#but keep it in mind: johannes becomes more willing to engage with human sociability

[thedevilscarnival]

I’ve been thinking about what you said in regard to Johannes becoming a ghoul, and now I’m wondering what it means that he felt such a strong camaraderie with the ghouls. I feel like there’s something I haven’t figured out yet as to why his friends are ghouls in particular, but I like the idea that Johannes is more open to making genuine connections (and not shunning those feelings) while he is animalistic

personally, i think it boils down to how he's never (felt he has) been treated with compassion, empathy, and understanding by any of his fellow human beings, except for his deceased love. my interpretation of why he felt companionship with the Other and the Animal is heavily based on, just. how insanely autistic coded Johannes is.

he's strange, he's weird, he doesn't get social cues right and his interests aren't normal ones. he didn't feel loved by his family, was almost definitely socially bullied & peer pressured by his brother throughout their childhood if Johannes' outright hostility towards Horst & remembering specific events where he humiliated him in book 1 is anything to go by, and as an adult is constantly called a psychopath and not human to his face (thanks for that, Leonie. really showing off the psychology part of your criminal psychology degree).

Johannes was never treated as a human. yeah, sure, dabbling in the dark arts of necromancy and going against every social "normality" there ever was will do that, but he wasn't treated as one to begin with, either. at some point he likely internalized that, and being forced into the shape of a ghoul simply externalized that ever-present internal fear. he simply realized halfway through that he still liked some parts of humanity, unlike all the other ghouls who, if not enthusiastically, fell into the maladaptive coping mechanism of embracing their inhuman status.

which is to say that the reason Johannes made more connections as a ghoul than he did as a person is the same one that causes many neurodivergent & socially undesirable people in real life find comfort in the animal and bestial:

reject the pain of personhood. become a dog instead.