hello, its me again jsdbjkbs. so i was doing some thinking and that thinking involved a tiny artem wing and what his childhood would have been like. so i took what little tidbits the game gave us and just ran with it, though this is merely speculation. also mild artem spoilers bc fuck it, he’s interesting and i wanna know(tm) and maybe you also wanna know (tm)
we know that artem grew up as an only child whos parents weren't around as often as he’d like. his parents were lawyers (his dad is a judge?? waaaa?) that more often than not were out of the house doing their job and not spending time with artem. but they did spend time with him (well, from what i’ve seen his mother tried a lot but couldn’t) and thats where we get neil. neil is a family friend that was, at some point, the more consistent parental figure in his life. even then, neil wasn’t perfect and had to bail on artem a lot due to his own job as a lawyer. so we know that he had a very lonely childhood.
not only that but his trust in adults that were supposed to take care of him probably chipped away bit by bit. in thin veil one of his teachers told him that he wouldnt make it as an artist because he had no imagination. even neil often had to cancel stuff on artem because of his work and i have no issue in saying that his parents might have been the same way with him. they tried but ultimately came short of what artem needed.
theres also a bit of info from his revisiting youth card where he was a bit of a loner after hs since he was enrolled at a later date than some of his peers. to the point of some teachers thinking he was bullied and that he would sneak up to the rooftop to have lunch there instead of having lunch with some of his peers. he was totally capable of making friends (he did have at least one acquaintance, i would hesitate to call them a friend tho) he just,,, decided that because he was late to the party (being enrolled late) he’d just rather wait it out and be alone.
so, onto the nitty gritty: artem was probably a very independent child to the point of detriment. i know i mentioned some thoughts about this like how artem’s valentines mr implied he had to learn how to tie a tie himself or how he only expresses his interests when prompted, which makes me think that he was really independent as a kid. and, technically speaking, he had the motivation to do so. with parents working all the time, i think he developed some opinions about himself. for one, i think that he valued that his parents helped people through law, but in order to do that they had to stay in their jobs. in comes ‘good kid artem’ or as some may call him ‘the kid no one had to worry about’. if his parents were called to school for the shit he could do (bc we know he is capable of breaking the rules, he picked a lock for crying out loud) he would be depriving people of his parents and therefore people who needed legal council would suffer if he was not a good kid.
theres also the added pressure of his parents being who they were and having expectations placed onto him at a very young age. in a sense, artem was never allowed to be his own person until he exceeded all expectations placed on him. sure, it may be innocent to say “oh your parents are x and y? you must be xyz” but that sticks with people. and there’s the added factor that artem does look up to his parents, so theres that pressure in himself to be like that but also the pressure to not soil their name by doing something stupid.
at the beginning of the game it states that artem has never had a partner of any kind (romantic, work related) until the MC shows up. he did everything himself. im sure that he was the same with neil, and we kind of see a bit of it in his personal story. neil tried to teach artem that there was going to be feelings involved in some cases while artem was being ‘by the book’ and staying detached. he had to be shown a situation in where his method would not work and presented with an alternative.
the thing with artem tho is that he does recognize that he will need help and goes to find it only when prompted of pestered about it enough. i think thats just him recognizing that he is hyper independent and needs someone to rely on. it’s not easy to acknowledge, much even correct your behavior. he has trouble with it, especially opening up and working with mc. in his personal story chapter 2 one of the bigger fights they have is because they both want to do things their way and they have to split but before they start fighting at the job. he has to unlearn being so independent and not only to work with others, but to trust that others have his best interests at heart.
and yeah. character growth. jkbdsjbc i never know how to end one of my rambles so yeah.
