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There's something very interesting with how Gideon is portrayed right now in this game, it's something that a large majority of the people who play this game will never really notice because they play as Father Nier. It's time to talk Replicant again!

It's okay to scroll past this, it's just me rambling about stuff with no videos or pictures.

Something that a lot of people don't really notice about the young boy characters in the plot is that they're all framed in the near-identical circumstances. Brother Nier, Emil, and Gideon all suffer from similar situations and feel the same sort of pain, but the result of the events they're put through is drastically different based upon their own personalities and life status. Let's do a quick little run down of the trio.
It's a similar sequence of events for these three, but let's look at how they all take it.

Emil is the younger sibling to his sister Hanua, who's used alongside him as an experiment for an ancient biological weapons program. He had no ability to get out of this situation and couldn't fight back against it. When finally coming face to face with her, now as No. 6, he's forced to deal with the reality of his sister being transformed into a monster. Afterwards, he's left to deal with becoming a monster himself. Luckily for Emil, he has had a positive upbringing with Sebastian at the manor. He has positive role models and friends in the form of Brother Nier, Kaine and Weiss who help him open up and become more of a friendly individual. His friends are there to support him through his time of need and as such finds the strength in them to accept who he has become, so even though he's No.7 to the world, he's still Emil to them. He's the Positive end of the sequence.

Brother Nier is the older sibling to his sister Yonah, who he's been tasked to protect by his parents after their deaths. After creating a bubble (Nier's House) within a bubble (Nier's Village) which he believes protects her from the horrors of the outside world, Jack of Hearts and The Shadowlord effortlessly break through and demonstrate the naivety he expresses with this. Brother Nier's upbringing has been shaky at best, his parents only present for a period of his life and left with the proxy parenting given by Popola and Devola. He's a young boy who only knows how to fight and kill, who has no one to really turn to now that Yonah's gone and as such he slowly feels the creeping agony of truly being alone. He lives in a positive environment though, the Village loves him and supports him as best they can so his rage doesn't grow out of control. This turmoil and inner loathing grows over half a decade, resulting in a young man who truly hates what goes on around him but accepts it on terms that he can do something good in the world, that the show must go on. He hates all Shades and the Shadowlord because they didn't just take Yonah from him, they took his whole world. The childish innocence, his belief that the world will be okay and that everything will turn out fine, the safety of his little world, the people he truly cares about. Brother Nier is the neutral end, he's messed up but still a reliable, trustworthy person.

Gideon is the younger brother to Jakob, a duo of siblings who live with their mother in a Junk Heap of homicidal robots and evil Shades. His father disappearing and his mother abandoning then subsequently dying takes its toll on the young boy, who grows increasingly dependent on Jakob. Jakob isn't equipped to handle this kind of dependency, as such he struggles to even maintain a basic persistent living condition. He has trouble finding bread. When Jakob does eventually die due to his own childish clumsiness, Gideon is thrust into Emil and Brother Nier's circumstances and subsequently snaps. He shifts the blame of Jakob's death from himself onto the Shades/Robots to keep a semblance of sanity and devotes himself to their destruction, his mental condition crumbling to the point where he hacks his own arm off! He has no positive role models or friends at Junk Heap to support him and his needs, relying solely on himself in a harsh, isolated environment where few can dare to tread. His only driving goal now is the same as Brother Nier's: revenge, but his is a misdirected one concocted by his own imagination. He's the Negative end of the sequence.

All three of the boys are in the same circumstance, but are affected differently by external forces present in their aftermaths. They lose a sibling to something they can't control and are forced to deal with it both internally and from external sources such as friends and family. Emil is a positive result because even though he has the most radical/traumatic shift he ultimately becomes a happier, more sociable individual. Nier is a neutral result, he's left to grow in an emotionally distant and frustrating environment at the lack of real genuine emotional connections and direction. Gideon is the negative result, he has no one to help him through his situation and is all alone to brood in his own little world.

Cavia's hatred for children is used in a way beyond simple cheap shot moments like Jakob's arm being torn off, it's used as a demonstration of how the influences of the world and the events around a person can shape their personality and ultimately determine the growth of boys into men. I've tried fitting the Prince of Facade into this but I simply can't work him in...