#i liked his arc and all but when they revealed in the ending that Oh actually his beliefs on crime haven't changed at all lol<3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[littleeyesofpallas]

Are Kyoraku's game abilities actually based on real Japanese children games? I only know about the Daruma one.

Sorry i put this off so long, i kept meaning to go dig up the old anime episodes to see if the anime added or changed anything, but never did. I'm just leaning on the fan wikia to take inventory and trusting they didn't overlook anything...

Bushogoma[不精独楽]: "Lazy SpinningTop" is the type of spinning top toy you usually see in Japan, where you wind a bit of string around the top to use like a rip chord to send it spinning; as opposed to the sort you'd spin by hand or something.

(It's what Beyblades are based on.)

(Oh a good thing to note here is that in the japanese version of the game we generally refer to as "tag" as well as the "it" role in it is called "oni" as in a demon/ogre. So the term in all the associated "XYZ-Oni" attacks could functionally just be translated as "XYZ-Tag")

TakaOni[嶄鬼]: "(High/Steep)Mountain Tag" is a play on takaoni[高鬼]: "High(up) Tag" a variation of tag where the tagger must be at even or higher elevation than the person they're tagging. i.e. players higher up than the tagger are considered safe. The "taka" is also a homonym with taka[鷹]: "hawk/falcon" and seems to be a play on how hawks hunt by diving at their prey, meaning they have a blind spot above them.

KageOni[影鬼] "Shadow Tag" is a variation of tag where instead of tagging the person themselves, whoever is "it" has to touch their shadow to tag them out.

IroOni[艶鬼]: "colorful/lustrous oni" is actually a pun on irooni[色鬼]: "Color Tag." Unlike in the manga the rule is usually that once a color is declared, touching anything of that color is considered "safe," so each round is a matter of chasing down players until everyone is either out or safe, then declaring a new target color.

Daruma-san ga koronda[だるまさんがころんだ] got the most attention I think of the whole line up and is the Japanese name for what I think it most commonly called "Red Light, Green Light" in English.

(Pretty notably the manga Kami-sama no Iu Touri[神さまの言うとおり] aka As The Gods Will used it as the first big game in their death game series, with a literal Japanese daruma doll. It's also what Squid Game stole its first game plot from, beat for beat.)

Kageokuri[影送り]: "Shadow send(off)" i don't know that this is really a "game" but it's when you stare at your shadow on the ground for a bit then up at the sky and can see your shadow's afterimage.

BBS adds Yubikiri[指斬り]: lit."finger beheading" as in to cut off the "head" of a finger. It's what we'd call a "pinky promise" in English, the idea being that you've sworn to keep whatever promise at the cost of cutting off your pinky if you aren't faithful to it.

...as well as Kagome kagome[囲召籠目]: "encircled basket eye" a pun on[籠目籠目]: "basket eye, basket eye." Children hold hands in a circle with an oni/it in the middle, they dance around in said circle singing while the center child keeps their eyes close, and when the song ends the oni/it has to guess who is directly behind them. The tune of the song that goes with it is extremely recognizable.

Some of the old videogames had original techniques but those were largely made before any of his actual powers were revealed so they're mostly just like wind elemental attacks and don't contribute to the theme.(ugh... goddamnit now that i went and looked for it i realize there's like zero info around most of those old games and it makes me want to download emulator files for them all and look up all their move lists... i dont want to actually do all that tho...)

Honestly I'm surprised Katen and Kyokotsu didn't have any anime original abilities in the filler arc or something...

They do have a BBS card with the move Utage-no-Ikkyou[宴の一興]: "Amusement/(Brief)Entertainment of (a) Feast/Party" which isn't really a game of any sort. at least not specifically. It would refer to something like a bit of song and dance interlude at a feudal era banquet. Admittedly a clever intersection of Katen and Kyokotsu's differing types of play -children's game vs adult entertainment.

[moonsidesong]

played the fangame danganronpa another with a friend and i didn't really like the ending but i very much enjoyed mekaru bc she's just woman byakuya togami. i'm going to talk a lot in the tags now

[gojonanami]

❝ 𝐖𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐈𝐓 𝐁𝐄 𝐄𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐈𝐅 𝐈 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐄 ? ❞

❝ ALL THESE PEOPLE THINK LOVE'S FOR SHOW, BUT I WOULD DIE FOR YOU IN SECRET ! ❞

✧ pairing: suguru geto x sorcerer! reader

✧ summary: suguru's birthday spent with you is like a dream -- the perfect day spent in bliss, but what happens when the dream has to come to an end?

✧ warnings: 18+, nsfw, smut, jjk compliant au (reader is a sorcerer), domesticity, cuddling, oral (m +f), handjob (m! receiving), fingering (f! receiving), improper massage technique, some angst (discussion of star vessel / premature death arc / geto's defection),

✧ wc: 3,015

The first thing Suguru felt were fingertips brushing against his cheek.

“Morning, birthday boy,” you murmured, and his almost violet eyes fluttered still half within the grasp of the sandman, and it didn’t help you looked as if you were the thing of dreams — your body clad only in his white button down, hair askew from your late night with him, and eyes filled with utter love and devotion, “finally waking up? Because I have a whole day planned for you,” 

His lips curl despite the sleep that weighed on his eyelids, a hum leaving his lips, as his fingers find you, even with his eyes closed — just as he always could, his fingers curling around your wrist, as he expertly tugged you and wrapped his arms around you. You were caged in around his limbs, pressed to his chest with barely any space to move, you’d be scared, if wasn’t exactly where you wanted to be. 

You sigh, burying your face in his chest, lips brushing the skin of his bare chest, “Sugu, come on, we can’t laze all day, I have a nice breakfast planned, and we’re having lunch with Satoru, Shoko, and Nanami later, and I have a million other nice things planned — none of which we can do if you don’t get out of bed,” 

“But you forgot something,” it’s his turn to sigh, as he shifts his face to rest against your neck, nose nearly tickling the skin there, as his lips press butterfly kisses, dotted like constellations along your neck and collarbone — as if he find the all the universe had to offer between the space of your neck and shoulder, “my favorite thing to do is right here,” 

You roll your eyes at the innuendo, a knowing smirk on his lips, one you didn’t need to see to know it was there — it was done against your neck after all, “If I recall, we did plenty of your favorite thing last night, and it’s the reason you’re probably so tired right now,” 

His fingers begin to toy with the buttons of his shirt that you’d stolen, “Well, they say you can never have too much of a good thing, after all,” 

“Oh, is that so?” and his lips find yours again to swallow your next retort, his lips gliding against yours and he can taste the coffee you had just had, the bitter taste mixed with your sweet tongue, that flicked not so sweetly against the seam of his lips. 

“You said I could have anything I want today,” he murmurs, beginning to undo the buttons one by one, as he revealed your body to his eyes — a twitch in his boxers as he realized you wore not a single thing underneath, “well right, all I want is you, for breakfast,” 

Your cheeks burn, thighs pressed together, his words sending a rush of heat down to your still aching cunt, “Sugu—” but his lips find yours again, his fingers busy with teasing your nipples — rolling both between his pointer finger and thumb, “fuck, baby—” 

“Gotta enjoy my meal baby,” his lips burn a trail of kisses down your body, his lips curling around your tit, his teeth grazing and teasing one and then the other, drawing a whimper from your lips, as he pulls his mouth away with a pop, “it’s the most important meal, and I have to start my birthday right, don’t I?” 

And his hands drag down your sides, large calloused fingers squeezing your hips, as he lifts your legs to hook around his shoulders, his dark gaze devouring the sight of your pretty cunt glistening with your slick, before his mouth and tongue would. 

His lips warm your outer lips, as his fingers tease your puffy little clit, pinching it, “Still swollen from last night,” his lips curl as you yelp in surprise, with a glare shot his way, that rolls into the back of your head as he buries his face in your sweet pussy. His nose grinds against your clit deliciously, as his tongue collects the pre already drenching you, humming at the taste — how was it that you were truly his favorite thing he tasted? You weren’t exactly sweet down there, but you were the only dessert he wanted (he’d leave the actual sugar to Satoru), “seems like you wanted this too by the way you’re leaking down here, my shirt and sheet is even wet,” he teases, making you cover your face in embarrassment, “don’t worry, sweetheart,” he smiles up at you with his slick covered lips and dripping chin, “I’ll clean you up.” 

“You don’t have to do this for me,” Suguru says, but you only shake your head, meeting his gaze in the mirror, with a roll of your eyes. 

“I want to do this for you,” as your fingers continue to comb his dark locks, finger twirling one strand between his fingers, “plus this is more for me than you, you never let me play with your hair at Jujutsu Tech,” you pouted, and he snorts. 

“First, you said ‘play,’ not do, and second, do you forget the first and only time I let you, Shoko, and Satoru do my hair?” and you stifle a laugh, badly disguised as a cough, as you lips part to answer, “don’t lie, I know you guys use it as your group chat photo,” 

“I only wanted to put clips and a scrunchie in your hair — dying your hair was all Satoru—” and his sharp look cuts you off, as you relent, before running your fingers through his hair, and easing another knot from his locks, “well isn’t this nice though?” and he nods, after your lips graze the edge of his hairline, “we’re almost done and you can tie your hair up after,” you hum. 

“Do you like my long hair?” and he meets your curious gaze in your reflection, “I mean, i decided to grow it out after we graduated, but I was wondering if you ever thought I should cut it,” 

You purse your lips, scrutinizing him in contemplation, “I love your hair either way, but you were always so meticulous about cutting it the same length, so why did you decide to grow it out?” His eyes fall to his lap, and he swallows, “you don’t have to—” you say softly, and his fingers find yours, squeezing. 

“I want to,” he echoes, as he bites his lip, “I heard when I was a kid that hair holds memories, and ever since Amanai and Haibara…I don’t want to ever forget them,” and he toys with a strand between his fingers, “And by keeping my hair longer, it feels like I can hold onto that, onto them,” he says softly, and you nod, “I know it’s not logical—”

“Not everything has to be logical, not everything has to have a reason,” you murmur, pressing your lips to his cheek, wrapping your arms around his neck, “sometimes things can just be a thing you do — but either way, if you cut your hair or keep it long, I don’t think you’ll ever forget those two, and neither would they — ever,” and he turns to meet your lips in a slow kiss, your fingers ghosting his cheek, before you finally part, “come on, get dressed, we’re going to be late.” 

~~~~

“You told me he liked strawberry sponge and cream cake,” you punched Satoru in the shoulder, who takes it if only to appease you, with a pout, “you said that’s what he wanted this year, you blue eyed freak,” 

“It is! How was I supposed to know he’d lie to me?” 

“You know him for how many years and you can’t tell it was a lie?” 

“You’re his partner, you don’t know what cake he likes—” 

Suguru rubs his forehead, as you and Satoru continue to bicker, as he pulls a lighter out, and offers to light Shoko’s cigarette, as she leans on the windowsill of one of the open windows, “Those two never grow up do they?” and Suguru snorted, leaning against the wall next to her, facing the spectacle you and Satoru were making,  “why did you say strawberry cake?” 

“Because it’s both of their favorites,” his eyes slide to those two as Satoru used his infinity only to infuriate you, “I always had thought those two would have made a better match,” 

He feels Shoko’s eyes slide to him, “She loves you, not Satoru,” and his eyes find yours, just as they always did, and you smile the one smile he always hoped would be reserved for only him. 

“I know.” 

“Did we have to stay that long?” Suguru sighs, pulling off his jacket, “who slipped alcohol into Satoru’s plastic cup anyway?” and your pause gives it away, as he glances at you, pulling off your shoes, “sweetheart, you know he can’t handle his alcohol,” 

“Well someone should’ve handled their job right then,” and he laughs, as he walks over to wrap his arms around you, as you grumble, “you ask Mr. Six Eyes to do something — and he can’t even see through a lie, so are we really buying that he actually has them—” 

And his lips find yours again, his hands sliding down to your hips to pull you closer, “I believe you owe me a present still,” he kisses down your neck, and he feels you melt into his touch, your fingers splaying on his shoulders, “and I know exactly what I want,” 

“Well, I may have gotten you something a little different,” your lips curl. 

“A massage?” he raises an eyebrow, as you strip him down to his boxers on the bed, a few towels underneath him as you warmed the massage oil with your hands. He heard the squish and squelch of your fingers, and he felt his dick twitch, the noise sounding like something else. 

“You don’t relax enough, this way, I can help you relax a little,” you hum, as you stand beside him, “can I start?” and he bites his lip, but nods. 

“Go ahead, princess,” and you do — Suguru didn’t realize how many knots he had in his back, the muscles stiff and immovable at first, until you begin to work away at the bundles of stress he had accumulated. A moan slips from his lips as he feels the stress ebb away, a blush burning up his cheeks, “Sorry,” 

“No complaints here, baby,” you giggle. God, he was so fucking hot like this. His muscles were glistening with the oil, each muscle becoming more relaxed under your touch, the little grunts and groans that left his lips left another knot, but this one was in your cunt.

Suguru couldn’t help let these moans escape his lips, you were making him feel so good, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to move after this, his body far too limp. Or so he thought. Your hands were traveling lower and lower, until they brushed against the waistband of his boxers, and he shivers, “Sweetheart,” 

“What? You carry stress here too, and as your masseuse, I have to do a good job right?” you hum, “as long as my client permits me,” 

And he bites his lip, “I’ll permit anything from you, baby,” 

You don’t need any more words, as your fingers pull at the boxers, tugging the fabric down to reveal his ass, your fingers first ghosting over the flesh teasingly, before beginning to massage it. 

Fuck, now he was fully hard, his dick rubbing against the mattress — thank god you put down towels — as you worked out the knots in his gluteus muscle, but he didn’t know if you were helping him relax or not, because he never had felt more stiff. And it doesn’t escape your notice. 

You hum, “Maybe we need a different method,” your finger traces up and down your spine, “would my client mind turning over for me?” 

“Princess—” 

“Just one more thing to help you relax,” and he relents, turning over, to reveal the tent in his boxers, still drawn over his front, and your eyes fall to his cock, “and I see where all the stress has gone,” you tsk, as you climb onto the bed, straddling his waist, drawing a gasp from his lips, “poor baby,  all worked up still?” Your fingers traces his clothed head, a large wet patch that assuredly wasn’t massage oil, “I think I can relax you.” 

He’s biting his lip as he watches you tug down his boxers, fabric dragging against his erection as you do, slapping against his stomach, “Sweetheart—“ 

“Just let me do this for you, baby,” you murmur as you clean your hands with a rag and instead smear the beads of precum along his length, drawing a groan from his lips, “so sensitive for me, Sugu, been wanting me since morning haven’t you?” You hum, as you begin to work his cock with your hand, lips leaning down to press a kiss to his weeping tip, “it’s only fair if I get to taste you too — after all, I may have been your breakfast, but you’re my dessert,” 

And your lips wrap around his length, tracing his slit with the tip of your tongue, and tasting his salty precum. He groans, the noise burning a trail to your cunt, “s’good for me,” you murmured against him, as you took as much of him as you could, taking the rest in your hands.

His fingers weave into your hair, hips lightly bucking into your mouth, the tip of his cock brushing against your throat, and you manage to suppress your gag reflex, “shit, sorry—“ but you cut off his apology by licking a thick stripe up one of his veins, before hollowing out your cheeks and sucking, “fuck, Princess, I’m close—I—“ and your fingers toy with his balls and your mouth redoubles his efforts, until he’s cumming down your throat with your name on his lips, his thick load painting your mouth and throat, as you swallow it eagerly. 

He flutter open, only to watch you pull your swollen lips from his length, strings of spit and cum still connecting you to his cock, before you wipe it away, “don’t worry baby,” you lean down to lick the beads of cum dripping from his tip, his hips jerking, “I’ll clean you up,” 

And after you get him all cleaned up, the two of you are in bed again, tucked up next to each other — Suguru was completely boneless, as you climb into bed beside him, “you okay baby?” 

He nods, smile on his lips, “More than okay after that,” he murmurs, lips finding yours, and then he pulls away with a pause, “but I didn’t get you off, baby,” and his forehead furrows as you chuckle. 

“Worry about that tomorrow, baby. I think you need some sleep now,” you crawl into his arms, your head pressed against his chest, you were so warm pressed against him, “got all I need right here,” you murmur, before you ask, “did you have a good birthday?” 

“I always do,” his fingers graze your cheek, as his eyes flutter shut, “always when I’m with you, Princess,” 

The first thing he feels, again, are soft fingers against his cheek, his eyes heavy with sleep, flutter open, as his brain catches with his body. 

“Master Geto? Master Geto?” His eyes finally flutter open to find Nanako and Mimiko at his bedside. 

He rubs at his eyes, as he stares at a ceiling for a moment, as he lets the haunting feel of your body slip from him — for a moment, he had let himself believe it was real — that you were with him, that he was still with you — all of you. 

“Happy Birthday, Master Geto,” they both intone together, and his gaze slides back to find the girls’ holding a birthday cake box. He blinks a moment, before he realizes. 

“Thank you both,” he sigh, sitting up, and even though he knows, he asks the question anyway, “it was left at the doorstep of the compound?” 

“Yes, the same one, the one that’s always left for you,” Mimiko answers as Nanako hands him the box, and he slips off the twine and opens the box to reveal a strawberry and cream sponge cake, “I didn’t know Master Geto even liked strawberry cake,” 

And he chuckles, as he stares at the cske, the residuals unbidden and clear as day who had left it — who had always left it, “I don’t but it was the favorite of two people very important to me before — you know I don’t care for sweets,” 

“I thought you didn’t care for sweets made by monkeys,” Nanako said, typing on her phone, before she snaps a picture or two of the cake, “why is this an exception?” 

“Because one of those special people baked it, and she’s a sorcerer,” and you always had — every year without fail. He didn’t even know how you had found him — he didn’t tend to stay in one place for too long, but you always did. 

As he lifts the cske out and hands it to the girls, “go slice it up and have a piece,” he smiles, “I’ll take care of the box,” and they nod, as Mimiko takes the cake while Nanako walks out staring at her phone still. 

It wasn’t the cake that he found special, but the card that was hidden at the bottom. It was nothing special — always a random card picked out with a birthday message printed on the outside — but no, what was special was the note you wrote. 

My favorite treat for my favorite birthday boy — I hope you have a good birthday — with your name signed below. 

His fingers twirled a strand of his hair, still far too long, as he traced your name with his finger. He hadn’t had a really good birthday — not without you. 

But, he opened the drawer of his bedside table, placing the card inside with the others, at least he could dream of one. 

✧ a/n: i've been hopping between my sukuna fic and prof geto 3, but i was bouncing back and forth between whether i wanted to write this or not, but i just had to for suguru - man has claimed a sweet spot. thank you to the anon who's idea i put on a spin on and @biancaness, who provided the massage idea :). this is also for @gaylatteart because their birthday is tomorrow, the day after suguru's. thank you bb for being so wonderful and congrats on doing the thing - i'm super proud of you!!

✧ taglist: @foxygemin1, @honeyangelsblog, @biancaness, @rwtard, @strangehuman101, @serendididy, @i-love-the8, @ririthedevil, @linastired, @bsaeshell, @jaceum, @going-to-californiaxx, @dontshuugo, @diogodxlot, @coffeebun17, @slikdolliy, @spider-fan72, @sophistication-as, @get0sfav, @klynne, @hatsunemitskislobotomy, @heijihattorisgf, @teatreeoilll, @el172736738, @nem0philistx, @strawmariee, @mysuperrainbow

[yumeka-sxf]

After two months, the SxF manga is finally back! There's lots of interesting Melinda content here, so let's analyze!

I would say the main thing we learned about Melinda in this chapter reinforces what's been hinted at before - not only does she truly despise Donovan, but she's actually terrified of him. Her expression on this page when she thinks of his souless eyes says it all.

Whether her fear comes from direct abuse, knowledge of what unspeakable things he's done in the past, or something else entirely, has yet to be seen. This chapter also emphasizes the fact that she can't freely do what she wants without being fearful of what he would do. Just like at the end of the bus hijacking arc where she made Damian promise not to tell Donovan that she had come to pick him up, we see in this chapter that she can't let him know about her occult hobby either.

But while it's not clear what exactly Donovan does or has done to her to make her like this, what is clear is that her fear of him is what's caused this inescapable hatred of him, which was so strong that it caused her to also develop feelings of hatred for her son because he's something that connects her to Donovan. But like we've seen before when Anya first read her mind, her dislike for Damian is fickle; one minute she wants him to disappear, but deep down she loves him. While the first incident after the hijacking made her seem more ambivalent, this chapter reveals that her "good" side is her true intent - wanting to be a worthy mother to Damian and see him happy.

But her fear of Donovan is so gripping, that just the thought of confronting him makes her paralyzed with fear. She becomes too exhausted to continue and even starts questioning why she bothers with fortune telling at all. Perhaps it's an unconscious coping method that she uses to try and find a way out of the horrible situation she's in.

Hopefully we'll learn even more about Melinda in the next chapter when she has her appointment with "Dr. Forger." But another thing I wanted to point out in this chapter is reiterating how empathetic Yor is to Melinda's condition despite not knowing what's actually bothering her. And in recommending that Melinda see Loid at work, she's actually helping with his mission! (of course only Anya realized this).

And oh my god, the "grim reaper" joke had me cackling 😂 Their expressions in the first panel were hilarious enough, but then Yor had to make sure Anya knows that she doesn't use a scythe! That's just so her.

Guess it wouldn't be a SxF chapter without one quiet, bittersweet scene, courtesy of Loid this time 😭

I also love how the boys are enamored with Yor. Even foul-mouthed Damian can't bring himself to be directly rude to her, so he just runs away 😆

I know a lot can be said about the Tarot card meanings, but this post is long enough already, so I'll leave that part up to others who are better with that type of analysis 😅 I'm just glad the SxF manga is officially back! I'm relieved Endo is better and giving my best wishes that his health continues to stay good 🤞

[zombvic]

KISSES TO MY EXES (joão félix x reader)

summary : in which y/n & joão soft launch their relationship as a response to their exes dating rumors

face claim : alexandra saint mleux (shes so gorgeous brooo)

notes : this idea came to me in a vision tbh like its so stupid im actually crying but hope you enjoy it. also no hate to magui shes so fine n stuff js her personality is irking me out xx

pairings : joão félix x ex!norris!reader , smau

It's safe to say both of them were screwed over by the two people who were now rumored to be dating.

Y/N L/N became a prominent figure in the sports industry even before she started dating the McLaren driver. She gained recognition in the Formula One community as Lando Norris's girlfriend. However, after their breakup, she became known as the one who was dumped by Lando Norris—in a good way, though.

She used the publicity of being dumped to her advantage. Instead of sobbing over the breakup initiated by Lando, she became the best version of herself.

João Félix, on the other hand, took his "breakup" as a challenge. A challenge to see how many times he could get fucked over by the same girl. The Portuguese actress and model, Magui Corceiro, was like meth to him. He couldn't stop going back to her; he didn't even try to stop himself. People say that "third time's the charm." Well, for João, it was the fourth. After she fucked him over for the fourth time, he decided he was going to start his villain arc (breaking up with her).

João's transfer to Barcelona came with much more than just a new club and a new country to discover; it also brought a new relationship.

The two had bonded over their recent relationship endings and on a personal level, they were a match. As months went by, their bond grew until it turned into an actual relationship. As of June 2024, they had been together for about five months, agreeing to keep it low-key. However, the moment they saw their exes link up they decided to reveal it piece by piece.

Liked by alliseeissainz, ynspookie & 85,725 others.

formulagossip uh, oh !! ex-wag / wag gossip here !! the ex-girlfriend of lando norris, y/n l/n, had attended a wimbledon match whilst her ex-boyfriend (lando) was there with his current girlfriend (?), magui corceiro. they havent interacted at all but neither of the three seem excited about meeting eachother here.

View all 247 comments.

user oh shit

user bro downgraded (personality wise)

user slamming my head against the wall

user lando when will you learn

- user both magui and lando r red flags ..

user wonder if shes gonna cheat on him too ..

user lando x magui seem very pr-like

user doesnt magui follow y/n on instagram

user their relationship seems fun..!

user not a smile in sight

- user y/n is mewing 🤫🧏

Liked by land0sgf, smoothoperator.com & 55,725 others.

formulagossip even more ex-wag gossip! it looks like the ex girlfriend of lando norris, y/n l/n, has arrived at the spanish grand prix. she lives in barcelona and is a long time formula one fan. she got invited by the ferrari f1 team to their garage 👀👀

View all 763 comments.

user are we about to witness a ynlando reunion .

user noooo y/n run outta there

user she looks so gorgeous.. landos loss

user why would she be there for lando, cmon guys be so fr

user her outfits always eat

user shes so fine guys helppppp

user L LANDOOOO

user poor lando, has to see whats he missing out on

user post break up glow !!!

- user more like new relationship glow .

Liked by yourusername, lecleaire & 43,384 others.

formulagossip wave of exes this weekend 👀 joão félix (portuguese fc barcelona player) also known as the ex-boyfriend of magui corceiro was spotted at the red bull garage.

user damnnnn

user guys i lowkey ship joao and y/n

user y/n, lando, joao but no magui..

- user lmaoooo literally we need her here to connect them

user y/n liked ??????????????

user WHY IS NO-ONE TALKING ABOUT Y/N LIKING THIS POST

user i get u y/n

user ooooh she likes barca players

user chat i need him

user f1 & barca.. my two worlds colliding

user a smell a new couple

- user if delusional was a person:

Liked by joaowow, barcafangirl69 & 25,856 others.

formulagossip y/n y/l, ex-girlfriend of lando norris liked our post regarding the portuguese fc barcelona player. the two have been following eachother for a few months and even spotted at some events together (via a fan who messaged to us!)

user 🚢🚢🚢

user chaaaaat i ship..

user the upgrade is wild

user i wouldnt be surprised if theyre dating tbh

- user they match eachothers vibe

user barca fangirl x barca player who ???

user ooooh i fear i like this

user girlie is gonna be the ultimate wag

Liked by joaofelix79, landonorris & 2,125,856 others.

yourusername hot summer nights

user joao AND lando in the likes !?!?!?!?!? thats craaazy

user magui caught shaking

user shes so lana coded

user this is so unfunny i need her like actually

- user joao on a second account is that you ??

francisca.cgomes beautiful !!

- yourusername says YOU

- user aint that maguis bestfriend ...

landonorris 😍

- user brother ..

Liked by joaoswifeyyy, yourusername & 1,055,682 others.

joaofelix79 summer 💆🏽‍♂️☀️

user this pic got me pregnant

user woof woof

user y/n liked !!

user not to be dramatic but i think i’m dead

user the kids miss you

user who took the picture ...

user those biceps ...... rawr

user magui missing ouuuuut

Liked by joaofelix79, landonorris & 3,001,885 others.

yourusername bit of this and that

francisca.cgomes #needthat

- yourusername #comengetit

- pierregasly what the fuck .

- pierregasly im telling your boyfriend

- yourusername fyi i read that in a french accent

- pierregasly much needed fyi .. thanks.

- yourusername what was that?? sorry i dont speak croissant

- user BOYFRIEND ?????

user mother is mothering

user wifey, are you cheating on me?

user who's that MAN.

user guys that's me please respect our privacy!!

user i think it's lando tbh..

- user get a grip

user dont ask me how i know this but those are definetly joaos hands

user the aestheticness is so visually pleasing xx

joaofelix79 posted a new story.

(translation : adorable)

Liked by stanloona123, francisca.cgomes & 103,685 others.

formulagossip former wag of lando norris, y/n y/l, is seemingly soft launching her relationship with the portuguese football player, joão félix. the two have been interacting both on and off social media for a while now and its not surprising theres possible romance going on !! y/n posted a picture of a pair of hands which match another picture of joaos hands. it also appears joao updated his instagram story with a picture of y/ns dog. what do you guys think?

user FINALLY . A HAPPY ENDING FOR THEM

user ahhhh thats so cute

user kika likeeeeeeed

user im so happy for them if theyre together

user ive been waiting for this moment

user beyond excited rn

user what the sigma im so happy

user ughhhhhh me when

user blud learned his lesson

Liked by ynsgirlfr1end, yourusername & 2,875,974 others.

joaofelix79 rio de janeiro🤍😍

user THATS Y/NS DOG

user he hay sports

user my mannnnnn

- user hey girlie...

user did y/n take that picture 👀 👀

user looking good

- user its the girlfriend effect

user WOOOF WOOF

user i wonder how y/n feels about the comments

Liked by joaofelix79, francisca.cgomes & 4,214,824 others.

yourusername cats out the bag n stuff

francisca.cgomes AAAAAAAH FINALLY

francisca.cgomes y/n is still mine tho .

- joaofelix79 nuh uh .. ????

- francisca.cgomes YUH UHHHHHH

- pierregasly bruhhh ☹️☹️

- yourusername sorry mr baguette man

user IM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW

user aaaaaaaaaaaaaah cuties

user anyone notice magui & lando have been quiet for a while

user talk about an upgrade

user anyone else find it funny that kika (maguis supposed best friend) is congratulating y/n for dating joao (maguis ex)

- user and not even a like for magui & lando

user i love the dynamic between pierre, joao, y/n & kika

user fav couple tbh

chattttttttt this is sillyyyyy but yeah hope u liked it xx

[sisislair]

More on the re-listen/read.

The second Jun Wu gets back he starts chipping away at Xie Lian's support base.

First with Feng Xin by telling Xie Lian about him forgiving the debt and helping him out. Which on the surface would seem nice of him, to let Xie Lian know that his old friends might still care about him. But he already knows that due to their very poorly disguised selves helping him out. What this is doing, however, is making Xie Lian complicit in Jun Wu breaking their secrecy. He was specifically told not to reveal this information to Xie Lian. So now there is no way for Xie Lian to acknowledge their good deeds naturally, without revealing how he found out.

And surely, if he's been told this secret, what other things are being said about the two of them behind their backs between Jun Wu and Xie Lian? It's not that big of a thing, but it doesn't have to be. The gap between the three old friends is already large enough that Jun Wu widening it ever little bits at a time won't be noticed.

Secondly, of course, he tries to drive a wedge between Hua Cheng and Xie Lian. The support of a ghost king is no joke, and I think by this point he has already started to make assumptions about their relationship. Same as the rest of the heavens honestly lol.

But either way he sends him to investigate Hua Cheng specifically because he knows it will fuck Xie Lian up to have to investigate someone who's being nice to him, and even if he can't make him distrust Hua Cheng with all the bits he's been dropping about how evil he is, then the least he can do is make Xie Lian feel so guilty that their friendship withers because of that.

And Xie Lian is torn up about it! Hua Cheng is being a wonderful host and friend to him, and he's snooping through his stuff! The wind master is like, 100% you should not have accepted this mission, ghost king or no, even if Jun Wu himself told you too. Because he obviously considers you his friend. But Xie Lian still sees Jun Wu as a trusted mentor figure, even if he doesn't always agree with him, so he reasons that of course Jun Wu knew this would be awkward for him. So he must have thought that Xie Lian was the only person who could do this task right.

And I mean, to be fair, not entirely inaccurate, if by do this right, you mean not jump to the immediate conclusion that Hua Cheng is in the wrong. As well as subtlety. Of which Lang Qianqiu has none lol.

So on the guilt end he is very much succeeding, which like, no surprise.

Xie Lian is the champion of feeling guilty about things. But on the trust end? Ghost city arc is so important for establishing a foundation for their relationship.

Jokes on Jun Wu, because his sending Xie Lian on this mission very firmly sets into his mind that Jun Wu and the other heavenly officials are all just talking bullshit when it comes to Hua Cheng.

Oh he can't be trusted! And yet he keeps his promises.

Oh he lives in a den of depravity and is cruel! But he obviously has a handle on things, and is very well respected, not just feared.

Oh his scimitar is super cursed! And yet it does Xie Lian no harm, and acts like an eager puppy.

Xie Lian's been on the wrong side of the rumor mill for a long time, he knows how this shit goes.

[dollypopup]

People don't give Penelope enough props for the absolute BRAVERY it took in asking Colin for a kiss!!! I am tired of the rancid takes of 'oh, it makes her look pathetic-' no. Penelope asking for that kiss is VITAL in her growth, and pivotal to Polin's love story. Some flowers for Colin, first, for having put in years of work into their relationship so that Penelope trusts Colin to the point where she would even dare to ask it of him, but flowers to Penelope for asking. She trusts him and she's familiar with him and she KNOWS she's safe with him, and she took a leap of faith. So much of Penelope's arc is hiding what she wants and who she is, melding into the shadows, putting on a front. She doesn't confide in much of ANYONE. Not even Eloise knew about her love for Colin, or her existence as Lady Whistledown. Penelope keeps so much close to the chest.

Which makes it such an amazing moment when she opens up with Colin. When she reveals what she desires, and when he responds with 'If you want this, I'll give it to you'. So in that scene, when she's heartbroken and sad, after she has written of her own humiliation in Lady Whistledown to circulate amongst the ton, adding her own name to her list of bullies, when she thinks she is well and firmly on the shelf, and Colin comes to check on her, and he won't allow her to think badly of herself, and he even goes so far as to bribe her maid to have a moment with her, she opens her heart up enough to ask him for what she wants.

And that is beautiful. It deserves props and recognition. To ask for what we want as women is radical, and I'm frankly sick and tired of people thinking she's 'pathetic' for it. Penelope is brave in this scene. She is brave and vulnerable and Colin is there to tell her that is okay. That it should be rewarded. That he will catch her and he is there and she is right to trust him. He is the safety net as she tumbles and steps into the unknown.

Penelope Featherington looked the man that she loves in the eye, and she asked him to kiss her. How many of us would have the iron spine necessary for that? Sure, maybe she thinks she's hit rock bottom, but she could have swallowed her truth as she so often did. She chose not to. Penelope Featherington, who only ever voiced her opinions on a page, anonymously, stood before him with nothing to protect her heart, bare-faced, and told Colin Bridgerton she wanted him to kiss her. That she wanted to be loved.

And he did. He did and it was lovely. It was a fantastic kiss, and in that moment, you can tell that she *was* loved. Is loved. He held her like she was starlight, precious, delicately grasping her chin, brushing her cheek; he pecked her once and then went in for more. That kiss had desire and longing and tenderness in it. It was gentle and wholehearted. It was them learning each other, the both of them flaying away another layer for the other to keep. Penelope asked him for what she wanted and she got it. And it was ultimately the catalyst for all her desires to come to fruition.

I feel like we as women are told we must be passive so often: don't be too loud, don't ask them out, don't look 'desperate'. But fuck that: Penelope is an active participant in her love story. She asks Colin for what she wants and he provides it for her eagerly. That kiss made him realize that what he felt for her was far more than just friendship, and it started with 'Would you kiss me, Colin?' and ended with him outrunning HORSES to catch up with Penelope so he could, on his knees, profess how much he wants her and how he can't stop dreaming of their kiss. She toppled that first domino. May we all be so courageous. May we all be so bold. May we all be so loved.

Penelope put her own love story into motion with that kiss. We should fucking applaud her.

[shsl-analyzer-guy]

In-Depth Character Analysis On All The DR Characters Because What, Are You Gonna Try And Stop Me? Who Are You, My Mom? Yeah, I Didn't Think So- Part 5: Junko Enoshima

Oh boy, this is gonna be a big one. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this turns out to be the longest analysis in this entire series of ~100 characters. Why did I not save her for last. Why is this part 5. Why do I do this to myself-

Jokes aside, I am so so so excited to make this; Junko has become the face of this franchise for a reason, and the depth of her character and role in the series as a whole is massive. I won't be surprised if this takes over a month to complete. In fact, just for fun, let's track it. I'm starting the analysis on 7/5/24. When will we finish? Nobody knows!

(Final edit Crane here. It has been more than 5 months. Christ.)

This analysis uses only official material for the sake of analyzing the character, primarily sourcing official English localizations. It'll be um, lengthy, to say the least, so if you aren't that interested, just keep scrolling. Also, if there's even one canon installation of Danganronpa that you haven't played/watched/read yet (THH, DR0, SDR2, UDG, DR3, and/or V3) don't read this; the ripple effect of Junko in every corner of the franchise will be discussed and thus, there will be spoilers aplenty.

Also, a disclaimer that though I try to remain as objective as possible with these analyses, it will be at its core, an interpretation. Not everything will match up with how you interpret it, and that's okay! I don't claim to be perfect, and this isn't an infallible source of canon, only my interpretation of the source. Let's get into it!

Foreword

Real quick, before we get too far in: readers of my previous analyses know that I normally try to move in chronological order of release and events in-game to keep the analyses easier to follow. Due to the nature of Junko's characterization and the fact that she's present throughout the entire series, that isn't really possible here, as to talk about any one aspect of her, I may need to pull from multiple installations. I'll be sure to cite where I'm pulling from and provide evidence where necessary, but it definitely won't be perfectly in order by release or timeline. So hopefully it won't be too messy. Also, characters very closely tied to Junko, like Monokuma, Ryoko, Mukuro, etc. will be analyzed separately at a later date, so those sections may end up feeling incomplete as a result. For the sake of releasing this before 2025, I need to cut corners a little bit and focus primarily on how these relationships affect Junko, and not the other way around.

Part 1- Monokuma

In order to understand Junko, you must first have a basic understanding of Monokuma, mascot of the Danganronpa series and self-declared Headmaster of Hope's Peak Academy. Monokuma introduces himself to the cast as their superior and oversees the killing games, providing motives and passing judgement on the class trials, all while reveling in the Despair of the students. There are multiple iterations of Monokuma, but most of them exist in order to carry out the killing games without issue.

Like Junko, Monokuma remained a staple of the franchise, appearing in every official installment, whether he was being actively piloted by Junko or not. As we see in DR3: Despair Arc, she personally designed him to become the face of her movement of Despair, and thus, he was used to carry out her will at every turn.

1.1- Trigger Happy Havoc

In the first DR game, Monokuma was just a robot piloted by Junko. His mannerisms were a character invented by her to appear as the psychopathic Headmaster, but regardless, her true nature of Despair is directly infused into the character as she acts him out. Through him, she's able to reveal hidden information about each of her classmates and torment them personally, all without them knowing she was once a dear friend to them. As a robot, though, he came with drawbacks- Junko couldn't pilot him and watch the cameras at the same time, and once the charade of his all-seeing Headmaster was seen through by Kyoko, he lost most of his power. Thus, Monokuma's existence was designed to deceive, and could only function through deception. He created the illusion that hope was outside, that escape was solely on his terms, and that the class had no unification- all according to Junko's design.

1.2- Goodbye Despair

When the sequel game arrived, Monokuma was once again a character being played by Junko. Unlike last time, however, the two had blended together, becoming one and the same. This Monokuma was a Despair Virus, created with Chihiro's Alter Ego technology, and implanted into the Neo World Program with the intent of continuing the real Junko's plans for the spread of Despair. This version of Monokuma is extremely similar to the previous in terms of its personality and beliefs, but appears much more powerful within the artificially generated world, now able to apparently power-up, bleed, and transform plushies into duplicates without logical explanation.

Rather than targeting certain themes in an attempt to teach Despair, this Monokuma created directly-targeted motives, attempting to use class 77's personal connections to a whole other level and banking on the fact they were friends, rather than try to cover it up. He also acts as if they're his dear friends and like they're on the same side, directly inverse to his apparent attitude towards class 78. This is intentional, though as to why, we'll get into much later.

1.3- Ultra Despair Girls

Rather than being present as a character, Monokuma exists solely as mascot in this game, as thousands of Monokumas are programmed and piloted to slaughter the majority of adults in Towa City. He exists solely as a tool used by the Warriors of Hope.

In chapter 4 of the game, you get the reveal that all the physical Monokumas that exist were built and sold in Towa Group's factories, and later, that Monaca Towa was directly responsible. This exists to demonstrate how Junko was able to financially and physically afford the amount of power and technology she accrued in her crusade for Despair. More on this later.

1.4- Danganronpa 3- Future Arc

Near the end of the first episode, Monokuma seemingly appears on a monitor in the meeting room of Future Foundation's HQ, announcing his survival and a return of the killing games, starting with the Future Foundation higher-ups. At the beginning of the following episode, an act is put on between this version of the character and "Miaya Gekkogahara", as they fake an argument where Monokuma alters her avatar Usami into Monomi, making it appear as though he's again being piloted by a real person from some remote location.

As the season comes to a close, though, we learn that it was the chairman who set up the killing game, and that Monokuma's appearance, along with the video that would play during every nap, were falsified recordings, aided in part by Monaca Towa pretending to be Miaya. Thus, his likeness was used for a cheap recreation in an attempt to manipulate one person and kill nearly everyone else in charge of the Future Foundation, all set in motion by Junko's own brainwashing videos.

1.5- Killing Harmony

This is the only version of Monokuma that Junko herself doesn't have a hand in recreating, and is the only time he exists solely as a robot personality of his own accord. Created by Team Danganronpa, he's a physical conception of the fictional character Monokuma in-universe, and thus, is a character in his own right. Birthed by a Motherkuma machine for the mastermind's benefit, Monokuma acts once again as Headmaster, but a significant amount of soul is noticably absent from the presentation. This is in part due to the amount of focus on the Monokubs, using their unique characteristics for comic gags with the cast in the way Monokuma used to in the previous games, and his appearance feels like more of a checkbox than an actual return of Monokuma. Simply put, without Junko's influence, Monokuma's character becomes more flat, and starts to fade into the background in a convoluted mess of references and callbacks. All of which is done on purpose- Monokuma is a facet of Junko, and without Junko, Monokuma becomes empty.

Part 2- Character Design

Junko Enoshima is designed as a gyaru, a subgenre of fashion known for its more 'rebellious' style. She's dressed in a modified uniform, with a black jacket with her sleeves rolled up and unbuttoned, allowing her cleavage and bra to show, with a black-and-white tie, a red bow, and a red plaid miniskirt. She also has Monokuma pins holding up her ponytails- one with the white half, and one with the black half. Asymmetricality and the use of exclusively black, white, and red all align her with Monokuma, an asymmetrical black-and-white bear with a red eye. She has styled blonde hair and blue eyes, and has the title of SHSL Gyaru, or Ultimate Fashionista.

2.1- What's A Gyaru?

Gyaru as a fashion style first originated in the 1970s, emerging from Japanese women's nonconformist desire to embrace their own sexuality and rebel against societal standards of the traditional housewife. As time passed and more women latched onto the trend, it became a major point of discussion, initially shaming these women for being too racy or delinquent, before shifting to an increase in streetwear fashion and being recognized as its own genre of fashion, evolving with new subgenres as time continued to pass. It went from a wholly shameful style to an expensive, trendy one as expressly gyaru clothes started to be made and sold in stores. The increase in popularity also led to discussions of placing laws against child prostitution, as younger girls were getting into the expensive fashion and started finding alternative ways to afford this showy clothing.

There are many, many subgenres of gyaru known, but Junko Enoshima is specifically referred to as a kogal or kogyaru, a high-school gyaru. Her school uniform is modified into a showy jacket and miniskirt with big bows, she wears knee-high boots, and her hair is blonde, implied to be dyed based off of the common hair-dying of kogals. In DR 0, we also see her with red hair and eyes as opposed to the blonde and blue, suggesting that red may be her natural hair and eye color. Kogal culture has a lot of stereotypes around it regarding the extracurricular activities of the girls who subscribe to it, but the general idea around it is for the girls that participate in it to break social norms and claim their sexuality for themselves to get what they want, all within a consumerist guise. This type of mentality matches Junko extremely well, as a character bent on breaking the world for her own pleasures by advertising herself as Despair.

Part 3- The Mastermind Reveal (THH)

We don't actually meet Junko Enoshima until the final showdown in THH, though we are well-acquainted with the idea of her before then, as not only do we meet an imposter-Junko in the first chapter, but her magazines are specifically shown to us in the intro of the game, and are scattered throughout the school(laundry room). There are also little hints as to her identity as mastermind sprinkled into the game.

"Whenever I spot a cute girl, I have a tendency to stare. I can't help it- I just gaze with intensity. The other day, I rode my bike to the train station... I was in the bathroom, just looking at myself in the mirror..." -Monokuma Theatre, THH

Despite these hints, the characters don't know who the mastermind is yet, only being able to reason at her motivations for the killing game and why it came to be based off of what clues Monokuma leaves out for them, like how the main track that plays when interacting with Monokuma is called '100 Mile Junk Food Dash'.

"But first, I have a question for you... Who are you? What do you want from us?" "Well, if you really must know... Despair. That's all." -Kyoko Kirigiri & Monokuma, THH

"And for those of us who represent hope to kill each other and sink into Despair... The mastermind wants the world to see that, to try and prove that Despair is better than hope." -Kyoko Kirigiri, THH

We know that whoever this mastermind piloting Monokuma is, they're someone that's engineering this entire killing game expressly to spread Despair. With the knowledge that the killing game is being televised, that Despair isn't just for the students, but is being put on display for the entire world to see. Manufacturing and televising such a sadistic game using public figureheads under governmental protection is a behavior akin to terrorism (Despairism?) and is an act that, by itself, seems nigh impossible for some high-school student to be capable of. Yet, we know it is a high-schooler- Monokuma insists that the only people involved in the killing game are the 16 students of their class.

Through the investigations of chapters 5 and 6, it becomes increasingly more apparent that whoever this SHSL Despair is, Junko has some level of involvement. For example, more observant players will recognize Mukuro's corpse almost immediately as 'Junko's' from chapter 1, as her bright red nails and the same high-heeled, red-laced boots are clearly visible. And while this doesn't immediately incriminate Junko herself, it does at least call into question the identity of the dead SHSL Despair, as the body being Mukuro's isn't ever really contested(save for a 'dumb Hiro' gag insisting it's Kyoko while standing next to Kyoko).

"And don't forget about the Fenrir tattoo. There's absolutely no mistake... Our victim in this case is, without a doubt, Mukuro Ikusaba...!" -Kyoko Kirigiri, THH

Throughout the final investigation, the player's job is to solve 'all the mysteries of the school', AKA their erased memories and the identity of the mastermind. This investigation intentionally doesn't talk about Junko, voiding her involvement to the point that her own face is scrubbed from the evidence. The hints given by Monokuma picture Junko's face covered up in every photo, and the recordings of the students agreeing to live in the school is cut off before it can cycle over to her. It's not her presence that matters, it's the lack of presence, because we haven't actually met her yet, juxtaposed to the repeated mentions of Mukuro, a girl who'd been a part of the group since the very beginning without anyone realizing.

When we do realize this, it comes with the realization that Mukuro's and 'Junko's' body were one and the same, and with Kyoko's old pocketbook revealing that "Despair walks among us, and so we survive... There's a second 'Despair'", we can come to the conclusion that the reason the mastermind was able to pull this off was because there was actually more than one, working in sync, and thus, the reason both bodies were one was because they were the SHSL Despair together.

Part 4- The Despair Sisters: Mutual Abuse (CW: Incest)

Despite the fact Junko was the brains behind the operation, there was never really a time where she was working alone towards Despair. She was actually one of two Ultimate Despair- as she called them, the Despair Sisters. Her twin sister, Mukuro Ikusaba, was Ultimate Despair as well, and assisted her every step of the way.

In her first appearance, we don't actually get to know anything about her, as she spends her time with the class pretending to be Junko. As such, any and all information gathered on Mukuro is given by someone else- official school records state her title and physical attributes, and Junko tells us her role as Ultimate Despair and goes on about her flaws.

"She had what I call the 'three atrocities'- atrociously rank, atrociously filthy, atrociously repulsive. It was atrociously clear just how out of touch she was with the rest of society." -Junko Enoshima, THH

"The older sister, tough and proud, that was Mukuro. The younger sister, smart and cute, that was... Hyaaaahaha! Me! Junko fucking Enoshima! And together, we were the Despair Sisters! AKA, the Ultimate Despair!" -Junko Enoshima, THH

Mukuro reappears as herself in DR 0 and DR3's Despair Arc, as well as the official AU novel DR IF. In these, we get more insight into her feelings, and see her display an overt attraction to her sister at multiple instances.

"Consumed by ecstasy, even Ikusaba-san's breath became ragged. 'Only I am able to understand her. That's why she needs me. She still hasn't realized that but, maybe she's only pretending not to realize. Ufu, that's because she's so shy. Ufufufu.' Seeing this intoxicated Ikusaba-san continue to talk like that repelled me. I knew that she definitely didn't have normal feelings for Junko Enoshima". -"Mukuro Ikusaba" & Ryoko Otonashi, DR 0

This is pretty obviously incestuous in nature. She blushes at her sister's attempts to kill her with an ice pick, has an internal dialogue about how much said attention affects her, and 'goes into ecstasy' talking about her sister's madness. It's intentionally uncomfortable because it's intentionally incestuous*. I've seen arguments for Mukuro's behaviors being out of character and only there for fanservice in the anime, but this behavior being found in DR 0 first pretty clearly contradicts that. I've also seen an argument for Mukuro's behavior being an act meant to make Junko feel Despair and not having any legitimacy. The crux of the argument comes from the assertion in DR IF that Mukuro is able to numb her emotions in battle, so therefore, she could also mimic such an attraction when around her sister. This argument quickly falls apart as well, considering that a) she has both internal and external dialogue directly referencing her attraction where Junko can't actually hear her, and b) going numb in the heat of battle is not at all the same thing as faking sexual desire outright.

*(Mukuro being incestuous is immediately relevant to the way the Despair Sisters interact with each other, and understanding that I'm talking about their relationship under the lens that she is will hopefully prevent questions about why I'm talking about them as I am throughout the analysis, particularly when she pops up in other sections here and there later. Please do not go into the replies or reblogs and explain to me why I'm wrong; you are not going to change my mind. Believe it or not, I don't like Despaircest either, but that doesn't mean Mukuro's behavior in canon is some accident to be shrugged off. These are meant to be OBJECTIVE analyses. I'm going to look at what the games and novels and anime are presenting, whether I actually like all the points or not.)

Junko Enoshima yearns for Despair. Despair is her reason for being, and everything she does, she does with the intent of eventually bringing Despair upon herself. That pain of Despair is the strongest feeling in the world to her. And the way she treats Mukuro directly stems from that desire. Despair stems from grief, and what brings more grief then the people you love most despising you? Mukuro is her twin sister, who stands by her no matter what. Junko even tests this, having her kill an entire class of students to prove her strength and loyalty in manga series Killer Killer(though, admittedly, Killer Killer hasn't been confirmed as canon to my knowledge, it still aligns with what we know for both characters without altering anything about their characterization).

Mukuro is capable- very capable, and definitely has the ability to betray her, or even kill her if she wanted to. So at every turn, she treats Mukuro like garbage, actively trying to kill her with an ice pick when they first reunite and talking down to her at every opportunity. She describes her sister as fat, flat-chested, ugly, stupid, a pervert, any insult she can think of. She critiques her murders, chastising her when she kills the guards in Despair Arc while looking for Izuru for not doing a clean enough kill. But despite all this, Mukuro never strays from Junko's side. She continues to fawn over her, not just taking all the abuse, but displaying an attraction to her Despairing nature, and refuses to leave her side, the exact opposite reaction of what Junko wants to see from her.

"'Yes, she really is ridiculous…to the point of Despair, she's the lowest, worst sister ever but…that's why I can't leave her alone. That's why I have to help her. After all, I'm the only one who can understand her.'" -Mukuro Ikusaba, DR 0

This kind of loyalty isn't Despair-inducing at all; that dedication is exactly what she predicted from her obsession. What Junko actually wanted from her, we get a brief taste of when she speaks in the final trial of THH- "Because naturally, she turned out to be the letdown of the family. Leaving me behind to run off and join some band of mercenaries... Such a disappointment." The Despair of abandonment, of betrayal, was what she wanted. But Mukuro is too loyal for her own good. That's just annoying.

Mukuro is emotionally abusive, or would be if her sister were anyone but Junko, lusting after her own blood sister in a way that's considered taboo and perverse. This lust develops from an obsessive need to stay loyal to her sister, while Junko verbally abuses her right back, talking down to her and keeping her under her heel, mocking her at all available opportunities and treating her in a way that would make anyone else feel like shit. Not so for Mukuro, the person who's been next to her since birth and has stood by her side through all her Despair. They abuse each other, but there's an unspoken bond that allows for their relationship to function regardless, albeit in a twisted way. They're sisters, equally matched, and together, they become two halves of a whole terrorist. Despair is toxic for anybody, and Junko's own affliction leads Mukuro's obsessiveness to chain herself to Junko's side. They're twins who were born together, after all, and who else could even begin to understand Junko's Despair?

4.1- Despaircest & Anime (CW: Still Incest)

We've seen the relationship that Mukuro and Junko have with each other, both as it was alluded to in earlier depictions and how they interact with each other immediately in the anime. And, despite the fact that it wasn't directly shown to us before said anime, there were hints of the intention of a one-sided incest in DR 0, as well as repeated examples of Junko treating her sister poorly on a surface level and how much she actually valued her within THH and DR IF. Going into the anime, this would be the first time we'd actually see Junko and Mukuro interacting directly with each other as themselves. This could have been the time where we get to see just how twisted their relationship actually is, getting to see how, and maybe even why, they began treating each other in this way. We could've gotten more of a glimpse into their backstory, when they separated, and the inherently self-destructive cycle they pull each other into. Here's what we got instead:

Rather than actually explore the real depth of their fucked up relationship, the anime elects to play it up for the sake of fanservice. This is admittedly an ongoing problem in most of DR3, as it throws most of its female characters into very compromising positions and focuses in on their bodies when they're being brutalized in one way or another and not doing the same for the men, but that only makes this lack of tact worse. There's no interest in actually addressing this darker plot point beyond the most basic surface level because to go any deeper would make it more difficult to get your rocks off to it. It's a shame to create such a conceptually fascinating relationship that would've made for a fantastic way to develop Mukuro as a villain more and Junko as a human more, and just use it for cheap servicy gags. I feel like it isn't an unreasonable statement to say that this was lazy. Danganronpa is supposed to be a series that explores dark topics and uses them to create tragedy and develop its characters. In the face of that, this was cheap.

Hell, this very scene says it itself: they're using Despair to create a fucked up pleasure for the viewer! The incest being played up for fanservice instead of acknowledging Mukuro as a character is, from a meta perspective, Despair-inducing. To the writers and to Mukuro, Mukuro doesn't matter outside of Junko. Her suffering is pleasurable to the audience in a way that's outside of social acceptability, in the way she needed to be used for so long just to exist. BUT WE ALREADY KNEW THAT. We didn't need to boil Mukuro down to an extension of Junko; Mukuro already did that to herself. Maybe this is just me complaining because it's not what I wanted to see from this plotline; I'm not ashamed to admit that. I think being able to acknowledge your biases as a consumer is important when critically looking at a piece of media. But I stand by my assertion that the presentation of this point is sloppy and surface-level, and should've been handled with more tact.

Part 5- The Murder of Mukuro Ikusaba

Junko treats her sister like trash, but despite this, we know that she does respect her. In fact, she has to consider Mukuro as an equal, because if she didn't, she wouldn't hold her as equal parts Despair as herself. Yet, when she reveals herself at the end of THH, she affirms that they were equals- both the Despair Sisters, who worked together("We were the Ultimate Despair, ya know?"), and in the same breath, describes her atrocities and mocks her memory as a disappointment. She sees Mukuro as not just a person, but a legitimate danger and a harbringer of Despair that's worth recognizing. Thus, as a sister, it causes her Despair to prevent anyone else from seeing that and paints Mukuro as just another victim of hers("She was nothing more than a bit player, an extra unworthy of lines."). Playing up her betrayal of Mukuro and her supposed disdain for her sister strips her of her agency as Ultimate Despair to their classmates, without letting them see her true self either. She becomes just another faceless victim, and Junko holds the memory of the true Mukuro Ikusaba, merciless killer and all, wholly to herself.

In the au light novel DR IF, Makoto remembers Mukuro, and inadvertently saves her from this fate. This leads the rest of the LN to focus on Mukuro and her relationship with Junko from her perspective as she copes with the reality that her sister betrayed her. It differentiates herself from Despair, and from her POV, we learn how she thought Junko felt vs how she actually did. Junko lives her life hopelessly- she's too smart for her own good, and can predict the moves of society and of the people around her. Mukuro believed she was the only one who fully understood Junko, so she acted perfectly in accordance with her plans, never once rebelling or going against her. She tries to convince herself to crave her sister's Despair so she would feel Despair from that desire, so she can remain close to her. But that wasn't the Despair Junko wanted. All along, what Junko wanted was for Mukuro to betray her because of her love for her. Without Mukuro, her plans would fall apart. She wouldn't be able to break into Hope's Peak as she did, nor would she be able to protect herself when attacked. Mukuro was what allowed her to gather as much power as she did over Hope's Peak, infiltrating and gathering blackmail, kidnapping chairmen, and so on. Mukuro was the brawn to Junko's brain. So the one thing that could destroy her plans, and bring her a Despair greater than any other, would be if her other half abandoned her. In DR IF, she learns this as Junko finally tells her that she loves her to her face. She breaks Mukuro's chains, and sets her free from her Despair to heal without her by rejecting her help, in a roundabout, Junko-esque way. In canon, though, Mukuro doesn't get to have that realization. She doesn't have the emotional intelligence to put those pieces together herself, and tired of waiting, tired of hoping, Junko gives herself an alternate Despair- the Despair of killing her own sister in cold blood.

The identity and death of Mukuro exist to keep the identity of the mastermind shrouded in mystery. Within THH, she's someone who's important from a narrative perspective- not as a person, but as an entity- designed to facilitate the reveal of the real Junko. Her murder is thus a murder of both her literally, and the murder of her personhood, as Mukuro is the one character that never gets to introduce herself. Junko makes it so, and wipes the memories of the class so that Mukuro Ikusaba will no longer exist outside of herself.

We're introduced to Mukuro not as Mukuro, but as Junko, wearing a wig and costume to appear as similar to her well-known sister as possible, and acting out her sister's fashion diva personality as convincingly as possible. It's tropey and typical of a fashionista- she cares about her looks a little too much during a killing game, acts like she's above the killing game and wants out of it, and explains away any imperfections as 'oh you haven't heard of photoshop before?'

There's no reason not to trust her at that point because no one thinks they've met her before. In DR IF, Makoto is able to recognize her through the outfit and charade, but that's only with his memories intact. Those memories have been thoroughly covered up by Junko in reality, and so the Mukuro Ikusaba she knows dies invisibly, betrayed and unrecognized as her classmates and friends mourn her killer instead. Junko gives her sister the worst Despair of all- being truly forgotten. After this, no one would remember who she was ever again, locked away in the mind of the person who'd never show her affection.

Not only that, Junko killing Mukuro and emphasizing how little she cared about that decision served to make the survivors hate her- her old friends now despised even looking at her, and brought her more Despair.

"Which is precisely why I killed her- to meet everyone's expectations." "That... can't be your only reason, can it?" "Well no, of course not. I also did it to avoid becoming bored." -Junko Enoshima & Makoto Naegi, THH

Despite that, being the one to kill Mukuro brings her a Despair like no other, with her describing it as "super super super super super Despair. No, more than that... Super super super super super super super super super super super super super super super Despair... It just feels... so... good..."

Junko did love her sister, and made everyone else she loved believe otherwise so she could feed off the Despair from their hatred.

Part 6- Ultimate Despair and Junko Enoshima

"The Ultimate Despair... A group of people who caused the Tragedy one year ago... Those same people put together this killing game and began broadcasting it around the entire world. The most desperately awful group of people ever... *That* is the mastermind's true identity." -Makoto Naegi, THH

Make no mistake- despite what the surface level of the series would have you believe, Junko Enoshima isn't the Ultimate Despair. There is no the Ultimate Despair because Despair isn't confined to any one person. Rather, Junko Enoshima is afflicted with Ultimate Despair. Despair, by nature, is grief. It's a pain inflicted by the death of hope, whether that be through the loss of a dream, a person, or whatever else. You grieve that loss, and it takes the form of Despair. Ultimate Despair takes that grief and amplifies it, destroying any sense of self and replacing it with the desire for more Despair. This is the type of Despair that Junko Enoshima feels, and thus, uses her own talents to embody it and spread it. It's a bold claim to make, I realize, that she isn't the SHSL Despair she defines herself as, but it's the basis this entire analysis leads to, and as the evidence over the course of the series develops her character more and more, it goes from some theoretical musing to legitimate design, all the way through to the end of V3. Though she immerses herself within Ultimate Despair, she herself is not Despair incarnate like she'd have you believe.

As we see her in THH, Junko is repeatedly hammered in as 'one of two' by the narrative. It's not just Junko that's formed Ultimate Despair; it's also Mukuro, and they're not referred to as 'Ultimate Despair and her sister', they're 'the Despair Sisters'. For all her charisma she displays, she alone isn't responsible for the Tragedy. Everyone is capable of feeling Despair. It's that foothold Despair has within her that creates an 'Ultimate Despair'. And while yes, Junko was definitely the most afflicted with Ultimate Despair, she didn't get as far as she did just by being horny for grief. She has a title, a real one, and it's not SHSL Gyaru. That was her cover, something she could use thanks to her real talent. Her real talent was only ever known by a select few, and to know what that is, you have to dive into the (criminally underrated, may I add) 2-volume novel set, Danganronpa 0.

Part 7- Ryoko Otonashi (DR 0)

(Little disclaimer here: Before I actually talk about the novel, I did want to quickly assert that DR 0 is both a mainline release to the Danganronpa series and 100% canon. Written and released by series creator Kazutaka Kodaka himself in 2011, it was written specifically to fill out Junko's character more. As such, everything contained within them are unquestionably canon to the world and its characters, something critically important to understand when talking about how it pertains to Junko Enoshima. I think just about anyone who's read DR 0 before knows all this already, but for the sake of anyone reading this who hasn't, I wanted to assert that.)

Ryoko Otonashi is the protagonist of DR 0, and is introduced to us as an audience in a 1st-person perspective. While she isn't the only character we follow in this series, she's the only one to speak to the reader straight-up, introducing herself and reacting immediately to the people and events in front of her. This is for good reason, as Ryoko is suffering from some form of amnesia. Not only does she not remember anything about her childhood or her identity, she also forgets things as they're happening. She can't even remember her name, and is only able to recall it by reading the cover of her notebook- 'Ryoko Otonashi's Memory Notebook,' where she's writing down everything in front of her as it happens so she can try to remember later.

Most of the story is told through Ryoko's perspective as she tries to avoid being caught up in some massive conspiracy within the school- all without actually remembering the conspiracy she's avoiding. Junko Enoshima is the one responsible for this, directing her from place to place and slowly forcing her to confront the conspiracy as she starts to figure out who she is and how she fits into it all. She insists over and over again that it has nothing to do with her, that she's innocent and has never met any of these people before and desperately tries to believe it- her memory is gone, therefore she could not be responsible.

But she is responsible, because she's not Ryoko Otonashi. Her real name is Junko Enoshima, and she's the SHSL Analyst, a girl with such a strong logical capacity that given enough information, she can perfectly understand and predict anything. This could be the actions and personality of a person, or it could be upcoming trends in fashion; whatever it may be, Junko is capable of perfectly analyzing and understanding what will happen in any given situation, long before the world does. And that type of intelligence has rotted away her mind.

Simply put, the human brain requires stimulation. Boredom is her opponent, and in a world where she can fully understand and predict anything at any time, Junko has nothing to stimulate her, and almost nothing can bring her any joy, because she fully anticipates it. Everything is normal, predictable, boring- it's left her with a case of intense anhedonia. Therefore, the only way she could find any happiness is in a world where that talent is stripped away from her. As Ryoko Otonashi, a girl with no memory, she can remember nothing and therefore predict nothing. Analysis requires data, and a blank slate offers none. Even her name is in reference to this, as 'Otonashii' translates to English as 'no sound' or 'quiet'. Only without memory can Junko's mind be silent and let her be genuinely happy.

Ryoko Otonashi is essentially a personality created by Junko as a test, not just for the people around her, but also for herself. Throughout the novel, Mukuro and Yasuke interact with her with opposing goals- Mukuro pushes her into the fray of Despair she's created, while Yasuke tries his best to keep her eyes and ears covered. Ryoko is in a unique position between the two- she's starting to remember and understand herself again, but is terrified of what she'll find, and wants to hold onto her peace with Yasuke. The ongoing question of the novel, which only reveals itself on a reread, isn't within Ryoko's identity itself. It asks the question of whether or not Junko could have been saved from Despair. And the answer, sadly, is no. Remembering anything for too long makes her forget her happiness, and she falls back into Despair, killing Ryoko Otonashi, the epitome of her peace, with her own hands.

Mukuro and Yasuke act as opposing forces within the novel, as both feel a loyalty to Junko that makes them act in what they believe to be her benefit, and both fail. Mukuro drags her kicking and screaming back into the depths of Despair to bring back the madness she sees Junko as, while Yasuke wipes her mind of everything that made her Junko to remove what plagued her. For Junko, balance isn't an option, and the people within her orbit fall victim to that same mentality.

7.1- Personality Disorders In Danganronpa

I'm not a psychologist, nor do I have any sort of split personality(DID, OSDD, etc). So my knowledge on the subject isn't that great, and everything said within this section should be taken with a grain of salt. But, to the best that I can tell, Ryoko's existence as an alter is sort of... mixed up. Other characters in the DR series (Toko & Genocider) make it pretty clear that Kodaka doesn't really have a fantastic understanding of people with DID outside of how they're stereotyped in the horror genre. And that background knowledge, combined with the presentation of Ryoko in DR 0, makes me think she was likely intended to be an alter, but as one that Junko had almost absolute control over, as at multiple instances, she was able to knock Ryoko out at will, and fully killed her once she'd outlived her usefulness for the experiment. There are parallels to Jekyll and Hyde in that aspect, though of course Jekyll was aware of also being Hyde- an alternate version of yourself created to rid yourself of everything about yourself that you despise is very reminiscent of Jekyll's motivations, down to the permanent erasure of the "good" side by the very end. It's also worth noting that Jekyll and Hyde weren't intended as an example of DID, but rather, an exploration of how every person is multifaceted with good and bad parts, even if modern day interpretations often read it as another example of the evil DID trope from 1960 and beyond(thanks a lot, Psycho).

There are several interactions between Ryoko and Junko that support them being two personalities within the same body rather than just a case of memory erasure. For example, when Ryoko is nearly killed by one of the SHSL Octuplets, Junko emerges just to make sure she isn’t killed, citing it as a minor nuisance.

“‘Upupu, I wonder if I was a bit too harsh.’ The voice said, it sounded close. ‘... But it can’t be helped. It’d just be embarrassing if you died here. After all, you’re the protagonist in this scene for once!’” -Junko Enoshima, DR 0

When Ryoko wakes up in the underground bunker of the Reserve Course cult forming, she comes across a captured member of the Steering Committee. And because she genuinely doesn't know who he is or where she is, he ends up giving her classified information that Junko needed, and the second he reveals it, she's immediately able to knock Ryoko back out and take over once again, having used the Ryoko personality as a front specifically to gain information.

“'The old school building… Kamukura Izuru’s there.' 'P-Please wait..' I ended the conversation prematurely with an interruption. Quickly, I wrote in ‘Otonashi Ryouko’s Memory Notebook’. .... But then… Huh? I suddenly felt an attack of dizziness, I struggled to stay upright. What’s happening?" -Steering Committee Member & Ryoko Otonashi, DR 0

"'Oy, did you hear me?' I didn’t. The beating in my ears was only growing louder, it completely drowned out all other sound, I couldn’t hear anything anymore. I shouldn’t be able to hear anything anymore, and yet I could hear a single, eerie laugh. '...Upupu.'" -Steering Committee Member & Ryoko Otonashi & Junko Enoshima, DR 0

Ryoko's memory of Yasuke is also contingent on whether or not Junko wants her to recognize him, suggesting that to some degree, her memory issues aren't just forcefully induced, but rather, are a conscious choice on Junko's part for Ryoko, as once Junko's plan is in place, she suddenly can't recognize him and is then forced to kill him in self-defense.

"'Are you…talking to me?' He looked exhausted. A face of someone who lost everything. The face of someone who lost all his thoughts, all his senses, and all his emotions. '…You don’t remember me?'" -Ryoko Otonashi & Yasuke Matsuda, DR 0

It's pretty unclear whether this was an intended conclusion from Ryoko's and Junko's behavior in DR 0, or if these are just remnants of Kodaka not knowing how personality disorders work and simply having Junko be so powerful that she can purposefully create, manipulate, and kill personalities at will, but I think looking at it from a more psychological viewpoint like this certainly puts Junko's actions as a manipulator into more perspective. The intention behind Ryoko suggests that Junko's manipulative abilities extended even into her own psyche, almost to a supernatural degree. Do actual systems in the real world function like this? No, but thanks to Toko/Genocider, we know that the representation of DID isn't gonna be good in this series.

If we wanted to put this into a more realistic lens, we could come to the conclusion that Junko's apparent control over Ryoko and the discrepancies behind her existence is a result of Junko having Munchausen Syndrome. Also called factitious disorder, Munchausen is a subconscious psychological condition in which the patient fakes symptoms of other kinds of conditions, whether mental or physical, without realizing they're mimicking the symptoms. Under this lens, we could say Ryoko was a factitious alter that Junko created after Yasuke wiped her memory, hence why she could have control over her over the course of the novel. This was almost definitely not the intended explanation, but it's the conclusion I came to. So there.

Part 8- Relationships

Due to just how many corners of the franchise Junko's present in, there's no convenient place to dump all the relationship analyses like I normally do. Ergo, I'll be breaking part 8 up, and will talk about the different core relationships Junko forms when they're most relevant.

8.1- Yasuke Matsuda

Yasuke Matsuda is the SHSL Neurologist, and a childhood friend of Junko's introduced in DR 0. Because he's the boy she's in love with, he remains the only tangible thing Ryoko can remember outside of her procedural memory, and is treating her memory loss. He's also the one primarily responsible for wiping her mind and assisting the school in the coverup of the student council massacre that Junko was responsible for, though he takes no pleasure in it.

"The silence continued for a while until Matsuda sighed and muttered, 'You should worry.' His voice was low and depressing. 'What if you’ll always be like this......'" -Yasuke Matsuda, DR 0

Despite his tsundere behaviors towards Ryoko whenever the two are face-to-face, he's very much in love with her, and spends the novel trying to look out for what he believes is in her best interests by methodically attempting to remove the Despair from her mind and covering up the Tragedy she's already set into motion. Throughout the novel, he works in cahoots with the Hope's Peak Academy Steering Committee to find more information about the Incident. He does this specifically to defend Ryoko and keep people from interrogating her further, and to hopefully extricate her from the whole situation permanently.

"'I said shut the fuck up.' Matsuda easily quieted the men by saying that and then he continued in a soft voice. 'People might call her an idiot, but she doesn’t even bother to stick up for herself, thinking she can’t do it. So I don’t think I’d be able to forgive myself if I don’t do it for her.'" -Yasuke Matsuda, DR 0

Though we never see it directly, we realize with the help of Kyoko that he's also the one taking the bodies of the Steering Committee and SHSL Octuplets after Mukuro kills them and disposing of them, in the hopes they won't be discovered and Junko will eventually be absolved of both suspicion and Despair.

“Finally she looked at me. ..... ‘The dead body, the body that was dead. There was a post-death body here before!’ ‘Huh?’ .....  ‘There’s not mistake, I know there was definitely a corpse here before!’” -Ryoko Otonashi & Mukuro Ikusaba, DR 0

“Matsuda-kun’s voice was definitely coming from beneath me. There’s no mistaking he was under the bed. ‘But... what would require so much concentration to be under the bed?’ ‘This situation.’ Somehow, Matsuda-kun’s way of putting it could allure to several different meanings.” -Yasuke Matsuda & Ryoko Otonashi, DR 0

"I stood next to the girl, crouched down and peeked under the bed. At the back I could see a large opening, .... 'It’s not a terribly impressive hidden room… a storage room at best.' '…A storage room?' 'For hiding dead bodies.'” -Ryoko Otonashi & Kyoko Kirigiri, DR 0

But despite his best efforts, Junko's talents of analysis were just too great, and she'd already come up with a plan to send her back into Despair before he ever touched her mind. With the help of Mukuro and the growing underground Reserve Course cult of Despair, Ryoko is forced to face Despair after Despair, and is hunted for her involvement in the student council massacre. Junko confronts him and taunts him for his failure, leaving him to wallow.

"'I get it, you feel sorry for her… even so, you’re troubled. You’re incredibly troubled. That’s what it seems like after what I’ve been hearing…'” -Junko Enoshima, DR 0

“'You know, in this scenario, only you can make the choice, Matsuda-kun. So think carefully, worry about it, and choose the choice you think it best. Hope or despair… the choices are so diverse and yet, surprisingly, intricately connected. Anyway, have a good think about it…'" -Junko Enoshima, DR 0

In one final attempt to see if he can salvage her, he approaches Ryoko outside of his lab, pretending as if he's Izuru Kamukura, and questions her. She doesn't recognize him, and he, too, falls into Despair, finally accepting that despite his feelings, he was a pawn to Junko's game, and tries to kill her, sending Ryoko towards Despair as she realizes who she's speaking to and can't convince him she loves him anymore. Defending herself, she ends up stabbing him, sending herself spiraling as she becomes her lover's killer, and Junko reemerges from her mind, killing her off in front of him and forcing him to die in Despair.

He dies believing Junko never actually loved him. He becomes thoroughly convinced that she was pretending, and that Ryoko was nothing more than a part of the game to send him into Despair. And that perception of Junko combined with her causing his death brings Junko an indescribable Despair. The man she loved died by her hands, hating her existence. Truly, this was Despair!

"'I was right, wasn't I? About you remembering? That's why you can't remember me? You remembered that I wasn’t a particularly important person to you…so that's why you can't remember?' Kamukura then revealed his eyes, their glint was tainted with deadly hatred. '…You're such a bitch.'" -Yasuke Matsuda, DR 0

"'There's no way this would have nothing to do with me…' There was a hint of sadness laid somewhere in that murmuring voice. 'After all…you were the most important person to me of all…' Those were her true feelings. Yasuke Matsuda was an especially important existence for Junko Enoshima." -Junko Enoshima, DR 0

She loved Yasuke intensely. She cared about him moreso than anyone else, save Mukuro. And yet, despite how attached he was to her, Yasuke couldn't realize in his own Despair that there'd be no reason for someone like Junko to bother dragging herself through so much mental torment and manipulation at his expense if she wouldn't get a magnificent Despair out of it. Yes, she causes Despair for others, but she doesn't throw herself directly into the fray unless she gets something out of it. Despite loving her, he never actually understood her. That truth, too, would bring her Despair.

Part 9- How Junko Shaped the Game

Turning back towards THH, Junko's reveal shakes the class. Most of them believed that finding the mastermind and forcing them to show their face would end the game. But that's not the case for Junko Enoshima. She's not through with them yet, and takes the opportunity to rub everything they've lost in their faces.

"Puhuhuhu... Did you really think the story would end once we reached the climax of the case? Wrong! There's still plenty more to go!" -Monokuma, THH

Throughout all of THH, Junko's plan is hinged on Despair, and thus, she takes her class, which had become close friends and confidants over the past two years of their lives, and attacks what would bring them the worst Despairs possible for each. Her talents as SHSL Analyst allowed her to analyze her own classmates and tear at what would've made their 16-to-20 year old selves when they first met snap. And each one of the motives she used was designed specifically for that, something she makes sure to cite when taunting them ("Did you notice that each motive I presented you had a specific theme to it?")

The first motive's theme was 'human connections', and everything surrounding the first chapter reflects this. Sayaka's motive wasn't just about her career. It was about the family she'd found and not letting down the people who loved her. And on a meta perspective, the first chapter was also about relationships, specifically that between Sayaka and Makoto and how that relationship's end motivated Makoto to eventually become SHSL Hope, and to a lesser degree, starting the development of the critical relationship between Hina and Sakura.

The second motive's theme was 'the past', something the 2nd chapter very much reflects. The secrets that Junko uses against the class are extremely personal to each of their histories, and can be used to twist each of them to head towards Despair, whether that be through their own hand or their own poor judgements of the people around them from their lack of memories. Mondo's secret isn't just tragic; Junko purposefully warps it in his letter to affirm his own belief that Daiya's death was murder and not just an accident, and because no one knows its contents, it sends him into a spiral. The same can be said for Chihiro, whose secret implies that their gender presentation is a lie, forcing them into a conformatory decision that leads to tragedy. Her classmates' memories of the past are presented in a warped way to suit Junko's needs. Toko's secret of having DID and a serial killer alter, Genocider Syo, is also revealed and used to develop her more as a character when she's the one most afraid of opening up to the class.

The third motive's theme is 'greed', using the promise of wealth to lure Celeste to murder. Even if you could argue other characters within the class could have fallen victim to the first two motives, this one is undoubtedly meant to target the Yasuhiros on Junko's part, as realistically, no one else in their class has any reason to even consider killing for money by itself, especially not when there's already been two class trials. The Yasuhiros are the only ones who consider themselves to be in any level of financial need. This theme is also meta-reflected by the possessive nature Kiyondo and Hifumi both develop over Alter Ego. Because neither of them can keep themselves away from them, they became easily manipulated, and it became harder for the rest of the class to obtain information and watch out for each other, forming a tunnel vision towards Alter Ego in their minds. This contrasts Celeste and Hiro greatly as well- Celeste is consumed by her own greed, while Hiro doesn't even consider killing for the money, opting instead to try and look out for the class and develop him as a survivor. Hiro's the one that looks out for Taka and calls out Hifumi on his obsession; Hiro's lured into Celeste's trap by promise of a way to save everyone, while Celeste rejects her class in favor of fighting for a selfish dream she didn't even need.

The 4th motive is that of 'betrayal', and this one is where the cracks in Junko's plan finally reveal themselves. Each and every trial before this one ended in tears and Despair, and a sense of hopelessness that wasn't alleviated until they were given new distractions. Sakura's betrayal is meant to mirror Junko's own betrayal of her classmates, and when half the class instantly turns on her, things go exactly as Junko plans. Sakura swears to destroy Junko by any means necessary, and takes her own life in an attempt to take the fun from Junko. With Monokuma's meddling, Hina is instead pushed into attempting a murder-suicide, one she's caught for by Kyoko and Makoto. But once the truth comes out, Sakura and Hina aren't condemned. Those that attacked her end up defending her. Sakura doesn't betray her class; Sakura betrays Junko, and it puts her on the path to failure. Junko even admits to this, though indirectly: "Once I revealed Sakura's betrayal, that led to everything that came afterwards..." Note this is the only time where she doesn't expressly explain to the survivors why her motive was successful, because in this instance, it wasn't. It also fills out Hina as a character and uses her arc of an attempted self-destruction to contrast Junko, as Hina let herself be forgiven by her classmates, something Junko could never let herself do.

Part 10- Self-Destruction (Junko vs Sakura)

Despite the fact that Makoto is the character christened as SHSL Hope at the end of THH, there are a lot more parallels between Junko's self-destructive nature and Sakura's self-sacrifice that often go unnoticed, and these parallels are quintessential to the overarching narrative of THH and why Junko functioned as its villain.

Both Sakura and Junko do the things they do because they love the people around them. Both Sakura and Junko find themselves to fall short of who they'd rather be. Both Sakura and Junko kill themselves. But their goals are fundamentally, diametrically opposed.

Sakura Ogami, as a martial artist, is a woman of honor and principles. She believes in the inherent worth of the people around her because of this, and strives to become the strongest person alive not because it's a desire of her own, but because that's the destination the people who loved her had in mind for her(her father, Kenshiro, etc). And therefore, she's someone who fundamentally wishes to act in the best interests of the people she loves, even when it's at her own detriment.

Junko Enoshima, as a hyperintelligent analyst, is able to predict anything. And because she can predict anything, she can enjoy nothing, because she always knows what will happen before it gets there. Ergo, the only way she can enjoy herself is via the only thing that can make her feel- Despair. Grief and pain still feel like something in a world where she can't be pleasantly surprised by anything. She despises herself for it, and so in order to feel, she decimates anything that brings her joy. Joy is boring; joy is nothing; joy is just part of the default setting because she still sees it coming. And therefore, she's someone who fundamentally acts in the worst interests of those she loves, for the sake of her own detriment.

When Sakura kills herself, and Hina is filled with Despair, Junko wants to revel in the Despair this brings everyone else. Sakura killed herself for people that weren't giving her the time of day, and the one person who gave a crap tried to kill you all! Isn't it so tragic, so Despair-inducing, don't you just want to break down and crumble?! And then they don't. Instead, after hearing the truth of Sakura's actions, the entire rest of the class is uplifted and united by her honor. Even Byakuya is feeling hopeful now! What the actual fuck is happening?! Is this how they'll feel when I die, too? Will my death bring no Despair?

8.2- Class 78-B

We never get to actually see any of her classmates interacting directly with her in their school days, or in any way that was positive. Outside of THH's and SDR2's final trials, we as an audience don't get to see them interact as friends. So we have to draw these conclusions from what little context we were given within her dialogue in these few rare moments in THH and the mentions of her class in DR 0.

"There was a tap inside [Junko's] skull, like someone pressed a switch and slowly her entire brain lit up with a notion. Several faces appeared. Of course, they were faces she knew… they were the faces of her Hope’s Peak Academy classmates." -DR 0

Without any doubt, Junko loved her classmates. They were people she considered in high regard and had unwittingly fallen for their unique charms. While Junko had come to Hope's Peak with the intention of causing Despair, she'd accidentally found people that made her happy. When entering the school, she intended to use the people around her to damage the school of Hope's reputation, but inadvertently became attached: "Once your school life here began, I thought about you constantly. It's only natural that I would... fall in love." This made for a fantastic happy accident for Junko, as finding something beloved made for a much more fantastic Despair for her later.

"Remembering the faces of the people who would bring her such despair, she felt something that was similar to a person in love, and she danced to the rhythm of Despair. 'This is it! This is a fantastic despair!'" -Junko Enoshima, DR 0

We can also reasonably assume Junko was someone her classmates had considered dear to them in turn, as she not only knew how to motivate their past selves into murder, but also their deepest secrets and fears, and was able to attack their relationships when they themselves couldn't even remember them. Could you handwave that level of connection with her SHSL Analyst talent? Actually, no, because as stated previously, analysis requires data. And the only way she could gather enough data to understand them at a depth that let her plan her killing game to perfection was by getting to know them firsthand.

There's also a strange implication within Junko's explanation of how she put the killing game together that I think gets often overlooked. When she prepares to infodump to the remaining survivors, she says this:

"So since I love you guys so much, I'll tell you all about it! All about the idea we came up with as the Ultimate Despair- our plan to bring Despair to all mankind!"

It's an interesting choice of pronoun, to say the least. "We." It implies that the group she's referring to when she speaks is herself and the people she's speaking to at this moment in time. Could she just be switching gears and talking about Mukuro, and later, the RoD, Kamakura, the WoH, etc? Yeah, absolutely. But none of these characters had even been mentioned, whereas she was just speaking on her love for her classmates in the dialogue prior and continues to talk about her classmates after.

In listening to Junko's explanation of how she put the killing game together, it made me come to a pretty disturbing realization. One of the biggest things about Junko is how she's always able to seemingly pull together everything to form this killing game almost entirely by herself. Later installments to the series include some level of explanations- Towa Group becoming a financial and robotic sponsor, a SHSL Mechanic that could've made the executions, etc- but her success within the killing game hinges fully on her knowing how to best bring her classmates to Despair. And she's not just an analyst; Junko is a master manipulator. Throughout her entire explanation of how she created the killing game, she never says she threw them into the killing game against their will. Instead, she very deliberately calls attention to her classmates' choice in the matter, over and over again. They chose to enter the shelter, they chose to lock the doors and cover the windows, they chose to be there with the SHSL Despair, though they didn't know who they were with at the time. Makoto is the one to assert that they did so because they believed in the hope of survivng, and giving the world a fresh start. But it's not just their year's worth of fun school classes missing from their memories. There's also a year of hopelessness within the school erased, too. Combine this with a few well-placed lines from Junko.

"You see, by taking away your memories, I gave you hope."

"You absorbed all that Despair, but then you forgot it all."

"Despair is contagious, you know. It's almost like... a natural phenomenon."

"Once you'd finished building your little shelter, it was time for me and Mukuro to get to work. And thus began the killing game!"

If Junko is making the claim that she was able to give them hope by removing their memories, that meant none of them had any to begin with. She emphasizes how much Despair her classmates absorbed, and even Kyoko herself states that it's impossible for all this to have been put together by just the Despair Sisters. If an additional year of hopelessness waiting around within the school were also erased, and Junko is intentionally avoiding saying she started the killing game herself, is it beyond reason to suggest that at least some of the 78th class had fallen to Despair in that timeframe? Look at the survivors that are left- Byakuya, Toko, Syo, Hina, Hiro. All characters that Do Not Like each other by this point. Most of the meaningful connections between the classmates have been murdered. Their past is scrubbed away. They've basically all betrayed each other at least once by now, and have been pushed to the brink of Despair. If you got a collection of THH characters most likely to fall to Despair, it'd be this group.

Junko even takes a point to emphasize just how Despair-inducing the truth can become, targeting Kyoko directly with this. As Kyoko comes to the realization the Junko purposefully designed the game with the possibility of being caught, she revels in Kyoko's Despair. She taunts her with the fact that their solving the mystery only made things worse. She is purposefully trying to drive the rest of her surviving classmates into SHSL Despair alongside her. She's manipulated the game and her classmates to get what she wants- the people she loves slaughtered, the survivors joining her in Despair, the world reborn by her hands. She quite likely manipulated her classmates into plotting each other's deaths not only inside the game, but in preparation for it as well.

Out of all her classmates, there was only really one you could argue wasn't perfectly analyzed and manipulated. One stood out among the rest as the unknown variable- a concept otherwise foreign to Junko- that was able to act as a wrench in her plans. And this, too, could cause her Despair.

8.3- Makoto Naegi (Hope vs Despair)

Makoto Naegi's SHSL Luck, AKA SHSL Hope, is the one who takes down Junko Enoshima's SHSL Despair. But why and how was this possible, and what does that mean for the relationship that he and Junko had prior to the game? If I wanted to fully delve into their relationship specifically, I'd need to really tear into Makoto's character, and I don't really have the time for that today(again, still hoping to get this out before 2025), so we'll just do the best we can based off the scenes they've had together and what we know about Junko to put the pieces together thematically.

Makoto is an average guy in just about every sense of the word. He likes average things, he looks plain, he's chosen randomly by lottery instead of earning his place in the school, he doesn't have any noticeable traits or beliefs- at least, not at first.

"But you know, if I had any one kind of strong point, so to speak, I'd say I'm a little more gung-ho than other people." -Makoto Naegi, THH prologue

By his own admission, he has a grand total of two character traits- abnormal normalcy, and enthusiasm. He's optimistic, and that's kind of it. By all intents and purposes, he's the SHSL Joe Schmoe, and that should make him another blank canvas on the wall of pawns Junko can knock over whenever she gets a little bored. And yet, SHSL Joe Schmoe is the one directly responsible for Junko's failure, and the one person who, by her own admission, she cannot predict. So why and how exactly is that?

I recall reading a story about a coding competition, where coders were meant to design an AI for a gambling competition. One entry proceeded to make an AI that would go all in every single time it was its turn, and the simplicity of it was so intimidating that it broke every other AI that was in the competition. That mentality is the exact strategy Makoto unintentionally employs. He doesn't have any strong sense of self or moral complexities; he's a dude that exists, and he throws everything he is into everything he does. He's an optimist to the highest possible sense. He leaves his door unlocked even after 4 murder cases and a break-in. He refuses to fathom anything but the best possible outcome, and so he's able to combat Junko's total Despair with pure hope. Makoto's head is so completely simple and empty that it acts as the exact opposite to Junko's highly intelligent, analytical mind. When she tries to force-feed him Despair in the final trial, he hits her with the power of 'nuh-uh,' and it works. It's that emptiness that fascinates Junko, and makes him and his random chance luck unpredictable to her.

Part 11- "Defeating" Despair

When Junko loses, it's not just because she failed to convince the others of Despair, or that Makoto's hope was just naturally the stronger conviction of the two. Rather, Junko's loss can be attributed to her own conscious choice to lose. Even if we're looking solely at THH, this is the case. And the source is found in a single line.

If her conviction to win in this moment was absolute to the point where only one person had to vote for Despair, she just had to include herself in the votes. After all, she is one of the 16 students participating, and by all accounts, she should receive a vote for this trial. But she casually refuses, instead leaving it in the hands of the survivors to make the final call. And that in and of itself is indicative of Junko's desires. When faced with a situation she can easily control, she leaves it to fate to decide, allowing that glimmer of unpredictability to take over and surprise her. She'll always believe in the Despair she's dedicated herself to; it doesn't actually matter who wins here. What matters is that she feels Despair. Either Makoto succeeds in convincing his classmates of hope and kills her, ruining all her plans, or he fails, and she exterminates the one unpredictable person in her life and locks herself out of that rush of adrenaline for the rest of her life. Either ending would fill her with Despair, and in that sense, there is no way for her to lose. She won the killing game, whether the survivors realized it or not, because she succeeded in destroying herself. She built herself a Saw trap, and her loved ones set it off.

Part 12- Execution Analysis

Junko is the only character to walk willingly into her execution, even being the one to hit the red button to start up the punishment rather than having Monokuma do it. You can first attribute this to her no longer being in the control room to pilot Monokuma to do so, which is true, but it's also representative of her desire for self-inflicted Despair. Her eyes are swirling with Despair and she goes on about how good it feels, how everyone should die in such Despair, how this punishment is 'extra special', because it's one she brought on herself. After methodically destroying the most important relationships of her life one by one, she'd now be killed by her friends in a series of recycled contraptions in an 'Ultimate Punishment'.

As she goes through each step of the execution, we see her bearing a wide grin, flying through the machinery that'd killed every one of her executed friends over and over again. She hits every baseball, handles the Cage of Death with ease, calmly survives the firetruck, and bobs her head with the excavator. She doesn't struggle, not once, and this is because in prolonging her Despair, her SHSL Analyst talent is keeping her alive. She's watched every one of these executions, and thus, knows how to survive them all. It's not just a retrospect of every prior execution as a callback for the audience; it means something. With a punishment meant to bring the character's worst ironic death via their most hated parts of themselves, then of course Junko's analytic abilities are keeping her alive through everyone else's Despair.

The execution ends with the return of the After-School Lesson, and this is the one that finally kills her, because it's the only one in which she doesn't know how it ends. Makoto's execution was tampered with by Alter Ego, so there's no way to know if she'll actually die or not. Junko can't know if it still works or not. Junko doesn't know whether she'll live or die, and that's what makes it so exciting. She's driven to the edge of death and left to sit there for a moment too long, long enough for the Despair to be replaced with disappointment- only to kill her right when her Despair abandons her. She stops smiling, looks up at the press, and dies abruptly. In her final moments, she is denied her Despair. Makoto did win, after all.

Part 13- Answering the 'How' (SDR2)

One of the biggest 'what-the-fuck's people tend to have after walking out of their first playthrough or watchthrough of THH is the How of the entire game. The first game is good and all, but it leaves Junko's skills and how she set up and pulled the killing game together pretty vague. This is intentional, as in the first game, she exists as a kind of force of nature, representing Despair as an inherent part of life in the same way Makoto represents hope. But after Spike Chunsoft commissioned a sequel, and Kodaka set to work on DR 0, the question of 'how' had to be answered as the series was expanded upon. This started with the introduction of Yasuke Matsuda's memory erasure technology and the reveal of Junko's SHSL Analyst status in DR 0, but continued to expand well beyond that.

In SDR2, we're introduced to an entirely new cast of characters, all with new and less conventional talents in comparison to the first cast. Whereas THH had plenty of more mentally-oriented talents like programming, writing, and hall monitor to balance out their more eclectic ones, the SDR2 cast is almost entirely physical or social talents like a yakuza, animal breeder, and mechanic. These talents also put them into more social or powerful positions than the 78th class on an overall skill, as you find yourself full of people that could command full armies and people proficient with making weaponry or fighting and potentially killing the people around them. This differentiates the casts, and automatically makes them more threatening in the ways they could attack each other in a killing game. This also makes them Junko's perfect weapons.

8.4- Remnants of Despair

Class 77 is revealed by the end of SDR2 to be the Remnants of Despair, pawns swayed over to SHSL Despair by unknown means. Makoto refers to this conversion as 'brainwashing', though whether this is him literally knowing they were brainwashed or making an inference and later being proven right is unclear. Regardless, the RoD are part of the SHSL Despair movement, and exist to explain a lot of how Junko was able to not only set up the killing game mechanically, but continue to end the world and send it into ongoing war after the initial Incident.

This is something especially apparent with the remaining surviving cast, as they're the most immediately powerful amongst the cast for Junko to use. Sonia and Fuyuhiko are both in direct command of massive amounts of people, with Sonia being the heiress to an entire country and Fuyuhiko being the leader of the largest mafia in Japan. Kazuichi as the SHSL Mechanic explains how and why so many elaborate executions were able to be designed ahead of time for the killing game, and Akane is a wicked fast athlete who's already accustomed to tragedies and will eat anything. On top of all this, there's Hajime, a human experiment worked on by those in league with the values of hope, and that was forcefully imbued with every talent that's ever been documented, including Junko's.

This sums up everything that made the RoD useful, but doesn't explain how any sort of meaningful connection was established between them and Junko. That's because on the overall, there isn't one. With two notable exceptions, the SDR2 class is largely unimportant to Junko emotionally speaking. They're useful, and that's about it. They weren't in the same class; they didn't interact at school or bond in any important way. She just dragged them down with the bare minimum brainwashing video because of their usefulness.

We also know Junko didn't care because of just how differently she speaks to and treats class 77 as opposed to the characters that we know she does love. The series painstakingly makes sure you know that Junko tears up everything she loves- Mukuro, Yasuke, class 78. She gores through them because hurting the ones she loves hurts her right back, and gives her an excellent Despair. But with class 77? Beyond the initial conversion, she doesn't really touch them. She doesn't need to waste her time with people who are virtually strangers. Their pain just is Despair; it's not her Despair. It's good for a laugh, but not much else, so she lets them run rampant on their own.

On an overall scale, Junko didn't give a fuck about these people. They existed solely as tools to her, and she interacted with them as little as possible. Unlike with her classmates, whom she loved, she did the absolute bare minimum required to get them to feel Despair by showing them a video and letting them do their own thing. The RoD were Remnants and not full-fledged SHSL Despair because their Despair was artificial. It was inauthentic, and so they could never ascend to true Despair in the way characters like Mukuro, Junko, or Monaca can.

8.5- Mikan Tsumiki (The Relevance of Junkan)

When we're first introduced to the concept of Junkan, it's portrayed as a one-sided infatuation from Mikan's perspective. She tells her classmates about the one person who forgave her existence and loved her anyway, with the choice of language emphasizing her beloved's need for Despair and asking for forgiveness for hoping suggesting that this beloved is Junko.

"Ahhh, this feeling of freedom where you no longer care about anything! My beloved and I are the only ones within that thin veil, and I'm just looking out through it..." -Mikan Tsumuki, SDR2

Whether intended at the time of SDR2's release or not, this line of dialogue ended up foreshadowing Mikan's heightened importance in comparison with the rest of her class to Junko as an RoD. When everyone else were just tools, remnants formed by brainwashing, Mikan is ultimately differentiated as special, not necessarily craving Despair but happily parroting it for the sake of a twisted love.

"It's like nothing matters! I could just die, that's how little it matters! Who cares about hope or despair! It's love, only love!" -Mikan Tsumiki, SDR2

This 'beloved' being Junko is proved true when AI Junko emerges in the final trial and reveals that class 77 are also the RoD. At this point, though, there's almost no evidence that Junko feels anything back for Mikan besides a vague sense of usefulness shared with the rest of her classmates, as she mimes seeing them as friends because of their actions as Remnants of Despair.

Something that's important to remember, however, is that Junko's need for Despair drives her to destroy everything she loves. We've seen this multiple times, over and over again with Mukuro, Yasuke, and her classmates before now. The reason we know she didn't care about class 77 is because there are no such personal attacks to tear them apart and make them despise her specifically- their pain brings her no Despair. There's no evidence of a personal attachment. Once DR3 comes into focus, though, that changes for one RoD in particular- one Mikan Tsumiki.

DR3 made the decision to bring Chiaki back as a human character, and made her the central figure for class 77's bond. Junko dragging out Chiaki's suffering and forcing her classmates to watch became the titular event that drove the rest of class 77 to Despair. But there was no personal attachment to this act, because she'd only just met Chiaki, and there was no dynamic to speak of between the two of them besides maybe a vague sense of interest based off of their single interaction.

So, if there's no established rivalry or connection to Chiaki, why does Junko single her out and kill her specifically? Easy; Junko doesn't. She sets up the maze, sure, but she is not and never was the one targeting Chiaki specifically. That was Mikan, and the show makes sure the audience sees this more than once.

When Mikan and Junko meet, it's because of a chance interaction. Mikan runs into Mukuro by mistake when going to check on Ryota, and is captured. In this sense, she's literally presented as a gift to Junko. Junko learns she's a nurse, and decides she'll let her hang around while she works on the brainwashing video.

In their next scene together, Junko is having Mikan massage her leg, listening as Mikan presents her classmates and friends to Junko. She's the one who tells Junko of how close her class has become, and how Chiaki is the central figure behind their bond. It's where we get this from Junko:

Though you might not immediately know it, it's swiftly revealed to us that Mikan is now in love with Junko via this and Ryota's mention that something appears 'off' with Mikan. From Ryota's discovery of the prototype video that was used on the Reserve Course students being immediately followed by Mikan's appearance and saying he souldn't have watched the video, it's easy to fall into the assumption that Mikan's fall is purely because of the brainwashing. But that's not necessarily true. Mikan having seen the video prototype is very different from being brainwashed entirely, and considering Junko herself says that the video is insufficient and that she can't brainwash people like Ryota can, there's an inference to be made that while the prototype video may have helped, it didn't rob Mikan of her free will in the way Chiaki's death did for everyone else. Ryota didn't fall into Despair from the video by itself, and neither did Chisa Yukizome. We also know from her FTEs in SDR2 that even before falling to Despair, Mikan was already a little fucked up, as her idea of a good time includes telling you all the ways in which you could die and begging people to treat her like garbage just for a taste of acknowledgement.

We also see what motivated her to nurse not only herself, but others as well- not empathy, but power and control.

"Sick people and injured people... are weaker than me. .... But if I know the proper way to treat them, that means my words are absolute. Which means... They'll need me. They'll depend on me completely." -Mikan Tsumiki, SDR2

Again, all this can be found in her FTEs, in a situation in which she's mentally reverted to the way she was entering the school, before she and Junko were so much as in the same city. By this line of information, it's just as believable that her falling in love with Junko was because Junko and her video actually connected with Mikan, taking Mikan's craving for attention via mistreatment and using it to her advantage. It's also worth noting that the anime makes a point to use 'spiral eyes' to demonstrate when a character has been brainwashed. This is something used with Chisa, with the characters in the Future Arc, and when the RoD are shown Chiaki's murder. But Mikan does not have these spiral eyes in the scene where she nearly assaults Ryota. She's horny, and it's extremely disconcerting, but her eyes are still her own, suggesting that the video didn't take a hold on her the way it did for the Reserve Course students.

Mikan is also one of the most similar characters to Junko in that she craves pain. Not emotional Despair in the way that Junko does, but physical pain, not only from Junko, but from just about anyone. Pain means attention, and that's something she needs more than anything. By this metric, she and Junko are actually quite similar, needing the worst from the people they love, and this makes for a formula that can create an incredibly abusive relationship. Junko can do literally anything to Mikan, and she'll lap it up like a dog. Mikan makes for a perfect punching bag, and suddenly, their relationship is intentionally paralleling the way Junko treats her sister. She kicks her around, calls her a disgusting horny piglet, and Mikan thanks her for it. It becomes a challenge of seeing how far she can push Mikan before she snaps and attacks her back, just like how she tries and fails to do with Mukuro. Simply put, there's no reason for her to treat Mikan in this way if she doesn't care about her as a person, romantic or otherwise.

This connection Junko forms with Mikan also serves to answer that earlier question: why did she bother with a class full of people she's never met? It's because of Mikan. Mikan is the one to present class 77 to her, and with the context that she goes on to set up a murder maze specially for Chiaki, and specifically says that Mikan has 'made a compelling case', that means Mikan was asking her to make them SHSL Despair. And not only does she do so, she does so in a way that forces Mikan to be the one to lead them into the trap. She brings her classmates to the bunker, she separates Chiaki from the group, she's responsible for sending her loved ones to Despair. This isn't a plot that's personal to Junko; it's a plot that's personal to Mikan, and Junko helping drive Mikan's loved ones into Despair saddles Mikan with a Despairing guilt tied to Junko.

Driving class 77 to become RoD is an act of love for Mikan- a twisted, abusive love, but a love nonetheless, and one that's in line with the way she drives her own class to Despair and makes herself the crux. Should her classmates realize what's happened, they'll know that Mikan brought them here. The rest of class 77 are Remnants, but Mikan is a SHSL Despair like Mukuro, valued like Mukuro, and her being the one to regain her memories and turn on all her friends once more, betray them once more, is a remnant of Junko's love.

8.6- Izuru Kamukura

When Junko first approaches Kamukura, she does so with the intention of offing him then and there. He's the artificial SHSL Hope, lab-grown by Hope's Peak Academy, and represents everything their research stands for. To kill him would be to kill their work, and that's what she walks in with the intention of doing.

Naturally, she fails, as Izuru's been imbued with every talent known to man. This wasn't outside to realm of possibility for Junko, though. There were several different ways to kill the SHSL Hope invented by Hope's Peak. Whether or not she killed him literally or metaphorically wasn't the point.

Izuru Kamukura exists as an empty symbol. He's filled with talent and nothing to use it on. Because his existence is an artificial one, he has no passion with which his talents were born, and no drive to use them. If anything, he's not the SHSL Hope, he's the SHSL Talent, but regardless, his creators have labeled him their SHSL Hope so that he can become their puppet-symbol. So to kill the SHSL Hope the trustees have created, all Junko really has to do is get her hands on the puppet first.

The actual convincing of him isn't really what matters to Junko. Similar to the trustees, she also sees Kamukura as a symbol, albeit one to be knocked down instead of bolstering up, so she uses him like a token symbol, too. All she has to do is pique his interest, just enough to get him to follow her, and her job is done. She talks on about her love of Despair, how grief and pain are something that actually makes you feel, and because he's had his emotion removed, that unknown variable is enough to get him to watch, just in case.

Despite his having every known talent, Kamukura is tricked. He's framed by Junko as being responsible for the murders of the student council. And in addition, he sees the power of Despair, as adrenaline from the final survivor pushes him to attack Kamukura even when it should've been physically impossible. When moved by that animalistic need to survive, he manages to cut Kamukura's face even after getting his own sawed in half. Thus the SHSL "Hope" is introduced to the world as creating Despair, and his job is complete.

Junko doesn't really bother with Kamukura after this framing. She lets him hang around, but when he decides to leave, she doesn't make any sort of fuss or try to attack him anymore, because she doesn't really care about him. He was only as important to her as his title was to the school, and once that title was tarnished, any connection between them she pretended to have was dropped. The next time these characters meet, it will no longer be the real Despairing Junko tainting some artificial husk of a person, filled with talent and emptied of heart, but rather, an artificial Despair combatting a survivor's true identity.

Part 14- The Brainwashing

Okay, let's talk about this. Was the brainwashing a good move for the story? Was it actually planned from sdr2? Or was it something half-assed at the last second because Kodaka didn't think that far ahead? Well, imo, it was almost definitely intended from their conception, and is very reflective of Junko's own motivations and goals.

From as early as DR 0, brainwashing tactics are evident within Junko's work. When Ryoko meets the reseve course's underground cult, she finds them watching a single video of mutual killing over and over again, with a fixation on its contents that's unnatural.

"[The cultists] didn‘t even bother to glance at me. Their eyes were still plastered to the monitors in front of them. .... Every monitor was a pitch black, none had a single image projecting on it.

'It‘ll… start again soon… so…' the monobear heads sitting in front of me said in monotone." -DR 0

Brainwashing is again brought up within SDR2, as not only is Hajime expressly a human experiment due to alteration of the brain specifically, but the entire class is referred to by Makoto as 'brainwashed'. At this point in the series, there's no reason for him to actually know this short of Kamukura possibly telling him they were brainwashed, so we can reasonably assume this statement is rooted in Makoto's inability to understand Despair and seeing anyone's craving of it as a mental disease that can be cured(not an unreasonable conclusion to reach, considering the Everything About Junko he was led to witness). Ergo, it's not beyond reason to assume that brainwashing was well within the bounds of possibility for the characters even at that time.

While the idea of brainwashing the class into Despair appears to rob the class of their moral complexities that came from being RoD, the view we as an audience are given by Makoto, Kyoko, and Byakuya within SDR2 is only ever that the RoD were victims of Despair. The survivors are already established as more reliable narrators than AI Junko thanks to the first game, so there's no reason not to trust that what they say is likely true. In addition, Junko never actually directly states that they did it of their own free will, just that they were on the same side and tries to get them not to listen to Makoto, her already-established opposite.

The idea of class 77 being brainwashed went from theory to canon in DR3, and while the method of their brainwashing is controversial(the line 'cutting through their free will like swiss cheese' from the dub is pretty aggravating), it still lines up with Junko's pre-established goals and motivations. She goes to Hope's Peak to tear down Hope and replace it with Despair, and after being shown a class full of Hope united by their love for the same person, she exploits it and is able to use their love against them to create Despair as an outsider. She's introduced to the class, uses them, and then lets them all go do their own Despairing thing because she doesn't actually care what they do. What matters most is her own Despair, and tearing hope to pieces. So her interaction with class 77 remains minimal, a mere experiment for Despair in the same way Hajime was an experiment for hope, and then keeps going about her business, calling on them presumably only if she needs something like the execution contraptions.

14.1- The Despair Videos & Knowing the Difference

There's not just 1 Despair video. Over the course of the anime, we're introduced to three, and each one has different levels of effect on those who watch it. Knowing the difference between these three videos is quintessential when talking about the brainwashing and how each character to watch a video is affected, as well as understanding different characters' roles in the narrative as they pertain to the videos. So let's establish the differences between these 3 videos and their effectiveness before we move forward.

14.1.1- The Student Council Massacre

The first Despair video, aka "the prototype", aka the Mutual Killing Video, is the one created using the footage of the student council's beta mutual killing game. This is the one made solely by Junko's attempted mimicry of Mitarai's animation talents, taking security footage of the mutual killing and sharing it with the Reserve Course and Mikan as a test run. And while it does have some level of effect on them, inspiring 'the parade' and having a hand in Mikan falling for Junko, it doesn't work nearly well enough to actually rewire their brains for Despair or strip them of their hope in the way that Junko would like. Even in the context of a parade, it's still very much a protest in the hopes of change. There's still the demands of a refund, of being let into the main course. Even when shown the Despair of the truth, there is still hope that things can be changed or fixed. And that's not what Junko wants. The only character that we've seen to watch this video to end with the aforementioned 'spiral eye' telltale of true brainwashing is Chisa, who we know was also being actively lobotomized by Mukuro during a repeated viewing to force it to work. This instruction came from some manual Mukuro was left with, presumably written by either Junko or Ryota.

While this video is what starts the parade, what eventually pushes the parade to violence isn't Junko. It's the inaction of Hope's Peak Academy and refusal to acknowledge their mistakes. Instead of coming clean, they bury everything wrong they've done even further and have their security beat the shit out of anyone that tries to find answers for themselves, doing so in the name of 'protecting them' from information. They keep the wrongdoings of their 'real' students under wraps at the expense of their underlings, fully buying into a talent-based hierarchy they created. Those without special talents are sources of finance- nothing more, nothing less. And when that overwhelming majority questions that, and finds evidence that HPA doesn't care, of course they'll retaliate. The video itself isn't a brainwasher, but when combined with the very real negative effects of the classism which the Reserve Course students find themselves hurt by, it makes its influence that much stronger.

14.1.2- Human Chiaki's Death

The second Despair video is Chiaki's execution, and is a live recording shown to her classmates. As far as we've ever seen, this is the only instance in which this is ever shown. This live recording is enough to send class 77 into Despair properly, spiral eyes and all, but there's an underlying implication that the primary reason for this is because of how important Chiaki specifically was to them. Throughout the season, and especially in this episode, Chiaki is established as the glue that holds the class together. Despite not being an extremely sociable person, she connected to her class with her love of games, and her earnest love of it endeared her to them, and their love of her did vice versa. The footage locked them each into place, unable to look away, and once they were at their lowest, at the very end of the video, Junko swoops in to dub them all Remnants and decides for them that they will now cause Despair for her. And because she says this when the live footage has brought them to their lowest, they each fall into this trap, at least to some extent. Whether or not they truly belive in what they're doing, they do it, because that feeling of Despair is their last connection to Chiaki left.

But, similarly to the prototype, it's still ultimately insufficient. Granted, it's much more effective than the prototype, but it isn't a full mindwipe, either. We know this because when we meet Nagito Komaeda in UDG as the Servant, he's still himself. He still has some level of self-control, able to speak and act as an individual even when following the orders of Monaca or the other WoH. He says himself that he despises Junko more than anyone else in the world, and follows through with Despair with the faith that it'll inspire a newer hope to conquer it. He says something similar in that moment of brainwashing as well.

"Nanami is our hope. Look what she did to her. What Despair... What a horrific sight! This is... This is the Despair we must overcome? Ah, Nanami... You understand, right? At this moment, you are becoming a stepping stone to hope!" -Nagito Komaeda, DR3

You could possibly attribute this to Nagito's luck cycle and history with tragedy just making him have a higher resistance to the brainwashing, and honestly, there's no strong way to contradict that, since Nagito and Mikan are the only ones we ever see in Despair outside of a montage, but narratively, I doubt they'd make a point to show one of the RoD hating Junko if it weren't to make the point that they had agency. Nagito was just the fan favorite, so of course it was gonna be him. You saw the fanservice in UDG.

14.1.3- Mitarai's Animation

The third and true Despair video is the inversed Monokuma Theatre, which is used to mentally hack its viewer and drive them into such a strong state of Despair that they kill themselves right then and there. This is objectively the strongest of the Despair videos, and the most effective, with the only character it doesn't immediately convince to kill themselves being the Future Foundation chairman Kazuo Tengan. This is mostly for plot reasons, but I'll address this specific exception to the rule later on and why this was the case.

The Monokuma Theatre video is mass-emailed to the Reserve Course students after they destroy the shiny new building their parents were tricked into paying for. The video hacks their minds when in an already vulnerable state, and each and every one of them jumps out of the building and kills themselves. Just as quickly as they take some control and uproot the system that hurt them so, they fall victim to the games of another who never cared for them in the first place. The purpose of the video was to create a horde of faceless victims to spurn others into action, and it worked like a charm, spiraling the world into a state of Despair. The RoD used their influence to ensure a smooth transition into this state of worldwide chaos as well, having significantly more social power and reach to spur more and more people into the fray.

The Monokuma Theatre video is also what makes the members of the Future Foundation kill themselves in the Future Arc, hacking their minds and then dropping a knife with which to stab themselves with. It works on every character that watches it- Chisa, Gozu, Seiko, Ruruka, and Makoto. Each of these characters are in various mental states when they watch it, yet all of them fall to it, without exception. It doesn't matter who you are or what you believe in. If there's even one thing you regret in your life, the video can and will work on you. It just does. And by that logic, it's the only real 'brainwashing' video, because it can work on anyone who watches it. The one character who seems to withstand it is the one who builds an entire killing game using said video just to force its creator to action, and doesn't even seem so much as affected by it. Really, it calls into question whether or not he was even affected by it.

14.1.4- The Flashback Light (Bonus Brainwashing!)

The Flashback Lights are used solely in V3, and are invented by the mysterious Team DR to reprogram the memories of their victims to play along in their scripted killing game. We see this work on both Kaede and Shuichi, as well as see the aftereffects it has on the rest of the class.

We learn while investigating that Tsumugi is the one responsible for creating the Flashback Lights, and that she's been the mastermind who knew what was happening the entire time. However, this initially opens up a plot hole in that Tsumugi has also been shown the Flashback Lights multiple times. There are 3 viable explanations for this. The first one is that she just closed her eyes, which is extremely boring and kind of a copout. The second is that she didn't know she was the mastermind until near the end, and Kaede's murder plot failing was a ruse by Team DR for the story, but that makes that entire reveal lose a lot of its impact. The third explanation, therefore, makes the most logical and narrative sense, and actually doubles as a reason why Tengan would be the only one to withstand the Monokuma Theatre in DR3: Tsumugi wears glasses.

Yeah, I know, that sounds silly, but let's actually break it down. In NDRV3, two characters are shown to wear glasses, and only two- Tsumugi Shirogane, and Gonta Gokuhara. Gonta, however, has two unique traits that are relevant here. One, he has 20/0.625 vision(strong enough to see the near microscopic Monokuma cameras), and two, he wants nothing more than to appear as a gentleman. I don't think it's a stretch to say he's wearing empty frames to appear more gentlemanly, especially considering they're paired with a full suit.

Tsumugi is the mastermind, and the one who has the most insight into what's happening in the game. She's the one who knew the difference between her actual self and the character Tsumugi that she played(it's implied in the dating sim that Tsumugi isn't her real name), despite having seen the Flashback Lights with the class several times. So isn't it entirely possible that having glasses to reflect the light of those Flashbacks was what let her pass for being affected as well? And, if that's the case, then it would also explain why Tengan, who wears glasses, would be resistant to the effects of the animated video, as everyone else who we know watched the animated version before their death didn't wear glasses. The faceless Reserve Course students don't have glasses, and neither do any of the five characters in Future Arc to watch it. It's completely ridiculous, and simultaneously totally plausible, for the idea of glasses reflecting off light and lessening the effects of such a video to be the explanation for why the videos or lights exclusively didn't work on these masterminds.

8.7- Ryota Mitarai

Junko's connection to Ryota is objectively the weakest part of her story, and admittedly a major part of why the brainwashing of class-77 falls under such scrutiny. Whereas every other part of Junko's plan is pretty well-established within her characterization, the connections she makes having actual sense to their conception and development, and just general consistency within the narrative, her meeting Ryota is not only a stroke of random luck on her part, but emphasized as one, and this just does not make sense for a character within said narrative to have never once been characterized as having any level of luck or fortune prior. This is especially glaring in a world that has established luck mechanics via characters like Makoto, Nagito, and Celeste. Junko just isn't a character meant to have luck like this, and never has any sort of moments or accomplishments stemming from luck before or after this outright.

When Junko and Ryota meet, it's because they walk past each other going in and out of the infirmary, and Junko, for no visible reason, decides to start talking to him right then and there. She starts squealing and hugging him, jumping up and down, and says this upon Mukuro's asking why: "I don't know, but... this is what I'm telling myself: This is yet another... fateful encounter!"

There's no rationale to this. There just isn't. It's not her SHSL Analyst talent having picked up on him over time, or her recognizing him via someone else, or anything of the sort. It's totally unjustified random chance for the convenience of the plot, and that's what makes this introduction so weak.

Really, the issue of Ryota's involvement falls more in their introduction than his actual function in the anime. Considering his characterization and the connections Ryota had prior to this, it would've made infinitely more sense if Junko had met Mikan first while in the infirmary, and buttered her up enough for Mikan to introduce the two of them. Knowing Mikan, it wouldn't have taken much, and would've made more sense for Ryota to be so willing to share a part of his life's work while still incomplete if he was introduced to Junko by someone he already trusted. Regardless, that's not what happened, but I say this mostly because I want to affirm that with Junko and Ryota's connection, it's the introduction that doesn't make sense, not what follows.

That said, once the awkwardness of how they meet is out of the way, what follows is fairly reasonable. She asks about his talent, purposefully mocks his interests to trick him into showing off, and then takes advantage of what she learns about him, which just so happens to be brainwashing techniques that she'd already be somewhat familiar with thanks to Yasuke.

Once they're acquainted, Junko uses her knowledge of the school and what she's stolen from the kidnapped trustees to set up Ryota underground where she can keep him under control, and so he can't mistakenly squeal about what she's setting up. She uses his passion against him to bastardize it into what she needs and manipulates him into walking into his own cell by doing so. It's not her most genius move of all time, and it's not a difficult one to understand either, but it's one that works.

What matters most to understand, though, is that she doesn't seem to develop any sort of affection for him in the way that she did for Mikan. When he finally uncovers what she's doing, Junko gives him a simple sales pitch, and threatens him indirectly with Mikan's friends.

By now, she knows damn well that he's met a grand total of two of his classmates, one of which just tried to sexually assault him mere moments prior, so this doesn't seem like the most effective tactic she could've used. But Ryota is a sensitive person. A victim of bullying growing up, the whole point of his brainwashing animations was to make people more empathetic subliminally. So to force him to help her, Junko is able to target this empathy by targeting Mikan over Ryota himself. Her abuse of Mikan is painful for Ryota to look at, and he wrongfully puts all the blame for the way Mikan acts solely on Junko because he doesn't know any better. And Junko lets him, because it's convenient for her to manipulate.

"As you have inferred, the mutual killing video you watched is the reason Tsumiki ended up this way. However, in order to reach my objective, this is insufficient. My lack of brainwashing ability is the cause." -Junko Enoshima, DR3

As we know, Junko is an unreliable narrator. She can and has lied to people's faces for the sake of manipulating them, telling half-truths and intentionally warping the truth to shift her victims' perspective in a way that she wants. We never see Mikan's fall, only cutting from her first meeting Junko to her already being in love with her, and as we've established, not only was Mikan already pretty fucked up prior to meeting Junko, but she doesn't exhibit the symptoms of a complete brainwashing at this point. She still has her mental faculties about her. So logically, that means she's doing the same here. Yes, Mikan watched the prototype video, and yes, it was insufficient. Hence why we as an audience can understand with our meta-context that Mikan still has her mental faculties intact. Ryota, on the other hand, doesn't have that benefit, so when Junko says this, the implication is that Junko took the meek, shy, kind version of Mikan that Ryota knew and twisted her into an evil, hypnotized slave of Junko's. It's an intentionally warped perception of the truth that Junko uses to her advantage, to the point where she flat-out says she can't brainwash at this point and brainwashing is still commonly attributed as the sole reason for Mikan's behavior in this scene.

Ryota cares about the few friends he does have, taking Mikan's and the SHSL Imposter's requests to take care of himself by resting and going to the infirmary even when he doesn't want to to ease their worries. So of course, when faced with the idea that he could prevent Mikan's loved ones from getting hurt, even though he doesn't know the vast majority of them, he caves regardless. It doesn't have to affect him. The people around him are important enough for this threat to work anyways. They're not his precious classmates, but they are the Imposter's; they are Mikan's. And Ryota is a very weak man. So he complies.

Later, when he escapes, she hunts him down to thank him for his help, and then allows him to run away, letting him believe that he's the reason why class 77 were the ones to be brainwashed.

"The video I had you help me with. The complete version of that. I'll have your whole class watch it now!"

The 'video' that Junko has them watch is a live recording of Chiaki's death maze. Meanwhile, the Despair video that the Reserve Course goes on to watch after the riots, and that Chisa Yukizome is subjected to, are different videos entirely, forcefully reprogramming them and removing their hope outright. Since Ryota's an animator, we can ascertain he's responsible for the one the Reserve Course watches, with an animated Monokuma. In other words, Junko does not, in fact, have his class watch the video he helped her make. She's lying to him to send him further into Despair.

"Imagine it... Because of you, all your classmates will fall into a deep, deep Despair. They'll become people who think of nothing but plunging this world into Despair, the Super High-School Level Despairs!"

It's a bold-faced lie, and one that Ryota has no knowledge with which to contradict it. Because he's a coward, and because Junko's already messed with his head so much, he runs and hides rather than face what he's done. She even leaves him with parting words of responsibility, twisting what happened with sarcasm so he'll always blame himself for her actions.

Ryota is by no means a perfect victim, but that doesn't change the fact that he is one. He was manipulated, and when he found out he was manipulated, he was threatened, albeit indirectly. But Junko was always planning to send Hope's Peak and the world into Despair. His video made it easier for her, but he is not and never was responsible for her actions. And by making him carry the guilt of her choices, she leaves him in a state of pathetic, guilty Despair akin to a genuine 'thank you' from her.

Part 15- AI Junko

AI Junko(or Kaijunko, as I like to refer to her as) appears as the reincarnation of Junko, created by Chihiro's AI technology and forming a Despair virus to infect the Neo World Program. She doesn't allow the Hope Restoration Program to follow through, instead taking Usami's teacher role and manipulating the world to be a Despair Restoration Program. The motives she uses are extremely personal and targeted, hyperfocusing in on specific members of the class each time to ensure a murder happens the way she needs it to.

Something that's important to remember, though, is that Kaijunko IS NOT Junko. She's an artificial recreation of the real Junko intended to continue programming Despair into the world after she'd inevitably passed. And as such, she isn't a 1:1 replica, and there are key differences between the two in the same way Alter Ego is different from Chihiro and Observer Chiaki is different from the human Chiaki.

The reason Junko fell into SHSL Despair was because her intellect combined with human need for stimuli left her with such a deep depression and boredom that pain and suffering were the only ways to make her feel alive. But as an AI program, Kaijunko isn't burdened by that same need. She's programmed to have the same goal of spreading Despair, but she doesn't have a personal, insatiable need for Despair in the way that Junko did. And this leads her to have a different endgoal for the final trial than what the real Junko might have chosen.

Kaijunko observes and learns from Izuru Kamukura and the RoD, as well as the Towa City residents, in the same way Alter Ego learned from class 78. The brainwashing video forcefully reprogrammed them, yes, but ultimately, they still loved each other as friends and classmates, even if Chiaki wasn't there with them, and it's that dedication to each other that Kaijunko learns about. It's why those connections are the ones tested within the SDR2 killing game; Kaijunko, who actually came into contact with the RoD personally and was toted around by Kamukura, would know what to use to create a killing game that would leave the most desperate group of survivors at the end to follow through on Junko's plans to reconstruct them all into her.

However, because Kaijunko isn't constricted to the same need to destroy herself, she can afford to bend the plan around impulsively in the way Junko herself had in the past, but in a way that'd align with the original Junko's goals to harm others around her without needing to harm herself anymore. Thus, in the final trial, she doesn't push those desperate survivors to want to escape. Instead, she uses her knowledge gathered to make them want to stay in the world Makoto provided to them, where none of them have to face the consequences of the RoD's actions, Kaijunko included.

One of the ongoing themes across the board for SDR2 is how artificial everything about it is. The island is artificial. Chiaki is artificial. Hajime is an artificial hope. The RoD are artificial Despairs. Similarly, Kaijunko is an artificial Junko. She goes through those same motions as the original Junko, but she is not, cannot be Junko. She can only mimic, never be, and so she tries to escape altogether by resetting the game to a state where the RoD live an escapist dream, and she's locked in the game with 'her' classmates forever. But despite this, because she's mimicked Despair, she's become part of it, and Hajime and the others do the one thing Junko can't ever succeed in doing: they choose themselves, and she disappears without a chance of hope, just like Ryoko before her. Hajime and class 77 forge a new future, and Kaijunko dies trapped in the shadows of the past.

8.6.1- Hajime Hinata

If the battle between Makoto and Junko in THH is a battle of ideologies- hope and Despair- then the battle between Hajime and Junko is a battle of wills. This is the battle between self-love and self-hatred, and both Hajime and Junko are faced with their opposite, only to reject it in favor of what they want for themselves most.

Hajime's main character arc is one of self-discovery. When we meet him, he's been stripped of everything that's made him himself, having a gap in his memory that has his identity within it. This is a direct parallel to Ryoko Otonashi's lack of memory, having no identity or memories of the past with which to identify herself. She has only the words others tell her. But in the case of Hajime, it's revealed that the supposed gap is virtually nonexistent. He has no special talent or ability that differentiates him from the rest. He's a blank slate- empty, one might say. And this is quite similar to Ryoko. In a similar way, Izuru and Junko are both burdened by the weight of their talents. In the case of Izuru, he was operated on to remove all emotions and thoughts to be a symbol for Hope's Peak, while Junko's Analyst talent left her burdened with the inability to enjoy anything.

There are also similarities to Izuru and Ryoko, having both had their minds operated on to remove all memories of their true identity and become someone new, while Hajime and Junko both feel a heavy burden of who they are and feel as if that makes it impossible for them to enjoy their lives as they are. This parallel is exactly why Hajime's choice to live, and choosing to live in the face of retreating into the NWP, is so impactful, especially when faced with the shadow of Junko Enoshima.

Junko never chose herself. She never could choose herself, and when given the opportunity to, she rejected it entirely, too addicted to the cycle of self-destruction she'd created for herself. She felt as though Despair was the only answer for her, so she could never stop searching for it, even from beyond the grave. That not just she should feel it, but everyone should. Everyone needed to know the way she felt. And she used anything and anyone at her disposal to make sure the world burned, because she wanted to feel, and what was the point of such a world pretending not to feel Despair anyways?

Hajime chose himself. It wasn't for anyone but himself. When looking in the face of what he'd turned himself into for hope, he was able to come to the conclusion inverse to what Junko did- that he didn't need to change for the sake of anyone else. It didn't matter that he wasn't SHSL like the people he admired, so long as he lived for himself. Meanwhile, when Junko reverted back to herself, it was like dragging herself back into a cage, being burdened by the same kind of talent that Hajime never needed. A talent she never asked for was the source of her undoing, while Hajime's lack thereof almost killed him in the pursuit of one.

The dichotomy of the talented vs the talentless is one that can be felt extremely strongly between dr0, sdr2, and dr3, but especially when in regards to the divide between these two characters, as it again circles back to the damage the hierarchy they find themselves in creates. Junko is a heralded SHSL Analyst and Gyaru, dubbed by Japan as superior and handed the influence that makes it so much easier for her to poke holes in the system until it collapses. Even when all the evidence is placed on her, she's the SHSL Analyst, and can convince HPA to keep quiet for her. They cover up her crimes, and when they can't anymore, she's part of the 'chosen' that receive protection from the government while the Reserve Course and their families are never mentioned again. Hajime has nothing, is considered nothing, is even beaten and told to 'take to the leash and collar already' to keep him complacent. His choice to become Kamukura is weighted by the pressures of the system he's trapped within, holding him not only to his desire to be considered important, but to be equal, not to mention the debt he's placed in just for the right to participate in said hierarchy. Those treated like nothing are downtrodden to accept the system and uphold it, and those with power can do whatever they want and the system will protect them.

In a lot of ways, Hajime and Junko are more similar to each other than any other two characters in the franchise, all the way down to the sacrifice of the ones they closest around them sending them on their final path- Junko with Mukuro, and Hajime with Nagito. And in mirroring this, Nagito eventually returns, while Mukuro never can.

Mukuro and Junko are twins, and work to attain the same goal, but they're still very different people. Junko is absolutely fucked up, and Mukuro follows her out of a twisted need to be by her side, even when it leads to her eventual death. Hajime and Nagito are repeatedly called out as similar, both needing the other to get through the trials and survive and being forced to come to an understanding, but still retaining their individuality and separate beliefs. When Mukuro dies, it's directly because of her loyalty to Junko, even at the cost of herself, and Junko's betraying her resulted in both their deaths. Nagito died because of his loyalty to hope, even at the cost of himself, and Hajime's trust in him was what allowed him to survive and eventually bring Nagito back. Where Mukuro was metaphorically absorbed into Junko and forgotten, Nagito's individuality was what became critical to Hajime.

15.1- Shirokuma & Kurokuma

This part will remain brief. Shirokuma and Kurokuma are the AIs found in an all-white and all-black bear in UDG, each positioned on one side of the Towa City genocide and perpetuating the war by manipulating the Towa siblings.

Shirokuma is the 'good' one, and is positioned with the adult survivors. He's the one responsible for creating the underground safe house, and is Haiji's right-hand. Even when making it appear as though he wants peace first and foremost, he goes on to pilot Big Bang Monokuma and stands with Haiji, playing him and Komaru to escalate things.

Kurokuma is the 'bad' one, and is the one who gave Monaca the plan to create a Successor in the first place. He's a chatterbox that's an advisor to the WoH, presumably left behind by Junko or created by Monaca, and pushes the kids into their murder games by standing with Monaca.

Near the end of the game, Kurokuma reveals that Shirokuma is his little brother, and later in the epilogue, we learn that they were actually not distinct AIs, but rather, the same AI Junko as in SDR2 that was working both sides to destroy Towa City. Them taking the form of siblings mirrors that Junko herself was a twin, and isn't truly complete if she doesn't have her sibling still present.

Part 16- Big Sis Junko (UDG)

Following SDR2, UDG returned a master-manipulator Junko to the scene via the Warriors of Hope. Though AI Junko is present and perpetuating the war through her manipulation of the Towas, Junko herself is all but gone, survived only through the kids' memory of her, and what they have to say is extremely telling to the capability Junko really had to push people further towards her Despair.

Her role as 'Big Sis Junko' came when she prevented them from killing themselves, though how she knew to be there at the right time is unknown. We can assume she'd been keeping eyes on Monaca already and, through her Analyst talent, figured out when the right time to be to show up.

From there, they became the Warriors of Hope, not missed by their parents that hated them or worried for by the world, and Junko was free to mold them however she liked. She did this by teaching them to lash out at the people responsible for their suffering- not just their parents and abusers, but any and all adults. She was a teenage girl who'd taken pity on them, as far as most of them saw, and so they trusted her as the first and only person besides each other to show them kindness. They became ideological, lumping all adults within the same box of 'demon' because they were given no other comparison, and they did it for Junko.

"As far as I remember, the first adult we defeated was a random person we didn't even know. .... From there, we leveled ourselves up by killing Demons. Big Sis Junko was so pleased..." -Nagisa Shingetsu, UDG chapter 4

They came to rely on her as their one true savior, and even those of them who knew they were being manipulated didn't care, if only it meant they weren't the ones being beaten anymore.

"At least, at the time I thought it was a miracle. But later I learned it was inevitable. She came into my life just to take advantage of me." -Monaca Towa, UDG chapter 5

"'You guys... were completely deceived by Junko Enoshima.' 'And what's wrong with that? Did I not tell you that we are her possessions? We would rather her take advantage of us than horrible adults.' 'Sounds like it's too late.' 'Say what you like. Big Sis Junko... gave us hope. That's the truth.'" -Toko Fukawa & Nagisa Shingetsu, UDG chapter 4

And when she died, she was martyred, a victim of the cowards who'd believe in the adults and Hope's Peak. By dying, she completed her manipulation of them, ensuring in her absence, they would only remember the kindness she offered them. Anyone who said otherwise must be a demon.

"No matter how much you hate us, no matter how much we're shunned, we're definitely not wrong. That's the real truth, because Big Sis Junko said so. .... Those adults who took her away from us and said that she was the bad one! They're the filthy ones; they're the ugly ones, the disgusting ones!!!" -Jataro Kemuri, UDG chapter 2

This manipulation and creation of the WoH stemmed from a practical source, as we learn in the game. By Monaca's own admission, Junko only ever cared about getting access to Towa City tech for her Monokumas and for spreading Despair wide-scale. Having highly talented and abused kids to carry out her will when she was gone was just a very welcome bonus; having the youth primed to continue spreading Despair when she was gone would create a legacy, and her ghost would continue to haunt those with hope for at least another generation. Enter Monaca Towa.

8.8- Monaca Towa & the WoH (CW: Mentions of Incest & Pedophilia)

Monaca is differentiated from the rest of the Warriors of Hope almost immediately as being more aware of what the fuck is going on than her friends. She's the L'il Ultimate/SESL Homeroom that loves hearing everyone else talk about their thoughts and feelings, she's the one who invented the Captives game, and she has swastikas in her eyes, because Nazi symbolism was the only way we could convey she's a dictator I guess. As the game goes on, we see that her relationship with Junko is different from the rest of the class- a bit more substantial. She has much more knowledge of Junko's desire for Despair and knows the real reason Junko sought them out in the first place. She uses her friends' idolization of her to trick them into helping her make a new generation Junko to carry her memory. She also has a hidden bedroom full of photos of Junko, and one in particular stands out among the rest.

Junko and Monaca, all by themselves, posing for a photo. None of the other WoH are present for this photo. It's also worth noting that Monaca's in her WoH outfit, even though in every other flashback or cutaway to the past before Junko's death, they were all in their Hope's Peak Elementary uniforms. If it weren't already obvious, these two were spending more time together than with the rest of the WoH. This is primarily because of the explanation we've already been given- Junko needed tech, Monaca was the one that had it. Of course extra work was gonna be put into her, and if she felt special in comparison, she'd become more like Junko.

Both Monaca and Junko are a younger sister, and their older siblings are established as pretty creepy in their own ways. Mukuro is incestuous and lusts after Junko whenever they're together, or even just when thinking about her. Haiji, meanwhile, is a pedophile, mentioning he likes girls younger, "as young as I can get 'em." I don't have to explain why the knowledge he has an extremely younger half-sister he expressly doesn't think counts as family is a bloodcurdling realization given this information. While they seem to have very different levels of connection with their siblings, this is a pretty distinct commonality to give both masterminds, especially when one is meant to immediately succeed the other. Both girls are also considered the "genius" of their families, while their older siblings use more brute strength.

Monaca is a character built upon the mimicry of Junko. We know this because we pay attention to the game, but also because if we look at the concept art and beta forms of the Successor, we can see without question that creating a "New Junko" was always going to be a major part of UDG, as not one, but two unused Successor characters were considered before Monaca eventually became who she is today as the mastermind and true Successor.

Monaca throughout UDG undergoes a similar behavior to Junko in the way that she treats the WoH, but it's in a way the fundamentally misunderstands why Junko acts the way she does. Monaca is a child, and idolizes Junko, but that doesn't mean she actually understands her, even if she got much closer than her friends.

Monaca manipulates and discards the other WoH one by one, making herself the center of their movement and letting them believe they have control over what they're doing. She motivates them with a Paradise that'll never exist, similar to how Junko motivated the reserve course to stand up against Hope's Peak, and they take over Towa City. Whenever a WoH disappears, she decides whether or not they're mourned, but it appears as though she doesn't care and never did. She quickly forgets Masaru's name, barely bothers with Jataro, and later in her backstory monologue, proudly claims that when Junko met them, she was planning to let her only friends all kill themselves as a prank and not jump herself. She takes all the steps possible to Not Care about these people, similar to how Junko seemed not to care about the people she loved.

If Monaca spent enough time around Junko to observe and pick up this pattern, it likely means she also saw how little Junko actually cared for herself and her friends. This would explain why she starts acting as though she doesn't care at all for her only friends in the world and discarding them, wanting to emulate Junko, her idol. It also means she knew Junko didn't care about her, but her talents, and just didn't care because it was Junko. Again, this is a mentality not just held by her within the WoH, but because she was given a peek behind the curtain, she filled in the blanks in her head and let herself continue to be manipulated by Kurokuma, all in the hopes that Junko could return and manipulate her again. She needed a Successor, someone to fill that sisterly void again. And in that desperate desire, she inadvertently set herself up to someday become the SESL Despair.

Nagito's intervention is directly stated as the reason why she ends up abandoning this role as SESL Despair and fucking off to space as SESL Apathy instead, shrugging it off as 'not wanting to end up like he did'. This appears to be a deviation from what was originally intended for her, as not only was this wrapped up in a singular episode of an anime not actually about her, but the teaser images for a UDG 2 in UDG's credits ultimately ended up unused, and V3 totes a teaser of a canceled UDG 2.

Part 17- Junko's Apocalyptic Crash Course

"Right now, Hope’s Peak Academy is set up in a pyramid sort of idea that a third world country would use; it’s only really there to concentrate it’s effort on the 'super high school levels', for their benefit, and then below them are the reserve students from the preparatory school. .... The teachers here don’t really think any of the reserve students really belong here." -Yasuke Matsuda, DR 0

As we've seen repeatedly throughout the previous games and DR 0, Junko's strengths don't come from sheer force of will. She didn't take some perfect world of hope and twist it into a world of Despair by flipping some ideological switch. She's charismatic, but still human. Junko's strength comes from her ability to analyze, her high intelligence, and her charisma combining to create a master manipulator. Using the skills and people at her disposal, she was able to amass a cult following, and inspire the downfall of a society that was already flawed by attacking the weak points that were already present. Ergo, Junko's SHSL Analyst talent led her to not only infiltrate the school, but also to find the flaws within it and the lies it covered up by taking advantage of the Kamukura project wearing the school thin.

She may have been the face of the Despair movement, but she wasn't a singularity. She had a small group of people she trusted with a certain amount of information, and who had skills that would become beneficial to her. Mukuro is the obvious right-hand, as previously discussed, and perhaps the only one she legitimately believed to be an equal, but there was also Yasuke, Izuru, Ryota, Mikan, and Monaca, all of whom she attached herself too and all of whom had an extremely useful talent or title that was immediately beneficial to her cause. These people were able to directly carry out her desired acts of Despair and work alongside her, reporting back to her to ensure things were running smoothly. These were people who were needed directly as they were, and who were most useful when they believed she genuinely took interest in them, whether she actually had or not.

In a world already so flawed, with thinly veiled atrocities already taking place by people who believe in a caste system of talent, earning a downtrodden majority's trust is as simple as taking the blindfold off. Manipulating the people she'd attached herself to let her reveal key information at her leisure and drive the school and its inhabitants to Despair without them noticing or knowing to take action until it was too late to stop it. Something manmade, that turned into a disease and spread across the world, infesting it with the Tragedy and burning the oh-so-predictable world to the ground, all while standing as the eye of the storm- that was the power of the SHSL Despair that Junko worshipped, and she became its spokesperson, sending the world into a spiral.

Part 18- Junko's Legacy (Death of the Human, Birth of the God)

Everyone that loves Junko, misunderstands Junko. This is a fact that we see more than once. Mukuro obsesses, not loves. Yasuke romanticizes a childhood he can never return to. Monaca idolizes her. Mikan overtly sexualizes her. Her classmates know nothing of her self-destructive nature. Junko knew this and Despaired every time. But this fundamental misunderstanding of who Junko is didn't just exist in the game. In real life, Junko Enoshima became an iconic villain, the teenage girl that burned the world, the Ultimate Despair. She was insanely popular, and still is. And the more popular a character gets, the more susceptible they become to misinterpretations, fanon, oversimplification, etc.

In becoming such a well-known figure, Junko Enoshima the person got lost in translation. There was now Junko Enoshima, the mascot, the figurehead. This isn't a phenomenon exclusive to Junko, of course, but as the titular villain of the series until this point, how could the series continue without her? To this very day, people can't agree on who Junko was or who she actually cared about or if she ever even cared for anyone at all. And when NDRV3 was made, it took advantage of this to tell its own story, utilizing Junko Enoshima specifically to demonstrate flanderization of characters within its lore.

Junko Enoshima is not a real person. She's a fictional character. All her motivations, her thoughts and feelings, are fabricated stories and vague implications from the writing of real people. And in V3, that 'real person' is Tsumugi Shirogane, one of many cogs in the machine of Team Danganronpa, who dresses up as Junko and uses her face to become 'Junko Enoshima the 53rd'. Junko has been used and reused over and over and over, to the point where the original vision has been muddied beyond belief. What she was at the beginning, way back in THH, no longer exists. She's now a silly mascot, a familiar face that fans can point at and dress as and draw fanart of, and a face that Team DR can profit off of. Tsumugi's portrayal is laughably inaccurate to the original Junko. It's a costume, nothing more, and the dialogue she gives when 'in-character' is simplistic and insignificant. All its weight comes not from the meaning, but from the reference for reference's sake.

Junko's appearance in V3, like many other moving parts of V3, reference real-world fandom culture. It's appealing to both the in-universe fandom and the real one, bringing back character sprites and voice actors and poking fun at its own ridiculousness because none of it is real, none of it ever was. It was because Junko was fiction that she could do everything she ever did. Her Despair has meaning, but that doesn't mean she felt the feelings we're told she did, because she never existed to feel them. And that's the thing that lets her forever remain an enigma; she is Danganronpa's villain, and to become immortalized in Despair, she deconstructed into nothing but the word Despair, a fate that is in and of itself Despairful.

8.9- Tsumugi Shirogane

Tsumugi Shirogane is the mastermind of V3, and believes wholeheartedly in Junko Enoshima as the true villain of Danganronpa. Tsumugi is built as the fandom insert of DR, being immersed in fandom culture in every conceivable way- winking at the camera, making references to other fandoms, the love and joy of making cosplay- but also the less palatable parts of major fandoms, like her purist views of cosplay, her usage of incest as both a serious plot point and as a gag, and even does blackface when cosplaying as the dark-skinned DR characters of dr1 and 2. She's also the in-universe producer of the season. Therefore, Tsumugi also represents content creators, and how even the creator themselves can lose the plot of the character in their attempts to create what they perceive to be a compelling story.

As Tsumugi is explaining her story and why she tied it back into the Hope's Peak era, she pretty openly admits that a) she sees it as a perfect reproduction and b) a necessary writing choice in order to make it interesting. Both are false, as not only is V3's continuity in a separate world from the Hope's Peak era, but her presentation of Junko and the voice lines aren't displayed the same way Junko had acted in previous installations.

"'So... you're just a freak pretending to be Junko Enoshima, huh!?' 'No, a perfect reproduction! Perfect reproductions are exactly the same as the original.'" -Maki Harukawa & Tsumugi Shirogane, V3

She presents Junko as a singularity, the Ultimate Despair, and brazenly parades her face around as the immortal and ever-present true Despair. She's the 53rd Despair simply because her influence wouldn't allow her to fade away. She's become Despair-incarnate, but in making new games, Team DR has forgotten why Junko caused Despair in the first place. She didn't do it just to do it; she threw the world into Despair because it made her feel human to feel Despair. And yet when Tsumugi explains Junko the 53rd's plans, it's nothing but a big show, and that's exactly what a surface-level Junko looks like to the masses- a high-school girl that ended the world for fun.

Junko's games had meaning. Even when she didn't feel particularly connected to a person, like the RoD, she still brought them into Despair for a purpose. She was an analyst, and did the things she did with intention and with care. Attention to detail and careful manipulation with the face of a charismatic gyaru was her forte. But Tsumugi's so-called "perfect reproduction" is a story full of plot holes and contradictions, all caused by some need to deify Junko. In other words, as they refused to let Danganronpa go, they lost the plot, and Junko's humanity went with it in a desire to continue using her image when writing new stories. In becoming a god of Despair, her origins as a human were forgotten.

Part 19- Despair Into Tomorrow (Why We Care)

Junko Enoshima is an enigma. She is Despair incarnate, a pillar of the Danganronpa world created by her own hands, hellbent on burning herself to the ground. She's a character of poetic irony, unknown to all as anything but Despair. She was born with a perfect mind, and in trying to feel human, feel pain, feel Despair, she became permanently deified by all that she loved and all that she met, whether that was as a savior who killed a cruel world or a demon that detested hope.

At every turn, Junko's actiona are filled with malice, and yet so often that malice is directed at herself. Living in a peaceful world pains her because it leaves her bored. Anhedonia is a cruel mistress, and those who claimed to love her could never once comprehend it, because they couldn't feel the way she felt. The only thing she had that connected her in any human way to others or to herself was grief, and her entire story becomes one of self-sabotage. Despite that, though, she's not the only character burdened by anhedonia, and her self-destructive nature outstretching to the people and world around her is designed as a story of caution.

In each and every installation of Danganronpa, Junko and the other masterminds inspired by her fail because of their key difference in connections. When Makoto appeals to his classmates, they're reminded of their own desires to live and their love for each other- Hina's memory of Sakura, Syo's love of Byakuya, Kyoko's and Byakuya's love of Makoto himself. The same can be said of when Hajime chooses himself, to fight for himself, and is inspired to do so by Chiaki. Every other survivor has someone that inspired them to live for themself- Peko, Nakomaru, Gundham, the people around them. When Komaru is saved by Toko, it's because she took the time to connect with her and with Syo, and that love saved her from destruction. When Munakata gave up hunting Makoto, it was because of his love for Chisa. And when Shuichi declared he wouldn't vote, it was so that Maki and Keebo wouldn't be forced into sacrifice of a system that would hurt them over and over again.

Junko had connections. Junko had people she loved. Junko had another half. But she burned them one by one, until there was nothing left but her, and then she burned that too. She's a villain even to herself, and she knows it. She feels Despair upon Despair and even then can't regret it, because she wouldn't let anything else touch her heart besides it. It's an inherently self-fulfilling prophecy to only feel Despair, because in order for that Despair to exist, she must have felt love first. But she doesn't acknowledge her love and her vulnerabilities because she believes those fall under her 'factory settings'. Comfort is boring; safety is boring, and boredom was her enemy, an enemy second only to herself.

Junko's actions stem from a deeply embedded self-hatred. She was too smart and too comfortable, and so her boredom became everything she was. She believed the lie she told herself, that pain and grief and Despair was the only answer. Don't be like Junko. Don't believe the lies you tell yourself. Even in an unjust world, you can try to make things better without making them worse. Feel your Despair and let it go. It is okay to let it go. You are still human, no matter what image the people around you have, and to be seen, you must first be vulnerable.

Afterword

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST IT'S BEEN OVER 5 MONTHS. I made jokes and gags about 'getting this out before 2025' but I didn't think that would actually end up as my deadline. Holy fuck.

Junko's analysis is by far the beefiest I've done so far, and very well could remain the biggest one in this entire series of analyses (I think Kyoko, Makoto, and mayyybe Chiaki or Hajime might get close, but otherwise? Those are def gonna be the big 5 though) But hey, that's what being the mastermind of the franchise gets you. In retrospect, Junko probably should've been the grand finale, not part 5/17 of this series' part 1, but whatever. I'll save that grand finale for Kyoko instead

This will probably be the most controversial analysis I put out, alongside the eventual Mukuro one. I know people are, uh, divided on their relationship, but I did my best to stay objective and look at it from an unbiased viewpoint for what they offer narratively and its effectiveness. And I hope people are able to see that. Just in case, though, I'm gonna have anons off for a bit until whatever circulation this post gets dies down lol

Honestly, my perception of Junko has changed so much over the course of these past several months. It's not like I didn't like her before, but she's morphed into one of my favorite villains in all of media after this. This girl just cannot fucking die, no matter how much she wants to, and I think there's something so deeply compelling about a villain that wants nothing more than to self-destruct and burn the world with them, especially if you've fallen into a depressive state like the one she's in before

Good news, though! The next analysis set is Hifumi's, which means it won't take nearly as long as this whopper of a tumblr post! I'm actually very eager to deconstruct him, so hopefully we can go back to the summer days where I was able to crank out an analysis after 2 weeks. Please, god, can we go back to the summer days where I cranked out an analysis after 2 weeks

Catch ya later! :P

[arceus-insanity]

So When Did Things Start Going Down Hill

I don't mean everything is shit after this, but things looking back started getting (steadily) worse starting with. Check bottom for more indept view on each option

A) at first I wasn't going to include this one as it happened before most of what I considered shit started happening, but with how much it blatantly favours this lazy-ass child abuser, how could I not include it. And of course, it shows so much evidence that he hasn't changed at all, like only even offering to teach Midoriya and Bakugo to manipulate his favourite victim Shoto

B) when it first happened I was devastated but expected this to lead to greater change to the hero system and society. But no, just a meaningless footnote to the heroes epic battle

C) literally no one questions how a top hero was just so eager to kill someone, or buy a wife, breed her, abuse & neglect his kids to the point one of them was believed dead. Only citizens whining about how Dabi is bad for them

D) here's this apparently big shot hero from the States we've never heard of before and immediately dies. If they wanted to keep Shigaraki from having too many powers they could of just chalked it up to the heroes interupting the process

E) the Todoroki family all blames themselves, this isn't to go into the complexity of abusive households, but to absolve Endeavor's responsibility and guilt. Despite the fact that as the one who created and was in control of this situation, he should be held accountable for theirs as well. The only backlash for his shit is framed as ohh poor Endeavor, he didn't mean for the child he threw away to create consequences, and now people are being mean to them

F) what was the point of this arc? Deku barely asks a villain three questions before giving up. He learns the HPSC had Lady Nagant acting as a secret assassin against any undesireables for them, covered up her arrest and got a replacement assassin (Hawks who has at least one confirmed extra jurdical murder under his belt). Witnesses an innocent woman get attacked for her appearance and was turned away from multiple shelters for said appearance. Deku: Hero Society is the Best, Nothing needs to change, because not every single apple in this basket is rotten to the core! Looking back he just looks worse for this

G) so this child, who due to his parents mistake was blackmailed under great threat & risk, into giving information to the blackmailer, deserves to be chained up and forced to take further risk by the heroes. Remember Endeavor never faces any consequences, nor does Hawks, but this child, Yuga, gets treated like this.

H) once again what was the point? How does Edgeshot know he can do this? How does he know how to do this? Why is he a top hero who has never interacted with Bakugo before this, sacrifices his appearing to be unharmed self, for a random hero student in the middle of a war? Oh and Edgeshot is revealed to be alive at the end of the manga, because Heroes have no consequences and live in magical fairytail land. Again what was the fucking point!

I) This was originally going to be two points, Oh poor Endeavor, victim blaming part 2 and the hospital battle. But I ran out of options and Endeavor doesn't need another personal option. So we got the whole Todofam blaming Dabi/Touya this time, and Endeavor being a whiney responsibility dodging coward again. Then we see the heroes knew that the villains were going to go after Kurogiri, kept him in a hospital. We see that the people aren't going after doctors or patients just trying to get to Kurogiri, get demonized for it. We have victim blamer/ pick-me Tentacole say that their kids will be attacked for this (already happening), and that it's up to them/ him to inspire the violent quirkests to not constantly attack, assualt, and otherwise discriminate against them, no need for the quirkists to be given any responsibility or consequences for their own actions. Oh and Spinner has major brain damage because how else was Tentacole supposed to win this arguement. Bonus points for Hawks calling for Toga to be murdered, doubling right back down on his previous murder

J) in this already overcrowded 3rd act lets make sure all these background characters get a scene! And despite the fact it took years for Deku to get a powersuit in the epilogue, All Might just randomly gets one, no build up or anything. AFO's backstory is left in the past so no one has to consider anything

K) I had hope going into this, but at every turn they kept on making it worse. Deku only tries punching and attacking, rather than make any attempts to actually talk unlike what Shigaraki has been doing since his introduction. Is randomly able to enter Shigaraki's head, doesn't have to see just how fucked Hero Society is as it gets cut short by moral scapegoat AFO coming in and revealing he orcastrated everything! Oh and he flat out kills Shigaraki. Living up to his name and not his goal. Deku that could my ass

Sorry if this comes off as super negative but I've been wondering this for a while, and well I'm pissed at the ending. Here's some people I want to hear the opinions of:

@moodyvoid @nagitosstolenhand @codenamesazanka @shortstrawberryshake @darkonekrisrewrite @nothingofinterest @itsnothingofinterest @villainsandvictimsalliance

Feel free to @ more people

[buggachat]

So, this is very important. Emilie or Amelie?

(Answer: Amelie. But seriously, I'm getting ahead of myself, let's talk about it.)

This is kind of a long post. If you don't want to read all of my ramblings, feel free to skip to the final point. That's the important one.

A mysterious woman who is clearly one of the two Graham de Vanily twins was in attendance of the party at the end of the episode. But is she Emilie (Adrien's dead mom, revived by Gabriel's wish) or Amelie (Adrien's already alive aunt)?

Here's the thing. The answer to this question is actually extremely important. Emilie being alive would be a HUGE deal and would have extreme consequences on the narrative and themes of the show.

Seriously. We need to know whether or not Emilie is alive. So, let's discuss— what do we know?

1. Amelie should be at this party.

Seriously. Amelie would be at Adrien's party.

You know who is in attendance at Adrien's party? Not just his friends, but also adults in his life. Nathalie. Su-Han. Jagged Stone. Penny Rolling.

You know what Penny Rolling's relationship is to Adrien? She's the manager/new girlfriend of his friend Luka's recently-undeadbeated-dad. And she was invited to Adrien's party.

Seriously. This is a party of any significant character. Everyone and their mother was invited and— hey wait, where's Félix's mother? Félix is here, and certainly our favorite mommy's boy would invite his mother along. Surely Adrien's aunt would be invited to Adrien's party.

You know, Amelie's aunt, who had a not insignificant arc in the story? A family member to the Agrestes, who we've seen struggle, who would well deserve a shot of her smiling at a party at the finale?

Amelie, who had some unresolved tension with Nathalie, centered around their respective relationships with Gabriel? Tension that would likely be rectified after Gabriel's demise?

Not only would Amelie be at this party, but I absolutely believe she would be sitting next to Nathalie. (I mean, they do know each other. Who else at that party does Amelie even know?)

If that's not Amelie, then where is she?

Oh, and side note, what was the shot just before the shot of the mysterious woman? Oh, that's right. Amelie's son.

2. She only appears for a brief flash, given no more significance than any other character in attendance.

There's a reason why everyone is using the same shot of the mysterious woman when discussing her. That is the only shot of her. There are more shots of Penny Rolling than of her.

Here's the thing. Either Emilie is alive in this final scene, or she isn't. So, how would you expect this scene to play for these circumstances?

Here is a complete list of everything I would expect if Emilie were not alive:

A brief shot of Amelie.

Here is an incomplete list of some of the things I would expect from a "Emilie, the mother of the deuteragonist and ghost that has been haunting the narrative for 5 Seasons, is alive now" reveal, at the bare minimum:

A shot that lingers on Emilie.

Emilie, seated with Nathalie AND HER TWIN SISTER.

A shot of Emilie opening her eyes during Gabriel's wish.

The newscast, which they watch during the party, having a mention of "... and Parisians are still celebrating the rescue of Emilie Agreste, who was previously missing but recently found!"

Adrien literally acknowledging that his dead mother is suddenly alive at all? AT ALL? Looking at her, mentioning her, literally ANYTHING from him? I mean, seriously, what did he think happened—

3. Adrien's perception of his mother's reappearance would need to be addressed. It was not.

Adrien does not know the wish was cast.

Adrien does not know anything.

Here's the thing. While, yes, Emilie has been described as "missing"/"disappeared" in the show, it is absolutely clear to the audience that Adrien has been under the impression that Emilie is dead.

We know this from the painting in the foyer that depicts Gabriel and Adrien in mourning. We know this from the way that Adrien (correctly) draws the conclusion that "Nathalie has the same illness as my mother, therefore she is dying". We know this from the way that Adrien speaks about his mother in past tense, how he encourages his father to move on and date Nathalie, how he has never once in the show seemed to be under the impression that Emilie could come back.

So, if Emilie suddenly came back........... someone would need to explain it to Adrien. He would need to be fed another lie about it. We would need to be made privy as to what he believes happened.

Examples of how this could have been easily achieved:

Again, the newscast. Nadja acknowledging that the missing Emilie Agreste had been found. Maybe mentioning that "she was found being held captive by Monarch" or something. I dunno, whatever lie that works.

Adrien, during his conversation with Marinette, mentioning what happened to Emilie from his perspective, the same way he vocalized to her what his perception of Gabriel's death was. I mean, seriously, Adrien was already doing this expositional dialogue... why wouldn't he mention his mom during it?

4. Leaked production material does not change the final product.

Yes, scripts were leaked of this season. There are deleted scenes in the storyboards. There are script changes and allusions to certain things and mentions here and there in these materials that suggest that the mysterious woman could have, at some point in production, been Emilie.

... at some point in production.

So, here's the thing. This is the most solid Emilie argument we have. In fact, I'd argue it's the only argument that holds any real ground at all. .......... and it's in content that we aren't supposed to have.

( Actually, it's the only real Emilie argument I've seen... period. The only other one I've seen is the fact her statue is gone, but I'd argue that the removal of her statue has symbolic weight no matter what. It was a symbol of Gabriel's obsession over her, the way that she haunts the narrative, the way she looms over the Agreste household. Alive or not, this is not the case anymore. So it makes sense to remove it. )

If your interpretation of the source material is solely, and I mean SOLELY based off of out-of-context snippets of things that were in the writer's room Vaguely At Some Point, things that now directly contradict the final product, things that the audience was absolutely under no circumstances meant to see...

You're not interpreting the episode. You're interpreting out-of-context snippets of a rough draft of it.

So, here's the thing. I've seen some of these leaks, I've seen a lot of people talk about these leaks, I've seen the rumors and I've heard the gossip. I'm not going to parrot it, because honestly, I'm still annoyed that the leaks exist at all. It feels a bit insulting to the art form, tbh, that incomplete scripts are being passed around and touted as significant and more accurate than the actual completed script.

But I'll say one thing:

If the rough drafts of scripts, deleted scenes, etc pointed to Emilie being alive.......

Why did they remove them?

(The answer is simple: because they changed their minds. And you don't have to stress about or mull over why they did it, because you were never supposed to know that it was changed, because you were never supposed to know about out-of-context rough drafts of the script in the first place. It doesn't matter. It's not the product. Writers are allowed to toss around ideas and scripts and then change them. It's unimportant and you're not supposed to be privy to it. It's not for you. It's not what they made. It's certainly not more accurate to the direction they're headed than what they settled on. )

Point is:

IF THE LEAKS DIDN'T EXIST, YOU WOULDN'T BE CONFUSED.

YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE THE LEAKS.

YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE CONFUSED.

5. So, Astruc on twitter.

Okay, I love perusing Astruc's twitter for snippets of information as much as the next obsessive miraculous fan. I have perused his twitter a lot. Astruc always addresses comments and concerns under like 20 layers of coyness.

People ask him, "is it Emilie or Amelie"? And basically, every time, he responds with some variation on "pay attention and you'll know".

He's been shooting down people presenting the clues they find to him, on both sides of the argument. Some examples (which include the Amelie wearing black and Emilie wearing white thing):

So, what does this mean, beyond the already known fact that Astruc likes to mess with us?

Obviously, I'm not Astruc. I don't know his mind. I also don't have much of vested interest in dissecting everything he says, nor do I take his word at face value a lot of the time (again, he likes to mess with us).

However, I think two things are fairly clear here:

It IS possible to know whether or not Emilie was revived by watching the episode.

It's not the small details he wants us to look at. Admittedly, color schemes and set dressings are small details. It's not the big picture. It's not important. It's not the heart of what he, or any writer in his position, would want us to interpret.

( Side note, but if nearly every single Emilie argument is based off of things NOT ACTUALLY IN THE EPISODE, then doesn't Astruc saying the answer is in the episode shoot that down right off the bat? But hey! I digress. )

So, what is the big picture? What are the things that writers are truly proud of? What is the thing that a writer would want us to pay attention to? What are the details of the show that can help point us to what transpired in the episode? What—

6. The WRITING of the ENTIRE SERIES, INCLUDING within THIS VERY episode, the dialogue, the themes, the character beats, the symbolism— Literally. All of it. Points to Emilie. STAYING. DEAD.

This is actually the heart of my point.

Emilie absolutely was not revived here.

Here's the thing. The themes of grief and loss and mourning are extremely present within the Agreste arc. Throughout the entire series, the following has been hammered in by the writing:

Gabriel is obsessive for wanting to bring Emilie back. His desires are not healthy or sound. He is delusional. He is hurting Adrien and Nathalie by living in this fantasy.

Gabriel should have moved on.

Nathalie wants to move on.

Adrien has already moved on.

EMILIE HERSELF wanted them all to move on.

Emilie is a nearly angelic figure. Adrien is literally the deuteragonist of the series. Nathalie is a morally grey character with a clear redemption arc. Gabriel is the antagonist.

The "better" the character is, the more certain they are that Emilie should not be revived.

The CORRECT choice, if Gabriel and Nathalie chose the "right" path from the start, would have been for Gabriel and Nathalie to focus on parenting Adrien themselves, instead of obsessing over bringing a dead woman who has already come to terms with her death back to life. That's what Emilie wanted. That's what Adrien wants. That's what Nathalie has wanted but was too afraid to say. That's what Gabriel refuses to accept.

Look, if I go in depth into the scenes where this is addressed, I'd be here all day. Instead, have a screenshot compilation, I guess.

Again. That's been a core message of the series this entire time. And while I don't have screenshots of it being spoken so plainly in seasons 1 and 2, Gabriel has always been depicted as sinister, and his obsession has always been framed in the wrong.

Now, if you're one of those people who refuse to analyze the text at all or interpret what the messages of the show are on the grounds of "the writing sucks so who cares, it's probably just inconsistent writing and they forgot about the themes in the final episode" or whatever, then like. Ok. But here's the thing— this theme is even more hammered home in the finale.

Guys. I'm serious. What the hell do you think the scene before the wish was saying?

Gabriel, at his lowest moment, brought down. Gabriel, detransformed and on his knees before Bug Noir. Gabriel, at the final hour of his life, near tears, still obsessing over his wife, still thinking of his wife his wife his wife above all else, as Bug Noir lays out the literal themes of the show to him in all their beautiful glory.

And then literally forces him to watch the very videos that he had tried to force Nathalie to delete. Forces him to face the very words he refused to acknowledge. Forces him, at his lowest, to come face-to-face with the truth he denied.

.... And it hits him. What she's saying hits him. Because how can he deny Emilie's own words? The very woman he's doing it all for? How can he bring her back to life when she would want nothing less? How can he force the love of his life to live knowing that someone had died for her to, when she didn't want that? How could he have lost himself so much in the madness?

And then Bug Noir comes in with THIS

.... And Gabriel says....

.... Note that, he does not continue to deny it. He does not plead his case that Emilie should be alive. He is no longer arguing that. Here, he has seemingly begun to accept the premise that Emilie should not be brought back to life. Instead, he has a new premise:

He does not want to be alive if Emilie is not.

Gabriel is not selfless. Gabriel is not a good man. Gabriel says, earlier in the episode, flat out, that he is more than willing to kill whoever it takes, whatever rando he wants, to get what he wants.

Here's the thing.

Gabriel wants to be with Emilie.

Gabriel is willing to kill anyone, whoever it takes, to make this happen.

Gabriel realizes Emilie does not want to be alive.

Gabriel decides that he will honor Emilie's final wish......... only partially.

Because Emilie wanted both Gabriel and Nathalie to take care of Adrien. But Gabriel does not want that. It's not that Gabriel is above killing someone to save his own life, it's that he realizes that he, too, does not want to be saved. Because he does not want to live in a world without Emilie.

He would rather be dead, with her, than alive and caring for his own son.

Gabriel Agreste's wish is a suicide. I mean, we already knew this— but I mean, literally. It's not a selfless sacrifice. It's not one final act of goodness. It's a suicide. He decides he wants to die, and he decides that he will save Nathalie in the act— because it's what Emilie wanted, and Gabriel is obsessive. The only person who would reason with him is Emilie herself.

And what does Gabriel's wish look like? How is it depicted to us?

Gabriel and Emilie, cast in a white light. Emilie lifts from her coffin, notably still limp, as Gabriel rises up with her.

He rises up with her, notably supporting her limp head with his hand. She is still unconscious. And he is joining her.

One last selfish act. The final nail into his "trying to be a dad" coffin. He doesn't want to be a dad anymore. He only wants to be with Emilie. And he will gladly pass that responsibility, the responsibility of parentage, onto Nathalie— The only character in the show who has been showing an explicit, vested interest in LIVING to take care of and be a parent to Adrien.

Nathalie is alive. Nathalie is well. A life for a life. One life for one life. That's all that's depicted. That's all that's shown.

Is it TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE that more could've been a part of that wish? Is it TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE that the wish could've been more complicated? Is it TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE that some random other person died? Is it TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE that all of that dialogue and that entire scene and the entire buildup of Emilie's recordings were just soooooo lol random and that Emilie just decided that she's totally cool with being revived and alive now and that the entire themes of the series were a lie?

I also think it's technically possible that Marinette has secretly been a hamster wearing a human suit this whole time, and Lila is actually secretly a sentimonster made by Gorilla. And maybe this show isn't a romance, actually, and that Adrien and Marinette aren't meant to be endgame. In fact, maybe the entire series was a big prank. Maybe I'm adopted and my parents lied to me about it.

But how it looks, from what I see, from what I've watched, what just happened is....

Gabriel accepted that Emilie is dead.

This made Gabriel want to die, too. Because he doesn't care about Adrien as much as he cares about Emilie.

So, he did. And he shirked parentage onto Nathalie.

Is this "winning", by the way? By any stretch? Is this "Gabriel getting what he always wanted"? Is this "Gabriel being proved right"? Is this a lack of consequences? Are we really going to call a broken man, who has been slowly turning to ash and rotting away for an entire season, who suffered and was beaten down and, at the very end, had the only people ever in his corner (Nathalie and Adrien) cursing his name and wanting him dead.... him being right all along? Is him committing suicide the series justifying his actions? Is him committing suicide (again, not a selfless sacrifice) him "doing good" and "being redeemed" by the narrative? Is a faux image of him, a false narrative, a complete fictional person that he never truly was being celebrated by ignorant Parisians, him "being redeemed"? I suppose that's another essay altogether. But I'm tired of writing.

also, there was still only one goddamn twin at that party

[bibibbon]

MHA chapter 426

4 more chapters until MHA ends and wow!!!

Honestly this chapter was mainly the conclusion of the todoroki family arc which I still hate how it played out and ended. The whole todoroki family NOT INCLUDING ENJI deserves so much better than what horikoshi gave them.

Hawks is the new HPSC leader?!?! I feel like the system should of just been destroyed considering how much it hurt everyone and hawks by no means has any proper character development to take this role. Hawks hasn't really broken down his flawed beliefs or truly developed from his mentality that ended up getting one of the most redeemable league of villains members aka twice killed. Also he barely reflects on his actions and all of this feels so underwhelming and unprepared for.

Todoroki family deserves better. The ABSLOUTELY vile ending the todoroki family received is horrible like I really feel like they should just runaway and live in a house without endeavour and actually take up on endeavours attornment bs. Like the only one who gets it is natsou who has every right to live with his girlfriend and keep her far away from that environment and oh my Rei deserves so much better both narratively and by the fandom.

Enji still sucks. Yeah I can't lie nothing this man can do can make me like him and it doesn't help that hori has written all of those retcons to humanise him and make him pitiful. I feel like when it came to the todoroki family arc enji took on a whole lot of screentime WHICH HE SHOULDNT OF!!! That should of gone to shoto and the rest of the family and an easy way to fix it is to simply have killed enji in the first war arc (as was initially planned but hori changed it later on) ALSO I SAY LET TOUYA REST AT THIS POINT!!! having him just mechanically alive and stuck is horrible honestly I think that death is much more of a merciful fate for him at this point.

So lady nagant chose to go to jail?!?! Her reasoning for it is actually so sad though and it really shows how much hero society traumatised her. Like the woman didn't want to be free so she can't be used by anyone and would rather spend time in prison over it. I wish that she was hawk's mentor from the begining because the vibe those two give is absolutely amazing and it would enhance the parallels and relationship they have if they were. Honestly I hope hawks actually does a good job but Iam still all for the destruction of hero society and I doubt hawks is actually going to reform it properly also the hero society is so deeply flawed that I don't think there is a proper way to reform more like just scratch everything out and start fresh.

Spinner is back. I hope I don't see him have a breakdown when he realises what happend to the league because I can't handle that. Also that begs the question I thought that spinner had become somewhat brain dead after all he's been through so how did he turn back from being a giant nomu?

I can't handle the sibling angst too bad that touya and shoto didn't have a better arc. The whole shoto trying to know touya better and him revealing that soba is also his favourite food softens my heart. In another universe where enji doesn't get a redemption touya gets one while justice is served to the todoroki family.

Gentle criminal and la brava getting justice. (The only good part of the chapter fr)

in conclusion this chapter was horrible if we look at it from a story perspective due to how badly MHAs already established plot points and themes are handled!!!

Also what happend to the random character in the last chapter!!! I hope we get closure on that soon

[hannie-dul-set]

나비 / NABI — [preview].

SYNOPSIS. in which you’re trying your damned best to willfully ignore your feelings for your friend of over twenty years, but— as always— life seems to have a different plan paved out for you.

PAIRING. choi beomgyu x female! reader. GENRE. childhood friends to not quite friends (derogatory) to not quite friends (endearment) to lovers, romance, humor, hurt/comfort but more on comfort, coming of age, slowburn, college! au, “it’s always been you” trope, pining, tons of denial, beomgyu is the only man ever, featuring a large ensemble of idols from various groups. WARNINGS. swearing, mentions of sex, hospital scare, ghosting, rumors as a plot device, what may be considered as bullying, mc refuses to monologue about her feelings, the works. WORD COUNT. preview: 1.2k words | full fic: est. 30k.

RELEASE DATE. end of may or within the month of june. TAGLIST. send an ask/dm/reply to be added.

NOTE. this is a sequel to 모기 / MOGI. remember when i said i wasn’t planning on writing a part two to this? haha, remember? well, this might be my best work yet gosh darn, life works in mysterious ways! i poured my entire fucking soul into this! 

something i’d like to mention is that i’ve already planned out this entire sequel before beomgyu’s sukidakara cover came out, before i revisited his other two covers. the timing was crazy because there’s three major arcs to this fic— and somehow, all three songs fit the themes. really really well i started crying at some point HAHAHAHAHHA. there’s so much i want to say about this story, but i’ll bite my tongue until its release. enjoy!

preview under the cut.

YOU STILL DON’T LIKE CHOI BEOMGYU. Ever since you and he reconciled and publicly became friends again, your life has never known quiet— all thanks to the countless insects constantly buzzing around him, and by consequence around you, every damn day. And it’s not like you can keep avoiding him. Choi Beomgyu has made the executive decision to take advantage of the guilt you’ve been feeling, so for the past month, you’ve been a slave to his whims. 

Responding to 3AM ice cream runs even though you’re swamped with assignments. Going to parties hosted by people you don’t know the fucking names of because he keeps calling you a boring loser. And, the cherry on top, having to deal with Lee Heeseung’s even more annoying presence, just like how you’d predicted he’d behave if he ever finds out you and Beomgyu are friends.

Which he did. Much to your despair and agony.

“Beomgyu, your girlfriend’s here to see you.”

Case in point. You spare him nothing but an eye roll when he lets you in the clubroom for the, ahem, coding club. You’re here because Beomgyu texted you to fetch him a matcha latte and since you’re playing as his slave at the moment (and until your patience runs out), you obliged out of the kindness of your heart, only to get a truckload of teasing in return.

“Oh, hey, what’s up,” Yeonjun throws you a peace sign from their worn out sofa by the door the moment you enter. He’s accompanied by a good number of chip bags on the cushions.

“Hey,” Hanbin greets you as well when you pass by their alleged meeting table. Which, by the way, has stacks of leftover takeout containers and some empty, some half-empty plastic jugs of water. “Beomgyu is on the computer.”

“Thanks,” you tell him. This clubroom is a fucking gremlin hole.

“You know what.” Your path towards Choi Beomgyu is interrupted by Hyunjin, suddenly popping out of the half-wall separating the lounge area from the computers at the back. You jump, because what the fuck? “My heart races everytime you come here. I still get flashbacks from the day you threatened to wreck our safe haven. I think you gave me PTSD.”

Ah, yes. That day. That was eventful. It was the first time you’ve seen Choi Beomgyu cry.

“Serves you right, gossip snorter,” you say. “Out of the way, I have business to deal with.”

Hyunjin indeed gets out of your way, and there he reveals a row of four computers lined up against the wall with their assigned nerds mashing on the keyboards and yelling profanities at matching game screens. You zero in on the one on the far left corner. Surprisingly, Beomgyu is relatively calm compared to the others. You tap on his shoulder. Beomgyu turns his head around.

“Oh,” he says, pulling his office chair back from out of the desk with a swivel while removing the headphones from his ears and letting them rest around his neck. You notice Jeongin seated beside him, who looks up at you only for a moment only to flinch back to the screen. “You’re here?”

No, shit. You jangle the latte in front of his face, head cocked, and he reaches out for it. But then you quickly jerk back your hand before he can snatch it from you. “Nuh-uh. Pay up.”

“Tch,” Beomgyu clicks his tongue and shoots you a bitter look. “Hyung, can you toss me my jacket?”

Someone from behind does indeed toss him his jacket, and at that very moment as well, Heeseung decides that it’s a great time to indulge in his newly founded hobby. “Hey, how about me? Why didn’t you get me a drink?” He joins the already crowded crevice in the back and swings an arm around your shoulder. “You get a boyfriend and forget all your friends. Have you forgotten that you two got together because of me? I’m hurt, I’m so hurt.”

Your face scrunches up. “Literally, how many times do I have to tell you he’s not my boyfriend.” You elbow Heeseung off, eliciting another whine from him. When your eyes snap back at Beomgyu, you see that he’s preoccupied with going through wallet. You kick his chair. “Say something, dipshit.”

Beomgyu hands you a bill and exchanges it with the matcha latte. You wait for him to speak. He takes a long sip, pulls his face away from the straw with a grimace, hands back the drink to you, then says, “What she said.”

You look at him, drink now back in your hands.

“What the fuck?”

“Keep it,” he says, putting his headphones back on. “Don’t you have class?”

Your jaw clenches. Fucker made you run an errand for nothing. He gives you an asshat smile of goodbye then spins his chair back to his computer. You scoff and smack the back of his head, causing his headphones to slip off. “Bye.”

“Hey!”

“Later,” Heeseung bids you off, and it’s followed by a chorus of goodbyes from the inhabitants of the testosterone infested, stinky gamer cave. Seriously, every time you drop by here,, you feel an ounce of your soul shriveling up and rotting away. Yeonjun very politely opens the door for you. You hear one of them yell out before you leave.

“Come over tomorrow. Hanbin hyung’s treating us to pizza!”

And with that, you’re finally free, matcha latte in hand and a desire to breathe in some fresh air. You’re pretty sure the air is polluted in there. But still, it’s been a lot easier to breathe recently than when you two weren’t on good terms.

“Saved you a seat.”

You make it to class two minutes before the schedule. Minjeong proudly taps on the seat next to her, and you take the invitation. “As you should,” you hum, taking out your notes from your bag, and not long after Sungchan arrives and lands on the spot next to you.

It’s the week before finals. Prof Shin starts the class and decides to fuck all of your study schedules by giving a last minute assignment due next week as well. 

“Does this guy want to give us depression before the summer or some shit?” Minjeong complains the moment your professor leaves the lecture hall.“I swear to god, if another prof gives us an assignment due over the break, I’m killing myself.”

“You two have plans over the break?” asks Sungchan, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and the three of you head out for lunch, funneling out into the hallway along with the rest of your blockmates.

“I’m going home,” says Minjeong.

“I have summer classes,” you answer..

Sungchan stops in his tracks. “You serious?” 

“Yup.”

“You bet on it.”

He looks at the both of you like you’re a bunch of withering old ladies and he’s very much unimpressed. “Make some time for the last week. I’m throwing the wildest summer rager and you two can’t miss it.”

You’re pretty sure you replied with something along the lines of an agreement, but you’re not quite sure. The thought completely slips out of your head throughout the next week because, well, finals. And before you know it, your first semester of uni comes to a close, and summer comes crashing in at full swing.

나비 / NABI. © hannie-dul-set, 2024.

[phantomrose96]

(A Breach of Trust)

[I am putting the rest of the ask under a ReadMore because it IS long [and now super-long with my responses added] but I am biting and chewing this ask I am biting everything it has to say I love this ask I have things to say]

But yes responding to this first chunk! First THANK YOU second I loved writing just the inherent comedy of each chapter being like "[Scene 1] Ritsu spitting blood: I have to save my brother. He's dying. [Scene 2] *Happy domestic montage of Mob petting a kitten and maybe drinking some hot chocolate*" It was a great way to keep some emotional balance in each chapter and also. Funny.

I was crawling the wallllls getting to the makeshift reveal. I think it was about 5 years between coming up with it and getting to the reveal. So I just had to bite my tongue and dodge any suspicion in Makeshift's direction leveraged in the ABoT discord (ABoT discord! BTW! If you want)

I ended up making this to channel the energy somewhere

[Rest of ask under the cut!]

i was nervous for a hot second early on (around when reigen first takes mob in) that it was gonna be the kind of story that would get frustrating because "oh if the characters literally just told each other anything it would all be fine" but i didn't end up feeling that way at all? like yeah a lot of the plot relies on characters not knowing things and technically a lot could have been solved if idk all the characters decided to meet up and sit in a circle to politely explain everything to each other but it never feels like that should happen. even besides them all generally having reasons for lying or not explaining things or not talking to each other it's like. all their decisions feel very natural even when they're bad or unreasonable, and also crucially when the characters do learn things or w/e it usually doesn't fix things (ie when reigen learns mob's real identity and tells mob the truth and it kind of fixes some problems but also adds a host of new ones). in general despite it being a story that hinges on all the characters making bad decisions it rarely gets aggravating bc all the choices they make are understandable and make sense for them -- it doesn't feel like anything is happening simply because the plot demands it. everything is constantly getting worse but that's because the characters are making it worse it's not just Happening. and then the characters have to confront and deal with the consequences of all their actions and learn from them and it's very satisfying

YEAH!!! YEAH YOU GET IT!!!!!!

It is VERY important to me that the story in ABoT is character-driven. There should virtually be no "it happened because the plot demanded it." If it happened, it happened because a character's choice caused it. And if a character made a choice, it was due to their own motivations and not because the plot demanded it.

So, YES, there is this scenario where so much of what is happening comes as the result of each character having, at most, a 20% understanding of what's going on. But the withholding of information, CRITICALLY, cannot be because of Idiot Plot reasons.

Reigen "could" just ring up the Kageyama's and send Mob home, cutting short the first like 2/3 of his and Mob's arc. But he doesn't. And not because he's an idiot. He tried. Mob freaked out. And that was a good enough reason to just delay this until tomorrow, surely. But we watch as Reigen gets to experience was feels like genuine accomplishment, genuine joy, genuine meaning, by helping this kid experience life again. From the very start that's what Reigen wanted--to feel like he mattered. At the beginning this is what drives him to take up the Tetsugami case, despite knowing it can get him killed. (Because maybe Reigen can do something, this time. It's not just another doomed marriage or unsolvable missing person. Maybe he can make a difference. Maybe he can matter.)

And it manifests in what looks like heroics, but in the case with Mob, it drives Reigen to stall... more and more. He knows on some fundamental level it's wrong to be keeping Mob this long, but he can justify it in how this IS what Mob wanted.

And the same extends to the other characters... Tetsuo doesn't tell Reigen about Shigeo Kageyama's link to the Mogami case because he can't bear to admit HE was probably Shigeo's captor. Mob keeps secrets about Mogami because Mob knows he "killed" Reigen's "friend." Ritsu withholds information because it's the only power he has, and giving up information allows other people to stop him. Gimcrack and Slipshod keep quiet about Mob's location because their free lunch would end if they told.

And when these characters make bad decisions instead, it is CRITICALLY important to me that those decisions were the organic result of that character's complexes, goals, misunderstandings, and absent information. It's a train wreck and God Dammit I do everything in my power to ensure each character is their own conductor.

and the Themes. okay first of all i am a huge fan of stories that are like "no, heroic sacrifices are Not the answer, please stay alive so you can actually get better and fix your mistakes and be there for the people you care about", so obviously i adored that. i loved reigen confronting ritsu about this and urging him to stay alive, and i'm also obsessed with how reigen immediately Does Not Take His Own Advice. reigen's self-sacrifice plan makes a lot of sense with his character and given the circumstances it's definitely understandable why he and teru would be willing, however reluctantly, to resort to that, but of course it's not that actual solution because that's the whole point. (shout out to mogami being the one to save him. congrats on accidentally doing one (1) good thing.) reigen, ritsu, mob irt to being imprisoned rather than death -- none of them can just sacrifice themselves and expect that to fix everything and everyone to be fine without them, because that's not how this works. (also i can't wait to see ritsu inevitably be pissed at reigen about him trying to do exactly what he talked ritsu out of and reigen having no excuse except "yes i know, i am a hypocrite, please do as i say not as i do.") the story is dark but it's also so full of hope -- you can live, you can heal, you can move forward from all of this, no matter what you've done or what's happened to you.

YES!!! ANOTHER RESOUNDING YES!!!!

I've talked in the ABoT discord about how Reigen's sacrifice didn't work because it couldn't work. Because, if Reigen intentionally killed himself in order to end Mogami too, and Mob was saved and went home, then that means you DO save what you care about by sacrificing yourself. Which would be fine in other stories, but not this one.

ABoT's message has pretty loudly been "you don't save things by sacrificing yourself. you save them by living long enough to fix what you've broken." And even when Reigen is the one SAYING this to Ritsu... he doesn't believe it for himself. And he does not get to get away with not believing it for himself.

In earlier planning stages of the Reigen sacrifice scene, my plan was to have Reigen's knife slip before he could slice his throat (palms sweaty, grip slipped, parallel to what happened in the struggle-for-the-knife in the original chapter 8 Reigen-vs-Tetsugami scene).

But I thought about that and I said "No, actually." If Reigen fails because his palm slips, that suggests this COULD have succeeded, and Reigen just botched it is all.

So instead, the scorching fire around them (the blaze Reigen set) has dehydrated him to the point that his sweating has stopped. He is salty dusty skin and dry lips and his grip on the knife handle is perfect (anti-parallel to the first struggle for the knife scene). His execution is perfect. Reigen sacrifices himself perfectly.

...And then it's Mogami, who is well-practiced at controlling a maimed possessed body, who snatches back control and cauterizes the wound shut. Mogami (the antagonist of this story) cannot be defeated by self-sacrifice.

There is no "if only Reigen did it right" ambiguity. There is an absolute statement about where the themes stand.

(And yes, I'm sure Ritsu will have only positive emotions about what Reigen tried to do once this is made clear to him. :))

one of the other themes i found most interesting was the theme of lies and people trying to act like something they're not, and how that factors in to all the characters' stories. of course mogami is right there (and the parallels between him and reigen in how they both lie to mob for different reasons are super interesting) but i was particularly thinking a lot about reigen, teru, and ritsu and the different sorts of false lives they live -- reigen the con man playing the part of the confident, powerful psychic, constantly lying about his abilities and his accomplishments; teru keeping up the appearance of being totally in control and untouchable, surrounding himself with friends he can't stand and a girlfriend he doesn't care about; ritsu trying to maintain his reputation as the perfect, model student and constructing increasingly elaborate lies to convince his parents that he's doing fine.

i was thinking especially abt the parallels between reigen and teru -- their identities as liars are both emphasized, literally having teru saying "i was lying. i lied to you. i'm a liar" and reigen saying "i lied to you. i've been lying the whole time. i'm a liar" in the same chapter. both of them have grown accustomed to being alone and having a life that's more an expertly crafted facade than anything with substance, but both find in their respective kageyama brothers someone who they genuinely care about -- and they both doom these relationships from the beginning because they can't let go of the facade they're used to keeping up and their desire to feel important/superior. teru continues to be the same smug, uncaring asshole he's designed himself to be even after he starts to see ritsu as a friend, and because of this ritsu remains antagonistic towards and distrusting of him; reigen pretends to be the "21st century's greatest psychic" with mob even when he's starting to care about mob and want him as a permanent fixture in his life, causing things to fall apart when he reveals the truth. they both say the right things to point mob/ritsu in the right direction, but the way they act does the opposite: teru tells ritsu the dangers of what he's doing and reigen tells mob that they should call his family or the police, but at the end of the day, no matter their good intentions, teru likes feeling superior to ritsu and reigen likes having mob depend on him, and so they're not actually going to do anything that would upset that balance. (and, of course, they reassure themselves with the knowledge that it's not their fault, ritsu and mob just won't listen to them! which isn't technically untrue, but nonetheless frames the situation in a way that ignores their own role in it.)

Aaaaaaaaaaaa honestly I don't even think I have anything to add here because your analysis is already so 🤌🤌🤌. They are Liars they are Liars living through a Mask they are Liars who Say one thing and Do another they are Liars who convince themselves this Lie is fine.

all the characters are so good but my favorite has to be ritsu his whole storyline is fantastic. from the start i was enjoying the fic a lot but it was when it started to really get into ritsu's story and his whole deal that i started being like "oh yeah this is the good shit." seeing him go further and further down his self-destructive spiral, constantly digging himself deeper as he hurts himself and the people around him more and more, is so fascinating and painful. and then seeing him get better and start actually wanting to live as he talks to reigen and later teru! and then in the confrontation with mogami when he decides once and for all that he wants to live and remember and try to find a way to fix his mistakes rather than forgetting them or giving in to them! just. he is thirteen years old and he just has all this rage and grief that he's been holding onto and repressing for so long and he finally gets the chance to do something with it, something he can do to find his brother at the low low price of bleeding himself dry, and so he throws himself into that, tearing himself to pieces and not caring who else gets hurt in the process, until he reaches rock bottom, what should be the point of no return -- but it isn't, because teru saves him, because reigen convinces him to try to stay alive, because mob is waiting for him, because he has people who care about him and he's just a desperate, hurting kid and no matter how badly he's fucked up he can still come back from it. just Such a compelling and painful and beautiful character arc

Thank you for stating exactly the reason I loved writing Ritsu's arc so much 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭🥺❤️

When I was about 13, I got really into Naruto and I really liked Sasuke's character. Even seeing him now makes some inner part of me point and go "It's Sasuke!" Brooding, stoic, over-achieving, entrenched in family trauma, is swayed over to the darkside because of the rage and grief he's been sitting on.

And because it's Ninja Fantasy World, Sasuke gets to do this and be really cool the whole time.

Ritsu is... actually just a 13-year-old, with psychic powers which he didn't even want after his brother vanished. He IS smart and he IS a model student and he IS powerful but... he's scared. He's scared, and he's 13. He NEEDS to be smarter than everyone (he's not, and he knows this, and it's scary) and more powerful than everyone (he's not, he knows, he's scared), because he knows that anyone with power over him can control him. And he's at his wit's end being controlled.

So he needs to be COMPLETELY in control and have COMPLETE power. And every instance that proves to him he's actually weak, actually clueless, actually being taken advantage of drives him to panic.

And he finds antagonism on all sides... Teru who loves to pick apart and mock Ritsu for every weakness he has. The spirit horde who eat him within an inch of his life. Isa trying to shut him down. His parents trying to control him.

No one is helping him with his grief... No one is finding his brother... No one is saving him... He does not want to keep living like this. And "no longer living" isn't even an option with how heavily his parents rely on him.

So what does he do. He's so alone. He doesn't have a single soul on his side. Every day is torment. ...And then he has this opportunity that shows up like "if you hurt yourself real bad, kill yourself doing it maybe, you can solve the very thing that ruined your life"

So of course he does it. He grabs onto it like a hot stove or a live wire because he's been wanting to hurt himself, and now he can do it in pursuit of the very thing which will save his brother and fix everything. The risk of dying isn't even a risk. It's an escape. He can do this and he can BECOME more powerful and he can GAIN control and he can USE and MANIPULATE whoever he wants (namely the people who've proven again and again they'll hold him down and force obedience out of him).

Of course he spirals. Of course he hurts people...

And then he finds rock-bottom. Teru chews him out and abandons him. Ritsu flips on Gimcrack and exorcises him out of paranoia (Teru turned on him, Gimcrack probably betrayed him too.) He NEARLY kills Reigen under that same absolute fit of paranoia and fear. ...And then he finds his brother. His brother. Alive.

And grabbing his brother shreds his hand. It does not fix him. It does not save him. It maims him.

And now Ritsu is nothing. Not powerful. Not in control. Not certain. He's someone who just hurts people. He's someone who destroys. He drives everyone away and they're RIGHT to leave him because of how horrible he's been. He can't save his brother, and his brother won't save him. ...So Ritsu wanders back to Reigen. The only person who seems to have a semblance of direction in this whole thing. Broken and beaten, Ritsu joins Reigen because he does not know what else to do.

But there is an up from rock-bottom. As much as Reigen and Ritsu are just The Worst to each other, it's actually that childishness in Reigen that starts to work on Ritsu... This is not a typical adult, using adult-speak and adult-authority to make Ritsu comply. Ritsu can't even fall into his typical masked-up behavior against an adult because Reigen is a fucking nuisance and an irritant and Ritsu, for all his "maturity", riles easily.

This is... really just Some Fucking Guy. A loser, at best. But it's someone Ritsu's brother cared about, and who Ritsu knows gave kindness to Mob where Ritsu couldn't. And it's someone who isn't forcing Ritsu to do anything. Reigen is, in fact, letting Ritsu make these decisions to change on his own. Teru comes back with an apology. Ritsu is staring at the chance to do better, and the chance for some future that doesn't involve killing himself.

And he gets to make that decision against Mogami.

And--here's the thing--Mogami was WITH Ritsu for so much of Ritsu's spiral. He knows what sort of kid Ritsu is. So he "knows" Ritsu will accept what Mogami has to offer...

But when "makeshift" vanished was exactly when Mogami got Mob back, aka exactly when Ritsu went to Reigen. Mogami did not get to see Ritsu's healing. So he got to be blindsided by Ritsu's ultimate decision.

and ritsu's dynamic with teru is just. so good i adored every single scene they had together. first of all they are so fucking funny. they're just these two psychic middle schoolers who both suck so bad and just cannot stop trying to murder each other on the soccer field and i love that for them. ritsu's terrible decision-making reaches new heights every day and teru's just standing there watching him and being right about everything in the most annoying way possible. literally the worsties ever <3

I have, consistently, referred to them as "the two worst middle schoolers ever". Like "you're a horde ghost and you're stuck doing the bidding of the two worst middle schoolers ever."

With huge consistency, the scenes I find funniest end up being Ritsu Teru scenes. Because they are, in fact, The Worst.

but more importantly on a serious note i am obsessed with the complicated mess that is their relationship and the way it and the reader's perception of it change as the story goes on. when they first meet things are seemingly pretty straightforward (mostly. i have thoughts which i will talk abt in a second): teru is the one causing the conflict between them by being shitty, and ritsu's just responding to it relatively reasonably. ritsu's the protagonist, the good guy, whereas teru is a morally gray asshole. them working together is a matter of necessity, with ritsu only going along with it because he needs teru's skill and power on his side and teru presumably having his own secret, self-serving motivations. standard stuff; we all know how this goes.

except then the story keeps going, and it gradually becomes apparent that things are far from this simple. it slowly becomes clear that despite teru's arrogance and callousness, he does have ethical standards and lines he won't cross -- whereas ritsu gets more and more unfettered as time goes on. it also gradually becomes obvious that teru does genuinely care about ritsu and see him as a friend (probably the closest thing to a genuine friend teru has), even if teru himself is pretty shitty at being a friend -- leading to the incredibly striking moment when ritsu himself realizes this, and his main takeaway is just that he has power over teru. by the time they have their second soccer field fight, teru has proven himself the more morally upstanding one, which is pretty wild considering the first thing we ever see him do is beat the shit out of a near-defenseless thirteen-year-old for annoying him. of course, he still isn't supposed to be fully in the right -- one thing i really appreciated about the story in general was that the conflicts between characters are rarely as simple as "this character was Right and this one was Wrong," but rather a matter of all the characters making mistakes at one time or another and then having to deal with the consequences and make amends. ritsu and teru's relationship is a prime example of that with how "ritsu made his own decisions and those decisions were Very Bad" and "teru treated ritsu poorly and never actually did the work to make himself someone ritsu could actually trust or would want to listen to" are facts that coexist and both get addressed. the second fight is a masterpiece of a scene in basically every way, but one of my favorite aspects is how teru is desperately trying to reach out to ritsu but is hit with the truth that it's too late for that, that he should have been doing this the whole time, that all this is partially his fault. and in this scene, he fully accepts that, gives in and decides that ritsu is right: it's too late to make amends, it's too late to save ritsu. but it doesn't end there, because this is not a story in which things are simply unfixable, and so instead teru comes back, decides to make the hard choice and try to fix things instead of turning his back on ritsu for good. during the fight, teru says he wants to help ritsu, to sacrifice for him, and ritsu scoffs at him and rejects the idea -- but then teru actually does it. he puts his money where his mouth is and reaches out to ritsu and offers his own psychic energy to save ritsu's life, along with apologizing to him and offering his help to find mob. like i dunno what else to say that's not just summarizing every scene they have together but god i love their dynamic and its arc. i really hope they manage to become actual friends now because god knows they could both use more (read: any) of those. the text exchange they have at the end of the most recent chapter is delightful i love that they bond by insulting reigen i think that's great for them.

Yes yes yes yesssss. It definitely felt like the most ambitious thing early on in ABoT, where I had early-story Ritsu and early-story Teru, and I wanted, somehow, to pull off "they basically swap moral grounds by their second fight."

It's easy enough to just SAY "Ritsu spirals and does progressively worse things. Teru starts to take objection to these more and more until he's the one who thinks this whole thing has gone too far."

And, harkening back to earlier, this kind of plotline has to be deeply rooted in their characters. There is no "Ritsu becomes evil just because" and there is no "Teru becomes good just because."

So they needed to be consistent in their own characters, but evolving under the pressures of the story. Ritsu I talked a lot about early up, how deeply he fears not having control, how much repressed frustration he has over the ways everyone in his life has failed him. And he's never allowed to speak up, or god forbid lash out, because it is his JOB to be the surviving child. Perfect, mature, composed.

Ritsu takes this WILD leap into something insanely dangerous which he has no understanding of, nor power in. Teru IS his first big painful wake-up call with how summarily Teru curbstomps him. Ritsu goes home desperately wanting to quit.

He pushes through it, afraid and knowing he has so little power and control. Then there's Teru, exacerbating this. Because he loves to point out how weak, clueless, and not in control Ritsu is. He jabs and he teases and he chews Ritsu out and he knocks Ritsu down because Teru cannot pass up the chance to prove he's better.

So... of course Ritsu eats up the first opportunity he's given to improve his power over Teru. Gimcrack offers to train him--Gimcrack who's far more supportive of Ritsu than Teru ever is--so of course Ritsu accepts. Every single tick of power in Ritsu's direction is security. And Ritsu is consistently rewarded. He learns to manipulate, and it rewards him with control. He pushes Teru away and it rewards him with independence. He lets the whole horde possess him and it rewards him with power.

And then there's Mezato in all this, threatening to rip away his control. But he can beat that out easily with possession. And if he possesses people, why should he care? Possession feels nice, to him. That's not even a fraction of a fraction of the pain he's been through. He can do this to other people, because possession is POWER.

And, ahhh, possession was such a great thematic vehicle to spin the Ritsu-Teru face-heel-heel-face turn around.

The first cracks we see in Teru's demeanor are all, subtly or not, around possession. When Ritsu almost blasts the possessed woman (Ritsu, panicked, uncertain how to handle things) Teru tackles him and screams at him. (Killing a possessed woman? Teru oh Teru why might that terrify you?)

So Teru DOES have morals. He does have limits. But of course, his first exercise of this is tackling and SCREAMING at Ritsu for fucking up. Just another tick mark in Ritsu's check list of feeling powerless and antagonized.

And the next time, when Ritsu offhandedly mentions he's had his parents possessed for the night while he and Teru were at the meat warehouse... well it's out of focus, since Ritsu is our POV character and he doesn't notice, but Teru freezes. Teru questions this. Teru, instead of letting Gimcrack phase him through the wall (and he was resistant to letting Gimcrack touch him to phase him in in the first place) Teru instead blasts a hole through the warehouse wall.

But... Teru has a plan. When Isa catches Ritsu in the call center, Teru confiscates Ritsu's spirits and (behind his back) blackmails them into never accepting a command from Ritsu to possess someone. (Teru is also a control-freak, and rather than try to talk to Ritsu directly about not possessing people, he just uses manipulation and threats to make it happen).

So now, Teru can relax, surely :). He invites Ritsu along for the movie. He's mocking and insufferable and cruel to Ritsu but, hey :), that's just Teru proving his place in the hierarchy. He... actually does want Ritsu there. He actually does help Ritsu (cauterizes his wound without asking). (It's still power-plays. Still power-plays all the way down which Ritsu hates.)

And Teru... incorrectly... starts to entertain this idea that Ritsu also thinks what they have is friendship. And after the ice cream thing, is when Ritsu leans into Gimcrack's offer to learn how to start being manipulative like Teru is.

So Teru notices NOTHING is wrong for a long time, because now Ritsu is faking it. He doesn't notice until it is much too late. And, frankly, it was ALWAYS too late for Teru to take the moral high road. And some part of Teru realizes this because what he sees in Ritsu, he realizes, is what it looked like to watch Teru from the outside. Teru was ALLOWED to be manipulative and horrible because Teru, himself, always knew he would stop before crossing a real moral line. (Not that Ritsu knew this.) And now he's staring at Ritsu, a true threat who won't listen to reason and who CANNOT reliably be expected to back down before a line is crossed.

And... to THROW this in Teru's face in the FORM of Ritsu letting every spirit from his own horde possess Ritsu during the fight, giving Ritsu the upper hand.

I always knew, for this second fight, the tables would need to be a lot more evenly matched, with Ritsu coming out ahead more often than not. But I also don't like "some character is morally questionable now, and for some reason that's made them stronger than the master character who pulverized them earlier."

But POSSESSION. The motif that all this conflict is hanging upon, used as a boon on Ritsu's side to smash Teru into the ground, to physically and MENTALLY rattle him to the point that he's lagging on Ritsu's attacks and incapable of subduing Ritsu until Teru puts aside his psychic powers all together...

AND JUST... Teru all the while being forced to realize he IS not blameless in this. That every horrible, callous remark he made to Ritsu was not directing Ritsu to the right path or proving himself cool and powerful. They were all instead only cementing Ritsu's hatred of him.

And Teru does not want to accept this at first. He wants to think he did the right thing, ultimately, and it was RITSU who rejected him. And this is where the scene with Slipshod comes into play. Slipshod, who is shown again and again being good at pressing people's buttons. Slipshod is the one bully bigger than Teru in all this, and behind his dumb demeanor is he really really good at knowing how to get a rise out of people. He does it to Reigen while possessing Mezato. He does it to Ritsu while possessing his mother. And he does it to Teru, for fun, because he loves to rub Teru's face in the mess he created.

Which, on the plus side, was the wake up call Teru needed to recognize how consistently horrible HE had been. How much of Ritsu's spiral (and now, imminent death) happened because Teru gleefully pushed him toward it.

Teru's one and only friend.

After Teru swore off friends and loved ones, because they can be used to hurt him.

So it is a big moment, and a big decision Teru makes, when he chooses Ritsu. chooses apologizing. chooses making himself vulnerable (VERY LITERALLY, with how the power transfusion drains Teru to nothing). Teru chooses to care.

And ultimately, it's not even that Teru went from the bad moralless one, to the moral one. He always had these morals. He had these uncrossable lines since day one. But he hid it behind his horrible antagonistic demeanor and the cracks did not come through until he realized he lost control of Ritsu. Teru's ACTUAL heel-face turn comes in him realizing how awful his demeanor was and making amends for that.

i'm actually not done talking about them though because it's finally time for that tangent about teru and ritsu's first fight on the soccer field now because i just reread it while writing that last section and it's so interesting actually. like okay, like i said before it does set teru up as the problem -- in that scene teru is very much the aggressor; he's being a complete asshole for no goddamn reason, with absolutely no compunctions about beating the crap out of some random kid, and ritsu is the scrappy underdog determined to fight back despite not really having the means to. but then there are the moments hinting at more complexity to teru -- him literally stopping the fight to teach ritsu to use his barrier, giving ritsu the makeup after the fight, and of course his decision to spare ritsu in the end. and then on ritsu's side, he almost actually kills teru -- the only reason he doesn't is that teru manages to break free. (awful awful au idea: ritsu actually does kill teru here. would that be fucked up or what) something that stood out to me when rereading it is that despite teru repeatedly saying he'll kill ritsu, and ritsu's internal monologue being very convinced that he's in mortal danger, teru's reaction to ritsu actually almost killing him -- "you really are trying to kill me. we're done", etc -- seems to imply that his threats were more him just talking a big game, expecting ritsu to give in and surrender eventually, and he didn't actually intend to kill him until ritsu gave him an actual reason to. especially interesting to me is the bit where teru asks ritsu if he really meant to kill him, because ritsu's narration and teru's actual actions are kind of at odds -- ritsu tells teru he meant to do it because he thinks him scaring teru is what's making teru hesitate, and that he needs to make teru think he's dangerous in order to get him to leave ritsu alone, but teru's actual response is the opposite, attacking ritsu more fiercely because "there's no reason for [him] to hold back". in general the scene very cleverly sets up the core difference between them: teru is pretty awful but does have firm moral standards, whereas ritsu is desperate and willing to do just about anything if he thinks it's the only option. also the parallels and contrasts with the second soccer field scene are excellent -- the role reversal with the strangling but also how when ritsu does it both the initial act of starting to strangle teru and the fact that he doesn't end up killing teru are both unintentional on ritsu's part, but when teru does it it's a very intentional choice both to do it and to not go through with it; "we're done" said by teru the first time when he's preparing to kill ritsu and then the second time after he's decided not to. have i mentioned that this fic is good because this fic is good. i'm running out of ways to say that

YES!!!!!! ANOTHER RESOUNDING YESYES YES.

I have slightly pre-emptively answered this question by mentioning it above but Teru demonstrates this hypocritical "rules for thee but not for me" because, internally, Teru knows HE will always stop before the line is crossed.

BUT RITSU DOES NOT KNOW THIS. THERE IS NO REASONABLE EXPECTATION FOR RITSU TO KNOW THIS.

So Ritsu, and we the audience, do NOT know this during the first soccer fight. Teru is going to kill Ritsu is a very reasonable conclusion to draw from the way Teru goes all out on Ritsu. Ritsu is terrified. Out of his depth. He's panicking. This kid is going to kill me and he has every reason to believe it.

We don't know, unless (like you) you look at the smaller details, that Teru is not intending to kill Ritsu. He's talking big. He's trying to force submission in Ritsu. He's not trying to kill.

But Ritsu does go for the kill. Because it is the single break he gets and it's perhaps his only chance to survive (he thinks), and he does, IN FACT go for the kill.

Teru breaks free and he does... even give Ritsu the chance to clarify if that was an intended kill-shot. Teru is giving the chance for Ritsu to essentially say "Sorry, accident, don't escalate to trying to kill me." But Ritsu misreads the room, like you point out, and this is when Teru gets serious.

Strangulation, in the first fight and in the last fight. Exactly as you say. Accidental, by Ritsu, the first time, and accidental in letting Teru live. Intentional, by Teru, the second time, and intentional in letting Ritsu live.

"WE'RE DONE" ECHOED. TWICE. In their first fight and their last. With entirely different meanings.

okay those were my big points but i also had a bunch of smaller thoughts so here's just. a list: - i just think it's really funny that teru saves ritsu by punching him in the chest with psychic power on not one but two occasions. literally their dynamic in a nutshell. (also. the way during the time at the mall ritsu responds by being like "did you cauterize me" really gets to me for some reason. he sounds so offended. like you can't just cauterize someone's wound maybe he liked bleeding all over the place you don't know!) (actually wait that thought is also very funny considering what happens with mogami and reigen later. you really can't just cauterize someone's wounds that's very rude. they worked hard to be that grievously injured) - okay so the burger scene. first of all generally a great scene second of all obviously it's a parallel to the scene with mob and the milk (reigen saying "have mine too" and all that) but also i love the parallels to the scene with isa in the coffee shop (also a great scene btw. have i mentioned this fic is good). they're both scenes in which ritsu has a loud emotional breakdown in a public restaurant (love that that happens twice. ritsu honey can you maybe not) with a major focus on ritsu's insistence on letting himself suffer and refusing any kindness he's shown, but they show ritsu at very different points in his story and have very different outcomes -- isa can't manage to get through to ritsu, but reigen can. ritsu refuses the croissant till the end, but he eats the burger. (sorry to add another side note but i love that that was a very serious sentence i just typed about a very emotional character arc.) also the symbolism in the fact that in the coffee shop scene, ritsu's explosion of psychic powers freezes and then spills his hot chocolate, rendering it undrinkable, but then in the burger scene when he blows up the ceiling the dust explicitly doesn't get on the food, so he can still eat it. good shit - i'm trying to avoid going through every single line or joke i liked one by one but i will say. the "this--" "reigen." "reigen" jokes were both incredibly funny on their own but the fact that they're like 30 chapters apart is what really kills me. the dedication. i saw the second one and was thinking "didn't that joke happen before. when was that. wait was that literally all the way back with tetsuo". countless plot events and several irl years may pass but reigen will never catch a break - the "FUCK OFF" tag reigen made being the one that they exorcise mogami with. perfect - love that ritsu is indirectly responsible for teru's girlfriend breaking up with him (good for mei honestly. sure teru wasn't actually cheating but his ass deserved to get dumped) and i like to imagine that teru never lets this fact go. he's not particularly upset about the breakup but he WILL bring up that ritsu ruined his relationship at every possible opportunity purely to annoy him

I THINK YOU MAY PERHAPS BE THE FIRST PERSON TO RECOGNIZE THE DOUBLE-CAUTERIZATION, and the intentional joke in Ritsu, the first time, declaring "Don’t… perform psychic medical procedures on me without my permission, okay?!" Like sorry bud, this is not the last unauthorized psychic medical cauterization Teru's gonna perform on you.

But not every unauthorized medical cauterization can be a win. Turns out when Mogami does it it's kinda mean >:(. But also necessary, for a not-dead Reigen, so actually thanks Mogami.

ABSOLUTELY THE "HAVE MINE TOO" INTENTIONAL PARALLEL BETWEEN THE MILK SCENE AND THE BURGER SCENE. I'm always glad when someone notices the repeat phrasing that ends both those scenes.

And aaghhhhh I could write a whole other essay about the symbolism that food plays with Ritsu's plotline, but in the smallest nutshell how it tends to represent someone reaching out with care and how often Ritsu rejects it. One public restaurant psychic outburst rendered the offered food unconsumable and the other one intentionally points out the way the food (burger) avoided the destruction :')

THANK YOU YES. "This--" "Reigen." "Reigen." as a repeat joke tickles me so much. Just Some Guy energy. Could've played the most pivotal role all night but he'll still end up somewhere next day where someone needs to figure out who he is. Reigen is here too, btw. His name is Reigen, btw.

Fuck Off tag was delightful... It started as an inside joke for a very early comic that @sandflakedraws drew (and then later redrew), of the (chapter 5 or 6) Reigen Tetsugami confrontation. The ineffective tag Reigen sticks to Tetsugami's cheek has, in katakana, "fuck off" written on it. Hilarious enough joke for me, years later, to incorporate it into the story.

Re: the girlfriend thing. I've joked before "if I had a nickel every time evil spirit possession was mistaken for an affair in ABoT I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice." But yeah, Ritsu, you asshole. You cost your bro his girlfriend.

i could just keep going but at this rate i'm going to be going back through the entire fic and just talking about every single scene so i should probably stop before this gets any longer. basically what i wanna say though is that the fic was very good, thank you for writing it, it has given me brainworms. once again i am so sorry for the length of this ask

THANK YOU!!! I think I just spent like 2 hours writing this response because, as you can see, I REALLY LIKE talking about this stuff haha!!

[meanbossart]

ASK COMPILATION: LORE, CHARACTERIZATION, AND THE ONE IN WHICH I RUIN A BUNCH OF PEOPLE'S FUN

As usual, this is far from all of the asks in my inbox but I'm trying to catch up 😩thank you everyone for your patience!

For the record, if your ask isn't being answered, that most likely means one of three things:

I am saving it as a possible art prompt.

I sincerely don't have a very interesting or good reply for it yet!

It's a question I have been asked multiple times/the answer is in my pinned post.

Glad you like them!!

As much as I don't limit what I draw to canonical events, vampirism is so antithetical to DU drow's character journey that I couldn't really envision it, to be honest, but who knows! Maybe I'll cook up some Ascended Astarion scenario someday that is kind of a role-reversal of the Bhaalist DU Drow AU I have going on in tandem to the story.

I'll be honest, this is one of the rare times where I'm really not sure which aspect of DU drow's weirdness this is in reference to. Do you know something I don't? 😅

His masochism is very... Classic, I guess? He's in it for the pain and for the emotional connection, and the process of being pierced wouldn't cut it whatsoever, it's too subtle. The body modifications he has are an incidental result of it, but they were never really the goal.

Also having stuff dangling off his face or body would just irritate him, he specifically only does rings because all other types of jewellery get in the way too much. Pre-tadpole Bhaalist drow obviously wore them by the ton, but only as a symbol of status and because he had a permanent new-money complex🤷 so yeah not a piercing-type of character at all, sorry!

He's smooth from the eyelashes-down and profoundly weirded out by body hair LOL

I don't personally think that whatever Astarion had for a home before would bear my resemblance to it after 200 years - having probably gone through several owners, remodeled, if not completely lost to the destruction of the end-game. I do HC that he used to visit it whenever he could as an enthralled spawn to read his mail, but he stopped after his father passed.

THANK YOU, I THINK? I can't say that isn't a passionate description at least!

I'm honestly surprised that this comes up as often as it does LOL but it's just an stylistic choice on my end!

The latter - for sure. He figured that them dying at each other's hands at the end was a given and took that assumption entirely for granted (and I'm sure daydreamed about it often while Gortash went on and on about political strategy during their dinner meetings.)

;))) way ahead of you and by "way ahead" I mean "eventually and whenever I can figure out when to do it alongside the other 30 ideas I am currently juggling" (but I really do want to make a little comic out of it!)

He used them! Not immediately, but he grew to trust the guardian after some initial suspicion and happily gobbled up those squirmy little things alongside Astarion. Because I made his character on a whim and without any planned backstory, I didn't really put any thought into his Guardian's appearance either, so she's just a human woman with a Joan of Arc look going on who's of no significance to him or his past.

But DU drow did trust her, again not immediately but eventually. It was honestly a big kick in the gut to him when the Emperor revealed himself and it definitely set their relationship up to fail from the get-go.

This is also why he didn't ascend to the next stage of Ilithid power, he just stomped the thing dead right on the spot LOL

LMAO I think Gortash is too proud to chase a tail he can't catch like that

He was probably very overwhelmed by the sudden realization that OH, THIS IS ALL HAPPENING BECAUSE OF ME which naturally didn't come across whatsoever to anyone present since he immediately bottled it up and tucked it away out of sight. However, as the story progressed and DU drow helped his friends get out of their respective pickles he was probably able to justify it to himself as it having been for the greater good - since it led to Astarion being freed from his master and Shadowheart to defying the Sharrans.

As for all of the rest of the ensued destruction and death that resulted from it? Well you can't make an omelette without cracking some eggs, or whatever is the wizard version of that saying. He has essentially turned the entire situation into a net-positive in his mind and sleeps great at night because of it.

[bruhmityblight]

Just watched episode 4 and like... I really do think Nina and the bride are endgame. Like I think this is genuine setup for them to have a relationship at the end of the show.

Frankenstein's creatures whole motivation is having an incelly obsession with bride and a hatred of anyone she ends up with. Thus, logically as the show goes on he needs someone to fight that is dating the bride to continue his story. There hasn't been a single romantic setup with anybody else except she spends all her time with Nina. She fights someone to protect Nina. She explores her backstory with Nina. Like they are actively ignoring developing a larger group dynamic to specifically focus on the two of them, when the major other plotline is incel obsessed with her wants to kill

The bride is a lesbian in the comics, and after that backstory having her get with a man would make no sense whatsoever. She's either getting with Nina or by herself.

We haven't gotten Nina's backstory episode yet and that would probably be saved for last (when fishbride would be most likely to be canonized) so if there's anything in the backstory that would give her charecter arc reasons to be with the bride it would be then.

James Gunn has canonized queer ppl before. In peacemaker Adebayo, Amanda wallers daughter was a lesbian. Her reveal was similarly halfway through the show. The shows seem to get a lot less "don't put gay stuff in" than the movies and like the biggest DC show in terms of numbers is Harley Quinn, so like if the writers wanted to I feel like there wouldn't be much pushback.

Idk maybe this is me being too optimistic but I don't know why this seems to be being treated like a "oh what a fun pairing" and not a "there is a high chance this will be canonized" idk I guess we'll see

[saintundying]

IIRC you also think DM happened in the past. Do you have a theory as to why Daniel's memory's were erased?

Are you ready for something insane???

I think it has to do with Marius de Romanus.

The epicenter of Armand is Marius. He is in every crack and corner of how Armand exists. His shadow falls over the dynamic of Louis and Armand in the show and Armand and Daniel in the QotD chapter. In the book, once Armand realizes Daniel truly loves him in Pompeii, what does he do? He resorts himself back into the role he knows, except he casts Daniel as Amadeo and himself as Marius. Daniel becomes fully dependent on Armand because isn't that what love is? Armand understands his love properly right when Daniel is dying so he turns him. Armand can't stomach turning Daniel (sounds like s2 finale babes) and Daniel loses his mind and ends up isolated in Marius' care.

1940s AMC Armand believes Marius dead. Does 2022 Armand? Timelines can change easily. He spent time with Lestat for the trial, it could have been revealed. Lestat would hold it over his head for making him do this. Or maybe, reveal it through a relationship with Daniel.

Armand makes sure the SF edit of memories allows him to flaunt he saved Daniel's life. This is important to him. Except, he didn't save Daniel's life at all in that apartment. Why is it important to Armand that Daniel (and Louis) believe this? Why is it important Armand can hold onto that? I think he really believes he saves Daniel's life, just not in SF.

In the books, Bianca, Daniel, Benji, Sybelle all become objects Marius takes from Armand. So if Marius did come to check up on Armand unseen (funnily enough he does so in Paris and it's in Paris that Daniel's memories start to form a coherent timeline again) and finds him in a relationship with a human boy? Oh no, Armand is Marius'.

Oh Amadeo, I've come to you again. You have a human companion? He is addicted to you, you hurt him, give him the Gift! Turn him or free him! You cannot love properly because that is your nature. Let me take care of this one for you, Amadeo.

There is a glaring neon sign stating the love has already happened because Armand turns Daniel in the show. He has no other reason to do so. Armand doesn't punish this way. Okay so past relationship, but Armand doesn't want Daniel in Dubai, except he is and he allows it. Why? The entire thing reeks of "I don't want this interview happening. I don't want you here, but I am weak and selfish and I wanted to see you again. I want you to remember me."

I think he believes he saved Daniel from a life of damnation and Armand by allowing Marius (or himself, but I don't think he is that strong in the Mind Gift) to remove the memories of their time. I free you from me and you can go onto live a life. I won't let you be cursed.

So yea, Marius. Show wise look at who is about to get the scoop on Armand and Marius through Lestat. You set up Armand as this false villain, Daniel starts realizing there is more memories missing, anger at Armand for taking more. Look at what you did to Nicki, look at what you did to Claudia and Louis, look at what you did to me. Drop the twist that Armand truly thought he was saving Daniel, start Armand's backstory/redemption arc, and you build them reuniting.

Devil's minion break up and reunite in the books, but that is never shown beyond a few lines. No way, this show wouldn't want a deep exploration of a human/vampire relationship. They're dramatists. Rolin Jones and co. have such a sandbox to play in with these two during the time Anne Rice doesn't write for them and that's why I think their timeline appears all over the place.

OH! Daniel sits by Marius' portrait in the dining room every time by the way. Also, crazy first name drop of a major character in a line from the episode titled "...after the phantoms of your former self" where only Armand is present in the scene.

Yea, I bet you never heard of him