This Whole Chapter Lives Rent Free In My Head, But Something About This Exchange Just... Especially Lives

this whole chapter lives rent free in my head, but something about this exchange just... especially lives there

he fantasized about monsters attacking a village when he was a child (and it's heavily implied that he still does). maybe he imagined them attacking his village, attacking everyone who shunned falin and treated her so poorly he left because he couldn't take it anymore. he fantasizes about monsters attacking a village because people cast them both aside for being strange. if they got attacked, they would all surely die, and all of a sudden wish that they'd been kinder to laios and falin.

i really don't feel like this is strictly a revenge fantasy, though. i'm sure that's part of it, but he looks ashamed here, or at the very least embarrassed to be called out on it.

monsters attacking a village would suddenly make them both "useful" to these people. his knowledge and falin's power would become things that people respect, they wouldn't be outcasts anymore. especially for a child, that's really the best case scenario. the thing that would "make you useful" appears and you get to save the day. you get to be loved, you get people's attention, you get their celebration instead of their disgust.

i really don't think laios hates people, or at least not ALL people. he hates how people have treated him and his loved ones. he hates that being who he is makes him strange. he wants to be a monster so badly because that's how people have treated him all his life—something to be reviled and cast out.

at least if he were the coolest monster in the world, nobody would ever be able to treat him or falin poorly and get away with it