#all the best cosplays come with elaborate canon you have to explain right

[thekimspoblog]

This Halloween costume is 77% business card

[96percentdone]

Anon if you’re wondering why I’m doing it like this it’s because I don’t want this showing up in the shi//rog//ane searches. I am going to rail very hard on her character. If you like her, you were warned.

To be quite frank I think literally anyone would have made a more interesting ringleader. Okay, that’s a lie. Except for Ouma and Harumaki and Yonaga, I think anyone else would have made a better ringleader. I’m gonna explain why, first starting briefly with why I think Ouma and Harumaki would have made worse ringleaders.

Ouma is quite simple: his entire character gimmick is “pretending to be an obvious mastermind only to end up NOT being the mastermind and is fundamentally against the killing game to begin with.” This is is just too good to ruin. Harukawa’s is less complicated in that she’s an assassin, so making her the ringleader would be boring and obvious. Like yeah okay of course the surprise assassin was the organiser of the killing game big fuckin whoop. And finally Yonaga, and the big reason for that is her character gimmick is “scary exotic foreigner” and cults and it’s a lot of racist shit and tbh I think even if you took a lot of that out, making the one foreign coded character (in a Japanese environment) your ringleader is asking for trouble. Don’t do that. 

The biggest reason I think shi//ro//gane fails not only as a DR mastermind, but as a character, is because she’s boring as shit and has no personality. It’s not even an accident she has no personality. in v3 characters tend to revolve around a gimmick, and her gimmick is literally being a non-entity. She constantly talks about being plain, and for most of the game her big thing each chapter is just...going with the gimmick of the chapter. That and she makes anime references that feel kind of forced and personally not how people tend to make references. And then in her big chapter, where she was the revealed to be the mastermind, she spends most of it pretending to be other pre-existing characters with more personality. 

Some people think the center of her personality is on fandom, and it’s a commentary on it, and on passion. To which I say: fucking where. Okay, I understand exactly where that potential lies, and in her free time events there’s definitely more of that. But I personally think that if I need to read the free time events (which are entirely optional you could play v3 without ever doing a fte, nevermind specifically hers) to feel like a character has a personality, then you didn’t write a well written character. 

What is there in the main story to suggest this? She makes constant poorly done anime references, and there’s one forced fanservice consplay scene. I’m blown away by this. It never feels like this is important to her, because it’s always played as like a joke or an event where her talent is just the excuse for fanservice in the ch1 scene. What else is there? Does she talk about her love for fandom and cosplay? Is she looking for excuses to dress people up in her various cosplays in the main story? No! Fuck I mean we even unlock her room and the mandatory conversation you have with her with that weird ass cg is about her bar life, not her fandom life. Like they go out of the way to not talk about it meaningfully in the one place it would be more than apt to do so. Seriously?

Chapter 6 is better at making her fandom commentary. You could argue that her constantly shifting into previous characters and rambling on and on about her love of dangan ronpa is fandom commentary. And yeah I guess it is. But it’s weak as fuck. It’s backed by like jack shit from the earlier chapters, and she has to talk about this because this is the big plan for ch6. It’s the ch6 gimmick! And then ch6 is an inconsistent mess of lies and contradictions that canon can’t explain, and she says some things (like the cosplaycat killer line) that imply she faked all that too so like. More following the chapter’s gimmick? would you believe? I would!

That’s the big problem with Shi//ro//ga//ne. Her gimmick is her entire personality, and that gimmick is not having one. That’s why she just does the big thing of every chapter, that’s why she’s so forgettable and doesn’t stand out and is “plain”, that’s why she constantly cosplays as other dr characters, and that’s why at the end of the chapter she goes “haha I pulled another great trick” without elaborating. Her thing is having no existing personality. Just being whatever the story needs. And maybe someone out there will be like “but that just shows her passion for DR and--” no. No what it is is just cheap and lazy writing, and again possibly not even true. 

And this has bad effects on writing a meaningful mastermind, particularly since we spent the entire game with her. She does nothing the entire time and doesn’t stand out, and particularly with v3′s writing where characters generally only become important in the chapter they die, by the time you get to ch6 it’s so obvious she’s going to be the ringleader. Harukawa’s had an arc (albeit a shitty one), Yumeno had an arc, Saihara is your protag for realsies who had an arc (albeit half-assed and not focused on what would have made it strong), and Kiibo is clearly having his big moment right now, so that leaves Shir//o//gane being saved up for something huge. Like the ringleader. She becomes obvious because she’s nothing. And then her reveal means nothing because she had no personality to get invested in because her gimmick was having no personality. And also they do nothing with her and chapter six is a poorly written garbage fest that makes no fucking sense.

She’s a bad mastermind because she’s a bad character, and she’s a bad character because her personality is a nonexistent thing that’s entirely up for grabs since she’s faked it all and her gimmick is just not being an interesting person. 

And this makes effectively anyone else a better ringleader, because anyone else in the game has more to their personality than she does. I’ll even explain why everyone excluding the previously mentioned three will make better antagonists before getting to my main ideal pick. In order of deaths!

Amami: he’s a mystery man right? that kinda seems to point against him but like play up the he died first trying to stop the killing game angle and it turns out he faked it or something just to get it started. He could take or leave killing Akamatsu off, but she chose trial, so she had to go. revise his videos a little so he looks a little sketchy, but even more like a victim trying to do good.

Akamatsu: if you just take out the fuckin “she has a twin bit” in ch6 and have it turn out she faked like her entire execution just so she looks like she’s entirely uninvolved, only to turn out she did kill Amami but with entirely different means, would that be cool or what? like it’d be the triple Akamatsu twist whammy. also wouldn’t waste her as a character cause she wouldn’t die for manpain to be your wife.

Hoshi: so yeah he’s kinda got the “I’m depressed because i’ve killed” shit working against him but you can easily rework that into a big old lie (hey look it’s the themes of the game some more wild). he’s still depressed in real life but his outlet for that was violence, so killing game.

Toujou: literally she gets power hungry and sick of constantly having to tend to the whims of everyone around her. her loving serving people was the big lie. she’s more interested in serving herself and the audience. Simple. Effective. Subverts her character in a meaningful but still relevant way.

Chabashira: she’s super honest and open about her emotions right? To an almost childlike way? fuck yeah you could make that ringleader shit. She wants to bring out the best in people emotionally, except she actually thinks the best way to do that is trauma. But she doesn’t really actually care about your emotional wellbeing, and that becomes apparent throughout the trial. her big fuckin lie. amazing.

Shinguuji: see this is tough and i’m tempted to put him in the not-mastermindable category because of chapter 3 which was. eugh. But okay see we’re just gonna take out all the weird incest serial killer shit. shinguuji’s gimmick anyway is that he’s detached and more interested in observing the people around him like an onlooker than he is partaking. smart but doesn’t give much a shit. this is easily played up to ringleader levels just. “I wanted to put humans in a society I made myself to play god and observe them to my heats content” simple. not as thematic, but hey it’s consistent.

Iruma: okay so canonically. Iruma is kinda a bitch. I mean this positively she’s kinda funny even if the sex jokes gross me out. She’s paranoid and kinda narcissistic and super weak to criticism and bites people in an attempt to make them not bite her. So what if it turns out like that’s just...fake. she’s actually just rude mean and crude not as some kinda backwards defense mechanism (we’re taking out the kink) it’s just because she likes being mean and crude. She seems so weak willed as a person but it turns out she orchestrated and “invented” the killing games just to keep attention on her and put people through hell. I’m not totally confident in this one I’m sure others can come up with better but fuck I mean it’s not shi//ro//ga//ne.

Gokuhara: this is easy he’s not actually a gentleman at all! it’s a big lie! a ploy to make him sympathetic and likeable! He went along with Ouma’s shit just because he thought it was amusing! The world at large decided he couldn’t be a gentleman, so he decided to be the biggest brute you can find and run killing game where he makes himself look good in comparison to everyone else. you’d have to rewrite ch6 a lot but it’d be better than canon anyway lmfao

Momota: now Momota’s my second favourite ringleader choice not gonna lie. This is just because the narrative plays him up as your shsl best friend and you get very invested in him (despite his uh....glaring toxic masculinity problems which we’re taking out because they add nothing to his character). His big thing is being a supportive believer. a shounen protag. but it’s all bullshit! Have the real Momota be the audition tape asshole. Or he doesn’t even have to be that it’s just his big thing will be that huge punch of betrayal that won’t compare except for with my #1 pick. But we’ll get to them very soon.

Kiibo: Y’know those posts that talk about how AIs are actually going to be very pure with their best interest in being serving humanity? I want that for Kiibo, but in a super warped and twisted way. Kiibo in his desire to be seen as a human and respected by them, starts feeding the twisted desires of the masses with the torture porn they crave in the form of a killing game, because this will make him be accepted as one of them. But he still ends up being a kind of subservient AI who never escapes that role, so now the killing game runs partially on hate, and partially on the thin remains of hope he has. I think this is kinda fun.

Yumeno: Yumeno is great because she has that whole arc where she learns to be open with her feelings and honest with herself right? Well we’re gonna make that just. a big old lie. She just doesn’t give a shit, so fuck it she’ll do this killing game shit too.

And finally, top pick: Saihara. Saihara would be the literal best option. Keep the protagonist switch. Akamatsu dies, we take Saihara as protagonist now. He gets played out basically the same. We play thinking we’re playing an insecure detective with some issues with the truth (and some issues with lies that aren’t capitalised on as well but hey that’s not actually entirely necessary for this scenario). We think Saihara is trying to carry on Akamatsu’s wish, because he says he would, and he solves all the cases and seems to be interested in saving everyone.

But...it’s a lie. Like in chapter 1 we were playing with an unreliable narrator the whole game. Saihara’s focus on the mystery versus trying to guarantee their lives in the game now gets played for “of course he’s focused on those this is his show. It’s what he lives for.” Saihara created a killing game to have an endless set of murder mysteries to solve, and he doesn’t really care about the people, but their potential in creating a good story. Maybe he’s even the pre-game fanboy too if we’re keeping that trick. And the narrative insisting on framing him as good through the use of the cast becomes a clever trick to hide his motivations.It’d be another unreliable narrator, and the best way to capitalize on the themes of the game. More lies. 

Not to mention it would make the Akamatsu thing especially brutal, because you play as him to frame her for a crime it will turn out she did not actually commit. The replay value of the game at LARGE would be through the roof, all because of this trick. It’d be fucking fascinating, and it would just destroy dangan ronpa formula. We’ll have not only a murder protagonist, but a mastermind protagonist. Listen. LISTEN. This is the best possible ringleader selection. I will fight you. dkgjrngdjkn

Okay I went on long enough we’re gonna call it a day. I hope this more than answered your questions!

[vaguely-concerned]

RANDOM OVERWATCH/MCHANZO HEADCANONS

My headcanons are usually global, so to say, so once established they mainly hold true for anything I write in that fandom until canon actively overwrites it (and sometimes even after that if I think the real answer is dumb ha ha). Most of what I’ve already done is the ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’ AU series. 

- Shimadamom died during the omnic crisis, since I feel like she would come up a lot more if she was actually around when her sons literally tried to murder each other. (It would also explain why Hanzo shoots the omnic in ‘Dragons’ even as he goes to some lengths to only incapacitate the other guards and why he thinks Numbani sucks, as well as adding a layer of ouch to Genji’s... robo-dysphoria.) Hanzo remembers her better than Genji does, since Genji would have been pretty young at that point.

- Hanzo is a dog person (oh hello there entire alternate wardrobe made up of wolf imagery) and Jesse is a cat person. (Both because of That Scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly with the kitten and the hat (!!!!!) and because really he himself is kind of a very affable yet still half-feral tomcat kind of a man)

- In ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’, at least, Jesse started out smoking cigarettes and graduated to cigars as he got older/had more cash, for that Authentic Man With No Name Look. He still goes for cigarettes sometimes when he’s on edge because he finds the little rituals of rolling them comforting. (Hanzo also has a very private Pavlovian reaction to the smell of a certain brand Jesse smoked around the time they started sleeping together. I’ll let you fill in the embarrassing details in your own time.)

- Hanzo usually cuts his own hair - just chops a bit off with a knife or something when it gets too annoying. The first time it was the dramatic symbolic gesture of dishonor ™, but these days it’s just because he can’t be bothered with anything fancier, in the same vein as ‘why even put my shirt on all the way btw did I mention I KILLED MY BROTHER’. (Yes, I know it’s a real traditional archery technique thing, just… let me have this.) Probably also why he wears it up most of the time so you can’t really tell it’s a bit of a catastrophe.

- Jesse taught himself how to play the guitar as a kid and has a wonderful voice for everyday life - it doesn’t belong on a stage but it is perfect for crooning in the background while making dinner or doing chores, stuff like that.  

- Jesse is quite ticklish, a fact Hanzo ‘Innate Talent for Strategy and Tactics’ Shimada uses without compunctions when it suits his goals. (His goals usually being a Jesse pink-faced and loose-limbed with laughter)

- Hanzo looks A LOT like his dad but takes after his mum personality-wise - more cynical and closed off except for with their loved ones - while Genji looks more like their mum.

- Jesse’s parents died during the war, quite early on. (tbh this is mostly b/c it breaks my heart to imagine his family would be okay with him having become a notorious killer by the age of seventeen. Like. Bro. I’d rather have someone love and protect him unflinchingly and then having no choice in leaving him. Though if the Deadlock gang had some element of a family business that would mean ANOTHER parallel between them, so if that’s how canon eventually lands I can work with that too ha ha)

- Do you ever think about Jesse at fourteen, coming back from a fight victorious but with new constellations of scars and bruises, curling up somewhere no one’ll find him to watch that scene in For A Fistful of Dollars where the man with no name gets beat up to hell and back and still gets out of it through sheer tenacity and being a tricksy fuck

Because I think about that every day and that’s why I’m constantly on the verge of tears

Anyway not so much a headcanon there as a window into the dark aching corners of my soul let’s carry on

- Jesse is demisexual, Hanzo is gay.

- At first I had settled for Hanzo being bi (what better orientation for a ninja than one that makes you invisible, after all? Who’s bitter you’re bitter) but then there were the White Day lines between Hanzo and Genji and now I’m 100% convinced that he’s gay, if only because it’s so much funnier to me. Let me show my work a bit here:

So as far as I understand, on Valentine’s day in Japan it’s women who give the ~*special men*~ in their life chocolates/gifts. (There’s also an uh ‘tier’ of chocolate that’s completely platonic and is given to friends and coworkers, but from the tone of Genji’s voice I doubt that’s what he’s talking about lol) White day is a month later, and it’s when the men reciprocate the gifts they were given. So essentially what Genji is doing with that line is going “SO… any special GIRLS in your life bro?? *I know you can’t see my face through the visor but you can feel the wink wink nudge nudge through the air*” and Hanzo’s answer is a sort of long-suffering reference to young Genji’s playboy lifestyle as well as a callback to a previous voice line between them, not a slight aimed at any cocoa beans.

Now I like to imagine bb!Genji as a bit of a hilarious dick - like basically sweet and well-meaning, but also hugely spoiled, self-absorbed and easily distracted. It would lend Hanzo’s annoyance so many levels of hilarity if his little brother just… hadn’t realized that the reason he wasn’t dating girls wasn’t just a) he’s been riding a wave of shame, guilt, grief, depression & light alcoholism these last ten years and it’s hard to date with a tight schedule like that, b) he is kind of weird and socially awkward at the best of times, c) his eventual anachronistic weirdo soulmate was running around on the other side of the world doing crazy shit for Overwatch

The reason he’s never dated any girls is that he’s FUCKING GAY

Like it was not as though it was secret, Genji, all you’d have to do was fucking pay attention or hey, ask at any point in the last closing-in-on-forty-years and it would have been EASILY AVAILABLE INFORMATION

FATHER KNEW AND HE NEVER NEEDED TO ASK,GENJI

Anyway I thrive on Hanzo Shimada’s annoyance and consternation because he takes everything so damn seriously and I love him very much

(Obviously in the ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’ ‘verse Genji does know. He’s not THAT massively oblivious.)

- Jesse is mostly ambidextrous but prefers to shoot with his right hand. I think there was some kerfuffle about his holster being put on both sides in official art that prompted this one? I’m not above going ‘*shrug* why have continuity errors when you can have headcanon’

- Shimadadad, intent on his sons not turning into Useless Rich Ninja Kids, made sure they were taught some essential life skills, like cooking and laundry and shit - meaning Hanzo knows how to make a handful of dishes to, like, double Michelin Star levels. He doesn’t actually enjoy it very much, though, so mostly he won’t. Meanwhile Jesse has no outside training whatsoever beyond at one point being shown how to turn on a microwave but figured things out on his own and has pretty good instincts. Hanzo prefers Jesse’s cooking and will happily just do chopping duty (which he’s still proficient at to the point that Jesse’s not sure whether to be unsettled or turned on).

- Jesse learned about horses from an older lady who semi-adopted him after finding him feverish and bleeding in her back garden when he was in his early teens. He stayed on her ranch for a couple of years and then left because he was worried some of the people he’d pissed off would be able to track him down there and burn it all down.

- Hanzo doesn’t like - or really get - giving and receiving gifts as a way to express affection. I’m pretty sure his line of association would go something like gifts ----> money ------> business -----> bribe -----> obligation -------> duty -------> faMILY OH GOD EVERYTHING JUST GOT REAL MESSED UP AND COMPLICATED IN MY HEAD I NEED A DRINK

- Another one where I’ll accept either outcome: I can’t decide from the in-game dialogue if Genji and McCree’s relationship is more bro-like ribbing or if they’re actually a little uh. Adversarial. (“You’re not quicker than a bullet”: a Schröedinger’s playful banter/death threat lol) If they’re mostly friendly that’s great! They can form a harmonious ‘Save Hanzo From Himself’ support group. If they’re more antagonistic? Pure. Fucking. Hilarity. Can you imagine Genji being SO FUCKING MAD because as it turns out the one thing in this world that has ever made his sadsack brother happy is that cocky jingle-jangle bizarro Western cosplay jackass. Like naturally I would prefer it if they were bros but I never turn down comedic potential like that.

- Jesse’s greatest fear has to do with being seen and with leaving. He’s very clearly set up a theatrical, elaborate part of his identity between himself and the world - I don’t think any psychologically unscarred person goes ‘well I’ll just wrap myself in this loner/vigilante archetype until it works for me’ lol. It’s a very smart ‘people are going to look at me so let’s make sure they can’t actually see me’ move. Also it makes me sad that me must have, like, reverse abandonment issues: every time he belongs to something - to the Deadlock gang, to Overwatch, to Hanzo in ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’ - he’s inevitably forced to leave it behind. (I guess this is part of why I love the pairing so much; they’re both wanderers now, they can go together ;____;)

Hanzo’s greatest fear is to really hurt someone he loves again. (Remember that time in Junkenstein’s Revenge where Jack looks at Reaper and goes ‘what could turn a man into this’ and Hanzo immediately answers “To be tested, and to fail”? Because I remember that all the time.)