#mphfpc rant

now, before i get into his inevitable bad parts, i do want to talk about what i like about him. he isn't all bad, despite how i make it seem sometimes. i like to be dramatic. there are some parts to him that i do enjoy, in which i wish most of them were expanded more or done with better intent. for example, him being extremely into research and discovery. in the beginning of the series, he is described to have written five books worth of information about pigs alone. that is such an interesting character trait! i do love it when he actually gets to use this part of him, given that it must be so easy for him to do because of his peculiarity; he doesn't have to worry about spending too long in a spot observing because no one knows he is there. it's honestly bittersweet in a way, and it would be really interesting if he expressed that more, or if we were told more about why he likes to do what he does. does he wish to leave his mark since he can't physically? is it something he picked up from an old family member? is it calming, or at this point has it just become routine? there is a lot of paths that this part of him could go down, none of which are explored, especially once we get to the second trilogy when this part of him is almost completely lost. along with that, his desire to be a teacher. my heart aches for him in this regard, to have a desire that will never be attainable that he presumably has had for decades, never losing the longing for it. such a sad trait to give to a character like millard, that is so sadly not touched on more than once. it would have been perfectly acceptable and very interesting if he showed more of this longing to be anything, in his case a teacher, when he was in the present. he goes to a modern school for a while for birds' sake! are we expected to believe he felt nothing while he was there? another missed opportunity to circle back to something already set up. either way, i do like that he has had some form of a goal or a dream that he has had to unfortunately accept won't come true. it adds depth to him. i also like the little trait he has that is pit-pocketing. i want to make this clear: not every bad trait makes a character bad. i actually like millard for this part of him, even if it is something that is bad. it also adds a lot of depth to him and how he uses his peculiarity, in this case in a negative way. i like how it is set up as a thing that he has been doing for so long that he cannot break the habit, that is realistic. it also can show us his personality or opinions on things, being that since he has been doing this for decades usually to people that reset every day, he doesn't feel bad or feel sympathetic for when he does take stuff, he simply isn't used to there actually being emotions or consequences involved. again, bad traits don't automatically make a character bad. everyone will have flaws, and honestly, some negative traits lead to a well rounded character.

before i start this, i of course want to make it clear that this is all my opinion and how i read into his character during the events of the story. people are bound to view characters in different ways, and i absolutely have no problem with anyone that does like millard or considers him a favorite, that does not waiver my opinion on you or your opinions ♡

millard, even without his personality (which is the main reason i dislike him), has never been too interesting to me. i suppose i had a bias against him before i even decided that he irked me. the invisible person is a classic that has been seen in various forms of media, and seeing that type of character in mphfpc simply didn't catch my interest as opposed to carrying bees in your stomach or being able to make hearts beat again (in which hugh and enoch were my two favorite characters when i first started to read the series). in saying this, i know that many of the peculiarities in the main cast are also stereotypical (fire manipulation, plant manipulation, super strength). but i do find those more interesting than simply someone that cannot be seen.

but, when i only have three good things to say about a character, and one of those things is something negative, that is not a good sign.

millard has various complexes going on througout the entirety of the series, in which the main most prevelent one is superiority. he is constantly the one in the right, and thinks very little about anyone else's words or opinions on the matter/matters, even his own caretakers who only wants him to be safe, going against her so harshly you would think she was a tyrant. he will always argue his case, and he will always have the last word. this objectively is a very annoying character trait to have, and when it is a character's main trait, it gets very tiring very fast. millard is always doing something or saying something that goes against anything anyone else says, only agreeing with people that do share the same ideas or opinions as him. he is more prone to listen to the ideologies of a book than any of his friends or more so closer to family that he has known for centuries. having a character be very book smart and strictly by the book is not the problem. the problem is that he is so caught up in it, that he actively judges and mistreats those that go against it. aside from this, he generally doesn't have much of a personality, especially the farther into the series we get. i think that's a big fault of everyone in the story, they are all stereotyped to a core couple of traits. however, we do see each charecter overall break said traits at times. i don't think millard does. i can't pick out any distinctive traits from him other than smart ass, smart, inconsiderate, "funny"...and that's it.

speaking of which, i do think he can be funny. but most of the time when he is trying to be, it is at the dispense of someone else. this isn't something that was ever a part of his character until just randomly in the middle of the series, and then it continued to be. this connects to the portion i said would be expanded on at the beginning of this post. let's take enoch for example. i think that it is ironic of me to say that i don't find him funny when he is talking down on people, considering i like enoch and think he is quite funny. but the difference is that enoch established as that type of character early on, and we are supposed to see him as such. millard was never established as being arrogantly rude for the sake of comedy in the beginning, yet we are expected to change our ways of seeing him. not to mention, he just says these things and no one ever says anything about them to him like they would enoch (a bit of a weird double standard there but i digress). he has moments of random quips and sentences that are humorous, but he didn't stick with that. instead he went the direction of making jabs at people and intending for them to be "funny", but really, it just adds to the superiority complex.

i think this complex, or even complexes, that he does have also plays a big part in his lack of empathy. this is my biggest problem with him, and it goes with everything ive stated above. i did bring this up eariler, with his pit-pocketing habit. though that is different from this segment here; he feels no empathy when pit-pocketing because he has never experienced the distress that people feel when they are, given that they will go back to normal and will know of nothing that happened in some hours. he also doesn't feel empathy to those that he knows will feel emotions and that won't forget. so many of the things he says or things he does are hurtful to those around him, and he seemingly doesn't care that they are. multiple times he is persistent on fiona's death and having everyone, most notably hugh, get over it. he purposefully drugs his caretaker without taking into any regard what this could do to her or how she would feel about it, and then gets upset when she is upset about it. he is making constant rude statements towards those who might not be as smart or as brave as him, notably bronwyn and horace, without regarding how these comments might make them feel. the worst part about this, he doesn't face repercussions for these instances but perhaps a mere slap on the wrist. he is treated the same as everyone else is in the instances they are in trouble, even those that were against what he did and didn't do nearly as much bad as him. he is allowed to be "oblivious" to the pain he is causing others, while other characters who do the same things or even less are pointed out for it. i don't even think he is simply "obvious", i don't think he cares. everyone around him has shown discomfort in his constant state of nude and have expressed this discomfort towards him, even straight up telling him. yet he has never changed that about him. he goes against everyone's emotions or feelings to have the high ground.

the more i write, the more disjointed this gets, so i will wrap it up here. millard started out as a fine character. he never was my favorite, but he had elements that intrigued me and made him a well rooted character. unfortunately, somewhere along the way to the end of the series, he lost his depth and became a selfish individual who felt the need to be better than the people who he loves and who love him back, risking their mental health and even their physical health in the progress.