#maybe her not being support IS becuase sao had no classes and she was turned into a healer in alfheim BUT THIS IS ONLY ABOUT AINCRAD

[eerna]

see Asuna Yuuki in another writer's hands could have been one of the coolest pop culture heroines ever. her character concept in Aincrad is truly the closest mainstream gamer media ever got to balancing female gamer sterotypes with an interesting concept. she is neither a gamer girl who is basically one of the guys, nor a traditional support character. she never touched a mainstream video game in her life before and ended up in SAO on accident, but she is a quick learner and manages to climb to the top of the charts within a year. let me remind you, she is tied with Kirito for the second most powerful player in the game - she is his equal in absolutely everything, but from a different angle, and they share basically no overlap. it could have been such a cool duality, where our two protagonists each represent one facet of digital existence. Kirito would be the seasoned veteran, he has completely retreated into video games and has nothing else going for him in his life, so this situation where his empowerment suddenly becomes real instead of make-believe is a heady drug. Asuna has no idea how video games work and doesn't understand the culture surrounding them at all, but this is a whole new realism-oriented approach to gaming, which means her lack of understanding could actually be a boon, which in turn allows her to live out her overachiever fantasies brought over from the real world (because there's nothing the Golden Child loves more than mastering something in a very short, very unhealthy timeframe). and then they meet each other, two sides of the same coin who would have never ever met in real life, and it reframes how they see themselves and their goals and dreams. we could have had an epic romantic gaming opera. we could have had it all. if only mainstream gaming media understood itself