#i'll save you from this franchise. boy

[shsl-hubris-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

[pinkydoggy83]

SPOILERS FOR THE DOGMAN BOOKS! HIGHLY ENCOURAGE READING THEM! THEY ARE SO CHARMING!

With that out of the way, I just wanna rant because I picked up the series again. I wanted to read it before watching the upcoming movie. Think of this as a Dog Man appreciation post <3

I stopped reading the series at "Lord of the Fleas" in elementary, so I started my binge read there.

I honestly wish I had never stopped reading so soon because this book is already a banger. I just love the way Petey is slowly accepting Li'l Petey as his son. Even without realizing it, he has grown so attached to his son and cares so much about him. Like, come on, that's hecken sweet.

Not only that, but I wanna mention George and Harold (I also used to read Captain Underpants back in the day). Back then I thought it was cool that it established that they were now fifth graders and were creating Dog Man as their next story after Captain Underpants. Now that I'm older, I feel this fuzzy feeling watching these goofy fifth graders try to be "mature" and in turn try to add some mature themes into Dog Man.

I find that really sweet and amazing! You really don't often see fictional authors of a story grow up like this. The authors themselves are characters. It's one of the most special things about this franchise. I really do appreciate this detail a lot more now. You get to grow up with them…or, I suppose, see them grow up. And in turn you see how the series changes!

The next book has a lot about Petey and Li'l Petey, but I want to cover this Dog Man part before talking about the cats.

Yeah, it's pretty strange to rationally realize that Dog Man is just a normal dude's body with a dog head. So in that way, Dog Man is a bit of an outcast (I can definitely use this for my own character exploration of Dog Man in a hypothetical fanfic). But the words used against Dog Man is"misfit," which I found interesting. Obviously, they are not outcasting him for his looks (that's not the main focus) but how he can't behave like he's expected to.

Dog Man isn't the most perfect hero. He can be clumsy, and his canine instincts can get in the way. It wouldn't be such a problem for him as a dog; however, he's not just a dog. He's a dog with human responsibilities. He's been given expectation ever since becoming Dog Man.

Don't get me started with the whole angst of his owner dying because that's already so much...but you have to realize that he's taking over Knight's job. Which the idea is hecken mind-boggling!

The thing that makes Dog Man overcome these problems is his golden heart. In the end, Dog Man wants to do the right thing and save the day. That's just Dog Man for ya. That's what makes him so much like a dog and a man.

I'm really overreading this all, but I love this idea for Dog Man. It's kinda hard to put it into words, but I hope this all makes sense.

OOOH BOY! This scene actually made me stop and put my phone down.

The sweet, sincere words of Li'l Petey as it sinks into Petey while Grandpa is just breaking stuff in the background. Guys. I wasn't expecting this from Dog Man. I was so shocked reading this part. Like you can see how much Petey loves Li'l Petey but has such a hard time seeing the world like his son does. Which, by the way, is literally his clone, so it's like him arguing with his inner child. That single hug speaks so many words. Petey just wants to protect him.

I love their dynamic so much. You got this old, disheveled cat who became realistic about the world in a sad way, and this young, wide-eyed, optimistic cat who has so much to learn about... but at the same time can teach so much. That's beautiful, man. That's beautiful.

Anyways, there's so much to talk about Dog Man (that's just how fantastic the books are), but I think I'll just end the post here for now. I'm still busy catching up, so maybe I'll share again. I'm just so glad I came back to this series again <3

[creatingblackcharacters]

Hi! I really love your blog and you've taught me so much about Black representation and helped me get started on the path to being better informed, so I really need to say thank you so much for all your hard work. You are amazing.

I was wondering if I could get your input on something since I feel like it has a place here. See, one of my most favorite game series is Telltale's The Walking Dead. I love it for its highs and lows, great story telling, and for some of the most amazing characters in the franchise. A lot of elements of this game series has not really aged well, however, and I feel like it all culminated in the series being racist on a lot of levels. Some of it is directly racist featuring microaggressions (like with one character referring to the character of Lee as "urban" and asking if he knows how to pick a lock), but there's one element that really bothers me that's most prominent in the last season. Apologies for spoilers but this has been bugging me so bad for years.

In the final season, our main protagonist Clementine has the chance to romance two characters. One is Louis, a laid back flirty guy who is Black with natural hair and loves the piano and puns. The other is a girl named Violet, a very angry but caring and protective blonde haired White girl who is a lesbian. At one point you have to pick who you save during an invasion on your camp, and whoever you don't save gets taken by the enemy to their boat to go back to the enemy camp.

If you save Louis, Violet becomes angry at Clementine for letting her get taken, actively fights against her at first when Clem and her team stage a rescue, but eventually goes back with her after the enemy's boat blows up and she becomes partially blinded and burned (which is a whole different issue I have regarding the writing but that's for another day). But if you do save her and pursue a romance, it's genuinely one of the most heartfelt moments in the entire game. You talk about what you'd do if you could take a road trip, make up constellations, and even slow dance together. It's genuinely sweet.

However, because of what happens to Louis, I can't bring myself to play a Violet route on any replays. Because if you let Louis be taken, the people who kidnapped him torture him and eventually do something really terrible (I really don't feel comfortable writing here it is that graphic), as punishment for "not shutting up" while imprisoned. I always end up pursuing the Louis romance because, along with being cute in its own way, with Louis writing a song for you on the piano, doing a quick candlelight dinner as best he can with what rations they can spare before the rescue, and even talks about eventually building a dream house with Clem, it's the better alternative to what would happen otherwise.

I don't like what happens to Violet if you let her get taken, but on some level it's better than letting what happens to Louis when he's kidnapped happen. He becomes absolutely broken if you let him get kidnapped.

For years I've felt this was far too uneven towards Louis, but a lot of the fandom doesn't seem to care about it since Louis isn't the only Black character in the series (most of the playable protagonists of these games are Black, Latino, or of East-Asian decent) and they like seeing the Queer representation with Clementine and Violet. But even so, I still feel like it's not fair.

There's a lot of other issues regarding the treatment of Characters of Color in these games, but the treatment of Black characters, especially dark-skinned Black characters in particular, really bothers me.

Oh I'll say it with you- yes, I would absolutely save the Black boy from being lynched over sparing the white lesbian character's hurt feelings, 100%. In the game and in real life. No amount of queer representation means that I should be sacrificing a Black kid and I simply won't do that 🤷🏾‍♀️ fuck the Black boys who may or may not be queer seeing themselves treated like that, huh? And anyone who genuinely believes that the two outcomes are comparable should not be trusted around real life Black people lmao I'm sorry that upsets me to hear.

I think it's baffling that they even made that decision as a studio, to take his suffering THAT far, especially for "not shutting up" when we know full well that "speaking out of turn" is often a trigger for antiblack violence. That is actually sickening, fr. I'm sorry you had to see that, and I'm angry that it goes that far one sidedly. I personally don't think romance options should be attached to decisions like that, either.

[justpeaxchy]

So I just finished watching httyd thw again, and my eyes are very puffy and my nose red because no matter how many faults it may have, I always end up bursting in tears over it because it's my favorite franchise lol.

But this time, when I was rewatching it, I started to understand why a lot of people don't exactly....love this movie the best.

As soon as Toothless sees the Light fury, it's game over man. Like, it's all he thinks about at that point. With everything he and Hiccup have been through (keep in mind I did also watch the other two movies before this) it doesn't even COMPARE with the light fury. Hiccup quite literally saved his life right from the beginning because he chose too, and they developed a friendship which took TIME to build. But with this light fury who suddenly pops up in Toothless's life, all of that progress was just.... forgotten? Discarded for a girl dragon?? I get it, that Toothless is himself a dragon and he isn't human, "fury's mate for life" according to the words from the movie.

Before now, I always said I enjoyed the movie very much (don't get me wrong I still do) and I backed up the claim that Toothless, even though he is best friends with Hiccup, is still a dragon and would want to have a mate like any other dragon would. It doesn't mean he doesn't love Hiccup anymore but....man, I wish the movie showed that in a greater way at least?

Yes, with love comes loss, ofc. It's just......MAN, I get this is the third movie and all but GUYS..... Have Toothless throw everything away for a light fury he met one day and LEAVE Berk with the REST of the dragons too?? Idk, I wish I could fully explain what I'm thinking but I hope I'm doing a decent job lol.

There was one specific scene towards the end, where Toothless was trying to get her back from Grimmel. That boy's eyes were straight up FIXED on that light fury oh my gosh. (Btw, this is no hate towards her, looking at her aside from the plot, I actually like her.) He didn't even seem that worried when Hiccup was literally getting piled upon by WHOLE DRAGONS. He looked so intensely focused on getting the girl back it almost appeared as though Hiccup was just .... On the back of a Night Fury while in that process of chasing her. Hiccup is trying his best to do what his FRIEND wants, but Toothless? Nah, bro's mind is empty except for the light fury .💀

Man, especially when I think about part two of httyd? It's still hands down my favorite part of the franchise and I will continue to stand on that. Toothless was SO protective over his best friend and it SHOWED. You were reassured that, "yeah, they both care about each other a lot" because, again, you can SEE IT. I didn't really feel like there was a lot of that in thw... I'm being completely honest here.

It was as though Hiccup was left behind for a light fury that suddenly shows up. Which is .....kind of what happens.

Anyway, I'll stop there cause idk when I'll end otherwise.

[bennie-jerry]

Why I think Silver deserves to be in the fourth Sonic movie

So off the bat, I know some of you guys are going to disagree with me and that is perfectly fine. I know a lot of people have mixed opinions regarding Silver as a character, and I certainly have my own.

All I ask is that if you do have any disagreements or information I might be missing, that you convey them respectfully since we're talking about FICTIONAL characters---the world isn't gonna end if we think different about a floating psychokinetic hedgehog.

I think he should be in the next Sonic movie, but in order for my points to coalesce properly, there's other aspects of the topic I'd like to address first in hopes you guys will see where I am coming from.

Personally, on top of having his powers being freaking awesome, I think Silver is a good character and is rather underused in more recognized forms of Sonic media. Don't get me wrong, he was in Sonic 06 and could very well have other mediums he was in---but for the most part, I don't see him and it's as if the Sonic franchise forgets he exists.

Now, don't get me wrong---I understand why some people might have an aversion to Silver regarding his appearance in the Sonic 06 game. His boss battle is tough for utterly no reason, he believes Mephiles at the drop of a hat, and then became a (sometimes annoying) meme. But personally, I don't think this makes him a bad character--but rather he had a bad introduction and I'll explain what I mean.

Regarding his trust in Mephiles, I'd be one to agree that it was naive for him to do, but Knuckles the Echidna underwent similar situations with Eggman MULTIPLE times. Especially if we're talking about Sonic X, Knuckles is shown to have believed Dr. Eggman's lies and fight Sonic multiple times. So personally, I feel as though if you dislike Silver for believing Mephiles, you should have similar thought patterns toward Knuckles for doing similar stuff---if not more than Silver.

For me, I interpret Silver trusting Mephiles as desperation to save his world from destruction. Silver---like Sonic---is an adolescent boy who has the weight of the world on his shoulders and is doing the best he can with the information that is given to him.

I'm explaining all of this because I for one, can't exactly agree with the narrative that Silver is a villain or that he's plain stupid (as some---not all, but some---have argued). And even if I were to agree with the notion that Sonic 06 had the worst portrayal of Silver, I still wouldn't agree with the implication that because of his introduction in the game--that it means he doesn't deserve a redesign or rewrite to fit the movie (since that's what Jeff Fowler has done with other characters in the film already).

I think having Silver in the movie could reintroduce a new version of him and considering Jeff Fowler's obvious skills in bringing honor to the iconic characters, I don't see why Silver would be any different.

Some people think Silver wouldn't fit, but I disagree due to a pattern I noticed within the more recent Sonic films (including the end credit scene for the third one involving Shadow).

Granted, we don't know what the fourth movie is about (or at least I don't) so for all I know, Silver COULD not actually fit into the plot. But considering what we saw with the metal Sonics, I think he'd fit right in.

In the second movie, it gave Sonic two allies (Tails and later on Knuckles) and an enemy (Eggman). In the third movie, it gave Sonic two allies (who would later on be Shadow and Eggman) and an enemy (Gerald Robotnik). While sure, they definitely have their differences in how they manifested plotwise, there was still a pattern.

In the end credit scene of the third movie, it already shows us who the new enemy would be [metal sonic] and who the new ally would be [Amy Rose]. So Silver could very easily fit that role of being the second ally. And sure, the whole 'enemy turned friend' thing might be predictable or old for some people, but I don't think it's a case of lazy writing. I think it's more about the franchise showing who Sonic truly is as a character and how at his core, he wants to help people.

In the case of Silver, I think that could work very well. And it's not like Jeff has it happen the exact same way each time. Heck, even if they were to make him an ally for Sonic off the bat without them being enemies first, I believe it could still very much work.

Once again, the fourth movie hasn't even released and so not many of us (at least not me) know know what the plot for it will be. But, if possible (and that's a big if), I think Silver deserves a shot at redemption by being in the fourth Sonic movie.

[siphersaysstuff]

FORTY YEARS!

As we reluctantly trudge into 2025, that means we've had FOUR DECADES of Transformers toys released globally with no breaks. So for January's Patreon-backed @tfwiki picture update, let's check out some toys from each of the major franchise chunks across TF history! Strap in!

I know it's an odd choice, but G1's representative is 1993's Europe-only Lightformer DEFTWING. But I think it's a fine example of TF's subteam gimmicks, the franchise's longevity even before the nostalgia boom, global reach, and its ever-evolving aesthetic.

(And as an personal-type note, this completes the Lightformers/Trakkons on the wiki, toy-pic-wise. Finally, all user-provided pics rather than crunchy old book scans. I love it when I can complete a team/theme like that.)

Beast Wars was a drastic change meant to save a dying line. And boy oh boy did it do that. Toys like 1997's B'BOOM mix "realistic" animal styling with super-posability and play gimmickry. Oh, also? This guy, a bit bigger than a modern Voyager, was $15. How's that make ya feel?

Car Robots/Robots in Disguise translated BW tech into classic TF Earth-vehicle alt-modes... with varying levels of success. WILDRIDE, aka X-BRAWN, here in a con-exclusive clear "transitional" state from regular to "Super" mode, is one of the better attempts.

The "Unicron Trilogy" really pushed toy-play gimmickry, and Armada's Mini-Cons are easily the best representative of the era. And Armada BLACKOUT (here in Powerlinx colors) embodies the versatility of their play pattern, with dedicated interactions with Demolishor.

The live-action movies were also a huge change in TF toys, both refining complexity and working some interesting gimmick & design challenges. 2007's DROPKICK is from the tie-in video games, and is a fun angry dude. The Bumblebee movie guy too? Maybe! Why not?

Animated's radical aesthetic shift had BW levels of immediate rejection followed by sudden glowing (and deserved) praise. SAMURAI PROWL shows off the tight coordination between the show and toy teams, making a complex design into a dang fun toy!

Prime kicked off the "Aligned" era, a massive reboot that formed the foundations of TF mythology going forward. New bots kept coming like AIRACHNID, here in her TakaraTomy "Arms Micron" release. And like other newcomers, proved popular enough to jump to other series!

Cyberverse used "evergreen" designs in a further shift to more kid-aimed TFs, which had started after Prime with Rescue Bots and Robots in Disguise 2015. ALPHA TRION embodies this with a much chunkier, simpler, action-gimmicky toy.

And now it's EarthSpark, focused on a new generation of TFs... but not all of them are nice! Chaos Terran SPITFIRE embodies the increased number of female TFs in the line... and the longstanding practice of redecoed toys as new characters, being a recolor of Twitch.

40 dang years. And I'll keep on going through it to bring more toy pics throughout its wide history for as long as I can. If you like these explorations and want to help out, consider contributing to my Patreon! Every little bit helps. You can find it at

"gregstfwikipics" at patreon dot com

[perseidlion]

This is why streaming is dying.

I'm Canadian, and I used to watch Star Trek on Crave. Crave saved us for awhile from the fracturing of the streaming landscape because it stayed as an umbrella service for quite some time. I used to get Star Trek, HBO, WB shows, Starz, Sony stuff...basically Hulu + HBO + Paramount. That was actually worth it because for the same monthy fee I could get House of the Dragon, Star Trek and more.

But that wasn't going to last forever. When Paramount+ launched in Canada, Star Trek got taken off Crave. I'm a huge Star Trek fan but even I couldn't justify a FIFTH streaming service just for Trek.

So I waited until Discovery was finished. And then I binged it and season 4 of Lower Decks. And then I cancelled. I won't get it again until S3 of Strange New Worlds and Season 4 of Lower Decks are finished, then I'll binge and cancel again.

There is literally nothing else on P+ I want to watch. I looked, because if there was something I'd cancel Netflix for a bit. But it's all movies I've seen and don't want to rewatch, shows I already have access to on other streamers, or things I have no interest in.

When the networks were working together to put lots of tasty treats under one streamer, it was absolutely worth it. I'd pay $20 a month for Crave if HBO kept making good shows (instead of cancelling them, RIP Our Flag Means Death) and if P+ had lots of Trek (and...didn't keep cancelling those shows like they did Lower Decks and Discovery.) Between that and Trek that would mean I always had a show releasing on the platform that I wanted to watch.

As long as there isn't a steady diet of things that appeal to me, I WILL keep subscribing, binging, and cancelling. Churn is the reason these networks aren't profitable. But there is literally no incentive for me to NOT do that when the things I want to watch are scattered across 5-6 different streamers, each charging $15+ a month.

In trying to get their slice of the pie, the networks have guaranteed there isn't enough food on their buffet to keep people coming back for more.

It creates a vicious cycle. This fracturing means there's not enough budget to support the flagship shows/franchises. Then, they get cancelled and/or budget reduced. So they take away or vastly reduce the thing I want to watch the most.

PLUS none of the networks are nurturing the cult hits/franchises of the future. Shows that have the potential to be the reason I subscribe are being cut off at the knees after virtually no promotion.

I watch every new show like Dead Boy Detectives knowing there is a very high likelihood that this will be the only season I'll get to watch. So much potential is left on the table. If there were four or more shows like Dead Boy Detectives and Kaos getting ongoing commitments from Netflix I wouldn't even consider cancelling my subscription. Instead, I know that any show that isn't an immediate cultural moment is probably getting the axe, or getting two seasons, max. Especially if it's SF&F. Especially if it's queer.

We live in the world where even the critically-acclaimed and franchise-based House of the Dragon is getting truncated episode runs and reduced support.

Regardless of how you feel about how Game of Thrones ended, that franchise is a cultural juggernaut. House of the Dragon is legitimately good and packed with talent. The rough patches of Season 2 can be easily traced back to reduced budgets/cut episode run at the last minute that forced the production team to scramble and adapt.

Honestly. Is there anyone actually committing to their series other than FX, AMC, and Amazon with Rings of Power? Although RoP can also be considered a sunk cost fallacy since Amazon invested a SHIT TON into the IP and the series, so they need it to work. They also have a wobbly track record supporting other shows. (I will never forgive them for cancelling A Leage of Their Own.)

FX and AMC are the only networks that feel like they're actually supporting their content. And what do you get for that? Shogun, one of the best shows in recent memory. The show absolutely swept awards season (and rightfully so) and is now setting itself up to be a tentpole show in the mold of such classics of the historical fiction genre like Deadwood, The Tudors, and Rome.

Interview With the Vampire, is an AMC show which has a very active and passionate fandom eager for more of it and Anne Rice's Immortal Universe. This is a rare example of a new franchise (albeit based on an existing, well-know IP) is really finding its feet and its audience. The audience for it is not of the size of something like House of the Dragon, but AMC is feeding the audience it does have unapologetically, with queer camp horror full of messy, toxic relationships.

Then there's What We Do in the Shadows, which seems to be ending on its own terms this year. FX is a Disney subsidary which somehow manages to commit to the series it creates, which proves it can still be done.

I do hope that FX and AMC continues to support their weird and wonderful shows, and I hope they keep getting rewarded for it with high ratings and awards so that the rest of the networks will smarten up.

If we hadn't just come out of a golden age of streaming where every network was producing excellent TV, all of this heavy cancellation and fragmentation wouldn't be quite so devastating.

Entertainment seems like it's constantly in a feast or famine churn. Right now, we're careening toward famine, which is full of one-season shows, overextended franchises, flagship shows being cut/restrained and a whole lot of cheap dreck.

It's the reality TV heyday all over again and I hate it.

[lunar-2-inklectric-boogalo]

Hey Lunar! I'm afraid your post about Indigo and channeling reminded me of the plethora of questions I had relating to ghosts in this AU way back when. I know you mentioned you were going to get around to making a ghost post eventually, but I fear my brain is absolutely buzzing, so here I am in your inbox, armed with my bag full of questions :>

So, first things first, spirit mediums ✨ If Illogico isn't the only one, then did the other spirit mediums of the world also die and come back to life? Would dying and coming back to life = spirit medium-ness?

Since ghost testimony is recognized in court, is the existence of ghosts in this AU common knowledge? Or are there still skeptics? Was Illogico being branded "the kid who saw dead people" weird because they thought ghosts weren't real, or because seeing them wasn't possible? And where did Leo land on the believer scale before meeting Illogico?

As for general questions about how ghosts work, I can save those for some other time lol. I don't want to bury you in questions. But quickly, I am interested if things like demons exist in this AU, too? And by extension, possession?

Cause if so, here's an absolutely evil thought because I can't help but satiate my angst enjoyer self 😔 It's said that demons feed on fear and aim to cause destruction wherever they can. So, a demon trying to mess with Illogico might play into his biggest fear and try to convince him that he's really dead. Bringing Illogico down to a state that makes him vulnerable to possession, and boom, our boy has a demon problem. Tying Leo into the mix, there could be a "devil made me do it" moment where the demon-possessing Illogico tries to hurt Leo. This will play into Leo's main fear of being betrayed and murdered himself since he wouldn't know Illogico was possessed at that moment. Cue shenanigans, and there you have a moment best fit for a darker timeline lol, an AU for the AU, if you will.

Anyway, as always, it's super fun thinking about your swap AU! I'll leave you with this pop quiz now 🫡

Heya Jay!! I love the concept of ghosts as much as murder mysteries so I'm very excited to yap about them before the full lore drop: Idk when I'll make the full masterpost (masterghost , if you will-), depends on when I get the full Swap AU Timeline finished? But asks bring me so much joy so ask and ye shall receive giant infodumps!! (giant is not a hyperbole. congrats/my condolences for all the text you're about to read. holy shit there's a lot.)

To answer your ghostly questions! Illogico isn't the only spirit medium out there! He's one of the most well known ones - partially because he can actually do it and isn't just faking, partially because he's constantly involved in high profile cases. To be a spirit medium, you need a pretty strong connection to the undead and ghosts, which can come from multiple places: Perhaps it's a family gift, you messed around with a few too many occult things and blurred the lines between you and the ghost world, working with death and death adjacent things, etc. Age is also an important factor: If you're younger, you're more likely to develop a sensitivity while you're developing than an adult, but it can happen to adults.

Dying and coming back to life gets the strongest connection to the spirit world (and gets you fun spirit medium powers like being constantly plagued by Ghosts), along with family gifts (think the Feys (a family of spirit mediums in the Ace Attorney franchise, known for strong abilities)), and that's where most genuine spirit mediums come from. Others can sense ghosts, be it through cold patches or faint whispers, mostly due to things like being surrounded by ghosts. Eg, if you worked in a morgue, you probably would have a higher sensitivity, but could just as easily write it off as the creeps or broken AC, unless you actively worked to strengthen that connection. Which can get pretty risky, because if you don't know who you're opening the door for and don't know how to keep control over yourself, well, enjoy possession! If you really want to get more involved, find someone experienced to help. But honestly, it's more peaceful not seeing dead people 24/7.

Also, I am aware of the implications of the above paragraph, and yes, Leo does have a heightened awareness of ghosts after all his time with his ghost-seeing boyfriend! He doesn't want to learn to see or channel them- he has his own monkeys and own circus to run (read: Swap Institute and its cast of characters), the ghosts are his boyfriend's problem. But he's aware if there's a ghost in the room, and can know it's general direction to say a hello or thanks. He wishes they would stop saying hi- His room is really cold, yes he knows they like him because Illogico likes him and most ghosts really like the one guy who can see and talk to them, but can he not need to wear his jacket in his office? And he appreciates the gesture of the shoulder pat but oh my god it is so unnerving to have something so cold touch you out of nowhere and send a violent shiver down your spine. But, well, it's nice something remembers to turn off the lights if he falls asleep at work. And Illogico does get him some sort of tie clip of cufflinks with a protective crystal so he stops getting violent shivers right after convicting a murderer.

Ghost existence is a funny thing in this AU. For one, the Murdle universe in general is a bit more open to the paranormal, with ghost detectors as a common murder weapon and the Institute also being as well known and successful as it is. We're gonna be playing by Ace Attorney rules a little bit here, where different places will have different viewpoints. The ghost testimony is a more recent thing: After Midnight I's trial, where Illogico's channeled testimony highlights details it would be impossible for Illogico to know and also point to evidence that makes him the killer for sure, it's tried in a few more trials before a tentative agreement of "we'll use this as a last resort, if we're stumped, but we're not putting the legal system on the shoulders of one guy" for so many reasons. Illogico's spirit mediuming is the backup plan.

So, the mindsets of the general public vary. Before the Midnight I trial, the general attitudes were “Ghosts could probably be real, it kinda makes sense? But if people could see them we'd know, so idk" and afterwards, the average mentality is a little more "Sure, I guess??" but more on the side of skepticism than acceptance. Not many people have really gotten to interact with ghosts, and even though who develop those sensitivities usually brush off what they can feel. Different places, like whatever bastardized mix of Draconia and Khura'in I cook up for the vol 2 timeline, probably rely much more on mediumship and actively try and raise mediums (through aptitude tests at a young age and raising children to hone any natural sensitivities), and the royal family probably also got their status through having that connection to the spirit world (Yeah that's a lot of implications for the Violet Family but 1) I don't have vol 2 on me since I'm on vacation and 2) it sounds super cool when I'm writing it now and vol 2 deserves to have as much insanity as vol 1)

EDIT- Additionally, part of the skepticism comes from the commonness of ghosts. Despite the high volume of murders in the Murdle verse, not all murder victims stick around as ghosts for very long, or at all. Probably like 24 hours max? Usually, they kinda want to move on rather than be trapped and isolated, struggling to interact with the living. But if they have unfinished business, they’ll stay, or if they want to stick around for any other reasons. If Illogico wants to channel a ghost that’s moved on, it takes a lore more effort and energy, but is doable. It also requires more of a ‘summoning’ than just calling a ghost up. If that makes sense? I can totally clarify my sleepy ramblings hahaha

Illogico was branded the weird kid for different reasons, depending on who you asked: The usual consensus was "You can't see ghosts", with the follow up of "Why would this weirdo be the one who sees ghosts?" He was shy before he was plagued by visions, so a lot of kids think it's in the same vein of "my dad works at Nintendo and only I know the new cool pokemon cards" and an attention seeking ploy. Leo, personally, thinks the idea is ridiculous. There's no real hard evidence of ghosts, it sounds stupid anyways. (But, after his mother's deaths, he finds himself being secretly hopeful that he was wrong and his moms are maybe around somehow. And yet, at the same time, he tries to shut down anything sentimental in a misguided attempt to avoid his grief, so his feelings are pretty complicated until he meets Illogico and gets to know him.)

When it comes to demons- I'll admit, your ask got me to thinking! To be honest, it's probably up in the air if demons exist as a separate metaphysical entity (and, to be honest, if they do, Illogico probably things ghosts are enough of a problem as is and he doesn't need to poke around in hellish business) but your idea is too good to not be spinning around in my brain for a good while!!! You cooked so hard!!! Just because Illogico doesn't mess with demons doesn't mean that they won't mess with him, or that he won't run into any enemies that would try and sic a demon on him. Illogico can force out ghosts, but demons would certainly be more powerful and intense and downright malevolent. Ghosts were once human, they're easier to reason with as a result. Demons? Unlikely they'd be as sentimental, and therefore, unlikely they'd be as merciful.

Also, if Illogico were possessed?! Ohohohooo, is Leo in a pickle! He knows a little bit about ghosts, and even what he knows, he doesn't fully understand. Now he's stuck trying to figure out how to handle a demon. Ancient chants? Crucifixes? Holy water?! Not like he has that on hand, all Illogico has is crystals and sage and Ouija boards and Leo doesn't know Latin, if he's even supposed to use that! He can't bring himself to hurt Illogico, because there has to be something of the man he loves left, possession aside. He has to save him. Leo will always try and save him, because he can't imagine a world without Illogico: The man who made him work harder on investigations (even if it was to prove himself at first), the man who comforted him in his darkest hours and can ease his paranoia, the man who sometimes makes no sense but doesn't have to because Leo loves him that much. But he needs to protect himself somehow, doesn't he? Not to mention his own worst fears are being realized, betrayal and attack from someone he trusted so much, it's so absurd it wraps around to being so obviously because something is deeply wrong, but that's only so much comfort when his worst fears are being realized.

Also, in general, I fw AUs of AUs so much!! I'm down to play with an alternate Swap AU where Illogico sees demons vs ghosts or smth!!

Hope you enjoyed ~1400 words of lore I cooked this all up in a single sitting!! All the words and ideas are on a backlog from not consistently yapping due to main being in the shadow realm and forcing myself to work on SoM 3 and a fic for another fandom I’ve procrastinated so bad on planning lmfao

[frankenwolf1564]

Transformers ONE: a quick overview

I'm fresh off my second viewing of TF ONE (at the time of writing) (yes I am that kind of nerd) and I really gotta get my thoughts out on it because it is such a spectacular film and easily one of the best pieces of media this franchise has seen, like, ever. This first bit will just be some general thoughts and full on spoiler-y stuff will be below the line in case you still haven't seen it, which is something you should go and fix, like, right now. Do it. Go watch the movie.

First off, the whole thing is just. Gorgeous. Nearly every frame is its own work of art. Cybertron is realized beautifully, both in Iacon and on the surface. Buildings hanging from the ceiling, endless layers and impossible heights, it's so easy to get lost in it all. It contrasts amazingly with the grungy, cramped mines and the harsh, living crust that's constantly changing and shifting. The visuals alone sell this film.

Orion and D-16's friendship is handled impeccably. It's really fun to watch them bounce off each other and it's easy to see why they're friends. What's even better is watching them fall out. This is your spoiler warning, because even if you know exactly where they're going to end up (which is likely if you've consumed nearly any Transformers media in the like, past decade?), the fun part is seeing how they get there.

oh and like. Bee and Elita are alright. I guess. They're probably not why you're here but y'know. Scarlett Johansson was ok. I thought some of her deliveries were kinda weak, especially by comparison to Brian Tyree Henry and Chris Hemsworth, but she wasn't bad. Neither was Keegan-Michael Key. I found Bee a bit grating but that was kinda the point and he was still funny, so.

Alright. You've seen the movie? You don't care? We're clear? Good.

You can see the exact moments that turn D-16 into Megatron. Yet even before those you get these tiny little hints that he's a bit off. He goes off about killing Orion or straight-up mutilating him, but it was a joke guys, he didn't mean it! "I'll melt your face into slag" isn't a sign of a sound individual, no matter how casually it's said. He's only convinced to go on Orion's quest for the matrix by the allure of praise and adoration. Everyone else is shocked or remorseful when they hear about the Primes getting killed, while D-16 is angry. The second he saw Sentinel's betrayal he was thinking about what he could do to him. How he, personally, was betrayed by what he'd done. How he could get his revenge. He took every single slight against the entirety of Cybertron, the betrayal and selling out of their race, as a personal offense. He slaved in the mines to fuel the Quintessons. He had his T-cog ripped out. His hero was killed. His idol was a traitor. Why shouldn't he be the one to set it all right? Then there's his declaration to kill every one of Sentinel's followers. Right before they're captured by the high guard, he's telling Orion that none of Iacon would turn their backs on Sentinel, that even when shown his lies like they were, they would ignore it. They would continue to follow him. He was fully comfortably slaughtering every single person that even for a second believed in the system like he did. There was one bot that tried to talk sense in to him, but he had stopped listening long ago.

Orion Pax is great. He's (going to be) the boy, he kinda has to be. Right off the bat you're shown that he's a rule breaker and not contempt with the system. He wants to find the matrix not to please Sentinel, but to help his fellow Cybertronians. He wants to bring back the flow of energon to make everyone's lives better, especially for those down in the mines. He's eager to do a good job in them because he wants to help. He's a little self centered about it all, certainly, but it always comes off as for the greater good. He broke protocol to save Jazz when the mines were collapsing. He broke into the Iacon 5000 to show the city that all miners were capable of more, not just that he was. He knew that there was more for everyone than just mining more energon. He's looking for a way to make things better. This is one of the many things that helps set him apart from D-16, who, while not happy with his place in the world, was content. He believed it would all work out as long as he stayed in his lane and did his part, even if that lane sucked. Then there's his reaction to the truth. He feels sorrow and anguish when he learns the Primes were betrayed and killed. He mourns the loss of life. He's put off by how eager D-16 was after killing one of Sentinels guards. He tries talking him down but it doesn't work. He's dead set on that path and there's no getting him off it. You can see the fear in Orion's eyes that there might be no turning back for his friend as he's fighting Starscream. It's a side of him he's never seen before and he doesn't like it. The rage. The unrestrained, unfettered violence. The sheer brutality in both his blows and his words. But there's still a shred of hope that, once this is all over, he'll have his friend back.

That last scene man. I cried in both my viewings. Orion is desperately trying to talk D-16 down, hoping that maybe, just maybe his friend will listen one last time. Sentinel is beaten. He's been completely exposed. He can't run. He can't fight back. There's nothing left for him except to be taken in and shown justice, but D-16 isn't having it. He will give Sentinel what he feels he deserves. He will tear down everything that traitor has built. He will rebuild their new world. He. Will. Have. His. Revenge. And he's not letting anyone get in his way. Orion jumps in front of Sentinel in a final bid to do the right thing, to preserve some sense of right, to get his friend to see the light, but it's not enough. He takes the blow. He gets knocked to the edge, and out of instinct D-16 grabs him. Then he lets go. He lets Orion fall to the depths of Cybertron and. Man. The music swelling as the planet itself parts to bring him to the core. D-16 tearing Sentinel in half. Any and all remaining clutter and debris clearing as the core comes into view. D-16 declaring the traitor as finally dead. That the age of Primes and their impersonators is gone with him. Primus himself grabbing Orion and saving him. D-16 tearing the stolen cog from Sentinel's lifeless torso. The Thirteen Primes coming forth from the core to induct Orion. D-16 upgrading himself into his new form while Orion is healed and blessed with his. D-16 declares himself as Megatron at the same time that Orion Pax is given the title of Optimus Prime. It's powerful stuff. Any other flaws this movie has are rendered completely null and void by that one moment. It's that good and I can not wait to see what comes next.

I want to end the review there because *gestures broadly* but I still have more to say. I am. SO fucking glad Optimus isn't the reincarnation of one of the Thirteen or anything like in IDW(?) and the Aligned continuity. It's Orion Pax's destiny to become Optimus Prime, don't get me wrong, but he still has to earn that. He shouldn't be handed it on a silver platter because whoopsie daisy yur the reincarnation of one of robot god's direct descendants kid. So I am very happy to say ONE Orion worked for his new title. He stood up for what was right. He fought against injustice. He didn't take the easy way out. His creator saw that he was worthy of more and granted it to him. And it's such good contrast to Megatron, who took the power that he wanted, not caring who got hurt in the process. Just. God damn it I love having actual themes to dissect and analyze and character arcs and stuff. Feels fucking good man.

so go see this movie I need a sequel

[darkershining]

A few months ago, this post caught my eye. From there, it didn't take long before my mind started going "Hmm... Tetro PINK in a Pretty Cure-like setting? What would that be like...?"

"Ooh, what if...?"

And as I kept toying with the idea in my head, I figured, might as well write this stuff down. And, well, I thought maybe some of you might be interested too.

I'll put a put spoiler warning for Tetro Danganronpa PINK, since I both mention stuff that happened in it and since some of the scenarios I came up with for this have some parallels to canon Tetro PINK stuff. I'll also put a spoiler warning for potential Pretty Cure spoilers, since I do reference and take inspiration from a few different series from the Pretty Cure franchise in this.

So, who would become Precures in this?

Well, after giving that some thought, I settled on these five for the main team:

Manami Tsuno, for obvious reasons.

Mai Hayashi. She and Tsuno were basically both at the top of the list while I considered the candidates.

Ruiko Tamba. I feel like there's potential here, and her athletic skills might serve her well as a Precure.

Ken Hasegawa. Since Soaring Sky Pretty Cure has truly opened up the possibility of boys becoming Precures, I figured at least one of the boys should get in on this. I decided on Ken because I figured his knowledge and such would come in handy. This was something I decided on before I saw the conclusion of Tetro PINK's last trial, but my decision hasn't changed. If anything, I think I like the idea even more now.

Nishino Watari. I think her fire dancing skills could translate to some really cool powers as a Precure.

While I think those five are enough for a team, I am admittedly also considering the idea of having an event similar to what happened during the final battle of Hugtto Pretty Cure happening in this, where the remainder of the cast are given Pretty Cure powers to help out during the final battle.

I haven't actually come up with any names for their Precure forms, or exact details on what said forms look like. I was considering the name Cure Phoenix for Watari's Precure form, though.

So, what's the format I have in mind?

Well, I feel Yonekura and some of the other KFTI scientists would still be the villains in this. However, in this universe, they've gotten access to some sort of magic and/or technology that can create the monsters that the Cures have to fight. Because one of my personal favorite Pretty Cure series is Fresh Pretty Cure, I'm thinking of taking inspiration from that and having the scientists be gathering up negative emotions as part of their plan, whatever it is.

This would follow the formula where the monsters of the week are created from a victim's negative emotions, with the victim imprisoned inside those monsters, and the Cures having to purify the monster in order to save the trapped victims. Naturally, most of the Tetro PINK cast will have their turn as the victim of the week, with the exceptions of Tsuno and possibly Hayashi. More on that later. Haven't decided if anyone will have the dubious honor of being the victim of the week more than once, although I could sort of see that happening to Hiroaki.

Some of the scientists might also get their turn as the victim of the week, since higher ranked villains turning lower ranked villains into monsters if they've failed too many times tends to happen in some Precure series. Just from what I know about him, I feel like Dr. Kan would probably do this to some of them at some point.

After taking some time to consider it, I figured that, yes, Monomoko will be the mascot giving the Cures their powers in this alternate universe. In this universe, I imagine she was initially discovered by the scientists, but she fled from them after discovering they intended to do something with her power that could potentially threaten both this world and her own. In fact, the scientists may have used the data they gathered from Monomoko to create the devices used for creating the monsters of the week.

Some ideas for the monsters in no particular order:

Chiba - I imagine hers resembling a giant plushie of some sort. Not sure what her abilities would be, though.

Yanagi - Has ice powers, using ice skating to move around quickly, not too surprising.

Watari - Hers has fire powers, wielding giant fire dancing batons.

Hiroaki - I imagine this one being partially made of cloth, being able to use cloth and threads and sewing needles and such as weapons, using them to tie people up and such.

Hasegawa - I recall Suite Pretty Cure once had the Cures facing off against a game show host-themed Negatone, so maybe Hasegawa's would be similar to that, attacking if you answer his questions wrong.

Kamimura - Something that either wields giant weaponized cleaning supplies, or other chemicals.

Harada - Something animal-themed, obviously, whether that be something resembling a tiger, or something else entirely.

Hama - Something resembling a demon feels like the obvious choice here.

Okazaki - Something resembling a giant white fox, again, gotta go with the obvious choice.

How's the story looking?

Well, near the start of the story, Tsuno, Wada and Isono notice Chiba and Harada looking for something near the school. Harada explains that Chiba thought she saw a white rabbit on school grounds, and he's helping her look for it.

Later that day, one of the scientists arrives at the school, having been tasked to track down Monomoko.

In an attempt to lure out Monomoko, the scientist decides to test out the device, with Isono becoming the first victim of the week. Wada witnesses her getting turned into the monster of the week, and tells Tsuno when she tries to get him to safety. Wanting to find a way to save Isono, Tsuno draws the attention of Monomoko, who gives her Precure powers so she can help her friend.

Wada witnesses all of this, and thus is Tsuno's confidant when it comes to the Precure stuff. He later becomes a secret keeper to the later Cures as well, basically being the friend of the Cures who is basically part of the team while not being a Precure himself.

I don't have a particular order in mind for when the different characters get their turn as the victim of the week (for the ones that aren't tied to one of the Precures gaining their powers, at least), but I feel Wada would get his turn fairly early on due to his concerns about Tsuno dealing with these monsters as a Precure all by herself.

On that note, I guess I can talk about what I've decided to do with Okazaki in this alternate universe.

First of all, no, she wasn't sent to the school to infiltrate it and gather info on the Cures, as certain Precure villains tend to do. Her already attending that school was just sort of a coincidence. The scientists do end up providing her with a device for creating the monsters, and may try to ask her for info, since unlike the canon Pretty Cure series where the villains basically know who the Cures, in this universe, the villains won't know the Cures identities.

Okazaki ends up being the one to responsible for Wada's turn as the victim of the week, testing the device out on him because she may already have a suspicion that Tsuno is the Pretty Cure she's been hearing about, and she wants to confirm her suspicions. Okazaki will likely end up learning the Cures' identities over time, but she won't tell the scientists. She doesn't actually have any interest in helping them, because she doesn't want to be a mere pawn to them. She wants to be an independant supervillain doing her own thing, you know?

Anyways, Tsuno manages to rescue Wada and return him to normal. After Wada explains his concerns, Monomoko assures him she's already started looking into other potential candidates to become Precures.

Now, for the next few Cures, I feel the events leading up to Hayashi becoming a Precure would involve one of the scientists initially trying to use their device on her, only for Yanagi to interfere, resulting in him becoming the victim of the week instead of her. Hayashi doesn't like that, and becomes a Precure in order to help save him.

I also feel Yanagi might learn the identities of the Cures, or at very least that Mai is one of them at some point. I haven't figured out when yet.

Okay, Tamba time. So, how does Tamba become a Precure? Well, at some point after Tamba has had her turn as the victim of the week, she ends up discovering that Hayashi and Tsuno are the Precures, and they convince her to keep it a secret.

At some point after this, Tsuno and Hayashi get into a fight with a monster with an ability that weakens the two of them in some way so that they can't fight effectively. I'm considering maybe having it shrink them, or something. Tamba happens to witness this, and goes to help them. I've been picturing her having the two shrunken down Cures ride on her shoulders while she runs to a safer spot.

Trying to figure out how to reverse the effects of the monster's ability, they figure they probably need to purify it to do so. Wanting to help Hayashi, and to become a stronger person in general, Tamba ends up deciding to step up. Finding the resolve, Tamba becomes the third Cure and manages to defeat the monster, purify it and return Hayashi and Tsuno to normal. From that point on, she's determined to help out her fellow Cures in preventing the scientists from "poisoning people's minds" with their dark magic.

Next up, Hasegawa. At some point after he has his turn as the victim of the week, I'm imagining him starting to look into things regarding the Precures and the villains. During this, he might have a few interactions with Hama, who is also looking into the Precures.

Eventually, Kamimura has his turn as the victim of the week (I imagine Okazaki being behind this one as well), leading to Hasegawa becoming the fourth Precure in order to help save him. In addition to Hasegawa joining the Precures, Kamimura also learns their identities after this and becomes another non-powered member of their group.

Before I get into the events leading up to Watari becoming a Precure, let me talk about that sub-plot I just mentioned with Hama doing his own investigation into the Precures.

I imagine the sub-plot kicking off with Chiba's turn as the victim of the week, taking place sometime after Hayashi becomes a Precure, but before Tamba does. Having been looking for her, Hama arrives at the scene shortly after Chiba has already been corrupted. He doesn't recognize her at first, but the monster does recognize him. The monster ends up grabbing Hama before he can get away, deciding to take him with her while she continues her rampage. She doesn't try to hurt him in any way, though.

Hama eventually figures out that Chiba is trapped inside the monster, and might try to talk her out of her rampage, but it doesn't work. The Precures eventually arrive and save him from the monster's grip, getting him to a safe spot and telling him to wait while they go help Chiba, assuring him that she won't be hurt in the process.

After this, Hama begins his own little investigation, keeping it mostly to himself aside from those interactions with Hasegawa. Hama might eventually start to suspect who each of the Cures really are, with Wada potentially catching on at some point that he's on to them. They're not that concerned about him potentially figuring it out, though, since they figure that Hama understands the importance of keeping their identities a secret.

Hama and Chiba are also likely present during Harada's turn as the victim of the week, with Hama witnessing Harada getting trapped inside the monster. He gets himself and Chiba to safety, and might develop a partial understanding of how the device works, realizing the victim's emotional state might be a factor.

Considering how many of his classmates have been targetted by the scientists, Hama naturally finds himself worrying that they'll eventually use the device on him, and if there's a way to prevent it. After all, who knows what kind of demon they might unleash if they use the device on him?

Well, I think this is the time to talk about the events leading to Watari becoming a Precure.

I imagine it kicking off with Watari witnessing Okazaki using her device on someone, leaving her with a lot of questions. Okazaki doesn't show up for school the next day, and asking Ninomiya might not give much information for her to work with either. (once BLUE comes out, maybe I'll have a better idea of how to incorporate him into Okazaki's sub-plot, but for now, this is mainly focused on the PINK cast)

Hama can sense that something is bothering Watari, and goes to check on her after school. He vaguely has an idea that it involves Okazaki and asks if they got into a fight or something. Before Watari can figure out how to explain the situation, one of the scientists shows up. Hama recognizes the device they have with them, and quickly tries to get himself and Watari out of there, not wanting either of them to get zapped by that thing.

The scientist eventually manages to catch to them. Hama tries boasting that the device won't work on him anyways, trying to draw attention away from Watari so she can get away, but the scientist quickly calls his bluff and uses the device on him. To their surprise, Hama actually does manage to resist the effects for a few seconds, likely due to being one of the few victims to not be caught off-guard. Before he's overwhelmed by the dark energy, he tells Watari to get to safety.

Monomoko senses the appearance of another monster, and brings the Cures (and Wada) over to somewhere close to where it appeared, where they come across Watari who tells them what happened. The Cures try to save Hama while Wada and Watari watch from a safe distance. Recalling faint memories from when she had her own turn as the victim of the week in a previous episode, Watari ultimately decides she can't just stand by while her friend is suffering, and becomes a Precure in order to help save Hama.

When Hama regains consciousness after being saved by the Cures, he recognizes Watari who is still in her Precure form. The other Cures confirm he was on the right track regarding their identities as well, and now both Watari and Hama are part of the team. Watari might suggest that Hama become a Precure too, but he declines, since he might not feel like he'd be worthy of that kind of power.

Watari also informs the others about Okazaki, and asks them for help in figuring out what exactly her deal is.

So, some things happen, Okazaki will probably find out that Watari has become a Precure at some point.

Okazaki will likely get her turn as the victim of the week, with the scientist responsible also retrieving her device for creating the monsters of the week on Yonekura's orders.

After the Cures save Okazaki, Watari manages to convince her that they should call a temporary truce, and Okazaki agrees to tell them what she knows. The group is a bit disappointed when they realize that Okazaki doesn't really have that much information for them. However, she has at least managed to deduce that they're probably gathering the negative energy for something.

Hasegawa speculates they might intend to use it as some sort of power source for something, while Hama thinks they might be planning to summon something.

If a situation similar to Hugtto Pretty Cure's second-to-last episode does play out, I imagine it going something like this:

As the villains plans are revealed, and Monomoko realizes how dire the situaiton has become, she decides to reach out to the Cures' classmates to get more help.

Most of them might be a bit reluctant to help, but I feel Yanagi and Hama would both volunteer to help fairly quickly. I see Chiba, who I imagine would probably really admire the Precures, being quick to offer her assistance as well.

Once the first few people start stepping up, Sasaki might decide to join in as well, figuring that a group of people gaining superpowers and having to figure out fairly quickly how to use them might need someone who can guide them in the upcoming battle.

With Hama and Chiba having already agreed to help, Harada probably decides he should help out too. If Yukino is there, then maybe she can join in too.

Hiroaki doesn't really want to go out and fight a bunch of monsters, or whatever. However, he probably did at some point come up with a design for what his hypothetical Precure form would look like. He might eventually agree to join in, if only because he's tired of those villains interrupting their daily lives by creating those monsters and he wants to get back at them.

Ojima is willing to help, although he does have some concerns about potentially zoning out during battle, even if he makes it clear he'll try very hard not to let that happen. Hiroaki promises to get him away from the battle if it does happen, though.

Kamimura wants to help Hasegawa and the others, but notes that he might not even be able to fight due to his health issues. His Precure form might develop abilities based around supporting the other Cures in some way rather than combat.

While he's been with the Cures as part of the team from the start, Wada never really considered the idea of becoming one himself. Of course he wants to help Tsuno and the others, but can he really do this? With some encouragement from Isono and the others, he eventually decides to join the battle. And of course, Isono joins in as well.

Okazaki is a little amused that Monomoko is willing to ask her to temporarily become a Precure, considering the trouble she's previously caused for them. But whatever, might be fun to fight alongside the heroes just this once. Plus, she has her own reasons for not wanting the main villains' plans to succeed, whether the reason be something mundane, or something that only makes sense to her.

I guess that about sums up what I have in mind for the main plot. Of course, there's plenty of slice-of-life stuff and such in-between the Precure stuff, doing regular school activities and having their own little sub-plots along the way.

I'm not really planning on actually turning this into anything, but it was still fun to think of these scenarios and such. So, if inspiration strikes again after BLUE comes out, I might do a follow-up post incorporating the cast of that into this AU. (At the very least, I already have some ideas for what kind of monsters could be spawned from a few of the BLUE characters.)

[bioeiectricity]

Do you have rover lore...? i can't find lore drop on your page...

I'm glad u asked!! ^^ i was planning to drop his information when i finished his char sheet but!

general info ⸜⸜ 　　 ‘ROVER’ TEEPAKORN KHAJEERUM ( ธีปกร ขจีรัมย์ ) ↻

　　 earth's fifth green lantern. a narcoleptic thai boy with unusually low self-esteem for someone his age, who's, frankly — afraid of everything that's out there. and yet constantly ran head into dangers anyway bcuz it’s the right thing to do. he regularly wonders to himself if he's even doing good enough due to excessive daytime sleepiness.

more under the cut!

　　 terrified of hal jordan as parallax, he saw that underlying potential that HE could end up like that too IF he didn't keep himself in check, purposefully going out of his way to barely even try. held himself back out of generally being tired && afraid of the negative outcomes.

　　 he knows what he's capable of, he's wielding one of the most powerful weapon in the entire universe .. and he were to be consumed by grief, god he's so scared.

　　 but other than that?? an average guy, always looks drained out of his mind due to the amount of his parents debt, that, and also his little sister's medical bills. used to live in los angeles but moved to manchester, alabama due to financial reasons. freelance photographer since fifteen years old, kind of close with alex dewitt and regularly asked her for advices on how to improve the qualities of his photos!

　　 he's a wallflower. both as rover and as green lantern, he's really, really shy, quiet and soft-spoken which kinda contrasted with the rest of the yj group's self-assured && energetic personalities. probably tried to be the voice of reason and reasonably gave up after a few days.

　　 i'd say rover is kind and very patient due to constantly having to hold his willpower back && having to practically raise his younger sister because their parents are neglectful ( which probably is the cause of his abandonment && attachment issues. )

　　 magical girls enthusiast, he's a fan of the entire pretty cure franchise, cardcaptor sakura, jewelpet && madoka magica. he loves making constructs inspired by the shows i’ve listed!

　　 the media ( & to some extents, dc editorials ) acknowledge him as ‘kid lantern’ .. rover hated that name with an undying passion. luckily none of his friends called him that unless they want to bully him into not skipping his meals to save money /hj

　　 speaking of friends, he's closest with greta, cissie, cassie && bart. with a particular emphasis on bart because they met in junior highschool! — i hced that rover's first debut would be in kyle's gl run, but he'd actually be a relevant character in impulse 1995, as one of bart's supporting cast w/ preston & carol

　　 i originally planned for rover jst to be bart's friend, because, let's be honest — all flashes has their lantern best friends. alan & jay, hal & barry, kyle & wally, tai & irey, but.. as u can see, everything sorts got out of hands.

and.. pulselantern exists now. boyfriend, yay!! codependency but I'll elaborate bart and rover's relationship another day..

also.. he's kyle's mentee. it's less of a mentor/mentee situation && more of a ‘learning the rope' together tbh. rover viewed kyle as an older brother figure — someone he could run to. considering his parents, kyle is probably the most positive adult influence in his life.

that, and ganthet.

..which is saying something.

tldr; i combined peter parker and mob from mob psycho for my thai-rep semi-self insert oc! 100%

[creepypasta-archive]

Bloody Painter (2017)

by Delucat This is it, our final stop (for today), the Remake that has lead Delucat to completely FRANCHISE the heck out of her OC. All that i had to say about it was said on the 2013 version's post, so i'll just paste this list of Officially Approved Character Trivia, that reveals some... irrelevant facts, but. hey. Let's have fun

His favorite color is blue.

His MBTI is INTJ.

In the current storyline, he's about 26 years old.

He’s a night owl and a light sleeper, which causes his prominent dark circles.

For his public art, he prefers oil paints for oil paintings. As for those darker pieces, he might mix in victims' blood or other substances.

He likes simple and sleek outfits, often wearing colors in calm tones.

He doesn't smoke or drink because he finds the smell of smoke pungent and dislikes the bitter taste of alcohol.

He's a clean freak and dislikes making a mess at crime scenes.

He uses perfume to mask the smell of formalin used in specimen preparation or the rusty smell of blood. His preferred scent is oceanic.

The official story doesn’t specify his nationality, but he is ethnically white.

He identifies as agender, meaning he doesn’t feel tied to any particular gender. His attraction to others is based purely on his mood and feelings. To put it simply, he doesn’t care about gender.

In the 2018 version update, all pairings with other authors' OCs were removed to keep his story realistic. He is currently single.

He’s not afraid of insects and even makes insect specimens. His fear of cockroaches stems more from his germaphobia than the insect itself, as he perceives them as dirty creatures.

Rarely will you see a creepypasta character that has patch notes like a minecraft update. CW// blood, mental illness, stabbing, murder, stalking, white people Click below to read the full unedited story

A file about the 2003 Murder Case. . . . In order to protect the privacy of the individuals and victims, in the following article, all names have been altered except the murderer. The details of the story have been adapted to make it smoother, but I will try to tell thing.

==

"Mr. Helen Otis?"    I called out to the boy who sat in front of me, but he didn’t reply. He was wearing a light blue patient robe, His dark green circles under his eyes, his messy jet black hair, and his skin, pale as paper. His gaze straight at me, like how a predator stares at its prey. I’m a psychiatrist, my job is to interview patients. He’s been here for some time now, but I’ve never seen him communicate with other patients. He always stayed in the corner of the room. Needless to say, he was an eccentric child.

This is a judicial psychiatric hospital. The only difference between this is the way we treat patients with a criminal record, to prevent the patients from another infraction.

His silence didn’t help at all. "Do you know this?" I pull out a picture in front of him, it showed a set of black-rimmed glasses on the road, this was his crime scene.. He stared at the picture and spoke softly, “This is from my best friend." "Can you tell me something about it? “I asked but he just stared at me without saying a single word. "Look, since you came here, we have not been making any progress. If you can tell me something about this, then just tell me about it. Please.” After I finished my plead, he heaved a sigh and said, “It's rather a long story…”

His story is about a very quiet teen in the class who was accused of stealing a watch which belonged to a very popular classmate. This caused him to be bullied by a group of students. He and one of those students named Tom became friends, but later found that his friend had framed him. They argued at the rooftop and Tom accidentally fell to his death. This is the photo of Tom’s glasses after the accident occured. "I tried to save him, I tried to pull him up, but he let go of my hand, I didn’t know what he was thinking at the time." He finished his story, then looked down at his hands. He seems to be thinking about something. Recalling seemed to give him anxiety. I had predicted this before he said anything. The patients who were sent here as well as their cases are recorded in their files. Intriguing cases  from high schools are very common for teens like Otis. Bygone memories of the past fade. But not in the case of Tom's death. Maybe that’s why Helen can’t forget the past or forgive himself. "What happened after that?" I continued my questions, at least we're making some improvement. "After Tom died, Halloween was just around the corner, and the school had a Halloween party, and everyone had to dress up. I prepared a mask one night before the event, I was tired so I napped ... and then I found myself here." In the file, it stated that he killed 17 people that night. No one knows how he did it. They don’t rule out the fact more than 1 person was involved. "Do you remember what happened during the party? Any details?" I asked. But he shook his head and then continued to look down at his fingers, "Doctor, why am I here?" He asked quietly. "Because you are ill." I answered. He rose his head in response. "Come on, you are only 14 years old, your future is still very bright." I gave him a pat and smile, hoping to cheer him up. I want to let him know that I’m his friend, not an enemy. This was what I said to that boy, this was the first time that her ever spoke more than a word. Well, at least he was talking now. We made good progress here.

==

The atmosphere always suffocates me, maybe because this is a hospital. Not a best place for a sane person to stay for long. I get surrounded by different patients every day. I had grown accustomed to it until now. I feel something unfamiliar. I feel like I am a frail sheep amongst a pack of hungry wolves. I am pretty sure this place is  slowly eating my sanity away little by little. Something in Helen Otis’s file stuck with me. I decided to ask him in person in the next coming interview.

We met in the small room like the previous time. I greeted him with a smile and he responded with a few blinks. I took that as a greeting from him. As I sat down at my place, I flipped open my notes on his case and looked him in the eyes. I questioned the femininity of his name. "Helen? Did your parents name you this?" He thought for a minute then told me that his parents had difficulty conceiving children, and they were eager to have a daughter, but instead gave birth to a boy. Due to his mother’s weak health and their financial situations, they couldn’t have any other children as much as they hoped so. They decided to raise their only son as a daughter.

As he finished his sentence, he fell into silence. As I was thinking what kind of response I should give, he opened his mouth again. Not only does his name sound feminine, his parents also bought girl’s clothing for him when he was younger, raised him like a daughter instead of a son. Neighbours and children around the area did not know that he was actually a boy. When he reached the age of six, he had to go to school. Afraid that, the way he was raised will cause a huge concern, his parents tried changing their ways, finally treating him as a son. Maybe this is why he has some feminine characteristics. "My parents are very fond of me, and I understand their difficulties, so I have not complained about them. I do not think they have any problems." His family is very dysfunctional. he grew up under his parent’s twisted faith and overly high expectations, which affected his growth. He lost some basic human traits, but he didn’t notice. Plus, he doesn't seem to know how to express his feelings due to the environment that he grew up in. It’s hard to change the patient’s opinion on their family’s faith, I wanted to tell him what his parents were doing is wrong but it wasn't the right time. So I kept my mouth shut.

==

Although he rarely talks to other people in the hospital, he talks politely whenever he does. We chatted sometimes, we sat on the white bench in the park, we looked like best friends. We don’t always talk about things related to hospital. We talked nonsense sometimes, and it was these moments that we both felt relaxed, especially me. I really felt the tension between us loosening. In this place, patients will randomly pick fights with one another. He won't pick fights but neither does he stop them. He always manages to avoid any form of chaos, and live peacefully. That’s pretty smart of him.

==

In the year 2001, 3rd of October, he was discharged from the hospital after receiving treatment for 7 years and it’s time for him to return back to society. He is now 21 years old. He’s no longer the young boy I remember. I was the one seeing him off, thinking back made me feel happy for him. “Don’t you ever come back here, Helen. If you come back here again, we will only meet when you are sitting on the electric chair.” Those were the last words I said to him as I pat his shoulder and smiled, he nodded in response. He had a good nature if you asked me. I remember the look of him when he left. He wore a dark blue windbreaker and a pair of black pants, his hair was still the same messy jet black. Won’t he try to comb his hair a little? I truly hoped that I wouldn’t be seeing him in this place again. After his discharge from the hospital, he was behaving well. We sometimes talk by email or meet up at a café, we talked about what were we doing now. He works as a mover and a cleaner as a part-time job. His body has grown quite muscular, looking much healthier than when I first saw him. He saved a small amount of cash, and rented a small old house, the environment is quiet and nice. He had brought some art tools and started to draw. He told me that he wanted to become a painter. He still didn’t talk much but I am happy that he found his goal in life. He said he never blamed his parents for what they had done to him but he never once visited his parents after he was discharged. After we confirmed that he wasn’t any threat to society, we finished our observations on him.

==

In the year 2003, October, there were a few missing persons cases. Judy George, and Maggie Wang, both aged 24 were a few of the victims who were missing. These cases were very popular at that time, but I didn’t really care.

(A User posted this photo on a social network, he said his CCTV recorded this picture on 31/10/2003, at 2:30 am and stated that “someone tried to break in my neighbour's house.)

(There is a human figure behind the masked man, he/she seems like fainted.)

The police have no clue on who is responsible for these cases, they thought it was some guilty pleasure freak behind them. (Note: There was no specific motive. It just seemed this was all done for some sick satisfaction, making him harder to track down)

Until the police found out the victims were all in the same class with Helen Otis, before he entered the hospital, as well as the survivors from the gruesome case from a few years ago. The police decided to investigate his home. When I saw the news, I felt my heart skip a beat. I tried to contact him as well but to no avail.but to no avail. Something bad was going to happen. I sat in front of my TV. My mind jammed like glue, I can’t think of anything, or do anything. “God no, please no.” Echoed in my mind. (Helen Otis‘s old house is now under police investigation.)

On the 17th of November, the night was dead quiet, that place was silent, which made his house in the middle of a field look more eerie. The police broke the lock on the door and opened it slowly. A rotten stench greeted the intruders from the darkness of the house.

One of the policemen shown a torch through the home. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a piece of furniture in the entire structure. Apparently no one had lived there for quite some time. They moved inside quietly to check the source of the smell. Suddenly, one of the policemen felt something brush against his shoulder, when he pointed his torch up, he saw something that scarred his mind. An upside-down human with a twisted face was eying the police. The corpse's neck has been ripped wide open. The policeman freaked out and called out to the others as he scanned the rest of the house with his torch. The house was full of such corpses, like a butcher's shop.

(Judy George, Age 24 ) [lost image file]

Every single body’s flesh was a drawing canvas, the writing on top of it was the process of killing the victims. One of the body’s jaws had gotten ripped away brutally. All the “paint” on the canvas was brown, this was proven later to be the victim's’ blood after analysis, turning brown because of the oxidation. There was a total of 5 bodies in this house, including Judy and Maggie. The other three were the ones who gave witness about the murder case involving Helen to the policemen a few years ago. This home seemed to be more like a gruesome art gallery of victims than a butcher's. All of the bodies and canvases were facing the entrance, as if they were greeting the ones who enter this place. The police couldn’t figure out the intention of the murderer other than him making a cruel joke. I fell into despair I’d never felt before, I really hope that he was not the one who did all this. After the news was published, neither can I eat nor sleep normally. My health was sliding downhill, my sanity escaping. Can anything can be WORSE than this? I really want to go back in time and punch myself.

(Newspaper of 18th November 2003)

Next day after the news was released, I received a call from the police and they asked me about the murderer. They received Helen Otis’ patient file from me. I told them everything I knew about him. The police took note that I was not well. I told them that I was terribly shaken by the Discovery of Helen Otis. I told them that Helen is really a good person. He was just walking down the wrong path, I THOUGHT I had stopped him from going astray. The police found a letter at the crime scene. They asked me to stay calm. The letter was written for me. I asked to receive the copy of the letter from the police. They complied, and then they left. I stared at the letter, thinking of whether to read it or not. I was on the verge of a breakdown, but I felt something in the letter could salvage me. As I sat back in my couch, I don’t know how long I was I staring at the letter in my hands. Then I slowly opened it and began to read…

“Dear doctor, I finally remember what happened that night after I looked at my mask. That night 7 years ago, the day before Halloween, I kept fidgeting on my bed, unable to sleep. All of the things that happened to me stung my mind like needles, that time I thought to myself, I had to do something about it! Then it happened… I threw a turned on hair dryer into the public bathtub, there were lot of people present. I remembered I used a simple fork to dig someone’s eyes out, I remembered I ripped someone's head from his neck, I attacked everyone who lived in the student dorm… I can’t fully remember all the details, I just did what my mind told me to. When no one was screaming or struggling anymore, peace fell upon me, a peaceful feeling I never felt before. I fell to my well-deserved slumber, on a pile of bloody bodies. When I opened my eyes again, I saw you, doc. You said that the reason I am here was because I am sick. Well, I must pretty ill for now but I never felt so peaceful in my life. Maybe, I am better off to be sick like this. You told me that next time we meet is on the electric chair. What if it was the other way round? You must know that I have got my own way to meet you in person. See you soon. : ) “

When I finished his letter, my mind went completely blank. What the hell was he trying to say? His last words sent a chill down my spine, I felt like a prey to him, I became one of his targets to hunt down. Wait, no. Maybe when he was still in the hospital, I was already a prey to him, maybe he longed for this day to come. God knows what was going on in his head. He never showed his emotion, even though I am his doctor. I could never truly understand what kind of a person he was. I even thought of him as a friend. Hell, I even said he was my own child! Everything we went through was just a lie? Why am I so fucking dumb that I forgot the rules of the hospital? They won’t send any sane person into that fucking place! The police won’t be on patrol at this time. My life is like an unstable time bomb, until the day he gets arrested, I will never know what he will do, my chance of getting killed by him will stay the same.

I don’t know when the worst scenario will happen to me, so I wrote it down, at least I won’t die without letting others know what happened, that’s what I think. I live alone and it's bad. I began to be paranoid about my environment, even little things made me jump. Before any of this happened, he used to be the most harmless patient I ever met with but now, he can kill me any second he wanted to, i'm like helpless prey. This is what I get from ignoring the fact that he is a criminal, and tried to save him myself. This is not a lost teen who walked the wrong path in his life, this is actually a real life criminal! And here I am, staring at what he is really capable of. Maybe his stable behaviour was all nothing but an act. The moment that I felt happy for his “recovery” was only for me. I don’t know how to face him anymore, I don’t know what was going to happen next. I truly hope everything will be okay soon. . . . . . . I just heard my house’s door open.

(This article was written in Dr. Elmer Christopher’s notebook in the drawer, there were some old newspaper articles attached with it. He already moved out of this house when the new house owner had found this and posted it online.)

==========

[emeraldhypothesis]

for the ask meme: jack atlas!

Oh Jack's a good one. This now means I got half the rivals done in day 1, yay me!

Why I like them/why I don’t

Jack to me is the writers fully realizing how they want to handle the Kaiba Rival archetype as a singular character. If Edo, Manjoume and Ryo were all a shared trial run across GX, Jack is the finished prototype. He's one of the few rivals I think is fully allowed to embrace how Kaiba wasn't just an antagonist, he was an actively malicious person when we meet him in the manga, willing to do anything for power and glory. Jack in contrast to the GX Rivals, is allowed to be like that, which especially stands out after Manjoume was just a school bully. He steals Yusei's ace, straps Rally to a boat and betrays all of his friends to get out of the Satellite and escape his past, and it doesn't really eat at him that he did this until Yusei reappears and makes him face his sins by stripping his mantle of King away from him in front of the whole city.

I love his arc especially after Carly basically beats him over the head to be a better person, which has notable effects on how Jack talks to people afterwards and pays off with him trying to save her in turn when she's a Dark Signer. It gives Jack a really profound arc that visibly moves him and changes his perspective on why he fights, allowing him to fight Godwin with Yusei and Crow not just as allies, but as reforged friends.

And then he's made very silly and that's when Jack becomes the best character in the entire fucking show. No joke, I love how Jack is made a silly idiot in the fluff episodes, it really expands his character and helps make a lot of the domestic slice of life stuff land. (maybe that's what Arc-V Jack was missing)

What I like about their appearance

I love that his riding suit is much more sophisticated and sleek than Yusei and Crow's gear. I read once that an analysis of Jack's clothes indicates that Neo Domino racer suits were made to more resemble F1 racers and their suits, while Satelite characters like Crow and Yusei more resemble traditional bike racer gear with the bigger emphasis on leather and crash pads.

I love his stupid bike too, that you wouldn't be able to see out of unless you were a madman like Jack.

Do I prefer their dub names or original names?

Same in both languages. Performance wise, I think I'd have to give it to the Japanese, but Ted Lewis does great as Jack- incomprehensible accent and all, and he's very charming in the role, but holy crap Takanori Hoshino leaves no crumbs in his wake. He gives Jack the full emotional range across his arc, and his "ORE NO TUUUUUUUURN" cry is always legendary.

OTP

It's Scoop. Come on, no contest here, they're basically as canon as this franchise can let them be by the time of Dark Signers. They're very adorable together and I do wish Carly got to be more involved in Jack's slice of life episodes because seeing them contrast would have been everything.

NOTP

Don't really have one.

OT3

Even if I don't think a lot of Jack and Crow's chemistry beyond them being the team's comic relief, I think that the boys all live together in a single shared living space for the entire second half of the show writes the doujins for me.

Favourite card they use

RDA would be cheating (shoutout to Scarlight though, I have a Royal of that in Master DUel), so I'll just say Vision Resonator is very cute.

Favourite moment they were in

It's really gotta be either Jack fighting Dark Signer Carly, or him facing the Crimson Devil to seize the power of Red Nova Dragon for himself. I'm also fond of him blowing up the garage that one time and his job-hunting montage. Jack in general benefits the most I think from the slice of life episodes post-Dark Signers.

Least favourite moment

Did we really need Jack to duel Yuya again near the end of Arc-V? It's not even like Jack gets a Level 12 Synchro out of it or anything to show his own journey. I'm a bit colder on Arc-V Jack.

Would I fuck, marry or kill them

Carly tired killing him, it didn't stick, and then I like to imagine she put a ring on it as a result, so he's unfortunately spoken for.

[doubleddenden]

Oh God kill me. Gen 8's mcs and rivals will have to be separated to 2 posts because there's that many official outfits and rivals. This post is dedicated strictly to Victor and Gloria, I guess.

Okay, so visible ankles automatically subtracts three points, I fucking hate it. In the game, too, you are SOL in finding full length pants until Peony is kind enough to loan you some sweatpants in the Crown Tundra dlc, so I had to get and pair the standard pants with gym trainer/challenger shoes, which at least fixed the issue by covering it.

Outside of that glaring issue imo, Victor is just... he doesn't feel like a Pokemon protagonist at all from his vanilla design. Honestly he reads more like a side character or assistant. I guess the shirt is kinda neat and great for finally giving boys a break from blue, but otherwise this is peak hipster garbage fire in terms of fashion. An oversized and not pulled down beanie, distressed skinny jeans that don't even cover the ankle and have a plaid design in the pockets, hipster shoes not fit for exploring anything beyond the untamed wilds of the local library, and a suitcase bag- honestly that's probably the most impractical bag to carry around in the entire series, yet it's also the most realistic for all the shit inside. Still, this is 10 for 10 on pathetic white guy getting Starbucks and trying to look fashionable while being too nervous to talk to the cashier, all that's missing are gauged out earlobes and a shit twirled mustache. This asshole gets a 5. I don't like it and he just looks too generic. At least the customization is pretty good in SwSh (and subsequently removed for no reason except to cut more corners).

OY I'LL BASH YE FOCKIN 'EAD IN, I SWEAR ON ME MUM. God I miss angry Scottish Gloria memes. They at least gave her some semblance of personality, unlike Victor, who reads as the stereotypical safe British boy girls fantasize about (they don't exist).

Gloria is a cute design, definitely a cozy one and a bit more practical compared to Victor. She comes across as a teen that put together a cute outfit using a mix of clothes from her grandparents or something, and honestly other than the hat, this is an outfit I'd probably see in fall, maybe with leggings though, and honestly oversized shirts and jackets just looks cozy on any girl- it makes me think of my nieces wearing my hoodies. It's a certainly a unique design among FemCs. Of course, the girls have way better options for character customization, including FULL LENGTH PANTS, and pretty much have access to most clothes and hair styles the guys do if I remember correctly. Not the reverse tho. Tomboys are fine, but gamefreak draws the LINE at femboys (this time, weirdly enough, when it's usually hard NOT to make one). 8/10, I've definitely made a few OCs using the femc.

No. 1/10. Wait. I like the shoes. 3/10. SwSh fails on a lot of levels, and one of those is just how STUPID they make the players look in our gym challenge uniform. I don't care if it's based on British sports, make better uniforms or fuck off and let me dress how I want. Victor especially just looks way too generic for his own good. If you paired this with Inteleon, you'd literally make the best still image case for the decline of design in the franchise- thankfully there are better designs in the sane gen.

The gym uniform looks slightly better on Gloria, mainly because they changed it slightly to be more leggy and gave her a nice pose. Still not a fan of them, but at least Gloria can kinda make it work. 6/10

Finally, something interesting for Victor. The Isle of Armor uniform is a bit of a cultural mashup of generic sport sweats and a martial arts uniform, which is fitting for the setting. I've said it before, but the SwSh DLC saved the game just barely imo, and this is one of the reasons. I do like the manbun, it's at least different from the generic slop Victor normally calls hair, and the colors are just incredibly well paired. I personally replaced the shorts with pants in my playthrough, and it was basically perfect for a training arc. What irks me most I reckon are the shoes, which doesn't really vibe with either west or east training arc inspirations imo. I think a perfect version of this uniform would have something kind of like an End of Z, GT, or Xeno Goku look with longer pants, yellow leg wrappings, and black shoes, and maybe pocket the gloves. A sleeveless option would've also been cool. As it is now, though, it's a nice 7/10 on Victor.

And of course, Gloria just rocks the uniform way better. The only real difference is the hair and shorter shorts (they're so short you can see the safety shorts underneath), but the uniform looks way better on the girls in the dojo for a design stand point, and that hair is just too cute. I'm noticing that whoever is drawing Gloria is focusing a lot on her legs and poses vs Victor, so it's kind of clear who is an office favorite imo. 9/10 tbh, it's a good look.

These two are together for the Crown Tundra look because it's literally the same outfit with little to no changes. There are 11 pockets on those uniforms, maybe 13 if there's rear pockets. That is kind of impressive, where tf did Peony find these? The colors leave a bit to be desired and I wish we had options to recolor the clothes and boots, especially the boots, because they'd be perfect in a black and white color with other pants. But the outfit does also come in gold for some reason and both can be mixed and matched with other clothes while covering ankle.

It's a practical look for exploring somewhere cold. 8/10.

As blank slates, Gloria is pretty decent imo, but both are pretty set designs that lack the same range as some protagonists. Nobody is mistaking these guys for anything older than 15 at the latest imo, maybe 11 at the earliest. It's a little better than SM in that regard with its firm 11 shtick, but you're definitely still asking mom to drive you to soccer practice. 6/10, Gloria on the higher end, Victor dragging down on the lower end.

Next, the swsh rivals

[self-indulgent-paw-patrol]

You know something I don't see anyone talking about? In the climax of the Mighty Movie, when the giant meteor is coming down, Ryder's response is to tell Skye to save herself, that meteor probably would've destroyed all of Adventure City and maybe even beyond, and there's no telling if they were able to evacuate the whole city by that point, I doubt it, Ryder was willing to let a whole city get destroyed and potentially a bunch of citizens get killed all for the sake of his pup, just goes to show how much Ryder cares for the pups, cause when it comes down to it, he'd choose them over a whole city

Dude THAT SCENE FROM THE MIGHTY MOVIE HAS SO MUCH TO UNPACK I WANNA SCREAM EVERY TIME I REWATCH IT

Also as much as that might sound weird because "he would sacrifice the city for his pups" (it DOES sound terrible), THAT WAS PROBABLY THE HARDEST DECISION EVER IN RYDER'S LIFE SO FAR and I'm gonna explain now why I'll always defend this boy with my life

Under the cut bc it gets long and I'll be talking details about a still kinda recent movie and I know some people who didn't get to watch it yet XD

First, YEAH, they were NOT able to evacuate the city on time. There were still a lot of people on the streets, including the very Paw Patrol team. Just like in the beginning when the first meteor came down and when they needed to secure a landing path for the plane, we see they first make sure the streets are empty before they look for shelter themselves. Same thing happened in the first movie, remember? During the storm, they secured the streets around the skyscrapers first, and only then the pups went for shelter in the building as well. This time, though? There was just not enough time for that. It wasn't about emptying a whole avenue or a few blocks, that giant fucker was going to obliterate AT LEAST HALF THE CITY.

Man, Victoria was indeed crazy. Just where the fuck was she planning to have that shit land as she pulled it down to Earth???

Which brings up another point...

The Paw Patrol was still there too and none of them had a crystal to power up and use their powers to escape. All crystals had been handed over to Skye just a few minutes before.

DO YOU GET WHAT THAT MEANS???

Ryder knew that was it. If Skye wouldn't be able to stop that giant meteor, they were all going to die.

Skye could die trying to stop that meteor.

If she would be successful and save everyone, she could still die while at it.

If she failed, she would die along with everyone else.

Ryder refused to let her sacrifice herself like that, even if there was a chance to save everyone, the risks were just too high. The biggest chance was that they would ALL die there- so if there was one way to save at least ONE of them, he was going to take it.

As much as the franchise relies on crazy and surreal odds (Dinosaurs? Merpups? I think Dragons too, I didn't get there yet? We can just keep going lol), Ryder is still a realistic kind of person. He's a dreamer, sure, but he's also realistic. He's a science kid. He knows the numbers, he calculates odds very quickly, he analyzes every situation faster than you can think so he can choose the best course of action and instruct his pups on where to go and what to do.

The best case scenario there? It was to ensure at least Skye would survive. She had the crystals, she was already out there in the air, all she needed to do was to get out of the way and fly far to stay out of the impact shockwave. No biggie. Anything else, any other idea to try and save the other pups, it would take too long and they wouldn't get away in time, and it would only bring Skye to die as well. Skye wouldn't be fast enough to fly all the way back to redistribute the crystals. She would get there, but then they wouldn't have enough time to run or hide, only Chase would be fast enough to get away and he wouldn't be willing to run and leave everyone else behind.

And there's also the fact that Ryder always puts his pups' safety and well being above his own too. He will make sure they're safe and sound in any given situation before beginning to consider about his own safety. It's his main duty to make sure they'll be okay. They're his responsibility.

And if even just one of his pups would be left behind to die, he wouldn't go either. Even if that meant letting the city get destroyed and taking several other people with them in the process.

The world be damned, his pups are well trained and always putting themselves at risk for the people, but when it comes down to it, their lives will always come first for this kid. And if one stays behind, he's staying too.

On a last note, I don't remember how it is in the English dub right now, but in the Brazilian dub his voice CRACKS SO HARD when he's telling Skye to save herself. He sounds SO DESPERATE and, and, like, he's trying so damn hard to keep his shit together, to get his point across and he knows they have zero chance of escape and survival, he knows these might be his last words to her, IT HURTS SO FUCKING MUCH--!!!!

[lunatic-pudge]

Duke Nukem General (and Relationship) Headcanons

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey, gang, I'm deviating from Postal and TF2 for a sec and giving a little bit of attention to Duke Nukem. Seeing so much Dude x Duke fanart has started to make me grow a thing for Duke. I'm still learning about the franchise and the character so my interpretation of him might be a little OOC. These are general headcanons and some relationship stuff. Gott work on my Duke Nukem skills. If you enjoy these and want more, feel free to hit up my comments (or ask box) and I'll gladly deliver. And, as always, I'm dutifully working on my Postal and TF2 requests. I'm gonna have some posted before the month is over. And if you wanna request Postal or TF2 stuff, you are always more than welcome to! I enjoy getting asks. :D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Duke is such a goofy guy to me. This macho guy that' jacked, kills aliens, saves the world, and is "totally straight". Yeah, I'm starting this off by saying that I aggressively refuse to believe that this man is only into women. This man is RADIATING pansexual energy. Originally, I was gonna say he's bi, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he really wouldn't care about gender.

-But that also extends to, he does not understand these things. The type of person to be like, "What's a nonbinary?" and even when you explain it to him, he still doesn't really get it but goes along with it. (This might also just be me craving himbo Duke) He's the hero we need in these bleak times, frfr

-He's such an interesting guy. Like Dude, Duke has a very extensive knowledge on weapons, even alien weaponry, and is very adaptable when switching weapons out. Even though this man is a himbo to me, he's way more smarter than what you'd expect. Having military knowledge and even knowing about differing types of aliens (and how to kill them obviously). Sometimes it's scary with how much he knows about these things

-Autism be damned, my boy knows how to work a grill. It's a shocker that this man is actually talented in the culinary department. It's impressive. Duke can make even the nastiest of things edible. If you have food allergies or sensitivities, it'll take a bit for him but he'll learns to cater to your dietary needs. He's very big on spicy and savory foods. Not really a sweets person. Tending to avoid sweets and only having them as a rare treat (he's got a physique to hold up here). He's not someone who's gonna tell you what foods you need to eat but will encourage you to stay on a more healthier diet. He's very health conscious

-Very big on working out and staying in shape. He would like it of you joined in with him on it but is understandable if you are unable to. I can also see him just flat out using you as a weight. Doesn't matter what your size is, you WILL be picked up by him.

-His love language is definitely physical touch and gift giving. Man is loaded with cash and won't hesitate to spoil you. Taking you out on lavish dates and getting you anything that little heart of yours desires. He also loves having you cuddled up in his side. Duke's a big guy, if you ask, he will carry you around. And since he's very into physical affection, expect some PDA from this guy as well. He'll usually have an arm wrapped around your waist and won't hesitate to give you a big ol' smooch or even a hug.

-Again, Duke is a goofy guy, he's always finding ways to tease you or to get you to laugh. He's a good guy with a good heart. He wants what's best for you and can be rather overprotective at times. He doesn't like people trying to hit on his partner. He know he has nothing to worry about, just finds it annoying that someone thinks they can take you away from him. Good luck trying to keep him from kicking some ass though. He can be hard to convince to turn the other cheek and ignore the offender