#dgmn

Attribute: Virus

A digimon born from the data of medical researches about sleep and brain waves, it can eat nightmares away, and the holy rings protects it from being infected by them.

Signature Move: Nightmare Syndrome

It releases the nightmares it has absorbed as an attack.

Evolves to: Unimon(Virus) -Ankylomon(Vaccine) -Xiquemon(Data)

I think the main "problem" with Daisuke - and I lose that term VERY loosely here - is the same problem that Reboot!Taichi has... Not even saying that they're "too simple-minded" or "sheltered" to, as you put it, "feel the whole emotional spectrum", but the writers REALLY do use them as a catalyst for literally EVERY OTHER CHARACTER except themselves.

And that's a shame, because it doesn't really allow them room to breathe or - le gasp - get enough introspection to "change". You basically already said it, the easiest way to break Daisuke is to literally threaten to KILL the people + mons most precious in front of him... And even then, he might be too resilient to even fall for that at this point. I quite literally read about that trope yesterday, because it's such a Shounen/Shoujo thing to do:

So we may have to get really drastic... And actually have his positivity have consequences.

He doesn't have to go through the same kind of turmoil as Tri!Taichi, being ridden by both guilt and fear of hurting innocent people and the feeling of having been "stronger as a kid", but...

Maybe somebody really has to die. I'm not saying it has to be one of the others, no, but if his actions may cause unintentional harm (and even if it's not death, it at least has to have a big impact), the aftermath of that could be interesting. For example, if he got avoided or blamed because of that...

I browsed through a fic recently that actually dealt with the idea of him being high depressed because during their high school years, only Iori and Ken really treated him like an equal friend, whereas Miyako and Takeru were on the edge of borderline psychological bullying and Hikari felt guilty about it, but didn't really do anything to change that either. Point of the story was that Daisuke met the Frontier kids and befriended them - whereas his parents Taichi and Koushirou (among others) had some serious talks with Takeru, Miyako and Hikari about it. It was an interesting premise for sure and I'm only now bringing this up because Daisuke may not deal well with being completely shut out/ignored.

However, that has to go to extreme levels of avoidance/abandonment/guilt tripping... Coming back to Shounen/Shoujo tropes again, there is an episode in Sailor Moon where Ami/Sailor Mercury gets brainwashed into thinking that her friends hate her - and the enemy tries to do the same with Usagi/Sailor Moon. "You're dumb and useless, why are we even dealing with you?!" And she seems distraught for a moment... Until she screams "WHO CARES, I KNOW MY GRADES SUCK AND I EAT TOO MANY SWEETS, SO WHAT?!"

... And I feel like Daisuke may be the type to react like that too.

Gomamon

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