#sei yttd

[sylkiescoat]

[corvidcrowned]

looks up at you so sweetly. 7 and kai?

AH. CRIES

[buttercupdemon]

Hiiii sorry for the inactivity, I've had issues lately!! But I'm still here, and today I bring you: more Satou(s) 🚗

[hell-toast]

Doodles testing funny brush hehe

(realnako was made for @dostyaak )

[exmartialgod]

The house is too quiet. 

Kai sits on the floor of his room, the silence drilling an unpleasant buzzing into his brain. Today of all days, the quiet hurts more than usual. For once, he wishes his mind would conjure an imagined Sei to keep him company.

The stillness of this room he once shared with his brother is far too much for Kai to bear. He has to go somewhere, anywhere else— 

His escape is brought to an abrupt halt the moment he enters the main room. For once, he’s not alone in this suffocating house. 

“...Father!” How long has it been since the two were home at the same time? 

Father doesn’t react to his voice, although truthfully Kai didn’t expect him to. His father has existed for the past three years in a trancelike state, barely aware of anything. Today is a day like any other; Father is blank and emotionless, staring straight ahead.

Kai clears his throat slightly. “Father…?” Still, no acknowledgement. Kai sighs. “Today is—”

“I know what today is.” Father doesn’t look at him. Kai would be lying if he said it didn’t crush him. 

He knows his father resents him. Kai is his greatest disappointment, a failure who cost the life of his beloved, successful eldest son. Kai is utterly useless, an assassin who can’t kill. Sei could kill. Sei never disappointed Father. 

Sei is dead, and dead sons don’t disappoint. They are preserved in perfect, golden memory. Kai is infinitely jealous of his dead brother, and he hates himself for it.

He sighs softly. “Sei is sixteen today.” Father flinches, very slightly, at the name. No one but Kai could have noticed. Or perhaps Sei, had he been alive to see it. “Have you wished him happy birthday yet?” 

“Not yet.” Father is still staring straight ahead. Kai follows his gaze to a blank stretch of wall and sighs a little louder. 

“He still deserves to be celebrated. Even if he’s…” he swallows, “...not here.” 

Father says nothing. He’s always worse on special days, even more absent than his usual, almost dazed state. Although Kai understands better than anyone, it still stings that his father won’t make an effort for his surviving child. 

“I will make a cake,” he says into the silence. “Not tiramisu.”

“He hates tiramisu,” Father contributes finally. 

It doesn’t matter. Sei won’t be eating it. Kai doubts he and his father will do much more than pick at a slice each. It’s a waste of time, food and effort. Kai will make it anyway. 

Father still makes tiramisu, but he rarely eats it. Kai wonders what happens to it. Does he give it away? He can’t think of anyone he would offer it to. After all, Father no longer speaks to any of his friends. 

He doesn’t react as Kai moves about the kitchen, gathering supplies. Although his father is no more than a few feet away, Kai feels utterly alone. 

“Father, could you…?” Kai’s eyes fall on the vanilla extract just out of his reach. He doesn’t expect a response, but even after these past three years, there is a child in him who craves his father’s attention. 

Father pushes it in Kai’s direction robotically. His motions have always seemed inhumanly perfected, but in the years since Sei’s death they have become increasingly soulless. Father himself appears to be hardly more than empty shell. Kai cannot hold it against him; he feels just as hollow.

“Thank you,” Kai says into the silence. It’s been many years since a slip in manners could elicit scolding from the man before him, but he is his father’s son. Formality is ingrained deeply into him. 

Preparing the cake is comforting. Kai can lose himself in the ingredients, just as he did before Sei died. He can pretend his brother isn’t dead, his father is still present, that he isn’t a failed assassin who will never amount to anything or make his family proud. He imagines that he lives a normal life with Sei and Father, that they’re happy, and alive, and—

The once-pleasant ding of the oven shatters the illusion, and Kai becomes aware of how dark it’s become in the kitchen. He edges around Father, who hasn’t moved, to flick the lightswitch on before retrieving the cake. A heavenly smell fills the house, and Kai closes his eyes to picture Sei skidding into the room, battered and sweat-sticky from training, practically high off adrenaline and eager to try the first piece of cake. He opens his eyes again to a spotless kitchen, sight drawn to an empty space where his brother should be. Father is looking in the same direction. Sei’s absence is so palpable that it’s painful, harsher than any training Kai has ever endured. 

Tears drip onto the counter, but not a single one lands on the cake as Kai meticulously frosts it. He is an expert in food preparation, and an expert in grief. He cooks and he cries. Sometimes it feels that’s all he does. 

He smiles shakily at his handiwork once he’s finished. It’s perfect. Sei will never see it. 

Father’s gaze drifts to the cake silently. Kai has long since stopped hoping for praise. He cuts two slices, hesitates, cuts a third. It would feel wrong not to. 

Father says nothing, as usual. He used to talk to them in the evenings after training. Sei always pestered him with questions. Kai doesn’t know how to speak to Father anymore. 

He picks up his slice of cake, places it on the table. Father follows him, taking a seat on the opposite side of the table. Neither have the heart to move the third slice, though they both keep glancing at Sei’s empty chair. 

Tears are spilling rapidly down Kai’s face as he smiles at the cake. “Happy birthday, Sei.” 

[eveningrainstorm]

People often talk about Rio Ranger as if he's the doll version of Sei but what I find super fascinating is that he isn't, not in the same way Fake Reko or the Dummies are replications of their human counterparts.

Ranger resembles Sei on a surface level — same physical appearance, just an unclear amount older; same way of speaking. But he is unmistakably different. Ranger is an incomplete being, missing his positive emotions, but even the true Ranger is Rio Laizer rather than Sei, because there's still something different.

Rio Ranger is, fundamentally, inhuman and yet desperate to be human. He was created to be jealous of humanity and despite his hatred for them, humanity is what he is always striving for. But it is something that he doesn't possess, and is forced to steal instead. He takes clothes from the dead and uses drawings on cards to feign emotion; he is the Dress-Up Doll, Rearranger, not possessor of anything of his own.

While the other dolls based on humans in the game have identity issues based on their personhood being defined by someone else, being merely a copy of another person, Ranger is not even allowed Sei's identity to base himself on — it's very likely he doesn't even know who Sei was. He does not have Sei's clothes — nondescript and tied to Asunaro as they are — and he does not have the capacity for expressing emotion that Sei had.

When comparing Ranger and Sei in terms of personality, differences are obvious. There are similarities, naturally — besides the abrasive way of speaking, there's the jealousy and desire for validation. But in Ranger, these are present to an extreme — they're all he has. (And, ironically, this is what Gashu claims to believe makes him so human, even when Ranger's inhumanity comes through most clearly in this lack of anything else.)

In Sei, on the other hand, these traits are tempered by logic, to put things in YTTD's beloved logic vs. emotion dichotomy. Despite his outwardly emotional nature, from what we see of him he appears realistic and focused on survival in a way that Kai isn't. He's aggressive and overly casual about killing people, but he doesn't express the glee at violence that Ranger does, only a fierce desire to prove himself and survive. Sei is jealous of Kai and desires Gashu's affection, but also has an understanding of the situation he's in that both Kai and Ranger lack — he can tell that Gashu doesn't care about him as much as he does Kai, and recognizes that the way Gashu treats both of them is wrong. Ranger believes Gashu truly loves him, a fact proven blatantly false by his eventual demise at Gashu's hands. Ironically, this blindness is more similar to Kai as we see him in his minisode, rather than Sei.

Of course, this understanding isn't simply a part of Sei's basic nature, but rather the fact that unlike Kai and Ranger, he has past experience to go on. Sei wasn't born into the Satou family — though his exact origins are unclear, based on his grief for his birth father and how he talks about Asunaro ("all this shady organization crap"), it's possible he wasn't even born into Asunaro at all. Before being sent to Gashu, he had his own father, one who we don't know anything about but whom he apparently loved. He doesn't accept Gashu's treatment of him and Kai the way Kai does because he has known a different father and a different way of life. This doesn't free him from Asunaro's influence — he still accepts the role of assassin they give him and resigns himself to becoming a killer. What choice does he have, after all? But he carries no illusions about Asunaro or his role in it. He knows that the training is cruel, that he is viewed only as a tool, that Asunaro is wrong even if they are also not worth resisting.

This is a major part of why Ranger isn't Sei, why he cannot be; because Asunaro is all Ranger knows. They are his creators, who he was literally built to serve. In Ranger's mind, he is not only Gashu's son and heir, but his creation, his masterpiece. And of course he wouldn't have been created with Sei's memories — why take that risk? Why give him any sort of knowledge of a life outside Asunaro or reason to be disloyal to them?

Ranger is not Sei — so why model Ranger after him? Because Ranger is the idea of Sei, what Sei was meant to be: a counterpart to Kai, a rival, a second choice. Gashu preferred Kai, once; Kai won out over Sei. But Kai has proven himself a failure and betrayed Asunaro, leaving Gashu with no choice but turn once more to Kai's long-dead competition. Ranger is, like Sei, the opposite of Kai, temperamental and vulgar while Kai is stoic and polite, and perhaps more importantly, capable of murder while Kai steadfastly is not.

And yet Ranger isn't Sei. Sei was jealous of those — specifically Kai — he saw as superior or at least as being treated as such; Ranger is this idea taken to its natural conclusion. Sei had lost everything he had outside of Asunaro; Ranger never had anything else to begin with. Sei was a human; Ranger will never be, doomed to forever long otherwise. Ranger is Sei only in the ways Sei was useful — desperate for recognition, willing to kill, a perfect rival to Kai — but something entirely different, an inhuman machine, in all the ways Sei was a liability.

Sei was human, and he knew that he deserved to have that fact respected. Ranger isn't human and gets only the wanting, desperate to be as good as a human even humanity itself is unattainable. Of course, it isn't being a doll that is actually Ranger's problem — it's Asunaro, who view humans and dolls alike as disposable. Sei's humanity didn't make him any less of a tool as far as Asunaro was concerned, it only made him more difficult to control. All Sei wanted was to be seen as an equal to Kai, a person worthy of respect — and this is what he gets, in the end: his face and voice used as a base for one of Asunaro's weapons, while his true identity and personhood remains forgotten.

Ranger has nothing to hold him back from doing his duty for Asunaro, nor does he have anything to hold onto outside of it. In that sense, Ranger is an ideal asset for Asunaro — at least until the very jealousy and hatred Gashu programmed into him goes too far, and he is, once again, deemed a failure. Ironically, Gashu shoots Ranger for attempting to kill a participant, when willingness to kill was perhaps the one true advantage Sei had over Kai.

In the end, Ranger is offered no more humanity in his death than Sei is — they are both merely pawns of Asunaro, set to die at its whims. But while Sei dies in the arms of his brother, receiving one final act of kindness as Kai refuses to kill him, Ranger has no one in either of his deaths but his creators: in his death as Rio Laizer the dubious kindness of Tia Safalin, making his final moments full of agonizing guilt, and of course in his first death, as Rio Ranger, nothing but Gashu's coldness, the bullet in his head a sort of culmination to the favoritism Sei found weighed against him, and a demonstration of just how far Gashu has come from the father who once genuinely cared for Sei. Sei was human, Ranger was not, but as far as Asunaro is concerned, they are exactly the same: tools, easily thrown away as soon as they stop being useful.

[your-local-chaotic-cryptid]

I love rp servers because I get stuff like this

It’s a lot of Daisuke, the person is a bit odd

[key-rhymee]

Charlie and Sei

[1emon-ice]

CW, mild flash! Kai minisode spoilers!

Both of them!

[daily-yttd-something]

Day 150: what the fuck?

[doonalli]

Hinako, Sei and The Effects of Asu-Naro

So hopefully with my previous analysis I’ve been able to convince you of Hinako’s character that was all already been there in the base game. If you haven't read it, you should as this is essentially a part 2 that which I couldn't fit in because of the image limit on Tumblr. Generally I've avoided talking about content from the past episodes because I want to make the point that the dummies’ characters have all been there from the start, but I do want to talk about it here a bit more just to add a little more and further prove the points I made.

In the last analysis I said Kai’s character is one that relates most to Hinako, but I LIED!!! I AM A LIAR!!! There is one character who parallels a lot more closely to Hinako, that being Sei from Kai’s past episode. Like Hinako he was raised in Asunaro as a child, and like Hinako he was given a small taste of affection before being killed off anyways. And both their mindsets are reflective of this too.

Both talking about being used and being "pawn", a specific word choice that only shows up 3 times throughout the whole game, being here and during Keiji's discussion about Kai, all related to people from Asu-naro.

Sei also mentions being a tool, and with that context Sara’s claim that she doesn’t think of the dummies as tools holds a lot more meaning

And to add to one of the major points in my analysis, being the affection Hinako doesn't seem to get, the lack of affection Asu-naro shows is something directly called out during the minisode.

Asu-naro's mindset of “value” which Hinako follows closely is shown through Sei yet again when he says,

And if that wasn’t enough, their humanity is called into question just the same as how the dummies were in 3-1, being treated as gimmicks.

In a way, the way Sei was brought in as a rival to bring Kai up also mirrors the way Hinako was an agent placed into the dummies assumedly to push the death game forward (as she claims Mai may have done, which could be seen as projection)

The parallels are clear between Sei and Hinako, and these connections continue onto the doll Rio Ranger as well.

Obviously Rio watched as the real Hinako died, beating her corpse out of jealousy upon realising she didn’t value her life, and specifically refusing to wear any clothes from her corpse.

Meanwhile our pink haired Hinako obviously did wear her clothes.

Already this puts some connection between them, but Rio also backs up the connection between affection and humanity with his death.

And Gashu’s denial of this (along with the Asunaro executive in the Past Episode) shows that the lack of humanity through affection in Asu-naro is a consistent thing, especially in the younger members. 

Considering all that the fact Hinako was finally able to find that affection means even more, and the fact that she was able to break out of this bubble for a moment, only to be dragged back in just adds to her tragedy, especially since we’ve seen Kai be able to escape Asu-naro’s grasps even in his final moments. The fact Hinako was denied that by Midori even after coming so far shows the dark core of Asu-naro at full force and tells us so much about Hinako herself to be able to grow from there.

[sylkiescoat]

Kai minisode spoilers under cut

He makes me so pained and ugghh. What’s the painful and relatable this-person-is-a-part-of-me equivalent of a comfort character. He’s like a weird cat or something

[gashu-satou-daily]

Day 5:

A family photo. Happy father's day to the worst one out there!

(part of a series! maybe)

[buttercupdemon]

KAI MINI EPISODE SPOILERS

Currently thinking about the fact that Kai only gets violent towards Miley after she starts mocking Kanna.

After she deliberately made her remember her sister's death.

Toying with Kanna's survivor guilt and blaming it on her.

After her sibling died right in front of her.

So I'm thinking...considering the parallels, it makes sense that this was the thing that triggered Kai's response. Kai understands. He really does.

[kaisatouofeachday]

Kai sitting and watching the clouds go by as it rains somewhere off in the distance.

reminiscing.

[exmartialgod]

Something I find so interesting is that, at least in the short moments we see, Rio Laizer is even farther from Sei Satou than Rio Ranger was. So making Ranger “human” did not equal the human he was based on.

Sei and Laizer have similar emotional capacity, but their life experience is so wildly different that they are nowhere near the same person. Giving Ranger his full emotions didn’t bring back Sei, it created an entire new version because, without his human memories and experiences, he cannot ever return to being Sei Satou.