#this was a *bad* thing. that his upbringing was wrong. he's still kinda grappling with that.

[starry-bi-sky]

I'm so annoyed. @kingcrow01 tumblr ate your ask about Danny's opinion on the League. tumblr i pressed 'save draft' why didn't you sAVE DRAFT.

ANyways I'm making a post instead. For everyone else, the ask was in summary:

What was Danny's opinion on the League now that he's left it? If he missed the familiarity of it, if he recognized the cult-like behavior inside it, and if he now detested his grandfather.

And to answer (again, grrr): It's complicated! We love complicated <3. Yeah, Danny does miss the familiarity of the League, it was still his home for the first ten years of his life and he has a lot of memories there. Plenty of good along with the bad, and while he's less homesick than he was when he was 10, it still hits him like a truck at random intervals.

Sam, Tucker, and Jazz are great, and he likes the Drs. Fentons enough that he's contemplated murdering Vlad for his meddling, but if he wants to eat the same food his mother used to make him and Damian, he has to do it himself and he can't get the taste right. No one knows arabic so he speaks it to himself because he doesn't want to forget his mother tongue, and he has a few books too. Frankly? He genuinely misses training.

Getting to use Sam's gym helps with his restlessness, same with training with Maddie, but he has no one on or above his level to go against other than his mother. And he only sees her twice a year at most. He knows that he's getting stagnant and he fucking despises it like a bad itch he can't scratch.

He feels conflicted about missing the League, however, since by now he recognizes the flaws and what was wrong with it, and he recognizes that it was cult-like. But even that is kinda, hrm, complicated? If this was a fic I would be able to go better into depth about what he has and hasn't unlearned because cult deprogramming is hard and Danny's doing most of this on his own.

Sam, Tucker, and Jazz have helped with the more obvious stuff: like the ecofascism, the disregard for human life, his emotional constipation; the more obvious stuff that shows in his behavior and personality. But none of them are professionals nor do they actually know the full extent of what Danny's life in the League was like. They only have snapshots since Danyal is very tight lipped about it. So they can only help with what they see themselves through Danny's behavior or word of mouth.

But in summary: He sees, for the most part, what's wrong with the League and disagrees with some of the stuff they do now. But he's very conflicted, and trying to dissect his feelings on the League confuses him. His protests about it whenever Sam and Tucker joke about it have at this point become mostly empty (altho it still causes him some discomfort), and its an inside joke between them three.

As for Ra's? Despises him. If only because Ra's wanted him to kill his little brother -- thinking about his motives with the League confuses Danny, cognitive dissonance and stuff, -- a lot of his hatred stems from "He wanted me to fight my baby brother to the death. I destroyed my relationship with Damian because of him, I had to fake my death and leave my home, and I will never meet my father or see my brother again because of him. Fuck that guy."

[h-worksrambles]

The fact that Brian is the only character from Echo who returns to have a major role in Arches is kind of genius.

On a surface level, it’s such a deliciously evil way to mess with returning fans. When you hear that a story you love is getting a sequel, you kinda hope that you’ll see your favourite characters again. Maybe you were hoping you’d see an older Leo, Carl, or TJ? Flynn’s ending in Echo even teased the idea of Devon and Cameron meeting Chase. Instead, Howly went ‘oh you want returning characters? Well here you go!’ before going full monkey’s paw and bringing back the last character anyone would want to see: the terrifying predatory serial killer.

But there’s another layer to why this works, and not just because, logistically, he’s one of the only people still there. See, the thing is, fan favourites they might be but, thematically, it would be wrong to bring the main cast back. Echo was a game about a broken friend group, this set of wounded people all tied to the past, trapped in their own heads. We saw them grapple with supernatural forces that played with their worst fears. This could turn out in any number of good or bad ways based on the endings but ultimately there was hope for all of them. Leo was taunted with a false image of his old life and lost love. Carl grappled with the most monstrous aspects of his family legacy and the expectations that came with it, in turn battling his own insecurities. Jenna faced her lingering feelings of anger and resentment towards her abusive upbringing, and learned to let go. Ideally, you’d want these characters to be far away from Echo, somewhere they can heal and move on .

And then you have Brian. Brian is the best expression of the worst outcome of the themes of the whole series. Like Chase, he had blood on his hands, and the supernatural hysteria of the town torments them both over what they’ve done. But Chase has the capacity to either repeat history, swallowed up by the unearthly forces feeding on his trauma, or else support his friends and change for the better, depending on the route or ending. Brian however can’t, or won’t, do so. He commits the same murders over and over again to distract himself from the influence of the town. He’s only moving in circles. Repeating the same destructive and self-destructive behaviour over and over again.

The title image of Arches is immediately portrayed as negative. It’s the symbol of Cameron’s grief. A reminder of the loss of his mother, and his fear of losing himself to addiction the same way his mother lost herself. That being said, a lot of people have pointed out the other significance of an arch. It’s a broken circle, a direct response to the main motif of the first game. It feels like it’s setting up a theme of breaking out of harmful cycles. It’s what Cam wants to do on a personal level to escape his past, and it’s what he may have to do to put an end to Echo’s cycle, to save himself and Dev.

Brian IS that cycle, the symbol of the curse of Echo, one that, in coming to this dead town. Cameron and Devon are now forced to confront. As of the latest update, Cam had now seen visions of Brian’s former victims. He’s digging through the horrifying history of Brian himself, and the town as a whole. Will this end with Brian’s disgusting acts of violence brought to an end? Will we see Echo’s circle finally broken? Well, that’s up to Howly I guess. But with Arches reaching its conclusion, and likely only a few more builds to go until the end, we’ll soon know one way or another.