#but he also care deeply for ryoko and junko

[princescar]

the cuteness aggression i get from these two is gonna make me crash tf out

[hopeymchope]

Hey, what do you think of Matsuda? He's sort of an asshole character, but I think he's the one who works best for me. Someone tried to argue with me that he was abusive with Ryouko—which I think is somewhat true for most of the novel—so he deserved to die like he did (this statement horrified me), but I always saw how Matsuda treated Ryouko as like, an unhealthy coping mechanism. I don't think its a stretch to say that Junko was abusive towards Matsuda in some ways, so Matsuda being toxic back at her seems mainly like an unhealthy way to deal with his complex feelings on her. Obviously, doesn't make how he treats Ryouko okay, as Ryouko does not remember doing anything Junko did, so it was definitely unfair of Matsuda to take it out on her, but... I don't know, it seemed more like... reactive abuse I think is the term, than anything else, only turning into just abuse once Junko lost her memories. But when I made this argument, and said that I thought Junko in some ways abused Matsuda, the person who I was replying to completely disagreed, and insisted that Matsuda was the solely bad one and that Junko killing him wasn't abusive and he deserved that. Which, really upset me. I stopped replying after a while but, it was very upsetting. It was also hard to understand them through their typos, and they got really upset at me when I misunderstood something they said. I think even if Matsuda was the only one solely abusive or toxic in the relationship, he still didn't deserve to die, especially how he did, especially so cruelly, because I really do believe in restorative justice. But the person I was talking to completely disagreed with that, too. This was all on a fic I wrote, BTW, one I was really proud of, and these were some of the only comments I got, so I was really discouraged. I really liked what I wrote but they hated it, and said all this stuff about Matsuda that upset me. All this to say, do you think I'm being unreasonable? I think Matsuda has definitely made mistakes, but he still didn't deserve what Junko put him through, but am I just biased because I like Matsuda? He's definitely an asshole, but I always sort of thought he was one of the more sympathetic assholes in DR.

I never liked Matsuda, but when we ultimately understand that his actions were driven by his (deeply misguided) love for someone he's cared about his entire life, I definitely felt somewhat more sympathetic towards him. 

Of course, we don't know much about how/why he loves Junko, and being in love with Miss Enoshima seems like a major friggin’ warning flag. Like, what, - did he just connect with her because they both fucking hate people and don't care what happens to them? ....Personally, though, I gave him a little more credit than that. I felt like he probably knew her before she became so sick of how predictable everything was to her. So I thought Matsuda probably loved her from childhood because he knew her when she wasn't so twisted.

When I first read Danganronpa Zero, I interpreted Matsuda's shitty treatment of Ryoko as being his way of punishing her for keeping Junko away. I figured he never considered Ryoko to be a real person - she was just the false face that was holding back Junko, the person he actually loves. So to him, what did it matter if he treated her like shit? She wasn't real anyway, right? I can imagine him seeing it that way. He can have a very clinical and detached view of things.

But I think your interpretation is also valid - I mean, I doubt Junko was the kind of person to be openly affectionate towards anybody, no matter how she felt about them. After all, how’s that gonna get her the precious Despair she longs for?! It’s only natural she’d abuse even someone she might legit care about. She even outright states that her reason for killing him is to just further drive herself into Despair, so that tracks quite logically.

Hey, maybe you can combine all of the above ideas. Maybe Matsuda saw Junko grow colder and more abusive, and that made it easier for him to be so abusive towards Ryoko, especially since he already resented her for the reasons I stated above RE: her being a façade and not even real in his eyes. Just pile all those motivations on top of one another.

That may all make him a little easier to understand compared to some of the assholes around him. Which isn’t to say I would presume to like the guy. I mean, he does literally murder an innocent person just to keep the secret of Junko’s guilt for the Student Council Killing Game. So he’s far from being a Good Boy these days. Maybe he was once? But regardless, I’m sure that when you can’t let go of “loving” someone as fucked up as Enoshima, you naturally get twisted by that love. On the plus side, at least he helped create the Neo World Program, so I suppose it’s not like he never did anything worthwhile. 

I’m pretty interested in the fanfic you’re talking about, though. Can you share the title or some kind of link (even though the Ask submission form will try to prevent you)? Even if it’s something you don’t want me to make public, I’d like to read it.