yknow, as counterintuitive as it may seem, helping a suicidal friend isn't a matter of stopping them from dying. it's about helping to make their world one that's worth living in.
it's important to make that distinction, lest we make people's quality of life worse in the name of "protecting" them.
this is about the death penalty and its also about call out posts about people who have already apologized for things they did a long time ago and itâs also about using âtoxicâ or âabuserâ as if its an immutable class of person, and its also about any other circumstance with permanent consequences or wherein you assume someone is still the same person they were.
Hear me out, but if Mikoto's writing is supposed to focus on the stress caused by toxic Japanese work culture instead of DID cases, then maybe DID shouldn't be added in at all.
but is it not a social commentary on toxic Japanese work culture as an extension of (and one of the final steps within) Japanese culture as a whole? the Japanese culture that would allow a single mother to raise two children, whereupon the eldest grows up in a way that he believes he has never experienced anger because of the negative impact it would have on people [S1Q10]? the Japanese culture wherein child neglect and relational stress (such as in cases of divorce [S1Q16], high social and achievement expectations [S2Q1], enmeshed families [S1Q16], etc.) are both considered especially common causes of DID? the Japanese culture that would reward a baseline of dissociative compartmentalisation (aforementioned lack of awareness/tolerance towards one's own social missteps and what are deemed unacceptable personality traits), as it helps a person keep up with and succeed under grueling social and occupational demands? the Japanese culture where in spite of everything, pushing yourself so far that you drink straight from a bottle of vodka on your way home, to cope with the abusive job that you may eventually die doing, is a relative, non-pathologised norm?
the Japanese culture where, if someone â that hit all these low-profile risk factors and therefore experienced DID on a subclinical level (on account of maintained functioning, doing what is expected of him, because drinking and working himself to death, is not considered 'disorder') â were to suffer 100+ days of sleep deprivation while abusing substances, and then go on a murder spree in his cognitively impaired haze, may retroactively compartmentalise and dissociate from that too, and only then â as a result of the scrutiny placed on criminals and antisocials â have his dissociative internal structure drawn attention to?
i think he makes for a really interesting fictional case study, about how much suffering and abuse we sweep under the rug, up until someone explodes, and how it is often only when the person has made disorder onto society (through violence, or not being able to work) that any sort of diagnosis (and thus acknowledgement of 'some issue') is made. and especially how, in response to 'some issue' that has been indicated, we always look at the person in question as an individual and isolated problem, who â on account of the diagnosis we then apply to them âmust have been dysfunctional from the start, and done what he did, because of his innate 'disorder'.
and i think DID was an especially good choice for this thought experiment, because of how clearly it encourages a common debate, around to what extent someone's behaviour is 'theirs' and to what extent it is their 'mental illness'. and it also makes me very very happy, as a pwDID, to see mikoto overcoming his lifetime of dissociation, suppression, and self-hatred that brought him to the current moment, and acknowledge that yes, at the end of the day, he did not do what he did because he was irrational or possessed, and that the parts of him that identify with his awful acts still deserve sympathy and collaboration. because while he perpetrated horrible things, it was as a whole person, for reasons that were understandable, and never should have come to be.
i have written this post to be emotionally evocative as a way to explicitly make frustrations and questions about Mikotoâs Trial 3 abundantly clear and also as a way to encourage people to vocalize their true thoughts and feelings on his Trial 3 through being an example of one. if you are discomforted, angered, riled up, shaken, or left with more questions/thoughts by this compilation-essay-ish then i have achieved what i intended with this post. the propaganda of civility and niceness in the end is really just censorship of talking about weighty subjects and i would rather assist in opening up the floor to dialogue especially when MILGRAM presents the perfect opportunity to talk about topics that are otherwise taboo in everyday conversations.
i will reiterate this at the end of the post but i encourage you to debate, retort, add-on, challenge, or whatever sort of dialogue you want to add/engage in any points that may or may not have been brought up in this post.
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people hating Mikoto's trial 3 are too enraptured with the label of DID on him that they forget that he's a character that just happens to have dissociative behaviors. he's not made to be DID's spokesperson.
how different would people cast their judgement if his diagnosis label was CPTSD instead? the symptoms of DID are the exact same symptoms found in CPTSD. what if he wasn't diagnosed with any mental illness at all? would people judge differently?
people are shitting on Mikoto's story because it doesn't live up to their fetish of DID-- that Mikoto didn't end up being their little symptomatic DID performance animal.
people forget that psychiatry is founded upon the criminalization of Others in order to systemically subjugate and dehumanize people through the power of a labelâs reduction and the pathologization of a set of behaviors that are outside of a governing authorityâs allowance. for example, it has historically been used as a tool of colonization where Others are âsavagesâ and âpsychopathsâ, thus are not rational, thus are not human. itâs been used historically and presently to deny people of basic rights, dehumanize persons, and is used as a âreasonâ to hide this vulnerable demography away and/or abandon them.
Mikoto is a victim of psychiatrization, reduced to the label of âDIDâ by MILGRAMâs authority whichâdespite being an abusive and violating institutionâis left unchallenged or uncriticized by people. instead, people are playing into this system of systemic abuse and violation and control of bodies throught engaging with its wants and games of dehumanizing individuals and the game of blame, rather than thinking carefully and critically about the system-institution and challenging it.
thereâs claims that MILGRAMâs writers are using DID as a trope when, in reality, itâs being used a device to challenge the real world approach to mental illnesses being used primarily in mass media, such as the news, as attention-grabbing mechanisms rather than it just be a part of life like any other disability. the only mentally ill people you tend to hear about are those who transgressed societal norms so severly in an act of explicitly uncontestable social disorder, thus that person is finally diagnosed with a mental disorder as an attempt for insitutions of authority to explain disordered behavior through imposing a label that absolves the institution of blame and shifts it to an individual rather than tackling the failings of societal structures that is inhabitable to people thus creating inability to cope, thus âdisorderâ. the only reason that Mikotoâs mental illness is even a factor is the first place is due to the social panoptic need/pressure norms to paint those who are struggling with impossible demands as âinsaneâ or âcrazyâ rather than a product of society.
like my wonderful oomf brought up, itâs not that Mikoto had mental illness and thus committed murder, he committed murder and then was labeled as mentally ill.
people seem to have forgotten that the prisoner/sinner reports (and diagnoses) are written by a biased authority: MILGRAM. if âLetâs rewind the clock to when MikotoâŚâ doesnât sound like a recounting of a story rather than an objective log of a series of events, i donât know what to tell you. the MV end report-files are in-universe files that the MILGRAM institution holds and authors. it only serves to give additional context but is written to how MILGRAM is to perceive the character.
there is also a clear demarcation and separation between the MILGRAM institution and the writers of the series, in which the writers are quite clearly trying to make people criticize MILGRAM and the institution(s) it represents or parallels. people are blaming Yamanaka for characters or the story not being exactly what they want it to be when, in reality, they should be redirecting that discontent and anger towards the real-world that MILGRAM is written to quite literally mirror.
yurusu doesn't just mean "innocent" or "forgive", it also means "affirm".
people can't seem to yurusu Mikoto who has now gained and developed the philosophy of (1) acknowledging his crime and wanting to atoneâ he will atone according to his Trial 3 VD; (2) challenging Es/you wardens' belief that he's innocent because John's the guilty one, instead claiming responsibility because even if a person doesn't remember their crimes at all, the person still committed a crime; (3) Mikoto finally accepting those parts of himself that he rejected and hated; (4) Mikoto developing a healthier behavior of self-compassion and self-understanding, rather than suppression, and actually working towards a better him; (5) working with himself with what he can do and being patient if he can't do it all right now.
people who can't seem to yurusu Mikoto's healthy character growth are baffling. it's been established since the conception of MILGRAM in 2020 that every single one of them is guilty of the act of murder, in which the law that decides guilt is based on the norms of society (thus leading to Yuno's case of abortion being considered murder). it has been a known fact. if you are voting him based on if he's guilty of the crime or not, then why not vote Muu guilty? why not vote Yuno, Amane, Kazui guilty, all of whom were voted innocent?
what makes Mikoto any different?
if you can't forgive Mikoto due to the amount of victims he has or the brutality of his crime, then are you going to choose to unforgive him, thus deny and disaffirm his character development and newfound healthier mentality (that will not only benefit himself but also others should he be rehabilitated/reintegrated back into society) all because of that emotional disgust? will you completely lock Mikoto who-is-alive out of the chance for becoming a person that will actually help people after rehabilitation and help that he needed all these years?
his victims are a tragedy, yes, that can be acknowledged but they are dead. fixating on the dead does nothing for the living. the dead can no longer affect reality. only the living can. the living can choose to change the systems that kills its members, whether directly or indirectly. if you are outraged by by 12 victimsâ lives ending then be outraged at and tackle the systemic issues that create these deaths. the dead are dead. focus on the living now in order to preven other Mikotos from happening but also focus on how to help those who may relate to Mikoto and those who are Mikotos. be outraged at the labor systems, the social culture of not speaking about what youâre feeling and the taboo ofânot just talking aboutâbut also mentally ill people existing, of disabled people existing. the reason he committed those murders wasnât because he was mentally ill. itâs because of systemic stratae of abuses that made him explode because he could no longer just implode.
this Mikoto Trial 3 so far is showing how plenty of people view judgement as a whole as punishment, rather than rehabilitation or incentive to help. it can explain why thereâs witch hunts and how if people donât like what a someone says, they try to punish that person through means of tarnishing repute, talking shit, harassment, etc.
do you only care about punishment? punishment on those that disgust you? punishment on those that don't fit into your ideas of what a person should be? punishment on those that don't fit your expectations? do you actually care about justice or do you only say you do because that's what's expected of you?
have you considered that each flash of the victim profiles in Requiem can be read as the moments that the abuses of his workplace and compounding stress from his life reached that certain point that locked in the death of those victims? the straws that broke the camel's back? the souls that were destroyed?
there weren't just 12 victims in that mass murder. it was 13. Mikoto is a victim of the normalized exploitive late-stage capitalistic society in which corporations quite literally run the nation legislative-wise and determine the cultural and economic norms. if Mikoto hadn't been driven to the point of a psychotic break due to 100 days of overwork and workplace abuse, and possible assault, in a society where even talking about feelings to your closest persons are strange or taboo and extreme extended sleep deprivation where dream and reality became blurred that led to him committing an act that is essentially social suicideâ death in Japanese society, that murders his youth, his potential, his opportunities, his future and how many people he could have helped with how importance design is in the world. the failings and flaws of contemporary Japanese society murdered this youth and who he could've been.
i don't understand people who are saying his story got retconned.
do you need it to be explicitly stated that he experienced This Specific Trauma And That Specific Trauma in order to have him play into the fetishization of DID performance to be a True DIDer?
iâve seen flack on Mikoto for supposedly being worse DID representation (despite not being made to be a rep for DID) than M. Night Shyamalanâs Kevin Wendell Crumb in Split (2016) but this is the thing: Mikoto is still dissociated and amnesiatic about his home and family life. there are aspects in all his VDs, timelines, and interrogations that show that his parentâs divorce is still affecting himâ feeling that John âdisappearingâ is just like a father leavingâ âabandoning everything and disappearingâ (milgram-en) and leaving it all up to him to pick up what he abandoned; his father and/or John.
there are so many behavioral signs of Mikoto being a child of divorce with his abandonment issues and fixation on being liked by people so that he wouldnât get abandoned again like how kid-him felt when his dad left in the divorce.
to a child it may feel like they werenât good enough and thatâs why the parent left, which explains Mikotoâs people pleasing behaviors and attempts to be friendly with everyone so they donât abandon him. it also explains why heâs sensitive towards rejection. kids typically have egocentric thinking in not yet developing a sense of independent self from their caretakers, which could have made Mikoto think that his parent leaving was because he wasnât good enough or likeable enough, hence his desperation for being liked and accepted and affirmed (such as the birthday timeline with Kotoko where he was restless until Kotoko wished him a Happy Birthday).
thereâs so many signs that he was a neglected child with his hyperindependence and fixation on being capable, in which neglect is the most common reason for the development of DID in Japan. thereâs signs that heâs an incest victim through the Eldest Child being the emotional support of his mother and the only masculinity that the Father role was placed unto, through both emotional incest and parentification through having to parent his younger sister despite being a kid himselfâ now a grown kid whoâs still learning the ropes of a new world, the adult world, all on his own. thereâs also signs that he was an assault victim through his fawning and people pleasing behaviors that could be an attempt to avoid being victimized again, not to mention how he dresses with his skin mainly covered with jackets/long-sleeves/pants/etc., only wearing clothes that reveal more skin area in privacy.Â
his obsession with normalcy and idealization of it also hints towards Mikoto never having had a normal and stable life and thatâs what he just wants so badly.
John âdisappearingâ is claimed from an unreliable narrator (Mikoto) and an unreliable authority (Es/Jackalope) that have their own biases and understanding thus phrasing of things. in reality, John was just suppressed by Mikoto as he represents the parts of himself that he didnât like, didnât want to be, and didnât want to accept is a part of him. not to mention, John is in the Requiem song. you can hear him as the second vocal part or voice, present from the beginning of the song as a very faint and quiet harmonization, to clear duets and solos with the other vocal part, Mikoto, all the way to the end of the song as a musical device to show that theyâve always been together but now actually acknowledging and accepting it all. hell thereâs a call-and-response repeating throughout the song with the chord plucking and the higher pitch plucking as the response.
Mikoto expressing multiple self-states werenât retconned either. we primarily got a professional, working adult Mikoto as the primary player in Trial 1, a protective big brother/hypermasculine figure that Mikoto never had due to his father leaving in the divorce in Trial 2, and the guttural, newborn crying a crying thatâs instinctual and has so much potential for growth, development, and learning as children are much more understanding and open to everything, including accepting things that adults have a hard time swallowing in Trial 3, not to mention T3koto phrasing things like a kid despite being adept at language to express himself in a clear manner at other parts of his dialogue with Es.
Mikoto being born in Shibuya doesnât mean that the interrogation answer of him coming from a Not Big City was retconned either. a person can be born in a big city in a hospital that has more resources and staffing but actually grew up somewhere else. itâs not uncommon for someone to say they come from where they grew up in rather than where they were born.
iâve seen people thoughtlessly yapping and disregarding Mikoto having complex trauma, ergo leading to the development of a complex trauma set of behaviors, due to coming from a middle class family. he may have been middle class and from an âaverageâ family but you can still be traumatized despite being born into a family that may have easier access to the potential of support in a society that famously lacks accessible and destigmatized social/community support. the invalidation of his struggles due to the socioeconomic class he comes from (that is arguably negated by being a child of a single mother, and the only masculinity in an otherwise majority feminine household situated in a severely patriarchal sexist nation) tangentially reminds me of dialogue akin the line of âyou have a roof over your head, thereâs food on the table, you get everything you need, so why the hell are you crying or saying that life is hard?â
itâs strange seeing people saying that his writing or story is weak because Trial 3 didnât explicitly talk about his childhood or traumas or home life of a person from years ago that caused his dissociative behaviors to develop considering MILGRAM is about the now and present where the crime happened. we donât even get anything about Amane beyond her life during the crime itself, yet i donât see people calling for Yamanakaâs death with Amane or calling her writing chopped.
those who complain that Mikoto is unrealistic and badly written because of that "unrealistic"ness are spitting on so many people who do relate to him â all those complex trauma victims, all those complex trauma victims that seem to contradict themselves because of all those conflicting emotions that may come from expressing their own history or even opinions (thus affecting memory or what the brain can handle), all those "imperfect victims", all those non model mentally ill persons that don't have digestible and "perfect" presentations of a condition, and every other way that a person can relate to him â are part of the ableism you may claim to be against yet, you enforce through creating a radioactive weapon carved with words that outlast civilizations, through festering stigmatization, ableism, dis-compassion, and un-empathy through your sort of discourse proliferating like a disease through the internet's memetic battleground that cares more about virality rather than actual critical thought, self-reflection, and action for systemic change. you are a hypocrite.
you are also a hypocrite if you preach about ableism yet you reduce Mikoto to just a mental illness character. you restrict his complexity, his wholeness, his humanity to just his DID.
you are a hypocrite if you complain about the bad writing of âhis crime being done because of DIDâ because you are reducing his entire character to a mental illness when, in reality, anyone would have broken through a lifetime of suppressed emotions in a society that forcibly hammers down emotions and expression whilst facing abuse, neglect, pressure and expectations, sexism, objectification, and even more abuse and bullying on top of 100 days of consecutive work at a company that practices what people have been referring to as âmodern day slaveryâ for decades, all alone with no support interpersonally, socially, or society-wise, and the first form of stress release you get is substance abuse via downing a whole bottle of Smirnoff Ice vodka despite the clear signs of malnourishment from lack of being able to eat well due to overwork that unlocks far too many emotions in its depressant qualities to a brain thatâs unprepared to handle it and a body not yet able to stomach it. you are ignoring the whole person in favor of constraining them to just one label imbued with so many expectations that reduce a person into the stereotype or trope you preach is there but, in reality, you are the one expecting, searching, and forcing it on. you are the ableistic person you claim yourself to be against.
those who encourage anti-intellectualism and further isolation thus stigmatization of DID through the process of making it taboo to even breathe about if you are not part of the plural in-group (i make a distinction here by phrasing it as plural rather than multiple or pwDID) that theatricalizes DID into a flanderized bastardation plurality of it are part of the problem. as my good oomf said, âyou do not need to be anything or prove anything to have fair discussions on weighty subjectsâ.
anyways, these are just my messy preliminary thoughts so far. iâll likely have more in due time and especially when Mikotoâs T3 interrogation releases.
i explicitly encourage you to debate, add on, or literally any form of dialogue and discourse regarding the points brought up in this post. all i ask is that you actually think about what you have read and what you actually think and believe.
If Iâm being honest, itâs more of a hypotheticalâit would be interesting if true, yâknow? Iâd personally be okay with it because that would further affirm that John and Mikoto are one and the same, but Mikoto has already acknowledged that himself which is more meaningful than a prisonâs rules by far so Iâm content.
Something thatâs driving me nuts is people âfixingâ Mikotoâs writing by saying he has a different mental illness. If you find Mikotoâs writing to be ableist and contributing to stigma, how would swapping one mental disorder in for another fix that?????
âHow did John think he was helping Mikoto? He made his life worse!â as a genuine criticism of Requiem is really funny. Yeah because alters are known for always making your life easier
Something thatâs driving me nuts is people âfixingâ Mikotoâs writing by saying he has a different mental illness. If you find Mikotoâs writing to be ableist and contributing to stigma, how would swapping one mental disorder in for another fix that?????
seeing people (not on here as far as i know...) now making theories that Mikoto doesn't actually have DID and is instead either faking or has a psychotic disorder. Lord Give Me Patience.
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