#— i could pop off about toko too but this blog ain’t about her

[ultfan]

sigh. was watching a let’s player go through komaeda’s FTEs and they said he was using his diagnosis as an excuse for his actions. “oh, i’m dying and insane so everything i do is justified” like — agH stfu!!! i’ll never claim komaeda’s actions to be good, and yeah i joke about his “insane”ness a lot, but at the end of the day you genuinely can’t hold him accountable. he is not in control of his facilities — FTD specifically targets your personality/behaviors — he is not in a right state of mind and is completely unaware he is in the wrong. he CANNOT COMPREHEND that. he’s just genuinely unable to!!! i’ll never claim he isn’t a bad person, or that he isn’t an antagonist, but at the end of the day he is someone who needs not help necessarily, but to be taken care of/looked after. he doesn’t belong in a prison, he belongs in a mental facility. where he can have trained professionals who can keep watch over him and actually work with him and keep him in check. — in any canon related verse he’ll never actually get that, esp given the state of the world, but it’s true that’s what he needs more than anything else.

and people really do tend to overlook just how much bvFTD truly fits komaeda as a diagnosis. especially in ways that aren’t touched upon by the vaaaaast majority of people. a while back i read a research paper about hyper-religiousity in patients with FTD; which could very easily be applied to the way he views hope. first clinging to it as a coping mechanism and that being exaggerated through the deterioration to become a blind faith that he is obsessed over which leads every action he takes.

anyway i just think it’s ridiculous to call a disease like FTD an “excuse.” there are people who use their mental illness as excuses for their actions to justify themselves, yes. but this isn’t a mental illness — it’s a degenerative brain disease. it’s an entirely different category. this isn’t a case of an illness making it difficult to control his actions and act reasonably, it’s a case of a disease making it IMPOSSIBLE to control his actions and act reasonably. it just really upsets me to see people brush that off because that is one of the main things that makes komaeda actually sympathetic.