This lovely commission of the MC was done for my by vgen artist renacchi06 [https://vgen.co/renacchi06], go check her out!
In philosophy there are two categories known as Accidents and Essences, accidents are the properties a things [or in this case character, the Male Protagonist (MC) can have] has, whereas the essence is what defines the identity of the thing or character itself that is essential to it, without which it ceases to be what it was prior.
Dan Salvato calls the Male Protagonist a "cursor", an "interface", and a "blank slate that says whatever is convenient", but these are merely attributes [accidents] attributed to the Male Protagonist that have no bearing on who he fundamentally is - low energy boy who is self deprecating and struggles with self esteem, who shows up for his friend Sayori and meets Yuri and Natsuki on their terms as a good friend and listener should. He consistently engages to all of the girls from a "Ich und du" [I and Thou] manner - seeing the girls as ends - as people to encounter and not projects to fix. He shows up despite feeling like he doesn't belong and engages earnestly in the interests of Yuri and Natsuki in particular trying to understand their own world's they occupy, accepting all their eccentricities and hobbies.
"Vessel", "blank slate", "interface" - these are all descriptions of the Male Protagonist that collide violently with his "MC-ness" which as established is a boy who has a defined, if understated personality and presence, and the way he relates to the girls itself is contrary to how players engage the game, and beyond that the Male Protagonist is a very "bad" dating sim protagonist but a good person, one who never keeps score, never demands romance, and doesn't even think he belongs around the girls [poor guy...], to say he is a vessel is beyond asinine as the Male Protagonist is arguably the worst vessel in the history of dating sims for never optimizing for romance.
Another error Salvato engages in is that of "nominalism", that is to say that things are only what we name them and universal categories don't exist, for example the Male Protagonist is deemed not a character because Salvato had deemed to be not, whereas in Aristotelian/Thomistic thought, [the essentialist position], objects or characters in the case of the Male Protagonist have an essence that exists [in the text of DDLC] regardless of whatever has been said of them, he has a particular "MC-ness" that exists irrespective of Doylist intent ("The MC is a meta commentary on visual novel/dating sim protagonists") as established before, and to say he is somehow not a character like the girls simply because of what is said about him by the fandom, author, or metaverse lore files is absurd. Truth precedes concensus, and the essence of things, not the accidents determine the reality of that thing.
Tldr; Dan is a poo poo head when it comes to philosophy and the Male Protagonist is a real character like the girls.
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