purposefromthejawsoffutility:

unfathomabletortoise:

purposefromthejawsoffutility:

i love Mom Friend kanaya but also i think people really downplay how much of a mess she is

this is the girl who spent three years pretending her girlfriend’s drinking wasn’t a problem and bottling up all her fear and frustration about it as long as she could; the girl who tried to train an auspistice and completely failed; the girl who goes after assholes with a chainsaw and who punched vriska in the fucking face. she’s the only character we’ve seen reduced to tears over a crush. she’s amazing but she’s a disaster.

and she’s had these expectations of motherhood forced on her her whole life and while she accepts them gladly as far as we seem i’m sure it’s an enormous pressure and i don’t think she would have chosen that life under any other circumstances. she’s not that good at keeping her friends together; she can barely keep herself together; she’s an awkward emotional insecure teen and i don’t like seeing her reduced to the calming Mom who only exists to take care of everyone else?

She might not have chosen exactly her mom friend role in another circumstance, but I think she would probably have ended up there anyway. Because, yes, she’s not that good at keeping her friends together, but I don’t think she can keep herself from trying to. Vriska calls her Fussyfangs for a reason- she sees a problem and she can’t not try to fix it. And that’s not always the best option for her own well-being, and sometimes she can’t fix it. And sometimes, like with Rose, she kind of hovers over to the side and pretends to herself that she’s fixing it so that she can keep herself from obsessing over it. I think she just wants these problems to be solved- she doesn’t necessarily want to do it herself. I think she’d really wish that she wasn’t the mom friend, that she didn’t feel all this responsibility, that she could hand it all off to someone else, but I don’t think she ever could hand off her worries to someone else because she would still worry about them. In fact, I think that’s one reason she’s so attracted to Rose at first- because Rose is strong and Rose knows so much about the problems they’re facing and Rose has theories and plans and timeline diagrams and a book full of knowledge and Kanaya doesn’t have to try to fix everything alone anymore.

Of course, then there are the times when she’s really tired of trying to fix things and nothing she’s doing is working and then whoop vampire chainsaw funtime!

All that being said, I completely agree that there is way too much calm and composed Kanaya and not enough complete and utter psychological mess Kanaya. She has a lot of problems and a lot of them she just tries to shove into a corner and pretend they’re fixed, and we don’t see enough of that.

This is such a good addition thank you!!
She is a true mom friend; meddling in her friends’ affairs often ineffectively but always with love and good intentions because she’s worried about them :’)