Something I'm a bit upset about is how they seem to have removed any and all mention of Reynauld's religious trauma in DD2 in favour of focusing exclusively on his role and fearsomeness as a crusader
In DD1 there's a lot of barks (mostly when he's irrational) where he outwardly rejects his own religion among other things
The self damage line feels especially striking to me, not to mention the line where he begs for mercy on a child's behalf. Even outside of his irrational lines, there is a very harsh focus on purity and cleanliness, which can be read as OCD esq compulsions.
I feel like ignoring these barks is a grave mischaracterization of Reynauld because while it is true that he participated in the crusades, I believe there should also be conversation about how it is implied that Reynauld was severely physically abused into his religion as a child and was even trying to actively protest against what I assume was one of his colleagues during the crusades. (Before someone pancake-waffles me, no I don't think he should be excused for his actions during the crusade because of his bad childhood)
In a kinder life I think Reynauld wouldn't have even entertained the idea of joining the crusades with how much he doesn't want to be who he is now when he's vulnerable... Hell, it's actively stated and shown in both the DD1 comic and DD2 shrines that participating in the crusades woke up his lust for blood, implying he would've never turned out this way were it not for how much religious indoctrination had influenced(and honestly ruined) his life
hello darkest dungeoneers. thanks to unpopular opinion i have decided i will start posting my dreadful tierlists to tumblr . all opinions are objectively correct and i will not be accepting sugestions or criticisms. (joke)
Exploration of Reynauld through a handful of cluster B disorders and OCD
Specifically through BPD with heavy ASPD tendencies.
Disclaimer: A lot of this is based on my own experiences and struggles with cluster B disorders and OCD, I just thought it'd be interesting to view Reynauld through this lens. as you read through this it will sound a LOT like the demonization of ASPD and cluster B and OCD but i swear to you this is literally only because Reynauld is a terrible person. also ft the debut of the "darkest musing" tag that i will use for personally sorting my darkest dungeon exploration (feel free to use it though)
Disclaimer #2: This post is cut short like halfway through and a lot of stuff is left out because i got really sick of writing sorry
Reynauld is such a fascinating guy to me because you can read him in so many ways but for today i will be reading him through clusterfuck B disorders and specifically OCD.
We will start with the ASPD tendencies because that is the easiest for me to write about but prepare for this to get rambly and interconnected very quickly.
Part 1: the disorders affecting the guy himself
I think Reynauld has trouble truly "caring" for people in a genuine sense, seeing people as precious objects/ useful tools rather than "people". He treats most people with an internal apathy and has a tendency to discard those he finds to be not capable of providing anymore. On the outside he appears cordial and well put together but internally he honestly doesn't really feel any obligation to be kind to others. In fact, his main motivation for following the Light isn't because he wants to help other people but rather because it earns him supposed "good person" points in his mind. He doesn't care whether someone is helped or not, but he knows on a surface level that people will like you if you do something for them. It is very easy for him to turn a blind eye to suffering as a result.
In essence, Reynauld likes the validation that being zealous and devout gets him and the sense of community with other closed (yet like) minded individuals. He likes being right and a lot of the actions he does "out of the kindness of his own heart" is backed with some sort of internal desire for validation from the people within his community. It is for this reason that it was so easy for him to fall into bloodlust. A lot of individuals with ASPD tendencies(especially coupled with BPD) tend to angle towards committing bad acts because of the thrill of being in power and being in control. Combine that with the fact that he was actively being rewarded for doing something "wrong" was essentially heroin for the cluster B brain. He essentially constantly felt the thrill of being in control of other people's lives while being allowed to feel the thrill of getting away with something as abhorrent as genocide.
Don't get me wrong, Reynauld is a bad person for giving into these impulses and letting them control him rather than recognizing them but the issue is that he is (on some level) aware that he is doing bad things; he just doesn't care that he is because doing these "bad things" gets him validation and community.
It would be very easy for Reynauld if cluster B was the only disorder he was suffering from.
OCD makes this carelessness a living nightmare, especially because I think it is a mix of moral OCD among other things, hence the whole "God fearing" thing. He flip flops between moral perfectionism with genuinely trying to be kind/helpful to others, and complete apathy for the wellbeing of other people. Compulsive thought spirals convince him that people will find out he's doing shit insincerely, so he tries to quell those thought spirals by doing "good things" for supposedly nothing in return (but he doesn't realize he is inadvertently asking for something in return in the form of validation)
Hence, Reynauld is trapped in a very nasty flip flop of apathy and self flagellating because of this apathy yet being too apathetic to really do anything to change that.
I need to clarify that Reynauld is capable of FEELING guilt. ASPD/sociopathy does not mean the lack of feelings rather moreso a pathological lack of empathy. Reynauld is capable of feeling guilt, anger, sadness, and all that nasty stuff, but he is too apathetic and uncaring to do anything about it except to look like he is making progress to other people so he can be rewarded with praise/validation.
It is very hard to properly explain the full scope of sociopathy/ASPD through a tumblr post. i heavily recommend reading "sociopath" by Patric Gagne for more information on it!
Part 2: The disorders affecting his interpersonal relationships
Hello borderline personality disorder.....
BPD makes it so that Reynauld suffers extensively from feelings of emptiness, exacerbated by the apathy from ASPD, which messes with his impulse control that is already pretty fucking shit from OCD, which bubbles and boils over into his extensive kleptomania. It's a viscious cycle for him: emptiness -> impulse control fails + thrill seeking behaviours start -> steal something-> MORAL OCD GUILT -> rage at his own apathy -> hollow/emptiness -> repeat
This obviously makes people offput with him, not even mentioning his discriminatory behaviours and his zealousness and his preaching and everything in between. But that is beside the point of BPD.
The way BPD REALLY rears its head for Reynauld is through splitting, most notably known as black and white thinking. It is...impossibly difficult for Reynauld to see people in nuanced grey areas as opposed to simply seeing them as pure angels or pure demons.
oh my god. im going to cut this post short because it is 3 in the morning and im too tired to continue
You know, in the context of reading Dismas as a transgender man the event of murdering a mother and daughter in his backstory can be metaphorically reinterpreted as transition and essentially "killing" who he's expected to be as a woman (a daughter and a mother), permanently changing the direction of his life the same way it does in both the dd1 comic and the dd2 interactable memory
