but he did change out of nowhere, bro was deeply disillusioned by his one-track have-to-be-the-champion ideology, throwing buckets at a suffering Dan, and then a few nights later he suddenly had a moment of accurate self reflection and a newfound desire to do better.
And here's the kicker, do better not for his own benefit, but solely for Dan? I'd be damned if I believed it. Considering he's been deeply self destructive for the longest time, even up until a few days ago, it's simply unrealistic.
I had to read your message 10 times to fully understand your point (I'm not joking, english is not my first language and my comprehensive skill is not that great).
Yeah, I got it. So, what I meant by changing out of nowhere is: Okay, he did some reflection and deep thinking, but that's not enough. It's the same thing when it's 3AM and all of sudden you decide that you need to change your like for better. The intention is good but to put it in action is really hard. You do it once and feel better, but the next day you go back to your good old self. Unfortunately old habits die hard.
That's why I said that I really liked that the author didn't make him a better person in just a few chapters. I want to see him trying and failing again and again and being human.
I agree with you that changing because of others isn't good enough (in his case because of Dan), but I don't it's unrealistic. It's very common actually, but as I said, it's no enough.
I wish the author make him go to therapy, that would be awesome.
Sorry for the long text
i really liked that the author didn't make him change out of nowhere bc in reality it takes time to change, even when you acknowledge that you're in the wrong and going to therapy it takes time to fully change. i hope him and dan can have a healthy relationship in the future chapters