#disclaimer. not a 1:1 accurate scale of how complex dissociative disorders actually work

[bakedbananners]

Ok hold on I’m making this a readmore bc it got long as Fuck anyways wayyy more under the cut

@serizawadyke @haemocyaninz (tagging da mutualz yay)

OKAY SO LIKE.

The reason I think it’s more OSDD-1 (going further, more like what ppl in the community sometimes call OSDD-1a) than outright DID is that “Mob” and “Shigeo”/??? aren’t really distinct as far as alters would go. They both call themself the same name, plus they (mostly) have the same childhood memories. While they’re both dissociated self-states, what mainly differs between them is how they feel about and act towards the people in their life. Also, it’s implied that before speaking to each other in their headspace in the final arc, they’ve never seen or spoken to each other before then. They both more or less take the same shape, and fight over who is considered the “real” Shigeo, rather than being two separate identities with different self-concepts. There is the detached “Mob” self and the emotional “Shigeo” self, in a way.

If anything, Mob acts as the Apparently Normal Part/Host/“Shell” between the two. He’s emotionally detached most of the time, he’s the more functional part and interacts with the world. He explicitly tries to hide his emotional self from other people bc he considers it to be dangerous and bad. ??? states that “Mob” is the “fake” between the two, he’s the one who is trying to exert a new “self” and deviate from his original purpose of being the unfeeling, dissociated mask.

“Shigeo”/??? is an Emotional Part in the most obvious sense. He feels things intensely, he’s intrinsically linked to the source of their ESP because of it. In a way he qualifies as a protector, because he only fully comes out when their life is in danger. BUT he also seems to get triggered by Ritsu getting hurt. I hate that the anime excludes a lot of his conversation with Mob bc anime-onlys miss out on some key context that while ??? Is capable of extreme brutality, he really does care about Mob too. He could also be considered the “core”, as he considers himself the original (and personally uses his given name “Shigeo” rather than his nickname) while Mob is the shell.

I think this is most apparent in their relation to Tsubomi. The entire time, it’s shown as if Mob himself feels romantic attraction towards her, but when prompted he can’t think of why he feels that way. And then it’s revealed that Shigeo is the one who holds the emotional memories as to why. They have amnesia barriers that work both ways. ??? is outright hostile to both Teru and Reigen, because his experiences with them are vastly different to the way Mob’s relationships developed regarding them. Mob feels infatuated with Tsubomi without understanding the reason why.

It would be easy to say The Ritsu Incident caused them to fracture. However my personal working theory is that kid Shigeo began dividing himself between “Mob” and ??? around the time he started getting picked on and teased in primary school before that. While it’s shown early in the manga, Mob actually brings it up in one of the most recent omakes that looking back he considers it to have been a type of bullying to a degree. I do think that the trauma of the incident caused mob and ??? to dissociate more from each other because of it. And after that Mob always interpreted ??? as his “power” not as, like, another “person” the way he might’ve with full DID. While ??? always considered Mob to be the “fake” that’s always taking control of their life and shutting him out.

Being a natural-born psychic, being highly imaginative and in his own little world with few friends, having a flexible young kid brain, experiencing the trauma of almost killing your brother and some other people count as contributing factors imo. Mob is already pretty heavily coded as autistic, or at the very least lacking important social skills and being a bit delayed. He’s also pretty sensitive. I think it’s also good to acknowledge the other canon espers and compare. Serizawa is very similar to Mob, he struggles with being around others and having extreme anxiety that makes him lose control of powers- but he doesn’t differentiate his ESP from himself. Touichirou relies on his power so much, stockpiling it to the extent that he becomes a being entirely made of energy, almost wearing his vessel like a suit- but there’s no differentiate between the “vessel” and the “soul”. There’s also Mogami, who purposefully turned himself from a psychic human into a spiritual being after death- but again there’s not separation between his human self or spirit self. The point is while they all struggle with “power”, Mob is the only one of them who has dissociated from that “power” to the point it’s a different self-state. Nonetheless, they are both Shigeo, just different part of the same whole.

Then there’s his emotional explosions. I definitely don’t think these are like full clear switches between alters, but imo I think they resemble blending between otherwise normally dissociated parts. Mob doesn’t experience amnesia or really act like an entirely different person with completely different self-concept during these. It resembles OSDD-1 to me because he has an “angry self”, a “sad self”, a “brave self”, etc rather than these self-states being their own alters. It’s more like “Mob” is a shell through which ??? blends through. It happens through like the entirety of his fight with Touichirou- and he even points out just how emotionally unstable Mob is. (One of my fave parts is 100% Ecstasy. You can see that Shigeo clearly enjoys being able to use his ESP to its fullest extent with someone who can actually take it.)

The end of the manga and the resolution to Mob’s arc is also important to analyze. It is not resolved by ??? or Mob disappearing, but rather by them both co-existing. Ritsu says that the two of them can’t be separated and that he must accept them together. By the epilogue it seems like they do, mainly by showing Shigeo to be more outwardly expressive and active. This could be interpreted as an integration between the parts to a certain extent, where their system is at least more cooperative and connected than before and has less barriers between the two. at the very least! Neither “Mob” nor “Shigeo” disappear per se, but it’s more like blending into a more cohesive self I guess.

anywaysss plural Shigeo is canon. To Me!!!

can I talk about mob being an osdd system