Why do you love Boris so much? He's extremely abusive
I knew I’d get an ask like this sooner or later bc this is tumblr and y’all are just oh so predictable.
I’m going to preface this by reminding everyone that no one is required to like or dislike a certain character. You can hate or love whoever you want, as long as you’re not chasing other people down and lecturing them about how they’re ‘not allowed’ to enjoy a fictional character for whatever reason.
Yeah, Boris has done some really shitty things, things that shouldn’t be condoned or excused or glossed over. However, you can love a flawed character without ignoring or denying their faults. I don’t support some of the stuff he’s done, no, but those things don’t completely obliterate his character for me. This is because- while I don’t think those things are okay- I do understand why he did them, which saves the bridge of emotional connection from being burned down completely. Boris is extremely well-written. He’s complex, layered, thoroughly fleshed out, and most importantly: realistic. If he wasn’t any of these things than yeah, I would find it hard to like someone who acts out in such erratic and extreme ways. However, Donna gives us context, background, and exposition so that we can make our own judgements and come to our own conclusions. We know that Boris had an extremely abusive father, we know that he grew up fairly isolated from other people, and that he was constantly in and out of school. He never had a stable, well meaning, adult figure in his life, and he also grew up thinking that people deserve to be hit, because this was literally all he knew.
None of this excuses him hitting Kotku, and yeah, if that was where you drew the line with him then that’s okay, to each their own. The reason why I, personally, continued to love him is because I don’t think his mistakes define his character. And I don’t think that one negative aspect of a person should be the sole element of focus when determining if they’re deserving of love or not. I’ve said this before in another post but i’ll say it again, in real life there are morally grey people. Nothing is clean cut/black and white. Everyone has a bit of good in them and a bit of bad, so it’s unfair to completely write someone off based on one part of their personality, especially if they’ve proven that they are actually good people at heart.
Boris, when you get down to it, is one of these people. He had his problems yeah (mostly when he was younger) but he really wasn’t ever purposefully malicious. He was violent because he was taught that violence is natural and acceptable, not because he knew it was wrong and still made the conscious choice to do it anyway. Again, while his trauma doesn’t excuse anything, you still can’t completely discount it either. It’s not like he was some privileged kid who had the means of understanding all the consequences of his actions. It’s important not to feed into the “cancelled” and “problematic” culture that permeates this website. Real life people do not-so-great things, but this doesn’t always mean that they should be completely condemned or seen as inherently bad people. Boris fucked up a few times, but he’s still an incredibly loving and kind person. He shared everything he had with Theo (even when he had close to nothing), he was forgiving and amicable to almost everyone in his life (even if they’d done deplorable things to him) and he was ready to give his life in order to right a wrong he made all the way back when he was only a child (stealing the painting from Theo).
There are a billion other little parts of him that are so immensely rich in goodwill and benevolence, and they just can’t be forgotten about or overshadowed by his mistakes. He’s much more than the bad things that have happened to him, or the bad things he’s done.
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