#yes i also think he has a gay thing going on with toshio but that's a tangential aspect to seishin gay theory

[etrosgate]

novel seishin is like.... on some subliminal level he Knows that there's something "wrong" with him, something that makes him different from everyone else. the only time he's out of the town, he self harms severely enough that he's hospitalized and immediately dragged home, and he still doesn't even understand why exactly he did it. the events of the novel is what really forces him to examine the alienation he feels from his community, face every single little thing he hates about it, to the point of choosing the side of the shiki in the end.

his cain and abel retelling is a reflection of this. cain is his true self, who kills abel, the mask he put on to be a "respectable" member of society. and his punishment is to wander forever, banished from his home, forsaken by god, haunted by the person he could never truly be...

when i went to my (very conservative) church as a teen, my suicidal ideation and desire to self-harm would Consistently get significantly worse, and i could never articulate Why... there was just some deep, instinctual knowledge that the environment was hostile to me.

it feels very pointed that when megumi goes missing, we hear some other townspeople say that it wouldn't be a surprise if seishin had been the one to do something horrible to her, cause isn't it suspicious that he's 30 and unmarried?

long winded way to say that i think he's gay and hasn't realized it yet