i haven't really been big on discussing MILGRAM here, because im not a fan of making posts tearing a thing apart, and i haven't been a fan of trial three as a whole (besides Amane, who i do like their handling of).
but wow
requiem and the attached voice drama was almost IMPRESSIVELY bad, wasn't it?
im gonna preface this post with two pieces of information:
one, this account is run by a DID system. i can speak from my own knowledge and experiences, but i do NOT speak for systems as a whole. experiences do differ, and im not the spokesperson for all systems ever.
two, while we ARE a system, i am not a medical professional by any means. take any information i state regarding the medical side of this disorder with a grain of salt.
Mikoto's case has been one I've been... cautious about. I'm not going to say "having a violent alter is bad and stereotypical", because admittedly, WE fall into that stereotype. That being said, there's ways to handle situations like that- trial two made me optimistic in that John was very "humanized". He was portrayed sympathetically, less like the "insane, psychopathic alter" and more like someone doing his best to protect himself and Mikoto in a bad situation.
Trial 3 then proceeds to inform us that his victims were all innocent bystanders, including a 17 year old girl and a single mother, not the actual causes of Mikoto's stress.
Ignoring the inconsistencies between what the MV and audio drama describe vs the actual known logistics of the disorder, this makes ANY defense fall flat. A version of the case where the victims were people who had hurt or wronged Mikoto makes it a case that would be debatable even without the DID twist, with the usage of the disorder serving the role of obfuscating the crime's details rather than being what the entire question of its morality is based on.
This version is, yet again, a stereotypical "insane" alter who is a serial killer. He was "born" 48 hours ago, and immediately jumped to killing random people on the street.
That's another thing that's irked me about this case, something which is hard to put into words. The constant "babying" of John- constantly throwing around terms of him being a "newborn", of crying like one, literal babying of the guy. While the voice drama does its part in having Mikoto acknowledge it was still his body and thus he needs to take the accountability for what happened, the report and Es almost overly talk about John like he's... literally a child.
What an interesting way to talk about him?
...Positives! Positive things! The MV's framing is actually probably the only positive. I think the music video is framed and done extremely well as a DID depiction, it's such a shame it's attached to the song and the context of... this. This entire story.
I don't like that the entire story hinges on basically whether or not you'd be willing to accept DID as an explanation for an insanity plea. I don't like the babying of the system and it's members. I don't like the insistence Mikoto has not been deemed guilty by MILGRAM itself. I don't like that this is a stereotype played entirely straight with no room for the discussions that made Mikoto's case interesting to begin with.
I don't like that trial three contradicts previous information- John was certainly not protecting them by killing innocent people. I don't like that the story truly treats Mikoto as "cured", John existed for 48 hours plus the time in MILGRAM and is gone. I don't like that it doesn't seem to take the effort to portray any of what makes a dissociative disorder a DISSOCIATIVE disorder besides the existence of John.
I don't like that, for all intents and purposes, you could say Mikoto had some sort of breakdown and forgot after and the story remains exactly the same.
It feels like the DID angle was added purely for the shot of John punching the warden back in trial one. Otherwise... this is just a story that villainizes very real illness. There's ways to go about violent alters. They DO exist. This is unfortunately not an attempt to discuss that reality, and is just used for a "moral dilemma" that adds nothing to any conversation and has been done many times over.
The concept is still as disgustingly ableist as it was 10 years ago, by the way!