I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this, but I really want to talk about how the upperclassmen and the monsters mirror each other. How each member of the monsters has a counterpart in the upperclassmen, someone with a similar backstory and similar motivations and goals, but with certain crucial differences that serve to highlight all the character development that happens throughout the books.
For instance, there’s Andrew and Renee: both foster children with harsh pasts who murdered and feel no remorse for it, but forced to face the consequences regardless. Andrew is left with a brother who can’t forgive him; Renee has to deal with the knowledge that she’ll never be the good person she wants to be. They have the same fighting style - defensive, reactive, but knowing that the only way to win is to stop your opponent from ever hurting you again; they both play goalie because they’re both best when they stand at everyone else’s backs and prevent anything from getting past them. There’s a reason Andrew charges Renee with protecting her half of the team, and not Dan, the official leader; where Dan is focused on moving forward and charging down the opposition, Renee and Andrew are about making sure everyone under their wing survives.
Then there’s Dan and Kevin, the team leaders (one official, one unofficial), a striker and an offensive dealer/occasional striker sub, #1 and #2. They’ve both been pushed down and shoved aside, marked as second-best or second-rate, and they both refuse to let that stop them. They both fight because they don’t know how to lose, because they can’t know how to lose, and they expect the same from everybody else. Kevin won’t accept anything but the best because that’s what he’s been taught, that’s the only way he knows how to live; Dan knows that anything less than perfection gives everyone else the right to stomp all over you, and is determined to never let that happen again. (And then there’s the fact that they both see Wymack as a father).
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