#374 – Curious
You thought the Elemental Theory was the extent of my psycho mumbo-jumbo? Think again, buster brown! At last, I get to reveal the Pallet Town Triforce. The general idea behind Doug, Gary and Daisy is the Sinnoh trio of Knowledge, Willpower and Emotions respectively. Knowing, doing and feeling.
Daisy’s strong suit is the Emotions. Despite being a whacko, she instinctively knows others’ needs and helps them in her own twisted ways. She semi-raised Gary, gave Doug the journey push, not to mention her relationship with Erika. However, her weak point is the Knowledge part. Being so attuned to what others feel, she kinda assumes that’s enough, that she doesn’t need to learn much about others. She never dug deeper into Erika’s past and we’ve seen in Chapter X how their otherwise great friendship was briefly in danger due to that. Daisy also straight-up ignored Sabrina’s attempt at revealing her backstory.
Gary’s main strength is the Willpower. When he cares, he’s the man of action, ready to rush in and save the day. He helped rescue Doug at Mt. Moon, he actively requested a bodyguard for his family, he aims to become a Gym Leader and after the S.S. Anne incident he immediately did whatever he could to chase down the main suspect Erika. For crying out loud, he kickstarted this entire comic! However, he is weak in the Emotions department. Contrary to what it often looks like, he is not the suave, cool guy. He loses self-control in the most emotional situations and just falls back onto his default mode of “do something and do it right now”. He completely fell for Erika’s trick and almost burned her alive.
And finally, Doug. Were you to reread the comic with the theme of Knowledge in mind, you should notice many little moments where Doug showed to be not only learned, but also analytical and observant. He would’ve noticed the “NOT R” flower. He “diagnosed” Brom back on page #152, he was also the first to realize Vang’s coaching potential, he even properly deconstructed and explained his own past crush on Erika for crying out loud. He’s the thinking type through and through. Like, if he had a webcomic, he would use the comment section to go into long-winded rants about the themes behind his characters’ personalities and whatnot, what a tool. When Gary was going berserk, Daisy was confused, Erika was faking and professor Oak was a Cacturne – who was it again that busted in with some actual deduction and facts to immediately defuse all the built-up tension? Doug’s weak Willpower makes him struggle with actually using his talents properly, but now that he knows where his strengths lie, he’s gonna (hopefully) make me eat all those jokes about how un-protagonistic he is.
There’s also the three “stages of development” these three are in: Gary < Doug < Daisy. Yes Doug is ahead of Gary, blasphemy. But here’s the thing. Gary began seemingly flawless, but his issues are now starting to reveal themselves – as in, only now. Doug started out aware of his issues and has been working through them all this time. And of course Daisy already had some of her biggest issues resolved at the beginning of the comic and even resolved the next one in the same chapter in which it revealed itself. Because of course she did. She’s Daisy.
Anyway, enough of this unnecessarily deep exploration of characters – see you April 4th for the battle’s conclusion!
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