#arei writes

[areiton]

Sent @meidui a snippet of the year you were mine and her reaction was perfection.

[areiton]

The thing about dating Steve is that it's little moments of endless happiness.

He thought he understood it, what it meant to be happy in a relationship. To enjoy coexisting with someone else. He had been happy with Pepper, had loved living with Rhodey. They were part of him, woven into his soul in a way he couldn't--wouldn't-- put into words, as much because he hated the messy touchy feely bullshit as because he didn't want to quantify his love for them. Putting words to how he felt for Pepper Rhodey Happy Peter--it made them smaller, somehow.

So he knew, what it was to be happy with other people.

He thought he knew.

But then there is Steve.

Steve, who curls a strong arm around his waist and presses a kiss to the nape of his neck before he crawls carefully from their bed, a sweet apology for untangling their legs and taking his warmth from their bed, a ghost of his laugh chasing Tony as he grumbles into the pillows alone.

Steve, who leaves a bagel and coffee steaming on the counter for him, a wordless reminder that he is cared for, that even as Steve merrily chases himself around the city for twenty miles, his thoughts are of Tony, that he knows Tony well enough to know he won't feed himself when he scoots out the door for his first meeting of the day.

Steve, who tangles their feet together as they eat lunch together, a quick stolen half hour between meetings or projects or debriefs, and it's nothing special, it's cold cuts and a bag of chips, an apple shared between them and sweet tea glinting on Steve's lips as he listens to Tony complain, it's melting chocolate licked from his thumb and a salty kiss smacked to his lips before Pepper hauls him away for his next meeting.

Steve, who he finds in the kitchen, who hums a happy little note as Tony winds around him, rests his aching head against his broad back, who leans back for a kiss Tony is too eager to give, who promises dinner soon, and a quiet night, who never complains, when Tony vanishes down into the lab for a little bit of tinkering.

Steve, who he finds on the couch in his workshop, and Tony collapses next to him and burrows into him, and one strong arm tucks him close, and he breathes into it, the steady warm presense of him, the scent of lead and wood, and Steve's favorite soap, and he lets himself drift on it, on the warmth of him, solid and steady around him, and the knowledge that this moment, this moment that is like a thousand others is going to be followed by a thousand more.

They might fool around, when Steve coaxes him up and leads him to bed, and that is always it's own reward, but here, with the bots quiet and the lab still, he inhales the quiet peace of this moment, and adds it to a thousand others that are the happiest he's ever been.

i just want to read about stevetony cuddles 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[grapecherry]

“The Choice To Be Kind” - A Thematic Analysis

(ft. Eden, David, Teruko, & Arei)

For me, Eden is the heart of this chapter that the cast is revolving around, all serving to contrast her uniquely genuine sentiment.

“I chose to be this way.”

“I’ll still make the choice to be kind.”

Her intentions are very blatantly stated. This is a decision she actively makes everyday. It’s not a naïve default, it’s a continuous effort.

This is a very important distinction to establish going forward in examining other characters’ perspectives of kindness. Kindness was not something she was born with; it doesn’t run in her blood or her genes. It is not intrinsic to her existence.

Kindness is autonomous.

This alone is in conflict with how Arei, David, and Teruko, all address “goodness” as a trait instead of an acquired skill.

So there’s this constant reiteration of “you are good or you are bad”

This is countered by Eden saying “you can be good or you can be bad”

But then, most poignantly, it is Arei who concludes with the most self-realized perspective of “you are not good, nor are you capable of becoming good, just as you are not bad, nor capable of becoming bad, because there is no Good or Bad to become”

And this is by far the healthiest way to conceptualize self-improvement.

All we can do is hold ourselves accountable for bad actions and acknowledge that they will never render future acts of kindness futile.

None of this is to disparage the idea of change itself — it is to say that David, Teruko, and Eden have a much different understanding of what “change” implies here. For them, change is a means to be made from Bad to Good. We see this sentiment reflected in Teruko’s exchange with Whit.

And there in lies the issue: these concepts of concrete morality are unattainable! They’re not real.

But what can be changed is your behavior.

Just as Eden established, kindness is an effort, and you can make it continuously. But unlike Eden’s implied sentiment, Arei has realized that there’s no threshold of Good to be met through these efforts. The effort to be kind is simply that: an effort. No one is barred from making it, nor is anyone required to. The effort means something, just as a lack of it does, but there’s no permanence to it all. It’s simply a consistency of effort that credits you reliable or kind in the eyes of others.

But everyone wakes up a blank slate, capable of starting or losing that consistency just as easily as the next person. And because of that-

-no one is too far gone.

No one is too far behind, because there’s no finish line to be reached.

Everyone can wake up and try to be a little less shitty.

[terukotime]

You say you don’t like the killer reveal, why? I actually think dev made some great choices and I’d love to talk to you about your perspective.

i don't want to get too deep into it because, like i mentioned in my previous post, i don't want my criticism to come off as negativity towards the series or discourage anyone involved in the production of the show because it's honestly not a huge deal. like, it in no way ruins the show or makes it less enjoyable for me. and i don't think the choice of who the culprit is is a bad one at all, i'm mostly unsatisfied with the way the chapter handles it.

[spoilers beneath the cut, obvi lol. and please remember this is just my opinion. me having and expressing my opinion is not hate towards the series. i'm nervous enough as it is posting just this and not a bigger essay on all my thoughts because i really don't want to have this be misconstrued, nor do i want any criticism i have to give, regardless of how innocent and respectful my intentions, to make drdtdev or anyone who works on the series feel bad.]

i think Ace being the killer DOES make sense. i have no qualms with him being the blackened, in theory. do i think he could've made for a great survivor, or have really interesting growth throughout the coming chapters? yeah! i would have loved for Ace to be kept around for much longer. but him being the killer this chapter isn’t inherently bad. it's now clear that there's a specific direction Ace's character was meant to go in this story and i think that's fine.

my problem is with what *didn't* happen with Ace's character up to this point.

the chapter hasn't concluded yet so there's still a chance for my thoughts to change, though i don't think it'll make much of a difference. but i'm still waiting to see if it can stick the landing. and even if it doesn't, that's okay. i've already accepted it, i'm just still disappointed by it all the same.

Ace, honestly, hasn't played much of an active role in the story. he's been a source of conflict and comedic relief, and that's okay, not every character has to be as important as Xander or David...but he hasn't really gotten to *do* anything. this series is very character-driven, and thus is very focused on the relationships between other characters. Ace has only had one notable relationship (outside of his feud with Nico, but i'm not really including that as a "relationship" for obvious reasons), and that was with Levi. and that didn't even stay positive for very long. and we also know now that Levi didn't even care about him to begin with because he doesn't care about people in general.

not only did Ace never really get to establish any other relationships, no one ever LIKED him. of course a good portion of the fandom likes him, but in the actual story, no one cares about him. no one will miss him. his death is honestly kind of meaningless character-wise. does it serve as a lesson to some of the other characters? sure. but he's going to be dying here with no one ever liking or caring about him.

Min's story wasn't just a cautionary tale. people did like her, people did care about her. she was friends with a lot of characters, she got to have an impact in the daily lives of others. we got to know her better, the things she liked, her deeper thoughts and opinions on things. she got to do stuff, and we got to learn about her. her death meant more to the characters beyond just being the first culprit. she died as a person, not just as a character.

most of the stuff we know about Ace is surface level or things confirmed in Q&As. he doesn't get to contribute much aside from the aforementioned conflict/comedic relief. i understand where the show is going with that idea, and why him not being liked by anyone is a specific part of what led him to murder, but that's not really what irks me. it's that Ace never got to really be a *person.* he's essentially a plot device, serving the greater "good person" theme going on this chapter, and filling in the smaller roles in the story when needed, like an antagonist in a scene or delivering a gag. yes, his admittance to killing Arei and eventual post-trial trauma dump will give him a bit more humanity and character...but that's not really enough.

we only get to see Ace how the other members of the cast see Ace: his loud, combative, aggressive side. the side that makes people think he's nothing more than an angry meathead who can't do anything right. we never got to see much of his other sides, of a much more somber, melancholic Ace. receiving even a hint of the Ace we see in his confession of guilt beforehand would have given him the depth we needed before this point.

to explain what i mean: imagine how unsatisfying it would have been if we never got to actually see Arei's breakdown in the playground. if Teruko had left before it happened, and we only get to learn what happened from a flashback from David's perspective. we already feel the weight and tragedy of Arei's death when her body is discovered because we knew beforehand why she behaved the way she did, how she never even liked being the way she is, and wishing she could be a good person like Eden. if we didn't get to see that happen beforehand, Arei's death would feel very flat and detached. her character growth would've happened entirely retroactively.

that's how i feel with Ace. it's not like he didn’t get enough spotlight this chapter, he certainly did. but every scene he was in really didn't really add anything new to him. the only thing that "progressed" with him was his hatred and paranoia. we just see him descend with no uplifting moments, no emotional hook to make us feel anything for him. the closest we get is the scene where he's arguing with Nico and Veronika at lunch, ranting about how poorly everyone thinks of him and that they all assume that he's for some reason happy to be the way he is. but it's really the barest of scrapes towards the deeper layers of his character.

a big problem is that there were a lot of chances for his character to actively be *explored*, but instead, the narrative perspective of him stays completely stagnant. the time we get with him this chapter doesn't give him any greater focus. and sure, you could say that that might be a big giveaway to him being the culprit, but i think if the time between character spotlight is distributed evenly, that would be easily circumvented. there was a lot more time that could've been spent building Ace's character beyond his animosity and self-loathing tendencies. we could have had someone actually attempting to bond with him, even if it doesn't turn out well. even if all the characters distrust each other to varying degrees, there's still a lot of characters that like each other or have unique bonds with each other that make them stand out and feel worth remembering, because those bonds contribute something to their characters. but with Ace? he truly gets the short end of the stick, because this isn't just the characters neglecting him, it's the story itself. if Ace got to have a moment like Arei, maybe someone to confide in, even if he wasn't really friends with them or liked them at all, him being vulnerable just once and having a moment with someone else would have rooted him in more as a person who fell victim to what the killing game wanted from him and not just a fictional character fulfilling the purpose required of them in the story.

honestly, it's a bit of a slap in the face, the way the show goes about it. because in hindsight, Ace's whole character is *meant* to be wasted potential. after all, his related phrase on Mai's bio page is "a girl who had a bright future".

he was set up to have the potential to change, the potential to add more to the story, the potential to show us more than what we were given. and i think the show kind of knows that and specifically perpetuates that. the scene where Teruko tells Levi to give up on trying to apologize to Ace almost reads as the show itself telling you to give up on Ace. that, why should we care about him? he's not going to amount to what we want from him. there's no use in investing our feelings in him.

whether or not any of that actually was intentionally doesn't matter, unfortunately, because rewatching so many scenes having this new context really makes it all seem like Despair Time doesn't want you to care about Ace. that Ace is meant to be a waste, that that's the core of his character. him being the epitome of wasted potential could have been great, actually, if they chose to use even a slight bit of that potential to build him up more before his inevitable demise. instead we watch him eat shit throughout the entire show thus far only for him to get royally fucked at the very end in the worst way possible. Ace's theme of wasted potential is only wasted potential because nothing is ever done with him. not actively, anyways. whatever his post-trial confessional is like won't really give us what we needed from the start. Ace didn't just deserve better in his life. he deserves better as a fictional character. he deserved to be a person and not *just* a character. he deserved to have deeper, emotional character moments outside of the trial, long before his murder confession and rapidly approaching demise. he deserved to be 3-dimensional.

again, this is all just my personal opinion, and there's still a chance the show can stick the landing and make Ace as the culprit feel a lot more natural and deserved. i'm not really confident in that happening, but drdt is full of surprises as well as a lot of great writing. that being said, even though i believe they kinda fumbled the bag with Ace here, i don't hate this turn of events. although he's a big favorite of mine, i still wanted Eden to be innocent over him, because she's also a great character and her killing Arei would not only be pretty huge character assassination, but would also make Arei's death meaningless. and i also think there were other characters who could have been better candidates as the chapter 2 killer (not just Hu, i think Levi, Arturo, and maybe even J also could've made for compelling culprits with the right reasons).

i'm content with this. i'm heartbroken he's going so early and i wish the execution of his guilt had been a lot better, but overall it's not terrible. he just deserved so much more in many different ways.

[daavidchiem]

drdt ch2 ep 13 spoilers

the david arei scene from this episode brought up something i've always meant to say, which is that their dynamic is so SO underrated! i feel like their impact on each other should be talked about much more...

[demodraws0606]

Why is Arei's glove missing ?

Okay so I'm gonna need to give credit for this one because I didn't technically come up with this on my own

@anakirui Thank you for solving the mystery of Arei's glove with me

I'm going to show the Discord DMS for this theory because I think those explain it the best

So yeah, this a possible answer to the very frustrating mystery of what could be on Arei's glove.

We know that turpentine is sticky and maybe Arei got some on her glove while struggling, leading to her maybe grabbing onto Hu's hair and then getting hair stuck on her glove.

Hu couldn't manage to get rid of the hair on her glove leading to her hiding the evidence on her person.

[xmicrophonyx]

DRDT EP 15 spoilers

This is just for me lol. So, yall know my Ghost AU, right? Well, while some of the characterization may have been off (Arei disliking David), I do think I can come up with a way Arei wouldn't have known that Ace killed her.

As seen in the Closing Argument, Ace attacked Arei from behind, therefore, Arei would have never seen Ace. Now, an argument can be made that she could have noticed his arm or he spoke and she recognized him, but she must have been in flight-or-fight mode and not thinking about who her attacker is.

It doesn't really matter that much either way. I just don't like inconsistencies (that I unfortunately have, but not because of Ace lol)

[accirax]

Attempting to Debunk the Arei Dress Up Theory

(CW: death, a mention of blackface, and discussion of the BMI system. Spoilers through Chapter 2 of Trigger Happy Havoc and through Chapter 2 Part 1 of Danganronpa: Despair Time.)

As most of you are likely aware, it’s a popular theory that, for one reason or another, the killer of Danganronpa Despair Time Chapter 2 dressed up as the victim, Arei, and that you can see them doing so in this conversation.

Because Veronika brings up Teruko’s prosopagnosia (face blindness) later in the episode, because Arei unusually says nothing throughout this conversation, and because the Dress-Up Room was oh-so-conveniently introduced this chapter, at first glance, it seems very plausible that this could be the twist the Class Trial is heading towards. I, too, liked this theory at first, but then I got to thinking. And the more I thought about all the risk factors, the more I became convinced it was nearly impossible that anybody would have chosen to dress up as Arei.

So, that’s what I’m trying to prove today: no possible killer amongst this cast could have been dressing up as Arei at this exact moment. And, my method is the most fair thing I could think of: bringing up a bunch of points of contention that could trip up anybody, and giving each character either an X or a pass based on their own traits and skills.

Given that there are 14 points that I came up with, I think it’s fair to say that if the character in question receives seven Xs or more (AKA 50%), it would be basically impossible for their disguise to have fooled anyone for this long. I will be giving out double Xs (XX) on some occasions where I think that someone would have a particularly bad problem.

That is based on my discretion, but, uh… so is this entire theory. The good news is that, with this one, it’s particularly easy to play along at home! If you disagree with any of my points, you could run this experiment and change the boundaries or participants to your liking. I’d love to see it if you do!

For this theory, I will be tackling any important character that I think could be dressing up as Arei at this moment. However, that isn’t everybody. Here’s who I eliminated and why:

Because we’re looking at this particular conversation, no one who is present in the Cafeteria could be pretending to be Arei at this point. I mean, I guess if Arei was in on it, then the eventual killer could be dressing up as Arei, and Arei could be dressing up as them. But, if Arei is willing to cooperate… why wouldn’t Arei and the killer just act as themselves? So, Teruko, Hu, Ace, Nico, Veronika, and Levi cannot be dressing up as Arei.

Xander and Min are dead, so I’m excluding them from this conversation.

If Arei is dressing up as Arei, she’s just being Arei. That’s nothing unusual, so we’re not talking about it.

If you genuinely think MonoTV dressed up as Arei and is the Chapter 2 killer, I have many concerns for you.

…Please don’t make me speculate even further about Mai, my heart can’t take it. More seriously, I think that the odds of this huge Mai twist resulting in her being the Chapter 2 killer (and thusly getting executed) are low enough that I can excuse her. I guess it could be that Arei was already dead at this time due to someone else’s hand, and then Mai stepped in from who knows where to impersonate Arei for reasons unknown, but… that’s so speculative that, again, I’m not going to bother. It'd really freak out the killer, too; can you imagine?

Cool! So that leaves us with Arturo, Charles, David, Eden, J, Rose, and Whit as people who could theoretically be dressing up as Arei, likely as her killer.

Before we really get started, I just want to clearly state that, for the most part, I’m not relating this to the actual theories of the timing or method of Arei’s murder. I think it makes the most sense if the person dressing up as Arei then became the blackened, but I’m not actually going to tie anyone’s culprit feasibility into how well they could dress up. There’s no category based on “do they have an alibi for Arei’s time of death” or “could they overpower Arei in a fight.” It’s just an objective look at how good everyone would be at impersonating Arei. I'm going to address the hypothetical person dressing up as Arei as the killer for the remainder of the analysis, though, so keep that in mind.

Let’s get started with issue #1!

Issue #1: Arei’s Hair Color

One factor that even Teruko could notice is if the killer didn’t have the same hair color as Arei. The girl is super blue (Arei even claims so herself in the Chapter 2 Part 1 Q&A), so the killer missing her distinctive hue would be a definite misstep. Out of the characters we have left, I think that David or Arturo would be the best at matching her hair color naturally.

Thankfully, though, they don’t have to.

A point frequently brought up is that we’ve seen these wigs in the Dress-Up Room already. If the killer simply put this on as part of their Arei disguise, it doesn’t matter what their original hair color is. Now, this wig is a lighter color than Arei’s hair, and it’s a little curly, and you’d have to style it, and the white wig being so similar to Sora from SDRA2’s hair makes me think that this wig is meant to parody an existing fangan character… but I’m willing to ignore all that for the sake of theorizing. Plus on that last point, just because the wig may be referencing somebody else doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been used by the killer.

So, no Xs given out this time! A round of applause for all our contestants.

Issue #2: Arei’s Eyes

Similarly, if you showed up dressed as Arei without her beautiful cerulean orbs, a lot of people would probably notice that something was up. J, Whit, and debatably Arturo pass this one for having blue eyes themselves.

The frequent counterpoint to this is similar to the wigs– the Dress-Up Room could easily contain colored contacts which could allow anybody to make their eyes blue. So, let’s talk about the Dress-Up Room.

This is what it looks like in full. As you can see, it’s mostly clothes. Teruko calls it “a boutique,” and Whit and Hu only mention getting “new clothes,” implying that there’s mostly only clothes in this room. However, it’s not only clothes, because Teruko has this to say:

Teruko mentions things besides clothes in this room, but has nothing to say about contacts or makeup. If they do exist, I think it would have to be in this dresser area, either in the drawers or in the pink box.

Now, I don’t think it’s impossible that there could be contacts in either of these places, which is why I’m giving people who don’t have blue eyes a pass here. I’m also ignoring the specific iris/pupil designs that people have here (such as David’s stars or Whit’s heart-shaped pupils) for the sake of the benefit of the doubt. Nobody has patterns on their irises or heart shaped pupils in real life (even after eye surgery), so that could just be a fun design quirk the creator ignored.

However, I will be giving our first X of the game to Eden, because of her glasses. If Eden was dressing up as Arei, she couldn’t wear her usual glasses, which she presumably needs to see. She could remedy her vision impairment with contacts, except that she would have to be wearing colored contacts to have blue eyes.

I did look it up, and it is possible to make colored contacts with a prescription. However, they would have to be customly made for Eden, which would mean that either A) she had to already have them on her at the start of the game (highly unlikely) or B) whoever created this killing game’s set specifically made colored contacts with Eden’s prescription on the off chance that Eden both decided to kill someone AND decided to dress up as someone to do it. They’d have to do it in several colors, too, because they would have no idea who Eden was planning to kill/dress up as. That seems implausible enough to me to discredit her on this one count.

You could also argue that Eden decided to chance just not wearing her glasses here. However, that would raise the obvious problem that she wouldn’t be able to see either what’s in front of her or who’s far away from her, which are both bad for someone trying to go undercover. It would be really hard for her to get through the day without accidentally scrunching her eyes trying to see something, which would start giving her away. Additionally, if Eden’s vision requires a double prescription (such as needing bifocals), you cannot make contacts for that kind of vision impairment.

So, yeah. TL;DR, it’s still an X for Eden only here.

Issue #3: Arei’s Skin Color

Arei has light skin, which you can see on her face and other various body parts in her typical clothing. Thus, anybody with dark skin would struggle impersonating Arei, because they would need to put paint/makeup on their face, neck, arms, hands, and thighs to avoid suspicion.

My point about the Dress-Up Room also comes back here. We haven’t seen any evidence that there is makeup in the Dress-Up Room, and other than potentially in Storage, I don’t think there’s a great alternate place to get it. I would believe that both Whit and Hu might wear makeup, so it would have been easy for one of them to comment about the cosmetics present in this room if they existed, and particularly if they would later be murder relevant.

However again, for the sake of theorizing, I’ll say that there is light skin paint/makeup in one of the drawers that a darker skinned person could use to cover themselves up. It would still be a time consuming plan with a high chance of failure, though, so I’m giving Charles, Eden, and Rose an X for impracticality here.

Issue #4: Arei’s Ethnicity

(This section has been edited since its original posting. Thank you to @another-danganronpa-fan and @xmicrophonyx for drawing my attention to the August 6th Q&A and more importantly the March 6th Q&A!)

Although Google says that the last name “Nageishi” is most common in Brazil (???), given that it’s Japanese in origin (as are Arei, Fuyuko, and Natusko’s names), I’m pretty sure that Arei is Japanese. And many of the other students… are not.

Look, I don’t want to bring real world politics into silly anime murder theory, but I really, really doubt that the creator would want to have a person of one race dress up as someone of another race, especially for characters who would have to change their skin tone. It’s not as obviously bad as a character straight up doing blackface, but it’s close enough that I think the creator would know to avoid putting that beat into their story. I’m tempted to give characters that fail here a double X, but since it’s technically only my opinion, I’ll leave it at one.

Now, I am assuming characters’ ethnicities here based on last names, which isn’t a foolproof plan. It doesn’t account for characters who are adopted, or who have a mixed race lineage. Still, I think that, combined with their designs, it’s the best we have to go off of.

Therefore, I’m giving an X to Arturo (likely caucasian), Charles (confirmed Hispanic), J (confirmed Hispanic), and Rose (French last name, but given that she is obviously black I would say likely Afro-French/potentially Creole?). Because David (likely Vietnamese) is still East Asian, I’m letting him slide; same with Whit (confirmed caucasian/asian). Although Eden's skin tone still troubles me, I try not to penalize or benefit characters multiple times for the same trait. Thus, because Eden is canonically half black and half Japanese, she will also not get an X.

I truly hope that I did not offend anybody with this section. If I said something incorrect, please let me know so that I can apologize and either correct it or remove this section as quickly as possible.

Issue #5: Arei’s Height

Arei is 5’7” (170 cm), so for the killer to impersonate her, they’d have to be somewhere around her height. I know that the Arei we saw was probably sitting down, but like… the killer would still have to walk to and away from the table to get there, which means people could have seen them standing. Not to mention, your height still shows when you’re sitting down if it’s off enough.

I think that being one inch (2.5 cm) off in either direction would be enough to bypass most people (we’ll get to that), so anyone in the 5’6”-5’8” (167-173 cm) range could pull it off. Therefore, J passes at a perfect 5’7” (170 cm), and so does Whit (5’6”/167 cm). Arturo (6’3”/190 cm) gets our first XX here for being literally over half a foot (15 cm) off. Eden just barely avoids being half a foot off at 5’2” (157 cm), so she gets an X. So do Charles (5’9”/175 cm), David (5’9”/175 cm), and Rose (5’4”/162 cm).

Issue #6: Arei’s Weight

I bring in this point mostly to communicate how likely it is that the killer could properly fit into Arei’s clothes. If the killer weighed too much more than Arei, then the clothes would be too tight, and if they weighed too much less than Arei, the clothes would be super baggy.

The best way I figured I could analyze this is to use a Body Mass Index (BMI) chart, which, if you didn’t know, is a ratio doctors use to compare people’s heights to their weights to determine whether or not they may be over- or underweight. Now, there have been several critiques of the BMI system, particularly regarding athletes– muscle is more dense than fat, so some of the fittest people in the world classify as morbidly obese under the system. It also wasn’t designed for anime characters with unrealistic weight expectations (seriously how tf was Mukuro 5’7”/169 cm and 97 lbs/44 kg she should've been DEAD long before the Spears of Gungir).

Because of how unreliable this method is, I won’t be giving any characters XX on this one no matter how far off they are. However, I will be giving one X to anybody who is more than two points off of Arei’s BMI. Because Arei clocks in at 19.5, that means anyone in the range of 17.5-21.5 would be safe.

Weirdly enough, with that range, the only two people who get an X in the weight category are the same people who passed the height category, J (22) and Whit (22). Arturo (21.5), Charles (21), David (21), Eden (20), and Rose (20) all have fairly similar proportions to Arei.

Issue #7: Arei’s Build

Speaking of muscles, Arei’s the Ultimate Bowler, dammit! She’s a professional athlete, and Rose even points out her strength during the arm wrestling contest.

Although I don’t think that the killer would need to expect to demonstrate Arei’s strength (or especially her bowling skills) when in disguise, you can still gauge how muscular someone is just from looking at them. For example, were Levi an option, he would be way too muscular to pass off as Arei.

This point becomes a lot easier to score with the official strength chart that the creator released in the Chapter 2 Part 1 Q&A!

I know that the creator warned us to not take this diagram too seriously, but for the sake of fun speculation, I think that this semi-canon material is the best we have to go off of. Not to mention, each section is only one point out of fourteen overall. If we're a little off here, it'll be okay.

Besides, I suspect that they put in that warning more so for people who do intense math about crime theories (like people who calculate that anyone who lifted Arei’s body using a single pulley system would have to be able to lift approximately 64 lbs/29 kg what who said that). It's understandable if they didn’t complete a physics thesis paper on exactly how a drop of blood would fall on a cashmere sweater when it’s a humid July day and the victim ate sauerkraut ice cream earlier.

Jokes aside, I’ll say that anyone in the fit to average range would be able to pass as Arei at a glance. That means that David and J are a-okay. Arturo, Charles, Rose, and Whit all get one X for being out of shape. Eden gets XX for being even more out of shape than the out of shape people.

Issue #8: Arei’s Voice

Out of all the voices in the cast, I think that Arei has one of the highest pitches. Thus, if the killer was suddenly called upon to speak as Arei, they would need to possess the ability to speak in a high pitched voice to even have a chance of mimicking Arei.

You could argue that the killer would go in with the intention of not ever speaking as Arei, but you have to remember that this killer was intentionally going out and being around people so that their disguise could be seen. A simple “how are you this morning?” or “did you get enough to eat?” could ruin your plans. You could choose to not respond, but part of the reason why people suspect that the Arei in this conversation isn’t Arei is because she doesn’t speak. AKA, Arei being quiet is out of character for her, and not speaking would immediately raise suspicion!

I’m giving David a XX because his voice is deep enough that I think he would seriously struggle to reach Arei’s pitch. Arturo, Charles, and Whit have deep enough voices that I think that they could easily be caught, but it wouldn't be so unreasonable that they couldn't give it a try. So, they get a regular X. Eden and Rose pass this test with flying colors. J has a lower voice among the girls, but I think she could speak in a higher pitch if she wasn’t so concerned with sounding girly, and her experience with actors might give her an edge.

Issue #9: Arei’s Wit

If “Arei” is forced to talk, then “she” also needs to sound like Arei when she does. Therefore, the killer needs to be someone who could mimic Arei’s personality to a certain degree– AKA, they need to bring the savage energy that Arei brings to her bullying roasts. After all, responding rudely is probably the best way to make sure that your interrogator shuts up and leaves you alone.

I’m just gonna run through this one in alphabetical order. Arturo insults people on the reg, so other than the fact that “Arei’s” insults might be a little more appearance-based than normal, he’d be fine. Charles has been seen trading verbal blows with Teruko, so I believe he could pull it off. David radiates so much theater kid energy that I’m sure he could pull Arei off as if it were the role of his life. Eden… is the first character here that I think might get an X. Her general personality is super nice, and even when she does oppose someone, it’s either out of sad desperation (like when she defends Arei in the second Class Trial) or in a silly way (like when she blackmails Teruko). Even if she decided to be mean for the sake of her murder scheme, I just don’t know if she has the killer instinct to come up with ruthless burns as quickly Arei does. While not as much as Arei, J is pretty blunt and rude, plus she’s had plenty of target practice with Arturo. Although Rose is very good at replicating paintings, I don’t think she’d have the energy or present-mindedness to replicate Arei’s personality, so she gets an X too. Whit has made jokes that come off as rude to others in the past (like Xander in the prologue, or Charles in the laundry scene), and he’s hung out with Arei a couple of times, so I think he could do it.

Issue #10: Arei’s Relationships

We’ve discussed somebody talking to Arei in the abstract, but now I want to get more specific. Right before the Class Trial occurred, Arei made some very notable relationships with people that were not made public knowledge– namely, her emotional reliance on David, her unwavering loyalty to Eden, and her defensive feud with Arturo.

The Arturo one isn’t really a problem, as just being normally mean to Arturo would probably suffice. But what if David came up to her at lunch, put a hand on her shoulder, and asked her how she was doing? If “Arei” started insulting him or manipulating him, he would immediately suspect something was up.

Considering that, as the evidence stands, I’m pretty sure no one character (other than Arei) definitely knew about all three of these relationships prior to the Class Trial, I could give everyone an X. However, there is a way you can bypass this– if the killer was confident that they knew about the way Arei felt about everyone, even if they were actually wrong.

I was already going to give Eden, David, and Arturo a pass for knowing about at least some of the relationships, but under this lens, it’s even more believable. Eden is in the best position, given that she knows about herself and Arturo, and at least saw David there when she ran away. Given that Arei thought of her as a friend, it’s also possible that Arei would have mentioned to Eden that David was the one who motivated her to defend Eden. David knew about Arei’s relationship with himself, and knew that she planned to patch things up with Eden. He didn’t have any reason to suspect anything weird with Arturo, but again, the relationship didn’t change all that much. Arturo would have struggled with David, but he at least knew about himself and Eden. I believe he could have been overly confident in assuming that Arei hated everyone other than Eden, so I’ll let him slide.

However, I think Charles, Whit, Rose, and J would all get an X. Charles is a smart guy who I can’t remember ever talking to Arei one on one, so I find it hard to believe that he believed he knew everything there was to know about Arei’s relationships. Whit spent more time with Arei, but he’s also more emotionally aware– he knows how complex people are, and therefore probably wouldn’t bank on nailing how Arei feels when he’s spent so much time off with Charles. Rose is often asleep and therefore misses out on a lot of the daily life. She sometimes can’t even remember who people are period, so I doubt she’d have the confidence to believe she understood Arei’s relationships. J is definitely the closest on this point, given that she’s interacted with Arei a decent amount and is pretty confident in herself. However, she’s pretty practical (just like her effects), so it’s still enough of a stretch that I’d give her the X.

Issue #11: The Killer’s Skill

This category asks, “how much does this plan rely on the talents included in the killer’s own Ultimate ability?” Don’t get me wrong– not every case, canon or fanon, needs to utilize part of the killer’s Ultimate talent. For instance, Mondo didn’t use any skills involved in being the Ultimate Biker Gang Leader when he killed Chihiro, unless you count his overall strength and attitude.

I’m actually asking this because I think that the disguise plan makes a lot of sense with J’s talent, the Ultimate Effects Artist. As I’ve explained before, J specializes in practical theater effects, which would make her far and away the best at pulling off the visual magic needed to make herself look like Arei. So, what of everyone else?

Think about it this way: imagine if you were playing the first case of Trigger Happy Havoc, and you learn that the blackened threw Hiro’s crystal ball at the buttons to make the Trash Room open. Then, you deduce, aha! Taka must be the culprit! In this universe, you’re right, and Taka is executed. But, wouldn’t it be weird if Taka committed the crime doing something that lined up exactly with Leon’s skill, and there was no focus given to it at all?

If someone was killing Arei and using J’s talent to do it, I would expect that they would be doing it with the intention of framing J. And I don’t think that anything else in this case purposefully makes it look like J did it, even if J actually did do it. Thus, I feel justified in giving Arturo, Charles, David, Eden, Rose, and Whit Xs for this category.

Issue #12: The Killer’s Absence

In my mind, the theoretical point of dressing up as Arei is so that, if you killed or otherwise incapacitated Arei earlier in the murder process, nobody would find it suspicious that she was gone. That, of course, raises another question��� what if people find it suspicious that you are gone? Because of that, I think that the killer is someone who would have to be able to slip away from the group relatively unnoticed.

Charles and Whit are giving each other Xs here. Since the beginning of Chapter 2, it seems like these two hang out with each other pretty much 24/7. If one of them was gone, the other would certainly notice. (I’m excluding the possibility of one of them being an accomplice for the other because I find it incredibly implausible for actual murder- and character-related reasons.) Not to mention the incredibly gay funny sequence of events in the second Class Trial where David questions if anybody could really have a solid alibi for the entire day, then Charles says that he was with Whit for the entire day, and David doesn’t even bat an eye. In theory, this also means that Charles and Whit were actually together for the entire day, which means that it probably should be impossible for either of them to have been Arei during the scene at lunch. ...Oops?. Speaking of spending the day together, though…

J and Arturo are also exchanging Xs. If J was busy dressing up as Arei all day, Arturo would have been roaming the halls calling her name. And even if J would enjoy Arturo being gone for a day, she would certainly remember it. She even says as much in the Class Trial:

Given that the “that time period” J is talking about is around 7:30 PM, it’s not fully impossible that either of them could have been Arei at lunch. However, they would still both generally notice the absence of the other, so they get an X.

I think Eden, David, and Rose all get passes, though. Eden is a generally sociable person who likes to talk to others, but she doesn’t have one particular person she’s attached to as much as Charles and Whit/J and Arturo are. The person who would probably be most likely to notice would either be Arei, but she would be dead/incapacitated, or Hu, who was dealing with Nico and Ace at the time. Plus, if she was absent from one conversation, people would probably just assume she was talking to someone else somewhere else. David also generally seemed to get along with people, but also seemed to spend a lot of time alone. Rose… really doesn’t have a lot of close friends, and also isn’t much of a talker. If she was gone, people would probably just assume she was off sleeping somewhere.

Issue #13: The Arturo Pass

Arturo is a plastic surgeon, a profession which looks at the smallest details of a person’s face and tweaks them, even in slight ways, to make them look their conventional best. Or, essentially, if something is even the slightest bit off about Arei’s face, Arturo could probably pick it up from a mile away.

Now, I know that Arturo did not appear in the specific conversation in which Teruko saw “Arei” being quiet. However, there’s no reason that the killer would have to believe that they couldn’t run into Arturo unless they were Arturo, right? Anybody could come into the Cafeteria, so unless the killer did something to stop him, Arturo could have come, too. Since we can’t prove that Arturo and the killer meeting did or didn’t happen, I think we have to assume it was a possibility.

Therefore, I think that all candidates except Arturo fail here because it’s unlikely that they could stand up to Arturo’s scrutiny. Additionally, I would say that J doubly fails because Arturo has spent so much time staring at her face specifically. It’s possible that he could have forgotten what the rest of the casts’ ugly mugs look like, throwing them all into the pile of disgusting rejection. But there’s no way that he wouldn’t be able to recognize Julia’s glowing beauty under the makeup and clothing that makes her look horrifying.

To summarize, Arturo passes his own check because he would have no reason to call himself out, J gets a XX because of how tuned in Arturo is to how she looks, and everybody else (Charles, David, Eden, Rose, Whit) gets a regular X for being ugly in their own unique ways.

Issue #14: The Rose Pass

Same as before, except even worse. Remember when I said we were coming back to the “one inch in either direction could fool most people” thing? We know that Rose can canonically notice 1/16th in (0.16 cm) growths in people, so having literally anything off here could spell death.

I am aware that Rose is sleepy, forgets what people look like sometimes, and is somewhat absent minded. So, let me address those concerns as best I can.

For the first, recall that this is the day where Teruko wakes up four hours late. Therefore, when she enters the Cafeteria, it’s actually closer to noon than it is to morning. Even if the killer was only dressed up as Arei around the time of that meal, we already know that she was awake at that time– Teruko leaves the Cafeteria and runs into Rose around the Gym directly afterward.

For the second and third, we only know that she only forgot about who J was before the first Class Trial. I would expect that after a murder actually occurred, she would be much more aware of her surroundings, and more likely to remember what people look like. She has nightmares about the trial and execution, which every student (except Xander) attended. With her photographic memory, I would expect that she would remember exactly what they looked like at that time. Not to mention that, under my system, everybody has at least one unrelated X. Those are all things that would stick out, which Rose is much more likely to notice than something that’s normal.

That’s my longwinded way to explain that pretty much everyone (Arturo, Charles, David, Eden, J, Whit) is getting an X here. Rose doesn’t because she, again, would not have to worry about running into herself.

The Grand Summary!

So, in the end, we see that (drumroll please…)

DAVID COULD FUCKING PASS AS AREI ARE YOU KIDDING ME–

Ahem. Well, with my analysis today, we have proven that nobody in the cast could have been dressing up as Arei at the time of that lunch conversation… other than David fucking Chiem, apparently. Now, keep in mind that he is just barely hitting under fifty percent here, and that he double failed on the voice.

But, uh, there you go, swap theorists. If anybody was going to swap with Arei, it would have been David. I look forward to seeing everybody’s theories about how David is the true killer of Chapter 2 via crossdressing.

Tip: I am so fucking mad. See ya, everybody– thanks for reading!

[thefandomenchantress]

Height Changes: The Fic

I thought it would be funny to write a little story about how everyone reacted to the non-canon height changes, (even if I am two months late whoops), so here you go! This takes place before any murders occur, so everyone can make an appearance.

---

Rose slowly exited her room, yawning into her hand. She usually didn't wake up in time to attend breakfast these days, but MonoTV said it had a special announcement today, so she'd woken up early. Or at least gotten out of bed early, she would probably take another nap in the cafeteria--

Rose suddenly stopped in her tracks. "Huh...?" She mumbled to herself, looking around the hallway.

At that moment, Nico exited their room and saw Rose. They slowly approached her. "Rose? Are you alright? You're just...standing here." Rose turned to them and only seemed to become more confused, glancing around again. "Rose?" Nico repeated.

"You're...shorter than you were yesterday. I think." Rose said, turning back towards her door. "And I'm shorter, too. Yesterday, I saw my name plate from a different angle. We both lost an inch of our height."

Nico was silent for a moment, perplexed. Rose had caught smaller differences in her own height before, even without a point of reference, so they doubted she would be wrong now. "Huh? It's not that I don't believe you or anything, but how would we grow smaller overnight?"

"Hm...I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with what MonoTV is going to announce." Rose answered, yawning and beginning to walk towards the cafeteria. "There's not anything we can do about it, though, so I guess we should just tell the others and move on."

Nico hesitantly followed her. Despite the strangeness of it all, she was right. There wasn't anything they could do about suddenly being shorter, besides drinking more milk to try to get taller again. But they'd never been too attached to their height, so there wasn't much point in that. Besides, they had read a while ago that milk doesn't help much with getting taller anyway.

The two entered the cafeteria. They heard a loud crash from the kitchen. They looked at each other and shrugged, wandering over to the kitchen to check it out. Hopefully nothing bad had happened.

When they entered, they saw Eden on ground, a layer of powdered sugar covering her pants, vest, the floor and the counter. "Oh. You fell. No one died." Rose said, surprised.

"Huh? Of course no one died! I was just trying to reach the powdered sugar. It was in the same place it always was, so I thought I could reach it just fine, but I could only grab onto the edge of the bag, and it fell on me." Eden explained, slowly getting up off the ground and dusting off her pants. Or she tried to, anyway, but she just ended up just smearing it.

Rose looked her up and down. "You couldn't reach because you lost a few inches of height last night. Four, maybe?" Rose picked up some powdered sugar from the counter and licked it off her fingers. Yum.

"Wha-?! No, I can't have gotten shorter! Not in such little time! And I was already pretty short..." Eden began measuring herself in relation to Nico and realized that she was indeed more than a few inches away from their height now, unlike before. "Aw...I guess I am shorter..." She admitted.

"Did everyone get shorter last night...? What kind of motive would that be? No one would murder just to be taller again, right?" Nico asked.

"I would hope not." Eden agreed. "Not being able to reach the top shelf isn't exactly in my top ten reasons to kill someone." She laughed a bit nervously.

"Why are we making top ten lists about murder?" Whit asked, entering the kitchen door with Charles. After approaching the counter and making a handprint in the powdered sugar, he said, "Personally, I would never murder someone directly. No need to get my hands dirty." He held up his now sugar-covered hand.

Charles sighed, pretending not to be amused. "Who made this mess? Whit and I were going to use the kitchen."

"Oh, sorry! That was me, I dropped the powdered sugar and now it's...well, everywhere. I'll clean it up while you two cook, though!" She waved as she left to find a broom and dustpan. And some wipes.

"Hm. Nico, not everyone got shorter. Whit did, by an inch, but Charles got taller." Rose pointed out, carefully looking the two up and down.

"Huh? I'm not that short, you don't have to belittle me." Whit sighed dramatically before snickering. "But, uh, seriously. What do you mean?"

"What I said. You got shorter and Charles got taller. Me, Nico, and Eden got shorter, too. We think it might be a motive or something." Rose explained, yawning and returning to her thoughts about napping.

"That's impossible, you said Whit was a whole inch shorter. He couldn't have shrunk by that much in less than 12 hours." Charles argued, wondering if this was some sort of practical joke.

"You're two inches taller. Go find a tape measure if you don't believe me." Rose shrugged. "Or wait for MonoTV to say something."

Whit brought his hand from the top of his own head to where it measured up against Charles. "Huh, I guess I am shorter in comparison to you now. Guess I'll never be one of those ideal six-foot tall guys anymore. That was a totally achievable goal before." He said sarcastically, pretending to pout for a moment.

Charles, a man of science, was now very confused. "No, that's...but...Maybe we should go find a tape measure." He decided. "I know I was 5'9" before, so if Rose is right, I should be 5'11"..." He began to mumble to himself, writing down the two numbers in his notepad.

"If you wanna, then sure, let's go." Whit agreed, and the two headed off to find a tape measure in the storage room, leaving Rose and Nico standing there by themselves.

"What are you guys up to?" J asked as she entered before stopping in her tracks. "What happened in here?" She pointed to the mess on the floor and counter. There was now an Eden-shaped space of clean floor from where Eden had landed before she got up.

"I fell when I grabbed the powdered sugar." Eden explained, now entering the room again with a dustpan and broom. "Sorry!" She began to clean up the mess.

"It's fine, I don't really care as long as you're cleaning it yourself. I was just wondering." She spotted Nico and Rose staring. "What?" She asked.

"Wait, let me try." Nico said to Rose, squinting at J and trying to analyze her height. "Is she...two inches shorter?"

"Close. It's three." Rose corrected.

"What the fuck are you guys talking about?!" J exclaimed, thoroughly confused.

"Oh. Right. Everyone's heights are changed. We think it's a motive or something." Rose explained. She was getting tired of explaining this to every new person she saw...That nap was sounding nice...

"What?! No way, I couldn't have gotten shorter in one night." J protested.

"It's true. We checked." Charles said as he and Whit entered the room with their newly acquired tape measure. "Rose is correct. Our heights have changed. Somehow."

J was certainly not happy about this. She had always been proud about being a bit tall for a girl her age. "Can I see that?" She asked, gesturing to the tape measure. Charles gave it to her, and after some difficulty she measured herself with it. "Holy shit, I am shorter!" She exclaimed, now extremely annoyed. Whichever god decided to curse her to be shorter despite the laws of nature, she smited them. She didn't care if smiting only worked the other way around, she would find a way to do the reverse.

"Shorter than what?" Teruko asked as she and Xander entered the room. They'd bumped into each other in the hallway (not literally this time) and had decided to head to the cafeteria for breakfast together.

"Shorter than yesterday!" J exclaimed, triple-checking her measurements. "I'm three inches shorter!"

"What? How did that happen, there's no way." Xander said, before analyzing her carefully. "But now that you mention it, you do look smaller to me than you did before..."

"Maybe that's because you're two inches taller, too." Rose suggested. "I'm surprised no one but me notices until I tell them...Don't your guy's clothes fit differently or something?"

"No, my jacket still fits like it did yesterday." J pulled on her sleeves to make sure they didn't feel longer on her than they used to.

"Hm." Teruko put a hand to her chin thoughtfully. "Rose, have I changed at all?"

"Yeah, you definitely got shorter by...five inches." Rose answered, closing her eyes. Maybe she could take a short nap while they sorted these things out again...

"So if me and J got shorter and Xander got taller, are we changing based on gender?" Teruko asked.

"No, Whit got shorter instead of taller. It's not based on gender. It seems like the changes are random so far." Nico said. "Me and Rose think it's something for the motive, but we're not sure why anyone would kill over this."

"I hope all the motives are like this." Eden said as she dumped all the swept-up powdered sugar into the trash. "Sure, this is weird and kinda inconvenient, but we'll be able to get through this!"

"You're right, Ms. Eden!" Xander agreed. "This is a pathetic excuse for a motive, if it is one. MonoTV won't break are spirits this easily!"

Arturo entered the kitchen at that moment, before immediately turning to leave after he saw how many ugly people were gathered here. "Ugh." Was all he had to say.

"Oh! Arturo, wait, let's check your height!" Eden exclaimed.

"What?" Arturo asked incredulously. "I'm 6'3". Why do you want that information? Actually, I don't care, just let me leave." He began to exit again.

"Wait, but you must've changed last night! Rose, can you--Oh." Realizing Rose was asleep, Eden went to plan B. "Well, if you let me get the tape measure, we can show you."

Deciding that the only way to get these people to stop pestering him was to indulge them for a few moments, Arturo sighed and waited for Eden to come over with the tape measure. "Um, I'm not tall enough to reach, but if you check yourself, you'll see." She handed him the tool, and he sighed again before checking his height.

"Oh, wow, who would've guessed. I'm 6'3"." He said in a monotone voice, obviously fed up with them.

"Wha-?! But that can't be right..." Eden trailed off. Arturo rolled his eyes.

"...Rose?" Nico gently poked the sleeping girl in the arm. She slowly opened her eyes. "Could you check Arturo's height? He says he's the same."

Rose squinted for a moment before nodding. "He's the same." She agreed, before closing her eyes again.

Teruko raised an eyebrow. "So then not everyone changed. That's strange."

"'Changed'? What are you people talking about? And why are you all gathered in here taking people's measurements?" Arturo asked. "This air is becoming suffocating."

"Well, we didn't gather here on purpose, people just keep walking in." Eden explained. "And we're taking measurements because everyone but you got shorter and taller last night."

Before Arturo could come up with a response to that, Veronika walked into the room. "Arturo! There you are!" She exclaimed, and Arturo groaned in annoyance. Veronika's gaze swept across the room. "Hm? Why is everyone in here?" She asked. "Is something exciting happening?"

"Sort of. Everyone's heights are all changed. Except Arturo's, apparently." J answered, totally definitely not bitter about the person she disliked the most being spared.

"Oh! I guess a lot of you do look shorter." Veronika said. "And I do feel a little bit different, but my dress has pretty specific measurements and it fits exactly the same. Did our clothes get switched out with new copies?"

"We're not sure. Me and Rose said we'd just wait to see what MonoTV says about it." Nico said. There were a lot more people to talk in front of now, so they were starting to get a bit nervous. "Right, Rose?" They asked.

"Eh?" Rose mumbled, waking up again and seeing Veronika. "Veronika's one inch shorter." She said. "Is that what you wanted?"

"No, I was just saying you said we should wait and see what happens since we can't do anything about our heights." Nico answered.

"Oh. Yeah, that's all we can do, I guess." She yawned. "Should we move to the cafeteria? There's a lot of people in here now."

Everyone agreed and they made their way to the cafeteria (except Eden and Whit, who had never gotten around to actually making breakfast). "Okay, so who else are we missing? Now I'm excited to see all the new changes!" Veronika exclaimed, watching the cafeteria doors.

She didn't have to wait long for Levi to enter. He stopped in his tracks when he saw everyone simultaneously turn to look at him. "Ah. Um. Hello." He said, wondering what he did to garner all this attention.

"Levi! Quick, see how tall you are!" Veronika said, practically throwing the tape measure at him. He managed to catch it and did as she told him, now extremely confused. He rarely took measurements of himself, since in his profession he was usually tailoring things to his client's measurements.

When he saw that he was taller than he remembered, he was surprised, double checking his math. "I'm...6'3"?" He said questioningly.

"Is that taller than yesterday?" Veronika asked.

"I...Well, I would say yes, but how--" Before Levi could finish his sentence, a loud bang echoed through the cafeteria. Everyone turned to see that it was and quickly realized Arei had slammed the cafeteria door open, a smug-looking Ace behind her.

"I'm taller than Arei!" He exclaimed, explaining why he was in a surprisingly good mood. Arei sent a death glare at him, and he flinched.

"Oh, wow. 7 inches. That's a new record." Rose said from her seat, looking Arei up and down. "And it looks like guys were the first to notice on your own, too."

Veronika approached Arei with the tape measure. "Almost everyone changed heights! You changed the most, though. I wonder why?" She began to measure Arei. "Why are you mad about it, anyway?"

"Because Ace keeps being a smug little bastard about being taller, I bet." J guessed.

"See, this is why you're my favorite." Arei smiled at J, who wasn't sure if she should be flattered or not.

Veronika's smile turned slightly mischievous. "Hm, I would've expected you to be a bit more upset, Ace." Ace raised an eyebrow, now a bit suspicious. Veronika just smiled. "Arei is five feet on the dot now!"

Ace blinked, comparing himself to Arei's height. "Huh? But..." His expression turned distressed as he realized he was only two and three inches taller than her.

"Hm. Ace is three inches shorter." Rose supplied, only confirming Ace's fears.

"Ha!" Arei exclaimed, poking Ace. "You're super short now!"

"So are you!" Ace shot back, now returning to his usual angry demeanor.

"Yeah, but I'm a girl. It's cute when I'm short." Arei said, now confident and happy again. Their dynamic had almost immediately returned to normal.

Ace grumbled about still being taller as Min entered the room. She went to go sit down by herself before noticing that everyone was staring at either her or Rose. "Two inches shorter." Rose said, and everyone nodded.

Min, puzzled, wasn't sure if she should engage or not. Veronika made the decision for her. "Everyone's heights changed last night! I'm guessing you think that's impossible, right?" She asked.

"What? Of course drastically changing your height in one day is impossible. What are you talking about?" Min wondered if Veronika was just messing with her. That seemed in-character for her.

"Tell that to Arei! She shrank a whole seven inches!" Veronika exclaimed, gesturing to Arei, who posed. Min looked her up and down. She did seem way shorter, but...

Veronika giggled at Min's confounded expression. "I thought it was impossible, too, yet here we are." Charles said.

"...Well, I suppose I can't claim it couldn't happen when it...Clearly did." Min decided. There was no way this was a prank if Charles was involved, he wouldn't participate in something like that.

"Ah? Is everyone already gathering in here for the announcement?" Hu asked after she entered the room, seeing everyone already there.

"Almost everyone. Rose, is she the same? She looks the same." Nico said to the half-asleep girl beside them.

"Yeah, she looks exactly the same. She and Arturo are the only ones that didn't change, I guess." Rose agreed.

"And Levi." Ace added.

"Nope! He's two inches taller!" Veronika exclaimed, just to see his reaction.

"Wha-?! But you're already so fucking tall, why do you get to be taller?!" Ace said, looking up at Levi with a betrayed expression, as though he somehow planned this.

"Um. I apologize?" Levi answered uncertainly.

"I...assume that was an unnecessary apology?" Hu said, wanting to say it wasn't Levi's fault but not sure what was going on or if it actually was.

"It was, almost all our heights have been changed but the changes are random. We think." Nico explained.

"What's this about height changes?" David asked as he walked in, the final person to enter.

"Mr. David! They didn't do anything to you, did they?!" Xander exclaimed protectively.

"What? Who's 'they'?" David answered, very confused.

"No, he's two inches shorter." Rose corrected. "He's not the same."

"I'm shorter? Are you sure?" David asked. Rose nodded. "Ah...So is this the motive?"

"Nope!" Suddenly, MonoTV popped up from...Somewhere. "Wow! You guys actually all gathered without me telling you to! Good job!" It exclaimed, with a :D face on it's screen. "But I do have one complaint. You guys keep calling this a motive, when it clearly isn't! My motives are much better than this! I'm offended." It made a >:( face to show it's grumpiness.

"Wait, so this isn't something that would be fixed if someone murdered?" Teruko asked. "We just have to accept this now?"

"Yep! I thought about making it temporary, but the audience is loving it! So your new heights are here to stay now!" It rolled around in circles happily, excited about the good ratings.

"You can't just fucking come in here and change our heights!" Ace exclaimed. "That's not how it fucking works!"

"It is now!" MonoTV seemed gleeful. "Hopefully this will keep the audience entertained while I find--I mean finish preparing the first motive. Because I didn't lose it." It disappeared again.

Everyone looked around at each other. Alright, so this was a thing now. Great...

---

The non-canon heights make me so happy you guys don't understand. Hope you enjoyed my little story about them!

[venus-is-thinking]

DRDT Handwriting Analysis

Hello everyone! I decided to take a look at the canonical handwriting of the various characters in DRDT. We've actually seen a good number of handwritings and it definitely seems like they are specifically written differently, so it's a fun new dimension of the characters we can look at. I've done my best to compile all of them in this post, but please let me know if I've missed any!

I'll be going in order of when we first see them, starting with:

Arei Nageishi!

Arei is our first handwriting reveal, which we know because she wrote the arm wrestling contest board in Chapter 1, Episode 2! She seems to write in all caps and has a slightly curvy style.

Min Jeung!

Whoops, murder time. Min's handwriting is seen on the "OUT OF ORDER" sign. We don't know it's hers when we first see it, but in the trial, it's revealed that she must have written it.

As far as I remember, we don't have another sample of her handwriting, which is unfortunate, given that I believe this is probably not what her real handwriting looks like. She's clearly printing in very straight lines; it's probably meant to look official. If it looked handwritten, it would lower the credibility of the out of order sign.

I also tried to see if you could tell what any handwriting looked like from the papers on the table in the Bonus Episode she's in, but I didn't manage to pick anything out that was actually legible. So, I guess we don't really know what Min's handwriting would normally look like.

Xander Matthews!

Xander wrote "Charles Cuevas' Motive" on this DVD, but a lot of it got smudged off when he planted it in the CD reader (god I hope I got it right I'm sorry Charles I'm trying to remember which is which).

He seems to use all caps. It's also not the neatest, given that the two Cs run into each other despite being on different lines.

Notably, there is a more filled-out version.

However, the red text isn't written by Xander himself, because he's dead at the time. As best I can figure, this is Teruko writing in an impression of Xander's handwriting. The image of the CD appears as Teruko says, "Hm, are you talking about this?" implying she's the one carrying it, and the rest of the writing is filled in when she says so. It might seem like it would be Rose, given that she's the one who figures out what it's supposed to say, but Rose instructs someone else to rotate it, so it can be assumed Rose isn't holding it. Teruko is the one to take the DVD out of the player at the end of investigation, so I'd really assume it's her.

...HOWEVER!

We actually have a specific example of Teruko replicating Xander's handwriting! She smudges it during investigation and re-writes it on. It seems to me like the creator went back to the original version of the CD in the trial (the little ink blot at the left of the O matches better with the first of the two images here, imo). I doubt there was much internal consistency given to how Teruko writes Xander's handwriting when trying to replicate it on this CD, but...

Teruko Tawaki!

Teruko's handwriting is bad-bad. It's very shaky and she struggles with letters. The O and C (as she thinks she's writing) that she replicates back on the CD have some more of the shakiness that this handwriting has, which implies to me that the creator knew at the point of the Chapter 1 murder that Teruko's handwriting wasn't smooth. The replication of Xander's handwriting in red back in Xander's section looks smoother than I think Teruko's would, which might be points towards someone else having written it. No clue who, though.

Notably for Teruko, I honestly wonder if she's meant to have dysgraphia? I don't know a ton about it, but it's a learning disability that makes it much harder for people with the condition to handwrite clearly. Just an interesting sidenote, if anyone with dysgraphia knows more/if this is wrong to say in some way, please let me know!

Charles Cuevas!

Back on track, I skipped ahead with Teruko to put hers next to Xander's. We don't technically have confirmation that this is Charles' handwriting, but it's very very heavily implied. It's written in cursive, which Whit says Charles writes in in the Chapter 2 trial.

This also implies that Whit has seen Charles' handwriting, which could add more to imply that this is his, but considering Charles has evidently seen Whit's (more in a sec), I don't think that means much.

Plus, as a fun note, Charles' custom weapon is the only one that isn't listed on the above handwriting sample. This is the biggest factor in me believing that it's Charles'. (Plus, I think Whit says something about getting it from a friend? I'm not reopening the episode sorry gang)

Whit Young?

Wait, where's the handwriting?

Well, as far as I remember, we haven't actually seen Whit's handwriting. We know from Charles that he dots his Is with hearts, but that's all we got. Sorry gang.

Eden Tobisa!

Eden literally gave us a handwriting sample. Thanks!

It's pretty cute! She has a curvier handwriting style with some irregular spacing, which I think gives it nice charm and character.

The Chapter 2 Killer??? (or accomplice)

Idk man! It seems like it has to relate to someone who's at least somewhat guilty in this whole thing, right?

I've written briefly about why I believe this is Levi's handwriting on @1moreff-creator's Levi accomplice theory post, but that would totally work for the popular theory that he's the killer, too. Either way, it's a handwriting sample.

Bonus!

NO WIFI! WHY LIVE :(

I have no idea who wrote this. From what I can tell, it might've been here when the cast got there...? The weird thing is that it changes.

Shoutout to @accirax for remembering that the white board changed, because I did NOT notice/remember. However, that begs the question...

WHO THE HELL WROTE THIS???

It's very possibly Veronika, as she's the one who's noted to, like, know and remember what Monokuma looks like. If so, that means we have a Veronika handwriting sample, yay! I really don't know who else would be drawing Monokumas. Maybe the mastermind...?

And that's all! Clearly there's no point to this post and I can wrap this-

Haha. You didn't think I actually made a post that doesn't have a theory to it, did you?

This has all been building up to me trying to figure out who the hell wrote this note. Because, I originally believed it made the most sense if it was a note that Xander wrote to himself, but accirax pointed out that we've seen Xander's handwriting, and it looks different. Then, I started noticing that we've been receiving various handwritings. Like, a LOT of handwritings.

I think that it's plenty likely that we're going to receive EVERYONE'S handwriting at some point throughout this series. Notably, all characters who have died thus far (Xander, Min, Arei, Chapter 2 Killer Even Though We Don't Know Who They Are) have already shown us their handwriting. This is probably because we're going to figure out who wrote this note at some point.

Does that mean everyone whose handwriting we've already seen thus far is safe? Maybe! I've gone through and talked about Xander, Arei, Eden, Charles and Teruko's with confidence. From what we know of Min's and Whit's, it doesn't seem like it's theirs, but I'd believe for either of them that it could be theirs if the devs wanted to pull a fast one on us (Whit could just... not write with hearts on the Is for this one. Min was replicating printed text).

I guess that means I'm saying that the most likely authors of the "Kill Teruko Tawaki" note are Mai Akasaki Ace, Rose, Hu, Arturo, Veronika, J or Nico, with Min, Whit and Levi also being possibilities that I just don't believe as strongly. I do want to note that, if Rose IS the one who wrote it, she could also easily be replicating someone else's handwriting. Ultimate Art Forger moment.

Conclusion

I compiled this image of all the handwriting I talked about with the purple being known handwriting and the gray being unknown.

I think it's really cool that the dev put time into giving each of the characters unique handwriting, and I think it's definitely a piece of evidence to keep in mind when theorizing about masterminds and killers and such.

Hopefully this was a fun read! I look forward to possibly figuring out the handwritings of literally every other character someday.

[drrt-opposite-au]

Omg wait looking at the latest post

Teruko: Do you think you and (Ale)Xander would make really really good friends in the future?

David & (Ale)Xander: Do you 2 get along at all?

J(ulia): What do you think of Arei? You said she's sisterly so I'd assume you think well of her.

Levi & Hu: are you 2 really good friends? Calling Levi "pookie" personally made me laugh like your dynamic seems really cool !

Also a personal question:

To everyone who hasn't had their sexuality revealed in canon: Do we have any members of the LGBTQIA+ community?

TERUKO'S RESPONSE:

DAVID'S RESPONSE:

JULIA'S RESPONSE:

HU'S RESPONSE:

(( Sexualities of a few of the DRRT cast: Hu - Pansexual Julia - Closeted Lesbian Arei - Lesbian Alexander - Bisexual with a male preference Charles - Homosexual

The ones that have been expressed in canon remain the same! And I may add more with the other characters ^^))

[areiton]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Tony Stark/Original Male Character(s) Characters: Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Grant Rogers Additional Tags: Cheating, Infidelity, Emotional Infidelity, Explicit Sexual Content, Getting Together, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Protective Steve Rogers, Anal Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Masturbation, Dirty Talk, Non-Linear Narrative Summary:

Tony wonders what it says about his relationship with Grant, that is marked by every first with Steve.

[meidui]

professor!tony fic recs ♡

enchanted by @areiton

You watch his smile shift, something softer, sweet and private, and he mouths, hi.

You blush, utterly enchanted. 

maybe they are by @areiton

“Maybe they fucked and Stark broke his heart,” Teddy says, watching Stark standing next to a table full of grad students, talking animatedly, waving his coffee as Rogers dodged by, giving him a dirty look.

Hot Professors and Underwear Models by @meshkol

Darcy Lewis is a simple gal, and by simple gal, she means unapologetically thirsty.

Nothing wrong with some eye-candy mixed in with classes, anyway.

non functional requirements by @lazywriter7

Gwen Stacy isn't having the greatest day, and that's before her System Designs Engineering professor starts explaining the material through the lens of his strained-sounding relationship. With his boyfriend in the audience.

Citation Needed by @elwenyere @festiveferret

Historian Tony Stark has one year to get his book about WWII weapons technology under contract before he goes up for Full Professor at Stanley College. There's only one chapter left to finish, which is supposed to explain Peggy Carter's involvement with something called "Project Rebirth," but there are two problems: his trail of evidence goes cold every time he encounters references to an enigmatic soldier named Steven Rogers, and his stress levels shoot through the roof every time he runs into the endlessly frustrating new hire in Fine Arts, Dr. Grant.

The Ring of Fire by @serinah80

Steve is 19 and has only had one girlfriend. He doesn’t like men, never has, so why the hell does Professor Stark make him feel this way?

A story with a ridiculous amount of anger, internalized homophobia, sexual exploration, self-discovery and pining. In short: it's about how student Steve tries, fails and then tries again to understand what is going on with him while dealing with his crush on a professor.

[grapecherry]

The Tragedy of David Chiem & Arei Nageishi: A Comparative Analysis

the absolute Tragedy of arei meeting the exact fate she feared for eden. david reprimanding arei for having a gentler worldview that he is responsible for fostering — one she reprimanded eden for having.

the Tragedy of arei using cruelty to protect eden and david using kindness to disarm arei. arei who hated seeing the hurt her efforts yielded for others’ benefit and david who relished in seeing the relief his efforts yielded for his own benefit.

the Tragedy of realizing david lives by arei’s sentiment and echoes her behavior. they’re both willing to be hated for what they see as the greater good of those they deem Good.

david deemed xander as his Good.

arei deemed eden as her Good.

and they were ready to change everything they had grown to be for them — to do anything. to feel Worthy of them.

and yet, we’re once again faced with the Tragedy of those influences having been separated before either could begin to truly trust the existence of unconditional love and opportunity to be kind.

but like I’m normal about it.

[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

It's always funny (in a /pos way) seeing fanart and posts that portray David as some evil puppeteering mastermind Like I think we need a moment to talk about just how shitty of a liar David actually is lmao

[amberinn]

guys read this areden thing I wrote