Something that pisses me off more than anything is the sentiment from anti-Marissa/Ryissa fans that Marissa “dragged Ryan into all her drama, which is why she was no good for him.” Please break this down!

I mean, people like that are only seeing what they want to see, and only thinking what they want to think. I feel like this has been the crux of Marissa fans since 2004. And the show is designed to make people feel this way. It tells us time and time again that selfish, dramatic Marissa is dragging poor uwu baby Ryan into her mess and isn't it just the saddest thing in the world that he loves this troubled girl. I'm not saying it's right, and I'm not saying it's not aggravating, but it's basically like beating our heads against a wall because they're watching a completely different show than we are. There is not a single instance where Ryan didn't put himself into his current love interest's business. Like, we know it's something he's attracted to. The white knight thing is baked into his character makeup. And he is never allowed to be wrong or feel bad about it. So whatever.

And we have Marissa over here who's given the plight of being the object of everyone's affections and earnestly believing that you can be friends with members of the opposite sex without the expectation of reciprocated feelings. Isn't that wild. For all the show cops to in the book, there's not a single instance about how harmful the messages they sent were. And we have certain cast members who have the gall to say that Marissa led Trey on and that shooting him to save Ryan was par for the course.

Marissa and Ryan both have savior complexes but Marissa is the one who suffers from them 100% of the time. The narrative paints hers as wrong and Ryan's as right and calls it a day.

We have to look at this show from the pov of a writer who, by s2, completely abandoned RM as a ship to root for and Marissa as a character who does anything substantial. It's a long way from s1 already. And the way this man stalked TWoP and other anti-Marissa message boards at the time also means he baked in those 'it's for the best Marissa d**d' sentiments that the AU season hammered home several times. So he's holding people's hands to get to these conclusions, and changed the show drastically because he was mad that Marissa fans wouldn't follow to the new season like sheep. He really, actually expected them to show up. And expected the numbers to not drop by half. I'm moving this message into new territory so I apologize but there's many layers to this. Basically Marissa being treated in the script as a character worthy of nuance and backbone went away with s1, and the sentiment forever became 'it's too bad Ryan loves her because she's a mess' and s3 hammers this home incessantly.