i didn't like the way mikoto's story ended up panning out, and i know everyone else has said it already... but i do think that not all of requiem can be merely discarded. i know now that yamanaka did not at all intend for mikoto to be good or positive DID rep, but she's still an important character to us on a deeply personal level. so i want to continue analyzing her from the same heartfelt viewpoint i always have before, which is taking most of her writing in good faith, and writing out the ableist stereotypes in favor of something far more nuanced.
with that being said, there's a lot of interesting information that was revealed that i'm a little excited to talk about as i process everything.
i've recently been fascinated about the juxtaposition of mikoto's easy life, when contrasted against him having DID. of course you don't need crazy / insane trauma or a perfectly terrible life in order to develop it, so frankly... i find it a little bit fun that her life has been 'easy' despite the label. while the report makes no mention of mikoto developing DID in their childhood, it also makes no mention of them developing it as an adult—only mentioning that john specifically split in adulthood.
since DID is a disorder of hiddenness, that has a very low window of diagnosability, usually being periods of intense trauma or stress, i do think that it's highly likely that after whatever situation made her develop it her life improved so much that it simply never caused any real problems in her life until later. this is a common experience for some pwDID/OSDD as well, going through a large period of their life never knowing that they have parts until an incident of some kind, that makes it incredibly apparent, takes place. i think she fits perfectly into this sort of thing...
the report also makes no mention of her father, whom hardly exists at all in the narrative beyond being a void in their memory that their mother refuses to speak of. that mikoto even thinks that she's possibly hiding information about from him. i can't help but still think that whatever caused her to develop DID involved this man, and that once her mother got her away from him their life became so much easier and more comfortable. trial 2 had us believe she wasn't from shibuya, but i've been wondering if maybe she was born there and her mother moved her away when she was young as they were cutting ties with his father. maybe mikoto only returned to shibuya in adulthood?
i also think maybe mikoto's mother became slightly overbearing after everything, tried hard to provide and make sure that mikoto had the best life possible growing up. she didn't want her to experience terrible hardships... i think she treated mikoto like she was a gift.
so it's a little cute that mikoto thinks she's special. that she doesn't try very hard at almost anything, because she's always gotten lucky and exceeded others expectations by doing just the bare minimum. it's cute that she gets bothered when people don't treat her to the standards that she wants them to. she wants people to acknowledge her as someone special because her mother always treated her as that. her name even means 'precious' or 'valuable' so of course she feels so special! she wants to wow others, and to be someone who stands out enough to be remembered. i think it's nice...
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