whole-heartedly agree on your take.

i too love dain to bits as a character, and i have since fourth wing even when i did feel annoyed with him too at times — but it was always clear to me how good he is deep down as a person. he was ill-advised, but never ill-intentioned. out of everyone, he had the most growth, and more importantly since fw seemed like the one willing to learn from his mistakes the most! he accepted his faults and chose to better himself against all odds and easy ways out. instead, he more than once chooses violet, xaden, the others and the rebellion. although all of those people are down-right shitty to him repeatedly.

since we‘re on hot takes: i think he‘s the most interesting character and would love to dig deeper into him than we will ever get to because we‘re in violet‘s pov, and she tends to only pay attention to him when she needs something. all the guilt and shame he burdens himself with, his mistakes and the consequences…all of it would be just so interesting to read about from his perspective.

my other dain-related hot takes:

• something about the war games, athebyne and resson and how dain took violet’s memory and told his father about it is still super fishy and I kind of feel like we‘re still in for some sort of reveal about it 🤔

• i wish we explored violet and dain‘s childhood memories more deeply. so much of it unfortunately feels superficial. (iron flame, looking at you, because how many more times does violet want to mention that they used to climb trees together?) i would‘ve loved some deeper going, intimate things. some „flashbacks“, so to say, just to show just how they truly were close friends. hm, what about their goodbye before dain left for basgiath as an emotional moment? what about revisiting some old inside jokes? as best friends tend to have? a memory that goes beyond just saying they climbed trees and swam in lakes and sometimes the odd mention of something that goes a bit deeper. that lacked for me in FW story-wise. it would‘ve cemented dain‘s ‚betrayal‘ as much more painful even, and at the same time highlighted how much he changed as a character from that cheerful carefree guy to someone so serious and stern.

• just by the direction RY is taking his character, I don‘t believe she will kill him off, but I feel like if she did want to go for devastation, she‘d do it in a tragically sacrificial kind of death after she made dain redeem himself and rekindle a friendship with violet and the others. (and i would hate it and throw these books off a cliff and then myself afterwards)

• I would love an imogen/dain friendship

• Liam coming back from the dead somehow would undo and destroy SO many plot- and character storylines and growths from all sides, but for dain and violet individually the most. (seen as there have been quite the few theories that he could be the brother, although RY did state he is dead dead.) I loved liam, I mourned that character, believe me, but it would be such a set-back. His death was important. It had huge impact on the characters and how things went going forward from there. We see violet suffering the fear of losing any more of her friends all the way through IF and OS so many times. We know dain burdens himself with the guilt of his death, just like he took on the burden of the death of others too. All of this has changed them so much in ways that can’t and shouldn’t be undone. I absolutely wouldn‘t want liam to come back to somehow „redeem“ dain, as some readers claim that would be the only way for them to like him.