Asher's brother gave the name Daniel a bad rep by being a shitty brother and then Day redeemed it because he's (for one) a great brother and a great guy
Welcome to what is probably going to become a series of rants about the very unimportant details of books that live rent free in my head
Today I present to you:
The older brother of a least mentioned side character in a (unfortunately) very unapreciated sci-fi ya book
Now that that introduction is out of the way I have thoughts about Daniel Batu Wing from Warcross.
And I was not kidding about the character introduction. Warcross has a fandom with like 4 people in it in total, which is tragic in my opinion. Asher is a side character, the captain of the team and out of all of the friends Emika makes during the events of the book the one mentioned the least. So, now imagine how much his brother is mentioned.
I'll tell you - it's about 1.5 pages and 2 by-the-way mentions in around 600 pages of the duology.
So what are the things we know about Daniel:
He's Asher's older brother (if I had to guess maybe like 2-3 year age gap)
He's a famous actor and stuntman
He comes off arogant in Asher's memory when he is touched by Zero
He's Day's ancestor, so at some point he was married/had a girlfriend/one night stand - procreated so to say
And... that's about it really
So not much as you can see.
Now, what I have thought about reading the book and what led to this post is Asher (as a character I wish had more developement) and in turn his relationship with Daniel and that somehow led to a very badly done psycho analysis.
On to the bussiness.
The first time we see Daniel mentioned is when Emika meets Asher. She says that he is famous and that Asher was originally known as his younger brother and Ash gets a brief cold look at the mention of his brother.
The second time is when the dorm is blown up and Hamilton mentions that Asher's parents and brother are there to see him.
The third time is the memory in which we find out maybe the root of the problem between the brothers.
I would like to present to you my personal headcanons for the ages of Daniel and Asher. I like to think that Asher in the series is 22-23. Which would make Daniel somwhere around 25. I may explain my way of thinking this later, this is already long and I have told you nothing that you did not already know.
Why are the ages important, you may ask? The memory. Since Emika places the memory some 8-9 years, before the events of the series. The boys would be around 14 and 16.
From what we know their parents are getting a divorce and their house is a mess as well as the relationships in their family.
Daniel's way of dealing with this? Absolutely ignoring the situation around him. For what I understand to be a significant amount of time - a couple of years would do the trick.
So he sees what is happening and ignores his feelings and thoughts about the matter.
Why? Simple - he's neglected and feels alienated from his family so he alienates them back.
One another headcanon I would like to mention, that sort of makes Daniel's attitude and things he says make sense, is that Asher lost the use of his legs in an accident some time before their parents divorce.
This, understandably, makes the parents dote on Ash and in turn neglect Daniel.
And I say this because to me at least it seems that Ash does not understand that Daniel does not want him around and sees Ash as a problem. Most likely due to some change in dynamic Asher is not aware of. Which is perfectly understandable because why would his relationship with his brother change?
We see some evidence for this in:
Asher: Where are you going?
Daniel:...
Asher: You know what? You don't have to tell me? I don't have to know every single thing about your life, when you clearly don't care for me.
Daniel *sarcastically*: You only need me to care. Don't you have enough people giving you attention already?
Or something along those lines, I have the translated copy.
He sound so bitter and jelous there.
And Asher ( who is not good at dealing with people, like at all (also a post for another time)) calls out on Daniel's coping mechanism (ignoring the divorce). In which part I understand given the next part of the conversation where Daniel tells Ash that he isn't doing much better and Ash, not at all reading the situation or understanding that Daniel also means ignoring the divorce, says that Daniel is not doing much better, but at least his victories are the reason they have food on the table.
First of all, some A+ parenting, right there.
Second of all, Dany straight up goes for Asher's throat after this and that entire conversation causes a rift between them.
Very fun on all sides, as you can see.
What's fun to point out is that Daniel acts like a threatened animal. He was ready for jumping at his attacker the first available moment from the moment Asher refused to put the matter to rest.
We see this from Ash's POV, but how would it look like to Daniel?
He has a small career, that he's very proud of
He's starved for attention from the people he needs it from the most in his teenage years
The only attention he gets from family comes from the very reason he is neglected (not to say Asher is at fault here, because he is not. Daniel just seems to place the fault on him)
All of the family's finance and well being is put on the shoulders of the youngest member of the family who is disabled
Like, he, as most older siblings (it's a curse), feels the need to, in some capacity, provide something to the houshold when the parents clearly don't, but he only continues to ignore the situation at hand.
If their parents have not gotten a divorce, Dany would have probably ran away from home a mnd cut all contact.
And like all things that are ignored, the sitation at hand comes to bite him in the butt in the form of Asher (the aformentioned problem) who just keeps on pressing the sore spot until Daniel has to options - run away again and keep the cycle going or bit back and get rid of the problem. And bite he does.
To his credit, Daniel was most likely 16 at the time of this and none of us emotionally mature at that age, he delt with his emotion really badly, took it out on the wrong person and soured his relationship with his family.
They have most likely made up (I do not think that the cold look Ash had at the mention of Daniel was because the had bad blood, but rather that Emika put him again in the back of his brother's shadow when Ash worked hard to get out of it). Why do I think this? You don't fly half-way across the planet to check on someone you don't like/don't speak with/have bad blood with, when if he wanted to come across as caring he would have called or texted. Or ask third party who knows what happend and has seen Ash like Roshan, Hamilton or their parents.
So yeah, to sum up this way too long of a rant in which nothing was said, Dany was just a teenager in a horrible situation with which he delt badly.
And to those who have suffered through this, thank you :)
