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night-willows · 1 month ago

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Kirihara: BD and Trauma

I mentioned in a recent post that I view Kirihara/Mizuno to have bipolar disorder, this was not coming from a place of ignorance but rather my own experience with bd. I disliked Kirihara for the longest time because of what I saw in him, and while I am slowly coming around to him, it's still hard for me to look at Kirihara and feel anything other than contempt. So, I thought I'd share my thoughts regarding his potentially having bd while sharing my own experience with it. Note, I am not a professional psychologist, I am just a girl with bd and I want to get more comfortable talking about it. Bd has a lot of shame both for those who don't have it and for those that do. I am just wanting to share what I saw in a silly anime boy, nothing more.

So, what IS bd? According to Hopkins Medicine: Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder. It causes you to have cycles of extreme mood changes that go beyond normal ups and downs. You will have periods of feeling joyful, energized, and excited (called mania). These are followed by periods of feeling sad and depressed. For this reason, it’s also called manic depression.

Symptoms may occur a bit differently in each person. The following are the most common symptoms:

Depressive symptoms may include:

Constant sad, anxious, or empty mood

Loss of interest in things that you once enjoyed, including sex

Feeling restless or irritable

Inability to focus, think, or make decisions

Low energy, tiredness (fatigue), or being slowed down

Having thoughts of death or suicide, wishing to die, or attempting suicide (People with this symptom should get treatment right away.)

Feeling worthless or hopeless

Feeling undue guilt

Changes in eating habits, or eating too much or not enough

Changes in sleep patterns, such as fitful sleep, inability to sleep, waking up very early, or sleeping too much

Headaches, digestive problems, or chronic pain

Manic symptoms may include:

Very inflated self-esteem

Need for less rest and sleep

Easily distracted or irritable

Racing thoughts

Physical agitation

Risky, aggressive, or destructive behavior

Talking a lot and talking fast

Very high or euphoric feelings (feeling overly happy)

Increased sex drive

Increased energy

Unusual poor judgment. For instance, buying sprees, drug or alcohol abuse, or risky sexual behavior.

Increased denial

While this term is typically associated with BPD and not BD, it can overlap with BD and many individuals with BD do experience having a favorite person (FP). An FP is an individual that someone with bpd forms an intense attachment to. This is something that is out of control for the individual with bpd, and while the relationship can be maintained in a way that is not destructive, often times one becomes fully dependent on their FP for emotional support, validation and security. When denied these things by their FP, it can cause for the individual to spiral and become emotionally unstable. As stated, while this is typically associated with BPD and not BD, overlap exists and is common when it comes to certain experiences individuals have with these disorders.

Finally...now that the groundwork is set, let's talk about Mizuno. Mizuno is a very troubled individual but for the majority of his time in the game, he comes off as a sweet, meek, and shy boy. Someone who is very well mannered and easy to like. But even with all these traits, Mizuno is alone. Both by choice and out of his control. He is closed off and seemingly can't push past the threshold that would allow him to make more personal connections. But even his relationship with Rei, someone who is constantly trying to invite him places and show him genuine friendship, he remains very surface level with her.

Now, part of this comes from the fact that they need to build up the big reveal of Mizuno leading the assault parties, but that isn't the only reason behind it. Apathy is the main driving force behind Mizuno's actions. As listed above, one of the main symptoms of bd is having a constant feeling of emptiness and feeling disconnected from yourself. I think you see this start to form during the roost scene, where him, Rei, and Towa all spend time at the roost together.

Rei tries to continuously engage Mizuno in an attempt to make him feel involved and not left out, but he hardly manages to keep up the conversation. Even with Towa, he constantly stumbles over his words and tries to keep the focus as off of himself as possible. When you have heavy disconnect from yourself, it's hard to tell what or who you are. No matter how genuine your actions are, you're constantly left wondering what's real when it comes to yourself. Are you really nice or is this just an act?

Mizuno is perceived as so many positive things both by Rei, Taku, and even Towa to an extent. But I find that the "reveal" doesn't take away these positive associations. I think that Mizuno was someone who had a hard control on his emotions, that he really could be kind and friendly, just as he could be manic and cruel. That constant shift is what stops him and many with bpd from forming closer relationships. Having a strong support system when you have bpd is important but it's hard to build, maintain, and even harder to do those things when you aren't palatable.

I've spoken about my own experience with bd a few times, but I feel as if my emotions often times aren't my own. When I'm happy it often feels like I'm faking it and when I'm mad, no matter if it's normal frustration or a full on breakdown, I'm crazy. I am hyper aware of how I will be perceived the moment I let my image slip, even if it's hard to keep it up at times. Mizuno is the persona that Kirihara made, not just to hide his violent tendencies but also to be more palatable.

There is no exact cause for bpd, but often times it can be linked to trauma, unaddressed trauma can exacerbate the symptoms of bpd. PubMed Central : Exposure to CT has been associated with an increased risk of developing mental and physical health conditions later in life. A recent systematic review of meta-analyses concluded that exposure to childhood sexual abuse was associated with a wide range of psychosocial and health outcomes.24 Similar findings have been reported for exposure to other traumatic events.25

-states exposure to CT during neurodevelopmental stages earlier in life, including young adulthood, contributes to an increased risk of developing BD. This process involves disruption of the psychological and biological systems mediating responses to stressful events and may remain difficult to describe in precise mechanistic terms until the culmination of large-scale longitudinal studies...

Early adolescence can effect the rest of a person's life, severe abuse in one's youth will haunt them. Mizuno is no exception to this, as he was horribly abuse by his brother his entire life until he one day disappeared. Despite the horrible abuse that Mizuno faced, it's clear that his brother was the closest thing he had to a caretaker and he was most certainly Mizuno's favorite person. To suddenly lose someone who you depended so intensely on would hurt anyone, but especially someone with bpd. Losing your favorite person is akin to losing the ability to breath. Mizuno was lost and desperate, he was alone. And then, he met Towa. When it comes to an FP, the connection is not only out of your control, but instant.

I believe that the very moment Mizuno laid eyes on Towa, he immediately dubbed him his new FP. While a FP can be a relationship that grows intensely over time, it can also be instant. In my own experience, some of my FP's in the past have been instant connections. One moment of speaking or a single look and I immediately became like a desperate cat, following them wherever they went until they would tell me to scram. In the case of my most intense and longest lasting FP, she is someone that started out as just a dear friend and eventually someone I started to lose sleep over. Both cases are just as valid as you cannot choose your FP, Mizuno didn't go out of his way to choose Towa. He saw his scars and immediately fell in love.

Idolization is incredibly common for those with bd, whenever your favorite person hurts you or some something horribly wrong, you don't find fault with them but rather you find a secondary target or yourself. My favorite person for a long time was my groomer, she was 17 when we met, I was 13. She was my everything, I stayed with her until I was 16, breaking things off was done in an impulsive moment of anger rather than real reflection and want to get away. I regretted it but I feared that she hated me, when she told me she'd forgive me I nearly dove right back into her arms. But my friends at the time kept me from her, I hated them for it and even now, when someone says something bad about her, I still feel that tinge of anger. That need to defend her and her actions because she was my everything for a long time, those lingering feelings remain. In the case of Kirihara, despite the horrible abuse that his brother caused, he's still quick to get anger and defend him when Towa says something less than savory about him. He's quick to deny that anyone else could understand his previous FP and abuser regardless of the truth.

Something else I wanted to mention is the exact wording that Kirihara uses when discussing his abuse. While he obviously glorifies his older brother, he also says something rather interesting during this whole ordeal...He calls what happened to him pleasure. While this does feed into the idolization, because of what happens when Towa begins to give into his euphoria, I believe that Kirihara is a csa victim. Once again from PubMed : Both physical and sexual abuse in youth with BPSD were associated with poorer general functioning and more disrupted family environments. Sexual abuse was significantly associated with greater severity of KSADS manic symptoms and mood lability; and physical abuse was significantly associated with a greater severity of parent-reported depressive and manic symptoms as well as KSADS Depression scores among youth with BPSD. The effect between physical abuse and the severity of depression within bipolar spectrum makes sense in light of the strong relationship unipolar depression has with childhood physical abuse (Fergusson and Lynskey 1997) and the finding that childhood physical abuse is significantly related to a family history of depression (Leverich et al. 2002). A history of abuse, especially physical abuse, may be associated with an increased risk for self-harm, suicide attempts, substance use, and greater severity of illness for youth not just with BPSD, but in general with any clinical diagnosis. Furthermore, given the worse course and severity of mood disturbance found in youths with BPSD who have been abused, it is plausible that these youths may not respond as well to treatment or may be at greater risk for needing intensive services. Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Cohen et al. 2004), which is designed to decrease interpersonal stress associated with abuse and to improve family functioning, may be warranted. These associations appear to manifest even in childhood and adolescence in a treatment seeking sample, underscoring the need for early identification and intervention.

While the use of the word "pleasure" could just be flowery language, considering what happens during his and Towa's fight, I have to argue that Kirihara was doing his best to mimic what would happen when his brother would hit him, and as a result, we get this.

He rubs his bulge against Towa's. Not the other way around. Kirihara in this moment is mirroring the behavior that he was subjected to in his youth. Many studies also show a link between those who were abused continuing that abuse, often repeating the same actions that were inflicted onto them. The use of the word lovers is also something that caught my eye. Love, the word, is BARELY used in Slow Damage, Towa never says it and even his love interests use it sparingly, Taku being the one who uses it the most and even that is mostly relegated to the after story. But the imagery of lovers is used here, between Kirihara and someone he's pretending is his older brother. This only furthers my theory that he is a victim of csa.

Kirihara also rejects the idea of being mindless and violent like the rest of the hapless children. While this could just be him viewing himself as better, many with bpd struggle with self image and often view everyone else as better than them, regardless of their own struggles and flaws. This is why Kirihara is so easily able to connect with Towa.

Jealousy is also something that tends to come up often for individuals with bpd. While it can be managed, seeing your FP interact with others and seemingly have a closer bond with them to you stings like a bad sunburn. It's horrible. Often times you can often feel worse about the jealousy after it has passed than you felt when it was with you in the present. Kirihara seemingly hasn't put in the effort with either Rei or Towa to have such strong feelings but with the idea of Towa being his new FP, he didn't have a choice when it came to how his feelings appeared and how he felt. While he calls Rei his second favorite person, it feels like he's mocking him rather than speaking honestly. Taking some sort of satisfaction in the fact that despite Rei's extension of friendship, Rei wasn't close enough to Kirihara to ever bridge that gap like Towa was. Lastly, I want to discuss one last thing. I see many people saying that Kirihara was able to hide his true self for a long time, but I think he let his emotions slip long before he called Rei and confessed the truth.

While I have talked at length about the symptoms of BD and how they can manifest with other people, I have yet to talk much about apathy. Extreme disconnect is common when you have BD, Mizuno shows disconnect and more importantly, conflicting feelings regarding this disconnect multiple times in game. He both wants his brother back but then says he probably died and he says both of these things with a dull voice and expression. He says he truly cared for Rei and Towa despite his actions showing the complete opposite. And he says he doesn't care about dying, and yet...

While this is when he is disguised as Mizuno, his voice is far different here than it is during the rest of the interrogation. He doesn't stutter or put on that meek and cute voice, he whispers it. Clearly this was meant for himself, not for either Taku or Towa to hear. We see later on that he claims to not care about living or dying, but he contradicts himself by not putting as much into the violence as Towa does when it comes to his euphoria session, not that he isn't violent but he seems more focused on the pleasure aspect than the pain. Kirihara shows incredibly self destructive tendances, which are often seen in individuals with bpd, as stated earlier, when combining bpd and trauma, you can often chase that feeling especially if it was an act that a FP was involved in.

Manic episodes are something that are often misunderstood when it comes to BD, with it being often portrayed as a crazy action or a purely angry one. Mania as shown by its main symptoms, is intense happiness or...euphoria. Being unable to control what brings you said happiness and needing it fulfilled no matter the cause. But the moment your wish is granted, the depression sinks in. That's what bd does, it constantly flip flops from horrible bouts of depression to mania and then back to depression. Unlike the other Euphoria models, we never get to see what happens to Kirihara after his euphoria episode is over. With both Ikuina and Asakura, we see how they become empty with their desire being filled.

But with Kirihara, he seems to rarely be in a state of mania, at least from my prospective. Even when he's gleefully telling Towa about his brother, his aura barely changes, it never gets wild like the other models and love interests. It stays fairly calm up until they actually start hitting each other, even still it doesn't go even nearly as excitable as other's smoke. I want to argue that Kirihara was in a depressive episode throughout the whole time we saw him. He talks about himself poorly, shows clear signs of not being able to focus, is constantly struggling with the ability to function normally and lastly he puts himself into constant high risk situations.

While it's to make him look like a victim, Kirihara is rather smart. He knew that by allowing the hapless children to beat him up, they could have easily gotten too involved in the action and killed him. He is strong but Kirihara could certainly not hold his own against countless men, most much larger than him, caught up in their own excitement. We even see this when two of his goons ignore his words and he has to fight them himself. Though I will not argue that during the euphoria session, he was in fact, in a manic state.

After the euphoria session, we aren't allowed to see how he reacted to anything. He is killed by either the Takasato-Gumi or Madarame. While suicide is very common for those with BD, they are also a higher target for violence due to their risk seeking behaviors. Honestly, I believe that Towa also has BD, but that's a post for another day...I apologize for any terms I possibly got wrong, but I hope that if you made it this far you found some enjoyment or something about this post interesting. Your reward for making it to the end? Some divas.

#as a Kirihara fan and someone with a special interest in mental illnesses this was SUCH an interesting read #glad to see my boy get some attention it’s so cool seeing other’s takes on him #nitro+chiral #slow damage #slow damage kirihara #nozomu kirihara #kirihara nozomu

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night-willows · 3 months ago

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My brain has decided that Asakura is trans for some reason and I am using that as an excuse to infodump about him again (Also just how Asakura’s character pertains to societal gender roles. And it just kind of devolves into a general Asakura character analysis somewhat because I got sidetracked)

CW: spoilers as they pertain to Asakura’s character (including true route spoilers), all the potentially triggering themes of Asakura’s character (talking about pedophilia and POCD/OCD in general mostly and religious theming), discussions of transphobia and gender dysphoria, talk about sex as it pertains to POCD and gender dysphoria, one minor clean dishes spoiler randomly mentioned because this goes on far too many tangents lmao

Hyperfixated on Asakura again and the brainworms have started telling me he’s transgender because my music taste lately is mostly that specific genre of loud music made by transfems (Ada Rook, Black Dresses, Stomach Book, etc) and too many of their songs fit him. Songs that are about being discriminated against for being trans fit his story because transphobes see us as predators. ANYWAY my brain got confused about this and now will not stop making up more reasons why he is trans coded so I am going to explain myself to the probably two people who will get it. For context I am coming at this as a trans man myself and someone who generally thinks a lot about gender roles in society because of that! Also! I list the songs that made me think this at the bottom of this post so if you just want to skim through my lengthy infodump and scroll to the bottom to listen to those to get an idea of what the hell I’m talking about you can!

First off. His gender is exactly this to me

I think he’s some sort of agender/nonbinary and does not know!! I don’t know when he’d have the time to figure it out he’s going through a lot!! That is why I am mostly still going to use he/him throughout this post, for sake of ease (hard to talk about a character in a fandom using different pronouns than the rest of the fandom uses for them) and also I don’t think he’d get dysphoric about pronouns, if he ever WERE to figure it out imo he’d use any pronouns. I think he mostly gets dysphoric about the societal role of a man being forced onto him when it feels so unlike who he truly is. I mean specifically the societal role of all men being awful, capable of horrible crimes, people to be afraid of. Now I know people who say things like “all men are evil” are people who have been harmed by misogyny/the patriarchy and are aware that it’s not LITERALLY all men who are bad people. BUT there are people like Asakura who this stigma affects badly too, he’s got a terrible case of harm ocd, hearing people say shit like that while being seen as a man is obviously gonna get to him. That coupled with how many people are afraid of HIM because of the rumors, he can’t distance himself from that and tell himself he’s a good man so he’s not who they’re talking about. He’s the kind of man they hate, he’s the kind of man they’re afraid of, and he hates being seen like that more than anything. Now obviously this narrative could be true and he could still be a cis man but. I just think it makes it so much more interestingly fucked up if this role of a man was just thrusted on him since he was born and he spent his whole life being told he was a man by everyone around him and just accepting that but deep down it never really felt right. I mostly think it’d make sense if he was agender, but the type of agender who could go their whole life not knowing it because they are content enough with letting people perceive them how they wish. Except, he’s not content with it anymore because his thoughts about being perceived as a man are getting so wrapped up in his thoughts of being perceived as a pedophile that he’s just started to hate both of them? Most of this is unconscious, he doesn’t think about it hard enough to realize but this IS what his gender dysphoria looks like for him. I also think in general he is VERY sexually repressed, because it’s hard for him to think about sex at all without accidentally getting intrusive thoughts about children and then he ends up distressed and in an ocd thought spiral about it so he copes by just… avoiding anything sexual entirely as much as possible because he doesn’t want that to happen again. This is something I thought about before but I think it can pertain to gender dysphoria too? Lots of trans people will feel sex repulsed sometimes when the dysphoria is bad, because there’s societal gender roles placed on our bodies and what kind of sex we’re “supposed” to have with them and it can just… get too icky to think about for too long when you are in a bad headspace. Asakura’s idea of that is just even further skewed by the fact that his ocd is making him see being seen as a man sexually as being seen as a future sex offender and he cannot handle that thought at all, so this specific type of dysphoria is very extreme for him. Note that people with intrusive thoughts like this and with dysphoria can of course still be sexual sometimes when they are in a healthier mindset but. I think at the time in his life we see Asakura in canon his pocd is at its worst so he’s not really getting many breaks to have a good mindset. I think he needs to go to therapy and unlearn all this shit and get medicated so that he can start to heal!! I think that’d help out his mindset on all this stuff and how he sees gender A LOT to the point that he might even get enough insight to actually figure out his gender. Even if he’s not a man the way he views being seen as one isn’t healthy whatsoever, and I think working on the ocd aspect there would help with the dysphoria aspect too.

I also think he was at least a little bit groomed by that college professor of his and has trauma from that and that’s affecting how he views men too. That man was someone’s he respected and viewed as a good man, and that view of him was ripped to shreds and completely betrayed as he LITERALLY TOOK HIM TO A CHILD BROTHEL AND COERCED HIM INTO CUTTING A CHILD WHILE HE WAS TOO DRUNK TO KNOW WHAT HE WAS DOING. This event is what traumatized him into developing pocd in the first place. It showed him that even “good” men can turn out to be horrible on the inside. So what if that’s true of him too? Even now that he’s moved to Shinkoumi and is seen as a “good man” by most of his patients and their families what if he’s lying to all of them? Misleading them like his professor did to him? Pocd is often developed due to past trauma from this type of grooming. How far it went outside of canon material can be left up to the imagination but. Even strictly going by only what we know, he learn that the teacher he looked up to he found out was likely a pedophile (why else would he know of that place? I think it was implied he probably went himself before?) and tried to rope him into it, using his respect for him to his advantage to get his inhibitions down and manipulate him into doing something horrible. Even just that is traumatic as hell.

ALSO let me tell you about how I think the societal role expected of a woman, especially when paired with the purity culture aspect that comes from Christianity, fit his character too. I think I might need to tell you about my dad first?? A lot of this aspect of my headcanon is inspired by my dad, I can explain it better if I explain how it relates to them. So, my dad is genderfluid, and repressed this and any sort of queerness in general until their mid/late 40s due to how they were raised. They only realized they were genderfluid after I came out as trans and they did a lot of research on trans people to be as supportive as they could be to me, and accidentally found out that THEY related to a lot of this too. Anyway, they strongly associate their feminine side WITH their role as me and my sister’s parent. They were the stay at home parent, they took care of us and played the stereotypical role of a mother, so they’ve always felt more like a mother to us than a father. They saw their femininity in their caring parental nature, and that’s EXACTLY why I connect Asakura to that same type of femininity, especially being in his 40s and repressing his identity so hard he hasn’t figured it out yet too. I don’t know I just love my dad so it makes me sympathize hard with older queer people just starting to figure things out. Anyway. BASICALLY this part of the headcanon/how Asakura’s character pertains to gender roles is talking about how a woman in society is seen as a caregiver and protecter of children. The exact opposite of how Asakura’s mentally ill brain is boiling down the role of a man as someone who will HURT children. And like. Asakura has such strong instincts to want to protect children I think?? I know he tells Towa he doesn’t want to have kids, but he would have made a great parent and I think he would have WANTED kids, if it weren’t for the pocd. I think he could still get a lot of fulfillment out of that if he was ever able to heal enough to care for a child without hurting his own mental health and putting the child at risk. Like.. obviously I don’t think he’s going to act on his intrusive thoughts but. He can’t be a good caregiver if he’s having them and getting distressed because of his child constantly and maybe trying to avoid interacting with them out of fear. ALSO you saw what happened to Hayato when he was circumstantially thrown into taking care of a child at his worst, he got so delusional about the angel thing that he almost tried to sew wings into him (I think the angel thing is an extreme case of a compulsion to the pocd, if he convinces himself he sees children as pure angels it calms his intrusive thoughts/obsessions about them.) Anyway while I think he did this because he was so unwell that he legitimately thought it was the only way to protect him from him from himself, Hayato still almost got really hurt and Towa, while consensually, DID get hurt. So like Asakura would need to do a LOT of healing before ever being responsible for a child most definitely.

But… he does genuinely love children in a normal way, he cares about them a lot. Why do you think he chose to dedicate his life to their care as a pediatrician? Why do you think he tried his best to take care of Hayato when his mother left him with him, even when it was making him feel horrible? That parental/motherly nature of his is the reason he couldn’t let himself just abandon Hayato too when he needed him. I think he didn’t want to be around him any more than he had to of course, I think he only meant it to be a short term thing and was trying to find someone better fit to take care of him because he was scared of what he’d do to him and trying to protect him from that. But Shinkoumi is a dystopian hell and they probably don’t have many good systems set up for orphans. There’s the facility that Shiro grew up in? I guess? But they didn’t seem all that great at like actually getting the kids adopted lmao they just sent him to live on his own at 13. I don’t know if there’s any proper fostering system and I wouldn’t be surprised if even orphanages like Shiro’s were few and far between. Even when Hayato DOES eventually get sent somewhere it’s on the mainland. Asakura was probably having a hard time finding anything and too paranoid to ask for help and get others involved. And… maybe a little worried about if they’ll actually take care of Hayato properly and not just neglect him? And he cares about him and doesn’t want to have to abandon him now that Hayato’s gotten attached to him right after his mother did? And the harm ocd might be spiraling about that too because he knows that that abandonment and being sent to a neglectful orphanage WILL traumatize him and he is just left paralyzed and unable to make a decision on what is best to do because the kid NEEDS a parent, and that’s not an option, but he is seeing Asakura as his parent now and he wishes he could be that for him but he can’t. Hayato’s mother abandoned him and gave him to him, maybe he could be the new mother? Or play the role of a mother? At least for a little bit until he gets someone else to take care of him? I think he tried his very best to do that in the time Hayato was under his care. I think he knows how to take children well, I mean he went to medical school specializing in pediatrics, I’m sure that talks about general childcare at least a bit. He has to know how to tell parents how to care for their children properly, I’m sure he knows enough to take care of a kid himself at least short term too.

ANYWAY I am getting sidetracked just. Also the purity culture part, a lot of Asakura’s character is about wanting to be pure and good in a religious kinda way? Of course purity culture can affect anyone but it’s especially bad in women growing up in religious environments so that’s the connection there. Women are expected to be pure because misogyny. While I think the motherly/caring feminine association reflects his genuine self, the purity culture side of it reflects the compulsions he engages in to convince himself that IS his genuine self and not the “evil man” perception people put onto him. Asakura’s entire character is way more interesting if you look at everything through the lens of an ocd cycle of obsessions and compulsions. The fear and paranoia about being a pedophile is the obsession, the fixation on being “forgiven” and seeing children as angels and wanting to create an angel is the compulsion. So my thought process is wouldn’t it be so cool if I made Asakura’s entire character a metaphor on societal gender roles too?? Using how his pocd functions AS that metaphor?? Being seen as and therefore believing he is a horrible evil man is the obsession, wanting to be a good pure Christian girl and repress any sexual thought (the intrusive ones AND any of them outside of that because he’s started to believe those are evil too), to validate the person he truly is is the compulsion. No this isn’t like “being trans is ocd.” Obviously. It’s a metaphor. I’m using Asakura as a metaphor for being trans. Again I don’t think he consciously thinks about this shit this is just an unconscious thought process that relates to the rest of his character and the rest of his character is mostly about having pocd. AND this is why I feel like it fits him best to truly be agender/nonbinary instead of JUST a woman either. He’s been raised in a society with strict gender roles and is just fixated on both of these roles in different ways while he’s not really either. I DO think he has some femininity to him but in a nonbinary sorta way, like not ALL of that role is fake but like. He needs to unlearn how he sees gender so bad. But I mean he DOES have feminine aspects of his design in canon he has pretty long hair and pretty long eyelashes lol. Do you see it. I’ve been calling him my wife for months now just because. He just has a feminine aura about him I hope by now you get what I mean.

BUT the issue is that trans people, especially transfems are seen even MORE as just horrible predatory men trying to groom children by our society at large (and transphobia and Christianity DOES have a big overlap unfortunately, it fits the theming) so… he can’t just accept he might be anything but a cis man even when he hates being a man without being a type of person that’s seen even more as a possible threat to children. He can’t be a good Christian girl because he wasn’t born as a girl so it’s a lose lose situation until he gets THERAPY FINALLY. Get Asakura a good therapist and ocd meds and hrt he’ll be happier trust me. Does this make sense. Has anyone even read this whole post I know it’s really long and the fandom doesn’t care about him. If you got this far have I converted you to my trans Asakura brainrot let me know. Anyway! Songs! Here are the songs that are about being trans or gender roles and also about Asakura to me! (Some are just VERY Asakura coded and by trans people tbf but like. They also have religious theming and/or talk about being discriminated against and shit which I’ve explained in detail how I’m using as a metaphor as gender roles for him so…)

Songs that ARE directly about being trans:

Animals-STOMACH BOOK

FUKUONA GIRL-STOMACH BOOK

Boogieman-Baby Bugs

CREEP U-Black Dresses

Songs about related themes by these same trans artists (Black Dresses is a band Ada Rook is in btw):

Devils-STOMACH BOOK

Pure As A Lamb-Baby Bugs

Angels-Baby Bugs

You Can’t Hide- Baby Bugs

COWARD 2 COWARD-Ada Rook

999999999 IN A DREAM-Ada Rook

PURGATOR3Y MODULATION ENGINE-Ada Rook

SHARP HALO-Black Dresses

This is. The direct result of getting a hyperfixation on Stomach Book’s music last month. Did y’all even know that the song Fukuona Girl that was all over reels platforms as a popular audio a while back was about being trans? And it just uses the lyrics about the infamous Fukuona Shoujo gif where the little anime girl gets flayed alive as a metaphor? For being discriminated against for being trans because maybe transphobes want to do that to us? I ALSO think the theming of the gorey anime girl part fits super well for Asakura’s intrusive thoughts though especially since she looks young. It can also be about him being tormented by his intrusive thoughts. Is he the fukuona girl or are his intrusive thoughts? Kind of both? (I’m aware this song def fits Towa too lol but shh it can be a little bit about Towa tormenting Asakura his entire chapter and the parallels between how their stories connect and Asakura’s entire mental illness being spawned off of what he was manipulated into doing to Towa as a child and how he gets intrusive thoughts about that and stuff too)

Oh my goodness this is so long. I’m sorry I’m super hyperfixated on Asakura right now and also maybe having a manic episode? I’m not sure yet but it’s made my brain feel like it’s on 2x speed and I NEED to be rambling like this about everything all the time all week so. We’ll see what my therapist thinks lmao

#my wifeeee :>#I love my wife #nitro+chiral #slow damage #asakura kazuki #kazuki asakura #I know he’s before Taku’s route because of the more obvious parallels but…#what if he got switched to Rei for gender reasons that aren’t canon but I thought about really really hard #idk where Kirihara would go though he does also fit Rei for the violence+family ties #can they both have Rei perhaps and Taku also gets Asakura?

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