#something with probability seeing how accurate it is with percentages idk man

[thatoneluckybee]

believe whatever you want to and no offense to anyone but astrology is so funny to me tf you mean my weakness is my kidneys?

[gundhams-pandemonium]

Okay, Yasuhiro Hagakure hc/anaylsis/rant:

[PS: I belive in UDG we get more insight of his past and his Mom, however I've not played and I wish to remain as spoiler free as possible]

Starting off that I have the opinion he 100% deserved to be a survivor. Yes, others deserved development But that can be said for almost every single person in the DR game. Also, he did deserve development too. Anyhow-

I'm stating something controversial here; Hiro was smart, particularly a smart buisness/slight con man. You may be thinking I'm joking, but I'm not. I'm very serious

One of his most famous lines is his "I'm accurate [about his predictions] 30%, 100% of the time" This line is seen as silly since us as players will read this, reread this, and see how ridiculous it sounds. However, this statement gets peoples attention But also if saying it quickly/trying to grab someone attention they might not even catch the meaning. Which is big why I said "Business/slight con man" Because that's an opening line that when first heard doesnt sound too bad.

This will cause people to be intrigued by his prediction skill even if it is only ""slightly above average""*. And he says it in such a convoluted way is not to be dumb, but to be smart. 30% 100% of the time are two percentages that when put together will sound reasonable yet intriguing enough to give him a chance.

*""above average"" because Hiro CAN predict the future. He has actual visions [he has one in the Future Arc] so he's not fully a lucky con man.

He even roped Makoto in a few predictions*, Giving him a little bit here and there. Which from a buisness standpoint makes sense, Once you start talking you can really draw someone into what your saying.

*the reason we dont see this as him being smart in these situations is because were in a killing game his actions of trying to get us to pay for his lighthearted predictions seems frivolous. It seems that even in being friendly that he doesnt turn off his buisness mode. Which knowing that he's lived in poverty/always had to worry about money makes sense; and again, is a S m a r t thing.

Also, Hiro has no trouble talking to people, and comes across as nom threatening which really helps when trying to sell services. If someone thinks your creepy/aggressive/etc they want support your buisness, however Hiro comes across as an average, chill, dude. Someone you might see at your local cafe, or a neighbor. Many people point to his non threatening, chill attitude as dumbness even though with his line of work it makes sense he has it. If he was in another "normal" profession he'd probably be beat at being a salesman.

On to how him being useless in class trials shouldn't undermine his intelligence. A big one: These Are Murder Cases. These are your average lil mysterious of "Oopzie Woopzie someone broke the Coffee pot" There is a dead person. Not only that but if they point the finger at the wrong person then they all die. So if you fundamentally dont know what to say/dont have much to contribute then not doing so again is a smart course of action. And he still offers up suggestions, he still tries. Which brings me to a few other points

He is very very clearly disturbed by the dead bodies, and understandably so. Even when they were strangers, when he witnessed "Junko's death" and realized that this wasnt an elaborate prank* he panicked. If I rember correctly he either stayed in the gym, and panicked in the corner unable to do more then pray that he'd be safe Or he was in the doors right outside the gym. He was scared, and that doesn't make him less intelligent. His reactions were very normal, especially since despite being in a buisness/trying to get money/etc he tries to be a good person. It makes sense, if he stayed away from the bodies, that he wouldn't be able to add any new information. It takes a lot to investigate a corpse and, again, he shouldn't be looked down on for it.

*some people argue that he's stupid because he didn't realize after Sayaka's death. However, it's not to far fetched to say he hadn't seen Sayaka's body and therefore didnt belive she'd died/believed this was still part of the welcoming ceremony. Could argue naive and optimistic, But being suddenly put in a killing game is a very farfetched thing into he first place.

I'd end there, But I know people dont just think he's dumb because he doesn't contribute too much to the trials. Otherwise another character would be accused way more. That character even helps lead us to the icing on the cake of "why people think Hiro's stupid".

The character in question; Kyotaka Ishumaru. Most of what he says in the trial is either obvious or unhelpful. Does this make Taka less smart? Of course not! But there are several differnt kind of smarts, and neither Taka nor Hiro have "trial smarts".

This brings me to my final point: While Hiro is not book smart either that still doesn't mean he isnt smart. I get so frustrated when people use smart only to mean book smart, especially since I can go on with how much school systems screw over students/neordivergent people/people with less money/etc But I won't for the sake that would be a long non Danganronpa related several paragraph rant.

In short: Yasuhiro is smart in his buisness/and the techniques he uses. He may not strictly be book smart, nor in trial, yet he is not a "complete moron" and "didn't deserve to survive" [Idk how many times I've seen that last point...]

(Thank you for reading this, and please reblog if you found it interesting!)

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

So on that note, I’d love to talk about something else that @kittenfair​ brought up in her post (at the risk of enraging Cloud Strife fans everywhere, lolll no biggie a super small fandom I’m sure) but I didn’t want to derail that thread because this is quite a tangential thought—

Why is that relevant? A quick googling has informed me that the average heights of men in Japan (between 2004-2013) is 5′7 - I’m gonna guess it was probably around that or shorter back in ‘97. This is, not coincidentally, a familiar number - it’s how tall the OG says Cloud, our protagonist, is. So for the original team creating this game, the protag is average height, your “relatable” everyman. Now, if they wanted to make the villain tower over him? 6′1 isn’t bad at all! In fact, that’s a solid seven inches taller. Huge gap. Saying Sephiroth is 6′1 establishes him way taller than Cloud.

For some reason it’s a little harder to google up the average male height of the total human population without it being broken down into specific regions, but this webpage has some nice infographics that make their (albeit somewhat edited down) data a bit easier to visualize. Let’s look specifically at this one:

From the countries they selected, 5′4.75″ is the lower boundary and 5′11.25″ is the upper boundary, making the mean 5′8″ and the median of this somewhat arbitrary selection 5′9.25″. Wikipedia’s more complete chart has 5′2″ as the lower boundary in Indonesia with 6′1″ as the upper boundary in the Dinaric Alps, making the worldwide mean height for men 5′7.5″. (You can’t really find an accurate median or average from this data.)

You can maybe see where I’m going with this. Cloud is not actually a shrimp. This is a post about body image and our skewed perception of it.

Even more damnably, I’d like to call attention to Livestrong’s (still somewhat arbitrary) selection of countries, ordered by height rather than alphabetically as they have done:

India: 5 feet 4.75 inches China: 5 feet 5.75 inches Mexico: 5 feet 5.75 inches Japan: 5 feet 7.25 inches Brazil: 5 feet 8.25 inches Australia: 5 feet 8.75 inches Canada: 5 feet 9 inches Russia: 5 feet 9.25 inches France: 5 feet 9.25 inches Italy: 5 feet 9.25 inches America: 5 feet 9.5 inches The UK: 5 feet 9.75 inches Spain: 5 feet 10 inches Greece: 5 feet 10.25 inches Germany: 5 feet 11.25 inches

I’ve highlighted two countries on this list, and they are the US and Japan. The US is highlighted because Livestrong is an American website and specifically addresses their article to American audiences, but also because the US tends to influence a lot of worldwide culture, and I think especially in our fandom on Tumblr, which is also a US-based website. But I've highlighted Japan because, of course, that’s where the source material we’re discussing (Cloud Strife’s height) comes from.

Out of this list, is there anything you might notice about places where the average height is lower than 5′7″ and places where the average height is higher than 5′7″? Because I am noticing a very eurocentric trend.

Here are some other countries with the smallest average male heights from Wikipedia’s list:

Bolivia: 5′3″ rural India: 5′3″ Vietnam: 5′4″ Nepal: 5′4″ Malaysia: 5′4.5″ Sri Lanka: 5′4.5″ Nigeria: 5′4.5″ India: 5′4.5″ Peru: 5′4.5″ Bahrain: 5′5″ Baghdad, Iraq: 5′5″ North Korea: 5′5″

Here are some of the countries with the tallest average male heights (they have multiple entries so I’m not going to list specific heights, but these are all in the 5′11″–6′0″ range):

Netherlands Sweden Denmark Norway Germany Iceland Serbia

So, when we say that 5′7″ is short, could it possibly be that what we’re saying is that 5′7″ is short for white people??

Now, granted, Cloud is arguably white despite coming from a Japanese game. Then again, he is arguably Japanese because Japanese character designers have a habit of creating visually Caucasian characters who we simply have to accept are Japanese/Asian “Because They Say So.” But he’s mostly perceived as white, I think, which might be why nearly everyone looks at him and his height and goes, “omg, he’s so short??”

Except...even among white people, he’s not all that short. If you consider that the average men in the US and UK are around 5′9″–5′10″, and the average men in Australia and Canada are around 5′8–5′9″, 5′7″ is only an inch shorter than that. (And I have chosen these four countries because stats say that’s where the highest percentage of my followers are from, with the overwhelming majority being US-based.) And idk about you guys but even if the difference of an inch is statistically significant, on an individual basis I never stand next to someone an inch or two shorter than me and go “wow wtf you’re so much shorter than I am.”

But...did you know that the average male heights in these countries was even that short? I live in the US and I usually observe people anecdotally marking the distinction between “short guys” and “tall guys” around 6′0″, which is a laughably unrealistic “goal” IMO. There’s also a reblog meme that goes around the Tumblr RP community now and then significantly proclaiming “reblog if your muse is shorter than 6′0″!” like that’s some kind of distinctive feature even though most humans are under 6′0″.

So where do we get these unrealistic standards from?

“The Average Height of a Model”

According to industry standards, fashion models are preferably tall but not too tall. Elite, a top modeling agency, specifies height requirements on its website. Women must be between 5 feet 8 inches and 5 feet 11 inches tall. Men must be between 5 feet 11 inches and 6 feet 3 inches. Models who want to enter the Ford Supermodel of the Year Search, should be at least 5 feet 8 inches.

I used to work in a department store, and specifically for a while I sold ladies’ clothing in the “special sizes” department: “Petites” and “Women’s.” (That’s code for “short” and “fat,” which by the way are separate distinctions and there are in fact some clothing sizes that are both W and P, although good luck finding even W or P in most stores.) The technical definition of a “petite” woman, in US clothing sizes, is a woman under 5′3″.

According to Wikipedia, the average US woman is 5′3.5″.

But the average fashion model? Is 5′9.5″. And how many women do you hear in the 5′3″–5′5″ range bemoaning how “short” they are? I am 5′1.5″ and I can tell you I hear a lot, because it never slips by me unnoticed because I need to catch my eyes before they roll out of my head and you tend not to miss that.

Around here at least, men are less likely to be caught complaining about their supposed physical deficiencies than women because it’s considered unmanly to do so, but if you listen long enough and hard enough and gain the confidence of enough men under 6′0″, you might just hear a recurring insecurity expressed about the failure to reach that height and about consequently “being short.” That’s not altogether unwarranted, because, disgustingly enough, more often than I hear men expressing a preoccupation with being 6′0″ or not, I hear it from women who say they won’t even consider dating a man under 6′0″.

This is significant because of the next thing I’m going to bring up, which is the part that is going to make the Cloud Strife fandom v angry with me. 😂

Why is Cloud infantilized so much for being “short”??

Unlike the other questions I’ve posed here, I’m not asking this to set you up because I have a proposed answer ready. I am honestly baffled and a little disturbed by this. If it isn’t right to sexualize Tifa because her breasts are large (and it’s not), then why is it acceptable to treat Cloud like a cute little baby child almost precisely because he’s the shortest man in the cast? And more importantly, how does that make actual men who are 5′7″ or shorter feel? (You can come at me about “male fragility” but I hold that all humans have feelings that are worth considering even if they fall into privileged groups.) I can tell you as a woman under 5′2″ that I am sick to death of being infantilized for it, and that’s while falling into a demographic which is supposed to enjoy being thought of as “cuter” or whatever. I don’t, btw, but at least I’m not openly derided and thought of as “less of a [my gender identity here]” than I would be if I were a short man (ooo, there’s some intersectionality we never talk about).

So, a proposition for your consideration: If you tend to associate Cloud with being cute and diminutive, maybe pause and ask yourself if these feelings are influenced by his height and culturally instilled notions of shorter men being thought of as less manly, and if these assumptions do not warrant being challenged. It’s no less than I would ask anyone to do of assumptions about Tifa being hypersexual possibly having anything to do with the size of her breasts.

I welcome respectful discussion, but please note if I feel your contribution is more about arguing with me than about actually making a thoughtful contribution to the topic, I will reply on my personal blog @ravys-ravings rather than trouble my followers with unproductive bickering.