#and well i had an...epiphany | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dw-flagler · 5 months ago

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In this post, I will attempt to calmly, reasonably, and in-a-good-faith-manner argue all the points raised by tumblr user @library-bat-girl in the following posts. I am starting a new thread so as not to further destroy the original poster, @skitterenjoyer's, tumblr notifications. Worm (+MHA) spoilers ahead. This will be a long post.

Firstly, I would like to apologize on the worm fandom's behalf. We will not engage in ableism of any kind. I sincerely hope that this was a singular incident and @skittersdrippygirlcock will be better about this in the future.

"MHA has better characters,"

My Hero Academia's primary achievement, I think, is managing to make many decently well rounded characters in a fairly short time-span. It certainly has very good visual character design, with easily memorable character designs, like Mina Ashido or Tsuyu Asui. Most of Class 1A is shown to be more than single-note gimmick characters. For a story with such a tight schedule, and only so much page real-estate, that's impressive! For instance, a character decidedly outside of the main cast, Fumikage Tokoyami, is shown to have more to his personality than "is an edgelord," showing a humility and friendliness that is highly against-type. This is very different than a lot of its peers, especially in Shonen manga, where side characters (and sometimes even main characters) are never more than their tropes (see Fairy Tale, One Punch Man*, The Seven Deadly Sins, or Black Clover). My Hero Academia does clear that bar, by making side characters little more than their tropes. This is to say nothing of the primary cast, who, again, is largely defined by tropes and easily slotted into standardized interchangeable Shonen roles. Rival, Love Interest, Rival but Nice About It. Additionally, MHA has an uncomfortably sexualized main cast, for one composed primarily of minors.

This is compared to Worm, in which many characters are fully realized and could have been the protagonist (and often were in older drafts of the story, due to Worm's 10-year development hell). Every character that gets an interlude, and most that don't, all have fully realized interiority, traumas, and wants. In fact, this is one of the major themes of Worm. Every character, from the protagonist Taylor, to characters so minor they're seen only once (see Damsel of Distress, Dauntless), to major antagonists and monsters (see Jack Slash, Bonesaw) all have their own story, even if this is never shown on-screen. There are no "side characters" in the same manner as in My Hero Academia, because every character is a protagonist of their own story, and not in a trite "life is so beautiful" way.

Taylor isn't the center of the universe, there's an entire world outside of her 3-block bubble. The mechanism by which all characters get their superpowers means that the mere fact of having powers implies this about them. Even the seeming exceptions, aren't (see Alexandria, Garotte). Taylor is a good character. I don't even know how to elaborate on that. She just is. Worm does not have the character Minoru Mineta.

"a better plot,"

What... what is the plot of My Hero Academia? For the life of me, I can't seem to recall. I can tell you the general formula of most of the arcs for the first ~2/3rds of the story. Class 1A goes to do a hero high school thing, like do rescue training, or on-the-job training, or on-the-job-training, or on-the-job-training (they do it like 4 times for some reason), the League Of Villains shows up (even when it's seemingly not the league of villains it actually is the league of villains) they fight about it, the class beats all the villains, and Deku beats up strongest bad guy and also breaks his bones. Repeat step 1. But like. What's... the plot? The League of Villains is evil and wants to kill people and do bad stuff. They explicitly do not have greater motivations. There's generally themes of passing-on-to-the-new-generation, so there's Tomura Shigaraki as the arch nemesis to Izuku Midoriya, just as All Might's Nemesis is All For One. Eventually they fight a big fight about it and I stop reading because I find out about Worm. From what I understand (I have not read the conclusion) the series ends without addressing any long-running questions, wrapping up any character arcs, or concluding anything in a narratively satisfying manner. As if severely rushed.

Worm, there are maybe 15 main stories going on simultaneously, which are all tied into the final confrontation with Scion. The most obvious is Taylor's and the Undersiders' story, about taking over Brockton Bay and defeating Coil, which is a smaller part of Coil's story about taking over the bay, until their confrontation with him in arc 17, when it supersedes Coil's story, and then intersects with Cauldron's story, the Traveler's story, the Case 53s' stories, the Wards' story, all of it, in arcs 18-19. This is one example. A great deal of attention is spent making sure the reader knows that Taylor, the Undersiders, Coil, all of them, are bit players in a very large game. Despite this, it's never hard to follow, because Wildbow, while lacking some of the more flowery prose, manages extremely well at making his stories easy to understand.

"I feel like even people who like Worm can agree that Worm is not the most consistent piece of fiction ever written. The disjointed way it was written meant that emphasis was primarily put on 'What Wildbow thought was cool in the moment', [sic] and the story RADICALLY shifts gears every time a new arc starts."

What? Huh? Worm is extremely consistent. Like. 1.1 to E.x. It's, like. Not disjointed? Oh my god, are you talking about interludes? Is that what you mean? The interludes shift gears? Because that makes sense. It's one of the hardest things about worm, yeah. It's gripping! The interludes are a great idea to expand the world of worm, but the problem is that taylor's story is so intriguing that stepping away from it to focus on something else is hard, no matter how individually interesting. I want to read about taylor's escalation spiral, not the travelers! (As opposed to My Hero Academia having random escalation and de-escalation between arcs with no real explanation. We're reading about lives-on-the-line battles with child-slavers and then move to playing on a playground with little kids? Best I can think of is that this whiplash is intentional, but this is never communicated to the reader. Worm does not do this. Any de-escalation is met with the explicit understanding that this is merely a period of calm before things get even worse). Taylor's story wraps up in an extremely narratively satisfying fashion, following her story to its logical conclusion. There were so many ways it could have been avoided, but there was really only one way that it could have ended.

"better worldbuilding,"

This actually offends me. MHA could have had great world-building. It doesn't. Every potentially interesting bit of world-building is backpedaled out of or stopped before it could get anywhere. Or it's just never elaborated or expanded upon. Everyone having a superpower could have been cool, but the implications of this are nonexistent. The reasons for this having no real implications, that being the banning of quirks, also has implications that are also immediately backpedaled out of. It's been hundreds of years since our time, yet life is exactly the same. Nothing ever happens. Endeavor is a cool concept. I like Endeavor. his existence implies such interesting things about the world, how important hero ranking is to these people's lives, that he would create this horrific system of domestic abuse to try and get to the #1 spot. What does this say about this system of heroes that operates like a popularity contest? It could have said a lot. It says nothing. What does the League of Villains, a league of people who call themselves out-and-out villains, who base their ideology in opposing this system of heroes, say about society? Nothing. On purpose. Worm does something with this. One Punch Man does something with this. My Hero Academia puts it in the story, and lets it sit, unused, for a decade.

Worm has... unique world-building. Because it's both good and bad at the same time. Worm's #1 feature is its world. It's brilliant, full stop. Triggers, The Birdcage, the PRT, Exclusion Zones! Why does the status quo exist? what does it say about that society? What does it say about our society? Why hasn't society radically changed from how it is in our world? This is explained. This plays into the themes. The story wants to say something about this world, and so it does. There are characters whose stories explicitly delve into these themes that are set up in the worldbuilding, like Armsmaster, or Battery, or Bonesaw, or Coil, or Piggot or Alexandria or Taylor herself or Brian or Lisa or ANY OF THEM THEY ALL DO THIS. Sorry.

Anyway, the bad part is that the actual world is not well built (and is kind of racist). What's going on in Europe? There's a 3 blasphemies! a 3 what? never explained. What's going on in Asia, aside from Japan? China is a monarchy for some reason. Why? It's never elaborated on. India gets a little bit of elaboration, we're told its different but not how it's different. Wildbow uses machine translation wrong and names some guy caliph of dogs. This is like worm's #2 problem honestly (#1 is Amy). Wildbow tries to make the implication of a well thought out globe without actually making a well thought out globe.

"stronger themes,"

It really doesn't. As I said in the worldbuilding section, MHA makes a point out of not saying or doing anything. I don't know if editors made Horikoshi walk back the more ambitious story beats or what, but there are multiple points in the story where the author pretty much looks you directly in the eye and goes "This Story Isn't Saying Anything At All Even Though It Looked Like It Would. Lmao."

Worm has lots of themes. I think Armsmaster/Defiant's story is my favorite. His entire character arc (which is fully realized despite him being a background character for nearly the entire story) has a point to it. It says something. It's misanthropic and uplifting simultaneously, and manages to feel like it earns both. It's a shared theme with Bonesaw/Riley's story, explored in two different ways.

"Meanwhile MHA establishes an actual overall theme/message right from the start that expands and develops throughout the story. The worldbuilding is informed by the message, which informs the characters arcs and the people they become by the end of the story."

I notice that you never actually say what that message is. What is it? Like, for real. I'm not being confrontational or anything, like what is the message? Cuz' I can't think of one. My Hero Academia, at its very core, is a defense of the status quo. Much like its world-building, but much less forgivable, because it does do something new and unique with its world-building. MHA could have done some extremely interesting stuff with its early implicit critique of heroic society as shown with characters like Bakugo, or Shigaraki, or Endeavor, or Overhaul, or Midoriya himself! It just doesn't! It doesn't do stuff that Worm does do!

Worm does have a message. It has a lot of messages, actually, some that the author disagrees with somehow. Prison abolition, for one. We know Wildbow loves prison. Anyway, the big one is in the subtitle: doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Taylor's constant spiral of escalation, her dwindling attachments to her friends and greater focus on treating herself like a soldier is prevalent, and it is to be avoided. Taylor isn't a sin-eater. They don't exist. From what I remember, this is sort of explored in Deku's character arc for a short period of time, but much like everything else in MHA, it is backpedaled out of.

The funniest is "don't text and drive" though.

"Just on a basic level the way that the audience is meant to feel about Taylor oscillates wildly between being directed to think of her as a misunderstood victim of circumstance, or history's greatest monster."

That's kind of the point. Like. the audience isn't meant to look at Taylor the same way throughout the entire story. It's meant to change as she changes. Taylor's opinion of Taylor changes. The mistake here is saying it "oscillates wildly." it doesn't. It's a slow and steady change for the worse, as Taylor gets more violent and starts throwing away greater and greater parts of herself to become more like a robot and less like a person.

"But a bigger issue in general is tone. It's very focused on being dark and gritty and edgy, and it makes the mistake a lot of consciously edgy media does. IE: it thinks that all it has to do to be smart is be bleak and/or graphic. It doesn't really try to say anything, in fact it contradicts itself throughout the book as I mentioned before, it just throws in extremely graphic scenes and content periodically to remind the audience how fucked everything is."

Did you read the boys and think it was worm? What? It's not being smart when it's bleak or graphic? I actually personally like the endbringers or the slaughterhouse 9, and not because I like watching people suffer. These things exist for a reason. It's not being dark for the sake of being dark. The heroes could stop the slaughterhouse 9. We see that, when they almost stop the slaughterhouse 9 (it's explicitly shown that they are stopped from destroying the slaughterhouse 9). The question then becomes why don't they? It's a grim, brutal calculus, and one that wasn't worth it. That's the point. The Endbringers are different. It's not until arc 27 that they're really explained. You could either read them as a criticism of Eidolon or of ableism, honestly. I mean, it wasn't intentional, he didn't create them on purpose, he needed something to fight, because without that he's nothing. His powers are all he has.

"Worm spends so much time trying to be edgy that as with a lot of edgy media the edginess loses all impact quite quickly and becomes sort of cringe."

I don't really think so, but like. Okay. I don't think this is a reconcilable viewpoint (none of this is really but this especially), so like we're probably gonna have to agree to disagree. The only thing I can really think of as edgy for the sake of edginess is Amy's arc. But even that's not really true. It's meant to be an utterly avoidable tragedy that could never have been stopped because of the people involved. Much like Taylor, actually. Amy could have stepped back from the brink, but she didn't, because Amy could never have done that, and nobody else was willing/able to help. It's supposed to be a thing where you sit back and think of all the tiny ways this could have easily been avoided, but wasn't.

"When body horror happens it still has impact because it's not happening constantly."

I mean, I guess. But like. I never got desensitized to the body horror in Worm. It hit pretty consistently for me throughout. As opposed to MHA, where it was usually walked back by the end of every arc. I never felt much tension or suspense because it felt as if there weren't actual consequences. In Worm, when Brian was strung up on his nerves, it felt disgusting because I was fully aware Worm would explore the ripple effects of this. It felt entirely possible he would die there, or never recover, because Worm didn't pull its punches. MHA did. This is a matter of opinion. We'll just have to agree to disagree about it.

"But most importantly - you root for the heroes because the world actually seems like it's worth saving."

that's just, um. sorry. I'm really trying here. That's just. Uh. Dumb. Do you root for Batman cause Gotham is a nice city? Everything's worth saving, that's, like, at its most basic what the concept of a superhero is about.

"Not only that but MHA simply does villain protagonists objectively better than Worm."

um. No? There straight up aren't villain protagonists in MHA. The villains are the POV characters for, like, one arc? You know what, here's a good spot for it. It's stated throughout the story that Shigaraki and the League of Villains have a goal, beyond just death and destruction. They're here to stop the corrupt society of heroes (that MHA hints at the existence of before backpedaling away from), and bring about a fairer society. But then, and this part pissed me off, one of the characters, I think Bakugo, says: "you're just using that as cover! you just want to kill people, you have no noble goal!" and shigaraki's like "dang you caught me." and then it happens again with Deku! Because My Hero Academia is allergic to saying something. Nope! They're villains! No moral depth here! They're Villains, We're Heroes, Go Put Them In Jail.

This is opposed to Worm, where- "The characters of the villains and their origins are used to highlight the flaws in the Superhuman society"

"Most of the villains are only villains because society failed them in some way, and the specific ways in which that happened become big plot points that then play into the future arc of our heroic characters."

I had to walk away from my computer for this one. It's hard to be civil. It's really hard. Polite and reasonable.

So Worm is about this. To even say this without a shred of irony makes me thing you've never once read a single word of Worm and are doing this purely as bait. Or you've read all of Worm and are doing this purely as bait.

"They're actually extremely complex in a way that ends up being fundamentally important to the overall story - where in Worm the villains are either based heroes fighting a corrupt system or they're histories [sic] greatest monsters... until they're presented as heroes again."

I think I get it now. I really think I do. You're not supposed to agree with all the characters. Like. Worm is inconsistent, in that it follows the perspectives of inconsistent people. Of course Triumph and Armsmaster don't agree on what is right! They're different people, they have different perspectives!

"See. Worm fans keep saying "This is Bait." It's not Bait, you all are simply ridiculous and obsessed with this series to such a degree that you feel compelled to say "This is Bait" instead of just... ignoring it, because you have no actual counterargument."

Perhaps worm fans are inclined to believe you posted rage bait because you brazenly walked into another fandom's post and wholeheartedly proclaimed that the thing they liked was Stupid Idiot Bullshit For Fucking Morons, and refused to elaborate until prompted, at which point you said several things that are demonstrably false about Worm.

"Your only response to anything I've said is pedantry, bigotry, and deflection. If it was obviously just bait why are you engaging?"

Well, I'm engaging because I've been in a foul mood since I woke up this morning. Also because you, again, said some very rude and patently false statements about a story that I really enjoy and find narratively rich, even in its faults.

"MHA's characters do fall into archetypal shounen character roles - but they are all given a solid amount of focus explaining why they are like that and developing them into something bigger."

Again, as I said, it's a genuinely impressive feat to have an ensemble cast like what My Hero Academia has, and give so many of the characters a degree of depth, with such little manga to work with. I think worm does it better, but worm doesn't have to be economical about it. MHA does. The problem I have with this statement is that it becomes a question of scale. How much bigger? They're no longer defined by their tropes, instead defined by their opposition to their tropes. It's still a one-note character, you've merely changed the note from C to C sharp.

"so almost every member of the cast has an arc that either develops them past the person they initially seemed to be or explains why they're like that."

This is probably my favorite part about MHA. They do have arcs! I love ensemble casts! it does a much better job in this than all of its contemporaries, even One Piece. However, they are comparatively simplistic arcs that all follow a similar formula.

"I've heard people say MHA is neocon or pro-establishment but the story literally concludes by showing that society HAS TO FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE or the same problems that created the villains in the first place will keep happening. The entire time skip specifically focuses on the fact that for eight years the main characters have been forcing change in the world and addressing the issues the villains brought up."

Now, I'm going to be clear. I stopped reading My Hero Academia around chapter 275. I don't know the exact number, but it was the latest chapter in ~mid 2020. I would occasionally attempt to reread, in an attempt to catch up, but give up around chapter 200 out of boredom. I don't know exactly how the story ends, but I have read ~2/3rds of the story. I feel this gives me a pretty good understanding of the general tone of the story, unless it wildly changes tone at the 3/4ths mark, which you have explicitly said it does not, as it is extremely coherent and consistent. Therefore, I believe I can state with some degree of confidence that MHA does not do that.

I would certainly believe that it tries (and fails) to SFP it, but SFP does not promote a fundamental societal change. That's the problem. Strong Female Protagonist was willing to come up and say that Alison lived in a fundamentally unjust world, even if it was never willing or able to offer real change. And hey. You do what you can. I sincerely doubt My Hero Academia is even willing to call its world fundamentally unjust, from the 200+ chapters that I did read.

"In the case of the actual main characters, they have extremely comprehensive character arcs."

Adding this behind the last point just so that I don't have to reiterate I haven't finished the book. I am, however, very much not inclined to believe the actual main characters had extremely comprehensive character arcs.

Which plays back into the initial theory that ANYONE CAN BE A HERO.

man, spider-man did that better (not a real argument, but like, spider-man totally did that better). Not least because midoriya specifically could not become a hero were it not for all might giving him a power.

No, the Villains don't get happy endings,

Why not? Why do they go to jail, even the ones who changed and wanted to redeem themselves? Endeavor never goes to jail. He did some horrible stuff. He's redeemed himself in the eyes of the story, right? Anyone can be a hero, right? So why not them? Why haven't they redeemed themselves in the eyes of the story?

You may wish to turn this back on me and ask why doesn't Armsmaster go to prison? Because he's similar in some respects. But worm never calls prison justice. (for some reason, even though wildbow totally loves prison). Prison is punitive, a tool for those in charge to control those it manages to capture. Maybe some deserve life in the birdcage. Many don't. It doesn't matter. Because the birdcage isn't a tool of justice. It's not meant to be. it's a box to put the uncontrollable capes in, until they can be used as meat shields. So Armsmaster doesn't go to prison because the story says explicitly there is no point to it. But MHA? MHA says there is a point to it. Endeavor needs to go to prison if he wants to atone. He's escaping justice every second he's outside.

I have actually read Worm, and for the first half to two thirds I loved it.

Weird. That's exactly how long I really enjoyed MHA. Not, like relevant, to anything. Just odd. I mean, I don't actually dislike MHA. I think it's fine, actually. It feels like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to me. Funny (when Mineta isn't around), bombastic, and a good time, even if I don't think it's super thematically rich.

I'm not coming at this from the perspective of someone who has never seen any of the merits of Worm, I'm coming at it from the perspective of someone who really liked it, gave it a fair shot, and was eventually disappointed when it ended up not tying together right.

See, this makes me more inclined to think it's bait, actually. since you said "Oh yeah. MHA is published. MHA's been an ongoing publication with a large following for ten years, in a notoriously competitive industry. Now this might seem kind of unimpressive, it's a very low bar to clear I know. But it's one Worm hasn't, so. I dunno, I'd say that's fairly objective. Now you may think "Yeah, but Trash fiction gets published all the time." And that's true but again - Worm hasn't. The worst piece of fiction you can think of got published and Worm didn't. You wanna be an asshole about this? The thing you love is so mid that it was self published in 2013, couldn't get picked up for professional publishing until 2019 and as far as I can see has stayed in development hell since then." in your previous post. Sure, perhaps we can say you were pissed at the time, but "the thing you love is worse than trash fiction, an altogether nothing piece of literature that isn't even worth the paper it would hypothetically be printed on" does not strike me as the words of someone who "really liked it, gave it a fair shot, and was eventually disappointed when it ended up not tying together right." In fact, going back through your other statements on the story, you seem to have genuinely disliked it from the very beginning, on grounds of being too edgy (which I can fully understand the logic of): "IE: it thinks that all it has to do to be smart is be bleak and/or graphic," thematically incoherent: "It doesn't really try to say anything, in fact it contradicts itself throughout the book as I mentioned before, it just throws in extremely graphic scenes and content periodically to remind the audience how fucked everything is," and utterly devoid of purpose or meaning. "When it does introduce new lore that new lore is almost always overly convoluted and acts as a catalyst for things happening, but not really things happening that play into a wider theme or message. It's just "Oh and here's this team of god-level serial killers who are gonna string a dude up by his nervous system." Like yeah, cool visual, but what is any of this actually saying?" This does not sound like a ringing endorsement of the first half of Worm to me. In fact, this sounds like you hated every second of it.

"And frankly given the number of comments that are just people saying "Bait" - I don't think any of y'all have engaged with this in a fair or honest way"

I'm going to reiterate on my previous statement. I like my hero academia. Capeshit is my favorite genre, it probably always will be. They're my favorite genre of story. While I find the themes—or lack thereof—extremely frustrating, I still think of it as fun. I gave it a fair shake. I would probably really enjoy the ending if I didn't have a reading list that was 300 books long.

#worm spoilers #MHA spoilers #*One Punch Man is partially an exception as characters are “never more than their tropes” for the sake of parody.#i don't dislike my hero academia by the way. in fact i rather like it. at least the first three quarters or so #L style contessa should have hit eidolon with a car and been like “look at that the endbringers stopped crazy.”#well it would have actually been crazy considering she had no way to know he was causing them #sorry n0brainjustvibes i never finished that MHA fanfic you recced me #quote text is colored to stop your eyes glazing over at the wall of text #armsmaster is what endeavor could/should have been #like they have a very similar arc. but they differ in that armsmaster's redemption is earned and endeavor's isn't #how so? there's like a reason armsmaster has an epiphany about his previous behavior #endeavor's like “oh the narrative is focusing on me as a protagonist i better be a good guy now!”#the fixing society thing is what ward should have been about but wasn't. but we're not talking about ward #by the way i wish they just killed teacher instead of birdcaging him. ward would have been so much better #^that was a joke #sorry about making the quotes smaller i'm trying to save some space in this tumor of a post somewhere #please don't say “god-level serial killers” by the way. for my sake if nothing else #you know i made the comparison to gotham being a shithole somehow without any thought that the person i am disagreeing with is a batman fan #or at least a batgirl fan

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accirax · 11 months ago

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New Evidence Regarding DRDT's Chapter 2 Killer?

Hello again, everybody! As I continue on my journey of rewatching DRDT via stream, I continue to pick up on more and different things than I noticed the first time. The subject of this theory post is the letter, signed by Eden (even if it wasn't necessarily written by her), that she, Rose, and Whit put together before the second Class Trial began-- I want to take another look at it.

(CW for Despair Time spoilers through 2-10 and mentions of suicide as described in Arturo's secret)

This note is a highly important piece of evidence, and I would expect that anyone invested in trying to solve the case is pretty familiar with its contents. However, I want to highlight exactly what the killer had to know in order to put this note together.

There is someone in the cast who has a motive secret that someone was "responsible for the death of [his/her] sister."

Eden was the recipient of this person's secret.

Eden didn't mean to tell this person, but it slipped out.

This person threatened to do something to Eden.

Arei promised to be Eden's friend.

Like I said, shouldn't be too much of a shock to any of you. However, what I really want to draw attention to is the first bullet point: someone is responsible for the death of his or her sister.

Why am I drawing attention to it? Because the last time Eden or Arturo says anything even close to a family member dying is here... (11:31)

...before Arei arrives. (12:44)

(The last time anyone actually says "sister" is Eden at 11:13.)

But, why is the time of Arei's arrival such an important distinction?

The thing is, most killer theories I've seen for anyone other than Eden or Arturo account for the killer being able to write this note by listening in to the conversation through the door. What I'm trying to say is that there's a contradiction there that I, at least, didn't notice until just now:

If the killer, listening in through the door had to know that the secret Eden received was about Arturo being responsible for the death of his sister, they had to be listening in before Arei arrived, because that is the only time in which Arturo's secret is discussed in enough detail to mention a family member dying. However, when Arei arrived, she had to walk right past and through the door.

This is what the door to the outside of the Infirmary looks like. There is no way in hell that Arei wouldn't have been able to see anyone who was walking by or listening in while she was doing the exact same.

So, what would this mean? Well, it would mean that only Arturo, Eden, and possibly Arei (depending on when she got into earshot of the door) knew enough about Arturo's motive secret before the murder to include all of those details in the note.

Or, at least, that's the boldest version of the claim. However, there are some counterarguments.

The first is that other people could have known if Arturo, Eden, or possibly Arei told somebody else about what happened and mentioned the detail about Arturo's secret. However, I don't believe that any of the three of them would have done that.

Arturo very clearly did not want his secret to get out, and seemingly didn't even want to believe that the death was his fault in the first place. Threatening Eden and making an enemy of Arei also make him look really bad. Both factors combined make it very unlikely that Arturo would want to tell anyone that this happened.

Eden also didn't want to tell anyone about what happened because she was afraid of Arturo finding out, as is clear in the Class Trial. Additionally, if she did want to tell someone so that they could help protect her from Arturo, it probably would have just been Arei. Thus, the information wouldn't have spread any farther than just Arei again.

Arei is definitely the iffiest option, but I still find it hard to believe that she would have told anyone about this occurrence. Firstly, it's already debatable whether Arei heard the specifics of Arturo's secret in the first place. Secondly, Arei probably would have had respect for her new friend and not wanted to share this traumatic event and put Eden in danger. I guess it's possible that Arei could have tried to tell someone about what happened to try to rally a larger movement against Arturo, and then that single person turned around and decided to kill Arei (thus leaving no innocent person who would want to bring up that Arei talked to them in the Class Trial). But, that's... a bit of a stretch. Plus, even if Arei did that, why include the specific details of what Arturo's secret was about?

The second option is that the killer could have planted some kind of bug or other listening device into the Infirmary so that they could overhear the conversation from afar. However, given that we have been given literally no advanced warning that a device like this can even be obtained within the set, much less that anyone actually used one in that location, I'm tossing this objection out, too.

And no, I don't think J's remote could have accomplished something like that, either. Not without an actual listening device already in the room.

The final possibility that I've thought of is that someone could have overheard the conversation from somewhere other than the doorway, which holds a lot more weight. Let's take a look at what's around the Infirmary.

Based on the map, I think the only places that are possibly close enough to the door of the Infirmary are the doors of the Cafeteria or Bathroom (Wash Closet; WC). Recall that, given the private nature of the conversation and that Arei is shown pushing the doors open in the CG, the doors were probably closed. Thus, anyone listening in would have needed to hear the conversation from behind at least one set of closed doors.

Let's start by quickly ruling out the Bathroom. I'm operating on the assumption that, if you can hear something going on in the Infirmary from where you are, people in the Infirmary could hear what's going on in that location, too. If people could hear what's going on in the Bathroom all the way from the Infirmary... Well, that's some pretty shitty architectural design, pun intended.

The Cafeteria is a viable location, though. In fact, we've already confirmed that you can overhear a conversation going on in the Cafeteria from the Infirmary.

So, using the same logic I described earlier, if Teruko could hear something in the Cafeteria from the Infirmary, it stands to reason that you could hear something in the Infirmary from the Cafeteria.

However, this argument still has its issues as well. The thing that Teruko (and Xander) overhear in this scene is, funnily enough, Arei arguing with Eden over not being invited to bake with her. It is described in multiple lines as a very loud event.

While I don't deny that a panicked Eden, a shaken Arturo, and an infuriated Arei could have been quite loud, all of those things, once again, happened after the last time that Eden or Arturo said anything about a dead family member. It's impossible to tell for sure given that the prior part of the conversation isn't fully voice acted, but it's implied that everything Eden says about Arturo's secret is in a regular, or possibly even hushed, tone of voice. If someone only started listening in after things got loud, they would not have heard about Arturo's secret in detail.

Additionally, there are the logistics of who would be sitting in the Cafeteria. Given that nobody else has stepped forward and shared that they overheard this conversation as well (even under potential penalty of death), it seems reasonable to assume that no innocent student overheard what happened in the Infirmary. Therefore, conversely, if any student(s) did overhear the conversation, they were probably involved in the murder somehow. I'm sure you could argue some fringe cases, but this is the general rule.

Unfortunately for this argument, though, the majority of scenes in the Cafeteria have many people present in them, whether due to partaking in a meal or a fight. Overall, that makes it unlikely that someone would be in the Cafeteria by themselves or with only one or two other people. That's not always the case, though, so we can't rule out only a few people being in the Cafeteria!

Can we try to further pin down the time period when this confrontation occurs to try to figure out who could or could not have been in the Cafeteria?

Eden tells us that this confrontation happened on "the day Nico tried to kill Ace" and "the day that Arei and [Eden] had a falling out," which, by my notes, is Day 6. Arturo never challenges this notion, and it also lines up with Eden being afraid that someone is following her on the night of Day 6, so I think that this is true. The canonical events that Teruko takes part in during Day 6 are:

Teruko plays with cacti and gets caught by Eden

J and Arturo, Nico and Ace, and Arei and MonoTV fight

Charles' secret is revealed

Eden tries to host a clock decorating event

Arei has her breakdown and David comforts her

Teruko confronts Rose about her secret

Nico threatens to kill Ace

Nico's secret is revealed and Hu and David comfort them

J drags Teruko into a closet to get away from Arturo

Teruko runs into Eden in the Dress Up Room

Ace is nearly murdered and tries to confront Nico afterward

The events highlighted in green are the only ones of the day that none of Arturo, Eden, or Arei are in. Given that all of them were present for the confrontation, it could not have happened simulataneously with any of the other events.

If the confrontation occurred while Teruko discussed Rose's secret with her (and Nico was there), the killer could really be anyone other than Teruko, Rose, or Nico. Anyone who we didn't have eyes on theoretically could have been in the Cafeteria at that time.

If the confrontation took place while Nico was threatening to kill Ace, however, I doubt that anyone would have been able to listen in on the Infirmary conversation over that cacophony. Therefore, for the sake of someone listening in, that option should also be eliminated. If it took place while Hu and David were comforting Nico, things would look bad for Levi and Rose, as they were both still in the Cafeteria after Teruko left. I know what I said about multiple students in the Cafeteria probably all needing to be collaborators in the murder, but if it was Levi and an asleep Rose, perhaps Levi could have gotten away with eavesdropping by himself?

Despite all of that, though, I think that Arturo's relatively calm and normal (for him) demeanor during the closet scene would speak to the notion that he hadn't just heard that Eden knew about his sister's suicide. Therefore, I believe that the confrontation likely occurred between Teruko's two trips to the Dress Up Room, when she "spent the rest of the day in her room resting." That would line up both with Arturo's claim that he was just "in the middle of something with Julia" (Teruko saw them together just beforehand), give Arei more time to cool down and reflect after her big afternoon, and put the time of the confrontation very close to when Eden is worried about someone following her. (Although, it does give Arturo less time to have "been following" her, assuming that comment was about him.)

That would also give pretty much anyone the chance to have been in the Cafeteria, because Teruko wasn't with anyone at that time. However, it may have been during a pretty dinner-y time, which decreases the odds that anyone would have been in the Cafeteria alone or nearly-alone.

If all that wasn't enough, here's one final wrinkle: whoever witnessed all of this happening would have overheard Arturo threatening Eden and decided not to get involved themselves. It's not a total nail in the coffin, given that I would assume most theories in which the killer overheard the conversation require them to have not attempted to help Eden for one reason or another. But, it is something to consider. Personally, I have a particularly hard time believing that J, #1 Arturo Hater, and Levi, adventurer on the quest of being a good person in the same vein as Eden, wouldn't have tried to stop what was going on if they'd heard.

So, in summary, if the person who wrote the note is not Arturo, Eden, Arei, or someone working very closely with them, they have to be someone who was in the Cafeteria probably alone at the time of the confrontation (assuming Eden's words were even loud enough to be overheard from across the hallway through probably closed metal doors), who decided not to step in to save Eden.

What does that mean? Well, I think that it means that it's very likely that Arturo or Eden is the killer, because having all of those dubiously possible clauses happen to fire off all at once seems implausible to me. But, I already thought that Eden was the killer, so it may just be confirmation bias. Otherwise, since we can't pin down the exact time of the confrontation, I don't think it actually helps us to fully eliminate anyone from the running-- other than, arguably, Teruko. I do urge everyone who thinks that someone other than Eden or Arturo is the culprit to consider this data when coming up with their theories, though.

However, I will end this on the note that all of this deductive reasoning is... incredibly nitpicky. At the end of the day, the crew behind DRDT is very small, and I would understand if the exact details of where and when what parts of Arturo's secret were said or what exactly the Infirmary door looked like were things that they didn't take into account when planning out the murder.

I've seen some critics say about recent YouTube indie animation shows that the long hiatuses between episodes give the shows an unfair disadvantage. That's because the long gaps allow fans to scrutinize every detail of the worldbuilding and characterization and find their holes for far longer than a network television show would between episodes. While DRDT is not exactly one of these indie animation pilots, it is a YouTube show created by a small team of independent creators. I can only imagine that they may be facing the same thing with having to take a break mid-trial. If that's the case, and what I've presented here contradicts what actually happened in Chapter 2, know that I don’t hold it against DRDTdev at all, and don’t think you should, either. I would apologize for pointing out this “mistake,” if you can even call something this minor that.

However, I also think that all of this might be possible, perhaps even on a coincidental/subconscious level, because Eden or Arturo is the killer, and DRDTdev didn't think too much about the logistics of how someone else would overhear the conversation. So for now, I'm considering all of this logic as reasonable theorywork.

If you have any rebuttals though, whether about a specific character or the premise in general, I'd love to hear them! Or, if I missed some detail in the story in general that blows this theory to smithereens entirely, I wouldn't love to hear that, but it would probably be good if I did.

Otherwise, thank you for reading, and have a lovely rest of your day! :D

#danganronpa despair time #drdt #drdt spoilers #eden tobisa #arturo giles #arei nageishi #fanganronpa #sorry for going back to drdtposting when it's supposed to be milgo time i was simply watching the stream and had this epiphany #and needed to write it out #can't remember if i've said this on blog before but how it often works with me is that i have no ideas then i am struck with an idea #and then i CANNOT do anything else until i've written the idea out #i think i might've said that on the archetypes post? well it's still true so #every day i come up with eden propaganda. sorry queen #my theories #cw suicide mention

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