There's no other way to put it:
Romanticizing abuse is disgusting. I am sick of manga portraying abuse as love.
Conditioned/manufactured emotion as a result of abuse is not love. "Love" doesn't explain at all why she started serving Fritz. She was forced to stay with him to begin with. The emotion that a child feels toward her "groomer"/abuser isn't love. It's "trauma bonding". Calling such thing "love" to begin with is disgusting on so many levels. Rather than having Ymir realize the abuse and healed and move on from it, he paints it as "being in love/moving on from love".
"For 2000 years, she sought someone who would release her from the agony of love".
LOL. WTF.
The story missed all the parts where it would’ve shown us Stockholm Syndrome but straight up ass-pulled "love". It would be alright if the point of Ymir's story was understanding love from Eren and Mikasa. But Sickyama made it that "she learns from EreMika that she can let go of Fritz even when she loved him". Wow, all of that was love, guys. For 2000 years, she hasn't opened her eyes about the abuse she endured, and continues to think about her relationship with Fritz as love. That isn't liberation. That is being trapped in an abused mindset.
Stockholm Syndrome - trauma bonding - battered-person syndrome - learned helplessness - is a traumatic reaction to abuse that shouldn't be romanticized in media, let alone be a parallel to allude to Eren-Mikasa's relationship.
I lost all respect for Isayama because he knows zilch about the psychology of abuse. Bet he never cared to study it. IRL, abused victims don't stay "blind"; they do eventually realize the abuse but it is difficult for them to leave because they have been conditioned to emotional patterns that the abuser manufactures. IT IS NOT LOVE. There are other ways to conclude Ymir's story, yet he chose to write this bullshit that demonstrates his ignorance and is an insult to all abused victims out there. Fuck mentally sick writing.
From other fans:
"I think that Isayama is actually a disgusting sad little man who has repugnant degenerate ideas about love. To even call this shit 'love' to begin with is such a disgusting fucking insult I can't even express in words my utter disdain."
"When Eren let her make the decision to start the rumbling to get back at the world for causing her so much torment, her character was complete to me, because I thought that signified she finally let go of her slave mentality. That she finally came to the realization that none of it was her fault. [...] Now I would have had been fine with the whole love that Mikasa shared for Eren being the catalyst of Ymir finding out maybe destruction isn't the answer, if the story just replaced the "she did it for her love of the King" with "love being better than destruction". Because I think this is a cop-out way so her coming to that realization [...]: it being reduced Stockholm took-over, you can never escape the chains of true abuse & oppression."
"The parallel between her seeing how someone in love 'letting it go'? Because I'm pretty sure that doesn't inform her that her 'love' is wrong, like my theorycraft above was from me picking up and guessing that Yams want to frame it in a way that the gang makes her feel those 'true' concepts, true love, true life, etc, but she passed away without knowing that her "love" is wrong wtf".
"It would be way better and reasonable to justify it as Ymir being an abused, scared and coerced slave who felt lost without a violent "owner" giving her orders and wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with being free and powerful at the same time. Or even to say she harbored so much hatred for humanity after everything, that she kept on making Titans with the hope of destroying everyone alive at some point. There are SO MANY better choices than her being in love with her slaver. Ugh."
