because they find her unlikable, she deserved what tory did to her, or they were somehow on equal footing with their rivalry.
because let's be honest! for a while tory's aggression towards sam was the most deliberate one-sided perpetuation of violence on the show (with mayyybe the close exception of s2-3 hawk towards demetri). robby went farther than she did, but it was an accident, and miguel had been the main aggressor before that point (w that said, robby kept pushing it even after, which was awful!! none of these characters are blameless!!). sam was a bitch to tory when they first met, yes, but to say that that somehow justifies tory 1) starting a school-wide riot, 2) literally scarring her arm, 3) breaking into her house to attack her when she was literally not fighting back, and more, is such a product of how much everyone cannot be fucking normal about sam larusso. that, plus the obvious misogyny that is embedded in the fact that everyone treats sam (drunk teenage girl) kissing miguel like The Worst Thing Anyone Has Ever Done (while also not giving a fuck about miguel's role in that situation), is why i just do not buy into the whole "both of them were at fault" thing.
and like. yes. tory goes the fuck through it. she has objectively the hardest life of any of the core cast in the show. she is literally dealt the worst hand over and over again. but like...everyone hates sam's "everyone's got a sob story. it doesn't give you the right to be a bully" line so much, and admittedly it feels a little tactless given her relative privilege and the extremity of tory's situation, but ALSO...the core of it is true! tory having a shit life does explain a lot of her aggression and anger and the way she deals with things, and it adds a lot of interesting nuance to her character and especially makes you want to root for her more—but it's not a substitute for actual accountability in what happened with sam the way the writing and fandom try to make it seem like it is. it drives me crazy that so much of the themes of this show in later seasons basically amount to like "if your life is hard enough none of the bad things you do are your fault and no one can justifiably hold them against you." it's such a weird watering down of trauma and cyclical violence. i don't dislike the fact that they made tory a complex antagonist-turned-hero. but that complexity only really works if it adds depth and nuance to her actions instead of just being used to explain them away.
there's a lot more to say about sam's perspective here—but i'm gonna keep it brief and just say that the amount of victim-blaming expressed by both the fandom and the writers is genuinely insane. and it's so predictable because they do the exact same thing with her father. no amount of suffering that they go through ever justifies their anger or aggression or any of it; and at the same time they can take the high ground over and over again and they'll still be blamed. it's a ridiculous double standard and it's genuinely exhausting to witness.
all that being said!!! yes i love tory! yes i think she spends a lot of the series being awful!! these two things can coexist!!! i think she has some of the best development on the show, even though the writers kept going back on it and putting her through the ringer to keep her as an antagonist. she's incredibly strong, she loves very very deeply, she's smart and funny and she's been through hell but just keeps going. with everything said above her dynamic with sam is still one of my favorites; i LOVE how the two of them grow together and i think their relationship is soooo interesting and rich and important to both of them as characters. i think it's crazy to watch an entire show about growing from your mistakes and then refuse to believe that you can both love a character and acknowledge the things they've done wrong....that is the whole point actually! like you said, loving tory means loving and understanding her growth and wanting her to keep being better!
that's all i'm gonna say for now but tldr, i love tory, i hate fandom perception of tory, i'm sick of the writers recycling the same victimization = absolution narrative over and over again. i do think that it's a weird product of the virtue-signaling/moralization of fandom that people can't accept that they might like problematic things and won't accept any criticism against their favs (even when they are perfectly able to just ignore it), and i also think it's part of the larger pattern of ck/the fandom to push this rhetoric that someone's suffering makes them incapable of fault and that acknowledging someone’s wrongs means you think they’re a horrible bad evil person.
