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This is such an authentic portrayal of how a 12-year-old would act

These scenes of Katara and Aang remind me a lot of me and my young brother (*who's also 12 year old btw) when he becomes open and vulnerable with me and wants me to watch him when he's playing a game or doing smth fun, kids want acknowledgement, attention and praise,

And they become disappointed when you're not giving attention and want to make sure you're watching them

(In these moments I would be busy just like Katara in this scene)

Then I realise that he's disappointed and wants acknowledgement, I reply with a complement in a tone like I'm amazed to make him feel noticed

+ bonus

(*This me when I ask my brother to do smth lol)

the whole dark choco & dark cacao storyline is one of the lowkey best storylines in crk, which is why it’s kind of infuriating to try and find genuine analysis about it, because it either suffers from dumbass racism, black and white thinking, or a complete woobification of both parties involved while also simultaneously erasing what makes the moral and general plot behind them both so great and gut-wrenching

Cacao is, by design, someone who has seen more people die than any of his friends. he’s headed a kingdom for basically his entire life and seen entire generations come and go, live and die, and he engraves their names on an altar not just for honor, but for remembrance. But all of this death is implied to have sanded away much of his sense of humor and innocence, which isn’t helped by the fact he lives in a hostile, blizzard riddled land that has very little food and is filled with wild beasts. He doesn’t have time to play games, he doesn’t have time to show his soft side, because if he does, someone might die. Someone relying on him might fall. There’s probably a hundred or more names on the Altar of the Fallen that come from something he may have messed up but never admitted, because his kingdom trusts in him absolutely and that trust slowly turned into him a one man island, an Atlas holding up the world that was simultaneously crushed by its weight in the same vein, a fact he’d rather die than admit, and eventually could not figure out how to admit until the end of chapter 14, when his soldiers reassure him.

There’s not a lot of concrete implications behind the way Cacao raised Dark Choco as a child, but it’s clear from these lines of his that there was definitely emotional neglect going on between them, which isn’t something I think many people fully grasp and understand, because not only are we not shown the full extend of DC’s childhood, but by nature the dysfunctional relationship between a parent like this and their child is messy, gray, and often something that causes people to fight because of their own personal circumstances and lack of empathy towards people in Cacao’s situation.

Cacao very clearly has PTSD. He has extreme PTSD from the war, and it most likely caused him to neglect his own son because he was afraid of losing him the same way he lost so many others. Cacao loved DC more than beloved anyone else in his entire life, and unfortunately that love is why Cacao most likely did not pass down that necessity to him. Love requires someone to be vulnerable, love involves loss, and love often can break people in ways beyond repair. From his perspective of seeing so many die, the harsh conditions of his kingdom and the Dark Flour War (of which he lost a good friend btw! White Lily!) it’s clear and understandable why he’d treat his son so horribly and why DC would inevitably grow up to hate him and see him as someone stifling. Someone who does not understand what the good of the future is. A stick-in-the-mud, if you will.

The reason I mention all of this is because Cacao’s story very much parallels Dark Choco’s own story. Cacao acted terribly, awfully, and was a neglectful father but he had a reason to. He had lots of reasons to. The cycle of child neglect is called a cycle for a reason, many parents who treat their children in unsavory ways often do so because they are scared or do not know any better. None of this absolves them from their actions or even requires their child to have a relationship with them once things change, but the reason I mention this is because empathy and compassion for those in terrible situations doing terrible things but growing above them and learning to be better is the message of both Dark Cacao and Dark Choco’s stories. It’s a plea to the audience to put themselves in the shoes of someone who so desperately wants to be better, who wants to do better and atone for their sins, accepting the consequences along the way.

It’s an especially importance message with regards to generational trauma. Generational trauma is a sticky and painful experience to unpack because it requires your own breaking of the cycle while figuring out how much sympathy, empathy, grace, and mercy to have for the generation before you who perpetrated it but also suffered from it. It’s one of the worst kinds of things to work through simply because being human means that the cognitive dissonance of knowing you should have love and understanding for someone who hurt you in ways that cannot be repaired had an understandable reason to do so, but not a justifiable one.

And that’s where the both of their stories tie into each other. Cacao was not a good father by his own words (what father raises a child without love) but he had a reason to do so and it was because he was afraid of losing the one he loved the most. Love hurt him, love gave him grief and made his heart ache in ways he could not handle. Dark Choco, by comparison, was also someone who did bad things for an understandable reason because he did not see himself worthy of love: he was raised without it, and thus gave himself over to a dark power and committed atrocities because he did not see himself worthy of love. He did not see himself as anything more than the darkness, did not see himself worth anything more than being a minion to someone who abused and manipulated him into being a tool, and he continued to be that way until…

It was the final realization of his father’s love that gave him the strength to fight back.

Ok weird opinion of mine I guess idk how to start posts aaaa

I think Simon’s “barbarian” design really works story and character wise.

Yeah, it’s silly and absolutely not historically accurate whatsoever, but it kinda makes sense in a certain weird way.

We know from Lament of Innocence and Dracula’s Curse that the Belmont family is generally on rough terms with the public. Leon gets his title taken away and, even though he gets his sword back at the end of the whole Walter situation as confirmed by how Belmonts onward have that sword, he’s still generally kinda shunned for going against the church’s wishes and the tail end of the crusades happening at the time. And Trevor is straight up banished from the country for fear of his strength. He’s much isolated from other people off in the house in the woods until he’s called to help fight against Dracula and gets some friends on the way.

And this kinda sets up the situation that the family was living in during Christopher’s time. The Belmonts are social outcasts; their existence is acknowledged, but they’re not really associated with or thought of very highly at this point. So, it wouldn’t be unlikely that they just wouldn’t really care for or be caught up with social expectations like fashion. When people are going to be wary of you regardless of what you do, why not dress however you want? Especially if you know no one’s going to do anything about it! Especially if it’s practical; the longer, looser sleeves and pant legs of the time would be restrictive in a combat/acrobatic context. So Christopher probably just wore whatever he wanted, and to be fair he doesn’t really seem to interact with anyone besides family very much.

First I wanna mention that I am completely aware that Simon was designed way before any of these other characters. But these characters are chronologically before him and can explain where he gets these design choices from in universe.

So, what about Simon then? Well, Simon has a lot of themes of wanting to be like his ancestors. Christopher is directly mentioned as someone he wonders he’ll ever compare to. Judgment shows him looking up to Trevor as well, and even though that game is of interesting canon status lol, it’s an example of that character element being used again. And this is reflected in his barbarian designs! The cape he wears in the manual drawings resembles the cape Trevor throws off in the opening of CV3. The general light armor and skimpy clothing is reflective of both some of Christopher and Trevor’s designs. The metal armor in Simon’s Quest being reminiscent in shape to Trevor’s on the CV3 box art. It just makes sense that Simon would be trying his damnedest to emulate the guys he’s been looking up and comparing himself to his whole life.

And the sudden transition from the barbarian look the family had for years to the more with the times fashion that Juste has makes a lot of sense considering Juste grew up in a time when the family was highly respected and in the middle of town, somewhere where keeping social expectations and appearances would be expected of him.

Idk if any of this makes sense, but aaaaaa random stream of an idea I guess. I like Simon getting to being weird and out of place for his time period and country lol. Also I’m not saying that other designs are bad!!! I like all of Simon’s game designs tbh, Ayami’s is really cool too and works for some of these points cause it’s also kinda barbarian esque but just in black and red, I’ve cosplayed it before lol. Yeah idk that’s it and I am sleepy goodnight—

Ok so I ran into a post on Reddit a while ago about the Undead Parasite boss from Lament of Innocence and what it looks like and it’s been bothering me for a looooong time because I think it looks like something else.

I’m putting a cut here because there will be pictures of medical diagrams and brief mentions of sexual implications so those who are discomforted by that can scroll past d(^^ ).

So the post was basically saying that the whole boss is very uh a certain private opening shaped and has worms going into the holes meaning it could be some kind of a sexual implication.

But looking closer at it, I really think that’s supposed to be something else. Shapes and patterns are often repeated in nature, especially in anatomy, so I can see how someone might think of that first, but that green hard structure in the inside looks wayyy more like something else to me that is also a tube in the body: the trachea.

Flip this image upside down and suddenly the layers around the hole start to line up, and that characteristic cartilaginous looking green structure makes more sense. But why would this area have references to neck and throat anatomy? For that answer we have to look at the context clues in the rest of the stage.

Oh wow, ok that is almost certainly brain tissue. The folds especially give it away, but the little node looking clumps that pop up are also evidence towards it. Those little things shoot out electricity!!! Like what the neurological system does! Not exactly sure what these might be specifically in anatomy because they don’t really look like anything, but they could just be a cluster of neurons of some sort. And well the neck is kinda situated right below the brain and houses the spinal cord, so it makes sense that references to its structures would be here.

Idk, this area just immediately screamed brain parasite horror to me. Which is interesting since it takes place in the church area, the house of sacred remains. I’m sure there’s probably some kind of symbolic reason for it, but I don’t know what it is tbh. General cynical poisoning the mind stuff? A metaphor for manipulation or brainwashing? Something about corruption? Who knows, just throwing out some ideas that might fit with other themes in the game. There’s also the chance that this might be referencing both anatomical things!!!

Anyway, just random thoughts, hope this makes sense :3

ok so. sara trantoul as a character has SOOOOO little lines and im attempting to extract and reconstruct her personality around it, and in attempting to study her to better understand her as a character, this is what ive so far found.

sara has exactly 3 scenes. one where she awakens to leon, and says maybe one thing to him, one where she’s electrocuted by rinaldo’s barrier, and of course, the one where she martyrs herself to create the vampire killer. we also have some very minor clues about her, such as her art, the music that plays during her last scene, the dramaticized scene with the succubus (iirc in sotn the succubus mentions being able to see into alucards mind enough to immitate lisa), and the emotions leon displays towards her, and towards her kidnapping / the situation in the first place. i don’t have the information booklet that comes w the game disk (anymore 😭) nor have i read the manga adaptation. i feel like i remember there also being a manga that follows, the one where leon meets trefor llewelen and liza marquis, but i dont know anything about it.

as a sidebar, if anyone has access to any of those things please for the love of g-d PLEASE let me see them

ill get into the more minor tidbits first. we have the succubus scene, which IS dramaticized, but its meant to at least somewhat believeably be sara. the only thing of note i really noticed here was that she says “i cant believe youre safe”, which speaks to her thinking of leons safety before her own, and thus putting him before herself. theres the music thats played when shes killed, which is meant to be very tragic and sad, and is very delicate, with harp and flute. which leads into a classical piano solo. these are often used to symbolize beauty and innocence in music. however, to me, since this scene and the game is from leons pov, it feels more like its how leon views sara, and how he views her death. (rear garden is a beautiful piece btw. go listen to it.) she also has her bio, which mentions she is the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and that despite being rich she will be the first to help anyone who needs it.

her first two scenes tell us effectively nothing about sara, as she does very little actual speaking in them.

in the last of sara’s exactly 3 scenes however, the one where shes basically sacrificed/martyred, it opens with leon & rinaldo finding out she has been eavesdropping on their conversation regarding her becoming a vampire. immediately this tells us two things—one, she is curious by nature, and two, more importantly, she is absolutely fed up with being kept in the dark regarding her situation & her fate, as no one will tell her whats going on really. shes having to piece it together from what little information she can glean, and having things just happen to her outside of her own control, and others basically making decisions for her, which walter did by kidnapping and eventually turning her, and, at the time of this conversation, leon is actively doing right now. (and, which, she never finds out, but which mathias effectively also does by orchestrating all of this) she is being used as a pawn in everyone elses games, and shes tired of this. she feels helpless, and she does not like it!!!

the next scene, the actual scene itself that i referenced, she tells leon to “stay away”, which speaks to her desperately trying to take control of the situation and of her own fate, trying to protect leon, that she views vampires as inherently dangerous and by extension, views herself as dangerous, and, correlated to her trying to protect leon, it speaks to her first instinct be to protect and/or help others before taking her own needs into account. however, she is able to stand up for her own desires if they directly conflict with someone else’s, even leons, as she begs him to kill her, and he refuses initially, still in denial and shock and convinced he can save her, and that theyll make it out of this, and everything will return to normal. sara knows this wont happen, explaining that it is already too late for her, which tells us she is not in denial about her own impending death. it doesnt necessarily mean shes fully accepted it—thats unlikely, due to the amount of trauma shes undergoing in such a short time. to me it, along with her first action of threatening to stab herself if leon approached, reads more to imply that when sara is faced with an upsetting and traumatic situation, her brain shifts into problem-solving mode, and surpresses her emotions until the situation is dealth with. she wouldnt be able to relax, grieve, really let herself feel any emotions until afterward, because the stress of the situation being ongoing forces her to prioritize making it through this situation before anything else.

she seems to describe the situation to leon, in presumably an attempt to make him understand the situation as it actually is and convince him to agree with her. again, trying to Fix the situation. part of the reason she has accepted death as the best option, too, is that she mentions that “if [her] soul can save others, then [she] wont die in vain”. this, too, speaks to her tendency towards putting others first even before her own life.

more than anything though, the way she describes it also reads to me as fear, which is natural. it partially implies that part of why shes not in denial about her death is that shes MORE scared of what she could become if she ISNT killed now, ESPECIALLY with how vampirism is treated/referred to in game, with the tale of rinaldo’s daughter justine completely changing, personality wise, and slaughtering the rest of her family, describing her basically as becoming a soulless monster.

sara tends to want to help people as much as she can, to the detriment of yourself. no matter how you interpret vampirism, your very survival FORCES you to place your own needs above others in a way that often endangers others. and the way vampirism is described IN GAME, its likely she believes that if the turn is completed, the vampire she will become will not only WANT to do that, but actively ENJOY it.

it is antithetical to her view of herself and her values, and THATS why she fears it so much. its also what i refer to by her putting her needs first. shed rather die as she is than live as an inverted version of herself.

when leon continues to refuse, she basically tries to manipulate/guilt trip him into agreeing, but this seems to be a last resort. but it IS a resort, which is also worth noting to her character. it implies that if she absolutely, DESPERATELY wants something, she will manipulate to get it, but ONLY as a last resort.

which draws a very interesting parallel to mathias, to me.

she also invokes this as an act of agency on her part, basically asking leon to honor her wishes instead of, like everyone else, making those decisions for her.

the last thing she says in that vein is her offering leon reassurance , which ALSO speaks to her tendency to put others before herself.

then of course we get the scene with the creation of the whip. the way rinaldo describes it in the ritual implies its SARAS rage and hatred which gives the whip its power, not leons (a mistake i made at first), and that vampires inherently carry a sort of hatred within their soul, but we dont directly see this with sara. she doesnt seem to be filled with hatred. in addition, she never completes the transformation into a vampire in canon, so she wouldnt be filled with hatred JUST by virtue of being in the process of turning into a vampire. however, i think this brings an opportunity for an interesting interpretation. she IS angry. she IS full of rage. but its nothing inherent to vampirism; shes angry she was put into a situation outside of her control, shes angry she was turned, shes angry her life had to be taken from her, shes angry at walter for all of this. and i think we dont really see this for some reason or another (my personal headcanon is that she doesnt really Allow herself to feel rage, so she surpresses it, which is why it doesnt INHERENTLY read that way when shes talking) but the thing that gives the whip its power is 1) the vampirism itself, the power of the demonic nature of her soul (vampires ARE a type of demon in the cv universe), and 2) the rage she feels towards walter, and towards vampires in general, for taking her life from her, which, now that shes in the whip, with rage being what powers it, she is basically stripped away to ONLY rage

which, i think is a very interesting metaphor to mathias and leon themselves, and how the story leaves them.

sara’s last words are “thank you, leon.” she finally feels like she can rest, like she was able to help and more than that, that her wishes were respected. it is her only true act of agency within the series.

theres of course a conversation to be had about how the writers’ misogyny played into both her characterization and lack thereof, her death and how it impacts the narrative, but thats for another time. this is what i have based on what we get in the games

BONUS: since i am an enjoyer of the victorian flower language as well as modern flower meanings, the choice of flowers in the wreath in her full body picture likely means little, but i’m still going to analyze it.

i can see 3 different flowers here: red anemone, white daisies, and bluestars

red anemone, the most prominent flowers here, and they represent death or forsaken/lost love. in christianity, they are used to represent the blood jesus shed during the crucifixion. which lines up with sara’s role as the “necessary” sacrifice, the martyr, and kind of feeds into leon’s superiority complexes in an interesting way imo.

the white daisies represent innocence and loyalty, purity and joy.

these first two line up very well with the narrative. the death of joy, of purity. a lament of innocence of sorts.

the bluestar is interesting. it can represent hope, and strength and determination, and reaching for the seemingly impossible. this is VERY interesting in the context of the narrative, as the task of defeating walter seems an impossible task, as no one has survived him before, and leon could not even land a hit on him before completeing the whip, but theres also hope now that the whip has been completed, the one thing that can defeat him, which was only possible because of sara, and with it, the determination and strength to see it to the end.

there appears to also be olive branches amongst the leaves, at least as near as i (not a botanist) can identify, which is interesting; olive branches are often associated with doves—which sara embodies very well. the bringing of an olive branch is meant to symbolize peace and hope—which is… FASCINATING to me, as she had hoped her death would prevent others from having the same fate befall them, but was consumed by rage after becoming one with the whip, the very rage which seems to perpetuate a lot of the conflict within the series. its also interesting to me bc walter returned sara to leon in a way that could be viewed as a corruption of the concept of extending an olive branch.

Alright I’ve thought about it a bit, let’s rant about just how horrifying the curse Simon was afflicted with would be! Consider this like a part one of sorts for Simon’s Quest analysis stuff cause I could talk about this one game for hours on end—

I’m gonna put a cut here because warning ⚠️ descriptions of decay, gorey stuff, disease, and some pretty bad mental effects. Stay safe guys, don’t read further if you can’t handle those topics!

I’ve seen multiple different descriptions of it from different media and manuals, but, just from this little line alone, this is already a pretty awful fate for the guy. High emphasis on the word decay. That in itself can imply a lot of different things, sometimes all at once. And keep in mind too, he’s had this over the course of 7 years. Simon is probably already an absolute wreck from this wayyyyy before the game even starts.

First of all, getting hit on the back is a bad spot for any kind of infection or spreading disease (closest irl counterpart). That’s awfully close to a lot of vital things you don’t want something spreading to including the spine, lungs, heart, etc etc. Especially for deeper cuts because we’re talking Dracula level injury here, not like a paper cut or something. Hell, too deep of a hit on the back might cause some nerve damage, not to the extent of paralysis in his case, but general chronic pain from a wound that won’t heal properly is uhhh… not great. :( I’ve also seen some media say that the curse causes wounds to not heal, bleeding, the American manual even mentions it effecting the soul, awful stuff. I generally like to think “Bloody Tears” is referring to Simon tbh.

Another thing, with afflictions that cause decay generally the smaller appendages start getting hit hard with it first. It’s the same way for a lot of other conditions; fingers, toes, earlobes, anything protruding like that because the body considers them lowest priority in a survival situation like that and it wouldn’t kill you to lose them. Necrosis especially has things start turning ruddy colors, blacken, and start forming holes in the layers of skin (@ @ ;). Obviously this alone is excruciating. Poor dude has to walk for days on end like that…

And slowly deteriorating could also imply some form of wasting. Fats usually go first, then muscle, which is also very not good when you’ve gotta beat the clock to survive. Scary thing is that the brain is like 60% fats and not immune to any of this whoops—

Something I don’t really see anyone consider very often when talking about the curse (not that I’ve seen many people talk about this 💀) is how absolutely mentally fucked up Simon would be from it. Just the terror of knowing you’re slowly rotting to death would be enough to drive most people into some kind of despair or panic, but seeing and feeling all the gruesome details of it is even worse. Being in constant pain and stress isn’t good for anyone, especially someone who is already weakened from illness. But the sheer mental deterioration this guy would be having from the decay itself oh my god (0_o ). Looking up widespread brain shrinkage like that and uh some of the early signs are already stuff like seizures and extreme headaches. Add the fact that he doesn’t really sleep much for upwards of 7 days and it’d be an absolute miracle if this guy wasn’t hallucinating and/or completely hysterical by this point among other things. I mean, no wonder so much of this game is running around lost and confused, not only are people lying to his face, Simon is probably just barely keeping his shit together the whole time.

So just imagine for a second all of these things combined. No wonder people were terrified of him, he probably genuinely looked like a corpse. Eeeee yikes yikes ouch, poor guy :’’’’’(.

Anyway, Konami where is my horror focused Simon’s Quest remake you cowards—

i absolutely love your tags on my post about the mysterious woman, it's nice seeing someone who's as passionate about her as me ❤️

Hehehe, thank u, I’m pacing around all happy about it rn (>.< ). I love Simon’s Quest and how genuinely odd everything that happens in it is.

And the Mysterious Woman doesn’t get talked about very much and y’all are missing out!!! She’s so so so fun to speculate about!

I ran into I think it might have been an old conversation on like Gamefaqs or some other comment section somewhere and there were a surprisingly large amount of people in the conversation who said that when the game came out they assumed that she was meant to be Selena, and that’s just aaaaaa so so interesting to me. And it wasn’t just American fans either, there was someone from Japan who assumed the same. It’s so awesome getting to see the perspectives of people who were there when the game was new and this theory has me going nuts sometimes lol. On one hand it makes sense for the ghost woman in the Belmont family graveyard to be someone from the family, but on the other hand is she really “mysterious” anymore if it’s someone Simon would know?

And why did the Mysterious Woman not mention the Tooth of Vlad and only the other five pieces that she knew would partially summon Dracula instead of the intended burning, burying, and breaking of the curse? Especially if she’s meant to be Selena/Simon’s wife or if you interpret her as Sara? Simon’s Quest really went for the twist of having the call to action character and the one to get Simon out of whatever rut he was in for 6 years in the first place be the first person to lie to him. Which is just so!!!! Aaaa!!!!!!!!!!! This also raises the question: is the Mysterious Woman actually a force of good? Or did she just know that Simon was desperate enough to believe what she was saying to him? I’ve seen some people theorize that she was some kind of Dracula cultist or even a possible form of Death because of this.

Or was she completely right that summoning and killing Dracula is the only way to break the curse? After all a lot of other games in the series that revolve around curses end in Dracula being brought back and defeated. But this is also a strange option as usually when Dracula is resurrected it’s by cultists or Death or whoever else and it’s not a good thing and is just for the purpose of having the evil dark lord do evil things. So that would make this game one of the few scenarios in which Dracula’s resurrection is justified which is so weird I just— thinking about Simon’s Quest to hard is gonna kill me one day lol X,,,,,D.

She also says that one line of “within your own heart, you might be able to defeat the evil if you wager your own life” and thinking about that along with the ominous vagueness of the endings all having different eulogies so similar that you could genuinely make an argument for any of them being the canon ending and the fact that almost all of Simon’s symbolism is related to self sacrifice and martyrdom is uh… interesting. Also a lot of people forget that the area around Castlevania is also cursed, not just Simon. The swamps are messed up, the towns get less saturated in color more empty the closer you get to the castle, and there’s monsters everywhere, this wasn’t entirely a selfish endeavor to save himself.

Anyway, the Japanese manual also talks about the Mysterious Woman in specific ways, appearing and disappearing with the mist. And maybe this is a way to keep her as mysterious as possible, but it’s an interesting choice of words. They could’ve said she walked away into the mist, but they specifically said “disappear”, which is an awfully ghostly thing to do. And it’s also weird cause we kinda do see another character suddenly appear out of thin air in a graveyard in who I like to call the Garlic Guy. The Garlic Guy is also massively under appreciated like what the heck is up with that whole interaction 💀💀💀. Go to the graveyard, only at night, and some hooded figure will suddenly begin to exist in front of you if you lay garlic on the ground and then give you a bag. And then like most things it’s completely unexplained and you just have to keep moving on. I’m thoroughly convinced Simon is just as confused as we are lol. And in a way she is also treated the same way as any other NPC: she does something unexplainable and is never mentioned or important again. The way the game is written I swear it’s designed to make you feel anxious and rushed, ya know like a guy who is actively dying would feel.

And the fact that none of this is ever explained is just so ominous. It adds to the tension of the game and themes of not being able to trust anyone. Nobody trusts Simon, Simon can’t determine who’s trustworthy, there’s NPCs that you don’t even get to know who or what they are, sometimes even the hint books aren’t particularly helpful, things happen and you just have to keep going as to not waste any time.

Hopefully any of this makes sense lol I ain’t reading all that again to check cause I gotta go have lunch cause I forgor about it whoops. Anyway I am very normal about Simon’s Quest and every character in it, please everyone play this game it’s good I promise— (;w; )

Edit: oh my god I did not realize how long this ended up oopsie—

PREACH OML SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK

however though, I don’t quite agree with your statement that “both of them are morally grey”

Primarily because a lot of what Mono does that could be considered morally darker was out of self defense (this applies to Six as well! But you already talked enough about Six!) Killing the doctor, killing the porcelain children, killing the hunter, those were all things that had to be done or the two kids would’ve died. It’s also important to remember that those entities aren’t really people, not anymore at least. They’re basically creatures- monsters, designed to attack and be hostile towards any kid they come in contact with. I don’t really think their deaths should be put on the same moral high ground as the death of a kid. And I don’t think it’d be fair to say those two are morally grey just for trying to defend themselves. Mono has consistently been portrayed as helpful and kind. He went out of his way to free Six from the hunter, he went through the school to save Six from the porcelain children, and greeted her rather gently when she woke up. And ofc he freed Six from her corrupted form in the signal tower. I agree with your point on the double standards between the two. People forget the way Six pulled Mono out of the TVs consistently, the way she pulled Mono out of the ruble when that building fell upon them, or overall the way she continually chose to help Mono through out the game, the fact she even stuck around.

I can pull more examples for the two, but I want to try to remain within just LN2 for clarity’s sake.

maybe its a bit of my own personal bias, but I don’t exactly like referring to any young kid as morally grey.

Mono and Six are only about nine years old, that’s incredibly young. I’m no expert in child development, but from my previous research, proper decision making skills, and emotional/social skills are only beginning to mature at that age. Mono and Six aren’t clueless of course, they understand what is happening but they wouldn’t understand the why of it all. They of course wouldn’t be able to process it emotionally either.

and that’s completely disregarding the effects long lasting trauma has on children and they’re development.

it doesn’t feel fair to expect these nine year olds to make morally sound decisions. Especially highly traumatized ones.

and I’m not saying your saying or trying to imply a lot of this! But I wanted to add these in as a response to the “they’re both morally grey” statement. I see a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings that come from that perspective as well. So I wanted to clear the air a little

I got really frustrated in a debate about Little Nightmares with someone so I’m drawing a whole comic for getting my feelings out.