DanielH wrote:This time Glam is taking on what seems like too much more blame than they could reasonably hold, even for them. Heroic responsibility, “it’s all my fault because I can change myself most easily”, is one thing. Blaming themself for Boots’s death is pretty far beyond that, unless a) that was a long enough distance Boots wouldn’t have gone otherwise, or b) they think they could have saved everybody once they got there in some way. I don’t think any plan could have gotten Glam that much attention and power within just four months. Not even going villain and testing the gun on Mount Rushmore would have been enough.
Maybe they could blame themself for the casualty rate not being a record, since they could have “tested” the gun publicly, potentially faking the damage done. But blaming themself for Boots specifically seems a bit beyond plausibility even given the previous conversation about that.
The Heroic Responsibility and the "I can change myself most easily" things are two
separate things. It's not "it's all my fault
because I can change myself most easily," it's "it's all my fault"
and also "I can change myself most easily."
Glam will take responsibility for things even when it's not reasonable for them to; this isn't a rational, well thought-out response to their environment, it's an emotional one. For instance, Glam
knows they can't blame themself for their mother's death, any reasonable account of the event lays the blame squarely on Behemoth's shoulder. That doesn't make them
feel any less guilty about it. It's survivor's guilt, in a sense. So even if Glam does talk themself into believing that it's not in fact their fault that Boots is dead, they will still alieve it is, for a long time.
Now, with respect to the Boots thing in particular, they didn't actually
know Behemoth was gonna attack Pittsburgh (for the record, Brockton Bay replaces Portsmouth, New Hampshire), that was a coincidence. For all they knew, Behemoth could've attacked Australia. They still did talk him into going in general, about how he's worth transporting even long distances for the lives he'll save, et cetera. It's almost worse because Glam can't reasonably say that's something they'd have done differently, they would still have encouraged Boots to go, they didn't change their mind about anything. Just because the maths checks out and they would have done everything the same way doesn't mean they don't feel bad about this particular person,
their friend, dying there, and the way Glam feels bad is by feeling guilty.
Soooo TL;DR: it's not a reasonable response/feeling, it's a form of survivor's guilt, and it's something they will talk themself out of feeling System 2-guilty about soon but that will still cause them to have nightmares for a long time.
Alicorn wrote:He wound up developing. It went name -> powers -> personality -> tragic backstory -> hey let's befriend him and then kill him off to torment Glam.
Stuff I have a hand in writing will in general make much more Doylist sense if you suppose "because I wanted to torture my characters" is the explanation behind something :P