1: facade/mask slips

several times in drdt, david's facade will slip when he thinks no one's looking, or if he's stressed. the first example is in the prologue itself, during his introduction:

and then he panics and asks teruko to forget what he said right after:

thats the first instance.

there was also before the first trial, when david snaps at teruko to shut up and leave him alone before immediately correcting himself and apologizing, along with several others.

during trial 2, david rambles on about arei being tricked, spewing out derogatory adjectives, and nobody really questions it?

this can be seen as both masking (pretending to be a different alter/one person, essentially) and cofronting (when there are 2 or more alters fronting at once).

the first instance in the prologue seems more like masking, as do most of his slip-ups. the one before the first trial seems like cofronting because of how quick the correction was.

otherwise, he's good at maintaining his mask.

2: memory issues

...it's clear he has memory issues, and they're very apparent in trial 2.

we'll talk about him forgetting the conversation with are in the last section. for now, we're focusing on this:

david doesn't remember going to the relaxation room at first, and he goes along with it because if they're saying it happened, it had to have. and teruko points out his confusion.

but the topic is changed after.

before the breakdown, he said "i was wrong, i think," as if he didn't really know what he did and what he was taking accountability for.

memory issues and amnesia are a big part of systemhood, especially if you have DID. if there are any other mentions of david forgetting things, someone let us know so we can add them! because we forgot. very ironic, i know.

3: pauses

before doing a lot of things, whether it's acting or responding to someone, he pauses for a second, or ignores someone.

like, when he's asked for his alibi pre-trial 1:

of course, he could just be ignoring teruko, since xander just died. but.. he does this a lot.

he hesitated before running after arei. and. well. we'll talk about the rest at the end.

this can be seen as switching (which we'll talk about with the breakdown), or dissociation. mostly dissociation, though? i don't know how to elaborate, but he just seems more distant than one would during this. shrug.

4: quote

this isn't concrete in the slightest, but the source code quote on david's tumblr page is "i hate you, i hate you, i hate you, i wish you would just die."

we know that most people will likely say their quotes in some canon media, like min and arei have. and the quotes, i think, can be up to interpretation on who they were about. arei's doesn't count, but min's has both first and second person pronouns ("i wanted to save you.") honestly? in canon context, this can be seen as her telling teruko she was trying to save her, and her trying to save herself from execution.

david's also uses first and second person pronouns, which we don't believe any other quotes do. obviously, he hasn't said it (yet), so we don't know who it's directed at, but since most quotes are somewhat directed at the owners, it's clear it'll be somewhat about himself.

this completely diverges, but we think it could be "pre-reveal" david directed at "post-reveal" david. since... it doesn't seem like the two like each other, based on how relieved post-reveal david felt after dropping the facade (even though i don't think that's what happened), and pre-reveal david's panic over being called a manipulator.

5: chapter two, episode eleven

alright, this'll be the longest section, but it covers a lot of stuff.

first: david didn't remember the conversation with arei at first.

second: at first, he was panicking over being called a manipulator (he panicked twice! first with arei, second right before he broke down).

first instance ^ here, we don't know what happened after yet, but he was extremely quiet, like mentioned before.

second instance ^ right here, he clams up real bad, as teruko points out.

and what happens right after?

he breaks down. the way we saw it was him switching out with the post-reveal david, but it can also be seen as him giving up on masking. with the long pause, it feels like a switch, though.

and suddenly, after the breakdown, he remembers everything, from meeting arei to going to the relaxation room, and has zero problems with being called a manipulator. he doesn't pause that much anymore, and just takes it all with zero issue.

he did a complete 180. two very different personalities.

now, we hit the image limit, so it's hard to elaborate further. we'll close the post off here: