Not gonna get into danganronpa another spoilers because this whole scene is something else that I’m still processing but I absolutely love this line. Like to bring up milgram I think this is an idea which can reflect on lots of the characters as well. The idea of basing your entire existence off of a certain thing/person/ideology and then for something to happen that completely destroys that. Your entire person has been stripped away and just what’s left? You can’t comprehend your own existence or meaning without that specific attachment and you start to question all of your actions based off that…
I can only really think of John, Kotoko, and Es here (and possibly Amane and Mikoto to an extent). And John bases his life off of Mikoto, Kotoko upholding justice, and Es being the warden.
John’s idea of his whole existence and reason for being is Mikoto. It’s the only reason he believes he exists and if he were to fulfill his role he’d “disappear” as he would be completely worthless without him. John tries to repress and ignore his humanity and reduce himself as a tool to protect Mikoto and that’s all he can see himself as. But now Mikoto’s starting to not deny his existence and feels pure hatred for everything about him. And what will happen to John, when the person he’s dedicated his entire life to and desperately wants praise from, denies his existence? What will he be but some worthless existence that is only a burden, to him.
Kotoko. An ideology of upholding justice and punishing evil that has completely overtaken her. She has pushed herself into a role of a “fang” for justice, protecting the weak and persecuting evil. But even so matter how much she tries, she knows her goals are unreachable. She denies relationships and attachments to other people based on this ideology. Kotoko admits that she does feel attachment to the prisoners, but has to deny them in order to fulfill the role as a tool. And believes that pain and violence is necessary to achieving a greater good. Trying to deny any regret because wouldn’t it be easier to believe you’re entirely in the right? She latched onto Es, believing them to be similar as the warden who carries out judgement on wether the prisoners are forgivable or not. But now, Es has denied her whole ideology, her whole existence due to the pain she’s caused. Kotoko wants to believe that what she did was right and that Es, another enforcer of justice would accept her, because that’s how it is.
And Es… they’re the warden of the prison. There’s nothing more to them than that they believe. Es has no memories of their identity or past before Milgram and immediately latched onto the identity given to them, of being the guard. Es took this role as their entire identity, an extension of the milgram system in order to interrogate and judge prisoners. I think Muu put this best.
“Warden-san, we call you "warden" because that's what you are, right? And I was assigned the role of prisoner, but that doesn't mean I'm now nothing but a prisoner at heart, too. After all, I'm still me.”
Es has an unstable sense of identity, to the point they latched on to the first thing they were given in order to give themselves a purpose and a meaning for existence. And Kotoko calling them “imperfect caused them to question their identity. But as the story progresses Es will probably begin to learn about the audiences control and the truth behind what they assumed to be their verdicts. That their will never was 100% their own. Who knows what Es’ past was, but eventually they’ll likely have to tackle it and their whole identity, the warden, the arms of milgram, is gone.
gonna think about Mikoto and Amane here as well. Mikoto, although may not seem to be as first, focuses his entire identity around other people. He’s the friendly sociable guy who’s easy to chat with. But that’s all he believes he should be, I guess. As perhaps this mindset is upheld by an inherent fear of other people rejecting him, so he focuses all his attention and identity on being a social person. He’s never truly friends with people, as perhaps that would be “too close” and open up the possibility for danger. He doesn’t completely deny his identity like the others, but he molds and shapes it in a way that is acceptable to others. He likes what everyone else likes and does what everyone else does so the fear of being rejected for being different won’t hurt him. But now he’s stopped denying John’s existence and his DID, believing himself to be crazy, and to be completely rejected from other people, his entire sense of identity to an extent. And especially with John scaring other people off with the mindset that will help Mikoto, he has now been completely distanced from everyone else and now has to come to terms with himself, but not the ideal persona he put on to be acceptable to other people.
Amane is a more different case as she in a way has rejected that idea, but not completely. Growing up in a cult it’s very likely that she was always conditioned that she was just a servant for god. That all the good things she did were actually god blessing her and all the bad things a fault of her humanity, herself as a person. She is in a unstable relationship with the whole submitting her personhood to her religion, as she sacrificed her ideologies in order to help a cat. But at the core, that wasn’t about herself and her identity, rather a focus on the cat’s life. Amane’s murder was her will. Rejecting everything and fighting for her life in direct opposition to what she has been taught her entire life and how her identity should be, a rejection of that and a glance into “herself”. But once again, this murder wasn’t entirely self motivated. She’s still broken enough that she can’t fully grasp herself as a person besides god and religion. And a large cause of her murder was out of the death of the cat, rather than simply protecting herself. Amane still slips back into the belief that her personhood is entirely dedicated to god. As she tried to convince herself and Es that the only reason she killed is because they deserved religious punishment and she is in the right for carrying out god’s will, once again denying her personal reason for doing so. Reducing herself to “we” on behalf of her religion, that this isn’t herself anymore. Amane is in a limbo between rejecting her personhood for god, but at the same time rejecting the suffering she’s been through in order to save “herself”. Amane’s case is so interesting, as there’s no clear answer of what she believes in here, and it is truly fascinating.
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Katniss is like Lucy Gray this, Katniss is like Sejanus that, and yes find that's all good and true and lovely but Katniss Everdeen is also a direct parallel to Coriolanus Snow and people NEED to start talking about this because it's driving me crazy.
Think about it: they both grew up poor and deeply vulnerable, losing parents at a very young age, with a matriarchal adult (Katniss' mother and Coriolanus' Grandma'am) who fails to provide for them emotionally and physically. They intimately understand the threat of starvation, even developing with stunted growth because of it, and their narrations in the books share a fixation on food. Throughout their childhoods, both experienced constant fear and suffered a fundamental lack of control over their circumstances. Because of this, they're inherently suspicious of the people around them. They resent feeling indebted to others, especially those who have saved their lives. They're motivated almost entirely by family and deeply connected to their communities. Both are used and manipulated by the Capitol, both are forced to perform to survive and despise every inch of it, both are thrown into the Arena and made to kill. Both have a self-sacrificial, genuinely sweet sister figure acting as their conscience. Peeta and Lucy Gray - performers and love interests with a fundamental kindness and sense of hope about them - fulfill markedly similar roles in their narrative. Both contribute to the development of the future Hunger Games, Snow throughout tbosas and Katniss towards the end of Mockingjay.
It's easy to ignore these similarities because, as mirrors of each other, they are exact opposites. Katniss is from District 12, viewed and treated as less than human; Snow is the cream of the Capitol crop, given the privilege of a name with social weight, an ancestral home, and the opportunity of the Academy despite having no more money than a miner from 12. Katniss has no agency over her life, and responds by being kind whenever she's able, while Snow justifies horrendous evils in order to continue his quest for complete control. Katniss does everything she can to protect her family; Snow does everything he can to protect his family's image as an extension of his own ego. Katniss loves her District and connects with its inhabitants on a meaningful level, but Snow is indifferent at best to his peers - the apparent "superior people" - and only engages with his community for personal gain. Katniss emerges from the Arena horrified at herself and the system, but Snow takes his trauma and turns it into an excuse to perpetuate the violence with himself at the top. Katniss cares for Prim until her death and then snaps at the loss of her little sister, while Snow survives on Tigris' blood, sweat, and tears and then torments and abandons her, presumably because she calls him out on his insanity. Snow actively adds to and popularizes the Hunger Games because of his vendetta against the Districts following his childhood wartime trauma - Katniss briefly agrees to a new Hunger Games in the pursuit of vengeance, but later stops them from happening by killing Coin and choosing a life of peace and privacy. Snow is obsessed with revenge, but Katniss empathizes with the Capitolites and does what she can to keep them from suffering. He exists in a cruel system and selfishly upholds it; she exists in a cruel system and works to dismantle it for the good of her family and community, at great personal cost. And Peeta and Lucy Gray are incredibly similar, but Katniss and Peeta forge a relationship of genuine love and understanding that shines in comparison to Coriolanus' obsessive projection onto Lucy Gray.
So, yeah, Katniss is Lucy Gray haunting Coriolanus. But I bet you anything that eighty-something year old President Snow looks at her, the girl on fire, bright and young and brilliant, emerging from a childhood of starvation with a relentless hunger for success, a talented and charming performer helping her win the Games, and he sees the ghost of his own past. And that's why he's so afraid of her! Because if he sees himself in her, then he's up against his own cunning, his own talent for manipulation, his own charisma, his own genius. He's up against the version of himself that he once wished to be, with the nightmare army of his childhood at her back and her star-crossed lover at her side, spewing Sejanus' truths in his own voice. This isn't to say that Katniss ever achieved the level of power and agency that Coriolanus did during her time with the rebellion, but it is to say that Snow was taken down by what truly terrified him - his own morality, come to finish the job.
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See this is what we're telling about re: if what changes your mind is just the word then that's a you problem.
You're not against transids you're against the radqueer community as it currently stands because of how toxic it is. You're veering so hard into trying not to be toxic yourself that you're creating a whole OTHER kind of toxic. This is the same fucking energy as the people who bitch and moan over the word endogenic, or the term natural system (bahahah "innate system" is just the less socially undesirable term for natural system too now that we think about it).
We hate to use the phrase "you all are dumbfucks" here, but, you all are complete dumbfucks. We aren't even going to give this the dignity of a link and web archive. We don't know what else we can say here.
Fucking block us if that makes you uncomfortable; we do hope your ability to analyze the words you use and how you come across gets a bit better over time but it is not our fucking job to teach anyone that.
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⋆。゚☁︎。⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
Alastor's antlers are embarrassingly, pathetically, unbearably sensitive.
He can't for the life of him figure out why—it's not like any of the other transfigured creatures wandering around the underworld were made this way. Most other animal-like sinners don't seem to care about or even acknowledge their characteristics.
Yet here he is, purposefully hiding them away just so that no one will discover his terrible weakness. Oh, what he would give to be like the others if only to ignore their incessantly uncomfortable presence on his head.
Perhaps it was a curse from heaven that made him this way, or karma that he was repaying from his life. Either way, he can't stand being touched.
At least, that's what he thought.
There's no malicious intent behind your hands, no glint in your eye that makes the primal instincts in his head scream at him to melt into the shadows. You're as gentle as can be, fingers running delicately along the intricacies of his antlers and stopping just at the ends of them.
"They're beautiful," you whisper with your eyes blown wide. Your shoulders rise and fall with each rapid breath, probably from the adrenaline of standing so close to an Overlord like this. And Alastor, no less.
Your reliable hotelier. Your first real friend in the hotel. The one whose smile cannot be trusted.
But for some reason, you can't shake the feeling that he's looking at you with pure, genuine appreciation even if his smile is a little wonky.
"Why, thank you, darling!"
He jerks away from you quick as the wind, standing tall once again and towering over you. His expression has morphed into something more strained—you can tell by the way his face creases up as his eyes narrow.
He was the one who decided to invade your personal space while the two of you were arguing. He just didn't think that you would be so bold as to get distracted by his antlers and have the gall to reach out to touch them.
The worst part? The absolute worst part of it all is that no one in all the time he's been in Hell has been gentle with him like that.
Add that to the list of things he despises. Or likes. You're confusing him now.
⋆。゚☁︎。⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
You have some nerve, he thinks.
Your hands have found a new home resting atop his head, with your fingers combing through his hair and tracing up and down the curve of his antlers.
It becomes a nightly routine—him on the barstool or sitting in front of the piano and you standing behind him with your fingers tangled in his hair and your chin on his head, perched right between the horns. Others in the hotel have started to raise a brow, but you don't seem to care.
So when you finally decide to break routine, sitting on the opposite end of the couch from him, his eye twitches.
There isn't even an audience tonight, everyone else already tucked into bed save for Husk behind the bar who's too busy with a bottle to care. The silence between you is heavy as lead.
"Is something the matter?" Alastor finally abruptly asks, eyes narrowed at you from the side. You shift uncomfortably.
"Why would something be the matter?"
He's not in the mood for games right now. "This is the first time you've sat away from me in months," he observes.
You look at him, surprised by his hostility over this. "Well, Lucifer told me that you don't like—"
"Lucifer," he interrupts, head now whipping to the side so he can fully glare at you. "Knows nothing."
You blink at him, stunned. With the way he's acting, he almost seems... annoyed that you've decided to stop being so handsy?
Silence overcomes you again as you just stare at each other, completely at a loss of words. Alastor finally realizes his snappiness and composes himself once more, exhaling through his teeth.
His smile softens at you, missing its usual edge. You know him like this the best—head in your lap and antlers exposed. It's familiar to you in a way that it could never be to anyone else. At least, you hope that's true.
"He knows nothing," the radio demon says one more time for good measure, eyes drifting shut under the weight of your hands.
Alastor has never liked to be touched before. But maybe there is a first time for everything, and maybe the safety of your touch brings him enough ease that you're the first he admits he can tolerate.
His smile says it all. He's content like this, even if he would deny it with his chest if you ever told anyone else.
"Okay," you breathe. "I believe you."
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