conuly

Cloak and Dagger's second season villain apparently had the origin story of "migraines", something which we all roundly derided. Five generations of migraines in this family, the kids are plagued by daily headaches, and yet somehow, neither of them has ever decided to treat their pain by stealing other people's hopes, kidnapping them, and forcing not only into prostitution, but also using them as motel maid service. If you ask me, that's just adding insult to injury, and if they hadn't had their hopes all stolen in both magical and mundane ways I feel like maybe they could've kicked out the villains and then paid people do to the cleaning part while they did the sex part. Or the other way around, but the point is, you shouldn't have to do both jobs.

"I help 90 percent of the people I come across." Yeah, well, cool story bro but it's the other ten percent that counts!

Hell, fucking Mayhem was in an arguably worse state, and yet she still managed not to actively hurt any innocent parties. She's quite a heroic character, actually, struggling not to do the easiest thing, the thing she wants to do, which is kill everybody and especially her alter-ego. Her choices may not always be ideal, but at least she's making a damn effort, unlike some people. Migraines are not a supervillain origin story unless you actually want to be the bad guy.

Meanwhile, over on Locke and Key, Dodge and Gabe act differently enough - not just in personality, but in mannerisms - that my headcanon is that the Identity Key literally changes your identity a bit, not just your appearance. (The effect may be either amplified or mitigated when dealing with demons.) I do feel a little bad for Gabe, who had a bad case of The Feels. Not bad enough to actually change his behavior, or even stop asking Kinsey to change, but still, y'know, bad. I know I shouldn't care, because he's fundamentally awful on every level, but I care a teensy bit.

Without knowing anything about it, my gut feeling is that Cloak and Dagger handled "character comes out of catatonic state after many years" a bit more realistically than Locke and Key. Even if your catatonia is magically induced, you're still gonna have to rebuild those muscles and all once you wake up, and get used to moving around in your physical body again.

One more thing, not locked because even if you look hard it can't possibly be a spoiler. I know the actor who plays Rufus is on the spectrum, as I suppose is the character. Did the actor write that letter out himself? Because. Uh. That's my handwriting. If my handwriting were a bit neater, I mean. But seriously, it looked like I wrote that.