another toffee analysis by sage h silentfire
I've been sitting on this analysis for a while, and I was going to touch on it briefly in a project I'm working on, but a talk with my therapist allowed me to put it into words and in greater detail than before. So here it is:
Why exactly do I like Toffee so much? It's a genuine question. He's the target of many different questionable writing choices, barely focused on, and forgotten within seconds of his death. We know so little about him he's basically a generic doomsday villain. The fandom is worse to him: popular interpretations paint him as cruel, arrogant, spiteful, and even, surprisingly enough, stupid. The word "sociopath" gets thrown around a lot, which, ableist. He's emotionless. He has no empathy. He's unable to connect with people. While liking villains is somewhat acceptable nowadays, it's always with the expectation that you like them because they're evil, not for any deeper reason. And with Toffee, because he's so poorly written, that should be the reason you like him. Because he's evil, and that's awesome.
But that's not why I like Toffee.
See, I am autistic, and that's never going away. I get more stereotypically autistic by the year, as I grow and become more independent, and my newfound independence clashes with my family and the society I live in. I'm weird, I'm moderately smart, I'm quirky. But more critically, I have no close friends because I literally don't know how to make and maintain friendships. I feel painfully aware of the potential emotions of everyone around me, but I don't know how to act on that awareness and communicate effectively with people, leading me to assume the worst. I have had meltdowns in crowded spaces that went completely unnoticed because I was "too subtle". I even worry that I'll die without any of the stories I want to tell – without my story – being told, because no one wanted to learn it.
Sound familiar?
So yes, I like Toffee. Even think he's a halfway decent person morality-wise, not just a villain. He expresses emotions weirdly, but he does express emotions. He is staunchly not willing to sacrifice his plans for others, but he still takes time to be nice to other people regardless. He didn't kill Moon and Marco when he could have, even though they were trying to kill him. He is empathetic enough to manipulate people and smart enough to take control of any situation, and he does it while not expressing emotions in ways others would expect. He's so much like my dream self fr.
And he dies the unquestioned villain, never getting the chance to tell his side of the story. The only perspective that we do get is filtered through the lens of his murderers.
"But Sage!" you might be saying. "What about Comet?!"
Well. I do count Comet's death as one of the questionable choices the writers made (it makes very little sense with Toffee's character, wouldn't he manipulate her into a better deal? It feels a little like the writers were like "Oh shoot, we haven't made Toffee evil enough to 'deserve' his graphic death, let's... uh, let's make him kill Moon's mother for no reason!"), but I can understand why Toffee did it, again through an autistic lens.
See, autistic people like me aren't taken seriously. Not about our areas of knowledge, not about our views and beliefs, and especially not about matters of our physical and mental health. We're treated like weird baby dolls that are expected not to have meltdowns or criticize their "superiors". Or we're embarrassments, time bombs just waiting to go off and mortify whoever we're with. Growing up, I was never able to be right, or even have a point. Oh, there were minor disagreements my guardians let me "win" and then would weaponize during the more serious arguments, but whenever we got into screaming matches, I was always the one in the wrong. We didn't even apologize or talk it out after arguments; it was always expected that I would realize I was wrong eventually and it was swept under the rug with all the other skeletons of long-dead arguments and left to simmer into resentment.
But there was one surefire way to make a dent, one I discovered recently and that has actually saved my life.
In the summer of 2022, I was put on a new medication. Long story short, I did not sleep for two weeks. I was in shambles, and I needed my mother to raise hell from me, because she would not let me do it myself – my psychiatry goes through my guardians, and I didn't even have the psychiatrist's number at the time. But she wouldn't do anything. The psychiatrist thought things would level out eventually, and my mother thought what the psychiatrist thought, nevermind that I was actively getting worse and my sleeping pills were getting less effective by the day. I begged her to raise hell like I knew she could, and she sent a mild phone call gently suggesting that things still weren't ideal. I could feel myself slipping away as everyone who was ostensibly taking care of me sat and twiddled their thumbs.
So I got personal. I deliberately started a big blowout. I convinced her that things weren't going well, and this little game of chicken with my health wouldn't result in the perfect, uncritical, angelic autistic daughter she so desperately wanted. I got into a screaming match, I listed everything she had ever done wrong, and I told her to shut up and stop spewing weak justifications on how my pain wasn't her fault, actually. I hit her where it hurts. I hurt her back. I hurt her.
And it worked. Hurting her made her take me seriously and I was back on my old meds before sunset. I slept well that night. And I will never regret it.
So maybe Toffee's plan to overthrow his colonizers with the death of Comet didn't end in monster victory. But if it weren't for the eleventh-hour dark magic, it would have. And Toffee's people were oppressed and the victims of genocide for ages. They were the small band of rebels fighting an evil colonizing empire. They were ideologically in the right. They kicked and clawed and bit until they found something to hurt, and then they didn't hesitate. Because no one took them seriously, and they still wouldn't have taken them seriously unless they did something damaging. Comet sure didn't; her chapter is a continually escalating series of microaggressions. Moon didn't; she doesn't seem to care about the conflict at all before Comet's death. Who else would take him seriously? Mina? The High Commission? Glossaryck?
So while I don't think he was totally in character in killing Comet, I do understand more than others why he might have done it.
Because Toffee is like me, for better or for worse. And he could have been great for me and people like me. But he wasn't. He was assumed to be evil and left to die immediately. Because people like me are always the bad guys.
In short,
Exhibits:
Toffee's emotions, courtesy @butterflyeffectiveless:
Comet's continually escalating microaggressions:
Additional source for Toffee being autistic:
because i'm autistic and i like him
the end.
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Whoopsies, I meant how would the yandere flame demons react to their darling discovering the carnage that they had done for them?
(a/n: i ended up interpreting this request a bit differently and got creative with it, but i hope it’s to ur liking anyways!)
(tw: blood and violence, mild gore, reader is (slightly more than a bit) feral)
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⌜ivlis.⌟
ALT
• Ivlis is, quite frankly, terrified. He thought of you as sweet and hesitant to resort to violence under any circumstances. Maybe he really doesn’t know you as well as he thought. He’s laying on his back, beaten and bruised as you took it upon yourself to make sure the assailants would stay off of his back, permanently. He props himself up on his elbows as you turn and make your way over to him then. He staggers and attempts to hastily stand to little avail, suddenly feeling uneasy.
• He wonders if you’re going to turn around and use your rage against him at one point, considering the way he’s been treating you – but he’s surprised when you instead wrap your still-blooded hands around him.
• He stands still as a statue as he quietly lets you hug him. He’s not focused on his own injuries nor all the gore staining him.
• He becomes slightly less tense - letting his shoulders sag in relief - when you tell him you’ll protect him the same way he’s always protected you, no matter what lengths you’ll have to go in order to ensure it. The stockholm syndrome has finally kicked in the most macabre way possible, it seems.
⌜rieta.⌟
ALT
• She’d been caught off guard by the otherworldly angel attacking her from a blind spot - as she’s thrown against the ground with great force, she’d already prepared to throw off this weak pest in a counterattack, nothing but a couple of shallow gashes on her body and bruises to show from the ambush--
• --Yet it’s enough for her darling to interrupt and unleash their wrath on the attacker without even thinking about it. Some of the gore as you tear ruthlessly into your enemy splatters onto you, nails sharp as razor tearing apart skin and muscle so easily you could reach their heart and rip it right out - and Rieta is pleasantly surprised you don’t hold back in the slightest when it comes to protecting her. Even if she can do so herself without a problem, it’s good you’re as much of a loyal bloodhound towards her like she is for you.
• Still, her own protective streak resurfaces, worrying and making sure you hadn’t accidentally injured or overexerted yourself. It would be best for her to handle the enemies from here on out - she is marginally stronger compared to all of Lord Ivlis’ lower-ranking troops after all, and that includes you.
• There’s a hole in the angel’s chest as they lay on the ground; lungs, heart, and other organs ripped out, leaving a complete unrecognizable bloodied mess; they won’t be waking up from that for a long time, if ever. The long-clawed demon suggests the two of you should probably get into a bath to get all that grime off later on. For now, you have a mission to complete and orders to fulfill.
⌜poemi.⌟
ALT
• “Oi, no fair! You didn’t even let Poemi have any fun slaughtering them!” she pouts, looking at the fresh dead bodies in slight disappointment. And here she was looking forward to taking at least one of them back to play with.
• Poemi loves to kill people for you (whether you like it or not), so you doing it for her comes as a bit of a surprise.
• “It would’ve been better to interrogate them first, I got a little… carried away,” you sheepishly admit, seeing the wound on her cheek. You were fiercely overprotective of your comrades-in-arms, even the flame devil's daughter, disturbing as she was on the outside.
"Luh-aaame," she complains at the lack of action she got to do on her part, hugging you from behind and looking up at you expectantly, the doe-eyed look betraying the cruelty of her words, "Let's kill together next time, okey dokey?" she asks.
“Right. Uh, you can have your… ah, fun next time,” you say with mild hesitance, truthfully a bit creeped out by her presence, especially how obsessive she usually acted with you.
• The little fiend of a demon wonders if there are at least still any good leftovers for her to eat.
⌜licorice.⌟
ALT
• Licorice, amongst all the others, is no stranger to violence and bloodshed - especially now when he was viciously defeated by Satanick’s right-hand, laying vulnerable against ground in a vast open area with nothing but a desert to surround him, as dirt and mucus seeps into open wounds.
• ...Yet his opponent never comes to finish him off. There’s still ringing in his ears and blurry vision at best. When he manages to open his eyes, he doesn’t see the goat within his peripheral vision, but he can feel his innards twisting in painful agony as the weapon he was attacked with previously is taken out. He hisses and coughs up more sprouts of crimson, hearing mantra (“sorry, sorry—”) from an entirely different voice above him, and he recognizes it almost immediately.
• His pride feels almost wounded. He can take care of himself just fine, even if that hole inside his chest pierced by the kris instituted otherwise - maybe even something worse would have followed afterwards if you hadn’t stepped in - but he doesn’t want to think about that. From where he’s sitting he can see a body not too far, blood pooling around the head and the throat. Well, demons are hard to kill (since Licorice mistook Envi to be a mere animal upon first meeting, not a fellow demon like himself), so you’ve likely only incapacitated him for a little while.
• “Let’s go back somewhere safer.” you told him, cradling his hand and shoulder with caution. He doesn’t have the energy nor the willpower to conjure up any arguments, so he allows himself to bask in the feeling of you so close to him and tending to his injuries. If he wasn’t feeling so fatigued and ashamed due to being defeated so easily, he would maybe have cuddled up closer to you.
⌜emalf.⌟
ALT
• A grotesque sight of the carnage coats the scene in front of him, as Emalf stands a few feet away from it all, frozen stiff, shocked at the sight of you covered in crimson in the middle of a pile of corpses. Those girls from the gray world were barely recognizable... were her intestines gouged out?! Effed up, man... that was...
• “Babe… y-you good?” he’s more worried whether or not you’ve come down from your rampage - damn, you look scary covered in so much blood and grime!
• You tilt your head to the side innocently. Leaving a trail of bloody footsteps as you approach him, the serene expression staying permanent on your face, making a comment about how you took care of that problem without any issues, and leaving those four there like mauled, grotesque roadkill on the side of the dirt road.
• He could easily have dealt with any hostile enemies on his own (what a liar, as if he didn’t nearly just pass out from fear at that brunette angel threatening to beat ‘im to death), but he appreciates you having his back when he’d do exactly the same for ya.
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