So, looking at Adult Darius vs Baby Darius, I gotta ask. What was it that changed him? He looked like a happy child, spritely and carefree and then he turned into the emo fuckboi that is the adult Darius. Was it a particular event or was it simply just all the years in the underground?
a bit of both! part of it was him growing up and getting cynical about the world, but mostly it was sherry’s disappearance that broke him.
i will say, the way i draw ‘baby’ darius is literal the polar opposite of how he appears currently, but it wasn’t a straight jarring leap from one to the other. here’s a brief history of dary:
baby dary: he’s literally just gained the ability to transform out of his octo form (im going to assume they have similar life cycles to squids) so he is pretty young, green, and naturally naive. he is thrown into the octo army immediately, and there meets a slightly older and more seasoned sherry, who takes him under her wing and kind of protects him from the ugliness of the world (she later slightly blames herself for maybe coddling him too much)
he obvs grows up a bit, gets more experience. he and sherry serve alongside each other as soldiers. he gets a touch of cockiness, but nothing more than in the sense as typical teenagers tend to have
sherry is eventually promoted to become a captain or something, and naturally she makes darius her right hand man. he’s a bit older again, so he’s matured a bit (maybe a lil too quick as is the nature of their lifestyles) and also becomes a little solemn as he takes his role to protect and serve sherry very seriously. and then of course, sherry is lost to a battle/disappears/is abducted...
he had obviously really taken sherry’s presence for granted bc it really breaks him when she is lost. their militaristic lifestyles had already started to make him feel a bit cynical about the world but it didnt bring him down too much because sherry, who almost basically raised him, kept him grounded and gave him something to believe in. when she was gone, all that collapsed in on itself in his mind... he deserts the army and treats the world with the understanding that no one cares about him so he shouldnt care about anyone in it.
i make fun of him and do of course love to joke about him being emo BUT yeah he’s probably like that because he is still grieving aka last time he let himself have an emotion/get attached to someone it ended so disastrous so he has shut himself off from being able to do that. to the point where he wasn’t really even able to properly emotionally process meeting sherry again, which is why they bumped heads and went separate ways once more :’^(
