Joseph's new birthday lore has genuinely wrecked meee It's so so so devastating, but I should say though, in a way that finally makes his spiral into madness makes so much sense (spoiler: there was a crucial catalyst) (AND IT'S ON SIGHT I TELL YOU L*****)
it really does a good job at portraying his desperation and why he ended up going as far as he did. I love when idv lore does this... when it doesn't erase the horror of what someone became but shows the fragile, human place it grew from... I've been thinking about it nonstop and honestly I think everyone should give it a read.
the thing that keeps getting me is the tuberculosis detail (which I.. don't think we knew of before, new claude info I guess!) like the idea that Joseph built his entire life, his beliefs, his sins, around the assumption that claude's death was some cruel inevitability of fate... only for science to quietly move toward proving that one day it might've been treatable. that it wasn't destiny or cosmic cruelty, just a disease humanity hadn't caught up to yet.
and instead of that being something that could maybe free him from the weight of it, leroux basically cornered him into such a situation so joseph commits fully to his path before that truth can reach him, in a way "invalidating" his grief and break him completely.. leroux made sure joseph finishes the work so his suffering 'continues to have a meaning', unknowingly for joseph but leroux's own sake. that is like. so unbelievably twisted it actually makes my stomach hurt.
joseph's literally just ☹️ trying to prove that claude's existence can't disappear, that he won't be erased by time and memory. that his brother won't "die a second time." with his memory failing, if not his own death. and leroux obv just...? spectates like the burning of a building he set on fire. I just.
I can't believe the tragedy of the twins somehow got even worse with this lore drop and i genuinely cannot stop thinking about it.