#junko is the face but mukuro is the context

[moonsidesong]

playing mystery games with a friend who is prone to wild speculation is so fun. just got to the end of dr1 chapter 4 and he hears the name mukuro ikusaba and without hesitation makes the assertion that Thats just kyoko's real name, actually. and everyone else in the call just gets to silently snicker about how wrong he is

[theamityelf]

Crazy ai idea makoto is his entire classes soulmate au imagine the chaos and the weird tsundere alliance Byakuya and Celeste would have as well as the possibility that junko would quickly figure out her and Mukuro share a soulmate

Not for nothing, there is a fanfiction similar to this (at least the "Makoto is his entire class's soulmate" aspect) called "You Can Do It, Togami," which I read recently on AO3. (I haven't finished it, but it's cool!)

I'm not sure whether this is more fun if it's all one kind of soulmate (Like, everyone occasionally sees through his eyes and he occasionally sees through theirs, etc.) or if it's all different kinds. He's got soulmate marks, he's seeing visions, he's seeing in color, there's a timer on his skin, just everything.

(And that's if it's reciprocated. It could be that they get the symptoms and he doesn't.)

Some fun possible scenarios include but are not limited to:

His classmates all have different soulmate marks, but they all represent him. Sayaka has the crane, Kyoko maybe has a bunny rabbit, Taka has a clover, Mukuro has a teddy bear, etc. (These are just examples, except Sayaka's; that one's definitely it.) They each realize that he's the one represented by their soulmate marks at different times (except Sayaka, who knew it since middle school). Meanwhile, he's got marks for all of them, and it's pretty obvious who his marks represent, so much so that he's embarrassed to show pretty much any skin because he knows it looks kind of pathetic for the Ultimate Lucky Student to show up to school with soulmate marks for all his talented classmates.

Everything that marks your soulmate marks you, and vice versa. Everyone who has Makoto for a soulmate keeps getting skinned knees, stubbed toes, bumped heads, etc. Meanwhile, Makoto is getting the works all the time: Hina twisted her ankle and now he needs a cast, Mondo got in a fight and now Makoto has all kinds of bruises and cuts, Kyoko's hands?!?! (Presumably frequent migraines and a scar on his head from Kamukura.) He shows up to Hope's Peak with gloves like Kyoko (but not leather; something comfortable), a knee brace like Hina, just various band-aids. His pain tolerance is incredible. He'll just raise his hand in the middle of class, like, "I think I need to go to the nurse again," and blood is running down his face because his forehead scar reopened again. (He doesn't get the internal affects of the Kamukura Project.)

Vision-sharing. Kind of like I mentioned. He occasionally sees through everyone individually, everyone individually occasionally sees through him. Maybe including dream sharing. This could basically mean that everyone kind of grew up with Makoto, in a way. Characters like Byakuya and Kyoko get a glimpse of a normal life. Everyone in his class kind of knows Komaru from glances and out-of-context scenes. Everyone knows Makoto's handwriting (or has the opportunity to know it; some of them might not be that observant), from watching him do schoolwork. Meanwhile, Makoto going through his childhood seeing through all of them at different times would definitely earn a reputation as a daydreamer, and no one believes him when he says how many different soulmates he seems to have. Plus it means that later on, once he actually meets all of them in person, there's a high probability that any personal time he spends with one of his soulmates will be seen by a different one.

Unreciprocated would also be fun! Makoto is just living his life like normal and everyone else is having their varied reactions to him. Maybe he has no marks or symptoms, or maybe he only has one or two. Whatever the case, it doesn't mean he can't come to reciprocate their feelings; there's still hope for them yet.

I realize this post covered more ground than it delved into anything in detail, so feel free to send another ask regarding a particular scenario you want to explore, lol.

(Next post)

[goshdangronpa]

for the headcanons thing, how about mikan?

You mean Mikan, one of my absolute favorites and a character I post/reblog about all the time? Eh, if you want, I guess

MIKAN TSUMIKI

Sexuality Headcanon: Pansexual and panromantic. She can love any kind of person except herself :( (don't be sad, she'll learn)

Gender Headcanon: *projects nonbinary/genderqueer all over my fave chars*

A ship I have with said character: (Sparta Remix voice) TSU-MI-O-DA. I'm so fond of bandaid for honestly too many reasons to list in one paragraph. I actually had a whole thing written out for this ... but I'm saving that for something more ambitious. Suffice to say for now that they were high school besties in a group with another wlw couple, they'd support each other and give so much of themselves without asking or being asked, and they just seem real cute together. As for the whole "one killed the other" thing, well, that's the kind of spicy drama that turns regular ships into epic romance. Again, saving my thoughts for later.

A BROTP I have with said character: I'm surprised at how little exploration I've seen of Mikan’s relationship with Mukuro Ikusaba. None were closer, more enthralled with, and more completely under the thumb of Junko Enoshima than her twin and her girlfriend. None know her more intimately, and none were more directly abused. Imagine Mikan treating Mukuro for wounds sustained while carrying out Junko's orders, the two growing closer over time, Mukuro standing up for Mikan after Junko takes things too far, the two realizing how much the other suffers and in turn realizing how toxic this whole thing is for themselves, and changing their canon fates by escaping together ... Damn, are there any fanfics like this? (This is also an awesome romantic ship, obvi)

A NOTP I have with said character: There's plenty of merit to Mikan/Nagito (Florence Nightingale syndrome, anyone?), but I'm too amused by the idea of them as "worsties" to consider any other relationship. Nagito has a bitchy side waiting to be unleashed against an embodiment of pure despair, and Mikan will go for the fucking jugular if confronted with a total asshole who's also a socially acceptable punching bag. Cut them loose and let them fight!!

A random headcanon: someone on Reddit once asked, in a context I can't begin to recall, whether Mikan would prefer AVGN or Nostalgia Critic. I said the latter would trigger her because Doug Walker always stares straight at the viewer and often addresses his insults to movies and their makers in second-person. Mikan would not like a man yelling "FUCK YOU FUCK YOU" right into her face. James Rolfe's comparably dynamic cinematography and directed critiques would be more to her liking. So if I just ignore how unlikely a Japanese teen might be (or might not be?) to watch English-speaking American content creators, sure, headcanon

General Opinion over said character: SDR2 Chapter 3 was so hard because I lost both my fave chars from the game. I loved Mikan right from the jump. Maybe because I have a tendency to apologize more than I oughta, and I'm familiar with the feeling (thankfully less frequent now) that no one in a given room wants me around. That aside, she's interesting, funny, sympathetic, capable of great courage that saves the day (piping up about puncture wounds in the first trial), so troubled but not beyond saving ... well, until, ya know. But even then, she wasn't herself, and that's what makes it so much more tragic.

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

Rpg Anon: 1. Yes Gleipnir was also the name of that anime. Weird stuff that I never watched but whatever. I mean, a magical silky piece of ribbon that binded a ferocious beast sounds close to being contained in fleshy clothing suit and unleashing your feral animal side. Regardless, for Mukuro, what would you say would it be hers? 2. Well then who's Ryoko's Thor? 3. Should we swap Aki and Genji then? I mean, it seemed to have fit as they are now before this storyline. 4. So N'tse or Nodens? Which one for Mukuro's Ultimate?

To be honest I have no idea. In a way, Junko could serve as that too, because Mukuro's trauma focused on her sister is one of her biggest weaknesses. Other than that, I've got nothing.

Matsuda is the only closely related person that I can think of in the context. I think it works to an extent, since while he's usually pretty stone faced, Matsuda can be pretty hot-tempered and unpredictable.

I don't think so. The initial points you offered as to why Aki and Genji get those gods made sense to me; that one story is just a bit of an outlier.

I agree that N'tse is probably more appropriate

-Mod

[siramay-the-showgun-dragon]

ok ok where do I start well there are many little meanings in their names The Jun in Junko is one of the halves of the word "mujun", meaning "contradiction". mukuro having the first half. and while ko simply means child the jun also means due to the way its spelled shield, alliteratively it can mean pretext meaning "a reason given in justification of a course of action that is not the real reason" now back to shield with that context of her character the brains, the insanity, the aura of mystery, she always covers herself, hides herself, shields herself under mask upon mask of personas always keeping her true self hidden under a mask of her own face, no one to ever know if the truth lost to time isolating herself like a island on the bay

and mukuro with the last name "war blade" of course it's simple as she is the ultimate solider master of war, the warrior of the mind, the last name also can mean battlefield, the way her life always was, in a way she was always used as a weapon to kill so she probably would see herself like that no will or life of her own unknow of who she could be, she lived to her name a corpse, dying, having lived her whole life relying on and livening for junko and in the end when she died she realizes, her identity would die with her as only junko would know the truth but shed lie about it meaning no one would ever truly know mukuros story, so it's like, she never lived at all…

so, in a way its symbolic of how they suppress themselves a shield hiding from the world and their true self and a blade fighting for others but never for themselves

Daily Danganronpa Fun Fact #156

Junko’s first name includes the kanji 盾, which means shield. Mukuro’s surname includes the kanji 刃, which means sword or blade.

Home | Previous Fact | Next Fact

[just-a-cheese-stick]

Naeleon week Day 1- confession (non despair au)

@naeleonweek2020

Makoto and Leon had been best friends since the start of their time at Hopes peak. They started talking to each other when they were placed in most of the same classes their first year.

It started when Leon tossed a note to Makoto’s desk, joking about something the teacher said that sounded weird out of context. At first, Makoto decided not to read it since he was in class, but as the kid next to him kept tossing more and more notes, he gave in.

Makoto read each note, each one making him smile without fail. He glanced back at the boy tossing them to him to give a chuckle, only to see who it was.

Before hopes peak, the lucky student had done some research on the other ultimates who were soon to be his classmates. He recognized that particular boy as the ultimate baseball star, Leon Kuwata.

Funny since he didn’t remember Leon’s hair being as scruffy as it was in his pictures.

Makoto was taken aback by this for a second, but responded with a small chuckle.

He took out a paper of his own from his notebook and a pen to respond to the other.

“Why are you throwing notes to me?” He folded the note neatly and slid it to the baseball player sitting across from him.

Leon noticed the neatly folded piece of loose-leaf paper slid over to his desk, and reached down to grab it.

He opened the response from the smaller boy who sat across from him and smiled a bit at it. He picked up his pencil and scribbled a response before attempting to replicate the neat folding of the note when it was passed to him before passing it back.

“Idk you seem nice”

Makoto saw the response, and tried to resist smiling ear to ear. Someone cool and popular like Leon wanted to make conversation with someone as basic as him? He stared at the note feeling his face heat up, before picking up his pen to send a message back to him.

They continued their chat throughout the class introduction, agreeing to meet up at lunch. They had been best friends ever since.

Now it was December. The two had been best friends for 3 months now. They were each others confidants, as well as best friends. Leon sometimes jokingly called Makoto his soulmate, since they understand each other so well.

But that statement was more than just a joke to Leon. He started to notice he was growing feelings for the brunette. Feelings way more intense than he’s felt for any other girl he’s ever met.

He could try and deceive himself, say it’s just what a true friendship is. But at the bottom of his heart he knew he had it bad for Makoto.

Midterm season drew close, which had everyone stressed and dreading the exams.

While Leon could usually care less, Makoto really wanted him to do well. So for him, Leon studied for the midterms. While it wasn’t too much, he still wanted to make Makoto happy.

The two even studied together in their dorms and in the library. Leon still got distracted a lot, but he was actually putting in effort. That made Makoto really happy. And afterwards, they’d walk off school campus to the coffee shop down the street and hang out.

Exam day came, and just walking into the exam hall, it was easy to tell everyone was stressed, tired, anxious, or all of the above. It was freezing outside. Snow was falling at quick speeds in high winds. Some people brought blankets or extra jackets into school. Others huddled into themselves or simply ignored the cold. Nonetheless, it was frigid indoors and out.

Makoto sat down in his assigned desk and took out his phone for them to collect, in order to ensure nobody cheats or gets distracted.

The desks were placed 4 by 4 rows, and students were sat in alphabetical order of their last names.

Aoi sat in the very front of the first row of desks. Behind her was Junko, who sat in front of Chihiro. In the back of the first row was Hiro, and in the front of the second was Mukuro, Junko’s twin sister. Sitting behind her was Kiyotaka, who appeared to be the only person who didn’t look like a zombie. Actually, he seemed quite eager to receive the first exam paper. Behind him sat kirigiri, who would be the runner up in The Who-Looks-The-Least-Lifeless challenge. She kept her calm and quiet nature constant, but appeared slightly tired nonetheless. In the very back of the row was Toko, who was too busy reading something to be paying attention to the cold. In the front of the third row was leon, who, unlike the two diagonal from him, looked like he was going to fall asleep any second now. Behind him was Celeste, who sat in front of sayaka, who was wearing a fuzzy looking hoodie with bear ears at the hood. She definitely looked comfortable. Makoto sat behind the three, and he looked exhausted. He brought a blanket into the exam hall and was wrapped in it, still shivering a little in the cold. At the front of the fourth row was Sakura. She appeared a little tired, which was odd, but not as odd as it would be in the situation they were in. Behind her sat Mondo, who had huddled himself into his jacket, and was trying to hide it. Togami and yamada sat in the two chairs behind him. Both, like toko, seemed too invested in a book to care about their surroundings or the cold.

Jin kirigiri came to the front of the exam hall designated for class 77B and loudly clearing his throat to silence the low chatter, turning the room silent.

From the corner of his eye, Makoto could see kyoko furrowing her eyebrows a little bit at her father. She mentioned once that he often overworked her to the point he refused to let her see her mother as she was on her death bed. The two had rocky relations ever since.

The headmaster began stating the exam rules and expectations, which, very little people paid much attention to.

“Please power off anyelectronic devices and place them on your desk so I can come around and collect them. You will get them back as you leave the exam hall when you’re dismissed.”

School bags and satchels could be heard unzipping almost in unison at that statement. Soon, phones and laptops were placed at the corner of nearly every desk, soon to be confiscated and replaced with a thick packet of papers and a #2 pencil. With that, the exam started.

It was like that every day of that week, leading up to Friday. Every day it snowed buckets, and every day people came into the exam hall cold and tired, and every day they took a midterm exam.

Friday afternoon. Makoto was one of the last ones in the exam hall, finishing his last part of the midterm. The only other people with him were hiro, leon, and mondo.

despite there being no windows in the gymnasium, Makoto could hear the snowstorm picking up.

“I hope everyone’s ok” he thought to himself. He was especially worried since this was when students began to clear out for winter break. His parents weren’t going to be able to come until Sunday, so he was glad they’d be safe.

He finally got to the last question. To his delight, it was a question on a topic he was really familiar with.

With eagerness, he aced the last question and got up from the desk, walking to the front table to turn in the finished exam.

Finally. His exams were done. He was so tired, physically and mentally. Finally. He’d be able to take a rest.

Makoto drowsily walked back to his dorm and flopped down on the bed.

He tried to nap, but he couldn’t sleep. His mind was racing. A lot of things were fuzzed together and racing thorough his head. He was stressed, tired, overwhelmed, and worn out.

But, there was one thing that remained constant on his mind. Leon. He’d recently been having dreams about him quite frequently. Dreams where he asks him out and he says yes. But he always wakes up from them knowing that will never happen. It was pretty clear to him that he had a crush on the redhead. But he never had the guts to say anything. But for whatever reason, he wanted to be close to him more than anything in the world.

But he was too tired.

He stayed in his dorm, gazing blankly at the ceiling; occasionally glancing at his window to watch the snow storm. It was pretty bad outside. Close to blizzard speeds, quite frankly.

He checked his phone to make sure the weather would be clear enough to get home Sunday when he heard a knock at his door. He got up and shuffled towards the door to open it, feeling a wave of cold corse down his body as his feet touched the floor. He turned the doorknob and opened it to be greeted by Leon standing in the doorway, looking excited about something.

“You’ll never believe this, but when I got my phone back, I checked my notifs and saw I got a B on my first two exams! Isn’t that awesome?” Leon said sounding proud of himself.

Makoto could feel himself beam ear to ear, pulling his friend into a tight hug. His entire body coursed with pride. He’d seen how hard he was working and it paid off.

Leon hugged back almost instantly squeezing the other out of pure excitement. Both boys were smiling ear to ear.

“Leon that’s amazing!” Makoto said pulling away from the hug.

“I know right?” Leon paused briefly. “Shit man it’s cold in here. Wanna come to my dorm? It’s a bit warmer in there” Leon then added.

Makoto thought for a brief minute. He was really tired— mentally and physically. But on the other hand he really wanted to spend time with Leon before winter break. “Sure”

Makoto picked up his phone and weighted blanket and fallowed him to his dorm, trudging a little. They made it to the Leon’s room and both sat down. “Those exams were exhausting, huh?” Leon stated.

“Yeah” Makoto said with an exhausted sigh.

“I dunno about you but I’m exhausted. I’m gonna-“ but just as Leon was about to finish his sentence, the lights to the dorm room went out.

“Shit was that the power?” Leon muttered under his breath. The entirety of the dorm building appeared significantly darker, and the tv that was on in the background of the dorm had completely shut down. In addition, the winds from the ongoing snowstorm had seemed to have picked up over the past few minutes.

“Yeah, pretty sure,” Makoto replied, slightly more interested in checking out the window and watching the leafless trees swaying violently in the storm.

“Damn” Leon paused. “Wait, that kills the heater too, right?”

“Oh god,” Makoto said starting to panic.

“Well shit!” Leon cursed. “Smart move bringing that blanket, man. But damn that isn’t good”

“Well, maybe we could have a sleepover” Makoto stated optimistically.

Leon turned his head towards him in curiosity. Makoto could tell that was kind of spontaneous, especially to someone who wasn’t komaru.

“Well, when I was younger and we’d lose power, komaru and I would always stay in the other’s room and have little ‘sleepovers’ where we’d stay in each others rooms and build pillow forts. We don’t have to do any of that but maybe we could just talk?” Makoto offered.

Leon thought for a second. He wasn’t used to friends wanting to spend that much time with him. Heck, he wasn’t even used to people he’d dated wanting to spend that much time with him.

“Yeah sure,” Leon replied with a slight smile.

Makoto’s face visibly lit up.

The two stayed up a few hours playing uno and other sleepover games and wearing those soft hoodies you never want to take off and are super comfy.

Before bed, they both snuck down to the kitchen where sayaka, mukuro, and kirigiri were all talking and holding lanterns.

“Oh, hi guys!” Makoto said seeing his friends.

“Oh, hello Makoto,” kirigiri stated calmly. “Need anything?”

“Nope. Just getting some cocoa,” Makoto replied cheerily.

“Wait Sayaka, weren’t you going home today?” Leon asked his friend.

“Mom couldn’t drive in the weather. She’s probably gonna come pick me up tomorrow, or at least when the storm calms,” Sayaka replied.

“Cool. Stay safe dude!” Leon said to his friend.

They made some cocoa and headed back upstairs to the dorms, where the awkward question of sleeping situation came up. Being as the beds in the dorms are somewhat small, they’d either have to smush together and share, or one would take the floor. While both secretly kind of wanted to lay together on the bed and share body heat, Makoto decided to sleep on the floor.

Makoto took his blanket and an extra pillow from the bed and laid down.

“Need anything, I’m here, ok?” Leon said before turning off the lantern that illuminated the room.

“Ok. Night” Makoto replied, shifting in his blanket to get comfy.

“Night”

It was midnight. There was still no luck with the power, and the temperature had only dropped more. The winds were still strong outside, and snow was piling up. On top of that, Makoto was tossing and turning in his sleep, letting out slightly distressed mutters. He curled up into his blanket more to preserve body heat, but was still undoubtedly cold.

Leon is a light sleeper. The slightest changes can wake him up, so hearing the constant shifting and shaking was enough to begin to wake him up.

Eventually, he couldn’t fall back asleep anymore. The constant disturbance was enough to shake him awake, and once he realized the source of the noise, he became worried.

He glanced down at Makoto shifting anxiously in his sleep, letting out almost inaudible whimpers.

Leon contemplated waking him up, but he didn’t want to be overbearing or annoying. He didn’t want to lose this friend. But his worries got the best of him and he gently shook Makoto awake.

Upon waking him up, Leon was met with a pair of drowsy eyes looking up at him.

“Hey, you ok? Sorry for waking you man, just saw you shifting a lot. Wanted to make sure you’re doing alright.” Leon said placing a hand on Makoto’s shoulder.

Makoto looked up at him wordlessly before throwing himself into a hug with him.

Leon was taken aback by this. He clearly did not expect that.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry Leon, but I can’t take this anymore! I like you! I like you in a way that’s more than I would like a friend! I’m in love with you, Kuwata! I’m sorry I couldn’t take the dreams and the falling and the embarrassment I couldn’t take it! I’m sorry for being so selfish, but I like you,” Makoto blurted out. Tears started forming in his eyes; purely out of anxiety. Did he really just blurt that out?

Leon stared at him for a moment, completely shocked. But then, he didn’t yell. He didn't leave. He didn’t even tell him he didn’t feel the same way. He hugged him tighter.

“So I’m not weird, huh?” Leon said somewhat under his breath.

“What do you mean?”

“Look man, I like you too. I don’t know if it’s weird or not, but yeah. Never thought you’d like someone like me,” Leon said resting his chin on Makoto’s head.

“You mean it?” Makoto asked, his face lighting up.

“Wouldn’t lie to ya, man. ‘Course I mean it.”

There was a silence. But not an uncomfortable one. It was actually quite pleasant. The two held each other for a while, enjoying the other’s company and warmth.

“Well, if it’s not too quick, would ya wanna come sleep in the bed with me? Floors gotta be cold,” Leon said breaking the silence.

Makoto’s face flushed. But he wasn’t going to say no. He could really use that right now.

“Ok.”

They climbed into the bed together. Makoto dragged his weighted blanket along with them, and Leon pulled it over the two for warmth.

He pulled Makoto into his arms and rested his head upon the other’s. Makoto returned the embrace, holding his new lover tightly and intertwining their fingers.

This was nice. It felt warm. It felt safe. It felt ok. They love each other so much. It felt nice to finally be able to channel that onto the other.

Barely 5 minutes had passed and Makoto could hear soft snoring coming from the other. This was a calming sound that he could get used to. He fell asleep soon after.

By around 6 in the morning, the power for the school came back on. It was warmer now. But that didn’t disturb the two. This was the closure they both needed.

[silversprit]

me reacting to danganronpa shit with no context

includes all 3 main games! ask for context if u want heeheh

FUCK YALL ITS CANON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BRO ITS LITERALLY THERE ITS ALL THERE (referring to leosaya of course)

i also love how everyone else hates him, though him and mukuro junko coudlve been really intriguing

kyoko doesnt even waste time speaking

SAYAKA DO IT. FRIENDZONE THAT NAEGI

DIUKGJHSDN DKUCFH CNXUDGFJKHN AXGUF NAEGIRI CANON CELESTE/MAKTOTO CANON????? WHY DOES EVERYONE LOVE MAKOTO at least sayaka friendzoned him

MONDO WHAT THE HELL ok its confirmed hes gay AHHAHA LEON JEALOUS OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP AHAHAHAHAHAH

HOYL SHIT NOOO LEON AND SAYAKA NEVER SAW GENOCIDER :( NEITHER DID MUKURO NO!!!

SAYAKA DO NOT BE THAT ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT TOGAMI HE IS NOT WORTH YOUR BREATH

CELESGAMI CANON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I KNEW IT WO- maybe not maybe im reading too deep “he and i are of a kind” WINK WONK

KYOKO JUST LAUGHS WHAT IS THE CONTEXT

toko pleeeease stop obsessing ove rhim hes so bad

ishimondo canon i think that ones actually canon someone on the dr crew said it i think

SAYAKA WTF “he’s great” SAYAKA/ISHIMARU?

fuck you byakuya “don’t breathe until i tell you to” shut the fuck up

-

i would say band-aid confirmed but honestly? it already was MONOKUMA HUH WHAT

hm comparing gundam to komaeda… is that a good comparison? idk much about sdr2 i cant say for sure SONDAM CONFIRMED again it probably already was

sodddaaaa dont beat him up

HAHAH THE GIRLS DISSING TERUTERU IS SO FUNNY akane just here for the food

i love you twogami you are so good HAJIME NOT KNOWING WHAT YAOI IS JUST… MMM FEELS RIGHT

OOH CHIAKI SORTA DISSING HAJIME OUCH

AKANE!! WHAT THE HELL THATS SO FORWARD I GUESS THAT THING FROM THAT ONE SCENE WAS MORE THAN JUST

TERUTERU GAY FOR HAJIME CONFIRMED also kazuichi/hajime but thats more believable… wait “come and be my worthy partner” TWOGAMI/HAJIME EVERYONE IS SO HORNY FOR THE PROTAGS

“she’s in the wild ‘n wet world of yuri now!” IBUKI WHAT ARE YOU SAYING ARE YOU DATING HER WAHAT i mean i do think it could be cute also hajime’s was surprisingly calmer than i thought it would be

WOAH HIYOKO WHAT THE SHIT DID YOU JUST SAY KOMAEDA WAS INTO LOLICON WHAT honestly im glad no one trusts komaeda (this will get me murdered)

SONIA KNOWS KUZUPEKO CANON EHLL YEAH ibuki was friends with him? i dont remember that

everyone is being angry at ibuki gonna kms /j /j /j shes just playin her death metal HIYOKO NOOO WHY ARE YOU THE ONLY ONE WHO LIKES IT

F-FUYUHIKO BLUSHING AT CHIAKI??? NO. I CANNOT ACDEPT THIS ibuki is so gay i love her she is best girl for a reason

i dont trust most of the people’s reactions to her thats weird

akane just confess to nekomaru already damn you dont gotta keep innuendoing ooookay is teruteru bi cause hoyl shit these reactions make me think so thats actually p cool

ibuki keeps referencing that one scene in chapter 2 and i love that

hajime says “stop talking about your panties”…. bro shes- you know what nvm he can figure it out on his own

KUZUPEKO CANONNNNNNNNNNNNN

ibuki being gay for peko feeds me i love them together but like kuzupeko but like peko has two hands! gundam just laughing.. imposter sus

glad none of the dudes (except for teruteru rolling eyes emoji) is being horny for hiyoko and monokuma calling her a loli is. technically correct? shes an adult if the dr timeline is right

love that ibuki still goin on about that scene girl… same also love that kazuichi and gundam bonding over loving sonia

ibuki rejecting soda like that… good for her. hajime yes you’re soul friends geeez it snot that hard to understand

-

havent played v3 so my opinions might be stupid (you have been warned)

wow these are surprisingly boring also whats with the talk of ghosts thats weird

miu dont diss tsumugi like that i thought she was cute also yeah okay maki you dont need to be like “im not interested” okay we know u straight baby its ok /hj kaito wanna see her cosplay (lenny face)

HAHAH RIP SHUICHI

STFU KOKICHI HIMIKO IS NOT UGLY UGGGHGH WHY DOES THE FANDOM LOVE YOU YOU PIECE OF GARBAGE

angie finds keebo attractive you say? and tsumugi asks if he knows romance? and shuichi calling him a dryer? fascinating

angie calling gonta a grandma is both cute and kinda odd. why is kirumi calling him mother? my god miu can you not be horny for 5 minutes

ohhh i get it now nvm gonta asked if she was the mom of the group AND KOKICHI ASKING HER TO BE HIS MOM HAHA KOKICHI MOMMY KINK LOLOLOL tsumugi drooling ooh

OHH GONTA CALLED ANGIE THE GRANDMA OF THE GROUP WHILE BLUSHING WHAT angie is honestly so cute shes obsessed with atua and sacrifices but shes cute

kaede asking why korekiyo wears a mask… sadge if only she knew what awaited her in 2020 also maki asking who his sister is is

monokummma

aw kaede called tenko cute. also kiyo just straight up being like “yeah imma kill her” is so brave

shuichis is so boringgigig

-

im crying i cant find the ultra despair girls one

ALSO I HOPE YOU NOTICED THAT THE DR1 ONE IS ONLY LIKE HALF OF THE CHARACTERS BECAUSE I WAS SO HAPPY THAT LEOSAYA HAPPENED THET I JUST HAD TO POST ABOUT IT

[silenthillmutual]

Danganronpa 1 & 2 characters as High School “recommended reading” books I actually read

Makoto Naegi

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee when i read it: 5th grade for fun, 10th grade for English class did i like it? well enough yeah content warnings: thematic & period-typical racism, ableism, and sexism about: Recounts a summer in which Scout and her brother, Jem, watch their lawyer father defend a black man accused of raping a white woman in the south while balancing raising them alone. Other stuff happens, but that’s the most important plot thread.

Sayaka Maizono

Medea by Euripides when i read it: i don’t remember, maybe 9th for drama, 12th for English? did i like it? yep! content warnings: child murder, infidelity, some pretty brutal other character deaths, sexism about: Medea, who has sacrificed everything to be with her husband - even committed treason - has been left by the man so he can move on to woo and wed a princess. And she loses her shit.

Leon Kuwata

The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn by Mark Twain when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? yeah! content warnings: thematic & period-typical racism (use of the n-word), domestic abuse, classism iirc? about: After his abusive dad comes back and demands money under the threat of death, Huck Finn runs away with a fugitive slave down the Mississippi River. Being Mark Twain, it’s a comedy, although Huck’s father is genuinely kind of frightening and his friendship with Jim is kind of heartwarming.

Chihiro Fujisaki

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley when i read it: 10th grade for fun, 12th grade & freshman year of college for class did i like it? I’ve got mixed feelings; i love the book, hate most peoples’ interpretations of it. content warnings: character death, incest (depending on the version of the novel you read), unethical doctors, neglectful parents about: Thinking he knows better than literally anyone else he’s ever met, Victor Frankenstein decides it’s his birthright to play god. He robs graves to build the perfect body, and then, once he’s successful, flips his shit and refuses to acknowledge any part he played in the creation, wrecking the lives of like everyone he knows.

Mondo Oowada

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton when i read it: like 6th or 7th grade, for fun did i like it? i loved it! content warnings: abuse, thematic classism, character death about: Honestly the most obvious choice to make for Mondo. Ponyboy Curits, a greaser, recounts the last few months of his life in which, after being repeatedly harassed and then nearly killed by gang of rich kids, his friend Johnny stabs one to death. In order to keep Johnny out of prison and Ponyboy out of a boys’ home, the two run away. Considering Ponyboy is also being raised by an older brother, this totally fits Mondo.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru

King Lear by William Shakespeare when i read it: twice in college (discliamer: as an english major i had to taken an entire course on shakespeare, so he shows up a lot here between that and having done theatre) did i like it? no content warnings: a surprising amount of gore for a stage play, including a guy getting his eyes gouged out and someone getting beheaded iirc about: The king’s getting up in years, so he’s hoping he can drop the workload off onto his three daughters while remaining the figurehead. His youngest, Cordelia, who he loves best, refuses to kiss his ass by saying that he’ll still have power over her once she’s married, and this pisses him off so he disinherits her. Then her sisters, annoyed with their father and his favoritism, decide that with Cordelia out of the way they can now do basically whatever they want and determine to make his life hell. Since he named them Goneril and Regan, I don’t blame them.

Hifumi Yamada

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer when i read it: college, but i wanna say i read some of the stories in it for English classes in high school? did i like it? some of the stories i did yeah content warnings: varies from story to story, but i remember unsanitary, drunkenness, and infidelity about: The overarching “plot” as such is that a group of people are making a pilgrimage to Canterbury, and decide that to pass the time they will tell two stories each. Each story is told in-character, and whoever tells the best story has to...buy everybody dinner, or something? I don’t really recall. It’s a comedy, but it’s also unfinished because Chaucer bit off way more than he could chew.

Celes Ludenberg

“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? probably, i’m a fan of Poe content warnings: drunkenness, murder about: This one got memetic on tumblr for a while, but essentially this guy decides to get revenge on an old friend of his for some kind of sleight by getting him drunk during Carnival, leading him into the basement, and burying him alive. Poe isn’t one to go soft.

Sakura Oogami

“A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? no content warnings: objectification, something akin to torture about: A family finds an old man with wings lying face-down on the ground and decide to keep him like a pet. People see him and assume he is an animal, and the family decides to start charging admission like their own private sideshow, while onlookers abuse him. One of those extra depressing stories that makes you wonder why the hell you had to read it for class.

Mukuro Ikusaba

The Crucible by Arthur Miller when i read it: the first time, probably in 6th or 7th grade, and then several more times after that for a variety of other classes. it’s a theatre and English class staple.  did i like it? when taken in context, yes. but i’m also fucking sick of reading it. content warnings: infidelity, paranoia bait, period-typical racism & sexism (takes place during the Salem Witch Trials) about: The plot is a witch hunt, in which a girl who had an affair with a married man claims to have been taken over by the spirit of the devil and that all her friends and a variety of other townsfolk have too. It follows the trials as they try to determine who is and is not guilty, who will repent for their sins, and thematically is about puritanical hysteria. It’s about the Red Scare of the 50s, surveillance, the Hollywood Blacklist, propaganda, and tyrannical government. Naturally, teachers fail to provide any context for the play that actually makes it relevant or interesting. Compare to modern day callout/cancel culture. 

Kyouko Kirigiri

12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose when i read it: 10th grade (although i’d already seen the movie) did i like it? yes content warnings: thematic classism & xenophobia about: The jury of a case in which a teenager is accused of murder convene to determine their verdict. All but one man believe him to be guilty. The rest of the play covers his attempts to sway his other jurors into at least casting aside their prejudices to view the case impartially.

Byakuya Togami

The Federalist Papers when i read it: summer before 12th grade for AP Gov. yikes. did i like it? oh god no. i had to have my lawyer dad explain it to me. content warnings: legalese and it’s boring as fuck about: i mean it’s just a bunch of essays to promote ratifying the the constitution. I don’t even remember if we read all of them. that’s how bad my retention of the subject is.

Toko Fukawa

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? kind of? content warnings: bugs, emotional abuse, depression about: A man awakens one day to find he has transformed into a giant cockroach. It’s a metaphor for his depression and what a burden he feels like to his family. If you read anything about Kafka’s life, you’ll understand why he was depressed.

Aoi Asahina

Hamlet by William Shakespeare when i read it: i’ve forgotten when my first time was because i’ve had to read it so constantly. if i had to wager a guess, i’d say middle school, though i’ve read it for fun, for drama class, and for English class. did i like it? yes content warnings: character death, suicidal ideation, incest vibes (depending on your interpretation) about: Hamlet, not over the early death of his father, is enraged that his mother has married his uncle. He’s really bringing everyone else down about it, and then he starts to see his father’s ghost on top of it all. No one’s sure if he’s just mad with grief or if the ghost is for real, but he starts making life for everyone else difficult when he decides to try and expose his uncle as his father’s murderer.

Yasuhiro Hagakure

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller when i read it: 10th grade i think? did i like it? if i believed in book-burning, this would’ve been the first turned to ash in my trashcan content warnings: infidelity, mediocre white men with narcissism, suicide, not sure what else about: An aging father who thinks he was robbed of success by circumstances refuses to face facts that he is a loser by projecting his failures onto a son that now hates him and thinking real big of himself for a wash-out.

Junko Enoshima

Othello by William Shakespeare when i read it: college did i like it? it’s my favorite Shakepseare play, actually! content warnings: thematic racism/xenophobia/Islamophobia, domestic abuse, character death about: A tragedy centering around the planned downfall of Othello, Moor of Venice. He’s relatively well-respected for his heroics and generally being a pretty cool guy, but for whatever reason, Iago wants to see him suffer. And when I say “for whatever reason” - it’s because Iago never gives a consistent one, but at the end he admits the entire thing has been his orchestration and he’s had no issue exploiting peoples’ bigotry as a means to an end. One popular and pretty text-evident theory is that Iago is in love with Othello. But - causing a ruckus, bringing society to its knees, and torturing a man just for shits n giggles? Getting it all done by sheer power of charisma? That’s all Junko ever does.

Monokuma

1984 by George Orwell when i read it: 10th grade for fun, 12th grade for class did i like it? yes but i don’t recommend it. i like tedious shit. content warnings: paranoia bait, sexual themes, torture, probably other stuff i’m forgetting about: Classic dystopia lit in which the government controls the flow of information to the degree of creating its own language (”newspeak”) to explain the technology used to survey its citizens and distill history-changing propaganda. Especially relevant in an era of “fake news.” Where Big Brother Is Watching comes from. Extremely difficult to get into.

Hajime Hinata

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck  when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? yeah content warnings: ableism, implied domestic abuse, character death, animal death, era-typical sexism (1930s) about: Very desolate and depressing novella about the futility of the American Dream to “make something of yourself”. Two farmhands, Lennie and George, arrive at a California farm seeking employment. They just want to earn enough money to open up a farm of their own - a rabbit farm - and things are all downhill from there. Well-written and one of Steinbeck’s shorter works.

Twogami

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? yes! i loved it. but in the way that you love sleazy tabloid rag stories. content warnings: infidelity, car accidents, character death about: Stupidly rich people in New York in the 1920s being fake as hell. It’s about excess and decadence and the idea of having a rags-to-riches story, and it’s very homoerotic.

Teruteru Hanamura

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? one of my top faves tbh content warnings: alcoholism & drug usage, thematic classism & racism (ie that’s the point), sexual themes, violence, non-graphic suicide (like literally the last sentence), character deaths about: You know how 1984 is a very pessimistic dystopia about government surveillance? Brave New World is like “what if everything was a utopia because of government interference?” It’s easier to get into than 1984. It’s about a man from the upper echelon of society discovering the dirty secret of how society is able to able to function the way it does, an outsider into his world to shake things up.

Mahiru Koizumi

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen when i read it: i dunno, summer between 9th and 10th grade maybe? did i like it? yes! i loved it. content warnings: there are a couple of guys who are sort of gross but there’s nothing that bad in it about: An upper-middle class family - more the mother than the father - trying to marry off the eldest of their five daughters. It’s largely character-driven and most of the plot focuses on Jane’s relationship with Bingley, Elizabeth’s relationship with Darcy, and the problems witch judging people based on first impressions.

Peko Pekoyama

Call of the Wild by Jack London when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? fuck no content warnings: graphic animal violence. if there’s other stuff i forgot because i fucking hated this book. about: I think it’s something like a dog getting lost in Alaska and has to learn to be a wolf in order to survive? It’s incredibly brutal and is one of those media where just reading it makes you feel cold. 

Hiyoko Saionji

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? not really content warnings: man i don’t know, but it’s by Tennessee Williams so there’s probably alcoholism, daddy issues, and homophobia about: An overbearing mother embarrasses her son and disabled daughter when an old school friend comes to visit...I’m not sure if there’s more of a plot to it than that. Like most Williams works, it’s largely character-driven.

Ibuki Mioda

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino when i read it: college did i like it? this is one of those rare exceptions in books where i read it, because i remember having a visceral reaction to it, but i can not for the life of me remember a single damn thing about it other than how stupidly difficult it was to read.  content warnings: it’s metaficiton. about: You are the protagonist. I genuinely can’t explain anymore than that.

Mikan Tsumiki

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? not really, but i’d be willing to reread it content warnings: domestic abuse, rape about: Unstable Blanche DuBois goes to visit her sister, Stella, and meets her appalling husband Stanley. All Tennessee Williams plays seem to have a theme of family tragedy in them, with this being probably the most bleak example. 

Nekomaru Nidai

The Odyssey by Homer when i read it: 9th grade, then again in college for a classics class did i like it? yeah content warnings: your usual classical Greek-variety nonsense, including character death, infidelity, and partying. about: Odysseus attempts to make his way back home after the Trojan War, and has a time of it. Having pissed off Poseidon he’s gotten off-course and gotten lost another ten years, and had a whole slew of other adventures trying to make it back home and save his wife from the harassment she’s been getting since his disappearance.

Gundham Tanaka

The Tempest by William Shakespeare when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? not especially content warnings: thematic colonialism & racism...not sure what else but it’s hard as fuck to read. try reading it out loud & acting along to it. about: I didn’t totally get it but there’s something about a wizard having been banished and now people are coming back to find him for some reason? the people who exiled him & his brother & daughter have crash-landed on his island and now he might get his revenge. Thanks, TVTropes! All I remember is discussing in one class about how The Tempest managed to predict the “finding” of America and how the English would treat the native peoples. It’s a “romance”, which in that day and age meant it was about magic. Influenced some science fiction works like Brave New World (the title of which comes from a line spoken by Miranda). I should probably reread it.

Nagito Komaeda

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger when i read it: 8th grade for fun did i like it? yeah content warnings: implied pedophilia. i’m sure there’s other stuff but i don’t remember it well enough. about: Perennial troublemaker Holden Caulfield is kicked out of boarding school, and takes a hell of a long time getting home from the place as he complains about his declining mental state, hypocrisy, and loss of innocence. It’s one of those books you either really love or really hate, and has been repeatedly challenged because Holden swears too much and might be bisexual.

Chiaki Nanami

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw when i read it: 12th grade, i think did i like it? yes content warnings: classism about: A linguistics professor makes a bet with a friend that he can take any lower-class citizen and teach them to speak formal English, well enough to pass them off as aristocracy to other rich people. It’s the plot upon which the musical My Fair Lady is based, although it was intended as a deconstruction of the kind of plot whose trope it now codifies.

Sonia Nevermind

“Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? yeah! content warnings: infidelity, character death about: A guy comes home and tells his heavily pregnant wife that he’s been having an affair, and he’s leaving her. She doesn’t take it well. I won’t spoil the rest of it, as it’s a short story, but it’s fun to keep in mind that it’s be the same guy who wrote classics such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Kazuichi Souda

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare when i read it: 8th grade for a book report and then again in....i don’t know. i’ve had to read it a lot. did i like it? sure, it’s got some pretty great insults content warnings: men being douchebags including stalker-y behavior, and a woman falls in love with a man who has a donkey’s head (it doesn’t last) about: Hermia & Lysander are planning to run away to get married because Hermia’s father doesn’t approve of Lysander, and she’s trying to dodge the affections of Demetrius - the man to whom she has been betrothed, because he’s an ass who, among other things, slept with her friend Helena and then ditched her. Which Helena is still hung up on, even though he’s a gross creep. At the same time, a group of actors are trying to get together a play for an upcoming royal wedding, and the King of the Faeries is trying to win back his wife. This all connects because a faerie decides to fuck around.

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier when i read it: college, for an independent study did i like it? yeah content warnings: graphic violence, i think some homophobia? about: Kids and staff at a private school take a candy sale way too damn seriously. There’s basically a mafia at the school and some sort of weird popularity contest and hazing going on. 

Akane Owari

“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? i guess so content warnings: human hunting about: A man finds himself shipwrecked on an island, and is then hunted for sport. No, really.

Monomi

East of Eden by John Steinbeck when i read it: technically i’m in the middle of it right now, but that counts, right? did i like it? so far, i guess i do, but it’s mainly i care character who comes up later. couldn’t give less of a shit about adam trask, full offense content warnings: period-typical sexism & racism (set around the turn of the 20th century and published in 1952), implied pedophilia (that gets incredibly glossed over), ableism about: A combination of heavy-handed religious allegory (Steinbeck really just can’t cool it with the Cain and Abel theme naming) and family tree history. Follows the Trask family through Adam’s childhood, tumultuous relationship with his brother, even worse relationship with his wife, and horrible parenting of his children. The end (which is what the film adaptation covers) is more centered on his son Cal Trask grappling with the idea that he might be evil because of his genetics, or something. I think that’s an argument you could make of Monomi, being related to Monokuma (or at least, how i’m sure she’d feel).

[jinjojess]

Danganstuck: the 78th Class vs. the Black King

As promised!

First, a couple notes for context: the DR1 cast are the Beta kids of my Danganstuck, with SDR2 as the Alpha kids, i.e., their session is post-Scratch (of course there's a Scratch, the original session has Junko in it). V3 is the universe created by the 77th and 78th Classes. DR:AE and DR3 I'm still mulling over, but I imagine they are alt timeline sessions reachable via the Furthest Ring (I need Fukawa to get there somehow).

Though I have a sort-of rough progression planned out in my head, I haven't sat down yet to fit everything into a timeline, so please bear with me.

The essential bits you need to know are that the DR1 kids fight their Black King at some point in the session, with the only relevant prototypes right now being a Kibougamine school pamphlet and Jin's body (he gets a very Mom/Bro death, where Junko kills him and Kirigiri finds the body later). This makes the Black King manifest as the school itself with a huge version of Jin's upper body coming out of it. All the other prototypings are applied as well.

For right now, all of the players are present at the Black King fight because of various time shenanigans and god tiering. I'll refine this explanation once I figure out where exactly this fits into the Danganstuck timeline.

Whew, okay, we can get to the actual scene. Obviously, this will make more sense if you know the canon story behind Rex Duodecim Angelus, but it's not 100% required.

The song starts with the 78th Class (minus the twins) on the Battlefield, looking up at where the Black King is emerging from the fog. Everyone is a bit unnerved by how massive he is, and there's a close-up of Kirigiri taking a deep breath and opening her eyes as the headmaster's face is revealed.

The first few repetitions of the King's theme are the King lashing out at the students, who dodge with varying degrees of grace.

When Karkat's theme comes on, that's where Sakura and Oowada, the two blood players, jump into the fray. They smash away at the King's many limbs.

Next is Terezi's theme, where Naegi the Mind Player marches out to face the King. He tries shouting at "Jin" to convince him to remember his humanity, which doesn't do a lot of physical damage, but does cause the King visible mental distress that reflects in his movements. The final beat of Terezi's theme shows Naegi dramatically opening his eyes ala the end of an Anagram segment in a trial.

The King strikes back some, movements more errartic than before.

Tavros's theme comes in as Breath player Yamada majestically flies in dressed like Buku, dropping bombs, while Breath player Kuwata hits baseballs with an electric guitar into the King's body.

Everything halts for Kanaya's theme when Ishimaru the Space player blows a whistle, followed by him kendoing the King backwards and covering part of him in paper announcements.

The Meowrail crew's comes in next: Celes, Void player, holds herself in a stately manner as she is carried in by her planet's consorts. She derisively pours scalding tea on the King's limbs. The other Void player, Maizono, is using her Voicekind strife specibus combined with a microphone to send powerful sonic blasts at the King. Nepeta's little playful parts represent Fukawa and Sho flipping between each other and popping in and out of the background to fend off the King.

The final attack in this segment (during the seadweller part) comes from Asahina, Life player and swimmer, agilely dodging attacks and striking back as if the whole thing were a dance. Meanwhile Hagakure, Hope player, is cowering in the corner but predicting and warning Asahina of a few incoming attacks.

The King begins his assault anew, entering a more furious barrage of attacks.

When Sollux and Aradia's part starts up, Togami is standing still with his arms crossed and a sneer on his face, using his Time powers to halt the King and his attacks momentarily so that Doom player Fujisaki can quickly type in commands to release attacks on the King. Alter Ego also flits in and out in the background.

As their assault ends and the music fades into a bike horn rendition of the King's theme, Naegi looks up at the King's HP bar--there's only about a quarter of health left.

As he points this out to the others, they notice that the King has stopped attacking, and instead is looking around in a panic. The bike horns crescendo and a hugely powerful attack lands, accompanied by a deafening thunderclap. The King's health bar rapidly depletes, as do about fourteen more of them right after the first one empties, leaving a final bar very much in the red.

In the aftermath of the attack, the class looks to see the Rage player twins standing on the battlefield: Junko posing and Mukuro saluting.

The King goes back into attack mode, badly wounded and desperate, trying to strike the twins but failing and being hit back in the process.

The twins make it to where everyone else is standing, and as the military march comes on, they walk right by Light player Kirigiri. Junko pats her on the shoulder as she goes by, offering a wink while Mukuro gives her a nod.

Kirigiri clenches her gloved fists and begins to walk forward with purpose, gaining momentum as the music cresendos. Finally, she's running at the King full tilt.

She looks at her father's face on the creature, closes her eyes, and throws herself forward with everything she's got to land the killing blow.

She's left panting and dazed on an empty battlefield, feeling the rain soak her through.

[ryouverua]

Trial 5 - Pre-Execution

Investigation 1 / 2 - second half is where I put my own theories that I penned before playing the trial.

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8

HOW MANY TRIALS ARE GOING TO END WITH A CONFESSION ANYWAY

Hnngh - okay, this is actually happening now. We’re having a post-trial talk with Kaito before we send him off to the gallows. Cool. Cool. Cool cool cool cool -

marvels again that on the most basic detail I was right but as a whole I was very, incredibly wrong about what went down

This is going to be a weight for her to bear for a long time, huh.

He’s trying so hard to stay positive and cheer everyone up - how can you be so upbeat right now???

well I guess there’s the fact that he’s had plenty of time to come to terms with his own death since yesterday’s events but -

get this man an Oscar 

Kaito is low-key impressed just saying.

I’m sorry when the fuck between the extreme muscle spasms, seizures and general shut down of his body was he supposed to have written this? Was this something he started before all this happened? Was this a contingency plan? omg - was he thinking of Shuichi when he originally wrote the script and came up with a ‘in  case something happens to me’ trial plan, then filled in the details up until he died to match the exact circumstances of what actually happened? He did ask Shuichi to be his partner last chapter... how long has this particular plan been in his head for???

How hard was it to swallow his pride and ask Kaito for help instead of Shuichi?

going for those Beatrice vibes even beyond the grave, huh

PLEASE ELABORATE PLEASE -

DAMN IT -

okay I see what the game is trying to do here. And I appreciate it going and highlighting how clever Kokichi is for his foresight, his planning, and his general awareness and understanding of the people around him. That is coming through loud and clear.

But can we talk about Kaito’s ability to ad-lib on the fly, in character, and react to all the situations he was presented? Because Kokichi could not predict the exact future. He clearly planned things, not just in the general sense, but there is only so far a mere mortal could go.

“When Shuichi brings up these points, counter with those.”

“Flatter Himiko to throw her off. Here are some sample lines. Push it as far as you need to to make her flustered.”

“Play on Tsumugi’s ‘everyday boring girl’ syndrome.”

“Here are all the insults I’ve come up with to use at K1-b0 to distract him. Choose the ones that fit the moment, or use them to come up with your own if needed.”

“These are turns of phrases I use to project my incredibly important image.”

“Here’s a 20 paragraph speech I’ve prepped as a giant SCREW YOU to Monokuma, you can break it up as you need to but you have to make sure you get through all of it at some point because I want to rub this in his face and if I’m not there to do it you NEED to do it for me.”

I’d laugh if he had scripts and script notes denoting possible variations, but there’s just a bookmarked page partway through the script and it’s this long  anti-Monokuma manifesto

Anyway, I want to admire Kokichi’s planning, absolutely - but I also want to appreciate Kaito’s own skill along with it, because I don’t think they should take from each other at all. Even if he broke character a few times (which is even more hilarious in hindsight), he was utterly convincing in full acting mode!

:(

.... does K1-b0 power off his eyes when he wants to look incredibly depressed... sorry, utterly distracted for a moment...

(Himiko looks depressed too - I’m just trying to not literally upload every single frame of the scene already and it’s HARD.)

Fucking hell Kaito, with all of your self-aggrandising talk why is it now that you can’t understand why everyone is upset?!

Well... I mean, I do kind of get it. Trying to make everyone around you happy - in general, and with themselves - is practically your raison d'être. And right now, you’re the reason everyone is so upset. But still, it’s only because everyone cares about you so much!!!

Kaito put on a pedestal and pushed off of it - check. 

How?? Like, how did he phrase it??? Did he decorate it with his normal sureme leader talk? Did he lay out that Kaito basically owed him a debt now? Or did he leave it with just ‘Maki will be the blackened if you don’t do this’?? I have a feeling that whatever I get from the flashbacks, it still won’t be enough 8′D

In the last chapter? Or longer? ... It must have been longer, right? He was writing on that stone since at least chapter... 2? 3? and was talking to Monokuma in Chapter 4. 

LMAO WHAT A CASUAL WAY TO DROP THAT PARTICULAR KNOWLEDGE BOMB

“Oh shit really? Wow, go figure.”

i enjoy kaito’s mildly shocked face here

HOW MUCH GEAR DID YOU GET MIU TO MAKE FOR YOU??? Am I going to have to pore over all of your interactions after all??? You guys gave each other so much crap during the trials and outside of them??? You had that ridiculous black-and-white scene in front of the computer??? How close WERE you two before she lost herself to paranoia?!

I can’t help but think everything with Gonta was improvised based on how events were unfolding around him. Would he have still tried to do the same thing if Miu hadn’t been making an attempt on his life? Or did he know that at some point down the line he would have to orchestrate a murder to convince everyone that he was the mastermind? Was this something he had to steel himself to do, or was that always in the back of his mind as an option from the beginning?

I’m sure that last bit upset Kaito the most - he was Gonta’s most stalwart defender in the last trial.

I haven’t seen this sprite in a while, jeez. Or... have I seen this sprite before??? It’s definitely similar to the ones he showed in Gonta’s trial, but I don’t recall him being so, erm, sweaty then.

#calledthat

That has to rankle more than anything. He highlighted Maki’s talent repeatedly and continuously called her out about it, and then this. 

The fact that he’s framing it as ‘the true mastermind is at fault’ and not putting it all on Maki is interesting. I wonder if Kokichi just sees Maki as a weapon as opposed to a person? Accurately in this case, perhaps...

Frowning/serious Kokichi is so strange?!?! Not that there’s any reason for him to be smiling here, but it’s really telling that he can’t even bring himself to do it here. This is probably the closest we’ll get to seeing his true feelings and thought process, huh...

Whelp I just went back to this part after writing a whole blurb a few screenshots down and the ‘mastermind doesn’t remember they’re the mastermind’ theory I concocted for fun just died an unceremonious death. I did enjoy those brief few minutes of my oddball ‘Maki doesn’t remember she’s the mastermind’ theory while it lasted so I’ll leave it up for you guys to laugh at enjoy! Unfortunately Monokuma being in time-out debunks it unless there are two masterminds.

If we tie this to the funeral scene... I proposed the idea that the flashback lights give their brains scenes to work with - aka that they aren’t necessarily actually their memories, but perhaps someone else’s, for example - and that their brain works to interpret them and make sense of them, and generally fit them into their own world view. I think it’s becoming accepted now that memories themselves are somewhat pliable and can even change during each ‘recall’. So if they were given the flashback light that said, ‘hey, there’s a cult working to destroy you all and it’s led by the traitor in the group, X’, their brains would fill in ‘X’ with Kokichi based on the context at the time. It also gives room for the idea that I originally had, aka that the talents and perhaps even memories they all have aren’t necessarily their own - that they could have easily had their talents switched between them in the prologue, and the fact they landed like this was just a coincidence - and the one known as ‘Kokichi, Supreme Leader’ could have easily one of the other classmates in a different timeline. The mastermind would be able to have the ability to adapt to any scenario, if that was the case...

lmao yeah that was pretty obvious

So even Kokichi never figured it out in the end? That’s pretty significant - the kid is basically a living lie detector. That leaves four possibilities that I can think of:

1) The mastermind isn’t actually among us. I highly doubt that - we’ve been building to a reveal from the beginning, even as far as having Shuichi find the door in the library. 

2) The mastermind is among the dead - someone Kokichi never got a chance to ‘read’. The best candidates for that would be Rantaro and Kaede. Rantaro would be the almost too obvious choice, between his memory loss, the video where he tells himself ‘you wanted this’, and his general intelligence and knowledge of the proceedings - and, hell, his lab door. Alternatively, this would be a good way to bring Kaede back into the game - we did see a shot of her wearing that helmet too, and also it would be nice to see her again tbh 

I just... don’t think this is the case though. Not only because we’ve done that with Junko already, though that’s a bit one, but because everything was set for DR1′s twist from the beginning - 15 students and 16 stands, the ‘odd one out’ murder aka Mukuro, etc. Rantaro’s video is certainly hinting at something, but I’d be shocked if it was leading to his reveal as the mastermind.

DEBUNKED :( 3) The mastermind doesn’t have their memory. Now, we’ve already done this with SDR2 so I really, highly doubt this is the case but if it is this way the best choice would be for it at this point in the game to be Maki. I mean, Shuichi would have been viable too... if he wasn’t the protagonist, because then we’d really be retreading old territory. Anyway, here’s the fun ‘what if’ for why Maki!mastermind could potentially work - it would really add onto Kaito and Kokichi’s conflict. Kokichi never liked Maki from the start, and antagonized her repeatedly - what if it was he sensed that potential in her? What if she was sent to infiltrate the mission by the cult and have everyone killed like this? And on Kaito’s side, he spends big chunks of the game trying to redeem her. What if it worked? What if it turned out that both Kaito and Kokichi were right, as a follow-up to this chapter where they both set aside their differences and work with each other (and, well, are killed by Maki). What if Kaito turned someone who had the capability to set up this game into someone that wouldn’t? There’s so ground that could be covered in this direction - I mean, I doubt it’s true which is why I said from the getgo that I highly doubt it’s the case, but it would be a fantastic reason to have highlighted her character so much and really give depth to, well, ‘tsundere assassin learns to love’. I could go on about this tbh...

4) The one I’ve been partial to for a while now... the mastermind is someone who specializes in lying. In putting on a mask. In breathing life into a persona, inhabiting it, becoming it, until it’s indistinguishable from their own identity - perhaps becomes their identity in those moments, to the point that Kokichi wouldn’t be able to realize they were lying. Oh, Kokichi was incredibly adept at it, sure - but he was recognized for his leadership skills, as unorthodox as they may have been. There’s someone else still alive, however, whose talent addresses the concept of ‘becoming another person’ has not been showcased much if at all to this point. 

now mind you other than the proclivity for cults shown in chapter 3 and references to escapism, I still haven’t gotten a proper motive in mind but at all but hopefully that’ll come next chapter??? anyway I’m getting distracted again

kokichi has the heart of a gamer

You just know that’s Kokichi’s game face. I mean, Kaito has his ‘optimistic!’ face on right now to give him the strength to face his own execution - maybe this is Kokichi’s way of comforting himself too?

THAT MUSIC CUT!!!

“ALSO HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING THAT WITH YOUR EXPRESSION, IT’S JUST THE TWO OF US, CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME BEFORE YOU DIE -”

Could it have worked the other way around? If Kaito let himself die, Kokichi pretended to be Kaito in the exisal and it was left decide whether ‘Kaito’ mercy-killed ‘Kokichi’ via the press or if he died by poison first, would that have been viable? Probably not as effectively... it would be a lot easier for them to believe Kokichi was pretending to be Kaito, less believable that Kaito wouldn’t show himself in the exisal, and a whole host of other factors. Maybe not, then.

And of course Kaito asked Kokichi that, because if he’s going to be committing to a plan this wild he needs some assurance.

Then there have to be people alive, right??? But they saw the burning ruins around them when they tried to leave, and even collapsed because of the air quality - so what, did they crash land in an area that was wiped out or something? But there are still places where people are alive?

It was a test, then.

... Gonta... has to have been a heavy weight on his conscience. I think we can officially say his breakdown over him was real if he would go so far as to try and end the killing game like this - and if Gonta was a necessary sacrifice, it was one Kokichi was pushed to make when he had few options left.

I think the chess analogies I’ve been associating with him are accurate at this point, and it would even be fair to say that if you were to think about Kokichi’s strategic thought process, the allusions are almost necessary - the whole game is about exchanging pieces in order to get a more powerful position on the board and eventually corner the ‘king’, and at some point Kokichi looked at the board and his available moves, as well as the ‘piece’ Miu Iruma putting him in a ‘check’ position, and realized that his only option was to intercept her with ‘piece’ Gonta. I also like using chess here too because there’s duality in that too - there’s the side of Miu that Kokichi can and clearly did use for his strategies, and the side that the mastermind used by way of motive.

Ah, and of course I’d be remiss to not mention that Yu-Gi-Oh! the card game works well too here (hell, it comes up in his FTE) even though it’s less accessible; it’s a game where more powerful moves require sacrificing lower level ‘monsters’, and there’s a literal graveyard they’re sent to. Also, unlike chess, playing from the graveyard is a legitimate strategy in YGO . I’m sure, especially after this trial, Kokichi can relate to that strategy in particular.

Or maybe as they’re suddenly starting to imply it’s more like the ‘Black Book Club’ ala YYH? There must be people alive then, right? ... So maybe... people who survived through unscrupulous means and sheer force of wealth and need some sort of entertainment??? They remembered being kidnapped at the beginning of everything, right? Were they intercepted before the gopher project had a chance to play out and now they’re being kept in an isolated facility somewhere meant to replicate the ship, but it actually isn’t the ship at all? Wait, when did I start wearing a tinfoil hat - ?!

Kaito is defending Kokichi, everything is right in the world

Shuichi: Please don’t redirect the spotlight at me - ah, shit shit damn it shit 

“It’s just like Kokichi said!”

mm thank you game, keep feeding me merci beaucoup

Himiko just gobbles up any bit of positive attention thrown her way with the obvious and incredibly glaring exception of Tenko??? man I really need to do her FTEs or something - does she just not know how to handle straight-up affection or -

i n h a l e s

KOKICHI OUMA

IS NOT

A REMNANT OF DESPAIR!!!!

K1-B0 YOU’RE KILLING ME HERE!!!

This just makes me wonder if betting and big money in general is wrapped up in all of this. “Who is the mastermind? Now gentlemen, place your bets before the reveal!”

MAKI IT’S THAT ATTITUDE THAT GOT US IN THIS SITUATION IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

tsun

dude he found a way to save Maki and potentially stop the game, I would hardly call it ‘evil’.

“I mean, I was hoping we could cut straight to the chase, but you’re actually a decent guy at the end of the day, and unlike most of the rest of the class don’t actually want me dead. Damn it.”

Fucking hell, between the music and his faces it so so easy to frame him as eeeeviiil!!! And yet just looking at the text in isolation, it reads:

“But are you sure you’re okay with that? Because if this poison kills me, then Maki would become the blackened. And her crime would be exposed so easily.

If that happened, then Maki and I would’ve died for no reason, right? Which is just what the true mastermind expects...”

And yeah sure it still has a bit of an edge to it, but it’s way more ambiguous when presented outside of his “Supreme Leader” aura which apparently can warp both his face and music.

Kaito is still trying to filter this through his ‘hero vs villain’ narrative, bless his heart. Either that or this is a heavily edited version of events - it would be interesting, even if it’s unlikely, if we found out that Kokichi made Kaito promise to tell everyone a different story than what really happened in the event of being found out.

There are gears turning in Kaito’s head right now, you can’t tell me there aren’t.

even if some of them are just him thinking ‘no seriously how are you doing that with your face’

NO!!! NO ‘D’ WORDS IN THIS HOUSEHOLD!!!

FUCK I want to have a montage of Kokichi doing incredibly kind-hearted and generous things and just doing his damnedest to spin it all in the most scary, ominous way possible!

“To answer your question, it’s really hard for me to hold my face in these expressions and the muscle spasms beginning to wrack my body are making it that much harder.”

But you can see shades of yourself in him, can’t you? That’s the scary part. Their goals aligned. This whole time, they’ve just wanted to help their classmates survive. They assigned themselves bombastic personalities in order to take the pressure off of those left in the class and damn it, they both prepared themselves to die alone in order to make good on their wish to save everyone left. Kaito made references to Kaede’s last wish - I wonder if Kokichi took it to heart as well?

No you were, Kokichi! No you fucking weren’t! Fml I don’t know how much solace that gives you at the end of the line, but...

Okay I nearly ended the post here as a tribute to Kokichi’s efforts but I have a rule of doing a single post-trial, pre-execution post and I must resist that urge -

LMAO IS THAT WHAT YOU GOT OUT OF THE EXCHANGE

I-It’s going to take you a while to warm up to the idea of ‘Kokichi actually wasn’t the dick he pretended to be’ huh. 8′D

OH REALLY

IT WASN’T BECAUSE OF MAKI OR ANYONE ELSE

IT WAS BECAUSE YOU TWO AGREED ON SOMETHING

SO YOU WEREN’T ULTIMATELY BLACKMAILED OR COERCED INTO THIS, EVEN IF THAT’S WHAT GOT YOU LISTENING INITIALLY

YOU CHOSE TO DO THIS FOR THE GREATER GOAL OF RUINING THE GAME

just. just want to make sure that point was clear for myself. Seems like it’s important characterization-wise, that’s all.

This seems like a good time to note that I am 99% sure Kaito had those swirly despair!eyes DR is known for in the last image with him coughing up blood. That was definitely the turning point for the chapter.

Also, Kokichi didn’t just swallow his pride - Kaito did too. He’s wanted to be the hero who swooped in to save the day for how long??? And here he is, admitting that this was fully Kokichi’s plan, and acknowledging that Kokichi was correct in a lot of ways even if he didn’t agree with him on everything. Beautiful.

nO IS IT FINALLY HAPPENING WE’RE ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT THIS NOW

‘THAT WAS A LIE.’

OKAY THAT’S IT, WRAP IT UP FOLKS, WE’RE DONE HERE.

“Ha ha yeah I could probably drop dead at any moment tbh ha ha why are you giving me those looks huh ha ha ha hrk -”

I’m guessing the medical exam took place before all of these events happened. But wasn’t the whole point of selecting these guys that they were immune or something??? I mean clearly it wasn’t true - I guess it was dormant or - ?!

... which Monokuma then brings up himself. Cool, thanks.

How dare you say that so cheerfully. >:(

L M A O

he’s so bloody casual about the whole thing

I mean I get that it’s because he’s come to terms with dying but

damn it Kaito

A chance to end the killing game and save everyone, knowing he was on his way out either way, and a way to save Maki specifically - it really was the perfect storm, huh?

Well damn it I know it’s implying this all happened after Kokichi died, but the idea of Kaito visibly fangirling over the plan in front of Kokichi, giving him a bit of external validation for the first and last time since his miserable life started here, makes me feel a little better. If nothing else, he would have at least felt good about the chances of success before he died.

FUCKING DAMN IT IT’S LIKE KAITO LINED UP HIS DIALOGUE STRAIGHT AT MY HEART AND PULLED THE TRIGGER

MERCILESS

DAMN YOU KAITO I SEE THAT SMILE YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE DOING

my BOYFRIEND

I’m not sure if he’s trying to comfort Shuichi after messing up Kokichi’s plan or not but if he is, he’s incredibly good at it.

Was it????

again, more praise for him -

Kokichi, beyond the grave: NO YOU DUMBASS I GAVE MY LIFE SO YOU COULD END IT IN A SINGLE TRIAL as soon as you join me in the afterlife I am going to KICK YOUR ASS -

AIBOU

Oh you big hypocrite. Wait - no - let me check -

*takes off shipping glasses*

Nope, I still don’t buy it. Kaito has a tendency to go to an extreme with his words - he’s shown that time and time again. The fact that he’s already started layering praise on Kokichi at this point - that means something. The idea of him as a whole still rankles Kaito and he still has their clashing viewpoints and outlooks on life to work through, but his opinion on him has already turned so much at this point. If he had more time to think on it, I bet it would change that much further. And again - pointing to that love hotel scene - Kaito loves a challenge, and people that challenge him. Kokichi was a fantastic rival for him, and the fact that he knows now that he never meant any true harm to them is important. He also hasn’t been given a chance to really digest the importance of everything Kokichi revealed to him - he basically got the script and plan thrusted into his hands, spent whatever time he wasn’t sleeping and recuperating studying it and preparing for the trial, and now, well, we’re here. Kaito has been shown to be very good at reevaluating people once he’s cooled off, and he hasn’t had a chance to really do that!

.... If only he had more time to reflect. 8c

!!!!!    g o d ........

The darkened face sprite...

Insert Himiko parallel here.

WELL COOL THAT WAS PRETTY UNAMBIGUOUS

“NO DAMN IT! I HAVE MY ROCK-SOLID VIEW ON HIM! STOP MAKING HIM LOOK SYMPATHETIC!”

If you really thought that, would you really share those words with everyone? In fact, just the fact that you said that in reference to being a ‘lying sack of shit’ in regards to his supposed feelings during the game and acting like everything happening was fun -  that, uh, kinda speaks for itself!

Thank you K1-b0!!! I officially forgive you for calling Kokichi a Remnant of Despair again.

don’t you pull this shit on me game

just because you have the class split down the middle doesn’t mean you can pull the wool over my eyes

WAS HE.... THOUGH....

No seriously, what an odd thing to say. I... I don’t know what to make of it. Do actions not speak louder than words? Am I the crazy one here??

!!!!!!!

HE’S ACTING ON HIS CLAIM OF ‘COMMUNICATION BEING IMPORTANT’ AAAAAH

OH MY GOD WHAT AN EXCELLENT APOLOGY

Seriously I could probably learn a thing or two from it, damn.

Chapter 5′s entire mission is to make me cry, I see, I see.

Even now, three chapters later, I am still incredibly impressed by that move on Kaito’s part. He just knew exactly how to alleviate the pressure Shuichi was under.

?!?!

AH NO NOT COOL WHAT THE FUCK NOT IN THE MIDDLE OF THEIR HEARTFELT APOLOGY DAMN IT

as;dlkfj Kaito you and Kokichi are tied in having the most horrifying sprites in the game. Congratulations! You did win at something after all!

ANOTHER FUCK YOU FOR MAKING ME LAUGH WITH THAT ‘YOU SURE ARE, BUCKO!’ BULLSHIT

speaking of sprites that denote great terror!!

I-It really is the Kaede scene all over again D: including them being willing to fight Monokuma and Kaede/Kaito protesting!

I hope you do little man!!! 

This was the strength Shuichi desperately wanted but didn’t have in chapter 1 - and man oh man it’s nice to see him showing it now, in full force!

but as usual Monokuma is off thinking about his own thing

DOES

THAT

ARE YOU SAYING WHAT I THINK YOU’RE SAYING

THAT YOU RECYCLED LIFE

THAT THESE GUYS ARE NOT JUST REPLACEABLE, BUT PERHAPS REPLACEMENTS

DID YOU RECYCLE MEMORIES AND TALENTS, PERHAPS -

oh NO APPARENTLY NOT DON’T YOU DO THIS

...........

Okay they all introduce themselves here but you know what? No. No. I’m not dignifying you guys with your opening screenshots even if I do love your theme song. sorry monodam I like you but I’m lumping you in with the rest of them

YOU ARE DEFINITELY MAKING SOME SORT OF STATEMENT ABOUT THE ACTUAL STUDENTS HERE

PERHAPS ABOUT HOW YOU GATHERED UP SOME NO NAME KIDS AND FORCED TALENTS, MEMORIES AND ABILITIES OF DEAD STUDENTS FOR SOME REASON, OR THAT YOU HIJACKED THE ORIGINAL PLANS OF PEOPLE WHO DID THAT

perhaps to make sure those that were immune to the virus were what humanity needed to survive or something???

I JUST -

I JUST DON’T KNOW IF I’M RIGHT ON MY CURRENT ASSUMPTION OR IF THERE ARE OTHER OPTIONS I’M MISSING BECAUSE WHAT I’VE COME UP WITH FITS PRETTY WELL

oh jeez okay we’re making a direct comparison then - I guess that’s fair at this point of the game, but I guess I just wasn’t ready for it?

THAT’S. THAT LITERALLY GOES AGAINST THE WHOLE ‘EVERYONE IS DEAD’ THING. YOU KNOW THAT, RIGHT?!

YOU’RE REALLY NOT

Except you. Only you. so basically the opposite of monokid. whatever i really don’t care about the kubs tbh

........ oh fuck

Sadly I’m on Kaito’s side in all of this.

It really did grow on her, huh. When was the last time anyone showed her any sort of affection outside of that ‘childhood friend’ hinted at in her FTEs? :(

I didn’t keep all of the interspersions of Kaito reacting in surprise to Maki’s statements but the fact that he didn’t realize his impact on her, that he was really getting through to her, is sad to me. Makes sense - the only indication he got that she was starting to respond to his ‘training’ was from Shuichi in the hangar bathroom scene, and then just a few hours later she busts in, completely throwing away everything he said about her being more than her talent, and basically acting as the mastermind’s weapon. It is incredibly interesting that he’s so shocked by all of her outbursts here - that he didn’t realize how much she actually cared about him.

Aaaah she’s crying D: Those sound clips, man...

And here’s the confession that was pretty much inevitable at this point.

For once Shuichi knew a matter of the heart before Kaito. That’s significant - in fact, it may actually say more about Kaito than Shuichi. You brag so much, but when it comes down to it, you really did underestimate the power your positivity had on people - or perhaps, more likely, your own self-confidence was shaken that badly in the last chapter?

Figures you’d only let us see you bleed is when you physically can’t hide it anymore and are actually about to drop dead.

KAITO UNDERSTANDS PEOPLE

INCREDIBLY WELL

AND KNOWS HOW TO SUPPORT THEM UNTIL THEY CAN STAND ON THEIR OWN

You - are you not going to address her confession at all??? omg I... I think Kaito may not feel the same way about her. Oh. oh jeez this is awkward...

Seriously though, what a smart way for him to take that confession and use it to help her. Whether he likes her back or not, it doesn’t matter - he won’t be around much longer anyway. What’s most important to him right now is that his friends will be okay when he’s gone - and in this moment, that they stand down and live.

I mean. Come on. He’s literally dripping blood from the mouth and smiling through it. Kaito, you’re absolutely ridiculous and I love you.

easy for you to say, you can’t see yourself right now

whatever Kaito you can’t fucking stop me I’m on the other side of the screen

WHOA DAMN WHERE DID THOSE COME FROM

Wait, that’s a reference to Ishimaru, right? Uh, Ishida?

.... does that mean this is him speaking for both him and Kokichi right now???

“Like I did. Like Kokichi did. Learn from us. Grow in our absence. Thrive. And take that sonuvabitch down.”

YES ONE LAST SAIMOTA BRO-TALK FOR THE ROAD!!!

OH GOD OKAY SPEAKING OF THINGS ‘FOR THE ROAD’, ANOTHER DEPRESSING SPRITE

Man, you just weren’t ready for this game at all. Physically you were stronger than everyone else, but mentally...

And just like that, he backs down. There’s probably some pretty valid criticism levelled at Kaito about being persistent and not always taking ‘no’ for an answer, but he does when it’s most important to, I think. And he knows to back down here because damn it, she needs to get this out of her system.

You’re not just some hero, Kaito, and that’s okay - you’re not some larger than life Ultimate Astronaut, Luminary of the Stars, just as Shuichi isn’t just the Ultimate Detective and Maki isn’t just the Ultimate Assassin -

You’re Kaito Momota, Shuichi and Maki’s friend. <3

THE FIRE IS BACK!!! 

YOU TELL HIM, MY MAN!

Just so you know, when I played this through initially I just. I just paused the game a few screenshots before this because it was late and FUCK THIS SHIT I’M NOT WATCHING HIM DIE BEFORE I SLEEP TONIGHT

not sure if delaying the inevitable was any better but anyway, that’s where my head was at. I was incredibly Not Ready either way.

THIS IS ALREADY INCREDIBLY ‘NOPE’

NOPE IS AN EMOTION RIGHT

fuck it it is now

holy shit it’s the execution that started the whole series off

Also I’m mad about how pretty the whole thing is. Is that the planetarium that we can use as a gift???

Nice new threads, Monokuma.

NO HE’S ALREADY IN SO MUCH VISIBLE PAIN THIS IS NOT COOL AT ALL

NO FUCK YOU

I KNOW I SHOULD BE IN AWE OF THE CALLBACK BUT NO

Usually these are ironic though??? His whole thing is about how he wants to  go to space, though I suppose the irony of being killed with what you love always fits like it did with the others...

OH FUCK YOU AGAIN

I didn’t notice it until I looked at this still, but aren’t those the headmaster’s bones???

HE’S COUGHING THE WHOLE TIME.... FFF

I-Is he still alive at this point??? The headmaster was reduced to bones at some point during the trip, right???

!!!!!!

HE’S TRYING SO HARD TO CLING TO LIFE...

KAITO!!!

KAITO, YOU MADE IT!!!!

oh god he

he smiled... for just a moment....

Kaito, on his way to hell, at Monokuma: ╭∩╮(︶︿︶)╭∩╮

OH COOL HE DIED SMILING

I’M DEFINITELY NOT CRYING OR ANYTHING

He died amongst the stars.... 

Wait so does that mean they didn’t see any of this happen??? Or was it projected on a TV for them or something -

oh jeez -

WAIT HOLD ON WTF?!

OI NO COLLATERAL DAMAGE ALLOWED!!!

AHOGE DOWN, AHOGE DOWN?!?! 

Despite the smiling, despite him finally reaching space, there ultimately isn’t any happiness be found in death. He never wanted to go out like this. :(

GOOD FUCK YOU MONOKUMA

[deadmandairyland]

Chihiro Fujisaki for the ask~

Thanks for the ask! I probably put way too many words in this. I hope you like reading!

002 | Give me a character & I will tell you

How I feel about this character:

Chihiro is probably my favorite character in Danganronpa. I think there was a time where I would have said he definitely was my favorite, but I have to give credit where credit is due because most of the characters in this series are amazing and uniquely and creatively designed. But Chihiro will always be near the top of my favorites if he somehow isn’t in first place. He is an unsung hero of the series. Without him the survivors of DR1 would have never escaped the school. He is at least in part responsible for the creation of the Neo World Program, which is a key part of the Hope’s Peak Academy arc’s lore. Supplementary materials often show Chihiro being at least somewhat involved in the backstory of the series. As I mentioned back when Absolute Despair Girls came out, Chihiro was basically the Adventure Time snail of the series for a time, showing up in or being mentioned in about as many installments and spin-offs of the series as Junko Enoshima. I’m pretty sure Chihiro has made more appearances in one way, shape, or form than friggin’ Komaeda, and everyone loves Komaeda. (Though screentime, on the other hand, is another story. I think it’s safe to say Junko and Komaeda won out on that end)

All in all, I feel that this is a character who deserves better–not just because he died such a tragic death, but in a meta sense as well. I feel like the series, after building up Chihiro in flavor text for so many installments, decided to backpedal a bit and make him more of a footnote than anyone important. This is especially disappointing considering that when most people talk about Chihiro, most of the time it’s in reference to the gender controversy, rather than his accomplishments in the series. Granted, this is a very important aspect of Chihiro’s character as well, and I’m not going to go out of my way to be a dick to people who say they saw something different in Chihiro than what I saw, but whenever I go through the tags it does seem like Chihiro seems to be one-note to a lot of people, and I feel it is a shame because there is a lot going on there. Themes of inner strength and resurrection and how destructive enforced gender roles and bullying in Japanese high schools can get when taken to the logical extreme. A lot of this seems to be ignored. I mean we all joke about how Chihiro’s birthday is Pi Day, but how many people also realize it’s White Day, the day when boys are expected to give gifts back to girls in response to being given chocolates on Valentine’s Day? Thinking about it that way, it makes you wonder what Chihiro’s birthdays were actually like. With all the talk surrounding Chihiro’s gender, I’m surprised that I’ve never seen anyone speculate on this. Might make for an interesting fanfiction prompt too, regardless of how you view Chihiro’s gender identity.

This got awfully wordy and more political than I expected it to get and I apologize. Though, to be fair, Danganronpa is a very political series… usually. Still, this is just a fun little meme, and I don’t intend to dive head first off a cliff into the sea and jagged rocks of fandom discourse, so let me end this segment by briefly saying another thing I like about Chihiro that will hopefully lift all of our spirits before we move on:

Chihiro is a sweet and adorable cinnamon roll that we do not deserve.

Just look at his smiling face!

No matter how sad I am, that smile will always make me feel a little better, if not outright happy.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Well, I could look over the charts I’ve made and find probably a million Chihiro ships (okay that’s a bit of an exaggeration; it’s probably more like twenty, which is still about fifteen too many), so I’m just going to stick with the big ones.

Naegi, Asahina, Sakura, and Ishimaru.

…Maybe Mondo. Maybe Leon. Maybe Mukuro. Maybe real world Chiaki. Maybe Kuzuryu. Maybe that Yukimaru guy who we sadly never get to see. Maybe Miaya… who we sadly never get to see. Maybe a crap ton of others…

But mostly the first four I listed.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

All of the “maybes” in the previous section.

Am I cheating at this? Yes.

…

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Don’t worry. I won’t be going for the obvious joke. (I mean I better not, especially after that first segment. It would defeat the purpose of that giant wall of text I made you sit through)

Instead I’m just going to remind anyone who thinks Chihiro is overrated and wasn’t an important character that Chihiro vicariously saved Naegi’s life and therefore the other survivors’ lives as well and y’all can suck it.

Also there’s that thing I made a thing in my DR3 fic that I still haven’t finished yet or even updated since November (oh my god it’s May already) where Chihiro is a fan of professional wrestling and that’s now a headcanon of mine that I’m sure very few people have or would agree with.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

This might seem like a cop-out, since this is Danganronpa and all, but I wish Chihiro survived.

To be fair it wouldn’t make sense from a narrative standpoint. Alter Ego is essentially a replacement/doppelganger for Chihiro, so having them co-exist in the story would be jarring. Also Chihiro plays the part of sacrificial lamb perfectly, and the foreshadowing leading to Chihiro’s death is written remarkably well. (Even as far back as the very beginning of chapter two, which occurs immediately after Leon’s execution, Chihiro is distraught over having sent Leon to his death, and Chihiro even says that he would rather die than do that again)

But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it, damn it.

#LetChihiroLive2018

my OTP:

Naegi x Chihiro. Two adorable cinnamon rolls with heartwarming and occasionally sad Free Time Events that actually tie into the plot in such a way that they actually feel 100% canon. There is also that punch to the gut that happens at the end of Chihiro’s FTEs if you manage to get them all. Naegi’s reactions to Chihiro being gone are also heartbreaking, especially in the anime adaptation which includes this response to Alter Ego being crushed into a ball that I admit there is a possibility I could be taking out of context here but it’s worth mentioning.

“We lost him again.”

And of course, as I mentioned before, Alter Ego saves Naegi’s life later, which means Chihiro saves Naegi’s life, which means Chihiro effectively saves all of the DR1 survivors. Important character is important.

Oh, and also Naegi can give Chihiro a thong for a present, which is still hilarious to me. I mean I know Chihiro isn’t the only character who likes the thong, but even Togami liking the gift isn’t as funny to me as Chihiro liking it. And Togami alone liking it is straight-up absurd. It’s a thong. That you can give as a gift to other people. During a game where people are forced to kill each other in order to escape what is essentially a prison. A thong. The only thing that would make it funnier is if it changed the outcome of School Mode. “Hey, remember this thong you gifted me? I’d like to return it, because it just occurred to me that this is a really weird gift. Why, Naegi? Why did you give me a thong for a gift? You could have given me perfume, or a Kirlian camera, or a portable video game console, or a punk rock T-shirt, but no. You gave me a thong. Why?”

But for the most part, it’s their interactions. FTEs included, I love all of the interactions between these two, both one-and-one and with the group. It always seems like they have each other’s backs and care about each other’s well-being. Chihiro even foreshadows the memory wipe very early on in the game in a way that makes me wonder how close they might have been before the memory wipe.

Also, they’re just sweet to each other and it’s adorable and heartwarming and, y’know, goals. But if you prefer your ships to be more interesting, these two do have that potential what with their baggage and all–Chihiro for obvious reasons and Naegi being just some guy in a relationship with someone who is far smarter, nicer, and more talented than him. So if conflict (though it’d likely be more along the lines of inner conflict, or conflict dealing with others outside the relationship) is what you’re looking for, there is potential for that too, even if we don’t see it very often.

(Honestly I think that’s why there isn’t a whole lot of content of this ship, at least nowadays. It seems like a lot of people ship it, but no one really writes for it much or draws much of it beyond fluff. The ship itself, I think, is seen as too fluffy for engaging storytelling… if you’re not thinking outside the box, anyway)

my cross over ship:

Pick a programmer, a hacker, or an intentionally gender-ambiguous or “otokonoko” type character who is roughly within Chihiro’s not-fully-established age range from any work that I’ve personally seen or played and I’ve probably considered shipping Chihiro with them at least once. Honorable mention goes to Pidge and Saika Totsuka, whom I’m pretty sure I’ve at least talked about and compared Chihiro to on this blog.

a headcanon fact

Remember when I said that the series seems to be backpedaling a bit after making Chihiro have an ungodly amount of behind-the-scenes importance? Well screw that. I mentioned it here a couple years back (and I have since mellowed out on the whole “If Chihiro isn’t important in DR3 we riot” thing so don’t worry about that), but I’ll mention it again. IF said that Chihiro recognized Monokoma’s programming as something he worked on. His FTEs say that he was working on an AI project for some company. And Usami looks way too much like Monokuma to be a coincidence.

So screw any potential retcons that may come out of Monaca Towa being the mass producer of Monokuma units, because I believe that the company Chihiro was making the AI for was Towa, and Monaca modified the AI to fit Junko’s needs, which would tie everything together into a neat little bow.

But sadly, this is still only a headcanon. But it’s one that I feel has a lot of weight to it, and that the series has yet to make impossible. So I’m clinging onto it like a friggin’ koala.

Holy crap, this was long! And yet I feel like I haven’t said much of anything. It’s tough to bring my thoughts into words sometimes. But I think it’s plain to see (damn it, Tsumugi, get out of here, we’re not paying your VA double for this post) that I love Chihiro, and he’s definitely one of my favorite DR characters if not my top favorite.

Thanks again for the ask!

[oumakokichi]

Ohhh can I ask what do you like about kiibo? He's one of my faves but I don't see many people talk about him

I absolutely would love the chance to talk about Kiiboagain! The biggest piece of meta I got to write on him was quite a long timeago, and it really is a shame that people don’t talk about him as much. It’snot as if he’s unpopular, exactly, but it seems like most people are onlyinterested in the “cute robot” aspect rather than the things Kiiboactually represents in the game and the things he accomplishes in Chapter 6.

Obviously I’ll be discussing Chapters 5 and 6 prettyin-depth, so there’ll be massive spoilers for the whole game. Please only readif you’re comfortable with that!

I think part of the main reason why there’s so littlediscussion about Kiibo is because his main time to shine doesn’t really comeuntil Chapter 5. I myself didn’t particularly have an opinion on him one way orthe other before that. Similar to Tsumugi, he stays mostly on the back-burner inall the previous chapters. He’s certainly level-headed and reasonable duringthe trials, but he’s very much on the outskirts of things, never part of eitherthe friendships or conflicts the other characters are having with each other.

Thankfully though, ndrv3 does much better than itspredecessors (in my opinion) of giving most of the characters a more fair andeven amount of screen time. Characters who received their fair share ofdevelopment in earlier chapters and then passed away aren’t around by Chapter5, so that allowed Kiibo to finally take the stage and receive a lot more focusafter five chapters of mostly only being brought up to either say somethinguseful to the trial or get robo-bullied.

Chapter 5 is the first opportunity we have to reallyinteract with Kiibo in a plot context, not counting FTEs. While it’s somethingthat was alluded to plenty in the other chapters, Chapter 5 finally reallyhighlights exactly how much Kiibo questions his own existence as it’s viewed byeveryone else. In a game all about how “lies become reality” and “perception iseverything,” he’s genuinely worried over the thought that others perceive himas little more than just “The Robot™” despite all his efforts to ask that theytreat him as one of the group.

Kiibo wants to be regarded as an individual, not a machineor a wacky exaggerated trope, even if that’s what the other characters keeptrying to delegate him to. Even if he can’t be human, per se, he’d at leastlike to be thought of as someone who’s not out of the ordinary. That’s part ofwhy he hates the mecha genre so much, in fact.

If he had his way, he’d honestly prefer to be an ordinaryhigh school student, just like the rest of them—and that, in a game where manyof the characters prefer talent and competitionand excelling above all else, is interesting. It’s not often that normalcy isany of the character’s desired goal; more often, it’s a curse that they’retrying to escape from. But it works well as a theme for Kiibo because being arobot is something he has literally no control over, something that arguablydoesn’t even count as a “talent” in the first place.

Kiibo is so desperate to settle the matter of how he’sperceived that he’s in fact almost reckless with it. He actually volunteers tolie under the press in order to see whether the sensor on it will detect him asa “human” or an “object.” When Ouma gives the group the electric hammers Miumade for him, explaining that they work on machines and electronics but not onpeople, Kiibo actually contemplates using one on himself in order to test howMiu actually saw him—something Ouma advises against, since if it turns out hewas regarded as a machine and not a person, his circuits would completely fry.

These things are, of course, not uncommon to robotcharacters in fiction. They’re themes that have been done before, but I ratherlike the serious twist things take with Kiibo’s self-perception anyway inChapter 5. It adds a level of understanding to the reason why he’s been so onthe outskirts of the group; unlike Tsumugi, who keeps herself on the outskirtsbecause she purposely wants to be an observer, Kiibo has simply felt excludedfrom the start and always will feel excluded,on some level. I feel for these kinds of characters deeply, and that’s probablythe point at which I went from being neutral about him to quite liking him.

The fact that he was actually the most objective and fairestcharacter in the Chapter 5 trial earned him huge points, too. That was where hetruly began showing some of his protagonist potential, in my opinion. Assomeone who wants to be treated fairly and “like one of the group,” it reallydoes speak volumes to Kiibo’s character that he honestly, 100% believes thateveryone else should receive that kind of fair and equal treatment, too. Evensomeone like Ouma, who was being viewed in almost entirely antagonistic termsby the rest of the group and who they believed to be a literal “Junko 2.0.”

Even after using the Hope’s Peak remember light, Kiibo wasthe only one in the group who actually wanted to talk to Ouma, rather thanMomota in Chapter 5. He went to the machinery bay with the intention of seeingif he could have a face-to-face talk with him instead of having to rely on theentire dr1-style “let’s talk down the big bad villain from despair” plan thatthey had set for the next day. I still wonder what would’ve actually happenedif he’d managed to convince Ouma to let him in to talk, too—he didn’t succeedbecause Maki was already in the machinery bay at the time, but I feel likethings could’ve turned out drastically different if he’d managed to talk withOuma for himself.

That fair objectivity of Kiibo’s is one of my favoritequalities, moreso since it’s something that seems to be natural and inherent tohim, rather than something Tsumugi oranyone else programmed into his character. It’s so distinctly… well, I’mlooking for a good comparison and I keep coming back to Hufflepuff. Fair,hard-working, earnest, and unbelievably loyal, both to the people he caresabout and what he believes in—these are all traits that embody Kiibo as acharacter.

While these traits are definitely positive things, they canalso be unbelievably scary when carried to their full potential. After losinghis ahoge and severing his connection with the ndrv3 audience, Kiibo finallyhas an opportunity to think for himself and make his own decisions, without anyinterruptions or subconscious urges not to do so. And he’s the only character after Chapter 5 who looksat Momota and Ouma’s sacrifice, and decides to put a stop to the killing gameonce and for all, with his own two hands.

This is a cold, ruthless decision coming from a characterwho has looked at all the options as fairly as possible and determined that thekilling game will not stop unless he takes this course of action. When Kiibomade up his mind to end everything himself once and for all was pretty much thepoint where I went from just liking him to lovinghim. Stripped away of the audience’s interference or Tsumugi’s plans for him,Kiibo is someone who at his core was not entirely dissimilar to Ouma—if anything,he was even more willing to make sacrifices than Ouma was, because Kiibo was absolutely willing to blow up the wholeschool and everyone in it by sunrise if Saihara couldn’t find any other way ofstopping the killing game by exposing the truth.

This reflects a loyalty to his ideals and to the sacrificesMomota and Ouma left behind that goes very, very deep. I have a huge soft spotfor loyal characters, moreso loyal characters who do questionable things forthe sake of their loyalty—Juzo and Mukuro are both super high on my characterranking for that exact reason. Kiibo’s unwavering decision to do anything ittook to end the killing game made him incredibly likable for me, especiallysince, in the end… he was right. It turned out that blowing up Saishuu Academyand giving the audience an ending that was neither hope nor despair was theonly possible way to break the cycle of “hope vs. despair” that had been goingon for 53 seasons.

Once the trial begins and Kiibo has his ahoge and his linkwith the audience restored, Chapter 6 is a journey of him stepping into theprotagonist role at first, saying all the wrong things and falling into all thewrong pitfalls of the “hope vs. despair” cycle, and acting every bit the sortof Naegi-like, inspirational, hope-giving protagonist that Tsumugi set him upto be. Just as Ouma was very much set up by Tsumugi to be “despair,” aJunko-like figure to take the fall in her original plans, Kiibo was set up verysimilarly to be “hope.”

But “hope” within the killing game, especially “hope” asTsumugi wanted it to reflect the Hope’s Peak arc, is a false hope. All it doesis enable the same cycle to keep repeating. And that’s something Saihara pointsout, touching on the fact that the ndrv3 audience arguably wants to see “hope”even more than “despair,” as “hope” is heavily implied to be the choice thatkept winning the most in the past 53 seasons of the killing game.

Like Ouma, Kiibo rejects his intended role in the end, andthat’s exactly what I love about him the most, I think. Despite being someonewho was set up to be a puppet on a string every step of the way, Kiibo rejectedthat “hope” and instead was willing to stand with everyone and lay down hislife in order to end the killing game. Even though he had every reason to keeparguing, even though his “inner voice” kept telling him that “hope” was theright choice, he ignored all of that and instead consciously chose to tryending the killing game once again.

There’s also the matter of Kiibo’s self-sacrificing streak amile wide, which is something I always wind up falling for in DR characters andsomething that inevitably hurts me, since they always die. Characters whosacrifice themselves for the sake of others’ happiness do not get to have agood time in DR, ever. And Kiibo’s sacrifice at the end of the game goes soun-commented on most of the time, because Saihara and the others assume that itwas more the outside world’s doing.

But looking back at the final execution, at Kiibo’s concernas he saw Saihara and the other survivors under the rubble, and the slight smileon his face as he flew up higher to the dome to self-destruct in order to givethem all a chance to live on, I can’t help but feel that it was Kiibo’s doing,rather than the audience’s directly. Some small part of Kiibo still left inthere wanted more than anything for the rest of them to have a chance atliving.

In the end, the will to live on is the smallest and mostgenuine form of hope that there is, in my opinion at least. The “hope” thatTeam DR and the killing game audience wanted was false, but Kiibo was notmistaken about wanting there to at least be some way for Saihara and the othersurvivors to keep living. In a game featuring many, many suicidal and depressedcharacters, Kiibo is ultimately the one that presents them with the opportunityto keep living, so that they don’t haveto sacrifice their lives. Even if the road ahead of them is bound to be harshand painful, he wanted them to have the option to walk down it in the firstplace and to be able to find a reason, any reason, to keep living.

This has gotten pretty long so I’ll leave it for now, but I’mglad I had the chance to talk about Kiibo because he’s honestly such a goodcharacter. The last two chapters of ndrv3 succeeded in making him go from acharacter I was completely neutral about to one of my absolute favorite DRcharacters of all-time—because contrary to how he seemed initially, he wound upbeing one of the best subversions of Naegi’s original character and the entireHope’s Peak arc.

Thank you both for asking! I’m always glad to meet morepeople who really like Kiibo, so this was fun!

[corpsextwar-blog]

@thexcrazyxbunch continued from here

“I-i am sorry...it’s just been very long since i saw a person with a...you know, same....nonexistent size of chest...i got...a little...i dunno why i did it...honestly” In her complete and utter confusion, coupled with embarrasment, she did not notice how she continued casually groping the blue-haired female. And with skill so to speak! Her sister often needed massages, so Mukuro just kinda learned to do so...on every parts of the female’s body. It was the same as learning to sing, really. Junko-chan just needed everything from her and Mukuro did not mind. And also, something in this girl reminded her of her sister. Maybe that spark in her eyes, or maybe her aura? Snapping out of her own thoughs, the brunette finally stopped, taking a few steps back. Oh, this is really akwkward. She just casually groped a girl who she never met for like few minutes. Her face was almost the same color as a tomato she had eaten not too long ago. It would have been cute if she did nit look like a pervert in the context.