dative / cadmium

there are a lot of little design pieces i want to talk about but to start off with some obvious comparisons... we have simple stuff like their personalities (volo being more closed off while promise lives on attention. introvert extrovert difference). but the first thing i thought of has to do with volo excelling physically versus promise with his immense mental strength... particularly on promise's capabilities, in the windfall family slideshow posted by linda on tiktok she actually does go over promise's lack of physical strength with points like. "will lose to a regular human in a fistfight" (hilarious) and "fights sitting down with his eyes closed" (less proving. maybe just there because it's fucking silly but i'm adding it here as reason anyways) promise is mentally powerful but weaker physically while on the contrary volo is noted to be physically powerful. they're like on opposite sides of the damage type thing. coin

this one is especially prominent in the stage descriptions but there's the way they push promise's villainy theme and emphasize his questionable morals far more than they do for any of the siblings while volo is like the only one out of the four windfall children who's doing something that's good for the world such as running a charity or becoming a surgeon... building off of this there's also the fact that it was specifically stated in the broadway video that volo is his favourite child while he is PERPETUALLY DISAPPOINTED IN HIS SON PROMISE!!! as broadway is a philanthropist i feel like he is probably quite proud of volo for helping society. similarly the whole villain thing promise has going on conflicts with broadway's superhero thing so yeah. "doubles down on greedy villain aesthetic to spite dad" congratulations it worked

then there's small shit like promise's eyes being Unbelievably Fucking Bright, even brighter than both pecunia and pandora's, in comparison to volo's which are the darkest throughout all of the siblings' stages, even without counting for the later changes in eye colour which literally turn the sclera black. truthfully this one was a bit of a stretch and i think arguments concerning eye colour fit a lot better in a different group of thoughts but i want to include it anyways because why are promise's eyes so fucking bright oh my god

more seriously though there's also how volo's passion lies with studying voidpets and a lot of what he does generally concerns helping other people while promise's focus thing is his own quest for power which is objectively way more selfish. amd then if u compare their stage 5 descriptions from garden you can look at promise and see how it's implied especially at that point that promise wanting to focus on self care and taking it easy, combined with the fact that he's always online, shows that by stage 5 he honestly isn't very productive anymore because he's already found his successes and feels like there's kind of nothing more he needs to do. so he doesn't do more. he's living comfortably with minimal further involvement in working... like it doesn't even tell us which branch of windfall inc. he leads when all the other siblings have one mentioned in their stage 5 description (volo nonprofit, pecunia finances, pandora is chair)

and speaking of the other windfall children if we go back to volo guess what the fuck he's doing in stage 5. he continues to be successful in fundraising! he runs the nonprofit of windfall inc.! and in his spare time what the fuck does he do? does he take time off like a normal person? relax like his brother promise? no he's a FUCKING SURGEON WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH HIM this guy does NOT take breaks. which is completely opposite promise who by the end of his stages seems like he's kind of doing Nothing. genuinely promise takes enough time off for the two of them combined

i feel like the most interesting comparison between the two has to do with their own kind of recovery... in one of linda's tiktoks she explains that in voidpet the heroes (freshmen) represent trauma and the villains (windfalls) represent healing. volo's healing is basically him not giving a fuck about what other people think of him and promise's healing is loving himself / taking care ofhimself. however promise doesn't have volo's in the way that he does give a fuck about what kind of attention he gets from other people he may actually give too much of a fuck... volo ends up learning not to care what other people think while his brother promise actually does care a lot about attention and the way he is perceived. unexpectedly i was thinking about this several days before any of the other points and i think it's really cool how promise's recovery, his intense love of himself, might end up fuelling an egotistical desire for attention... not cool in the way that it's necessarily a good thing for him but it. gives me thoughts. many thoufhts

(real tweet by me. i'm still in a crisis)