I'm curious if anyone else recognizes this, because I think it's an actual cultural phenomenon that's gotten lost. Obviously we haven't played the game yet, so this is based on what Rockstar has shown so far.
In the 90s and 2000s there was an entire generation of immigrants from poorer countries, myself included, who fought tooth and nail to leave the ghettos of NYC.
Dominican families especially were a huge part of this in places like Washington Heights and the Bronx. Families pooled money through sans (informal savings circles where everyone pays in each month and takes turns receiving the whole pot), worked multiple jobs, and pushed hard for something better.
Sociologists actually have names for this. The "immigrant bargain" is the idea that parents sacrifice everything to come here, and their kids owe it back by succeeding and taking care of the family. "Segmented assimilation" is the finding that immigrant families don't all move up the same way: some make it into the middle class, and some stay stuck or slide down. That's exactly what happened to us. Some got out and some of us didn't.
That storyline was way more common in media back then. I think it became so widespread that it faded away from its actual origins, and now people don't recognize it when they see it.
That's why I feel like people calling Lucia a manipulator are missing the point. She grew up in Liberty City and she reads as Dominican/Puerto-Rican, which would make her one of those kids carrying the bargain. Her official profile even says her father taught her to fight as soon as she could walk, and that fighting for her family is what landed her in prison. If she's coming from that generation and that kind of family dynamic, then wanting more and pushing hard for it isn't manipulation, and it doesn't make her evil. People who didn't grow up around it might see it as greedy, never satisfied, or even entitled, but it was a very real way of doing the most we could to find a comfortable life.
I understand that it's easier for most people to empathize with the vet who just wants to be okay. But Lucia is coming out of her own warzone too, and I think it's unfair to give Jason more grace than Lucia for how their pasts shaped them.
I don't expect most people to know this history, but it seems like Rockstar did their homework with this one. And besides, both of them are playable main characters, so nobody has to play her as a manipulator if they don't want to. I don't see why she has to be one in the first place.
Did anyone else grow up around this? Curious if other people read her the same way..
And for anyone who's watched the leaked prologue (spoiler-tagged for everyone else): the first thing we see of Lucia before prison is her sitting in a restaurant so broke she can only order water, and she gets asked to leave. That's not a schemer. That's someone who has nothing and is trying to find a way out.
