#i hope this isn't swinging a bat at a hornet's nest sdfjdskfl this whole thing just. bothers me

[shoechoe]

On the subject of people insisting that Trish is Doppio's daughter instead of Diavolo's, I think the main reason that bothers me isn't because it's just incorrect, but because people use that to try and twist the narrative into "Diavolo is the evil monster that ruined poor Doppio's relationship and if only he was never there, Doppio could've stayed with Donatella and been a good father to Trish and none of this would've ever happened!"

You guys… Doppio actively helped Diavolo kill Trish. The point isn't that Diavolo is a horrible monster for getting in the way of Doppio's happy domestic life or whatever- the point is that Diavolo's paranoia and attempts to erase his past became a self-fulfilling prophecy as his own past actions finally caught up to him and led to his defeat.

As Diavolo became increasingly power-hungry, he lost his humanity in order to become completely untouchable by the outside world. He sabotaged his own life (including Doppio by extension) to sever all of his ties from the rest of humanity. He was willing to burn down his hometown, abandon his girlfriend, and eventually try to kill his kid because of his paranoia and lack of care for anyone but himself. His own daughter, a person he's supposed to care about, was instead a painful living reminder of his past that he wanted to dispose of at any cost.

That’s the moral of his character; when all you seek is power, you lose your humanity and sight of what’s really important, which, in this case, was his child. This “Diavolo is the evil split personality getting in the way of Doppio being a good father” narrative totally defeats the point (not to mention echoes the tiresome “sweet, innocent alter with an evil violent alter” character trope that has been used to stigmatize people with Dissociative Identity Disorder for decades).

I feel the same way about the constant insistence that Doppio is the "real/original" of the two and that Diavolo is the "fake" one, whatever that means (if anything, it would be the reverse since the manga repeatedly calls Diavolo the "true form" and their "true nature"- though this entire idea of one being "fake" and one being "real" doesn't really make sense), the "Diavolo is actually a demon possessing Doppio" theories, and the constant babying of Doppio's character. It's all geared to favor Doppio and frame him as the pure victim and Diavolo as the practically inhuman monster, resulting in squashing out the depth in both of them (and honestly detracting attention from the real innocent victim, which is Trish.)

And it’s not like Doppio needs any of this mischaracterization to be interesting; there’s genuine tragedy to his character as well. Diavolo’s obsession with self-isolation ends up dragging Doppio around with him as he’s used as a human vessel, even though Doppio does not desire this isolation for himself. As a result, he’s incredibly lonely and unhappy, depending on his Boss for companionship and instruction, never realizing that the one responsible for his loneliness in the first place is his Boss- who is also the other side of their fractured identity. In the end, he’s forcefully separated from Diavolo and ends up dying alone, deliriously begging for his Boss to call him despite Diavolo not even being there to hear him, never getting to discover the truth about himself. It reflects not only how brutally Diavolo treats others to achieve ultimate power, but also how he treats himself.

Character favoritism is fine- after all, Doppio is the more likable one, so it was inevitable- but I think it's leading people to make these two into worse characters, and that bothers me. You don’t need to spout misconceptions, fall back on overdone mental illness tropes (really, canon is already bad enough as it is), and change the whole moral of their characters to make them interesting.