#in the meantime i’ll just keep analyzing and obsessing over them on tumblr dot com

[doctor-hopper]

OK OK GLAD YOU ASKED! BEING-SERVANT-IS-DESPAIR-FOR-KOMAEDA RAMBLINGS LET’S GO!

So! Komaeda exercises a ton of control over the narrative, and he feels most comfortable whenever he’s able to, but we all know he’s also still got this intense sense of powerlessness and inferiority in his life. He’s almost innocent to a lot of the control he wields, just because he doesn’t think he’s ever fully capable of that—his luck has always snatched true control of his life out of his hands and left him a hapless toy of the Powers That Be. Everything just happens around him. He’s an ordinary person, an insignificant person, a worthless person, a bystander. Never Hope. Never even close.

Until the Tragedy rolls around, and the Killing School Life, and suddenly the very same Ultimate Despair that Komaeda already fell to (an inevitable fall, for someone of his inferior nature?) is defeated by (an equally inevitable) Ultimate Hope—

In the form of an ordinary, insignificant, supposedly-worthless Ultimate Lucky Student?

Just look at that reaction!

Naegi is a middle-finger to what’s left of Komaeda’s old worldview. Naegi’s a shift in the paradigm. And from here on, Komaeda makes that switch—by UDG, he’s decided that ordinary, insignificant, worthless underdogs are exactly the source of the new Hope he seeks to unleash.

But where does that leave Komaeda himself?

Because Komaeda isn’t Naegi. He didn’t face Despair and win—no, by this point, he’s given himself over to Despair Herself (if its claws haven’t been deep in him for much, much longer than that). His goalposts have shifted, and conveniently enough, they still just so happen to exclude him.

And sure, it’s a beautiful revelation, a beautiful brand-new Hope—but he’s angry. He’s envious, bitter. Naegi is exactly what he could’ve been all along, if not for…everything. Naegi is what he wants to be. A “ray of hope”.

So, what can he even do in this brave new world? Well, the same thing as always, sort of. He’ll let luck run its course, let it spare his life from the Warriors in exchange for a bargain and a collar around his neck. He’ll offer himself up to Despair, and thereby to Hope. And he’ll work behind the scenes, innocuously nudging the sequence of events in exactly the way he wants, wielding his luck just as it wields him, eking out uncanny control even through his powerlessness.

But what a cruelly poetic bargain that might’ve been, in his eyes. Because no matter how much influence he wields and how much he achieves, won’t it always be in service to a Hope he’ll never have (but maybe, maybe could have had) for himself?

hi. im here to kamukoma ramble. ok so i reeaaly hate how all kamumeshi Fan Content (which is basically all kamukoma content) waters down izuru to being the dominant one and servant to being his cute little dog like i feel like its so much more complex then that.

izuru was created to be subservient, to be smart enough to see through manipulation tactics and yet not care enough about himself to do anything to stop them, always doing something to serve someone else’s interests - and even when he does do one thing in his own interest (the killing game), it was largely because of his obsession with junko, so we see her still pulling the strings on him from beyond the grave (emphasized by his convo with her in his udg cameo). he doesn’t have power and he’s been designed not to want it. he’s been robbed of his humanity over and over again and been taught to accept it. he even explicitly states all of this in talent dev plan with taka

komaeda, on the other hand, is always framed with such heavy control over the narrative - he heavily influences dr2’s ending and takes that same puppeteering role in udg too. although he has that inferiority complex, he still holds so much power over everyone else, manipulating them like chess pieces. he is just as dangerous as izuru is, considering he has not only the intelligence but the motivation to act out like this, something izuru lacks.

and so this creates a really cool complexity where servant believes he’s meant to be subservient to izuru but this may not be wholly reflected in the way he acts, and izuru most definitely does not care for/about controlling servant. and, if izuru does take a domineering role, it’s because that’s what servant wants (especially after junko’s death, when he has no one left to place himself beneath), and so izuru’s still letting himself go with whoever the people surrounding him want him to be. he’s not with servant for the power trip, that goes completely against everything he’s ever been - because, in reality, IZURU is the one who exists to serve. to serve his creators, and then junko afterwards, even after her death. his purpose has always been assigned to him, not created by him.

both characters are fucked up and morally grey. both characters are the man, both characters are the god.

this is what i wish people would focus more on when writing their general character development and the development of their relationship. because they barely get any screen time you get lots of creative freedom and you can take this concept in either a “they are going to heal and get better together” route or a “they are doomed to always hurt each other in their codependency” route or some weird thing in between; again, personal preference, and if you want to keep izuru and hajime separate postgame this opens a whole new plethora of dynamics and development to write about after komaeda becomes himself again. the flexibility of their dynamic is whats so intriguing to me - kamukoma is a very complex and fluid idea that i wish more people would mess around with like this join me and we can play with them like putty