The very "manic dream girl" who...

I think the title already makes it clear. We know this archetype, right? Yunyasha, Varenka... Yunyasha is known to those who read the redraw, and Varenka was mentioned in the old version (By the way, we'll see Varya for the first time!!! - We haven't seen her before, - in the extras to the first arc, namely KUSP 2147, but let's not get distracted).

I've already seen these comments that Addiction is a romance about a drug addict and a professor: "Well, here we go, another story about how a philosopher-mouse (well, what mouse? A peacock) met a crazy girl who taught him how to live."

Yeah, right.

Who's teaching whom.


In the classic "manic dream girl" trope, the hero is a guy. He's boring, lonely, and suddenly an explosion happens in his life. She bursts in with colorful hair, a weird style, and a mission to "make his life brighter." And it seems similar to my Yunya, right? She literally flew into our poor philosopher's life. Though she doesn't have brightly colored hair... Well, that's fine, it works too.

But there's one detail that annoys me the most about this trope.

These girls have no inner world.

No goals. No real problems. No development. They're just a function for someone else's plot. Essentially, a harmless firework that goes off and fades, just so the guy hero becomes cooler.

But let's imagine for a second that this girl exists in reality?

What if we take this trope, chop it up like a salad, and pour over it that very living, painful truth that is so lacking in movies and books?

I love to ponder:

• Why did she become like this?
• What does she feel when she "bursts in"?
• What did she sacrifice to become this "dream"?
• And whom did she make sacrifice themselves?

And most importantly: What if she's not harmless?

What if her love is not a lifeline, but an anchor? What if that very "hero" is just a consumable resource in her own, very dark story?

I like to flip tropes. I want to show that very "mania," but in a way that makes your skin crawl not from the girl's brightness, but from understanding the price it comes with.

And it's scary. And it's beautiful. Beautiful to me.