Chapter Text
Why Abby Anderson should be my girlfriend (as wife is impossible)?
Abby Anderson is a 24 years old girl from Seattle. If considering the events in game previous her encounter with Joel as not canon, it's easy to tell she can clearly be my girlfriend. I don't believe she could ever be my wife, fist off because we couldn't attend a catholic wedding since she states she doesn't believe in God and I haven't completed any official ceremonies past being baptised (so I can't marry in a church until I complete them and I never will), there's also a low chance that getting married is still an official thing in a post apocalyptic world. Sure two people can define their relationship as a marriage, but there for sure be no official papers.
Given this, the key points to take into consideration are the facts that she lives amongst the WLF (Washington Liberation Front), a paramilitary organisation that controls much of Seattle, and that she's seen in game being part of a functioning society. She has close friendships, takes responsibility, follows a routine, and contributes to her community.
These are all things I can't do because I have no friends and I don't contribute to my community, but I do take responsibility pretty seriously, so where I lack in social skills she can fill it in for me.
On the other side I'm quite the artistic type and I'll make her as many Christmas stockings as she wishes, along with sketches of her wherever we go. That's a nice touch to a relationship I believe as I've never really seen anyone taking good care of her emotions in game so that's a spot that needs to be filled and I was born for that.
My age is really close to hers (now) and even if I'm just a few years older the relationship can be seen as in a standard rage on the age gap matter. Also, age closeness could improve the overall quality of the interactions between us, meaning that probably, we'd be talking about every girl's issues that concern girls our age. The fact that the economy is collapsing doesn't really matter because the world as I know it would be gone anyways. We could spend time instead talking about how a different life could've affected us and basically planning a future in which we can live rather happily given the circumstances since we both have good planning skills.
This includes also me doing her hair whenever she likes so it's less time spending than braiding it alone, and also I've learnt from a professional hairdresser (my mother) how to do more complex hairstyles so she can be as fashionable as she wishes.
To balance things she can coach me when we do gym, because as much as I do have muscles and I'm working pretty well and with constant workout to get better, sometimes I lack that competitive feeling. Fit models on Instagram don't do the job quite right because I don't really care about being “better” than them, so challenging myself to get to my girlfriend's level is really the motivational boost and I'm sure she can give me as many tips as she can.
Given that I'm pretty shorter than her, as she's canonically 5”8 to 5”9 or 173cm to 175cm and I'm just 5”2 or 157cm, if we made a team while travelling on foot together because we need to go somewhere, she can easily boost me up high places that would be unreachable alone, and I can find some way to get her up too either by being smart or tying my waist to a pole and just letting her use my arms as a climbing rope. That's a point on the team scores since every relationship should be a team first!
Our interest, as far as it's revealed and I'm only referencing canonical information, do match pretty well. If she's actually taking satisfaction in doing physical activity and gaining strength, that's what I'm busying half of my week with, so we could start whole conversations about that, exchange tips, compare our results or fit into pretty common tropes of girls being really sweaty and staring at each other while trying not to be exposed, or straight up kissing in the lockers room (that would just be our room because in such a world real gyms aren't a thing anymore).
The compatibility in our interests extends on collecting things that other people may find useless. She collects coins and car plates, maybe as a way to connect with objects and memories of a past that's no more, or maybe straight up as a hobby itself, and if that was the case we'd have another thing in common. I collect physical books (because I like the smell of the pages) that are only first prints. I don't only buy first prints, but if I can I search for them until I find one, even if I already read the book, just to have a collection of the first prints of them. I also collect jewelry that goes from the 1960s to before, usually asking my grandmothers to gift them to me because I don't want to spend money on them, but I love the vibe of possessing vintage jewellery that no one would wear nowadays.
Given these points we would be yapping a lot about our relics collections and that's such a great start to any conversation that regards our value of them, which can lead to conversations about our pasts.
The third probably most important point to prove we'd have a strong connection is trauma bonding. As much as I never lived through an apocalypse I still have to go to therapy two times since I was 17 because of all the turmoils and events I had to experience. As I don't want to give information about that I'll just say it's real bad stuff that had me diagnosed with a pretty complicated disorder, for which I'll have to talk about in therapy sessions for at least ten more years to “solve” (quoting my psychologist on that, so a professional who's got different degrees in the psychology fields).
Although mine and Abby's traumatic past would be very different, if we came from the same universe, in this case her moving to mine, we'd have a lot to talk about on a deeper level, giving our connection also an aspect of solidarity and sympathy. Our attitudes are also quite similar. If it was possible to smash the people who hurt me (on a serious level) with a golf club I'd do it without thinking about it twice, no matter if I lose the approval of my friends because, I repeat, I have none and if people don't like my revenge arc they can move on and leave me alone.
Having said so, I'd be helping Abby in her own revenge arc as much as she needs, collecting as many golf clubs for every one of her enemies so she doesn't have to worry about breaking them when breaking their bones. On her side she's really good at finding people, following tracks and all that would allow me to actually get to the people who did me really wrong since the internet and hacking their accounts to find their addresses wouldn't be a thing. And I can't do that in real life anyways because I don't wanna go to jail.
I also have a real life friend who would help me finding golf clubs to play golf with my abusers, but she's also very in love with Abby so having them together in the same room would create a lot of tension and there'd be a big chance of her stealing Abby from me since she's way cooler than me. (Sorry girl let's say you live in Rio De Janeiro in that universe)
Having a way to help each other avenge ourselves against the people who scarred our past would create a lot of complicity and keep the relationship emotionally rich and satisfying because I'm sure I'm as keen to violence as she is, if only laws weren't a thing anymore. That's why I can only use a punching bag, while being together would allow us to punch real people together.
Many people would go against my thesis, by explaining their concerns about me writing this in the first place, but I'm not going to confute that because it's not against any legal or moral law to write an essay.
These people could sustain an impossibility for me and Abby to be a couple, since she's not a real person. In their canonical way, a real person is a biological person with human DNA. Since Abby is a human with human DNA in her universe, some may argue that Abby Anderson is merely a sophisticated collection of code and digital assets; or critics may claim that Abby is “nothing more than several million lines of code arranged in a particularly muscular configuration” in our universe.
Other opponents to my thesis could state that Abby couldn't be my girlfriend because of her sexuality apparently being about interest in men only. Apart from the worldly accepted fact that gender is a spectrum, these people might mean she's into amab people only and try to prove the division of sexuality being only heterosexual/homosexual given the impossibility or at least the difficulty of gender transitioning in a post apocalyptic world where even the walls are trying to kill you.
Is it although easy to confute both the points the antithesists may bring with actual facts rather than their weak speculations.
If I don't consider the possibility to just shift into another universe to be with her, bringing up the multiverse theory, I can still strongly affirm that we do live in a simulation. I've watched probably more than 10 hours of podcasts in which mathematicians, physicists and philosophers have argued that the idea of the simulation hypothesis is at least worth considering. The person most responsible for the idea is the philosopher Nick Bostrom, followed by Max Tegmark who explained the idea that reality may be fundamentally mathematical. Fredkin finally proposed the idea that the universe may fundamentally operate like a computer or a computational process (digital physics).
If considering the hypotheses of these brilliant minds as true and valid like I do, there for sure can be a way to rewrite part of the universal code for me to just exist in what's considered a digital world, while it's just another parallel digital world. My code can be transferred or copied and Abby's code can be as well. In the end we'd be together anyways.
To address the second matter the people could bring against my thesis, that Abby can only be heterosexual because she's seen having intercourse and a romantic interest only with a man, I can surely reply that Abby and Owen's bond goes deeper than the simple romantic interest.
Owen was a long time friend of Abby when taking into consideration the events happening in her flashbacks levels. Owen was part of her life even before her father died, and most certainly stayed close to her after the event. Their bond transcended physical attraction, taking roots in mutual sustain and team work that lasted years. It's never clear if Abby had ever had any other romantic interest and on the matter anyone can speculate as much as they like.
While Abby is being seen together with a man, she's never being seen not liking a woman. She never explicated her sexuality that for what we know she could be demisexual as much as she could be bisexual. These are strong bases to assume that Abby could in fact be interested in afab people as well and given the facts, I do have a strong chance indeed.
To conclude my thesis on why Abby should be my girlfriend, I can prove how much I actually love her, having 2 Pinterest boards in which she's the protagonist and one of them being only dedicated to her. I've also done many digital portraits of her that got quite the amount of up votes on Reddit and that's just showing off my love. I believe I provided enough counterarguments to the antithesis points and finally, just the fact that I spent 3 and a half hours writing this should get me Abby straight up delivered by mail to my door.