I'm rereading Sword Art Online: Progressive and found myself thinking about how reticent everyone is about sharing IRL information which, combined with some rather boring work I had to do today, lead me to overthink the reason for it. Spoilers for book 4 of the series.
Kirito explains it as a taboo to talk about personal stuff online because, like, doxxing and stuff, presumably. But I feel like that goes out the window when it's no longer a game but your reality. And, also, I get not sharing stuff with Lind or Kibaou or even Argo, but you and Asuna ain't gonna talk about y'all's lives? You've both been held by the other while trying not to cry (Asuna after losing her sword and coming across the PK-ers in the dungeon under Karluin and Kirito at the end of the same book when the weight of bearing the beta tester hatred at 13 gets to him). Come on, y'all are close enough to talk about personal stuff now. Also, like, in the original run of the story, they got married and only thought to exchange information when Aincrad was crumbling and I'm pretty sure they both thought they were going to die. Guys, really?
I get the initial thought of it. I know SAO was originally written for a competition and so was much shorter than the released version (the contest version didn't have the stories about the Moonlit Black Cats, Liz, or Silica, I'm pretty sure) and so maybe finding a natural place for them to discuss their real lives was hard. And, waiting until the end like that makes it feel like they're saying good-bye to their lives in SAO. It's thematic. But it's still kinda ridiculous.
Now, onto why I made this post in the first place. I like to write and, as a writer, I often look at stories and go, "How would I write this?" as a bit of an exercise. Even with stories that I'm absolutely in love with, I'll find parts where I can't help thinking, "Okay, but it would be cool if this happened in a different way." That's the whole basis of fan fiction, after all. So I'm looking at this odd bit of world building and thinking, "You know it would make more sense, to me, if this no IRL talk was a taboo because of the mindset needed to beat the game, not as a holdover from when it was a game."
Now, what do I mean by mindset? Kazuto Kirigaya is a socially awkward 13/14 year-old who hides in his room and in games because the real world is scary. Kirito is a veteran swordsman who can face any monster with intelligence and courage. Kirito has enough leadership ability and charisma to rally 10 other players to beat a floor boss. Kazuto could never. And I'm sure it's the same for most people there. They're all roleplaying as their characters because their IRL selves wouldn't be able to handle their new reality. They're compartmentalizing. (I think I'm using that right.) This would be why it's taboo to talk about the real world and your real life. Reminding Kirito of Kazuto is stripping Kirito of his armour of nonchalance. It's reminding him that he's really just a scared kid who misses his family and regrets pushing them away. It's reminding him that he has no idea what he's doing half the time.
Here's where I go into full on AU territory and start rewriting bits of the story in my head. What can I say? I was very bored.
This compartmentalization will, of course, bleed into real life once the game has been beaten. Suguha, Midori, and… whatever the dad's name is get to see their family member wake up, but in his place is an entirely new person. They would probably try to rationalize it as Kazuto having changed and grown over the two years. I mean, it's not like he was asleep the whole time. He was doing stuff. He was gaining traumas they probably don't even know about. But no, it's not Kazuto who came back, it's Kirito. And it stays Kirito until he manages to complete Kirito's mission and rescue Asuna (and the others) from Sugo. Then, he finally returns to Kazuto. Not the Kazuto they lost, of course, but the Kazuto who survived SAO. Kirito's still there and he always will be, but Kirito and Kazuto are no longer separate entities. They are part of the same person.
Kirito, having been born as a coping mechanism, will still sometimes take over. In GGO, for instance, when the game gets too real. But now Kazuto gets to take over on occasion too. Now, I don't know Kazuto pre-SAO very well and the Kirito we meet in the first episode of the anime isn't treated like his game persona but like he's always like this, so I couldn't say what it would look like when the more Kazuto personality traits comes out of our main character, because I don't know which personality traits can be attributed to him. But I think it would be fun to explore that. If GGO is where Kirito comes out as a trauma response, maybe Kazuto comes out during Alicization or something, since the virtual environment there is less game and more simulated life. Since we the viewer only really know Kirito or the Kirito/Kazuto hybrid that came out of SAO, this would be our first real chance to see and understand the boy who turned into our main character.
Or, maybe we could see Kazuto come out in his Alfheim character. After two years in SAO, the mask of an avatar now feels more comfortable to him than his actual body and he has no one around him that he has to pretend to be okay for.
Continuing on from this, Asuna is Asuna both IRL and in game. She literally uses her own name as a username! I wasn't even doing that in elementary school. But, anyway, Asuna states early in Progressive that she chose to leave the Town of Beginnings and fight because she wants to be herself until she dies. (Which, I understand vibe-wise but is a bit of an unclear motivation. What if who you are isn't someone who fights monsters?) So Asuna is always genuinely Asuna. She's never playing a character. She used to, because of her upbringing, and is sick of it. This sets her up as a foil to Kirito and also shows him that it's okay to not just be the Black Swordsman. That it's okay to be Kazuto, too.
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