#every so often I get salty over how Pearl is so infrequently

[leonawriter]

Something that I think could be addressed in some Pearl-centric romance fics, too - what are her own thoughts on entering into romance? 

I’m sure she’d be just as terrified hat she’d get it wrong for herself and her eventual children as she would be excited. Not to mention afraid on an irrational, emotional level that her partner will walk out on her. No matter the gender. 

And if she is with someone of the same gender, and they are incapable of reproducing, then no matter what her significant other, Maya, Phoenix, or anyone else says, she will still end up with not being able to carry on the Fey line, and the anxieties and pressure associated with that, especially if Maya either a) hasn’t found someone yet or b) is in a same-sex relationship herself.

I feel like when people look at Pearl Fey, they don't see her as a character so much as they do a cute young thing that’s there to support their ship. People who ship Phoenix with Maya have it that she’s justified, and can read the situation well (when Maya herself says that Pearl’s only coming to conclusions because of not having any good parental figures and wanting to insert people into those roles, as well as wanting to believe in romance and love that she didn’t see in her own parents. People who ship Phoenix with Edgeworth tend to still have her as shipper on deck, though less so, as that role has been shifted to Maya, and Pearl often ends up still somehow supporting a relationship she’s never seen supporting in the canon (and would actually be upset to hear of, as it would break her daydreams), and in a relationship later on with Trucy, with whom she’s said to be in a ‘sister-like’ relationship.

If we look at Pearls’ own motivations - her wants and needs, so to speak, then we get a clearer picture of where she might end up.

What she wants is that she finds her ‘special someone’, that everyone around her finds theirs, that they all get married, and that they’re all able to live happily ever after. And none of the guys look at other girls than their wives.

What I think she needs is for the idea of people having that ‘special someone’ to be gently demolished, bit by bit, until she’s able to live without it. She needs to be able to know that if things don’t work out for someone with the person they thought was ‘the special one’, then it’s not the end of the world. That life will go on, and all that. 

She also needs to learn that no one knows more about their love life than the people directly involved. She does not know more about Phoenix or Maya’s feelings than Phoenix or Maya themselves. But that sometimes, one needs to take advice, because one can still have their feelings lead them astray. But this does not mean ‘you just don’t know how you feel’.

She needs to be able to fall in love with someone that she loves rather than someone that she thinks that she loves. That love can’t be an obligation. And that if it isn’t working out, then it isn’t working out, and that’s okay.

She needs to learn that people can be friends with people they aren’t in a relationship with... and that people who she thinks are in a relationship can be friends with anyone else at all. And might end up attached to other people, even.

She needs to learn how to prioritise her feelings in regards to looking after herself, her duties as a Fey able to spirit channel, and also concerning her friends. 

‘Is it more important that I am married to this one person who I care about a great deal, or is it more important that I marry this other person I care about less, but who the elders would approve of for the purpose of creating heirs?’

‘Is it more important that I feel justified in the relationship I perceive to be going on, or that these people have the freedom to interact with each other and other people regardless of my feelings?’

Bear in mind that if she has been seen to hit Phoenix and be somewhat controlling of Maya’s interactions (even if just in ‘but you’re supposed to be with Mr. Nick!’) then how will she act with her own significant other? Will she become angry and hit them if they interact with other women, if they are a man, and if they are a woman or NB, will she be paranoid that any outside interaction is her s/o showing interest in someone who is ‘not Pearl’?

Will she have unreasonable expectations of this hypothetical person to live up to her own ideas of what makes a ‘special someone’ in a romantic relationship with her, specifically? 

I do have to wonder how she’d react the first time she and her s/o have a fight, especially a big one which might need mediation. Pearl, being the kind of girl she is, who ran off crying when she thought that Phoenix hadn’t considered Maya’s feelings, who has had a tendency to blow up at people, for whom all of this stems from an abusive childhood (under her mother, Morgan, which led to her being the shy thing we first met in the second game), might easily believe that everything is over, that she’ll never be able to find someone to love again, that they don’t actually love her, or any number of things.

If Pearl has an idealised vision of romance, does she understand that her s/o is going to have habits that she won’t like, and won’t be able to talk them out of? That some things that might seem cute at first aren’t going to stay that way?

I can only say this all in hypotheticals because we aren’t given any solid clues as to how she’d actually deal with any of this. She seems to have become more mature about shipping people together (doesn’t matter what you ship, that’s unhealthy toward people you know in real life, which for her it was) but it isn’t gone.

And I say all of this as someone who loves her dearly as a flawed character, as a character that could have done with being developed more in DD and SoJ. I want people to look at her and give her the three-dimensional, deep reading that she deserves of someone who is flawed, an abuse survivor, and who would have hurdles to overcome that would be amazing to read about.