#but i can't rely on that either so i need ways to make progress regardless

[friendofthecrows]

I have to remind myself that actually doing my assignments or studying makes me feel GOOD.

It always seems like a tiring, borderline *painful* activity that I naturally dread, but I'm a lot more cheerful/content after having been productive on schoolwork. This is reflected in my mood tracking apps like daylio. The data is there. So WHY my problematic brain, is it so hard to sit down and work for any length of time without procrastination or distraction. I know the answer is adhd but like, there has to be ways to work around it, especially given that it is a good thing!!! I need to remember, it is not to be dreaded. Remind myself.

[lacktastrophe]

Do you think Taeshi will ever resolve the conflict between Mike and Lucy in a satisfying way, narratively speaking? I want them to fix their relationship badly, but for that to happen, Mike has to get over Sandy and mature more. I want to see Mike and Lucy have a stronger bond after overcoming such terrible circumstances in their relationship, but I think being a huge source of conflict might put the series’ narrative longevity in jeopardy, so I’m not sure if I want to hold out hope or not.

After seeing elements of Abbey's story being (mostly) closed out accompanied with moments of closure, I'm absolutely confident that Veronica' will be able to have them both be resolved in a good way. But I feel reaching that point is going to require a lot of effort and time on behalf of the characters, particularly those two. We've had some insight into their complexes and seen how little has really changed since Lucy's return. And to complicate matters further there's a lot of newly fractured ground on an otherwise hopeless situation. Now that Mike's realised he's trapped in a relationship he's not happy with and burned Lucy again, we can bet that these will probably get worked on progressively with some focus through the story. But I feel this growth will be the slowest because it's been the corner stone of characters behaviour, like Lucy's. There's a lot that needs to happen! And for most parts I feel that Lucy's is going to be a balancing act on opening up and relying on others. I'd be confident her happiness will be through resolving the problems around her, but I'm not writing it, so whatever happens is going to happen!

I don't think it really has much to do with Mike needing to mature. He already has the foundation to make the right choices, it's just he's found himself in an ironic predicament: trapped a relationship where he's obligated to keep things going despite being otherwise really unhappy, just like he was much younger when he thought Lucy was more take then give. I figure what we're looking for here is more an idea of growth for him to realise that ultimately long distance doesn't work and his source of happiness is more closer to home. Sorry Sandy but you either move back or it's over, Baby!

Comparatively Lucy is in a considerably worse situation because of her internalised baggage over the abandonment she suffered through the series, which came to light as the reason we're seeing her push herself away from the others.

There's also the co-dependency, Lucy isn't motivated to find new friends, everything comes back to Mike.

I get a lot of people still want Mike x Lucy win out but I feel we should be prepared for the eventuality that these two might decide instead that they need to meet newer people for their own health, especially given they've been pretty bad to each other a few times now. That might be the result of the "Bittersweet". Terribly ironic given McCain's analysis but, you know he's right -- most relationships in school don't win out, and there needs to be a lot to occur for these two to resolve their issues while addressing all of their baggage -- Because I can't see how Mike and Lucy can remain a pair while knowing Lucy is still co-dependent. That's not something I feel we can really just end with.

But again, I'm a fan of closure when it comes to issues like this, so for me I really do want to see how these issues are addressed. At the same time I feel any result would be satisfying. It can't stay in this perpetual-hell forever and must eventually end.

I feel Lucy and Mike's arc ending is the pen-ultimate end to BCB, what starts with the comic has to be at the end, but at the same time I think there could even still be enough there for the series to continue regardless -- we saw this when Lucy moved away originally; you have three other protagonists and everyone mostly moved on after the first initial chapters dealing with the fallout anyway!

But yeah, I'm sure it'll be resolved, but I just wouldn't hold out for certain relationships, I think 10 years has illustrated that point for a lot of people who liked Paulo x Jasmine LMFAO.

[biganimal92]

update for the 4 of you reading this that care (this isn't meant to be pessimistic I just mean that very few of my friends follow me on here lol)

I feel like my art has been stagnating for a long time and it's mostly because I limit myself to fandoms and the attention I get for my fanart messes with the way I value my self-worth so a few months back I decided I wanted to start doing a lot more with my art to gain more personal fulfillment and to give myself a direction i actually wanted to take it in so that i felt like i was making progress and going somewhere with it. I was making plans to create a proper portfolio of things that weren't star wars yaoi or the dudes from fall out boy fucking, and I was planning on launching a YouTube channel where I posted speedpaints and stuff and I actually made some decent progress

I drew something I was really proud of and I knew the content in it would be pretty popular despite still technically being fanart, and I had a time-lapse recorded for it and everything, I was even halfway through the script. I also had a number of original drawings I'd done that I never posted anywhere and I felt like by this time I should have been able to properly launch this stuff and start taking appropriate steps to have my art reach a wider audience.

butttttt then my laptop died suddenly and randomly (i was literally using it just fine, i lifted it up from my lap and it shut off and wouldnt turn back on) and it's been in the repair shop for a week and they still don't know what's wrong with it. they think it's a motherboard issue and if it ends up being at least $600 to repair it I'm just getting a new laptop. I think they can transfer the data on the hard drive to an external that I have and if so that'd be wonderful because that laptop contains all the work I've been doing these last few months for this thing I wanna do with my art.

thankfully since then my roommate is letting me have one of his backup gaming pcs (he works in tech so he has plenty) and I've been able to get set up there in case I need to start my progress over, but the issue is that it's a Linux and clip studio literally doesn't work with Linux because the desktop version of the program apparently relies on either edge being installed if it's windows, or safari being installed if it's Mac. so I can't sign in or download the full version, I'm stuck with the super limited trial version, and because of this I've been trying to get comfortable with Krita. which thankfully can record time-lapses.

my mental health has only been improving since moving to Seattle despite some pretty low lows so thankfully, even though this is uh a pretty big deal all things considered, I'm handling it really well. I had one horrible encounter with a psychiatrist when trying to get treatment for my anxiety and adhd, but since my insurance here sucks since I'm poor and nothing has worked for my other issues I've been fortunate to be able to see doctors about, I've officially become a crystal mommy and I've resorted to ~alternative medicines~ and as a result I've had a considerable amount of improvement in a very short amount of time with the things I've struggled with getting help with from a professional psychiatrist. so yeah, I'm only getting better

biggest issue that still impacts me is that my attempts at befriending people irl have not borne much fruit, granted I haven't been trying super hard but with a huge covid spike coming up soon, said weak attempts are going to have to be put on hold for the time being. especially since the main thing I was literally going to do as soon as Christmas was over was join this drawing group that meets up every other Sunday, but now I don't have my laptop so it'll just have to wait regardless of what the state of things are looking like otherwise

uhhh what else. oh yeah I got into Chinese yaoi and Indian cinema and I got out of my head enough to start playing genshin impact again so basically I'm a huge faggot ama

OH SHIT I forgot to mention I got another horrible job and I'm kind of trapped into keeping it for at least a year unless something catastrophic happens because it's giving me really important experience in the field I'm trying to go into, but when I say it sucks I mean it's probably the most disorganized place I've ever worked at that wasn't a locally owned franchise. I work at an open-access low income healthcare organization that's all over Seattle so when I say it's terrible and disorganized I think you get the picture

anyway I don't know how often I'll be on here but I'm bored and lonely and scrolling through tumblr seems like a better use of my time than spending an entire shift looking at r/shittyfoodporn

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

So, I couldn't find much else on this post about like. How to actually go about alternatives beyond "just suck it up and do it"

So I'll try, as someone who will admit that they used Gen AI in the last few months, but also does write all of their public fics without it, has been writing fics on their own for years before it, and has now gone back to distancing themself from AI. First, elephant in the room: It *did* get less approachable to RP with real people, and it *is* really hard to be brave enough to do it. Having to rely so much on Discord nowadays really *does* feel like a big step backwards. I also feel it's reductive to blame this specific phenomenon on AI. To me, it feels like AI is just well-timed to capitalize on a decline that was in motion regardless. And realistically, your most approachable friends usually don't share *ALL* your interests. Sometimes an idea being weird or uncomfortable ISN'T just in your head, and not just anyone is suitable for it. It really is hard. Of course, hard things can be worth it, but we need to stop downplaying it and being so quick to discard compassion and ignore people's struggles. (and no, compassion doesn't have to mean you just enable them) Otherwise, they're not actually going to stop or really learn anything beyond "well, now i've made them all mad at me, so that's even more reason not to RP, I already ruined it for myself" Like. Anxiety *sucks* at grasping "people won't be mad forever". A lot of the time, it *feels* like "they all still hate you, they just decided to be polite about it" Personally, I still don't really RP, and I'm still afraid of it. But my general approach to hard things is to take a few deep breaths and just take the first step before I can talk myself out of it. Then let yourself feel the discomfort. Let yourself see that it's not going to harm you. Keep breathing. As for writing, I have plenty more experience there, but that's hard too. It's often slow, tedious, thankless, and I've gotten criticism that I would genuinely call traumatic. Again, I don't actually think AI is to blame for perceived reductions in fic engagement, either. People who don't want to read a fic were always going to find *something* to do besides read that fic. IMO, the only real option is to try to reduce your need for attention and approval, and keep in mind that people just naturally aren't in the mood to read fics 24/7. Do your best to calmly let self-doubting thoughts about it pass over you without feeding further into them or taking them as fact. I also feel like we don't really talk about how much harder it is to do things when you get past the age where you were able to confidently be bad. Devoting yourself to something that feels miserable and constantly makes you anxious and scared is extremely difficult. Start small. Aim for short, achievable things. Try to teach yourself that you're capable of *something*, and try to find people who are actually willing to be attentive and supportive. (Which is another thing that's way harder than people on this post keep claiming it is. A Ton of fandoms are tiny and/or mostly dead.) I would suggest starting with posting basic scenarios and ideas rather than actual stories. It gets notes and attention without all the commitment, especially if you keep at it, so then it's much easier to pick out people who'll be interested and supportive in the first place. As for private writing, it's once again the kind of thing that gets easier when you start. I myself often have to sit in the word document with no other distractions for upwards of 45 minutes before I finally feel like I'm able to make actual progress. "Just write a sentence or paragraph every day" flat out doesn't work on me, because I have to invest so much into getting the ball rolling for each session that I *can't* just "pop in" and do a little at a time. And don't be afraid to write out of order or write small snippet scenarios, either. I've lost loads of productivity to being irrationally uncomfortable with writing "out of order", or not writing a "proper" longform story.

[lucky-draws]

also ok i promise i'll shut up after this and go to bed but i'm trying to post more wips and process photos etc in case ppl are interested so,, here's a wip from today of big blorbo and zero

and like one thing i'm still struggling with a lot rn is hands like i rly can't imagine how they should look sometimes esp when holding stuff or whatever so like sometimes i will literally just take a photo of my own hands in the mirror in a rough mimic of the pose i need,, which is what i did for this lol:

sometimes i get annoyed that i have to rely on references for a lot of things and can't just magically pluck an idea straight from my brain and splat it onto the paper instantly but then i calm down and remember literally all artists ever do this and it can take a lifetime to understand anatomy enough to be able to draw every kind of pose from scratch so yeah. #motivational

UM anyway.

oh and here's the very first sketch i did for this, it's on a separate page and a lot smaller, done without any references it's just a rough sketch to start deciding on the poses/composition etc

lately i think i've got slightly more comfortable with backgrounds or like interiors and objects etc...perspective is still an iffy area like furniture often looks very wonky... but there is progress happening

ALSO erm. i don't want to like. hm. make it seem from my ramble posts like this that u know. art has always got to be a skill you work at and get better at bc obviously it's fine to do art for fun regardless of what it looks like and whether ppl would consider it "good" or "technically competent" BUT. this is just like my goal personally in that like i really do want to keep getting better idk im just very conscious all the time of what aspects look bad or need work and i guess i don't even mean that in a negative "i hate my art" way i mean like it's just what keeps me motivated u know??? like i enjoy aiming to work towards being able to do stuff i'm happy/happier with u kno.. anyway.

this has been a 2am (where i am) waffle post perhaps it was interesting or perhaps it sent you to sleep or perhaps nobody is reading this but either way. i need to go to beddie bies myself so i will shut up now... o/

[captaindoubled]

Me, the person that spent the last years at college studying and researching evaluation conditioning in the media and how it affects people's feelings towards different races irl: Even though media is getting better, folks are still falling into harmful tropes that only harm the message they are trying to get across and it helping.

I love Akande in overwatch but he is still a hulking black villain and that only reinforces the black hulking stereotype. Evaluative condition g is quick and instant and on a subconscious level for the most part so when folks look at him, they make connections with the racist stereotype of a big black man even if his character is far from it.

Dream Daddy has trans representation but has had their name tacked on to transphobic gamers and regardless of their involvement, that association is there. Gay men will be played as a joke because viewers of these gamers will be primed to think of gay men as a joke and not nuisanced people.

VLD relies so heavily on character tropes that genuine moments of character growth are lost because viewers are only going to see them through those tropes. Example- Characters like Hunk have moments where he shines through as an individual in the show are lost because the viewers have already been told multiple times that he's a fat food guy coward and because this trope is old and connections are strong in people's head that this trope is easily recognizable, moments where he's brave, math clever and just kind are overshadowed even if those moments are even with his food moments.

Steven Universe is another show that I had a lot of hope for but ultimately i had to step back from entirely because they constantly did nothing about their anti black biases and continued to demonize or other black coded characters within the show. Black woman characters being mules for the feelings of other characters, even when they were given moments to deal with those problems were turned to moments to lift up another character in the end (When Pearl used Garnet to fuse to feel powerful but only ended up being a character development moment for Pearl when that story arch should have centered around Garnet carrying the burden of the team). The creators have refused to do better with the POC coded gems or POC characters in the town and have mostly focused on white coded or thin characters. This is an example of people trying to be progressive so much so that they don't stop to check themselves or allow themselves to be criticized which is a shame. It's hard to see the progress in media when half the time it's one step forward two steps back.

Also me, but an optimistic person who just wants to have a good time and have faith in folks: I still enjoy the characters of Overwatch and other actually diverse big name pieces of media and even with its flaws it's a step in the right direction. The flaws will help them learn and if it doesn't, the spite will fuel other people to do better with their own IPs. I've seen plenty of folk get on their grind from bad media just as much as good media. And within the full context of the story, Akande is more than just a big black man and if fans and folks don't see the humanity in him, that's their problem. It is the job of the creators to do what they can to not promote harmful stereotypes but if fans can not see humanity in black characters than there is little that can be done.

Example- Lució is a good man, a musician and a hero to his people but people either Demonize his character by saying his a criminal for stealing from an oppressive force or dehumanizing him because he's one of the shortest characters on canon and because they don't see him as a "threatening" black man, they find ways to make him even less threatening, almost infant like as a counter stereotype which is just as harmful to black people.

I will bring up Dream Daddy again because other than small moments that are iffy, the game is actually very tame and very well made and not the fetish fuel that the fans have made it out to be. Most of the dates are just friends hanging out and only on the third date do you lock in a romantic interaction. Some of those last dates don't even become romantic until the last minute. Even Joseph's story which doesn't have a "good ending" is balanced for in the fact that not every gay has to have a good end when the majority of them in the story do. Only positive stuff doesn't make people see gay men as complex human people and the idea that just because it's a dating sim, huh can't always get what you want is nice and treats him like a human man with his own issues and not just fan fuel. I can see this being a stepping stone for folks to take the dating sim genre more seriously because both them and visual novels are easier to program and create than fps,third person games, or side scroller and so more indie folks can create bigger and better representation without being tacked on to the Game Grumps.

VLD has been an odd show from the jump and has done a lot better than previous versions of the show. It's far more diverse and the stereotypes are annoying but not as bad as they were in the past. I prefer to watch the show outside of the fandom and I don't interact with the fans because again, it becomes a situation where the fans own biases have soiled the entire experience and made the show something that it isn't. It could be better but nothing is perfect and I'll critique it because that's my job as a viewer but I'm still proud of the work it's done so far even if it's not super good all the time.

Also also me, an exhausted person: Just do better. Both shows and fans. People make these shows and pieces of media and people aren't perfect. It's both the job of the creator to do better and to apologize when implicit biases, which are very hard to change unless you actively go out of the way to fix them and recondition yourself, are present in characters or they just fuck up on something.

But it's also the job of the fans to educate themselves on what's right and how to interact with folk. This isn't a reasonably, be nice thing. It's a, maybe don't send really weird messages to folks about your ship unless the creator has made it know that they like to engage in that talk. Even if you are angry, actually say what's wrong with sources instead of working off hear-say. If you don't know what's wrong with a show, ask and do your own research or only form your opinions from folks that actually did the research and not a random post with literally no sources but lots of outrage. Also accept that sometimes your opinion on stuff is wrong. Cis women who only interact with a show for the gay ships are fundamentally wrong?? And annoying and you hounding a creators for gay content is actually very gross when you can support shows when canon can characters.

BUT as fans you do have a right to critique a show for stuff going on and creators have to have thicker skin when it comes to critique. They have every choice to listen to it or ignore it but fans have every right to critique the media. It's how things change. Again, a point back to Steven Universe. Both with the fans and the creators didn't want anything bad said about the show. Just because it was progressive for one group, doesn't mean it's progressive for other folk.

There were good moments that children and adults needed to hear but nothing is perfect and if a show can't be critiqued nothing will get better and the deeper in your craw you get about a problem, folks tend to double down on them (I have a theory that racist/sexist/ist thoughts and actions tend to get worst when you tell folks to stop because they can be learned through conditioning and so go through a thing called an extinction burst ((an extinction burst is when you try and stop a trained behavior by not reinforcing it any longer the thing doing the behavior does it a lot more out of frustration because they aren't frying their treat anymore)) so they do racist shit more because they aren't getting rewarded for their behavior) the worst you'll get.

The rise of social media and creators wanting to connect with the fans have created a situation where folks have easy access to one another and there is a lack or respect for folks space. This was a problem with Bryke and members of the ATLA crew entering in spaces meant for the fans and being upset with how overwhelming the close interactions were and got defensive about critique of any kind. This is a problem with folks on the VLD fandom holding pieces of media hostage to get what they want, ignoring the real world consequences of those actions. The closeness allows for direct responses with problems but also the same way texts are, people expect and answer immediately when people behind contracts and are representing their content and everyone who's worked on it has to put the message out fast but same time it has to follow rules probably set out by their company. Both sides just need to do better.

[oumakokichi]

So Ouma's sent everyone into a paralyzing state of despair come chapter 5, yanked the gameboard away from the ringleader and ground the game to a halt. What exactly was his plan after that? Did he expect them to all stay in a listless despair forever and be alright with him continuing to live given that he was the "mastermind" that "destroyed the world"? Does he have plans to get out as he knows the world can't be completely destroyed if there's still viewers? Is it ever mentioned?

Ouma’s plans for what came next in Chapter 5 are only alluded to rather than mentioned directly, mostly because between his self-isolation in the machinery bay and the twist with the remember light which set Maki into action to try and kill him, he never really gets a chance to go back to his own investigation. However, there are a few things we can surmise about what he likely had up his sleeves next, as well as how he expected the group to react and why he told them about the outside world in the first place.

It’s important to remember that the first and foremost reason why he showed all of them the “truth of the outside world” is because they kept asking. No matter how much he or Gonta in Chapter 4 were determined not to tell them about it because it was so horrible and depressing, the entire group kept maintaining that it couldn’t possibly be so bad, and this culminates in Momota basically inspiring the rest of them with his own plan in Chapter 5. He says that if they stage an uprising against Monokuma now that the Exisals are gone, there’s nothing stopping them from going to see the outside world for themselves, and that it’s “probably not so bad anyway.”

This, of course, is a very bad plan. While it’s true that the Exisals are momentarily out of commission without the Monokumerz around, Monokuma has plenty of other tricks up his sleeve, as shown by the fact that he can literally bring the Monokumerz back whenever he wants, which he does at the end of the Chapter 5 trial. The Exisals aren’t nearly as difficult for other people to control either; while only the Monokumerz can unlock them, pretty much anyone can pilot one if you use the right technology to get one open, such as one of Miu’s electric bombs, or the remote control she made for Ouma that could hijack electronic devices.

Ouma overheard Momota sharing his plan in the cafeteria, and knew it was pretty much a certain death trap, or else an opportunity for the real ringleader to get more of their kicks in. Not only that, but even if they had miraculously managed to successfully rebel against Monokuma using only a handful of weapons from Maki’s research lab (and only Maki was actually successfully trained in how to use them), the only exit to the outside world available to them was still the one located at the end of the death trap mini-game, which is nearly impossible for anyone to clear without assistance, and would have posed very real threats to their safety regardless of whether Monokuma was around or not.

Ouma shows up in Chapter 5 and hands them literally all the tools they’ll need to clear the mini-game on a silver platter, making them considerably better-armed against both the Exisals and the platformer mini-game. Despite the fact that his offer of assistance was quite literally met with Maki attempting to choke him to death in front of multiple witnesses for the second time, he still followed the rest of the group’s progress, and when they reached the door leading to the outside world for themselves, that’s where he put his revised plan into action.

I believe that his original plan with the hammers and electric bombs was something very similar to Momota’s. However, Miu’s inability to trust the rest of the group was something which I think deeply shook Ouma, considering his own deep-seated skepticism. Knowing that group unity was something that would likely never be fully achieved as long as the real ringleader was hiding among them (which is actually true, considering Tsumugi is right there within the group listening in on all their plans the whole time), he decided instead to target the broadcast, rather than relying on a plan that would potentially allow someone to backstab the others, or even worse, potentially risk letting the killing game continue.

Following up on the act he put on ever since Chapter 4, Ouma stages his grand coup d’état against the real ringleader, and even though his entire plan was essentially for the group’s safety, so that they wouldn’t get themselves killed in a much riskier plan against Monokuma and the ringleader, turns it into a claim that he “just wanted to see the despair-filled looks on their faces” by “showing them the truth.” He claims that he’s the ringleader who thought up the whole killing game, that he’s gotten bored of it now, and that everyone can pretty much do as they please, he doesn’t really care about them anymore now.

His plan was meant to make the group depressed by taking away their “hope” that the outside world was safe and fine and somewhere worth getting out to. Rather than making them despair, per se, it was meant to eliminate that hope entirely, in a scenario very similar to what Saihara and the others realize near the end of Chapter 6: precisely because hope exists, despair exists, too. The reason people within the group kept killing, and the reason for the entire killing game show’s existence, is precisely because of “hope.” Every culprit who killed had some “hope” that they were doing the right thing, hope that they were returning to their loved ones and the outside world, hope that they were making horrible sacrifices for the “right reasons.”

But this “hope” played into exactly what the ringleader and the audience wanted from all of them. Their desires, wishes, ambitions, all of these were why they killed—not despair. And so as Ouma tells Momota himself in Chapter 5 before dying, he tried to eliminate their reasons for killing one another by first taking that hope away, and showing them the “horrible, single, unchanging truth” of the outside world.

It’s important to note too that while he certainly takes credit for engineering the killing game and for being the leader of the religious cult (not the Remnants of Despair per se, but a cult which Tsumugi twists into being the Remnants of Despair in her remember lights) which had wanted to stop the Gopher Plan, he does not and cannot claim credit for destroying the world per se. The meteor showers were a natural disaster which he remembered just the same as everyone else in the group, and it’s pretty clear from some of his more cynical remarks in the scene in which he breaks the truth to everyone that he seems to believe those meteor showers fucked the earth up in some ways for good, regardless of the fact that there are people viewing the killing game show.

He was tired. He was very, very full of self-loathing after violating his single most important moral code not to kill people in Chapter 4. Part of his claims that he’s the big, evil ringleader who they should all hate and blame for everything is because it’s part of his plan to snatch the gameboard away from the real ringleader, and it’s partly because he knew the group was going to blame him for everything by that point anyway. There’s a certain level of “self-fulfilling prophecy” to his actions in Chapter 5, and it’s the first point at which his actions become somewhat reckless when he’s normally so careful with every single move he makes—because he definitely stopped caring about his own life after Chapter 4, precisely because of the sort of underhanded tricks he had to use in order to stay alive.

If Ouma is a SHSL Chessmaster (and I still think he is) capable of analyzing potential moves and predicting far ahead, similar to how Junko and Kamukura can analyze and predict for future situations, then Chapter 5 and his coup d’état mark the point at which he stopped making moves on the chessboard specifically in terms of victory, and started making moves for the sake of being incomprehensible. On the one hand, it’s much, much harder for your opponent to read your next move if your objective isn’t victory in the traditional sense. But on the other hand, if you start sacrificing much cleaner, more open moves that would lead to you winning the game quickly and efficiently, the difficulty increases immensely. You start sacrificing your own possible moves for the sake of hoping your opponent can’t see through you.

That’s essentially what he does the whole way through. By acting extremely contradictory and making huge claims about being the ringleader with only shaky “proof” to back them up at best, he was hoping to simultaneously force the rest of the group to stop the killing game and make the real ringleader nervous—but by no longer caring about his own life, he had begun leaving huge openings in his plan, such as the fact that he could no longer investigate or eavesdrop on the rest of the group after holing up in the machinery bay.

Because we know that he wanted to take down the real ringleader, we can surmise that he was hoping they would react by giving themselves away somehow. His plan was nothing short of a direct blow against the killing game itself. With everyone deprived of reasons to kill anymore, the show instantly went from a “killing game show” into a “watch everyone lie around depressed in their rooms show.” There was no more hope or despair in the days following Ouma’s broadcast, and just like with Saihara’s plan to abstain from voting, this was seen by the audience and ringleader both as the worst-case scenario. It wasn’t interesting, or fun, and it certainly wasn’t anything they expected from Danganronpa. The longer this sort of bland stalemate lasted, the more likely it was that the real ringleader would start sweating bullets and launch a counter-attack.

The downside, of course, is that Tsumugi as a ringleader was nothing like what he expected. She flew far too under his radar, and her plans of countering were vastly different from what someone like himself, or even someone like Junko, would have thought up. Where Ouma was probably expecting a form of retaliation involving a direct murder attempt in order to start the game back up again (which is exactly what Junko did when the game came to a stalemate in dr1 Chapter 5), Tsumugi worked in a far more insidious way, relying on hope once again, rather than despair, to jumpstart the killing game back into action.

And so Ouma was blindsided, because his mistake was in thinking about his opponent in terms of what he would do, rather than thinking in terms of an opponent who went beyond his chessboard strategy and who was perhaps not the super grand, strategic, imposing ringleader the way he himself would be. As bitter as he is about it, he still accepts his mistakes in Chapter 5 as something of his own doing, and retaliates as quickly and as hard as he possibly can in the span of less than two hours.

We also know for a fact that…well, dying wasn’t outside of Ouma’s expectations. The fact that he wrote his own suicide note and left it to be found in his room, and the fact that he willingly let himself be killed by the press, as well as constant allusions to “having no one who would miss him if he were gone” meant that at some point, he did probably suspect this would be a likely outcome if he weren’t able to carry out his plans against the ringleader as far as he wanted to. He was suicidal and tired, particularly after Chapter 4—and having embraced his villain role to the fullest already by that point, I think he did assume there was no way for the others to ever understand his mindset or his plans, or him, as an individual.

Ouma didn’t want forgiveness and didn’t expect it, and that’s part of why he went to his death willingly, leaving only the most basic explanations of his plans, probably knowing that Momota and the others would be unlikely to believe him anyway. That’s really the tragedy of his character: he leaves his entire self in the catbox upon dying, knowing that understanding was really beyond his grasp anyway. He wanted to retaliate against the real ringleader as much as possible, and he left all the tools necessary to do so with the rest of the group—but even leaving them all the right clues and answers they needed to find the truth, he knew it was likely impossible for them to ever really, truly understand what he was like or what he’d been trying to do.