#milgram voting discourse

[oboetemasuka]

Trial 2 is over...

Have the final voting graph.

I'm letting it run for another day just in case something changes (like it did with Amane)

The final voting board... Take it in...

[oboe-o-oboete]

Kotoko voting update

[Image ID: Graph of Kotoko's votes since the start of her voting to today. The vertical axis has labels from 72 to 76. /end ID]

[oboetemasuka]

#(obviously the percentages can still change but I really don't think they will that much)

Can confirm that Yuno's voting graph has been pretty much a flat line since about an hour after voting opened. (Compared to Amane, who is the reason I made the voting graph in the first place)

Dunno if this adds much, but Yuno did spend some time in the guilty zone in T1.

Yuno T1: Okay, so we know she's called a "murderer" but it seems like the most likely thing that happened is she had an abortion; very unclear though that might be a misinterpretation. Do we forgive her?

Yuno T2: Alright so it's pretty much confirmed to be abortion, glad that's cleared up. Do we forgive her?

Yuno T3: Okay so it wasn't an abortion. She fell down the stairs and accidentally killed an unborn child. Do we-

Yeah that checks out.

[meowkusunoki]

i feel like a lot of people are seeing yuno's moral dilemma as being "can you forgive her for what she did?" when to me that's not what it is at all. yes, the miscarriage being an accident makes her completely innocent, but that's the point. the moral dilemma is "this innocent woman is asking you not to forgive her. will you respect her wishes, or impose your will on her for her own good?" which links to milgram's greater theme of there being no good outcomes because it is an inherently abusive system.

also, yuno has been completely robbed of autonomy in all of this. the pregnancy was an accident, the miscarriage was an accident. and now, we're robbing her of her autonomy yet again by forgiving her despite her explicitly asking us not to do so.

(this isn't me saying we shouldn't forgive yuno. we 100% should. lesser evil and all that.)

[dearmahiru-archive]

i am excited for purge march but i'm also dreading it at the same time. all of the faceless victims have been revealed thus far and considering amane's victims is another child... if milgram continues the trend of being shocking last minute and decides to outright depict amane's murder i am going so mad. we all know the casual fanbase cannot handle shocking imagery without immediately labeling said prisoner as evil

[oboetemasuka]

To add a few points (pardon the ramble; I was such a nerd about the voting):

At least having the voting overlap allowed for some sort of pushback, even if it was a bit weak. They didn't overlap in T1, and Amane slipped into the guilty zone in the end. I'll always wonder if an overlap would have brought Amane back up in T1. (In comparison, Yuno was in the red until Fuuta's trial brought her safely back in the blue; I made a post about that)

It's telling that Mikoto's votes started going up once Amane's verdict was finalized. But even so, his votes hadn't fallen drastically to begin with. Perhaps just enough people were upset about the discrepancy for it to show but not to make a big difference.

During their entire overlap, it seems that they fell at the same rate (though Mikoto had some steeper drops since it was the beginning). Amane hit an equilibrium 12 days before the end, but why was it going down steadily before then, so close to the 50% mark, with no signs of stopping until it did?

And even on their respective first days, Mikoto had a slight lead.

At the peak... (74.83% vs. 78.01%) (from what I was able to gather)

And after 24 hours. (73.06% vs. 76.68%)

yamanaka putting amane and mikoto right after the other was honestly such a power move because it shows exactly what people are willing to let slide if you're an adult male who's cosplaying as a perfect victim and not a little girl who's lashing out, because actually what the hell was this

I mean this with all the understanding I can muster: How in the nine circles of Dante's Inferno did people watch a little girl get waterboarded and tazed on-screen, and then watch a man complain about how hard his work was, call his mom, and go "guys I'm so sorry :(" for two minutes straight, and come to the collective conclusion that the latter was more deserving of forgiveness and sympathy than the former. Like sorry Mikoto, I'm sure being overworked was hard for you and I acknowledge that what you went through is pretty representative of what a lot of men your age in Japan have to go through, but this girl had her cat fucking killed by her authority figure. And you wanna especially know why this makes my eyebrows raise so high? In case you forgot, here's what their voting looked like at the beginning of their trial.

Amane's vote was going down consistently, constantly, and quickly, to the point where I am fully convinced that if her voting ended just a few days after it actually did, she would've been unforgiven. Meanwhile Mikoto? His voting only went down by 4%. And during the entire duration of both of their votes, his was 20-16% higher than Amane's. And now that I have the gift of hindsight... I just can't help but wonder why. I mean, I know why, but also why?

[kiqilinn]

milgram?

MILGRAM GOD. MILGRAMMMMM

[good-beans]

Why we should continue voting prisoner 5972 guilty in T2👏 (aka @oboetemasuka )

Has admitted she will keep causing Amane pain to if left to her own devices

Has admitted she will keep causing us pain to if left to her own devices

Has the habit of getting in other prisoner’s ears, and persuading them to cause harm too (I myself have fallen victim to this -_-)

Consistently and continuously beats up Fuuta – to the point of claiming one third of the the Fuuta-gets-beat-up fics on ao3!! (ty @mulberriesandtea for the stats 👍)

Keeps encouraging Amane to kick Shidou’s a– well, actually, that one’s okay I guess

Worst of all, she’s a band kid!!!!

Milgram prison is not safe with her free 😤😤😤 Do what you will for final verdicts, but vote guilty T2 for your own safety !!

(Psst, go read her stuff here! It's awesome!!)

[oboetemasuka]

Decisiveness order

I'm feeling funny. Let's sort the T2 verdicts in order of decisiveness.

Shidou: 81.98% innocent

Yuno: 78.55% innocent

Fuuta: 76.82% innocent

Muu: 74.46% guilty

Mikoto: 74.38% innocent

Mahiru: 69.84% innocent

Haruka: 54.97% guilty

Kazui: 54.67% innocent

Amane: 51.32% innocent

At the time of this writing, Kotoko is at 74.58% guilty, which would put her between Fuuta and Muu in terms of decisiveness.

[oboetemasuka]

I just wanted to add a few more anecdotes.

Based on Pai's graph, Mahiru was consistently hovering around 72%. She got a boost to 73% after Kazui's video, but she was affected by the guilty shrine; probably August 8, as she lost about .4% by the following day. (Incidentally, that's when I joined the voting.) From there, she lost about 4% until Amane's video came out, and then she recovered .3% on the last day.

In contrast, Kazui was a full-out tug of war. Even if it seemed like the red was winning, he was never more than 2% behind. I guess you could say that Mahiru's "average day" vote went down drastically, while Kazui's was already divisive as-is.

I wonder what that means for Amane. Yes, I noticed that her percentage drop is slowing down; I think she could "survive" to Mikoto's video. Then there's the case with her first trial. She started around 80%, but she just kept dropping until she was just below the guilty range. If Mikoto's video hadn't been delayed then, would she have gotten a boost back into the blue?

Okay, time for me to stop overthinking.

So about Amane's voting percentage. I've seen a fair few people worried that if her Innocent percentage is dropping, it must be because there are more people voting her Guilty than people voting her Innocent. However, this is not necessarily the case, and while it may be my own biases speaking here, I actually think there's a pretty good chance there are currently more people voting her Innocent than Guilty, and her percentage is dropping only due to a mathematical quirk. It's a pretty simple concept really, it's because the percentage changes per day don't relate directly to what votes happened during that day, but rather, they tend towards what can be considered an "average day"'s vote. I'll explain under the cut if anyone's confused.

Also this will be focused on Amane but it can be applied to any prisoner vote that follows a similar trend.

Also also as a disclaimer I am not very educated on complex statistics so a lot of my claims might be a bit off.

So it's pretty clear looking at the data, a lot of people voted Amane Innocent during the first few days after Purge March came out, but then stopped voting for one reason or another. I'll call these people "One Time Voters" to give them some name.

To visualize, let's take some manageable numbers to understand what's going on. Although hundreds of thousands of people vote every day, let's take some smaller numbers, and say that after One Time Voters were done voting, Amane's situation looked something like this.

30 votes for Innocent, 10 votes for Guilty. So a 75%/25% split, which I believe is around the highest peak Inno percentages got. We'll call this "Day 0." After this, One Time Voters stopped voting, and Innocent was winning by 20 votes.

Now, let's say, for the sake of simplicity, that every day after this, 6 people voted her Innocent and 5 people voted her Guilty. Obviously this is a massive oversimplification, not everyone votes the same way every day, but I'm trying to explain the basic idea here. Thus, Day 1 would look like this.

36 Inno votes, 15 Guilty votes. So, a difference of 21 votes in the favor of Innocent. You would think this means her inno percentage would go up, yeah?

Except, if you do the math here, the spilt is 70,59%/29,41% (rounding a bit liberally here). Her percentage went down almost 5%.

That seems weird. Let's extend this over a few more days and see what it looks like afterwards. Let's skip to Day 20.

150 Inno votes, 110 Guilty votes. The difference is now 40 votes, double what it was originally.

And yet, when you do the math, the split is now 57,7%/42,3% (again rounding a decent bit). Again, even though in absolute terms Amane is even further from being guiltied than before, it sure doesn't look like it!

This is what I meant at the start. The percentages in the website don't change based on the results of an individual day, but rather, they change to always more closely align with what an "average day" of voting looks like. In this example, the "average day" is 6 Inno votes, 5 Guilty votes, for a total of 11 and thus a 54.54%/45.46% split. This creates a particular behavior, which can be observed by looking at Day 21.

156 Inno votes, 115 Guilty, a difference of 41 votes and a 57.56%/42.44% split. You'll notice the inno percentage went down from ~57,7% to ~57.56%, a 0.14% decrease. But the decrease from Day 0 to Day 1 was almost 5%, remember?

That's because the average split (54,54%) is acting as an asymptote of the function Inno percentage vs Time. I say it "acts like" because I know 0% about statistics so I'm not sure if that term is appropriate here, but it's a good visualization of what's happening I think. In case you somehow don't know what that is, I'll give you an example.

That's the function 1/x. As you can see, it has a horizontal asymptote in f(x) = 0. That means it always gets closer and closer to the constant 0, but never "touches" it (no matter what it may look like), and certainly never "crosses" it. Additionally, as you can see, it follows a very particular behavior. It has a very steep "drop-off" at "the beginning" (mathematicians please don't hate me for the very coloquial terms I'm using), then gets progressively "slower" as it approaches the asymptote.

Sound familiar? It's what we were talking about before, how the bigger the difference between the current voting percentage and the average, the faster it drops. It's "correcting" towards the asymptote, the average.

If you've been paying close attention, you'll notice this is vaguely what's been happening with Amane's Inno percentage. Here's a graph from this post by iris-drawing-stuff (thank you so much I love graphs). It only goes up to the seventh of September, but the behavior can already be observed.

As you can see, after the brief spike immediately after the release of Purge March, Amane's percentage drops like 5% in just about two days, but then it took it around 4 or 5 days to drop another 5. And anecdotally, I think I saw it only drop like ~0.22% in a day recently, so it would take almost five days to drop just 1 percent.

And you can even see a similar thing on Mahiru's and Kazui's. Mahiru, who didn't have many oddities, stayed practically constant around her aymptote, while Kazui slowly corrected for the whole "circumstance" of people voting out of superstition.

Again, this is much more complex than a simple asymptote, because there's a lot of fluctuation here. People join the fandom, people stop voting, etc. But we can probably (I am not very educated on this) expect it to "slow down" even more in the following days, until it reaches a certain average percentage it will hover around until voting ends. Until this happens, it is highly unlikely Amane's inno percentage goes up significantly ever again, but there is a certain percentage it will likely not go under. It's also important to keep in mind that since there's only a finite time the voting will be open, we might not get as close to the 'asymptote' as we possibly could.

The one exception, as many have already predicted, might be the release of Double, where One Time Voters may return to the page and vote Amane Inno once again. Frankly, I think at that point there will be too many days of "average" for that to make a noticeable difference, but even if it does go up, it will likely go down again quickly after One Time Voters leave again. Be prepared for that.

The final question is logically: where is the asymptote? That I cannot tell you, but it's very clear that it's around 50% and it isn't a blow-out on either side. So keep voting, regardless of whether you're voting her Inno or Guilty, because her situation is still very delicate.

Personally, by eye-balling it, I'm sorta hoping she hovers somehwere between 52 and 53 inno percent, but I'm immensely biased. I just don't think my heart will be able to take it if she ever goes below 51%, and I will cry if she ends up with like 49% and gets guiltied.

I don't want to give anyone too much false hope. There is absolutely a chance she ends up Guilty. I'm just saying it's not certain in the slightest, at least not for now.

I did try my best to figure something out with the power of overlaying images, but I'm not confident on sharing my results because they suck and are probably massively biased and I have a phobia of being wrong on the interned (/j) (though the things I did do suggest Amane never drops below 50% inno, I hope I'm right about that and I'm not just doing insane gymnastics for the result I want).

Anyways, I hope that could give some insight on what the deal with Amane's percentage might be, though again I am not a mathematician by any means, feel free to correct me if when you see anything I got wrong. Take care! And Inno voters, don't lose hope! And Guilty voters, uh, thanks for reading too!

[slothfuljeremiah]

i find it so funny when other amane inno voters post their theses on why she should be forgiven but add a disclaimer like "no offense to amane guilty voters though!!" could not be me. if you see me posting about her there is Always an implicit "full offense to guilty voters" that's a whole ass child. i don't care about shidou btw

[the-sol-eater]

Okay listen I don't want Amane to be unforgiven, at all, and even though I'm pretty confident her verdict will turn up as forgiven given how the votes have gone I am aware there is a sliver chance that she could barely get into unforgiven, and that scares me That being said however, the one positive that would come from her being unforgiven would be seeing Jackalope's reaction because could you fucking imagine "Oh, you didn't forgive her because you thought you could change her worldview? Tough luck with that" [One Trial Later] "Are you actually fucking kidding me, say sike right fucking now."

[meowkusunoki]

see even back when i joined the fandom (around the time cat dropped) i was a little apprehensive about fuuta's t2 forgiven because like. how would he interpret good things finally starting to happen to him right after he started practicing amane's religion?

of course an unforgiven verdict would also have made things worse because we'd be psychologically torturing an already very unstable man. so really it's a lose-lose. but i do think that his indoctrination makes a lot more sense when you take into account our/es' role in it.

[oboetemasuka]

(I hope I don't jinx anything... *knocks on wood*)

I've been looking at a voting graph (from Pai, I think it was). Pretty much everyone had a noticeable bump at the time of the next video coming out.

Maybe Amane might get a voting boost when Mikoto's video comes out (and Kotoko's too, since their voting will overlap by a day). I remember when Mahiru and Kazui's votes went up after The Purge March came out. It seemed as if people went to vote for Amane and thought, "Oh no, why is Kazui guilty? Better fix that!"

Man I hope when mikoto voting starts people will remember to vote amane Innocent again because things are not looking good over there :/

[kkoct-ik]

milgram analysis: 'john' (orekoto, オレ) did not form to vent mikoto's stress through murder, and he is not the alter that 'did it'

(mainly me musing on how DID functions, as well as analysing the text. enjoy)

will be referring both to wiki and milgram-en's (Neoplasm, interrogation) translations. mainly wiki for gesturing, and milgram-en for textual analysis. thank you so much!

note on names: for the purposes of this post:

09 refers to the person/system, all parts included

mikoto refers to 09 with the exception of orekoto/'john' (ie. all his 'normative' / in denial / confused / playful demeanours). this is the alter who is 'on trial' for the purposes of Milgram, so I will also use this name when talking about voting

'john' refers to the 09 (オレ, ore) who claims in Neoplasm to be the alter who commit murder. I will also make the assumption that he is the same alter as 09 (俺, ore) in John Doe that attacks es, since he expresses familiarity with 俺's actions in John Doe

i'm working with translations and 09 is a complicated character, so please forgive any slip ups!

thank you for reading.

introduction: widely accepted fanon

i frequently see that mikoto's case is controversial on the axis of 'system responsibility'.

on the side of guilty voters, mikoto is guilty because he and john are part of the same system, and unfortunately, that means they share culpability. i often hear rhetoric implying that 09's DID means mikoto was functionally possessed, and that he had no say in the murders, but regardless, him being guilty is just an unfortunate logistical situation. it's just how it is.

this rhetoric also makes it easy to argue for his innocence, and counter with how unfair this expectation is. if DID means he was functionally possessed, couldn't control his actions, and his alter just went out and killed people, regardless of 'john' having any noble intentions, that's tragic and unfair.

aside from being a fucking horrific way to see someone with DID (implying alters' actions are burdens, foreign intrusions that you just have to deal with. no recognition or self compassion whatsoever. die), this discourse also rides on the assumption that between 'normative' mikoto and his alter dubbed 'john', mikoto had nothing to do with his crime. that 'john' formed as a result of overwhelming stress mikoto had bottled up, and, pitying him deeply, 'john' decided to find mikoto an outlet through murder, something mikoto did not consent to.

i don't blame anyone for coming to this conclusion or approaching 09's crime in this way. it is very very deeply what milgram leads you towards, and what 'john' wants you to believe is going on.

through the VDs and MVs, 'john' consistently paints the picture that it was his choice to murder and his alone, that he did it without mikoto's consciousness and anthetically to mikoto's character.

so. what's the problem? he's told us very straightforwardly across the board that what you've just described is what's going on. can we not believe the words of the prisoner themselves?

no. because 09, like all prisoners, has reason to lie to us to secure his survival. and 'john' in particular has every reason to convince us of a reality where he and he alone is the guilty party.

i very very strongly believe that 'john' is manipulating the audience to create the impression he does out of an ego-protective obligation. so i'm writing this post. and i hope i can convince you too.

main body 1: the purpose of alters (no, we are not functionally possessed):

let's start at the beginning. why did 'john' form? why would an alter with his characteristics form at all? this will help us understand why he does things, and what his role is within 09's life.

alters in DID typically form in response to new life roles and traumas, with the key note being that these aforementioned roles or traumas could not be handled by / identified with the alters that already exist. thus, a new dissociated state emerges to isolate that event or carry out that role. memory gaps may occur when the mere existence of that role / event is intolerable, or dissociation is otherwise high.

i have already written a long document on writing DID. check it out if you are unfamiliar with the basics.

we are aware of a few facts about mikoto's life, which can clue us in to what those roles and traumas may have led new alters to form.

first, he works an overwhelming job and never gets a days rest. it's implied he does not take good care of himself because of how all-consuming his job is, and that it takes him to a breaking point.

second, he commit mass murder.

third, he was suddenly brought to milgram, put under 24/7 surveillance, and told he was a killer, despite not remembering doing anything of the sort.

i frequently see people come to the conclusion that 'john' formed as a result of his stressful job, and functions to let mikoto 'blow off steam'. there's a few reasons i don't think this is the case.

an alter who forms as a result of a stressful job is more likely to handle and isolate the source of stress itself. for example, an automatic alter to handle work and nothing else, isolating that stress from the rest of their personality.

i really dont think an alter can form to 'blow off steam'. by definition, 'john' is a dissociative identity, disconnected from mikoto. whatever he does in terms of emotional processing is by design not going to impact mikoto.

in John Doe, 'john's' demeanour appears majorly aligned with fictionalised stereotypes of violent split personalities, appearing sadistic and animalistic. this alter presentation doesn't just 'happen' without reason, and i can't find a reason for 'john' to present himself like this if he truly formed to put himself first and 'blow off steam'.

so why did 'john' form?

main body 2: the purpose of 'john'

it's my opinion he formed as a result of (ie. after) the murders, as a way to contain and identify with those actions, because mikoto could not. i believe 'john' protects mikoto from 09's identity as a murderer and that intolerable experience in general, by allowing him to dissociate from it and forget it.

(note: it's not in my interest to pin the crime on any one alter, and i think it's weird to do so. you will notice i refer to 09's (as a whole) identity as a murderer, rather than blaming any one part, since it's an objective fact that 09, as a person, killed people. i'm opposed to holding any single alter responsible, but i am absolutely certain that if you are to argue that one is, it would not be 'john'.)

i believe that through distinguishing himself from mikoto through his accent, personality presentation, and sense of self, 'john' becomes the archetypal 'monster', which serves to reassure mikoto that 'john' is 'not him', and thus disassociates mikoto from the things 'john' takes ownership of: namely, 09's murderous actions and 09's identity as someone who has killed.

i also believe that following the transition into Milgram, 'john', as a protective alter is forced to develop beyond just psychologically protecting mikoto from the reality that 09 are a murderer. due to the voting system, it becomes important for 09's physical survival and wellbeing that 'john' can convince the audience that he is distinct from mikoto. he takes advantage of the fact that mikoto is the only alter on trial, and begins to spin sympathy for mikoto as a helpless victim, and negotiate on the terms of mikoto's innocence, by reiterating that it was 'john', and only 'john', who did it.

let's break down some 'john' truths:

he has a rough demeanour in contrast to mikoto's soft-spoken, and in John Doe, appears violent and sadistic

he distinguishes himself from and contrasts himself to mikoto by making a point to alternate personal pronouns

he claims to be the alter that commit the murders

he insists that this means mikoto should be found innocent, and that mikoto had nothing to do with it

when he realises that es may not agree with that view, he begins to plead, and then attempts to negotiate with es, being willing to sacrifice his existence as 'john' by promising to 'disappear'

he, well. this:

I'll take it all - bear it all (...) and I'll be rid of it. I (ore) ... was born in order to protect me. I (ore) would do whatever it takes to protect me (boku).

i find these last words 'john' says to es are the most telling, and really give us an insight into his motivations and what he considers his role and responsibility.

note that it's not to help mikoto vent stress. it's to take on the burden of everything that causes 09 distress. that being, for the most part, his guilt. he expresses a desire to isolate that trauma into himself as 'john' and vanish it, and maybe it's the DID in me, but all i'm hearing is the sound of a self-sacrificing protective alter who is desperately trying to keep his normal parts from having their illusion of a normal, trauma-free life shattered.

main body 3: where we can infer 'john' may be misleading us

ok, so i have this crazy theory i've convinced myself of that can strictly speaking be considered in line with the text using some mental gymnastics. but is there anything in the text that directly suggests that 'john' didn't do it?

yeah.

for starters, and perhaps a moot point, but mikoto is the alter on trial within Milgram. not only that, but 'john' is specifically not.

to be honest, this is what first got me theorising along this train of thought. if Milgram really 'doesn't make mistakes', and were presumably aware of 'john's' existence (in the sense that 'john' is considered unique, and not a prisoner), what makes mikoto the identity on trial?

like i said earlier, while i disagree with assigning culpability to individual alters, i do believe that if you were to assign culpability and only persecute and associate one alter for/with 09's crimes, it would not be 'john', because he did not exist as an alter at the time 09 commit those crimes. therefore, i believe Milgram is suggesting that of the alters, mikoto is the guilty party.

moreover, when you dissect 'john's' confession to es, there are certain patterns he displays that imply he is misleading us.

1. he is incredibly vague and emotionally disconnected when describing the event, lol.

his account of the murders appears fragmented and vague, and it's notable that he doesn't elaborate very much, or seem to feel much at all towards the event. contrast this to mikoto, who, when pressed on the topic of murder, starts to panic, scratch at his head, whimper and groan, and dissociate.

'john' either has a composure of steel, and truly does not feel remorse for his murder whatsoever, or, more likely, is that he only has a surface level connection to those memories, because his role only really extends towards identifying those memories and actions as 'his'.

it may be possible that mikoto is the alter with a unique repressed connection to the emotions and distress associated with the events, hence his violent reaction to es' pressing. it's also possible that the murders are blurry and hard to connect with for 09 in general, because trauma and dissociation can do that. but in both cases, i feel that 'john's' account of the murder don't really convince me that it was him that was conscious for the act, much less in a nonchalant and uncaring way, as he seems to put across.

2. he is first and foremost preoccupied with what his confession means for mikoto's guilt and protection

he gives up confessing and spinning his story after he's successfully convinced es that what he has said is the truth. he then immediately checks with the consequences of his actions.

this doesn't read as a confession to me, rather it looks like a blatant strategy. it's not about what 'john' did, it's about what 'john' can tell es to turn the tides in mikoto's favour.

when it becomes clear es may not be willing to see things his way, 'john' immediately loses his nonchalant composure. clearly, distinguishing himself as a uniquely guilty alter isn't working to secure his goals of mikoto's innocence, so he doubles down and makes emotional pleas.

again, note that it's not about 'john'. 'john' is content vilifying himself, and makes no attempt to humanise himself, or give explanation for 'his' actions. instead, he emphasises mikoto's innocence, and tries to evoke sympathy for him.

and in the end, 'john' strikes a deal with es; on the condition of mikoto's innocence, 'john' will 'disappear' himself. he cements his role as an alter that serves to carry 09's guilt so mikoto never has to face who he is and what he's done. the apparent subtext of 'proving one's use' reinforces this reading, i think. 'john' being able to 'disappear' himself and secure mikoto's guilt-free survival, is, honestly, the ideal situation as far as 09 believes.

the logistics of 'john' 'disappearing' himself and the fact that this, practically, would not make 09 guilt-free are a can of worms — this ... might not go how they expect ... — but 09's intentions are clear. 09 wants what 'john' isolates, carries, and represents (his guilt & identity as a killer) to vanish. whether or not he practically can 'vanish' anything (and what the consequences of his 'disappearing' are) remain to be seen (although, based on the voice clips, it seems that without 'john' around to contain 09's identity as a killer ... mikoto is not having a good time, psychologically).

in my opinion, 'john's' confession and the subsequent deterioration of the conversation are absolutely seeping in 'john's' ulterior motives to take all distress and discomfort from mikoto and protect him.

I'll take it all - bear it all (...) and I'll be rid of it. I (ore) ... was born in order to protect me. I (ore) would do whatever it takes to protect me (boku).

therefore, i would not take anything he claims about being autonomous, monstrous, and uniquely guilty at face value. 'john' has a goal, he has a purpose, and he will do anything to attain it.

main body 4: but maybe he's not... intentionally lying

all this said, i don't want the takeaway to be that 'john' is a manipulative liar. i also strongly believe that on a lot of levels, he, and 09 as a whole, believe what he is saying, because he has to.

like i said at the start, alters in DID encapsulate roles and traumas that could not be identified by the alters that already exist. if 'john' exists to isolate 09's identity as a killer, that means that 09 as a whole cannot tolerate the idea that mikoto could do such a thing.

i find 'john's' musing on the 'kind of person' that mikoto is very telling.

09 has a very firm idea of what a kind of gentle, sensitive, victimised person mikoto is, which makes the fact that he broke under the pressure and murdered people an even more intolerable reality. however, it's crucial for 09's health that they continue to believe in their goodness and maintain the illusion of a normal life for their everyday parts.

therefore, it's safest for 09's ego and psychological stability for 'john' to truly believe he is guilty and mikoto innocent. he also, after all, expresses incredibly high distress at the suggestion that mikoto may be punished or considered 'guilty', yet displays no such distress at his own condemnation. this reality where mikoto is innocent is clearly a source of stability for 09 across the board. so i do believe all of 09 believe this is the case, at least emotionally, and collectively work to sustain this reality for their psychological welfare.

i also believe 'john' isn't necessarily lying about believing in his role and personal guilt just because of how much self-hatred he betrays.

the aforementioned utter lack of self-respect (never standing up for himself) and subservience to mikoto's wellbeing (being willing to 'disappear' for mikoto's sake, claiming his all-encompassing purpose is to protect 09) implies a low self esteem. the end of Double as well as just how fucking miserable he sounds at towards end of Neoplasm betrays that he does feel immense guilt for 'his' actions, but only in relation to how the intolerable identity/experience he holds causes harm to mikoto.

'john', ultimately, is a character who represents a lot of self-hatred. he hates what he represents, he hates what he 'brings' to 09's identity, and he hates himself for existing and serving as a constant reminder of their identity as a killer that distresses mikoto and threatens their guilt-free manufactured reality so much.

(timeline translation document)

mikoto also targets 'john' to blame him for 'causing problems', to add layers to the self-hatred. 'john' counters emotionally, evoking his subservience and desire to protect, and defending his existence on the basis that he tried to help.

practically, i believe 'john' does help, by protecting mikoto from the reality that 'he' (09) killed people. but in 09's eyes, 'john's' 'helping' is 09's unexplainable and fragmented violent outburst, and thus 'john' has done a crap job at helping anything. this leads 'john' to not understand his value as an alter and hate himself, being ready to throw himself under the bus for mikoto's sake to 'save him' from the consequences of 09's guilt, and leads mikoto to lash out at 'john'.

i'll just say, from experience, throwing blame between alters that are associated with traumatic experiences is an unfortunate and common experience with DID. i even talk about it in my DID representation doc, as to illustrate why self-compassion and tolerance is vital to healing.

It’s very easy for us DID folk to simply wish that all of it would go away - to wish all of them would go away - because they must be the root of all our problems. They’re too needy, they’re too sad, they’re too angry, they hurt me, and I don’t understand them. I wish they would leave. I just want peace, we think. (...) Regardless of how alien and aggressive we feel, people with DID aren’t possessed, and our hurting and self-harming and destructive parts aren’t demons. They’re traumatised facets of a traumatised person. And no part of a traumatised person deserves to be repressed and vilified and shunned. (...) To me, a hopeful narrative and resolution is anything that can bring the parts together cohesively while loving their differences. (...) Navigating the decades of internal conflict and self-hatred and transforming it into tolerance and love. — Me, The Subjective Comprehensive Guide to [DID] Representation

... great job with the tolerance and love, guys.

conclusion / tl;dr:

i don't think 'john' as an alter appeared one day and decided to kill people to help mikoto cope with work stress.

i think 'john' is a very complicated part of mikoto, that identifies with the act and identity of killing, to keep it from mikoto and protect him. he presents himself as the 'kind of person' that would kill, and who is different to mikoto, because to 09, mikoto is not that 'kind of person'.

i think 09 use DID and the distinctions between alters to protect themselves psychologically, because that's why the disorder exists.

i also think it gives them an advantage in Milgram: by leaning into their DID and maladaptive self-ostracisation, they can attempt to convince the audience that 09's guilt is split between two alters: an innocent and a guilty.

using this, 'john', who hates himself as it is, promises to the audience that he will vanish himself on the condition mikoto is voted innocent, making himself useful one last time and finally 'saving' mikoto in the way he feels he has failed to thus far.

epilogue / reflection

so! i hope i make sense, and i really hope i haven't forgotten to cover anything glaring.

this is an all-encompassing way of reading 09 to me, and if it is canon like i believe, 09 may be a shockingly sensitive and accurate portrayal of DID. but to unearth this interpretation you need to dive into a lot of subtext and dodge a lot of intentional misdirection than leans into stigma and negative stereotypes of DID, so i sort of understand why a lot of people fall short, end up taking things at face value, or otherwise feel unqualified to dissect what's being written and claimed.

i hope my analysis and commentary helps, and please know that i am also always open to yap about these guys or DID representation in general if anyone would like. this is a very strong interest of mine, and i love picking fiction and DID representation apart, as well as demystifying the condition for people!

thank you for getting to the end of this, i know it's an essay and a half.

if you read this all the way through, even ignoring the text in images, this post comes out at over 3.5k words. this is longer than any college essay i've ever written. good grief. but it's over. thank you for sticking with me.

[minothtime]

hm i think I'm just exhausted at milgram's whole approach to forgiven/not forgiven (or innocent/guilty, which in this context means the same)

According to milgram, if we choose to forgive we are not only saying we forgive the prisoner but also reassuring the prisoner's point of view. if we don't forgive, we're restraining the prisoner because we think they're guilty and saying we don't agree with their views.

this sounds fine until you realize the system is set up in such a way that these two outcomes are basically the very same thing. let's take Kazui and Kotoko as examples.

Kazui has been voted innocent twice in a row (and in my personal opinion for very good reason), but going into T3 he's very clearly upset. why? because we've been agreeing with him! and in this case it means he believes we also think he's a disgusting man for what he did! he's become even more entrenched in his belief!!

now let's see Kotoko. She was voted innocent once, which fucked up a few other prisoners, then guilty once people realized she's better off restrained. but it doesn't matter! we agreed with her once, and now that we've turned our back on her, she still thinks the same thing she once did - she just switched targets. a guilty verdict just made her repudiate us. she's become even more entrenched in her belief!!

it is the exact same fucking outcome!!! the only real thing inno/guilty was good for was the restraints, because at the end of the day the prisoners would just think the same thing they once did.

I'm just sad, man. i know yuno and kazui's songs will be drenched in moral discourse that has no place in 2025. i know amane, mikoto and futa are not getting any kind of nuanced treatment because why would they. i know kotoko will be overly simplified. i never thought i'd say this, but right now i only have hope for muu's storyline... just because haruka's death might have knocked something loose. and it's just a possibility.

(don't even mention es. whole nother can of worms.)

this is just a shitty situation in which you better not care about the characters because fuck you that's why. they were never gonna get a happy ending anyway, lol. why would they? they're assumed to be killers immediately. it all boils down to nuance being useless in a black and white situation.

oh well. at least the songs are fun!