#i really wish austin would remake lisa the first to incorporate stuff from the later games

[chikkou]

What are your thoughts on Brad?

im assuming u mean brad from lisa, so i will respond with that assumption in mind LMAO

as a character, i think hes fucking fantastic. austin jorgensen did an absolutely AMAZING job making brad both empathetic and deeply fucking flawed, but flawed in such a way that it is really difficult to blame him for being how he is. he didnt get to choose any single thing that happened to him, except taking buddy in, and even that was something he managed to screw up. there is something very poignant about seeing a man who has been through so much pain and suffering struggle to do the right thing, to help those in need, to take care of someone and raise them with the love and kindness he never got... and fail. 

he fails completely in everything he ever set out to do. the daughter he swore to love and protect both fears and hates him. he kills scores of innocent people for naught. he never manages to overcome his addiction (but in fairness to him, this is largely buzzos fault as he forcefed brad enough pills to guarantee that he would overdose eventually). all of his friends, even TERRY, turn away from him at the end because he is doing the wrong thing. 

again, in fairness, SOME of the party members will reveal that they only agreed to help brad to get a “shot” at buddy themselves (rage is the only one i can think of rn, though i know there are others) - but there are also a sizable number of them (terry, shocklord, queen roger, and olan immediately come to mind) who were genuinely loyal to brad and cared about him, and only work against him because they sincerely feel he is morally in the wrong. and when brad fights those people, they barely fight back - they have unique, miserable-looking sprites for the final battle and spend most of their turns crying, being scared, or throwing out weak attacks that do little to no damage. they dont want to do this. but because of how far brad has fallen, they feel like they have no choice. 

as a PERSON, i am highly mixed on brad, as one is obviously meant to be. as i said previously, i do sincerely empathize with him. he has experienced an unreasonable amount of trauma, to such an extent that its difficult for me to judge any of his actions, but that goes right out the window the minute he chose to adopt buddy. it was his decision to raise buddy instead of taking her to rando, someone who he could trust and who had the resources to keep her safe for many, many years. brad wanted to prove to himself that he could be better than his father, that he could love and treat a child as they deserved to be treated. but he couldnt. he never recovered from what happened to him. he is haunted by his father and lisa, with no means of tackling it in a healthy way, and he never trusted anyone enough to share his pain with them. we even see it in the flashback where he tries to buy painkillers off of sticky - sticky point blank refuses because brad is clearly unhinged and needs HELP, not more drugs to mask the pain. 

he never should have adopted buddy. it was selfish of him to think he could simply fill the void in his heart with a child and that everything would be fine. by refusing to accept that he is broken beyond repair and in need of some serious help, he unwittingly perpetuated the cycle of abuse, and did unto buddy what his own father had done to him. its a very sad reality, but some people simply do not have the capacity to be good parents, and brad is one of those people. hed already adopted one child, and then abandoned him when the reality of parenthood hit too hard - why would he try to do the exact same thing all over again?

now, i wont be too harsh - i do believe that some part of him did sincerely love buddy. but his love for the real buddy was always overshadowed by his regret over lisa, and even up until the end, i know that when he looked at buddy, he only ever saw lisas ghost. that said, the boss battle that buddy has with brad in the joyful is so fucking perfectly written and full of love and sorrow that its making me emotional just thinking about it LMAO.... it was very clear there that even buddy, for all the resentment she felt toward him, knew how much he loved her and wished things had been different. it was a story that could never have had a happy ending. brad tried, that much is true - but perhaps things would have been different if he had accepted that he couldnt be the parent buddy needed right from the beginning.

tl;dr brad tried but he really shouldnt have