heliokleptic | ESSAY ON IMPLOSIONS AND SHIT

SO I GUESS i feel like a Dawn Essay.

So now that RUBY IMPLOSION is basically over. Let me cover shit from Dawn's pov. And, I guess, all the shitty stuff that has happened and how he handled it and why and why he is doing a lot better now.

The Oz and Acedia and Gil Thing- Okay, of course Dawn's info on this is TERRIBLY INCOMPLETE, because he thinks Gil and Acedia are in a GOOD RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FRIENDS, so to him Oz being jealous of that was really selfish! This is why he let Oz beat himself up and didn't try to convince him he wasn't in the wrong. Also because Oz was all I AM WRONG I MUST CHANGE AND FIX THINGS which is a mentality Luke can empathize with strongly and it was one of the first times he ever empathized with Oz.

However! When Acedia refused to forgive Oz and was dramatically CHANGING HIS WORLD VIEW and Wrath kept blaming Oz, Dawn changed his mind a bit. Yes, he was at fault, but it isn't Oz's fault that Acedia is SO CRAZY he is overreacting to this level. In the end, Dawn got really tired of it and figured they would eventually work it out, but nothing could force it at this juncture. This is the ONE UNRESOLVED ISSUE and that is still what Dawn thinks. However, since he is feeling more okay with both Oz and Acedia, he is less prone to force the issue. And it is becoming more of a 'lol one of those party in-fights' that is kind of a pain and kind of a joke.

The Acedia Broke Thing- So, after Oz broke Acedia, Acedia was trying to rearrange his world to work again and I think was just considering tossing Oz out but leaving the rest of Ruby in tact. But! While trying to understand Acedia's pov, Acedia asked Dawn his feelings on team, basically. Dawn KNEW his true answer was the wrong one, and he felt shitty, but he gave it anyway. Dawn will just ABSOLUTELY NOT LIE about something that important. It ties heavily into 'lol my entire life was a lie' and also 'I had to change myself to see the world more clearly in order to become happy'. So he told Acedia the truth, knowing it would hurt him, and it did! He takes full responsibility, but has not yet regretted the decision.

Then, when trying to work things out with Acedia, he ended up taking a dose of Acedia's FEAR OF ABANDONMENT + 15 other crazy issues. IT WAS SUPER UPSETTING because it was very upsetting feelings he had NEVER HAD BEFORE and was like lol ocean of new insecurities. Some of these still remain in his system! But for the most part, Dawn washed them out through therapy of A) reminding himself he doesn't deserve to have a place to belong and B) reminding himself he has such a place ANYWAY and then going to sleep with Dusk. Dusk, also, said the perfect thing which was basically "you'll just have to keep trying". And reminding Dawn that giving up is not an option is pretty much all it takes to give him his nth jesus wind.

The Souya is a Meanie Head Thing- Okay I lied there are two unresolved issues. HOWEVER, this one isn't very large. What Souya said had a big effect on Dawn, buttt not in the way Souya probably wanted. Dawn is INCREDIBLY MASSIVELY STUBBORN about things when he sets his mind to it. And Acedia iissss one of those things. He has thought extensively on Souya's words, and while he understands the intent behind it, and can't deny that maybe Souya is right, in the end he comes back to several facts! A) Acedia's world view was too weak and was going to break eventually anyway. As upset as he might be, Dawn is deeply aware that it could be MUCH WORSE, as it was when Luke's world view finally shattered. B) As much as Dawn has no self worth and is not against the idea of 'being' something specific in order to fulfill Acedia's need to prop up his world view, he is aware that Acedia's team world view depends on more than just him. Even if Dawn had lied and been the perfect ideal Ruby, it is unfair to expect everyone else to change to fit Acedia's needs. In short, Acedia has to adapt to reality, not have everyone around him change reality for him. C) If he had lied, when the lie was revealed, Acedia would probably never trust him again. Not that he is sure Acedia trusts him NOW, but he isn't going to give Acedia a reason to doubt him.

THE THING WITH LUKE is that he tends to doubt himself, and will quickly accept being the one in the wrong in moooost cases. But if it is something important to him, he will mull it over and ultimately come out of it with a much stronger belief. Talking with Souya hurt his feelings, but also gave him a lot more conviction when it comes to dealing with Acedia. BECAUSE!! He can't argue that he didn't break Acedia, and even if Dawn thinks he did the right thing, that doesn't change that it was hurtful. It is his responsibility to never give up on helping Acedia rebuild his worldview. (Unfortunately this means Dawn will knock Acedia's world view on it's ass until Acedia gets it right...). Thus, Dawn's conviction/obsessed went up quite a bit, and AJ can blame Souya for Dawn being even more up in Acedia's business than usual.

ON THE SOUYA AND FEELINGS END, he is currently still sad about it. But he thinks Souya being important to Acedia is more vital than he and Souya getting along. He'll continue to tell Acedia to trust Souya and realize he cares for him!!! And otherwise totally avoid him. Sadness will quickly turn into just resigned awkwardness.

The Acedia's No Good Terribad Memory Thing- SO THEN ACEDIA DECIDED TO SHOW DAWN A MEMORY OF HIM MERCILESSLY LYING TO, MANIPULATING, AND EVENTUALLY DESTROYING A NICE BOY, thinking, crazily, that it would make Dawn stop loving him or something because idk, Acedia is a retard who doesn't pay attention.

Now, no like, it was an upsetting memory for Dawn! On two fronts! A) He got to 'feel' what it is like to see humans as worthless. While Acedia does not see people quite as lowly as Van saw Luke, it is still close enough for him to... make note of it, and for it to hurt him. B) He empathizes strongly with Masato, the poor, good-hearted boy who Acedia destroyed for lulz. Even though Dawn handled the memory pretty well at the time, it is definitely high octane nightmare fuel for him. He logics on knowing that he can't help Masato by abandoning Acedia, but he still kind of feels like an asshole in his heart. However, immediately following the memory, what he mostly got was no one ends up this way naturally. And he realized he must've been vastly underestimating how bad Acedia's childhood was if Acedia felt this was the sort of 'lesson' people needed to learn.

Acedia refused to let Dawn look at his memory, and this lead to other things. In the end, Acedia expressed doubt that Dawn had any value at all, and Dawn challenged it by telling Acedia to kill him. Acedia acted nonchalant and like he just wasn't killing Dawn because there was not REASON to, but he quickly shut down and went to sulking when Dawn knocked down all of his reasons.

The end result of that conversation, on Dawn's side, was to realize that even though Acedia is a lot like Van, and pretty terrible in his own right. He is not nearly as bad as Van is. The memory Acedia showed Dawn, as horrible as it was, is a microcondensed version of Dawn's own story. He can handle that shit, and it gave him hope for the future. Also, he now knows that Acedia doesn't view him as worthless, which helps his feelings a bit. Also! It was just a HUGE info dump on 'Mukuro'. He learned quite a bit about Chikusa, Ken, and Lancia, mostly through their interactions with Mukuro. He learned about a lot of Mukuro's abilities (illusions, mind fuckery, body control, general lying and manipulation). About his world (highschool! bullies, etc). and his feelings! Dawn isn't BRILLIANT but he still absorbed a lot of info out of that, and it makes it easier to talk to Acedia about certain things (and probably worse for Acedia). Also he can read Acedia better now.

The Wrath and Feelings Things- So, before Dawn just went and told Acedia to murder him if he didn't like him, Dawn thought he would show Acedia his feelings with a bottle of them! Much like what Acedia did to him. Wrath and Dawn ended up completing the quest for that together, and did a feelings exchange. Dawn showed Wrath what 'love' felt like, for him, so that Wrath would stop worrying that just because Dawn doesn't understand 'Ruby', it doesn't mean he will just run off and forget about them.

Here was how I described Dawn's idea of love: [This feeling is blindingly bright, and even, and endless. There is literally no fathomable stop or start to it. And it feels warm and gentle and comforting, both in itself and because it will never disappear. It comes bundled up with a mix of acceptance, understanding, hope, patience, fondness, dedication, and endurance. The first and the last of those are perhaps the greatest additions, and the most necessary, because this feeling is also incredibly, suffocatingly heavy. Like an anvil weighing on the chest. There is no point in struggling against it, even if it feels like you can barely breathe. But there is no fear to accompany the sense of entrapment, just a self-deprecating resignation.]

It's okay up until the last half, right? Lol.

Dawn has a very convoluted idea of love, which may seem pessimistic or very grown up, depending on how yo want to look at it.

The thing is, Dawn knows exactly what it is like to love someone with no return on those feelings. Normally, we associate love with hope, warmth, happiness, security, and returned affection. Because even though 'in love' love may not always be requited, generally when we are just talking general love, as in between family or friends or lovers, you probably know that is someone close to you and your feelings are returned to some extent. Love thus becomes a source of happiness and joy in your life, and you associate love WITH those feelings.

Now, this isn't to say no one who Dawn loves loves him back! That is of course hugely untrue! BUT! There is Van. Van who is incredibly uber important to Luke and Dawn, and one of Dawn's strongest memories is loving Van even as Van tells him he is a worthless throwaway pawn. Van didn't even hate Luke, he saw him as a tool that broke before it's purpose was fully served. A source of maybe frustration or disgust, but no more a person than you would consider your hammer. And Dawn still loves him.

And that is how Dawn sees love. When someone loves you back, when you feel good around them, when they make you feel happy and warm and secure. Those are all great things! But they are separate things. At it's core, to Dawn, love is just this warm but inescapable feeling. You can't fight it, you can't reject it, or throw it off you, or escape it. No one else can free you either. It's just there, forever. You'll feel it even as they hate you, or try to kill you, even as you kill them. Love alone is at least as much a source of pain for Dawn as pleasure, and probably worse. Van shattered Luke, and Acedia tends to break Dawn's heart with every conversation. But he's okay with it! Because he knows that is just how things are.

Then! Wrath showed Dawn his feelings for Ruby!

Aaand... Dawn didn't get it. It was very positive! And he liked it! And could place all of the feelings involved. However, he still can't really view Ruby the way Acedia and Wrath do. Konatsu has had some luck getting Dawn to understand via explaining that the 'whole is different from the sum of the parts'. But even then, to Dawn that is more of a fact than a feeling. Dawn is just really really terrible at viewing people as groups. He was better at it before he broke and got all jesusy. But even then, that was mostly the result of not knowing anyone on Ruby that well. Now that he does, when he talks about 'Ruby' as a whole, he tends to mean the overall personality of his team. It is not, however, something he feels any particular loyalty to, or has any desire to 'be'. To him Ruby as a group is just a bunch of his friends, much like how despite being in a party with the same people for a year, Luke never saw them as some kind of 'unit' or anything, and never had loyalty to their 'whole'.

On top of that, there is the issue of... Dawn is really just too independent. For a kid who once could not think about anything for himself and constantly needed others to explain, Luke/Dawn VERY QUICKLY and VERY COMPLETELY shifts into a mode of constantly thinking for himself, taking accountability for himself, and making his own choices. Dawn has already made that switch! And, the drawback of independence is... well. Lack of dependence. People who tend to cling really strongly to a group identity also tend to be people who have trouble with a personal identity. Dawn has existential issues buuut... not in that way. In canon Luke's existential issues centered around the fact that he was a replica. In Aather, they center around the fact he thinks he shouldn't have existed. He has no issues with being different or argumentative or stubborn. Not being a 'part' or Ruby was upsetting to him, but mostly because of the worry of losing his friends in Ruby, not because he would really care much if he was moved to a different team.

Finally! There is the issue of the fact taht Dawn has lost everything he had multiple times. As such, he is not prone to dependence even when it is offered. The obvious obsession here is Dusk, but frankly as much as Dawn adores/dotes on/is strengthened by/obsessed with Dusk. If Dusk DID just disappear, he would be sad, but he would be okay. It would not shatter his world, just make him very very depressed. Dawn does not even REMEMBER a fifth of the loss Luke experiences in canon, but he already knows that basically everything he ever had was taken away from him at some point. His name was never his, his family was never his, he was never meant to exist, it would have been better if he never had, he was not a hero he was a murderer, his friends all got upset with his selfishness and left him, his master used him and threw him away and called him worthless, he killed the person he loved most, the person he loved most was driven crazy by the world and the Score, his original hated him, his original died, he dies. That is just stuff Dawn knows RIGHT NOW. He doesn't even know that Ion is going to die, that he is going to sacrifice himself while killing hundreds of other replicas to save the world, that he has to kill Van AGAIN, that he disappears while freeing Lorelei, that his father sent him to Akzeriuth to die, that the leaders of the world ASK him to die, that he personally fights and kills hundreds of soldiers, and so on and so forth.

My point here is that Dawn is extensively familiar with loss. To him, love might be the only thing in the universe that he truly believes is permanent. Ruby will not last forever, and he is prepared for that. People on Ruby are eventually going to leave/be booked, and he is prepared for that. His friends may even turn on him, or he may leave the team himself, and he is prepared for that. There is nothing Dawn HAS that he can't handle losing, and this is kind of why he will never quite understand the extent to which Acedia and Wrath believe in Ruby's existence. Nothing is that solid. Which... is something Acedia himself believes in, but the difference is, Dawn is okay with that. He's accepted that part of reality, and Acedia is a cranky bitch about it who wants to believe that Ruby is somehow immune.

The Dusk Is Dead Thing- So! This was actually one of the least emotionally traumatic events. Even though it was very painful for Dawn, he had to get his shit together quickly because Dusk needed him too! So he did. And once he started having his shit together, he just kind of kept it that way. Dusk is HERE, and Dawn is already familiar with A) people he cares about being dead and B) finding out you died! So... it was hard to hear, and it makes him sad, but he can cope with it pretty well and already is. His main upset will be when he remembers Dusk dying. The emotions on that will be super strong and super painful. But he will still cope okay.

Aaaaand, I think that is everything. Dawn's emotions have been ALL OVER THE MAP, peaking at a 10 on the misery scale for a little while, but he's gradually been wrapping up problems to wher ehe is now bouncing around between a very functional 4 and 5. Maaaaybe briefly spiking up to 6 if Acedia is being an asshole. But overall! He is currently in a good place again, and in a way, better than how he went in. Because he's more comfortable with Acedia now and will continue to talk to him about feelings whether or not he likes it.

THAT WAS A LOT OF WORDS you are allowed to ask questions if you are into that.