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#but i want to believe that takemichi manages to bring him back to his senses eventually...
revengesworn · 6 months
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thinking about agency + mikey and a different take on the final arc/ending. this may be controversial and i absolutely welcome discussion + disagreement here! in fact i kind of crave it. please.
honestly mikey is such a tragic character in part because he has like. no agency in his life, or at least very little. like he has no control. all because he's been cursed for something that wasn't even his fault whatsoever, he's basically destined to lose control at some point, and there's nothing he can do to save himself, not without relying on someone else to end the curse.
it's got to be so frustrating. he's never making choices in the series with full knowledge of what the future will bring. and in the end, when he's told about his fate in the futures takemichi returned from, he finally makes his own decision for once! he's finally able to achieve something, even if it's through sacrificing himself - he's able to protect his friends and achieve a happy future for them. it's not something he wanted for himself, but he wants it more than he wants them to suffer.
but in the end, that decision is snatched away from him. takemichi goes back in time and everyone is suddenly in danger again - and his decision has been completely ignored. draken dies as a result - and in the end, takemichi does too. of course, in the end, they DO manage to save everyone, and takemichi's decision was the right one, but...
on the one hand, should mikey be allowed to sacrifice himself for everyone? takemichi and the series itself would say no, because no-one should be forced to take on everything alone. mikey is wrong in his assumption that he has to bear everything by himself, it's unhealthy, and sometimes, when you care about someone, you can't just respect all their decisions and let them do whatever they want.
on the other hand, wasn't it still his choice to make? mikey never gets the chance throughout the series to choose a future for himself, and ultimately he plays no part in saving the people he cares about or himself. takemichi chooses to place everyone's lives in danger (and i'm not personally blaming him for this at all mind you) against mikey's wishes, and people actually do die as a result! if it weren't for the (entirely unexplained) miracle at the end of the series, they would've stayed dead, too.
idk where i'm going with this. i just can't help but feel that mikey's own powerlessness is extremely tragic. even then, i'm inclined to want to believe in the series message - that no-one should be forced to take everything on all alone. but is it okay to ignore mikey's own agency in getting him to change his mind?? it's just really interesting to me. does this make any sense at all or am i just saying words at this point idk i'm tired
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darkimpulsed · 3 years
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DANGANRONPA VERSE // details.
okay, I thought about it last night and here’s what I got. Though before I start, here’s your warning for triggering content here including manipulation, gaslighting, murder, & threatening suicide to get what you want.
Before the Tragedy happened, Mikey had already lost Shinichiro, Emma and Baji similarly to how he did in canon. Of course, things played out a little differently due to there being no time travel in this verse, but Takemichi was still present and had played a major role in saving Draken’s life beforehand.
After the Tragedy happened, Mikey fought on the side of hope for a while beside Takemichi, Draken and the rest of Toman that remained - but he was empty the whole time. On the verge of giving up, he was extremely close to giving into despair. Toman noticed this fact, but none of them knew how to help him.
At one point, he was kidnapped by Izana. Izana manipulated him, convincing him that his friends couldn’t be trusted and that they had no faith in him, that they didn’t care about him - after all, they never once saw through his facade of being okay, and they’d never once tried to help him, right? Not really. He made Mikey believe that his fall into darkness was inevitable, no matter how hard he tried to fight it. It was easy to do - Mikey had already been on the edge of believing these things for quite a while, now.
Izana then presented him with Kisaki, the one who’d killed his sister and was responsible for Baji’s death, too. He offered him the chance to kill him, telling him that he’d let him go if he did - and Mikey took him up on that offer. When he killed Kisaki, he didn’t feel a thing.
It didn’t take long for Mikey to fall into darkness after that. Izana told him that spreading despair was all he was good for, and that it was the only way to take out his anger about everything that had happened to him. Mikey refused to go back to Toman, believing that Izana was the only one who still cared about him - and whenever he had second thoughts about what he was doing, Izana threatened to kill himself to keep him in line. Mikey couldn’t stand the thought of his own brother’s death being his fault, and so went along with whatever Izana suggested without complaint. He was manipulated into believing that the higher-up members of Toman who remained wanted Izana dead, so he began killing them one by one. Only Draken and Takemichi remained alive at the end of it all. This process took about a year or so.
But Mikey still kept a tiny bit of reluctance to kill innocent people. At the very least, he didn’t seem to get any joy out of spreading despair like everyone else did - he was just empty. So Izana decided to show him a modified version of the brainwashing video that he’d somehow got his hands on. It wasn’t as powerful as the real thing, but it affected Mikey’s mind enough that he egan to enjoy despair. Mikey suspected he knew what was going on when Izana presented him with the video, but he was far gone enough to just let it happen - and after that, he very quickly became addicted to the feeling of spreading despair to other people.
Mikey became a valuable asset to Despair after that. Though sometimes he still has doubts about what he’s doing, and it’s possible that he could still be saved... either way, Takemichi certainly hasn’t given up on him yet.
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