#@besties: if u see this post of me isaacposting at 4am tomorrow its bc my discord was down and i couldnt message yall

[butcharyastark]

thinking once again about how painful but necessary the desire for revenge against hector is to isaac's arc, bc the thing is that it is unfair and it does hurt to see them pitted against each other, but that's part of the point. isaac doesn't really hate hector, he just hates what he represents, and to isaac hector represents a bucking of the security that gives isaac the only purpose he's found, the only morality that makes sense to him anymore. he starts out wanting revenge against hector bc he thinks he's betrayed them, which means betraying dracula, which means breaking down the only thing isaac has left anymore bc the thing is that dracula's presence and goals are both pillars of stability to isaac who doesn't believe in the goodness of people anymore, and so hector presumably unimaginably rejecting that is the necessary broken link in the chain that gets isaac on his road to genuine self-agency and recovery and believing in kindness again

bc the thing is that hector's betrayal (and dracula's following selfless compassion but not the focus of this post) is the first thing that spurs isaac into something he wants. it's him that's angry at the injustice and the fact his last haven of stability is gone. it sets him on the path to exploring and discovering goals of his own, nobody else's, bc before he was relying on dracula's support and plans as a coping mechanism and substitute for having control of his own life bc he had lost hope that there was any point at all to even trying to care about himself or what he might have wanted. and once that first domino tips, and the other players enter the board when isaac finally begins to interact with other ppl again (talking to the captain, that old woman, the demons) instead of shutting himself off, it can only end up one place from there: isaac realizing that he has a choice.

he wants revenge against hector and wants something for himself and realizes he has power to obtain it and makes an effort to care abt something new and he starts to realize that maybe what he really hated was himself bc maybe he never thought he was worth forgiveness either and maybe he thought humanity was hopeless bc he was hopeless and he starts to notice through recognition of the other that both starts and ends with hector that maybe, just maybe, if other people can be kind, if other humans can be worth trying for, if the world can be good--maybe they had never really been pitted against each other at all, maybe they had always been the same and had been trying their best to survive despite the horrors. maybe hector deserves compassion and kindness and tenderness and forgiveness... because realizes he deserves those things too.