Sometimes, I think I could bear Ernesto, but I always go back to the nonononoNOPE mode very quickly. At first, I didn't understand why I hate him so much. It's something visceral, I couldn't help it. But I recently noticed he strongly reminds me of an old friend who… well, she didn't kill me, of course, but she did give me hell and I haven't recovered yet, even after all these years. I see her in Ernesto every.fucking.time. I see her in his "you're not going to leave me" attitude, that possessiveness, like if you were a fucking object with no purpose on your life except serving them. I need your songs to fulfill my dream, therefor you're gonna stay. And if you try to put distance, to have a life, to take care of yourself, they see you as a traitor and don't hesitate to destroy whatever you care about. They will destroy you and they will play the victim role, because they're so nice and good, unlike you, and they won't care. They will not care.
It's frustrating, because I'd like to be able to enjoy more fics and more aspects of the Coco fandom, but I just can't. This guy is triggering as fuck to me and I can't read anything that pictures him in a friendly way or tries to redeem him or has him as main character. I can only bear Ernesto when he's portrayed as the murderer he is. A complex murderer, with many layers, but a murderer after all. And I'm still salty at Pixar for giving us such a villain and kind of laughing him down at the end of the movie. Because Ernesto is fucking scary to me. He's terrifying, because he's a kind of person you can easily find anywhere. That makes him too real to be laughed down.
Last night, with the last chapter of Elegy still in mind, I was thinking about Héctor and Imelda. These two kids, who got married at 16/17, full of joy, full of dreams, full of love. And they had 4 (four, F O U R) fucking years of happiness, before everything went to hell. Ernesto didn't care about how young his friend was, about his wife and child who were waiting for him at home, about Héctor's life and dreams. He didn't hesitate to destroy his life and he even did everything he could to destroy his afterlife too. And I got so mad I could barely sleep, because fuck off, Ernesto, you didn't care.
I'm pretty sure he has some kind of condition. I've read some very interesting analysis about it. But our mental state should never be an excuse for our "crimes". It could be an explanation, but never an excuse. Because not everyone cares. Not everyone cares about their mental health and the mental health of those around them. Not everyone acknowledges there is something there that needs to be treated and tries to find help to improve. Not everyone cares the slightest about hurting other people or being abusive. And that's what makes Ernesto irredeemable to me: he didn't care. He did not care in the past and he did not care in the movie.
He just did not fucking care.
PS: I was going to put this on tags, but I think it's safer to include it here: this post isn't meant to shame any Ernesto's fan in any way. Ernesto is a great character; I like him as a character, though I hate him as a person. I'm also aware nobody here excuses his "murdererness", and most of Ernesto's friendly representations are canon divergent. I'm just unable to dissociate Ernesto from the canon, but that's absolutely personal because of my own experiences and it's perfectly normal that other people can see him from other perspectives.
