THEORY: THE MEANING OF THE INTERROGATIONS IN CHAPTER 3 DAILY LIFE
alora's growth spikes and then plateaus as soon as she is given the title of warden. suddenly, rather than only living with her crimes, she feels she has the chance to make up for them via her authoritarian welfarism thing. her only growth is that she feels she has a reason to exist again, and then she stops.
it's easy to note that each tape is delivered to us at the point immediately after the biggest turning point in the character's development, but i would like to argue that after this phase change, the character plateaus. plateaus at a higher point than before, but they grow much more slowly after this point, if at all. only one succeeds at killing their old self, at metamorphosis, because lyra is the only one whose growing only ceases after she dies.
everyone else becomes a cocoon at the moment we see their tape. lyra is the only one who succeeded at complete metamorphosis.
ismene's growth spikes and then plateaus after she, for lack of a better word, gets woke? the janitor accidentally radicalises her in the opposite direction, and for the rest of the chapter, she grows increasingly sympathetic to the anti-ultimate movement. she grows somewhat closer to her fellow prisoners, but she still pushes them away. importantly, during her tape, she is told to kill her stuck silkworm-cocoon self and rejects the idea explicitly. she is the only character to do this. the reason she provides is that she is unlovable and disgusting if not for her intelligence and status. her ideas are the only reason people tolerate her. it makes perfect sense, then, that she would be so blatantly absent from the explosion at the end of the chapter after her biggest turning point is labelled as the moment she realised the ultimate system is really the opposite of what she believes to be righteous and good—that it exists to keep the weak suffering, not to help them.
shinku's growth spikes and plateaus after he attempts to strangle lyra. that is the moment he wakes up and truly realises that he won't be able to make up for killing akari no matter how many people he tries to save, and that her death doesn't have to define him in any case, that he is not doomed to be nothing more than terrible. from that point, he understands that the only way to really "atone" is just to be better, not do any one thing. he doesn't resign himself to being the worst forever even though he can't just Make Up for this. and he hates that he can't, but he stops letting it rule him.
zeke's growth spikes and plateaus after he realises that his crime was him being everything he hated about the world, and that he had no right to feel entitled and egotistical in response to getting a worthy verdict. importantly, although the space between he and lyra was good for them and he does loosen his hold on lyra, he still remains emotionally dependent on her. the difference is that he stops feeling entitled to her because everyone else is worse and out to get her, because he stops assuming that everyone else is worse than him. importantly after his metamorphosis he immediately tries to publicly choke ismene to death because entitled, prideful bullies like the two of them don't deserve to live and he wants to kill her and die too so like that's where zeke's at
asuga's growth spikes and plateaus after they realise they don't know best by default and that they have to question how good the things they're doing actually are. similar to ismene, the interrogator urges asuga to kill her silkworm-cocoon self, and asuga says they know they need to, and they want to. the interrogator then says they might learn to fly yet. asuga really wants to live, and she misses her circus, but they emphasise that she knows she can't just swoop in and save them and fix everything she did. instead, she just wants to live well, and live freely. asuga is the closest of the living characters to metamorphosis, and the reason for their plateau isn't as clear as the other four. it's possible this is the moment she might choose to attempt murder... and if she can't be free, they'll at least have ended this motive.
lyra only plateaus after she dies. she never stops growing. she is the only one to have successfully killed her silkworm and cocoon self, and she could have been trying to break open another cocoon in the process, a mutual metamorphosis. she spoke to asuga like she knew she would die for what she was about to do. it's likely that she tried to get locked up on purpose so someone else could kill her, whether that was ismene to end the game with an explosion (lyra freeing emilia, and maybe wanting to free ismene but in that case why iz and not anyone else?), or simply asuga to free themself and zeke, with ismene's explosion being unrelated. if twin theory is relevant, alora could have knocked lyra out after lyra revealed her identity and that could just be the end of ly's involvement, someone else could have just taken the chance to kill her out of convenience. maybe lyra could have planned this to free alora, but i doubt alora would really accept 5 people dying for 2 to survive, even if the 2 escapees condition technically allows the blackened to not choose to save themself.
fu doesn't get a tape because he doesn't grow in this chapter. doesn't even become a cocoon. metamorphosis is out of the question.
