#also Esme did kickstart a chain of events leading to Ava divorcing and KILLING her husband

[saintlesbian]

as an Esme enjoyer (NOT APOLOGIST!!!!) I have lots of conflicting Thoughts ™️ on her current character rn. maybe it’s bc AKP is such an entertaining actress or maybe it’s bc I only started watching recently (so I kinda missed out on most of her really unethical behavior) but. there’s something about this fucked up little skrunkly animal of a girl that draws me in sorry.

like esme’s sociopathic snark was funny to me. the whole thing of her being manipulated by her father into manipulating the cassadine men in order to try and break up Ava and nik’s marriage was entertaining to me as a supporter of Women Who Scheme… and she’s doing all of this to gain the attention and affection of her father who is kinda Incapable of Love and is preoccupied with his Ava obsession at all times. like I can get why she would fuck nikolas to try and screw over Ava since to Esme, Ava is the main obstacle standing between her and her father’s love. and Ryan’s manipulation def bled into the way she interacted with the rest of the people she supposedly cared about since she literally alienated herself from the entire rest of the YA friend group by COMMITTING A SEX CRIME???? AND FRAMING TRINA FOR IT???? all to sow discord among them, isolate them, and ESPECIALLY to isolate spencer so she could keep manipulating the shit out of him.

like i think she saw trina, being friendly and reasonable with Spencer, as a threat to her relationship bc she’s insecure as hell and doesn’t have a model of healthy attachment to base her experiences on. and she sees joss and cam being happy together (maybe still wanting cam a little bit bc he was one of the few people she showed a softer side to??) and gets jealous as fuck bc she doesn’t have that kind of happy relationship. so she kills two birds with one stone, records the caoss revenge porn to sabotage their relationship and pins it on trina to isolate her from her friends… except even with all that reasoning behind it it’s still like GIRL??? you really didn’t need to do any of that??? like Ryan didn’t even order her to do that she just picked up a little sociopathic side project for herself. the crazy roots ran deep with this one. god forbid women have hobbies I guess

so to have those roots ripped out of Esme with the amnesia plot, it’s kinda like they sucked out all the meat and left behind a shell of Esme, this panicky waif, this sopping wet animal in the rain, directionless and loveless. I kinda imagine this is just what she was like before she started communicating with Ryan, and with the recent death of her adoptive family she just latched onto the first family she could find, with Ryan, modeling all of her behaviors after his orders. and even after the amnesia she still latches onto the first family she can find, with Laura the maternal figure and Kevin her uncle, who looks just like the father she can’t really remember.

she’s def not a victim tho, despite the two different hostage situations she was in recently. those were mostly her own fault lol. I think for Esme to have any shot at a meaningful redemption she does still need to face the consequences of her actions, whether she remembers them or not. jail time 100% for the revenge porn thing bc even I can’t make an excuse for how yucky that was. but what would really seal the deal for me is if she actually got her memory and a little of her personality back. scared animal Esme is fine and all but I’m starting to miss her snarky side… I think her redemption would be more satisfying if she had to deal with the guilt of her past atrocities and come face to face with everyone she hurt and have them all lay into her.

and I think the specter of Ryan should haunt her. like how she used to hallucinate him telling her to hurt her baby… I think that should be an ever present threat in esme’s head. like esme should def keep her snark and mild criminal behavior, but also when faced with the chance to fully revert to her old ways, she should be actively choosing not to be evil, rather than it just being a byproduct of her blank slate status. also this bitch needs therapy for sure but I’m wondering what impact talking to Kevin would have on her fractured subconscious…