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mikogalateaAround 5 years ago, someone made a submission to Revolutionary Confessions on Tumblr wondering what might have happened to Shiori to make her have such an awful image of herself. Here's the speculation I added at the time.
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I strongly suspect that she used to be bullied a lot. When she's introducing herself to Utena and Anthy, she says that Juri was her only friend and that she always "protected" her, which might be implying something along those lines. I've also seen it speculated that she may have been abused in some other way as well, which might've had a similar effect on her; I wonder if she could have come from a toxic home environment, for example.
I won't claim to speak for all victims/survivors of bullying, because I know that everyone's experiences are different, but I will say this: not only can it utterly destroy your self-esteem, but enough abuse like that can also make one distrustful of other people's intentions even when they do mean well. In that case, I can see how Shiori jumped to the conclusion that Juri was only friends with her out of pity.
Other things that I think contribute to Shiori's self-loathing are being in Juri's shadow for so long, general problems with their relationship (I think Juri was emotionally distant, especially after falling for her, and wasn't terrifically sensitive to Shiori's feelings; meanwhile, Shiori was so afraid of being seen as pathetic that she kept bottling up her feelings to the point where they festered) and her own internalised homophobia. As Ikuhara has indicated in the second boxset booklet, she has her own romantic feelings for Juri, and I wouldn't be surprised if the poor girl thought of herself as disgusting for it. =/
Shiori's quite a depressing character, actually. Not only does she think that no one could ever actually like her, but she also believes there's no way she can bring herself up -- hence her trying to bring Juri down instead, just so she can hold something over her, just so she can be seen as something other than a helpless little princess. And yet all the guy-stealing incident did was wreck her relationship with Juri and make her hate herself even more. It's really sad all around.
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I strongly suspect that she used to be bullied a lot. When she's introducing herself to Utena and Anthy, she says that Juri was her only friend and that she always "protected" her, which might be implying something along those lines. I've also seen it speculated that she may have been abused in some other way as well, which might've had a similar effect on her; I wonder if she could have come from a toxic home environment, for example.
I won't claim to speak for all victims/survivors of bullying, because I know that everyone's experiences are different, but I will say this: not only can it utterly destroy your self-esteem, but enough abuse like that can also make one distrustful of other people's intentions even when they do mean well. In that case, I can see how Shiori jumped to the conclusion that Juri was only friends with her out of pity.
Other things that I think contribute to Shiori's self-loathing are being in Juri's shadow for so long, general problems with their relationship (I think Juri was emotionally distant, especially after falling for her, and wasn't terrifically sensitive to Shiori's feelings; meanwhile, Shiori was so afraid of being seen as pathetic that she kept bottling up her feelings to the point where they festered) and her own internalised homophobia. As Ikuhara has indicated in the second boxset booklet, she has her own romantic feelings for Juri, and I wouldn't be surprised if the poor girl thought of herself as disgusting for it. =/
Shiori's quite a depressing character, actually. Not only does she think that no one could ever actually like her, but she also believes there's no way she can bring herself up -- hence her trying to bring Juri down instead, just so she can hold something over her, just so she can be seen as something other than a helpless little princess. And yet all the guy-stealing incident did was wreck her relationship with Juri and make her hate herself even more. It's really sad all around.
