#the paul holden community seems so divided on a bunch of stuff like

[alaskan-wallflower]

kinda coincides with my previous post but within the parry community i kinda see a lot of discourse over “oh soul would be emotionally abusive!” “oh paul would be an absolute gentleman!” and honestly? i don’t really agree with either? at least not fully.

this is just my opinion btw you don’t have to agree with it and i frankly don’t care if you agree or don’t agree because this is a post solely for my own opinion to be stated but

with paul and darry being together, i think that paul would be somewhat emotionally abusive, but not intentionally. let’s look at soc home lives. again, socs aren’t depicted as having caring families, nor are they depicted as having a found family like the greasers do. and i don’t think paul is an exception. i think paul probably grew up with emotionally neglectful parents, and he grew up with parents who weren’t always there for him. i have personal headcanons about paul’s home life (i think his mom was kinda neglectful and wa star one to never tell him no while his dad did business and used to come home and would be emotionally abusive towards paul but anyway that’s obviously not canon, that’s just me) but i think that any and all emotional manipulation and abuse would be a learned behavior and something paul assumed was normal. look at all the socs . none of them are saints. none of them are gonna tell each other “maybe that’s fucked up” because it’s normalized to them.

i guess what i’m getting at is i don’t think paul would be an incredible boyfriend-not because he was abused, don’t think that in saying that, but i think that through both enduring said abuse and like bob, wanting to be told no, while also just being in the environment he’s in, he never really learned that his abuse was in fact, abuse, and carrying on those behaviors wasn’t normal.

obviously i think that given that darry lived with his parents and had a found family he recognized it right away and tried to work with paul but it kinda all just went to shit because paul gets REALLY defensive and such.

another thing i’ve seen is that people disagree on whether or not paul would get along with the rest of the readers and honestly i can’t really see it. again, paul hasn’t found a chosen family so he doesn’t really understand. the social class thing is also a big divisor and i think that darry wasn’t your stereotypical grease, which was why he got along so well with paul. however, i cannot see him getting along with someone like two bit or steve, who are your more stereotypical greasers. even long and sods like to them he’s a stereotypical soc and to him they’re just greasers. he’s never been kind to the greasers and i don’t think that the curtis gang is an exception.

again, this is just my opinion, you don’t have to agree, i don’t care if you do or don’t (don’t come at me though like i’m not looking to fight) but tbh this is just me looking into how these kinds of environments affect someone.