#if i ever get back to cosplaying i'm going to hunt for the answer

[nightxaviation]

one thing about toumyu i love is that the wigs continue improving

i was impressed when i first watched OG mihotose that they got to make sengo's hair look like sengo's hair at all

but the way it just got better with each iteration is so good

and i think everyone's wigs improved, most notably in my mind is kogitsunemaru and hachisuka lol

[avaantares]

Wait, Zhao Yunlan's gun is actually a...?!

(I've never claimed production meta for @guardianbingo before, but after the amount of time and research I put in on this, I feel like I've earned the "Zhao Yunlan's Gun or Whip" square, haha)

SO. GUYS.

Maybe this is something fandom as a whole figured out back in 2018, but I, who didn't hear of Guardian until 2020, did not realize until now and I need to share the knowledge because when I finally noticed, I made an unholy sound.

I've tracked down where Zhao Yunlan's gun came from -- or at least, what it most likely started as. Not the in-universe dark-energy-maybe-uses-bullets-maybe-doesn't-device-that's-best-not-thought-about-too-long, but rather the actual fake-steampunk-revolver-that-is-best-not-looked-at-too-long-because-it's-awful prop.

Y'know, this disaster:

I was actually working on a different Guardian Bingo fill and needed to look something up for continuity, so I'd flipped through a couple of episodes at super high speed trying to find a scene. As luck would have it, one of my skips forward happened to land on the scene I screencapped above, when ZYL confronts Zhang Shi.

Normally we don't get this clear (or this stationary) a shot of the godawful gun prop. I'd assumed all along they had just taken a plastic gun, glued some extra bits and bobs on it to make it look fancy, and hit it with some dry brushing (fun fact: you can watch the paint flake throughout the series; check out the top of the barrel and the side of the cylinder in the above screenshot!) to make it look #steampunk like the abandoned aesthetic of 25% of the show (as I've said before, I have theories about what happened in preproduction, but that's another post). This sort of thing is exactly what I've done for cheap cosplay weapons or background props for film work that aren't going to be seen at HD detail range.

Anyway, since the detail showed up better here than in other shots, I paused the video to look at the random screws and hex bolts (why??) they'd glued on it, since I recalled that I had the aforementioned gun/whip bingo square to fill.

That's when I noticed a detail that had eluded me before: An inverted V shape at the bottom of the grip.

Only looking more closely, that's not an inverted V. It's a symbol that I've seen a whole series of variations of over the past 15+ years... every time there's a new installment of the Assassin's Creed video game series:

So I started hunting. The principal weapons in each game turned up no matches, but eventually I found a gun that looks almost exactly like ZYL's:

It's not a perfect replica, but the details are certainly all there: The stylized logo; the leaves and swirls on the grip; the feathers up the back; even the Victorian scrollwork beneath the barrel.

Now, what's really interesting is that this gun isn't actually from the AC game series. It's part of an elaborate fan project by artist David Paget that started as a class assignment back in 2014. Even though it gathered a bit of steam in the AC fandom and generated a couple of forum role-play groups, OCs and the like, nothing about this artwork was ever connected to a real Assassin's Creed title. So why would there be a physical version of a gun that was only someone's fanart?

This is where the smoking gun (*rimshot*) goes missing, because I can't prove any of this, and it's been long enough that digging through the archives of the internet to find answers is going to take way more time than I can afford to spend on a project I'm not getting paid for. But there are two likely possibilities:

Scenario A: Some employee in a toy factory somewhere in China got told, "This Assassin's Creed franchise is really big, so we need to be producing replicas from those games to sell. Work up some designs." So the employee Googles "assassin's creed gun," finds David Paget's very professional-looking art, and whips up a replica to mass-injection-mold without realizing it's not actually from a game. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and finds a cheap toy revolver on clearance after several years of sitting in storage because there was little demand for a replica of a gun that was never in a game. They buy several, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!

Scenario B: Other fans were involved in the design. Someone did build a 3D model of David Paget's design that's still available on Sketchfab (screenshot below), and it's not unreasonable to assume that other fans could have thought it looked cool and built 3D printable models. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and acquires the 3D print file of one of those models from the interwebs. They mod the file a bit, print some, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!

Personally, I find Scenario A far more likely than Scenario B, for two reasons: First, the hero prop looks more injection molded than 3D printed, especially given the technical state of 3D printing back in 2017-8. And second... Budget-challenged dramas do have a history of picking up bulk video game replicas and using them as cheap props. I made a post back in 2019 about the WoW Horde shields we spotted in a different drama...

Anyway, no firm answers about the source of the hero prop -- the world may never know! -- but we have now confirmed that in some alternate universe (possibly one of the first eighty?), Zhao Yunlan and/or Zhao Xinci is an Assassin.

Wait, wait, wait... *recalls mechanics of how the whole Assassin's Creed frame story is supposed to work* Uh... so... who wants to write a genetic memory explanation for the whole Kunlun -> [lots of lifetimes] -> Zhao Yunlan thing?

.

(I did actually check the catalogue of a friend of mine who makes replicas of props from various media franchises to see if he'd done a commission of the David Paget design, since a surprising number of his custom pieces actually do end up on film and television, but while he has a gorgeous replica of a revolver that actually appears in an AC game, it appears he has not done the Zhao Yunlan gun. I didn't really think it likely, since he's in the U.S., but you never know.)

[robotslenderman]

Eavesdrop!

"... weirdest fucking human last night."

"Yeah?"

"So I'm just working, right, but I'm a bit hungry and haven't hunted yet so I go down the street, right, and there's this group of people coming out of this karaoke club. This one human's fiddling with her bag and lets the others go ahead so I'm like, okay, great, I have lunch now. But you know, it's always risky to approach the ones that present as female because -- "

"Yeah, I know, if you breathe on the other side of the road they'll know about it. I usually go for men for the same reason, they think they're safe. In most places anyway, ever tried hunting in the East End in the '60s? Even the men were super jumpy because they were always shanking each other."

"Dude, weren't you Embraced in 1974?"

"Yeah, but my sire told me stories. I was one of those jumpy humans. You could barely set foot outside your door after dark without getting mugged. I wore a turban back then though, so I didn't get bothered much, only by the idiots who didn't know what a kirpan was."

"Anyway. So she sees me approaching, right, and she's on her guard and I'm like, don't worry dude, I'm just a hungry vampire."

"Sullivan. The fuck?"

"It's this thing Evie started doing to fuck with the kine, just to see what they say. She only ever does it around me so I can sigh loudly and Dominate them into forgetting about it afterwards but uh, I also started doing it sometimes just for the lols."

"For the what?"

"Evie says that too, it means for one's own amusement. Can't you actually use a smartphone? How do you not know what that means? You've never been on social media?"

"Weren't you lecturing me about 'spiritual self harm' last week?"

"Shut the fuck up. So anyway, she plays along. A lot of them do. Asks to see my fangs. I show her. Asks me what fucking clan I am."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, she's played fucking Bloodlines. Matthew Dawkins has a lot to answer for, no wonder he's on that fucking Red List."

"Isn't that the alter ego of -- "

"Yeah, that guy. No wonder nobody's been able to bump him off yet. You try telling a Methuselah he can't just fucking violate the Masquerade like that by making a literal fucking game out of it."

"He didn't make it, he just -- "

"No, no, he did, Matthew Dawkins is just his latest cover."

"Oh! Right, I forgot. Feels like it only came out and made the Camarilla shit themselves like... six months ago."

"Bram Stoker, eat your fucking heart out. Anyway the human's pretty excited about how good my 'Lasombra cosplay' is because I'm all in black and the shadows are spooky and shit so I'm like, thinking, right. I'm behind my monthly quota and you know what Amicia's like when I don't hit it."

"So is this, like, the monthly-monthly quota or the monthly quota where she sneakily tries to bump it up, you call her out on her shit, and she brings it back down and doesn't give a fuck you didn't actually hit it so long as you hit the normal one?"

"Oh, it's the former."

"Oh, so you must be in a lot of trouble, then."

"Yeah, so like, I'm still hungry but I've got this human eating out of the palm of my hand and I still need some blood bags. She's not as jumpy now that she knows I'm a cosplaying weirdo instead of a sexual predator weirdo, but I still gotta lure her into the van."

"Yeah, I noticed the graffiti -- "

"Yeah, that wasn't Evie this time, I woke up and it was there. So anyway I decide fuck it, may as well go the whole nine yards, so I'm like 'hey can I steal your blood.'"

"How'd she take that?"

"She corrected me and said it's not stealing if I have her consent. So I'm like, okay, so do I have your consent to steal your blood? And she's like. No. that's not -- actually never mind, how are you going to take it? And I'm like well I have this whole set up in this van here. And she's like the one with 'free candy' written on the side? and I'm like. yeah. the one with 'free candy' written on the side. the kids these days think they're so funny."

"How many times has Evie -- "

"Eighteen, but nine of them were actually hallucinations because she was too lazy to get some more spraypaint so I don't think it counts. But like I said it wasn't Evie this time. So anyway, that graffiti ended up saving my ass here because I'm sure she'd have run screaming if it was a normal creepy van but because someone 'lampshaded the creepiness,' as she said, she hung around instead. I showed her my setup. She was like 'cool, sure, go ahead.'"

"She wasn't worried you'd chloroform her after?"

"Pretty sure she was going along with this for the lols. She seemed to think I was harmless. Or at least, she gave off the impression she did. To be honest it might've been a fawn response, but yeah, I had her in the van hooked up and giving blood. She tried to tell me off for not sanitising her arm but I just Dominated her into thinking I'd done it so no harm done. So yeah, got the blood, Dominated her into forgetting it and sent her on her way. Wish they were all as cooperative as that! I'd be way fucking less traumatised."

A snort. "Did you at least give her a cookie? The humans do that."

"She asked if I had any. I said no, I only have chewable iron tablets."

"You give the humans iron tablets when you're done?"

"No, but Jane has a stock for when I'm out in rural bumfuck nowhere and need to feed off her exclusively for a while. Anyway. Now there's a weirdass human who's got a bottle of chewable iron tablets in her bag and she has no idea how it got there. I think Evie would be proud."

"So you do give out free candy, huh?"

"Nah, she paid for it in blood."

"Yeah, that's... yeah that's true. Damn, and I thought I was being so witty."

"Har har har. Fucking smartarse Ravnos."

[oumakokichi]

Hi there. I'm not sure if you've been asked this yet so here goes. Regarding the final trial, do you believe that the events of DR1-3 were fictional or that they actually happened in the NDRV3 timeline? Since the theme of the game was truth/lies, I like to think that Tsumugi made up that lie in order to sell the idea that everything was fake in order to break down the survivors. Plus considering the improvements in technology and talent along with how this takes place 50 years in the future...

The actual status of the Hope’s Peak characters and whetherSHSL talents do or don’t exist are just a few of the many, many things leftwithin the catbox by the end of the game’s epilogue, which Saihara, Maki, andHimiko are set to check for themselves when they stand near the exit from theschool’s dome. Given how much of what Tsumugi told them was a definite mix oftruth and lies, and given how she definitely made huge, false claims in orderto break their spirits, the most we know with certainty is that she was lying about some things. Pinpointingwhich things, however, is the trickybit.

Personally, I’m inclined to believe that while talent seemsto exist in the ndrv3 universe (given the line Miu had about it in theprologue, what we can surmise about the SHSL Hunt, and the fact that in orderfor people without talent to be looked down on as much as they seem to be inndrv3, that kind of implies super-talented people do exist), the events of Hope’sPeak, and therefore dr1-3, were probably either fictional or took place farback enough that they were retconned historically into a sort of fictionallight.

Not much is really known or told about the timespan on whichthis is taking place, and if ndrv3’s universe is taken as a separate universealtogether from dr1-3’s universe, then the timing doesn’t really tell us a lot.However, we know for a fact that technology which either erases people’smemories exists (meaning brainwashing technology), or that technology which cangive a bunch of normal people talents and backstories so indistinguishable fromthe real thing that they essentially can create SHSL talents exists (meaning…well,more brainwashing technology).

Whichever answer is true, either of these things goes aboveand beyond what we would find in the real world normally, because the answer isalways leaps and bounds above reality in wacky DR terminology. Still, it has tobe one of those two answers in particular, and either one of those kind ofbrings to mind more typical DR technology and terminology.

There’s also the fact that the child we see at the beginningof Chapter 6, Makoto, specifically mentions going to “a super elite school”where “everyone around him is talented and part of the elite.” Hisself-loathing stems from the fact that he in particular is super normal inevery conceivable way: grades, sports, hobbies, etc., he just cannot keep upwith the people around him. Being normal is agonizing to him, and literallymakes him want to die, because there is so much pressure to compete, toperform, and to stand out from the norm in some way.

This sounds very similar to terminology usually associatedwith Hope’s Peak and the Reserve Course, in my own opinion. A large part of theDR franchise has always been taking aspects of Japanese society, particularlythe societal pressure to perform above and beyond the norm in high school, andcriticizing it drastically, and ndrv3 was no exception to that. Makoto’ssuicidal urges to die without either a talent of his own or a special interestto use as some form of escape highly resembles some of the previous themes we’veseen brought up in DR before, particularly those associated with Hinata.

Still, it’s true that the “world of Danganronpa” isconsidered an escape. It’s not a place where “normal people go,” it’s a placewhere people who have given up on reality and therefore cannot live in reality anymore go. To the outside world, it’s theperfect form of entertainment, providing exciting mysteries, thrillingconflicts, and memorable interactions between “characters” on-screen; for thepeople who audition for the game and perform in it, it’s (according to Tsumugianyway) something they themselves wanted because of how much they had all givenup on the real world around them. The killing game show was itself preferableto going on in reality any longer.

If we consider that the events of dr1-3 were eitherfictional propaganda specifically designed to engineer this sort ofentertainment and sentiment, including an admiration for SHSL Students and adesire to see them all perform and face off in these “hope vs. despair type”conflicts, I feel like that would make quite a lot of sense with what weactually witness, both in Tsumugi’s own trial and in other glimpses, such asthe remember lights and even the prologue.

Things would, however, also make sense if the events of theHope’s Peak clash had perhaps actually happened in the past and then becamesort of…twisted and changed into a more fictional retelling further down theline. Like a game of telephone, this would also explain the littleinconsistencies in Tsumugi’s version of events as opposed to the “real” historywritten down in the book in Ouma’s lab: people tend to gloss over and pick andchoose their favorite versions of these “real-life” events, changing them againand again to the point where they become less reliable and more fictional.Basically, it would mean that the events of dr1-3 are more like a myth, or anepic legend, based on historical fact but retold to the point where they’vebecome pretty blurry along the way.

Whichever the case, it’s very clear by the end of ndrv3 thatthe Hope’s Peak Arc and its massive, wild success with people in the outsideworld is essential to the existence of the killing game. Without things likeHope’s Peak Academy, without characters like Naegi or Junko, there would be nokilling game show. These things are the cornerstones which work as thefoundation for the show to go on, and which have raked in enough support fromthe audience that the show has continued for 53 seasons.

There’s also one reason in particular why I’m inclined tothink the Hope’s Peak characters have to be either fictional or existed so longago that they’re regarded as fictional—and it’s got a lot to do with Tsumugiherself. Even though Tsumugi’s words can definitely be doubted, her allergicreaction to cosplaying real-life people has to be pretty much taken at facevalue, in my opinion. It’s impossible to fake her particular reaction. Ratherthan just going into a mild sweat or coughing, she literally breaks out intovery visible, very painful hives.

Some people in the Japanese fanbase have speculated that perhapsTsumugi lied about her reaction and it’s actually the other way around and shecan’t cosplay fiction, meaning the Hope’s Peak cast are real while the ndrv3cast were “too fictional” for her to cosplay, since their talents andbackstories were fabricated. But I personally disagree: unlike many of Tsumugi’sother stories, her claims about her allergy have been consistent ever sinceChapter 1, and it wouldn’t fit thematically in my opinion if she weren’t ableto cosplay fiction instead of reality.

After all, Chapter 6 is full of her trying to use fiction asan escape around her, constantly. She lives through fiction entirely; it’s thereason she has absolutely no sense of self without relying on fictionalcharacters. If she were cosplaying real-life people rather than fictionalcharacters, this very essential aspect of her personality would no longer addup, or make sense. And so I think it’s far more likely that she was telling thetruth about her allergy, and that she can cosplay the Hope’s Peak charactersbecause they’re either entirely made up or else put into a fictional “mythical”scale.

I think the ndrv3 cast being “too real” for her liking wasexactly why she couldn’t cosplay them, because she undeniably would have lovedto do so if she could’ve. Cosplaying them as fictional existences in the finaltrial would have been the perfect way to break their spirits all the more, andforce them to acknowledge that they were “completely fictional” and that they “couldn’timpact reality in any way.” If she’d been able to force them to accept the “non-reality”of their existences, she definitely would’ve tried that particular cosplayingstunt, because nothing would’ve traumatized them further like seeing themselvesor their dead classmates being paraded out on display like a bunch of fictionaltoys.

These are the theories and thoughts I’ve built up on thematter for the time being, anyway. There’s still, of course, a lot ofspeculation involved, and nothing will really be set in stone until Kodakadecides to open the catbox himself and provides either side materials or anndrv3 sequel. Still, it was a lot of fun to get to theorize like this. Thankyou, anon!