#sorry if the last part comes off as humblebragging but just. let me tell you. i AM flattered but it feels very strange when i dont feel lik

[satsuha]

as much as i can rag on localizations sometimes, i think it's important to differentiate me nitpicking the objective quality of a localization and simply the intent behind it... translating is extremely subjective and nuanced in a way that i don't think any monolinguals (or even people who haven't attempted translating themselves) can understand and two competent translators can end up with completely different results that are both functional localizations.

i also understand that a lot of localized works are simply impossible to "live up to my standards" because i don't think localization teams have the time to make sure every line is perfect, which is fine! i'm just an insane fan so i enjoy picking apart every single line, that's all

and i also can't agree with the idea that a proper localization adds nothing to a work if you can understand the source material, especially in a world where social media allows us to connect with fans who experienced it in so many different languages. each language is able to add nuances and portray things differently that can be really interesting sometimes! (see: the use of iambic pentameter in live a live, or something as simple as partitio's yeehaw-ing in english)

also as someone who has dabbled in amateur translations, i really feel for localizers because i can't tell you how many times i've wracked my brain on how to write a simple sentence or just resort to using a translator's note (which localizers often don't have the liberty of doing, especially in games) and it isn't always flattering when someone compares my work favourably against an official localization. it's really just a matter of taste most of the time...!

tl;dr localization is really, really hard and when i nitpick it's often because a version is at odds with my personal interpretations of a scene or character

[memento-mariii]

That last post I reblogged reminds me of the first time I ever experienced misogyny. Or as I like to call it, ~Baby's First Taste of Misogyny~

You see, until then, I was really lucky. I was never catcalled or sexually harassed, and my parents never made me feel that the most important thing about me was my looks. In fact, since I was one of those kids with ADD whose neurodivergence manifested as something that could be miscontrued as brilliance, I think they were convinced that I was going to up to find the Cure for Cancer(TM), or become a SuperLawyer(TM), or something. (Sorry for being a disappointment, Mom & Dad! Love ya!)

I was so successfully shielded from sexism until then, to the point that I used to be one of those girls who think that feminism is a little silly. After all, haven't we already achieved equality? Isn't sexism a thing in the past? (Spoiler alert: no we haven't and no it isn't. Sadly.)

Fast forward to first year of high school. Or maybe it was third year of middle school? As a teen, I have been to a lot of science programs, to the point I can't exactly remember which was which, so I can't pinpoint the exact time. But I do remember hating Twilight back then-I vividly remember reading a twihate blog on livejournal on the bus to the SNU-so it must be when Twilight was still popular, or at least when it was still relevant.

So, late middle school or early high school: since I was something of a teacher's pet, and a straight-up-A student to boot(this is not a humblebrag; me being excellent at high school has zero bearing on the clusterfuck that is my life now; I guess I peaked at high school), my science teacher offered me a chance to go to Seoul National University's science outreach program. I use the term "outreach program" loosely- the program taught us nothing about science, it was more of a "come and get to know our school, so more of you'll enroll and we'd have more tuition to build more unnecessary buildings with" kind of deal. (I'm sure there's a word for that in English, but I'm not a native speaker and nothing comes to mind, so I'll keep on referring it as an outreach program)

Nevertheless, I was STOKED. In case you don't know, Seoul National University is one of the best, if not the best school in South Korea. It also happened to be my dream college.

So, on that fateful day, I, accompanied by handful of other students from our school's science club, show up to SNU and are joined by similar students from other schools. They lead us to a boring white room with a beam projector in it. Then a guy, in his late-thirties or so, comes in and talks about the school, what kind of stuff they teach, how natural sciences are awesome and you shouldn't ever think about going to engineering school(if it wasn't obvious, the outreach program was directed by SNU's natural sciences department and not the whole school, har har), et cetra. I'll call this guy the Speaker, because to this day I have no idea if that dude was supposed to be a professor, a tutor, a faculty member, or some rando that happened to work in the department.

Soon, the Speaker guy is done with his speaking, and he asks if anyone has any questions. Two or so dudes raise their hands, and he picks one and answers his question. Then he says that this time, he'll take a question from one of the girls. None of us raise our hands-I don't know why, maybe they were busy taking notes? I, for one, had tons of questions I was dying to ask, but was to shy to actually raise my hands, so maybe they too were shy?-whatever it was, it wasn't because of plain disinterest, because remember: those girls wanted to come. They were handpicked by their teachers as students most likely to be interested in the outreach program. All of them were members of their school's science clubs. And remember!!! the guys weren't that different either!!! only two of the guys had raised their hands, so that's only two people less!!!

So imagine my surprise, when out of the blue, OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE, this idiot opens his gapehole and says---

"솔직히 여학생들은 이런것보다 솥뚜껑 운전이 더 편하죠, 안그래요?"

What he said is a misogynistic Korean slang, so it's hard for me to translate exactly, but the gist of it goes like this.

"Honestly girls would be better off staying in the kitchen and making and sandwiches than doing something like this(as in, studying STEM) am I right?"

I am shocked. I am flabbergasted. Remember, this guy's job is to leave a good impression of the school to the students so that they'd want to return there when they graduate. But this idiot, this absolute buffoon, comes up and invokes the Korean equivalent of the tired phrase, "make me a sandwich"! This is such a monumentally stupid move on his part, to this day I have no idea what he was thinking. Again, his job was to leave a good impression of the school! What was he trying to achieve with such a jab? Doesn't the school have any sort of sensitivity program? I'd assume he could get in huge trouble if any of the students reported his behaviour to the administration! He had nothing to gain, and everything to lose from saying such a thing! What was he thinking? It makes no logistical sense. If it wasn't my first-hand experience, and I heard this from somebody else, I'd think they were bullshitting me. Sometimes even I wonder if it was just a fever dream. It's that stupid! It makes! no! sense!

The students aren't exactly enraged, but we're not laughing along either. If anything, we're confusedly sharing awkward glances with each other. And because men like this are astronomically bad at getting a clue, the idiot prattles on:

"I feel bad for you girls. You don't actually want to be here, but your parents are forcing you to do it because they are too conceited."

Conceited for what? Supporting and encouraging their daughter's passion for science? For thinking that their daughters were good enough to be equal to their male colleagues in STEM? For thinking that their daughters could ever achieve anything more than "staying in the kitchen and making sandwiches"? Who is the one that's being conceited here? And motherfucker, how dare you insult my parents like that?

The atmosphere is getting tangibly awkard now. The discomfort is real. And the speaker, fool that he is, finally catches on. He abruptly and clumsily changes the subject, and luckily for everyone, it's time for restroom breaks not long after that.

I didn't need to go to the bathroom, not really, but I go anyway to lock myself in the stalls and gather my thoughts for a bit. After the bathroom break is over, it's time for another speaker to speak, so that awful speaker has already left the room(thank God!). The rest of the day goes by in a blur, and I don't have much memory of it.

A disclaimer: after that incident, I was invited to a lot of different science outreach programs, some of it manned by the Seoul National University, and all of them were really educational and all around delightful. I have nothing but fond memories of them. In fact, I can only think of one instant when a university-led science program wasn't fun, and that's the incident I have detailed above. So I won't call SNU itself misogynistic, just that the first of their outreach program I went to was....weird. They didn't even teach science(all of the other outreach programs I went to taught ar least some science), it didn't look like it was sanctioned by the whole school, only the natural sciences department, and there were like kids from only a handful of schools(all the other outreach programs I went to had kids from at least tens of schools). So.... I don't really know what happened, behind the scenes.

Despite all that, SNU continued to be my dream university.

Even though I now had a newfound anxiety about never being seen as an equal by my male peers, I continued to love science and ended up majoring in Chemical Engineering. (I didn't end up going to the SNU though, but not for lack of trying. The school I go to is pretty rad too, but not as rad as SNU.)

I wish I could tell you what happened to the sexist speaker, but I honestly have no idea. But I hope he got fired. I can say only one kind thing about that guy, and it's that he made me realize that sexism and misogyny are alive and well in this day and age, which led to me becoming a feminist.

So, thank you for that, Mr. Speaker from my memories. Let's not meet again.

[ryouverua]

Trial 6 -  Oh, I am one yet many (5)

The above inspirational picture was taken seconds before disaster.

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

Tsumugi is not the one-trick pony we thought she was ABORT MISSION, ABORT MISSION!!!!

NO YOU AIN’T! NO YOU AIN’T I DID NOT SIGN UP TO BE HAJIMEMED, NO SIR I DID NOT!

i mentioned it during the text hellstorm I unleashed when I was mid-playthrough but the way Shuichi says ‘cosplaying’ here is ADORABLE. I love his VA she is so good -

also

oh no

oh no

o h      n o

I can’t just... express how deeply that feeling of ‘oh no’ pervaded my being. My soul.

“THIS IS JUST COSPLAY“ SHE SAYS - AND GOD, THE MUSIC, THE MUSIC IS SO WACKY LIKE THESE ARE JUST SOME NORMAL FTE ANTICS -

wait no this is the ‘let’s start the killing game music’ -

ah that’s why I’m lowkey terrified right now

W-What in the world are those white smears across Hagakure’s eyes??? And oh god the first game too???

WHAT THE HELL TSUMUGI YOU’VE REALLY BEEN HOLDING OUT ON US TELL ME HOW YOU’RE DOING THIS I-I mean oh no, how dare you, this is so awful...

SHE’S TAKEN FULL OWNERSHIP OF JUNKO!PERSONA

AJSLKDF

TSUMUGI

HOLY SHIT

TSUMUGI

IS THIS YOUR FINAL FORM

ironically this got me thinking ‘this would be a really cool cosplay + prop’ once I got over the sheer terror of the situation and I starting thinking, oh, wouldn’t it be cool if you even had a sort of pinwheel mechanism (with the main body of it being hidden by her long hair) that rotated all of these pieces, and have you ever realized that there is a small piece of you that is the monster

also I just realized... she kept putting her glasses on as Junko. But I’m assuming she won’t ever wear them as Hajime. So it’s true - the moment she actually took off her glasses, we really did get to see her final form..

IS THAT KOMAEDA’S HAIR

ALL OF THESE THINGS, I RECOGNIZE ALL OF THEM OMG

This............ this is terrible, terrifying, and also really, really good

don’t say you’re jealous don’t say you’re jealous don’t say you’re jealous okay I’m a bit jealous FFU --

SHUICHI I THINK THIS IS ONE OF THE TIMES WHERE YOU DON’T WANT TO PURSUE THE TRUTH I HAVE A TERRIBLE, AWFUL FEELING -

oh no oh no

here I was doing mental gymnastics to justify why she’d be able to cosplay as Junko, a real person

but I was over-complicating things as usual

even the egg has been compromised for her nefarious scheme this truly is the worst timeline

What is with me and stumbling into series that just bloody smash their fourth wall until there’s nothing but broken pieces left

thank you for having twogami right after togami it’s not something I realized I needed and among all this heartbreak is a blessing

THIS IS NOT YOUR CUE TO START PLAYING THE CREDITS MONOKUMA

I am only making it through this trial by sheer force of will and the power of Sweetcheeks’ adorable voice.

Dangan.... ronpa....?

oh god she said ‘we’ she said ‘WE’ THIS IS REALLY NOT GOOD

‘Don’t get too whacky with your theories,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to sound like a total crackpot,’ I said. DAMN YOU SELF I SHOULD HAVE LET MYSELF GO ABSOLUTELY WILD AFTER ALL

So this was invented completely from nothing??? My initial theory had them seeing themselves in someone else’s actual memories as themselves, and having their own brains play tricks on them that way - but all those scenes with them being interviewed by Makoto, of applying to Hope’s Peak, and possibly everything else about them - oh god - how powerful are these lights? How much detail was crammed into them? Can this all be done with a mere flash of a light???

‘We.’ Her use of ‘we’ is interesting, here. It really does feel like Tsumugi sees all of her cosplay personas as actual people that she can channel to ‘help her’ as opposed to just mere characters. Like entities fighting along side of her, not just through her...

also hello ibuki I forgot how much I enjoyed your VA they make me hear seagulls in the distance

aaaaaaw look at how much the art style has improved from the first game!!!

Y.......... YES.......?????? wait actually as someone who is lowkey interested in props and set design - BUT NO WAIT STILL THIS IS WAY BEYOND THAT -

How... the hell... do you cosplay the world?! The entire world?!?!

Is that possible?? If the entire world isn’t real - if it’s all being propped up by you - then -

Who - who are we playing this game for then??? Why make us play it??? Who is watching the game???

I KNEW IT

I AND PROBABLY HALF OF THE PEOPLE PLAYING WERE JUST WAITING FOR YOU TO SHOW UP

......

Did. Did you just say it takes place in the real world.

Oh no -

It... It’s real fiction... because they’ve kidnapped actual people... and brainwashed them... and then trapped them in a situation where they were forced to kill each other to get out?? For things that didn’t exist??? For reasons that weren’t ever real???

Wait - so that means they can get out and it’ll be fine?! That’s..... t-that’s not as bad as I thought, but...

‘STAFF’ OH THAT WORD IS SO OUT OF PLACE -

...............................

There are. There are people backstage. It’s not just Tsumugi. This. This is super not good.

insert inappropriately-timed comment about how I love this VA

Okay. This actually took me by surprise. And I’m kinda terrified to ask.

W.... Why not? Is - Is this actually a space separated from reality? Can they physically.... not go back....???

no wait -

what are you doing

PUT THAT KEY BACK RIGHT NOW

oH

OH UNCANNY VALLEY-LEVELS OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

NO DON’T THROW REAL FACES UP THERE -

IS THIS A BLOODY COMMENT BOARD

I mean I know in my head that this is a niconico parody but the fact is they have to translate the comments to suit an english audience so -

omfg no I cannot believe what is coming out of the screen right now

wait wait

Kyoko is my waifu

My husbando Shuichi

first

Sakura is my muscle waifu good taste anon

Bring on the spoilers

LOL are you watching?

I feel like I’m participating too!

she’s shaking

Aaaw, Himiko is still alive.

Wow it’s on? LOL!

this is what the creepy kid at the beginning of the chapter was about

this was who that Makoto kid was

WHERE IS HIS CREEPY-ASS FACE I KNOW YOU’RE THERE MAKOTO

Is this the everyone... the real everyone Tsumugi says she represents, then??? That she’s fighting for? Omg was Kirumi’s motive/trial foreshadowing all along -

Anyway, damn Tsumugi is proud of her viewership.

#humblebrag #musclewaifu

EVERYONE???? LITERALLY EVERYONE?!?!?!

SURELY... SURELY THAT IS THE CONCEITED TALK  OF A MANAGER TRYING TO TALK UP THEIR ‘BABY’.... SURELY...

I appreciate the use of Celes here. This is.... damn dark. They’ve achieved such a peaceful world that the have to manufacture darkness and blood-sport for people to get their kicks???

STIMULATION?!

first of all where’s miu when you need her

SECOND OF ALL ARE YOU SURE HUMANITY WAS BEAUTIFUL, KOREKIYO??? ARE YOU SURE?

“It’s simple economics.”

THERE YOU ARE MAKOTO YOU CREEP

oh no he was... literally... using this game to cope with his problems.... and he said that one day he wanted to be a part of it... oh no.....

..... D... Did one of the comments say that it had been years? That they had been waiting for a few years for the sequel?

Does - does that mean something, or is it just a throwaway audience comment? Why years? If Rantaro was in the last one, why would it have been years for this one to happen??? How old is Rantaro? How old is Tsumugi?!?!

FML I had been wondering how ‘Monokuma’ could exist without Junko existing since they’re inextricably linked. FML.

MONOKUMA CAN YOU STOP ROLLING THE CREDITS, THE MUSIC AND THE TITLE CARDS FOR A MINUTE PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU

Because I don’t enjoy having Saioinji’s terrifying eyes trained on me while she questions my intelligence, so I’ll sum up the next question - what season of this gameshow from hell are we apparently on?

I mean, considering Junko’s title... well...

..... yeah it looks better with a V.

the real answer to why they used V3 even though it’s technically not the correct way to say ‘53′ - it’s the aesthetic.

FFFF

I actually screenshot all the parody!title cards and they’re amazing. I’ll post them just once a bit later when it shows up again because this post is entirely too long, but needless to say, whoever designed them had fun. And the titles of the games, too - Birth of Despair? Dream Danganronpa? Sign me tf up! oh no does this make me part of the problem I’M SORRY SWEETCHEEKS

I can’t believe I was bitching about Junko being the mastermind for the third game when apparently audience members have had to sit through 53 Junkos

You couldn’t have changed it up??? Not even once??? Like, one led by Mukuro as a prologue idea or??? quietly denies the existence of the anime

Oh, speaking of which, I do like the excuse they came up with as to why the drv3 creators didn’t create new characters from the supposed other games why Tsumugi didn’t cosplay anyone outside the first two games - it’s for the class’s benefit, since they only knew those two casts, and y’know. She cares. about shock value

DON’T YOU PASS THE BUCK, GIRL

Ah, so that ‘staff’ you mentioned earlier...

why is this so funny to me

T-Tsumugi, do you have a tumultuous relationship with your managers or something

why are you airing out your dirty laundry on live television

is it all the incest plotlines

I feel like at this point it’s less ‘Tsumugi is trying to rub into the students how completely and absolutely they are boned’ and more ‘okay, it’s time to give a shout-out to everyone who put this production together! Perfect time to slap on that logo, guys!‘

oh my god that was supposed to be a trailer in-meta too alsd;kfj i’m losing it

AND AGAIN, THOSE TITLE CARDS - THEY ARE AMAZING.

SHE IS SHE’S TOTALLY ADVERTISING MID-SHOW

TSUMUGI STOP BEING A CORPORATE SELL-OUT

"NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR CRAPPY SHOEHORNED ADVERTISING!!!”

oh god oh no

who’s going to tell him -

MONOKUMA DON’T YOU DARE

i’m having an existential crisis alongside sweetcheeks ngl

there are so many layers

....

we need to go deeper

So, just to clarify, there are three layers right now:

There’s us, the players. In a sense, we could be considered ‘equal but different than the tier’, but we do still operate on a plane separate from the metafiction of Tsumugi’s ‘everyone in the world’.

There’s the ‘audience’, the outside world. This is the space that’s been breached at this point. And this... this is the level where the students are from, too - aka the reason I think we and the audience should exist as separate entities.

And there’s the domain of the Killing Game, a space created to play out this story, using real people - a place separated from reality... how? If Tsumugi is talking about a set, it could easily be the real world, which means they’ve been isolated somewhere. At the same time though, when they managed to reach the end of the escape tunnel and saw the outside world, they all started to choke and suffocate. So... could this be VR still? Or no? Can these existences known as Shuichi Saihara, the Ultimate Detective, Maki Harukawa, the Ultimate Assassin, Himiko Yumeno, the Ultimate Robot, K1-b0, the Ultimate Robot, and even Tsumugi Shirogane, the Ultimate Cosplayer, leave this space in any way, shape or form... or not at all? Is them suffocating ^ like that a sign that they literally cannot exist outside of this space?

She is literally throwing the same question back in Shuichi’s face ghdfkgh

NO I’M ON SHUICHI’S SIDE I COULDN’T HELP IT I HAD TO CHOOSE REAL PEOPLE

no!!! no!!!! NO!!!!

no seriously I still chose real people because I am stubborn

sweetcheeks et al. do not deserve any of this

Of course they brought out despair!Mikan for this. Of course.

I have to say, I do like these little character touches - the decisions that have been made as to which ‘cosplay’ says what. I mean, it’s supposed to also act as a way to throw our known and loved favourites in our face too, but having Celes comment on how boring ‘peace’ is? Having Ibuki smashing through the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience, Gundham remarking on their abnormal existence and Leon commenting on how cool the ‘aesthetic’ of the title card is? It’s such a nice touch. also horrifying. butalsonice

Oh we really are addressing the prologue now??? And - I’m assuming Tsumugi is referring to Hajime when she says ‘me’, but is there a chance she isn’t?

Just as I initially suspected, though - they really were normal when they got in. So how did they decide who got what personality/talent, or was that random? I mean, that might be the case - it was potentially hinted by the motive video switch of Chapter 2..

............. Huh.

But..... in what sense? Like the 16 talents were stored in those lights and they were ‘picked up’ by the most suited participant? How could you make sure there were no doubles? Or - and this is possible because of the vague language - did the talents build on what the student knew already? In which case, how would they know what the talents would end up being and plan the labs around them?

No, it would... have to be... the first one. Talents had its own selection in the flashback creating machine, though without verifying what the subcategories are it’s hard to confirm or deny anything... but I also can’t shake what Maki said at the beginning of the game? How it felt like their talents were given at random?

So... so they’re not only back where they started - completely isolated with everyone they’ve ever known and the world they knew completely out of reach (in this sense, dead/not actually existing are functionally the same), but they get a helping of a totally warranted existential crisis on top of that.

And... their bodies are real, so everyone else really is dead. No happy sdr2 ending. Well, unless I mental-gymnastics that to read ‘they have physical bodies to return to, but as manufactured personas it’s pointless.’

Me too, Sweetcheeks.

We can’t go 5 minutes without a WHAM line.

B-But they were kidnapped weren’t they -?!

fujisaki does not deserve this slander

Return of the hat!!!

..... is it bad that I miss his hat. I. I really liked his hat. I know that it was representative of the way he held back and used it to hide himself, but - but I liked his original portrait. And I liked the way it was incorporated into his sprites and all the movements he makes with it and without it, like it‘s a phantom limb. okayI’llstop

Why... are we not getting a name here? Was Shuichi Saihara a made-up name too?

oh -

oh no

D: A... Anything...

H-He’s.... a complete fanboy too.................... holy shit. cute but terrifying he looks like much more of a schoolboy super!fan than real Shuichi

S-So wait, it’s not even autosuggestion then - he asked for it? How - how does this work with the flashback lights? It can be targeted like that??? god I’m going to have so many questions after this is all over

I think this may be the death knell for his psyche oTL I certainly wouldn’t be able to take this if I was in his position.

LOOK I KNOW I GET EXCITED ABOUT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT TOO

but this is a bit much c-can you please keep that drool in -

asdfkjlsdf w h a t

was

was this omitted or something

I - I swear they were kidnapped they seemed a lot more freaked out?!

Even Rantaro, who seemed to know more than he let on at the time - ?!

I... I think I really need to go back and replay the prologue.

ME NEITHER K1-B0 I FEEL LIKE I’M BEING GASLIT

d-did

did you use it on me too

That... that I can believe. No matter who they were before - if they were consenting or not - it might not even matter, if they can’t return to how they were. In a sense, the Gopher Project story was practically preparing them for it - the idea that everything they knew and loved were gone, and would never come back. Oh... oh that’s bad....

TSUMUGI IS ACTUALLY TERRIFYING

SHUT UP NAEGI

wait why is seeing him say that worse than seeing Junko say her normal despair stuff

it’s the insincerity, probably...

YOU NERFED KAITO?!?!?!

YOU NERFED KAITO!!!!!!!

okay I take back what I said Maki you have my enthusiastic blessing to recklessly murder as necessary

RIP Tsumugi and all of her new depth

“I’m also the one that kept sneaking all of the death flags into his room while you were out training every night!”

Y O O O

YOU NERFED HER CHARACTER TOO?!?!?! YOU GOTTA LET THAT HAPPEN ORGANICALLY!!!

LMAO

Souda will never show this much awareness in his actual every day fictional life and that makes this 100% funnier

Everything has a writing credit.... every single thing? Every bit of development?

Even Kokichi’s coup and Kaito’s cooperation? And Kokichi manipulating Gonta? You just seemed so - so angry about that after the trial. Surely those, if nothing else...

At this point they’re just kicking a sad, beaten-down puppy. What more could you possibly do at this point - ?!

oH GOD I DON’T WANT TO SEE THIS

WHAT THE HELL WHO EVEN SAYS SOMETHING LIKE THAT

nNOOO

NO LET ME REMEMBER HIM THE WAY HE WAS

DON’T YOU CROSS THIS BRIGHT RED LINE SHIROGANE

NO

NO THIS IS ILLEGAL I’M CALLING THE POLICE HE LOOKS ABSOLUTELY MAD -

GHGHGGHGHGHGH

GHGHghghghghhh

ghghgh

sdkflj

n o  o o o oooo o o o o o o o

gggkghk

I-It’s not a lie! Even if it was manufactured, even if it was coded into them - their feelings were real to them! It might be by design, but - oh this sounds so hollow. It’s one thing to talk about ‘fate’ and ‘this was the work of a higher power’, but having it brought down on you in such a trivial way must be absolutely soul-crushing.

this is the saddest iteration of hangover!Shuichi that I have laid my eyes on in the entire game

nihilism.

tbh I never found Izuru that intimidating as a final villain in the last game - but here? Terrifying. Maybe it’s in contrast to Junko here, who has the overbearing destructive personality of a tornado, but the quiet emptiness and lack of a higher purpose, of absolute futility that he stands for here - that scares me a lot.   Maybe it’s just because it seems to bring the concept of DR’s despair to a place that I can personally understand?

I keep saying ‘this is terrifying!’ but I mean, to be fair... it... kind of is. as always, fantastic use of text DRV3!

also can someone please shut up the peanut gallery for five minutes

well damn Monokuma that one felt aimed right at me

It reminds me of what Komaeda would say about his own motivation: it was watching everyone struggle with adversity, or the ‘despair of the killing game’, with the end goal of them ‘reaching hope’ - of seeing them overcome and grow stronger for it, that drove him forward. From the outside that makes sense; seeing other people overcome struggles, even ones so terrible, give us the mental strength to overcome our own problems. But for someone on the inside looking out... how perverse would that feel, to think that your suffering is basically being used as inspiration!p0rn? Knowing that there were voyeurs getting a kick out of your struggle?

What happens to game pieces after the game board is closed and put away?

Do they go into stasis? Do they just... exist, outside of time? Frozen forever, until they’re taken out to be ‘played with’ again; left to rot?

If they ‘win’.... they have no future. There’s nothing for them to move forward to reach. A piece learning that they’re a piece, and knowing their dreams after their trials will always stay just out of reach... how can anyone move foward like that?

“love that reaction” OH SHUT UP LUDENBERGxLUVER37

Fight for yourself! They fought to get you this far - Kaito and Kokichi died to give you this chance, even if they are a ‘lie”!

But Shuichi has never been able to fight for himself, only for the others...

Tsumugi, after spending the last hour verbally beating them down and shredding his and everyone’s sense of self to shreds: wow lol what a weakling

Everything is terrible and yet her saying this still got a laugh out of me, damn it.

S-SHUICHI? SHUICHI?

I-IS HE EMOTIONALLY SHUTTING DOWN -

OH GOD

HIS

H-HIS POV - IS GONE -

And nothing but despair left...

Did - did we just lose Shuichi...?

SWEETCHEEKS!!! SWEETCHEEKS, NO!!!

SWEETCHEEKS I’M SO SORRY!!!!

[thetravellingvagrant]

Day 1- Glasgow/Warsaw: In Which I Rob The Post Office Again

Long time readers of this blog- all two of them- will likely be acutely aware of phenomenon I have come to refer to as the 'first day curse'. For new readers- all none of them- this curse strikes, as you might expect, on the first day of my trip and, without exception, turns what should, for all intents and purposes, be the most exciting part of my journey into an unrelentingly shitty maelstrom of sadness and fuck. Be it getting dragged around a museum of the European Parliament while about six hours beyond my elastic limit of staying awake; getting turned away from my couchsurfing host's apartment for several hours, to fend off cold and blisters by a diminutive racist; accidentally committing a home invasion or just getting fucked time after time by bastard taxi drivers, who seem to make it their business to ruin my life, the FDC is ever-present and ever-shitty in this Vagrant life of mine.

But not this year. I was determined to swerve that bullshit however I could, this time; my journey to  Warsaw, the first stop of this trip, had been planned to a tee; I had managed to finagle an honest-to-God lift to the airport with my very helpful mother, nearly entirely eliminating the possibility of missing my flight, which I seem to manage to do, each and every time I fly by myself and perhaps, most important of all, as detailed in my last entry, I had already basically had my FDC this year, with the absolute shit-show of a day I had had, trying to get my passport sorted. Surely the travel-gods would see this as enough penance to let me pass both unhindered and unfucked into Vagrancy, for once. Just once, travel-gods. Be cool. Jesus.

I woke up bright and early, or at least early, in my own lovely bed for what will be the last time for almost a month and quickly set about mopping up the remaining tasks on my to-do list for the trip, including- but not limited to- faffing around trying to get the export settings right on Adobe's Premier Pro for a video I had been working on (which, let me tell you, is a lot of fun to do under pressure and with a strict time-limit), general packing of way more things than I need and having a series of increasingly severe mini-breakdowns.

While my flight didn't leave until 7:30pm, I regardless found myself with little time to spare in my flat, due to my having an unavoidable dentist's appointment (whose office, those of you who read the previous entry will know, is located close to my parent's house and is therefore some distance from my flat) at two in the afternoon.

By some miracle, I finished my to-do list, or at least the most important items on it in reasonably good time, or at least in enough time to still make it to the appointment if I hurried and caught a bus to the train station and so bid my cat a remarkably brief, though no less tearful than usual farewell

I won’t miss you.

And was quickly on my way to have my teeth all messed about. Hurrah.

Trips to the dentist, I'm aware, aren't usually regarded as a particularly pleasant thing, regardless, but holy shit, was this ever not a pleasant trip to the dentist. The appointment lasted a full hour (fifteen minutes longer than was scheduled, which was very helpful on a day when time was so limited for me) and consisted almost entirely of having the inflamed pulp inside one of my teeth jabbed at with a needle, which uh, yeah, isn't too great, let me tell you. The little cherry on top of the bakewell tart of shit that had been my orthodontic experience was the anaesthetic injection in my gums: it seemed that I was to spend the rest of my day with my face entirely numb in, apparently, every part of it except the bits that hurt. I was also told to expect my tooth to ache like buggery during my flight. So that was a treat.

A bit shaken and now behind schedule, I left the dentist to return to my parent's house briefly to pick up my passport, check in for my impending flight and to put some music and podcasts on my phone so as not to be terribly bored for the rest of my evening.

Ryanair do a lot of shit wrong- Like a lot- but I've got to say that being able to check in and get my boarding pass on my phone is a nice touch, or at least one that just about finally brings them level with other, better airlines in literally just that one aspect. Or...at least it should have been...

I entered my details into the app, triumphantly pressed 'continue' with an uncharacteristic arrogance for someone dealing with anything to do with Ryanair and...an error occurred. For god's sake, Ryanair, pull your shit together. I pressed the button again, my confidence slightly dented, but still in tact. Error. Umm.

“Okay...” I thought, “so the app's not working. I suppose I can always go and physically print the passes like some fucking caveman”.

I loaded the Ryanair website, my confidence now all but entirely replaced with pure vexation and...it wasn't there. Not my boarding pass- the website. It was down for maintenance and apparently had been for some time- days in fact. Indeed with a quick Google, I learned that it was national (albeit quite tabloidy) news that this website was down. People physically couldn't check in for their flights and were being stung for £55 for it when they arrived at the airport because of it, while Ryanair, in an ostrichian level display of burying their heads in the sand were maintaining through all this that the website was up, running and fully functional despite clear empirical evidence to the contrary.

I checked my phone. I needed to leave; I still had to pick up a travel money card at the post office and get some food before I headed to the airport and had no more time to spare, angrily pressing 'continue' over and over again, sighing a little louder each time it didn't work.

My mother and I bundled ourselves and my luggage into her car and drove quickly to a nearby town. I darted off into the post office for my card and she into Morrisons to buy some very delicious food for me, which was very nice of her, even if I was in far too bad a mood to properly acknowledge it at the time.

I had realised, some time prior, that I had also managed to forget my gloves. Given that I'd be travelling to basically Russia in the winter and realising that historically that can go poorly, I was understandably a little worried about this. It came as a genuinely nice surprise then to find that the post office sold nice gloves at he very reasonable price of £1.50 a pair. I grabbed two sets (for layering purposes) and headed to the till. I obtained my travel money card fairly effortlessly (#humblebrag) and left with it and my gloves in hand. So to speak. Wait, shit- I had been so wrapped up in getting the card and dwelling on the unbelievable amount of garbage that had been slopped on top of me throughout the day that I had actually forgotten to pay for not one, but two pairs of gloves, thereby robbing the post office for the second time in a week. Charles Bronson got life for that so I'm lucky to have gotten away with it.  Anyway, sorry post office. Again...

Travel money card, several pairs of stolen gloves and some very delicious food now obtained, my mother and I set off, finally, to Edinburgh airport. As we drove, I continued mashing the Ryanair app, desperately looking for signs of life, my already critically low optimism dwindling even further as I did. On the verge of giving up, the two hour cut off point for obtaining boarding passes looming within mere minutes, the app spluttered up all the water it had swallowed in that devastating surfing accident and took a deep, ragged breath. It wasn't much and being clinically dead for as long as it was, only to come back to life would clearly lead to massive brain damage, but that was all I needed to get my foot in the door and my grubby mitts on my boarding pass. I was overjoyed, though, and I've said this before of Easyjet, when you're made this happy by a service being offered simply working as advertised, that really does speak poorly of how high the bar is set for your company...

We ended up arriving at Edinburgh airport in genuinely quite good time, which was...surprising, considering how my day had been going, to say the least. My mother and I shared a tearful goodbye or I'm sure we at least would have done, if she wasn't so concerned about the cost of her stay in the drop-off zone going up the longer she stayed there and with a single punch on the arm in lieu of a hug, I was off.

I navigated the airport security with ease for once, with my bag and genitals left unfondled by surly old security guards and sat down in the duty-free costa with some time to spare. Despite having a bag of, and I really must stress this, like crazy delicious food with me, I decided to treat myself to a warm panini and a hot chocolate as due to a combination of needing to rush in the morning and having to wait after dental work in the afternoon, I hadn't yet eaten. As I chewed, using only the right side of my mouth, through my pigs-under-blanket panini and sipped my a-little-too-hot hot chocolate, I reflected. It seemed that the first day curse had regardless struck me once more, despite my best efforts to the contrary as, to be totally honest, I had had a pretty cack day. Still, at least I wasn't going to almost miss my flight, for once.

Oh, right, shit, my flight...

I looked at the time- the gate was closing. I'd spent too long reflecting like some genius prilosopher might... I pushed the rest of the panini into my already overstuffed mouth and forced it down with the remainder of my drink, burning my tongue quite badly in the process (probably considerably less like a genus philosopher might...) and sped off towards the gate. I don't know how I managed to get myself into this situation, but I now found myself in not insubstantial danger of missing my flight, despite having literally been inside the airport for the past hour and a half.

I approached my gate doing that kind of half-walk-half-trot thing that people do when they're in a hurry, but are still unwilling to go full-run.

“Are you going to Warsaw?!” a flight attendant, standing by the gate shouted to me, from some distance away

“Uh, yeah!” I replied, breathlessly.

Even as far apart as we were, I could tell that her face wore a look of mixed shock and pity

“...You'll have to hurry, then, they're getting ready to take off!”

I went full run. I charged through the gate and onto the plane as quickly as I could, stored my probably slightly too large bit of luggage in the overhead lockers (incidentally, being very, very late for a flight is a great way to get the attendants to conveniently forget to check the size of your bag) and sat down, sweating, dishevelled and manic to the demonstrable disappointment of my new seat-neighbour. I honestly don't blame him.

After an uncharacteristically pleasant flight, barring some minor air-pressure-related toothache, I was spat out into Warsaw Modlin airport and found myself almost immediately on a bus to the city centre. I'm not quite sure how I managed this, as by this point it was around 11:30 at night, I was still in pain, hadn't slept particularly well the previous night and was, by now, flagging badly, but I assume it was some kind of lovely witchcraft. Thanks, lovely witchcraft.

Once in Warsaw, proper, I quickly darted to the central station, which, through my very careful planning both my bus stop and hostel were adjacent to. Despite it pushing midnight, the station was still open and, although all I really wanted to do was go to bed, I thought it prudent to buy my ticket for tomorrow's early morning train journey to Belarus as soon as possible. I took my place in the queue, or at least what looked like a queue. The woman behind the counter appeared to be reading some kind of document on her computer; a strange thing to do, I thought, with a line of seven or so people, steadily climbing in number, waiting specifically for her attention. She continued to read this document and sip her coffee for the next forty minutes or so. It was dangerously close to 1:00am and I was dangerously close to putting the entire idea of getting a ticket before morning in a big flaming bin before she deigned to start actually doing her job and serving people again. Albeit slowly. I bumbled through buying my ticket in the most 'me' way possible (awkwardly, quietly and tinged with rage) and left for my hostel, head shaking in disbelief and body aching for sleep.

After a scant ten minute walk through the pervasively freezing Polish night, I had arrived. The door had been left ajar for me by the night-receptionist, who greeted me with a nod. I nodded back, somehow accidentally yanking the door closed in front of myself in the process. Great. Good start. I had managed to lock myself out of the hostel before even getting inside. With an audible sigh, even through the locked door, the receptionist forced herself out of her chair to re-open it for me. I apologised as I stepped inside. She started back at me blankly, apparently not speaking enough English to respond. She pointed to a clipboard sitting on her desk; on it were written the names of everyone checking in that night. I pointed to my own name and she led me to my room.

As she opened the door I was hit by an ungodly stench; a sickly sweet combination of feet, body odour and death. I wretched as quietly as my body would allow me to, unsure whether to tough it out and try to get used to the smell or just hold my breath all night.

The receptionist flicked the light on. An audible groan came from one of the bunks as the more irritable of my roommates was woken up by this. The receptionist pointed me to my bed and left. It was the bunk above the angry man. In a room of six beds, only three of which were occupied, including mine, it seemed that they had opted to put us as close to one another as we could physically fucking get, without sharing a bunk, which is honestly exactly what everyone wants in a hostel, anyway, so good show.

Not wanting to be 'that guy', I flicked the light off and, as quietly as I could, put my stuff away. I was hungry again, by this point and so decided to go and sit in the hostel's kitchen and eat some of my, as yet untouched, unbelievably delicious Morrisons swag. I grabbed my bag and headed out into the hostel's halls, quickly realising that there was no kitchen or indeed dining area of any kind. There was a toilet that stank perpeptually and very strongly of shit and a receptionist whose disdain for me seemed to only grow each time she laid eyes on me, but no kitchen. Unwilling to rustle sandwich containers and crisp packets on the top bunk of a sleeping man who genuinely may have hated me, I put the idea in a big flaming bin and opted to just go to bed, having eaten once and drank little more than a hot chocolate throughout the entire day.

I re-entered the bedroom as stealthily as possible, given the sleep I had had and realised all too quickly that the bed hadn't actually been made. They expected me to do that for myself, which, let's be totally honest here a) is among the last things I want to do when I'm exhausted and physically fatigued from travelling, b)is like super, super disruptive to the other people in the room and c) probably should already have been done before my arrival, right? I mean that's like hospitality 101.

With little recourse but to do it myself, though, I did just that. Shockingly, I did not manage to do it particularly quietly and even more shockingly than that, Mr. Angry didn't seem to appreciate my inability to noiselessly prepare my own bed at past-one-in-the-morning.

After some bumbling around with sheets, my bed was ready, or as ready as I could be bothered making it. I grabbed the ladder to my bunk and hoisted myself up onto it. The entire bed shook, unsecured bits of metal rattled against one another and the entire thing bent considerably on its axis. I don't know if you've seen the viral video of several hundred squeaky rubber chickens being pushed down on all at once, which made the rounds a year or two ago, but that was uncannily what it sounded like, except louder, deeper and sadder. I was one rung up the ladder.

Out of options, there was little I could do but push on- one thousand terrified chickens screaming in pain with every step, until finally I was in my bunk. The noise didn't abate, even then, ringing out, entirely undampened with every tiny movement I made, but at least the bed had stopped rocking back and forth like a tiny, shitty, uncomfortable boat.

Once actually in my bunk, the room's other issues began to make themselves apparent. While the bed did have barriers on the far side from the wall, these barriers were similarly flimsy to the rest of the structure and were so insignificant and strangely placed so as to do literally nothing to stop all my stuff falling off the bed during the night. The side of the bed pressed against the wall had no barriers whatsoever, instead opting for the 'sheer drop' approach, which obviously wouldn't have been an issue had it not been for the bed being positioned approximately a foot and a half away from the wall for absolutely no good reason. As it stood, it was fairly likely that my phone would fall off one side of the bed during the night and my body the other. My best efforts to counteract this came in the form of neatly folding my trousers and placing them under my pillow, with my phone nestled in the back pocket: in this way it was unlikely to be knocked to the floor in the night and I could still hear my alarm, even with earplugs in. And let me tell you, boy howdy did I ever need earplugs. Mr. Angry wasn't my only roommate- I was sharing with one other person as well. Actually, I say person, but I never did get a very good look at them and honestly, from the noises they were making during the night, you could have been forgiven for thinking that what I was actually bunking down with was a pig being butchered with a chainsaw. The noise was honestly inhuman; wet, droning slurps and gurgles emanated constantly from the far side of the room and cut straight to my core, regardless of how deep I pushed my lovely and usually very effective gummy earplugs into my terrible, broken brainbox. Combined with my squeaking chicken bed and that fucking smell, it was honestly a bit like going to sleep in an abattoir. An abattoir with no power outlets.

How's that for a Trip Advisor review?

[16sock]

pedestals.

(Image from Pixabay.)

“The Crane Wife” is a story from Japanese folklore. I found a copy in the reserve’s gift shop among the baseball caps and bumper stickers that said GIVE A WHOOP. In the story, there is a crane who tricks a man into thinking she is a woman so she can marry him. She loves him, but knows that he will not love her if she is a crane so she spends every night plucking out all of her feathers with her beak. She hopes that he will not see what she really is: a bird who must be cared for, a bird capable of flight, a creature, with creature needs. Every morning, the crane-wife is exhausted, but she is a woman again. To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one.

(The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser, emphasis mine.)

I want to preface this post by saying I know some of this might come off as a humblebrag and that’s not my intention at all. I just had some musings last night and wanted to write out my thoughts, as incoherent as I think they are.

Back when I was having my Tinder fun phase, the one sentiment I got almost invariably from guys was “I can’t believe you’re single” or “Your ex was a fool to lose you/I can’t believe your ex would let you go.” That always bothered me on some level, but I could never articulate why until now, months later with a little more distance and experience.

I’m sure some of those guys probably just used that line because they thought it would pull me in, because they thought it was what I wanted to hear. But just to be clear, there were also some instances where I’m fairly certain they weren’t just lines. For context, I made it clear to these guys that I had just gotten out of a relationship and only wanted physical intimacy, that I wasn’t ready for a relationship or anything deeper than a bit of light-hearted fun and some chitchat to distract me from the heartbreak. 

And yet. So many of my Tinder dates wanted more after meeting. I told them I was happy to continue the physical part of our relationship, so it wasn’t a matter of them trying to convince me into that. One of them said they saw something “special” in me and promised he would drive the 40 minute commute between our places (in traffic!) to see me more seriously. Another said he was considering moving between two places and if he moved to my city, would we be able to date? The most difficult one was someone I really liked as a friend, but who I could tell was falling for me far more than I was for him. He wanted to start a long-distance relationship, which I was absolutely not willing to do. All of them said the same things. “I love your passion for environmental issues/your research/other passion.” “You’re so driven/different/smart.” “How can a girl like you be single?”

I think I know now why those statements felt so empty and strange. When I look back on the entirety of my dating life, it’s been a pretty common pattern where the other person is attracted to me based on how “different” I seem, how full of life and passion I am. And I mean, I get it. We all like positive people, we like people who inspire us and make us feel like the world is there to be conquered.

But I’m also a person, my own person. I’m not here to just be your inspiring manic pixie girl.

I was talking to my partner about this when we first started dating and he observed of one of the guys, “It sounds like he didn’t really have much else going on in his life and was looking to you to fill that ‘thing to be passionate about’ void for him.” And that rang so true for me that I had to pause for a minute and sit down. (Okay, I was already lying down, but you get the idea.) I realize now why I hate being put on a pedestal so much, and I know how much that sounds like “woe is me, people like me too much! Oh, life is so hard!” I’m sorry. But being pedestal-ed isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

Sure, it’s nice to be treated well. It’s nice to be spoiled sometimes. But not by someone who doesn’t think of you as a full person with flaws and wants and needs of your own. Not by someone who just wants you because you bring something to his life that he doesn’t currently have.

I feel like this is what happened in my last relationship. Back then, he also said he was drawn to me because of my passion, because I was “doing so much” (pursuing a PhD, writing, being all about environmentalism, etc). Maybe it should have been a sign for me, but of course, hindsight is 20/20.

I read the “crane wife” article I linked above after the breakup and it perfectly articulated my feelings. I was constantly trying to want less, need less in that relationship. I told myself I was okay with things when really, I wasn’t. I told myself that I could sustain the kind of relationship where I only see my partner once a week, chatting infrequently, that I could be with someone who didn’t have the same ideas on sex and sexuality that I did. Someone who didn’t have the same values I did. But now I can say that honestly, breaking up with me was the kindest thing that guy ever did for me.

When I met my current partner, he liked my passion, but more than that, he just liked my company. He liked that we could laugh together, watch things and talk about story together, just hang out and do mundane everyday things. He liked me for me, and sure, it was great that I was smart and driven and passionate, but so was he. (Still is.) So we could be that together.

I guess what I’m trying to say is...all those guys liked the Hex that writes books. That does research and codes and draws and has a million things going on in her life. But none of them knew the Hex that sometimes can’t bring herself to type a single sentence, that sometimes needs to cry and lie in bed and not do anything close to a million things. The Hex that needs someone to lean on, the Hex that can’t always be strong and brave and passionate and bubbly. And for those that did know, that wasn’t the Hex they signed up for.

I’m so happy in my relationship now, and I hope to be for a very long time. But this is just a reminder to myself and a message to anyone who needs to hear it -- date someone who thinks of you as a person. Someone who says, “I know you have flaws. I know you’re not perfect. I know we might not always agree, but I want to know those parts of you. I want to experience the truth of you, even the parts you think are ugly or that I might not like as much.”

In the end, we’re just clumsy clumps of carbon reaching out for the possibility of love, for the possibility of life at the side of another clump of carbon. Pick a good clump of carbon that doesn’t make you feel like you’re hard to love. Not even a little bit. Relationships are work, not like a chore, but just in that they require effort to understand and be considerate of each other. But it shouldn’t feel like you have to try to be someone you’re not. Don’t settle for less.

(And by the way, that ex is a fool for losing me. But that’s not my problem now, is it? 😉)