The Chronicles of Rush: part 5

i am a ridiculous Aiden stan and you cannot stop me

Time for an Aiden rant!!!!! :D

A lot of the time I feel lowkey like a moron for being so invested in one character who is only in one episode and isn't even really that good a villain. But I replayed ep 5 a few days ago and honestly?? I think Aiden's a lot more complex than most of the fandom gives him credit for.

If you really pay attention to his dialogue, there's so many more levels to his character than just 'jealous little chaotic shit'. Because he is jealous and he is unforgivably chaotic and he is a little shit, but under all that? He's hurting.

He's someone who needs someone- anyone -to blame. And for the Witherstorm, and his whole world literally being torn apart, that someone is Jesse.

Can you really blame him? They were technically the cause of all it. And the fact that Jesse was already someone Aiden didn't like makes it worse. The fact that Jesse, who was previously just some lame nerd, manages to miraculously become a hero in the eyes of the whole damn world would be absolutely infuriating.
And depending on your dialogue choices, Jesse can be a brat about it, too. Even the more pacifist dialogue choices are kinda bitchy.

We don't know what the Ocelots were up to during the Witherstorm. In ep 4, all three of them were alive and well, so in my opinion it's not too far off-track to say they may have found a potential way to stop it as well. If they managed to find a solution as well, but Jesse and the New Order simply beat them to it and got all the credit...yeah, that could legitimize some rage.

In most of the main fight, he's so, so angry. But to me, it seems like that anger is split- some directed and Jesse, and some at himself. Because he knows he's given up and let himself fall this far.
"Why couldn't you have left well enough alone?!"
"You just can't stand to see someone else in the spotlight, can you? You just can't let anyone else win!"
He's talking to Jesse, but some of that could easily be about himself. Projecting the problems at someone else because he doesn't know how to deal with them if they're about him.

Under that, he's clearly scared. Several points in the fight when things aren't going his way, he seems terrified. It's only for a few moments, but that's enough.
Just think about how quickly he surrenders once Jesse defeats him. That's when his desperation really comes through- he wants to be remembered, he wants to be known for something, even if that 'something' is destruction. He doesn't want to die.

But desperation and fear isn't enough to keep someone going. That's why he turned to anger. Hating someone or something gives one a purpose, something to aim for and try to take down. And if your entire world is torn out from under you, your supposed best friend leaves you behind, and someone you already didn't like is put on a pedestal you think they don't deserve, it would be very, very easy to look for anger as a solution to desperation.

Another interesting point is that he willingly turned himself into a villain. It seems at first like he just 'got in over his head', and that's true enough. But he let himself spiral down. If you notice, he wasn't even entirely after the Eversource. He only made a mess of Sky City because of Jesse. He got overwhelmed in the chaos, but continued on anyways.

Essentially, he decided that if he wasn't going to be seen as a hero, he might as well try the other way. He knew he was a villain, and he went ahead anyways. I didn't even think about this until one of his last lines of dialogue in the fight- "I thought you were the 'good guys'?"

Catch the implication there? By calling Jesse that, it reveals he knows he's fallen under the title of 'bad guy'. And he did it anyways. He got so angry and so desperate because he felt like he didn't have anything else. If you can't make it as a hero, might as well take a shot at being a villain.

I'm not justifying anything he did- the boy was way the fuck out of control -but I think I get what was really going on with him.

TL;DR- Aiden fucked up, but under all his (maybe justified) anger, he's scared and desperate and I love him

Until the next burst of randomness,

~Rush