this is already a theory ive stated within my friend group but i feel like putting this out in the general public would be crazy awesome because i like people who agree with me
please know that my interpretation of elevator hitch isn't canon and will likely never be canon, but i like games/medias where i have to fill in knowledge gaps with my own personal interpretation. i think everybody played elevator hitch but forgot to have fun with it. don't have too much fun though [insert all your theories are wrong goodbye gif] [but with rachel as scott cawthon]
so read if u care blehhhhhh
okay trying to organize my thoughts here! i already have a massive amount of interpretations within elevator hitch so i might add some tidbits of knowledge thats like 'what the fuck that wasnt stated at all'. sorry. sorry everyone. forgive hiro
protag, from what i've seen anyway considering official art/content and all of that, he's considered more human than coworker. it's implied that he's had a life. an implied horrible childhood, parents, and even used to work at someplace else. he has history. as you can probably guess, protags upbringing wasn't very good.
he had to hide things, saw his parents as monsters [judging by the fact they were odd pure-black silhouetted creatures] [> Bright light keeps the monsters away] dialogue, religious trauma, all of that
his bed's bedframe is a bunch of pipes that probably leads to nowhere. has anybody ever talked about horrendous his bed is
literally. look at it. why's the mirror next to your bed
anyway completely irrelevant
antag is speculated by the fandom to be the most vulnerable parts of protag. after being held up in an elevator with no exit, for months and months years and years. however long. he puts on this whole corporate face to get his way and trick the other party, and dare i say- if you look into it enough- as selfish as coworker can be. i think if you really look at the entire game, protag is, or at the very least /wants to be/ selfish, because he's given up everything for the cost of being nothing but a cog in the machine. part of a corporation, part of a society. part of- like how many work forces claim- a family.
taking this side of him and removing the cap and the filter, you'd probably get someone like antag. someone who's already acting like he's part of the system. like coworker but i'll get on that more mild-ish rant later.
what i'm trying to say is, what if antag- protag's most vulnerable side- reflects off his family and how he was treated?
(most) people with unstable parents say that the reason why their parents weren't found out sooner is because they put on a mask of innocence and claim that they're a perfect family. it's not every time of course i feel like i gotta clarify but i've been with people thick and thin. abusive homes with christianity or religion often frame god as their sole connection to other people. haha, nooo. they couldn't do anything wrong, and if they did, god would forgive them. that whole thing you know
i really really wanna think about what protags parents were like since we don't know anything and, from the bottom of my heart, i think they were like that. people who hide behind closed doors and perform when the doors are open to invite someone home
even you, as an audience, you aren't supposed to know what they did. i think it's fitting that we don't know anything about protag's parents besides the fact they were abusive. in the entire game, we're in protag's pov- so obviously we'd know that they're traumatizing. nobody else was in that room besides protag, so obviously we'd know that they're traumatizing. even when they talked to protag on the 4th floor they were talking nice to him, warning him multiple times.
maybe this is a weird take and i sure hope not because i know this sort of thing all to well but, like, imagine you're some completely different bystander with a normal life. absolutely perfect. if a parent heard you making too much noise (supposedly late at night), and they said they were coming up there, that wouldn't be traumatizing at all, right?
it'd be scary because of consequences. you'd get grounded and have your stuff taken away but if you add in the fact that protags completely traumatized then it adds a whole new layer of "what the fuck" because you don't know what the consequence IS
the floor actually ends after the door closes on protag
it really rubs it in that abuse happens behind closed doors.
from this point on, we don't actually know what happened to protag for the ending to loop. maybe it was the door closing within itself that forbids him access to elevator is what made him loop back, but i really don't think so. whatever happened to him, happened behind closed doors
whatever punishment, abuse, or *violence* he was met with, happened behind closed doors.
'hiro! haha great analogy how the fuck does this tie to antag'
hey first off dont be rude to me. second
'hiro i still don't get it'
Stopitttttt uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
i think above all else, antag is much more determined and menacing.
he's keen, passionate, and has a strong will to get what he wants without giving much information. when colleague tries to open about something, antag shuts it down by interrupting him and/or covering it up with a more safe story and/or giving him a dirty glare. his parents would have done that, i think.
that ties back to the doppelgangers in my eyes, because antag berates and abuses colleague when they're stuck in the elevator- while the doors are shut! but when it's open.......... he's interrupting colleague everytime he speaks up about what truly happened
copying what i said to my friends verbatim
[ if coworker has no nuance in this scenario (a cocky, arrogant man with no mental health issues) (oh just wait for my coworker interpretations. the 65% of the fandom that believes coworker is just a guy that sucks will love it), i feel like the only way he would end up like he did with colleague, so miserable and pathetic, even tho his original self is much more arrogant, is because antag is projecting his abuse onto a blank slate.
a canvas. abuse is miserable, so the canvas would be, too. if antag is projecting his frustrations through violence because his experiences built him up that way, and colleague is someone with no experiences, then he's gonna reflect off antags experience, and be the same miserable child that protag was a long time ago ]
[ the thing abt colleague or coworker just being this dumb arrogant overly confident bastard with a huge ego, most narcissistic people fight back. They don't lay there and take things. coworker does because he's unaware how to respond when someone hits him or attacks him. on the interpretation he's artificially made for the company, that's implied to be very strict in their rules of being polite and a kiss-ass and whatever, he never would have been hit. he never got attacked. protag, and antag too, changes that. i feel like the reason why coworker doesn't fight back isn't just because he doesn't want to or he's too good for it or he wants to be the better person or whatever but also because I think he literally doesn't know how to ]
i think that's about everything :] follow me for more awesome sig takes
when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they weren’t really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)
anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.
i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”
and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.
“What?” i say.
“…it’s a cock and a pussy, Jules,” she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.
Something I think is pretty cool about Teru’s character design is that it reflects how fake he is and the way he just hides a LOT.
Okay, so it’s pretty obvious that Teru is fake, right? He hides behind an act of being perfectly nice, cool and collected, and charming and likable. But something I noticed is that the way he looks and dresses reflects that. First of all, we always see Teru wearing long sleeves and very covering clothing.
Sometimes in official arts he’ll have short sleeves (as shown below)
And something that we notice whenever he’s wearing short sleeves is that he seems to be injured/bandaged. Another thing that stands out to me is that it’s only in arts where he’s a child/younger (at least, so far as I have been able to find.) Whenever we see art of Teru as a child he’s almost always hurt. I’m talking likeee. Plasters and bandages on his face and arms. The above images are my proof for now but I’ve seen more.
The rest is under the cut because I don’t want this to be a giant wall of text!!!
I think that says a lot about him. First of all the concealed clothing choices show us that he’s not someone who’s open and hides a lot about himself most of the time, unlike his little brother who’s constantly shown wearing short sleeves (keep in mind that Kou often even rolls up his sleeves to the form of a muscle shirt/sleeveless shirt) and such and reflects that in his personality too (Kou is not only much more open than Teru with his emotions and thoughts, he’s also significantly more OPEN MINDED! Towards supernaturals!)
Another character this reminds me of is Hanako, who is very mysterious and it’s a whole thing with him that his past is a secret and he rarely if ever opens up. Hanako also consistently wears long sleeves, even in an ASHK chapter that takes place at the beach, he’s shown wearing long sleeves under a short sleeved shirt. This is interesting because it actually contrasts with Amane Yugi, who can be seen wearing short sleeves! In fact, a similarity between Amane Yugi and Teru is that when they wear short sleeves we can clearly see plasters and bandages covering their arms.
For Teru, covering the wounds he gets from fighting supernaturals with long sleeves and concealing clothes is just a way to keep his life as an exorcist away from prying eyes. People are constantly watching him at school, and if he walked around scars and bandages on full display… well. That’s not happening, right? So, being an exorcist, and getting injured that way, is just one thing he has to hide.
Now, wearing long and covered clothes isn’t the only way we see physical manifestations of Teru hiding who he is!
Whenever Kou or Tiara smiles or opens their mouths, we can see very clearly that they both have fangs.
Now look at Teru’s smile.
It’s very drawn and thin. Usually we only see his bottom teeth when he’s smiling, as if hiding his fangs on purpose. Even when he does smile big like his siblings do he’s still purposefully not smiling wide enough to show his fangs, another thing which shows he’s not exactly a “normal” human. Occasionally we will even see him LITERALLY
PHYSICALLY COVERING HIS FACE WITH HIS HAND WHILE HE LAUGHS. HE’S HIDING FANGS BRO I KNOW HE IS
And you might think im being silly or making that up. But im not. Because he literally does have fangs!! In official arts and multiple manga panels such as below:
Thank you for coming to my. Ted talk? Rant? Spiel? Whatever it is, thanks for reading! I hope it was entertainin!!
i don’t think you understand i totally thought we were gonna die locked up in this castle but this fucking genius was like “im going to invent a way for humans to fly”. shout out to my dad he’s a real one fr
LMAOOO this dude told me to be careful as he affixed the wings to my back…..dad no offense but you just invented flying and we have to go high enough to avoid the king’s archers. soo
i don’t understand why but he’s coming closer. he is not supposed to stray from his path, lest the sun fall from the sky. why does he look so anguished to see me?
i pray to him just in case. i am grateful he tried. my palms are red and cracked from where they touched divinity. the ground does not look any closer than it was
i have not seen my father since we took flight…i hope he escaped. i hope he will not witness this. i wish i could tell him how joyful these wings made me before the wax melted
please please please i have no coin for the ferryman if i am to die now i will never reach the realm of hades please turn me into a bird any bird or a bug or something anything please please pleasepleaseplease
Has anyone else noticed recently that when you press the 🅐 Button while in the air you can hardly find the strength to do a Double Jump anymore? Go ahead and try if you want, but it won't work.
Nothing's been the same since she... fuck... I'm sorry... since she... since she left this world. If only I'd remembered that holding and releasing the 🅑 Button would've allowed me perform a powerful Spin Attack. If I hadn't forgotten, she might still be here today. Shit... fuck... I can't handle this anymore, I'm sorry.
There's a Save Point over there. They say if you stand on it and press 🅧 you can save your game. But can any of us really be saved? I don't think so. Not after everything we've done.
I just wrote 8 pages when I haven't written in months and was beginning to think I'd never be able to again. Idk what it is, but I am sharing and manifesting this energy for every writer who sees this. May you write 8 quality pages effortlessly and find joy writing once more