#and thus need to remain hidden

[a-so-called-person]

Me personally I cannot wait till the first act of season 2 finnally drops then we will get to the very specific point where we will KNOW WHOS ALIVE AND DEAD AND WE WILL GET TEASERS WITH SHOTS OF THE MH OR THE DEFENDER OR THE FINAL LOOKS OF THE LOL CHAMPIONS FINNALLY START TO BEING SLOWLY PUT TOGHETER AND PPL WILL THEORIZE ABT MY FAVS AND-

[contact-guy]

(pt 1) (pt 2) (pt 3) (pt 4) (pt 5) (pt 6) (pt 7)

HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES pt 5 (read the other parts first!)

(this is part of the Watson's sketchbook series)

letter text under the cut because SOMEONE'S handwriting is atrocious:

My dear

Dear Watson,

I have solved a mystery lately, the one concerning my distressing levels of distraction + poor humour (refer to yr. notes on NORBURY). I would like to present my thoughts to you as tidily as though this were any other case (a little ritual which, I must admit, has become one of my chief pleasures in this work). (omit; overly sentimental)

The truth is thus: over the seven years of our acquaintance, I have come to care for you beyond friendship or brotherhood. Poetically, I care for you in the Grecian way (has W. read Plato's Symposium?) ; plainly, most would consider it unwholesome.

I am aware that you are tolerant of this vice in your friends, an admirable attitude. Whether you yourself indulge remains stubbornly beyond my sight, for I find when I desire a certain outcome, logical deduction of the truth becomes impossible.

I occasionally seek to amuse and dazzle you by seeming to read your thoughts; but it is a simple trick, and I can only peer into the shallowest corners of your mind. Because of my abiding personal interest, your depths are hidden. (excessive)

I find your presence and this unspoken dialogue to be unsettling in the extreme. I am in need of resolution. Will you please tell me I require data and it must come from you. I await a response urgently at your convenience. If you desire to end our personal and professional relationship, a word to Mrs. Hudson will send me away from Baker St. for as long as you require to gather your belongings.

Yours,

S.H.

p-s- you need no reminding of propriety, but do be sure to destroy this humble note.

p-p-s- of course I could leave the rooms to you, but yr. pension would not cover the cost

[val-of-the-north]

The "Hornsent deserved it" sentiments make me lose my goddamn mind

Short answer: No they didn't.

Long answer: Oh my gooooooooooood can we NOT do this shit, please???

There are two underlying sentiments to this line of thinking.

The Hornsent hurt Marika's people, thus Marika did nothing wrong, therefore they deserved to die badly

The Hornsent hurt Marika's people + Midra and some others, Marika is still evil, but the Hornsent deserved to be destroyed

Both may even come to the extreme of "Messmer wasn't cruel enough" or some other nonsense in the same vein.

-

Number 1

To tackle number one, we need to remember a little thing called Elden Ring's base game. The Hornsent's jar ritual is undoubtedly abhorrent, that much is true. But I urge you to remember the things that happened during Marika's reign. She:

Murdered all of the Fire Giants but one, subjecting him to a fate similar to hers but worse, forced into labor confined on the mountain among the remains of his people and culture. She mocked him, to boot. All of this because they might have burnt the Erdtree.

Enslaved the Misbegotten from birth "or worse" because their species just so happened to have made contact with the Crucible.

Rewarded her own loyal Crucible Knights with scorn because of it too, as they didn't fit her current society that they fought to establish.

Made sure the Albinaurics were seen as lesser just because they were graceless, which influenced the way they were treated. She even had her Inquisition, run by Rykard, torture them in needlessly cruel manners, as they appear to be their main victims.

Just in general, she allowed Rykard to run a sadistic Inquisition to torture heretics to the Golden Order in the first place, and she saw nothing wrong with it or their practices.

She entombed the entire Great Caravan over a false rumor, which is the sole reason why the Flame of Frenzy was even a problem during her reign. This has also scarred the remainder of their people greatly.

Made the lives of all Omen a living hell either by cutting their horns just as they were born which often kills them, hunting them down in as cruel a way as possible by using their trauma and body parts against them, or throwing them in a sewer to fester with evil spirits hidden from view. She also used to shackle them, including her two children, just to make extra sure they wouldn't crawl out.

Shunned anyone who saw a vision of the Erdtree burning, regardless of who it was, and chased them away from their homes.

Literally allowed the belief that shorter people are somehow lesser, for apparently no reason at all (her most random discrimination decision tbh). This forces them to band together and take up honorless jobs just to get by, and in turn, people start to spread rumors of their inhuman practices, which are likely all untrue.

Had people literally work as slaves for the nobility just by virtue of "being born into obscurity", whatever that means. As well as other accounts of slavery like the Fallen Hawks (likely tied to the defeated soldiers of ancient Stormveil).

Likely endorsed viewing anyone without Grace as inferior beings, which includes the Tarnished that only exist because she divested them of it. She has done nothing to ease their discrimination (despite potentially seeing them as a future asset of sorts), as even the members of the Crusade are more than ready to kill us, like Fire Knight Queelign.

All of this was done in service to HER religion and order. Killing all the Fire Giants and burying the Nomadic Merchants alive? Oh, they could have ruined her age with those pesky flames of theirs.

Systematically oppressing Omen, Misbegotten, Albinaurics and the likes? Oh, they are impure creatures, unlike her people, blessed with the Grace of Gold, elevated from the rest. (Which is the exact same line of thinking as the Hornsent and their horns for crying out loud).

"Oh but the Hornsent stuffed her people into jars" yeah, and I am not arguing the contrary! It was a cruel, deranged practice, born of simple superstition that their victims would be reborn as "good people". But Marika's answer if you don't fit her vision of the world is to either get rid of you and your people through extermination, by literally hounding you from your rightful home, or by enslaving you.

Both sides are genuinely awful... but there's only one side that people are justifying, and it sure as hell isn't the Hornsent.

Marika's backstory is meant to make her less a god, which is all we have ever known her to be before the DLC, and more a human, which is what she once was. It gives her complexity as a character, it's meant to be the catalyst from which we learn why she took the path that she took. It is absolutely not meant to make us go "holy shit guys, Marika was the good guy all along???", because what she brought upon this world through her burning desire for vengeance has ruined it irreparably, and ruined the lives of most of the creatures who inhabit it.

This includes her ruthless, honorless, pointless Crusade against the Hornsent. Sure, it was her own son that started it, but it was for her sake. It was her who allowed him to wage it, he had her full support... until the thing turned to such a slaughter-fest that even she could not associate with it anymore due to how appalling it all was. And what better way to do that than to seal her own son away to wage war endlessly? And not just because his actions made her look bad, but also for the same crippling fear and prejudice that saw her kill all Fire Giants but one and scar the Great Caravan.

Gratuitous violence across the board, and for what?

(I want to make it absolutely clear that I don't mean you can't like Marika now. In fact, I'd say the DLC made her much more of an interesting character to me as well. I just cannot fathom seeing the entirety of Elden Ring and coming out thinking "wow Marika was the good guy" because she isn't. Heck, coming out thinking that she'd be disgusted with what her grandson Godrick is doing with grafting as if she isn't the queen of having zero empathy for those who are graceless or aren't her family, which the Tarnished he grafts are neither. She'd probably be very proud if anything. Marika is a monster. She became one the moment she obtained godhood, because no milestone would quell her. She did all the wrongs, so take this whole section as a refresher in case you had forgotten)

-

Number 2

Now, to tackle number 2... this one seemingly has more nuance, but falls for the tried and true pitfall of "the many must pay for the crimes of the few" which is exactly where it rots and collapses onto itself.

Apparently, because of the perpetrators of the Jar Rituals, ALL Hornsent, INDISCRIMINATELY, deserve to be destroyed. They all, each and every single one, deserve the Crusade and the absolute pointless ruin that it brought them. From the children, to the ones who were friends with people with no horns, to the ones who found their own practices grotesque, to the ones that weren't even tied to the Tower's religion and were just simply living their lives.

They ALL, EQUALLY deserve to be burned, to have their cities destroyed, to have their lives ruined. All of them. Ok.

Number 2 works with the assumption that the Hornsent are some sort of hive mind. Some sort of all-encompassing religious order who believes in their superiority. But that's just the Tower's religion. Hornsent are a people. And people are individuals, with their own opinions, their own lives. In fact, from the perspective of the average Hornsent citizen, they were attacked out of nowhere as they were living in peace, which likely means they weren't even at war with Marika before this event.

People also have the assumption that all of the Hornsent were benefiting from their society, which is blatantly false. In fact, outside the treatment of the Shamans, the people that we know the Hornsent have hurt the most are their fellow Hornsent. We know of quite a few of them suffering at the hands of their kin BECAUSE of their religious and cultural practices.

Being Hornsent isn't a "free from mistreatment" card. If anything, the large Gaols where they were imprisoned were built specifically to house them. The main prisoners we find in large numbers are commoners, the same types as the ones scavenging the ruins of their ravaged towns. They are often seen eating maggots off the floor and cowering in fear. All of them were Hornsent too, locked away for who knows what crime. Could have been big and important, small and insignificant, or even just a failure to do something properly (there's precedent), point is, it's clear the Hornsent weren't having a good time in there.

The jar rituals were used mainly as punishment for the imprisoned Hornsent themselves, as a way to have them become "good people". This was just as horrifying for the Hornsent prisoners as it was for the Shamans I assume. Look how terrified this Hornsent seemed at the prospect of sharing that fate. This is the reason why they chopped up Shamans in the first place, as ritual ingredients for a punishment meant primarily for their kin.

And there were more Hornsent who suffered because of the leading ideology. Curseblades were once shunned because they failed to become tutelary deities, and so they were thrown in the Jar Gaols. They were only let out so they could use their expertise and flowing movements to defend their homeland when Messmer invaded, otherwise they'd be rotting with the Innard Shamans and the other Hornsent prisoners the way Labirith is.

It's also worth pointing out that Midra's Mense was filled with Hornsent attendants who sided with their sagely master regardless of his lack of horns and what the Inquisition believed of him. If we were to operate with reasoning number 2, they too would deserve to be murdered in the Crusade because they just so happened to be Hornsent. Because ALL Hornsent deserve extermination for what happened to the Shamans.

And we also know that the Hornsent can find what happens in Bonny Village revolting. In fact, we know that from someone who was born and raised there.

This sounds nothing like someone who thought any of that was ok. So who is to say other Hornsent weren't like this too, especially those who DIDN'T live in Bonny Village? Those who risked being stuffed into those same jars themselves? We make waaaay too many assumptions about an entire race, and that in itself is foolish enough.

If there's someone to blame, it's the Tower's Inquisition. They are the religious order that governs the Hornsent. They have all the power in their society... and yet, would you look at that? Enir-Ilim, their sanctum, the one place where those calling the shots reside, is completely untouched. And what about Bonny, the most structurally fine Hornsent settlement, when you'd expect it to be a black stain of char by now. But nope, no sign of Messmer activity and the Greater Potentates are just running around naked, doing their thing as usual.

The Crusade isn't even a good tool of vengeance, the only ones suffering are the civilians who were likely the ones with a higher risk of ritual jar punishment anyway. If this isn't proof enough that the Crusade is a completely petty, useless revenge war that accomplishes nothing I don't know what else to say. I'll just leave with what the people taking part in it were taking pride in doing.

These are people who, without a shadow of a doubt, would have chopped up most of the oppressed groups described earlier and stuffed them into jars if Marika had told them to do so. (Heck, something like this was being done to the Albinaurics already, as we have seen previously...)

They have zero moral superiority, their deranged zealotry is the only reason they act in the first place. Not to mention that they have no connection to Marika's struggles or past, nor were they informed of them I bet. It's likely only Messmer truly knows the reason for the Crusade, and that's only because he is her child and shoulders all the blame onto himself.

"Those stripped of the Grace of Gold shall all meet death" is LITERALLY their motto. Do you really think they stopped at the Hornsent? They were just their main target, but judging by the way all of Messmer's soldiers, including Queelign and the other Fire Knights, and even HE HIMSELF, attack us on sight for the simple fact we are Tarnished and lack Grace in our eyes, I have no doubt in my mind these people were just rounding up and killing anyone who didn't conform with the Golden Order.

THESE are the people who should be allowed to play judge, jury and executioner with the entire Hornsent race. And people will genuinely, with a straight face, tell you "That's right".

-

To conclude... I think I actually hate reasoning 2 more than reasoning 1 lol, despite not liking either at all. At least 1 is understandable. Marika is a very interesting character, one that we have known for a few years now. We have an attachment to her, heck, sentiments of her being some sort of misunderstood/rebellious figure were already there before the DLC. In that regard, I understand the emotional response, even though I still think it's a wrong mindset to have. I have at least some hope that it is purely in the realm of fiction because it's a beloved character, nothing more...

Reasoning 2, on the other hand, attempts to be nuanced, or at least pretends to be. In reality, all it peddles is the "an eye for an eye" mentality which is much too common irl as well. Not only that, but it deals in monoliths. All people belonging to a group or race are equally responsible for stuff they didn't even commit, stuff that could have even harmed them, because their leaders decided to commit crimes against another set of people. And don't get me wrong, there will be even commoners from that group or race that will agree with and celebrate that bad deed, but just as many will not, but will be either scared, powerless, already being punished for speaking up through physical violence or elaborate shunning, or currently protesting and doing something to hopefully ignite a change.

But that reasoning only exists to perpetuate cycles; of war, violence, and hate for the most part. And sadly, this mindset is very prevalent, a lot of people fail to see the issue with wanton violence as long as it's to stroke that lust for vengeance. And vengeance is a theme that Elden Ring criticizes multiple times in a row, even beyond the obvious horror of the Crusade.

[sashi-ya]

𝑪𝑼𝑻𝑺 𝑶𝑭 𝑭𝑹𝑬𝑬𝑫𝑶𝑴 「 part 1 」 soshiro hoshina x f! officer! reader

a/n: yes! first Kaiju no. 8 fic ever! idk how many of you would like to read from Kaiju but I've been obsessed with it lately, and especially with Soshiro. it's pretty short and wrote it cause I needed to think of other things after studying. So yeah, enjoy! tw: there aren't "sex" scenes, however mdni as it has suggestive language, nudity and mature content. (thank god for this manga having almost every character above 25!). Pretty much inspired on Soshi's backstory from Kaiju no 8 side B, so expect fluff too. what happened on the following days? more Soshiro smut, here. masterlist

“I can’t take the suit off” you murmur, trying to lower the front zipper. The mission took much more than what you expected, and the kaiju stench is making you nauseous.

For the time being, most of your squad members have already jumped into the showers. But you, still trying to get out of the suit, haven’t.

“I… this shit… why is it not working?” you protest, forcing the zipper more and more, but it hasn’t been able to go down past the beginning of your chest.

You try to look for the intercom; pressing it to call the Operations leader Konomi, will surely help you out with the captive suit. But, you can’t find it. Did you lose the little intercom before coming back to the base? Or did it fell around there?

Everything seems to be flaunting tonight. It’s late, you are tired. You’ve been hit several times by different Kaiju, but none of them -luckily- was able to injure you.

However, you begin to feel an incredible -and uncontrollable- heat coming from the suit itself and reaching the inner layers of your skin and organs.

You don’t panic. At first.

You definitely panic two minutes later, when the heat is unbearable and the pain in such restrictive jail is almost deadly.

“Help…” you whine, not loud enough to be heard by anyone else. Or at least, definitely not enough to be listened over the lively chattering coming from the showers.

But it hurts, as much as the acid of those despicable monsters when their core explode. And it really begins to interfere with your breathing, and thus, with your consciousness.

“Help me… I’m burning…” you scream louder this time. But no one comes, and your knees hit the ground in pain.

Tears flood up your eyes, your nails aren’t enough to tear the thick skin of Izumo Techs’ innovative suit. No guns are enough, probably, even if you had the chance to go grab yours… it wouldn’t be useful.

You pray, you wish for someone to cut that trap into pieces.

“H- help… me…” “WHAT IS IT?!”

In between blurred eyes and painful frown, you device an angel of slanted eyes and deep purple hair.

“I… the suit… it’s boiling… it’s overheating… I can’t take it off” you grasp a little bit of air and try to communicate -effectively- the reason of your suffering.

“Stay quiet” he commands, and you comply. There is nothing you wouldn’t do to go against his orders.

An immediate relief comes with enough cuts that you couldn’t even see. Completely naked, completely soaked in sweat. There you lay, panting, with still stings of pain reverberating all over your skin.

“Come here” he says, ripping the remaining pieces off the suit still ferally attached to your burning skin. And as feral as the suit is, the feral his hands are when ripping its pieces away.

“Vice-captain Hoshina… th-thank you…” you cry, completely unaware of your impure show off.

His eyes open widely, and for the first time you see the beautiful bloody irises he usually keeps hidden away. But his expression is not jovial, nor even neutral. He is by far worried.

Probably for the first time in ages, the blades have fallen to the ground and with those same hands he saved your life he hurries to carry you to the men’s showers.

At the speed of light, cold water begins to gush from the showerheads. Your body feels instant relief; so much there is even some vapor coming from your skin.

As it bathes you, it also bathes him.  Completely dressed, Soshiro gets drenched in the same water as you. And, as his hair becomes wet, one of his hands moves it out of his face, revealing his façade completely.

Your arms hang from his shoulders into his back. Your knees, fight to keep you standing up even if the one actually holding you up is no other than him.

Soshiro is completely mute, and so do you. There is, maybe, no need to speak.

He lets his jacket slide through his shoulders to finally fall into the shower’s floor. The compressive shirt underneath gets also wet, becoming something like a second skin of him. Showing off the hours of training, and why he is the vice-captain of your division.

Immorally, you that were on the brink of death a couple of minutes ago, now feel in heaven because of your saviour. Because of your blades wielding hero.

Once again, he was able to save a life with those thinly cut masses of iron.

His hand, with soft but still steady pace, clean something off your back. And for that your breasts are pressed against his chest. You can see his neck from the side, as he tries to take a deeper look at your shoulder blades. You inhale the scent of his skin, a mix of sweat from the last battle and manly hints of fresh perfume.

“You got them almost engraved on your skin. What the fuck? The suits aren’t supposed to hurt you this way” he whispers, close to your ear. “We should go to the medical pavilion, now” he adds.

You nod, feeling how everything has started to spin around you and your stamina decreases more and more.

“Thank you, Soshi- Hoshina fuku Taichou…” you babble, realizing your faces are closer that what they should ever be and your arms and his are interlocked pretty strongly to the other’s body.

He takes a deep breath through his tiny nose, looking at you with lazy eyes. Just a tiny line of red is visible, as tiny as the opening of his lips that let prominent fangs barely flash.

Soshiro’s chest goes up and down, harder every time. His muscles tense more and more, especially the ones on his neck. His hug gets even tighter, pulling you so closer that ever before.

“It’s… ok…” he barely words; something is affecting that man… and it’s probably all your body, all your still warm skin being his for at least a couple of minutes, the way your lips have become red and pouty, your sloppy eyes and the warmth of your breath closer to his mouth.

“What happened!!??” “Vice-captain?!” “are you two allr-“ the girls scream in terror. Probably, once they were out of the showers they faced the dantesque scenery of blades lying on the ground and a anti kaiju suit completely destroyed and fuming scattered all over the floor.

Within seconds, not only the officers of squad 3 have reached the place but also the men. Some of them, thinking not the worst… but probably that Hoshina fuku Taichou and you have finally caved in for lust.

With a fast reaction, Soshiro grabs the coat of his own uniform to cover you up. And with a much more severe tone ever heard, he orders Kikoru to call Mina and Okomi and let them know he is taking a badly injured officer to the medical pavilion. As for the rest, a scary deadly look over his shoulder was enough to make them run away from the place allowing him to pass.

You, however, couldn’t quite experience such happenings, as your consciousness had fade away right before your comrades arrived.

A soft white light shines in between your shut eyes; the sound of unknown solitude reaches your ears as well as the synchronic beep of your heart reflected on a machine.

“What-“ you mumble, regaining consciousness. Your body feels cold, and you are thankful for that. Your limbs are heavy, but you can move them. Your lips and mouth are dry, but you smile as you remember vague flashes of Soshiro and you under the shower.

You finally open your eyes to discover you are indeed at some kind of medical facility, soon remembering this is the place you all come when you are severely injured after battle.

Everything on your body seems to be on its place, and for that you breathe alleviated. Thankful to your hero, you wonder how to thank him when you are out of here… or maybe, you just plan to leave the squad as he has seen you completely naked.

“I didn’t know you were awake already” a well-known voice scares you away. You try to stand up, but his hand stops you from doing so.  “I couldn’t sleep, I was worried for you” he says, with that sweet funny tone he often uses to communicate.

There is, as far as you could see, anyone around but you and him. Soshiro, who apparently couldn’t sleep, has come to see you.

Your cheeks burn, and it’s not because of a defective suit now. It is because, you are deeply embarrassed, and still, something inside you is jumping with genuine happiness to see him here.

“I’m ok, Sir. But.. you didn’t have to come! I’m deeply thankful for you saving my life, and I promise you I will replace the uniform you got all wet” you say, trying to look away from him who has came closer to your bed.

Soshiro bursts out laughing, the way he only knows how to. He grabs his stomach, and soon flashes of the way those abs looked with wet fabric sticked to them, makes you shiver.

“You- you should worry for your own suit! Not mine!” he continues laughing while, little by little, he ends up sitting right on the bed. “By the way, you know why your suit almost killed you?” he asks.

You swallow. What- why is he sitting next to you?

 You shake your head in denial, out of words, because you couldn’t think of a reason for such big flaw on that impressive technological miracle.

Soshiro, who is well known for being at least a little bit irreverent -and that’s exactly what you love the most about him-, gets himself comfortable next to you. He lies back, as you move to the side to make him some space.

Now, the scent of his skin is clean and delicious -even more than earlier-. And you can smell it, because there isn’t much room to be separated on a single bed.

“Well… you had a piece of Kaiju tooth stuck on your lower back. Therefore, the suit either processed it as a threat or… it reacted with the pieces of kaiju within it. In any case, you will be given a new one in a couple of days” he tells you, with his right arm stuck underneath the back of his head.

His bicep, perfectly moulded to be strong, but still lightweight to be as agile as possible, protrudes with the hem of the compression shirt around it. Does he really know how sexy he looks? Or he is absolutely unaware of the effects he has?

“Oh…” you sigh. You take it as a personal failure; how were you not able to see it? “Don’t worry, this incident helped them to investigate further security measures… however, isn’t your back hurting?” he asks, this time turning to you.

You deny, again, without any words coming from your mouth. But there isn’t much you could do, when Soshiro turns you around so that your back faces him.

“You do, in fact, have a big bruise. I should report this, too” he comments, as his soft index travels down your spine, to the small of your back.

Your eyes, opened big enough to look like moons, have stopped seeing all around and all you can think of is the proximity of that man to you.

“You good?” he murmurs, ignorant of everything happening to your body. “Ye-yes, vice-captain. I wanna thank you for taking care of us the way you do; hadn’t been for you, I’d be dead by now…” you pull those words from who knows where, even if your muscles seem paralyzed from his touch. Your speech sounds like those you give when you follow commands during battle.

He laughs; this time softer and sweeter. You can feel his body coming closer, enough to feel the tip of his nose grazing your neck.

“We should have each other’s backs in here, or else… but most importantly, being told my blades will not be useful to fight and protect, you remind me once again that they indeed can” he whispers, making your skin shiver.

It’s clear that he wants you. And you want him, too.  And you always knew, and he always knew. And all of them, too.  Why, just now, on a place where you should be monitored, there were nobody around if not?

“Can I rest here for a minute?” he asks, as his forehead lands on your nape. “All the time you want, Vice-captain” you answer back, smiling softly.

You slowly relax, as his hand slides in the most delicate way towards your belly to hug you. Your hand, also delicate, fall on top of his, confirming how much you would love for him to touch you like this forever.

“Call me Soshiro when we are like this, ok?” he murmurs, planting the first kiss right on your shoulder.

You turn around, slowly. Even if you would love to stay the way you were, you can’t stop yourself from wanting to see his face.

“Soshiro…” you whisper, coming closer to his lips. “That’s better…” he smiles, kindly.

And one kiss, and then another came by… and thankfully, that night, there were no more Kaiju around.

[mournthebird]

Condition.

summary: Soldat refuses to sit down, you notice he's in pain.

warnings: Post!HYDRA Winter Soldier | Post!HTP | Post!SA | Descriptions of SA | PTSD symptoms | Brief flashbacks of SA | Non sexual nudity | Swearing | Descriptions of physical injury and sexual punishments

a/n: I saw someone caught one of the things I wrote earlier in hcs and I knew at some point I was going to delve deeper into it. So that's the push I needed. This one is potentially triggering thus no tags have been added to this post. Unedited; I have so may wips rn, I will check for mistakes later. ;; wc: 4.4k

You weren't too sure what the problem was.

Soldat didn't like to sit down. You thought maybe it was because he felt like he had to be on guard at all times, fresh out of HYDRA and paranoid the agents would somehow find his whereabouts, then forcibly break down your door and tear him away from your apartment that he deemed safe enough.

You noticed a pattern in Soldat's actions whenever he did reluctantly lower himself into a seated position. With each attempt, you saw a subtle but unmistakable wince or a barely audible hiss escaping through his clenched teeth, betraying his discomfort. These seated interludes were invariably brief, lasting a few seconds before he would abruptly rise to his feet once more.

The simple act of lowering himself onto a chair seemed to require an immense effort, though he tried desperately to conceal his discomfort behind a façade of indifference. The careful dance of pain that displayed anytime he attempted to lower himself down on the ground, or apply any pressure at all to his backside, shot up his spine and made him think twice.

On occasion, you noticed him favoring one side of his body as he sat, shifting his weight in what appeared to be an attempt to alleviate some hidden source of pain. But, more often than not, Soldat opted to forgo sitting entirely, preferring to maintain a standing posture that allowed for a quick reaction to any perceived threat.

It had only been a few days.

He maintained his resolute silence, stubbornly refusing to utter a single word. The only exception had been a barely audible thank you in Russian after you had carefully and gently bathed him. His demeanor remained guarded and defensive, occasionally punctuated by sharp, guttural exclamations of 'Нет' whenever you approached too closely. His words were replaced by growling and baring his teeth as if that were somehow off putting enough. He reacted as though you posed an imminent threat, despite your efforts to appear non-threatening and helpful.

You couldn’t really blame him, at the end of the day. His body bore the signs of telltale abuse and mistreatment for god knows how long.

As the days slowly passed, you grew increasingly concerned about his deteriorating condition. The pain etched across his features seemed to intensify with each passing hour, and you really wanted to confront him about his condition. He stayed in the spare room, his weary frame silhouetted against the window and sheer curtains guarding the glass. His eyes were heavy with exhaustion but remained vigilant, constantly scanning the darkened streets below.

Sleep had become a luxury he could ill afford, severe conditioning and sleep deprivation made it almost impossible for him to fall asleep naturally unless he completely collapsed from exhaustion. His paranoia and discomfort didn’t help his need to rest. The toll of his sleepless nights was clearly visible in the dark circles under his eyes and the slight tremor in his hand as he maintained his ceaseless vigil.

"Soldat..." You spoke gently, not wanting to startle him. Despite your cautious approach, your tone didn't have the desired effect. He still flinched visibly when you called his name, his body tensing as if bracing for impact. He turned to face you, his movements stiff and guarded, his eyes wary as the soldier watched you.

"It's okay, I just came to see you," you reassured him, your voice soft and soothing. You paused for a brief moment, allowing your words to sink in, before continuing with soft concern, "Are you doing okay? Are you in any pain?" As you spoke, you took a tentative step into the room, slow and deliberate to avoid frightening him further.

Soldat's reaction was immediate and instinctive to your step. He took one step back in response to your advance, his body language screaming discomfort and distrust. However, his retreat was cut short as his shoulder made contact with the cold, unyielding surface of the wall behind him. The realization that he had nowhere left to go flashed across his face, a fleeting expression of panic quickly masked by a forced blank stare. He stood there, cornered and tense, like a wounded animal trapped with no escape route.

You knew better than to approach too quickly. Experience had taught you that if he felt cornered or threatened in any way, he'd lash out instinctively. Although he hadn't physically harmed you before, you were aware of his potential to do so. He was a goddamn super soldier, and you were just a civilian. He could snap your neck with one arm. The tension in the air grew and you could sense his unease increasing with each passing moment.

"It's okay, I promise..." You slowly raised your hands, palms outward, trying to placate him. You were very cautious with your actions, designed to show him that you harbored no ill intent. You maybe hoped he’d recognize you were harmless, but understood why he still felt wariness in himself. You remained rooted to the spot where you stood, consciously avoiding any sudden movements that might startle him or exacerbate the fear you had inadvertently stirred. "I just want to see how you're handling yourself... you seem to be in pain, and I want to help. That's all I'm here for, nothing more."

You paused, carefully observing his body language. His already stiff posture became increasingly rigid as he pressed his back firmly against the wall. It was as if he was trying to conceal something from your view or instinctively protect an injury. His wince was unmistakable even in the dark room, as clear as a beacon in the night. Your ears picked up the sharp, hissing intake of breath when he inadvertently applied too much pressure to his backside. The sound was a clear indicator of his discomfort, and it only reinforced your concern.

"Please...Soldat, let me have a look at you?" You whispered softly, your voice barely audible in the tense atmosphere. Your heart ached with the desire to ease his suffering, to offer a gentle touch that might soothe his pain or provide the comfort he had been robbed from. You yearned for his trust, to create a haven where he could lower his defenses and find solace in your presence instead of constantly feeling so anxious and alone.

The air between you grew thick with anticipation, punctuated only by the shallow, measured breaths you both took. In the depths of his eyes, you could see the internal struggle unfolding—a battle between ingrained wariness and the desperate need and hope for comfort. Time seemed to stretch as he weighed his options, his body still rigid with uncertainty. Finally, after several long minutes, a subtle shift occurred in his demeanor.

Slowly, he began to peel himself away from the wall that had been his refuge. His body language was tinged with nervousness, his gaze never left you as he inched forward, scrutinizing your every breath, every twitch, as if anticipating a sudden betrayal. The distance between you diminished gradually until he came to a halt by the edge of the bed, his posture still coiled with tension, ready to retreat at the slightest provocation.

"There we are...good job," you offered gentle words of encouragement, mirroring the approach you had taken during his bathing session. The positive reinforcement had proven effective then, so you decided to employ the same strategy in this situation. "I can see you're in pain. Could you point to where it hurts?" You inquired softly, fully aware that he might not respond verbally given his usual restraint from speaking.

For a brief period, he remained completely still, his body language giving no indication of his thoughts. Then he shifted his posture, turning in such a way that his back was now fully exposed to your view. However, without the aid of words, the gesture alone didn't provide much clarity. The area of discomfort could be anywhere along his spine or surrounding muscles. "Is it your back that's causing you pain?" You asked, hoping for a more specific response.

He shook his head slightly, a subtle movement that nonetheless clearly conveyed a negative answer.

"Okay…is it your legs that are hurting?" You ventured, this query elicited a slight shrug from him, a gesture that hinted at possible agreement but still left room for uncertainty. You found yourself at a loss, unsure of how to proceed or phrase your next question in a way that would yield more precise information. After a moment's hesitation, you decided to be more direct in your approach, hoping it wasn't what you thought, but part of you knew deep down that it probably was. "You don't sit down very often. Is there some discomfort in your bottom?"

He almost made a scoff, his brow furrowing slightly at the unfamiliar sound. The concept of shyness was foreign to him, it contrasted to the harsh commands he was accustomed to hearing, vulgarity being barked at him about his body and how he looked. Soldat's eyes, initially narrowing with a hint of suspicion, quickly softened as he processed your tone. His gaze met yours, and he offered a gentle yet subtle nod. You noticed a flicker of discomfort cross his features, leaving you puzzled about the source of his pain. Hesitantly, you spoke again, "Can I see?"

He bristled instantly, a cocktail of emotions surging through him. Vulnerability and aggression warred within, his muscles tensing as if preparing for a fight. He had to remind himself that this was you standing before him, not them - not the towering figures from his past. You weren't one of the men who had loomed over him, using their size to intimidate and control. You weren't here to pin him down or force his compliance. Instead, you were asking for permission. The concept was so foreign, so at odds with everything he knew, that it almost felt like a trap. The idea that he might have any sort of autonomy, any say in what happened to his own body was terrifying.

Your simple act of requesting permission sent his mind reeling. It stirred up a maelstrom of conflicting instincts within him. Part of him yearned to seize this newfound agency, to exert control over his own choices. Yet another part, deeply ingrained and conditioned by years of abuse, screamed at him to flee. The mere possibility of having a choice was so overwhelming that it almost made him want to turn tail and run, to retreat to the familiar confines of obedience and subservience.

After a moment of internal struggle, he made a decision. He shifted closer to you.

His body language was a mix of caution and tentative trust as he allowed you to examine him. He was clad in the clothes you had provided, a simple black tank top and a pair of comfortable sweatpants. It wasn’t much, by any standards, but when he arrived at your home you had no men’s clothes at all. You hastily had to buy him an outfit of some kind. At least these clothes were stretchy, he hadn’t even told you his size.

His old uniform had been in a state of utter disrepair - torn, filthy, and reeking of neglect. You recalled the arduous process of attempting to salvage it, for whatever reason. The washing machine had groaned and protested, nearly breaking down after a single cycle as it battled against the ingrained grime and wear.

You delicately hooked your fingers into the elastic waistband of his sweatpants, slowly and cautiously tugging them down his thighs. This was different from when you had bathed him earlier; at that time, you hadn't been able to get a proper look at his condition. The warm water from the bath had caused his skin to flush, making any injuries blend seamlessly with the reddened areas. You hadn’t really looked at his lower areas either, your primary concern then had been to cleanse him thoroughly, rather than to scrutinize his body for signs of harm.

As the sweatpants descended to his knees, your eyes widened in shock, taking in the full extent of the damage. Angry welts and livid red lashes crisscrossed the backs of his thighs, creating a horrifying tapestry of abuse. The marks were severely inflamed, with some sporting small, beaded clots of blood that were desperately trying to peek through the swollen skin in an attempt to heal the split flesh. The pattern and severity of the injuries suggested that he had been repeatedly struck with a stick or a similar rigid object, each blow leaving its cruel imprint on his tender skin.

Your gaze followed the trail of lashes as they disappeared beneath the hem of his boxers, leading you to the realization that his buttocks likely bore the brunt of this vicious assault, explaining his evident discomfort and aversion to applying any sort of pressure to that area.

Steeling yourself for what you might find, you reached up to carefully peel down his boxers. As you did so, you offered him words of gentle reassurance, trying to comfort him since this was an extremely vulnerable position. "I'm just gonna take a look, okay?" you murmured soothingly as you slowly shimmied the underwear down to join the sweatpants at his knees, careful not to irritate his welts. Your suspicions were confirmed as the fabric fell away, revealing the full extent of the damage.

His buttocks were covered in a dense network of welts and bruises, the marks here even more numerous and severe than those on his thighs. Bruising painted his backside in various shades of purple, blue, and black, with the deepest bruises appearing almost pitch against his pale skin. The sight was enough to make your stomach churn, a mix of sympathy and anger rising within you at the thought of the pain he must be enduring.

Your gaze was drawn to the sight of dried blood on his inner thighs, your brow furrowing as you looked at the obvious bleeding that had been occurring. Without thinking, you instinctively reached out to get a closer look at the area, wondering if there was an open wound he had been concealing. You didn’t want him to have an infection, especially in that tender spot. Your hand gently caressed his cheek, gently trying to spread him to look.

Soldat's reaction to your sudden touch was immediate and he turned away from you, his movements awkward and uncoordinated due to his pants still being bunched around his knees. His eyes were wide with fear and anger, locked onto you as he glared fiercely.

"Не трогай меня!" He snapped, his voice sharp and filled with warning. The Russian words hung in the air between you as he stood rigidly, facing you with a defensive posture.

For a second, you were sure he was going to lash out at you physically with the way he postured up. But you realized that beneath the aggressive front he was putting on, fear was the dominant emotion. He continued to back away from you, his movements jerky and uncoordinated because of the way his pants were around his legs.

As he backed away, his knees collided with the edge of the mattress behind him. The impact caused him to lose balance, and he fell awkwardly into a seated position on the bed. The moment he made contact with the mattress, a sharp, pained sound escaped his lips, wincing as his face contorting in a grimace that showed the intense discomfort he felt from sitting. The force of his body weight had him sit harder than normal, the collision with the bed felt like he had fallen on his ass on the floor.

Almost as quickly as he sat, he struggled to his feet once more. His leg muscles flexed as he jerked himself upward, the sudden movement seemed to intensify his pain and you could see his knees trembling, threatening to give way beneath him. The agony that shot through his body was evident in every line of his face and every quiver of his muscles. He reached out and gripped the edge of the bed, trying to keep himself upright and not fall down to his knees.

Your heart ached seeing him so scared and hurt, especially in this sick way. You took a step forward, your hand held out as you cooed at him. "Soldat, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have touched without telling you. But you're bleeding, I just wanted to see where it was coming from, that's all." You attempted to explain your innocent reasoning, but he felt so much anxiety at the moment, he didn't trust you to just look. Those wild eyes made contact with yours, a look that told you to back off.

So you did. You didn't want to freak him out any more than he was right now.

His trembling legs felt uncontrollable, finally betraying him as he slowly collapsed to the floor, crumbling like a wilting flower. He surrendered to the soft embrace of the plush carpet beneath him, settling down on his side. He carefully curled into a tight ball, desperately trying to ignore the searing, relentless pain that radiated from his ass. The intensity of the sensation was overwhelming now that he had stimulated the pain by his accidental sit, causing him to retreat further into himself. It didn't help that memories were flooding his vision, he just saw boots surrounding him and vicious words being spat at him.

You observed his distress from a distance, recognizing the need for space in this. You made the decision to quietly exit the room, allowing him the solitude he seemed to desperately cling to. Attempting to intervene or offer comfort at this time would likely prove counterproductive, pushing too hard or too soon would only serve to exacerbate the situation, potentially causing him to withdraw even further. You wanted him to trust you so badly, but that meant patience was your best friend, and you required it for this delicate situation.

From what you had seen, your mind wandered to possible causes. You knew of the beating and relentless torture he faced, for whatever reason the idea of sexual assault hadn't crossed your mind until now. However...the blood trickling down his inner thigh felt like a slap in the face at your ignorance.

Of course they would do that. HYDRA was full of sick degenerates that were hungry for taboo and inhumane activities. The men in charge got away with everything, and being an asset in HYDRA was less than being a pet, a mere toy for pleasure and consumption. Soldat was basically just a doll for them to puppet around and fuck with.

After several long minutes had passed, you made your way back to the room. Soldat was still curled up tightly on the floor, his arms wrapped protectively around his face and his knees drawn up close to his chest. The poor soldier looked so pitiful as he curled into a small ball like that, as if he were shielding himself from an impending threat. Your heart ached at the sight, deep-seated fear must have driven him to such a defensive position.

You approached him.

Your feet moved silently across the plush carpet of the room, each step measured and deliberate so as not to startle him. As you drew closer, you lowered yourself to the ground, settling a few feet away from his huddled form. You wanted to be near enough to offer comfort, but far enough to give him the space he clearly needed.

"Soldat..." Your voice was barely above a whisper, soft and soothing to keep his frayed nerves calm. "Do you want me to help you clean up? I promise, I won't do anything you're not comfortable with. I'm not... I'm nothing like those bastards who hurt you." The last words came out with a hint of venom, your disgust for those who had mistreated him evident in your tone.

There was a moment of tense silence before Soldat eventually responded. He hesitantly lifted his head, the sight of his face made your heart clench. His face was flushed a deep red with random blotches, his eyes were glossier than you had ever seen them, brimming with unshed tears. The vulnerability in his gaze was almost unbearable to look at, making your chest feel tighter with each breath. You watched as he visibly swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing with the motion. His head inclined ever so slightly in what you interpreted as a nod of agreement.

Encouraged by his response, you continued in the same gentle tone, "I promise you, it'll help those welts feel better. Bit of cool water and some ointment will soothe the pain and help the inflammation." You paused, talking as if you were speaking to a frightened animal or scared child. "And I really need to make sure you don't have any tears or excessive bleeding down there. That could lead to infections or other bad things that will require more serious care, and I don't want your condition to worsen. I swear I'll be as gentle as possible."

A beat.

Then two.

Then three.

Soldat gave you another slow nod, just enough for you to notice his compliance. "I'm going to go grab some things, I'll be right back." You went to the bathroom where you kept a first aid kit, not really sure what you needed, but it contained some gels and ointments that you knew would at least soothe the swelling skin.

You carefully settled yourself beside him and reached for a bottle of soothing ointment, it was typically used for burns but equally effective for welts. The cool, smooth glass of the bottle felt reassuring in your palm as you unscrewed the cap. You squeezed a generous amount onto your fingertips, the translucent gel glistening and cooling your fingers already.

You lowered your hand to his ass, your fingers ghosting over his skin before making full contact. You tenderly began to spread the healing substance over one of his cheeks, ensuring every affected area was covered. You made sure not to press too hard, and to get it down his thighs too.

At the initial contact, his body tensed involuntarily. The sudden coolness of the gel against his heated skin elicited a sharp intake of breath, followed by a long, shuddering exhale. His mind reeled, struggling to process this new sensation. He never experienced the soothing balm of pain relief; it was an alien concept to him.

Throughout his time in HYDRA, he had been conditioned to endure, to bear the full brunt of every punishment, every ache, every sting. The mantra that had been drilled into him echoed in his mind: pain was the sculptor of his being, the unyielding order he was meant to follow. It was through suffering, they said, that he would be molded into their ideal.

And so, he had taken it all - every lash, every blow, every tormenting penetration they forced onto him. The pain had been relentless, a constant companion that he had learned to expect and accept, no matter how intense or unbearable it became.

But right now, things were different. For the first time in decades, the familiar sting of pain was gradually being replaced by a soothing coolness that spread across his skin. The sensation was so different, of relief, of comfort, of care. The contrast between what he had always known and what he was now feeling was stark and overwhelming, almost triggering him to react and wipe it away, to feel that horrible pain once again. He at least knew who he was, who he was supposed to be with the pain accompanying him like his shadow. Without it, the sliver of knowledge of his being was gone.

"Most of the lashes are already clotted to heal so...there's no need to bandage them." You spoke calmly, satisfied with the ointment being spread on him. "But I will wipe away the bit of blood from between your legs, okay?"

Soldat, still reeling from the memories plaguing his mind, somehow understood your words and gave a tentative nod.

He felt the warm, damp cloth gently press against his sensitive inner thigh, the soothing heat gradually softening the dried, crusted blood. With each careful stroke, you cleaned away the remnants of his ordeal. Even after it had long been over, his body carried the wounds of it, reminding him of the painful experiences. Your touch was tender, as if you were handling something precious and fragile. The level of care you were showing him left him with feelings he couldn't quite decipher. He struggled to understand and accept your gentle treatment with his own self-perception. You approached him with a kindness and respect typically reserved for fellow human beings, a category he had long since excluded himself from.

He was a machine.

He was a toy.

He was HYDRA’s fist.

He was not a person.

You delicately cleansed between the affected areas, ensuring no trace of blood remained. Your movements were slow and deliberate as you navigated around the swollen, tender flesh, careful with the area since you knew it was very intimate and you didn’t want him to feel like he were being threatened. After all the blood was washed away, you applied a cooling balm specifically formulated to alleviate inflammation and discomfort in that sensitive region.

"There we go...all done," you murmured softly. Your hand was so warm and comforting, trailed along his back in a gesture of reassurance. To your surprise, he didn't flinch or pull away from your touch, a small victory in itself considering he would with any other kind of physical gesture. Mustering his strength, he pushed himself up onto his elbows, twisting slightly to survey the damage inflicted upon his body.

Soldat turned away as quickly as he saw it, his mouth contorting into a pained grimace. The soldier couldn't bear to look anymore, his mind reeling from the vivid memories that assaulted him.

He felt the phantom strikes of various implements of torture - the sharp sting of canes and crops swinging down against his ass.

The bruising impact of hands and boots, the searing pain of teeth sinking into his abused flesh, and the cruel bite of leather belts. He especially hated when the buckle hit his groin.

These ghostly sensations, etched deep into his psyche, haunting him with the horrors he endured, making him flinch involuntarily as if the torment was happening all over again.

"It's okay." You whispered, "You are safe now." Your hand rubbed circles on his back, you'd keep this in mind, this kind of assault he endured. It was complicate things in the future, but for now all you cared about was his comfortability. You continued to whisper comforting things, pulling a blanket over him that had been on the floor by his makeshift bed. You draped it over his backside, covering him and giving him some kind of security with feeling covered up.

For the first time, he seemed to be accepting your touch without reservations, as you felt the soldier's back muscles relax under your palm.

Dividers by @/strangergraphics | Images found on Pinterest

[the-art-of-witnessing-the-cosmos]

Astro observations. 💌🌻

🌼 Virgo moons though seem as practical, efficient & perfectionist, but inside they are deeply loving , shy & need emotional closeness & safety . They are so shy that this side of theirs remains hidden. They deeply wish to be of help .

🌼 Taurus risings especially Rohini Risings require luxury , aesthetics , beauty, art to feel emotionally satisfied and thus motivated to grow more in life.

🌼 Leo risings especially Magha risings are mostly unfazed and do not let emotions ride their decision making. They are very stubborn and royal like & they rarely change their ways . Unless there are water placements to balance it out.

🌼 Mutable risings are quite adaptable & mild personalities , they might feel a bit of out of this world. Since their Kendra owners are benign planets and to deal with the outside world, some dark side , badass effects of malefic planets is required to face of the difficult and challenging aspects of life , living & people. Kendra rule those aspects of life . And ownership of malefic planets gives a personality a hard balancing edge too.

🌼 Capricorn moons have an inner child that really had strict moms , they are sort of the children that learnt the real value of money earlier than others. They are hardworking, stoic and can be sense of support & stability for close ones. Hopefully they can feel more fulfilled too if they allow themselves to feel their emotions in a healthy manner too.

🌼 Age 24 , 28 , 36 , 42 , 48 are one of the most transformative years of life. The personality becomes more mature if it allows itself to learn and grow 🪴.

[ozzgin]

This is something I decided to do on a whim, but I'm very fond of the idea! The Ten Commandments in reverse, featuring an obsessive Angel and the ways in which it's breaking said laws. Part 1. content: gender neutral reader, religious themes, blasphemy, NSFW, horror

They are embedded within the very fabric of creation, holding together the molecules, the neurons, the existence itself: the Ten Commandments. They have been bestowed upon humans for guidance, yet angels are different. Perfect machineries erected from spoken word - they do not have the choice of receiving these laws. It is their fundament, their core.

Thus, one would be inclined to think that there is no such concept as a disobedient Angel. Like the one sent to guard over you. The one who's been watching you from the very beginning, who loves you so dearly. It would do anything to protect you. Perhaps even go against its Father's word, against its purpose.

10. Thou shalt not covet

It stalks your movements with a pained grimace. The way you smile at your friends, the way you lean against your partner. Why, oh why, must you torment it like this? It yearns to be the one holding you instead. To be the one graced with your joyful laughter, to be the one blessed by your soft, loving voice. There is nothing fruitful to its distant benevolence.

It cannot remain hidden any longer.

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour

"No one loves you as I do", it wails, wicked tears streaming down its face. The holy water burns the skin, leaving trails of raw flesh behind. "They're vile, these humans, their hearts impure. What need have you for deceit and barren promises?"

"I am the only one you can trust", the Angel declares, gazing at you. Its face resembles a broken marble statue, its soft features caressed by scars and wounds. Only you can mend its anguished heart, only you can soothe its mechanical soul.

8. Thou shalt not steal

One by one, your friends abandon you. Or maybe it's you who's grown distant. Their familiar cheer is now tainted by cold monotony. You've no need for shallow affections. You have your partner, and your guardian Angel.

Almost, the sacred creature grins. Its chest throbs with selfish delight, and the envy succumbs once more. Soon you will belong to no one else. It never felt such exaltation, such ardent, burning warmth: a desire fulfilled.

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery

Its blackened fingers drag themselves across your naked body, groping every curve and penetrating every hole. The hunger becomes unbearable. "It will be our secret", it whispers lowly, though the pledge is quickly drowned by your perverted whines.

It has claimed you; it has defiled you. The serpent-like tongue flicks and slurps in a maddening lust. And yet, it's not enough.

6. Thou shalt not murder

It stands above the drained cadaver, peace finally settling in its soul.

"It is the two of us now", it muses, overwhelmed by rapture. "Adam and Eve, the beginning and the end."

Its lips quiver upon speaking such blasphemy. It is a lie, it is a nonsense. It is a divine apparatus meant to serve God's will, not a human to love, and feed, and copulate.

T̷̹̹̭͖͍̗̘̄͒͗̄̑͋͜͝͠ḩ̸̛̮̖͈̹̱͙̬̰̫̾͆́̆́̃̓̀͌͐̽͜͜͝͝ͅè̸͕͉͓̻̇͐̇͌͝ ̵͍̙̀̊̈̅͗͛̊͝s̶̯̬͚̰͔͙̞͖̦̭̲̩͍̾́̀̎́̆̌̋͘̚̕̚͠͠y̸̝͚̱̪͂̄̍̆̂̽̽͗͑͆͘͜͠͠͝s̷̖͚̮̙̩̖͙̥̓t̸̬͎̟̥͓̐̃̄̅͛̈́̄̀̇ͅe̷͔̻̤̪͋̈́̿̐̑̒͜͝͝m̵̡̼̖̥̠̠͋͆́̊̑̓͌͒̽̆͠ ̶̨͈̺̯̹͉̬̭͔̜͕͎̔̈̽͜͝͝i̸̬͕̊̿̌͛̾͠͠s̷̡͙̯̫̪̝͎̖̬͗͂̂̐͒̇̊̆͋̍̉̈́̈́͘͜ ̴̛͇̘͇̱̘̯̱̜̑̌̉̓͊̋̀͘͝c̵̹̳̓̍͗̔́͌̐̒̀̍͒͌ö̷̪̣̫̘̝̋́̃̍̀̍̆̎͠r̴̢̦̰͎̜̖̗̼̿͌̾̈́̂̊͛͐̾ͅŗ̶̭̥͕̝̀̊ù̶̘̻͔̻̦̠͉̳͋͛̀͆̏͠ͅͅp̷̢͙͈̗̙͎̪̼̪͎̈́̌̀̄͒̌̄͂̀͘̕̕͝͠ṭ̵̡̽͗̓̈́̀̍́̊̒͌̃́̕.̴̨̬̝̘̜̦̭̪̩̹̫̎͆̃̌̓ ̴̧͕̪̄́̿̉̑

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[vigilante24ish]

🌙 Moon Phases 🌙

Agatha Harkness X Fem!Reader

Plot: You have a past with Agatha, one as old as your ages. Your roads often met, but more than once, she left you behind. Now, once again, your paths cross, but this time; it is intentional.

Taking place around Episode 2 of the series. Might continue it if it gets popular or leave it as a small one-shot. Give it a shot and let me know

You were a rare type of witch, one whose path not many chose to follow; but not you. The very same moon you observed and talked to as a child was the very same source of your power.

The very same moon shapes you as you grow, your moods and natures shifting like the never-ending phases. Both light and darkness resided within your soul, one path sometimes more tempting than the others and vice versa.

It was under that that you learnt to do your first spell, that you practised your Latin, and it was under the same moon that you met her...

Agatha Harkness

Under the full moon had you gathered with her and her coven, to praise the Godess around the fire; bodies void of any clothing as your magic grew wild and free.

After that, you met again and again; sometimes by mere coincidence.

Your ever shifting nature was what had kept others away, keeping you confined to a small neutral space between two covens but never able to truly join any of them. Your complex thoughts that guided your kindness and also led you down dangerous paths became a mystery for Agatha to explore... to study.

The meetings became intentional, the unique aspect of your mind was something she welcomed and encouraged; the very first sparkle between you.

Sometimes your sweet words and smiles seemed to melt whatever ice was threatening to form around her heart; seemed to bring light into days her thoughts were too dark.

And sometimes, your mischievous nature assisted her with crazy plans; noses buried behind stolen scrolls of forbidden magic.

During those moments, sparks always seemed to fly between the two of you. Sometimes, they were small, hiding behind brushing hands and contagious smiles. Other times, those sparks threatened to ignite an immortal fire; fueled by long touches, lustful looks, and forbidden secret kisses.

It never went too far, and it never became something permanent. You learnt to live with it, also unsure if this could ever work out or if it was a momentarily escape from the solitary life chosen for you.

You never judged her decisions but never tried to change her either, even when you could see the dark path she favoured was becoming too much.

You opened your door for her when she first fel like an outcast, and again after, she had taken down her coven. You offered her your house and a change of clothes, a warm tea and a shoulder to rant.

Yet when she told you of her plans, when she asked you to join her... you politely declined. This was not the path you wished to take, and whether she was hurt by your words or not, remained a mystery; true feelings hidden behind sarcastic words and fake smiles.

Eventually your paths parted and the years passed by. However, fate seemed to draw you back to one another like two halves of a whole; supernatural powers trying to keep you together.

It never lasted for long.

Your door was always open and sometimes, those old sparks seemed to reappear but by then, Agatha's mind had been taken by a need for power.

Once again, you did not follow, only watched her walk away from you for yet one more time. More than once, you thought to call her out, say you changed your opinion and join her; or even try to shift her goal... but you never did.

Like the silent moon watching over the earth, you did that... just watch. You became her light when she needed you but never dared to take the next step; your conflicted thoughts and emotions stood in the way.

Somewhere in the future, she stopped showing up, and you wondered if she had settled down at last or someone had taken her down. Both scenarios made your heart ache, and thus, you chose to forget; lock away any memories you had once created.

It worked and you continued your solitary life, never setting for a place too long and never looking at someone the same way you would look at Agatha.

Now, you had a small business right beneath your little apartment. It was not something fancy, simple crystals and tarot cards for those interested. You also offered star and even zodiac readings, being perhaps what truly ade you famous amongst your customers.

The moon always guided you, the stars spoke to you even when placed on a simple imaginary map. The houses dividing the sky exposed their secrets to you; both of past and future.

So it was no wonder all kinds of people walked through your door; some more believers than others but all with the same curiosity about their lives.

Yet you did not expect that one calm day, the bell above the door would ring and a familiar face would step into the shop.

"Hello, Hon" the husky female voice you had almost forgotten reached your ears like the sweetest melody.

Your breath caught in your throat for a moment, before your mask settled back into place. "Agatha" you greeted her back, offering her the courtesy of standing up from the wooden chair you occupied behind an old worn out desk.

Her blue eyes locked onto yours with the same intensity they had all those years, invisible flames dancing behind your irises; threatening to mix and burn everything to the ground.

As you stared into the face you often searched for amongst the stars, that little locked chest at the back of your mind was forced open. The memories you had suppressed all those years flooded your mind, making your heart beat twice as fast as both happiness and pain dominated you.

"It has been too long" Agatha said, her voice acting like a beacon that saved you from drawing in your emotions. "Missed me?"

Her signature smirk was still there, eyes flickering with mischief and tempting pink lips stretching faintly; yours for the taking, if you dared to step closer.

It was then you noticed that someone had one with her. A teenage boy, stood tall behind her; trying to observe some crystals but his eyes often lingered to you.

You didn't know whom this boy was but your mind rushed to scenarios, wondering if he was her son; the product of love with someone other than you. Even if not by blood, Agatha had chosen it; letting him take your place after she got tired of you turning down her offers.

You were not sure and did your best to remain calm, not let anything show and not lose control of yourself. Your mind was both your blessing and your curse, its mood as uncontrollable and unpredictable as the rising tide; controlled by an ethereal power far beyond your reach.

Agatha seemed to understand where your gaze lingered, the teenage boy feeling slightly uncomfortable under the vague expression casted in your eyes.

She rolled her eyes at the drama. "He is my pet, not much of an importance" she explained dryly and then sent a warning glare to the boy, ensuring he would not utter a word.

The situation was delicate, it needed proper handling. If it was up to her, she would have left him in the car, one window barely open for some air but she couldn't.

Well, she could try but the boy was persistent and at that moment; Agatha did not truly think him being there would change something.

Considering how welcoming you always had been over the course of centuries, how considerate you have been of her well-being and how willing you were to help; even when a part of you clearly wanted to stop her.

"What do you want?" You managed to ask, your voice sounding as cold as you wished it to be.

The moon was not yet full, the tide had not fully risen and there was still power to hold everything at bay.

Her timing could not have been better and something told you, that she knew it. Never having forgotten how unique your thoughts were and how they matched the white moon that offered its light when the two of you met in secret.

"I plan to walk down the road, you see. And I am in need of a coven" she said simply, making it hard for you to detect whether she was even slightly affected by your meeting after so long. "Are you in?" She asked next, not giving you much time to debate.

The clock at the wall was ticking in sync with your beating heart as you processed an answer.

Perhaps this one should be different from all the others... just this once.

.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

[shsl-analyzer-guy]

In-Depth Character Analysis On All The DR Characters Because What, Are You Gonna Try And Stop Me? Who Are You, My Mom? Yeah, I Didn't Think So- Part 5: Junko Enoshima

Oh boy, this is gonna be a big one. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this turns out to be the longest analysis in this entire series of ~100 characters. Why did I not save her for last. Why is this part 5. Why do I do this to myself-

Jokes aside, I am so so so excited to make this; Junko has become the face of this franchise for a reason, and the depth of her character and role in the series as a whole is massive. I won't be surprised if this takes over a month to complete. In fact, just for fun, let's track it. I'm starting the analysis on 7/5/24. When will we finish? Nobody knows!

(Final edit Crane here. It has been more than 5 months. Christ.)

This analysis uses only official material for the sake of analyzing the character, primarily sourcing official English localizations. It'll be um, lengthy, to say the least, so if you aren't that interested, just keep scrolling. Also, if there's even one canon installation of Danganronpa that you haven't played/watched/read yet (THH, DR0, SDR2, UDG, DR3, and/or V3) don't read this; the ripple effect of Junko in every corner of the franchise will be discussed and thus, there will be spoilers aplenty.

Also, a disclaimer that though I try to remain as objective as possible with these analyses, it will be at its core, an interpretation. Not everything will match up with how you interpret it, and that's okay! I don't claim to be perfect, and this isn't an infallible source of canon, only my interpretation of the source. Let's get into it!

Foreword

Real quick, before we get too far in: readers of my previous analyses know that I normally try to move in chronological order of release and events in-game to keep the analyses easier to follow. Due to the nature of Junko's characterization and the fact that she's present throughout the entire series, that isn't really possible here, as to talk about any one aspect of her, I may need to pull from multiple installations. I'll be sure to cite where I'm pulling from and provide evidence where necessary, but it definitely won't be perfectly in order by release or timeline. So hopefully it won't be too messy. Also, characters very closely tied to Junko, like Monokuma, Ryoko, Mukuro, etc. will be analyzed separately at a later date, so those sections may end up feeling incomplete as a result. For the sake of releasing this before 2025, I need to cut corners a little bit and focus primarily on how these relationships affect Junko, and not the other way around.

Part 1- Monokuma

In order to understand Junko, you must first have a basic understanding of Monokuma, mascot of the Danganronpa series and self-declared Headmaster of Hope's Peak Academy. Monokuma introduces himself to the cast as their superior and oversees the killing games, providing motives and passing judgement on the class trials, all while reveling in the Despair of the students. There are multiple iterations of Monokuma, but most of them exist in order to carry out the killing games without issue.

Like Junko, Monokuma remained a staple of the franchise, appearing in every official installment, whether he was being actively piloted by Junko or not. As we see in DR3: Despair Arc, she personally designed him to become the face of her movement of Despair, and thus, he was used to carry out her will at every turn.

1.1- Trigger Happy Havoc

In the first DR game, Monokuma was just a robot piloted by Junko. His mannerisms were a character invented by her to appear as the psychopathic Headmaster, but regardless, her true nature of Despair is directly infused into the character as she acts him out. Through him, she's able to reveal hidden information about each of her classmates and torment them personally, all without them knowing she was once a dear friend to them. As a robot, though, he came with drawbacks- Junko couldn't pilot him and watch the cameras at the same time, and once the charade of his all-seeing Headmaster was seen through by Kyoko, he lost most of his power. Thus, Monokuma's existence was designed to deceive, and could only function through deception. He created the illusion that hope was outside, that escape was solely on his terms, and that the class had no unification- all according to Junko's design.

1.2- Goodbye Despair

When the sequel game arrived, Monokuma was once again a character being played by Junko. Unlike last time, however, the two had blended together, becoming one and the same. This Monokuma was a Despair Virus, created with Chihiro's Alter Ego technology, and implanted into the Neo World Program with the intent of continuing the real Junko's plans for the spread of Despair. This version of Monokuma is extremely similar to the previous in terms of its personality and beliefs, but appears much more powerful within the artificially generated world, now able to apparently power-up, bleed, and transform plushies into duplicates without logical explanation.

Rather than targeting certain themes in an attempt to teach Despair, this Monokuma created directly-targeted motives, attempting to use class 77's personal connections to a whole other level and banking on the fact they were friends, rather than try to cover it up. He also acts as if they're his dear friends and like they're on the same side, directly inverse to his apparent attitude towards class 78. This is intentional, though as to why, we'll get into much later.

1.3- Ultra Despair Girls

Rather than being present as a character, Monokuma exists solely as mascot in this game, as thousands of Monokumas are programmed and piloted to slaughter the majority of adults in Towa City. He exists solely as a tool used by the Warriors of Hope.

In chapter 4 of the game, you get the reveal that all the physical Monokumas that exist were built and sold in Towa Group's factories, and later, that Monaca Towa was directly responsible. This exists to demonstrate how Junko was able to financially and physically afford the amount of power and technology she accrued in her crusade for Despair. More on this later.

1.4- Danganronpa 3- Future Arc

Near the end of the first episode, Monokuma seemingly appears on a monitor in the meeting room of Future Foundation's HQ, announcing his survival and a return of the killing games, starting with the Future Foundation higher-ups. At the beginning of the following episode, an act is put on between this version of the character and "Miaya Gekkogahara", as they fake an argument where Monokuma alters her avatar Usami into Monomi, making it appear as though he's again being piloted by a real person from some remote location.

As the season comes to a close, though, we learn that it was the chairman who set up the killing game, and that Monokuma's appearance, along with the video that would play during every nap, were falsified recordings, aided in part by Monaca Towa pretending to be Miaya. Thus, his likeness was used for a cheap recreation in an attempt to manipulate one person and kill nearly everyone else in charge of the Future Foundation, all set in motion by Junko's own brainwashing videos.

1.5- Killing Harmony

This is the only version of Monokuma that Junko herself doesn't have a hand in recreating, and is the only time he exists solely as a robot personality of his own accord. Created by Team Danganronpa, he's a physical conception of the fictional character Monokuma in-universe, and thus, is a character in his own right. Birthed by a Motherkuma machine for the mastermind's benefit, Monokuma acts once again as Headmaster, but a significant amount of soul is noticably absent from the presentation. This is in part due to the amount of focus on the Monokubs, using their unique characteristics for comic gags with the cast in the way Monokuma used to in the previous games, and his appearance feels like more of a checkbox than an actual return of Monokuma. Simply put, without Junko's influence, Monokuma's character becomes more flat, and starts to fade into the background in a convoluted mess of references and callbacks. All of which is done on purpose- Monokuma is a facet of Junko, and without Junko, Monokuma becomes empty.

Part 2- Character Design

Junko Enoshima is designed as a gyaru, a subgenre of fashion known for its more 'rebellious' style. She's dressed in a modified uniform, with a black jacket with her sleeves rolled up and unbuttoned, allowing her cleavage and bra to show, with a black-and-white tie, a red bow, and a red plaid miniskirt. She also has Monokuma pins holding up her ponytails- one with the white half, and one with the black half. Asymmetricality and the use of exclusively black, white, and red all align her with Monokuma, an asymmetrical black-and-white bear with a red eye. She has styled blonde hair and blue eyes, and has the title of SHSL Gyaru, or Ultimate Fashionista.

2.1- What's A Gyaru?

Gyaru as a fashion style first originated in the 1970s, emerging from Japanese women's nonconformist desire to embrace their own sexuality and rebel against societal standards of the traditional housewife. As time passed and more women latched onto the trend, it became a major point of discussion, initially shaming these women for being too racy or delinquent, before shifting to an increase in streetwear fashion and being recognized as its own genre of fashion, evolving with new subgenres as time continued to pass. It went from a wholly shameful style to an expensive, trendy one as expressly gyaru clothes started to be made and sold in stores. The increase in popularity also led to discussions of placing laws against child prostitution, as younger girls were getting into the expensive fashion and started finding alternative ways to afford this showy clothing.

There are many, many subgenres of gyaru known, but Junko Enoshima is specifically referred to as a kogal or kogyaru, a high-school gyaru. Her school uniform is modified into a showy jacket and miniskirt with big bows, she wears knee-high boots, and her hair is blonde, implied to be dyed based off of the common hair-dying of kogals. In DR 0, we also see her with red hair and eyes as opposed to the blonde and blue, suggesting that red may be her natural hair and eye color. Kogal culture has a lot of stereotypes around it regarding the extracurricular activities of the girls who subscribe to it, but the general idea around it is for the girls that participate in it to break social norms and claim their sexuality for themselves to get what they want, all within a consumerist guise. This type of mentality matches Junko extremely well, as a character bent on breaking the world for her own pleasures by advertising herself as Despair.

Part 3- The Mastermind Reveal (THH)

We don't actually meet Junko Enoshima until the final showdown in THH, though we are well-acquainted with the idea of her before then, as not only do we meet an imposter-Junko in the first chapter, but her magazines are specifically shown to us in the intro of the game, and are scattered throughout the school(laundry room). There are also little hints as to her identity as mastermind sprinkled into the game.

"Whenever I spot a cute girl, I have a tendency to stare. I can't help it- I just gaze with intensity. The other day, I rode my bike to the train station... I was in the bathroom, just looking at myself in the mirror..." -Monokuma Theatre, THH

Despite these hints, the characters don't know who the mastermind is yet, only being able to reason at her motivations for the killing game and why it came to be based off of what clues Monokuma leaves out for them, like how the main track that plays when interacting with Monokuma is called '100 Mile Junk Food Dash'.

"But first, I have a question for you... Who are you? What do you want from us?" "Well, if you really must know... Despair. That's all." -Kyoko Kirigiri & Monokuma, THH

"And for those of us who represent hope to kill each other and sink into Despair... The mastermind wants the world to see that, to try and prove that Despair is better than hope." -Kyoko Kirigiri, THH

We know that whoever this mastermind piloting Monokuma is, they're someone that's engineering this entire killing game expressly to spread Despair. With the knowledge that the killing game is being televised, that Despair isn't just for the students, but is being put on display for the entire world to see. Manufacturing and televising such a sadistic game using public figureheads under governmental protection is a behavior akin to terrorism (Despairism?) and is an act that, by itself, seems nigh impossible for some high-school student to be capable of. Yet, we know it is a high-schooler- Monokuma insists that the only people involved in the killing game are the 16 students of their class.

Through the investigations of chapters 5 and 6, it becomes increasingly more apparent that whoever this SHSL Despair is, Junko has some level of involvement. For example, more observant players will recognize Mukuro's corpse almost immediately as 'Junko's' from chapter 1, as her bright red nails and the same high-heeled, red-laced boots are clearly visible. And while this doesn't immediately incriminate Junko herself, it does at least call into question the identity of the dead SHSL Despair, as the body being Mukuro's isn't ever really contested(save for a 'dumb Hiro' gag insisting it's Kyoko while standing next to Kyoko).

"And don't forget about the Fenrir tattoo. There's absolutely no mistake... Our victim in this case is, without a doubt, Mukuro Ikusaba...!" -Kyoko Kirigiri, THH

Throughout the final investigation, the player's job is to solve 'all the mysteries of the school', AKA their erased memories and the identity of the mastermind. This investigation intentionally doesn't talk about Junko, voiding her involvement to the point that her own face is scrubbed from the evidence. The hints given by Monokuma picture Junko's face covered up in every photo, and the recordings of the students agreeing to live in the school is cut off before it can cycle over to her. It's not her presence that matters, it's the lack of presence, because we haven't actually met her yet, juxtaposed to the repeated mentions of Mukuro, a girl who'd been a part of the group since the very beginning without anyone realizing.

When we do realize this, it comes with the realization that Mukuro's and 'Junko's' body were one and the same, and with Kyoko's old pocketbook revealing that "Despair walks among us, and so we survive... There's a second 'Despair'", we can come to the conclusion that the reason the mastermind was able to pull this off was because there was actually more than one, working in sync, and thus, the reason both bodies were one was because they were the SHSL Despair together.

Part 4- The Despair Sisters: Mutual Abuse (CW: Incest)

Despite the fact Junko was the brains behind the operation, there was never really a time where she was working alone towards Despair. She was actually one of two Ultimate Despair- as she called them, the Despair Sisters. Her twin sister, Mukuro Ikusaba, was Ultimate Despair as well, and assisted her every step of the way.

In her first appearance, we don't actually get to know anything about her, as she spends her time with the class pretending to be Junko. As such, any and all information gathered on Mukuro is given by someone else- official school records state her title and physical attributes, and Junko tells us her role as Ultimate Despair and goes on about her flaws.

"She had what I call the 'three atrocities'- atrociously rank, atrociously filthy, atrociously repulsive. It was atrociously clear just how out of touch she was with the rest of society." -Junko Enoshima, THH

"The older sister, tough and proud, that was Mukuro. The younger sister, smart and cute, that was... Hyaaaahaha! Me! Junko fucking Enoshima! And together, we were the Despair Sisters! AKA, the Ultimate Despair!" -Junko Enoshima, THH

Mukuro reappears as herself in DR 0 and DR3's Despair Arc, as well as the official AU novel DR IF. In these, we get more insight into her feelings, and see her display an overt attraction to her sister at multiple instances.

"Consumed by ecstasy, even Ikusaba-san's breath became ragged. 'Only I am able to understand her. That's why she needs me. She still hasn't realized that but, maybe she's only pretending not to realize. Ufu, that's because she's so shy. Ufufufu.' Seeing this intoxicated Ikusaba-san continue to talk like that repelled me. I knew that she definitely didn't have normal feelings for Junko Enoshima". -"Mukuro Ikusaba" & Ryoko Otonashi, DR 0

This is pretty obviously incestuous in nature. She blushes at her sister's attempts to kill her with an ice pick, has an internal dialogue about how much said attention affects her, and 'goes into ecstasy' talking about her sister's madness. It's intentionally uncomfortable because it's intentionally incestuous*. I've seen arguments for Mukuro's behaviors being out of character and only there for fanservice in the anime, but this behavior being found in DR 0 first pretty clearly contradicts that. I've also seen an argument for Mukuro's behavior being an act meant to make Junko feel Despair and not having any legitimacy. The crux of the argument comes from the assertion in DR IF that Mukuro is able to numb her emotions in battle, so therefore, she could also mimic such an attraction when around her sister. This argument quickly falls apart as well, considering that a) she has both internal and external dialogue directly referencing her attraction where Junko can't actually hear her, and b) going numb in the heat of battle is not at all the same thing as faking sexual desire outright.

*(Mukuro being incestuous is immediately relevant to the way the Despair Sisters interact with each other, and understanding that I'm talking about their relationship under the lens that she is will hopefully prevent questions about why I'm talking about them as I am throughout the analysis, particularly when she pops up in other sections here and there later. Please do not go into the replies or reblogs and explain to me why I'm wrong; you are not going to change my mind. Believe it or not, I don't like Despaircest either, but that doesn't mean Mukuro's behavior in canon is some accident to be shrugged off. These are meant to be OBJECTIVE analyses. I'm going to look at what the games and novels and anime are presenting, whether I actually like all the points or not.)

Junko Enoshima yearns for Despair. Despair is her reason for being, and everything she does, she does with the intent of eventually bringing Despair upon herself. That pain of Despair is the strongest feeling in the world to her. And the way she treats Mukuro directly stems from that desire. Despair stems from grief, and what brings more grief then the people you love most despising you? Mukuro is her twin sister, who stands by her no matter what. Junko even tests this, having her kill an entire class of students to prove her strength and loyalty in manga series Killer Killer(though, admittedly, Killer Killer hasn't been confirmed as canon to my knowledge, it still aligns with what we know for both characters without altering anything about their characterization).

Mukuro is capable- very capable, and definitely has the ability to betray her, or even kill her if she wanted to. So at every turn, she treats Mukuro like garbage, actively trying to kill her with an ice pick when they first reunite and talking down to her at every opportunity. She describes her sister as fat, flat-chested, ugly, stupid, a pervert, any insult she can think of. She critiques her murders, chastising her when she kills the guards in Despair Arc while looking for Izuru for not doing a clean enough kill. But despite all this, Mukuro never strays from Junko's side. She continues to fawn over her, not just taking all the abuse, but displaying an attraction to her Despairing nature, and refuses to leave her side, the exact opposite reaction of what Junko wants to see from her.

"'Yes, she really is ridiculous…to the point of Despair, she's the lowest, worst sister ever but…that's why I can't leave her alone. That's why I have to help her. After all, I'm the only one who can understand her.'" -Mukuro Ikusaba, DR 0

This kind of loyalty isn't Despair-inducing at all; that dedication is exactly what she predicted from her obsession. What Junko actually wanted from her, we get a brief taste of when she speaks in the final trial of THH- "Because naturally, she turned out to be the letdown of the family. Leaving me behind to run off and join some band of mercenaries... Such a disappointment." The Despair of abandonment, of betrayal, was what she wanted. But Mukuro is too loyal for her own good. That's just annoying.

Mukuro is emotionally abusive, or would be if her sister were anyone but Junko, lusting after her own blood sister in a way that's considered taboo and perverse. This lust develops from an obsessive need to stay loyal to her sister, while Junko verbally abuses her right back, talking down to her and keeping her under her heel, mocking her at all available opportunities and treating her in a way that would make anyone else feel like shit. Not so for Mukuro, the person who's been next to her since birth and has stood by her side through all her Despair. They abuse each other, but there's an unspoken bond that allows for their relationship to function regardless, albeit in a twisted way. They're sisters, equally matched, and together, they become two halves of a whole terrorist. Despair is toxic for anybody, and Junko's own affliction leads Mukuro's obsessiveness to chain herself to Junko's side. They're twins who were born together, after all, and who else could even begin to understand Junko's Despair?

4.1- Despaircest & Anime (CW: Still Incest)

We've seen the relationship that Mukuro and Junko have with each other, both as it was alluded to in earlier depictions and how they interact with each other immediately in the anime. And, despite the fact that it wasn't directly shown to us before said anime, there were hints of the intention of a one-sided incest in DR 0, as well as repeated examples of Junko treating her sister poorly on a surface level and how much she actually valued her within THH and DR IF. Going into the anime, this would be the first time we'd actually see Junko and Mukuro interacting directly with each other as themselves. This could have been the time where we get to see just how twisted their relationship actually is, getting to see how, and maybe even why, they began treating each other in this way. We could've gotten more of a glimpse into their backstory, when they separated, and the inherently self-destructive cycle they pull each other into. Here's what we got instead:

Rather than actually explore the real depth of their fucked up relationship, the anime elects to play it up for the sake of fanservice. This is admittedly an ongoing problem in most of DR3, as it throws most of its female characters into very compromising positions and focuses in on their bodies when they're being brutalized in one way or another and not doing the same for the men, but that only makes this lack of tact worse. There's no interest in actually addressing this darker plot point beyond the most basic surface level because to go any deeper would make it more difficult to get your rocks off to it. It's a shame to create such a conceptually fascinating relationship that would've made for a fantastic way to develop Mukuro as a villain more and Junko as a human more, and just use it for cheap servicy gags. I feel like it isn't an unreasonable statement to say that this was lazy. Danganronpa is supposed to be a series that explores dark topics and uses them to create tragedy and develop its characters. In the face of that, this was cheap.

Hell, this very scene says it itself: they're using Despair to create a fucked up pleasure for the viewer! The incest being played up for fanservice instead of acknowledging Mukuro as a character is, from a meta perspective, Despair-inducing. To the writers and to Mukuro, Mukuro doesn't matter outside of Junko. Her suffering is pleasurable to the audience in a way that's outside of social acceptability, in the way she needed to be used for so long just to exist. BUT WE ALREADY KNEW THAT. We didn't need to boil Mukuro down to an extension of Junko; Mukuro already did that to herself. Maybe this is just me complaining because it's not what I wanted to see from this plotline; I'm not ashamed to admit that. I think being able to acknowledge your biases as a consumer is important when critically looking at a piece of media. But I stand by my assertion that the presentation of this point is sloppy and surface-level, and should've been handled with more tact.

Part 5- The Murder of Mukuro Ikusaba

Junko treats her sister like trash, but despite this, we know that she does respect her. In fact, she has to consider Mukuro as an equal, because if she didn't, she wouldn't hold her as equal parts Despair as herself. Yet, when she reveals herself at the end of THH, she affirms that they were equals- both the Despair Sisters, who worked together("We were the Ultimate Despair, ya know?"), and in the same breath, describes her atrocities and mocks her memory as a disappointment. She sees Mukuro as not just a person, but a legitimate danger and a harbringer of Despair that's worth recognizing. Thus, as a sister, it causes her Despair to prevent anyone else from seeing that and paints Mukuro as just another victim of hers("She was nothing more than a bit player, an extra unworthy of lines."). Playing up her betrayal of Mukuro and her supposed disdain for her sister strips her of her agency as Ultimate Despair to their classmates, without letting them see her true self either. She becomes just another faceless victim, and Junko holds the memory of the true Mukuro Ikusaba, merciless killer and all, wholly to herself.

In the au light novel DR IF, Makoto remembers Mukuro, and inadvertently saves her from this fate. This leads the rest of the LN to focus on Mukuro and her relationship with Junko from her perspective as she copes with the reality that her sister betrayed her. It differentiates herself from Despair, and from her POV, we learn how she thought Junko felt vs how she actually did. Junko lives her life hopelessly- she's too smart for her own good, and can predict the moves of society and of the people around her. Mukuro believed she was the only one who fully understood Junko, so she acted perfectly in accordance with her plans, never once rebelling or going against her. She tries to convince herself to crave her sister's Despair so she would feel Despair from that desire, so she can remain close to her. But that wasn't the Despair Junko wanted. All along, what Junko wanted was for Mukuro to betray her because of her love for her. Without Mukuro, her plans would fall apart. She wouldn't be able to break into Hope's Peak as she did, nor would she be able to protect herself when attacked. Mukuro was what allowed her to gather as much power as she did over Hope's Peak, infiltrating and gathering blackmail, kidnapping chairmen, and so on. Mukuro was the brawn to Junko's brain. So the one thing that could destroy her plans, and bring her a Despair greater than any other, would be if her other half abandoned her. In DR IF, she learns this as Junko finally tells her that she loves her to her face. She breaks Mukuro's chains, and sets her free from her Despair to heal without her by rejecting her help, in a roundabout, Junko-esque way. In canon, though, Mukuro doesn't get to have that realization. She doesn't have the emotional intelligence to put those pieces together herself, and tired of waiting, tired of hoping, Junko gives herself an alternate Despair- the Despair of killing her own sister in cold blood.

The identity and death of Mukuro exist to keep the identity of the mastermind shrouded in mystery. Within THH, she's someone who's important from a narrative perspective- not as a person, but as an entity- designed to facilitate the reveal of the real Junko. Her murder is thus a murder of both her literally, and the murder of her personhood, as Mukuro is the one character that never gets to introduce herself. Junko makes it so, and wipes the memories of the class so that Mukuro Ikusaba will no longer exist outside of herself.

We're introduced to Mukuro not as Mukuro, but as Junko, wearing a wig and costume to appear as similar to her well-known sister as possible, and acting out her sister's fashion diva personality as convincingly as possible. It's tropey and typical of a fashionista- she cares about her looks a little too much during a killing game, acts like she's above the killing game and wants out of it, and explains away any imperfections as 'oh you haven't heard of photoshop before?'

There's no reason not to trust her at that point because no one thinks they've met her before. In DR IF, Makoto is able to recognize her through the outfit and charade, but that's only with his memories intact. Those memories have been thoroughly covered up by Junko in reality, and so the Mukuro Ikusaba she knows dies invisibly, betrayed and unrecognized as her classmates and friends mourn her killer instead. Junko gives her sister the worst Despair of all- being truly forgotten. After this, no one would remember who she was ever again, locked away in the mind of the person who'd never show her affection.

Not only that, Junko killing Mukuro and emphasizing how little she cared about that decision served to make the survivors hate her- her old friends now despised even looking at her, and brought her more Despair.

"Which is precisely why I killed her- to meet everyone's expectations." "That... can't be your only reason, can it?" "Well no, of course not. I also did it to avoid becoming bored." -Junko Enoshima & Makoto Naegi, THH

Despite that, being the one to kill Mukuro brings her a Despair like no other, with her describing it as "super super super super super Despair. No, more than that... Super super super super super super super super super super super super super super super Despair... It just feels... so... good..."

Junko did love her sister, and made everyone else she loved believe otherwise so she could feed off the Despair from their hatred.

Part 6- Ultimate Despair and Junko Enoshima

"The Ultimate Despair... A group of people who caused the Tragedy one year ago... Those same people put together this killing game and began broadcasting it around the entire world. The most desperately awful group of people ever... *That* is the mastermind's true identity." -Makoto Naegi, THH

Make no mistake- despite what the surface level of the series would have you believe, Junko Enoshima isn't the Ultimate Despair. There is no the Ultimate Despair because Despair isn't confined to any one person. Rather, Junko Enoshima is afflicted with Ultimate Despair. Despair, by nature, is grief. It's a pain inflicted by the death of hope, whether that be through the loss of a dream, a person, or whatever else. You grieve that loss, and it takes the form of Despair. Ultimate Despair takes that grief and amplifies it, destroying any sense of self and replacing it with the desire for more Despair. This is the type of Despair that Junko Enoshima feels, and thus, uses her own talents to embody it and spread it. It's a bold claim to make, I realize, that she isn't the SHSL Despair she defines herself as, but it's the basis this entire analysis leads to, and as the evidence over the course of the series develops her character more and more, it goes from some theoretical musing to legitimate design, all the way through to the end of V3. Though she immerses herself within Ultimate Despair, she herself is not Despair incarnate like she'd have you believe.

As we see her in THH, Junko is repeatedly hammered in as 'one of two' by the narrative. It's not just Junko that's formed Ultimate Despair; it's also Mukuro, and they're not referred to as 'Ultimate Despair and her sister', they're 'the Despair Sisters'. For all her charisma she displays, she alone isn't responsible for the Tragedy. Everyone is capable of feeling Despair. It's that foothold Despair has within her that creates an 'Ultimate Despair'. And while yes, Junko was definitely the most afflicted with Ultimate Despair, she didn't get as far as she did just by being horny for grief. She has a title, a real one, and it's not SHSL Gyaru. That was her cover, something she could use thanks to her real talent. Her real talent was only ever known by a select few, and to know what that is, you have to dive into the (criminally underrated, may I add) 2-volume novel set, Danganronpa 0.

Part 7- Ryoko Otonashi (DR 0)

(Little disclaimer here: Before I actually talk about the novel, I did want to quickly assert that DR 0 is both a mainline release to the Danganronpa series and 100% canon. Written and released by series creator Kazutaka Kodaka himself in 2011, it was written specifically to fill out Junko's character more. As such, everything contained within them are unquestionably canon to the world and its characters, something critically important to understand when talking about how it pertains to Junko Enoshima. I think just about anyone who's read DR 0 before knows all this already, but for the sake of anyone reading this who hasn't, I wanted to assert that.)

Ryoko Otonashi is the protagonist of DR 0, and is introduced to us as an audience in a 1st-person perspective. While she isn't the only character we follow in this series, she's the only one to speak to the reader straight-up, introducing herself and reacting immediately to the people and events in front of her. This is for good reason, as Ryoko is suffering from some form of amnesia. Not only does she not remember anything about her childhood or her identity, she also forgets things as they're happening. She can't even remember her name, and is only able to recall it by reading the cover of her notebook- 'Ryoko Otonashi's Memory Notebook,' where she's writing down everything in front of her as it happens so she can try to remember later.

Most of the story is told through Ryoko's perspective as she tries to avoid being caught up in some massive conspiracy within the school- all without actually remembering the conspiracy she's avoiding. Junko Enoshima is the one responsible for this, directing her from place to place and slowly forcing her to confront the conspiracy as she starts to figure out who she is and how she fits into it all. She insists over and over again that it has nothing to do with her, that she's innocent and has never met any of these people before and desperately tries to believe it- her memory is gone, therefore she could not be responsible.

But she is responsible, because she's not Ryoko Otonashi. Her real name is Junko Enoshima, and she's the SHSL Analyst, a girl with such a strong logical capacity that given enough information, she can perfectly understand and predict anything. This could be the actions and personality of a person, or it could be upcoming trends in fashion; whatever it may be, Junko is capable of perfectly analyzing and understanding what will happen in any given situation, long before the world does. And that type of intelligence has rotted away her mind.

Simply put, the human brain requires stimulation. Boredom is her opponent, and in a world where she can fully understand and predict anything at any time, Junko has nothing to stimulate her, and almost nothing can bring her any joy, because she fully anticipates it. Everything is normal, predictable, boring- it's left her with a case of intense anhedonia. Therefore, the only way she could find any happiness is in a world where that talent is stripped away from her. As Ryoko Otonashi, a girl with no memory, she can remember nothing and therefore predict nothing. Analysis requires data, and a blank slate offers none. Even her name is in reference to this, as 'Otonashii' translates to English as 'no sound' or 'quiet'. Only without memory can Junko's mind be silent and let her be genuinely happy.

Ryoko Otonashi is essentially a personality created by Junko as a test, not just for the people around her, but also for herself. Throughout the novel, Mukuro and Yasuke interact with her with opposing goals- Mukuro pushes her into the fray of Despair she's created, while Yasuke tries his best to keep her eyes and ears covered. Ryoko is in a unique position between the two- she's starting to remember and understand herself again, but is terrified of what she'll find, and wants to hold onto her peace with Yasuke. The ongoing question of the novel, which only reveals itself on a reread, isn't within Ryoko's identity itself. It asks the question of whether or not Junko could have been saved from Despair. And the answer, sadly, is no. Remembering anything for too long makes her forget her happiness, and she falls back into Despair, killing Ryoko Otonashi, the epitome of her peace, with her own hands.

Mukuro and Yasuke act as opposing forces within the novel, as both feel a loyalty to Junko that makes them act in what they believe to be her benefit, and both fail. Mukuro drags her kicking and screaming back into the depths of Despair to bring back the madness she sees Junko as, while Yasuke wipes her mind of everything that made her Junko to remove what plagued her. For Junko, balance isn't an option, and the people within her orbit fall victim to that same mentality.

7.1- Personality Disorders In Danganronpa

I'm not a psychologist, nor do I have any sort of split personality(DID, OSDD, etc). So my knowledge on the subject isn't that great, and everything said within this section should be taken with a grain of salt. But, to the best that I can tell, Ryoko's existence as an alter is sort of... mixed up. Other characters in the DR series (Toko & Genocider) make it pretty clear that Kodaka doesn't really have a fantastic understanding of people with DID outside of how they're stereotyped in the horror genre. And that background knowledge, combined with the presentation of Ryoko in DR 0, makes me think she was likely intended to be an alter, but as one that Junko had almost absolute control over, as at multiple instances, she was able to knock Ryoko out at will, and fully killed her once she'd outlived her usefulness for the experiment. There are parallels to Jekyll and Hyde in that aspect, though of course Jekyll was aware of also being Hyde- an alternate version of yourself created to rid yourself of everything about yourself that you despise is very reminiscent of Jekyll's motivations, down to the permanent erasure of the "good" side by the very end. It's also worth noting that Jekyll and Hyde weren't intended as an example of DID, but rather, an exploration of how every person is multifaceted with good and bad parts, even if modern day interpretations often read it as another example of the evil DID trope from 1960 and beyond(thanks a lot, Psycho).

There are several interactions between Ryoko and Junko that support them being two personalities within the same body rather than just a case of memory erasure. For example, when Ryoko is nearly killed by one of the SHSL Octuplets, Junko emerges just to make sure she isn’t killed, citing it as a minor nuisance.

“‘Upupu, I wonder if I was a bit too harsh.’ The voice said, it sounded close. ‘... But it can’t be helped. It’d just be embarrassing if you died here. After all, you’re the protagonist in this scene for once!’” -Junko Enoshima, DR 0

When Ryoko wakes up in the underground bunker of the Reserve Course cult forming, she comes across a captured member of the Steering Committee. And because she genuinely doesn't know who he is or where she is, he ends up giving her classified information that Junko needed, and the second he reveals it, she's immediately able to knock Ryoko back out and take over once again, having used the Ryoko personality as a front specifically to gain information.

“'The old school building… Kamukura Izuru’s there.' 'P-Please wait..' I ended the conversation prematurely with an interruption. Quickly, I wrote in ‘Otonashi Ryouko’s Memory Notebook’. .... But then… Huh? I suddenly felt an attack of dizziness, I struggled to stay upright. What’s happening?" -Steering Committee Member & Ryoko Otonashi, DR 0

"'Oy, did you hear me?' I didn’t. The beating in my ears was only growing louder, it completely drowned out all other sound, I couldn’t hear anything anymore. I shouldn’t be able to hear anything anymore, and yet I could hear a single, eerie laugh. '...Upupu.'" -Steering Committee Member & Ryoko Otonashi & Junko Enoshima, DR 0

Ryoko's memory of Yasuke is also contingent on whether or not Junko wants her to recognize him, suggesting that to some degree, her memory issues aren't just forcefully induced, but rather, are a conscious choice on Junko's part for Ryoko, as once Junko's plan is in place, she suddenly can't recognize him and is then forced to kill him in self-defense.

"'Are you…talking to me?' He looked exhausted. A face of someone who lost everything. The face of someone who lost all his thoughts, all his senses, and all his emotions. '…You don’t remember me?'" -Ryoko Otonashi & Yasuke Matsuda, DR 0

It's pretty unclear whether this was an intended conclusion from Ryoko's and Junko's behavior in DR 0, or if these are just remnants of Kodaka not knowing how personality disorders work and simply having Junko be so powerful that she can purposefully create, manipulate, and kill personalities at will, but I think looking at it from a more psychological viewpoint like this certainly puts Junko's actions as a manipulator into more perspective. The intention behind Ryoko suggests that Junko's manipulative abilities extended even into her own psyche, almost to a supernatural degree. Do actual systems in the real world function like this? No, but thanks to Toko/Genocider, we know that the representation of DID isn't gonna be good in this series.

If we wanted to put this into a more realistic lens, we could come to the conclusion that Junko's apparent control over Ryoko and the discrepancies behind her existence is a result of Junko having Munchausen Syndrome. Also called factitious disorder, Munchausen is a subconscious psychological condition in which the patient fakes symptoms of other kinds of conditions, whether mental or physical, without realizing they're mimicking the symptoms. Under this lens, we could say Ryoko was a factitious alter that Junko created after Yasuke wiped her memory, hence why she could have control over her over the course of the novel. This was almost definitely not the intended explanation, but it's the conclusion I came to. So there.

Part 8- Relationships

Due to just how many corners of the franchise Junko's present in, there's no convenient place to dump all the relationship analyses like I normally do. Ergo, I'll be breaking part 8 up, and will talk about the different core relationships Junko forms when they're most relevant.

8.1- Yasuke Matsuda

Yasuke Matsuda is the SHSL Neurologist, and a childhood friend of Junko's introduced in DR 0. Because he's the boy she's in love with, he remains the only tangible thing Ryoko can remember outside of her procedural memory, and is treating her memory loss. He's also the one primarily responsible for wiping her mind and assisting the school in the coverup of the student council massacre that Junko was responsible for, though he takes no pleasure in it.

"The silence continued for a while until Matsuda sighed and muttered, 'You should worry.' His voice was low and depressing. 'What if you’ll always be like this......'" -Yasuke Matsuda, DR 0

Despite his tsundere behaviors towards Ryoko whenever the two are face-to-face, he's very much in love with her, and spends the novel trying to look out for what he believes is in her best interests by methodically attempting to remove the Despair from her mind and covering up the Tragedy she's already set into motion. Throughout the novel, he works in cahoots with the Hope's Peak Academy Steering Committee to find more information about the Incident. He does this specifically to defend Ryoko and keep people from interrogating her further, and to hopefully extricate her from the whole situation permanently.

"'I said shut the fuck up.' Matsuda easily quieted the men by saying that and then he continued in a soft voice. 'People might call her an idiot, but she doesn’t even bother to stick up for herself, thinking she can’t do it. So I don’t think I’d be able to forgive myself if I don’t do it for her.'" -Yasuke Matsuda, DR 0

Though we never see it directly, we realize with the help of Kyoko that he's also the one taking the bodies of the Steering Committee and SHSL Octuplets after Mukuro kills them and disposing of them, in the hopes they won't be discovered and Junko will eventually be absolved of both suspicion and Despair.

“Finally she looked at me. ..... ‘The dead body, the body that was dead. There was a post-death body here before!’ ‘Huh?’ .....  ‘There’s not mistake, I know there was definitely a corpse here before!’” -Ryoko Otonashi & Mukuro Ikusaba, DR 0

“Matsuda-kun’s voice was definitely coming from beneath me. There’s no mistaking he was under the bed. ‘But... what would require so much concentration to be under the bed?’ ‘This situation.’ Somehow, Matsuda-kun’s way of putting it could allure to several different meanings.” -Yasuke Matsuda & Ryoko Otonashi, DR 0

"I stood next to the girl, crouched down and peeked under the bed. At the back I could see a large opening, .... 'It’s not a terribly impressive hidden room… a storage room at best.' '…A storage room?' 'For hiding dead bodies.'” -Ryoko Otonashi & Kyoko Kirigiri, DR 0

But despite his best efforts, Junko's talents of analysis were just too great, and she'd already come up with a plan to send her back into Despair before he ever touched her mind. With the help of Mukuro and the growing underground Reserve Course cult of Despair, Ryoko is forced to face Despair after Despair, and is hunted for her involvement in the student council massacre. Junko confronts him and taunts him for his failure, leaving him to wallow.

"'I get it, you feel sorry for her… even so, you’re troubled. You’re incredibly troubled. That’s what it seems like after what I’ve been hearing…'” -Junko Enoshima, DR 0

“'You know, in this scenario, only you can make the choice, Matsuda-kun. So think carefully, worry about it, and choose the choice you think it best. Hope or despair… the choices are so diverse and yet, surprisingly, intricately connected. Anyway, have a good think about it…'" -Junko Enoshima, DR 0

In one final attempt to see if he can salvage her, he approaches Ryoko outside of his lab, pretending as if he's Izuru Kamukura, and questions her. She doesn't recognize him, and he, too, falls into Despair, finally accepting that despite his feelings, he was a pawn to Junko's game, and tries to kill her, sending Ryoko towards Despair as she realizes who she's speaking to and can't convince him she loves him anymore. Defending herself, she ends up stabbing him, sending herself spiraling as she becomes her lover's killer, and Junko reemerges from her mind, killing her off in front of him and forcing him to die in Despair.

He dies believing Junko never actually loved him. He becomes thoroughly convinced that she was pretending, and that Ryoko was nothing more than a part of the game to send him into Despair. And that perception of Junko combined with her causing his death brings Junko an indescribable Despair. The man she loved died by her hands, hating her existence. Truly, this was Despair!

"'I was right, wasn't I? About you remembering? That's why you can't remember me? You remembered that I wasn’t a particularly important person to you…so that's why you can't remember?' Kamukura then revealed his eyes, their glint was tainted with deadly hatred. '…You're such a bitch.'" -Yasuke Matsuda, DR 0

"'There's no way this would have nothing to do with me…' There was a hint of sadness laid somewhere in that murmuring voice. 'After all…you were the most important person to me of all…' Those were her true feelings. Yasuke Matsuda was an especially important existence for Junko Enoshima." -Junko Enoshima, DR 0

She loved Yasuke intensely. She cared about him moreso than anyone else, save Mukuro. And yet, despite how attached he was to her, Yasuke couldn't realize in his own Despair that there'd be no reason for someone like Junko to bother dragging herself through so much mental torment and manipulation at his expense if she wouldn't get a magnificent Despair out of it. Yes, she causes Despair for others, but she doesn't throw herself directly into the fray unless she gets something out of it. Despite loving her, he never actually understood her. That truth, too, would bring her Despair.

Part 9- How Junko Shaped the Game

Turning back towards THH, Junko's reveal shakes the class. Most of them believed that finding the mastermind and forcing them to show their face would end the game. But that's not the case for Junko Enoshima. She's not through with them yet, and takes the opportunity to rub everything they've lost in their faces.

"Puhuhuhu... Did you really think the story would end once we reached the climax of the case? Wrong! There's still plenty more to go!" -Monokuma, THH

Throughout all of THH, Junko's plan is hinged on Despair, and thus, she takes her class, which had become close friends and confidants over the past two years of their lives, and attacks what would bring them the worst Despairs possible for each. Her talents as SHSL Analyst allowed her to analyze her own classmates and tear at what would've made their 16-to-20 year old selves when they first met snap. And each one of the motives she used was designed specifically for that, something she makes sure to cite when taunting them ("Did you notice that each motive I presented you had a specific theme to it?")

The first motive's theme was 'human connections', and everything surrounding the first chapter reflects this. Sayaka's motive wasn't just about her career. It was about the family she'd found and not letting down the people who loved her. And on a meta perspective, the first chapter was also about relationships, specifically that between Sayaka and Makoto and how that relationship's end motivated Makoto to eventually become SHSL Hope, and to a lesser degree, starting the development of the critical relationship between Hina and Sakura.

The second motive's theme was 'the past', something the 2nd chapter very much reflects. The secrets that Junko uses against the class are extremely personal to each of their histories, and can be used to twist each of them to head towards Despair, whether that be through their own hand or their own poor judgements of the people around them from their lack of memories. Mondo's secret isn't just tragic; Junko purposefully warps it in his letter to affirm his own belief that Daiya's death was murder and not just an accident, and because no one knows its contents, it sends him into a spiral. The same can be said for Chihiro, whose secret implies that their gender presentation is a lie, forcing them into a conformatory decision that leads to tragedy. Her classmates' memories of the past are presented in a warped way to suit Junko's needs. Toko's secret of having DID and a serial killer alter, Genocider Syo, is also revealed and used to develop her more as a character when she's the one most afraid of opening up to the class.

The third motive's theme is 'greed', using the promise of wealth to lure Celeste to murder. Even if you could argue other characters within the class could have fallen victim to the first two motives, this one is undoubtedly meant to target the Yasuhiros on Junko's part, as realistically, no one else in their class has any reason to even consider killing for money by itself, especially not when there's already been two class trials. The Yasuhiros are the only ones who consider themselves to be in any level of financial need. This theme is also meta-reflected by the possessive nature Kiyondo and Hifumi both develop over Alter Ego. Because neither of them can keep themselves away from them, they became easily manipulated, and it became harder for the rest of the class to obtain information and watch out for each other, forming a tunnel vision towards Alter Ego in their minds. This contrasts Celeste and Hiro greatly as well- Celeste is consumed by her own greed, while Hiro doesn't even consider killing for the money, opting instead to try and look out for the class and develop him as a survivor. Hiro's the one that looks out for Taka and calls out Hifumi on his obsession; Hiro's lured into Celeste's trap by promise of a way to save everyone, while Celeste rejects her class in favor of fighting for a selfish dream she didn't even need.

The 4th motive is that of 'betrayal', and this one is where the cracks in Junko's plan finally reveal themselves. Each and every trial before this one ended in tears and Despair, and a sense of hopelessness that wasn't alleviated until they were given new distractions. Sakura's betrayal is meant to mirror Junko's own betrayal of her classmates, and when half the class instantly turns on her, things go exactly as Junko plans. Sakura swears to destroy Junko by any means necessary, and takes her own life in an attempt to take the fun from Junko. With Monokuma's meddling, Hina is instead pushed into attempting a murder-suicide, one she's caught for by Kyoko and Makoto. But once the truth comes out, Sakura and Hina aren't condemned. Those that attacked her end up defending her. Sakura doesn't betray her class; Sakura betrays Junko, and it puts her on the path to failure. Junko even admits to this, though indirectly: "Once I revealed Sakura's betrayal, that led to everything that came afterwards..." Note this is the only time where she doesn't expressly explain to the survivors why her motive was successful, because in this instance, it wasn't. It also fills out Hina as a character and uses her arc of an attempted self-destruction to contrast Junko, as Hina let herself be forgiven by her classmates, something Junko could never let herself do.

Part 10- Self-Destruction (Junko vs Sakura)

Despite the fact that Makoto is the character christened as SHSL Hope at the end of THH, there are a lot more parallels between Junko's self-destructive nature and Sakura's self-sacrifice that often go unnoticed, and these parallels are quintessential to the overarching narrative of THH and why Junko functioned as its villain.

Both Sakura and Junko do the things they do because they love the people around them. Both Sakura and Junko find themselves to fall short of who they'd rather be. Both Sakura and Junko kill themselves. But their goals are fundamentally, diametrically opposed.

Sakura Ogami, as a martial artist, is a woman of honor and principles. She believes in the inherent worth of the people around her because of this, and strives to become the strongest person alive not because it's a desire of her own, but because that's the destination the people who loved her had in mind for her(her father, Kenshiro, etc). And therefore, she's someone who fundamentally wishes to act in the best interests of the people she loves, even when it's at her own detriment.

Junko Enoshima, as a hyperintelligent analyst, is able to predict anything. And because she can predict anything, she can enjoy nothing, because she always knows what will happen before it gets there. Ergo, the only way she can enjoy herself is via the only thing that can make her feel- Despair. Grief and pain still feel like something in a world where she can't be pleasantly surprised by anything. She despises herself for it, and so in order to feel, she decimates anything that brings her joy. Joy is boring; joy is nothing; joy is just part of the default setting because she still sees it coming. And therefore, she's someone who fundamentally acts in the worst interests of those she loves, for the sake of her own detriment.

When Sakura kills herself, and Hina is filled with Despair, Junko wants to revel in the Despair this brings everyone else. Sakura killed herself for people that weren't giving her the time of day, and the one person who gave a crap tried to kill you all! Isn't it so tragic, so Despair-inducing, don't you just want to break down and crumble?! And then they don't. Instead, after hearing the truth of Sakura's actions, the entire rest of the class is uplifted and united by her honor. Even Byakuya is feeling hopeful now! What the actual fuck is happening?! Is this how they'll feel when I die, too? Will my death bring no Despair?

8.2- Class 78-B

We never get to actually see any of her classmates interacting directly with her in their school days, or in any way that was positive. Outside of THH's and SDR2's final trials, we as an audience don't get to see them interact as friends. So we have to draw these conclusions from what little context we were given within her dialogue in these few rare moments in THH and the mentions of her class in DR 0.

"There was a tap inside [Junko's] skull, like someone pressed a switch and slowly her entire brain lit up with a notion. Several faces appeared. Of course, they were faces she knew… they were the faces of her Hope’s Peak Academy classmates." -DR 0

Without any doubt, Junko loved her classmates. They were people she considered in high regard and had unwittingly fallen for their unique charms. While Junko had come to Hope's Peak with the intention of causing Despair, she'd accidentally found people that made her happy. When entering the school, she intended to use the people around her to damage the school of Hope's reputation, but inadvertently became attached: "Once your school life here began, I thought about you constantly. It's only natural that I would... fall in love." This made for a fantastic happy accident for Junko, as finding something beloved made for a much more fantastic Despair for her later.

"Remembering the faces of the people who would bring her such despair, she felt something that was similar to a person in love, and she danced to the rhythm of Despair. 'This is it! This is a fantastic despair!'" -Junko Enoshima, DR 0

We can also reasonably assume Junko was someone her classmates had considered dear to them in turn, as she not only knew how to motivate their past selves into murder, but also their deepest secrets and fears, and was able to attack their relationships when they themselves couldn't even remember them. Could you handwave that level of connection with her SHSL Analyst talent? Actually, no, because as stated previously, analysis requires data. And the only way she could gather enough data to understand them at a depth that let her plan her killing game to perfection was by getting to know them firsthand.

There's also a strange implication within Junko's explanation of how she put the killing game together that I think gets often overlooked. When she prepares to infodump to the remaining survivors, she says this:

"So since I love you guys so much, I'll tell you all about it! All about the idea we came up with as the Ultimate Despair- our plan to bring Despair to all mankind!"

It's an interesting choice of pronoun, to say the least. "We." It implies that the group she's referring to when she speaks is herself and the people she's speaking to at this moment in time. Could she just be switching gears and talking about Mukuro, and later, the RoD, Kamakura, the WoH, etc? Yeah, absolutely. But none of these characters had even been mentioned, whereas she was just speaking on her love for her classmates in the dialogue prior and continues to talk about her classmates after.

In listening to Junko's explanation of how she put the killing game together, it made me come to a pretty disturbing realization. One of the biggest things about Junko is how she's always able to seemingly pull together everything to form this killing game almost entirely by herself. Later installments to the series include some level of explanations- Towa Group becoming a financial and robotic sponsor, a SHSL Mechanic that could've made the executions, etc- but her success within the killing game hinges fully on her knowing how to best bring her classmates to Despair. And she's not just an analyst; Junko is a master manipulator. Throughout her entire explanation of how she created the killing game, she never says she threw them into the killing game against their will. Instead, she very deliberately calls attention to her classmates' choice in the matter, over and over again. They chose to enter the shelter, they chose to lock the doors and cover the windows, they chose to be there with the SHSL Despair, though they didn't know who they were with at the time. Makoto is the one to assert that they did so because they believed in the hope of survivng, and giving the world a fresh start. But it's not just their year's worth of fun school classes missing from their memories. There's also a year of hopelessness within the school erased, too. Combine this with a few well-placed lines from Junko.

"You see, by taking away your memories, I gave you hope."

"You absorbed all that Despair, but then you forgot it all."

"Despair is contagious, you know. It's almost like... a natural phenomenon."

"Once you'd finished building your little shelter, it was time for me and Mukuro to get to work. And thus began the killing game!"

If Junko is making the claim that she was able to give them hope by removing their memories, that meant none of them had any to begin with. She emphasizes how much Despair her classmates absorbed, and even Kyoko herself states that it's impossible for all this to have been put together by just the Despair Sisters. If an additional year of hopelessness waiting around within the school were also erased, and Junko is intentionally avoiding saying she started the killing game herself, is it beyond reason to suggest that at least some of the 78th class had fallen to Despair in that timeframe? Look at the survivors that are left- Byakuya, Toko, Syo, Hina, Hiro. All characters that Do Not Like each other by this point. Most of the meaningful connections between the classmates have been murdered. Their past is scrubbed away. They've basically all betrayed each other at least once by now, and have been pushed to the brink of Despair. If you got a collection of THH characters most likely to fall to Despair, it'd be this group.

Junko even takes a point to emphasize just how Despair-inducing the truth can become, targeting Kyoko directly with this. As Kyoko comes to the realization the Junko purposefully designed the game with the possibility of being caught, she revels in Kyoko's Despair. She taunts her with the fact that their solving the mystery only made things worse. She is purposefully trying to drive the rest of her surviving classmates into SHSL Despair alongside her. She's manipulated the game and her classmates to get what she wants- the people she loves slaughtered, the survivors joining her in Despair, the world reborn by her hands. She quite likely manipulated her classmates into plotting each other's deaths not only inside the game, but in preparation for it as well.

Out of all her classmates, there was only really one you could argue wasn't perfectly analyzed and manipulated. One stood out among the rest as the unknown variable- a concept otherwise foreign to Junko- that was able to act as a wrench in her plans. And this, too, could cause her Despair.

8.3- Makoto Naegi (Hope vs Despair)

Makoto Naegi's SHSL Luck, AKA SHSL Hope, is the one who takes down Junko Enoshima's SHSL Despair. But why and how was this possible, and what does that mean for the relationship that he and Junko had prior to the game? If I wanted to fully delve into their relationship specifically, I'd need to really tear into Makoto's character, and I don't really have the time for that today(again, still hoping to get this out before 2025), so we'll just do the best we can based off the scenes they've had together and what we know about Junko to put the pieces together thematically.

Makoto is an average guy in just about every sense of the word. He likes average things, he looks plain, he's chosen randomly by lottery instead of earning his place in the school, he doesn't have any noticeable traits or beliefs- at least, not at first.

"But you know, if I had any one kind of strong point, so to speak, I'd say I'm a little more gung-ho than other people." -Makoto Naegi, THH prologue

By his own admission, he has a grand total of two character traits- abnormal normalcy, and enthusiasm. He's optimistic, and that's kind of it. By all intents and purposes, he's the SHSL Joe Schmoe, and that should make him another blank canvas on the wall of pawns Junko can knock over whenever she gets a little bored. And yet, SHSL Joe Schmoe is the one directly responsible for Junko's failure, and the one person who, by her own admission, she cannot predict. So why and how exactly is that?

I recall reading a story about a coding competition, where coders were meant to design an AI for a gambling competition. One entry proceeded to make an AI that would go all in every single time it was its turn, and the simplicity of it was so intimidating that it broke every other AI that was in the competition. That mentality is the exact strategy Makoto unintentionally employs. He doesn't have any strong sense of self or moral complexities; he's a dude that exists, and he throws everything he is into everything he does. He's an optimist to the highest possible sense. He leaves his door unlocked even after 4 murder cases and a break-in. He refuses to fathom anything but the best possible outcome, and so he's able to combat Junko's total Despair with pure hope. Makoto's head is so completely simple and empty that it acts as the exact opposite to Junko's highly intelligent, analytical mind. When she tries to force-feed him Despair in the final trial, he hits her with the power of 'nuh-uh,' and it works. It's that emptiness that fascinates Junko, and makes him and his random chance luck unpredictable to her.

Part 11- "Defeating" Despair

When Junko loses, it's not just because she failed to convince the others of Despair, or that Makoto's hope was just naturally the stronger conviction of the two. Rather, Junko's loss can be attributed to her own conscious choice to lose. Even if we're looking solely at THH, this is the case. And the source is found in a single line.

If her conviction to win in this moment was absolute to the point where only one person had to vote for Despair, she just had to include herself in the votes. After all, she is one of the 16 students participating, and by all accounts, she should receive a vote for this trial. But she casually refuses, instead leaving it in the hands of the survivors to make the final call. And that in and of itself is indicative of Junko's desires. When faced with a situation she can easily control, she leaves it to fate to decide, allowing that glimmer of unpredictability to take over and surprise her. She'll always believe in the Despair she's dedicated herself to; it doesn't actually matter who wins here. What matters is that she feels Despair. Either Makoto succeeds in convincing his classmates of hope and kills her, ruining all her plans, or he fails, and she exterminates the one unpredictable person in her life and locks herself out of that rush of adrenaline for the rest of her life. Either ending would fill her with Despair, and in that sense, there is no way for her to lose. She won the killing game, whether the survivors realized it or not, because she succeeded in destroying herself. She built herself a Saw trap, and her loved ones set it off.

Part 12- Execution Analysis

Junko is the only character to walk willingly into her execution, even being the one to hit the red button to start up the punishment rather than having Monokuma do it. You can first attribute this to her no longer being in the control room to pilot Monokuma to do so, which is true, but it's also representative of her desire for self-inflicted Despair. Her eyes are swirling with Despair and she goes on about how good it feels, how everyone should die in such Despair, how this punishment is 'extra special', because it's one she brought on herself. After methodically destroying the most important relationships of her life one by one, she'd now be killed by her friends in a series of recycled contraptions in an 'Ultimate Punishment'.

As she goes through each step of the execution, we see her bearing a wide grin, flying through the machinery that'd killed every one of her executed friends over and over again. She hits every baseball, handles the Cage of Death with ease, calmly survives the firetruck, and bobs her head with the excavator. She doesn't struggle, not once, and this is because in prolonging her Despair, her SHSL Analyst talent is keeping her alive. She's watched every one of these executions, and thus, knows how to survive them all. It's not just a retrospect of every prior execution as a callback for the audience; it means something. With a punishment meant to bring the character's worst ironic death via their most hated parts of themselves, then of course Junko's analytic abilities are keeping her alive through everyone else's Despair.

The execution ends with the return of the After-School Lesson, and this is the one that finally kills her, because it's the only one in which she doesn't know how it ends. Makoto's execution was tampered with by Alter Ego, so there's no way to know if she'll actually die or not. Junko can't know if it still works or not. Junko doesn't know whether she'll live or die, and that's what makes it so exciting. She's driven to the edge of death and left to sit there for a moment too long, long enough for the Despair to be replaced with disappointment- only to kill her right when her Despair abandons her. She stops smiling, looks up at the press, and dies abruptly. In her final moments, she is denied her Despair. Makoto did win, after all.

Part 13- Answering the 'How' (SDR2)

One of the biggest 'what-the-fuck's people tend to have after walking out of their first playthrough or watchthrough of THH is the How of the entire game. The first game is good and all, but it leaves Junko's skills and how she set up and pulled the killing game together pretty vague. This is intentional, as in the first game, she exists as a kind of force of nature, representing Despair as an inherent part of life in the same way Makoto represents hope. But after Spike Chunsoft commissioned a sequel, and Kodaka set to work on DR 0, the question of 'how' had to be answered as the series was expanded upon. This started with the introduction of Yasuke Matsuda's memory erasure technology and the reveal of Junko's SHSL Analyst status in DR 0, but continued to expand well beyond that.

In SDR2, we're introduced to an entirely new cast of characters, all with new and less conventional talents in comparison to the first cast. Whereas THH had plenty of more mentally-oriented talents like programming, writing, and hall monitor to balance out their more eclectic ones, the SDR2 cast is almost entirely physical or social talents like a yakuza, animal breeder, and mechanic. These talents also put them into more social or powerful positions than the 78th class on an overall skill, as you find yourself full of people that could command full armies and people proficient with making weaponry or fighting and potentially killing the people around them. This differentiates the casts, and automatically makes them more threatening in the ways they could attack each other in a killing game. This also makes them Junko's perfect weapons.

8.4- Remnants of Despair

Class 77 is revealed by the end of SDR2 to be the Remnants of Despair, pawns swayed over to SHSL Despair by unknown means. Makoto refers to this conversion as 'brainwashing', though whether this is him literally knowing they were brainwashed or making an inference and later being proven right is unclear. Regardless, the RoD are part of the SHSL Despair movement, and exist to explain a lot of how Junko was able to not only set up the killing game mechanically, but continue to end the world and send it into ongoing war after the initial Incident.

This is something especially apparent with the remaining surviving cast, as they're the most immediately powerful amongst the cast for Junko to use. Sonia and Fuyuhiko are both in direct command of massive amounts of people, with Sonia being the heiress to an entire country and Fuyuhiko being the leader of the largest mafia in Japan. Kazuichi as the SHSL Mechanic explains how and why so many elaborate executions were able to be designed ahead of time for the killing game, and Akane is a wicked fast athlete who's already accustomed to tragedies and will eat anything. On top of all this, there's Hajime, a human experiment worked on by those in league with the values of hope, and that was forcefully imbued with every talent that's ever been documented, including Junko's.

This sums up everything that made the RoD useful, but doesn't explain how any sort of meaningful connection was established between them and Junko. That's because on the overall, there isn't one. With two notable exceptions, the SDR2 class is largely unimportant to Junko emotionally speaking. They're useful, and that's about it. They weren't in the same class; they didn't interact at school or bond in any important way. She just dragged them down with the bare minimum brainwashing video because of their usefulness.

We also know Junko didn't care because of just how differently she speaks to and treats class 77 as opposed to the characters that we know she does love. The series painstakingly makes sure you know that Junko tears up everything she loves- Mukuro, Yasuke, class 78. She gores through them because hurting the ones she loves hurts her right back, and gives her an excellent Despair. But with class 77? Beyond the initial conversion, she doesn't really touch them. She doesn't need to waste her time with people who are virtually strangers. Their pain just is Despair; it's not her Despair. It's good for a laugh, but not much else, so she lets them run rampant on their own.

On an overall scale, Junko didn't give a fuck about these people. They existed solely as tools to her, and she interacted with them as little as possible. Unlike with her classmates, whom she loved, she did the absolute bare minimum required to get them to feel Despair by showing them a video and letting them do their own thing. The RoD were Remnants and not full-fledged SHSL Despair because their Despair was artificial. It was inauthentic, and so they could never ascend to true Despair in the way characters like Mukuro, Junko, or Monaca can.

8.5- Mikan Tsumiki (The Relevance of Junkan)

When we're first introduced to the concept of Junkan, it's portrayed as a one-sided infatuation from Mikan's perspective. She tells her classmates about the one person who forgave her existence and loved her anyway, with the choice of language emphasizing her beloved's need for Despair and asking for forgiveness for hoping suggesting that this beloved is Junko.

"Ahhh, this feeling of freedom where you no longer care about anything! My beloved and I are the only ones within that thin veil, and I'm just looking out through it..." -Mikan Tsumuki, SDR2

Whether intended at the time of SDR2's release or not, this line of dialogue ended up foreshadowing Mikan's heightened importance in comparison with the rest of her class to Junko as an RoD. When everyone else were just tools, remnants formed by brainwashing, Mikan is ultimately differentiated as special, not necessarily craving Despair but happily parroting it for the sake of a twisted love.

"It's like nothing matters! I could just die, that's how little it matters! Who cares about hope or despair! It's love, only love!" -Mikan Tsumiki, SDR2

This 'beloved' being Junko is proved true when AI Junko emerges in the final trial and reveals that class 77 are also the RoD. At this point, though, there's almost no evidence that Junko feels anything back for Mikan besides a vague sense of usefulness shared with the rest of her classmates, as she mimes seeing them as friends because of their actions as Remnants of Despair.

Something that's important to remember, however, is that Junko's need for Despair drives her to destroy everything she loves. We've seen this multiple times, over and over again with Mukuro, Yasuke, and her classmates before now. The reason we know she didn't care about class 77 is because there are no such personal attacks to tear them apart and make them despise her specifically- their pain brings her no Despair. There's no evidence of a personal attachment. Once DR3 comes into focus, though, that changes for one RoD in particular- one Mikan Tsumiki.

DR3 made the decision to bring Chiaki back as a human character, and made her the central figure for class 77's bond. Junko dragging out Chiaki's suffering and forcing her classmates to watch became the titular event that drove the rest of class 77 to Despair. But there was no personal attachment to this act, because she'd only just met Chiaki, and there was no dynamic to speak of between the two of them besides maybe a vague sense of interest based off of their single interaction.

So, if there's no established rivalry or connection to Chiaki, why does Junko single her out and kill her specifically? Easy; Junko doesn't. She sets up the maze, sure, but she is not and never was the one targeting Chiaki specifically. That was Mikan, and the show makes sure the audience sees this more than once.

When Mikan and Junko meet, it's because of a chance interaction. Mikan runs into Mukuro by mistake when going to check on Ryota, and is captured. In this sense, she's literally presented as a gift to Junko. Junko learns she's a nurse, and decides she'll let her hang around while she works on the brainwashing video.

In their next scene together, Junko is having Mikan massage her leg, listening as Mikan presents her classmates and friends to Junko. She's the one who tells Junko of how close her class has become, and how Chiaki is the central figure behind their bond. It's where we get this from Junko:

Though you might not immediately know it, it's swiftly revealed to us that Mikan is now in love with Junko via this and Ryota's mention that something appears 'off' with Mikan. From Ryota's discovery of the prototype video that was used on the Reserve Course students being immediately followed by Mikan's appearance and saying he souldn't have watched the video, it's easy to fall into the assumption that Mikan's fall is purely because of the brainwashing. But that's not necessarily true. Mikan having seen the video prototype is very different from being brainwashed entirely, and considering Junko herself says that the video is insufficient and that she can't brainwash people like Ryota can, there's an inference to be made that while the prototype video may have helped, it didn't rob Mikan of her free will in the way Chiaki's death did for everyone else. Ryota didn't fall into Despair from the video by itself, and neither did Chisa Yukizome. We also know from her FTEs in SDR2 that even before falling to Despair, Mikan was already a little fucked up, as her idea of a good time includes telling you all the ways in which you could die and begging people to treat her like garbage just for a taste of acknowledgement.

We also see what motivated her to nurse not only herself, but others as well- not empathy, but power and control.

"Sick people and injured people... are weaker than me. .... But if I know the proper way to treat them, that means my words are absolute. Which means... They'll need me. They'll depend on me completely." -Mikan Tsumiki, SDR2

Again, all this can be found in her FTEs, in a situation in which she's mentally reverted to the way she was entering the school, before she and Junko were so much as in the same city. By this line of information, it's just as believable that her falling in love with Junko was because Junko and her video actually connected with Mikan, taking Mikan's craving for attention via mistreatment and using it to her advantage. It's also worth noting that the anime makes a point to use 'spiral eyes' to demonstrate when a character has been brainwashed. This is something used with Chisa, with the characters in the Future Arc, and when the RoD are shown Chiaki's murder. But Mikan does not have these spiral eyes in the scene where she nearly assaults Ryota. She's horny, and it's extremely disconcerting, but her eyes are still her own, suggesting that the video didn't take a hold on her the way it did for the Reserve Course students.

Mikan is also one of the most similar characters to Junko in that she craves pain. Not emotional Despair in the way that Junko does, but physical pain, not only from Junko, but from just about anyone. Pain means attention, and that's something she needs more than anything. By this metric, she and Junko are actually quite similar, needing the worst from the people they love, and this makes for a formula that can create an incredibly abusive relationship. Junko can do literally anything to Mikan, and she'll lap it up like a dog. Mikan makes for a perfect punching bag, and suddenly, their relationship is intentionally paralleling the way Junko treats her sister. She kicks her around, calls her a disgusting horny piglet, and Mikan thanks her for it. It becomes a challenge of seeing how far she can push Mikan before she snaps and attacks her back, just like how she tries and fails to do with Mukuro. Simply put, there's no reason for her to treat Mikan in this way if she doesn't care about her as a person, romantic or otherwise.

This connection Junko forms with Mikan also serves to answer that earlier question: why did she bother with a class full of people she's never met? It's because of Mikan. Mikan is the one to present class 77 to her, and with the context that she goes on to set up a murder maze specially for Chiaki, and specifically says that Mikan has 'made a compelling case', that means Mikan was asking her to make them SHSL Despair. And not only does she do so, she does so in a way that forces Mikan to be the one to lead them into the trap. She brings her classmates to the bunker, she separates Chiaki from the group, she's responsible for sending her loved ones to Despair. This isn't a plot that's personal to Junko; it's a plot that's personal to Mikan, and Junko helping drive Mikan's loved ones into Despair saddles Mikan with a Despairing guilt tied to Junko.

Driving class 77 to become RoD is an act of love for Mikan- a twisted, abusive love, but a love nonetheless, and one that's in line with the way she drives her own class to Despair and makes herself the crux. Should her classmates realize what's happened, they'll know that Mikan brought them here. The rest of class 77 are Remnants, but Mikan is a SHSL Despair like Mukuro, valued like Mukuro, and her being the one to regain her memories and turn on all her friends once more, betray them once more, is a remnant of Junko's love.

8.6- Izuru Kamukura

When Junko first approaches Kamukura, she does so with the intention of offing him then and there. He's the artificial SHSL Hope, lab-grown by Hope's Peak Academy, and represents everything their research stands for. To kill him would be to kill their work, and that's what she walks in with the intention of doing.

Naturally, she fails, as Izuru's been imbued with every talent known to man. This wasn't outside to realm of possibility for Junko, though. There were several different ways to kill the SHSL Hope invented by Hope's Peak. Whether or not she killed him literally or metaphorically wasn't the point.

Izuru Kamukura exists as an empty symbol. He's filled with talent and nothing to use it on. Because his existence is an artificial one, he has no passion with which his talents were born, and no drive to use them. If anything, he's not the SHSL Hope, he's the SHSL Talent, but regardless, his creators have labeled him their SHSL Hope so that he can become their puppet-symbol. So to kill the SHSL Hope the trustees have created, all Junko really has to do is get her hands on the puppet first.

The actual convincing of him isn't really what matters to Junko. Similar to the trustees, she also sees Kamukura as a symbol, albeit one to be knocked down instead of bolstering up, so she uses him like a token symbol, too. All she has to do is pique his interest, just enough to get him to follow her, and her job is done. She talks on about her love of Despair, how grief and pain are something that actually makes you feel, and because he's had his emotion removed, that unknown variable is enough to get him to watch, just in case.

Despite his having every known talent, Kamukura is tricked. He's framed by Junko as being responsible for the murders of the student council. And in addition, he sees the power of Despair, as adrenaline from the final survivor pushes him to attack Kamukura even when it should've been physically impossible. When moved by that animalistic need to survive, he manages to cut Kamukura's face even after getting his own sawed in half. Thus the SHSL "Hope" is introduced to the world as creating Despair, and his job is complete.

Junko doesn't really bother with Kamukura after this framing. She lets him hang around, but when he decides to leave, she doesn't make any sort of fuss or try to attack him anymore, because she doesn't really care about him. He was only as important to her as his title was to the school, and once that title was tarnished, any connection between them she pretended to have was dropped. The next time these characters meet, it will no longer be the real Despairing Junko tainting some artificial husk of a person, filled with talent and emptied of heart, but rather, an artificial Despair combatting a survivor's true identity.

Part 14- The Brainwashing

Okay, let's talk about this. Was the brainwashing a good move for the story? Was it actually planned from sdr2? Or was it something half-assed at the last second because Kodaka didn't think that far ahead? Well, imo, it was almost definitely intended from their conception, and is very reflective of Junko's own motivations and goals.

From as early as DR 0, brainwashing tactics are evident within Junko's work. When Ryoko meets the reseve course's underground cult, she finds them watching a single video of mutual killing over and over again, with a fixation on its contents that's unnatural.

"[The cultists] didn‘t even bother to glance at me. Their eyes were still plastered to the monitors in front of them. .... Every monitor was a pitch black, none had a single image projecting on it.

'It‘ll… start again soon… so…' the monobear heads sitting in front of me said in monotone." -DR 0

Brainwashing is again brought up within SDR2, as not only is Hajime expressly a human experiment due to alteration of the brain specifically, but the entire class is referred to by Makoto as 'brainwashed'. At this point in the series, there's no reason for him to actually know this short of Kamukura possibly telling him they were brainwashed, so we can reasonably assume this statement is rooted in Makoto's inability to understand Despair and seeing anyone's craving of it as a mental disease that can be cured(not an unreasonable conclusion to reach, considering the Everything About Junko he was led to witness). Ergo, it's not beyond reason to assume that brainwashing was well within the bounds of possibility for the characters even at that time.

While the idea of brainwashing the class into Despair appears to rob the class of their moral complexities that came from being RoD, the view we as an audience are given by Makoto, Kyoko, and Byakuya within SDR2 is only ever that the RoD were victims of Despair. The survivors are already established as more reliable narrators than AI Junko thanks to the first game, so there's no reason not to trust that what they say is likely true. In addition, Junko never actually directly states that they did it of their own free will, just that they were on the same side and tries to get them not to listen to Makoto, her already-established opposite.

The idea of class 77 being brainwashed went from theory to canon in DR3, and while the method of their brainwashing is controversial(the line 'cutting through their free will like swiss cheese' from the dub is pretty aggravating), it still lines up with Junko's pre-established goals and motivations. She goes to Hope's Peak to tear down Hope and replace it with Despair, and after being shown a class full of Hope united by their love for the same person, she exploits it and is able to use their love against them to create Despair as an outsider. She's introduced to the class, uses them, and then lets them all go do their own Despairing thing because she doesn't actually care what they do. What matters most is her own Despair, and tearing hope to pieces. So her interaction with class 77 remains minimal, a mere experiment for Despair in the same way Hajime was an experiment for hope, and then keeps going about her business, calling on them presumably only if she needs something like the execution contraptions.

14.1- The Despair Videos & Knowing the Difference

There's not just 1 Despair video. Over the course of the anime, we're introduced to three, and each one has different levels of effect on those who watch it. Knowing the difference between these three videos is quintessential when talking about the brainwashing and how each character to watch a video is affected, as well as understanding different characters' roles in the narrative as they pertain to the videos. So let's establish the differences between these 3 videos and their effectiveness before we move forward.

14.1.1- The Student Council Massacre

The first Despair video, aka "the prototype", aka the Mutual Killing Video, is the one created using the footage of the student council's beta mutual killing game. This is the one made solely by Junko's attempted mimicry of Mitarai's animation talents, taking security footage of the mutual killing and sharing it with the Reserve Course and Mikan as a test run. And while it does have some level of effect on them, inspiring 'the parade' and having a hand in Mikan falling for Junko, it doesn't work nearly well enough to actually rewire their brains for Despair or strip them of their hope in the way that Junko would like. Even in the context of a parade, it's still very much a protest in the hopes of change. There's still the demands of a refund, of being let into the main course. Even when shown the Despair of the truth, there is still hope that things can be changed or fixed. And that's not what Junko wants. The only character that we've seen to watch this video to end with the aforementioned 'spiral eye' telltale of true brainwashing is Chisa, who we know was also being actively lobotomized by Mukuro during a repeated viewing to force it to work. This instruction came from some manual Mukuro was left with, presumably written by either Junko or Ryota.

While this video is what starts the parade, what eventually pushes the parade to violence isn't Junko. It's the inaction of Hope's Peak Academy and refusal to acknowledge their mistakes. Instead of coming clean, they bury everything wrong they've done even further and have their security beat the shit out of anyone that tries to find answers for themselves, doing so in the name of 'protecting them' from information. They keep the wrongdoings of their 'real' students under wraps at the expense of their underlings, fully buying into a talent-based hierarchy they created. Those without special talents are sources of finance- nothing more, nothing less. And when that overwhelming majority questions that, and finds evidence that HPA doesn't care, of course they'll retaliate. The video itself isn't a brainwasher, but when combined with the very real negative effects of the classism which the Reserve Course students find themselves hurt by, it makes its influence that much stronger.

14.1.2- Human Chiaki's Death

The second Despair video is Chiaki's execution, and is a live recording shown to her classmates. As far as we've ever seen, this is the only instance in which this is ever shown. This live recording is enough to send class 77 into Despair properly, spiral eyes and all, but there's an underlying implication that the primary reason for this is because of how important Chiaki specifically was to them. Throughout the season, and especially in this episode, Chiaki is established as the glue that holds the class together. Despite not being an extremely sociable person, she connected to her class with her love of games, and her earnest love of it endeared her to them, and their love of her did vice versa. The footage locked them each into place, unable to look away, and once they were at their lowest, at the very end of the video, Junko swoops in to dub them all Remnants and decides for them that they will now cause Despair for her. And because she says this when the live footage has brought them to their lowest, they each fall into this trap, at least to some extent. Whether or not they truly belive in what they're doing, they do it, because that feeling of Despair is their last connection to Chiaki left.

But, similarly to the prototype, it's still ultimately insufficient. Granted, it's much more effective than the prototype, but it isn't a full mindwipe, either. We know this because when we meet Nagito Komaeda in UDG as the Servant, he's still himself. He still has some level of self-control, able to speak and act as an individual even when following the orders of Monaca or the other WoH. He says himself that he despises Junko more than anyone else in the world, and follows through with Despair with the faith that it'll inspire a newer hope to conquer it. He says something similar in that moment of brainwashing as well.

"Nanami is our hope. Look what she did to her. What Despair... What a horrific sight! This is... This is the Despair we must overcome? Ah, Nanami... You understand, right? At this moment, you are becoming a stepping stone to hope!" -Nagito Komaeda, DR3

You could possibly attribute this to Nagito's luck cycle and history with tragedy just making him have a higher resistance to the brainwashing, and honestly, there's no strong way to contradict that, since Nagito and Mikan are the only ones we ever see in Despair outside of a montage, but narratively, I doubt they'd make a point to show one of the RoD hating Junko if it weren't to make the point that they had agency. Nagito was just the fan favorite, so of course it was gonna be him. You saw the fanservice in UDG.

14.1.3- Mitarai's Animation

The third and true Despair video is the inversed Monokuma Theatre, which is used to mentally hack its viewer and drive them into such a strong state of Despair that they kill themselves right then and there. This is objectively the strongest of the Despair videos, and the most effective, with the only character it doesn't immediately convince to kill themselves being the Future Foundation chairman Kazuo Tengan. This is mostly for plot reasons, but I'll address this specific exception to the rule later on and why this was the case.

The Monokuma Theatre video is mass-emailed to the Reserve Course students after they destroy the shiny new building their parents were tricked into paying for. The video hacks their minds when in an already vulnerable state, and each and every one of them jumps out of the building and kills themselves. Just as quickly as they take some control and uproot the system that hurt them so, they fall victim to the games of another who never cared for them in the first place. The purpose of the video was to create a horde of faceless victims to spurn others into action, and it worked like a charm, spiraling the world into a state of Despair. The RoD used their influence to ensure a smooth transition into this state of worldwide chaos as well, having significantly more social power and reach to spur more and more people into the fray.

The Monokuma Theatre video is also what makes the members of the Future Foundation kill themselves in the Future Arc, hacking their minds and then dropping a knife with which to stab themselves with. It works on every character that watches it- Chisa, Gozu, Seiko, Ruruka, and Makoto. Each of these characters are in various mental states when they watch it, yet all of them fall to it, without exception. It doesn't matter who you are or what you believe in. If there's even one thing you regret in your life, the video can and will work on you. It just does. And by that logic, it's the only real 'brainwashing' video, because it can work on anyone who watches it. The one character who seems to withstand it is the one who builds an entire killing game using said video just to force its creator to action, and doesn't even seem so much as affected by it. Really, it calls into question whether or not he was even affected by it.

14.1.4- The Flashback Light (Bonus Brainwashing!)

The Flashback Lights are used solely in V3, and are invented by the mysterious Team DR to reprogram the memories of their victims to play along in their scripted killing game. We see this work on both Kaede and Shuichi, as well as see the aftereffects it has on the rest of the class.

We learn while investigating that Tsumugi is the one responsible for creating the Flashback Lights, and that she's been the mastermind who knew what was happening the entire time. However, this initially opens up a plot hole in that Tsumugi has also been shown the Flashback Lights multiple times. There are 3 viable explanations for this. The first one is that she just closed her eyes, which is extremely boring and kind of a copout. The second is that she didn't know she was the mastermind until near the end, and Kaede's murder plot failing was a ruse by Team DR for the story, but that makes that entire reveal lose a lot of its impact. The third explanation, therefore, makes the most logical and narrative sense, and actually doubles as a reason why Tengan would be the only one to withstand the Monokuma Theatre in DR3: Tsumugi wears glasses.

Yeah, I know, that sounds silly, but let's actually break it down. In NDRV3, two characters are shown to wear glasses, and only two- Tsumugi Shirogane, and Gonta Gokuhara. Gonta, however, has two unique traits that are relevant here. One, he has 20/0.625 vision(strong enough to see the near microscopic Monokuma cameras), and two, he wants nothing more than to appear as a gentleman. I don't think it's a stretch to say he's wearing empty frames to appear more gentlemanly, especially considering they're paired with a full suit.

Tsumugi is the mastermind, and the one who has the most insight into what's happening in the game. She's the one who knew the difference between her actual self and the character Tsumugi that she played(it's implied in the dating sim that Tsumugi isn't her real name), despite having seen the Flashback Lights with the class several times. So isn't it entirely possible that having glasses to reflect the light of those Flashbacks was what let her pass for being affected as well? And, if that's the case, then it would also explain why Tengan, who wears glasses, would be resistant to the effects of the animated video, as everyone else who we know watched the animated version before their death didn't wear glasses. The faceless Reserve Course students don't have glasses, and neither do any of the five characters in Future Arc to watch it. It's completely ridiculous, and simultaneously totally plausible, for the idea of glasses reflecting off light and lessening the effects of such a video to be the explanation for why the videos or lights exclusively didn't work on these masterminds.

8.7- Ryota Mitarai

Junko's connection to Ryota is objectively the weakest part of her story, and admittedly a major part of why the brainwashing of class-77 falls under such scrutiny. Whereas every other part of Junko's plan is pretty well-established within her characterization, the connections she makes having actual sense to their conception and development, and just general consistency within the narrative, her meeting Ryota is not only a stroke of random luck on her part, but emphasized as one, and this just does not make sense for a character within said narrative to have never once been characterized as having any level of luck or fortune prior. This is especially glaring in a world that has established luck mechanics via characters like Makoto, Nagito, and Celeste. Junko just isn't a character meant to have luck like this, and never has any sort of moments or accomplishments stemming from luck before or after this outright.

When Junko and Ryota meet, it's because they walk past each other going in and out of the infirmary, and Junko, for no visible reason, decides to start talking to him right then and there. She starts squealing and hugging him, jumping up and down, and says this upon Mukuro's asking why: "I don't know, but... this is what I'm telling myself: This is yet another... fateful encounter!"

There's no rationale to this. There just isn't. It's not her SHSL Analyst talent having picked up on him over time, or her recognizing him via someone else, or anything of the sort. It's totally unjustified random chance for the convenience of the plot, and that's what makes this introduction so weak.

Really, the issue of Ryota's involvement falls more in their introduction than his actual function in the anime. Considering his characterization and the connections Ryota had prior to this, it would've made infinitely more sense if Junko had met Mikan first while in the infirmary, and buttered her up enough for Mikan to introduce the two of them. Knowing Mikan, it wouldn't have taken much, and would've made more sense for Ryota to be so willing to share a part of his life's work while still incomplete if he was introduced to Junko by someone he already trusted. Regardless, that's not what happened, but I say this mostly because I want to affirm that with Junko and Ryota's connection, it's the introduction that doesn't make sense, not what follows.

That said, once the awkwardness of how they meet is out of the way, what follows is fairly reasonable. She asks about his talent, purposefully mocks his interests to trick him into showing off, and then takes advantage of what she learns about him, which just so happens to be brainwashing techniques that she'd already be somewhat familiar with thanks to Yasuke.

Once they're acquainted, Junko uses her knowledge of the school and what she's stolen from the kidnapped trustees to set up Ryota underground where she can keep him under control, and so he can't mistakenly squeal about what she's setting up. She uses his passion against him to bastardize it into what she needs and manipulates him into walking into his own cell by doing so. It's not her most genius move of all time, and it's not a difficult one to understand either, but it's one that works.

What matters most to understand, though, is that she doesn't seem to develop any sort of affection for him in the way that she did for Mikan. When he finally uncovers what she's doing, Junko gives him a simple sales pitch, and threatens him indirectly with Mikan's friends.

By now, she knows damn well that he's met a grand total of two of his classmates, one of which just tried to sexually assault him mere moments prior, so this doesn't seem like the most effective tactic she could've used. But Ryota is a sensitive person. A victim of bullying growing up, the whole point of his brainwashing animations was to make people more empathetic subliminally. So to force him to help her, Junko is able to target this empathy by targeting Mikan over Ryota himself. Her abuse of Mikan is painful for Ryota to look at, and he wrongfully puts all the blame for the way Mikan acts solely on Junko because he doesn't know any better. And Junko lets him, because it's convenient for her to manipulate.

"As you have inferred, the mutual killing video you watched is the reason Tsumiki ended up this way. However, in order to reach my objective, this is insufficient. My lack of brainwashing ability is the cause." -Junko Enoshima, DR3

As we know, Junko is an unreliable narrator. She can and has lied to people's faces for the sake of manipulating them, telling half-truths and intentionally warping the truth to shift her victims' perspective in a way that she wants. We never see Mikan's fall, only cutting from her first meeting Junko to her already being in love with her, and as we've established, not only was Mikan already pretty fucked up prior to meeting Junko, but she doesn't exhibit the symptoms of a complete brainwashing at this point. She still has her mental faculties about her. So logically, that means she's doing the same here. Yes, Mikan watched the prototype video, and yes, it was insufficient. Hence why we as an audience can understand with our meta-context that Mikan still has her mental faculties intact. Ryota, on the other hand, doesn't have that benefit, so when Junko says this, the implication is that Junko took the meek, shy, kind version of Mikan that Ryota knew and twisted her into an evil, hypnotized slave of Junko's. It's an intentionally warped perception of the truth that Junko uses to her advantage, to the point where she flat-out says she can't brainwash at this point and brainwashing is still commonly attributed as the sole reason for Mikan's behavior in this scene.

Ryota cares about the few friends he does have, taking Mikan's and the SHSL Imposter's requests to take care of himself by resting and going to the infirmary even when he doesn't want to to ease their worries. So of course, when faced with the idea that he could prevent Mikan's loved ones from getting hurt, even though he doesn't know the vast majority of them, he caves regardless. It doesn't have to affect him. The people around him are important enough for this threat to work anyways. They're not his precious classmates, but they are the Imposter's; they are Mikan's. And Ryota is a very weak man. So he complies.

Later, when he escapes, she hunts him down to thank him for his help, and then allows him to run away, letting him believe that he's the reason why class 77 were the ones to be brainwashed.

"The video I had you help me with. The complete version of that. I'll have your whole class watch it now!"

The 'video' that Junko has them watch is a live recording of Chiaki's death maze. Meanwhile, the Despair video that the Reserve Course goes on to watch after the riots, and that Chisa Yukizome is subjected to, are different videos entirely, forcefully reprogramming them and removing their hope outright. Since Ryota's an animator, we can ascertain he's responsible for the one the Reserve Course watches, with an animated Monokuma. In other words, Junko does not, in fact, have his class watch the video he helped her make. She's lying to him to send him further into Despair.

"Imagine it... Because of you, all your classmates will fall into a deep, deep Despair. They'll become people who think of nothing but plunging this world into Despair, the Super High-School Level Despairs!"

It's a bold-faced lie, and one that Ryota has no knowledge with which to contradict it. Because he's a coward, and because Junko's already messed with his head so much, he runs and hides rather than face what he's done. She even leaves him with parting words of responsibility, twisting what happened with sarcasm so he'll always blame himself for her actions.

Ryota is by no means a perfect victim, but that doesn't change the fact that he is one. He was manipulated, and when he found out he was manipulated, he was threatened, albeit indirectly. But Junko was always planning to send Hope's Peak and the world into Despair. His video made it easier for her, but he is not and never was responsible for her actions. And by making him carry the guilt of her choices, she leaves him in a state of pathetic, guilty Despair akin to a genuine 'thank you' from her.

Part 15- AI Junko

AI Junko(or Kaijunko, as I like to refer to her as) appears as the reincarnation of Junko, created by Chihiro's AI technology and forming a Despair virus to infect the Neo World Program. She doesn't allow the Hope Restoration Program to follow through, instead taking Usami's teacher role and manipulating the world to be a Despair Restoration Program. The motives she uses are extremely personal and targeted, hyperfocusing in on specific members of the class each time to ensure a murder happens the way she needs it to.

Something that's important to remember, though, is that Kaijunko IS NOT Junko. She's an artificial recreation of the real Junko intended to continue programming Despair into the world after she'd inevitably passed. And as such, she isn't a 1:1 replica, and there are key differences between the two in the same way Alter Ego is different from Chihiro and Observer Chiaki is different from the human Chiaki.

The reason Junko fell into SHSL Despair was because her intellect combined with human need for stimuli left her with such a deep depression and boredom that pain and suffering were the only ways to make her feel alive. But as an AI program, Kaijunko isn't burdened by that same need. She's programmed to have the same goal of spreading Despair, but she doesn't have a personal, insatiable need for Despair in the way that Junko did. And this leads her to have a different endgoal for the final trial than what the real Junko might have chosen.

Kaijunko observes and learns from Izuru Kamukura and the RoD, as well as the Towa City residents, in the same way Alter Ego learned from class 78. The brainwashing video forcefully reprogrammed them, yes, but ultimately, they still loved each other as friends and classmates, even if Chiaki wasn't there with them, and it's that dedication to each other that Kaijunko learns about. It's why those connections are the ones tested within the SDR2 killing game; Kaijunko, who actually came into contact with the RoD personally and was toted around by Kamukura, would know what to use to create a killing game that would leave the most desperate group of survivors at the end to follow through on Junko's plans to reconstruct them all into her.

However, because Kaijunko isn't constricted to the same need to destroy herself, she can afford to bend the plan around impulsively in the way Junko herself had in the past, but in a way that'd align with the original Junko's goals to harm others around her without needing to harm herself anymore. Thus, in the final trial, she doesn't push those desperate survivors to want to escape. Instead, she uses her knowledge gathered to make them want to stay in the world Makoto provided to them, where none of them have to face the consequences of the RoD's actions, Kaijunko included.

One of the ongoing themes across the board for SDR2 is how artificial everything about it is. The island is artificial. Chiaki is artificial. Hajime is an artificial hope. The RoD are artificial Despairs. Similarly, Kaijunko is an artificial Junko. She goes through those same motions as the original Junko, but she is not, cannot be Junko. She can only mimic, never be, and so she tries to escape altogether by resetting the game to a state where the RoD live an escapist dream, and she's locked in the game with 'her' classmates forever. But despite this, because she's mimicked Despair, she's become part of it, and Hajime and the others do the one thing Junko can't ever succeed in doing: they choose themselves, and she disappears without a chance of hope, just like Ryoko before her. Hajime and class 77 forge a new future, and Kaijunko dies trapped in the shadows of the past.

8.6.1- Hajime Hinata

If the battle between Makoto and Junko in THH is a battle of ideologies- hope and Despair- then the battle between Hajime and Junko is a battle of wills. This is the battle between self-love and self-hatred, and both Hajime and Junko are faced with their opposite, only to reject it in favor of what they want for themselves most.

Hajime's main character arc is one of self-discovery. When we meet him, he's been stripped of everything that's made him himself, having a gap in his memory that has his identity within it. This is a direct parallel to Ryoko Otonashi's lack of memory, having no identity or memories of the past with which to identify herself. She has only the words others tell her. But in the case of Hajime, it's revealed that the supposed gap is virtually nonexistent. He has no special talent or ability that differentiates him from the rest. He's a blank slate- empty, one might say. And this is quite similar to Ryoko. In a similar way, Izuru and Junko are both burdened by the weight of their talents. In the case of Izuru, he was operated on to remove all emotions and thoughts to be a symbol for Hope's Peak, while Junko's Analyst talent left her burdened with the inability to enjoy anything.

There are also similarities to Izuru and Ryoko, having both had their minds operated on to remove all memories of their true identity and become someone new, while Hajime and Junko both feel a heavy burden of who they are and feel as if that makes it impossible for them to enjoy their lives as they are. This parallel is exactly why Hajime's choice to live, and choosing to live in the face of retreating into the NWP, is so impactful, especially when faced with the shadow of Junko Enoshima.

Junko never chose herself. She never could choose herself, and when given the opportunity to, she rejected it entirely, too addicted to the cycle of self-destruction she'd created for herself. She felt as though Despair was the only answer for her, so she could never stop searching for it, even from beyond the grave. That not just she should feel it, but everyone should. Everyone needed to know the way she felt. And she used anything and anyone at her disposal to make sure the world burned, because she wanted to feel, and what was the point of such a world pretending not to feel Despair anyways?

Hajime chose himself. It wasn't for anyone but himself. When looking in the face of what he'd turned himself into for hope, he was able to come to the conclusion inverse to what Junko did- that he didn't need to change for the sake of anyone else. It didn't matter that he wasn't SHSL like the people he admired, so long as he lived for himself. Meanwhile, when Junko reverted back to herself, it was like dragging herself back into a cage, being burdened by the same kind of talent that Hajime never needed. A talent she never asked for was the source of her undoing, while Hajime's lack thereof almost killed him in the pursuit of one.

The dichotomy of the talented vs the talentless is one that can be felt extremely strongly between dr0, sdr2, and dr3, but especially when in regards to the divide between these two characters, as it again circles back to the damage the hierarchy they find themselves in creates. Junko is a heralded SHSL Analyst and Gyaru, dubbed by Japan as superior and handed the influence that makes it so much easier for her to poke holes in the system until it collapses. Even when all the evidence is placed on her, she's the SHSL Analyst, and can convince HPA to keep quiet for her. They cover up her crimes, and when they can't anymore, she's part of the 'chosen' that receive protection from the government while the Reserve Course and their families are never mentioned again. Hajime has nothing, is considered nothing, is even beaten and told to 'take to the leash and collar already' to keep him complacent. His choice to become Kamukura is weighted by the pressures of the system he's trapped within, holding him not only to his desire to be considered important, but to be equal, not to mention the debt he's placed in just for the right to participate in said hierarchy. Those treated like nothing are downtrodden to accept the system and uphold it, and those with power can do whatever they want and the system will protect them.

In a lot of ways, Hajime and Junko are more similar to each other than any other two characters in the franchise, all the way down to the sacrifice of the ones they closest around them sending them on their final path- Junko with Mukuro, and Hajime with Nagito. And in mirroring this, Nagito eventually returns, while Mukuro never can.

Mukuro and Junko are twins, and work to attain the same goal, but they're still very different people. Junko is absolutely fucked up, and Mukuro follows her out of a twisted need to be by her side, even when it leads to her eventual death. Hajime and Nagito are repeatedly called out as similar, both needing the other to get through the trials and survive and being forced to come to an understanding, but still retaining their individuality and separate beliefs. When Mukuro dies, it's directly because of her loyalty to Junko, even at the cost of herself, and Junko's betraying her resulted in both their deaths. Nagito died because of his loyalty to hope, even at the cost of himself, and Hajime's trust in him was what allowed him to survive and eventually bring Nagito back. Where Mukuro was metaphorically absorbed into Junko and forgotten, Nagito's individuality was what became critical to Hajime.

15.1- Shirokuma & Kurokuma

This part will remain brief. Shirokuma and Kurokuma are the AIs found in an all-white and all-black bear in UDG, each positioned on one side of the Towa City genocide and perpetuating the war by manipulating the Towa siblings.

Shirokuma is the 'good' one, and is positioned with the adult survivors. He's the one responsible for creating the underground safe house, and is Haiji's right-hand. Even when making it appear as though he wants peace first and foremost, he goes on to pilot Big Bang Monokuma and stands with Haiji, playing him and Komaru to escalate things.

Kurokuma is the 'bad' one, and is the one who gave Monaca the plan to create a Successor in the first place. He's a chatterbox that's an advisor to the WoH, presumably left behind by Junko or created by Monaca, and pushes the kids into their murder games by standing with Monaca.

Near the end of the game, Kurokuma reveals that Shirokuma is his little brother, and later in the epilogue, we learn that they were actually not distinct AIs, but rather, the same AI Junko as in SDR2 that was working both sides to destroy Towa City. Them taking the form of siblings mirrors that Junko herself was a twin, and isn't truly complete if she doesn't have her sibling still present.

Part 16- Big Sis Junko (UDG)

Following SDR2, UDG returned a master-manipulator Junko to the scene via the Warriors of Hope. Though AI Junko is present and perpetuating the war through her manipulation of the Towas, Junko herself is all but gone, survived only through the kids' memory of her, and what they have to say is extremely telling to the capability Junko really had to push people further towards her Despair.

Her role as 'Big Sis Junko' came when she prevented them from killing themselves, though how she knew to be there at the right time is unknown. We can assume she'd been keeping eyes on Monaca already and, through her Analyst talent, figured out when the right time to be to show up.

From there, they became the Warriors of Hope, not missed by their parents that hated them or worried for by the world, and Junko was free to mold them however she liked. She did this by teaching them to lash out at the people responsible for their suffering- not just their parents and abusers, but any and all adults. She was a teenage girl who'd taken pity on them, as far as most of them saw, and so they trusted her as the first and only person besides each other to show them kindness. They became ideological, lumping all adults within the same box of 'demon' because they were given no other comparison, and they did it for Junko.

"As far as I remember, the first adult we defeated was a random person we didn't even know. .... From there, we leveled ourselves up by killing Demons. Big Sis Junko was so pleased..." -Nagisa Shingetsu, UDG chapter 4

They came to rely on her as their one true savior, and even those of them who knew they were being manipulated didn't care, if only it meant they weren't the ones being beaten anymore.

"At least, at the time I thought it was a miracle. But later I learned it was inevitable. She came into my life just to take advantage of me." -Monaca Towa, UDG chapter 5

"'You guys... were completely deceived by Junko Enoshima.' 'And what's wrong with that? Did I not tell you that we are her possessions? We would rather her take advantage of us than horrible adults.' 'Sounds like it's too late.' 'Say what you like. Big Sis Junko... gave us hope. That's the truth.'" -Toko Fukawa & Nagisa Shingetsu, UDG chapter 4

And when she died, she was martyred, a victim of the cowards who'd believe in the adults and Hope's Peak. By dying, she completed her manipulation of them, ensuring in her absence, they would only remember the kindness she offered them. Anyone who said otherwise must be a demon.

"No matter how much you hate us, no matter how much we're shunned, we're definitely not wrong. That's the real truth, because Big Sis Junko said so. .... Those adults who took her away from us and said that she was the bad one! They're the filthy ones; they're the ugly ones, the disgusting ones!!!" -Jataro Kemuri, UDG chapter 2

This manipulation and creation of the WoH stemmed from a practical source, as we learn in the game. By Monaca's own admission, Junko only ever cared about getting access to Towa City tech for her Monokumas and for spreading Despair wide-scale. Having highly talented and abused kids to carry out her will when she was gone was just a very welcome bonus; having the youth primed to continue spreading Despair when she was gone would create a legacy, and her ghost would continue to haunt those with hope for at least another generation. Enter Monaca Towa.

8.8- Monaca Towa & the WoH (CW: Mentions of Incest & Pedophilia)

Monaca is differentiated from the rest of the Warriors of Hope almost immediately as being more aware of what the fuck is going on than her friends. She's the L'il Ultimate/SESL Homeroom that loves hearing everyone else talk about their thoughts and feelings, she's the one who invented the Captives game, and she has swastikas in her eyes, because Nazi symbolism was the only way we could convey she's a dictator I guess. As the game goes on, we see that her relationship with Junko is different from the rest of the class- a bit more substantial. She has much more knowledge of Junko's desire for Despair and knows the real reason Junko sought them out in the first place. She uses her friends' idolization of her to trick them into helping her make a new generation Junko to carry her memory. She also has a hidden bedroom full of photos of Junko, and one in particular stands out among the rest.

Junko and Monaca, all by themselves, posing for a photo. None of the other WoH are present for this photo. It's also worth noting that Monaca's in her WoH outfit, even though in every other flashback or cutaway to the past before Junko's death, they were all in their Hope's Peak Elementary uniforms. If it weren't already obvious, these two were spending more time together than with the rest of the WoH. This is primarily because of the explanation we've already been given- Junko needed tech, Monaca was the one that had it. Of course extra work was gonna be put into her, and if she felt special in comparison, she'd become more like Junko.

Both Monaca and Junko are a younger sister, and their older siblings are established as pretty creepy in their own ways. Mukuro is incestuous and lusts after Junko whenever they're together, or even just when thinking about her. Haiji, meanwhile, is a pedophile, mentioning he likes girls younger, "as young as I can get 'em." I don't have to explain why the knowledge he has an extremely younger half-sister he expressly doesn't think counts as family is a bloodcurdling realization given this information. While they seem to have very different levels of connection with their siblings, this is a pretty distinct commonality to give both masterminds, especially when one is meant to immediately succeed the other. Both girls are also considered the "genius" of their families, while their older siblings use more brute strength.

Monaca is a character built upon the mimicry of Junko. We know this because we pay attention to the game, but also because if we look at the concept art and beta forms of the Successor, we can see without question that creating a "New Junko" was always going to be a major part of UDG, as not one, but two unused Successor characters were considered before Monaca eventually became who she is today as the mastermind and true Successor.

Monaca throughout UDG undergoes a similar behavior to Junko in the way that she treats the WoH, but it's in a way the fundamentally misunderstands why Junko acts the way she does. Monaca is a child, and idolizes Junko, but that doesn't mean she actually understands her, even if she got much closer than her friends.

Monaca manipulates and discards the other WoH one by one, making herself the center of their movement and letting them believe they have control over what they're doing. She motivates them with a Paradise that'll never exist, similar to how Junko motivated the reserve course to stand up against Hope's Peak, and they take over Towa City. Whenever a WoH disappears, she decides whether or not they're mourned, but it appears as though she doesn't care and never did. She quickly forgets Masaru's name, barely bothers with Jataro, and later in her backstory monologue, proudly claims that when Junko met them, she was planning to let her only friends all kill themselves as a prank and not jump herself. She takes all the steps possible to Not Care about these people, similar to how Junko seemed not to care about the people she loved.

If Monaca spent enough time around Junko to observe and pick up this pattern, it likely means she also saw how little Junko actually cared for herself and her friends. This would explain why she starts acting as though she doesn't care at all for her only friends in the world and discarding them, wanting to emulate Junko, her idol. It also means she knew Junko didn't care about her, but her talents, and just didn't care because it was Junko. Again, this is a mentality not just held by her within the WoH, but because she was given a peek behind the curtain, she filled in the blanks in her head and let herself continue to be manipulated by Kurokuma, all in the hopes that Junko could return and manipulate her again. She needed a Successor, someone to fill that sisterly void again. And in that desperate desire, she inadvertently set herself up to someday become the SESL Despair.

Nagito's intervention is directly stated as the reason why she ends up abandoning this role as SESL Despair and fucking off to space as SESL Apathy instead, shrugging it off as 'not wanting to end up like he did'. This appears to be a deviation from what was originally intended for her, as not only was this wrapped up in a singular episode of an anime not actually about her, but the teaser images for a UDG 2 in UDG's credits ultimately ended up unused, and V3 totes a teaser of a canceled UDG 2.

Part 17- Junko's Apocalyptic Crash Course

"Right now, Hope’s Peak Academy is set up in a pyramid sort of idea that a third world country would use; it’s only really there to concentrate it’s effort on the 'super high school levels', for their benefit, and then below them are the reserve students from the preparatory school. .... The teachers here don’t really think any of the reserve students really belong here." -Yasuke Matsuda, DR 0

As we've seen repeatedly throughout the previous games and DR 0, Junko's strengths don't come from sheer force of will. She didn't take some perfect world of hope and twist it into a world of Despair by flipping some ideological switch. She's charismatic, but still human. Junko's strength comes from her ability to analyze, her high intelligence, and her charisma combining to create a master manipulator. Using the skills and people at her disposal, she was able to amass a cult following, and inspire the downfall of a society that was already flawed by attacking the weak points that were already present. Ergo, Junko's SHSL Analyst talent led her to not only infiltrate the school, but also to find the flaws within it and the lies it covered up by taking advantage of the Kamukura project wearing the school thin.

She may have been the face of the Despair movement, but she wasn't a singularity. She had a small group of people she trusted with a certain amount of information, and who had skills that would become beneficial to her. Mukuro is the obvious right-hand, as previously discussed, and perhaps the only one she legitimately believed to be an equal, but there was also Yasuke, Izuru, Ryota, Mikan, and Monaca, all of whom she attached herself too and all of whom had an extremely useful talent or title that was immediately beneficial to her cause. These people were able to directly carry out her desired acts of Despair and work alongside her, reporting back to her to ensure things were running smoothly. These were people who were needed directly as they were, and who were most useful when they believed she genuinely took interest in them, whether she actually had or not.

In a world already so flawed, with thinly veiled atrocities already taking place by people who believe in a caste system of talent, earning a downtrodden majority's trust is as simple as taking the blindfold off. Manipulating the people she'd attached herself to let her reveal key information at her leisure and drive the school and its inhabitants to Despair without them noticing or knowing to take action until it was too late to stop it. Something manmade, that turned into a disease and spread across the world, infesting it with the Tragedy and burning the oh-so-predictable world to the ground, all while standing as the eye of the storm- that was the power of the SHSL Despair that Junko worshipped, and she became its spokesperson, sending the world into a spiral.

Part 18- Junko's Legacy (Death of the Human, Birth of the God)

Everyone that loves Junko, misunderstands Junko. This is a fact that we see more than once. Mukuro obsesses, not loves. Yasuke romanticizes a childhood he can never return to. Monaca idolizes her. Mikan overtly sexualizes her. Her classmates know nothing of her self-destructive nature. Junko knew this and Despaired every time. But this fundamental misunderstanding of who Junko is didn't just exist in the game. In real life, Junko Enoshima became an iconic villain, the teenage girl that burned the world, the Ultimate Despair. She was insanely popular, and still is. And the more popular a character gets, the more susceptible they become to misinterpretations, fanon, oversimplification, etc.

In becoming such a well-known figure, Junko Enoshima the person got lost in translation. There was now Junko Enoshima, the mascot, the figurehead. This isn't a phenomenon exclusive to Junko, of course, but as the titular villain of the series until this point, how could the series continue without her? To this very day, people can't agree on who Junko was or who she actually cared about or if she ever even cared for anyone at all. And when NDRV3 was made, it took advantage of this to tell its own story, utilizing Junko Enoshima specifically to demonstrate flanderization of characters within its lore.

Junko Enoshima is not a real person. She's a fictional character. All her motivations, her thoughts and feelings, are fabricated stories and vague implications from the writing of real people. And in V3, that 'real person' is Tsumugi Shirogane, one of many cogs in the machine of Team Danganronpa, who dresses up as Junko and uses her face to become 'Junko Enoshima the 53rd'. Junko has been used and reused over and over and over, to the point where the original vision has been muddied beyond belief. What she was at the beginning, way back in THH, no longer exists. She's now a silly mascot, a familiar face that fans can point at and dress as and draw fanart of, and a face that Team DR can profit off of. Tsumugi's portrayal is laughably inaccurate to the original Junko. It's a costume, nothing more, and the dialogue she gives when 'in-character' is simplistic and insignificant. All its weight comes not from the meaning, but from the reference for reference's sake.

Junko's appearance in V3, like many other moving parts of V3, reference real-world fandom culture. It's appealing to both the in-universe fandom and the real one, bringing back character sprites and voice actors and poking fun at its own ridiculousness because none of it is real, none of it ever was. It was because Junko was fiction that she could do everything she ever did. Her Despair has meaning, but that doesn't mean she felt the feelings we're told she did, because she never existed to feel them. And that's the thing that lets her forever remain an enigma; she is Danganronpa's villain, and to become immortalized in Despair, she deconstructed into nothing but the word Despair, a fate that is in and of itself Despairful.

8.9- Tsumugi Shirogane

Tsumugi Shirogane is the mastermind of V3, and believes wholeheartedly in Junko Enoshima as the true villain of Danganronpa. Tsumugi is built as the fandom insert of DR, being immersed in fandom culture in every conceivable way- winking at the camera, making references to other fandoms, the love and joy of making cosplay- but also the less palatable parts of major fandoms, like her purist views of cosplay, her usage of incest as both a serious plot point and as a gag, and even does blackface when cosplaying as the dark-skinned DR characters of dr1 and 2. She's also the in-universe producer of the season. Therefore, Tsumugi also represents content creators, and how even the creator themselves can lose the plot of the character in their attempts to create what they perceive to be a compelling story.

As Tsumugi is explaining her story and why she tied it back into the Hope's Peak era, she pretty openly admits that a) she sees it as a perfect reproduction and b) a necessary writing choice in order to make it interesting. Both are false, as not only is V3's continuity in a separate world from the Hope's Peak era, but her presentation of Junko and the voice lines aren't displayed the same way Junko had acted in previous installations.

"'So... you're just a freak pretending to be Junko Enoshima, huh!?' 'No, a perfect reproduction! Perfect reproductions are exactly the same as the original.'" -Maki Harukawa & Tsumugi Shirogane, V3

She presents Junko as a singularity, the Ultimate Despair, and brazenly parades her face around as the immortal and ever-present true Despair. She's the 53rd Despair simply because her influence wouldn't allow her to fade away. She's become Despair-incarnate, but in making new games, Team DR has forgotten why Junko caused Despair in the first place. She didn't do it just to do it; she threw the world into Despair because it made her feel human to feel Despair. And yet when Tsumugi explains Junko the 53rd's plans, it's nothing but a big show, and that's exactly what a surface-level Junko looks like to the masses- a high-school girl that ended the world for fun.

Junko's games had meaning. Even when she didn't feel particularly connected to a person, like the RoD, she still brought them into Despair for a purpose. She was an analyst, and did the things she did with intention and with care. Attention to detail and careful manipulation with the face of a charismatic gyaru was her forte. But Tsumugi's so-called "perfect reproduction" is a story full of plot holes and contradictions, all caused by some need to deify Junko. In other words, as they refused to let Danganronpa go, they lost the plot, and Junko's humanity went with it in a desire to continue using her image when writing new stories. In becoming a god of Despair, her origins as a human were forgotten.

Part 19- Despair Into Tomorrow (Why We Care)

Junko Enoshima is an enigma. She is Despair incarnate, a pillar of the Danganronpa world created by her own hands, hellbent on burning herself to the ground. She's a character of poetic irony, unknown to all as anything but Despair. She was born with a perfect mind, and in trying to feel human, feel pain, feel Despair, she became permanently deified by all that she loved and all that she met, whether that was as a savior who killed a cruel world or a demon that detested hope.

At every turn, Junko's actiona are filled with malice, and yet so often that malice is directed at herself. Living in a peaceful world pains her because it leaves her bored. Anhedonia is a cruel mistress, and those who claimed to love her could never once comprehend it, because they couldn't feel the way she felt. The only thing she had that connected her in any human way to others or to herself was grief, and her entire story becomes one of self-sabotage. Despite that, though, she's not the only character burdened by anhedonia, and her self-destructive nature outstretching to the people and world around her is designed as a story of caution.

In each and every installation of Danganronpa, Junko and the other masterminds inspired by her fail because of their key difference in connections. When Makoto appeals to his classmates, they're reminded of their own desires to live and their love for each other- Hina's memory of Sakura, Syo's love of Byakuya, Kyoko's and Byakuya's love of Makoto himself. The same can be said of when Hajime chooses himself, to fight for himself, and is inspired to do so by Chiaki. Every other survivor has someone that inspired them to live for themself- Peko, Nakomaru, Gundham, the people around them. When Komaru is saved by Toko, it's because she took the time to connect with her and with Syo, and that love saved her from destruction. When Munakata gave up hunting Makoto, it was because of his love for Chisa. And when Shuichi declared he wouldn't vote, it was so that Maki and Keebo wouldn't be forced into sacrifice of a system that would hurt them over and over again.

Junko had connections. Junko had people she loved. Junko had another half. But she burned them one by one, until there was nothing left but her, and then she burned that too. She's a villain even to herself, and she knows it. She feels Despair upon Despair and even then can't regret it, because she wouldn't let anything else touch her heart besides it. It's an inherently self-fulfilling prophecy to only feel Despair, because in order for that Despair to exist, she must have felt love first. But she doesn't acknowledge her love and her vulnerabilities because she believes those fall under her 'factory settings'. Comfort is boring; safety is boring, and boredom was her enemy, an enemy second only to herself.

Junko's actions stem from a deeply embedded self-hatred. She was too smart and too comfortable, and so her boredom became everything she was. She believed the lie she told herself, that pain and grief and Despair was the only answer. Don't be like Junko. Don't believe the lies you tell yourself. Even in an unjust world, you can try to make things better without making them worse. Feel your Despair and let it go. It is okay to let it go. You are still human, no matter what image the people around you have, and to be seen, you must first be vulnerable.

Afterword

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST IT'S BEEN OVER 5 MONTHS. I made jokes and gags about 'getting this out before 2025' but I didn't think that would actually end up as my deadline. Holy fuck.

Junko's analysis is by far the beefiest I've done so far, and very well could remain the biggest one in this entire series of analyses (I think Kyoko, Makoto, and mayyybe Chiaki or Hajime might get close, but otherwise? Those are def gonna be the big 5 though) But hey, that's what being the mastermind of the franchise gets you. In retrospect, Junko probably should've been the grand finale, not part 5/17 of this series' part 1, but whatever. I'll save that grand finale for Kyoko instead

This will probably be the most controversial analysis I put out, alongside the eventual Mukuro one. I know people are, uh, divided on their relationship, but I did my best to stay objective and look at it from an unbiased viewpoint for what they offer narratively and its effectiveness. And I hope people are able to see that. Just in case, though, I'm gonna have anons off for a bit until whatever circulation this post gets dies down lol

Honestly, my perception of Junko has changed so much over the course of these past several months. It's not like I didn't like her before, but she's morphed into one of my favorite villains in all of media after this. This girl just cannot fucking die, no matter how much she wants to, and I think there's something so deeply compelling about a villain that wants nothing more than to self-destruct and burn the world with them, especially if you've fallen into a depressive state like the one she's in before

Good news, though! The next analysis set is Hifumi's, which means it won't take nearly as long as this whopper of a tumblr post! I'm actually very eager to deconstruct him, so hopefully we can go back to the summer days where I was able to crank out an analysis after 2 weeks. Please, god, can we go back to the summer days where I cranked out an analysis after 2 weeks

Catch ya later! :P

[zsocca55]

TFP Alexis AU

So some of you asked for my TFP Alexis AU’s concept notes and I typed it up for you guys. This one will be long, but my notes tend to be just as long as my chapters usually are. 😅

Concept for Starscream and Alexis history:

-Optimus arrives on Earth at first with a different team (Hot Shot, Red Alert, Jetfire, Bumblebee)

-the team hides from sight in the mountains somewhere in Nebraska and began stocking up energon supplies

-the kids, Alexis, Rad and Carlos discover their hideout while touring the mountains -> they have maybe a month of bonding time with the group until the US government spots the issue and a small conflict happens between the ‘aliens’ and the military and Optimus signs a pact (they are allowed to stay but hidden)

-the main focus is how Autobots slowly adapt to their new environment and humans in general

-meanwhile on a devastated Cybertron Starscream is tasked to scout this alien planet after the Prime team with a group of Decepticons before the main fleet would decide to move to Earth (Demolisher and Cyclonus go with him perhaps?)

-the Autobot team stays hidden and the military shoots Starscream out of the sky when he least expects it - the rest of the Decepticons abandon him to his fate and soon leave the planet because they can’t find any Autobots (and blame Starscream for leading them astray)

-Starscream is injured and hides away from humans (since he realizes these organics shouldn’t be underestimated)

-the Autobots search for him (but it will be the kids who find him first - accidentally of course)

-Alexis convinces the others and Starscream that he won’t be hurt if he surrenders and so Starscream figures it’s time to play the part

-the Autobots are not happy by Optimus’ decision to offer a helping hand to the Decepticon if he switches sides but Starscream is alone so he has no choice

-Starscream gets fixed but his comm-link is disabled to keep him from calling other Decepticons - he stays with the Autobots for a while, plotting  how to get away

-everybody is suspicious of him and are mean/wary except Alexis of course who makes a genuine attempt to befriend him

-Starscream slowly warms up to her but keeps his grumpy attitude

-he takes her for flights while on energon seeking missions

-he has a rivalry thing with Jetfire about who is the better flier and it escalates to the point where they make a race to Mars to see who gets there faster (the kids ask for a present and Starscream brings them a shiny rock like in Armada)

-Soundwave and a search team shows up on Earth -> he sends a transmission through Laserbeak when Starscream is out and the seekee realizes that the Decepticons have finally returned for him

-he feels slightly guilty but doesn’t think much about going back and Soundwave tests his loyalty by forcing him to tell where the Autobots hide

-Starscream tells him and thus the Decepticon team goes to raid the place

-Starscream sends a secret message to Alexis’ phone to warn her of the coming danger

-Optimus decides the Autobot team needs to split up and hide and they send the kids into the care of the military

-everybody is devastated by the betrayal 

-the Decepticons hunt for the Autobots while also confronting the US military units protecting them and come out winning (Starscream’s advice)

-the Decepticons manage to kill the team except Bumblebee and Optimus (the latter gets away only because Jetfire sacrifices himself for him)

-the Decepticons leave the planet after they fail to find the Prime and Starscream resigns to the fact that he did what he did and he would never meet the kids or Alexis ever again (and thinks she probably hates him for sure now)

Notes: the Autobots have no proper base or ground-bridge yet 

Concept for the events during the TFP timeline:

-Optimus sends out a message in hope some Autobots remained and some begin arriving: Ratchet, Bulkhead, Bumblebee, Cliffjumper and Arcee

-the US military gives Optimus a base in Nevada to stay in and Optimus tells the government to stay out of the war between the factions to avoid the pointless human deaths (Fowler is assigned as their handler)

-Ratchet makes a ground-bridge

-Decepticons return a little more than a decade later with Megatron who then shortly after getting to know the planet leaves for three years and leaves Starscream in charge

-things kind of happen the same way they did in TFP until Starscream gets betrayed by Airachnid and chooses to side with the Autobots (and wisely shuts his damn mouth for once, not prattling about how he killed Cliffjumper)

-the team is not happy with Starscream at all, least of all Arcee and Ratchet

-Optimus is more wary of Starscream this time (he is kept in the base and his wings are cuffed) but he believes the seeker can be changed so he summons Alexis (who is an adult now and works for the government/politician)

-Alexis agrees and has mixed feelings when seeing Starscream again (but she is happy nevertheless - she was the only one who actually forgave him since she thinks he was forced to betray them due to the warning he sent her)

-Starscream is shocked to reunite with her and feels guilty/awkward in her presence

-the kids (Jack, Miko, Raf) are surprised to learn that Starscream was already an Autobot once and that Alexis was his ‘assigned human companion’

-Alexis entertains the kids with a few old stories and becomes a regular visitor

-Starscream acts more defensive and snappy until she forces him to face their fallout and make up (he is shocked by her forgiveness)

-later on he grows very protective of her (determined not to fail her for a second time) and Alexis makes an attempt to teach him to care about the others too

-and the main focus is on how Starscream goes from a cowardly traitor to a more honorable person like he was in Armada

This is all that I have! I hope you enjoyed it! If anyone feels inclined to write this story, then by all means go ahead! I merely take credit for the idea itself. 🥰

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Literary Character

In a literary work, characters are the persons who are given certain moral, intellectual, and emotional qualities by the author.

Two Major Types of Characters

Static. The static character is one who is "flat" and two-dimensional. Such a character is usually recognized by one or two simple traits. The hallmark of a static character is that he or she will not change in spite of experience or conflict. This type of character remains unchanged by events and experiences. An example of a static character is Mistress Quickly in Henry IV.

Dynamic. The dynamic character is one who is "round" and three-dimensional. His or her personality, motives, and attitudes are complex. Such a character cannot be summed up by one or two traits. The hallmark of a dynamic character is change. This type of character will be changed and influenced by events and experiences. An example of a dynamic character is Pip in Great Expectations.

Criteria for Analyzing Character

The reader can use the criteria below in order to analyze, interpret, and draw conclusions about a character.

Appearance. Appearance generally falls into two categories: external and physical. External appearance consists of extrinsic qualities, such as clothing, jewelry, tattoos, or hairstyle. Through these external factors, you may determine a character’s taste, social status, occupation, or personality. Physical appearance, on the other hand, consists of intrinsic qualities, such as height, weight, facial expression, or tone of voice. These physical factors can suggest different personality traits. For example, a muscular physique might suggest strength; a skinny physique might suggest weakness. Be careful, however, not to judge a character on appearance alone. Appearance and reality are not always the same.

Behavior and Actions. In literature, all behavior and actions help define character. Nothing a character does is arbitrary or incidental. Small nuances of behavior need to be interpreted, as well as major decisive actions. Therefore, when trying to define what a character is like, consider what that character does. Do his or her actions reveal courage, ignorance, cunning, or generosity? For your analysis to be complete, consider involuntary behavior, such as nervous twitching, fast talking, or profuse sweating.

Biography. Often in short stories or novels, biographical information about a character will be revealed: place of birth, era of childhood, type of education, early careers, successes, failures, even the identity and occupation of the character’s parents. Such information can be used to sharpen the picture of a character, or to give added credibility to traits and values that have been identified.

Dialogue. Closely scrutinize what characters say and how they say it, for dialogue is significant. A character’s speech reveals traits and values in 2 principal ways:

Direct Expression. The correlation is patently clear between what the character says and who the character is. Nothing is hidden; nothing is subtly suggested. Direct expression requires little or no interpretation by the reader. What the character says provides immediate insight. For example, in Paradise Lost, the fallen angel Moloch states how he would like to deal with the angels left in heaven, “My sentence is for open war.” Moloch’s hostile nature is revealed directly.

Indirect Expression. The correlation is implied between what the character says and who the character is. The meaning of words may be hidden or suggested. Thus, the reader must determine the unstated meaning of a character’s words. For example, at a ball in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy is asked if he’ll join in the dancing. He replies, “All savages dance.” At its face value, the statement could be a harmless observation about dancing. Instead, it reveals Mr. Darcy as a haughty man whose sense of superiority makes him disdainful of his company.

Emotions. When interpreting a character, you will be trying to get below the surface of that character to see deeper meanings. To do so, take into account a character’s temperament. Temperament may manifest itself in some general traits, such as whether a character is introverted or extroverted, optimistic or pessimistic, sensitive or indifferent. Or, temperament may reveal itself in specific emotional states, such as anger, melancholy, anxiety, compassion, or happiness.

Thoughts. If an author uses “direct expression” to reveal a character's thoughts and values, you need only to note what these thoughts and values are, explaining why they are significant. However, a character’s thoughts are rarely revealed directly. Therefore, you will need to interpret, infer, and draw conclusions about a character's thoughts. To do so, gather evidence from the above criteria. These criteria can all come together to form a composite sketch of a character, revealing his or her true opinions and beliefs.

What other characters say and think. The statements and thoughts of one character regarding another can be a valid source of information. However, this information can be double-edged. While you may learn about a character based on the statements and thoughts of another, you will have to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of those statements and thoughts. A reliable character will usually be perceptive and a good judge of character; an unreliable character will be flawed in some way that inhibits his or her judgment.

How To Write about Character

When writing about character, you may use the following 3-step process. Keep in mind that this is a general approach.

Establish major character traits. Pin down the character’s traits. Because the main characters in a work will have depth and complexity, you should be able to distinguish at least three prominent traits. These traits may be closely related, but they must be distinctly different.

Support major character traits with examples. The traits you establish in step 1 will be based on general impressions. In step 2, however, you must support these traits with concrete examples. For example, if you assert that “vindictiveness” is a trait, you must substantiate vindictiveness with examples from the literary work.

Explain how and why your examples substantiate a particular trait. Step 3 is the most important (and most difficult) stage of your paper. You must go beyond merely linking examples with traits; you must elaborate your views of a character’s traits with explanation. Your explanation must tell how and why your examples reveal a particular trait, whether the trait is moral, intellectual, or emotional.

Note: Other non-human entities can perform in the role of “characters.” For example, animals, nature (rivers, mountains, oceans, etc.), and man-made creations (cities, machines, houses, etc.) can function as characters.

If these writing notes help with your poem/story, do tag me. Or send me a link. I'd love to read them!

Writing Notes & References

[interlunium-opus]

►DANCING WITH THE DEVIL #004 [Sunghoon.] — teaser

Previous Parts ‣ #001 | ‣ #002 | ‣ #003 | ‣ #004: Prelude | ‣ #004: FINALE

Abstract: Eight years have passed since you betrayed Park Sunghoon, leaving his fate shrouded in uncertainty. You thought you'd left that world behind, but the serial killings in the capital city —which bore a haunting resemblance to that in your past—pulled you right back into the shadows you once escaped. What began as a quest to prove your worth soon unraveled into something far more sinister: a labyrinthine network of power, deceit, and danger hidden beneath a veneer of opulence. Now, amidst the grandeur of a castle steeped in blood-soaked tradition, you find yourself, once again, entangled with Sunghoon—a ghost from your past whose motives remain as inscrutable as ever. The stakes are now higher, the games deadlier, and survival feels like chasing a mirage. As you navigate a web of twisted rituals and deadly alliances, the tension between you and Sunghoon ignites once again. But this time, the game is different. With whispers of betrayal and lingering wounds threatening to consume you both, you must decide if trust is a risk worth taking—because in doing so, you are not just exposing the truths they've hidden, but also the feelings you’ve fought so hard to suppress and bury.

Genre: vampire!sunghoon | horror | thriller | fantasy | romance (or is it? 😋)

Status: Prelude (released) | Finale (tbc)

>>> | Masterlist |

Author's Note ((if you want a teaser, read me lol)):

Ack, I can't believe I came back (for the last time, probably).

I have written almost 20k and I think this is 70% of the story in my head already. To give you a teaser of it: if you like the gothic and eerie ambience of this series, Part 4 is on another scale -- I bring you right at the nexus of that vampire world (yknow castles, full moons, venetian masks, a ball, lots of fangs and deaths). If you like the tension between Sunghoon and y/n, I can assure you THAT is something that will never die from this series BUT lemme just say this time, the tension is different. I think thus far, the tension and dynamics between them has always been very much an attempt at one-upping the other -- fiery and chaotic, fuelled by emotions they didn’t want to admit even to themselves ((if there were any emotions there is 👀)). But in part 4, the tension has matured -- leaning more into proximity, vulnerability, and unspoken questions. It's less about winning or one-upping each other and more about unraveling hidden truths and struggling with the emotional weight of their past and present. Basically, here's another moodboard because boiii, I needed the main moodboard to have Sunghoon's beautiful face all over so I can't fit the other "important" pics hahah

And that is about as much as what I'll give you hahaha. I really plan to end the series with this part so it will stop haunting us ((me especially)) so I hope your interests has not waned and if you're new to this, I hope this sparks you to read from the beginning hehe

If you're interested to know about the creative process behind this. You can read on: it was effing torturous. It was very hard to think of how to reunite these two in a way that is not cliche nor rushed. It was even harder to try and make them realistically not want to kill each other after the ending of Part 3. Hence why it took me so long. On top of that, I was juggling a full-time work and very recently, academics so you can just imagine. But I digress, hopefully Part 4 will be a good ending to this ((whether it ends positively or not 👀))

-A.

[im-totally-not-an-alien-2]

Halloween prompts year 2 day 15

Hood remained silent, even as he clenched the gun tightly in his hand. He hadn't even seen a hint of green portals or blond elfs but 200 witnesses couldn't all be wrong.

All of them had stated that a white haired meta with a gas mask was working with a blond elf with a leaf mask and that they had been the ones kidnapping the kids and teens of Gotham.

Jason had heard stories of fairies snatching kids and infants, sometimes swapping them out with a sickly one of thier own. But there were no trades that Jason knew of. Only missing kids.

Hell, all of the biggest child gangs around Crime Alley and the Narrows were gone.

As in gone gone. Not a single member was left nor any trace of where they could have been taken to. As much as he hated to admit it, he might need to ask for help from the Justice League Dark...

---

Link stared down at the kids from his rooftop perch.

They looked...cleaner. Happier. They had gained a healthy amount of weight, no longer stick thin and weak looking. They had season appropriate clothing without holes and others hidden away in chests and armours for the coming seasons far off from now.

His spirit friend, Phantom, had panicked a bit after he realized what they were doing was trafficking, but calmed down once he pointed out that these kids would have a much better life in Hyrule than they would have had in the rotting trashpit that was Gotham.

If they would have lived much longer at all

Still, thier presence here was mutually beneficial. Hyrule had lost over 80% of its population in the Great Calamity and they were no where close to regaining the population they once had. All of thier forts, training areas, ect were specifically targeted and destroyed in the attacks and gardians and monsters were left in the ruins to ensure they could not rebuild what was lost

Which led to the bigger issues at hand. All the empty occupations.

The castle, and thus castle town, were ground zero for the disaster that wiped out the Hylian peoples. With it many businesses and trades were lost. Hyrule had few soldiers and those they did have desperately needed armor, weapons and training.

That wasn't all. Hudson construction had attempted to repair Castle town and eventually the castle, but they were wood workers, not stone masons. They knew little of the craft that was needed.

There were lessons and information in the castle archives covering most of the jobs and trades, as well as how to proform them, but the princess didn't see it as a priority. They didn't have the people necessary to teach these crafts and the castle and town surrounding wasn't really a priority anyway. Not with all the people who still needed help around the kingdom.

Phantom helped a lot too. Other than helping them build towns for the kids (the child gangs actually really liked having a town all to themselves) he did a lot of other random jobs around the kingdom, much like Link himself.

Unfortunately, his next trip to Gotham lead to a run in with the "Red Hood" and the phrase, "Was that a fucking fruit grenade?!" Link did not know what the word "Fucking" meant but the Hood man would not tell him. He is learning a lot of new words from this guy, words that Phantom appearently didn't like cause he loudly scolded Red Hood like a naughty child the first time they met. It was hilarious to see this tiny 15 year old tell off a giant tank of a man.

Link couldn't see the mans expression due to the odd red helm the man wore, but he could tell he was cowed, even if just a bit. Then he began speaking to someone who wasn't there while pressing his finger to the side of his helm where his ear should be. Is Red Hood ill? Does he have a mind sickness like the ones Phantom told him of when describing his parents? Or is this something Link doesn't yet understand...either way he doesn't think he's getting more children for Hyrules future in this trip...or anytime soon if those ominous masked people landing on the rooftops around them had any say in the matter.

[cozymoko]

plz make a part two of your Yandere Diabolik lovers x sister reader were yui discovers reader

THE SECRET SAKAMAKI pt. 2

Note: Of course, of course!

Btw; I had to stop this at some point before I lost all my sanity. I will update later.

Part one! synopsis: Yui finally meets the only sister of the Sakamaki family who has been hidden away by her brothers. This but part two.

Format: Scenario; 3rd person and 1st person (some)

Word Count: ???

WARNING(S): slight platonic yandere themes.

Want more Diabolik lovers? → Masterlist! ★

Please proceed below the cut.

CREAAKKK—!

An unpleasant sound tore through the air, loud and haste. “Oh, it seems they’ve returned,” [Name] sighs, slowly rising to her feet. “Come now, there’s no need to keep them waiting, is there?” Her words came off as more of a demand than an inquiry. Even so, it was not Yui’s place to refuse her.

The walk was short, but to Yui, it felt much longer. She struggled to keep up with the strong strides of the woman in front of her, as they were brisk and confident. Despite just barely looming over her (and her rococo dress), Yui had nearly slipped countless times. Oh, how embarrassing!

[Name] paid no mind to the trembling girl at her side, nor the thin layer of sweat sandwiched between their palms (thanks Yui). Her sleek pumps served as the perfect distraction for the eerie silence that fell between the two of them, and so did the audience so joyfully awaiting their arrival. Well, Yui's arrival.

A loud huff escaped the woman’s lips, for they had finally reached the end of the hallway. Excitement surged through the vampire’s veins like an unhinged drug, slowly eating away at her polite front. And with one swift motion, her palms collided with one another, their sound commanding the attention of the brothers.

“Boys, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” She smiled.

Their reactions were rather strange, to say the least.

That's if they had one.

For what felt like the first time in history the boys were silent, like mice. Various of emotions were brewing amongst them, yet very few of them made it to their faces. Once growing bored of the silence, Laito let out a low whistle before shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Well this is definitely a surprise. Who would've thought the two of you would meet this soon~?”

“What is the meaning of this?” Reiji pushed Laito aside with a dismissive hand, gazing intently between the two girls before him. His lean arms tightly crossed along the front of his chest, waiting expectedly for a response.

Despite being at the mercy of the second eldest, Yui could not help but allow her mind to foolishly drift to the conversation she shared much earlier with the beautiful woman. [Name] Sakamaki, the one who'd seem to hold all the truths of this wretched place...

⠀⠀⠀⠀“Why do you continue to waste your time with them, with Shu?” Reiji had often asked me in our youth. Though we’re all related under that man, solely Reji, Shu, and I shared the same mother. Thus, we were arguably the closest.

⠀⠀⠀⠀As a child, Shu cared very little about being the heir, that much we knew. But my mother, Beatrice, wasn’t very pleased. The thought of the three of us not surpassing the others pained her greatly, and I often suffered for Shu’s defiance. I suppose Reiji took note of that.

⠀⠀⠀⠀That day, he took my hands in his own. “If you stick by me we can surpass them all,” He lamented, tucking a loose strand of hair away from my eyes. At that time, that was the most passionate I’d seen him. “We will no longer be overlooked, we can be together. Shu Won’t you join me?”

⠀⠀⠀⠀The offer was tempting, but my answer remained “No,” in the end. I knew, his motivates had very little virtue. Seeking validation at the demise of out own flesh and blood.

⠀⠀⠀⠀Reiji’s proposal was driven by resentment and envy. That I could not condone.

The clearing of Reiji's throat brought the girl back to reality. From the looks of it, his patience had been wearing incredibly thin. Poor girl, thinking everyone will help her in life. With a woman so well-spoken at her side she must've expected her to take the lead. How foolish!

Glancing to her side, Yui's eyes widened; frightened and in utter bewilderment. The woman she had met merely hours ago was watching her, also waiting for the mortal's response. She alone could get away with being silent, but Yui could not.

Angst had begun to well up in her stomach in the form of warm bile. Her lips drew into a taut line, swallowing her anxiousness as well as she could. Even so, that was not enough. Sensing its arrival, the girls was quick to place a hand over her mouth. Further and further it crawled; closer and closer it drew.

But of course, someone came to her ‘rescue’.

“I'm also curious~!” Laito chimed, that same sing-song playfulness was laced in his tone. Yet there was some malice lying deep beneath it. “You just had to go and stick your nose in other peoples’ business didn’t ya, little bitch? I warned you already; what a shame~!”

His eyes flashed a quick tint of red, narrowing ever so slightly. Laito circled the girl, who's expression mimicked that of a caged mammal. It was a laughable sight, her anguish and fear. And to some, Laito's disdain may have been far more entertaining. However, [Name] knew better than to let this go on for much longer.

In one swift motion, [Name] had swept the mortal to her side, successfully out of her brother’s grasp. In her eyes, it was just an accident waiting to happen. That look in his eyes was one she'd been well acquainted with from a young age.

⠀⠀⠀⠀Now Laito is an interesting one. He wasn’t unbearable, that I can admit. There was just a bit of clinginess and I suppose he was a bit selfish at times. Nonethenless, I loved spending my time with him, there was never a dull moment.

⠀⠀⠀⠀That was in the beginning.

⠀⠀⠀⠀As we were approaching our “teenage years”, his behavior had become rather bizarre. All my friends at the time, male or female, had begun to disappear: one by one. I remember running home and sobbing to my brothers, asking what was wrong with me. What had I done wrong? That boy is surely Cordelia’s son, for they manipulate all the same.

⠀⠀⠀⠀“It’s okay, [Name], don't cry!”  Laito had been quick to comfort me, rubbing comforting circles into my back. “I hate to see you like this but it's your fault.” He scolded me very often.

⠀⠀⠀⠀“The world is filled with ugly people who want to take you from those who love and care about you as I do. Now, come with big brother. Let's get you cleaned up, you’ve stained your new dress~!”

⠀⠀⠀⠀It was evident, my naivety at the time. My mother had regarded me as a fool for lacking better judgment for the words of others. Looking back on it, I suppose that witch was right about something. Laito had successfully filled my head with lies, leading my dependency to increase tenfold.

⠀⠀⠀⠀Hah, what a bastard. Yet I cannot bring myself to hate him despite his actions. Perhaps it's due to his upbringing? The abuse he went through in comparison to mine? Hm, what do you think Yui?

A sharp pain shot through the hip of the mortal girl, the connection of another one, pulling her from her thoughts once more. “No need to punish this one, I quite like her.” [Name] cooed, rubbing her cheek against Yui’s. “It’s been so long since I've last talked to a girl my age. Can’t you just let me enjoy this opportunity?”

Though your question came off as more of a statement, it had somehow managed to detear him. You in no way needed their approval to do as you pleased, but seeing as the sacrificial bride already knows of your existence, what's the harm in roaming around a bit?

Reiji’s face contorted in pure disgust, “Absolutely not—”

“Hah- Pancake? Why her?” The redhead threw his arms up in exasperation, he was baffled rightfully so. “Man, and here I thought Kanato would be the most annoying bastard I’d have to deal with.”

Reiji didn't look pleased in the slightest at the interruption, as hypocritical as it is. Yet he kept his lips sealed. His mood had visibly soured, and by the looks of it he's not the only one.

⠀⠀⠀⠀I swore those two would’ve killed one another if not for my interference. They absolutely loathed the idea of sharing me, let alone my time. Somehow that had not been Ayato’s biggest issue. I’m sure you’re surprised.

⠀⠀⠀⠀No matter what we did or the few events Father took us to, Ayato always had to be the best. Initially, I thought it’d be for Cordelia’s approval but I couldn’t be more incorrect. He wanted me to see him, see the success he displayed.

⠀⠀⠀⠀Regardless, of how much I congratulated him, he wanted more. His stunts became more extreme. His motives were no longer crystal clear. There were times I found him antagonizing his brothers in hopes that I would scold him.

⠀⠀⠀⠀Thankfully, he managed to even out over the years. Even if it was only a little bit. Ayato is still competing with our brothers, mainly Kanato, but old habits die hard. Especially for people like Ayato.

"Sister!" He wailed, glaring at Ayato through misty, dewy eyes. "Are you going to let him speak to me like that?"

Streams of tears began to descend down his fair skin. If not for the bags beneath his eyes, one could say he looked like a doll. With his free hand he pointed accusingly at the older triplet, using his other arm to clutch the teddy bear closely to his chest.

“Fight your own damn battles for once!” Ayato scowled. “You're always running and bitching to her about the dumbest shit."

⠀⠀⠀⠀Kanato, my dear older brother Kanato.

⠀⠀⠀⠀His clinginess never ceased to amaze me. Despite Kanato being older than me by at least three years, it often felt like I was his older sister, comforting and consoling him as his pitiful mother had failed to do.

⠀⠀⠀⠀If anyone were to hog my attention the most, it'd be him. We met when I was four, and at first he didn't really like me because “Babies are loud and gross!” But he changed his mind in the future, clearly.

⠀⠀⠀⠀The way he used to scream and shout when I spent time with the others was hilarious. Sometimes, I even detour bad for laughing at him.

⠀⠀⠀⠀“Uu...You love Ayato more, don't you?” He sobbed, gripping the hem of my frilled, violet dress. “Thats why you're leaving, you're going to play with him!”

“Shut the hell up, all of you!"

⠀⠀⠀⠀I cannot count the times I spent feeding his clinginess, enabling him. I never truly became close with Ayato until a year later because of it. It's a shame, truly. And honestly, he's no better now as I'm sure you already know.

Here we go again. [Name] sighed internally.

There, hiding in the shadows, stood Subaru Sakamaki. His arms were crossed securely along his chest, whilst his cherry red hues narrowed in discontent. His lips were pulled into a taut line, just barely exposing his fangs.

“You're the loudest one!” Kanato cried out, sending a glare of his own to the distant male. His nails began to dig in his skin just enough to leave little crescents in its place.

"Eh—?" Subaru pushed himself off the wall, pale fingers coiling into tight fists. “What the hell are you on about? Tch, you're a fuc—"

Admist the chaos, his frantic faze hadlanded on [Name], lingering just bit. The shock on his face was evident, as though his heart had dropped at the sight. Almost immediately, the corner of his mouth dips into a deep frown, shame slowly flooding his being.

He averted his gaze, finding his sheen coating of his boots to be rather interesting. Nonetheless, he could not dare to meet the eyes of his beloved sister, the ones burning and simmering through him like a heated torch.

This was a sight, [Name] hadn't seen from the young Sakamaki more than two times, counting. Seeing how they often visited one at a time, on their own accord, there was no true reason to do such. Yet, there went this perfect facade he tried so desperately to hold together; crumbling into thousands of pieces, collapsing at the feet of his beloved sister. The one he'd give the world to.

⠀⠀⠀⠀And Subaru, I couldn’t help but coddle him. He’s the only one younger than me, and the only child of Christa at that. I thought I could perhaps be the older sibling he needed.

⠀⠀⠀⠀“Why do you have to leave?” Short, fragile arms had made a home around my waist. Despite his lack of muscle, his grip was almost bone-crushing. “Can't we just stay together?”

⠀⠀⠀⠀Times were tough, my family which had once felt whole was gradually being torn apart like an old, tattered piece of cloth. I’d spent most of my days with Subaru, he was the youngest so I thought he might need extra support. And I couldn’t help but coddle him. Unfortunately, that caused him to grow a bit too dependent on me.

“Fufu, Subaru, it's so nice of you to finally join us~!” Laito breathes out sarcastically, resting his chin in the palm of his hand.

⠀⠀⠀⠀He’d always do this when it was time for me to return to my mother, frankly, it broke my heart each time.

“No, it's really not,” Kanato frowned. “leave already.”

“That's the only thing I'll agree with him on.” Ayato cackled, hoisting himself onto the back of the vacant loveseat. “Why do you always have to be so damn loud? I'm the star of the show; Yours Truly.”

“Shut the hell up already! No one calls you that!” Subaru snarls, picking up a nearby vase. Poor thing.

“Can't you all just be mature for once?” Reiji sighs, and yet it doesn't take away from the vein in his neck practically threatening to burst.

“Heh, I should've known you wouldn't listen,” The champagne-haired man chuckled humorlessly. “Troublesome woman.”

The blonde blinked rapidly, as though surprised at the idea of her being addressed. Knowing the closeness of the two, she didn't think it would happen. Instinctively, she gripped the ends of her brown shorts, nervous and without an answer.

Shu merely chuckled, drawing his attention to the woman kneeling by his side. His youngest sister; his only sister.

“Yui,” [Name] called, reaching out to gently grab her hand. “Do you remember what I told you earlier?”

“U-um...huh?”

Yui hadn't noticed it before, despite the stories she'd listened to from the kind woman. But the two of them shared some uncanny resemblance. In face shape and hues alike. Both were gifted the same soft blue eyes, cold yet vivid in color; mimicking the tranquil waters freezing over in an unforgiving winter.

⠀⠀⠀⠀“Mother look! We all have the same eyes!” Shu shouted, shifting on the balls of his feet in sheer excitement.

⠀⠀Upon my birth, Shu had never been happier. This was before he became so cold, so it wasn't that far fetched at the time. I remember mother shushing him for being too loud around me when I was a baby. But that didn't seem to stop him.

⠀⠀⠀⠀“It feels nice to look like someone for once,” He mumurs, lightly poking the plush flesh of your stomach. A soft smile overtook his lips as your giggled at his antics. “Well, besides mom, but she doesn't count!”

⠀⠀⠀⠀Our mother always said we looked like twins, hah, at least a little. Our eyes were the same, and our face shapes were too. The first and the sixth born being so alike was truly an anomaly to us all, but I suppose that's what makes it amusing.

⠀⠀⠀⠀Surprisingly enough, my hair was a similar to his when I was younger too. Though it wasn't that noticeable, in my mind. Faint, platinum strands littered among the rest of my hair. Everything else, was all my own. That's all I had to my name in comparison to Shu.

“So noisy,” Shu moved to place his other earbud in, allowing his pale lashes to flutter over his cold eyes. He released the hand of his younger sister, finally giving her the ability to move once more.

⠀⠀⠀⠀“I'll protect you, forever, [Name].” Shu grins, craddling you in his small arms. “I won't let them hurt you like they tried to hurt me. We can be happy; you'll be happy. I promise.”

[Name] shrugged at his laziness. It was nothing new. Leaning over, she poked at his cheeks, digging into the softness hidden deep within them. “Stop.”

“Hah, no way!”

Yui could not help but admire the scene before her; it was warm and sweet. Bickering amongst the six was not a rare occurrence, yet something about this seemed different. (Even if Subaru threw a vase at Ayato) The air around them felt light and clear, the boy’s faces looked to be much younger and youthful. Almost as though she was peering into their past.

Sighing, [Name] raised to her feet, placing her hand upon the curve of her hip. Her cheeks were lightly puffed out, upset, after Shu had swatted her hand away. “Ahem,” She cleared her throat.

Silence.

“Now, you all know how much I hate seeing you fight.” She started, slowly approaching Yui (standing by the door). “Without me.”

“W-what?!” Yui cried out.

“I want to be involved too! It's been so long since we've all been in the same room.” [Name] smiled mischievously, running her manicured nails along Yui's slim arm. “So, let's have some fun.”

⠀⠀⠀⠀I know what you might be wondering. Why did they keep me in this room? If they love me so much then why did they act the way they did? The answer is simple really, it wasn’t their choice (entirely).

“Catch us if you can!” She shouted, making a beeline down the long, dark hallway. “C'mon Yui!”

⠀⠀⠀⠀Despite being the only one to comfort them when they were down, hug and nurture them with genuine worry - love. Ever since my father proposed the idea of a sacrificial bride, I was tucked away. He feared I would influence them far too much and they wouldn’t be able to rise to their ‘fullest potential’. 

⠀⠀⠀⠀Realistically speaking, they just had to come to terms with that.

“Yui,” [Name] says, gently clasping the mortal’s hand once more. A small smile tugged at her painted lips. “Don't think you're safe because of my arrival. You'll surely be feeling the affects later on.”

“W-what?!”

[Name] merely giggled, loud and filled with glee; ignoring the question of her mortal friend. “Run, quickly, before they catch up!” Kicking off her troublesome heels, the woman dragged her down the hall. Their hands locked tightly in one another, and their smiles sewn onto their faces.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀THE END!

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀—いつも、いつまでも♡

[talonabraxas]

Wood Snake Talon Abraxas

2025: Year of the Wood Snake Yīn Wood The Heavenly Stems developed from the ritual calendar used by the ruling elites of the Shang Dynasty (16th–11th centuries BCE) and is based on the movement of the five visible planets.

In the Heavenly Stems cycle, 乙 yǐ is the second year of the 10-year cycle and signifies yīn wood. It represents the early growth of the seedling. Having broken through the soil, it is small, tender and vulnerable. However, as opposed to its yáng counterpart, this form of wood is flexible. It is the blade of grass whose strength comes from what keeps it in the soil — its roots. It draws strength from what cannot be seen, hidden below the soil’s surface. We may look at that blade of grass as soft and weak because all we see is something small, continually bending to the wind and being stomped on by feet and hooves. But it remains because its outward-yielding nature is firmly rooted in its internal nature.

The wood phase in the Heavenly Stems represents the planet Jupiter. Thus, Jupiter’s movements in the sky are particularly important during the two wood years. The key thing about any wood year is to pay attention to what Jupiter is doing, especially against the backdrop of your own chart. Pay attention to the houses it transits and any aspects with points in your birth chart, and note those times of year and how the wood energy will influence your world.

We start this year off with its continuing movement through Gemini, signifying new developments in education, transportation and media. This transit has seen the need for fact-checking in the age of AI and deepfakes. The disruptive outer planets are indeed influencing Jupiter’s time in this sign this time around by the sudden, quick and expansive spread of this technology. There is also a curious combination of energies involving Jupiter in the latter part of the year, but more on that below. Snake: Yīn Fire

The other part of the equation is the Earthly Branch sign of 巳 sì, most commonly known as the serpent. The animal zodiac in Chinese astrology was introduced by Buddhist scholars around the 5th century CE. This version has become popular (especially in the West). Initially, the Earthly Branches was an almanac used by farmers to track the movement of the seasons; thus, there are 12 phases.

The sign of 巳 sì (snake) signifies introspection, subtle power, and transformative growth. It embodies a quiet yet potent energy capable of illuminating hidden paths and fostering deep emotional and spiritual understanding. Its strategic, resourceful nature makes it excellent for long-term growth, but must guard against volatility or over-sensitivity. In practice, 巳 sì inspires creativity, patience, and inner resilience, bringing light and warmth in a deliberate, steady way. 2025: Snake Leaving A Hole

In this sense, yīn wood’s influence on fire can continue to be seen in Jupiter’s influence in two instances.

In August, Jupiter in Cancer trines with Black Moon Lilith in Scorpio (the point where the Moon is furthest from Earth). This harmonious alignment blends Jupiter’s emotional wisdom and optimism with Lilith’s fierce, transformative power. This integration of light and shadow suggests a time of deep healing, emotional authenticity, and reclaiming inner strength. By nurturing vulnerability, embracing transformation, and setting empowered boundaries, individuals can experience profound emotional freedom and connection. This will be a good time to engage in shadow work, honour your desires, set boundaries and nurture your inner world.

Later in November, Jupiter and Lilith combine with Saturn in Pisces to form a grand trine. This alignment in water signs suggests an influential period of emotional growth, healing, and empowerment. It blends Jupiter’s optimism and expansion of emotional wisdom, Lilith’s transformative power in confronting and integrating the shadow self, and Saturn’s discipline and stability in grounding emotional and spiritual progress.

Together, they create an opportunity to:

· heal past wounds and reclaim emotional and personal power

· cultivate emotional resilience, boundaries, and maturity

· channel intuition, compassion, and authenticity into meaningful transformation

· manifest goals or dreams by integrating emotional insight with grounded, practical action

This alignment encourages a harmonious flow of deep healing, empowerment, and spiritual evolution, offering profound opportunities to transform your relationship with yourself, others, and your emotional truth.

But the deep transformative energies don’t stop there. A day after the September Equinox, a partial solar eclipse occurring alongside a Grand Trine involving the Sun (and Moon) in Libra (29°), Uranus in Gemini (1°), and Pluto in Aquarius (1°). This energy lasts for a few days and also includes a ‘Kite’ formation, where Neptune (0° Aries) and Saturn (28° Pisces) are in a semisextile aspect to Uranus and Pluto. The combination of these factors suggests a period of profound awakening and progress on both personal and collective levels. The key themes of this powerful time will be:

· Transformation Through Harmony: A balance between radical change and stability

· Awakening and Breakthroughs: Innovations in thought, technology, and communication

· Collective Progress: Focus on group efforts, equality, and humanitarian ideals

· Equilibrium Amidst Change: Aligning with the flow of transformation while maintaining balance

· Empowered Dialogue: Using communication to drive positive, meaningful change

While this eclipse will close the 2025 eclipse season, it is important to understand that an eclipse works like portals or activators to influence a particular transit or alignment. While occurring late in the year, the manifestation of the yīn wood snake energy will begin to impact us moving forward into the future. The seedling doesn’t stop growing during this phase — it is simply the beginning of the growth, maturation, ripening, and decay cycle.

The Hidden Elements

The snake also carries the hidden presence of other yáng elements: fire, earth, and metal. These add layers of strength, resilience, and decisiveness to 巳 sì’s otherwise yīn-oriented nature. These three elements are represented by Mars, Saturn, and Venus, respectively.

In late May, Saturn begins its two-and-a-half-year transit of Aries. While it will retrograde into Pisces at the start of September, it will resume its journey in Aries on Lunar New Year’s Day of 2026 (the yáng fire horse). Saturn (corresponding with the earth phase in ancient Chinese systems) in the fire sign denotes the importance of taking personal responsibility and owning your actions.

At the start of March, Venus (corresponding with the Chinese element metal) begins a six-week retrograde dance between Aries and Pisces, which signifies a period of reassessment in relationships, values, and self-worth. It will challenge us to consider impulsive actions, deepen our emotional clarity, and foster meaningful alignment with authentic desires. This sets up what emerges later in the year.

Because the ancient Chinese five-phase school only considered the planets seen by the naked eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), the outer planets we now know and utilise in astrology correspond to combined elemental energies. For example, Uranus can be associated with aspects of metal and wood; Neptune can correspond to aspects of the water and wood phases; and Pluto can be seen as the combination of water and metal. Pluto in Aquarius will define this generation, which started in 2024.

Neptune enters Aries for 14 years on 30 March. Historically, Neptune in Aries has coincided with periods of radical spiritual and ideological change. We saw this in the 1860s when causes like abolitionism drove the American Civil War and visionary advances exploded, like the first printing press and the opening of the New York Stock Exchange. It also should be seen as an ‘autocrat alert’. Given the swings towards authoritarian-leaning parties and leaders around the world, this should not come as a surprise.

After disrupting the security of our home and private lives over the past few years in Taurus, Uranus begins its seven-year sojourn in Gemini in July. This will disrupt Geminian industries, such as telecommunications, data security, transportation, education and the media.

In the middle of the year, Saturn joins Neptune in Aries (24 May–1 September). This transit focuses on discipline, responsibility, and structured action within themes of personal leadership, identity, and pioneering new paths. Challenges arise when the impulsive Aries energy clashes with Saturn’s demand for patience and commitment. Success requires strategic, methodical courage. This period will ask you to own your actions and not hide behind excuses for them. Be bold in how you do things.

[annwrites]

— aemond targaryen quotes ⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖ | sons & daughters

❝You prefer to watch then, niece? Come down, and I will give you a private show of your very own, if you instead join me.❞

❝What is it you pray for, then, I wonder? An advantageous marriage, perhaps. One for love, I’m sure. You always did have your head in the clouds as a child.❞

❝I recently learned yours never hatched, even after taking it such a long way. I could tell you why that might be, but I fear it may offend you. So, let me instead make you an offer.❞ (...) ❝Come join me on mine own. She is the largest in all the world. Just consider what that might imply about her rider.❞

❝At least you have not forsaken your mother tongue,❞ he’d said, coming closer yet again. ❝Mine own is quite adept at it, among other things.❞

❝Then perhaps we steal away in the dark of night, married in secret by a septon. Like something out of a fairytale book, which I know you loved so dearly at one time. Our marriage consummated upon a bed of hay, in a barn where our secrets lay hidden.❞

❝Let us flee across the Narrow Sea, then, for there is nothing left for me here now. Not with you having gone and hidden yourself away from me on that desolate island. Let us finally be free of our gilded cages, beloved niece. Together.❞

❝I see you have not forgotten our games as children we so often enjoyed together in those most private moments. Hm. How well we got to know one another then.❞

❝If I do, you will thus be ruined for all, wholly belonging to me at last.❞

❝Stay. I’ve enough of you walking away from me.❞

❝Have you much thought about it? What we did in the Godswood—alone—with just ourselves and our sweet sin between us? I know I have. Would you like to know what I did about it? Mayhaps you did as well.❞

❝Come, then, let us find a dark corner so I might explore and discover the answer for myself. So I might see in what all ways you have grown into a woman, besides just your disposition.❞

❝Fuck them. Let them watch.❞

❝You know the promise we once made: to never lie to one another. You believe me to have forgotten it? I lost my eye, not my senses, dear niece.❞

❝You belong with me. You are of my blood and I yours.❞

❝I will return it to you when you return to me. Not a moment sooner.❞

❝To my most beloved niece: how good it is to have you returned to me once again. For I have missed you so very dearly. I eagerly await our next reunion. I much hope it is…quite soon.❞

❝We should be together. We're supposed to be.❞

❝Tell me then, boy, if your whore mother did not send you prepared to wield a sword in her name, why did she not send my lovely niece then instead? I do so long to see her.❞

❝She is there, in that northern wasteland they dare call a kingdom?❞ He sneers. ❝She should be instead with me. She is my blood. Mine!❞

❝Y/N belongs to me.❞ (...) ❝Nothing will change that. Including some dull, passionless northern lord. What is he compared to her own uncle? A prince?❞

❝You see,❞ he cocks his head to the side. ❝She was meant to be my betrothed. She was created for me to have. I would not expect you to understand, but it is mine own blood which I am meant to wed.❞

❝Some unwashed northern fucking lord is not suitable for her needs! I am!❞

❝Do you want to know, then, mother? The things we did with only the Gods to bear witness?❞

❝I’m going to get my bride back!❞

❝My niece belongs to me! She belongs with me! Not fucking there! Mine! Mine! She is mine!❞

❝My fucking property! She was born for me! Created to be given to me to have and take to wife!❞

❝I'll burn the fucking North! I'll burn the whole God's-damned Realm if that's what it takes! I'll have Maester Orwyle cut that thing out of her, and fill her instead with my seed! A dragon, not a fucking dog! I'll feed it to Vhagar!❞

❝It is alright, my beloved niece. We're together now. None shall part us ever again, or I will kill them. I'll kill them all. I swear it.❞

❝You will remain always by my side. Until your last breath. You will not—fuck—so much as look at another man. You will remain in our chambers. Safe and sound. Always waiting for me.❞

❝You are perfect. Every single part of you was made for me to love. And I do, and I will, and I shall.❞

❝My beloved niece,❞ he drawls against the shell of your ear. ❝One lifetime of having you will not be near enough.❞

❝You are meant to be with a dragon. Not a wolf,❞ he spits.

❝I am giving you one last chance, beloved niece,❞ he says acidically. ❝Give up this bit of ridiculous pretend before you force my hand.❞