#if things were worse I could have been disabled instead of injured with an assumption of recovery

[tourmelion]

Yeah

People can still deserve to be taken out of the equation

Without heat or emotion, some people are just generally dangerous and should be gotten rid of if no other avenues are available

Just, logically the damage they do is too much to be able to justify keeping them alive just to have them commit acts of intense cruelty

That being said, we can never be too sure we got the right mark, jail can be reversed upon finding that person was innocent

Death cannot be

Only when other options are unavailable is it justifiable to use deadly force against a dangerous individual

When Indian police officers took the gloves off and started using deadly force against terrorists when they were also shooting at the police when they attempted to arrest them, those officers sustained less casualties and was able to neutralize the threat

( cops are still corrupt but it is still bad when they die cause they aren't empowered to use more force against armed nut jobs )

Killing someone who was attempting to kill you or severely maim/r*pe you is self defense, that's justifiable cause you can't justify the cost of them not being fought against and there aren't really other options

Of course there's always a worry of people taking advantage of these circumstances ( they do it anyway, it's just normal murder, which is when we rely on the law to find out whether it was in defense or not )

But the base morality still stands, sometimes it's just not practical, it's not pretty by any means, and it shouldn't devolve to that choice in our society, but it can, and people shouldn't overthink and make themselves miserable when fighting off the generally dangerous to save their own lives and skin and the lives and skin of others

Border control needed to kill back when a group of soldiers broke into their side of the border and started killing

When no one will stop the child rapist or murderer you have to defend yourself and the people around you

Reason can dictate it's the best option

And true that people do unjustly kill just for their own sick pleasure, but they hardly are willing to stop just cause reasonable people won't

If you've been in a situation where such extreme action feels like the only way out and you're pushed to it to save yourself or those around you don't let it burn you up inside, the action is inherently dark and upsetting but you had reasons to

My family are survivors from a genocide, they shouldn't feel bad for taking down a terrorist, or someone coming around to kidnap their daughters or any person they felt like snatching

Intense times can call for intense measures, in situations like that don't let yourself be handicapped

Don't make yourself completely powerless if you know you can do something

When the law fails you or cannot intervene don't get caught up in the titles and visuals of the matter

Think about why you did it, fall back on that and let that calm the issue, it's important to question and reflect, and to recognize if you did the wrong thing, but do that with reason, don't just hate yourself cause you were pushed that far

If you were raised or got caught up in a gang and had to to live, if you wanted to kill the guy who killed your family or friends, if you did it to help a person escape from trafficking or you were trafficked and that was the only way out or to get justice, if someone tortured you for fun and you couldn't call for help

Fall back on the reason why, get peace from you attempting to pick apart your reasoning and having it stand through it, having you question your reason and being able to answer them, being able to genuinely justify it cause you do ask yourself and you can make a response, one that you can pick apart and bring to it's end, to it's logical conclusion

Being able to wade through all the mess with reason, questioning, picking apart, so you can get closer to the truth, to find the truth

Don't just get disheartened and upset with yourself just because of a surface level title slapped onto what was done

Your truths are more nuanced than that and deserve to be met with proper consideration

All of ours are

Btw

Some of my tags outline my experiences

They are kinda disturbing

Outlining my poor treatment a little

Read at your own risk

I'm fine-ish now though so don't worry

I'll be alright

re: that last post, ive said it before and ill say it again: no one deserves to die (deserving is fake and death is bad) but some people need to be stopped and choose to make death the only way to stop them

[oumakokichi]

I can't remember if you got to this yet, since there's been a lot of posts clearing up chapter 4's false rumors- but what was the motive behind chapter 5? Some people claim it was to make sure Maki didn't get the blame but I figured you'd be able to explain it better if that was/wasn't the case

I’m so sorry for taking so long to answer these! Chapter 5has taken me the longest to go through sentence by sentence in the trial,partly because of time constraints and partly because I want to make sure I getabsolutely everything right that I can. And I’m planning on actually doing sometranscriptions soon! It’s going to take some time considering the amount ofwork involved, but I’m definitely planning on doing a transcription andtranslation of Momota’s flashback about his collaboration with Ouma in Chapter5.

In any case, I’m going to make this a “Chapter 5 Masterpost”of sorts and try to explain most of what happens from the point where Makiactually tried to put her plan into action, and then go from there and explainOuma’s plan and motive, his and Momota’s collaboration, and things about theChapter 5 trial in general. This will probably get very long, so I’m sorry inadvance. Usual warnings about spoilers apply for under the read more!

So, I’ve discussed it a bit before, but as we all know, Makigoes to try and kill Ouma in Chapter 5. She was already furious with him foressentially keeping Momota as a hostage inside the machinery bay, but afterusing Tsumugi’s fake remember light and “remembering” that Ouma is actually “Junko’ssuccessor” and the “leader of the despair cult,” she fully makes up her mind tojust flat-out eliminate him, no questions asked.

While the rest of the group was planning on launchingfull-scale break-in to the machinery bay and rescuing Momota so they could “talkOuma down” and basically have a big trial with him as the mastermind the sameway the dr1 characters had with Junko in dr1 Chapter 6, Maki outwardly agreedto go along with their plan, promised them she would not try to go doinganything on her own or kill Ouma since the rest of them were decidedly againstkilling him—and then she goes and tries to do exactly that. She’s an assassin,and it’s in her nature, and I have no doubt that’s exactly what Tsumugi washoping for from Maki in particular when she set that remember light there totry and spark the killing game back up again.

The night before they were going to put their plan to rescueMomota into action, Maki took her electric hammer (one of the ones that Oumahad given the group at large to incapacitate electric devices), in order todisable one of the Exisals and climb in and pilot it (turns out they canabsolutely be piloted by people who aren’t the Monokumerz, as long as you havehandy dandy Miu Iruma technology). This was how she got through the electricbarrier guarding the shutter to the machinery bay, because the Exisalsthemselves are immune to the security measures guarding them usually in thebay.

She also brought a crossbow and two arrows from her own lab,and had coated the arrows with a slow-acting poison from Saihara’s lab. Sheconfirms in the trial that she absolutely wanted to kill Ouma from the start;she only chose a slow-acting poison rather than one that would kill instantlybecause she wanted to torture him for information about being the “leader ofdespair” first. Therefore, the first arrow was for torture, and the second wasto actually finish off the job.

However, when she entered the machinery bay, that’s whenthings get complicated, because there was already a stand-off going on betweenMomota and Ouma.

Ouma had kept Momota as a hostage ever since earlier on inChapter 5, where Momota started running towards the Exisals in an attempt totake them down with his electric hammer after Ouma let the group see the “secretof the outside world” for themselves and then took credit for being the “mastermindbehind the entire killing game.” He didn’t even hurt Momota or torment him infront of the group or anything like that—he literally just used the Exisal topick him up, then kept him in the machinery bay with him in order to keep himisolated from the group and from riling the rest of them up. Basically, it wasa move to cool his head, but from Momota’s and everyone else’s perspective, itseemed as if Ouma was taking him hostage in order to hold him over their headsand show that he could “kill him at any moment if he wanted.”

Momota, as it turns out, had been getting tired of beingkept in the machinery bay, and after hearing from Saihara the afternoon beforethe rescue plan that all the others were working hard for his sake, he decidedto try and do something about his situation himself. Himiko came to visit himand check in on him just a little while after Saihara, and Momota asked her tobring him a crossbow and a single arrow over from Maki’s lab, because Makiherself had showed him how to assemble one earlier in the game. He wanted touse a normal crossbow arrow just to intimidate/injure Ouma and try to make anescape attempt if possible. Himiko agreed, naturally, and said she wouldn’thave agreed had his plan been to kill Ouma instead of hurting him, and Kiibohappened to witness her carrying the crossbow case over later that same night.

So when Maki busts in through the shutter riding the Exisal,the stand-off is already happening, Ouma’s already been shot in the armnon-lethally, and the two of them were right in the midst of having a scuffle.Maki entering the scene upset things drastically, and even Ouma was completelybewildered and caught off guard by the situation going from bad to drastically, horribly worse, and thatleft Maki with enough time to get out of the Exisal before he could use hisremote that controls the Exisals (built by Miu during their earlier collaboration,of course) and shoot him in the back with one of her poisoned arrows.

This was the start of the end, so to speak, because it wasthe moment at which Ouma’s death was set in stone and it’s also the moment thatallowed for the entire killing game to start back up. Maki tries to interrogatehim about why, if he was the mastermind and also the leader of the despaircult, he would call the game off in the first place, but naturally since Oumawasn’t around to use the remember light that Tsumugi planted, he doesn’t knowabout Tsumugi’s grand plan to make him into Junko 2.0, or that he’s “supposed”to be a despair cult leader, so really he’s just bewildered and disgusted that Maki would have such aninstinctive urge and taste for killing that she would go this far to start thegame up again. He did everything in Chapter 5 for the sake of trying toliterally force the game to a complete halt, so to him, it just seems as ifMaki must really, honestly like killing this much from the bottom of her heart.

Maki gets tired of not getting a response out of him andtries to shoot him with the second arrow in the face in order to just kill himdirectly, but this is where Momota interferes, not really for Ouma’s sake somuch as because he just really, really doesn’t want Maki to go back to killingpeople like she used to have to do. He gets shot in the arm, and Maki freaksout instantly and runs out of the machinery bay to go fetch an antidote fromSaihara’s lab before she even registers that maybe she should have planned alittle better.

This is where things get really incredible, because it is atthe exact instant that Maki runs out of the bay that Ouma actually manages tocome up with a plan, quite literally on the spot, that can turn the situationaround and strike back at the mastermind, rather than just letting this becomea normal case like in any other killing game. He dives for the remote, closesthe shutter, and locks Maki out before she can come back, forcing her to comeover to the bathroom window at the side of the machinery bay in her attempt toget Momota the antidote.

Momota takes it from her, but before he can drink it, Oumasucker-punches him, takes it for himself, and pretends to drink it, thus tricking Maki into thinking there’s nomore antidote (because she only brought enough for one person and apparentlythere just wasn’t any more in Saihara’s lab, because…plot reasons) and thatMomota is going to die as a result of her own actions. She’s furious,naturally, and tries breaking the panel that controls the electric barrier infront of the shutter, but it doesn’t work, and she can’t use her electrichammer anymore because it’s already out of charge. Left with no other choice,she has to leave the area and decides to come back for the group plan in themorning to finish off the job and kill Ouma herself.

The moment she’s gone from thewindow is the moment at which Ouma puts the full brunt of his plan into action.He uses one of the electric bombs made by Miu to disrupt all the electronics inthe nearby vicinity, including the security cameras which Monokuma and themastermind use to monitor each and every case. Then he has Momota drink the antidote,and proceeds to think and explain his assoff and asks him to help with his plan to end the killing game once and forall.

The bomb only works for about twohours, and literally everything is pointless if he dies from Maki’s poison, sohe has to go fast: he wants to end the killing game, he never was themastermind, he only pretended in order to try and figure out the identity ofthe true mastermind, and also he’s certain that if he can manage to create acase in which no one, not even Monokuma, knows the identity of the victim orculprit, or even the official cause of death, he’ll disrupt the game becauseevery game has to have rules. And he’s also sure that because Monokuma has beenmentioning a set of rules that he has to follow, it means that the game isdefinitely being broadcast “to someone.” This confirms, just like in Chapter 3,that Ouma has been going on with the assumption that the entire game was abroadcast from the start, and also that he wants to send a major “fuck you” toboth mastermind and audience alike.

After hearing this much, Momotawas not opposed to going along with Ouma’s plan, moreso considering Ouma hadliterally saved his life. He only falters and objects when he realizes the planactually requires him killing Ouma, saying he doesn’t want to be a murderer.And Ouma planned this far ahead of course, because he knows pretty well by nowMomota’s not the type of person to want to kill someone else, but he explainspoint-blank that that is the kind of situation they’re in, and if Momota doesn’tgo along with his plan, that’s fine, but also he’s going to die of the poison,and Maki will be put on trial andexecuted as the culprit.

People seem to have misunderstoodthat this was some kind of “blackmail” attempt by Ouma, but in all honesty, it’snot. It really is just the way things are, because no matter what happened,there either wasn’t enough antidote for two people in the first place in Saihara’slab, or Maki really just was that against letting Ouma live, and her entireplan had been about killing Ouma. She would have been put on trial andexecuted, and it’s something that came about as a result of her actions, notOuma baiting her into it.

He wasn’t blackmailing Momotainto going along with his plan, but giving him all the facts, plain and simple:Momota could either go along with his plan, help take a shot back at the realmastermind and put an end to the killing game for good, and dirty his own handsby killing Ouma, or he could just wait until Ouma died of the poison which wasbound to happen, and Maki would die instead.

So while I wouldn’t say “savingMaki” was Ouma’s true objective here—it was much more about confronting themastermind who had engineered this whole development—it was a matter of mutualinterest. Ouma wasn’t obligated to care about Maki as a person at all after theattempt she made on his life and the fact that she literally blew apart hiswhole plan to force the killing game to an end, but I still do think that herlife did matter to him on some level. In Chapter 4, he already had to sacrificeothers in order to stay alive, and hated every minute of it; by Chapter 5, hewas tired of it, and he clearly valued other human lives, even Maki’s, morethan his own, and made a plan which only required himself (who was already deadeither way from the poison) and Momota (who was also already dead either way).

Of course, I’ve explained inother posts that at any point in time, Ouma could have averted all of this bydrinking the antidote for himself and holing up in one of the Exisals to keephimself safe from Maki at the school trial. It would literally have been apiece of cake to let Momota die, have Maki get executed, and then wait untillater to actually confront the mastermind directly in yet another grand schemeor plan. His entire plan in Chapter 5 was something he was literally able tocome up with on the spot. Even for people who don’t like Ouma as a person, Idon’t think anyone can deny that hewas a genius, and that his level of foresight and planning and his ability toread people meant that he could have come up with any kind of plan he wantedonce Maki was out of his way.

If he were half the villain thathe or even the fanbase makes him out to be, he would have said morals be damned,and thrown Maki and Momota under the bus from the start. But instead hedeveloped an entire plan which started taking form in his brain the moment Makiran out of the machinery bay, and put it into action in the span of less thantwo hours.

He and Momota collaborated to thepoint of Ouma planning every single possible deviation or outcome that wouldoccur at the trial; he told Momota to hole up inside one of the Exisals, usethat to protect himself from Maki and from Monokuma, and literally wrote a scriptfor him to use that was probably the size of telephone book. Ouma had such an incredible grasp on the likelyreactions and responses from each and every single one of his classmates thathe could plan that far ahead, and allof this was in a plan he was literally coming up with on the spot. Again, he’s just…a genius, really. As a human being hedoes horrible, questionable things sometimes, but I really don’t think anyoneshould deny that he was brilliant asa strategist.

We can’t ever know for sure whathis last thoughts were before the press fell, but we do know that by the timeit happened, Ouma was in pain, nearly dead from poisoning, and unable to evenwalk or stand without leaning on something for assistance. He was probablymiserable and bitter about the fact that he had to go with this as a plan,after all the work he had put into trying to stop the game in its entirety, buthe was still fighting. The press wasnecessary to obscuring his identity and whether or not the final killing blowwas poison or crushing, so he knew he needed it—but I will say that in theclimax reasoning at least, he did seem very…scared by the inevitable blow. EvenOuma is only human, and death itself is a terrifying, unknowable thing. So Ithink it’s safe to assume he was probably scared, but still didn’t let thatstop him.

Before going through the entireChapter 5 trial piece by piece, I was under the mistaken impression that theExisal’s presence was something Monokuma had a hand in in order to stall fortime, but it’s clear now that Monokuma clearly only let the Exisal in because:a.) he had to have a culprit, and he assumed whoever was alive in the Exisal,whether it was Ouma or Momota, had to be his culprit, and b.) he literallycouldn’t pierce the Exisal or injure whoever was inside, so preventing themfrom entering the courtroom when he eventually wanted to execute them waspointless.

As it turns out, Momota followsOuma’s plan through to a T, ad libs whenever something comes up that eitherwasn’t in Ouma’s script occurs (especially with lines from the other charactersabout Hope’s Peak Academy or “leader of despair” related things), and playsalong to create a situation in which the Exisal is literally Schrodinger’sCatbox, and whether it’s him or Ouma inside is a complete mystery to everyone.But when Saihara realizes that this was their objective all along and tries togo against his previous theories and plays along saying that yes, Ouma isalive, Momota is dead, they shouldn’t vote for Momota in the trial, Momotafinally breaks character and realizes he doesn’t want the group to risk gettingentirely executed on the off-chance that Monokuma might not abide by his ownrules after all.

He and Ouma were relatively surethat Monokuma would follow his own rules and that he wouldn’t be able toexecute the entire group as long as he didn’t know the answer himself, becausebreaking those rules would be devastating to the image of the killing gamebroadcast and not reflect well with the audience or the ratings. But there was,of course, always a possibility that Monokuma would decide to do it anyway, andthat was a risk Momota ultimately didn’t want to take, and so he opens thecatbox and reveals that it was him all along, and goes to his executionbravely, and while asking the others to please find a hint as to the realmastermind and stop the killing game themselves, as they eventually do.

This is long by now so I’ll stop,but I have a very nice question sitting in my inbox about whether Ouma wasleaving hints intentionally for them to solve his “unsolvable” catbox riddle,and I’ll go into more depth with that one at another time, because yes, I thinkOuma realized what Momota realized about Monokuma and the possibility that hemight not follow his own rules long before, and I want to talk about it indetail. But that’s for another time, and in the meantime, I hope this postserves as a much better, much more comprehensive guide about what exactlyhappened in Chapter 5!