#or you can go ''get a strike or we kill you'' b/c you never have to find out if he's joking or not

[robotlesbianjavert]

What's the problem with Deku's writing?

well for one he's a main character. which is strike one.

technically that's a joke but also not. there's a lot angles i could take in order to complain about deku, so for now i want to take the angle that as a main character, there are things that are going to be taken for granted as endgame for the narrative, but it's so taken for granted that the story forgets about the actual material needed to reach the endgame.

i'm going to use ofmd s2 as an example of this, because it's another thing i like to point at and go :) bad writing. so for that, it's very evident that the writers are aiming for "ed and stede are together and are ready to embark on a new, more mature phase of their life together". you can tell this because the showrunner was constantly talking about it in interviews. and indeed, the season ends with ed and stede parting ways with their crew and pirate life to try their hands as innkeepers.

but to reach that endgame, the series has to a) get stede and ed back together as soon possible, meaning they have to lean heavily on coincidence rather than any real efforts on the part of the characters, b) resolve the very emotionally stark situations the characters had left s1/started s2 in a way that makes the happy innkeeper endgame possible, but this makes the segue from drama to resolution unbelievable because the series can't really dedicate the time to dealing with that fallout before hopping onto the next big issue, which c) means that the ways that the other characters have been hurt as a result ed and stede's relationship drama have their pain sidelined and shrugged off, and in turn d) the focus on ensuring that ed and stede are together and in love means that their relationships with other characters get de-emphasized and feel much less lived, which rebounds and makes ed and stede feel more one-dimensional without the magic that fleshed them out. and most dire of all e) the audience is expected to believe that "sorry i was a dick" "you're not a dick life's a dick" is meant to indicate a development of maturity that means they are able to go off and be innkeepers together. it is NOT there.

essentially, the focus on a specific endgame without care about how that endgame is achieved ends up undercutting the triumph and catharsis of that endgame, rendering it much more hollow. people still enjoyed ofmd s2, and they're allowed to! but they enjoy it because their otp ended the season standing next to each other. three feet part. not for any genuine critical acclaim.

it's a similar issue with deku, especially in this final arc. his obvious endgame is that he'll affirm shigaraki's humanity and pain, "save" him (what that looks like yet, we don't know), and in turn become the greatest hero. we've got all the bones of that - just recently in 411, deku did his whole "you ARE human" declaration. but the lead up to deku and shigaraki's confrontation is thematically shallow and heavily dependent on us knowing that deku is a great kid and a great hero.

deku starts the third act realizing that if he understood the villains that he's faced, things could have turned out differently - the set up is that deku has to understand shigaraki as a person in order to stop him. the lead up to this is. well he asks muscular "what's up with you" one time in the middle of battle. that didn't work out. and then he had his nagant confrontation, where he was more shocked about her killing the former commission president than he was about the commission ordering a lot of evil assassinations. and then never thought about what that meant for society at large. and he was just like "well i know the world has some greys in it now" and that fixed her i guess. overhaul was there and deku made no real effort there to get why he was so frantic about seeing his boss. and then he has that conversation with ochaco where they both go "isn't it crazy that we have empathy for villains".

so basically the most work that he actually put into "understanding villains" was with nagant, who is a completely new character who has the baggage of "hero commission assassin is ANYONE in series gonna talk about that", and the potential she possesses as a shigaraki foil and a stepping stone for deku towards his endgame gets muddled. she's also basically, while a significant confrontation, is one beat of many in the third act.

so the set up for "understanding villains" as a factor in deku's endgame, in seeing villains as human, is pretty weak. and deku was honestly really dependent on getting that build up and using other villains as a learning experience, bc his actual dynamic with shigaraki is sparse. compare it to uraraka and toga - the "understanding" thread fares a lot better there, because uraraka has had specific and charged interactions with toga that deeply affected her and made her think. deku's most constructive interaction with shigaraki was way back at the mall, before the training camp, but that's not enough to carry chemistry through their supposed arc as hero & villain.

but the story already knows that deku, one way or another, is meant to succeed, so it acts like he received the necessary development to be able to understand shigaraki as human in their confrontation.

there's a similar lack of meat for many other aspects of deku's characters - like his relationship with the vestiges, where yoichi could be 2nd and 3rd around on deku's behalf, and his mastering of the new ofa quirks, which we get TOLD has consequences or that he's struggling with, but it's never in a way that actually causes him substantial issues that he must overcome.

but actually, we can move all of that aside and ask one simple question about deku's character: what does he think about the floating death coffin the other heroes built for shigaraki?

deku gets confronted by the vestiges about having to possibly kill shigaraki, and his response to that is "yeah i guess but i gotta try saving him". which is very nice, but it just ends there. deku doesn't have to deal with how everyone else - people who are scared, or have been hurt by shigaraki and the villain's actions - might feel about this initiative. at no point does deku have to stand his ground against the other heroes after shigaraki's head, he doesn't have to convince anyone of his point of view, he doesn't have to look inward and understand why he wants to do this. it's just "well if i can!"

deku doesn't have to have any thoughts about the floating death coffin. he never has to be in scene with it before it started malfunctioning. he doesn't have to have any opinions about its construction, about the heroes deciding to take this path. he doesn't need to have feelings about it, he just has to save shigaraki.

and when that happens, the narrative will celebrate him, and the heroes will be like "wow deku really is the greatest hero, kids these days are so great". they don't need to have thoughts about deku wanting to do this in the first place, because it's going to happen and no one can stop it.

in a similar way that some ofmd fans can walk away happy with season 2 because they don't need anything more than their otp standing together three feet apart, a lot of fans would be happy with deku and shigaraki's likely endgame because what matters is that deku is the hero and that he saves shigaraki. but from where i'm standing, deku has so little substance and build up to this endgame (or at least the build up is THERE, but poorly done) that it's hard for me to be impressed.

also everything @codenamesazanka said here. everything she says i nod and go hell yeah.

[highladyluck]

The Finn stole my baby AU

ok FINE you can all have the Eelfinn Stole My Baby in outline form

I've never pinned down the details on this, because I think it would be most interesting as an installment in a larger series and a lot of the details would be determined by the needs of the overall storyline, but this is the vague outline:

1) Fortuona has just found out from Min that her kid's going to be a marath'damane. Because a) SOME IDIOT (maybe Mat, maybe Berelain if they're on speaking terms, there's some other options depending on the scenario) made the mistake of telling her about Sindhol in some way that makes her actually believe in it, b) she's a slut for prophecy and always has been, and c) she wants to explore all her options, she wants to go to Sindhol to get some answers from the Aelfinn. The questions she intends to ask vary by setting but it's something along the lines of how to survive the current situation/protect her marath'damane child/solve the sul'dam problem/ensure stability of the Empire in the westlands/how best to reconquer mainland Seanchan. You know! #FortuonaProblems. Mat eventually agrees to escort her; both to get in, since the only way in right now is the Tower of Ghenji, and to get out.

2) But because they're going in outside of treaty rules and Mat's there, the Eelfinn are the ones waiting for them and they won't let Fortuona go see the Aelfinn (maybe they say that they won't see Mat, but they will see her, if she agrees to be escorted alone. Mat's almost like "oh, over my dead body" but catches himself just in time.) Whatever deal Fortuona makes with the Eelfinn involves something she can use to solve her existing political problems (not sure what this is but it could be something horrible, like a better male a'dam), and something for Mat (maybe a magic replacement eye?). The third item is either something else for her, something else for Mat, or a very thoroughly rules-lawyered escape clause, depending on how confident Mat was/she is about being able to escape with the ashandarai. In exchange, they take her about-to-be-born-child, which she either explicitly names as the price, or is counting on them taking as the price.

3) At least they're not gonna eat the kid; the Eelfinn want a human child who can channel to build them new treaty doors someday, and if the human child is raised by them and therefore on their side, so much the better. They're also thrilled to get another piece of Mat. I figure the Eelfinn would want the savor of Mat and Tuon fighting about this, so while there's a possibility that the world's least hygenic c-section happens before Mat cottons on to what Tuon just bargained away, I think it would be more likely that they don't strike until the price is explicit or Mat has figured it out.

Tuon's like "I understand that you're upset but it's better this way. I came to solve a problem. It's not solved the way I intended, but it's solved and I got you an incredible boon in the bargain. We can always have more children."

Mat's like "Yeah, well, you aren't having them with me! You're a monster for unilaterally trading our child to my eldritch enemies."

She's like "If I'm a monster, so are you. As soon as you found out she would be marath'damane you began setting plans in motion to take her from her destiny. From the empire. From me. Don't think I haven't noticed. At least in this situation, I'm getting something out of it that benefits both of us."

4) I honestly don't entirely know what happens next, but it's bad. Unstoppable force (Mat's desire to rescue women & his love of Tuon) meets immovable object (said woman/Tuon just betrayed him and his innocent child to his worst enemies). Would he just leave Tuon there? (maybe?) Would he try to trade Tuon's life for the baby's? (I like this because I like pain and I think he might be deranged enough in the moment to do it) Would he try to trade his life for the baby's? (maybe, but they wouldn't accept it.) Would he try to kill all the Eelfinn? (yes, and they'd still take the baby.) Like how the fuck do you recover from any of that? And the worst part is you can like… sort of see where Tuon is coming from, if you enjoy women's wrongs? And she really just wanted to meet the Aelfinn and it's Mat's fault that it isn't going as planned?

5) If there's a sequel, it would be the fully grown child showing up in their world with a terrifying knowledge of esoteric ter'angreal construction and thoroughly socialized as a *Finn some improbably short amount of time later. Maybe when Elayne and Mat mount a rescue mission in a few months. Time runs differently in Sindhol if the *Finn need it to.

Bonus: I'm still debating adding a variant of this to the epilogue of The Fox That Makes The Ravens Fly- for one thing, I haven't decided yet if Tuon is pregnant, and if she is, by whom. If I do it'll be Rand who tells her about the Aelfinn & Thom who tells her about the Eelfinn, she'll go in with Thom and someone else (Elayne, I think, in exchange for access to the dice-ring ter'angreal that replicates Mat's luck, also Elayne would love to go on that field trip, although I could see Min being interested for the metaphysics of it all), and the ostensible point is to rescue Moiraine. I think instead of that, she negotiates getting Mat back, at the cost of leaving her baby with them, and resetting the timeline so Mat never died and the canon events where Moiraine gets rescued happen, but she remembers the old timeline. I have no idea if the *Finn actually get to keep her baby, who may or may not be a sparker in this scenario, or for that matter if they get to keep Moiraine, but I bet they'd take the bargain regardless because they invested a lot in Mat & also now Tuon has some weird fucking emotions about the entire life she didn't lead. Also they're the fae, the only thing they like more than bargain eyeballs is bargain babies.

[ctheathy]

Rio Ranger Fluff Alphabet 1/4

Rio Ranger x Reader

Alphabet Letter ABCDEFG [Fluff]

Author’s note: Currently obsessed with the biggest bastard in the universe and have been mentally surviving because of Character AI, so I just had to scribble this down.

A little warning that this might be more harsh and unhealthy than your average fluff alphabet. But please remember that we’re talking about a character who quite literally lacks all positive emotions in his creation ... You are his heart. And he just needs to warm himself up to that.

Rio Ranger/Reader [Romantic]

• • • ° ° ° • • • ⚀ ⚁ ⚂ ⚃ ⚄ ⚅ • • • ° ° ° • • •

A ctivities - What do they like to do with their s/o? How do they spend their free time with them?

Because you’re technically both stuck in a killing game where danger lingers at every corner, a lot of the more ‘normal’ activities are most likely minimised. The role of being the third floormaster also puts a ton of responsibility on his hands, so most free time gets reduced to the smallest possible degree. This doesn’t stop you, however. You just keep dragging him along with you against his will. Rio would feel slightly weirded out but strangely amused by your behaviour towards him. Unlike the others, you never treated him as your enemy to begin with. He’d play along with you at first. Constantly watching if you have any hidden motives or goals behind your sickly sweet demeanor. Only to figure out the facts and realise that... You don't.

You’d pull him along to do quite literally anything remotely fun you have the chance of doing in this hell hole, pulling him away from the killing game itself after the said attractions to instead spend both of your time in your assigned room. I especially enjoy the thought of you both doing activities in order to make him feel more human rather than as a doll. This usually just results in you painting his nails, giving him some make-up of your own to enjoy, using some facial paint on his features or brushing his beautiful ginger locks as you both babble your days away. Other fun things would include you both creating more face cards such as the ones he always held with him, helping you make some of your own so you two can twin.

B eauty - What do they admire about their s/o? What do they think is beautiful about them?

Due to him physically being a doll and having this inferiority complex towards humans, he’s most likely going to adore every single inch of you, his low status striking him once again, but he wouldn’t dare show you this. It sadly does add onto insecurity and even potential jealousy. And although the list of things he adores about you is endless, there’s something else in particular that specifically helped you steal his heart with no exceptions.

Your determination to be kind to him.

This is what he admires about you the most. We all know he can behave like an unbearable prick and he made it clear that he wasn’t up for friendships with humans. And yet... You never lost your hope in him. Despite his floormaster title, you still viewed an treated him as you did with any other participant. You still smiled at him. And your lack of resentment towards him might just be exactly what he needed in order to lessen his own towards the other players in the game.

C omfort - How would they help their s/o when they feel down/have a panic attack etc.?

Rio has little to no experience in proper communication, much less the instinctive responses the human body and mind can have towards themselves. As soon as you fall into these little habits, he would at first just stare blankly at you; not knowing what on earth to think. He’d move over towards you, being somewhat awkward with his movements yet being strangely... Caring at the same time. He won’t be too intimately touchy with you, but you’ll definitely get a hug here and there and he always seems to want to entangle his hand with yours.

Ranger has seen the affects of true despair on past participants. And despite his lack of care and empathy towards others, he knows he doesn’t want you to feel the same way. He finds the sensitivity of human emotions difficult to deal with, but ... He cannot help but feel this need to help you. Despite being rather unhandy when it comes to physical contact and affection, it seems like he wants to stay close to you or at least remain in the same room whenever you’re feeling down or are going through an episode. He’d also leave behind snacks and other basic human needs to make sure you’ll still take good care of yourself. He does truly care about you in his own way ...and it will show as long as you keep note of the little details.

D reams - How do they picture their future with their s/o?

He doesn’t really tend to think about the future nor care about it that deeply. To him, the only importance is here and now. Though every now and then his mind will go towards the what ifs. He’s seen romantically involved relationships between other players before you came along and though he never thought much of it back then; he sometimes cannot help but hope for the exact same things to happen between you two. The connections he’s gotten glimpses of before you two became a couple stuck with him and it now sometimes makes him wonder if the same are capable between you and him.

Somewhere deep down, he truly does desire a bond of trust with another that doesn’t require certain motives or gets deeply affected with the current circumstances you find yourselves in. He wants to be understood and accepted for who he is.

He wants to be... Human

E qual - Are they the dominant one in the relationship, or rather passive?

He naturally feels inferior towards those who are human and you are no exception. This mainly results in him trying to boss you around and act like a much more dominant individual than he actually is. He’s always had this facade to keep on in order to live up to his father’s expectations as the third floormaster. He wants to believe that he’ll stick together like glue until the end, with or without being looked after. But he keeps on feeling this damned warmth in his chest whenever you provide the littlest bit of affection, resulting in him melting in your arms behind pure instinct.

Realistically speaking, the boy loves to be babied and has a soft spot for those who are the nurturing type. He’s really just a child in an adult’s body, especially after facing the neglect of his father. He likes to convince himself that he doesn’t need love and care at all. But if anything, he internally craves it more than anything. He finds himself getting shaken up with the tiniest bit of affection and doesn’t know how to handle the sensation of it. He truly is rather sensitive towards it all.

F ight - Would they be easy to forgive their s/o? How are they fighting?

Ah yes. Very fluffy, guys.

It most likely depends on what the fight is about. You both constantly get into little squabbles and contests where you test one another, mainly caused by Ranger’s unending and merciless teasing. But there is absolutely no hard feelings behind a lovers quarrel. Heavier topics however ... are a different story. It most likely ranges between his insecurities getting the best of him and taking it out on you, or you calling out his father’s terrible influence. And if it’s mentioned, Ranger goes mad.

Even if somewhere deep down, he knows that you’re more than right. After a screaming fit is thrown, he’s likely going to avoid you for a while to try and sort his feelings out. Fortunately after this, he will 100% come crawling back like his life depends on it. And in all honesty, it does. You’re the only one out there who made him experience these foreign feelings... he wouldn’t dare lose that now. He seems like the type to never directly apologise because of his stubborn- and pettiness, but he would stop trying to prevent facing you at some point. He’d still dodge questions and reason, but he would try and show he’s sorry by giving you little gifts all around the block.

G ratitude - How grateful are they in general? Are they aware of what their s/o is doing for them?

He wouldn’t share it to the open eye for sure, but he does realise that you’ve always done a lot for him. He sometimes even considers himself undeserving for every little effort you’ve put into your bond with him. He struggles a lot with sharing his true emotions and it has a lot of healing to do in order for this to get better. He shows his gratefulness through physical touch and contact, something he usually wouldn’t allow at all and where one could get highly punished for. Instead, he just shows his appreciation and gratitude for you through his own ways and as much as he possibly can.

He’s absolutely smitten ... Just through his own circumstances.

• • • ° ° ° • • • ⚀ ⚁ ⚂ ⚃ ⚄ ⚅ • • • ° ° ° • • •

[as8bakwthesage]

I decided to go ahead and do a test of a bunch of Hacker's lines that I made. Basically a "what if Hacker was in the actual TF2 game?"

Also, yes, sorry for the mic peeks. This is why this is a test lol

See below for the transcript:

Killing more than one enemy in 20 seconds with their pistol:

Woah!! Did anybody see that?!

Heeheheheheheh, I got the bad boys!

You’re all dead! Whaaaaaaaaat!

Killing more than 3 enemies in 20 seconds with their weapons:

I have no regrets and you all suck!

I don’t think they expected that from lil ol’ me.

The Corvid strikes again. Punks.

Caw caw, motherfuckers

Kill assist:

Thanks, Snips! (to Sniper)

Thanks, Toasty! (To Pyro)

Thanks, Coloniser! (to Soldier)

Thanks, ôgawatasik! (to Spy) (trans: someone who lies in shadow)

Thanks, kakezihlôt! (To Scout) (trans: the fast runner)

Hvala, Braco! (to Heavy very excited)

Thanks, partner! (to Engie in a very exaggerated accent)

Thanks, kakezalkat! (to Medic with a mysterious air) (trans: a lover)

Thanks, Alcoholism! (to Demo)

You are all national treasures. Or international?

Melee Kills/Taunts with Taser:

Hi, I’m Hacker, I’m a diagnosed psychopath. (Michael Reeves reference)

I just wanna electrocute you.

It’s not a taser. It’s not a taser. It’s not- it’s not a taser.

Cheese! (as if taking a photo with someone)

*Maniacal laughter*

“Oh Hacker, it kind of seems like you’re just coming up with excuses to tase people-” Yes.

After Hacking Engie’s Sentries:

Sentry’s hacked!

I’ve converted the sentries!

Dispense these bolts, bitch!

After Hacking a Spy’s toolkit:

You don’t fool me, Second Coloniser

I see you

If you weren’t such a little bitch, I’d be sad

Quick Hack Charge Complete:

I’m in.

Hacker voice: I’m in.

You’ve been hacked, whoops, you have a virus now!

Ah-ah-ah! You didn’t say the magic word?

Domination:

What? Nooo! Who could have seen this coming? Woaaahh?? (Michael Reeves ref)

Your entire existence is pitiful. I feel nothing for you.

I’m so tired of fucking your moms.

I will put you in my computer. 

You blocked me on facebook and now you’re going to die.

Plan B? Nah, you need plan C.

Dominating a Scout:

Go cry home to mommy!

I never thought he’d shut up

Off to go fuck your mom

Spy may be your dad, but I’ll be your daddy

Loser bitch boy is dead

Dominating a Soldier:

A victory for the Indians!

Fuck your cavelry

I’m embarrassed by how easy it was to kill you

Do all colonisers fall so hard?

Dominated, you useless settler scum

Dominating a Pyro:

There can only be one gender ambiguous lad

When’s your posthumous gender reveal party?

What? I can’t hear you over the sound of me bashing your skull in!

Dominating a Demoman:

Facial Detection? Nah, I prefer Racial detection!

If only we were on the same team

And y’all thought Indians were alcoholics…

Next time, try and get a bit more wasted

This is why the British COLONISED YOU!

Dominating a Heavy:

Nisam ocekivao da ces biti takva budala!

Maybe in another life we could have been friends…. NOT!

I am not sorry for putting a bullet in your skull, fat man

Brains over brawn.

Dominating an Engineer:

You sure didn’t over-engineer this shit

Wamp wamp! I win!

You can build, but you can’t defend

Mission accomplished: killed a shortie

Dominating a Medic:

Why’d you have to die so easily?

You’re cute. But not that cute

I love the kind of man who takes his murder well

I’m going to FUCK you. Wait no, wrong one

Crows are smarter than Doves, dorkass

I’ve proven once again my superiority

Dominating a Sniper:

Yes, yes go! Piss in your jar.

I will piss on your grave

You gonna pee-pee piss yourself, pissboy?

You’re dogshit at hiding, my guy

Dominating a Spy:

*Robotic laughter*

Ding dong the Coloniser is deaaaaad!~

France can rot in a hole, and you alongside it

There’s a Spy among us… and I killed him :D 

Why do women even like you?

Revenge:

Heeheehee, payback

An eye for an eye

I made you regret killing me, didn’t I?

It’s time for me to gloat forever

I remember you

On fire:

I’m on fire!

FIIIIIIIIIIIIIRE!!!

I’m burning, help!

Healed by Medic:

Thanks, but it’s not like I like you or anything

That feels good!! Thanks!

Ah! I’m glad to live to see your handsome face again!

Thank you, Medic!

Under effects of ÜberCharge:

I’ve never felt more powerful…

I’m fucking invincible!

I won’t be slain here.

Payload cart moves forward (offense):

Any of you boys wanna help?!

C’mooooon, I’m not waiting all day!

Get a move on, asswipes!

Cart goes backwards (offense):

You deserve the death sentence. (Michael Reeves ref)

Who stopped pushing the cart??

Why is the cart going backwards?? It’s supposed to move forward!

Payload cart moves forward (defense):

NOOOO!

I’m going to kill you. And then kill you again. 

I will end your existence.

I will slit you all open from mouth to anus and wear you like jackets

Cart goes backwards (defense):

Weeeeeeeeee! Down it goes!

Haha fuck you, BLU/RED team! Now you have to push it BACK UP THE HILL!

I feel like they’re living as Sisyphus… they’re living the dream 

Win a round:

Gasp! We won!

Yayayayayayayay!!! Yaaaaaaay!

I’m so proud of us!

A bunch of murder hobos killing a bunch of other murder hobos… it’s a good day!

Lose a round:

I’m gonna let the depression set in, and I’m going home

Hey, at least we won’t get to the Post part of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

*sighs* I feel like I’m reliving my ancestors’ history…

Next time, there will be blood. Lots of blood…

Tie a round:

Welp. Fuck me sideways with a chainsaw, let’s a get a drink

Wait, that can happen??

I’ve never felt more confused in my life

Round Starts:

Fuck em up, boys!

Heeheehee, let’s play a game

I wanna play a game

Lezzgooo!

Hajmo!

Sudden Death:

AhHHHHHHH!!

I’m dead. Oh no. (coming out of a machine if Hacker is killed while hacking one)

Teleportations:

Wee, that was fun!

Thanks, Engie!

You’re the best!

Objective-related responses

After Capturing Intelligence:

Not usually how I do this, but it’ll do!

I’ve hacked reality!

Time to run!

After capturing control point:

Okay, time to stand here!

Wait. Does this technically count as hacking?

Guess an enbie can prove themselves after all!

I claim this point in the name of my people and my ancestors!

Standing on captured control point, firing weapon:

Budalo, get on the point!

Awahodo, get on the stupid point!

You idiots expect this shit to work if you’re NOT on the point??

On the point. Or I will tase you.

Defense:

Idiots.

I can’t believe you’re being beat by a hacker!

I love knowing I’m smarter than you all

I’m winning and you’re not! Ha!

Spy!:

There’s a Spy among us!

Imposter spotted!

He’s gonna vent!

Jeers:

Guys. I’m. I’m so disappointed.

If I have to come down there!

I’m a hacker, not your babysitter!

[poppy-in-the-woods]

Every time a middle class Karen says "just find a better job!" about people striking for their rights to a livable wage and fair working conditions, God kills a kitten. I don't make the rules, I am only the messenger. So if you don't want cats to go extinct, every time you hear someone say that about the writers and actors ongoing strike, just remind them that:

1) If only people who can support themselves with the actual conditions (A and B listers, and maybe C listers) remained there would be not enough performers left to make all the movies and shows they like. Small roles and extras are actors too and deserve compensation for their work.

2) Nobody begins getting paid 1 million per episode. Even their favourites who live in mansions, drive expensive cars and wear designer clothes began from the bottom. If no one wants to act because it doesn't pay the bills or even gets health insurance, how are we gonna make movies or shows? Who's going to play this episodic character? Brad Pitt? I don't think so. People should be allowed to be passionate about a job that also pays their bills, because if they have to quit acting because of that, soon nobody will have the opportunity to grow as performers.

3) The big names in the industry don't strike for better pay for themselves, they do it to pressure the studios to accept the conditions the unions are putting on the table. That includes better conditions for everyone (safer sets, better hours, studios not being able to get away with stealing someone's likeness...), not only better salary.

4) AI is all A and not enough I to write shows or movies and that's okay, it shouldn't be and nobody should want to watch a show or a movie written by AI. It will be garbage and it'll only put more money in the hands of the studios while people lose their jobs. Do you really wanna put more money in the hands of people who already earn millions and bo basically nothing while the people who make possible the media you like lose their source of income?

5) While I agree that sometimes A listers are payed too much, nobody remains at the top of their game forever. People who aren't as famous anymore still deserve to have enough money to pay for health insurance. Streaming services have to pay residuals, one way or another, because some actors that are starring in shows that never played on TV are not getting properly compensated for their work. Acting is not a stable job, we all know that, but it shouldn't be possible that anyone has a recurring or even regular role in a show that is among the most viewed in a platform and they can't afford to pay their bills. That is happening, and it's absolutely unfair.

6) Studios are canning almost finished movies and pulling shows from platforms almost right after airing for tax breaks. To have more money than they already have and they still refuse to not only give people some of that but to let them have more time to eat, for example. They're only fueled by greed and honestly, I think each and every person that works in making movies/shows should unionise and join the strike. From the directors, the cast, the crew, to the people who do the special effects (practical or cgi), the stuntmen and more. Everyone, all across the globe. Strike. Force them to give in.

7) Piracy is not what's killing the cinema industry, greedy studios and streaming services are. Streaming services are more convenient and reliable than pirating, so people are more likely to pay them as long as they keep it that way. Erasing shows and movies from their catalogue because money and then not paying people what they're owed does not paint streaming services in good light. Making shows not accesible based on region and not allow VPNs doesn't make people think they're the good guys either. Also, people want to own media. If paying a subscription doesn't make them own the content, it's more likely that they will resort to piracy to make sure they can still watch and rewatch their show if the streaming service decides to pull it from their catalogue. It's a simple question of conservationism.

I have enough DVDs, books and overall media to consume to resist a couple of years of strike. Do you, Karen?

[giffingthingsss]

the death of a marriage

Skimming through Joy's letters to Bill.

One major theme is money, or lack thereof. You can sense the weariness. It's one thing to go through a period where he can't come up with money, but there's always some excuse. For years. She's really being quite accommodating while also trying not to starve to death. One letter she's like, 'listen honey, I'm as tired of harping on this as you are of hearing it' lol. 'but we can't live on air.' She often couches things with humor.

There's the recurrence of old problems, an anger that flares up from time to time, a general feeling of 'handling' him, trying to keep him in a good mood and earning money so he has it to send to his kids, etc...

He definitely stressed her out and it's a relief to have him gone. In the beginning she was sensitive to his threats of suicide and the like and worried about him, etc... but over time begins to see it as gaslighting and manipulation. It's why she just kind of sighs when her cousin starts falling for the same lines but is like... 'whatever. good luck.'

I'm fine with attempts to round out the breakup of the Greshams rather than showing the kind of lopsided Shadowlands version of events where Bill's problems are the only ones mentioned (in one letter she tells him to tell her family that she is a third responsible for everything, as evidently family members had begun taking sides). But Santamaria's biography goes too far back the other way.

She's obviously influenced by talking to Bill's family and is eager to balance the record, but it gets ridiculous. 'yeah he drank but he was a happy drunk. yeah he would smash furniture but it was for attention. yeah he shot a gun in the living room once but it's cuz it accidentally went off.'

As if you shouldn't throw a guy out of your house immediately if he fires a gun in your living room, whether accidental or not. Good grief. 'Joy wanted them to fall in love so she could dissolve the marriage'. as if Bill and Renee weren't grown ass adults who made their own decisions.

Another guy says that Renee (Joy's cousin that Bill later married) told him the gun going off was actually a suicide attempt. I can't buy the book to look that up myself because that particular book only had like 500 copies made and sells for approximately $500. But that's what a journal article said.

If the suicide attempt is true, then my theory would be it wasn't a genuine attempt. More of a 'go my way or I'll kill myself' thing and then the gun accidentally went off. In one letter Joy wrote -

All through our marriage you used to argue that you must get your own way in everything or else a) you would kill yourself, b) you would get drunk, c) you would go on strike and not support the family. I have no doubt your anxiety was partly genuine, but the use you made of it was not. If I feel uncertain of your good intentions now, it is simply because of the record.

Anyway, that just kind of gives you an idea of what a crazy household it could be.

But there's a genuine old affection that comes out from time to time and they can often chat like old friends. Things are never simple or completely cut and dry.

Maybe someday I'll do a more comprehensive thing, but I'll leave it with this letter from Joy -

It must be a great surprise to you that I now have such powers of resisting your commands and persuasions. Throughout our marriage you could always make me knuckle under one way or another, and I’m sure you find difficulty in understanding that them days are gone forever. You mistook my submissiveness for the weakness of a self-effacing neurotic. But, as I told you, it is not inherently part of my character, and I shall never practice it again.

[accirax]

Great addition!

Man, I always forget how short killing games are until you actually lay the number of days out. Granted, DRDT is a particularly short one thus far, with the Prologue/Chapter 1 only taking 3 days and Chapter 2 taking 5 days, but it's still crazy to see the extent to which characters bond in such a short time.

But you're definitely right; between Ace "the only thing I should do is look out for myself and myself alone" Markey and Nico "why should I own up for the mistakes someone else made" Hakobyan, the only way their relationship can end in such a short time span is through animosity. And likely one or both of them dying.

I do think it could make sense if Nico died in Chapter 3 if the extent to which they "caus[ed] an interesting moral dilemma," as you put it, has already passed. I can definitely see a world in which Nico attempting to murder Ace serves as the inciting incident to further fighting between Ace and Hu, but Nico themselves takes a back seat. This could be due to remorsefully not wanting to anger anybody further, pressures from characters such as Veronika, or simply wanting to keep a low profile so that people don't think to retaliate against them.

The idea of Nico essentially taking a hit for Ace is super interesting, though. And, it could definitely happen as a sort of twist on that "walking into the room while the murder is occurring" thing, like you were saying. However, I might prefer the option where the killer believed that they killed only Ace and Nico, and then it turns out that Ace is still alive, such that there's actually only one victim. The concept of someone being either desperate or twisted enough to murder three people with their own hands is juicy, but that does still mean that one of these characters has to choose to strike thrice. Beyond the moral implications, that would leave a lot of evidence behind.

Although Nico being the only third victim would mess up my Charles third victim prediction (such that I wouldn't really know what to do with him), it would help my predictions out later if we gain an extra survivor by avoiding a second victim. In my world, that could allow six characters to participate in Chapter 6-- AKA, Teruko, Rose, David, Whit, and Ace could survive, and we'd still have room for J to be the mastermind (and potentially not survive).

Given that (to my knowledge) DRDTdev has never written a fangan before, I really have no idea if he's going to roll with the Chapter 3 double kill or not. With all of DRDT's parallels to THH, I suppose I would lean yes? Along those lines, that could open the door to a murder train where Character A murders Character B, but then Character C murders Character A.

Man, could you imagine that with the Ace situation? Nico attempts to murder Ace again, so then Levi retaliates against Nico, but then Hu gets revenge on Levi for Nico, and then Ace actually survives again? That's probably super improbable, but it is a fun idea.

I do also like the idea of Nico dying instead of Ace for the reason that it would allow Ace to nearly escape death again. Honestly, that could be a cool and unique way to end his cowardly character arc. What better way to learn that you don't need to be afraid of everything than conquering death multiple times? I can hear the "well, I've already escaped death twice, so, fuck it, let's try again!" Chapter 6 hope consensus already~

Side note, but Rule 1 is really awfully worded. "Participants must live within the set of Danganronpa: Despair Time for the rest of their lives, unless a murder is committed"? If you were to interpret the text literally, now that a murder occurred, participants no longer need to live on the set for the rest of their lives. Therefore, they technically should be free to go. It's a good thing for MonoTV that there doesn't appear to be an exit in sight...

Thank you for your addition, and for all the kind words :D

Danganronpa: Despair Time Mastermind Ranking (Least to Most)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Xander: Xander canonically died as the Chapter 1 victim.

Min: Min canonically died as the Chapter 1 blackened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#17: Arei Nageishi

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

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

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

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

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

#16: Charles Cuevas

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

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

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

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

#15: Xander Matthews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#14: Ace Markey

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

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

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

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

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

#13: Arturo Giles

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

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

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

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

#12: Min Jeung

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

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

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

#11: Hu Jing

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

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

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

#10: David Chiem

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

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

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

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

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

#9: Levi Fontana

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

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

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

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

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

#8: Nico Hakobyan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#7: Eden Tobisa

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

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

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

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

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

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

#6: Whit Young

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#5: Veronika Grebenshchikova

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

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

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

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

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

#4: Mai Akasaki

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#3: Teruko Tawaki

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#2: Rose Lacroix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#1: J Rosales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[felikatze]

What the hell is a Child of Fire and is Nagyunn an arsonist

preamble: hi i’m thinking abt this webcomic again and how little we know abt what’s actually going on with the masked bandits outside of that one guy possibly being lauzun’s dad or something. so when i reread i paid extra attention to figure out stuff but i’ve gotten nowhere. I write meta posts bcuz my thoughts haunt me and i want them gone to think about other stuff. other people think abt this for me thank you

So. Here ya go.

This post includes three sections, best summarized as:

1. What? 2. Who? 3. Why?

1. The hell’s a Child of Fire anyway?

We never get an explanation of this, but there’s some deductions we can make.

a) a Child of Fire is pretty hard to kill We see this when the masked bandits talk about killing Najin. They planned an ambush with a lot of people, and I’ve seen theorizing that they may have made Nagyunn kill Najin because only Nagyunn could.

There’s some property of a Child of Fire that just makes em apparently unkillable without special circumstances. Which leaves us with the question of, why could Nagyunn kill Najin if he’s a normal guy?

From Episode 32, said by the leader of the masked bandits.

b) a Child of Fire is presumably from Woodion This mainly ties back to Woodion being “the town of flame” and Najin being referred to as “Woodion’s flame” so this seems appropiate.

From Episode 2

From Episode 4

During the first meeting with Marsha, she also calls “Najin” “Najin van Woodion” with van being uhh dutch? for “of” so he’s “Najin of Woodion.” Names like that are typically associated with nobility. Either Najin’s family actually had some importance before biting the dust, or Najin and Nagyunn don’t have unique surnames and he’s “that guy Najin from Woodion.” Does anyone in this series have a surname actually?? Does anyone??

From Episode 19

c) Possible ties to magic? Other theorizing is that “Child of Fire” is meant very literally, what with the two counts of fire attached to our main guy. There’s also how magic works in The Ember Knight, as explained by the magician with magic being stronger if the elements just kinda like you. A Child of Fire may be a kid that fire just loves, but this point is the most theoretical.

From Episode 35

All around, we don’t know shit.

2. Who’s a Child of Fire anyway?

The obvious no brainer answer would be Najin, but it’s not that clear cut, imo.

There’s evidence for Najin being the one, namely the fact that the masked bandits are veeeeery convinced that he is, to the point they’re willing to believe Najin survived sword-through-the-heart on account of being the unkillable Child of Fire (see: the first screenshot).

Another thing is the first big count of fire in the story (chronologically): the fire supposedly set by Nagyunn that killed Luzian’s dad.

From Episode 2

Odd thing abt this is a formulation here:

[screencap of flashback during Luzian’s tryouts]

From Episode 13

The phrasing that Nagyunn didn’t feel guilt for killing the guy but rather not being able to save him, coupled with the reasoning for the fire being that “he doesn’t know”, makes who set the fire kind of suspicious.

From Episode 22

A very real possibility here is that Nagyunn took the fall for Najin if we once again interpret “Child of Fire” as being literal, on account of Nagyunn’s “I’ll always protect you!” thing

From Episode 2

but then AGAIN, Nagyunn very very much blames himself for the fire.

Also From Episode 2

Our second option would be that Nagyunn is the Child of Fire, which I think is also very possible.

First count of fire-setting could be Najin’s fault, but it could also still be an accident on Nagyunn’s part. Furthermore, the second fire of the series strikes me as notably odd.

Why the hell did Nagyunn burn his own house down? There’s a pragmatic reason, being that he needed a believable cause of death that would both obscure the actual cause of death via stabbing and also make the corpse unavailable for identity verification.

However, we don’t see Nagyunn actually set the fire. And the fire starts with a paper on the wall, without Nagyunn even being in the panel. That’s weird, right? There’s no explanation for how that happens, yeah?

From Episode 4

It’s possible we’re just not shown how Nagyunn set the fire because it would slow down the scene or something, but who else would it be? The masked bandits just up and left, they had no reason to set a fire.

If we believe Najin to be the Child of Fire, then his death could’ve caused it, just like, magically or something. If we believe Nagyunn to be the Child of Fire, then it may be like, a physical manifestation of his emotions.

It’s just weird, man.

Another point for Nagyunn is like, not really lore related but more symbolism related.

From Episode 12

Here, Nagyunn, who before was symbolically “the ash that remained” assumes the position of the fire, “the embers you couldn’t extinguish.” This also ties into the title of the comic, obviously, and this is the moment we really see Nagyunn as “The Ember Knight.” (Though rejecting being ash is additionally a metaphor for rejecting being Nagyunn. Layers.)

Like lore wise this means nothing but this is a narrative and foreshadowing can be anything. Nagyunn symbolically assumes the position of ember, that will one day grow into a raging fire. Ya see?

Maybe the masked bandits thinking Najin is the Child of Fire just comes from Najin’s strength and they’re mistaken, because they knew “one of those two” had to be it. Maybe Najin’s a red herring?

Man, maybe both of them are Children of Fire and it’s a genetic thing. Who knowwwws.

We don‘t actually know how killable Nagyunn is since he‘s never physically in mortal peril. I mean „stabbed-through-the-heart“ mortal peril. He is frequently surrounded by people with the intent and strength to kill him, though.

Moving on to a different thing, this bit from the narrator.

[screencap of the “one in a million” rock metaphor]

From Episode 9

Both Najin and Nagyunn are described as “one in a million” by the narrator. The narrator in this instance is pointedly not a limited one, as it describes Nagyunn in third person. Obviously, some random comment from the narrator doesn’t mean much, but I feel it’s worth pointing out how both of them are “special.”

And now arises the question of why the masked bandits wanted the Child of Fire dead so badly.

3. Why kill the Child of Fire anyway?

Since the masked bandits are so mysterious to the point not even some of their members know what the hell’s going on, they could be, well, not the good guys, but well-intentioned. There’s the geo-political aspect of them teaming up with the skeleton guy from the east who wanted to protect his king, and the brewing war between east and west, and the Knights are on the side of the west obviously but. The masked bandits may be trying to prevent war? I think?

So it remains within the realm of possibility that they wanted to kill the Child of Fire because the Child of Fire is inherently dangerous somehow.

Whether the presence of the Child of Fire would assure war-time victory for the west or whether the Child of Fire is dangerous to the world as a whole, I don’t. I don’t know. Both is possible.

If we believe the Child of Fire to be a danger, then it wouldn’t be out of line to describe them as “a lump of impurities”, would it.

That’s all my thoughts on the whole Child of Fire thing. Think what you will, all bets are off to what it really would be.

[ryosmne]

Three brats??

Dad!Sukuna x f!reader

So this is basically a comfort fic, featuring dad! Sukuna because the brainrot was too much. Ok so, the reader and Sukuna have a son together, yes their son is Yuuji, I know this is usually the single father Sukuna trope, but I wanted to give it a go, feedback is always appreciated. Thanks for brainrotting with me @likeab-o-s-s cause this is the reason this exists. That's all from me enjoy reading.

Warnings: none really, just family, heartwarming fluff.

The air was crisp and fresh, unusually refreshing for the beginning of summer. Parents were already gathered outside the daycare, Yuuji, y/n's and Sukuna's son attended, patiently waiting for their kids to run in their arms again.

Sukuna arrived a couple of minutes before the final bell on his motorcycle, he took off his helmet, leaned back on his bike and waited for the familiar little pink head of hair to come wobling to him.

The three mothers next to him, scooted a bit closer to him to get a better look nothing he's unfamiliar with and no one can blame them, Sukuna is a sight for sore eyes. Leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up, extenuating his board shoulders, exposing his tattoo covered skin, v neck white t shirt, allowing his toned chest and even more of his tattoos to show and a simple black pair of pants hugging his muscular thighs in the best of ways.

In the past some of the bolder ones had mustered the courage and asked him if he was a single father since they had never seen his son's mother, but with a laugh Sukuna brushed them off telling them how his lovely wife was a working parent and her schedule just didn't match the daycares. Maybe the very unconventional wedding rings they got weren't the best idea in this situation, even though they were extremely beautiful and unique.

"I really admire the work you put in the little guy" Sukuna's gaze met a woman who attempted to strike a conversation, oblivious to what she had meant by her statement he replied, maybe these three minutes would pass faster talking about normal things and not stressing about work.

"Don't we all put work on our kids?" He spoke calmly with a slight smile that he always wore when talking about Yuuji.

"Yeah, we do, but it still must be hard I can't imagine what you're going through" Sukuna's mind went to the worst scenario. Was Yuuji a trouble maker at school? He is a very well behaved child, both him and y/n made sure to teach him proper manners and how to be polite, that couldn't be it right?

The bell rung, and kids made their way out of the daycare, Yuuji in the blink of an eye was hugging his father's leg, exited to see him after the hours he was gone. In a swift motion Sukuna put Yuuji's little backpack on his own back and scooped the boy up in his arm.

"Yuuji's a pretty good kid, hes never been difficult" Sukuna smilled again resuming in the short conversation with the woman next to him. "Single father's like you don't get the credit they deserve". She spoke again smiling sadly down to the little pink haired boy who seemed too fixated on the earrings his father was wearing.

Sukuna finally understanding what this whole thing was about, chuckled, this had happened before after all, he should've known.

"I'm not a single parent, speaking of that your mom said she has a big surprise for you after dinner" he said directing his attention to his son again, the woman next to him quickly fumbled an apology for missundertanding, to which Sukuna replied to with a simple 'dont worry about it'. He placed Yuuji on his bike, put on both his and his boys helmet and drove off.

Y/n was still stuck at work, thankfully her husband would cook dinner tonight cause overtime was killing both her and her mood, good thing she finally had a day off tomorrow.

Y/n checked her phone to see how close she was to going home only to find a text that Yuuji's teacher had send her that was obviously meant for her husband.

Hello Mr Itadori, this is Mrs Laura from the day care. I was wondering if you wanted to get launch with me after school tomorrow, you can bring little Yuuji too, I'm awaiting your response, have a nice night.

What the hell was that? Well y/n's number was in Yuuji's contact information, she chuckled at the words displayed on her screen but she couldn't really blame the teach, Sukuna was a walking temptation, she knew that first hand, hell she fell head over heels for the dangerous looking guy who hid a heart of gold under his hard exterior, but the teacher could at least check who the number belonged to.

Y/n run her last errands and made sure to pick up Yuuji's surprise before heading home, she even tipped Sukuna off so their son wouldn't know what hit him.

Y/n made her way inside the family house, tossing her keys somewhere on the living room couch.

Yuuji immediately after hearing her car in the driveway came rushing down the stairs, jumping around her like he always did when she came home.

"Mom, mom you're home." The happiness was evident in the boys face, his smile was wide when y/n dropped to his level to pick him up and spin him around

"Yes I am little devil, did you give your father hell like we agreed?" She spoke in the happiest of tones with Yuuji still in her arms. Another set of arms engulfed her frame making her halt on spinning the little boy.

"So you're telling him to be a little brat now huh?" Sukuna's breath tickled the side of her neck and ear as he rested his head on her shoulder and wrapped his strong arms around her waist. "Welcome home love" he spoke again giving her jaw a ghost of a kiss.

"Daddy is the food ready" Yuuji spoke from y/n's arms, Sukuna only laughed at his son's appetite, and directed both him and y/n to the kitchen where he had already set everything up.

"Mommy, what is a single dad?" Yuuji asked in the middle of dinner in typical fashion of his, any question he had from something he heard through the day would always come up during dinner.

"Well Yuuji, single fathers are the fathers who raise their kids alone." The young boy seemed to think about his mother's words before speaking again. "So its just a daddy ?" Yuuji asked again with his eyes growing a bit sadder, his mother nodded, and Yuuji's eyes started to water.

"Baby what's wrong?" y/n asked. "Hey buddy what's going on?" Sukuna was growing quite concerned too. Yuuji burst in tears leaving his seat, climbing up his dad and hugging him tightly. Sukuna was rubbing his back to comfort the young boy and y/n's hand was stroking the kids hair in an effort to calm him down. "B-but why did that lady c-call you that, is m-mommy l-leaving?" Everything seemed to click for Sukuna, y/n was still confused but in the calmest sweetest voice said "Yuuji, baby look at me, I'm not going anywhere ok?" And the boy left his father's arms and clung on to her like his life depended on it.

Sukuna cracked a few jokes and lightened Yuuji's mood so he could enjoy the rest of his dinner, which went pretty well, he was his smiling adorable self very soon after his parents reassured him that none of them were ever leaving his side and the boy was now drawing with crayons in the living room. He seemed to have completely forgotten about the surprise his father mentioned when he picked him up.

Y/n and Sukuna were doing the dishes in the kitchen, each one talking about their day, Sukuna explained the awkward conversation he had at the daycare that sparked Yuuji's sadness, y/n took a turn in talking about how her son's teacher, basically asked Sukuna out on a date but messed up and texted her. "How about you set up a date and you show up? I mean it's you she texted right?" Sukuna joked "Babe, that's cruel" y/n chuckled at her husband's mischievous nature.

"So you've got everything ready?" Sukuna asked. "yeah who'll bring him over?"

"You do it I'll keep Yuuji busy."

Sukuna joined Yuuji on the couch. "What are you drawing little brat?" Y/n heard him ask their boy in the usual sweet tone he had with him. She made her way down the basement, where she kept the surprise since she came home. Yuuji was going to love this, Sukuna was too, she knew she was already in love as well.

Y/n climbed the stairs quickly, and snuck up behind her son, who was occupied by his dad, she gently tapped the boys shoulder.

"A PUPPY" Yuuji announced exited making sure his voice was still soft not to scare the eager dog that his mom brought to his arms. Yuuji gently held the puppy that was licking his face as he was in a fit of laughter and excitement. Sukuna was as exited as his son and y/n had a huge smile on her face too. Their son had begged and begged for a dog ever since his best friend, Megumi got a black German shepherd puppy. Of course y/n and Sukuna wanted to comply to Yuuji's request right away, but they took time to teach little Yuuji everything there was about the responsibility of owning a dog. They took him to dog cafes and shelters, so he would be the perfect little dog owner, they taught him patience and responsibility beforehand. Sukuna visited the local shelter and decided with y/n on a white Shepard puppy that Yuuji always pointed out in your visits because 'he looks like Megumi's puppy they can be friends like we are' who can say no to that little adorable devil?

The puppy momentarily left Yuuji's arms to lick Sukuna's face. "Now we've got two little brats and a big one in our house." He laughed, enjoying the moment.

Y/n was admiring her son and husband as well as the newest member of the family with a smile plastered wide on her face, life was indeed beautiful.

The next day, both Sukuna and y/n were waiting for Yuuji to finish school, since y/n had the day off. Sukuna had his arm protectively around her because this time, others were staring at what was his, but he was proud to show her off to everyone, even in a place as mundane as his son's daycare.

[lemons3ason]

HOW THE VINSMOKE BROTHERS REACT TO LOSING THEIR S/O BECAUSE OF THEIR FATHER!

Warning: Mad Angst, Lowkey long I got kinda a little to into these scenarios, mentions of death and torture, I cried and lowkey need to make a part two for fluff TT-TT

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

Ichiji Vinsmoke

You were missing from bed this morning, of course Ichiji was curious of it since you were practically 8 months pregnant but he thought you were just back in the kitchen cooking with Cosette again. You were a chef for the Germa Kingdom, the only reason he had met you was because Niji had thrown a plate of food at Cosette and you shielded her from it before striking Niji in a nerve and knocking him unconscious for over 36 hours. Since that day Ichiji had claimed you as his, his cute firecracker, and yet for some reason you were never enough for his father. You made his son human, which in turn made him weak, sooner or later you would’ve had to be dealt with. Judge had summoned him to the throne room to speak with him alone, with his shadow casting over the young red haired man he spoke with a cold heartless tone, “(Y/n) has been executed. She was taken down to the dungeons before daybreak, so you won’t find her.”, he turned to his son to make sure he emphasized his point, “She wasn’t good enough for you anyways.”

Ichiji felt his heart shatter, something he once never had, and felt his lips quiver at the news. Nothing held him back, so why?! Why didn’t he just kill his father where he stood! Judge had sent you to the dungeons to be executed, all because he deemed you unworthy of the Vinsmoke name. Ichiji’s fist ignited into flames as his rage boiled in his blood. He was always cold and collected but right at this moment he was afraid! Afraid and enraged, Ichiji left his father alone and stormed down to the dungeons. Memories of his days tormenting Sanji replayed in his mind causing his stomach to churn. The dungeons were for the weak, only the strong could laugh from the other side of the bars and unfortunately you were just a weak powerless human compared to the monsters that lived right by your side.

“(Y/n)! (Y/n) answer me! Answer me right now!”, Ichiji’s voice roared through the cold dark cells of the dungeon.

Soldiers in charge of the chambers emerged attempting to calm their leader but their skulls simply met the hard brick walls as he punched them. Flames flickered from his fists and feet with each of his movements, even without his raid suit Ichiji was a force to be reckoned with.

“(Y/n)!”, his screams were desperate at this point, his emotional heart couldn’t handle the stress of the situation anymore.

Then he saw it, in pure disbelief he threw his glasses to the side taking in the pale lifeless battered body that laid before his eyes. Everything stopped, y-you were gone. He was to late. Ichiji didn’t want to believe it not now, not ever, he raced to your side scooping your cold form into his arm and holding you tight almost mistaking his own body heat as yours in broken hope that you were still alive. He was heartbroken, as he stared down at your beautiful sleeping face his vision became blurry. He had lost it, he lost you, tears and screams of agony poured out of Ichiji’s body. He couldn’t handle this, not (Y/n), not you of all people. His wails became louder so much so that his siblings could hear him, even Judge who stared out over the sea with no regret to his decision could hear the heartbroken wails of his precious son. Ichiji’s raw emotions triggered his powers, his tears evaporated from the intense heat his body produced and like an inferno eating at a dry field his flames engulfed the dungeons setting fire to half of the Germa Kingdom. Even as your body seared to ash in his arms he held onto you desperately his wails becoming noiseless gasps until his brothers pulled him out of the flames and away from your ashes.

“(Y/n)! (Y/n)! (Y/n)!!!!!”, He screamed fighting against his brothers strength as soldiers rushed in to put out the flames.

Even if he showed weakness because of his heart Ichiji mourned your death, he couldn’t handle it anymore because every little thing reminded him of you. For a whole week he had locked himself in your old quarters and he wouldn’t budge...not until Reiju appeared with the only thing that would pull him out of mourning. She kicked the door open holding something small in her arms and sighed seeing her brother collapsed by your bedside.

“She’s gone Ichiji, get over it.”, Reiju growled.

“How do you expect me to do that? Tell me Reiju! Every woman I’ve ever seen was merely a toy of amusement for me until I met her! She reminded me what it meant to be human, how do you expect me to get over her!”, the red haired male growled grabbing his sister by the fabric collar until a soft cry caught his attention.

The sudden rough movement had awaken the slumbering (h/c) haired baby that rested in Reiju’s arms. Ichiji’s body trembled from shock and he once again collapsed to his knees. Reiju smiled and kneeled down in front of her younger brother carefully placing his child in his arms, “(Y/n) fought till the very end, I noticed them take her down to the dungeon and the stress from them beating her drove her body into labor. Father’s word was absolute to kill her but nothing was said about the baby. All she asked was that I took her.”, Reiju sighed tears of regret falling from her blue eyes.

This little baby girl, with Ichiji’s curly little eyebrows, and your sweet eyes, was all he had left of you and he wouldn’t let his father take her from him like he took you!

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

Niji Vinsmoke

That night you hadn’t returned to bed, after a heated argument about his cruel behavior towards the staff of the ship you had left Niji alone in his quarters. The young prince waited impatiently for you to return but after midnight struck the clock he decided that it would be best to go find you instead. It wasn’t your first fight but truly he let himself go, he said things that he regretted and sucking it up and apologizing to you only seemed fair. He called your name loudly, not caring about the others and their sleep since he needed to find you quickly.

“(Y/n)? Hey little brat come on, it’s late we can continue this argument tomorrow just come to bed.”, he sighed running his fingers through his blue hair in frustration.

He noticed several guards talking amongst themselves and decided to question them on your whereabouts. All the soldiers froze up once they felt the intense anger radiating off of their general, they quickly stood at attention greeting Niji as he glared down at all of them. He noticed your necklace hanging out of one of their pockets and quickly snatched it back as he began to interrogate the soldier.

“Where the hell did you get this? A piece of gravel like you shouldn’t have been able to get this close to (Y/n) in order to take it. Where did you get this?”, Niji growled electricity discharged from his body with each passing second.

The soldier stumbled over his words trembling in fear as he looked death in the face, “I-I’m sorry sir! I-I found it in the dungeons it’s from the most recent kill. I-I didn’t know this b-belonged to Ms. (L/n)!”, the soldier squeaked in fear as Niji’s electricity made all the lights in the hall pop, his body glowed a dim blue in the dark corridor as he stormed down to the dungeons. Something didn’t feel right, for once an unsettling itch was making Niji nervous. Why would you be in the dungeons of all places? His steps echoed the farther down he went, but the eerie silence of the dungeons made his stomach ache. Something wasn’t right.

“(Y/n)? Hey brat, where are you? Come on this is enough, it’s not funny, (Y/n)!”, Niji yelled, his voice broke as he called your name, “(Y/n), come on I’m sorry! I don’t hate you, I love you so come back.”

For the first time ever fear was coursing through his blood and he didn’t know what to do. Every call of your name drove him crazy, you didn’t respond no matter how loud he got. He searched every sell desperately for you but he couldn’t find a thing, he was clueless on your whereabouts until one of the many prisoners in the dungeons spoke up.

“Niji?”, the old man called quickly grabbing the young prince’s attention.

“Who the hell do you think your calli-“

“That’s the name the young lady was calling when they were beating her. Niji, at the top of her lungs, it was painful to have to hear her.”, the old man sighed tears falling from his eyes.

Niji’s arms reached for his tattered clothes slamming him against the bars as he demanded answers, “What girl? Where did they take her?”

“T-this young lady with short (h/c) hair. They took her to the torture chamber just down the hall!”

“Her hair wasn’t short! Liar!”, Niji growled.

“I-It was! Lord Judge cut her hair with his spear to show her how little she meant to the family. Then ordered her execution, I haven’t heard her voice for the last three hours.”, the man admitted crying in fear of being punished.

Niji released the man and ran as quickly as he could to the chambers, but the pool of blood was enough for him to understand your fate. He stared down at the pool in defeat and fell to his knees as his vision became blurry. Bloodied whips and clubs littered the floor but Niji couldn’t see a thing, he screamed in anguish to the situation. His heart couldn’t take this, his head was splitting to the very thought of your death. His sadness quickly turned into rage, it’s was his fault, his father was the cause of all of this! Using his powers he appeared in his father’s room in a mere matter of seconds, his electricity burning hotter then ever before.

“WHERE IS MY (Y/N)?!”, Niji roared ripping his goggles off so he could see his father properly.

Judge, completely unamused by his favorite son’s outburst, simply scoffed and returned to his paperwork. Having been ignore Niji slammed his fist into Judge’s desk scattering and burning the papers throughout the room. He glared up at his father and repeated his question, “Where is my (Y/n)?”

“Tossed out to sea, it’s not like she was alive anymore. By now she’s being digested by some stray seaking that found her battered corpse.”, Judge sighed in frustration, “It’s not like I would’ve considered someone like her eligible to be your wife. A prince shouldn’t bother with a mere nameless slave.”

Niji was heartbroken, tears that had been ready to fall from his eyes from the past 20 years had finally started to fall. He couldn’t see, not even an inch in front of him as he grieved your death. He was to late, he fought with you and made you leave and when you needed him most he wasn’t there for you.

“It was pathetic how desperately she called your name, she was to reliant on you, it made the torture so much easier when she finally gave up. Hopefully the next woman you fall in love with is more suitable to be a Vinsmoke.”, Judge sighed lifting his son by his collar and throwing him out of his room.

Niji was forced to stumble back to his room, no matter how much he called you you never returned to his side. You were gone, all because he was to late.

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

Sanji Vinsmoke

“What happened to her? (Y/n)!”, Sanji yelled caressing your face as you slept.

Your body was covered in bruises and cuts from your recent fight with Niji, you had snuck onto the Germa ships to find Sanji and drag him back but unfortunately you had ran into one of his monster brothers. Reiju had stopped her beastly brother from killing you but you presence on the ship didn’t go unnoticed, Judge was now aware of you and he wasn’t happy. Reiju allowed you to stay in her room with Sanji but Judge had other plans for you.

“(Y/n) you idiot. You should’ve stayed with the others back on the Sunny.”, Sanji sighed holding your hand in his, you woke up seeing him softly kiss your knuckles.

“Takes an idiot to know one. Come back stupid, I miss you.”, you sighed turning to him.

Sanji frowned at you but he couldn’t help but smile seeing you awake. You were such a handful, always had been and always would be but that’s what he loved about you. He pressed a kiss to your forehead making you smile but once again you both forgot that you were prisoners to the family. Sanji carried you back to his room and kept you there by his side, you both softly whispered to each other declaring your love like children. Having you in his arms again made Sanji forget about his worries, all he needed was you and that’s all he wanted. Eventually sleep claimed you both but you both slept comfortably together sharing dreams that a promising future would hold. The next day Sanji was forced to meet Big Mom. He hoped that you’d be left alone in his quarters but hope was for fools, while he was gone one of the soldier’s had slipped a sleeping drug into your food and dragged you down to the dungeons.

“(Y/n), I’m back. Have you eaten I’ll make yo-(Y/n)? (Y/n)?!”, Sanji’s blood ran cold seeing you missing, you couldn’t move around with your injuries which meant someone had taken you. He raced through the halls of the ship searching for you desperately, not one soldier told him where you were but a feeling in his chest told him exactly where you were. His legs carried him to the dungeon chambers but he found himself unable to even open the door. Memories of the caged abuse he went through drove a cold sweat through his body, but he had to save you. He swallowed his fears and opened the door but his fears were realized when he heard your voice scream his name. He hurried, he rushed, as quickly as he could but he was seconds to late. With his father looming over your battered body Sanji was forced to watch the spear pierce through your back,

“S-sanji.”, you cried as the injury killed you instantly, your outstretched hand fell to the ground as you passed away.

“Why failures stick together I will never know, but at least there’s one less of you vermin.”, Judge growled pulling his spear from your corpse as he turned around to see his mortified son, “It’ll teach you better then to let fools get in the way of my goals.”

He simply scoffed at him and walked back up the stairs while Sanji fell to his knees just inches away from your body. “(Y-y/n)...(y/n).”, Sanji croaked holding the hand that you had been reaching for him with.

“(Y/n)!”, he screamed to no one in the cold depressing dungeon as he pulled your body towards his chest to hold you.

He sobbed into your hair, crying until his voice ran dry. Sanji couldn’t accept this, “Not like this, p-please not like this. Not her!”, he begged staring down at your bruised face that still looked like a beautiful Angel in his eyes.

“(Y/n) please don’t leave me. Not like this my dear.”, he whimpered pressing his forehead against yours.

This dungeon had caused him so much pain and now it was the place that had taken you from him. Why did life have to hate him so much? To be married off to a stranger, to be taken from his crew, and worst of all to lose the only woman he had wanted to marry. His family brought him nothing but agony, he cried until exhaustion forced him to sleep. Reiju was ordered to fetch him for dinner but the sight of her younger brother asleep against the wall while holding your dead corpse was enough to move her to tears. He truly did love you but now you were gone.

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

Yonji Vinsmoke

From the start Yonji knew that his father hated your existence, but Yonji just couldn’t help it. He had fallen for you, the way his name rolled of your tongue and past your sweet soft lips made him crave your presence. The way you reached your small hands up to him to hold his face in your hands made his heart face, but your eyes, your beautiful passionate shimmering eyes made him fall head over heels for you. Even when he was disrespectful towards others Yonji would always keep an eye on you smiling when he saw you doing the simplest of tasks. The prince that loved a peasant what a cliche love story. Even if he was a genetically modified human in your eyes he was just him, and you were just the perfect normal little human girl.

“Prince Yonji I made cookies today. Would you lik-oh heehee.”, you giggled watching Yonji eat the cookie from your fingers.

His crumb covered lips pressed against your cheek making you smile, but your soft moment together was spoiled by the all to familiar scoff of Lord Judge. The tall giant glared down at you while you sheepishly smiled up and greeted him, Yonji scowled at his Father’s glare and wrapped his arm around your waist protectively.

“Keep moving old man.”, he growled much to Judge’s disgust.

Cosette called you back to the kitchen, you excused yourself hesitating to give Yonji a kiss in front of his father but the green haired man wouldn’t let you leave without a proper kiss. As soon as he got his kiss he let you go, your face flushed red and smiling as you returned to your duties.

“Why you bother with a failure like her irritates me, you deserve a princess not a dirty servant Yonji.”, Judge growled down to his youngest son.

Yonji scoffed in annoyance to his father and simply walked away leaving his father to his own complaints. Judge decided that if you were the one his son wanted then he’d modify you so that you were actually useful to the family. Every night you would come to find Yonji and kiss him goodnight, it was a ritual that he became dependent on but tonight you didn’t show up. Far past midnight sleep was finally beginning to take over his body but he tried to stay awake hoping that you’d just been busy with chores. He woke up angry the next day because of your absence and went to search for you to give you a piece of his mind but no one had seen you. You always presented yourself to work even if you were exhausted or sick meaning something had happened to you. Yonji growled under his breath knowing that his father had something to do with it. One of the doctors appeared before him asking for his presence in the dungeon chambers, Yonji didn’t want to bother with it but his father was waiting for him. Just entering the room he could hear torturous screams resonating from down below, his father must’ve been furious.

“What do you want old man?”

His father simply pointed into one of the screaming cages and smiled, “Now she’s worthy of you. A soldier ready to give her life for you.”, he chuckled.

That’s when Yonji saw it, his eyes widened in shock seeing your blood stained body killing a prisoner. You held the knife above your head ready to kill them but Yonji’s hand caught your wrist as he called your name. You responded but the look in your eyes was enough to tell him what had happened. Cold, lifeless, dead (e/c) eyes, looked into his there was no spark in them anymore.

“What did you do to her!?”, Yonji growled sending his mechanical arm right to his fathers face.

Judge was unimpressed by his son’s rage and pushed his hand away, “Simply made her worthy of you. An annoying woman like her wasn’t fit to be a love interest for one of my precious sons but with her genetic enhancements now she is. Surprisingly she was able to stay sane for about 7 hours before the electrical charges finally fried what little brain cells she had. The only sacrifice was her mental sanity, her emotions, and her heart. She’s the perfect little puppet now.”

Yonji’s face dropped to the news of your torture, he turned to your frozen form and kiss your lips hoping that you’d react, hoping that it wasn’t true but nothing happened. Your cheeks didn’t heat up, your eyes didn’t sparkle with love, you didn’t call his name sweetly, he lost you.

“REVERSE IT! REVERSE THE EFFECTS RIGHT NOW!”, Yonji ordered holding your head softly in his hands.

“She’d really die this time, if we bothered trying. This is how she stays if you want her by your side, once you’re tired of her dispose of her. She’s no longer human she’s just an empty shell.”

Yonji couldn’t believe it, he held you calling your name over and over until you responded but you never did. You never made a noise you were just silent. “N-no...(Y/n)...n-not like this. Please not like this come back to me.”, Yonji pleaded through his tears but from then on it would never be the same.

[willowbrookesblog]

THIS MEME LITERALLY SUMS IT UP 😭😭

And sometimes I think some of us as in the fandom forget that A. They have been alive for a long, long time (another headcanon of my is that they were turned by dracula himself but that's for another time) B. That their brutal hunters with almost no moral compass from what we can see, I mean they were about to kill a group of kids (mind you I never liked the frogs but it's something that we have to take note of y'know) and C. From them being alive so many times they most definitely would have had some personality changes as the times grew around them.

But not all of these are bad, I like the complicity of their characters and it makes each one more interesting than the next.

We know these guys are brutal killers, we literally see Marko scalping a guys head, but then we also have seems with Paul and Dwayne being super nice and treating him almost brotherly. We know they'll kill without a second thought and we know some of them enjoy it (definitely Marko in this case - you've seen how relaxed and almost in an euphoric headspace after they were done "feeding") but we also know that they can when they want to be be nice-ish to the people around them (star and laddie).

And the thing you said about Paul probably noticed a pattern with people liking the "dumb blonde", I definitely definitely agree with. I don't think I said this in this particular headcanons but I think he would be one of the ones who is super observant which helps him pick his meal for the night (surprisingly - imo).

He definitely knows he's hot and will use it to take advantage of anyone he can get, make them feel nice and comfortable, and then strike and watch with enjoyment as the person who they thought were their friend - is infact not and proceeds to off them.

I just find the boys so interesting I could go on, and on, and on about them

Certain headcanons I have for Paul (the lost boys):

this is for my babes @vampirefilmlover 😚 sorry it took so long 😭

Some people view Paul to be a weed loving, not very smart person and fun loving-ish, and while agree with the weed loving - I have a slightly different opinion about the others.

•|~~~^~~~|•

Personally I believe him to be very smart, I feel like it's just a fun act for him, like the dumb blonde stereotype and he can lure people in to be his snack for the night (in more ways than one 😏).

At the end of the night, he's not just a dumb blonde but an actual predator with his own motivations to kill wether that's because he was just hungry or because he enjoys the feeling of the hunt and the kill.

I feel like he'd watch his victims before attacking - but not for a long time as I do believe he definitely would have a short attention span - I feel like he'd watch them for a couple of days to a week if the person he intends to kill interests him, but he'd definitely if he was to kill without stalking the person before, he'd make sure that they aren't a regular person who lives around town.

•|~~~^~~~|•

I believe he can be fun loving at times but I think it almost always has sinister undertones unless it's with the people he cares about (aka, Marko, Laddie, Dwayne, and David).

I also feel like he'd fuck with the people he kills with it, he'd make them comfortable around him, give 'em some weed, (which we actually see in the movie with Michael and David where Paul hands David the weed and walks off, and while it's not Paul who gives it to him - I feel like he would do that with his own victims) and then drop "jokes" about death or something of the sort but then play it off as something that they misunderstood or something of the sort

•|~~~^~~~|•

In my opinion he was turned when he was 24, I feel like he was the last one turned out of the boys and was found by Marko who then spent some time hanging out with him and eventually told him what he was and paul eagerly wanted to become "one of them" which caused Marko to ask David to turn him (he had a little crush okay)

He quickly flourished in his new environment and was very interested in Marko, Marko would let Paul hang around him and learn how he picks he's prey (which is also one of the reasons he stalks his prey and gives them little clues as to scare them before he attacks. Listen we love these boyfriends ok 🙄)

•|~~~^~~~|•

That all for now! But I will have more of my personal headcanons for the boys posted, it could be tomorrow - it could be three months from now - but it will be posted!

@oceansrose2002 @skxllz @vampirefilmlover @skullsandswearwords @charlizekkelly @xxx-wounded-angel-xxx @britany1997 @auntvamp @phantomenby

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Can I get a future Tom x Reader where he was kind of brainwashed by Tord the whole time so when he finally gets conscious again he finds out his s/o had died and been turned into some kind of android/cyborg that's devoid of emotion. Lots of angst please!

"Brainwashed?"

"Yeah. It happened to all of us." Edd grunted as he sat at the table with Tom and Matt.

He then slammed his fist down rather abruptly, rattling the hard surface. Usually that meant he was about to have another tantrum over the cola ban.

But not this time. He was infuriated for a different reason.

"We got brainwashed by Red Leader into being his friend, doing stupid stuff, chasing after pointless, worthless things...all while he could expand his army without our interference."

"You know..it was odd that I forgave him so quick for ruining my face.." With a grimace Matt held his hand up to his bionic eye, clearly displeased that age and Tord's assault had spoiled his "beauty". "Now I know why. I wonder what else he's ruined.."

Tom's visor displayed an annoyed emote as he looked at his colleague. "You're still mad about that?"

"I have every right to be!!"

"Wow...so anyway.." He paused to take a swig of smirnoff. "I don't think he messed with me at all."

"Didn't you and [y/n] get captured or something?" Matt tilted his head. "Thought you'd at least remember that."

In that moment...Tom realized what he had completely forgotten about.

Something else Tord could've possibly ruined..

You.

In haste he stood up, dropping the bottle to the floor and ignoring the loud shattering. Edd looked quite annoyed at the mess, but his concern made him refocus on Tom, who was already sprinting towards the door.

"Where are you-?"

"I-I need to find [y/n]. Now." Tom whirled around, his visor showing pixelated sweat. "Matt was right..we got captured, and they took them somewhere! B-But I can't..I-I...I need to get home!"

"Now don't be stupid," Edd warned. "We need a strategy if-"

"Screw your strategies!! I'll call if I need help!" Without listening to another word, Tom had left the base.

You were his priority. He didn't know what happened to you after all this time, but he was going to find out even if he died trying.

He wanted..needed to know if you got out or not.

The two men who remained in the room exchanged glances, realizing that they forgot to tell Tom something important.

Something that was a painful and agonizing truth. With the intel they gathered they would've informed him that you were indeed alive.

But not the same.

..........

It took ages for Tom to reach what remained of your house. He could easily be mistaken. For all he knew..you could've been caged in at the Red Army base instead, but his gut feelings screamed for him to check your home first.

Though as he got inside with little resistance, he was suddenly blasted by a red laser beam.

He yelled and dodged it, allowing it to strike the door and leave a hole in it. But as the scrambled digital green pixels of his visor tried to reform themselves, he spotted you.

And god was he crushed.

Almost none of you was human anymore. Only part of your face was.

As for the rest of you, there was no doubt..the gray and red metal that covered your body were all clear indications that..

You were turned into a cyborg.

"[Y/n]..?" He mumbled in disbelief.

"Tom. It's been a while." Your voice was totally devoid of emotion, as was your expression. Nothing in your inflection signified that you missed him or that you were worried about him.

It was like..your whole personality was erased.

"H-Huh..? What...what did he do to you?" He approached you cautiously. "You remember me, right?"

"Of course. Although I died, all my memories have been preserved. I'm still me but with some..obvious changes." You raised your arm, with transformed into a laser gun.

But Tom's heart could only sink as you uttered those two words he never thought he'd hear:

"I died".

Now he realized what happened:

As he was being brainwashed by Tord after all this time, you were tortured, killed, and converted into a cyborg. The fact your chestplate displayed the Red Army's logo was undeniable proof of that.

You, a human once full of life..a human he once loved, became a killing machine. A mere tool for the Red Army against your will.

If only he had known you'd turn out like this..

Tom's visor shut off as he looked down, gritting his teeth as tears streamed down his cheeks. One by one.

"Tears don't suit you, Tommy."

Feeling a cold metal hand cup his cheek, he allowed you to raise his head up so he could look at you. But he just couldn't understand why this had to happen. And to you, of all people.

Why leave only your memories of your love for him intact?

Why not just get rid of all aspects of you?

Did Tord mean to do this?

Did he want to torture him like this?

No matter. He was going to get those answers soon enough. For now he just wanted to pretend that you were still here with him.

Pretend that you meant those words you spoke with genuine softness and concern.

Pretend that..you were still alive.

His visor flickered back on, displaying a broken heart symbol as he put his hand atop yours. "You..c-came back here on your own, didn't you? I was expecting a trap."

"I only attacked because I wrongfully assumed it was an intruder." You explained. "Red Leader told to stay put here. He said I would be a "surprise" of sorts to you."

"H-Hah, what a fuckin' surprise this was...that son of a bitch." Tears started to fall faster as the ache in his heart grew. Your answer outright confirmed his previous suspicions. "So what now? You're on his side?"

"He created me, but I'm not in servitude to him. So rest assured..I will not betray you." The pad of your thumb brushed away some of his tears, and he couldn't help but smile a bit.

While your face didn't show it, your gestures did.

You still loved him.

And he still loved you.

[heytheredeann]

Imagine a tiny canon divergence where Napoleon can speak Russian, but has managed to hide it both from the CIA and the KGB. So, Illya has no idea that Napoleon undestands him when he speaks Russian and Napoleon of course nevers tells him. What do you think Illya would be saying when he believes Napoleon cannot understand him?

(Lol, hope I explained this well enough; I hate explaining things. Also, (man, this is so presumptuous) if you find this idea inspiring/interesting, feel free to use it in a fanfic.)

ASDGHJKL I LOVE, sorry for taking a couple of days to answer!

Also you explained perfectly, and don't worry, it's not presumptions, thank you for the go ahead! I'll keep it in mind, you never know when inspiration will strike <3 Meanwhile, I wrote you my thoughts on this looool

So

I love Napoleon having this little ace in his sleeve, and I imagine that in the movie he'd be like "YEAH I am being forced to work with Mr KGB here so NO WAY I'm spilling my secret", because if Illya tries to talk shit about him in his presence thinking he can't understand he's going to want to hear (and like technically he could also gain some intel for the CIA like this, but he probably wouldn't volunteer it as a favour anyway because they suck lol).

And then there's Istanbul, and he still doesn't say anything because it doesn't really come up? Like yeah, Illya mutters to himself in Russian all the time without thinking but most of the time it isn't really addressed to him, being like "Hey, fyi, I can understand that!" would be awkward, also he does kind of like the idea of holding onto this advantage and he's pretty sure Waverly's experiment isn't going to last long anyway. Right?

Cut to like six months later, the three of them are still working together and he's in too deep.

I think that especially at first the most common things for Illya to say in Russian when it comes to Napoleon would be rants and insults LOL. Like that сука in the movie during their little night mission. Napoleon is just waiting for the right insult that he can answer with a great comeback in Russian, for maximum dramatic effect.

Except going forward Illya's rants start going from stuff along in the lines of "what did I do to deserve this" to like. worried mutterings about how he's an idiot who should be more careful and follow the plan for once before he ends up getting himself killed and stuff like that.

And like it's fine, it's not that different from what he actually tells him in English---maybe to his face he leans more on the "We have plan for a reason, FOLLOW IT" (in Napoleon's defense, he is good at improvising and there's usually a plan b, c and d) than on the "I was worried" angle, but still.

He kind of likes hearing him go off like that, it becomes part of the mission-almost-blown-to-hell routine and he is going to hold onto it a little while longer, until he can find a suitable moment to confess his crimes. It's fine, it's not a big deal anyway.

Except he waits a little too long and one time when Napoleon is being a smartass about the fact that his (admittedly a little risky) improvisation went smoothly and saved the day because he's too charming for his own good, Illya just stares at him, shakes his head and goes "you're so lucky I love you"

To which Napoleon is like o___O

Now he has to take the secret to his grave.

[yoshkeii]

𝟼𝚝𝚑 𝚆𝚒𝚜𝚑 | 𝟹𝟻𝟶+ 𝙴𝚟𝚎𝚗𝚝

࿐ character: Megumi Fushiguro, Satoru Gojo

࿐ prompt: 14) Injuries 15) Fistfights/Fights

࿐ type: headcanons (hcs)

࿐ requested by: anon for my 350+ event.

⌦ male!reader (he/him)

⌦ sfw, fluffy n caring parts (somewhere), crush hcs

⌦ tw: fights, injuries, mentions of blood

⌦ both prompts are applied to all characters.

⌦ ‘could I request (from the word prompts) 14 and 15 with Gojo and megumi? male reader hcs if its not too much’

A/N: more gojo content? from me? who knew? no one did. BUT- decided to put the reader as a v tough strong boi <3 we need strong y/n’s in this place pls

𝙶𝚘𝚓𝚘:

→ as a special grade sorcerer similar to Gojo, he really admired you, obviously of course-

→ only ever hearing about a popular, trusted, and strong special grade. he was interested on meeting you, always asking questions about you to the staff who knew or seen you.

→ this man has no boundaries when it comes to the topic of you, and quickly developed a crush once he laid his eyes on you. finally coming back from abroad of an curse infestation, somewhere- which Gojo didn’t bother remembering, he just... stared at you. 

→ fucking looking handsome and tough, and- he can go on. he will.

→ wearing a similar look to the uniform but instead in a more formal, tight fit look. sleeves rolled up to your elbows showing your forearms and the black gloves with [Favorite Color] on the palms. And of course the signature jujutsu high button w/ its swirled crest as a button below your tie.

→ your built was much bigger compared to him, having more broader shoulders and a body composition that could pack a fucking punch.

→ feeling an odd stare, you catch Gojo staring at you. mouth slightly ajar. 

→ raising an eyebrow you spoked, “should probably close your mouth Satoru.” your husky voice made his heart stop a beat, face flushing slightly.

→ he often called you for ‘help’ when he was in ‘trouble’ with some curses, only just to see you beat the fuck out of the curses in the end. easily exorcising them.

→ your e/c eyes met Gojo’s gaze as you blew off the dust from your gloved knuckles.

→ he really really REALLY, loved seeing your technique at work. surprised that your technique mainly involved blunt force and sometimes manipulation of most objects you touch, it had advantages.

→ but in reality, he just watched your punch your opponents and secretly wishing it was him sometimes.

→ Gojo questioned where or why your technique was like that at one point though. and you simply explained that your family taught boxing or some sort of fighting sport.

→ you even claimed you did underground fighting to gain some money as a teenager.

→ he practically swooned for you more after that. having some... imaginations in his mind of his.

→ this man tries to hide the obvious facts of his crush with snarky teases and retorts at you whenever someone brought it up. like sir... its.. its very obvious.

→ everytime you get badly hurt or injured, you still fight even if the pain is overwhelming. enduring the striking pain to win the battle.

→ Gojo once stumbled upon you at the infirmary while being treated by Shoko, the wounds you had were rather bad. but you sat there like nothing happened with just slight winces and ows.

→ ever since learning that fact, he always make sure to keep an eye on you when you both are out on a mission together. or... together in general.

𝙵𝚞𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚐𝚞𝚛𝚘:

→ Fushiguro knew you as the more reckless and clumsy type, and often compared you to Itadori.

→ being both carefree people who just uses hand-to-hand combat as their weapon. he didn’t think much of you. till...

→ you were one of the ones who came to save him from Todou. sending a punch that made gusts of winds, able to knock off a normal person’s balance. but... but that expression on your face he faintly saw, really stuck with him.

→ it was very tensed, serious, and out-right feral. he has never seen you like this. you looked like a beast that could and would kill on command, holding back for a mysterious reason he wish he knew.

→ as you turned to him, crouching infront of his view, the fierce expression your face had earlier quickly softened into the normal y/n he knew. he only just stared at you as you talked to him, which he didn’t pay attention to. only just staring at your face in admiration.

→ Fushiguro realized why your nickname among the 1st years would be ‘Mad-Dog’ or as literally anything fearful. Monster, a beast, a wolf... it goes on.

→ seeing that side of you, awoken what he didn’t think... he had. a fuzzy feeling in his stomach that made his mind wonder about you 24/7, him spacing out fairly often once you were in view, and the slight stutter in his voice gave little clues of his crush on you.

→ denying it a few times as Itadori and Nobara relentlessly teased him about it. he shortly accepted it as he slowly pieced up the clues and signs he gave.

→ flustering up in his room most of the time now.

→ Fushiguro has caught you working out in your own dorm on accident once. hearing slamming noises somewhere, following it, till it lead to your room. knocking on your door, you opened it to stare back him. 

→ “Oh! Hey, Fushiguro.. uh... what brings you here?” you say panting softly.

→ “I heard some noises coming from your room. So I came to check it out..” “What are you doing?”

→ “I’m just working out with my punching bag,” you opened the door a little wider to point at the punching bag in the corner of your room. “it’s a new one since I busted my old one just yesterday.”

→ “..b-busted??”

→ ever since then, he has helped you exercise. holding up gloves as you sent quick jabs. honestly the most intimidating shit he’s done with you. seeing the focused glare made a shiver run up his spine.

→ but often he can’t handle your punches, sometimes tripping onto the floor. which usually ends up with him watching you or lounge in your room.

→ Fushiguro tried not to watch so intently, but he was so mesmerized to see you in action. but the unwelcoming thoughts and details as he watched sweat drip down your face and muscles.

→ you caught him a few times staring while you exercised, resulting in a very flustered Fushiguro as he gazed away quickly with a deepened flush across his cheeks. a chuckle coming from you.

→ at one point you had hit the punching bag so hard it busted (again), you managed to gain few scratches on your knuckles. nonchalantly muttering, “..oh shit, i think i punched to hard-”

→ “what? what happened??” Fushiguro sat up from your bed, before spotting the dripping blood from your hand. “Y/n?! a-are you-?”

→ “Yeah I’m bleedin’ but its not that bad,” you laughed lightly. “mind gettin’ me the first aid on my desk?”

→ and so he did. he was genuinely worried that this wasn’t the first time this happened, but luckily the first time he saw it he convinced you to stop for the day.

→ he’s just worried for ya. if you can be so blunt about a deep wound on your knuckle, he knows for well you are the same for much worse injuries...

[missjanjie]

Prompts + AUs/Tropes

its been a minute but i miss doing these. send me a number and letter, or feel free to reblog for yourself!

“I can’t live without you.”

“Please stop talking, my head hurts enough already.”

“I never wanted it to go this way.”

“Do I mean anything at all to you?”

“I was kinda hoping you’d stay.”

“It’s nice waking up to your face.”

“You should really stop sticking your nose in other people’s business.”

“I knew I loved you the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“You heard all of that?”

“I’m not stupid, I’m just horny.”

“You’re in denial.”

“I can’t believe this is goodbye.”

“Don’t give me that face.”

“How could you let them go?”

“I can’t live without you.”

“You’re not a burden.”

“No, no, I can’t let you go out looking like that.”

“I’m just waiting for disaster to strike.”

“So this was all some fucking game to you?”

“Maybe I don’t give you enough credit.”

“I feel like I’m falling behind.”

“Yeah, this is definitely not my problem.”

“Did I fuck up?”

“I can’t tell if you’re flirting or being mean.”

“I’m just saying we could get a lot of free shit if we pretend we’re getting married.”

“Because I’m in love with you!”

“Make no mistake, they’re mine.”

“I just want someone to care if I come home at night.”

“It’s good to see your face.”

“We thought you died.”

“I don’t have the time to waste on you anymore.”

“I wasn’t staring at your boobs! I mean, I was, but I was trying to be subtle.”

“I hope you’re happy.”

“It isn’t as bad as it sounds, I swear.”

“You have no idea what I’m going through right now.”

“I can still taste you on my tongue.”

“Just hold me tight.”

“You are a beautiful disaster.”

“I hate the phrase ‘love conquers all’… and I hate that it’s true.”

“Pack your bags, we’re leaving.”

“I don’t know what they’re after.”

“Don’t do this while my parents are here.”

“I’m waiting for some kind of miracle, I guess.”

“Meet me on the roof.”

“I honestly love you.”

“This is too dangerous.”

“Show me that you’re mine.”

“I wish we could go back to the way things were.”

“We should be lovers.”

“I haven’t felt this way for the longest time.”

“They have a crush on someone else, why should I waste my time?”

“You weren’t there when I needed you.”

“I’m so inspired by you.”

“What? It’s National Send Nudes Day, you knew I had to participate.”

“I can’t live like this anymore.”

“This isn’t how I wanted to win.”

“I know it’s three and but I couldn’t let you be sad by yourself.”

“What’re you gonna do, spank me?”

“It didn’t kill me, but I kind of wish it did.”

“We can’t keep it.”

“I thought you loved me.”

“Bite me.”

“I didn’t think I would ever believe in love again.”

“You could’ve gotten yourself killed!”

“We’re not leaving you behind.”

A. High School AU B. Song Fic C. Enemies to Lovers D. Royal AU E. Canon Compliant F. College AU G. Fake Dating H. Stripper/Porn Star AU I. Trapped Together J. Vampire AU K. PWP L. Time Period AU M. Bed Sharing N. Flower Shop AU O. Green-Eyed Epiphany P. Tattoo Parlor AU Q. Secret Admirer R. Soulmate AU S. Meet Cute T. Meet Ugly U. Celebrity AU V. Mafia AU W. Hurt/Comfort X. Bakery AU Y. Hospital AU Z. Other (specify)

[kino-alternative]

“ This will be a long one! Also, trying angst, so uhh . . Don't be surprised if it's bad! ” ( Inspired by: The Story Of Evil )

❢◥ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◆ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◤❢

“ The Servant ”

Keywords: Y/N- Your Name, T/N- Twin's Name ( Your twin is a girl )

Notes:

This is a Nagito Komaeda X Reader.

This will obvious have SPOILERS for the game. Specifically, the whole Danganronpa: Goodbye Despair game.

Reader's Gender-Neutral. Also suggest listening to “ Daughter of Evil ” “ Servant of Evil ” and “ No Regrets ”.

0: 𝐁𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 -

Y/N L/N was a part of the Future Foundation, 14th division. While their twin sister, T/N who was the Ultimate Queen ( Originally Princess but a certain blonde already took the title ), was a Remnant of Despair along with the rest of their class.

It pained the twin to see their other being controlled by the strawberry blonde fashionista. Especially since they had to capture her themselves.

After running the program, Y/N decided to enter as a secret agent of the Future Foundation to help the two others when needed. It hurts knowing the truth but they were glad to see everyone before the tragedy struck.

Their dear twin sister was indeed a troublemaker and others even say she's ‘ evil ’ due to her cruel and awful personality, but of course as - not only her twin - her loyal servant ever since they were reunited, Y/N stood by the girl's side.

There was also another that they treasure, Nagito Komaeda,The Ultimate Lucky Student. Yes, even knowing how he is, he managed to make them fall for him. It was interesting really, since T/N isn't really fond of him ( Most of them don't ). But their was something about him that made them feel . . . Loved. Not platonically.

Y/N and their friends, their fellow survivors of the first killing game, had thought everything would go smoothly.

Sadly, that was not the case. That's the reason why I said ‘ first ’ after all. Y/N had failed to protect the Ex-Remnants of Despair from Monokuma's sick game. They could only think of him being the reason the virus entered in the first place.

Three trials. Three blackeneds. Four victims. It was awful. They hated the fact they had to go through another killing game. Now here they are, starving in two fruit-based buildings. Unfortunately, that was not the only motive the despair loving bear had planned.

1: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫.

“ Upuhuhuhu! That's right! T/N is an agent working for me! ” Monokuma announced to the eleven remaining students. Everyone's eyes widen as they all looked at the said girl with shock and anger.

She took a step back, almost stepping on the skirt of her dress as she clicked her tongue and gritted her teeth. “ Seriously!? You peasants believe him!? ” She asked with a glare.

“ How can we not? You're basically . . Evil! ” Kazuichi exclaimed, hiding behind Mechamaru to avoid the girl's glare. Everyone agreed with what he said. T/N was definitely cruel and awful, how did she managed to get her Ultimate anyway?

“ Silence! You shall not call them ‘ peasants ’! ” Sonia ordered with a stern look on her pretty face. The young queen scoffed, crossed her arms and looked away “ Isn't that what we call others below us, your highness? ”

“ I mean, as despairing as it sounds . . Monokuma hasn't lied to us ” Nagito pointed out, to which T/N replied - “ Hush, you hope obsessed freak! ”

But it seems like everyone seemed to believe it's true.

-

“ You asked for me, your majesty? ” Y/N entered the deluxe room of Grape House. There, at the desk, was their twin who's eyes were shining with anger. “ That damned bear . . Those peasants . . ” She began to curse under her breath as she stabbed a certain area on the map.

“ I will make him pay for ratting me out ”

The elder twin sighed and walked up to her, placing a blanket they grabbed from the bed over her shoulders. “ It is getting late, you should rest. Some sleep should give you energy for now ”

T/N whined but listened nonetheless. As soon as the girl plopped onto bed, she was out like a candle light. Y/N smiled softly and kissed her forehead, bidding her goodnight before leaving the room.

“ That devil shall not live to see the light of day . Not after she poisoned us with her thorns ”

-

“ A body has been discovered! ”

“ A body has been discovered! ”

Two. Two victims. One was a destroyed robot and the other was a stabbed with gunshots H/C girl. That's right. The victims were Mechamaru Nidai and T/N L/N.

2.1: 𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐇𝐨𝐩𝐞.

Nagito knew something was off.

The moment he saw his hope, Y/N, he knew that they were hiding something. And that something was indeed shocking. “ Ah, I apologise for not introducing myself earlier . . I'm Y/N L/N, the Ultimate Servant ”

That was a lie.

After completing the final dead room, he got his prize. It was files about them. Not only did he found out that Hajime was talentless and was a reserve course student, but his dear hope, his true love of his life, Y/N was not only talentless, but an agent of the Future Foundation.

He was upset but understood Y/N's reason. But for some reason . . He can't help but feel like he missed something.

2.2: 𝐇𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐭.

After the trial . .

“ That's right! The blackened who killed T/N L/N and destroyed Mechamaru Nidai isss . . . Gundham Tanaka, the Ultimate Breeder! AHAHAHA! ” Monokuma cackled as everyone looked at the breeder, who seemed to be prepared for the up-coming punishment.

Despair was painted on everyone's faces, a few tried to hide it. But one let out the pain that was weighing their down, slamming their hands on their podium which surprised them.

Tears streamed down their face as they asked, “ Why did you choose to murder her!? Why in the brutal way!? ” Their voice cracked from the sobs that came after the question. They knew that the H/C haired servant would be upset, but it was shocking to see them break down so . . Easily.

But . . Come to think of it . . They weren't acting like themselves. They usually back Hajime up with no hesitation but during the trial, they kept their mouth shut. Like they're scared to say something wrong or spill information.

Gundham replied while looking away, “ Mechamaru did not deserve death . . But that daughter who's lord is a devil did. She was a demon and lived in the depths of darkness ” ‘ Y/N ’ 's eyes widen those words, their grip tightening.

“ That's right . . I deserved to die ” Everyone looked at them with confusion as they straighten their posture “ It's my fault they died . . ” Placing a hand on her chest, she exclaimed “ So pin the blame on me! ”

Then it finally hit. This wasn't Y/N . . This was T/N. If that's the case then . .

Nagito lowered his head and whispered, “ Y/N's gone . . ”

-

Knock Knock ** Click.

“ Y/N, you're here! Good news, I have an idea on how to prevent . . Huh? ” T/N turned around to see her twin that was wearing her clothes and their hair down like hairs. They looked identical to her. “ Why are you . . ? ”

They only smiled and gave her their clothes, a letter was placed on top of it. “ I actually have a plan of my own, dear sister ” T/N's eyes widen in sudden realization, “ You don't mean . . I will not allow it! Besides, that damned bear would know! ” She exclaimed, her eyes glistening.

Y/N shook their head and placed the clothes on the bed. After that, they put their hands on her shoulders with a firm yet gentle grip. “ I already took care of that issue ” “ But- ” “ Listen now my dear, you and I will switch and you will be me. It is fine, we're twins and I'll be here to take the strike ”

They wiped away her tears with their thumbs and kissed her forehead, “ They won't know because we look alike ” Y/N stood on the original position their twin was in as T/N hesitantly switched clothes. “ B-But what about Nagito!? Surely, he'll miss you! A-And I'm the devil here! I'm the demon! Not you! ”

Their smile saddens, “ . . . ” They knew how the pale luckster likes to pin the blame on his luck and himself. But they already wrote to him in advance. They hoped it would help him in some way. Y/N truly love the luckster just as much as they love their twin sister. But they live to serve their sister, even if it kills them. Even after knowing everything the other's don't.

Dodging the first question, they replied with closed eyes “ If the devil's your lord as they all curse your name . . Then I am a demon too, for we have the same blood ” As soon as T/N finished dressing, they pulled her outside and ordered “ Now go, don't look back and be free ”

The twin sister hesitates before turning away and acted like they had a normal conversation, holding back the tears as the cameras assumed she was the other. Y/N watched her leave before closing the door, leaving it unlocked and sat on the chair while watching the fire on the candle dance.

“ If the day comes that we are reborn once again, it'll be nice to play with you ” They could hear the footsteps “ I'm sorry for leaving you Nagito . . But until then . . ”

* Creak!

Glaring at the breeder, they asked ( sounding like their twin ) “ How dare you, you pest!? ”

-

Watching the execution was painful, like always. T/N handed the letter to Nagito before leaving the trial room “ . . They wanted you to have this ”

3: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫.

“ My Dearest Nagito,

I am guessing that T/N gave you this after revealing the truth, correct? But, that is not the point.

I know what you're thinking.

You're blaming yourself again, are you not? You blame your luck. You regret letting me get close to you.

But you shouldn't.

Yes, I have broken our promise. And I truly am sorry but I will never regret getting close to you. I'm sorry for leaving you behind so early.

And I know you may think you have nothing to live for but please, live and fight the despair.

That's what you tell me, right?

A daily reminder that you are not useless nor worthless, you are more than that. You're more than just a stepping stone. Don't be afraid to acknowledge that, even if you don't believe it.

Can you do me a favor? If it's alright.

End this killing game for me. I know you know about the files but that's the past. The future is still out there, right? So please, live and end this killing game with the others.

It seems like I'm running out of ink, so let me say this one last time, alright?

I truly and deeply love you, Nagito Komaeda. Please do remember that. Even after what you did, I can not help but love you. So, if the day comes where we are reborn, I'll gladly fall for you all over again.

I'll die with only one regret. And that is, I wasn't able to protect you.

- Signed, Y/N L/N <3 ”

4: 𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐡.

“ Please, wake up ”

Y/N slowly opened their eyes, trying to figure out where they were and what was going on. But as soon as they sat up, they were pulled into a hug. “ Y/N! You're awake! ” “ T/N . . ? What . . ? ” Their gaze then landed on Nagito who stood beside Hajime.

Then it snapped, they hugged back and smiled “ So you did it . . I'm so glad ” They whispered as T/N pulled away and Nagito walked up to them. Tears finally streamed down his cheeks as he held both of their hands and leaned his forehead on theirs. “ You're here . . ”

Y/N kissed his nose, “ Everything's alright, I'm here, you're here, we're here. Safe and sound ”

Everything turned out to be great in the end. T/N slowly warmed up to everyone. They're working with the Future Foundation on Jabberwock Island. And all is good.

Arms wrapped around their waste as the luckster placed his chin on their shoulder, playing with the ring on their finger. With a content sigh, he says “ I love you ”

Yes, everything has it's flaws but nonetheless it was perfect to them.

❢◥ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◆ ▬▬▬▬▬▬ ◤❢

“ I hope you all enjoyed it! Angst isn't really my strong suit but hey, I'll get better at it! ( I was originally going to put a bad ending, but I'll make that someday ) ”

- Sincerely, Mizuki Kioku.