#//there's a way to advocate for him spending some time single that doesn't stigmatize mental health issues

[rinisbowen]

glad we can agree that ricky bowen isn’t toxic like some like to make him out to be. i feel like he’s judged way too harshly in this fandom and gets the blame for things he doesn’t really do

hi! thanks for this tbh anon <3 it's always nice to see someone agrees with me here. i'm usually just talking and then maybe someone will resonate with it or maybe not.

but honestly it drives me up a wall anon, because you're absolutely right. he's judged incredibly harshly in a way that even characters set up as antagonists initially aren't and haven't been. sometimes it's a josh thing, sometimes it's a nini thing or a gina thing, sometimes it’s a ship thing... but the result is the same. he's a teenage boy who's going through quite a lot of stuff- and he's a good person at the end of the day.

i think people need to remember that as per tim's own statements, the show is about good people being generally good to each other. these are all good kids. and they mess up sometimes too, but they're a theatre family, for better and for worse.

it's potentially main character syndrome in some senses, arguably, where the fact we focus on a main character more (in this case ricky and nini, who do get more focus than the others) means that chances are if they're interacting with a less primary character they're going to be dealing with something related to the primary character... that is what contributes to the ricky's a terrible friend thing. like 'ricky's a horrible friend to big red' no he isn't- he's just the main character. also he does repeatedly support big red so idk what that's about truly.

all these narratives- ricky's a terrible friend to the wildcats, ej should punch ricky for what he did to gina (i see it in fic mostly, but i also have seen it in this fandom more broadly too. maybe someday i'll write about my dislike for the romanticization of violence in fandom), ricky's a toxic person, ricky should've helped this person with their problems even though they're not close and they didn't tell him about those problems so he had no way of knowing, ricky should've done this that and the other thing, etc... it just doesn't accurately portray the story that's being told on this show.

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also bc it's somewhat adjacent to this topic- if people could stop doing the 'i only ship ricky with therapy' thing i'd love that please and thanks. i can rant for so long about this but it needs to end- it should've never started to begin with. if someone wants me to talk about it i will but- idk if i need to start anything rn haha