#basically his main flaw is a combination of “high expectations of others” and; probably moreso; not wanting to face up to the truth of

[revengesworn]

OKAY SO I'M GONNA GO AHEAD AND SHARE SOME DRAKEN HEADCANONS, mostly about his flaws since we didn't see that much in canon. under the cut for length. keep in mind that most of this is not actually implied in canon, just stuff i thought would be interesting and may end up scrapping/changing in the future.

in terms of actual canon moments that imply his flaws, i could only think of a few things: his initial fight with mikey over pah and how it got out of control, the moment after emma's death where he took everything out on mikey, and maybe (??) the fact that he didn't share his feelings/objections on toman's dissolution and accepted it while secretly being conflicted, too. i've tried to draw upon these moments when making stuff up, but if anyone has any different ideas to mine based upon these moments for flaws draken might have, PLEASE SHARE THEM WITH ME I WOULD LOVE YOU AND MARRY YOU INSTANTLY AFHJSDK

anyway. so i thought one flaw of draken's that'd be interesting is also a strength of his - his strong moral compass and high expectations of others. this is also a good thing for obvious reasons, but in contrast means that he expects people to react to trauma in the "right way" and thinks on some level that they have an obligation to do so.

now... it's actually more complicated than that. that's what he TELLS himself he believes, but in reality, when he finally acknowledges to himself that mikey has become a "bad person" (more on that later) - he can't abandon him. he decides to try and save him, going against his own principles which state he should be writing mikey off as a "lost cause", because mikey is ultimately more important to him than those principles.

however... i do think those high expectations caused issues in a different kind of way. specifically, while he subconsciously noticed mikey's pain and his "darker side" even before the kanto incident occurred, he somewhat denied the full extent of it because he didn't want to have to face that conflict between his principles and his love of mikey. maybe he was afraid of what the end result would be. it's kind of like... on some level, he didn't want to lose that "perfect" image he had of mikey, because then he'd be forced to either abandon his friend OR completely re-evaluate his worldview.

of course, it's not like he thought mikey was perfect. he was willing and able to call him out when needed, and noticed when he did things wrong, but kind of downplayed the seriousness of it to himself a little?? a lot of this is all subconscious, though. he TOLD himself the reason he didn't push harder about mikey's mental state is because mikey didn't want the help, or just needed support in the form of being treated like normal, or that he was healing on his own time. but deep down, it might've been because he feared that if he acknowledged what mikey was hiding, he'd end up abandoning him.

i guess in that way, his flaw is more "not wanting to acknowledge his own feelings" than "high expectations of others." they're both an issue to an extent, but for the latter, when it comes into conflict with his care for his friends, the latter ultimately wins out.

i also want to compare him to the others in toman a bit and my headcanons for them... so. baji i think was another character who noticed what was up with mikey and didn't push, but for him i think it was less not wanting to acknowledge his own feelings on it, but more that he felt he didn't have the right to interfere after what happened with shinichiro. mitsuya... probably didn't notice as much as draken or mikey, and might even have handled things better then them if he had - but by the time he did notice mikey's darkness, mikey already seemed too far gone. pah didn't notice because he's not the smartest, but if he did he would've talked to mikey about it because he's BEST BOY OKAY LISTEN I'M RIGHT!! #pahbestboy

but back to draken. some unrelated to the whole mikey fiasco flaws are generally his tendency to keep his feelings to himself. not telling emma how he felt, for instance - he tends to assume people just "know" how he feels already. also, he tends to keep in his more negative feelings/feelings he thinks he shouldn't have, and that leads to them spilling over when they become too much (see him @ mikey after emma's death.)

finally, i do think draken did on a small level rely on mikey to an extent. he saw him as a "strong leader" and didn't want to lose that image of him... but that's not really a huge thing for him in comparison to his other reasoning for not pushing with mikey, if that makes sense?? like he still considered mikey more important than that.