#either way im rooting for more parallels and/or more interaction

[mettywiththenotes]

I can't explain it in a way that doesn't make me sound delusional but. I believe in Viktor Jinx interaction part 2 Getting Worse boogaloo

[purgemarchlockdown]

Tags by @74n5n (Ill take your word for it) and I dont mind the Yunoposting we Should unite to Yuno-Amane parallels post (the cats…oh the cat symbolisms…)

Yeah I think Yuno percives herself as something immoral and dastardly, a witch stealing away the world’s prince and what not. (God I Hope im slowly infecting the Milgram Fandom with my rgu terminology bullshit- I havent even Gotten out The Devil side of the Prince yet) but even when Yuno is going “look how Horrible I am!” She gets cast as either the damsel or the prince anyway.

Cat as Symbol of Sin and Impurity Never Dies and Yuno potrays herself As That Cat! That the most honest version of herself is the Impure Cat seeking to corrupt moral society.

Not to get into More Rgu Bullshit: But Rgu it deals a lot with the romanticization of fairy tales and stories and how they shape our society. That these stories have a tangiable impact on the way we view and interact with the world and their ability to enforce unhealthy hierachies, systems and worldviews. Prince and Princess are Roles people play, and since their strict, used to uphold a hierachy, and need someone to be a damsel for it to…Work it harms people! Both sides really but since its so unbalanced men are Encouraged to keep it in tact because even if its unbalanced it Benefits them.

Its more benefical for the audience to keep Yuno as either a Girlboss or a Victim ,because it makes it easier to Enforce an Image of Yuno onto her. To keep the story simple and non-complicated and to make her an easy win for the Audience’s sense of justice…if that makes sense, again idk much about Yuno.

Amane is a Monster in both outside perception and in her own view of herself. For differnet reasons but similiar root that its cause of her behaviors and actions. Amane was not treated as human and thus doesn’t believe herself to be one. Not really at least. She depicts herself As The Cat as well and all that.

The thing with Amane is that she doesn’t really Hate that about herself, like she does but she also Loves It. She doesn’t Want to be anything else and she doesn’t Need to be anything else. And that’s Scary, cause if the monster doesn’t Want to become human (to become better, more “moral”, more “normal”) then what does That say about normal human society?

She’s dangerous cause she poses a threat to the simple uncomplicated story that Yuno keeps on being shoved into. I think it’s fascinating.

Quick clarification on the “Amane doesn’t lie in her MVs” thing- no one does…just at all. The most is just telling the story from an extremely biased perspective (Muu) or being Very Vague about it (Shidou)

But Amane is intriguing to Me (cause its Amane) but also cause even in Magic everything was just…shown to us. Just- you don’t need to dig much. It’s surprisingly straightfoward in a series full of MVs that Aren’t. Especially for an MV that literally potrays itself as a performance.

I vaguely remember the lead up to Purge March and the theories people had about her crime (that stagelight Got To People) but what happened was just…a lot more straightfoward then what people expected. The stagelight really was just part of Magic’s set, the cat was a cat etc etc.

The biggest question was the nature of the victim (maybe victims) but even then in Purge March, Amane is Painfully Honest about that. Unless they make a big twist that her victim didnt do anything to her (which…well…I doubt it to say the least) there’s not a lot left on the specfics or details of her crime. Even if you believe it wasn’t her mother we have Two Other People she Very Clearly shows did something that got her hurt. Unlike characters like Kazui and Shidou with seven hundred unanswered questions (what the fuck are you DOING Shidou)

Idk, I just think its an interesting change from everyone else.

[voidix]

Masamune -Not Yu- should have been the substitute or How to not introduce a new character

So Masamune Kadoya. I feel like he’s a very polarised character in the fandom. Either you really and I mean REALLY like him or he gets on your nerves like a fly buzzing around the room you can never seem to catch.

My personal opinion on him is eh irrelevant to this discussion as I’m trying to be as objective as possible in this post. That being said I know a lot of my negative emotions that I feel/felt towards him stem from the way he is introduced.

When Masters starts we literally have no idea who this guy is except that he keeps calling himself the No1 blader with nothing to back up his loud mouth. As a viewer i was like uhm.. And the more he interacts with the gang the more he seems like a less intelligent less charismatic copy of Gingka.

So when he gets to be a main player in Team Gan Gan Galaxy instead of Yu or Tsubasa we as the viewers who are already attached to Yu and Tsubasa and have seen their strengths just feel like ??? What?? Why this guy??? It doesn’t add up??? Yes we see him train this one time but I personally as a viewer have no reason to cheer for him to be on the team when it could have been two beloved characters which makes you just really frustrated and you’re wondering how did he beat them but not in wonder but in annoyance because he literally came out of nowhere and I’m supposed to believe this guy with Gingka’s worst traits turned up 20 fold is so good he becomes a main player on team Japan? AND IM SUPPOSED TO ROOT FOR HIM NOW?? It’s just frustrating from an emotional perspective.

Especially when we have seen the anime successfully introduce an - at the time- overpowered and mysterious character: Yu

Yes there is a very good reason I mentioned him by name in the title. Yu’s introduction is very well done. We see Doji recruit him in the desert where we get a teaser for his power. During the survival battle Blader DJ announces someone has beaten 10 players at once. Then the fight with Hikaru Kenta and Benkei where he takes all of them out. At this point we have been teased enough to know this kid is no joke. So when he not only beats Kyoya but also Gingka in the final of the survival battle it doesn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. We had seen Yu’s power in action before we had seen him defeat strong blader after strong blader. So his victory in the survival battle made perfect sense. You were impressed instead of being like what???

“So Hani how would you fix that and still keep the pacing of metal masters?” Well besties it’s in the title. Instead of having him be a main player make him the substitute. It would have been a much more interesting story to have him kind of an underdog that slowly grows to be one of the strongest bladers in the world.

Not to mention it would give us a perfect parallel to Zeo

Towards the end of metal masters there is some focus put on the arrangement system vs the bladers spirit. And since the dungeon trio were the core of the HD Academy arc it would have been very interesting to have Zeo as kind of representative for the arrangement system and Masamune who used to be weak but became stronger because of his bladers spirit. Both doing it for Toby. That would have made Zeo’s win even more emotional and it would have created more tension because you’d genuinely be scared and would have no idea if Gan Gan Galaxy would actually win this.

“But hani THEYRE the main characters it would be obvious they’d win!” Would it tho? Let’s compare. I’m the metal fusion finale Gingka vs Ryuga it was pretty obvious who would win we had two episodes left there was no way Gingka would lose. Here however? Damian vs Gingka is around episode 40 and we have 51 episodes in this season. You would not actually know if they’d win immediately because there are still more than a few episodes to go.

I know this post is low-key all over the place but I hope you guys could kinda understand where I’m coming from and If you want to start a discussion I’m all ears.

[trashahime]

How Kagome could be the mom, but also Kagura, Rin and others

I have a fandom friend who really likes Sesskag and wants Kagome to be the mom somehow. We discussed many far-fetched possiblities and one scenario arose that had some in show support. It's still wack and not probable at all but Im bored as hell and thought I'd write up what we concocted for those of you who like my crackpot theories.

*

I remember there was an interview or such when the Yashahime creators said they considered giving Towa and Setsuna different moms but discarded the idea.

Maybe they didn't discard the spirit of the idea.

Maybe the real reason for the Mama mystery is that there exists multiple timelines where a different woman is the mother and we are seeing these different timelines being entangled or converging into one.

Recently, I made a post stating I didn't think Sota actually raised Towa. I pointed out in one scene Towa's room looked messy and as if she just moved in and in another, it was sparse, neat, and felt more like an impersonal guest room.

The first suggests Towa just moved in and the other maybe she doesn't live there at all. The scene where Mei ties her shoes, showing three umbrellas corresponding to Sota, Moe and Mei, but not one for Towa, supports both possible scenarios.

Maybe these are visual clues of different timelines. One where Towa never lived with Sota and one where she moved in with him later in life. And there's probably one where she did live with him all along.

And there is also this picture from Kagome's bedroom.

Notice the rainbow and moon picture. I think it's an indication Towa lived in Kagome's bedroom. Maybe when she was younger before Sota got married but Sunrise focused on that board several times. I think they wanted us to notice it. Maybe there was a universe where it was Mama Higurashi that raised Towa.

It's been said both Kirinmaru and Sesshomaru messed with time and maybe it resulted in dozens, even hundreds of timelines. When it came to combining them into one, perhaps it was a case of majority rules. Like in most of the timelines, Towa was forced to the future and was raised by Sota but we are seeing artifacts from other universes where that happened differently.

In another post I described a similar situation and liken it to Mandela Effects. It's essentially the same thing.

It could explain:

Towa's possible personality change from when we see her fighting hooligans in the modern era to being reluctant to fight in the past. They were were reflecting different Towas.

The shell rouge could be from a universe where it was never destroyed.

Setsuna's violin skills could come from a universe where it was she that went to the future. Or one where she and Towa were born in the modern era. Either way she learned from Moe at a slower pace.

Which brings me to baby mamas and how it could be Kagome.

There's been some speculation that Naraku's existence could be be erased. That could result in a timeline where Kagome never goes to the past. Maybe she meets a modern Sesshomaru and has the twins. I think the mama!Kagome universes were in minority, so it didn't "win" but we are seeing artifacts from the universes where she was the mom.

Some hints to this could be:

The overly dramatic way the Higurashis declared all three girls were family and that they needed to come back "home".

There's been speculation that the twins have spritual powers.

In the cat episode, there was a Towa scene paralleling Kikyo's interactions with young girl. Since she is Kikyo's reincarnation, it could be some sly pointing to Kagome.

Towa's string tie is highly suggestive of the red tie strings Mikos wear.

As mentioned earlier, Setsuna's violin skills could be a holdover from a timeline where she was born in the future as Kagome's daughter.

Although the twins mostly look like a mix of Sesshomaru and Kagura to me, sometimes their facial features are a little bit softer and their eyes more rounded. So I do understand why some people think the twins look like Rin. Mostly I think it's animation inconsistencies, but for the sake of this theory, I'll say it's intentional. Since Rin and Kagome look alike, it could be hint to either one.

Since I mostly see evidence of Kagura being the mom, I think that's the scenario that "won". However, there's also a lot of evidence supporting Rin and and some for Sango even.

ETA: Also, this could explain how the girls are hanyo if Kagura is the mom. The twins could be born as hanyo the majority of the time once you combine all Rin, Kagome and Sango universes.

Beyond baby mamas, other evidence of the mixing of timelines could be Towa's resemblance to Inuyasha. @lumera actually has a post about thier similarities.

Perhaps this is an indication there exists a timeline where Inuyasha fathered Towa or both twins.

Another visual clue to the convergence of timelines could be the way Treekyo's tree of ages perch is a bunch of tangled roots that are intertwined, then branch out and then come back together again. I can't find a screenshot at the moment but I think most of you will remember it.

If this ridiculous theory is true, I think what happened is that the mixing of timelines didn't go smoothly. There are too many artifacts from alternative universes. And maybe some people (perhaps some of the OG Crew) didn't cross over when they should have, and maybe people who shouldn't exist, do.

Maybe fixing the mistakes will be the endgame of Yashahime. Or maybe it'll go the other way and the timelines will get untangled and allowed to be. Maybe the last episode will be of montages of these different universes where there's happy little families of Sesskagu, Sessrin, Sesskag and so on.

Unlikely but maybe.

[fallen029]

Home Visits.2

Previous Chapter

Freed declined both the not so convincing arguments of Bickslow and Lisanna, rather opting to suggest that they do something else to pass the time. As Lisanna only continued to glare at Bickslow, as he'd promised that time that they'd watch what she wanted and he wouldn't try to ruin it, nope, not at all (though he would argue that if she honestly still believed him at this point, that was more her fault than it was hers), but the seith only shrugged a bit at his friend.

"What sorta thing were you thinking of? Freed?" Bickslow asked. "Like I said before, you're the guest."

Of only the worst apartment in the city, the rune mage was certain. Still, he only sat there silently for a few moments as he thought of what he'd done so wrong in his life, that he'd been sentenced to such a fate, before sighing, giving in, and asking, "Are you two partial to card games?"

Oh, of course they were because the first thing out of Bickslow's mouth after the man's suggestion was simply, "Of course. But you know, cards ain't much fun without wagers."

"Wagers."

Nodding, the seith said, "Some jewel, yeah? I mean, I know you're down and out right now, Freed, but-"

"I am not...down and out," the other man told him with a bit of an eye roll. "I simply do not have a place to stay until my apartment is properly-"

"Then, what you're saying is," Lisanna asked slowly, "that you can make some wagers?"

"Of course I can. I have jewels on me right now."

"Great!" Bickslow jumped right up at that. "I'll go out, huh? Get us some grub? Some more drinks too. Don't you think? Lissy? That it's a good idea?"

"I think it's a great idea, Bicks."

"Great."

And something was off. Freed could tell. He wasn't an idiot. The pair of them were always up to something, anyways, so even if he didn't outright pick up on the strange vibes that they were throwing down, he definitely knew enough of the pair and their relationship to know there was almost always something going on.

They rarely interacted with other people without having something up their sleeves. Be it a prank or something else, they were well known for this. He'd liked to think that him being, as Bickslow had put it before, down and out, would give them some hesitance to this ideal, but apparently not.

Unfortunately for Bickslow and Lisanna, however, Freed just wasn't up for drinking that night, which was part of their plan. They pair didn't intend to rob the rune mage, of course. No. They loved Freed. He was Bickslow's very best friend and Lisanna seemed to respect him even without that factoring in. They just wanted to get him a little (a lot) drunk, stay sober themselves, play some cards, and end up the victors. Two on one and all.

"The house always wins," Bickslow snickered to Lisanna as Freed went to the not shockingly disgusting bathroom. "Foolproof."

"Foolproof," Lisanna agreed.

But this wasn't the case.

With the pair of them, it hardly ever was.

Because they hated the idea, anyways, of Freed getting to drink and them not being able to. How was that fair? Other than the fact that they'd been the ones to come up with the idea in the first place. And were the ones, you know, that were unable to control themselves.

Well, that wasn't right.

Not really.

Lisanna hardly drank, honestly.

Except for around the seith.

And he'd just had a good smoke, which usually sated him.

Until he had poor innocent Lisanna to corrupt and entertain and all that.

It was a sickening cyclical situation that they only seemed to spin faster upon when they had an audience. Still, Freed (and most everyone, honestly) saw this as not lasting much longer. It couldn't. Eventually the two would become sick of each other or, worse, themselves. That was the way that most relationships turned out, after all, but especially ones founded in such a fashion as theirs.

Not to say that Freed didn't want them to be together.

"Oi, Lissy, let's get married, yeah?"

Other than right then, when he definitely didn't want them to be together.

"What?" Freed had been watching the pair drink themselves silly to the point that they weren't even playing cards anymore, but rather trying (and failing) at making houses out of them. Their stacks were no higher than the first level and, honestly, Freed was a counting the moments until they both passed out and he could just go to bed. Then they went and said nonsense like that. "What did you just say, Bick-"

"Oh, gosh, yeah, let's." Lisanna was busy trying and failing at finding where a pesky card had gotten off to when she'd knocked her attempt at a house of cards to the ground. "Let's do it. We'd get so married."

"So married. Married fucking hard."

"Harder."

"Hardest."

"You cannot." Freed, for some reason, thought that he had an opinion in the matter. They both would have laughed were they not too busy making faces at one another and laughing at those instead. "Bickslow. Lisanna. Marry. It would not be appropriate for the two of you currently to-"

"Why do you talk so much, mate? Have a drink!"

"Bickslow, I do not wish to drink."

"More fo' me!"

"I do not suggest that you drink more either. And especially you, Lisanna," the man remarked with a bit of a frown. "I assumed we would spend the night taking my mind off the horrible predicament I am currently in. Not me babysitting the two of you."

Was there a better distraction than that?

"I'mma go fin' some nice pants to wear tomorrow to our weddin', Lissy."

"I'll ask Mira for a dress."

"I do not advise telling Mira of this." Stopping the worst mistake of the pair's life would be difficult enough without Mirajane egging them on. Which she would. She'd probably not like the idea of her little sister wedded off to the resident freak, but she also could never pass up a good chance to plan a wedding.

Or plan any wedding.

Mira had been waiting years for one of her friends to finally tie the knot so she could help with preparations.

If Lisanna had to be the one to bit the bullet then so be it.

"Course we'll tell her. She's the best woman."

"Maid of honor," Lisanna corrected to which the seith, who was busy stumbling into the other room slurred back in the affirmative. "My sis."

"Your sis."

"At our wedding."

"Our wedding.

"Perfection."

"Perfection."

Ugh.

Rubbing his head into his palm, Freed stared down at the ground rather than look across from his seat on the couch where Lisanna was still seated on the ground before the coffee table. Lisanna had so much promise. A second chance at life. And a wonderful one at that. She was powerful in her magic and of decently intelligent. Though her siblings might outshine her, there was no problem with her burning bright in her own right.

All thrown away. And for what? To pal around with stupid Bickslow for a bit?

Life was a disappointment.

"I got a top hat," Bickslow called then, to her, from the bedroom where sounds of him rooting around could be heard. Some of the babies had gone off with him, but two, Pappa and Poppo, stuck with Lisanna, watching it seemed as she tried once more on a house of cards. "Can I wear it, Lis?"

"You gotta."

"Why?" Freed groaned a bit as he rubbed the heel of his palm now into his eye socket and prayed for death. "Why does he have to wear that?"

"It's in right now, Freed."

"No, Lisanna, it's definitely and certainly not."

"Debatable."

"But it really isn't."

Heh.

"I'mma wear a red suit too. Think we can find one?"

"Red?" Freed wasn't sure why he cared as they certainly couldn't in the timefram ethey were stalking about working. "Why red?"

"To represent the joinin' of our blood, yeah?"

"Yeah? Yeah, what? Who's bleeding?"

"You know, that part at weddin's where ya slit a part of ya and mix your blood together and then both drink some of it and say your vows."

"What?"

"It was in," Lisanna agreed, "a movie."

"Stop watching these movies. Please," Freed begged. "They sound illegal."

"One would think," Bickslow called out with a cackle.

One would think.

"I hope everyone's back from jobs," Lisanna said then. "To be there in time."

"My people are. 'cept for Laxus." Then Bickslow loudly proclaimed, "But who need 'im? Freed's my best man."

"Freed's not going," the rune mage assured him.

His complaints were of little matter to the pair it seemed.

"How do I look!"

It wasn't a question from the seith, really, but rather a very loud proclamation as he came back into the room in only some dress pants and his hat that certainly wasn't not a top hat, but rather just a normal beanie. Freed was confused, but Lisanna only nodded her head.

"Stupendous," she replied and it was kind of shocking for her to get the word off as cleanly as she did, for her to be as inebriated as she was, but at that point Freed just gave up.

Honestly, he did.

Which was fine, as they both gave up then, it seemed, as Lisanna went to go sit in front of the movie lacrima and snooze while Bickslow finally put a movie in, but it was a horror flick instead of anything they pair were interested in before. With a final guzzle from a bottle of some hard liquor, he went to fall onto the floor with Lisanna and to the sound of the flick, they both passed out.

Freed, however, only sat there with his head in his hands, watching most of the movie.

It wasn't terrible.

Just not his taste.

The entire plot was contrived and he was never one for movies, honestly, as Freed much preferred stage plays as a medium, but mostly he was a bit concerned by the message portrayed. An angel fallen down to the depths of hell where one of the truly fallen works to help her and keep her safe. Of course, in one part, she must save him as well and, to do this, they pledge an allegiance to one another by slicing their palms and sharing a taste of one another's blood.

Freed wasn't so certain what themes he was supposed to take from this movie nor of it's message, but he was certain of the parallels Bickslow and Lisanna apparently saw in their own relationship.

It told him all he need to know about the pair and their ill-fated romance, honestly.

In the light of day, after a terrible night of sleeping on their gross couch, all Freed wanted to do was shower and be literally anywhere else.

Until, after stripping down, he pulled back the shower curtain to reveal a sight he wasn't expecting.

"What," his call awoke the pair from where they were still snuggled up on the ground, planning on sleeping most the day away, "is that?"

"Wha'?" Lisanna half griped as she didn't even lift her head. But Bickslow did open his eyes and glare at the bathroom door where Freed was now standing in the doorway of, towel around his waist, looking distressed.

"Oi, mate, calm down, yeah?" Bickslow's eyes drifted shut again. "That's Jeffery."

"You named that gigantic spider-"

"Jeff, actually," Lisanna muttered in a terse tone.

It had been hotly debated.

For a moment, Freed only stood there, both angry and confused by the goings on of his friends. Then, with a frown, he turned back around.

"I'm going to kill it."

"No!" And Bickslow was scrambling to his feet then. "Dude, no, if you kill it-"

"Oh no!" At the sound of Freed's cry of terror, even Lisanna started to get up. "I think I made it angry!"

"I told you to leave him alone!"

"How do you morons live like this?"

"Quite happily," Lisanna complained as Freed came back into the living room then, still in his towel, determined in that moment to leave right that second. Which he would, but not before going into the bedroom and changing his clothes. "Before you came and tried to ruin it."

"Ruin it? How?" From the bedroom, where he'd stomped off too, Freed was incredulous to this idea. "How have I-"

"You were a big party pooper-"

"You two cannot get married!" He was yelling at her. Lisanna. For some unknown reason. He liked the woman enough and hated that she was doing this with her life, but enough to yell? Not likely.

They were having an affect on his psyche now. Great.

"Who the fuck wants to?" came Bickslow's gripe from the bathroom where he was trying to find where Jeff(rey) had gotten off to. If he left the bathroom, they might be screwed. "Lissy?"

"Not me. At all."

"Me neither."

"Last night the two of you-" Freed tried, but they were cutting him off and, really, was it worth it anyways?

Was any of it?

"We like to dream when we drink," Bickslow defended.

"Doesn't everybody?" Lisanna added.

"But our dreams are nightmares," Bickslow went on.

"Isn't everybody's?" Lisanna also quipped and ugh, they were horrible together.

"If that is not why you cite me as ruining your party atmosphere," Freed griped as he came back into the living room then to glare at Lisanna, "then what is?"

"You wouldn't drink with us," Bickslow answered for her.

"Or let us trick you out of your jewels," she finished.

"I'm leaving," was actually what finished it though as Freed headed to his things. "Right now."

"Okay," Bickslow hummed, though this was to try and hide his panic over still not finding then almost certainly poisonous Jeff(rey). "But be back by sundown."

Lisanna, who was curling back up to sleep, only grunted in response.

And he shouldn't.

Should he?

"What," Freed sighed as, at the front door now with his bags, he looked over his shoulder at the mess of an apartment, "happens at sundown?"

"It's spaghetti night," Lisanna told him simply and it sounded so real that he almost believed it.

Almost.

But instead decided that this was some sort of 'term' of theirs that would no doubt end in attempts to, apparently, take his jewels, and get wasted.

While he wasn't wrong, it was actually also the night in which they make the simplistic meal of all, spaghetti.

But truth be told, he really didn't want to see what sort of silverware and cooking utensils the pair owned. Or cleaned for that matter.

As he left with his things, Freed knew his ship wasn't sunk just yet because, though he and Bickslow were thick as thieves (before he got all tangled up in the Strauss family), Evergreen was still the most level-headed of the group.

Until he arrived and remember that, unfortunately, she took had gotten caught up in the Strauss epidemic.

This is probably the most obnoxious Lisanna and Bickslow have ever been together, so I think we can safely say we are now in the realm of absurdity. But I live for that kind of shit, so let's proceed.

[rennyji]

July 20th tweets...

July 20th tweets...

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“Aaryan” is another one of those Mohanlal movies from the place of my background. I saw this late in life, and during the phenomena, several times, I would mention to my mother, and especially father, about the parallels. In the movie, Mohanlal’s character is a devout Hindu Brahmin from a respected family. He’s happy with his life and has a girlfriend, in a woman he’s known since childhood. Men not respecting societal roles and in greed for money and power, wrongfully set up the family in a crime of their planning. Mohanlals character loses his family to death and humiliation, as well as his home, and his girl friend also, in the actress, Shobhana. He flees to Mumbai, where he follows a very earthly path centered on money and attaining that money through jobs, where his philosophy is “Ill do anything for money.” He sinks himself in alcohol and the company of gangsters and joins them. Once obtaining enough money, he avenges the wrong doers against his family and seeks to restore his family’s lifestyle and “way of living.”

I guess I remember that movie because he was minding his own business, when people rooted in jealousy and greed, wanted to steal that from him. And me, after more than a decade of “lightly and carefully portrayed to the public” abuse, I can’t help but think, wasn’t I minding my own business?

For my sectionalistic brethrens who identify through the body parts, rather than the overall body that is the country, as you forgot about order, structure, unity, brought about through ancient Hinduism, for a visual example: think the movie, “Koyla.” Shah Rukh Khans character get turned into a mute and a servant by the people who killed his parents, from greed, for stumbling on their fortune of diamonds in this life. To save Madhuri Dhixits character, and to restore his dignity, he takes revenge on those who took decades of his life. I guess what I’m getting at is, from Koyla, you can see just how evil some men truly are. Even in real life, some people will take decades from your life. Before killing you, they’ll turn you into the court jester for their people and they may even shock your brains 20 times to make you more numb and compatible for mind control/mind reading.

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In Mark 4:33-34

33 “With many such parables he spoke ithe word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34 He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.So Christ talked to everyone in parables, and said, let those with ears hear. However he discussed the parables with his disciples, in private, elaborating on their meaning.Here I am, in the present day, a nobody, trying to elaborate on meanings and about living a life with meaning. But my own mother, instead of listening intently, will talk about toilets or do something involving uncleanliness, when I talk to her about things of God. My father prays and prays (though mechanically, without heart, without understanding meaning), and yet he fails to see and respect my seriousness in willful words and actions, based on faith. He’s so busy talking about defending what he as a father does, he fails to see that I’m enduring this, simply because of the hand of God carrying me, when the infidel tries to figuratively break my legs.I can see why Christ elaborated on heavenly things with just his disciples. Other people wouldn’t give it the respect it deserves (through talking about random things like toilets or whatever) or would let it fly over their heads as something nice sounding and tantalizing.

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Orchestrator government group 1 tries to piss me off to say things or write things about them, so that the child like voices rooted in perhaps the party school I attended (for completion of my undergraduate) makes it about them or me randomly addressing people who aren’t direct with me.

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I dunno I think I’m being led to think that I’m not seeing “this situation” in the way it’s projected to others…ok guys, lemme walk with you on this, let’s take a deep breath and digest the fact that this has been going on for more than a decade- I mean that alone, if nothing else, is horrendous…so am I disillusioned?

---

So I keep telling you guys to refrain from taking part in this, and to only help me by talking directly to me- especially about the situation. I tell you take a load off and just be natural in your interactions without hiding that this happened/is happening.

Yet, for one thing, some of you may try to assist me on the road under one or more things that you have been led to see me through- that goes back to my talk about mental filters…

If something tells you guys that I’m about to change a lane unnaturally, it results in the following:

The guy in front of me will abruptly slow down, while I’m checking my mirrors to the other lane, leaving me to still drive forward, while the guy in front of me is instructed to slow down. Kinda malicious of the orchestrators, don’t you think? Two cars risk colliding…

But then sometimes, I notice cars in the other lanes, accelerate, as I’m about to change lanes, while others leave significant space.

Please just follow the rules of the road and stop relying on external knowledge when making your decisions on the road.

Some of you may be instructed to smile a particular way (smiling is great if it’s not rooted in an instruction), frown a particular way, nod to me from the corner of my eye…see, think about it from my perspective. I have mind cr*p- to be very very very general- to deal with all day. When you have too many programs open on your computer, doesn’t it freeze or become unresponsive? Whether by design or carelessness, despite my effort to get you to be direct with me, these indirect things to make me think one thing or the other, are meant to overload my brain-the orchestrators just give me stuff to pick up on, where I have no idea what’s it’s about. I may have written something before that frown or whatever. Is that supposed to make me think ur unhappy with me for you allegedly eavesdropping into my life and making things about you, the stranger,  when you don’t even follow me on Twitter or Facebook?

---

I heard the following: DMX- Party Up- from the lyrics,

So whatever it is you puffin' on that got you think that you Superman (doing this for a decade)

I got the Kryptonite, should I smack him with my dick and the mic?

Y'all niggas is characters, not even good actors (ur a bunch of cocky arrogant losers)

What's gon' be the outcome? Hmm, let's add up all the factors

I keep saying there’s two sides to every coin. But you like to tip that scale. Always remember how much of an a*shole he is, more than any crazy, for starters, to put such statements/sentences out in public- that too when the world is monitoring every aspect of me…I mean I could be giving the police or some legal case against me, a ball for their courts through my recorded words and written statements- so in response, I’m in a rap mood:

Eminem says

Go call you a lawyer, file you a lawsuit

I'll smile in the courtroom and buy you a wardrobe

I'm tired of all you, I don't mean to be mean

But that's all I can be, it's just me

I realize these guys(artists)all deal with stupid people like the orchestrators while the larger audience of the world “say oh that’s mean” without context (what was preceding, what was said and done, and what occurred after)

At the end of this, either the orchestrators or me, will be progressing forward in in peace and happiness. Im making that clear, I’m throwing in all my cards, because no matter how numb you make me, my hate accumulating over a decade will find its nourishment. So Have fun, f*ers…

and to the larger audience, lemme guess “oh no he’s mad…what happened…awww” yeah ummm thanks for never talking to me, but thanks for the sentiment too.

Contrary to how I’ve been living for more than a decade, word of advice to the world: “Show the other cheek, talk out your problems, write 300 pages with variations of the idea of returning to normalcy in one chapter in life in an official police complaint, endure a decade, and hope for a solution- this can only be done for so long, and a decade? F* that sh*t. Orchestrators? F* ur wives, husbands , and Kids..

hey guys, when someone is giving YOU a hard time, please be like me and Let them shock your brain 20 times too, for talking about the hard time, so that you can show that you have no decency and are willing to bend over for them, for the sake of “compliancy.”  Next time the F* fake protectors of the law, who don’t protect the rights of an American citizen(wtf does ur Stars and Stripes flag stand for? The red and white ropes they bind you down with in life? Are the 50?!stars on ur flag about ninja stars you throw at ur country’s victims? Maybe the 50 is about, how they’ll screw you 50 times over for minding ur own business i.e always remember: nice guys finish last…maybe the red is about how the country likes to make you bleed/watch you bleed/and entertain others on how you bleed while you try to stand strong)…but where was I? Next time the F* fake protectors of the law, who don’t protect the rights of an American citizen want come in 4 SUVs and make you walk barefoot, for talking about “the situation” ur not supposed to know about daily, be mindful, you will be on the list, when I gain back my authority. Bear in mind the respect enforced, actually needs to be earned through effort and not by a rough voice or tough exterior.

Peepz , when law enforcement engages in a circus, makes remorseful random faces fo you while, get this: simultaneously, engaging in madness, when the FBI engages in silence to make you America’s prostitute of a servant of a hero/icon,

please,

never follow my example.

If any of you get out into a fraction of my problem, don’t waste your health, ur dignity. At times, fists and kicks are the only answer. I went about my life reporting things to authorities, dreaming about best friending a girl in college and marrying her…the works…-if respect can’t be earned or given because some infidel playing or being a false god commands it, “seize respect. “

You can’t waste time on some superficial high ideal high minded losers.

So I keep talking about mental exhaustion…you still actually do the same things, over and over…- so I’m supposed to fall. What’s the matter orchestrators? Could t f*me in the a*s while standing strong? You need me to collapse or be on a stretcher? Would a tempur pedic be ok when you stop most likely molesting ur kids? F*ers…

—-

So I was listening to “Sam’s Gone” from “I Am Legend,”

And I remembered the powerful end scene from I Am Legend…listen and watch 37 seconds into this clip till the end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7LsxKkh0zg

Starting from 37 seconds, Will Smiths character says “They’re not gonna stop…they’re not gonna stop…” those coincidentally white horrific mutations of humans, in their mindlessness, their aggression, their lack of heart and compassion, remind me of the police officers who made me walk barefoot, it reminds of some party school professors, it reminds of the orchestrators rooted in the mind cr*p - after a decade, I’ve come to acceptance that “they’re not gonna stop.”

For 10+ years of slavery, further indignified by turning me into a joke,

That moment where Will Smiths character and the mutated man (symbolizing an American orchestrator) race to battle towards each other - man…after a decade plus of provoking me, literally 24/7…when we’re finally face to face, I want to see what he/she has the balls to do. De palabra de espanol: “Ver”, ”, mi gentes, “Ustedes Ven la  cara de el Diablo blanco.”

Regarding that moment, when the orchestrators and me race toward each other, win/lose, it’ll be like this from 300:

ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOLpIkoS0QY

You, orchestrators may have the big guns, may have humanity following ur instructions, but like many before me, it’ll be like these two segments from the below 300 movie clip: 1:02- 1:50, 2:12-2:57

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qubItQjdSHA

In a deep state of mind to what transpired years ago, I said that I will get justice. Am I’m saying it again. You, the American orchestrators, turn mankind into one team in conviction and practice against me, you’ll torment me for a decade plus…maybe even destroy me after humiliating me-as is American military style.

Just know this: I, an Indian man, fated to suffer this “situation” in your country, will come back lifetime after lifetime, to finish what you started with me in this epoch of time, where you seek to conquer the Kingdom of God, that resides in every conscious mind wanting peace.

Orchestrators,ur quite welcome to see me as that cockroach who just won’t die or stay dead.

---

[warmdevs]

New Post has been published on https://warmdevs.com/wechat-chinas-integrated-internet-user-experience.html

WeChat: China’s Integrated Internet User Experience

The big Internet companies of the Western world have proclaimed “conversational user interfaces” and chatbots to be the Next Big Thing, with major initiatives led by Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Even Taco Bell has a “TacoBot,” a service that allows users to order and customize their tacos using a natural-language UI.

Much of this hype stems from angst generated by the success of the Chinese WeChat service, which had 700 million users as of April 2016. WeChat has been touted as the poster child for conversational user interfaces. In this article, we report on user research we did in China with WeChat users. The study aimed to uncover practices in which WeChat users engaged, as well as why and in which cases its users preferred to use WeChat instead of regular mobile websites and apps.

WeChat: All You Want in One Place

As the name implies, WeChat started as a mobile instant-messaging (IM) app, launched by Tencent in 2011. However, WeChat quickly added other features; today, it is no longer primarily an IM application, but it also includes:

A payment service. 200 million users have connected their bank accounts to WeChat. This capability allows person-to-person money transfer, including 8 billion “red packets” (so called because gifts of lucky money were traditionally given in red envelopes) sent during the 2016 Chinese New Year celebrations, as well as easy payments to either online or real-world businesses.

A platform for companies’ online presence, with 10 million “official accounts.” Official accounts are WeChat-supported mini-websites that are easy to establish and especially convenient for small businesses, compared with the high-tech skills needed to build and maintain an interactive website.

An ecommerce platform, which is particularly convenient because it’s integrated with the payment service.

Social networking. The “Moments” feature is somewhat like a Facebook wall where friends can post messages in different formats (e.g., text, audio, pictures, stickers, videos). Furthermore, message dialogues allow users to interchange text, audio, pictures, stickers, short videos that are taken within WeChat, links, contact cards, and documents.

Other social services, such as “people nearby.”

Games.

A broad range of 3rd party services. Examples include ordering a taxi, booking train and airline tickets, buying movie tickets, and paying utility bills.

Integration with the physical world. QR scanning is widely used to quickly access WeChat official accounts, and exchange information (for example, contact information). There are even plush toys that connect to WeChat.

The Mon Mon plush toy for little children to interchange voice messages with their parents’ WeChat accounts. (Still from advertisement created by the vendor, the Chinese toy company Dan Dan Man.)

In total, more than a third of the time spent by Chinese users on mobile is on WeChat. No wonder Western companies want to get in on the action.

However, the key UX advantage of WeChat is not that it grew out of a chat service; it’s the integrated user experience. Each individual service is fine, but not necessarily better than those offered by other companies. In fact, our user testing of WeChat revealed many usability problems in various areas. What’s superior is how these services play together and reinforce each other. Most importantly, these benefits are not the result of a superior, simple conversational UI; instead, they are often provided through a simplified graphical user interface (GUI).

WeChat is similar with a megaportal providing access to a huge number of services. It’s almost a parallel, alternate web, whose explosive evolution seems to be rooted in two different aspects:

A huge initial adoption of the IM service and, later, of the payment ability

The scarcity of mobile-optimized sites and services on the Chinese web

The first aspect led to widespread adoption and provided a convenient substitute for credit cards (a less common method of payment in China); the second provided one (and often the only) convenient way of online access to a business or a service.

We asked our Chinese research participants to draw their mental models of WeChat, and as shown in the following examples, many of them considered the smooth payment service and the official accounts more central than that the chat service.

Mental models of WeChat, as drawn by two of our study participants.

User Research

We conducted two rounds of user research in China:

A diary study, in which 12 participants logged their WeChat use for 7 days:

Users sent us a WeChat message each time they used a special WeChat functionality.

Users also completed two questionnaires at the end of each day: one about their use of basic WeChat features and one about their use of special WeChat features. Basic features were defined as messages and chat with friends, checking Moments (the Facebook-wall equivalent), and reading articles published by official accounts. All other activities were considered special features; these included interacting with official accounts, posting to Moments, using payments, scanning QR codes, and shopping.

A usability test, using the thinking-aloud method, where 14 participants used WeChat and other mobile apps to perform representative tasks during 90-minute sessions. At the end of these sessions, most users sketched their mental models of WeChat.

About half of the users were in Beijing (one of China’s advanced “tier-1” cities, with 21 million inhabitants) and the other half were in Tangshan (a smaller and more traditional industrial “tier-3” city, with 7 million inhabitants). The specific location doesn’t usually matter for usability testing, but, in this case, market research suggests that WeChat penetration varies in different parts of China: 93% market penetration in tier-1 cities vs. 43% in tier-3 cities. Local services (e.g., offline businesses using WeChat official accounts and payment tools) also differ in these two types of cities.

About half the study participants owned iPhones and the other half owned Android phones.

Here are some examples of usability-testing tasks (translated into English):

You are planning a trip to Beidaihe next Tuesday. Use WeChat to find what train tickets are available.

Use WeChat to check how crowded it is now at Sanlitun.

Your friend recommended “Jacky’s Crawfish.” Order some crawfish, and have it delivered to our testing location. Please stop before just before completing the purchase.

WeChat Payments Rule

In the diary study, fully 32% of all recorded WeChat activities were payments, confirming this service’s central role in WeChat. On average, during the 7-day diary, each participant made 6 payments — about one per day. The majority of the payments were directed towards offline businesses or physical persons, and actual ecommerce payments were in the minority.

Recipients of WeChat payments made by our study participants.

The main reason for the popularity of the WeChat payment service was its smooth user experience and its ability to cut across channels and across the business/social divide. As one study participant said, “When I am paying with WeChat, I only need to take my phone out — no bank card, no signatures, no cash, no change — so convenient!”

The next two major uses of WeChat were Moments (the Facebook equivalent) with 16% of use and official accounts (miniwebsites hosted by WeChat) with 10% of use. The many other WeChat features accounted for the remaining interactions and thus summed to 42% percent of the overall use.

Integration and Consistency of User Experience

What makes WeChat superior is its integration: many features that all work together and build on each other. Once users subscribe to an official account, they can receive content pushed by that account. They can also access the WeChat page of that account and find more relevant information about the company or read associated pieces of content. They can purchase products or send money to the company. Thus, subscribing to an account opens up a world of interaction possibilities with that company, all strongly tied into WeChat.

Palace Museum account: The user can select one of the tabs at the bottom of the screen to interact with the Palace Museum (top left). Each tab opens up a submenu (top middle). A list of articles about the Palace Museum accessed through one of the menu options (top right). A WeChat “webpage” for the Palace Museum can be accessed through another one of the menus (bottom). (Note, however, that the Palace Museum’s webpage accessed through a regular mobile browser is actually not mobile optimized.)

These WeChat services are often not available through other mobile channels — for example, the Palace Museum does not have a mobile-optimized website available through a mobile browser. Thus, many users will prefer to interact with a company through the consistent and relatively predictable WeChat interface instead of risking to go to a different channel and have an inferior user experience.

The Palace Museum website as accessed through a mobile browser is not mobile optimized.

For companies, WeChat is an inexpensive way to ensure a presence on mobile; that presence has the advantage of offering a standardized, consistent user experience. Users are likely to succeed when engaging with an official account because most of them look the same — they are the equivalent of websites designed according to the same design pattern. The interaction is thus easy to learn and is made of the same WeChat supported building blocks that people are already familiar with from countless previous interactions with other companies.

WeChat vs. Traditional Websites

Although the mobile web is perhaps not as strong in China at this point (with many sites not having mobile versions), it is most likely that WeChat and regular websites will continue to coexist because they each have advantages and disadvantages. Our users didn’t expect the WeChat official accounts to cover all their needs, but they saw them as an easy way to access commonly used features.

Our users said that they preferred using companies’ official accounts on WeChat for several reasons:

Ease of access. WeChat is the primary QR-scanning application, freeing users from typing which has high interaction cost on mobile phones and is particularly unpleasant for older users.

Ease of interaction. As discussed above, it is easier to interact with an official account — you know where to click and how to use it because they all share the same basic interaction style.

Access to small businesses. Many such business (e.g., a fruit shop, handcraft, interest-based organizations) are unlikely to invest in a real website.

Special discounts. Followers of a WeChat account often receive promotions or exclusive campaigns.

Up-to-date information. There’s obviously no fundamental reason why a company’s website could not be kept as current as an official account, but users’ perception was that websites were more static, whereas WeChat accounts were updated more frequently.

While WeChat official accounts have their benefits, users continued to use traditional websites in parallel with WeChat, for several reasons:

More complex functionality, beyond the simple WeChat-supported UI

Spam: Too many articles pushed by WeChat official accounts can easily become annoying, even for followers of those accounts. Some abuse users’ trust and flood them with ads.

Closed system: WeChat excludes access to frequently used services such as Taobao (a major ecommerce site) and important music providers.

Impaired findability: Often different accounts will have similar names, and some of them may belong to a legit company and others may be fake and trying to impersonate that company. To make things worse, the same company may have different WeChat accounts, and the accounts themselves may be of different types (service accounts vs. subscription accounts) with different capabilities (service accounts will support payments, while subscription accounts won’t). Finding the right account can thus be challenging for users.

Trust issues: Some articles on WeChat spread fake information.

WeChat search results for Palace Museum (left) and for Xuxian, the fruit business (right). Checkmarks indicate that the account is verified by WeChat. But these verification checkmarks do not help identify the desired account, because many verified results may actually be returned. Some of these results will belong to the same company but will have different functionalities, and some will belong to a fake company that may take advantage of a better-known brand’s name. Users can differentiate companies by clicking on their introduction page or checking their messaging history, but these operations are time consuming.

Some of these problems are similar to those faced by users of traditional search engines, whereas others are unique to WeChat, especially the peculiar distinction between subscription and service accounts, which breaks the integrated model of the service and seems to be a legacy of WeChat’s history.

WeChat Usability Problems

Our user testing revealed plenty of usability problems in WeChat and the various official accounts we tested. This is no surprise, since the perfect user interface hasn’t been built yet, but should come as a warning to those technology enthusiasts who believe that simply moving to a new platform or embracing a new interaction style will result in great user experience. On the contrary: any design will still need polishing and adaptation to users’ real needs, as opposed to companies’ internal hopes for what their customers will do. We’ll just give two examples here.

Team Maker allows users to define group events. The setup screen requires users to enter a name for the new event, but 10 of 14 study participants overlooked this field and went straight for the second field (denoted by a clock icon) to enter the time of the event.

Team Maker’s official account: The top field had the instructions “Event Title (Required),” but it was overlooked by most test users.

Several design issues combined to cause this problem:

Banner blindness possibly made users overlook the top field because of the graphic.

The prompt was shown as a placeholder text within the field, which is less noticeable than a separate field label.

That field was not aligned with the other fields in the form, and thus looked as if it was not part of a form, but rather a static title.

The activity title prompt was shown in low-contrast text, especially compared with the brighter text used for the time field.

Users may have had a selfish-action bias, preferring fields related to their own needs (the time of the group meeting) over fields related to system needs (the title).

City Heatmap is a WeChat feature that indicates how crowded a given location was. This feature is available under Wallet → Public Services → City Heatmap. Our users had great difficulty finding it. This navigational path was simply not expected, and suffered from a convoluted information architecture and problematic naming with poor information scent.

Such issues are not special to WeChat and we’ve seen them many times in usability studies. New platforms have old usability issues, because the main determinant of usability is the human mind and people’s needs, not technology.

Text-Based Interaction Gets Limited Use

WeChat supports two different types of interaction with an account:

Text-based: Users can text a number or a keyword to a service account and receive an IM reply from that account. (The reply can be automatic or can be generated by a customer-service representative in charge with responding to WeChat queries).

Menu/link based: Users can select a link embedded in a text message or they can use the menu buttons available on official-account interfaces and in the chat window.

Sometimes all these interaction methods were available for an account, but in other situations only the more basic text interface was supported.

Palace Museum’s official account: users can interact with this account either by texting back one of the numbers 0–6, or by tapping the GUI menu button in the bottom left corner of the screen and selecting some of the available options. On some pages (but not in this case), the numeric options inside the text message are themselves tappable links. (In fact, many of our test participants tried to tap the options inside the message and were disappointed when that action did not produce any result.)

In our diary study and in the usability-testing sessions, we noticed only limited use of the text interface. In particular, some users texted back a number in response to a first message received after subscribing to a service account. They also occasionally texted back a keyword hoping to get back matching search results from that company. However, most users much preferred a menu-based interaction over the more effortful text-based interaction. Whenever the bottom menu was available for a service account, users relied on it, as a more expedient way to interact with the company. They also attempted to tap on the numerical options displayed in the chat message as an even faster way to make a choice.

Our initial interest in WeChat was to better understand conversational text interfaces. The appeal of such natural-language interfaces is that they supposedly allow users to simply express their goal and then sit back, while letting the site do all the work for them. No clicks or taps are involved once the initial query has been formulated, so in a sense, such interfaces have the potential of getting closer to the holy grail of usability ­— zero interaction cost. (Such interfaces do assume that users will be able to formulate a goal — an assumption that does not always hold, because users do not always know the search space well enough.)

We did not find evidence for sophisticated natural-language understanding in WeChat. (Those human-staffed official accounts that reply to individual user queries are definitely not scalable in the long run and were not the norm in our study.) Instead of a true conversational text interface, we discovered a system that warrants the interest of an evolutionary web scientist for the way in which it mimics the evolution of the mobile web — a world in which historic, simple interaction such as the numeric-menu selection and keyword-input coexist with more sophisticated menu-based interfaces or GUIs. These latter methods are newer and often preferred by WeChat users for their lower interaction cost, yet, at this point, they have not yet completely erased the chat-box interface.

Conclusion: WeChat Integration Builds Convenience

If conversational interfaces are not a strength of WeChat, what is the secret behind its success? When we asked our users for their top likes about WeChat, the most frequently mentioned attribute was convenience.

WeChat shines in several ways that build convenience:

A wide variety of services and features

Integration of these features among themselves and, especially in the case of WeChat payment and QR codes, with the physical world

Simple, consistent interaction that stays the same across different official accounts — in marked contrast to the diversity of user interface techniques that plague websites

Integration and simplicity are especially important because WeChat is mainly a mobile service. User interfaces are more difficult to use on mobile devices because of their screen-size limitations and error-prone touch input. A simple interaction style that provides a seamless omnichannel customer journey is essential for mobile designs.

Different usability aspects of WeChat were cited as major positives (second most common after convenience) and as major negatives by our study participants. No UI is completely good or completely bad in terms of usability, and while this interface had many good parts, there were others that definitely needed improvement.

Our study participants’ likes and dislikes about WeChat.

The interplay between usability and convenience points to one of the major contrasts in our field — that between usability and user experience (UX). While usability applies to well-designed user interfaces (UIs), usability is not enough for a good UX. Users need useful features that address their real needs instead of their imaginary ones. When a system is convenient, it goes beyond usability and succeeds in being useful and simplifying a previously complicated task.

WeChat does all of this, and that’s why it’s successful. Not because it grew out of a chat site or originally used a conversational user interface.

[oumakokichi]

um im curious if maki and Tenko have any special interactions with characters that aren't Kaito and Himiko? Like Saihara perhaps, Ouma, Kibo, Korekiyo, Angie,, etc..

It’s hard to define “special interactions,” but there are a few! Maki doesn’t really interact with many other characters, but part of that is as much because she’s a loner by nature as it is because the game starts attributing all her character growth and development to Momota at some point.

Still, she does have a few interesting interactions one-on-one with Saihara, mostly in Chapter 3, when Momota begins skipping out on their training sessions (probably because of his illness, though the game tries to make you think it’s just because he’s scared of the occult at the time). She’s also the investigation partner for Chapter 3, which helps flesh her out a little more.

Sadly, their dynamic has always fallen a little flat to me, mostly because most of what they do talk about one on one still revolves around their romantic feelings (Maki’s for Momota, and Saihara’s for Kaede). Everything that gets asked about Maki’s backstory is usually done only when Momota is around, or else outside the main plot, in her FTEs. And although they do have fairly good interaction between Chapters 3 and 4, I still maintain that Chapter 5 really dropped the ball, considering how horribly their dynamic is handled without ever getting brought up by the narrative.

Maki insults Saihara during the trial, calls him a shoddy detective, says he’s a bad friend to Momota, threatens him, and outright says word for word that she’s willing to get him and everyone else killed in the trial if it means “defeating Ouma as the ringleader.” This isn’t such a bad thing in itself, because I like when female characters are allowed to be cold and aloof and not necessarily good people. If the game had actually addressed it and let Maki be on the outskirts of things in Chapter 6 while having to earn her right to be trusted by the group again, I would’ve loved that.

But the problem is that her behavior just literally never gets treated as a problem after the trial. She doesn’t apologize for it afterwards, and Saihara acts as though there’s no issue at all; he doesn’t even seem angry or scared of the things she said and did. Even the fact that she lied to the entire group before the trial ever started, promising not to kill Ouma before going to do just that, is never once addressed as a serious breach of trust.

So sadly, even though Maki does interact with Saihara on her own somewhat, I feel there’s a lot of unfulfilled potential in their dynamic. The only other character who she can be said to “interact” with is Ouma, but their dynamic is… well, extremely antagonistic. Which is interesting in its own way, but it’s definitely not a story of friendship and getting to know one another better.

Both of them mutually dislike each other, Ouma because he knows she’s a killer and that she was lying about her talent to the rest of the group, and Maki because Ouma relentlessly makes digs at her status as a killer and because he constantly puts on such an antagonistic and hostile façade. I will say something I found interesting is that Maki does seem to revise her opinion of Ouma a little bit in Chapter 6, though very, very late in the game.

After she sees all the evidence that he wasn’t actually evil, including the very childish diagrams in his room, and the discussion in the trial that confirms he was never a Remnant of Despair, I think she couldn’t help but be shocked at how she was used as a pawn by the real ringleader to kill him. It’s admittedly very interesting how I think she’s stuck between two very different images of Ouma in Chapter 6: the “evil villain” side that he exposed before, and the much more childish, self-sacrificing side that gets alluded to by all the clues in his bedroom. While I would never go as far as to call them “friends,” I do think their dynamic with one another is very interesting in that sense.

Tenko by contrast is quite willing to interact with other members of the group, though usually only if they’re female. She’s much more outgoing by nature, I think, given her tendency to wear her emotions on her sleeve. But the main problem is that unlike Maki, she’s not nearly as plot-relevant, and therefore her interactions with other characters are intentionally kept limited.

Still, she does have a few characters who she interacts with! Kaede is a pretty noticeable one. I would say that after Saihara himself, Tenko was arguably one of the characters the most touched by her. Not only are her FTEs with Kaede pretty damn cute and indicative of how worried Tenko is for every single girl in the group, but as someone who wants to protect others herself, I think she was touched by Kaede’s leadership attempts. She’s someone who wears her heart on her sleeve, so Kaede’s death is something that really hit her hard.

The fact that she also keeps Kaede’s memory with her in her heart is actually one of the things that prompts some really nice in-game interactions with her and Saihara. While she’s still certainly wary of Saihara because he’s a guy, she can clearly tell that he’s trying very hard to get stronger, that he’s not a bad person, and that he clearly was very fond of Kaede. In Chapter 3 they talk for a bit about the influence Kaede left on them, and it was a scene I quite enjoyed.

Like Momota, Tenko also takes it upon herself to try and force Saihara to come to terms with his own insecurities. It’s a sign of what a good person she is and how much she truly does believe that strength comes from overcoming one’s own flaws and facing problems head-on that she includes Saihara in her little “aikido session” in Chapter 3 as well as Himiko–and that she largely gives them both the same treatment, even though she clearly has feelings for Himiko. When it comes to making them both stronger, Tenko’s advice is the same: confront the problem directly.

Saihara’s weakness is his anxiety and hesitation, which is something she tells him directly while aikido throwing him to the floor. While her little “training session” with him is quite brief, it’s still amusing to me that it bears so many similarities with Momota’s own training sessions he puts Saihara through. Clearly, Tenko never hated Saihara; if she had, she would never have offered him personal advice. Her attempt to get him to face the root of his problems was a really nice scene, and showed that while she’s wary of guys by nature, it’s not as though she actually hates them.

Her interaction with Kiibo is admittedly much more brief, but I still really like their brief back-and-forth in Chapter 2, as well as the fact that Kiibo gets an invitation to the pool event because he doesn’t count as a guy. I think there’s a lot of “I don’t really understand your logic” feelings between the two of them, but that they both do like each other well enough, even if they’re not close or anything. The fact that Tenko felt the need to confirm directly whether Kiibo was a guy or a girl was great, because it shows that she was clearly trying to decide how to view him and whether to trust him or not.

Meanwhile I think Kiibo did like her, since they’re both two of the more formal/polite members of the group by nature… though I think ultimately the fact that she does just view him as a robot stops them from getting much closer. After all, Tenko is the one to start asking questions about what would happen if Kiibo suddenly fell off a boat in the middle of the ocean, and later she and Gonta both don’t even hesitate to throw Kiibo at the tank to break it and get Hoshi’s skeleton away from the piranhas. There’s a feeling there that they like each other well enough, but just don’t really get each other much.

Finally, one of Tenko’s more interesting interactions (besides Himiko, as you said) is Angie, probably. The two of them are clearly paralleled as the people who vie for Himiko’s attention. But while Angie’s reasons are largely self-motivated and because she’s used to having very trusting, naïve people around her who will do what she says, Tenko’s reasons are entirely self-sacrificing–a little too much, sometimes, when she gets over-eager.

This conflict of which approach is best for Himiko, and whether Angie’s trying to take advantage of her or not, is what sparks most of the tension between Tenko and Angie. Angie’s full-fledged devotion to her religious beliefs mostly irritates Tenko early on, but I think it’s only later in Chapter 3 that she realizes how serious Angie is about it, and that it could become a serious problem if she keeps going through with dangerous things like the resurrection motive.

What’s interesting is that while she clearly resents how quickly Himiko opened up to Angie, and how much Angie seems to be taking advantage of her, she never actually hates Angie. She specifically wants to handle the situation without killing her in Chapter 3, and she says that she’s not even sure Angie realizes how much she’s escalating the situation.

Because she believes so thoroughly in her god, it’s not as though she’s evil or a horrible person per se–but she’s unshakable and unwilling ot listen to reason, and that makes her dangerous. That’s why she wanted Saihara and Maki to talk to her and try and convince her to stop the resurrection ceremony, if possible. Whenever she herself tries to talk to Angie instead, the situation seems to escalate ten times more than necessary, and it’s impossible to get through to her.

The two of them have a definite rivalry of sorts, and I appreciate the fact that it has nothing to do with a male character for once. I wouldn’t say that they’re “friends” with each other necessarily either, but it’s clear that Tenko didn’t hate Angie. And Angie, for all her flaws and the fact that she wasn’t written as well as she could’ve been, never expressed any interest in actually killing anyone either. The cause for most of their mutual dislike is, I think, paranoia: Tenko clearly mistrusts Angie and thinks she’s a bad influence on Himiko, while Angie mistrusts Tenko for not letting her just have her way and speaking up against her so much.

I hope this helps answer our question, anon! It’s always really interesting to go back and try and consider what interesting relationships or dynamics characters have with each other. Ndrv3 is noticeably different from dr1 or sdr2 in that the characters never really quite manage to pull off that “we’re a big happy group of friends” feeling, but that’s pretty deliberate, I think. Even when they do start acting like it, it’s only because of the Hope’s Peak remember light in Chapter 5, and because they’re starting to act a lot more like their predecessors.

It’s fun to look at dynamics between characters which were really interesting or compelling even if they weren’t a huge part of the game. So thank you for asking!