Can we talk talk talk talk talk about it again?

fast forwarding to a scene from chapter 7, it’s pretty important to this entire thing:

isaac, shown to be well-meaning and friendly, doesn’t exactly do the right thing because he’s just like that, just selfless; he does it to feel good about himself, to get others to like him, to get him to like himself. this is not necessarily a bad thing. for a lot of people, empathy and helping others can be a very big struggle, and they’ll be perceived as heartless if they don’t show what is expected of them.

isaac struggles with his self esteem and seemingly bases it upon what other people think of him instead of forming his own opinions about himself, formulating those based on what others say, and usually, his own analyzations of how they act. he wants to be perceived as, both to others and himself, a good person that could never hurt his friends. because by this point he had struck dimitri with a blow caused by his own fear, he already feels this thing he’s so carefully built up for himself starting to crumble. he wants to be good, and is a good kid, but struggles with his emotions and his outbursts, which he perceives as getting in the way of being a purely good person.

he is not violent nor cruel, but perceives himself as such (poor thang) which is why he seeks out other relationships to prove that he’s not all that what he thinks he is. if that makes any sense. tldr, isaac thinks he can prove (mostly to himself) that he’s a good person if he does good things for other people.

DOORMAN & TRUST

doorman, isaac’s caretaker, is a veeerrryyyy prominent figure in isaac’s life. with his first appearance, he’s introduced as a mentor that guides him through his struggles with his emotions, also showing that doorman is probably the only person isaac has confided in about this at this point (chapter two, excluding the past conversation with boss leader.)

isaac trusts doorman a lot, and doorman trusts him in turn. for a quick side track, let us turn to isaac’s relationship with trust.

if he trusts someone, he’ll do anything to keep that trust. he’s very over-analytical and anxious about breaking it, and when broken, he’ll steer clear of them in turn. he trusted spender, who had broken that trust and earned scorn from isaac. he trusted max with showing him doorman and the shortcut, and gets frustrated when max seems to break that momentarily, by not instantly spilling a secret in return- something isaac thought he “owed him for” instead of just doing something to help max. in the earlier chapters, his relationship with the other characters is very strained, as he does not communicate his emotions properly. at this point, he thinks of friendship as something beneficial to aid him in liking himself. which is something he should not be faulted for, considering he’s just 13 struggling with having no emotional outlet and rocky friendships in general. he desperately wants to reach out and talk to the other members of the club, but because he views them as the results of a broken trust, failed friendships, and has a perceived notion that they must hate him for something far in the past, he bottles himself up so he does not ruin anything further.

back to doorman, as isaac begins to try and move past this mindset following chapter 5, and begins to open up more, isaac returns to this state after doorman, someone he’s confided in for a very long time, reveals he has been keeping things from isaac- it reaches a boiling point.

isaac, who additionally already has issues with people holding things back from him (chapter 5: his and isabel’s argument, where he’s upset over his own beliefs of the club being mad at him), sees a part of this confirmed and immediately puts walls back up. isaac lashes out at doorman, made afraid of what he could have been “using him for” the entire time he’s been under his care, panicking in his emotional state because he had just had his previous trust shattered.

after putting all of his trust into someone (doorman) i can’t imagine he’d be willing to go back and mend this relationship for a while, as he thinks doorman had been using him the entire time. he picks out and over analyzes everything from what doorman had been saying, throwing him into a worse emotional state, leading up into where he leaves the slanted manse in a rush.

this is not to say isaac is a bad person, of course. he’s impulsive, letting his emotions guide him despite his best efforts- which isn’t a bad thing. he’s clearly trying to work on it throughout the whole comic currently, but with stress from everything happening in his life piling up, there’s no way he could have kept a cool face after his relationship with his mentor is broken in his eyes. he’s a kid who struggles with his emotions. it doesn’t make him evil.

MAX, & A SECOND CHANCE

as soon as max moves, isaac keeps himself close to him in an attempt to be his freind. not necessarily because he likes him at first! but because he sees him as a second chance to fit in with the rest of the activity club, as he had already ruined his previous one in his own eyes.

because isaac keeps pushing himself away from the rest of the club, he doesn’t allow himself to heal, and repeats his mistakes with another person. when he’s upset, he hangs onto it, which is why he’s clung onto his previous mistakes for so long- due to him being so caught up in the past, he doesn’t focus on what he could do in the present. it’s why he’s distrustful of mr spender, and the activity club, and starts gravitating away from max, too, when he’s hurt by him. he finds himself jealous of the way max can bounce back so easily while his emotions fester in his head.

with bpd & holding grudges, it’s hard to let them go- with intensified emotions following every thought about a past event that could have hurt the person. because so much is tied to specific events, no matter how small they could have seemed to other people, it’s easy for it to eat you up inside. (especially when you bottle it up and let it fester for a long while!) the pile of this makes it hard to trust people, and in my experience i’ve been afraid to trust people because of past friendships. i feel like isaac ticks somewhat of the same way, his feelings pushing away his friends, no matter how much he doesn’t want that…

following his argument with isabel, he turns to trying to prove his worth Again by defeating hijack’d spender.

max, of course, doesn’t hate isaac like isaac may think he does... he messes with him, but doesn’t turn that into a dislike towards him. even so, he tries to push himself away again by quitting the club when he hurts max. in these panels he explicitly says he saw max as a fresh start, not exactly a friend- he wanted to start over with someone who didn’t know who he was or what he did. in the end, it’s unfair for him to push his frustration onto max because he was worried about how he was perceived. 

following his admission to this, he’s able to form actual connections with the rest of the club (albeit with a bit of hesitance on his part shown in the panels below. i choose to interpret this as him trying to search for a lie behind isabel’s words when there isn’t one in actuality, because he’s so used to thinking of other people as having ulterior motives against him)

(also the line about him expecting rejection but craving acceptance wrecks me. it speaks for itself here)

with this leading us into:

ISAAC & THE ACTIVITY CLUB

his distrust stems from the people around him keeping secrets. while the secret of the activity consortium is kept out of necessity, it’s unfair in isaac’s own eyes. if everyone else can know, why can’t he? (of course we know the answer but we’re talking about this guys thoughts right now) adding on his regret from hurting dimitri, and him thinking that dimitri quit because of the injury, isaac’s fear melts away into distrust. he keeps himself around the activity club, but this is a matter of him proving himself and craving their acceptance.

however, because he’s busy festering in his emotions regarding past events, he doesn’t bring them up to anyone else. he doesn’t try to fix his problems, leaving the rest of the club confused and upset on as to why he “keeps picking at the scab,” in isabel’s own words-

leading to him paying only his own emotions any mind, rather than considering the feelings of others. while isaac desperately wants to talk about his own emotions, his distrust leads him away from that, until it eventually reaches its boiling point, exploding in an argument with isabel. they hurt each other consistently without realizing because neither of them talk about what’s happened. the alt text for this page makes me insane, by the way.

isaac is afraid of the past and the mistakes he’s made then, and it carries over to the present, manifesting in unstable emotions and rocky relationships. luckily he’s able to go towards fixing this between him and the other kids of the club, shown in the section with max & how he ends up admitting his faults. it shows to isabel that he hasn’t been treated all that fairly, either, and she begins to act weary of spender as a result. look at the club being all happy this panel makes me sick and ill