His mother is dead—killed during the fall of Dresden. Harald doesn't seem to carry any particular grief or respect for her memory beyond the general whining about how the family "lost everything." She exists mostly as another prop in the endless, drunken lament about their former lavish life in the Bavarian countryside. The way he and his father talk about her [and the broader horrors of the Eastern Front's aftermath] is detached and self-pitying at best.

His most prominent relationship is with his father, Albrecht. It’s an ugly, enmeshed father-son bond built on shared failure, entitlement, and perversion. Albrecht enables Harald completely: the spoiled, portly, manchild son starts shit at the bar knowing Papa will finish it, acts like an obnoxious, handsy brute, and the two of them spend their evenings in their foul little flat getting black-out drunk, romanticizing the "good old days," and mourning their lost status. They treat local hookers as shared property, putting them in degrading, almost cuckold-adjacent situations that blur any healthy boundary between father and son.

Harald was raised [and clearly still is] as Albrecht's pet project and political heir—papa's boy through and through, even as an adult. There's no real independence, no growth, no reckoning with the war or their crimes. Just two fat, bitter ex-Nazis freezing time in a bottle, larping relevance while rotting in the new reality. Harald works at the same meat-processing plant as Johannes, but mentally he's still the same little shit who believes the world owes him the lifestyle his father's rank once provided.

As horrible as they both are, and my initial apprehension to open up about his character because of how most people online view the act of creating "OC"'s [i.e. not as storytelling devices but projection projects], this kind of character is exactly the sort you unfortunately cannot ignore in a fresh post-war German setting. The unpunished, still-entitled remnants who learned nothing and carry the old poison forward in the most petty, disgusting ways possible. His inevitable ugly end at Johannes' hands [carved up and tossed in with the actual pigs at the factory] feels more like a grotesque cosmic justice more than tragedy. No redemption, no sympathy, just a loud, drunk, entitled pig meeting the fate he and his father spent years acting like they were above.

Shawn’s idea of a favorite meal before Vadim was basically whatever didn't fight back. Cheap, stale, microwaved, expired. Gas station burritos, instant ramen, dollar menu burgers, half-cooked leftovers, expired canned stuff if he's truly desperate. Energy drinks & cheap off-brand soda, even if it's flat or been out all night. There's also that weird layer where he likes the idea that what he's consuming might be "contaminated" in some way. Not always consciously, but it feeds into his whole parasite fixation.

Vadim's taste in food, in opposition, is almost ascetic. On the surface, he presents it as "healthy." Underneath, it's a mix of disordered eating and OCD-like compulsions that he's refined down into something ritualistic. Simple, high-protein meals, clean plating, nothing excessive. He cooks as much as he can himself, and has a strong distaste for fast food. Frozen protein meals if he's desperate. Black coffee, mineral water, and scotch or vodka sparingly. Function over indulgence, etc., etc.

Watching people eat is diagnostic to him. Sloppiness, overindulgence, pickiness: it all tells him something. Once Shawn moves in, yeah the non-stop junk food is basically over. From there, it turns into another axis of control. Junk food gets thrown out without warning, meals become scheduled, portions are controlled, and Shawn is expected to finish everything or deal with consequences. Eating becomes something observed, corrected, and sometimes commented on in real time.

The more he acts against Vadim's will, the more Vadim's OCD manifests itself unwillingly, adding another layer to the way he behaves. He has tried to enforce specific rules in the throes of discomfort about chewing, pacing, or finishing meals, reacting disproportionately to anything that feels "off", etc. This is where it gets uncomfortable in a very specific way.

Vadim doesn't just impose structure on Shawn because he wants to control every aspect of his life; he genuinely believes Shawn is filthy, undisciplined, and that his habits need to be corrected for all of this to work. And the worst part is that physically, Shawn probably does start to feel better at first. More stable energy, less constant nausea, which just muddies things further in his head.

HI! THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTION and So sorry for how long it took me to get back to this ohb my god LMAO. For Shawn, the things that stick with him aren't always the biggest, most obviously horrific moments. It's in the small, repetitive degradations, the routines that would end up getting under his skin and rewiring him. Some examples...

1. Vadim's nightly "health routines" are a big one. Shawn would remember being made to sit still while Vadim inspected him like a specimen: checking his mouth, skin, weight, scars, infections. The way Vadim would correct him mid-sentence, shush him, or talk over him like he wasn't a person. He remembers trying to sleep with injuries afterwards. Breathing wrong because of his ribs, fractures, fissures, bruises, and the the dull, constant ache of untreated damage. Now, years later, Shawn can't handle being looked at too closely. Even a doctor's appointment or someone brushing lint off his shirt can make his stomach drop.

2. One of the most corrosive memories would be the first time Vadim made him cross a line at work. Not necessarily the worst act, but the first one. Like it's inevitable. Shawn remembers the feeling more than the act itself: the dissociation, the buzzing in his ears, the way his body just... goes along with it. The realization that he can be made to do things he doesn't want to eats at him long after.

3. Punishments that made no sense. Vadim's unpredictability is key. Shawn would fixate on moments where he thought he was safe, maybe even did something right, and still got punished. Those memories loop because Shawn keeps trying to "solve" them. His brain wants a rule, a pattern; but there isn’t one. So he lies there at night replaying it: What did I do wrong? What was I supposed to do? That inability to map cause and effect is what keeps him mentally trapped.

4. The periods of forced "affection." Not all of it is overt violence. Some of the most disturbing memories for Shawn would be when Vadim is almost kind. Talking to him like they're partners. Praising him. Etc., etc. It hits that neglected part of his brain that wanted approval, so later, when Shawn thinks back, there's this sick overlap of feelings. Disgust, fear, and something dangerously close to validation.

5. Being denied autonomy in small, humiliating ways. Control would show up in the mundane. What he ate, when he slept, when he showered, what he wore. Vadim would throw out old clothes and replace them, force him into routines. Watch him eat, make comments on his body. Shawn remembers the humiliation of that sometimes more than the blur of sexual assault & physical abuse. Now, even minor decisions can feel weirdly stressful or loaded once he's "on his own."

6. Moments where he tried to resist, and failed. These are the ones that hurt his pride. The times he did push back, even slightly, and it didn't matter. Vadim wouldn't always retaliate immediately. Sometimes he just waits. Lets Shawn think it's over. And then it comes back worse. That creeping realization that resistance only prolongs things & that compliance is safer; that idea sticks in Shawn's brain long after everything ends, bleeding into how he handles relationships, minor conflict, and even basic interaction.

7. The emails in the beginning. Oddly enough, the start might haunt him just as much as the worst parts near the end. The early days of email correspondence, when he was still rotting away in his parents basement. Because that's at least where he had the illusion of choice. Even if realistically he couldn't have wormed his way out of his own choices, his brain keeps circling that point like it was the last exit he missed.