#maybe five

prefacing by saying the sou DID headcanon is very special to me to the point that i talk about it as if it is canon. i know it is not canon. i'm not arguing that this is what these moments mean, i'm arguing this is an interpretation that i really enjoy, and this interpretation of sou's character speaks to the DID experience Unnervingly well.

i use sou & shin interchangebly, they are parts of the same person, but generally i say sou for during the death game and shin for before.

so. first.

the important bit — sou's dissociation from shin tsukimi

during his first trial, shin tsukimi is given the winning percentages. there he learns that 'shin tsukimi' cannot survive the death game.

to escape shin tsukimi's weakness and inevitable death, shin abandons him, and instead takes on the name and certain characteristics of midori, to build a new self — sou hiyori. he disowns his identity as shin tsukimi to psychologically escape from his fate, so that he can psychologically survive in this moment and keep living.

a part of DID is the repression and disowning of the weak and hurting parts of you, and in turn outwardly becoming & functioning as someone or something else that can survive.

sou very literally dissociates from the weak parts of his identity and becomes & functions as someone else to survive.

and that's the absolute basis of the headcanon. turn back now if you want to. the rest is me slowly losing my sanity.

me slowly losing my sanity

so. listen. here's the thing. theres a lot more in sous behaviour that you could interpret as DID if you know where to look.

it's not quite as simple as "there are two of him: shin tsukimi (who was weak, easily manipulated, and incredibly scared) and sou hiyori (who is not that)". there are quite a few more moving parts to this guy, and also a lot of grey areas where his identity breaks down and develops over the course of the game.

the sou we first meet is timid, but not particularly vulnerable: polite, but observant. you get the vibe he is silently taking note of everything you do, because he is. during the first main game, he takes control of the discussion by claiming to be the Keymaster, both securing his survival, and giving himself a level of control over the discussions.

when the information he found on the laptop and his attempts to throw suspicion on Sara causes everyone to doubt him, he begins to panic. he brings up the moment Nao hit him - something that must have been triggering to him, considering what defines 'sou hiyori' is that he is not weak like shin tsukimi is.

i like to think in this moment a subconcious part of him realises that the present sou hiyori is not removed enough from shin tsukimi to be free of danger. despite his distance, he's weak enough to be attacked - he could have been killed, and now he's at the mercy of the masses.

his protective parts and mechanisms need to kick in at 200%. so they do.

under the pressure sou snaps and goes into a a very aggressive protector part. sou projects outwards his vulnerability complex, calling everybody else 'weaklings' who are going to die (reinforcing his dissociation from shin tsukimi). he suddenly openly rejects the value of trust and human cooperation, in an attempt to make himself seem untouchable and entirely in control.

section: sou's protector part

i love this guy so i marked out a section just to break down his protective mechanisms. this is a direct continuation from the paragraph i just ended.

after his first instance in the first main game, sou's protector part (easily spotted by his fucking mastermind persona) appears multiple times to cover up moments of vulnerability. it makes him out to be a liar, but it also makes him seem incredibly calculating and dangerous, which works just fine for him.

during the token trade game, sou 'fakes' amnesia to avoid being singled out for his actions during the first main game. he reverts back to his polite & timid demeanour for a portion of the chapter, and also sleeps for a large portion of it (due to his sickness). but to allow himself this leeway (either to play up or let slip his weakness) he employs protective mechanisms: he enthusiastically tells Sara that his memory loss was a lie, and that he's been playing them all for fools. he intentionally gives her the impression that every moment of weakness he has let slip or otherwise is part of an elaborate plot.

whether this is purely for the sake of managing how the person he fears most percieves him, or because in this part he is genuinely so disconnected from his vulnerable parts and weakness that he refuses to acknowledge it was real, is up to interpretation to me. but i do love how many layers of lies and contradiction he symbolises.

(i choose to believe his amnesia was a genuine moment of vulnerability, because the scene makes me So Happy if i read it as a vulnerable part slipping through the cracks, who's entirely disconnected from the stressful events of the main game and is genuinely terrified. i like to think his later claim it was a lie was because he could not risk Sara genuinely witnessing his repressed weakness that he swore he disowned at the door. but i digress)

he has a similar 'moment of weakness' during the second main game, where he makes it more explicit that he is not necessarily him telling the truth when he says his earlier weakness was a lie. he relies on other's confusion and the fact people think he is one step ahead of them to protect himself.

he continues to employ his mastermind persona even after the shin tsukimi reveal - although its effect is somewhat lost now that everybody knows that he has vulnerable parts (and people he loves) to protect, and that his persona exists for their sake, not because it's his true personality.

mfw when the ego protection mechanism crumbles because i was vulnerable once and now my protector part hates me.

section: shadow sou

i was going to immediately follow onto shinai and what we can learn from him, but i want to clarify shadow sou first.

the long and short of it is i think he's the closest thing we have to a midori introject. while you could argue sou hiyori has introjected traits (which he most certainly does: he takes his name for christ's sake), i think shadow sou most explicitly takes after him, especially if you read soushin as an emotionally abusive relationship.

(lingo: what is an introject? an introject is an alter who represents internalised traits and figures. for example, if you had a personality who treated you like your mother treated you, and reinforces the beliefs you internalised from her, that would be an introject of your mother. they do not have to be accurate to the real person's personality; they only echo how you saw and internalised them.)

shadow sou speaks with sou like an familiar but condescending friend, comments on sou no longer being shin, and exists to reinforce shin's feeling of weakness. midori encourages shin to become the person you want to be; shadow sou is the one to pressure shin into becoming someone else. midori is a 'scary friend' of shin's, shadow sou physically frightens and attacks shin during his moment of panic.

as far as we know, we never meet shadow sou from Sara's point of view, so i interpret him as a more internal alter. there's a lot to play off with sou's / shin's / shadow sou's relationship: i think they are soooo cute. i just wanted to point out the similarities between him and midori.

section: shinaiiiiiiii: what can he tell us?

ok yaay onto shinai. although not strictly a version of sou (not his repressed weak personality, not his polite but wary personality, not his masterminding ego protection personality, and not his internal shadow self), because he is a computer program, he does give us a certain perspective on who sou used to be.

disclaimer: we know shinai was trained by midori's love poetry, and thus you can argue his personality could be slightly altered to be more suited to midori's purposes. for the sake of this section we will take things with a grain of salt: it's what shinai can suggest about shin, not tell.

shinai gives us the impression that shin tsukimi was polite, had somewhat low self esteem, and was conflicted on midori: on one hand, he scared him a lot, but on the other, he considered him close, and they spent a lot of time together.

during the maple boss fight, shinai sobs for midori to help him. i get the impression that despite being afraid of him, shin still relied on midori for security and reassurance (sou's lantern dialogue to corroborate).

my friend suggested that shinai's / sou's conflicting accounts (with part of him being afraid of midori, and the other seeking assurance from him) could in itself imply that shin (even before the game even began) is made up of two alters with opposing attachment styles. i dont disagree.

sou vs the shinai test data

this one will be short i promise.

i really like sou's morbid interest in the shinai test data. and i know the joke is that it's love poetry and sou is embarassed and repulsed by how midori saw him, especially now that he knows how cruel midori can be, but the scene also spoke to me as a dissociative person; there is nothing more viscerally uncomfortable than learning about things you did as a different personality. it messes with your brain, because it was you, but it also wasn't you - it can't be you, you don't remember it, and it's not the kind of thing you would do, but you did - and so your dissociative rejection signals go absolutely insane. so i like this tiny scene for personal reasons.

and thatse it (i think). i think i said it all.

tl;dr:

this is my headcanon :33 or well. a graphic i made a few months ago as i was solidifying the headcanon. some minor things ive changed my opinion on / perception of since but it gets the idea across.

that said i fully support any other interpreted sou hiyori systems. go fuckin wild. i spoke to a friend a bit ago about their personal DID sou take and i had so much fun.