#and SS light novel writer

[eyesofanapothecarian]

Chie Nakamura(Sakura’s VA) talks about meet & greets-for years “fans” called HER weak & useless; which made her depressed. Seeing Sakura place top 3 world wide made her emotional. They’re both finally receiving the support they deserve 20 yrs later🥹🫶🏽

This is way out of handed.

Yeo Min-jeong, the Korean Voice Actor for Sakura, speaks up about how much hate she recieved just for doing her job. She loves Sakura was so upset at the backlash that at times she didn’t even want to record her lines.

Jun Esaka the writer of Sasuke Retsuden publicly had to post and pleaded with fans and anti fans I guess to stop harassing her.

It's a specially troubling knowing she had to do this during down time right after she her her child and specifically recieved a death threat to her baby.

Obviously no one cares that people are getting worse as fucking bullies.

[mochiajclayne]

Hi there,

I hope you're doing well.

i read your post regarding SasuSaku and Sarada as a family and you stole the words right off my mouth.

I'd like to know your thoughts and opinions on Sasuke Retsiden because from what I can see, its only Jun Esaka (a mere light novel writer that writes non canon stuff) all over the internet being equally all over about her Sasuke Retsuden. I haven't seen any other light novel writer being more active about something non canon. Even kishimoto himself doesnt behave like this regarding his own work.

I'd like to also know about your opinions regarding Jun Esaka ATTEMPTING to remove or metaphorically kill Karin Uzumaki by making the main villain a Karin look alike and giving her sensory abilities to Sakura, which again, makes no sense. Does that woman hate Karin and SK so much? Is that woman so threatened by the very thought of SK as a couple that she had to incorporate a villain that looks like Karin Uzumaki down to a tee?

These are just my thoughts and speculations but I'm also really interested in knowing your side of the story.

Thanks for reading my long comment and i wish you a wonder day/afternoon/evening/night

Hi, @theuntamedangel! I appreciate the long comment! I hope you have a wonderful day/afternoon/evening/night, too!

Before I share my thoughts about Sasuke Retsuden, let me share that I did, unfortunately, have a sasusaku phase. I know. Shocker. The entire lore is here in case you're interested (promise it's relevant to my explanation).

I did hear about Sasuke Retsuden when I was still in college. Bits of information, specifically, about the chakra ring and from a perspective of someone who used to ship sasusaku casually, my initial reaction was okay good for them and I went on with my day. Note that I wasn't as heavily engaged in the Naruto fandom like I do now so for me to isn't active back then, hearing about Sasuke Retsuden, speaks volume on how it is over the internet that it even reached me.

I hate Sasuke Retsuden. It's badly written, it's OOC especially for OG Naruto characters, and the canon inaccuracies are more than enough to drive me into aneurysm.

Below this cut is my detailed thoughts about Sasuke Retsuden.

The villain looking like the male version of Karin caught me off guard. I don't know what the intentions behind the character design but I think they aimed for association as Jiji, one of the characters from this godforsaken novel, reminded me of Juugo.

I am not a sasukarin shipper but I do understand where the shippers are speaking from. I think they'll make a cool couple because Karin actually freaking cares about Sasuke when shit gets serious and outside of her "gag", she respects Sasuke's boundaries. Might be speaking out of the box but this novel in its existence was meant to be sasusaku-centric so the possibility of being threatened by all Sasuke-related ships, especially those making far more sense than SS, is high. I don't think Jun Esaka hates Karin. I would dare say that she picked a random character that could work as a direct contender to Sakura and unfortunately, she decided to scapegoat Karin. Moreover, the entire sensory ability shtick added to Sakura was uncalled for. I would go even further and say that Esaka's version of Sakura is what her stans hailed her to be--a superior version of [insert any Naruto's female character]. Even their pink haired kunoichi is incredibly OOC here and you expect me to take her seriously?

The funniest thing about Sasuke Retsuden is the way that they had to use SNS at first, specifically, Sasuke's mission is to find a cure for that chakra illness that Naruto alone suffers. Sure, this is SS centric but it all comes down to Sasuke and Sakura working together to find a cure for Naruto. Now, she could just write a novel about SS without using Naruto's "sickness" as some kind of a plot device, right? But no, she had to convince us somehow and an effective way to do that is literally Naruto and Sasuke.

The dinosaur. Don't even get me started. Even tailed beasts cannot fight against Sharingan to the point that canon graciously provided us evidence of both Madara and Obito controlling the Nine Tailed Beast. The very same Sharingan that made the higher ups of Konoha suspect the Uchiha clan as mastermind for that same incident. We're talking about the same dojutsu that manipulated the Fourth Mizukage. The canon inaccuracy throws me off the loop.

More inaccuracies. Suddenly Sasuke is an Earth and Ice Style user. Wow. Conveniently forgetting about Kakashi mentioning in Part 1 how Ice Style is a Kekkei Genkai that even Sharingan can't copy. As far as Naruto canon goes, Sasuke is a Fire and Lightning Style user. I don't consider Boruto as canon but even that animanga doesn't show any moment of Sasuke using Earth Style. It's insane that people claimed this as canon.

THIS DISTURBING INTERACTION. I did say that the OG Naruto characters are OOC in this shitshow novel and yes, unfortunately that includes Sakura. We've seen the way she react around Naruto's sexy ninjutsu antics. Unless objectification of women or the mere implication of it doesn't perturb her, then it says more about how Esaka portrayed her. I'd personally file a restraining order when a guy says he'd settle for my old, half smoked cigarette butts. I'm surprised that she didn't throw any snide remarks here.

WHO IS THIS SASUKE AND WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM. This panel made me laugh so hard because I feel like Esaka straight up ignored that Sasuke canonically spent years with his family before the Uchiha downfall happened. I don't think he'd be this clueless about how a married couple acts. Even in flashbacks, Sasuke was shown around his parents or Itachi, literally with his family. I think he knows well enough about married couples.

The ring part as well makes me cackle because Kurenai literally wears a ring in Shippuden. Trust me, Juugo-look-a-like, rings are used in Konoha by couples.

The Uchiha clan symbol takes me out because AREN'T YOU GOING UNDERCOVER IN THIS PRISON? WHY ARE YOU SHOWING THAT OFF?

The Chakra ring in question. Finding out the lore behind this further upset me and I am thankful that I no longer ship sasusaku. Show these panels out of context to someone with little to no exposure to canon and it would be romantic but if you know Narutoverse like the back of your hand, this novel served nothing. Seriously, the fact that Sasuke is incredibly OOC on this novel speak volumes. Imagine annihilating Sasuke's character to make SS work? Insanity.

Writing Edo Tensei with rose tinted glasses disgust me. That jutsu is straight up manipulating a dead body at your bidding. Tobirama shouldn't have invented that jutsu. Hinting that jutsu to be used to revive a loved one that passed away is vile and disgusting. The lack of attention to canon isn't a new thing for Esaka at this point.

Even this novel can't cover up the fact that Sakura doesn't know Sasuke well. If there's one thing that's consistent in the prequel, it was Naruto that gets into trouble. Sasuke doesn't use honorifics and he got away with it. His bluntness doesn't get him and everyone around him in trouble. Sasuke only began resorted to extremes when he was batshit blind and sinking into the unhinged depths of his hatred. Probably the only things that Sakura got correctly was Sasuke's kindness and his nonchalance about his looks but that's it. So the claim of knowing Sasuke inside and out is preposterous. The one who can say that is, guess who? Naruto.

Ending this long analysis with this panel because honestly, Ino is asking the questions for me. Unfortunately, despite being "married", their dynamic stayed the same. Sakura is still that same girl that has a crush on Sasuke, except she's in her 30s and Sasuke is still the same boy that rejected her date offers and the idea of being together with her, even reaching the point that he's away from her a lot.

I do apologize for going off to the point that I decided to pull a meta post about this. I do hope you're doing well and I appreciate the ask!

[smokingasters]

Hi, do you think Frederica is a potential love interest for Kogami?

Hi Anon, thanks for the ask ❤️ Yes, I do. If Psycho-Pass ever goes that route, I would like to see the potential dynamic between Frederica and Kogami. I shipped these two since the SS Case 3. I felt as though there was a bond, maybe it was the dinner scene or the conversation they had after on the cliff, or maybe it was the infamous water bottle scene, but there is a charm to them as a couple.

I liked how Frederica understood Kogami's emotions and she helped him come to terms with the aimlessness of his journey, where she respected his methods even if they were less than savoury. Then again, she was recruiting a new hound for her team, so she did have ulterior motives but the fact that Frederica learned about Kogami from Saiga makes me extrapolate that she was intrigued about his history personally, so I believe at least from her side she might have some romantic interest. Plus she doesn't hesitate to boss him around when necessary.

Kogami is quite guarded around her even in the novelization and the text makes it quite clear (even Tenzing picks up on it) that Frederica is flirting with him. Kogami is quite clueless as to how to respond to her advances, which to me was hilarious.

Anyhow, we don’t know Kogami’s thoughts about Frederica, whether he sees her in a romantic light, so I’m not going to jump the gun and assume that it will happen.

Also, I am aware that Shinya x Akane and Shinya x Gino are highly popular ships that tick off many of the romantic couple tropes thus they are more likely to become canon than Frederica x Shinya if the writers decide to go ahead with any romantic relationships.

A part of my heart will ship them despite the fact that Frederica x Kogami shippers are a minority 🥰 Not to mention Tenzing secretly ships them.

[grandhotelabyss]

Thoughts on swearing in non-fiction?

The performative Millennial swearing that infests even the titles of popular nonfiction books is annoying because it's supposed to signify rebellion or impiety when it actually demonstrates that a battle against older forms of propriety has long been won. They want credit for being rebels while actually conforming. I even have a passage making fun of this in Major Arcana:

Ash del Greco knew the average office girl she saw online, the one working in what they called corporate and living in an SF or Chicago high rise, a girl who seemingly slid from the womb with her yoga mat under one arm and matcha latte in the other hand, the type who had thousands of extra dollars to spend on psychotherapy, mindfulness coaches, wellness retreats, moleskine notebooks, and a color-organized library of sassy self-help books with bright spines, all of them titled some variation on Girl, F*ck This Sh*t: How to Maximize YOUR Bad*ss Life, wasn’t going to listen to a gender-struck teen with a spiral scar on xir big ugly face broadcasting from the dark and cracking wise about the sinking of the Pequod.

Such people would never violate the new proprieties, which is fine—I don't violate them either—but neither will they defend propriety as such. In Light in August, Faulkner abbreviates with a period a word we are now permitted to spell out: "fucking." On the other hand, he spells out a word—a racial epithet—we are obliged to abbreviate. I've often thought they could reissue the novel with this self-censorship reversed. To me, this proves that some words or other in a language are always taboo—literally unspeakable in any context, not even available for quotation or permissible in fictional dialogue.

Aside from that, though, I'd consider it as part of a broader question about how close to speech one's prose style should get. I personally tend to prefer a more "elevated" or artificial style, somewhat campily and ironically so in fact, as I learned it from writers like Harold Bloom and Christopher Hitchens and Susan Sontag, who liked to play up their acquisition of a "class" manner they hadn't been born into, and I therefore tend to find excessively conversational styles patronizing, or else the slumming gesture of someone who was to the manner born. If you can make it work, though, then go for it.

With the aforementioned vanquishing of older models of propriety, many swearwords have retreated to neutrality, the downscale sting and earthy tang gone from the Anglo-Saxon. Sometimes, if one isn't using them (as the Millennial writers do) to convey a now-nonexistent shock or intensity, they can just read as commonplace language, calling shit "shit" the way Chaucer did when the language was new.

[kattra]

What I’m Reading

BOOKS OF MAY Only A Monster by Vanessa Len  A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair  When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo  Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin (SS)  My Favourite Girlfriend Was a French Bulldog by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias  A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers ** Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree **

Graphic Novels: Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins Vol.1-3 — Mercer/Colville/Samson** Graveneye by Sloane Leong & Anna Bowles  Persona3 Vol.1-3 by Shuji Sogabe & ATLUS  Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall & Lisa Sterle ** Himawari House by Harmony Becker ** Marvel’s Voices: Heritage by Various Writers & Artists Skyward Vol.1 by Joe Henderson & Lee Garbett 

(78 books read / 125 books goal)

currently reading:  The Witching Hour by Anne Rice  Greedy: Notes From a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much by Jen Winston (NF) A Game of Fate by Scarlett St. Clair Black Light by Kimberly King Parsons (SS) The Renunciations by Donna Kelly (P) Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras Making Love With the Land by Joshua Whitehead (NF) 

* - re-read // ** - 4+ star-rating (recommended) GN - graphic novel // NF - non-fiction // P - poetry SS - short story collection // AB - audiobook 

TBR: The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce  Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes by Eric LaRocca  Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez (SS)  Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad (NF)  Poppy’s Inferno by Poppy (GN)

WHAT ARE YOU READING? :D

Find me on: GOODREADS | THE STORYGRAPH 

[fictionfromafar]

The Venus of Salò by Ben Pastor

The Venus of Salò

By Ben Pastor

Bitter Lemon Press

Publication Date: 23 May 2024 

The Venus of Salò is the latest and the eighth novel in the Colonel Martin Bora series, the most recent of which was The Night of Shooting Stars in 2020. The Martin Bora series written by Ben Pastor is comprised of a total of 11 books, which were released in Italy between the years 1999 and 2015. Ben Pastor is actually the pen name of a famous Italian author named Maria Volpi Verbena. Born in Rome, she now has dual citizenship and lives and works as a teacher in the United States. 

This was the first novel I had read featuring Martin Bora and while there are references to his previous exploits, particularly on the Russian front, the characters in this story aside from Bora appear specific to the novel. They comprise of a combination of real historical figures and fictional characters. 

The story sees Martin Bora arrive in the fascist Republic of Salò on Lake Garda in October 1944, six months before the end of the war in Europe. This was a very turbulent time in the history of Northern Italy as the once captured Mussolini has been rescued by the Germans from his mountain prison and restored him to power in the north of the country. While the German occupiers ruled through violence and the aid of the local Fascists, official and unofficial armed bands would roam arresting suspected partisans, members of the Resistance and terrorising the local population. During this time, Salo‘s grand villas by Lake Garda are used by Mussolini, the Gestapo and the SS. When a valuable painting, the Venus of Salò goes missing from such a residence, Bora is tasked with the investigation into the theft of the work of art, and it's recovery. A pattern of mystery develops when several attractive women are found dead, apparently but perhaps not by their own hands. 

The investigation sees Bora mingle with a range of Italians whose allegiences can vary quite substantially as well as German occupiers from whom he has his own secrets to preserve.  Along the way finds himself mistrusted by nearlt everyone, yet also falls in love while at risk of capture from Slavic partisans. 

Ben Pastor's astute reading of historical settings emerges strongly through this story providing a multifaceted crime novel which gives the reader a real flavour for the chaos and paranoia of this period while on a human level, they route for Bora to emerge from the situation unscathed. 

The blurb:

October 1944, in the so-called Republic of Salò, the last fascist stronghold in Italy. After months of ferocious fighting on the Gothic Line, Colonel Martin Bora of the Wehrmacht must investigate the theft of a precious painting of Venus by Titian, stolen with uncanny ease from a local residence. While Bora’s inquiry proceeds among many difficulties, the discovery of three dead bodies throws an even more sinister light on the scene. The victims are female, very beautiful, apparently dead by their own hand but in fact elegantly murdered. 

The author

Ben Pastor, born in Italy, worked as a university professor in Vermont before returning to her country.   She is one of the most talented writers in the field of historical fiction. In 2008 she won the prestigious Premio Zaragoza for best historical fiction. She writes in English.

Many thanks to Bitter Lemon Press for an advance copy of this book and to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inclusion in the blog tour. Please check out the other reviews of this book as shown below.

[kinosternon]

I posted 71 times in 2022

That's 56 more posts than 2021!

20 posts created (28%)

51 posts reblogged (72%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@kinosternon

@bluejayblueskies

@natsume-ss

@dduane

@tanoraqui

I tagged 70 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#haruka nanase - 8 posts

#free! spoilers - 6 posts

#for my own reference - 5 posts

#writing advice - 5 posts

#free! the final stroke second part - 5 posts

#albert volandel - 4 posts

#ikuya kirishima - 4 posts

#rin matsuoka - 4 posts

#free! the final stroke - 4 posts

#about the writer - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#itll be /better/ with a single sentence saying 'and then time passed' than a long drawn out scene that fought you every step of the way

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Okay, I'm doing it.

I'm writing a summary for the last Free! movie.

12 notes - Posted April 30, 2022

#4

@demigardess

Hello, I was your secret santa for @natsume-ss this year! I really enjoyed your prompts, so I hope you can enjoy this fic as well ✨

Title: Peace of Mind Relationship: Gen, Natsume Takashi & Tanuma Kaname Prompts used: Gen fic, any kind of reveal fic

Summary:

He felt frozen, caught between two answers. The first, the easiest, was also one he could never say: It's fine. I'm already taking care of it. The second answer was the one that pertained to what they were really asking, he knew. And the answer was: I have no idea what to do for him right now.

read on AO3

13 notes - Posted December 27, 2022

#3

NaNo 2022: not writing exposition or dialogue but a secret third thing (epistolary novel)

14 notes - Posted November 1, 2022

#2

Official online Nabari Kuji!

Kamatani Yuhki announced recently on their Twitter that a new company is holding an online kuji (lottery) for official Nabari goods! It's rare to see something like this come out so long after a series ends, and I want as many people as possible to get the chance to participate. (According to the site's Q&A, you can register through a third-party company to have prizes shipped internationally, though I haven't tried this myself.)

All the prizes are random, and use official manga/promotional art—prints, badges, magnets, and so on—focusing on a variety of characters.

The kuji runs from today (August 19th, Japan time) through September 30th, 2022. You see what you've won right away after purchasing, but the items themselves won't be shipped till late December, and international shipping will probably cause further delays.

Link coming in reblog because I'd like this to show up in the tag.

17 notes - Posted August 19, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Walthrough: Reposting your old FFNet fics to Ao3

In light of recent rumors that FanFiction.Net might be receiving little/no ongoing support, and could suddenly disappear one day with very little warning, I wanted to offer a resource that might help preserve another fic or two. Just in case.

I'm already keeping a private collection of favorite fics from FFN that I can't bear to lose, but this tutorial isn't for saving other folks' fic. Instead, this tutorial is for people who might want to republish their own fic to Ao3 in a streamlined, relatively painless way.

Using these steps, I was able to upload an entire 16-chapter fic, with all the correct original formatting and without doing any fussy HTML editing, in about an hour. (And that was while making up the steps as I went along!)

What you'll need:

A link to your old FFNet account URL OR the those of the fics you want to save (no login necessary)

Access to a working Ao3 account

A web browser, permission to download zipped HTML files, and an unzipper (most computers have these by default)

How to save your fic for posterity:

Copy the link to the first chapter of the fic on FFN that you want to save. (Right-clicking the title of the fic on your profile and choosing "Copy Link" will do this.)

Go to https://fichub.net/ and paste in the URL. Press Export, then click "Download as zipped HTML." This saves your entire fic at once, no matter how many chapters, with formatting intact. Everyone thank the team who made this tool, because it's amazing.

Navigate to your downloads (or click on the pop-up that'll probably appear) and open the zipped HTML file. It will probably open in your default browser on its own, but you might need to tell it to open by right-clicking the unzipped file and choosing the desired browser. The resulting file should have all the chapters of the fic laid out one after another, with clear breaks between each chapter and the original HTML formatting (including section breaks).

Post a "New Work" in Ao3. (Can't import with FFNet, sadly, which is why this tutorial exists.) Add the title, relevant tags, and summary. (I used my FFNet summary with a note that the fic is crossposted.) Backdate the fic if desired by choosing a publishing date from around the time the fic was written.

Here's the magic part: Switch to Rich Text Mode in the "Work Text" field, then copy-paste the text from your first chapter into the Rich Text Mode window. (Note: You may see the stray space appear around italicized/bolded text, and an extra line break tends to appear between section breaks. Otherwise, though, the formatting is generally very well preserved.)

Optional detail: Hit "Preview," then "Save Draft," then "Add Chapter" to avoid posting any of your chapters till you have them all set up and ready to go.

Side note 1: Don't put an endnote on the end of your Chapter 1. Or if you do, go add a chapter 2 first, and then go back to add a chapter 1 endnote. Otherwise it'll end up at the end of your fic instead. It's a fixable outcome, but an annoying one.

Side note 2: If you use a pseud to post, you'll need to be careful to select the correct pseud for each chapter you upload, or you'll end up being listed as the author twice, once under each pseud you selected. If you notice this happening, it's because you've missed switching one in one or more chapters. This is fixable by checking the author listed under each chapter heading using the "Entire Work" button and keyword searching the username you're trying to get rid of.

While I didn't find a way to post all chapters at once, you can do it pretty quickly in the right order, without skipping, by doing the following steps in a loop:

Press "Entire work" at the top of the page.

Use your browser's "Find in page" function for the text "post chapter".

Hitting the "Post Chapter" button that appears.

Just continue the loop until there's no more "Post Chapter" buttons.

Once your chapters are all uploaded, you're done! Congratulations.

A final note

I know that this latest rumor might be blowing certain hints of FFNet's siterunners' inactivity out of proportion. I know that Ao3 isn't everyone's favorite (though I don't agree with most of those people). And I know, most of all, that some folks would rather some of their older fics not see the light of day anymore, for whatever reason.

But look. I'm a trans guy who used to be a teenage girl who (enthusiastically) wrote Twilight/Doctor Who crossover fanfic. I get it, and yet I'm still managing to stun the part of me that cringes long enough to preserve my stuff, because I think that fic should survive whenever possible.

There are options to help make the cringe factor more manageable. Use a pseud for your older stuff (like me), or to minimize any connection to your current account, you can use the Anonymous collection or the Orphan Work function as soon as you're done posting. Do whatever you need to feel comfortable.

But remember that every creative work is a victory just for existing. Please, if you can, find it in your heart (and your schedule) to preserve your work. Past!you worked hard on it, after all. And besides, you never know who might stumble across it someday exactly when they need it.

(PS: Please let me know about any other FFN preservation efforts, by the way! Hopefully this is all blown out of proportion, but you really can never be too careful.)

376 notes - Posted September 21, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[crystallinee-waters]

Have you seen the SS trailer or I don't know that short something? What do you think about it? I love Harley's outfit but I don't like that her tattoo 'property of joker' is changed. it's 'property of no one'. Also I find it movie unfair to David Ayer. In that trailer they were saying all the time thing like 'no one could direct SS movie better that James' or show us that's a lot better than this crap in 2016. I also fell sad for Jared and I'm starting to think DCUE Jarley is gone forever. 😭💔

Thanks, I hate it. That’s what I think.

Yeah, that entire movie and the way it’s presented is a kick in the face to David Ayer, who again got his creative vision absolutely butchered and lived for years with his hard work slandered. It might even make it harder for the Ayer cut to see the light.

I love Margot’s outfit, that Injustice 2-inspired look is iconic but she’s not Harley to me anymore. Margot doesn’t get the character more than at face value and can’t play her in that layered, complex way without David’s script/direction. She’s even admitted that herself, she just wants Harley to be likable and fun all the time. She’s got the looks, that’s all.

About the tattoo change, fair enough - she’s not his property, she is a partner in a joint criminal enterprise exactly like the Suicide Squad (2016) graphic novel/comic said they were. They have made their vows, but he doesn’t own her. Margot was pro-Jarley back in the day 2016, her quotes are on this blog. Why was she? I’ll let you all guess.

I won’t watch this movie unless I can be convinced it’s actually doing her character justice. (And for fuck’s sake, don’t even mention him. I dare you, script writer. Show us she’s not thinking about him literally every second.) It’s a hard pass for me.

We still got our fandom, anon - the ship is not gone as long as we have that. (and join the jarley discord if you want!)

[judaiteitoreokou]

This is for the OTP prompts. Just do whatever ship(s) you feel like doing the most! Write as many or little as you like, as long as you're enjoying it ^_^

Judai: So mommy @shiroekoyuki is giving me free reign over this OTP prompt thingy (is this even an otp prompt? Lol).

This post might be a bit longer than my usual posts…. lol…. hope you guys will have fun reading my answers for this~☆

I’m going to start with my Tsukipro OTPs

HajiShun

• Who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunter

I’m going with Shun as the hunter and Hajime as the werewolf. Shun wouldn’t kill Hajime. Hajime with a black purple-ish fur that is so soft to touch. Lol.

• Who’s the mermaid and who’s the fisherman

Hajime as the fisherman and Shun as the mermaid. I’m imagining a pretty Shun with silver to pure white scales; he has pearls in his head, ears, wrists and neck; and he’s definitely the prince of the Atlantis and at the same time the resident sea witch (warlock? Magician?). So yeah, Shun can definitely turn himself into a human without any of those “in exchange for legs, you will lose your voice” deal.

• Who’s the witch and who’s the familiar

Shun is definitely the witch and Hajime is the familiar.

• Who’s the barista and who’s the coffee addict

I can’t imagine Shun as a coffee addict since he usually drinks tea so I’m leaning on Shun as the barista and Hajime as the coffee addict.

• Who’s the professor and who’s the TA

Hajime as the serious yet gentle to his students professor and Shun as the mysterious and mischievous TA.

• Who’s the knight and who’s the prince(ss)

Shun as the prince who either always laze inside the castle or always go out of the castle to observe the kingdom’s citizens (with Kai always fretting and chasing for the missing prince) and Hajime is the knight who is serious in guarding prince Shun’s life to the point that he’s always there wherever Shun is located.

• Who’s the teacher and who’s the single parent

To be honest, I think I’ll find it more interesting if its Shun who is the single parent and Hajime who’s the teacher.

• Who’s the writer and who’s the editor

Shun is the writer while Hajime is his exasperated editor. I bet Shun has two editors and it’s not because Hajime is not a good editor but because if those two are left alone, little to none will be finished. Lol. Btw, Kai will be the other editor. Lol.

ShiTsuba

• Who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunter

Hmmm.. I’m gonna go with Tsubasa as the werewolf who refuses to hurt humans and probably just there in the human territory to chill, and Shiki as the hunter who one day, unexpectedly, met the werewolf Tsubasa. 

Also, I just wanna see a Tsubasa with fangs… wwwwww

• Who’s the mermaid and who’s the fisherman

Tsubasa as the beautiful mermaid/merman and Shiki as the fisherman who caught said merman and immediately tossed him back to the water. 

Shiki wanted to eat fish. Edible fish. Merman is not edible (and is very pretty).

• Who’s the witch and who’s the familiar

Tsubasa as the stressed-out-for-being-tsukkomi witch/wizard and Shiki as the  why-am-I-here-I-want-my-coffee-boke familiar.

• Who’s the barista and who’s the coffee addict

Of course, without a shadow of a doubt, its Shiki who’s the coffee addict and Tsubasa is the exasperated barista.

• Who’s the professor and who’s the TA

Shiki as the professor who thinks sleep doesn’t exist and Tsubasa as the TA who forces the said professor to sleep. 

• Who’s the knight and who’s the prince(ss)

At first, I want Tsubasa as the prince and Shiki as the knight but I think it will more hilarious if its Shiki who’s the prince and Tsubasa as the knight. Shiki is like goes out of the castle without a disguise to visit that local tavern for a coffee with an exhausted Tsubasa who just finished fighting off tons of bad peeps who wanted to kidnap or assassinate the prince.

• Who’s the teacher and who’s the single parent

Tsubasa as the teacher of a preschool and Shiki as the single parent who was shocked to find his normally stoic son smiling happily to this pretty preschool teacher. 

I bet you’re thinking its love at first but nope. Shiki is salty that as soon as he greets his son, said son went back to his stoic self without a single trace of smile. And I bet he became saltier when he found out said pretty preschool teacher is that same first-year brat when he was still a third-year high schooler who criticizes his music and just vanished before Shiki can present to him the complete and improved version of his music. 

By the way, Tsubasa is actually a student from a different school and Shiki didn’t know. That’s why Shiki was shocked and thought it was a ghost or something when he asked for a certain blonde-haired guy in every first-year class in his school.

The Tsubasa is actually a ghost theory of Shiki was further enforced when he remembered the said blonde teen looking ethereal. No, it was just the trick of the light and Shiki’s exhausted mind and lack of sleep. 

• Who’s the writer and who’s the editor

Shiki is the writer who writes several award-winning novels and articles, and Tsubasa is his editor who kept on forcing Shiki to sleep and makes sure the said writer eats. It was kind of a traumatic experience for Tsubasa when he was still a rookie editor and he found Shiki fainted on the floor due to lack of sleep and food. After that, Tsubasa made sure to visit the writer everyday to keep him well-fed and to make sure he does sleep.

Tsubasa also became Shiki’s muse, without the former knowing it. Tsubasa was the person who broke Shiki’s writer’s block on the novel series he wasn’t able to finish for a long time. 

KouMamo

• Who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunter

Koki as the werewolf who is nice to human beings and Mamoru is the hunter who doesn’t like killing werewolves or any living things for that matter. Mamo-chan would rather befriend supernatural beings than killing or making them his slaves/followers. And because of his friendliness and warm aura, he has lots of supernatural friends. 

He met Koki when the latter was wounded after being shot in the forest by a hunter. Mamo-chan, who was in the forest to look for herbs, came across the wounded werewolf and carried him back to his house. Helped by his fairy friends, Mamo-chan was able to heal Koki.

Yes, Mamo-chan is a Disney princess. No one can tell me otherwise. Lol.

Also you may think the plot is a bit cliche but KouMamo is just that kind of couple who actually do all those cliche scenes you find in romantic movies. Although for both of them, it came naturally.

If you’re wondering about Mamo-chan’s supernatural friends, they consist of fairies, vampires, the demon lord, nymphs, elves, demons, a dragon king, gnomes, mermaids/sirens, angels, undeads, and beastkins. As for why Mamo-chan wasn’t able to befriend any werewolves is because werewolves attacks or runs away from him as they can smell the scent of hunters from him. Its cause Mamo-chan also has hunter friends.

And yes, the demon lord is Shun. Lol. Hajime is the dragon king.

Actually, if you guys want me to give you details on this AU, feel free to ask. *beams*

• Who’s the mermaid and who’s the fisherman

Mamo-chan is the mermaid/merman and Koki is the fisherman. Mamo-chan as the mermaid is due to that one art by Koyoki-sensei. I think it was an art for Halloween…?

Anyway, Mamo-chan as this mermaid who was caught by one of Koki’s net. Mamo-chan is a friendly and curious mermaid who, after their first meeting, started to watch Koki closely when the latter visits the sea. 

Friends with the wizard Shun, he asked for his tail to become legs. However, it came with a price. (I bet you think the price is Mamo-chan’s voice but nope, that’s not it. Lol) If you want to know more, feel free to ask. 

• Who’s the witch and who’s the familiar

Mamo-chan as the wizard whose magic sometimes fails while other times its too successful to the point of being too powerful. Koki is the familiar he was able to summon after five failed attempts.

• Who’s the barista and who’s the coffee addict

I can’t picture any of them as the coffee addict… But I’m gonna go with Mamo-chan as the coffee addict and Koki as the barista. Mamo-chan is that one customer who orders sweet coffee drinks to the point you can’t taste the coffee anymore and Koki is the barista who indulges Mamo-chan’s every coffee order despite it being too sweet to be healthy.

• Who’s the professor and who’s the TA

Koki as this cool-looking professor with tons of fangirling students and Mamo-chan is his clumsy but hardworking TA.

• Who’s the knight and who’s the prince(ss)

Koki as the knight who has sworn to protect the gentle and kind Prince Mamoru. 

• Who’s the teacher and who’s the single parent

Mamo-chan is the preschool teacher and Koki as a single parent. So I’m gonna merge it with the abovementioned ShikiTsuba scenario. Mamo-chan is Tsubasa’s coworker who plays the piano while Tsubasa sings. All of the kids love him, even the stoic son of Shiki (although said son loves Tsubasa more). While Koki treats his daughter as a princess, Mamo-chan sees her like an independent woman as said daughter acts so responsible to the point that she always looks out for her clumsy teacher. 

Mamo-chan is the reason why Koki’s daughter doesn’t act spoiled. Said child started learning how to make food and do chores so as to help Mamo-chan. Koki, while being a gentle, loving, doting parent, is not always around as he has to work and leave his daughter to the maids. He does give the effort to be there when he’s free from work. He was actually surprised when instead of playing, his daughter was helping the maids do chores and cook. Asked why, she answered that she wanted to help Mamo-chan-sensei….. and also be a woman who needs no man in her life, except for Mamo-chan-sensei and Papa (Koki). (By the way, the being “a woman who needs no man in her life” came from Mamoru and Tsubasa’s female coworker who was broken-hearted at that time). 

And since his daughter kept on mentioning this “Mamo-chan-sensei,” Koki found the time to visit the preschool to see who exactly this teacher who has become such a huge influence on his daughter. And lo behold~

(Feel free to ask for more details. LOL)

• Who’s the writer and who’s the editor

Koki as the editor and caretaker of one stressed-out writer Mamo-chan. XD

===========================

Judai: Those three Tsukipro OTPs for now. Perhaps I’ll make another post for my OTPs in another fandom. Actually, feel free to send an ask indicating which what couple would like me to write on. 

You can also send an ask if you guys are interested on the AUs I made up.

- Judai

[wizardnuke]

Thor x Bruce? For the ship thing

werewolf and hunter

bruce is a werewolf and thor is the hunter that was promised fame and lots of money for bringing his head. but then he comes across the werewolf, this man living alone in a cave, scared and alone, and he begins to have second thoughts.

mermaid and fisherman

bruce is a quiet fisherman that gets what he needs and shares his excess with the families in his small town, god knows they need the help. thor is the beautiful, shining mermaid that never speaks to bruce, but he smiles and waves at him as he and his rowdy friends hang out in the water nearby.

bruce suspects that he herds fish towards his hook, but he's never quite sure.

witch and familiar

thor is a witch-in-training of sorts. he isn't all that good yet, and it doesn't help that his brother seems hell-bent on making sure that he's never as good as him. loki sneaks an herb into the potion thor is making one day, and instead of a small familiar, perhaps a cat, or a rabbit, he gets this big, green, hulking.... thing. it likes thor's hair.

barista and coffee addict

thor loves his job, loves talking to people and loves that people tend to think he's attractive because it means they tip well. bruce is a, well, thor doesn't know what he does, but he doesn't think the man has looked at him once. he's always busy, barely pausing to order his coffee between phone calls and stacks of papers, and the day he does look at thor is the day he spills hot coffee all over his lap and promptly apologizes for it. thor notes that he has pretty eyes.

professor and TA

doctor banner is a professor, and thor is his truly terrible TA. it's good that doc banner doesn't seem to need his help all that much because he's always late, if he even shows up, but banner always seems to be happy when he's there just because he likes to talk. thor likes listening to him, even if he doesn't always understand what the hell he's going on about.

knight and prince(ss)

thor is a prince, and he's damn good at protecting himself, thank you very much. bruce is his mild-mannered knight and, frankly, thor is offended that his mother thinks that he needs a guard in the first place. he challenges sir banner to a duel, confident that he'll win, and then they duel and, well. holy shit.

teacher and single parent

mr banner is thor's kids' favorite teacher. thor's just glad that there's a teacher out there that's capable of handling his loud, messy, unruly twin boys. then he meets the man- sif took the boys to the start of the year meeting, bless her, he had a job interview that he couldn't miss- and then he really doesn't understand how the man does it, but he'd be very interested in learning more.

writer and editor

thor comes to bruce with an action-adventure novel that more than lives up to his name. bruce thinks it's fantastic, but it could stand to be even more outrageous. when he tells thor that, the beautiful man's eyes light up like nothing he's ever seen and then he promptly asks if they could have weekly meetings. god, bruce is so fucked.

[at-the-exd-of-everythixg]

][Lastly!! Dream and Sal, and Dream and Pascal for the ship meme][

@blind-mutant

Dral

who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunter

Dream is the werewolf and Sal is the hunter. The monster fucker hunter. He's heard of the legendary huge wolf and his legendary huge cock so obviously Sal needs to find him to get a good view of it. Though Dream doesn't know this.

who’s the mermaid and who’s the fisherman

Sal is the mermaid that decided to full body slam the fishermen because he was practically glowing in the light and Sal was under the belief that humans could glow. Ah well, he might as well drag the human down to the depths with him unless the human has something interesting to say.

who’s the witch and who’s the familiar

Sal is the star witch and Dream is his very cute familiar that seems to have better advise to give than the actual witch himself. Some say Dream was a witch that was cursed but it isn't like the familiar can tell anyone that himself...

who’s the barista and who’s the coffee addict

Sal's a sweet lil addict who always complains or brags about his nights out and Dream is the barista who gives him extra drinks because it definitely seems like a safer option than letting Sal go back out into the night - both for him and his scam victims.

who’s the professor and who’s the TA

Dream is a Professor who constantly sees the TA of Giles Estrellas lazing about and not doing work yeah, someone should yell at him but...he always smiles and is the only one who actively wants to hear about what Dream is teaching.

who’s the knight and who’s the prince(ss)

Well, we both know for a fact that Sal is the little bratty prince that Dream should get a pay rise for looking after and Sal insists that he knows EXACTLY how he can pay Dream well enough;)

who’s the teacher and who’s the single parent

Dream is the teacher that all the soccer moms sigh over but his eyes tend to be captured by the short and incredibly rude Sal who doesn't believe the fact that his kid apparently started a lot of fights. Dream doesn't know how to bring up the fact that he distinctively remembers watching Sal dance in a nightclub a few times.

who’s the writer and who’s the editor

Sal writes a lot about how to scam idiots and Dream is just ".....I think we legally cannot publish this" and Sal demands to argue it out by sex over his desk. Maybe he can write porn, huh??? Dream????

Drescal

who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunter

Pascal is the hunter who has made it a point to try and save werewolves before his mother and their church can get to them. Dream is the next werewolf that has determined to save but...he hadn't expected to want to keep the wolf for himself.

who’s the mermaid and who’s the fisherman

Pascal is the mermaid that is being kept in a tank, being forced to predict fates for humans. Dream is the starstruck fishermen that swears to get this beautiful golden man out and away to safety no matter what (aka "Free Philly").

who’s the witch and who’s the familiar

Dream's a witch that's trying to help his familiar safe from other witches due to Pascal's seer powers. Pascal is more than happy to try and help such a sweet witch by predicting good things to happen to him.

who’s the barista and who’s the coffee addict

Pascal comes in every weekend right after he's gotten out of predicting stuff and Dream is far too enamoured with this random guy who seemingly always knows the coffee he's making. It's become a game to see if Pascal can tell which drink is going to be made before Dream actually makes it.

who’s the professor and who’s the TA

Pascal is the professor on Greek mythology, Korean specifically, prophesies and religion surrounding them. Dream is a TA for anothe Professor who's gotten too caught up in the professor that always knows when he comes to his class and likes to invite him in to talk about what an asshole the professor that Dream works for is.

who’s the knight and who’s the prince(ss)

Pascal's a prince who knows that he's supposed to look after his kingdom, but he can't help it when his sights wander over to Dream! And maybe it's bad to want your knight to come away with you and help your forget responsibilities, but Pascal has never been all that good at being what people wanted.

who’s the teacher and who’s the single parent

Dream wouldn't have really expected himself to become a teacher after his life, but things always seem to take a different turn. He likes the kids and he loves Pascal, the guy who always brings different dogs every day when he comes to pick up his kid.

who’s the writer and who’s the editor

Dream writes some horror novels and Pascal is so flattered and a little bit love struck that someone would take the time to specifically write books for blind people. He maybe points out random mistakes just so he can sit and talk with Dream and talk more over his ideas.

[bookenders]

Cutting Down the House

I talk with a lot of novelists, and when I mention I’m a short story writer, most, if not all of them, say the same thing:

“I don’t know how you can write something so short! That takes real skill.”

Like, sure. But long form is, in my opinion, a lot harder. How you can write something so LONG? How do you fill all that space? Where do you find all those words??

But I’m not here to fawn over novelists (again). I’m here to help y’all figure out how to cut, green, trim, and slim down your prose. I’m talking short stories, flash fiction, micro fiction, and other short stacks. 

(I have an obvious bias for short stories because that’s what I do the most.)

Here’s How I Write Short Fiction:

[Under the cut, because long post is looong.]

Let’s Begin

What kind of stories are short stories?

Shorts are somewhere between 1,000-10,000 words on average, less than that is Flash. You’ll see a lot of disagreement on how long a short story can be, but I recommend capping it around 10,000.  [NOTE: Most literary magazines only accept less than 10,000/8,000/5,000 word stories. It varies.] 

I usually put the short story cap at around 20 pages because one time someone turned in a 30+ page story in a workshop out of spite and everyone was very salty about it. 

In a more vague sense, any story can be a short story. It’s all about how you tell it. I mean, I’d pay good money to see someone shorten The Epic of Gilgamesh into a short story and make it good, but you get what I’m saying. I’ve read fairy tales, war stories, romances, holiday fluff, deadbeat father stories, midlife crisis tales, murders, you name it. If you can think it, you can do it.

The trick of the trade lies in - 

Construction

How do you structure a short story?

You don’t have a lot of space, so, like poetry, you gotta make it count. 

[Actually, I recommend trying out writing some poetry, or using it as a warm-up of some kind. Learn some poetic devices because that stuff is crazy helpful. I’m constantly thanking my English teachers and that one poetry class I took for teaching me how to be succinct.]

You don’t have the time to expand everything like you might in a novel. So you gotta whittle down your plot to a few basic steps. Just like an essay. (Eugh.) 

I think of short stories as mini arcs. If you are a long form guru, try to think of a short like a single scene. If you’re doing scenes right, that means that each one has its own arc. Beginning, middle, end, emotional change, ending on a positive, negative, or neutral as long as it’s different from where it starts, the works. But a whole lot more localized and focused. 

In my mind, a mini arc goes like this (and keep in mind, my stories are usually single location, limited cast, dialogue light, and interiority heavy):

The protagonist is in a place (physical and/or emotional) that can be changed and will change. This is your opening paragraph(s) / first page (if you’re writing a longer story, or your structure is a slow start for pacing). Start answering questions: who are they, what do they want, why can’t they get it?

Inciting incident occurs. This, ideally, happens in the first or second paragraph, no later than the end of the first page. Or before the story and is mentioned as early as possible. In short: it should happen early. A skilled writer can even throw it in the first sentence. 

Rising action is as tight as you can get it. It’s more of an approach than a rise, in my opinion. Everything in this part, or these small scenes, leads to the climax and closing - we’re learning about the character(s) and their world, learning what makes them tick and how they think and how the story leads them where they need to go. In my stories, this is the longest part.

The climax point is typically closer to the end than the beginning. Sometimes it’s the last page, last paragraph, or, my personal favorite, the last sentence. 

The falling action/denouement is, in my opinion, optional. If the climax happens right at the end of the story, you don’t have much room for it, maybe a sentence or two to close it. Otherwise, this is where you tie a bow around your theme(s) and exit on a mic drop.

While you’re planning your arc, keep an eye out for connective tissue, or threads. If you bring back a detail you mention early on when you’re writing the end, it’ll look like you knew what you were doing the entire time. 

The fancy term for this kind of thing is rhyming action. Charles Baxter has a fantastic essay about it (I’ll link to it in the reblog). I highly recommend reading it. Here’s an excerpt that hits the point home:

“...the man... is suddenly struck with what we sometimes call déjà vu, which is only an eerie sense of some repetition, of a time spiral, of things having come around back to themselves... The effect is a bit like prophecy, except prophecy run in reverse, so that it cannot be used for purposes of worldly advancement. Prophecy run forward gives the prophet the power of forecasting and a habit of denunciation. Prophecy run backward, into rhyming action or déjà vu, gives the participant a power of understanding.”

It’s one of my favorite tricks, and once you learn it, you’ll start to see it everywhere. It’s the equivalent of a 3-part thesis statement for writers: optional, but a good structural tool to keep around.

Keeping it SS

Short Stories are Short and Sweet.

It’s all about finding a way to say what you want to say in as few words as possible. Show vs tell guidelines come in handy here, but you have to use some good judgment and decide the right moments to show and the right moments to tell. 

Think about campfire stories. If they’re describing a car, they probably won’t mention any details unless they’re relevant to the plot or message. Do we care if the car is blue? No, unless the color reminds the protagonist of their ex’s nail polish, or something, and that reminder impacts the story in a significant way.

(Details are like dialogue. They advance the plot, reveal character, and/or provide a complication.) 

I once read a character description that went like this: “He was the kind of man to never use two words when one would do.” 

Be that man. Get the point across swiftly and succinctly. But also know when to draw a moment out. It’s a lot of back-and-forth with shorts. And, as always, it depends.

Remember: Like snakes, stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Some are tiny, some are a little bit longer. Sometimes they look cyclical. Keep your SS SS. (Get it? Ssss, like hissing? Snakes? 🐍)

What If I Need to Shorten What I Already Have?

There’s a technique called greening that you should reserve until your final draft. Basically, it’s taking out every single word that can be removed without losing any of the meaning. This includes frankensteining sentences together, removing extraneous modifiers, and leaving out that detail you like but has zero impact on anything relevant. It’s hard, it’s very hard, but it’s an amazing skill to have. 

There’s a great New Yorker article about it, which I will also link to in the reblog.

Have any specific short story questions? 

Shoot me an ask! I’ll do my best to help you out! I write lots of short stories and used to be the fiction editor for a literary magazine, so I’ve got all that juicy editor know-how.

Questions? Ask ‘em! Comments? Make ‘em!

For more writing advice and observations, check out my advice tag.

Like my advice and other writing nonsense? Check out the link to my Ko-Fi in my description!

[kaibutsushidousha]

Artbook Data - Writer Team Interview

I really saved the best for last with this one. This interview was a wild ride, with at least two big pieces of fandom common knowledge being proven wrong.

Interviewees:

Yoshinori Terasawa: The producer for the Danganronpa series. Tasked with the challange of organizing this ragtag band of weirdoes while fighting schedule and budget. This time his title on the credits changed.

Kazutaka Kodaka: The writer, and one of the series’ creators. He created this game in paralell with writing scripts for the anime. Also experienced in writing novels and manga.

Takayuki Sugawara: Involved with the series’ development since the first game. For V3, aside from giving the order for the game to happen and offering many ideas, he also wrote all the secret lie routes for the Class Trial.

Shun Sasaki: This game’s director. Kodaka’s right-hand man, with the important role of transmitting Kodaka’s thoughts to the staff. The many bonus modes were all made at Sasaki’s idea. 

The inital theme was going to be Psychoamerican, with the game being set on a desert!?

Interviewer: It has been a month since the game was released (interview recorded in February 23, 2017), so how much have your thoughts changed since the game’s release?

Kazutaka Kodaka: Not much.

I: Then it must mean everything, including the fan reactions, was just as expected.

KK: Yeah. I was wishing for an unexpected reaction, but everything went just as expected, for better or for worse.

I: How about you, Terasawa?

YT: Kodaka says “just as expected”, but I was thinking the game would be a little bit more well received. You know, when I look at the timeline, I see more critical opinions than I imagined I would.

I: That said, I’m getting the impression that we’re getting more and more positive reviews, compared to how it was immediately after launch.

YT: We’re feeling this too. I’m very thankful that one month after launch, the positive opinion have been getting gradually more vocal.

I: How about you, Sasaki?

SS: Same as Kodaka, no big changes. I'm just still stunned that it’s over.

TS: I’m the opposite of Sasaki. We’ve always finished Danganronpa on the edge of the deadline, but this one we were REALLY improving everywhere we could until the very last second. I feel like the production is still not over even now. Maybe we’re all lying when we said we made it in time (laughs).

I: Was V3 really this hard? When did the project start?

KK: It was late into Ultra Despair Girls’ production. Sugawara called me about a new project and ...

I: So it was Sugawara, not Terasawa.

KK: For some reason, he never calls me directly. Always has someone relaying his message to me. Then me and Sugawara started coming up with some content and wrote the project pitch. It was completely different from what’s now.

YT: It was going to be set in a desert.

I: A desert!? Do deserts have schools?

KK: The design theme at the time was Psychoamerican, so we thought it should be in a desert.

YT: If I recall right, it was going to be a desert where a Future Foundation was stranded...

KK: And so we made the project pitch with loads of American-ish stuff, like Vegas neon lights. I can’t remember much of the details.

YT: But even back then, Kodaka already had the game’s direction and that ending in mind.

I: So the ending idea stayed the same through the how development cycle. Was it Terasawa or Sugawara who asked you to make the V3 project?

KK: It was more the company itself than Terasawa. 

YT: Yeah. I was the one who directly asked for it, but the very company was pointing out that it was about time for a new number Danganronpa sequel. At the time, the DR:AE development cycle was approaching its climax, so everyone was at the mood of “What are making next?” and the next cycle started very naturally.

I: I see. Then, was moving away from the Kibougamine series also decide from the beginning?

KK: Yes. No one ever considered continuing the Kibougamine series with V3.

TS: The Future Foundation ship I mentioned earlier would be set up as the ship from the DR2 ending for a twist of “haha, it was a different ship all along”. It was a red herring planned to draw the fans’ interest. 

I: And why did you change settings?

KK: We all know DR1 and 2 follow each other chronologically as the Kibougamine series, but at first I never said they did. When I say from the start that it’s a sequel, the fans start expecting characters from the previous games. But personally I’m not a fan of having a previous survivor in the killing game, having to experience the murders, investigations and Class Trials all over again. I thought that when I made the next numbered title I should reboot the setting and characters.

I: Let me get this right, all you had defined back at the project pitch stage was doing a reboot and the story’s ending. Yes?

TS: Yeah. We didn’t have a concrete idea of how we would present the ending, but it we were settled on the direction that it was something that would make the player part of the plot. 

I: And how exactly did lies, one of the game’s main themes, entered the stage?

TS: We had decided from the start that we would have the lie mechanic. Lying was actually a gimmick I came up with for DR2 and I really wanted the chance to include it for real in a next game.

I: Any other elements decided from the start?

KK: I think we decided the true meaning of “V3” in our first discussion. Did we? I vaguely recall we see saying it would be clever if V3 actually meant 53.

I: I agree, I was impressed when I played it!

KK: It’s just the part that the first game were also fictional in-universe and that V3 was the 53rd Danganronpa game that we came up with later. At the time we just though of the initial clever curveball. This was back before we had the idea to make the DR3 anime. We went with the name V3 just for this joke, then later we thought “If this is DRV3, the anime should be DR3”.

I: The game was decided first, huh. And how exactly did the “New” and the “Everyone’s Killing Game New Semester” came about?

KK: When we had to present the game for the Sony Press Conference (September 15th, 2015), we thought we should add something before the title, like the Super in Super Danganronpa 2. So we went with “New”.

YT: But for the first logo we wrote “NEW” in English letters.

I: And you already had the subtitle back then.

KK: The subtitle was also put together on a rush for the Sony Press Conference. We basically just added the “Everyone’s” there because the ending was pretty much completely planned at that point.

YT: We need to have these big presentations like the Sony Press Conference, because otherwise we never settle on a title (pained laughter).

The design theme changes to Psychocool! The production finally starts for real.

I: Now I have several questions about the contents of the game. We know you have the decided on the title, then presented the game under the final design theme of “Psychocool”. For what reason did you decide against the “Psychoamerican” theme?

KK: To be honest with you, Psychoamerican was never a design theme I was really serious about...

TS: We just needed something to pitch a project with.

YT: Every good project pitch has a few bluffs on it. 

KK: At the time I was busy with Ultra Despair Girls, so I decided to leave the theme decisions for later. But after watching Sugawara’s presentation at the project meeting, I may have regretted neglecting the subject (pained laughter).

TS: That’s because my project file on the meeting as a blank piece of paper (laughs).

I: (laughs) Suguwara, did you really explain the entire project with a blank paper?

TS: No, each page had a head title. “Scrum Debate” was one, for example. And did the explanations with just that. Judging by the participants’ reaction, the overall tone of the meeting was “What the heck is going on here...?” (pained laughter).

I: And after all these hardships, you settled on the Psychocool theme. What was the deciding factor here?

KK: We started putting some actual thought into it, notice how hard it would be to deal with a desert setting, and decided the American part wouldn’t work. At the time I was considering given a more adult image to it, so we decided on Psychostylish. But we didn’t go very far with this theme, did we?

SS: I don’t think we did.

KK: So, the players who experienced DR1′s Psychopop in their teens grew into adulthood with DR2′s Psychotropical, and now cooled down after their growth... That’s why V3′s theme became Psychocool.

I: So it had a more mature image.

YT: But us changing themes 2 or 3 times before made things hell for the graphics team, since we wouldn’t settle on a direction already.

SS: Because before we decided on the Psychocool theme, the designers had already started working with no design concept. Kodaka already some ideas in mind for a ruined school with growing vegetation and some machines in it, but without any concrete direction, they had to redo their work multiple times.

I: I’ll ask about the design concept in more detail in the designer team interview. The next question is about the story. Is “what could be a lie” something you think about in the earlier plot planning stages?

KK: Include some lie elements back in the plot planning, but there’s nothing that was always meant to be interpreted as a lie. It all started in a project meeting where Sugawara said “I want to use lies”, but without any concrete idea of would that be implemented into gameplay. Later, when I started planning the plot, I was looking back at the project file and the discussion notes, scavenging for content I could use and found that I could use lies to fill the gaps in my plot. And so was born my liar character, Kokichi Ouma.

I: Usually the characters make the plot, but sometimes the plot can make a character.

KK: They are just robots instead of characters, but the same goes for the Exisals. They came from a joke idea told in the project meeting.

TS: We mentioned the Exisal as a mascot replacement for Monokuma. “Next mascot should be a monkey” (laughs).

KK: But not having Monokuma as the mascot feels wrong to me. Yeah, we were rebooting the characters and the setting, but I think changing too much does more harm than good, so I decided to keep Monokuma as the mascot without a second thought.

I: About what you just mentioned about Ouma, did you create all the characters as you were planning the plot?

KK: Yes. I thought 16 was the perfect number of students, as it was in DR2. Before I had any plot, I asked Komatsuzaki for some designs based on his impressions. I was planning the plot as I was receiving the designs and came up with the details along the way, I think.

I: At what point did you decide on the dual protagonist scheme with Kaede Akamatsu and Shuuichi Saihara?

KK: I can’t remember when exactly I decided that it was doable, but I’ve been wanting to do it from very early on. I was thinking that if I could do it, it would make for an awesome chapter 1.

I: The Ikebukuro Namjatown had a poll to guess who would survive. Harukawa was first, Saihara was second and Akamatsu was third, so I thought the fans saw it coming.

KK: I was also weirded out by how high Saihara was, but then I heard about the unfortunate hatless Saihara sprite visible in the PV. Since the ahoge is the symbol of the Danganronpa protagonist, I’m pretty sure this spoiled the twist.

YT: You didn’t notice it when the PV came out?

KK: I didn’t. Sasaki told me about it later and I was like “Oh no, really...?” (laughs).

YT: I see, because it very early on in the video.

SS: It was. What a shame...

KK: That said, a lot of characters were predicted wrong. Our survivor Himiko Yumeno got the very last place.

YT: She reestablished balance.

I: Yeah. Just look at our presented protagonist Akamatsu. While there were a lot of people thinking she was safe because she’s the protagonist, there were also a lot suspecting even the protagonist could die.

KK: I think the majority was predicting Akamatsu would die. But I think that as they watched the PVs and play the demo, a lot of them noticed how we made all the Class Trial assets for her and started thinking “Yeah, of course she wouldn’t die”. At very least, I think not many people predicted she would be executed as the culprit in the Class Trial.

This is how the 16 students watching the new Class Trial were born

I: In this interview for Danganronpa 2, you mentioned that Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu was supposed to die along the way, but as you were finishing your plot he became a survivor. Did V3 also have a character like Kuzuryuu?

SS: I’m pretty sure no character was changed. Though I vaguely recall we changing the order in which they died as the murder tricks demanded.

TS: When Kodaka was thinking of the murder trick for chapter 1, he asked me “What SHSL should we kill off?”. I answered “Killing the detective would be a shocker”.

KK: For context, I wasn’t too sure if it was ok for Saihara to be the Super High School Level Detective. Because Detective Saihara would mean a protagonist title ripping off Kyouko Kirigiri’s. But I ultimately accepted the idea of him being a detective.

I: I see. So this didn’t have any big changes like DR2 had. Was there any student talent or character trait that you decided on based on their murder tricks?

KK: I always plan the characters and the tricks at the same time. And this time I planned part of the tricks along with Kitayama. Whenever we discussed, I just told him “This is the culprit, this is the victim and this is the type of case I want” and he would come up with the details for me. Otherwise none of us would know what to do with his murder tricks.

I: If any other character had their characterization changed along the way, like you said Ouma did, tell us about it.

KK: I changed Harukawa’s title after seeing the finished desing. I kept her title as Super High School Level Child Caregiver, but made her actually an assassin.

SS: I remember you going with Bounty Hunter Harukawa before you changed it to Assassin.

KK: You’re right. She looked so out of the ordinary in that illustration that I thought she would work out as assassin and changed it, if I recall right. I tend to change my plot points a lot, so that’s why it’s always better to do all part of my work at the same time.

I: Is Kodaka always this nonchalant when talking about major plot changes?

SS: Yeah, he just comes out of nowhere and “I made Harukawa an assassin”.

TS: The script still wasn’t finished at the time, so even I didn’t know the reason for the change, I could say is “Really?” (laughs).

SS: Though I like her a little better as an assassin than as a bounty hunter.

I: Yeah, that’s not a situation where you can say “no” for no reason (pained laughter). By the way, Ouma and Harukawa are super popular. Did you expect them to this many fans?

KK: Sure, Harukawa got a lot of attention on the first teaser visual, and she’s a tsundere character very easy to understand, so I thought she would be popular. And Ouma is remarkably “Danganronpa”. When he is doing so much work to get things his way and getting many big scenes in the process, it’s no surprise he would get popular.

I: I think Kaito Momota got even more big scenes than he did. Not to mention his story role was pretty important.

KK: Momota was a character I was much more unoptimistically hoping to be popular. Because in the previous games I never had any characters as super friendly as him and Gonta Gokuhara. When I was writing the script, Sugawara or Sasaki told “This cast is our tightest group of friends so far”. Now that I think about it, I guess this strongly influenced my decision to put Momota as the leader. Byakuya Togami from DR1 would be constantly on the edge if he was there.

I: He sure would (laughs). Opposite question now, what character did you think was less popular than you thought they would be?

YT: Less than expected? I guess Ryouma Hoshi? Just my personal opinion though, I understand it’s because he died too soon.

KK: A lot of people I know love Hoshi. 

TS: I know lot of Hoshi fans too.

KK: To me, the most unexpectedly unpopular character was Korekiyo Shinguuji, not Hoshi. I mean, his uniform is awesome and his unstable relationship with his sister feels like a classic underground movie. Shinguuji is one of my personal favorites and I thought he would be popular. But the people playing the game called him “gross” (pained laughter).

I: Shinguuji, one-of-a-kind as he is, he’s really not for everyone.

KK: Meh, whatever, I don’t wriite characters trying to make them popular. Be it for Momota or for Shinguuji, I was thinking I would personally love if they became popular but that was not the goal. In fact, the only character I wrote with the popularity polls in mind was Miu Iruma, and the goal there was to get her the last place! I think this gave her strong character quirks, not mention that trying to make everyone popular makes the cast weird and lacking in variety. 

I: I see. Speaking of Shinguuji, I felt that while his motive was quite unrelatable, most of the other students had sympathetic motives. Was that on purpose?

KK: For the motives, I was just trying to avoid a repeat of what happened with Mikan Tsumiki. Yeah, I know Shinguuji’s was close. But this time most of the motives were based on their murder tricks. The first thing I did was give a definite theme for each murder trick: chapter 1 is the protagonist being the culprit, chapter 2 was a fusion of murder trick and magic trick, chapter 3 was a new death during the investigation, chapter 4 was the culprit not knowing that he is the culprit, and chapter 5 was the culprit and the victim working together. That makes chapter 2 the only outlier. I just really wanted to use the twist that Kirumi Toujou was the Prime Minister. I also absolutely wanted to have piranhas in my story (laughs). 

I: (laughs) Another big difference I notice is that I couldn’t predict the culprits based on the murder tricks.

KK: That part was very intentional. I really didn’t want any moments of “I don’t know the trick, but the culprit is this guy” the best I could. Chapter 3 was easy to figure out, but I think chapter 2′s clever hooks did a lot better.

Kodaka is Barack Obama!? The personality felt by Megumi Hayashibara.

I: Sayaka Kanda voicing Akamatsu was a highly discussed topic. How exactly did you decide that?

KK: The initial was to have (non-voice) actors playing the role of the two protagonists. After many twists and tuns, we had only Kanda voicing Akamatsu.

YT: She had a great performance as Junko Enoshima in Danganronpa THE STAGE. I invited her to the Akamatsu with high expectations, not only because she obviously a very talented actress, but also because she is so associated with Junko Enoshima that it would give the fans a lot to speculate about. 

I: Another big surprise was the other protagonist Saihara being Megumi Hayashibara. Hayashibara is not someone most people would imagine voicing a boy...

KK: Hayashibara was my personal request. It looked difficult at first, but ultimately she accepted it. She might have been initially wary but then felt it was okay because she shares a lot of history with Ogata and Takayama, who voiced the previous protagonist.

I: I see. Not that you mention it, in a previous interview Hayashibara made a comment about you: “He’s like President Obama”. She didn’t elaborate on that, so please tell us why!

KK: When we were recording chapter 6, Hayashibara asked me “Does Danganronpa always ends like this?”. I answered “It’s not always like this.” and the conversation continued from there. After I created Danganronpa, many other stories with death games started appearing. I know death games are exciting and easy to employ, but so many of them didn’t think their endings through or were just the using the game as a sadistic system to kill characters. Then, as I was analyzing what it means to “truly escape the death game”, I reached the conclusion that it’s the characters upsetting the death game itself. As I explained to her how I made that ending because I had to take responsibility for creating Danganronpa, Hayashibara said “Wonderful!”...

I: And where does President Obama come in? 

KK: Hayashibara talked about one time when President Obama dismantle bomb facilities in the US to say “It’s important to take responsibility for what you make”, so I answered “Then I’m Obama?” (laughs).

I: (laughs) What a conversation.

KK: Hayashibara seemed to be very convinced by this explation, seeing how she put even more power into her chapter 6 performance.

I: Saihara’s chapter 6 voice acting was indeed on fire. Speaking of chapter 6, I was really surprised by the twist of having the DR1 and 2 characters there. Was that decided from the start?

KK: I didn’t even considered it when I was planning the plot. The idea came to me only when I started writting chapter 6′s script.

YT: That’s pretty late into the process.

KK: I was thinking that just Tsumugi Shirogane’s cosplays would be too weak to express the mastermind’s threat level. As I was thinking on how could I make her a character on par with Enoshima, since the ending was going to be that, I had my epiphany: “She should cosplay every character before her!”. And if I want a perfect cosplay, I would need the real voices. When I talked to Terasawa about how awesome she would be if she could cosplay even voices, and how much of a visual punch it would be to have all previous characters, his reaction was “Wait a minute...”.

I: I can see how he wouldn’t be ready for that.

KK: I was doing the recordings for the DR3 anime at the time, so I was naive enough to believe asking for just a couple additional lines would be enough.

YT: Life is not that easy (laughs).

I: (laughs) But everything worked at the end.

KK: I have to admit, I did some emotional blackmail there. Saying “I already started the script, I can’t go with any other twist now”. I had already resigned to the fact that we couldn’t have everyone, but in the end, the entire cast came to the recordings.

I: Impressive work, Terasawa.

YT: After Kodaka’s blackmail, I had to do my part, too. The result was splendid and very meaningful to the game, but we can’t use that in promotional material, so, from a cost efficiency standpoint, it was really bad (pained laughter).

KK: But one problem I would want to fix if I had a chance is how this made her total dialogue really long. I could have made it all a lot more concise, but you know, leaving one character with only two lines who be such a waste.

I: That said, I think the result was splendid. Just as you wanted, it made Shirogane a lot more awesome, in my opinion. On the topic of Shirogane, was making Super High School Level Cosplayer the mastermind talent decided from the start?

KK: Yes. The mastermind being a cosplayer came first from that ending punchline where she asserts that their entire world is part of her cosplay. Also because I really wanted to have a cosplayer character somewhere.

The Love Hotel was born from a cancelled game mechanic!?

I: Our next topic will be the setting and the special scenes. Starting from how the Kibougamine Academy was rebooted into the Saishuu Academy. Tell us how the academy was created.

KK: I think didn’t put any school name on the project pitch. The thing is, V3 is a project initiated under the idea of being something of a culmination of the series, of putting an end into everything, so we went with the name Saishuu, which carries the nuances of both “final” and “talents being locked up”. Another neat detail I only noticed now is that it’s kanji form is pretty easy to write (才囚).

I: You’re praising yourself too much (laughs).

KK: I love Saishuu Academy’s name, but I like its emblem just as much. The design includes a subtle prisoner aesthetic and a Monokuma. Though I wonder, how will the localization handle this? (pained laughter).

I: That’s a good question (laughs). Then, how was the academy’s design decided?

KK: I only asked them to make the wall. The wall was my utmost priority.

TS: I remember that this wall got its birdcage style because I suggested to include a jail or birdcage motif. V3′s school has a prison atmosphere, but prisons still have sports grounds and whatnot, you know? Because of this, we decided to make the Saishuu Academy with explorable areas outside the school building.

I: The Saishuu Academy has a lot of strange areas. A casino is already bad enough, but it has even a love hotel...

KK: Whose idea was the love hotel again?

SS: It was based on Sugawara’s idea of nighttime raids, from the project pitch.

TS: Oh yeah, at the time we had a set rule where you could only solve the academy’s mysteries at nighttime. The idea was to explore the academy at night and investigate the mysteries, but you could also peek into the students’ rooms.

YT: Yeah, I was thinking of making an investigation game like this. 

KK: The problem was that this was going to make the game too lenghty, so we left the parts where you enter the students’ for dialogue as the Love Hotel.

SS: Yeah, and since we thought it would be nice to have an element where you can flirt with the characters, they became those erotic scenes...

I: I see (laughs). Did you write the Love Hotel scenes, Kodaka?

KK: I gave the Love Hotel scenes to a substitute writer. Except their version were really not acceptable, so I had to rewrite them myself (pained laughter).

I: What an interaction to have. Enough about character scenes. We also had many new secret routes in the Class Trials.How exactly were these secret routes created?

SS: The secret routes exist because we wanted to incorporate the Lie Bullet into the story, not only the gameplay. But lying is something we kind of needed to convince most players to do. You know, we needed to add moments where the player would want to lie. And all thanks to Sugawara, we could do it.

I: You wrote the secret routes, didn’t you, Sugawara?

KK: I was too busy with everything else. Since already had semi-done scripts for the proper route, I let Sugawara have his ideas based on that.

TS: That said, I was also piled up with other jobs, so I had other developers do some bits, like pointing me out where I could lie. Some pointers I followed straight, while others I had to rethink. I tried to include as many secret routes as I could, but this was a work I couldn’t get done in time for the voice recordings.

I: I think making secret routes is hard even when the proper route script is complete...

TS: It was relatively easy to make the new content for the secret routes. The difficult is how to get back to the original route.

KK: I tried not to touch on Sugawara’s scripts too much, but I did edit some character word choices or some parts where the topic got too long.

I: How did the fans react to the secret routes?

KK: I didn’t hear much about it.

YT: I often check Twitter for fan opinions, but that’s never really tweeted about.

TS: I think a lot of people don’t notice where they can lie to get a secret route. I did make them change the song for the Debate where you can do Perjury, but that’s not listed or hinted in any tutorial, so...

KK: Not to mention it’s a really minor change, so I find it pretty difficult to notice on your first go.

The mystery novelist Kitayama adds even more well polished murder tricks

I: Since we are talking about Class Trials, I would like to ask about the murder tricks. First, tell me how Kitayama joined the party.

KK: Once I knew I would have to work on this and the DR3 anime at the same time, I thought I would have to ask someone for help, since the time I would have on the scripts would shorten. I thought that if I could smoothly get all the murder tricks decided, I could handle both scripts just fine, but unfortunately the discussion went for much longer than I expected. In the end I didn’t gain any time from all this, but thanks to Kitayama joining me, we boast higher quality.

I: How was your work?

KK: I told Kitayama the trick themes for each chapter and had him come up with the howdunnit. With that, Sugawara and Sasaki’s developer team can plot out the trick, then I check it all and put it together as the script. 

I: Was there anything big you had to fix?

KK: Depends on the chapter. For chapter 1 I pretty much used Kitayama’s idea exactly as it was. Even the “I tossed away what I was holding” descriptor was left exactly as Kitayama wrote it. On the other hand, chapter 2 was very different from the initial draft. 

SS: The chapter 2 trick was the water slider instead of the ropeway using the floating tube, right?

KK: Yeah, that one. Lining up a lot of floating tube to make the corpse slide on them. Then she would only have to cut the rope connecting them and that would leave just countless floating tubes on the pool. I fought finding the tubes during the investigation would be a fun idea, but when it came the time to script it, I got a lot questions. “Is this really enough water pressure to make a corpse silde?”. “Won’t she get wet from the water on the gaps between tubes?”. “Are sure the corpse can enter the fish tank?”.

YT: I’m a physics major, so this bothers me a lot. One little detail like this can ruin the whole case for me, so I made sure to comment everything I noticed.

KK: Yeah, so I had to change to the whole water slider trick into a ropeway trick. Sasaki, you’re the one who argued the most against this, weren’t you?

SS: I was (laughs). I had to plot the trick for chapter 2. So when Kodaka told me “The water slide won’t work”, I was like “Really...?”.

I: The script is where you start to notice the problems.

KK: More exactly, the plotting stage doesn’t put all that attention to detail. Because the workload for plotting a trick as a lot bigger than it sounds. And we’re definitely not gaining any time if I happen to see plans before they’re ready...So, the issues only start showing up when I’m doing the script.

SS: In chapter 2, even my idea to gather all the students together, the Insect Meet-and-Greet, caused some back-and-forth.

KK: Yes, I let the developer come up with the finer details, like for example the reason why all students gathered together. So, for this one I was like “What’s an Insect Meet-and-Greet even supposed to be?”.  Then he explained to me that the group would be assembled to look at Gonta’s insects, but I still had no idea why they would do that. I still wanted to do it, it was a fun idea, so I implemented Gonta’s Insect Meet-and-Greet on the form of Gonta kidnapping the students under Ouma’s orders.

I: Do you have any other case of struggles to connect a trick’s dots?

KK: Chapter 3, handled by Sugawara, also took a lot of time.

TS: I used Kitayama’s idea for the main trick using the seesaw, but we needed to change all the steps that lead to the crime, and that was the time consuming part. 

KK: Oh yeah, we changed the seance ritual.

TS: At first, the trick was that the students would all hold hands and sing Kagome Kagome together, while the culprit would stomp the floorboard. But if that were the case, when the culprit stomped the floorboard, the people holding his hands would feel the movement, you see...

I: And that’s why you had to edit. Next is chapter 4, how was it?

KK: Chapter 4 also had a murder trick by Kitayama, but it was a trick using a rope. Since we changed chapter 2 into the ropeway, that would make chapter 4′s a repeat. While we were thinking of how to make a ropeless trick, one the developers gave the looping world idea, so I created the trick using the loop.

I: Chapter 4′s trick was an idea that made a really good use out of the game world. Was there any reason to change the characters’ visual into the chibi models?

KK: I was born because we wanted to make a game inside a game. At first, we wanted to make a fully 3D world.

YT: You were calling it “VR”, weren’t you?

TS: But then its main gimmick became the loop trick, so we had to give up because a loop would be too hard and far too costly to portray in 3D. 

SS: We also considered using the bonus modes’ 8-bit sprites, but the consesus what that those were too visually unimpressive, so we made new ones, if I recall correctly.

KK: Also because to make the trick work we need to make the game in 2.5D, not 2D. Most of us thought it would be difficult to use the 8-bit sprites under that circumstances.

I: And for the chapter 5 trick, the twist where the victim and the culprit were in cahoots was very original, and I honestly couldn’t tell which of them was the culprit until the very end.

YT: That one is the hardest to figure out.

KK: I’m glad I could put the Exisal to good use in the 5th trick, with the victim and the culprit switching places. Also, I loaded chapter 5 with a large amount of information to distract you from the truth, so you being confused about it is exactly what we wanted.

The feelings imbued in the shocking finale. And an intriguing plan for the future!?

I: From this part on, I will be asking about the controversial chapter 6 and your plans for the future. I was told that when you were writting the chapter 6 script you added many extra animations and cutscenes of the school being destroyed. 

KK: At the plot planning stage, the only thing I had planned for chapter 6 was the endgame. Only when I actually reached that part in the script that I saw I didn’t know how lead the path to that. In DR2 I prepared some surprises to thrill the fans, like Kibougamine Academy appearing and whatnot. I wanted this game to have an element like this. And that’s when I arranged a meeting with all of Sasaki’s developers. I said “I put Kibougamine in DR2′s finale, so now I want V3 to have a set up as good as that”.

SS: Everyone agreed we should have one, of course.

KK: And that’s where I suggested we should explode Saishuu Academy. With Ki-bo appearing to help us around at the tightest moments, fighting the Exisals and all that. I talked with Sasaki’s team to ask if they could do it, they said “I think we can” and I answered “Nice” (laughs).

I: (laughs) That said, I think that was hard on who was managing the budget and schedule...

YT: You get me. There was suddenly a lot more to make.

KK: But we weren’t behind on the deadlines, were we?

SS: That’s right, we weren’t.

YT: That’s not how it works! (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

I: Chapter 6 had a lot more animated cutscenes too, hadn’t it?

KK: I wasn’t expecting that. You know that scene where Ki-bo first appears, flying to the glass? I was think that was going to be just some CG, not a fully animated cutscene. So it was a good surprise, like “Are you really making him this cool? Thank you!”.

YT: And his cutscene was quite a long one, at that.

SS: A CG would be too weak and unconvicing for this. We decided we should have this animated to give it the impact it deserved.

I: And I assume the same goes for all the add cutscene. Was the idea of slapping away the block-pathing debris conceived and added for the same reason? 

SS: It was. Honestly, there was so much more we wanted to do but didn’t have time to...

KK: To be completely honest, I was thinking chapter 6 was going to be a lot more visually simplistic than that. But once we started we didn’t want to stop. I’m glad the finished version is this much better than I imagined.

I: Speaking of chapter 6, can I ask Kodaka to explain the ending? 

KK: I went with that ending because I wanted to change where the player stands in V3. In 1 and 2 the player was an outside observer to the killing game. But in V3 I wanted the player to experience the same shock as Saihara and take part in the debate from the same position as him. Then, as Saihara is shocked to learn “This world was fictional. The Akamatsu and Momota I believed in were all fiction”, the player would also be hit with the fact “Everything I played so far is fictional”. But it’s a fact that everything you played so far still resonated with you and you gained a lot from it, so I was hoping you could synchro yourself with Saihara and take his side in the argument after he gets back in his feet. I was thinking that it if the player and the characters could outgrow this fiction, it could even create a new relationship between player and game.

I: I see. So that’s what you were thinking.

KK: I prepared a lot of tricks to make it easier for the player to sync up with Saihara, like Ki-bo’s “Do you want to save?”. Just empathizing with the characters was not enough for chapter 6, I want to share their point of view. That why, to make it harder to insert and emphatize in one specific person, I shuffled the POV with everyone.

I: I think the finale intentionally avoids stating what’s the truth and what is a lie. Do all of you in the production staff share the same answer to this mystery?

YT: Kodaka might have the answer on his mind, but I think we don’t need to know. We don’t even know if we can take everything Kodaka says as correct. See, the real right answer is the answer you came up with yourself.

I: You mean you just want everyone to think of the answer with their own personal interpretations?

YT: Also, I want to take this moments to tell all the fans that we never had the slightest intent to tarnish or insult the past games. We still think of Danganronpa 1 and 2 as our very beloved children. We love all 3 games from the bottom of our hearts.

I: Kodaka said before that V3 is a culmination and an end to everything, but will the Danganronpa series continue?

YT: Like with the first two games, we are completely burned out after finishing it, so, honestly, we don’t have any solid plans for a next game yet. However, as a producer, I want to answer to the fans’ support and expectations. I need to think long and hard about the future of Danganronpa.

I: What could this future be holding for us...?

YT: Who knows. DR1-2 Reload and Ultra Despair Girls will be ported to the PS4 this year, so I think we’ll get many new fans. If something in this trend incites Kodaka’s desire to write, we could be having a new game. Or at least that’s what I expect. I hope our fans expect the same.

I: I’ll be looking forward to it. Now, one message from all of you to the fans.

KK: Thank you for buying this artbook. How about replaying once more now that you know the game better? Or even better, buy another copy of the game and the book!

TS: I think there’s always something of value, be it good or bad, in someone playing a videogame for the first time. So the words I want to say here are the same words of gratitude said since the old days: THANK YOU FOR PLAYING.

SS: I saw a lot of intense critical commentary both for and against this game, so I’m very happy that this game managed to make this many people feel something about it. I believe leaving you wanting to talk about of you felt is one of the more characteristic traits of Danganronpa, so I love that you can enjoy exchanging your opinions.

[sparklyjojos]

[Disco Wednesdayyy part 11/?] ---Disco goes on a big dream adventure, which isn’t nearly as nice as it sounds [tw: body horror, eye horror, fingore]---

Last time, we learned we had a demon problem, and Kozue went missing. In order to allow Sakurazuki to find Kozue, Disco has to fall asleep in Kimura’s room (we’re not yet told exactly how this is supposed to work, but hey, Sakurazuki thinks it’ll work). What follows is basically a weird dream (?) sequence a’la Asura Girl, but much better.

--

Disco ‘wakes up’ in his office in San Diego. It’s 25th July 1986, and we’ll quickly see that in this dreamscape Disco doesn’t remember things that happened after that date, like the Pine House or even who Kozue is.

The one who ‘woke him up’ is Sharon Styron, who brought with her a boy she had found by her pool. The 17-year-old boy introduces himself as Mitamura Saburou and claims he was somehow transported from Nishi Akatsuki in Japan to San Diego in under an hour, and he thinks he could have been kidnapped. That’s not the reason Mitamura came to Disco, though. He wants the detective to find his missing brothers, Ichirou and Jirou.

Somebody knocks on the door, and Disco is startled to find that it’s a giant guy who looks like he’s entirely wrapped in black leather, with his face being a featureless surface, seemingly “boiling and squirming” [a Silent Hill monster, pretty much]. The man (?) introduces himself as SS Nail Peeler (”Not that SS. It’s short for ‘super sadistic’, actually.” Can I just say that I love how even the murder demon doesn’t want to be associated with Those Guys). Nail Peeler says that Disco is ‘in the wrong world’, and that he has to go back to the Pine House. He calls Disco ‘Odoriba Mizutarou’, which is one of the many nicknames the protagonist works under. [It’s the equivalent of ‘Dancefloor Wednesguy’ and I love how on the nose it is.]

At this moment Mitamura starts screaming, so Disco turns around and sees that Sharon Styron has been cut into bloody pieces by some mysterious force.

“Run, Odoriba!” Nail Peeler says. “Go back to the Pine House! Only you can properly save the world! Think only about Kozue! You really should be thinking about her!”

Disco and Mitamura jump out the window and flee in Disco’s car. They hear a radio announcement that “...to solve the last challenging puzzle of the writer Ehimegawa Juuzou, many great detectives as well as mystery nerds came to the Pine House Theater..." Disco somehow knows that the Pine House Theater is the big round building on the hills of San Diego, so they head there while talking. (Disco: ”Ever heard of this Ehimegawa Juuzou?” Mitamura: “Yeah. I’m a mystery fan. Have you read Shimada Souji’s books?” Disco: “Nah, I’m a detective, I have enough of this stuff in real life.” Mitamura: “But The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is a masterpiece!” -- okay, at this point Maijo isn’t even hiding that he wants the reader to check out Shimada Souji).

They arrive at the Pine House Theater, which looks like a cross between the Pine House and a theater (...duh): long rows of seats wrap around the scene. The door closes behind Disco, the lights go out, the Nail Peeler suddenly appears. “You finally came back,” he says. “Well then, let’s begin the tragedy -- The Pine House Dead!”

As Disco watches, Sakurazuki comes on stage. “My name is Sakurazuki Tansetsu, and I am a great detective.” He recites a short explanation of the case, which contains quite ridiculous claims like Mitamura having been murdered by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Once he’s done...

“Let the judgement begin!” says Nail Peeler. The lights go out, and once they turn back on, Nail Peeler is standing behind the now dead Sakurazuki, holding one of the man’s eyes. A chorus sings from the shadows: “Holy death, holy death, the fool dies for new knowledge, crushes his eye to gain new light”.

All the other great detectives take turns on the stage -- Kiyuu; Hakkyoku with five others; Keraku; Judy Dollhouse; Daibakusho Curry -- and shortly sum up their reasoning, and each time after they’re done the Nail Peeler enacts his ‘judgement’. [This can’t really be conveyed in short recaps, but I can’t overstate how awesomely this entire scene was written. It’s one of those scenes that you can instantly see and hear. Imagine Cellblock Tango, but the spoken parts are the reasoning explanations, and the chorus is ominous like it’s a part of an Utena duel song, and also there’s a murderous demon. That’s what this scene felt like]

[There’s not much new stuff we learn from these explanations, and of course we’re not told exactly what parts of them were wrong. Judy thinks that Mitamura’s body might have been pointing to a celestial body known as 2003UB313 -- that’d be the dwarf planet Eris. Daibakusho Curry says some nonsense about how Mitamura made the circle of blood because a circle is a ‘positive shape’ and he wanted to tell others that death is not something to be afraid of.]

Once the last of the great detectives is dead, the Nail Peeler appears behind Disco’s back. “It’s your turn, Odoriba Mizutarou. You already knew that. For Kozue’s sake, read out the truth!” But Disco has no idea what’s going on and can only stand there frozen in terror. “Oh well, I guess there’s no use in waiting. I’ll just take your eye now...” As he reaches to do just that, the door to the Theater fly open, a mysterious man comes in and saves Disco. While Disco doesn’t recognize him in the dream, we know it’s Mercury C.

--

Disco wakes up back in reality. He got out alive from the encounter, but while he slept his fingernails has been ripped off (OUCH. Thank God a doctor they called earlier is hanging around the Pine House so he can help right away). At least they achieved their goal: Sakurazuki is holding plushie-Kozue, whose soul he managed to find when the Nail Peeler was distracted showing Disco his highly disturbing and symbolic play.

From a quite philosophical conversation we learn that Sakurazuki is able to glimpse into other people’s ‘world after death’, a sort of a ‘neutral place between worlds’. Sakurazuki thinks that said place is constantly changing shape according to what a person believes. He wonders if even the real world is shaped by human consciousness (”Maybe if everyone believed that Earth is shaped like a giant table, it would really be a giant table until someone started having doubts? (...) Maybe everything that was ever discovered in our world is like fiction, like movies and novels...”). Disco is pretty skeptical -- if this world is shaped by human wishes, why are horrible things happening in the Pine House? Who would want it? -- to which Sakurazuki answers enigmatically: “Someone whose worldview is different from ours, who therefore can do extraordinary and offbeat things.”

--

Not long after that, Kiyuu is found dead just like many other detectives before him. A short time later Hongou informs everyone that Sakurazuki almost followed that fate as well, but thanks to the quick medical help is still alive, though it’s hard to tell if he‘ll wake up again. For now he’s cared for by that doctor from earlier in one of the vacant rooms.

Only two great detectives in the Pine House have yet to state their theories about the case: Hongou Takeshi Takeshi and Mikami Nils.

[iristial]

SS/Kamen Rider Ramble #92: It Suddenly Went to Hazard Level 7 For No Reason At All - Kamen Rider Build Episode 42

What I’m getting is that no one is supposed to be happy at this point, even if they deserve it...but something isn’t playing right. It’s definitely not the acting that’s wrong so it has to be the writing. Oh dear no, I think this reached the point I was afraid of since Sento became Killer Rabbit for one episode.

Everyone’s feeling the summer ~ Finally we see Kazumin in something other than his furry coat and we have Sento dropping the beige long coat for the first time in forever. I could cry looking at how skinny they are, do their muscles migrate to the upper arms? Or do the muscles melt over the summer?

Gentoku finally wore something decent this episode. Misora probably helped him but I wish she cut his mullet while she was at it XD Also, why is he...spineless this episode? Idk like he’s still broken by his father’s death, a.k.a. him getting overpowered by Utsumi when the latter mentions his father in the corniest way possible, only to get himself together by Sento’s motivational speech which sounds like it got fed through Sento’s mouth?? There’s just something off over how he’s mourning his father’s death again in this episode...

I can’t get over Kazumin’s “upgrade” because you have Sento decked in white and coloured glass, and Ryuuga boiling in black and orange, and there’s Kazumin...with two little drills...

We have a call-back to Ryuuga being Evolto’s other half via recalling his memories from his time on Mars! Except...we have Ryuuga “overheating” and Utsumi exclaiming “how did he power up?!” Duh - he’s Evolto’s other half; except he’s sweeter, more hot-blooded and a lovable idiot.

I have a low-key bad feeling that the writer is trying to “prepare” us for the Build novel in which Sento is going to be paired with Sawa. Shipping preferences aside, the chemistry between those two - it’s just not cut out for a romantic relationship, putting the “they just haven’t developed feelings yet” card aside. If you told me Sawa would be paired with Gentoku, I’d be more convinced tbh

Finally Japan is reunited...it seems too early to call that, especially since Evolto suddenly changed his mind to turn Earth into another Gaim battle ground.

The boys head out to fight, the girls stay at home. I somehow feel disappointed with this division. I don’t even need them to be Riders; I just want them to not be pushed to the side or be mere spectators...

The Lost Smash. I get that they’re a bigger threat, that we may have another Hokuto Crow Trio death sequence at our hands if not for the Genius Form, that they’re probably going to be used for the summer movie. But honestly? I’m not exactly fearful of this new plot development? If it was introduced about ten episodes ago, it would have the impact it should have. For much of this series I’ve been praising Mr. Muto’s ability to whip out unforeseen outcomes. But he’s pulled the rabbit out of the top hat one too many times and now I’m not feeling the gallows that was supposed to fall on my neck. And this isn’t even the least of it.

Junior Katsuragi is able to choose which memories Sento can have access to. That...doesn’t explain Sento’s amnesia. Not at all. It was said that Evolto took the memories away and when Katsuragi woke up in place of Sento, he acted as though he hasn’t seen the light of day ever since he was knocked out by Evolto. Hm...

Utsumi. It feels like forever since I last saw him. I was expecting...just something that wasn’t Utsumi acting like a secretary for the third time in a row, or being one of those tiny dogs who bark at a crocodile. The dude lost his sanity, for earth’s sake, and pledged alliance to a sociopathic alien because he can’t handle living without a master. I thought he’d descend further into madness, filled with the delusion that he’s going to live when he’s not, and ultimately die a spineless fool. But we’re still having the small hint of goodness from episode 12(?) being tugged...won’t that mean Utsumi will undermine Evolto and therefore steal the climatic battle? Unfortunately all I’m getting is that Utsumi is a lapdog with a big ego. If they pull off some “redemption arc” for him this late in the game, I’m going to scream.

Evolto is still the big threat but now we’re introduced to Sento’s father. It does makes sense that the latter has been affected the most by the Pandora Box and thus wouldn’t kill himself over the incident...however, it seems way too late to introduce him as Evolto’s equal?? Like out of the blue we’re told that Sento’s father is still alive, as though he’s the contrast point between the Rider System and the Evolto System. Also, he somehow has access to extra Rabbit and Tank Full Bottles. I don’t understand what the intention is behind introducing him? I suppose one way you could pull this off is for Sento to completely severe ties with his former identity by disowning his father and using the Build system as a counter measure to Evolto because he decided that. After all, science itself is not evil - it all lies in the creator’s hands as well as who chooses to wield it

NEXT WEEK MISORA WILL BE OUR NEW LOST SMASH - LIKE I DID THEORIZE A WHILE BACK THAT AT SOME POINT SENTO GOT A BOTTLE OFF HER BUT THIS ISN’T WHAT I EXPECTED NO IS VERNAGE BEING INVOLVED OR???

IS SENTO LOOKING HOPELESS BECAUSE HIS FATHER TURNED OUT TO BE A VILLAIN OR THAT MISORA WAS PUT THROUGH NEBULA GAS DESPITE HIS VOW TO PROTECT HER OR BOTH????

[davidjjohnston3]

Thoughts on philosophy of education non-toxic and detoxifying edition

1.

Needless risk.  I said years ago, “The quality of the peace determines the quality of the war.”  What is the life-expectancy for an African child-soldier who started at 8?  

Everyone in America wants to be or thinks they can be or can make their kid Ender Wiggin.

2.

ES - Mom, school, hakwon, piano hakwon, church

MS - friends

HS - destiny, purpose, and often, couples

3.

My last ideal H&M Hail Mary projects

 -from Promise Nine “Clover”

 - from Mother Superior Mrs. Catherine Cho’s “Inferno.”  Elinor Wylie or What She Shall Be.  We shall walk in the snow.  Purity and controlled aggression; ardor; candor; and mayhap, without apologizing forever.

- Digging up all my buried treasure from the days when I had good psychiatrists like Dr. Z. who said a comment over the 2012 election.  “The Winners.”

4.

Young people have ardor and candor and are good writers but lack opportunity / life-chances.  They engage ideas.  Sometimes they ignore their own faces and hands and this is in part because, as I have repeatedly noticed, the old who HAVE ideas just want bodies.  

Hence, “My Teacher’s Pet Grace.”  “My grandmother [shoot me in heart].”

I have other thoughts and feelings about this but it’s my private concern.

5.

I have no idea who is gonna make it or how.  “Wonhago...”  America seems demoralized.  Whitefish Bay, where I love, where someone knows my name, at Sendik’s feels like they are not sure they can win.

I used to love their Pumpkin Festival and even took Mom and Pop.

I started “Uncle Sam” about a geography teacher who retired too soon and is fond of Krystal Jung Soojung.  I think his name was “Samuel Johnston” and in past he had a Southern undermining friend I based on Miles Patrick Klee who always tried to “bottom shelf” him down to his essential pathetic condition; whereat I was repeatedly pigeonholed(?) by all my “friends” or ex-constituencies.

“Uncle Sam” evolved eventually in to “Send for Your Love” which is my masculine counterpart(?) to something like “The Hen Who Dreamed She Can / Could / Might Fly” whereby I thought I failed as a hakwon and HS teacher but had a solid even immortal concept for Phi. of Ed. and teacher-training.  

6.

I discovered “All Loves Excelling” actually in Lake Geneva (where FSF was born) at a consignment boutique with a 21-year-old cat on a digression back from Chicago where I’d just interviewed at the ROKCG for the first or second time.  I didn’t understand it at all but felt it “cool, keol, jeongdeokhan” that a Headmaster wrote a private school novel because I HATE Gossip Girl.

7.

There was also “The Midwestern Novel” a study I never ended up reading but which tickled me(?) which I fancied or was taken with because I had assumed if not inferred that most Midwesterners only gazed dead-eyed with “tarnished mournful beady-eyed German mirrors” at the literature of the coasts.

That is / was not true.  For one thing there is me.  For another many people “hide their virtue” as a Japanese said.  They also pour their pure hearts and their creativity and “apercus” (not acumen) into creating little families, households, and other things which remain idle ideas for some apartment-dwellers.  Astronaut farmers here there be - if only they would launch from the pad; but IDK since I’m an outsider here to all but myself.

8.

Wallace Stegner

9.

It is important / critical / crucial to know what is going on in the present moment or there’s no end to the reading of history or anyway it is for other people - “Sheep May Safely Graze.”

10.

Whitefish Bay - “Bay of Slow Hopes” - at least thank the Lord =/= Milwaukee.

11.

I’ll never forget the Vietnamese girl at World War Z.  However JiU going for the popcorn and no movie is like a dream come true to me.

This is why I gave away my precious SS-9′s and SS-7′s a few months ago -  I sincerely thought it was Acts 2.  “Husbands look on your wives’ brows, hold your daughters’ and sons’ hands at the library, vote Republican, don’t even vote, don’t outsource, don’t send for, don’t go.”

“My Love Don’t Cross That _”

TW-1 used to like it when I said “Don’t do that” but I stole the line from Big Bad Boris.

I used to compose in Tumblr when I thought this aspect of the past was a small deal.  Now I want to give butter and honey and “daily bread, viaticum” (M. Scott Peck Gifts for the Journey DNR - he said “I’m a prophet not a saint” which is 100% non campus mentis suicidal).

12.

What’s Dong Joo Lee up to, under the moon or sun, by mirror or torch / lamp, by moonlight or throw-light.  

I imagined him on an aircraft carrier with an F-35 blasting “You Could Be Mine” or “You Shall Be Mine.”

He said, “I wrote on a paper I want to join Navy JAG, I did, God is good.”

He looks great / beautiful in white + killer facial hair for a Kor.

When I met Chi Hye Kim I a saw a comet walking around and remembered his back-muscles sheathed in fat / water-retentions before our years of?

13.

I’m against BP but “F U pay me”

14.

I used to listen to “Adagio Cantabile” all the time and think, “repression, going over and over, re-reading and re-reading, mystery religiose, not wanting to know, student crush, Angel Stays Here, repression, repression, repression, rejection, unwillingness to “rebel against evil.”

Siyeon Paradise - run 

away

and that bubblegang 5 song, 

aoi tori

caritas tori

golden dove missive

15.

“Our New World” as letters or love-letters

A Half Day after MS and Pizza at Bunny’s 

16.

Half-days are terrible and the staff don’t even develop

As Dale Duncan said at Family Buffet, “Hell no.”

He moved south and got gay-”married.”

Also blogs about his genius pedagogy

17.

The other song I should have held in my heart’s arm-wing-chaingun-magazine was “Don’t stop flying till you find me, high sky light-debt-bond.”

18.

What’s Richard M. Dienst up to and since I can’t seem to get me a sinecure in Wisconsin can I get a familiar river old boy country road take home at RU.  Will teach for not even food, not even thanks...