#project eden’s garden ch1

[evesedenramblings]

Something so underrated about Eva Tsunaka is how incredibly egotistical she is. It flies under the radar most of the game, probably because she’s paired with Damon “my talent is better than your talent” Maitsu for most of it, but I would say she’s actually MORE egotistical than Damon is, it’s just easier for us to see Damon’s ego since he’s the protagonist and we can access his inner monologue.

Yes, Damon is definitely egoistic but there’s some logic behind it. Damon has a philosophy of talents needing to be useful, and it’s only when those talents don’t meet his standard that Damon gets an ego. When it’s people like Wolfgang with ‘useful’ talents, or just of use to him in general, Damon tends to demonstrate a lot of respect. He is capable of seeing others as his equal.

Eva, however? She respects nobody but herself, not even Damon. Absolutely nothing is ever her fault, it’s everyone else’s fault because she can’t accept they matched her intelligence, something her ego is rooted in as the Ultimate Mathlete. She “deserves to live”, as though she was the exception to the rules of the Killing Game and was above punishment. She bluntly calls her fellow students and their ideas stupid. When Damon notices the doorknob in the boiler room has been flipped, but only after the fact, Eva remarks that she “would have noticed in the moment”, and she rubs that in too. She needed to assert herself as more intelligent than her only friend. This particular example is crazy too considering Eva changed the doorknob herself! I sure hope she would have noticed it was switched!

So much of Eva’s self worth is rooted in needing to be better than everyone else, and unlike Damon she’s not willing to accept being equals. She has to be better, or else she’s nothing.

[runetallem]

this is how he sounded talking about the calendar

maybe he’d be happier with it if it was Kai on there….

[evesedenramblings]

I’m never letting anybody forget about this interaction it means so much to me

they interacted that's all that matters everything else i refuse to accept

[evesedenramblings]

Getting into Project: Eden’s Garden is funny because the protagonist hates pretty much everyone but also has undeniable chemistry with all of them. Wolfgang? His narratively opposite antagonist with that underlying appeal of “if we weren’t on opposing sides, we could be a power duo” due to their similar talents. Diana? An even more narratively opposite antagonist that he canonically has a soft spot for because she showed him kindness. Eva? The only person he trusted and he said she looked good when she smiled, and just internally gushed about in general.

You think that’s it?? Nope, not even the side characters are safe. Kai? The unexpected option who he becomes roommates with, and who he SHARES THE BED WITH and just so happens to oversleep for the first time in the game when they do?? Desmond, who Damon is so uncharacteristically flustered around it’s not even funny- I don’t think I’ve ever seen Damon give out so many casual compliments about someone.

Genuinely you could make a legit case for almost every student in this game to romance Damon and I’d just be like yeah bro cheers I see it good on ya.

[runetallem]

I know what you are…

[rosebunnys]

happy P:EG CH1 release everyone!! here's a redraw of the first fanart for it I did to celebrate the occasion

[evesedenramblings]

OP bless you for the visualization. Art in its truest form.

he picked him up like a ragdoll...

[violetstrations]

[ID: a tiktok redraw featuring Wolfgang Akire from Project: Eden's Garden from the shoulders up. Captioned "Trying to kill the beetle in my room but suddenly it talks about how I acquired my fathers temper and my mothers hunger for destruction." Wolfgang hovers whilst holding up deoderant, with a shocked expression on his face. The author's watermark is over his shoulder. End ID]

Wolfgang occasionally takes over my mind for brief but intense periods. take this drawing I've had in my head since I finished ch1

original below cut

[ID: the tiktok screenshot the drawing was based on. End ID]

[evesedenramblings]

Despite what Damon Maitsu wants to think, he has been incredibly trusting and kind throughout the Killing Game thus far. His actions contradict a lot of his own inner thoughts. Even though he is often rude he’s also rather kind, and that’s important to recognize since he wants to believe he’s so de-attached from everyone.

I think the first thing that comes to mind is the first trial’s Pathos route, where Damon decides to defend Diana based on his gut feeling despite all the clear evidence- or, trusting Diana’s character to be true over his own deductions. The second thing is when he realizes his trust of Eva is built on nothing. What both of these things have in common is how mad Damon is about it. Damon doesn’t want to defend Diana, he gets incredibly mad at himself when he realizes he’s sympathetic to her crying and wants to trust in her. The same goes for Eva, but his trust is lost instead. Damon gets angry when he realizes the only reason he trusted Eva was because he fell into the “Us vs Them” mentality, and he automatically grouped Eva in with himself, but Eva didn’t do the same thing. At the core of the issue, Damon is mad because without even realizing it, he is a hypocrite. He claims the students shouldn’t be able to so easily trust each other, then went and easily trusted just the same- and chose the worst person to acknowledge he trusted.

I say Damon acknowledges he trusted Eva because I think Damon trusts the other students more than he realizes. He is easily able to engage in Free Time Events with every student, except Grace. The fact there’s no Grace FTE’s, or to be Meta an exception to “hang out with your favourites!” rule, makes it feel in-character that Damon trusts the other students enough with his safety, but not Grace. Also, a lot of what happens in those FTE’s like Jean picking up Damon by his ankles has to mean they’re at least some sort of comfort with each other. The other students do seem comfortable with Damon, even the youngest student Toshiko knows she can call Damon a cutesy name like Mochi- he’s unhappy about it but ultimately does nothing. Ingrid asks him to help with the laundry and he agrees- grumbles about it later to himself but doesn’t actually protest to Ingrid’s face, and does his share. There’s also the fact that Damon doesn’t protest the roommate rule, and then how immediately comfortable he gets with said roommate. He even prefers to sleep in Kai’s room at a certain point, as sleeping alone in his own room makes him too anxious as opposed to sleeping along with someone else. For someone who claims to be untrusting, Damon spends a lot of time with other people one-on-one and in group settings, and being kind to them as well.

The only time I can think Damon doesn’t cooperate with the group is when Eva shows him the Tozu Equation and he says they should keep it secret. However, even then, Damon means *he and Eva* should keep it secret. He still means to work with Eva, as their own private team. He doesn’t go work on it on his own at any point, and asks her about it later if she had made any progress. When she says no, Damon assures her that he hadn’t expected her to with all the ongoing issues. He believes her at face value and doesn’t go to check on it, and was kind to her about the issue.

Still, there is an obvious elephant in the room: Damon is still an outsider. He’s not part of the group, there’s no equal exchange of first. The obvious solution, and one Damon comments on himself multiple times, is that he’s cooperating with them only to gain their trust, *not* because he trusts them. However, I think Damon is lying to himself, or is just unaware of how much trust he puts into his actions. For a comparison, I want us to look at Eva. Eva only spends time individually with Damon, who she “trusts”. Other than that, the only time we see her with others is to gather information or purposefully be seen while plotting her murder. We don’t have much insight on her rooming situation but Diana’s comments imply Eva was often absent from their room. Eva tends to lurk in the boiler room alone, specifically because nobody wants to go down there. She has no interest in her classmates and doesn’t trust any of them, and only takes interest in them when she needs them. Now this could just be a difference of strategy (Eva wanting to gain trust when the time was right, and Damon wanting to gain trust in advance) but frankly, it didn’t work. Damon spent more time cooperating with the class, and yet in the trial they hesitate to believe him over Eva based on his character. The only reason they choose to believe him is because they take a moment to reassess everything Damon has been saying, and draw a logical conclusion. Damon has still gained no real trust from their group, so what was the point of everything he’s done if it amounted to nothing?

Damon, whose situation is extremely close to Eva’s, is willing to share his living space with another person, to the point he shares the bed with them (his idea btw), not even swapping the bed every night. Eva feels more safe alone with her own mind and intelligence, but Damon has always reached out to other people for security. After Tozu threatened him, Damon went to Kai despite his belief Kai might kill him. When Wolfgang turned the group against him, Damon automatically latched onto the one other outcast, Eva without even realizing it. He’d already latched onto her from the moment they awoke in the boiler room together.

I definitely missed some stuff, like how Damon was the only one willing to grab Kai’s ring in the FTE- just say no if you don’t want to do it Damon. It’s going to be important to remember how kind he is in these earlier chapters since that kindness and trust he employed has now been thrown back in his own face and spit on (thanks Eva), so I’m not sure we’re ever going to see Damon be this unintentionally kind again.

[accirax]

Come back for the first installment of Blind Date or Die tomorrow!💕

[xelfless]

i could never become you

[sam-sessington-the-third]

finished p:eg and im absolutely BAWLLING over these two

[melonkittii]

someone please take this danganronpa fangame away from me i can feel kai monteago doing something permanent to my psyche

[evesedenramblings]

WOLFGANG AND HIS SHEEP!!!! ADORABLE!! GREAT WORK OP!!!!!!!

stay pure🤍

[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

so gang....there's this historian...who's only had approximately 21 minutes of screentime...

unhinged rambling over a fictional character under the cut

I have always loved ulysses ever since the prologue came out back in december 2022, but after my recent rewatch in preparation for chapter 1 coming out later this year, my interest in his character has sparked into a full-blown hyperfixation??? it feels like ulysses wilhelm was designed specifically for me I'm going to be so honest. like, there's the surface level being that he's a boyfailure twink and that kind of character always seems to attract me, but everything else about his character from his design, his personality, his voice, the little aspects of him like the fact that him specifically noting down classmate birthdays and him updating a common phrase to sound more modern shows a genuine desire to connect with his class despite his clear social ineptitude, and also just...him having knowledge about the internet enough to know about internet arguments despite disliking computers?? silly ass. I've also like, never really seriously headcannoned a character with a mental disorder before, even ones that I have myself, but I am actually being so serious when I say that ulysses is literally just my inattentive adhd manifested into a person. I have not felt so represented in so long, and its by a character who doesn't even canonically have it, and I think its very special and a testament to how talented the writing crew behind p:eg is that they can make me feel that or anything I'm typing in this post despite, again, this character only being on screen for 21 minutes he is literally just me in every single way possible, actually. we literally even have the same birthday. I'm not a supernatural person, but like..I think me saying that this character was made for me might not be hyperbole after all. ...he's also just so fucking cute. Can I say that?? LOOK at this fucker??

his slightly scruffy hair that looks like he just woke up from one of his naps, his small but silly little smile, his dumb eyebags, his fucking VOICE, his lame as fuck sense of humor, his sprites, his dumbass sleepy noises, the fact that he's the shortest out of all the male characters, his everything?? I want to be his friend and listen to him yap about history, and I also want to make out with him sloppy style. I am sleepy all the time but he is sleepier, which means I can spoon him. I'd imagine his lifestyle of constantly being in his office doesnt really lend itself well to him receiving affection. he is probably very touch-starved... what if he encountered my persona. would he initially think the lack of sleep has finally caused him to hallucinate, considering I doubt you see slutty demons with big wings in real life. when he finally realizes that I am actually there, would he be fascinated at the sight of such a nonhuman creature being right in front of him? a new piece of history he has yet to discover? what if we become best friends. what if we become best boyfriends. my brain is moving at 200 miles an hour and I cannot stop it, I need him so fucking bad. if you have read this far, I'm not sorry and I'm not ashamed for my actions. except if you happen to be doctor pap (ulysses' va), in which case I politely ask you that you forget everything I have said today. thanks for reading

[1moreff-creator]

"eva in particular is fantastic and is my favorite character" clap if you're surprised anyone, FF has a type /joke /lh

A type of character I particularly enjoy? What could possibly make you come to that conclusion?

I mean, look, I'll pick my favorite characters from three different fangans and you'll see they have nothing in-

[Pictured above: Three academically gifted women with related talents, all of which at some point take a role akin to "support" for either the protagonist (DR Despair Time & Project: Eden's Garden) or the cast (Tetro DR Pink) early in the story, although their preferred killing game strategy/lifestyle causes friction with other members of the cast, in particular having one clearly defined ideological rival (Xander, Hiroaki, Wolfgang). They may also be ever so slightly fucked up in several different ways]

... Fuck, I'm predictable.

Spoilers for the fangans mentioned below the cut

Also how are they all the CH1 killer??? How in the actual fuck does that happen??? Can we let one of the nerds live past CH1 please???? For me??? /j /lh