Reconciliation
Old dome squadmates Trito and Kinoga get together at Trito’s place to catch up after years apart and a meeting by chance on the surface.
⚠️Warning for suggestive content below + implied chest trauma
After several weeks of chipping away at this, the comic is finally done! Very happy to have rendered a full 7 pages of oc stuff. Please give it a read!!
read the full 7 page comic on twitter! <-please do not click if you are a minor and view at your own discretion, this link contains explicit 18+ content. Thank you!
For the lore, includes stuff from splatoon Octo Expansion: Trito and Kinoga were a part of an octarian military squad living in the domes, Kinoga being their squad leader that many looked up to and admired. There were 6 of them who considered each other to be their closest friends. Upon hearing about the tests from Kamabo Co. and the allure of the Promised Land, Kinoga wished to seek it out in order to find a better life for their squadmates. A difficult decision, since it meant leaving them all behind, promising to come back and take them there.
Kinoga enters the metro trials and soon realizes that the Promised Land isn’t what they expected, their hope crumbling when they encounter one of their sanitized squadmates Agara, who followed suit to the metros soon after. Kinoga narrowly escapes, eventually making a break for the surface, carrying the shame of unwilling to return for their squadmates with them (it’s justified, of course, there might not be an easy way in, they might get caught again, Agara is gone)
Trito enters the Metro not too long after Kinoga does, wanting to catch up to them, and an accident that occurs in a test early on results in Trito’s near sanitization, giving him his scar. Terrified, and realizing what happens to his fellow octolings, Trito is unable to return to his squadmates, not wanting to break the news of their loved ones’ untimely fates. He hides away on the Metro until the events of OE happen and Agent 8 dismantles Kamabo, opening an opportunity to escape to the surface. Unwilling to face the possibilities of going back, Trito takes his chance to leave, starting a new life and feeling that it’s for the best if he doesn’t acknowledge it, though he missed his friends dearly.
Years later, Trito and Kinoga run into each other on the streets of Splatsville by chance, and the implications of them both being on the surface and alive hit them, having to carry the burden of leaving their loved ones behind and finding out the truth, knowing the other felt exactly the same, not knowing the fate of their squadmates and not wanting to think about the possibility of them being gone. They have a tearful reunion about it, and set up a meet later, to sit down and really talk, and get into a brief argument when the topic of returning to the domes comes up. Trito’s in disbelief that Kinoga never went back down to check on the rest of their squad, wanting them to have been a better person than him, who was too cowardly to do so. Eventually they do reconcile, and end up at Trito’s place to hook up, where the above comic takes place :]
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Did Matthias do anything illegal in his life? What I mean is morally unacceptable behavior that hurts people. If so, why did he do that?
I mean, has he killed someone? Has he beat someone up? How many times has he done it or has it only been occasionally? Do people find him rude? Should people be afraid of him?
I’ve said this about Matthias before, but he’s someone who’s had violent thoughts and urges ever since he was a child. I do think there’s a possible genetic factor at play there, but I also believe that the way he grew up left something chasmic in its wake, this gouge in his chest that he’s been clawing at ever since. Matthias was severely neglected as a child and his development was… slanted, for lack of a better word. There’s something warped in his head, you know? He’s a product of his upbringing.
To give you a picture of Matthias’s childhood, I want to make it clear that he never had any toys. His nursery was nothing more than a crib in a room. No bright colored walls, no alphabet blocks, no pop-up books. He didn’t play, or… not like most children, at least—not how you’d normally picture a child playing. His childhood was spent alone despite the sheer number of staff on the grounds of the estate. If Matthias reached for a hand or wanted comfort from a nanny or another member of the staff, he’d be pushed away. There was no emotional or physical warmth in the Evanoff household and a harsh line had been drawn between Matthias and everyone around him, including his parents, who he saw no more than a handful of times when he was young. What little socialization Matthias had was… well, it was nothing more than giving orders to attendants or having discussions with his tutors about the subjects he was studying. The staff were forbidden from interacting with Matthias more than was strictly necessary and the effect that had on him can’t be understated.
You can see, then, these early building blocks for cruelty being laid out. As a precocious child whose only real social connection with others was formed through analysis and study, it only made sense that Matthias found himself reaching for the books in his father’s library whenever he could, and through that those very same blocks began to stack. Play for Matthias was deconstructing humanity through history, through fiction, parsing through dense text in the ever-present child’s curiosity: but why? And Matthias’s father was an excessively cruel and frighteningly violent man, so his taste in literature certainly reflected that. This is also what I mean when I say there’s a genetic factor at play with some of Matthias’s impulses. Some of it’s inherited. In a way, he gets this from his mother’s side, too, although she’s a different kind of violent… a hands-off kind. I mean, that violence is how Matthias wound up being tortured for three years while trapped in a “therapeutic” reform school. It’s just as cruel, but it pretends to be righteous. So there’s this snapping violence and this opportunistic kind.
I’m saying all of this because I think it gives context to how much control Matthias exhibits over himself and his violent urges now as an adult. Sure, when he was younger he would react, he’d deride and break and hurt, but he doesn’t do that anymore. It’s not that he feels guilt over the impulses he has—there’s no shame there at all, really. To him, it’s just in his nature to get these flashes, these sudden images of brutality. They’ve been there all his life, you know? It’s normal to him. The only reason he doesn’t act on them is because he had impulse control beaten into him at the reform school and because he’s learned that the social contract is something that he can use to his advantage to get whatever it is he wants. He charms and obfuscates now. In that same vein, it’s not often that people find him to be rude, because he keeps his disdainful and unsavory thoughts to himself. You’d have to be someone who’s incredibly perceptive in order to see through Matthias… which just so happens to be Theo to a T.
So what I mean by this is that now when Matthias does actually act on these thoughts, these urges that dig at his brain, there’s normally a catalyst to them—this trigger that sends fire all through the synapses in his body. Matthias is incredibly loyal to Imani and Theo and he’s someone who’s very protective of them. Throughout his early teen years, back when he and Imani went to the same boarding school, he was constantly shielding Imani from the brunt of the corporal punishment that came with the turf. At that age he was volatile and would even hit back at times, but he knew that would land him in solitude and separated from Imani for days on end, which he just couldn’t have—not if he wanted to make sure nobody hurt her. He learned restraint for Imani’s sake then, but it wasn’t until he was trapped in the reform school that that restraint was fully drilled into him as a result of psychological torture and abuse.
He’s quick to offer a slicing comment, to give a chilling smile, to go eerily still and intimidate with his stare alone, but now as an adult he doesn’t often get physical unless provoked. He keeps it in and he holds himself back, this taut tension in his jaw only there for a moment before the mask submerges him again and holds his head under water. It’s really only when Theo’s involved that Matthias just… God, he really just can’t help himself. The cracks widen and he gets physical. It’s vicious. He has all this strength now, this imagination that only ever comes alive when he’s thinking of this, and he’s had years of experience in actual brawls that were just horrible—he’s been ganged up on, hit with metal chairs, humiliated and jeered at while bleeding everywhere, ripped out of bed and kicked until his ribs broke… It's safe to say that he takes pain like it means nothing to him now. So he swallows the blood he tastes when a hit lands and just plows through like it’s the only thing he knows how to do, like it’s programmed in him. It’s animalistic. It’s vengeful. It’s rapturous.
Like I said, seeing harm come to the only people Matthias loves has a disastrous effect on his self-control. Imani’s in a better place now that she’s an adult, but Theo… well, Theo’s been hurt by a lot of people—his parents, faces at clubs, ghosts from his past… too many instances to even begin getting into each of them. And Matthias has to unravel red yarn before a board and string together all of these physical reactions Theo has around some people, has to tilt his head as he replays the tapes and rewinds through remarks Theo’s made that felt off even before Matthias knew there was something going on there. Theo doesn’t talk about his hurt, doesn’t talk about anything that could make him weak, that exposes the nasty underbelly of his private life, so it’s up to Matthias to pick up on what’s been left unspoken. The specifics may not be there, but it’s enough to see Theo flinch at the sound of his own name being called, to watch him freeze up when a hand raises too fast, to track Theo as he checks the locks once, twice, three times in a row before he moves away. Matthias notices it all and he’s an eye for an eye kind of man. He can’t even help himself there, has no restraint when it comes to Theo, so… he handles it.
The furthest Matthias has ever gone, the worst he’s ever injured somebody, was when he nearly killed someone from Theo’s old summer boarding school. Theo managed to stop him, but only by a hair’s breadth. Matthias could have gone to prison for that one, he easily could’ve, but… there were circumstances and, when it comes down to it, Matthias is obscenely wealthy. In the end, he got off scot-free from attempted murder while the other party was hospitalized. He handled the rest without physical violence, though he certainly wanted to finish what he started. But, at the end of the day, Theo comes first, always.
He’s certainly engaged in far more illegal and immoral activities (his little blackmail moment was a personal favorite of mine), but physically he’s never gone so far as murder (though he’s not opposed…) and while he’s definitely lost control and grievously injured some people, I’d say he’s only ever hospitalized a handful. He keeps himself in check… most of the time, at least. He honestly doesn’t fly off the handle for no reason. If you keep your hands to yourself and watch your mouth then you don’t have to be afraid of him in that way. Still, it’s better to just keep your distance. He has too much fun pulling strings.
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something that isn't talked about much when it comes to healing yourself is that it might end up killing relationships (both romantic and platonic)
and i don't mean that in a way that should dissuade anyone from trying to heal. i mean you are where you are, on a path to try and get better, to do right by yourself and take care of the child inside you and nurture the things that have been hurt and sometimes you look around and realize that the people that you used to stand beside are a half-mile back on the track, so far that you can barely see them
and you want them to be with you still. you know that if they can get themselves up this hill with you that they'll feel better. things can get better and it's hard but you're up here climbing a hill, you know that it's possible and they can do it too! they can climb the hill with you and look out at this great view
but
you can't move their legs for them. and no matter how you wave or cajole or promise that it's not as hard once you get into it, they will not move from where they are. and you can sit there and try to talk to them from afar, but the healthier you get the harder it is to yell back to where they're standing.
sometimes there comes a point that you have to turn around completely because the path they want to stay on will only leash you back to a lower point. and that's... not actually your fault.
and yeah that can get so very frustrating. there have been times in my life where while talking to friends who were in bad spirals i would get frustrated b/c no matter what i said or did it seemed like they were hellbent on staying exactly where they were no matter how much they hated it or how much it hurt them. i could sit down and walk with them through resources and venting sessions and so many ways to to get out of the place they were in and it just... repeated. in a cycle. at some point i had to come to terms with the fact that you can't help someone who refuses to take the first step to help themselves and sometimes sticking around someone like that is only going to keep you tethered to that mental state.
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