POTA save me🙏

I don’t know anything about mental health disorders but I have noticed a lot of Red’s personality traits that we see in Revelations (especially) and (a little bit) in War are similar to Antisocial Personality Disorder (manipulative, aggression, hostility) and some of the things he has done in Revelations (such as going after Cornelia and threatening the midwives with a gun) could be described as ‘lack of restraint, impulsive, risk taking’ which are also signs of ASPD.

This does NOT necessarily mean Red has Anti Social Personality Disorder, I’m just saying there are similarities with his behavior and personality with the disorder.

Whether he has a disorder or not though, Red’s hatred of Caesar and his rule seems to run deep. It bothers me that we do not know anything about Red’s life prior or during the events of Dawn, especially because him wanting to overthrow Caesar in Revelations and later joining the AO army as a donkey doesn’t seem like just anger over Koba’s death (why the heck did he follow him in the first place?).

I think it’s reasonable to say that Red is likely a teenager in Revelations (maybe he, like Blue Eyes, Ash and Lake, was born sometime after Rise-like first generation of apes born after their liberation) so some of his thinking might be attributed to that but mainly it might mean his childhood was rough (Caesar’s Story also hinted at mortality rates in the early years of their freedom weren’t great: deaths in childbirth, illness, cold weather, etc).

It just seems to me that Red‘a hate for Caesar and (possibly) the other apes is much more personal than Koba’s death. My headcanon for Red is basically:

- Something or a series of events happened in Red’s childhood that made him feel rejected by the colony (not necessarily by fault of Caesar and others! Like maybe he lost someone close to him to a human (which could explain his preference to Koba’s rule over Caesar’s), or Red was in a situation where he needed help but no one knew or how to help him (such as if he was abused by a parent or orphaned at a young age) and he felt abandoned by them).

- If humans did have something to do with Red’s life before War, it likely would have involved his parents. Maybe his parents were abused by humans and thus taught Red to hate and fear them, or maybe one or both parents were actually killed by humans sometime between Rise and Dawn.

Another thing I notice is Red never interacts with Blue Eyes or Lake in either Revelations or in War but he does with Winter and Grey (in Revelations).

This may not mean anything but it makes me wonder what Red’s social life was like before he turned on the apes. I think it’s safe to say he and Winter had an ok relationship before that but did he have any friends his own age? He kind of seems like a loner to me.

What is also odd to me is, despite being a gorilla, Red prefers manipulation and underhanded tactics (in Revelations) as opposed to physical violence (of course he is capable of it).

This is where his age comes into play here, his ‘beating around the bush’ in the beginning of Revelations could have been Red trying to overthrow Caesar without actual confrontation and hoping the humans did that for him But it still doesn’t explain his willingness to manipulate Grey and Winter into trying to kill Cornelia, make Grey the leader, and take the colony somewhere else.

But then here’s the funny thing about Red, despite all that he is also shown to be redeemable when he saved Caesar at the end of War (which also resulted in his own death).

The look on his face as he watched the apes get shot at too!

It makes me wonder if when Red manipulated Winter into telling him where Caesar was in the beginning, if he was also attempting to save his life (given that Red and the other turncoat apes joined the AO soldiers to survive). This can’t really be confirmed though since we didn’t actually this conversation.

TLDR: Red is an under-rated and complex gorilla and I love him so much for it!

literally