Updating the blog list
Old fanart I did last year
No, Leyley Was Not Evil, She Was Just a Kid
I was going to be like "If you thought Leyley was an irredeemable devil as a child you probably just hate kids" but I'll be a little more lenient and say you probably either never interacted a lot with kids nor have had to work with kids. Fair enough. But like you're still wrong and I'm going to explain why.
The first part of Decay was an hourlong flashback showing why Andrew hates Leyley, and as a child how easy it was to view her as the evil thing that's ruining his life. And don't get me wrong, Leyley was an absolute brat. She's rude, she's pushy, she throws tantrums, she has no filter, and she has no qualms breaking things.
But from an outside perspective, especially from someone who's worked with kids like this? She's just being a normal kid. None of this surprises or disturbs me. Her attitude and actions made perfect sense. Like yeah when kids are left to their own devices and made to watch each other, when all the adults in their lives want nothing to do with them, this is going to be the result.
If you don't give them the attention they need and the only way they get it is to break things, they are going to break things. And because Andy initially only bothered with Leyley when she breaks things, she learned this is the only way to get and keep his attention.
And this mindset that Andrew will only give her attention when she breaks things is why she continuously pushes Andrew's buttons present day. She never grew out of this belief, which is why it's hard for her to grow out of Leyley.
And reminder, the reason this happened is due to the parents. This was not Leyley's fault, it was the parents who pushed Leyley onto Andy. And I also don't blame Andy for not understanding that as a kid. Later as an adult Andrew does realize that it was his mom who caused this to happen, but it doesn't remove the resentment he festered for Leyley for so long.
On another note I think it was nice how despite this burden put on Andy that made it hard to like Leyley, there's still glimpses of them getting along. Andy defending Leyley from the teacher, them chatting and laughing about getting baked into one of grandma's pies. It really showed that in spite of everything they could have gotten along as normal siblings would, if only things hadn't been screwed up from the start.
It also shows that despite hating Leyley, Andy was still only ever happy with her in the flashback. During that whole sequence not once was he happy interacting with anyone except those few times with Leyley. The only times he acted happy with anyone else was because it was just that: an act to avoid discomfort or trouble.
When the main source of your misery is also the main source of your happiness...yeah no wonder things went so bad.
people at the grocery store sometimes do a visible double-take about how many vegetables I'm buying. they look at me probably thinking wow she's so healthy! it's ok that she's also buying donuts! she's earned them!
you fools. all the produce is for my pet pig. I'm eating donuts for dinner.
an older woman actually stopped me once and told me I must be a great cook because I was just throwing random vegetables in my cart based on price. she was like "gosh! I would need a recipe to know what to do with all of those!"
i do have a recipe. it's very simple:
ingredients: vegetable
step 1: throw it on the ground.
Mobster, pointing a gun at my head: Any last words kid
Me: I actually like to use women's deodorant because the stuff for men dries out my skin and smells like harsh chemicals
*BANG*
(3 hours later, at Walmart)
(Mobster holding Dove Advance Care in the deodorant aisle)
Hmm...
where's that post of someone getting a letter from their bank like "dear keith we realise you're just taking the piss but every time you venmo your mate for 'al-qaeda training camp' we do have to, by law, fill out a lot of boring paperwork for the police so we'd really appreciate it if you'd stop doing that"
My wife pointed out to me the other day that apparently most people were literally only taught how to say Sorry and not how to Apologize or even that they are different things so here.
If all you ever do is step 1, not only did you not apologize, but people will rightfully stop believing you and start getting pissed or hurt.
