hiro !! ^_^

okay trying to organize my thoughts here! i already have a massive amount of interpretations within elevator hitch so i might add some tidbits of knowledge thats like 'what the fuck that wasnt stated at all'. sorry. sorry everyone. forgive hiro

protag, from what i've seen anyway considering official art/content and all of that, he's considered more human than coworker. it's implied that he's had a life. an implied horrible childhood, parents, and even used to work at someplace else. he has history. as you can probably guess, protags upbringing wasn't very good.

he had to hide things, saw his parents as monsters [judging by the fact they were odd pure-black silhouetted creatures] [> Bright light keeps the monsters away] dialogue, religious trauma, all of that

his bed's bedframe is a bunch of pipes that probably leads to nowhere. has anybody ever talked about horrendous his bed is

literally. look at it. why's the mirror next to your bed

anyway completely irrelevant

antag is speculated by the fandom to be the most vulnerable parts of protag. after being held up in an elevator with no exit, for months and months years and years. however long. he puts on this whole corporate face to get his way and trick the other party, and dare i say- if you look into it enough- as selfish as coworker can be. i think if you really look at the entire game, protag is, or at the very least /wants to be/ selfish, because he's given up everything for the cost of being nothing but a cog in the machine. part of a corporation, part of a society. part of- like how many work forces claim- a family.

taking this side of him and removing the cap and the filter, you'd probably get someone like antag. someone who's already acting like he's part of the system. like coworker but i'll get on that more mild-ish rant later.

what i'm trying to say is, what if antag- protag's most vulnerable side- reflects off his family and how he was treated? (most) people with unstable parents say that the reason why their parents weren't found out sooner is because they put on a mask of innocence and claim that they're a perfect family. it's not every time of course i feel like i gotta clarify but i've been with people thick and thin. abusive homes with christianity or religion often frame god as their sole connection to other people. haha, nooo. they couldn't do anything wrong, and if they did, god would forgive them. that whole thing you know

i really really wanna think about what protags parents were like since we don't know anything and, from the bottom of my heart, i think they were like that. people who hide behind closed doors and perform when the doors are open to invite someone home

even you, as an audience, you aren't supposed to know what they did. i think it's fitting that we don't know anything about protag's parents besides the fact they were abusive. in the entire game, we're in protag's pov- so obviously we'd know that they're traumatizing. nobody else was in that room besides protag, so obviously we'd know that they're traumatizing. even when they talked to protag on the 4th floor they were talking nice to him, warning him multiple times.

maybe this is a weird take and i sure hope not because i know this sort of thing all to well but, like, imagine you're some completely different bystander with a normal life. absolutely perfect. if a parent heard you making too much noise (supposedly late at night), and they said they were coming up there, that wouldn't be traumatizing at all, right?

it'd be scary because of consequences. you'd get grounded and have your stuff taken away but if you add in the fact that protags completely traumatized then it adds a whole new layer of "what the fuck" because you don't know what the consequence IS

the floor actually ends after the door closes on protag

it really rubs it in that abuse happens behind closed doors.

from this point on, we don't actually know what happened to protag for the ending to loop. maybe it was the door closing within itself that forbids him access to elevator is what made him loop back, but i really don't think so. whatever happened to him, happened behind closed doors

whatever punishment, abuse, or *violence* he was met with, happened behind closed doors.

'hiro! haha great analogy how the fuck does this tie to antag' hey first off dont be rude to me. second

'hiro i still don't get it' Stopitttttt uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

i think above all else, antag is much more determined and menacing.

he's keen, passionate, and has a strong will to get what he wants without giving much information. when colleague tries to open about something, antag shuts it down by interrupting him and/or covering it up with a more safe story and/or giving him a dirty glare. his parents would have done that, i think.

that ties back to the doppelgangers in my eyes, because antag berates and abuses colleague when they're stuck in the elevator- while the doors are shut! but when it's open.......... he's interrupting colleague everytime he speaks up about what truly happened

copying what i said to my friends verbatim

[ if coworker has no nuance in this scenario (a cocky, arrogant man with no mental health issues) (oh just wait for my coworker interpretations. the 65% of the fandom that believes coworker is just a guy that sucks will love it), i feel like the only way he would end up like he did with colleague, so miserable and pathetic, even tho his original self is much more arrogant, is because antag is projecting his abuse onto a blank slate.

a canvas. abuse is miserable, so the canvas would be, too. if antag is projecting his frustrations through violence because his experiences built him up that way, and colleague is someone with no experiences, then he's gonna reflect off antags experience, and be the same miserable child that protag was a long time ago ]

[ the thing abt colleague or coworker just being this dumb arrogant overly confident bastard with a huge ego, most narcissistic people fight back. They don't lay there and take things. coworker does because he's unaware how to respond when someone hits him or attacks him. on the interpretation he's artificially made for the company, that's implied to be very strict in their rules of being polite and a kiss-ass and whatever, he never would have been hit. he never got attacked. protag, and antag too, changes that. i feel like the reason why coworker doesn't fight back isn't just because he doesn't want to or he's too good for it or he wants to be the better person or whatever but also because I think he literally doesn't know how to ]