srs: Lore here with some LONG rant about my 2nd bias, Leona. And also a little rant about miss Yana. Also a little rant about Sebek.
Reminder: I ain't good at psychology or anything in regards to it, I'm stating what I understand about Leona based on Drace's interpretation and also mine (also Drace, if this is too personal for you, then you have the right never to answer), you're free to disagree with me or if I miss something as long as you stated your own opinions in a less aggressive way. This is gonna be long though so bear with me.
Listen, I get some authors had characters they hated and yet I don't see that as an excuse to give them lack of character development and lore as well as making them stagnant till the end. (It reminds me of miraculous )and no I'm not that anon, everyone knows miraculous) where that bully character had like the best character development but was wasted back to zero cause the creator simply hates her)
I know Leona isn't the only one either. And the fact Leona is specifically made to be like Malleus in terms of being fetishized by furries is just upsetting in my opinion. I don't why it's the most compelling or random characters who are the ones sometimes hated by authors.
I had a dislike towards Sebek (and the fact we share the same bday) but the only thing that I don't like about him is that whenever Malleus is the center of his life, he acts like a toxic Kpop fan who puts his master up on a pedestal and is protective of him to the point Malleus had no freedom at all. But then again that makes him quite interesting since we yet to know why he's devoted to Malleus that badly. I prefer the side of him where he isn't talking about Malleus 24/7, he's much more better to talk with that way.
Leona has always been my favorite when it comes with his psyche and if he was written well, he could've been one of my most favorite villain based character.
Yes, I can see that he's a self deprecating, depressed asshole who holds no value to his own life and everyone else as long as he gets what he wants and treats people around him like unimportant or just random people, even his own family and wallowing in self pity thinking no one can understand him. But I can't blame him (if only his backstory is fleshed out well we can see how he becomes too damaged to the point his mindset is distorted. And let me remind you that he's literally just a fictional character and I would never want to encounter someone like him IRL), you're looking at a person who was born being feared, hated and ignored by people in his homeland for NO SPECIFIC REASON. In the servants POV, they see Leona as hard to please and has a UM that can turn people into sand (then again, I find their opinions as unreliable cause it's obvious they don't like him, we never get to see what Leona was truly like as a child nor we hear what he sounds like as a child or how he interacts at that age unlike others who OB, we only see him as a grown up arguing with Farena). It feels like in my opinion, that everyone treats Leona as a bad guy or what the anon said, a Black Sheep of the kingdom, and every mistakes he made he was dragged down more. Having to experience that sort of upbringing even at his young age, that would explain why he acts the way he was back at EP 2.
The hatred and unfairness he experienced led him to become hateful of the world, to everyone and especially to himself. He had spent his life in somber and sleeping his pain away, unmotivated to even move forward as he feels that he's stuck. He takes literally everyone's advice as an insult and even an inch of mistakes or if he doesn't get what he wants he gets irritated and gives up and doesn't take the idea of being 2nd place. He also tends to mostly speak badly about himself more than he does to others. That's part of his so called inferiority complex.
About his snowflake syndrome as Drace said, he plays victim all the time whenever he gets called out, he believes he's the one who's suffering the most and no one can understand his pain, yet he keeps pushing them away when they do and blames others for his mistakes, that quite makes him a hypocrite or probably because of his trust issues I'll explain that later. As much as he is aware others suffer the worst than him, he thinks they still had it better, especially Ruggie cause even if he's poor, he's still being optimistic.
But that isn't the worst part oh no I'm not done yet, I know he's also a prince and that means the superiority complex part of him acts. Being a prince he is a while new brand of spoiled (you can say his problematic part of him is similar to those privileged rich spoiled brats who had a terrible upbringing) and with his brains and magic, he knows that he can use his privilege and talents for his own benefit as it shows he's becomes a dorm leader and has led his dorm into many victories that is until Malleus came. So where's the superiority complex in that? Well we see in his SSR story that when his dorm members are going against him, Leona reminded them of his power, that goes to show how he rules his dorm with not just brains and brawn, but with fear as well (well I can tell that he does show good leadership sometimes but mostly he manipulates everyone with fear, this is why nobody dared to defy him). He also enjoys being a bully and is a sadist like Drace said (but almost everyone in this school is Sadistic), he just enjoys downgrading people with no regards to their feelings, and it's not just in words either Due to his own pain, he seeks fulfilment in giving others pain so he could feel good about himself and in my opinion he hated seeing people more happy in their lives than him. (but in my opinion as much as he downgrades others he downgrades himself the most). He basically treats everyone in the school like just random people regardless of their position in the society and even calls his profs in their surnames with no honorifics that's how you know how disrespectful he is.
About his relationship with Ruggie, sometimes Leona treats him like his servant sometimes he does trust him. He never let anyone else in his messy room than him and are both partners in crimes and acknowledge his shady talents. He even gives him his money and other things he doesn't want to him. The part where he almost killed him is because in that scenario Leona was already unstable and at this point he doesn't care if he kills him (I'll explain about his destructive behavior later on). Also times he never cares about Ruggie's poor life and Ruggie rubs it off saying rich kids can't understand poor people's pain when in fact Leona already is in pain enough to hate the world and never cared about anyone else pain. Ruggie is a little guilty of the fact he failed to understand Leona's pain cause he thought he had it better, but riches and privilege doesn't mean less suffering they say.
Now onto his destructive behavior, Like I said, he hated the world so much to even care about anything and anyone, even if his sense of logic and consciousness is stable or unstable, his psyche is already broken to begin with. His untreated depression, snowflake syndrome and his superiority inferiority complex has eventually led him to become this destructive. As much there's a side of him who wants to die, there's also a part of him who wants the world to suffer as he is, he has this "If I fall, you will fall with me" kind of destructive behavior. He literally wants everyone to suffer like he does, that's why he's a bully, he took pleasure in people's pain to feel good about himself, even though he has a side that's still suffering, wishing death. The part where he's already at his most worst us at EP 2, his plans to sabotage or even kill Malleus shows that he's already in the point of no return. And the fact he manipulated all his dorm members to do this makes him all more dangerous. He'd done alot of damage to innocent people but the worst part when at the middle part of the story where he gives up and unnecessarily destroy everyone's dreams and ambitions. When Ruggie told him off about it, Leona gets mad and starts his killing spree, this is the part where he's mentally unstable to think rationally (you think a rational person would think of killing someone cause they irritate them? he's already at the point of no return, he knew what to do and he's ready for it, never caring of the consequences.) Now that he finally concludes that he has nothing for him in this world, it's best for him to destroy himself, everyone and everything, then the Overblot.
Seeing the fact he's willing to lose whatever he has left of him he thinks it's unimportant or he feels unworthy of shows how lost he is to the darkness, despite being aware his actions can cost him everything. To me I think Leona is just lost and he doesn't know how to live in a cruel world and his only way to keep going is to make everyone around him kneel to him and manipulated them to cater to his personal desires as well as making them suffer unnecessarily, he's aware of this yet he keeps on doing it. (Again it's no excuse for his terrible actions, just explaining it) And because he keeps doing this, the more he becomes worse to the point he becomes too dangerous for everyone.
IDK if ever his family did try so hard to reach out to him cause the fact he was this worse means he lack attention and guidance at a young age from his own family. This is also why his depression remained untreated. Then again Farena may had tried to reach him but he was too late cause the damage is done. Leona needed help, to make it happen he needed an adult with stronger magic, a legit therapist with the capability of patience to withstand his stubbornness to listen and not just some random people who he can just knock down. What Drace mean about protecting people from Leona, is because nobody has the nerves to defy or go against him other than Jack that's why he's able to pinned them down, we see how he almost killed Ruggie and his dorm members. They needed to be saved from Leona first before he gets to be saved.
I'll do a continuation of this later. Took me 5 hours for this. And thank you.
Hey there, no problem! Hope you don’t mind talking to the rabitthing instead, as this is Leona-related. Late reply because I was waiting for the second rant, but in retrospective, you might have been waiting for a reply before sending that one too lol, sorry if so.
To be fair, I don’t think neither of us is a Psychology expert, either, though I know a little more about it though the patient experience and a little more about story writing through career stuff and such, and so does Drace; we’re both very passionate about essay writing too, and honestly the only thing stopping Drace from absolutely killing it is the fact she’s not a native English speaker (which, neither I am, but I was kind of forced to learn the language from a young age).
First, a genuine question if you don’t mind, because I’m puzzled: What is it that you hope to achieve with these exchanges?
You know, I got here like, 3 days ago lol, so as someone that was merely a watching party to what seemed to be a very heated debate that has lasted for days, I’m curious. To me, you come across as pursuing this conversation with your all, so, do you seek to explain your viewpoint of the characters as you understand them to others? Sort your thoughts through dialogue? Compare your opinions with those of other fans? Enrich your own understanding and viewpoint? Maybe it’s just something spontaneous, a fun thing to do, something to distract you or kill time or just one of those things that gets you going, that’s okay too!
What happened to Miraculous actually feels more like the exact opposite of what happened with Leona in a sense: The author dude protects the Ladybug so much he’s bending the whole plot around her and ripping apart the rest of the cast so she can come out on top and attain… Whatever it is that he considers happiness for her. Leona was properly written and then dropped into the story with no care, but other than Ruggie a little, no other character or plot point was affected by this.
Yeah that’s not good, definitely. I grieve for Sebek’s wasted potential so far. He got so much going for him, including that interesting subplot about the fact he doesn’t seem to be able to reconcile the fact he’s half-human, half-fae, which makes me think, is this due to the fact he adores Malleus so much? Or is the blind devotion he professes towards Malleus a result of how much he seems to hate the fact he’s half-human? Maybe he sees serving the future King of Dark Fae as some kind of higher calling that will help him leave the human side he refuses so much. In which case, Silver being there, and being loved by Malleus in a more honest, legitimate way must greatly frustrated him too. That’s not here, not now, though. Neither is a real fun story about someone else who hates sharing their birthday with a fictional character…
Back to Leona, the thing is, that I personally think Leona is well constructed as a character in his context, it’s just that his development through the story is a slow and too little so far. You have laid the points as to why he’s actually well written yourself many times before. We know why Leona is the way he is, this has been made clear, the audience can understand his motivations clearly. We know nothing was done along the way to prevent this outcome. There ain’t much either of us can do about that except watch as the story progresses and hope for a crumb of further development.
Of course, the situation he was put into almost as soon as he was put in his world is not something that can be blamed on him. The world seemed to have conspired against Leona because sometimes It Is What It Is and it just gotta suck massive ass. He’s still in charge of his own actions and decisions, though, and the blame still can’t be pinned on anyone but him at this point. He longs to be closer to Farena and he doesn’t actively want to break Cheka’s heart, and I believe he wants to be a true friend to Ruggie real bad somewhere deep between his heart of hearts, but he’s constantly self-sabotaging himself, unable to trust even his own choices, because what if he gets hurt again? A fear of pain is real in these kinds of cases. “If I hurt and go down, you’re all going down with me, we will all hurt together, no happiness for anyone.”
And the thing is, you can’t really blame any of this on Ruggie or Farena, or have expected them to be the ones to pull the brakes for a number of reasons either. You gotta cut them some slack. Farena is not Leona’s father and Ruggie is an acquaintance. From what we have heard, it can be speculated that Farena was shoved into the throne at a young age, then rushed to find a marriage partner and produce an heir. Then he had to take care of that heir, his family, attend to his duties as King, keep an eye on his younger brother and his father. He must be spread thin despite whatever Leona choses to believe, communication failing between them as Farena’s responsibilities piled up, and now Leona being too prideful and hurt to admit there might just be no one to blame for that and refusing to mend his relationship with Farena when Farena has tried to approach.
As for Ruggie, he’s a whole 5 years younger than Leona and in a position that must make it hard for him to empathize with him truly. So, from my perspective, it’s a little naive to expect Ruggie to ‘understand Leona’s feelings better’ and pin any blame on him in this situation for not stopping his Senior and Prince.
This all sounds very cruel yes but again, it would seem like Leona was thrust into this chaos without anyone having any say in this and it just sucks, for everyone.
These issues are complex and this is a trash situation that seems to be without any written paths out, but there are a few!
Ultimately, Leona has to walk up to Farena, accept his invitation to make amends, and then, as you suggest, look for someone that can truly help Leona out of it; Farena himself could do it, if he has the chance and Leona accepts it, with the help of a mental health professional, of course.
