#is it spoilers if the game has been out for 6 years?

[0ssianic]

watched the first ep of the nier automata anime!

pretty cool that it exists, but im not sure how to feel about the show itself yet. the 1st ep was the essential beats of the tutorial segment of the game, but it didn’t feel nearly as epic or emotionally engaging. partially due to time constraints of course, but still. (like the upcoming last of us show, games have more agency than films/animation which kinda automatically adds a layer of engagement). part of it may be me knowing whats coming so i already have it in my mind of how its supposed to go and will automatically compare. idk how many episodes its supposed to be, but hopefully they’ll be able to let certain things breathe.

i need a gif of 9s stepping off the beam and just dropping fr

finally...

!!!!!!!!!

adorable! great way to handle the bad/silly endings i cant wait till 2b dies from eating a fish

[pisceancryptid]

thanks dash for the massive totk spoilers, untagged. confirming something i was suspecting thanks to OTHER untagged posts but yknow. i know its been a while since the game came out but come ON. not everyone has played it yet

and YES i have #totk spoilers filtered

[danrifics]

good morning i have slept a total of 2 hours here’s my spoiler breakdown for terrible influence antwerp

they start by playing a text to speech voice who welcomes us and the straight boyfriends and the dads (they’re a bit obsessed with the dads i’ll be real) the voice tells us if we film she’s gonna sue are asses. text to speech lady she is an icon

dnp come out and they’re like yo this is cool it’s the first show, you guys are gonna see what we’ve been up to and then they’re like it’s the first show so we can use you guys to decide if we change anything

they they’re like there’s probably people in the audience who don’t really know us so they do a 15 years of dan and phil lore breakdown with dolls of themselves in little set of iconic dnp locations (made by pj and sophie btw) they put these sets in a table in front of a camera and it shows on the big screen, (for 1 section of this the screen doesn’t work for the first part lol) also phil makes the dolls kiss and they also make the dolls hump the breakfast bar cos of course they do

i can’t remember what happens next or maybe it jumps right into the next thing i mention

they play a game show called role model or no-model which is a madlibs style game where you have to decide if the version of dan and phil the audience creates is a role model or not these are compared to real dnp. we had homophobic furry lawyer dan and linguistics dr phil wo has a thing for hamsters. just an fyi for this dan is really good at hearing what the audience is saying and phil is not at all and im pretty sure he made his up cos he couldn’t understand what we wanted

okay so after this iirc they start talking about the youtube landscape and what they’re gonna do after tour and how to keep people entertained and they go on a little adventure through different genres of youtube like minecraft lets plays, vtubers and then they pretend to be mr beast and pretend to give away a bunch of stuff that they don’t have, they cure us of any mental health issues and they cure us from being gay <3

then they decide to have a boxing match cos obvs that’s what youtubers do, they ask us to cheer for whoever they want to win and it has cool intro to it! i’ll be honest this boxing match goes on for entirely too long like it spans the end of the first half and the start of the second but they have like choreographed fighting and OMFG it’s very gay and like suggestive and they do many times look like they’re gonna have sex 😂 like one of phils moves is to hit dan with his ass while dan is holding him from behind so… yeah. anyway dan thought he won ours and then phil knocked him out with a tv, as he should!! also before they end the first half they’re having an insult match where phils tells dan hes gonna burn his house down only for dan to say they live in the same house and i was dying it was so funny, phil also calls dan a dickhead and this is where he also calls him a cunt and that’s how the first half ends. oh also phil has a fake 6 pack on and that’s the $300 dollar silicone btw

okay second half after dan is dead they have a sincere moment and then they’re like you guys keep telling us you want load of long unedited content and they ask us to tell them a topic to monologue about and someone shouts feet and they rant about feet lmao phil excitedly tells everyone he has a better wiki feet rating than dan

then dan goes on a rant about being discriminated against as a millennial (can’t remember how we got there) and phil gets bored and starts watching subway surfers and i’ll be real honest as a gen z i instantly got distracted by subway surfers and didn’t listen to what dan was saying (that was the point tho) and phil keeps turning up the volume and dan gets mad and he storms off

we have a nice sincere moment with phil but idk what tf it was cos neither did phil 😂

then suddenly a voice, oh here she comes, she asks if we’re ready to confess our sins and out comes sister daniel, everyone fucking loses it, if you heard me screaming so loud no you didn’t.

anyway they read some confessions (phil is father philip) and they read out a few including one from @dnphobe !!! phil has a water gun that he didn’t have when he was meant to and couldn’t find and then found and he was spraying it at people to cleanse them of their sins which is what they meant by people being in the splash zone btw also phil sprayed it at dan it was kinda cute

okay so they say they need to go and get changed and they head off stage and there’s a gag where they leave the microphone on and they’re purposely making it sound sexual and it’s so funny and then dan comes out and phil doesn’t cos he’s struggling with his leather fucking trousers that was a completely unscripted part for sure

then they talk about the hiatus a bit and how dan left us and they keep calling us their family and brb while i cry my eyes out

then they pull out a fucking banger of a song, like i can’t even explain to you how good it is, it has a fully like kpop style dance to it that im gonna fucking learn lmao and dan was so good at it like im not even kidding that man was pulling moves!! phil was doing great too btw but he definitely wasn’t as confident in it as dan was but damn it’s the best song yet imo!!

also i forgot to write the conspiracy bit because i forgot where in the show it is but on one of them they were trying so hard to make us say the opposite one but we were literally forcing tour bus on them and yes they confirmed they shared a bed on that tour bus!! and they played it off like its okay for friends to do that (cos it is) but they way they said it was that thing again where they blur the line a little so we know what they actually mean but still pretend they mean something else

okay some little things i remember that i didn’t write above

- “i can’t imagine my life without you”

- “it’ll be 15 years in december” (if you know you know)

- the absolute silence after they confirmed the bed thing cos none of us were actually expecting it

- dan had to prompt phil a little to remind him what to say next but it was very cute

- they kept looking at each other in *that* way

- phil lied to us about when norman died cos he had norman merch coming out

- sleepless night with phil 3 is fake!!

- they showed *that* video of phil asleep on the tour bus

- there were multiple times where i thought they’re gonna kiss right now???

-phil called dan kinda sexy

- ALL IS FORGIVEN, ANYTHING FROM THE LAST WE MIGHT HAVE DONE IS FORGIVEN THEY LOVE US WE ARE A FAMILY THEY ARE LITERALLY OUR DADS

[felassan]

"Journal #3 Dragon Age: The Veilguard is coming October 31 Pre-orders Open Now Hello everyone, We’re excited to finally share the release date for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which is officially October 31, 2024 worldwide! Please note, this is a simultaneous release; we will announce exact timing at a later date. We want to extend a huge shout out to the Dragon Age community for your patience and enthusiasm; we can't wait for you to jump into the role of Rook and embark on your journey to save Thedas. We know the wait has been long, but the wait will be worth it. In the meantime, we want to give you a hint at what's in store for you in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. You're leading a desperate fight for the future of Thedas with your companions, the stakes are higher than ever. So grab a seat and click on the thumbnail below to watch this brand new trailer (includes some small story spoilers). “As someone who’s been working on Dragon Age for over 15 years, I know just how much our community has been looking forward to this day, and I’m equally excited to share and celebrate that the game will officially launch on October 31,” said John Epler, Creative Director of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. “We wanted to give you the choice to really express yourself, and do that in a world full of adventure and danger. So whether you’re a Warrior, Rogue or a Mage, we can’t wait for you to gear up, gather your party, and set out for another thrilling adventure through Thedas this Halloween.” As a character-driven RPG, Dragon Age: The Veilguard offers you a crafted experience woven from the threads of rich storytelling and fantasy worldbuilding the franchise is known for. In this bold, heroic adventure, you will experience expansive and dynamic stories that navigate love, loss, and complex choices that affect relationships and the fate of each member of the Veilguard. In true Dragon Age fashion, these bonds of fellowship are the foundation upon which Rook’s journey is built, and it will be up to you to determine how their personal story unfolds. Pre-Orders Now Open Fans who pre-order* the Standard Edition of Dragon Age: The Veilguard for $69.99 USD‡ on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, or $59.99 USD‡ on PC via Steam, EA App and Epic Games Store will receive cosmetic Blood Dragon Armor sets for Warrior, Mage and Rogue classes. EA Play Pro† members on the EA App will enjoy unlimited access to the EA Play Pro Edition* starting October 31st. Check out the full breakdown of the different editions we have available here: Digital Editions"

"- Standard Edition  - Dragon Age: The Veilguard - PC: $59.99‡| Console: $69.99 USD‡"

"- Deluxe Edition - Dragon Age: The Veilguard - 3 Rook armor sets (cosmetic only) - 6 Rook weapons (cosmetic only) - 7 Companion armor sets (cosmetic only) - 7 Companion weapons (cosmetic only) - PC: $79.99 USD‡ | Console: $89.99 USD‡"

"- Pre-Order Bonus* - All Pre-Orders (Standard & Deluxe) will receive: - Blood Dragon Armor Set (Warrior, Mage, Rogue - cosmetic only)"

- “Rook’s Coffer” Edition (Does NOT include Game) - Lyrium Dagger - Thedas Map with Quiver Tube - Rook’s Deck - Potion Flask - Enchanted Die - $150 USD‡"

"- Vyrantium Pack by Scanavo (Does NOT include Game) - Exclusive SteelBook® Case (No Game) - ICONART™ Metal Print and magnet wall mount - Notebook - Collector’s rigid Outerbox Check in with your local retailer to find out about the availability of this edition in your region"

"The Art of Dragon Age: The Veilguard by Dark Horse (Does NOT include Game, Deluxe Edition shown above)  - Standard Edition - 256-page art book providing a behind-the-scenes look at Dragon Age: The Veilguard - $49.99 USD‡ - Deluxe Edition - Includes extra prints - Includes exclusive slipcase - Alternate cover - $99.99 USD‡ - BioWare Gear Edition - Only available while supplies last, sold exclusively on the BioWare Gear website - Includes an exclusive print - BioWare Gear Edition alternate cover - $55.00 USD‡ What’s Coming?"

"ICYMI, we released our August Roadmap this week! Next week, we’ll have a dive into our game’s combat and more information on our PC Specs. There’s a lot more to come in September and October, too; so keep your eyes peeled on our socials.  We're beyond excited to be on this adventure with you, and we can't wait for you to get your hands on the game. Chat soon. - The Dragon Age Community Team *Conditions & restrictions apply. See https://www.ea.com/games/dragon-age/dragon-age-the-veilguard/disclaimers for details. ‡Offers may vary or change. see retailer site for details. †Conditions, limitations and exclusions apply. See EA Play Terms for details."

[source]

[giuliettagaltieri]

Fight for Carnage

Pairing: Mentor!Coriolanus Snow x Mentor!Reader

Chapter Synopsis: The Admirer

Warning: angst, unrequited love, mean Coriolanus Snow, academic rivalry, elitism, injuries, greed, mentions of death, Capitol cruelty, spoilers

Word Count: 1296

1 of 6

Before the onset of the Dark Days, Panem has seen no better tag team than that of Crassus Snow and Thanatos Swansworth, your father.

Men who helped shape the society, who kept the rebels at bay by putting a leash on them.  They were the lightbringers of the Capitol and the harbingers of death to the Districts.  They were well respected, or feared.  Nobody really cared to understand the difference.

And to you and Coriolanus, they were people to be highly looked up to, they were not the best fathers but they were great men.  And being their children, given the task to take up the challenge of reviving their legacy is a dream.

Although, it was never that easy.

Coriolanus Snow is your classmate in the academy, but he never really liked to socialize with you.  It was a great insult to you when he once left your company to seek out Sejanus, a person he claims only to tolerate.

It did not deter you.

In class, you tried to offer smiles to him, asking him about his day, and he would respond to you curtly.

When there were gatherings, you tried to get him to make you his date, lingering by his side like a desperate little puppy, but it was always Clemensia Dovecot, his class partner who got the honor of having an arm looped around his.

It hurt you deeply.  Especially when you always believed as a child that it was him you would marry.  Your fathers loved to bring it up in every opportunity they had.  They say that you and Coriolanus are one and the same. 

Coriolanus disagrees with that.

Aside from having dead tyrant fathers, you had nothing else to sympathize over.  

He had chosen his friends well.  They were promising individuals, truly in the path of being the next great leaders of Panem.

And you, of course you were an exceptional student, someone who made it into the Academy’s top 24 best-performing students.

The news of having to become mentors in the 10th annual Hunger Games made your stomach turn.

Death was not foreign to you, your mother made sure you watched every single game.  She said it was a way of honoring your late father.  She has done it every year until she followed your father in death.

As a child, you had to develop resistance to brutality.

And the thought of having to take part in the backgrounds of such savagery did not affect you.  The task, however of having to make your first step into the path your father wanted you take, had you completely anxious.

They had given you a young boy from District 8.  He was plain.  You saw no potential in him.  Not that you voiced that out when they assigned him to you.  It was only when you got to talk to him and he told you interesting things you can do with a sewing needle that your interest was piqued.

Coriolanus was invested in his tribute.

You saw it, heard it, as you passed him in the cafeteria when he had his luncheons with Sejanus.  The way he looked at Lucy Gray’s eyes, the way they talked with such familiarity.  You had trouble hiding a sneer.  Surely, he would not stoop so low as to trick a woman’s affections just so he can come out as the victor.

When the games started, Cooriolanus became more and more detached, jittery, always on edge, as if using every moment to scheme.

That evening, you chose to rest early so you can come back before the break of dawn.

You were alone when you arrived, and you were met with the battered face of your tribute.  Had it not been for his clothing, you would not recognize him with how bad his face has suffered from the brutal blows.

You stand in front of the screens, your body rigid as you cross an arm over your chest to support the other.  You saw your father doing it often when he was plotting with Crassus.  He often had a thumb under his chin and his index pressed in his lips as if to silence anyone who dared disturb him, and overtime, you managed to acquire the same gesture.

Your eyes were calculating as you watched every detail around him.  It was a bloodbath around him.  From the looks of the splattered blood, the culprit did not hold back.  And the weapon, it was lying on the side, the concrete painted crimson.

Your narrowed eyes squinted at the other tributes, hardly anybody moved from their spots.  Who could have done it?

You stood in the middle of the stage, eyes on every screen.  Most of them had their own chosen weapons.  What could have happened that your tribute had to die such a slow and brutal death.  A pitchfork to the heart or an ax to hack his throat would have been better, at least his suffering would have been short.

Coriolanus Snow arrived after you.  His eyes were blown, his forehead sweaty, and his shoulders stiff.  He made no effort to acknowledge you first, you decided to do it for him.

“How have you been?”  You ask gently.  “I see your tribute is still cooped down there.”

He glances at you and at Lucy Gray on screen.  “Yours?”

“Dead.”  You smile at him.

The stillness in his movement did not go unnoticed by you, so did the grimace he pulled when he moved his shoulder wrong.  You did not hide the way your eyes scanned his posture and he was watching you as you did so.

“Where were you last night, Corio?”  Your smile is still on your face.  Tone similar to the usual one you used when you ask for extra notes in class.

“Library.”  He spoke with practiced calmness.

“In the middle of the night?”  Your brows frown playfully.  “And in the middle of the games?”

His back straightens at the tone of your voice.

Coriolanus Snow always detested how you were your father’s daughter.  It was unfair to you, of course.  But how is it that you, the daughter of Thanatos Swansworth did not have to suffer like him when he also lost his father.  You were a sweet little girl.  But the way you are at this moment, he started second guessing everything he knew about you.

“Were you scouring for strategies, you sly little fox?”  You giggle as you walk over to him.

Coriolanus did not respond. 

For a moment you just look at each other.  His eyes are as glacial as you remember.  He really is attractive, his ambitious nature even more so.

You squeezed his arm and the way your eyes darted to his shoulder had him holding his breath. 

“Promise me you will not do anything stupid again, please?”  You say with your voice barely above a whisper, almost begging him.  He tries to break free but you pull his coat with your free hand, you are gripping his arm now.  “Please, Corio.”  You press yourself closer to him, eyes searching for something that is clearly not there.

He grabs your wrist tightly, making you let go of his coat.  His eyes are not fazed with the unshed tears in your eyes.  As his lips remain a firm line, you shy away from his cold gaze, feeling utterly pathetic. 

But you will not let him see that he got through you.

It never ceases to amaze him how you can pull such authentic looking smiles.

“May the odds be ever in your favor, Coriolanus Snow.”

You stand on your tippy toes to press a kiss to his jaw and you leave him there with his thoughts building up a storm inside that golden head of his.

Hunt for Glory

[grace-williams-xo]

RAMBLING THOUGHTS AFTER FINISHING PART TWO. GONNA ADDRESS MY P1 THOUGHTS FIRST. SPOILER WARNING.

1 & 2: I think Debling could’ve worked in the second half, and I’m kinda sad Cressida didn’t get a happy ending. The Creloise fell of a CLIFF after ep 5 but I think it could still be saved

5: no cishet man has ever loved his wife more than Anthony Bridgerton I’m gonna be ill

6 & 12: kanthony’s absence was felt BAD in the finale, I think their reactions to LW were sorely needed. Also Jonny and Simone have both said they’ll be at every sibling’s wedding and stick around for years but they missed Francesca’s??? Also felt their absence too much then. They’re both booked and busy I think we’ll continue to only get a couple episodes a season from them

8: Francesca did get to thrive happy in pt 2 my baby I love her

9: I think they managed to disconnect the mondrich plot even further like 😭 once again, I don’t mind them their plot just feels very empty

10: Pen and Delacroix CONTINUE to be my fave duo I love them so freaking much and they can never get rid of it

13: Portia’s growth this season continued to be 10/10 I loved her and Penelope’s relationship it really showed what it’s like to be closely related to people you oppose and the process of needing to forgive and understand them for your own peace of mind

14: that was not how I was expecting Colin to find out about Whistledown

15: Marcus felt a little rushed in part two but I think I need to watch the whole season together to fully decide

17: this was indeed the longest 27 days of my life I got Covid day after it dropped lmfao

MY ~NEW~ THOUGHTS:

We finally got character development from Cressida and if they write her out I’ll be inconsolable (as will Jessica Madsen)

I hope they paid Golda Rosheuvel good for her feet exposure. Worth more than titties in this economy

I feel the need to tell everyone that £5000 in 1815 is in the realm of £500,000 today and we cannot brush over the fact Penelope has made herself the equivalent of a literal millionaire

Anthony has two moods ‘I’m obsessed with my wife’ ‘I want to win this game’ like it is comical how drastically different his facial expression is in the game of charades compared to pretty much every other scene

Anthony saying the marriage is perfect and not hard work and Kate being like BOY I will humble you,,,, doing the lord’s work I love her so much

At some points I felt like Francesca was fighting Anthony for ‘Violet’s least favourite child’ award lmao

John saying he’s off to look at the wainscotting was unfairly funny

Cressida in the red dress is even better than I imagined fuck even if she’s not gay then I am

Peneloise back together the universe is healing I love my babies all we need now is creloise lovers and peneloise friendship simultaneously I don’t like it being one or the other sue me

However much Brimsley is getting paid isn’t enough,,,, Hugh Sachs the man that you are

I adored Penelope’s wedding dress so much and as bitter as I am still about no kanthony wedding in s2, it felt kind of right somehow for Polin to be the first wedding we properly see in this show

Most of the costumes and makeup feel like they got worse,,,,, big ‘I hired a 14 year old’ energy. I don’t need historical accuracy but I would like a modicum of care and the costume/hair/makeup dept looking at a single historical reference from before 1850,,,, please

We all got the bi Benedict we’ve been asking for and I appreciate it, and recognise that he needed Tilley to explore that, but I still would’ve preferred if they first main queer experience was not a threesome

If they go straight into benophie in s4 (which idk, I’m so torn bc I feel like F, E and B all could work well next season) then I also feel like bi Benedict was just them throwing a bone for 5 mins but meant nothing

The CONTENTIOUS Michaela Stirling,,,,, I was undecided until I saw it but that was the definition of gay panic from Francesca and it worked so well I am so excited.

As your resident peerage expert, it is much easier for women to inherit titles in Scotland than England so I wonder (not that anyone on this show knows anything) if that was a reason they chose Francesca to be sapphic [general peerage info and female inheritance info if you care]

On the above, if they can canonically end racism with one marriage then they can end homophobia with one marriage as well

We all know Eloise was the easy and obvious choice to be the queer love story but part of me does kind of like them not taking the easy route, and them going something more unexpected, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want Creloise/Sapphic El like they had eight children let’s be honest

Finch’s sneeze and Phillips’s “now Varely! The bugs!” were unfairly funny

Everything Lady Danbury said to Penelope about suspecting her and what not felt very in character and you can fight with the wall idc

Did they tell us the name of Polin’s baby boy???

Hyacinth saying she thinks of Gregory as the family pet,,,,, girl you an icon walking amongst mere mortals

Predictions I got right:

Anthony didn’t kill Colin, but “are you gonna duel your own brother” lmao I was on the right track

I knew Polin would win the Featherington baby race and I love that for them (but why were Prudence and Phillipa pregnant most of the season, barely showing, Kate was showing almost immediately, and then in the epilogue the sisters all had baby’s similar-ish ages???? Give the writers room a calendar please)

I SAID FROM DAY DOT THAT THE FURNITURE THEY BROKE FROM SEX WAS A CHAISE I CANT FIND THE POST BUT I KNEW IT I FUCKING KNEW IT WHERE DO I COLLECT MY PRIZE SOME OF YOUR GUESSES WERE TRULY FUCKING COOKED

Okay that was too long if you made it this far I’ll make you cookie ily

[bagelbun333]

The death penalty in Ace Attorney | The fandom’s biggest misconception

Capital punishment is something we all know is a real consequence when it comes to murder in Ace Attorney, but do all culprits who commit these crimes actually get the death penalty? That’s what I’m going to go through in depth within this post!

CW and TW: mentions of death, execution, murder, suicide etc.

Also major spoilers for basically all the mainline ace attorney games!

To start off with, what exactly warrants a death penalty in Japanifornia? Murder has been referred to as a capital crime that deserves a capital punishment, which in turn led people to believe that all murder convicts get the death sentence. However, there is a slight mistranslation within that statement and it should say “murder is a charge that risks the death penalty.” “Risk” is the keyword here. While yes, it is possible murder charges can warrant the death penalty, that doesn’t mean every culprit will get executed. Like, this isn’t Danganronpa 😭 What people don’t think about is the different kinds of murder charges there are, and the differences in sentencing this can create.

Murder charges can go from:

1st Degree Murder - Premeditated/long time planning

2nd Degree Murder - Not premeditated but the intent is there within the moment/deliberate killing

3rd Degree Murder - Deliberate reckless behaviour resulting in death

Aggravated Murder - Murder when an aggravating circumstance is proven (such as kidnapping or torture)

Voluntary Manslaughter - Intention to kill but is not guilty of murder due to provocation or mental incapacity

Involuntary Manslaughter - Killing without intention within the heat of the moment

Self Defence - Killing for defence of oneself

Consensual Homicide - Assisting a suicide

Attempted Murder - Planning and failing to kill

In Japan (the country this series is initially based on) these charges have different kinds of sentences depending on circumstances. So naturally, Japanifornia must have punishments very similar to this. These are the sentences for these crimes in Japan according to my research:

1st Degree - 5 years to life imprisonment

2nd Degree - 5 years to life imprisonment

3rd Degree - 3 to 5 years imprisonment

Aggravated Murder - Death penalty or life imprisonment

Voluntary Manslaughter - 1 to 15 years imprisonment

Involuntary Manslaughter - 1 to 15 years imprisonment

Consensual Homicide - 6 months to 7 years imprisonment

Self Defence - No imprisonment

Attempted Murder - 5 years to life imprisonment

Death penalties are usually passed in cases of multiple murders, although there are exceptions where individuals have committed a single murder that have been executed because it involved torture, extreme brutality or kidnapping with a demand for ransom. It is punishable by five years to life in prison, and with the death penalty if aggravating circumstances are proven. The only exception is for juvenile offenders since the minimum age for capital punishment in Japan is 18.

With this, we can work out what kinds of charges each of the ace attorney culprits will be given. (Mostly for the Phoenix Wright trilogy since I can’t recall much beyond aa4.)

(For clarification’s sake: a “/” is used when a crime could be one or the other or both, while the “,” is used to separate different crimes.)

Frank Sahwit: 2nd Degree Murder

Redd White: 1st Degree Murder

April May: 1st Degree Murder (Accomplice)

Dee Vasquez: Self Defence/Voluntary Manslaughter

Yanni Yogi: 1st Degree Murder

Manfred von Karma: 2nd Degree Murder, 1st Degree Murder (accomplice, planned out)

Joe Darke: Serial Murders (technically spree murder, guilty on five counts)

Damon Gant: 1st Degree Murder, 2nd Degree Murder (Serial Murders)

Lana Skye: 1st Degree Murder, 2nd Degree Murder (Unwilling Accomplice in both)

Richard Wellington: 2nd Degree Murder/Involuntary Manslaughter

Mimi Miney: 1st Degree Murder

Morgan Fey: 1st Degree Murder, Attempted Murder (Accomplice in both, planned out the crime)

Acro: Attempted Murder, Involuntary Manslaughter

Matt Engarde: 1st Degree Murder (Hired a hitman), Consensual Homicide (driven a woman to unalive herself)

Dahlia Hawthorne: 1st Degree Murder, Consensual Homicide, 3 counts of Attempted Murder, and 2nd Degree Murder (Serial Murders)

Luke Atmey: 1st Degree Murder

Furio Tigre: Either 1st or 2nd Degree Murder

Godot: Voluntary Manslaughter/Self Defence (defending someone else)

Iris: Voluntary Manslaughter (accomplice)

Kristoph Gavin: 2 counts of 1st Degree Murder, Attempted Murder (Serial Murders)

Those who canonically got the death penalty:

- Joe Darke

- Dahlia Hawthorne

- Terry Fawles

- Simon Blackquill

Those who canonically got the death penalty but didn’t get executed:

- Terry Fawles (he died anyway rip)

- Simon Blackquill

Those who are most likely to get the death penalty but never canonically stated:

- Manfred von Karma (not explicitly stated but heavily implied)

- Damon Gant

- Matt Engarde

- Morgan Fey (vaguely implied)

- Kristoph Gavin

- The Phantom

Those who don’t get the death penalty:

- Frank Sahwit

- Redd White (he would if his blackmail victims got leaked)

- April May

- Dee Vasquez

- Yanni Yogi

- Lana Skye

- Richard Wellington (could be a chance that he would considering his victim was a police officer)

- Mimi Miney (unsure considering her accomplice is implied to be on death row)

- Acro

- Luke Atmey

- Furio Tigre

- Godot

- Iris

To recap, the death penalty in Japanifornia is reserved for the criminals with absolutely no hope for rehabilitation, and for those who have aggravated murder charges/serial murder charges. Even people like Redd White will not receive the death penalty.

After all, Redd White did plead guilty to Mia’s murder specifically because getting arrested for one murder would be safer than having his list of blackmail victims get leaked to the press. It would be strange to confess for his own safety if he was just going to get executed anyway.

In the later games it is shown that the law is changing, and the death penalty is even less involved when culprits are convicted of murder. (Not counting charges in Khura’in, that’s different.) So it is very possible that the punishments can change overtime for those who were already convicted; meaning there’s a chance that they can be given a lighter sentence later on. There’s even a culprit in aa5 who was planning a murder but ended up killing someone else accidentally, and they were released from prison mere months after the trial. If they can released for that then surely a lot of the other culprits deserve the same treatment.

Speaking of Khura’in, that is actually more of a parody of what the fandom thought Japanifornia’s death penalty worked like. Even then, after the ending aa6, it looks like that judicial system will change for the better too.

And that’s pretty much it! The reason I wanted to go through this topic is because the whole murder = death penalty ideology is taken way out of proportion, and has been treated as a fact for far too long when it’s actually not completely true. This is just what I’ve managed to research and you can feel free to believe it or not, but I really wanted to share a new perspective on this subject. I, for one, wanted to share some hope for people; especially because I know a lot of these culprits have a lot of fans, and they deserve to have a brighter perspective on these characters. I definitely want some of these characters to return and this research really helped me feel confident that some of them have the potential to make a comeback.

Plus with the HD release of, not only the Apollo trilogy, but the Edgeworth collection in the same year, it’s more than likely that aa7 will bring back old characters! The reason a lot of these old characters didn’t make a reappearance sooner is because Capcom stood by this “no spoiler” rule for the players who may have missed out on certain games in this series. But now that we have all the mainline games in the series getting a HD release on all modern platforms, this “no spoiler” rule will most likely not be necessary anymore!

No more of this “if they’re guilty they’re never coming back” bs, let’s be more hopeful! It’s actually less likely that all culprits would get executed than the majority not getting executed. Let’s bffr!

And even if they don’t come back in aa7, we now have a more clear understanding on this messy topic, and you can feel free to use my analysis as a way to explain ace attorney culprits being able to leave prison in fanfictions, roleplays, fanarts etc. Don’t let the fandom tell you what to do >:3

Unrelated but I think this has been my first analysis post I put on tumblr and it was very fun to delve into! I may make more if anyone is interested :3c

[simpcityy]

My Little Spawn Pt.1 (Dadstarion X Child!Reader)

Summary: Astarion was finally free from Cazador after being kidnapped by a mindflayer but he was stuck with one annoying task, you.

Disclaimer: I do not own Baldur's Gate 3 or any of its characters.

Word Count: 2.1K

Warnings: Use of (Y/N), Cazador, language, spoilers for those who haven't gone far in the game....Uhhh...I think that is all.

Everything was dark and blurry in his eyes. All he remembers was stalking in the shadows looking for his next prey and suddenly he was kidnapped. He felt mixed emotions, fear but importantly joy, he was finally away from Cazador. It would be like he suddenly disappeared in thin air and Cazador will need him no more. Until he was stuck with another burden, You. “Would you keep quiet, dammit!?” He whispered rather loudly. You stopped shifting around the tall grass and peaked out of it. “I’m sorry” You whispered before going back to hiding. He looked over seeing two people walking by, “Perfect” He mutters and gets ready to put on his performance.  

  After almost getting incinerated, you and Astarion have found a group and camp for the remainder of the period till the little wiggly worm is out of your mind but of course, you wouldn’t comprehend, for you were so young. 

“Who’s the little adorable bugger?” Gale smiles letting you try to read the books he has found so far. “For the record this annoying little sp-human is not mine, they just seem to be attached to me.” Astarion watches you trying to pronounce the big words only to butcher them. “But it’s getting rather late and I hate to deal with a cranky annoying child tomorrow.” He picked you up keeping his arms outstretched and walked to his tent. Once everyone was out of earshot, he squats at your height. “Listen here, you must not tell anyone what we are understood?” His red eyes look down at your innocent (E/C) ones. “But why not?” You sat on top of the pillow looking up at Astarion seeing him take a deep breath in. Of course, Astarion knows he has to make it simple. “Because we are playing a game” He grins “ We are all hiding our identity. You and I are a team and the rest are a team. Whoever is the first one to discover their real identity, is the sore loser.” He gives a smile sitting down next to you. You pouted, your cheeks puffed up “We will win, okay! I won’t tell.” You lean back before yawning “ If they ask what do I say?” You cute little doe eyes look at him tiredly. “Hmm…we are just normal elves got it?” He looks away in deep thought, “it’s for the best for now” He mutters before leaning back “ You know for a being the youngest Spawn he created…you still need rest like a human, you are such an odd little creature” He gently plays with the ends of your hair “ Why did he even turn you?” He whispers as you slowly slip into sleep. “What use does he even have for you?” He kept asking himself all the questions ever since you were part of the “Family” 

You were the youngest spawn Cazador has ever gotten. You were only 5 soon turning 6. Astarion was first shocked to see Cazador holding you in his arms when he came back from bringing a pretty prey for his master. He never dared question, he kept all his unanswered questions to himself. Astarion felt anger towards you both. Why was Cazador more tender with you, not treating you like he does to his other spawns. Why did you get the special treatment? He was mostly angry towards Cazador as always, why did he turn you, you didn’t even reach your half way milestone of your life. You were going to stay that age and size forever.  He has been treated like shit for 200 years but you, you would never experience the things a child should be, the things teenerages and young adults go through. Once again Cazador has robbed you of your life just how Astarion was robbed of his.

Morning rolled by, You picked up a little flower near Gale’s tent, “Astarion! Look what I found!” You ran up to him as he was getting ready to set foot on finding a healer with the others. “What is it this time?” He mutters looking up before seeing a flower being gently shoved to his face. “A flower.” You smile waiting for him to take it. “ A flower…you called my attention for a flower…this is why I don’t work with little annoying monsters.” He sighs already feeling annoyed from the lack of blood. “I’m sorry…” You whisper looking down, putting the flower away from his face, small tears forming in your doe eyes. He stops putting things into his bag and sighs “ Why must you be such a crybaby” He sits down pulling your tiny form on his lap, taking the flower. “Wow, thank you. I feel the luckiest person to get a flower from you.” He says in a bored voice looking at you. You sniff and rub your eyes, “You mean it?” The tears no longer present in your eyes. He looks at you unamused. “Yes, now shoo, I have to pack. Go bother Gale, Shadowheart or even Tav but not me got it?” He makes you get off his lap before freezing feeling you give him a light peck on his cheek “Okay! I’ll collect more flowers for the others!” You giggle before running off.  He placed a hand over his cheek and watched the direction you left. “What an odd little spawn.” He whispers before continuing to pack. 

  You hummed a tune as you collected more flowers near Gale’s camp where Gale was sitting on the pillow, reading a book. He looks up hearing you hum. “Say (Y/n), that tune you must be from the upper city aren’t you?” He smiles placing the book down as your little feet shuffle over to him. “Mmhm! Papa would always sing me this lullaby at night!” You grin “It’s my favorite and he always wants me to sing! He says I’m his little singing bird!” Placing the flowers down, you sat on the ground in front of gale. Thinking back to what Astarion said last night, remembering to not give away too much information. “Judging by your clothes, I bet your father is a rather important man?” He smiles rubbing down those stubborn baby hairs that lift up from your hair. You only nodded “Papa is the best! I miss him and I want to go home…” You look around the wilderness that you and Astarion crashed in. “I want him to hold me close…I always dream of those monsters…and the little wormy” Whimpering you scoot into Gale’s arms. “I don’t want them to come back!” You tear up, “I want papa to hold me but he’s not here!” You wail. Gale quickly panics “Oh…crying child…what to do…wish Tara was here…” He mutters before rubbing your back “Hey now, you can always come to me, Shadowheart and even Tav if you ever have a nightmare. How about this, before you go to bed, I will tell you a story so you can dream of that story rather than the scary monsters. Trust me, I have read so many books, I know them by heart.” He grins as you finally stopped the water works. “Which is why he’s a walking library in this case.” Shadowheart smiles walking over “Now, we should get going, the closer we find a healer, the faster you can go to your papa” She smiles leaning to your height. “Really!” You smiled, your eyes widened at the thought of seeing your father soon. “Let’s go!” Grabbing the flowers, you ran to Astarion to share the news. 

“Astarion!”

“What now!?” 

Walking to find a healer seems like eternity to you, “I wanna rest!” You whined to Astarion tugging at his shirt. “Then complained to Tav, they are leading the damn group, not me.” He sighs, breathing in heavily to compose himself from lashing out. “Up! Up!” You lifted your arms. “The hell I won’t!” He walks faster only for you to follow him whining even more. The rest of the small group look over watching the two of you, seeing you bothering Astarion even more. “Is it me or do these two know each other very much?” Shadowheart watches you keep tugging on his shirt. “Yet he says he doesn’t know (Y/N), that they only tagged along with him.” Gale crossed his arms. Tav smiles “I don’t know, (Y/n) looks nothing like Astarion so I doubt they are related and (Y/N) always mentions a papa.” Shadowheart and Gale nodded. “What in the nine hells! Where did you go!?” Astarion looks around for you as you stop tugging on his shirt a while ago. “Where did they go?” Tav walks back to the pale elf. “ I don’t know, the moment they were annoying the hell out of me! Next thing I know, they are go- wait…” He smells it, blood. You must have run off to the smell. “ I…um…heard them, this way” He quickly follows the scent with the rest following. 

You carefully walked down the ladder, the smell of blood getting stronger. Turning around a corner, you are met with a woman with red skin, burning and importantly with a broken horn. Slowly walking over to the tiefling, you look up at her “Are you okay?” You meekly whisper seeing how tall she was according to your height. She looks up hearing the childish voice, “Hells, what is a child doing all alone?” She looks at you shocked before feeling the tadpoles connect. “Fuck” Karlach whispers holding her head “You were also in that ship…” She whispers before calming herself down and kneels down to make it seem less intimidating to you. “Hey there little soldier,  What are you doing all alone?” She smiles as you slowly take small steps towards her. “I…you’re hurt…are you okay?” You go to place your small hand on her but she backs away quickly. “Careful there, I’m not like any other tiefling, I can burn you.” She smiles “I'm Karlach, what’s your name, little soldier?” She chuckles admiring your little face as you try to say her name slowly. “Car…Ka…la…Karlach.” You finally get it right, before giving her your name, someone else beat you to it. 

“(Y/N)!?” Tav runs over, crossing the log and quickly pulls you back from Karlach, putting you behind. “Get away from them” Tav frowns weapons out. “Are you okay?” Shadowheart checks you over for any injuries as Gale also checked along with her. Astarion catches up and lets out a small sigh seeing you alive and safe. “What in the sweet hells were you thinking running off like that?! A goblin could’ve gotten you or a wild animal?!” He looks down at you but stops himself seeing you tear up. “I-I’m sorry….don’t get mad like papa!” You cried. “Like papa….” He glares down at you. “Don’t ever compare me to him you litt-” He stops himself seeing the fear in your eyes. Him, being like Cazador. He would rather kill himself than be exactly like his old master. He sighs before kneeling to you as the others were busy with Karlach. “Sorry…I was…I guess you can say I was very worried…I know it wasn’t your intention to run off…” He then whispers “You must be hungry…for blood like me…I know you are craving that sweet and yet bitter flavor but you need to hold it in like I am…tonight we’ll find some small vermin okay?” He slowly pats your head as you nod. Standing up, he walks over to the rest as you follow closely to him. “My, I feel so much better knowing we have a strong wall to protect us from any arrows” He smirks after learning Karlach was recruited. “I like her! She’s nice!” You popped out from behind walking over to Karlach. “And I like you little soldier” She smiles. 

After going back to camp for the day, Astarion watches as you listen to Gale’s stories. He sat from his tent looking at a book but his mind wandered back to what you said. Like papa…when has Cazador ever punished you? He thinks back but nothing comes to him. He turns the page to the book to make it look like he was reading. He looks back at you with that question still haunting his thoughts. It really ticked him off when you compared him to Cazador, he will never be like him…no he will be better. He wants to get back at him and back at him good. He smirks looking at you. Why not get him back with the thing he treasures the most, or rather the person he treasures the more. 

You

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

Authors Notes: Thank you everyone for reading this, please like, reblog and share it with others. I will be working on Part 2 soon hopefully. I also started another series a month ago or more about Astarion and a Gur! Reader. There is only part 1 out as well but I will be working out on that. Please remember to stay hydrated and to get some rest. Love you all! You are welcome to ask to be tagged as well for the next part.

-Axie

[agender-witchery]

On Project Moon

Hey, this is gonna be long, I'm putting most of it under the cut. This post is about the recent firing of VellMori from Project Moon, I know that it warrants some tags for triggers, but I have no idea what's commonly used, so if I miss something, please tell me.

Additionally, I have written this up in a way that if it escapes the target audience of Project Moon fans, it can still be understood, so with that in mind, there will be Library of Ruina spoilers.

The tl;dr for those who don't wanna read the full thing is that Project Moon was put in a very bad position with some violent extremists targeting them and that I'm not happy about any of what happened.

So, for those unaware, Project Moon has fired VellMori, the CG artist for Limbus Company. Now, a not inaccurate statement that can be made from this is "Project Moon fired a woman for being a feminist" but this is... somewhat reductive. Let's immediately get out of the way that VellMori did absolutely nothing wrong. Some people have said she is a TERF. I've seen no evidence of this. Some people have said she wished death on all men. I've seen no evidence of this.

What I HAVE seen is that VellMori thinks sexual abuse is bad. Now, why would this lead to a firing? The short answer is that a bunch of violent incels, one of which was literally dressed as a clown, came knocking at their office doors.

See, Limbus Company has a "beach" event coming up. In this event, we are getting a water themed outfit for two of the characters, one male and one female. For Sinclair, the guy, he has been given an EXTREMELY slutty mechanic's outfit. For Ishmael, the woman, she has been given a very skintight wet suit outfit. Now, I wanna take care to note that VellMori is the CG artist - she had no hand in these designs, a man made them. I would also like to mention that both outfit designs are amazing, and I will be including them at the end of this post for reference.

Now, upon revealing the wet suit design for Ishmael, a bunch of whiny incels on what is basically Korean 4chan got upset that Ishmael, instead of being in a bikini as is usual for gacha games, was wearing a wet suit. Nevermind that the designs in Limbus Company have always been conservative and that the Sinclair design is the most skin we've ever seen and it's just an open shirt. Again, the wet suit is still super revealing, it's skin tight and this is literally the first design of her that doesn't make her look flat chested. They're not rioting over the lack of sex appeal, they're specifically mad that it's not a bikini.

The incels come to the conclusion that the lack of any skin being shown on Ishmael's outfit is a result of evil feminism. No, I'm not exaggerating. They initially begin harassing the artist who is actually responsible for drawing the outfits, but upon learning that he is a man, set their sights on VellMori because she's a woman, and being an artist is good enough I guess. What they do from here is they start digging and digging and digging on VellMori's twitter, making use of archived pages because many of the "offensive" tweets had been deleted.

I'd like to take a moment to point out that VellMori never actually tweeted anything out here - it was all retweets from a 4-6 year old archive, and retweets that have been long deleted. These retweets contain such transgressive statements as "I'm sick of misogyny" and "If being against patriarchy makes me antisocial, then so be it" and just... mirroring back to men what those men were saying to women. Some people would like to have you think she was calling for death to all men. She wasn't. She ALSO retweeted all this stuff while she was a teenager and well before she worked for Project Moon.

Nonetheless, the incels had decided that feminism was the reason Ishmael had a wet suit and not a bikini and they had found a feminist working for Project Moon. It is at this point that we must take a brief detour and talk about Library of Ruina, Project Moon's previous game.

See, in Library of Ruina, one of the protagonists, Angela, has this whole arc about escaping her abuser and becoming a human. Yes, she is literally a robot, but Project Moon isn't exactly a stranger to symbolism in their stories and a feminist reading of Angela is ridiculously easy. The main antagonist in Library of Ruina is Argalia, the Blue Reverberation, and his crew is called the Reverberation Ensemble. Every member of the Reverberation Ensemble is a violent lunatic who each want to reinforce the status quo in their own unique shitty way. In addition to this, typically in order to reach the titular Library, you would need to be invited. The Reverb Ensemble are the "uninvited guests", the ones who managed to reach the Library and knock down the door without an invite.

Why am I talking about this? Well, the incels decided to start calling themselves the Reverb Ensemble, and referring to each other using names of the Reverb Ensemble members such as Pluto, Elena, and Oswald. Having taken on the moniker of the uninvited guests, they then showed up to Project Moon's office to protest. Over the lack of a bikini. Now, remember how I mentioned someone was dressed up as a clown? One of the Reverb Ensemble members, Oswald, is a clown with an extremely tenuous grip on reality. So much so, that his ideal world is one in which there is no meaning whatsoever. That is the character they chose to dress up as. This is either a case of extreme self awareness or extreme self unawareness.

Eventually, the incels were let into the office possibly as a form of damage mitigation to prevent the crowd of protestors from getting any bigger. This was a questionable decision, but they had a group of violent incels at their doorstep either way, and I don't exactly have full details on this. Regardless, Project Moon had on their hands a group of violent protesting incels, who they felt compelled to let into the building, and who had demands including the firing of their feminist employee. (7/28 update: a translation of the transcript posted to DCInside has surfaced. Please check the reblogs for it. Project Moon was verifiably threatened.)

So while "Project Moon fired a woman for being a feminist" isn't inaccurate it also isn't the full picture. More appropriately, it'd be "Project Moon fired a woman because a group of violent incels who weren't satisfied with a form fitting wet suit instead of a bikini showed up to their office demanding that an artist who did not make the wet suit design be fired because she retweeted some feminist stuff 5 years ago while she was a teenager".

I'm not happy with this. None of this is good. People are allowed to be feminists, and Project Moon stories have always presented progressive ideas to anyone with half a brain to do some basic literary analysis. I can understand why they would cave to the demands of people who were threatening them and showed up to their actual place of work, but at the same time, that's someone's livelihood gone and proof that in the future, the same sorts of people can use the same sorts of tactics to bully Project Moon into doing whatever they want. All of this sucks.

For those who would like to see the retweets in question alongside translations: https://twitter.com/danghwangs/status/1683884236888223744

And for people who would like reference as to what the artworks these incels were up in arms about, Ishmael in the wet suit and Sinclair in the mechanic's outfit.

[999week]

999 Week 2024 announcement/info!

What is 999 Week? Well, for a “week” in September, the Zero Escape fandom comes together to celebrate the first game in the series, 999! Want to participate? Simply create and upload any kind of fanwork (fanfiction, fanmixes, fanart, cosplay pics, etc.) for a character from 999 on a specific date! You don’t have to do all the characters, of course; any that you can is appreciated.

Each character gets a specific day in September, corresponding to their bracelet numbers! So they’d be as follows: Ace (9/1), Snake (9/2), Santa (9/3), Clover (9/4), Junpei (9/5), June (9/6), Seven (9/7), Lotus (9/8), and 9th Man (9/9).

September 10th is reserved for any extra characters (“Zero,” Nijisaki, Musashidou, Nona, Funyarinpa, Science Boy, etc.). We can’t leave these guys out! Also, here are some guidelines:

If you are late on any day, feel free to upload it the day(s) after!

Feel free to just make content for as many or as few characters as you like! Any and all posts will be reblogged and appreciated!

Tag everything as #999 week so everyone can track the tag! Also: make sure you tag spoilers! (#999 spoilers should do!)

I’ll be reblogging every work I see on the tag to this blog (@999week​​), so if you want to see a collective of everything, follow us here!

Any kind of support, or even a signal boost, is appreciated! This started back in 2012, so we’ve been going for quite some time. We love and appreciate all the fans and their hard work to celebrate the games!

As always, we hope everyone has a great time this year!

[danieyells]

hi there,

thank you so much for all the voicelines you post !! if it’s okay, can i request subaru’s ?

thank you again !

You're welcome! At some point I might go back and put in the ones I leave out because they don't appeal to me as much lol but since i always end up posting 99% of them anyway I think it's enough for most people hahaha. It's all of them now! Sorry for the delay.

I WAS GONNA OMIT ONE OR TWO BECAUSE OF SPOILERS but eh i'll just warm for like. extra spoilers. since after doing more code peeking it wasn't the spoiler i thought it was. SUBARU IS A SWEETIE THOUGH. I also read Subaru's chats which were put in the code recently and. Man this guy needs anxiety meds. I have a small guess as to what his stigma is, but we'll learn in a few days anyway.

Hello: (the first time the game is opened after that character is set as home screen NPC. Only happens once per day, unless the character is switched out and back.)

"I'm very sorry to have kept you waiting. It's wonderful to see you again."

You've Got Mail: (whenever there's something in the inbox, usually Arena rewards)

"It looks like there's a notice for you. I'd be happy to go pick it up for you if you've got your hands full. Oh, forgive me if I'm overstepping."

oh no he's anxious about helping--

Default: (requires no affinity, has no time constraints)

"I really am so lucky to be surrounded by so many kind people like you."

"I never thought I'd get the chance to enjoy the lifestyle of a student until I came to Darkwick. Every day truly is fulfilling here."

it feels like subaru is like. . .the only one who actually enjoys school life here. . .or who really enjoys being here period lmao. . . .

"You think I'm always smiling? Ha ha, I hear that a lot. It just happens when I'm around all of you."

"I may be the captain, but it's just in name. I think Haku is much better suited for the job than me."

"I've been working since I was four, so people often said I was mature for my age. But the truth is, I've still got a lot to learn."

that makes two characters whose parents have essentially been keeping them from normal life and normal childhood for work reasons since they were four year olds. . . .

Affinity 1: (between 5am and 11am)

"I tend to just have hot water for breakfast. I know it would be better for me to eat a proper meal, but it's just so much effort."

DO WE REALLY HAVE TO START WITH "I NEED THE GHOULS TO EAT PROPER FUCKIN MEALS". . . .

Affinity 2: (between 11am and 4pm)

"I'm sorry I'm so late. The campus is so crowded I can never manage to walk in a straight line, so it always takes me longer than I think. Silly, isn't it?"

baby you're hardly the first person i've met with anxiety about crowds. you're fine.

Affinity 3: (between 4pm and 8pm)

"What would I do without Haku's help? Hotarubi would be a mess without him."

Affinity 4: (between 8pm and 5am)

"I wonder if I should apply early to take out any common artifacts I might need for this mission. I'll ask Haku what he thinks..."

Affinity 5: (between 8pm and 5am)

"Ah!  You surprised me there... I just got back from a small errand. Do you need something?"

Affinity 6: (between 4pm and 8pm)

"Ever since I was a child, the performing arts were my only focus. Maybe that's why people always say my mannerisms are so peculiar. It bothers you too, doesn't it?"

poor boy doesn't know how to act if he isn't acting. . .he doesn't know how to exist off-script. . .no wonder he made a deal with a demon. it's probably the first thing he's ever done for himself.

Affinity 7: (between 11am and 4pm)

"I'd like to go to the cafeteria, but the line is always so long. I feel bad taking time to choose while people are waiting behind me. The bar of entry feels a little high."

i am once again suggesting subaru get anxiety meds. hell go to sinnostra and get some weed, i bet they sell that. i hear it can help.

Affinity 8: (between 4pm and 8pm)

"I'm just about to go and meet a friend. I hate to inconvenience you like this, but if it's something urgent, could you speak to Haku about it instead?"

Affinity 9: (between 8pm and 5am)

"What am I going to do? We're supposed to be meeting up in an hour... If I cancel now, they'll hate me..."

Affinity 10: (between 10pm and midnight)

"Whew... I'll walk you back to your house, {PC}. Oh, it's no problem at all, I assure you! I wanted some fresh air anyway."

Affinity 11: (between 5am and 11am)

"I have an Anomalous Ecology test coming up. It's such a fascinating subject, I couldn't help but stay up all night studying. Now I'm a little sleep-deprived."

Affinity 12: (between 11am and 4pm)

"I'm going to stretch my legs a little. I might not have a show to practice for right now, but I need to keep putting myself through my paces. I'll get rusty otherwise."

Affinity 13: (between 4pm and 8pm)

"I'm sorry my phone's been making so much noise. I recently downloaded an app by mistake, and it won't stop sending me notifications..."

awww he's also technologically incompetent. . .poor guy was probably raised with such a heavy focus on his career he just. never needed a smartphone. anyone he needed to contact or who needed to contact him was probably always very close by. it sounds like he didn't even properly go to school before going to Darkwick. Somebody please take this boy on a walk. like anywhere. take him to a library. buy him a churro. can sho make churros? this is somebody who's never had any sort of normal social experience and sees how different he is and wishes it weren't the case, unlike Ritsu who assumes everyone else is like him, i think he'd like to have some more Experiences.

Affinity 14: (between 5am and 11am)

"... ...Oh! Hello, {PC}—I didn't even notice you there. My mind was somewhere else."

Affinity 15: (between 5am and 11am)

"Good morning! Sorry? My hair's messy? You're right, it's sticking right up at the front... That's embarrassing. I'll fix it right away."

Affinity 16: (between 11am and 4pm)

"I usually have lunch in the dormitory. I do eat on the terrace with Lyca every now and then, but he seems so busy these days..."

Lyca is one of the members of Obscuary, btw! Seems like he and Subaru are friends.

Affinity 17: (between 10pm and midnight)

"I didn't take you for a night owl, {PC}. Since you're here, I suppose I'll stay up a little longer. You're sure you're okay? You're not sleepy?"

Affinity 18: (between 8pm and 5am)

"Do you visit Sinostra very often, {PC}? I see... Oh, no reason. I was just making conversation. Ha ha."

why do you ask that. . .a certain mafioso captain wouldn't happen to be suspicious of you would he. . .or maybe you owe them money. . .or maybe you used to be part of Sinostra and moved to Hotarubi. . . .

Affinity 19: (between 10pm and midnight)

"It's getting late, {PC}. How about we finish this tomorrow? Thank you for keeping me company all this time."

Affinity 20: (between 5am and 11am)

"Oh, I couldn't ask you to come all the way to my room to wake me up—I'd feel terrible. I do very much appreciate the thought, though."

it's okay buddy jin already makes them do it, one more pit stop won't hurt.

Affinity 21: (between 11am and 4pm)

"Oh, hello, {PC}. Sorry, I was actually just on my way out. I should be back by evening—do you mind if we speak then?"

Affinity 22: (between 4pm and 8pm)

"Lyca has seen my message, so why hasn't he responded to it? I hope nothing bad has happened to him..."

Affinity 23: (between 8pm and 5am)

"Lyca will adapt well to human society, I'm sure of it. I'm so relieved that Darkwick chose to trust him. I can't thank you enough for your help."

he really likes Lyca huh? that is his dog.

Affinity 24: (between 10pm and midnight)

"You can't sleep? Then let me tell you some stories. Legend has it that evil spirits appear once you've told a hundred. Now, what number was I up to..."

BOY IS TRYNA GET YOUR ASS HAUNTED.

Affinity 25(max): (no time constraints)

"I don't want to seem like I'm testing you, I just... I get really anxious sometimes... I'm sorry. I'm being weird, aren't I?"

he's the type to ask 'are you sure you love me? are you sure you wanna be with me?' after you get married and move in together and own a house and have two kids with another on the way. he's the hyper anxious 'i'm sorry we disagreed about our favorite colors do you hate me?' friend(affectionate) I wonder though, is he apologizing for seeming like he's testing you because he's using his stigma to see what you've been up to or something. . .? Probably not lol it's more likely he just keeps asking if you like him

Spring: (March-May) (between 5am and 11am)

"There is no time like spring. Everyone seems more relaxed this time of year. It's reassuring to see."

(between 11am and 4pm)

"I have some sakura mochi. I was just about to prepare some tea to go with it—would you like to join me?"

(between 4pm and 8pm)

"They have no control over whether they bloom, and yet they get made a spectacle of nonetheless... Oh, sorry—I was talking about the cherry blossoms."

(between 8pm and 5am)

"There are many different flowers growing in Hotarubi, but I think the wisteria are my favorites. This is the best time to see them, so you should take a walk around."

Summer: (June-August) (between 5am and 11am)

"Hot today, isn't it? It's always raining in Hotarubi, so it does provide a little escape from the blazing summer sun, but... Ha ha. It is very humid, isn't it?"

(between 11am and 4pm)

"Summer makes me think of the ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan. The scene where Oiwa becomes hysterical, having realized her her face has been disfigured— incredible."

Yotsuya Kaidan is one of the best known japanese ghost stories! It's extremely violent, so read the summary at your discretion. The scene in question has Oiwa shown her reflection by her sister's boss to see that the cream she was given by a woman who was in love with her husband was actually some sort of poison that instantly scarred her face. She grabs a sword and goes to kill her, only for her to accidentally slit her own throat.

(between 4pm and 8pm)

"Hotarubi House holds regular festivals during the summer months. If you need a yukata to wear, I'd be happy to pick one out for you."

(between 8pm and 5am)

"I don't mind scary stories, but when that biwa in the tea room started playing by itself, it did make me jump a little..."

slight spoiler, although you can probably figure it out from this but. . .Zenji is a ghost. Subaru currently can't actually see him or hear his voice. . .only Haku, the pc, and, perhaps not so oddly, Towa can afair. All of his youtube content doesn't have him or his voice in it because he can't be recorded by cameras. So Subaru doesn't realize that the biwa playing on its own is actually Zenji playing the biwa.

Autumn: (September-November) (between 5am and 11am)

"The air has gotten crisper, and the leaves are changing color. I know it's only natural for the seasons to shift, so why does it make my heart ache so much?"

(between 11am and 4pm)

"Oh, these? They're some chestnuts I found. I know—I should give them to Sho. I'm sure he'll be able to make something delicious with them."

(between 4pm and 8pm)

"That's another kuchikiri tea ceremony under my belt. It's an annual tradition where one cuts open a tea jar to reveal the tea that was preserved from the first harvest."

(between 8pm and 5am)

"On long autumn nights when the moon is shining beautifully in the sky, it's hard to resist taking a walk outside. Don't stay out until too late though, {PC}."

Winter: (December-February) (between 5am and 11am)

"...Oh, {PC}. Good morning... I had a hard time getting up today. It must be the cold... Ha ha. Not very captain-like, is it?"

Jin, Taiga, and Ed are all prone to not getting out of bed. and Yuri falls asleep on operating tables when he has down time. Trust me Subaru you are perfectly captain-like.

(between 11am and 4pm)

"Today, I'm going to order ingredients from one of my favorite stores so we can all make negima—tuna and scallion—hot pot together. Please, do join us."

(between 4pm and 8pm)

"It's cold out today. I was just thinking about lighting the fire. Would you like to come and warm up with me?"

oh subaru you don't even know how that sounds

(between 8pm and 5am)

"People say winter makes you want to snuggle up with someone, but I find that a good blanket does a much better job."

i agree that blankets are much easier to manage than people lol. probably warmer too.

His birthday: (February 20th)

"A present? For me? Thank you... I didn't expect you to do anything for my birthday, so I'm a little caught off guard. I really appreciate it."

Your birthday:

"Um... Happy birthday.  I really hope this year will be a wonderful one for you."

New Years: (January 1st)

"Happy New Year. I hope I can depend on your guidance and support again this year."

Valentine's Day: (February 14th)

"Chocolate? Oh, It's Valentine's Day, isn't it? Does that mean these are for me...?"

nah i just wanted you to look at them. YES THEY ARE FOR YOU BBY. why would you be showing him chocolate if it wasn't for him! On any day, not just valentine's day!!

White Day: (March 13th)

"These are for you, {PC}. I put in a special order for monaka from my favorite confectioner in Ginza. They're wafers filled with bean jam—I hope you like them."

April Fool's Day: (April 1st)

"Earlier, Haku told me he was switching houses. It gave me a real shock— I'm very relieved that it wasn't true..."

i bet subaru made the most scared kicked puppy face and started apologizing for being such an awful captain and blamed himself for that haku would go to a different house and haku had to quickly explain it was just a prank for fear that subaru might burst into tears.

Halloween: (October 31st)

"Happy Halloween. I know it's nothing special, but I've prepared some treats for the occasion. Oh... But you're more than welcome to play a trick instead."

please don't trick him. april fool's day was hard enough for him.

Christmas: (December 25th)

"Merry Christmas. We already have our New Year decorations up in Hotarubi, so it has a real east-meets-west atmosphere now. I hope everyone is okay with it..."

Idle: (about 20 seconds without interacting with the game) (below 13 affinity)

"Everyone seems busy at the moment. Maybe I should use this opportunity to tidy the garden..."

(13 affinity and above)

"{PC}? Oh... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you. I was just worried because you were so quiet..."

Absent: (logging in for the first time in 2 or more days?)

"You're back... I'm so relieved. I was worried I'd done something to make you feel uncomfortable..."

this man shakes like a chihuahua 24/7. like you can taste the anxiety coming off of him. i love him. he's so pathetic(affectionate). i wanna squeeze his hand reassuringly and tell him everything's gonna be okay. i wanna hug him and pat his head. i wanna take him places so he learns more about the world outside of working. i wanna watch him do schoolwork excitedly because he's never really gone to school before and it's a new and exciting experience. i want him to experience the most mundane aspects of life with wonder.

good boy. yeah. get him anxiety meds /nodnod

[cinnbar-bun]

Good Fortune

Pairing: Dio Brando x GN!Reader

Summary: Dio is told he is lucky, often. He can't see how, considering how awful his life has been. But after meeting you, the child of George Joestar's old business partner and Jonathan's friend, perhaps his luck has turned for the better.

Even if he refuses to engage with such notions.

Rating: SFW but it's painful

Word Count: ~4.5k

AO3 Link: Here

Notes: Childhood-friends-to-lovers, Phantom Blood!Dio, babes this just angst, talks of death and dying, death, religious discussion, religious imagery, Dio unfortunately falling in love, Reader is MENA! but it's easy to ignore, foreshadowing for parts 3 and 6 (no spoilers though), yes I made this to be self indulgent because I wanted to torture Dio because omg what if he went to Cairo specifically because his partner mentioned it?

Dio stares in front of the full-length mirror in his room, adjusting his suit and tie. George explained he was having an old friend over tonight for supper, making a brief comment about how said friend was also bringing his child over. Dio noticed Jonathan’s eyes widen and the smile adorning his face- obviously, they were acquainted from before he ever arrived to the mansion. 

He could only sneer as he thought of how obnoxious this ‘friend’ could possibly be. He couldn’t just antagonize them or Jonathan like he normally did, not when George would be around and watching. The thought of having to sit all night with that buffoon and a friend of his made him want to gag. 

Alas, one must do what they have to do to obtain wealth and power. If he wanted the Joestar fortune, he had to play the game correctly. Assuring he was in good standing with George and this guest would only serve him well in the future. 

And who knows, Dio chuckles to himself, maybe this ‘friend’ of Jonathan’s would slowly grow to hate the boy as well. He brushes his blond hair back, fixing it up properly. A loose strand makes him use his hand to push it back, and he smirks as he sees the three little birthmarks on his ear. He fixes his cufflinks and proceeds to walk out of the room, annoyed at having to put on airs, yet interested to see what will become of this dinner. 

The minute he steps down the stairs, there is a knock at the door. Dio curiously looks from the staircase at the large front doors that George himself approaches. The first thing Dio can make out is a large man, around the same age as George- perhaps a few years older if the few strands of gray hair are anything to go off of. Before he can take a closer look, Jonathan races down the stairs, accidentally brushing shoulders with Dio. 

“You damn-,” Dio snarls, but quickly shuts his mouth in case of anyone nearby. Jonathan didn’t seem to notice, instead jumping off the last few steps and running towards the guests. Jonathan yells out a name Dio doesn’t recognize, but the energetic boy is quickly put in his place with George’s hand on his shoulder.

“Jonathan! That is not how we greet our guests!” George scolds his son. Jonathan’s shoulder slink apologetically, like a beaten down puppy. 

Dio despises that look more than anything. He makes an expression of disgust before he hears some chuckling. 

“Oh, it’s alright, George, let the boy be! He’s young!” A jovial voice exclaims, and George sighs. 

“I’m aware, my friend. I just can’t help but worry about what kind of man he will grow up to be,” George muses, tugging on Jonathan’s ears. Dio’s ears pick up that despite the negative words, George isn’t angry at Jonathan. Jonathan himself isn’t too offended either. 

Hmph. Disgusting. 

Dio figures that he’s seen enough and makes his appearance in front of the guests. The man is clearly foreign and has some semitic features that Dio hardly has ever seen in Britain. He’s finely dressed, wearing a fancy English suit and plenty of gold accessories. Dio finds himself fascinated by the many rings on the man’s fingers. 

“My, my, and who could this be?” The man questions, a friendly smile on his face. Dio is frankly grossed out by the overly familiar tone the man takes, but bites his tongue back. 

“This is my adopted son, Dio Brando,” George proudly states. The man extends his hand to Dio and shakes it with a firm grip. 

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Brando,” he introduces himself then pats his child on their shoulder. “This is (Y/n), my only child. I assume you’re all the same age, so I think you’ll get along splendidly.” 

Dio glances at you briefly as you bow your head politely to him. “It’s very nice to meet you, Dio.” 

You look quite similar to your father, albeit, younger and more rounded, with the same features Dio finds rare on you. Your clothes are just as intricate as your father’s, clearly very expensive, making Dio curious about just how rich you and your father are. 

Dio bows his head back to you. “It’s nice to meet you as well, (Y/n).” 

Once the greetings are done, Jonathan goes up to you and excitedly beams at you. “(Y/n), did you bring anything for me this time?” 

Dio is almost tempted to smack Jonathan on behalf of George, but you chuckle and nod, seemingly not minding. You glance over to make sure the older men are not looking and open your satchel, taking out a red box. Dio and Jonathan peek at it while you remove the cover. Inside the box are small, pink cubes covered in white sugar. 

“Woah… what are these?” Jonathan asks. 

“Lokum, oh, ah, ‘Turkish delights’,” you say in English. Jonathan is about to take one when you close the box and shake your head. Jonathan pouts after being denied, probably due to his love of sweets. “After dinner. Otherwise my father might lecture me.” 

“Turkish delight, you say?” Dio repeats. “So, I assume you and your father must deal within the Middle East, correct?” 

“Yes. He was born there, then moved here to start his business,” you pridefully comment, always happy to share how proud you are of your father’s hard work. 

“Interesting…” Dio thinks. He frowns when he thinks of his own drunkard of a father, and the gross feeling that dwells within him bubbles upfront. How nice it must be to be happy for your father. How wonderful it must feel to be proud to share the same DNA as the man who had created you. He can’t point to a single thing he enjoyed about Dario, can’t even count anything nice the man has done on one hand except die. 

Yet you look to hold your father in such high regard, perhaps even moreso than Jonathan does to George. Likewise, your father keeps smiling at you and flaunting your accomplishments to George, as if you were the best of the best. As if you were the most wonderful thing to have ever graced this earth. 

Dio can’t help but feel disgusted and so, so jealous that you get a father who adores and spoils you like nothing else. You don’t even have a mother, but that doesn’t seem to damper you. Any hope he had of wanting to meet you is squashed by the hatred and rage he feels for your relationship. 

----

You write letters often, Dio finds out. Now Dio knows why Jonathan is always so excited to check the mail. Soon after leaving the dinner party George held, Dio started getting letters addressed just to him from you. 

Apparently, you were too stupid to understand that Dio wanted nothing to do with you and actively despised you like he did Jonathan. Or maybe you just didn’t care, since you began writing about anything and everything you were thinking of as if you were old acquaintances. Dio once snagged Jonathan’s letter from you to see if the tone was any different, but almost nothing was, except for mentions of a historical places Jonathan would like to possibly visit. 

At first, he burned them away, not interested in whatever mindless rabble you had to discuss. He had no interest in history, none in studying, and absolutely none for whatever rich person you had just met on the road. Jonathan writes back plenty, but in order to save face, Dio writes back, only very rarely, pretending as if he actually cared. 

It isn’t until his birthday that he sighs and relents, opening up the package you had sent. He rolls his eyes at the well wishes you give him (although he does wonder briefly how you knew his birthday) but finds two wrapped gifts in the box. 

In the first one, thinner and longer, is a selection of the Turkish delights you had brought over the first time you met. He actually hadn’t bothered trying it then, mostly due to his disgust with you and the fact Jonathan looked like he was enjoying himself when he took a bite. 

He snorts and rolls his eyes, about ready to throw away the sweets when the smell of the powdered sugar and rosewater drifts into his nose. It is… certainly unique, he thinks. Nothing like what he’s ever smelled before. He places the box on his desk again and glares at it, as if the treats were personally ruining his day. He folds his arms and stares at it some more. 

He should throw this out. Never look at this and just write a quick ‘thank you’ so you felt appreciated or something. But still… the powdered sugar dusting the outside, the sweet, sweet smell of it- it was far too tempting. He clicked his tongue and picked one up, groaning at the way the sugar dusted his fingers and part of his suit. 

“Disgusting,” he mumbles before he takes a large bite of it. The taste is nothing like what he’s ever had before, and he nearly chokes at it. He coughs then swallows, taken aback by the taste. It’s… it’s quite delicious. He’s never tried something so wonderfully sweet, something that overtakes the senses quite like this. Roses make an interesting flavor profile, he muses. 

Wait, no, what is he thinking, getting excited over this stupid gift from an annoyance like you? He closes the box of sweets then opens the last box. Inside is a ring, similar to the one your father wore at the dinner party. The ring had a large amber stone, and Dio twirls it in his hands, fascinated with how the light catches the stone. 

This must have cost a fortune. He chuckles as he picks up the note to go alongside the ring. 

My father and I thought a ring would be a good gift for you. He says that it’s always wise to have something nice on your hand. It can bring you good luck and make you stand out. I hope you like the color- he was going to get you the blue one, but this one reminded me of your eyes. I thought you might appreciate it more. 

Happy birthday, Dio. 

You sign your name at the bottom and Dio finds himself biting his lip harshly. It’s really frustrating how you always naively try to think of him like this. Who said he wanted your damn sweets? Who said he wanted your rings? Or your good luck? Who said he wanted anything you had? 

He shakes his head and gazes at the ring again. He hates himself, so why would you dare get something that is meant to be of him? This body that he despises, how could you covet it in a god damn ring meant for him? 

You bother and enrage him like nothing else. He always thought this was because of your friendship with Jonathan, but this just cemented that the hate he felt for you was entirely just because of who you were. Whereas Jonathan was an obstacle he needed to rid of for the Joestar inheritance, you were someone who actively treated him like a damn charity case. 

You must have thought you were so clever and kind gifting these things to him, weren’t you? 

Fine. If you wanted to be a useful idiot for him, then he would make sure to get the most use out of you. The violent rage he had boiled over into interest and excitement. He grabbed his paper and pen, quickly writing a letter back to you. 

This time, however, he made sure to be more expressive than he normally would have. He laughed loudly as he signed the paper in a hurry and sealed it within an envelope. This could be quite enjoyable. 

Imagine him- getting rid of Jonathan and using you for his own gain! Not just one- but two means of success and fortune! Oh, you were a delightful idiot through and through, he thought as he threw aside the lid to the dessert and popped in another cube. 

----

The years were kind to Dio. Ever since his plan to use you came to fruition, he slowly refined it to working his way up to being able to ask for your hand in marriage. He spent years cleaning up his act, faking his way to the top, even joining the rugby team and a university to study law. He was practically the perfect man- attractive, intelligent, resourceful, strong- why, anyone would be lucky to have him as a son-in-law and husband. 

The interest he deemed to show you in his teens made you reciprocate his affections. You began writing longer letters for him than you did to Jonathan. You would stop by and visit, not even for Jonathan, but just for Dio now. You two would have long discussions in the gardens, on the road, and in the library of the Joestar mansion. Your father practically adored Dio as a son, always patting his shoulder and joking with him more casually. He was an admirable prize, one that was practically handing himself on a silver platter for you. 

Except, somewhere along the line, like a damn fool, Dio made a mistake in his normally thorough plans. Somewhere, somehow- you managed to make Dio enjoy your presence. This wasn’t supposed to happen. 

When he first started trying to get your attention, he often would do so at the expense of Jonathan. He just liked pissing his brother off while he would drag you away as if he had something urgent to say to you privately. He would aggrandize and embellish his stories, making himself seem far more noble and special than Jonathan was. Of course, Jonathan, ignorant as may be at times, wasn’t stupid. He knew right away Dio was up to no good and tried to warn you, subtly take you away, or even insert himself into the times when Dio pulled you aside. 

Nothing worked, however. You either didn’t notice or didn’t care, always brushing aside the warnings and believing in Dio wholeheartedly. It was cute- misguided, frankly- but cute, nonetheless. Especially after Dio did his best to mend his relationship with Jonathan, Jonathan found he had no leg to stand on and tried to leave the past behind him, wishing you two only the best. 

Good, thought Dio. He was tired of having to play nice with his Jonathan, and now that Jonathan had no chance of stealing you away from him, Dio could enact his plan still. And that’s what it should have stayed. 

But fate was far more strange than Dio realized. One day, he would find himself listening to you more. While before, it was just to keep track of your stories to use later, it now became an interesting part of his day. Another day, he would naturally seek out your hand to hold- not as a means to make you swoon and desire him, but just for his own comfort. And on another, god, he couldn’t believe this- he found himself imagining what a ‘home’ could be like for you and him. 

You somehow managed to imprint yourself in his brain, filling his head with stupid, ridiculous, and childish thoughts. He found the hushed whispers he spoke in your ear to become less and less false as time went on. He found the way your cheeks would warm up made him grin and not smirk. He found your voice pleasant and the words you’d say become clearer. He found his body recoiling when any other man, especially Jonathan, tried to talk to you. 

You ruined him. You ruined everything. How dare you? He could afford plenty of things now, yet he continued to wear that damn amber ring on his finger. You adored his eyes, and for once, he found himself almost agreeing whenever he looked in the mirror before he would take you on a date. 

You. Damn. Worm. 

You must be the devil. You must be some evil snake charming him and destroying him inside and out. He couldn’t accept the fact that he, Dio Brando, was actually enjoying your presence in his life. 

You spoke of the trips you took with your father for business. You loved almost all your destinations, bringing back souvenirs and charming photos for him. But one city always stood out to him. 

Cairo. 

“Oh, yes, the city is wonderful there,” you mused dreamily. “There are these beautiful pyramids-” 

You point at the photos of these pyramids and he’s become interested in these monumental landmarks. Jonathan made a mention of them once, he thinks. 

“And what are these pyramids for, exactly? Why would someone just build these with stone in the middle of a desert of all places?” Dio raises a brow. Although he’s impressed, he finds himself questioning the worth of these structures. You chuckle, a sound he’s grown to enjoy. 

“The ancient Egyptians lived here, Dio. They built these pyramids and all sorts of buildings for their final resting place,” you smile. 

“Tch, how pretentious,” he teases. “You sound far too happy talking about a place of death.” 

“Perhaps, but you know, death isn’t so bad.” Now this makes him pause. 

“And what do you mean by that?” Dio questions. You shrug. 

“Well, for them, they believed that when you died, your heart would be judged and you could go to the Field of Reeds, Aaru.” 

“Similar to western dogma,” Dio mumbles. He never had such faith in things like ‘God’ or a ‘heaven’. 

If God really existed, he would have helped Dio’s mother. He would’ve made Dario a better father. Would have made Dio feel safe. 

But there is no such thing, no such tangible way to prove that God did exist. And it seems these ancient humans were just as foolish as the people of today. They would continue to believe in something that did not exist and did not love them. 

“Yes, you could say that,” you nod. “But I think the idea is nice overall. Don’t you think?” “I don’t understand what could be considered ‘nice’ about it,” he frowns. 

“I like to think of it as a second chance. Another way to live, having gone through the struggles of your first life. You’d know more and appreciate more.” 

You don’t notice the way his face tenses as he grits his teeth. Even if there was a god, in no way shape or form was Dio ever going to be in ‘heaven’. He could push that aside right away. He was the son of Dario, and that certainly already meant he was sentenced to eternal damnation. 

“I see,” is all he says. You snap your fingers as you then show a picture of a gorgeous terracotta mansion. 

“I almost forgot to show you! We got to stay in this beautiful place. Oh, it was just wonderful inside. I think you’d love it. There was a lovely garden there, too. I wish I could take you there, I’d show you everything Cairo has to offer! And you could finally taste the dates when they’re ripe and the festivals that go on there!” 

“I would love nothing more,” he replies, suddenly thinking of how hot Cairo must feel. He wondered how you would smile if the festivals were going on. How lovely the night must be with you in it under the lamps and palm trees of Egypt. “Maybe we can go for our honeymoon?” You lightly smack his shoulders and laugh. “Don’t tease me like that! Otherwise I might make you propose tomorrow!” 

“I could have that arranged,” Dio leans forward, resting his chin on his hand. 

“Let’s focus on our studies first,” you chuckle. “I really would love to marry, but alas, our fathers have decided to make us wait longer.” 

“Alas,” he joins in, the thought of finally being yours and you being his making his heart swell. 

Only you could offer Dio this momentary salvation. This brief respite of peace despite the anger and hatred he held in his heart. This was a feeling only reserved for you, the you who practically forced your presence and love onto him. 

It almost didn’t even feel like a part of his plan to gain the two fortunes, even though he would force himself to remember this was just business. Ah, but you made it so easy to enjoy life. You made him forget for a moment he was not the son of Dario Brando. You could made him forget he was a maniacal bastard orphan, instead making him feel he was Dio. A new Dio, a Dio no one could have thought ever existed, even him. A Dio that was just a man, for once. 

He would become Dio, the man who would pick you fresh roses. Dio, the man who carried you over puddles on the street. Dio, who enjoyed drinking tea with you. Dio, who loved when you slipped into your mother tongue. Dio, who held you when you cried. Dio, the man who would get curious whenever you would remark joyfully about his birth marks, saying he must have been lucky. 

The only thing “lucky” about him was you. That’s all he could genuinely point out in his life as “lucky” and “good”. 

So slowly, and foolishly, the only thing he could do was simply let you in deeper into his heart, letting you carve your initials into him and marking him as your helpless servant. 

----

It had now been two months since your passing. Dio returned to the mansion in a drunken stupor, finding he was unfortunately still aware. 

Aware of how empty he was. How angry he was. How much he despised everything. 

Why the hell was Jonathan crying over you? Jonathan knew nothing about you. Jonathan didn’t love you or care for you anywhere close that Dio did. 

That rich boy who had everything handed to him and given to him just for existing knew nothing of the pain Dio was feeling. 

He didn’t deserve to cry over you. Didn’t deserve to feel a god damn thing about you. 

Dio was the one supposed to marry you- not him! So Jonathan should have left and let him grieve properly over the fact his betrothed was now gone. 

Was this God’s way of punishing him? Huh? Was this his sick joke? A reminder to him that no matter he did, he was never meant to be happy? 

Was that all his life was? One meaningless, empty joke for God to amuse himself with? 

Dio couldn’t help but burn every letter he had kept from you over the years. He didn’t need them. With a bottle of alcohol in his hand and a few letters in the other, he held them over the fireplace and let them burn to ash and dust. He didn’t care. Couldn’t care less. 

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing could ever bring him satisfaction. Nothing could ever bring him joy or peace. He was obviously not meant to have it. 

Even your own father tried to console Dio, having thought of him like a son, but Dio couldn’t bother. Your father promised to give employment and a portion his fortune to Dio still, already securing his future wealth. 

But that wasn’t enough. It was not enough. For every ounce of love you tried to give Dio, he felt a thousand times more angry at the world he lived in. 

He didn’t need this world. He didn’t want any of this. He couldn’t live like this. 

He couldn’t die like you- oh god, no, he couldn’t. He’d most certainly be punished and made to repent for his sins. 

As he burned the last of your letters, he downed the rest of the alcohol, burning his throat. He could not muster anymore tears, not after he laid the roses down on your tombstone. Dio Brando was dead and buried alongside you. 

All that was left of him was his hatred. 

So close to having everything he wanted, and now it was all gone. 

He was so close to even giving up his earlier desires to torture Jonathan, instead content to protect your father’s business and travel with you after he finished getting his degree. But now he had nothing to hope for. 

Drunk as he may have been, he found himself thinking like he did when he was a young boy. 

Yes… I’ll just kill them all. I’ll ruin them all. I should’ve stuck with that plan originally. 

He cursed himself between hiccups, cursing himself for daring to let you in, letting himself feel safe around you, letting himself be vulnerable and able to be torn to shreds by you. 

It was his fault. His fault for all of this. If he hadn’t acted a fool and loved you, he could’ve had Jonathan gone, perhaps disowned or dying in a ditch somewhere. He could’ve been the richest, prodigal son of Britain. He would’ve been powerful then. He wouldn’t have had to have you extinguish every ounce of life within him. 

He was no longer human. He was now Dio. Only Dio. 

Dio, who hated everything. Dio, who had no love for anything but himself. Dio, who wanted everything erased. Dio, who had become exactly like the man he despised most. 

He hated it all. 

In his anger, he picked up the pictures you had given him and threw them all in the fire. He hacked out his lungs when the smoke billowed from them and surrounded him. A few photos began to melt before his very eyes, but for some reason, one of them caught his eye. 

The terracotta, three story mansion from your trip in Cairo. The one you wanted to take him to. The one you two dreamed about going on your honeymoon for. The one you joked about possibly buying and redesigning to make it your home forever. 

He gasped and grabbed the photo, blowing out the flame quickly and saving a majority of the picture. The corner was burned off, but the picture still remained. He held it to his chest and let out a shaky breath. 

Cairo was something he could never give up. Cairo, the only place that would allow him to be with you. Cairo, the place where you two promised to go. 

You promised. 

So why…? Why? Why, why, why? 

But Cairo would have to wait. He had something he needed to do first. Once he could get rid of Jonathan and George, and everything else that would stand in his way, then he could go there. 

I will find you again in Cairo, my (Y/n)...

[theelfsongbard]

Counterweight

Pairing: spawn!Astarion x AFAB!reader

Summary: after the epilogue, you and Astarion share a summer’s afternoon together in the meadow. For @oharahive’s breeding kink challenge!

Warnings: epilogue spoilers, breeding kink, mentions of potential future pregnancy

Word Count: 2273

Image source: https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/760123243354175763/

These past 6 months have been the counterweight to 200 years of misery. Thank you.

He had said those words to you weeks ago, and from then, he had slowly been opening up more and more to you. More frank, more transparent with his feelings than ever before. Today, he is quiet again but you know his mind is anything but, still coming to terms with his grand adventure and the turn of fate that it has brought with it. All at once, he speaks up.

“You bring me the best happiness. You show me the way, where I cannot see and you give me love where I don’t always deserve it. I don’t know how you do it, but I will always be grateful for you.”

The summer breeze blows over the meadow, sifting over the long grass like a wave of verdant green. How lovely it is, to be here, to be loved. Astarion’s thoughts lazily drift as he rests his head in your lap, his eyes shut and sheltered from the sunlight by the wide canopy of an old oak. Slowly he breathes in, bringing cool air into lungs that no longer work. Things have changed drastically in the past 6 months, and now, despite his condition, he found himself flourishing and a free man.

Above him, your gentle humming stops though your hand in his hair continues to massage his scalp with just the right amount of pressure. “And I would give up anything to see you happy for all eternity without hesitation. Has last night’s party been on your mind, love? You’ve been introspective lately.”

“How can I help myself, darling? I can’t help but think about how things could’ve turned out so differently, and yet every iteration I think about, I cannot imagine myself being happier than I am now. You led me here and I… hate to think what life would be like without you being my guiding light. I’d be bitter, resentful, enslaved still by my own will or by Cazador. And I know that I was not always easy to love, but you stayed anyways when it would have been so easy to walk away.”

“You are worthy of love. I have chosen to love you because waking up to your smile every day and seeing you grow into who you are brings me joy. You are my home and my guide. The obstacles we faced together only strengthened our bond.”

Astarion cracks one vermillion eye open, a knowing smirk on his lips, “You like my smile? Why don’t you tell me more?” His voice deepens playfully as he drags you down to press some feather-light kisses on your mouth. This is his way of processing his feelings on complicated topics, as if he is afraid that wallowing in his thoughts any longer will eat him alive even though he has become less self-conscious about openly sharing his thoughts now.

You gasp in feigned scandalousness, “If I feed your ego too much, you might be too full of yourself for tonight’s dinner! I suppose you’ll just have to settle with knowing that you’re just lovely.” The way you giggle into his mouth sets something alight in him and he flips himself over, pinning you down into the grass below him, earning him a squeal of delighted surprise. This time, it’s your turn to lean up and capture his lips with her own, pulling a low rumbling chuckle from deep in his throat that vibrates through his chest and into hers where he presses against you. “Cheeky little thing aren't you?” the sound of his voice combined with the feeling of his arms caging you in makes your heart beat wildly in its ribcage. Nobody plays the game of seduction better than Astarion and the past 6 months together have only given him time to learn exactly what makes you tick.

“If you're worried about me being too full for dinner, I suppose I can always have dinner a little earlier, if you'll permit it. There's always room for dessert afterwards.” his lips graze tantalisingly over the exposed skin of your neck, his nose nuzzling the shell of your ear with care.

The ring of your laugh chimes like a bell on the wind, “Oh, just stop playing coy and come down for a bite then!”

You don’t need to ask twice before you feel his fangs probing for the blood beneath your skin before finally piercing into your neck, you grit your teeth and cling to his arms as he bears down. The feeling of pain never gets any better no matter how many times he feeds from you, but you have gotten used to the icy pricks and the ensuing numbness as he draws the blood from your body into his. It's his chest that warms first, followed by the healthy flush of life that fills his cheeks and… more intimate regions making itself known by the hardening desire pressed into your stomach.

Drunk on the fresh bouquet of your blood, Astarion laps his tongue against the puncture wounds at your neck, capturing the remnants of his dinner as it runs from the site. An appreciative moan pours from his throat, and when he pulls away at last, you can see that his eyes burn with fire and need. Feeding Astarion doesn’t always lead to sex, but the intimacy of the act makes it a very appealing activity for you both and today is one of those days.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about our future as well, what adventures it might hold for us both,” he kisses up your neck, tickling you and leaving you gasping for air as he teases. The only coherent word you can manage to utter is a shaky “yes?”.

“And I had the most interesting chat with Gale at the party.”

You frowned, wondering where on earth he was going with this. There was once a time when he and Gale weren’t on the best of terms with one another, not in the least because he was also competing for your affection when it was clearly already given to Astarion. Although time had mellowed out Astarion’s moodiness and dislike of the wizard, you couldn't help but think that perhaps it was jealousy that had stoked the fire of his appetite today.

“Oh? And what about him?” you squirmed about as his lips found your ear.

“It's nothing about him, but it is about us. You see, he was telling me about a guest lecturer he had at his school, a dhampir.”

Oh. Oh. So that was what was on his mind.

“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” The implication hung there, tantalising. The idea of children wasn’t a topic that you had broached with Astarion. In all honesty, you had both had your hands full with other things; adventuring, searching for a cure to vampirism, working to rebuild the Underdark for the many spawn that had been released from Cazador’s manse. But now that he had mentioned it, your mind couldn't help but be filled with images of Astarion lovingly gazing down at a small fragile bundle close to his chest, swathed in cloth. Astarion smiling as he held out a finger clutched by tiny hands. Astarion cooing and stroking its cheek as it drifted into a trance, protected from the cruelty of the world by his love. “Astarion.” A familiar tingle of heat fills you and concentrates itself at your core as the thoughts suffocate the forefront of your mind until nothing else surfaces.

“Think of them reaching for us, seeking the comfort of our loving embrace, filling our home with joy in the mornings.” he breathes in wantonly, inhaling your intoxicating scent. You are fertile, and the tang of your blood on his tongue and the scent of it lets him know that your body is ready at its peak to receive a child if you should choose to do so. “I’m ready for a child, if you are, my love.” he breathes it like a promise against your mouth, forehead pressed to yours waiting for your answer.

“Yes. I am ready.” you respond in kind, kissing him earnestly. “Give me your child.”

Astarion’s ministrations grow as much as his enthusiasm. From where he is hovering above you, he growls with a hint of possessiveness and primal joy. The fact that you were willing was a promise of security, of having you by his side in the years to come with the knowledge that you loved him so much that you would choose to create something that would immortalise your expression of love for each other in flesh and bone and flowing blood.

You were his of your own choosing and he was yours. Would always choose you and stand by your side. The thought drives him mad and admist the attention that he lavishes on your lips, a hand snakes down your body, freeing your tucked shirt and undressing you with uncanny dexterity and speed fueled by his need to have you as his partner and his mate. Immediately. To press you down and fill you to the bursting with his essence until his seed overflowed in your womb and blessed you both with child.

His hand is distracted by the curve of your breasts, kneading them gently as he begins to move down your body to lick and suckle on them. The moans pouring from you only serve to heighten his own arousal and fill him with satisfaction as he plays you with all the expertise of a bard with a well-acquainted instrument. When he finally relieves you of your pants, he lovingly dips a finger along your folds, making you buck your hips up, collecting the slick and rubbing it against your clit, revelling in the way you’re already wet with desire for him causing a shiver to run through your body. “Excited, darling?” he dares to tease out with that high giggle of his. The heat in your cheeks only grows as you huff, “you don’t say. Please, don’t stop now.” you're so desperate for his touch, to feel him inside you.

He chuckles, “Only because you’re so desperate -“. He licks a long stripe up through them, but despite pretending otherwise, the hold you have on him is too great and inhumanly quickly, he scrambles back up, his knee hooking up under yours to open you up and pulling himself free from his trousers as he aligns himself with your entrance, coating himself in you before pushing in until he’s fully sheathed in your warm heat. The unexpected stretch rips a stifled yelp of pleasure from you and Astarion can’t help but moan in kind. “Don’t hide, let me hear you.”

Waiting until you’ve adjusted to him, he lifts your knees up to his shoulders, folding you over so that he can bury himself deeper inside. The new position brings you closer to the edge as he thrusts with increasing vigour, losing himself in the need to fill you up completely, imagining his seed taking and the swell of your belly bearing the evidence of your passion for everyone to see. “I want to see you dripping with my seed, fucked full until there’s no room left for anything else.”

“Then do it!” you just about screamed as he reached between you to rub on your clit. “Give it to me,” you sobbed, “until there’s nothing left to give.” the added pressure sent you tumbling over the edge, and your vision blacked out momentarily as your mind tried to catch up with your body, still spasming and twitching around his cock, milking him of all he had as he met his release with a shuddering roar, driving himself even deeper than he had before as he spent himself inside you. He doesn't move to pull out, keeping himself and his spend inside you do as long as possible and the intention of the action makes you clench slightly around his softening cock drawing a hiss from Astarion. “You want to go again, love?”

Catching your breath, from the exertion you couldn't help but drag him down to lay beside you, holding him close as you rest your head on his arm, nuzzling close to his neck and inhaling his comforting scent. It spells safety and tenderness that you know is only reserved for you. “Not right now, Astarion. I'm exhausted, but maybe we do it again another day,” you say with a laugh, “after all, if it doesn’t work this time, we’ll just have to keep on trying.”

“Well,” he says with a lazy kiss, “I’m very on board with your idea.”

“This is nice. This is really nice,” you whisper to him. “I just want to lay here with you forever.”

His hand snakes over to rest on your waist, the reassuring weight grounding you and the gentle press of his lips to your hair making your heart flutter. “Then let’s stay, for a little while longer at least. Close your eyes, darling.” Without even being able to see it, you can hear the smile on Astarion’s lips as he says it. You can’t help but feel a swell of contentment and pride at these moments of softness where so much was said with so few words.

You don't know how long you lay there in the field with Astarion, holding each other as the sun sank below the horizon but the next time you’re pulled from your trance, it’s the stars that watch over you as you anticipate the hopeful possibility of what might come to fruition.

[bamsara]

question regarding solar lunacy, more near future situations without spoiling too much.

regarding specific scenes, very heavily leaning on the cut scenes shown in the game. how would sun/moon be brought into these scenes with y/n?

sticking out to me, where moon has knocked freddy out cold, and dragging him into parts and service for interrogation.

will we be experiencing moons after math from some kind of "black out" after dragging freddy into the "protective cylinder" and y/n conducting the repair instead of greg?

or will we simply not be cool enough to share cannon events with freddy and greg?

additionally, moon is hunting greg through the game after very hour. will this be incorporated as well? (if able to answer without spoilers) how?

Oooh, some of this would require spoilers and/or some info that would need to be taken with light grain of salt as my current drafts aren't set in stone, and I'd be revising and changing things before the chapters release.

So I can't talk about the scene with Moon dragging Freddy away, or give you in-deph detail about the lights-off routine at the end of every hour and how that relates from game to fic (considering some things have changed in the fic compared to the game, like how Y/N inadvertently prevented Vanessa from being hired as a security guard, but that doesn't mean she's not in the pizzaplex still. Wink wink.) Somethings will be similar but not the same.

Most canon events will need to happen to some extent. I cannot tell you which ones or how true they will stay to the source material, but there will be destruction. As for the hunting procedure the animatronics have, this will still in place, but altered for the fic universe. I cannot talk about how this will work out without giving direct spoilers. But yes, Gregory (and the Reader) will be hunted by some animatronics.

For now, I put a lot of background details into SL that come back later, including: - The Daycare Attendant, (and Monty to an extent) have been working on their resistance to the virus for over a year now in fic timeline. The other animatronics, and staffbots, have not had this, even if their virus manifestations are able to be more hidden from the public (and the reader/narration.) - The reader (Y/N) is an employee and has shown to have the knowledge and clearance to work the breaker/manual power to turn On/Off the scheduled pizza plex's lights in the past before (see: chapter 6) as long as they can get to the controls to do so. - Thanks to Eclipse in chapter 13, there is currently a crack in the protective cylinder in Parts n Service.

There's others as well. There's foreshadowing of something in every chapter, even the early ones. I hope you're okay with me not spoiling stuff until then!

[sophistopheles]

hey!! ty for posting about the article talking about continuation of aa. I don’t know as much about the production of aa5 and 6 but you mentioned a person names Eshiro being responsible for the “no spoilers” rule being replaced. what/who is that? just in general giving u the floor to rant about aa5 and 6 beyond what u were able to say in that post and ur hopes for the future 💙✨ ok bye! :)

hiya!! (post here)

So, the story of why aa5 and aa6 are so different to aa4 basically boils down to a change in the team making it (and Eshiro was part of this).

Most people know Shu Takumi wrote and directed the original trilogy of Phoenix Wright games and then worked on Apollo Justice (although the director was technically Mitsuru Endo, people tend to think of AJ as the last "Takumi" mainline game). After that, he left the Ace Attorney team to complete and release Ghost Trick in 2010, and then he became involved in the development of Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright, which released in 2012.

While he was doing all of this, a "secondary" Ace Attorney team had arisen to keep working on the franchise - they had almost all worked on previous AA games and in 2009 and 2011 they were able to release the two Ace Attorney Investigations games.

The two most well-known members of this "team" are the producer Motohide Eshiro and the director Takeshi Yamazaki, and the fact that AAI2 is so beloved shows that they are by no means unable to make really, really good Ace Attorney games. But, with Takumi still busy with his other projects, and a good few years having passed since AA4, this team was asked to create a fifth Ace Attorney game in his absence.

This was, obviously, a challenge, and Capcom were likely in quite a rush to get a new mainline game out soon. Additionally, initial fan reception of AA4 was really not that good - many people hated the decision to disbar Phoenix in particular - and the game itself had many loose ends.

Eshiro, as the producer, decided that for AA5 it was better for the writers to not be held back by previous games, which manifested in what people think of now as the "no spoilers rule". This is why AA5 does not follow up on AA4, and likewise for AA6. Nowadays this decision is widely regarded as a very bad move, but on some level I empathise with it - AA has always been kind of reluctant to spoil past games, and you were always operating with the presumption that the player might be new to the series and wanted to go back to the previous games. Writing a follow-up that addressed AA4, while being acceptable to newcomers and not spoiling almost all of AA4's biggest twists, without the guy who originally came up with the story, would prove really difficult.

So they wrote Dual Destinies as a new story which followed AA4 but didn't really address it, and indulged in fanservice to try and restore the series status quo. It seems like the scenario changed a lot during development and they were pretty crunched for time, too - the final villain's models are apparently called FINALBOSS in the game files and completely broken if you look at them from any other angle.

After working on AA5, Yamazaki was apparently exhausted and didn't really want to make another Ace Attorney. Unfortunately for him, Shu Takumi was still off on his Sherlock & Souseki Victorian-Meiji Adventure, writing the Great Ace Attorney duology, and he wouldn't get done until 2017 when DGS2 came out.

Eshiro managed to persuade Yamazaki to work on AA6 by bringing him to conventions, and having seen the passion and overjoyed reactions from fans after AA5 came out, Yamazaki agreed to direct the sixth game, with Takuro Fuse (AA5 and 6's main artist) acting as co-director to ease the load. Some of AA6's cases were also created by guest writers; the SOJ artbook mentions a struggle for ideas, which explains the outlandish setting of Khura'in.

To the best of my knowledge (and I'm not sure this account is 100% accurate so anyone please feel free to correct me) this is why AA5 and AA6 are the way they are. Nobody is particularly to blame for how things turned out; there were just a couple of bad decisions along the way which has resulted in the games being looked back on by a lot of people with some contempt. Given the circumstances, I'm actually pretty impressed with how enjoyable Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice are, even if they don't reach the heights of the trilogy.

Yamazaki left Capcom in 2019. Eshiro went on to produce Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2, and I'm pretty sure he's still at Capcom.

What all of this means for the next Ace Attorney title is completely speculation, but the short version of the story is that Shu Takumi has finally come back from getting milk Herlock Sholmes Jail writing other games, and seems to be getting hyped up by capcom as the "Director of the Ace Attorney Series". This makes it very likely he will direct and write the next Ace Attorney game. At present we have no idea what this means - he could follow up on AA4's story as well as he's able, he could write another Phoenix game, he might go rogue and write an Athena game, he might do something completely different. But the next AA game will likely be around the quality of AA1-2-3-4 and DGS, not another AA5/6 situation.

As for the producer, this comes from the November 2020 leaks (which was very real - it's where we first got the TGAA localisation confirmed), but the only thing we heard about their projected AA7 was that it would be produced by a guy called Yasayuki Makino. He also produced The Great Ace Attorney collection, and if you read his dev blogs from that release, he credits AA4 for getting him into the series initially, and generally seems to be a huge Ace Attorney fan himself, pushing hard for TGAA to get a worldwide re-release after its unimpressive initial sales (and look how well that's worked out...!)

That's basically the story. I think AA7 will be great, actually, but at this point I will literally take anything, Capcom please my family is starving

[accirax]

Danganronpa: Despair Time Mastermind Ranking (Least to Most)

Yeah, I should’ve known that I needed to get around to this someday.

You see, the reason why I hadn’t made a theory about the identity of the Despair Time mastermind is that… I'm not totally convinced on any one person being the mastermind. Like, look at these clowns! They’re all so weird! I love them all for it, obviously, but none of their personality quirks or roles in the story stand out to me as particularly mastermind-y. There are a lot of characters that I believe could be the mastermind, but it’s also pretty easy to convince me out of it for one reason or another.

However, it’s not like I had any idea about who the P:EG mastermind would be, either! At least with two chapters under its belt, I can feel more comfortable that I’m not just fully mischaracterizing the Despair Time cast. And I definitely have things to say about various DRDT masterminds, just… in a way that’s kinda hard to rank.

But, that’s no reason for me to be cowardly! I’m sure that seriously scrutinizing all of the characters’ mastermind potentials and ultimately coming up with who I think the most likely candidate is will be super fun. It’s just… going to be really long, so, buckle in. And maybe prepare to take breaks in the middle.

(Spoilers for all three main canon games and DRDT.)

Why is it going to be so long? Well, it’s because, when it comes to DRDT, I think that my predictions will be at least partially based on how long I think each character will make it into the story. If I have a particularly strong inclination that a character is going to die in Chapter 3.456, no matter how unfounded, it might make me feel worse about their prospects of being the mastermind. That’s not to say that a mastermind can’t appear to die (or actually die) before Chapter 6 rolls around, of course. However, it is an uncommon additional hurdle to the story that would require some justification and a little suspension of disbelief if I’m trying to call it years before it transpires.

So, if we’re going to talk about the mastermind, I need to share my current feelings about where each character might place in the death order. Should I update the title…?

Danganronpa: Despair Time Mastermind Ranking (Least to Most) AND ALSO Death Order Predictions

These are my mastermind rankings, so my opinions on where the characters might be headed will obviously be used as the baseline. Naturally, you don’t need to believe in anything I'm about to throw out here. I’m just trying to explain my thought process so that nothing I say later on will come as a total surprise.

Also, since it’s kind of long, here’s the top of the death order section. I think it’ll provide some important context, but if you want to skip it, look for the other green, bold text.

Some of my thoughts were inspired by anderscim’s death predictions theory, as I read that pretty soon after I joined the fandom. I encourage you to go read their work as well!

The tiers are mostly pretty self explanatory– 3-4 means I think they’re at risk of dying sooner and 4-5 means I think they’re at risk of dying later. But, I’ll give everyone what I hope to be a quick rundown on each character just to explain my thinking. 

Xander: Xander canonically died as the Chapter 1 victim.

Min: Min canonically died as the Chapter 1 blackened.

Arei: While I respect the concept, I personally don’t believe in the “J and Arei swapped places and Arei is actually still alive” theory, and I will be writing the rest of this post accordingly. So, to me, Arei canonically died as the Chapter 2 victim.

Eden: Pretty much anyone who’s seen my DRDT theories at this point shouldn't be surprised that I’m listing Eden as the Chapter 2 killer. The logic behind this belief has been explained by my lovely mutuals here and here.

Levi: Alright, on to the ones I don’t have any concrete evidence to support! (There is concrete evidence behind the ch2 murder, even if you believe it points elsewhere.) Levi has had a decent amount of focus already in his trainwreck of a relationship with Ace and discussions of morality with Eden and Teruko. If he does serve as an accomplice to the Chapter 2 killer (see the first link in Eden’s section), then I feel like his clock will really be ticking. He’d be trapped with the branding of a bad person, his greatest fear, and left without any relationships to lean on. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone targeted him as a victim they “believed deserved to die after what happened,” or even if Levi decided that he was doomed to be a villain from the start and decided to kill. Alternatively, he could try to redeem himself as a classic Chapter 4 buff curse sacrifice in some way. In either case (or even in the case of him just being the Chapter 2 killer), I have my doubts that he’ll be making it too much later into the game.

Arturo: To me, Arturo doesn’t feel like a character set up for incredible longevity. That doesn’t mean I’m pigeonholing him as a one-dimensional villain or pure comedic relief, just that Arturo seems like a character who might be set up to have his ideology lead to his downfall. I don’t think he’s dying in Chapter 2, as I believe the narrative would want to see how he reacts to J burning the bridges between them, but I could definitely see the story only needing one more round of daily life (or possibly a trial as well) to resolve wherever his character is going.

Charles: Look, it’s not only because he’s already been pronounced dead at 3. As I elaborated upon in Charles’ section of this post (The Jerk), Charles feels like he’s speeding towards the end of his character arc far ahead of schedule. It could just be that he needed to learn to make friends quickly before Whit makes an early exit, sending him on a secondary arc where he learns to process his current grief and fears as a parallel to regaining memories about Elliot. However, I find it much more likely that the Inevitable CharWhit Doom Scenario plays out in the opposite direction. He makes a lot of sense as a Chapter 3 victim to me.

Nico: Similar to Arei and J, I am writing all of my theories with the assumption that it really was Nico who attempted to murder Ace in Chapter 2, because I think it makes the most narrative sense. (I could keep typing out a “well, unless” every time, but I don’t really want to eat up my time writing or your time reading all of that.) Through that lens, the fact that Nico has already murdered someone and “gotten away with it,” more or less, puts them in a really weird situation. I don’t really see them killing again, as it feels like we’ve already explored the emotional and narrative implications of that happening through Chapter 2. Although, I can’t deny that it would be interesting to see the fallout of Ace being proven totally right and Hu 100% wrong. Still, if they were to be a survivor after doing something so severe so early into the game, it seems like they would have to undergo some sort of redemption for the audience to accept them as a face of hope in the end. I don’t currently see any great paths to that happening, although there’s obviously still plenty of story time for something to open up. For now, though, I feel more confident in placing them as a early/mid-game victim, likely as a consequence of choosing to harm someone else.

Hu: Given her overall lack of focus in the story thus far, I find it likely that Hu will be one of the focal characters of the Chapter 3 daily life. That could be bad news, considering how Xander and Arei fared after being focused upon in their respective daily lives, but… I dunno, I just feel like Hu would survive it, somehow? Wouldn’t be too surprised if she didn’t, but my gut instinct is that she would. I kind of see her character exiting the story in Chapter 4, no preference on killer vs victim.

Veronika: Veronika is a very weird character (an “oddball,” I’ll call it), and thus, my predictions for her are strongly based on the patterns that oddball characters normally follow. I’ll be using canon characters only, because I believe that those are the only killing games that I have the right to assume every DRDT fan has seen. But, you can apply these same kinds of patterns to many fangan characters. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for fangans breaking from typical Danganronpa norms and following their own paths. But, in the case of how oddballs are treated, I think these characters generally tend to follow these patterns because they’re sensible writing practices. I’ll try to explain why each of these conventions makes sense in the following bullet points.

Oddballs tend not to die in Chapters 1 or 2. This is because oddball characters are generally created to supply a very niche kind of comedic relief– examples from DRDT could include Arturo’s commentary on ugly people or Ace’s bizarre remarks of cowardice. Any character deemed worthy of being included in a fangan occupies one of 16 highly contested slots. So, if you include a character for the purpose of making jokes with them, you'll want to get your bang for your buck! It’s hard to fit every joke you have in mind into only a chapter or two. The best example I could come up with for a (canon) oddball who dies early is Teruteru. In his case, the writers likely anticipated that his hyper-flirtatious nature would get tiring if it continued on for too long, and thus, exhausted all of the jokes they wanted to make in Chapter 1 before his exit. An oddball who dies this early has a limited shelf life, and is likely accompanied by other oddballs who can pick up the comedic slack.

Many have pointed out that silly oddballs often die in Chapter 3 (Hifumi, Ibuki, Tenko) as a way to signify the death of fun and innocence. You also have a chance to get rid of some of the more sinister oddballs (Celeste, Kiyo) at a point where it seems unfeasible for them to have stuck around this long without… well, killing someone. In either case, it’s because Chapter 3 is a great balance of letting a character stay in a story for long enough that they achieve whatever strange effects you wanted from them, while also clearing them off the stage before you get into the really serious business. Silly oddballs especially may not be equipped to handle the often turbulent natures of Chapter 4 without breaking the serious tone too much, so it’s best to axe them at the midpoint.

Endearing oddballs (Gundham, Gonta) have a hard time making it past Chapter 4. If Chapter 4 is serious, Chapters 5 and 6 are even more so, and the Chapter 4 killer slot in particular is a viable dumping ground for characters who don’t really have a place in the finale. Their deaths are meant to pull at your heartstrings and prove how a killing game can make literally anyone– yes, even that guy– a killer. (Miu is an outlier; more like an extended Chapter 3. Unlike THH, which has its tonal shift at the end-of-Ch3-Sakura Traitor Reveal, and SDR2, which has its tonal shift at Mikan’s insanity and death, v3’s tonal shift comes at Kokichi's accusation and Kaito and Shuichi's argument, or possibly even Miu's death itself. The Chapter 4 Daily Life isn’t all that serious in and of itself. Thus, Miu dying as a Ch4 victim functions more like killing off a silly oddball before she has to deal with all the betrayal and scheming that occurs later on.)

Oddballs really only die in Chapter 5 to the extent that you can count major antagonists like Nagito and Kokichi as Weird Dudes. As the precursor to the big, showstopping, mind-bending Chapter 5 Trial, the mood is typically pretty… straightforward. Depending on the overall plot’s arc, Chapter 5 is either the point where most of the surviving students are concluding their character arcs and learning how potent a weapon teamwork is (THH, SDR2), or a “dark night of the soul” type moment where all of the slowly growing inter-character conflicts are finally coming to a head (v3). It can also be Version A for some characters and Version B for others, but, either way, hijinks are not ensuing, basically. Plot relevant things happen here, and as such, plot relevant characters are the ones who are dying. It can be hard for an oddball to find a place in the narrative relevant enough to serve as one of its final, poignant deaths without also being a major antagonist.

Despite everything I’ve said about oddballs dying, it is definitely possible for oddballs to survive. Danganronpa is, at its core, a dark comedy, and as such killing off all of your funny joke characters before the ending is probably a bad move. Hiro, Toko, Kazuichi, and Himiko are all characters I’d call oddballs that survive until the very end. The difference in their case is that part of their oddball nature is being… kind of pathetic? I think it helps them fade into the background more. It's also probably easier to give them a character arc than some others... like Veronika.

I’m sure that you can find exceptions to these “rules” I’ve laid out, especially amongst casts that have a high percentage of oddballs (which you could certainly argue fits DRDT). However, pattern recognition brain go brrrr. I don’t think that Veronika fits the description of a Chapter 1-2, Chapter 4, or survivor oddball particularly well. That leaves Chapter 3 (sinister) and Chapter 5 (bewildering antagonist). I don’t know if it’s that Veronika doesn't seem to have much of a reason to kill at this point in time or all of Veronika’s weird mastermind coding that makes me think DRDTdev might have greater plans for her. Either way, I’m leaning Chapter 5, probably victim. Jeez, that was a long section for one character. Favoritism, I guess?

J: J gets her own category because, honestly, I have no idea what to do with her. Could J make it to the end? Sure! Could J die in a Chapter 3 scheme? Sure! Could J be the Chapter 2 killer? Well, I personally believe the evidence points elsewhere, but in terms of narrative? Sure! The only real inclination I have is that I think it’s more likely that she would be a killer than a victim, mostly because Ultimate Effects Artist is a talent that could lend itself to some really creative and fun murder setups. Given that I have more characters pegged as early game deaths right now, I lean towards J late game, but… man, I don’t know!

Teruko: Teruko is the protagonist, and also is a Lucky Student who allegedly “can’t die.” Especially after she made that claim, it would be silly if she died before the ending– it’d just kinda make her look like a fool. I’m not averse to theories where Teruko is no longer the protagonist by the end, whether by her death or someone else taking up the role for whatever reason, but in the sense that “Survivor” = “Chapter 6,” I think Teruko will survive. I’m not here to predict crazy last-minute Kiibo-blowing-himself-up twists.

Rose: I think that Rose has a really nice arc of overcoming her fears and becoming less passive set up in front of her. We spent enough time establishing her relationship with Teruko that I could see her being a good potential friend/support character to Teruko in the endgame if relationships with people like Eden or Charles fall through. (And, at this point, you know what I think about Eden and Charles…) She’s also good at delivering low-key jokes that can provide some levity without totally ruining the tone. We already saw some of that in this scene. The main things that I think could be standing in her way are her photographic memory and history of debt. The photographic memory could be too annoying of an obstacle to write around for the entire game, and instead be an ongoing effect set to expire in in Chapter 3. Additionally, a money motive paralleling THH’s in Chapter 3 could be too tempting for Rose to pass up. Really, what I’m saying is, if Rose can make it through Chapter 3, I think she’s golden. We’ll just have to see how that Chapter pans out in the future.

David: Oh, David. Currently serving as Teruko’s largest antagonist, I can see why people would think that he would die in Chapter 5. However, I’m not going to beat around the bush and pretend that I’m the only person who thinks David might survive, either. As an inspirational speaker, David is established early on as a character who should be a beacon of hope, before revealing that he’s more of a hope-sucking black hole. It would make sense if, alongside Teruko, he learns to find more of a balance between blithe optimism and cynical depression and heal as a person. He has a lot of very obvious depth that I think a lot of people want to see explored, and whose exploration would be very on-brand for the themes of a typical killing game story. Plus, if Teruko ever does stop being the protagonist, David probably needs to be alive at that point to pick up the slack.

Ace: Similar to Nico, it seems like we’ve already gotten a taste of what Ace being a victim would be like, in a way where I don’t think we’re going to see it again. He could still be a killer, but would the cowardly Ace even want to attempt killing someone and throwing himself into the scrutiny of a Class Trial? Well, it is true that Ace believes that “[neither] dying young or living a long, shitty life of suffering… are as bad as this” (the killing game?). So, he could simply grow fed up with the killing game and decide that risking a Class Trial is worth it, even if he does wind up dying young. However, if that were to occur, Chapter 2 seems like the narratively best time to do it, as it’s when his emotions are most potent and probably when others would least expect him to do it due to his weakened state. Like Rose, I feel the period Ace has most to worry about is this upcoming Chapter 2 killer slot, but if he makes it through, his arc of learning to escape his fear by bravely rising above it instead of lashing out to try to knock everyone down feels very viable.

Whit: The pro of the Inevitable CharWhit Doom Scenario is that, hopefully, one of the two would manage to make it as a survivor after the other one dies. And, I’m Team Whit Surviving! Not just based on which of the two I like better (they’re my first and second favorite characters, so I’m taking a massive L either way), but because I think it makes more sense for it to be Whit that lives further on. Unlike Charles, who feels like he’s already in the final lap of the character arc race, Whit has barely left the starting line. The laundry scene in Chapter 1 and Whit’s secret in Chapter 2 have both been used to establish that Whit focuses on his and others’ bliss in hopes of remaining ignorant of everything that stresses him. The main offender, of course, being that Whit lies about his mom being alive to presumably stave off his grief. The easiest way to give him a character arc that resolves that issue is to give him something to grieve– namely, Charles– and soon. If Whit’s main character struggle is pretending that people dying doesn’t bother him, he might need an entire Chapter or more to stubbornly show off his central flaw. Now, it is possible that, if Whit can’t overcome this flaw, he could die soon after Charles and meet a tragic fate. But, those just… aren’t the vibes, to me? A post-character arc Whit who knows how to grieve fiercely but healthily might come in handy if Teruko finds herself handling her own emotions about Xander, Min, and/or anyone else at the end of the game.

And here’s the bottom of the death order section!

Finally finished writing something that nobody asked of me at all. Well, I still think it was important, and I hope you feel the same.

Now that we’ve laid all that out, I think it’s finally time to actually see who I think the Danganronpa: Despair Time mastermind might be! Although, please keep in mind that, despite the large preamble full of story predictions, I’m still pretty uncertain on who I think the mastermind is. So, my points might not be the best supported, and I might change my mind again pretty soon after I post this theory. I expect to be far better at disproving why everyone is the mastermind rather than proving why anyone would be, because that’s generally how I feel… but, onwards we go!

#17: Arei Nageishi

(Forgive me for reusing art here, I’ve drawn these bastards ENOUGH /j)

If I were writing this after Despair Time’s prologue, like I did with P:EG, there’s a pretty good chance that Arei, at the very least, wouldn’t have placed dead last. But, well, now Arei is dead. And also last.

Obviously, there are other dead characters too. But still, Arei is the one who I most struggle to see as the mastermind. Given that Arei died as a victim whose body was thoroughly investigated by several parties, it’s pretty hard for me to believe that anyone could have missed any signs of life. I don’t get the sense that DRDT is in some kind of simulation where everyone can magically be alive again at the end either, so I think Arei is, sadly, well and truly dead.

On top of all that, we know a lot about her backstory from her Chapter 2 breakdown, and none of it seems to point her towards masterminding a killing game specifically. She doesn’t have any particular ties to any big organizations that would have helped her accomplish it, either. While she is NOT just a temporary weather spell whose absence will be celebrated and then forgotten, David… I have a hard time believing that the audience would find her character relevant enough(?) to be a good twist mastermind come Chapter 6 several years down the line.

I don’t think I really need to keep elaborating on this. Arei isn’t the mastermind.

#16: Charles Cuevas

I know it’s a bit of a bold move to put a character who’s currently alive below characters who have already died, but… man, I really just don’t see how Charles could pull this off.

And it’s not (just) because I think he’s going to die in Chapter 3 as part of Whit’s character arc, or that I want to believe that he’s a good person. Really, it’s mostly because of his phobias. How is a guy who started gagging at the sight of blood splattered on the floor supposed to be the one who orchestrated an entire death game? Could he get through the process of creating a brutal execution like Min’s without freezing up and freaking out? Even if he could do it, why would he? Sure, he didn’t seem to remember the fact that he had necrophobia until Xander died, but that might be even more of a problem. Wouldn’t the mastermind, who’s certainly had to consider the others’ deaths before, remember that they were afraid of death? He would almost certainly have to be lying about at least the scale of his reaction, although that’s probably a given if he is the mastermind.

Of course, there are mastermind subcategories that could better benefit Charles. If DRDT is actually a simulation, especially one in which the participants don’t actually die, that would definitely make it easier for him to be the one behind it. We’re also meant to believe that Charles has childhood amnesia, so he could have amnesia in other areas as well and be a mastermind who forgot they were one.

However, as I said before, I don’t particularly believe that DRDT is going to be a computer simulation or that Charles is an amnesiac mastermind. I just… don’t see this one in general.

#15: Xander Matthews

Let me preface this by saying that I’m not trying to argue that Xander is actually still alive. The concept that he would be able to fool not only Min, making her believe that she dealt him a fatal blow, but also everyone else as they identified his body, seems outlandish to me. However, just because Xander is dead doesn’t mean that he couldn’t have entered this game as the mastermind.

We know for a fact that Xander wanted to kill Teruko due to his dialogue regarding the note he received, which lines up well with the popular theory that Xander is the individual speaking in the first scene with the papers and the blood. If we assume he is that guy, then it may seem a little counterintuitive to think that the person who says “I have to end the killing game” would be the one behind the killing game. However, he also says, “Even if I can’t do that… I have to kill Teruko Tawaki,” implying that killing Teruko is of a higher priority than ending “the killing game.” Thus, if, for some reason, Xander thought that orchestrating the killing game was the only way to kill Teruko, it’s possible that he would be willing to let the death game roll for as long as it takes to eliminate his bigger target.

However, I can’t deny that the Xander mastermind theory has some massive flaws to it. For one, Xander is dead. I don’t think we’ve technically seen any evidence that the mastermind has to still be alive as of Chapter 2, but a mastermind-less Chapter 6 would be… an interesting challenge to write, to say the least. Also, while Xander betraying Teruko and the others was a great surprising hook the first time, if it happened again, it would be kind of… underwhelming, in my opinion. It’s the same kind of concept I brought up in my Eden’s Garden ranking:

Then, in Chapter 6, we’d be faced with the revelation that, wow, the mildly antagonistic character was actually a really antagonistic character all along! It just doesn’t seem like enough of a dramatic hook to me, I guess?

“Wow, the guy who betrayed Teruko and became a killer actually betrayed Teruko and was the mastermind all along! And now, he’s not even around to reap the social or karmic consequences of it!” You see.

And then, there is the literal interpretation of the text that Xander (if he is bloody hands man) obviously stands against the killing games. He’s also the Ultimate Rebel, someone who stands against corrupt institutions in general.

If Xander is revealed to be evil later down the line, it would make much more sense if it was as a traitor type. As for being the one and only mastermind, I think the odds are pretty low.

#14: Ace Markey

Hey, it’s another character that’s alive! And, this one doesn’t even have a crippling fear of death. However, he is a massive coward, and that’s the main thing that’s dragging him down for me.

Similar to Charles, what would Ace stand to gain from hosting a killing game such as this? Ace doesn’t seem to have any interest in notoriety, money, the destruction of society, despair, or any other things that I can think of that would motivate a typical mastermind. We’ve seen time and time again that Ace cares most about having control over both his life and how other people see him, even though he often fails on both fronts. I guess both of those things could be solved by hosting a killing game, but… Come on, there have gotta be easier ways to do that which don’t threaten your precious life.

Furthermore, what exactly would Ace being the mastermind have to say about the story as a whole? Jockey has to be in the running for “talents that are least relevant to a potential killing game host.” How about the idea that the mastermind nearly died in Chapter 2, only to go off the rails threatening and blaming his assailant? I… always knew that Nico was… fully in the right for doing that, because it would have killed the big bad early??? Ace Mastermind is the preferred ending for those who believe that Nico can do absolutely no wrong, lol.

I can’t remember where I saw it, but I once saw a theory of writing that said that there are two major kinds of character arcs. One is the typical character arc, where the narrative pushes a character's traits to change over the course of the story for better of for worse. The other, this theory posited, was an arc on the part of the viewer, where they learn that a character that they thought was flawed was actually not as flawed as they thought all along. You could potentially apply this kind of thing to Eden: in the first chapter, some people may have seen her as a dim-witted positive girl, but in Chapter 2, we firmly establish that her kindness is not stupidity and learn how her optimism is a strength.

So, you could say that the character arc DRDTdev is going for with Ace is something more like that, where we spend the entire game learning to treat him more seriously just in time for him to be a real threat as the mastermind? It still feels like a bit of a stretch, though– I don’t know exactly what Ace would do to make us take him more seriously that wouldn’t either send him on a growth arc not super befitting of a mastermind or wind up with him being a blackened. Ace as the mastermind certainly isn’t impossible, but I obviously found it unlikely enough that I placed him below one character who is currently (presumed) dead.

#13: Arturo Giles

Arturo’s role in the story so far is not very mastermind-ish, in my mind. In the prologue, we establish him as a cold and judgmental person who puts his own opinions of how the world works over everything else, especially how other people feel. This already feels like how a mastermind would act, so if he turned out to be the mastermind, it would be more of the same.

Then, in Chapter 2, we establish that he’s a massive simp for celebrities, to the point of transforming into something adjacent to comedic relief. We’re meant to think that his over-the-top sprites and refusal to actually listen to anything J is saying is hilariously pathetic. Other characters are constantly dunking on him, such as Teruko calling him a “bigoted” “crazy person,” and even the narrative gets in on the action when highlighting how he cares less about the fact that J’s life was at risk than that she didn’t come out of it with drip. Narratively, we’ve already seen these characters get the better of Arturo. If we the audience interpret that as confirmation that the surviving cast could easily beat Arturo should he ever come to stand in their way, it could diminish the stakes upon his mastermind reveal.

However, for all of his negatives, there are some definite positives to Arturo being the mastermind, too. Despite his comedic effects, we have seen through his threats to Eden that Arturo is very capable of being very scary in a way that I don’t think we have with Ace. The horror factor of a plastic surgeon as the mastermind could be a really fun and creepy design theme to explore. And, Arturo is obviously super obsessed with celebrities. If hosting a deadly TV show is what he thought it would take to get him in with the Hollywood celebrity scene, he might be willing to go for it.

I don’t really know why he would have made his secret what it is if he was going to get that upset about it, though. I guess if there just weren’t any better options that wouldn’t tip his hand…? Also, Arturo would blend in terribly as a survivor. If you’re heading into Chapter 6 and you have to pick the evil character out of (let me spin a wheel real quick...) Teruko, Eden, Rose, Charles, and Arturo, Arturo is definitely the evil one. (Okay, that was actually a terrible randomized draw for Arturo on the innocence front, but I hope you can imagine how he would oddly stick out of most groups.) Like I said in his death predictions, I find it hard to imagine a character arc for Arturo, which is why I find it hard to believe that he would make it as far as Chapter 6.

#12: Min Jeung

Honestly, if Min weren’t (most likely) dead, she might be pretty high on my list of mastermind choices. While not as suspicious as the Spurlings, XF-Ture Tech is pretty suspicious, even more so with the introduction of that one altDRDT character. Min is related to XF-Ture Tech, so if that company has anything to do with the operation of the killing game, she could have been the one behind it. Min is also very smart, and her talent has obvious applications for how it could have been used to set up/influence the killing game. The fact that her talent is so similar to Teruko’s, Ultimate Student versus Ultimate Lucky Student, could have also set them up for some great parallels and duality down the line.

However… Min’s role as the Chapter 1 killer throws a pretty big wrench in her chances. Beyond the dying part, Min’s role as the blackened was incredibly evitable. It’s not like she was thrown into a situation where she had to kill or be killed, or even one where a motive was particularly difficult for her. If she wanted to be the mastermind and survive until the end, all she had to do was walk away from Xander stabbing Teruko and pretend she never saw it. However, if Min’s goal was the inverse of ol’ Bloody Hands (keep the killing game running, but most importantly, keep Teruko alive), her actions could line up. And then, perhaps Min could have falsified her own execution early to draw suspicion off of her, much like Junko did by killing Mukuro.

Beyond her death, though, it’s really Min’s reaction to being the blackened that makes me think she can’t be the mastermind. The stellar voice acting in Min’s breakdown scenes makes me really believe both that this was the first time she had ever hurt anyone as gravely as she did to Xander, and that she fully believed that she was about to die. Those are two things that a mastermind, especially one headed into a fake execution, would not be feeling. Maybe Min memorized how to be a great actress too amongst all those textbooks, but I doubt it. I can still see several reasons why Min would have been a good mastermind, but her actual death and her reaction to being told she was dying knock her down several pegs in my mind.

#11: Hu Jing

Hu is a bit more suspicious to me than some others just because I think she has something to hide. Between her refusal to share whose secret she received or had herself, mysterious “I want to pay for what I’ve done” hidden quote, and intense desire to be relied upon, there’s definitely something about Hu as a person that the narrative has yet to uncover. Could that something be “Hu is the mastermind”? I dunno, maybe.

Hu also has a tendency to react to things with her temper. That could be a sort of foreshadowing to how she would act as the mastermind, much like how David’s brief spell of apathy during the prologue hinted at the way he would act further down the line. Hu’s defense of Nico could act much the same way. Our overall impression of Hu at this point is that, while she is a flawed person, she’s one of the nicest and morally best people in the game, who’s always looking out for others. Defending Nico to the point of babying them might cross the line a little, but she’s only trying to help everyone…! Hu could make it to the end as a believably heroic survivor and then reveal that all of her presumed poor decisions were actually active malice, and I think she could pull that off.

All that being said… I don’t, like, actually think that’s going to happen. In fact, I’m probably overexaggerating the extent to which people think that Hu is nice and morally good. I’ve seen several people discuss the unjust amounts of hate Hu gets in this fandom, which implies that a lot of people hate her, even if I haven’t particularly seen much of it myself. At the very least, I definitely over exaggerated the extent to which people believe Hu could survive! As implied in the death order predictions, I do personally think Hu is going to die, possibly as a consequence of getting too invested in everyone else’s business when they don’t want her to be and/or wearing herself too thin. There are paths which I believe could lead to Hu being the mastermind, but they seem to be the roads less likely traveled.

#10: David Chiem

While I have no doubts that David has the fame, charisma, and worldview to pull off a killing game… I’d have to wonder about how he would see himself playing into all of it. As we saw in Chapter 2, David knows that his career has a lot of value, possibly to himself but definitely to other people, and therefore, he doesn’t want to jeopardize it. In fact, the reveal of his manipulative secret was the inciting incident behind his massive change in characterization. So, if he were the mastermind of a televised killing game… How would he think that would play out to his viewers?

Now, to be fair, there’s a lot we don’t know about the worldbuilding of DRDT. MonoTV claims that the TV show will be broadcast to a widespread audience. Perhaps that indicates that, in the world of DRDT, publicly broadcasting talented young peoples’ violent deaths is normal, or even sought after. Maybe the cast of DRDT forgot about it.

However, David seems to think that people learning that he sees everyone as manipulable would do damage to his reputation, so it’s a bit of a contradiction either way. If the world has been wracked with despair and craves intense violence on TV, then David’s reaction to his secret is either an elaborate lie or the result of the mastermind erasing his own memories regarding the situation. (Or, I guess the public could see death as fine and dandy but manipulation as a cancellable offense, which is… one of the interpretations ever.) Otherwise, in the scenario that the DRDT world is a normal one, David wouldn’t care about being revealed as a manipulator if he’d already committed to the mastermind bit. If his career was already preemptively ruined by agreeing to commit literal murder, why get so worked up about the thought that people might abandon ship over you not being 100% honest?

And then, there’s also the whole “surprise factor” thing that I keep bringing up. Admittedly, it’s been a longer hiatus between the start of Chapter 2 and the end of Chapter 2 than DRDTdev might have been hoping for, but that doesn’t change the fact that this part of David’s characterization happened in Chapter 2. DRDT fans far and wide have written thousands of words gushing over “the David reveal” or “evil David.” If David were unveiled as the mastermind, we’d have to start writing stuff about “the first David reveal” or “when David showed his true colors again.” You see how it kind of takes the hype away from such major plot points? That’s the sort of concept I’ve been trying to get across with some of my other choices too, but a bit more clear cut.

I don’t know why I sound so much like a hater in this section (in my opinion) when I’m literally putting David at #10, above seven other characters. I guess it’s because I can see why his theatricality and traits foiling Teruko could make him a good mastermind, but also have some major issues with the logistics of him getting there. A lot of good points versus a lot of bad points settle out to him winding up someone in the middle.

#9: Levi Fontana

With our first single digit number, we’ve also reached our midway point of mastermind candidates: Levi!

Levi would be a really interesting mastermind choice because of how his character centers around grappling with his morality. I think it would be really intriguing to have a mastermind outwardly struggling with their attempts and failures to be a good person throughout the entire game, only for the player and the characters to receive the full context of the debacle at the very end. I guess in this situation, it would be pretty likely that Levi would be redeemed at the end? That’s not necessarily a problem. (Honestly, I don’t know if I think the DRDT mastermind could be redeemed or not based on the fangan’s themes… that’s a post for another day, perhaps.)

Anyways, I think that what we know of Levi’s backstory could work well with him being the mastermind. If he does have the “murderer without remorse” secret, that would be in line with orchestrating a killing game. We also know that he’s “been disowned” and that he and his family were “all bad influences on each other.” We’re meant to assume that Levi was fortunate enough to escape a bad/abusive situation (and in all likelihood this IS what actually happened!!!!), but we are hearing about the situation from his point of view alone. There is a small possibility that, if Levi is actually a despair enjoyer, his family cut him out because they thought he was a danger to their lives.

I will reiterate again, though, that I don’t think this is the case. Levi seems like he’s a chill guy, or at least that he’s trying very hard to be one despite how he’s been told to react all his life. The whole “mastermind wanting to become a good person” lens also makes less sense given how channeled Levi’s development is through Ace. Like, I would imagine that, if this were the angle DRDTdev was going for, Levi would be making an effort to get along with everyone as part of his atonement. The mastermind randomly choosing to focus on just one person out of the crowd seems kind of strange, especially when that person is someone as disagreeable as Ace. That kind of plot would have big “the mafia CEO vampire prince fell head over heels in love with me, the random average girl” vibes. Repenting mastermind Levi is the preferred ending for pining lovers to enemies to lovers AceVi shippers, lol.

And then there’s the part where I think he’s going to die. I don’t think Levi is the worst mastermind choice, but I think there are better out there.

#8: Nico Hakobyan

Yay, we finally got to one of the characters that Anon thought was suspicious! It only took… 7k+ words. Oh boy.

I definitely think that the cat coding is the strongest thing that Nico has going for them. It would be pretty funny if the extent to which “Ultimate Pet Therapist” is relevant to the plot is the climactic reveal that “yeah Nico has been talking to a (robotic) animal the whole time.” That’s a joke, as Ultimate Pet Therapist is already quite relevant to Nico’s characterization as someone who prefers communicating with animals over people, but it would be funny as hell from a character designing perspective.

There are less silly reasons to believe that Nico is the mastermind too, though. While it seems like, similar to David, pulling the trigger on Nico’s change in behavior in Chapter 2 would be a bit early, I don’t think it’s as destructive to mastermind Nico as it is to mastermind David. There’s a lot more doubt in people’s minds that Nico even did anything to Ace, to the extent that a decent number of people (in the story and out of it) think that it was someone else trying to kill Ace entirely. Nico also has a stalwart defender in Hu, which adds an extra level of intrigue to the situation. Instead of confirming that everyone was right to be suspicious of David, at least some amount of focus could be placed onto Hu being wrong for trusting Nico and failing to see someone’s true colors again, which could be interesting for her characterization if she was alive at that point.

On the other hand, the biggest reason that I think Nico isn’t the mastermind is also because of the attempted Ace murder. Why would Nico, as the mastermind, try to kill Ace at this time? If Nico wins the Class Trial, then the killing game is over, which is probably counter to the mastermind’s goals. If Nico loses the Class Trial, well, we’ll say that the possibility of Nico dying isn’t an issue, as they could just fake their own death or deny entering the execution. But still, why?

It could be that Nico was trying to remove themselves from the killing game on purpose, but I don’t see why it would be necessary. No one was particularly suspicious of Nico being the mastermind, and if they were worried about their gender identity getting out, they could have simply made their secret something else. A mastermind could kill to avoid the killing game falling into a standstill, but tensions were really high at the time that Ace almost died! With a full day left to go before the motive secrets were revealed, such drastic action wasn’t yet forced. I guess the best option would be that Nico was just really angered by what Ace said, and wanted to retaliate as part of their vicious mastermind nature. Is that worth taking yourself out of the killing game and risking the show’s termination, though…?

There is also the possibility that Nico is the mastermind, but didn’t try to kill Ace. In that case, suspicion of Nico would be such a huge in-universe coincidence that I’m doubtful DRDTdev would have included it as a major plot point.

Speaking of “show’s termination,” I also don’t know why Nico would have any involvement in creating a TV show, both from a backstory/talent perspective and a personality one. Nico doesn’t like interacting with people. Therefore, I don’t know what would possess them to want to create and join a TV show for which the major draw is a big stressful discussion between a bunch of people.

I guess I had fewer reasons why I thought Nico would be the mastermind than I thought. I would love to hear more details about why you suspect Nico though, Anon! I’m definitely willing to believe that they could be the mastermind.

#7: Eden Tobisa

Make no mistake, I still think that Eden is the Chapter 2 killer. However, in the case that she isn’t… mastermind isn’t a terrible choice for her.

The biggest draw of Eden being the mastermind would definitely be the shock value. The seemingly nicest character suddenly being revealed as the mastermind would create a huge hurdle for the surviving characters to overcome. Teruko especially, given that she probably would have grown at least a tad closer to Eden if they survived five chapters together. It would be a little mean to give Teruko a trustworthy friend just to rip it away from her again, but I could see the opportunity being used to highlight Teruko’s growth. When Xander and Min betrayed Teruko, she panicked and shut everyone out, but when Eden betrays Teruko at the very end, she’s able to remain strong and rely on the other friends who she continues to trust. Or DRDT could have an unconventional feel-bad ending, I suppose.

If some kind of time loop is at play within DRDT, then Eden’s talent would obviously be thematically and perhaps practically relevant as well. I could see a lot of comparisons being made regarding a killing game being run “like clockwork.” Her secret quote “you can’t go back, no matter how hard you try” is... actually kind of anti-time loop, but at least the concept of going back in time is somewhat related…? Speaking of secret quotes, her Mai quote, “she kept calling the number, even though no one picked it up” is also really weird. That suspicious hidden evidence could point to her being the mastermind.

However, Eden’s personality is a pretty major issue when it comes to her being the mastermind. Shock value is great in the moment, but it can ring hollow in retrospect if people find that the twist doesn’t make any sense. Masterminds aren’t typically known for their kindness or optimism. So, if Eden is the mastermind, it seems like her whole “even if this world is cruel, I’ll still make the choice to be kind” speech is a complete lie. And, that would be a shame! I don’t think that having an unexpected mastermind at the end of the game is worth the cost of completely demolishing a character that we’ve come to know and love over the course of six chapters and several years. (I’m not saying that complete demolition has to be the case if Eden is the mastermind, but I think it’s a reasonable worry that many people have.)

And, I know that all this talk about how wonderful Eden is might sound rich coming from someone who strongly believes that she just killed someone who wanted to be her best friend. But, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? As someone who thinks that Eden is the killer, I know very well how a lot of people have a really hard time believing that Eden could do something as terrible as killing Arei. I can only imagine how hard it would be to accept that Eden was the one who put Arei, Min, Teruko, and everyone else in danger, and the one pulling the strings behind every execution.

Eden as the mastermind, to me, is more tempting in concept than it would be viable in execution. And also, I don’t even think she’s going to live to see the light of Chapter 3 day. However, there’s also some definite emotional power behind the accusation that makes me see how shooting for this ambitious choice could be worth it in the long run.

#6: Whit Young

Alright, it’s finally time to talk about Whit. I know that he’s a really popular mastermind choice, but… I just don’t see it, personally. Even though I put him at 6th place. (I do not enjoy putting him in 6th place.) Is that just because he’s my favorite and I’m attached to my interpretation of the character? Perhaps. But, I’d still like to explore some points that I find faulty.

Perhaps the biggest reason behind suspicion of Whit that I’ve seen is the way that he breaks the fourth wall. People connect his asking people to pause for the evidence list to MonoTV invoking similar mechanics, and lines such as “do you really think she’d be hanging out in the playground” to him knowing more than he’s letting on. However, there are a couple of ways that this accusation can be depowered, in my opinion.

Firstly, Whit isn’t the only person who says stuff like this. Veronika alludes to the killing game before it begins, Teruko also breaks the fourth wall to tell the viewer to pause (albeit only in her thoughts, not out loud), and Arei makes the same kind of “hanging” wordplay in Eden’s flashback that Whit did. I won’t say that characters addressing the fourth wall can’t be important at all, because I believe there are some moments where the other characters commentate on how weird it is that MonoTV is talking to no one. However, I also think that breaking the fourth wall may simply be part of DRDTdev’s humor, as exemplified by that “make sure to like and subscribe so that Teruko has enough mental strength to carry on” joke. Whit is a funny guy, so it just makes sense that if DRDTdev’s brain generates funny meta jokes, Whit would get some of them. Everything that Whit says reminds me more of Mia AceAttorney saying “hit tab to open the Court Record” than some sort of groundbreaking DDLC-Undertale direct communication with the viewer. However, I can see why others would think otherwise.

The second is that I think some of Whit’s comments (more so the “dead at 3” and “hanging in the playground” than the pause) are just meant to showcase his intuition. And, yeah, it could be that DRDTdev has been leaving crumbs of Whit’s intuition behind so that in Chapter 6, he can use it to exploit everyone’s insecurities and greatest despair. To me, though, Whit’s intuition has always reminded me of the myth of Cassandra.

For those who don’t know, Cassandra is a figure in Greek mythology who was blessed/cursed to receive prophecies, but for no one to ever believe them. By my interpretation, Whit is a really smart and perceptive guy who has strikingly accurate gut feelings about how things will play out down the road, even when he doesn’t realize it himself. However, the curse of his own coping mechanism– choosing to act like an eternally cheerful goofball– leads the majority of the other students, and perhaps some of the viewers, to never take his point of view seriously. He can only realize the accuracy behind what he said after the bad things have already happened, leading him to blame himself more and more for not being able to speak up and help when times were tough.

This kind of behavior would line up with two different themes we’ve seen from Whit before. The first, that when he jokes around without thinking, he can accidentally say hurtful things that he later reprimands himself for. We saw that when Charles blew up at him at the end of their shared FTE. The second is Whit’s major theme of good things hiding a darker undercurrent. Being the Ultimate Matchmaker is great until you’ve never had a successful relationship yourself. Having an awesome mom is great until the truth comes out that she’s actually dead, and you’ve been covering it up. Growing super close to someone is great until he dies. Having an amazing intuition and understanding of everyone is great until you can never actually use it to help those you care about. Joking around is great until it's all you can do. Pretending everything is fine is great until it’s not.

Like I said, very specific interpretation. I promise I was not citing classical literature to make my argument sound smarter than it actually is. I am aware that my interpretation of Whit is no less or more valid than everyone else’s. However, it’s one that I hold very close to my heart, and thus, I personally have a hard time seeing around it.

However, I’ve also seen a lot of people argue some valid points for Whit, so I can at least acknowledge that he deserves to be in the upper echelon of choices. There’s a lot of weird stuff regarding him in Literature Girl Insane, and he’s certainly an option of someone who felt so much grief that they became totally empty inside as shown in that one hidden quote. I would be appropriately surprised and heartbroken if Whit revealed himself as the mastermind in Chapter 6, so he checks the box in that regard. There isn’t anything from his backstory that opposes the notion that he set up the killing game, and, to quote what I said about our other Ultimate Matchmaker, Toshiko…

While Ultimate Matchmaker might seem like a silly talent to give the mastermind, it could also be a ruse to distract us from the fact that [Whit] has a talent that allows [him] to read people well and make choices that will impact their lives dramatically.

I don’t like it, but I can see the argument… kind of. To me, most mastermind Whit interpretations feel like mischaracterization, but as a theorist, I always try to keep in mind that I’m the one who could be twisting the text to my whims as well. In this my-opinions-based list, though, he’s not getting any higher than 6th.

#5: Veronika Grebenshchikova

Ooh, what spooky art for a spooky mastermind. Let’s be real, though, Veronika is way too obvious of a mastermind candidate to actually be the mastermind. Unless… she’s so obvious that she loops back around to not being obvious, and thus, is the perfect mastermind candidate?!

Veronika is in a really weird place. I obviously have no doubts that she would have any moral qualms about hosting a killing game, because she’s told us herself that she doesn’t. She knows what Monokuma is in immense detail, but claims to have no idea what a killing game is. She’s dressed really similarly to Junko, though. Is that just a coincidence? Are giant pigtails also a symbol of fear in the DRDTverse? I need ANSWERS, LADY!!!

The biggest problem I see with Veronika is the potential for obviousness. Similar to Arturo, if she actually made it to Chapter 6, I feel like it would be pretty obvious what’s going on. An oddball like Veronika is not the typical survivor type (although she could break the mold). Because Teruko’s character arc is all about trusting people, it would make sense if the reveal of the mastermind was someone who challenged her trust to some degree. With Veronika being obviously unhinged the whole time, I don’t think that Teruko would have any particular difficulties with kicking her to the curb.

However, Veronika clearly has the motive to start a killing game, and potentially to spread despair. DRDT has taken inspiration from Trigger Happy Havoc in the past, so it could make sense if DRDT’s mastermind was also inspired by THH’s. Having a so-obvious-it’s-not-obvious mastermind could also be another way to mess with theorists like me, as DRDTdev did with the comments section portion of Literature Girl Insane. “bro Veronika being the mastermind would be WAY too obvious” sounds EXACTLY like “I just hope XXXXXX doesn’t go crazy and kill in chapter 3. That would be way too predictable” or “XXXXX will obviously die in ch5”. If part of the point of DRDT is to make know-it-all analysts rethink the rules they believe to be set in stone, I could see Veronika as a subversive choice.

Veronika definitely seems to be building up to something, but I don’t know if being the mastermind is exactly it. I think that Veronika could make it pretty late into the game, but I still struggle to see her making it all the way to Chapter 6. I would absolutely love to see what DRDTdev does with her writing if that is the case, though. 

#4: Mai Akasaki

(Well, now I feel bad that I’ve never made a colored portrait of Mai.)

As you may have noticed back at our first entry, Arei, I started the countdown off at seventeen, not sixteen. (If you didn’t remember that, I don’t blame you– it was a WHILE ago.) That’s because I thought it was only fair to include DRDT’s best kept(?) secret, the lovely Unnamed Student herself, Mai Akasaki, as an option! Because, man, is she mysterious in some suspicious ways.

“But, didn’t MonoTV tell the students that the mastermind was one of them? Mai isn’t one of the students in the killing game (unless prosopagnosia is REALLY going crazy), so she can’t be the mastermind, right?” Well, yes and no. The scene where MonoTV confirms the existence of the mastermind is SUPER weird. Let’s take a look at it.

On one hand, MonoTV is still in the Movie Screening Room, where it was JUST talking to the student body, so it would only stand to reason that it’s a continuation of the scene we just saw. However, the setting also seems to be doing everything in its power to tell us that this is NOT the same scene we just saw. The lights have been turned off, even though they were on in the scene just before this. They return to being on in the first scene of Chapter 1, which the students treat as being directly after the scene during which the lights were on before. The widget denoting the time, chapter, and episode has completely disappeared, placing this at an even more unknown time than “Time Unknown.” The text indicating that the speaker is MonoTV has even disappeared! I mean, I assume that MonoTV is still the one saying it, considering that it’s on screen and the speech bubble is pointing right at it, but we don’t even know that for sure!

Additionally, MonoTV refers to the viewers directly (“dear viewers”) two speech bubbles after this one, which makes it seem more like MonoTV is talking to us the audience rather than the students in the room. But then, if the mastermind is “one of you,” and MonoTV is talking to us, wouldn’t that mean the mastermind is someone in the audience? That could lead in to some really meta interpretations of the text (i.e. “DRDTdev is the mastermind of DRDT because he’s the one who created the killing game”) or it could indicate that I’ve gone fully off the rails. 

A midpoint between those two ideas is that the mastermind is part of the in-universe audience watching the killing game, as in, a fictional character who is watching the real-to-them TV show that is Danganronpa: Despair Time. That could include Mai, a very notable character who is not one of the sixteen participants in the killing game.

Side note, I’ve seen some people fight back against the concept that Mai could be the mastermind with the idea that making the mysterious character the mastermind would be too obvious. While I sort of agree, I feel like we’re somewhat overestimating the extent to which Mai is obvious. It’s not like no casual viewers would know who she is, because her image was shown pretty obviously in Chapter 1. However, the name “Mai Akasaki” is only accessible by finding the hidden quotes on the optional associated website’s character profiles. To learn anything about her beyond that, you have to have the thought to type the name into the website URL, and then solve another puzzle just to see the bare bones of what’s there.

I’m not trying to assert any sort of dominance or superiority over DRDT fans on YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, or anything else, but from what I’ve gathered, Tumblr is the place you want to go for deep analysis and theories on DRDT (possibly because of Tumblr’s longer word count). Therefore, anything about DRDT that may seem like common knowledge on Tumblr may only be common knowledge to the fans who specifically bothered to come to the deep lore and crack theories website to find deep lore and crack theories. Essentially, this:

Sort of similar to what Gravity Falls did with the reveal of Bill Cipher back in 2012 (at least I think, I wasn’t actually in the Gravity Falls fandom at that time), I think it would be reasonable to plant clues about an overarching villain that people who want to analyze can analyze ahead of time, such that the villain’s arrival can come as a victory to the puzzle solvers and an exciting new development to the more casual viewers.

However, while I believe that Mai has an awesome setup that she could use to become the mastermind, whether she would actually fit the role is another question entirely. As I alluded to back in the first Mai paragraph, I’m rolling with the widely held (among theorizers) belief that the Unnamed Student in Xander and Min’s bonus episodes is supposed to be Mai. In those episodes, Mai seems to be incredibly caring, peppy, and sweet. She knows a ton of little heartwarming details about Min and Xander, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same is shown to be true with Arei and whoever else’s bonus episodes in the future. Those hidden quotes on Mai’s profile also give off the impression that everyone in the cast really loves Mai– one could call them a “portrait of a person dearly loved,” perhaps.

While it’s possible that these scenes are supposed to highlight Mai’s social prowess and how much she can get people to fall in love with her, they… don’t really seem to be giving off those vibes. We see her thoughts in those bonus videos, and she really does seem to be dedicated to helping Min and Xander out. Mai’s change from someone who wanted nothing more than to help out her friends to someone who was willing to throw all of them into the killing game is something that would have to be explained, and it could be difficult to communicate that shift within the confines of bonus material, if Mai’s content is mostly kept there. There is the concept that Mai could have put her friends into a killing game to protect them somehow, which could be a way to avoid Mai’s character seemingly doing a total 180, but that rationale would need a lot of explanation too.

Otherwise, there’s also the problem that Mai is almost certainly dead. I won’t get super into it myself, because the amazing @1moreff-creator has already done a great job explaining why here (starts in the XI. God is Dead section). I don’t think I need to elaborate on why Mai being dead potentially before the killing game even began would be detrimental to the idea of her being the mastermind.

To be honest, I don’t know how much this idea actually makes sense. I think I’m personally more inclined to believe that Mai could be the mastermind just because I really don’t get mastermind vibes from pretty much anybody in the cast. If the mastermind simply wasn’t one of the members of the main cast, that could solve that issue, right…? Mai is very likely involved in the inception of the killing game somehow, so extending that role to one of being the mastermind isn’t the biggest stretch. However, her personality and living status do throw in some pretty big question marks, so I don’t think she should go any higher.

#3: Teruko Tawaki

Teruko was definitely the first character who I believed could be the mastermind after I watched the series for the first time. However, over time, I’ve sort of fallen off of the idea that she would be. Is that because I’m forgetting key details of the plot, or because I’m drifting closer to the truth…? Honestly, I have no idea.

Let’s start with the strongest “evidence” we have against Teruko, her motive secret: “How could I even select which secret to make your motive? Just about everything you’ve done in your life is worth killing for. The killing game is all your fault.” Although “the killing game [being] all [Teruko’s] fault” sounds pretty damning, there’s the obvious counterargument to be made that this isn’t even Teruko’s motive. In fact, the board currently shows it assigned to Xander. However, the majority of people (including myself) seem to believe that David was lying, and this secret is Teruko’s. So, let’s analyze under that assumption.

Teruko did admit to Veronika that she doesn’t know what secret could be used as her motive because there were so many. Even if that motive secret isn’t hers, that still means that Teruko has done a lot of shady stuff. Teruko’s decision to live on set forever could line up with the mastermind's goal of wanting to keep the cameras rolling as well. The very first scene of DRDT shows that someone who wants the killing game to end also wants Teruko dead, which implies that Teruko and the killing games are on the same side.

Teruko also has a prior history of concealing things about herself from us, the viewing audience. We knew basically nothing about her past or trust issues before Xander stabbed her, causing her sudden change in attitude to come as a blindside. Teruko apparently has a “risky” killing game-ending plan in mind for the end of the second Class Trial that she’s told us absolutely nothing about. And, most notably, Teruko clearly knows things about Mai that she’s decided not to share with viewers at home. (I do believe that Teruko genuinely can’t remember Mai’s name, but she does remember that Mai is similar to Xander and wanted to help, which is more than anything we would have known from the main text on our own).

Point is, DRDT is written in a way where we don’t hear a ton of Teruko’s thoughts. That would make it much easier for her to scheme something behind the scenes, as opposed to someone who we get a lot of emotional reactions or logical theorizing from. It’s actually kind of similar to the difference between Kaede and Shuichi’s styles of narration, as pointed out by ShortOneGaming in their impeccable v3 playthrough! I recommend watching their entire letsplay if you're in the mood for v3, but I found one time where they talked about this concept here. I’ll transcribe it for anyone who doesn’t want to open YouTube right now:

Gina: I do want to call– as my final sort of note– what’s interesting is that you called out immediately that Kaede’s narration was weird. That, it was always, like– dictation? Allison: Yes! Gina: It’s always, like, speaking directly to a person– Allison: Yes! Yes, I did say– It never really felt like actual internal monologue. Like, she never was expressing her thoughts or anything to us. I mean, yes, she was, but then there were those weird moments where she was, like… y’know, hiding it from the player, and… probably from herself, too, to some extent. Like, she was just like, “and then I had to go do this thing.” Um, and like, “we won’t really address how I’m feeling about this.” Gina: Yep. Allison: And at the same time, it hides it from the– the player. And that was very clever. Really good. I mean, her– yeah, her narration was always kind of weird. But, she did have moments where she had internal reflection.

Hopefully, you can see the comparison. By putting a greater emphasis on actions as opposed to what Teruko is feeling (“I kneeled down and touched his neck” after finding Ace’s presumed-dead body; “Everyone else started filtering in” when people walk into the Playground and find Arei’s corpse), it becomes much easier to have Teruko hide exactly what she knows or exactly how she feels about certain events. It’s actually the opposite of the kind of narration that Damon had (“I’m trapped in a killing game… with people who despise me. How… how did this happen? I just wanted to help… I wanted to make sure we didn’t trust each other too easily… and now I’m being treated like the bad guy” after the 0th Class Trial) that made me believe he wasn’t the mastermind!

So, do I think that Teruko would be a mastermind who remembers, or a mastermind who forgot? Well, I could kind of see it either way. Personally, I think that Teruko being a mastermind whose memories are intact is the more interesting version, and I do believe it’s possible. I also don’t understand why someone with as many trust issues as Teruko has would want to remove her own memories if it weren’t necessary. Then again, Teruko being an amnesiac mastermind could make up for some of the… issues that arise with her as a mastermind candidate.

What? She’s in third place, not first. Despite how long I’ve already talked about Teruko, there’s still more to say!

First, the problems if Teruko did retain her memories: why would she ask MonoTV about the mastermind’s identity when the two were alone? Why would she be creating a plan to end the killing game? Why would she pretend to not know who Mariabella Rosales was even though everyone else clearly knew?

And then, the problems that persist even if Teruko did lose her memories: where would Teruko have gotten the resources to plan a killing game of this caliber? Even if she had them, why would she use it on this? Assuming that secret is hers, why would she write that about herself in a plausibly public place (beyond the swapping, Arei looked over Whit’s shoulder)?

Oh yeah, back to that secret. Just because “the killing game is all [Teruko’s] fault” doesn’t mean that she’s the one who planned it. In fact, the wording sounds very accusatory and hostile for something that Teruko would have theoretically written to herself. From the first scene, we already know that there is a person or group of people somewhere who are out to get Teruko. It could make more sense if that entity is the mastermind, and wrote the secret to blame Teruko for whatever she did that got her on their bad side.

There’s probably more to be said, but hopefully you can see why I have so many mixed feelings about Teruko. I definitely think she’s one of the more likely mastermind candidates out there, but I still don’t know exactly how likely that is, y’know?

#2: Rose Lacroix

Once upon a time, a wise and powerful theory alchemist known only by the epithet @1moreff-creator postulated that Rose could be the mastermind of Despair Time, and then never elaborated on the idea at all. For centuries (a couple of weeks) the townsfolk (me) were baffled by these dark and mysterious ramblings. However, as seasons passed by, as travelers came and went, as the tide advanced to kiss the land before slinking back to its home once more– the idea… started making more and more sense?

Rose is a really smart character who has already shown her proficiency in Class Trials. In the first, she utilized her ability to perfectly capture the scene and her knowledge of chromatography. Although her talents haven’t been as useful so far in the second, she’s still managed to keep up with the conversation despite never looking at the scene of the crime. Thus, I can see why, from a writing perspective, DRDTdev would choose to make his mastermind the Ultimate Art Forger.

There’s also the angle that Rose is a criminal, and therefore could be willing to do illegal or immoral things. However, she does seem to be pretty remorseful about it, and she’s already been caught for her criminal behavior before. Unfortunately for her, her relationship with her saviors the Spurlings only makes her all the more suspicious. Even if Rose didn’t want to be the mastermind of a killing game, if the Spurlings forced her to do it, she might have not had a choice. (Xander is very against the Spurlings… Xander is bloody hands guy → stop the killing game → stop the Spurlings?)

I also like the angle of “the Spurlings forced her to do it” because of what I talked about back in Mai’s section– the concept of the mastermind not being among the students. In Rose’s case, you can get the best of both worlds. The entity behind the killing game, the Spurling Foundation, would be a group outside of the killing game for MonoTV to contact, but there would still be a student among the cast’s ranks to suspect and accuse come Chapter 6.

What’s the argument against Rose? Well, I would ask why Rose would want to put herself in this kind of situation, but if it was the Spurlings’ choice, then that explains that. You could say Rose has been too helpful to be a bad guy, but everything she’s done so far has been to help the students win a Class Trial. That keeps the killing game running, which keeps the show on. The biggest problem I’m thinking of at the moment is the notion that the Spurling Foundation would have chosen to make Rose’s secret about how her backstory led her into their clutches. However, the secret doesn’t actually acknowledge the Spurlings by name, and it also frames Rose’s crimes in a way that makes her look like a good person– the opposite of what someone would think of as a mastermind. The secret was also only intended for Rose’s eyes, so it could have functioned as more of a low-key threat to remind her why she needs to stay in line.

Shouldn’t all of this talk of Rose lacking agency make her a bad mastermind candidate, though? If a villain doesn’t even believe in their villainous motivations, the story could end on a really flat note, with the good guys steamrolling an evildoer who doesn’t really care. How are we supposed to reach a satisfying conclusion if the mastermind hardly has anything to be held accountable for?

Those are normally things I would argue, but as many have pointed out, Teruko isn’t a normal protagonist. Actually, I think that this kind of mastermind setup for Rose could be a great way to end Teruko’s arc about learning to trust other people. Rose is the mastermind, somebody who shouldn’t be trusted…! It would be so easy for Teruko to just crush this person who betrayed her into dust– Rose isn’t even putting up much of a fight. But in the end, Teruko will choose to be patient, and see that Rose never wanted to betray Teruko. Even if her actions wound up hurting Teruko and many others, she still deserves a second chance, or at least a second evaluation.

As you saw in the death predictions, I obviously believe that Rose has the potential to make a late game run, whether as a survivor or something else. Writing all of this out, I can see even more clearly why Rose just might be the DRDT mastermind. However, despite all that I wrote, the idea still feels kinda more like a fun AU than the actual truth to me…? So, I still think there’s one person whose chances I like slightly better.

#1: J Rosales

Whaddya know, J’s personal ??? tier catapulted her into the lead. It is probably true that my uncertainty about where she might land is contributing to me deeming her the mastermind– it’s a really weird space in the kill order, as someone who survives long enough to theoretically have a positive character arc while sometimes not being counted among the survivors at the end.

Part of why I put J this high is that I really like the theory of J being the mastermind along with her brother, Ryan. Sadly, I cannot find any of the original theories that postulated this idea to link to, so I’ll try my best to explain what I remember myself. Basically, some people found the scene in c1e4 where Rose doesn’t remember who J is suspicious. They combined this scene with J’s younger brother, Ryan, and J’s talent, the Ultimate Effects Artist, to suggest that J could be using her FX talents to disguise Ryan as herself and have them occasionally trade places. From this Q&A, one of the few things we know about Ryan is that he enjoys crossdressing, which furthers the idea that he could enjoy pretending to be J. Ryan is also (to my memory) the only DRDT character’s sibling whose name we have seen in the main text, which could indicate that he’s more important than Arei’s sisters, Levi’s brothers, or other potential siblings.

I think it’s a really fun idea that I would at the very least want to see come to fruition, regardless of how likely it is. If J was working with Ryan, you can once again repeat the argument that there’s both a mastermind for MonoTV to talk to outside the game and one to be accused within the game. The biggest issue with it is that I don’t know how Arturo wouldn’t see the differences between the two, even if Rose may have. Maybe if J and Ryan haven’t swapped since the Rosales secret got out, and won’t swap again until Arturo dies…? I don’t know, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The thing is, other than just being a unique and interesting concept, I’m not really sure what the point of having J and Ryan swap would be, in universe or out of it. (This is why I wish I could’ve found a link to the original theorist... :,( ) My best argument for in universe would be that there are some things that only J has the skill to do, her being the Ultimate Effects Artist while Ryan is not. However, they couldn’t just have Ryan be the one in the killing game full-time, because he’s too young and therefore wouldn’t have been part of the original Hope’s Peak class. Thus, there are some points in time where J needs to be working behind the scenes (like on the executions or something), and during those intervals, Ryan subs in. Metatextually, I guess it could show how every person in the entertainment industry can be cutthroat, or that every child of a celebrity is bound to get messed up about it somehow…?

Regardless, even if Ryan isn’t involved at all, there are plenty of reasons to suspect J on her own. Ultimate Effects Artist is a highly suspicious talent when it comes to the deception of a killing game (just check out how many people think J already used it to kill Arei), and in connecting her to Hollywood. J may claim to specialize in theater as opposed to television, but 1) she could have been lying, or 2) that could be true, but she’s making an exception this time. Even if she normally works in live theater, if you were a TV executive approached by the daughter of Mariabella Rosales who is also a Hope’s Peak Ultimate student in her own right, would you really turn her away…?

J’s custom weapon is also pretty suspicious. Even if it doesn’t seem to be able to trigger traps like the one used on Levi (though that could be another lie), I could still see it being pretty helpful for subtly operating MonoTV, turning on a monitor, starting an execution, or stuff like that. Charles essentially confirms that the custom weapons were in the students’ rooms since they all woke up, which means that J could have had this remote on her the entire time.

J’s relationships also seem potentially mastermind-y. Thus far, the two characters with which she’s been associated most are Arei and Arturo. Those two (at least, prior to Arei’s change of heart) have been so clearly villainous and hateful that J would obviously look like a nice person in comparison. Why is this helpful? It means that J can get away with doing more objectionable things without raising any huge red flags. If J is the mastermind, we can look back on her demolition of Arturo in the Chapter 2 Trial as a brief early glimpse into how cruel she can really be. But, for the moment, although it’s definitely memorable, many people (including myself) can react to it with a, “yeah, but based on what Arturo was doing to her, it’s kinda justified…” (Not saying it isn’t somewhat justified either way, just that it could also be something more.)

J could also have a range of motivations related to her hatred for her mom. Maybe she’s trying to turn people against the Rosales name to ruin Mariabella’s reputation. Maybe this killing game is a plan to finally have a big artistic success all on her own (or with Ryan) to prove her mom wrong. Maybe she thinks that a world so enamored with fame and glamor deserves to rot in a pit of despair. I don’t know which of these options would be the most likely, but I could see how any of them could be possible explanations for how J got to this point.

I think my biggest argument against J once again comes back to the “why”. I think that J has a lot of potential to be a good mastermind, but I don’t know if that carries over to being a good mastermind for Teruko. Unlike with Rose, I don’t have a good sense of how J being the mastermind would tie into a satisfying ending to Teruko’s trust arc.

@venus-is-thinking and I sometimes like to run randomized killing games as a fun writing exercise (randomize the cast, motives, and mastermind; see where it takes you), and we’ve generally found that the most compelling protagonist-mastermind duos either have the protagonist sharing the same worldview with the mastermind, or being the only person who believes the opposite.

If the protagonist starts with the same beliefs as the mastermind, then defeating the mastermind is a showcase of the protagonist’s development. Hajime and Izuru work as protagonist and mastermind because Izuru is the manifestation of Hajime’s belief that only talented people are important and can make an impact on the world. By renouncing Izuru, Hajime proves that he’s learned that anyone has the chance to change their future if they put in the effort. 

If the protagonist has the opposite opinions from the mastermind, then it proves how crucial the protagonist is to the narrative because they are the only one who could deliver the critical message. A great example of this is Shuichi and Tsumugi. When Tsumugi tries to set up the conflict of “hope good, despair bad” that will keep the killing games going, all of the other surviving students fall for it. Shuichi being the only character who has spent the entire game learning the importance of balancing two extremes makes his callout of Tsumugi incredibly satisfying, and justifies the protagonist swap by proving that Shuichi is the only hero who could have saved this day.

That’s why I think that J would be a great mastermind for a protagonist who has issues with family or stardom, but might not be the best choice for a story with Teruko at the helm. Those are only my observations, though, so I’d understand if DRDTdev planned things differently.

And that is finally the end! Here’s the final tierlist I wound up working off of, which I fiddled with a TON while writing:

(It’s based off of Ocean Unknown’s tierlist!)

Since this has already gone on so long, I’ll try to keep the conclusion brief. Please take all of this with a grain of salt, as I wound up making a lot of claims about writing that don’t necessarily have the strongest foundation. I didn’t write anything that I think is blatantly false, obviously, but whether it’s good advice or not doesn’t necessarily mean that DRDTdev considered it. We may have different priorities in telling a compelling story. And, we’re less than two chapters in! Even the end of the Chapter 2 trial could throw a positive or negative wrench in any of these profiles.

Thank you so much for reading through this whole thing, and if you got through it and still have anything you want me to elaborate on further (a specific character, a specific theory, a specific aspect of fangan writing, etc), I would be happy to do so. I, uh, really hope that this answered the question that Anon asked, haha. Until next time… stay wary. There could be masterminds lurking about...!