#leave.

To better explain i think it requires a peek into how I see Dan as a character. And how why he's like that is a completely unsurprising result of Danny + Grief.

So Dan is all Big and Bad and wants the Whole World to Know. He wants to either destroy or enslave humanity.

And like. 🤨🙄😒

But the main thing is, that like all who seek power especially men, power seeking/hierarchy assertion is a fear behavior.

Like yeah yeah "rage at a world that abandoned him" or whatever but like. Anger is a secondary emotion. Bro is covering for grief and fear. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Hell the comics even confirm this with (spoilers) Vlad calling him out for the same things that he does.

But even beyond that i dont excuse his power seeking behavior to Plasmius's influence.

Danny has that in him too.

Because Dan's whole shit is an act of Ego Protection.

Bro is Desperate to keep that grief buried.

He needs everyone to be scared of him. He needs everyone to feel as bad as he does.

But on God and the Ancestors, that man is One (1) Hard Read away from breaking into tears. The only thing stopping that from happening is that, unfortunately, he has enough power to never be forced to sit with himself in that way.

So he is constantly coping.

He cannot deal with his own reality so he does everything in his power to avoid it, much like how Teen Danny has a dedicated part of his brain for Not Thinking About What He Is.

The one time he was forced to really think about himself/his nature Spectra damn near had his ass because it fucked him up so bad

So he has the same coping mechanisms as he always had. For one.

He has the same fragile ass ego, tho aggressively protected, for two.

And now on to the third part of my power point presentation.

Like, hey, sidebar: Danny's moral compass is typically other people most often Sam or Jazz. And btw offloading his moral/emotional intelligence onto the women his life dovetails really nicely with my final point.

Which is that, for all of his good qualities, Danny is still socialized as a Statistically Average White Boy.

And while this doesn't guarantee that you turn out evil there's a couple of things that you just gotta accept about that.

Male socialization in western cultures does not allow for emotional development. You are not taught to express yourself. The only acceptable emotion is anger.

There is the Male Socialization of Dominance as a Means of asserting status/manhood.

And despite what the melanin deficient leftist population would like to believe *****this doesn't exist in a vacuum from race*****

But i will focus on the parts most relevant re: racial socialization for Danny.

Because while in all likelihood that he's walking around with a thousand and two unconscious biases (keep in mind i am talking about canon Danny not the perfectly woke version that lives in the fandom's mind) brass tacks there's certain things white people and white men especially (tho white women and femmes are NOT EXEMPT) are conditioned to believe about the world.

One of which is the deeply individualistic belief that you are Entitled To Revenge.

My toxic trait is that im lowkey Pro Revenge. But this stance is for minorities specifically. And no being a white woman/femme/afab does not count. Talk to me when your voting block can compete with Black women re: progressive political alignment. ✌🏾

Because, as we all know, the thing about white supremacist capitalist patriarchy is that it hurts everybody. Even those who receive dividends from it.

But white people are Severely Individualism Pilled and so when they feel the Steel Toed Boot of The System crushing their windpipe they feel Uniquely Slighted.

As if No One Has It As Bad As Me or, alternatively Anger at An Uncaring World.

The narcissistic "woe is me" bullshit that acts as if the world continuing to turn when your life goes bad and the general apathy of the masses is the result of an inherent depravity in the world as opposed to everyone being caught up in their own bullshit. Largely do to trying to survive under the same oppressive system that caused the pain in the first place.

People would have a lot more time to care about the plight of strangers if they were not being made to fight for scraps.

And yes "anyone can feel the pain of an uncaring world" but white entitlement allows for so much insulation from Systemic Violence that the idea that Other People Are Going Through It Too but Would care if given the chance eludes them.

Because white people pain is real pain. (unlike the pain of minorities caused by systemic violence) but white people's voluntary isolation (because holding on to cultural identity and community makes you Other) makes it so that pain, tho real, is an individual problem.

Whiteness has no tools for mending grief because that does nothing to reinforce hierarchy. It has no use for a broken worker.

And so white people though they will acknowledge the pain of other whites with thoughts and prayers have no means of actual communal grief and healing.

So when Danny lost his support system he was up a creek.

Not to mention him ending up in the custody of Vlad of all people meant that there was no fucking chance of him learning any kind of healthy coping mechanism.

So you have a young white man who is going through grief, feeling very isolated, who is by the nature of his socialization inclined to respond to respond to extreme emotional distress with repression or anger, and who's standing in society would (at least subconsciously) condition him to believe that it is his right to lash out against an uncaring world.

Who suddenly had the power to do so with the twitch of his finger.

So basically a young white man, who already wasn't popular at school but "was such a nice boy" and experienced real grief from the sudden violent loss of his support system and anger at living in a world that is cruel and unfair and doesn't care that he's hurting, chooses to externalize it in the form of mass murder. (Bonus points: he's literally the embodiment of his own suicidal ideation.)

(No literally the first act Dan ever did was kill himself. But the Phantom half isn't able to die. So he's just endlessly externalizing that pain. Kind of on the nose tbh)

So no i am Not Surprised At All that Danny would turn into Dan given the circumstances.