The Apathy of Acceptance - DSMP x Reader

Chapter 6 - Nature vs Nurture

(I do not condone actions of any people who played the characters mentioned in this chapter, remember, these are the fictional characters, not the real people.

Also, Dream and you know who's backstory time! Eventually... it'll take a hot minute to get to it, but y'know, there are 'other characters' or something.)

Nature versus nurture has always been a prominent discussion topic. Whether the blood that flows through your veins or the ways you were raised determines how and who you'll grow to be. But it's impossible to ever know.

Two siblings, one adopted and one not, may in all ways, be raised and brought up the same by their parents. But there are genetic differences that will show, even if they tell no one. Shades of hair or eyes, curves to their smiles, the way their voices sound and the way they physically age, leading to the world treating them differently, and in turn changing how they're raised, even if the parents were determined to keep things fair.

Let's say two sisters, one born from their parents and the other taken in from an orphanage, are raised up they exact same. Same budgets for their clothing, same meals, same toys, same lifestyle in general, and sent to the same school. One, the daughter born of the family, has long, stringy black hair, harder eyes, and a slightly strange nose, while the other, the one taken in, is brunette, with curled hair and bright, rounded eyes, soft in her manner of speaking, and at once they're set apart and treated differently. The first is popular with friends, meets others she gets along with well, and those friends happen to be ones that show her to sports, The other, meets a few girls who think she's nice by looks alone, and show her to sit and chatter on with them every morning. What people wouldn't see by looking alone was that at the time, their personalities were nearly similar.

They both favored honesty, kept to the rules, were chatterboxes that had minds for the creative side of the world, and were a prime argument for how nature meant nothing in terms of nurture, but on the first day of school they returned telling of different stories. The first, the ravenette, walked in, telling her father about the boys she hung out with and how they told her about older brothers who were soldiers, and the brunette told her mother of the sweetest girls in her class. When the parents questioned what they'd done together they had nothing but what they'd learned to say, and at once, their lives were separate. No longer were they treated the same, having different friends who'd tell them different things, and they still got along as siblings did, but their behaviors and opinions and attitudes changed.

The brunette went on to study further, join her friends and she grew to be a teacher, polite and kind to her students, while the other grew to join the army, starting from swordplay when she was a child and becoming a passion for her. Perhaps if they looked the opposite that they did, then the brunette would've grown with a talent for warfare, or the ravenette would be sitting teaching children how to read and write. So the case of the two would be a toss up. One could argue it fully proved nurture, saying that if they'd grown up with the exact same friends and experiences, it all would've ended the same. Another may say that if their families were the same, they'd look even more the same and fall into the same routines, and that people would look and treat them the same. My argument, Is that it proves people are dicks.

But to prove that, let's look at another scenerio. Two brothers are born, identical twins, and the mother dies from complications. The father grows to rue the second son, as in his mind it was the one he didn't ask for. The first, who we'll call the wanted, got hefty meals and was trained by his father to take on the business one day, a carpenters shop. He got toys and grew to be incredibly social, going to school with new clothes and a high head. The other grew angry, lashing out and hating the world, without clothes of his own that weren't older or thrifted, he fell into a group of worse friends, and they both went on to join, guess, the military. But they were both talented, one taught by a trainer and the other by instincts, and again, arguments are made to both. For nurture, they were raised separately, differently treated, and they were raised with different mindsets and talents. In way of nature, they both found success in the same area, did fairly well in school, and overall, in adulthood, though one had far more mental struggles than the other, went on to be functioning members of society. I'd say, the father treating the two of them differently had to have either been the son of a demon or raised by won.