#I'm dying to know CR's take on the Twins and Hooligans. I know it will be good. It's already been better than what I could think of

[delightful-dorks]

NumbuhPhenon's Cold Reception is really making me think about the Interesting Twins and Rowdy Hooligans in light of how the Delightful Children came to be. The way the fic sets up Sector Z is just so gutting and horrifyingly plausible that the mere existence of other delightful children suggests so much about Father as a character; namely that for all the awful things he had to do to turn Sector Z into the DCFDTL, there's proof that they're not the only ones he's done this to-- and they might not have even been the first!

(And even if you aren't familiar with Cold Reception's specific recounting of how that happened, ZERO still implies a lot about them; the fic just illustrates one possible scenario in such devastating clarity it made me think about their Whole Deal a lot more.)

I think it's interesting that, out of the many delightfulized groups, the DC are the only group of children that Father actually claims as his own-- the Interesting Twins and Rowdy Hooligans don't live with him, and I think it's interpret-able from the way both of them talk about him whether or not they consider him their Father, or if he's just their boss. It's really making me look at Father as an embodiment of an abusive, selfish parent in a whole new light, in that perhaps the Twins and Hooligans represent the way some fathers have children that they either don't claim as their own or abandon for one reason or another.

Father says that the DC are his "perfect" delightful children, made from his original machine, but we don't ever see him mention any other attempts or children other than them. We know he must have done some experimentation, given how many delightfulization machines we see over the course of the series; it's probably his life's work that the DC were a culmination of, so.... where is all of his previous work? Whether he "made" the IT and RH before or after would probably give us some insight into his view of the DC-- maybe they weren't as effective as he had hoped and kept trying, or maybe his first few attempts before the DC weren't as driven or disciplined as he wanted. Either way, though, it doesn't help that both the IT and RH are never seen with parents and are conveniently not in America where the DC and people that know Father might see them. The two groups definitely strike me as being either too prone to failure (IT) or not willing to hold grudges enough (RH) for Father to accept-- probably seeing them as failed experiments that he distanced himself from. But honestly that's just the beginning of my questions. Do they even know about each other? What if they all think they're Father's only real kids, with Father maintaining a separate lie for all three? And, barring that, who were either group before?? We know the Delightful Children are Sector Z, but who were the Twins before? Who were the Hooligans before? Were they all KND, or was that where Father went wrong? Did he kidnap regular kids and expect them to be just as tactical and strong as Sector Z was (no doubt giving his machine too much credit for their efficacy) and thus abandoned them when they couldn't perform?

Much to consider....