Just wanted to draw a quick comic after drawing these outfits.
I'm not sure if we'll start Chapter 6 on a light note, so let's pretend it does for these short moments of ambiguity.
My defense of Milgram’s writing, and how all the T3 decisions either continue the previous setup or add to the themes 👍
This will be my only Milgram discussion post, just getting all my thoughts down, (though I'm down to answer questions anyone might have on the thought process!) This has nothing to do with voting discourse or character interpretation -- I'm strictly looking at the structural/craft perspective of the writing and why it's so skillful.
I know it likely won’t change anyone’s mind at this point, but I figured I’d get my thoughts out there because I think so many clever decisions are being misunderstood! I'll admit, there’s one thing I think was a weird choice, and two things I believe could be removed, but aren’t even bad choices.
I present everything in as simple statements as I can manage, I promise the tone isn’t accusatory or condescending ;-; Over the process of writing this, I realized that maybe people just aren’t engaging with the reflection aspect of the project as much as I originally thought. My major points may not be as intuitive to fans who are consuming it as strictly entertainment, rather than engage with the psychological experiment side of it. I'm not attacking anyone for that, just trying to point out the structure of Milgram and how it fixes a lot of issues people have brought up!
TLDR of this whole thing are three major points that will clear up all criticisms:
Your personal disappointment is not a sign of bad writing
Milgram is not murder mystery media, nor is it a legal discussion
The point of the project is to look at individual people who suck ass and come to understand them by the end (whether or not you forgive them)
#1: I swear I’m not being harsh, but genuinely, a decision that you would have preferred another way is not a sign of bad writing. I think this is more of a general fandom comment lol, but I still feel like it’s important to mention in a defense like this. I understand people being upset their favorite character wasn’t as similar to themselves as they thought, or didn’t have the ending they wanted. That really does suck, and I agree! It just doesn’t make those decisions uninformed or harmful, which is the point of this writing now. This also dips into the difference in cultural values for overseas fans – just because a situation isn’t common in your local area doesn’t mean the plotline is unreasonable or unbelievable.
#2: There is a murder involved, but the stories aren’t crafted to have all the twists and turns and shock factors of typical murder mysteries. No cases are “too boring” or “too simple,” because they’re meant to mimic realistic, straightforward events. Details were withheld per trial to create interest across the project, and isolate variables that could make you change your mind, but the point isn’t to try and trip you up with complex timelines and motives. The point is not to “solve” a case, it’s to understand it. It’s to understand yourself, and how you reached your judgement.
At the same time, it’s made very clear that the law is not involved. Yes, Es cites laws that they know, but the conversation turns to the fact that they get to make their judgement outside of it. It’s repeatedly shown that any judgement, good or bad, harms the characters. (I know we’re on the piss on the poor site, but) I promise audiences are smart enough to witness characters being unfairly imprisoned/punished without suddenly swaying to believe that real people deserve jail time. The writers know this, too.
#3: The characters are not meant to make sweeping generalizations about groups of people. You are presented with a very specific person – they have their own upbringing, experiences, preferences, history. They are not a metaphor for a wider group, they are a metaphor for a single human being you may come across in your life. They are not meant to be “good representation,” and in fact, are specifically crafted to be the very worst of their demographic. The project is asking you to hear them out and see if viewing their human sides can sway your heart at all.
Oftentimes, this can lead to people learning to accept a wider group, (and I believe that is still the purpose of the project,) but a character does not need to be the poster boy for their demographic to make this so. Indeed, the cast being harmful examples of their group is what makes accepting them so important – if audiences can learn to understand even the worst member of the group, it’ll be easier for them to treat the average member they meet on the street with kindness.
Character deaths:
We might be past this now, but at the T3 commencement I saw a lot of vitriol that characters were being killed off. It’s just a #1 criticism, but I still wrote out how it supported the project’s themes [here], and I stand by the fact that withholding songs and content is just as respectful to the characters. Creating a hole in mvs (and not videos altogether, or official art mind you), forces the audience to grieve their absence like a real loss. They aren’t treated like a fictional character who can be revived again and again for your entertainment, their loss is treated with the respect of a real one. Sure, it’s sad, but it’s a good writing decision.
Details that were called “out of the blue” or “retconned”:
Muu and Rei not being in love – Yes, there was a line about love in After Pain, but it was extremely vague and not the first time Milgram had kept the true meaning to a lyric hidden until later. It is not homophobic to have a case designed one way from the beginning, no matter how much potential you think a ship would have had (see #1).
Shidou’s truck driver – Though this is the first detail I agree is confusing, there was an earlier voice clip that confirmed this wasn’t a brand new addition. I think it was held back because of how deeply people got into the organ-donating debate – the team assumed audiences would need both indirect and direct murders to create a truly grey area, and realized that the indirect murder was just as strong on its own, so they focused on that in T2. However, that’s all speculation, so this remains an unnecessary, if harmless addition to his story.
Mahiru’s fiancé – There were clues Mahiru was on the run and sneaking around that people picked up on early (which I ended up expanding on here). The fiancé was not thrown in for shock factor, and in fact explains a lot of the extremes in TIHTBILWY more satisfyingly than “Mahiru was just crazy” would have. (Though all the cases are colored with Japanese culture and values, hers especially is rooted in practices that feel more natural to a native audience.) Just because the situation seems uncommon for you doesn’t mean that’s the case for everyone – it simply means you must put in more effort to analyze her character to truly understand someone experiencing something you haven’t been around.
Multiple eras thing – This is something I’ve heard described as retconned to fix things, but it’s clear that the dates were particularly set for when the societal pressure was strongest for each (Fuuta’s internet age, Kazui’s homophobia, Amane’s religious craze). Still, I’d admit this detail was unnecessary, if harmless. All it did was add a little extra confusion in Haruka and Yuno’s cases, when each case is genuinely just as believable nowadays.
In general, no big details revealed in T3 came out of the blue. There are many fic writers and theory posters who absolutely nailed everything from Muu’s to Mikoto’s case back in T2. There is plenty of proof out there that, by following the voice dramas, interrogations, and not getting stuck on personal assumptions early on, the cases are surprisingly easy to track from the first two trials (see #2).
And, getting into a bit more detail for the heavy hitters, Yuno and Mikoto:
I’ll start off by citing #1. It is not the writer’s fault you projected a girlboss, “I don’t care” attitude onto her. The project has nothing to do with legality, and very much is not promoting any sort of legal consequences, so the fact that you have thoughts on the legal classification of abortion have nothing to do with the writing decisions (see #2). It’s great that you don’t consider abortion a murder and think Yuno shouldn’t be in Milgram, but just as many people believe someone else’s suicide should not be considered murder. Just as many people believe accidental, indirect death should not be considered murder, and shouldn’t be punished with prison. Yuno is not unique in this, she is merely another example of how Milgram is meant to be an unfair prison system.
And, I acknowledge “abortion” is a strong word for Yuno’s fall, but it was not a complete out-of-control accident. She repeatedly contemplated suicide and abortions, feeling as if her future were doomed if she didn’t get rid of it, and then did something reckless anyway (climbing roped-off stairs while in a bad state of mind). There’s also the fact that she got pregnant in the first place, and no matter how accidental the fall was, she still had control over the actions that brought her there in the first place. She holds some responsibility and agency in the loss of the fetus, and whether or not you want to assign guilt, many women in her place would indeed feel it.
There are so many women who think like Yuno – even though her case is not meant to represent all women (see #3), her mindset actually does genuinely resonate with a lot of the population. Yuno herself doesn’t express any religious or legal affiliation on the issue – we are only given a single woman’s emotions and asked to feel for her. Those who dismiss her case are, I believe, the ones who need to learn to empathize with her most. Those are the people who will come across women grieving their abortions in real life, and need to learn to see it from that perspective, in order to offer them understanding.
As for some criticisms on the visuals, it’s logical and effective that the mv captures those emotions through bodily imagery and visceral splattering. Just as the other videos weren’t trying to convince us “this murder was really bad!”, these visuals were only meant to show us “this single human had a strong emotional reaction to these events, and we’re conveying those extremes to you.” Yuno experienced panic and disgust at what was going on inside her body, so the visuals leaned toward the female anatomy to get the audience thinking about it in the same way.
For Mikoto, I agree that choosing DID specifically was a weird final decision. The same result could have come out of a general psychotic break/anger issues/other conditions. I think his story would have worked just as smoothly with something else, and would have been smarter since they knew there would be limited time to dispel myths and talk about details. (Each character has like ~50 min of total content, they must have known that was too small to accurately convey something so commonly misrepresented). This left his childhood undetailed, thus coming off as happy, thus giving an inaccurate representation. The attention to detail in every other aspect (even them including that John did indeed go dormant, and can be called upon again!) only makes these oversights more frustrating.
That being said, #3 is the major rebuttal to Mikoto’s criticisms. His story was not meant to show DID in a shining light – every other character was the worst of their group, the bad stereotype, the harmful member of their outgroup. Yes, it sucks that there’s already so much frightening DID rep, but it also sucks that there are already so many developmentally challenged characters who come off as unfeeling, already so many cult victims who come across as violent perpetrators, already so many queer people who are villainized for loving someone else. Mikoto is not unique in this, he is merely another tool of the narrative for teaching people they can come to an understanding of those they previously considered dangerous.
Further, it’s made very clear that the root of that danger isn’t from his DID. His entire character revolves around his job and overwork. His mistake wasn’t his mental state, it was his decision to bottle things up, refuse to ask for help, and ignore his own pain. Even if his victims weren’t connected to his job, it’s repeated across all three trials that the job stress is what pushed him to that point. John gets a single trial to explore/confirm those protective motives, but the rest of the focus remains on Mikoto’s host in order to drive home that his avoidance until he reached a breaking point contributed to the case (just as all the characters had flaws mingled with things out of their control). His case is definitely the shakiest writing-wise, but the writing decisions were extremely effective in what they set out to do (see #3).
So yeah, in conclusion, I always took the reflection element of Milgram as the very core of the project – it’s the first thing you learn and the driving force of the trials/interactive medium – but going through the popular criticisms, it would make sense that the majority of people view it as the same type of thrilling-murder-entertainment as other shows. They are expecting scriptwriters to try and make them happy, and give them a complex case to crack, and offer generalized characters/plots that are meant to represent massive groups as a whole. There’s absolutely nothing wrong if that is the case! I just encourage you to look at it through this lens every now and then :) It can teach you a lot about yourself and the way your mind, morals, and kneejerk reactions work. Using it as a conversation and not as separate entertainment makes the project so much more satisfying and meaningful overall.
Agreed!!! I particularly feel strongly about point (1). I've seen a number of critics that I think seriously needs a wake up call. But I agree with (2) and (3) a lot as well (though they are closely linked to/part of point (1)).
Also if I may tack on something I liked from an interview answer from Yamanaka, point (3) just made me think of this immediately:
"In MILGRAM -ミルグラム-, we want viewers to think and consider things, but whether their considerations are correct or not is not really a big deal. // Rather, I would be happy if they could confront their own emotions and imagination through the characters from various perspectives, such as, “If this were the case, I would not forgive them.” or “If this were the case, I might forgive them.” This is not only important in MILGRAM -ミルグラム-, but also in life."
"[...] That’s why we want to treat the characters not just as two-dimensional characters, but as human beings. We want people to think about how they would feel if such a person actually existed."
Interview translation here by @/maristelina
I believe this means Yamanaka's intention was for the characters to be treated closer to human rather than a targeted social criticism/PSA. Humans get affected/influenced by real societal issues, mental health struggles or just problems in general. However, humans do not live out their lives to become a moral/social message.
I don't want to talk about Mikoto I just want to share a game I love very much.
Alice Mare is an adventure game with a bit of exploration and subtle horror where you take the role of Allen, an amnesiac boy who, after losing his parents, ends up on a home for lost children taken care by a man who likes to be called 'Teacher' with five other orphans.
This part onwards will have spoilers from the game. PLEASE GO PLAY IT. It's not very long and it's cheap on Steam, and there's also a LOT of character building (but not much interaction sadly) and if you like Milgram I'm sure you will like it. There's also a novel somewhere that adds a lot to the history. I played this game a long time ago and I might have missed some details too, sorry!
I must say too, the character are inspired by fairytales! I might talk about the others too sometime, but I'll center on one of my favorites of the bunch.
By the way, I am not a system so I can't say how good or bad her rep is since it also follows the 'omggg system is a murderer :00000' type of thing?? Better than Mikoto it might be. Anyways, off you go.
Letty and Rick!
SO! Letty is one of the orphan kids on the home, and she's the typical happy go lucky kid, cheerful and very sweet. She mentions having a brother and there's two wardroves and beds on the room, but she's the only one there. When asked, she says that her brother Rick 'only wakes up when I say good night', which is the first sign of THE DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER BABY.
Because yeah, Letty is the host of a system.
That's explored when Allen enters a dream seemingly made of the memories of the people in the home, which manifest as world you can enter by going inside closets. That way we learn Letty grew very poor, to the point where she had little to eat and could have resorted to mushrooms, hence the game over you can see there after eating some.
She was abused, berated and physically beaten, often abandoned in the middle of the forest because they have no food to feed another mouth. We are told the mother abandoning her alone constantly in the forest, away from home and cold. That's probably where Rick comes into play, where he would comfort and talk to Letty, taking her home when the night falls.
-> That would explain why Rick only comes at night. Letty is scared of the dark because she used to stay alone in the forest very late, a pretty dangerous thing for a girl so young. We don't know their ages exactly, but by demeanor and appeareance any of them don't seem older than 13 or 12, and knowing her backstory the abuse and neglect probably started very young. (If I remember correctly, the novels have a timeskip of around 8 years and Allen seems to be 17+, so it's possible.)
SYMBOLISM OF RICK???
Okok, so. This post is a mess, but the Worlds Allen visits are representations of the children's homes, and there's different puzzles around you need to do before progressing. With that:
With this. Is the killer Letty or Rick?
• There's this bird that asks you to play spot the difference in two paths that seem the same, but aren't. I interpretate this as, probably, the memory problems both of them have. There's something wrong in one, it's different than it should be. One remembers it differently, as the other doesn't.
Letty and Rick's names start with left and right respectively, and funnily enough, the left path is the "original" and the right one is the one with the differences.
-> It's not clear who pushes the witch to the flames. There's a sprite right before that's seemingly Rick talking with Letty looking horribly disfigured and zombie-like, probably how the mother saw (because Allen ends up pushing the woman, since he takes place of the killer in the dreams).
Though, later we get to read Letty's notebook (esential part of the game I totally skipped, but Teacher gave every character a notebook where they could write whatever for him to see if anyone was going to be the host os a dream world or smth I don't remember very well sorry-), and we find out Letty was the one who burnt the house and the mother inside, and it's hiding it from Rick.
Rick, for his own separate notebook, feels guilty for existing, and ask why Teacher gave him a bed and clothes different from Letty's, asking if it's her love whats keeping him alive.
I love how the games treats each of them as their own people, and it's reinforced by Teacher giving Rick agency even if the child is insecure about his existence OMGG-
I must say this game is from 2013, later on steam on 2016, so it might be a bit outdated, but with all the controversy with Requiem I just wanted to talk about it. Is it correlated? Nope. Do I care? Nope. I will keep talking of the things I like until the day I die because that makes me happy.
Sorry if this doesn't make much sense or if I'm a bit gone from here. I'll try to keep the posts going and I'll finish some of my drafts.
If you got here, please play Alicemare. I'll do more analisys maybe if my head is still on it's place for then. Have a nice day (≧(ｴ)≦ )
Do you remember the theory about Es being a mechanical life form?
So, I rewatched Vivi: Song of the Fluorite Eye a while ago, and Vivi's final song fits perfectly with T3.
As usual, I'm doing some kind of crossover/overlay, a "what if" kind of thing.
Credits for text: Few lines were taken from mewsic's cover on it and few I found on wiki
ru ver you can find on my telegram channel link in pinned post
Have I mentioned I'm a big ahh pokemon mystery dungeon fan? Like, I've talked about some fangames I got into a few weeks ago, but I swear to god PMD has such a special place in my heart I can't say it enough.
They should bring it back. Cmon Pokemon Company, new PMD game when?????
Fuck it, how do you all think Es would die, if they do? A lot of people seem to agree the one cross from the novels might be a good callback, and I agree, but I wanna hear the people.
Something, something, milgram Oc's I'm working on because I wanted to do a precuel/Es as a prisoner shit and I got WAY TOO DEEP. I HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED WRITTING.
So, yeah. There's just five (with es) instead of ten bc I'm NOT prepared to write ten well developed characters.
And yes, there's headcanons.
I should finish the four other things I have but fuck it, this is my happy place stop pressuring me (there was no pressure from no one).
How do you think Es is going to destroy Milgram? Do you think they'll find a way to contact Touchi or will he contact them somehow?
okayyyy so I did NOT read the novels so I’m kinda lost on that bit. But since the novels are paid and the main project is free, I doubt that this is gonna be required reading. Like they’re not going to suddenly make a character show up that 20% of fans know..and it would be a bit confusing to introduce a new character like that, at the very end of a character based series. It feels like a deus ex machina.
but, I think to end milgram, they’re gonna do something that fucks up audience enjoyment. Something that punishes voting discourse, etc etc. themes and such. Maybe there’s a monologue. Maybe the voting website locks. Or maybe, because so many people still voted and had discourse over it, they’re gonna point that out. I think by destroying milgram it’s more about the systems downfall. It’s not like they’re gonna get a stick of dynamite and evacuate all the prisoners lol. Es with a sledgehammer would be a great sight though.
I may be saying this partially because I just watched cabaret which is The Musical About Bad Systems and so it’s going in my head like popcorn in a microwave.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
stormborns
yousharknotpass
gracieabrams
vaporwave
jimmyeatworldofficial
