Tear Jerker / Hunter: The Parenting

"I only wish I had died yesterday."

Much like its predecessor series, Hunter: The Parenting isn't afraid to get serious and fully show the depressing darkness of the setting.

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Main Chapters

Chapter 2: If The Vampires Had A Tortured Wrestling Match

• Shitbeard's agitated rant about missing the simple pleasures of mortal life, while played for humor, hints that becoming a supernatural creature of the night isn't quite all it's cracked up to be.
  Shitbeard: You rancid, pissy fuckers'll never know what it's like! You go out into the sun and buy your cream crackers, your wheat-a-bix, and your... fucking... cream crackers! You finish college, and shit in a cramped little toilet, and play Snake on your phone!
  Kitten: Gotta admit, bruv, not very relatable.
  Shitbeard: Fuck you, toilet-shitter! Your mundanity is something we will never have again!
  • It also recontextualizes his actions and anger in the previous chapter. Learning that Kitten is Marckus' fiance enrages Shitbeard, reminding him of a pleasure he can no longer enjoy. Later, when Marckus pretends to want to be embraced by him, Shitbeard becomes even more livid. He can't fathom why Marckus would nonchalantly exchange his mortal life for a vampiric unlife, which his hatred for is firsthand.
• Throughout the episode, Apeboy firmly believes Pyotr is in his corner. Then the brawl begins and Pyotr immediately leaves Ape high and dry and ends up murdering him. You can feel that Ape genuinely trusted Pyotr only for the Nosferatu to violently shatter the fledgling Gangrel's belief.

Chapter 3: Hunter's Hunters Hunted

• The cut-to-commercial card for Episode 3 reveals the dates and reasons Kevin's allies died. Shitbeard had disappeared while attending a blood drive, Ape was turned and dumped in a mass grave, and Pyotr was turned by one of his superiors during an underwater welding operation, as either an example or a brief snack.
  • The third audiobook hints that Pyotr may have been a Cleopatra, a Nosferatu who was turned for no other reason than because they were attractive and it amused their Sire to make them hideous.
• Sure, Boy manages to land the killing blow on Pyotr, but he's noticeably shaken up and crying for a period afterward, trying to convince himself it's just like playing Deffmatch... implying that this is the first time he's ever had to use a gun on another person.
• Even with all the things he'd done, Pyotr of all people gets a moment of sympathy just before he passes out on the Family's lawn.
  Pyotr: I don't... wanna... die...
  • The delivery of that line sounds surprisingly heartwrenching and vulnerable, even for a pure-evil Nosferatu who'd diablerized his packmates, and it gives an extremely saddening context to his actions as well. Pyotr may have manipulated and hid, only capitalizing on moments that were solely in his own favor, but as it turns out, he did all of that just because he wanted to survive.
    • On the other hand, it's a perfect example of how a bully acts when their power is taken away, revealing the pathetic little man he was all along.

Chapter 4: The Feuds of Our Fathers

• Kitten and Grimal are not Amicable Exes. While Grimal seems to still want to try and be friends and even steals a few lingering gazes at him, Kitten is both incredibly stressed by the current situation and entirely fed up with her.
  • When Giles inquires while they're arguing, Elise tells him they're "reliving past trauma". Which suggests the two hurt each other in their relationship.
  • First time they're about to fight, Marckus interjects and distracts Grimal. But second time happens when he's busy fighting Brok and it blows off badly. You can tell Marckus is miserable seeing two people he cares for hurting each other.
  • Between Grimal getting angry both times Kitten gets frustrated with her attempts at injecting levitiy (even if he does have a point) and her frustrated claim he should be happy about getting kicked out of the Arcanum, one can get an impression she clearly wants him to be happy, but cannot understand why her attempts at helping do not work.
• The terrifying and violent death of Wernon Fatigue. He seems to have been the one person everyone in the Arcanum liked; a sweet, harmless old man who went out of his way to be kind to the distressed people locked in the Chapter House with him. The entire cast is a quiet mix of horrified and furious to find his gruesomely mutilated body, and Occam immediately declares that the culprit won't survive to see the morning.

Audiologs

The Probing of Kevin

• While funny at first, Kevin's reactions to Big-D stealing his wallet and finding his personal information turn out to be tearjerking in their own ways. His wallet (along with his apartment and his pet cat, Mr. Smerples) are the very few connections to his former humanity he has left, and he lived in constant fear of being eaten by even his own pack-mates if this information ever got out. Even his "[scream of incomprehensible shame]" response to Big-D learning about his last name and age can be interpreted as painful reminders to Kevin of how he died so young and how his dreams of making it big were shattered in the worst possible ways.
• Eventually, there's Kevin's recounting of his own past. He was simply an ordinary person, who wanted to make something of his life, and be remembered. But even in his human life, all he achieved was being in a dead-end job with no real hope for the future. And then, even that was taken away from him by his death and Embrace, where he became little more than a slave abused and gaslit by his masters. Even Big-D feels sorry for him.
  Kevin: Allow me to tell you a parable... A parable about one named Kevin Wettsworth. Kevin was born in Ipswich to a middle-class family. His parents were devout followers of the status quo, and primed him with all the tools necessary to lead a pleasant, stagnant, unexceptional life. Kevin became an accountant. About the only field he truly excelled. But his dream was always to accomplish something... more. So, he broke away from his life in the suburbs. Moved a bit further north. He decided: he will make it big. He will do something with his life. He failed. And so, Kevin got a job as an accountant in Great Yarmouth. But Kevin never gave up. Don't you understand? Kevin may have been trapped in the mire. He may have been an uninspiring person trapped in a dead-end job. His dreams and aspirations might have been dying, but they weren't dead... not completely. He was going to make his name. He was going to make rent every week. He was going to move up, see the world. He was going to do something, anything to make people know his name. And then Kevin died. And now you know the rest.
  [beat]
  Big-D: Well... Perhaps I know a part. But neither of us know the ending.
  Kevin: Spare me your optimism! It was stolen from me along with my life.
  [beat]
  Kevin: You cannot know the feeling of the Embrace. To wake one day, your skin cold, your heart still, ravenous, inhuman... Where once there was a world, friends, colleagues... now there is only prey and treachery. This story comes to no good end. I cannot follow my dreams, I must scrounge to stay alive or sane, I... I cannot remain human any longer. My only hope is to embrace a shadow of this dream, to embrace the Beast, and hope freedom is on the other side.
  Big-D: Freedom never comes through surrender.
  Kevin: Perhaps not... but it's the only chance I have left.

Big-D's "Guide" to Avoiding Arrest

• After Kevin hears that Chapman wants to become his Ghoul, he's mortified at the thought sheerly because he himself knows the kind of psychological torment that the Tremere bloodbond is. It takes a lot of convincing to make him budge even slightly on the idea because he wouldn't wish that kind of slavery on anyone else, let alone enact it himself.
  • Kevin is horrified when Chapman mentions his children. He's clearly appalled that anyone would willingly tie themselves so closely to the world of vampires when they have a family to think about.
    Kevin: You have kids?! That's fucking terrible!
• The fact that Kevin has a sister who has made numerous missing persons reports since he vanished. Not only is she probably desperate to find her brother, but it's a sad reminder that when vampires are Embraced they have to leave behind their human loved ones to uphold the Masquerade. Kevin didn't just unwillingly lose his freedom and his dreams, he lost his family.
  • Thankfully, Kevin does promise to look into the reports from his sister once Big-D brings it up to him.
• Kevin admits to feeling conflicted about the deaths of his packmates, all of whom he liked and hated in equal measure, calling their relationship a "psycho polycule". In the hell that is vampire society, Pyotr, Ape and Shitbeard were the closest thing he had to friends.

Something is Wrong with Horse

• Everyone's reactions with Horse showcase the characters' own insecurities about how their lives have gone, and how they interact with the others.
  • Big-D contemplates the fact that he keeps his family ignorant to the dangers at hand; both unsure of his own base reasoning of keeping them safe, and in his fears about how they'd handle themselves if the danger does find them. It's mixed with Nightmare Fuel as it shows the consequences of Big-D's lifestyle as a Hunter and how it has a psychological impact on not only him, but also his family and extended relatives.
    Big-D: What if I did fully bring you into the light? What would you do with the real truth, Horse? Would you die horribly to the things hiding in the dark? Or would you fall in other, far more sinister ways? Or might things... actually... turn out for the better? Could they?
  • Marckus is clearly frustrated with Big-D as a parent and how his keeping secrets left everyone at the mercy of Pyotr in Episode 3. It's not until Door offers him a listening ear that Marckus unleashes all his bottled-up frustrations and resentment, complaining about how Big-D treats even his own sons like pawns in his war against Vampirekind and forces them to clean up after his messes. For bonus points, this is very similar to how Magnus felt about his father in Text-To-Speech, where the Emperor of Mankind was even less kind than Big-D.
  • Kitten retells a story of trauma that ends up being a reason he found so much more comfort amongst the family once they returned. He knew vampires existed before then because he stumbled into the feeding of a Nagaraja. This particular vampire had been someone he knew by name as Edwin Davies. Edwin was born to a well-off family and had a reputation of being generous with the allowance he was given. The one night, he walks in on Edwin, bent over the freshly-murdered corpse of another person he knew closely, Sarah, in Sarah's own apartment. Edwin tries to justify himself as he closes in to try and stab Kitten, but he's able to put up a proper fight and eventually kicks him out of a several-story-high window, where he's accidentally impaled on an iron gate. The memory haunts him not just because of Sarah's death, but because for the longest while, he still felt guilty over killing Edwin, vampire or no.
    Kitten: D really helped put things into context. Gave me some closure. And that helped, truly, it did. It helped me know that it wasn't a person that killed and ate Sarah, I guess. But something else. Something wearing Edwin Davies' skin.
• Horse's condition in general is just a tearjerker for anyone that's ever owned a pet that got horribly ill. The horse is in a lot of pain, even discounting its possible supernatural nature, and all the family seems to be able to do is keep him somewhat comfortable in the hopes the worst of it will pass.
  • On the other hand, Horse's condition can alternatively be interpreted as a family member who contracted and is suffering from a horrible illness, with everyone else trying their best to accommodate them and ease their suffering as much as they can. Supernatural elements aside, the entire Family's reactions to Horse are all portrayed realistically, ranging from being extremely caring and empathetic, to unfamiliar and nervous yet still trying to help out in their own ways.

Marckus Goes Pubbing with his Weirdo Friends (and gets in a brawl)

• Marckus is distraught and, rightfully, furious when he learns that after the Family got banned from the Arcanum, Remold Blackclaw lobbied to have all their contributions, possibly years of research destroyed simply because it came from them.
  • What's more, he is also clearly feeling guilty about the fact that Kitten only got banned because of being his fiance. Doesn't help that Kitten took the ban the worst of them all.

Misc

Shorts

• 'A Life Well-Lived' is all about what happens when Big-D arrives too late to stop an attack. He enters a home after a vampire attack to find the only survivor; an elderly woman that was turned into a vampire. Only to reveal she was responsible; The woman was turned by her housekeeper and, being unable to control her newfound nature, slaughtered everyone to feed on their blood. When Big-D finds her, she is simply broken and mournful at what she's done. After voicing her regrets at her life and decisions she follows Big-D. Knowing all too well why he's there, and accepts her death by sunlight.

  Old Lady: I hope in death, I shall be thankful that I once lived. I only wish I had died yesterday.

  • The short's outtro is also somber, simply showing Karl the Deranged sitting down in front of a city and bowing his head. The camera then cuts to words spray-painted onto the back of a chair:
    Spray-painted words: Shine on
  • Its tragic for the carer too, loved by the old lady as a daughter and heavily implied to have embraced her out of similarly caring back for her charge- one who had recently lamented to her about never having gotten to have any time for herself. A twisted but well-intentioned attempt to give her more of it, only for it to end terribly for everyone involved. Its telling that even the old woman holds her no ill will.

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And now you know the rest.