Who does everyone represent in Bad End Theatre? The narrative makes it very clear who the Maiden and the Overlord are based on, but I want to dig deeper. So, here are my thoughts. (Spoilers ahead)
The Hero: I believe that the Hero is based on society, specifically the people in it who may be devoutly religious considering how his whole job is to rescue the Maiden from the demons. However, it’s shown that he does have the ability to learn and grow from this if he chooses to. In some endings, he refuses to budge on his principles and just causes more suffering for everyone by going on what he sees as a just crusade but is actually a killing spree. However, in the true ending, he is capable of change and assisting the Maiden and the Overlord. So, he could even be a specific person that Tragedy knew who made it his mission to rescue her from sin even when she didn’t need ii or want it. Maybe he was a priest.
The Maiden: her role is pretty obvious, she’s based on Tragedy and she was always told that she’d be captured by demons and to stay away, only to venture out to find out for herself out of a curiosity if the forbidden as well as just thinking she may as well find out if it was going to happen to her anyway. Much like how most likely Tragedy was told that homosexual sinners would try to convert her or something like that and then she was like cool let’s find out if they’re actually that bad and it turned out that they weren’t that bad. It’s also telling how the Maiden is the catalyst for pretty much every bad ending in the theater, showing how Tragedy views everything that happened as her fault for being to curious and straying from the path she was given.
The Underling: this was the most difficult one for me to figure out. Which is a shame because they’re my favorite character because they’re so silly and tiny and they chomp on things and eat people sometimes. But, they also have a role in this analysis, and I think that I’ve finally got it. Feel free to offer some other ideas for this one though as they’re a lot less set in stone and obvious than the others, but I think that the Underling represents queer infighting. Think about it, the demons are outcasts to human society, and even the Overlord is still just another demon who happens to be in power. Why does the Overlord get to have this power over the other demons? Well, the Overlord is a bit more of an acceptable demon than the Underling. Let’s think about it in terms of the real world queer people that they’re based on. The Overlord is a cis lesbian, and the Underling is nonbinary. Both of them are discriminated against, both of them are outcasts, but society has progressed a lot in favor of cis queer people, but as much as we’re in the same boat and should support each other, people under the trans umbrella are behind cis queer people in terms of achieving broader acceptance in society. That’s why often the face of pride movements end up being cis queer people while trans people are left behind. The Overlord gets to at least have privileges within the world of demons, but the Underling is left among the rubble. That’s why the other demons are so eager to overthrow the Overlord and claim some of that power for themselves. Of course, the Overlord doesn’t want to give up her power for them and is just barely clinging onto her image of authority as well. They should be able to get along and help each other and hold power together. Why does there only have to be one overlord anyway? But there’s never an option from the Overlord to do that, so the Underling and the rest of the demons are forced to resort to more violent measures to take control even though the Underling doesn’t actually really seem to want to hurt the Overlord especially since in order to get their true ending, they can’t actually kill her. Even the ones who don’t really want to and end up feeling more peer pressured into it because otherwise they’re letting someone with more power walk all over them like the Underling. Maybe in the real world, the Underling was a friend that the Player had who always felt overlooked and overshadowed whenever the Player would talk about queer things as trans people, and especially nonbinary people like themself would be left out of the conversation. Maybe this resulted in a buildup of tension and maybe a fight broke out between them and the Player didn’t fully understand where they were coming from and felt betrayed because maybe the Underling really did do something cruel to them after so long of feeling like they were silenced. But, since in order to get their true ending, the Overlord has to spare the Underling, it can be assumed that the Player and the Underling were able to come to an understanding with each other and make up and become friends again.
The Overlord: The Overlord is very clearly based on the Player that Tragedy fell in love with. She’s depicted as a demon because she is someone that Tragedy could not have and also likely because they were always told to associate homosexuality with demons. Maybe the Player also wasn’t raised as strongly religious as Tragedy presumably was considering how the Overlord also remarks that humans weren’t to be trusted and it was the Maiden who was drawn into the Overlord who was the forbidden one while there was no one in control of the Overlord forbidding her from taking the Maiden, only the Hero who was only trying to protect the Maiden from her. So she may have been a less religious person who was queer and Tragedy was told to stay away from. But of course, Tragedy and thus the Maiden did not stay away from her, and they fell in love and we all know how that ended.
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