#sebastian sallow meta

[heidi891]

Sebastian Sallow: Evil or Innocent?

I’ve seen people expressing two discrepant opinions: either Sebastian has been manipulative from the beginning and deserves to be sent to Azkaban or he’s just a victim of his difficult circumstances. I don’t agree with either of these.

Firstly, there’s some truth in the statement that his circumstances are difficult. His uncle was abusive to some extent, though I wouldn’t paint him as malicious. He most likely had PTSD, he had no experience nor support in raising children, there were no education nor therapy available. Yet he had to deal with a wayward teenager and the only way Solomon knew was “tough love”. Unsuprisingly, he ended up hurting his nephew.

Sebastian—like Harry Potter—ended up distrusting adults and looking for solutions to his problems on his own. His loneliness and lack of support (a few classmates don’t constitute appropriate support) led him to feel more desperate about Anne’s condition since he saw her as his only true family. This also led him to research the Dark Arts in hope to find a cure.

I don’t think he’s been manipulative. I think he’s never had the greatest social skills to begin with as he’s had to deal with emotional abuse and lack of proper support for most of his life. He was more likeable in the beginning, then his desperation kept growing, as was his infatuation with the Dark Arts.

I suspect the relic was influencing him negatively, amplifying his desperation and anger, making him more reckless and aggressive. For example, when we encountered goblins near Isadora’s house, he had some normal reaction, while later, after finding the relic, he became hateful. During the In the Shadow of the Relic quest Ominis comments that Sebastian is behaving strangely, not like himself. Of course, it might be just a sign of his further corruption, but the relic’s influence might also be a factor.

However, if that is the case, then Solomon was probably affected by the relic too, since he was the one who destroyed it. That might’ve made him more aggressive too and led to that unfortunate duel in the catacomb.

Sebastian’s situation is sad. But he has commited a murder. Solomon is dead and is not coming back.

I refused to learn the Unforgivable Curses and chose to oppose every stupid idea that Sebastian came up with. Unfortunately, the game didn’t give me much to choose, my character ended up saying “Not sure, but let’s do this” every single time. It made her complicit in his actions to some extent and made the final choice more difficult. However, if the murder was ever found out, my character could be found guilty too for hiding the crime. Sebastian isn’t her close family, he’s just a friend she’s known for a few months. Is he worth risking going to Azkaban for?

Some people claim Sebastian is remorseful afterwards and I’m not convinced (including his reaction when he’s not turned in). He’s clearly upset and overwhelmed by what’s happened. But is that true remorse? Does he understand his grave mistakes? Does he want to atone for his crime? There’s too little information in my opinion. Can he get better afterwards? Well, he’s still alone. He’s more alone than ever since Anne has cut contact with him. He’s got only Ominis and the main character. And how has it worked out so far? They were faintly protesting, but kept enabling Sebastian. Why should it change now? And Anne is still dying, so Sebastian may find another Dark artifact, claiming it’s the last time.

Last but not least, Sebastian keeps ignoring Anne’s wishes. He’s focusing on his pain and loss, he’s not there for her.

While, as I’ve said, I don’t view him as evil and manipulative, I also don’t see him as innocent and justified. He’s emotionally unstable but also very gifted which together with his lack of strong moral beliefs make him dangerous.

Azkaban is a terrible choice. Enabling him further is a terrible choice too.

I imagine my character has some influencial family in the Wizengamot and IF Sebastian is really remorseful, he’ll end up like Hagrid—expelled but free.

[serpensortiamaxima]

This is a long ramble but my brain plagued me with it and I need to get it out.

As an ex-Magic: the Gathering player, I find that the Hogwarts house system makes more sense once you assign it MtG's colour wheel system to it. It's not flawless because there are more colour than there are Hogwart houses and the colour wheel is...more complex, but it does help see how certain characters end up in a certain house despite clearly having attributes from other houses.

I'd cut it down this way:

Gryffindor: Red

Hufflepuff: Green

Ravenclaw: Blue

Slytherin: Black

White would be a wildcard because the values it represents (morality, order, uniformity, structure) are not only essential to Hogwarts as a school but also not house-specific in that any individual within a house could align with these values or not. The existence of the house system itself is a "white" thing.

Sebastian's case is interesting because there is a lot of talk about his Ravenclaw leaning, which would, in colour wheel terms, translate to Blue. But then, if you look at his motivations, he actually has a story that is a lot like planeswalker Liliana Vess (who is mainly mono-black aligned). Both have a sibling that has been cursed somehow and both have sought out some kind of cure to save them by exploring the darker forms of magic (necromancy in both cases too).

In MtG, the colour black embodies the idea that "the only measure of right and wrong should be whether or not an approach leads to success" and that is exactly Sebastian's mindset regarding the Anne's cure. Now, what the colour wheels allows to do that Hogwarts houses don't, is to have allyships between colours. If we assign the values of MtG's Black to Sebastian, we can quickly see that he also embodies the qualities of the two colours "Black" is compatible with: Blue and Red: "Black has an ally in Blue, as it appreciates its subtlety and use of cold logic. Black is also allied with Red, respecting its desire to do things on its own terms." Cunning, in MtG's framework, is a very Blue-Black principle. Recklessness is a Red principle.

So while Sebastian does display attributes that we would associate with Ravenclaw (research skills, curiosity, thirst for knowledge etc.) they serve a specific purpose towards his goal. In MtG terms, his impulsivity and recklessness would add a touch of Red to his personality that otherwise wouldn't necessarily match with Gryffindor, but he'd still be easily be categorized as primarily Black, with Blue and Red as secondary colours.

I guess the question remains of whether or not 11yo Sebastian was like this from the start when he got sorted into Slytherin, or if there was something else that got him sorted into this house. I personally think a younger Sebastian would be much more Red-Black aligned than Blue-Black like he became, perhaps due to the exposure to other Slytherins or simply due to Anne's curse.

[heidi891]

I don’t think Sebastian was interested in the Unforgivable Curses before the game.

When he teaches MC Confringo, he presents it as something awesome and forbidden, but is it really so much worse than Bombarda that is taught at school? I used Confringo a lot… for Merlin Trials! What a truly horrible spell. So frankly speaking, I think Sebastian’s bar for dangerous spells was initially set rather low.

I believe he taught himself Crucio (or rather—read a lot about it, because as far as we know he’d never cast it before) to understand what Ominis had been through. I don’t think he had malicious intentions behind it.

He probably taught himself Imperio after he read in the spellbook that it might be needed to find the relic.

Then he started to become more angry and aggressive, thinking about dead goblins… and I guess sometime along the way he decided to teach himself Avada Kedavra as it was even more useful than Imperio in his eyes.

[heidi891]

Sebastian Is an INTP

I view Sebastian as an INTP. Of course, some people may see him differently, because we don’t know for certain why he behaves the way he does, what he thinks, what he feels—if he’s manipulative or just misunderstood. Here’s my opinion.

Introverted Thinking (Ti): He approaches everything mostly through the lens of logic and knowledge, for example while trying to befriend MC he asks a lot of questions to know MC better (instead of hanging out with MC more casually and doing something funny together), he reads a lot of about curses to understand Anne’s condition better and find a cure (instead of focusing on making Anne happy, giving her presents, spending time with her and so on), he says in the scriptorium that Crucio is just a spell (highly logical approach without taking more emotional and social aspects into account).

That’s why I think he’s genuinely interested in MC when he asks all his questions—that’s the way INTPs tend to befriend people and if they have a crush on somebody, they’re sometimes a bit obsessive, because they value knowledge very much as it helps them navigate the world. That’s also why I think he didn’t have malicious intentions behind learning Crucio—I think he did it to understand Ominis better, not to torture people.

Extroverted Intuition (Ne): Sebastian is very curious, has many ideas and explores different options, for example he learns more about plants (the Shrivelfig), the Dark Arts (the relic) and Ancient Magic in order to cure Anne. And he likes puns (“ominous corridors” 💀).

Introverted Sensing (Si): This is a tertiary function, so it’s less prominent, but I think it’s visible in how he acts when he’s stressed—the Ti-Si loop. He focuses very much on his good memories of Anne at school and his bad memories of his uncle at home, but his thinking lacks balance and emotional grounding. I think that’s one of the factors that led him to killing his uncle—for a long time he kept thinking too much about all the bad memories without any kind of healthier outlet.

Extroverted Feeling (Fe): He’s quite friendly, he takes other people’s emotions into account, he apologises after ‘so ignorant’ quarrel, but at the same time he doesn’t seem to fully understand the impact emotions have on everything (it makes sense for the inferior function). In the catacomb, when he kills his uncle, due to all the stress he’s under he may be in the Fe grip—too emotional, irrational, almost delusional, convinced that his uncle hates him, unable to let go, and so on.

[heidi891]

Regret Vs Remorse

“While regret and remorse both involve feelings of disappointment in one's actions, they diverge in key areas. Regret focuses more on personal loss or missed opportunities, while remorse involves acknowledging harm done to others.”

Source: https://www.grouporttherapy.com/blog/regret-vs-remorse

“What’s the difference between regret and remorse? Regret has to do with wishing you hadn’t taken a particular action. You may regret an action because it hurt someone else, but you may also regret it because it hurt you, it cost you something emotionally or financially, or led to a punishment or undesirable result. Regret can lead a person to feel sorrow, grief, hurt, and anger—but these can be for the pain he or she feels for the self, not necessarily for the other person who was hurt by the behavior. . . Remorse involves admitting one’s own mistakes and taking responsibility for one's actions. It creates a sense of guilt and sorrow for hurting someone else and leads to confession and true apology. It also moves the remorseful person to avoid doing the hurtful action again. Regret leads a person to avoid punishment in the future, while remorse leads to avoiding hurtful actions towards others in the future.”

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/stop-caretaking-the-borderline-or-narcissist/201507/regret-vs-remorse

“The main difference between remorse and regret is that remorse indicates a sense of responsibility for a situation that has gone wrong, whereas we can regret things beyond our control. . . It’s not possible to feel remorse without feeling guilty, whereas we can regret something without feeling guilty. . . When we feel remorse, we accept that something happened because of our fault, but in regret, we don’t necessarily have to accept our fault.”

Source: https://pediaa.com/what-is-the-difference-between-remorse-and-regret/

“Regret is what we feel when we realize that we’ve hurt ourselves—damaged our careers, tarnished our reputations, limited our options. Regret is not remorse, which is what we feel when we’ve hurt others.”

Source: https://mbird.com/psychology/toothpaste-paralysis-and-the-difference-between-regret-and-remorse/

“Put simply, regret is like wishing you’d made a different choice and could take something back. Remorse, on the other hand, is feeling truly sorry for hurting someone with your actions. Regret is about your decisions, and remorse is about the impact on others and owning your part in it.”

Source: https://www.soberish.co/regret-vs-remorse/

Meanwhile Sebastian in the Undercroft after killing his uncle:

“I did it for her.”—No, you didn’t. You hurt her. You killed her uncle whom she loved. Why haven’t you said “I hurt her so much” instead?

“What? Turn me in? She saw what happened.”—She saw a lot of Inferi and her uncle dead on the ground. Why haven’t you acknowledged that you get why your friends might want to turn you in?

“I never wanted to hurt my uncle. . . I didn’t mean it.”—You definitely did, even if only for a moment. You know that, because you explained that you need to have clear intent to use the Unforgivable Curses. Why haven’t you expressed horror that you must’ve wanted to kill your uncle even for one brief moment?

“I can’t leave now. Anne needs me more than ever.”—It’s you who need her more than ever. You still focus on your pain and loss instead of hers. Why haven’t you acknowledged that she might not want to see you again after what you did?

Up to this point Sebastian isn’t remorseful. That’s why I decided to turn him in.

Ominis after turning Sebastian in:

“It will never be the same without him. Just standing here in the Undercroft without Sebastian feels wrong. . . I just wish things had turned out differently.” He feels sad about what happened. He regrets that Sebastian went too far. But he doesn’t directly regrets turning Sebastian in. And he definitely isn’t remorseful about it.

“Unfortunately, his anger only grew—towards goblins and Dark wizards.”—Sebastian is still focusing on his own emotions and hatred. Why didn’t he express any regret how things could’ve turned out if he had known about Rookwood? He’s still blaming others and his circumstances for the murder he committed.

“I know we had a bit of a rocky start, but you’ve proven yourself—as a friend. I’m glad you came to Hogwarts.”—Ominis apparently doesn’t regret the main character advising him to turn Sebastian in.

Conversation with Ominis after turning Sebastian in didn’t make me regret it.

Sebastian after not being turned in:

“I can’t blame her. I couldn’t really blame any of you if you gave up on me entirely. You all believed in me. And I let you all down.”—Yes, he regrets what happened. But is that true remorse? He says he would understand if they gave up on him, but we know that if he’s turned in, he grows angry and bitter. So in my opinion he doesn’t really understand it, it’s his emotional reaction in response to not being turned in. He’s trying to smooth things over.

“I realise I can’t undo what’s been done, but I can try every day to make up for it.”—It’s the only statement that indicates remorse. However, it’s very vague. He doesn’t give any specifics. How is he going to make up for it? There’s no promise to never use the Unforgivable Curses again, to never use Dark Magic again, to listen to his friends’ advice—and these are passive propositions. In the light of gravity of his crime he should also come up with more active resolutions. How is he really going to make up for it? How is he going to take responsibility for his actions? He doesn’t say.

That’s why I’m not convinced that Sebastian is truly remorseful.